[Halo Dalgion]

Okay everyone I'll start by saying that I'm very excited that IN replica is about. I have seen several familiar names of the golden days. I am very worried though about the survival of the shard. I also believe that this can indeed work and become successful. We all know UO is old game and somewhat outdated so in order to gain an acceptable player base we need what no other shard can offer (which we have already) but the skill gain is in my opinion to hard. I mean I don't want to complain and get a bad name but seriously 350k ingots to 100 from 55 BS? Thats a little insane. 120 hours from 60 mining to 100 thats 40 hours a week for 3 weeks thats a full time job! My argument is we're not all 17 anymore with no worries and no lives. Many of us have wives, children and jobs that consume nearly all of our time. I know that I would not be able to even compete for the first two years of this shard while I am suffering from having to train 1-2 hours per day while someone may be able to pump 40-60 hours a week in. I know craft skills need to be hard in order to make there value worth achieving but at least have some sympathy. We spent years already in IN1 achieving skills and now you're telling us to pump out even more time and more effort into the game when we can not all deliver such things. As much as I would love to go back to 17 and have no worries of bills and such I wouldn't mind the skill gains but now if you want stable players I really think you should reconsider the level of difficulty. I am not only talking about myself but I am speaking for many others as well.

Sincerely Halo.

[Druid]

he is not only right he is right %100
we already gave our times for skills (and like 6 month for gm scribe lets think)
i worked like 3 char at IN1(2 was banned) soo it mean minimum 2 year(for only fight skills sw archery [healing peopls know how it was work hard to gain at In1 ?]) now we gonna give another year or years for skills?? soo after? no man no way to work skills here we all bored of this shit skills exp etc...

[Maktor D.]

I really cannot make a good point because he already made the point. I work sometimes 50+ hours a week, unless I can get a band of asian kids together to gather my resources, i'm not going to make it in the pvp world, let alone, make it as a merchant. The first time I lose a set of mytheral or blood rock, my woman will have to get a second job so I can play. I mean I'll get kicked out of daemon for sure. *grins*

But on a more serious note, the climb to the top of any good crafting skill should be moderate no doubt, but everybody wont want to risk losing a set of armour they've spend 2 months trying to put together. That makes Pvp a rare sight, which is mostly what people live for. If the old IN1 players wont play because of time consumption, then who is going to keep the young pups from trying to run the show?

I say, the economy will be fine eventually, let everyone be able to craft quicky and efficently. You can always make for example, The fiery bow of death or Hells hally and make it difficult to obtain ingredients....there are ways to make this work, we just need some more input from some more familiar faces.

D'leh

[Daemon]

[Eru]

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

[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

[Maktor D.]

Well since merching is going to be a sort of rareity to most of us, those who's paths are by the blade should be able to make a comfortable living. Maybe such as hosting weekly quests for good amounts of coin. There needs to be a balance between who controls the market and who hunts. Maybe let the pvm'ers be a big help in part for the merchants then.

[Shade]

Was writing this as Eru was writing his response but to add my own views and such here is my rant on the topic.

I can see your concerns when looking at the skill gains in a short term manner. However the truth is, the easier skill gains are, the less value items have for those who wish to craft. This is something I want to avoid as making crafting skills easy typically results in a non-existent economy. Right now it is rough, for most players (even though some people already have vanqs and invul armor) but it helps balance a shard in the long term as far as an economy is concerned.

Oh and keep in mind that while mining might be a bit slow to gain, you can always make a new character to mine up higher ores. Having a chance to craft platemail doesn't require GM smith either, so you really don't need to worry about GMing it to have armor, as you have a chance of crafting plate once you hit 75 smithy (less for pieces besides the chest). There are two players who will be able to craft armors by the end of the weekend. GM smithy is mostly for special weapons. As with most crafts, GMing them only unlocks the top items of their crafting range and you don't need GM for the skill to be useful. Also remember you can always make a mule character with harvest skills so you can get better ores quickly.

Having craft skills at a difficult level makes players work together and focus on a single craft, which helps build a community and a proper economy. I have played and staffed on enough shards to know that this is always the case when it comes to well rounded shards. If this shard was purely for pvp it would be a different case but thats not what Ive been aiming for.

Also keep in mind that it only takes about 2-3 days to be fully prepared for pvp, skill wise. The mercenary camp and the newbie dungeon offer quests that can give you skill boosts and you can also buy skill boosts with nickels inside the casino, so technically you could be ready in a day and a half.

Honestly, if skills were easier, they might as well just be given out completely. There needs to be a point to GMing crafts and a goal for players to reach. There are several people with over 1k skill points (equivalent to 10 GM skills), a couple players in the 2k range and one player about to hit 3k skill points. It really all comes down to how well you spend your time and how efficient you are while playing and macroing.

[Eru]

Maybe let the pvm'ers be a big help in part for the merchants then.

This is actually a really good idea... We should make some of the better crafted stuff take items that come from PVMing. Dragon scales, etc.

[Shade]

Almost all the better crafted stuff already requires pvm related items

Like I said, my intent is to establish a strong economy based on trade and need of others.

[Paulie]

As im sitting here at work thinking about this game that once again has become so addictive to me. I think I've come up with a great solution to this problem. Being that im 99% sure I am the only gm miner on the shard atm, I believe that the skill gain in mining should be dropped. It took me roughly 120 hours to gm mining(hence I have no life and my wife bitches at me on a consistent basis) I feel that this should be dropped by 40-45%. Leave the crafts alone but if you change this more people will mine for there goods and the people who actually invest the time to do Blacksmithing can charge fees if a person supplys the ingots needed to make a armor or a craftable weapon. This will promote more trade, more pvping, and in the long run make the economy very good and stable. Which I know shade this is one of your biggest concerns.

[Halo Dalgion]

Okay all this talk about how fast combat skills are, and all this talk about how you can be afk. Forget the crafts leave them alone the more I think about it sure the better off it'll be if we have dedicated players. But mining is to hard thats just insane. Paulie is right when he said that mining would promote more trade. I just dont see the point in going afk to train. You're not earning anything if you're afk so why even make them as challenging as they are? Been afk for 12 hours now and just hit
78.6 anatomy. Come on let us hunt. Make combats even faster to promote more money and hunting faster and PvP.

[Paulie]

I actually believe that anatomy and Eval intel should be dropped a little bit as well. But with the new nickel system inplanted and the 4 skill you can get at the begining you can spend 3 days macroing if you chose the right skills. Or you can spend about 10 nickels per 10% gain on these skills. I myself have been so busy with training a craft I spent my nickels on combat skills that I didnt want to spend the time training. 10 nickels = a $1 USD donation. For the most part all of us are grown and have a extra $20 we could donate to help with the server and advertising.