Many were dissatisfied with the skill system of the upcoming (MMO)RPG Shroud of the Avatar. Therefore, the developers announced that they would replace this system with a new one that resembles that of the classic Ultima Online at the end of the month.
To increase skills in Shroud of the Avatar, players previously gathered experience points, leveled up, and received skill points that could be used with a trainer to enhance their abilities. The system faced criticism for supporting grinding, and many did not understand why, for example, they should be able to improve their magic skills in throwing fireballs if they only fought with a sword.
The criticism reached the developers. In a lengthy post published as part of a newsletter, they announced a new system where skills improve through usage.
Ultima Online Waves Hello
Players select the skills they want to train through usage. When they use these abilities, they gradually improve. However, if a skill is not used, the player will “forget” it over time. However, this is not as severe as it might seem. It does not mean that players must start from scratch if they do not log in for a few weeks. They will lose a maximum of two days of progress. This loss occurs when the character dies in the game or when a skill improves to the next level through use. A similar usage-based skill system was already employed in the classic Ultima Online, but it led to issues.
Players assigned actions such as “mine ore” to a specific key on the keyboard and then wedged a coin in to keep that key pressed indefinitely. This way, they could go to sleep and wake up the next morning as an expert in mining ore. The developers want to prevent this by making it significantly faster to improve a skill through meaningful actions like PvP battles or quests than simply hitting a training dummy repeatedly. Passive skills and attributes like strength or hit points also increase automatically, but at a much slower rate than active skills.
Overall, it should take a very long time to become a true master of a skill, and maintaining that skill at such a level will be anything but easy. Therefore, it is unlikely that a player will completely master every skill.
This new skill system is set to be introduced and tested with Release 21 of the (MMO)RPG Shroud of the Avatar, which begins on August 27. Want to know more about the game? Then take a look at our news overview of SotA.
