Just noticed Decay for the first time

Basically, untill you try playing a week or so at an hour or 2 max a session, you wont see the issue with decay.

Decay is ignorable, IF you have 3-4 hours at a time to play every time you play in a way that risks death.


Also if your JUST noticing it now, im guessing your not loosing 100k-250k a death yet. So .. youll see?

 

I'd like to emphasize that point.

The reason (according to the devs) for death decay is not to be a "punishment" for death, but a way to impose (sort of) a cap to skills without making it a hard cap like in UO.
So that each character needs to focus on a certain number of skills only instead of having everything.

However, back to that point Toadster mentioned... The fact that you can only ever have "that many" skills on your fighting deck at a time, is a form of "cap" in itself, since it doesn't matter if you're GM in 40 skills because you won't be able to use them all at the same time. This is how Guild Wars 1 worked, for example, and it worked very well; you could have all skills of the game in one character eventually, but only ever use 8 simultaneously. The game was then about collecting as many skills as you could and developing builds by combining 8 among them in a smart way.

So maybe this "pseudo cap" imposed by death decay isn't really needed?

That together with a steep exponential curve to learning skills at high levels (possibly even more than now) could be enough to differentiate characters. Just by being really hard to level skills after a certain point should be enough to discourage those who don't really want to use that skill primarily from taking it to such high levels. Especially since the decks are limited and he may not even be using that skill very often.



tl;dr
Having more skills at high level should only allow for more possible build combinations, but the guy who plays less and has only a handful should be at the same level of "power" in that one or two things he does well.

 

Highlights below are mine:

That goes to the heart of the matter for me and why I despise skill decay even more than I despise PvP - it simply ruins the joy of exploration and seeing the sights.

There are other ways to implement a death penalty. Ex: put the player in a severely weakened state that requires them to eat food and rest for a period of time. The time increases with each death.

There are ways to mitigate skill decay if that's *just how it's going to be*. Ex: allow enchanters to enchant the small crafted ankhs which in turn can be used once per day to prevent any skill decay. If you want another gold sink, here's two of them - let players opt to pay x-amount of gold to the *Spirit of the Ankh* to avoid skill decay when they rez. In adventure zones have a mage who sells life insurance. You want to ensure you experience no skill decay - pay the price. Weapons and armor will still take damage of course.

 

That post reminds me of a conversation I had with the Crowfall leads over some Austin bbq. I don't remember the question, but the answer was, "if you create a game with lots of fun, but risky content, and also give players a no risk button they have to press into tediousness, some will choose that button and then run off screaming that the game sucks."

There is some wisdom in that. It is a good thing that the developers don't listen to us much.

 

I won't say for the 14th time how much I am against decay upon death. Whelp, I went and did it anyway.

 

When I started hanging on the forum, the big topics that were repeated like this was full loot PvP and Permadeath. One thing I really appreciate is just how different we all are from each other, yet we manage to get along with a few exceptions.

 

I think one of the reasons for the repeating topics is that they are not addressed by any official developer. They leave people on the forums to go back and forth causing division instead of actually clearing things up with an official statement. I do think many people would be more friendly to each other and have more stimulating debate if there happened to be some definitive answers. All in all I think its very sad and very telling.

 

Or people just don't like the answers they're getting.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SotA_Offic...richard_garriott_aka_lord_british_creator_of/


The answer is often given somewhere...people just don't move on very well.

 

I guess moving on is subjective. Also, port has a huge problem with puting information in one area, say, the official forums, instead of some obscure site that no one looks at. I am like lum, I hate to go to reddit.

 

I agree that the information is often difficult to find. But now that I've provided the information, do you think that's the end of this discussion? How about the other three on the same topic?

I also don't like reddit, I don't have an account there, and I didn't participate in the AMA because I don't want an account there. Still, the information is available, so the real issue is not that people don't know the answer, some just don't like it and are going to throw a fit about it. If at some point that results in them being moderated, they'll just go over to reddit and do the same thing. It's a vicious cycle.

