Your Stats

I’m looking for some inspiration for stats, and to see what you guys think.
I have been looking at other games and what stats they used, for example Acrobatics from Oblivion… but then Oblivion also has Agility. Wouldn’t that be the same thing?

This is what I have so far. I’m open to any criticism, or ideas on how I could make my stats page better.

[b]Your Character[/b]

*stat_chart
	text Name
	text Gender
	text Path
	
	percent Strength
	percent Agility
	percent Willpower
	percent Intelligence
	percent Speech
	opposed_pair Hero
		Villain
	percent Luck
	
	text Health
	text Stamina
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good rule of thumb is to include as little “hard” stats as possible. for you its a lot of checks to keep track of (especially for balancing purposes) and for the player its difficult to know which are important and keep track of them all.

ex: heres a stat page for something I’ve been working on, which I based off of other published CoG games

*stat_chart
	percent Prowess
	percent Courtesy
	percent Intellect
*line_break
*stat_chart
	percent Renown
	opposed_pair Compassion
		Ruthlessness
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I don’t understand. Are you saying I have too many “hard” stats?

yes. are you going to be using all of these? will the player want to use/focus on these?

its not an absurd amount, but IMO its better to focus on 3-4 “hard” stats and then the rest of the stat page focus on relationships/progress/information. for example, you could combine strength/agility into one “combat” stat, willpower can be phased out or used in conjunction with speech/intelligence. etc etc

will you use health/stamina? will the player actually need to keep track of that? there are several CoG games that use a health stat but frankly none of them do so particularly effectively, in the sense that the player has to keep track of the stat. same with stamina.

id also break up the stat chart a bit, try to group things together with *line_breaks, it just looks nicer and more approachable.

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This is what the stats look like with the script the way it is. You mentioned I need *line_breaks? Does it not look neat already?

its not bad but if you look at other published games you’ll see a lot of games breakup & informally categorize their stats.

ex:

${Gender_Title} [b]${Name}[/b], the ${Gender_Title_L} of Blades
*line_break
${Age} years of age, of ${Stature} stature and ${Appearance} appearance
*line_break
${Calendar}

[b]Personal[/b]
*stat_chart
	percent Prowess
	percent Courtesy
	percent Intellect
*line_break
*stat_chart
	percent Renown
	opposed_pair Compassion
		Ruthlessness
		
*line_break		
[b]Company[/b]
*stat_chart
	text Funds
	text Expenses
*line_break
*stat_chart
	percent Discipline
	percent Loyalty
	percent Morale
*line_break

ultimately though, the stat screen is secondary to the story you’re trying to tell. use the stats as a tool, not as a crutch. but good UI philosophy is to keep it simple and clean.

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I changed the stats screen and how it was showing “Name: Name” before the player initially chooses their name.

In the startup.txt I created
*create name “???”
followed immediately after by a
*set name “???”
I hope this is the correct method and i’m not making things too complicated. I literally just started learning to use ChoiceScript three days ago.

And I thought that in the basic intro I read “*line_break” wasn’t something that important since you could just press enter to make the next body of text.

This is a line
*page_break
This is a line

would equal

This is a line
This is a line

Or am I missing something?

Thank you for all your previous and future feedback btw. The scripting for this is fun to learn and to use at the same time.

This! This right here. Anything that leans heavily into stats and stat checking tends to drive players who want to get to the end of the book into making less “organic” decisions based on their initial knee-jerk reactions, or mood. This lends itself more to meta heavy game play than an interactive story.

Not that this is a bad thing per se, but it does shape how the narrative alone would probably not be enough of a draw for some players interested in the theme of the story. Having a challenge now, and then is a good change of pace, though.

3 Likes

I think these stats are fairly generic as far as type goes. But echoing others’ cuckoo, it’s not a bad thing on its own. VoiD’s suggestions are more on the how the statpage is presented and the design choice.

Hmm… I am going to have to think about how I can narrow things down in the morning. yawn

Tips from me: build your stats from your story. Not the other way around.

2 Likes

I’ll chime in as someone known on this forum for his dislike of stats. Don’t use them unless you absolutely 100% need them for the story.

I’m probably in the minority of people when it comes to stats in that I don’t really think many of them serve any purpose. The only ones that I actually find useful are relationship stats - they can help make character interactions feel much more interesting. Anything else is just unnecessary gatekeeping or just plain unnecessary.

In my first WIP, I have three personality stats (Peacemaker, Wallflower, Firebrand) that determine if MC can behave in certain ways, and I also have relationship stats for each character. In my second one, I do have four hard stats (Strength, Intelligence, Speed, and Composure), which directly relate to the setting (zombie apocalypse); stats for humanity and health; and stats for the MC’s family’s health and relationship.

Stats are meant to be for you to code unique variations into the story imo. If they aren’t serving that purpose, you don’t need them.

8 Likes