Intro
So a while ago I made a topic on how there tends to be inconsqeuential stats out there and that kind of got me thinking about something else, mainly, how flawed the traditional ways RPGs tend to go about doing things are. For example, in a ton of games out there you pick a certain class, advance within that class, and end up changing your moveset simply because the later class-based abilities that you can unlock are just straight up better. Or the way the game is structured is rigid in a way that may prevent you from having the kind of set-up you want, such as making wands the weapon you have to use when you're going to be a mage to be effective, instead of being able to be a mage that wields a sword. Or, worst of all, when you are late into the game, due to how equipment tiers work...everyone starts to look the same.
However, there was nothing that clarified the difference that matters to me the most more than Log Horizon versus Sword Art Online. Notably there are tons of people out there that shit on the latter's way of depicting an MMORPG compared to the former, but there is one thing that they pretty much never bring up whenever I see these discussions. Log Horizon may emphasize on providing the viewer the experience of a traditional MMO...but it does not really care all that much about the fact that they are playing their characters in person rather than through proxy on a computer. Sometimes it does when it comes to logistical concerns and how something tastes and the like, but it does not really concern itself with one thing Sword Art Online absolutely tries to emphasize: the relevance of just how close a game now is to real life.
Think about it, just why exactly is the idea of playing a game in virtual reality so appealing? Is there really any reason other than freedom of movement and sensuous stimulation? At one point in the SAO novels, Kirito even speaks to Asuna about how she is putting too much effort into killing monsters. That is to say, it's no longer a matter of "that isn't MP-efficient" or "that does the highest DPS" but instead, it becomes a matter of how much strain it puts on the body(actually your brain but let's not get into that right now) and how you can mitigate that by being more efficient about how you go about fighting.
Ultimately, the greatest benefit of this all is that it seems more real. So while we still can't achieve neural VR, what I wanted to think up of was a way to better simulate that feeling of something being more real.
(That's not to say I believe being actually realistic in itself is necessarily desirable. What I'm actually aiming for is more like "TV reality" where things like fatal consequences from falling into water from a great enough height or tearing apart all of your muscles from spinning around in mid-air at extreme speeds don't apply.)
Mercurius' System - Stats & Titles
ABSOLUTE STATS : Health, Stamina
PRIMARY STATS : Strength, Wisdom
SECONDARY STATS : Force, Armor, Technique, Weight
You may be wondering...
Where the hell is MP? Where's DEX and AGI and all that good stuff?
I did not include them because they do not seem to be necessary details. In my system, strength increases your force and weight capacity, and wisdom increases your technique. Agility, or rather in the system's case, mobility, is determined by your weight. Dexterity when it isn't just "Thief class damage stat" would be in reference to accuracy for the most part, but all weapons have fixed accuracy values, so that's not needed either. When it comes to actually going to battle, I believe this best reflects the most important factors.
The need for values like MP and ammunition have always been drawbacks of non-melee classes that 90% of the time seem to be nothing but an unfair inconvenience in videogames, so instead of dealing with that, magic has the disadvantage of cast time and ranged weapons have the disadvantage of reload time.
Stamina & Weight
I'm assuming everybody knows what health does so I'm omitting that. Anyway, where stamina comes into play in my system has nothing to do with the short-term. In some games stamina is a value better known to be a limit for actions that regenerates quickly over time, such as in Dark Souls and Monster Hunter. The idea of my system is similar, but the difference here is that your stamina takes a lot longer to run out, and it doesn't automatically regenerate.
In my system, stamina determines how long your character's performance will not diminish regardless of how many actions you take. When it runs out, you face a serious penalty that basically makes all of your character's base secondary stats (that is, ones that aren't affected by equipment) get screwed over. In short, you can't hit as hard, you lose control over your movements, and you run slower.
The only way to restore it is to eat food, but here's the catch: Potions don't exist, so food restores both your health and stamina...and, you must have a stamina value that is sufficiently reduced before you can actually eat anything. (Think about it, there's a reason we eat multiple meals depending on the time of day instead of everything we need at once.)
The only way you can get restoration of HP without eating? Healing spells, which can only be used by those who have built their character to be capable of using tomes. Why? Because this either encourages you to become a support character yourself, rely on someone else(increasing the social necessity in an MMO), or become good enough at avoiding damage to be able reserve eating for when both health and stamina values are low.
