2 Big Picture Questions

Hey guys, so a word of warning this may be a bit of a read, depending how much i really decide to add to it.

As this game gets closer and closer to an actual release - state, or at least out of *pre alpha, or w.e they wanna call the states * .. 2 glaring questions keep popping up the more I play and talk to other players.

1 - How do you possibly have a player run economy, while also keeping everyone self sufficient / cap less?

and

2 - What is the long term picture for the level gap in PVP ?

I have been watching the forums for a long time, been active in a lot of conversations, and i've increasingly become worried that they really do NOT have the long term picture in these 2 things figured out. And if they have, they have certainly not elaborated much on it.

Just recently in the post mortem Starr + RG started elaborating a little bit on how they see the economy working, and Garriot tried to .. explain it? i suppose?
Anyways,
the impression i got is that what they SEE/WANT happening is the ability for the game to have
A - Gatherers/Refiners
B- Crafters
C - Adventurers ?

Meaning, Adam sells to Chuck, ore. Chuk refines or crafts something out of this ore. Chuk then turns around and makes a profit selling a compelted product back to adam or a different player. Said item gets used/destroyed killing things that make gold / get used gathering more materials.

Kind of like a supply/demand economy. Im a killer.. i make gold killing things.. I buy bows because im not a crafter. This pays the circuit.

This is the impression i got of what they want. ? Correct me if im wrong.

So my blatent question is.. How can you expect this to happen, or more realisticly, how are you surprised this ISNT what is happening, when you've made everyone self sufficient?
Why would adam sell the ore? Instead of making his own gear out of it. He gets the crafting exp for gathering it. He then has no penalty to refining it, and then crafts his own stuff.
And the sad truth is, in the game right now, by the time you wear out your weapon, (being someone running scenes) you've easily re-gathered enough to replace that weapon ten fold.

So now your adventurer (the marketed customer in this scenario) is A - Gathering materials while killing things. B- refining and crafting his own materials . And C - making his own gear + extras.

How is a crafter ever going to compete in this scenario if he has to purchase raw materials?

* Oh but crafters can specialize! * ? Really? Because it seems to me, like an archer (myself) can quite easily keep my carpentry up to match a crafter, by making my own bows. This is because i can now HANDLE the zones where the wood is. Can a crafter run a zone and farm wood faster then me? Doubt it. Not only that a crafter is now trying to run every class of crafting to stay viable.

Alll in all i dont possibly see the end game here. The players running and being self sufficient end up with more then enough stuff for themselvs, as well as extra to sell. So there is no pure crafters.
The only way that im wrong about this in the current game, is the few players that have gone above and beyond the average guys, to surpass the average for end gear/late game enchanting/masterworking.
This wont matter in the long run, as guess what?! by the time my bow breaks, i have 9 backups. By the time i need more, my carpentry is as high as a crafters by simply using the gatherd exp while running zones.


Ive seen a good couple posts about how people are pricing under the value of the item. And its because of exactly this.
In the time my 1 bow broke, i can easily gather enough for 40-50 exceptional bows while clearing out zones.

Now i got a replacement bow, and lets say 10 mw/enchanted bows extra. Do i need them? nope. I can undercut the person who paid for those materials and is trying to make a profit. Why wouldnt i? Their stuff is going to sit on a vendor so they can make money. Ive spent next to no money (gatherd my own materials) and even if i make the value of the raw materials, its all gravy, as i made these on TOP of farming gold from scenes. Suddenly you end up with 9 bows from me listed. EVERY TIME I NEED ONE. When I AM the consumer that would be using them.

Mix this with almost every main adventurer being at least semi-self sufficient.. Where do crafters fit in?

This also ties into the idea that they made it clear they dont want mining zones.. tehy want dungeons with ore in them. So now adventurers are the only ones able to GET those materials. Meaning why would i sell them, and pay more for my weapon.. instead of making it myself? And better yet, Why would i pay the full value, when theres other self suffcient guys, who are selling for raw cost of the materials or lower.

