The Hard Caps and Tree limit Thread

First of all...
Please read!

I dont want to force this, heck i cannot eitherway and i dont want a discussion no caps versus caps and argue with the one group to get the thread closed or derailed.
If you think caps and limits are bad in general and you dont want it, just ignore this thread, please, please just ignore it, because this thread is only about what could SotA be with hard caps and limitations for trees and what would be the problems and does it make sense or would it cause more problems than benefits!?
So again, if you dont like the following idea and want SotA be the game as it is today regarding skills, limitless progression and no limits in choosing trees then PLEASE dont feel like I or we want to take this away from you or destroy your ability to level all or whatever and just ignore the Thread.
That would be super helpfull.

Thanks!!!

My idea was allways to build an Archetype out of the classless system,
to choose some trees, master them and then partake in the sandbox RPvX.
Fight Monsters and other players with friends or alone, but allways profit from grouping, because we then can do things that no one can do alone, because we depend on each other , collect fluff like virtue banners, rare trophies etc... and progress and develop in a way of more practice with your build, more knowledge about your foes and the game in general, negotiate with friends and foes in metagame and RPvP.
Craft and sell goods and maybe trade goods and do some business.
Become a famous cook (with food expiring mechanic), become a healer and a passionate Bane of all Undead.

To me in Multiplayer Modes (also SPO) the game and the community would highly profit if you can only have 2/3 Trees from the Combat Circle.
3 because of Shields and the 3rd would limit 4 Magic Trees to only 3.
So if no Shields you choose weapon and armor and up to 4 Magic Schools.
If you decide to use no Magic, you can bring 4 combat Skills to 120, otherwise the cap is 100.
If you choose to not use any combat skills you then can choose 4 magic skills to 120. Cap otherwise again would be 100.
You can have 6 Trees from Harvesting, Refining, Producing.
So nobody could do all and would allways depend in some way on other harvesters/ crafters.
This would create a Market. Also for Tanks, Healers, Thieves...
Some may choose to be able to gather all, others want 1 or 2 entire producing cycles from harvesting to endproduct.
But will they also be enchanters?
This encourages players to interact, trade, help each other.
Same for Groups in PvE and also PvP.
If there are only Characters with specializations more or less then they would all have huge disadvantages in other areas and and need others to help then with this or that.
Only then a Group finding Tool they want to create make sense to me. I otherwise just skill more until i can do it solo. And to me it allways feels bad if you see people soloing the whole content. It's nothing about jealousy, i can do it too, it just needs more time to skill high enough and figure it out how to do it. But for MP, even if we see the MP Mode only as a Coop mode and not as a MMORPG it's more interesting to have dependencies imo.

So who is with me on that?

Caps to 100, or if you choose to have no combat or magic, then 4 skills can be 120.
Oh and you shouldnt Master all to 100.
Maybe only 10 GM if you choose 1 armor type, 1 weapon, 4 magic and 6 Crafting trees.
People then can GM a whole Magic Tree or most of their Combat and Defense Skills or become Mastercrafters, but nobody is all and everything and depends on others.
You decide what skills develop higher than 80 to 100 or even 120 if you specialize very hard.

And this Skills would decay very hard from Deathdecay and additionally need constant usage or would decay over time anyway if not used.
The Character one day has everything at 80 lets say and need to play further to obtain their Masteries beyond 80.

This needs sure some adjustments in trees and also for Mobs.
And i only would want this for the MP Modes, those who like to solo and skill everything as high as possible can for sure play offline and be whatever they want to be. Omnipotent in New Britannia ;-)
It would encourage for Twinks, but why else have a second character if the one you can have now has no limits and nothing that stops him beeing all and everything?

