>>Squanto: I would like to point out that this is due to the fact that not 19 years ago, but rather about 3ish years ago stat caps were expanded, but unfortunately 101+ points are insanely expensive, so it only makes sense under the given system at hand to spend your points on the least expensive points first... 0-100, since you can get like 5 stat points or more to every 1 at the higher end. Even with easy experience alone, it would be incredibly simple to hit all 100s if the stat cap was not lifted.

That's part of what I was getting at with my comment about "skyrocketing costs/diminishing returns for training stats past 100." You get more bang for your TDP by raising all stats to 100 before raising any stats past 100. That is part of the reason that, for ultra HLCs, stats approach homogeneity.

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

Paladins: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Paladin_new_player_guide

Armor and shields: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Armor_and_shield_player_guide

If stat caps are going to come down in reach of a reasonable endgame, there's going to need to be some occasional respec options like you have in Gemstone's more structured leveling system.

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Re: Life mana Spell preps

You raise your hands in the air. You wave them like you just don't care. Somebody says, "Hey!" Somebody says, "Ho!" Somebody screams.

> But TDP gain aside I wonder how people would feel it something like a stat cap was put into place where you can only have two stats at 100, two at 90, and so on.

> I get the feeling that would make people even more unhappy even though that would be a direct addressing of the issue of stat homogeneity.

You're just gonna get two or three cookie cutter builds instead of one. I can already imagine "the stat build for magic users" or "the stat build for barbarians" or whatever. Cookie cutter builds become a problem for just about every single game, something that devs struggle against, but it should be with balance and fun in mind. In Diablo 3, devs track how many people use the various skills, then try to beef up the ones that no one uses. There have been so many times in so many games when players blurt out, "Why are you using {whatever skill}? No one uses {whatever skill}! Do you not have {skill everyone has}?!" Try an experimental build in League of Legends and see how many judgmental comments you get. Cookie cutter/meta builds are de rigueur!

If two or three options are preferable to just the one, then that'll do it (plus make for something else to argue about on the forums). But this one, specifically, would definitely ruffle feathers, because plenty of people would have to downgrade their characters in some way while ordering their stats with new limitations. I don't like the idea of taking away from players as a solution.

I dunno, I might not care much about homogeneity in stats myself because the similarities don't outweigh the differences to me. If we all end up with maxed stats, I still have my own altered items, a different appearance, different RP. Different typing skills, macros, scripts. A complete lack of a sense of time that sometimes cripples me in pvp. Heh. There's a lot that distinguishes a player beyond just stats. Homogeneity in skills I can understand a little more--I skip training all weapons/armors on most characters because I like the RP flavor of choosing favorites--but stats, ehh, let people max them and see what they can do with that as a base.

>> You're just gonna get two or three cookie cutter builds instead of one.

Ideally the answer to this would be to give incentives to diversify the kinds of stat contests you're good at using both offensively and defensively, and force people to build around those.

Realistically, I know that probably wouldn't happen. I was just floating the notion as a kind of thought experiment. It would remove the need for changing how TDPs work as Armifer says, but I don't think anyone really wants to see what that would look like.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

There's been things to spend TDPs on beyond stats in the past... though honestly it's hard to accept that anything is worth more than stats.

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Re: Life mana Spell preps

You raise your hands in the air. You wave them like you just don't care. Somebody says, "Hey!" Somebody says, "Ho!" Somebody screams.

>>You're just gonna get two or three cookie cutter builds instead of one.

I don't know if GMs ever audit how many players know spell/feat X, but I assume that there's some cookie-cutter-ness already going on, but at least it's something all players are generally agreeing on liking vs doing because there are no other options.

Like I'm sure anyone who plans to ever use cyclic spells knows the Raw Channeling feat, and a lot of people might not invest in, I don't know, Debilitation Mastery or the Survivalist Symbiosis.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>>Because the game doesn't happen in a vacuum.

It does for stats, TDPs, and PvP. Unless you can give me a legitimate reason outside of "m-muh cookie cutters," there is no argument to ruin the entire system into which many players dedicated their time and effort. Please see my previous post, thanks.

>>Similar to how the cost of items has to take into account how much money the top earners make these days (look at how expensive a rare item was 10 years ago vs now), systems need to acknowledge that players might have skills in the 1k+ range, stats that are 100+, etc.

Why? Are the GMs gonna introduce TDP-specific mobs? Stat-specific challenges and activities? If not, you're describing apples and oranges. TDPs do, on the whole, -NOTHING- outside of PvP. If you don't PvP, you have no dog in this fight.

Id much rather see a complete stat wipe if there's going to be tdp regulation. For instance if you just increased the size of the tdp pool and placed a stat cap of 100. Grandfather everyones tdps to the new tdp plan and reissue tdps the way you are going to then everyone can do as they like with thier new stats. It still rewards those who have put in the time and effort, and it removes the top echelon from hitting caps and causing issues. I think this, coupled with the increased learning rate/time taper would be a viable solution. This would be my most preferred way to do it.

