Selecting Stats - A New Perspective

[John]

I dreamt this idea up last night and thought it sounded cool so I wanted to see what other people thought.

My idea is players can pick the highest level their stat will be. What happens is a player puts in their preferred level for their stats. The stats are then rolled and then their preference is looked at. For stats that are above what the player asked for, the stat goes down to what the player wants. Otherwise the player's preference is ignored.

So an example would be:
I say I want:
* Poor strength
* Excellent Endurance
* Average Wisdom
* Absolutely Incredible Agility.

My starts are rolled (without any regard to my preferences) and they are:
* Above Average strength
* Good Endurance
* Average Wisdom
* Poor Agility

My preferences are looked at and my stats are changed where appropriate, so the end result is:
* Poor strength
* Good Endurance
* Average Wisdom
* Poor Agility

What would be the advantage to this? It lets me have bad stats if I want bad stats. Quite often I'll write up a desc to show how weak I am, and then get AI strength. At the moment I have to put in a request to get my stats changed, and given how quick I go through my characters it must be annoying to the staff. This would let me have bad stats (or average stats, or above average stats but not perfect) when I want them. I'd like to think I'm not the only player who does this.

It also wouldn't require a code change to the app process (which Sanvean has said she's hesitant to do unless it's a complete revamp), because I can select my stats in the Hall of Kings. Your stats aren't rolled until you've pointed at the map and selected your starting town.

It also wouldn't allow powergaming because the you can only select a maximum, not a minimum. There's no advantage to having a preference, except that you can increase the likelihood of getting the stats that match your description and background. That doesn't mean though that you can pick poor Agility, poor Wisdom and get a bigger chance of having AI strength. The stats would be rolled (or rerolled) regardless of your preference.

It also wouldn't force players to make a preference, with the default being AI (so you can get any level in that particular stat).

So what do people think?

[Jherlen]

While this does take care of the problem of some stats being unrealistically high, it does nothing to address the problem of some stats being too low for a concept (the massive muscular man with below average strength but AI agility).

If any change to stats were going to be made, I'd vote for one that gave players a little more control than this.

[Fnord]

It might be a nice two-part process. First, enter maximums for each stat, and then an order of highest to lowest.

Step 1) What is the highest your strength should be? Hit enter to not limit it.
Step 2-4 ) Rest of stats.
Step 5) Enter your most important stat. Hit enter if you don't have a preference.
Step 6-8 ) Rest of stats.

So, banging enter 8 times would give the exact same random results we have now, but the player that wanted to limit and/or order stats could do so.

I've always been in favor of stat ordering, as it helps sync up stats with description. Of course there are, for example, deceptively strong scrawny people out there, but they are the exception, not the rule.

[Hymwen]

I think it's a very nice idea, with no disadvantage or possibility for abuse, but I think that it'll be low on the staff's priority list.

As for stat ordering, I'd rather see the possibility of picking one stat rather than all four. Should be sufficient for anyone who wants to play "the brutally-muscled man", "the extremely lithesome elf" or "the totally clever guy", and if your character concept has more than one high stat requirment, maybe you should tone down your goals a bit.

[Synthesis]

I think this is one of those "Hey, I thought of it, so I may as well throw it out there" ideas.

I'm guessing very, very few people ever create a character they intend to play for a long time with the specific intent of having that character be a pathetic weakling or a complete moron.

Basically, you can play around your stats, so do it.

People deal with having heinously low stats (lord knows I do with this character, sheesh).  I think you can deal with having a particular stat be a little too high.  I think -everyone- can deal with it, and that your idea is a solution to something that isn't much of a problem at all.

Personally, even if this idea took exactly 30 seconds to implement via a code change, I'd rather the staffer take that 30 seconds to fix a typo somewhere.  Or take a deep breath and relax.

[Yang]

Another RPI mud lets you prioritize your stats in order from most important to least important. Mind you they have like 12 different stats.

I want a warrior: STR END AGI WIS
I want a mage: WIS AGI STR END

Whatever works. I admit, this doesn't work as well on a mud with only 4 stats.

[Yokunama]

Another RPI mud lets you prioritize your stats in order from most important to least important. Mind you they have like 12 different stats.

I want a warrior: STR END AGI WIS
I want a mage: WIS AGI STR END

Whatever works. I admit, this doesn't work as well on a mud with only 4 stats.

Yea, it would make everyone seem less unique.

[Anonymous]

Rather than stat ordering I think the best solution is to add an 'advanced character creation' option to chargen.  This would all be done through the magic of coding which I'm told is done by laboring gnomes whilst we sleep and therefore should be no problem at all.

:arrow: You create a character (name, age, height), pick a guild, subguild and race.
:arrow: You are given a chance to edit the above before ending part 1.

:arrow: your character is generated with their stats (which are displayed to the player) and a generic sdesc/desc.  

The key here is that at this point there is a character attached to your account and quitting out won't do any good.  From this point on another editing menu is provided for part 2.

:arrow: Knowing their character's stats the players can now edit the generic sdesc and desc as well as the background before submitting.

:arrow: The immortal review process is modified to approve the existing character and transport them into an active zone after applying the submitted descriptions/background or to reject the application, send an email, flag the player's account to start at part 2 of chargen to change the submitted desc/sdesc/background all the while leaving the generated character hanging out in no-man's land.

At least, that's what I see as the answer to all this business since stat-ordering hasn't seemed to be the desired solution.

[jcarter]

Not to derail, but is stat ordering in now?

[Anonymous]

remember the numbers you can't see.

a dwarf rolls poor str and ave agi. Numbers wise it would be almost the same thing really. Because the number for poor str on a dwarf is a lot higher then it's number for poor on it's agilitiy.

