Skill Gain: Ambush vs Abilities

[Dorn]

So, as I'm sure most of us are aware when you ambush a target from stealth successfully you cause its defenses to drop down to near the real low end of the spectrum. What is interesting to note, is that despite the creature's defenses ending up at say 100 when it is normally 1000... when you land your hit, it will still treat it for gain purposes as though the creature had a 1000 defense.

What I think would be very nice to see, is if this was somehow able to be translated to the usage of abilities as well. Currently, if someone tackled a Creature, knocking it down and stunning it, and then took a swing at it, any chance of gain is diminished by that loss of defense. The same with the more injured a Creature gets. It slowly begins to lose its defenses as it gets injured/exhausted, until by the end of the fight you've a very high chance of not getting any gain at all despite the work having gone in to defeat/kill it. It is possible this applies to group pushdown as well. A group of adventures who took on a Drakolin, might not get any attack skills (except maybe defensive, if they managed to dodge anything at all) because there was enough of them fighting it that its defenses dropped down so low.

I think it would be nice, and a lot more intuitive to new players and a lot more interesting hunting if as I said, this was changed. Got abilities that weak and hinder your opponent? Use them, it will help you train and keep you on the field instead of... got abilities...? Don't use them, you're just slowing your progress down.

Whether just base skills are used for combat gains, or some other way of doing it? I don't know. All I know, is I think this would encourage both more group play and also people being a little more active in how they train.

[Tamsin]

Good ideas. We should be rewarded for landing abilities and grouping together!

[Dorn]

You've got the bonus of grouping up to land various abilities as well. Get that really tough mob on its butt, and start hitting it.

[Lun]

There are many hindrances to using abilities, magic, or even grouping up. Flanking an enemy, disarming, hamstringing, shoving, or otherwise somehow knocking an opponent over all result in your foe giving you no gains. I agree that it's a bit counter intuitive that abilities and grouping take away your ability to skillgain, and I think this is a great idea.

On the other hand... the potential for abuse is pretty high. But is it really abuse if it's intended that hindering your opponent grants you skill? I don't know.

[Dorn]

I wondered about abuse, and thought... how would it be abuse?

The worst possible case scenario I can think of, is getting a few people together to completely beat down mobs so they can't move, and get skill gain from it still. Then I thought to myself, well if they're at the point they can get gain from those mobs, each, then the abilities are just making it easier for them to do so, more interesting, and they're grouping to do it.

More interactive combat, and grouping... like you said, is that abuse? I'd prefer that to some of the number juggling to find reasonably "decent" mobs to practice skills on.