Perception

[Aazenius]

The Perception System: Probably my favorite bit of info about Vanguard out of everything I learned. Perception is a the ability to detect and identify things in the game. It's all pervasive, being arguably the one of the most important stats no matter what sphere you are playing. Perception has ties in the intelligence or mental stats of your character, giving Warriors and meele classes a reason to carefully consider how many points they should leave for stats other than strength. Indeed, because Perception is how you sense reactions and opportunities in Vanguard's combat system, perception could end up being as important to meeles as their physical stats. Early on during E3, I asked John Capozzi what the two most important rogue stats were, and he replied that it was probably dexterity and intelligence. Later I was told that it was instead dexterity and strength. 2 different takes on what is actually important to a class from 2 different devs. John said Intelligence because he probably was stressing the importance of Perception. The other was probably stressing the meele damage aspect of the class.

Interesting to see that melee types will have to consider choosing to put points in their Melee abilities or Intelligence. I found this here: A warrior putting points in Intelligence? Never thought I'd ever see that happen.

[Aazenius]

It is a bit like chess. Action and reaction, moves, countermoves. These mechanics are built into every system in Vanguard, and maybe nowhere can they be better illustrated than in combat. The mid level group combat we were shown included an impressive amount of information being displayed by the UI. As your character's perception skill rises, you won't just see your current target when multiple mobs attack. You will actually have an opponent's group window, very much like your own group window, which can show you all of the mobs, their status, and even what they are casting or attacking with.

This can be found here I found the text in bold to be interesting.

[Camerous]

I have always thought warriors should need to be smarter because let's face it...a stupid warrior is a dead warrior most of the time.

As for the group window for multiple mobs...wow that sounds real cool and is news to me. :-)

[Guanott]

Wow... this is going to be a pain in class making now. Long ago in eq, I made a rogue. I dumped points into intelligence and dexterity because I thought being smart would help. /sigh
Well, in this case, the system is going to be based on a lot more then brute strength, which is good. Nice to see a way to implement as many stats to each class, rather than only focusing on one or two primary necessities.
Kudos!

[Pirotess]

Aye Guanott. After playing EQ1 from release to the conquering of Uqua it always bugged me that the only stats that mattered towards the end were HP/Mana and AC. Everything else was pretty much always at cap so getting more of them had zero benefit. Even while we were in the Kunark era the only other stat to really matter to a Wizard was int. We didnt need Str or Cha or any of the other stats. There was a rumor for a bit that dexterity helped us but I think it was disproven over time. I'm very happy I'll have to balance my stat augmentations, that means more choices to make over time and thats always a good thing since it enables characters of the same class to differentiate from each other.

[Aazenius]

I don't think it will be that bad. Players will just have to work at improving their perception... which will improve their overall effectiveness in combat. So naturally players will want to increase that anyways. I think it's a neat idea that you can counter someones combat moves or spell casting based on how good your perception abilities are.

[Guanott]

Yep, that's part of the reason why I left EQ. Stats were all capping at some 300 number, while expansions only seemed to bring higher hp/mana/ac totals. Hopefully they don't throw stats around as generously as they did in eq... otherwise than focusing on broader stat options; we go to the whole hp/ac ordeal.

[Khalathwyr]

I like this addition. I only hope that there is some tactical use to the information learned about your foes as opposed to it being informational only.

[Irvyn]

There will be some use, as you will learn skills from mobs when you fight them. You may never learn a certain skill if you never fight a certain mob.

[Khalathwyr]

In theory, true. However, I don't think it'll be too long until spoiler sites post such information. "X Creature has Y ability. I learned Y abiity fighting them when my perception was at Z". Then the next person comes along and says they leanred it at Z-1, and the next at Z-3, and so on and so forth, until they narrow down the actual number your perception has to reach in order to capture the skill.

What I would like to see is a random factor that is assigned per account, akin to the random taper that was applied in Asheron's Call at it's release. Randomly assign each skill a base target number for learning. Then randomly assign a base target number modifier that falls in a specified range. It would look something like this:

Actual Number= Base Number(r) + Random Number(r) (Number selected from a range -15 to +30).

That way it's highly improbable that any two people that know each other will learn a given skill at the same perception level. Some people just learn things quicker than others.