We are EA

I died yesterday for the first time in the last 2 weeks.
Lost 20k xp
Can you please tell me how to get 200-300k xp in one hour?
100k xp would be also fine to me.
And your math weird me.
You said you loose 50k and need 30 minutes. But you also say 200-300k in an hour. So worst case is 15 minutes for 50k, isnt it?

I hope for beeing able to get to all places ingame one time.

 

The only thing that will please the haters is if the game ends up vastly underpopulated at launch.

Your analogy is perfect for the situation and you're 100% correct that Port chose the crowdfunding method to avoid pressure to launch before the game is finished, in order to please some of the most negative critics of the ultima series. So it's a wonder why anyone would think Portalarium doesn't value its critics.

What really sets my mind at ease is watching the telethons. The staff is clearly confident and happy despite the daily jabs and it shows during their livestreams.

Anyways my advice is as always, folks: Don't jump on the bandwagon. It isn't going anywhere.

 

Well unfortunately it's shifting math and has some it depends the decay rate is likely to roughly double in R41. Making the 50k 100k twice that is 200k which would be realistic at al 60-70.

Then it depends where you are. Personally I find deep ravenswood undead by far the fastest xp. (no trick just run around the ruins in a circle all night..thrilling gameplay). Or I can pull about 150k an hour out of the cultists at sequenna collosus and practice death magic.

Last time I pulled numbers for fun the fighters in serpentspine foothills were about the same and dropped much better loot and they're easy. But it's hard to describe my farming route.

 

I agree with this top to bottom. 100%.

I hope that I am wrong.
I am glad to see that there are more people that don't mind waiting for a better game.
I hope we can vocalize this in a positive way more often.

 

Personally, I'm fine with the way things are now.

Portalarium should be focusing on wowing new players, not appeasing old players.

For one thing, I get a sense that many are "unappeasable" in that they will be disappointed no matter what Port does because that is their shtick.

I don't have too much of a bleeding heart for players who have already logged so many hours that they are claiming a need for level 200 content, while also whining about skill decay. These players are going to be bored again within 3 days of release after they zoom through the story, already being way overleveled for Episode 1 content. Mark my words, it will be less than a month after release and those same people will be here in the forum with pretty much the same complaints... We need "higher end" content! We need raids! We need guild wars!

Obviously, anybody who has 20 or more hours a week to play will always be in such a predicament. It takes way longer to create content than to play through it and the only thing to do to "appease" these players is to make more rare items for them to grind for. And probably complain about the grind nonetheless.

I've been around for 10 releases now probably logging an average of 10 hours a week.

My adventure level is around 70. I haven't completed the quest trunks. I haven't unlocked Enchantment yet even though I'm an Alchemist. There are some uncloned scenes I've never been to. There are community events to attend. Books to write and read. Entire builds I have yet to experiment with. A second house that is barely decorated.

Plenty for me to do. I think one of the best things a backer can do to support the game at this point is to hang tight and wait for Judgement Day.

 

I hope the team is enjoying making this game as much as I am enjoying observing and in a very small way participating in the process.

I wonder about the morale at Port compared to the forums. I hope the telethons are a good indicator that they can rise above any nay sayers, stay optimistic and focused.

On your second point, it is good to see people thinking and acting for themselves.

 

The death decay mechanic only "punishes" those who insist on having overleveled skills.

It takes over 1 million XP to take a normal active skill from 90 to 100. For some passives this is closer to 5 million XP.

Said skill gains a modest 5% effectiveness for those 10 levels.

Skill decay is max 2.5% of the total XP applied to a skill.

So, for example, backing a strength innate down from 100 to 90 will result in a decrease of strength by a measly 1 point, whereas it will save over 100K in skill decay upon death.

The most pertinent question is: What level is necessary to complete Episode 1 content? It looks to me to be around 75 or 80 for most skills, with maybe 1 or 2 GM skills.

The decay for this build should be manageable for anybody, even with only a few hours to play a week.

I think the message here is that if a player cannot reasonably cover the death penalty, then they are overleveled. If Chris starts to see many players not advancing, or actually regressing in development, then I'm sure he will rebalance it appropriately.

Overleveling is fine if that's what a player wants to do, but by definition they will always be far ahead of the general PvE content, and will require things like raids and guild wars to keep them content for the long term.

Since both of these are out of scope for Episode 1, we have skill decay. I would think it goes without saying if skill decay were removed, we'd just end up with a group of players with skills over 200 with basically the same complaints.

