Shroud of the Avatar VS UO skill system

hm.. there's an idea. the companies SHOULD have a repository where they all drop info on what did and didn't work...to help the gaming industry evolve the genres based on player needs and wants..

 

There was a MOBA called Fury, in which you could spec a character as you liked with gear. Tank gear made you a tank. Mage gear a mage, etc. Soon everyone had a set of gear for everything. Strangely, rather than enjoying this flexibility, I felt that my character had no core. I hadn't made a choice and grown with it. Instead my character was sort of nothing and I had no real commitment to it. As you may know, the game folded. I think it is a useful example.

I feel the same way with SotA. I can run with whatever spec happens to suit the weapons I have in my pack. When I level up, I get a generic stat increase, and I have some more skill points to spend - but somehow this is not exciting and not something I look forward to. Why? Because I have no commitment to any spec and have not already mapped out my progression. Ho hum, another level, who cares.

So, I agree with all those people who prefer the skill increase through use model. If we have to stick with the deck system - which is ok - but a real distraction, and a real block to optimum skill use, changing your deck should cost a lot.

 

Fury (wow what a lame game- I played it like 3 times and then deleted it). The reason it seemed "soulless" was because there really was no game outside of fighting in an arena. Hopefully SoTA will be better than Fury.

 

It was ok - but you reminded me of another issue it faced. The flexible customisation of characters had the result that over time, many people adopted the same specs once they had been shown to be the most effective. Is there anything to stop that happening here?

 

Just throwing in on skills e.g. UO vs SotA and what I like and dislike.

In UO grinding your skills was a chore. It wasn't difficult, not for any skill. Simply arduous. The advantage was you became something unique. A master thief who disarmed his foes and stole their weapons. A great mage with almost magical muscial talent or even a simple but sturdy warrior who fell into combat like an axe into redwood.

The point is I didn't like the grind, but it made you appreciate the end result.

And what else? You were dedicated to that persona, it was immersive, and it was limited in a good way.

I like that SotA gets rid of the grinding to some degree, but I can't stand the lack of immersion.

"Oh, hello, you're that Moon Mage who helped us escape that roving band of Orcs"
"Hmm, oh, right. No, I'm a hammer wielding brute force warrior now"
"Uh.. ok"
"Actually, stuff this, back in 30 seconds, I think I'm going to be a Fireman"

You don't feel like you're playing a character with these simple and quick changes of role. You're just a guy putting on a new hat every 5 minutes.

 

One thing I didn't notice in this thread (and forgive me if I'm wrong, since there was a lot to read) was making mention of more difficult skills having to be gained through harder work. Any UO veteran knows it was easier to grind Swordsmanship and Musicianship than it was to train Magery and Resist, or training Mining and Tinkering over Alchemy and Poisoning. Some skills took a lot more time and resources, which equate to money (both IG and iRL), to effectively "level up".

Do you remember what this led to? I hope so, because the arguments are hashed out every single day on "era-accurate" (I use this loosely) shards around the world.

"Mages are stronger than warriors because it is more costly to train."

"Poisoning should be more effective (on weapons, nox mages, buffing the poison from DP to LP with higher skill, etc.) because it takes so long and costs so much nightshade to train."

So utilizing skills to actually train them is a great idea, in theory, but in practice it becomes a significantly different beast altogether. Each skill would have to temper the tedium inherent in repeating tasks ad nauseum equally so that one skill wasn't so terrible to train no one will take it, or rather defend its strengths (dare I say, overpoweredness) on account of time, resources, effort and so on. Ultimately speaking, everyone will be able to train any skill they want, but the less-than-hardcore crowd may not be able to reach their goals in the same way or frequency. This could be argued for anything in an MMO setting, but most people who are bringing up the issue of skill-specific training should recall that element of UO that, to this day, still enkindles flame threads regularly.

