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 |
March 2002 News:
|
^ top-I Stand Corrected.
[Nieves] March 31 - 11:02 PM EST | Well, I fucked up.
Remember my little tiff over the house thingie?
ICQ History:
Me: I don't know, perhaps we should talk about the deal itself
You: Hehe. Small house, east of Yew. About 2 minutes walk/run.
Me: So what are you looking for in exchange?
You: Regs and Ingots.
Me: how many of each?
You: Well, I bought that house for 250GP. Is that too much in ingots and regs?
Me: 250gp? Wow, you're quite the bargainer
You: Ack. I meant 250kGP :p
Me: hehe I'm sure I could hook you up with about 50 black pearl if you want.
Me: The good news is I do have a lot of ingots
You: Aight.
You: What's fair to you?
Me: I don't know...I hate to sound like a trammie and say "make an offer" but ... well, make an offer
would you accept gold to make up for the slack?
You: sure. that's cool.
You: I would rather have all ingots and regs but that's cool.
Me: I've got 5k ingots, what's that worth to you?
Me: plus a bunch of colored ones
You: 20x5000 (market rate on ingots was 20 last I checked)
Me: So how does 5k iron ingots and 6k of each reg sound?
You: hmmm....sounds good.
Me: Alright, give me a little bit to get it together
You: np.
You: I will show you where the house is first so you can see if you still want it.
Me: alright
I am officially a dumbass.
Gawd I need a fucking break.
Hasta. |
^ top-I Am Not One To Mess With
[Nieves] March 31 - 5:51 PM EST | But I am nothing compared to the Terror.
Check it.
Sick man, oh so very sick.
Hasta. |
^ top-Humans Are Greedy Sons of Bitches
[Nieves] March 31 - 12:01 PM EST | Months ago, I had houses across 4 shards. Seeing as how I didn't play on them as often, I went ahead and gave away a house on Siege and a Small Tower on Catskills. The Small Tower was a gift, but no biggie. The Small on Siege I paid for with my own gold. I gave the houses away for people that were needing places to chill in and for "UOPG Guild" type efforts on said shards.
Well I log on to Siege doing my "character refresh run" and I find I am no longer friended to the house and I find this on the sign:
So tell me True Believers, do I get pissed or leave it the fuck alone?
My first reaction was: what a bunch of fucking asshoes.
I have thought about EBAY but because EBAY is the Devil, I have avoided doing it. Anyway...
What-fucking-ever.
UPDATE: I was wrong. Read the April 1st, 12:02 AM Post.
Hasta. |
^ top-UOPG Publish
[Nieves] March 30 - 12:27 PM EST | That annoying load delay is gone.
Both the Games Lists at the bottom and the top 10 list at the right are gone.
Both of them can suck a lemon. They could've at least sent an email out to their subscribers that they went down.
Asshoes.
Hasta. |
^ top-From The Mouth Of Watts.
[Nieves] March 29 - 5:40 PM EST | Watts speaks.
A direct quote when he was talking about Factions: "If they don't want to be involved: Fuck them, they can go to trammel!"
Own.
Too bad he doesn't powergame anymore. Fag.
They also have a contest for a contest going. Check that out.
They promise to have cool prizes. No, they won't give away pictures of redrum whuppin Watts with a horse prod. Sorry.
Hasta. |
^ top-And On A UO Game Play Note
[Nieves] March 29 - 5:22 PM EST | Looters Inc. strikes!
We all need this laugh. I mean, after the harsh reality this morning, we need something to get away from all the hubbub and hoopla of the drama that is Ultima Online.
Hasta. |
^ top-The Response
[Nieves] March 29 - 11:24 AM EST | I sit here with my bowl of corn pops contemplating this past week when. lo and behold. I get a message that the "Impy's Article" is up. So off I go to read it. And sure enough, it's there. And boy, it's...um...well. Go read it.
No, go ahead. I will wait. Really. You aren't gone yet? Dammit. GO!
::taps his fingers on his deck::
Ok, good you are back. Now, the question was asked, what are my intentions with writing this here 'response'? Well, when I first got wind of the article, I wanted to work with the author and provide her with the information I have. Especially since I was told the article said I had posted inaccurate information in my original Impy's write ups. In fact, she even says it in today's article:
This article was reprinted in "UO Powergamer's" as well under the title "Impy's Money Bin" I am still confused as to why two reporters would chose to print information they knew to be inaccurate..
Now, she speaks of inaccuracies in my own report? Well, a few inaccuracies of her own came blaring at me like a semi-truck that lost its brakes.
