You didn't play dota obviously. Imagine how a hero with maxed strength would act in a fight. He has low initiative, so he is last one to go. He has no resistances, so he easily gets stunned/knocked down from the beginning. He has low movespeed and he can't jump far enough to start damaging enemies, he also has low movespeed. So it ends up him being useless for a turn or 2. Or maybe even more if he falls under longduration debuff or disable.
So in other words heroes need to build all their stats more or less identically, which was the first issue I noted.
This game is also nothing like DOTA, and using a completely different genre as a model is a warning flag, imo.
It's a draft. Don't pick on details.
So I'm not allowed to point out potential problems and issues until the final version is posted? That hardly makes sense. Where are we? We're in an alpha test forum for D:OS 2, where it is our job to point out potential problems and issues now so they can be worked on and fixed before the final version.
You can make stats less useful with each new point invested. It is one of the ways. Another one is to make bonuses small. Lets say some ranger has 70 Finesse. We would make it 10m attack distance in the beggining with 0.2 meteres maxed by 1 point in finesse. With 70 finesse he has 22m distance for his shots and abilities. Not much, considering he has no points in strength and can't actually deal damage. Mosquito.
You're the one who just said above that a hero stacking all their points into one stat would be crippled by flaws elsewhere. So why are you setting the range bonus based on someone stacking all their points into one stat? With a starting range of 10 meters, Rangers will start in easy melee range of all enemies (2 AP = 5 meters), losing their advantage of range.
"Ranger reduces AP cost and allows dodging magic"
But the one that comes up with a lot of attacks.
There are no AP Cost reductions in D:OS 2.Another detail. I am not suggesting a good working system, it is just some other way of building it. You only need to make your spells harmless for your players. Nothing hard. But you didn't notice that int also gives chance to set some status. So you will maybe deal less damage, but you will freeze/stun/burn/knock down the enemies.
Details do matter. The type of concrete you use in the foundation when constructing a skyscraper is a detail, but get it wrong and very bad things will happen.
Additionally, spells having friendly fire is a critical part of D:OS 2's combat mechanics to encourage proper tactical play. You can't just say "oh, we'll just switch friendly fire off". Not to mention that surface mechanics would be incredibly confusing if some surfaces were harmless and identical ones were not.
Hardly.
You specifically state that the limited amount of points is the problem, so to put my point from the opposite end. Without the limited availability that forces you to choose, you get enough to do everything, so it might as well happen automatically.
If there's enough stats to get everything you want(be it a few valuable stats to get, or enough points to get everything), a leveling system based on distributing points becomes pointless.
The proposed system is fatally flawed.
I'm not arguing the merits of the proposed system, I'm arguing your flawed approach to the topic.
I called it a strawman because there is, in fact, such a thing as a middle ground in between "ALL stats equally useful" and "ONE stat is useful". You can see that in D:OS and D:OS 2, where you have STR/INT/(DEX or FIN) as primaries and other attributes as complementary to the build.
You do not have enough points to get everything, but you can afford to specialize in a few of them, and don't have to keep all of the primary attributes roughly equal to not be crippled. That is what I was trying to say.
Damage, Durability, Quickness, Abilities - main features that characterize a unit. Each stat should add every of this feature to a hero, but in a different way. Strength gives base damage, Finesse - range for the attacks, Intelligence - crit chance, Constitution - amount of action points. It could be changed, you may give a finesse-based unit lower cooldowns.
In terms of durability: strength for vitality, finesse for dodging, intelligence for avoiding disables, constitution for resistances.
Thats the logic. You should first determine what classes you want to have, than determine what each of the attribute may offer to the class and than balance all of this stuff in order to avoid super-imba classes.
This is not DOTA. This is an classless RPG. The presets on character creation are just presets which can be changed.
The current system is already doing some of what you want anyway, with STR granting some bonus physical armor and INT bonus magical armor and FIN some dodging. However, an important difference is that each of those attributes provides bonus damage for X-type weapons. That is more balanced than putting all the damage onto STR only.