Personally, I always prefer using a skill to level it, simply because otherwise someone will find out what the "easiest" skill or activity to grind is in order to get the levels up to distribute skill points. But we can't exactly go back to what UO was, because it just led to overnight macroing in houses or in dungeon corners somewhere, defeating the purpose of even playing the game until "the end" in the first place.

 

I gotta say, taking a year to master magery, another for provocation and such kept me a paying customer for at least three years. Additionally, I was quite proud of my accomplishments. Being able to provoke the strongest creatures on one another was so satisfying because of the hours and hours of hard work that got me there. Others appreciated the accomplishment too. It does not bother me if someone figured out how to game the system and mastered these things in a less honorable way. That did not diminish my personal accomplishment one iota.

Perhaps gaining skill in the easiest and fastest way via Sota scheme and transferring to whatever genre I want at any given moment has some personal payback, but I cannot imagine any sense of accomplishment personally. The world has changed and my yearning for the good old days is not understood. In real life, being a scientist is not what it used to be. Now days, you make up whatever theory that supports the popular interest, and funding for your life and family follows. You really do not have to be expert in anything. Furthermore, no one seems to care.

 

I was with you up until the "scientist" comments.... Not really seeing that correlation, but (think) I'm getting your gist anyway. The UO skill system was way better than skill trees, agreed. I love it too (and still play "official" UO on pacific occasionally, in between new games- me and like 10 other players have the whole shard pretty much to ourselves )

Sadly, there seems little chance a use-based skill system will be implemented in Shroud, no matter how hard some of us pine for it on these forums. Rationally speaking, they've already invested far too much time and effort into the current iteration to back off now

 

Still, plenty of opportunity to make flipping between roles less frivolous.

You want to meet old friends and have them be a certain person. It's hard when your arcane buddy suddenly becomes a rogue overnight.

 

Pyro, don't take this the wrong way but, I'm not sure if you're agreeing or arguing with my last post... Just to clarify, I was basically stating the same thing as you (i.e. I don't like arbitrary point-allocation OR skill trees; I DO prefer a use-based skill progression).

 

Oh, I was agreeing

I was also agreeing that the skill trees are probably set in stone (or very firmly by this point, whether we like it or not). But I was also saying that how skill points are currently re-allocated and how often it can be done is probably still up in the air. So we might see some stricter ruling on that when they've all been fleshed out a bit more, hopefully

 

The only way my fishing skill should increase is by fishing.

 

I can appreciate hard work, but people are attracted to end game content, not grinding rabbits and wolves. It isn't that they cannot appreciate the journey, either, but rather that they didn't pay for a game to train when the reason they installed it was to sail the seas as a pirate or lead the charge in a mighty battle. These things don't happen when you're facing level 70s as a measly 20.

My recent stint on ArcheAge was just that. I cannot stand item-based PvP and grindy games, yet ArcheAge offered just enough grind, at first, to be tolerable. I raided trade packs in the West and intercepted smuggling runs by furries in the East. That only took me about 3-4 weeks to start accomplishing, and it took a lot of effort to do so for me and my small crew of semi-hardcore struggling RPers. lol Then Tier 3 Hasla weapons became the norm. Then the archeum tree fiasco erupted and wallet warriors took over the market big time. Suddenly I was facing classes that shouldn't have existed for months if not years while I was still struggling in my sub-par (for the time it was supposed to be) gear.

If someone told me it would take a year to go out and PvP and enjoy the sandbox-y nature of ArcheAge (which, for my playstyle, it effectively would have), I'd have told them to suck it. I wouldn't have installed the game and never considered paying a subscription for it. I'm not appraising SotA as UO2.0 because I know it won't be, and for good reason; however, if it was anything grindy like a modern MMO or repetitively unimaginative like UO was, I'd lol and never think twice about Shroud again. I'm not a teenager who wants to place a staple on his spacebar while he's at school to train Hiding behind a tree north of Cove; when I log in, I want to dual wield some schwards and dice somethin' up.

