Poll - should we have skill decay?

I liked the UO system better.

We did choose and locked skills .
It was not taken out of our hands.


It is funny how everywhere punichment is avoided in this game - what could enrich the gaming experience.

But then suddenly implend a decay system we have no influence on.

Make decay part of death in game.

 

Lineage 2 did have the experience decay upon death and it was part of the game downfall along side of it being major grind fest swarmed with botters and their pk guard squad.

 

Lineage 2 a downfall??

It is one of the most successfull MMO.
Had 14 Million Subscribers.

Just because we European or American can't handle challenge , does not mean more advanced gaming culture countries can't also.

Huge success in Korea

 

Yes, it had 14 million subscribers at some point, but the game ended up filling with Chinese gold farmers and bots, which make regular people don't feel like spending time in there. Ain't nobody got time for that when there are other competitors out there.

Your point is valid. However, would you want this game to be American/European based or do you want them to be Korean based (these groups potentially have lots of time to play and enjoy grind fest)? People play game for entertainment. While having challenge could also provide entertainment, but if it doesn't, then they would just move on to something else.

If we don't want to exclude any player based, then we gotta find the balance. XP decay on death isn't one.

 

This is exactly how I feel about it as well (in a nutshell).

I don't think decay is the way to go unless it is managed on a +1 skill A, -1 skill B basis so skill specialization is automatically balanced with a controlled total skill point cap. I understand that this is not UO, but that's how skills should be handled IMO.

 

If having skill caps is something to be considered, I would prefer this thought to be put on hold until the additional character slots have been ironed out and implemented as a norm, not some pledge rewards or some crazy expensive "rental" fees.

 

I would add that modern MMOs have a serious lack of finality. For most other companies, there is no "I win" because the anticipation is that a busy player is a continued source of revenue. (I truely hope this is not the intention for skill decay, but it sure feels like it).

Loyalty to a project as overwhelming as it was/is with UO can't be achieved with business taking presidence over the art. I think that was very apparent when RG sold UO to EA. It was due to their insistance on pushing content that inspired revenue instead of inspiring the players imaginations that caused it to fall from grace.

You can claim "it was just UOs time to go" but tell that to the people still playing it. (With all due respect to the new broadsword team trying to breathe new life into it...) The continued player base and nostalgic reverie has nothing to do with EA and everything to do with the passion the creators put into it.

There is a purity and dedication to the art that makes a game timeless and things like skill decay do not lend themselves to that ideaology.


An MMO based upon and created by true classic MMO fantasy fans should be setup to allow players to continue playing as long as they choose but allow "completion" of specific aspects of the game such as skills.

I think Shroud should provide cumulative albeit slow progressive advancement until a goal is met and then the ability to lock that progress at its desired level or allow it's unlock at the players discretion for playstyle changes.

Let the players manage our own skills and stick to doing what you do best, tell us a story we will adore... in a land we won't ever forget.

 

Agreed, and it's even more apparent when you consider...
Why would you have the following mechanics together?
- The oracle can (in some no doubt ridiculously contrived way which inexplicably remains mysterious) remove skill decay
- Casual players (the largest demographic, inevitably) will always be punished more by skill decay.
- You will have the ability to retrain, forget, or unlearn skills
- There is no skill cap

I mean, logically, it makes sense to have a skill cap and the ability to unlearn or forget skills. That's simple and clear, everyone can understand that.
But why no skill cap and the ability to forget skills? What possible value does that offer to the player?
And another thing that makes no sense; So, a major (if not THE major) design goal of skill decay is to prevent "masters of all", except... if you play the game a lot, that's exactly what you can be, and mechanics like the oracle removing it are specifically being implemented. So.. what's the resulting design goal, of Skill Decay, then? To annoy, punish, and alienate the largest target demographic? Ok, mission accomplished?
It's like they've gone out of their way to pick the worst possible combination of systems and mechanics to create the greatest possible level of illogic, frustration, tedium, and alienation of the customer.
First the Deck system, now Skill Decay. Neither was even remotely required or necessary, but they've spent an inordinate amount of wasted time on both, with the results being almost universally negative, despite warnings on these forums of that outcome.
Punitive mechanics only worked in UO because there was so few other choices in the genre at that time. As soon as there was another choice (EQ) the rats were off that burning ship. The same thing will happen here, just faster.

 

Are you saying we should be able to master every skill and every tree if we play enough?

 

Apparently that's how it is with all Ultima game (not the online) from my understanding. Which is fine since Skyrim also have that and people still enjoy playing it. The key is to strike the balance between making too easy and too impossible to move forward.

 

The thing is all those game you are quoting are all single player.
The point of an online game is to have player interaction,
this requires some sort of system to support a demand for new players and reliance on current to provide an ecosystem for the player-base. Without decay I no longer have a need for the healer friend or the general merchant trying to sell his goods in town after a long day of gathering and crafting. I can just do it myself train up all my healing skills and crafting skills and I'm good goodbye other players.

