I remember this bugged version, i guess it was 1.3xx where u had all honor shop items in chapter 1 ( easiest chapter ever then
)
but anyway, i dont think the honor shop items are strong enough for the later chapters. so remove them and do what u suggested AND the people want. I dont think the "stats idea" is bad. i didnt buy honor shop items anyway because my playstyle need a lot of lifes ^^
ok serious now, why dont u add something in between combat kings and honor shop items. in 3.3 alpha u could wear those items that gave u an extra attribute point for str/agi/int when leveling up.
So my suggestion is, instead of honor shop items u could buy some passives "books" that:
-either improve the spells or
-improve the stat gain when u lvl up
e.g.
i would definetly choose the spell improvement for phodom and galeoth. phodom, is meele, can tank a lot and has some nice spell damage potential. Galeoth is ranged, a mage and has ofc huge spelldamage.
fradz on the other hand needs to survive to fullfill his role, he is meele but his hp are terrible. so i would choose the "stats path" for him especially strength. I dont know how many times i died with fradz during boss fights with him just because some bosses cast 1 spell and he dies instantly.
the stats "passive bonus" could range from 0.5 to per "book" to a maximum of 2.5 so in total we could have 5 upgrades.
lets do some maths, fradz starts lvl 10, supposing he could get the upgrades all in chapter 2 so he would have:
40 lvls * 2.5 extra str/lvl * 25 = 4000 bonus hp at level 50.
ok that sounds
**** overpowered^^ but u could set the prize for 1 upgrade to 5 honor points or something. and these books should only focus on 1 attribute ofc.
overall its just an idea, i just loved the "extra stat point" item back in 3.3