Ludicrous game mechanics are ludicrous

[Chocobits]

Seconding the removal of random chance of skillup. Even if every successful action you make only yielded a 0.1 skillup.. that is still only 10 actions per level of skill... which at higher skill levels beats the unko out of the 55~70 (arbitrary number) of actions you need to perform per level skill.

The less randomized timer in the game, the better. We have plenty and there's room to shear some off.

*edit* I've gone 400 and more swings without gaining a full level of weapon skill. Putting some finite number cap on that would actually make it work.

Anyone else remember leveling WAR in 2005-2006? You literally had to quit using great axe and switch to axe to stay capped while leveling at anything over 2500 xp per hour..

[Zagen]

Anyone else remember leveling WAR in 2005-2006? You literally had to quit using great axe and switch to axe to stay capped while leveling at anything over 2500 xp per hour..

Gah don't remind me! I was praised when I pointed out T-VT changing was better EXP and we pushed 3-3.5k/hr...

[Zhronne]

In my opinion the skillup system worked really fine in the old WoW.
Back there you had a dynamic skillup rate.
When your current skill was much lower than your current cap, skillups were really really fast, 100% proc chance for each action.
As you went up they became slower, and as you approached the final 5-10 levels they became really slow (slower than current FFXI speed, I'd be leaning to say).

Such a system still requires a bit of dedication and love for your job, but it's much less punishing.
Not saying SE should copypaste this, but they should go a bit more in this direction imho.

[Rustic]

By removing the randomness of skilling stuff by making it where every success gives you experience towards your next skill level and every failure gives you less experience.

This is the norm for every RPG and MMO that has skill levels. The only place where there's any randomness to skill levels is Final Fantasy XI.

Incorrect. If you've ever leveled a single crafting skill on WoW, you know this to be untrue. Or Everquest, for that matter- which is FFXI's chronological counterpart in MMO-dom. Darn tootin you had to skill up there as well- only it was slightly broader categories. 1H edged instead of dagger/sword, for example.

Truth is, if you're sitting there doing things the old fashioned way- you don't have low skill levels. Soloing my thief on EP's? Capped weapon skills, evasion/parry a point or so below cap. On -easy prey-, doing nothing faster than GoV pages with mobs that normally generate 150-80 exp.

Low skill levels indicate you decided having job levels was more important than a character than can do the basics. Skill up now or skill up later, you put in the time either way. Yeah, you can have a job leveled to 99, a dozen of them, two dozen. Somewhere in there, you're going to end up putting in the time facing off against opponents or casting that gets you to skill caps.

I -do- think that some skills are under-increased by normal play- summoning magic is at the top of that list. Those are the ones that need to see higher skillup rates put in, but when I can sit there swinging at a high EP monsters solo and watch the 0.1-0.3's rolling in and see a few levels of skill per mob...that's OK by me.

[Zhronne]

It saddens me to see how many people hate the skill system.
On one hand I recognize it's a bit too punishing and something should be done to loose it up a bit (something HAS been done, it's just not enough yet), but on the other hand I really like it.

It saddened me a lot when I noticed they removed it completely from FFXIV, which I was hoping to be FFXI's successor in the world of MMOs.