Skill system?

[Dubanka]

Skill decay is all around bad news. You should not be punished for wandering around just having fun enjoying the game, and you should not take a hit to the skill of your main craft if you want to play around with other crafts for awhile. Skill decay may be realistic, but fun>realism and NOTHING about a skill decay makes anything more fun. It is a game mechanic that basically says "Skrew you if you want to stop and smell the roses and just have fun. This game is about work, work, work. Its a second job, and fun is not allowed." When I heard mention of skill decay I almost quit on the spot until I realized it probably wouldn't include recipe decay.

Skill decay is an idea so bad its a game breaker. In fact one of my friends who I told about this game lost interest instantly after I mentioned there may be skill decay at some point. Its just that bad. If you wan't players, you don't want skill decay.

A soft skill cap however, I fully support. As it stands it is very easy to grind to the top in a skill. If they implement a soft skill cap that slows down leveling based on how many skill points you already have, it will make it so people can jump into the game, get insanely good at a small number of skills really fast, then slowly add on new crafts over time, making it so you can feel like a contributing member of a tribe very quickly, but you can still develop your character over a very long time.

If the soft level cap is done properly, they will probably release new skills faster than all but the most obsessive grinders can max all their skills.

One thing I will say is you DO want people to be able to craft and fight on the same character in a game like this. People play sandboxes because they want to be able to experience very diverse gameplay without creating 5000 alts. PVP, and crafting are both extremely major features of this game, and people should be able to experience both of these from a single account.

So in summary. Grinding should slow as the character gains more skill points to prevent people for easily getting characters that can perform any given role, but you should be able to have at least a couple different crafting skills on a character that is a firebreathing monster in combat. Skill decay should never be implemented at all, because it punishes players for doing what they enjoy, instead of whatever it takes to keep their main skills maxed.

I disagree with about everything you said.

skill decay is great because it forces a player to make a choice...this or that, jack of all, or master of a couple. Soft cap+skill decay is even better because it ensure that you will have to be extremely focused on something to become a master at it. This makes for great character and world diversity.

sorry, but you shouldnt be able to be able to have every ability maxed out just because you have the time on your hands to do it...thats horrible game design, since that then sets the barrier to entry to be 'maxed at everything'. horrible horrible horrible.

[JCatano]

Hell no to only a soft cap. That leads to people being masters of everything in the end, and only encourages long term macroing. He should scrap skill decay and just give us a certain amount of points we can earn (like Pre-NGE SWG). So, it would basically be a hard cap on points we could invest. If you want to free up some points, drop <insert value and/or skill> and start earning the experience in order to put them into other skills.

I guarantee that macroing would be incredibly prevalent if there was only a soft cap. Darkfall is a perfect example, since the only skill mechanic in that game is a soft cap.

Master of a few things or a jack-of-all-trades. Decay or a hard cap are the only ways to accomplish those things.

[Andius]

There is no soft cap in Darkfall, and can you describe an easy method for macroing any skill in this game? I can go and write a Darkfall macro with Auto-Hotkey right now to level my magic, melle, archery, trueforge. Hell you name it. The only thing I can think of macroing in this game would be fishing. Also macroing is only prevalent in Darkfall because AV doesn't even try to stop it. If they started handing out bans for macros with perma-bans to 3rd time offenders, it would be gone overnight.

[orious13]

There is no soft cap in Darkfall, and can you describe an easy method for macroing any skill in this game? I can go and write a Darkfall macro with Auto-Hotkey right now to level my magic, melle, archery, trueforge. Hell you name it. The only thing I can think of macroing in this game would be fishing. Also macroing is only prevalent in Darkfall because AV doesn't even try to stop it. If they started handing out bans for macros with perma-bans to 3rd time offenders, it would be gone overnight.

Funny how the most important parts of J's post you entirely missed.

[Andius]

I said macroing is an issue in Darkfall because its easy to do there, and AV makes no effort to stop it. So the fact this game is already hard to macro, would mean if Notorious made any real effort to stop it, it would be a very minor issue.

My last post addressed how with a soft proper soft cap it would be virtually impossible to max a character out.

So what point am I missing?

[JCatano]

There is no soft cap in Darkfall, and can you describe an easy method for macroing any skill in this game? I can go and write a Darkfall macro with Auto-Hotkey right now to level my magic, melle, archery, trueforge. Hell you name it. The only thing I can think of macroing in this game would be fishing. Also macroing is only prevalent in Darkfall because AV doesn't even try to stop it. If they started handing out bans for macros with perma-bans to 3rd time offenders, it would be gone overnight.

Yes, it does. Each skill/school has a soft cap. That's why it gets slower and slower as you climb, obviously.

It doesn't matter if you do it that way or a collective soft cap. Macroing and/or grinding until you have everything will be the way people play. It's human nature to want, want, want. It won't matter if you made it an epic grind of 10 years. People will go after it, which creates a wide gap that the lower experienced players will have to make up in order to compete. At the end, we have clones of each other. No diversity at all, and everyone self dependent skill-wise.

There are already multiple tribes macroing a lot of skills. Take a look around. And... You will never, ever completely get rid of macroing. There is no monitor for it.

