Just to explain a cpl of things

[pauly]

I was buds with PD faceless if anyone knows of him or remembers his great contributions even before the t2a era so I know this to be fact.

(PD runesabre was the EA-blessed retard who ruined UO with UO:R , he was the lead on that patch)


Skill gain worked like this: It depended on how many people were on server and the total amount of the given skill used by all players combined. The more players developed that skill; the slower that skill gained. Hence me macroing eval on atlantic around 1998, there were times where it took 4-5 hours to get .1 in the late 90s. Hence the beginning of a test center wipe or when Europa first came up; skills flew. Comparatively speaking, anyhow. Not flew like DFI or UO:G ofcourse.

Also, people, if you're confused about ANYTHING in relation to that era of UO, JUST ASK ME. I know it inside out


-pauly boy ;]

[Senses]

I heard about this in the very early days of UO, but I don't believe it was ever really confirmed as any more than a rumor. I think it was along the lines of stuff you would hear like "Chopping down enough trees in an area will slowly change the habitat of local wildlife." Sounds good, but it was just bs.

[RoadKill]

Find some patch notes.

[pauly]

If you're referring to my explanation of skill gain; I know this to be fact. Atleast around the time Europa/DFI opened up. Shortly prior to the eval int/anatomy patch which created the Hally tank mage. The main point of the patch was that a person couldn't have the "all in one char". I mean shit, you had great Pkers who still didn't lose the GM mining. After the patch, without eval/anat, you weren't a competitive dexer/mage in terms of PvP. Meditation came around the same time and was placed mostly for the same reason. I would never post bs here that I don't know for sure. No sense in doing that. I'm glad the ppl who run this shard are dedicated to recreating the most fun-filled free world of an MMO there'll ever be.

-pauly

[ClowN]

the reason people were able to have gm mining (or whatever other bullshit skills) on their PKs prior to the anatomy/eval/meditation patch was because back then you could afford to have bullshit skills on your mage. everyone ran around with platemail suits on their mages. some people had multiple fighting skills. it didnt matter cuz there was no mana regen penalties (no med), and no reason to have eval or anat. so those skill points would get used in other skills that usually didnt make a big difference on your characters pvp ability.

i do remember hearing that rumor regarding skill gains, but im pretty sure it was bullshit. there was alot of rumors about game mechanics back then that people always talked about. kinda of like the rumor that skll gain would be accelerated if your character was constantly on a full stomach.

[Derrick]

The skill gain system described is consistant with what I read in an ad-hoc chat.

[Cutpurse]

Skills were also passive in gaining (albeit VERY slow). You could gain mining literally by standing next to someone who was mining. I believe that was changed early on, because you could make a newbie and go light kindling by a high level blacksmith. It was before skill locks.

[Michael Malloy]

Skills were also passive in gaining (albeit VERY slow). You could gain mining literally by standing next to someone who was mining. I believe that was changed early on, because you could make a newbie and go light kindling by a high level blacksmith. It was before skill locks.

Vivid memories of dudes screaming at me and running away from my campfires. Unintentional griefing on my first day.

[pauly]

the reason people were able to have gm mining (or whatever other bullshit skills) on their PKs prior to the anatomy/eval/meditation patch was because back then you could afford to have bullshit skills on your mage. everyone ran around with platemail suits on their mages. some people had multiple fighting skills. it didnt matter cuz there was no mana regen penalties (no med), and no reason to have eval or anat. so those skill points would get used in other skills that usually didnt make a big difference on your characters pvp ability.

i do remember hearing that rumor regarding skill gains, but im pretty sure it was bullshit. there was alot of rumors about game mechanics back then that people always talked about. kinda of like the rumor that skll gain would be accelerated if your character was constantly on a full stomach.

Thanks for explaining what I said to those who prefer to read in a less articulate manner.



(not sarcasm, btw)


Lets get to the point, is there any questions about anything in that era? Anyone? I can pretty much give facts on any question asked.

[0range]

Lets get to the point, is there any questions about anything in that era? Anyone? I can pretty much give facts on any question asked.