A sidenote: if anyone wishes, they can go to the UOPG Archives and read up on my original articles. Just do a search for Impy. It's ok, go ahead and read it. I can wait.
....
........
..............
Cool. Welcome back.
Now, the question still remains, "what are my intentions? Why would I want to write a response anyway? Nothing negative was really said to or about Nieves at UOPowergamers in the Branwilde piece". Welp, as I was saying, I wanted to work with the author. Answer any questions she had and provide her with information so she would have a complete article. And to answer the accusation of my inaccurate information. And I mean, she is wanting to "set the record straight", right? Well, the conversation with said author, Bitchwilde, did not turn out as I thought it should've. I will let you be the judge:
When she sent me the autho for my Q she said: "I am not here to fool around, get to the point", then I basically asked, "what is your problem" and it started:
Sam 3/27/200 9:10 PM Fooling around? What's with you?
Branwilde/ 3/27/200 9:10 PM ok ignore
Sam 3/27/200 9:11 PM Anyway...you want to talk about the article
you got cooking?
Branwilde/ 3/27/200 9:11 PM no, not really. It is self explanitory.
Sam 3/27/200 9:11 PM Fine. When I burn you with the lie and the
inaccurate info, don't say I didn't try to
work with you.
Branwilde/ 3/27/200 9:12 PM you know what, i don't play that way. youi
can if you wish. but i simply will not be
intimidated. I'm just putting together
information as I understand it.
Sam 3/27/200 9:13 PM I was not trying to intimidate you in the
slightest. I was trying to work with you.
You were the one coming off with "Get tot he
point" and "no not really". If someone is
coming in with an attitude in this, it's not
me. The fact that I came to YOU to work with
YOU should tell you something...
Sam 3/27/200 9:14 PM Now, I will try this one more time: Do you
want to work together on this or not?
Branwilde/ 3/27/200 9:18 PM i am still in the process of verifying my
information with impy. your concern about
what i say and how i say it seems out of
pr0portion to me. I have just learned from
staff at impys that garber did work one
auction after the release of info..and they
are in the middle of an auction now and cannot
verify actual dismissal dates etc. Why would
i want to work with you after the articles you
have published about impys and me? because
after all, i am the one writing the story that
really contains nothing pertaining to
you...don't know where you got ahold of all
that rot.
Sam 3/27/200 9:22 PM I was going to help you verify that Barth did
indeed work an auction I have a screen shot.
And what do you mean Impys and you? You mean
my write up the other day? Please. If you
wanted to do a full report, you would've gone
to Nols and myself and talked to us about the
article. I gave Impy's the benefit of the
doubt and asked him before I posted my article
if he wanted to talk. "Impy's doesnt' do
interviews" is the reply I got. And I have
that logged as well.
Then after I posted my article he wants to
talk to me? Think about that for a second.
When I did do my article after the interview I
put the information up Mandrake gave me and
gave an unbiased opinion.
But since you are already of the mind I am
here to fuck you or have an attitude with you,
i wont' waste your time.
I will wait for your write up.
Then, if you wish, I will notify you when I
have done my follow up to yours. Or you can
just look for it.
Branwilde/ 3/27/200 9:26 PM I did a two hour interview with impy last week
kiddo...why would i go to you and Nols, you
clearly represent one perspective and have
done so. I am in the business of representing
the facts presented by impy and his staff to
me. I did interview impy. It would not
suprise me in the least that he would refuse
you an interview after the kinds of
insinuations Nols made and you printed.
Sam 3/27/200 9:28 PM Listen 'kiddo', I asked impy for an interview
BEFORE I posted my FIRST article. Does that
make it a tad clearer for you? I asked him to
talk to me about the Nols thing she did. He
refused. Are you paying attention yet? And
I do not represent one perspective. I am
simply trying to find the truth as you are.
But, you obviousely feel you have all the
facts. Run with it girlfriend. Run hard.
Branwilde/ 3/27/200 9:29 PM oh you are so tough lol just don't use the
word fuck for a change it will make you look
intelligent
Sam 3/27/200 9:30 PM Nice one. 10 points for Brunwilde.
Branwilde/ 3/27/200 9:30 PM If you are wanting to work with me, why are
you talking to me this way?
Yoiu represent a particular style of reporting
that Impy perhaps finds distastful
Sam 3/27/200 9:30 PM Do you or do you not want the truth?
Branwilde/ 3/27/200 9:31 PM go ahead and tell me your version of the
truth....that is all it is. Your version.
Sam 3/27/200 9:32 PM Contact me when you are off high horse and
have left the smug attitude behind and we can
talk about this.
