Mastery Point Concept

Kalifas

Reading these quotes below inspired this little concept. I am not the best on numbers, so If you do like the idea but think the numbers are off please let me know.

Arato wrote: »

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Arato wrote: »

EZgoin76 wrote: »

Arato wrote: »

EZgoin76 wrote: »

I'm a console player so I have no idea if it was different before console release but why even have VR ranks to begin with?

Why did they not just stick with regular levels, i.e. levels 1 through 50, open up the CP system at level 50. Then cap levels at 65 until content demanded higher levels.

I may be thinking a little to simplistic, idk.

Because this method opens up the game for all your alts once you hit level 50. Before, your alts were only 1/4 of the way to being able to do group content when they hit 50. They still had to do all the questing they did from 1-50 2 more times, plus another 6 veteran ranks worth of xp to reach the cap.

Yes that's the way it is now. My question was why they made VR levels in the first place. Instead of having regular levels like I said above.

I'M on my phone so I won't go further into it but I think this could have all been avoided in the first place.

Because initially there was no endgame. You got to 50, and some people said they wanted to do the other faction's zones on their character that was already leveled up.. so ZOS created VR's to make an end game. People didn't like it, so they started making plans to remove them, since real end game was coming anyway with trials and such.

But it's a lot easier to add levels, than take them away, which made the removal very complicated.

They wanted a system that allowed for longer term progression, but make every level up less impactful than normal character levelups (normal character level impacts a lot of things in regard to character strength, relative crit rates, relative armor effectiveness, even adding a miss chance if you're much higher level than your opponent. A VR1 would straight up whiff on a perfectly aimed attack against a VR16

Personally, I just would have bit the bullet, made the cap 50, left in champion levels but not have them effect gear or character strength beyond the passive effects you put points into, reduced all Tier 6 and above gear down to Tier 5. Ebony/Daedric is the top tier of material in any Elder Scrolls game except ESO.

the team did a huge disservice by not only delaying the VR removal but expanding the VR cap multiple times, just making their job harder as more people became invested in the VR system. Console players never should have had to know VR's in the first place.

Now yes, they are removed, yet there's a gaping hole left from a bloated system being ripped out, now you have Tier 6-9 materials that are basically worthless to anyone who had a VR16 character on their account, good thing for crafting bags making the bloat and excess materials not as noticable I guess, but there's basically no point to gathering in any zones from cadwell's silver up until IC or Wrothgar, I guess upper craglorn for nirncrux, but that's it.

ZOS basically made a mess and drug their feet about cleaning it up until they couldn't clean it up entirely and so there's still stains from the mess they made everywhere earlier.

I actually think they're on the right track tough with places like Craglorn. Some materials SHOULD be from specific parts of Tamriel. Jarrin root for instance should be from Stros M'kai. Saltrice is really more of a Morrowind thing. A lot of items could find they are needed from different locations and I think that would be great! Give crafters a reason to farm a specific map for their purposes. This adds depth to the game. Most of us who do alchemy in this game for instance know that you'll find mushrooms generally in dark places around rocks or next to a tree. Water Hyacinth and Nirnroot are around water. I'm just suggesting I like the idea of making some materials specific to certain Provinces or even narrower regions of the conditions make sense.

I also agree with you that the progression of materials is odd for a TES game.

In a perfect world, ESO wouldn't even have a level system at all, just skill levels and champion perk points, but zones wouldn't be level based, some mobs would be tougher than others in the same zone.

You'd then have materials gathered not by what level they are, but how they fit into the geography of the zone.

Like you wouldn't find the same types of trees in Skyrim that you'd find in Summerset isles.

In that system the quality of gear you could wear would be determined by your skill level rather than an overall character level (IE to wear Ebony gear you'd need 45+ in heavy armor)

Remove the levels and only keep the Champion System and maybe add the Mastery System, in One Tamriel it makes sense.

I wish a perfect world was here. I like my whole mmo world to remain relevant.Should enemies outside starter cities still be important to long time players? Absolutely not in a game with levels.

But I would argue, Why are there levels to begin with? Does a hunter become proficient at every type of game by only killing a rabbit with a knife one million times?Global levels are what keep game worlds from staying relevant. Imagine every zone having it's own flora and fauna. You become proficient at killing Daedra by, killing Daedra. The idea is you start weak and as you defeat a certain obstacle, you get stronger at that particular obstacle.

What character improvements take less work and space than creating multiple sets of gear to fill specific situational instances? Traits! What if traits could be unlocked by executing a certain battle parameter rather than just be a passive unlocked via ranking up?. How about a dynamic performance tracker that rewards you for executing better against particular foes?