That being said it would make sense to me then to remove the 100 point stat "cap" that there is now. Its a cap in the sense that it's stupid expensive. This way if someone wanted to skew a stat and be a unjque snowflake they still can, but overall it completely revamps what "higher end" really is by reducing the entire playing field. It also will extend the life on dev that's already done, dropping the personal best for everyone across the board and letting us grow back through that range again over a MUCH longer period of time.

Monster Elec

You hear the distant echo of a savage Horde snarling in barbaric disapproval of your deeds.

>Just a few important PvE things that can't be covered down on by higher skills:

All fair points but there's a lot of inherent flaws in the pools.

>Weapon roundtimes

Completely able to be capped before major stat numbers.

>Encumbrance

Same as above.

>Vitality Pool

Important and true, maybe a revamp of the vitality system?

>Spirit Pool

Important and true, maybe a revamp of the spirit system?

>Fatigue Pool

Important and true, maybe a revamp of the fatigue system?

>Concentration Pool

Kinda negligible unless you're a thief, really.

>Experience Pools

Diminishing returns start to hit really hard and noticeably after about 40.

>Experience Drain Rate

Same as above.



The problems aren't inherent to the TDP system as much as they with an outdated pool system.

>>The problems aren't inherent to the TDP system as much as they with an outdated pool system.

...your entire argument appears to be decoupling the stat system from everything that isn't PvP.

Some other things not listed in the previous list:
1) Roundtime reductions during crafting/harvesting
2) SvS checks

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

I would be surprised/disappointed if a change to TDP gain didn't also come with mob stats across the board being rebalanced because they desperately need it.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

>>I would be surprised/disappointed if a change to TDP gain didn't also come with mob stats across the board being rebalanced because they desperately need it.

That'd address the entire PvE side of the problem.

I ran some numbers, if anyone was a curious as I was.

I built out two Moonies (just because the numbers were more readily available to me).

Moonie 1:

Circle 150, only has exactly the skills needed to reach 150th circle.

Has earned 40,095 TDP. If Human, that means they could have equal stats of 59.

Moonie 2:

Circle 150, trained every skill to the highest guild required skill for each skillset.

All magics at 850
All Survival and Lore at 570
All Weapons/Armor at 360 (arbitrary number since they have 0 requirements from their tertiary skillsets to circle)

Has earned 67,765 TDP. If Human, that means the could have equal stats of 76.

I kinda feel really inadequate reading all these posts about people training all the things. I have so many more ranks to gain over the next 30 years to cap everything. I seriously was not aware that everyone had at level everything in all skills. I also had no clue everyone was sporting bare bones 100 in every stat.

"Brace yourselves, Squanto is going to bleh blah fart fart bleh.." -the player of the character formerly known as Pureblade

>>Isharon: This is unrelated to TDPs or stats, but I would like to see a bonus to experience drain for characters doing more focused training of fewer than X skills.

>>Bluefrog99: Honestly, that would make me feel sooooo much better about leaving combat to train single skills such as crafts. I hate devoting that much time to one lone skill. It might be awkward in practice--would it count skills still sinking in, for instance--but it's an idea with promise.

I would define X as the number of skills that have received new field experience within the last Y minutes (where Y would vary according to the total number of skills draining).

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

Paladins: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Paladin_new_player_guide

Armor and shields: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Armor_and_shield_player_guide

>>Isn't there a cap for those too? In the same way that weapon roundtimes are capped? Like, eventually, way below the 100 stat line, isn't there a max you can reach? I'm not up to date on fanny-pack knitting, so maybe you can educate me with the specifics here.

Crafting RTs work notably different than combat RTs (and, IMO, "better").

You don't just get a tool with X speed while having stats Y and Z over a certain number of points and always hit minimum RTs. Instead, tool speed + the two stats associated with a particular craft (or harvest) increases your chances at a RT reduction. There might be an effective cap to how high your % of reduction could get from stats, but it's not like someone with 100 strength/stamina and a super fast tool is always hitting the minimum RT for each action, unlike how weapons work.

>>SvS? You mean like in PvP? Where they matter most? Where I'll argue they matter exclusively? The applications of SvS in PvE are tiny and negligible, especially if you're hunting at level. Like I said before, if you're not trying to hit something far above you, stats don't matter.

You do realize SvS exists for PvE, right? And, as you said, negligible at level. But what if GMs acknowledge that enough people sandbag their stats by training a ton of weapons/armors/whatever and adjust critters accordingly. Now you have people who aren't opting into the grind having to do that grind because they're expected to have stats at that point.

>>I seriously was not aware that everyone had at level everything in all skills. I also had no clue everyone was sporting bare bones 100 in every stat.

