Let's talk about armor and attributes

You want to know if it's an upgrade right off the bat? Like, you don't want items to have strengths and weaknesses, you want them to either be an upgrade or not? To do that, wouldn't we have to reduce the number of attributes in the game to one, so items have just one stat on them? That way, you could tell pretty easily that those +3 boots are better than your +2 boots. But that sounds really boring to me. Maybe I just misunderstood you.


You'd get frustrated if you entered a maze and couldn't walk in a straight line to the exit? You might not want someone to tell you how to have fun, but if they didn't, you'd take the opportunity to bore yourself to tears, apparently.


The given choice in weapons isn't mutually exclusive to the fact that the game asks you to vary your weapons and attacks depending on the enemy type you're facing at any given moment. Giving the player a pair of weapons and a shard off the bat like that is giving you the ability to vary your weapons and attacks, obviously.


So what you're saying is, no, the game doesn't encourage you to vary your attacks based on the enemies you face, it simply encourages you to have a variety of weapons and shards that you can use depending on their effectiveness in a given combat situation? I couldn't have put it better myself...



It's a bit extreme to think the game would present the player with something that ludicrously overpowered, but yeah. You'd get to use that armor and benefit from 15 DEF, which would increase your armor by about 40%, in your example. A powerful item, indeed, even if you can't make use of it all!

Ah, but then, maybe you can go to your other items and try to unequip anything with DEF on it, since it's being wasted there, too. Hey look, you previously found this ring that gives you a bunch of STR: now that DEF is more than taken care of by your chest piece, you can put aside your old DEF ring, and equip that instead.

And your helm also has DEF on it, as well as some MND and INT. What other choices do you have? Let's see... a helm with CON and a lot of INT, or another with INT and MND. With all that DEF you still have at the moment, you figure you won't need so much CON, so you choose the latter helm.

So you found a powerful DEF item, but ended up with WAY more DEF, and more INT, MND, and STR than before. Great! What an interesting series of choices you just made.

Alternatively, here's how you would have it work: You find this absurdly powerful item, equip it immediately without any consideration, and then are entirely overpowered for your level, trivializing the difficulty of the game. Bravo.

You honestly want the game to work that way?

Punishment was actually your word for it, I was just rolling with it. I called it a handicap. Yeah, you can handicap yourself for the challenge. No reason you couldn't do the same thing, even with these caps. In fact, as we just talked about, the caps would prevent you from trivializing the game's difficulty. If you're actually looking for a challenge, then with caps, you get every opportunity to handicap yourself, and you wouldn't be able to overcome that deliberate handicap with overpowered gear, as you would be able to otherwise. Those seeking a challenge like that should welcome my idea.

I don't follow how you'd be able to figure out how to get max stats for a level.

I mean, in theory, you can do that now. You could have done that in any prior Igavania game, at any point.

What's the most in any given stat you can achieve at any given level, in Order of Ecclesia, for example? Comb through the bestiary to see what the enemies drop, find the absolute best gear that you have access to, and then farm that gear from those enemies, and hope that you don't level up before they drop what you're after. Then you can equip all the best gear that you can at your level! Great. What now? What did that do for you? Because you then carry on with the game, level up, and find better items later.

Usually, people only really care about the Best In Slot items at endgame: the Crissaegrim, Dragon Helm, Twilight Cloak, Ring of Varda, et all. Those are the best items in Symphony of the Night, and, at endgame, that is all anyone who cares to max out their character ever uses. Have you always hated that about these games? Then propose something that will change it.

In truth, my stat cap idea (and the reinforcement of the resistances and weaknesses of enemies so that all stats are valuable) could result in there being a few different options for BIS gear at endgame, since when you cap out of one thing, you're left with options as to which other stats to pursue, and all are viable and useful.

If you took all the game's most powerful items and looked at all their combinations, you might find that all the best combinations can get each of your stats super high, but they can't cap out all of them, and each combination offers variances in each stat. If INT or CON is as valuable to you as STR, then who is to say if your particular balancing of stats is less ideal than someone else's? Boom. Player choice. More than you have now, certainly.



What do you mean? Of course you'd still be trying to get your chosen stat as high as you can (without going over the cap). You might not be going for DEF when you find this miraculously-overpowered item, but are you saying you wouldn't take it, or something? You'd rather dismantle it? Of course you'd take it, right? And then in an effort to waste as few points of DEF as possible, you'd unequip items with DEF on them in your other slots in favor of other stats, and you get to choose which stat you want out of the gear you have available. I don't see how it's irrational to find an item with a load of DEF on it if DEF wasn't the stat you were gunning for. You lost me.



Yes, the developers have myriad reasons to prevent that scenario from playing out in their game, because it's not fun, not even for you. It's just going from the start of a maze to the end by walking a straight line. There are no choices, and no challenges involved. That's not a game!

You've played that much Halo and never noticed that energy weapons are more effective against shields? You never used a charged plasma pistol shot to drop the shields, and then switch to another gun to finish off an Elite? That's surprising, especially since you seem to also agree that using only the pistol (the most powerful weapon in the original Halo) is a challenging handicap that you've imposed on yourself to make the game more difficult, ostensibly because it is less effective against shielded enemies.

But there's no need for us to continue to talk about the mechanisms of Halo, since you already agree with the point that I was trying to make, which was that Igavania enemies have resistances and weaknesses to encourage players to be well rounded.

Having well established that fact, the 'it'll encourage players to be well-rounded' criticism of my stat caps idea has been officially dealt with. I've also dealt with the criticism that the stat caps would remove player choice, by proving that it would add choices. I've also dealt with the idea that stat caps would make the game less challenging, by proving that it could only prevent the game's difficulty from ever being trivialized. I've proven these things quite well already, so please, don't continue to challenge me on those points without some new evidence or logic. Else I'll just have to keep thinking up new ways to reiterate the same points.

Given my counterarguments, why not just allow yourself to seriously consider the possibility that the idea could improve the game? Because it sure only seems like you're afraid of change. I don't get the sense that you're coming to this discussion with the right mindset of how to change the game to make it better. You're seemingly coming here with the mindset that the games are all already perfect, and that any change or deviation would automatically make it worse.

I've explained why I set out to make this idea. I have laid out my goals for the system. Why don't we start there? Don't you think the game could be better if those goals were achieved? If so, maybe try to take my idea and propose tweaks to it so that it accomplishes those same goals more effectively. Or come up with your own ideas on how to accomplish those goals.

FINAL WORDS:
The developers know full well the ramifications of poorly balanced gear. There are people on the team that likely spend all day looking at a spreadsheet balancing items for the area and difficulty. I want to see builds and items not limited by some wonky hard-coded formula to maintain a gate; but by the reasonable and responsible thought of human balancing and planning.

I'd like to see build variety where players can make an int heavy or a damage heavy build or defense heavy build or maybe focus on two; or perhaps trying to make a fully balanced and versatile build depending on how they want to approach the challenge.

The major point here is if people build toward balance and versatility; it's because they have the freedom of choice to do so, not because the game is forcing them by level-locking them.

Additional;

My 65 year old father, an avid "fuck that" to games person, also agrees with me. your idea of limiting progression is dumb. He also, believes that at this point you are just trolling us.

Yes, he does at least know what an internet troll is. He uses the internet, he just hates games.

I would have to agree. I too have a game I would like to create and have been looking into such things.

I would say, go for it. Show us it can be a good thing. Show us it can work.