Increasing skill cap

[GalenKnighthawke]

At the House of Commons, someone raised the possibility of the skill cap for an individual skill to beyond 120. Jeremy, to my shock, responded that this was something being seriously considered.

Here is the link:

http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/show_content.php?content=29147

And here is the exact quote:

zigzag - *CLEVER_DRAGON* Guten Tag, Bore Da, Hello! I would like to ask (if I may) if UO plans to expand beyond the 120 skill cap. It seems like fewer skills are needed these days because of some wonderful items one can obtain, and I think that a cap of say, 150 would be appropriate to allow players to specialise even further! Thank you sirs! *bows*

Jeremy_EAMythic - Draconi says "We have, in fact, been thinking quite a bit about this. Leurocian and I are now locked in fierce negotiations about this in Stygian Abyss."

Does anyone else think this is a really bad idea, and that if anything should be raised, it's the total skill cap of 720, not the individual skill cap of 120?

Or have I missed the boat somehow, and UO players generally want their templates to become even more crowded, even more specialized, and incorporate even less variety?

-Galen's player

 

[Restroom Cowboy]

At the House of Commons, someone raised the possibility of the skill cap for an individual skill to beyond 120. Jeremy, to my shock, responded that this was something being seriously considered.

Here is the link:

http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/show_content.php?content=29147

And here is the exact quote:



Does anyone else think this is a really bad idea, and that if anything should be raised, it's the total skill cap of 720, not the individual skill cap of 120?

Or have I missed the boat somehow, and UO players generally want their templates to become even more crowded, even more specialized, and incorporate even less variety?

-Galen's player

[advertisment] SA...taking gimp to new levels. [advertisment]

 

[gunneroforgin]

I would defintely be in favor of rasing the 720 skill cap to 800.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

I disagree with raisign EITHER the 720 cap or the individual caps on skills.

Instead I want to see even more skills, specialization skills and the like put in WITHIN the 720 + items limit.

As shown in one of the myriad of Sampire nerf threads, getting to 850+ skill points is already feasible if not easy to do.

My personal opinion is that the game needs more skills in a tree-based system that allows for specialization, but retains the customization and mixability of skills that UO already offers.

A system where people can excel in one area (example: crafting) such as Blacksmithing, or can generalize across various crafting abilities would work better than allowing even more skill points to stack together every skill possible.

The LESS a player is able to be an all-inclusive character (or cover every facet of the game within the number of characters they have on a single account), the better IMO. Having more people pushed into different templates (again, both generalists and specialized, hybrid and "pure"), the more variety the game has. The higher the skill point cap, the less variety is needed.

Why have a specialist Tailor if you can stuff three or four other crafting skills with it and still be as effective?

 

[Maplestone]

Or have I missed the boat somehow, and UO players generally want their templates to become even more crowded, even more specialized, and incorporate even less variety?

Many do, yes. For freedom to matter, there must be a need to make choices.

(doesn't make much difference to me - I can't imagine I'd ever be able to afford the power scrolls)

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

...

I disagree with raisign EITHER the 720 cap or the individual caps on skills.

I can see the case for raising the overall skill cap, but I have never advocated for or openly proposed such a step.

What I'm more concerned with is why they'd even consider raising the individual cap to....Well, anything past 120.

Has anyone ever suggested this before that House of Commons? If so, can you explain what your argument is?

-Galen's player

 

[Restroom Cowboy]

Many do, yes. For freedom to matter, there must be a need to make choices.

(doesn't make much difference to me - I can't imagine I'd ever be able to afford the power scrolls)

Me thinks 150 scrolls will ruin champ spawns if they are a SA reward. Heh...it would be funny to me if the PvP area had all the arties. Would make for a truly interesting role switch.

 

[Nexus]

At the House of Commons, someone raised the possibility of the skill cap for an individual skill to beyond 120. Jeremy, to my shock, responded that this was something being seriously considered.

Here is the link:

http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/show_content.php?content=29147

And here is the exact quote:



Does anyone else think this is a really bad idea, and that if anything should be raised, it's the total skill cap of 720, not the individual skill cap of 120?

Or have I missed the boat somehow, and UO players generally want their templates to become even more crowded, even more specialized, and incorporate even less variety?