Im no economy professor, but just watching the in game state. What is the long term plan? How do you possibly make a functioning player based economy, where everyone can do everything with no penalty ?

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PVP Level gap -
This one is quite a bit more obvious. Will there ever be a PVP worth mentioning in SOTA for players joining at this point ? Doubt it.

Simply put, we currently have a system where levels decides 80% of the fight.
One of the most glaring issues with this is how the resists / Attunement are set up. If i have 2000 hours in sota, its quite easy for me to pull in 300-500k an hour or more. Meaning i can GM most things in 2-3 hours. This gets easier the further along you go ( as proven by the hardcores currently in game ).

You now have a system where these guys can spend 3 hours and GM a fire skill. Which adds to their total attunment, and then adds a base resist in fire. Meaning any end game - pvper (which is all we got atm) Is going to at LEAST gm most spells, just for the attunement, as well as the resist passives in said trees.

If i join today, how long will it take for me to match someone at 2000 hours to a point i can possibly win a PVP fight? 1500 H ? At least enough to cut through their 95% Resist right? lol .

1500 h from now, what are these hard core guys at now? Now they are pushing 120 in each magic skill jsut for the resist? For spells they are never using.. just using for the attunement.

( And i say attunement, but i essentially mean the Resist that comes from it)

Fine . Time + exp = Massive advantage. I get that.
How is this going to work long term?

Im 1100 hours in. I've slowed to pretty casual lately.
I can be 1 shot by a lot of people. I can be 2 shot by a lot MORE people.

At the same time, i can 1 shot - 2 shot pretttty much anyone under 700 hours of pure grinding.

Is that the game plan long term? Can this game even advertise of having a PVP when the chances of actually fighting someone YOUR level are only if YOU have pre arranged it? I have seen players with 2000+ hours kill 8 people at once without even going below half health.

Get a group of 4 god mode characters, and they can quite literally shut down any and every other person interested in PVP. So suddenly new players are going to look and say * oh ****.. to play competitivly i need 1500 hours in now.. ya screw that *
This is kind of a huge problem is it not? Is the goal for PVP to be only the top 50 people in the game?

I keep telling myself that *guild wars is their focuse! * That some how you guys have a solution for this for guild wars . I keep telling myself that maybe you will do something along the line of a Keep capture guild Vs guild with siege equipment ( as promised ) But have the INSTANCE this is in, take anyone and everyone up to GM everything , or down to GM everything. Making it actually about skill and deck/team comp.. instead of the future issue of the top 10 players ruin it for everyone else.

Im all for competitive play. Im all for time = advantage.. But not at the sheer capacity it currently is. In no possible way are casual players going to be PVP competitive with (the few ) amount of hardcores that want to do PVP. It will always come back to time/exp being the most dominent factor. Why would i possibly look at SOTA as a fun competitive game, over other games i can go from level 1 - max by pvping with friends/guildmates?
So far with the knowledge given, all ive seen is * guilds might focuse on powerleveling members to stay competitive *.. So is that the direction we are going ?

So once again, i ask the SAME question ive asked 100x on these forums.

Can you please elaborate on how you see PVP in the long term, and can you please elaborate on the big picture of what you hope Guild Wars to be, and explain the plans for the mechanics and how you want it to work?

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Solution suggestion?

At this point they can't wipe. We all know this. And w.e, that doesnt actually fix any of these current issues. All that would do is fix the players that .. *tested* broken mechanics for un-intended amount of experiance.

