With respect to Role Playing Games, how much should stats grow during the course of the game?

For example, do you prefer it like Baldur's Gate (or almost any AD&D based game) where your stats pretty much remain constant during the course of the game?

Or would you prefer something like Disgaea, where your stats might start in the teens or even lower, but eventually (after many hours of play) reach the millions?

Or do you prefer an in-between option, like in a typical Dragon Quest game, where stats might start in the single digits or teens but reach the low triple digits by end-game?

I'm not keen on D&D style, I'm far more used to JRPG stat growth and stats that don't change much or at all during the game don't sit right with me.

I've never played Disgaea but I doubt I would be all that keen on that system either, so I suppose the in between of moderate stat growth is probably my preference.

Really I just like to feel like my characters are improving and see the results of that.

I've played Pokémon so my style is SOMEWHAT like Disgaea: you start at like 10 in each stat, but at the end you reach the hundreds. Not insane, but significant.

My preference of how characters stats should improve would be.....

easy...

see The Elder Scrolls 3, Morrowind.

I thought that was just about a perfect combination of how and how much stats could improve. Just MHO of course.

I'd say that's more like Dragon Quest, albeit with a somewhat higher expected end-game level (about 50-60 in Pokemon compared to 40 or so in Dragon Quest 3+).

Disgaea, on the other hand, takes you up to around level 100 (with stats potentially breaking a thousand) by the end of the main game, and into the quadruple digit levels in the post-game.

I don't really care about what numbers we've got, though keeping to low numbers helps make things clear sometimes, but what they mean.

I like to feel an actuall improvement, not just some abstract number increase. I want new skills to be unlocked, new perks, new options. I'm playing Shadowrun Hong Kong right now, and the Shadowrun games are a nice example of that- numbers are kept relatively low, but every atribute or skill point feels like it matters. It may unlock a new skill, or a new etiquette (basically knowledge in some particular area for use in conversations) or some unforseen options to solve quests. Funny, I was just recently playing Morrowind, and I got kinda bored and took a break in part exactly because I thought the character progression kinda sucks. Yeah, my stats increase, but it doesn't feel any different. I swing my sword exactly the same. I block better, but I don't really block at all- the game does that automatically. I move a little (very litle) faster. At level 16 I don't really feel at all different than on level 1 :P

I like at least a little bit of stat growth as you go, to help correct some mistakes one might have made during character generation or to take your character in a different direction. Done well, it can help with the notion of playing a role.

Pace-wise I simply enjoy having something visibly improved or unlocked at each (1h-2h) gaming session.

I would say that this relates more to the distribution of stat growth, rather than the amount.

Some games favor focusing heavily on one stat, resulting in characters with rather lopsided stats. (Disgaea is actually an example of this in a way; it is common, when transmigrating, for a player to put all the bonus points into ATK, resulting in that one stat being much higher than the other stats.)

One aspect of a growth system you can look at is this: Does raising one stat make it harder to raise levels? If character A has 99 STR and 5 INT, and character B has 4 STR and 5 INT, can character A raise her INT as easily as character B? In a game where you get stat points to distribute at level up, the answer is no, as character A's level is higher, making it harder for her to gain more levels. In something like a SaGa game, the answer is yes, as there's no levels and stat gain does not depend on other stats. (Ultima 3 is also like this; while the game has levels, level ups and stat growths are completely decoupled.)

Another thing I could mention is diminishing returns in general. In most RPGs, as your stats get higher, it becomes harder to increase them further. Some RPGs, however, don't follow this rule, including Ultima 1-3, SaGa 1 (assuming the character is a Human or Mutant), and some stat growth methods in the Disgaea series (leveling up and reincarnation have diminishing returns, but there are other ways to boost your stats (leveling up equipment, for example), and many of those methods don't.) One observation with these examples is that, except in Disgaea, after a while it becomes easy to max out stats; without diminishing returns the stat cap needs to be *really* high for it to not come into play.

I quite liked how Fallout 3 / New Vegas did stats and perks. Slow progression, but you feel the difference for each point, and different builds create very different playstyles. (But I always end up with sneaking around with a sniper rifle, no matter how I start out....)

I actually don't like the method by which your stats improve in Morrowind/Oblivion.

I much prefer Wizardry 8's approach, where the scale is similar (max of 100 with stats starting around 50), but stat growth is decoupled from skill increases and there are no missable stats.

Maybe a bit of both, assuming the player chooses where the points go.

At any rate, not sure I have a preferred amount of growth.

Though sometimes the really big numbers seem odd when you think about it. If you're a young adventuring adult and some base stat is maybe 12 out of a possible starting 20, seems weird to boost it up into the 100-range over time. Maybe some of the mental ones, sure, but some of the physical stats? Like you're 5-10x more dexterous than before? "When I'm not killing monsters, I like to work out on the balance beam and parallel bars. And practice my floor routine." From the games I've played, though, that seems to be found more in 'action RPGs'.

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I believe in the freedom of distribution.

The thing with distributable stat points is that, typically, it takes the same amount to raise a stat from 90 to 100 as it would to raise a stat from 10 to 20. This leads to the problem of overly favoring overspecialization of characters; you are going to put points into the most important stat and ignore the least important stat.

Avernum 1-6 (but not the more recent remakes) had one solution to this issue: As you raise a stat or skill, the cost to increase it increases. This makes it cheaper to raise lower stats than to raise higher ones. (This was changed because the developer felt that too many choices were made early rather than late; a better solution would have been to increase skill point gains at higher levels.)

The SaGa games (at least those that have increasable stats, and excluding the original SaGa 3) had a different approach; stats increase based off your actions, and the chance of a stat increasing is only dependent on that stat and not others. Hence, one can easily raise weaker stats without having to worry about jeopardizing your main stat.

As for your point about having the stat start with 12 out of 20 and increasing to the 100-range over time, I have never felt that to be weird, but then again I am used to playing JRPGs where that tends to be the norm rather than the exception. One way to think of it is that stats represent the character's skill and experience rather than just the character's natural talent.