Themo: end of release feedback

@Chris

Passives do not feel like they progress as well they should considering how much use actives require to see a passive gain in the combat areas. This is also the case in harvesting/refining/production but doesn't feel quite as punitive because you're not having to pay up to them just yet.

As a general rule, if you have players standing still somewhere casting spells in rapid succession because the idea of just using them in combat is too frustratingly slow, that's likely a good indicator that they're not moving up as fast as players would like (I see a LOT of this and do it a lot myself so.....).

 

Nicely said. I'd be curious to see what skills/spells people think don't level fast enough, but that's something I'd have to start at the beginning of R26 so people can comment on it as it happens instead of thinking back on it.

 

I hear you, but I prefer to trust the data/actions myself; were there a way to report upon chain-casting skill work, it would reveal which skills see this behavior pretty quickly. Behaviors around either not moving and chain casting or chain casting on gustballs, a pattern of affliction upon a pet, upon the player, and then, regularly timed recasting of purge, heal, etc.... the hardest part about data insight/analytic is that you have to know what you want to know before you can determine what data is needed to tell you. There are some game companies that see intrinsic value in play analytics and some who find it of lower priority; generally speaking, it's a great way to suss out design issues before they become crisis that impacts planned/scheduled content development and delivery.

 

See it that way Drocis, the 100 H you might have to play is not only grinding/farming but get knowledge about the skills and ability's of your avatar.
You can use this time to get all the scenes know batter. Knowing your surroundings is important for pvp and using it to your advantage.

Time and training is the key to get good in something.

 

Just a question to better understand this statement:

1. Are you saying that the act of logging on contributed to the decay? or
2. Do you mean "although we logged in each day but did not craft or fight.. we accumulated decay"?

I assume you meant 2. and not 1. because that has been my understanding (whether or not you log on you accumulate decay if you don't train your skills).

By the way, Themo, I like your example because it realistically explains what happens if you aren't out fighting and training. I have started to unlock all the skills I don't want to decay once a day and use them once one after the other before logging off. This is ridiculous and I know there are people out there who consider me a moron.

I am looking forward to the changes announced for R26 and hope that decay will be less painful. If I understand it correctly, locked skills will combat decay by constantly being a drain on the experience pool to ensure that they are maintained at the level they were locked at. (If I have misunderstood, could someone please set me straight?) If this is correct, we'll have to have a way to not maintain the level of a skill we no longer need or get rid of it completely, because the more skills that are being maintained in this way, the less experience will be available for skills that are actively training, and training skills will be very sluggish.

 

Well since we're not given a choice and they created that huge barrier of entry, it's nearly impossible to prove that wrong in SOTA. All I can say is that I strongly disagree with that line of thinking, and I think that if I were level 100 today I'd easily be able to show off how ridiculous that logic is.

 

@Chris Passives (innates, whatever) IMO are fine. Fairly quick in the lower levels, really tough to GM, and nearly impossible to level after GM'ing (like 7million xp to go from 100 to 104 in INT).

Other than Decay (which has been beaten to death even though they acknowledge its not working properly), leveling all skills seems fine to me.

EXCEPT FOR THIS

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...e-point-distrubeted-for-stacked-skills.43682/

 

If you are just offline for a month your decay (is meant to) cap at 3 days worth of decay, but if you are logging in and out the entire time and not training the skills then they will just keep building up decay until you use them.

 

Reserving this for a reply. Will be tagging producer when I do as this is far more complicated and hard to maintain than it should be. There is a very elegant way to do this that is likely less overhead for Portalarium to maintain (and achieve the same motivator results).

@Chris

My understanding of the goal is to require player to use skills to keep them current; this operates both as time sieve, progress gate (to mastery), as a money sink (training), and keeps player from being able to "master all the things" without using them all on a regular basis.

Additionally, the decay forces player to decide on a preferred style and keep it OR run the risk of falling behind, being less effective, etc.

While the goal of decay is a noble one: when you stop playing or stop using a skill (for => X time), decreases, and you'll have to work it back up.

The problem is that decay "feels" overly punitive because it doesn't reward or mitigate those who ARE here regularly and who DO invest the time, money, etc to raise the skill, but are exploring builds, play styles, etc. Indeed, it actively penalizes these activities which is not very friendly to new players or very incenting to "old" ones over time.

So one winds up doing things that feel "grindy" to avoid feeling like one is losing previous time/effort invested. Realistically, it would take an incredibly long time to forget a skill one has mastered; this may or may not be accelerated by injury, but should be that heavily impacted by lack of use for anything other than high-precision techniques.

Possible solutions that are more elegant:

1. Consider having a hard cap on ultimate/maximum decay value.

2. Consider having a skill available upon grandmastery that allows you to offset decay of that tree up to 100% depending upon cost or some other scalable factor.

3. Consider accelerating increase rate for resuming use of a decayed skill (whether on sliding scale, as a powerup, a specific quest per tree or skill or combinations of these).

4. Consider a quest only available upon grandmastery that locks against a % of decay and increase the difficulty of the quest line in accord with the % being protected.

5. Consider having actual age of account be part of the calculation of % protected from decay to incent players (erosion protection).

6. Make mid-level skills that are free to train NON-DECAY; start decay only upon entry to the trees progressing to grandmastery (this also curbs the "jack of all trades" mentality, which I suspect is one of your interests).​

Any of these could be avenues to could allow you to build/introduce micro content specifically to players inclined to recurrently lapse into decay; it would also allow you to offer DLC to incent revenue around delaying, mitigating, or stopping decay.

Ultimately, the game should be forgiving of lapse, or at least make recovery more reasonable and less punitive feeling in nature.

In closing, the usual YMMV disclaimer for those who need it....

