Earning and Learning magic spells

How is it possible that, after killing 1000 chickens with a sword, I'm suddenly "qualified" to cast fireball? I want to see more depth in the development of magic skills than simple allocation of skill points. Magic should be hard to learn and even harder to master.

I would think that we need a way to earn that spell ( and not by repetitious killing/grinding ). It shouldn't just suddenly appear as an option in a spell list. There should be some reason/quest as to how we discover spells.

I really hate it when games take the easy route and use XP level as the gating mechanism. No immersion at all.

 

I'm not sure how killing a thousand chickens is supposed to make me a master archer, fencer, swordsman, blacksmith, carpenter, or cook, either. Well, cook maybe. But I strongly prefer a usage based skill system.

 

I think the devs did say something about trainers.

 

I agree with this 100%. It is my sincere hope that Portalarium looks deeply into how skills, both combat and non-combat, are to be advanced. I would think another "Deep Dive" request is appropriate.

 

At some point the student must exceed the master. Where then does he training come from?

 

I agree but:

1) No skill caps. Find a better throttle. So people can practice whatever they want without some weird mechanic kicking in.
2) Grind shouldn't equal power or otherwise be extremely flat. So a "better" swordsman get much cooler animations, etc. but it's drastically stronger.
3) I agree on the "splash" effect. Killing chickens could make you a slightly better cook.

 

The lower level skills/spells will be trained by commonly available trainers. Higher level skills/spells come from harder to find trainers. I imagine the highest level abilities there is only 1 trainer in the world, you have to find them, and then perform a quest or earn their respect in order to be taught that skill/spell.

What we know for certain is that abilities do have to be learned from trainers and there will be specific trainers for things. It will not be a usage based system. (Which I'm glad for, they feel so grindy)

 

It wont, you'll learn nothing from doing that. You might earn a small amount of experience points towards combat.. but that doesn't = new skills. They can also scale EXP, i've played games where things that are too easy for your skill level gives you 0 experience. They might even make chickens always give 0 exp.

You have to perform crafting in order to earn experience in crafting, it wont give you experience towards those professions.

 

It's hyperbole, mate. Killing 50 rats, then 50 spiders, then 50 wolves, then 50 orcs, etc. isn't that conceptually different, especially when you consider that you can become a master swordsman by killing said monsters without ever using a sword.

As for the crafting bit, it has been said several times that the developers would like players to be able to earn crafting experience experience while adventuring and vice versa.

Lastly, as for experience =/= new skills, that's only part true. Experience will earn you points, which can then be deposited into skills for cards. IMO performing a task for a trainer to teach me some special swordsmanship tactic doesn't resonate. Becoming a master at any combat skill or craft takes practice, and you learn through practice. Watching a tutorial video on how to build an oak dinner table doesn't suddenly make you able to build an oak dinner table. It takes mastery of the tools and talent, besides simple know-how. In the case of combat, it also takes acuity. You can't get that through superficial training. Ask any soldier.

 

Well actually that isn't exactly correct. If you are on the path to being a swordsman, you wont be killing things with a mace because you wont have any skills in macing, you'll be using a sword. Could you kill things with a mace without points in macing? probably, but nothing challenging

Killing a lot of the same thing might not be the best way to level up. They can make it so after killing 10 of something they no longer give you exp. They can also make it so only tough fights, (Satyr, Elves, lich's) give you experience once you reach a certain point.

We can give them these suggestions if you feel it's important you fight challenging foes to gain experience in combat.

The part where this does fall apart though is the unlearning/training Now in order to train a new ability they might give you a quest where you have to use a skill/ability in that skill tree on a certain creature and defeat it. Then they teach you the advanced move or spell. So that can still remain consistently keeping in you must use it to learn it.

 

That's true for one skill, but if I become good at swordsmanship, I can then use a sword to learn alllllllllll about fire magic. That's where things start to break down.

They can, but that would probably cause other problems. They could implement the same sort of a thing in a use-based skill system, anyway. I would more like to see a change to use-based character development, to prevent the above problem where players will leverage one ability to learn others that are completely unrelated in a way that doesn't make any sense. This isn't a problem in most other games because most other games are class based, meaning a Warrior can't learn magic anyway, but leveled development isn't very conducive to a sandbox game--at least not in any way that makes any real sense.

