Simply put do you prefer to choose you own stats or be given them on level up?

Yes - on toon creation/level up you get a set amount of points to put where ever you choose.  You can make a rock solid tank that does a dismal amount of damage, but won't die or you can have yourself the ultimate glass cannon who hits like a truck filled with concrete, but is just as likely to be 2 shotted by your opponents, or you can try and find a balance.

No - your stats are given to you and you play without having to worry if you took points in the appropriate spots.

Combo - a little from column A and a little from columm B.

My preference is a combo - where the majority is determined by the game.  For me the WoW talent system was a good fit.  You can pretty much throw your talents in anyway you want to whilst leveling and still get by - if you chose poorly you might not have the same advantages as other players, but your choices couldn't really have a detrimental affect.  However the thought that you could customise you choices the way you wanted to play end game content is not completely true.  For PvP others with better setups did have an advantage, and in PvE a couple of misplaced points could be the difference in performance during a guild trial.  Either way you technically did have a choice of where you wanted to put your points, but really they were predetermined by whoever took the time to do the hardcore maths and posted the optimal selections.

I also really don't get much enjoyment out of the complete control games - for the most part this is from the lack of info - a simple tooltip pointer could explain that in this game INT increase spell crit as well as MP, or that STM only increases HP.  At the least something on the games website to explain, a lot of new games with stat control leaving the players to play blind.

stats (not talents/spec...thats a whole different ball game) in my opinion should be a combo.  Maybe pick 2 that are your focus stats that gain quicker than the rest.  In a PvP game there should never be 100% picked stats as people will abuse it (stack on dex so they get 80% crits for example) and your example about 2 shotting never ever balances it out. 

So yeah, a combo would be nice but still restricted.

I lean towards "no", mostly because I'm not a fan of giving players 10 million choices to make at the start of the game (you know...that time when you know jack shit about the game's mechanics?)

I'm sure when I put my "no" vote in I'll see the majority voting yes, because if you ask people "Do you want more control over your character?" they'll always answer yes!  It's the knee-jerk response.  However sometimes it's just not good for gameplay.  (UPDATE: Surprisingly it's a spilt 4v4 vote at the moment!  Nice!)

I prefer character creation to almost purely be visually creating my character.  The gameplay side of things is way more important to me, but it makes more sense to introduce those mechanics gradually while I'm playing the game instead of giving me 10 million things to figure out before my character's even created.

I would go for no too. Already you choose a class at the begining and to worry about specing from the get go can be a bit overwhelming when you want to discover the game as youll be concerned with making competitive choices. Its specially bad in games where earlier decissions are important and respecing is difficult/expensive.

I voted yes.I spent hours in elders scrolls just tweaking and playing with stats, it is very hard system to balance for pvp,lead to stuff like tank mages,i rather i have choice and let the devs dev try to balance it out.

Anarchy Online did it very well.  You get points to spend on your skills, but for the first 20 levels you could just let the game auto-allocate some or all of them while you figured things out.  I suppose I wouldn't mind keeping that ability around longer, maybe permanently for people who don't want to worry about it but having complete control over how your IP is spent makes a game more meaningful.

I like the way AC2 did it, you get all your xp to put into your talents at any time you have points. It takes away from the grind in the game also because you are spending those points all the time. If you ever palyed AC you know what I mean.

Originally posted by Cephus404

Anarchy Online did it very well.  You get points to spend on your skills, but for the first 20 levels you could just let the game auto-allocate some or all of them while you figured things out.  I suppose I wouldn't mind keeping that ability around longer, maybe permanently for people who don't want to worry about it but having complete control over how your IP is spent makes a game more meaningful.

AO was the best skill system.  There were no macroing since you spent XP you won from leveled enemies on skills.  Players did have levels, but they were just a representation of how many skill points you had.

AO let you earn IPR (reset) points after a while, which let you dump a skill back into your points pool.

I would vote for a completely point-based, player decided allocation of attributes, skills, etc. (like GURPS, etc)  Templates can be provided for your standard archetypes, so players that are not interested in deliberative "build" creation don't need to bother with it, while allowing others to custom tailor their character for the way they would like to play.

retrainable choice. basically, you choose where to put points. also, you can voluntary lose points, and re-earn them.

This is one of my cons playing WoW. I like stat distribution. Especially if 90% of the stats aren't required for your weapon, since most MMORPG's have static items, almost everybody ends up with similar stat builds, give or take 10% difference.

Originally posted by spinner_vis

retrainable choice. basically, you choose where to put points. also, you can voluntary lose points, and re-earn them.

I like that. It's UO's current system.

Hum, I remember first playing Dofus and being really lost as to where to put points... luckily there were numerous forums already. Plus now, you can reset your stats up to level 15, that let you get a feeling of the game.

Other than it being confusing for newcomers to MMOs/games, I love the customised stats as it give you so much freedom. Of course there will always be preferred templates looked at as "best", but you still get to create an original char.

Yes.

That's one of the things that I absolutely require in a game; I dont  like it at all when there's 50k other players with exactly same stats as I have. A perfect way to be unique (y).

Too bad there aren't many really good games that offer this..

Originally posted by Chealar

 I love the customised stats as it give you so much freedom. Of course there will always be preferred templates looked at as "best", but you still get to create an original char.

This is a good point.

You CAN customise your toon anyway you like - but someone has done the maths and proven that this build IS the best, so if you don't build exaclty like this (and like the majority of other players) you will be at a disadvantage, and won't make it into the guild you want to play with.

