DatOneGuy wrote:And before you start complaining "Oh but those guys are griefers!", that's a way to play the game, don't attempt to invalidate their views on gaming to promote personal benefits.
Isn't that exactly what you're trying to do? (Along with anyone else against stat/skill cap for the sake of their character investment)
Hardcaps are pointless, and ruin the game for many people who enjoy that aspect.
This is what I'm talking about. The only recurring argument amongst those 'against' is that they don't like it. Of course nobody wants to see something that they spent a lot of time on (combat advantage) become easily accessible, or even worse, common. Many other mmos have made the mistake of making challenges trivial to appeal to a more 'casual' crowd. I think we agree that to be a good mmo, there must be a method to gain advantage, that method should be challenging, and most of all that advantage should be worth something to the player, whatever their goals. However, in my opinion, there are two major flaws with the system as it is. First and most obvious, it is extremely unlikely that a brand new player will ever be able to catch up to an established player. If Bobby McMacrogrind and Timmy McNoob start months apart, but spend the same amount of time playing, Timmy will never be a significant threat to Bobby. Imagine that you are Timmy, why would you bother to put effort into making your character stronger if you knew there were characters who would always be able to kill you at will, not to mention hugely setting back your attempt to catch up? I'm not saying the game should be 'easy' but it should be accessible.
The second problem is a little more complex and is about the different kinds of play styles. Simply put (and as has been mentioned earlier) a player who decides to focus purely on building/crafting cannot hope to compete with a raider of equal skill/level/equipment. Recently it's been made much more difficult to destroy walls (alone anyways) I think that was a great change. However, as you all know, given enough time there will be characters who will be able to punch down brickwalls anyways. If you make defensive ability scale with offensive ability (walls, armor, etc..) you do a couple things. You make the game boring, since the only way to get an edge is to grind a few numbers to make them bigger and you would continue to punish new players and discourage them from competing. As it stands it's even worse, since defensive players DO have a cap on how well they can protect themselves while offensive characters are free to progress as far as they want.
To me it's hilarious that anyone would say that a skill cap limits their gameplay. What exactly is so free and varying about only working on the same few stats for your characters entire career? Especially if that's the only good way to gain an advantage.
Rather than getting mad and focusing on what would be taken away (extremely linear, unbalancing, boring infinite number progression) consider the sorts of things that could be added to the game. Rather than 'one way to win' there could be dozens. With the right additions, strategy could become a major factor in conflicts, without replacing the role of stats/skills.
I've got a few ideas to toss out. Even if they aren't workable, hopefully they are at least moving in the right direction.
1. Traps! I imagine at some point or another everyone has had something stolen and weren't around to do anything about it. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to leave a surprise for those dirty rotten thieves? Traps could do a great number of things, deal damage, make the criminal easier to track (stinkbomb!), even capture them for a short period of time. Even something as simple as caltrops spread around that force players to move over them at crawl speed, hopefully making it easier to attack them at range. Tripwires that alert you when someone has trespassed, I think you get the idea. It would allow craftsmen to have a more significant impact on combat/defense.
2. Specialization! There are plenty of roles to be filled in the game, but not very many ways to really capitalize on them. The belief sliders are a simple iteration of this. The purpose is simple, make sacrifices in one area to be more effective in another. I'm imagining a specialization towards being a trader (as well as a more robust trading system, but that's a whole new thread) where you could get bonuses to raft/wagon speed, carrying capacity, item appraisal, etc...
Maybe the drawback of that specialization would be lower productivity/less stamina. Making the trader valuable, but forcing him to rely on specialized craftsmen to be most effective. You could have all sorts of combat specializations, ranged, single target, multi-target, 'tank', siege-engineer (more siege weapons!!) and so on. The specific mechanic of the specialization doesn't have to 'limit' you, but there should be some strategy to it. Maybe there is no limit to the number of 'specializations' you can have, but you have to suffer the accumulated drawbacks of every one you have. (Probably would have the negative effects increase as they accumulate to discourage trying to get them all)
3. More combat options! Personally I'd almost be willing to settle for just 'less confusing ones'. This is mainly part of specialization, but the idea is to have methods of effecting the outcome of a conflict without strictly relying on how hard you punch or what kind of wall you built.
I'm interested in seeing what ideas you all have for making progression more fun but still challenging. I bet you can come up with better ideas than me.
TL;DR Infinite linear progression discourages new players and leaves little room for alternate playstyles, cap stats and make lateral progression and strategy more significant via adding content.
Disclaimer: I'm fairly new to the game, so I may have got some stuff wrong. I'm not posting to piss anyone off, but rather because I see a good game with a great game buried inside.
