I think the xp decay thing is a really dumb idea

I agree six. It's too forgiving if they wanted to use decay to prevent people from getting every skill. They need decay to get worse as you gain total skill points so people have to make decisions about which skills they want to focus on.

People will choose less skills with higher ranks just like they did in UO with a system that keeps track of total skill points and applies ever increasing decay based on total skill points.

 

In my opinion, if the dev really needs to do anything right now with the skill decay is to make it even more clearer on what it actually does and whom it actually significantly affects. Perhaps even point out how much skill decay are we expecting might help (or would it be too much meta-gaming?)?

Unfortunately, it wasn't working correctly until the bug was detected and corrected in the last release. Otherwise, people would probably get used to it by now, considering it was toned down from accruing up to 3 days worth down to 4 hours.

 

Yeah and that's all cool and stuff but as @Sixclicks pointed out already it doesn't make your death meaningful.
The decay system as it is at the moment doesn't make any sense.

If you want death to be meaningful I guess it would make more sense to tie it to item decay. Would be good for many reasons but I am not going to derail the topic.

So to me it seems this isn't about meaningful death. That's about progression blocking. But as a progression block the system doesn't make much sense too.

Either we set the decay much higher, which would be the next punishing mechanism in this already quite taxing game. Or we just scrap the idea of skill decay and come up with a better progression block.

 

But I want to level everything if im only going to have 1 character with multiple decks/gear... and I already have everything

In the pre-trammel UO, you could GM everything but the more skills you have at a higher level, the harder is was to level anything else, and every so often a skill that wasnt used would lose skill because of all the increases you were getting elsewhere but this didnt limit you to a few skills, you could still raise everything, it just got harder and harder. For example, everyone who pvped would go lvl magic and magic resist first so it would get capped easy. I on the other hand didnt know how the system worked and lvled magic resist last and lets just say it cost me a fortune in raegants and self-casts on myself to just get to 60 cause i already had a lot of skills at 100. But then they implemented the skill cap in which only permitted you a certain amount of points where if you gained anywhere, the point would be taken somewhere else when the cap was reached. I dont like this, I want to be able to cap everything if I can only make 1 character. If one day I want to play a dual dagger wielding necromancer, I can, and the next I want to be Legolas... i can. But a skill cap would block that. Skill decay on the other hand permits it. If their intent is to prevent people from capping everything, they need to let people make different characters. Why would I buy a game only to test out 1 character template??? Why would starting as a purist mage prevent me from enjoying the possibility one day of becoming a grandmaster armsman? I dont want to buy multiple accounts :*(

And to be clear, there are "hard caps", "soft caps" and "decay".
When someone says "soft cap" im assuming they are talking about the original UO pre-trammel style, not the "hard cap" style where you only had 700 points to distribute. But there are also soft caps for individual skills. Please correct me if I am wrong, cause I when I hear people talking about caps, im not entirely sure of what they are implying or what their version of a "cap" is.

So far, there is no hard or soft cap in Sota for the total skills, except for each individual skill is soft capped (going to 200 is pointless, softcap is what is regarded as a cap that is attainable and meaningless to increase (currently 80 and 100).

 

How is losing exp not making your death more meaningful? If you die, you dont want to die again cause it costs something. Because its exp and *not gold* or *mats* you think there is a difference but there isnt... You will still need to grind back to repair. I dont see a difference in progression as you say if you switch from exp decay to item decay. At least with exp decay, dying multiple times wont leave you naked and poor.

And I am all for making the penalty more harsh as you say

 

MORE meaningful , yes.
Meaningful, no.
I, honestly, don't care about this 0,0000whatever%
It's too small to care about.
As I said: this isn't death penalty. There are a lot of things out there in the mmo universe that work MUCH better as death penalty.
The decay system as whole system (including the you don't play, you get decay as well part) was invented to slow down your game progress.
And I don't see it working as intended if you keep that in mind .

 

Meaningful death would imply full loot upon death
But that system was done away with because the wolves would feast upon the sheep and it kills the ******** player base which most likely is about 90% of the users.

Portalarium is stuck in other words

 

Shhhh we don't use the evil c-word
Well yes indeed. I agree, though this is of course the far end of the meaningful-spectrum

 

The same way losing gold isn't meaningful. Or even full loot in UO wasn't meaningful. It is a cost to dying, if you lose gold you go out and get more gold, you lose exp you go out and get more exp, you lose items, you go out and get more items.