[Andius]

If there is a soft cap its a pretty weak one as I haven't even noticed it and I have many maxed skills on that game, not an exponential softcap like I am suggesting. Unless you are talking about how as a single skill raises it gets harder to raise.

If you know of people using macros don't tell me, tell the Guides. Thats how we solve this problem.

What I am suggesting is that the amount of grinding it takes to gain skills double periodically based on how many skill points you have. So it goes 2, to 4, to 8, to 16 times as hard as you go. Like in the example I gave it was over 1000 times as hard to level for the last few levels until max everything.

Sorry but even if you were running a macro 24/7, they would probably be releasing new skills faster than you could hit max in everything. And you know what? I would rather have a few cheaters max in everything then have something that would ruin my game experience like skill decay. If the solution is worse than the problem, its not a solution at all.

A would go for a hard cap before I would go for skill decay 5000 times though. Personally I like to be able to make my character more versatile over time even if slowly, but skill decay gives me the feeling I cannot simply do what I want to do without being punished for it EVER.

In my opinion skill decay is simply not an option in any form. Its equivalent to saying "Lets chop of my arm so I forget my nose has an itch."

Also using Darkfall as an example. I still find there are many people out there in need of items from various crafts. The only thing I hate about how it is, is how the top players are all 100% maxed at PVP, and there is a huge difference in strength between a maxed character and a moderate or low level character. If they simply made gear and stats have a minimal effect on PVP performance or made it is easy to quickly reach max PVP stats, I would be fine with there being just as many "fully maxed" characters as there are in Darkfall.

In fact I think a hard cap or skill decay would make the problem worse. You would get people who would fully max their PVP or constantly grind combat who would be PVP gods while crafters would basically just make items for their PVPer buddies and get owned all the time.

[JCatano]

Yes, which is why I said each skill/school has one in DF. To repeat, a collective soft cap as you suggest will still cause people to grind and/or macro simply because the carrot is there. That means people will be top end no matter how tough you make the progression. Human nature to progress cannot be beaten (unless it's decay or hard cap).

I highly disagree with you idea, since it allows people to everything. And if you think the DF economy is working... It's barely working. That "barely" refers to the laziness of just getting some rare ore or a few mats here and there for enchants so they are purchased. I've been playing since the very first day and don't need anything from anyone. Many, many people are in the same boat.

A hard cap or soft cap/skill decay would not make the problem worse. It would be a situation where choices are made... Master a few things? Jack-of-all-trades? Full combat build? Combat/craft build? Full crafting build? Or anything in between... Pre-NGE SWG had a single character servers and 250 skilll points that could be earned. Some chose full combat, some chose full crafting, while others were somewhere in between. It worked very well. All of those styles played off of each other and supported the metagame of it. Also, we have every skill at a basic level in this game, so technically you already have your hand in each one. If someone wanted to go full crafting or a full PvP build that would be their choice. It's not an end-of-the-world decision, since it's what that individual would have chosen to do.

My hope is that he changes his mind and doesn't allow for separate soft caps. Currently, what is supposed to be coded is that combat and crafting have their own soft caps with decay. I think every skill should be in the same pool and move towards choices and not spoon-feeding just because someone is bitchy about wanting as many skills as possible.

[Andius]

You know, I heard of a great game that only allows players to be useful in one narrow role. It's called 90% of current MMO's AKA non-sandboxes. Diversity is the pillar of a sandbox game. ESPECIALLY when you are only allowed one character per account. I don't mind only being able to max 2-3 crafting skills to help promote trade and a working economy, but simply put, being able to have max PVP performance and also craft from the same character are essential to my enjoyment of the game.

I played Freelancer five years. I played it for five years because the you can kill anyone for any reason, and amazing combat yielded one of the most fertile grounds to really enjoy a full game experience of every aspect of leading an empire. The diplomacy, the economics, the battles, everything about it was great. What eventually killed Freelancer for me, is that the only way to really obtain victory was through making your opponent give up because they were tired of dying and territorial control was not a built in feature. All it really was, was map on the forums showing who owned what. The ownership came with no real power. And economy in Freelancer was taking a trade ship back and forth between point A and B all day long.

In this game I can build real bases. I can occupy my time doing a variety of interesting crafts when I am not fighting. And I can get real meaning from someone's death via full loot PVP.

But if I can't actually craft when the action is low, because it will take away from how strong my character is, and I can't terraform or scavenge because doing these things starts making my combat skills, or leatherworking skills decay. Why the hell not just go back to a game with fun non-buggy combat like Freelancer. Why the hell would I pay all this money and suffer through all these bugs when I can go experience better combat on a game for more stable FOR FREE, right now.

Or if all I want to do is craft why not go to Wurm? They have better crafting in my opinion. They are stable. The graphics aren't great but I'm not big on those anyway. And they got rid of skill decay. Plus its about half the price.

No I'm playing Xsyon because it will allow me to go out and just have fun fighting all day, and then sit back, relax, design a cool fort or make some neat armor when the action is low. It combines combat and crafting. If what you're telling me is you think people should have to either be crap PVPers or not be able to craft. I might as well choose which one I want to do, and then go back to Freelancer or Wurm. I'm not paying to get a game experience I can get somewhere else. I want a great crafting system combined with a PVP system that is not only fun but offers me freedom, and this is about the only place I can find that. Why kill Xsyon's best selling point?