Innate Skills BLOCKER

I haven't played much of the game yet (mostly due to time constraints), but there's obviously a flaw in the design right now between innate skills, the limits just introduced, and the focus tree which IMO should probably operate on a separate set of skill points with it's own scaling. Though that wouldn't work by itself of course, focus would need to be re-worked from scratch a little bit and expanded to compensate for a change like that, though I think it would be worth it in the long run.

Putting limits on things like innate skills is a perfectly fine balancing mechanism to introduce, but it all has to "feel" right to the consumer for us to get any enjoyment out of combat. We should be able to make somewhat effective trade-offs for our choices within the limits we want to set. 1/2 of your level is probably a little too restricting at certain points (especially now) but it might be close to ideal with some tweaking on just about everything.

This all just reminds me how of far we still have to go in terms of figuring out where everything should be balanced to get the most "fun" packed into the game before we hit release

 

I just wish SoTA would let us in on their logic. They must have discussed why they were doing this in a meeting with the Devs. The Devs. have God Mode so they don't have an urge for a nervous breakdown with something new and all the bugs that go with it. Why don't they tell why they are doing this if we are also testing it? We can be quite reasonable. But when we have no answer to an unknown quantity, we will get upset because human beings need closure (answers). Apparently telling us we are testing the game is not enough detail for us. In other words we are getting grumpy! We need information!

 

I would very much like to know their intentions here. I don't need to know every detail of every decision but ones that have a huge impact on everyone that (to me at least) don't make any sense.. that I'd kind of like to hear about.

 

For locked deck users (i.e. me), the limit on passives is even more dramatic.

I cannot use more than 10 active skills (and consumables, theoretically, but I'm not that dumb to use them!) at once anyway. For me there's not even the possibility of diluting the deck with more active skills, because I simply cannot use them. Our setup is basically 10 maxed-out skills (for focus/cooldown reasons - and carefully picked ones, of course), and all passives.

With this change, the LD has been nerfed to oblivion and back, and it will take a very, very long time to compare performance with a random deck user.

And since Focus and Tactics tree consist mainly of passives, and most of them are simply required (locked deck without 10 slots is an exercise in applied suicide), I just gave up pumping health, focus, INT, STR and DEX, but the bare minimum to unlock further, critical innates - like the entire subtree below +INT.

I'm a 32nd level char, with the stats of a newly rolled avatar.

 

LOL loved the Starbucks video I think they can rant as good as we do

 

*sigh*

yea... coffee...

 

As much as I would like to believe there is a good reason for having a new process introduced, and leaving many with this feeling of having it wrapping its hands around our metaphorical skill point throat and throttling them, literally choking them. Perhaps we are misunderstanding the explanation as to "Why", and our own personal clarity might be a good thing.

We need to understand this is still very new concept, this whole combat system we have is new (I personally have not seen this used in other games, that could just be me), things will change for good or bad. This thing will be tested, or this other thing. It is something we all have to deal with. Yet, going to say, this is one of those bad ones, or at least needs adjusting. With adjustment this could be fine, removal would be better.

First - At level 30, I have an over-sized pool of useless points that can not be used because I have all my combat skills and well passives are out of points. Sense making here, zero.
Second - Why have we had our freedom of choice removed? If we want to put all our points into passives and suffer on the combats, why has this choice been removed? We all know how I personally feel about being directed and having my choice in which direction to go forced. This comment should come as no surprise to anyone.
Third - Why? For Who? I am going to guess this was in favor of PvPrs, because I do not see the AI complaining that someone put to many points into their passives making them harder to hit. "just saying".

With that said... the things that could be adjusted to help it not feel so smothering.

1) Raise the points that can go into passives so less points are sitting in pools wasted. - First pass over at this system, half way is a good starting point, now we know we need adjustments.
2) give these wasted points (at 30 that is a bit early for wasted points) something to do - This may already be planned and we do not know it. Patience.
3) We will have more points to spend when the trees are finished - Patience is needed here also from the players - Portalarium is working as hard as they can and they are humans to, not robots. DBAD - have patience!
4) Change Focus and Tactic trees from passive to not passive allowing us to actually use our points here. The ability for locked decks come from focus - focus is passive - locked deck users are being hurt here (and they already *were* being hurt by having to pay double focus. Another thing that almost feels like they are having their choice removed and forced to unlocked)

Just my thoughts and opinions.

 

After sitting, thinking about what i wanna do and might need aside from my main build as situatiosn out in the world change, and also considering the bonuses and inante skills you can aquire from crafted items, I am able to have a full combat deck with no heals or high focus spells cluttering it up, a backup deck with soem heals and high focus glyphs, and still have plenty of stats. Once i aquire the armor i am after, i will be able to take enough poits out of the stats they will support for me into more passives.


I cant have every passive in the game (All resists, all damage, all stats, etc), but i am able to get enough innates to support what i am using as long as i dont try to get every benifit in the game.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/ongoing-combat-training.25523/#post-360337
^ a little demo of effective builds by violation

 

EMP - Thank you for direction to Violations posts. He does great work, however again, this is for combatants.

