Decay revisited from a different perspective and an alternative

Well stated, @Toadster
And Amen...

 

And then there's the fact that ...​

"Chris is a Game Development Genius!"
and we fools will continue to be blinded standing in his light!

​

 

Can we please stay on topic ?

I don't care about your life, for my part.

As I said earlier, all of this is only about trying to force everyone to be equal. It's not about to find a good solution about decay. THAT's a pity.

Why do I say that ?

Many good suggestions have already been made about death decay. For exemple, someone suggested to apply XP loss for repetitive deaths within an X period of time. Where have you been, everyone, to discuss it ? Also, people (like @Mac2) asked to apply death decay only to play time and not to real time. @Chris was about to do that but he didn't. I don't know why but all of those good suggestions would have allowed casual players not to be penalized one way or another. Apparently, This does not seem to be a solution that interests you @Toadster @FrostII @2112Starman @Arc Yeah, you, the 4 musketeers...

You plead for something even more boring : the disuse decay. The casual player will not suffer less from it, even if it's only about play time. It is a simple question of logic.

Then, it's obvious all of this is about wanting the 1% not to be the 1%. All of this is about to have everyone equal and to deprive the game of its incentives. All of this is about disputing the advantage earned by anothers. All of this is about jaleousy.

Do you want a scoop ? There is no solution to your problem. Even the hard caps will not prevent the 1% to be better than you. Just play every other MMOs to realize it. Because other MMOs have hard caps, and there are still players who have better gear, smarter builds and so on... And the developpers of those games are taking time to create new things for hard core players for every single patch. The famous high end content lacking in every MMO. Wow ! Can you imagine ? Portalarium doing that with the money of the 99% other backers ? Yes, because it is inevitable. One day, erveyone will be at the level of the 1% and when a game (today) does not keep incentives, it flows from the bottom. Diablo has parangon levels, SWTOR has the commander rewards, etc...

The only important questions are whether it is possible to play with the current system and whether these players are really untouchable ? We already know the answers to these two questions, even if you do not like them. Yes and No.

Of course, the death decay need to change a bit. I have advocated this for a long time. More than you did here. Of course, skills need to be balanced. But @Chris is a developer. I suppose that before using a less punitive solution, he tests many things. He has access to statistics that you do not even imagine. And he told us that he was keeping an eye on this.

 

This.
If you want something like this, go play WoW.

 

Lol.
This thread got funny fast.

Mac
Go invite some friends to play, and dont power level them. Tell them its going to take them essily 750 to 800 hours of pure grinding before they contribute in your group.
Then explain how decay works to them.

You keep using devil cult as an example. Yes i understand 16 h a day of grinding can get you up fast. Esprcially with powrr leveling help. Thats not the issue tho.

If they play 16 hours a day, then your right. It probly wont hamper them. (Decay)
The other 90% of people who dont play 16 hour days, will find their time to get up will be even longer.
Once they understand this, see how many stick around.

Now look at it on a larger scale, outside of your sensitive bubble.
The conversation and issue really doesnt have anything to do with you or how u got to where your at.
Its 100% about people joining now, and the appeal/ trying to keep these players so SOTA actuallt grows past its whopping 300 players your the king of.

The decay mechanic is garbage. That was the discussion. Where your exp is at reaaalllly doesnt change that.

So i ask agian. Why have decay at all, if the big limitation is the 200 being so unattainable anyways?

 

I remember when this subject of death penalties first came up in our forums back in 2014... and those solutions were much more harsh than anything we have thus far seen "by far!"
Rise to the challenge, or become bored to death because everyone is equal... which they actually are through our current decay, they just don't know enough about gaming to see it's reasons.

We saw the early fall in the idea of having death decay effect our PvP. That was an idea I so much enjoyed I did! But for all the "valor" or lack of it, we won't be seeing that idea's beauty to return. I like our super skilled heroes to the point of loving them! Yet with equality of ability through placing some hard cap is such an antiquated way of play, our game would be as dead as most games which outlive their challenges so quickly as to offer nothing more. I don't want to play many games. I have 2 thus far, SOTA as my main and Elite Dangerous as my second, because both have very good players lurking out there waiting to blow lesser skilled players into pixel dust ...

Backing away from any challenge has never been within me...
~TL~

 

While i would rather have caps and multiple characters.. why have decay at all if skills gain costs scale so much?
All it does is prevent risk taking and hamper mid play people.

