Have lurked for awhile now, but, since my current project has gotten alot of design work in progress, I thought I would make a post regarding the individual sub-systems I plan on implementing.

Keep in mind, the end goal is an MMMORPG, first person, open world, and 3D, although currently I am coding it as an MOG, 2D, top-down, open world. Some aspects of gameplay won't be implemented until I switch to 3D (in fact I plan on making full use of the added dimension, as that is part of the games core design)

I have yet to build begining/end storylines, and it being an open world online game, 'End Game' is going to be a relative, and possibly unused term.

Each character, along with all NPC's will have the same stats and capabilities, there will be dumb animals, smart creatures, and absolutely cunning monstrosities. I am aiming for a higher than average amount of realism.

The basic stats are as follows:

-Core Body
// Used together with Core Mind attributes for most physical actions, some use Core Body attributes alone. //
--Upper Body Strength
--Upper Body Speed
--Lower Body Strength
--Lower Body Speed

-Core Mind
// Used with Core Body attributes for most physical actions, used alone for some magick actions, although most magick, especially higher grade, also uses Core Soul attributes.
--Mind Strength
--Mental Clarity
--Mental Capacity
--Mental Focus

-Core Soul
// Mainly used with Mind Core attributes for high grade magick, also used alone for religion
--Soul Strength
--Soul Depth
--Soul Clarity
--Soul Purity
--Soul Alignment

Every craft skill has an associated level, mining, blacksmithing, weapon smithing, carpentry, bowery, ship-building, etc. Each action using skills can raise your stats, and besides spells/effects that alter your stats, raising your skills is the only way to raise your stats, each skill affects different stats, possibly even different number of stats, and affect your stats in different amounts, some may even lower some stats, down to a minimum, as no stay or skill can go below 1, the currently designed cap is 100, although I plan on getting it to 200 by the time development is done, and if not, it will be a planned update/add-on.

I want the early game to be a bit quicker, a bit more fast paced (although based on the person's RL capabilities, experience, etc.) While the player goes through the game, learning what they can, via an informal tutorial. Mid game is what when the game gets a bit harder, they should have the basic needs, now they got to make whatever they want of their character a reality. Be it a villages blacksmith, a larger cities Night Watch, a small hamlet's sole hunter, etc, my goal is to stress the freedom for a person to play however they wish, within the obvious, and sometimes not so obvious guidelines.

The last 20-25% of the game is meant to be hard, skill wise and grind wise, and by hard I mean near RomHack hard :)

With just those variables, it is going to take alot to balance, as I intend for players to be able to loot the armor, weapons, etc of opponents (with PvP being limited in that regard, among other ways) because of that, I intend to have have a smallish amount of different classes and grades for weapons and armor, and combat damaging equipment (although I am aiming for exponential damage, the more damaged it is, the easier it gets more damaged, but a moderate challenge to damage equipment, with abilities and spells)

One of my (hopefully) original ideas is to have your stats (and to some degree, skills) be less like flat numbers and more of like a gauge, with your skill being the max, e.g. same games have stamina that depletes when walking, or energy that depletes when mining or cutting wood. Regeneration will not be a flat rate, although I am open to ideas and suggestions and what progression type would be applicable given the game type and style.

Most skills can be performed in two ways: active and passive, passive will be timer-based, aiming towards lower timers (minimum of 4seconds, which abilities and passive spells than can lower it to 2, with the higher end reaching about 3-4 minutes, maybe 5, as that is 300 seconds and would work better for math stuff.) Active would be an option, which in most cases gives better results, and always gives better experience. Active would consist of minivans-like challenges, and I have a few skills Actives picked out already, such as a vertical digger for mining, sidecrolling tree hop/chop for woodcutting, crafting would be an assembly-line type of minivans, et al.

Magick will be slightly rare, as you have to unlock the ability to use it via stat levels (same with block, parry, evade, and once it gets to 3D, jumping [which you will be able to wall jump, repetively, but if your stats drain to zero, you will most likely fall, and there will be damage for falling certain distances.])

I am looking for any feedback, suggestions and/criticism, and mainly look forward to refining my ideas to a more workable form design wise. Thanks in advance!

Hey and welcome!

Perhaps someone else will be able to offer you some feedback on the abstract you've offered up. However, I feel it'd be more productive to make threads for advice/ideas/feedback as and when you need it when you're working on the specifics of a single mechanic, i.e. how the carpentry mechanic would work. Or maybe to discuss the dynamics that occur when two mechanics interact together etc...

It's nice having a general overview of your game and it looks nice, quite Bethesda-esque. I just feel you'd get a lot more out of this forum by approaching it that way instead .

Thank you for reply, and I am sure it would be much more productive to post regarding individual sub systems, I'm mainly try to find some general curves that would fit, already have some basic formulas, and this post is mainly about the combat systems, as the amount of starting variables is making it a bit difficulty to prototype formulas, I switched methods to first get a rough curve, find a similiar formula, then fine tune, instead of how I was at first, creating formulas that make each skill have the amount of effect to the end result that I want.

The main trouble is finding exponents small enough to not cause too much a difference, all begining stats are 1-100, and I want the accuracy results to be 1-5, damage results 1-100, with the averages being slightly less than half.

And the fact you mentioned Bethesda is kinda exciting. I am a big fan of fallout 3 and fallout New Vegas, and some aspects I did borrow from those games, but I have also seen the aspects in other games too, and hope to put them all together in a new, fun way. I already have a way to convert to possibility of the max being 200 instead of 100, so all starting values will be 1-100.

