Why Do We Keeping Getting Freezes On Exp Gain and Skill Gains??

Well, we are getting a xp pool bar next release, but just wanted to say that this once again happened to me. was killing wolves at lvl 37adv and blades at about 71. All of a sudden all my skills froze. I figured I depleted my pool but killing 15+ wolves didn't budge it. I tried killing myself, logging in and out, changing zones but nothing helped any skills move. I tried training various skills, from freshly untrained skills (lvl 1), to skills at lvl 20, 30 and 70+. None were moving! FYI only had 3 innates going (str/dex at 28), blades at 71. But still, absolutely no progression.

Then magically something happened and all my skills were once again levelling. My adventure level was still at 37, which proves there is no magic adventure level cap.

Either way, I eagerly await the return of the xp bar.

 

I posted in the thread below what i have figured out about the "freeze" syndrom.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...rrectly-distributing-shared-skill-gain.37757/

I can safely say, after many testing, that this is not the case, sadly.
ADV level doesn't affect it, atleast not for us in our testings.

But like you, i also think that there is nothing hidden or tricky, but i do think there is some kind of an bug that freezes some players, mostly when grouping up with other players.

 

Chris' explanation of skull cap and experience gains: (https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/use-based-systems.35948/)

Quoting some of his explanation here, in partial answer to your question:

"Our system actually still has players earning experience through in game actions. Those experience points go into a pool of “to be spent” experience. Then using skills spends points out of that pool on the skill to level it up. How many points spent on each skill use depends on the current level of the skill, the size of the experience pool, whether the skill use was successful or not, and a few other secret items. The amount would be a certain % of the pool for the base value so having a large pool of experience built up will accelerate the process.

The amount applied per use will be capped so it requires a minimum number of uses to advance. The minimum number of uses starts around 5 for most skills and advances up to 100+ at the highest levels.

Each skill tracks its own experience and levels up similar to how players level up in the current system. Each skill requires far less (varies widely but around 1/100th) experience than the current leveling system. This means that players will see tons of incremental progress and if they choose to only work on a couple of skills, they will increase at a MUCH faster pace than leveling.

Skills will have a difficulty value associated with them that we likely won’t show. This is how many times more costly a skill is to level. Some things that have a very limited opportunity for use, like taming, might level more easily. Other things that are immensely powerful will level more slowly, like raising stats. Leveling str/dex/int will be in the order of 5-10X average skills."​

 

That one is clear to many leilakin, well, atleast it is to me.

However, we are talking about a complete halt for several hours or even days, not just about an stutter or slower pace in gaining xp for skills.

 

As I understand it, (and I could be wrong) you have a pool of available skill points that you can fill through activities that earn you experience points. That pool of skill points is dependent on you first raising your experience level and our experience level currently seems to stall (temporarily) if we completely diminish our skill point pool, for example if you attack a gustball for a few hours.

Similarly, if you have a lot of skills turned up, your skill pool will diminish and your experience gains will stall. I think this is an afk macro prevention system.

I think the intention was to take skill gain in a slow focused manner so you don't ever fully deplete your skill points pool and as the experience flows, so will the skill points pool.

I've found that some idle time is the only thing that will reset the experience timer. It hasn't reset for me when logged out, just idle time of actual gameplay.


Now this speculation is just based on my personal experiences. In R22, we will be able to see our experience bars and some form of that skill pool, so we will better understand how it works more thoroughly.

 

Hey! What's clear to me is that, in the quote from Chris, he says that some skills have a higher difficulty and will take longer to level up, which can account for why a skill might take hours or days, as you say, to level up.

What's also clear to me in the quote I referenced from Chris is that if you hit the cap for the skill in hours or days, that will also account for why it's not leveling up in hours and days (you've already hit the cap for that skill in that time period.)

So there are two reasons for a "complete halt for several hours or even days" in gaining xp for skills.

A third reason for this complete halt for several hours or days can also be related to the fact that skill use has diminishing returns, as Chris has referenced in his posts about the use based skill system. If you use a skill over and over the experience gained will diminish during that time. And, it seems, if you use the skills on the same target or in the same area for a certain duration, skill experience gains diminish.

