One user's unified solution for Use-based system

I disagree with scrapping XP. Scrapping XP would cause more problems than it "solves".

 

I think the 3 issues are decay, throttled short term skill gain unless micromanaging and xp pool depletion (which is worse if you don't micromanage)

 

If skills would gain based off of a set percentage of the xp bar, that might help. They could only gain so far at adventure level x, then they'd stand still (which has to be indicated properly so you don't wonder what's going on).

Of course, this requires decay to be removed and a way to unlearn skills, the latter of which is said to come soon.

The xp bar needs to stay visible so you can notice when your xp level goes down and you need to change your strategy and visit higher level zones.

 

Issue with this idea is things like primary weapon skill which have extremely high impact and really might be worth leveling beyond that point.

Decay might be able to stay, but the implementation needs to change.

Themo mentions how defenses also dictate whether you can xp gain on monsters - tougher monsters might use more skills even if they give more xp.

And I can easily lose xp pool going against the toughest stuff I can training a single skill. The xp curve for skills is much steeper than the monster xp curve. I'm in favor of spending less xp on skills when gaining less, though I'm not yet sure on a good way to do that.

 

The problem with decay is that you need to maintain your skills. Say you've built a mage, you'll have to run around casting it up to keep your skills high. What if you're into roleplay and much rather spend time with your buddies, fishing in the lake in your town while having some drama going on?

There are many kinds of players and loss looming over your head can have negative influence on some aspects of the game.
It turns it into work. And I already work all the time in RL

 

I agree , but if decay didn't trigger so fast this would not be anywhere near as much of a concern.

 

With a cap, there would not be a need for decay. You'd work towards your template and when you want changes, you delete skills, or train them down by training something you want up.

What do we gain by having decay anyways? What's it good for, apart from preventing us from being GM-Everything super heroes?

 

Oh I agree hard cap is better than decay, I just think that if they insist on keeping decay, they can twist the system into something better than now.

 

Unfortunately the devs don't discuss such things with us lowly peasants on the open forums. :/ Wonder if the lords and ladies on the Dev+ forums know more.

 

I've seen suggestions from the release specific forums adopted by devs. I think these sections are less frequented.

 

Already getting big. Can I ask for help refining the OP? Are there easy parts to edit so that it reads better (sorry BDF, I did write this up fast and missed a lot of things).
Is there anything that most agree on? I doubt that Chis has read this yet, so I want the most viable option possible to present.

 

*Haughtily* Yes, we do little peon... checks Dev+ forum. *Defeatedly* No, we don't little peon.

I think its still early enough in implementation that they are still feeling it out and haven't actually decided anything long term. Or at least that's my hope.

 

What I fear is that they'll say "we invested so much time and manpower (and hence money) in the exp system, we won't cut it out now", which would render every discussion about it useless.
There's hope they rework the decay though.

 

Most trimmable bit, the email from Chris. Its helpful for us, but it doesn't add much to discussion at the moment.

Reword:
1. No micromanagement. The Learn vs. Remember will be a simple enough design, but still gives 'some' control over where the XP goes. (there is micromanagement, but it can be lessened if desired)

Lots of us have commented on the loss of the xp bar visibility if they keep an xp system in place, so addressing that could be helpful.

Expand on your idea, as one of the issues is how would XP be generated for each pool? Is it purely based on skill use or still tied to current xp per kill system?

Work on concept for general XP pool that untraining skills, quest xp, potential exploration xp, etc. would go into.

Otherwise, I think it is pretty good.

 

I would agree with you, but since they decided to scrap original intentions behind NON-skill use, I'm hopeful they'll do the same with the xp system (be it ditching it or just reworking significantly).

 

I so hope you're right. I'd be a happy panda
All these threads made me realize how much I seem to want this game to be just a modern version of UO, since that was the best MMO so far.

 

Something definitely still isn't quite right about the use-based system we have now, even though I think it's pretty close to a fix we wanted to see in UO.

I wonder if the solution is just to do something like:
1. Cap XP gains over time, so that XP gained is still rewarded but over a period of time after the cap is reached. (eg, if you gain 15000 XP in 1 hour, 10000 XP is assigned to relevant skills in those 30 minutes, and the remaining 5000 is put into those skills over the next 24 hours 5%/hour - something like that)
2. Reward bonus "catch-up" XP when no XP gains have been attempted over a certain period of time.

 

Sorry when I thread gets to like 4-5 pages I just can't read the first post, so I started on the 2nd page and went from there and so far don't agree with what random people have stated. If I get time I'll get back around to reading the first page, maybe.

 

About the different Skill-Pools:

Sneaking never generates XP but will need quite a lot of XP to GM.
Questing generates a lot of XP but is not linked to any Skill.
Thus, I'd rather have a common Skill Pool.

About Gust-Balling:
I understand that everyone is blaming them. It looks like stupid botting and .. seriously.. you gain levels by hacking a ball?
However, I like the general idea behind. Just substitue the ball with real training dummies. Let say some training barracks for fighting skills. Some academy casting grounds for training magic spells. A thief hideout for training sneak.

If you have too many XP due to a large quest reward or if you locked all your skills during a large battle. Its ok to use these skills then in the training grounds to increase your skill. That sounds like good RP. And its used similar even in pen&paper.
Maybe they can even make a fun training out of this so its not just positioning the avatar and start the bot.

 

@Elfenwahn
Good points on sneaking. I think that would be where the general pool (from questing and the like) would be used. Any skill that does not generate XP could be designated to advance from this pool.
But this is moot because no dev is even reading this. :-(