Boosting Skill Gain Rate

[Gurrnutt Venomblade]

Title says it all, can we get a skill gain rate boost until religions come out ? It will give a chance for new players to build up characters and maybe some oldies to re-re-return. Theres not much to do beside macro anyway, lets reward the people who are logging in.

[Dista]

I believe this makes total sense - boosting skill gain rate until the release of religions. With the delay of religions potentially stretching over the summer, I think this would be a quality decision to potentially bring some people back to the shard, make some people become more active, and this could also be offered as incentive to a few new players to stick around or even begin playing. I don't agree with making only weekends boosted gains. People's lives and schedules are different. For those that work weekends or perhaps play mostly on weeknights this would be rather unfair. The last few days that I have been on, I have seen the online count at only 2-3... I think a boost of the skill gain rate could potentially boost our player count - at least for the short term which is realistically what this problem is until religions are released.

[Glarundis]

I could use this, and i'm sure others too. new people are always willing to have better gains. oldies will have a reason to stay for a while longer since they know they'll get better gains, and there's also the possibility for those guys that left to perhaps return if things are made easier. Of course, we want to think that even if people are inactive for months they will come back when religions are released, but it's safer to keep them logging in every now and then to make sure they don't forget about pangaea

[Bestia Domare]

September is a pretty lengthy deadline, unless it can be expedited somehow, this or something else needs to be done to avoid losing more player base.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Personally I voted for the weekend option as if there is anything like this done it should not just be always on.

The argument it will boost the player activity I find highly suspect, it may actually increase the online count but meaningful activity and interactions I doubt.

My concern with a consistent always on skill gain increase is that when it comes time to turn it off it won't happen or if it does we'll see a furious backlash from the player base at that time.

[Raegen Keenarrow]

Hezzle to the Yezzle! That's a YES. It would certainly help with training my bard I'm not gonna lie, I would appreciate that benefit. It might be another incentive to persuade my friend "Cutter", to come back to UO after 12-15 years. Next step would be getting him that empyrean set.... =P

[Glarundis]

Personally I voted for the weekend option as if there is anything like this done it should not just be always on.

The argument it will boost the player activity I find highly suspect, it may actually increase the online count but meaningful activity and interactions I doubt.

My concern with a consistent always on skill gain increase is that when it comes time to turn it off it won't happen or if it does we'll see a furious backlash from the player base at that time.

We could set a date for it to be over, and that's that. Can't complain, everyone knew from the moment it started it would be over. I think this is just a way to make sure people won't leave for good.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

I just do not see this as incentive to keep stragglers. The shard for good or ill was relaunched a little prematurely, I was under the impression that the religions were much closer to being completed when the shard was initially relaunched.

The reason I mentioned the issue with the deadline not being honored (which admittedly is probably not the reality) or more likely cause great strife and upheaval amongst the player base is that typically something long term and let's be honest about this, anything 2 months or more in this case is long term, we're talking of a close to 4 month boost at this point, when reverted back or changed in someway or another always causes embitterment because of various arguments I could type out but won't bother, we as old time players of any free UO shard can imagine and attest if we're honest with ourselves that this will occur.

If we are talking of incentive to keep player base and possibly bring back old timers who have found greener pastures, perhaps the solution to this problem is not perks in terms of skill gain but instead, releasing small bits of the religion system at a time to give us a taste of what to expect. My most valued and trained character, my monk (well I guess my scribe takes that cake she is heightened), is currently fairly useless to me so he sits idle logged out. Surely the non specific religion tomes could be put out once they're done, I assume these tomes are at least close to being done. For once, I am lost at what could be done to keep the stragglers hanging on but I am fairly certain a skill gain increase will not affect player interactions and activity. I do know one thing though, in this duration of minimal player base, there are steps that can be taken to clean up other problem areas of Pangaea that have nothing to do with scripting, these of course might or might not be underway.

In the end I find discussions like these as knee jerk reactions to low player counts and a "quick solution" to trying to solve a problem it more than likely will not fix.

Do note: skill gain increases would definitely help me out currently unless something changes.