Brought to you by – one-hit kill mechanics!

Nearly all RPGs have statistics, used to math out the results of an event. Your perception to detect a trap, your agility to avoid a blow, your strength to deal damage. Simple in concept, and as D&D has proven, extremely complicated in execution. Dice wars are a thing folks.

For this particular post I wanted to explore the concept of skill vs stats. The typical JRPG has had a ‘Level 1’ challenge where a player tries to complete the game at the absolute lowest level possible, with the worst stats, and simply ‘gimmicks’ the game to completion. FFX has a notorious NSG (no sphere grid) challenge I’ve attempted that boils that down to the essence of cheese. On the one hand, games are math and math has a logical output, if you understand the formula. Rarely is random ever truly random with computers, and as such, players have found ways to tweak the math in their favor. Shaving the dice as it were. Conversely, there are games where you can simply stack the stats to a sufficient level that all math is irrelevant due to scaling, which is an end result of a power scale with no meaningful end. Again, JRPGs have exceled here, where the end game is some sort of uber challenge that makes the final boss look like a tissue in a rainstorm.

ARPGs are in this vein but have their own sauce. The mechanical pieces of the game usually have no upper limit in math, which allows for ‘god rolls’ and players pushing the hardest difficulty possible, with some measure of skill included. For the most part though, the events in the games are dictated by your ability to reach statistical thresholds to survive/defeat a particular event. If a boss is able to 1-shot you, then you need improved defense stats. If the battle takes forever, you need more attack stats. Mitigation and mechanics are sometimes present, such as ‘don’t stand in the fire’, but there comes a point where you can simply stat your way out of it, and face-tank the event.

Well, that’s mostly true. Some ARPGs do have situational mechanics that defy all stats and require you to pay attention. Some battles have timers that require you to perform specific steps before a game over. Some have 1 shot mechanics that require memorization + mobility to avoid. Some are just artificially challenging as it’s not content you’re actually meant to experience until other events take place (e.g. invulnerability phases). This effectively maintains the challenge of a given event regardless of the stats you have, which I will readily admit I am not a fan.

This is more due to design concepts than mechanics, or perhaps more accurately the player conditioning applied and reversals. ARPGs are meant to be near-infinite stat ladders, where a few more digits can move you to the next tier of the hamster wheel. There is no stat stick that prevents a 1-shot mechanic, and as such, this mechanic stops the momentum of the wheel in its entirety. There’s no flow, dude. This friction may be seen as interesting by some, but more of a nuisance by others.

Diablo 4 certainly has it’s fair share here, which is more of a frustration due to the visual cues not being clear when the screen is simply filled with FX. If your character has an aura for example, or a hydra on the ground, it’s entirely possible to not see any cue and just go poof. Which, fine, you won’t see at all if you can conversely 1-shot the boss and simply skip those mechanics. This adds some interesting decision points for players, as not all content at a given level is the same. Duriel, Andariel, and the Aspect all have the same loot pool. Duriel is dramatically easier than both the peers, so players will only really ever do that run. Heck, a nightmare (+15) version of Duriel is easier than a base level Lilith.

It’s funny in a way, this was a similar issue with WoW for years where raid markers were near impossible to detect and frankly was the core reason DBM was created, or why players simply turned off VFX in progressive raids. I don’t need to see my sword on fire, I need to see me not on fire.

I’m kind of curious as to how the next Diablo 4 DLC decides to tackle the difficulty curve of stats vs skills. I know there’s more splits in the difficulty levels planned, but the overall balance should be interesting. If it’s anything like the Diablo3 RoS expansion, then this should be quite eye opening. PoE2 still has no details on Patch 0.5… so will be interesting to see what comes from that.