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"Strength" vs "Dexterity"
Chimborazo
Member UncommonPosts: 146
This thread is about something that's common in most RPG games: It's commonly set that a character can either aim to increase his "strength" attribute or his "dexterity" attribute, leading to very difference results. I think that, realistically, most developers got it wrong.
The strength in your muscles is what makes you able to sprint faster, jump higher. When you use bows (usually linked to the dexterity attribute) you actually need a lot of strenght to pull the string.
What is "dexterity" in the end? Is the stereotype of the big, strong and muscular but unagile warrior realistic? What are the real trade off of "being strong"?
The strength in your muscles is what makes you able to sprint faster, jump higher. When you use bows (usually linked to the dexterity attribute) you actually need a lot of strenght to pull the string.
What is "dexterity" in the end? Is the stereotype of the big, strong and muscular but unagile warrior realistic? What are the real trade off of "being strong"?
Currently on: Guild Wars 2
Post edited by Chimborazo on
Comments
you can overcome these issues with a good work out plan....its just the bigger you are the more time investment it will take.
as for historical warriors they were and are professional soldiers and train/trained with efficiency in mind....so they would be both strong and agility. wearing armor weighing 40 -120 pounds they could still run down your average civilian.
I don't believe you have to go deep into RL body dynamics, it's just gaming.
My only problem with it is, strength is attached to carry weight, making a dex player spend points in str.
Sure often a fighter or tank class is expected to have heavy armor and weapons but if it gimps a ranged nimble class on other items carried, then its wrong.
This is about realism in gaming, and how much we need it. Table top RPG's have the same problem, what I have found over the years is that you can get wrapped up in realism until it obscures what you are doing, playing a game.
This is a terrible generalisation but it is usually better to just put realism in the back seat and get on with the game. Your avatar can be both very strong and very dextrous, if you really need realism (you shouldn't) think Olympic gymnasts.
Dexterity has two components physical (acrobatics) and manual (aiming a bow), but now you are making things even more complex when you don't need to.
You can chop up "stats" like Intelligence, Dexterity and so on any way want. Just use a "best fit" approach and don't worry so much about realism.
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_motor_skill
Dexterity is used for archery because it's your ability to aim the bow. In melee combat it's your ability to make fine precise movements when attacking or when evading opponent's attacks.
Whereas strength is the sheer physical force you can exert when attacking with a heavy weapon, when blocking impact of opponent's attack, and when wearing equipment that weights a lot.
When you train one you would realistically also gain some of the other - for example an archer will also gain some strength due to the physical effort of training with bow and arrow, and training your muscles by lifting weights also increases your coordination a bit - but strength and dexterity are different stats and they are trained differently.
As delete5230 pointed out, assigning different main attributes to the different combat classes is an easy way to prevent one attribute from being too dominant across all combat.
Similarly you could argue endlessly about why casters need intelligence while healers need wisdom.
There are surely other design approaches to this problem that could work and are more tightly connected to real life, and maybe we will see a more simulation oriented game try them one day. If it works and is fun, it's fine by me.
We have to keep in mind we are talking about magical worlds, they have their own gameplay focussed rulesets and that is their "reality".
One can ofcourse argue that some similarity to our reality makes sense for immersion purposes, but usually players won't get hung up by small details like "str vs dex and int vs wis as compared to real life" anyway, so it's a non issue.
Magic isn't real, so I didn't want to discuss the subject.
Thx for correcting me on "Strength", sometimes my phone decides to learn a wrong word!
I wouldn't call "Dexterity" how good you are at aiming!
There are definitely few aspects that should be tied to dexterity like acrobatics, parkour, dodging, ability to hit certain spots etc.
How much does "being big and muscular" affects these aspects? I'm thinking about heavy weight fighters and boxers, is it really true that they're less agile?
When making a game system of some sort, you start by thinking how many attributes do you need and what do you want them to do. You can come to all sorts of conclusions, as long as the system makes sense as a whole, then that is all that matters. You may use dexterity differently from someone else but as long as you and to a lesser extent your players understand what is for don't worry about it.
"When" I come from phones lived in booths or were attached to walls, and computers and TVs both had vacuum tubes...
Not real indeed.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Original designers of AD&D and similar games wanted to tie one or more "attributes" to each class and / or race.
So Piety or Wisdom for Clerics, Humans, Dex for Thieves, Elves, Intelligence for casters etc.
There are certainly very agile NFL defensive linemen, (especially compared to the average person) but none will ever perform a gymnastic floor exercise as well as a 90 pound 15 year old female gymnast. (Let's not even think about performance on the uneven parallel bars)
Conversely, while those young women are very strong, especially pound for pound, no matter their agility they would not survive running the ball up the middle for very long.
Like some other things in life, sometimes size (and strength) does matter, and all the agility or intelligence in the world can't compensate for their lack.
Archery is a good example where it really doesn't. With enough practice my guess is the 14 year old 90 pound gymnast, the 33 year old 275 pound tackle and even a 160 pound, 55 year old man could all more or less shoot equally well as factors such as excessive strength or dexterity don't really impart any advantage.