Weight capacity is also related to stamina in that the higher your weight capacity is and the less actual weight you have on you relative to your maximum weight capacity, the longer it takes for your stamina to actually run out, because performing actions is less stressful on your body. (This also explains why someone that builds their character to be a dedicated mage has to forgo wearing heavy armor. They had to have low strength to further raise their wisdom.) You will also run faster the more free weight capacity you have, however, building the momentum for the sprint will take a few seconds. (In other words, running speed is only useful for when you can buy enough time to do so safely. Soldiers in real life tended to die more often retreating than fighting.) This is ridiculously difficult to keep track of by hand, but videogames have a computer to do all those calculations for us.
Strength & Wisdom
These two stats have one property besides being the stats that you manipulate to change three of your secondary stat values, that being requirements to use certain types of equipment.
However, instead of the requirements seeming totally arbitrary, I've tried to make it have some level of sense. More will be explained in the equipment section below, but essentially, the only reason why the requirements exist is because some things are heavier than others(weight) and some things are harder to use, or at least, have more options, than others(technique.) What gives you the ability to carry more? Strength! What makes you more skilled? Wisdom! Who needs all these additional variables like faith/attunement/vitality/vigor/dexterity/intelligence/luck...
Also, here's the big thing about these two stats that's so different from almost every other RPG ever. You are completely free to re-adjust them every day without cost(as long as you are at your in-game house), and at the very beginning of the game, you have access to the maximum number of stat points you can have.
That is to say, there are no level ups. You cannot gain more points, you have to choose which one you will raise over the other. What's that? Having no levels is crazy? Well...
Title
Ultimately, what do we really have level systems for? To screw over other people by overpowering them through your stats? I hate that. That kind of shit is what brings all this "meta this" & "meta that" a.k.a. "you're a dumbass / gimping yourself if you don't use this specific thing" We don't need that. If you want to feed your ego by showing off how much better you are than other people using a videogame then I think the validity is only raised when you pull it off without having a position that is extremely optimized for the purpose.
The most significant reason behind why levels are in RPGs is essentially to give a sense of progression. You get stronger, you can wear better stuff, you can now enter this boss room, stuff like that. In other words, what it is really doing is granting you permissions to do that thing.
You know what else is really popular these days for a sense of progression? Achievements! But to me, achievements tend to ring hollow. Why? They generally don't really give me anything in the game.
So what alternative would I go for?
Achievements that grant permissions, and only those. Once you have finished a certain achievement, you are granted a title, and those who have this title have permission to do a certain thing.
These achievements are success in feats and quests. The former is from doing something that is unrelated to any quest, which will probably have more relevance to PvP. The latter is from doing something the game has specifically set up for you to do in a linear way, which will have more relevance to PvE. To put it in example form:
Objective: Defeat 100 players in a duel / Title Reward: "Gladiator" / Permission: You can now wear pieces of the "Gladiator Armor" set.
Objective: Defeat 1000 players with the title "Gladiator" in a duel / Title Reward: "Gladiator Champion" / Permission: You can now wear pieces of the "Champion Armor" set.
Objective: Defeat 50 players with the title "Guild Master" in a war / Title Reward: "Promoted" / Permission: You can now wield the Sabre "Officer's Katana" and the Rapier "Noble's Smallsword"
Objective: Complete the quest "The Beasts of the Witches' Marsh" / Title Reward: "Crocodile Slayer" / Permission: You can now enter the "Depths of the Witches' Marsh."
Objective: Complete the quest "The Witches' Dragon" / Title Reward: "Dragon Slayer" / Permission: You can now use the Tome "Dragon's Breath" and wield the Greatsword "Dragon's Fang"
Objective: Complete 30 feats and 30 quests / Title Reward: "Guild Master" / Permission: You can now lead a guild.
and so on.
What does this mean? What's the best thing about it? It puts the vast majority of players in the game on the same playing field. In recent times a lot of MMORPGs to cater to more casual players have made getting to lategame very easy and essentially invalidate most earlier content...so why not just give everyone the same playing field from the start? This also makes it much easier to invite your friends to play this MMO and do interesting things with you ASAP instead of having a level gap that makes one of the longtime players just carry new ones through easy content.
Force & Armor
Why "force" instead of the usual "attack power"? Mainly because I wanted to get one point across for those who read the stat. Force is more specific to energy than how effective the weapon necessarily is, and in my system, the only way you can pull off doing an attack that strikes multiple opponents, that is to say, an AoE, is to either have sufficient force behind the attack to go through several opponents at once, or to use magic. In any situation where you do not have sufficient Force to overwhelm the Armor value by a sufficient amount with a melee weapon, any attack won't hurt anything but the first target it strikes.