This would begin to give away the numbers for the characters which, In six years of playing I have enjoyed not knowing.

[Hymwen]

Not to derail, but is stat ordering in now?

No.

[flurry]

At least, that's what I see as the answer to all this business since stat-ordering hasn't seemed to be the desired solution.

Since it hasn't been implemented yet, I think it's a little too soon to judge.

[Morgenes]

Stat ordering will be going in soon.

[Larrath]

Stat ordering will be going in soon.

Just in time for the HRPT.  :twisted:

[Anonymous]

Stat ordering will be going in soon.

I have to ask, by that you I hope mean you just pick where the highest numbers are assigned. Not switching things up?

I was chatting with a friend about this and I discussed a HG character, if he said
well I have ave str (maybe a 18 on a HG) and good agi (maybe an I want
to switch them so it is G str Av agi... but it would be an 8 str and 18 agi which
I would think would be poor str and ai agi.

I hope that makes sense. If it was just a matter of prerolled numbers and you
assigned where they go highest to lowest with racial caps kicking in. That
would be a good system. We will still get those uber crappy characters
that are so much fun when your leet and your like "holy shit I just did
that with the weakest character ever!". Or that all AI roll where you are just like wow, and you die from falling off your mount and crit fail falling on
your head in 2 hours.

[Morgenes]

I have to ask, by that you I hope mean you just pick where the highest numbers are assigned. Not switching things up?

That's the idea.  During character creation you will be prompted to prioritize your attributes as few or many as you want.   So you could just say that strength is the most important attribute to you, and you don't care about anything else.  We will assign your highest roll to strength and the rest will be random.

Or you could specify you want 'wisdom, agility, endurance, strength'.  We will assign rolls such that they are ordered as  you specified.

[Armaddict]

So uh...there's no more random chance of that absolutely -beefy- roll anymore?

[Flaming Ocotillo]

Stat ordering will be going in soon.

THANK YOU, MORGENES. I wasn't sure I'd ever see the day that Armageddon MUD could acknowledge that having a stat ordering system wouldn't bring the anti-christ of RP down upon us.

So uh...there's no more random chance of that absolutely -beefy- roll anymore?

If you roll a dice once for each stat, or roll four dice at once and then arrange the values to different stats, the chance of getting a high roll doesn't change.

[spawnloser]

From what I understand, no more beefy stat chances.

What if you played a HG that you selected wis agi str end or a human that you selected wis agi str end.  What you saw when you typed 'score' would show strength as good, agility very good, wisdom extremely good, above average for BOTH characters while it being the equivalent of the 'same roll.'  This would be on scale, in otherwards.  Even though it means that the HG's strength at good is (fake numbers disclaimer) 20 and wisdom (his 'highest stat') is 5, compared to the human with wisdom 16 and strength 12.

If this is wrong, could someone that knows for certain correct me please?

[Morgenes]

From what I understand, no more beefy stat chances.

Maybe I don't understand what you mean by 'beefy stat chances', but the rolls will be the same, we're just gonna play some tricks to order them to your preference.

What if you played a HG that you selected wis agi str end or a human that you selected wis agi str end.  What you saw when you typed 'score' would show strength as good, agility very good, wisdom extremely good, above average for BOTH characters while it being the equivalent of the 'same roll.'  This would be on scale, in otherwards.  Even though it means that the HG's strength at good is (fake numbers disclaimer) 20 and wisdom (his 'highest stat') is 5, compared to the human with wisdom 16 and strength 12.

If this is wrong, could someone that knows for certain correct me please?

You are correct.  It still is in scale to racial mins and maxes.  A Half Giant will not have the wisdom of a human, no matter what you choose in your ordering.

[LauraMars]

From what I understand, no more beefy stat chances.

The rolls would be exactly the same.  You still have just a much a chance to roll that AI score.  It's just that now, if you roll an AI, it'll go where you want it to go instead of the numbers being randomly assigned to a stat.

edit: Er, yes. What Morgenes said.

[spawnloser]

By 'beefy stat chances' I was responding to what Armaddict had said and meant that you don't have, with stat ordering, any more chances of getting an AI, an exceptional, etc.  Your chances for each of the descriptive stats that we see as players is the same as without stat ordering.

[Malifaxis]

The conversation that preceeded this HRPT:

Morgenes:  Well, it's almost done.  Rock and roll.  Time to call the strippers and caterers.
Halaster:  What's done?
M:  Stat ordering code.
Tlaloc:  That's going to give a large advantage to the new created PCs.
H:  Yeah, but it'll be worth it.
M:  Well, there is one simple fix.  Let's just make everyone equal.
(brief pause)
T:  We can't really pfile purge.  It's Armag.
H:  We'll do a manual pfile purge.
(pause)
H:  You know.  HRPT.
T:  Oh, right!
M:  Heh.

[flurry]

By 'beefy stat chances' I was responding to what Armaddict had said and meant that you don't have, with stat ordering, any more chances of getting an AI, an exceptional, etc.

Why wouldn't you have any more chance of that?  I don't see the connection.

[Anonymous]

By 'beefy stat chances' I was responding to what Armaddict had said and meant that you don't have, with stat ordering, any more chances of getting an AI, an exceptional, etc.  Your chances for each of the descriptive stats that we see as players is the same as without stat ordering.

After talking it over it was finally explained to me.

Say you roll 15,12,13,4

Those will just be assigned in the order you want, so you can still get "beefy" stats

You just say hey I want my highest at str and my lowest at wis (I am a HG)
They will then get assigned and racial bonuses/negatives/caps applied and there you go.

So if you rolled 3 6 4 5 you still suck mek butt, and if you roll 21 21 21 21 you basically will still own noobs.


*please correct me if I am wrong*