Ability Scores Generation

[Maerimydra]

Will it be random (dice rolls) or not (point-buy)?

For the sake of balance, I hope it will use a fixed amount of points that you can spend in the ability scores of your choice, like in NWN 1 and 2. 25 points would be enough (standard-fantasy).

 

[Ferdator]

Personally I do prefer the point buy system. It is easy, fast and has the best balancing. And you might very well scale difficulty with it.

What I really dislike is a dice roll system, where you can reroll infinitely. What's the use of such a system, if it's just a matter of time, when you will have the very best stats for your characters?

So now you know my standpoint. Some of my colleagues do prefer (limited) dice rolls though.
The decision for the game is not finally made.
I'd like to hear other opinions in this concern.

 

[Grunker]

ToEE had both. I vote both!

Though I would prefer something along the lines of rolling three rows for rolls, and choosing the one you'd like, instead of having infinite re-rolls.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Point buy is boring.

I wanna roll till I drop.

Pretty please?

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

Maybe something like in Pathfinder, where you roll three or four (depending on the system) d6, and then discard the lowest number and add the remaining? Although I confess that I loved to roll and roll and roll on Wizardry 7 to get better bonus points. Fuck it. Just give us the three options (point-buy, infinite reroll, and limited roll).

 

[catfood]

Dice rolling only works in P&P and roguelikes anyway. I vote for point buy. It might be 'boring' (though I have to confess that you have to be pretty fucking autistic if you find any pleasure in seeing random numbers pop up on screen), but it's the only way to insure that the game is going to have some sense of balancing and strategy when character creation is involved.

If you want to go the rolling way, might as well go full munchkin and let us set all of our attributes at 18 at the start of the game, POR style.

 

[Mangoose]

Might I suggest remaking this topic with a poll?

 

[Crooked Bee]

Might I suggest remaking this topic with a poll?

No. Just give as all three options, like the cosmic misogynerd said.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Point-buy, please. Rolling is for munchkins and bees.

 

[Maerimydra]

Although I don't feel strongly one way or the other, a have a question for those who absolutely want ''Rolled'' Ability Scores:

Should the devs increase the difficulty of the game just to provide a challenge for those who will spend an hour Rolling the stats of each of their characters, thus making the game super-hard for those who don't, or should it be the other way around (cakewalk for those who do)?

Also, in TOEE, the two options for generating Ability Scores where very unequal. ''Rolled'' characters were almost always more powerful than ''Point-Bought'' characters even if you didn't spend a lot of time rolling. If CC offers more than one option for generating Ability Scores, I hope those options will be somewhat balanced (unlike TOEE).

 

[Delterius]

Rolling is boring in CRPGs, unless its masochist-noretry mode. So ToEE except that you can't roll on normal playthroughs.

Though I do remember being amazingly giddy after rolling the ubermenschkin in a single roll back in ToEE (2 scores of 18, the rest either 16 or 17). ONLY FOR THE GAME TO CRASH ON THE PORTRAIT SECTION.

 

[Rpguy]

From my experience roll system is more fun when you create you character but then the rest of the game feels too easy so I would rather skip that fun part to get a challenging game. - and no I have no self discipline, if you give me both I will stay hours rolling until I get perfect characters just like I did with ToEE and KOTC

 

[Vulcris]

Personally I do prefer the point buy system. It is easy, fast and has the best balancing. And you might very well scale difficulty with it.

What I really dislike is a dice roll system, where you can reroll infinitely. What's the use of such a system, if it's just a matter of time, when you will have the very best stats for your characters?

I also prefer point buy over dice rolls for the raisons you stated (well except that I don't mind passing half a hour to create some characterd )

 

[Jaesun]

Point buy would be fine for me.

 

[Zed]

IMO:
point buy for standard play.
dice roll for iron man (with no re-rolls).

 

[Vadeross]

Point buy is good for me. I am afraid that if I can roll I will roll until I make my characters overpowered and won't enjoy the game as much. Perhaps you could give players the option to roll their own characters after finishing the game once. Sometimes it is fun to solo a game with an uber character or smaller high powered party on a successive playthrough. This would allow everyone who plays the game to have a relatively equivalent gameplay experience that minimizes the variation of perceptions between "this game is too easy!" and "this game is too hard!"

