Skill progress mechanics should be improved to be more fair and avoid grinding

I experimented more and found that there is really no time window, but XP pool. Yes, Bowen you were right.

Anyway, every second target gives you NO XP as all your XP from pool is spent on previous target.

By the way, when I first posted this thread there were time window for skill leveling.
Seems now it's changed and XP is added to pool without expiration.

Update - XP pool resets if it's not spent and you are killed.

 

I've backed SotA to a fairly high level based on demonstrated performance from the Dev team (pre-SotA and during SotA) and on continued faith that I will see a game that has a LOT of dimensions to play. None of these dimensions should be easy, but also none should be too hard to drive anyone away from the game.

I look forward to seeing how the Developers will keep us interested in mid- to post-Episode One -- that is, how to keep the game interesting for people who have already maxed out in some of those dimensions (combat, PVP, PVE, crafting, quests, housing, decoration, player town, charity drives, transportation and shipping services, commerce, economic warfare, player quests, libraries, constellation discovery, control point management, story-writing, play-writing and acting, music, radio, reporting, and of course Fishing!). I believe "mastering" this game will not be possible as it would take 3 or more full time persons to experience everything possible ... and the community/guild/town/economy aspects are limitless. Keeping this game "alive" will also depend on us--the community of players--since each of us contribute to the challenges/enjoyment of others in the game too.

My comments may be a bit off topic--sorry about that. I just hope we see many more things going on in the design of New Britannia than the skill progressions. I foresee this game adapting, mending, blending, and advancing well beyond what we see today, which is why I am "all in".

Thanks.

 

Every body uses the term grinding so loosly latly.
The very basic conzept of each rollplay so far is following the plot and on the way encounter enemys and kill them. You will get rewards like xp and loot.
If you are to weak go out in the world and train.

When peapel talk or complain about grinding thy say most of the time: Oh no! i have to go out and kill stuff to level up thats grindy thats bad.
Not killing mobs to train or to progress makes a game grinding, its the not fun fealing with combat.

If the combat is no fun and peapel do it only to progress than they feal its grinding.
If the combat is a lot fun and holds dangers, peapel dont call it strait away grinding.

Work hard for what you want to achive. This counts for games as allsow for the real life.

With upcomming quests and more interresting enemys fighting will be more of a joy and the grind fealing might go away.

In world of warcraft daly quest arnt fun but every body does it for the reward.
And thats the problem doing somthing that is not fun in a game is a flowed game designe.

 

Brofist comming your way Winfield couldnt had it said batter .

 

I'm not grinding, I'm chopping wood so my carpenter can finish furniture for house, collecting cotton for beds, copper for future armor, killing annoying skeletons and things because they are in my way (and the loot pays to keep axe sharp)....etc

 

Agreed there.

It is all in a matter of perception really : If you find it a rewarding experience to traverse from Point A to Point B (whatever those points represent), then it is not a "grind".

However, if the only payoff for you is to reach Point B, then the journey simply becomes tedious busywork (aka "grind").

----

So far, I have simply ignored the parts of the game I consider "grindy" and focused on aspects that appeal to me.

Worked pretty well for me so far. Results for others may vary.

 

I would guess its cous you enjoy what you are doing wich is my point

But here lies the biggest problem of modern games. The jurny to get from point A to B should be fun and not only be there to extend time or to get a payoff.
Here is in modem gaming somthing horrible wrong. One way to do is when you go from point A to point B and you have random accounter make them interresting and hide secrets where ever you can.

As an exampel:

Edward wants to get to the undead necropolis.
He has to walk from Lockbrier over the foothills and the desert to reach a controlpoint. If he was lucky he didnt got zoned in all the way to the checkpoint.
He would run strait throu the checkpoint (ignoring every thing) and enter the other side of novia.

After get zoned in several times on the way to the necropolis (running away from all the monsters) he would reach his goal.

Say necropolis has the best ress in the game. So Edward start his farming run and collect klick collect klick releog reset the necropolis.

So far all this would for me grind. Wy?

I have no personal relation to any of the monsters i face on the way. They are bother some stealing my time and arnt my goal.
If the monsters in the checkpoint are dangerous for an npcs town or playerowned town and i build up a relation to some npcs throu there story this would be different. Getting zoned in with interresting accounter or zones .. weell i might skipp my farming run to investigate what is going on.