-Galen's player

I think it's a bad idea There's too much specialization and item dependence now raising kill caps (the 120 caps that were mentioned) would further aggravate this.

 

[MinorMage]

I'm with Dermott on this.

Raising the skill cap in anyway would be difficult to balance to say the least.

 

[NuSair]

At one time I had a proposal written up (about 40 pages) of things that could be done to UO. I probably spent a good 200 hours or so on it. And I was going to send it in, even offered to drive upto Fairfax and present it, but emails I sent to Jeremy, Bob and Drac never went answered, so I never did.

One of those ideas (spelled out in much greater form) was skills from skill specialization. It came in 3 forums, well, I had 3 ideas for it anyway.

One was that for certain groups of skills, you received a skill bonus. Example, if you had Blacksmith @ 120, Tailoring @ 120, Carpentry @ 100, Tinkering @ 100, then you 'received' a 100 in Item Lore as a bonus.

The second was similar to the first, but if you had X skills at X value or higher you received a bonus amount of skill points to be used elsewhere.

The third, and probably most complex, was the tree system. Example- If you had Blacksmith, Tinkering, Magery, Alchemy and Item Lore then you could learn Ring Making. If any of those skills dropped below the required skill, then you could not use the Ring Making skill. The materials for ring making would be found through out the game. Gems to be mined up, certain woods to be 'burned' to create magical fires, new and rare ingredients to be gotten for magic mixtures found on creatures, in chest, in the swamp at a certain location only when the Twin Moons are full

But anyway, that's a small overview of a couple of things I had written up in a proposal to UO.

 

[ZippyTwitch]

Yet another dumb idea to ruin the game more.

 

[slayer888]

For whoever agree on 150 skill points, most if not all must be using cheats or scripts to raise their skills.

Do you know how hard it is to raise ALL the skills looking at the monitor for 4-5 hours without blinking your eyes?

For example, mace training.

I set up uoa macro for healing paladin from 90 mace

target is :120

You know HOW GOD DAMN LONG it is to take from 90 to 120? Now you're saying we need to take it to 150.... please make it NEVER NEVER happen. I do not want to look at the monitor for 20 hours per day and 7 days a week just to gain one skill. I have life besides UO.

This is just encouraging people to cheat more and script more to maximize their skills. Those who can't cheat to compete can just sit in their house with their hard earned 120 skills and 1034343 years to reach 150 skills.

I am not saying some skills such as Taming, discordance and such... those would be even worse.

Moreover, I think the skill cap of 720 is very good idea as it is hard to make uber templates.

For example, for a stealth archer tamer. You could not fit healing and anatomy in the template, so the only choice of healing would be potions.

Moreover, you do not have resist so there is a risk for getting mana vampired and cant hide for a period of time until your mana is recovered.


Please stay all skills max to 120 and cap at 720. This should not ever be changed.


Instead of opening up new skills, why not we input more spells for each type of template?

Like ninja, can have other 2 new learned skills... etc..

For mage, can have few new spells to learn... etc..

For necro, can have few new spells to learn.. etc...

etc.... (by quest or recipe) [PLEASE NOT REPEAT quest like Heartwood for scripters.]

Why will everyone need to be a gargyole to compete? I think all races should have its pros and cons.

In my opinion, elves and human are quite balanced at the moment.

Human main advantage is the jack of all trade

elf main advantage is being a mage type for +20 mana, 75 energy.


So gargyole could have something different such as:-

Night Sight
Berserk when below 20% hp (hci +10, dci -15, di + 20)
60 archery or throwing weapon (invisible skill) <-- like human
40 mysticism (invisible skill)
+5 hp
+5 mana
+5 stamina
Cannot wear some Elf and Human Armors

Fly (mounting) <-- just like casting ethereal horse <-- speed as fast as horse walk and run

Walk (non mounted) <-- speed as fast as human walk and run

In order to fly, will be same as casting ethereal horse

After dismount, cannot fly for the same amount of time as right now in game.

Cannot fly across sea, or other blocked area. However, can only fly to gargyole areas (must not be pvp area or monster around to avoid grief of using this advantage over strong creatures or pvp aspect).

 

[T_Amon_from_work]

Raising ANY skill cap above 120 would be nasty.