If you scour Chris' posts and replies to comments in those threads on the skill system, he shares a lot of information about how we gain experience.
I literally play SotA every single day of r21 and I alternate between going out and adventuring and killing mobs, gathering resources, crafting, talking to npcs, doing quests, and decorating.
I notice shifts and changes in my experience gains, and they seem to be related to the three points above.
1. Some skills with higher difficulty (and a seeming correlating higher tier in the skill tree), like Fire Ring and Death Field, take longer to level up (gain experience more slowly) than lower level/lower tier, easier skills like Fire Arrow and Death Touch. I notice this by watching the green bar under the skill in the skill tree and watch how quickly or slowly it moves.
2. If I spend a couple hours using the above mentioned skills (in example 1), I stop gaining experience in those skills, which makes me think the skill reached the cap for that time.
3. If I kill the same mobs over and over, I notice that I stop gaining experience in the skills I'm using vs. or near/around those mobs (like healing touch isn't vs. a mob, but I use it while fighting the mob.)

From these three things, I take it that my experience gains are a mix of those factors (all from quotes that Chris has posted).

Duration of combat sessions seems to contribute to the diminishing returns, as does repeated use of the same skill. So, sometimes I will change up which skills I use. I switch from spamming fire balls at things to putting fire rings on them and using death ray and death touch, for example.
I also change where I'm fighting. I kill new mobs in a different place. I will simply go to a new zone when I notice my experience gains have stopped.

Oh, also, I do not have a lot of skills turned on. I will shift and change, from combat session and from day to day which skills I turn on and off, to help distribute and focus experience gains.

I know people are frustrated, I'm trying to share my own experience of experience gains. For me, having played all day every day (yes, I have no job or life Kappa) in R21, and played with several players with whom I talk about the skill and experience system with, I can honestly say that I notice I have to change it up in order to keep gaining experience.
This is one of the many ways that I think the skill system has been created to prevent us from grinding and macroing.
I love it!

Edited to add "macroing" and skill turn on/off.

 

I realise that until someone sees something for their own eyes, it can be hard to believe.

Let me ask you one question and see if you can come up with an answer based off Chris's post. Why was I unable to get any gains from any skills, regardless of levels (ie: Gust (lvl1), Healing Touch (21), Blades (71)).

 

Like i said, i am fully aware of what you just described.
There seriously is no further explaination needed.

We did some deep testing, trust me...
And it is for sure abnormal that ALL SKILLS, and i mean really all, no matter how many i have turned on or off are on an complete halt, until...
Did you actually read the bug report thread i posted/linked further above?
...until the ex-party member logged out (which was me), then right after, my gf was gaining like mad on the very first mob.

And i will now say the same thing Tyde above me did:
I realise that until someone sees something for there own eyes, it can be hard to believe.

EDIT:
Oh and i am not frustrated, i just want to know what's going on. This is Pre-Alpha, and we need to figure this out.

 

There is further explanation needed, as you keep asking for...

I felt happy to share my own understanding, interpretation, and experience of the skill use system in reply to everyone on this thread (especially the OP), just like all of us are doing here in the forums: sharing our experience, understanding, and interpretations.

It is worth something to discuss it and talk about our own experiences and share examples and data. And on that note, I'm doing to log into the game and stream it and bang around with my skills. As you and Tyde have said, until someone sees something for (with) their own eyes, it can be hard to believe.

I invite you and anyone else who has seen this to make videos of your gameplay and show the devs and us!

Thanks,
~Leila

 

I never asked for further explanation in regards to what "Chris" wrote about the skill system, show me where i did.
What Chris said/wrote was always clear to me.

But i agree that it is of course worth it to discuss and share things. I never was against it, i am now not really sure why you even thought i would be against it.

 

I'm not sure why you are acting to angry with me. All I've done is post my thoughts about the skill use system. Also, in the post you linked and referenced you ask for what you are saying to be looked at and considered. And posting here asking and talking about the skill use system implies that you invite discussion and further investigation and explanation. No need to be rude to me. Thanks.

