Why is that...

Absolutely, it truly is relative to the person. Given how grind intensive SotA is at the moment I would have to imagine you are enjoying it immensely!

 

Grind for maybe 2 hours a week. That was it. I always went to events or explored and PVP. I didn't just sit there and grind, grind, grind, grind, and grind.

 

I'd say so as well.

 

Grind away then man! Grind and grind. If that is your thing. I'm just personally not about that. But hey, I can't tell you what makes you happy. Do it!

 

What I find even more mind boggling that there are people that gripe about dance parties. I assure you that much more development time has gone into PvE, and the never ending grind system than dance parties; or any other systems for that matter.

As for mind numbing monster mashing, I personally just want to hit a skill cap so I can PvP without having to worry about someone hitting ~30% harder than me because they have absolutely too much time on their hands.

 

This - to get restock and mats preparing for sandbox elements and pvp

I dont dislike grind or collecting stuff, harvesting per se, i dislike it if this is the main aspect of the game and the defined endgame!
I really like it sometimes to chop 100 wood or get 100 ores... But i never had fun doing this for more than 2-3 hours once or maximum twice a week.
This should be enough to spend the rest of your time partaking in all the other aspects of a game.

imagine nobody can fight everything in sota becaus trees are limited and resistancies of Mobs are still there.
Mybe Skellies drop something you need to craf X. But your char is bad at fighting skellies and good at fighting bandits, what drop something else needed for crafting Y.
People trade, people need to help each other, one is a Undead Killer and can get you material X and the other one is a Bandit killer an can get you material Y, they then depend on each other.
Some things annd builds correlate, but never is someone self sustainable and allways need others to get this or that. This is the main purpose of a MMO imo.
Cool to have SP offline where you can be everything and become the ultimate Avatar, but online? What is the purpose then for going online?
no matter if somedays you like to go SP online or only play with friends in FMO, but you will allways need all the other players or at least a couple of them, because you never can be an Archer and a heavy melee guy.
You never can be an excellent Sword smith and master Bow maker, this just contradicts.

I understand some people like exactly that, but it destroys any purpose of an online sandbox imo.

 

It is a little bit ridiculous to claim that "most of the player base left is into a version of Sims and second life." I mean... come on. Also, "most people that cared about this are gone now." What?! This is really weird stuff to say, when clearly the vast majority of the people that play this game care about it a fair amount, and do not go and do dance parties every night. Most people are not playing this game because it is a Sims, or Second Life type of thing for them.

I really hate it when people come into a thread and try to spread really strange, untrue notions about what "all of the people are doing," and that "everyone has abandoned this because of some PvP reason." Ugh. Man. Just be realistic. Some small group of people that backed the game ages ago, that really wanted a wild west, 1997 UO-style of PvP situation have gone. We get it.

 

The reason is because XP was the only viable reward system. Gold/loot is compromised by RMT, flat loot, and farm-ability.

So the only people who found a point to the game (challenge and reward) were grinding.

But now that they took the challenge out of XP, there is nothing left with both challenge AND reward. Plenty of each in isolation but those are hurting not helping. Reward without challenge undermines any real attempt at challenge WITH reward, so we can never get there as long as we have these standing XP zones. The challenging scenes will be pointless sideshows as long as the shortcut exists.

 

I'm just hearing the same thing again and again - there are a group of people who want to play casually yet be competitive in pvp so for this reason we must have hard caps or lower the softcaps to something achievable in a couple months.

We've already seen many concessions in this direction by the devs, with the introduction of so many new systems/areas that make leveling up easier than its ever been. Perhaps we'll see even more - that really depends on who the target demographic is.

I don't personally like grinding.

I don't think grinding is fun.

So I don't really do 'grinding' that much. I just wander around, exploring all the scenes, harvesting everything I come across, and killing whatever gets in my way. Then making stuff. Selling. Shopping. Going to events. You know - a good 18 months of you know, actually playing the game? and I was pretty high level. And people who have started a couple months ago have blown right by me because its THAT EASY to level now, easier than ever before.

I'm not still playing this game because "I like grinding." I'm still playing it because there's still goals to achieve, more to discover, and more to do. I've logged more hours in Sota than in any game in the last 15 years. And I know exactly why. Because in every other game, take your pick, a couple months and you're level capped. At that point, you aren't getting any better. Sure, sometimes I stick around for a bit if the PvP is good, or sometimes I'll do the cooperative raid thing for a while, but honestly, when there's no further way to advance? When I've maxed out as much as I can grow? I pack my crap and go find a new world to explore.

I don't think anyone "likes grinding." But I do like seeing that I'm stronger now than I was six months ago, and I can do things I couldn't do.

The slow, marathon-not-a-sprint feel of Sota has always been its most alluring feature for me, something I could sink my teeth into, and play for the long term. A living world in which to build up your trade or your town or your relationships and reputation with your guild and your friends and truly be part of something for years rather than a few weeks when your character is essentially done. I think we've already lost a lot of that 'living world' wonder by making it so easy for people to get to high levels so quickly - and yet, they are still not satisfied, and want to level even faster with even less effort!

I do understand that for PvP reasons this is frustrating, and alternative solutions - applicable to PvP only - could satisfy that without breaking the balance of the core, RPG gameplay. An RPG is about character development. If you want an instant gratification battleground where everyone's on even footing, and longevity, loyalty and investment do not matter, that's a different genre entirely.

I would hate to see Sota become this - if there's no benefit at all, or incentive, to keep playing the game for years, then there's simply no reason for people to do so.

 

I got both my specializations to 80s before UT existed with maybe 2 hours of game play tops per day and a long break in between for some other games. I never grinded in the Rise either before I achieved 80 in both specializations. If you just play the game as you say you would do casually, you should be able to hit 80 on two specializations without too much trouble. Unless of course you simply turning the skill to maintain.