Let's say doing or reacting to certain things skillfully at opportune times result in a percentage of an objective rising. As your completion percentage rises in that category, you start progressing towards a unique trait/item/key item/that helps clear content designed around that specific species and environment. Each boon caps at 10% per enemy type. Of course enemies already in a skill line like Fighter's Guild might have to be omitted from the mastery system.

Some examples of what I am speaking of:

Enter The Mastery System or Conqueror System

Resource Mastery Track
The Resource Mastery Track is enemy type specific and character bound.

• Defeating a Naga= +.001 Health Recovery against a naga
• Defeating a Naga with pure magicka skills= +.001 Magicka Recovery against a naga.
• Defeating a Naga with pure stamina skills= +.001 Stamina Recovery against a naga.

Defensive Mastery Track
The Defensive Mastery Track is enemy type specific and character bound.

• Absorb 1000 damage from nagas= +.001 Naga skill resistance
• Defeating a Naga without getting hurt= +.001 Evasion against a Naga
• Block an attack from a naga= +.001 Blocking skill against a naga
• Block a heavy attack from a naga= -.001 Blocking cost against a naga
• Receive critical physical damage from a Naga= +001 critical resistance against a naga
• Receive normal physical damage from a Naga= -.001 physical damage received against a naga.
• Receive critical spell damage from a naga= +.001 Critical spell resistance against a naga.
• Receive normal spell damage from a naga= -.001 spell damage received when against a naga

Offensive Mastery Track
The Offensive Mastery Track is enemy type specific and character bound.

• Perform a light attack against a Naga= +.001 damage to light attacks against a Naga
• Perform a heavy attack against a Naga= +.001 damage to heavy attacks against a Naga
• Perform a weapon critical against a naga= +.001 weapon critical hit chance
• Perform 3 weapon critical against a naga= +.001 weapon critical damage
• Perform a spell critical against a naga= +.001 spell critical hit chance
• Perform 3 spell critical against a naga= +.001 spell critical damage
• Defeating a Nagas with pure damage over time= +001 Duration of dots against a naga.
• Defeating 3 Nagas with pure damage over time= +.001 damage of dots against a naga.
• Damage a Naga with flame damage spell= +.001 flame damage against nagas.
• Damage a Naga with frost damage spell= +.001 frost damage against nagas.

The First three tracks, Resource, Defensive, and Offensive are enemy specific. What I mean is you get stronger against a certain type from skill ups, specifically that type you are fighting. You could even fight an elite spawn or world boss and get stronger against that type of enemy.Champion points make your character stronger regardless of what you fight. These mastery tracks make your character stronger against particular enemies. This would allow ZoS to tune open world difficulty to be more difficult in your initial encounters which become easier as you conquer each type of enemy. It doesn't make sense that someone who killed 10 million rabbits and got max level can suddenly walk up and own a daedra to me.

ZoS could even get more specific and allow us to train specific skills against an enemy and upon gaining the master rank for that type of enemy. We could gain traits to boost our expertise towards a certain enemy type. Traits like Dragon Breath resistance, Dragon Killer(Damage +10% to Dragons or Intimidate/Paralyze Dragon),etc. It feels more iconic when you can get to start weak against things and remain weaker against things you don't normally pursue and fight, but then become extremely proficient at fighting particular things. You could be labeled as a Dragon Slayer versus Slayer Of Everything because I killed a thousand other things besides Dragons. Perhaps even add a trait that helps you procure rarer drops from an enemy you gain mastery over.

Acrobatics Mastery Track
The Acrobatics Mastery Track is character bound and applied to whole world.

• Dodge roll out of a red ground marker from Naga= -.001 dodge roll cost against a naga
• Jumping over obstacles in jump trials= Increases your jump height by 1 inch.
• Jumping across gaps or chasms in jump trials= Increases your jump distance by 1 inch.
  
• Falling from big heights without dying= +.001 height needed to take damage
• Falling from big heights and dying= -.001 damage from falling from big heights.

To prevent cheats from being used or making leveling acrobatics cheesy. ZoS will have to design jumping obstacles within context placed inside specific areas of zones. By context I mean places that require jumping in relation to the world and not just placed to add jumping puzzles. Players will be able to level up jumping in these specific areas once per obstacle and then must move on to the next one that they come by later. Although jumping can only be leveled up in these specific areas, the leveled up jumping will work throughout Nirn.

Athletics Mastery Track
The Athletics Mastery Track is character bound and applied to the whole world.

• Sprinting for 3 minutes per 24 real hours= Increases your sprinting speed by .001
• Swimming for 3 minutes per 24 real hours= Increases your swimming speed by .001
• Climbing for 3 minutes per 24 real hours= Increases your climbing speed by .001
• Flying for 3 minutes per 24 real hours= Increases your flying speed by .001
• Gliding for 3 minutes per 24 real hours= Increases your gliding speed by .001

I proposed limiting these skill ups to doable once every 24 hours to prevent the cheesy ways of leveling up fast to max it out. I don't think many would find it fun doing an athletic solely for leveling up anyways. It should feel like something that happens along side as just part of your everyday adventures. I know climbing, flying, or gliding isn't in the game. But just included them to cover all the possibilities.

