Portalarium, please don't cave in to the loud noise. Keep decay in!

By all means keep tweaking it, like in the last release (good changes IMO), but please keep SotA the promised game where actual skill matters, not turning it into a hand-holding WoW clone. The gains are already small past 80 and miniscule past 100 so it's not like the power level of mid/high vs extremely high characters will be immense either way. Let actual player skill be a factor in top level small gains.

If you die so often that you can't progress anymore, then you've simply hit your soft cap as a player and will continue to progress if you get better (which under the current system means you are very likely a high level to begin with but that's another topic). Suggestions : ask better players for advice, get better equipment, tweak and optimize your skills and decks, pick your hunting spots more carefully... in short, learn the game and play it well!

Actual skill and dedication being rewarded is what makes games great and SotA being among the few that stand out, don't take that away!

Sincerely, the less vocal pro-decay lobby.

 

I agree - keep it in.

Some people just don't understand the concept of a soft cap, they just know that 200 is the hard cap. I look at it like life expectancy, I could live to 200, but there is a soft cap around 80-100

 

Sure! Keep it in! But not accumulating while I'm offline

 

I dont agree or disagree. Im actually ambivalent.

The problem is still that there is *no* decay in the game. I largely say that because I have only died maybe 5 times on accident since persistence so it really does not even apply to me (at lvl 95).

 

Everything you want discourages players grouping up and learning things themselves. Want to go do something? Watch this video, overfarm this green garbage until you're this buff, write a thesis, ?????, and then go try it. What you're lobbying for isn't skill; it's being so overpowered before you attempt something that there's little left to skill. It is a difference.

Why take the risk playing the game and learning something new when it is requiring an entire night or more of *recoup* time because ... no reason really... who wants to group? Who wants to play with anyone else? Why risk it? Why help that new guy? Everything about death decay kills group focused content. It is simply too expensive to die and therefore too expensive to want to play with others.

 

I have 33 GMs and death penalty is still fairly meaningless (about 150k XP since it was effectively halved last patch). Just enough of a sting that I don't want to charge recklessly like an idiot, but far from stopping me from trying anything. Hell, I died 3-4 times in a row trying to solo the Ghost Corpion just for fun. And i'm guessing i'm in the top 1% most affected by death decay penalty. No risk, no glory, no reward.

 

honestly... I hardly notice the decay... maybe because I'm mining too much or playing too much to notice it or I don't have enough skills or it's just not noticeable... and I do die often because I'm just wearing an armor with beginner stats and I'm not that particularly good when getting mobbed... anyway, just sharing my experience with decay... sorry to anyone who finds my reply not to their liking...

update: last time I bothered to check using @Umuri's SotAHud, it says there my decay is 75k per 24hour...
update: not sure if this adds anything but my Avatar is AdLevel 92 with only 15 GMs

 

I am all for there being *something* that happens when you die. Just not this. I come from a multitude of EQ'esque heavy group/raid style games and in every case where experience was lost on death, you could mitigate it (Resurrect on corpse returned 96% of exp, for instance in EQ). There was a penalty, 4% of what you lost wasn't so terrible over the accumulation of multiple wipes over a night while you're learning new content, etc etc. It's a complete apples to oranges analogy, but you can't have a system where there's such aversion to doing anything new.

For those that played those now-older MMO's... Think of all the wipes it took to down a new boss. Translate those deaths to this game. There's no way that's sustainable without a group whose job it is to play the game simply to break even with raiding/group content. This is after all an MMO, grouping needs to be ENCOURAGED and decay in the current form does everything in its power to DISCOURAGE meaningful group play where death is likely.

So rather than beat this dead horse that nobody can agree with the opposite party on, what ideas for *on-death penalty alternatives* can you guys come up with that still create a sense of risk/reward (lets be honest there is no reward right now) while still encouraging group play?

 

I think the current system is actually much better for raids. Only the first death matters (even less now since R42), because then your decay doesn't have time to build up, even if you wipe all night.

 

I agree. Keep Decay essentially as it is. They already cut it in half for the first death. Hard Cap would be disastrous.

 

Disagree.