About the upcoming Mastery Skills.
Yes i know, but i doubt it will be the same like it were with hard caps and limits.
There are so many people who like it this way we have it, they wont change it drastically to not upset them.
But if this game wants something in the Line of UO and a MMORPG it need some changes imo. But yes i know they wont happen. I'm curious how it will go on and how many threads we may see in the future after release that ask for a game based more on archetypes.
There is absolutely nothing that really encourages me to interact with others or to develop a PVP Character and compete, because it needs so ridiculous high skills and levels in so many trees the average player need years for and not only years of playing, but powergrinding to get the max xp per hour.
Oh i like to interact and i also group, but it feels so bad.
And in the end it's sure about cherrypicking and having the "best" skills, the fotm skills and equip.
But is this fun?

What do people who like this think of it?

This is a Thread for those who like it, who have ideas around that, all others who dislike it, dont care about it, it wont happen imo and you need not fear these ideas and you also need not derail or argue against it.
Just let those discuss it who would like it.
Thank you and have fun - Stun

 

I would like to see some capping. To me, this current system does not feel classless, but one gigantic class and you just have to get everything up. AL depends on every skill and every tree has resistances, shields and something that you just need with high attunement, to be able to roam the content. This is singleplayer system now.
+1 for your ideas

 

+1 for hard cap

 

+1 hard caps makes multiple chars more valuable. << for this reason

However they went all in on the classless system as stated above a "giant class" or single giant class system.

Nothing will change at this point. So its a after the fact wish bases on how good uo did it.

 

Have to add some more..

Im personally at weird spot with my character now. To get more damage and survivability, I "just" need to get attunements in almost every magic tree up..
This system does not work for roleplaying either, you just cant be pure melee for example. Well, you can, but with huge issues with survivability. Only magic based heals ( or potions that you cant afford because no loot.. ).

Also I absolutely hate the fact, that we are missing roles. Having roles ( healer, dps mage, dps melee and ranged etc), does not remove the ability to build an avatar that feels good to you. UO did not have those roles, but you still had to make a choice.

Why do we need more characters?

Immersion.. I don't really care about it, but if I did, then how would these god like avatars, that can excel in everything, fit in that view?
A super melee fighter, that can switch to bow in 2 seconds and masters it and then summon powerfull magic creatures to aid, while taming dragon and crafting highend metal, fabric and wood items while eating the masterous dishes, that he all by himself prepared. Everything leads to this.

This skill system kills economy and the need for party ( other than social aspect)
This is THE thing of this game and it breaks my heart..

Theres 5 episodes coming, If you just keep playing, you too will be master or everything.

Im really waiting for the R51 and things that Chris has implemented...

 

Hello Stundorn and all other Avatars, thinking of a good possibility to have a "self regulating system"

I just gave a suggestion to Chris (because of his great info

).

I thought about a possibility to solve the -unrealistic- "you can Grandmaster everything!" problem.

So, because I understand both, people who wants to try a lot of skills - and the intention of this thread, I would like to share my thoughts to you, because there is often more as one way instead to say just "hard" or "soft" - may be the truth is between ...

Here an excerpt of my suggestion to Chris (original 4, I just wanted to give this fitting to the thread theme!) :
________________________________________________________
I want to share some ideas about Skill Balance - I keep them as short as possible
And it's not I am expecting changes made for Episode 1! But I think some of them could be considered in your actual changes until launch ... (-->1b)

1. MASTER & GRANDMASTER
Actual we are talking about "Grandmaster" with Skill at 100 WITHOUT doing anything to receive it
(ok, grinding and using the skill. A master should be more ... and there should be more honor about...)

1a) I think it would be great, like in the magic skill trees (Elementals), if a player has to do a special quest to receive the Master title!
A crafter could do an -exceptional- master(!)piece he had to bring to a Crafting Grandmaster ...
And after this, the Skill would raise further - until this not.

This would do 2 things: greater meaning to have a Master. No one would be a master automatically.

For crafters: A Master Crafter always could have a 50% chance for an exceptional piece


1b) Next step could be Grandmaster (may be at 120?)

