I'm honestly very split here. At its core, I kinda like the system, but it seems to me as if you get additional base health based on how many lessons you spend in a skill, which... well, quite frankly, I don't like. I don't have the time, but how would things look if you set a HME bonus to each skill (so combat would get 2/5 health for instance), and then just added them all in the end?
Sorry if it wasn't clearer. I wasn't imagining that health/mana/ego would be based on how many lessons you spend on a skill (which we could do). The idea was that each main skillset unique to a class would have a low level skill that would you give the health/mana/ego bonus. For example, 'workout' may be the third skill in Athletics and as soon as you get it you will get a passive 5/10 health bonus (i.e., you wouldn't have to activate it or anything, it'd be a permanent bonus -- as long as you have the skill, of course).
EDIT: You made me paranoid. I had to look at the design doc again--but nowhere does it say the skill(s) would be based on lessons so not sure where that's coming from.
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EveriineWise Old Swordsbird / BrontaurIndianapolis, IN, USA
I don't begrudge needing to make money. There are lots of utility and RP artifacts I would buy if I had the money. It's the "buy these and have an automatic advantage over those who don't buy them" artifacts that bother me.
Everiine is a man, and is very manly. This MAN before you is so manly you might as well just gender bend right now, cause he's the manliest man that you ever did see. His manly shape has spurned many women and girlyer men to boughs of fainting. He stands before you in a manly manerific typical man-like outfit which is covered in his manly motto: "I am a man!"
Daraius said: You gotta risk it for the biscuit.
Pony power all the way, yo. The more Brontaurs the better.
I don't begrudge needing to make money. There are lots of utility and RP artifacts I would buy if I had the money. It's the "buy these and have an automatic advantage over those who don't buy them" artifacts that bother me.
As much as I WISH that we could stay in business with only utility and RP artifacts, that's really not reality.
I feel we have some competing interests at play here.
On the one hand, its nice to have a race thats really good at one thing, in exchange for losing out in some other area. It gives the race some hefty meaning.
On the other hand, there is a strong desire for "clear balance" which removes many of the things that you can adjust to create that feeling.
Secondly, while at first glance it seems like the stats for a race might as well be "Large number in stat A, and 0 in stats unrelated to that guild" I recognise that isn't really the case, because of the large collection of common skills. It would be important to understand what affect stats have on skills like Combat, Discernment, Environments etc. Especially with the strong desire to remove any bonus to speed, its hard to understand what they would do.
Personally, I think that if the difference in speed between a stat of 0, and a stat of 20 (is 20 the max?) is 0.4 seconds than the fact that some are faster than others won't be too big of a deal. For some, lag is a bigger impact than that.
Perhaps the stats can affect the "cost" of an action? i.e. if the skill costs mana or ego it takes less mana or ego, even if its not a mind or empathy based skill? If the only cost is balance/eq and there is no damage being dealt, perhaps then the stat can increase the speed? If there is damage being dealt, than the stat increases the damage?
Basically I'm suggesting that instead of the stat affecting speed across the board, perhaps the stat can affect speed only if that skill doesn't deal damage. If it does deal damage, than the speed is constant but the damage dealt is improved. If addition the amount of health mana or ego spent is reduced.
Another option that might be too much of a code rewrite could be the concept of a cooldown for each skill. Meaning, you have the cost of balance/eq that each skill takes, but ontop of that you can't do that action again until your cooldown expires. For the example of a warrior class, say the balance cost to swing a weapon is 2.5 seconds. If you have a high body stat, you can keep swinging the weapon because the cooldown is 1 second. But if you have a low body stat the cooldown might be 4 seconds, and so between swings you have to shieldbash, or headbut, or use a tertiary skill between swings. This is a bad idea, but I'm having a hard time coming up with something useful for stats to do, and wanted to throw out some wild ideas to get others thinking :P
Basically I'm suggesting that instead of the stat affecting speed across the board, perhaps the stat can affect speed only if that skill doesn't deal damage. If it does deal damage, than the speed is constant but the damage dealt is improved. If addition the amount of health mana or ego spent is reduced.
