Skill gain based on targets skill level

[Tagarr]

Unless this has recently been corrected, I'm fairly certain the current way that combat skillgain is calculated *based on your target* is incorrect.

From what I have noticed, when another player is your target, have about 10% of the skillgain of when you are fighting mobs, but it doesn't seem to matter what type of mob you are hitting, your skillgain speed does not change.

From what I can recall, during this era, your best gains were netted off of SOMEONE or SOMETHING within your skill range, didn't matter if it was a player or an npc/mob.

ie (on OSI): as a noob you can gain quite efficiently from the GY monsters (which probably have about 40-50 wrestling) up to 60ish skill. After that, skillgain would decrease quickly...

However, on UOSA, you can efficiently GM your combat skills off of random GY mobs. (newb skeletons and zombies)

I specifically recall searching out for the optimal skill-gaining mobs. (deer, then great harts, so on and so forth, and eventually ending at polar bears to GM) or the bone wall.... Because these mobs had a higher base combat skill, thus netted efficient gains up to GM.
I'm sure everyone here will remember polar bears as being prime skill-gain mobs...

In comparison, if you were starting a new char and decided to spar with a friend (also 50 combat skill) your skills would gain fairly quickly, this would be one of the most efficient ways of gaining combat skills)
But if you melee'd someone who was, GM wrestling, or GM swords, your gains were much slower... Same thing applied if you were a noob with 0 wrestling trying to wrestle ANY NPC or mob, your skillgain would be next to nothing unless the target was around your skill range.

I however am not certain if this is based on hit % or on the skill level of your target..........

Just thought I'd throw this out there, as I was thinking about it.

I could very well be incorrect in my thoughts, but I am fairly certain the way it is now is not correct.

[Kaivan]

While I can't comment on whether UOSA has a scaled system for gaining skill based on the difficulty of what you're fighting, I can say that players are supposed to provide significantly less skill gain than creatures. This was actually a very early change on OSI noted in the following patch:

Stat and skill advancement for fighting other players has been drastically reduced.

[Malaikat]

While I can't comment on whether UOSA has a scaled system for gaining skill based on the difficulty of what you're fighting, I can say that players are supposed to provide significantly less skill gain than creatures. This was actually a very early change on OSI noted in the following patch:

Stat and skill advancement for fighting other players has been drastically reduced.

That quote doesn't give any context or frame of reference though. Unless it's only an excerpt from a larger patch note, I would have to ask "drastically reduced" as compared to what? Perhaps it was 2x the skill gain from mobs and it was reduced to be even or only slightly better...

[Mikel123]

I think the original poster is correct in that the band of skills at which you can effectively gain skill here is definitely wider than I expected based on my experiences on OSI.

I am shocked that one can go from 30 to GM on many types of NPCs, as well as Blade Spirits. And, these NPCs and Blade Spirits aren't hitting you back, so their skill should be static.

To put numbers to it, it seems like here you can gain skill if your target is within +/-40 skill points from you, while on OSI it felt like around +/-15 was necessary for gains.

On the other hand, lag, macroing, etc., usual caveats apply. Everything will *seem* faster here no matter what.

[Roser]

I am currently working a new character... Wrestle Swords and Tactics have been all gaining very steady from an NPC fighter bought at Jehlom, the npc is not fighting back.

I've almost GM'ed these 3 skills in about 30 Hours of beating on this NPC. This to me seems far to easy compared to OSI...

I would have to agree with Taggar on about everything there... My main way of gaining melee skills on OSI was fighting another player, polar bear's, and finally bone knights. Players seemed to work very well up until the mid 70's.

I used to walk around all day asking "wanna spar?"

[MatronDeWinter]

I would regularly spar another player to GM skills in 2-3 days. If there was nobody around my level available, those paladins in delucia took the beating for the same skill gain (assuming I was at around 70 (what I estimate a paladin has). Paladin fighting was annoying though because you could not arm them with weak weapons.

I do remember, if I got to something like 90 skill, it would take about 4-5 hours before gains picked up as the paladin gained skill.

[OhSnap]

I agree with the original post. I only played from about mid-99 to early '00, and I recall sparring with guildmates up into weapon/tactic skill levels of 90+, and I'm pretty sure the guildmates were close skillwise, which makes sense with what o/p is saying. With that said, I recall skill gain being relatively quick (definitely easy) on OSI while sparring a guildmate, but not near as fast as it is on UOSA by beating on a paladin/fighter.

[Kaivan]

While I can't comment on whether UOSA has a scaled system for gaining skill based on the difficulty of what you're fighting, I can say that players are supposed to provide significantly less skill gain than creatures. This was actually a very early change on OSI noted in the following patch:

Stat and skill advancement for fighting other players has been drastically reduced.

That quote doesn't give any context or frame of reference though. Unless it's only an excerpt from a larger patch note, I would have to ask "drastically reduced" as compared to what? Perhaps it was 2x the skill gain from mobs and it was reduced to be even or only slightly better...