 

I'm not sure killing rats with swords is that easy :> They run pretty fast and are small and you have to have precision :>

 

Someone teaching you something when you are already skilled is very realistic. New techniques that someone else knows was possibly taught themselves and seeking them out for training is something experts in their fields do all the time.

crafting wont get you combat experience. combat wont get crafting experience. If they give you experience in those things while adventuring I imagine that means through questing or solving puzzles or something like that.

Skill usage systems such as UO used aren't much fun for me. Doing things over and over again in real life can make you more proficient at doing them, experimenting with different things while doing those things over and over again is how you teach yourself. But, that isn't very much fun. Games are supposed to be about Fun, so they make changes so that advancement in something is more fun than making 50 different bowls or practicing your sword forms and sparring for hours on end day after day.

 

That's not the issue. The issue is how you get skilled in the first place.

I'm fairly sure they said that it will in the Crafting deep dive. I'll look up the time when I get home from work.

Unless you're doing exactly what I suggest is the problem (using swords to gain levels, then spending those levels on a totally different skill), you're still repeating the same thing over and over again to gain levels anyway. The idea is that you should be using a sword to gain experience (and thereby levels) with swordsmanship. That's not any different from using a sword anyway, unless you leverage the disconnect to learn a completely new and unrelated skill via your most powerful skill. I would agree that this is convenient, but sometimes the way things have to be for a certain process to be convenient devalue the process. UO isn't the best example because it took a very long time to master some of the skills, but if I'm going to be a master fire sorcerer, I'd feel better about it knowing that I got there by using fire magic, not by using a sword and just clicking to invest skill points into the fire magic tree.

 

I think it will be rare that someone will wield a sword while putting points into another weapon, so I think it ends up being only theoretically, rather than practically awkward. Someone wanting to become a master swordsman will put points in swords and use swords.

I do think it becomes problematic when fighting skills of any kind lead to skill gains in magic. I think magic experience should be separate from combat experience, and you get experience for both in the same fight if both are used in the fight.

 

Actually, if they're going with pool experience, it might make sense to go with three experience pools: magic, combat, crafting

 

That's true they could do that. Then it's an argument of how far to divide it.

they can make more pools. Your fire school experience, your ice skill experience points, your sword skill experience points. and whatever you used during the combat gets the exp divided up into those pools.

I really don't see a reason to do it though, it might "feel right" to you that way, but then it just becomes annoying, I want to master sword so I'll put only sword skills in my deck so I only get sword exp. Just make it easier on us so we can enjoy the game... combat is combat...

 

This would line up pretty well with the way they have skills presented on the dial. They could advance the idea further with future episodes, too, so a blacksmith can't learn more than only so much carpentry by producing swords and armor.

 

Implementing these changes wouldn't affect your preferred play style, anyway, it seems. This isn't really an issue for people who want to pick one way of doing things and stick with that, since all experience you earn will come from using a sword anyway. I suspect, though, that many will want to adopt multiple combat or multiple crafting techniques, so as to be something of a jack of all trades. If the skill (level?) cap is high enough, you might even be able to have multiple highly ranked skills, so many players will opt to take complimentary skills so as to increase effectiveness and reduce vulnerability.

 

@Mishri,

"Feeling right" isn't unimportant to the fun of the game.

As for the approach of UO... Its boring and grinding, yea, if your focus is on increasing your level and not just playing the game. If your focus is on playing the game, and increasing your level is of secondary importance, the grind goes away. I wouldn't necessarily completely support the UO system, though, because I don't think its true that all learning is based on practice and repetition. You carry over your skills from one area to another. A lot of learning is abstract, and by analogy.

But as for a magic pool --- Part of the problem I see is that in a lot of MMOs magic is too easy for anyone to use; for instance, in ESO, every class ends up using magic-based skills. What I find possibly happening with the SotA system is fighters picking up a couple of magic skills just so they can have passive resistance bonuses. I have no problem with that if people really want to do it, but requiring it come from a magic pool rather than a combat pool might make the balance feel better, and make this less easy.