I realize that Poratlarium has been inconsistent with their communication, and sometimes it's been down right horrible. But that doesn't give players carte blanche to make stuff up and ignore reality. Which unfortunately is what some people choose to do regardless of if they know what the official reasons are or not.

 

I expect a steady sprinkle of decay hate for the life of the game because it has to be hated to be effective. I actually agree with all the concerns, but I still fall in the camp of it being a much greater positive for the game overall. I don't think any amount of protest is going to change it, because every protest just proves its success. I want people to go ahead and protest anyway because it is their passion for the game that drives it. I am just not keen on it when the sky is falling or they are claiming to represent my view, neither is happening in this thread yet.

 

by quoting me twice and saying "some people" is an indirect attack on me. I refuse to listen to this as it is just more noise. "Some people" is a fiction that people use to drive a point home that is not fact. I will not respond to you further.

 

By "some people" I did not mean you. I did not mean anyone specifically.

What I was trying to avoid was saying "most" people or "all" people or something a long those lines. What I dislike most on these forums is when "some people" use those words in an effort to make their points stronger, as if they speak for "all" people or "everyone" etc etc...

I'm sorry that you took offense, that was not my intention. I was merely pointing out that some people do the things I mentioned and that has an overall negative impact on the game's development. As Tahru said, it's not that they're voicing feedback, that's good. But when the developers provide a reason, and people are making multiple threads, going to reddit and other sites to yell about it, and generally not providing realistic alternatives that accomplish the same goals, it makes me wonder what they think they're going to accomplish.

 

So am I missing something there? I thought you said answers.....

death without consequences, does eventually suck... I think all agree on that, but wait.... digital consequences have to balance out with fun game play.
a number of players hate it.... yes, I think we can agree on that
Many Players that don't think it is extreme enough.... Hmm... wonder how many players count as Many.... (in his group of X friends X out of X want to be punished?
limiting player progression???? Who's???? When????? it limits mine with only a few hours a night to play after 1 year.... Long run ok I guess I am capped and can move on...
making players treat death seriously..... well if I treated death seriously I would never leave town, or face a dragon, or do anything fun in the game.... guess that is the plan though?

And finally.....
Lack of agreement on what would be better..... although exactly which one to use would lead to disagreement I think the players that hate it would agree that anything would be better than losing earned experience and skill.... Anything would be better than forcing grinding in lower areas....Anything....Anything......

 

Really? Anything?

A skill cap? An XP cap?

 

You are correct, I don't like the answer that has been given. And in another thread I gave a much better solution:

I think everything surrounding decay upon death is the fact that some were racing to 100+ and the developers were not ready or unable to deal with avatars at such a high adventure level,because they would eventually become bored. The idea was for a long term game. I have heard others say in the past they played other games with skill decay,none that I ever played had it. If this concept had ever been introduced into Warcraft,they would have had hundreds of thousands unsub.
Obviously in Warcraft,the object is to reach max level, gear and fight raid bosses, although there are tons of other things to do. In Shroud,the concept seems to be we will keep you from ever maxing out at all cost. Although these two games are different,my idea of death in shroud should be:
Adventure Level:
1-25 First Death 5% XP gain loss for one hour,2.5% XP gain loss per hour each additional death. Resets after 6 hours of game time.
26-50 First Death 7.5% XP gain loss for one hour,4.5% XP gain loss per hour each additional death. Resets after 6 hours of game time .
51-75 First Death 15% XP gain loss for one hour,7.5% XP gain loss per hour each additional death. Resets after 6 hours of game time .
76-100 First Death 25% XP gain loss for one hour,20% XP gain loss per hour each additional death. Resets after 8 hours of game time.
100-125 First Death 35% XP gain loss for one hour,35% XP gain loss per hour each additional death. Resets after 10 hours of game time.
126-200 First Death 50% XP gain loss for one hour,50% XP gain loss per hour each additional death. Resets after 24 hours of game time

In other words,looking at level 126-200 the first death their XP gain goes from full to 50% of what it would be, their second death cuts that in half again,their 3rd death cuts that in half yet again and so on. Given a 24 hour of game time reset window,that would slow people down a lot,while lower level adventurers are taking less of a hit death wise.
To me this makes more sense than taking away what people have already gained,to me that concept is just brutal and encourages lower level not to group together to adventure.

