Skills Cap and Attenuation - A possible solution.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Antrax Artek, Jun 20, 2019.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Antrax Artek

    Antrax Artek Avatar

    Messages:
    1,002
    Likes Received:
    2,087
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Viborg
    I always hated the skill cap, but at the moment it seems to me a viable solution to overcome the problem of attenuation.

    -Skills cap level fixed to 160 (just an example number),could be 120 for specs.
    -Attenuation removal
    -General slight reduction of exp reward of every single monster
    -Occasional addition of new skills to the game.
    -New combat tree with just passive skills unlockable once the cap on a certain number or all of skills is reached, skills in this tree should be very expensive, the goal should be not to make these something mandatory but only a small boost for those who no longer have a place to put points xp because of the cap:
    • Speed: 0.1 Dex every 10 levels
    • Force: 0.1 Str every 10 levels
    • Mind: 0.1 Int every 10 levels
    • Constitution: 0.5 HP every 10 levels
    • Mentality: 0.5 Focus every 10 levels
    Not being at all a walk in the park to bring all the skills of the game to 160 I think removing the attenuation but adding a cap could be a decent solution.

    About the speech of casual players worried about attenuation removal, I would like to say that the current attenuation system is the bigger enemy for any casual.
    Who is able to play 10-15 minutes per hour of the day has a big and continuous advantage, compared to those who may dedicate 1 or 2 hours (in total) to it.

    Example:

    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.

    Without attenuation instead the casual Player Y could bring into play several variables to maximize his possible experience in his two hours of gameplay for example organizing a good party to get faster exp in less time in a harder zone.
    At the same time with the skill cap and not attenuation would be much easier and faster for casuals to complete their specific build (becoming competitive) and the advantage of hardcore would be more to be able to be a generalist.

    PS: Having a real attenuation that really reduce slightly experience gained and not a experience cap fixed to 1.3kk/hour like it is now can be another simple solution, you can keep grinding just get less xp (less does not mean nothing or close to nothing).

    What do you think? As usual, all feedbacks are welcome.

    I beg you to refrain from any flaming and offtopic activities.
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2019
  2. Jefe

    Jefe Avatar

    Messages:
    905
    Likes Received:
    1,007
    Trophy Points:
    93
    So in one of his streams I think Chris mentioned that attenuation free zones will be coming. So I think attenuation will be addressed. I believe it was mentioned in relation to episode 2 content release as a slow roll out and then expand as needed.
     
    Boris Mondragon likes this.
  3. Mimner

    Mimner Avatar

    Messages:
    152
    Likes Received:
    494
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Back in the R21 era we had a system in place for skill point allocation which was, practically speaking, a hard cap on skills. The system suffered from the same issue UO had, in that once you 'topped out' progression pretty much came to a halt. I am so pleased that we currently have a true soft cap, diminishing returns based skill system. It would be a real step backward to turn it back into a hard cap system.

    The problem with attenuation is that, while it was designed to be a soft cap system as well, when you reach the high end levels of play it becomes, practically speaking, a hard cap system. The solution to this problem, in my humble opinion, is to make attenuation a true soft cap system.
     
  4. Boris Mondragon

    Boris Mondragon Avatar

    Messages:
    1,332
    Likes Received:
    3,938
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Docking at your port soon
    @Antrax Artek ; Here are my two cents on this attenuation thread:

    1) Stop attenuation limits.

    2)2x xp first 2 hours daily (2 Hour power hour for casual players).

    3) 1/2 xp rest of day.

    4) Hard cap on skills and AL at 160 Ep1 then raised by 10 for successive expansions.

    Get your xp, use your xp and actually play the game.

    R/Boris/El Pirata
     
    Dhanas and Fister Magee like this.
  5. that_shawn_guy

    that_shawn_guy Bug Hunter

    Messages:
    1,409
    Likes Received:
    3,738
    Trophy Points:
    125
    Location:
    earth... mostly
    I think the heart of the issue is when the double xp became the norm, to cost to level skills was not adjusted.

    I feel attenuation was a "middle" attempt to address this without lowering skill level for high-end players and still allowing new player to feel like they could catch up. Of course the "we have to do <latest-xp-mill> for hours to get anywhere" mentality set in shortly after.

    To keep the same balance, we need to up xp requirements deeper in the trees. Port probably should have increased the length of the road at the same time they upped the speed limit so that the trip still took the same amount of time.

    I don't have a clue what the fix is. But, being able to gain enough xp to GM 1-2 skill from 0 in a single session has never set well with me. Having a handful of GMs with a few months of causal play is easily achievable. I don't want to get board in 3-6 month because there is so little challenge left. So, you will rarely find me in <latest-xp-mill>.

    I do think adding things like power hours, hard caps, etc do seem to add more complexity and I'm not sure they address the issues directly.
     
