Livestream and decay

There's already a system in place that achieves that - leveling all skills to the hard cap of 200 would take 1,725,835,942,405 XP - that's approx 1.7 million hours in UT....

 

Ya, but the soft cap is supposed to start at 100.

 

What are you talking about?

 

It really starts to kick in at L80

Level 80 is 15% of the XP to level 100
The half way point from 1 to 100 is around level 92
by the time you get to 108 you've spent more than twice the XP for 100 (or 14 times what it took to get to L80)
by the time you get to level 120 you've spent almost 7 times the XP for 100 (or 45 times what it took to get to L80) - for that extra 700% xp, the gain in skill effectiveness is typically around 5%

the 'soft cap' is actually the amount of time available to gain XP (which is effectively capped at 1 mill / hour) with rapidly diminishing returns on XP spent. That in itself is more than sufficient to prevent players continuing to get vastly more powerful in an open ended system.

People are leveling skills to 130+ which will be a minimum of 20 hours grind over 100 - the occasional <1 hour loss of XP isn't slowing these people down, its the increasingly infinitesimal gains in skill effectiveness that does that. Yet at the same time, the XP loss is causing plenty of lower level players to lose interest.

 

it really does feel like those who complain are those scared of what decay might mean to them, and those who actually suffer find it fair

 

You are likely correct. Whether correct or not, the important thing is what decay is doing to the game, and I'm convinced its putting many people off playing whilst simultaneously not really having any material impact on the highest level players. To me that says its not doing what its designed to do and needs to go.

 

I'm adv 109 but I only have 1 skill that isn't specialized over 100. My decay is somewhere in the 300-400k neighborhood. Decay hurts, but at my level and skill setup its pretty easy to gain it all back in twenty minutes or so but if I push my skills much further its going to start to hurt much more. I don't like the current system, but it really does give me a soft cap. I'm happy with my characters strength right now, I can do pretty much anything solo if I take the time to figure it out. I don't plan on leveling much else right now, so any experience I gain just goes into a pool that I could careless about at this point. It's a pool to fuel my deaths and decay... So for me this system seems to make sense.

It's very punishing if you want to push your skills to a very high level. But you can kickass in this game with everything at 80-99. And with specialization you can even bump stuff above 100 without getting hit too hard. It's very easy to handle decay once you reach your personal soft cap like I have.

So I'm very worried about how this is going to turn out. Because I already see the mechanic working, and don't get me wrong, i know it sucks and I totally understand how others don't like the idea of it. But after playing this game for this long, I get it, the mechanic works, it's not perfect and prob needs adjustments but I don't think scrapping it completely is going to help at all.

 

I thought decay was cool, and actually not nearly severe enough. It still gave me little fear. Im high enough level now that it can eliminate a day's worth of solo exp, but then again, thats part of the challenge of the game!

Much like @Dinsoo I hardly ever die. I just play the game carefully. Its more immersive that way, anyway. Kind of sad that so many players couldnt adapt their play style (I mean you have access to literally every single skill, + free decks, + mind wipe? and you cant adapt?!), and now Im sure the game world will be filled with rainbows, training wheels, rubber walls, and safety helmets.

I guess Ill go back to waiting around for the cooking skill tree to manifest, and start roleplaying as a retired warrior who writes books about how the fightin' was real, raw, and dirty back in my day...

 

It also seems that the SotA devs basically yield to the most vocal. Id like to see how the validate the vocal groups representation among the entire player base (to know the threshold number of players required to cry about something and get their way. What is it? 15? 20?).

 

I think the penalty should be a teleport back to your bind point at death. Then a 10 minute pause on the ability to teleport. This removes player from the fight, requires the player to decide on traveling back or wait for the time out and teleport. No loss of experience, just the inconvenience.

 

That's an interesting idea, though I think this and stat loss a la UO would have a similar effect of interrupting gameplay - something that can be more frustrating than decay. It's probably not a big deal for solo players, but for a team it could end the adventure for the night for everyone, and you'll be left feeling the fool who let everyone down.

***

I'd like to throw my hat in by saying that, whatever Portalarium does to limit über characters and (hopefully) encourage greater interdependence for high end content, both adventure and production, will be welcome even if it is punishing.

I just hope they don't replace it with a time sink. Time is a more precious thing than exp and gold coins. Recouping via activity as is now is better than waiting or clicking something emptily.

 

Ive wanted this to be part of SotA since kickstarter. I am 100% for "UO Rules" when it comes to death. This would be great for the economy!

 

What would be your definition of "UO Rules" for us, @Black Tortoise ?

 

Dinsoo stated that he spends his time mining..... How do you spend your time, @Black Tortoise ?
This might tell us a lot about why you think the death penalty is fine.

 

This is true but the key part your leaving out is "the more you play the game, the more are able to gain" and by gain I mean xp gain. At high levels a person can easily make 1mil exp in 20 to 30 min so a person dies. We assume they loose 1 mil but many times if they are specialized the loss is not there, 20 min later they gain it back again and 30 min later they are up q mil. If they die a second death its not as bad because how the penalty is set up and by the 3rd and 4th. Its not even noticed. I'm speaking as a high level character with quite a few gm's and adventure level about 110 but can buff to 120. I die ALL the time because I am always playing around with different builds and such and testing the limits of what I can do. The death penalty does NOT limit my player growth in any way and I don't buy into the notion that it limits others growth having already been through the gauntlet but the vocal minority of complainers won so we shall see what new thing is implemented. I'm going to predict that it will also NOT limit my growth as a player but that other complainers with not be happy with it. peace out.......

 

This is a problem with the game development in general but just the decay issue sadly. Hence we are where we are.

 

You actually did though. He's saying that these tough creatures that high end players can just barely beat would be out of the reach of many average players or even groups of average players. For those average players to beat them they would need to get better and or party with much higher level people which is fair and just in my world. Just because you play a game doesn't mean you should be able to beat things specially as an average player. Some thing are and should be out of your reach because it gives you something to reach for. What I hear you saying is creatures should be easy enough for average players and groups of average players but than scale up in difficulty to challenge elite players or groups. I don't agree with that.

 

I wasn't a fan of decay right from the start, because I was sure they don't reach the goal from holding players back to lvl everything to GM and higher.
Now it seems it is what I thought it will be.
You can't hold back those which don't mind to grind a lot to reach their goals. On the other hand decay hurts those
wanting kind of high lvl Avatar without grinding a lot to pool EXP, they can't easily replace the loss.
But I also think...Devs can add whatever they want, unless they just remove decay they get the Shitstorm ;P

 

got hyperbole?......somehow removing decay leads to:
"
Im sure the game world will be filled with rainbows, training wheels, rubber walls, and safety helmets
"
we should all just uninstall I guess

 

kind of, I bet if 15-20 people start yelping about something it'll trigger a review of that something. Then its in the courts hands. Chris has seemed pretty pro decay and has up to now held his ground against the masses.