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Skill consumption of pool

Discussion in 'Release 34 Feedback Forum' started by Zader, Sep 29, 2016.

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  1. Hornpipe

    Hornpipe Avatar

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    I don't want to be off topic but Air wizardry is very effective. There must be a counterpart. You are complaining of losing money by doing XP grind. Fine. It's purposed goal. People using less effective means for XP grinding may save their gold. But it's because it takes them much longer to have the same XP gain.

    Fire is broken too imho. I think it could be nerfed in the future.
     
  2. Sixclicks

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    I'm fine with them nerfing the damage or the stun chance/duration. But increasing cost beyond the already high cost of being a mage is a very bad change imo. It doesn't make air any less powerful, it just makes it more of a pain to use. I leave it at that because I don't want to derail the topic. I only brought it up because it sucks for me personally that they would nerf skill gains right when I decided I need to switch to another magic type because Air is just not worth the cost to me any longer. Stuns are nice, but Fire is significantly cheaper since you can just cast a few fire DoTs and then kite enemies through it. And Earth gets the benefit of much higher direct damage and better defensive stats. It's just really poor timing for this change for me.
     
  3. mass

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    I wish I'd found this thread before I used 120 silver ingots to move my mastercraft skill from like 30 to 34 with having over 500,000 crafting xp pool.
     
  4. Snazz

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    It's always been like that. Bonus xp didn't kick in until higher levels
     
  5. agra

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    Yep, when people realize the true impact of this nerf/change, most will just stop progressing or walk away. Combining miniscule XP consumption along with insane material consumption? Worst. Combination. Evar. :eek:
    It's laughable that Portalarium thinks punitive mechanics like this will encourage players to stay and participate in such a sadistic grind for years, when the opposite is true.
     
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  6. mass

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    My biggest source of confusion is that typically, multiplayer games start with the balance shifted to 'hardest' and then gradually move it back to 'medium' over time. This way, the casual player can eventually catch up to some extent with the hardcore players over time. Shroud has done the opposite, making those that power leveled the first persistent release have a seemingly permanent advantage in that I cannot achieve the same that they have achieved given the same total hours played.
     
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  7. agra

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    Yeah, getting to AL 100 now? That's gonna takes years, not months or weeks, with these changes. Good thing all those existing AL 100's exploited when they could, eh? Yeah, that's a sad story with a bad ending. :oops:
     
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  8. coyotemoon

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    i tested carp skill growth at lvl 85 and enchanting at lvl 41 and both seem to give as much exp per craft as before r34. nothing in adv skill has but everything in crafting has so far for me. more testing needed though.
     
  9. Hornpipe

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    Sure. Sorry about that
     
  10. WehTeheFf

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    If they really just nerfed the skill xp consumption without touching the xp neede to level up a skill, then it's really not that bad. For normal skill gain during play this just shifts the XP Pool to a higher value, the overall skillgain rate shouldn't change at all in the long run.
    And for those skills you can only gain by casting them mindlessly (like summons) you just have to collect a bigger pool for same effects. Doesn't sound like fun, but still, I at least have to test this some more, before I say this is bad.
     
  11. mass

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    The real problem lies in skills that require regs or materials to advance. The advancement per material consumption may have been greatly decreased. I could be wrong about it, but it seems lower to me. Would be nice to see if the devs confirm or deny this change for us.
     
  12. Zader

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    Thanks, all of you, for the feedback! I wanted to ensure that I'm not crazy and something was changed :)

    I definitely understand slowing down progress a bit for the long term health of the game.

    I did some testing and here is what I've found:

    Situation- Summoning skill at 98, pointed up, all other skills locked.

    Adventure pool-------Skill consumption for advancement per single use in R34
    500K----------------2,012
    600K----------------2,408
    700K----------------2,824
    800K----------------3,220

    My rough math shows that if I raise my Adventure pool to about 4 Million XP, that would get me back to Pre-R34 Skill gains per usage... so that gives you something to look forward to! This is the largest my pool has ever been, so I wonder about my ability to maintain my XP pool in the multi-millions. I feel the pain mostly in long cooldown abilities and high reagent consumers.
     
