Potential SP Fix

I wanted to touch on this, perhaps it wasnt so much they didnt think electric heals could cut it, but maybe the troll was struggling to power just 1 so refused to power 2? I've been brought in raids where the healer that was in there was blowing through their power in mere seconds of each fight starting, so maybe that's the case with that group and the electric healer.

I got 369 SP in my first year, and I'm at 434 now, still under 2 years. I play regularly with 2 people that each started within a week of my start date, both are over 400 SP. Not everyone has extensive grind time, but those that do will find the climb perhaps easier than anticipated.

I've never purchased a stabilizer, and I play on villain side, where the game is supposedly dead. I just don't see this problem when I play the game. Your mileage may vary, this is just my experience.

Also everything Brit said, yes. That.

Sp system doesn't need a system. If you want/need more sp then start working on feats like everyone else did.

I'm still reading and re-reading what you wrote in the hopes that I can picture what you're proposing, but I'll admit that i'm having a hard time picturing what your solution would look like vs what we have.

In the meanwhile, I can offer you a bit of my perspective on the acquisition of skill points thing. As we get further along in content, more and more feats get added, so hitting minimum sp numbers actually gets easier and easier. Achieving 280 sp in 2019 (soon to be 2020) has gotten significantly easier now than it was say 3 years ago. All that to say that while on paper it sounds like a high bar to get over to join a league with these requirements, it's not as insurmountable as it sounds nor is it that unreasonable. Also, that shows that the player can at least cover their base and is willing to continue to improve themselves.

The biggest hurdle to skill point acquisition isn't really the number of feats, but the ability to get into a lot of older group content to get the feats, and also the RNG based feats (style drops, boss combos etc.). Further complicating the group content issue is that LFG has been turned off as default for new players, so the one tool that could help them get groups to run older content becomes basically rendered useless.

The DEVS have, on several occasions said that if a player is within 10% plus or minus of their CR in terms of SP then they will have enough to be competitive.

In other words if you are a 250CR player anywhere between 225 and 275 SP are enough. Once you hit 100 SP in any category you have maxed any bonus skill points for that category provides and anything above that is an incremental stat increase.

IMO there is a general confusion between SP matter and STATS MATTER. There are many ways beyond SP. Buffs, artifacts, trinkets and mods all can have significant impact on your stats while in combat.

Don't get me wrong, SP (to a point) ARE important. But with the current max CR being where it is NOBODY needs 400. In fact, you don't really even need 300. IMO extremely high SP levels come as much from feats garnered from Time Capsules which you can buy, and PVP which is a huge time sink and fairly few people play regularly.

Thus, I don't see any reason to change the SP methodology. If a player is a completest (which is perfectly OK) there IS a price to pay to max out SP. Which IMO is just fine.

I find the 376 SP I have, more than enough to suffice.

Just some food for thought

Im not trying to poo poo ur idea, but i dont really think the end result would change much.

Sure the sp stats are a nice little buff, but one of their main values is as a measuring stick for experience. Alot of people say they would rather have someone who knows the mechanics vs someone with high stats.

How do u learn and remember the mechanics tho? By running the content over and over.

U said it yourself. U can level to end game cr in short time, but in order to get those sp's, u have to go back and run that content over and over, gaining the experience as a by product.

How many times do u see in lfg- "looking for exp tank/healer pst cr sp"

They're looking for someone who has done it before and knows what they're doing, and they're using their cr and sp to determine that.

U could do away with sp completly, but players/leagues that are looking for experienced players to run with will find a way to separate them from the inexperienced.

Personally i dont really care. Ill usually run anything with anyone as long as they're trying, listening and working as a team.

Tho to be fair to the ones who dont.

There is a lot of content to run thru if u want to keep everything maxed out or close to at end game. Im talking cr, sp, artifacts, mods, styles, dailys, weeklies, alts, holiday stuff, etc... When people say grind it out for ur stuff, it really is a grind, and i cant really blame someone too much if they would rather run with experienced people that'll help make that grind a little shorter each day.

