Levels VS Skills (voting)

Hello all!
Most of us played UO earler (official or hacked POL server..any ) Do you remember how we mine for hours only to take +0.1 for mining skill? Or cutting hundred billions of trees for lumberjacking GM ?

Leveling,as for now,- are easy for programmers. No counting,less server usage,etc... but it's dull... If player want to be an alshmist,he doesn't need to kill 100 goblins .he just need mortal and Pestel ,some ginseng and empty bottles And so on


P.S. Mining now is sucks...we have a mountain) we need to dig a mountain )) Macros rule ;-D

 

Has to be against the skill itself.......I really dislike the generic leveling where you can pot skills anywhere.

 

Problem: Changing it now would mean gutting the entire skill system as well as other systems it currently interacts with.. (ie combat). It would be a huge step backwards in development that I'm not sure Portalarium would be willing to take.

I'm not saying I care for levels and spending points but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a bad system either. It's just very.. non-immersive. There are some things I know they've thought about doing that I really wish they wouldn't but this system isn't complete and isn't balanced. Rather than calling for it to be replaced entirely out of personal preference.. It might be more productive to come up with ways to make it as good and fun as possible.

 

They willn't because skill system is already implemented in a core ;-( but if they could.. one o two months for replacing...skill on variables ^__^)))

 

And if it pushed things back by a month or so......I would still be happy because I would know that the system would be better and different from most of the other games.

 

What happened to the "how much time you put in to the skill" design? I specifically remember LB saying that he wanted skill advancement to be based on how much time you used a skill.

 

offtopic: waiting for poison daggers,stealth and greater explosion bottles ^___^

 

I actually don't mind either systems. However, level based systems are much easier to balance in areas instead of skill based ones....I guess we will have to wait and see how the skills work out in the end.

 

Well they'd have to completely redesign skills from the ground up. Which probably means both combat and crafting would need an overhaul. I realize that crafting skills aren't in yet but there's a good chance a lot of the code related to crafting skills is in. 1 or 2 months delay I think is optimistic.

To think of it.. the current deck system would also have to be gutted since the number of glyphs you get for a skill is based on how many points you've spent on it. So that would have to be reworked to some extent as well.

I can probably already tell you something else they'll say. The current system is easier to balance.

What might be rather more interesting imo.. has anyone considered a sort of hybrid system? How could we convert XP into points? Right now, all XP is "general" XP but what if we had something more like XP from Fable? XP for Str, Dex and Int? All XP could lead you to the next level but instead of just generic points you get general, str, dex and int points depending on the skills you've used and all skills get XP.

So say.. you might get 5 XP for harvesting or field dressing something easy. The skill uses dex and int so the XP gets added to dex and int pools. When you level up, XP from each pool can be spent on an applicable skill. You wouldn't for example, be able to spend Str XP on a dex or int based skill.

You could attatch difficulty to gathering skills.. ie a stag is harder to field dress than a rabbit.

You level up as you do before.. but point distribution could be based on XP pools rather than levels.

In a sense this would be expanding on the current system rather than gutting it entirely.

 

The game is looking great, but I have to say that I'm very disappointed with combat and level systems at the actual stage.

 

i agree that action based lvling would be more immersive, and therefore better. but in UO, you ended up with a gang of mule characters and often multiple accounts.

seeing as the standard game purchase gives you only one character slot, i think a lot of casual players will find them selves worrying too much about having to pick a path, assuming that as you progress, it takes longer to gain any skill at all.

i like the skill trainers. I am assuming that once the game is gold, you will have to travel far to specific trainers found in towns known for thier respective trades to apply certain skill points and it will probably cost a lot more in gold than it does now.

 

Nah. I think it was you or maybe Invidia that suggested keeping it locked at least to entire skill trees.

Use Death magic? Get points to spend there, not also in swords and pole arms. Makes more sense to at least keep it within the group of similar skills.

I dont think that would require gutting anything. They need to add filtering for it, for sure.

If they are not gathering the stats on skill usage that would send a million red flags up -- so I just CANT believe that data is not being tracked.

 

+1~Time Lord~

 

When you check your skills the points are already divided into each skill once you put them in.

Why not just have using the skills lead to points going up in each separate skill instead of one pool. Then you can put the points you gain in a skill into the parts of that skill tree only.

 

Two Bethesda games, Fallout and Skyrim, used each of these systems. In Fallout, it was certainly less immersive to level up and just dump points into whatever, regardless of how you had earned that levelup, though it gave the player more control over how their character progressed. In Skyrim, you had a feeling of immersion in that you gained skills by using them. The down side of this though was that it encouraged power-leveling via extensive sessions of blocking a mudcrab's attacks for an hour, swimming against a wall (Oblivion), or casting a custom spell that cost only 1 mana, since the potency of the spell cast had no effect on the gain rate (Morrowind).

Similarly, in UO it was common to sit in a house with a few alts macroing curses on you to train magic resist, or to leave your character afk attacking an alt while a third alt healed the second one. In UO crafting though, exp gains were scaled based on your ability, so you couldn't craft garbage all day to level up. That didn't solve all of the power-leveling issues, but if applied to SotA combat, it would prevent wolf bear grinding, as stronger players would need to seek out stronger creatures. How PvP gains would be determined this way remains an issue though.

Edit: bears < wolves (in SotA)

 

I had forgotten (conveniently?) about power leveling. Good point! However, that should be easy to check against (in theory). Stop giving XP after X amount of time if the situation doesn't change significantly.

 

Well Stated!

This is where I do have a few issues with, that I do, as well as don't seem to be comfortable with. I know that I don't truly wish to start any revolution uprising within whichever direction our developers take us, but I don't seem to wish for skill points to be for any other skill that I did not practice or use to build it.

But... there I find myself again, just as you stated, where I am grinding on just one skill... "which I do mind' less' because it's that UO feel...
but then there I am standing in a room staring at a wall, while grinding away in a seemingly mindless' oblivion

So I seem to know which way my but is, but I also seem to be in the dark as to what could be seen as being the way forward which causes me to wonder where exactly my head is stuck in
All I can say is that there seems far less air in the subject that could add some contrast of the fragrance
*still searching for solutions*
~Time Lord~

 

The only difference is that now you can sit in your house and macro crafting donuts to raise magic resistance.
At the end, people will find out what skill grinding is more effective and we all will end macroing the same skill to raise the others.
I do believe Devs have a solution for that, or?

 

pvp gains would be built on what you use to PVP. pole arms swords maces, armor, magic etc..

if im understanding your question right?

 

I'd prefer increased proficiency in skills most used, rather the assigning of skill points.

The self-appointment of skill points seems too artificial to me.