Increase the amount of Skill Points awarded per level

Does this sound like an idea worth testing?

  • Yes

    Votes: 14 87.5%
  • No

    Votes: 2 12.5%

  • Total voters
    16

DeletedUser15368

Idea title: Increase the amount of Skill Points awarded per level, to offset clothing/set bonus power creep.

Details of idea: Nowadays, the vast majority of the player's skills come from clothing and set bonuses. When most of the input comes from clothing and set bonuses, the PvP formulas can no longer function as intended. Everyone is a Dueller, or everyone is a Fort Fighter, and all jobs are available to all players simply by changing clothing, and your points allocation does not matter - a Key element of the RPG aspect of this game is now missing.
Instead of awarding 3 Skill Points per level, award players 10 Points, giving a total of 1500 Skill Points and 150 Attribute Points at level 150.

Additionally, make all jobs slightly more Labour Point intensive to balance for this PvP-focused change.

Reasons for submitting: I've realised that the game stopped being good around the time you could gain inordinately more Skill Points from your clothing than you could gain from levelling and questing. PvP is currently broken due to tombola power-creep, and I believe that shifting the primary source of Skills to your characters level and questing could vastly improve our gameplay and engagement, without the need for changing formulae.
This would also have the additional benefit of enabling Quest Rewards to feature more Skill and Attribute Points - the most valuable and desired quest reward possible.

Edit: This could also be considered as a substitute for increasing the level cap.
 
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DeletedUser15368

I've now realised that one of the newest sets, Angus' set gives 2044 Skill points and 163 Attribute points, so my suggested values might actually be too low.

compared to 450/150 from levelling... How did we let it get this bad?

At this point I don't even know what numbers to suggest, maybe like 30sp per level to bring us back to sanity - but the idea still stands.
 

Goober Pyle

The West Team
Fort Balancing Strategist
An accompanying idea could be adding a new skill per attribute
(Eg
STR: Determination
MOB: Endurance
DEX: Focus
CHA: Persuasion)

All jobs would be changed to require one of those skills, but they would forever be unavailable through clothing

In duels, those skills will be ignored

In FFs you will see a proportional damage and Resistance penalty if you don’t have an average of >400 points in those skills and a small attack/defense ATT/DEF bonus for points in each skill
(Eg Determination=> Defending DEF
Endurance=>Attacking DEF
Focus=> Defending ATT
Persuasion=>Attacking ATT
[this stops all these new skill points just adding to damagers damage and tanks hp and opens up some more experimentation with different AP distributions.
 

DeletedUser15368

All jobs would be changed to require one of those skills, but they would forever be unavailable through clothing
A really interesting proposal, it could also introduce the opportunity for new buffs and craft items based around these skills - further encouraging engagement.

In FFs you will see a proportional damage and Resistance penalty if you don’t have an average of >400 points in those skills and a small attack/defense ATT/DEF bonus for points in each skill
(Eg Determination=> Defending DEF
Endurance=>Attacking DEF
Focus=> Defending ATT
Persuasion=>Attacking ATT
[this stops all these new skill points just adding to damagers damage and tanks hp and opens up some more experimentation with different AP distributions.
I'd have to see how this actually plays, but could be a positive addition to the fort formulas.
I really liked the post-IFBC formula testing aspect where players were penalised if their skills weren't distributed somewhat equally - which was an effective nerf against both pure leadership and pure HP playstyles, so adding an element of that in would still be awesome in my opinion.
 

RaiderTr

Well-Known Member
I couldn't read Goob's suggestions in detail but I always felt "Attribution Points" per level to be almost irrelevant, compared to "Skill Points" per level, when calculating Attack/Defense values via Fort Battle formulas.

So yea I'd prefer a better ratio than 3 SP vs 1 AP per Level at the very least.

It's much easier to implement anyhow.
 

WhyN0t

Well-Known Member
I partially agree, but there will be a problem in duels. Soldiers will be impossible to be KO.
And in fort battles, both damage from leadership and HP don't suffer from diminishing returns, but HP is penalized by duellers' crits. So, duellers will be even more advantaged. And they're already the best class in the fort, so that's not fair.
 

DeletedUser15368

I partially agree, but there will be a problem in duels. Soldiers will be impossible to be KO.
And in fort battles, both damage from leadership and HP don't suffer from diminishing returns, but HP is penalized by duellers' crits. So, duellers will be even more advantaged. And they're already the best class in the fort, so that's not fair.
Damn those are good points... It would be a larger project than I had hoped to account for this, so thank you for thinking of it.

For soldier health points, it could be reduced to something like awarding 1 HP per skill allocation, or 2 for soldiers (2.5 premium?). A cap on point allocation to HP or even just go ahead with a long overdue class bonus update to address this.


