Just noticed Decay for the first time

Wait, we get loot in this game!? I thought it was all rotting skin, slime ooze and rusty <insert weapon name here> lol

 

Well now we are in a community where we know the average player base. Its 500.
So I would argue that that line is ALREADY at 105 to 110. Meaning that players feeling as restricted before that is overkill. Theres high level dungeons in game already to cater to these players? Its not like they got these levels in skull 5 s. Even things like the monkey room and such, all this was intentionally put in by them to allow players to continue proceeding at the rate that they are. If they wanted to truly slow people, they would have scaled down the exp value of things overall.
Hell they could cut exp across the board if they were even remotely serious about slowing down players.
And I would even point out that this is speculation on your part. Your assuming thats where the 2 red lines is intended to be right now. Because now if you look at where the intended attainable level is now, going up to 105 or 110, suddenly that death decay seems pretty over kill for the *Average * player.
I would even argue that right now, if their intent was to slow down those players in your diagram for example, they would cut the exp of the higher end dungeons for now, completly limiting the gap these guys are making, right? As now the exp curve comes into play. He can farm 40 h to gain 1 skill point, where im doing mine in 2-3 to catchup.

So why are they adding high level content, with max exp? Just for testing? maybe. Or the limiting factor for the average players right now, is too much.

Or are they keeping a really bad mechanic in play, and justifying it.. to limit these hard core players?

Im curious how many people are past 105? I mean like i said they announced that 500 daily login players. To be that level your talking about a player that is playing THROUGH the death penalty, and clocking in a LOT of hours or grinding (not POT building).

So a massive turn off for new players. An annoyance for new - mid tier players. An actual damper on mid - high end players is in play to limit these players? They dont have ANY OTHER solutions on this? Yet still keep releasing high exp giving areas for them? If they were absolutely serious about testing without players hitting that point, they would use a different approach.

If the justification for the death penalty is to limit this portion of players, then i would argue they probably LOST more players from coming in, then there are players at that range of where its *well past the intended level *

 

And again i use myself as an example. I played as much as i would play any other game. Brought in a community with me. We EASILY surpassed 5 skull in a few weeks.
Im 92, and i havn't been playing *Seriously* for months.

Am i well past the intended play curve of SOTA then?

Whats the point of *too much time* into SOTA killing stuff before im part of the group thats *ruining the game * and need to be punished for it?

 

Ok, well how about we stick to the actual numbers and not what we feel like?

I'm guessing you would be surprised at how low the average player is and what that does to a bell curve.

 

500 is a direct quote from the Reddit AMA. The average players playing daily on SOTA is 500. That is straight from them, as of a few days ago.

Again though, subtract POT owners, and take away the players over 100. And i dont think i would be? I know that any player that comes into the game, and actually intends to progress adventure level, can get well past 5 skull without much hassle at all.
And then you have to account for the fact guilds and power leveling.. Etc etc.

I think theres not a lot of NEW players enough to offset the players in 90s or higher 90s. I think that since i have a guildy whose probly one of the highest producer levels in SOTA currently, and he is about 90 without EVER leveling past where he could solo kobolds past the mines, just leveld while mining. I would assume Crafter PURE characters are hovering 70s. ( Since most need to get their own silver)

So, if you have information to enlighten me, please do as im genuinely asking here.
What are the actual numbers then? And if you dont know them, why do you think they would be different then what i do?

 

I know that.
You don't seem to understand that the average player is different than the total population. Ask Chris what the total break down is...what the bell curve looks like. People over 100 are not going to be well represented. Probably be less than 5% of the total population, and that's in a VERY small population.

 

Your just blatently not answering the majority of my questions to you though.
Yes i understand. With that logic theres 64k players or something.

I dont think players NOT playing SOTA, but are still part of the total? are really relative to the conversation though.
Of the 500 average players in game right now. What % of THAT do you think is over 100? Because we know THESE are the players logging in every day.

