AoE mages broken, mages OP

Aoe mages were broken beyond belief, most of the highest level players in the game are mages. melee and archers seam to be more inline with reasonable xp gains.


And I dont even want to talk about the control point exploits and how they catered to mages .

 

With nearly everything turned off, I get just over 2k XP per patriarch bear in Deep Rav. 4 of them gets me about 9k.
Sequanna Collosus gives a bit more per mage/fighter/archer...so it's getting close but those are pretty hard for me solo yet.

Perhaps he means 3 Phoenix

 

Understood! Yeah it can be tough to see the pool swell with skills turned up
I don't normally use the word swell in this manner but I knew you'd appreciate the attempt

 

Join the only having one thing going up(also a poke) at a time club.

 

killing 3-4 creatures for 11k? I started with 34K I spent an hour in serpent spines foothills with my skills set to raise and a few on maintain. I died once lost 11k exp. after killing 30 or 40 I left the evening with 22k Exp in my pool. Net negative for the day and eventually will have 0 in my pool and no skills left.

And for casual player that can only play a few hours a day, every time I log in will be max accumulated decay. I am going to check again tonight, maybe the max accumulated decay only accumulates when I am logged in?, or it is multiple days worth of accumulation and not 6 hours? Looking forward to your change list, it would have been great to read about them before getting hit with them.

 

Are the mobs in serpent spine mostly green to you now? Might consider it's cousin twin foothills in Elysium at this point.

 

Please stop confusing net experience with net pool experience adjustment.
If you have -any- skills set to train, then your next experience is NOT the difference in your pool.
It's starting pool - ending pool + skillsthatgainedexperience.

In the first example, @Budner, he says he has skills on and they drain. Therefore, his skills are going up! Remember, if your skills are set to go up, they use the exp as you gain them. Yes he lost 11k, but if he was hunting yellow mobs, even if he only took out one mob per 5 minutes, that still gives him probably at minimum 20,000 exp total net. And that's a huge stretch, assuming he's level 50 or so.

In the second example, @Toadster, he says he spent an hour in serpents spine foothills, and is generous to tell us he killed 30-40. We don't know what, but the average exp for mobs in that instance i have at 875~. So lets say 30 * 875 = 26250, and that's a super low estimate. I bet he killed more and killed higher value, and was probably closer to 40k for a nice lazy stroll there.


Remember, the only way you know your -net- experience is if you track exp per kill (which is a feature coming in the HUD, but will never be 100% accurate), or if you turn ALL SKILLS to maintain. not off, maintain. If it's off when you die you will lose skillpoints and that won't track in your net pool.

I'm not saying decay is good or bad, i'm saying you aren't getting a real good picture of it.
I will try to accellerate the work on the exp per kill adjustment to the HUD and get that out in the next major release.

 

Yeah, raising skills uses xp, and depending on how many you are raising you can easily use more than you earn. Turning them off if you want to build your pool. Eventually, you'll find a good middle ground where you are raising skills you want to focus on, but maintaining everything else and still adding to your pool. If you can't, as Royce said, you may need to move to a higher scene.

 

Thank you clarifying the net experience. But now let's carry out this example out a few days. I go in today spend an hour and my pool drops to 10k. I log for the night and come back Wedsnesday after work and play for an hour -2k pool and losing Skills. And now Thursday -14k from my applied experience. So yes it is net experience in your pool, I have never set my skills to maintain and built up a massive pool of millions of experience, I set the skills I want to go up and maintain them when they are where I think they should be. Guess now that is not the way we should play, we need to set everything to maintain build a few million XP and then raise skills one at a time. I personally Didn't want to spend my days micro managing an exp pool, I would rather play a game to have fun.

 

That is certainly a way to play. You may feel frustrated that your skills don't raise as quickly as they used to, but you can run around with a zero xp pool and still advance. You will just be applying xp as soon as it comes in, rather than building a pool. Perfectly fine, but slow.

The benefits of having a large pool is that you can apply more xp each "use", which advances the skill more quickly. This is especially helpful if you want to jump ahead in a skill quickly, using the fewest attempts possible. I havn't seen anyone really do this outside of crafting, where it save a TON of resources to do so.

 

That works in concept as long as every skill is gaining in every combat situation but it does not.

So if I was carrying a 0 pool I would lose 11k from all skills and only have the amounts applied back to the ones I am using that day. Since you can only effectively carry 18-20 glyphs in a deck and not always getting hit with the right spells to apply to innates. My skills would constantly be in a state of flux taking from one and raising another based on what I am using or killing that day. And since I don't have 12 hours a day to play i can not get them all back.

