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

Add to this:

They dont listen to the 80K cavemen who left, they surround themselves with the 500 extremely long term and enthusiastic cavemen and create a "yes-man" bubble with them, interact with them, invite them to same people to their events (telethons). You can see the sarcasm towards the 80,000 people in every telethon, yesterday alone the comment was made "if we built the game that our community asks for then it would take years" (usually said in a demeaning sarcastic way by the way, I saw this happening a year+ ago). Not really, yes a lot of people throw out a lot of crazy stuff that in terms of the game is pretty small (agriculture, fishing, brewing, etc...) but there is a small set of loud things (major issues) that many people over a long period of time have talked about that effect the entire core of the game or existing features.

 

Did everyone just not notice Chris yesterday when he brought up decay vs. hard cap during the telethon? I don't seem to remember any sort of "conclusion/finality" being reached...

 

When did they talked about crafting decay the first time? Cause looks like there are no plans for it since then.

Thats because there are still People out there like us, who fight against this crap

 

There is no discussion. Just pay them and tell them it's great like a good little avatar. They are not going to listen to us until they get embarrassed when this game gets reviewed by people who aren't starry-eyed groupies of astronaut billionaires. This seems harsh but here is the blunt reality of it.
I don't want to have to outfit my computer room with the equipment that gets sold at your bankruptcy auction like I did with 38 Studios. (I am still kicking myself for not bidding on that mocap system that went for $10000.)

 

What changed your point of view on the game Sempiternal? You were quite critical of the game during the February 2nd, 2017 Dragonsmeet and your points around 1:12:05 were on target. You even mention decay during that video. What was the turning point for you?

 

I was blinded by what I thought the game SHOULD be and not what it truly is, if you get what I'm saying. You have to have a little faith and I've learned that over the last 3+ months. I spoke incorrectly and recant everything I incorrectly said in that "heat of the moment". Shroud is awesome!

 

We all have those moments! I'm still holding out hope myself, but I am glad the game is fun for you now.

 

That is our life, comparing ourselves with something that should be, comparing ourselves with the greater, with the nobler, with the more intelligent, with the more spiritual and so on and on. Therefore conflict and fear. This is our life, a battle for security and in the very search for security, psychological as well as physical, we bring about destruction.

 

So true!

 

If you really want to try and understand the depths of that. http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=961&chid=665

 

I love philosophic works so I'll have to take a read on this.

 

In the Telethon yesterday, @DarkStarr and @Chris had a discussion around Skill Caps. It was stated, I believe by Chris that ½ of the Players want a Skill Cap and ½ the Players want the Decay System.


First, if I look back on all the comments in this post and all the likes generated on the side of hatred for the “SO CALLED” Decay System, I have to wonder if this is what goes for the “New Math”.


Second, and probably more important is that if you were to say that ½ the Players want a Hard Skill Cap and ½ the Players want a Soft Skill Cap then I would have to think this is totally possible. However, when you throw in that the Soft Skill Cap is going to be based on a “Death Penalty” and that Death Penalty is really a Loss in Producer Experience Points and you will have to spend wasted time making them up, then that is a different story.


The statement made on the Telethon makes an assumption that there is only a choice between a Hard Cap and a Death Penalty. That to me says that no one at Portalarium is Creative enough to come up with a better more sensible idea. That is very, very hard for me to believe based on the Creative Talent I have seen so far in the staff of people who have been hired.


A Hard Cap could be based on individual skills, on an entire Skill Tree or even over the total of all skills. A Soft Cap could be based on Skill Non-Use, or even just adjusting the individual skills such that when you reach a certain level in a Skill, the amount of Experience Points required to move just one more point in Skill would not be worth the Experience Points put in the skill, but if you wanted to spend the next 5 years of your life to get a few extra points in that Skill it would be your choice and it is not Capped.


At present the existing Death Decay System has very little and in most cases no effect on the Skills, but only on losing Adventuring Experience Points. Players carry large Experience Point Pools that they just replenish every time they die. Skill Decay never happens. For those, with a reasonable Adventure Level, and are only able to play an hour or two a day, the amount of loss of Adventuring Experience points is greater or equal to what they can make back in an hour. This causes many to just not bother to log in. How long will that last before they start not logging in at all. For those with 100+ GMs who can solo the major bosses, the amount of time they spend making the Adventuring Experience Point Loss back is many times as short as 20 minutes. Since these people are also the same people who play several hours per day, they can accumulate enough Experience points to cover their next 7 deaths. That is if they even die at all. It becomes virtually impossible for them to lose Skill Points under this system. And it was loss of Skill Points on which the present ludicrous system was founded.

 

The hard part for them is, it has to be sensible AND fit their ideology. That's the rub they can't get over.

AND, not to mention, it's those very people that it doesn't affect, that the system was implemented to affect.

But that's the totally ironical, moronical solutions you get when you try to build a system that punishes creativity, motivation, success, investments of time, profits, and personal choices, in an effort to make everything fair for everyone instead of building a system that nurtures, guides, encourages, teaches, and motivates people to excel and strive to climb the rungs on the ladder of success. If the ladder only has one rung, it doesn't take anyone anywhere.

Take a good look folks, this is a world built on fairness and shared sacrifice and the innate fallibility and therefore need of punishment of man. I think we've seen plenty of real world examples of how this ends.

 

The Telethon was just a proof that they dont ready anything here in the forums.

They want Decay? Make it the same for everyone! x% Decay based on what you need for the next Adv level and not this 0,5 times on 80 and 4 times decay on >120 nonsense. Problem fixed.
You want people to drop back in level because they are to strong? Raise the exp curve! Double or tripple the xp you need to get to 100. People will fall back without losing something, no strong characters anymore. Problem fixed.
You want a penalty for death so it gets meaningfull? Every time you die, slap your own face as hard as you can. Problem fixed.

 

I think most of us have heard the old adage of 'The carrot and the stick'.

This game is mostly all stick.

 

Haha, this made me laugh irl.

this fairly accurately describes the feeling i get most nights that I log in, and I'm one of those players that somewhat rarely dies (once every 40-50 hrs of gameplay), so it's mostly from just the general experience (lack of fun and punitivity), not the death decay.

 

I don't believe this for a second. There are many "carrots" in the game.

 

Ok, then answer me this, where are all the people?

By ANY objective metric of measurement, this game has basically zero population in comparison to ANY other game at a similar stage in it's development. There might be many carrots in the game, but evidently they are spoiled and soured because the donkeys don't seem to like them. Is that the fault of the donkeys or the devs?

Why won't the dev's release any real numbers of actual players?

Do you honestly believe that this current level of players is sufficient for the longevity of this game?

Do you honestly not see that the current in game economy is dying so fast that it might as well not exist?

Do you honestly believe anything is going to change that will bring in massive amounts of players?

Do you honestly believe this game is/has been/will be a commercial success as defined by the market?

Do you honestly believe this game is a 'spiritual successor' to anything?

 

We're still in early access and the devs are working on all of those things. I can tell you have a lot of passion for Shroud. We'll get there!

 

This game is mostly all rusty stick