And now an important thing to prevent players Grandmastering "everything":

Each Skill above Master (>100.00) could have a natural decay of x!
Because: If you don't USE it, you loose it!

You will never loose your Master title (after doing the special quest!)
But there will be a natural decay on Skills > 100

And for this: you could consider(!) to turn off Death decay for Skills > 100!
(or lower the amount, not double - etc.)

You could arrange it, that a player, using to play an amount of hours (for example 10) in a month will have no decay,
if he uses the Masterskill (>100) for x times.

So the problem of "Grandmastering everything" is away. You can't use hundreds of skills all the time!
Natural selection: A player will find out soon, which skills are his favorite, because the skills he don't use as often will decay ...
(maximum back to Master)

No hard cap is needed! But each player would have a real chance to Grandmaster a few skills over the top
May be you make the math. calculation this way, that a casual player can do 2-4 GM each Skilltree, a professional player 4-8 GM each Skilltree.

For Crafters: Having GM (may be at 120?) should give him an extra chance for special/higher effects, well, maybe less destruction while master crafting?

And I think, to have a GM should give one special GM ability ...

Well, you also could use the natural Skill decay beginning with 90 or 95 - BUT consider please to make a math, that a casual player could have double Masters as GM ... May be you grant save haven for 1-4(!) Master Skills for each Skill tree? (No natural and no death decay?)

And to be fair: The XP from natural Skill decay should go back at 100% in XP pool
The natural decay should only be counting in GAME TIME ...

 

The bad thing about PvP even if they are limiting active skills now like Evasion /Fortify Defense is if you one day meet Daniel the Dread Knight and fight him, he next time is maybe Daniel the Death Mage or Daniel "i drown you in the water" Mage.
It's even possible to quickchange decks in combat and you could turn from a tank to a swifty Air Ranger including equip in 3 seconds.
This is just bad, the favoritism to hardcore gamers need to go.
Not because i'm jealous, but sure because i want be equal strong with less effort.
But why?
Because of more participants in an more even playfield without such a gap regarding power.
If it takes 5000 hrs of min max attitude gameplay to create a competetive toon, well you can cancel pvp and need not put more work into it.
What are the measures here?

And Caps and Limits would also help to get to a way more mediocre gameplay regarding the grind it is now.

 

@Paladin Michael.

Its not enough for me and i doubt that some cannot use all 200 skills in time.

Edit: but good you share your thoughts with Chris and discuss!

All the compromises are bad.
It not possible to make it a good SP and MP system.
It's either this or that, everything in between is just only half as good as if it were pure.
They can do both, they have offline mode.
Simple as that.
For online modes all this compromises in the skillsystem are just bad.
It's online with only one considerable purpose, socializing.
Nor the content, neither anything else encourages to play together ( with or against each other).
Online is SP plus meet in PoTs and socialize.
Maybe that what it is for, i dont know.
I think it's to cast pearls before the swine.

 

@Stundorn,

If you look on compromises as always bad - you're right, than they are bad
I don't think so. I just know it is always our extreme point of view making things feeling worse.
Only THIS or only THIS. Nothing between.
Our extreme expectations on something leads to an extreme frustration ...
That's life!

I don't think, there is an absolute "that's right" or "that's not right".
I only think: A lot of people have different interests. And this is very difficult to fulfill!

Well, let's have an example: MY No 1 fun killing machine is death decay. Wait!
Not because there is death decay, but how it treats players different and our time we invest!
As you can read here - not only mine ...
And I cut my playtime by over 50% because of this!

To limit something can be done in a lot of ways. I also made examples like you above in another thread to give Avatars MORE POWER if they only use less skill(tree)s! At the moment it isn't honored. And I think it should! Less Skills could mean more focus power! At the moment we don't have this ...

And:
I don't think you can keep all skills equal alife if all have a good amount of natural skill decay (as I suggested above)
Honestly: Would you like to enter this game and click every of your 200 skills for 20 times an hour to not have a decay on it?
Think about the cooldown values of skills! Where is the fun by doing this? With math. you can solve this in a good manner ...

