Does Decay kill Specialization?

If you are around the High Level range and you found your playstyle, it is time to specialize your Charakter.
But can you really? Is a pure Swordsman or Archer comparable against a Jack of all Trades?
Well i guess the answer is no. The only way to get better then a Mage in Cloth and Chain Body, 2 Wands and every skill between 80-100 is, to put your XP pool in your important skills.
So i have to start leveling my skills to 120 and beyond. Now he can everything, but i am a little bit better in Blade Combat and Heavy Armor. The most Player level up to 80 and later to 100 and stop there. This is the Point where the Specialization starts. The Jack of all Trades gets his next skill up to 80/100 and i invest my XP in 100+ to get better.

But, thats also the Point where Decay hits you the most. For one level 120 skill i do, the JoaT get 5 skills to 100. My Decay is 2 and his Decay is only 1 (when i get the numbers right). So i get totally f**ked in the a** when i try to get 2% Avoidance more, while the JoaT can catch more GMs.

In my eyes, the Decay system is useless. You dont push the high level players back, they just lose some time and will still progress further. It annoys Player and damages the group play. There was a time where you tryed to clear the Controll Points, the Challenge Dungeon or want to kill Dragons in small groups, now players just say: "naaah i dont want to lose 250k XP agin"

The decay should come over time and not on death and it should not get higher if the skill is over 60, 80 or 100.
I know a game needs some kind of death penalty, but XP loss is the worst! Give us Debuff and/or Gear Dura loss.

 

All arguments about devay.. caps and limits aside, thsts one of my main peeves.

Hits a point people turn down adventuring or new content for fear of death and the exp hit.

 

Skills at 12o at enot worth it but if you want them to be there then YOU have to expect to pay a higher penalty. That is the trade off and how it balances.

Works, the problem is that there wasa time tha players could gather millions of EXP and abused that and achieved many MANY GMS, now they are working to keep what they have and they have a little easier time since they are so powerful.

The "Normal" PLayer has no change to achieve these levels and maintaining what they have now appears extreme to them.

SO until the "Balance" kick in which will show over time there will be this devide.

It will most likely get beiger before it is worked out but form noe decay works just fine. Not liked but a lot of times things that are not liked are doing what they are supposed to do.

 

The Normal Player will come soon to the point where he have problems to hold his XP pool. If you have limited time and die once a day, you cant progress anymore. If i can only play 1-2 hours a day but allready lose 200k, what are you doing?
They are forced grind pool or they level down. A player that play 5+ hours a day doesnt give a thing about it. So Casual player will stop progress early and Hardcore player will still fill up there xp. You cant bring them down and you shouldnt.

 

They need to find a better mechanic for a death punishment than "time". Time is the most valuable thing to lose and like @MrBlight above said, all this does is prevent people from wanting to actually go out and do things. The argument is always "Do I have enough experience/time to get experience to cover this death?" The argument should only be "Do I have time to go do this?" They need a different penalty on death, ala gear wear, which is still pretty harsh but will not be met with "Nope, ain't goin."

 

I have yet to GM ONE skill NOT one. I have had around 250 - 500 K in my pool for like 2 weeks. I play occasionally. I am actually working to GM the Concentration Skill (taming) to get a 50% reduction.(I do not care what player think about taming, it works just fine)

I have locked it at 96 and am going to GM Ranged which is at 96 also and I am at 500K Exp.

Once I GM Ranged I will lock everything again work the pool up to like 750 and GM Concentration.

I die at least once a day.

Currently I am in Sequana and screwing around with the Elite Archer, Mage, and Footman. I can NOT take more than on at a time and I have to work pet perfectly to make it all work out. It takes a little while but I have killed the mage 2 xs and the archer and footman once. I also kill all the undead in the area.

So I enjoy playing the game as Casual PLayer. You know how I feel about the Power Game delta between normal players IT SUCKS - but will not be fixed they have no desire to even try.

The decay will in the long run balance it all out but it will take a long while.

Players have to accept they they will HAVE to lock all skills gain EXP GM skills and grind to maintain.

The game is that way and nothing you can do will change it, accept it deal with it learn how to play it and just ignore the things that are sold by players who have PG it. You will get the ventually.

Perhaps in the future the Dev team might look back and realaize what we are saying but as of now they are blind by $.

 

Its like to say: Wow the Miner have so many Gold, i cant get so many Gold like them cause i dont have the time. Lets tax them so if they want to buy anything they have to pay the 2x and 4x price! Then everyone well be even someday *clap*

 

Any character who is losing 200k on a death (Advent level 100?) and cant grind it back quick has not been paying attention.