IMO, it's good game design to recognize a potential issue before it actually becomes the norm. I mean, look at all the threads on why people should wear every armor type (Free TDPs! You're an idiot if you don't! Etc.) – it's a clear highlight of a problem that could easily run out of control if it becomes adopted as the norm by the playerbase.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

Everyone's telling me to ignore you but I'm just gonna give you the benefit of the doubt.



>>The issue isn't where people are with their stats. That's a symptom of the actual problem: TDP generation was allowed to run away for far too long, making the current system of "train all the things!" become the "norm", and the "norm" is unfortunately a poor design that needs to be changed.

Only if you care about PvP. If you don't, do what you want. In my personal experience, the people who do care about PvP are okay with "train all the things!" It's usually the people who have nothing to do with nothing that are upset about it.

>>The GMs have said this much. They tried once (as I understand it, anyways?) and were met with such insane backlash that they backed off.

And rightly so for the reasons I stated. Why are people who don't care about TDP applications outside of extremely superficial reasons upset? PvP is the only meaningful application of TDPs. Stat contests. That's it. If you don't PvP, literally who cares. You can train exactly how you want, you just won't be at the top percentile of PvP.

>>And I really don't understand this whole "I spent the time, everyone else has to!" logic. I mean, if you had bought a ton of DVDs, and then suddenly Blu-Ray comes out, are you going to demand that nobody can buy a Blu-Ray movie without first buying the DVD, since you had to?

I-- you-- what? What are you even trying to say? I'm not demanding anybody stop training the way they want to. In fact you won't even be bad at PvP if you don't train all weapons! You just won't be at the top! Who cares! The better analogy would be hoarding rare items that only a dedicated few had to go out of their way to find, and now the items are available everywhere for every casual searcher to grab. That's a slap in the face, frankly. As I outlined, this is primarily a PvP issue, and if you don't PvP, step down from your discarded DVD soap box.

>>Things change. It can suck sometimes, sure. But "I like it how it is, if you don't, it's cause you want a free ride!" is a pretty poor attitude to take.

Yeah that's literally exactly what the argument boils down to, poor attitude notwithstanding. Did you even read what I wrote before? Everyone is getting a free ride for the efforts a few put in. Try to bear with me here: stats do very little outside of PvP. Okay? They don't impact pools in a significant way past 40 and 50 stat points, they're negligible in PvE outside of hunting too high. In PvP, if my opponent can't debilitate me or vice versa, the match is over for one of us. That's it. In PvP, you need every technical edge. Matches are decided by debilitators. Debilitators are governed by SvS. SvS is governed by stats. See where I'm going with this? If you wanna be good, you work for it like we did. It's as simple as that. If you don't, why even care?

>>Now granted, things should not have been allowed to go the way they did for so long. I don't think anyone ever came out specifically and said "hey, we know you're training wide for TDPs now, that won't last forever, stop it", so yes, I agree it's pretty unfair to suddenly pull the rug out. I don't think that's the intent, though. I'm pretty sure any change is going to compensate the people who put in the extra time somehow. I'd like to think so, anyways.

That's kind of exactly what Armifer did. Past empty discussions and conjecture, he one day made a statement: "I'm not like the other lily-livers, I'm going to take this whole system down!" Ideally, yes, we'll be compensated or the changes won't be so bad, but I've noticed that things go only one way when changes are being made, and I am not interested in things going down that one way.

>>it's a clear highlight of a problem that could easily run out of control if it becomes adopted as the norm by the playerbase.<<

The problem being?? We all cap everything on one character after about 20 to 25 years of gameplay? By the way, whatever you train is a choice. Whatever you choose not to train is a choice. There are like 52 skills, so tons of options! Guess how many skills you need in order to RP in this RP game: 0. The cool thing about the game is if you don't want to train a damn thing, you absolutely can do just that and enjoy it if that's your cup of tea. If you want to just circle as fast as possible and only train reqs? You can do it! If you love numbers and seeing results of your gains? You can do it. This is exactly what makes this game so clearly successful for so many varieties of personalities as being demonstrated in our inability to agree on a simple thing like TDPs 100% across the board with one another.

"Brace yourselves, Squanto is going to bleh blah fart fart bleh.." -the player of the character formerly known as Pureblade

>Squanto:

^^^ This ^^^


Rhadyn da Dwarb - Blood for fire!

>>Discoteq21: This is a truly awful idea and would lead to much more cookie cuttering (new word), and also would probably make racial choices completely meaningless at endgame.

While some preferred stat builds would likely emerge, I don't see how a TDP cap would encourage more homogeneity than we have now, where every character's end-game stats approach 100 "with limited to irrelevant variation."

Racial choices are arguably meaningless at the end-game right now, because it costs all races the same number of TDPs to raise every stat to 100. (And based on my testing, race has almost no effect on post-100 stat costs.)

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

Paladins: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Paladin_new_player_guide

Armor and shields: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Armor_and_shield_player_guide