I think that's still bad, especially in the context of Guardian and Wiccan guilds. Their setups can be pretty tightly timed and a few tenths of a second can make or break a kill pretty easily.
Ah, gotcha. The separation of them confused me slightly. So, basically, health would max at at 12.3k assuming a level 3 life rune?
Correct, the max would be 13/13. However, my hope is that would be rare to achieve without questing, temporary bonuses, etc. (i.e., have to work to get it at the very top max).
Perhaps the stats can affect the "cost" of an action? i.e. if the skill costs mana or ego it takes less mana or ego, even if its not a mind or empathy based skill? If the only cost is balance/eq and there is no damage being dealt, perhaps then the stat can increase the speed? If there is damage being dealt, than the stat increases the damage?
This is interesting except that wouldn't really impact the physical skills where there is (rarely) any mana/ego cost.
Ok... Here is my final proposal for stats until a better idea comes along.
1st. Stats affect damage resistance to skills coming from the skillpool of that stat. If you have a high mind score, you take less damage from spells coming from the mind skillpool. If you have a low mind score, thus take more damage from low mind skillpools. I'm thinking of a max resistance of 2 or 3 coming from a stat of 20 and a vulnerability of 2 or 3 for a 0 in that stat.
2nd.
If a skill does not have an offensive capability. (doesn't do damage to health,mana or ego, or give an affliction) The higher the stat, the less time it takes to recover eq/balance. With a Max of 0.45 second bonus.
3rd. If a skill has a cost besides power or eq/balance, than the higher the stat, the less the cost.
4th. The higher the stat, the more damage it does.
Ok... Here is my final proposal for stats until a better idea comes along.
1st. Stats affect damage resistance to skills coming from that stat. If you have a high mind score, you take less damage from high mind skills. If you have a low mind score, thus take more damage from low mind skills. I'm thinking of a max resistance of 2 or 3 coming from a stat of 20 and a vulnerability of 2 or 3 for a 0 in that stat.
2nd.
If a skill does not have an offensive capability. (doesn't do damage to health,mana or ego, or give an affliction) The higher the stat, the less time it takes to recover eq/balance. With a Max of 0.45 second bonus.
3rd. If a skill has a cost besides power or eq/balance, than the higher the stat, the less the cost.
4th. The higher the stat, the more damage it does.
This is all interesting though may be a bit of a burden on coders (which may be worth it). The only thing for (1) is that I think it should be resistance from a skill coming from that skillpool (i.e., high mind score would resist spells coming from the mind pool). I need to think of this but I generally like all 4 points.
Make race and root stats independant of each other. That way we'd have all races (inkl flavours) but could cut down massively on base root stats.
Right now there is a scaringly long list of root stats. If I also consider that those root stats get changed by archtype + skills, it seems like a lot of work to balance. Cutting down on root stats if they are not necessarily determined by race wouldn't lose much as archtype + skills then add differences again anyhow.
Plus: You could play a race in more constellations than just the 'expected' ones. (Yes a pet pieve of mine, but I do think in this case the above could be useful.)
When Lusternia came out I think most the players from the other IREs assumed Lusternia also would have them. They didn't seem unbalancing in Achaea then, not sure what the feeling there is now?
Edit: Mainly I wanted to ask that these sorts of proposals include a couple of character types for comparison. Right now, they're mostly a list of numbers without obvious context. A couple of examples from warrior, mage/druid, guardian, and bard would make it clearer I think.
We could possibly just do away with stats altogether and just have each race have a couple of advantages/disadvantages.
By the way, I think this can be a very good idea if the advantages and disadvantages are well thought out. Unfortunately, it seems that the conversation has moved away from this since that post, but I just want to highlight it just to say that I would support it if there is a serious consideration of it.
Ok... Here is my final proposal for stats until a better idea comes along.
1st. Stats affect damage resistance to skills coming from the skillpool of that stat. If you have a high mind score, you take less damage from spells coming from the mind skillpool. If you have a low mind score, thus take more damage from low mind skillpools. I'm thinking of a max resistance of 2 or 3 coming from a stat of 20 and a vulnerability of 2 or 3 for a 0 in that stat.
2nd.