The only solution i can possibly see to address BOTH of these issues is to force late game specialization.
I propose that anyone everyone can take everything up to GM.
I propose that after 100, you can no longer take those skills up unless you choose to *specialize that tree*.
I propose you limit each character to 4 specializations. Suddenly you have late game classes. Suddenly a pure Fire mage might actually be viable.
A lot of skills stay relevent at 100, so its not like this eliminates the ability to properly hybrid, and unique builds.
Suddenly you have actual GATHERERS, REFINERS , and CRAFTERS. Which would in long term lead to an actual chance that.. someone specialized in Forestry, and Milling, can sell raw mats to a crafter (hes making 30% more then the crafter not specailzed in this would) who then makes Specialty items actually worth something.
Anyone over 100 in a tree that they dont want to Specialize in, simply gets the EXP refunded in, and it goes towards what they choose to.
Suddenly having multiple character slots makes sense. Instead of purely for RP reasons.
This also leads to adding a little bit of replay ability to the early part as people might run a few dif specailized focused characters.. instead of never ever looking at 1-4 skull areas again. (waste of 3/4 the zones)


This is just a spitballed idea ive been talking over with a few people, and i really think its the most viable future for SOTA.
Would love some feedback on it.
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Anyways, at the very least i would love it one of the dev's actually took the time to answer these 2 questions, as i simply have not seen them answered except in vague posts.

-Lastly, if your not going to make a productive post, or destroy me with a well thought out fact, please dont spam the thread with garbage, these are actually the main issue i have keeping people interested in the game.

- Blight.

 

The answer to your questions can be summarized in two words: skill decay. The devs have promised no wipes, no caps, no classes. But they never promised that skill decay would remain as low as it is. I suspect the plan is to dramatically increase skill decay. In fact I don't see any other way it can work. If the decay rate is high enough, the only high level skills you can retain will be the ones you use the most. Your bow crafting skills will melt away if you spend much time actually shooting your bow, or gathering resources. Total skill level will depend on how many hours a week you play, rather than on how long you have played the game. It will be a difficult thing for the devs to balance, but I don't see a better alternative.

 

Skill decay being loss of exp on death?
Thats easily bypassed and is already ignorable for most people Adv level 100+ as they just play it slightly safer. And even with the current increase, you got people (guild leader for example) farming 1.2 million an hour right now. Even the current decay only knocks him down 200k or so. . Mix that in with the fact he dies SO RARELY...

Relying on death as a CAP system means people dont take risks, means people just play it safer. Its a dumb and poorly planned mechanic. Right away when the first decay was put in people blatently didnt want to run anything challenging because *death decay! * This leads to a more boring, less risk taking game. Which in itself doesnt actually limit anyone, just sucks for the casual person who is actually pushing and doing new things.

This is also ignoring the fact they seem to want to keep everything Solo able, yet also somehow expect to have late game group content.

 

I'm with you on this @MrBlight

In my opinion, a cap is way more simple and direct than skill decay. If the end goal is to not have people with gm in everything why not just make it obvious with a cap?

A cap also brings an end to the xp grinding (unless you choose to swap builds). Both in the sense that you'll reach your end build a little earlier, giving you more time to explore the rest of the game rather than be constantly trying to level up. And that you don't have to spend time replacing lost xp on death.

I like the idea of the specialization. That's an interesting take. However I feel that 100 base in all skills is still way too much. I feel 50 to 80 in non specialised trees might be good enough while the number of specialisations could go a little higher. I'm totally for self sufficient characters in solo rpgs, but I'd rather see player depending on one another in online play.

Speaking of simple and direct... The xp pool system is neither of those things.

I'll use crafting as an example since the clunkiness is more pronounced there. Unlike fighting, where I can keep fighting to level up any adventuring skill, I can't keep crafting to get my crafting skill up, I need to mine/gather so I can get enough xp to craft? My xp gained per craft is dependent the size on my pool? This means I need to head out to gather in order to craft, which also indirectly means I need to work on my adventuring in order to gather. That's hardly a flexible system.

I really think the skill system could really benefit from simplification if a cap is put in place. Then people can just use a skill to raise a skill without the need of worrying about an xp pool.

This could also be a problem in the proposed specialisation system since players who choose to focus on crafting still kinda needs all 3 spheres (adventuring/gathering/crafting), to progress at a fair rate.

