Suggestion: Use adventure level to limit the number of skills one can train

Well, that is true, but it changes quite quickly into being stronger with 20 skills at 70 than 5 at 100, especially when it comes to innates. Most skills are garbage below 40, but then, above 80 the gains are not quite worth it (some exceptions could be found).

 

By that time, the player is no longer a newbie and has a deeper understanding of the systems.

You can have 20 skills at 70, but the best way to get there is to level them up in small batches instead of letting them progress naturally. I believe that's a fundamental flaw in an RPG that tries to build a convincing world.

... And, forget the hybrids for a second, we're talking about a scenario where a player just wants to focus on one particular role. "You want to be a tank? Here's a list of all the skills you want to use but don't train them all at once!"

 

Except that you can't even unlock most skills until the ones above it are 40. I think that it's actually much less of an issue than is being portrayed here. It certainly hasn't been an issue for me.

 

How about letting us all see how much Experience is being allocated and where during the play session? Yes, I know we have been pushed far away from that idea. It still has its benefits and I doubt it would turn everyone into a spreadsheet guru nerd. People know that they need to manage, but the tools for managing are hidden on some hair brained idea that managing should be the furthest thing from your mind. You are supposed to "JUST PLAY THE GAME".

 

As I stated before: Most players of videogames are no retards, all, without exception, will get it. For me, it took a few days until I found out how it works with the skills to train, maintain, not train. And I am not the hardcore player kid, which knows the basics of all videogames.

 

Personally I don't think changes are needed, but clearly new players find the skill point system a steep learning curve. The in game help could be stronger on the deck and skill point systems which is the quite unique aspect of Shroud, so even experienced MMO players can be flumoxed. Currently player made wiki's don't really address this well either.

If there has to be in system 'hints' about channelling experience points, I prefer something non verbose but along the lines Aldo suggests. Each skill card icon explored under 'K' could conceivably show a red, amber or green 'glow' based on the proportion of skill points going to it from the most recent combat(s). In terms of which cards to use and what's efficient, that's pretty obvious already from how quickly you kill or die.

To me this isn't needed, but it would be helpful to newcomers. Boiling all this useful stuff down on the Deck system, it really is just about optimising the flow of skill points into how many or how few skills to make your character as effective as they can be for their current relative level. If your build isn't effective, it's no big deal, you just have to hang out with lower level mobs for a bit longer, or find a group and expect that quest progression get stalled a bit. But isn't that kind of the point of the challenge?

For me quest progression is the big weakness, but that's a whole other story.

 

That doesn't make it any less problematic.

We're no strangers to video games... Sony should get on board:


Players are smart. They'll figure it out!

Just because something can be learned or that people can get used to it, doesn't make it any less garbage.

Congratulations! It doesn't affect you! I'm living through it.

I have to train Dexterity, Healthy, Silent Movement, Distract, Dodge, Defensive Stance, Blade, Thrust AT BARE MINIMUM... and this is only 8 skills. Lets not forget skills like Sap and Sneak Attack, Evasion, Armor Weak Point, Rend... oh and lets not forget all of the pre-requisites that need to be at least level 40.

Having something that is un-intuitive doesn't necessarily means that it's hard to understand. I know how to system works. That's not the main issue (it is a problem, but that's not my main point) the game is asking me to do something that goes against everything that I believe I should be doing in a RPGs. NOT TRAINING something that my character NEEDS to let other skills train faster is counter-intuitive.

 

It doesn't affect me because I have all my skills set to train and I have since persistence (except for a very few occasions where I had a specific goal in mind). You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

 

Agreed. This is basically an issue of the pacification of RPG (MMO, etc...) gamers over the past 18 years (since UO). When games went "3d" (EQ starting it), they got extremely simple and "on rails".

I embrace the complexity like Ultima games and Ultima online. I played U4 when I was young (probably 10-12 years old) and I put a hundred hours into it (C64) and still barely knew what I was doing. When I revisited it later when I was in my mid-teens I picked up far more and was amazed at the complexity and things I missed even though I still probably only understood 50% of it.

SOTA is complex and it was even a shock to me at first (not being used to it) but like complex games... the reward in game is learning it and utilizing the complexity to make yourself powerful. UO was great at this also, the best players in the game understood this complexity, using things like UO assist early in the game for key combo's and quick actions (pop that deadly poison cure in a split second).

If people cant get into this complexity then it is my opinion for me and myself only that this is probably a good thing, I dont want to be stuck like I was in WOW in the west commons full of trolls flamming each other in area chat. Im all for the mature gamer and THAT is actually what we have in our community now. If that means we get 100,000 mature gamers over 1,000,000 flammers, Im fine with it.

