Deminished returns - -

A look at why they are actually much more damaging to the concepts the game was founded on than they are worth.

Ok going to take a stab at why I feel these are self defeating. They do have a purpose but I think they are defeating their purpose from how the game is supposed to have "Soft Caps" and not be able to GM the whole skill tree. Or be a jack of all trades. Sure the game allows for it but in the end it is self defeating and actually promotes the "grinding" of control points and such for exp so players can afford to have high skills is as many trees as possible. Going to look at two specific skill but this can be applied in many other aspects; the two skills are going to be the innate inner calm and an Ranged skill, Blinding Shot.

I have both these skills and ATM they are Inner Calm at 86 and Blinding Shot at 80.

Inner Calm at 86 = 10.8% reduction in focus of skill use, at 106 it would = 13.3% So if a skill uses 20 points in a base cast that would = 2.1 reduction at 86 and 2.6 at 106 only and increase in saving of less than 1/2 a point of focus. Blinding Shot at 80 uses 15 focus so for it I am saving 1.6 (1.7 if I trained it up to 103 1/10 of a point diff) Soo why? I will not it is a complete waste of exp points / time and effort.

Blinding Shot at 80; Focus 15 x5 Glyphs, range 30 cool down 6 sec, 116% to consume reagents, 22 - 37 dam and -26 de for 31 seconds. If I take it up to GM (100) the changes are 25-42 dmg and -30 dex for 35 seconds. soo in the end my average damage would go up 4 points (30 - 34) and a increase of 4 more points in dex reduction of my target for 4 more seconds. So looking deeper at the skill I have no idea what 116% reagent consumption means since I am shooting arrows so it is a pointless boost for whatever it does. C0oo down does not change nor does Focus cost or range. Those are the three attribute that a player actually sees and needs to have adjusted for the training of a skill. Faster casting and less focus would be what a player would think would be more beneficial for spending so much Exp, time, effort to train the skill up to GM (100). Now is players actually knew what a dex reduction of 25 or more actually means it might be somthign to consider but since we have zero clue how this factors in it is impossible to even guess what it actually does. I mean 25 dex from a Mountain Troll??? How much dex does he have to start with. And dex for us = Dodges, hits, and critical hits?

Once I have all my skills to 80 that contribute to my simply chosen template style of a Ranger = Ranged / Light Armor / Sun / Earth / Life / Water / Taming Sub skills of tactics Subterfuge and Focus are also required. But those I only am looking at; Dex from Subterfuge and its new Back Stab (from behind), Tactics for the simple health, strength and Preservation (stances might come into play now), and from Focus just really focused on the Intell and focus skill and as pointed out the Inner Calm to reduce focus cost. Sinc I am not worried about flipping between decks as I can easily change between fights and pretty much anything else that is PvP related allot of skills some players have a need for are useless. Now true they might help in another template but I have no need to be a jack of all since I do not really need to change templates to do what I enjoy doing.

Soo in the end there seems to be zero point in training any skills higher than 80 and I am better off leaving them where they are and just looking at another skill anywhere else that gives me some benefit and increasing that skill. In the end it will make a learn other skills which will give me more diversity but is not needed in any form.

This brings me to the conclusion that I have already hit the "soft caps" and therefore have reached a point where the diminished returns are not only diminishing but totally counter productive and I have no need to even try and raise those skills.

NOW if I would actually receive a larger reduction in focus and got some real benefits from taking my Disabling shot above 80 then might consider it. Sure it might appear unbalancing but if all skills where considered this way them they would balance out. This applies across the board.

So have I reached end game - nope there is a lot more I can explore but now we are into other issues I have with things like quests which appear to all be a hit or miss thing if I stumble across the starting point or so on. Killing a dragon is out of the picture for me as I am not going to min max a template to be able to do it.

Did that make any sense to anyone else?

 

no idea about the math (or where the numbers come from beside what is obvious in skill descriptions) but my impression was it is suppposed to go up until you reach 100(gm) and then dimishes in reward for exp spend?

Actually to little knowledge what skills do (ranged combas is 60.3% effective. in what really0.o

This game is still way to shy at giving an perspective of what theese descriotions reall mean and what ore of the same would help or not..

 

I just showed you some math of two skills taking them from 80 to 20 points higher one innate and another actual skill. I clearly pointed out how small the increase is and every player knows that to go above 80 - GM in any skill is almost the same if not more than it took to go to 80 in general.

So what is not clear?

I also pointed out that the lack of information as what skills like lowering dex actually mean?

So again what did you not understand of taking a skill like Disabling shot from 80 to 100 means very little? which is what diminishing returns mean. and yeah going above 100 is even less a increase.

 

Sorry maybe i said it wrong, I thought it was supposed to become dimishing after GM (or why make GM at 100 and not 80 then)
I do not doubt your math, it is just pretty pointless this way (like becoming really good in one skill/specialised skillset.

Getting to 80 is not that hard, so in theory getting every skill to 80 not as faar fetched as lets say to 120 (an gm with some extra for the little more oomph)

This kinda encourages to become proficient in all skills )and makes pretty boring character because everyone ends to be the same.)

I would like for some more focussed specialisation (like bettwe results for an specialised tree so people level up pretty even and then branch out at skillsets.)

So well what i meant it should be GM is most efficient in my opinion, and proficenzy should unlock the tree used on to be more exp efficient because one focuses on it, not that encouraging to get lvl 80 in all and then kinda everyone is an copy for each other...

I hope that made it more clear.

 

Here's the way I see it: at 80 Inner Calm (where I have it), I get a 10% reduction in focus use across the board. It's not a buff that I have to cast over and over, it's not a potion that I have to drink over and over, it's not a blessing that I have to go get before I can go out and adventure, it's not some piece of equipment that will wear out. It's a permanent 10% reduction. If I really want to go above and beyond, I can put (a lot) more experience into it for another modest 2.5% focus reduction. This is not worth it to me but to someone else, it might be.

I have a number of skills at 100 because they're important to me. I even have a couple skills above 100: Rapid Fire is 105 so that I get that extra shot and Ranged Combat is 110 (I plan on getting it to 120) for extra damage and an easier time hitting higher level creatures.