Make skill decay understandable

Ya, that's why I don't like decay. I do not always work my skills when I log in. Alot of the time I need to log into do something to my house, or garden. So if I quickly log in to take care of something unrelated to my skills, I will be decayed. Ya, I hate decay even more than slugs now...this should definately be looked at again.

 

Where did you hear this? I don't doubt you, I've just never heard it that way. Always hear it regarding time and not logins.

The fact that experienced testers are not 100% sure what the hell is going on with a critical game component is telling that we need a Decay Deep Dive.

 

Lawyer'd!

Decayed amount increases as time goes by without using skills, and it has been said that caps after two days. It's applied the first time a skill is elegible for skill gain (in case of active skills first time you use one, in case of passive skills, everytime you do something) time you log in (whatever decay you've accumulated). That means you can log in, chat or hang out in FL tavern, and not apply decay to your skills.

Decay should be noticed but not something to worry about. You nailed it Kara, decay will work as soon as it let players play knowing it is there, but without worrying about it.

The fact that a post asking for clarity on a mechanics has been quickly filled with questions regarding that mechanic kind of makes the point for it

 

To prevent one character from doing everything, because that would be really really bad, according to Portalarium. Illogical, naturally.
Consequently, one player now does everything with multiple characters and/or multiple accounts. Just like every other game that has tried such a hare-brained scheme in the past 20 years.

In other words, Skill Decay is a failed solution to a problem that can't be solved without losing a significant portion of your target demographic. As a result, it sits firmly in the realm of incredibly annoying and pointless, and will remain there until removed.

 

What does skill decay really add to the game? What makes it a fun feature to keep? I don't see it adding anything to the game that makes it fun. We were told you can go to the oracle and get rid of it later, maybe do a small task or something for the oracle, I dunno. What's the point of it? We log out each time we play next to the oracle so we can do a daily chore before our play session? I just don't get the point of having it.

 

Currently none because in this first implementation it's not even working as it should. But it will have a point if we let it develop further. Not everything works at the first time, so we should not deny the whole mechanic but the flaws showed in its current implementation.

 

Move to Rift's End! All 15 of our NPC buildings are Oracle Conservatories! Do the oracle quest right from your house!

 

Wait wait.

Lux has thermae?? So what, Rift's End ain't got no decay!

(All respect to Spoon, I'm clearly being a dork)

 

Yeah, that Oracle task... here's a bet you can take to the bank, in the bright light of historical attempts at similar goals: (that is, wrapping contrived in-game activities around attempts to slow advancement)

That "task" is going to be more onerous than just recovering the lost skill on your own, making the whole contrivance, ultimately, a waste of developer time and effort. Again. Just like it's happened before. I'm seeing a trend here...

It's the philosophy that's the problem, not the implementation. Skill caps work, and everyone understands them. If Portalarium was going to pick a mechanic to implement a terrible failed philosophy, at least they could use one that they themselves have seen work previously, rather than attempt something that was logically flawed from the start, and still doesn't work. heheh.

 

It's not a good solution to fix the problem it was suppose to be created for though.
I think agra's comment here adds to what I'm saying too.

 

Things you need to understand:

1- the bars at the bottom of your screen are NOT level bars (like other games), so they don't go negative... They will go to zero, but not negative... One is for adventuring, and the other for crafting...
2- the bars are "Exp" bars or "pools" of Exp you have built up, but not used...
3- when you gain in "skill", you use up a portion of your exp, unless it's zero, then you simply don't gain in skills when you're used up all your exp points...
4- if you have too many skills that are gaining, then your pool of exp is depleted to zero, and you stop gaining...
5- to build up your pool of exp, you need to stop gaining by turning OFF all your skills. As you kill critters, each is worth X amount of exp, which is stored in your pool of exp until it hits max. The higher "skull" scenes you play in, have higher exp critters, so your pool raises quicker. If you play in a group, this process is slowed down because the exp is divided by the group, but gains 5% for each group member, for example, a critter has 100 points, and 5 player party kills it, the critter rewards 125 points (100 base + 25 (5 members * 5%) / 5 members = 25 exp for each member)...

Skill decay is something completely different and its tied to the death system...

1- when you stop playing the game, you loose 1 point of skill for every 2 days you don't play (what skill is depleted from, I have no idea)...
2- its only taken from you when you die (part of the death penalty)...
3- I don't think it's working properly because I have points in "blades" that I never use anymore (for days and days), and I've died many times, but it never takes points away from "blades" niether has it taken points from anything else too... IMO, if you stop using a skill, it should decay 1 point for each 2 days you haven't used it, and it should take it when you die...

I hope this helps...

 

Hey bud. Might have helped someone but its totally off topic in here. We are talking about the green bars on your skill trees and not the gold bars of adv and prod exp pools.

 

I disagree. I see the philosophy perfectly fine, and the current implementation flawed. Just because the first implementation is creating that many unrest you can say the whole concept failed. I agree with you that hard caps work, but since we already know that and in the end we can say "well let's remove decay and put some hard caps" why put them now? let's test something and see if we can make it work.

Yeah, that's why i said that it's not even working as it should; because it's supposed to not worry the player while playing and to make it more difficult for advanced players, and it's currently having the opposite effect (half because the implementation and the other half because of the unrest). But that means that first implementation backfired... that doesn't invalidate the concept. The concept being as simple as "what you don't exercise it gets rusty" and "the hardest part about mastery it's not reaching the 99% but getting the last 1%". If properly implemented, it can work for sure.

I'm just saying we should give new things more than one opportunity before dismissing them, because that's what we're here for. It's easy to put all the things that we all know that could work, but that's not why i'm here in prealpha. I'm here to try to come up with something different and fun

 

This is why the gustball is so important, to me anyway. I don't use it for AFK gusting, but every night I go home and unlock and train any skills I happened to miss that day. It's strictly a 'training dummy' to me. But a necessary one.

I am def one of those folks who don't 'just play' tho. I treat my skill trees as their own little mini-game!! same with spell weaving, its fun to get a 5 stack of something, but you have to really work for that 5 stack!! That type of thing is fun to me, but for a casual player it could get confusing and frustrating.

 

Something different and fun would be no skill caps and no skill decay. You want to gather more customers? Do that.

 

Sorry but I disagree again. That destroys the possibility to have a long lasting economy (everybody crafts everyting) and to have some kind of build synergy (in the end everybody is self reliant). That may be fun for you, but it's definitely not fun for me.

 

It's no secret how i feel about it, but overlooking that... at the moment there is some confusion between how it was described, how it works and how it is meant to work... and if that is 3 different things (it is at least 2 different things).

 

Not if the the skills have a soft cap of scaling exp per level and benefit from those levels.. which they already do. Add to that a further exp requirement to train new skills for each one you raise and it has the same effect without people feeling sad.

 

Played games like that before- I wasn't impressed.

 

Sorry, misc understood... Carry on...