For those interested in an IP-wipe:

[Megabio]

Originally posted by zeroframerate
Now if Megabio would only talk about the topic in the thread instead of going off on a different tangent completely. Thanks for the contribution, Megabio, but at least try to stay on topic next time. Thanks!

Sorry, missed second/third page.
~Chris

[_______zeroframerate]

Originally posted by Megabio
Sorry, missed second/third page.
~Chris

Hehe. S'ok. It's a pretty convoluted thread we're battling through here. It's easy for folks to misread what people are trying to say.

[______________Yazule]

Originally posted by Xombie
Absolutely no RPG in history that I know of, online OR offline, has EVER allowed you to reallocate IP's.
Why would AO?

umm that is not true at all. In UO when you get sick of a skill you can just tell the game that you want to lower it. There is a 700 pt skill hard cap, so you tell something else to go up and when that skill goes up, others go down.

I had one character that started as a tailor got to 90's in skill (of 100 possible) and found that my fingers bled too much from the toil, so he became a Treasure hunter and over time tailoring went to 0. Then I got a gm fisherman (most boring class in the game, but good loot) and didnt need my treasure hunter anymore, so He became a bard, and guess what, he has lost all his treasure hunting skills as magery, music, and bardic skills have gone up.

BUT...

IP WIPE IS BAD, YOU WILL HAVE ENOUGH IP'S AT HIGH LEVElS.

[_______zeroframerate]

Originally posted by Yazule
umm that is not true at all. In UO when you get sick of a skill you can just tell the game that you want to lower it. There is a 700 pt skill hard cap, so you tell something else to go up and when that skill goes up, others go down.

BUT...

IP WIPE IS BAD, YOU WILL HAVE ENOUGH IP'S AT HIGH LEVElS.

Agreed on the IP-Wipe part.

But disagree about the UO comparison. UO's system for gaining skill points is drastically different than AO's. In UO you just merely performed the action repeatedly to gain skill. In AO, you never gain skill by doing something repeatedly and instead must spend IP. The comparison isn't valid because of that and therefore what he states holds true (so far).

[_______________Snarf]

> It's easy to take someone else's work and claim it as your own, which is no doubt what you are doing.

Before accusing someone of plagiarism, point to a source, dumbass. I created those stats with a bunch of other guys in the original forums three months ago or so.

F'kin newbie.

Snarf

[_______zeroframerate]

Originally posted by Snarf
Before accusing someone of plagiarism, point to a source, dumbass. I created those stats with a bunch of other guys in the original forums three months ago or so.

F'kin newbie.

Classic Internet anonymity trolling. Post away with all your anger, Snarf. One day you'll realize it's just text on a screen and no matter how many times you insult people in a feeble attempt to feel or seem superior, you're ultimately just some jerk on a keyboard trying to hurt people.

Snarf, it's text. All you do is stick your tongue out and give people the finger and think that is enough intellectualism for anyone. 10-year-olds type things like "newbie" and "gay". If you are older than ten, then you should seriously re-evalutate your communication methods with other human beings.

How about you provide the source, Snarf, since apparently you are the source? Oh wait, that would mean actually trying to work with me instead of just fighting me. You've refused to cooperate in the examples I gave, you've refused to read my posts thoroughly to understand everything and you've refused to act like an adult. Nothing about your attitude or your posts convinces me in the slightest that you have anything of actual contribution to these boards other than the dull and redundant insulting of people.

[______________Yazule]

Originally posted by zeroframerate


Agreed on the IP-Wipe part.

But disagree about the UO comparison. UO's system for gaining skill points is drastically different than AO's. In UO you just merely performed the action repeatedly to gain skill. In AO, you never gain skill by doing something repeatedly and instead must spend IP. The comparison isn't valid because of that and therefore what he states holds true (so far).

Well zero, he said no game ever gave back IP's, seeings how this is the ONLY game that GIVES IP's .. that would make his statement true no matter what unless they give an IP wipe.

what he should have said is no game has allowed reallocating skills. and UO did.

it is all semanitcs anyway.

