Is it me, or do riding and athletics level too slowly?

[yeahchris]

All of my other skills are outpacing them by a pretty ridiculous margin. Especially weapon skills.

 

[Neodymus]

Riding levels up pretty fast since you do more damage than on foot. But yea, athletics is a drag even with full focus and 6 endurance.

 

[Ni]

My riding seems to go up pretty quickly at least to 60 or 90 fairly quickly (I restart a lot since factions snowball out of control so much). It doesnt go up as quickly as weapon skills, but I really wouldnt expect it to.

I ride a lot in combat as well as across the map so I dont know if that makes a difference or not.

 

[yeahchris]

Seems to me like they made it go really slow since they are essentially passive in nature and constantly being used. But it doesn't really feel right from a gameplay perspective. If I need to level one or the other up there really isn't jack **** I can do about that. There should be a way to actively train skills in a game where you can only increase skills through use.

 

[Poddicus]

Riding is okay, for the most part

Athletics... lol
Skill can't go up if I'm never off my horse

 

[Northcott]

I tend to split my time between mounted and not. Athletics feels like it increases at a significantly slower pace than Riding; perhaps due to the difference in damage done when riding.

 

[jramm]

I ride a lot in combat as well as across the map so I dont know if that makes a difference or not.

You level up by your mode of transport on the map. If you have a horse equipped, you slowly level up your riding ability, and if not, your athletics ability.

I used that to my advantage in my newest game, where I built a character that was entirely focussed on trade, leadership, etc. because I was going to be a steppe merchant guy. I neglected athletics (actually, the top two fighting categories). Big mistake when it comes to things where you're forced to fight on foot (like hideout quests), so I started travelling around on the map without a horse.

 

[qmax]

I rather like the experience system but to me the issue can be that they have required very specific tasks for the experience. I can lead my army into a 100 battles all successful and leadership has not moved. So to me the system is reasonable but too rigid.