Character stats

[action9000]

Hey all!

We're at the point in the game development now where I'm trying to allow the player to choose a character to play as.  This really won't do anything yet because the game has no content yet but I figure it's getting to the time to decide:

What stats can a character have?
What do the stats actually do?
How do the different dinos compare when it comes to stats?

There are a couple of things to consider when designing character stats, the most inportant being:
Avoid stats that players will want to max out just because it makes the game less annoying when it's higher.

A good example of that would be something found in so many games: the ability to use a temporary powerup on yourself.  While I don't know if such a thing will exist in this game, I do know that stats that increase the amount of time that such an powerup is active is very annoying and people will want to max it out just so they don't have to bother using the powerup as often.  That's the sort of feeling I want to avoid.

How does this relate to our game?  Eating and stamina.  Our game will have a food and stamina system that works like this:

A player has X points of Stamina, say, 100 for example, when they create their character.  Stamina is used up when performing certain abilities but it also runs out over time.  The lower the stamina of the player, the poorer the player's abilities perform.  Stamina is recovered by eating.  After eating, the stamina will NOT drop over time until a certain amount of time has passed.  Stamina will still be consumed when using abilities that require it to be consumed but it won't drop on its own until a certain amount of time after eating.  This amount of time hasn't been decided on yet.

What we should probably avoid are stats that increase this length of time. Everybody will want to max out this stat because it means we won't have to 'bother' eating as often.  Therefore I say, we just give everyone the maximum of this 'stat' to begin with and save them the trouble (in other words, don't make it a stat at all, but a hardcoded number that won't change unless we come up with a really good reason to change it).

Anywho, if anyone has ideas for stats, please feel free to post em up here!  
Here's what I have in mind so far:

Strength:
Strength affects the following aspects of the game, among others we may come up with:
-The amount of damage you do to an enemy.
-The maximum weight of object(s) you can push, carry, etc.  Some larger objects can be carried or moved by getting a team together with enough total strength.
-How long you can carry an item before it costs you stamina and how heavy an item you can carry without losing any additional stamina.

Resilience:
-Increases your resistance to extreme temperatures, which may cost you stamina and even render some areas of the world impassable.
-Increases the rate at which you gain Stamina when you level up.
-Decreases your chance of getting injured when trying to destroy or move (by charging into it) a hard, heavy object.
-Increases the maximum distance you can fall before taking damage.

Agility:
-Slightly reduces how much speed you lose when climbing a slope.
-Increases the maximum slope you are able to climb without sliding down.
-Increases the maximum distance you can fall before taking damage.
-Slightly increases the rate at which you gain Stamina when you level up.
-Improves the dino's ability to stealth and sneak around.
-Increases your chance to dodge an attack while in combat.


Health Points (HP):
When your character reaches 0 HP, you are dead.  That simple.
What happens when you die? I'm thinking you could wake up from a dream, back at your nest, perhaps losing some experience points.

You can lose HP from combat, falling too far, etc.  Your HP will steadily drop as long as your character is at 0 Stamina.

Stamina:
Stamina is your fuel, basically.  It functions like this:
at 100% stamina, your character functions normally and abilities work to their full potential.  As your stamina drops below certain thresholds (determined by your "Toughness" stat), your abilities and skills become less effective and your movement speed will start to drop.  At the lowest levels of stamina, you will be unable to sprint, lose the use some other abilities and even begin to lose HP gradually once it hits 0.
Stamina can be regained by eating.

Toughness:
Toughness is a stat with one major purpose: to make your character more able to function in low-stamina situations. The higher your Toughness stat, the lower the thresholds are before your skills start becoming ineffective.  
-Increases the rate at which you gain HP when you level up.

Size:
Size has an effect on some functions in the game.  For example, a small dino cannot assist in moving a very large boulder (to prevent a huge team of flyers massing up enough strength value to do so).  Also, there will be cases where players will be able to rescue others from dangerous or sticky situations.  In some situations, small dinos will be physically unable to save the large dinos.  Other roles of this stat will come into play, I'm sure.
-Smaller dinos lose more speed when climbing hills than larger dinos.

Abilities
Swimming:
This affects how fast your character is able to swim both on top of the water and underwater.  Anyone with 0 swimming is completely unable to swim and will lose HP, as well as some physical control, if they enter water too deep to wade in.

[action9000]

As for the numbers for the actual dinos, here's what I have so far.