Branwilde/ 3/27/200 9:33 PM i am listening, if can write in a neutral
manner
Branwilde/ 3/27/200 9:34 PM excuse if you can write in a neutral manner
without accusations.
Sam 3/27/200 9:36 PM No deary. You fucked up with me.
I came to you to talk straight and get shit
all clear and maybe 'help you' see some things
that are being conveniently left out (the
Barth dismissal being a glaring example). You
see, I like Markee alot. I talk to him
frequently. But you are just full of attitude
about me and you don't even fucking know me.
I enjoyed the time. I truly have.
Bubye.
The log is 100% as it happened. Oh, and note the date of this log. It will be important later.
Some could say, "but Nieves, you was mean to her in your 2nd message to her!?" Ah, but if you will note, she started with an attitude as it is. And since I have my mother's Latina, "mira, I no foking tink so" demeanor in me, the Latina Demon came out and said: "No juus no say dat chit tu me!?"
So, what are Nievesy Pooh's intentions? Well, Ms. Bitchwilde hurt Nievesy Pooh's Pheelins. So, Nievesy Pooh is going to take his broom stick from his closet, tell Bitchwilde to bend the fuck over, and feel this. And I hope she's ready because this is going to fucking hurt.
Smile and say cheese, Bitchwilde, because it begins.
First let us look at this statement:
"The day after the original charges of the infidelity of the character BvD also known as Garber to Impy's staff were made public in the "UO Powergamer's " article of February 9, 2001, Mr. Garber worked his last Impy's Faire Auction and was put on suspension as an Impy's Arctic Faire employee."
Hmmmmm. Now if I am correct that would mean the suspension would have been in affect as of February 10th, 2001? Wow, my original BVD article (where I busted him for being a UO Pimp) was posted February 9th, 2002. Here is the header to Noleens own article: Scrooge McDuck and his Giant Money Bin
Submitted Saturday, February 16, 2002 - 2:37:36 AM by Noleeens. Mistake #1
Wait it gets better! Maybe it was a simple typing mistake (we all make them). So, I'll grant that the suspension may have taken affect on February 10th 2002. Funny though since I attended the Impy's Artic Faire about 10 days later and what do my eyes see? You guessed it!
(pay attention to the date)
Mistake #2
You see,I was there: 
I am sure Impy's remembers that. I was kicked about 2 seconds after the image was taken. This isn't a picture that was sent there. I was actually in attendance.
Now see, I had previousely talked about Barth being employed at Impy's with Impy's reps.
Some quotes from my original articles.
First from my article posted February 20 - 8:47 PM EST:
Oh yeah...by the way, Barth Van Dorn worked for Impy's. Or does he still? Oh, let me correct that. The player that played Barth Van Dorn was a part of Impy's crew under a pseudonymn. We all know who BVDorn is right? Right. [...]
UPDATE: An Impy rep denied they make that much gold. They also denied BVDorn works for Impys. Ok, right. BVDorn doesn't work for Impy's. His other character, Garber Devinci, does. Don't you love semantics?
When I posted the article, the 'Garber Devinci' text was a link to the Impy website contact page. At that time Garber was still listed.
A quote from Bitchwilde's article: The big scoop here folks is that Impy's DID fire Garber before the Daily Herald and Powergamer articles were even published.
The big scoop really is, you are fucking WRONG. Oh wait, remember this?
Branwilde/Stheno(21:18 PM) :
[...]
I have just learned from staff at impys that garber did work one auction after the release of info..and they are in the middle of an auction now and cannot verify actual dismissal dates etc.
She stated to me that he did work after the dates mentioned to me personally on the 27th, yet doesn't note it in today's article? So she is in the business of representing the facts presented by impy and his staff to me, right? Did you note the date on the log above? And, if I am correct, today is the 29th of March. Some really responsible reporting there 'kiddo'.
Excuse me while I go wipe this broom stick off.
Ok, where was I?
Oh yeah. Shit, she even seems to contradict her own fucking self:
The day after the original charges of the infidelity of the character BvD also known as Garber to Impy's staff were made public in the "UO Powergamer's" article of February 9, 2001, Mr. Garber worked his last Impy's Faire Auction and was put on suspension as an Impy's Arctic Faire employee.
Later she says:
The big scoop here folks is that Impy's DID fire Garber before the Daily Herald and Powergamer articles were even published.
All I could do was sit there when I put those two together and think: "what the fuck...?"
Continuing right along....
