Experience point loss has removed the incentive to adventure and explore.

For the past two nights a group of 5 of us, have spent approximately 2 hours each night helping one of our friends go through the Pages and Lenses Quests. That amount of time is generally about all we have to play together. some because of limited playing time and all of us due to regional time differences. In those two nights I and most of our group died at least 3 times, in my case I died 8 times last night and probably about as many the night before.

For helping out another player, one of our freinds, adventuring into the unknown, we were rewarded with two full nights of maximum Experience Point Loss. The worst part was that those deaths were not from dying to some MOB. Oh No! We get to die from jumping from one pillar to another, sacrificing oneself to open the way for others, falling off an ore cart, or having Boards fall out form the floor where jumping then becomes virtually impossible without dying.

All of this would have been a lot of fun. We would have laughed and had a great time. Dying would not have mattered that much. It would have been Fun finding and exploring the exciting things the creative developers at Portalarium put in our way as a challenge. We could have even reported areas we felt were broken or could use improvement. But NO! We spent the night cursing whoever put in this ludicrous Experience Point Loss. Why? What is it's purpose. Piss people off? This is not a system designed in any way shape or form to reduce skill gain, only to prolong it and make it far more boring. It is a punishment pure and simple! It will now take me approximately 2 hours to make back what I lost in the last two days.

 

They absolutely need to remove decay from certain forms of death. As I understand it, you don't get decay from PvP, well it seems that a lot of people also think that it is wrong to impose decay from death by falling. And I agree.

But if you've been playing for a while and don't have 40 in Safe Fall, get it already. You get a lot of result from less than one day's free 10,000xp. In The Epitaph I normally go down by jumping down the stairs instead of going all the way to the ends.

 

The players will tell you what is Fun and what is not. I agree with you that every person has their individual definition of what they feel Fun is. For months now I believe a large number if not the majority of Players have expressed their displeasure with the Experience Loss System. Portalarium has a choice to change it, get rid of it, or continue on with it as it is. I believe the Players are giving them a warning on this issue. They are saying this is not Fun. As I stated earlier. The most important thing in this game to me is "My Time." I can enjoy crafting, house decorating, killing MOB's on my own etc etc.. But when you make me do things over and over and over again to make back something I already gained then I'm going to complain.

 

yeah a Metric Ton of stuff to do that results in actually having to do a metric ton more???

The point is make that "Metric Ton" fun and worthwhile - not just something you HAVE to do to maintain a level or Have to do to procure stuff to make mediocre items.

There are a few who can do anything they want at will and they are what is / was used to "balance" stuff and as a result the scales have fallen off the table.

Sure I can go do a Ton of things but they result in nothing worthwhile - NOTHING

Any skill above 80 is almost pointless since the delta from 80 - 100 is insignificant . . . .

Any item I really want to go get / make I now have to "find" the recipie(s) and then procure the myriad of items to make the item - do not even mention tweaking the item . . . . .

Oh and if I do have a bunch of skills in the higher tiers if / when I die I HAVE to go back and recoup the exp lost or I LOSE skill levels ? ? ? ? Yeah G R E A T idea ?????

Done here point is made, peace.

 

I have to agree with this. I feel so at home and comfortable in the game. It really does have this aura of an alternate reality, despite being underdeveloped. I think the reason for that is the other players. It is really nice when you run into folks and just wave or share a few words. There is no mad rush to get things done most of the time so people are more likely to be social.

 

This is not really a Decay System to me. As an example. A player at say 90 Adventure Levels and lets say 13 Adventuring GM's could potentially lose 60,000 Experience points in two deaths. A Player at say 100 Adventure Levels and 25 GM's could potentially lose 135.000 or more Experience points in two deaths.

Neither of these two players can fight any Major Boss alone. In most cases they would need 5 - 6 players with an equal level Dedicated Healer included to do those major bosses. Even then the
chances are they are going to die at some point. Even if they don't those 5 -6 players must split the Experience Points between them with a small bonus for grouping. Considering the length of time to kill a major boss and splitting the Experience points it still takes a considerable amout of time to get back any Experience Points Lost while having a significant chance of dying again and having to make up more Experience Points. The fastest alternative is to go back and do the highest level MOB you can, in a continual grind, where your chance of dying is minimal.