[_______zeroframerate]

Originally posted by Yazule
Well zero, he said no game ever gave back IP's, seeings how this is the ONLY game that GIVES IP's .. that would make his statement true no matter what unless they give an IP wipe.

what he should have said is no game has ever given back skills. and UO did.

it is all semanitcs anyway.

But the reason the comparison doesn't work is that in UO you never ever spent IP to gain a higher skill value. In UO, there is no earning of IP at a level to spend on a skill bonus since there are no levels, no IP and no XP to gain levels. So therefore UO does not give back IP because there are none to give back.

He's referencing other games that do give IP-equivalent earned points to attribute to skills like EverQuest. In EQ, you gain XP to gain levels to gain points to increase your skills. EQ also has the gain-over-time-with-use feature as well it should be noted. In that instance I believe (not 100% positive) that Verant has never refunded spent skill points to players.

[______________Yazule]

Im curious.. played EQ once on a friends account for maybe an hour.

when you level in EQ you get points to put into places? or do your classes abilities just go up when you level? I DO remember gainin skill in fishing when I was fishing.. I also remember gaining attack skill while fighting.. sounds a *lot* like UO's skill systems with no hard caps.

not a flame or challenge.. actually curiosity

all in all we agree hehe

[_____________Hossley]

You didn't gain points to spend in EQ, you gained the ability to learn more, up to the next lv cap. Eg (and it's a while ago), you could repeat doing Melee at lv 1 (by fighting) and eventually you would be, say, 10 Melee. At that point you couldn't go any further until you got to lv 2. Once you levelled you could start gaining point from doing the action again. At certain key levels you gained extra skills to complement the ones you had (like dual wield, riposte etc)...

...and then your character drowned whilst zoning on a ship into Freeport and you lost 2 weeks exp and you went down a level and you went away and cried.

That's how I remember it anyway

Cheers,

Hoss.

[______________Yazule]

AHA! so there were no points in EQ to give back either.. hmmmmm

[_______________Skara]

zeroframerate:

Is this what you are saying;

that with an IP wipe, instead of raising my 1he skill as I went along, I could max out my str sta agi, which are the base stats for 1he (thereby raising it through stats), then raise 1he after the fact and actually spend fewer overall IP points than I originally did, even if stats and 1he are the exact same values as before the wipe? Sounds logical, but I don't have that level of detail of the numbers so,

Snarf:

Are you saying that it doesn't work the way I understand zeroframerate to be explaining this?

If it does work that way, very high level characters would end up with more IP.


Skara

[_________Basher Tarr]

Zero
Snarf is correct in what he says. Those equations were discovered a long time ago (since Beta) by many parties.

Your spreadsheet, however, is wrong, according to what you say. The "base" value of a skill is entirely dependent upon your attributes (read, Str, Agi, Sense, Stam, Int and Psy) and level is not a factor. There is an easy way you can ascertain this. Make a new (lvl 1) char. Open up the skills panel and look at any skill (lets say Shotgun for the sake of argument). Write down the value of your shotgun skill (do NOT spend any IP whatsoever).

Now kill some leets and reets till you level (level 2). Open the skills panel. Notice your attributes are still at their starting value, and so is your shotgun skill, it remained unchanged, even tho you leveled. Now, shotgun is dependent on Str and Agi, so raise them by 6 points each by spending IP. Your shotgun skill goes up.

Here are some actual values:

---Atrox Adventurer:
--Starting Stats
IP: 1500 (no IP spent yet)
Str: 15
Agi: 6
Shotgun: 7

Stats after leveling once:
IP: 5500 (no IP spent yet)
Str: 15
Agi: 6
Shotgun: 7

Stats after maxing Agi/Str till level max:
IP: 5293 (spent 105 on Str and 102 on Agi)
Str: 21
Agi: 12
Shotgun: 8

Test yourself if you doubt it.

Another thing:
Lvl 73 Opifex Fixer

Use your spreadsheet to figure out my 1hE, 2hB and Parry. They are not implanted or buffed, no IP spent in them (those skills are useless to the Fixer)

[_________Basher Tarr]

Snarf
What zero is trying to say is that "minor" spendages, like those little few IP you put into Elec Engi to get NVG's, are "eliminated" when you are allowed to respend your IP, simply because you raise your Attributes first, so your skills go up due to skill dependencies, and hopefully go over 32 (which it should, if you spend into the right skills) therefore eliminating the need to spend ANY IP directly into Mech Engi (saving you about 800-1000 IP overall)...