 

Mehhhh, i am not angry at all, sorry if my stuff sounded like that :/
I thank you very much for your contributions!

But please, define "rude", because i wasn't rude at all to you. I simply was confused about you for a moment.

Anyways, in the thread i posted, the "please take a look at it" was primary meant for the devs .
But of course everyone is invited to test this.

 

I apologize in advance as I didn't read any posts after page 2 of this thread... so if someone already tried it or mentioned it, just ignore my post.

It's sort of common knowledge by now that grinding on one thing for a while tends to "freeze" skill gains. Bug, hidden blocker intended to prevent macroing or power gamers, or whatever reason... it is happening to a bunch of people.

But has anyone who is experiencing these "freezes" in skill ups tried to just log out of game and log back in to see if skill gains continue right away? I haven't really been grinding this release to experience any major freezes myself so I can't really test it. I did notice a few times where skill ups might stop, but I usually leveled my adventure level shortly thereafter and skill gains started increasing again so no "6 hours of no gains" for me.

So, my thoughts are either that the adventure level increase actually adds xxx amount of skill points to the pool (allowing you to raise them until those points are used up), or something hidden puts you in "sleep mode" when doing the same thing for a certain period... and leveling up simply "resets" the ability to gain them again. I thought of this because when you are in mid-fight with a bunch of mobs and you level up after one of them dies, your health/focus bars reset to full and maybe this resets a bunch of game systems for you? So the level up simply takes you out of "sleep mode" and lets you gain skill points again. Just a theory, not proven nor even tested.

Leaving a zone and entering another zone may perform a similar "reset" of the freezing. Which would be why some are saying that doing some crafting after a lull seemed to restart the skill leveling.

Would love to know if this is the case or not, and frankly I'm a bit disappointed that a Dev hasn't replied in this thread to confirm/deny/explain what the issue really is. At least in a couple days we will get an xp bar back so we will be able to see if adventure level XP stops or slows at all and then know when to move somewhere else or try something different. But adventure level gains seem to be a key to letting skills increase again.

 

Thanks Daxxe Diggler.

We have tested all your suggestions already. With we i mean me and my gf.
Take a look into this thread:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...rrectly-distributing-shared-skill-gain.37757/

 

Hmm, that is interesting indeed. Sounds like the group / level disparity / logout problem you discovered might be a serious issue that needs to be resolved.

 

This, i personally believe, is the most important part of that information and i saw that entire post before R20 was even here so i made this thread with that information in mind and more.

Since i no longer know if im not only spending hours on grinding but potentially wasting some of those hours on top, ive sat AFK grinding ever since with a level every 2 or so days.

Same zone, same enemies (just alot slower from doing it AFK on same spawn as it eventually respawns each time) and ill eventually level so i dont think its the traditional same grind at least complete, or major freeze/penalty.

Not to mention people have gone to start grinding and didnt receive lvl or skill gains for hours, being hit with it before even having been in the same zone or on the same enemies for a long time.

Im personally leaning more toward honestly a weekly or daily progress cap, something more absolute, that cant be worked around both intentionally or unintentionally. (Like going to another zone, another type of enemy or waiting an hour to reset it, relogging or maybe some crafting for a bit etc.)

Again though having the numbers which people say are coming back, some of which, which were coincidentally removed/hidden in the first place, should show whats going on if they dont end up changing/removing this penalty at the same time.

With all the negative impact, they would be crazy not to.

Heres a response to another post earlier on in the thread which i think would go great here:

"Even if some of those ideas do work to some degree, do you really want a game that dictates the way you are going to play? Letting you enjoy some combat then deciding you have done enough combat and that you need to take a break, to maybe craft or do something else before being allowed to go back to combat, when the system deems enough time or other hidden criteria has passed?"

While you seem to like it and thats cool, i dont really enjoy being forced to play how the system wants me to play, or have it decide for me what i can and cant do and for how long, especially if im not a big fan of the other main mechanics it wants you to switch up to like crafting.

Great feedback either way though, thanks.