Power, defense, and regeneration are arbitrary stats. Letting someone get more power as they level up doesn’t matter, because everyone can get more defense as they level up as well. They’re abstract numbers that go up in a linear fashion.
Agility, attack size, intensity, and attack speed are not arbitrary stats. They will (likely) have issues when increased too high.
Too much agility means that people can just ignore travel time on land. Island sizes can’t keep scaling with level to deal with this.
Too much attack size means people don’t need to aim, and at any given moment in a wilderness island battle, 50% of the place will be hit with an attack. Once again, island sizes can’t keep scaling with level to deal with this.
Too much intensity means that cooldowns won’t matter. Cooldowns (probably?) can’t keep scaling with more and more advanced moves, because then people who don’t run intensity will be saddled with incredibly long cooldowns that aren’t fun to wait out.
Too much attack speed means that casting time won’t matter. Casting time can’t keep scaling with more and more advanced moves, because then people who don’t run attack speed will get stuck casting a single move forever.
I actually think it was a smart move to make agility a jewel substat, because we’re not getting more jewel slots as we level up. Spreading out the stat increase from level 1 to max level IS an option, but simply immediately letting people get to a noticeable amount in a stat and then just not letting them get any more of it instead of dripfeeding them the full power of that stat over a long journey to max level is much more enjoyable.
I’ve linked a previous post from me covering the issue with stat softcaps, and an old suggestion from the World of Magic days that discussed the same problem pretty well.
While it’s ok for a level 1000 player to have 50x the damage of a level 1, it’s not ok for a level 1000 player to have 50x the magic size.
Yeah that’s a good idea, I’d vote for it if it wasn’t closed.
Maybe at most with commons it’s one main stat, uncommons have that a little higher, rares could be split between two, and exotic+ could receive some unique substat that remains fixed. So an exotic piece of armor could get a +2.5% life steal (1/2 for ranged) fixed effect as an example.
Actually, lifesteal would be a great idea for an arbitrary stat. Arbitrary stats don’t have to be tied to common gear—they just scale with level. Just make “+30 lifesteal” give you 30 health every time you hit an attack. 30 power doesn’t make you get 30 extra damage on every hit on a 20-multiblast, because that spell has low power scaling. I’m sure “lifesteal scaling” could be implemented on attacks as well—just have it use the power scaling system.
It’s important to have as many arbitrary stats as possible, because eventually you’ll start running out of combinations of arbitrary and non-arbitrary stats to put on armor, and there should be as many levels as possible between repeated stats on armor to keep armor builds as fresh as possible at all stages of the game.
I think it can be split into two camps:
Non-Arbitrary and Arbitrary
Non-Arbitrary (% lifesteal) would be for power builds with singular big attacks
Arbitrary (fixed lifesteal) would be for high attack frequency builds (potentially with high speed)
Generally fixed would be too low for it to matter for most builds unless you attacked a lot. Something like +25 at medium investment, and being divided to 2.5 for 20 blasts.
Actually, mathematically it’s best to go for the highest damage, and 20x blast for example is always going to be the best option if you can hit it all (vs single blasts). So for non-arbitrary to have a niche it’d have to be on first hit only for that skill.
What if instead of gradually increasing the stats gained from armor, armors that are stronger recieve special abilities? Like how the sunken sword and triasta of bronze have their exclusive skills, if there were an equivalent of that for armors the problem would no longer be stat bloat but whether or not these “abilities” are balanced or not.
For example, wearing full Sunken Iron Armor makes it so that 80% of your attacks have a 50% increase in attack size and apply the wet status effect, with a 5~ second cooldown between each increase? Each Sunken Iron Piece would contribute to the percentage, so wearing only one piece of the set would only give you that much %: 1 sunken iron piece = 26.6% of attacks have a 16.6% increase in attack size while applying Wet.
Then if you were to wear multiple rare armors you have to choose what “ability” you’d like to activate, that way you can’t stack multiple powerful abilities upon each other. In return, these armors could have heavily decreased base stats.