On Skill Caps...

[Dorn]

I'm going to leave this alone. But honestly, if you fail to see any reason as to why guilds should be balanced towards each other... and I do not mean tit for tat, stat for stat, I mean Pros/Cons to each that make them both different but equally interesting/fun/unique to play in their individual fields that I'm unsure what to say.

Looking at the Dwaedn/Rooks for example, unique, full of flavor that is echoed both in their abilities, equipment, RP and locations. Fully fleshed out, and I think a brilliant example of what good Guilds can be. The Templars also. Man, do they have a lot of penalties for the stuff they have to get. I just choose to use a very narrow example to compare two guilds who *should* both be extremely proficient and capable at combat, maybe not in the same way but with enough to each that they're unique. Considering everything the Mercenary can do (really, just Coup once again), the Templar can do and not only that, but do it better (due to the increased Melee helping disarm/feint/etc or whatever they manage to get), there isn't that.

You don't want to compare Guilds, okay. I'm still going to say, this is great, I'm glad to see it. I just really hope that now there's no "Want to be better than them? Go skill", that along with it is something I'd love to see go hand in hand with it being more fleshed out Guilds to support their RP.

[Elystole]

One of the things I like about the idea about the cap is that you can't simply throw more grinding at a problem. You can't fight harder so you need to start fighting smarter. If you lose a fight at cap, you can't say, "Well, their skills are so much higher than mine there was nothing that I could do." And I also think that hitting the cap and having "nothing to do" is a good thing: Use that time to do something besides grinding. Now that you have the skills figured out, what can you do with them?

I also get what people are saying about guilds not getting much love. Believe me. It sucked trying to be a one-man death squad with one special ability (then no special abilities) against people who can use freaking magic. Maybe we can think of some ways for the GMs to help us do that? Maybe they'll have more time for that sort of thing or fleshing out hunting zones or eliminating the training gaps now that there is a ceiling?

Maybe I'm weird, and I'm not saying that other people's concerns are invalid. This is just how I see things. But now I kind of want to grind my skills to 2500 then say, "Okay. Now that the work is done, let's have some fun."

[jilliana]

I'm still on the fence about this. I'll admit that I like the mystery of not knowing how exactly how good someone is compared to me on the combat front. This is particularly the case with Jilliana since she is my best combat-wise.

I do like that eventually we can put a skill aside and dedicate it to other things once it is capped.

[Sneaky]

So just a heads up, 2500 and 3000 really isn't all that much of a gap.
It's still a gap, but it's manageable. You can disarm, feint, tackle trip, numbers are random. If you have a capped merc and a capped templar, the templar has a definit advantage, but the merc can still pull out a win with a couple lucky rolls.
There's also the rp advantage that mercs have, you can't hire a templar to go and shake someone down, but you can hire a merc to do it. CVC in clok should never be a purely numbers game, it's about the connections you have, the friends you make, and most importantly, the hat. It's all about the headware.

[Lun]

Anyway, when everyone hits cap, they can just do what EVERY game does and increase the cap again. Make 5000 the new cut off. Spark new excitement for grinding, simultaneously release tons of new areas! (Don't make all the new areas do 500 damage per round)

[Acarin]

Anyway, when everyone hits cap, they can just do what EVERY game does and increase the cap again. Make 5000 the new cut off. Spark new excitement for grinding, simultaneously release tons of new areas! (Don't make all the new areas do 500 damage per round)

I really hope this won't be the case. This sort of thing gets frustrating.

[Dorn]

Anyway, when everyone hits cap, they can just do what EVERY game does and increase the cap again. Make 5000 the new cut off. Spark new excitement for grinding, simultaneously release tons of new areas! (Don't make all the new areas do 500 damage per round)

I really hope this won't be the case. This sort of thing gets frustrating.

And is just a kick in the teeth for the people who end up doing it twice.

[jilliana]

I'm sure there has to be a way for the GMs to keep track of who had over the gains over the cap and could probably just give them that number. It really would be a kick in the teeth to have to work for it all over again.

[Sneaky]

I really hope they don't intend on raising the bar in the future. If they did it really wouldn't make a whole lot of sense in my opinion.

[Jirato]

I have no intention of raising the cap as CLOK gets older. I feel there are plenty of other ways to continue adding unique content and features to CLOK without turning it into some kind of "Oh, a new expansion just came out! Lets race to the new cap!" thing every year or two.

[Rias]

Yeah, it'd be pretty lame if, after a few "expansions", legendary critters like drakolin ended up as "meh" and we'd have to invent new god-killing abominations as common spawns just to give people something challenging to fight.

In my book, when god-killing abominations are common spawns to keep your players entertained due to the ever-expanding level cap, your game no longer has respectable lore. It's 100% a game world. And that's great for some games, but if that happened to CLOK, I would die inside. We aren't raising PCs as the next batch of ascendant Immortals, sorry. You want to power up to the point you can take on gods, play D&D or Guild Wars or something.

[preiman]

So I'll never be strong enough to best the Blood God in single combat? What's the point then?

[Lysse]

So I'll never be strong enough to best the Blood God in single combat? What's the point then?

You could give solving the Riddle of Steel a whirl.