Now lets take those who achieved 100 or more GM's prior to putting in the Experience Loss System. They can do the major Bosses alone or with just one other generally a healer. Mostly though they can do them Solo and do them faster than a group of 5 or 6 can do. So even though their Experience Loss is higher, they can make it back in probably close to 20 minutes (taken for a previous post by a high level player who lost over 175.000 Experience Points). So in an hour they have not only made back what they might have lost from dying (a rarity in itself for their level) but also made twice as much as they needed for the next potential death.

In the meantime those other two players from above are spending an hour or more making up for their deaths, which in all probability their deaths happen quite a bit more frequently than those who have 100 GM's or equivalent or better.

So lower level players are dying more frequently and requiring more time to make up Experience Point Loss than those High Level Players.

What that creates is a system where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The speed at which the higher level player gains skill increases exponentially based on what they can kill solo at higher levels, while lower level players are slowed down and require far more time to gain in skills. In essence however what happens is the more skills you attempt to "level" the higher your Experience Point Loss grows each time you die. The only way to stop that is to keep every level skill below 40. or even 60. Then maybe you can spend the rest of your time in SOTA killing level 2 MOB's, But at least you are a well rounded player with lots of useless skills.

 

The only thing that will keep me from playing SOTA in the long term is XP loss on death.

I enjoy much in the game, but I hate the XP loss mechanic and have not explored lots of scenes because the penalty for dieing ruins the game for me.

And going to the same scenes where I can survive is getting old...

 

Upping the resource requirements for Long Red Rugs. Seriously, I need far more of these than I anticipated. 4K cotton worth of various rugs and still haven't finished the main building.

 

Exactly the opposite of what was intended... and again I was ignored when trying to point it out. It's the worse system I've ever seen, much prefer hard cap over that.

 

What will keep me playing? The possibility of seeing @Audacity and @Amber Raine along with the rest of MGT. Keep my friends playing and I will at least log in.

 

@Sempiternal Dragon
I'm glad that you're enjoying Shroud and have a couple of questions for you, if you'd be kind enough to answer.
What AdvLvl are you?
What group do you generally play with?

 

Hot air balloons that move. Maybe you can even steer them.

If Players have 'bank teleporters', why don't BANKS? Access bank items from anywhere. Maybe for a GP per item 'teleport fee'.

Sortable columns in item windows.

The ability to put bags inside of other bags. Why not?

The ability to harvest a node or mob without 'moving to a certain spot'. Proximity should be enough. I've lost more than a few skinning nodes to the fact that my avatar wanted to walk through a wall to be able to harvest it.

No NPCs that "don't have names".
All NPCs reply to certain terms. 'Novia', 'Virtue', etc.
NPCs should use some phrases interchangeably, have various ways to say 'hello', etc.
Guards that guide you to a select NPC when you mention the NPC's name/job. (ie: Place a temporary marker on the map/compass when you say 'blacksmith')

A better Virtue system. Variables for each virtue visible on the character sheet.
Good or Bad virtue affects certain NPCs, quests, stats, moonrift reliability, your ability to cast certain magic, hit rates for certain weapon types, certain crafting abilities, etc. More guards in more towns react more when you steal. Attacking (not killing) NPCs is possible, but affects virtue and is met with swift justice by the nearest guards.

I'm sure all that stuff is already on the TODO list though, right? No need for me to file any feature suggestions.

 

Edit: this is a response to the title rather than the bait switch "let's talk decay."

Last night we attended a murder mystery night. You could keep me with those alone.

Then my party had a jam session, and a marching band parade. Knights of Cydonia on flaming bagpipes? Oh freaking yeah!

If you want to make your sota story dramatic, hire someone to follow you around playing that on flaming bagpipes while you click keywords.

 

I agree the game should appreciate people like @Andartianna who not only took over ORC on SOTA for us, but still finds a way to keep the guild pushing interest in SOTA. They are a big part of the reason i even put any time into the game at all anymore, as every game ive played with this group they are awesome.

That all being said, it doesn't make the mechanics short comings any less annoying to me.

I still believe SOTA has a lot of potential, i think my own personal patience for them meeting what i consider *basic foundations of gaming * at this point though, is just slipping away. I fully hope the game finds ways to keep people involved, and i think players like Andar will be the reason the game lasts long enough to have a chance to produce this. I just hope they DO produce it in the time these players provide for them, enough to appeal to a larger audience as well.
Time will tell i guess?

 

As do I....

