Character Creation?

[WhiteWhale]

I was toying around in character creation and my question is this:

If I were to select two of the attributes as "most important" will it allow me to submit the application as such or does it all have to be ranked in accordance of importance?

[jdidds]

http://www.middle-earth.us/forums/viewt ... ?f=2&t=582

This should help you out

[jdidds]

And you can set as many of your stats to most important as you like, it just means a greater distribution of points to those stats from your pool.

If you where to set all your stats to most important, then it would evenly distribute your pool over your stats, just leaving racial bonuses and height/size modifiers and a slight random number to vary the number a little.

[Rivean]

And you can set as many of your stats to most important as you like, it means a greater distribution of points to those stats from your pool.

Setting all your stats as 'most important' would be exactly the same as setting them all as 'least important'.

[jdidds]

^this too.

[WhiteWhale]

Thanks. I was wondering how it would all work out.

[likui]

I had some unexpected results. I set one stat as most important, which did not quite reach a maximum level. Another I set at most unimportant and the result was "average".

[EltanimRas]

Each stat has some randomness added that can bump it up +/-2 points. There are some race modifiers as well as weight modifiers as well. We do not take age into account for stats at this time.

[Nimrod]

The stat generation process has been a topic of much discussion by both players and staff. We've tweaked things quite a bit to keep the highs within check for the most part. I'm still a big fan of the process which gives you so much more control and it's fair because everyone has the same tools available to them.

The only thing we could do to give you more control would be to allow you to actually set your stats manually, forcing you to not go over the overall cap for your race.

We've had some very interesting choices in stats, which I'm very happy to see. I think it adds a lot to how you play the game and it's a dream come true for the warrior types.

What's your opinion of the new system so far? Love it? Hate it? Give me your honest opinion. I can take it.

[radioactivejesus]

What's your opinion of the new system so far? Love it? Hate it? Give me your honest opinion. I can take it.

It definitely didn't work at all like it should have on day 1, with most people's stats being determined by size/weight or at completely random instead of their picks. I haven't been through chargen a second time to witness any tweaks you made so I don't know how things are working currently. The idea of size and weight changing stats is a bad one though, because it will motivate people to describe their characters in ways that contradicts their intentions so that they can play the coded badass.

The idea of players having more choices for how they assign stats is a really good one though. Always hated how in the old system I wasn't allowed to make a character who was average at everything but also fairly smart. I had to be awesome at one thing, good at one thing, mediocre at another thing and then terrible in another thing. No well-balanced pc's allowed.. I think your new system does a swell job of fixing the problem

[EltanimRas]

What's your opinion of the new system so far? Love it? Hate it? Give me your honest opinion. I can take it.

Not stats per se, but related: I think the height ranges may be too widely randomized and/or less sex-specific that us RL humans instinctively expect. And the weight ranges all seem to run heavy for how I visualize the descriptions, at least on the human side.

For stats specifically, I think the high number of fine-grained importance settings is misleading -- they seem easily drowned out by the randomization. So far, I'm finding the results roughly predictable only when I limit myself to using three (or at most four) widely-spaced settings. I might also be happier if we had more transparency on the racial and weight-based modifiers.

Overall, I don't hate it, but I think it is, at least in its current incarnation and with current documentation, a bit unintuitive -- if we'd had a mock-up somewhere that we could have practiced with before using it on 'real' PCs, I'd probably have liked it a lot better.

[Rivean]

To add to the above, something to consider:

When we had a high degree of randomization in SOI2, there was, at least at some point, the ability to reroll your PC. Arm, as far as I'm aware, gives you two rolls.

I'm not at all advocating we go back to that model - but I am suggesting that if you're going to be stuck with the PC after you log in for the first time, then there should be less randomness to it.

[Justanothacivy]

I love the current attribute selection option. It worked wonderfully after I played around with it and figured it out.

+1

[jdidds]

To add to the above, something to consider:

When we had a high degree of randomization in SOI2, there was, at least at some point, the ability to reroll your PC. Arm, as far as I'm aware, gives you two rolls.

