There has only ever been a mention of a soft cap over a lifetime based on the fact you have limited time. There has never been mention of lifetime, weekly, daily or any other such hard cap.

What we do know is that there is algorithm that works out how quickly people should gain skills to keep the overall spread of skills mastery to the projected levels, i.e. Very low percentage of players at the highest levels. So the more time people are dedicating to a skill the more time overall that skill is likely to take to progress. There is more about that here.

Personally i dont think hard caps are a bad thing it encourages thought in building a char. Pretty much every game ive played that had no skill caps was an epic fail because every char could eventually do everything. I think hard caps are necessary to keep the game competitive but that just my two cents. Im sure other would strongly disagree for various reasons.

Posted By Nkrumah at 3:39 PM - Wed Jan 18 2017

Personally i dont think hard caps are a bad thing it encourages thought in building a char. Pretty much every game ive played that had no skill caps was an epic fail because every char could eventually do everything. I think hard caps are necessary to keep the game competitive but that just my two cents. Im sure other would strongly disagree for various reasons.

Their system may boost the skill ramp for some while hampering it for others to ensure a balance ecosystem.

I look forward to seeing how it plays out. It's not a system I think I have seen before but it seems better than soft caps/hard caps.

[Edit] In every MMO I have played I have mastered the profession given and never once felt, "Wow. I am a Legendary Blacksmith (or whatever profession)".

in CoE if you are Legendary at something, it will feel Legendary.

I dont like caps. Like at all. Just make it hard&timeconsuming to get high in something and no cap is needed. With timeconsuming, I mean really timeconsuming. Like 8 hours per day crafting and only letting the character rest when he needs to and then needing a whole rl year to reach maximum skill. Or even more like planned in that dev diary thing which said one would need several years to reach maximum skill. If its capped how much one can achieve in one skill, people will just reach said cap in one skill and afterwards go on with the next to reach caps in many skills. If its capped on overall skill level, people will feel like there is no use in playing because they can't progress at some point. (Sure, there is always the metagame, it just shouldnt be forced upon people that just want to max skills imo.) It should be hard to reach maximum potency. It should be quite easy to reach half of that in several skills at the same time, though. Still, caps are not the way to do it, hard caps are just boring.

DJ# 8 covers this a bit. While some of the thinking on things can change, just like any still-in-development project, it'll give you an idea at least. Sorry for the wall of text. Thought it would be useful to put here. I'll include a link at the end if you want to read the whole DJ.

Skills Mastery in Chronicles of Elyria is divided up into tiers with a percent mastery for each tier. The tiers are broken down as follows:

Novice (0% - 29%)
Apprentice (30% - 39%)
Journeyman (40% - 49%)
Expert (50% - 59%)
Artisan (60% - 69%)
Renowned (70% - 79%)
Master (80% - 89%)
Grandmaster (90% - 99%)
Legendary (100%)  

The percentage mastery reflects how proficient you are with a specific skill but also inversely reflects the percentage of people who will attain a specific skill tier. In other words, based on the amount of time it takes to level a skill, you can expect distribution of mastery across a server to look like the following:

Novice: 100% of all people can achieve Novice in any given skill
Apprentice: 70% of all people are likely to achieve apprentice in a skill
Journeyman: 60% of all people will achieve journeyman
Expert: 50% of all people will achieve Expert
Artisan: 40% of all people will be Artisans
Renowned: 30% of all people will achieve Renowned
Master: 20% of all people will achieve Master
Grandmaster: 10% of all people will achieve Grandmaster
Legendary : Approx. 1% will achieve Legendary

Put differently, we calculated how long it would take people to reach Legendary status over several lifetimes if they did nothing but work on advancing a skill. Obviously, that's not going to happen. So as people train and improve, the Soulborn Engine monitors progress and provides bonuses as necessary to ensure the top 1%, 10%, etc... will eventually reach the Legendary or Grandmaster tier.

You should also note those skill tiers carry across reincarnations and it will, in general, take a lifetime to become a Master, multiple to become a Grandmaster, and several to become Legendary.

DJ #8: Character Roles and Skill Advancement

Also, with the number and variety of skills, it's likely that your skills won't reach any soft cap quickly, since you can't exclusively train any one skill in this game without detriment in other ways.

IE Train your hunting skills exclusively, and you won't have a very high skillset in say crafting. Work only as a craftsmann or womann and you won't have a high combat skillset.

Also, skill ramps change over a lifetime.

Wards and Young PCs (15 - 18) have an accelerated learning period. Particularly for physical skills. Young adult to adult characters also have better luck with physical skills, but no accelerated learning.

Around age 45 or so, characters start losing physical abilities, or the ramps stop working anyhow, so you gain little physical skill; BUT skill ramps start climbing on the mental skills such as teaching and contracts, the bardic skills essentially.

Around age 75 everything stops ramping up and physical ability (not learned skill, just your ability to use them effectively) especially starts falling off. All abilities start to fail at this point, but physical first followed by mental capacities. Design Journal 3 has more infor and better details about how your skill ramps change over your lifetime.

