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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
How do you feel about 'Natural Skill' progression?
ShadowVen
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Throughout all the years of playing various MMORPG's, one element of progression that has stood out to me is just the basic premise of: 'doing more of it, makes you better at it'. The more you do something, the better you get at it idea within any game has always grasped my attention. I've noticed a trend of absence for this basic idea within the gaming industry, and wanted to get this community's opinion.
Off the top of my head, here are two games that utilize this element:
Here are some ideas that I've had; This natural skill progression I speak of is: Let's say you have a 1H sword and Shield equipped, the more you use that 1H sword the more accurate you become with it, and the more you have a successful block with the shield, the higher chance of you blocking successfully. I believe this type of incremental progression could be implemented within Ashes without causing much grief to the current skill / Augmenting system. One way of integration, for example, being a SpellHunter Augmenting a certain magical Element to your arrows. Having natural skill in Archery and Elemental Magic would affect your accuracy and the stacked imbued elemental dmg of that Elemental arrow on top of your physical dmg.
I'd prefer not to have to go talk to an npc to raise these particular natural skills, but instead maybe doing certain "training" quests could give an improved rate of learning. Rather than it flooding your chat box in previous games, there could be a UI window that shows the current value of that particular 'natural skill'. I think these natural skills could be a passive sub-set to basic Stats such as "Strn", "Dex", "Agi", "Int/wisdom", "Endurance/stamina", etc ....
What do you think? What could be the Pro's and Con's of this to you?
Thank you for any input =D
Off the top of my head, here are two games that utilize this element:
- 1. Everquest
- 2.Final Fantasy Xi
Here are some ideas that I've had; This natural skill progression I speak of is: Let's say you have a 1H sword and Shield equipped, the more you use that 1H sword the more accurate you become with it, and the more you have a successful block with the shield, the higher chance of you blocking successfully. I believe this type of incremental progression could be implemented within Ashes without causing much grief to the current skill / Augmenting system. One way of integration, for example, being a SpellHunter Augmenting a certain magical Element to your arrows. Having natural skill in Archery and Elemental Magic would affect your accuracy and the stacked imbued elemental dmg of that Elemental arrow on top of your physical dmg.
I'd prefer not to have to go talk to an npc to raise these particular natural skills, but instead maybe doing certain "training" quests could give an improved rate of learning. Rather than it flooding your chat box in previous games, there could be a UI window that shows the current value of that particular 'natural skill'. I think these natural skills could be a passive sub-set to basic Stats such as "Strn", "Dex", "Agi", "Int/wisdom", "Endurance/stamina", etc ....
What do you think? What could be the Pro's and Con's of this to you?
Thank you for any input =D
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Comments
Wololo,
I also thought of that scenario, howeve I believe it would be easy to mitigate that simply by disallowing skill progression to be obtained by hitting other PC's. I dont mind the grinding part to learn faster, thats part of the progression, however for higher lvls, maybe there could also be a passive skill called "learning" which would increase your learning rate overall of any natural skill, or at higher lvls you simply learn faster for skills under a certain numerical value.
I see your point about the alts, however, I personally dont mind that aspect of the game for each of my characters. It would give me a chance to focus on a certain path of skills in comparison to my main character.
So this natural progression works fine as long as combat skills are involved, but can become a drudgery for other skills
Now comes the question: Will we have such passive skills like Transcribe in Ashes?
XD
I think in a lot of cases it negates the necessity of classes and somewhat homogenizes characters, because some skills are used frequently by everyone. I am sure there are ways to address these issues though.
As for PvP, I don't think advancing combat skills should be limited to PvE. I am not sure what Ashes currently plans for xp related to PvP though.
I think that weapon skilltrees should be something that everyone shares. A sword for a warrior would be used the same way a sword would be used by a summoner for example.
Sadly this would lead to other problems like: "Searching for a fighter with at least two passives in helbards!" Or "Lf1m sword mage with electricity passives! Fire is also okay!"
