Use Based System is too easy to min/max

What's the downside to any of these skills?

Healthy
Dexterity
Strength
Intelligence

Armor Preservation
Heightened Awareness
Any of the Magic Spells but in particular Healing Spells

At least with Blades you have to use a blade, so it's specialized. But with magic you don't have that problem.

But if you think about it, who's not going to level Healthy? Who's not going to level STR, DEX, and INT?

Who's not going to have at least SOME magic and be viable?

I feel like to really balance out the Use Based System, all of the skills and spells in the game have to have a downside to using them. Players should be making a choice about what kind of skills they're going to have, not just going out and taking everything.

Yes, I know how the use based system works, that eventually players will have a hard time training everything because of skill decay. That's argument misses the point. Every player is going to have basically the same foundational build because the use based system demands it by making it ridiculously easy to level up all of the skills shown above. The way the skill trees work, everyone will max out on STR, DEX, and INT without even trying. Everyone will have a wide variety of low level magic - just because.

I don't think this is good for the game. It makes use based progression more about time played and less about choices.

For example: If I choose to be a powerful mage that isn't physically strong, the only reason that would not be the case if because I would have actively not trained in Healthy and Strength. There's no logistical reason this would happen, the game is handing people those easy HP's and STR points as a gift.

 

At first glance, what pops into my mind is fizzle rate?

 

How so?

 

Well, unless you wear only cloth, your fizzle rate is so high, you can't really do magic, so.. to answer your question of "Who's not going to have at least SOME magic and be viable?" my impression is, the answer is anyone who wears leather or metal armor.
Unless there's some other mitigating factor to fizzle rate that I'm missing?

 

I think the part that you are missing is that skill gain is dependent upon the XP pool, and if you train in 20 things, they will advance half as quickly (more or less) than if you train in 10 things, because the incremental fractional gains will be distributed over twice as many skills.

Also, the skill trees are a bit small right now, leaving fewer choices. I'm sure they're planning to add more skills later.

 

I wear leather armor all the time and have no problem with magic. If I wore plate armor I could use Earth, Life and Water without real problem - by design.

I don't think fizzle plays a large role in this.

 

I'm not sure they're planning to add more skills later. In fact, I'd guess that's not planned anywhere near Episode I.

As for the EXP pool, I stated that I understood that in the OP, though I may not have stated it every well. In any event, the problem I'm having here is that I can't see where large amounts of people will not have STR, DEX, INT completely maxed out. Can you? I also don't see a world where everyone doesn't have healing. It's just too easy to get the benefits from these things, and there's no downside to doing it. There's nothing that makes a player say "I can see where it would be better for me NOT to have a maxed out STR".

If the only reason not to max out strength (for example) is so you have a slightly easier time leveling some other skill, I don't see that ever being temping for more than say 1% of the player base.

 

I wear leather armour; up until this build I invested points down to the bottom of the Focus tree, this reduced my fizzle rate to zero. In this build it's going to take quite some time to get the same effect, even though I have managed to unlock the follow through glyph.

 

Why would a mage need maxed out or even high STR? Or a pure warrior INT?

Currently the skills lack the logic what constitutes a learning experience and what doesn´t, once that is implemented we´ll see no more leveling skills through unrelated actions. That in conjunction with skill decay is a rather effective countermeasure to the issue you describe.

 

Because Strength adds to your total hit points, your carrying capacity, and your ability to survive (hps). The combat system is heavy DPS so if you don't have a lot of hit points you're going to lose.

 

I completely agree with the OP. Especially this

I love the use based system, but we need to empower choices, not a "level it all" galore. all the skills mentioned are worrysome but the stats are something that needs to be layered up. I always have been against having the stats in the skill trees... now being able to raise all of them eventually it has become a major concern. How much time is going to pass before we see all the 80-80-80 avatars? because with the current implementation that's going to be common.

Because it doesn't cost them anything, and they'll get benefit from raising it. Stats benefit everyone (as Drocis said above), so they're only meaningful if the amount of points distributed between them is a choice by itself.

 

Ah, ok. Good to know, I assume INT adds to focus then? And how does DEX figure into this?

Still if they implement skill decay and a finite number of skill points a character can have it should solve the issue, at least in theory.

 

Dex is supposed to give you hit chance and int gives you focus, yeah. Every gets benefits from those.

Regarding the skill decay... that's not going to solve the stat problem because you're always using those, so as long as you're playing, your stats won't decay. Same goes for any skill which use is meant to be general (like armor and weapon preservation).

 

There's no max on skill points...that's why this is a problem. You can theoretically get to OVER 100 in everything.

 

That´s unexpected... I assume they plan on adding a skill point cap, otherwise the use-based system would indeed become highly unbalanced.

While we have infinite skill points, yes. If they add a cap, and I´m sure they will, it will solve itself provided the cap is low enough to enforce making choices.

 

They don't plan on it. What they plan on is skill decay balancing the playing field because people won't physically be able to spin all those plates to stay high level in everything. I don't have a problem with that, but the OP is a byproduct of that decision that would need to be compensated for.

 

But isn't that the actual balancing factor? Decay spread over multiple skills.

For instance, since I didn't think it through, as I was leveling in the this new Use Based system I kept unlocking the next skill tier over and over. Which eventually meant I stopped progressing in almost anything. This since the xp pool got so diluted that gain was very very very sloooooooooooowwwww.
So I had to rethink my strategy completely to get a progression curve more in line with what we used to have in the skill point system, and one of the first thing I did was stop the Healthy the Focus and such things. I did keep all three INT STR DEX but I'm still hurting because of that decision.

So come next wipe I certainly know that I will not unlock everything like I did this time around. Instead I will only put 3-4 glyphs on gain at a time, trying to get them up into their 40s at least before moving on.

 

Yeah, the soft cap is there... And i agree with the leveling strategy you bring up, but thinking this on the long shot, i see how Drocis has a point. But if i understood correctly how skill decay works, in the end all characters are going to have 80 str 80 dex 80 int because you're using your stat always, so they can't decay. Eventually, you'll rise them all up. If that can happen, i'm sure i don't like it.

 

But aren´t they supposed to be only raised by using relevant skills eventually? So, for example, a mage would end up with STR 40, DEX 40, INT 100 or a fighter with STR 100, DEX 80, INT 20 or any mix inbetween depending on the actives used. At least that´s my understanding of how it´s supposed it work.

 

stats should have a separate decay from other skills so a soft cap of 175 or something along those lines.
My character is going to be of the hybrid sort so having all maxed would benefit me but hurts the game.

Sure hope they do, there is even a pledge reward to get you skills earlier than the rest. I was under the assumption this was meant for after release not pre alpha, might be wrong though.

they are not just too small they are too linear (in my opinion)

There has also been a lot of discussion on healing which kind of relates to this thread i.e no point in not having it atm
and healing touch is waaaay to useful for a tier 1 spell, some sort of non magic healing needs to be implemented and make plate users inept magic users.