Decay: Worst Mechanic Ever

So a guild member wanted a skill at GM and she decided on smelting. The guild all pitched in ore and she managed to get up around 93 smelting. She then had a busy time at work and had no game time for over 2 weeks, logs back in... smelts one ingot and loses a level worth of exp and seems to be so far in the negatives that her skill will now not increase. I had gone beyond GM with my own smelting and as a result have a stockpile of ingots and had not needed to smelt for about a week myself, so i go and smelt an ingot and lose a huge chunk of smelting exp. No wonder people are complaining that certain skill seem to go nowhere... some skills are needed at high levels but are not used constantly.. like resurrect, douse, purify... pvp decks only get used when pvp happens ect. If you do not use something constantly, you lose it. If you have to work, you lose it. How is this mechanic in any way useful or needed? There are far better ways to stop people leveling all skills than taking away skill levels that they worked hard for just because they can't use them 24/7. This is literally the only thing i do not like about the game. Skill decay is a horrible way to gate progress and it does nothing but upset people and punish those who want to do things like roleplay, play music, explore, socialize.. or anything other than work a daily skill rotation. BOOOOOOO!


EDIT: Just to be clear, i play all day..every day. You have to daily use anything you do not want to lose. There is no option for me to relax and do whatever i feel like doing each day since i now feel forced to follow a regime of skill maintenance. This is not fun, i like events and many other activities but there is no way i am going to bring myself to enjoy these things when i am aware that it is COSTING me.

 

The SotA team has devised some very clever ways to stop people to cheat on raising the skills. They have yet to find out how to do the skill decay. I only hope it will not become the equivalent of the 700 skill cap of Ultima Online. Back then, on the beta, I had a char with lot of skill points. After the cap, I had to choose, warrior or mage, blacksmith or carpenter, tamer or fisherman, etc. Ended up with about 12 characters. It was bad, maybe worse than being uncapped since the cap only was important on PvP. ¿Can have we PvP chars and normal chars, free of all those "balance" issues?

 

If each level cost twice as much XP to acquire as the previous level, AND increased your effectiveness only half as much as the previous increment, there would be no need for skll decay.

 

I tested this skill decay myself on skills that I would not use constantly but I still want to gradually gain as I progress my character and had the same results - a chunk of XP being removed. At lower levels this can seem minor but at higher levels this results in a ton of wasted time and materials towards leveling a skill.

 

Currently if you achieve what the game considers abnormally high levels, it forces you to use it or lose it. Unfortunately this feels to some like theft if they cannot do that. If each incremental level cost exponentially more XP to achieve and was exponentially less effective than the previous increment, sane people would stop when they reached a level that was worth the effort, safe in the knowledge that they would never lose what they gained.

People would be able to reach and keep level 100, but it would not be all that much better than level 60. I suspect BDF might approve of that.

 

In my case, it's a more insidious issue - I'm pretty ill, and end up spending several weeks a year in hospitals and another similar period recovering from that, at totally unpredictable times. That causes me more than enough hassle in real life, I really don't need it causing more in a game I'm meant to be enjoying as well. Penalising people for being absent makes it feel like an obligation, or a job, where I absolutely must be there all the time, rather than a game played for fun. I want to be playing because I enjoy the game, and being part of the community - never out of fear of losing what I already worked to get....

If there really is such a need for any skill decay mechanisms (I've never yet seen any sensible explanation why developers add them to games - unless you count once when a probably over-honest developer said it helped to 'incentivise' people to keep paying the game subs to keep playing every month rather than take breaks!) then the system needs to be really well thought out, or it adversely affects people and gives them reasons not to play the game.

 

I don't understand the reasoning behind skill decay. At higher levels it already takes much more effort to increase a level, and the effectiveness of each additional level (the benefit it brings to the avatar) diminishes. This alone will discourage a lot of players from attempting GM level in various skills.

Losing a level of skill at level 40 wouldn't be that tragic, because it can be regained with a couple of hours worth of dedicated effort. But regaining a decayed skill level at level 93 (as described in the original post) is extremely hard to do and may take days of effort.

It would take no effort at all for someone macroing their skills to regain the decayed level since they can do other things while their avatar is levelling up.

It seems to me that the only players being punished by skill decay are those who are actually in the game legitimately using their skills by hand. I don't understand why this is a good thing.