That can be a little tricky with the CR boosts in play, though. Someone who's used one gets a LOT of feats from the core game content, so even though their feat list gets filled out it doesn't necessarily mean they've performed the acts necessary to get those feats.

There's also the detail that a lot of feats can come from just collecting a style off a vendor or visiting a certain location. Heck, there's a feat in the Iceberg Lounge solo that comes from just interacting with the bar patrons and really doesn't relate much to the combat aspects of the game.

I can see where someone might use that as a gauge or measuring stick for other players, but it's REALLY easy to read too much into those numbers so it's not something I'd recommend.

But there's also people set on the completely opposite of the spectrum. We're doing a-lot of those players a big injustice when we assume that they are solely focusing on their CR instead of their SP.


Lower Content is the biggest problem here. It never ques anymore because as you've mentioned there are people like you who have worked and have completed those feats, and there's also no marks/other incentives for higher ups to run back to older content.


Since lower content won't que at any rate these days, it really puts players who are solely focusing on their CR in-between a rock and a hard place, because that's feats like EO, Four Corners, and a lot of other 50 point feats that they'll have trouble getting.



You assume it's bad enough SP is included in the CR Skips, but I'd argue that they are essential unless you want more players to struggle with back-tracking even more than they are now.


I cannot understand the mindset of this game's progression system, I really do not. The SP system isn't fine at all, it's flawed because there's too many feats that are hard to come by because the developers disincentivized old content and never did anything outside of the half fixes like Artifacts and "post relevancy" aka trash drops to fix it.

Either older content needs incentives again, or they need to bring back walkins/teleporters.

If you want people to be more active at end-game, I feel like the progression; not just SP seriously needs a mainstream overhaul. Because either the developers want people at end-game as quickly as possible or they do not.

I dunno, I think helping build a smarter/more experienced player base or just being helpful are pretty strong incentives to go back and play older content.

Having the devs constantly backtrack to older content to put in incentives isn't the answer because that could mean a hit on developing new content for players to play, and it would be a constant thing because as soon as players got all the incentives they'd just start demanding more of them to keep them coming back.

Walk-ins would be problematic because it could end up causing a strain on the system itself (think about how many instances could end up being opened at once or accidentally left open if they were abandoned) AND because it could further split the higher and lower CR players apart. I know I'd just take advantage of walk-ins to do content by myself (I don't like the idea of potentially spoiling someone else's at-CR content run, but that's me) and I don't think I'd be alone in that regard.

@Nawanda

TC-Based Feats: This is an unfortunate by-product of the Free-to-play model, which is an unfortunate by-product of having a "AAA-Game" but only sandlot player base. Most every F2P model introduces a problem, and then creates a for-purchase solution. Case in point: Escrow. There's a game dev briefing floating around that talks about how the most profitable things to sell are convenience items.

Expired Feats: Most games resolve this by making a title or vanity item as opposed to something that has an affect on gameplay.

Brit explains on the next page that both these issues are not as big as we think. With this soft cap he identifies, being concerned about TC-based and expired feats is not an issue.

@Brit

Again - thank you for the thorough and well-explained reasoning. I can see how you felt I was identifying you as the "didn't read" but I didn't intend to imply that. I apologize, I wasn't trying to identify you specifically.

Also, this isn't necessarily a concern from me directly. I already have a PC and a Switch league. I would consider the PC league a significant league with exceptional players and I managed to slide in as a rank newb simply by the grace of right place at right time. I'm just really observant and what I've seen is concerning.

If I may, some questions:
1) Based on your comments, would a reasonable assumption be that the leagues seeking players in the 250-280 range be seeking those that have hit said soft cap?

2) What are the specific caps, or do you have a link? I've done a bit of searching, and have come up with some discussions on PVP caps and SP hard caps, but no soft caps values. The closest thing I've been able to identify is a comment by Ala Rebeldex dated April 11, 2018: "at least reach 260 where you get your crits and max out your main stat." That combines well with your 250-ish comment.