Decay is ignorable for me but the whol3 concept is garbage.
Its ignorable for me becsuse i play 3-4 h a time when i play so loosen 20 min or more in exp is nothing.

I play with giys who hop on an hour here n there. And sometimes thst first death is more then their total exp gained. ( this is because not everyone pulls max exp they can all the time ).

If i die its 20 min in my best solo spot or about 40 min somewhere else.

For them it can sctually push them backwards.
This leads to over farming low level **** .
Not pushing new content.
And the largest factor here, is thst crippling weight knowing its there.

And why is it there? The same people arguing its for a soft cap or w.e, also say its impossiblw to hit 200 in skills anyway due to the increases exp cost scaling.
So whats the point of it then? The limitations are from the unrralistic exp it takes to get to 200, not from death.

All this does is encourage low level farming. And effects people puttinf in less time per session.

Theres better way to add death penalties.

And this is ignoring the fact its HOW far past persistance and is still taking up a retarded amount of dev time?

Take it out. Add one of the 100 other death penalty ideas. And move on.

 

Very easy fix for the more casual player : simply have decay accumulate when you're actually playing, or some variation thereof.

 

It sounds easy, I think it should be easy.... probably isn't easy. If it was that easy I can't understand why Chris wouldn't just *f it let's try it* and see...

 

I am interested in hand holding on certain things. Too many players come into this divided scene world and say hmmm. There should be markers showing what is what. I went to Brittany last night to find the coto vendor. Did I want my hand held or at least a street sign that said coto vendor this way with an arrow? The signage in this game is lacking and that is not hand holding that is aesthetics and functionality. And that new players 'see' the options this game offers. It does not mean that quests tell them every movement to make or anything like that but the game has markings for people to find their direction. Imagine when we get treasure hunting, wow I want to know a blacksmith building and I want static signs for some things.


We should not limit the game to being one way. I want dailies but yet I still want the totally immersive quest-lines too. I want both. I want to have tasks and achievements because sometimes that is the type of day it is and it gives reason to play. So I vote for it all for all types of players.

 

I'd quite like it if decay was based on usage and was set at a point where you could easily maintain a couple of specialities like combat and mining or carpentry and fishing etc. That would encourage some specialisation. Adventures would be powerful heroes but not be skilled enough to craft the best gear for themselves, while blacksmiths would be able to make great swords and armour, but rely on adventurers to bring some of the more exotic materials to them. Carpenters would be able to build your furnishings and home, but would need the blacksmiths to help with locks and window fittings etc.. That would improve the economy and provide a motivation to buy additional character slots if port opened them up to help out with funding.

 

+1

I don't ever foresee a booming player economy in this game without specialization and I don't see the current decay system forcing any specialization. If I can do everything in this game and craft everything I need why would I ever have to buy/sell anything? I'd prefer it if players got to choose a couple of combat trees and a couple of crafting trees as specialties which had NO skill decay applied while the other non-specialty skills got hit harder with decay (although not necessarily the death-based decay system we have now) or with a much, much steeper progression curve (and just get rid of decay entirely).

 

I've noticed as player decay increases the active player population decreases. Based upon the sample size of Steam when decay became dramatic we suffered a -15.64% decrease in player population. Anecdotal evidence a lot of people quit grouping and playing due to decay.


May 2017 138.1 -25.6 -15.64% 257
April 2017 163.8 +6.5 +4.15% 299
March 2017 157.2 -4.2 -2.59% 309
February 2017 161.4 +1.3 +0.80% 293
January 2017 160.1 +11.1 +7.42% 302

Source: http://steamcharts.com/app/326160#6m

 

At this rate the only players left will be the pro-decay people at which point they'll give another survey asking about it then declare the decay system as overwhelmingly popular and a great success based on the results.

 

Does decay actually work? Is it doing what it is intended to do? It doesn't seem so.

Also why decay and a soft cap. Doesn't that suggest the soft cap is not working? Why not just increase the soft cap, say make taking a skill from 90-100 a lot more painful than it currently is. Make anything over 100 super painful?

 

It doesn't work, the devs likely know this, but Port really hates admitting mistakes so unless decay actually breaks the game, it is unlikely to be removed or significantly changed.