BASE STATS FOR:
Longneck:
Size: Large
Strength: 30
Resilience: 20
Agility: 15
Toughness: 20
HP: 120
Stamina: 200

Swimmer:
Size: Small
Strength: 5
Resilience: 15
Agility: 30
Toughness: 15
HP: 110
Stamina: 220

Threehorn:
Size: Large
Strength: 35
Resilience: 25
Agility: 12
Toughness: 30
HP: 125
Stamina: 190

Flyer:
Size: Small
Strength: 3
Resilience: 20
Agility: 25
Toughness: 10
HP: 100
Stamina: 210

Spiketail:
Size: Large
Strength: 40
Resilience: 30
Agility: 10
Toughness: 30
HP: 135
Stamina: 190

Fast-runner:
Size: Medium
Strength: 20
Resilience: 25
Agility: 20
Toughness: 20
HP: 105
Stamina: 230

[EDIT] removed swimming as a primary stat from these character sheets.

[Kor]

Looks pretty good.  I guess different species may have some numbers shifted around a little?

[action9000]

I guess different species may have some numbers shifted around a little?

That's been a debate for quite awhile now but the final decision on that is:
The species has NO effect on the stats of the player.  It is for looks only.

The reason for this decision is that we want the player to choose the look they like the most, rather than it being based on which look has the most appealing stat changes.

[Littlefoot Fan]

Everything's starting to look really good. I completely agree on the stamina issue. The number one thing I always HATED about games was pumping points into a certain stat/skill, only to find out that I put barely anything into the ones that were supposedly much more superiour. :

I do hope that you have customization over the size of your class? I wouldn't want to be stuck with being a huge longneck. I imagine if you chose a smaller size the longneck's toughness, resilience, etc. would go down while its agility and stamina would go up. Something like that. Same would go for the other classes.

[Kor]

I guess for saltasaurus that is just a look and not extra armor, and a huge or small species of longneck is treated as having the same stats.  That does have good points, maybe not super realistic, but that would tend to negate some folks who like to min/max and such types.

[action9000]

That does have good points, maybe not super realistic, but that would tend to negate some folks who like to min/max and such types.

My goal of this game is to have enough content so the player won't really have to min/max too much. Every stat will be useful in completing some parts of the game.  My goal is to also keep the 'fear of wasting points' to a minimum because all the stats will be useful at some point or another and the game won't become totally unplayable if you choose stats not typical to your dino.  This will allow players to get more creative with their character stat builds and we'll see less of that 'cookie cutter effect' present in so many other games.

In time, the player can develop their character's abilities quite high all-around.

[F-14 Ace]

This affects how fast your character is able to swim both on top of the water and underwater. Anyone with 0 swimming is completely unable to swim and will lose HP, as well as some physical control, if they enter water too deep to wade in.

1. How do you learn to swim if you can't go into deep water?  

2. It seems in the movies that most dinos have at least some ability to swim except for sharpteeth.

[action9000]

1. How do you learn to swim if you can't go into deep water?

video game liberty.
A creature with a stat of 0 can be taught how to swim, probably by an NPC.  Just imagine them getting in-water training while the screen is faded out or something.

2. It seems in the movies that most dinos have at least some ability to swim except for sharpteeth.

Flyers will be the only dinos that start with 0 swimming and they will have the chance to learn in on a very basic level as they progress through the game.  They'll be able to simply fly over most smaller bodies of water (and large ones later on in the game).

[Serris]

I like this system. Basic but workable.


I have some changes:

Strength should affect how easily you can destroy an object (less blows required)?

Resilience/toughness should affect combat by serving as a "defense" stat.

[Kor]

I guess certain stats have an upper limit, or do you assume, for instance, that a high level swimmer or adult has a high strength since they are now an adult?

[Serris]

I think a stat cap is a good idea because realistically speaking I don't think Swimmers will be anywhere as strong as Spike-Tails even at maturity.

[Kor]

Or petrie's mother being able to hurl around as much weight as Ducky's mother or Bron.  Though a Quetzalcoatlus would be larger and stronger, but species are being ignored so that would not matter.

[action9000]

I guess certain stats have an upper limit, or do you assume, for instance, that a high level swimmer or adult has a high strength since they are now an adult?

There actually won't be any aging in this game.  A max. level player will not be an adult.

As for stats having limits, here's what has been discussed:
at each character level, the player is awarded points that they can spend on stat upgrades.  As a stat (such as Strength) is increased, it costs more points to make it higher.  This creates a maximum in the sense that eventually it will cost so many points to gain even 1 more strength that it's not worth it.  

