I’d say that it depends on how the game is balanced and how useful the player considers those stats to be. Even if a certain stat isn’t objectively useless, it can feel that way in practice if the other stats seem more useful.
I think this is very important. This is a problem in tabletop D&D right now with the intelligence stat. It’s only useful to Wizards, and is essentially a dump stat for every other character, which means that, in practice, you mostly get a bunch of apparently incredibly stupid characters running around, even though a higher intelligence should be useful for every character. Maybe this is social commentary by the game designers, saying that only incredibly stupid characters would ever go out to adventure. I think it’s just bad game design.
When I first tried my hand at Dark Souls III , I was completely stumped by which starting class to pick. How was I supposed to know which attributes would be useful to me? How much of a difference does +3 Strength make? What’s the difference between Vigor and Vitality? What the fuck is Faith? Even if I just researched these things, I don’t even know what my preferred play style is going to be. All I could do was take a guess and try to make do with my probably wrong choice.
This is an aspect of the Souls series in general. These games provide minimal information up front, and you have to discover the plot and the mechanics through observation and experimentation (or by checking a wiki online, I guess). This is part of what die-hard fans love about the series. It’s definitely not friendly for new players, but if you can get over that steep learning curve, the Souls games are some of the most satisfying to play.
There is always a tradeoff with hand-holding. The more hand-holding you do, the more the player is taken out of an immersive experience. If you provide a lot of complicated stats, and then feel the need to explain them all, then you’re going to have a very different gameplay experience than if you provide a bunch of mysterious stats the players have to experiment to understand, or if you provide very few stats that the player barely has to pay attention to.
I agree with everything @grotlover2 said, but you may also want to ask, “What experience do I want my players to have?” If you imagine a game where the players are completely immersed in the setting, where they are in the world, then you’re going to want fewer stats, no hand-holding, voice acting, etc. If you want them to be focusing on stats and mathematics, then throw every stat you can think of at them plus the kitchen sink and have nice, detailed explanations for everything. That experience will be great for min-maxers who love to tweak the system and use probability distributions against the game system itself. Or you could provide something with more balance.
Also, remember, you don’t have to show the player the stats at all, if you don’t want to. They can be completely behind the scenes. I’ve always been curious to play a game where the character’s stats are obfuscated, and leveling up comes with only vague, “You feel stronger, more agile” type messages.