Skill Points

Yeah, I suppose so, I’m just not a huge fan of having to specialise so much. I agree that it encourages cooperation but what if I want to be able to mine and craft and fight. It would be bad if you had too many skills in the early game, but it takes ages to get to level 50 in the first place let alone level up further. I was also only talking about a small number of skill points each time like 5 or something

I think that getting skill points could actually be nice if there were specific skills that we could only put points in, like character attributes, end game.

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This is something that has been heatedly discussed several times before. Unfortunately (from my perspective), there are more people that disagree with you than agree with you, both as users on the forum and from what I can see, as developers at Wonderstruck.

Honestly, I’m slightly concerned about the apparent absence of any post lvl-50 character development. I know that there will always be ‘things to do’ once you hit the level cap (building, getting more plots, hoarding resources, exploring etc etc). However, given that equipment is both limited in durability and irreparable and that you stop earning skill points, once you hit 50, there seems to be nothing to work towards to permanently progress your character beyond that point. At a guess, I’d say that there are just as many (if not more people) who will look at this as an MMO first and foremost, and either be put of by this decision, or reach level 50 and rapidly lose interest.

Personally, I’d prefer continuing development of a single character (because from my point of view, the only difference between one character that can do it all vs. 3 that can do it all between them is convenience). That concept being large disliked by the community, I would VERY much approve of a Diablo 3 style Paragon system (small, incremental increases to sets of general stats), or something else that provided the feeling of actual character development.

I have recently been playing in the early access of Fortnite These two games are not comparable, so note that I’m not trying to do that… It’s got plenty of bad reviews because of the ridiculousness of it’s RNG paid loot-boxes system, but a bigger emerging gripe isn’t that they cost what they do, it’s that they’re basically the only place to gather the higher rarity equipment. Better equipment is the primary source of character progression once you maxed out your current gear, and so you reach a point where you can’t just play the game to get better. You can still play and pray to RNGesus, But the very fact that your character progression comes to a screeching halt has proven to be… Disruptive.

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@james @luke-turbulenz @vdragon and any other devs, what are your opinions on this?

I was actually thinking that it seems too easy for people to get to level 50 (or maybe it’s that I don’t have as much time to play as others).

The issue with continual skill points is that, eventually, everyone will be exactly the same - it doesn’t matter how long it takes, that’s the inevitable, eventual outcome.

I like the idea of continuing to earn cleanse points though. It allows for slight a respec given enough game time (without the need for doing a full paid skill reset).

Yes it’s a matter of convenience if you have one character that can do everything as opposed to 3 characters that can do everything between them… but… with 3 characters, you can only use one of them at a time, and this promotes interaction with others (this being one of the core defining aspects of both the game and indeed the actual development of Boundless).

For example, you may have a character that is specced for mining, but you want to go to a higher tier world for some supplies … you need someone to protect you while you mine. With a character that can do it all… it’s too easy for you to just do everything yourself without interacting with anyone else - that to me is a single player game, not an MMO built around communities and interaction.

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In Boundless your max gear expires when your durability runs out. So there’s a need to go out collect, craft or buy these items to stay at your peak.

I believe you do get cleanse points so you can re-skill.

We’re focusing on the core experience at the moment and once that’s in a good place we’ll be working on alternative things for players of all levels to do.

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Great! Looking forward to this :slight_smile: Especially with the multiple characters. It will allow me to maximize my 3 characters over time.

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@Stretchious I believe we’ve had this conversation, and I hadn’t meant to drag it up again (which is why I accepted that my views were… ‘less popular’, and moved towards the continued-progression-lite suggestion as in D3’s paragon system.

While we’re here though… Logically, what you say makes a lot of sense. I would say that in my experience though (and increasingly so as the years have passed), group-play really only happens with people who like being a group anyway or when it is a more efficient use of time to do so. I honestly can’t think of a single game I’ve played that has tried to incentivise playing in a group that hasn’t just ended in 4 or so random strangers joining a group because it’s more efficient and not saying a single word to each other (beyond maybe ‘hi’ and ‘bye’) till the end of their play session.