Another quote from my follow up to the "Impy's The Money Pit", entitled "Impy Speaks" posted February 23 - 8:49 PM EST:
"Do you blame folks for being hesitant to work with you since BVD is part of your staff?"
Yes, they would. Without hard proof, how can they dump him? And since no one will talk to Impy's crew at length about what it is that happened with some hard proof, how could they dump him?
A note: From what I understand, in the private Impy's board, BVD received a verbal lashing. One they felt he deserved. So be it.
[...]
Also, the rep told me that the BVD person has NEVER broken the Impy Crew's trust. They are going to judge him based on the lack of "hard evidence" and the 'fact' he never broke Impy's trust.
Me personally? I wouldn't work with Impy's because of that staff member being on board. But that's me. If you have had a good relationship with Impy and their "BVD" staff member hasn't done you wrong, then you be your own judge on that.
But yet, Bitchwilde says: He was fired because he hid some of the truth from the Staff members regarding matters not even relating to how he handled accounts, gold, or women. He lied. He left out an important bit of information, and it was uncovered, and for this he was fired.
Ok, did something change since I wrote my previous articles and what Bitchwilde wrote today? Um...ok.
Now, Bitchwilde says in her article that she interviewed the Impy's staff for two hours and feels she has all the facts and I am sure they speak the truth. Well, I hinted at it in the 2nd of my Impy's articles ("Impy Speaks") that I found an inaccuracy and wouldn't list it. Well, here it is:
Mandrake 1/20/200 7:45 PM Not at all, bud. You get a copy of our
latest article?
Sam 1/20/200 7:45 PM Which one?
Mandrake 1/20/200 7:49 PM Was trying to do a file transfer, but can't.
Put me on your visible list.
Sam 1/20/200 7:50 PM going to have to email it sir
We went back and forth about my leaving pieces of the write up "out". That I was doing some "creative cutting and pasting". Um. Ok. You can read it in my article and on Impy's website. Do a comparison and tell me if there was some "creative cutting and pasting".
Anyway. Then he made the following statement:
Mandrake 1/20/200 8:26 PM yup yup
I wrote the article FOR you. It wasn't an ad.
It was an article submitted as if you'd
written it, to save you the time of having to
ask certain things. I took care of those
things for you already.
I got excited.
Sam 1/20/200 8:26 PM IOh well shit, you didn't tell me that article
was for ME.
I thought that was part of something you put
up on your site before.....
But then realized something:
Sam 1/20/200 8:27 PM hmm...sec.
Mandrake 1/20/200 8:27 PM you caught me in the middle prepping for an
auction...we've got over 60 people here...I
was trying to hurry...my bad
Sam 1/20/200 8:28 PM dude, you didn't write that article for ME
It was posted 3 days ago on impy's.net....
Sam 1/20/200 8:28 PM oh excuse me, a day ago.
Mandrake 1/20/200 8:29 PM It was written yesterday by me...for all the
fan-sites that carry player-run event news. It
got posted to our site by our news guy when he
saw it on the private BB.
Sam 1/20/200 8:29 PM :n ods : So you can't say it was posted for ME
directly.
That may sound like semantics, but I am just
pointing something important out.
At that point, I should've listened to the bell ringing in my head. Semantics or not, it reeked of bullshit.
She hinted that maybe it was a smear campaign by the girls hurt by BVD in the title of Bitchwilde's article and in her introduction: How is it that the infidelity of BvD/Garber combined with the ladies he used results in attacks on Impy's Artic Faire?.
I will agree that maybe, just maybe, some of these girls that were hurt had it in for Impy's. But all Impy had to do was distance himself from BVD/Garber, not defend him:
Mandrake Wrote:
Welp...what I've been told by anyone that would actually talk out of the front of their mouth vs. the side, is that he flirted with many and some fell in love with a damned cartoon character in a role-playing game. Let's not go there, ok? It'd really be ignorant for me to have to go play stupid games like Ari did. A huge ad to say your cartoon character was cheating on you with another cartoon character is rather pathetic. While it is just as pathetic on his part, it does not have a thing to do with my staff, nor the hundreds of customers who submit/attend Impy's. Get real.
Um...ok. And I am sure you can see the inconstancies in his supposedly current stance with Bitchwilde's article and previous statements. Hell, from the way it was written, that was their stance the whole time. Yah, right. Psst.
------
The only inaccuracy I can think of in the articles Noleens and I wrote had to do with Nols' math. It was originally wrong. And it was stated as such in BOTH our write ups. If that's the basis of their inaccurate reporting claim, then they need to get a fucking clue.
