Wednesday, February 3, 2010

It's all about the attributes.

It seems that lately I have been in a MMO funk; I don't have much desire to play the two I have subbed at the moment, a desire to play MMO's that I am not subbing for now and a realization that I wouldn't play them anyways.

I then began to wonder what it was in or with WoW that compelled me to play that game for over 2200+ hours according to Xfire. I have been using Raptr instead of Xfire now, but Raptr pulled over all my games with time played when I signed up, nice! Here's something I didn't know till I looked; out of the top 10 games I have registered time playing, 6 of them are MMO's. The game I have played the second most is Star Wars Galaxies with almost 990 hours played! I do know that amount would be higher if Xfire had been out when I began playing SWG years back.

But back on topic, I was wondering why I have played so much WoW and why are there all these other MMO's that are good but are just not grabbing my attention like the big one did at one point. A couple of weeks ago I came to the conclusion that it boils down to the skills and attributes.

Hopefully I can explain this as well as it sounded in my head! I have played so much WoW that I have a pretty good grasp of the attributes do and how they affect the various skills. In LOTRO for example, I have very little idea what the various attributes do and how they affect skills for combat or what to look for in armor and weapons. It's the same thing with EQ2, WAR and to a certain degree AoC.

I understand that this is a simplistic view and that there are other aspects to a MMO like combat, exploration, questing, crafting, etc. But when you think about it, attributes affect almost every aspect of a MMO. Age of Conan back at launch is a great example of a MMO that had attributes that had little affect or made little to no sense within the game.

So my thinking is what if I take the time to learn how the attributes work in LOTRO, how they affect my skills and learn to play my class. Goes without saying right? But it is something I have not done much of since the game launched. So if I learn the attributes, finding a build and learning the skills, maybe the game will be that much more interesting for me and I will renew my sub for another three months!

So my goal is to do just that with LOTRO, stay tuned!

3 comments:

Yeebo said...

The attributes in LoTRO are at once transparent and opaque. You can mouse over any stat, and the game will tell you exactly how many points are being added to various defensive and combat attributes. The problem is that "+200 ranged attack rating" or the like still doesn't give you any idea of what the difference in damage output is.

I have found that I get a lot of insights as to the effects of stats from crafting. I have a fleet of crafters on Arkenstone. I can tell a huge difference between the alts I twink out and those I don't.

At low levels: morale, power, and the max damage a weapon can hit for trump any other considerations. Vitality and Will are only worth considering in that they add to morale and power.

It takes hundreds of points of any other stat to make a real difference (250+ as a rule of thumb), and you can't hope to hit that in any stat at low levels. So go for weapon DPS, morale, and power.


At higher levels you will surely want to get your core stats into the 500 range. Past that, it depends on your class and playstyle. It's debated whether there is any point to going over 600 in most stats.

Anonymous said...

lord of the rings is a strange one for me, I absolutely love the books and the lore however I just cant stomach the MMO.

I loved exploring and seeing some of the world brought to life but alas something just didnt click.

Marty Runyon said...

Rule systems are very important to me. That bias goes back to my pen-and-paper RPG days. The quality and care the designers take in making a system that is at once readable (I mean you can see what the numbers do just my looking at them) but also styled to match the setting. One of the problems I have with Champions Online is that the rule system just lays there. Which is so frustrating when the pen-and-paper rules have so much to offer!

Best of luck with LotRO. At least the stats feel a lot like WoW, what with the base attributes and combat ratings. It's not a copy, but it reads similar.