The big question: Skill and Stat Caps

Dian

Dian

This has been a constant unanswered issue for me over the years..
What is a good skill and stat cap for a shard?

I have been working on my shard since 2000 in one way or another , and over all these years I have never really come to a solid decision to what these caps should really be. I have always maintained fairly close game mechanics to the traditional Ultima game. I like to keep things balanced as best I know how.

There are tons of shards out there that have higher caps, some with unlimited skills you can learn, others with crazy formulas that give multiple GM's but low caps for all the rest, allowing many skills to be used by a single character.. etc.

So I really want to open the floor to everyone's idea of what skill and stat caps should be, and why they have increased them if you have. For example, if you allow 10 skills at 120, what reason did you have for the increase, and how has it worked out?

So lets hear about your skill/stat caps, and how they work out for your shard and players~!

*Also, if you like, I have the same question relating to pet slots. Do you keep them at 5 pet slots, and why?
 
I personally feel the OSI caps are fine, provided you are using soulstones. I find it confusing to have too many skills on a single character at a time. It also makes pvp much more difficult to balance (even pvm to an extent).

I have played on some shards that have a higher skill cap. They are fun for a while, but I guess I prefer simple systems.

I had extra pet slots on my shard, but they had to have herding skill to increase the slots. It worked fairly well. You want to boost melee combat for players or you become another shard full of tamers.

My 2 cents...
 
Good points, I pretty well agree. I feel that the OSI caps are fine too.. or I guess should say, those caps are the base line to the balance they have.

PvP has such a critical balance point, and I do not know if there really is any true balance to achieve, to be honest. I think they really dropped the ball when introducing the Gargoyles. Way over powered, able to wear more items with properties than the other races, etc. At least in the beginning.. not sure where they are at now.

Maybe the pet slots are okay as well, but its the slots that each creature has that needs altered.. I dont know. Its a tough thing to do really.. balancing the tamer in itself.

Thanks @Ravenwolfe
 
Yeah, the pet slots can be tricky as well. If they can have too many pets, they roll over everything and there is no challenge. I basically allowed 2 dragons if you were willing to give 100 points to herding. I also made greater dragons NOT tamable as they are a bit OP. To balance I made pets weaker in pvp than in pvm. I also made melee stronger in pvm.
 
I think the trick is that every benefit should have a cost. Want more pets, give up skill points to get them etc.

They were good at this in the early years of UO but failed as they made the game very item dependant with very little cost to the items (can repair, self repair, etc).
 
I agree the greater dragon is pretty strong, for champs you really do need groups other wise with 7x skills you have to pull and run for a single player, which of course takes forever. But for a normal server with the normal osi mobs- a dragon and nightmare are excellent to pull off, I have to admit for a tamer having at least 8x skills helps much more of course :)
 
I've also been questioning this for a long time.. maybe three or four years. Here's the conclusions I've come to..

The skillcaps should go on forever, and the only thing it that should limit this is time. With that said, I'd have it take someone 4 years to reach 200 in a skill level. I'm sure people will disagree but without this feature there's a place at which characters become "complete" - they have the best items they can wear, the most skills they can get, and the biggest house plot they can get. Unfortunately this usually only requires a few months work on most servers. If you leave your individual skillcaps unlimited, while still limiting the overall skillcap it leaves players with a more realistic and rewarding choice. If I have 400 swordsmanship and 300 tactics I may be unchallange in the art of swords, but as soon as a mage paralyses me, I'm done. With this said, a player has before them an endless path and a choice to make.
 
I been leaning more towards leaving the caps in place (skills at least in this thought), but creating a fairly large/wide range of suits that give an extra GM in a skill, when wearing the complete set. My thinking is, it would give the ability for players to get that extra skill, for example like Milva mentioned, a good tamer template is always one skill short. But a special suit could give them that veterinary skill, and would just need to balance out their suit for whatever other properties they are wanting.
That, along with the soul stone and fragments, I think would give that little extra something for skill totals, while not really ruining any sort of game mechanics or balance..

Thoughts?
 
No, I get what you are saying, and I agree with what you mean. There is some kind of missing link to having a characters skills maxed out, and where to go from there, huh..
 
personally I feel that giving players a little more room than osi is better since they're working with a smaller player base and characters need to be a bit more flexible.
I worked out it once, and you could have a pretty decent character with 10 skills at GM.
This let's someone be GM at both spells and taming, combat and magic, etc.

I also changed it so that recall, gate, and mark don't require any skill or mana. Kind of far fetched for UO, but quite standard compared to every other RPG that has a similar option.

Stats...if a player can gain too much dex then they'll be able to "insta-heal" with bandages. Or very near it, I think the cap in most cases is 1 or 2 seconds to heal. That's with 250 dex and 120 healing.
So, keeping that in mind, I'd suggest doing something like individual stat can't exceed 175, but give them a lower total stat cap so they don't just set every stat at 175, too easy and too thoughtless.

If you wanted to let a player set one stat@ 175, another @ 150 and last @ 125, that's 450 cap.

There's always Vet players to think about, giving players something to work towards and reward them for playing.
 
All excellent -great feedback, all these idea's are what creates so many different server's for player's to check out :)
 
Enroq said:
I've also been questioning this for a long time.. maybe three or four years. Here's the conclusions I've come to..

The skillcaps should go on forever, and the only thing it that should limit this is time. With that said, I'd have it take someone 4 years to reach 200 in a skill level. I'm sure people will disagree but without this feature there's a place at which characters become "complete" - they have the best items they can wear, the most skills they can get, and the biggest house plot they can get. Unfortunately this usually only requires a few months work on most servers. If you leave your individual skillcaps unlimited, while still limiting the overall skillcap it leaves players with a more realistic and rewarding choice. If I have 400 swordsmanship and 300 tactics I may be unchallange in the art of swords, but as soon as a mage paralyses me, I'm done. With this said, a player has before them an endless path and a choice to make.
Click to expand...

That's something I'm hoping a system I've been planning and working on for about a year or so will help to fix. As far as gear goes anyway. Since UO is item based, I've made a system that makes upgrading of items almost endless but takes time and work to get there. It's not purely a gold dump system either, in fact it's built in such a way that it gives younger/newer players something to sell to the older players to help create a sort of economy.

Crafters aren't being left behind, in fact there's a bonus given to crafted items that might provoke players to choose crafted items over arties, depending on the type of character you want.
As well as items that require certain stats or skills in order to be used.
You could say it's like a suggested class system.



hopefully that makes sense
 
yes, the stats can almost be more over powering than extra skills as you pointed out @zerodowned
I have that much well in mind, and like the idea of capping each stat individual.

Seems just an extra 20 or 40 to the already set 720 would suffice really.. 760.. 780 cap even, would give a big benefit to any player use to the paid shards.. hm
 
I only find the unlimited skill caps tend to cause problems. But if you was to introduce a sensible skills cap like 700-1400 and tweak the other features to suit you will find it also works.

Even with a 800-900 skill cap you will make certain aspects of the game a lot easier than they should be.

What a lot of people fail to take into account is that by default everything is skill based. Most people have no problems upping the skills caps on players but fail to realize that creatures also inherit skill caps aswel.

In the end they start making 1 hit super uber monsters that deal like 2million damage but only take 1 damage a time.

Like anything you make or plan to make it depends on your abilities and how far you are willing to dig to create your desired goal
 
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