Decay: Worst Mechanic Ever

You bring up a good point. I myself would limit the total skill points just like UO would. But I can see a cap per skill also in maybe a greater scheme of things. As I said I would like a hard cap of skill points. But once reached you could maybe do a quest and unlock it and make it a soft cap. Then the skill decay would come in and you would have to work to stay above and beyond the gm status. How many skills and how high you could get them would be up to you,but you still would not be punishing the average player trying to get to gm. I hope I am making sense as the spirits are taking hold now lol.

 

something i'm not clear on, having seen several examples (including my own) of decay: can you actually go down a level? ..because if not, if it just puts a damper on progress to the next level but doesn't take away any level you've already learned, i'm okay with that.

 

What @Themo Lock says is that the higher your level the more severe the penalty. If you lose 1/6 at level 10 its not so bad. If you lose 1/6 of a level at level 100 its a significant difference.

 

that doesn't really answer the question. if i have only barely level 100 and lose 1/6th, does it knock me back to 99 or does it put my progress bar negative for 101?

 

I am not positive on this. I do think it would put you back to 99 though or some where close to it. It would not give you a catchup to 101. (I dont think) Sorry, I just do not have that info.

 

well at the moment it seems puts you in negative for 101, which is confusing and possibly a bug

 

What I observed, it's the latter. You're (invisibly!) put into a negative value, and you have no idea when you will see that green bar again.

 

i much prefer it to being dropped to 99! it means no matter how much decay i accrue, i won't ever lose an actual level.

 

no argument from me here

 

OP:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...worst-mechanic-ever.42017/page-13#post-468991

Maybe we need a recap. What we are really talking about is this:

A NON-GM crafter. Sinking in? Not a ThemoOfTheWorld insane robot. A run of the mill NINETYTHREE smelting level player taking two weeks away from the smelting station. Not a Grandmaster. Someone just like me and you. A casual player, if you want.

Stops smelting because RL.

After a while, the poor soul reapproaches the smelting table, smelts an ingot and *poof* goes into such a deep black hole of negative 94 level that it takes 500 ingots to start recovering.

500 ingots.

FIVE FREAKING HUNDRED INGOTS!

I.e. 2'000 ores - or 500 ores + 6'000 metal scraps. Did you ever try to mine that much, just to see a tiny sliver of green again on the NINETYFOUR level progression?

Is decay not punitive?

And what would be punitive, then? Two months in Guantanamo? Sheesh.

 

I have not seen someone drop a level. I have seen a friend say that they have not been able to get any experience (green bar) in a skill after decay. This was in smelting and they smelted 500 ingots (at least) and did not see any jump in the green bar. This was with smelting in the 90's. So... this is a huge part of this post. At a high level if you lose a big chunk of your skill and not able to see any skill gain after 500 ingots (2000 ore) then there is a problem.

This brings up a possibility of negative XP at a lvl, rather then going down a level. Only staff can tell if this happened tho. (would probably be bug tho so dont get panties in a bunch)

EDIT: Just saw your post Katrina, and that player is the one im talking about. I let them smelt all my ore and they did some on the side which is where the 2000+ ore came from. They did not gain at all

 

what about the players that real life takes them out of the game they get in to the game a few days week later get to play for an 1hour or 2 then have to go back to school work etc. and cant play for a while more. when they log in the next time they will be put deeper and deeper into a hole each time they log in and don't recover the negative loss they accrued from the previous log.


(this is what my daughter referenced earlier... all her work she was able to do in the time she had to play was lost with skill decay... when she was able to play she hadn't recovered the decay from the last log in and her new decay added to it. she does not have enough time to play the game to recover all her skill decay when she has to log out and not able to play again before decay gripe's her again putting her further and further in the hole.)

 

okay, so the hole needs a bottom. easy fix. it's supposed to not take more than 1/6th of a level, how about if it knocks you negative you can't go below negaive 1/6th?

 

If decay continues, I think it's fair to give us some notification it has happened.. I don't like NOT knowing something is being taken from me. I think I'd 'feel' if I got rusty at the skill that was reduced.

