Post:Long Time, No Post - 10/02/2012 - 20:38
| Re: Long Time, No Post · on 10/02/2012 08:38 PM CDT | 3380 |
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| >>Call it what you will, but a penalty is a penalty is a penalty.
Please see my earlier post about perspectives. It's a penalty or a bonus or both, and you can look at it in any of those ways. One thing it unequivocally is, though, is a CHANGE. It's different than it is now, and I encourage you to try to view DR3 from DR3's perspective instead of DR2's. The game will be different, easier in some ways and harder in others. It's different and not identical to the way it is today. >>If somebody wants to play 20 hours a day and cap all their skills at 1750, so be it. If somebody else wants to play 30 mins a day and has only leveled their character to 20th after 10 years, so be it. But please, don't try to 'level the playing field' between these two characters because there is really no comparison. So, let me try to present this in another way: This change, fundamentally, gives people more options. You can train a few skills, you can train a medium number of skills, and you can train a lot of skills - Each decision has its own benefits and drawbacks. As the system exists now, there is no tradeoff between the two play styles - It is always better to train more skills. This mode of play only benefits people that have a ton of time to play (given that it takes a bit to warm up a rotation that keeps all N skills draining). What that means is, the people that are already getting ahead are getting a leg up from the system as it stands now. The new system withdraws that benefit - They already HAVE a huge benefit of being able to play and get active draining for hours on end, and they don't need even more help. Instead, now, the people with a crapton of time to play DR with can choose which mode of optimization they want to take part in. If you want to train a bunch of skills for TDPs, you'll want to keep a bunch of skills hot for a while. If your concern is keeping up with the Joneses, you'll still be ahead of him if you train a bunch of skills all day while Mr Jones only plays for a couple hours. The time you spend will still give you a massive edge on people without the same amount of time, you just don't get additional help from the way the system is tuned. I feel like a lot of the rage surrounding this idea would find a HUGE issue with the idea of somebody getting a bonus to experience after being logged off for a while. This benefits people who don't play frequently, which also narrows the gap between people with a ton of time and people with less. Is this as upsetting of an idea? I ask because this is a fundamental part of almost every MMO that's been released to the public, and few people complain about those people that are getting ahead by 'rest experience'.
I'm not sure where you got this idea - I fully anticipate people using their bonus ranks to train a lot of skills. If you want to train a broad set of skills, you'll get just as big of a bonus per pulse (relative to pulse size) as if you're training one skill.
No you won't :). Believe me. High ranks are *really expensive*. It's not like draining 50 ranks of Light Edged into your bonus pool will give you enough bits to take you from 950 to 1000. There will be people that focus on circling with their bonus bits, and people that focus on training crafting skills they've always wanted, and people that don't pay any attention - All of these scenarios are fully anticipated. That's one reason the circles above 150 are so expensive - There are a lot of ways that people can powercircle if they really want to, and I didn't want to have to raise it to 250 and 300 and 350 over the next few years because of it. These scenarios are totally okay.
Seriously, chill. It's not as ridiculous as you're making it out to be. People have choices now, rather than 'must train as many skills as possible'.
Not without rerolling. This is a roleplaying game, and I'm only going to go so far to let people optimize after changes. There are some choices that are permanent and won't be changing - What guild you are, what race you are, etc.
I encourage you to at least wait until the release happens. You'll probably find that it's rather less different than you're afraid it is. If you've been playing for 15 years, you've had plenty of changes that you've suffered through.
I haven't made any changes to how stealth is calculated, but that doesn't mean it's always going to be like that.
Fundamentally, I think it's a mistake to compare DR2 and DR3 and say that there's a penalty or a bonus. You're comparing two things that are similar but are also wildly different in a lot of ways - Circle reqs are different, the amount of experience things grant is different, drain rates are different, number of skills is different... The experience model has changed in so many ways that saying one is a penalty vs a bonus seems... an inadequate way to describe it.
Look, I know you have an axe to grind but it's really just embarrassing to suggest that I'd use misleading data just to prove a point. The 99% was certainly an exaggeration - the actual number is closer to 90%. Of all people logged in right now over level 5, 10.38% of them had at least one skill over 1000. The good of the 10% still doesn't outweigh the good of the 90%. Especially since absolutely nobody has any gauge (except wild speculation) as to the impact this will actually have on how you play.
Hm. I would think that the fact that I'm paying a ton of attention to this thread and answering questions would lend credence to the idea that people are being listened to - Much less the pretty consistent evidence in the past of taking player input into account. Don't think that because I make a counter argument I'm not listening to concerns.
It's really not about catering to people who do this. I'm going to post this giant epic so that it can get out there and responded to, because it's getting too long, but if the previous responses don't explain how it's not explicitly catering to these people (though they're not left as far behind), please raise the question again.
That's incorrect - One of the first things I posted is that this idea turned out not to be a good idea, and we're not going to do it.
Again, this the numbers totally aren't set in stone. I've said this a few times already, which is why people getting so worked up about it seems weird. I'm not going to implement something that makes the game horrible to play for a ton of people - I'll find the sweet spot where the most people benefit and the ones who suffer suffer the least. RAILZ's suggestion seems reasonable (though again, not at all a final decision), and it's roughly what I was expecting to land on. | |
| This message was originally posted in Abilities, Skills and Magic \ The Experience System, by DR-SOCHARIS on the play.net forums. | |