3) What would you estimate a probable timeline to get to said soft cap? Consider this from the viewpoint of a player doing mostly solo work, gaming an average of 15 hours a week. It's important to see this person as a league outsider; I've played a ton of MMOs and players are much more willing to assist established players than the FNG, but I've also experienced players who enjoy mentoring a new player up.

I will state that your SP gains do not equal mine. I didn't get to 80-ish until hitting around 260-ish CR, and I am still a far cry from the 250-ish soft cap you identify.

I also want to state that I am not proposing the removal of anything - I wouldn't dare for fear of my life! I'm simply suggesting the values shift. You can't remove anything from this game without the long-term players rising up with pitchforks in hand, demanding blood. Case in point: any discussion proposing cash removal caused by the recent exploit issue. I've also come across similar comments such as:

"

Punishing players with high sp because the newer players are seemingly at a disadvantage?

Not surprised to hear even more bad ideas from the forums.

Keep it up and this game won't be around for much longer.

Geez, no SM,Stale content, stale elite content, the suggestion of capping skill points or reducing feat points...

Continue to ruin this MMO even further just to account for newer players that probably have no idea of what they're even doing or playing."

I'm also not convinced that changing weights would have a dramatic impact on those seeking to attain cap. If the soft cap is at 250-ish (I trust you and am taking your word on it) then surely these people know it, yet still push to attain the end values. I've also noted my own behavior pushing content for points in the past - the lure of attainment usually supersedes the need of stats.

Anyways, thank you for your time and input, and aside from the questions above I guess we can label this a moot topic and move on to other things. I'll make it a habit to reference other players to this forum post so they understand the issues aren't as problematic as they perceive.

Understood. As I wasn't on my healer, and as I wasn't playing Electric nor was the character I was on at the tier they were playing at the comment did not affect me directly. I just observed it and used it to point out that there is gatekeeping at multiple levels. I'm not certain there's a real fix to 'wrong build, wrong gear, wrong powerset' that isn't best addressed at the individual level.

The game at the start was about Skill Points. Today, that is not the case. The Game since the Revamp has put more focus on getting Gear to increase your stats versus grinding out Skill Points first. SPs are still in the game and provide that time sink and serve as "icing on the cake" to your stats. The rule of thumb has been, "keep your Skill points the same as your CR" and its one to live by. We get more gear and even more feats in the game with each Episode. a new player starting out isnt nor should expected to grind out 8 years worth of feats.

The longer a person has played the game will ultimately make them have more Skill Points if they put the time in. Even as a Day 1 Vet myself, I have 321 SP and certainly below the average person who has played the same length of time. To me, there isnt an issue with SPs. If player wants to be competitive, then they have the work ahead of them. Players with low skill points should have to work towards them as it is now. That is the carrot on the stick.

You've tried this argument before in another thread, and it simply doesn't fix nor address anything. The mentality of "building a stronger/more experienced player-base" doesn't solve the fact that people aren't queing for older content. At best, it comes across as a platitude message that's just there to completely disregard an issue that's growing ever bigger as we go from episode to episode.

Nobody's jumping at the chance saying "oh let me help out this lower cr to get stronger" versus "oh let me go ahead and spend some more replays on this latest end-game raid" and you know it's true.

Your not likely to find people with a set mentality like that, unless it's a league full of people like that.

The developers already do backtrack and put incentives into older content, they do it with seasonals as it is. Every time they bring back a seasonal event, all they are doing is putting new items and new cosmetics in the vendor. Now why would that be hard to implement in older content? Make a new currency while your at it.


The developers also used to make quarterly episodes/trilogies instead of waiting 4-5 months per each episode.

Heck, they even tried to bring old content back into the fold through LPVE, failed as it maybe; it's another sign that they can always find a way to add an incentive to older content without delaying new episode releases. So that's all I got to say on that.



If for some reason they can't add incentives, the walkin choice is there for a reason. The idea of there being a "Strain" on the system is conjecture at best, nobody would know what would happen because they never attempted these again after they shut down Paradox Wave's teleporter due to a bug that they never fixed.