The rate at which a stat gets more expensive depends on the dino.  A strength-based dino such a spiketail will see the cost go up slower than say, a flyer.  They can both achieve high strength levels with enough points poured into strength but the flyer would have to sacrifice nearly everything else to do so, really making it not worthwhile, hence a bit of decision-making is involved on the part of the player. Even then, the flyer would never see the high strength values that a spiketail would.

We'll never see a flyer get close to the average strength of a spiketail for this reason.  
What happens if a Flyer player tries to increase their strength so much that their character becomes very hard to play?

Well, for a bit of effort, the player can go through a procedure to reset their stats and 'refund' the points used, giving the player the chance to 'fix' stats that didn't work for them.  This is my idea for a solution to that problem, anyway.

It's hard to balance resetting of stats.  The reason being, if it's too easy to do, a player will just max out his stats for the particular task they're working on and change their stats every time they get a new task.  If it's too challenging, a player with a 'broken' character won't be able to do the task required to get the reset.

It's also hard because without a currency system, what can we ask the player to 'spend' or 'trade' for this service?

Specifically, what will the player have to do to reset their stats?  I don't know yet.  I was thinking something like:
1) Allowing the player one reset once halfway through the game (if the max. level is 100, you're given a reset at level 50).  The logic behind this being, by level 50, you should know well enough roughly what works that you shouldn't break your character too incredibly badly withinin the next 50 levels.



I actually just thought of another idea to prevent this from being an issue:
Don't allow resets of stats at all.

Assign each dino 2 'primary' stats; specifically, the stat that starts the highest with each dino, or one most closely-associated with that dino type.  For example:

Longneck:
Strength, Resilience

Swimmer:
Agility, Resilience

Threehorn:
Strength, toughness

Flyer:
Agility, Resilience

Spiketail:
Resilience, Toughness

Fast-runner:
Agility, Toughness


This plan is simple in theory: as you put points in your other stats, your primary stats receive discounts.  This will encourage players to make sure points aren't used in stats that will eventually make a character very hard to play.
A longneck, with skills that are mostly strength-based, for example, will be very hard to play if the player never put points into strength, especially later on.  Avoiding this from happening would be nice, but at the same time I want to give players flexibility on how they want to level up their character.

[action9000]

I think I have to write out an example here to help *me* understand it.
Okay, if you're a Longneck, your base stats are:

Size: Large
Strength: 30
Resilience: 20
Agility: 15
Toughness: 20
HP: 120
Stamina: 200

When you gain a level from level 1 to level 2, you get, say, 100 points to 'buy' stat increases.

What do the stats cost to upgrade?
Let's say:
Strength: 15 pts
Resilience: 15 pts
Agility: 15 pts
Toughness: 15 pts

HP will increase automatically based on your character's Toughness stat and your type of dino.

Stamina will increase automatically based on your Resilience stat and your type of dino.

Obviously the math won't always work out that you can use all of your 100 points.  For this reason, a few points could be rewards for completing some tasks (not usually, however. The vast majority of your points will come from levels).

But let's say this happened.  Now you're level 2 and you bought:
3 strength = 45 pts
2 resilience = 30 pts
1 toughness = 15 pts
and you have 10 points left.

and now you have the stats:
Strength: 33
Resilience: 22
Agility: 15
Toughness: 21

Since you're a longneck, the price of
Strength goes up 1 every 2 stat points (primary stat)
Resilience goes up 1 every 2 stat points (primary stat)
Agility goes up 1 every stat point
Toughness goes up 1 every stat point

which means you don't actually have 10 points left from the previous level.
You bought 3 strength before but the 3rd one cost you an extra point.
You bought 2 resilience so its cost has gone up to 16pts now.
and you bought 1 toughness so its cost has gone up to 16pts now.


When you hit level 3, say you gain 100 more points.  You now have
109 points

and the costs are
Strength: 16 pts
Resilience: 16 pts
Agility: 15 pts
Toughness: 16 pts

Now let's say you put 6 points into Agility this time.
Agility's cost goes up 1 every time:
15 + 16 + 17 + 18 +19 +20 = 105
leaving you with 4 points left.

Your stats are now:
Strength: 33
Resilience: 22
Agility: 21
Toughness: 21

Because you put points into a secondary stat, the cost of your primary stats become cheaper.  I don't want to force players to do a bunch of math while choosing their stats so here's what I'm going to do:
I'm not going to have this discount apply until the *next* level.