 

I will start here... I am sorry, but someone who disagrees with your development decision may not always just be a raging gamer who wants to solo dragons. I am hoping this is just a over site in a long post but, it really just stands out to me as someone that thinks they know best and will not listen to anyone who thinks/feels differently. So I will look past that and try anyway.

For background.... I work 40+ hours a week, with a wife, and two kids in sports. My wife graciously lets me play a few hours a night and contribute to the game at times. I am 72 adventure level and can barely solo the 2K hit point troll in Nightshade Pass. I would consider myself on of those casual gamers that this change is not intended to slow down.

You have read about my first experience with your new decay. So now for day 2... I started my day with 22K Exp. After dinner I could log on for an hour and suffered my 11K XP loss for my first death. After working for a about an hour to get some of that back the wife and kids decided to watch a movie. So we watched Capt America Civil War and after the movie and getting the kids to bed I come back on to Lose another 3K exp. After an hour or two with a run to Sell some goods I end the evening with 12K experience in my Pool. And tomorrows first death will take me down to 1K in my pool and hopefully I have time to fill it back up before I start losing skills.

So overall in 2 days with real life issues for a casual player, my pool has gone from 34K to 12K and if his continues I will start losing skills tomorrow or Thursday.

And as this is still intended to be increased further, I am concerned this will make the game unplayable for anyone but a hardcore gamer. Have you considered just having the decay accrue while in game? at least with that change I will only be punished for my time in game and not for time to sleep/work and be with my family.

 

Exactly - how can decay build up over 12 hours, when most regular players will only spend an hour or two in the game? This seems unfair, decay should only build up to 12 hours if the player has spent 12 hours in the game with no death, and not build up magically overnight while that player is sleeping/working/doing something else and unable to build up actual play time and xp to cover it.

@Chris

 

How did you guys manage to die so often? I'm level 68 and I have almost 1.7 mil xp from just hunting solo in the adventure zone span over a few weeks. I hardly die anymore unless I'm browsing the forum or fall off the airship.

 

Well maybe to understand this we need the big picture, but we often get info piecemeal. What does a top level player look like? Adv level 100?
I was probably changing nappies when the decision not to have a hard cap was made.. whoops!

Death should have a penalty.. we aim not to die. @Toadster I work, family, same boat. You have about 6 levels on me. I am already considering my character pretty darned impressive to where he was when I started.

The death decay disavantages some. Time decay would also disavantage some. Is there really anyone who can argue a hard cap to skill points with the interests that 'Thou shalt not fight the dragon solo'? The day I could solo the hardest creature in the game is the day the game bores the heck out of me..

Either way the challenge is how to stop those pesky level 90+ ppl from being Godlike with the current system.

 

Well I guess some people just are not as impressive as, or perhaps just don't play the way you do. Hmm...

 

That didn't really answer the question. We can't help ya if we don't know the details (where do you hunt, what skills do you use, what are your equipment, etc).

The new resistance and the DOT stack restriction will affect whom we can kill with which spells or skills, so there will be some adaptation. People will less likely be able to do bonehead spamming the same skills over and over again to the mobs. For instance, if a person who's pure mage won't be able to harm obsidian golem anymore due to their high immune to spells. That cold be a big hit to those who farm in the shardfall areas.

 

The current penalty for death is not enough! Make it harder!

Also this was discussed openly before it occurred, and discussed again in the hangouts/post mortem.

Also discussed were the new skills for avoiding interrupt. After hearing about them in the video announcement, I immediately leveled them up to 50 ;-). I suggest you all do the same.

To people concerned about negative exp or losing too much: get good at not dying ;-)

I hope the same for SoTA. I want to feel like the world is dangerous, but not impossible. I want the fear of consequence of a mis-step to force my game play to constantly grow and adapt. I want subtle nuances in how mobs behave on their own to create a chemistry of opposition when theyre combined together. I want the world to be navigable when I practice awareness, and deadly when I take it for granted. At the base of this all is the fear of the consequence of death. It should be far from fun - not punishing for the sheer sake of it - just logical consequences of having bitten off more than you can chew. Yes I expect some players to suddenly rage quit one day over a most epic death in a zone that took 2 hours to walk to, but I think its healthiest for the game's culture overall if the game challenges players in this way.