Accuracy determines hit rate, attack style mainly determines strength versus armor type, and where they hit the opponent, as, like fallout 3/NV, and other games, you damage body parts, hitting legs affect speed, hit hands or arms affect weapon swing speed and damage, etc.alot of work to get it all working smoothly, then a heck load more for balancing, but worth the effort. I have been working with these ideas for about 7-8, and have done some coding, although my laptop broke, and wasn't able to save anything on the hard drive, and don't currently have the resources to code enmass again, yet.

I also plan for npc cities/factions/guilds/etc, that interact, send caravans that can be raided to other settlements, have wars, treaties, etc, so AI is gonna be a doozy lol, but I'm not even gonna touch that until I can get the base stats to a workable state.

I know given my post it does sound more abstract then I intended, and at this point, that all it pretty much is, but I do intend to carry it out to completion, no matter how long that may take.

I am mainly asking how others go about using multiple starting variables, and how to make sure the end results are within my range, without breaking scale and progression. Would I be better off converting the starting variables to the end range from the beginning, or at the end based on a percent of the max result?

No worries! Glad to see you're flowing with ideas.

I like the gauge idea you have for stats. This is just off the top of my head: have that gauge represent the 'health' for the individual body parts. The character's stats are directly influenced from their respective body parts. If a body parts health falls below a certain percentage it starts to modify your character's stats in a negative way.

From there you probably don't have to make stats as important as health. Perhaps at full health and your player's eyes are not damaged and they have +2 in accuracy, they'll be better shots. If they're damaged to 50% they'll take a drop to their accuracy rating but the +2 they have makes that drop less etc.

Is this sort of getting to the vein of your question? It sounds like you're trying to find trade-offs to balance power/progression and making the game a challenge. So I say make their physical/mental health the biggest thing they have to worry about if they want to be awesome. Don't jump off a cliff and break your leg if you want to run faster!

You misunderstand the depth at which I am implementing the gauges, health is already a gauge in most games, and each body part will have seperate health gauges, although the health of let's say the leg, will affect the foot and torso to some degree.

But, let's say your running, your leg speed and leg strength are also gauges, and as you run they will go down, with the respect levels being the max of the gauge. Basically adding in a stamina type system, but more specific to the body parts being used.a running archer would be using arm strength and speed for drawing the bow and aiming/reloading, hand speed for aiming/reloading, leg strength and speed for running, he may not be a good runner, so he may need to slow down or stop running, but his legs being tired won't affect his archery skills, which I think is an original concept.

I am also considering an injury system that may completely eliminate the need for 'health' but it may be too complex from a coding perspective, time will tell in that regard, but the short version is your health would define blood levels, cuts would cause bleeding and heal over time, or get infected and get worse, breaking a bone, if bad, May even cause permanent damage, possibly because bones not healing right, etc.

I have always loved games like fallout 3, Wurm Online, fable 2, etc, that allows for freedom, but gives the player a challenge that isn't just grinding, it takes skill. And so I am trying to find ways that emphasize skill over grinding, without getting rid of the option to grind. Hence the active vs passive skill grinding.

I don't want players to have to develop carpal tunnel just to get a decent level in a skill, I want it to be challenging, just not dull or boring, and that is going to be tough lol.

I am also considering an injury system that may completely eliminate the need for 'health' but it may be too complex from a coding perspective, time will tell in that regard, but the short version is your health would define blood levels, cuts would cause bleeding and heal over time, or get infected and get worse, breaking a bone, if bad, May even cause permanent damage, possibly because bones not healing right, etc.

Seems like feature creep that adds little to the core game-play, and may be hard to explain to the player.

A better option might be to introduce some magick-with-drawbacks; "for advanced players only"

Each action using skills can raise your stats, and besides spells/effects that alter your stats, raising your skills is the only way to raise your stats

The concept is nice, but you're creating the situation where a player has to craft/mine to be able to combat, while many players prefer one over the other.

I 'd either introduce skills that are usable during combat or making combat-actions increase stats.

What do the (individual) mind and soul stats do ?

I am also considering an injury system that may completely eliminate the need for 'health' but it may be too complex from a coding perspective, time will tell in that regard, but the short version is your health would define blood levels, cuts would cause bleeding and heal over time, or get infected and get worse, breaking a bone, if bad, May even cause permanent damage, possibly because bones not healing right, etc.

Seems like feature creep that adds little to the core game-play, and may be hard to explain to the player.
A better option might be to introduce some magick-with-drawbacks; "for advanced players only"

Each action using skills can raise your stats, and besides spells/effects that alter your stats, raising your skills is the only way to raise your stats

The concept is nice, but you're creating the situation where a player has to craft/mine to be able to combat, while many players prefer one over the other.
I 'd either introduce skills that are usable during combat or making combat-actions increase stats.

What do the (individual) mind and soul stats do ?

You misunderstand.

A woodcutter who built up muscle from chopping logs will have more muscle to swing a sword, but other than that skills don't affect each other. And the injury system has nothing to do with the magick system. And yes, any feature I haven't fully thought out will probably seem like feature creep. Magick is just going to require an above average mind, one capable of utilzing the Arcane Arts.

The individual mind stats affect things such as aiming, weapon speed, and to a small degree skill gain, as someone who is smarter learns faster.

The soul stats affect magick and religion.

It sounds like we may have to see a well structured design document in plain English with the individual mechanics clearly defined in order to grasp the full scope of your project + the design issues you're having with it. I'm sort of getting it but there's a bit of guesswork needed. It's difficult to pick out what you're asking for.

Hope this helps.

My fiance just had a hysterectomy, got bk from surgery today, so hence the bit of lack of.. structure to my posts, I will start putting in more structure to my posts, just might be a little bit lol. Only have a smart phone to work on dev/design, lol.