What about the crafters? Who need those strength passives for carrying their items? Who do not have much desire in actual combat but simply wish to get only enough combat so they can kill off the creatures to collect their hides, or defend themselves while chopping woods, mining nodes, or collecting other resources. They will require strength, to carry more.

Perhaps I am seeing something inaccurately here, and I will confess that perhaps that is the case. However, one would see that the inability to put all their points into say: health, strength, and earth innates (for extra strength) and only a few skills to take out the critters that would be skinned. Could hurt them?

Not to mention if they prefer the locked deck over the other method. Now they are kept weak, less health for taking out critters (wolves, bears, etc) and suffer from not being able to lock their decks.

This was my point above about - "Should it not be our *choice* if we wish to put it into passives and suffer in combats" - not all are about combat. Some are about crafting and only a small amount of combat. Again, only my opinion.

 

I agree with everything, and I keep repeating DBAD to myself (I often need that), but:

While absolutely agreeing that it's always a good idea to be patient, remember that for locked deck-jockeys, having 10, 50 or 100 valid active skills to choose from is for naught: since we can have only 10 (20 with quickswap, I concede!) at our disposal at once, even if the trees are complete, we will still have dozens of unused/unusable skills. Random decks could dilute their decks (and whoever played Magic The Gathering knows all too well how large decks are a curse), but theoretically they can still stuff all 100 active skills in the deck.

We simply cannot.

I'd kill for an 11th and 12th locked deck slot.

 

I completely agree. And being a M:TG player since 1993?4? I know only too well about having all these cards you want to play with and cursing yourself with being "too big" (you never get the card you want, it is your downfall not your benefit).

I did make mention of the negatives in this in reguards to locked decks. I only recently switched to unlocked.. guess why? (have I ever mentioned i dislike being given a choice but almost feeling like you are forced to take one way or another? double focus cost, can not stack, can not combine, now have to wait forever to actually build that deck because they are innates.)

I feel your pain. Believe me, I feel your pain.

And, I have no doubts there are devs that also are aware of this pain. I know that there were a few that said they use the locked deck. I have faith that this is just a first touch and it will be adjusted with testing and our gentle words to them that it just is not working for everyone. ((see my post about the poor crafters for example, they could be hurting even more then we the fighters.)

 

I had two decks too but it was basically the same as my original deck. It just had a few water magic skills to help with PvP. It raised my adventuring skill count from 25 to around 28 to 30.

Oh I had a third deck too ( to automatically switch to a copy of my pvp deck but wearing a white tux ). I only did that so I could change clothes and back by swaping back to my two main decks it had my combat gear instead of my tux.

So I had 3 decks at one time.

 

Yes it is totally new in this game. Although the concept isn't actually new in terms of years because many of us have been shooting around ideas of what we would like to see and not see since the summer of 2013.

What has upset a few of us in the past is that explicitly what we asked NOT happen did. I personally was pleased in R8 when they first released the deck system because I believe I was totally proved wrong when I found that the system was useful.

However since then I have repented (turned 180 degrees) because I felt that stacking and combining were annoying and we needed some kind of auto stack, and recently we found out that there wasn't going to be any auto stack or fix but instead there was mention of more complexity and strategy in the future... (which is exactly what we argued against years ago). So I think now is a good time to drop the deck system in favor of something more traditional because I know for a fact after all this time that it is going the wrong way for me to enjoy this game.

Combining, stacking, and all manner of other things that causes us to focus on that toolbar is not a selling point of this game. I'm very concerned that this is going to turn a large number of people way. In which case our pledges and all the fancy windmils and ether amplifiers will be worth toad droppings.

 

I can not even express how much flack I caught for opposing the deck system back when it was introduced, in fact I'm pretty sure some still have me blocked because of it. Anyways, I gave it an honest shot anyway, and I even really enjoyed combat through r11-13 but in the end I just couldnt stack any more, could focus on what glyph to press when it popped up anymore and simply grew to ditest chasing or running from anything, my current build doesnt require any activated glyph, i can just stand there and grind away, no button mashing, no chasing, no discissions, I am peace lol.

 

yeah same here. People have been so gung ho for the game that they get upset at anybody criticizing a feature. Although do you notice that this is becoming less common now? What I mean is some people are actually starting to realize that this game is not the revolution that we hoped for when we pledged during kickstarter.

EDIT: That doesn't mean that this game won't be successful or still be really good. However this deck feature and the skill stuff right now needs serious work. If anybody thinks this is a winner at this point they need to be more open minded.

 

~peeks in and whispers~ "i really was hoping for a UO style combat... I have gotten used to the deck system.. new things sometimes take a long time to figure out and work all the bugs out of...

It is the new things that make things less stagnate. Yet, it is the new things that can be the most frustrating until the wrinkles are ironed out. I have no doubt they will do that. ~prays HARD to Chislev!~

 

I'd love to have classes. It would be easier to balance and make more sense from a roleplaying perspective.

 

You mean you can swap decks along with all your clothing mid fight ? :/

 

Yep. The deck comes with gear and arsenal attached.

 

Yes, it's horrible. I'm hoping that turns out to be part of testing and not part of intended design.