Chosing your Paths . . . . .

Well I mean the point is that you could build any kind of character you want. Like if you want a warrior mage, go for it. It's classless for a reason. The point is freedom in build.

The limitation is time. People won't have the time to get everything leveled up. Even without the skill decay, it takes a lot of time and patience to get a skill to level 100. The more you put limitations on your own build (try not to do anything) the more you can specialize and theoretically the better your character will be.

 

Have the starting scene act like a mini quest. Place a few NPCs that you need to talk to. Have one let you determine your alignment, then another allows you to pick your primary skills. Make it so that you need to practice the skills you pick to get your starting points. Then see someone about your secondary points, pick what you want them to be and practice them a few times to get your points. Finally talk to someone about your tertiary skills, choose and practice these. THEN go through the rift.

Just my thoughts on this.

 

Allowing everyone to be everything does not allow any differentiation. At all.

Given time, everyone will have basically the same skills. It's a bad idea.

There absolutely needs to be either a hard or soft cap in my opinion. That we had to make hard choices (or so I thought ...) wasn't the point of my criticism.

This is one of those things you're either going to "get," or you aren't, from a design perspective.

 

Then it sounds like a few very confident sounding folks in this thread need to fact check.

It can't be both ways fellas ...

If this poster is correct, (cap of some type) and I hope he is, then the virtue questions are terribly implemented and absolutely remove player choice in character building.
If this poster is mistaken (no cap of any type) then the game won't hold my attention for long. That would be a huge disappointment.

 

You do realize this is exactly the opposite of what you've been saying in this thread? What you describe would require a cap.

 

I don't think picking skills based on Virtues is the way to go anyhow. They are roleplay elements and keep it at that. Not define gameplay; everyone looks up stuff online nowadays anyhow. Most people would start picking virtues for starting points. I'm pretty sure of this.

 

As I understand it there is no skill cap, but each time you die and each time you gain skill is when any given skill which have been unused for a certain amount of time may decrease. The point is that you will never be able to train all skills to 100, because getting to 100 is too hard and will have the consequence of reducing the skills you're not using during your training. You'd have to run around using all of the skills all the time... Good luck with that, whomever may want to try.

 

Actually, no? It's not. The hard part is that it's insanely hard to do in multiple categories. I was only saying from the beginning that the first free points they give you in no way affects your abilities to go to the top on any other ability besides the one they started you on.

Because you were saying I can't go to the top in so-and-so skill because they gave me these free points in this skill 'a' as oppose to this skill 'b' (which I think is what you were saying). I've been saying the free points are free and they don't affect your ability to max out on skill b. Which seems to be the case?

And you're saying because there's no cap it's possible to max out on everything (or that's how it sounded when I read it) so I don't like it even more. And I'm saying well yea, you could try but because of the effort it takes to maintain a skill or two or three most likely it is going to be the limit for any individual being (thus probably not possible) and thus not likely you will be able to max out on 'all' skill and be the almighty. I don't think I contradicted myself in any way there. Or maybe I did and I just don't realize it?

 

It is *not "insanely hard to" get skills into the 70s. That's all that will be required to destroy build diversity.
It is *not "insanely hard" for power gamers and macroers to get skills even higher.
You should have to make real, meaningful choices in defining your individual character build. I'm extremely disappointed if the scope of those choices is no more substantial than which skills to train first.

 

Getting to 70 is not considered the hard part

 

I just wish there was a clear answer more than anything man.

 

I used the chart to get the skills I wanted. I'd prefer that my starting skills not be tied to my answers about virtues at all. This system makes no sense to me.

 

There is Really\ NOT a skill cap, if you are saying I can NOT be a Master of every skill is a "Cap" you are really reaching. Im sorry but if I could master every skill I would not even bother with this game, might as well go play PacMan

As for skills being tied to a virtue ??? Just need the ability to Chose within that Virtue to get more possible skills.

 

What you've said here is:

1. Trust me, there is no skill cap.
2. If there were no skill cap I would not play this game.

So, do you play the game or not?

 

Theoretically, if there was a mob that gives you billions of exp and you could kill this mob with one hit, then yes, you can master all skills and be the almighty (which is not necessarily the cap of the skill because it will still be going up each time you killed this mob - assuming that you kill enough of this mob to keep the skill at the almighty level and still have more exp leftover).

Theoretically, if you kept killing this mob, you could keep up your skills so you can keep being the almighty.

So, in this sense, you could then be the almighty in all skills, theoretically. Hence it would be a game you and Wein wouldn't want to play. <<This is the point where you go to pacman

Do you know of any mob around that will give you billions of exp you can kill so easily? No? Then, yes, there is no skill cap so you can still reach almightihood with your skill of choice but you can't do it in ALL the skill because its not possible to kill that many mobs to get the exp necessary to get to the almighty of all because you still need some exp to keep being the almighty in skill abc of your choice. So, although there is no skill cap - because if that theoretical mob existed you could get to the almightyhood and beyond - there is a cap on the amount of skill you can maintain at the highest level. Hope that makes better sense to you?

 

In the old Ultimas I answered the questions the gypsy asked me at the beginning only once according to my conscience and happily kept playing with whatever the game gave me.

In SotA I will do the same, even though I have knowledge of all the different outcomes because of pre-alpha testing.

I don't care if the game gives me skills I don't want to specialize in. Those skills give me the means to survive my first hours in New Britannia and earn enough gold to unlock other skills of my choice. Within hours I can raise those unlocked skills to surpass the level of the skills I started out with.

The starting skills, if I choose not to use them, will eventually decay from misuse. It will probably be possible to "untrain" skills at a skills trainer at some future time (this was said in a recent video chat). The starting skills, even if unwanted and unused, have no negative effect on the future progress of the avatar in his chosen skills career, other than a few hours head start.

The "soft cap" that is sometimes mentioned refers to the fact that the adventuring experience needed in order to advance skill level is exponential, so it is easier to advance a skill from level 1 to level 90 than it is to advance a skill from level 90 to 100.

"There are no hard caps on how many total skill points a player can have. Due to the slow decay there is a sort of a soft cap where at some point, no matter how frantically a player tries to advance everything, they will not be able to keep everything at max. Also, the higher the skill is, the tougher it will be to maintain"
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/use-based-systems.35948/

 

There is not a hard skills cap. However, it becomes exponentially more difficult to advance skills the higher they get. It takes as much effort to go from 0 to 90 as it does to go from 90 to 100. There is also a small skill decay which at low skill levels can be easily recovered, but which can represent a significant effort to recover at really high skill levels. It takes a lot of effort to counter skill decay and maintain a single skill at a really high level. It would not be possible to do this for more than a small number of skills.

 

And I think that's the root of the disconnect, several people haven't played the Ultima games with this role selection system in it (including me). KOTOR has the same mechanic built in , your answers determine not only the color of your light saber but what Jedi class you end up with (Guardian Sentinel or Counselor). It's simpler though in KOTOR, the weapon and base skills you end up with are the same - it's all light sabers.

Here's the video, it's one of the best role selections I've ever seen :

 

That's not a skill cap then. And it sucks.

Players will macro the effective combat skills up into the 70s, 80s and 90s. Those skills will be effective at those levels. Those skills, where you can have all of them, will be found on every effective combat PvP character "build." Those builds will be substantially the same. You'll essentially be playing a RP heavy, poorly implemented third person shooter.

That's my .02 from what I've seen in-game and read about the "skill cap."

 

Your prognostications may be correct ONLY if having all skills at 70 is a greater advantage than having a few at 100 and THAT has not been established.

Like many issues surrounding this game, dire predictions are made with no actual evidence.