To this day, it's never been confirmed as to what the teleporter disabling glitch was. So to that end, I'll say Walkins could be successful or may not be successful.


If you want to talk about "Widening the Gap" let me clarify: This idea isn't made to fix that. Replay badges are a factor, as are Time Capsules.

But I will argue that having a way to access older content or get those feats quickly would probably narrow the gap or at least provide players with some skill points they are lacking otherwise.





I just don't get how people gripe at other players for having low SP at end-game, and yet on the forums; posts like these do nothing but refuse players the opportunity to get themselves more SP in a streamlined way.

Visual aid, perhaps?



The goal would be to make the gaining of a reasonable amount of SP to participate and not be looked down upon/denied admittance would be in the content players have easiest access to. On release, Episode 37 would then be weighted more, episode 36's value would then be weighted less. The impact would be an increased difficulty level entering Episode 37 because of loss of the heavier weighted Episode 36 SP, but would be mitigated by a broad former content SP foundation. Long term players would continue to have an easier go of it, newer players would need to prove their mettle but the new content would provide a more readily attainable source of SP. I'd like to believe this would also further incentivize the importance of going back and completing older content in order to smooth out the impact new release has.

What the actual values would be for the base, the legacy and the current would need a lot more data and testing than I can do on my own, so I won't propose percentages or weight values - just the abstraction.

Note that the soft cap Brit points out basically invalidates this concept however. I wasn't aware that there isn't an honest need to kill yourself getting to 450+.

For new players its alot of ground to cover.
I helped my friend level from 1-30 then he hit 30 and asked “whats next” and i said the on duty is the endgame... thays something like 30dlc a new player has to purchase and hundreds of sp that without a proper league a noob wouldn’t b able to achieve,, he went on to uninstall the game for the same reason as i wont get into elder scrolls or star wars... its alot of ground to cover... but those games are alot more alt friendly bc everything in the entire world of eso is stat clamped to your character.

Im trying to talk my friend into reinstalling in January for the character booster but truthfully he’ll b around the same spot with sp...

The games been goimg for almost 10 years of course people have put hundreds of hours into grinding feats but without new players we’ll never grow / replace the lost... imo alot of the new players running around the PD and nightclubs are alts because alot of them have dlc powers & be honest with me, are u gonna drop money on a game your brand new to and never played?

Answering #2 first, the soft cap is found in-game. If you open your skill points menu where you would allot them, you may observe that the maximum number of skill points that can be allotted into any of the given stat catagories is presently 255. This number has increased by 10 with the corresponding release of each of the new Episodes for the past couple of years. So a Healer spends 255 in resto, or a DPS spends 255 in the Might+Power node, a Controller spends 255 in Vitalization, etc. This really isn't addressed on the forums or the patch notes; it's just kind of a "figure it out" thing. But that is what I am referring to when I talk about the soft cap for skill points. There comes a point where you have maxed the number of skill points that you can put into your respective role, after which additional skill points would have to be assigned elsewhere.

While I personally play as a Healer and reached a skill point threshold that exceeded the amount required to max my restoration, additional skill points were farmed into areas like Health just to generally give me more wiggle room in case I'm working without a Tank, or Might+Power because even though my Nature heals deal no Might damage I still find as a Healer I cannot complain about having a little bit extra Power. I suspect that Controllers who max Vitalization probably spill over the extras into Dominance or Might+Power, Might based DPS who max the Might+Power probably put their extra into Health or Precision, and so on. Once you have locked down your respective role to the utmost of it's ability, you invest any additional skill points into an alternative stat that is less important for your job, so while they still do provide some benefit, they are worth significantly less. This is what I would call the Soft Cap.

I do make a brief side note regarding Tanks. Tanks have a harder time with Skill Points than any other role, because often Tanks require investing skill points into both Dominance AND Health in order to excel. Fire Tanks debatably need to also spec into Restoration. I personally have advocated for some time that, the same way Might+Power are combined into a single node, Health+Dominance should be combined, so that Tanks do not require higher skill points than other players in order to perform their job.

