Innate Skills BLOCKER

You do lose a big chunk of focus if you switch mid-fight, but it's a temporary penalty and not a particularly hefty one.

 

There's also a focus skill that will reduce that penalty.

 

which is another innate...

 

Yeah, but that's an example of how innate skills are overpowered at their core. It's a very unbalanced system. You need all the innates you can get to compete because the moment you don't have something you're going to get zapped by another player or high level mob. Instead of having a dynamic Block and Counter system, we have a static passive system. Everyone is focused on "where are my innates?!!!!" and instead they should be focused on "let's not use innates at all and balance this combat system".

 

This is an example of declarative knowledge. lol Ya know like an axiom.

It is by no means an example of Imperative Knowledge. How to do it right.


Joking or not that statement I quoted is still fact. It is not just a belief, but a starting point that needs to be addressed... that is why I offered the option of dropping the deck system Amber.

 

Well everyone is focused on the innates now, but it is same with gear, maybe even worse now.

The thing is that combat is currently about two things:
- Can you attack? Ranged has distinct advantage and if it was not for lag it would be damn hard to be competitive for anyone with melee skills.
- Most DPS (best innates, gear, skills)

There is minimal number of counters and anticounters are nonexistent. Combat should be full of circles of counters. If your opponent do move, there should always be some way how to get upper hand on him. And they should get chance to use your moves against you as well.

 

I agree. Capping of the innate skills is particularly handicapping to mages as a multitude of mage abilities is dependent on the innates. Decreasing fizzle, increasing focus/intelligence, damage of spells, increasing deck size. All greatly hampered by this restriction.

 

I have to throw in my two cents here. More a lurker than a poster but this warrants it.

I wasn't keen on the glyph system and really wanted true skills but I made due and decided it would work as I could still pick what I wanted with a minimum of wasted points. Then it was changed that you had to reach a certain number of levels in one skill before you could go to the next tier. Didn't like that because again, I am wasting more points on skills I will never use but I adjusted, bit the bullet and wasted the points. Now, I have to waste even more points on skills I will never use just to get the attributes, focus, and tactics I want? What happened to the sandbox mentality of playing how you want and not hand-holding? I know it is pre-alpha and this is hopefully the first attempt at adjusting but it really seems to be moving quickly down a path I am not looking forward to or comfortable with.

Playing UO for years, you were limited on the number of points you could get for skills. You could GM skills or you could scatter the points around all over the place. Some GMed skills to be more effective in those specific skills. I had a friend who hated the idea of limiting their characters so they ended up getting points all over the place because it is how they wanted to play. Sure, we each used the same number of points and I had a 7xGM and their highest skill level was around 75 but they were playing how they wanted. That is the fun of having a system like that in place and the flexibility to customize your character to your specific play style.

Restricting the system and not allowing the freedom to customize the way you want to play takes away drastically from what I was expecting. Again, hoping this is just the first attempt at something (still not really sure what the goal was) but will see...

 

Yeah that was a great system. 7xGM wasn't mandatory even for PvP. In fact I felt basically as powerful at 4x GM as I did at 7x except for the resist spells on my 7x was really cool to have.

I take that back my main character never reached 7x and I didn't care. He had like 75 to 80 magery or something. I know I could at least cast gate sometimes with him, but he was a mace fighter and that was my best PvP character at least the one I had most fun with.

However I really liked having the rest of my points in cooking and camping. I liked just being able to go out into the woods kill a big animal, use my blade to get some kindles for the campfire and cook the meat on the fire. It felt like I was self sufficient even with a 700 skill cap. Also I think we could safely log out next to a campfire we made in the woods too.

Thanks for the reminder that 7x gm wasn't even nessisary in every case in UO.

 

I would support innate points reduction only if innate skills where removed from skill trees.
Lets this game be a real classless game let people invest their 50% skill points in the innate skills they want with no restrictions.
Just one example, actually in order to get Blued Blooded skill (increase cold resistance)
you have to invest points in Shield of Ice and Icy Breath, with the actual restriction its simply
impossible getting cold resistance, no one is going to waste that amount of innate points.
Compelling people to specialize is not what I would call a Classless game.

 

Has there been any talk on this from the devs yet? It's a pretty huge deal.

 

A good topic for this week's Dev Hangout?

 

They said in public hangout they did it as a way to try to prevent people from pouring all of thier skillpoints into every buff and stat at the same time and having everyone be built the same

 

You can raise strength with gear and buffs as well if you really want it, but it isnt required. 7 points and some strength gear will have you carrying plenty.

 

I think that's a poor excuse they have for not making other skills desirable. Instead of forcing people to spend points where the devs want you to and limiting innates, why not instead, improve other skills so that they're all good, and we'd have so many good skills to choose from we'd be able to build more diverse decks.

 

Everything that will effect combat in a big way is not in game yet and there have been no focuses on combat balancing yet. All of the things ive found annoying in fights so far, according to things that will affect them that havent been put into the game yet, seem like they will have counters. Until those things are in it would be redundant to try to balance things with what we have now

 

Because everyone would still have the same passive abilities. It's not that some passives are better than others, it's that everyone wants all passives. Everyone wants all resists from every magic tree, all of the damage from every combat tree they are specced in, all of the heals trength and all of the death magic strength and all of the stuns while having their primary stats stacked very high at the same time.

EDIT: When all you want is to squeeze every last bit of damage out of your character as possible without having to sacrifice efficiency or defense, then you look at your deck, you see you onyl need 25 glyphs to get rid of all slugs, you get exactly that many glyphs, and you put the rest of your 300 or so skillpoints into intelligence, magic damage, and drop the rest in as many defensive innates as you can.

Meanwhile those passives get limited, forcing you to choose and specialize. Some folks go for damage, some folks go for defense, some go for utility and/or support and the rest are jsut unhappy that they cant have all of these thigns at the same time because its The Way They Want To Play.

If you play that way it forces everyone else to to compete.
If you have to choose a path, then you can be countered by or counter someone who chose a different path.

 

It's much more complex than that lol...

and besides, I feel like everything thats been done so far mainly focuses on combat and skills, and levels and level of items...

and I've listened to most the dev hangouts ?

 

Here you pour your hear out into innates so you can do more dmg. Why not both? skill and strength combined. that was people can spec certain abilities they want to excel in by adding points to them.

 

Skills were added to the game but no balancing has taken place. They dont have all the skills in yet, and there are no armor enchantments yet, which will play part in combat as well.