mrvbalc wrote: »

actually after reading your post i installed oblivion again in my system just to feel the character system again, its so complex, if they bring that character system in eso, you will find unique builds and skill sets (ie: imagine everytime u lvl up u get 3 attribute pts, and u have to spread it across 7 attributes, for 65 lvls it will be 195 pt, so 1907713332720 combinations which will results in that many different builds).

Faulgor wrote: »

TL;DeeR at the end.

I recently posted something similar in another thread, and it gave me the chance to think about the merits of streamlining ESO's character system.

Now, that word is understandably not very popular. Developers too often use it to masquerade diminishing complexity and nuance as something to celebrate. What I mean by streamlining is to cut redundancies and rearrange components of a system in a way that does not compromsie the function of the system. The benefits of a streamlined system should be that the functions of each component are easier to understand, that each function is more efficient, and to have less redundant parts that can interact in chaotic ways, which makes regulating or "balancing" easier.
Long story short, streamlining does not necessarily mean that functions are removed.
In fact, a system can be made more efficient by adding parts with new functions, which this post is all about.

Now, regarding the character system of ESO, there are several recurring complaints which most of you should be familiar with.

- No (soft) caps leads to insane damage stacking
- There is no drawback to doing so because offense, defense and healing all rely on the very same stats
- Constant balance issues between magicka and stamina builds, largely because stamina lacks the variety of skills in healing/defense magicka has
- Hybrids are unviable in this situation
- Tying spell damage to weapons has made staves a bad choice for magicka builds
- The champion system has made all these problems much worse

Of course, individual skills (like Hardened Ward or Wrecking Blow) and game mechanics like AoE caps are also often brought up, but those either need to be looked at individually or aren't affected by the character system directly - so sadly there's no "simple" change here (except just disabling AoE caps, obviously).

Now, I will attempt the unthinkable and adress all these issues with only a few changes.



1) Add 6-7 Attributes that can be increased at levelup. H/M/S will be derived attributes like all other stats.

But why do we need more attributes?
One balance problem from day 1 has been that magicka and stamina, which should be your resource pools, also increase your damage with skills. In an RPG, you would expect advantages in some areas to come with disadvantages in other areas. With more attributes, we can spread such advantages out, so a limited amount of attribute points cannot cover all areas.
The design intent for these attributes is to avoid stacking similar effects on the same attribute, while making every attribute desireable for every build.

How would this affect the current attributes?
Of course, magicka and stamina should no longer increase your skill damage. Also, you would no longer increase H/M/S directly at levelup.

What attributes are we talking about, and what do they do?
Naturally, we should stick to the attributes that already exist in the Elder Scrolls universe, which are: Strength, Endurance, Agility, Speed, Intelligence, Willpower, Personality, and Luck. As there currently wouldn't be any applications for a Personality attribute, I would suggest to stick to the other 7.
Now, these effects are simply suggestions. Disagreeing with them should not cause you to dismiss the whole concept.
Strength is an obvious one, and should improve your physical weapon damage. Additionally, it could add inventory slots, as it usually raised your encumberance limit in previous TES games. Another application would be to increase critical damage.
Endurance sounds rather straightforward, but could apply a lot of effects. However, because the whole point is to avoid having too many effects applied by the same stat, I'd suggest to stick to an increase in maximum health and physical resistance.
Agility, likewise, could increase maximum stamina and provide a (small) chance to dodge attacks, as the Minor/Major Evasion buff does now. The idea is to couple every increase of a resource pool with a defensive stat, as otherwise we might have to put offensive and defensive effects on the same attribute again. An alternative would be an increase in amount blocked or a block cost reduction, as the Block skill used to be governed by Agility in Morrowind.
Speed sounds obvious as well, but somewhat underwhelming. Of course it should increase your movement speed, but that is not nearly enough to make it appealing. Additionally, it would fit thematically to decrease casting and charge duration (like heavy attacks), or outright increase attack speed like the weighted trait for weapons. Further, as it used to govern the Athletics and Acrobatics skills, it could reduce the cost of certain combat abilities like dodging and sprinting.
Intelligence is the attribute for the maximum magicka resource pool. Also, it would increase spell resistance.
Willpower is the mage's Strength, and increases spell damage. Also, just like Strength, it could increase critical damage.
Luck is a great candidate to increase spell and weapon critical hit chance, a stat that is currently not affected by any attribute. Additionally, it could improve your chances with all chance based effects, like secondary elemental effects or detection chance while sneaking.

