All spells should require reagents

Well that's the old argument used in Ultima VI where the lady at the mint that exchanged coin explained that there copper, silver and gold coins.. but being the Avatar naturally you only carried gold.. but you can get away with that in single player.

Well technically all mobs could just have the 1 tier version of themselves and relative power of the player can be reduced/condensed even further following the concepts of Ultima and UO which took that route. I just don't think Portalarium would be willing to make that level of drastic change at this stage. The adjustments needed for skill progression may be a significant issue.

 

english please ?

 

You have to scale the other way... but you have no choice to let go off that status quo

 

Well in all Ultimas and UO.. there was no level system. UO was strictly a skill based system and all power was based solely on that. Where as in SotA.. adventure level is still used in hit/miss calculations.. which is probably the biggest reason why your character level is important. Ultima itself was limited to 8 levels from Ultima IV on and that only affected your stats.. there was no exponential power gains like you get in so many other games. So as you leveled up and got better gear.. mobs because easier but you were never over powering just because of your level.

SotA is attempting in a lot of ways to meld the Ultima method with UO's use base skills but the problem is.. we have a LOT more skills.. with skill trees and they all require XP.. XP raises your level etc

So pardon me I'm just thinking out loud at this point. What you'd need to do.. is just eliminate adventure level from calculations entirely.. and rebalance mob difficulty to not be level based.. you'd also have to rebalance skill progression because all XP between most mobs would be the same.. rather than XP gains increasing based on the level of the mob you just killed.

 

I agree with this also, especially since everything else in the model is supportive. You can use a base value for mobs to simplify the original algorithm but you can stack these equations in Unity, you can still have little boosts but not from the power of the monster alone, also for ingenuity in defeating them and also for streaks of luck, maybe even there could be subtractions if you really perform poorly... Think SDAD&D

 

This is also where world history plays a big role... obsidian crowns might be worth a lot right now *coughs* but... what if...

 

I invite thee all to think out of the box for a moment, the gold coins could be very, very small (thus not worth alot of material) AND there could be counterfeit gold AND there could be things to be made out of gold that could tempt people to melt even national currency...

We're in a freakin steam punk universe... so please think hard and think alot about my SPY and DETECTIVE fluttery merry-go-round.

I really meant it when I said xorinia has pressing matters to discuss.