  13. kaeshiva

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    I really don't like the direction this seems to be going.
    While having to 'work' (grind) is acceptable in small doses, it feels like this is all the game has become.
    Grind for money. Grind for exp. And now another grind at the gustball to cast things hundreds of times using even more reagents (needing to grind more money), etc.
    Grind for rent. Grind mining for producer xp. Grind watching craft bars repeatedly to level up tradeskills. Grind grind grind grind grind.

    I think a typical play session for me is now 95% tedium.
    And recent changes seek to make this worse!
    Is there any reason things are heading in this direction?
    Is this fun for anyone?
     
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  14. Barugon

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    I think they adjusted the rate that skills would take XP so that it would be easier to maintain a pool because skill decay will be tuned on soon. That pool is a buffer and decay takes from that first.
     
  15. jutman

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    Here is an idea. Let's fix all the skills before even attempting to toss in what will be a debocal of adding another wrench into the cog wheels of fixing things with skill decay!
     
  16. Roycestein Kaelstrom

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    After skill goes past 80, it will start taking XP to the proportion of the available XP on the pool. Weinz did some math about it a few months back.
     
  17. Lifedragn

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    The developers had a general progression speed in mind (A leisurely and immersive slow boil to the top). The average progression speed at present has been tilted because MOST of the player population is grinding for MOST of their play-time. The developers need to adjust as they view this the primary play-style given their own metrics and need to try to maintain interest in a game where players are now demanding higher level content while the developers haven't even finished all of the new player content.

    The players, having a completely different progression goal in mind (ASAP, Flash Boil, Maxed Out Yesterday), simply respond to the developer's attempts to slow grinding efficacy by... grinding all that much more.

    As such, we now have a feedback loop where each side is antagonistic of the other's goals and we are working at cross-purposes.
     
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  18. kaeshiva

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    All very true, but regardless of what you do to nerf, slow down, or otherwise put obstacles in people's paths, there will always be those that grind.
    People who can invest 15 hours a day will always be ahead of the people who can invest 2 hours.
    Some games address this with things like 'rest exp' or 'daily bonus hour' or those sorts of things so people can make meaningful progress in a short time, but the heavy grinding types will take advantage of this, too.

    None of this means that there needs to be a decay mechanic, in reality the decay mechanic will hurt the people who play less far, far more than the heavy grinders, who will grind back those levels without so much as a sting, who have millions of pool sat around to absorb any blow and can get millions more in a matter of hours. That's why I keep suggesting that decay be limited to post-grandmaster, its a clear place to draw a line beyond which the xp investment curve goes into a giant upward spike. It would also be a nice bonus to add to gm, ie, your xp wont drop below this point. That way a casual who has spent months to get a skill that high wont lose it, and the grinding crowd who's got a dozen things at 110-120 will have to work to maintain it.
     
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  19. Asclepius

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    This is true, but is only significant for those interested in PVP. Sure if that is your thing, and your potential opponents are way out ahead of you, it's pretty daunting. Don't know the answer to that, other than to say that the devs have tried to engineer the game so that a level 50 player would have a fair chance against a level 80, on a good day.

    For the bulk of the population, who are into PVE or crafting, it doesn't matter a scrap. You are essentially running your own race against the game and the mobs therein; take it at the pace you are able to. If it takes you a year to get up to formidable status, so what? It's a lot of fun along the way.

    I'm certainly not busting myself to max out ASAP - there's too much else to do:)
     
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  20. kaeshiva

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    I agree completely - I'm not in a "hurry" by any means. I have no problem putting in the time -months, years -
    As I've said before, the problem I have is wasting my time, achieving something that the game would later take away from me.
    Its somewhat like if I spent days mining up 1000 ore, only to find that it "decayed" overnight.

    There is absolutely no reason whatsoever, logical or otherwise, to make me 'unlearn' a skill - in fact I think toggled, manual skill unlearning shouldn't be a thing, either. You can always go get more experience to learn something else but its not like you can delete the knowledge of how to hold a sword from your brain so that you can learn about summoning fire elementals instead.

    Your character should always be growing, getting better as you put in more time. Whether you do that by playing 15 hrs a day or 1 hr a day, you should be seeing forward progress. While I have no problem whatsoever with a more significant punishment being added to death, having it reduce skills is going to drive people away because the grind is already pretty bad, and having to do it even more to keep what you've already earned is frankly a slap in the face.
     
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