Earning and Learning magic spells

Mishri, I respect your opinion but differ with you on a couple of key points here.

Fighting experience could equate to tactics as well - something you DO want. Perhaps anatomy, strategy, positioning, reflex, yada, yada. You get my point.

Skill caps are fine - PROVIDED - that the cap itself is ridiculously hard to achieve in the first place. If a cap exists at, let's say, 100 and everyone can hit that cap in only 2 days play time then it's crap. I'm all for the first few point allocations being easily achievable, but the higher up you go the harder it must be. This is not linear progression.

While I agree with not being all powerful in every conceivable skill available I still want to be known as one of the most powerful mages in the land and am willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that level of notoriety. When you see my red-colored name coming you just know you're in for a major ass-whoopin'.

This is sad, then...

 

Remove skill caps, everything works fine. They add no value and mess everything up.

 

Your pawns don't get better, but YOU, as the chess player, do. No one starts out as a grandmaster. The next question then becomes: at what point do you "graduate" and become a chess grandmaster?

 

How's that?

 

And the same thing works in the game. You get better. You don't need your character getting better. Just like chess. Or any other competitive game. I don't need the tools I use to play, whether that's a bat in baseball, a pawn in chess, or a character in a compute game getting better. I can collect lots of cool trophies to show off. But there's simply no reason to have more experienced players get an extra advantage over newbies. All this does is wall off the game and keep new players from playing. And, ofc, make the game much less competitive.

 

I'm confused. Aren't you the one that wants skill caps removed?

 

What confuses you?

 

If the power curve is flat, you don't need skill caps. That isn't a contradiction, that's a solution. 0 + 0 + 0...

 

I still don't think I'm understanding you right. You don't want there to be any character advancement at all?

 

You can advance. But it's cosmetic or otherwise zero sum. So I get cooler looking moves. Or maybe I now get to choose whether to slot my "+hp passive" or "better dodge" passive. But I don't get stronger. So everyone's competitive and the whole game is relevant all the time.

 

Ok, now I understand. Thanks. I don't imagine that would be a very popular system, though. Most MMO and RPG players expect their characters to grow in power, and growth in character power is the biggest reward mechanism in most RPGs overall. Character progression also enables a sort of carrot on a stick for developers, where they can design content that can only be experienced by developed characters. I don't know how many players would enjoy playing a game where everything is open to everyone all the time. Exclusivity lends itself well to pride, and MMO players--they do quite love their pride.

 

Actually, Chris came in chat the other day and suggested there wouldn't be fixed skill caps -- saying it would take a long time to master all the skills anyway. He discussed some other things too, and answered questions from channel members. He said the current plan is to not require a hand to be free when casting spells, because the deck system requires forethought and mages would be allowed to use things like bows and swords.

I'll... start a new thread about that.

But... as I understand it, even under a skill cap system, the plan would be to cap skills and not xp, plus the caps for skills on crafting and adventuring would be separate, so it would make sense the caps for combat and magic would be separate too, if there were two separate XP pools. If mage character goes directly into melee combat, rather than just sitting on the side and lobbing spells from a distance while others fight, it also makes sense that he has some melee skills. If nothing else, light armor skills.

 

I don't like it at all. I don't want huge gaps in power, but my character not gaining in skill and power at all? Yuck. Count me right out. Building up your character, seeing them grow and get stronger is a very popular part of rpgs.

 

In WoW, yes.
In a single player game, possibly.
But this has changed over time with newer games which are better designed around multi-player, including PvP.

Because you don't want a power gap in PvP at all. And it causes problems in PvE as well because zones become either useless or unreachable and you can't play with friends.

You can have all the pride in the world with achievements, cosmetics, or becoming king of the hill by taking some castle. Stats have nothing to do with this.

All of this is a hold over from D&D, which used more numbers to sell more rule books, and early computer games, which used piles of numbers because there were no other players and no graphics. There's no need for bigger and bigger numbers now. It just makes everything worse.

 

But there's a difference between zero sum and low sum. I think that, generally, the backers do not want huge power gaps, but a system where joe noob is exactly the same power level as the character who has been adventuring for a good while and gained a great deal of experience just sounds un-fun.

I'm for a low number difference, which focuses on increasing your repertoire of tricks MORE than raw power, but zero-sum would make for a game I don't even want to play.

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/conversation-with-chris-on-skills.10576/

 

Let's also remember that beyond Episode 1, there will be more and more spells and skills added and the systems will move beyond the current structure. I hope to see a myriad of abilities that are relatively independent of each other but requiring prerequisites for learning. I also hope to see requirements across trees, i.e. an ice spell that requires a certain number of points in stealth, etc.

Anyway, I'm not terribly concerned exactly how it's structured (we can visualize the data in different ways), but mostly that it not be simplistic and that progression not be automatic.

 

No skill caps won't make for a zero-sum, but the differences would be miniscule. Maybe not 0+0+0, but 0+0.1+0.1. Why? Because skills rely on a few things that don't change significantly: your armor, your weapon, your magic skills, and your deck.

If you are wearing plate armor, you put plate skills in your deck. Because gambeson and mail skills turn into slugs, and just don't do anything (unless we eliminate autoattack and replace slugs with standard attack, as others have suggested). Because the best items will be player-made, everyone will have access to them in relatively short order, and with durability they will be circulating regularly.

If you are wielding a sword, you put sword skills in your deck, again because other weapon skills are slugs. Again, no weapon will be significantly better than what is available out of the gate.

As far as your magic, as long as you know magic you can stack your deck however you want it. But utilizing a broad number of magic skills naturally causes each individual skill to become more rare in the deck.

The deck *has* to be set. Say you get 30 "cards", and can never add any more, but you can swap out what it in the deck whenever you want, based on the skills you know. Early on, you only know a few skills, so you deck has a bunch of slugs in it. But you can learn as many skills as you want, without significantly impacting your power; you still only have 30 slots. Filling them with the most powerful skills you have will, of course, make you hit harder and live longer, but those come with the side effect of having reagent costs, high Focus costs, and long cooldowns as well.

 

I only meant to reference PrimeRib's comments about power gap and his earlier comment about zero-sum, not the stuff about skill caps. Sorry for the confusion.