Also, as far as this issue of Impy's giving interviews or not, at first Impy's did indeed deny my request for an interview. "Impy's doesn't do interviews" was the general answer. Hell they denied Noleens request as well. I feel, in my mind and heart, that the only reason Impy finally relented to live interviews was because of the pressure they were feeling. They lost their advertising platforms. They were losing money (gold or cash, you decide). They wanted to get back in with the community and get some "credibility back". Well, you saw how I ended my original "Impy's Speaks" article. I made my conclusion and I left it for you guys to decide. Do business with them if they were good to you. If you have a problem with them, then move on. At this point, I say fuck them.
You know, I could sit here for the next hour continuing to break down the rest of her write up and provide even more information to totally refute Bitchwilde's piece. I could sit here and further destroy Impy's fucking reputation as a "reputable" business. But they already did that on their own. Sorry Mandrake/Impy/Whomeverthefuck you want to call yourself. You picked the wrong reporter to do today's piece.
And all you had to do was be upfront and honest. But you failed.
I seriousely have to question Bitchwilde's integrity. In fact, I will just say it. You fucking lied. You are wrong. And I wonder why she is on the staff at MD or the other website she writes for.
I would fire her fucking ass on the spot. She knew she had inaccurate information and she went forward and posted it anyway. Totally irresponsible journalism. And this is supposed to be a person that has been writing for years. Psst.
Go read all the articles and you be the final judge.
As far as anyone from Impy's camp emailing or ICQing me and wanting to talk about it further. Don't fucking bother. I will delete the emails and ignore the ICQs. In fact, don't even read my fucking website or come to my forums.
Nieves is done with you.
*nieves releases his grip on the broomstick*
Off you go Bitchwilde, Nieves is done with you too.
UPDATE: 2:58PM CST: MarkeeD seems to be down right now. If they don't come back in a day or if the article is gone if they do come back up, I will post my copy here.
Hasta. |
^ top-Mace Beatdowns
[Kamikaze] March 29 - 12:29 AM EST | Some of you may have noticed I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve always been the sort of type who expounds quality over quantity. Lately there has been quiet the hubbub one these boards concerning macing. Some think it sucks, some think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Well I must admit I’m a bit partial to the skill myself. My first Tank mage (Pre UOR) was a mace fiend – back when Q-staffs drained stm and broke armor. My most successful tourney fighter on Napa (I won 10 1v1’s with him and was undefeated in 2v2’s) was a Swords/Macer/Parrier (again this was Pre UOR). So in remembrance of two of my favorite characters I’m posting what I believe is the best macing template around: The Macer Parrier.
The Macer Parrier (Part I Template and Equipment):
Mission Statement: The macer parrier is about one thing outlasting. Outlasting your opponents stm, their shields, their armor, their potions, and that accursed energizer bunny. The longer the fight goes the happier you should be. Needless to say patience is your prime virtue. You are a walking tank, a warrior’s worst nightmare. You have but two weaknesses: poison and magic.
The Template:
GM Mace
GM Tactics
GM Anatomy
GM Healing
GM Magery
GM Parry
GM Resist
Suggested stats:
Str 85 Dex 90 Int 50
-These stats are balanced to avoid the cheap ass terror that is MB. The reason you need balanced stats is because the MB damage equation looks like this. (Avg mindblast dmg is something like {[Highest Stat - Lowest Stat]\2} with a max of approx 40 damage - whatever is lower)
MB only looks at differential between your BASE STATS. Potions and spells DO affect the differentials as they modify BASE STATS. Bless is a good spell to use because it increases each of your stats by he same amount so your original differential is maintained. Your Stats are boosted and the MB dmg you take IS NOT!
You also have enough int to cast GH’s or LH according to your need.
Suggested Equipment:
1 Suggested Armor Combo (see bellow)
1 GM War Axe (dmg: avg 20.6 max 32.4 min 10.8)
1 GM War Hammer (dmg: avg 25.3 max 43.2 min 9.6)
1 GM Q Staff (dmg: avg 21.7 max 33.6 min 9.6)
1 Reward Robe
1 Reward Cape (If you can stand wearing them)
5 GS potions
5 GA potions
10 GC/GH/TR
10 Trapped Pouches
50 Bandages
20 Fish Steaks
20 Of Each Reagent.
2-3 GM Metal Kite Shields (The best all purpose shield period) Proof
Suggested Armor Combo:
GM Ring Tunic
GM Ring Legs
GM Plate Helm
GM Plate Gorget
GM Plate Arms
GM Plate Gloves
-9 Dex loss 35 AR
This is because not all armor pieces are created equal, i.e. certain armor pieces impart better over all average protection.