A second note worth making regards the way that those Passive Stat skill points work. Each skill point invested provides a static bonus, like +9 restoration. This is a flat number of points. However, there are also specific skill point milestones that include a fluid bonus, for example at the investment of like 5 or 10 in a given stat, you will receive a flat +1% in that stat. Those fluid bonuses matter far more than the static ones. Because our CR gear carries stats in such huge numbers, an extra 5 points of restoration for somebody who has almost 40K Resto means practically nothing. However, a +1% restoration for somebody who has 40K resto means a bonus 400 restoration, which is FAR greater than what you're going to get from those individual static bonuses. In short, those % bonuses are the important things to achieve. And the final tier of those % bonuses occurs at 100 skill points invested. So, for Tanks for example, the commonplace practice is to go 100 points Dominance and 100 points Health, rather than 200 in one and 0 in the other. Often I have even seen Healers and Controllers that, after achieving the 100 points in the main stat, would rather deviate and dip into Might+Power to get it to 100 points before returning to their main stat to finish it off, just because a 10% increase in total power provides so much more value than a flat amount of static gain in their core stat. These practices are somewhat debated and I encourage each individual to play around with them and decide for themselves, but truly, even though your core stat requires 255 skill points to max, if you were to look at the total amount of your stat you gain, about 70% of it comes from the first 100 skill points, heavily weighting it towards the lower end and making those later skill points see a diminishing return. That is yet another way that they have made skill points more user-friendly for new players.

In answer to your question #1, I cannot presume to know what those specific Leagues are looking for, but putting together the evidence, the 250-280 range is essentially what it takes to max your core role stat (with minor deviance based on things like putting extra points into weapon combos and crit percentages). If a League is specifically recruiting with those target numbers, that is likely what they are looking for: people who have already maxed their role. Basically the idea would be that, since those players get little benefit from extra skill points, the League itself doesn't need to worry about doing Feat runs and can instead focus on endgame content. It might be a position that is taken by Leagues where larger numbers of their core players are Premium and may not have regular access to intermediate content to go back and re-run it for new members, or simply players who spend less time playing the game and don't want to break away from doing dailies and level-relevant content to double back for areas where there are no rewards.

If a League is recruiting exclusively 400+ skill points the way you had described towards the beginning of the thread, that is a different case. Players who have 400+ skill points have the experience in allotting 400+ skill points, and if you've ever had to assign that many (and you're not a Tank) then you've seen a point where they stopped being useful and became pretty 'meh'. When Healers are spec'ing extra Skill Points into Dominance because it will give a minor increase to their Shields, they know they are past the point of these things making a real significant difference. So if they are recruiting only people in that range, it is probably a sign that they only want very few players to apply, intentionally trying to keep the League small (perhaps just one or two raiding groups total), or perhaps it's a misleading declaration, intended more to be their way of saying "very experienced" but putting it in a quantifiable way. One player might claim to be "very experienced" because they have been raiding for years, but if that League wants people who also have PvP experience and good command of the lunge/blockbreak/block prompts, "very experienced" doesn't guarantee that while "400+ skill points" pretty much forces the point that the player has PvP'd to get some of those.

But, at the end of the day, the number of Leagues that have any sort of requirements at all is actually a small percentage, with tons of Leagues existing as social clubs without any required number of skill points in order to join. It's kind of like how the Help Wanted ads in the newspaper might detail some high paying job that requires an intense educational requirement, but the Help Wanted sign in the window of McDonalds requires nothing and will take anyone, but doesn't waste as much time advertising because it's easier to find the sort of people they want. And, in contrast, regardless of skill points, a new player will not be able to join those Leagues until they reach the endgame. If they say they want 280 Skill Points, you can also assume they want at least 280CR. If you apply and have 280 Skill Points but you're in CR34 gear, they will equally have no use for you.

