Skill of The Month Stats

Wow Tim I'm interested to see how much you'll have at the end.

Just wait until I hit my second wind.

I hope that I'm posting this in the appropriate thread, as I couldn't find a way to create a specific topic under SKOTM.

I have a suggestion regarding future SKOTMs, that you might want to consider. It seems as though the competitions are rather unfair, depending upon who signs up and what their skill level is for that particular SKOTM. Specifically, there is no way someone with level 70 in a skill could compete with someone with level 90+. The training methods that become available as you increase your skill level give much more experience than those methods available to lower levels. So obviously, you would gain more xp putting the same amount of time into training.

What I would suggest is that you have two categories for SKOTM. One, a basic category that is open to players who have less than a particular level, say level 80, and a category for high level players (above level 80). Or perhaps more than two categories, novice, intermediate and advanced. This would make for better competitions because the lower level players wouldn't feel like they have to compete against someone who may actually have 99 in the skill they are competing in.

For example, this month I have entered into SKOTM competition which is cooking. This is a relatively easy skill to train. The last time cooking was the SKOTM was January 2010 and the winner achieved 30 million xp over the course of the competition. That's 1 million xp per day. Even for someone like me with 95 cooking that is quite a task to compete against. {can you say "no life"?} I can't imagine someone finding the SKOTM fun if they don't even have the ability to cook sharks or rocktails. Would be quite discouraging actually.

Anyway, the competition is underway. After only one day into the competition, the leader so far (who also happens to be the winner of the last cooking SKOTM) is again out in front with 1.5 million xp earned in only one day. I guess it's time to catch up LOL.

Good luck everyone.

Uncle Dano,

I see where you're coming from and the point you make is good, however.

Everyone knows Cooking is easy xp. If there were a novice and experienced category that were level 80- and 80+ then it would have to automatically upgrade you to the experienced category once the contestants reached level 80 because the experience gain is so fast. Otherwise you get nearly the same issue because after 80 Cooking you get fast xp. Also, everyone knows what the skill will be a few days before it happens. For skills like Cooking this is plenty of time to get level 80.

This is a competition, competitions are won by those who've prepared. You don't see one person win every month consecutively because they can't prepare for every month. When one person shoots out in front for one SKOTM it's their time to shine. Chances are you won't see them in any SKOTMs for atleast a month. The same issue of 'unfairness' could be seen in almost any SKOTM. Most of the time it's owned by one or two people. These are the ones that prepared. I only have 80 cooking and hate cooking but if I had prepared I could've had enough sharks or rocktails to get 10-20m cooking xp this month. I don't like cooking though so I don't sign up or prepare for it.

I don't usually see people complain much about one person getting lots of xp during a SKOTM because we expect to see one winner. I don't know if this is just now getting on people's nerves or if it's because it's cooking or because of the current person in first place. If Cooking is the problem maybe we should remove it from the list for a year. If it's the contestant, I don't think we should exclude previous winners from SKOTM and SKOTY. That would not be fair.

If you look through the archives you'll see that 9 times out of 10 the majority flatlines their xp gain after the first few days. Many times the winner gets a chunk of experience - enough to win - and then floats around doing nothing and watching everyone teeter off. Through the archives you can also see that some people prefer certain skills and do well on those skills. Southrend won Crafting and Smithing, twice each. Should he not be allowed to compete in the next smithing competition because he earned the win previously?

I'm just giving my opinion as an innocent bystander who has not won a SKOTM yet.

P.S. 1m xp every day isn't really that hard for someone who devotes time during a SKOTM.

There must have been some rollback with his highscores table on Jagex's end. Not our problem. It's happened before. It auto corrected with the next update.


As for Uncle Dano's comments:
You could segment skill of the month into categories as you say but where do you stop? A decent range for Cooking wouldn't be a decent range for Farming or Slayer. You also have the problem of people moving between brackets as Jason said. We had this discussion once or twice when Skill of The Month first started. It has to stay this way since anything else would be too complicated to manage.

With that being said, everyone has the same amount of notice when the skill is chosen (1 week). This gives plenty of time for a person to plan their strategy and stock up on resources.

Oh and you won't see Cooking for another 3 months.