by stellated » Fri May 24, 2013 11:16 pm
I have a proposal for a massive change to the stat system. There are a number of aesthetically unpleasing aspects of the current system, and the gameplay isn't that interesting. Despite a major change to the formula, breeding still feels pretty much the same as the last version. This is evidence of a design problem: The system behind breeding is complicated but you can't really tell what is going on. A good system is one that gives the player interesting decisions and tradeoffs to optimize. Currently, the only decisions to make are which monsters you will breed to get all + breeding modifiers and how to get high level traits without being too incestuous. All the end-game monsters you end up breeding tend to look the same: insanely high stats and they can do everything. Even after a while, by abusing Human Intelligence you can get omni-monsters who have every trait you want to put on them. Aesthetically, the use of floating point makes the numbers look more complicated than they really are, and you get ugly long decimals in places like the STR tooltip. Furthermore, the stats are too granular. 0-1000 is a massive range for stats and it doesn't really matter. STA and FER only matter in 100 point increments, and I don't think anyone cares about the nuance between 97 STR and 100 STR.
My proposal attempts to address these problems by:
A. Make all the numbers involved integers.
B. Reduce their range drastically.
C. Change the stat cap system to force monster differentiation.
First, stats now run from 0-10, integers. This does not impact the granularity of Sta or Fer and the other stats didn't really benefit from being floating point numbers from 0 to 1000.
Second, breeding modifiers now run from -5 to 5, integers. Growth modifiers run from 1-5, integers.
Third, stat caps are removed. Instead, monsters have a LVL (level) stat which can be grown by breeding, and also a LVL Cap. The cap can be raised by breeding and special items, though it cannot be higher than 100. LVL is completely determined by the other stats of a monster. Each point in a monster's stats increases their LVL. Higher stats contribute more. The Nth point in a stat contributes N/2 (rounded up) to the monster's level. This is cumulative. For example, the 10th point in a stat costs 5 points. Having a stat at level 10 contributes 30 to a monster's level.
The motivation for this change is to force breeders to make decisions about their monsters: You want some well-rounded monsters for some tasks, but very specialized monsters for others (like selling them). The max LVL cap of 100 means you can never have a monster that is perfect at everything. A monster with 10 in every stat would be LVL 180.
Stats improve monsters in the following ways:
Every point of STR increases a monster's critical success effect 1.
Every point of DEX reduces the time spent on an action with that monster by 5%.
Every point of STA allows a monster to breed or be harvested an extra time per day (more below).
Every point of WIL gives a monster 1% chance to critically succeed at certain actions.
Every point of CHA increases a monster's worth by 10%.
Every point of FER improves a monster's consumables by 10%.
I switched FER's old attribute because I think eating should be a more strategic decision and being able to eat several times per day makes it more of a grind than anything else.
STR and WIL factor into things like harvesting, breeding, and inheritence. Sometimes monsters can perform exceptionally well at these tasks and STR and WIL decide how. Breeding is described below and what a critical success for that is.
Breeding: Let's say Alice and Bob are monsters and they fuck. How do we determine Alice's stat increase?
Let X be Alice's current LVL.
Let G be Alice's growth modifier for the stat we are considering.
Let B be Bob's breeding modifier for the stat we are considering.
Let S be Bob's current level for the stat we are considering.
We roll a number of 10-sided dice equal to B*(S+1). Every die that rolls (6-G) or higher counts as a success, the others are failures. If we get enough as many successes as X, Alice's Level, she gains a point in that stat provided it does not put her over her limit. Alice and Bob also have a chance to critically succeed. They have a chance to critically succeed equal to the sum of their WIL, and if they succeed they add both their STR's to their number of successes.
If you've ever played a pen and paper RPG these sorts of rolls are familiar. This proposal is incredibly simple compared to the current formula. Instead of treating this aspect of the game as a black box it encourages players to try to squeeze advantages out wherever they can. As a UI enhancement, breeding can produce a % probablity of increasing stats to give a player a direct idea of what their odds of success are and a way to gauge how their decisions improve their chances. Every stat point and modifier has a significant and noticeable difference on the outcome. End game difficulty is built in already: even if you have 10 STR on both monsters and the best breed modifier for a stat, you can't raise it on a monster that is higher than level 70. The sheer difficulty of getting really high stats leaves room for special effects from consumables, traits, and whatever other gameplay mechanics you want to add.
Breeding modifiers are hella important, but growth modifiers are extremely good in this model. It should be very hard to get higher growth mods. It should require special breeding and consumable regimens.
So that's my proposal. It is incomplete because it does not detail inheritence or how consumables affect monster stats. I figured this these are a lot of complicated suggestions already and there's no point in spelling out the whole game if no one likes this idea!