These are the Post UOR values.
36% Chest
22% Legs
14% Arms/head
7% hands/neck
As can see, you want the areas hit most often to have the higher AC, specifically the legs and chest.
(Note all AC values are off stratics, so they may be out of date, and have been compiled under the assumption GM armor renders a bonus of 20% to AC)
AC(GM) % Dex loss
GM Ring Tunic: 26.4 * 0.36 -2
GM Ring Legs: 26.4 * 0.22 -1
GM Plate Helm: 48.0 * 0.14 -1
GM Plate Gorget: 48.0 * 0.07 -1
GM Plate Arms: 48.0 * 0.14 -2
GM Plate Gloves: 48.0 * 0.07 -2
Total Real Average AC: 35.472
Dex Loss: -9
Which means you'll be absorbing 15-30 pnts of dmg on average
This is the best overall protection you can get for under 10 dex loss.
You don’t want too much dex loss because most mace weapons swing slow enough as is.
Part Two with detailed tactics will be coming as soon as I finished my fucking essay on Protestantism and the Spirit of Capitalism!
Adieu.
|
^ top-Things That Make You Go Hmmmmm......
[LadyGrania] March 28 - 1:03 PM EST | Just read your story on the site... I know you feel you had to do that.
All of a sudden you feel like you have to pull your head outta the game?
It happens that way.
There is a woman here at work, who has a 12 year old daughter.. Twice this year her daughter's been hurt at school because other kids were doing things they shouldn't have been. Once she was hit in the eye with a brick and this time she was elbowed in the jaw.
This woman is trying to blame it on the school.. well #1 her daughter was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and #2 logistics say you can't control that many people at once, no matter how hard you try.
Is it much different than UO? Is it much different from anything else?
Oh, how we work to protect that which we consider precious. Even if it's just pixels on a screen sometimes.
Through this STUPID game, I have made some great friendships; friendships that transcend UO and make their way into my "real" life. Those people do not just go away when I turn off the box. Those people live inside my heart.
You, Nieves, are one of them.
Love Ya! |
^ top-Drama
[Nieves] March 28 - 8:46 AM EST | You know, when I started playing Ultima Online, I started playing it because a friend told me it was cool and that I would love it.
And she was right. It is a cool game to play.
Then I got involved in the community that plays this game.
So many people to play with! So much drama to get involved in! WEE!
Jeesuz. It's fucking crazy.
As you already know, I posted an article about an as yet posted article that's supposed to set the record straight about some things. You think Nieves stopped digging to find out more about it? No. Why? Because, it's juicy stuff. It's stuff that makes you go "ooh, ahh, look at this shit!" It's stuff about people that have nothing better to do than to talk about each other and point the finger at anything that is perceived to be flaky or wrong.
And I helped them do it.
Why did I do this to myself? Why did I do this to UOPG? Is it in the true nature of UOPG to become a place for people to air their dirty laundry or resolve differences?
You see, I am not the best writer in our gaming world. I would have to defer that distinction to folks like Lum, Arcadian Del Sol, and Watts (sorry Jinx, Watts gave me a 50, you only gave me a 20; oh, and no refunds). But I write and I do my best at it. And I have to do it right. There are plenty of people out there that are chomping at the bit to just slam Nieves. Oh yes, they are. And I know it and accept it.
When you become a writer that is well known, what you say carries a lot of weight. This week I came to realize just how much power this "Nieves" persona I have created has with the written word. It's amazing to me. I sit there and think: "oh yeah, worship me". Then I stop and say: "wait, what the fuck!? I am just an average guy that happens to have gotten some webspace, a place to write, and an audience that will listen!"
I am no better than any of these "Drama Kings and Queens". I have been caught in some stupid shit. I am not perfect. Hell, I had egg on my face plenty of times. It doesn't feel good. But would it help if someone told the world about it? Well, maybe.
I am not as concerned with my mistakes because I know I make them. I recognize I have weaknesses. I am a stubborn, hard headed, rude, son of a bitch. Oh, and you can ask my mom. She will tell you: "wha? Ju no know who juus foking with?" So yes, she can be one. But I love her. She means well. Hmmm...sorry, I digressed.
Is it my place in our community to sit there and tell everyone: "hey, that's fucked up! LOOK! REALLY! LOOK!!!! THIS IS FUCKED UP! STAND UP! FIGHT! FIX IT! GOSH DAMMIT! FIX THE MOTHERFUCKING THING!" Or is it my place in the community to bring you Powergaming information with my personal commentary?
