Quite many people have maxed out their skills. I didn't check how many people have maxed at least one skill or how many maxed skills individual people have, but here are some stats.
1) % of people who have discovered that particular skill.
2) % of people who have discovered at least 1 skill.
Code: Select all
skill name Maxed 1) 2)
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Farming 600 12.74 10.52
Fighting 15 0.32 0.26
Building 103 5.0 1.81
Manufacturing 35 2.46 0.61
Hunting 241 4.91 4.22
Foresting 380 11.73 6.66
Phys. strength 147 2.67 2.58
Mining 151 5.97 2.65
Fishing 78 5.95 1.37
Digging 421 11.02 7.38
Collecting 125 4.77 2.19
Drilling 237 8.93 4.15
Gardening 15 3.73 0.26
Burying 9 0.31 0.16
Refining 127 5.37 2.23
Smelting 28 2.45 0.49
Cooking 448 10.87 7.85
Tailoring 256 7.42 4.49
Man. machines 51 2.26 0.89
Man. weapons 199 4.67 3.49
Man. vehicles 37 1.97 0.65
Shipbuilding 52 3.53 0.91
Man. tools 261 5.8 4.57
Carpenting 89 3.08 1.56
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All 4105 5.77 3.0
The percentual amount of awkwards ranges from 4% (foresting, farming, cooking) to 11% (fighting), with an average of 6.8%. I would draw the conclusion that fighting is clearly harder to train than other skills. Other skills with a high awkward rate (9%) are burying and refining.
The percentual amount of experts ranges from 37% in farming to 22% in burying with an average of 28.3%, which makes sense since most people farm for their own food and some people don't bother with burying corpses, and also the amount of corpses is limited by the amount of spawnings.
Here's another chart that might be easier to read to see the relative amounts of different skill levels.
In almost every category
there are more experts than people with any other skill level. The exceptions are burying, in which skillful, efficient and novice are pretty much equally common, and smelting in which expert, efficient and novice are equally common. In shipbuilding experts and skillfuls are also equally common.
It appears that skill levels are only assigned when the character actually tries the skill (although I assume everyone still has genes from spawning). There are 24 skills (including physical strength but not counting states like hunger) and only 42 people have discovered all of their skills. 5706 people have discovered at least 1 skill. There are 5796 living, approved characters in total, which means 90 lazy people have never worked on a project or tried to hit or drag anyone.