Being capable of doing an AoE in itself has become something you have to commit to, and I think making decisions important adds a lot of value to how you play a game.
Likewise, if the Force value is too low relative to the target's Armor value, it will only do negligible damage outright. I think it's rather silly how in a lot of games and movies out there armor doesn't really help you even stay on your feet. Armored opponents are serious business, man- they deserve more respect than to be cut down willy nilly.
One last thing, you know how games have a concept known as "Super Armor", which dictates how resistant you are to staggering? In my system, everybody has high Super Armor. I think staggers are a rather silly thing in games overall, they're there to make combos and the like more effective. If you're going to be in a serious fight and you are supposed to have enough maneuverability to be good at it, your adrenaline will numb you to a lot of pain and there are seldom blows so devastating that you cannot continue your attack after being hit in itself. So all attacks are kind of risky (but rewarding) to do, and demand that even more focus is put into timing when to defend and your distancing.
Technique
For the purpose of being an adjustable, numerically measured value in a videogame, technique refers to how soon in an animation your character can decide to cancel the action they are performing to use a different action instead. This has basis in reality, you aren't supposed to overswing a sword, you do things to be unpredictable if you want to be a good fighter, and you can make better decisions in the split second you need to if you're more experienced when it comes to fighting. So anybody that chooses to have higher Wisdom over Strength will trade doing less damage for more flexibility in their actions.
Mercurius' System - Equipment
PRIMARY WEAPONS : Spear, Glaive, Flail, Greatsword / Arquebus, Crossbow, Bow / Tome
SECONDARY WEAPONS : Dagger, Rapier, Sabre, Mace, Sword
SHIELDS: Buckler, Targe, Pavise
ATTIRE: Clothing, Padding, Light armor, Heavy armor
In most games out there that let you switch your weapon type (and isn't an FPS) they have a tendency to attempt putting every weapon into the same balance. This is to promote freedom in choice of how to individualize yourself and the like. (Let's put aside that said games tend to suck at actually making that balance work.) So you have your swordsman, your spearman, your gunner, your mage, all that kind of stuff.
However, in real life, weapon advantages were about something more than that. They are simply not all balanced relative to each other, anyone using a dagger for instance, is at an overwhelming disadvantage against someone who has a spear, all other factors being equal. Why isn't it as big of a problem in videogames? Because they tend to make the spear way too slow to compensate for the reach advantage. In truth, reach should be a total gamechanger and the speed of which you use a polearm can actually be fairly quick. Once you make a weapon both fast and long, just how important reach is quickly becomes apparent to anyone that has to face them.
I don't personally want the system to be like other games in this aspect, because weapons are tools and different tools have different purposes, but that's not to say that I think we should take away that choice in characterization. As a result, while you can adjust your stat distribution and equipment while you are at your house, you cannot switch into anything else when you are outside of your house, and have to stick with what you got instead of freely changing anywhere to suit your needs. No carrying 500 different things on person at all times, even if magically teleporting loot into storage at home is just as unrealistic.
And one other thing I don't want the system to be like other games in this aspect, is the idea of significantly better versions of the same weapon. In real life, your choices when it comes to swords aren't Steel Sword, Mithril Sword, and Excalibur, they're more like Steel Sword, Steel Sword BUT WITH MORE SWAG, and Steel Sword With A Different Kind Of Swag. Same applies to all other weapons that share the same model. Yes there are better built and poorer versions of the same weapon but their performance differences is nowhere near as drastic as they are in videogames and I want to minimize people's pride in having the most optimized character they can. As a result, a bare bones sword and a sword with all kinds of bling on it and a cursed sword from the abyss all perform the same way, the others are really just different skins.
Polearms
So why doesn't everybody just use a spear? In real life, the reason is because we don't have a convenient inventory to just shove it inside whenever we need to put it away. You do have a convenient sheath for things like swords and daggers, so people carried around those all the time, like why you bring your smartphone everywhere but not necessarily your gaming laptop.
This includes people who carried spears. So instead of having a "swordsman v.s. spearman" you can just have your character be both. I mean it's not like it's that much more of a hassle to bring both your smartphone and laptop than just the laptop itself right?
Ranged
So polearms are known to have long reach, and thus are awesome. But ranged weapons have even better reach, and people that are using them shouldn't be getting into close range combat until they have to anyway. Therefore, while using one of these makes it impractical to carry a polearm alongside it (and vice-versa) it's not like they would benefit as much from having the polearm anyway. So why doesn't everybody just get one of these? They're clearly superior right?
