Convert to cards?

People who will cheat will cheat in any system you design.

So, when you fight you are not just spamming spells to fight? Sheesh, leveling systems are just as grindy as skill-use or hybrid systems. It's all about working your character...call it a grind, or call it fun...I call it fun because that's why I play...to achieve goals for my character to become better at things...Games are not for everyone.

You have cool downs in every system...what's your point?

 

Ignoring cheating and making systems that make it easier will doom any online multiplayer game.

It will completely destroy the community. You seem rather dismissive of that, and you shouldn't be. SotA needs to be a game that can have a long term future.

You seem to completely misunderstand what I'm saying. I like RPGs because I like meaningful advancement.

But saying you can only get better at Fire if you only use the on Fire skill you have to start makes the game less fun to start. As it is today, you can alternate that fire skill with other attacks until the fire skill comes off cooldown. What you're proposing means you cast a fire skill, stand there and do nothing else until the fire skill comes off cooldown, stand there and do nothing else until it comes off cooldown, etc.

Compare that to free attacks you get with melee. What you're proposing would be punitive to a fault.

 

I'm not saying to ignore cheating. I'm sure it's part of game development to create systems and checks to make cheating very difficult...and also to ban accounts of people who do manage to cheat...Nothing new here...online games are prone to hackers and cheaters. I hope our game will not be full of cheaters like Final Fantasy XIV was and some other games...takes some patches and bug fixes sometimes to make cheating go away...(it was a huge problem in FF XIV)

I agree with you on meaningful advancement. That's why I'm against a pool of points you get each level raise. It's not meaningful. It means nothing to choose any random spell/skill just because you raise a level. I want what my character is doing to mean something. I want his spells to raise because he is getting smarter and more effective. I want this process to be very slow. I love slow but obvious character growth and development. Once my character is done raising and improving...it takes a lot of the fun out of my gameplay. Hence the need for a multitude of alts in normal MMO games.

The way I currently play the game is choosing only 1-2 trees. As it is, at level 31 I am forced to have 25 glyphs in my deck. When you are only going in 1 or 2 trees you are faced with choosing a lot of garbage you do not want to cast and end up right clicking a lot of your combat away. That is not fun for me. I would rather have 3 or 4 spells I could use and maybe an effective defense spell (Block is not effective) that lasts 20 or so seconds to cast every so often. So I would cast fire arrow, ice arrow, and some other spell options depending on the tree(s) you've chosen. I like to specialize my mage and even my warrior characters. I think you should be rewarded for focusing on a specific type of spells rather than punished with slugs for not diversifying into a jack of all trades.

I don't understand why you think it is less fun to cast my fire spells to improve at fire spells...I cast fire arrow...perhaps it gets a tiny bit stronger after a while. Perhaps it fizzles less. Perhaps my intelligence goes up a tiny bit. Perhaps I get a little bit better at concentration. Seeing these effects is FUN to me. Even if I only have a small number of spells to cast. There may not be many spells I can cast at first, until my mage becomes more powerful and smart. It could take weeks to learn another spell. That's fun for me. I love the slow yet noticeable advancement of my character. That to me, is meaningful.

 

The skill tree system and assigning points is very likely here to stay. I can't imagine any scenario where a project of this size and budget with this small of a team would junk all that and start over at this point.

 

I agree. The skill tree system will probably not go away. I am just hoping they will make it much more immersive and character development driven.

 

If only that were true, my friend. Right this second, there is an artificial penalty in place to coerce people into trying random, but I say that it is implausible to have two competing mechanical systems within a game, thus: the locked vs random problem should be solved and resolved before we hit Actual Beta (whenever that will officially be).

 

You mean the two systems are being balanced given the massive inherent advantage of being able to predict a set rotation that you can macro.

 

Errr... Chill out? I didn't even say that one was better than the other. I just clarified that you can have locked glyphs mixed with random ones because someone seemed not to know that. No reason to go all rage on me because of that, right?

 

That's like saying that filling the city's sidewalks with high power strobe lights that randomly send pedestrians into convulsions balances the playing field with those who are blind. Read y'self some Harrison Bergeron, you'll get my entire viewpoint on that subject right there. The devs have admitted that the current balance is in part to get people to try random, and that some or all of those penalties will go away, my point is that anytime someone tries to get me to use the less-fun, less-effective method by creating artificial penalties to the more-fun, more-effective method, my response is expressed with a finger. In this PARTICULAR case, it will be the finger clicking "Close Window" as I move on to other games. And while SotA will no doubt survive my defection, arranging for potential customers to leave is not a valid market strategy for establishing a game.

Not raging on you, dude, but go back and read your OWN post, and pay attention to where you put it.

@Morthaur had just asked for arguments FOR using a random system. You responded that one could lock individual keys. Now, you COULD argue that you had just happened to walk through the door at that moment and were making an unrelated observation, you might have posted that we can hybridize the two UIs in any forum on this site, or even the internet. You could have logged in to YouTube and posted that little gem under a Miley Cyrus song. But you didn't. You posted it with a quote in response to someone asking for arguments in favor of using a locked system.

I DEFINITELY responded to your post, in that thread, in that vein of thought, and pointed out why your response was not an adequate answer to @Morthaur's question.

That's not raging, that's logical debate. I just happen to be A) verbose, and B) definite. Call them personal failings if you like.

 

This is sophistry. Yes, cheating is a "risk factor" in introducing any new mechanic, or any player for that matter. I've seen nothing indicating that usage-based advancement is uniquely vulnerable to cheating, or that it has a pronounced tendency to encourage cheating. So letting you play the game is precisely as risky as introducing usage-based systems. Not an effective argument against either, from my point of view.

This is the sort of thinking that gave America the TSA. Just the fact that a problem exists does NOT justify any and every means taken in an effort to curtail that problem. Prove that your methods can and will reduce cheating, and they will have merit. As has been pointed out countless times, the current random deck UI has not passed that challenge. And if it isn't actually reducing cheating, then you cannot equate failure to support the system with "ignoring cheating and making systems that make it easier".