If a skill does not have an offensive capability. (doesn't do damage to health,mana or ego, or give an affliction) The higher the stat, the less time it takes to recover eq/balance. With a Max of 0.45 second bonus.
3rd. If a skill has a cost besides power or eq/balance, than the higher the stat, the less the cost.
4th. The higher the stat, the more damage it does.
I think all of these are great ideas, and for #2, I think the best way to implement it would be to use the already-existing "offensive action" check. If an ability will be an offensive action (requires non grace, removes masochism etc) then it won't be affected by the speed increase. Saves the trouble of making a new criteria of exception. That should balance most of the stuff, and leave very few exceptions. After all, if we only narrow it to damage and afflictions, not only do the coders have to specifically filter those out, it might also miss things that are combat related but which don't cause damage/afflictions. Since we already have an existing filter that's reasonable, might as well use it too!
I do have one query to help develop these four suggestions: will the damage/resist increase/decrease be integrated into the current buffs/resists system? Or will it be a separate layer? For balancing wise, I think it'd be better to integrate it in, but given that the buffs/resists are damage-typing and this is skillpool based, I'm not sure how complicated it will be for the coders. What do you think?
Other alternatives of effects I can think of for skill-pool based stats:
Regen. At 15 points and above in a stat, you get 1 level of regen in the new system of regen buffs. At 14 or below, no bonus. - Body = Health - Mind = Mana - Empathy = Ego - Artistry = ??? Think of something. - Spirit = Insanity (equivalent to half that of a circlet, or something like that)
Esteem bonus. At 15 points and above in a stat, you get a slight esteem bonus (something reasonable) to a single type of influence, at 14 or below, no bonus: - Body = Weakening - Mind = Paranoia - Empathy = Empowering - Artistry = Seduction - Spirit = Charity
Learning speeds. At 15 points and above in a stat, halves the time between the display of the learning messages when learning a skill associated with the skillpool.
Tradeskill bonuses? Extra 10 IG months of decay time, or faster balance recovery from picking herbs? Most tradeskills are only affected by one or two pools, though, so the rest of the pools will have no effect. Or we could split the tradeskills up evenly through each of the five stats.
Just some ideas off the top of my head. I'm sure others can think of more creative ones than I can.
Make race and root stats independant of each other. That way we'd have all races (inkl flavours) but could cut down massively on base root stats.
Right now there is a scaringly long list of root stats. If I also consider that those root stats get changed by archtype + skills, it seems like a lot of work to balance. Cutting down on root stats if they are not necessarily determined by race wouldn't lose much as archtype + skills then add differences again anyhow.
Plus: You could play a race in more constellations than just the 'expected' ones. (Yes a pet pieve of mine, but I do think in this case the above could be useful.)
This is a great idea. Statpacks! Of course, by now I don't have much hope of statpacks being implemented here, but it wouldn't be me not to at least echo my support.
I don't know how to do the inner quotes thing... so I'll just respond by points.
1. I'm just going to go on on the record, that I don't like removing stats based on race, unless there is some other mechanism that will encourage each city/commune to be mostly composed of one race rather than another. Elves outside of Serenwilde should be rare no matter how popular they are in other media, etc.
2. Yes, "offensive actions" used by avenger/grace etc would be perfect!
3. For the damage resistance, I was assuming they would be part of the general buffing system. If my understanding of the system is correct, and the second number indicates the max buff you are now able to get from other sources, I would suggest something along the lines of -1/3 for stats 0-4, 0/3 for 5-9, 1/3 for stats 10 - 14, 2/3 for stats 15-20. What "type" it is, I think should just depend on what is easiest to code and what makes sense. (is 20 the max, I keep assuming it is, but maybe its not?) *Alternative system... -3/3 for stats 0-2, -2/3 for states 3-5, -1/3 for stats 6-8, 0/3 for stats 9-11, 1/3 for stats 12-14, 2/3 for stats 15-17 and 3/3 for stats 18-20. I'll leave that to the envoys to suggest what would be best.
4. Perhaps for Artistry, you can add 10months of decay time for stats 15 and over and remove the tradeskills benefit? (I think harvesting herbs would already get the increase speed bonus from the stat if that suggestion goes through) Another option would be recovering from being drunk faster, or building intolerance faster? (appreciation for fine wines etc) . I definitely like the esteem idea.
