Thread: We're getting stat allocation back in 1.20, right?

Originally Posted by Frein

No, it never worked in any MMO. There is always 1-3, usually just one, optimal builds for every class. Doing anything else is doing it wrong.

Oh yes it did. Ragnarök Online did it, and did it extremely well. There were indeed 1-3 builds at least for every class - and then there were god knows how many bizarre and still highly effective builds achieved through creative use of stat deployment and choice of gear, particularly gear that enabled the use of non-standard skills.

A few particular examples would be: the Battle Priest/Acolyte, a physical attack-based character inside a primarily magic-based class that capitalised either on high strength and vitality supported by their ability to heal, or certain items that converted high int to physical attack power. Or perhaps the Plagiarist Rogue, a normally physical character that could give mages a run for their money by stealing spells then using naturally high dexterity to hurl them back twice as fast. Or the Battle Sage, a high-strength magic-based build that relied on a quirk of a particular secondary skill that enabled spells to be fired in response to physical attacks. Then there's the Instant-Cast Super Novice, the Perma-Novice, Mug-based Rogue, Battle Mage, Magic Knight...

The long and short of it is that with the way it worked, RO's open stat assignment (with limitations coming from particular classes having to spend more on particular stats and the obvious downsides of having low numbers in particular fields) was able to support a stupidly large number of effective builds.

Another game did it extremely well was Mabinogi, which is completely class-less. Characters defined their roles simply through their stats and skills - and this is in a successful, casual MMORPG that didn't necessitate and would have died in the event it forced its players to breakout the spreadsheets.


So.. yeah, Ragnarök's one of the MMORPG's that defined the genre after Ultima Online and Everquest. Declaring free stat application has never worked serves no purpose besides illustrating just how little experience you must have within the genre. .. Lay off the blanket statements. The only issue is when the community gets stuck in the mindset that one build and one build only can be effective, itself a consequence of high-efficiency raiding and so forth that developers should be doing everything in their power to mitigate. Experimenting with builds and seeing people who fight in wildly varying ways within their own class is one of the things I happen to find really fun in this genre.

Frankly the only argument against free player-controlled character builds I can accept as logical is that the inevitable number of creative builds possible becomes difficult for the developers to keep in balance, the obvious example being in PvP. Not to mention PvE - one Sage build could, under certain very specific circumstances, rotate a skill that cast random abilities (including some GM ones like monster spawn control) until it was able to summon an endgame monster of their choice. There's also one Priest build that through a high luck (admittedly to the exclusion of everything else) was able to farm some of the highest-end bosses in the game using anti-undead spells.