My Experience as a Returning Player

I'm convinced Starr doesn't even play the game.

 

In UO, the game is not fractured into ever changing instances. So in that game you could go back to your body and reclaim all your stuff if the body had not decayed. You can stash some gear in a bag and hide it in the scene prior to engaging so that you could quickly get enough emergency gear to survive back to your corpse. If you have a rune marked to your location, you could recall home, get outfitted and recall back to search for your body and items. The point being you have a chance to reclaim everything you lost due to death. Here in SOTA with death you have a permanent loss of Experience points. IMO the loss is not a game changer, but it remains a loss you have no chance to recover. Perhaps a design could be made which would allow a recently expired player to in some way recover the experience as part of the resurrection which will work with our instancing mechanic. I have no ideas, but just wanted to point out that the UO model is satisfactory to most players and we should try to find a way to have something similar that would work with this miserable instancing stuff we are stuck with.

 

I don't want to take this too far off the original post, but having a family member who is a dietitian. They always advise getting on the scale once a week and not everyday. When you look everyday you might see that you gained a half pound and then the next day your down a pound and a half. That is just the way the body works but if you check once a week you should see a difference and you don't get frustrated as often.

Bringing it back to the OP, I believe the people who have the biggest difficulty with this system are those who are constantly looking at their xp pool. Port would do better by taking away the numbers. If you have nothing to look at there would be no issue. I have yet to find someone say I have actually become weaker because of decay. Decay is there so people can not max out every skill. This topic is really getting old.

 

I took issue, after some reflection with your assertion of XP loss. I'm not the math guru.. just not wired that way. It would drive me insane if I (like some of my close friends) was doing a running tally on stats. LOL it actually taxes my brain listening to their non stop calculations but I realize that's how they're wired so I smile and enjoy our individual uniqueness.

That said... there is no possible way in hell that you lost 150K XP. As I said,I'm not Joe Math but I think I'm near to correct in saying it would take more XP to get from your lvl to mine than it did for you to get from Zero to your current level.
With that said.. I died last night and as I did the last time I died I had to seriously laugh. I'd done another of my patented clumsy moves and instead of going up some stairs I ran into the wall next to them... twice ffs. aS it so happened I'd been pulling my skills up due to doing some training so I had knew roughly how much was there (like give or take 50-100k) and as it happened I'd just been discussing this thread and so I looked to see how much I'd lost and it was nowhere near 150k. I'd *guess* maybe a 1/3 of that at most. I remember thinking.. hey that wasn't such a bad hit

Now, the fact is, I don't mind a discourse with someone whose opinions are not the same as mine. I very rarely block anyone because even amongst those I vehemently disagree with I find over time there are often certain areas of commonality or, they just make a damned good point and so I learn. My questioning (which you referred to as a nice piece of fiction, and ty for that compliment ) is to what your real intent in posting is. I note that as I write this you have still not written a bug report which, I would be inclined to think would likely result in a restoration of your lost XP. That being the case.. I have to wonder what it is you are seeking. I'd also be interested (as I am very much interested in the game (and Port's) longevity and success asto what is really bugging you.

WHile I stated above that I seriously wonder if Starr even "lifts", I note a change too in your own stance. To quote a previous statement you made:

"...Not to mention the fact that this game is supposed to be as close to a fantasy simulation of real life as possible. Fair doesn't exist in real life, and it shouldn't exist here. If you want to win, be good. There are no trophies for last place here.

Demoyn, Oct 6, 2016 ..."

So what's *really* going on?

So is this the real driving factor? I tend to note there are some players who are constantly talking about the need for hard caps as in their minds they don't see how they could ever be competitive. I don't see it that way. I would submit that most of those who insist on a hard cap haven't even begun the hard lifting. They just imagine this wall they can't conceive of scaling but they want so desperately to be relevant. The "obvious" choice.. to them... is to negate the hard work and dedication it has taken the top players to get where they are. 2 of my closest pals in the game are in the top 5 in the game and I have watched them closely for a long long time.. well one of them .. the fact is one of them hasn't been playing for a year yet. The other I've played with for about 2 years. The thought that someone's else's jealousy (this is a If the shoe fits wear it thing) should negate the hard work is , to me obscene.

