Conversation with Chris on skills

It will still be possible, though, to have two combat skills. I suspect most people will unless the skill cap is pretty low. If I get pretty good with a sword, then I can use a sword to raise my skill with, say, fire magic. The only sure-fire way to implement use-based skill gain is by implementing use-based skill gain.

 

@NRaas,

I think two skill point pools actually might make it harder to be good at both magic and fighting. With one skill pool, an advancing character just has to carefully balance his advancement; one level add to weapons, the next level add to skills. With two, the player still has to choose whether he wants to advance in magic or fighting, but by choosing how he attacks in battle. So the choice isn't gone -- its still there. But spending too much time fighting might delay your ability to learn magic.

 

Since it was mentioned in the original post that a skill cap is probably no longer necessary, it most likely means that each additional skill point will be more difficult to achieve than the previous one : As in it would require more experience to unlock.

That means that once one has spent the easy-to-get skill points on sword skill, one will need to resort to spending the more difficult-to-get skill points on magic skill.

From the sounds of it, doing so *will* be possible given an extremely large expenditure of time, but it will not be simple.

And as you use those points to increase in magic skill, you are sacrificing higher level weapon skills as a result.

In my opinion, this leads to exactly the hybrid style that was seen in the use-based system in UO.

With two pools, whose difficulty are not interlinked in some manner, the effort to receive the initial easy-to-get early points from both pools will be simpler, than it would have been with a single pool.

Obviously, just my thoughts though.

 

Yes I recognize that and agree with you

 

The only difference being that it will be easy to respec - so choices don't have much consequence

Which is another topic altogether -

So far the system we allows players / to select schools - not magic vs non-magic combat ... so a lot of versatility and player choice is somewhat paramount

To me this only works if passives / elemental protection / etc is heavily emphasized

- If they wanted to make it more demanding - they could simply have 2 trees - magic and non-magic ...

At that point even if you do re-spec you will always be faced with the choice of how far down - or in depth - you want to progress down a tree - which will truly impacts or poses a choice every time you venture - and possibly add that element of pro's / con's versus builds for specific challenges

This might even allow for better synergy between schools if the branches were organized accordingly (for magic)

and could open up the door for dual wielding in the non-magic schools

 

Soft caps are just normal caps dressed up in fancy clothes. That doesn't affect my point much if at all.

 

Just making sure I understand you then, is all.

 

Indeed! I think easy respec is a poor decision, but that's just my opinion, and we're not sure how "easy" it will be. Personally, you should just have to slog through gaining more skill points, but I understand others may not agree with my opinion. I hope it will have a cost - I would like to see it cost experience rather than gold. There should be a penalty, especially in a game where you can just gain new skills. I just think there should be some incentive for those who plan properly to avoid respec.

Which begs the question: Will you continue to gain skill points forever? Or do you max out at a certain "level"?

 

From the way Chris remarked in the original post, it sounds like one continues to gain skill points forever, but eventually run out of useful places to put them.

 

This was always the solution which made the most sense, given the way the trees were laid out and everything else worked. It's more or less the GuildWars model.

 

ALSO drawn from what has been said about this, I believe the intention is to keep adding new skill trees, sub trees, and other peripheral skills over time, so that though you may one day have earned enough ability points to purchase everything in release 1, by then release 1 will only be a fraction of what's out there. Thus, while our characters never stop evolving and growing, we also never actually buy out every skill available. We will still need each other, we will still interact, buy, trade, sell...

And MY unique combat build won't necessarily even be possible for random people I meet, nor will I be able to quickly copy theirs.

 

Thank you.

@Curt

Still no-skillcap worries me. It might be good for a singleplayer game, but for an mmo....

Well, if the skills take as much time to train as they do in Eve, then it's gonna be OK. and skills in EVE take a loong time to train.