2 Big Picture Questions

Forcing too much specialization does not appeal to me. What I really enjoy about this game is that there are so many facets to enjoy. I think it would be boring to just do a couple of things. I have really enjoyed hunting. Also gathering. Also crafting. And it has been really fun working on diverse decks. Within each of these facets, I have of course had to specialize to a certain extent. I have played a lot, but I find there are avatars that are really much much better at any facet. For some reason, it doesn't bother me. I just plan to have fun continuing to grow.

I have also spent a lot of hard earned gold buying and earned some selling. I have also enjoyed helping and trading with my guild mates.

I have observed players that seem very specialized and I admire that also.

!!!! So I vote for a game that lets a player enjoy a lot of variety and choices. !!!!

Of course this is just from my perspective. Economics is so complex, I thought it better to just offer my experience at this point.

 

I don´t want to see sota becoming another easy, classlock and generic MMORPG, with daily rewards for simply join the game, or instant level 100 characters. No skill cap system is an incentive to keep developing your character in the long term, and it also allows unique and rich builds. So i´m against skill cap system but i recognize that devs should reduce the gap betwen hardcore/casual players, and it´s very simple to do, just making the skill leveling 0-80 faster, reducing the benefit of the attunementt and balance the combat system.

 

I really liked when we had attunements that worked AGAINST each other. This gave a little bit if a good feel to me because it worked in the direction of a class system, i guess you could call it a soft class system and kind of brought both camps together as a compromise IMO. I am largly against the decay however and prefer hard caps.

 

The successful mage must study neotony.

 

I'm not into PVP so I could be entirely wrong here but... Would a fix be to cap skills only within certain zones? Or to be able to set up tournaments with that kind of rules? For example, if you're level 1000 and enter a lower level PVP shardfall your skills, max damage, health and focus are constrained to that zone's max. That way a more casual player could feel confident they could do some PVP without being entirely ganked. And some kind of shardfall / oracle lore could be worked up to explain it.

 

This is very misleading as decay will never accomplish a soft cap system without completely decimating the casual player. Someone playing 8-10 hours a night maxing exp gains grinding content will either outpace the decay or the decay would have to be increased to a level that would decimate casual players with only a few hours a day to play.

Master of everything is fine by me when you are going to be limited to your deck and geear setup for any fight you participate in. This will naturally result in the flavor of the week templates for PVP, and also custom rigs that only some can master and work effectively. Fun stuff if you ask me.

 

I believe there is suppose to be a test PVP zone setup that capped skills for this release. Would be great if they could expand on this also. Get rid of the current loot and decay system. Have penalty on death on normal scenes be anything you gathered in that scene remains on the corpse. Remove all forced PVP scenes and open them to the general public so they are no longer empty.

 

Decay need not be constant for all players. I have assumed that it will scale with skill level or adventure level. A simple percentage might even work. If two players both log a certain number of in-game hours without using their brewing skills, for example, that skill could decay 1% for both players. The casual player might regain this just as easily (or more so) than the other player who is GM in brewing. It all depends on what formula the devs employ. There is no need for decay to preferentially penalize casual gamers and I would not assume that the devs plan to do it that way.

 

There is no calculation or magical formula that would make this work. Changing it to ingame time for accruing decay would help but even then your are only capping players on the amount of Exp they can reasonably gain in one hour. To get to a point when your playing, that if you die you have to grind crap for an hour to get back to where you were is just not good game design. The casual player that doesn't want to grind 1 hour of their life away every time they die will eventually say, "I am done. "

 

Personally im actually hoping thats how the * guild war Scene* will turn out.. where it either rounds everyone down to GM.. or everyone up or something.. So it actually becomes a little bit more about deck synergy/team work.. instead of being who has the most high level characters. And honestly, if they DONT want to rework anything, this might be a good end term solution for making guild wars fun.
But i belive this idea was shot down from other players a while ago about *if im willing to put the time in, i should get advantages over other players* Which i essentially agree with in theory... but you can see how this can make it VERY hard for new players especially to play or catch up to a competitive level (IN A REALISTIC amount of time).

This, yes falls under another *possible solution* which i like.

+1 for you.

 

No magic is required, just algebra. I am a very casual gamer and have played other mmorpgs with xp debt. It's no big deal. If Port continues to tie decay to death (which isn't really necessary) then certainly some players will complain. Every player has a different level of tolerance for death penalties and a different expectation in terms of challenge. It's a debate in every mmorpg I'm familiar with. Decay is not the only way to resolve the issues raised by the OP. I'm not even saying it's the best solution. But I suspect it is the solution which will be implemented.

 

I think it's about the right measures.
I wont be sad as a casual if i cannot hold as much GM as a more passionate player with more time.
In my eyes this would be better than what we now have.

