Illarion.org

Since the proposal board is closed access, bringing an idea to attention and criticism.
This idea is an attempt to brainstorm increasing role of willpower for non-magical professions.

I propose to decrease amount of damage a fighter does in melee combat as they get hurt and hungry, and willpower to be the stat to negate that penalty. Justification: a character with high willpower has enough devotion to maintain cool head, and deal good damage despite wounds and hunger, where as a character with low willpower will give up and weaken his prowess.

Discuss?

You can submit proposals directly to Mantis as feature request.

Fighters already need

Constitution for surviving attacks
Agility for surviving attacks
Strenght for being able to carry junk and armour
Perception apparently does something about your chances of hitting someone

Adding willpower to this mess means that fighters are going to get worse.

I agree with Adrian, the fighting stats and all is already messy

I also agree with Llama. Furthermore there have to be some attributes you can save points with as a non-mage, e.g as a crafter or fighter.

But from another point of view, theoretically all fighters should be puppets, and roleplayed accordingly. However they are not. I recall the rules saying you should roleplay your character depending on the stats you have, not maxing them to squeeze the most combat ability out of them.

Not gonna happen Arvy

Wait for VBU?

Zehshirr wrote:Not gonna happen Arvy

I do.

How about you provide alternatives? Like, point out where the effect of willpower is too low or should be added?

Do not think about complicated stuff (like a willpower-o-meter). Think simple. But think ahead. How about bard magic?

Hadrian_Abela wrote:Fighters already need

Constitution for surviving attacks
Agility for surviving attacks
Strenght for being able to carry junk and armour
Perception apparently does something about your chances of hitting someone

Adding willpower to this mess means that fighters are going to get worse.

Unless the max distributable attribute points are increased.

Many cooks spoil the soup.
Too many opinions ruin the balance of an online game, for most of those stating one do so only in their own advantage.
An existing concept may need to be tweaked, but that must be done with care and by an "unconcerned" person. For whenever tweaking happens by the opinions of too many, the original concept will get lost and you will end up needing a new concept.

Willpower might help one resist the effects of bard magic such as charming, lulling, and hypnosis by reducing the duration and severity of the spells. When charmed, lulled, or hypnotized by bard music attack speed, dmg, magic resistance, agility, and constitution can be reduced. Willpower might also function like charisma and help in haggling with NPC merchants by reducing purchasing costs and raising selling costs for the character.

Note- I play a nun so I satisfy the unconcerned test.

Damien wrote:Many cooks spoil the soup.
Too many opinions ruin the balance of an online game, for most of those stating one do so only in their own advantage.
An existing concept may need to be tweaked, but that must be done with care and by an "unconcerned" person. For whenever tweaking happens by the opinions of too many, the original concept will get lost and you will end up needing a new concept.

Well of course you're going to hear the opinions of people who would be at a disadvantage by something like this being passed. Someone who is not a warrior wouldn't know how it would affect a warrior, so why should they get to decide if it gets passed or not? It should be left to the opinion of those who benefit from it, and those who get hurt by it to decide.

Well, I am not saying that everyone should max willpower on fighters now, I am against maxing to begin with.
My proposal happened because I noticed that there are 2 basic templates to follow if you want to make a character that works:
A fighter - a shallow shell of a man, dumb as a stump, with maxed strength, dex, agility, constitution, and some perception, and minimal essense, will, and int.
A mage - genius, charismatic, and great will, but a complete wimp otherwise.

This kind of makes the stat markup a little flat and 2-dimensional. Either you're a brain genius, or a shallow shell.

And of course, few people will put well rounded stats on characters if they know it's gonna waste them points.
So my suggestion is geared towards giving people more reason to make character stats well rounded, so that the str/agil/dex/con fighter stereotype goes away.

Thanks.

I agree with Banestone. I think I satisfy both roles too. Krazen (my main character) is by no means a competent fighter, nor is he smart or especially willful. He strong and tough, but with low will and essence, and is thus roleplayed. Flaws make characters interesting. He doesnt benefit from this rule, but he is hurt by the fact everyone plays a charismatic, crafty rogue who most likely has 2 intelligence and 3 willpower.

A fighter - a shallow shell of a man, dumb as a stump, with maxed strength, dex, agility, constitution, and some perception, and minimal essense, will, and int.

This is not what all set for fighter stats btw.. not only do you have fighters and mages, but crafters. Druids don't seem to have any set stats needed though I would like the possibility of willpower being included with druid, bard and priest stats.

Adding more attributes tot he fighter medley is a nerf not a buff plain and simple. If willpower must play a role in non magic systems then it should be a utility role that helps all non magic character, not simply just warriors.

