Is it time to change the gain rate in Ultima Online?

It's been a while since I've uploaded and finished a character and it's quite a grinding to do so.

Leaving aside the possibility of Scroll of Alacrity and Transcendence to make this whole arduous process easier on slower skills, I wondered if it's really necessary for all this to have to go through at this current time we live in, not only for veterans, but for new players coming in.

Observing returned and new players that I had relationship with them in the game and I communicated by discord (so I know exactly), I discovered that 95% of those who returned or started the game again and I had relationship, which were many, stopped playing, some like a girl who wanted to join my guild and I told her that when she finished the character let me know to add her, she did not finish her character because of the slowness that was to upload provocation, among others and ended up leaving the game going to other games.

All this makes me ask openly, is it necessary today all this slow process?

The profile of players who join, particularly returnees, are people who played 15-20 years ago, from what they tell me, with little time from what they tell me and what I observe and when they see that they have to upload a character and the slowness that this entails, they literally give up.

Times have changed and not only the disposition of those who know this game, but also the new generations, I think that making a big grinding to upload a character that doesn't even guarantee its success, because sometimes they upload it for testing and make changes later, is too much.

As I updated in one of my guides, what is not conceivable today is that it takes almost an hour of real time to gain 0.2 healing points, it is literally shattering for the vast majority of people.

Some may think and say that New Legacy solves this kind of problem, but for those of us who like the old classic maps, it is not an alternative or an option.

Is it time to consider changing the rate of skill gain to not only expand new audiences, but the very survival of this game?

mis said:

Is it time to consider changing the rate of skill gain to not only expand new audiences, but the very survival of this game?

No.

Skill training is already incredibly fast with tools that you've mentioned like SoT SoA. Veterans  have access to Soulstones which makes any template possible without constantly training different skills. Most skills have 'tricks' they've purposely added over years to train fast. I'd argue they train skills too fast and should even be fixed (not seriously):

• Beat on a wolf spider for any weapon skill with minor intervention.
• Mage weapons to train magery easier. 
• Stealing from a packhorse to gain stealing.
• 'Make max' for trade skills.
• MASTERIES!!
• On and on and on and on

For production shards, we have Mythic Tokens for a reason.  If you want to advance quickly, that's the course you have to follow.  I've reached a point where I use one for nearly every new character, then will do a combination of training and pinks to reach GM/Legendary. 

There are some skills where the gains are exceedingly difficult after a certain level (some of the bard skills come to mind, Bushido after about ~80), and maybe deserve a small tweak - but I'd be very careful as to how much.   We also don't want to destroy the economy for pink scrolls, which are an easy and cheap way for players of all styles to make some easy gold.  Maybe the better answer would be to throw more pinks into the loot tables of some of the older existing content to beef up their rewards a little bit.  It's a delicate balance. 

New Legacy on the other hand...  I think might deserve their own special Mythic token of some sort for season two. 

Simply finishing Haven would work. the quest should take you to GM not stop at 50 which is totally useless 

ForeverFun said:

"Yes".  Only mention 2 below which are in the "hard" bucket.

Animal Taming.  Can take a year if playing casually to go from 50->90 skill - I did this once.  You can purchase a mythic token ($), and the ToL expansion ($) to enable mastery training from 90->120.  SoTs are about 50M/ea for every 5.0 points - not practical for most new players.

Provocation.  Can puchase a mythic token ($) to get to 90 skill.  Don't need to purchase the ToL expansion ($), as the barding masteries are the only "free" ones.  SoT option much cheaper than taming, though still a drag for new players.

The NL character xfer option for tamers may be a short-cut.

Regarding that, that token allows you to reach 90 as you rightly say, one option is to opt for a jewelry that total makes you +30 as a really cheap and fast option to finish.

But in the case of the girl I commented, she wanted 120 real because she wanted to benefit from the Skill Mastery.

That's why she decided to raise the skill real, regarding the SoT, the issue is that at least in Europe, a SoT of 5 points is around 8 million as cheap, minor loose is more expensive in total, unfeasible for new players without resources who need to raise the character.

In the case of the girl I commented, she did not accept more gifts because she felt indebted to me, I gave her 120 provo and many alacrity, and I gave her some SoT for when she reached more level, however, she quit.

This is the case of a lucky player, because she received donations from me, others who do not receive anything and go for free, raising their skills is a real odyssey. Where sometimes one decides to change skills because they do not fit with one's expeactatives and back to start with a new skill, accumulating weeks and weeks of grinding.

She went three weeks and didn't finish it.

