The Grind

I don't think opening up actual avenues of advancement beyond killing the same creature over and over again will end grinding. If you prefer to grind, you should still be able to do that. But don't force everyone to grind. If I really can build up my character through doing quests then that will make me happy. You can still grind in that game it's just not required.

 

That's what Pillars of Eternity did and I thought it worked fine for that game. I'm not sure it can work in SOTA with its use - based system and soft level cap idea.

 

Helm your overall explanation makes sense but I needed to highlight a couple extremely important assumptions that you have made which is note worthy. Both comments in bold assume that the higher level person has used their XP pool in a optimal way and know how to set up their deck to get the most out of it.

For example, I might have twice your XP but if I have it spread out across too many skills I might be gimping myself, or if I fail to level key passive abilities, or if I put points into two opposing fields of magic.

or maybe the way I put my deck together is not well designed so I might find myself with limited attack skills or no heals when I need it and you have a deck that gives you the best chance of drawing glyphs that are always beneficial.

 

Thanks jschoice, your're quite right, it is very important to take note these assumptions. I tried to stay in the context of the OP, which basically puts forth the question "does it require grinding to be able to compete in pvp?" and I simply tried to put it in easy to understand numbers.

I think an FPS game analogy might clarify this further for some folks. In FPS games (like say CS:GO) there is no character progression, but one (for example, depends on the game of course) earns money and can improve the fighting chances by purchasing gear (better weapons and armor). In this analogy, XP is similar to money. Let's say a cheap pistol (that has any chance of penetrating the opponent's armor) costs $500, decent basic gear (let's say an assault rifle and some armor) costs $4.500, and top-of-the-line gear costs $9.000. It is sometimes possible to defeat an opponent equipped with top-of-the-line gear with just a pistol, but in reality it is very rare -- you need at least basic gear to have any realistic fighting chance (and while top-of-the line gear does give some further advantages compared to basic gear, on that level it's the actual skill that starts to matter much more).

Now, in the context of my analogy, the amount of XP (converted to $) a level 40 player has available to spend on gear (=skills) is around $700, a level 65 would have $7.700, and a level 80 would have about $32.000. So our level 40 player can never afford anything but just the equivalent of a basic pistol, our level 65 character can afford basic gear (and can get close to top-of-the-line if investing everything in combat, but not quite), and our level 80 character can afford anything while leaving a lot of $ to spare for other things (which are typically nonexistent in FPS games of course).

Continuing this XP<->$$ analogy, my own 62th level character has so far earned around $5.800, and from that amount maybe $4.000-$5.000 has been invested in skills that improve my combat ability, so I can handle myself well enough in combat (for my needs), but it's nowhere near optimal because the skills have not been selected with any PvP in mind (and even in PvE context it's not that min-maxed, my choices have been more rp-oriented or related to testing). That said, it is very likely that I can still wipe the floor with any level 40 character regardless of how lousy my deck arrangement might be, quite possibly I could do many single-shot-kills with one >200hp Aimed Shot critical against many builds.

Speaking of criticals, one thing I like about FPS game mechanics is that a single headshot with a mere pistol can actually be enough to kill even a high level character/monster. None of this "well that was a perfect headshot, right through the brain, but your opponent has 842HP so you're going to need 7 more of those" -business. But I digress.

To sum up, looking at the numbers, I can only conclude (in the context of the OP) that

• yes, essentially, PvP combat in SotA is basically just HP-DPS war, and consequently,
• yes, lower level characters stand next no chance in PvP (except in groups/teams as near-dead-weight participants);
• yes, getting to high enough levels where you can actually start to matter in PvP can be an epic grind;
• yes, the concept of "low level character PvP" (except in the said groups) is probably an oxymoron.

Now whether or not this is good or bad is of course a matter of personal opinion. I have no real opinion on the matter either way, as I'm probably never going to enable my PvP flag permanently (because of the IMO boring DPS game mechanics, and because I have zero hope that the majority of PKs of this world are going to have any decent RP justification for their actions). However the opinion expressed in the OP is spelled out pretty clearly, and I fully support that.

