Should people have to specialize?

I'll start by saying I didn't like the absolutely max skill cap they had in UO, of 700 total skill points. There should be no cap to the amount of skills and advancement in this game. The fact that skills can go way beyond 100 and give us an endless carrot is great.

What we should have is a system that makes us pick our specialty to some degree. In a year with the current system, we'll have hard core players who make most of us feel like we have no role. They'll simply be better than most people at everything or be just as good anyhow.

When looking at the trees and how many skills are required to make a competent build, it seems like the magic numbers is around 15 skills, give or take a few.

I'm not going to say that what I'm about to suggest is the best option, but it's one option. The most important thing is I think some kind of specialty system should be put in place.

My suggestion is adding a gold key setting to skills along with up arrow, down and hold. These 15 skills you select will never lose experience due to death or decay. You'll be guaranteed that your key skills can only go up.

Anything that's not one of these core skills will be susceptible to loss from decay and death to a much greater degree than we currently experience. It will still be very easy to maintain many skills after the 15, it just will be extremely difficult to maintain extreme levels in non core skills such as GM levels. All the core skills will be protected though, and you can raise them to any level you wish.

I think this would promote specialization in crafting and adventuring and will allow us to build an identity with our characters. It will also create a death mechanic that isn't so laughable that people use it to bypass content.

 

Not needed at all and the system force specialization in its own way.

This is just a round about way to side step decay, and what stop me from rotating it around?

Sorry

 

If you rotated it around, your key skills would fall significantly on death and you wouldn't want that loss. There's another thread being discussed right now about how crafting is broken because people are making everything and not specializing. This system would be a fix for that situation too.

 

Um actually this fix would make it even easier to not specialize.
if I had 15 skills that had no worry about decay, that would give me 15 skills I could take beyound 200.

Less than 100 skills have trivial decay, when you start getting close to 200 decay will be an actual factor. (million(s) of xp to get to 100, billions of xp to get to 200)
When you start trying to maintain 15 skills at level 200, that's when your going to start seeing the point were decay, eats as much or more progress than you are making, and death is very non-trivial.
Right now, you have people complaining that 72 hours of decay is meaningless, because everyone has lowbie skills and no one has started on the "end game" skills.


With crafting that kinda sucks because getting 80 points or so unlocks most of the stuff you need and starts hitting the exceptional caps for some items, which causes newbie crafters to complain because everyone can make the same starter stuff they can.
Regular Items = regular crafter, Masterworked items = master crafter, Masterwork is the intended XP sink for Crafters. just making regular items doesn't require a master craftsman, making expceptional items and masterworking them does.

Your really looking at how easy it is to get 100, and forgetting the exponetial growth of xp required to get beyound that.
When you start talking about raising skills above 100, if you aren't specialized, you are never going to get there.

Meticulous is the intended Xp sink for gatherers, as it's the only skill that can actually get yeilds into an area where it is profitable to do, and none of the rest of them make any meaningful contribution after 80 or so in the skill anymore.

 

if they would flesh out the trees to be self-supporting, then specializing could be rewarded. For example, the water tree has 2 damage spells and a bunch of worthless junk...if it could be made more like the fire tree (ice ball, ice storm etc) then someone could pick and choose which tree they wanted to be strongest in...

 

The current decay system is almost non existent. What I'm suggesting is that it be increased by an order of magnitude for non specialization skills. You'd see significant decay on skills that you didn't specialize in if you tried to raise them beyond a basic level (40-60 range).

Currently if you play in a hard core way, you can grand master a couple skills a week. Not everyone makes a living out of playing this game, but there will be people with dozens and dozens of GM skills in a year. In two or three years, all original players will be sitting on dozens if not a 100 or more grand master skills.

If you were a new player trying to break into this game, would you continue to play if the guy you grouped with had 100 grand master skills? Specialization will mean that each player will have a chance to create an identity that separates them from other players.

 

Umm.. 100 / Grand Master only means compotent enought to teach a lowbie.
The game is getting rebalanced so that 200 is what you think 100 is.

 

I don't know about the gold key macanic. I do think having a special skill set that you fouce on is a very positive thing. However it would require large changes to the over all game balance.

Ex. The only way I find myself able to challenge an air mage is to have air mage attunement. While I highly dislike having to level skills I don't even want just protect myself from people who do have them. If I had to choose 15 skills from my current build it would be primarily CQC abilities. Leaving me with an over all build that takes a rough 30 to 55 more damage from a mage with high attunement in a tree like air.

I do understand what you are getting at as a possible change to make people have a more unique style apart from everyone has (a least ) some of everything. Which I fully support.

If a way to defend yourself from magic school without dumping exp into the very same tree was implemented. I see your idea for the skill system being very likely to be implemented in some ways. Just with some decay at higher levels of the (golden skills)

 

It doesn't matter if someone is an expert at all weapons because you can hold hold one. And have one set of cloths.
Using the deck system optimizes around stacking many of the same skill, rather than 20 different ones.
There are a lot of ways to push people into a more or less zero-sum build, even though they may explore and unlock every skill.