 

Yeah that's a distinct issue from decay but I have no problem with that if someone wants to grind endlessly for very little gain, let 'em. Regardless of whether we have skill caps or not, we shouldn't have decay.

 

So you agree that one should be able to master all trades and combat proficiencies if they play enough?

 

This will happen no matter what Portalarium does to try and stop it. How? Multi-Accounts, Multi-Boxing.
Why?
Because, 1) unfortunately, having a second healer controlled by you, via a keyboard on your desk on a second computer, next to you, is often better than relying on someone half a world away, due to latency.
and because 2) Everyone charges too much for everything. In 20 years, if I have one constant law I've observed regarding multiplayer reliance/dependency in crafting, it's that doing it all yourself is always cheaper. Always.

And finally, SotA has two single player modes. Single Player Online and Single Player Offline. So, being able to do it all yourself, for those Single Player modes, is going to be an expectation for some players.

 

I'm all for it in SINGLE player.
Also EVERYTHING shouldn't be cheaper there should be things that get more expensive and things that should become cheaper. Your argument just ruined the in-game economy. Now we have elite players producing all the goods because they can make everything cheap now. As a new player I have no reason to craft cause I can just purchase cheap stuff from veteran players.

 

needs to be a hard cap

 

It's not my argument, it's the reality of any fantasy themed multiplayer online game, today.
It's the way SotA is designed. To design it otherwise reduces the target demographic to an unacceptable degree.

I know you weren't asking me, but my answer to this is yes, if the only other choice is skill decay at all skill levels.

Now, if they're going to go with skill decay only for skills at 81+, 91+, or 101+, sure, I'm all over that, go for it. Then I'll just get a skill to level 80, 90 or 100 lock it, and move on to the next skill.
Which is exactly what all the hardcore/time-plentiful players will do, with or without decay, in the current design.

Even if they put in a severely terrible decay system, heck, even if they put in hard caps, and only allowed 1 GM per account, and all other skills can only get to 80, people would just buy enough accounts to have as many GM's as they want or need so they don't get ripped off when they want to craft something. I've seen it in other games, and I see no reason why it wouldn't happen here.

Originally, the design was one character per account, but they changed that. Originally, someone saw the wisdom in allowing a single player, with enough time, to reach their goals with a single character. Time is the only commodity in short supply if you want to attract a demographic large enough to keep your company in the black. IMHO, customers are no longer going to pay for: repeated involuntary victimization, overly punitive mechanics of any kind, overly tedious grind and/or lack of progression (years vs. months or months vs weeks.) There's just too many other easy fun choices out there. Decay falls into an overly punitive mechanic, and as long as it exists, it will overshadow any and all attempts Portalarium is making to distinguish itself positively in other ways.

 

I hope they ditch decay and implement some other system to try and keep one character from being able to excel at everything in the game.

If people are still set on keeping it tied to skill use then I would say change it so real time isn't a factor at all.

One way to do this would be to track the last X skills used for each player and set their caps based on that. Then have their skill cap for each skill be (80 + %skillused) or (80 + 2*(%skillused^0.75)) something similar. So if you want to be skill 100 you need to use it ~20% of the time in combat and if you dip below that the skill goes down. You could limit skill tree skills and attunements the same way but include all skills from the tree in the % however they might need to have more of a non-linear modifier to them like the second formula I put up since you'd get very high number easily. You might need to add pet commands to count as skill use for the skill used to summon them. You may also want to round the number to a 2-5 level granularity to allow people to have a chance to see where their use trend is going and adjust before losing an expensive high level. Some of this depends on how long the sample size is.

This method would eliminate a lot of the grind and punishment aspects of the decay system since you're no longer in a race against the clock. You just have to control what skills you use. Getting to the skill caps would still take a bunch of work since the exp to get there is still a lot but you shouldn't lose it unless you're careless.

 

If there was a skill cap on the number of skills you used vs skill decay we could all be a Thermo Lock eventually but Thermo and others would be penalized because they know they can be better than the skill caps. The only limitation is skill in using the max skill caps and combos but in theory we would all be at the same max skill level so would it be fair to penalized people who would be better than a skill cap?

 

Ok, I've been sorta keeping up on this thread, but just perused it again to see if anybody had any ACTUAL DATA on skill decay - and am amazed that no one has posted any....

Most everybody seems to hate it, but how many of you that hate it have run any numbers on it?

How much does it "decay" at any given level?

What does it take to get back to "square one" from where you locked it?

I have some data (from the perspective of someone with a LOT of skills at many different levels, some locked - some up) but before I hit you with it, I'd love for some of those who like or dislike it to tell me why - but please include your "experience" with it (with data)....

Or - if you have no actual data on it - then just say so....

Oh, here are my credentials: