On RPG stat systems

[windextor]

Hey guys!

First of all I'd like to say I'm sorry for basically not following the forum for a year or so
I found it through Halls' tutorial videos which introduced me to the the idea that it is in fact possible to create a browser MMO by yourself, followed most of the videos, and then real life kinda got in the way.

So, hello again, I guess! Now on to the subject.

Guess what? A year later I'm still struggling with game design. Turns out good design is actually more difficult than good coding. Who knew?

The thing is, I'm a perfectionist. Not the good kind either. So this time around, my OCD-like behavior led me to try and find a stat system that is as elegant as possible. What do I mean by elegant? I don't really know how to explain, but let's say:

• Coherent - The stats must make sense to the game, that is, they all must affect something specific to the game (Capt. Obvious strikes again, but bare with me, I'm getting somewhere with this).
  
  Purposeful - This follows a bit from the previous bullet. What I mean with purposefulness is the complete and total absence of dump stats. I never got the dump stat thing (although I love it because I tend to become a min/max player at least on my second run if not sooner). If a stat is considered dump, then just remove it from the game!
  
  Balanced - And I mean balanced! Every stat should govern skills or events or other smaller stats in an equivalent manner; ideally it should be done in such a way that improving one stat instead of another would drastically affect your game-play but NOT the difficulty of the game in any way at any point! All game styles should be viable, rich in content and mutually-exclusive (at least in the early stages of the game). I realize this is a huge challenge.
  
  Symmetrical - To make things a tad more difficult, why not raise the bar even further and make it all beautiful and orderly? What I mean by symmetry is having a collection of stats that all sort of reflect each other in different aspects of game-play. Like... Strength represents your physical prowess and Intelligence represents your mental prowess. For Dexterity, there is Perception, for Endurance there is Willpower and so on and so forth.

This more or less sums it up. Maybe I'm missing something or another, but that's why I'd like to share these thoughts. Am I being too idealistic or did I just unknowingly described every RPG system ever and didn't even notice it? If so, I probably didn't communicate the idea as it is in my head.

For symmetry I have a good example. Remember Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura?

That game's stat system was based on Fallout's SPECIAL with a twist. Every stat had a physical/mental counterpart.

Strength/Intelligence
Dexterity/Perception
Endurance/Willpower
Beauty/Charisma

This tickles my fancy, although more than half of those were dump stats. I'd aim for something smaller (maybe two on each side?) that would affect a larger portion of smaller stats so that each one could more significantly affect game-play.

One other thing that bothers me but that I can't really find any work-around to is the fact that most stats always affect combat, in any RPG. Why is that? Why wouldn't there be an amount of stats just as relevant and important to the out-of-combat game? I don't know.

And I know it all depends on the game in question but somehow that answer doesn't satisfy me

Anyway, here's my caffeine-induced cerebral vomit. Am I raising a relevant question? Am I just making a big deal out of this?
Any input is appreciated!

[Xaleph]

I think you are raising some valid questions, however, most of the balancing can only take place once you start testing different aspects of the game, it also depends on the content you want to deliver. If you start writing quests, it`s up to you to balance it out for every race/profession/stat to have an equal ammount of content available.

On to the next point, you will always have dump stats, since not every player diggs every aspect of every game. If you are using charisma as a linked attribute to beauty that would mean you could program a beauty contest, i`m just firing blanks here obviously, but if you planned on integrating that, that would mean that it is an integral part of your game, however not every player is going to participate in beauty contests, if you catch my drift.

So it`s up to you in what you define as dump stats. Other than that, why would you integrate stats like charisma? I suppose you can use to during quests or quest givers, and depending on charisma, get a better reward or whatever, but then again, that`s all up to you, so balancing is the key and balancing can only take place after an initial release.

[Callan S.]

On another site there's a theory that makes a distinction between a game where you play it to win and a game where playing it is the act of exploring an imaginary world for the sake of exploring it as that is fun.

These two don't mix together terribly well.

I'm mentioning it, because simply out of legacy reasons, if you want to make the explore type, it sounds like out of habit your still going to use play to win mechanics. Mechanics which are predicated on winning, in order to advance. Which is just utterly conflicted with the explorative priority - which aught, perhaps not surprisingly, to be predicated on exploring, in order to advance.

Part of your problem with game design might come from continually trying to design for both of these in the one game, when they are 99% mutually exclusive.

[Callan S.]

If you are using charisma as a linked attribute to beauty that would mean you could program a beauty contest, i`m just firing blanks here obviously,

Just on a different subject to what Xaleph brought up, that's another designer habitual problem - you decide to have a beauty attribute...and now you find yourself forced to create a beauty contest or such in order to make the stat a valid one and not a dump stat/pointless stat.

I'd say it's actually counter creativity to find oneself trying to make 'interesting stuff' simply to make sure a stupid number remains valid. It's a real pit to fall into. It's almost like, having made fuzzy dice, trying to invent a car to go along with the fuzzy dice.

[windextor]

Yep, I totally agree that trying to create a 'perfect' system before thinking out the actual game first is counter-productive and completely hinders creativity. I wouldn't go as far as forcibly trying to justify a gaming system and end building the proverbial car around the fuzzy dice (excellent metaphor).

What I'm trying to do is to find a good balance on stats that reflect the aspects of the game in a balanced manner. I believe that working with fewer stats wold make things easier, maybe 4 stats would be enough (2 physical, 2 mental with each side having an in-combat and out-of-combat aspect to it).

Also, Beauty and Charisma were just an example in that case. I liked what they did there, but if you actually played the game you probably remember that both Beauty AND Charisma were absolutely useless

[Callan S.]

I would suggest thinking about what your game is going to have in it first. Even coding up pages where you do stuff, without figuring any base set of stats first. In fact don't even just assume from the get go your going to have combat! Just start figuring it out and you might find in how you figure it out, combat or whatever doesn't even come into it.

I'd forget about stats for atleast 24 hours. What do you do in your game? Ford rivers? Jump from asteroid to asteroid? Convince hot chicks to sleep with you? Solve crimes? What?