Hello Sark,

This is the same issue as described in this bug report

Here is the full explanation of the current system copied from the other thread:

Here is how both the skill and stat trackers are implemented:

The trackers keep track of uses per day for the past 7 'active days'. An 'active day' is a real life day during which the player has logged on. If a player logs on every day during the week, the tracker should be showing the recent uses for that week only. If a player logs on once per month, the recent uses would encompass 7 months of that player's time.

When the trackers began, the numbers were all set to 0. At the end of the first active day, the numbers for a particular skill would look something like this:

day 1 day 2 day 3 day 4 day 5 day 6 day 7 total
87 0 0 0 0 0 0 87

At the beginning of the second active day the numbers would look like this:

day 1 day 2 day 3 day 4 day 5 day 6 day 7 total
0 87 0 0 0 0 0 87

At the end of the second active day the numbers would look something like this:

day 1 day 2 day 3 day 4 day 5 day 6 day 7 total
63 87 0 0 0 0 0 150

And so on....

As players only see the total recent uses, these uses can only increase until 7 active days have passed. After 7 active days, the numbers can go up or down and even end up back at 0 if the player is not using that particular skill.

For example, at the end of the first active week, the numbers could be something like this:
day 1 day 2 day 3 day 4 day 5 day 6 day 7 total
58 17 68 53 22 63 87 368

At the beginning of the next active day they would be like this, with the total dropping:

day 1 day 2 day 3 day 4 day 5 day 6 day 7 total
0 58 17 68 53 22 63 281

That's how the system is intended to work and is actually working.

There is one major problem though. The 'active day' is not being updated as often as it should. It currently requires the player to be online during the day change (and it may have other problems causing it to not update even at that moment). If the player is not online at the right time, he can be stuck piling up thousands of uses in one active day.

Looking at the data I see that:

Some players have had their active day updated many times with total skill uses going up and down (which is how it should be).
Some players have had their active day updated but only a few times since the launch of the trackers, so their uses are piled up on several 'active days' and their total has never decreased.
Some have the full week with numbers, so the next time they are updated (happen to be on at the right time), they will lose uses (as they should).

Players that played when the trackers were launched are more likely to have thousands of uses piled up on one active day as we used to restart the server every day which was also preventing the trackers to update properly.

What happened with your character is that your tracker finally updated an seventh time, correctly setting day 1 to 0 and removing the use counts that were piled up on day 7.

So the real issue here is that the tracker update needs to be revised to make sure it updates daily on days when a player has logged in and not just if the player happens to be logged in at the exact moment that the date changes.

In addition:

Skill locks have no effect on 'recent uses'. Recent uses are supposed to be exactly just recent uses within the past 7 real days. I know it hasn't been updating correctly for players and so the system has been messed up since day one. It does update if you happen to be logged in during an update, so this is what must have happened.

On the current Test Server I've correct the system to work as it was originally intended. There's been a bit of discussion about it in this feedback thread.

I'll explain the Skill and Stat Tracker to make sure that its function is clear. Now that the trackers are corrected this is how they should work.


- Both trackers update once per real day.
- The trackers update ONLY for players that have logged in during that specific day.
- Each update, the current day uses are set to 0
- For Stats only 7 days of recent uses are stored
- For Skills, 7 days of recent uses are stored AND a running total is stored.

So, you will now see both 'recent' and 'total' uses.

Also

- Total uses should never decrease.
- Recent uses should decrease every real day during an update as a day full of uses is dropped and the new day starts at 0. If you had no uses for a skill 7 days prior to the current day (the day that is dropped), then your recent uses for that skill won't change during an update.

I hope that's all clear. If not, please ask any questions to clarify the system.

Thanks

He meant, skills who have uses all the time drop. as far as i understood, only skills that hit 0 uses can decay, not?

Ok. I'll wait for clarification from Sark.

What I understood is that the 'recent uses' on his skills, including skills set to + dropped. This is correct and how it should have always been. The reason they dropped is that his counter updated because he was logged in during an update.

The actual skills should not have dropped, just the 'recent use' count.

There is a 'total use' count for skills on the Main Servers but it does not display anywhere. It does display on the current Test Server.