I don't consider that unbalancing at all, but just trying to clear up the misunderstanding.

[telanon]

Originally posted by Lucid Flow




No you miss the point. I, for example have never pumped my Pistol skill. With all my base abilities, my pistol skill is now 56. At a Nano NT, at level 1 my base pistol skill was well below this.

The kicker is if I want to pump my pistol skill from 56-57, it takes 8 IP, same as it did at level 1. If you do an IP wipe, you will give very high level characters the ability to save thousands more IP then they would have had they done things progressivly,

That is exactly why everyone and their brother that is past level 50 will tell you...Never, Ever, Ever..spend IP's unless you positivly have too...

My Agent used pistols from level 1-20 before someone clued me into Rifle and Aimed Shot...since I wasted so many IP's my agent was hella gimped, so I re-rolled.

AO has a learning curve, you should expect to have to live with your mistakes, if you dont want to... re-roll..its sucks, but at least you can do it.

Also, it is important to note that as your characters gets past LVL150 you really start to gain ground on IP's. (you start hitting permanent caps) Everyone I know that is 200( or close) has no complaints about IP's, as a matter of fact they dont know what to do with them all...

-Ballpin

[nipsnaps]

Which is why (the minor expenditure savings, and when I say minor I mean minor) the reallocation machine will be a permanent _feature_ not a one-time option, eh.

You feel your lvl 100 char could use be fine tuned to higher standard, fine go ahead. Eat the reallocation tax (2%, 4%, 5%, or so), and feel free to blow your heart out.

Personally though, haven't spend IP on elec engineering at all, and heck I play on nVidia Riva TnT which doesn't work totally correctly (newest Detonators actually make it fail to load on Win98, so have to use 12.41) and the game world is pitch dark at night. And when I say game world, I mean game world (GUI is just as bright as on the other comp with a Geforce256), and pitch dark as in pitch dark (again, other comp next to that one so can compare, on G256 computer you can see semi-fairly even at night).

Anyways... IP reallocation machine -> prolongs lifetime of game for casual gamers (WHO WILL NEVER REACH 140+ where IP is not an issue!)
No IP reallocation machine -> does not prolong lifetime of game for casual gamers (Who will more likely quit and pick a new MMOG than re-roll their char after a crucial game change like adventurer multiwield messup or enforcer T&S...)

[__________Lucid Flow]

Originally posted by Darkherald
Snarf
What zero is trying to say is that "minor" spendages, like those little few IP you put into Elec Engi to get NVG's, are "eliminated" when you are allowed to respend your IP, simply because you raise your Attributes first, so your skills go up due to skill dependencies, and hopefully go over 32 (which it should, if you spend into the right skills) therefore eliminating the need to spend ANY IP directly into Mech Engi (saving you about 800-1000 IP overall)...

I don't consider that unbalancing at all, but just trying to clear up the misunderstanding.

Unbalancing? YES! You know why? Not every skill needs to be maxed to be effective. Actually, most skills have no reason to be maxed. The only time it's not unbalancing only for those skills you need to see maxed such as weapon skills. On all others, thousands of IP is saved such as:

Dimach (For Advents and Enforcers)
Parry (For Blessed with Thunder)
Adventuring
Sneak Attack
Fast Attack
Multi-Melee (depends on what weapons you use)
Fling Shot
Burst (I dont know if it adds damage so maybe)
FullAuto (same as above)
Bow Special
Multi-Ranged (dependant on weapon)
Run Speed
Mech Engineering
Weapon Smithing
Pharma Technology
Computer Literacy
Psychology
Nano Programming (once you can make q200s)
First Aid (debatable)
Treatment (debatable)
Breaking and Entering
Trad Disarm
Perception
Vehicle Air
Vehicle Ground
Vehicle Water (lol)
Map Navigation


All of these skills would benefit from an IP wip because these are skills that NEVER have to be maxed. After a certain points their usefulness goes down the drain. From all of these, you can literally save thousands of IP for nothing, just by an IP wipe, especially at the high end.

