I think the xp decay thing is a really dumb idea

Well, being a purist mage trying to transition from T3 zones (losing exp constantly because it took more to kill than mobs were worth) to T4 (can't kill anything and die), it isn't just people trying to solo boss mobs that's the issue. If everyone plays the hybrid melee mage (which is all the devs have developed for currently), then sure it works fine. If you try to play something other than that niche... good luck.

 

Just have decay kick in for skills beyond GM and leave the casual player alone.
@Chris wants to make it difficult to accumulate very large numbers of GM, and I agree with that.
Once again, kick decay in for skills beyond GM and that will solve the issue.
People won't be able to maintain 50 GM's, and the vast majority of casual players can relax and adventure without concern over death.

 

Remember that per Chris the original intention was that only grinders would ever hit GM in anything and that casual players would rarely get over 80 in active skills. So the current minimal amounts are probably meant to lure us into eventual extreme amounts, just like the crap ranged targeting was changed and explained that melee had switched to it a few releases ago without complaint. They seem to slowly start making changes and then upping it to affect everyone quite noticeably when there aren't initial complaints. And the instant defense when people complain is, "Well, Richard agrees" to justify it. Very frustrating.

It always amuses me when a dev states they don't want people to GM everything and the only way to do that is either hard caps, which no one wants (followed by LOTS of people saying we want this) or the decay system (followed by LOTS of people, usually different ones, complaining about the punitive feel of it). I've always felt that the exponential xp increase method (@Spoon came up with a great concept but I don't remember the thread it was in so I can't link it) was the best way to handle this. It gives something for uber power gamers to strive for, but makes it so most casual gamers will never notice it. Unfortunately, with persistence in and the mechanics still being bounced around, don't see much hope for a better system to come in to play.

 

I seem to remember Chris saying it would be difficult to maintain more than around 8 GM's for the casual player, which seemed reasonable.
At any rate, having decay kick in AFTER GM would solve the problem of those few power gamers who want to maintain 50 GM's - while keeping the will to adventure and die without death concerns for the majority of casual players.

 

Quotes from the Chris's original posts about switching over to use based system:

So even casual players will be able to get a fair number of skills into the 80 range and keep a few dozen at 60+. The real challenge is going to be for those players that want to keep 1 or more skills in the 100+ range. Remember, that the difference between a 100 skill and 80 skill is around 10% but that last 10% costs 5 times as much as it took to get from 1 to 80! If players want to push beyond 100 they can but that curve gets steeper and steeper!

For example, one player plays 50 hours a week, another plays 1/5th that at 10 hours a week. If player one was able to learn and maintain 7 skills at grandmaster with 50 hours, player two would be able to get those same 7 skills at 80 which is only around 10% less powerful. If player two wanted to, they would be able to keep 1 skill at grand master and the other 6 at 60 with the same effort. Just some rough examples but the key point is that decay will force players to make decisions on what to keep at what level.

Define "Easy"... I would love to see someone try and keep that many plates spinning at once! I think mathematically at the rate that some of the hardest core people earn experience, a player could get most, about 2/3rds of the skills to an 80 but they would spend all their time keeping them there and fighting off the decay. The real question is why would someone want to do that?

Players who are that hard core will probably do something more like get 2 dozen skills to 80 and then work on pushing a half dozen to grandmaster.

Admittedly this was quite a while back, so they may have upped the expected GM levels. If they have I would be very curious to see the current target goals he has are.

 

So I am playing to have 1 skill at GM? And that is it? Well I guess I am done with this character. When do the other slots open up.

And to limit a character so much when we already have a deck system that limits you to about 10 useful and efficient glyphs at a time is beyond stupid and just plain redundant.

 

It's not about how many skills you GM, it's more about how much XP you put onto all the adventure skills. Right now at the maximum of 4-hour skill decay, the skill decay will take 400 xp away for every 1 millions xp you put on the character.

By looking from the simplified math, if you're capable of gaining 10,000 XP, why would losing 4 XP be an issue?

 

Thanks @Chris and @DarkStarr. It's about time decay came into the game. Too many have had it too easy for too long. Time to start realizing the vision of the development team regarding character development.

 

For some games like diablo 3 hardcore you lose the character completely on death. Now that is a massive and painful loss, but some people still enjoy the challenge (I know I did for example). I view this decay as being about as painful as being hit in the head with a feather

 

Diablo 3 is a procedurally generated so even on a full wipe, the replay is a fresh experience. Procedural games are pretty much the polar opposite of SotA though.

 

Huh, you are talking about game world generation mechanics, I'm talking about the character being perma-dead, and the penalty facesd on death, two completely different things.

 

We aren't there yet and hopefully the devs have woken up and changed their minds about this... but don't be surprised if it gets significantly harder down the road.

The problem isn't the current implementation. It is the intention behind it and the eventual implementation that makes it progressively harder/impossible for casual players.

 

I think he's referring to the fact that even with a character being wiped, the grind to get it back up will be a unique experience. SotA is nothing but repetitive grind currently. I could be mistaking his POV though.

 

I'm not buying the .04% math. I've died three times in less than 1 hour. I lost upwards of 4k xp from my meager pool of 40k (which I'm still struggling to earn back after 3 hours of play). Most of my skills are level 40 or below and I only use a handful schools (blade, heavy armor, tactics, death). I doubt I have 1,000,000 total xp given my skill levels, yet I lost about 4k between 3 deaths. It would be nice if this stuff wasn't so obfuscated.

 

Perhaps some of the innates are draining it? Earlier when I fought in Serpent Spine foot hill, I kept losing about 1k XP after the first death for 2-3 times until I realized that the two innate skills from shield tree have been eating up XP as well.

 

Just had the pleasure of being lag-killed. So on top of poor performance (with a new computer) I have the pleasure of enjoying decay due to framerate issues. Thanks Port!

 

Hey @Budner , where were you when you lag'd badly ?

 

Greymark. Doesn't happen often. But it happens.

 

Greymark !!!!

You must be really hurtin' for wood !

Um, sorry about that - but you know what I mean....

Those elves annoy the hell outta me there.

There's better places to harvest trees, btw...

Go hang out at the Bear Tavern and somebody there'll give you a list of areas to get trees with less deaths...

 

Bingo, games designed around the player struggling to succeed and being kicked back to the start for failure have their own charm, I'll still play nethack from time to time. Setbacks are core to the experience for roguelikes though, non-procedurals with death mechanics rarely feature more than a commodity penalty, not a stats one. I'm not saying that it couldn't be done well, but it'd have to be core to the experience, not an afterthought to try to balance out other questionable design choices.