Sneaking Mastery Track
The Sneaking Mastery Track is character bound and applied to the whole world.

• Successfully lockpicking a novice lock= Increases your lockpicking skill by .001
• Successfully lockpicking a apprentice lock= Increases your lockpicking skill by .002
• Successfully lockpicking a journeyman lock= Increases your lockpicking skill by .003
• Successfully lockpicking a expert lock= Increases your lockpicking skill by .004
• Successfully lockpicking a master lock= Increases your lockpicking skill by .005

• Successfully pickpocketing an civilian npc= Increases your pickpocket skill by .001
• Successfully pickpocketing a guard npc= Increases your pickpocketing skill by .002
• Successfully pickpocketing a noble= Increases your pickpocketing skill by .003
• Successfully pickpocketing a general= Increases your pickpocketing skill by .004
• Successfully pickpocketing a royalty= Increases your pickpocketing skill by .005

Lockpicking goes from novice thru master as you level it up. At every 10 percent you have skilled it up. It ranks up to the next rank. The highest rank master is only unlockable via the Thieves Guild and only after you have progressed along with the ranks leading up to the master lockpicking.

As the rank in lockpicking is raised, the number of tumblers that remain locked in place when a pick breaks increase in the following manner.

Novice – No tumblers remain in place, most time to unlock.
Apprentice – One tumbler remains in place, second most time to unlock.
Journeyman – Two tumblers remain in place, third most time to unlock.
Expert – Three tumblers remain in place, fourth most time to unlock.
Master – Tumblers always remain in place, least time to unlock.

phaneub17_ESO

So you want to add another tedious grind to the game that is creature specific. It'll end up as another mandatory requirement for Trial guilds forcing their members to master in order to join or participate. It's like WoW old weapon skill system that they eventually abandoned like many older MMO's used to have as well. This works for a Single Player game as dedication to it is dependent on how long you invested and stopping isn't going to hurt you when you come back to it, but in a persistent game world this would drive off a large segment of players who have plenty of other options. In this current market, you have many venues available that would gladly take you.

If you want to incorporate this into a Single Player game that's fine there are plenty of game maker software out there at least 3-5 on Steam alone, but MMO's of today have to keep it casual, easy to learn, and inviting to new players if they want to keep their numbers. Some people don't have more than a couple hours a day to play, some don't have more than 4 hours a week to play. Games have to take into consideration of all possible player-base not just the top elite.

Kalifas

I can't say no guilds would require mastery over every species. But we can't say every guild require it either. It doesn't have to be tedious. That is why I left the numbers up to proposals. It could be as tedious or non tedious as the developers or playerbase wants it.

The whole point of an mmo is to keep people playing in a persistent online world over long durations. Or the sub model option would cease to exist. Dedication is dependent on how long you invested and stopping isn't going to hurt you in an mmo when you come back to it. People sub and un-sub all the time to mmos.

I never understood why developers want players to play their game over long durations. But then make content so light with no long progression or long term goals. I am more casual myself now, but that doesn't mean I want to be lead around by the nose or have an mmo trying to get me to play less of it. Having more options existing outside your favorite mmo is already taking you away from it regardless of how great an mmo is. And this is one of the best ones out there regardless of how many complaints the forums get.

One of the most wanted features in this game is spell crafting. And I don't see anyway that could be implemented without being exhaustive and time consuming unless it released and was rather simple. Just because an mmo has multiple features, doesn't mean I as the consumer get to have my hands on every piece of it, or want my hands on it. I rarely touch PvP with a ten foot pole.

AlnilamE

I kind of understand where you are coming from (and I have to ask if you are playing Black Desert because of the Naga reference and the similarity of your proposal to their "knowledge" system).

But consider this: We have just spent about a year and a half moving from the Veteran system to the Champion System. That was a LOT of development time. Time that could have been dedicated to other concepts like Spellcrafting or housing or more DLC.

I really don't want to go through another complete overhaul of the game systems. I'd much rather have Spellcrafting and Housing. And it would be really nice if those systems could be complex, but shoving them aside to redesign the level and skill system is not how we are going to get that.

I really don't mind that zones are leveled. I only wish low level mobs didn't try to attack you when you are gathering. But that's just a minor inconvenience.

Kalifas

I haven't played Black Desert or even heard of the knowledge system. Only seen videos of it and the parkour and graphics are insane.

Well if this idea did cut into spellcrafting coming sooner rather than later. Then yeah I would definitely agree that this mastery system should take a backseat to that.