Let's Kill Power Leveling

Perhaps I am tilting windmills while singing "to dream the impossible dream," but I do not like the skill management system that developed over the last few releases. It seems unnatural to me to not improve in the skills you are actually using in order to save experience points to use on something else. I mean how do you do something over and over again without getting any better at it?
One possible workable answer would be to allow players to set a skill focus. By setting your skill focus or training focus on a particular skill or skill tree a larger portion of the experience one gains would go into that skill or skill tree when that skill or skills from that skill tree are used. There could also be an option to put skills on a low focus setting. Those skills would have a small amount of experience applied anytime they are used, but a lot less than your focus skill or skills set to advance normally.

Another issue I have with the current skill management system is that Portalarium does not really support it. To really manage your skills effectively under to current system you need progression tables for all the skills in order to decide at what point a skill is no longer worth putting experience points into. Portalarium does not provide such information, as far as I can determine. I would really like to know the potential of Healing Touch at level 150 and how much experience it takes to get there. Or what about that innate skill in the blade tree that seems to never improve no matter how high its level gets? I would sure like to see a progression table on that one.
These things will not stay secret for long. Already various gaming gnomes are putting together their charts and tables in hopes their website will be the go to site for SotA gaming data. So why not just give us the information yourselves?

XX

 

Concerning Portalarium providing information; I personally like figuring all of that out on my own, with my friends, guildmates, whatever- through experimentation. The idea of having information handed to me on a silver platter sounds suspiciously like tools that would be used for power leveling. Also lazy. Also giving more work for Portalarium. Especially when updates/patches changes values. So now they have to keep track of that as well? Also, why deprive those website of being the go-to place for SotA gaming data? Are you against such endeavours? Why take that away from the community? I personally am 100% behind the community's efforts to enrich the SotA experience. I like knowing that people are that invested in this game. I know I spent many (quite fun) hours back in the days of UO, figuring out how things worked with my friends. Stratics was an awesome go-to place for learning too!

There are community members that already enjoy doing those kinds of things. Again I ask, why take that away from them? It seems to me that at least in part, your post is contrary to what you've titled it: Let's Kill Power Leveling.

I'm on to you Xander Xavier!

 

Well, if I must manage my skills, I would like to data to do it right... But I would rather just play the game.

XX

 

A lot ofd this data is out there being gathered by many different players doing many different things.

It has been asked for a few times to no avail so "Don Quihote" your but off

And for nay changes there has already been rumors that you will not be able to lock everything in a tree so the idea of locking a skill so it doesn't gain to just gain points is something I "think" they already have an idea for, but yet to see nay facts or actions. I too hope they od succeeded in it but lees tan 2 months until players start to train sooooo....

 

This happens all the time IRL way more often than you think. People do things mindlessly all their lives. If simply performing a task repetitively made you automatically good at it, then thered be no bad drivers except for very young people. Heck where I live, some people cant figure out how to walk down the sidewalk. I know plenty of adults who have really low skill in dont-forget-your-keys. Occasionally, I have to wait extra long in a line because someone's order-a-sandwich-at-the-deli skill is horribly low even though this is their 342,393rd attempt. I have friends who have walked their dog 1000x, and still suck at it. Sometimes training in martial arts is exactly like that - you swing thousands of times and never improve. Perfect mindfulness is a talent few, if any, people have.

Its very easy to do something over and over again without getting better at it - dont be present. Focus your attention elsewhere. Youll get nowhere in no time .

Why dont you make this journey, and report back to us?

My guess would be, that their attention is focused on providing a deep and rich gaming experience, one that makes you forget about charts and spreadsheets, and makes you get lost in a fantasy RPG.

 

This was how it worked in UO as well - you had a skill cap, and you adjusted your skills up and down to manage them to be what you wanted. It pretty much just worked.

I do agree that it does feel weirder here somehow - the comparison is UO's 700 skill cap vs SotA's adventuerer XP, which is mostly the same thing. I think it's just because it's harder to keep track of exactly where your skills are and how much you've got left to go since we're using a bar instead of numbers. It's a bit of guesswork.

