Finding the Sweet Spot: Item Stats in ratio to Character Stats

[Magnificent Brain Candy]

Hello, all--


As I've been messing with my test games, I've been trying to see where the ideal balance lies between intrinsic stats (those are permanently attached to characters)  and equipment stats.


I've been playing with a loose 50/50 balance for the most part (at any given level, a character wearing the platonic ideal of level-appropriate gear will get half their stats from each side), but wondering what a tilt toward more powerful equipment (say, 60/40 or even 70/30) would feel like to the player... I don't want the leveling and equipping process to be a completely predictable, anodyne curve that never has any exciting spikes, and I don't want new pieces of gear to always be uninteresting increments above what came before. 


But, at the same time, I don't want players to feel entirely at the mercy of their gear, and I don't want the gaining of character levels to be regarded as totally uninteresting, statwise. 


Does anyone have any personal theories, any formulas, any rules of thumb on this subject?


Thanks!

 

[Celianna]

Moving this to general discussion, fits better there

 

[Oddball]

i have somewhere in the upper single digits to uper teens for armor stats. the better peices decreasing agi (in an atb system) or offensive stats


i also have this as my combat formula for offensive skills


((a.atk*2 - a.tp*4))*14/((b.def*2))


what does this do? it makes equipment more important in damage sense i have static stats throughout the game. it also lets stat drops/buffs on opponents be more significant


though in my game equipment is more customizing charecter builds than leveling up gear, making all gear usefull at most points in the game

 

[bgillisp]

I think it honestly depends on many factors. How frequent and fast are level ups in your game? If they come about every 5 minutes, you can probably make level ups a higher percentage of the stats, as the player will see improvement from that really quickly. However, if level ups are as rare as diamonds, then you will probably need to make equipment a high percentage of your stats, just so the player feels like they are improving still.

 

[Kes]

There are several threads on balancing, either here in General Discussion or in Game Mechanics Design which you may find give you a wide range of opinions.