Changes to the Combat System Resistance/Attunement/Armor/PVP...

Alright @Chris ,

I repeatedly saw threads and posts that criticize the game of forcing the players to level EVERY magic school to be viable.

I see a similar problem, and from my experience of other games it leads to a situation where people take a long time to feel viable and ready to join in any form of PVP. IF SotA PvP will ever evolve to something more than a KOS or deathmatch like experience - no one knows but the devs... but I know that ultimately it leads to less people participating in PVP which is always bad for a sandbox game in general. A small dev team can only put up so much content - players can do that much better if they have the ability to shape their virtual world.

The main problem SotA feels like a one class game comes from the way resistances and PVE encounters work. Only some schools work against certain enemies. I am not against that.

In fact it is great that you can level everything. You just shouldn't have to for PVP. I think as a RPG enthusiast most of us feel it should be more rewarding to become the highest fire-mage, rather than level everything.

Right now versatility vs specialization is not balanced in SotA.

So make everything based on your deck.

For example:

The player is able to level everything just like before... However each school he adds to his deck comes with a bonus attunement, resistances plus negative attunement etc. for the opposing school.

Adding an earth magic spell gives +10 attunement for a GMed skill, +10 resistance to earth but -10 attunement to air and -10 negative resistance to air.

For a armor school it could be +dodge or sth else per skill and -movement speed, -...

For weapon schools +dex, +str, +crit or whatever depending on the different schools...

I understand this would be a huge change and a lot of balancing needs to be done.
But ultimately it would reduce the amount of time needed for someone to create a GM-Deck char.

Innates would have to be re-balanced ofc. The goal would be to see more specialized characters and maybe more of a classic mage, rogue, warrior and priest feeling - while still being very unique and able to mix different builds.

You could also limit the amount of skills or schools than can be used in a deck.

Unfortunately I think we are already pretty late in development and the likeliness of a complete overhaul like this is nearly zero. Also for PVE I could foresee that for someone who specializes there are ofc less options to level up and it might get boring to kill the same mobs over and over again - because everything else is resistant to your magic or physical school.

A cheap trick to counter all that would be to set all player on a same level in PVP zones... That completely destroys the sandbox though and degrades SotA PVP into a minigame like experience *aka the Fall* , which might be fine for some but definitely not someone wanted a more UO like experience of open world/order vs chaos.

I think my suggestion would be a good compromise between working for your character, and accessibility for casual players, while keeping the feel of a virtual world and not breaking the logic of it.

All that being said, the "PVP problem" comes from lack of mechanics, not balance of high level vs low level chars. But I think my system solves the Masters of all Trades issue, that is also quite game breaking for an RPG, without taking anything away from someone.

 

I like it!

 

+10000
You say what I cant put in words!

 

Excellent idea! This approach better serves the needs and desires of PvE, PvP and RP players. @Chris please consider and share your thoughts.

 

Very cool ideas! Some additional thoughts:

-The deck system is an instrument that already forces some specialization, but not enough. One reason is that there are too many passive skills that every character can use. When added up are very powerful and become must haves.

-The worst case of this might very well be resistances from attunment. I don't see why you couldn't just remove this connection alltogether. Let attunment just improve the actual spell casting. There are already ways to boost resistances from specific passive and active skills, as well as from items.

-I seem to remember that the idea of negative resistance effects from opposing schools was abandoned because they didn't like that mages from opposing schools could blast each other down really fast. I can see how these fights become less strategic and fun.

 

And maybe get rid of Slugs and limit the skills for dynamic slots so that nobody can put in all relevant skills in a dynamic Slot.
Maybe only skills from same color and not more than 3 with a slow Rotation.

 

Yeah they scrapped the idea before even tuning it felt like :/ I see no reason why it wouldnt work especially if rest of OP is implemented.

 

I think one of the best fix would be : every active skill which provide a bonus over time overwrite every other skill with the same bonus over time :

• Casting evasion or glancing blow would cancel fortify defense or ice shield.
• Casting healing grace would cancel soothing ray or elysian illumination.