 

[Excidium]

Point-buy kinda sucks for pnp because of the min-maxing aspect of it but for CRPGs it's great as it generates all characters within a specific power level that the game can be balanced for. So I say go for point-buy or at least offer the option and balance for it.

Maybe something like in Pathfinder, where you roll three or four (depending on the system) d6, and then discard the lowest number and add the remaining?

That generation method exists since first edition of AD&D...

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

I suppose, but I've never played a PnP game before. My first serious attempt to play one was with Pathfinder.

 

[Delterius]

Point-buy kinda sucks for pnp because of the min-maxing aspect of it but for CRPGs it's great as it generates all characters within a specific power level that the game can be balanced for. So I say go for point-buy or at least offer the option and balance for it.

Ironic isn't it? In CRPGs its the munchkins who roll their stats.

 

[zornskin]

Point buy, 4d6 drop the lowest and 'set your own stats'(within racial limits).

Everyone can have what they want, and folks who want the cheese their games over can feel free to do so.

Since Steam achievements are implemented, it's easy to show who the munchkins are:
Point Buy Purist - Created a party with point buy system - Point Buy Purist MKII is awarded to those who"complete" the game that way
3d6let - created a party this way and 3d6let MKII completes the game in this fashion
Munchkin Assassin - set their own points at will - no achievement for game completion for these parties. Or something point and chuckle-y "Fellowship of the Smurf" or something else of friendly commensurate disdain.

Steam status can show the completion achievement the user is currently progressing towards.

 

[Delterius]

I like where you're going, but 'set your own stats' is pointless. It may sound silly, and it is, but rolling your stats sky high doesn't feel like straight cheating because you 'earned them' after a million hours of rolling.

 

[Zed]

I like where you're going, but 'set your own stats' is pointless. It may sound silly, and it is, but rolling your stats sky high doesn't feel like straight cheating because you 'earned them' after a million hours of rolling.

Indeed. Spent like an hour rolling very high stats for a character in BG. Doesn't feel like cheating because I invested time in it.
Then again, I enjoy grinding in MMORPGs.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Rolling rolling rolling yeah

If not rolling attributes as such, please introduce the Wizardry system where you roll for the number of bonus points to distribute. It's pretty cool That way you get to combine point buy with rolling and you can still balance the game around the average number of bonus points you get; the best of both worlds.

 

[zornskin]

Meh. I just want them to make a lot of money. It seems to me, if they let newbs set their own stats, those people who are short-bus strategists won't lose interest in a game that just crushes them from combat numero eine and just get's worse from there.

This satisfies the criteria of making the game more approachable to folks, but maintaining the quality and difficulty level for those of us who would prefer a challenge. I know it's super cool to be elitist and be "one of the few", but maintaining an artificial level of difficulty for everyone only scares folks away from trying a game that we would prefer developers make more of.

If people don't play this game, sure we can all sit back and say- "Yeah, I guess they just weren't hardcore enough.". While we all wait another 10 years for another game that we genuinely want, and coreplay can go back to making cheesy workout software for the Wii U. I'm sure everyone would be super-psyched with that result.

Keep difficulty high, but allow for entry level players to enjoy the games we've loved for years. It seems like the one of simplest ways to keep everyone happy. Lowering the bar for entry doesn't hurt the hardcore at all, esp given that it's a single player game. It just saves them the trouble of downloading a trainer to set all 18's anyway.

 

[Delterius]

Actually, I think you opened a interesting debate. About a easier way of manipulating the difficulty level that makes sense within the game system, that is, as opposed to manually crafting scaling encounters (hard) and changing enemy statistics (bizarre) - just enable more powerful parties. I'd propose it a little bit different though.

Instead of just letting the player set the stats however he wants, just allow higher amounts of points. Though this isn't absolutely newbie friendly, it does open the way for people to learn their priorities in char-building. Another thing I was thinking about was if we could tie these point-buy tiers to difficulty levels, named for how powerful the Avatar-party becomes:

Legend (easy): 40*

Hero (medium): 32*

Adventurer (hard): 28*

The-Peasants-Try-To-Do-Something-For-Once**(Inferno-Ironman): 22*

*The numbers are random, better ask someone who knows better to tweak them
**Work in progress