No, this is not correct. When you gain in a skill AND your skill total for that group is over the 'soft cap' limit, the 4 least used skills should slightly decay. The decay is based on the number of recent uses. For example let's say your resource skills are as follows:

Fishing - 320 recent uses
Hunting - 275 recent uses
Logging - 471 recent uses
Terraforming - 523 recent uses
Foraging - 84 recent uses
Scavenging - 254 recent uses
Forestry - 102 recent uses
Resources - 193 recent uses

If you gain skill in Hunting and there are no locks set, the least 4 used skills should slightly decay. The least 4 used skills in this case are:

Foraging - 84 recent uses
Forestry - 102 recent uses
Resources - 193 recent uses
Scavenging - 254 recent uses

The decay is distributed based on recent uses so:

Foraging will decay the most
Forestry will decay second most
Resources will decay third most
Scavenging will decay the least

Because the skills have similar recent use counts though, the difference in decay may be barely noticeable (if at all after rounding for display).

More than skills may decay IF you have more than 4 skills with 0 recent uses. So for example, let's say you had 0 recent uses in all skills and gained in Hunting. The remaining skills will all equally decay slightly, because there is no way to determine which are the least 4 used.

At no point do skills automatically decay without another skill being gained. The skill balancing function ONLY runs when a skill is gained.

If something is still not clear let me know.

Thank you for the reply.

My question was about the affect of the + lock on recent uses.

What I dont get, Is how was I able to keep the uses on a skill i hadnt used in a very long time.
Ie Firebuild, It was around 20k uses, but I kept it on + and never used it
BELIEVEING (it seems incorrectly) that the + was protecting those uses.

And then (seemingly) those uses are now like 6.

and the its the same story for Tools, never used it, kept on + had around 10k maybe a lot more i cant recall.
also at the same time as firebuild the uses dropped to like 26.


I play a lot...... How can I have continually miss these skill updates that were supposed to decay my uses over time.

Sark

a few questions:

what about skills on lvl5 ? do my skills drop if i have 0 uses on 4 skills which stay at lvl 5?

so neighter "plus" nor lock will protect a skill after the upcoming patch?


also:
will the diffrence between decay and gain be the same than before, mean people can skill max all skills over time because the "pool(?)" per group increase?

currently it sounds a bit like a doomscircle. if i raise 1 skill i loose skill lvl on 4 other skills. as soon as i start to fix the first one of them i will again loose lvl on the other 3 + one more. how will this system work once you reached the softcap of a skill.

as i mentioned in the testbuild thread, 2 locks are not enough to control the decay anymore. for people who worked over year on their charackter, this would be a asskick because the:
1. wont have a chance to lvl skills which didnt hit lvl 100 anymore
or
2. will mess up the skills they put on 100.

Yes, the + only protects the skill from decaying. It doesn't affect the use count reset. So I checked the data and what looks like happened is that the update cleared out the 7th day where you had a lot of fire building use counts. The total use count (around 10k I think, I checked quickly) is still in the database and will be visible when I patch the next update.

Playing a lot and missing the skill updates may seem strange but it's a matter of timing.

You could be logged in almost all day but if you're never on during the moment the update runs (midnight UTC) the tracker wouldn't update for you. Or you could log in for 10 minutes a day at the right time and your tracker would update every day.

To add to the problem, the tracker day would reset during maintenance, so days I restarted the server wouldn't update the tracker reset at all. In the earlier days I ran daily maintenance so skill uses were piling up on one day in the database for a long time.

To further add to the problem, I think there was an issue with the update clock that would reset the day when the first player's tracker updated during an update. if this is true (I'm not 100% sure but there was something strange in the code at that point), only one player online at the time would have the tracker updated that day!

To sum up, yes, the tracker update was (currently is) broken. It's corrected now on the Test Server and will be patched out correct.

I'll set this report as 'not a bug' as the locks don't have an effect on the skill use count.

Thanks!

Ok, just to be clear: I am not changing the skill decay or balancing system. I haven't touched that code at all. What I am describing in these posts in how the system is supposed to be working on the live servers. Maybe it's not working correctly? If not, it's not going to change with the next patch.

The only thing that I fixed is correcting the skill tracker that counts recent uses and the display so that it shows BOTH recent and total uses as requested.

Plus and lock will protect skills, just as always.

The least four recently used unlocked skills (or skills set to minus) will be the the skills that decay, just as always.

Or... has this not been working?

More info here