While it is true that we don't have an exact context for how good skill gain was against players, a pragmatic approach has been taken for how the skill gain was prior to the change (a normal level of skill gain against players prior to the patch). If this approach is not used, one could argue that skill gains were 500 times better against players, and were drastically reduced to be 100 times better. However, in the stead of finding out what that ratio is, Batlin - our resident UO Demo master - has done significant work to understand the skill gain system in the demo. While I can't comment on whether he actually knows what the skill gain ratio for player to player combat as opposed to player to creature combat is, a reliable source does exist in the demo for that kind of information. Until such time as we have that information, we will always have an approximate system in place for skill gains.

[Tagarr]

While I can't comment on whether UOSA has a scaled system for gaining skill based on the difficulty of what you're fighting, I can say that players are supposed to provide significantly less skill gain than creatures. This was actually a very early change on OSI noted in the following patch:

Stat and skill advancement for fighting other players has been drastically reduced.

That quote doesn't give any context or frame of reference though. Unless it's only an excerpt from a larger patch note, I would have to ask "drastically reduced" as compared to what? Perhaps it was 2x the skill gain from mobs and it was reduced to be even or only slightly better...

While it is true that we don't have an exact context for how good skill gain was against players, a pragmatic approach has been taken for how the skill gain was prior to the change (a normal level of skill gain against players prior to the patch). If this approach is not used, one could argue that skill gains were 500 times better against players, and were drastically reduced to be 100 times better. However, in the stead of finding out what that ratio is, Batlin - our resident UO Demo master - has done significant work to understand the skill gain system in the demo. While I can't comment on whether he actually knows what the skill gain ratio for player to player combat as opposed to player to creature combat is, a reliable source does exist in the demo for that kind of information. Until such time as we have that information, we will always have an approximate system in place for skill gains.

I'm not necessarily arguing the player-player vs player-mob skillgains...
I'm moreso discussing the point that there's no way in hell I could GM my combat skills off of zombies in 2 days on OSI. (as you can here...)

I would have stopped getting decent gains at about 50-60, and slowed down to the point of being completely futile.

There's some form of calculation based on your targets skill level, which I am certain is not in-place here.

I think all we have in-place for UOSA skill gain calculation; is what you discussed above, a player-player skillgain rate, and a player-mob skillgain rate, rather than a calculation based on your targets skilllevel.

ie: If you have 50 wrestling, and your target has 40-60 wrestling, you will gain decently up to 60-70... after that your gains will slow and eventually stop.
If you have 50 wrestling, and your target has 0, your gains will be almost nothing.
If you have 50 wrestling, and your target has 100, your gains will be almost nothing.

Your target has to be within your skillrange for optimal gains; I specifically recall this as being a factor in skillgain, and it doesn't seem to exist here; if it does, the calculations are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy off.

I

[Hamrlik]

I agree with what's being said on this thread... I just (almost) GMed fencing on two different characters back to back, on the same Grizzly bear.

I also had a bard macroing Provoke on the Grizzly, targeting himself so it didn't fight back too much.

For the first character, the bear was hitting back when taking a hit (which is what they should do, right?), so I had to keep healing both the Grizzly and my character. I figured the Grizzly was gaining melee skill along with my character, so I wasn't too surprised about GMing off it. I had to use over 700 bandaids, healing both my character AND the Grizzly.

For the second character, however, the bear wasn't hitting back, ever. I ran a macro on my tamer to keep the Grizzly healed, but my fencer had no one healing him. He almost got up to GM, without ever taking a hit from the Grizzly fighting back. I ended up using less than 200 bandaids this time, healing ONLY the Grizzly. I was surprised this morning to see both the second character AND the Grizzly alive, I thought one of them would end up dying at some point.

Also, if we assume the Grizzly GMed melee from sparring with the first character, in order for my character to keep gaining up to GM level, then the second character should've had trouble gaining skill early on. However, I got smooth gains until I went to bed around midnight, at which point I had ~50 fencing. He got up to over 95 overnight.

So, not only is the era-accuracy probably way off, but somehow, mobs don't even seem to be consistent in the way they act when being fought. My bard went from 89 to 92 Provoke over the entire ordeal, so it's not like success/failure ratio had changed from the first toon to the second either.

In any case, melee gains are NOT difficulty-based at the moment. Bone knights are probably happy about it.

I'm not complaining, though, only observing. I still have a couple of melee skills to macro up, so don't fix this too fast...

EDIT: I just logged my 2nd fencer again while on lunch, the bear is properly fighting back now, I guess I just got lucky yesterday.

[Mens Rea]

I've seen peeps in the GY GMing their fighting skills on regular skeletons.

NEA.

Otherwise we wouldn't have seen things like the bone wall in Deceit.

[Panthor the Hated]

Then why do we see the bone wall here?

It wasn't brilliant then and its not brilliant now but it def gets the job done if you got the people and makes you some money.

[MatronDeWinter]

Then why do we see the bone wall here?

It wasn't brilliant then and its not brilliant now but it def gets the job done if you got the people and makes you some money.

We see it here for nostalgic reasons I would imagine.

[Panthor the Hated]

It wouldn't continue like it does if it weren't as practical here, theres pretty frequently a bone wall 'up'. Its legit skill gain + plate armor + gold. Thats why people do it.