More In Depth Character Builds

[Daeron 1]

So Darius and I were thinking about trying to make the game more realistic to the MMORPG that most people would play. I, Daeron, was saying how in every RPG they have stat builds for characters and then a seperate set of stats known as a "Skill Tree" which would be our current skills.

Anyways, the way we have thought that this system would work out is that for every level you gain, you will be given a Stat Point. What you can do with these "Stat Point" is build into your character's physical stats allowing you to differentiate your character build more than before. The reason why we suggested that this would be needed is because if the roleplays keep coming as they are, everyone is gainning skill points from every one they do. By the end of it all, everyone is going to go for Weapon Skills and Armor Effeciency first, meaning that everyone will have those maxed and everyone will have the EXACT same damage resistance and dealt for skills. This is serious because otherwise everyone is a replica of one another, and the game won't be fun anymore.

We added this so people can make their characters closer to the preference that they would like. This way, players who want to be tanks, can be tankier, and players who desire a build that is more AD (Attack Damage) Carry, can do more damage rather than resistance.

The way this system works is that you may spend a skill point into a skill every level you have earned so far. We have agreed that the maximum level your rank in a skill can go up to is 5, because for every rank you must invest 5 stat points. This means to get Rank 1 Strength, a player must be Level 5 first.

So to get Rank 5 (Max) on a stat, you have to be level 25. In order to get Rank 5 on EVERY stat you will have needed to invest 150 Stat points total. Meaning Level 150 will have needed to be reached. Most players will take a long time to get there, meaning EVERYONE shouldn't cap out for a while in every skill.

Constitution: For every rank you go up in this character stat, you will gain an additional 1 point of Health to your base HP.

Example:

By the end of Rank 5 you can have 5 more health than your level would normally have, so if you are a level 25 you would have 53 HP, but with this, you would have 58 HP.

Strength: For every rank you go up in this character stat, you will be able to absorb an additional point of damage dealt to you.

Dexterity: For every rank you go up in this character stat, you will be able to deal an additional point of damage dealt to your opponent.

Luck: For every rank you go up in this character stat, you will have a +1 Point to your Loot Dice Roll.

Agility: For every rank you go up in this character stat, you will be able to deal an additional point of damage on CRITICAL HIT ONLY

Intelligence: For every rank you go up in this character stat, you will a +1 Modifier on your Crafting Dice.

Will Power: For every rank you go up in this character stat, all Debuffs such as Poison, Paralyze, Bleed, etc. will last 1 turn less than it normally would, however the debuff must last atleast one turn, meaning it will not affect one turn debuffs.

[ham 0]

I like this idea a lot. I thought the current system could be exploited easily. However, I never thought of what the OP said.

There's another forum where they use a state system to define their characters limits. I've been reading the light novel for quite a bit and I notice a lot of the high level players have a solid concept of their abilities within the system. Especially, Kirito, and I think if he's aware then most likely a lot of the beta testers are as well. Essentially, anyone high enough would understand their limits so they can account for it when they go exploring.

Like Agil is a strength based two handed axe user. He doesn't need sex in his build. Asuna is a sex based build for accuracy and speed which is the primary stat she invested her points in. While Kirito is a mixture of both but favoring dex.

I think Heathcliff was a defense based character or so most people believed because of his ability to rank.

I love the idea. I hope players start thinking more about their builds in this way because it creates the necessary restrictions to understand what it's like to live in a VMMORPG.

[Daeron 1]

Exactly,with this in-depth stat system, we can truly specialize in a certain type of "class" that you wanted to work for. If this isn't added in,then looks like everyone will have the EXACT same build soon because players are already halfway there from their skills. The next thing they go to is their armor and weapons. Of course everybody is going to want perfect gear therefore probably +3 damage and then armor that does -3 Damage taken. Therefore by the end of the tenth floor, every player is almost the exact same type of build. The only difference will be players who have an additional ability with them that did the quests and then those who didn't.

Personally, I believe that this feature is a must.

[Mortambo 0]

I also like this idea because it gives the levels more meaning than just HP. And it is still all kind of tied together, but it almost means your stat points will raise far more slowly than your skill points.

So basically:

[Daeron 1]

Exactly! The stat points are not supposed to come in too often. Especially not as fast as the skill points. This is just for actually leveling up your character. Unlike the skill points, these are not intended to be quantity over quality, as to those where you get them every roleplay you've completed. You need to be able to state a way to prove that you want to be a support character or that you want to be a "damager" to bosses in the future. Without that, players will be clones of one another, adding no diversity among one another.

[Cayden 0]

I certainly don't want to rock the boat too much since I'm a new player, but this seems like a delightful way to add some more flexibility to the system. I will however chime in with my two cents on how things work because I am too stupid not to.

First and foremost, if you're going to be going with something like this my recommendation would be to do it as a tandem and full overhaul of the rules. The reasoning for this is that a skill system like this would amount to a pretty serious change from the rules as they are currently written and significantly effect the balance of play. What do I mean by that, well here is an example.

When the rules were originally written (as I can see) a character didn't really get much in the way of +BD/Damage/Whatever. Thus a boar is a legitimate threat to a low level character. A player does between 1-3 damage and can kill a low level enemy in between 1-3 hits. The boar on the other hand would kill the player in between 2-5 hits.

So lets add on the current skill system. Now a starting player (assuming they take +Sword Arts) kills a boar in between 1-2 hits, the boar kills the player still in 2-5. If the player takes +Armor then the player still kills in 1-3 hits, but is killed anywhere between 2-infinity depending on the thing's damage.