 

For this round of the wipe, I actually turn everything on, no more locking, and just straight playing the game as is. I made it to 88 blade combats with 60ish blade combat glyphs and innate with skills on life, air, and earth. At this point I'm adv level 55 and able to tackle level 5 skull zone relatively ok.

At this point I probably won't bother doing the min/max skill locking anymore since I find it's more fun to just play it as is.

 

I personally want to be able to lock my skills. What if I don't want to raise lighting bolt to 100 just because I use it a lot. I want to control my skills.

How is this less natural than buying skills with skill points earned with leveling? It isn't.

There are people who do karate all the time but they stop gaining belts or don't get belts as fast as some others. This current system is good in my opinion.

 

Also I know a pair of twins that trained in stick fighting and it took them ten years to realize they were not using the right footwork and then bang they improved dramatically.

I write every day, either on facebook, text messages, or here in these forums etc. I have not improved as a writer in quite a while. I have to actively focus on improving my writing skills to get back to where I was. I do not obey all the rules and use proper punctuation nor do I spell check much. I can do it but I've sort of settled on my writing ability to remain the same.

However I can mindfully focus on becoming a better writer every day. If I did that I would pay careful attention to fine tune this skill. However I've chosen to let the skill stay roughly the same for 10 years. In fact I let it slide back a bit because I personally am not interested at being a writing master and rather spend my time elsewhere... however I don't want to lose the skill entirely, and I use it every day without improving.

 

While skill gain has gotten slower at lower levels with the xp slowdown, its still actually more efficient to just train the same skills your using to get your XP first. there are some non-combat skills that you have to train up while not in combat, but initially, its better to just let it ride and train the same skills your using to collect your XP with. With the exception of material conservation in newer craftign skills, its faster to leave your skills unlocked unless you specifically dont want soemthing your using all the time for some reason.

In the future, i dont think it will be neccessary to train all your skills to level 10 to get the next skill up in the tree, but youll still need a certain proficiency in the tree the skill is in before you can unlock it.

 

Totally agree with you on this topic.
Here is interesting article on 10,000 Hour Rule http://www.businessinsider.com/new-study-destroys-malcolm-gladwells-10000-rule-2014-7

 

I like that attunements are now automated.
I think that passives should be automated and unlockable too (though you perhaps should be allwoed to focus on some more, the basic passives get same progress fro many skill which is not quite right).
I do not mind managment of active skillsbut it feels wrong that after killing wolves with sword the mindless hitting of gustball somehow raises your intelligence.

The Dex-Str-Int should be completely out of this system of passive skills.

 

Sadly i can like that post only once. Giant steps to fix the game, in a nutshell. Hope they start taking them sooner than later

 

I've noticed that the higher the level of your skill the more it seems to require a "real" activity to get skill gains.

If your just learning a skill it will rise normally at low levels but you cannot gain anything if you shoot fire arrow with a skill level of 75 trying to get it to 80. I don't even think it rises. If it gains INT because of that practice I'm still not concerned because it's a passive skill and that's what they do.... keeping in mind there is a drain to the xp pool.

We can argue about every other game that has skill gain too and say why it sucks or it is good. Those who gain levels and all skills get a jump together, and even the sacred UO had skill gain but you had to use the skill in tougher circumstances because you didn't gain any skill in combat unless the creature had a high skill level. So in UOs skill use you couldn't gain skill unless you did tougher stuff, and that too isn't perfect, because you are still using the skill and even if your opponent is less skilled than you, you still are getting XP (although I suppose skills like anatomy still gained no matter what) so UO did use similar concepts.

SotA I think has it better since the skills will gain if you use them but it is up to us to dial it back by locking a few skills while still gaining in low danger/level areas. So we can still gain but the xp pool drain has the effect to cause us to gaining slower in low level areas but with a different methodology.

 

Sure, look for my post about it in a year or so after final release when I reach level 150 Healing Touch. If you want the information sooner then that, ask a power gamer.