Variety in warriors has never been a problem, as Illarion has no forced builds for characters. when people make a character they make a choice in what attributes they use. I understand the desire to want to encourage people to use different builds but what i don't want to see is another molding of the game world around players who have the option of making characters with builds that aren't top heavy (I'm sure many remember the flame war that was magic discussion, where a certain group of 2-6 essence warriors complained magic was too powerful...gee wonder why )

@ Arvemor

You'd be surprised to know that the many of the best warriors on the isle have at least average intelligence (8-10) if not higher, and i know a few have essence much greater then 2. There is a minority of players who have experimented with builds and attributes and have a more acute knowledge of what these different attributes add or subtract to their warriors. The concept that all warriors must have 18's and 20's in in agility/strength/constitution etc is rather dated. Having a excellent warrior is more of a careful balance between attributes in reality as every maxed stat will improve one aspect of fighting and take from another.

The strengths and flaws of a character should result from the RP concept of the character. The attributes give a raw direction to what your character is able to, but in the end the only thing that matters is how you want the play the character and how you are able to.

Forcing the characters to be the lead of the way a character is played would lead to a very limited amount of different characters. The most warriors would be drowning in there own drool while staring up the sky wondering who painted it blue (the sky in Illarion is blue, right? )

Now for willpower. While using many attributes appear at the first sight to be a nice idea there are some considerable disadvantages. For example the fact that calculations that contain 1 attribute are simpler, easier to maintain and faster then calculations that contain 5 attributes. And easier calculations tend to contain less bugs then complicated ones. Also the concept that every attribute matters lead to the point that finding a good setting of attributes is more complicated and confusing to basically every player, especially the new ones. No one gains anything if the engine requires too much time to be studied.

During the VBU it use of the attributes will be changed a little. In general we are moving away from the overly complicated usage of attributes. So basically exactly the other way you propose with this thread here. The idea behind is simple. Less time you need to understand and learn how the engine works, the more time you have to have fun in the game.

Nitram

Huh, alright thanks for the reply, Nitram. I'd like to state for Athian's sake, that this proposal was not a "nerf" or "buff" proposal, that's a gamer point of view, always taking advantage of things. I was more approaching from developer standpoint with a bit of creative thinking.
Back to Nitram's reply, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the new system is like.

Question here: when this VBU gets implemented, will there be a chance to re-destribute stats on existing characters to fit the new system, or will it be a full reroll of all characters?

The redesign of the attributes is mostly compatible with the current distribution.
The possibility to change the attributes of the characters as result of the VBU is not planned.

Nitram

A system where a class needs all free attribute points to be effective in only one main-activity and perhaps somewhat effective in one or two secondary activities is always unnecessarily annoying and as well, for the usual player, unsatisfying to a certain degree.
The adressed problem of "maxing" will not be solved if you make an attribute that is now only important for mages important for others as well. Because then, fighters will end up having the same "problem" that any well-working mage character has : Once you have spent your skill points to be effective in one craft, you won't have many other points left for free stuff. You get forced to specialize (and to max).
Therefore, this proposed method would cause even more characters to "look alike", in having less free skill points to distribute where wanted besides those distributed where needed, thus reach the opposite of what is wanted.
Diversity and flexibility in skill and attribute systems is something that does not go along with Illarion's type of attribute and skill system(that is, if you don't want to give every player ten or twenty more points to freely distribute, and that would cause lots of jack-of-all-trades). If you want to achieve a system that supports diversely attributed characters, you would have to completely restructure the whole skill system. And that is a workload that might be far too much if you want the VBU to happen earlier than in the next twenty years.

To address the problem of similar, fixed stats for a majority of characters, why not make attribute points distributable throughout the gaming experience? That might reflect the changing nature of characters as they grow and live. For example, a character born with a weak constitution after a vigorous exercise regimen and nutritious diet might become less frail and sickly.

Well, good quality food gives a constitution bonus. Likewise things for other attributes, hm, sounds fun.

Nitram wrote:The redesign of the attributes is mostly compatible with the current distribution.
The possibility to change the attributes of the characters as result of the VBU is not planned.

Nitram

Does this mean that the new system will not have a dramatic change to attribute arrangement?
For example, if a character with high dexterity was a blacksmith, the new system, where smithing would require strength instead, would not make the character's attributes useless for smithing, correct?

Willpower is used for magic resistance.

Even 10 willpower makes a HUGE difference when you have high enough skill.

But of course that means sacrificing points.
The question is whether you want to be supreme at one thing.
Or generally well rounded.

Nitram wrote:Now for willpower. While using many attributes appear at the first sight to be a nice idea there are some considerable disadvantages. For example the fact that calculations that contain 1 attribute are simpler, easier to maintain and faster then calculations that contain 5 attributes. And easier calculations tend to contain less bugs then complicated ones. Also the concept that every attribute matters lead to the point that finding a good setting of attributes is more complicated and confusing to basically every player, especially the new ones. No one gains anything if the engine requires too much time to be studied.

During the VBU it use of the attributes will be changed a little. In general we are moving away from the overly complicated usage of attributes. So basically exactly the other way you propose with this thread here. The idea behind is simple. Less time you need to understand and learn how the engine works, the more time you have to have fun in the game.

Nitram

You're exactly right. What I would ideally like to see happen is four attributes. One that covers all aspects of melee combat, one that covers ranged combat, one that covers magic, and one that covers crafting.

I'm sure many players are fed up with their characters being less effective and not really knowing why.