5. Again with stat packs... we need some mechanism to keep the player population matching the lore populations. I think that is an important part of such a proposal that needs to be explained and understood.
Tangental side note: I'm not paying attention to each races' actual stat numbers until we are certain we know what the stats actually do. Also... If Tae'dae aren't high in body, low in mind, and high in empathy, I'll be very very sad. I'm also assuming that "Artistrty" has more to do with trade skills, than Influencing, and that the new stats won't have that big of an impact in how influencing works. (i.e. 1:1 ratio of Charisma to Empathy as far as that skillset is concerened) If thats not the case, it should be made more clear.
I don't know how to do the inner quotes thing... so I'll just respond by points.
1. I'm just going to go on on the record, that I don't like removing stats based on race, unless there is some other mechanism that will encourage each city/commune to be mostly composed of one race rather than another. Elves outside of Serenwilde should be rare no matter how popular they are in other media, etc.
I understand what you mean. However, I believe that stats tied to races severely limits what races are actually played. Org races tend to be best for a given archtype, so most people play them - which is only reasonable. But how many actually play an igasho or a krokani for example? There are usually better races for a warrior and you just can't use them for any other archtype.
Those races just tend to sit around being rarely played at all. I just think that's a damn shame. Why put so much work and lore into those races and then freely accept that almost no one will play them anyway? I'd love to see more krokani, igasho, tae'dae etc around... but I don't think that will happen if race stats stay as-is and I can't even fault people for that.
For that matter I would also support removing race stats altogether (as suggested by Estarra in another post). There can still be advantages and disadvantages that would discourage people playing certain races in certain orgs. For example an elf in a tainted land might feel a bit sick and a lucidian might have trouble finding crystal harmony in a chaotic city like Gaudiguch. etc.
Alternately, use the five stats proposed but toss out the automatic effects. No automatic speed bonus to skills with that pool, no automatic damage bonus to skills with that pool. Then, set damage 'manually', just as it is now. This will allow for a more uniform and (most importantly) intentionally planned and balanced setup. The racial stats would serve mostly to map classes to their RP-appropriate race, more so than is possible with only 2 stats serving as primary damage stats.
Basically, you would be sorting races into one of five different "prime-stat" camps: Nature-Mage/Totemist (Spirit), Bards (Artistry), Warriors/Monks (Body), Mages (Mind), and Influencers (Empathy). None of the other stats would particularly matter, just as (even with the ill-advised speed bonus) they won't matter much in the current iteration of the proposal.
Honestly, I like the idea of h/m/e being more dependent on class, but applying a direct, retroactive conversion is extraordinarily messy. Not all guilds are going to be stacked equally along skillpool lines, and balancing any one speed bonus is going to drag in every other class that shares a skill. The Hartstone share skills with 15 other guilds, across four archetypes. If the stat pools were devised and assigned around this proposal, it could work well on its own (without the speed bonuses), but it'll take a lot of jiggering and rebalancing to shoehorn it in now.
I think removing race from stats would actually improve upon orgs focusing more on their org race. I think both Dracnari and Viscanti in particular would be much more prevalent in both Gaudiguch and Magnagora were that the case
I also echo the removing speed bonuses from stats, at least for offensive actions.
My only issue against the raising/lowering resistances to skills based on skillweb (Daganev's point #3) is that it's going to amplify the crappyness of class vs class even more so. Like bards would be having a harder time against other bards in general, but reduced damage(because both have high artistry) would amplify that effect. I know it's slight, but still.
As another point, I'd really like us to not have +stat artifacts. I think one of the nice things about Lusternia is that stats have always been reasonably balanced compared to other games with + stat arties. Part of the overhaul is to make the entry into combat easier, and adding stat runes seems against that direction to me.
Stat runes are also going to be redundant with dmp-system artifacts, that already increase percentile damage.
