What makes a stat "interesting"

[Shurrikhan]

As in the title, what does a stat (or set of stats) have to accomplish in order to be interesting?

Quick poll, for thread-users reference as it accrues votes.

1. Must adjust gameplay, more than just in terms of rotations. (E.g. rotations + aethetics + identity + overall feel of the job)

2. Must adjust rotations, and maybe a bit more.

3. Must adjust capability; even if using the same skills at the same times, should now have a bit more baked in AoE or burst or periodic damage, without necessarily needing to adjust rotation.

4. Must adjust character identity, even without direct change to gameplay. (Aesthetics, shared gear or stat use between multiple classes giving a sense of collective progression, or whatever else)



Will also sticky any other core questions and issues appearing in discussion.

[w/ Khalithar] What makes gearing (the selection of gear paths or desirable pieces) interesting?

[Khalithar]

I really don't think it's possible to make passive stats interesting, they can be made more "desirable" though. For example, if a stat gives you a drastic dps increase or scales really well to the point that it REALLY outshines others then you're going to want as much of the stat as possible. I don't necessarily think that's interesting though. To give you an example, a few years back WoW had a stat called armor penetration, it was the highest dps boost for all classes that dealt physical damage and it's scaling was ridiculous to the point where it became a godly stat. They kept having to nerf it and it's scaling over and over again but it STILL managed to outdo all the other passives, eventually they gave up and ditched the stat entirely in to something new.

[Shurrikhan]

I really don't think it's possible to make passive stats interesting, they can be made more "desirable" though. For example, if a stat gives you a drastic dps increase or scales really well to the point that it REALLY outshines others then you're going to want as much of the stat as possible. I don't necessarily think that's interesting though. To give you an example, a few years back WoW had a stat called armor penetration, it was the highest dps boost for all classes that dealt physical damage and it's scaling was ridiculous to the point where it became a godly stat. They kept having to nerf it and it's scaling over and over again but it STILL managed to outdo all the other passives, eventually they gave up and ditched the stat entirely in to something new.

This is something I've talked with others ingame about a fair bit, and on here a few months back. The way I see it, gearing itself (choosing gear paths, or gunning for a particular piece) can be made interesting through any of three ways:

• [Gear affects gameplay] You establish a gameplay style you like as made possible by gear (in our case, the only actual affector is Speed, but same idea), and try to maintain it in what even-value gear choices you do have, or start experimenting and rounding out new gameplay styles from what you don't have a choice over. A particularly high-stats drop could be your pride or, temporarily, the ultimate annoyance as you have to readjust things to support it, but regardless you do feel like there's significant interaction with your gear and stats themselves.
  
  
• [Class-optimals] There is a clear best and/or worst stat for your job, and you try to maximize the prior and avoid the lower. Unlike a more balanced setup that allows for more gameplay styles, this puts a greater urgency on gearing, as two players differing only in secondary stats could have noticeably different outputs.
  
  
• [Scalars] In ARR, Crit was originally recommended for most classes to a certain level, but after said level the crit chance as a portion of one's base chance being increased per stat point diminished, making it lose weight as the amount increased. De-exponential. Inversely, the portion of the remaining GCD affected by Skill Speed increased with the more Skill Speed one acquired. Exponential. Determination was linear. In this system, the most worthwhile stat is dependent on the other stats in play, and their relative equilibriums. Even if the stats are individually balanced at a given point, there's constant significant renewal of their weights as gear progresses.

I'm personally most fond of the first system, but not by much. I like the idea of mostly having control of my gameplay, so I like for gear to last, and/or for the variance not to be too huge, but for there also to be a number of distinct styles supported within any given tier collection of gear pieces. I don't dislike charting out gear paths to maximize my best stat and avoid the worse, or theory crafting for the best set of stats at a given time. They all kind of work. It's just a question of which has the most FF feel, or just generally is most attractive to most players.