@Damokles
so, your sword passive value wouldnt be different for other classes, rather perhaps the Cap value per class may be higher or lower in particular weapons based on the class. So warrior 2H sword cap..say.. could be 500 at max level, where a summoners sword value caps at 300. Or if you think that would take away the diversity of classes, you could attach a natural skill passive cap dependent upon a general stat. So say, for every 5 points in STRN, you'r cap would be raised 10-15 pts for particular passives, such as 1h Swords, 2H swords, Blocking, etc...
I dont see this getting to a point of players requiring other players to have a certain value in their passives.
@Azathoth
I guess, as long as there is a Cap value for each skill per level, then I wouldn't see a problem with that. It's not like these passives would give any extra advantage. Its more for the immersion and giving the added possible difficulty in encounters. Having the ability to not dodge an attack based on your stats and a low sub-passive "dodge" value.
I'm not that in to PvP, but saying they have to PvE in order to get the skills to PvP is literally as abhorrent as saying a PvE player needs to PvP in order to get the skills to PvE.
I'm all for natural skill progression, but the answer to "what is to stop people just grinding it out" is simply "nothing".
As far as grinding it out, aside from the OP mentioned quests. I don't see anything wrong with grinding it out. Again its just another element of immersion. An additive is the theory that I mentioned of the sub-passives cap being attached to general stats.
Using it for skills like swimming (don't drown as quickly), running (you get a small speed buff?), and trading (for a bit better price from certain NPCs). It would be wonderful for crafting, but only as an add-on to the system.
My opinion is that the progression skills cap at a very small amount, so those who want that little extra will grind them, but they won't have a huge impact on the game.
I see your point and agree, although even within the fast paced combat action movement type, the so called "dodge" passive could still have an affect on whether your opponents hit lands or not. Each character/entity will have a hit box which therefore will give the ability to have multiple layers. The hit box can be hit through Action Combat Aim or Tab target hit chance. The (weapon) passives could affect both. For action combat, it could mean whether your hit dmgs for closer towards Min or closer towards Max dmg by minimal or fractions of number, & For tab target your overall chance of hit (small changes).
Although the passives would be a sub-set of general stats, there could definitely be in depth layers that could add overall immersion of gameplay. It would also increase the Diversity of how a player can focus on their character build. I do agree that it shouldn't have a huge impact, but perhaps for HC players every % of block, dmg mitigation, DPS output, Casting speed, Accuracy, Dodge, etc... counts in the long run. For the casual player they can decide whether or not to cap the skills or even focus on them, and just allow them to rise passively while playing.
It always feels unsatisfying when you reach that max cap and everything you do feels partially wasted as youre not getting a passive reward for clearing dungeons or smth. All you get is EQ
This idea of "natural skill progression" sounds nice but often than not things like that end up in a grind festival.
I like how BnS handled it with their HM levels. You get a few statpoint with each lv up which only grant some small benefits but werent worth "grinding" as it would just take too much time. It also was kind of a mark that shows how long you played that character. I like things like that
Elsword has something simliar, but issue there being that theres actually a reason for you to grind to a specific level. Those "post max Lv" - levels can give you stats like +35% skill dmg (this is basically flat out +35% dmg), +7,5% true dmg (gets added after dmg calculation) or +15% dmg to bosses. So having a high "post lv" there can boost your damage quite significantly
To me "train your 1handed skill over time" sounds like something that goes into the same direction. Im fine with rewarding players that have played the game for a long time, but rewards should be limited to small gimicks and mostly be for "showing off" my work rather than "making me superior to the other guy"
Since every weapon, even the legendary weapons, are going to be available from level one, maybe the skill should be a requisite along with level and other stuff, to be able to use the total stats, passives and powers of each weapon
very simple
1 don allow progress of the skills when the combat is pvp
2 the skill progression only work if you are against mobs that are close to your level 2 or 3 leves above or below
If you can level up by grinding out a single action, the amount of leveling you can do needs to be hard capped, and only apply to weapons of that level. If all you have is a level 5 iron sword, you shouldn’t be able to master swordsmanship with it no matter how often you use it.