Another potential cool idea would be to introduce a lot more statshifts for appropriate races, under a more paired down stat proposal. For instance, a sub-race of tainted Orclach that have the Nihilist prime-stat instead of high body. Or a 'shaman mugwump' that has a higher spirit/empathy than mind, that is a 'spec race' for anyone with the Nature skill. Kind of like Achaea's Archetypes, but without the illusion of choice.
When races are overhauled, I don't see why Viscanti or Dranari will become less popular. However, for the Viscanti in particular, I was under the impression that they wanted to a "ruling elite", which was enforced by racial requirements in the city, even while making mugwumps and various warrior races more attractive as shock troops. That is, with stats, you can make each race as attractive as you want it to be to have a direct affect on how popular a particular race is within the org.
The only thing I can think of that currently has a similar affect is Domoth racial blessings, but that might be too subtle during character creation.
As great as it is has been playing a krokani or tae'dae, (and I think in general the warrior racial selection has always been closer to the non org specific races) I think that if everyone started playing them, and few played Elves or Faelings or Merians, and every city became ruled by an elite minority who changed race or got a racial hat, Lusternia would lose something unique. (I think in general, people who play muds prefer to choose the "special snowflake" rather than being one of the "expected races".)
I'd want to know exactly what attractive features the races will be getting to help enforce their stereotypes.
5. Again with stat packs... we need some mechanism to keep the player population matching the lore populations. I think that is an important part of such a proposal that needs to be explained and understood.
This isn't true. People tend to forget that there are large numbers of 'off-screen' npcs milling around. Serenwilde has a lot of 'on-screen' elfen and faelings living in the commune, that are stand-ins for what the LOOK messages describe as a massive tree-top community. There must be at least hundreds of regular-joe people (npcs) living in Serenwilde, going about their lives while we fight and rule. Just because most of the players in Magnagora might not actually be Viscanti doesn't mean that Viscanti aren't still Magnagora's most populous race.
Midkemia Online has another method of enforcing that the Player population matches the Lore population. Which is that when you pick your race, it automatically picks your city for you, so there could be a thing that when you pick a race you get an org assigned to you, and then you have to go through the IC process of switching to another organization that will let you enter... but I don't think that's such a good idea. I much prefer the illusion of choice, and freedom of backstory that Lusternia provides.
What is happening with non-stat things? Are they staying the same? Will dwarves still get alcohol tolerance? Will viscanti regen in taint? Will trill fly?
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I used to be on the keep stats per race bus.
Then I moved to Magnagora, and discovered that over half the city is not, in fact, viscanti, but other races wearing viscanti hats. So saying that a city like Mag will end up full of non-viscanti is not a great argument, because people are already playing stats of other races.
The historical families will keep people wanting to be specific races, anyway, for the honour ticks.
A lot of people want statpacks. Is it really a bad thing?
When races are overhauled, I don't see why Viscanti or Dranari will become less popular. However, for the Viscanti in particular, I was under the impression that they wanted to a "ruling elite", which was enforced by racial requirements in the city, even while making mugwumps and various warrior races more attractive as shock troops. That is, with stats, you can make each race as attractive as you want it to be to have a direct affect on how popular a particular race is within the org.
If there's a race with better stats that's a more efficient at whatever class - then Viscanti and Dracnari will be just like they are now, less popular or tons of racehats in use.
I'm honestly very split here. At its core, I kinda like the system, but it seems to me as if you get additional base health based on how many lessons you spend in a skill, which... well, quite frankly, I don't like. I don't have the time, but how would things look if you set a HME bonus to each skill (so combat would get 2/5 health for instance), and then just added them all in the end?
Sorry if it wasn't clearer. I wasn't imagining that health/mana/ego would be based on how many lessons you spend on a skill (which we could do). The idea was that each main skillset unique to a class would have a low level skill that would you give the health/mana/ego bonus. For example, 'workout' may be the third skill in Athletics and as soon as you get it you will get a passive 5/10 health bonus (i.e., you wouldn't have to activate it or anything, it'd be a permanent bonus -- as long as you have the skill, of course).
EDIT: You made me paranoid. I had to look at the design doc again--but nowhere does it say the skill(s) would be based on lessons so not sure where that's coming from.