At one point you will think about, which skills will be "your" skills you want to have at master/grandmaster.
This should be the goal to find out. And a natural decay can help you - as the death decay helps now a little ....

And the solution isn't "hard caps only" - from a mathematical view! The truth is between the extreme soft and extrem hard ...

I can tell you about MY game play. My life time is valuable. So, I always think about, which skill I REALLY need at which lvl!
I decreased a lot of skills down to 40! Because I am not willing to invest half of my play time to earn back the amount for the death decay pool.
Because there is actual no need to have a lot of skills at 80 or 100.

Example: Light, Night Vision, Celestial Blessing. What is better at 60/80/100? Duration?
Well, Focus - actualy is proportional to duration - so it's no reason to lvl up - for me. Healing: If I don't use to heal others(!) I can lvl down the "heal other" skill to 40. (No decay!)
And players who have them at 100 and don't heal others? Well, how useful is this? Just the base of the decay pool is higher!
And from this view there are a lot of skills you can lvl down to 40.

Another example: I trained dash. Why? To be faster from a to b Later I decided to train also sprint. At one point I made the decision to lvl down dash and only use sprint. Do I loose anything? No. I cut the death decay pool and took the XP point to lvl Skills I REALLY need to be stronger.


The Attunement problem will be solved soon with R 51/52!
This was one of the most problems of the game, WHY people tried to lvl all skills up!

And imagine this:
A natural skill decay would do the same as a hard cap, but would give players what was the intention of this game:
a wide field of skills to use!

And it would regulate by itself:
Skills you don't use enough will go down. And no one likes to click an hour on skills for nothing(!)
And if someone wants to do this with his/her time: well, it's his/her decision!
In real life someone could train 2 hours a day, another 4 hours and others 8 or 10 hours a day.

I couldn't complain about people who wants to invest more of there time. And if I would like to have a sparring with someone training very hard, I should calculate, he could be better ... but who knows? May be I have my skills forced to a point I can stand with only 4 to 8 GM against his/her 40?
Because he/she can't use 40 the same time And, as told before: not all of his GM have any effect while fighting ...

A lot of skills wouldn't have any meaning in pvp if lvled to or over 100!
So a "hard cap" isn't the answer, if you believe it is to participate in pvp ...
And don't forget: Attunement changes!
I really don't care about, how many Grandmasters others have!
That's not my business. In fact, they don't bother my fun in game!
And after attunement changes there is less reason to fear others while entering a pvp zone ...

And one last thing, if we are talking about "fairness" and the feeling, we couldn't spar with other players.
What about all these potions you can drink to have +5/+10 or/and the devotional shrines? And food buffs?
I really don't like it to eat and drink just to be "He-Man" Don't mention artifacts or master weapon/armor!
What, if you have a +10 Armor and +10 weapon and your opposite +4? How will you "hard cap" this?

So, I don't see the problem about skills or too many skills as a kind of "PvP killer".
If you are focused on one weapon and shield >100 you don't care if your opposite can manage 4 weapons! He just can take one at a time
That's indeed no reason to say, a "hard cap" is the solution for better pvp.

Focus on meanigful skills >=120 will make you probably a harder enemy as a 40+GM who capped(!) his Skills at 100
Again: limits are great and good - but not only in one (hard or soft) way ... and they are not the only solution to have fun at all ...

 

How does cutting your playtime affect decay?

 

*g* the other way, Barugon. The decay affected my playtime I spend

I stopped to look around in the world in more dangerous places just to visit them.
For now I just do it for a good reason, like mining or -at first- quests

 

Everyone should just get off the grandmaster band wagon. It is only half way to where you can actually take a skill. And with reminiscing returns and exponential growth on exp cost templates characters will build themselves without all the rules and regulations but in through game mechanics.

