From many ARPGs I have played so far I have noticed that stats are only caps for weapons/skills and are used to increase other numbers only (Health/Stamina/Focus points) without a physical change in the character or the way it interacts in the world. An example of this is Elden Ring, in which you can have barely enough STR to hold a big sword but it doesn’t affect the character movement, the character runs/move/jumps like it is naked and that just looks stupid.
As Moon Studios is implementing an evolving world, it would be nice if the character can evolve through the adventure and the actual stats can reflect physically in the character or the way it can interact in the world. For example:
Strength: Besides being able to wield bigger weapons/armor, it will cause your character to gain muscles and become more bulky with the tradeoff of getting slower movement (slow in general, not only attack animations) but at higher points won’t get staggered. Strength oriented builds with slow movement will need to take off their equipment to jump certain obstacles.
Dexterity: Not only a cap to use certain weapons but also to enable new movesets (Weapons can have a moveset tree??) and use the environment (traps) to fight enemies.
Intelligence: Besides being a requirement for weapons (or skills??), can unlock new dialogues and quests and even to find/unlock secret doors/paths in dungeons. Would you entrust an important quest to a stupid person? I personally wouldn’t.
Faith: Not only used as a cap for weapons, but can also be a requirement for certain dungeons in which plague infected enemies will overwhelm you character affecting your movement by fear.
Focus: Besides increasing the focus bar for skills, it may improve/enable parry for certain attacks that can’t be parried from some enemies.
Given the world implementation, it would be cool to see your character growing through the adventure in an organic way, not just by an exp bar and stat points. For example:
Some weapons can fortify other stats by having a “weapon mastery bonus” that grants certain stats points once you reach certain expertise or time using it, only while that weapon is equipped . This will help with build flexibility. E.g. A dexterity based bow can grant +5 strength mastery skill bonus to be able to pair it with strength based weapons (swords, axes, etc).
Character builds with low intelligence, can buy bookshelves or get special books from quests or treasures that will give a temporal Int points boost when the character sleeps in the house with that specific bookshelf/book so they can take specific quests with high intelligence requirement.
Visiting the church will grant you temporal Faith points so you can be able to enter dungeons and fight enemies. Or you can buy a small altar for your house to get the faith boost after sleeping there.
Following the same line, the character should have scars based on how many times you died to reflect how punishing was your adventure.
I hope this feedback is well received and I’m waiting the next update release.
Well the STR one would require new models and animations just for that.
The INT one is not gonna happen, the game is an ARPG, there are no dialogues to choose responses like BG3.
The focus one i dont get it, since i havent found an attack that cannot be parried, hell i parried the wolf barf attack one time, lucky one since i didnt even know it was possible.
I dont get the FTH one either, so those dungeons would be impossible to enter unless you have high enough FTH?
What if those altars are not enough? Most builds are based on one damage stat, stamina, health and carrry weight maybe, thats it. Same deal for the INT quests.
That would not be good, it would force other builds to respec just to get inside, everybody would have a FTH weapon in the player house somewhere just for that, and since respec use embers, and embers in the next update will be even more valuable, thats not good.
Man my toon body would be covered in scars if that was the case hehehe.
I’m not talking about dialogue selection like BG3. I’m leaning more on that as INT level just as requirement to get new quests from NPCs or new lines from them with more lore, instead of having them repeating the same thing all the time. No dialogue selection needed.
That’s the problem, low level characters should not be able to parry all attacks, specially the ones from higher level enemies. The parry capability should be tied to focus level or maybe a new attribute so it can’t be exploited through the entire game with all enemies.
Not impossible to enter but more difficult, or if FTH is actually a requirement maybe someone from your party with a different build may help to take it and could only apply to optional dungeons.
In my post I mentioned temporal attribute boost, to basically not force the player to respec their base/core stats so often. Ideally, those will be more like a soft attribute system that will be granted by weapon mastery skills or furniture in your house like the altars or bookshelves from the examples.
That’s the idea
All of the post suggestions are to make your character build to have an impact in how the game world/NPCs interacts with you through the playthrough, not just focused on DMG outputs or DMG scaling. If you play the game with different builds you could experience and see different things through the game and their NPCs.