Yeah... Sorry, my post wasn't nearly as clear as I had hoped it'd be. That's what I get for writing something while I'm rushed to get to work. Anyway, what I meant was more along the lines of "I don't really like the idea of having to spend lessons in a skill to get a HME boost", rather than implying it'd scale with the amount of lessons put in. If it's a low-level ability in the skill, though, I can see it working (although at that point, there might be a point in just giving the HME boost to the skill itself, rather than having to put 10-15 lessons into the skill).
In the proposal all races have a total of 50 stat points. Are races going to have bonuses/penalties outside of the stat system? If so, will those buffs take away from stat points or just have a penalty associated with it or both?
How would things that are more thematic like viscanti breathing poison gas (which is blocked by protection scroll and geos have a better version of it so no one uses it ever) be balanced? Or other bonuses that don't have a direct counter, for example how many malus levels would flying cost?
These buffs/penalties could play a significant impact in evaluating the races.
[Also, visctanit plug - having a few element specific resistances in the age of widespread use of so many damage types is much less helpful than it once was. So having a little extra resistance to a few damage types while having a sip malus (not huge but noticeable) that affects healing from all damage sources and types combined with generalized stat spread makes the race unattractive to many. Just saying]
Comments
EDIT: You made me paranoid. I had to look at the design doc again--but nowhere does it say the skill(s) would be based on lessons so not sure where that's coming from.
Secondly, while at first glance it seems like the stats for a race might as well be "Large number in stat A, and 0 in stats unrelated to that guild" I recognise that isn't really the case, because of the large collection of common skills. It would be important to understand what affect stats have on skills like Combat, Discernment, Environments etc. Especially with the strong desire to remove any bonus to speed, its hard to understand what they would do.
Personally, I think that if the difference in speed between a stat of 0, and a stat of 20 (is 20 the max?) is 0.4 seconds than the fact that some are faster than others won't be too big of a deal. For some, lag is a bigger impact than that.
Perhaps the stats can affect the "cost" of an action? i.e. if the skill costs mana or ego it takes less mana or ego, even if its not a mind or empathy based skill? If the only cost is balance/eq and there is no damage being dealt, perhaps then the stat can increase the speed? If there is damage being dealt, than the stat increases the damage?
1st.
Stats affect damage resistance to skills coming from the skillpool of that stat. If you have a high mind score, you take less damage from spells coming from the mind skillpool. If you have a low mind score, thus take more damage from low mind skillpools. I'm thinking of a max resistance of 2 or 3 coming from a stat of 20 and a vulnerability of 2 or 3 for a 0 in that stat.
3rd.
If a skill has a cost besides power or eq/balance, than the higher the stat, the less the cost.
The higher the stat, the more damage it does.
Make race and root stats independant of each other. That way we'd have all races (inkl flavours) but could cut down massively on base root stats.
Right now there is a scaringly long list of root stats. If I also consider that those root stats get changed by archtype + skills, it seems like a lot of work to balance. Cutting down on root stats if they are not necessarily determined by race wouldn't lose much as archtype + skills then add differences again anyhow.
Plus: You could play a race in more constellations than just the 'expected' ones. (Yes a pet pieve of mine, but I do think in this case the above could be useful.)
(Of course, everyone knows I'd still play fink anyway.)
Edit: Mainly I wanted to ask that these sorts of proposals include a couple of character types for comparison. Right now, they're mostly a list of numbers without obvious context. A couple of examples from warrior, mage/druid, guardian, and bard would make it clearer I think.
I do have one query to help develop these four suggestions: will the damage/resist increase/decrease be integrated into the current buffs/resists system? Or will it be a separate layer? For balancing wise, I think it'd be better to integrate it in, but given that the buffs/resists are damage-typing and this is skillpool based, I'm not sure how complicated it will be for the coders. What do you think?
Other alternatives of effects I can think of for skill-pool based stats:
Regen. At 15 points and above in a stat, you get 1 level of regen in the new system of regen buffs. At 14 or below, no bonus.
- Body = Health
- Mind = Mana
- Empathy = Ego
- Artistry = ??? Think of something.
