1) Most experienced players will either use a roller or manually type 'n' over and over again to get maximum or close to maximum stats.

2) A first-time player will be confused by the roller, and go by old roleplaying knowledge and think that 15 is a good stat to have.

Why not a point system?:
- It would allow much greater determination of stats based upon the player's desired role for the character. (for example, if a player wanted his necromancer to be frail because of some magical rigors or whatever he could set his constitution to a low value). If you notice, even characters roleplayed as unintelligent will still have the maximum intelligence for the race. I blame this partially on the rolling system, though it's also a byproduct of player mindset.

- You could set the given points so that no one could be rolled with maximum stats, or however you wish based on the power level desired.

- Monstrous time-saver. No more spending hours at the roller trying to get those perfect stats, and no more advantages gained by players who manage to acquire a good stat roller.

There really are no advantages to the rolling system, at least none that I can see.

>- Monstrous time-saver. No more spending hours at the roller
>trying to get those perfect stats, and no more advantages
>gained by players who manage to acquire a good stat roller.
>
>There really are no advantages to the rolling system, at least
>none that I can see.
>

According to our anon stats the average rolling time per character
rolled on YACFR is

23 minutes 10 seconds.

MONSTROUS

.

download the damn runtime environment to run YOUR roller, buddy. ;-)

It is, however, a waste of time. Zulgh, you mention that it takes about 15 minutes to roll decent stats. True enough, but note that most players want the best that they can possibly get. That's their problem, but why indulge their tendencies with this antiquated system?

It just seems to me that the rolling system gives the impression of datedness to newbies and is just irritating to experienced players. I know nothing about coding, so if this would be hard to do, then whatever. Just a suggestion. I'll shut up now.

Sorry Timmy, 90% of us like rolling stats. Give up your hopeless crusade!

Okay, the system is antiquated, some players accept a decent roll in 15 minutes others wait for a couple of hours to get a perfect roll. Newbies get burned because they roll by hand and get slightly less than decent stats.

I don't like the system, but I honestly don't see a need for a change. I don't see scores of players leaving CF because it's too hard to roll a character.

What I don't want to see is a coder tackle this project which would likely be at least two to three weeks of coding, testing, and deployment, as well as the mulling over it would require from Team Game-Balance to make sure all the point distributions are fair, when that valuable time could be spent: fixing things that really are broken, designing and coding new areas, coming up with new cabals, creating new races/skills/classes/powers/spells, etc.

It comes down to an issue of priorities. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being absolutely critical to keep the game running, and ten being a nice-to-have if anybody has some spare time to throw at the problem, overhauling the rolling system would be an 11 IMO

One of the drawbacks to being a CF Immortal is that there is always more to do than you have time to do (*). There's a lot of prioritizing going on behind the scenes. I don't have time to do most of the stuff that I want, let alone what everyone else wants.

I can see some merits to a non-random system, but it's not clear to me that the drawbacks (character homogeneity, min-maxing, higher learning curve(**)) outweigh the benefits. I don't want that as a project- I could spend a lot of time on it, and make something that makes the game worse. I could have spent the same amount of time fixing typos and bugs and areas and doing other stuff that everyone knows will be good.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

(*): Disclaimer: I've done jack squat for a couple of weeks due to some crunch time at work (which is now over) and holiday travel, but this applies to all of us at one time or another.

(**): I think it's facetious to claim that the rolling system is unfair to newbies, but a system where the player has to make a lot of choices with long-term impact is not.

doesn't really argue against the situation where each race gets base stats + a certain amount of trains to allocate to stats.

eg. Fire giant gets base stats. Not rollable. Same for every fire giant. Then he has 10 trains to use on creation. Some might go for str, and some for other stuff.

I'd also consider tying in str to the hp equation and dex move heavily to the movement equation (and then making movement regen also a function of max moves).

That way it isn't obvious to practice con, wis, int first, and you would have a greater degree of heterogeneity.

This is increased by the current system as a result of people attempting to roll near-perfect stats. A point system will make this better, not worse.

Fine, it's not a big issue? Fair enough. But don't make ridiculous arguments stating that homogeneity will -increase- with a point system that allows diversity in stat choices.

... yeah, it's not like I've ever read a post wherein someone asks what affinities they should pick for their invoker, specs and legacies for their warrior, etc. etc. etc. Much less several a day.

And it's not like stat distribution would be a question a dozen times more common than any of those.

If I ever have to read a "Where should I put my stat points for a storm paladin" post, it'll be one too many. No thank you.

nt

>1) Most experienced players will either use a roller or
>manually type 'n' over and over again to get maximum or close
>to maximum stats.

And it takes about 15 minutes to get decent stats. Oh no.

>2) A first-time player will be confused by the roller, and go
>by old roleplaying knowledge and think that 15 is a good stat
>to have.

Actually...you can type no about 20 times to start off with, and get a good idea of what the maximum you can roll is.

>Why not a point system?:

Because I don't want to read "What should I spend my points on" posts all over, much like the spec/legacy question you see all the time now.

>- It would allow much greater determination of stats based
>upon the player's desired role for the character. (for
>example, if a player wanted his necromancer to be frail
>because of some magical rigors or whatever he could set his
>constitution to a low value). If you notice, even characters
>roleplayed as unintelligent will still have the maximum
>intelligence for the race. I blame this partially on the
>rolling system, though it's also a byproduct of player
>mindset.

If you want to play a stupid character (I mean a really stupid character) you can pray and have your stats lowered. That's not hard to do.

>- You could set the given points so that no one could be
>rolled with maximum stats, or however you wish based on the
>power level desired.

Lots of coding work for no gain.

>- Monstrous time-saver. No more spending hours at the roller
>trying to get those perfect stats, and no more advantages
>gained by players who manage to acquire a good stat roller.

Monstrous? I don't think so. If you're spending hours at the stat roller, I do not feel sorry for you. You can roll decent stats (notice I didn't say perfect) in 15 minutes.

>There really are no advantages to the rolling system, at least
>none that I can see.

And I see none in what you offer.

Don't rollers cause the mud unnecessary lag big chief? If someone wants to play a stupid ass char he can grab a war belt and helm of control etc.

>Don't rollers cause the mud unnecessary lag big chief?

Only rollers that try to roll up the character on hundreds of different ports. We have however prevented that, so no, rollers don't cause unnecessary lag.

That could be better spent elsewhere. The current system isn't broken, why spend valuable coding time fixing it?