The Case for Soft Caps for Crafting Skills

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Eldurian
 
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Joined: 26 Jan 2015, 22:13

The Case for Soft Caps for Crafting Skills

Post by Eldurian » 08 May 2017, 19:49

I realise this is going to draw a lot of flack as it's attacking one of the major pillars of the game but I'd like to make this case anyway. The skillcap was one of the worst features of Mortal Online and it's one of the features with this game I take the most issue with. So allow me to outline my problem with it, and an alternate solution.

Rebuttal - "Without a Hard Skillcap Everyone Can Do Everything!"

While this is true in a certain sense it also definitely bears a certain sense of falsehood. In games that leave the skill system wide open you generally see people focus on a narrow range of crafting skills because of the fact that time is limited. So in games such as Wurm Online or Darkfall that use an open system you still see crafting specialists.

In games such as Mortal Online you actually see everyone do everything more often given the generally faster time to raise individual skills. It's just that they have multiple characters who do everything. I see no advantage to that and plenty of disadvantages. At least for me, in a game where community is important I like to keep to a single persona in the community as much as is practical. Having multiple characters just leads to confusion, and it's annoying to swap between them if your computer isn't exceptionally fast at loading.

Point - It Unnecessarily Punishes Smaller Communities

In large communities you will easily have someone that can do everything, and redundancy within professions. This is just due to sheer numbers. Probability dictates you will have bit of everything if the community gets larger and this is strengthened by people who ask "What does the community need?" before choosing a profession.

In a smaller community there is not as many people so in order to get every base covered people are pushed into specializations they may not want. There is also little redundancy in professions. If you have a single alchemist and that alchemist goes inactive your village suddenly finds itself without one.

The counter to this is generalization as opposed to specialization. Rather than having people very good at a few things you can have people who are less good at many things. However due to the LiF leveling system a generalist will cap out fairly quickly and have no more room to advance in crafting unless they work on becoming a specialist after capping.

Rebuttal - "This Isn't a Solo Game!"

Of course it's not, and that's expressed in things such as the fact smaller communities will generally have less defenses and less people to call upon if attacked. There is no reason to punish smaller communities further with even the crafting system working to combat their style of play more than it should.

Point - Players Do Not Like Being Locked out of Portions of The Game

Most players are going to want to eventually dabble in most areas of the game. You don't want to design a game with tons of rich content to only lock players to a small portion of it. People should be able to generalize into other skills without endangering their specialization skills. Sometimes you just want to work a forge, even if you are an alchemist.

Proposed Solution - Soft Skill Caps

A soft skillcap as opposed to a hard skillcap is the idea that when you hit your cap, progression slows down as opposed to stopping.

So there are 3000 skillpoints worth of crafting skills included in the capped skills. A soft cap might work like this.

0-500 = 100% progression speed
500-750 = 50% progression speed
750-1000 = 25% progression speed
1000-1250 = 12.5% progression speed
1250-1500 = 6.5% progression speed
etc.

As you can see, past a certain point you reach the point that your progression slows to a crawl and is almost negligible.

Alternatively you could do a more complex system where point values of skill levels is based upon how high you have the skill trained.

For instance each level = 1 point 1-25, 2 points 25-50, 3 points 50-75 and 4 points 75-100 for a total of 7500 points then adjust the cap from 500 to skillcap to 1250 (That would allow you to fully max five skills in the new system before hitting the softcap)

The first system is a bit easier for players to understand, the latter is friendlier on people who choose to generalize early on rather than training additional skills after hitting max in their focus skills.

Implications

As you can see this system would still keep it impractical for "everyone to do everything!" It would just be friendlier on generalists, and make it so there is never a point your character fully stops progressing.

Overall its a system that makes single account players more competitive against multi account players, without fully negating the benefits of either.


Delcan
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Re: The Case for Soft Caps for Crafting Skills

Post by Delcan » 08 May 2017, 20:57

+1, I like it, as you said, people won't be doing much of what they are already doing becouse of lack of time/will

And it is still balanced in PvP due to skill lose on death, maybe tweaking numbers a bit if it's too overpowered.

And it opens some interesting possibilities for the truly dedicated players, but I don't see this ever becoming a reality due to the fact that multiple chars means more money, either they need it or not (which I think they do).
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Reapo
 
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Re: The Case for Soft Caps for Crafting Skills

Post by Reapo » 08 May 2017, 22:12

The main problem that I have with your statement is that your still thinking in the mindset of communities being separate from other communities. Me and my friends and clan mates have been going back and forth on what we want to do with the game. Do we want to be apart of something or do we want to start our own something.

The current way of things, and the last time I saw on a video (haven't gotten into CBT so please correct me on anything I have wrong if you have knowledge) is that the current skillcap is capped at 400 points. Thats enough points to go into a single skill tree or be support for an artisan player.

Your rebuttal without having a hard skill cap, yes it is true, but if there isn't a hard skill cap, more communities of players are less likely to depend on other communities.