Why add critical damage to Strength and Willpower? Doesn't that put two damage increases on the same attribute?
The idea is to provide something unique for hybrids - if you want to have the highest critical damage, maxing Strength and Willpower would be the way to go. Even if you didnt plan to max both attributes, you will have something extra in your damage to make up for your lacking specialization.

So how do weapon and spell power work with attributes?
Strength adds a base amount of weapon damage, to which the damage of your weapon is added.
Willpower provides a base amount of spell damage. Your weapon has no effect.

Why are the resistances increased by attributes? Isn't gear enough?
Basically, to provide a tradeoff for chosing offensive attributes like Strength and WIllpower. Another option would have been to provide resource regeneration on these attributes, but that would put a resource increase and recovery on the same attribute, something that should probably be avoided.
To give the choice between offense and defense more weight, the armor cap could probably be increased to 60-70%.

What about health, magicka and stamina recovery rates?
Simply didn't make it in. But if you have suggestions where to place them in an extended attribute system, let's hear it!

So how many attribute points do I get? Can I max out all of them? Is there even a maximum?
As suggested, you would get one attribute point at levelup, just like you do now. While this in itself leads to a maxmimum of 64 points, there should probably be a maximum for each individual attribute as well - as we are already borrowing from classic TES, we could set it at 100, and a starting amount of 10-20. Of course, the whole point of the system is to force players to make meaningful choices for their build, so maxing out all of them is out of the question. Given a starting amount of 10 per attribute and 64 attribute points in total, I would propose an increase of +3 per attribute point, which would allow you to max out 2 attributes (including the 10 base, 262 points in total out of 700).

So we separated a skill's damage from its resource pool. But healing and magicka-based defensive skills are still based on spell power, the same stat as damage?
That is correct. Sadly, there aren't enough attributes to split effects even further. Although it is conceivable to make use of Personality as an attribute for healing, that would be a bit far fetched.
However, my hope is that detaching the magnitude of a skill from its resource pool will already force people to make a choice whether to spend their resource on damage, healing or offense, even if the potential magnitude is increased by the same attribute. Further, the disadvantage for stamina builds in healing and (to an extent) defense could be ameliorated by improving their damage without spending resources, i.e. light and heavy attack damage with physical weapons.




2) All increases to stats are now percentage-based.

What does that mean, really?
Outside of your attributes, all increases to stats like health, stamina, magicka, weapon damage, crit chance, etc, will be a percentage-based increase, like the current minor and major buffs.

Which increases are we talking about here?
Enchantments, item set bonuses, jewelry traits, passive skills, active skills, food, mundus stones and champion points (I think that's all of them).

No exceptions?
Exceptions could be made for armor (physical and spell resistance) and weapons (weapon damage). The actual stat calculations are up for debate.

Why?
Let's use a stamina-based damage skill as an example. Currently, there are these sources off effects to improve said damage:
For weapon damage, the weapon, jewelry enchantments, weapon enchantments, item set bonuses, passive skills, active skills, potions, and a mundus stone.
For stamina, attribute points, jewelry traits, armor enchantments, item set bonuses, passive skills, active skills, food, a mundus stone, and thief champion points.
Alltogether, 17 unrelated sources to increase the damage of your weapon (not entirely true, as certain active skills and potions apply the same buff). It's an absolute balancing nightmare, and that has largely to do with the fact that a lot of them provide an absolute bonus (e.g, +3000 stamina), not a relative one (+10% stamina). If they were all relative to a base value, modifying the base value would adjust the effect of stamina-based damage skills throughout the whole system. In this example, that base value would be Strength.
That aside, it's the very definition of many parts without complexity, as all sources have the same effects. A better approach would be to give, for example, mundus stones effects that cannot be acquired anywhere else.

