certainly makes sense on the party member revive,promotes party play and its definitely gonna come in handy with half the nasty creatures you guys have planned 
@james good to hear! im always planning my buildings 2-steps ahead of what i’m currently doing,always walking around my creations wondering if anything doesn’t quite fit and have gotten used to toggle creep in other voxel games.
The part after the qoute was more to show that even if there was no hard cap we would still need to look at what kind of behavior the skill tree setup encourages.
I might have missed it in the previous discussions, but what are we actually exhausting when reviving others? Sort of like a mana I guess but I never though this is needed in boundless, not until I saw that we have a revive skill.
Also, totally agree with @TheBirne! Those are some of the things I’ve felt weird while looking at the tree but couldn’t put it into words.
You’re right. I guess that at this point it’s just a difference of opinions. I liked what you said a couple of posts back about bonus skills at the end of trees though. Then we still get encouragement for specialization, but if they leave it on the linear scale we can choose between a bonus skill or more base help.
Of course we would need to look at that. That’s the case regardless of system^^
But like I said while the cap/no cap doesn’t matter for the first few skills you take, it does matter if you want to specialize. Some will do regardless but some will only specialize if they know they don’t have to sacrifice anything in the long long long term (3 longs because they would have to use a lot of time to get everything else unlocked after specializing in something.)
That’s the reason why I think a cap doesn’t really give any incentive to specialize while no cap does, as counterintuitive as that sounds.
It sounds counter intuitive… because… its… nonsense.
Furthermore, as before, more advanced players become less and less specialized as they all become homogenized at max or near max level. The level of cooperation between specialist drops to zero as you no longer rely on other specialist as you continue to fill out every spec tree.
It’s counter intuitive to most every social goal of the game.
No, it’s not nonsense. Not in the slightest.
You all seem to assume that it will take the fastest player only months until he has maxed out every skill. But that’s only the case if it’s designed to be that way. That means you can design it so even the most dedicated player needs years to max out everything.
If you design it that way, in 5-10 years, without any additional update to the game(!), I’d estimate about 50% will have maxed out everything. If it’s done right.
And with additional updates, which I, and surely you too, hope will come, there won’t ever be someone who comes even close to maxing everything out. And thus there will always be a need for specialists and there will always be cooperation and trade.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy to find the right spot for the leveling difficulty but that’s not the point here either.
Now when I look at the types of players I see 3 of them: The ones that want to skill evenly anyway, the ones that want to specialize anyway and the ones that don’t know yet.
The first two don’t matter because no matter the system they will do the same thing. The last one on the other hand is the one the system should be targeted at.
I think those in that third group are people like me. They would like to specialize because it’s kind of fun but they don’t want to sacrifice anything else because that’s dumb.
(I can’t see a reason why someone wouldn’t want to specialize unless he has to sacrifice something. If you have a reason for that kind of behavior then please tell me.)
That means a system with caps would swing that group to spread out their skill points or make them invest them in a way so they can unlock the most things. Of course without specializing.
While a system without caps would swing them the other way to be more specialized because they don’t have the fear on loosing out on something. Because eventually they could still unlock it, even though it’s almost impossible to max out everything.
So the conclusion is, it doesn’t hurt any of the social goals of the game at all if you don’t have caps. It even helps them. Yet a system with caps would hurt the social goals of the game while not really helping them in anyway.
And as always if you have a counter argument, I’m happy to listen to it. I don’t want to be right I want to find a solution/the truth.
No way the game will be able to offer 5 years of content at 1.0.
Well, I said if it’s done right. What I mean is not that you can play 5 years and see new things everyday. I mean you’d need at least that much time to skill everything to the max. You’ll most likely be bored of the rest of the game until then but I don’t think that’s important for this argument.
It’s only about how long it should take a player to max out everything.
Of course you could scale that down for the 1.0 skills for every expansion of skills that comes out in those 5 years. Always depending on how hard you want it to be.
I think you’re making unfounded assumptions. Furthermore, to provide the sort of time scale you’re proposing, you either have to provide:
A) huge number of levels to obtain per tree with small interval rewards (ex 99 lvls, .5% increase each)
B) huge intervals of time between levels (10 lvls, 10% increase each, but 3 weeks dedicated grind per lvl)
This results in excessively grindy gameplay.
Furthermore, no matter how balanced, it will always lead to high levels of homogeneity.
No it doesn’t have to be more grindy than it is already for the part we could skill already. Meaning you don’t have to change the time you need to aquire the amount of skillpoints where the cap is set at the moment. You only need to make it much harder for every additional skill point or make every additional skill cost much more.