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On WoW's Armor Penetration itself, and similar quandaries:

The main issue with Armor Penetration was certain oversights in how the mechanic actually worked, not the least of which was that you could remove more than 100% of armor in order to then deal bonus damage. Armor Pentration removed flat amount of armor per point. However, because after exceeding 100% armor reduction the bonus damage being dealt as a percentile while the stats was accrued as a flat sum meant that those with lower armor were more vulnerable to its effects. If it took only 500, rather than 1000 ArP, to ignore the whole of a mage's armor, then by 1500, the mage would be taking twice the bonus damage as the other guy. It doesn't make much sense for the term, destroyed clothies in PvP, and in PvE it functioned as a nigh exponential stat. Were it to have capped at 100% armor, it would have instead been an auxiliary stat much like Accuracy (or in their case Hit and Expertise) that at most causes physical attacks to never lose priority even against armored enemies. Instead it caused hybrid attackers to even deprioritize their DoTs and magic damage in favor of direct physical sources, wherever possible. That's oversight, as you could call virtually any exponential scalar, especially after whatever point it starts to wholly overwhelm all other options, just as ArP did. It's quite avoidable. However, that example also wouldn't be applicable to XIV, as we don't have mob Defense anyways.

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Thinking on it more, it is my opinion that [Class-optimals] is what will end up happening no matter what they do. At their most basic level with combat, MMO's are just number generators with a fancy user interface and sooner or later someone is going to figure out which stat yields the most dps increase. A blizzard dev once commented that he was shocked what players would do even for a theoretical 1% dps gain and that is inevitably what happens. You either make the stats good and then someone figures out which one is best or they become so weak they don't make much difference at all, at which point someone with a spreadsheet will theorycraft and figure out which one of those paltry stats offers the best increase. That is the nature of MMO's nowadays. I don't think it's a bad thing personally, but that again brings me to why I don't think stats can be interesting, because no matter what the stats do, someone will eventually figure out what makes the numbers the biggest, spread the word, and everyone will go for it.

The thing is, though, if the devs so desire, the same theory-crafting can be done to be sure that all stats are balanced. It just requires ensuring that scalars are of equal value to the class's tool-set. And an equilibrium or 0-derivative between different stats can be calculated just as easily as a proven (not just hinted at) "best" stat. I'd wager that the main reason class-optimal stats seems to be the given is that for many MMOs differing ideal secondaries are a selling point of class identity. In some cases this was even used in place of class-specific gear. It's leather, usable by any and all leather-users. Who should get it? The one for whom it has ideal secondary stats.

That being said, it's not like people are going to toss out an upgrade just it's not the BiS (due to secondary stats). An alleged upgrade can be rather disappointing, weight-wise, if non-optimal, but especially when the primary stat weight gains are as strong per ilvl increase as they are in XIV, there are no truly wasted pieces upon acquisition unless you already have equal or higher tier gear compared to the place you're looting. The odd thing about this is that this vertical progression above all paradigm has caught a ton of flak from the community, sometimes for its effects, and sometimes on principle. But if most pieces are to remain real options, either of two things have to happen: the primary stats must diminish the secondary stat weight gaps between pieces over time/progression, or the secondary stats themselves need to be more closely balanced. Otherwise you end up with either a smaller actual gear pool, or secondary stats changed to "auto-fit" the class wearing them (at which point you have only vertical progression left).

[Khalithar]

[*][Class-optimals] There is a clear best and/or worst stat for your job, and you try to maximize the prior and avoid the lower. Unlike a more balanced setup that allows for more gameplay styles, this puts a greater urgency on gearing, as two players differing only in secondary stats could have noticeably different outputs.

Thinking on it more, it is my opinion that this is what will end up happening no matter what they do. At their most basic level with combat, MMO's are just number generators with a fancy user interface and sooner or later someone is going to figure out which stat yields the most dps increase. A blizzard dev once commented that he was shocked what players would do even for a theoretical 1% dps gain and that is inevitably what happens. You either make the stats good and then someone figures out which one is best or they become so weak they don't make much difference at all, at which point someone with a spreadsheet will theorycraft and figure out which one of those paltry stats offers the best increase. That is the nature of MMO's nowadays. I don't think it's a bad thing personally, but that again brings me to why I don't think stats can be interesting, because no matter what the stats do, someone will eventually figure out what makes the numbers the biggest, spread the word, and everyone will go for it.

[Khalithar]

That being said, it's not like people are going to toss out an upgrade just it's not the BiS (due to secondary stats). An alleged upgrade can be rather disappointing, weight-wise, if non-optimal, but especially when the primary stat weight gains are as strong per ilvl increase as they are in XIV, there are no truly wasted pieces upon acquisition unless you already have equal or higher tier gear compared to the place you're looting.

Actually, this is EXACTLY the case and was one of the rampant problems the devs had with raiders back in WoW, players would actually not want an upgrade unless it was BiS. I can't find the exact quote as it's pretty old, but it's one of the mentalities Blizzard found really problematic with raiders. That could very easily happen here as well.