Won't that lead to exponential stat growth?
Only if individual buffs multiply with each other. Of course, they should be additive (e.g. 15% + 5% = 20% increase).




A) Overall

So where did that streamlining thing come in?
Because of the new buff system, everything traces back to your original 7 attributes. They are a capped, controllable box which modulates the effectiveness of all other effects in the game. And we did not take one thing away. In fact, we only added parts to the system.

How do the points of critique from the beginning hold up in the new system?
- No (soft) caps leads to insane damage stacking
> > Because attributes are hard capped, so are effectively all stats in the game. Buffs can still be stacked, but one buff can no longer affect the stat increase of another.

- There is no drawback to doing so because offense, defense and healing all rely on the very same stats
> > In some cases this issue is resolved (Hardened Ward scaling with Magicka > Intelligence; Spell Damage scaling with Willpower), in others not (any Healing). However, basic defensive stats like resistances are decoupled from offensive stats, and focusing on one will mean neglecting the other.

- Constant balance issues between magicka and stamina builds, largely because stamina lacks the variety of skills in healing/defense magicka has
> > Not a huge problem right now, but could become one again after upcoming changes to the champion system. Regardless, the new attributes will make it easier to adjust the capabilities of magicka and stamina builds.

- Hybrids are unviable in this situation
> > Special benefits for hybrids might make them more appealing. Although they will still have to spread out their points intead of investing in a single one, there are more benefits that come along with each attribute.

- Tying spell damage to weapons has made staves a bad choice for magicka builds
> > Spell damage is independent of your weapon (like in classic TES), but you can use special weapons for other effects (set bonuses, master enchantments, heavy attack resource gain).

- The champion system has made all these problems much worse
> > The champion system passives trace back to the same attributes as any other buff. Further, ZOS' expressed goal is to fully consolidate progression into the Champion System once VRs are gone, and I think my suggestions would complement that approach quite well.

How would this effect current builds?
The most obvious changes to builds would be more significant drawbacks to focusing on one stat alone. This also means that it will be more difficult to switch from one role to another simply by changing your gear.
A classic magicka sorcerer would probably translate to a 100 Int/Willpower build. This would give him extraordinary spell damage, magicka and spell resistance, but leave him severly lacking in physical defense, health, stamina, and movement, and even other offensive effects like crit chance. What's more, he can't overcome these disadvantages simply by eating food or with a defense buff.
As another example, a stamina nightblade that builds for high burst damage from sneak, with Strength/Speed/Luck would have great damage, crit chance, sneak ability and movement speed to escape - but he absolutely would have to escape, because he lacks in all resources that would allow him to sustain a fight.
Regardless, FOTM builds will certainly emerge as they do in all MMOs, but there should be greater possibilities to exploit their weaknesses.

Won't all of this require an awful lot of rebalancing?
Isn't that required anyway?

I really think this would put ESO's character system on more solid ground. It doesn't solbe all issues - AoE caps, shield stacking, animation canceling, etc - but it addresses a lot of them, works very well with existing systems like the champion system and minor/major buffs and enables more interesting builds outside of "damage or bust", improving the longevity of the game.

TL;DR
Adding capped attributes and using them as a base value for all buffs would streamline the system in a way that doesn't reduce complexity, improves build diversity and makes balancing a lot easier in the long run.

Also, here's a winking deer.

Terror wrote: »

I think these changes would be fantastic, the only change I would make is to your suggestion for Strength, I'd personally like to see it as a baseline requirement for the use of certain armor types, similar to something you'd see in Diablo 2: LoD, as opposed to granting inventory space.