As for total cap, I'm torn. I have 3 characters (1 Pally and 2 crafters) where a cap increase to 750 would allow filling in scrolled skills and prevent the need to swap skills between the crafters in a case or 2. <shrug>

Overall I think I'm more on the "nope. leave things alone" side of the fence. Leave it.

 

[Snakeman]

Doing this would only hurt the game further. Start fixing existing bugs that are plaguing players for the last few yrs & that would help the game more. Adding more Tot skill points or tot to a skill lvl will only create more of a mess then we have now.

 

[Seasseragh]

Neither 120+ skills nor 720+ skill total is something i´d like to see.

 

[Nexus]

Neither 120+ skills nor 720+ skill total is something i´d like to see.

Honestly I'd like to see the hard cap on skills dropped back to 100 and just tank PS

 

[Viper09]

Lol, and the skill title for 150 will be
"Bob the UbberGimp Swordsman"

(sarcasm)
But what I really think they should do is make the individual skill cap 720. That way we can really become specialists on one skill for each char.
(/sarcasm)

 

[Sarphus]

I think that UO can work just fine with skill caps going up to 150 instead of 120. Here's the thing, it could only work if the game design makes it work. With how skills work out currently, there really aren't any reasons to take a lot of skills over certain levels. That issue would need to be fixed before they allow us to go to 150 in skills.

For example, chivalry would need to scale the power of chiv spells based on your skill level AND your karma. The way chiv works right now would not work for an increased skill cap to 150 and it REALLY wouldn't work with an increased skill cap for characters.

Also, spells would have to be added to all spellcasting skills in order for it to work. To increase skills up to 150, magery would need a 9th and probably 10th circle. The spells in 9th and 10th circle would have to include more than just summons too... perhaps an AE heal spell or something. It would also be cool if there were mage summons that become more powerful if multiple mages participate in summoning them. Mages could get an "ae around caster" spell similar to wither, but energy or fire dmg. A heal buff could be added that effectively casts lesser heal on the caster once when it is targeted and 2 more consecutive times without interrupting spell cycling. A spell similar to flamestrike could do about as much direct damage as an energy bolt and give the target -20 HPR for a period of time based on eval vs resist. The reason I would make it do -HPR is because that would prevent it from interrupting on the target.

Ninja would need a lot of help. Being able to go to 150 in ninja would help a ton in letting people use all ninja forms without fizzle, but ninja would still need other abilities that actually make sense. To be frank, ninjitsu doesn't make sense. It's completely impractical in pvm for anything aside from using animal forms. Ninjitsu should have abilities built around the consept of assassination.

it would be really cool if necro got a lifetap spell. They could also get more forms, which would be scaled based on the min necro skill to cast them. They could get some spells that siphon life, mana or stamina from a target as long as the target is within a certain range. They could get an ability that drains stamina and another to drain mana. They could get a charm undead spell similar to dryad allure.

Spellweaving could be enhanced with a spell to buff an allured pet. It would also make make sense for spellweaving to have a charm ability that does something similar to bard peacemaking, but the effect would be broken if the target is hit at all.

Bard skills would scale to 150 very easily.


Now... the other direction this discussion is going is along the lines of raising the skill cap from 720 to something higher. If the skill total allowed for a character was raised without also raising the potential skill cap for each skill, that would just create more advanced gimp characters. It's already possible to create 4-class characters that are not only competitive, but extremely powerful. Increasing the cap even by 80 pts would make it possible to make 5 class characters. Unless the content in SA was made extremely challenging, I can think of a few 5 class builds that would pretty much lay wreckage to any pvm content that wasn't made to intsantly kill people.

IMO, skills need to be balanced... game designs need to be carefully balanced to make them challenging without making them guarunteed death. Instant death is just bad game design.

 

[Basara]

I wouldn't mind seeing the following:

Soft Cap: This is the amount you get in REAL Skill Points
Hard Cap: this is the maximum you can have in real+equipment points.
Individual skill cap: This is the amount the skill can go up to.

Soft cap: 700+5 per year of account age (for all accounts).
Hard cap: 800 total skill points.
Individual skill cap: as it currently is, except that one gets +0.5 per year of age, added on top of the skill's normal/scrolled cap - and only if the skill is all real skill points.

So, a 10 year old cap would have 750 possible in real skill points, can benefit from up to 50 points from equipment, and can take non-scrolled skills to 105, 120-scrolled skills to 125, etc.