Someone could get 100 in every skill... woohoo... but the next person really focuses on his 10-20 skills and gets them to 150. If the goal of this is to make sure no one ever gets to 200 in every skill then woohoo they have 20 years of a game to play. Let’s see how the new mastery/resist stuff works as I think it may start limiting magic trees on its own through benefits, not through penalties and restrictions.

 

I just cried thinking about that decay loss.

 

Eh.... What the... So you pretend to do an academic post and the stuff you post won't happen but you post it anyway but want to stop people that don't like your ideas from posting by saying it won't happen anyway...
So...why do the post? It's spam by your own definition!?
Either it won't happen and you can save yourself the time OR it's an discussion and than EVERYONE here can participate,doesn't matter you like it or not.
That being said: I don't like your idea.

 

I am in agreement here. I do not desire to start a large fight or fall into name-calling. Though building a thread that by nature is purely pro-position does not make for a good representation of the desires of the player-base. If anything, it gives a false illusion to greater support than a position has. Especially given the vocality of a section of these boards.

That being said, I also do not like these ideas. -1 Hard Caps.

Though really, the discussion is moot, given that Portalarium already ran a survey involving these issues and has far more user input and player data than we'd ever collect on a forum.

 

My Vote is to keep the game as is, having hard caps will break the core principle of SotA!

I do not understand why players have such an issue with no caps when we have decks and alike to specialize our builds, plus if a player wants caps, they can self impose them, no one is pushing them to play past the caps! On the other hand, if this argument is based on pushing caps on other players because of personal reasons then in its basis of trying to restrict others it should never be supported!

 

I think the idea I like most is having specialized char/builds.

Right now its take all magic skills to 80 and specialize in the skills and trees you like to 100+. In time all characters will be close enough to the same. -skill and gear.

Actually the intent is skill level 80, its not terribly hard to have everything at 80.

Hard caps make char slot 2,3,4 etc all a unique experience.

I quit wow because it was all cookie cutter example all resto shamans had all the same builds. Its kinda the same here except there are alot more skills you need to get. Now if it took 6 months to hit 80s in a tree it would be perfect and soft caps would be working. But i can take a whole tree every skill to 80 in about a week.

As a new player it does feel great because you feel like your specializ8ng. Once you have been playing 18months or so you realize you need all skills at 80 or in many cases all skills to or near 100.

Dont get me wrong there is a lot I like about this set up. But why bother with a alt, one charater is really the end all.

Currently I do play two accounts though for ballance decay reasons and not play new play style reasons. With one near 100-120 in most skills i use and 80+ in passive trees the other one at 80s in about everything. This system does work esp if im doing new risky stuff the all 80s guy pays 12000 in decay where as the higher toon 300,000 in decay. Both chars can do the same stuff with the same skills thats what I find blah.

Toon A death touch hits a drip harder for a higher focus cost.
Toon B has to hit a cpl extra times but has more focus to burn also the penalty if I fail I can ignore.

But...

So im not sure this convo is helpful.

 

From personal experience I can say that in game development the quality of a comment matters, not the quantity. The OP has some valid points, but others will not be realistic because we already went down a specific road. However from what I've read, Chris has acknowledged some of the points Stundorn and others raised in the past. The master of all trades issue was discussed a lot, and now it is getting fixed.

 

Proving my point!

 

Hard caping skills will never help with specialization. Everyone will level everything to the limit.

Now, about forcing people into a limited number of trees, it would break the classless system idea and force people to make choices that they don't want to do... exactly like now, when people feel compelled to train every skills.

Every system like that is a bad system. The system should support every playstyle. People who want to specialize just need bigger incentives. We don't need other limitations. @Chris brought a lot of good ideas recently. Why people just don't wait to see how it works with those ?

Also, hard caps will break one of the biggest incentive of this game : unlimited progression with slowing progress.

We already had this talk @Stundorn and I'm surprised with your request toward people who don't agree with you because you complained enough about people who tried to censor your opinion.