Game is WAY Too Easy

Except that all of the problem in my opinion isn't about attack skills or weapons. It's about being able to pick defensive skills and buffs in every trees, level those and use as many of them as possible. Attunement, passives and this reality make the jake of all trade superior to a specialized build.

You take @Sara Dreygon as an exemple but that's a pretty bad exemple as she leveled every magic trees to get the attunement. The same can be said about me.

Really, there is not a single avatar in this game who can efficiently fight without having to train skills which have nothing to do with the desired specialization.

One of the best exemple was a couple of release ago with the damage avoidance buffs (using evasion/glancing blow, fortify defense, defensive stance and ice shield in a row). You can still do that with heals over time (+ healing proc chest and death shield, just for fun) or you can combine dodge with two damage avoidance buffs and parry, etc...

The skill combination possibilities are simply a mess and a way to avoid easily the restrictions which come with soft caps.

 

Dude... Take a deep breath and let it go...

maybe take a break and come back in a couple releases...I mean seriously.. no offense man but you've been posting walls of text for 2 days about how SotA is all messed up and now you're done with it..

Let.. it... go

YW

 

He's right you know... they just have very good coffee around those parts...

 

You can have story consequences with failure states. You can have combat consequences where monsters are more aggressive against certain types of specs... or flee. Like archer prioritizing player casters or something.

Having a consequence doesn't mean that you have to punish players; it just means that they have to think about what they want to do and the "should I stick with what I got or just stop playing altogether" isn't a choice you want players to consider.

"got to max out all my skills to play" isn't a choice either other than you being able to put up with it. It's just a thing you have to do because, apparently, that's what the game requires of you.

If getting all skills to level 40 is a "no brainer" and it's part of the accepted meta, why don't we all start with skills at level 40 instead? It's not like they do anything worthwhile bellow 40 anyways.

If people are talking about having 100+GMs, then decay isn't much of a consequence. As you accumulate more and more skills, you just progress slower in those new skills but there's no consequences because you're not making a decision beyond "am I willing to grind more today?"

You say you "struggle" with more than one ranged opponent; I do too. You're still capable of dealing with them (as do I)... but what if you had NO CHANCE what's-to-ever to deal with, say, a ghost?

I'm not talking about dragon bosses, sieges or even trolls here... I'm talking about a single (simple) mob that is simply melting your face because "you chose wrong".

 

Yea lol archers are serious threats now and I remember ghosts rolling my face in r32, getting some defensive attunments in death will make them more managable. Going from zero death attunment to about 80 really lowers their damage to you.

 

Get 40 in the death tree, 40 in the moon tree, use celestial blessing vs ghosts and it will be WAY easier.

 

*Walks in and glances around quickly* Hey, anyone else notice Fireflies works for ranged damage now?

 

when they made the switch to crit damage and not crit % it was not working for bow initially?

 

Worked since day 1.

 

an ancient roman lunch?

I really just take the best skills in each tree and make a mega-power character. muahahahaha.

so, guys, the secret to the replay/retention value really is limiting the number of points you can spend, perhaps and not a dead decay? is that what you mean by "hard cap?" because if it is, that might be a good idea. (please don't hurt me)

 

*looks back to the Post 2 1/2 Weeks ago*

 

Who said it was a "no brainer"? I said it had no consequences, it's still your choice whether or not you do it. I certainly don't have every skill above level 40.

We were talking about your assertion that it's "not fine is being "jack of all trades" and not suffer any trade offs" and I'm asking what you mean by that. Answer my question instead of deflecting.

I don't have 100 GMs, very few people do. My current death penalty sets me back by about two days of play in terms of my pooled XP, so decay seems consequential to me.

I have no chance with, say, the Ghost Corpion in Boreas Colossus. I run past it.

If it's something I want to kill then, as I said above, I either get some friends to help or develop some skills that will work.

 

How? ive truly never lost enough to be able calculate in minutes

Not trying to be a douche just trying to figure out what im doing wrong/right.

 

I'm not calculating in minutes, I'm talking about days of play - to be more clear I mean two days where I play for my normal amount of time doing the normal things that I do.

I died a few times on Monday night, lost about 200,000xp in total. Died a few more times on Tuesday and lost about 150,000xp. Made back quite a lot of the Tuesday night XP because I was in a party in The Rise (i.e. abnormal XP gain for me, but also why I died a lot) and after a normal play session yesterday I'm still about 150,000xp down on where I was on Monday morning. Figures are somewhat imprecise because I have a few skills turned on.

