UO Second Age

Gaining from skill failure is something that was only implemented into UO after UO:R release, and only applied during powerhour.

Wasn't able to find much about it, but surely others remember the "wtf?" reaction after the release of UO:R and suddenly gaining from skill failure?

http://uo.stratics.com/content/professi ... aler.shtml
http://www.uopowergamers.com/a-july01.shtml
There two only mention that it is possible to gain from failure during powerhour.

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:ZY ... nz&strip=1
This one mentions that it is possible to gain from repeated failure of a skill during powerhour - which is unintentional. Slightly more on topic.

Acrually if I remember correctly, during T2A you could gain off failure and it was nerfed during UO:R, to keep the mobs with torches off the doorstep of the OSI offices, they introduced power hour, in which you could gain from failure again, to placate, later to be replaced by GGS.

Then how would you raise a skill like Hiding or Animal Lore? At 0.0, you'd literally fail every time.

Mikel123 wrote:Then how would you raise a skill like Hiding or Animal Lore? At 0.0, you'd literally fail every time.

That reminds me of when I was in the Navy and needed my PARs signed off. The Chief I worked for told me that I litterally had to do everything in the book to get signed off. I couldn't explain how to do it, I had to show them.

I reported that I was never going to get advanced and he told me not to be so negative, that that's what he did.

Then I pointed out that there were 4 things related to emergency child birth (I was a Navy Corpsman) and asked him how he arranged it so he could get his promotion.

The older we get, the harder it was.

Mikel123 wrote:Then how would you raise a skill like Hiding or Animal Lore? At 0.0, you'd literally fail every time.

from 0-12 skill you would gain every time regardless of success or failure.

though the obvious answer is npc training

Gicod wrote:Acrually if I remember correctly, during T2A you could gain off failure and it was nerfed during UO:R, to keep the mobs with torches off the doorstep of the OSI offices, they introduced power hour, in which you could gain from failure again, to placate, later to be replaced by GGS.

http://update.uo.com/design_180.html

the skill changes went in mid march, uo:r was not released until april 28

powerhour was also introduced at the same time as skill gain changes in general (aka anti-macroing)

Oh well, Im old, there goes the memory....

powerhour went in before uo:r. i didn't remember that.

unfortunately OSI never provides much detail in their patch notes.

though food for thought, correct me if i'm wrong - you could not use the EQ trick to gain magery until after the powerhour patch (~50-65 magery). i'm fairly certain that UO:R kept the same "can only gain if you have more than 0% chance to succeed". it's only that we've become accustomed to runUO that we are inclined to think otherwise. so it would make no sense that it was a new tactic to use EQ scrolls to gain magery, unless it was impossible during t2a era to gain from fails. i'm at work but i'll research it more tonight

Taken from http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:ZY ... nz&strip=1

We're calling this proposal the Guaranteed Gain System (GGS). The core of this system is the guarantee that if you play "normally", you will gain skill. As always, you can only gain skill when you successfully perform an action. The difference under the GGS system is that if you have not gained skill under the current use-based system after a certain time period, the system would recognize this and force a point of skill gain (point meaning a tenth of a point, as in moving from 70.1 to 70.2). The length of the time period, or timer, is based on the level of skill.

Yes, this relates to a time well past UO:R release, but does provide some light evidence of my claim.

no it doesn't..

Checking on the demo, skill gain is possible off of failures well beyond 10 skill. This suggests that failures did indeed allow skill gain prior and during T2A.

I used think failures weren't possible for skill gains based on older articles and so forth until the demo disproved that notion.

Also, Prima's guide doesn't mention anything about skill gain. If failures prevented skill gain, it would be mentionned for sure.

Faust wrote:I used think failures weren't possible for skill gains based on older articles and so forth until the demo disproved that notion.

The demo isn't necessarily accurate for every minor detail, though I'll admit it's the best source of information, so I guess it's kind've a dead horse to suggest otherwise.

Will probably poke around tonight and see if I can find anything, but all the obvious searches have turned up very little info.

kaldori wrote:Also, Prima's guide doesn't mention anything about skill gain. If failures prevented skill gain, it would be mentionned for sure.

Haven't been able to find a copy from googling (a very quick I-don't-want-to-get-called-out-for-googling-UO-at-work google), but surely if he's writing a guide, it details what to do and it wouldn't be important to state whether success/fail dictates a gain. Unless he specifically says that you can gain from fails.

The demo is a time capsule of July 1998 with precise 100% accuracy up to that point in time.

We know failures gained in skill during the late t2a and early UOR era due to obvious bugs that existed at that time.

These known facts tell us a couple things about this topic already. First, skill gain on failures didn't exist in July 1998. Second, it's probably unlikely that two "ninja" patches went in and out during a timespan of a year from that point in time to the end of the t2a days in early '00 before the UOR era was published.

That there tells us that the possibility of this existing during our target date is next to none.

This isn't exactly the place, but is there a legal way to get the demo without buying a new T2A disc? Mine's long gone