please explain endless progression to me.

why do people want endless progression and no caps at all, neither a softcap aka deathdecay (what sure need to be adjustet to prevent outleveling it and just aren't affected) nor a hard cap.

I want you to explain me how new players or players that will join in in 2 or 3 or 4 years will accept that the progression more or less never ends and they will allways behind the curve? - please dont come up with math of 147 years to do it to 200 and for 201 there is no math.

second please explain to me how this is good for economy and pvp if to be pvp ready takes a normal gamer (10-20 hrs/week) the generous casual gamer - 2 or more years to get competetive?

and please explain me if:

- you just dont get it?
- you just ignore it and want to be allways ahead because you have earned it with your early efforts
- you exactly want it because you like to "own" people.

the people against death decay come sometimes up with alternatives what are good suggestions, maybe at least additionally to deathdecay, because extrem hardcore players already submitted they can outlevel even the harshest decay.

what i dont get is that this game for any MP purposes strongly need some balancing and adjustment, but a lot of people dont want to adapt and instead want to progress further nonstop.

another question:
slowing progress seems not the problem - thee feeling to have to restock already earned XP seems to annoy people.
but slowing down is not capping, either soft capping, but caps are needed to have a healthy playerbase and economy and balance in PvP. Not?
Then please explain to me why not.

i'm a casual - allsay i suffer most of it - i do not - i suffer from the gap between powergamers and casuals atm, but death decay is one first approach to solve this problem, but it's clearly thats not enough.

Please explain me why endless progression is so vital to your game!

and the most important - please tell me what you are loosing and how many GM you have, how many 100+ skills you have, and how many XP you can do in an hour.
And please tell me how high is your pool and if you lost levels of skills or just pool what only slows down your progression, what is the same some want instead of decay imho.

Death decay only slows you - we need way more balancing and players limiting nerfs if we want a healthy MP or MMO Mode imho.

If people disagree, i would like to understand that and know if they dont want it and dont care for new or casuals or balance at all or if they want it, but another way implemented.

 

Progression adds a lot of fun to the game. It's nice to have something to show for playing, even if it's something small.

The people that would be turned off by being behind after starting late are the same people that would get bored and leave without progression.

 

Life until death

Edit: and even then...

 

dont get it by language - something like live life to the fullest? I know you are not against the decay so curious what you want to say - sorry my english isnt that good to get sayings or metaphors most of the time

 

to me its fun on the cost of others and i disagree to the second point you made, because i know people like me to which progress is seconded.
Priority is immersing, rp, adventure with friends and still have a challenge and be nearly equal strong etc.. balanced groupplay to say and not one solo it and others just get the group XP and are meaningless for the fight.

 

Continued growth, even if only barely perceptible, creates a good feeling in me when playing. I'm okay with the soft caps and would probably accept no cap but I can understand having one. Hard cap is antithesis to me.

I don't want to have to math out my character skills to make them fit in a specific container. I don't play the optimizer game and it isn't fun for me. The softer decay system provides a bit of a cushion for encountering that limit barrier. Though I haven't hit it yet.

I've never calculated my XP earn in an hour. Usually measuring my playtime by gold because I have lot taxes to keep up on.

I have one GM, but that is tailoring, so not really one that counts here. My Water tree is largely 60-80 in skill level. Sun, Earth, and Air are all at 40-60 in level. Swords passive around 60, except primary swords skill which is 81. Shields is at 50-60 for passives + Deflect. Adv Level is 68.

The change to suffer half of decay per death helped alleviate a lot of pain. But still feels fairly punishing if I'm only on for an hour or two per day. The math feels balanced for the people grinding out XP and as a player who doesn't do that it can sometimes feel like an uphill battle. My pain alleviation may also be from a lot of down-level adventuring with a friend who is just starting up. So death has been less frequent. Might have to provide an update when we're back to regularly tackling more challenging areas.

 

Life until death is endless progression. The game reflects life.

 

I have trouble understanding this discussion. With your way of playing the game you would always be 'outgamed' by others. No matter if there is a hard, soft or no cap at all.

 

I think one misunderstanding is most who appear to be against the death decay are distinctly NOT for no cap and endless progression (they propose other alternatives to the overly punishing tactic of death decay). Also, although the devs repeatedly say softcap=death decay, I don't believe they are necessarily tied to each other. But I may also not be the target of this thread as I'm pro hard cap (I just gave up on pushing it as it is obviously against devs desire).

