Tweaking experience attenuation in Shroud of the Avatar with the aim of removing forced breaks

I disagree, Now they added lot of new skills like specialization ( which requires 24kk ) or resistance, compared to those times, also now playerbase has higher average skills than before. Raising a skill from 120 to 140 it's a pain, and, since we don't have any skill cap, ppl will continue to progress endless, trying to reach others.
Making zones provide less than 1kk xp h make the game even more boring and grindy.
I think the goal should be reducing grinding time and enhanche effectively game playability.

 

So, you do a coin-flip...

Heads, you attenuate, then wait around, because 1.3m is the hard cap of experience....

Tails, is we hard-cap respawns, so instead of doing nothing after the current 1.3m, you just now wait for respawns, which are designed to never get past the 1.3m/hr....


Uhhhhh.....
....

 

I wasn't being serious. It was just to iilustrate how much better it is now.

 

I was gonna faceplam myself so hard ..:..:..

 

Respawn doesnt have to be an issue if you make very large dungeons. I have played MMOs where 4 plus hours is required to kill the dungeon and there is no redrawn behind you, if there is it ia on a long time. And a party make up is required. In otherwords replace mad spawn with technical fights. Give more XP, no respawn and better loot

 

This kind of thing would actually be fun for a group of people.

 

With all due respect, this just exasperates the problem of forced breaks by, let's say, twenty-four times the current issue. If this went in effect I would go from earning a bunch of exp in 15 minutes and having nothing to do with the rest of my hour to earning a bunch of exp in an hour or two and having nothing to do for the rest of my day. A hard cap is a hard cap and will always have this same issue. Cap the experience once a week if you want, and then I play SotA only on Monday and do something else for the rest of my week.

The problem is we have a system that rewards hard work from players by forcing them to play less and less the better they get. Am I the only person who recognizes how absolutely insane it is, from a business perspective, to encourage the most avid players of your game to play less? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

My suggested change would keep attenuation and also remove forced breaks. If, as Chris says, attenuation must remain in place until they sort out the design for their dungeons, why not remove the forced breaks?

 

You take a break because there is no other thing you want to do aside from XP grinding. Hard-core XP grinders who's only game is to grind XP will never feel gain rate is satisfactory in a system where the skill levels are designed to come slower and slower. People want to cap in a capless system.

There is now a scoreboard that proves who the ultimate grinders are. A couple of guys on there are insanely better at grinding than everyone else and I think they deserve a special title, emote, and cloak for it.

If you award people who grind with something cool like a special title or weapon or spell or something, that will be a cap to reach in a capless system because it's a cap that always moves, but does nto contribute to power-creep.

 

Perhaps if the attenuation were a real attenuation and not an hard cap of 1.3kk would not have reached this critical point of several forced breaks in a day.

 

My problems are:
1 i don't want forced breaks
2 if it requires 20 milions to lvl up a skill means i have to grind around 20h.
I hate the fact the game force me to play 20 h to lvl up a skill while i know with my skills and experience i can do it much more faster.
With a daily cap, let's say 24m daily, i Will grind for prolly 4h to reach my cap, after that i have time to craft, pvp and so on.
I think The average mmorpg player plays around 3-4h daily, so put a cap, if you have to, that atleast make them play 4h.

FYI i would prefer no attenuation at all, cap in xp and loot is ridicolous

 

I don't like this, having attenuation over a long period of time does not balance the zones for XP.
Once you are at the last wave of Vauban Pass Control Point you would attenuate a full party of 8 for a whole day in I reckon about an hour (hard to know for sure).

That control point is fun, so don't want to nerf it. But you would not have to be "hardcore" to get full day attenuation in an hour probably. Suddenly everyone has PUGs for vauban pass, plays for an hour or so and logs off for the day. How is that better....


Regards
Spung

 

Isn't this the whole point of soft cap and diminishing returns, sounds like working as designed.

If you continue to level skills in the same amount of player time (because you are doing harder content and getting more XP) then where is it soft cap capping you?

Player are supposed to be able to catch up close enough on the power curve to COMPETE in a reasonable amount of time.
If the power increase per player time investment does not diminish the above statement is no longer true.


Regards
Spung

 

I dont think moving attenuation to 4h would mess up much

I do think that if there are alot of being thinking they are being forced to take breaks, if this changes, a side effect would be that alot more gold will be generated in game causing some inflation

I think using the scoreboard to generate rewards would be a better way to reward continuous grinding in some way. Titles, trophy decos, wearables, etc

 

If the point of the soft cap is allowing player with less time to play to catch ppl with more time to play it is not working as intended at all.
Ex. If player Y has just 2h for playing daily can't do more than 2.6 milion daily, if player X has 8h daily for playing He can go up to 10.4kk xp daily. After a week player Y did 18.2kk xp and player X got 72.8kk xp. At the end player Y will never catch player X.
Imo attenuation as it is now advantage players which play a lot and have lot of time while it disavantage player with less play time, and i Think this is not the goal of attenuation itself.
Hope i explained myself and what my concerns are.

