So there’s loads of ideas in my head about where the game could go, but for now I’ll focus on just one mod I discovered in the experimental build.
Stats Through Skills is a simple idea, raising your skills also raises your stats, and skill degradation will also degrade your stats. I think, if done right, this could lead to a more dynamic player experience, as well as allow for people to push the envelope just a little bit further. As it is the Stats Through Skills mod needs work, a lot of work, but I’ll talk about that over in mods.
This was entirely off-topic for the “Discuss the design outline” thread so I split it into its own thread. In general suggestions should have their own topics instead of being attached to the end of existing topics.
Welcome to the forums though
That aside, StatsThroughSkills has a number of problems.
Foremost is that it’s grossly overpowered, leading to stupendous stat levels for free as a side effect of doing something you are already going to do.
Worse though is that it just doesn’t make sense, skills and physical/mental traits are simply not linked the way it models them.
What I’d very much like to see is a system where there are a number of long-term activities available, such as calisthenics, weightlifting, running, dexterity exercises, etc that the player could perform in order to train stats, of course performing various activities like running, fighting, studying, crafting, etc would also contribute to this. Effectively the player would expend time and resources in order to improve (or maintain) their stats.
There’s also one other major problem with Stats Through Skills.
It breaks assigning stats in character creation. Any changes to your base stats during character creation are recent back to straight-8s at midnight. If the starting point of the mod’s stat calculation could take character creation into account, it MIGHT be acceptable as an option, but it still doesn’t make sense as the default option. Even then, it’s fine as mod content.
Actually, a BIG reason why the mod is so damn overpowered isn’t just how many free stat points you get over time. The other half of it is the ability to exploit it during character creation. If you set a world to start at midnight, you’re absolutely free to drop all your stats to the minimum. That gives you 16 extra points to abuse as you see fit, and what what normally be a massively stupid idea is instantly corrected on spawning.
[quote=“Random_dragon, post:3, topic:11261”]There’s also one other major problem with Stats Through Skills.
It breaks assigning stats in character creation. Any changes to your base stats during character creation are recent back to straight-8s at midnight. If the starting point of the mod’s stat calculation could take character creation into account, it MIGHT be acceptable as an option, but it still doesn’t make sense as the default option. Even then, it’s fine as mod content.
Actually, a BIG reason why the mod is so damn overpowered isn’t just how many free stat points you get over time. The other half of it is the ability to exploit it during character creation. If you set a world to start at midnight, you’re absolutely free to drop all your stats to the minimum. That gives you 16 extra points to abuse as you see fit, and what what normally be a massively stupid idea is instantly corrected on spawning.[/quote]
A possible fix for this might be to have the game check if your world has Stats Through Skills enabled, and then disable elements of character creation that would let you tweak the stats. That way the mod doesn’t just hand out a free, “16 extra points” to clever people.
That sounds like an even worse, convoluted action compared to making the LUA code for Stats Through Skills recognize stat changes in character creation. >_>
Completely opposed to stats-through-skills, but not to training stats.
How about a system where stats have a ‘training’ modifier, being able to change the effective value up to +2?
So the base stat is what it is, then mutation & cbm effects are applied. On top of that, if one is not trained in a stat, he gets +0, while as he trains the modifier will go to +1 and eventually to +2.
Still i can foresee balance problems with it tbh, but the concept is not that bad.
While the current system is largely stagnant I dont mind it for now. especially when the alternative is so arbitrarily overpowered.
I consider that it takes 6-8 weeks to see real improvement ata gym. 2monthes of braintraining or adopting a mors mentally rigorours lifestyle to see benefits in an area. Ive considered 7-11 to be human averages, if you believe averageshoud cover 90-95% of the population. Im left with the conclusion that in general point values are dumb because they require standardization to make sense of, and you know how hard it can be to rigidly place a value on things.
I certainly dont see the average person, all 90% of them, gaining more than 2-3 attribuite points, and I see it taking years to gain more than that
Stats Through Skills is a cool mod, but it worsens one of the biggest problems in DDA balance: hard starts turning into easy endgame.
In Stats Through Skills, all starts are low stat and all endgame is high stat.
Zombie evolution isn’t enough here - early shocker brutes are a big spike in difficulty that ignores evolution, hulks are balanced against player with OK stats and not a 16 dex 8 dodge monster.
[quote=“jcd, post:6, topic:11261”]Completely opposed to stats-through-skills, but not to training stats.
How about a system where stats have a ‘training’ modifier, being able to change the effective value up to +2?
So the base stat is what it is, then mutation & cbm effects are applied. On top of that, if one is not trained in a stat, he gets +0, while as he trains the modifier will go to +1 and eventually to +2.
Still i can foresee balance problems with it tbh, but the concept is not that bad.[/quote]
