Whenever I show up, I always end up making some suggestion to increase diversity of buildcraft... Right now strength, intelligence, and charisma are dump stats, and basically can be dropped to 1, allowing the "more useful SPECIAL" to all be nearly maxed out.
The most use these stats have are for a very small handful of perks. For strength there is adrenaline rush, and more rarely stonewall. Intelligence has uh....PvE stuff I guess. Maybe some builds which require a really high skill% for multiple perks, but that is usually doable with minimal change.
Other than that these two only serve as a means to reduce grind in the game, which is almost relevant only for newer players and those without a well funded faction to help supply them.
Charisma has more questionable worth, being a dumpstat since the dawn of fonline practically. I'm a little skeptical to touch it though, as I don't know where companion builds stand in the meta these days. I'll leave discussion of this to others, until I have a better opinion of it.
The easiest way to make these SPECIAL relevant again is to have various perks require higher levels of them. But that is boring I think and adds mostly tedium. It doesn't add anything to the current gameplay and
should be avoided. Coming up with ideas to fix this is a lot harder than new ideas for perks and traits, and I'm struggling. Here are a handful of possibilities to pick and choose from...
Actual Suggestions rather than rambling below. Pick one or some.Strength
-Larger effect on melee damage, possibly making melee builds more useful or relevant. Right now it only adds +1...5, and only changes from strength 7 to 10. Instead add 1or2 damage for every point in strength (+20 for 10 strength though? Not sure. But only 10 doesn't seem like a whole lot)
-Affects critical rolls for melee combat only, +1% critical roll for every point of strength.
-Partly affect health per level, to a lesser degree than endurance
-Each point adds 1% critical resist?
Intelligence
-Increase critical roll, +1% for every point of intelligence (ranged only? for all? A high intelligence AND high strength character with potentially +20% critical roll with SPECIAL alone would be rather interesting, but I'm not sure about balance. More importantly it would be
different)
-Critical resist for head alone?
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-this one is tougher, look at some of the radical suggestions set in the spoiler below for more.
Radical changes, to potentially more than just strength/intelligence
-Allow for "half" health so that taking an odd number for endurance is viable
-Have the rate of AP regeneration static, the same for all levels of agility. Agility thus allows a bigger initial blast, doing 2-4 attacks in a row immediately. For whatever reason, I associate this with 6pool zerg rush if that makes any sense...
-Alternative to the above, intelligence determines AP regeneration, while agility determines total AP potential. Thinking quick on your feet for intelligence, compared to quick initial reaction for agility.
-Intelligence determines the perk rate. Very radical, would highly suggest adding in more and rebalancing perks in general though. I think it is a really cool idea if perks could be overhauled in general.
In general I would like to see the necessity of agility reduced, without increasing the tedium and amount of time "waiting." If AP were split between agility and intelligence, I would highly suggest a slight increase to both, with 10int giving slightly faster AP gain than 10agility does now, and 10 agility would probably give slightly more than 10AP total.
This is all radical change though, and even I'm unsure if they're any good. But its out there for others to judge, consider, and inspire possibly.
Topic: Making SPECIAL relevant (Read 2007 times)