Yeah. I just stopped checking my skill levels and don't care about them.

Skill levels are impactful in gameplay in chunks of like, 10-15, but to be totally honest I have stopped paying attention to them and don't really feel the difference... which makes me start to think they shouldn't be a mechanic at all. If I can just ignore the entire mechanic and have fun, then maybe it shouldn't be there?

But then they've included the feelsbad of skill loss on death. Which, in order to be a meaningful deterrent against dying (as if corpseruns weren't enough of a deterrent), needs to have a higher impact of skill levels.

They could definitely do interesting things with skill trees, or "locking in" certain skill levels by making costly sacrifices at some altar or something. But I know they won't.

The skill lose doesn't matter much unless you're dying a lot and so it builds up. Even if it was a big hit - and it's not - dying infrequently wouldn't be a huge problem.

I guess what I'm saying is try not dying.

I can understand a harsh penalty for dying,. but DON'T waste my mo fuggin' time bruh. Nerf the skill loss PLZ!

You aren't wrong. I spent the first few hundred hours of the game not knowing about the skill drain and not worrying. But now i do know, and i know it makes a difference and I know that I had 93 run dozens of hours of progression ago and now I have 77. It just needs to be less punishing. If it's bad enough I need to ignore an integral game mechanic to not want to rage quit, maybe it should be tweaked.

Originally posted by FissionChips:

The skill lose doesn't matter much unless you're dying a lot and so it builds up. Even if it was a big hit - and it's not - dying infrequently wouldn't be a huge problem.

I guess what I'm saying is try not dying.

I got to 93 run so I am decent at not dying, but Mistlands and Yagluth were a bit rude. :)

Everyone has high run skill obviously, since you spend 90% of your time running in this game lol. Mine is always above 85% and usually over 95%. It's all those other skills that take a hit because they are so slow to make up the skill loss without grinding. So I have all these skills in the 20s and 30s after nearly 600 hours. It's to where I don't think the skill levels matter much at all. I can kill anything with level 25 in a weapon. Maybe it takes me a couple more hits than if I was level 70, but just means I have to parry one more time.

I have over 1470hrs played not including offline hrs at work that i play and i have never worried about the skills at all, even in death and the no death penalty if you die again right after that trying to get your tombstone back and i have died a lot. if your losing that much skill points you may want to get your tombstone a bit faster with the no skill lose in affect then level your skills back up before going back the death site again. Yagluth for me!!!! after 1400 hours i finally went to kill him my first time and never died once. COLD arrows took him down nicely.

Originally posted by Stone:

I can understand a harsh penalty for dying,. but DON'T waste my mo fuggin' time bruh. Nerf the skill loss PLZ!

What constitutes a "harsh" penalty that doesn't cost time?

I mean if the game destroyed/despawned items on death, that is time needed to recover materials to rebuild. Games that punish with gold costs on resurrection just again represent time spent to get back to where you were. The harshest penalties fall on those that make the biggest blunders.

Exploration is a huge part of the game, and if you choose to do so without sufficient preparation then the skill/time cost can be substantial. For instance if you sail off to some distant area and don't think to take materials for portals, an untimely death could drain down the skill loss waiver before you have a chance to even recover what you were carrying. Heck, even sailing out without a reasonable # of progressive stop-over outposts is risky enough because you could meet your end before having a chance to put down or secure a portal. Skill loss is a fair enough penalty because it represents the minimum cost for resurrection.

I do think the skill system needs an overhaul. While I don't mind a deterrent to throwing yourself at something over and over, the amount of xp needed to level skills grows exponentially, once you get high enough it's not hours, its real time days of using it over and over to get it to that level, so dying and losing literal days of work is too much IMO, having some way to get it back at an accelerated rate or something to incentivize being active about it instead of being oh well would be something. (300% XP gain within 48 in game hours perhaps?)

I would honestly rather make a full set of armor again than lose 4 levels from a 90+ skill, the grind to get mats back is faaaaaaar lesser than the xp grind at that point, i think that's what the defenders are missing is it's not really that bad to get mats in this game.

It's not horrible but letting the player do something about lost levels faster, be it just accelerated XP for the amount of levels lost or just making it so you cant go back a bracket (like once you hit 90, it wont ever go lower than 90 on death). Also swimming is such a meme bad skill it should just be taken out of the game it's barely noticeable lmao

Skills? What are skills? Don't know 'em. Never cared about them.

I mean, if you don't want to lose your skill points, you can try not dying... usually by changing your approach if you find yourself dying over and over again...

Actions have consequences. WHO KNEW?!

I would suggest that instead of skill drain, you become unable to level up skills for 2-3 game days (or whatever amount of time) instead.

Mods Mods Mods Mods Mods

Turn off skill loss with mods.

Use devcommands to give you back the lost skills.

Plenty of ways to get around this if the dev design choice is not to your liking.

Perhaps maxing skill loss to 5% or whatever, below max attained level. Your progress could be stopped but not reversed. Even that when i say it, why? In what video game is backward character progress fun? Not for this guy anyway and I don't think that is what many people are going to like at general release. I think devs should fix it before then. That probably won't happen so I will move on ignoring the skill bars as much as I can. Silly me enjoying progress.

High fives to everyone who came here to tell me to be better. Y'all are the best.

I don't even look at the skill loss. Who cares? Just play the game. None of this really matters.

Originally posted by FissionChips:

The skill lose doesn't matter much

Originally posted by Renlish:

Skills? What are skills? Don't know 'em. Never cared about them.

Originally posted by suejak:

I don't even look at the skill loss. Who cares? Just play the game. None of this really matters.

if it doesn't matter then why is it in the game? haven't IG themselves said nothing will be in the game without a purpose?