Ok, one big question...you realize you reinvinted green stats right?

[Cocytus]

<p>So with the launch of DOV, green stats were dumbed down into basically HURK DURK dis is offense and HURK DURK dis is defense. This was, according to that dev who apparently moved on to the Clone Wars game, to keep things simple so as not to confuse people too much.</p><p>I was kind of under the impression we were gonna do something to make green stats a little bit less...I dunno how to put it....silly.</p><p>So where once we had five green stats which was "WAY TOO CONFUSING" (said in context, in no way was it even remotely close to confusing), we now have some items that have up to NINE, yes, NINE blue stats on them.</p><p>We just went in a huge circle. Don't get me wrong....I am glad we're  adding some more variation (though honestly, looking at the gear, it doesn't really feel like it because everything has basically the same stats still). I really am glad to have some more variation. But, look, itemizing blue stats in the first place was what lead to horrendous stat inflation, and itemizing them EVEN MORE now only makes it worse. It seems to me like the solution would be to work from greens in order to help the longevity of the game.</p><p>Eh, whatever. I just feel like the point is *never, ever, ever* going to get across.</p>

[Elskidor]

<p>Do away with all stats, and toss in a couple thousand more aa. You can pour those aa into any thing you want and create something off the wall really freaky....like a wizzy with 10,000 multi attack and 10,000 str but no int. Or a tank with such a high amount of hate gain/stamina/survival he can basicly enter a room and tick everything off by standing there and never take damamge, but have only 1 point in strength making it impossible to ever kill a mob by himself. Of course every stat would have to apply to every class in some way or another.</p>

[Buzzing]

<p><cite>Meube@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Do away with all stats, and toss in a couple thousand more aa. You can pour those aa into any thing you want and create something off the wall really freaky....like a wizzy with 10,000 multi attack and 10,000 str but no int. Or a tank with such a high amount of hate gain/stamina/survival he can basicly enter a room and tick everything off by standing there and never take damamge, but have only 1 point in strength making it impossible to ever kill a mob by himself. Of course every stat would have to apply to every class in some way or another.</p></blockquote><p>epic...</p><p>/rage quite</p>

[Felshades]

<p><cite>Meube@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Do away with all stats, and toss in a couple thousand more aa. You can pour those aa into any thing you want and create something off the wall really freaky....like a wizzy with 10,000 multi attack and 10,000 str but no int. Or a tank with such a high amount of hate gain/stamina/survival he can basicly enter a room and tick everything off by standing there and never take damamge, but have only 1 point in strength making it impossible to ever kill a mob by himself. Of course every stat would have to apply to every class in some way or another.</p></blockquote><p>If players in EQ2 suddenly had to grind out a few thousand AA in order to be viable(a la EQ1) you'd be looking for quite some time for enough people to raid or group with because most of the players would just up and leave.</p><p>Immediately.</p>

[Ragefighter]

<p><cite>Meube@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Do away with all stats, and toss in a couple thousand more aa. You can pour those aa into any thing you want and create something off the wall really freaky....like a wizzy with 10,000 multi attack and 10,000 str but no int. Or a tank with such a high amount of hate gain/stamina/survival he can basicly enter a room and tick everything off by standing there and never take damamge, but have only 1 point in strength making it impossible to ever kill a mob by himself. Of course every stat would have to apply to every class in some way or another.</p></blockquote><p>what.the.f are you smoking...</p>

[Eugam]

<p><cite>Cocytus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Eh, whatever. I just feel like the point is *never, ever, ever* going to get across.</p></blockquote><p>Most probably. Actually a piece of armor should have only mitigation and a wepaon only damage on it. Everything else comes from character stats incl. AA and spells. An uber item maybe has a +2 to something, where +2 is maybe 1% of the total value of that certain stat. Sticking to this from release till forever never ever creates inflation.</p><p>If your startegy is based on selling the biggest burger, then you are at the beginning of an arms race, which inevitably ends in an overkill. At that point you ll need to invent new stats <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> There are custumers who only want the biggest burger, but in the long run its smarter to sell the quality burger, because the big burger people tend to fluctuate a lot.</p>

[NardacMM]

<p><cite>Cocytus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>So where once we had five green stats which was "WAY TOO CONFUSING" (said in context, in no way was it even remotely close to confusing), we now have some items that have up to NINE, yes, NINE blue stats on them.</p></blockquote><p>I don't think we went down to two stats in order to make things less confusing.  I think it was done in order to generate all the Velious gear in a very short time period b/c the expansion was behind schedule (due to the resources being applied to the F2P initiative.)</p>

[Morghus]

<p>The thing is, multiple stats did not have real meaning outside of a handful of situations.</p><p>Take mages and pure dps scouts for example. For them, there always have only been two stats for them.</p><p>For others, there were times where you could pile on sub-obtimal stats for some gains here and there, though it was typically a lopsided gain that required extensively stockpiling attributes at great cost elsewhere, for relatively minimal gain.</p>