I found that one of the unique things about YO when I was learning is the roles me and my friends set for ourselves. We knew going into the game that we needed shelter, food and water. I immediately started doing what I needed to do to provide shelter, getting my terraforming up and logging up as well as putting stat points that would help with those tasks. One friend focused on farming and cooking while another mainly brought in a constant source of food through hunting and fishing. Being only three players, we had to go out to trade for the finer things that we needed as we did not have a blacksmith, nor did we have the know how to even find good mining veins.

This is what is unique about the MMO. The current setup makes players think beyond their own goals and groups. If the skill cap is increased, players will be less willing to work with other players outside their own goals. If you're a farmer in the MMO but you don't have any protection then it provides a unique situation. You can A.) Load up some of your best goods and farm seed and head to the nearest town to trade for a quality weapon and maybe a light suit of armor. B.) You can go to the towns leadership and work out a deal of providing food for the towns people for protection (yes that sounds very mob like, but medieval times did that before mobsters did lol).

If the skill cap is increased the chances and opportunities of these types of situations is greatly decreased. Does it punish smaller communities, yes, but what punishes the community is the communities thinking. If you need something, you should take the time to figure out how to get that. That is what this game is all about. Don't try to make it more convenient for you. Remember, life is feudal. It's going to be hard because it should be hard.

I do feel like you brought up a lot of good points and I hope more people join the discussion on this because I feel it'll be a topic for years to come haha.

I do think there could be some lean way given in terms of the skill cap to where you can put points into an extra skill that goes will with your artisan skill. If you're a farmer maybe you can put skill points in preparing food or if you went into construction and architecture, carpentry could be there to support you.


Eldurian
 
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Joined: 26 Jan 2015, 22:13

Re: The Case for Soft Caps for Crafting Skills

Post by Eldurian » 09 May 2017, 05:13

Skills are not a good way to promote trade given that larger communities will have all skills already.

This means they are self sufficient and can meet their own needs. But in order for trade to be necessary they need a deficit of something.

So small villages may need to trade with large cities but why would large cities need to trade with small villages? That kind of one sided relationship is a poor basis for a trade system.

Localized resources is a good basis for a trade system. My region has a deficit in gold and a surplus of silk. Your region has a surplus of gold and a deficit of silk. That is the basis of a good trade system because we both have something the other needs.


Dragmar
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Re: The Case for Soft Caps for Crafting Skills

Post by Dragmar » 09 May 2017, 06:13

Eldurian wrote:Skills are not a good way to promote trade given that larger communities will have all skills already.

This means they are self sufficient and can meet their own needs. But in order for trade to be necessary they need a deficit of something.

So small villages may need to trade with large cities but why would large cities need to trade with small villages? That kind of one sided relationship is a poor basis for a trade system.

Localized resources is a good basis for a trade system. My region has a deficit in gold and a surplus of silk. Your region has a surplus of gold and a deficit of silk. That is the basis of a good trade system because we both have something the other needs.


Trust me, large groups will always need to trade.

Yes they can produce everything, yes they can produce more then their smaller neighbours.
But they will also consume a hell of a lot more. There are some things that even large groups will always be willing to trade. Flux, naptha, regional spesific items, blueprints, etc, etc.

Sometimes you might even be able to trade manpower. Larger groups will also normaly have larger terraforming or building projects going. And hey, who wouldnt be willing to trade some items to get someone else to do their digging? :)
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Sharana
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Re: The Case for Soft Caps for Crafting Skills

Post by Sharana » 10 May 2017, 01:40

Eldurian wrote:So small villages may need to trade with large cities but why would large cities need to trade with small villages? That kind of one sided relationship is a poor basis for a trade system.

Localized resources is a good basis for a trade system. My region has a deficit in gold and a surplus of silk. Your region has a surplus of gold and a deficit of silk. That is the basis of a good trade system because we both have something the other needs.


There is only 1 commodity in LiF - human hours. They are never enough for what you want to achieve. There are also priorities. Yes big claims produce everything and if they try hard enough they might be self sufficient, but because of their high consummation that will be the bare minimum they need anyway. Let's say flux - all guilds produce flux to meet their needs, but it's hard to afford some luxury like vost. steel stuff where 1 ingot is 720 flux on top of the daily need for weapons and armors for example. Flax (or even better processed linen hanks/cloth) can also never be refused. On top of that regional stuff.
Also as said the human hours are always limited. If a large town outsorces part of it's needs to a farming village nearby (some small community) they gain human hours that they can invest on a big terraforming and building project project, on war preparation and stuff like that.
Another thing you are missing is military. Large communities have to field strong military to defend itself against other big communities. This is time and resources consuming and the actual warrior can very rarely be active crafters, it's the PvE players crafting for both them and the warriors. There are no 100% PvE big groups that will survive, so you can't multiply by 10 the crafting potential of 10 players living in a small village focused on crafting and a town of 100 for example.

Also if localized resources are the basic commodity why would a large community trade with a small one instead of just establishing an outpost in the area, sending few miners with escort and mine the gold they need instead of buying it?
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