Allow us to save Specalizations and swap them

We need the ability to store our specalizations into a docking area that moves all Specalization xp making that Specalization as 0. We can then train another specalization and store that and swap them as needed. Add a cooldown (12 hours).

sometimes I want to be a knight with heavy armor and earth Specalizations. Other times a Druid with taming and bard Specalizations. This way depending on what I can do for that day I can change them out.

 

I was under the assumption you can only train one at a time, but you don't lose the ones you stop trading.

 

I have never really understood why there is a mechanic that automatically untrains these sorts of skills as opposed to them just being inactive when not used. They're inactive when untraining anyway, so the only difference is that you lose xp any time you try something else without using an obsidian potion. Obviously you don't want people being able to just switch specs on the fly, but there's a million different ways that could be achieved that would be less annoying.

 

You can only have two Specalizations trained and locked. All else will loose xp.

 

agreed 100%. i proposed the concept from UO of soulstones to store the XP for a spec skill. sort of an unlearn scroll but storing the XP that could then be restored. so many ways this can be done. i think the easiest would be in addition to the learn, unlearn, maintain, to add a fourth mode to the spec skills of inactive. inactive already exists for specs set to unlearn, just use that as the base for the new inactive but not lose XP.

 

Why not try out a different character concept with different specializations - on a different character?

 

It's one of those things where I don't get what the game design is supposed to be. It doesn't seem that coherent.

Having no hard caps on skills by itself isn't good or bad, but when mixed with a "classless" system, which doesn't intrinsically need to mean "you can train literally all skills", it produces bad results. All characters, regardless of their initial state, will eventually merge into the same asymptote where one character's skills are indistinguishable from another's. The only thing that distinguishes to characters is which skills they happen to be using at the time, and what they look like.

There's no point in creating a new character and re-enjoying the sights, quests and scenery of lower level zones, because it'd just be eventually identical to the previous character. So there's little replayability in the game. The game funnels all players into endlessly grinding the same limited high level zones and loops, to make their logarithmically dropping-off skills inch forward just a tad bit more, because there's little horizontal progression, beyond training up those lesser-used skills, further moving towards that asymptote at the end of time.

That also causes a problem of newer players ever catching up. What's the solution? Flattening the curve, and boosting XP rates temporarily from 2x to 4x. Maybe making 4x the new norm. This causes that logarithmic falloff to worsen.

Specialization, at least seemed to be trying to buck that trend, so that there's some variety in the game. But that depends on it being... specialization, as in, you must select two things to focus on. But because the veterans are so desperate for some horizontal progression, they keep insisting that the specialization cease being specialization, adding more, or just making specialization a Fallout 76 or early Diablo 3 toggle, that you can arbitrarily engage/disengage.

... and it all trends to the question of, why even bother will skill levels? Just go full card system. Specialization just becomes like another item on the deck... the one you happen to be using at the time... become indistinguishable from the regular skills, of which you've trained them all, with the question being, which ones are you currently using?

So not only should specializations probably stay they way they are, your other, unused skills, should probably become more rusty over time. The idea that a character can grand-master ALL skills has always been mystifying to me, but like Titans in Eve, it wasn't intended that everyone should have one. The soft caps were supposed to push people away from infinite progression. They were caps. I don't think they expected that people would get sunk-cost invested like they have, unable to walk away from characters they've spent 5000 hours on, to budge the numbers.

... and then the game devs created new zones based upon people who've put 5000-10000 hours into the game, requiring new players to do the same, in order to experience those zones.

So yeah, keep specializations specialized. But also take a step back and think about the game design as a whole.

 

I can't figure how making the game more punishing / frustrating would help the game or player enjoyment...

On the OP, forget about it, any idea to add "freshness" to the game will be met with negativity by the devs and their "trusted player think tank".

 

Replayability - one of the things this game has very little of. There's no point in creating new characters, playing through existing zones again, or doing things differently this time.... because all characters can train all skills with no limit. They become identical. A change like this, if it were to happen, wouldn't exist in a vacuum.

Fun games must necessarily provide constraints of some kind, not just allow unlimited everything, even if the players complain about it.

It's the same reason that people will get bored with 2x XP, then 4x XP, then 8x XP, then 16x XP... It's not good game design.

 

Some of the most fun I had was on my second character, < AL 40. But the higher level I got, the more I just had a clone of my main.

 

No limit? The skills are limited at level 200. They are additionally limited by raising the cost to raise a skill from "try once, gain 3 skill levels" at the start to "have to gain millions of XP" to gain 1 skill point in them once you raised a skill higher. Creating identical characters would require to spend that XP, and the time to gain those XP, to level all skills to the max, which would require such an enourmous amount of XP that the time required is even longer. Sure when I still went to school I had a lot of time but nowadays with a full time job?

However creating characters that by choice completely ignore entire schools (or raises those schools only to skill levels around 40 where they still are "cheap", e.g. a "Ranger" that ignores vile Death and Chaos magic, has no need for Heavy Armour and no fingers for fine embroidery and later might specialize in ranged combat and water or life plays differently than say a "Wizard" who shuns blacksmithing and carpentry and concentrates on elementals while avoiding to get into contact with drooling animals for taming. Perhaps even "Knight" who uses heavy instead of light armour, sword and board and leaves menial tasks like tailoring and alchemy to others and naturally foregoes the pradtics of black magic...

Considering the huge costs of raising skils to the max, it´s faster to create several characters who leave out some skills than trying to create identical ones who do it all.