In my opinion, this issue is really important and should be considered by the developers team.

mis said:

 I discovered that 95% of those who returned or started the game again and I had relationship, which were many, stopped playing, some like a girl who wanted to join my guild and I told her that when she finished the character let me know to add her, she did not finish her character because of the slowness that was to upload provocation, among others and ended up leaving the game going to other games.

Okay.. I just have to ask: why did you not invite her into the guild before her character was finished? 

mis said:

username said:

I'd argue they train skills too fast and should even be fixed (not seriously):

What a pity that 95% of the returning/starting players I met didn't know your knowledge of how to raise skills too fast, because they have left the game.

In particular the girl that I even gave her alacrity from provocation to make everything easier for her and even then, because of how devastating it was, she quit and left the game.

I would also like to see how you upload your healing with the current publish, this morning to be exact it took me almost an hour of real time for the server to give 0.2 points, fortunately I finished it, if too fast is 0.2 points in an hour, we both have a different view of the concept too fast.

Boohoo. Your one anecdote of a player quitting because they're used to a different style game or can't figure it out doesn't mean we should redo the skill gain system. It's fine. It's actually incredibly easy for 95% of skills. Again, they can all be trained, combat magic etc. without even fighting a monster to 120. How is that hard? Too easy.

You want to know what's making more people quit the game? The 3rd party constellation client. Hands down. I've seen whole guilds/servers basically collapse because they quit over that. You've got a better chance there. So get going on that.

How I upload my healing? If you mean gain, I either start or stone over 50, do +30 with jewels, and then straight to ressing a ghost. It's easy you just sit there and click a simple CC macro last object last target.

Jepeth said:

Okay.. I just have to ask: why did you not invite her into the guild before her character was finished? 

username said:

Boohoo. Your one anecdote of a player quitting because they're used to a different style game or can't figure it out doesn't mean we should redo the skill gain system. It's fine. It's actually incredibly easy for 95% of skills. Again, they can all be trained, combat magic etc. without even fighting a monster to 120. How is that hard? Too easy.

Of course, I am not going to tell you one by one, I am telling you that if in these months I have been in contact with approximately 50 new/returned people, 95% of them (people, not skills), left the game.

I repeat it because I see that you don't understand anything, they left the game!

username said:

How I upload my healing? If you mean gain, I either start or stone over 50, do +30 with jewels, and then straight to ressing a ghost. It's easy you just sit there and click a simple CC macro last object last target.

and before it wasn't going as slow as it is now, you don't climb with your ghost more than 0.2 per hour above 99.8 not by chance as it is now (real without alacrity). so, don't come to me telling ghost stories because you don't know how the situation is.

Sorry, going to have to go with username on this one (whom I disagree with about 99% of the time.) You’re using the example of this player to try and suggest a fairly massive change and, as your first paragraph said, minimizing the mechanisms we already have in-game to address the slow pace of skill gain. 

Jepeth said:

Sorry, going to have to go with username on this one (whom I disagree with about 99% of the time.) You’re using the example of this player to try and suggest a fairly massive change and, as your first paragraph said, minimizing the mechanisms we already have in-game to address the slow pace of skill gain. 

I also don’t think it’s speculation to say that people stay longer when they have people to play with. Handing them items and checking in on them feels shallow compared to simply inviting them along.

Truly, though, if you are running into these players tell them to head over to us on New Legacy.

Having said this and understanding that there are people who do not understand or conceive the seriousness and importance of this matter.

I will not respond to anyone else in repeating the repeated, if it is something new, perhaps, but not to repeat the same thing.

There remains my proposal for whoever has to evaluate it.

If any change should be made, it should be harder to gain skill, between mythic and pink scrolls or blue scrolls, with a little gold you could be 120 skill in 20 minutes 

if you didn't use any skill booster, most skills take a day or 2 to max out, still very quick to become "Legendary" skill in anything

Mis got a point tho.. we can train skill fast.. with a lot of cheese.. but as someone mention when you're new or returning u don't want to do AFK type of stuff to level up faster on a loop.. we want to PLAY, while leveling.. like personally my resist spell was level'd up back then using daemon farming silver coin on fire island.. instead of looping spell on myself on a boat (now u have a new cheese at NH for that)


The fix mis is asking, mid term, IS NL (the only real good use for NL, imo.. since it under deliver).. u play (theme park questing) to lvl up fast.. then u just need to wait 1 year if u started day 1 to move on prodo 


Cuz y'all giving power leveling tips.. a new or returning players do not want to power level AFK on a loop.. they want to play. Someone experienced gonna do ~3 days of power leveling usually before playing their new character, unlike someone new or returning.