- Spirit = Insanity (equivalent to half that of a circlet, or something like that)
Esteem bonus. At 15 points and above in a stat, you get a slight esteem bonus (something reasonable) to a single type of influence, at 14 or below, no bonus:
- Body = Weakening
- Mind = Paranoia
- Empathy = Empowering
- Artistry = Seduction
- Spirit = Charity
Learning speeds. At 15 points and above in a stat, halves the time between the display of the learning messages when learning a skill associated with the skillpool.
Tradeskill bonuses? Extra 10 IG months of decay time, or faster balance recovery from picking herbs? Most tradeskills are only affected by one or two pools, though, so the rest of the pools will have no effect. Or we could split the tradeskills up evenly through each of the five stats.
Just some ideas off the top of my head. I'm sure others can think of more creative ones than I can.
Also, This is a great idea. Statpacks! Of course, by now I don't have much hope of statpacks being implemented here, but it wouldn't be me not to at least echo my support.
4. Perhaps for Artistry, you can add 10months of decay time for stats 15 and over and remove the tradeskills benefit? (I think harvesting herbs would already get the increase speed bonus from the stat if that suggestion goes through) Another option would be recovering from being drunk faster, or building intolerance faster? (appreciation for fine wines etc) . I definitely like the esteem idea.
5. Again with stat packs... we need some mechanism to keep the player population matching the lore populations. I think that is an important part of such a proposal that needs to be explained and understood.
Tangental side note: I'm not paying attention to each races' actual stat numbers until we are certain we know what the stats actually do. Also... If Tae'dae aren't high in body, low in mind, and high in empathy, I'll be very very sad. I'm also assuming that "Artistrty" has more to do with trade skills, than Influencing, and that the new stats won't have that big of an impact in how influencing works. (i.e. 1:1 ratio of Charisma to Empathy as far as that skillset is concerened) If thats not the case, it should be made more clear.
Those races just tend to sit around being rarely played at all. I just think that's a damn shame. Why put so much work and lore into those races and then freely accept that almost no one will play them anyway? I'd love to see more krokani, igasho, tae'dae etc around... but I don't think that will happen if race stats stay as-is and I can't even fault people for that.
For that matter I would also support removing race stats altogether (as suggested by Estarra in another post). There can still be advantages and disadvantages that would discourage people playing certain races in certain orgs. For example an elf in a tainted land might feel a bit sick and a lucidian might have trouble finding crystal harmony in a chaotic city like Gaudiguch. etc.
Honestly, I like the idea of h/m/e being more dependent on class, but applying a direct, retroactive conversion is extraordinarily messy. Not all guilds are going to be stacked equally along skillpool lines, and balancing any one speed bonus is going to drag in every other class that shares a skill. The Hartstone share skills with 15 other guilds, across four archetypes. If the stat pools were devised and assigned around this proposal, it could work well on its own (without the speed bonuses), but it'll take a lot of jiggering and rebalancing to shoehorn it in now.
Another potential cool idea would be to introduce a lot more statshifts for appropriate races, under a more paired down stat proposal. For instance, a sub-race of tainted Orclach that have the Nihilist prime-stat instead of high body. Or a 'shaman mugwump' that has a higher spirit/empathy than mind, that is a 'spec race' for anyone with the Nature skill. Kind of like Achaea's Archetypes, but without the illusion of choice.
The only thing I can think of that currently has a similar affect is Domoth racial blessings, but that might be too subtle during character creation.
As great as it is has been playing a krokani or tae'dae, (and I think in general the warrior racial selection has always been closer to the non org specific races) I think that if everyone started playing them, and few played Elves or Faelings or Merians, and every city became ruled by an elite minority who changed race or got a racial hat, Lusternia would lose something unique. (I think in general, people who play muds prefer to choose the "special snowflake" rather than being one of the "expected races".)
I'd want to know exactly what attractive features the races will be getting to help enforce their stereotypes.
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I used to be on the keep stats per race bus.
Then I moved to Magnagora, and discovered that over half the city is not, in fact, viscanti, but other races wearing viscanti hats. So saying that a city like Mag will end up full of non-viscanti is not a great argument, because people are already playing stats of other races.
The historical families will keep people wanting to be specific races, anyway, for the honour ticks.
A lot of people want statpacks. Is it really a bad thing?