Magic, Combat, and Crafting Skills

If i lumberjack in the woods ill get better at it..
If i wrestle a boar ill get better at it.
If i cast fireball guess what ill get better at it..
If the development team is using training to keep money moving in the economy. Add a tax for skills in a document that you agree pay and sign because you didn't notify Lord British of your new found skill.

This game is moving a complete opposite direction of the current norm so i stand by my previous comments to remove the redundancy of trainers.

 

I'd be OK with losing trainers. Actually I'd be OK with a shotgun style pseudo random skill allocation. e.g. using your sword may teach you something about your sword but you might also improve armor skills or axe skills or whatever.

 

I think I heard / read somewhere that it works to places you can walk/path in to. So no, you cant blink past pit if you normally could not walk around it - if I remember this right. And ofcourse, subject to change.

 

uhmm i like "trainers".
Maybe it would like: "go to that dumb pointy hat NPC that is always around the center of the city (doing nothing) and pay him some money to learn that skill".
But it could be much or less like: "To teach you that necromantic spell, fistandantilus will defy you with a deadly riddle. But first you must get into his dark tower of terror and brake the 7 seals of hell. Of course you must get there alone".

Anyways they didnt mention that you must pay gold to learn.

 

I love it when fans tell game developers with decades of experience how to develop games.

For the rest of your rants about feedback in dev+, they said before they have to design the systems, we aren't designing system for them. We can give feedback, and ideas on those systems, thats what those threads are for and they have changed things in the dev+ section if you go back and read them based on our responses. There may be things they are considering but haven't said yes/no to yet based on what we've said.

 

It is unrealistic to think someone can't be a great warrior and a carpenter and a fisherman. Many people are capable of learning and being great at multiple things. Especially things like Fishing, anyone can use their spare time to fish and be great at it. The important thing is choice, they can choose to only be a fisherman in this game if you want, and if you want you can be a warrior, just like you could in UO, my bro's fisherman/archer was awesome.. I am also very glad they arent' using UO's system of skill points. I am really tired of that system and am looking for something new, this looks like something new and different.

 

Yep, I like the idea of having to find and interact with leveled trainers. How much interaction that will require has not been said, but I like the idea of having to complete quests to level / skill up that require me to use those specific skills. Imagine if there was a physical embodiment of levels, like a tower or dungeon, where each level represented skill mastery. You'd need to complete each quest on each level before mastering that skill. You know, like completing all 36 chambers to become a Shaolin Master

 

Some crafters don't want fighting skills.
Some fighters don't want crafting skills.
What about these players?
Do you have anything for them?
Or do they just miss out on half the skill points?
But I see what your saying, should every axe fighter be a lumberjack.

 

crafting and combat are their own pools of skill points/exp points spent individually. one has nothing to do with the other so there is no missing out on something if you only want to do one thing.

You might be thinking of this like UO 700 skill points but up to 350 are crafting and up to 350 are in combat, instead of letting all 700 be focused in one area. That isn't the case. This system is very different.

One question that still hasn't been answered is whether we can master all crafting skills or not, We've heard a few different things. One is that they want it to take so long it's unlikely you'll be able to, instead of forcing a cap or limit on it. The other thing we've heard is a re-training process or un-learning.. I don't know what is going to happen.

 

That being said, it would be a good idea to "level up" in heavy armour to gain the increased carry capacity.

 

Hahha yeah all the branches in all the trees look like they have something I want.

 

Like you said we don't know yet.
I'm hoping for something more like the 350/350.
I posted as to why on this thread.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/700-point-skill-system.3936/#post-71921
The question then is why separate the two if one side don't help the other or have limits on them?

 

I'd rather have carring capacity as a passive skill that lvls up the longer you carry a heavy loads. With it being passive your heavy armor movement speed and other factors would go up as well, while if you wear light armor your dodge ability may go up as well. this way you won't see a bunch of crafters just going heavy armor because the ability to carry more supplies, and would be free to choose what type of armor and playstyle they like.

 

Ahh, the seperation is so someone can't master all of the combat tree or all of the crafting tree. That was one thing RG originally said is he didn't want someone to be both an amazing fighter and wizard.

Until I see how this system works I think I disagree with him there, I think with the 1 character limit and the way the combat system works I think it would be a non issue.. but we will find out what works and what doesn't. It might very well be too powerful to summon/control a daemon and have great fighting skills and shooting lighting.. but the issue is with the negatives of heavy or medium armor and having a weapon in your hand might make that build not work well.

Oh, it's also so you get crafting points to put into crafting, and combat you learn combat. So it's somewhat of a system of do this thing to earn points in this field. instead of just assigning it whever you please.

