@fibs said in Will there be a way to change your Attributes?:
The philosophy you just gave us is directly contradicted by every single element of the game that is not the raw character attributes as well as by common sense. Do your Talents not matter because you can respec them easily? Does your gear not matter because you can change your clothes? Does the planet you're on not matter because you can go to another planet more-or-less freely depending on your race and alignment?
Of course that isn't how it works, and it doesn't apply to character attributes either.
Turns out we actually agree about quite a lot, we're just using different words to do it. 
Decisions are only interesting if they have consequences. A decision's consequences only apply until such a time as you can unmake that decision. So the impact of each decision is tied to the duration between making and unmaking each decision. The longer the duration, the greater the consequence, and the more interesting and important the decision becomes.
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So your hotbar selections do matter. But only until your next rest.
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Your gear selections do matter. But only until you lose, break, swap, or replace them.
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Your planet selection does matter. But only until you move to a different one.
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Your attribute selection matters. I believe current design is that a one-off respec ability will be offered early in a character's progression, after which it is permanent.
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Your talent progression matters. It is permanent.
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Your race selection matters always, it is permanent.
Listed in this way, we have a gradual rise from short-term to long-term durations for the decisions we will be making in the game. I don't think that this means the game design is contradicting itself. I think this is a way to have different mechanics that complement each other to lead to an interesting and compelling whole.
But perhaps the most key thing you've said is this part here:
And just like Talents have a limitation on how quick you can learn them, when you can respec, and when you can swap hotbar slots, stats should also have a limitation on when and how they can change so that players aren't ever-shifting slime-demon Mary Sues.
Exactly!
So it seems that this is where we agree: Decisions should have meaningful consequences. The faster a decision can be unmade, the less significant it's consequences. So there needs to be a duration between making a decision and unmaking a decision if that decision is going to be meaningful. We agree that such durations should be nonzero, and that some decisions should have longer or shorter durations than others.
What we disagree about is where that duration should max out. I prefer more permanence than you, because I am trying to maximize how meaningful the decisions are, and to create a sense of consistent identity for the character into which I will be dumping many hours of play time so that I can get invested in a sense of ownership over my character. You prefer the middle ground of not-trivially-changeable-but-also-not-permanent because that'll give you more flexibility to enjoy different playstyles down the track as your tastes and as the game itself gradually evolves.
I think that this is a reasonable disagreement, made in good faith, based on our different subjective preferences regarding what we both hope to enjoy from the game over our time playing it.
And I don't think that either side of our disagreement here is "completely stupid and bluntly contrary to every other aspect of not only this game's explicit design but good game design in general". I get that this is an internet forum and hyperbole is just par for the course. But even so, that's a little strong, don't you think?
The romantic concept of "yours tailored to you" is defined by adjustment over time.
So this brings us around to where I think there might be room for some compromise.
What I want to avoid is trivially rebuilding your entire character once an hour, or once a day, or once a week, or even once a month. I prefer permanence, and in response you've brought up adjustment over time.
Adjustment over time is not the same as a respec. And that's... Actually pretty interesting as a concept.
It reminds me of a MUD I used to play ages ago. Your attribute selection on character creation was essentially permanent. You couldn't even boost your attributes with gear: Gear could boost secondary statistics like skills or attack chance or damage or health. But not the underlying attributes that set everything up.
It was a humorous, satirical fantasy setting. One of the NPC merchants was a retrophrenologist. Phrenology in real life was a quack pesudoscience that suggested you could infer information about someone's personality from the lumps and depressions in someone's head and skull. So in the fantasy setting, the retrophrenologist's job was to change the shape of your skull to bring about a desired change in your character's attributes. With a hammer.
So you'd go in, pay a large sum of in-game currency, the NPC would wallop you with the hammer, dealing massive damage and applying a status debuff for a few hours. In exchange, you would transfer one point from a stat you no longer wanted, into a stat that you wanted to increase. And there was a time limit, something like only one retrophrenologist visit per day, or per week. Something like that.
Obviously, that specific implementation of this kind of mechanic would not fit the style and tone of Fractured.
However, this is what a gradual adjustment over time would look like. Not a full respec once a week, but a gradual shifting of points between abilities. Something like that would actually be fairly reasonable to me. I'd be happiest with something very slow - one point moved per real-time week - but that might be way too slow for you.
But regardless of where you or I would want to set the dial for rate-of-change-throttle, I think that something along these lines would be a little bit more interesting than just having a full attribute respec a week/month/year/whatever.
Thoughts?
I absolutely agree that choices should be meaningful. I remember playing the same MUD - wasn't it discworld? - and thinking very specifically ahead, which path to go and decisions to make.
Probably, it would be best to give new players a tutorial phase at the beginning of the game where they get to test some mechanics and even some first skills (different weapons, armours, spells working, crafts) without necessarily acquiring them just from 1 try, but to let them experience their choice in practice. You could make it a dream setting sent by their race's main god(s) of what could be, before the PC sets out to follow his/her path in the worlds.