That way it wouldn’t change anything from the current system it would only make it possible to skill further even if it is grindy. That’s the point isn’t it? You shouldn’t be able to get the additional skillpoints at the same rate. It should be hard. If it wouldn’t be grindy and hard you’d see a lot of people maxed out pretty fast.
And no I don’t think it will lead to high levels of homogeneity. It will lead to slightly higher levels. That’s true. It would be amazing if not. But they won’t be high unless the time you need for additional skill points is set too low.
That means: No, I think balance can change if there are high levels of homogeneity or not.
Also if I’m making unfounded assumptions, point them out instead of just mentioning their existence.
Then why do it? I just don’t see any reason for it
I think you miss the point. I explicitly stated that this is a scenario without any additional content. (Which is highly unlikely)
That way I had a starting point with conditions as exact as possible, to tell you a baseline of what I think should be the difficulty of aquiring every skill that is in the game.
Of course there will be additional content which keeps you occupied. And even if not, being bored of the game before you could even max out everything is not an argument against no skill cap.
If anything, you could say since everyone is bored before they can max everything out, there is a guarantee for a certain degree of specialization.
The longer it takes the closer you’d get to the same system/end result as it’s proposed at the moment but without the cap.
sorry to say but i’m gonna have to agree with havok on this one.
i used to play FF14 ARR and was a crafter and the amount of time it took to acquire the mats to get specialist skills took literally months or even longer (up to over a year when Heavensward hit) and tbh after awhile you just get bored farming/trying to get to that point or you just dont bother at all.
if i spent 10 years perfecting my crafting trade does that mean id be good at combat? no as i spent that time specialising in something someone else didnt,the fact is you have to sacrifice something to achieve a high skill level (ie time)
“you cant please everyone,so aim for the majority and be happy” which is the route the devs will most likely take,your a minority in wanting it take as long as you do,most other people will get bored if they feel there not progressing by investing time in the game.
First of all, don’t be sorry to agree with someone^^
I also agree with you, it would be too hard to if it would take so long for every skill to master it.
What I’m proposing is a bit different though. It would be literally the same experience as the devs plan for now until you hit the cap. It would take the same time and everything.
My “system” would only kick in after that. At the moment it would be the end of your skilling when you hit the cap. But I propose a system where you can continue gaining skillpoints and investing them but it takes you much longer and/or costs you much more for the additional skills.
What I meant with the part you quoted was: I don’t think someone specializes because he has to sacrifice something. He might sacrifice something because he specializes.
That was in response to the argument that the skill cap will encourage people to specialize which I don’t think it will or at least to a much much lesser extend than a lot of people here think.
Also to add to your example. As you said you have to sacrifice time to specialize in something. Time is one of the factors which enable you to get better with something.
But in a world where you can’t die or where you will be resurrected again you have unlimited time which means even if you invest a life time to be the master in something you still have infinitly many life times left for the rest of what ever you want to learn.
Or another take on it. Even if I take 10 years to perfect my crafting and I’m a literal 0 in combat. I can still start to train my combat after that while maintaining what I’ve learnd about crafting. And in another 10 years I’ve mastered both and can go on to the next one.
ahhhh i see what your getting at,bit like diablo 3’s paragon system (after level cap you still level up but have a choice of stats to put said points in eventually capping all stats)
i think the only problem i see is long term where players who have been around awhile would be able to do all skills thus removing/limiting/having full control the economy (same thing happened in FF14 where players who where omnicrafters (ppl who have all skills) had full control on the economy,dictating prices,demand/supply etc)
yeah sorry i quoted the wrong part
How long did it take for the fastest player until he was an omnicrafter?
depended on the player,a casual maybe about a year,for serious crafters like i was 4-5 months of 8-12 hrs a day non stop crafting.
What would you think if you’d scale it up so much that even the most serious player wouldn’t be able to max out everything in let’s say 2-3+ years? Not even counting new content.
Would you say it’s still not enough? Would you say any amount of time would not be enough because eventually some people would be omniskiller? (omniskiller = every skill maxed out, I quite like that term^^)
personally i dont think any player should be able to max everything for a few reasons (though i understand some would like that)
A) it will mess with the economy no matter how grindy you make it (just prolonging the inevitable)
B) having limit skills would allow you to respec down the line and enjoy a new playstyle (serious crafter>fighter/dungeon raider if we get that sort of thing)
C)In a game where everyone maxes out every skill, everyone ends up with the literal identical build rather then a build thats suited to them/what is needed among friends.