Well, because while most people are pretty good at aiming with melee weapons, it's a completely different story with projectiles, especially when it's less of your fault and more of the technology's shortcomings. All melee weapons have 100% accuracy as long as you get a hit in (and 0% accuracy when anything is too far to be hit by it), but when you're shooting a projectile that you might not even be able to see by the time it hits the target? Yeah, there's no making sure of that without them ending up dead.
That said, it's annoying as hell to actually emulate the issues with trajectory and the like for both the players and the developers, so instead everything you shoot goes in a straight line and has a chance to tell you that it missed even if by hitbox logic it should have hit. The other disadvantage is that it needs time to reload (which is done automatically after the reload time is over, no animation to get stuck in or anything, it's just a cooldown) which means it can't attack as often as a polearm. People that use ranged weapons are going to use them more because their job is to stay back and shoot from behind the guys keeping opponents at bay for them or as an opportunistic kind of thing while mainly using their sidearm until that opportunity presents itself.
Tomes
So, magic. It is just straight up silly to try to make it more realistic...because you can't. Our friend AoE over there however protests to exclusively making melee weapons capable of harming multiple opponents (because it couldn't be very wide in scope) and temporary weapons like explosives aren't factored into your equipment, and we all know we'd miss it if magic was out of the picture.
Like the decision to take a firearm or bow with you in place of a polearm with you though, you can't bring a different primary weapon alongside this one, and to get serious about it you have to gimp yourself pretty hard on the strength side. It also totally sucks when you don't have a whole bunch of people keeping you safe enough to actually use it, so you're stuck with your sidearm alone to defend yourself in a pinch. What do you get for it?
Being the best team support you could ever be, that's what! Also, because of its compact size, you can equip two at the same time! (Can't cast them at the same time, though.)
(Incidentially, because of the lack of elemental resistances in the system, elements are just skins the way it works with other items. "Firestorm" and "Hailstorm" does the exact same thing, for example.)
Sidearms
So wait hold on Mercurius, you said earlier that spears are like totally OP versus something like a dagger. Why do we even want to have a secondary weapon when we can just use our non-magic primary weapon all the time? Does the game have a disarming mechanic or something?
Well, no. That is historically the biggest reason for why you would switch to your secondary weapon, but gameplay-wise that really wouldn't be much fun and is more of a necessity than a choice. In terms of the gameplay system, the main reason for why you should switch to your secondary weapon is because the primary weapon must be wielded two-handed to not be clumsy in use, and thus disable you from the use of your shield. So it's a choice of if you want better defensive or better offensive option at the moment. Since reach is primarily such a huge advantage because it keeps your opponent's weapon out of range, opponents that can just tank your hit significantly decrease the usefulness of reach. Hence, being able to use a shield is also a gamechanger. Roman legionnaires are all about that kind of thing.
Alternatively, you can make your secondary weapon be your primary weapon by just straight up ditching the primary weapon entirely to give you enough weight capacity to use the heaviest shield with the heaviest armor or something. All kinds of compromises are available to gain different strengths and weaknesses, and that's really what the system is about.
Shields
If armor is your face-tanking defense, shields are your smart defense. I personally like the fighting game approach when it comes to blocking, so I've given the shields a certain number of times they can block until your guard breaks and you're forced into being unable to guard again for some period of time. If you stop blocking with the shield though, it will recover from its cooldown even if you haven't actually used up all your blocks yet back into its maximum number of blocks. In this sense, the buckler is a fairly good option whenever you know you only have to deal with one opponent, but the pavise is much better for when you have to defend against many at the same time, because the more enemies there are, the more attacks you will have to withstand.
There is also a minor chance of failure as to keep blocking opponents who can manage their number of blocks well from being totally invulnerable, except in the case of the biggest shield. They will only block from the front, so going around is your only option against someone with a pavise.
Attire
As mentioned several times before, when a force value is too low relative to the target's armor value, it cannot do significant damage. Armor is serious business. That said, there is another "game-like" factor that I feel the need to change- the idea that having a certain piece of armor worn contributes to the entire body's protection. However, having separate hitboxes for different body parts is fairly tiresome for gamers to deal with until we get something with as much freedom of movement and sensory recognition as the NerveGear neural VR console.
