Character Skills vs Equipments: How much does character ability matter in this game?

One of the coolest feature back in UO (Pre-AoS) was that your character's innate ability (skills) played a significant role in determine how strong you are. The game was not item based, your character matters more than the items you have for the most of the time. Surely it is fun using a "Katana of Vanquish" to demolish an earth elemental; however your character can get by with any non-magic swords just fine as long as you have high enough of Swordsmanship and Tactics.

The ability for your character to play the game is ~70% based on your character's skills and only ~30% based on what items you have. Unlike majority of the MMOs or ARPG, where the power level of your character is 90% or more based on how good your equipments are. In some extreme cases your character cannot even function without certain high level equipments.

I hope SotA is taking the direction of which your character matters more than equipments. I am uncertain if this question has been addressed elsewhere but it is definitely something worth to discuss about. I understand that SotA is not UO, however many aspects in UO are what making RG's game unique and fun to play with.

 

Yes please. No item-based crap.
I have no problem with the old UO differentiation of Ruin, Force, Might, Power and Vanquishing, but no numbers please. And certainly no fire, death, water, whatnot kinds of damage. This is not D&D.

 

We will most likely seen the "numbers" used for the equipments. It is the modern way for new players to understand what is going on with their gears. I don't against it personally and I doubt it will be handled differently either.

However I'd like to see a game that focuses more on character skill building rather than what kind of magical items you can get. It makes a very big impact in terms of game play.

 

An RPG is likely to have some item progression. Some items will be better than others.

In WoW and games like it, two players with the same gear repeating the same rotation will put out nearly identical DPS, as the game is designed around that. Everyone has the same character builds and repeats the same rotation. So gear is the biggest differentiator.

The SotA devs have said repeatedly they want the game to focus on player skill and not repeat the WoW gear treadmill.

There will be elemental damage and resistance types.

 

I'm hoping for the absolute minimum in power based progression. So the whole game is always relevant to you.

 

Me too. It changes the whole dynamic of the game when you find that very fine balance between progress that completely bypasses old content and progress that opens new content without making you too powerful for the old. It's hard to do, though. It's much easier to just keep stacking tiers forever and ever.

 

It is good to know that the Devs had addressed this before. It is also great to know that the most powerful gears in game that are able to be crafted by players.

I raise the concern because I do not want to see power creep in this game.
An ancient Wyrm or equivalent should always be hard for player to deal with even though new area or new content is introduced to the game in the future (perhaps episode 2?).

Many MMOs increases the level cap or provides higher tier items as a way to introduce their new content. This is essentially power creeping, and it will leave the monsters or dungeons in the old area completely abandoned by players.

Hopefully, as the new contents are introduced in the future it is more oriented around new quests, rich story lines and interesting areas for players to explore. By providing more dps gears or increase level cap are not required if the actual content of the game is good.

UO T2A up to Lord Blackthorn's Revenge never used power creep as the main focus of the new content; rather, new areas and interesting mechanics were introduced to the game. An Ancient Wyrm from Dungeon of Destard was still pretty hard to kill even after all the expansions in UO.

Again, the game seems going towards the direction where character is more focused rather than gears, I am glad with Dev's decision on this.

 

That's going a little too far. Whats wrong with a flaming sword?

 

The devs have stated clearly, indeed, LB has stated clearly ( in a rare fit of not hedging himself ) that items will NOT be the driving force of the game, and that 'the quest for the next uber sword of slightly better than this one'-ness will not be part of SotA.

That being said, I would like to see what gear we bother to carry matter as well. It should MATTER that I bothered to invest in a sword chain, or spiked shields, it shouldn't just be a generic filler for a slot on the character sheet.

What gear you carry is PART of tactics, and one of the big opportunities for players to customize. I'd like it to be far, far more than cosmetic.

 

Yes very true!! Otherwise, what would be the point of getting and putting all that time into crafting when we can all just run around with lvl1 rusty swords

 

im hoping for a 50/50 split .
dont forget we have crafters who are suposed to make the high end weapons/armor and then of cource we have enchanters to further enchant those items.

 

Since I had little time to follow recent developments, the information may be outdated, but wasn't there talk of gear getting better over time ("getting used to that favorite sword"), but increasingly hard to maintain ("I only use this sword for dragons these days")?

The revenue of crafters would then, as a nod to reality, come from repairing gear and selling replacement for such, that has become too expensive to maintain ("broken"). Defnitely a more stable base for an economy than an ongoing increase in power.

 

Crafters should make the best weapons/armor if they have hard achieved high end skills which should take a long time to master.

Gear of this magnitude should be easily replaced.

It should be like UO Renaissance, hard to master the crafting skills and a high demand when you have.

Full loot would also demand easy replacability.

