Here’s my two cents on what can be done to improve the attributes’ mechanics.
Instead of strength, dexterity, intelligence, and faith, introduce attributes for weapon, armor, and rune effectiveness.
Here’s what the attributes list could look like:
- HEALTH - increases the amount of hit points
- STAMINA - increases the amount of stamina points for basic attacks, dodging, blocking, and parrying
- ARMOR EFFECTIVENESS - increases defense (armor, poise, and elemental build-up resistance) and the primary factor on when an armor can be used
- WEAPON EFFECTIVENESS - increases weapon damage and the primary factor on when a weapon can be used
- RUNE EFFECTIVENESS - increases rune damage, speed of elemental build ups, and effectiveness of support spells (heal, damage surge, etc.)
- FOCUS - increases the amount of focus points
- EQUIP LOAD - carrying capacity and determines dodge type
Through this I believe we can have more build types and combat styles as it gives the players more freedom in how they want to balance their offensive and defensive capabilities. Also, this allows the players to experience all weapons as they are no longer stat locked to a particular weapon class that only scales with one or two attributes.