[Loxus]

<p><cite>Deverel@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Cocytus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>So where once we had five green stats which was "WAY TOO CONFUSING" (said in context, in no way was it even remotely close to confusing), we now have some items that have up to NINE, yes, NINE blue stats on them.</p></blockquote><p>I don't think we went down to two stats in order to make things less confusing.  I think it was done in order to generate all the Velious gear in a very short time period b/c the expansion was behind schedule (due to the resources being applied to the F2P initiative.)</p></blockquote><p>^^^ This.</p><p>Notice there's no "tresured" gear either this expansion?  But I think it was more DCUO's doing.  So instead of one great effort and one failed effort, they came up with 2 meidiore efforts that are BOTH failing.</p>

[Aethn]

<p><cite>Loxus@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Deverel@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Cocytus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>So where once we had five green stats which was "WAY TOO CONFUSING" (said in context, in no way was it even remotely close to confusing), we now have some items that have up to NINE, yes, NINE blue stats on them.</p></blockquote><p>I don't think we went down to two stats in order to make things less confusing.  I think it was done in order to generate all the Velious gear in a very short time period b/c the expansion was behind schedule (due to the resources being applied to the F2P initiative.)</p></blockquote><p>^^^ This.</p><p>Notice there's no "tresured" gear either this expansion?  But I think it was more DCUO's doing.  So instead of one great effort and one failed effort, they came up with 2 meidiore efforts that are BOTH failing.</p></blockquote><p>Both of you guys need to lossen up the TinFoil Hat a bit, its clear that the blood has stop circulating in you're heads.  Conspiracy theory much?</p>

[Morghus]

<p><cite>Persyphony@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Loxus@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Deverel@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Cocytus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>So where once we had five green stats which was "WAY TOO CONFUSING" (said in context, in no way was it even remotely close to confusing), we now have some items that have up to NINE, yes, NINE blue stats on them.</p></blockquote><p>I don't think we went down to two stats in order to make things less confusing.  I think it was done in order to generate all the Velious gear in a very short time period b/c the expansion was behind schedule (due to the resources being applied to the F2P initiative.)</p></blockquote><p>^^^ This.</p><p>Notice there's no "tresured" gear either this expansion?  But I think it was more DCUO's doing.  So instead of one great effort and one failed effort, they came up with 2 meidiore efforts that are BOTH failing.</p></blockquote><p>Both of you guys need to lossen up the TinFoil Hat a bit, its clear that the blood has stop circulating in you're heads.  Conspiracy theory much?</p></blockquote><p>Well, to be fair, they did actually remove one of our devs (only one as far as I know) and moved them over to work on DCUO before they could finish what they were doing over here.</p>

[thewarriorpoet]

<p>Basically this is all the problem of having stats in the first place. They serve no purpose but to give the illusion of a basis in reality. We have stats so that you can make a tie to the action you are performing and some (usually with a random component) equation to calculate success or failure. So if you have, for example, Strength so we can figure out if we succeed or fail when doing something that requires Strength, like swinging a big sword. This system is flawed; and is pointless when a computer is involved.</p><p>SOE has always tried to balance EQ and EQ2. The problem is the roles that the various classes fill required differing amounts stats. Some needed just INT, while others needed STR and AGI. The point is, you cannot balance something when there is an inherent imbalance in what is needed if you insist on giving everything the same amount (if I need to eat 2000 calories and you need 1000, you can't give us both 1500 and call it balanced). If you give us all the same number of points to split between stats the math quickly shows some classes got a distinct advantage with the old system. So go and clean it all up and everybody only has one thing to worry about...boring...but much more balanced (not that we have achieved this mythical balanced state, but we are closer by some perspectives).</p><p>Enter the blues...just as the OP said, we are back to the beginning. Now classes that use both spells and CAs are going to see the problems. Which means the bloat of blues will go through a similar reduction in the coming months. This game is a living thing in a manner of speaking. The above mentioned imbalance of the old green stat system wasn't changed until differences between the players who could min-max one stats started to dwarf those who chose or who had to split between two or three. In other words, as stat-inflation occurs these problems become bigger and more noticeable and the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Organic developement at its finest. :]</p><p>As for the idea of using AAs for everything...that isn't a bad one. I think the idea of stats is old and should be put away. It is a holdover from the old pen and paper RPG inspirations. Even pen and paper games are starting to drop them. There doesn't need to be one stat to drive the effectiveness of everything (or even most of what) you do. This is a video game, our computers can do the math. Have each ability be driven by its own set of AA. A large and complete tree with REAL choices. Not these bogus non-choices we have in our AA trees now. Most classes have only one real spec that is worth anything anyways - but that's another issue.</p><p>The point I'm getting at is that I don't think stats mean anything anymore and should go away. This is well outside the scope of EQ2 however. So this is all academic and won't change anything here and now. But it's a happy dream to have. :</p><p>~Lakoda</p>