 

To you it makes more sense.

To me, what this really comes down to is a fundamental awareness that players with extreme experience ARE able to keep it if they don't die. If they die, they're going to lose a lot of it. It's their choice. Portalarium could have (and I wish they would have) simply taken it away from these players to flatten out the curve. But instead Poratalarium said "keep it" but it's going to be really hard to keep leveling.

One example of this is a person with 271 million pooled experience. He's got every skill and every spell level at 100. I have no empathy for that situation. What exactly am I supposed to feel sorry for? That he can't get all the skills to 120?

 

The idea is another in the community, as a result of dev. choices, doesn't feel like it's worth it to keep playing the game. Very simple and cut/dry and I'm sorry you're so blinded by the big number to see that. We're well aware that a lot of that experience was gained through control points. HOWEVER, control points EXISTED in the fashion they did FOR A LONG TIME BEFORE persistence. IF it was such a tremendous issue, you can only blame the developers themselves and not the players that used game mechanics to their advantage. The people that sat AFK with spiders, as per what I've asked and been told, were the ones that faced disciplinary action.

We're all going to reach that threshold of "decay too stronk" eventually and "too stronk" will be subjective to each of us. Why do we need THIS system when PLENTY of others have been suggested, YET NEVER ACTUALLY TRIED, that perpetuates this cycle of "I can no longer play the game because I can no longer afford my decay costs." It may happen in 6 months, it may happen a couple years down the road, but the reality of the matter is that THIS is the future of this system. It's not a hocus pocus doomsday prediction, it's a simple application of math that the longer you play and progress, the harder decay is going to hit you and eventually that hit is going to prevent you from wanting to do anything. I view that as a failed strategy. I'm for a carrot system where you actually have rewards and purpose for playing through the years, and not just a stick looming over your head that slowly grows larger and prevents you from then wanting to play the game. Whatever the death penalty is, it should NOT prevent people AT ANY STAGE OF THEIR PROGRESSION from wanting to play the game.

 

So this happened this week and I think it's relevant to this discussion:

This past week I talked to two friends of mine in separate occasions in hopes of convincing them to come play SOTA.

• One of them already owns the game but hasn't really played it yet, just logged to look around once or twice a long time ago.
• The other doesn't own it yet but I know it's the kind of game he'd really like.

Since they're both old UO players they were naturally interested in the similarities and differences between the two games. The conversation eventually came down to "death penalty" and how in UO you could possibly lose your whole carried gear on death.

• When I described the death decay system and how you could lose part of your progress to them, they were immediately put off.
• Having watched Tech Talk videos and such, I tried to relay to them as best as I could the Devs reasoning for having the system, and their arguments in favor of one such system.
• They still couldn't grasp the idea of "losing XP" no matter the logic behind it.
• One said that the system reminded him of "those silly old MMOs like Ragnarok Online."
• Neither tried the game after that. I can't tell if this was the direct reason or not, but it certainly helped pushing them away from the game.

The point here is, I think, that despite the Devs' reasoning for death decay, or whether it is or isn't a good system... this is going to be a really TOUGH SELL to new players. I think there's something just psychologically dreadful about losing your character's progression like that which will put new players off.

By the way... they both were OK with the idea of losing equipment on death as in UO, and one even said he missed the thrill it added to the game. So it seems having a "death penalty" per se wasn't the issue. But specifically XP/Progression loss.

 

I'd love to have the problem of too much XP and too many GM's. Wow, what a hardship. I'd be able to stop grinding and start doing what you're supposed to do in a roleplaying game - roleplay.