Selling gold and other stuff RMT'ers does on ea.com front store on the client.. you could have a pay 2 fast option. Also, grim made a solid point about NH and the 50 skill.. if what he said is true.. give them AT LEAST 80 (I mean with soulstone we can already start at 50 all skill.. what kind of help is that NH noob tutorial).. u can't do poo with 50 skills.. at with ~80 they could do some dungeon or something more meaningfull.

If you want to help people get the journeyman set the skill gain token works for everyone in party and is like being on every blue scroll at once

mis said:

Of course, I am not going to tell you one by one, I am telling you that if in these months I have been in contact with approximately 50 new/returned people, 95% of them (people, not skills), left the game.

I repeat it because I see that you don't understand anything, they left the game!

If they're quitting because their skills are training "too slow" then they were never going to stick around anyway and this game was not for them. I have never heard of anyone quitting the game because skills are training "too slow". Ever. Cause you know that's like a core part of this game? Why would anyone play this game and not expect to train skills and have it take a little time which, as we've all outlined, there are INFINITE and CHEAP/FREE ways to train skills FAST? They most likely were promised one type of game with UO and received another. This game is not for everyone and that's okay. The skill gain rate is just fine.

If you want new player retention, once again, focus on the massively abused cheater client that cause these insane awful optics every time a ToT is running. Guilds have collapsed because they see no point in playing the game with crap like that going on.

Crank skill gain up to infinity, who gives a shit at this point? Everyone who wants to has been scripting it for decades anyway.

Grimbeard said:

If you want to help people get the journeyman set the skill gain token works for everyone in party and is like being on every blue scroll at once

I have no idea of what u talking about (never try the new haven "tutorial" not a big fan of questing if it does not involve an epic storyline; hunt 20 wolves, collect tails = no thx)


My first thought would be to add something along those line to the EA store and to not make it party.. a cheater could bring a bot with that set on for various reason.


But yeah, like nytrax said, plus they working on NL.. mid term; NL could fill that need without making any extra money. So, we losing our time talking about that.

KroDuK said:

Grimbeard said:

If you want to help people get the journeyman set the skill gain token works for everyone in party and is like being on every blue scroll at once

I have no idea of what u talking about (never try the new haven "tutorial" not a big fan of 

Never stops you from giving out useless info.  It would be nice if you actually played UO, you may help someone sometime.

He is talking about this:

Deluxe starter pack from the in game store.  It has a: 

• A Token of Skill Alacrity that allows you and your party members to experience an increased rate of skill gain for an entire week.  This token is bound to the character that purchases it.

https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/beginning-the-adventure/deluxe-starter-pack/

The Journeyman part is the name of the armor.

*smh* Google: sarcasm & irony..

To make it clear for you:  3-they shooting themselves in the foot
                                              2-cheater sucks, don't design for, design against.
                                              1-if u do questing make it epic.
I made a solid point on every paragraph.


Grim had something tho.. but one way or another.. NH questing.. NL.. third client..


Try again, but do better.. I feel bad now, cuz..
i'm better than you at playing dumb, to get my points along, cuz anyone reading this can easily find the solution to what i'm saying, BUT...

PS: Was not fishing for..

Pawain said:

Never stops you from giving out useless info.  It would be nice if you actually played UO, you may help someone sometime.

a bad faith hater.

Are you mad cuz i'm helping a couple people with my experience on UO or cuz I called u out recently, for bringing very little to the table while quoting you in my signature? Just curious. 

Meditating on your comments I have come to an idea that may be the balance and that I will expose in a new publication.

I understand your position, but I want you to understand what I have experienced.

I was helping new and returning players where I gave them in game, power scroll, necessary equipment (armors/weapons), money and knowledge.

Completely agree. All skill gain should be like alacrity at all times.  Also all skill usage should,give gains. Aka if my pet is being commanded I should be able to gain taming and lore. 

@Mis ;

Grimbeard said:

Simply finishing Haven would work. the quest should take you to GM not stop at 50 which is totally useless 

Personally, I would work around that.. the counter part would be a cash shop option; a training suit with extra skill gain.. but with NL around!?!

Cuz the solutions you have a few of them in this topic.. my favorite is.. just make them a tutorial for what not shall be name. 

I'm curious to read your next post.

mis said:

ForeverFun said:

"Yes".  Only mention 2 below which are in the "hard" bucket.