I'm not at all advocating we go back to that model - but I am suggesting that if you're going to be stuck with the PC after you log in for the first time, then there should be less randomness to it.

I agree. I would actually like a little bit more of an idea of how your character will be, perhaps allowing a reroll which can only be done when in the pre-game rooms. You could then go with your previous stats or take the new ones.

[Nimrod]

I did write a page that allows you to select all attributes, height, frame, gender and then rolls ten sets of stats, displaying them for testing purposes.

Currently this is a staff-only option and it's my opinion that it should remain such as there needs to be some bit of mystery to it all. With the upgrade command you can tweak things after the fact anyway, although it takes time. If you can talk Icarus into making the stat test page public, I'd be happy to open it up for your use.

[RiderOnTheStorm]

I personally love the current cg. And I've been through it 6+ times.

With the tweak to starting skills, I might love it less. I dunno. I thought it was cool how, if X and Y were your high stats, and and you had skills with that pairing as the stats, you could start at talented or very close to it.

[EltanimRas]

Currently this is a staff-only option and it's my opinion that it should remain such as there needs to be some bit of mystery to it all.

While some of us (myself included) would undoubtedly find this fascinating, I don't think it's truly necessary for us to see tens or hundreds of rolls or to otherwise remove all 'mystery' from the process.

The sticking point for me is the difference between zero experience and two to three characters' worth. Basic, big-picture stuff, like the idea that while "most important" stats will almost certainly be higher than "most unimportant" ones, "slightly important" stats may roll lower than "slightly unimportant" ones.

With the upgrade command you can tweak things after the fact anyway, although it takes time.

Can some mention of this command and its workings please be added to the chargen and/or commencement process? Even if it's just "Stats can change slowly over time; please see 'help upgrade' for more details."

We're not all equally code-savvy players.

[hobbitboots]

I like it. My stats got borked my first time, but it got fixed. In the end, my stats turned out about as I expected. I also like that we have the upgrade command to let us fine tune our characters over time. On that topic...

When is the presence stat going to be added to score?

When is upgrade going to be updated to also include presence?

[tehkory]

When is the presence stat going to be added to score?

When is upgrade going to be updated to also include presence?

This, please.

I'm relatively disappointed in the system, but not overmuch: Pres/dex were put at 1, and int at 4. This made me received average/poor/poor in these stats, so...1/3 success rate so far. Agi/wil were put at 6, each getting to be average/great...so with size added in, this came out alright. 50/50. Strength was 8, and con 10, and those ended up being peak/great. 50/50 again. It feels pretty odd/wanky, but I was a day 1 PC. Maybe it's been fixed? I don't know.

[Nimrod]

but I was a day 1 PC. Maybe it's been fixed? I don't know.

We have made adjustments. The first few days saw a lot of wonky stats.

[tehkory]

but I was a day 1 PC. Maybe it's been fixed? I don't know.

We have made adjustments. The first few days saw a lot of wonky stats.

Since you're here:

Any eta on helping people shift their stats around, out of/away from presence? It'd be nice!

[LuckyV]

Personally I would like an addition to the current system which would let you make an input like:

I don't want any of my skills to be lower than average
or
I don't want any of my skills to be greater than great

[Rivean]

Personally I would like an addition to the current system which would let you make an input like:

I don't want any of my skills to be lower than average
or
I don't want any of my skills to be greater than great

This actually might be an interesting idea - one might, for those who wish to try it this way, instead of specifying stats, specify your ideal skill cap balance and let the game calculate your states based on your desired goals.

[tehkory]

Personally I would like an addition to the current system which would let you make an input like:

I don't want any of my skills to be lower than average
or
I don't want any of my skills to be greater than great

Or both. I'd snarfagling love this, especially for playing Elves/Dwarves so there's less "idiot savant" issues.

[EltanimRas]

Actually ... would it break anything to let us directly set our characters' heights and weights? Let the game translate our choices into short/tall/heavy/light on the back-end, if other code depends on those categories.

Even if we keep height and weight randomized, it'd be nice to see those rolls before we write our descriptions, rather than after.