The game doesn't pretend to have a balanced end game at this point.

 

I'm confused, @danjacobsmith about your reasoning behind the request, and have two questions:

How does any other player's total skill levels make you "feel like we have no role" ?

If someone plays more than someone else (and presumably raises their skills while doing so) how does this have any effect on you or anyone else ?

 

That's the beauty of a specialization system. Right now everyone is trying to get everything and be perfect. As a player character we should have strengths and weaknesses and we should make choices on who we want our characters to be. With a specialization system we'd have to make hard choices, and we'd have to work with others at times to fill in our weaknesses.

The whole point of specialization is we wouldn't have every skill. If we all have resistance to every school of magic and defenses against everything, then how are we any different?

Someone playing as a taunting tank, might purposely build resistances to all the schools of magic, but he'd specialize in that and he would have to sacrifice other specializations to get it. He would earn a name of being a very defensive tank, and people would seek him out for that role. Currently, everyone is getting everything though, and his goal of being a defensive tank of renown can't happen.

 

Imagine you have a vision for your character to be a great wizard that throws fireballs. You start the game as a fresh character a year from now. You just broke 80 skill and you're very proud of your accomplishment. You're now ready to seek out adventure with others. You join a group and you're following the main tank around.

You look up and see your main tank has 75 grand master skills. He then decides to throw some robes on in the middle of the adventure, pulls out a full deck of fire mage spells and is now a wizard that puts you to shame.

As a new player trying to specialize as a fire mage, how do you feel? Are you going to feel like you've came late to the game and can't fill a role anymore? Are you going to just turn the game off and give up?

To suggest that people should have no caps and be the best at everything and that this doesn't effect the roles of other people is nonsense. In an insulated bubble, sure that would be true. In a massive multi-player experience, that would be the farthest from the truth.

 

I don't think players should have to specialize, but I think that the trade off between specialization and versatility could be a lot better. I think that the way it is now, diminishing returns are just too steep for specialization to be viable at high level. I'm pretty sure there are plans to work on this some more though.

 

If we allow specialization it won't prevent people from working on non specialized skills, and with unlimited caps (even with diminishing returns), at least there's an endless carrot in this game, unlike many other games.

I'm not suggesting, that my suggestion is necessarily the best one, but I believe some sort of system that allows our characters to form a niche that put's them apart from other players is a good idea for the future of the game.

 

Few things with this one. 1) By the time someone gets to 80 skill, they've also pretty much figured out grouping/grinding out scenes. So if someone switches to tank to fire mage, all the power to them, because that means faster clearing which in turn means more xp for said new player to advance faster. 2) I am on point with specialization, but don't think we need 15 key spells. As someone else stated, regardless of how many of whatever you have, you can only use 1 weapon (except for dual wield), 1 set of armor, and 1 deck to use at any given time. Also, play styles are a huge factor in how people use their skills and such. So even though they may have 75 GM's, what if they just did it for fun, but their real play style is healer? Still a role. 3) I would be more than happy to team up with anyone that has 75+GM's. In this game, having someone that has GM's in your party gives you a boost to gains in that skill. So if you are a new player, grouped with Mr. 75+, be happy....he's helping you. Just my thoughts on the matter.

 

Maybe if they had to where you choose like 2 specializations per type of craft, and those specializations are have their xp requirement for each level halved so you progress much easier to higher levels in the specialty?

 

Why not just allow a decay system to be fully implemented. This forces people to "specialize", otherwise if they spend a year grinding out all the trees (to some extent), they'd lose points everywhere. However, in my circumstance, I can see a benefit to leveling up some skills in various trees. I myself am interested in Death, Air and Chaos. I want to do Moon for some PvP skills (it seems). But I also want to level up Water/Earth to get my resists as high as possible (that's the right side of both Water/Earth). In addition, in Tactics I want my Health, Strength and Heavy Lifter up there. And since I am a mage, a lot of the focus tree is going to help. I also need my dexterity up (2-3 skills) for the stun effects. Finally, I am using a wand and a shield. So I've got 3-5 skills planned/working in the Shield Tree. And, wait, I eventually want to Tame as well.

That's definitely over 15 skills. And that's not going deep in every tree, just thinking 20-40-60-80 (that is, I level everything up to 20, then 40, then 60, then 80) for a few skills in other trees I will not pick all skills in.

I have a problem, I know.

 

i wouldnt want some predeterminded specializations. i specialize in what i do and upping the skills i feel i need. i dont need nor want no handholding there by some instance telling me what i should do next. bad enough its in the entry sequence (the choose bow because its blabla).

at some point you have to specialize if you want to see big numbers on your skills. some need that, pretty sure this aint going to be neccessary though.