Skill advancement is partly out of the control of the players, as they might be roped into doing favors and so on during downtime. This is not the problem. The problem is the fact that tests on endeavors can get bonus dice from assets and - the way I read the rules - even lores in some cases.
This means that players who are good at finding creative ways to make their assets and lores relevant will be throwing more dice during endeavours, which will let them fail more rolls and advance faster than less skilled players. With some players, it also turns every downtime into a long negotiation, as they go through every single asset they have to try to eke out every advantage - indeed, this is a problem with the skill system in general, some players almost view it as a failure if they can't get the highest possible allotment of extra dice.
But, it gets worse - endeavours can be used to gain assets, which will train the skills you need to get more assets, as well as giving you assets to improve those skills. In the hands of a skilled player, a character can be turned into an "advancement engine".
Luckily at my table, the playes help each other with this, so they advance roughly at the same speed. So my gripe is mostly the "can I use my workshop?" "can I use my cart?" "can I use my military lore?" dance for every roll. You get that with a lot of checks, but its especially prevalent during downtime.
Another problematic aspect of the skill advancement rule is that players will sometimes take downtime endeavours that don't make sense, to increase their skills. And when a favour does get called in, it can sometimes feel like a double penalty - its bad enough they don't get to do the thing they want between adventures (which might even loose them treasure they had planned to invest), they also may have to advance some skill they don't care about. This also makes some contacts very unlikely to be attractive as someone to owe favors, such as the one favoring the Throwing skill...
I won't houserule this for my current campaign. But in the future, I am tempted to look at some other mechanic for skill advancement - probably just requiring XP for that in the same way as for stats (though possible a separate xp pool, call it skill points for instance), and discoupling it entirely from endeavours.
Or possibly, just possibly, finding some way to make assets and lores valuable without having them grant bonus dice. Some assets have that - the small but vicious dog, the plate mail. Same with some lores. Maybe all assets and lores should be like that, and never grant extra dice. That would solve all the problems.
Better ideas are welcome, post them below!
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