For many people (myself included), it isn't about balancing or comparing yourself to others in the game. It's about the fun and personal acheivement/accomplishments. Being able to achieve a top level or get above whatever the perceived peak is (in this game it is getting to GM status in a skill or numerous skills) gives fulfillment to the time invested (for lack of a better way to phrase it).

Specifically, it is NOT good for the economy or PvP in my opinion (again one reason I'm a hard cap person). The imbalance creates a large gap which griefers (those who like to abuse mechanics to punish or harass other players) exploit and enjoy (specifically focusing on those who enjoy griefing in all aspects as their play style). For some, they actually enjoy the challenge of overcoming a stronger player and being able to attain a top level to await being toppled from the throne so they have a good reason to climb back up (PvP players that like imbalance for game mechanic motivation, not to abuse the imbalance as that would fall to the griefing side IMO).

As for economy, I see absolutely no balance or benefit to everyone being able to do it themselves, beyond the fact that people will naturally focus in different areas even if they CAN do everything, they may not want to invest the time and resources into actually getting the rare items they want to craft (lots of MMO already have this and it hasn't directly harmed the economy).

Some of those who are leveling unto no end don't may have no interest in balance because they are not into PvP or the crafting economy and just want to push themselves further for the sake of pushing themselves (extreme grinders, achievement seekers, etc.) When you focus on your own play and don't care about competing with others, this can become a driving factor. There is also a good feeling to be able to be a god among mortals when facing dangerous enemies (or at least enemies that others feel are dangerous but you can solo with minimal difficulty). This is also helpful when running friends or guildies through quests and difficult areas (in other games I intentionally keep an uber tank/healer over leveled as possible to aid those who are trying to get through tough areas without dying before the character can survive naturally, usually only in open world games).

Again, I know I'm not the target audience as such, but I hope I'm somewhat accurate on the proposed answers I have above.

 

The thing we're missing is permadeath, with some nice traits you can pass onto your offspring, as well as her inheritance.

 

I personally would like just having unlimited growth but it has at least one major drawback: it would have a huge negative impact on PvP.

 

Going with the theme of the OP (and to sate my own curiosity if I am accurate in some of my guesses above), what appeals to you about the unlimited growth aspect?

 

I guess it's the allure of continually getting better at something. I know, however, that if they removed decay then the game would lose that struggle against death. In those times when I have bit off more than I can chew, I would probably just think *oh well, I can just respawn* instead of trying my best to escape the situation.

 

What about durability hit on items in lew of exp hit?

 

If I'm using pledge or add-on gear then that's meaningless to me.

 

Considering those fall off compared to any gear easily obtained at adv level 50...
I would be fully okay with that.

Advantage pledger.. other then your self gimped pretty hard?
But win win win...
(Intention is less sarcastic thrn it reads.. im legit okay with founder gear not decaying.. since its limited in use ).

Sweet replace decsy with dur loss. Game fixed!

 

Also chiming in here: I like seeing once challenging content growing easier and easier. I actually get annoyed by the heavy trend of level scaling a lot of RPGs take on these days. I like having areas that I need to grow to meet. And once I am there, I enjoy being able to look back at areas I have outgrown and be able to effortlessly sweep through that old content. The diminishing returns of advancement in SotA makes for a very understandable slowing of reducing the difficulty of high level challenges.

But these views are almost entirely contingent on a PvE experience. I don't PvP and have no real plans or desires to. So balance across players is less important to me.

One of the death decay issues is in the risk/reward model though. When seeking economic gain as a reward, I find focusing on easier tiers to be better as I can kill and collect loot faster. The only real reason to risk higher level zones is the XP which is also that which is being risked. I feel like we still need a bit more economic incentive to explore up-level and make that xp loss more worth the risk.

 

Well said. This tends to reflect my preferred play style too.

 

Because the math inherently makes it more costly for you to maintain a lot of high skills. If you want them, you have to work for them.

Simple explanation:
- skills take more and more XP per level as you increase them
- skill effects level off more and more as you increase them
It's all about exponential and logarithmic curves.

The XP curve doesn't inherently prevent is collecting dozens of GMs. Decay works against that by making it cost more and more XP to maintain skills at higher levels.

I have been playing since persistence, and am at AL75. There are new players who have quickly gone past that in only a few months, because they have more time and care more about grinding XP. You can't do anything about people who have more time and desire to grind.

 

That and there would be no way to keep providing challenging content to never ending grinders. Plus gathering would be too easy, harming the economy.