And so on...

Add to this that one spell from one school can cancel spells from the opposite school :

• Casting a fire ring over an ice field cancel the ice field.
• Casting an ice arrow cancel fire damage over time on the target.
• Gust would cancel root.
• Stone arrow could cancel the stun effect from the air skills or provide a better resistance to it for a limited time.
• Casting Death Shield would prevent the caster to use healing skills.

etc, etc...

As for attunement, simply cancel the comparison system with the target and move the resistance passive skills and Celestial blessing to the focus tree with a slight boost on those.

Move Bulkwark of Earth and Sympathy of Stone to circunstancials bonus (used only when Torpor or Earth embrace are on).

Nothing much to balance after that. Easy fix. Will not take much time from Portalarium. Thanks. Good bye

 

I like skills canceling eachother out but why celestial blessing in this example? 2 heals and 1 resist buff. 2 short time and celestial lasts long

 

I think this would actually do the opposite of what you want. This makes the calculations of skills so complex that the average player would have no idea what their defense is and would likely make pvp so much more confusing that even less would want to do it. I Like the current system thanks.

 

Because I'm stupid . I confused with Elysian Illumination. Fixed

Vallo's system is quite complex. But it's not the only solution. And the current one is even less appealing. I'm walking through Novia quite often (I played something like 2 600 hours which is not much but enough to have a point of view), and I don't see so many PvP tagged folks. I don't know but I would bet that it's because everyone feels obliged to level all their skills before tagging.
Also, being healed by sun (Elysian Illumination) while it's raining (Soothing Rain), and using Death shield while the life tree provide health with Healing Grace is certainly one of those totally illogical things that discredit the game. I understand that skills have been built gradually, but Portalarium must take a look at that before the release. There is a big risk that press review will do their thing with such inconsistencies.

 

That is the ultimate problem shroud had from the beginning. Blame it on their development style... but nothing makes sense in Shroud.
It remembers me more of Spoony's U9 review, rather than Ultima Online or the worlds created in U7 and even U8...

That being said, it is about time to make virtue matter, guilds matter and create some form of conflict. There isn't even much roleplaying...

All I see advertised is second life like charity events, dance parties and such, that give the game an image of being a meeting point for lonely 50+ rather than the Ultimate RPG.
They have to decide if they want to be an RPG game or replace people's social needs in an online "world".

 

I'm glad you have your opinion. I do not share it. I am happy with magic being free from restraints. I like that I can cast anything as much as I like and because it's magic it works. I don't want a system base on some sort of constrained ideology where opposing elements some how can't complement each other. Frankly that style of game as been over done. SOTA is much more fun due to the freedoms we enjoy. I also don't have any problem with people having to learn all the skills for pvp defense it's a good experience which I have gone through they can certainly do the same.

 

The problem is the lack of diversity in classes. I agree on the gameplay part. Of course someone would still need to level a resistance etc.. or maybe make wards harder to attain.
But like I said in my post in the end everyone is very much the same and the game needs more players not very few that already went through the worst

Also you can still level everything.. but not use everything unconditionally with my suggestion.
It is to flatten the level difference. Create more "viable" players for hopefully more sandbox content to come.

 

The current system obscures a lot of what you were mentioning. I was always against the approach to just let people play and not care about the numbers...
Ofc presentation of things like crit chance, dodge chance etc needs to be improved nevertheless... its awful in SotA by design unfortunately

 

I see many different types of players, sword users, fire mages, death mages, air mages, polearm users, bludgeon users, archers. The #1 thing that made the most people I know quit was the decay system.

 

The decay system was designed so everyone can level up to his own level of incompetence. It was pretty clear it will cause a lot of people to give up very early as they stop progressing. ^^

 

I agree with vallo here, (maybe for the first time ever) there absolutely need to be more constraints on pvp or else it becomes both uninteresting and anti-competitive.

in this case, i agree so much i posted a very similar idea 3 months ago (proposed both as linked or unlinked to decks)

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/locked-trees.94719/#post-842386

 

True words.