Originally Posted by
Andius
Skill decay is all around bad news. You should not be punished for wandering around just having fun enjoying the game, and you should not take a hit to the skill of your main craft if you want to play around with other crafts for awhile. Skill decay may be realistic, but fun>realism and NOTHING about a skill decay makes anything more fun. It is a game mechanic that basically says "Skrew you if you want to stop and smell the roses and just have fun. This game is about work, work, work. Its a second job, and fun is not allowed." When I heard mention of skill decay I almost quit on the spot until I realized it probably wouldn't include recipe decay.
Skill decay is an idea so bad its a game breaker. In fact one of my friends who I told about this game lost interest instantly after I mentioned there may be skill decay at some point. Its just that bad. If you wan't players, you don't want skill decay.
A soft skill cap however, I fully support. As it stands it is very easy to grind to the top in a skill. If they implement a soft skill cap that slows down leveling based on how many skill points you already have, it will make it so people can jump into the game, get insanely good at a small number of skills really fast, then slowly add on new crafts over time, making it so you can feel like a contributing member of a tribe very quickly, but you can still develop your character over a very long time.
If the soft level cap is done properly, they will probably release new skills faster than all but the most obsessive grinders can max all their skills.
One thing I will say is you DO want people to be able to craft and fight on the same character in a game like this. People play sandboxes because they want to be able to experience very diverse gameplay without creating 5000 alts. PVP, and crafting are both extremely major features of this game, and people should be able to experience both of these from a single account.
So in summary. Grinding should slow as the character gains more skill points to prevent people for easily getting characters that can perform any given role, but you should be able to have at least a couple different crafting skills on a character that is a firebreathing monster in combat. Skill decay should never be implemented at all, because it punishes players for doing what they enjoy, instead of whatever it takes to keep their main skills maxed.