Wisdom stat Ideas

[Dresan]

I wanted to propose some more wisdom ideas. Beyond just wisdom buff, I believe all the items below are needed in one way or another, thus it could have the double use of buffing wisdom too. Even with the below ideas, choose wisdom would be tough trade off to the other stats.

Wisdom ideas:

1. You gain an equal percentage to your wisdom bonus to learn just weapon skills when being parry against worthy opponents. All other visible skills have 1.5 times this bonus as a percent chance to learn from success. This initiates skill cooldown as if failed. 

Reasoning: I think some of the frustration of with wisdom and the game come from the fact some skills are hard to grow regardless of play time or anything else. You almost have to play in abnormal ways to grow. That said, I've been having some growing concerns about how weapon skills are effecting performance, they should probably be more in line with parry, shield_use, weapon styles in that having master skill does not mean you win fights, with bonuses rendered moot against similarly skilled opponents.

The game should be balanced with all character skills at max potential, with hidden offense and defense skill determining outcomes based on effort, opportunity and just plain luck but that is probably another thread (combat simplification?)

2. Your wisdom bonus helps provides flat armor reduction. The bonus increased with two dual wielding the same way strength has its damage bonus with two handed. 

Reasoning: Lighter weapons like daggers, long knives feel useless at the moment. Not just because they don't do enough damage, but they rarely do any damage against anyone with thick skin or a little bit of armor. There is almost never a reason to choose a lighter weapon or choosing anything other than strength as first or second priority.  I think adding this to wisdom instead of agility makes for an interesting trade off for those who are willing to take a big risk with lower strength characters, making lighter weapons a bit more viable despite low damage.

3. Wisdom bonus should provide an equal increase to crafting success.

Reasoning: Not all crafting skills come at master, and even then things can fail, this would be a small bonus to improve those situation if you choose to at creation. It will also promote spice use and trade during important efforts. 

[Refugee]

I'd like to add a little suggestion for wisdom as well.  I played a character from the age of 22 years old to the age of 71.  He suffered catastrophic physical consequences of aging.  But his wisdom never changed from poor.  I feel that the physical changes were unrealistically harsh, but I certainly feel there should've been some commensurate improvements to wisdom.

[Dresan]

The only other idea I would add is:

Allow wisdom stats to influence offense/defense learn limits. Allowing you to learn from unskilled opponents a bit longer.  Yes the limits are needed, you should not be learning from rats. However, the only solution is often join a clan which isn't always ideal to many players. This is why trading learning faster for something like strength isn't always the best trade off because many player plateau roughly in the same spots in terms of skill.

Also, that this change would not really be that drastic at all, since you only need to fight a boosted heavy combat with high agility as newbie warrior yourself to know that defense isn't ever absolute so you can still hit sometimes, despite the fact they will not likely learn from your attacks. So why not just hit them harder with extra strength.

Finally I am not suggesting the game boost current limits rather just allow wisdom to influence them alongside class selection so its more of a meaningful trade off to strength, endurance and agility.

[Tasemu]

I d like to mention that wisdom in terms of skill gains is practically useless. Because a reasonable training break requires at most a HG level wisdom. More is overkill. One might even argue that training any skill at highest wisdom levels would be considered unrealistic and twinking.

[Dresan]

I d like to mention that wisdom in terms of skill gains is practically useless. Because a reasonable training break requires at most a HG level wisdom. More is overkill. One might even argue that training any skill at highest wisdom levels would be considered unrealistic and twinking.

I agree, I think people just train their low level skills once per login anyways.

Also the fact that stat based bonus on all visible skill gains is very noticeable, so much so that its quite a boost to low wisdom races and those wishing to use wisdom as a stat dump.

Don't get me wrong, I love these changes but it does put wisdom in a bad place, especially given the fact that all the strong human, dwarf, mul or HG has to do is keep swinging that weapon, and at some point they will stop missing.

[Tasemu]

To fix wisdom, I believe it should provide actual action bonuses, such as for crafting, hiding, and other activities that require focus and concentration actions you'd expect to be performed better by wiser individuals.

[LindseyBalboa]

I don't think wisdom really needs 'fix'ing.

It already provides bonuses and maluses to some skills, like other stats.

It provides extreme bonuses to learning skills and more.

A poor roll has extremely noticeable consequences but in my experience that can generally be roleplayed as part of the character which to me is the perfect level of 'malus.'

