Request: UO skilling

Acid, I know, but take it as a knowing where this game is facing, and I think its time to. Perhaps this game is only for mature people? .I'd like to see bakers age statistics, it would clarify a lot where this game is going .... no offense intended, tbh but I'm certainly being very curious.

 

Hi Livinded, Being old, slow, and stoopid--in every game I've played, I've had to look away from the action to see if my cooldown for a particular skill/attack is up. I've only been playing SotA for a few weeks, but doesn't 'locking-down' your action bar achieve the same effect as these other games...? Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems we are given a choice in SotA that is lacking in WoW, Rift, etc... Cheers!

 

Exactly.

 

About the notion, that a skill system always leads to do stupid mechanical repetition of a single action to rise up your skill: you of course can do that... but you'll never master your skill that way. Learning the good use of magery or melee combat can only be achieved at fight ! That a seasoned player would act such an artificial skill rising, that is another question, as he/she already owns the skill.
On the other side: in a level system, artificial leveling can of course also be performed. What? A sample? sure! In soltown, just go in the cimetary's underground, and just stay here to kill lots of cultists. 800 xp each ! You can farm your levels here alone. Who could say that it is better than skilling in UO ? And more: renounce to a thing, that would be good for the greatest number,- for the reason that any peoples will have a bad use of that thing, that isn't very wise. It is perhaps even more stupid than these persons who have this bad use of this thing. We see that every day in real life
About UO again: in an ancient time, UO's client's code was published. A profusion of little nasty programs like Razor (nice macroing), EasyUO (scripting) and even time-hacking programs did then appear. That is a plague! Let's hope such an error won't happen with SotA...

 

i just had to quote this - i agree, but also think they have learned their lessons with that. HOWEVER, a good reminder is just that. good.

 

I think it's quite a safe bet that the average age for players picking up Shroud of the Avatar is quite a lot higher than most other computer games.

RG is the reason many of us backed to begin with, and UO isn't even one of his oldest RPGs.

I'm 57. I'm not after a twitchy click-fest of a game. However, what I do look for is a RP friendly atmosphere, and that means systems which support roleplaying by being unobtrusive and immersion supportive while you play your avatar.

Which, the current deck system is certainly not.

With a mature crowd playing, many who have their roots in roleplaying, I think the abstracted and immersion obstructive combat system is simply a very bad fit for the genre of game into which it has been tossed. Hopefully the designers will pay heed to the great many players who have pointed out the system's weaknesses, and make significant changes to enhance the roleplaying friendliness of combat. I want to fight monsters, not the UI beastie.

 

Skills should be chosen more organically. A trainer should be necessary to introduce you to their 'tree' or skillset. but once you are taught the basics, you should be able to practice and discover skills within that tree on your own over time. Most of these discoveries should not require a trainer, though specialized trainers may be needed for certain unique and complex skills higher in the tree. For added variety, some skills may be learned through books or maybe a few in our dreams. Lets have sleeping reward us with not only regenerated focus and health, but also dreams that sometimes help us discover new skills!

This method is natural, feels right, and happens to be a bit of a hybrid between the two systems that I hope we can accomplish in SotA.

 

A level system simply divides the community and creates stagnant zones which rot.

Why do people macro? Because the system was time consuming and unenjoyable for their goals. It is a game it should be fun.

U.O. did a good job in that it was easy to raise skill to 70-80points, and by 85 in most crafts you were of some use and not just dead weight. So, the grind to maximum proficiency was too tedious and not enjoyable:

I think offering mini games or a better method of scaling the skill gained would be ideal.

Even if you allowed a quick "max" that everyone reaches, but several points or specializations that open up based on character adventures, time assasociating with other say, swordsman. It could be based on the type of armor they craft or magic they practice.

 

I've found that people are generally very motivated to tell the awesome story of how awesome their awesome character is. Those same people are rarely interested in telling us all about the slow beginnings and weak early years of that character's life. "Low level" really only serves as a beginning to a story, to focus the player's attention on things that matter in the story, and to train the player in using the control interface. Once we know the story, and we know how to play, we are left immediately with a desire to get to the END of the story, where our character is epic.

That's where we enjoy playing, and crafting, and grouping, and PvP, and raiding. That's where we all seem to want to be. The top end of character progression.

Now, balancing that against the desire to never stop growing is tough, but I don't think the solution is to keep everyone weak and "low level" for any longer than necessary.

 

Character levels is such a categorical and uninspiring method of telling players where their character is at in it's "lifespan". When you are at max level I think it feels a bit like your character is done, retired and cannot really grow further. At least for me, this is not a good thing for a MMORPG type of game where your character should never have a "retired" state and should always feel like he or she could grow further.

As people we do not have levels, but we have skills and experience and there is no real end to your learning. A game that seeks to provide immersion and a living world should in my opinion more closely reflect this with skills rather than levels.

