Character Stats And The Developers Who Just Don't Get Them

A word of warning, this is more a (very longwinded) rant than an informed study or an unbiased blog.  But I think I've got a point worth making, because what I'm going to talk about is a mistake that developers are still making, "but in an ad hoc manner, and without the benefit of past experience."  You're probably all familiar with character statistic systems in a variety of RPGs, both of the action RPG variety and the more classic roleplaying variety.  JRPGs are mostly excused from this rant, by virtue of my not having played enough to really write about them in any detail, and their tendency from what I've seen, to have systems that are too simplistic (no offence!) to make these mistakes.

If you don't recognise what I mean by stats instantly, I'm talking about things like, "Strength," or, "Luck," and so on.  Those arcane mathematical systems that have some effect on your character's strengths and weaknesses in-game, and that, in the process of playing the game, you usually make some attempt to improve.  They vary in depth, sometimes painting your character in broad strokes with just values for your strength, toughness and intellect, and sometimes going all the way down to how far you can jump and how much you know about animal tracks.  And the thing that really amazes me is that the developers who have designed these systems, working on them for usually two to four years, so often don't seem to understand them.

Itemisation

A lot of RPGs have items, and these items - because they are magic items, and I have to say this is a very boring concept of 'magic' - improve your statistics.  Again, you should all be familiar with this: it's a very basic RPG concept.  You get items that improve your stats.  Ideally, you are looking for items that improve stats relevant to your character, so if you're a manly man who likes getting up close and in peoples' faces with your sword, you're probably looking for considerably metal armour with some high strength and toughness values, and if you're a sly, sneaky roguish character, you probably want something that helps you stay hidden and dodge more easily.

It is therefore with some great incredulity that I encounter games of this sort where the developers seem to have looked at their system, and thought to themselves, "right, Burly McFighter needs some plate armour, so I'll make some magic plate armour and it'll improve his intellect and knowledge of religious practices."  If they're not quite that stupid, they might still fall into the trap of thinking that everyone wants every stat, which they usually don't.

I'm not having you on when I say that this is still happening to this day, but first I'll start with an older game, that by virtue of being old maybe escapes criticism, because they had 8 years less experience than we have now: Diablo II.  Fans - and I realise I'm writing on a Diablo portal - may cry out that this is unfair, and that many items in the game are good.  And indeed, they are now.  Once the game had been out for a year and the players had taught the developers how to use their own system, they did design a lot of good items.  But before that, there were some terrible items, both uniques (exceptionally rare items with non-randomised stats) and sets (again, non-randomised stats where you gained more stats if you collected several parts of a set of items).

For a few examples, I direct you to the Arreat Summit page for the original sets (note that all the green bonuses were added much later, once the developers had realised how bad the stats on the items were) and a few uniques, notably wands (almost all of these wands are useless compared to the wands you can get from vendors, which improve the skills you actually use; Gravenspine, with its Dex/Str bonuses is a particular gem of an example) and daggers (items that no close combat character is likely to use, yet all of which include combat stats).  I'm being quite selective as there were a fair number of well-itemised uniques in the original, although many of them were only good enough to be used for a few levels before some item with randomly generated stats surpassed them.  But then again, the ability to modify your how brightly your character glowed (or didn't?!) was apparently an important stat for many of the earlier uniques!

While I'm on the subject of Blizzard games, I guess World of Warcraft should get a little tough love too.  Again, the itemisation is much improved two expansions on, and the developers and the players are mostly on the same page now.  Looking at 'vanilla' Warcraft though, meaning the game as it was originally released, there is a veritable wealth of examples of mixing up the stats needed by one class onto the items only usable or used by another.  I would guesstimate that more than a third of the quest rewards are either badly itemised (they'll have a useful stat and a useless stat on the same item), or just totally useless (there were quite a few cloth items, meant for ranged casting characters, with pure close combat stats on them).

Most of the earliest sets for level 60s fell into the category of, "everyone wants every stat," silliness.  Here's the Valor set, a set for close combat characters, that improves their spirit and agility, two stats that are pretty much worth diddly squat.  The Magister's set is worse still, improving the intelligence and spirit of casters.  Some of you may be thinking that intelligence, which improves the mana pool, is surely a good thing: I'll deal with you later.  It's not that it's a bad thing, it's just that it's not a very important thing.  That 4-piece bonus that improves spell power, that's an important thing.  Also, note that both of these sets - and most of the other, "Tier 0," sets - improve resistances by 8 as your bonus for collecting the entire lot.  This falls into another more easily avoidable category: putting insignificant numerical values of a stat onto an item.  If you were a Druid, Mage or Paladin at the launch of WoW, you hated Blizzard itemisation.

These are the basics here, and if you look at many of the games with such systems, you'll see these mistakes repeated over and over again.  And if you don't believe me when I say developers still haven't learnt, here is an example in Warhammer Online, released only last year!  A set - a very difficult to get set, no less - for the Bright Wizard, obviously an offensive caster, with stats like Willpower - which improves your healing done - or Weapon Skill - which improves your chance to parry and penetrate armour with melee attacks - on it.  Sadly, this is true of almost all the Renown (PvP) sets in Warhammer Online, and many players are wearing items with randomised stats that just happen to fulfil their needs better than items designed to fulfil their needs.  And these sets are supposed to be the best carrot on a stick you can possibly chase after...  so much for that!