 

I am frustrated by wanting to test, but testing is really only available to those with the time. If they opened up QA tools in the QA server then I could actually setup and test scenarios with repeatability. Being able to drop a skill level is just as important as raising it for testing.
As it stands, I leave the real mechanics testing to the power guys and I will keep looking for visual bugs. Sigh...

 

We have actually asked for that before, but they use QA for ..stuff

 

Lets say we all would start at level 100.
I know how the fight between you and say themo lock or magarite would end.
You would loos.

With out playtime, with out knowing your character you cant win.
Its like you would play against me c&c generals or neutral selection you would loos each game in the first few minutes.
The reason is simpel.
I am bad ass in these to games.
Why? I played this games for years. And they are games that suit me well.
I invested tons of times in c&c generals playing the singelplayer story and then evolve my game play by challenging my self against other players.
By thinking out of the box and having so much experience i came up with strategy and tactics that no one thought of when the game was new.
I could do that cous i had memorized every short key and had a deep game understand cous of the 100 of hours i invested in this game.
Very simpel.

OVer time you could catch up but you would need to invest ton and ton of time.

 

This runs counter to your argument (as well as many others) though.

How can you know something if you haven't tested it?!

You must understand that there are two levels of testing. Design and Implementation. They are equally important and just because something works as it's intended to work doesn't mean the design is good. Just because you haven't tested the functionality doesn't mean you can't opine on the design and suggest improvements. QA or Auditing works like this. You can't just focus on one without the other and expect to get good results.

I have a lot of respect for the work that goes into the test of implementation by those people that have the time and ability to test that. There's a huge level barrier to doing that however, which I believe is strong proof that the design is poor.

But back to your comment about the outcome of something that you haven't had the chance to test first hand. This is exactly what people are telling me that I'm doing by not being level 100. You can't have it both ways. Either I get a chance to be level 100 and prove my point, or I get to provide value feedback about the design of the game without ever being level 100. To try to pin me down in a world where I can't prove either without jumping through insane hoops is not conducive to developing or testing to get the best game possible.

And this is not just about me, it's about everyone having the chance to do that. Because once this game is launched, everyone will have that chance and if it's not fun they'll leave. If it's true what I'm saying, they'll leave. If it turns out this little siloed group of scrum testers didn't do a good job, they'll leave. So it's kind of important that we KNOW what we're talking about through a large population. It's also equally important that we don't rely on the same few people that have virtually the same playing style. We want our testing to be as diverse as possible.

 

I never said that you would loos cous you are not 100.
Its about how skills and spells acting on higher level then they do on lower levels.
They know the focus costs, they know how much damage they can take be for they have to heal ect.
They know this cous they played a lot.

ITs not about how good you are in games.
IF you would be tomorrow 100 and say themo to, you would loos.
If you guys would be tomorrow 100 and you would play for 2-3 weaks on 100 the outcome would be random. Who knows?

My point is you have to invest time into something if you want to be good in it.

ITs like using the level 100 coin in world of warcraft when you start playing again.
I was one of the best tank hunter and shamen on my server.

When i checked out the game latly i got a shamen on 100 with the service.
I had no clue what was going on. and it took me a weak to get slightly back into the shamen. It would had been batter if i would have played from 1-100

 

Or...as Themo demonstrated, he stays at level 50 and consistently beats players 20+ levels higher than him. To me, that means that the system is working well to create a level playing field where skill is the primary determining factor in PvP success.

Now, for comparison in LotRO or any number of WoW clones, if you took a level 50 player in full raid gear, and put him up against a level 70 player in full raid gear, the level 70 would win every time simply because he is hitting for 3x the damage and has 3x the hit points.

 

Just one more thing added to the decay part of the discussion. I feel that the decay system is a backward system. By that I mean players should be awarded the more they play, not disciplined for it. By focusing on preventing people that want to achieve above 100 in everything, decay punishes the more casual players even more. Capping innates to 100 could go a long way in helping with balancing between levels and skills. I know we are now married to the hybrid system, but since it's a hybrid system there could still be some caps to balance things and there wouldn't be a need for decay. Since many see innates as very powerful must haves, they could being capped at 100, and the combat skills continue to cost us more and more each level.
I wonder why more attention isn't being paid toward promoting bonuses for playing more, instead of disciplining players with the decay mechanic.

 

Because we have enough BDF hijacking jk! jk!

 

I agree though,we should not be punishing the casual players (I'm pretty erratic myself, and do not do the same things, everyday.. i'd get bored if I do) to keep the overachievers from getting too powerful. There will always be a level disparity between those who play/grind a lot and those who don't. We cannot punish those who have less time.

 

LOL so true!

 

I think it's clear, we cannot punish either group (grinders or casuals) for playing or not playing enough. To do so upsets either side. Is it wrong to expect a system where both styles are equal..? It would be nice.. but I have yet to see ANYONE with that idea to come forward with a viable system. Kind of like communism or socialism Sounds great! but is it fair and is it going to be implemented correctly?

The solution? Inequality as usual.. the grinders grind for many reasons.. some like it, some are obsessed with the numbers game, others just have nothing better to do.. none of these are reasons to limit them. As a casual player, I cannot expect to be as strong as someone who plays 10 times more than I do.. I think it is unrealistic and would never (and hasn't yet) worked. I cannot understand why we should/would have gm or skill caps as an alternative? What does it matter if someone is stronger than me, by huge margins? There are a lot of other players that are equal in strength if I were to pvp.. and a matching system would alleviate that perception of unequal opponents to spar with... which is what we need.

Decay needs to be reworked, or removed. GM/Level capping seems just as unnecessary, I still cannot see a need to worry about how many gm's another user has.. simply if I am in a situation where it matters (so far that is ONLY pvp) then I'd decline the battle.. which again would be not much of an issue with a matching system to find more equal opponents.