So instead, there are four areas to cover. Head, torso, arms, legs. Every time you successfully hit an opponent, you have a 25% chance of hitting one of these areas. What does this change?
As with everything, it makes decisions important. In this specific case it's more of a matter of fashion versus reliability, because mix and match pieces of different kinds of armor will make how much you get hurt a matter of chance. You could have 75% of your body in heavy armor, but wear no helmet and risk a 25% chance of getting seriously hurt by anything in exchange for extreme damage reduction 75% of the time, or you could just wear light armor everywhere on your body and take the same damage 100% of the time. To be closer to life the chance of hitting certain areas would actually be higher than others (the torso and arms are easier to hit than the head and legs) but then everybody would just focus on the torso and arms and skimp on the other two areas...
The last thing to say on armor is that, regardless of the force value a non-magical weapon has, you will take the highest amount of damage you can from any of them in situations you are struck in a place without protection, that is to say, there is no padding, light or heavy armor, just clothing. This means that a dagger will do the same damage a flail would if it actually connects.
Mercurius' System - PvE and PvP
So wait, why did I mention that about armor just now?
Because whenever you go into some civilized location, the game will automatically switch you to your clothes. (There are separate slots for clothes and armor.) It will also disable the use of your primary weapon and shield. As for why, it's because that was true in reality. You don't really have much business carrying around battlefield weapons in a town environment or wearing something meant to protect you from battle, that's when you're supposed to feel comfortable. Where is that relevant in terms of the gameplay system?
Duel PvP, which can only be initiated in these civilized locations. Why?
When measuring one's skill versus another player, everybody prefers one-on-one combat. You know, No Items, Fox Only, FINAL DESTINATION. Because you cannot wear armor or a shield, or have a significant range advantage (unless one of the participants brought a dagger or mace) the duel is where equipment cannot give you a massive advantage. (It's also a reason to focus on being a mage when going far from your in-game home if you like dueling and exploring, because your high wisdom stat will grant you much quicker animation cancels than others.)
In contrast, war PvP can only be initiated in battlefields, and are all about getting several builds together to build a strategy that makes the best use of who you can get. I've implied earlier that a guild leader is the one who initiates a war (presumably against another guild leader) but just like history, it's pretty likely you will need mercenaries to help with numbers rather than relying on your guild alone, and we know that you need to be at your in-game house to switch your gear and adjust your stats, so "locals" (people that happened to purchase a house in that location) could be more flexible when it comes to filling in roles than guild members. Battlefields would also likely be fairly close to civilized locations themselves.
In a duel, your equipment can't act as much of a crutch. In war, the army's equipment is the crutch you will need.
So what about PvE? Just same old?
Well see... (Because everything needs to have a catch.)
Isn't it kind of weird how monsters in RPGs tend to be basically in any wilderness whatsoever? You could be right outside the castle walls, and BAM, monsters.
I think monsters should generally be reserved for locations humans wouldn't particularly feel like making a settlement in, like forests, marshes, ghost towns, Mordor equivalents, and basically anywhere where there isn't enough water (or too much of it, in the case there isn't enough land.) Places that you go out of your way to go into for some quest or to hunt for resources. What does that mean to the gameplay system?
It means everybody that's going out to do PvE content is going to be far from their in-game houses, and thus are stuck with what they go with. So you can either organize a large party that equips themselves from their houses for specific roles to take to set out on taking it on as a team...or you can try to tough it out with a small number of skilled people or even just by yourself.
So, for duel PvP, you want to have a build with high wisdom. For solo PvE, you want to have a build with high strength that keeps the gap between your weight carried and your weight capacity large so that your stamina can last the run, and probably a ranged weapon to attack from afar because the reach of polearms isn't as important against non-human enemies and magic takes too long to cast to benefit a solo player much. For war PvP and team PvE, you want to choose which role you're going to take for when you're going to be working together.
Mercurius' System - Consumables, Drops, Transportation & Economy
I've mentioned before that potions don't exist, mostly because I just happen to really like food's existence in videogames for whatever reason, but also because the way they are typically portrayed is too convenient. This isn't to say that I want to make the game difficult, but I do think that thought should be put into why you would warrant having a healer, and also making the game easier through a smarter method than simply drinking potions that instantaneously restore health whenever used.
Consumables come in the form of food and drink and are chosen from a canteen that provides several different choices and beverages. Meals, which consist of three of the choices presented put together into a basket, provide both health and stamina, whereas drinks only provide stamina. The amount that can be carried is 20 meals and 40 drinks, however, these two items are not exclusive to each other and thus share space. Assume that every drink takes up 1 slot whereas every meal takes up 2 for a maximum of ?/40 space for consumables carried. After being consumed, your health/stamina will regenerate at a very quick pace.