This would give veteran accounts some nice bonuses, but not too noticable ones.

Alternatively, if the extra 0.5/year is considered too overpowered, they could be made to only apply to non-combat skills (especially crafting and resource-gathering skills), or be allowed for all skills, but points going over the base cap amount are ignored in PvP.

 

[Sarphus]

Me thinks 150 scrolls will ruin champ spawns if they are a SA reward. Heh...it would be funny to me if the PvP area had all the arties. Would make for a truly interesting role switch.

The devs could still increase the skill cap to 140 without hurting fel champ spawns. here's how...

The skill cap could be increased to 140 by getting a special new type of power scrolls that are ADDITIVE to existing PS. In other words, you get to the 140 skill cap by getting a +20 of the new type of PS AND getting a +20 of the old type of PS. That way the devs could still use the existing champ spawn system and not obsoletize the existing champ spawn system.

I think a few examples are needed to explain what I mean...

If you use a +5 old PS and later use a +5 of the new type of PS you would have a cap of 110. If you then use a +10 of the old type of PS your cap would be 115 and if you then used a +20 of the new type of PS you would have 130 as a cap and so on. So basically, each type of PS would work independently of each other.

 

[Sarphus]

I am curious what a 150 tamer would look like. I'd imagine it would be absolute murder training taming to 150, but a pet that is in the 150 range would be SOOOOO tough that I'm not sure it would be balanceable for pvp without also adding stronger defensive skills.

Also, how long would evasion last with 150 bushido/parry? Would you even be able to build a samurai and go 150 in all the skills you need? I guess not... I guess that's the whole point of raising the skill cap. Players then have to decide where they want to specialize. They can do the 150 bushi/parry, but then they might have to sacrifice chivalry.

Well anyway... After thinking about this for about 15 minutes now, I don't think the cap would be upped all the way to 150 if the devs went with a system like this. Instead, I think they would up the cap to 140 and add a new set of PS that go in increments of 5.

I also think that raising the cap to 140 on all scrollable skills would really shake things up to the point where it would take players probably a couple of years to truly find all the holes that let them overly exploit the system.

If the devs do it right I really think it could work. They would need to really test it, though.

 

[Warrior of Time]

I can't help but think that a move like this would be used to tighten the gargoyal templet.

150 parry to remove the possable use of a high throwing skill in the gargoyal for example being kept low by the 720 skill cap.

UO has had the caps the way they are this long I say keep what we have and the devs to work things to that end.

Changing caps from 700 to 720 for long time vets has made new players do nothing but complain. (That is till they was 4 year vets)

All we need now is to make it as hard to get to 150 as it was to 120 before. That would make the very hard road to 120 before easier to get. Example: Magery took X number hrs to get to 120. reset the max to 150. That could mean that a person work the same hrs to get to 150 it took me to get to 120 before. 120 would then be easier to get.

They messed with it in AoS adding the scrolls system. All that did was make it harder for a person using 100 skill points fail more often casting circle 8 spells.

I say keep it as is and keep complaints down.

We didn't like some of the changes that was made in AoS why repeat history.

 

[Maplestone]

I am curious what a 150 tamer would look like.

Most likely like a 120 tamer looks like now. In such a world, difficulty would likely be rescaled so that greater dragons would be +30 skill harder to control than they are today.

 

[gjohnson5]

They need to forget about enhancements. They need to produce more bug fixes so that people won't be holla-ing about quitting everytime they change something that probably shouldn't have been.

That vamp form issue had been around for years , so I think it's only rightfully so that changing it after some 4-5 years makes no sense at all.

Fix the game fist , make enhancements l8r

 

[Harlequin]

I think 120 for an individual skill is good enough. (I don't think they are talking about using items like a +60 ASH to boost the skill over that 120)

As for raising the total cap skills, I doubt that they would do that either. If they did, a certain percentage of people would complain that they just undid the fix for sampires, even though every other template gets the extra skill points too.

Personally, I'm hoping that they boost the HP for players to 2-3 times the current values. I'm a Legendary warrior, I should be able to tank a measly Greater Dragon!

 

[hawkeye_pike]

This is a bad idea.

People will whine even more for an increase of total skill points available.

