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View Full Version : I believe the scarcity of entry-level scrolls and skillbooks breaks progression



BBQSloth
11-16-2018, 11:17 AM
I just sent this to the devs via the in-game suggestion box and I thought I'd repost it here for some discussion:


The scarcity of entry-level scrolls and spell books like Flamestrike for the Priest class fundementally breaks progression of those skills. Instead of an actual skill that's valuable to use, Flamestrike 1 is just a gateway skill that's never actually going to be used. It's pointless, tedius, frustrating fluff. The only players who are going to actually use Flamestrike 1 are the very rare Priests who are lucky enough to loot it in the short and early stages of leveling up the Priest skill. Everyone else is just looking for it as a ladder to get up to a usable level of the skill which are found commonly and cheaply. The scarcity of the entry-level spell books drive the price up to beyond what should be appropriate for a level 1 skill. The rarity should increase with the complexity and power of the skill, not the other way around. This can also be said of skills like Shoddy Priest Staff. By the time I ever find that skill, I'm far beyond the ability to make use of it and the staves themselves aren't valuable to sell because of the limited amount of time they would be used by a player in their leveling of their combat skill.

These skills serve no purpose beyond gatekeeping. The amount of people who are actually making use of these skills is miniscule. A regular progression of a skill should go:


Earn skill
Use skill until a more powerful skill becomes available
Upgrade skill
Use upgraded skill


Keeping Flamestrike as my example, very rarely is anyone every going to use low levels of Flamestrike. By the time someone actually manages to get their hands on Flamestrike 1, their other inherent skills are going to be much more powerful making Flamestrike 1 not practical to include in a rotation. The only reason to get Flamestrike 1 is to allow you to climb the ladder to a higher level of Flamestrike that you can use. Meanwhile, the higher levels of Flamestrike are readily available for cheap on any used tab. For the privilege of learning Flamestrike 4 for 1,200 councils, I have to pay 25,000+ councils to get Flamestrike 1 which I'm never going to actually use or sit watching used tabs hoping someone sells it to an NPC vendor not realizing what it's worth.

This also applies to crafting. Sticking with the Priest theme, if I want to take up Carpentry to synergize my crafting with my combat skill to build my own staves, I need to get the Shoddy Priest Staff recipe before anything else. But since it's required for all higher levels, the price is extremely inflated above the higher levels of the recipe. By the time anyone gets their hands on the recipe or has the councils to buy it, the staff itself is useless. The amount of time someone is going to be in the combat level zone to use the Shoddy Priest Staff makes it impractical to craft for selling.

I don't like pointless items in MMOs that serve no purpose. Because of the scarcity of these low level skills they are effectively rendered useless as they only serve as gateways to the higher level abilities.

spider91301
11-16-2018, 11:43 AM
I just sent this to the devs via the in-game suggestion box and I thought I'd repost it here for some discussion:



These skills serve no purpose beyond gatekeeping. The amount of people who are actually making use of these skills is miniscule. A regular progression of a skill should go:


Earn skill
Use skill until a more powerful skill becomes available
Upgrade skill
Use upgraded skill


Keeping Flamestrike as my example, very rarely is anyone every going to use low levels of Flamestrike. By the time someone actually manages to get their hands on Flamestrike 1, their other inherent skills are going to be much more powerful making Flamestrike 1 not practical to include in a rotation. The only reason to get Flamestrike 1 is to allow you to climb the ladder to a higher level of Flamestrike that you can use. Meanwhile, the higher levels of Flamestrike are readily available for cheap on any used tab. For the privilege of learning Flamestrike 4 for 1,200 councils, I have to pay 25,000+ councils to get Flamestrike 1 which I'm never going to actually use or sit watching used tabs hoping someone sells it to an NPC vendor not realizing what it's worth.

This also applies to crafting. Sticking with the Priest theme, if I want to take up Carpentry to synergize my crafting with my combat skill to build my own staves, I need to get the Shoddy Priest Staff recipe before anything else. But since it's required for all higher levels, the price is extremely inflated above the higher levels of the recipe. By the time anyone gets their hands on the recipe or has the councils to buy it, the staff itself is useless. The amount of time someone is going to be in the combat level zone to use the Shoddy Priest Staff makes it impractical to craft for selling.

I don't like pointless items in MMOs that serve no purpose. Because of the scarcity of these low level skills they are effectively rendered useless as they only serve as gateways to the higher level abilities.

Its pretty much just to make you grind longer or in my case for situations like that spend more ingame cash to get it which in turn makes you grind more to remake that cash back up considering they dont have a full storyline quest chain what do you expect

BBQSloth
11-16-2018, 11:55 AM
...what do you expect

Progression that makes sense and doesn't render skills completely useless. If they want to make the skill a grind, make the levels increasingly rare. Not the inverse where it's incredibly difficult go get the entry level skill and stupidly cheap and easy to max it out.

NickzMagic
11-16-2018, 05:06 PM
I'm not really a fan of the current skill books, in my experience it has been running to the NPC's that buy them and hope some newb has sold one to them. If not, check the next day.