  6. Spungwa

    Spungwa Avatar

    Messages:
    607
    Likes Received:
    1,243
    Trophy Points:
    93
    EDIT:
    REMOVED : As with the other post, this post STILL misses WHY attenuation was added to the game.......

    ADDED : As with the many of the replies on the other post, this post STILL misses WHY attenuation was added to the game.......

    Attenuation was NOT a band aid for double XP, attenuation pre dates double XP.....

    Attenuation was NOT to allow casuals or new players to "keep up" with older hardcore players. If anything it makes it impossible for the a hardcore new player to catch a old hardcore player.

    Attenuation was to stop high level player grinding fast spawning lower level content for huge amounts of XP. It was to stop Port having to continually nerf and balance scenes to keep them balanced for XP returns. Remember the old kobold expedition camp they had to nerf (eventually was around for 4 months......) to hell because pre double XP the high players (no one else could do it at the time) could get 8 mill XP per hour there due to the respawn rate. This continual limit on having to balance the XP returns of scenes was making scenes boring and slow to respawn and put huge limitations of on the scene builders.

    Edit : The above also pre dated the party XP boost, used to only be 10% extra XP per party member, so you did not have the answer of grouping to get huge XP. Grouping was a huge XP nerf to a player at the time.

    Shortly after the kobold expedition camp nerf they introduced a global solution to scene XP balancing => thus was born attenuation.....

    EDIT : Attenuation allowed fast respawns of challenging content for lower level players to group and do and still get decent XP returns while grouped. Without it being HUGE XP gains for high level player when they solo it.


    Regards
    Spung
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2019
    Gorthyn, Jaesun, Barugon and 3 others like this.
  7. Mimner

    Mimner Avatar

    Messages:
    152
    Likes Received:
    494
    Trophy Points:
    18
    You have completely missed the point of the other post. The other post does not address 'why' attenuation is in the game, it addresses 'how' attenuation works in the game and 'how' it could work better to achieve the goals of 'why' it is in the game.
     
    Spungwa likes this.
  8. Spungwa

    Spungwa Avatar

    Messages:
    607
    Likes Received:
    1,243
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Actually as I said in the early part of your post, I was happy with what you suggested. Page 1 i believe. I'll edit the first line a bit to make that clear.

    The later posts where replying to the points from the subsequent posts (not yours) asking for removal of attenuation or increasing the time period. I was explaining that those solutions do not meet the intended aims of attenuation

    Regards
    Spung
     
    FrostII and Mimner like this.
  9. Mimner

    Mimner Avatar

    Messages:
    152
    Likes Received:
    494
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Before double exp you had very few people earning enough exp to really expose the hard cap nature of the current attenuation implementation. In fact, one of the questions which prompted my original study of attenuation was, 'What is the effect of double exp on someone who can already hit attenuation without it?' The conclusion of that study was that the double exp bonus would result in very little net experience gain, but that the gain would happen very quickly and then there would be a lull period where the player earned very little exp. As a player gets more powerful and can burn more mobs in the same amount of time, my model predicted that the burst time of exp would get shorter and the lulls would get longer. In other words, the system forces high level players to take breaks.

    Attenuation exists in the game because of the many reasons which @Spungwa has emphasized here. Its far from an ideal system, because as @Chris put it there are equal rewards for different scenes irrespective of difficulty. However, until the dev teams designs us such wonderful zones which negate all of the reasons attenuation is in the game, we are simply stuck with it.

    But attenuation doesn't have to mean forced breaks.
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2019
    Fister Magee and Spungwa like this.
  10. Duke Lorimus

    Duke Lorimus Avatar

    Messages:
    900
    Likes Received:
    1,398
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Ohio
    Working as intended.
     
    FrostII likes this.
  11. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,679
    Likes Received:
    24,294
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    In my opinion, they should only address the issue of spiking XP gain. Perhaps they should start attenuation earlier but ramp it up more gradually, so that continual participation will result in a maximum of 1.3M experience per hour and stopping would result in less. However, I'm sure that the problem is much more complex than people here realize.
     
    Jaesun and Mimner like this.
  12. eli

    eli Avatar

    Messages:
    683
    Likes Received:
    1,192
    Trophy Points:
    93
    I think a cap on the number of skills you can have would make for more compelling meta than a cap on the skills themselves.

    For instance, if each deck were limited to 12 skills, including passives, it would significantly close the gap between new players and ancient gods.

    It would also allow for actually specialized builds without compromising the "classless" design or "endless" leveling at the heart of this game.

    Even the 120+ club would have weak spots, which would be healthy for pve and pvp. We wouldn't have this awkward state where basically a party is optional and soloing is comparatively lucrative.
     
    Last edited: Jun 22, 2019
    Time Lord and Gorthyn like this.
  13. Gorthyn

    Gorthyn Avatar

    Messages:
    617
    Likes Received:
    1,497
    Trophy Points:
    93
    This 100 per cent.
     
    Time Lord likes this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.