Think about it from a new player perspective. We were all there hacking aimlessly in a tier 1 zone netting 500 gold in an hour, if we were lucky, getting devoured by packs of brown spiders all the while.

How discouraging would it be for new players struggling to survive on Day 1 of commercial release, meanwhile they are surrounded by a bunch of people running around with 50 GM skills?

Or worse... Some of those players with 50 GM skills decide to open up "training shop" and next thing you know we have some rich noobs with 10 GMs running around, while everyone else is left in the dust.

Does that sound like a fun game for people? If not, then maybe we should be less concerned about what will make the game more fun for backers with tons of time on hands.

 

You're laboring under the false assumption that it's actually slowing anyone down in that high level bracket you seem to think needs punishment or causing them not to continue to level up.

It's not, they're going to continue working on that thrust to 200 goal, and they will get it anyway. They're goal oriented if you get rid of the goal you will lose the player. I've lost 0xp to decay this release btw while adding 6 gm skills because safe content is the best way to level.

What are we supposed to do with the xp after get all our favorite skills to 80 leave them in pool because we're afraid of decay? That sounds like wonderful game design. I had 80 in everything I used within 3 months of last wipe or about 30 million xp ago.

This hurts casual players a lot more and they don't have the time to overcome and will just quit. Believe me there will come a time when you decide to start pushing skills to gm, that last 10% does matter. I just hit it myself this release.

I have 10gms. I hear there are people with 50, that's not going to change negatively between now and release. If you want to advocate for a player wipe on release you might have a point. Otherwise the problem you see is already here and not going to "improve" with a higher decay it's just going to drive people out of the game when the game takes their entire day or weeks result away from them.

 

I am willing to take what you say at face value, since I don't know how much xp you can really farm per hour. However, I want to make sure you realize that it takes 66,826,950,763 XP to take an innate skill like Swiftness from level 100 to 200.

If your goal is to level your skills to 200, then 30 million xp is a relative pittance.

Casual players aren't aiming for level 200 skills. There's no point for them to do it.

I believe you. But as I said, I am confident that 1-2 GM skills will be more than adequate to complete all of the Episode 1 content. I suppose only time will tell.

What I do already know from experience that working on things like improving my overall strategy and tactics, improving my decks, learning deck swapping, and keymapping skills to my new Razer mouse has most definitely given me WAY more than a 10% increase in effectiveness without having to level any skills.

 

I know, don't remind me. I had a plan to gm train strength this week, 700k later lower pool I googled the curve for it...riiight.

My grind rate is 250k/hour. Killing the same mobs I was at al 50.

I sure somebody is aiming for it. It's not realistic on a casual schedule no. And that's going to frustrate people on its own the xp curve and return for investment is ludicrous. Certainly over 100.

Getting those 6 extra skills (more the first 5 which were defensive) has solved problems I complained about for months with everything at 80. Would getting them to 120 be that much more of a. Improvement? Probably not but I don't want to have 80 skill in everything, I want to be very good at swording things with some death magic on the side.

 

This is a question I have pondered on, and wonder how this will work for the typical casual player that doesn't have that much time on their hands to skill build to levels high enough to complete an area like Malice.
Looking forward to your feedback once you've managed to reach that part of the endgame (unless you've completed it already).

 

Well of course it's totally up to you where you find that right balance! I'm just saying make sure you know what kind of return you are getting for your effort, so that you don't get surprised and disappointed if it turns out not to be worth it.

I don't mean to sound preachy or anything- I just learned about all this a week or so ago. Being a more casual player though, my skills are still pretty much in the 60-80 range so I haven't hit that next bump you are talking about yet.

I'm sure it will come, but I actually pushed it back out recently after getting my hands on a +adv level arti. Which also boosted my effectiveness WAY more than GMing a skill. I'm now landing +100 crits on 5 skull mobs, and can adventure solo in Ulfheim and Tenebris Harbor. Again, this is all new to me. After diving further into how the skill curve vs effectiveness really works, and also learning more about the importance of attunements, my build has taken a different direction. I was otherwise on a path to GM all the basic innates... well needless to say that wasn't getting me anywhere and now I know why.

BTW... level 200 is only 40% more effective than level 100 despite requiring 13,800 times more experience. Let that sink in.. whatever it takes to GM a skill it will take 13,800 times that to get it to level 200.