Raising the skill cap will bring new incentives into the game for power gamers, while "normal" gamers are neglected and discouraged. To my opinion, even 120 skill cap is useless and unbalancing the game, especially since the scrolls are only available to few who understand best how to exploit the system.

To make players keep playing UO, you don't have to push the skill limits more and more up, but you should rather improve game depth and game content.

I personally am not interested into going through all the nonsense in order to get a 120 scroll, and I most definitely wouldn't try to get a 150 (or whatever) scroll. If this decision would mean a noticable disadvantage in PvP or PvM, I probably would lose interest in playing. I don't like to be forced into a power-gaming playstyle in order to be able to compete.

 

[WarUltima]

Hmmm how about NO.

Fix useless skills before mess around with the total skill/skill cap.

120 is Legendary.... and now legendary is not even close to enough?

130 is Pwner Master
140 is Uber
150 is what? WTFPWNT?

and it will be even worse if they did a retro fix to increase skill cap so now the 150 gives the same advantage as the old 120. It's gonna be bad. Even less template varity. And if you increase the total skill cap beyond 720 to something more than 740 it will be even more nasty when they try to balance templates.

 

[MalagAste]

While I would absolutely LOVE to have 820 skill points, I could see where this would be a VERY bad thing.

I would also like to say I remember when they changed to the 120 skill base and I went from being able to open a gate all the time without hardly ever failing at just GM to fizzling 8 out of 10 tries at 110 magery...... This to me is WRONG....... so what would be next at 150?????? never casting a gate at GM????? is that what you want??? NOT me.

I could give a rats about farming scrolls in FEL what concerns me more is the further destruction of skill... I don't want to rework all my templates either just to fix them after a change in skill cap. I VERY much hope they really think about this before EVER implementing such a thing.

I know I could do a lot with 820 skill points or whatever but I think it would seriously change the delicate balance of the game.....

As it stands there are people SOLOing things that should NEVER and were NEVER meant to be soloed..... This is WRONG. With 820 skills or 150 skill caps could you imagine the things people could do??? No not at all a good idea in my opinion. I wouldn't want them to tell me that you couldn't have more than 7 skills on your template or anything like that. I have some characters with as many as 10 skills on their templates... so this is not a good idea at all.

Please click the hatchling and help him mature to adulthood. Bel'la Dos (Thank You)

 

[Lord Kotan]

At the House of Commons, someone raised the possibility of the skill cap for an individual skill to beyond 120. Jeremy, to my shock, responded that this was something being seriously considered.

Here is the link:

http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/show_content.php?content=29147

And here is the exact quote:



Does anyone else think this is a really bad idea, and that if anything should be raised, it's the total skill cap of 720, not the individual skill cap of 120?

Or have I missed the boat somehow, and UO players generally want their templates to become even more crowded, even more specialized, and incorporate even less variety?

-Galen's player

... watch it be tied to something like faction rank. I think I'd quit over that - seriously. (figuring they are tieing items to factions - wouldn't suprise me if they did this too)

 

[Connor_Graham]

For whoever agree on 150 skill points, most if not all must be using cheats or scripts to raise their skills.

This statement is pure BS. All it takes is the DRIVE, the DESIRE, and the PERSEVERENCE to achieve something to do so. It doesn't take cheating. Anyone that claims otherwise is missing one of these 3.

Do you know how hard it is to raise ALL the skills looking at the monitor for 4-5 hours without blinking your eyes?

Hard, no. Time consuming with some skills (like Taming), yes. It's not all that hard to hit the same buttons over and over again.

For example, mace training.

I set up uoa macro for healing paladin from 90 mace

target is :120

You know HOW GOD DAMN LONG it is to take from 90 to 120?

Yeah, a few hours in the Yamotsu mines. It's the same for Swords too. I know, because I've built all 3 of the melee skills to 120.

This is just encouraging people to cheat more and script more to maximize their skills. Those who can't cheat to compete can just sit in their house with their hard earned 120 skills and 1034343 years to reach 150 skills.

Those who don't cheat now won't. Those that do cheat now will do so anyway, regardless of how hard or easy something is. That's the nature of a cheater.

I am not saying some skills such as Taming, discordance and such... those would be even worse.