So you have the freedom to choose whatever you want, and you will freely choose what everyone else chooses just to keep up.

This mirage of choice is just that, if you choose not to mainstream your character you are likely to get left behind, so what is the difference between preselected stats the game picks for you or you selecting the stats that the elite gamers have worked out to be the best. 

The only diff is that if you can honestly say you would prefer to take longer to level due to nothing more than poorer stat choices, and you have no problem failing raid after raid as your guild has a less harsh view on how to control their players stats, and allow raiders to not be optimal stats, or you have no interest in end game - then I can understand the freedom to choose whatever you want and to mix things up a little.

But if you want to level efficiently, and play with the big boys on your server at end game (PvE or PvP) then your choices have been predetermined for you anyway - you do however get manually put them in every level tho.

I think a combination works terrific.   An established base along with the ability to modify those bases depending on your gameplay style works terrific.  However, it seems that its quite difficult to not have 1 or 2 builds outshine all the others.

Originally posted by thinktank001

I think a combination works terrific.   An established base along with the ability to modify those bases depending on your gameplay style works terrific.  However, it seems that its quite difficult to not have 1 or 2 builds outshine all the others.

This is one thing that ive grown to really love about EQ2. You have your class with its base stats, and then stat mods from gear, which allows you a bit fo freedom to choose between really similar gear with slight differences in stats. Then to vary from there, you have the AA lines, which in every class offers you choices to go down a line improving the stat of your choosing while unlocking more unique skills and bonuses as you continue down that same line, or you can mix the lines together. You are required to spend x amount of points in each tier of the line in order to unlock the next, and you can spend additional points for upgrading them even further if you like.

This allows you to improve a stat of your choosing regardless of class, while not really gimping your toon since it gives you access to skills which anyone who went down a different path will not be able to access. These skills vary greatly with things such as improved crits, reduced cast time, increased recovery time, increased speed, slowing enemy speed/cast time/cooldown timers, stuns, knockdowns, turning the enemy and rooting in place for positional attacks, a % to proc double attacks with every attack, improving poisons, damage reductions, AOEs for classes that dont have them in their normal skill trees, the usual debuffs to use on enemies (-dps, defense, resists, etc).

The way the system is setup it allows you to take even a class such as an assassin, to go down a line that increases its INT (which is normally useless for a rogue/assassin class in many games) and still be a viable class by granting it skills that none of the other lines have. It also allows you to gear your character out differently due to the fact that some of the lines also require you to move away from your usual weapon setup, and they name these different lines as sort of a class within a class. for example, i believe the assassin (or one of the other rogue branches), can go down the Wisdom line (i believe) and become what is called a Fencer, which requires you to switch from dual wielding to using just 1 weapon (just like an actual Fencer would) and offsets the dps reduction by giving you certain other advantages and defensive/cc manuevers.

Along with those trees, AA can also be spent in another set of trees which mostly upgrades individual skills by adding bonuses such as improved damage/healing done by thats kill, increased stun/knockdown/root/debuff durations, improved % to proc, etc. All of this combines to allow a pretty highly customizable character within each of the archetypes & classes without having to actually worry about the math/difficulty involved with allocating individual stat points and worrying about being underpowered in some aspect. Each path you take has its own distinct advantages and disadvantages which still be offest by your gear and use of extra AA points.

i prefer a combination. my ideal system would be one where you can have the game automatically set stats according to a certain character build. then you can just toggle the auto-distribute so you can manually configure your character. i have a bad habit of not remembering to allocate stats so id like to have a bit of automation.

Originally posted by BlueSkunk

Originally posted by Chealar

 I love the customised stats as it give you so much freedom. Of course there will always be preferred templates looked at as "best", but you still get to create an original char.

 

This is a good point.

 

You CAN customise your toon anyway you like - but someone has done the maths and proven that this build IS the best, so if you don't build exaclty like this (and like the majority of other players) you will be at a disadvantage, and won't make it into the guild you want to play with.

 

So you have the freedom to choose whatever you want, and you will freely choose what everyone else chooses just to keep up.

This mirage of choice is just that, if you choose not to mainstream your character you are likely to get left behind, so what is the difference between preselected stats the game picks for you or you selecting the stats that the elite gamers have worked out to be the best. 

 

The only diff is that if you can honestly say you would prefer to take longer to level due to nothing more than poorer stat choices, and you have no problem failing raid after raid as your guild has a less harsh view on how to control their players stats, and allow raiders to not be optimal stats, or you have no interest in end game - then I can understand the freedom to choose whatever you want and to mix things up a little.

 

But if you want to level efficiently, and play with the big boys on your server at end game (PvE or PvP) then your choices have been predetermined for you anyway - you do however get manually put them in every level tho.

Having a "best build" is a flaw the game's design and is not a necessary implication of having a fully customizable character creation mechanism.   Leveling efficiency, end game, etc etc are also all due to a particular game design that is not a universal given.  A fully customizable character creation system can not work to its full potential in a leveling treadmill, gear grind based game.

Originally posted by BlueSkunk

 

You CAN customise your toon anyway you like - but someone has done the maths and proven that this build IS the best, so if you don't build exaclty like this (and like the majority of other players) you will be at a disadvantage, and won't make it into the guild you want to play with.

A very true statement when it comes to WOW-styled MMOs - primarily because they are class-restricted level-based systems and not skill based systems - but completely false when it comes to skill-based MMOs.