I am shocked by the character progression system

After playing R11 during the last weekend ...

I am completly shocked by the character progression system that is in place now!

Why just another level / skillpoint based system again?
This system feels so wrong ... gain a level ... get skill points ... use skill points ... rinse and repeat!

Why not going for a use and gain system like UO had?

The more often a skill is used ingame, the better a char should become and at certain experience levels a char gets perks for individual skills. For example if a sword is used frequently the sword skill will increase and at certain experience level a glyph is granted. Glyphs are granted for example at every 10% ... amount and value of granted glyphs will increase the higher the skill becomes.

Instead of this, we are given another boring level-based system where we have to spend skill points to various skill trees and unlock the perks. That feels so wrong to me ... please tell me this is not the final system!

I really hope the actual R11 character progression system is not what we will get in the final game.

If this is the case I am mostlikely done and gone ...

 

I would have to agree with you. Maybe there is a reason why they are doing it like this? We will have to wait and see if it is final.

 

yea the reason is that these guys are afraid to take any risks so they make it like every other MMO with slight diffrences at this point I doubt Ill play it

 

I have to admit that I did not read the forums very frequently during the last time and maybe I missed something ... I really hope you are right and this is just a temporary system ... but to be honest I cant imagine why they would put in a level-based system in the first place.

My impressions after R11 are that this system does not look like a temporary system ... xp-gains from creatures, xp-bar in the interface, skill-points to unlock perks, level up's ... it feels so wrong and I would never have expected something like this in SotA.

 

In a recent MMORPG article, it was said that the development team is considering a use based system akin to UO. It doesn't say they will do this, just that they're considering it.

I think that would be fantastic. But there's one HUGE problem that the UO use based skill system had (or has, if you're still playing). Scripting.

I didn't play UO for very long. But I played during the earliest days after launch, and what I remember most about UO was the incredible amount of scripting that took place in an attempt to "level up" skills. It was asinine, and it's one of the things that made me doubt the competency of people like Richard Garriott and Raph Koster. Many years have past and I now hold both Richard and Raph is high regard (I'm sure no one cares one way or the other, but the point is that's how bad the use based system of UO was).

The problem with UO was that you would have 100's of characters logged in while people were at work, macroing mundane actions like "hiding" in the bushes over and over again. If you wanted to be a thief, you had to hide about 1 million times before you could ever be good at it. And while in real life it actually probably does work similar to this, no one has time or the desire to perform that same push of a button that many times. So the game was almost forcing you to use 3rd party tools, and if you were one of the people (like me) that refused to do that, well then you were at a huge disadvantage verses the scores of people who didn't share your moralistic nature.

Would I like to see a use based system here in SOTA? Yes, I think that would be much better than what we have. But only if it prevents scripting as was seen in UO.

 

To my mind Ultima Online had one of the best use-based character progression systems I have ever seen. This would have been a solid basement for further tweaking and optimization. So many folks I know are anxiously waiting for more than 10 years now to see such a system again. I can't believe it would be a risk to put in such a system again ...

The real risk is to put in this level-based character progression system into SotA!

Everyone I have talked to after R11 weekend basically said: "If this is the final system, I am done with the game".

 

That's absurd. This development team has taken on considerable risk. They just haven't taken on as much risk as you would like them to.

Selective Multiplayer
Limited Housing
Crowd Sourced Assets like Music and Graphic Art
Crowd Sourced Funding
Player Towns where players have control
Combat Deck System
Stretch Goal Store
Agile Development based on fan feedback
Massive Pre-Alpha Access
NO NDA

I'm probably missing a number of items here, but these are no small things. The independent development of a game this size and this open to the gaming community this early in development is unheard of. Sure, Shroud of the Avatar may not have Full Loot, Open PVP, massive ganking of noobs and FPS mechanics, but those are not the only things that constitute taking a risk.

Let's call a spade a spade.

 

In many respects I do agree on this as it would give more opportunity for people to gain skill without having to PvM. I'm not sure how skill gain is going to work for crafting, but im guessing skill will be gained on creating objects (which I am OK with). My main concern over the current skill gain is how does the PvP community gain skill, I would like to think you will be able to gain skill whilst fighting another player or at the very least upon defeating a player.

I'm not going to complain too much because I did have a lot of fun (still am) in release 11, however the progression does seem similar to most other MMOs and it would have been nice if skill points could have been gained in each area by using the skills.

 

How is that going to possibly work with the silly card system?
The system is bad enough as it is, but if they tried to combined that with a "you have improved .1" system then that would drive away so many people

 

I have no idea.

I have stopped trying to come up with solutions. I often find myself thinking that I no longer understand the vision of this game or the combat system.

