Training excessively with dummies

[Gwain]

Today someone pointed out to me that dummies could be trained with exclusively through attrition over long periods of time in order to max skills that made little or no sense in training with wooden dummies. Skills like hide should not be trainable with a simple construct like a dummy because from the rp perspective they are simply practice targets that to a degree can help you train skills but should not yield an advantage over more complex mobiles. So I would suggest severely limiting skills trained up through easy targets like dummies to avoid players mastering skills with little effort and interaction with the world and fellow players. It's the same case with weapons. A player should not be gming weapons by repeatedly killing dummies or rats, they should be forced to commit to attacking increasingly challenging targets in order to obtain a better understanding of the weapons they seek to master.

Now some will claim that they lack the time, patience or facilities associated with forming groups, solving complicated puzzles or even roleplaying to the level of others. That the only way they can play is this way. I would suggest that we let them do what they can but limit them from organisations, reward types and applications that might be better suited to someone more immersed in the rp of their character and more active in the world. It's one thing to be mechanically superior by repetition it's another to be superior by experience and evolving game play.

Keeping in mind that this may not be codable in the he current game it still helps to mention it and present solutions for it. Not in the spirit of penalising players and forcing them to change but to add incentives for those changes by denying some rewards they would otherwise have.

Just my opinion.

[Kivore]

I like it, perhaps a system addition where less challenging mobiles give you a negative to skill ups and more challenging mobiles giving a bonus to skill ups?

[Hrosskell]

You already get more experience from targets your level, and as far as I knew this applied to skills as well; there's also the idea that you're getting less skills per mob on small targets than larger targets, so eventually it's more rewarding for your time to go fight tougher mobs. The amount of uptime vs. repop vs. need to heal eventually makes it much, much more favorable to kill higher level mobs.