A Plea for Decay (Character)

[Granger]

@OP: I recommend you put some pictures (graphs) together which illustrate the difference between the current and the alternative system. At this point I don't even want to say the word because exactly what you have highlighted in bold in your OP edit.

Thanks for the suggestion, here they come

This first nicely demonstrates the problem with unbound growth of the numbers, all three characters have the same LP income but the inheriter suffers twice an 'accident' (on RL day 90 and 270) while the latecomer got the memo for a new world half a year late:

character_unlimited.png (22.54 KiB) Viewed 180 times

Both the inheriter and the latecomer have lost, the inheriter on day 90 (with the first accident) and the latecomer on day one as he didn't start.

[Granger]

But here's what would happen with stat decay, same daily LP intake, same accidents (death for the inheriter and a delayed memo for the latecomer):

character_bound.png (33.37 KiB) Viewed 180 times

Both the misadventurers have the ability to recover from their mistakes.

BTW: This chart (as the one above) uses a 50% (of LP) death penalty - the current penalty of (best case) 55% of LP in attributes lost on death is worse.

Something giving this result would IMHO be a huge win for the game.
And everyone who dosn't like the word 'decay' please read A Plea for Buffs (Character) which is a positive framing of the concept.

[shubla]

I wrote a long reply earlier but sadly closed the browser accidentally..

I think that it is an interesting idea and would work pretty well with the quality mechanics that we already have in the game.

The decay % could be constant or then lower over time. (Maybe not a good idea?)
Of course, the charts above are quite optimistic... People who play the game for long time would still have better ql things so they would gain advantage over new ones. BUT one could argue that the advantage gap would be a lot less.

Only issues that I see are:
Some people might get angry when they see their stat numbers quite stagnant.
What if you want to have a break from the game? A nice month lasting trip to some big island country? Its not nice to lose all of your stats! (One solution could be that you could "retire" your character for time being, and what I mean by that is that you could toggle a mode, which would prevent your character from losing any stats via decay, but your character would gain some debuffs or be unable to log in, which would make the character unusable for combat or crafting, this mode would have a cooldown to prevent abuse)

I think that it is a great idea and devs should definitely try it. (But deciding what the % precisely is and coming up with a system to give players who want to have a break some relief from the decay must be decided first!)

[terechgracz]

I think this idea is bad solution, much better would be stat cap. Basically this decay is kind of cap but a very depressing for players to have. It just forces you to play game non stop, it's insane to think it's valid mechanic for a game. I suggested capping sum of attributes and sum of skills, which is much better mechanic because it promotes meta game.

[MagicManICT]

I think this idea is bad solution, much better would be stat cap.

jorb has already said they hate stat caps, so you should come up with a really strong solution to it if you want to suggest this....

Basically this decay is kind of cap but a very depressing for players to have. It just forces you to play game non stop,

The point is just the opposite. Under the current rules, if you want to stay up with everyone else, stay on par for faction PvP or for trade, you already do have to play non-stop. Under this suggestion and suggestions like it, if you die, you have a reasonable chance of developing back to par instead of 'never.' You won't lose as much ground.

[pppp]

The point is just the opposite. Under the current rules, if you want to stay up with everyone else, stay on par for faction PvP or for trade, you already do have to play non-stop. Under this suggestion and suggestions like it, if you die, you have a reasonable chance of developing back to par instead of 'never.' You won't lose as much ground.

But it still rewards nolifing because the more you play daily the higher stats you have (IK, asymptotic but still).

That would make way more sense if it referred to played time instead of real time, but then it would encourage alts. (Playing alts to pump a titan which wakes up only for brief moments, mostly for pumping ).

That's why a few posts above I suggested penalty to combined LP+FEP so growing beyond certain limits is possible but not sensible.

[shubla]

I think this idea is bad solution, much better would be stat cap. Basically this decay is kind of cap but a very depressing for players to have. It just forces you to play game non stop, it's insane to think it's valid mechanic for a game. I suggested capping sum of attributes and sum of skills, which is much better mechanic because it promotes meta game.

Capping is not good because:
People play the game, when their stats cap, they quit because there is nothing to do.
With this system, people still have to maintain their stats.

..And you could still increase your stats by rising ql etc.
But just a bit slower than currently.

[terechgracz]

I think this idea is bad solution, much better would be stat cap.

jorb has already said they hate stat caps, so you should come up with a really strong solution to it if you want to suggest this....

Balanced world, you can have meaningful PvE, and normal PvP that happens at some point of gameplay because after hitting caps your skills starts to matter more than your stats. I see that caps might be somewhat bad because after hitting them there would be no point of eating and studying curio, so we could implement decay mechanic just to make players keep their industries going. And I don't suggest just capping every stat at X, just capping the sum of your possible stats, like having 100 ua, 100 melee, 100 survi = 300 stats, if you set cap at let say 1500, you could create titan that has 1500 ua, or normal hunter/forager that also invest in survival, lore, explo etc.
Capping gives you endgame, caps your qualities and gives you border of what can be achieved for one character, and we can finally see some development for endgame like dungeons only for most developed ppl.
Why you tell there is nothing to the game after capping? You still have PvE, PvP and raiding... Don't tell me the whole purpose of haven is to just roast kebaps every x hours.

[Hrenli]

But here's what would happen with stat decay

Basically stat caps at 100 according to the picture.

[terechgracz]

I don't know you're so keen for such sophisticated mechanics anyways, simpler = better. Normal cap > strange decay mechanic.