Some thoughts on skill gain

[cmiddlebrook 182]

I've been looking at the way skill gain works in WU and it sure seems different to WO. I've been using mining as my testbed.

 

* Every successful action gives you skill. But in WO, when mining if you get 1QL shards, those are considered 'fail actions' and don't give skill. In WU, I'm getting skill on every single mining action regardless of the QL shard produced. 

 

* The action timer has no effect. In WO, longer action timers = more skill so when doing something like mining (for skill) you'd queue up as many actions as you could before your stamina ran out in order to make your action timer longer on the later ones. That behavior is not optimal in WU. The skill gained is the same on a 20s timer as on a 30s timer so if you want to get things done quickly, allow your stamina to replenish between actions.

 

This second point effectively makes skiller tools redundant. I don't know how many 1QL pickaxes & hatchets I made for my priest to CoC to try and create good skiller tools in WO. This won't be necessary any more. Just use your best tools all the time for the best success chance & skill gain, and the fastest timer.

 

Anyone else have any observations?

 

 

[Nappy 1,369]

Warlander confirmed your observations earlier this week in another thread. If I run across it again I will let you know.

[Drakeling 106]

Yeah, it's borrowing the skill code they used in the Challenge servers. The Challenge servers worked exactly the same way when it came to skill gain. It was all about completing actions as quickly as possible to build skill. Literally to grind weapon smithing all you have to do is produce a couple thousand war arrow heads, and that gets you right up there.

I'm hoping they allow us to toggle between that and the skill gain code that Wurm Online freedom servers use. Currently there is a Feature Management, a GM tool, and there is something called new skill system, or something like that, but toggle it doesn't change anything.

[Sia 40]

These are some great observations. Thank you for posting this. Certainly makes the style of playing/skilling different in WU -- personally, I like it, though I'm aware others may not. For me, however, this gives me an extra incentive to raise skills such as blacksmithing and carpentry as this makes good tools even more important. Also doubles my motivation for making a Vyn priest character since the combination of WoA + CoC no longer cancels itself out but instead the spells complement each other. So I like it.

 

Edited to add, I agree with Drakeling in that having an option to toggle it on and off would be great though, for the people who don't like it and would prefer the more "strategic" approach to balacing ql of tools with skill levels/ql of mats/timers.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Sia

[cmiddlebrook 182]

Yeah I also like to the idea of good tools being useful and also stacking CoC and WoA, but I don't like the idea of being able to easily grind up something like Weaponsmithing quite so easily! Then again, my skill gain modifier is 1.0 so it's the same slow speed as WO so it might not be that easy!

[atazs 962]

What about characteristics?

[Scrubbs 6]

I do a skill modifier of .35 and an action timer of 2x and it feels like the skill gains (Minus body stats since they're messed up) come out to be about the same as WO. Obviously not exact since the action timer isn't considered, but maybe someone will mod it to be like WO Would just be more code to rewrite I would think.

[Overlord 13]

I'm using 2.0 skill gain and 2.5 timer feels good... faster than WO and not as fast as default WU...

[LastChime 4]

Characteristics seem to lag pretty heavily behind as a result.

Edited October 30, 2015 by LastChime

[Herald 5]

one nice outcome from this skill system is that you actually gain decent skill doing normal stuff like building walls, making mortar/bricks, building ships, etc. Which on WO you hardly get any once your skill lvl is high enough. No more of that nonsense grinding. I can concentrate on doing what needs to be done knowing well that i am rewarded with the proper skill gains.

[Uberknot 327]

Well.....if you go into the  GM wand......you can disable the "new skill system" what ever that means....there is a bunch of settings you can turn on and off.

 

Edited October 30, 2015 by Uberknot

[Drakeling 106]

Well.....if you go into the  GM wand......you can disable the "new skill system" what ever that means....there is a bunch of settings you can turn on and off.

 

 

 

http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/132652-what-are-the-real-default-settings-for-freedom-and-epic-on-wo/?p=1369843

[Uberknot 327]

http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/132652-what-are-the-real-default-settings-for-freedom-and-epic-on-wo/?p=1369843

 

 

ohhh ok so there are a few other things that would have to be changes as well.....have you figured it out yet?

[Drakeling 106]

No, I'm not yet sure what changes would need to be made to enable the feature management.

[Uberknot 327]

So you have unchecked something and used over ride as well?  it's saying something about it the override is not checked it will go back to the default.

[Drakeling 106]

Yes, that's correct. When you use over ride it writes the configuration to the database. Either you can over ride enable with the enable box check, or over ride without the enable box check, which is suppose to disable that feature. I tried every possible way I knew how to get it to work, not to say I couldn't have over looked something though.