You see, I have this need to fix anything that's wrong that I am intimately involved with. Fuck the feelings of those involved. If it's going to affect me, I want to get it done right. The problem is, sometimes, it's none of my fucking business. But I justify it because, at one point or another, it will affect people I "care" about or interact with.
Hmmm...people I care about? Who are these people I care about? Do I really know them? There are 4 people in this whole earth that know where I physically live that play Ultima Online. When I turn the computer off, what happens to those people? Are they even there anymore? Are they even real? Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I wonder if any of this shit we create is even real or worth it.
Oh yes boys and girls, we do create it. There are only two things Nieves has to do in his life: Stay Puerto Rican and die. Everything else is a choice.
I choose to get upset when OSI does something weird or stupid or funky.
I choose to get upset when someone decides to lie to or about me.
I choose to get caught up in the drama.
I choose to allow any of the bullshit that's happened happen to me. Well, for the most part anyway, right?
I can turn this fucking electronic appliance off and say: "oh fuck that shit".
But it keeps you in. Like a line of cocaine, once you start, you can't stop. You want more. You want to just keep hearing about the juicy stuff. You want to talk about it and share it. In time, you become no better than the people you are trying to "expose".
The article that's going to "hit" sometime in the near future I am sure is going to piss people off. Anything that "exposes truth" usually does. And in the process of finding out what I found out, I ran into some egotistical bitches that I just wanted to bend them over and put a broomstick in their ass. "CAN YOU FEEL THAT BITCH!? CAN YOU!!!!!!????" But, in the end, I allowed them to get to me. I took the path that would put me in the face of all of that bullshit.
So what do I do now? What do you think I should do?
It's hard really. Because my nature keeps me coming back. I want to fix shit. I can't help it. Thank you mom for giving me that trait. Dammit. I don't know what the answer is. The solution could be a very easy one. But is that a cop out? The problem is, I have my own issues and situations that I need to fix. I have my own things in house that needs fixing first. So, priorities are fucked. Maybe?
I think, that when all is said and done, in the end, none of this pixelized drama is worth it. But if I want to be involved, I need to find the balance and play my game and maintain a good and proper website as well as take care of my own personal shit and be right with that. And I need to remember that I can just give someone the finger, walk the fuck away and just play my fucking game.
Hasta. |
^ top-Game Developers Conference 2002
[Nieves] March 27 - 10:45 AM EST | Read about it.
I will give my impressions as time permits.
Hasta. |
^ top-Homes For The Homeless
[Nieves] March 27 - 10:13 AM EST | “Homes for the Homeless" is a new idea to Great Lakes. The charity will, simply, buy cheap homes, and distribute them to those less fortunate. There will be several guild members searching around Great Lakes for those people and one will be selected and given the keys to their own brand new, furnished house.
OCW is trying to give something back to the community for all the help they have recieved since they were created in beta testing. We are shooting for at least 2 houses to be givin away by the end of the year. The charity will be funded through donations and through charity auctions hosted by OCW, where people can donate items to be sold off with the proceeds going to the charity. For more information about the charity or to donate, you can contact me the following ways: e-mail or by UIN 115461516.
Now that rocks.
Some of us play the game to play the game. Not because of drama queen bullshit, make real life dollars, or for the fun of it.
Wow, what a concept.
Hasta. |
^ top-Another 4 year reward update, well sort of....
[Nissa] March 27 - 10:06 AM EST | If you every visit the UO Boards, you know that there are always a ton of posts asking about 4 year awards. In the Development Board Cynthe gives us an update:
Actually, there's not much to tell at the moment - 4th year Vet Rewards are still coming, but haven't been 100% nailed down yet. Sannio's been working with the Dev Team to get a full list together, but until that list is complete, there's not much else to say at the moment. There will be more info soon!
Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
Now doesn't that clear it up for you all!! Some folks posted about the lack of information, how long and what are the rewards and Cynthe went on to say:
That's part of the info I don't have. Sannio's doc will explain all! :)
Unfortunately, we're limited by the dev team's rigid schedules just like y'all are... when the dev team has to meet a coding or designing deadline, our docs sometimes have to take a lower priority. It's unfortunate, but the team really does try to get us stuff quickly. It's just hard to really explain how full their schedules are, especially when you consider that shard crashers, third party programs, exploits, etc are always popping up, and those require that we drop everything at a moment's notice to fix. Things like that, as well as regular bug fixes and other things, can push out schedules far beyond where they were originally planned.