 

LOL

 

Chris talked about decay only building during adv scenes.. and more importantly only when online.

Will see how those changes look i suppose.

 

@Tetsu Nevara

While my personal position is one that supports decay, and I think most people just don't comprehend what a soft cap is as they have never played a game with it, you do bring up one valid point that I agree with, and that is that this promotes people to do the jack of all trades build by not taking any skill over 100 (or perhaps not even over 80 for a casual player), and penalises people that want to play a pure class character such as "swords and plate only", who would want to just go past 100 on those skills. Of the two builds, the increasing decay costs (0.5x 1.0x 2.0x) for the pure class build means that that person, while already getting diminishing returns for their skill point investment, will suffer a huge comparable XP loss.

 

I don't think they would ever do this, but it would be nice to chose a specialization (school) . And by choosing this specialization, decay would be a fraction less. Opposing magic schools could get a more severe penalty. A secondary specialization could even be allowed, with a smaller reduction in decay though.

 

We need something where you can unlock the next skill if you reached Skill 100 in the previous. This will give us some kind of spec.
Decay over time will be enough, why punish people with more time? I invest alot of time to get skills to 120+ and these are not game breaking improvments my Charakter gets.
If you invest 150 Milllion XP in 1 Skill, you will find your soft Cap, sooner or later you get stoped by decay over time.

The only problem i have with decay on death is that the Game is not in a state where you can say it is fair. How often i die cause i have the bug where i cant use any skill/spells or new Monsters
like the Cabalists are totally unbalanced, or you get crazy CC and cant do **** cause the resistance is not working, or you want to walk by a Pass and the Control Point is bugged with 20 Mobs and they teleport you to the mid.
So many stupid situation you die because the game is unfinished. Sometimes you cant do **** against it.

Also, the only Game with XP decay i know is Final Fantasy 11 and i remember where friends rage quite the game cause they deleveled 2 times a day with a bad luck party.
It is demotivating, annoying and kills group play. There are way more better solutions for this. I dont want to pay for the problem Porta caused, they slept while people cry that so many player exploit the game.

 

Isn't that the truth.

 

I always get accused of always taking up for the game every time someone is critical of it. And really I don't,unless people are complaining about the same thing in a new thread they created that has been discussed 15 thousand times somewhere else and they feel a new thread is needed for whatever reason this week.

But maybe you should mark this down on your calendars,because XP decay upon death is one of the worst game implementations I have seen in the 200 + game titles I own,period. I have not avoided games that have this on purpose,just none of my owned games have it. I sat one day and mused what would happen to World of Warcraft if this was put into a release. The number of heck raisers would be staggering,what also would be staggering would be the number of 15 year old trolls who would try to wipe groups just to enrage everyone. I cannot even conceive of hitting max level only to lose half a level because some troll wiped a raid 3-4 times on purpose or someone actually made a legit mistake and wiped the raid.

Yea, I know this isn't Warcraft. But why would any game,any title penalize you where it hurts the most, TIME? Oh yes,it has been discussed that game time could be used rather than real time. And to that I say,big deal. I know lots of folks, myself included here,that spend 75-90% of their game time doing something else than being in an adventuring zone. So if I spend 90% of my time crafting and decorating and then go with folks adventuring that 10%,the idea I am getting hit with death decay is a far from fair as anything, based on real time or game time.

Even then, my deaths alone might be 1 in 50, my deaths in groups are probably 40 in 50. The reason is, in a group nothing is in your control. So the fact that my death XP loss only tells me one thing, I am being discouraged from being in groups that will cause death,because that is where my death occurs. And to carry this thought further,because the only people I have ever grouped with is guildies, I am being discouraged from grouping with guildies,because my death chances in that group is higher than my being alone, where I have control over pulls. Add to this, a new feature is being added to find groups to adventure with,so now you can group with people who may have no issue pulling more than the group can possibly handle for what ever reason.

I remember everyone saying no one could ever hit level 200 with all skills at 200. I don't know why anyone would try that to begin with. But what I do know, is I feel it is being dictated to me that I can't go adventuring, because one death will cause me to spend more TIME trying to get back that lost XP,which could result in me spending more TIME doing other things rather than adventuring.

I love everything else about the game other than this. But last year when I invested in the game,if I had known skill decay upon death was coming into the game,(which it may have been discussed somewhere,still I never read anything about it) there would have been no Duke pledge,no town purchase. This is how much I am opposed to this part of the game and how unfair I feel it is to the player base. If you disagree with me,it's fine, I understand. But this is my way of thinking.