Do you see the point now?

[nipsnaps]

I'll start off by saying zero is NOT saying that the little IP savings of like elec engineering, zero is saying (WHICH IS NOT CORRECT) that since a lvl200 could raise their stats first to gain 100+ base skills, it would cost less for him because of said base skill. Which, as said by anyone who knows squat about the skill system, is not correct. Yeah zero is also saying about the little IP savings, but he has this FALSE notion also of somehow saving huge tons of IP.

The order of skill value is: base-skill (4.5, or around there IIRC) + ability bonus (corresponding stats * 0.25, raise con 4 points your bodydev rises 1 point) + skill_raises_by_IP. Skill raises by IP is ONLY (read, only, only only) dependant upon how high the skill has been raised so far. Skill raisecost for true-skill-level of X costs basecost+(X-1)*basecost*0.2. So a basecost of 5 skill (the cheapest greens) costs 200*5*0.2+5 = 205IP to raise from true-skill-level of 200 to 201. Level, ability bonuses, and absolutely everything else between earth and heaven and hell has no correlation to the IP cost of raising the skill.


Originally posted by Lucid Flow

Unbalancing? YES! You know why? Not every skill needs to be maxed to be effective. Actually, most skills have no reason to be maxed. The only time it's not unbalancing only for those skills you need to see maxed such as weapon skills. On all others, thousands of IP is saved such as:
---
The IP savings only come from raising abilities. Almost all skills have uses so high, that you will eventually raise them after you have already capped your abilities.



Dimach (For Advents and Enforcers)
:Weapons require 200-250 or so for QL200. Eventually, non-casual gamers who reach high levels will max this out also, since it is an alpha-strike ability. So in the long run, its not wasted. In the short run, ehh you will need to wield those weapons so unless you overgrow your dimache skill by the 0.75/level (3stat per level, 0.25 bonus to skill per one stat point) you are doing something wrong or not upgrading your weapon anymore. Anyways, powergamers will max it, only one no-IP realloc machine hurts is casual gamers who might want to stop their characters advance at lvl80, lvl100 or so, but they will upgrade their implants for their weapon skill which will enable them to wield higher QL weapon which will probably require them to raise their dimache anyways even more.



Parry (For Blessed with Thunder)
:Ql200 BwT requires 851 parry. Even with maxed abilities and parry skill, you can get higher QL's ones for use with implants to parry skill. Every IP spent is more power... not much more power but still is onward movement.

Adventuring
:Heh, well this is a totally useless skill anyways. Agree on the point that anyone who spends any IP on this has in the "uber" view "gimped" themselves. But, gee, this also only hurts the casual gamers if there is no ip-realloc, since powergamers just don't put anything into it, eh. And also that powergamers 150+ frankly have their crucial things already maxed and don't need the IP anyways.

Sneak Attack
:QL200's require about 450-500 or so. Again, powergamers will max even this if they can use it, it is also an alpha strike ability. Aside from the fact that it is pretty much useless skill except for lowbie levels, to reach the 450-500 needed for highest QL weapons, you WILL need to raise the true-skill-value also. So, the usual: 150+ powergamers will max it, no ip-realloc hurts the casual gamers if they wish to change their weapon type or if somehow they have overspent into the skill (doubtful, never happened to me that when I upgrade my weapons I find out I have MORE than the required sneak/fast/dimache/brawl... I always max 1h edged as my adv, and when I upgrade my weapons, I have to spend TONS of IP into sneak/fast/some in dimache/lots in brawl.)

Fast Attack
:Look above, exactly same thing applies.

Multi-Melee (depends on what weapons you use)
:This lies between dimache and fast/sneak attack values, but the same thing applies as said on them. Look above.

Fling Shot
:See Fast attack, basically identical skill to that one.

Burst (I dont know if it adds damage so maybe)
:Alpha strike, see above on other weapon skills, you'll never outgrow the reqs as long as you implant your main weapon skill.

FullAuto (same as above)
:Yeah I have same comment: same as above.

