Decay yay or nay?

I voted nay. Ultima online is still going after 20 years without decay and with skill caps. Shroud has everyone wondering if we are going to make it 3 months after launch. Everyone I know hates decay, except for the 10-20 peeps on these forums advocating it.

 

I hope that's true.

 

The penalty should be linked to the amount of time it takes to earn the exp like they stated was the goal. If you can't earn the death back in 30 mins then the decay is too high. As others have stated what the decay has done to me is limit where I want to go and pretty much end large amounts of exploring and trying unsafe encounters more then once. My decay on death with out a resurrection is 1.4million and 700,000 if someone is around to res me. It is impossible for me to make either of those in 30mins especially with the cap at 1million exp per hour to make the 1.4 million exp back in 30 mins I would have to make 6million exp per hour which is impossible. So anyone that thinks decay is not reducing the top end players doesn't know the math. It does greatly effect us. That however negatively effects the experience for more then just us. What that does is make it so we are less likely to explore, help out, or try new things. This starts to really effect people socially as they get higher. People start saying no more often when there is risk. Which I personally think makes the entire game less fun for everyone.

 

Except you already do have to grind endlessly to participate in end game content, to pay for all the exp you'd lose doing so.
Learning/wiping to content in this game is not feasible with the current punishment system, and the current group mechanics give so little return for being in a group unless you're ...xp grinding a control point....well.


As I've said repeatedly, we have a horizontal cap (limited deck size), and an extremely punitive soft cap beyond lvl 100 in skills that costs you 6-7 times what it costs to get to 100, to get to 120, for a few % more whatever. Going to 140 is even more costly. If there is no benefit to continuing to invest hours developing your character then this would become another 'max out and move on' type game without long term playability. The current benefits are miniscule, but its still forward progress.

 

if i tried to earn back my decay i believe it would take less than 30 mins to recover. if it was consistantly 30 mins forever, your decay woudl never increase with your skills.

And theres folks who can grind 1 mil XP an hour and lose less than 500k when they die.

So if that was soemthing they said, are you sure they werent talking about their target soft-cap?

 

I agree here, your loss on death should be calculated to what you've actually earned in the last 30 minutes, not some arbitrary system that punishes you for spending years as an active player.

 

Just because someone CAN grind a million an hour doesn't mean they want to go do that every day for several hours to "pay" for the ability to go do other content that's going to get them killed.

As Andar has said, all the decay is doing for me is making me less likely to help or go do stuff with others ...which I don't think is healthy for the game. If anytihng, we need MORE encouragement and incentive to group up.

 

Whoa... I think I'm around 50-60 and I've never had more than 120k in my pool. That 120k came from several days of turning off most of my skills and killing things.

 

Can I ask what the end game content is, and how hard it will be for new players to access say 3 months after launch?

 

Yes I'm sure that's why resurrection now cuts it in half. It was to the point where it would be impossible to reach the full amount in the goal time. That's why I think it should be a variable number and not a fixed number. If it varies based on a players average 30 min time frame even if they tied it to the last 4 hours of play it would better for everyone. That way you don't have casual players getting hit by decay that takes several days worth playing to earn back and you don't have an impossible number to reach for the hardcore players.

 

I'm sure it has been mentioned before, but has anyone brought up the idea of decay only happening after gm levels?

 

I would think end game content is fighting, bosses, control points, and completing the main quest lines. I'm not sure anyone could reach that in 3 months without massive amounts of game time and a lot of help in three months. Certainly not solo.

 

So there is no progression after a certain level. Nothing like progressing in a raid sequence. It makes me wonder what the rush is to get to the end game.

 

I've suggested this before, and it makes a lot of sense - GM is a natural softcap and applying decay only for 'going beyond it' would rightly only effect people on the higher end seeking to push things further. I think it would go a long way toward alleviating the problem. Specialists who push a handful of skills high would have to pay dearly for those, but lower levels or generalists who prefer flexibiltiy and lateral growth would't take as much of a hit. We'd also all stop getting penalized for levelling stuff for attunement.

 

The major decay doesn't start until 101 , they made the break point 1 point into the level above so 101 111 121. The cost of each skill in decay above that level goes up exponentially.

 

Which is why specialization can get painful.

 

but what if there was no decay until then. People would excel until that point. It would be easier to accept I would think.

 

Then everyone would simply GM all the skills and stop there. This would fuel the rage of jack of trade haters even more.

 

But isn't that the point? For people to stop? I would think in that scenario decay would be doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

 

No i don't tho

I agree with that

When you leave the cap up to the players descretion isntead of outlining it for them, it seems the "push and push till greatest" have no limit.

In the meantime, there is still a benfit to being beyond grandmaster while sacrificing diversity. And its not popular among those unwilling to sacrifice any diversity.