[Shurrikhan]

Actually, this is EXACTLY the case and was one of the rampant problems the devs had with raiders back in WoW, players would actually not want an upgrade unless it was BiS. I can't find the exact quote as it's pretty old, but it's one of the mentalities Blizzard found really problematic with raiders. That could very easily happen here as well.

Sorry, I meant specifically in XIV.

In WoW: WoD, level-cap gearing with secondary stats increasing damage by about .8x. In other words, about 40% of your damage was due to secondary stats. By the end, secondary stats had increased damage by about 3.5x. In other words, they tremendously outweighed the value of XIV's secondary. Compare that to FFXIV's secondary stat values, where I have a weight of 323.2 from my combined secondary stats (almost entirely crit, SS second) on my Bard relative to a 1216 weight of primary attack stat. Even including its contributed Bloodletter procs, it's probably making up not much more than a third of my damage. It was that majority of a late-game WoD player's gear-damage contribution. Part of that is because secondary stats would enhance relevant properties more per point than ours — whereas tier ilvl jumps are rather similar, including into Mythic/Savage — and part of that was because of especially advantageous class mechanics (similar to Bloodletter). The closest analog we have to that is BLM's taking off at the end of ARR due to higher secondary stat weights. Blizzard has also released posts, though one of the most concretely aimed somehow sunk into the unmentioned, saying their looking to curtail exactly that. Legion itself has aimed to provide more core gameplay early on, and quickly taper off secondary stat contribution in order to better linearize their worth against upgrades by primary stat, (so that, say, an ilvl bonus is still to some degree the way to go until about a tier higher than in WoD).

Our (FFXIV's) actual primary/secondary stat balance is still leagues different that WoW's, while WoW seems to be taking steps to move in our direction.

[DarthVella]

The closest option here to my opinion is 1, though you might not agree.

An interesting stat is one that provides a tangible and unique benefit. You have to see changes in the small scale before it becomes interesting, if you get what I mean. For example...

I don't care much for Determination, because it's basically just a weaker version of whatever primary stat.

When I'm on my Scholar, I love Crit, because Adloquium actually changes a little when it crits, and I am able to recognise when that happens and adjust my future actions accordingly. Otherwise, it's just a little DPS bonus every now and again, so much more lukewarm on it.

Spell/Skill speed - I used to not give two shits about it, because it's an abstract number that you have to perform stupid amounts of maths on to determine how it affects you. Even though it gives an obvious bonus, I just didn't care about it beyond what I got on my gear as it came, because it didn't really change the way I played.

However, the moment I realised that a certain amount of Spell Speed might allow me to fit another Ruin III into Dreadwyrm Trance, that abstract number began to represent a very tangible benefit and I went nuts over it. I STILL don't care about it on any job other than Summoner, because I don't get any similar hands-on benefit at their current levels.

[Iromi]

I picked #1.

Interesting stats to me is stuff like store tp+15, refresh +3, enmity -4, magic Attack bonus, extends contagion duration..etc

[ADVSS]

well lets look at parry from 2.0. it synergized with dexterity and strength in a way that made it...less dull. But being a random stat that is unpredictible, it just simply wasnt something you invested in. It was more interesting though, to say x strength made it block more % incoming damage and x dexterity made it proc more often, so Id say it was somewhat of an interesting(yet unreliable) stat. In all honesty I really do not know what kind of secondary would be more interesting and stats are only more interesting if theres a rarity or limit or where stacking two stats gives a better effect than just dumping everything into one. literally could shove str, int,dex into DAMAGE. and nothing would change for DPS at all. tanks sure, but not even healers.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Well OP, it's interesting the way you think.

I neither cared too much about basic stats, nor gear with extra effects.
(Dont get me wrong, they are nice, but im just as ok w/o them.)

You asked 4 questions, and all of them ask the same thing. "What does it adjust?"
Which I further took as "What does it change?"

I dont think that way, instead I find stats interesting, under the conditions;
1) How do they improve my gameplay?
2) How do they improve my rotations?
3) How do they improve my capability?
4) How do they improve/fit my character identity?

If it doesnt do these things, the stat isnt interesting.

If it does, then it's interesting.

if it doesnt improve, but merely "changes" then its up for debate if its good/neutral/bad. (Which will be judged solely on the prior 4 things I said, which was kinda pointless)