This I agree with. Taming needs some serious looking at as far as skill gain goes. It takes way too long to complete a tame cycle on each creature. Skill gain checks need to come a lot more often than they currently do.

For example, for a stealth archer tamer. You could not fit healing and anatomy in the template, so the only choice of healing would be potions.

You'd be surprised what someone can come up with if they decide they want to do one specific thing. Never say never in UO.

 

[Sir Kenga]

LOL

130 skill - Unstoppable
140 Skill - UltraKill
150 Skill - Godlike!

 

[Harb]

I'm all for it providing a few things come along with the change. 1) If individual skills can go to 150, address the long overdue total cap of 720.750 sounds about right. Dump the vet bonus, 750 for everyone. 2) Drop powerscrolls completely. If they continue to be a necessity to go above 100, this is an extremely bad idea. 3) Do not "rescale" skill requirements/ effects. We've heard it before, "you will not need skills above 100 or the new powerscrolls...," well duh.

The effect of a 750/ 150 cap, no scrolls/ no vet bonus/ no rescaling, would be mature characters running somewhere between 5-8 skills. Most skills would naturally "max out" somewhere between 100-120, though a few would benefit all the way to 150. Taming, bard skills, weapon skills, med/ eval/ spirit speak all come to mind in the latter category. A final thought, let all skills go to 150, all of them. Currently, there are several 100 cap skills that certainly would benefit, such as lockpicking, inscription, and carpentry, just to name a few.

 

[ColterDC]

Hey Devs, ever heard the saying..... Don't fix something that's not broken?

Making changes to the skills caps would be the stupidest thing ever.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

This is a bad idea.

People will whine even more for an increase of total skill points available.

I sure as Hell will!!!

-Galen's player

 

[Beefybone]

The developers badly want this game to be WoW, because it's all they know. First we get a sad attempt at raids (peerless) along with some blue elves, then enchanting (imbuing) and arena gear (faction rewards). And in wanting it to be like WoW, they really want to raise the "level cap". Only UO doesn't have a level cap, so their heads are melting not knowing what to do.

150 skill cap? Cripes, what an awful idea. I'm curious which dev, Leurocian or Draconi, has the sense to argue against this. I'm betting Leurocian. He always seemed sensible.

 

[Cear Dallben Dragon]

my gut says a better balance/good move would be to highten the stat cap and fix some already known pvp issues. the skill cap seems fine. but i was never a fan of 120 in the first place

 

[5% Luck]

Realy the cap should have never went beyond the 100 mark. But its made such a nice addition to fel i dought fel would have survived with out it. Plus what would we be doing with that extra 20 on vet accounts?

If we increase these capps it should be a part of the vet system.

 

[Kratos Aurion]

I would rather see new skills created to reduce the amount of tanking templates. That way we have a more balanced class of pure characters and hybrid characters.

 

[Salty Pete]

Skills should never have been allowed above 100. The skill cap should have stayed a hard 700 as well.

 

[Sarphus]

The original question at the townhall was if the devs have considered raising the skill cap to 150 on skills. The devs said they have been discussing raising the skill cap internally.

The devs never said they were considering raising the skill cap to 150. With everything that the devs have said about SA designs, I think it's highly unlikely that the devs will increase the skill cap to 150. Instead, I think they will increase the skill cap to 140 with new PS dropping in SA with 5 pt increments just like the current PS. Basically, the new PS would be stackable with the old ones, so you would reach the 140 cap by getting a 120 PS from each system.

Honestly, that's the only logical way I can think of the devs doing what they are considering.

Also, I really think a system as mentioned could be balanced. It would just need to be tested really carefully before it's released. As long as the devs keep the skill cap per character at 720, having skills able to go up to 140 would just increase the level of specialization that people can choose for their character. It would also allow people to choose pure templates or to build hybrids. As things are right now you can only really build hybrids...

 

[Draken-Korin]

It amazes me that they can talk of higher skill caps and all these additional lousy changes to the great game that used to be UO, but when you speak of a pre aos shard OH GOD NO WE CANT DO THAT THERE IS NO MARKET FOR IT.

*shakes head* What utter bs.

 

[love2winalot]

NO. Hey EA, Take all the time & effort & resources that you would use to accomplish the new skill caps, and use all of that, ON SOMETHING THE GAME REALLY NEEDS...............