Maby i find a secreat magic tower that is bigger from the inside than from the outside. Maby i find a crying child wich is lost n the woods.
I want to be invested to realy be involved in such accounters. Get zoned in cous i crossed a roming kobold hord that whants atack Solcetown? Hell yea i would kill them. Get zoned in by skelletons wich have only the purpos to steal my time .... i would ignore them.

Making havesting interresting. and more than only klick on the node, that would take the grind out of ressfarming.

 

All games can be abstracted as a journey from A to B. The nature of A and B aren't really important, for most games everyone starts at the same origin A, but for many the destination B can vary, especially in open world titles where the player is encouraged to set their own goals. Depending on the game type, there may be a single path from A to B, many paths or the player may have to make their own path.

Though rise of walking simulators brings this into question, traditionally have placed obstacles in these paths (or at least where the player is likely to tread) to impede their progress, we can abstract these as gates. Gates come in all shapes and sizes, some require skill to open, others logical reasoning, luck or even just waiting for a time lock to open the gate. The unifying feature is that each gate requires the player to halt their progress and pay attention to the gate.

Gates can be judged in many ways, but for now let's just judge them on the "expected time to open" and "intrinsic enjoyment provided" by each gate. "Expected time to open" isn't just limited to gates with timers, any gate that tests your skill or makes you stop to think takes some amount of time. Good gates maintain a ratio between these two factors. A gate that is quick to open isn't expected to provide much enjoyment, while a gate that stops the player for days is expected to have a much higher payout.

Consider the Tower of Hanoi, it is a well defined puzzle that's solution is linked to the number of levels in the tower. If you ask a child to solve the puzzle with only 2 or 3 levels they are likely to stumble over a solution within a few minutes without ever understanding significance of the puzzle. If you give them a tower with 4 or 5 levels, there is a much better chance that they'll discover the significance of the puzzle and develop a somewhat optimal solution to the puzzle. If you give them a tower with 10 or more levels, they'll probably discover the optimal path, but the solution will take so long to execute that the reward and sense of accomplishment are outweighed by the frustration at the length of time to complete the puzzle.

That third scenario is often called grinding in RPGs. You know what you have to do to open a gate and you want to make progress towards B, but your sense of accomplishment is outweighed by the time it takes to open the gate. I want a Meteoric Iron Longsword with a Constantan Hilt. The gating factor in acquiring it is 5 Nickel. Yesterday I harvested a few dozens of mining nodes over the course of 3 hours and acquired 1 nickel (bad luck I suppose, as I got several tin). Personally, I'm looking at at least another day before I'll have the resources to craft the weapon and within a few releases I'll have to worry about leveling my smelting and blacksmithing skills as well. For me, 3 days of effort to complete a sword with tier 2 materials, when most of the time is spent waiting while my character swings a pickaxe falls below the time/enjoyment line, meaning it is grinding in my eyes, though if you find resource gathering to be more enjoyable, I can see how opinions may differ.

Personally, I'd like to see to see each part take one unit of metal, with an option to add a third unit to get the "inlaid with" cosmetic modifier and require that my character have been trained to work with each metal by an instructor.

 

While I agree that gathering isn't for everyone, in SotA you aren't supposed to be the end all/be all gatherer, refiner, and crafter of a particular finished product. You are supposed to engage the public economy to attain certain components to then craft said finished items. That is why in order to make an arrow, you need a miner, a smith, a carpenter, a lumberjack, and a field dresser (for feathers).... just to make one arrow. It's all interrelated on purpose and designed from the ground up to be more difficult/time consuming to achieve by yourself (but not impossible) and I think folks haven't wrapped their heads around that quite yet. It's not your typical Multiplayer RPG. And I for one hope they keep it somewhat difficult to make finished items alone in order to facilitate and foster the creation of the vast local player economies we all hope will exist within the game world.

 

Generally the best MMOs are good single player games made great through multi player. I'm not sure you can turn a crippled single player game great through multi player. Especially since SOTA is supposed to be both.

 

Skill increases are FAR FAR slower than they were with the point spend system. Especially in gathering.

Starting out a new weapon skill tree is also stupidly painful, especially at higher levels since you need 15+ skills to avoid slugs and you only have 1-2 with your new weapon. So switching later on will be a long horrible grind.