From my perspective, even were a person able to max Mining AND combat they still may not be able to go and mine high level things alone, let alone with any degree of efficiency. This is merely ‘hoping’ at this point, but it would be nice to think that going alone to high level planets to do a spot of mining will require you to spend enough time watching you back, switching to weapons, faffing around fighting etc that you don’t actually get much mining done. You’d still want to go with other people geared out and ready to function in a specific group role, to get worthwhile things done irrespective of how many skill points they have and where they’re spent.

However, as I said I’m sure we’ve had this conversation before, and also that more people and Devs share your views on the subject than mine. Now that we’ve both had chance to reiterate our opposing views on the subject, lets leave it at that.

Tbh, that is exactly my concern. You will reach a point where you are out farming, mining, working just to stay where you already are and make no further progress. I would love for the game to continue down it’s current course, launch, and for me to be proven wrong. But what I foresee is it leading to people actively avoiding playing because they can only go backwards if they use their awesome gear too much, or saving those super-cool items for an occasion special enough to warrant them, and never actually finding that moment that is special enough.

That is exactly what I wanted / needed / am relieved to hear.

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Isn’t that issue/concern obsolete with the implementation of multiple characters per account?

Definitely not. I can now make a miner, a combat character and a crafter/trader. But with the current system I can’t go running around Munteen mining and doing combat - I’d need a group. If I could have one character with all the skills it would be able to do everything on its own - massively discouraging groups.

It needs to remain limited in order for us to form interesting builds and depend on other players (which is the root of any MMO).

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i REALLY don’t think that will discourage groups in fact i think that will make people bond together cause now u can be just casual and be like “oh hey wanna go mining m8” “Yeah sure” instead of “oh hey wanna go mining m8” umm srry man i can’t mine that great i’mma just stay here and work on collecting logs

What I don’t really understand is why it takes so long to gain skill points and why the trees require so many exponentially.
To me, if you want people to specialise, limit the skill points but allow people to specialise fairly quickly. The limit on skill points will then force people to choose a path to be a master at, and maybe one or two supporting paths. At the moment I find its becoming a bit of a chore to reach the next level and the pay off sometimes isn’t worth it.
For example, I want to make glass but I have to unlock a tree of machine skills and decorative block skills, and then I have to dig up the stuff to make glass so to support that skill I need to unlock some digging improvement skills to save myself some time. I want to produce glass as a trade so mass crafting is necessary if it’s to be my career. In order to get those skill points, I need to go out into the world and mine/hunt/explore. Each of those needs skill investment of their own. Now I’m torn, do I invest in vitality, running speed, hammers and combat so I can survive the world in order to get skillpoints (which costs a lot of skill points on its own), or do I punch flowers for a few days so I can do my dream job - cooking sand? I can’t buy the resources as I’ve no money yet, I need to have glass and a shop stand (a skill of its own) to sell before I can buy the resources (which needs a request basket, even more specialisation!). That’s a lot of problems facing a player who wants to make glass, which in minecraft is available from the get-go. (And yes I am using Minecraft as the example, but so will many-many new players; its an unavoidable comparison).
It kind of feels like I need to be able to do everything in order to get the skillpoints to specialise, but I’m punished for trying to do everything - and when mentioned on the forums get told, you’re not meant to do everything! How am I supposed to level up then? Even punching flowers is less effective now. :wink:

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You actually kind of have enough money as starting player through coin rewards by leveling. The skill part is I think also an issue though. There are just some interconnected skills that sometimes don’t make much sense OR the rewards of spec-ing is can be felt multiple level down the tree.

I personally want incremental progression in terms of skill and a better skill tree but this might be a big overhaul on the current system and lots of work needed (But I feel it needs to be done). The attribute part of the progression is fine with me (and very tempting to skill this up since you’ll reap the reward right away).

This is also where buying plinths come in. I’m buying more than 100 000 coins stuff at any given moment. You can instantly get coin by using existing shops :wink:

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Sorry my example is from the point of view of a new player facing some of the frustrations of navigating the skill tree and deciding between stats and skills. You’re asking someone still learning the mechanics to traverse to your shop on the highest tier planet to buy off you (and yes, your shop is awesome, thanks for making it!)
Think of how much learning and progression there is in that, all to own a shop stand which is in one of the early trader tutorial objectives.