Take away the POT owners. (theres 300, but lets pretend 50 active ones where the owner actually play) Because i would guess i can safely assume someone investing that kind of $$ is going to be part of that daily average no?
And take away those 100+ guys.
So i feel that once you do THAT , what do you feel the average player is at?

Because i mean.. if were going to start talking about total population.. including people who bought an account.. and never played again.. or log in once or twice to see if release is decent ( i know a lot of those people).. then yea im sure that 100+ group is pretty small %. But then we might as well include every person who bought an account and never opened game again.. cause now they are relevent.

 

I told you... about 5% are over 100. That's just my guess though, it doesn't really matter what I think. That's why I said ask Chris. I'm not trying to muddy the waters here by making the population all the dead accounts in the world.

If it's over 6% we have an even bigger need for decay (or alternate solution) than I imagined though.

 

I'm partially basing my estimate on what Chris said months ago, that there were only about 27 accounts that hit level 100 or more. So yes that's changed over the last few months, but it's not likely some giant number of people.

What's really going to be interesting is how many people are over 100 now. Whatever that number is, it's not going to be "good" for the game. So the more that number is, the more we need decay or an alternative, the less that number is the more we need decay or an alternative. It really doesn't matter because the outliers are bad for the game either way.

 

Or that the intended player level is higher then anticipated already, meaning death is currently too punishing for players getting to that point lol.

All this is not really relevant tho. As Chris has already made it clear that hes not willing to hear/discuss Decay anymore. And im a firm believer its already cost them enough players to justify changing it.
It's increasingly becoming yet another reason i play other things instead. And so far, i don't agree with the justification for it. A lot of high end players will play through it, meaning it only actually limits players with less time who do want to continue progressing.

Id be surprised if it wasnt closer to 10% of the population were talking about. As even jsut off top of my head i know 5-6 people who have hit this point in the last 2 months. THAT BEING SAID, im not accounting for those high end players who burned out and left between then and now.

 

Sorry to hear that but decay and making good changes is increasingly why I support this game and love it.

 

How is this tiny % bad for you or bad for the game?

 

And making *GOOD CHANGES* is exactly why i still try to play casual. Which leads to Decay sucking more and more per login. Which leads to me not wanting to play. Etc etc.

The reality is, theres enough hate for the decay system it needs to be at the VERY LEAST adjusted.

I would love to know why he scrapped the idea of only accumulating decay when you were online or in an adventure zone. Even that starts to turn a garbage mechanic into tolerable. Id rather they cut all exp gain on mobs 10%, then punish exp loss on death the way they do.
The idea that they dont have options is crazy. The idea that they are keeping the option that is annoying the amount of players it IS already, is ludacris. The only GOOD thing about it, is as that curve increases and more people hit a higher end point.. More people will realize it, and maybe itll get re addressed.

 

I agree with you for my playstyle personally. But I don't agree with you for the good of the game because I know a lot of people hate this mechanic. I say leave it in the background and let the player figure it out. You have a better chance of them getting hooked or finding something they enjoy before they find this and get pissed. Throwing it in people's faces might do more harm then good.

 

Already explained multiple times in multiple threads.

 

It's funny you mention the dragon, I was just out with someone this morning and he soloed the dragon repeatedly. I was along for XP gain and he was gracious to give me all the dragon meat for my cooking.

I agree with you that at some point the design fails and that it's hard to put in content for high level players. By the same token, that's a problem in every single game I've played. There is always a small percentage of people who are driven to level up as fast as they can so they can be king of the mountain. And then there is no more new content for them...oh well.

My point is this - you cannot make a game that is focused on trying to penalize/slowdown/put roadblocks in for the 5% (which then negatively affects *everyone*) while forgetting about the other 95% and making the game a not-fun grindfest where death means you lose what worked so hard to gain. My percentagess are arbitrary, unscientific and I can't back them up with facts, but it's the principle of thing. It is unsustainable, IMO, to make things harder for everyone in order to try and slow down the minority of players who already have a gazillion XP in their pool. It's too late for that. There needs to be a paradigm shift that actually *encourages* people to play, especially casual players.

