Cost of Trainning and Skill Reset

But it SHOULD be cheap to change skills frequently now, because we are in pre-alpha, and the focus should be on testing skills and reporting bugs.

 

I appreciate that, and I look forward to these player driven ideas too, but the problem is the economic balancing act is being too largely focused on , too early in this development process, and can only serve to inhibit the creation of these, because of the time commitment it takes, relative to how we spend time leveling and earning gold to buy skills, etc ...

 

And while I may be one of a "a small number of loud voices" as Chris so eloquently put it, I suspect others are not feeling the need to speak up, simply because they already have people speaking up for them.

Also, as a case in point, I have plenty of gold to pay for my skills, and I'm not arguing simply because I can't afford my own skills.

I'm adding what I feel is very rational logic to something that is very quickly becoming irrationally premature economic balancing focus, well before the rest of the skills related to combat, and to refining and production are even implemented.

You postponed player vendors because you postponed refining and production skill tree.

Wouldn't it also make sense to postpone balancing the economy, as it rests squarely on the shoulders of the other systems you've postponed?

You have players asking for more skills, more monsters, more scenes, etc ... and so what do you guys focus on ? The economy balance ? I haven't seen much of the player base clamoring for more economic balance ...

That said, I'm going to take a break from the forums before I wear out my welcome, but I'll check back later.

 

OK I ended up remaking my Level 61 Pole Arms Dexer and Spent 78K in Gold and used 526 Skill points in Magic and Combat haven't even looked at Cradfting Skills yet

Here is what I ended up with will make a STRONG Pole Arms PvE fighter and would be ok For PvP with some minor tweaks but cannot afford the tweaks, so much for Gust Ball, :-(

 

I completely agree with your goal, but not the timing. If we were post launch and I could sit back and read about how the various school of combat and magic actually worked, and make some informed decisions about how I wanted my avatar's capabilities to develop this would be great. But we're still in a place where capabilities are organic and we and you need the flexibility to experiment without needing most of the release to grind enough to be able to do that.
If you are committed to the fee structure at this stage of development, then the suggestion about a special dungeon/arena with a free skill trainer becomes a no-brainer. You get your economic model started and we can still experiment and have some fun with it. I'd be willing to bet you'd be running multiple instances of it 24 x 7

It's not simply the cost of getting back our skills. That's annoying but I could live with it. It's the ability to experiment and give feedback that's the real victim here. At the risk of repeating myself, there have been some significant changes to combat and the balance of fighting skills. But I'm not going to spend hours every day trying to raise money so I can compare bludgeon to blades or fire and death to chaos. But I'd certainly like to be able to make those comparisons.

The fact that a bandit will give you a weapons and gold isn't my problem. I don't expect a tree to drop a sword or a bear to give me gold, but it would be nice if creatures gave useful resources more equitably. As an example, it would be nice if a highly skilled gatherer would find suet on a higher percentage of bears or stags. I can see why not every cotton plant has spider carapace, but isn't animal fat as normal as a hide? And if you're going to do some resource balancing, why is iron almost a rarity compared to copper?

Everyone posting here (OK, that's an assumption) wants SoTA to succeed and has invested time and money to see that happen. I am in general agreement with the plan for training fees, just not while our feedback on developing systems is an asset to the development process.

 

Dreaming of the Dungeon Laboratory of Combat and Skill Experimentaion ....

 

Thanks Chris for your honesty in dealing with us. I know we are all over the place sometimes and we so appreciate you showing us some of your humanity and being that frank and open with us. You have a difficult job and I for one really appreciate what it takes for you to do that for us and for the good of the game. I am so happy you are thick skinned since we probably seem like pirahnas some times

**edited** spelling

 

@Chris
Like Majoria said, thank you for your honesty and for taking the time to explain the changes. I'm sure we all appreciate that.

Now, back to the current training costs....

The way you have it now - ie. getting to the bottom of any tree being very expensive - makes the ability to re-assign points in order to test other skills cost prohibitive.
I would think that during testing in pre-alpha you'd want us to be able to freely test other skill trees, so that we can report back to you on how it's all working.
At least allow us to "sell back" skill points so that we can move on and test other trees.

I have plenty of gold to buy skills, but really feel that "throwing away" points GOLD in one tree to test another is counterproductive to the whole process.

 

@Chris this may be kind of a weird question - but do you guys have a business plan type diagram of what you want to the economy in SotA to look like with the various inputs and outputs?

 

Hmmm. So the prices will remain high then? This makes me sad, very sad. WAHAHAHAHAhahahaahaha

 

@Chris...

Will the QA stay live for the entire release ?

Does that mean you will be tracking skills used by everyone? Even if you were to do that, it still won't show you what people might have done - were it not for the expense involved in changing skills from one tree to another, and your testing base is thus seriously reduced...

I see your logic, but I'm sorry - I think the costs involved in testing different skill trees (unless you go to the QA) is excessive...... One of the things that I have enjoyed the most, has been the ability to experiment with different combinations from different trees -

Not so much now.

But thank you for responding.......

 

OH Playing the QA server might be a great option for those of us who like to play on easy mode. As long as I can take advantage of low cost skills I'm going to use them.

 

I don't have QA access, but perhaps, just maintain an account of total gold spent on all skills, and then we can get a "Refund" on the skill cost, when we remove points, and then only respend that on other skills, but not in the immediate session at the skill trainer, but just a running total sum? This will facilitate the overall gold expenditure you're looking for, for your data points, and still allow us to change things up often, for testing skills and playstyles ....

I think it's more the cost of CHANGING skills, that are upsetting me and others, who like to test many options and builds ...

 

OH! I have an idea. What if they keep track of the gold spent toward skills and then all gold spent toward skills are half off till we meet the old skill level?

 

I screwed the reset skills deal royally..... I did not even realize money had been loaded initially and that the skill cost were high as i was trying to raise the skills I had before. I then noticed this particular skill was 2500 gold and thought oh crap and then tried to de-level not realizing i was not getting money back. I then took it one step further...assuming If I did a reset that cash spent would be refunded and I could try again to get it right. Now i have like 5k when I had almost 20k before the reset and still have 263 combat skill points to spend. Then i read in the forum that money will be added when you zone so I zone quickly and get a message that 39K was added to my account...... Of course that must have really happened earlier because when I logged back in I still have 5K.

I have to say this was the most expensive screw-up I have ever made in a game...

I definitely think some sort of confirmation dialog could have prevented my mistake and the others that were made today.

 

This I think would be a good reason to either simply allow refunds, or at a minimum to all refunds to go into a special account, that we can re-spend on skill points later.