Some "Tooltips" are horribly ambiguous - for example

That's the general idea I was after, though in the case of a Crowd Control Resist having greater than 100% chance to stun doesn't seem to matter. The likelihood of the stun (or whichever CC) working vs the mob's stats is rolled, then if it's otherwise successful it rolls again against the resist for a very straightforward chance to apply based on the CC Resist stacked into the mob.

There's separate stun resist factors (strength and a straight resistance stat at least) that go into that first roll where >100% efficacy could be helpful, but CC Resist is always what's printed on the tin as far as I know.

 

Eh one of my gripes against the game as its evolved is its become largely about managing and figuring out numbers, and then min/maxing them, when doing spreadsheets is not why I play games, especially RPGs.

The health stat is one of the least worst examples because you know 'the more the better', although because of the way the game systems are structured you don't know what tradeoffs are worth it without doing calculations. The damage avoidance is worse because at least you can see health visually, while its not easy to see damage avoidance visually.

Definitely I agree with FrostII's premise anyway that the more relatable the numbers are, supposing the devs can make them more relatable (and maybe they can't), the better it would be for gameplay in general.

 

Damage avoidance is clearly seen on your character sheet (C) and when you hover over the name, it gives you a description of what it does



The bigger the number, the bigger the chance. What's the chance you say? Depends on the mob you are fighting, which is why they can't put % or any more "flat answer" numbers, cause there is no flat answer to these questions in this game.

 

Yea I understand, but that doesn't mean the number is relatable, meaning I don't think you can easily guess what a certain number means against a certain mob. Its hard to say if they can make this better, I'm not sure they can.

Of course, personally I don't worry about the numbers at all. I choose to play the game in a RP style. One of the things I use is a shield, so I know my shield skills plus my shield give me a good degree of damage avoidance, that someone that doesn't have a shield doesn't have. I also know from experience that playing the game in an RP fashion where you don't worry about the numbers or min/maxing also handicaps you, because the game is friendly towards min/maxing.

 

Yeah I see what you mean. I pretty sure it would be hard to make it better due to the explanation Coswald linked, due to every mob having different dex scores and what not, and also someone's 50 avoidance will probably differ from someone else's 50 avoidance if they have different dex, dodge, Parry and what not.

Yeah, pretty much every game will be like that in my knowledge. There are some that will enjoy the game the way they want to play it, in a RP fashion, and make great fun out of it, meanwhile other people's fun is in min-maxing. I am of that category, I end up min-maxing even in single player games such as Fallout or Skyrim. Every game is susceptible to min-maxing, and honestly shroud is one of the harder ones I know, because of how so many numbers mean so very little or what not.

If let's say I knew exactly how much every stat stacked up against specific monsters, I could build specifically against them, as in, why get 50 points of avoidance when I start getting greatly diminished returns at 40 avoidance, and could invest what gave me the extra 10 points in something else and get even more out of it. That type of min-maxing isn't really available in shroud, but is in most other games I've played. In Shroud, apart from knowing basic math, so 50 > 40, I don't know the real difference those 10 extra points make, so I know that I get something out of those 10 points, but I don't know when it will start being better to invest it elsewhere, and that's one of the beauties of this game, min-maxers have been pushed into a trial and error situation rather than mathing it out easily.

 

Nah, not every game is just as bad. Some games are designed more with realism in mind so you have a set of tactical choices, and you choose what tactical choices you want, and you're chances of victory are as good as your tactics are. Things that give you a lot of power, like magic spells, are possible, but they have costs and trade-offs to them.

Games that focus on numbers tend to be more min/max friendly, and the more so the more you create a level escalator, which this game does, and which also makes guessing what the numbers mean more difficult. If you have level 1 wolves and level 100 wolves, and the only difference between then is numbers, how are you supposed to understand what fighting a wolf means from an RP perspective? If wolves are always wolves, more or less, then you know how much strength you need to defeat a wolf.

Focus on numbers make games a lot more complicated to RP. Plus when its so easy to hybridize and not play a character class...

But that's all off-topic. The basic point is though is we do have a lot of numbers, and numbers matter in the game more than I'd like, and I think the more relatable they are to the player, the more it would help. But yea, we're in agreement that its a difficult issue to make them relatable.