 

I am going to speak to the PvP level gap. You have some excellent points here, and I want to address some of them - anecdotally and quantitatively. This is all from my perspective as a PvPer, and as a "min/maxer." I like to duel a lot, and I duel a lot of people. I don't do that much overworld PvP, because my guild is not currently at war with anyone and I don't typically attack randoms unless competing over resources. I am adventurer level 103 and I have 3 combat skills GM'd and 3 other skills at 99.

First of all, let's talk about the return on levels. There are two classifications of returns on glyphs - logarithmic and linear. The majority of glyphs are logarithmic. Examples of linear glyphs are: healthy, train strength/int/dex, things that give a constant amount of bonus each level. For train strength, you get .5 strength per level no matter what level the glyph is.

Every glyph that does damage has a logarithmic curve, the damage quickly goes up from 1-60, and each level gives a little less after that - diminishing returns. Past 80, these skills do not give much bonus. The amount of xp required for 1-80 is 17.4% of the xp required for 80-100 of ANY skill. If you hit 80 and are looking forward to GMing a skill, you have a LONG road ahead of you.

Logarithmic glyphs only gain about 5% effectiveness from 80-100. If you decide to gm a skill, 83% of that xp was spent for 5% of the damage. That is the bread and butter of the soft cap.

I will get to the attunement part in a little bit, but I think GMing skills is not a good idea, especially if you're under adventurer level 90.

Leveling a skill from 99-100 is the same amount of xp as it takes for 1-75 (of the same skill).

Well, let's do some math based on some fights from Virtue League last season. The biggest discrepancy of a win last season was a level 89 beating a level 108 (I apologize to those involved for using this as an example so frequently).
The xp required to get to adventurer level 89 is about 48 million. The amount to 108 is 294.5 million.

The level 89 has no GMs, highest level glyph is 94. And this is not a fluke, he beats me regularly. He isn't the only person around that level who can beat me, either. But all the people who can have something in common, they don't GM many things.

So, how long would it take you to get to level 89 given that you had a good strategy? Well, if you're only doing 100k xp per hour it would take 480 hours.

Attunement is important, and let me clarify what you are referring to here.

You gain 1 attunement for a school of magic for every 10 levels you have in a glyph in that school. So, if you have 1 skill at level 100 you get 10 attunement. There is some weirdness here, as some schools will count innates (e.g. death) and some won't (e.g. air).

100-120 on the cheapest skill is 6.3 million xp. That is 5x the amount of xp from 1-100. If people are spending 6.3 mil xp for 2 attunement, then that's their decision, but I don't think it is a smart one. Either way, their focus cost is going to be a lot higher (since it scales linearly), and their skills won't be that much better.

But there is a point here, attunement is great! Let's say you love obsidian arrow (I know I do), and you want it to do more damage. Well at a certain point (80+), you will get more damage on obsidian arrow by leveling other earth skills, because of the attunement it provides.

This is the goal of my guild, Societas Eruditorum, to show people how to make good competitive Avatars without having to grind a ton. Although, most of my guild members don't listen to me and GM skills anyway.

I don't think people who are adventurer level 70 can expect to compete with adventurer level 100, but that is because the amount of xp to get to 100 is almost 20x the amount of xp to get to 70. Adventurer level is not taken into account in PvP, but the amount of xp you have matters up to a certain point. That point seems to be around 50 million xp.

One last point:
Gear matters A LOT - https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-item-based-is-pvp-in-sota.80029/#post-760396

 

Excellent insight.
The only correction ill point out is that when im talking about raising the attunement, im pointing out the fact that 10 attunement translates to 5 resist in that school as well. So its more like people taking every magic skill to 80, to increase their base resist from those magic trees.

So what im talking about, is initially you have to factor in to be relevent even at level 89? Im assuming they have every skill in each magic tree a solid 80, which grants them a solid amount of attunement in each = base resist.


