The calm before the storm: Skill degrade

Not really. In theory it would yes, if everyone was running the same build. There are some adventurer level 100+ people ( AOE Mages predominantly) out there now, who can gain 1.8 Million xp in 1 hour easily. It takes them accordingly 7 hours to raise an adventurer level at their present level so they state. As an example i am adventurer level 75, an Archer with single target damage, and i can make 160k an hour, that's not looting, running like a maniac and killing everything in a scene as quickly as possible, thus it takes me over 10 times longer to gain xp than it does these optimal builds for levelling. If we all changed to these levelling builds then yes in theory we would catch them up, but that involves everyone who is not running these builds are at a disadvantage and will never catch up.

 

I just want to say that I am just trying to vet your idea. If its kosher then its cool. The way it sounds to me at the moment then it is and will be a level gate to pvp at least. People that can put in more time and effort into some one just wanting to play the game will very much suffer. I am open to your response as always though. I myself can only play one or two hours a day at most. The rest I am required to run my business, and its not from the back of a desk. I am a fencing contractor and do barb wire fencing for a living, no computer in hand.

 

Well then you are like me. I can play some but not tons, nor do I care to be a leet PVP'er. Would rather take on bosses in groups than grind to do it solo. Priority is fun, not titles or levels or accomplishments.

And PvP should be MUCH more dependent on strategy and build than level. If a 100-level person has a meaningful advantage vs. a 90-level person, then PvP will fail here. Chris knows this and has designed advancement as such.

That said, don't penalize the more casual player with b.s. like slow regen, decay, etc. We just want to play without the sense of punishment.

Early UO had it perfectly balanced. If you died, you could be fully looted if you didn't res and get back to your body in time. That frantic mechanic was BEAUTIFUL. I have never seen, and will likely never see again, the balance of risk/reward that the early days of UO afforded. In fact I think I'll go back to my free UO Second Age shard tonight and go stir up some trouble with some reds and lingering blues.

 

We agree! I was many years on SP in UO, also atlantic, pacific, and europa. I understand! If we have anything thats different between us is minor. Not minors you creeper, lol J/k

 

I have standards damnit!

 

Not FBI, Maybe homeland security, IDK. By the way if its dead and still good eating, well, why waste the meat? I will say a prayer for every kill/feast that I use!~ "remember this is all role play, unless your budner, then IDN, but I assume he's kinda nuts, but he's cool!"

 

You mean, "The Calm Before the Entertainment".

 

by entertainment what do you mean? Dancing on tables?

 

No. All the whining and crying.

 

I am not sure what you mean? who is whining and crying? I get confused these days because it is so rampant.

 

No mention of skill decay in R34 patch notes, maybe the actually listened to us? Or will they sneak it in there?

 

I suspect they simply chose to hold off correcting the issue until they had some time to think through the consequences thoroughly (ie: not during the crunch just prior to a release).

The dev-team would not have spent all that time convincing the player-base that decay was "fine and dandy", only to give up the ghost now.

Eexpect it to return to the plate in R35, at which point you can all ride this merry-go-round again.

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ease-34-instructions.64769/page-3#post-664897

I suspect they need more time to re-evaluate the skill decay for crafting.

 

Leave skill decay in, but allow players to pick a tree that's immune(One total, not one adventuring and one production). You can move it around at will, but when you die, only the current choice is immune. The stated goal is to make it harder to be great at everything, this accomplishes that while making it less frustrating if you just want to be good at one thing.

 

I don't see why there needs to be decay or a cap.
If someone wants to spend months grind grind grinding in order to get everything high, its not hurting anyone else.
If anything it allows for more versatile builds, experimentation, etc. It allows you to log in and play for any amount of time and feel like you can make some progress.
If there was a total cap, unless it was quite high I bet a lot of us have already hit it. So, why play then? What is there to log on and achieve? Nothing.
Pool up millions of xp and spend it on ...nothing.
What would be the point then?
Not having a cap, or having a cap that is so high (ie 200 cap in single skills) encourages people to stick around for years.

 

PvP

 

Exactly !
So all the rest of us must suffer because of PvP ?

 

Cap is the thing that will let mega hardcore players and casual players to, at some time, be equal.
Skillcaps alone can give to ALL PLAYERS: equity, integrality and universality. It means all players can enjoy pvp, hardcore or casual.
Hardcore players will still farm things first, sell it at best prices, farm at the best spots. So nothing really changes, beside the part more players will pvp at the long run of the game

 

PVP is not a reason to change the entire skill mechanic, and I'd hate to see it happen for just that reason.
Especially since one of the biggest outcries / first response from the devs was that Decay would not apply to PvP death!
Now surely, if PvP is the only reason to mess up the system and add limits and penalties and etc. then surely PvP death is the only place such decay should apply, by that logic?
Keep PvPers from getting too powerful / forcing them to grind skills back, right? Seems fair to me. Leave the rest of us alone. Leave crafting out of it.
Of course, this puts another obstacle to PvP, and it seems there's little enough interest in doing it now anyway, so that certainly wont help matters, but hey, if that's what the PvP folks want?

Again, the people who suffer from this change will be the casual players, forced to grind and re-grind all over again.
The hardcore players with millions of pool in surplus will barely notice.
The only way to mitigate this would be to have decay at very very high skill levels only, levels casual players will likely never see.

 

I like the idea of a skill point cap for allocated skill point, however I think that the Dev team could increase it to a new cap level with each expansion - will give players something to look forward to with each expansion . By having an allocated skill cap this also means that more skill points can stay in the adventure pool which means that skill loss on death won't be so painful - more points will come from the adventure pool rather than your used skills