Have any of us ever heard of anyone saying, "Raise skill caps, or i will quit the game?..........me neither.......

 

[Dicimiie]

I always found the concept of going over 100 in any skill rather bizarre. I always looked at the 0 to 100.0 point system in terms of percentages. It was a much simpler system, with 100.0% being the maximum you could achieve. It worked for me.

Then again, I'm also against the itemization that has become such a huge part of UO. I'm against the extinction of skills (item ID and forensic eval coming to mind), and the serious changes in others (blacksmithing becoming far less necessary and repairs being done via repair deeds).

UO had such a unique feel to it when I started playing that no game since has been able to imitate. Unfortunately, rather than keep that uniqueness, the game is slowly being made into a poor imitation of the other, more popular but less fun games out there.

 

[Wenchkin]

I don't support a higher skillcap than 120 or an increase in our total skill points. I would much prefer if we all started with 120 max on the relevant skills and powerscrolls were replaced with another valuable reward, but one that wasn't going to be a necessity as PS are becoming. As content has been added to require higher skill levels, so it's been more necessary to get scrolls to train and compete. And while folks like myself are happy with the "fight for them or buy them" options, others aren't. Let's prevent further bitterness, give Fel something cool to replace powerscrolls and give the 120 skill cap, where appropriate, as standard.

Also, if we were to see skill caps raised to 150, there would need to be spells and actions added in for those skills so players could get gains beyond 120. I'd also think the time between gains would be such a joke nobody would find any real enjoyment from it either.

Wenchy

 

[Pinco]

For me the total skillcap must become 750 (730 + 20 of veteran reward), 30 more skill points can make the difference sometimes...

 

[Scratch]

i vote for a ten year revert
at least we will all be in fel and it will all be skill vs skill
no more item based numbers

uo died long ago
its time to bury it now

 

[Violence]

I'd love 150.0 Scrolls on a couple of conditions.. 4x150 and 1x120 is enough to run a dedicated whatever template and I like specialization.

I would also suggest 5x150.0 with an increase of the skill cap as years pass, for veterans but that bit isn't important.

So the conditions I mentioned;

-We would have to seriously re-consider Skill Bonus from items

-New abilities should be introduced for specializing in a template.
Or new abilities should be added for 125.0 to 150.0 for all skills.

Without these 2, I honestly don't care what they do. I'll just buy the scrolls and train when the time comes anyway.. For the Must-Have skills at least, like weapon skill which everyone will want for PvP.

Now, new primary (as in STR/DEX/INT) and secondary (as in Mana/HP/Stamina) STATS I would be very interested in seeing.
Constitution? Agility? Charisma? So many to pick from.

 

[Maplestone]

I notice that there hasn't been much discussion about dilution of content: a higher skill range means new content is spread across a wider range. There are a lot of skills which are severely lacking in low-end (or even high-end) content. Should devs not flesh out gameplay for existing skills before they start seriously expanding the heights of skills?

 

[Kaleb]

Oh hell no!!! With the "additions" since 2000 I find it harder and harder to log on EA UO. I have had to resort to playing a free shard do to what UO has become. I feel this would be the final nail if they were to do something like this and if they do Im deleting all my items (some are very rare server births that i picked up in 98 or 99) and all my characters and Close my last 2 accounts.

Changing the skill caps would do nothing but kill templates by taking skill away from characters just like when 120's came out. when those came out what you were able to do at GM now required 120, if they raised the cap then what you could do at 120 would now be 150 thats utter BS if you ask me. IMHO powerscrolls were one of the worst additions put into game 2nd to tram.

I talk to people on free shard every day and i always get that they dont play it because its free but the fact that "OSI" (they still call it that ) Keeps ruining the game with pointless additions before fixing major bugs,exploits,dupes. and the simple fact that they revolve their design around items and pixel crack. And i see their point Myself at one time had 8+ accounts (closer to around 15 if i counted my BoD runner accounts) and now im down to 2. Seriously I dont see any new players comming into UO as fast as I see them leave. Pacific used to be the Biggest West coast server it is now in a pathetic state. Ask for your crap people kill the game some more.

 

[ake]

imho

keep the 720 skill cap
change the individual skill cap to 140 (not 150) = more variety
140*5 = 700
140*2 120*1 100*3 = 700