Give us mere mortals things that mitigate skill decay:

a) Put in a threshold that if you have X number of skill points in your pool you aren't eligible to use those tools. Anything over 500K...over 1 MIL...over 2 MIL or 10 MIL. If you have a threshold, then people who have hundreds of millions in their pool will bear a higher death penalty than those who don't.

b) Give us mages who sell life insurance in adventure zones. 5K a pop, 10K a pop. Make it cost, but not so much that it is out of reach. It's like paying an entrance fee. As long as you paid for your life insurance, no matter how many times you die in that zone, you don't get any skill decay. As stated in A - people above the skill pool threshold aren't eligible. Added bonus - gold sink.

c) In other areas, give us a choice to pay the Spirit of the Ankh a fee to restore us to life with no skill decay. As stated in A - people above the skill pool threshold aren't eligible. Added bonus - gold sink.

d) Make the crafted ankhs meaningful as an object that can be enchanted and can be used once per day to avoid the skill decay penalty. As stated in A - people above the skill pool threshold aren't eligible.

---> Or don't get creative, leave things the way they are, cross your fingers and see what happens for the rank and file player who would love to *play the game*, but due to skill decay will simply avoid harder zones, stay in safer zones, get bored and quit.

 

What is your skill decay? Do you know?

It's probably something you can make back in less than an hour of play. Do you think death should have no meaning? Because that to me is a fundamental must have in this game - meaningful death.

We're not going to have a very good game here if everything we dislike we simply remove. Buffs with penalties? Removed! Attunement? Removed! Death Penalties? Removed!

This would just be a giant chat room if we did that.

 

This is really sad. Pure jealousy. People that put in more should expect to get out more. That's a prime selling point of the game. The only way this becomes bastardized is if things change so much that you will never be able to reach their *snap-shot in time* level. IE at some point, you will reach the 120 skill. That dude may be 130 or higher by the time you do, but you can still actually reach the same point given time.

If you want hard caps, just say so. Decay currently doesn't provide what you're after. These guys are still hitting that grind stone and gaining experience. The ones that are suffering are the rest of the people in the conversation that don't have that kind of time to devote to simply *covering the death cost* or refuse to do so and stop playing.

But that your basis for everything stems from this jealousy principle that *they can have while I cannot* is ... yea. I already put my balancing act suggestion for the highest tier of PvE and for all PvP to add some semblance of balance, but there's really no helping anything as "the grass is always greener on the other side."

 

I have no idea what my skill decay is at this point because I don't go places where I die. My skill pool is currently at 200K only because I went out this morning and all the dragon killing boosted me 60K. I don't do a lot of grinding for skill points - grinding is boring. I have no GMs, I don't have a lot of gold and most of what I do have of the approx 100K is from selling off a few things to other players for ingame gold. I don't want to *make up* any skill points up in an hour, two hours five hours or even five minutes. Whatever time I put into the game, I want it to be meaningful and fun. Skill decay is not fun and it detracts from my ability to do meaningful things in the game. But that is just me. You seem to like it as hard as possible. I'm sorry I can't agree with you there. It's a game not a job. I want to have fun

I think death should have meaning and can have meaning. But if we are going to play a game where magic exists, then give me some magic that helps mitigate skill decay. Heck, we have guides through control points to mitigate the chance of getting killed when the control point gets tripped and the mobs are out. Why not have mages who sell life insurance? Why not have a threshold where you can no longer buy that life insurance?

*The mage replies, "Your skill has exceeded my ability to provide you life insurance. You must enter at your own risk and face death unaided."*

As for, "We're not going to have a very good game here if everything we dislike we simply remove." I don't think that's fair to say as it misrepresents the points I have attempted to make on this thread.

 

Yes, you have said that it is game breaking which does not make sense to me. There are videos out there of people soloing bosses with an adventure level in the 70s. You believe that having tons of GMs make you god like which simply isnt true at all. There are already mechanics in place that place caps on a players power level.