please explain endless progression to me.

Well that goes without saying. I'd hope you are convinced you are right otherwise why have that opinion in the first place. 8^D

Like I said I don't find your comments trollish, I was just confused by the phrasing where you said it was unnecessary to talk about it, yet you've been presenting good information and interesting discussion in all the threads we've had so far.

Here we have a different opinion completely. As long as there is a single player online option, the content needs to be achievable for that play style. Offline and online basic game mechanics for combat should not need to be significantly different. I've been a big advocate for having multiplayer NPC companions. This allows those who want to be part of the economy and enjoy seeing other's housing to still be viable in the intended design for the devs for single player online. If the devs didn't want SPO then they never should have created it as an option. Being that the option was there from the start, it needs to be balanced to provide a challenge but still allow the player to succeed in that mode. Otherwise, its a **** move by the devs to say, "Yes we have this intentionally designed play style. The intention is to screw anyone who wants to play in this mode so they can't have fun or complete anything unless they switch over to either friends or multiplayer because we hate single players and want to force everyone into Chris's preferred MPO PvP only."

I agree that there should be a challenge for multiple players (otherwise FO and MPO are useless for the same reason that people are trying to make SPO useless). What should be done is to scale up the challenge based on either number of people in the party or in the scene. Yes this can lead to griefing, but I can't think of a more effective way to get both play styles viable as the devs have already said they are against putting companions in the online mode. Also, when scaling up it should take into account rewards and experience given as well so that it isn't used to milk the spo for an easier attempt to get xp and loot.

 

Okay, maybe my worlds where not well choosen

We have a different view on what SPO/FO and SP offline should be, i think . I understand it this way:

SP Offline:
The possebility to play sota completely alone. You actions effect noone except yourself. In this mode you are not "a" avatar, you are "THE" avatar. Maybe here is no softcap needed, and imo this would be okay. But again, i personally would like to see some mercenary system. Maybe in all the modes, but slighty different in the offline mode. For example: In the offline mode you can hire really really strong warriors, but in the online modes you are limited to relatively weak "healbots" of "mulie" chars.

SP Online/ FO:
I understand this mode as the posebility to be on your own, in the world of many. You have to compete in the market with other players, and you influence everything. All the online modes should (imo) encourage to play together. So i have a problem with the actual mechanic, that playing in the single or friend mode, gives you advantages above the players who play online together. Its more efficent to farm, and you have all the mobs for you allone. Further than that, it is verry important to balance out the playerbase! Because the players could compete with each other in PvP. So i think there needs to be a regulation that makes shure, that the highend content is multiplayer content, and that the gap between casual and progamer is relatively small, when it comes to character skill.

And one important thing:
When you have no regulation that forces you to have a char with edges and weaknesses, there is no need of actual "planing" you skills. I allways loved about UO, that everyone had a given amount of skillpoints, and need to find a template that balances out pros and cons. That helps you to be strong in the content you wanted to play. The best example for this, are the stats str/dex/int. When nothing prevents you from maxing them all, after some time everyone maxed them. Warriors with max mana and mages with max Health. I would prefer to see that Mages or Warriors actually have to think about, which of these stats they raise how high. And with a softcap we have this situation. Stats are extremely expensive.. So maybe its much better for a mage to no level str to 100, so he can level 2 additional resist skills or spells higher.

(And damn! i get confused and mix up SPO SPoffline FMO all the time XD i am not even able to use the same shorts all the time haha)

 

If you feel that you absolutely have to "catch up" then you might as well never play any MMO.

 

The difference between sota and other mmo's is:
In other MMO's you exactly know how long it takes. You know "okay, there are 60 levels and they take about 3 month.. Am i willing to do that?" in sote without a working softcap you could start playing 2 years after release and be faced the situation, that it would take 1-2 years of really active playing til it is MAYBE possible to kill some veteran players in PvP. And not because they have so much playerskill. And in this 2 years of grinding, thouse players could grind too and make the gap even wider.

Think about it:
"Hey Alfred my friend! I play sota! You should start it too! When you start now, we could pvp together in 2 years! Maybe..."

 

To me SPO ist just a privacy online mode.
SPO and FMO has lower ressources and respawn timers.
But still better to gather FMO than to compete about Ressources in MPO.
Will be balanced too imho.

For offline the online group content gets companions or already has some.
Dont know, never played offline.

So for offline all these nerfs and limitations arent needed that much.
But SPO is still a MP Mode and affect everybody in MP, so to me this mode is just privacy, but no guarantee to solo group content.
Online Group Content needs a group, it's not doable in SPO. To me that would be ok.
If one want to solo the whole content (with or without companions) play offline.
Anything else makes no sense imho.

 

No worries, words were well chose, its just a different point of view. 8^D

Yeah I tend to differ with the school of thought below:

SPOffline and SPOnline:
Both are the possibility to play the game fully alone. Everything should be achievable and balanced so this play style can have fun and enjoy all aspects of the game. The only difference between the two modes should be that one can engage in the online marketplace and the other can't. Otherwise, they should play very similarly, i.e. you are THE Avatar in both modes, not just A potential Avatar, have NPC companions, able to kill anything eventually, etc.

