exactly, there should be caps only if there is something unbalanced, like some races become too dominant because some skills are just too op compared to other so everyone end up playing only that and not by that where this one player played more than the other one to be “better”
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Sorry, I completely missed addressing this in my post… Ooops.
I think that could be made to work. It’s probably a whole extra unplanned branch of development in providing the ability to essentially have your own rule-sets for privately hired servers, and to find some way to adapt characters to fit any given ruleset and transition between them. Probably one that there isn’t development time for right now sadly. BUT if I could rent a server and decide upon things like that, I’d be FAR more likely to want to pay money for it (I mean, I’m probably going to want to do that anyway, but the point is made hopefully).
Could you please explain a little deeper how having limited professions isn’t better for community building? It’s not intuitively making sense to me how needing others to do certain things for you should worsen your bonds with them.
Without more information, it’s difficult to know for sure. I was assuming that the trader tree would provide buffs and reduce upkeep for shopkeepers. I didn’t think you’d have to take it to even open up a trade window. The latter would severely limit the game for everyone. For example if I’m Mine/Gather/Explorer, I now suddenly can’t get rid of my materials.
This is a great point. In WoW, GW2, and SWTOR I also have an army of alts with max crafting/gathering professions. I don’t need to interact with anyone to get anything I need (especially in GW2 with that lovely reagent bank). Recently I’ve been playing Albion Online with some College friends. The game is SUPER grindy and leveling-intensive but it doesn’t restrict you. If you wanted to, you could max out each skill tree, but it’d take years upon years. So the game artificially, as you were saying, forces you to go down a path. For example, I make leather armor and daggers, which I then wield in combat. If the game was launching now, then I’d eventually have to specialize further and choose to only make leather hats. In the end-game, the experience levels are so high that specialization is key for your sanity. But in the early game, you can make alts so that one gathers, and then you have crafters for each armor type/weapon type. As others were saying, this allows a jack of all trades, master of none play style. You can make and sell low-medium level things across the spectrum but the real money comes from the end-game items which you won’t have access to if you were to keep up with these alts.
So I guess that my point is that I agree that you shouldn’t be able to muster an alt army and easily obtain max skill in all professions on your account. But I don’t think you shouldn’t be able to muster an alt army and obtain novice skill in all professions on your account. End-game profession progression should feel meaningful.[quote=“Marrash, post:80, topic:4504”]
Out of curiosity, does that mean that in WoW, you could have gotten equal quality items from scaled difficulty raids, whether they were scaled higher or lower? If it does, that is an interesting concept, though I can see why the raiding elite were unhappy.
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No. It’s comparable to SWTOR’s raids. Normal < Hardcore < Nightmare. Each increased tier of difficulty drops slightly better rewards in Wow’s Looking for Raid < Normal < Heroic < Mythic.[quote=“Havok40k, post:76, topic:4504”]
Perhaps the rented worlds can be an answer here? What if we compromise somehow. What if in a low population rented world, leveling is uncapped, but if you visit a official open world, you are capped at a certain level and skill set? Obviously this is not the best answer, and you’re essentially asking solo players to fork over more cash for a private world, but it’s something… right?
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Hmmm…I think they’ve said they’re getting rid of difficulty tiers in the worlds, right? So with no level cap, people with lots of free time and rented worlds could tear through titans or other enemies and then export these goods to the official servers and make bank for minimal effort, at least compared to their capped counterparts. And if there is a difficulty difference between worlds then they could just rent the most difficult world and have it on farm basically. To compare to WoW, I’d consider this as being similar to someone being level 110+ while doing HFC and then they went down to 100 when going to town to sell their BoEs. I’d probably call that unfair/game breaking. But an interesting idea that could be explored more to prevent the above.
I just said it’s not better. It’s not worse either. It has about the same effect.
Since this thread is going into full discussion mode anyway I’ll elaborate a bit^^
If you look at the proposed system now. We have a cap of 3 skill trees you can choose and max out. In the end every character has a maximum of 3 skill trees.
The effect a lot of people hope for from this, is that people socialize with others to get things they can’t make themselves or accomplish things they couldn’t on their own. Be it building a house or taking down a titan.
