A Different Kind of Stat System

So tonight on my way home from school I put a lot of thought into something that would improve the site's personality, specifically because of the mass negativity coming from the whole forced PvP idea. I eventually came to the realization that if the stat system that Zeno has sneak peeked in the announcement section ever came to be, that it would greatly discourage PvP and bring more negativity to the site and so i began a journey to mount think a lot to think up a better stat system for you guys to look at.

Before I continue let me explain how the current idea for a stat system will make the site worse in terms of PvP. First there is already the idea of level vs level obviously a D rank is weaker than a C rank and a C rank is weaker than a B rank and so on so forth, and so it becomes a fight over who out wits the opponent, especially when both players are the same rank. This is how people of lower rank can still fight and have a chance at beating a higher ranked opponent, assuming that the level gap is reasonable, cause lets face it a D rank would be vaporized if they tried to fight an H rank.

However what the stat system will do is force numbers onto people at which point you get into the territory of whoever has the higher stats, and gives the higher ranking members a point that lets them argue why they are losing to a lower ranked player, then everyone brings in mods and admins they end up arguing and we get nothing more than angry people scream at each other over numbers. People should understand that they are less likely to win because they are a lower rank than someone else, we don't need a numbers system to make it impossible to win just cause some jerk decides that numbers are absolute and if his numbers are higher he wins.

TIME FOR MY SOLUTION!

Instead of having a stat system that grows with level and gives higher ranking players another thing to use to leverage their victory with and dooms lower ranked players for good and overall discourages PvP in the end, how about a stat system that doesn't change when you rank up and is more there to represent what your character is strong at and weak at rather than give you numbers that undermines the lower ranks. Your stats still increase in a hidden fashion but stats aren't what count here it's more about what your character can do than what your character is to solve problems such as fighting a higher ranked opponent. A tactician with high intelligence will probably beat a brute with 0 brains and 1000 brawn, why do you think Vulcan's have it so rough. Though that's just an example it doesn't mean the tactician wins every time cause clearly they would have sacrificed strength for knowledge and thus are more like fragile glass cannons.

So here's my idea for a stat system, you are given a set number of points say 15, the maximum a stat can have is 6 the minimum is 1. You have 4 stats that you can put these points in, strength(Obviously, this is like the basic building block for most dragon slayers), speed(Something for those assassins to use to get around the map), intellect(every pure magic characters best friend), and Endurance(what else would big brawny tanks need?).

an example. This is Jiggle Joo he is a tank with average intellect and strength, his stats are

Strength: 4
Speed: 1
intellect: 4
Endurance: 6

Clearly Jiggle Joo is very slow but he can sure take a beating.

You may only have one stat that has a level of 6, clearly I could have taken the two points from Strength and put them into Intellect instead but because Jiggle Joo already has a 6 he can't have another 6. 6 is considered to be a mastered stat, and you may only have one, or if you would rather you can go full balanced and have none if you would like.

This is something you would fill out when creating your character or magic and represents what your characters strengths and weaknesses are rather than gives you numbers to be discouraged and discourage with. Anyone can still beat your character if they do it right and doesn't undermine those who aren't higher ranks.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

For the sake of humor and silliness you may also have a 5th joke stat, this is a stat that doesn't represent any strengths or weaknesses and is purely just their for personality sake, this stat does not count towards consuming points and can have any number of points between 0-6.

Example, Jiggle Joo is bald thus he has a stat called hair... this stat has a number of 0.
Example2, Jiggle Joo is bald thus he has a stat called smooth... this stat has a number of 6.

You still have 15 points to spend on your other 4 stats and you get a free stat that's funny.

That is all, I hope I explained it in a way that makes sense though I have a feeling that there will still be arguments over this.

I can say why this wont work Irina. The problem is not simply answered by plugging in a number and then saying its the fix all. What about spells that give muscle buffs? Speed boosts? The moment you add those, your stat system get cleanly thrown out the window. Also intelligence is RP'ed, but never does it actually directly affect combat.

Also what does the numbers represent? What does 1 to speed equal to Miles per Hour? What does 3 to strength equal to the amount of weight he can bench press? This is not answering that question and thus beats the entire purpose. This will not help solve the PvP matters sadly. Also remember according to rules a mage of higher rank wins if 2 people are tied in strength.

Although I do like the joke 5th stat. That one made me crack a laugh.

honestly there are too many ranks to effectively do a stat system. Stats would have to improve as rank gets higher and higher naturally and you start to see a very clear distinction between ranks.

A d-rank should have the capacity to defeat a c-rank, even though he's disadvantaged he's not so much weaker that its impossible. Any stat system we conjure up (and the more pvp we get the more we'll need one eventually unless staff wants to judge every single fight) will have to take into account these distinctions between rank and minimize them. If we wanted to effectively use stats we'd have to centralize the way we rp combat and magic around those stats, rather than the rank of a current mage.