That being said.. i thought the whole idea of the deck system and random card pull would mean that even identical exp level players would rely on deck build skills, skill use an terrain strat to be * the best *-.. so teeechnically even equality would seperate the best from the average.

Coarse sota 200 everything is like 14 years of grinding lol

 

Exactly. And if this about appealing to new players, I really don't see them putting XP loss so bad it eventually makes you go backwards as a bullet point on the free trial advertisements, either.

 

My 2 cents.

It's not about the casual player or the player with 100+ GMs. Heck, It's not even about the role-player who believes in doing nothing but dancing all day long at parties or hiding under a rock breathing cold air.

It is about the game itself- SotA.

The devs make it an endless skill grind cos they are afraid that there is nothing for players to play or do at endgame. But by doing so, they hurt the entire idea of being a character in an MMORPG, the reason of why you're here anyway, your purpose in this world and economy anyway.

Every player can level up every skill without penalties and be a clone of each other in the end. If there is a skill cap involved, players will be in niche roles and have a much CLEARER idea of what they have to do in this world or how to roleplay their character or bla.

I know it is not easy putting a cap on skills, and that it might take a major re-look at some skills and reduction/merging of nodes. But just think for a moment...Think of SotA and the game that you wanna play for years to come.

Why do we need multiple character slots in future when our main character can do (and you will want them all on ONE character) everything?

Why does this game lack identity besides resources and just about anything in the game being able to sell for RL money? Cos the players are not given clear game instructions on how to make their identity. Make my own Caps? Please. Hand me some paper and I can make my own game even.

With a cap present, you'll not need to think about player power, or time commitment, or casuals vs hardcore. Hardcore players can still grind out more artifacts to pimp their build out or put excess items on their vendors for sale. Skills can be better balanced instead of fearing the presence of an infinite build.

tldr: Caps are painful but for longevity of game, makes the purpose of a player/character in a supposed Player Run Economy much CLEARER and form better bonding and community due to RELIANCES and REPUTATIONS based on individual characters.

 

Not really.

 

I agree that something really needs to be done about the decay system as it is. Perhaps a Poll on the subject might help Chris get an idea on how many people are unhappy or not with the curreent system?.

My personal opinion is that it is rather demoralizing(and it is a game after all) having to spend an hour or two of non stop grinding to get the xp back after a sudden finger spasm silly death, yesterday I unfortunately died due to the stun bug(which only happens rarely now, however shouldnt happen at all!) as I ran away to try and get to the rezone point, I reeceived several ice arrow crits to the back, which inevitably lead to my death. So now I feel like I have to spend an hour focused on combat instead of slacking around, exploring and basically doing what I want to do in the game.

I am not sure I agree with the disuse skill decay idea. Personally I have GM's in things I use a lot, however, I use different skills in differeent areas, ie Banish undead..only good against undead, pretty much useless in other zones. I am sure I am not alone in the way of ensuring that you are quite flexible in attunements. I dont really want to have to spend the time I am online switching zones for an hour plus just to use every skill I am levelling to stop it from decaying, this kind of also puts me off levelling skills past the 100 mark also, which it really shouldnt to be honest, I mean it is a game after all and should be enjoyed by everyone regardless of playstyle or acheivements.

 

This is wrong. Levelling a single skill to the max level (200) could take decades even for hardcore players. So maybe you don't know that yet, but you will have to do choices.

This game has caps : soft caps and they are efficient. The 200th level would take an entire life to grant... what already ? a 15~20~30% bonus compared to a level 100 in the best cases ?

The problem with the skills, currently, in my opinion, is about magic resistance and attunment which force you to level magic skills when you don't care about. @kaeshiva said that better than I do. It's also about melee warriors which don't have physical skills which allow them to really compete with blink and other movement bonuses.

As for grind, every game has grind issues. When I play SOTA, I don't feel pain with grind. Why ? Because I can try to reach personal goals, endlessly. The game could help more with that (having good quest and story telling, dynamical content, etc...) but, for now, it is too early in the developpment to get something really attractive.

Hard caps are not the solution. Most of the games which have hard caps are trying to delete them because they need to keep players interest. Death decay need some love, even if it's far better than the previous release. That's all.

 

In every MMO you reach a point where you level to the maximum allowable level (cap) and get all the shiniest things. Then you're essentially done, and while social ties or levelling up alternate characters to the same stage may keep your interest for a while, when you can no longer make meaningful progress there's little incentive to login.