Drops come in the form of equipment and materials. All equipment is instantly teleported into your storage box at your house because you can only switch equipment when you arrive home anyway. Materials come in the form of bone, leather, fur, meat, wood, stone, iron, silver, gold, and silk, which are instantly sent to your storage box at home. The exception to the storage box rule is meat, which will be teleported there if you have no space for it, but is otherwise stored as a meal in your inventory and is the only way to get more food without having to go back to town to buy more of it. It takes the form of generic manga meat and you can sell it like the rest of the materials.
Enemies do not drop money as they do in other games and they do not drop specific parts of them meant to be sold to a general store because they don't really serve much purpose. Instead, when purchasing anything tangible that isn't a consumable, the NPC you are buying it from needs to have a certain amount of materials of specific kinds depending on what you want. So the player goes out to hunt for these materials (no mining or fishing or anything like that), then goes to the warehouse present in all towns, sells the materials there for money, and then the NPC that sells the object you want will have those materials in stock to make what you want.
Quick transport doesn't exist in the form of teleportation, and to go fast you need to rent a horse, zebra, bicycle, or tame a unicorn, which requires a title to attempt. You can also travel by sea by renting a rowboat or by purchasing a ticket to board a ship, with the former taking much longer to do, but the latter risking being assaulted by undead depending on the route taken. Renting lasts 1 day and horses(and others) all have extremely fast running speeds, but are very difficult to steer, and you will be forcibly dismounted if you either crash into something or get hit.
How does this relate to economy?
Trade between players does not exist. (The reason why is because the goods that players could trade reduce the need to actually play the game to get them, and because the goods themselves are not designed to be valuable beyond their difficulty in finding.) That means that we run into the problem of having too much money and not much to do with it.
However, because transportation and consumables for restoration cannot be particularly expensive without being harsh to new players, those really just serve as a reminder to everyone that money is useful to have.
Eventually, a player will run into a point where there is no longer any furniture, house, clothing, armor, or weapons they feel the need to purchase. So what do they pay for then? Well, seeing as the endgame of an MMO tends to involve PvP competition, I chose fees for initating wars and duels.
Initating a war against a guild at all has a high fee, and is paid from the guild treasury that any guild member can deposit their money into if they would want to support having more wars. Initating a duel against a player becomes more costly depending on how many titles that player has, telling less experienced players to steer clear of the person they might try challenging and informing a veteran that some people aren't worth fighting.
However, with endgame costs come endgame funding, and that is where raid bosses, the other popular endgame thing, come in. Anyone that happens to have no need for more furniture or equipment doesn't need more materials, but they would need more money to engage in PvP versus other veteran players and initiate war PvP. As a result, raid bosses don't drop anything at all, but do have a bounty on them that will cause all participants to earn money at far greater amounts than through hunting normal enemies. Each time a raid boss is defeated, the bounty for that boss decreases and other raid bosses conversely increase in value, with the value increase being greater for bosses the more times players fail to defeat the boss each month. This means that people can't just keep fighting the same raid boss as a routine to earn money and gives meaning to having multiple raid bosses. Of course, raid bosses are hard, and basically can't be beat unless your team knows what they are doing and have the patience to essentially come up with the best tactics for cheesing it.
The one other thing all players have to pay for every hour they're logged in is house rent. While this is meant to be easily affordable when you only have one house, the total rent that players have to pay increases for each additional house they purchase for the convenience of having a storage box and the ability to adjust one's equipment and stats in multiple towns. It will also deter people from AFKing. The only way to avoid this rent would probably just be purchasing the house through the use of real cash.
The System's Players On Paper
Now that I've gone over how the system actually works and where it goes, here's what it would look like trying to make character builds for it:
Conclusion
Important decisions are to be made, and all of them are compromises.
The only situation where the strengths of your character will really shine is when someone else covers for your weaknesses.
No one is better than someone else by virtue of the stuff they have.
Cosmetic decisions mostly don't disadvantage you in combat.
The only inconveniences designed to be in place are there to give you a greater variety of experiences.
Advantages and disadvantages have been illustrated through fairly intuitive factors in place of esoteric gaming ideas and is thus relatively simple to explain and understand.
Everyone can help.
What do you think? Do you think RPGs are better off sticking to the way they are?
