I didn’t play the game for a few months, and only a few days ago have I returned to play some Unturned. The new server list screen confused me at first and I realized the game had some changes. The car mechanics update made me very happy and the new server list is very functional. However, one of the changelogs listed a simple change that I have missed while I was scanning the updates: the removal of skill loss.
As always, I was playing on an almost-vanilla server and after getting some decent items and skills, I was really afraid of losing them. Obviously, I got killed very soon. When I realized I didn’t lose the skills, however, I didn’t feel relief – I was angry that I didn’t receive proper punishment. This simply makes the challenge of survival in the game much less important.
The current issues
In my opinion, the change introduces the following problems:
death is less punishing/painful (in a survival game!)
traits are almost useless
diversity between players is smaller (those who play for a few days will all have the exact same skills, that is everything maxed out)
those who just joined the game have no chance against ones who have played for a few days (even if they are naked)
libraries are less useful (who cares about XP after maxing out every skills)
players with maxed skills can now keep respawning with impunity
it makes me sad
My compromise proposal
Though I dislike that change, I can see that it is approved by the most (maybe because people focus more on the PVP itself and not on survival?). Honestly, even I agree that the skill loss was a bit too harsh before the update. For that reason, I understand the change will not be revoked entirely. Instead, I propose a compromise:
Instead of decreasing the level of each skill, like it was done before, decrease the level of just few. This could be done partially randomly. I propose the following mechanism: out of each category, N skills are randomly decreased on death. These skills are selected from ones that have level higher than 0, and are not part of the character’s trait/skillset. That number, N, can be configured, and it’s default value is dependent on the difficulty level – 1 for easy, 2 for normal, 3 for hard. For example on normal, this would make one death cause at most 6 skills to decrease level (2 from each category). That is not much in comparison to previous loss in all 22 skills + the random boost. À propos, the random boost should also be removed on each death (not sure what’s the current status of that).
Benefits of such compromise
punishment for death would be balanced
traits would retain their previous usefulness
other issues from the previous list would be fixed
skill categories would be relevant in gameplay
with default config, difficulty level would affect skill loss
The people hosting the server can mark a bunch of command lines and flags in the server’s configuration files from the client-side to dictate weather-or-not a server as a whole will allow skill loss or not. This is a problem that results from the decisions made from the server host(s), vanilla map or not.
Difficulty can also dictate how much of a skill tree you can loose on death. This also can be edited (I believe) in the .dat files of a server before launch. (Almost) Everything can be edited.
The default’s however also play an important role in this. Not only is it almost impossible to find a vanilla server that has feature loss, but also it requires additional steps to play Unturned as real survival now (at least in my opinion). Additionally, my proposal would introduce a new system, that (as far as I know) is not possible to achieve with current configuration capabilities.
Also, after writing the original post, I have realized that the skill loss removal also makes the hunger, thirst and intoxication less relevant. This is because you can simply reset in case of low status of any of these three and respawn in your bed without any penality (you can collect your items right after).
I also liked skill loss. It made the game a bit harder. Personally, I am neutral about skill loss after death. It is not that critical, and as @SomewhatFantasticMrFox noted, owners of the server can always change configuration of the server and make skill loss
If we were to go the route of losing levels from a set number of skills on death it would be nice to make which skills would be lost visible in the UI as part of an eventual skills revamp.
I wonder how much this is affected by whether we go with more of a skill tree than multiple levels of a small number of skills.
Well, they can, but you said liked (in past tense) for a reason ; or maybe it’s just because of my overprojection of skill loss as completely removed (sorry). Well, in any way, since the change, I haven’t been able to find a server that had skill loss (but also note that I only played on a few).
Also, maybe the skill loss itself is not so critical, but it was the only absolute (or even ruthless) penalty for death, which is crucial in a survival game (in my opinion).
I haven’t seen anyone bring it up in this thread yet, but players are still penalized for dying as they lose 50% of their Experience on death. (You could use a Library on vanilla maps & some of the curated maps to store experience, but this is usually taxed.)
Do you dislike experience loss / prefer skill loss over experience loss?
Yeah, but after a few hours of playing, who cares about Experience? After maxing out all skills, you can just forget about that part of the game now.
No, I do not dislike experience loss, I believe loss of both shall be the default (but not as harsh as before, that’s why I propose just decreasing a few skills instead of all of them).
Well, a skill system revamp would be great. If a compromise on skill loss can’t be made with current skills, I will strongly admire the idea of expansion of the skill system with eventual addition of reimagined skill loss .
I agree that making that visible in the UI would be useful, I remember being confused about which skills I would lose and which I would keep after death when I was learning Unturned.
A skill tree sounds interesting; haven’t heard about that idea for Unturned yet. Would love to see experimenting with skills, especially in a way that would expand on current systems (making the stuff I mentioned earlier even more useful: libraries, skillsets, etc).
Perhaps a good solution would be to have more EXP sinks in vanilla? Maybe require EXP to craft certain high tier items like c4, horde beacons, etc. Maybe vendors can be added to vanilla maps (e.g. being able to buy items through the radio towers on PEI).
I do agree that EXP becomes a bit redundant late-game now, except maybe helping out friends via library transfers metal ones should have no tax tho!!! they’re so rarely used ) or the random bonus skill thing. but IMO skill loss is a bit punishing esp with the vanilla TTK. Being killed 3 or 4 times in a row is insanely frustrating and further increases the power gap between someone who’s running around killing everyone vs someone who’s just trying to get a foothold on the server. 0 skill loss allows newer players on a server to slowly but surely progress forward.
I see now! Very nice – one skill in normal and two in hard. I believe these defaults are good for the balance of this community. While it is still a bit too little for me, I realize it is the best compromise for all. Once again, thank you Nelson!
OK, I won’t spam anymore (sorry), thanks for the discussion and bye!
I think its a good step, but i think skills should be more customizable in general aswell as allow for custom ways to up / lose them.
By customization i generally mean amount of levels and how much of a boost each level gives. This would allow a map maker to create a large vararity of configurations for example high stamina, but low stamina regen rate or negative values for default levels of skills to make not having levels up the games difficulty and i guess a custom skill slot with a choice from players attributes that a map could add.
Another idea worth thinking about is skill buffs from actions ingame perhaps a quest ups a skill level for a single life or beeing low health decreases one random skill