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...tion-a-possible-solution.156428/#post-1241724

 

Offering the possibility to catch up might be one part of the reason this mechanic exists but lets take a look at progress without attenuation by using your examples:

The Casual played 8h a week with round about 3M exp per hour and got that way 24M exp during the week.
The non-casual played 56h a week with at least 4M exp per hour and got that way at least 224M exp during the week.

24M vs 18M for the casuals is not that different but 224M vs 72M is a huge difference making it clear that slowing down the drifting apart lvls of casuals and heavy grinding players by slowing down the growth of very active avatars might be another reason. The devs have to create content once in a while but without attenuation T8 for the first lvl of tartarus would still fit for casuals but for the very active avatars it would have to be at least T14 to be some kind of challenge. Whatever they would create it would be either way too strong or way too weak for one or the other group.
But I think assuming all avatars are currently getting 1.3M exp per hour is already a false assumption. I would guess the average exp gain per hour is way below 1M exp even if you would just count avatars with at least lvl 80.

 

So my understanding is this is NOT what the soft cap is for. If you wanted players with less time to catch players with more time you would use a HARD cap. SOFT cap is to allow the player with less time to be competitive, but not on an equal footing to the player with more time.

True enough. But it is not about amount of XP. It is about the power increase you can buy with that XP.
So if both players start at the same time.
Week 1, massive power gap between player Y and X.
Week 10, that power gap is smaller, but still significant.
Week 50, that power gap is is tiny and insignificant.

In fact I would say by week 50, build, deck, gear, and player skill would be the deciding fact in power of the char against the other character. If this is not true for given skill etc, then that is balance issue of the skill, nothing to do with attenuation.

So attenuation is about balancing zones/scenes for XP. The diminishing returns of the soft cap on skills deals with the power gap based on XP earned.

If you make the attenuation window too large, then you are not limiting XP from high XP return zone/scenes. You are just making those high XP scenes even more appealing and the other zone may as well not exist.

So if i can get 5 mill XP per hour in 1 scene and 1 mill XP in another and don't attenuate until 5 mill XP, guess where everyone is. If attenuation does not "waste" the active player time from a XP perspective, it does not do its job of balancing XP gains across different scenes. It necessary to limit the XP of the player active time for high XP zone to make them in line with lower XP zones. Else they spend all there active time in high XP zones and lower XP zones are worthless (what a waste of dev time that would be, or even more dev required to keep trying to balance every zone to be competitive on XP with every other zone).

Attenuation should be set at whatever the devs think is a reasonable MAXIMUM amount of XP a player should get from a scene. With this global limit, it frees scene designers to make interesting fights and scenes without having to worrying about ensuring they are not unbalanced XP wise against every other scene in the game.


Regards
Spung

 

Man, in your reasoning you're totally missing the fact that it is not a soft cap like you're saying, it is an hard 1.3kk exp per hour cap and the average player can reach it in 15-25 mins, while an end game player can reach it in 10-15 mins.

Also an example that could explain what is really happening at the moment is:

Player X is not a casual and plays for 8 hours/day, he's able to get 1.3kk exp 8 times in a day (10.4kk in a day)
Player Y is a casual and plays for 2 hours/day, he's able to get just 1.3kk 2 times in a day (2.6kk) cause attenuation system.

This means that with the current system, Player X can do 54.6kk more exp per week compared to the casual Player Y.

 

Yes, and i'm saying that balancing that a hardcore player with more XP than a casual player with less XP being able to compete is NOT the role of attenuation. So is irrelevant to attenuation conversation.

That is role of diminishing returns on skill progression.

The soft cap i referred to is the SKILL soft cap, nothing to do with attenuation.

I think people forget why attenuation was added in the first place. If you remember it was to allow scenes to be able to respawn faster and be more interesting, and allow the scene designers freedom of putting whatever spawns they thought would be fun in a scene. Without them becoming unbalanced in XP returns against the other scenes in the game. There was a time before attenuation when they had to keep nerfing scenes making them more boring and less challenging because they where fun but gave easy excessive XP compared to other scenes. Especially lower level scenes with fast respawns that could be steam rolled by high level player for HUGE amounts of XP per hour. Attenuation was the answer to that problem. it was never the answer, and ever intended to be as far as I know, the answer to the problem of casuals keeping up with hardcore players.

The role of attenuation is to ensure that scene X and scene Y is balanced in the amount of XP it gives. Which it does. I can go to UT, Ravensmoor, Taranus, Ruined Keep, Spectral Peaks, the Rise, Krull and a few other. All give me different challenges BUT are balanced on XP return per hour.


Regards
Spung

 

And not all players (without grouping at UT) even attenuate. People who play a ton will have more xp; they earned it so all good by me. I just wish I was not discouraged from playing because when I get attenuated I feel like I should stop else I spend my pool down hunting. Equality of outcome should never be desired. End attenuation. Since levels get so silly expensive and the skill gains so modest at high levels we don’t need attenuation. It is redundant and discourages people from playing, which as a game for profit seems odd to me: I would think they would reward players.