I'm pretty new to this server but have an idea about poisoning gains. It is fine that poisoning takes some time to gain but how about an idea that allows players to gain while actually playing the game instead of macroing. To keep numbers simple lets base it off it taking 10 seconds to use the poisoning skill applying it on a weapon for a chance of gain. Once poison is applied to a weapon have a chance to gain poisoning based off using that weapon. Maybe have a script that checks swing speed of currently equipped weapon. Say the player can swing 5 times in the 10 seconds it takes to actually apply the poison have it be 1 in 10 swings to get a skill gain from using the weapon. Or say its 10 swings in 10 seconds make it be 1 in 20 swings to skill gain etc. So that is twice the amount of time it takes to get an equal skill gain by macroing but the option to be able to gain poisoning in game play. That is also not taking in account the time it takes to run from monster to monster and also makes it so even if someone was to macro poisoning on another player it would take twice as long to gain the skill that way. Also doing it this way would make it easier so you wouldn't have to worry about if the weapon hit or missed or actually applied poison to the target.
Interesting idea. Something that came to mind after reading the entire post, assuming that we went ahead and decided to implement this feature: In the event where a player is naturally training poisoning using the skill directly to apply poison to a blade, while at the same time is also macroing his combat abilities against another player or creature, should this allow the player to be eligible to gain skill in poisoning from the actions of applying it to the blade, as well as this new concept for skill-gain by using the bladed weapon which is poisoned against the creature in combat? I could see this being utilized to both speed the process of leveling skill in poisoning, on top of reducing the total cost which it would take to raise the skill to grand-master status. Do you think we should allow the skill-gain to stack respectively while using both methods, or should gaining skill in poisoning only be possible from 1 source or the other, at a time? Or perhaps I've misunderstood the post entirely, and this change would replace the original skill-gain from applying the poison to a blade, to having to actually use the poisoned blade in order to gain in poisoning at all. I'm not taking a stance towards one or the other, just curious as to how you'd suggest it be done if it were to be developed.
Hmm, that is a good point I didn't think about someone trying to macro both of them at once. I think it would be up to the GM's to decide if they would want poison to gain in combat or not. I would say if you DO want to gain poisoning through combat make it go up at the same rate as it does for applying poison to a weapon. Other than that, I'm not exactly sure how to prevent people from being able to macro them both. If there was a 30 second delay from when you applied poison to a weapon till you could gain from using the weapon in combat, the application of poison would probably be almost gone resulting in no gains from in combat so that would get tricky. Maybe an option would be to have it only gain via NPC combat? That would prevent from macroing vs other players while macroing applying poison to the weapon.
We could prevent the ability to macro poisoning using both methods at once in one way or another, I was mostly just curious to if you were intending that to be allowed or not. The poisoning skill is intentionally a larger investment & slower skill to raise, however you have included aspects to attempt to hold true to that. I can't really say at this time if we would adopt this concept though, for no reason other than there being systems of higher priority on the development table right now. Also, the NPC-only method could be skirted by hiring a paladin or any other hire-able & proceeding to heal/macro off it.
These kinds of suggestions come up a lot in UO. Heck, I posted my fair share on the OSI forums back in the day. It's a problem that's fairly unique to Ultima Online, and one of the (inumerable) reasons I prefer free shards over the paid service. In Ultima Online, all character development boils down to the consumption of resources over time. With Poisoning you need to consume a number of Nightshade in the form of varying-strength poison potions. The minimum time to gain a certain amount of skill is dictated by the skill delay. The real time this skill gain consumes depends on your play-style. Enabling new play-styles is about the only way of effectively adding options to gain in a skill. For instance, the Nox Mage. When Poison could be gained through casting An Nox, I took it to ~85 while hunting with my mage because I An Nox'ed everything in sight. That was a different playstyle. Giving passive gains for utility skills (not added-effect skills like Eval) to existing play-styles usually turns out poorly. So, there are two play-styles that can increase Poisoning (not sure if An Nox works here): The Crafter and the Adventurer. As a crafter, you'll have to do what all other crafters do in UO to become useful: grind like hell. This is best accomplished via a macro, but can also be done by hand. As an adventurer you can re-poison your weapon every time the charges run out. This will take more elapsed calendar time because, unlike the crafter, you're using the skill intermittently. But, unlike the crafter, you are also developing other skills while adventuring and hopefully making a small fortune in gold while doing so. Adding additional gains to the adventurer play-style in this case serves only to further emphasize that particular play-style, not to help the craft. It'd be like gaining tailoring every time you got hit wearing leather armor, or animal taming every time your pet makes a kill. These changes would create imbalances in the game to the detriment of all. Bottom line: if you don't like crafting (poisoning) and prefer adventuring, then go out and adventure, make some gold and go buy the products of the craft (poisoned weapons). I'm sure if you made mention that you're interesting in a poisioner's services in either the forum or IRC you'd find folks happy to render services.