What are good prices for things?
Where are the nearest major settlements?
How do portals work?
How do I get back home?
How do I earn money?
Where do I find the things shopkeepers want to buy?
Can I survive there?
Is that rain dangerous? (You know what I mean, you’ve all thought the same looking through a portal for the first time, especially with “toxic world” as a description!) :wink:

There’s a lot of learning going on for new players, some of whom are expecting to shape their own destiny and play their way as the store description says. Yes, for us and others like us who have hours in the game, this is second nature but to be frustrated at completing tutorial objectives will not encourage new players to stick it out.

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It doesn’t have to be my shop - there are many on many worlds with buying plinths :wink:

I actually think it’s kind of cool that one of your first task as a trader involves trading to acquire a shop stand! It’s so very representative of being a trader!

This took me a month to figure out my pricing scheme. I still change my prices every day - the economy is always changing. Keep in mind that a good price for anything varies based on the volume of them you have for sale and how hard you are to find.

This tripped me up too when starting. The devs have actually stated previously that the objectives will be hidden until you can craft/access it.

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Yeah I guess a lot of the skill tree navigating causes most of the frustrations and this skill limit of what you’re actually allowed to be able to do and make depending on what career you want to have will be more obvious in future builds, e.g. a lumberjack will always get a better price selling to a trader than trying to sell on his own because the trader is skilled in tax reduction, just like the trader will never chop wood as good as a dedicated lumberjack.

Hey, I’ve always wanted to ask you about this, and especially since your giant (and fascinating) omniconomist post. I remember watching your prices change daily back in the early days when you were buying like three items. So, just because I’m curious, can you elaborate on pricing structures in a system with one “tie point” price (the warp costs)? How much does that externally fixed price constrain world prices in general? If, say, you’d decided to start with sap at 30c instead of 3c, would the whole system have adjusted to keep it there, or crawled back down, or something completely different? And is there some systematic reason why it seems like the older/defunct shops seem to have copper tools priced around 100-150c (or is it some sort of selection bias that those prices were too high for the demand and consequently they’re the ones that remain)?

/armchair

Edit: sry, just realized exactly how off-topic this post is. Oops.

I started by trying to base my prices around warp costs, but that was totally misleading. The bigger influencers turned out to be the available coin supply and available goods supply per player.

Since coin is turning hands daily and there is only one small coin sink - there is much more coin in circulation per active player. Also, due to pre-alpha state many players are only active for short periods - quickly removing and reintroducing old coin levels.

Goods supply is basically just what’s available on shop stands. Players checking in on updates tend to not resupply their shop stands (but they tend to buy stuff to try things out) - leaving us with a diminished available goods supply per player and even more coin influx.

The end result: coin normalizes to old patches’ coin levels and supply to current active player volume. Of course, this macro picture is also subject to change. I predicted more players after this patch but did not plan on the creature killing debacle. We now see many players taking breaks as a result and active players have already dropped by 50% according to Steam DB. So depending on time taken for a “fix” patch (as in, that fixes the economy - not fixes the game):

Slow fix: Prices will drop since more recently inactive players mean less total coin in circulation and a lot of goods remaining with fixed prices (from those players) which will lead to a temporary drop in prices for active traders to stay in circulation (in game time this will happen over 2 weeks or so).

Fast fix: New players, new characters and new coin sources will increase coin supply significantly whilst difficulty will decrease goods supply leading to short-term inflation as these characters level.

EDIT: Footfall is much more than anticipated. We will be experiencing inflation. And it will be on the goods that builders want first. This is gonna be awesome!

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Your shop is great @OmniUno but honestly not everyone will be able to have a shop of that size or scale accordingly. Not everyone can have a main location in one of the big cities to get foot traffic. Or the time to grind and promote like you do. Even if we have cash we can’t portal jump everywhere to price watch, etc.

It is crazy that I have to level 2 levels now to get the basic skills to make standard things. At one level I am fine with it, but on another from being able to support myself in game I am finding it challenging.

Since I am new I have to look at all the big cities I see now and even trying to figure out how to fit into the shop situation… I can’t think about the game at a later point with 1000’s of people online. I have to think about it with 500 or whatever play. The devs can tweak things at any time but we need to keep new people interested.