Same with different elemental affinities. Using a tier 1 unaugmented frost spell should never let you have significant mastery over elemental magic.
If people want a practice-makes-perfect system I’m all on board, but it has to demand actual use of the skills, not just bare minimum repeated unto infinity.
If you want skill progression to be natural then it should be about player skill, not character skill. For example, in a fighting game if both players choose the same character, the only thing separating them is player skill. This is natural. Imagine if the first time you use a new character, that character's damage was lower than someone who had played hundreds of matches.
This is essentially the tab target vs action combat thing again.
Tab target is all about building your characters stats, your characters abilities. Character progression is the single most important thing.
Action combat is about the players ability. Progression is anywhere ranging from actually pointless to somewhat less useful than it is in tab target combat.
The above said, tab target is as much about the player as action combat is, it's just different things that the player needs to do.
The skilled gamer in a tab target game knows full well that those numbers are anything but arbitrary - because the skilled tab target player fully understands the system those numbers are used in (which means they are no longer arbitrary by definition).
No offence, but if you are playing a tab target game and a number seems arbitrary to you, then you are not a good tab target gamer.
"Natural skill" is really more the purview of the FPS genre.
But, MMORPGs try to appeal to a wide range of gamer playstyles - hence, the hybrid Ashes is aiming for.
I assume it would be relatively easy to attach diminishing returns to certain actions after 'x' repetitions within a period of 'y'.
But why penalize all PvP players just to prevent an exploit among a few?
There are other possibilities for passive progression. Perhaps weapons and spells could be divided into sub-types and familiarity with each sub-type would offer a small bonus when using said sub-type. Melee weapons, for instance, could be blunt (small armour piercing perk), bladed (small bleed DoT is applied over 3 seconds), or piercing (small boost to hit chance/damage). The only way to level these small bonuses is through the prolonged use of the appropriate weapon type, with only one of the boosts being active at a time based on equipped weapon type. Would be an extra layer of complexity for those who enjoy that, without being a mandatory concern for those who just prefer to pick a weapon type and stick with it.
But if i am "rank 10" in elemental arrows, I should be rank 10 elemental arrows for all different types of bows and crossbows. Because really, how different is it to shoot a lightning arrow vs a frost arrow.
A maxed out elemental ranger would look something like this:
Elemental archery: Rank 10
Crossbows: rank 10
Short bows: Rank 10
Crossbows: rank 10
Also, do not make this for every single unique type of weapon. I don't want:
Shortsword of 1 cm shorter: Rank 10
Shortsword of 1 cm longer: Rank 10
Keep the mastery for the different weapon types. Not unique weapons.
Lightning arrow could be considerably more chaotic.
All depends on the nature of magic in the specific setting.
In Ashes, weapons and the effectiveness of their abilities will likely be more tied to the crafter than to the wielder.
Marzzo, thank you for your feedback.
The idea I had wouldn't be "unrealisticly" complex.
Two ways the passive sub-sets could look like pertaining to weapons:
Of course there would be other categorical skills, such as blocking, conjuration/summoning, dodge, etc..
Various ways to include these passives into Ashes that wouldn't be Bold face complex or even something a player would "need" to focus on.
RuneScape has this system and it works fine. Grind is part of the game and the world is holistic (fixed levels), so there's always a place to grind up that skill you've been neglecting. Plus, unlike TES, RS separates combat level from total level, so you don't run into the issue of raising non-combat skills making you weaker in combat (due to enemies scaling).
Trainers can also alleviate the high level grind issue, or any intended method of power leveling.
The one point to confront about this system, however, is that all players will ultimately become a master-of-all. Even if you make the road to get there take 30 years, the road still has an end. If the aim is to have players specialize, either for balance or group play, this system isn't for it.