Eventually, the penalty for death will make you great at not dying. Youll still slip up now and then, but overall, the game will be so much more worth it.

Old man anecdote:

Spoiler

The other day I was playing UO, while drinking, chatting with a non gamer friend hanging out in the room, and otherwise being distracted. Naturally an Elder Gazer fried me to a crisp before I could set my Peacemaking skill on it fast enough. When you die in UO, everything (well, with some exception) stays on your corpse, and your corpse stays where it fell - right next to the uber badass mob that killed you (until it despawns and is gone for good!). You lose it all! You also have to find a rez somewhere in the middle of nowhere, or very deep in a dungeon, and have to run naked across the world to get home (again, with some exception). So that afternoon, I re-equipped everything, and then diddnt notice the second dread spider that hit me the same time as a gargoyle and other dread spider. Im a 6x GrandMaster warrior, mind you, and these are regular mobs youd find anywhere in the game world. Got deadly poisoned and hit with hard spells simultaneously, fried to a crisp again. Lost everything again. Had to spend 10-15 mins running home naked (dodging low level mobs the whole time) to re equip again.

2x in the same 2-3 hour period. Thats a brutal day in UO. I die an average of once every 6 months (in non PVP), its extremely rare that I am unable to get to my corpse and recover my things. I am extremely good at not dying in UO. But its not a game you can afford to lose focus and be successful. And thats a good thing! Its what makes the game fun and challenging (that and many other things). When focused, I pretty much never die, and find the experience casual because I have learned to be very skilled PVE/PVM. Its actually quite easy. But if I disrespect it for a moment (screwing off with friends and playing at same time), the game world owns me in this challenge. Its not easy. It doesnt hold your hand. But with enough practice, you can tame it well. You will get very skilled at not dying.

You can travel to most of the most dangerous areas in UO if youre a highly skilled player and are very experienced in the art of not dying. Stray from this vigilant posture, and the average woodland creature will have you for dinner. And that is a meaningful consequence.

As death penalties increase in SotA, my skill in not dying will go up. Bring it on!

great perspective. our thinking is pretty close. i dont want to be at "end game" either!

sometimes i have the hardest time wondering why people dont view playing games this way. racing to the top sounds painful and agonizing (no wonder those kinds of players have so many negative posts!).

i would rather not have an exp wipe, though, i wouldnt argue if the devs decided it was necessary. i wouldnt feel bad for anyone if they wiped exp. I also wouldnt put up any grief if they did a "money wipe" somehow. they cant do a full data wipe, though, people have made too many IRL investments in transactions that have occurred in game.

Im sure they could refine the algorithm over time such that lower players lose very little while the uber powerful have a great risk.

(Might be beating a dead horse here...) I think most of us play this game exactly because it is not most games...

The problem I am reading here is that you are adventurer level 72 and you die this much. This is a great example of how I dont want the game to be - no one should be able to get to that high of a level and die that much, except for a freak occurrence of bad luck. This game is not nearly challenging enough in terms of death, if it were, you wouldnt be having any of these problems. You, Sir, simply need to get good at not dying!

also lol @ being adv lvl 72 after ~3 months of live data and considering yourself "casual"

Yep

 

Nope it didn't it stroked your ego in hopes you would move on. If you would like to start a new thread on the proper way to play this game with the new mechanics I am sure there are 1 or two people out there wanting to be told what to do. If you want to contribute to how this change impacts my current play style negatively as a casual player, please continue.

 

Wow... I will refrain a little but ohh so much could be said. but a lot of my advancement is from a great group of friends that play regularly. Not dedicating massive amounts of time to the game.

Please explain how many times I should be dying an hour? Is 1 or 2 a lot, guess it would depend on what you are killing and how many times a kid jumps in your lap or the wife has to talk about real life.

This was a bug in the math with people with weapons equipped or doing DOT. These have either been removed or fixed with the last patch on QA. And as I am not pooling millions of points of exp to assign large chunks to skills when they come out. my tranquility is only 42 but I am sure when I get to 50 woohoo it will be amazing.


And for the rest of your post that completlety contradicts itself. You want a challenge that you rarely die at? That makes no sense, a challenge would be something you fail at until you can ultimately overcome. To some that failure means death. Now if you feel an XP loss is somehow going to give that death meaning then I feel sorry for you. Death itself, the failure should be meaningful, but when you can Rez you pick yourself back up and do it again you lose most meaning. This is just forcing characters to play a specific way in order to advance.