Again tho, I'm confused.. does decay accrue for skills unused over a long period of time, as in I am using bludgeon and heavy armour mostly, but when I go to put on my light armour after not using it for a while, will I have decay, will more than one skill decay separately? I log in daily, this affects people less if they don't play as often?

I guess it doesn't matter much for now, as this thread seems to be likely used for ideas behind closed doors. I am sure we will find a substantial change for the next release. Lots of great ideas.. I think a combination of ideas is the key.. but all we can do is try a few more things!

Whatever changes, and whenever it does, I just hope the 'way it works' is explained clearly in the current manual.

 

or you could get rid of the thing that caused the hole. No one wants to repeat grinding, over and over.

 

You need to use everything you have trained regularly. If you only use a certain skill every 3 or 4 days it will steadily go down on occasional use or death.

 

I personally would describe my self as an adventure class,
i love exploring new places in the game. I gather to resources to fund my expeditions. I find myself linked to projects for various guilds at different times... early after this last wipe i was grinding lumber for a project then i grinded block and iron ore for (athanil's) arena then i was back to wood for a different project back to iron for trying to make my plate armor.

But at each project i neglected the other gathering skills as i spent 2 solid days in a mine or in a shardfall gathering wood. now i might not skin a animal for 3 days at a time then skin one as he got in my way to a destination. be another 3 days before i skin another one. same can be said with the iron. i was farming trees i might grab an ore hear and there but it was normally a day or two between.

the same can be said on the refining said exp shown above. but add the fact that was only one skill measured... did that not happen to all his skills... guilds build amazing new things in the game and burn through a certain resource in large chunks and tend to get as many people involved across guild lines to help. while this is going on one would safe to surmise that we are singularly connected to that project and let other skills decay cause we are trying to help our friends guild mates and other guild's. then add in production... i needed 50 wood panels to test an idea so for two days i grinded wood then processed it and created wood panels. guess what i did nothing else. so decay on everything other than those 3 sections...

as i see it today this creates a need to create a daily log in and a list of chores to do on each log in just to maintain your skill lvls you all ready earned....

some days i want to pvp or rp or just muck around and kill bears or skeletons but if i chose to do that and not maintain all my skills the decay will eat you.

i was originally for it only lost 2 days max if you didn't log in and now i see its by actual skill use not that you logged into the game. this will create such a black hole on avatars in game the only way to recover will be to delete the character and start over. it would be cheaper to do that than try to regain your decay.

 

I played uo and I'm against it. I'm neutral territory here... I don't want skill cap and I don't want dailies... There's a happy balance to be found we just have to trust that they're going to find it.

And to the people giving smart behind remarks... I was in the conversation where Chris told a few of us its our job to point out problems and his job to find solutions. Themo is spot on to say what he did and say that's what @Chris wants. (That said I'm always giving suggestions lol... Themo listens better I guess)

 

Did you notice how everyone put their mind together then how everyone's style has granulated to the point where we clearly see everyone's qualities.

Everyone's happy then, settled.

The constructive question is then : Why are you against a skill cap ?

 

I think the best argument against a skill cap is that skill caps run contrary to organic advancement, and instead benefit strict builds.

Ultima Online is a good example for this. When you create your first character in UO you grab skills left and right, the advancement is organic, you simply get whatever skills you as using at the time. However, you very quickly hit the cap and realize you have to make decisions on what you want to advance further. Your character ceases to be organic at that point, and instead becomes planned out. Instead of simply being better at using swords because you've always favored them over daggers you now decide that you are going to have no skill whatsoever with daggers, and in fact never ever fight with a dagger, and instead be a grandmaster with the sword, and always use a sword, because that's simply more powerful.

Before long most characters in UO end up being boiled down to just seven GM skills and nothing else, because that's how you get the most powerful characters. These characters are great at what they do, but their builds are usually the result of consulting forums and doing calculations and talking strategy with people, not the result of simply living in the world and picking up abilities proportionally to what you're actually doing.