Fix the leveling system.

[mrcalhou]

Personally, I'd prefer a system where you could max every skill but where you couldn't be everything at one time. I know people want to avoid the "magetanks" of UO or the melee-archer-mages of Darkfall, and I also want to avoid that. I just think there might be a better way to do it than with skill decay and levels.

Skills are nice because they give players more flexibility with how they want to develop their characters. Skill decay solves the problem of having everyone being everything and going for the one and only most efficient skill route, but it really hinders people that want to experiment. They will essientially have to level up some things twice, like the -exp death penalties, but instead of being penalized for death, the player is being penalized for wanting to try something new. While levels don't exactly penalize a player directly, they do usually penalize the player by restricting content availible to the player, and penalizing the rewards when low levels and high levels wish to play together. Character levels can also signal to the player that there is nowhere left to advance once max level is achievied.

Personally, I'd prefer a game with a skill system that lets players train whichever skills they like, but they can only have so many active skills affecting their character at anyone time. To change skills to would have to go to their home area. To hinder players from being the ultimate crafter, there should be a lot of craft skills and players would gain skill points based on their skill level in that craft and the recipes "level" such that a crafter would gain very little, if any, skill points at a high level using less advanced recipes. The learning rate of new skills could also be a function of total skills. But I don't think a skill decay is a good idea.

[lp0okmnji9]

A player should be able to max all skills but tradeskills and combat weapon skills. they should only be allowed to max 2 weapon skills.

As far as Scavaging
Foraging
Fishing
Logging
Hunting
Hiding
Jumping
Running
Swimming
Terraforming
Architecture
Firecrafting
These should be maxable by all players

Cooking
Woodcraft
Weaponcraft
Masonry
Toolcraft
Tailoring
Leathercrafting
Basketry
Bonecraft
These need to be min 2 selectable or just 1 for better trade and econemy. If you pick leather crafting and secondary as toolcrafting thats it for life of the char.
But should have to max one before can max the other.

Reason why? Cause you want trade. I mean real trade in the game not one person can make every thing. With this type system trade is very possible never stray from it. If I craft leather armor and want some cloths I can trade my products for clothing from a tailorer or for bricks or tools so forth and same for each class. Then bartering comes in effect very well. This also helps cut down of market over flow.

As far as item decay well of course you need item decay another tool set in motion to help items from over flowing. No repair just decay till no longer good, that way I can make more and be able to get more items with out some one saying I'm over flowing in that what else you got? The main goal in systems like this is balance and decay helps balance and the market and trade for every one.
As far as skill decay nope bad idea specially in this. Mabe stat decay if you eat to much sit on but loose str dex agi stamina but able to gain that back by running swimming moving trees on your back carring lots of dirt and stone around.
This is my 2 dollars on this subject

[banyo84]

I'd say devide skills into primary and secondary skills... Skills like:
Foraging
Fishing
Logging
Hunting
Jumping
Running
Swimming
Terraforming
Firecrafting
should be secondary and thus not be limited and only decay to let's say 50...or maybe the attribute level it's tied to...

The rest of the skills, especially crafting skills and fighting skills (including Hiding) should be primary and limited to a certain overall level... Like max. 800 points in all of those skills...maybe less or more, depends :-D

[shyndaar]

First off, in games like this, Hardcaps are the dumbest thing ever because you can eventually reach a point where you cant go up anymore. Whats the point of that?

Second, if i wanna pick a few skills i enjoy and level them up a lot, i dont want to lose a substantial amount of those skills because i wanted to do something else. Say it takes a month of solid grinding to get to 100 in a skill. Then i want to grind something else to 100 for the next month. Then after that, i split my time across a few skills to get them to the 50s. So two full months after reaching 100 in the first skill, id hope its at least over 90 when i decide i want to do that some more.

Its one thing to grind a skill because its useful (like healing or something) and its another to grind it just to have it at 100. In either case i dont see a point of a level system. So you can add points to something to raise it faster? This is the sort of game where if time is really that much of an issue, you shouldnt be playing.

[Shrimps]

First off, in games like this, Hardcaps are the dumbest thing ever because you can eventually reach a point where you cant go up anymore. Whats the point of that?

Second, if i wanna pick a few skills i enjoy and level them up a lot, i dont want to lose a substantial amount of those skills because i wanted to do something else. Say it takes a month of solid grinding to get to 100 in a skill. Then i want to grind something else to 100 for the next month. Then after that, i split my time across a few skills to get them to the 50s. So two full months after reaching 100 in the first skill, id hope its at least over 90 when i decide i want to do that some more.

Its one thing to grind a skill because its useful (like healing or something) and its another to grind it just to have it at 100. In either case i dont see a point of a level system. So you can add points to something to raise it faster? This is the sort of game where if time is really that much of an issue, you shouldnt be playing.

I don't think skill points are intended to help you level other skills, they're more for maintaining your current ones. So say if I had a 90 skill in using axes and my clan needs me to help terraform so I stop using my axes for a week and non stop terraform. Well my axes skill degraded since I didn't use it down to 84. So I use the points I got from terraforming to raise it back to 90.

It's to keep you from having to constantly grind a single skill while at the same time not allowing you to master all skills.
Skill degredation is not currently in the Beta so we're not yet seeing it's effects but when it's enabled you will.

[shyndaar]

Dont skills level up like 0-10 its 1 for 1. 11-20 is 2 to 1 etc? If thats the case theres no way leveling would help skill decay. Even if from 90 - 100 its 5 for 1, youd put 5 into a skill and then itd decay long before you level again.

[mrcalhou]

There are much better ways to prevent players from being the same thing than with skill decay.

[ifireallymust]

I like the system the way it, myself. I like the soft cap, and I would really hate to see a hard cap. Too restrictive!

[Dade512]

I like what's been said about the way the stat and skill system are supposed to work. Considering that we haven't seen the system in full yet, shouldn't we wait for that instead of already trying to get changes.

[Stevro]

I agree lets give it some time to see how it pans out , Ultima Online tried skill decay in the early days but it was to hard to ballance and it meant you had to do specific things each time you logged in to stop decay for them skills for that day, The devs have most likely learnt from this system im sure, It would of been good in UO to be able to issue points like is planned in this game. I dont see a problem with the system. If you wanna waste your level points on skills you dont use be my guest but remember that the ones you want to raise will decay at high levels if you dont prop them up. UO also implemented a hard cap eventualy and gave you up arrow,down arrow and lock for each skill and a 700 point cap to distribute how you want across all skills, You dont wanna travel down that path it becomes a bad case of "Template Clone Wars" been there done that. #Lets just see how this works before getting all upset it is to early to worry about it just yet

My 2 cents