It was a pretty well established world when Bill Gates first wiped his own rear.. I know as we're the same age...

the same holds true for Zuckerberg and so so many others yet the fact that there were already incredibly successful people did not hamstring them or prevent them from progressing.

I would then respectfully submit that if you see the potential this game has to be a world where you want to exist that the only thing that can stop you is the guy you see when you look in the mirror.

 

Absolutely agree.

Thing is most people want to optimize, they arent playing for immersion or RPG in the first place. That's to most of the people seconded. Priority No. 1 is almost optimization or min maxing a char.

I stick to my opinion that roleplay games shouldnt be make around this, they should be made around immersive gamemechanics.

Other thing is, i think development of games is going to catering more and more to people who do nothing else than gaming. The amount of time a player like me spend gaming is very low compared to those who play 10-16 hours a day.
Question is, where is the measure?
Do games need content for people who do nothing than gaming or can we find a mediocre way where people what only spent 5 hours a week perhaps have problems to ever see the whole content and people who play 12hrs/ day have finished the content in less than a week?

I remember allways these headlines like...
reached level 60 in 48hrs or whatever.

If thats that what people understand is playing a roleplaygame then we are doomed.
Roleplaygames arent about numbers, levels, killstreaks, min maxing...
Or wait they are meanwhile, but they shouldnt.

 

I agree with you. Somewhere along the lines gaming lost what a lot of us older players enjoyed and that was the journey the game took us on. Today it is about stats and min/maxing along with who can get through the game content the quickest. I have played a lot of MMORP's as well as a ton of single player RPGs. My favorite experience is still UO. That game did not have fancy mechanics, no heavy storyline, no fancy gear until artifacts came out. I played that game for 8 years and it took me about 6 years to reach 7 times gm. I could of used the 8x8 exploit like a lot of people did but I was having fun just playing and I never felt I could not hold my own in PvP or PvE. I made lots of friends in UO that are RL friends now.

Unfortunately, I think the train has left the station and most gamers want to min/max and say I completed such and such content first. And before I get called a fanboy there are lots of issues I have with SotA, skill decay is just not one of them.

 

I sent @DarkStarr a friend request months ago and have not been friended. I got a cool Steam achievement for doing so though. Maybe he just doesn't like me :'(

 

Skill decay allows you to work hard on your toon and master many things - hard cap would almost certainly be capped way below what some people have worked hard to get at ..

Next to every game out there has decay - in some variation or other, why should death be painless? sure test your boundries - you can always run, sure get it wrong a few times, but why should you be able to do stupid things and walk away with zero penalties?

 

He's on my list but I can't remember the last time I saw him in game. I hope he's well.. I know he had a nasty health thing not that long ago (and if I got my research right I'd guess it was stress that triggered it) and I know only too well that being up and about is not the same as restored to pre condition state. I also consider the pressures of managing a skeleton crew trying to do an impossible feat while trying to make many different factions happy. I'm guessing too that like me, he only gets 24 hours to his days and that being the case he can't possibly have the time to play in a meaningful way. My statement was not an attempt at rudeness.. rather my observation based on comments he makes about a game that seems to differ from the game I'm playing.
WHen he gets on, I'm sure he'll friend you. Next time I see him online I'll be sure to send him a poke

 

The game has, I think always been touted as being a place where actions have consequences. How then could death not?

