Interface for item attributes

[Sy]

Spitballing while a notion is in my head..

Most games display items as a name, a type, and a set of attributes applied to that item.

Sword of smashing
2d6 damage
+1 vs skeletons
It looks like a sword, but it swings like a metal club.

The attributes are taken from a set, and only those which apply are displayed. I'd like to suggest another interface. Imagining armor, and using a fantasy settings, I could imagine:

vs fire
vs water
vs lightning

Normally one would show something simple like

+1 vs fire

I would display all attributes with a slider.

vs fire.......oooo|oo +1
vs water......ooo|ooo
vs lightning..ooo|ooo

This fits well with a crafting or buffing system and during the crafting or planning stage, a player can fiddle with their preference of slider and the others will change to compensate. For example, if a player wants to make the item better in some way, maybe the cost is significant like so:

vs fire.......ooooo|o +2
vs water......oo|oooo -1
vs lightning..oo|oooo -1

vs fire.......ooooo|o +3
vs water......o|ooooo -2
vs lightning..o|ooooo -2

Now what can happen is if a player chooses a specific rank of an attribute, it will unlock or block a related slot. That slot can have a type of benefit in it (ability, cooldown, or whatever is sensible).

vs fire.......ooooo|o +3··[choose]
vs water......o|ooooo -2···'- Fireball
vs lightning..o|ooooo -2···'- Blast wave
···························'- Flame dash

A player would research those various abilities with a horizontal tree. Maybe they'd research weak abilities usable at +1, then continue up the tree for more powerful abilities at +2 and +3.

I'm trying to juggle some ideas in my mind, and one day I hope to map out something far more straightforward-yet-deep in the direction of a more sensible Path of Exile. PoE has a serious problem of seeming simple but being worded badly and heavily punishing a player for experimentation.

I intuit something about a slider concept as the first-step that feels unique and easy to understand. I know there's the notion of armor vs energy vs speed that would work well with this, and maybe more things can use that interface. A long time ago it was mentioned that it would be cool to be able to tweak those sorts of things on the fly, which I think would be interesting and has opportunity for animated transformations, but that's beside the point for this idea.

 

[Pandagnome]

Sliders are nice what do you think of circles

 

[Omnires]

This just a funny idea I had and not sure if I'm explaining it right nor if it is a good idea to start with. It is just a random thought. But what about something like a venn diagram to show stats? Where related stats are linked and overlap within the diagram. The closer the link between them the more the overlap with each other.

I feel that this would help people to understand what stats effect each other and what stats are independent of each other. Because one of the problems I see in a lot of games is that the devs do a bad job at explaining what stats are interlinked what stats are independent. This can lead people to get confused about how to play a character / class or know what gear they need to focus on to play the role that they want. Because there have been some games I've played in the past where I had a clear idea of how I wanted to play but no idea on how to build my character to that end because the stats was confusing. Likewise there have been games where I've been able to switch classes and/or roles at a moments notice with all the right gear needed for my play style because the devs made sure to tell the players what stats do what and how, on top of highlighting what stats are important to get the most effect out of a character or gear or ability.

For example. In some games putting more stats into your strength also adds a little of health per every few points, but not nearly as much as putting points into constitution would. Strength also effect melee attack power as well as maximum weight capacity. So when you go to highlight the Strength stats you'll see a venn diagram linking it to weakly to Health and strongly to both melee damage and weight capacity.

And you can do that with every measurable stat on the character and gear. For example in melee weapons mass and speed effects the amount of momentum you can build up in the weapon. And momentum is linked to how hard it is to stop the weapon once it gets going. So the higher the momentum is for the weapon the more things it can go through before stopping. Linking back to character Strength and Speed stats giving bonus damage to the weapon. And even more of a bonus buff if they are doing something like running with the weapon or jumping downward with the weapon as this adds the character's own mass and speed into the math.

But for the venn diagram idea to work most of the stats in the game need to links to each other. Because if most or all the stats are independent of each other than there is little to no place for the diagram to overlap things showing their links to each other.