Accomplishments in sandboxes for many people do not lie in developing skills and stats - they reside in crafting a legend, their own.

 

Sounds good. But I don't see why crafting your legend can't also include a reasonably believable skill progression.

 

I don't really see any significant difference between the two systems in the long run- they both allow for Character customization, which is the main thing.

Levels with point buys does a couple of positive things: It eliminates grinding specific skills, which was a major occupation in UO. I did it and was gratified when done (I have legendary on 14 stones over two characters on Siege so I can grind with the best of em) It also gives that "ding" rush from leveling- which is a positive thing. They have really messed up on the animation and sound so the actual event is more like "ding?" I think I leveled up? than "DING!!" Oh YEAH look out I have LEVELED UUUPPPP!!!

The other positive thing to a point buy is not having to flush skills to change templates which is something that happened in UO. (Before skill stones)

Having skill progression tied to levels or whatever does not really matter- what matters is that it is fun to progress and fun to master skills while ending up with unique and interesting characters.

My main complaint about the current system is how drab and uninteresting the skill screens are and how little apparent impact spending skill points has on combat.

 

It isn't necessarily a bad thing to level a character and progress through game mechanics, but after 25 years of leveling characters of which 17 years were grinding MMO characters, "been there, done that" isn't just a t-shirt slogan. Just let me get on with throwing sand in people's faces and kickin' over some castles without devoting a part-time job's worth of grinding devoted solely to menial, repetitive tasks toward each individual skill while I sit and drool over all the pictures and videos displaying the reasons why I installed the game in the first place.

 

Usage-based skill gains aren't necessarily a bad thing either, besides, it's highly doubtful the game's gonna be this easy to "level up" at launch- most likely there's still going to be a lot of grinding involved. But that wasn't even what my post said...

Point is, I don't like "skill trees" with generic points assignable to anything (seems like every other game is doing it too)... I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

I have to agree. All games that require a form of xp to gain in power are arguably a grind. However, that grind is more compelling for me when it's usage based skills. I just like the idea that what I use increases in skill versus generic point assignments. Part of the reason is that it also opens up the possibility of "true" ( for me) master ranks...you know a person is a master in a skill because they used or practiced enough that skill instead of them, on the fly, quickly swapping to a flavor of the month build by just reassigning skill points (and yes I understand why the ease of easy skill reassignment is a good thing too, and yes for me, the overly repetitious skill usage is meaningful even if someone can macro exploit skill gain).

But looks like the generic skill point distribution is here to stay and I can live with that.

 

just re-read this whole thread to be sure, i've only seen people say it pretty much this way, and never really seen anyone all for the current system. i mean, people said they would be 'OK' with the current system, but i just don't see any reason why Port shouldn't add on a skill system as a seperate layer of skill, then just modify the formula to take that number into account when performing action X.

the type of skills available for combat right now, are kind of telling me they may in fact be leaning towards something like that, but after they add the crafting skills and finish tweaking THAT system as a whole.

ok, hope plays a lot into this..but i pray anything that is holy, "Please Portalarium, Please Listen to the Community in This!"

 

Not true, somewhere in the late nineties developers made the startling discovery that if you offer more rewards for quests and reduced the number of fodder enemies, you could create an XP based RPG that doesn't require grinding (see Baldur's Gate for example). The world rejoiced, and then the MMORPG was developed and it required a monthly subscription which forced developers to re-implement the grind and re-brand it as "Accomplishment", killing 10,000 rats isn't a pointless grind anymore, your fortitude makes you better than other players.

Unfortunately, if SOTA wants to have a player-driven economy, it can't have usage-based skill progression, over-production of junk and over-consumption of resources will kill it as fast as it killed UO's.

To be specific, from the recent announcement:

Meaning, in short form, that crafters will not be able to profit from over-crafting items. If you force them to, for skill progression, you can flush any "carefully crafted macro-economic system" down the crapper.