 

@Lord Gorynych
Seems you were misunderstanding how the EXP pools work...which is no biggie because it does seem a little strange at first with no documentation on it. There is a main pool (think of it as the main reservoir where all your exp goes for adventuring) which then flows into individual, relevant skills as you use them. Bowen explained that part so hopefully it makes sense now. One thing I'm seeing though is that a lot of people aren't using the system to their advantage. Turn off training for skills you don't intend to use. You will level the ones you want more efficiently without the adv pool draining into non-essentials. You can really customize your build this way by toggling on and off things to alter what levels and when. If you want to raise your Focus tree quickly, turn off everything except the bare essentials and Focus then go adventure in an area you can handle. Alternately, group up with someone and take on harder mobs.

Just for uber clarification, here is a break down of what was actually happening from this fight:

- I killed one target and get NO XP. ---You killed one target, get <x-amount> adv exp.
- I killed second target and get XP. ---You killed another target, get <x-amount> adv exp. Relevant skill used, see adv exp go towards the <y-amount> skill exp needed to raise that skill.
- I killed third target and get NO XP. ---You killed another target, get <x-amount> adv exp. Relevant skill is higher now so requires more exp to level, does not raise.
- I killed fourth target and get XP.---You killed another target, get <x-amount> adv exp. Enough in pool now to meet required <y-amount> to level skill again when used.
- repeated above steps many times with the same result. ---Yup...that is how it's supposed to work, we are just not used to having the numbers hidden from us!

Right now, quests are limited, so as Baron said, yeah..gaining adv exp is kinda limited to killing stuff. Especially if you already completed them in R20 since there was no wipe. But quests..there will be more of them. Not always combat-based. And they will of course give EXP.

 

@Soulicide

Yes, it was difficult to understand without seeing any data about adv.XP pool and skill's XP.
Is there any way to see how much XP is in the pool, and how many points exactly are added to pool from exact action and how many are taken from pool to train certain skill ?
In previous releases all XP gains were clearly visible in combat log, but now it's hidden and very confusing. Now it's impossible to realize which target gives you decent amount of XP and you may spend hours slashing monsters that very hard to kill for your character's build, but give very little XP.

 

Yep, inefficiency to no purpose. All it ends up being is frustrating.

 

Of course that's not how it will work, as players will kill big monsters and then do the XP dance to ensure their new XP goes into the correct pools, like every other game ever made using this type of system.

 

An combination XP --> use-based skill system?

 

Crawl: Stone Soup comes to mind instantly, where it was known as the "victory dancing".

 

Each point does a lot less, but we don't seem to be gaining the resulting stats from the skills at the rate we saw in R20. In R20, I was mining in Spectral Mines like crazy, and even got up to an 8x harvest from meticulous kicking in. Now at 34 mining skill, 33 mining speed, after mining all over the lands for many hours, with survey and meticulous turned off at 17 and 13, on the hardest mining nodes I'm up to a 39% chance and it still takes 30 seconds. (Adv. Level just hit 33) Yes, I do harvest the other stuff too, but the other three are at the 18-20 skill level.

Also, R20 had separate XP progression for adventuring level (kill monsters) and crafting (harvest stuff successfully, craft stuff). I have seen no definitive information on whether crafting and combat in R21 use the same XP pool. Do we now have to kill monsters to get good at breaking rocks and weaving cloth? Does breaking rocks and weaving cloth how make it possible for us to learn how to swing a sword or sling a spell?

 

Yes, even as a level 14 sometimes those zombie plagues can add up...seems some versions of plague are worse than others. Guess if you know you're going to be up against zombies, having Purify pinned to your bar is advisable . Maybe I should build a specialized "zombie" deck.

THIS! It helps to talk around and hear from others what are good newbie areas. Lately I've been sticking to East Perennial Trail as the mobs are generally doable at level 14 (as long as I don't get ganged up on) and they spawn rather quickly. The area south of Owl's Head currently has a looting/spawning bug, and the fear of spiders keeps me away...

I'm sure as development progresses more newbie areas will be added.

 

I almost wish SotA was a $15/month game, to ensure that the game will continue :-( I understand being poor, I am on a fixed income (Social Security) but even I can come up with $15 bucks a month. If someone has the kind of computer and Internet connection to play this game, I'm sure they can too.

<asbestos flame suit ON>