Animal Taming.  Can take a year if playing casually to go from 50->90 skill - I did this once.  You can purchase a mythic token ($), and the ToL expansion ($) to enable mastery training from 90->120.  SoTs are about 50M/ea for every 5.0 points - not practical for most new players.

Provocation.  Can puchase a mythic token ($) to get to 90 skill.  Don't need to purchase the ToL expansion ($), as the barding masteries are the only "free" ones.  SoT option much cheaper than taming, though still a drag for new players.

The NL character xfer option for tamers may be a short-cut.

Regarding that, that token allows you to reach 90 as you rightly say, one option is to opt for a jewelry that total makes you +30 as a really cheap and fast option to finish.

But in the case of the girl I commented, she wanted 120 real because she wanted to benefit from the Skill Mastery.

That's why she decided to raise the skill real, regarding the SoT, the issue is that at least in Europe, a SoT of 5 points is around 8 million as cheap, minor loose is more expensive in total, unfeasible for new players without resources who need to raise the character.

In the case of the girl I commented, she did not accept more gifts because she felt indebted to me, I gave her 120 provo and many alacrity, and I gave her some SoT for when she reached more level, however, she quit.

This is the case of a lucky player, because she received donations from me, others who do not receive anything and go for free, raising their skills is a real odyssey. Where sometimes one decides to change skills because they do not fit with one's expeactatives and back to start with a new skill, accumulating weeks and weeks of grinding.

She went three weeks and didn't finish it.

In my opinion, this issue is really important and should be considered by the developers team.

Hahahahaha, you gave everything and she left, let's think how much content we need done before you will be able to get mastery and 120 scrolls should we get rid of it aswell ? Next time send her to NL to get full gms just by completing few quests. Some one just like farm drama, it is not about gameplay get old. 

Garret said:

Hahahahaha, you gave everything and she left, let's think how much content we need done before you will be able to get mastery and 120 scrolls should we get rid of it aswell ? Next time send her to NL to get full gms just by completing few quests. Some one just like farm drama, it is not about gameplay get old. 

Too many times the new or returning player is just part of zerg guild of the day come to farm our dead shards 

I think there are too many New Legacy comments. Whilst I support New Legacy, this forum is for production shards. My experience of New Legacy, I logged in, I could not see my character on the screen, I chose scribe, I chose to play it, instead of being led down some hand-held crafting path, I ended up against some impossible monsters to fight, and a map and travel options that made no sense at all, it restricted everything for me, to the point I quit after 2 hours, and have no intention of ever going back. New Legacy is not an option for everyone, please stop going on about it.

Gains can be very hard to get, I'm currently training a peacemaker, I get approx 0.1 per hour, it is insane. Some skills are too easy, some skills are too hard. Some skills are ok. Maybe the whole system does not need to be redone, but what would be useful, is if someone started them all from zero, and worked out how long they took to train, then balanced them out a bit for the insane ones.

mis said:

or do certain quests that I ask them to do, not NPC quests, but created by myself.

Last time I did that was in ~2008 for an IRL friend.. Still had a couple codes to invite people that I received from x expansion. When he shared interested for UO.. I gave him one.. He had ablast building his cabin near Vesper.. after he wanted to be a warrior.. I gave him a set told him what to bash and where (I believe it was shame)

On his ~4th days.. he came back to me all happy and proud.. he explored the map, got loss while collecting stuff.. he had a big piles of.. reagents (that he collected in the Vesper woods)

I wanted him to be at least 90 weapon skill before joining me on the champ spawns (for his weapon skills)
He ended up making a gatherer while using my mule account to craft stuff for his cabin.


After New Haven tutorial, a housing quest line/tutorial could be dope.. for most of us, when we started the focus was not our account/characters but our house. Also, upgrading the house was always faster than upgrading the character. The housing stuff is one of the weakess point of NL.. wich is 

Cookie said:

I think there are too many New Legacy comments. Whilst I support New Legacy, this forum is for production shards. My experience of New Legacy, I logged in, I could not see my character on the screen, I chose scribe, I chose to play it, instead of being led down some hand-held crafting path, I ended up against some impossible monsters to fight, and a map and travel options that made no sense at all, it restricted everything for me, to the point I quit after 2 hours, and have no intention of ever going back. New Legacy is not an option for everyone, please stop going on about it.

Gains can be very hard to get, I'm currently training a peacemaker, I get approx 0.1 per hour, it is insane. Some skills are too easy, some skills are too hard. Some skills are ok. Maybe the whole system does not need to be redone, but what would be useful, is if someone started them all from zero, and worked out how long they took to train, then balanced them out a bit for the insane ones.