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R.I.P. Talent Tree & Skill Points - The most interesting progression system I've played., and it's n
bcbully
Member EpicPosts: 11,838
I'm going to attempt to explain the Age of Wushu character progression system. I will try to break it down in sections. Wushu vets, feel free to chime in when you see a mistake.
Internal Skills - Internal skills are similar to levels. Each school has 3 internal skills at the moment. You can have one active at a time. They all do different things. As you train your schools internal, you gain base stats and bonuses, like energy return, speed, knock downs, poisons etc. Each internal goes from 1-36. The internal progression path the CB2 testers took, was to train 1-36 1st internal, 1-36, 2nd internal, and are currently working on 3rd internals.
The internal progrssion path for those who started at launch my be very different. At 1st interal level 20, you can begin training your second internal, at 20 of your second, you can train your third. They key thing to remember is that at any point, you can begin training another schools internal. For example, I could be a Tangmen with Wudang 3rd internal If I choose. This is not something you casually choose though. There's a lot of planning, and a lot of time that needs to be invested. In theory you could have all 24 (3x8 schools) internals 1-36 for each. It would literally take years though.
Skill progression - Each school has 3 skill sets of 6-8 skills, that can be trained form level 1-7 for members of that school. Memebers of other schools can aquire your schools skills, but can only train them to 4 at the moment. Theoretically you can learn every skill from every school and train them to a minimum of level 4. Again this would take a very long time to do. Not as long as it would take for internals, but easily a year.
To put it in perspective, a person may level from 1-85 in WoW in a week or less. One week in Age of Wushu leveling just your skills (not your internal, you can only train one thing at a time) you probably wont have one skill set trained to max.
Meridians - This is where things get real tricky, and the idea of "levels" goes out the window. Once you have raised your 1st internal skill to 20, you unlock that schools meridian. For everything you do, you gain Chi points which go directly into your unlocked, activated meridian. Each cycle you gain base stats. Cycles go from 1-108, with extra bounuses to things like crit, defense, evade ect, depending on the schools internal.
A person who has trained their 2nd internal to 36 (correction incoming ^.^) can activiate a total of 4 meridians. One from their schools internal that can be trained to 108, and 3 others from other schools that can be trained to 9. In order to train the other schools meridians higher, you will need to level their internal further.
In theory you could have a person with four 2nd internals maxed and meridian cycles at 108 for each, that is much stronger than a guy who only has his schools 3rd internal maxed.
When you put all of this together, it creates a system where NO two players are the same. Further more, no two characters have the same base stats. You have hand crafted characters tailored to the creator's play style.
If I wanted to I could add professions and gear into this mix. You do not have to level any skills to be your severs best blacksmith, tailor, fisherman, music player (side note, this game has real bards that do nothing but play buff and debuff music. Play as in like guitar hero) etc. No two crafters are the same. No one knows everything about their profession. I've never seen two pieces of gear that were the same either.
tldr- Age of Wushu has the most complex, most interesting progression systems I've had the pleasure to play. If you are looking for progression Wushu has it coming at the arses, years of it straight out the box. If you want equal everything in a matter of days, Age of Wushu is not the game for you. You will never be "equal", or "balanced". You will however be able to excel in the direction you choose.
Comments
nice link bro. It's really hard to comprehend how far out this game is.
Awesome writeup bc
. I've been playing pretty casually lately, and although I still haven't decided if it's really the game for me, I can easily see all the amazing, innovative aspects that it encompasses. Starting out as an EQ gamer, I guess I've always been more "themepark-minded" when it came to progression, so it's been difficult for me to adopt a new gaming philosophy where combat in pve isn't the "go to" form of advancing yourself. I've had a really great time solo-challenging the faction instances though. Despite the rap this game gets for having "terrible pve", I think the combat system makes it way more interesting than most mmos out there. Heck, I honestly hope they keep adding stuff to pve, right along with the pvp.
I'm also not a great pvper by any stretch; I mean, I love a good fight, but dealing with gankers can be a pita. Fortunately, I haven't came across many yet. The jailing system in the game seems to do a great job at curtailing merciless gank fests, and that's something a carebear like me can really appreciate
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Anyway, this is really just my own issue with adapting to change heh. It's a different kind of game and everything that it does, it does it very well. Who knows, maybe I'll learn to appreciate and even prefer the more Sandbox-ish approach that AoW takes, in time. I feel that if any game is going to convert me from a themepark player, this would be the one to do it.
By the way, on the part about Meridians, it seems to let you start cultivating them right from the beginning. I'm only around 13 on my first inner skill, and I've been cultivating the first Wudang meridian for awhile. After running a bunch of instances, it's sitting at around 4/9 right now.
This has been my experience as well. I have 3 active and 1 cultivating since I learned about them when I was inner skill level 10ish.
Good write up, bc.
OP either does not understand how Meridians work or is giving out misleading information(again).
Meridians in no way surpass internal skill in terms of levels. Meridians is what talent tree is. Their max effect is like 10% of stats your internal skill, providing you with some "perk" at max lvl.
To get max lvl meridian lvl, you need 3rd tier internal, not 2nd as presented in op.
AoW is horribly combining 2 game aspects - heavy dependency on levels and focus on PVP. As the game goes, more skills will be released, level caps will be raised and gap between old and new players will increase even more, and along with "forced" PVP, resulting in awful game experience.
AoW is not a sandbox by any means simply because of above - usual race to max lvl so you can join endgame content. Typical linear progression, wrapped up in different package.