[JazzMaus]

<p><cite>thewarriorpoet wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Basically this is all the problem of having stats in the first place.</p></blockquote><p>We've had stats in RPGs since the beginning of RPGs. I'd even argue that without stats, most people wouldn't play at all.</p><p>It's not stats that hurt MMOs; it's the mud-flation of them for no reason other than simply the desire to have bigger stats. IMO, this is as much a problem caused by player expectation & desire, as anything else.</p>

[DxPreist1]

<p>Yes they did, and TBH.... good, this "let's strip everything down to the simplest thing possible" movement in games is lame. Why should we not have sets of stats to describe our chances and bonuses for various actions? How is it so bad to make us weigh options for what we are doing or using?</p><p>Is that it really? "It's too Complicated?" Holy crumb, sit down and play any PnP RPG if you think this is in any way overly complex, you'll have an aneurysm for sure. Just feel lucky the game doesn't have a critical botch chance and learn the systems, they are not that hard honestly.</p><p>Actually SOE maybe they are right, this is just so complex, can you remove all the stats and just give us a single guiding stat to clean up the mess, the character screen would be better too? It could be Like:</p><p>90 Ogre Illusionist</p><p>HP=14067</p><p>MP=15602</p><p>You Just Do Things Better=19.5</p>

[Cocytus]

<p><cite>Deverel@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Cocytus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>So where once we had five green stats which was "WAY TOO CONFUSING" (said in context, in no way was it even remotely close to confusing), we now have some items that have up to NINE, yes, NINE blue stats on them.</p></blockquote><p>I don't think we went down to two stats in order to make things less confusing.  I think it was done in order to generate all the Velious gear in a very short time period b/c the expansion was behind schedule (due to the resources being applied to the F2P initiative.)</p></blockquote><p>No, part of the reasoning posted (on the beta forums, iirc) was to make it less confusing.</p><p><cite>Eugam wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Cocytus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Eh, whatever. I just feel like the point is *never, ever, ever* going to get across.</p></blockquote><p>Most probably.<strong> Actually a piece of armor should have only mitigation and a wepaon only damage on it</strong>. Everything else comes from character stats incl. AA and spells. An uber item maybe has a +2 to something, where +2 is maybe 1% of the total value of that certain stat. Sticking to this from release till forever never ever creates inflation.</p><p>If your startegy is based on selling the biggest burger, then you are at the beginning of an arms race, which inevitably ends in an overkill. At that point you ll need to invent new stats <img src="../images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /> There are custumers who only want the biggest burger, but in the long run its smarter to sell the quality burger, because the big burger people tend to fluctuate a lot.</p></blockquote><p>EXACTLY. This is the absolute perfect formula (I've mentioned it before, though not recently) to keep itemization in a game healthy, and I just doing ****ing understand AT ALL why so few game developers see this. ARMOR for defense, WEAPONS for offense. This makes it SO MUCH easier to itemize things while avoiding inflation for a very long time. Jesus it's just so simple.</p><p>It's like the early blue stat itemization. There was like ONE bracer in the game that had 5 DA, so people would never replace it (until things got even more inflated in the future). Now what if you took that 5 DA and put it on a weapon instead? Weapon base damage/overall damage values increase as levels go up, so that 5 DA only does so much good and eventually you're crippling yourself clinging to it - whereas if you put it on armor, you somewhat become stuck with it until you find one with a greater DA value.</p><p>I really, really, really, really hope they realize this in EQ3. I seriously do. I'm so sick of RPGs over the years that just don't get the whole armor = defense, weapon = offense thing.</p>

[Morghus]

<p>^</p><p>They basically jumped the shark with Kunark...where people were replacing their Faydwer raid gear with legendary and fabled solo quest rewards. EoF and everything before then was fairly tame.</p>

[Gaige]

<p>Armor = defense and weapon = offense would be even more boring and bland than what we have now.  Back when Contested Mayong's 5 MA bracer was the best the majority of damage in this game came via autoattack.  It was boring.</p>

[thewarriorpoet]

<p><cite>JazzMaus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>thewarriorpoet wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Basically this is all the problem of having stats in the first place.</p></blockquote><p>We've had stats in RPGs since the beginning of RPGs. I'd even argue that without stats, most people wouldn't play at all.</p><p>It's not stats that hurt MMOs; it's the mud-flation of them for no reason other than simply the desire to have bigger stats. IMO, this is as much a problem caused by player expectation & desire, as anything else.</p></blockquote><p>There are plenty of RPGs without stats, as I stated originally. The inflation of stats is unavoidable because if you use stats to "measure" your chracter they inherrently have to get better as your character "levels". If you have stats and you have a leveling system you will have these problems, there is no getting around it.</p>