This is much easier to do when your pulling in 500k-1 mil an hour, then someone starting out. So that time has to be factored in as well.

So even in your example, Props to the Adv level 89 for sure. But thats 480 hours to be competitive?

Is SOTA really aiming for PVP to only be relevent with a TON of time sunk in? Because .. very few PVP orientated people.. are going to dump that much time into grinding PVE.. just to play a mediocer PVP game.
So if their end focuse is PVP END game, it better damn well be worth it. And my big problem right now, is they wont even elaborate on their endgame PVP ideas.. which i would rather they dont try to hold off, and release only to be a massive let down.

 

I don't think being self sufficient is what stall the economy. It is more to do with there is not enough people to generate demands. While there are folks who are the "do-it-all", there are others who would rather go farm gold from mobs, then buy ores from someone else. There are also other folks who prefer to be in their zen and just mine or harvest woods and sell to other people.

As for level gap in PvP, from my understanding is that once the skills go beyond 80, their increase in effectiveness will be less and less compare to going from 0 - 80. At some point, players will have to decide whether it's worth pushing beyond 80 or GM compare to the amount of XP they need to spend and also how much skill decay they need to deal with. At least that's the plan.

Although, it seems to me that Adv level is also playing some huge factor here since it affects the stats, which may end up making more impact than raising skills. Two people with GM blade combat, the guy will adv level 60 will be less likely to hit the guy with adv level 100, so that will need to be addressed at some point.

 

My main experiance from the game shows that adding more players wont solve the demand problems. Look at whats in play right now as the testing base. Theres more then enough *do - it - all * folks to flood the demand below raw material value. This is ignoring any pure crafters. I dont see how adding more players will change the general % that does each. Every self sufficient guy probably covers the demand of 10 *killing only* players. And the amount of people who would have to completly cut out crafting to make crafting viable, i just dont see it. I think my main concern is more people will only increase the issue on a larger scale. More people, more excess demand, more raw mats for cheaper. Etc etc. I dont see it as More people.. more weapons being used that arnt replaced. I have to imagine for every 10 ONLY KILLING and buying bow archer, there will be at least 1 person willing to make their own, and end up with excess.

Have to imagine that every 100 people that join, were going to have roughly the same % wanting to do the same stuff as people here. Probly 20% crafter focused... maybe 30% self sufficient.. and even if 50% of people ONLY want to kill stuff and ONLY buy their weapons, the market will still be flooded.
Maybe theres some numbers somewhere that counter what i seem to see in game.

 

+1

 

I feel like this could be addressed by adjusting the exp given upon refining, and crafiting items, to make it closer to gathering.
This would actually make REAL gatherers and REAL refiners and REAL crafters.

Sure i could do Forestry, Milling and Carpentry .. then maybe Tailoring? But then i actually need to rely on another player for efficient Foraging / textiles.

Or a fighter could do his own Mining / Smelting / Blacksmith.. and Enchanting? ( and be 100% self sufficient, but that would mean not being a pro fisher , agriculture as well or w.e ) the whole give and take.

So i feel like by adjusting EXP per craft /refine with some balance.. you could make it work?


The big thing with this change.. is suddenly adding things over 100 in crafts... you can really make a market for specialized crafters, that *Self sustaining* people probly arnt going to hit.
Obviously my idea needs tweaking, but you kinda see where my line of thinking with it is.

 

I like this idea, but I would add something. If you really want to specialize crafters, and I guess gatherers/adventurers also, I would suggest just merging the combat and the crafting/gathering tree's. Make the decay be part of the gm process for a single tree instead of two trees. This will add the number of gm's and the decay rate will increase then. This will further improve the soft cap and move it more to a hard cap in essence as people would have to spend more exp keeping multiple gm's.