You kept on mentioning UO but you forget the fact that in UO the different builds except the ones that are loaded with only crafting skill are pretty much all self sustainable. In fact bandage healing is far superior than what we currently have in SOTA and the folks who gm (or 120) in both Healing and Anatomy can be extremely self sustaining/versatile against 90%+ of the UO contents.
Of course I always need to mention Tamers in UO, there is no way in bloody abyss they aren't "self sustaining" In fact they almost have no weakness. Despite of these facts people are still happily party together for dungeon crawl, boss kill and other events. Saying that UO characters are less self sustaining than SOTA is a blatant false statement. Simply put in UO surely you can't learn EVERYTHING but you pretty much can do ANYTHING with the character anyway.
SO what is the incentive to get online? Well treasure hunt (which will be implanted in SOTA), Faction War (future castle defense in SOTA or other PvP events). Mob killing in general and champ spawn (We got mob kill part but no champ spawn). Grow rare plants (currently we only have crop). Just because players in UO are mostly or even more self sustaining than SOTA it does not prevent people from group together.

About contribution in group in SOTA, there is no need to have 140 or even gm skills. As long as you tune up your deck, and irl playstyle you can contribute significantly with your so called low level 80s for skill level.

You talk about effort and gaming, even in a game like Street Fighter where no grind is needed whatsoever. If you want to be the best and competing in events you have to spend time master the game with irl skills. If you want to be casual Street Fighter player, that is fine too, in my case I could still win a online matches very often however just because I can't take down the local events doesn't mean I don't have fun playing the game. The definition of effort and grindy various from different individuals. To you SOTA is grindy to others SOTA provides a rich character development opportunity. You are entitle to your opinion but using example like UO and saying SOTA is not this and that... I mean... at least get the facts straight.​

 

Hey, you see it your way and I see it mine. No need to be rude and hostile over an opinion.

 

UO had skill caps. WoW has skill caps. They have managed to maintain players for 10+ years. These games weren't instant gratification MOBAs as everyone keeps exaggerating that anti-grinders want. We just want a realistic end to the grind.

 

Opinion? Saying something that is not true is not an opinion.

 

burdon of proof is on you, prove its not true.

 

Hahaha. ok, man.

 

I have mentioned this a few times, but will point it out specifically to you this time, hopefully getting an answer from you. Your main complaint seems to come from the lack of PvP because others can get that 29% dmg boost which you cant get.

Which brings me back to PvP zone specific caps. Would you enjoy it if all shardfalls and obsidian trials ended up getting a level cap? The max skill level in a T4 Shardfall would be 80, so even if you have 80 or 140 bladed combat passive, you are both equal being in that zone. Come out of that zone, and you now have a 60 level difference (140-80). This would mean hardcore PvEers would not get affected by ypur desired caps, but you could still compete in PvP specific zones with people who play 80 hours more than you per week.

This could be divided up into tiers for shardfalls : T3: lvl 60 cap, T4: lvl 80 Cap, T5: lvl 100 cap, and then flagged people could PvP in regular zones with no cap. This would not affect PvEers, but would still give you a goal to reach fpr your pvp dream?

Also, they could do PvP specific nerfs, so damage and healing could be nerfed by 30% on players in a PvP setting, which could help balance combat numbers without getting the PvEers and the "grinders" (like you call em) mad.

What dp you think of this scenario? Seems like a good compromise ImO which could end this discussion right here and now!

 

There's a lot of different factors that go into it, not just "skillcap" or "not skillcap".
In many games like WoW, the cap gets raised every so often with an expansion - so there's always that on the horizon. In the meantime, you have to have enough stuff to do to keep players logging in and playing. In UO for me it was the modular housing and the community and the making of alternate characters to try different things and the crafting. In WoW...well, I didn't play WoW very long after capping my character (took a few weeks in vanilla days, just working through the questline, even faster now. Now I believe you can 'buy' a max level character who comes with set of mid-grade gear to boot and skip the grind entirely). I did the raid thing for a month or so, got all the things. Then its "now what?" time. I lvled an alt. Went through same. Then left.

I appreciate that the whole "I'm level capped, now what" mentality is a -me- thing and not a -most people- thing, but there has to be something worthwhile to do with the time you spend in the game otherwise why play it?

I think there's absolutely a middle ground here, but its where does that middle ground exist?
I think that our softcap is far too low and its too easy for players to get powerful, too quickly.
You think its far too high and it takes far too much time to get to a level where you can compete.
There's no right or wrong here, just a sliding scale of where everyone's comfort level / threshold is.

I think the question we should be asking is, why was the game designed with a diminishing returns/softcap/decay system instead of hard caps? What was the reasoning/philosophy? I think the answer to that may give insight into the target audience. Just looking at the way the game is designed, this seems to emphasize a more long-term player. But, you know what? Maybe not . Or maybe that was the vision, and that vision has changed. It certainly seems so, with the way things are unfolding.

I think the pivotal point is when you look at cooperative or competitive gameplay and there being a need to keep people on more or less the same page. Some games achieve this by capping particular zones/scenes to a level appropriate to the challenge of the zone. That may well be the compromise.

 

If they implemented skill cap/hard cap I think one thing that could help would be factions. City faction and Racial factions. Developing rep with them. It creates storyline drama and possible rewards could be had by the different factions. Maybe opposing factions also. You could be defeating opposing faction bosses (very hard bosses) when you got to the certain rep. Kind of like a raid, but open world. This could be pve and or pvp based. One could help defend their faction boss from other players attacking it. Dev's could create different scenarios and events for each one. I dunno, just spitballing here.