If we had now a system where there is no cap at all. Everyone can choose every skill tree and max all of them. The fear is that this leads to less social interaction.
But if you scale things a bit then the effect becomes proportionally the same as with caps.
As an example to compare with the currently proposed system:
Let’s say we have no caps. But only the first 3 of the skill trees scale the same as they would with the capped system. And from there on it gets just harder and harder. If you scale it so it takes years (maybe 10? Just a suggestion.) for someone, who plays a lot, to master all the skills, then the amount of people who actually manage to do it is so low that it’s negligible.
Why is it negligible?
If we define casual players as people who play just enough to max out 3 skill trees. Nothing changes for them at all. And casual players will make up the majority of the playerbase.
For the more active players it will have it’s advantages but like I said before. It’s always those who invest more time, which get better or get more back in return than those who invest less time.
Or on a more visual note. If you imagine the player base as a bell curve with the activity on the x-axis (which it will be.)
Then you can draw a vertical line on the far right and everyone who is farther to the right than this line will hit the maximum level on all skill trees in let’s say 10 years.
If you now increase the time a person needs to reach maximum level, you can push that line farther to the right and in the process minimize the amount of people reaching max level.
In other words, the longer it takes to reach the maximum level on all skill trees the more it’s negligible.
If we now look at the people who are not maxed out but self sufficient. And draw another line for those.
This line will also move farther and farther to the right when you increase the time necessairy to level additional trees.
And when there are enough people who are not self sufficient, we have the same situation as you would create with a not capped version of the skill system.
Because it’s not the system that creates the social interactions directly. It only creates situations where you need other people. Which then in turn creates social interactions.
In conclusion, as long as a uncapped system is made so that it creates those situations. Then it has the same effect as a system where things are capped.
P.S. This uncapped system would work even better if you say a player has a certain amount of skill nodes he can unlock until it gets harder. Instead of whole skill trees. An obvious amount would be 3 times what you need to fill one tree, to make it comparable to the old system.
(I hope that explanation was coherent and logically sound, if not please point out the errors to me^^)
(Also if anyone wants to make a visualisation of this, please go ahead^^)
and yes, I don’t think you’ll need the trade tree to initiate a trade. But it could still change how you trade.
There might be a tax on trades as a gold sink. If you can reduce how much of a tax you have to pay you have more gold overall which influences how much you can/will trade.
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Thanks, I understand better now.
I’m guessing as potential future expansions come, additional skill trees will unlock. After all, we have farming and cooking to look forward to at the very least.
I know an addition branch is not what you want. You want no branches and complete freedom. I’m just saying is all.
My worry here is creating a grinding-intensive game like Albion Online. I burned myself out playing that game with my friends because there’s always exp to grind. I want Boundless to be a fun game I can play after work where I’m playing and experience comes to me, not where I’m playing so that experience comes to me. It should be indirect instead of a primary goal, if that makes sense. I think if I had every skill tree open to me, I personally would burn out trying to gather experience for them all. And once I realized I don’t have the patience for that, I’d move on to a new game (as I’m doing with Albion).
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I know that feeling since I’d be the same. I’m not opposed to grinding (although I really have no time for that anymore^^) but I know what you mean.
But it still would be the same experience/take the same time until you touch a 4th tree or you fill up your amount of skill nodes.
Which means while you’d still have the burning out problem. But it would only set in when you’d have maxed out a character with the capped system anyway^^
The grinding would basically start after what you can reach at max in the capped system so it’s only fair that you have to invest more time to get even more than that.
My only concern here is how things look via a player perspective, especially for people who haven’t been part of these forums.
It can either look like “oh, I can reach max-level in a few hundred hours” or “oh, I can reach max-level in a few decades”. Even if you say that it’s not different from being capped at 3 trees and then adding on a bit more, people aren’t going to see it like that. They’re going to see it as more work that needs to be done.
Some may like that and be up for the grind. Others may be turned off and not want to play the game. That’s the challenge we’re facing.
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Yea that’s a good point.
A challenge I don’t know a good answer to at the moment to be honest.