I like the idea of giving more of an 'edge' to weapon skills if one prioritizes wisdom but I think that's likely to work out in practice as a small bonus for mages who prioritize wisdom anyway.

-  What about adding a learn or two for higher wisdom to represent the extra learning capacity a high wisdom PC would have?
          -It's a very small bonus, but useful, and I don't think it should negatively affect learn at all (no one gets less than  the 4 we all get now).

[Dusty Boots]

It provides extreme bonuses to learning skills and more.

This isn't completely accurate since the changes to skill gains. Having the correct primary stat for the skill gives you more skill gain than having high wisdom as per Halaster's post about it. Also the skill gain from wisdom was nerfed.

[Dresan]

Certain combat gains are not only balanced by wisdom but class. I'm not overly concerned with mage/combat subclass and hybrid classes while still very strong has spec app/skill limitation to balance them out. That said, having played around with Elven high levels of wisdom, I can only say I was fairly disappointed at the performance of certain skills despite the bonuses provided with wisdom.

With features like learn and alternate stats effecting skill gain, I don't think wisdom is in a good place. This will progressively get worse overtime because these features are important to the game, and will need to be buffed as the season progresses. And again, to clarify these features are an absolutely wonderful quality of life change to the game.

Ultimately the game's classes needs to be balanced out for max cap for all visible skills.

A bit of derail but the elephant in the room is really just weapon skills. Weapon skills need to change to bring them in line with parry and shield_use. Certainly it should be nice to have all weapon skills at advanced, even better to have them max out at master however, just like with max cap parry and shield_use skills, it should not guarantee winning or even surviving against anything you fight. Instead hidden offense and defense skills should be king when determining the outcomes.

Hidden offense and defense skills are a bit of a unique feature to this particular game, which greatly improves the experience. While it rewards effort and opportunity, two character can put the same amount of effort and have the same amount of opportunity, but have very different outcomes. At that point, you can only blame your own bad luck. However, this means that even playing the same class/subclass/clan/etc your experiences are different with ever play through.

Even if the game were to make off/def skills harder to gain while at the same time wisdom improved those gains further, i still think the stat would require some love to make it a reasonable alternative to other stats.

[Athapaxis]

Dresan - let me start by saying that I love the fact that you are constantly putting things out there to improve the game.  You seem to do it in a way that has a lot of thought but doesn't get butt-hurt if the idea isn't picked up.  GDB Kudos to you.

I like the idea of crafting difficulty.  Sometimes feels like certain things fail a LOT even when they are easy to craft.  I wonder if there is a separate fail-rate level or if that's just RNG?

[LukeRM]

Certain combat gains are not only balanced by wisdom but class. I'm not overly concerned with mage/combat subclass and hybrid classes while still very strong has spec app/skill limitation to balance them out. That said, having played around with Elven high levels of wisdom, I can only say I was fairly disappointed at the performance of certain skills despite the bonuses provided with wisdom.

With features like learn and alternate stats effecting skill gain, I don't think wisdom is in a good place. This will progressively get worse overtime because these features are important to the game, and will need to be buffed as the season progresses. And again, to clarify these features are an absolutely wonderful quality of life change to the game.

Ultimately the game's classes needs to be balanced out for max cap for all visible skills.

A bit of derail but the elephant in the room is really just weapon skills. Weapon skills need to change to bring them in line with parry and shield_use. Certainly it should be nice to have all weapon skills at advanced, even better to have them max out at master however, just like with max cap parry and shield_use skills, it should not guarantee winning or even surviving against anything you fight. Instead hidden offense and defense skills should be king when determining the outcomes.

Hidden offense and defense skills are a bit of a unique feature to this particular game, which greatly improves the experience. While it rewards effort and opportunity, two character can put the same amount of effort and have the same amount of opportunity, but have very different outcomes. At that point, you can only blame your own bad luck. However, this means that even playing the same class/subclass/clan/etc your experiences are different with ever play through.

Even if the game were to make off/def skills harder to gain while at the same time wisdom improved those gains further, i still think the stat would require some love to make it a reasonable alternative to other stats.

Why shouldn't I get a good idea of my character's capability by looking at their sheet? If anything, base Offense/Defense should be visible - that way more people will understand how difficult they are to raise without activities that are ICly absurd or OOCly cheesy.

Without making Wisdom do something gigantic, directly, all the Wisdom in the world can't compete with extra flat damage modifiers from pure Strength. And then it'd be another nerfbat common combatants didn't already need because they already have 2-3 statpools that are almost always more important.