 

they should really check if this thing is working for everyone because those numbers seem faaaar off for me at 91. I die about 10 times each session 2-5 hours weekdays and im always out ahead by hundreds of thousands of xp no matter if i do the rise or ulfheim heck I could even do a 4 skull and I would have my losses back in a couple of minutes. I dont keep my skill list up at all times but starting to think I will have to test this out for real

 

You already have multiple answers to this question in this thread. You just need to read. Everyone has to level every skills in this game. Those who want to specialize will invest more experience in fewer skills, without being competitive at all.

I will take an exemple with an archer but that works with everything.
First, with the learning curves (soft caps) an archer will need almost 188M experience points to get every ranged skill to 120 (I don't even mention tactics and armor) while the "Jack of all trades" needs 137M to get everything to 100 (GM).

Secondly, the 120th level will only give 20% bonus OR less on each ranged skill compared to those same skills with Jack. 20% bonus on 11 skills and -100% (on skill bonus) in everything else for 31% more time invested.

Thirdly, the Jack will be allowed to cumulate good attunement with every heal over time and defensive skill except for the damage avoidance ones while the specialized one (let's be fair and tell that he learned evasion, dodge and fortify defense) will have 0 attunement, no shield, no resistance, no heal, etc...

Shall I speak about the versatility which is one additional advantage ? Or about the fact that, at least, 3 of the 6 ranged attack skills are unused by archers because nobody is interested with piercing things or a small dex malus ? Or about the opponents who are resistants to some magic spells and who will kill every specialized mage ?

The problem here is pretty simple and I'm quite surprised that people try to silence something so obvious : In SotA, the more you level everything, the better your chances will be in each fight (of course, that does not mean that you will win every fight). The BIG Problem here is that soft caps AND death decay are useless against this phenomen. Because the Jack of all trades use less experience to have the best efficiency.

To summarize, everyone feel the need to use magic and weapons and tactics and passives and attunements and resistances in this game. That's not a classless system. It's a ONE class system.

Don't get me wrong. The current system's fundamentals are excellent. But @Chris need to look into the way how skills interact with each other. "Simple" solutions exist.

 

I have been reading the thread. We've discussed people like Mac2 and Sara Dreygon in this thread, they have very different builds and they have talked about their comparative advantages.

So a "Jack of all trades" has every skill at GM? Does that match your definition @Gix ? How many players exist that have every skill at GM?

So you're saying it doesn't actually take 188M to be 'specialized' in archery because half the active skills aren't used?

I'm at AL 94, I have 23 GMs but I'm not sure off the top of my head how many are in combat skills, about half probably.

 

Their build is not fundamentaly different. @Sara Dreygon already stated that she had to train almost everything to get attunements. Of course, they don't have the same skills at the same level, I guess, but the only real difference is the way they are playing (and their decks).

Do you know the meaning of "exemple" ? You can use the same maths with a 60 Jack vs 80 specialist or 80 Jack vs 100 specialist. The results will be the same with different figures.

You can simply say that I'm wrong if you don't want to have a valid debate. That would be faster.

 

I'm not deflecting, I'm merely trying to elaborate on what I had believed to be a pretty easy concept to understand.

A "jack of all trades" is the idea that someone can do practically what others can. He's doing "all the trades" so, while he may not be a grand-master swordsman, he can still be pretty effective with a sword... his lack in proficiency with a blade is compensated with the idea that he can also handle himself in other activities such as archery, healing magic, fire magic, etc.

... this is using RPGs tropes as a setting/example, in the modern world, we call them "generalists" (at least in the 3D art industry: people who can do concepts, model, texture, rig, animate and lighting).

So, no, I don't associate "Jack of all trades" with someone who GMs EVERY skill (although that person would certainly be one); just that he leveled up a fair amount of skill in every tree to be competent. In SotA's case, that allows him to overcome practically every challenges thrown at him; not having to worry about his inability to perform in one particular activity as well as someone else who specialized.

When everybody feels forced to level up skills in every tree (because the "jack of all trades" suffers little to no disadvantages) instead of leveling what they truly want to play, THAT's where you got a problem.

To spin it the other way, what advantage does my "specialist" blade-stealther has over someone who can practically do everything? Slightly more damage? Compared to someone who has more magical resistances, can (also) apply bleeding and poison, fire DoT, healling, summon pets, etc... and probably has more Focus to boot.

You said it yourself: I'm "limiting" my character by doing that. The thing is, I'm being limited even though the way I play is how I'd naturally play a character; I'm not consciously doing this to screw myself up. The other guy? He doesn't need to be amazing at it, but he certainly has a way easier time.

... and then everybody ends up being "the same". Not because they have identical builds, but that they have identical "flavours". This isn't like GuildWars 2 where every class has some way to heal others but they each have their unique way about it (like the Thief can turn people invisible in an area that triggers a small heal while the Warrior has a shout that boosts health, etc)... this is a classless system, meaning everything's way more generic. Healers can only compare on the quantity of their heals, rather than "how" they heal.