Posted By Hexprone at 10:55 AM - Fri Jan 20 2017

Posted By LorenzW at 5:59 PM - Wed Jan 18 2017

Around age 75 everything stops ramping up and physical ability (not learned skill, just your ability to use them effectively) especially starts falling off. All abilities start to fail at this point, but physical first followed by mental capacities. [Design Journal 3]

Hm. Will suicide be an option at this point? Some players -- particularly dedicated PvPers -- might want to jump right into the body of their next heir once their current character could no longer fight in tip-top condition.

I suppose a warrior guild could agree to slay its members (over and over until they really died) when they reached the point when they could not longer meet the group's standards.

Suicide is always an option at all times, all one needs to do is choose to not complete their spirit walk.

I think this might very well become part of the meta of pvp if age really does hinder physical ability as much as it sounds -- players opting to shell out another $30 early to optimize their characters for pvp.

As pvp will be the forefront of my playstyle and that of my cult, I would definitely do it if it mattered that much.

I guess the biggest downside of having no caps would be that anyone with a job could forget any dreams of becoming a master - those positions would be exclusively reserved for those who have no responsibilities and all the time they need.

Caps first and foremost are usually intended to level the playing field a little.

Posted By Vucar at 12:59 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

Posted By Hexprone at 10:55 AM - Fri Jan 20 2017

Posted By LorenzW at 5:59 PM - Wed Jan 18 2017

Around age 75 everything stops ramping up and physical ability (not learned skill, just your ability to use them effectively) especially starts falling off. All abilities start to fail at this point, but physical first followed by mental capacities. [Design Journal 3]

Hm. Will suicide be an option at this point? Some players -- particularly dedicated PvPers -- might want to jump right into the body of their next heir once their current character could no longer fight in tip-top condition.

I suppose a warrior guild could agree to slay its members (over and over until they really died) when they reached the point when they could not longer meet the group's standards.

Suicide is always an option at all times, all one needs to do is choose to not complete their spirit walk.

I think this might very well become part of the meta of pvp if age really does hinder physical ability as much as it sounds -- players opting to shell out another $30 early to optimize their characters for pvp.

As pvp will be the forefront of my playstyle and that of my cult, I would definitely do it if it mattered that much.

That would keep your physical stats the highest, but it has been mentioned that to hit the highest tiers in a skill you need to spend time teaching others, which is done at an older age when your mental skills and social skills are peaking.

Posted By Hexprone at 7:56 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

Posted By Oracle at 11:11 AM - Fri Jan 20 2017

I guess the biggest downside of having no caps would be that anyone with a job could forget any dreams of becoming a master - those positions would be exclusively reserved for those who have no responsibilities and all the time they need.

Caps first and foremost are usually intended to level the playing field a little.

As I understand it, Elyria isn't really meant to be a level playing field. Some people paid enough to be kings and queens, and those people just get more. For those of us buying in as commoners, part of the adventure is finding ways to survive with less.

That said, isn't off-line training intended to reduce the importance of hours spent actively playing?

I could be wrong but I thought they said you wont gain skill while offline.

Posted By Oracle at 12:11 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

Posted By Hexprone at 7:56 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

Posted By Oracle at 11:11 AM - Fri Jan 20 2017

I guess the biggest downside of having no caps would be that anyone with a job could forget any dreams of becoming a master - those positions would be exclusively reserved for those who have no responsibilities and all the time they need.

Caps first and foremost are usually intended to level the playing field a little.

As I understand it, Elyria isn't really meant to be a level playing field. Some people paid enough to be kings and queens, and those people just get more. For those of us buying in as commoners, part of the adventure is finding ways to survive with less.

That said, isn't off-line training intended to reduce the importance of hours spent actively playing?

I could be wrong but I thought they said you wont gain skill while offline.

I believe they said you would not gain as much skill while offline but you will be gaining skills while offline. Let me see if I can find a link:

https://chroniclesofelyria.com/blog/347/Design-Journal-3--Time-Aging-and-Offline-Player-Characters

These Behaviors will let you do things like train character skills, run a storefront, perform weekly trade routes, do some gardening, and many other things.

Posted By FateWeaver at 8:39 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

Posted By Oracle at 12:11 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

Posted By Hexprone at 7:56 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

Posted By Oracle at 11:11 AM - Fri Jan 20 2017

I guess the biggest downside of having no caps would be that anyone with a job could forget any dreams of becoming a master - those positions would be exclusively reserved for those who have no responsibilities and all the time they need.

Caps first and foremost are usually intended to level the playing field a little.

As I understand it, Elyria isn't really meant to be a level playing field. Some people paid enough to be kings and queens, and those people just get more. For those of us buying in as commoners, part of the adventure is finding ways to survive with less.

That said, isn't off-line training intended to reduce the importance of hours spent actively playing?

I could be wrong but I thought they said you wont gain skill while offline.

I believe they said you would not gain as much skill while offline but you will be gaining skills while offline. Let me see if I can find a link:

https://chroniclesofelyria.com/blog/347/Design-Journal-3--Time-Aging-and-Offline-Player-Characters

These Behaviors will let you do things like train character skills, run a storefront, perform weekly trade routes, do some gardening, and many other things.

Excellent. I might have seen some dodgy info then :) Though you can never be sure - some decisions seem to go backwards and forwards a bit.