AoW is still pretty fine game and I guess not many people mind the leveling race but there is no need to mystify people about the game.
4 meridians at around 72 cycles would be stronger or as one max 3rd internal. 4 at 108 cycles would be much stronger.
Looking at my schools meridian, It's given me 618HP at cycle 90. Now I'm tangmen so my merdian doesnt give a lot of HP. Add in 3 more at level cycle 90(not even talking about 108) you would have roughly +2400 hp. Ad that HP into you 2nd internal HP you are now at a minimum of 5700hp most likely more. On top of that you will have 4 different sets of bonuses.
Compare that to my near max level 3rd internal. Which gives me 3990hp. 5928 with 90 merdian cycles, with only one bonus to crit dmg.
Even with that being said, you must not duel much, I know a expert of self that would smash most 30+ 3rd internals, Ishkar,He's expert of self (not max level 2nd internal) because he has leveled other internals. Come to Chengdu and test it if you like.
Do you mind giving your in game name so I can see your rankings in order to tell how experienced you are with the system?
The more I look at you post, profound it becomes. You made several comments akin to what FOX, or MSNBC would make. There is a grain of truth to what you say, but taken to a point of dishonesty.
Sounds like its ripe for balance problems.
Games don't use simpler systems because they haven't thought of anything better, they do it because its easier to manage from their end. So while you might thinking 'good', that tune will change once min/max leveling methods come out. and THERE IS min/max builds, or builds don't matter at all.
Its funny you say there are no levels when there clearly are. You progress in overall power by doing things and it adds up and even by admission a person who has done more is more powerful. I give you the very definition of levels. they can label it whatever they like I suppose.
This game would be fantastic, but the combat feels more disconnected and laggy than visceral. Couple that with bad translations, and it's just hard to enjoy for some subset of people (me being one). If this had a perfect translation and/or more Western interface then perhaps the combat disconnect would be even more tolerable. To me it's not enjoyable because of that... However, I definitely encourage everyone to try it.
Former xFire user... I only wanted a game tracker and messenger, not a screenshot taker, video recording, broadcasting piece of bloatware.
If I may interject: That is not always true, I do not know how Age of Wushu/Wulin how it works but this is speaking in general, in games where levels do not matter to power/do not exist the player progression is one of versatility of the character or experience with the game mechanisms with the best such system offering both flexibility and deep gameplay mechanics (a drunk style blacksmith? XD) which offer a easy to learn hard to master experience.
Still no way near to power of internal skill. Not to say how much more skill time would that need to take.
Meridians are talent trees, period.
Please, stop spreading misleading information about the game.
Some skills are (tab)targeted, some use cone/aoe.
It is very reactive combat system with blocking and dodging with flying skills in place, at the same time it somewhat feels like "round" combat when you exchange blows since after successful parry you slash back before the opponent can raise his block...if your ping is low enough.
You need really good ping to fully enjoy combat mechanics otherwise you will get rubber banded and ported all around the place.
Perhaps, but the pvp combat is so based more on the skill of the player than anything else that it doesn't really allow the min/maxing and "one best build" to really shine through.
There are obvious builds which seem a bit more powerful than some others but then comes the guy using barehanded emei set (commonly thought of as useless in pvp) and just rolls over everyone with it making the whole thing a little less black and white than you describe..
To clarify, there may be min/maxing and dominant pvp builds, but the skill-based nature of the combat makes judging those builds a little fuzzy. Having a level/gear/build (within reason) advantage on someone doesn't even begin to assure success in combat against them.
Good luck engaging someone with 50% more HP and dmg than you.
Seriously...
People do that in EVE-Online all the time and still win o.O, christ a interceptor killed an orca that had drones to its name so it had at least 100 times more hp than the interceptor and at least as much dps as it and it still died. In Age of Wushu I'd imagine 50% more hp and 50% more damage can be countered by stunning that person silly o.O.
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
If it is skill based and not power based what would be the point in mentioning an option like that Rommel ?
he can't hep it. he spread the same kind of misleading crapola about TSW.
That's the thing, you are only imagining things.
EVE and AoW is nothing alike.
In EVE, your skill points are capped by ship you fly, not in AoW tho. AoW is all about gear and character progression.
You can do pimp crap in EVE too, especially lately EVE took that direction, but it is till no way near to AoW.
AoW is quite similar to DF no skill cap. Very bad design.
I never claimed having 50% more HP and damage than someone wouldn't lead to victory in most cases.
That has nothing to do with the point of my post which obviously wasn't clear enough. My point being, with the way the combat is, it is harder to judge the more powerful builds than it is in some games where every hit is a background calculation and nothing more.
Try not to extrapolate beyond what I have claimed. (i added a "within reason" comment to my original post so maybe people won't take it and run with it far beyond what it was meant to be)
It isn't skill based.
If you do not gain your gear and lvls, you won't be competitive. And lvl cap is continuously increasing with game update...
It is a usual themepark max lvl rush. Not saying it's bad or anything, just not gonna lie about it and pretend it is not.
Funcom had hit the golden jackpot and designed the Mecca design of all future mmos yadda yadda.
Just seems amusing that its d
Actually the pimp thing in EVE is caused by farming incursions, once they plug that isk fountain that's the end of the pimpy things.
Wouldn't no skill cap actually help balance things out because if you had a cap the powerleveler could actually become full level powerful before anyone else but with no cap they'd have to have a build in mind and go with that otherwise they'd be wasting money and quite possibly gimping themselves. Just thinking here.