 

This actually isn't the case. Adventurer level doesn't get incorporated into hit chance in PvP, only PvE

 

I have always been in the request for caps group. No one is unique, everyone does everything, less meaningful choices are there imo. I know it may be fun for a while to do everything, but it doesn't mean there couldn't be a reset option for purchase to reset your points like many games have if you decide to go a different route later or try something else out.

I can't tell you how many times I did a respec in wow. For me and I know in some things I would be a mediocre jack of all trades out of points but happy still.

There would have to be changes to the trees to encompass specializing verses knowing it all, but I would love to see a cap placed on crafting and combat with appropriate changes. My opinion.

And be-gone decay !!!!
Edited

edited again

 

Ill add to this that one key to the most powerful players in game is that the learn the logarithmic rules of the game (math) and find all of Chris's (Atos) math mistakes. Taking Earth as an example, people figure out that if they max str, max attunment then get the brand new +50 attun and +50% obsidian arrow wands and start dropping 1000+ hp crits on things. I use this as an example because I used it until it was nurfed in R40 (although Ill state that I had been earth for a year so I got lucky). These things are all over the place in the game and often times they dont get fixed for a long time. Most of these players also use creative and unexpected deck manipulations that they may find as bugs from the developers... or even auto stacking gliff scripts.

I generally think Chris needs to slow down at times and think the math through on things when he adds in artifacts like the Lich ring and such. *especially* since we are in persistence.

 

@majoria70 , there are many that want caps! Thank you for agreeing with me/us.

 

put me sir in that category...

 

As a player that has invested...

Over 1600 hours, many thousands of dollars and has stopped playing/investing for just the reasons you have presented. Thank you, I couldn't have said it better.

By far the biggest problem the game has is the lack of skill caps. I suspect Chris got the same feedback in his survey.

Hopefully they take some drastic action to rebalance, some people will rage. But the game will be healther for it. Besides what's the point of all those high level pledges getting extra character slots if your first guy can do everything?

LETS MAKE PLEDGES GREAT AGAIN!

*sorry couldn't help myself there*

 

As I tend to play lots of different games in bursts to keep them interesting, I really do not like the idea of aggressive skill decay. I much prefer the idea of skill caps instead.

Its not at all unusual for me to stop playing a specific game for 6 months to a year. If I came back to find all my skills are halved, then I'd probably just log out and not bother again.

 

Why not just create a production limit / time it takes to produce goods ? I enjoy the grind to get as many skills as possible (even if I do not use them) and would hate to be limited to certain skills. I also do not like skill decay. I think it is a silly thing to take something away I have worked for. I do not identify myself ingame with the amount of gold I have of the house I have but with the character I created so whatever I achieve comes down to how competitive I am.

 

Ok. Its a very good point made about crafting. Although the other discussion about equipment damage making high-level crafting pointless has to be factored in otherwise there is no purpose to fixing crafting.

I can't speak to PvP as I know nothing about it.

On the crafting front I don't think they're going to limit characters to x crafts or they'd have done in on Day One like most current MMOs.

What they could do is raise the bar on it.

Let us say that any character can GM 2 gathering, 2 refining, and 2 crafting. Any others stop at say 80.
To GM a third in any of these they need to finish a quest of appropriate difficulty and relevance. Perhaps present the quest giver with high quality examples of their work.
AND
face an exponential difficulty in levelling additional crafts ie getting a third craft to GM takes twice the xp from 80 to 100, a fourth takes 4 times etc.

This gives a good differentiated craftbase for most people but lets the few completionist nutcases do their thing - and wear an even bigger smug grin at the end.

It doesn't lose the original intent but it does mean that we don't have the OP situation of everyone ends up as a GM-of-all-trades just by bumbling along.

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On a slightly separate note I am a bit surprised by the limited resource types.
Traditionally in MMOs you found better resources needed for higher recipes in more difficult areas.

When I started carpentry I thought I'd have to level up before I found some oak trees as the starter area only had pine and maple.
I was gobsmacked when I found I couple make oak furniture out of maple. I feel a bit like a cheesy discount furniture store.