 

I think he came to one of the dance parties about 9 months ago

 

So glad one of your family members is a dietitian who is lying to people. My bachelors is in exercise physiology. I'd be happy to go over the math of why she is lying her clients. People get frustrated cause they can't add which is apparently what is happening here as well. Decay is not needed to prevent all skills from being maxed out. It is impossible to get all skills maxed to 200. The lowest experience skill gust takes 8,353,983,370 which if you were gain 1 million exp an hour for 8 hours a day would take 1044 days to get to level 200 for one skill. The highest skill Train (stat) is =167,079,445,188 which if you were gain 1 million exp an hour for 8 hours a day would take 20,844 days to get to level 200. So please tell me exactly how decay is stopping maxing out skills. It is in no way doing that all it's doing is putting a death tax which takes time from players that does appositely nothing and yet you are buying the line cause you can't do math?

 

The real driving factor is that I've spend quite a few thousands of dollars on this game and I don't want to see it wasted due to the population becoming extinct while the developers hang on to their absurd ideal that people want a video GAME that simulates constantly bashing one's head into a wall.

Now, since you like math so much, here's some math for you. This game went persistent in late August. I stopped playing in mid October. That's slightly over a month and a half of playtime. During that time I got my character to the mid 80's. Sure... there were about 10 players ahead of me when I quit, but I didn't use exploits and the day the game went persistent was literally my first day ever in the game, so being a top 25 player was fine by me. The point of that story is that you should really stop trying to guess at what my motivations are. The ONLY thing you've been right about is that I didn't bother filing a bug report for a game I've already decided not to play, and as I've previously stated that was obviously pure coincidence.

As for the XP, I've noticed people saying how much XP they've lost recently and it got me questioning myself. Maybe my memory is horribly shot. Even so, I did a little math on that too. Like I said previously, I only started thinking about coming back to the game after I hit a million XP. When I logged back in to check my XP after creating this thread I had 975,000 XP. Given that I got 10k XP just for logging in the day I got bugged that means the loss was at least 35k. Now that's not taking into account any days I logged in to get the daily bonus. I'm pretty sure I logged in 5-6 times the week before, but let's just assume that my memory is REALLY bad and I got to that threshold later in the week and was only able to log in 2 times before I created this thread. That's still a BARE MINIMUM of 56k XP, which is almost double what some people had been posting in here that they lose on a death who are in a level range near mine.

Also, I'm pretty sure you said before that you were level 93. It does not take more XP to get from 85 to 93 than it does to get from 1 to 85.

TLDR - You're wrong. You're wrong every time you type. Maybe you should stop typing.

 

The amount of XP Adventurer Level takes from 1 to 85 is 32,902,127
The amount of XP Adventurer Level takes from 85 to 93 is 37,621,426
That one is correct actually

 

Got to love forums, when someone shares a different opinion only to get blasted with insults. Yes I can do math, but I choose not to care about the math of a game. These types of discussion happen in virtually every MMO game. XP loss or XP Debt systems have been pretty common in MMO's. You are correct that it is a death tax which takes time from players, which is a penalty for dying. I actually miss the corpse runs and mobs looting an item from my corpse. Debuffs and Gear Damage are useless to me because players can easily pay to repair an item or wait out the debuff timer doing something else like crafting. There is Gear Decay which is different to me then Gear Damage. Gear Damage means you can fix the gear by doing a repair, but if you had Gear Decay where the items durability is permanently lowered each death until the item is useless is kind of strong.

Andartianna, I am curious as to what type of death penalty you would find acceptable?

 

This is meaningless to anyone using pledge/add-on gear.

 

@Demoyn

People are conflating the wrong math though.

If your avatar was gaining its XP back in the day it was also accumulating decay according to the old decay math.
That decay that was accrued back then would still be in your decay pot when you returned.

Which you then would lose upon dying.

So what people accrue and lose in decay now with the new formula is pretty irrelevant to your case.

Which means that both sides are correct and that all the needless bickering they are putting you through is merely based on a misunderstanding and moot.

You are correct because the decay pot you had was accrued using the old rules and the old math - which was harsher than now.

They are correct because with the new rules and the new math someone of your level and XP couldn't lose that much - which still is irrelevant to your case.

Furthermore if you'd continue playing then you'd accrue decay by the new rules and the new math - which wouldn't be as punishing as that first one upon your return.

