Skill Points - Everyone needs to understand Skill points where in a Pool, not going to last

There are TOO many threads out there with players wanting the game to change because of errors they have commited.

Used all skill points in Uselss Skills . . . . . .

No More Skills points avail therefore cannot gain anymore . . . .

Forgot to unlock skills . . . . . .

And now they want the ability to lower skills - Sorry (Perhaps in testing ONLY)
Learn that you have to ADV to gain more skill points - it isn't a bug it is as designed
Sorry that you forgot but the game should not unlock a skill just because you hit 10 below it. Players have to learn how to MANAGE their templates.

Macroing on a Gust ball will not be avail since you will NOT have points there. I said it should not have been allowed and the devs WARNED about it for R23 and let it go now players are complaining - Sorry.

R23 and Beyond player will HAVE to ADV to gain ADV levels which in turn will get you points that you can spend in your skills.

If you just turn them all up you wil most likely gain in some you don't want right away - you will have to plan out your gains.

 

Welp, I see the first problem.

Edit: More in the, if the skill is useless, why is it in the game, sense.

 

If you erect a barrier to fun & entertainment, create a bait & switch scenario (by design) and charge money for it, you can expect that will not go over well in the court of public opinion.

You need to let people undo their mistakes. Punishing customers for ignorance ensures exactly one thing: They'll cease being your customer and will tell everyone they had a bad experience. Don't do it, Portalarium.

 

Real decisions, real consequences. Sounds like a GREAT idea.

 

I said that is fine during this "testing" but a lot of them made mistakes just because they just didn't read instructions - that is not really a mistake just ignorance.

Players have a chance to learn from their mistakes uring this "Alpha" phase. The live game needs to make players do what Dorham says Real Decisions . . . .

 

IMHO: That philosophy will simply lead to fewer customers. Sorry, that's humans for ya.

 

I make real decisions that have real consequences 40-45 hours a week at my job. I play games to have fun, not agonize over whether or not I should turn XP off to skills at 10 or at 20. If I wanted another job, I'd just play EVE.

As to the skill points concern, I suspect that the higher a skill is, the more points it "consume" per use. Combine this with the grinding people did early on and many players are probably finding that the majority of their XP are flowing into a very small number of high ranked skills before low ranked skills can consume. The Devs could give us the lowdown so we could test it properly, but it seems they prefer that we stumble around and conjecture, so them's the breaks I guess.

 

It's fun how I like SotA's direction exactly because it reminds me of EVE: free choices, and forced consequences.

Luckily (for us), there are wipes. At release, one can always re-roll the char, or use further char slots. Or let it be, accept the mistake and go on.

 

I feel like the levelling system and the use-based skill system are a little incompatible with each other, or something's missing.

I know that we need to do anything we can to stop macroing, though.

It feels a bit like we're still levelling up, but without a levelling bar and without knowing how many skill points we can spend at a trainer.

I've found myself regularly trying to use my skills on monsters, being unable to kill them, and then running away from them. So I get no loot, no levelling experience, but a few skill gains out of it (until my invisible pool runs out, at least).

What's the fix here?

 

Mistakes? This idea behind re-specing has already been solved by numerous games, that is you just pay some kind of penalty for respecing. Whats wrong with that? Why don't we just make it so that when you die, its permanent, just like life, and you can't play anymore...there is your real consequences! rofl...

 

I wonder how long it would take me to level up my other 2 characters on my account; I don't expect it being much fun after the first one...
If you put it into an in-game timeframe, Id say it would be like 100 years to get a skill like "chain lightning" to a level that actually can hurt something haha

 

The usefulness of a skill often depends on what other skills you have. For example, if you have a skill that does single target ranged damage then the second skill you pick that does the same thing is less useful, the third skill you pick that does that exact same is extremely questionable, and the fourth skill you pick that is the same is full on useless to your character.

 

I would think the system needs to be well defined and outlined so that a player understand their decisions if they are going to be locked into it. As it stands now, I really don't have a clue as to all the ins and outs needed to advance properly and I would have to play for a while, making decisions (good and bad) before I could learn it. I don't think it is such a good idea for people learning the game to be forced to stay with all their bad decisions made while learning, without any way to correct it afterwards. Especially when everything is about as clear as mud to start. Just my opinion.

 

That is why in another thread I have asked Clearly for that information.

this is all testing so it all comes clean every few months.

 

You caught my attention with this information! Where does it come from? My mage has to use single target ranged spells. She does more damage with an untrained (stopped training at level 10) basic polearm hit, but that's another issue.

 

It's simply about avoiding redundancies in character builds. There is no special mechanic that makes similar spells less efficient when placed in the same build, it's simply in the nature of how characters work. Once you are hitting the point where you have enough glyphs of a certain type in your deck to cast that kind of spell as often as you need it there is simply no additional benefit from generating even more glpyhs for that type of spell.

Someone with one hammer and one saw has a more useful toolbox than someone with three hammers. The individual hammer always has the same usefulness, but the usefulness of a toolbox doesn't go up if it has nothing but hammers in it.

 

Unless the three hammers can magically combine and produce a "superhammer" that can punch rivets thru steel beams, and not only plant nails on wood.

IOW, don't underestimate stacks and combos.

 

I appreciate them trying new things during this testing phase. Being test though, and of limited time period, I can see the devs suggesting some things for people to try for them. All melee builds, all magic, hybrids, etc. Of course, there are the super players that figure out the min/max by instinct.

Finding out what works, and what does not is great. If people can't win their way through the small wolf spiders to advance level though, not much is being tested. It seems that the auto attack/range issue, if fixed might be enough to fix things like that.

That being said, I'm a fan of the use based system. We do need the option of point reset, limited by time and or gold. (Never a bad thing to have in the online store). A clear set of rules to the use of the use based system will be helpful, once finalized.

 

Agreed.
Although with the Use Based with the slugs for nr of glyphs in the deck I have several times in mid-level range had to have several skills with similar effect since grinding a single skill high enough to get enough copies of it has been too boring.
So in the old system I would have bought 5 glyphs of one skill, but in this Use Based system I often found myself using two similar skills with 2-4 glyphs each... Just to fill out the deck.

 

Yea, I'm not saying there is never a reason to use two similar skills, just that there are diminishing returns on it, so skills that can be individually useful can still make a bad build when put together in certain ways.