 

I hope we can master all skills. It should take long, it should be hard and expensive, but it should be possible.
With only one character, i don't want to lose my hard gained skillpoints in swordfighting, just because after 2 years of playing i want to try out some magery skills.
And what about the new skills to come in later episodes ? how could that be handled with limited skillpoints ?

 

On "having all of the skills":

Considering the way combat has been mentioned to be designed, where you get a deck of options that only a few appear at a time, having "all of the skills" would be detrimental.

If anyone here has played a trading card game, you'll know what I mean when I say a huge deck of many different cards is not a good thing. You get too many options and those you need most may or may not come at the appropriate moment. Focus decks always do better because they get all of the options needed to win out quickly.

This assumes that combat continues along the lines of having a set amount of skills in a queue that you specify, those are randomly presented as combat flows. Which I really like the idea of personally, though it will be something a lot of people probably balk at.

With the above system I described in mind, if I have guessed correctly, it would be fine to have all skills available, but only put together a fixed set (deck) for efficient use. This allows for many possible combos and setups of character, so many variations of how you could build that skill set making the possibility of being unique very high.

Sure, you'll end up with 'flavor of the month' characters, but that's unavoidable and honestly who cares. "OMG other people are using it so it's __________" (insert whatever negative aspect you feel).

If I'm limited to one character, I want access to everything, it's just unlikely that I could exercise them all at once and be effective.

As far as crafting goes, same thing really, I would like to have the ability to do any of them. If I put the time in to be completely self sufficient, fine, I did the work. Again, if I find that I don't like Blacksmithing, oh well, you're screwed. Or do I magically forget everything, completely lame as well.

In a game with multiple characters, you get people who make multiple crafters. It happens in every game out there. But that's because multiple characters are available. Limits, while sound good, just end up punishing those without a guild, or without money to have multiple accounts.

 

On trainers:

If you're just improving a known skill, click a + button, I'm fine with that.

If you're learning something new, then make that part of the game. Either put books in that teach it, a mysterious figure you met in your travels, the monk at the top of the mountain, but put something into it. Talking about combat and magic skills here. I don't want to just magically have access to everything because I "got enough points". I want to earn it, I'd love to see the fringe skills that we probably won't see until later, that you have to find that guy to teach you.

Also, if a player knows the skill, they should be able to teach it. And they should have the option to charge for it. Put in a trade for training dialog and bam, you've got players teaching other players, out in the world.

However, if it's just Joe Trainer NPC in town, where I have to go back to him to click a "add new skill" and that's it, yes, leave that crap out because then it's just as meaningless as magically learning the skill and definitely a waste of time. But if I hear that Galleo the great swordsman is going to be in Brittany, I might make my way there to see if I can convince him to teach me something of his skill. (ie. you might want to save skill points just incase an opportunity arises, or even better have the system allow for a 'credit' of points when you get a random chance to learn some skill that's not normally available)

Considering skills are horizontal progression and not vertical, the concept of "the more I use it, the better I get" doesn't work. Extra points mean the skill comes up more often:

"Adding skill points to Active Skills increases the number of copies of that skill the player has therefore increasing the frequency that skill will appear during combat."

I'm really liking the way that combat system is going, based on previous comments from the dev team and what little we saw in the 6 month update. This skill system supports that even more, and the possibilities excite me.

 

I think I recall I've heard that you'll be able to build your "deck of cards" around whatever roll you'd like to play.

So mayb you'll be able to optain a large amount of these "cards" and customize your hand for whatever role you'd like to play, and then the rest are sitting off not being used and you're able to customize your class how you'd like to play it. I'd have a blast just gaining abilities and building my own class how I want to play it, it would add to the sand in the sandbox game.

If this is the case I hope they add a moderate timer on changing out cards or decks, just so you can't instantly change in combat.

 

It would be nice to have both options. To learn everything and also to re-train skills. If we can learn everything that's fine but gaining higher levels probably takes more and more experience points making it very difficult to learn new skills after you've already gained mastery of a few skill trees already.

So if it were possible to gain all the skills, but you don't want to wait for that next level perhapse you can unlearn a skill you never use and pay a trainer to train up a different skill using the skill points you unlearned from your previous skill. Then you won't have to wait till the next level to have that new skill, but you still have to pay to train up the new skill.

 

Wow, I think you really missed the mark on this one. His point was that in game design, there is something called a 'game design document,' or a design 'bible.'

It was promised that Dev+ backers see this thing, in PDF form. It has not materialized. He is saying that these related systems should be laid out in a design doc before people start work. It's called 'pre-production' in filmmaking.

He is not saying that WE should design the systems for THEM. AT ALL. He's asking 'where's the overall design doc that integrates alll the systems, so we can look at it and give feedback on it like we're supposed to, cuz seeing it on paper first is less expensive and time-consuming than going back and fixing things later when it's too late.'