In fact, the whole point of ranged weapons, from bows to modern firearms is they permitted people lacking any extraordinary talents the ability to kill more or less equally as long as they had sufficient training and met a much wider range of criteria.
I would suck in broad sword fighting, but hand me a modern SAW rifle and yeah, I'm going to do some real damage, even if I'm up against an NFL tackle or 14 yr old gymnast.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
However, I did read the entire thread and some good analogies were brought up. There is a point I would like to bring up. Combat Athletes.
Cross fit mimics this, but the Military (Of most countries) has been doing this for a long while now. Being both Strong and dextrous is a requirement for any type of top-level operator. As well as Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. So there are big guys out there, that can, in fact, throw themselves around a gymnastics gym with equal dexterity to that 15 yr old gymnast and are fully capable in a free weight gym. They need to be able to carry a lot of weight (Strength), move smoothly (maintain dexterity, to shoot) while doing so, and do this for hours on end (Endurance, or constitution). This to me, would represent what your average hero is in a fantasy setting. A starting point if you will.
A being that either by luck, genetics, training, or chemistry has an advanced level of capability in all areas and has set off to make a legend.
I would hope we can leave fantasy where it is and leave real life where it belongs, and come to the agreement that there needs to be some metric available to measure a character's progress as we tromp through these Sci-fi or fantasy settings. I think the alternative would be rather boring.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
I bet some Mage: The Ascension (sp?) players would disagree if your cell is not magical, as it perhaps could be under a technocratic paradigm...
When it comes down to attributes it is all about the system you chose. You can go down to miniscule sub attributes but that usually makes games micromanaging spreadsheet. I've even seen MMORPGs where you had Str, Dex and Agi. Dex for fine manipulation and targeting and Agi for body coordination, such as dodgeing (sp?!?! looks weird).
Back to the WoD reference in my side note to Kyleran. This P&P gem had bodily, social and mental attribute groups. So you could be ugly as hell, but have the charisma of a saint, without the ability to get poeple to do what you want to, as you could have 1 point in appearance, 1 in manipulation and 5 (max) in Charisma. Or as we had someone who often heard the sentence: Go over there distract the people by looking great... But don't ever open your mouth!!! (Appearance 4 or 5 and 1 in charisma).
Physical was parted in Strength, Dexterity and Stamina, so you could play someone who could walk 500 miles (SCNR) but was unable to lift a feather or dodge a closing door. Mental went into Wits, Intelligence and Perception. So perhaps your character could make witty remarks without problem but wasn't able to add 1 and 1.
It as all about how you project your target design and how much micro management you want your players to do. If you really wanted you could break down strength even further into muscle groups. As someone who has strong arms doesn't neccessarily have strong legs. Or go for constitution in terms of long and short bursts of exhaution (like long distance runner vs short distance runner).
But would you really want to play a game where you distribute points into Str (Arms), Str (legs), Str (Back), Dex (Fine Manipulation), Dex (Hand-Eye-Coordination), Dex (gross motor skills), Agi (body control), Agi (Speed), Agi (Flexibility).... And so on and so on...
And on the other hand would you want to manage and balance this system? I wouldn't want to...
Look at athletes like Rich Froning, Mat Fraser, Sara Sigmundsdottir, Tia Toomey, or any crossfit athlete in general, they combine strength and dexterity in pretty much everything they do.
We had Empires run by Emperors, we had Kingdoms run by Kings, now we have Countries...
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Dexterity:
Easy peasy.
Current game: Pillars of Eternity
Played: UO, AC, Eve, Fallen Earth, Aion, GW, GW2
Tried: WOW, Rift, SWTOR, ESO
Future: Camelot Unchained? Crowfall? Bless?
In gaming, it's about balance and choices.
Dexterity: The band's musicians, such as the lead guitarist and the drummer.
One is a measure of power. The other speed, quickness and manual precision.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Both have Strength.
It's a question on how far they go.
There is little to no truth that being big or muscular means you are slow and awkward, In fact there is nothing about being strong that affects your overall flexibility, speed, hand-eye coordination or agility.
There is even a Strength Wars, calisthenics vs weights.
There is also nothing about someone being fast and agile that means they can't be strong and powerful as well. Some of the best street jumpers are very strong well muscled people.
In games however, it is simply a means to balance the abilities of a toon, so they can't have everything, just a way the game makes for trade offs.
Dexterity = making a touch conversation somewhat comfortable.
Didn't specify whether physical or mental!!
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
In general (and I can't remember what the term is called and it doesn't work exactly like this but close) but for every square centimeter x of a muscle it can produce x2 force but weighs x3.
An ant can light 50 times it's weight. An elephant weighs on average 6000 and can lift 500 kg.
The bigger the muscle the more it weighs the more energy it takes to move. Eventually you reach a point where you can't move it anymore.
Aloha Mr Hand !