People bring up UO as exciting with full loot. But if you remember way back then they had regular armor and exceptional armor. That was it, there were no special items people grinded for, for days, weeks, years. All people lost was time. And they replaced everything cheaply with more time. There was not a single death in UO that had meaning to me.

Taking exp is just another time sink for grinding and a rediculous concept, because they can not turn on full loot since people are paying cash for items and they set stuff up as way to rare to replenish cheaply.

Meanjngful, deaths in these games doesn't exist through punishing people for dying. The most meaningful deaths will come from the scenes. More areas like chilblains where if you dye you start over, keeping someone alive to Rez the rest of the group, etc. and unfortunately through the PVP updates with objective based group combat. To say skill decay makes death meaningful is just rediculous.

As for Cpping skills with decay, it really just depends on where there cap is, if we get to stable state and my time investment only allows me to carry 1 to 2 GM's unless I sit everyday in 1 area grinding exp for the weekend to do something fun and die a few times. I would be pissed, turn this game off and never return.

 

The concept is to give "staying alive" value and "dying" a negative value. If you dont directly subject a player to a negative value upon death, of any kind, death becomes meaningless. Adding ANY negative value to death, whether it be time, exp or gold, or even real money, directly gives meaning to dying. Just because you dont see it as "more meaningful" doesnt change the math of the economics. Full loot from UO gave value to every item in the game because of the simple fact that you could lose the items. Once acquired, you didnt have them in permanence such as in EQ for instance. This means that items can only be valued for how hard they are to acquire. Losing them from breaking or death, INCREASES their value. Same applies to EXP. Being able to lose exp upon death gives more value to EXP, thus death becomes more meaningful. But if you are a nihilist, this is all pointless

p.s.: There were magical items in UO, but because of full loot, they were always parked in the bank or would travel from dead body to dead body like herpes until they would find their home in a looters bank/home. Nobody wanted to risk losing their only vorpal sword. I personaly only took out my magic halberd when I would travel in a group I could trust. This made the halberd very special

 

No actually do believe real life has meaning. If this was real there would be no resurrection, and we would have real consequences. This should be fun not a chore, forcing additional grinding in this way is just pushes people not to explore and try more difficult things. just forces more grinding instead of fun game play.

They could learn a lot from the path UO took to get where it is. The why's behind trammel, and insurance that kept the game going when competition came out. But it seems like they are trying to re-hash some original concepts from the begginning of UO that would have buried the game had they not been changed. But then again maybe I am wrong and losing exp on death will make the game fun... Wtf.

 

You said it.
I dont have fun when a game feeds me with a spoon. Sorry

 

So, something must have changed over the last 4 days since r35 started. Now when I die, I only lose 200-400 xp, not 4000. I can live with 200-400 each time I die. It's enough to make me want to avoid death, but I don't #tableflip.

 

Unless UO changed after I left the character maxed out at 700 points (if I remember correctly) and only reds took a penalty upon death in an attempt to slow the PK. Currently shroud doesn't have cap, and all PVP is optional so not really a great comparison.

Honestly though imo either they need to hard cap the skill levels to around 2500 (25 GMs) or increase decay to the point that it's incredibly difficulty exced or maintain those levels. To be clear from the PVE perspective I don't care if you have 200 gms to my 5. But from a PVP perspective I want the new & semi casual to have a chance or PVP will only be viable for those that can invest tons of time in the game, leading to fewer new players, reduce fun, and less revenue for port.

 

there are other ways to make a game difficult without just adding ridiculous, tedious concepts that will just bother new players.

 

Yet PVP deaths don't get skill decay. Meaning that PVP is the most ******** activity in this game. You need to focus your attention on getting skill decay added to deaths in PVP :3 PVPers are starting to look like total wimps.

 

Yes plz

 

That's because there is no pvp.
All we have are tourneys and agreed brawls. And even that would die out soon if you add skill decay.

 

Why would adding a meaningful death to PVP make it die out???

 

Exactly.

I thought "meaningful death" was a thing PVP people threw about as part of their whole desire to experience actions that have consequences...why would finally getting their "meaningful death" stop them from playing the way they want to play, with meaningful actions and whatnot.

PVPers are looking like a bunch of nancys, given what PVE players and crafters have to put up with.