This "decay" system is even worse - not only is it functioning as a cap in exactly the same way as above (i.e., you reach a point where you can't progress anymore) its also making you struggle to even keep what you have.

Linking this to the death mechanic is even more short sighted, as the stronger players, the ones you're actually wanting to limit, aren't going to die often as most of the game's content is trivial. For everyone else - You can't go try anything new or challenge yourself or you're right back to tedious grinding just to get back what you've already earned. The only thing a long-term player has to look forward to is the repetition of this same behavior, forever, with no increase in their characters power, no ability to branch out into other skills without exacerbating the already ridiculous penalty.

We are already seeing the soft caps evening the playing field. While I'm nowhere near the top players, I've nearly reached what I call the content cap - I can survive pretty much everywhere and while I'm not soloing bosses, I expect that with a bit of specific gearing and deck building, I could probably do it. A player who has invested 5x my total xp can do it a bit better, but at least I've got something to strive for. If you look at 5skull content, a player with FIVE TIMES my total xp can probably clear out a zone a few minutes faster than I can, but that's about the only difference. They might take 5% less damage, and do 5% more damage. They are far more likely to opt for lateral movement / other builds /versatility / rounding out of skills and passives than pushing individual skills past the 130-140 mark - the cost ramps up far too swiftly for the benefit. In a world where decay did not exist, there is still a limit to what is achievable simply due to the rate at which XP can be acquired.

I don't know about the rest of you, but this is it for me, this is the MMO I've been looking for, its where I want to hang my hat for years to come, I am a strong believer in the project and have put my money where my mouth is over and over again. The only thing I want is to be able to log in, play for any amount of time, and make some sort of tangible progress, see my character grow, and customize my avatar over years of /played time investment. If I get shiny stuff along the way, fine. Gold comes, gold goes, but as long as that progress is still there, then we keep playing, its the central thing you can fall back on. The game is designed across more cash sinks than I've ever seen in any game ever, where the player must work constantly to combat the drain on in-game wealth. The flip side of this was that until decay, we could at least be comforted in knowing that our character is growing and developing and perhaps it will be easier to pay the rent next week. If you take this away, you take away everything.

 

I share w/ you this sentiment (as outlined in your last paragraph), exactly.

Another thing: death decay brings into sharp focus the need to specialize, i.e., maximize w/ what resources fall within its useful cap. But how can this really be done when there are so many interdisciplinary skills which only get diluted when not used w/ the full backing of their skill tree? Attunement comes to mind, as does resistance. And mages have it especially difficult: each magic tree is not suited to being all around useful; that means ones mage avatar is destined to reflect that: not being all around useful (ones avatar will forever be relegated to being a few tricks pony). Looking towards a future of a neutered mage w/ a handful of glyphs and that's it is unappealing; that's not a future.

Death decay and the choices it brings shouldn't even be on the table for consideration until the skill trees are straightened out and balanced. We are not there by a longshot and neither should the death tax.

 

Hi, I understand what you're saying but it does not help build diversity or give clear feedback on your ROLE. To get new players in, my vision is more pragmatic, and they can immediately work on a build towards a certain role, then make a new character for another role if they so wish to.

Everyone will be a 80 this n that. Or a few 100s here. No niche, as it's not smart to specialize as you said. Unless you got decades to give.

 

Yes the death decay is very hard to accept. That said, meaningful death is not a bad thing when you think about it. Then I don't know how death decay should be applied, really, but I think this game must have one.

Let's talk about soft caps : blade mastery or stone arrows. You will need almost 17 000 000 000 xp points to get the first to the 200th level. You will need twice for the second skill.
Let's do some maths. @Mac2 told us that he was playing 16 hours a day. And he can earn 600 000 xp for each hour of grind. To get blade mastery to 200, he will need to set all his other skills to maintain ... and grind for 4 years and 9 months, every single day. He will need more than 9 years to do that with obsidian arrows. Theorically, he can do that but well, do I really need to explain further ?

 

You're right. Each tree maybe need more versatility. That said, you can specialize a bit. I'm pretty sure my build is somewhat unique for an archer. I could use all the skills in the game, but with the hotbar, and as I love archery, I don't use much more than twenty of them.

 

One word... consequents\ces which are the hallmark of all lord British games and why they have been so successful.

 

Yeap. Cap me and give me a consequence for my choices.~

 

You can do that by yourself