So lets add on the stat system. Now a starting player (again assuming +Sword Arts) kills a boar in one hit. Doesn't matter if it crits, 6+ is fatal. What was a roughly 87% chance of victory is now something ridiculous like 98.9%. Likewise you add it to armor and it would take five consecutive rolls of 10 for the boar to kill a player.

My point is that you see power creep really, really fast. A player who diversifies a lot at low levels would have improved HP, armor, Damage, and Crit damage on top of whatever gear they find, rapidly putting them out of any real danger unless they were facing vastly improved monsters. Hell even many of the boss monsters wouldn't prove much of a challenge when you start stacking gear/skills/stats all together.

Now that isn't to say that I think this is a bad idea, as I said above, its a great idea... when factored in as part of a larger change to enemies as a whole. Without that it runs into the scalability issue.

Again, this is only my personal newbie opinion, but as a game designer the first thing I noticed when reading the rules is the issue of scalability. Apart from Unique monsters I've yet to find any rule regarding mobs scaling for attack damage, and in a system where ten completely roleplays gets you +3 Damage resistance that effectively makes a player invincible to any non-unique opponent.

Assuming a rebalance to some of the fundamental mechanics I could totally see this working however. If people are curious I could write up a proposal that is a little more in depth with the sort of changes I'm suggesting, I just don't want to step on anyone's toes otherwise. :(

[Saix 0]

For future reference, single picture replies with no feed back, or words of any kind really, will be treated as spam and immediately deleted. This section is for providing suggestions, and giving constructive criticism/feedback in return, not just posting an image.

This is a better example, above you see plenty of pictures or gifs, but they accompany thoughts on how to approve the idea.

Do NOT let me see spam posts in here again, or I shall become a very angry tiny giraffe.

[Miaki 0]

The only flaw I see with this right off the bat is that while these mechanics exist in almost every RPG, I dont see them in the few MMOs I've played. Not to mention Sword Art Online never used this level system. It consisted of the levels of your skills not a character build. This would be more relevant in some other type of RPG site I think. #DevilsAdvocate.

[Rennat 0]

I agree with Miaki above that maybe a flat stat system like the one being suggested may not be the perfect match for what this site already has as its foundation, so I'm ALSO going to have to semi-agree with Cayden on the fact that this would require a complete system overhaul. Unless a system is introduced that is extremely simple and molds into the one that's already here, there would need to be a testing section to see how all manner of battles at different levels/skill levels/stat levels to determine how balanced it is. I think that maybe, to avoid some of this mess, new skills could be added to a new section called "growth," or something in that vein, that would amount to a small version of this system. It would allow for more differentiation without having to introduce an entirely new system for new players and current players to adjust to, especially those who would have to go back and add up all those stats. Instead, players could elect to go that route, say the route of much higher strength or higher speed, instead of a weapon or armor skill. All choices like that should be running on dual profit and sacrifice anyway, you should have to trade in something you need to have the advantage of great damage or dodge ability over other players/enemies.

Anyway, that's just me. :D

EDIT: Also, I understand that some current passive skills do add to a base stat like speed (a la Sprint) but the skills I proposed would be heftier bonuses without all the other pretty additional action-related stuff that the current passive skills offer (again, like Sprint)

[Daeron 1]

I can see where you all are coming from but if we don't change things up soon, everybody will have +8 or +7 damage, +3 accuracy and too high of defense therefore we are heading right back to a point as if we all started. Compare nikki and Keith. Nikki has such high defense that she can even out a players level is more than twice her own.

[Rennat 0]

So you think the stat system will balance that?

[Cayden 0]

I can see where you all are coming from but if we don't change things up soon, everybody will have +8 or +7 damage, +3 accuracy and too high of defense therefore we are heading right back to a point as if we all started. Compare nikki and Keith. Nikki has such high defense that she can even out a players level is more than twice her own.

The problem is that your system doesn't do much to balance that. It just throws things even more wildly out of proportion. If you think her defence is bad you might want to keep in mind that a level 25 charachter under your system could have a +5 on top of items and everything else.

Beyond that, they overall benefit of the various abilities is wildly different. +5 HP is weighted exactly the same as +5 armor, even though +5 armor is far, far better than individual HP.

As I said before, the current system isn't perfect, and I think it'll probably need an overhaul at some point, but stapling rules on without properly balancing them and without thinking through the effects will only exacerbate the issue.

Edit: This came off harsher than I meant it. The short version is that I like the idea of more customization, but this doesn't seem to be the way to go about it in my opinion.

[Miaki 0]

This is also a rather poor timing to have pitched something new entirely. We are currently in the middle of a transition over to the new skill system which has been in development for more than the entire summer (Atleast since May). It took alot of testing, reviewing, blood, sweat, and tears (and a whole lot of complaining from the community I might add; myself especially). This system has been mapped out to even out the playing field and give players within the mid levels (12-20) the ability to compete and stand with the high levels (Keith, Haine, Ruri, Miaki, and Cicila). Specifically the classes of DPS and Tanks. From what I have heard and seen our new skill system was made with these two classes in mind. I dont even think we are seeing everything the system has in mind yet. I do think that the skill system will branch out further to define players further. I myself am a pure DPS. My goal is to get in and hit hard but even with my high HP I'll be cut down to nothing with future bosses. This is why we'll need tanks. Players with decent DMG output but focused on DEF. They'll stand there and laugh as bosses hit them and they'll take forever to lose HP. Combine this with armor geared to tanks and you have a very hard target to bring down.

Now with the new system the only difference between the top 5-10 and everyone else is the amount of HP we have. The system rewards players for making multiple RPs and now a massive post count. If you happen to have both however then you get the best of both worlds. I think this is the best way we can reward those who are great RPers here but dont have the time to post 15-20 times a day.