[Halo Dalgion]

There are lots of ways to increase combat skills and many of the other spamming skills are easy. (hiding, anatomy, eval int, etc.)

Hunting skills are also pretty easy to raise with only Provocation taking a really long time, but with the power that it has, that's understandable. Provocation is the difference between taking on one dragon at a time and powering through packs of 10 or more.

The 'problem' is the craft skills. They raise slowly, mostly for the reasons you've already mentioned: If it's too easy to raise the skill, everyone will just GM it and the economy will be in the crapper because noone buys or sells anything.

I think that the fact that people don't have as much time to sink into UO is an excellent reason to have the craft skills be harder. Pick a skill that you want to be good at, then sink the time into just that skill, then you will be one of the few people who can make money with that craft.

Ideally, you want to have crafting very hard, but hunting and exploring easier to start on. This way, you have more people who choose to make their living through hunting than people who are crafting.

The skills for hunting are easy to gain, but offset by the difficulty of the monsters that give better returns. You can increase the amount that you gain by taking on harder monsters, using more skill to do so. There is no difficulty in crafting, only the amount of time that you sink into it. SO, if you make the skill-gains too easy, more people have the skill, and the value of the 'time-invested' lowers. (if that makes sense.)

Point is, skill-gain seems low now because you're just getting started. People who have GM skill later will say that the skillgain is too easy for whichever skill they gained because they want to be the only one with it. Lets just stick with what we have for now and see how it goes. ;P

I could argue everything you're saying here to an indisputable new level. But I do not feel the need. I see that you're minds are already made up. The only people that suffer from the skill gains are those who do not have the time. I hope your little idea works and if it does pat yourself on the back. If not whats another failure. I'll be here for awhile to see what happens. GOOD LUCK