At the least all early level skills should be trained(say 1-5 of every skill) or automatically gained and higher levels can be skillbook only. As mentioned it is extremely unlikely a newbie priest will be getting to use flamestrike, farming it as a drop is unpractical and you're basically getting it from sell used or just not getting it for awhile.

I also think there should be a full list of skills with the unlearned ones grayed out similar to recipes with "learn this skill from...". It took me weeks of playtime before I learned that Heavy shot and Heavy multishot existed - I was given arrows so never did fletching and hence never clicked on elahils training tab to find out. I've seen many other newbies using just the skills you automatically get from levelling up as well, how are you meant to find out that marna, velkort, azalak and elahil all teach you archery skills to go and get?

HardRock
11-17-2018, 06:25 AM
It all makes perfect sense if you view it through the lens of a Skinner box.

Crissa
11-20-2018, 10:19 AM
Eventually you get the higher books and have something to look forward to...

...Which makes me think there needs to be some enemies that always drop the early books, so they can't be missed. Maybe one of the mini named mob in a back corner of the level appropriate dungeon.

I hesitate to say their drop rate should go up, but it's currently easy to miss the dungeons where these drop. It just seems the number of mobs that can drop them is too few, but having more won't make it easier to catch back up. There should be a hunt, but the hunt needs to be possible.

When hunting for my book 1s, I ended up finding five book 2s.

Tagamogi
11-20-2018, 03:56 PM
Hmm... What if there was an NPC that allowed us to trade in recipe books for a lower level version of the same book? For example, trade flamestrike 2 for flamestrike 1?

Daguin
11-20-2018, 04:13 PM
Hmm... What if there was an NPC that allowed us to trade in recipe books for a lower level version of the same book? For example, trade flamestrike 2 for flamestrike 1?
This is an interesting idea, but I think it would need to carry some kind of penalty....maybe just cost councils.

DLMyth
12-01-2018, 12:26 AM
It could be trade 2 or 3 books for that 1 skill you need. The books you're trading in doesn't have to be the same skill. Or you can have it when you trade in a book you get a new currency in which you can select the upgraded skill from the NPC. Another idea that can work is that there's hidden masters you can find through out the world. Each one has all the skills and upgraded versions of them. However, they cost a bit more to train unless your favor is pretty high. So that will give you the enjoyment of finding these masters in plain sight or hidden in caves/dungeons.

Murk
01-16-2019, 04:02 PM
I have the same problem and am now not sure where these scrolls drop. I am yet to find Flame strike 1 or Duelist slash 1, but have found a mountain of the higher level scrolls. Is it the case that level 1 scrolls drop only on low level mobs, or is there some other rule for this?

Temjiu
01-18-2019, 05:01 PM
Totally agree. recently started Carpentry, and Im horrified to see the shoddy priest staff recipe for 20k or higher, when I bough a staff recipe 20 levels higher for 400. it should be the reverse...20k for the high end recipes, while the lower tier recipes should run 400k or so.

Not sure why this is. perhaps the drop rate are the same, but with a larger amount of lower level carpenters on the server, the lower tier recipes are used personally more often, resulting in a scarcity of them on the market? Just conjecture really, but the point remains...we need a higher drop rate for the lower tier skill books. specifically the ones that you cannot get elsewhere.

Not only does the current setup reduce player sense of accomplishment with their skillset progression, but it also encourages those who are only in it for monetary reasons to watch vendors and snap up those low tier recipes, further diminishing the pool for those who honestly just want to craft with them.

Not a good design.

Golliathe
03-08-2019, 03:30 AM
One of the reasons you can't just train everything from a trainer is because there is an element for every class to make upgrades not be easy. If you put real effort into wanting to play a certain class then over time you will have the skills.

"But people sell flamestrike for 20k and I'm a new character!"

This is really a fault of everyone being able to try everything and get it to level cap pretty easily. It is actually super rare to find someone who just says they will play at most 4-6 classes and be done with mostly everything else. I promise you that I can relate as I played unarmed a long time without having the scroll skills.

And then I changed to fire/mental and once again I was always feeling underskilled due to the rarity of fire mats. And then the joke was on me at level 50 when I discovered that the next set of resources is basically a situation where you are a well geared level 70 and farm them or pay 10-20k each (you need like 45 total).

Go out and farm sub level 30 bosses as soon as they are off cooldown and you can probably get them in a few days. Nobody wants to do that though... and so everyone just pays the 20k for convenience.

Celler
03-08-2019, 10:09 AM
It's just an issue of how game currently is. We have many players at high lvl doing near current end game stuff.
Rather than go back and spend hours grinding low dungeons and bosses for recent added skills/recipes they are willing to pay what is in effect less than an hours worth of work.
As time goes by and these players get those abilities and recipes done demand will no doubt drop.

It's annoying enough I imagine for the folks at correct lvls of new dungeons to be surrounded by high lvl players tearing into new dungeons just to kill the bosses, without them hanging around for a week to get all the new recipes that they more than likely will barely use and just want for semi completion.

Flamestrike is a priest ability that skill set can not be obtained until Kur so really for most the pattern should be as newish player in sth serb save the recipes from there till later.