 

The following quote from Chris post on the new combat system posted from August of 2015, "for those who are less concerned with becoming grandmasters. If a player just wants to get skills to 40 (which unlocks 3 out of 5 possible glyphs), then they should be be able to get 15 skills to 40 in the time it currently takes to go from level 5 to 20 under the current system. And just a reminder, 40 is approximately 70% of the effectiveness of a grandmaster."

If the above information from Chris is true the difference between a person with skills tat level 40 compared with someone with the same skills at level 60 is at most 10% more effective. 10% in MMO standard is not that big of a gap in open world PvP. If this was the traditional level route of many MMO's that is based only on XP which not only significantly increases the skill/spell power, Hit Points, and grants the higher level to more powerful armor and weapons then a level 40 stands no chance going against a level 60. It seems to me that the power slope levels off dramatically post 40.

 

While Chris might hold this opinion, skill level aren't more than tangentially related to who is winning in combat. In my experience, gear and level play the biggest roles, with STR/DEX/INT in second, weapon skill levels in third and active skill levels in a distance 4th.

 

Welcome to the "revolutionary" card combat... which was implemented while ignoring 90% feedback about it.

I got used to it, I'm not complaining, just saying... even in the "dev" section it took repetitive begging just to get an idea of the math behind the basic combat. Even then so little was revealed that it sounded like someone didn't want feedback in the first place.

 

This is not a simple system that can be accurately explained by saying "level 60 is only 10% more effective than level 40". That might be true if one of the two characters were completely gimped by bad skill point placement. But on the whole, a level 60 character that has been "appropriately" min/maxed will wipe the floor with a level 40 character. The gap is not as pronounced and the level 40 might win occasionally, but statistically if you have them battle it out toe to toe the level 60 will win an absurd amount of the time. This is because there's very little actual skill involved in this combat system, and because the level 60 character will have more hit points and do a higher range of damage than the level 40 character (far more than 10%).

Chris is also talking about a single skill vs. a single skill. Not a character at 60 vs. a character at 40. The character skill (for example, Bladed Combat) is mathematically 70% the effectiveness of a grandmaster. But player characters are more than just a single skill.

 

I really have not played around with gear so I can't comment about the "uber" gear that is in game. Most crafted gear I have come across on vendors has only had minimal stats at best but I am sure by what you are saying there must be some powerful stuff out there.

 

How much alcohol and new add-on cash-flow would be required to get @Chris, @Lum and @RichardGarriott to each play and stream (Twitch) a completely new (no 4x exp bonus), Benefactor Adventurer, non Dev powers character in solo online mode during the next hangout session? That would actually server multiple purposes! I assume it would be fun to watch for us, the developers would each gain additional time to test the 'play feeling' as new, non money, low time player (because they can still answer questions and chit chat via teamspeak like 'normal' players would, right? ) and it would easily display what is 'average possible' within an hour and a half, given their very different play-styles (I'd guess Lum would be mainly running errands, Chris would be covered in enemy blood and Richard might end up as a mixture with a god amount of admiring the stars ;p ).

Edit:
P.S.: It would have to be solo online to prevent people from helping or hindering. And for an additional bonus, it would be incredible fun if @Themo Lock would attend and do the very same to have the 'extreme power grinder' covered as well.

 

*eschewed laughs*

Extreme power grinder hahaha

 

That would be one LONG boring hangout.

I'd like to see Richard do this though. Maybe a first few hours of the game type thing. Because apparently you can get to level 40 in a group in about four hours. Something tells me RG would not be close to this in solo play.

 

Where's the difference to one of the normal hangouts? Or rather, why would it be boring? You'd have four Twitch channels and one Google+ hangout to choose from. You'd still get them to answer the questions (only this time via voice chat). The only thing you wouldn't see is Chris playing with his fake axe and taking shoots

 

Thats it *rofls*

I wonder if the devs when trying the game have used the /set level 50 just to be reasonable

Have you seen Baron Fondorlatos : it seems that Lord British honors one of the most prolific RMT sellers of all times who contributed to the degenerescence of alot of MMOs into capitalist ventures. He plays with him for a few hours, its so very surprising how very little they're able to accomplish and what kind of favoritism is going on here...

His name is Marquis Dragon you can find it on youtube... I laughed during the whole video, its hilarious but sometimes uncomfortable because I'm not sure they realise just how absurd it is...