 

The chunk of exp you see me lose in that video is well over a thousand ore worth... the time it takes an average player to get that amount of ore is very high. Without the accelerated pre-release skill gains and 4x bonus, the amount of time it will take to master skills, craft skills in particular, is quite high. There is already diminishing returns on level benefits and scaling exp requirements... why subject people to decay?

 

Thank you for posting this @Themo Lock it needed to be brought up. I enjoy playing the game, however, I do not want to feel like it is required to log in daily. It's a game, not a job it should be fun.

 

Two questions. First, didn't Chris say that 'decay' would be limited to a maximum of 48 hours? So your female guild member shouldn't have lost as much as she did, or she would have had to be online during these days, just not smelting?

Second, didn't Chris/DS mention the possibility of getting the skill decay to stop through the Oracle (and Lum explained after complaints by players that it might be skill trainers doing that instead of the oracle) later down the road when the functionality is implemented?

(Please do not get me wrong, I dislike skill decay!)

 

Logain the 48h rules should also apply if you don't gain any skill or die during the time, so 1 week of RP should also give you only 48h cap

 

I like the decay system, but i think a few adjustments are needed.

 

While that sounds trivial in theory, I doubt that it's as easy in reality. Cast 'light' spell? Skill gained! Get hit by a beast? Skill gained! Actually, I think it's rather tricky to keep at exactly zero 'skill-ticks', even while having the intention of roleplaying only.

 

just turn of training those skills. that should save you.

 

The point I've been trying to convey is that it's not as easy as one thinks at first glance. There is a plethora of skills that you can level 'by accident'! Sun Attunement/Worship/Eater, Dex/Int/Str, Armour/Weapon preservation, Healthy, Deflection/Hard Headed/Endurance, Swiftness/Acrobatics, Angles/Shield preservation/Balance/Stand your ground,... and possibly something I forgot?

Has anybody actually tested that yet? It might be that the 'event trigger' is in the 'calling event', instead of in the 'gain procedure'?

 

I will join the choir of "boo" on skill decay.

The result of such a punishing mechanic is that people will feel forced to use skills when they don't need to use them, just to prevent decay.

Thus not only you will see people standing in random spots continuously casting useless spells just to gain points, but you will also see people logging in to frantically perform some random and otherwise pointless activities in order to avoid an XP hit.

Sorry, can't go adventuring today: I've got to smelt an ingot, chop down a tree, make some boards I don't need, then cast 20 different spells, kill a rabbit with a sword, then with a halberd, then with an axe, then with a crossbow, and finally bake some bread and dump it somewhere.

 

You make a very good point. The skill decay in some way restricts how many skills someone can seriously level unless they want to do all these things every day.

It actually does make some sense. Imagine in reality if you wanted to master being a doctor, a lawyer, a carpenter, a musician proficient in 4 different instruments, and be a world class chef. You're going to be pretty busy or some of your skill sets are going to be lacking.

 

There is zero point to having decay implemented... zero. It very much makes me not want to play a game i otherwise love. It is why a large group of people who were avid fans simply vanished .. i did too but i came back to give it a chance. Think about this for an example...

When crafting, to critically succeed you need a minimum base chance of 50%. At Grandmaster using tools of prosperity and expert tables (items most players will not have) you have a 43% chance of succeeding when crafting a 2-handed blade (my weapon of choice). This means to craft this weapon at its best quality an average player is going to need to maintain a smithing skill at a level of somewhere between 150 to 200 (assuming they can access the not-yet-added higher level tables which are not going to be readily available). To do this they are going to need to craft thousands of items from that blacksmithing recipe book every two days... the moment they can't do this..they go backwards.

Now i can do this BUT it means every time somebody says " hey can you help me with.." the answer is "NO!". Event comes around..looks really interesting..shame i need to craft 2k daggers, get my pet killed repeatedly to maintain resurrect, go find something to give me a plague to maintain purify, fight spiders for 2 hours to rotate combat skills so i have enough time to go to my nephews birthday party.

Why do this to people? Sure you can say "Stop thinking about it, just play" but then on the same day there is discussions about adding leaderboards and encouraging competitive play. This is a terrible mechanic that serves no purpose and severely detracts from the game. I hate it and likely wont endure it, it just makes me sad and disappointed.

 

What else would you suggest to prevent everyone from eventually being a master of every single skill? A point cap?

 

The more skills you raise, the slower it becomes to raise additional skills.