 

I think that is another problem that’s root is not decay…some used the early mechanics to grow up quick. And even if at least some of them are not to be blamed for legally using these early mechanics these avatars are unbalancing the system simply by their existence. E.g. I do not think the devs can create contend that is a challenge for them while being simultaneously solvable content for normal avatars and that’s why all contend will and should be made just in reference to normal avatars and not for the few “anomalies” and I think the devs said already that they will do so.
Bosses are designed to be group content for normal avatars and in my opinion to complaining that some are able to solo them is the same as complaining that you can solo a group of T1 creatures. Both the bosses and the T1 creatures are simply not made to be fought by much stronger avatars. (Maybe there should be at least thought about a skill and experience wipe e.g. at release if these outstanding avatars are really such a problem.)

Is decay wonderful? No, but I still prefer decay if the other choice would be hard caps as I think a possible continuously improvement is more appealing than having a finite number of e.g. 1000 skills.
I think also that scraping decay without anything as replacement will not work. We simply have to lose experience somehow (or implement hard caps) as I honestly do think there are not many other solution to prevent that e.g. currently existing avatars will be unbeatable for avatars joining next year and all existing avatar will be unbeatable for avatars joining in two years and so on. (unbeatable not just regarding PvP also by looking at e.g. gold earning)

Plain and simple progress must slow down and not improve the stronger you are…more or less as it is with the skills. The first levels in a skill give you much benefit but the more the skill advances the lesser is the benefit you gain per level. Having the possibility to still grow stronger (even if there are hindrances and just slow progress) while at the same time new avatars have a chance to catch up will help to keep SotA alive as I think in such a setting there is an appeal for new and old avatars to stay active in this world.
Maybe to achieve this general slow down even the experience and loot tables has to be adjusted to be influenced by the avatars level.
Just as an simple example e.g. if the avatar is more than 20 lvl above the enemies lvl the gold that can be found as loot is reduced to 25% of the normal value.
A strong avatar would kill faster but maybe still "just" earn 110% of the loot/exp as an avatar this scene was made for and similar with bosses.

Oh and of course it could be true that the current iteration of decay is not the best solution as I think I read that decay for widespread skills is easier to compensate than having a small number of very high skills.
Maybe there should be instead a decay based on e.g. a skillcounter to not punish avatars who would like to be specialists.

Decay = Summary of Skills above 40 * Summary of Skills above 40 * 10 exp

But thinking about it maybe we need additionally an option “deactivate decay”. With that option activated you could fight and die as much as you want you will neither lose nor use nor gain experience…so to say your experience pool is frozen. And just as it is with PvP you can activate or deactivate it but at least in some regions it is always or never active. (E.g. in PvP arenas it could be always active and in story quest regions always inactive.)
Maybe this "buff" can be manually activated for the price of 1% of your pooled experience at the oracle and lasts 24 hours.

 

Havent read the thread, just the Title and OP.

About me, it would be a roleplaying and adventuring, maybe pvping, germanspeaking community. Favoriting in a PoT or two interacting and playing together.

Actually this does not exist and my hope is less that it will turn out to have that.

Actually i played the main story and would have only grinding to do.
I dont begin crafting because of this.
If i grew more i feel i make any potential group content obsolete to me, because i then i can solo it.

So i try to get some people together, support any Event what maybe happens and play a bit here and there.

Leveling further or trying to compete in pvp or begin serious crafting i dont because i know i will never be able to catch up.

Maybe crafting, but... it seems it too much effort they want me to do to get properly rewarded. Same for PvP.
If i need to grind ore's in mines for thousands of hours.
No, may it happen by the way, but then it's a long way and it wont keep me playing because i would never focus on repetetive things.
Killing a Boss twice or clear a Room of ore, wait for respawn and do it again are things i do for 30minutes to maybe 1hour if i am lazy, but then i feel to need to stop because my brain starts rebellion and my roleplayers heart ask himself how deep can one Fall? :-D

So - community, RP and challenging and interesting group play would keep me playing for years.

All i dont have ^^
So actually it's just some hope and because i spent a lot of Money.

 

I think the question that should be asked is what is going to bring the players back to the game that have quit. I understand most people on these forums enjoy the game for the most part. But the game needs a lot more people to thrive. Less than a thousand players is not a very good number in terms of an mmo.

 

This is a really tough question to answer, i cant even play now much less think about years from now.

 

I have stopped playing since completing the main story line, but for me it will be the continuation of the story and implementation of new features and quests. Also, to visit with the friends I have made here.

This last release was really good and I think the Portalarium team is moving ahead in the right direction. Having said that, moving forward (with all kinks ironed out, all scenes uncloned and a better combat system) the new episodic content could be great, if done right.