My biggest Problem is the thing about resistance and atunement And the need to skill almost every magic school, although you maybe dislike for several reasons, mechanic, RP and just personal flavor.

I dont have a ready solution, if so o maybe would Design games and have a cooler Job than now

 

I do agree with unique and rich builds being ideal. But wouldn't having a limitless skill build of some kind of work for that idea of against it?

In a limitless plan, there is no reason not to have every generic passive trained to benefit you if you want to optimise your character. Which is why players who want to optimise train all their spells trees regardless of their eventual build because of the passive defensive benefits.

If everyone who wants to optimize trains everything, wouldn't that make builds more similar instead of unique?

 

lol had to look that one up.

neoteny. (nē-ŏt'n-ē) The retention of juvenile characteristics in the adults of a species. Humans, for example, are sometimes said to demonstrate neoteny by retaining through adulthood the relatively large head and hairlessness characteristic of very young primates.

 

Yes the retention of flexibility, multi potency, and adaptability.

 

Not sure what your level is but to lose 70k in EXP when you can farm about 100k an hour is a big deal. And I have 1 GM in a skill I don't even use, but that's another thread. I do have a lot at 80 with adventurer level 85. If this is the cap they place for a casual player with a few hours a night unless I want to resign myself to mind numbingly boring zones just to grind. Then I am out. There are so many better options than decay.

Anything I collect in the zone stays on my corpse.

Charge me gold for a resurrection fee

Just don't make me sit through another hour of grinding... exp

 

We have to add more decay to not used skills to limit gaining endless power by powergaming.
I am casual too, I can live with all at 80 and maybe just 1 or 2 GM

 

Hi folks, very, very casual player. Briefly skimmed through the posts (i.e. barely read the first page). Just wanted to add my 2 cents.

I am in support of a cap on skills as well. Something in the fashion of a normal distribution. I believe forcing specialisation is what will drive the player economy. I would something drastic. For example, a high-level gathering will negatively impact greatly, or capped heavily, your combat skills or crafting skills.

So what happens when you do something like that? Solo players will suffer for sure. I am largely a solo player. I am always the last to join an MMO with friends, and when I join, I largely play at my own leisure unless they force me to do some group stuff. But back to what will happen.

- Fighters will instantly suffer from a lack of gathering loot.
- Gatherers will be blocked from a lot of farming places unless we fix the maps.
- Crafters can neither gather nor fight well. (Note that just because a cap does not mean you have a fundamental ability to do other stuff)

This seem like it makes the game less fun. So here's an idea. Make things really, really UBER at higher levels. At levels where only one skill of a character can reach, it should do really cool stuff. 5-6 ores with a single tap. Damage goes haywire. Crafting success rates sore.

What this will look like if this is implemented correctly.

- Fighters teaming with gatherers (who will probably go range or healing) to more dangerous maps.
- Gatherers paying for escort.
- Gatherer to crafter transactions increasing.
- Generally more and better items on the market.

If we reach that stage, you can freely nerf how fast items decay. No one will care because everyone will be uber in their own way.

The current system as it is, feels a lot like Skyrim. I don't really need social interaction. That is why it took so long for me to voice my opinion. I believe there are a lot of players like me. They just join MMOs for a more vibrant play experience (and to pretend they are socialising). I've heard that Single Player Mode is the way to play now. I say screw that. If I wanted a single player experience, Skyrim and a lot of other single-player games are better options.

PS: The friends who roped me into SotA hearken to the era of Ultima Online and Everquest 1 & 2. The way they pitch to me the game was a player-driven economy and uniqueness of characters. An open cap-less system is not unique and does not create unique characters.

PSPS: I may be wrong, because lately I haven't really feel like logging in, but Skill Decay is just XP loss on death, is it not? I thought skill decay is supposed to be some consistent drain on XP based on high level skills. If it doesn't happen that way, it's not really Skill Decay is it? Skill Decay is a really nice idea to set a soft cap on skills. But until it works the way it describes, could we stop calling it that?

 

without really disecting this post too much.
Adv and Crafting are already seperate skills, and my first intended proposal never said anything about seperating them. In fact maybe i didnt specify but i was thinking 100-200 being the *Speciality* levels.. and 4 options from crafting, and 4 options from adventure, not 4 overall.

Also my proposal was.. anything/everything for everyone can go up to 100, only the 100-200 would have to be specilized. This means that even a solo player still has the basics ( or higher since GM is pretty higher end i suppose) in everything. It would really only effect the later game, late game PVP, and late / specilized crafting.
So its not like the casual player is going to feel it entirely much, as they arnt the ones pushing everything past 100. And by the time they ARE, their own speclities, makes them more useful in their own areas.. allowing them to trade/sell/buy for what they need. (economy)

 

@MrBlight I'd love to come watch you sometime.
Would you mind if I did ?