Thus it would make ranking more like this: Mage, S-rank Mage, super ultimate badass of greatness. I am aware we aren't a canon site but even in the canon there's very little distinction between the skill of mages aside from what we can visualize and make sense of. Such as, "Grey is clearly stronger than Macao" and we as a site think, "well since there's an S-rank there must be other ranks right?" Except that we've never seen any other ranks and most of it is just relative. Even during the s-rank exam arc, every single mage in the guild was trying to get a shot in the exam, even those that we clearly saw as weaker than our major characters.

This however isn't going to happen because if it did all the C-ranks, B-ranks, and A-ranks would be needlessly alienated because they may feel they lost power when they decide how much each currently ranked member gets above what we decide new members are going to start out with.

Anyway back to a possible solution. The 'best' possible solution still has the rank distinction problem but it can get better. Honestly, spells already have distinctions between what's weaker and what's stronger so any stat system we implement should ignore magic entirely and be based on what a mage can physically do on his own.

First we need some stats to choose from. We have the obvious strength, speed, and endurance but lets get a little more detailed. We could have a stat that improves how much mana you have overall but that would get excessively abused so lets avoid that. In order to save time I'll use these generic five stats:

-Strength: How hard somebody can throw a punch or a kick
-Endurance: How well somebody can take a punch or a kick
-Speed: Running speed of a character.
-Agility: Reaction speed of a character.
-Stealth: How noticeable a character is and how likely a person is to notice another person.


The important thing about stats is not to make them incredibly distinctive of what a person can do. Don't say something like "A person with a strength stat of 12 can lift 500 lbs or that he can lift 200 lbs (these numbers have nothing to do with a stat). Instead, pick a number that you want to be what an average person could do in this system.

For this example of a system lets make the average person be 7. Now because we're mean let's let every d-rank distribute 30 stat points (or an average of six per stat).

Now we need a minimum and a maximum. Set a clear minimum and maximum for each rank. Let's make the minimum be 3 and the maximum be 10 for a d-rank. Actually, now that you've set a distinct maximum for d-ranks you can now properly limit with a total maximum at the end and raising the minimum at each rank(or at particular ranks). This will be explained through the character.

Let's continue this example using my character Hiro Villenn.

If I were to distribute his stats at d-rank I'd do it as follows:

strength: 8
Endurance: 7
Speed: 6
Agility: 6
Stealth: 3

Since my character is a front line fighter he has no need to go unnoticed so I can minimize his stealth stat but he'll be doing a lot of close combat so I'll want to boost him up physically in strength and endurance while maintaining some average speed or agility.

Now what happens when he ranks up? Well he should get more stats obviously. Lets say at every rank up he gets five stats.

Now lets make sure we have minimums properly set up throughout at these numbers:

D-rank: minimum of three and a maximum of 10
C-rank: Minimum of four
B-rank: Minimum of four
A-rank: minimum of five
S-rank: minimum of five
SS-rank: Minimum of five
H-rank: Minimum of six

Now in order to seriously protect against some uber monster let's say no stat can exceed 25 and only one stat can be at 25 (By the way at this system having a single stat at 25 at any rank would seriously hinder other stats against a more balanced player). This 25 maximum excludes buffs and debuffs.

Now let's rank Hiro up at each rank to C then to b. (to save space stats will be shown D/C/B

Strength: 8/10/12
Endurance: 7/8/10
Speed: 6/6/6
Agility: 6/7/8
Stealth: 3/4/4

Naturally the stats go up but they aren't sky rocketing, even at the best stat the maximum is 12.

The only thing left for me to do is tier it. Let's say anything that's 2 points lower than mine is negligible. Meaning if I were fighting with swords against another person and he had a strength of 10 compared to my strength of 12. They would cancel out. Or if he had a strength of 14 the same would happen.

Or the even more important strength versus endurance. Let's use the same 2 points but say that if they're equal we're doing basic damage. Basically I'm not cutting you in half like your a stick of butter but your not deflecting my sword like its nothing. So baring my slicing your throat or stabbing you in the heart, your not dead. In pain, but not fatally wounded.

Now even this stat system isn't finished. It doesn't factor in everything. How much does endurance effect magic spells. How much agility is required to react in time to dodge a c-rank or a b-rank spell? Although it answers some problems, it doesn't answer all of them (at least not yet this can be mostly done).

anyway I'm gonna stop talking and leave this here for staff to fiddle with or blatantly and rudely ignore all my hard work. I'm really just trying to point out that with all the ranking rules and stuff we use, we can't really solve every single issue. We can only find the system that solves most of the issues or the biggest issues without creating a plethora of new issues. Which is why it will take so long to make a stat system in the first place.