So while you're level 3, these are the prices of your stats:
Strength: 16 pts
Resilience: 16 pts
Agility: 21 pts
Toughness: 16 pts

but when you hit level 4, what we can do is take your Current agility, subtract your base agility and your Current toughness, subtract your base toughness (because those are NOT your primary stats):

Current agility(21) - base agility (15) = 6
Current toughness (21)- base toughness(20) = 1

Now, for every multiple of, let's say 5, these values give you a 1-pt discount on your primary stats.

Toughness has only had 1 point put into it so you don't get a discount from it yet.
Agility has had 6 points put into it, which rewards the player by giving you a 1pt discount on your primary stats.  If you had 10 points in agility, you would get a 2pt discount and so-on.

So when you hit level 4, what happens?
Your stats:
Strength: 33
Resilience: 22
Agility: 21
Toughness: 21

and the costs of the upgrades:
Strength: 16 pts - 1 discount = 15pts
Resilience: 16 pts - 1 discount = 15 pits
Agility: 21 pts NO DISCOUNT = 21pts
Toughness: 16 pts NO DISCOUNT = 16pts

Only your primary stats are discounted.

So we hit level 4, the costs are
Strength: 15 pts
Resilience: 15 pts
Agility: 21 pts
Toughness: 16 pts

and we get, say, 100 more points for a total of 104pts.  

The first thing you may notice is, hey, the numbers are really unbalanced because you'll quickly not be able to afford much of anything.  That's very true, I haven't balanced the numbers yet.  This is just the concept that I'm playing with for a levelling system.  In theory though, with the right balance, we can 'cap' out the primary stats high, the secondary stats lower, without having to actually place caps on the numbers AND discourage people from trying to mass stats that are less vital to the character they're playing (which will minimize the "broken character" problem, found in so many games where you choose your own stats, like Diablo 2 for example.  This should also eliminate the need for a 'reset stat' feature.

I'm sorry this is so complicated-sounding.  It's not as bad as it looks, it's just complicated to explain.

If anyone else has another idea, I'm definitely listening.

Of course an easy alternative is to have your stats just automatically increase as you level, rather than giving the player the choice.

[Kor]

Sounds like math, which is jibberish to me.  You just need to look for ways it can be exploited since if there is any way at all, some humans will do so.   Some kinds may have stat maximums since small folks like Ducky, Petrie, Flapper, Guido, and Scat won't be as strong as Littlefoot till they hit their teenage years, then their strength and hit points may not be so vastly different.

& some system to keep min maxers and power gamers from doing what they love to do is also needed.

[action9000]

Sounds like math, which is jibberish to me.

The player won't really have to worry about that much.  The math is actually quite simple (compared to some of the 3d crap I've had to do so far anyway ) and the program does it all.  The player just needs to know that putting points into a secondary stat will make primary stats cheaper.

& some system to keep min maxers and power gamers from doing what they love to do is also needed.

Nice thing is, there won't really be a min/maxing problem in this game because all of the stats are useful to all characters.  With being less focused on combat, players will have a unique challenge finding any way to min/max in this game.

A solution could be, if it is still a problem, to put stat caps that increase at every level, or every few levels.  So if you're at level 20, you can't have more than, say, 70 strength.  But at level 50, the cap could be raised to, say, 200.

By max level, the cap would be totally removed and the player would be free to build their character however they wanted.

[Kor]

Would be odd, having Ducky with a high strength, able to uproot a tree & throw it at a sharptooth, or grap the sharptooth's tail and flip it away.  Or pick up a large rock and throw it at some rocks blocking a river, shattering all the boulders and freeing the water.

[action9000]

Would be odd, having Ducky with a high strength, able to uproot a tree & throw it at a sharptooth, or grap the sharptooth's tail and flip it away. Or pick up a large rock and throw it at some rocks blocking a river, shattering all the boulders and freeing the water.

which is why she'd never get a strength stat high enough to do such things.

Assuming a max. level Spiketail has, say, 500 strength for example, and a max. level swimmer seeing maybe 70 strength, it might take 30,000 strength to anything remotely close to uprooting a large tree.  In short, it will require so much that no team could feasibly do it.
Even a team of 40 spiketails with 500 strength each only gives you 20,000 strength.

Shattering a boulder would require characters with boulder-shattering abilities (such as Threehorns or maybe spiketails).  Depending on the size of the boulder, that may require, say, 2500 strength, where a team could manage to accumulate that much.  The team would need to consist of dinos who could help shatter the boulder though.

That's the objective of what we're doing: to make exceedingly high stats nearly impossible to achieve because they become so expensive it's like having a cap without having a cap.