Hope this clarifies things.

Happy hunting

Spoon

 

The funny thing is my friend that we both have the same objective. That we see things from a different perspective is understandable. I have not, at least by intent tried to dis or bash you on a personal level. I'm sincerely trying to understand what it is you are after. Believe it or not sometimes when we stop and try to put ourselves in the shoes of another person and understand why they have the POV they do we actually learn something. One of the beautiful things about the potential of this game is it it allows the possibility for so many people to approach it and have an enjoyable experience. I too have a couple dollars into this. I do not fwiw think that because
I have invested at w/e lvl I have that my opinions should have more bearing than the folks who may start off with a $20 game investment when they caught a 1/2 off sale on Steam.

We are in 100% agreement here. The only good feeling (you know FUN) that comes from beating one's head against the wall is when you stop. As to my "liking" math, I guess I didn't articulate myself very well. Math (other than figuring my finances) gives me a headache. I leave the hard math to my wife.

I DO want to have some enjoyment when I play which by the by I do more as a "seat of the pants" player. I don't need to understand all of the physics involved when I ride my Harley... I just ride the damned thing... again, seat of my pants.
Now that said.. there are *some* things about which I am aware as I frequently play with a couple people who DO have that stuff figured out and so I have gleaned a bit merely by osmosis

For example:

You stated: "...The ONLY thing you've been right about is that I didn't bother filing a bug report for a game I've already decided not to play, and as I've previously stated that was obviously pure coincidence..."

While you may not have intended it to come across the way I take that it would seem to me that in your mind I'm just some blathering idiot who is *obviously* not capable of the level of understanding you have and so anything I may think or feel is of no consequence and should therefore be summarily dismissed. You are of course entitled to that opinion.

As seen by the statement of my friend Andartianna that makes at least 2 points I happened to have gotten correct for whatever reason. If then I landed on two correct points, through the employment of w/e methodology got me there, I would submit that the possibility exists I may have been correct or partially correct in other areas.

Perhaps Doyle said it best when he said: "...Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth..."

Again. it is not my intent to have a silly argument. It takes all kinds to have a world...I think the game is better for it's diversity and with that being the case I think it's a loss if you toss in the towel. It's a better world (game) with you in it; regardless of whether or not we share the same point of view.

Again, if you have taken anything I have said as being mere snark or intentionally disrespectful, I apologize as such was and is not my intent

With Gassho

-sol

 

I don't particularly feel like keeping this argument going either, but I do want to point out the problem with your arguments, and the above is a perfect example. I went back and read the thread over and I hadn't realized that you posted some perfectly fine comments on the first and second pages before you devolved into who you appeared to be on the next few pages.

This quote, though, is why I continued to argue with you. From page two until just after this quote all you've done is make strawman arguments about what I'm thinking, which WASN'T anywhere near what I was thinking, and then proceeded to argue with your own delusions as if they're what I thought and/or said. You said things like "he hated the game", "he hates the game", "he rage quit", "he can't keep up with top end players", all the way up to "he thinks I'm just some blathering idiot". Only one of those was even close to true (I'll let you guess which one). Those types of arguments are not respectable and they're not used by respectable people. I guess what I'm saying is: try sticking to the facts; you actually got a few of those correct (though let's be honest - while technically correct on 85-93 having more XP it's pretty damned close to even. I looked for a chart to check before I posted but couldn't find one that went past level 40).

 

Thats right, rpgs should be build around story, game mechanics and gameplay that is fun. But we have a game where Story is only incidental and some content blocked from the grind wall. Shroud is more like a Korean grind game with housing then a deep roleplay game. In no way you can compare this game in the current state to any other true rpg's. Even when i play Pillers of Eternity i look on the numbers and try to build a good character because i play those games on the second hardest setting. That doesnt mean that i have less roleplay feeling or immersion, it just adds some tactical/strategic elements to it. SotA has to earn the rpg titel first.