 

I think the concept being bad is finnaly dawning on them as chris has talked about only having decay kick in when in an adventure zone and when online.

I saw that in the blog, havnt taken the time to follow up on it though.

 

I'm trying to wrap my head around the example the @Chris gave about xp penalties:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/chris-daily-work-blog.85584/page-2

Also, despite popular belief, the top players do die... a LOT. I did a check on the top XP player in the game and he had died over 30 times in the past 30 days.


We’ll use a couple of example cases:

Player A, Mr. Hardcore: Plays 10 hours every day! Median XP/hour = 400k
Player B, Mr Moderate: Plays 4 hours at a time but only 3 days a week. Median XP/hour = 100k
Player C, Mr Mostly a role player. Hangs out in town a lot but really only adventures once a week for 4 hours. Median XP/hour adventuring = 25k


After playing for 1year total XPs:

A = 400k * 10 hours * 52 weeks * 7 days = 1,456,000,000
B = 100k * 4 hours * 52 weeks * 3 days = 62,400,000
C = 25k * 4 hours * 52 weeks * 1 day = 5,200,000


What does a max decay death cost each of these players?

A = 1456000000 * 0.0025 = 3,640,000 /400k = 9.1 hours play time
B = 62400000 * 0.0025 = 1.56 hours play time
C = 5200000 * 0.0025 = 0.52 hours play time


Given: the top XP player in the game and he had died over 30 times in the past 30 days.:

Wouldn't this mean, on average,

Mr. Hardcore - 1 day @ 10 hours = 10 hours of play time, 1 death * 9.1 hours xp lost = 9.1 / 10 = 91% of gaming time is lost due to xp loss on death

As a way of comparison, lets say Mr Moderate/Mr Roleplayer die once per play session.

Mr. Moderate = 3 days @4 hours/ week, 3 deaths / week = 12 hours playtime, (3 deaths * 1.56 hours lost) = 4.68 / 12 = 39% of gaming time lost per week due to xp loss on death.
Mr. RolePlayer = 1 day @ 4 hours / week, 1 death / week = 4 hours playtime, (1 death * .52 hours lost) = .52 / 4 = 13% of gaming time lost per week due to xp loss on death.

 

Not anymore.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...hris-daily-work-blog.85584/page-2#post-811474

 

Can someone help me understand how does Decay work as a matter of fact?

From what I am understanding, and I don't understand a lot or understand very well:

1. There a Decay Pool? I.e. a pool that grows over time and hits you when you die.
2. The Decay Pool accumulates only in adventuring scenes
3. The Decay Pool only accumulates when you are online
4. The Decay Pool only hits you when you die. A fraction each time, with the first time in a session being the worst.

Further questions,

1. Is there a cap to the Decay Pool?
2. Is there a way to reduce your Decay Pool?
   
3. Does the Decay hit your invested skills or your un-invested XP pool?

If the answers to the first two questions are "No". Then isn't the Pool eventually going to catch up with you no matter what? Nobody never dies in an MMO no matter what. Also, that does seem terribly unfair to the specialists, but also seems terrible to everyone in general. More so because it's going to create a population of Jack of All Trades, as the OP puts it, reducing uniqueness between players.

Sorry if the questions sound basic, I haven't been playing much because of stuff.

PS: If my above understanding is wrong, then the penalty is not an accumulated pool, but based on invested adventuring XP, as I though it to be for quite a while, then I am even more confused by the talk about "accumulating" and "decay", as it's just a level-based death penalty.

 

As far i understand the decay system, R42 will try a new way.
So my answer are for the changes that will come along with R42 this thursday.

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes (But i think ist more like the decay pool wont decrease while you are offline or in non-adventure Scenes, that means it could store the earned XP from like a real week or more if you dont play much in adventure Scenes.)
4. Yes for the die part, no for the first time you die. That was changed to make the 2nd death a bit more meaningful.

1. No, the cap are all earned XP during the last 24 hours in adventure scenes. If you are playing 4 hours each day within adventure scenes the decay pool will contain all Xp you aerned the last 6 days .
2. Yes, idle around while in adventure scenes, kill nothing. There will also another way to reduce it, Chris mentioned the Oracle could maybe do it, but thats still undisclosed.
3. The decay will be determined by each skill, the higher the more XP will removed. But it will take the XP out of your XP pool first before hitting and lowers the skills.