You may very well be able to, but so far your credibility is lacking. If you expect people to take you seriously here, or in any skeptical environment, you'll need to do a bit better than simply claiming to know.

Best,

[pauly]

Ask and will be proven.

/end

[Red]

What the OP describes about skill gain is 100% accurate.

I used to be a part of the few that played on Test Center before you got any free skills or items. I played Test Center primarily from T2A to the opening of Trammel. They used to wipe that server every 1-3 months and people still had GM Mages. People played there because the skills were insanely easy compared to production shards at the time. There used to be a forum for all the "TC Regulars". The hot thing to do at the time was to kill LLs with Blade spirits til you get 50k for reagents, and the easiest place you could find lvl 8 spells was in dungeon chests.

Believe it or not, there was a pile of 60k that spawned upon the creation of any server, just outside Papua. Also, there were bright blue and purple hued armor that spawned in some chests in Deceit upon server creation as well.

I was also the player that discovered how to double your tickets in the original CuB by transferring them to yourself. On TC of course

[Kaivan]

For those who are interested here is a snippet from the Stratics page that talks about stat caps and this skill gain quirk:

World skill advancement works like this:

The server tracks the # of tests called on each skill since the start of the shard.

It tracks them, however, as a PERCENTAGE of total skill calls.

Also, there's a cap; if some skills look like they are going to dominate the percentages and squeeze out the others, they're not allowed to account for more than, uh, say 10% of the calls each.

The advancement rates are then based on these percentages. The hypothetical average player who plays "typically" would see all their skills advance at exactly the same rate in a given span of play time. Of course, nobody is the average player and nobody plays "typically." The result is that for any given player, some skills seem harder and others easier.

Why do this? Well, it's a given that skill get used at different rates. You therefore need to have differing advancement curves for them. You could guesstimate them. We thought of doing that.

When we guessed, we were off by a factor of SEVERAL orders of magnitude. Meaning, a skill we thought was "slow" was at 100 times slower than the fastest skill to rise (like say, tactics, which is the slowest skill to rise) turned out to actually be called 40,000 times more frequently. A good thing we didn't use guesstimates, or else the game would be totally out of whack.

Now, is this working perfectly? No. Macroing distorts it badly. We've been talking about changing to the following system:

Impose a limit on chances at ADVANCING in a skill; so you might test a skill 100 times in five minutes, but you only get one shot at advancing.

Instead of the table tracking skill tests, make it track only skill tests that can result in advancement.

The result?

Rapidly tested skills all "cap" because you can't advance in them faster than the rate of once every five minutes... and what's more, since you get fewer chances to advance the higher you go in the skill, even that cap may not get hit as much.

The proportions of one skill vs another should be "shortened" leading probably to faster advancement each time you get a skill test, but slower advancement overall. The lesser-used skills would "come up" in the table because they don't normally get tested every five minutes...

And for macroing--well, it makes it more difficult, and possibly not worth it. But since I am not a macroer, I don't know what methods would be used to try to exploit this. Would players sit and macro even more? I don't know.

Designer Dragon

The page can be found here. The information here on stats comes from early to mid 1999 when there were still issues with stat gains. By late 1999, stat gains worked correctly and were much easier to max out using the see-saw method. As for the skill difficulty shifts, I can't say whether we currently have that in operation or not, but I would imagine that we don't have it set up that way. If we don't, I don't suspect that we will change it because of the fact that we don't have any actual accurate numbers for skill advancement in the first place, and adding another layer on top of that wouldn't really be that much of a skill gain changer without accurate base values.

[Fwerp]

There were sub-servers that were randomly assigned. I discussed it at length with GM Jarkarta circa 1999 on Atlantic when I couldn't gain.

[BlackFoot]

i remember that the more people using a skill the slower it would go, anatomy gained incredibly quickly a few weeks before t2a was implemented, as soon as every one realized they needed anatomy the ksill took two weeks to gm
unless they changed the gain rate of skills when t2a was implemented that explaination of skill gains makes sense.
And I had a friend who could swear to god that if he did smithing in jhelom early in the morning he would gain the best