 

Keep decay and tie it to play time, not real time to alleviate the hardcore vs casual problem. Sure you'll be building decay while at that crazy emote party, but it is better than having a full bank of decay when you log in after a few days doing, well life stuff.
For a crazy idea how about tie decay to time spent in an adventure zone. Since PvP death causes no decay trigger and no xp gain for killing this still leaves cities open for duels and pvp fighting but the penalty will not be accruing. For a lore tie you can say that the Oracle sustains your skills while in cities.

 

I know that changing when decay accumulates is on the table. So is tiering the decay, rather than applying a flat percent along the whole curve.

But again, the average player who just wants to PvE for a bit and then go craft or deco or have an emotefest, they will not have accumulated an excessive amount of decay.

Also keep in mind that the devs are not unreasonable people. Everything I've read or heard from Chris leads me to believe he has thought everything through and is doing his best to maximize fun for the most amount of people.

My guess is he is tracking the death penalty as a function of average XP gain while adventuring. He probably has a target in mind, for example, that death sets a player back by an hour.

But in order to balance the death penalty, it needs to first be fully implemented and tracked for a while. That's definitely going to cause much pain for the player hell-bent on pushing their skills beyond what is necessary to play all of the content.

But remember, we are here to help test the game. Shouldering these kinds of inconveniences are part of the deal.

 

That is almost certainly the case, but player perception is something that can't really be tracked. I fear the negative opinions regarding any form of skill decay will scare potential players away and cause other current players to feel inconvenienced enough to play less frequently or quit entirely.

I have to admit I haven't studied skill decay and it probably impacts me much less than I think it does, but knowing that it is there is enough to give me pause about whether I want to dedicate significant time to playing the game.

The statistics may show that decay doesn't have a huge impact on me, but my perception of skill decay still turns me off. That may not be completely reasonable, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels that way.

 

Just keep working

They are making the game I like to play, plus all the possibilities they are trying to give us to be part of this. I like SotA because there is more than just a game, is like a big open door for many things as a player, and I like how close and transparent they are with us (sorry if someone feels like they are not).

I'm having fun helping with the localization, helping new player as an hospitaller since persistance and I have more plans for this year.

In the midst of negativity, I just wanted to talk about the bright side this project is providing me.

 

100% agree, good post.

 

/salute
We need more of this!

 

I don't mind waiting. My house is currently tax-free (thanks to the kindness of a guildmate) so I'm not having to do much to maintain my presence. If it wasn't tax-free and I'm forced to constantly go in-game to upkeep it, I'd be less... patient with waiting. Perhaps that's where some of the other player's frustration could be stemming from. But I think that's generally a first world problem. Not everyone has homes.

What they are doing that works for me:
- Keep communicating with the players (which they are doing, through Telethons, Forums, Hangouts )
- Keep releasing developmental road maps

What they could do:
- More than a Road Map, keep an updated targeted game features list for Episode 1 list. It seems like a lot of the frustration I see stems from players not having a clear image of what the game is going to be at launch. Things might have changed from the original vision, that's okay. I'm sure things are mentioned in separate sources (maybe mentioned during telethons etc.) Having one official list helps clarify confusion.

I hope portal could sticky something in the Announcement forums clearly stating what the confirmed features is targeted to be in Episode 1. Is it still going to be a single player RPG with multiplayer tagged on? What are offline towns going to be like etc., Updated targeted launch dates, are we still on track to have xxx feature out at launch? )

They can also provide details of features that they're still unsure about. Their financial backing upon launch, is the add-on store a temporary thing? Skill caps vs. Skill Decay? Is offline mode currently still a focus? Or something they'll work on after launch.

Of course, this should come with the disclaimer that these targeted features might be subject to change. As much as there will be some complaints about "changes", at least the players will have a clearer picture of where things are going and discussions on the forums will be more focused.

Personally, there are some features that I don't know if they are still going to happen that I can find on the homepage. If it's changed I would love to know.

• Player Driven Economy: Deep crafting system where the best items are made by players and player items are the main source of loot found in the game.

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Which has been somewhat discussed before but it'll be nice to see a more definitive answer to where they plan to go with this

• Pay Once to Play: No subscription fees. Each episode (released approximately annually) is a one time fee and everything in the game can be purchased with in-game gold that can be earned (except for some exclusive backer rewards).

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Will everything from the add-on store be purchasable through IGG in the final released product? or must another player first purchase it with RMT then sell it to another player with IGG for example.

 

All skill decay has done is stop me from doing anything that may be difficult. I know why they put it in,but after playing other games for many,many years that don't,I just don't want to put myself in the position to lose it. I personally don't feel in any game you can gain XP thru kills and then somehow lose it by dying at some point. But it is what it is.