As for fort battles, the solution may already exist and have been tested - adding in the diminishing returns formulae that were tested post-IFBC, which was an effective nerf against high HP/LDR builds.

Damage formula
Code:
 1 + max(0, (min(skill1, leadership, aiming)^0.8 + median(skill1, leadership, aiming)^0.7 + max(skill1, leadership, aiming)^0.6 − |maxHealth ÷ 10 − mean(skill1, leadership, aiming)|^0.6) ÷ 400)

Resistance formula
Code:
 1 + max(0, (min(skill1, leadership, dodging)^0.8 + median(skill1, leadership, dodging)^0.7 + max(skill1, leadership, dodging)^0.6 − |maxHealth ÷ 10 − mean(skill1, leadership, dodging)|^0.6) ÷ 3

 

Goober Pyle

The West Team
Fort Balancing Strategist
Damn those are good points... It would be a larger project than I had hoped to account for this, so thank you for thinking of it.

For soldier health points, it could be reduced to something like awarding 1 HP per skill allocation, or 2 for soldiers (2.5 premium?). A cap on point allocation to HP or even just go ahead with a long overdue class bonus update to address this.


As for fort battles, the solution may already exist and have been tested - adding in the diminishing returns formulae that were tested post-IFBC, which was an effective nerf against high HP/LDR builds.

Damage formula
Code:
 1 + max(0, (min(skill1, leadership, aiming)^0.8 + median(skill1, leadership, aiming)^0.7 + max(skill1, leadership, aiming)^0.6 − |maxHealth ÷ 10 − mean(skill1, leadership, aiming)|^0.6) ÷ 400)

Resistance formula
Code:
 1 + max(0, (min(skill1, leadership, dodging)^0.8 + median(skill1, leadership, dodging)^0.7 + max(skill1, leadership, dodging)^0.6 − |maxHealth ÷ 10 − mean(skill1, leadership, dodging)|^0.6) ÷ 3

One possibility is having an str/hp penalty for cha/leadership/tactics points (eg a pure ld dueler drops to 500 hp) while capping the damage multiplier at 2.0 and adding a max(550,<current formula>) to maximum damage taken.

This would make pure Damagers true glass jaws (and dramatically change the strategy for protecting them making that build less desirable to exist en masse and for offie play)

This would likewise penalize soldier tanks for simultaneously using their HP bonus and leadership/tactics bonus
 

Goober Pyle

The West Team
Fort Balancing Strategist
All That being said, reskilling costs will need serious rethinking, perhaps dividing shaman costs by 10, allowing placating with bonds and adding an option to the shaman for a full res kill for a sane nuggets cost (say 30)

I would like to see people be able to reskill every 5th FF or so with just what they earn in game and US$10/mo nugget munchers able to afford reskilling for each FF
 

DeletedUser15368

All That being said, reskilling costs will need serious rethinking, perhaps dividing shaman costs by 10, allowing placating with bonds and adding an option to the shaman for a full res kill for a sane nuggets cost (say 30)

I would like to see people be able to reskill every 5th FF or so with just what they earn in game and US$10/mo nugget munchers able to afford reskilling for each FF
Yeah or bring the cost of the reskill potions down to a reasonable degree.
 

DeletedUser15368

All of this, or just nerf/cap any sets
The amount of ap/sp coming from gear is ridiculous. Also makes toons utterly useless. At this point it's just fashion week with dress-my-doll toons
A complete El Gringo's set gives 5,190 Skill Points and 522 Attribute points
Plus all of these bonuses:
1648286353798.png

You get 450 SP and 150 AP from levelling up - You're right, is this a Role Playing Game or a Dress-up Sim with added gambling?

I don't really know how you get a full set, and I really, really hope no one actually has one, but I'm now thinking we'll need at least 60 SP per level to match current clothing. Absolutely mental :blink:


Just make a server with classic west world settings and you solve the problem :lol:
I'd usually completely back you, but:
1 - They can't monetise true Classic - best we could hope for is a limited-time run.
2 - They've methodically, and to the upmost degree, absolutely devastated all of the Classic clothes making it completely non-viable in the 2.xxx version.
 
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Caerdwyn

Well-Known Member
El Gringo looks great, but when was it up for sale? I don't think I've seen anyone actually using it. Best gear I recall spotting on anyone while actually fighting was Union/Andalusian/Fire and Ice.
 

Harriet Oleson

Well-Known Member
I'm upping this thread cause I really liked the idea, and to precise : even if that wouldn't compensate all SP/AP brought by equipment, it'd still have a much better impact in results than right now, with a bigger diversty and possibility to specialise a bit more. No need to totally counterbalance the equipment system.
And with "not so much impact but still a better one", maybe no need to require all the formulas/class char changes you talked about ?
I think there are better chances it could be taken into account by the team if it's super easy to implement; if there are big changes to make in parallel, that's dead.
 
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