 

I've been thinking about how and why we should gain experience through a game, and I've come to a conclusion. We should only gain experience when we complete quests. The skills we use along the path to completing a quest should determine where we get stronger. So if you complete a quest by fighting with a sword, then you gain experience in sword fighting. If you complete that same quest by disarming a trap, sneaking and pick-pocketing a key, then that's where your experience should increase, etc. This will ensure that quests are designed well, to be able to be completed using whatever skillsets we have available. There's no reason to provide experience for killing things etc., that just tells players the game is designed for them to grind mobs. We don't want a grind, we want to play through the story and have fun in an open world. By keeping all experience gain strictly in completing quests, the negative behaviors like killing mobs over and over to 'level up' will disappear.

This also is a natural way for the developers to know players are exactly at the experience level they want them to be, every step of the way through the story, because it's the story itself that is the controlling factor for their experience levels.

 

I have to agree with someone up there. Here's an out line of leveling in this game so you can better understand what im talking about. First of all i believe we should gain skill by using skill bottom line, it doesn't make sense that i start off a mage and become a great plate warrior of death with weapons (for example) here is also a cheat sheet for the newer people out there when we get wiped and start over again....

AFTER THE WIPE - time to start over again................

wear plate carry a 2 handed weapon and kill everything collect resources and stock em away(very unlikely you will die if you keep watch on your life

so wear plate mail carry a big stick (weapon) grind monsters for days dont add any points you get when you level wait till you reach level 20 or 30,
At this point change all your skills to magery, make sure you get an AOE spell and stand back and attack and kill everything (you may have to run around a lot more but hey your leveling) until you hit level 40 or 50

now at level 40 or 50 it gets really exciting you can pretty much build a character to your liking (outside of PVP)

oh but i want to PVP!.............ok see how all the other mages are set up? Since your a warrior type you will lose most of the time.

So now you need to figure out what people are using to tag you for 150 200 pts of magic damage or higher! Set your skills up like them! (here we are again losing our individuality)

Now your a mage since that is what most OP PVP are! or.........................

you can just build the character the way you want and be what you want not what everyone else is, but you will not be a very competitive PVP!

as you can see with the current system there needs to be a fix! If im a Warrior i shouldn't be able to become a mage in record time, since i never really used magic abilities! So my belief is, training skills should be based around what skills you use!

That format above is what i use to level higher and and get my skills set up! so i go from a warrior to a mage back to a warrior and a mage, and im just as good as you who have spent many hours of building your character, but i really didn't work for it!

Its easy to copy an op players skills, and now that op player doesn't really matter, since i too have everything he does!

that's a lame way to become good at something and since all of us can do the exact same thing, my multiplayer game is irrelevant, i dont need you and you dont need me. I would think that crafters would be especially upset at this, since it kills off their businesses, and or needs/gameplay. The problem we have with this skill building thing here is in the end we dont really need each other anymore. So much for multiplayer.

 

What if we are not into doing thousands of run from here to there quests?

 

If you're not advancing in the story's plot, you should be at whatever level you stopped advancing, until you begin to advance some more.
People who only like too kill each other have never gained experience in doing so, this is the same thing.

If we want to advance our character in the game, it must be done through the story. It wouldn't make sense to allow players to build up their characters to elite status before even starting the quest lines. For a story-based RPG with an open world concept, I feel the advancement must be tied directly to completing the story. The open world sandbox is just that, a place to have fun when/while we're not doing the storyline. Otherwise it will just encourage people to avoid the story and grind away to elite status before trying to complete it, or to grind away when a certain part of it feels too difficult.. basically it will promote grinding without this restriction. Let's not encourage grinding as a means for gameplay. That's not fun.

 

I tried again to play a pure mage. This time I went in water. (I had heard rumors that ice arrow does a lot of damage...I didn't notice that)

Again I suffered getting to level 20 dying a lot, not doing much damage, trying to hold still for less focus cost, and running away a lot because I can't fight more than 1 thing at a time in cloth.

Raising levels didn't seem to make me any stronger. At level 20 I put on my pole-arm skills...and they actually do damage. Still wearing cloth to try to be a mage...but not feeling like a mage with a halberd.

Why can't we have UO type leveling? There is worry about macroing? Sheesh...at least I'd be having fun seeing my character develop and improve instead of being forced to wear plate and a halberd to have any hope of survive. Magic DOES NOT work in this game for survival...I've tried it and tried it...I have to wear plate and wield a two handed weapon to live. Please allow us to play a pure mage...If we are forced to do a leveling/tree wow-like system, at least make it as good as the boring wow system was...I had a strong warrior and paly in wow...I had good options to play a tank or a dps character...