I actually quit MMO's for a while over the past 5 years because they were to simple. I picked up a big flash based space game that was P2P but was extremely complex and the people who learned and understood the complexity and statistics did the best in the game, time didn't matter all that much.

 

I love the skill system in SOTA. Yes, it took me a bit to figure out the XP pool system, but once I did, it's been quite enjoyable. It's also forced me to really strategize what I level up, and when, and made me have a better understanding of how each skill affects my build. I would be against changing the current system. I do think better documentation to be provided at some date on how the pool system works would be useful, but that's a final polish bit.

 

How many skills do you train, what adventure level are you and what level of content can you do?

You'll forgive me if I sound like I'm making a big deal out of it, but I don't tolerate mediocrity in the games that I play.

No. This is an issue of expecting quality design.

It's really funny when people use the "people are used to be on rails" when I'd be the first in line to promote games like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter. Games that do everything possible to make you learn things by yourself and NOT give you anything on a silver platter.

This is nowhere near Dark Souls quality in design... yet SotA is done by veteran RPG designers... Pioneers even... Flaccid Skyrim is more in-tuned with how RPGs should be than this.

 

I think what you're saying is its an issue of being complex vs. being complicated.

But more to the point, a lot of times SotA feels like managing a spreadsheet -- min/maxing different numbers -- and not role-playing. And plenty of MMOs are about min/maxing in this way, in a way the Ultima games never were. I don't remember having to manage all sorts of numbers in Ultima IV. In fact, the Ultima games purposely hid numbers from you. UO often did too.

I have no problem in abstract with the skill system, but the more it can get streamlined into a good role-playing experience, the better, and also the more intuitive it will be to new players.

 

Exactly.

 

nope all the players who are whining about why they cannot gain and learn they trained to many skills just need to go read some of the player generated resources and learn how to manage their training.

This has been a dead horse since around release 15, players who just want to go out start the game and train have no one but themselves to blame for weak skills, having skills they don't really want trained . . . . .

there is more than enough information out there on how to train effectively that there is no need to create a Hand holding system.

 

I'm currently training 28 adventurer skills (mostly innates). I have two GMs (ranged combat and aimed shot) and a number of skills that are currently locked because they're at a level that's good enough. I'm adventurer level 76 and I currently have little problem with most 5 skull scenes.

 

You say that like it's a good thing. I don't WANT the complexity of how I develop my character to be restricted.

This is a good point, it seems to be that adventure level (at least as we define it now) should NOT be how we decided what you should be fighting. That said, something more complex would be hard to come up with...

maybe something like the total number of skill levels, weighted so that higher level skills count disproportionately to lower level ones? (that's just a vague notion though, no idea how it would work in practice)

On a personal note, my pet peeve is that I can't keep a counter for my pool count up without the entire skills window being open. It's not like it's being hidden from me, it's just in an inconvenient place.

 

I think an average of your top 4 or 5 skills might give a better indicator of your preparedness than adv level.

I'm with others that disagree restricting skill choice is a good solution. The freedom of this system is great. I'm not as troubled by the mechanics as @Gix but it does produce occasional frustration in character advancement. I recently took train strength from ~60 to ~70 (immediate goal is 80). So, I spend about a week (1-2 hours a day player) with everything turned off to grind up 1 million xp. Then I turn the one skill on. In about an hour I gain the 10 levels and burn 500k xp. I know see that to get to my 80 goal, I'll have to spend another week or more with everything turned off to build a bigger pool and get my next 10 levels without making any other character advancement during that time.

My alternative is to just leave it on, burn my xp down to like 50k where it should sustain with the skill left on, and then probably spend more than a month of slow, sloowwww, skill progression (of just one skill). The former method is more satisfying than the latter, but only just.

It might have been better to simply have had xp directly applied to a skill that is used at the time of use at a flat rate, regardless of other skills that are active. The xp pool method both frustrates the new player with it's learning curve and provides too much potential for exploit by advanced players.

 

There would have to be something more then that, I think, because that would be unable to distinguish between a 5GM and a 10GM, which could belie quite a difference in power.

 

Just to note, str/dex/int are some of the hardest skills to level, as they consume the largest amount of XP to reach level 100 (12 million something). I recommend a minimum XP pool of 3 million if you're going to train them. I just got dex to 80 with a 3 million XP pool baseline. Generally I'd get myself to 3.3 million or so, and then level the stat twice. Rinse, repeat.

 

I guess I don't play at that level then because I assume once you get 5+ combat GMs, everything should just turn green . You're probably right, need to account for innates and active skills.