 

I agree. The team has been saying time and again (most recently in the E3 video released earlier this week) that crafters will in fact create the best items, but we haven't been given the details of crafting advancement yet. I hope it's difficult. In UO mastering any crafting skill required dedicating most or all of your playtime to crafting. I loved that. IMO that's the only way a truly player-driven economy can work because when crafting is too easy to advance, suddenly anyone can craft anything, and that devalues goods to the point where it's not worth crafting items to sell them.

 

I'd be on board with making them learn something new. It's not like scalar system are complicated. (Ruin = good, Power = better, Vanquishing = BEST!) Young players should be introduced to a game that doesn't stuff the min/maxing mentality down their throats, IMO. Yes, min/maxing would still happen, but the idea that powerful items are rare and mysterious adds much more depth to the game than reducing that "Vanquishing" item to a set of numbers.

That said, I have to hope powerful items are actually rare. Full loot dropping and fairly fast corpse decay were two of the features that ensured magical items stayed reasonably rare in UO, but it seems we won't have full loot dropping in SotA. That simple difference will have profound impacts on item rarity, both for dropped items and crafted items. I know they've said dying to an NPC might cause that NPC to loot a few items, but that doesn't seem like enough. I'd love to see what they have in mind to work around that seemingly obvious barrier to a stable market.

 

"Vanquish" weapons back in UO was very powerful actually. You can definitely see the damage ticking a lot of faster with one in your hand. However your character does not require to have a such a weapon to function through the game properly.

These high end weapons do give absolutely power in terms of PvP and may be required for them (yah! the Valorite Long Spear!!). As for PVE or general game play, I'm not going to say it isn't great to have a powerful weapon in hand, but it should not be required.

The powerful gears should exist in a world where character skills are more valued but they should not be an necessity for all. This does not mean crafters will be worthless because as mentioned above, PvP folks will still want to min-max their gears regardless. In addition, for PVE players, although not required, they will still be tempted to getting better gears (Vanquish Katana vs Earth Elemental example). For crafters they will be able to gain profit by supplying and repairing these high end gears for many players.

 

I like items an skills. At the end, all we have the exact number of slots to place items, right?

The point is that progression in this game will give you more complex options to develop strategies in battle.

 

Well, given that they've said that we will have no cap on skill points, but that periodically new skills, new ability trees, new branches on those trees, and just generally new $#!T will come out, so that no-one can ever get close to mastering everything, I am thinking (and hoping, very much hoping) that individual player tactical decisions will become the deciding factor. Did you invest in complimentary skills, giving yourself tactical boosts that make you more potent, or are you just spamming random abilities that look cool? Do you have gaping holes in your defense that a moderately skilled opponent could drive a bus through, or are you well balanced with extra fall backs for emergencies?

I would like to see so many different viable builds that "off the beaten path" lies around every bend, so that we can experiment, and through experimentation and success, design builds that nobody in OUR sharded group of players has seen. I want people to say "Whoa! What power was THAT!?" or "How are you doing this with that equipment setup, it makes no sense to me!"

That would be a world where innovation and cleverness ruled, where I could be special not because I had acquired the 'magick cup of yay', or maxxed out my 'savage beatings' skill in PvP, but because I was ME, and had made the choices I make.

That would be AWESOME.

 

A skill based game doesn't mean you would have a lack of gear variations.
Based on what we have in game currently, there are many options in terms of weapon//armor selections.
Each category of the equipments can be used to provide assists and supports to players who invest in the chosen skill trees. This will result many different types of play style and/or skill combinations.

Gear Variations and Gear Power Creep are two totally different things.


Equipments are after all "tools" for our characters, it should not be the other way around.

 

First, the weapons we have RIGHT NOW are pretty much all the same thing with different skins. The skills used add slight chances of special effects, but in sampling them, I didn't see any real variety. I fully expect that to change, since this is still open beta testing of ongoing development, but until I see it, I will still hold up the banner saying it is needed.

Second, as you said, a skill based game doesn't mean we get a lack of gear variations, but it also doesn't PROMISE an abundance of gear variations. We could have a skill based game that has only one set of gear. This thread discusses skill VERSUS gear, and I think that asking for gear variety is a valid point to make in such a thread.

Third, I never actually said anything about Gear Power Creep, I can tell the difference for myself, thanks. I was addressing the idea of gear selection as it plays into player skill. Finding, recognizing, and choosing items that grant advantages concomitant with your style and selected abilities SHOULD be part of player skill. If there is no real variety, everyone will wind up using very similar tactics and very similar builds, because there will be a 'best' way to do things. The more variety that is added, the less true this will be. Skill variety, range variety, armor variety, weapon variety, shield variety, magick variety, consumable variety, character attribute variety... the more we can change things up, the more we can create a truly vibrant medley of character designs.