In this system you have no options...You have to diversify your skills into many trees to get enough attacks to avoid getting slugs...You can't just specialize in 1 tree like a pure mage should be able to. You don't get a mana regen bonus for wearing only cloth. You don't do more damage wearing only cloth...You can't fight from a distance because your ice spells do not actually slow anyone down and there are 2 attacks...a fist spell that you have to melee with or an arrow that doesn't do enough damage to hurt your mob before it pounces on you.

I am trying so hard to be open minded to this system, but so far I am not having fun in combat. Please consider making 'pure' classes an option...

Why don't you get better at the spells you actually cast? You can choose 5 copies of spells that hold no additional power...Ice shield doesn't keep me safe...I don't even know what it does...Block skills don't seem to block...How does a pure mage survive? Spam life spells? Heck I'm a mage not a priest!

I loved UO skill raising...my character would get a raise on skills he was actually using and then I would notice that spell did more damage the next time I cast it...Wow that was great combat!

 

Well i advanced in levels fighting monsters, which all should! but if there is too much running around it becomes more of a job than an enjoyment. If this game becomes a job, i will just leave it to you all to work in RL and also Work in a place thats supposed to be fun. Ill go elsewhere. Im not into following the story of the game id rather make a place in the game with my won story.

 

What if I don't like questing? In tabletop gaming, I've always considered modules the lowest form of gaming, with neither imagination nor possibility of choice. A GM who can add choices mitigates this considerably, and we all like those GMs. There is, however, another type of GM, who many of the PnP gamers who read this will recognize: The RailRoad Engineer. "All aboard!" he calls "Nothing you do will matter, every NPC, enemy, and bit of landscape will act in unison to drive you back to right where you should be in my plot no matter WHAT you do."

Restricting ALL xp to that gained by completing quests is exactly the sort of tactic that a RailRoad GM would use. I believe in giving the player base a choice. I think players should get XPs for combat, and for crafting, and for questing, and for PvP, and for exploring, and for any-other-damn thing that players do in the game. Whatever adventure you live, that should be what gets you XP. Should XP gained from exploring allow you to master a school of magick that you've never before cast from? Probably not. Then again, completing a quest to gather 20 pieces of a rare ore probably shouldn't grant mastery of that school of magick either. But both can teach you.

 

If everything everyone does grants experience, then everyone will just grind away at the easiest and fastest experience gaining thing until they are maxed out elites, and the whole point of growing as a character over time as you experience the adventure of the story is lost.

"how did you become so powerful?"
'I saved New Britannia from the Dark Lord, and united all the land under one rule, how did you?'
"During your journeys did you see any sheep?"
'No..'
"That was me "

--okay.. fine. Have it your way. Let's not make it skill based though, or that will force people to play ways they don't want to just to become the epic hero they want to become, and I'll level all the way up by swimming around Novia 5 thousand times. Yay everyone grinding away - not because they enjoy it, but because they know it's easy and can't resist taking the easy way.

Give too many options to the player, and it stops being fun because people pick easy over fun almost every time.

 

South Park's hilarious episode notwithstanding, leveling by farming low level mobs all the way to max level takes FOREVER, and may actually exceed the player's lifespan.

The reality is people who don't like where they are in the storyline will wander into the hills for some heavy grinding, get a bit of advantage, and then return to whatever the story has for them as and when they like. Some will want to push ahead, taking on challenges out of order. Some will want to take the challenges precisely as written, and precisely at the level expected. Some will want to grind up from time to time, keeping a slight advantage over the usual sequence of the story. That is the player's choice.

Although, the idea of someone who eliminated all the sheep in the world, all the time, to the point that nobody ever saw any in their travels, deserves a certain amount of respect.

 

Agree 100% with Lord Baldrith. Combat is not fun for me, and I'm concerned it never will be. Some quote snippets below with my thoughts, which are somewhat tangential to Lord Baldrith's thoughts, so please read his post as well, as mine is (1) tangential, and (2) my opinion is probably a bit more strongly worded.

The level system and skills tree is horribly overdone in just about every MMO today. Really wish SotA had gone a different route. I've heard arguments on the forums by the community and the dev team that UO style leveling promotes macroing. I don't buy it, never had, never will; it is a misguided thought. UO's macroing problem had everything to do with simplistic mob AI, simplistic UIs, and simplistic scenes / environments, and nothing to do with how player skills advanced. SotA's card combat system could probably be macro'd by a compentent developer in a few weekends using OpenCV and xdotool. On top of this I could just pay someone to level my character for me. SotA is no better off than UO in this regard. Saying otherwise is hogwash, and trying to prevent macroing by going to a skills tree and/or level based progression is wasted effort.

Couldn't agree more. I posted a similar sentiment a week or so ago. I'm trying. I really am trying to see this vision for the combat system. It's just not working for me. It is not fun.

Yes, how 'bout that? A combat system where the skill used is the skill advanced. What a brilliant idea.