While the devs are awesome, genius, and often perform amazing work as a whole...the combat system direction doesn't make any sense to me. It's like they took the worst aspects of modern MMO gaming (Damage and Cool Downs) and tried to shove it into a new distribution model (the card deck system).

I think the card deck system was really a smart idea and still has a lot of potential, but when you're just making a game full of skills that use DPS or buffs to DPS...what's the point? It's really no different than Archeage. You just can't spam combos as fast. So how that would fit into a use based system, I don't know. I'm just saying that I'd like a use based system and I'd like a good combat system too.

 

See this is one thing I will never accept for not doing something.

Have I ever scripted in UO?...... yeah loads and loads and loads. Should it have been detected? definitely as in most cases I was stood in the same position all day gaining skills.
Have I ever scripted in games like Aion?.........yeah loads and loads. Should it have been detected? probably not as it ran rails, had alerts built in etc so it was far more difficult to tell.

My point is that it doesn't matter what game you create, someone will always manage for make a script.

 

The sad thing is that they were talking about sending magic down the perfect direction, where each spell was completely distinct and had a specific purpose but that would have meant getting rid of the card system because there is no point in (for example) making fire ball the perfect spell for when I am in a tunnel with a group of enemies confined in a tight group and fire arrow the perfect spell for a fast moving enemy who keeps dashing around if the game then doesn't give me the option to use them. Instead they have to make them all the same so that you can still play with this silly system just with different animations

 

You can design a game where scripting doesn't benefit people. Turn based games come to mind.

 

Don't get me wrong, I do not claim that the UO use-based progression system was perfect. As I said earlier I rather see it as a solid basement for further tweaking and modification. In contrast to a level-based system which to my mind is the worst idea they could ever come up with ...

Also I don't think that macroing / scripting would be to much of a problem when it comes to character progression. It is of course a completly other question when it comes to automation of fights, synched attacks and stuff like that. But I think that is another topic.

If you want to avoid macroing skills you can put in some simple "captchas" or "mini-games". If a character is using a certain skill over and over again for some time, let a small mini-game come up that requires human interaction ... if there is no valid response freeze the skill gain until there is a valid response.

 

Depends on the turn game and turn games have very limited appeal to be honest.

 

Just to merge my two thoughts together in this reply...

I think the combat deck system was created in part to prevent scripting (or at least make it harder) because the cards move all about at random. I don't think the card deck system was really designed with much more in mind than that.

I'm sure some really smart person is working on scripting a tool that will click on the the most advantageous combos and be as efficient as possible (as we speak) but there's a lot of variables that go into this thing and it seems like a lot of work just so you don't have to think about it yourself.

Anyway, I think that the deck system has some value there. I'm not in a hurry to give up on it. Simply changing the system back to static keyboard memorization would be even worse in my opinion. The real problem with combat is that it's an unsophisticated contest of Damage Per Second builds. That's what people should be upset about.

 

Poker has mass appeal all over the world and I would be surprised if more money and more people were not involved in that past time than MMO's. In fact I just looked up a 2012 survey that said that 6.8% of the adult population plays poker regularly). Which may be why Portalarium started out in online gaming.

I'm not saying we should make combat feel like poker, but I'm trying to put this into proper perspective. Turn Based competition is anything but unpopular. The trick would be to have turn based ELEMENTS put into a fast paced combat system to promote fairness and competitive play the likes of which we have never seen in MMO's.

 

*shudder* turn based combat would be even worse. I HATE that, nothing brings me out of a game as quickly as turn based combat. Spoony pointed out the worst of this in one of his final fantasy reviews, the guy throws a huge boat hook and they just stand there while he does it and then runs out to get it back. how dumb. If someone is coming at me with a sword, then why in gods name would I stand there and let them hit me, I want to use my shield to block and then stab back. Action RPGs make so much more sense than turn based ones ever will

 

That depends on how it's designed. If it's like Final Fantasy, or Pokemon...yeah, that's horrible.

But if someone is swinging a sword at you and now it's YOUR TURN to block or parry or perform some other action...how is that bad? And when I say turn based I don't mean that someone swings a sword at you, and you go down to the post office to mail something to Aunt Bee, and then go drive over to buy some lunch, and then drop off your dry cleaning, and then build a log cabin with your friends, and then drive back home and press a button so you can block the attack. I'm talking about having a good 3 seconds to make your move. Now lag is FAR LESS of a problem, you don't have to worry about people jumping around or running about all crazy. The game slows down to a thinking speed and yet still makes sense.

 

Then combat would have to be active. Every click with your mouse and every button you press creates an action instantly. When a guy swings his sword at you, you have to press the block key fast to block the swing.
This would have actually been very interesting. But I doubt that it will work in SotA with the lag we have. Other games like TERA or Age of Conan show that it is indeed possible in an MMO.

As for turn based combat, Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin Show how great and tactical turn based combat can be.