Bow Special
:Same as above...

Multi-Ranged (dependant on weapon)
:Holy maccaroni and cheese, Batman! If you think using multi-ranged can get away without maxing multi-ranged, think again. So no, higher levs won't get away AT ALL by spending less IP into multi-ranged after an IP realloc. Just to reiterate, the IP cost to get 600 skill value at level 150 is exactly the same if you raise stats/the skill slowly going from 1-150 as it is raising it instantly at 150. Exactly the same, same, same... repeations tend to make the point sink home usually

Run Speed
:Well, 150+ everyone maxes it. So again, as in ALL of the above ones so far (and all of the ones below probably), only hurts casual gamers if there is no IP realloc.

Mech Engineering
:Well, its a trade-skill. 150+, they will have the IP, casual gamers if they don't need it but have raised it for something... why? If they need it, they need it.

Weapon Smithing
:Low light scope anyone? Skillreq 651 for ql200 -> raises needed pretty high.

Pharma Technology
:Trade skill, see mech.

Computer Literacy
:400 for highest grid reqs, which is way more than what base ability bonuses will give. Read = will need to raise.

Psychology
:551 for highest QL aggro enhancer. Again, will need to raise.

Nano Programming (once you can make q200s)
:Once you can make q200s, you have a) no IP worries probably and B) maxed base abilities already.

First Aid (debatable)
Treatment (debatable)
:900ish req for highest QL kits. Nuff said, see most of things above.

Breaking and Entering
:At the moment, pretty useless yeah. But hey, again it only hurts the casual gamers, power gamers have the time to reroll or they never even put any points there anyways. All points so far are casual gamer hurting power gamers ignore.

Trad Disarm
:Same as above pretty much.

Perception
:ql200 range increaser = 801 skill req. See above.

Vehicle Air
Vehicle Ground
Vehicle Water (lol)
:Yeah well, power gamers won't put any points into any of these anyways. So again hurts only pre-150 casual gamers. (Umm, what are post-150 casual gamers laugh?)


Map Navigation
:Actually, if the realloc was done according to my suggestion (reboots map unit = clears it totally), the realloc would FIX OLD extra IPs resulting from exploiting the /terminate. If you don't know what I mean, please could you guys just listen up and please please please trust that those that have been around longer do know what the heck they are talking about (Snarf and me for example).


All of these skills would benefit from an IP wip because these are skills that NEVER have to be maxed. After a certain points their usefulness goes down the drain. From all of these, you can literally save thousands of IP for nothing, just by an IP wipe, especially at the high end.
:Umm, well. Ehh. How to put it simply... hey I got it, No it won't work like that.


Do you see the point now?
:No, but do you see our point now?

[__________Lucid Flow]

Umm, well. Ehh. How to put it simply... hey I got it, No it won't work like that.

Actually you have already proven my point. Most of these skills only have to be pumped to 400-600 points before their usefulness has completely changed. It doesn't matter is "most people max them" they simply don't need to.

What you don't realize is that these skills are effected on the TOP END of the ip scale. Since you start with such a higher base without the cost, it's the last 100+ points where you save all the IP and that is where it's the most costly.

You've only proven my point.

And by the way, your "it only will effect casual gamers" is moot since the majority of players are casual gamers.

[________Billy Talent]

If a IP wipe would go into a effect the following things would have to happen:

- all checks on all items including armor, weapons, etc.
- all implants, weapons, and armor would have to be taken off and put into a special one time bank

Ok so you save a few IPs on electrial engineering and usless weapon skills, but does it matter? Those IPs won't make any difference in your main skills because you will cap out all your main skills at one point.

For example: I am lvl 154 with 40,000 ip left over. I cap out all my main skills and a few extras every level. I have no idea what to do with these 40,000 ip points. If funcom decided to go through with a ip-wipe I would probably get another 20,000 ip on wasted ip from earlier lvls. Now what? Now I have 60,000 ip, which I would probably never use. Why is this true? It is true because you are capped in the amount of ip you can spend in one skill. So even if I wanted to sink my 60,000 ip in MC I couldn't because of the cap. So basically it really doesn't matter =o)