As an answer to Question #3, the solo work, my advice is always the same. First, focus on your CR gear. There is no reason to stress Skill Points until you have reached the endgame gear, because the gear provides far more increase to your stats than what your skill points do, and with the increases to gear you unlock more options, while a character who works on skill points rather than gear will have a more limited field of what skill points they are able to achieve. So punch your way straight to the newest Episode. After that, you can worry about Skill Points.

With the confines that you've set, the biggest problem I will identify is almost immediately the word "Solo" player. What you can earn by yourself is very limited, and often very grindy and slow. You don't require a regular League necessarily or a static group to play with (although it's nice), but by reaching outside your comfort zone and working with other people, you will see far greater rewards at a faster rate. After punching a character straight to the newest Episode, I then begin the practice of "Queue for EVERYTHING". Queue literally everything there is, so that there is always something popping. Nothing is more unproductive than standing around the Watchtower waiting. If you've only got 15 hours to work with, you don't want to waste even 1 of them doing nothing and twiddling your thumbs. Queue for everything. Run every raid that you can, regardless of the level. If you don't have a raid, run an Alert. If an Alert hasn't popped, run a duo. If you can't get Duos, then run solo Challenges. If you've locked out all of your challenges, then PvP. But always be doing something. For the first few weeks, you will get dozens of skill points just in accidental feats. You're a high power level character mowing through low and mid-level content, so speed feats, zero deaths, no sodas, those ones are all happening without trying. Half the raids and alerts grant a feat just for completing them for the first time. Many fights will have optional mechanics that make the fight easier, but you get a feat if you don't use them; as a high level character you can just melt the boss and ignore them and get those feats for free as well. Along the way, you'll get gear styles and Marks of Victory, and you can finish up some of those style feats.

My last character I did a serious skill point push with was last year when they gave us the 210CR advancement. I jumped to 210, and then started mass queuing everything with the brand new character, while teaching myself how to Electric heal. I had capped my restoration stat (so back then, that would have been like 225ish) in less than a month. Getting skill points is very fast once you've already got the gear. In contrast, when I made my Switch account, I spent about 4 months just getting my character to CR160 and 98SP. Granted, I play the Switch for one hour or less per day, but definitely getting the gear is more time-consuming than getting the skill points.

Lastly, since I didn't explain it very well, I wanted to make a ghetto tweak to your visual and show what I was talking about for reduced skill points.

The red box that I cut out from the Episode 36 and moved forward reflects the Episode 36 feats that are available while you are still in the Event mode. A quick scan of the feats and you will see that most are going to preface that they need to be done in Regular or Elite mode, which means that they are unavailable until the player reaches the minimum CR to enter the Episode for real.

So a new player starting from level 30 and moving forward has slightly more Skill Points at level 30, because the Base stuff is weighted stronger, but then everything that they are earning while they level up is worth less, because the endgame is weighted heavier as well. Eventually they reach a tipping point where, because their gains are smaller since they are only running Event and Legacy content, they actually have FEWER skill points than what they would have during the old system. And it will remain that way clear up until they unlock the Regular version of the endgame Episode and can start working on that huge Episode 36 box for real. So a system like this doesn't hurt the endgame players; they stay exactly the same. It hurts all of the new players trying to level and catch up, because when they finally reach the endgame, they are guaranteed to be even further behind than the old system.

Using the rough visual, you can see that when they finally unlock Episode 36 for real (bottom) their skill points will only be as high as it was at Episode 28 under the previous system (top). This new system puts them even further behind schedule, because it gives them the lesser Legacy credit for everything they have to do to level up.

You do realize that same statement can be turned around a bit and used against those who won't queue up for lower CR content, right?

If someone's complaining about other players having low SP at end-game but refuses to help those players get those SP by not queueing for older content, they've lost the right to complain about that. It's a situation that they can help directly and in a faster manner than the devs, but if they won't do so?

*shrugs*

Way I look at this situation is I'll help anyone get a feat, but at least tell me what I'm supposed to do, if you cant take the time to look it up on say YouTube or something similar then why should I bother? Because that's how I use to and still do it.