Rewarding Skill, Emphasizing Risk/Reward, Current SP Problems and How to Fix it

[Peregrine]

"Unless you are good" is the root of the problem as much as nothing mattering is. That's a myth. Nothing in the game requires the make or break "are you good?" check. and it is INCREDIBLY difficult to design MMOs to check a player's actual skill more than simple setup. Almost nothing you do as a player as "skilled" makes a difference. You can't skill your way out of not having two bards.

Thus, any attempt to "reward innovation and effort" is likely doomed to simply rewarding imbalance. It'll kill diversity. It'll force players to exclude people not out of inherent choice, but because they bring the "effort" and "innovation" required down.

You cannot talk about making the game more rewarding of innovation and effort without talking about the balance needed to sustain such a system without breaking.

Adding chroma ore to this game would DESTROY the economy. How much would they be? 80k each? 200k each? A million each? More? Probably more. Everything would go to ****. Because you can't add chroma ore to a game that is horribly economically balanced.

So it is with the battle system and reward for "innovation" and "effort."

There is no such thing until proven otherwise. There is only setups that make the cut and setups that don't.

If dLvl goes to 20 on sp, and that becomes the norm, that stress will result in the emergence of an elite class of sp'ers and a gimp class. The elite will stick together. The gimps will suffer the consequences. And it will have NOTHING to do with skill.