Testing 194: Epic Skills, Skill Sets and the Exchange!

That’s why I said the return to sanctum. It is a time penalty in that you are removed from what you were doing. However, you can keep playing and even can go back to doing what you were doing if you can get back there easily enough from one of your beacons. Otherwise, you can continue playing, but, choose a different thing to be doing or a new location.

I had the 10% experience reduction rather than a loss of experience gained for a certain time. Players who hate penalties and want no consequences always want a time period without experience gain. They just go grab a snack, do their homework, read a book on how to cheat at games, or whatever they like to do. Or, they simply log off or switch characters. That way they have no penalty at all with loss of some experience gain as the penalty. They are simply advocating no penalty at all. They don’t want to lose anything at all ever for death or anything else. So, they argue for the easiest thing there is to totally avoid so they never have to pay a price for any bad decisions.

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Gathering skills should not be an either or. Shouldn’t have to pick between them. There is no harm in having the ability to get both epics. I fully disagree with locking gathering like this.

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Why not set it so if you die the portal takes you back to where you entered that planet from. Sure there is ways around that, like opening a portal and entering the spot you’re mining, gathering, building, etc. But also is an inconvenience that costs.

You can have a maximum of 10 points of each attribute.
You start with 1 point in each and you can get 1 point each from the all attributes skill.
That leaves 8 for the regular attribute skills. :blush:

I thought we start with 10 and we can have 100 max.
Each attribute level gives 10 so we end up with 90.
Then each level of attribute bonus gives 2 and that allows us to reach 100, as there are 5 levels of the attribute bonus.

:thinking: Oh I must’ve missed that, thanks for clarifying :slight_smile:

I think this is the best idea so far.
I would only tweak it slightly to suggest that if you die it is reset and if you stop mining or collecting xp then it slowly then quickly decreases.
this could work in combination with a percentage of xp loss. I think a percentage of xp loss is not so bad. (not sure what it is now if its a percentage, i think ive heard different values)

I actually wanted to suggest something similar as a perk for miners (since hunting is the best way to level as everyone knows)
and that would be as you mine or collect xp continuously you are rewarded with some extra xp (like mini feats) or maybe a luck bonus that quickly resets if you stop mining for a few seconds.

sometimes we do, and that is a big enough hit a lot of times, especially when items or carcasses are despawning or especially during hunts where in 30 seconds you could easily be getting over 20,000 xp.
these are the times the death penalty is already frustrating. Plus, like @schasm said, sitting out on a game is a HUGE penalty in itself because we log on to play this awesome game! my time is precious (okay I have lots to spare atm but sometimes I don’t) and for that I absolutely hate unavoidable time based penalties. (having to wait for items to craft was infuriating at first but its one of those things I accepted and moved on with, you can always just craft a queue and do something else, I like that)

100% agree.

another cool big update, i like the way that the skill system has been changed a lot

I think what many of us are arguing is that even for players who take a break they are still being penalized in terms of play time. Maybe sometimes they would have taken a break anyways, but most of the time they would have preferred to keep playing.

I don’t see Boundless as a game that needs to be overly punishing about death anyways. It’s not that sort of a game. The mechanic only needs to be just strict enough to make players care to try and avoid it, and also designed to prevent people from abusing death to accomplish things they shouldn’t be able to.

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About the defeat penalty. I mainly have one thing to say, is that between no consequences and a little consequence there is already a big difference. My miner had only defeat penalty 4 till recently, and when missed a jump and died in lava I was mad. Now I’m the kind of cheap guy that mine with iron hammers etc, I guess not everybody cares about their tools that much. But still, the difference between losing nothing and losing something is huge.

I feel like tool durability loss was good, I feel like xp loss is not bad either, Neither is the xp and luck debuff. I’m fine with any of those.
I think it’s more a question of fine tuning. The player will get the message, they got punished. The punishment doesn’t need to be big. A small penalty will already change things a lot compared to now where people are immune.

Overall I’m happy with the loss of total invulnerability. And I like the idea of hitting veterans and new players equally. And it is the researched goal, then Omni’s defeat penalty is the best one. I wouldn’t go overboard with it though, because if a mechanic makes a player log off, he might not log back in.

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I agree that “putting down the game for a while” should not be the punishment for a player. First, most of us have limited time to play and this is the last thing that we want to do. Second, putting it down might translate to “maybe tomorrow again” then to “I don’t feel like opening the game again”. Third, it makes the world less lively.

With that said, I still believe that the reduce in luck is still the better option for death penalty (so far). However, we should probably move from “punishing death” to “rewarding being alive”. For example, doing activities and evading death could earn you a status of “Healthy” thus, increase in luck. Upon death, you lose this status and you need to do some activities again to earn the said status.

Now, instead of putting down the game for a while, you would want to play more to earn that status and be “lucky” again (even if that lucky just means being normal again. Psych!!)

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Testing 194 - Report issues here

I feel like I’m the only player who didn’t use skill points on it. I was just extra cautious and extra angry with myself when a character died. :slight_smile:

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I also never used it. Double durability on tools was more important to me. :grin:

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

How about the following change:

Defeated Penalty:

  1. When you’re defeated we apply a “Death Sickness” status effect.

  2. We remove the current death sickness effects (reduced stats and limited jump height) It wasn’t clear what the effect ever did, and it always felt strange to jump a different amount.

  3. The new death sickness then reduces your XP generation by N% (say 50%) until you’ve earned M% (say 10%) of the total XP to progress your current level.

    For example (with made up numbers):

    • If you require 10,000 XP to progress from Level 10 to Level 11.
    • Death sickness cost on Level 10 would be: 10% of 10,000 XP = 1,000 XP.
    • Whenever you have Death Sickness you earn XP at 50% until you’ve earned 1,000 XP.
    • Once earned you recover from Death Sickness.
  4. If you are defeated again whilst you have death sickness, the status effect is reset and starts over. They don’t stack or accumulate.

  5. OPTIONALLY - we add an Epic Skill that reduces, but doesn’t eliminate, the death sickness. This could be taken by players who have a habit of dying.

The advantages are:

  1. No progress is ever lost. It’s not possible to go backwards or get stuck on a level.

  2. It’s simple. Your XP gain is reduced whilst you have the status effect.

Comments?

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This x 5 trillion.

EDIT: Realizing I am 5 years late on this discussion. Never mind. Carry on.

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I would also count this as a big advantage.

My only concern is, if something sticks with you that hinders your character but without a clear time frame when you will get rid of it, it might ruin your fun playing that character, or playing at all.
But I think it’s still a better solution then xp loss or tool damage.

Another variation on using time as a punishment could be to send the player to a special area that they will have to navigate and/or fight through in order to return to the rest of the game world.

You guys are geniuses.
:raised_hands:

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I think this is probably about the best way. It definitely makes death something to avoid. I would like the epic skill added to reduce but not eliminate the penalty.

I do appreciate that you do listen to our concerns.

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You could also add in an item that will reduce the amount of xp reduction. Like say a brew or food that you can eat that removes a % of the penalty, but adds a buff or debuff that doesn’t allow you to use it again for 20 minutes or something. So you’re not forced to keep that penalty until worked off.

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