FO/MPO:
These are roughly the same option, except one allows you to dictate who can join you to avoid being harassed or frustrated by others. They both need to be balanced so that having multiple people is needed/desired to help motivate playing with others (otherwise, why get out of SPOnline in the first place). Part of this balancing is they need to reward more exp and loot to the players running it as well as provide a larger challenge, but this must be dynamic and not static or else people will just farm FO on their own. Many Avatars in this mode, you are just one of the crowd. Our current design doesn't do this which is why farming SPOnline/FO is a major issue that some people use/abuse. Without having dynamic scaling of content, there is no motivation to group and it is actually detrimental in many ways to group.

All 3 online modes have the shared dynamic of being able to play with each, but many of those who enjoy the SPOnline mode want to have access to populated towns and the markets for them to buy and sell at, but will never switch to FO/MPO because they don't enjoy having others around. Yes there are those who want to be protect while they boost up their PvP abilities, but I honestly don't think that is a majority of the SPOnline population (I could be mistaken... but it wouldn't be the first time so I'm OK with that).

Progression in all 3 online modes will have people of all skill levels though, so balancing that must also be taken into consideration, but it will never be perfectly achieved due to when people start playing vs others.

Could not agree with you more about this. Its why I am pro hard cap. However, there are still ways to achieve this with a "limitless" soft cap. One of my favorite ideas came from Spoon. Instead of exponentially scaling each skill individually (i.e. 1-40 easy, 40-80 takes longer, 80-100 takes strict focus, 100+ asininely difficult), his suggestion was ALL skill do this in relation to each other (total number of skills 1-100 easy, 100-250 takes longer, 250-500 takes strict focus, 500+ asininely difficult, completely arbitrary numbers to give rough example, his examples actually showed better break downs). This style would motivate specialization due to the over the top exponential growth that it would take to be a jack of all trades. Yes, it does still allow one to, but its far more practical to untrain the skills you no longer want to use and train up those that you do want to try out. You could have this retraining give a specific hit to the xp (only get back 75% or whatever) for the xp sink if you feel you have to have one.

 

Unfortunately, this is the concept that people have. However, that was not the way it was pitched. Many of the players interested in SPO like playing completely alone, but also enjoy having access to a fluctuating market for both selling and buying from. Current design definitely doesn't make this practical, nor is it currently balanced for the other online modes. I'd say FO is the privacy mode as it allows you to play with others, but restrict those you don't want to see.

 

ok - didnt know and understand.
Well there are maybe posiblities for SPO, if they can adjust spawnrates and such, they maybe also can adjust mobs or character strength without to imfluence other online modes too much.
I dont know how, but thats also not my job

 

Agreed. This has always been the balancing issue. One of the reasons I was excited when I first found this game was the SPOnline mode. I'm traditionally an extreme solo player, but figured if anyone could figure out how to balance a solid Ultima 7 like single player game (my personal favorite game of all time, let alone the series), with the ability to have the dynamic of an online community, our team here could figure it out. Sadly, there possibilities are there, the dev teams focus isn't.

There are so many interesting ways of trying to do it, but at this time it just isn't a priority for them to figure out. I don't fault them as there are other things that definitely need to be in place, but it is still frustrating for many who had one thing promised and they don't see it being delivered (but that goes WAY off topic).

Part of balancing it though could be done through a balanced unlimited skill progression, but that's only loosely tied into the entire debacle that is SP modes for this game (online or offline) and I don't want to derail this thread (more than I already have with recent posts *grins sheepishly*).

 

What they say and the reality are two very different things to me.

 

I more and more think we need way more patience!!!

 

Quite simple really innumerable skill gains/progression.

 

that comment makes 0 sense, 99% of MMOS have a hard cap which means atleast skill wise you can catch up, then from there you may lag behind in gear, or money or whatever, but if your someone whom puts alot of time into gaming. you eventually can get up there. With limitless progression that doesnt seem to be the case. Youll always be behins whether your talking about skills, money, gear etc. money and gear i think can be interchangeable atleast in SOTA.... Someone whom starts the game say today will have a much harder time getting a skill to 100, then someone who started right after persistence. On top of that they have 0 chances of every catching that person unless they have all their skills locked and dont use them on a regular bases? Or said new player plays game 24/7 and other more seasoned player spends few hours a day playing.

Im a perfect example of this been around since prior to persistence, and maybe have played 45 minutes in last 6 months? So in this case a new player would prob surpass me rather quickly. Im referring to active players.

 

Diminishing returns at a higher cost. So with an exponential increase on experience as you progress this will eventually bring high end players together. It would be rather quick to catchup when you can gain 5 to 6 levels for every one of theirs. But as you get closer to them it will be harder to actually catch them. But at that point the diminishing returns should kick in and someone with 160 in skill should not be to far away from someone with 180.

This game system manages iteself with a hard cap already set at 200 if they just balance for that without decay... and they already stated 200 is next to unattainable.