The most important thing to keep your sanity in this business (and as a player) is to be flexible, and to understand that in a live game, the top priority of one week could be completely dropped the next for a fire that absolutely has to be put out. And if a larger and more crucial deadline looms soon after, then other things can be shelved indefinitely to allow us to meet those deadlines. It happens, unfortunately - we don't have the luxury of putting off major shard crashing and service-affecting issues to complete things that were previously scheduled. (Not to imply that 4th year Vet Rewards are being shelved - they're not!)
I think maybe a good comments from the team topic for some point in the future might be a description of the process used to determine schedules... that might help to explain why some of the things happen the way they do. Note that that's not a promise, since again, I or one of my team would have to work it into the dev team's schedule to get enough info to write it... :)
__________________
Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
|
^ top-An interesting little housing tidbit....
[Nissa] March 27 - 10:02 AM EST | The following was posted to the Development Board:
I just want to say that I've read the threads on housing and while I can't publish any information at the moment I wanted to re-iterate what I said on the boards a couple of weeks ago:
Changes to house ownership and housing decay are coming. They have not been finalized so we are taking an active look at these threads. We are noticing the concerns, many of which we share, which is why we are developing a plan on dealing with the situation. I also want to state that the changes won’t be by most measures sweeping. Although I’m sure some will likely say we are doing to little and some say we are doing too much.
Please be patient and stay tuned!
Prophet
Well, as an old time UO player with multiple houses, I hope my grandfathered account stays in tack. With BODs and treasure maps for GM Cartography, I need more storage!!
Later in the thread Prophet posts:
The changes we are looking into doing would go into effect in the next major publish (sometimes called publish 16)
This is the first anyone has heard about this, wonder what they have in store for us. I do hope more information follows soon.
No one at OSI is talking about this. Basically we are being told that we will be able to test everything once the test center is live. But alas, no date on that one either.
|
^ top-Going To Get Nieves Are You?
[Nieves] March 26 - 9:27 AM EST | I caught wind last night that there is going to be some glaring something about us on Markee Dragon either today or before week's end. Apparently, Impy's has joined forced with one of the models-of-integrity-and- champion-of-truth-in-journalism MD staffers to investigate several of us. Your name was on the list, I believe.
I know that you were one of the ones named as someone who wrote absolute lies about Impy, saying he declined an interview when he didn't. From what I was told, they have uncovered some "star witness" who will provide evidence that we are all a bunch of pathetic losers/liars, etc., including a damaging bit about not only you and I, but [...], Noleeens, Ariyana, Nick Seafort, etc. Basically anyone who has ever said or done anything that kept Impy's name either out of the news or in the news in unfavorable light.
Oh, how fucking hilarious. Let me give people a clue. Assume Nieves knows everything. Because, eventually, he does. And if you don't believe that, I could give you a list of references with stories.
Now, as far as this "Impy's" campaign of smearing little ol' Nievesy Pooh (sorry Watts), I welcome every single one of the readers to go back to the archives, do a search for "Impy", and read the two articles I posted about Impy's over a month ago. And for those Impy's Inquisitioners that wish to say you deny ever turning down interviews, don't make me go looking through my ICQ logs and other saved journals and emberrass you. If you want that, let me know. I will surely oblige. And as far as that Markee Reporter is concerned, I have yet to hear anything from any "reporter" to get my side of the story. (-checks email- Nope, nothing yet.) A courtesy I extended to Impy's. How fucking quaint. Truth in reporting, eh?
You see, after I got my interview with the Impy's crew over the phone, and then posted my article, I was pretty much done with it and haven't said anything positive or negative about them. In fact, I haven't talked about them since that time. Now those pendejos are going to *get* me? Oh fucking please! Get a life. If people aren't advertising the Impy's auctions, maybe Impy needs to look within. Maybe there are valid reasons people won't advertise.
And to put it into perspective for little ol' Impy: One of the things Impy said was, "I am not playing ball with these people anymore."
I said, "He's right about that. The rest of us have all turned in our uniforms, left the field and the fat lady sang. It's just him now, standing out there, hitting a ball against the wall." *snicker*
I have no beef with Markee Dragon or their Fansite. I had a very good relationship with them over the course of the year I was on their network. They took good care of Nieves and UOPG. Hell, they bent over backwards for me. Many people told me lots of shit about MD and Co. before I moved and while I was on the MD Network, but I judged them on the way they treated me and UOPG. I hope they don't plan on souring that experience with blatant bullshit.
I will add this quote:
Don't you feel like one of those stars who gets trash-talked in the tabloids? WOOHOO!!! Now I know what Madonna must feel like!! I think it's an absolute hoot! I have been laughing about it ever since I heard. Considering their recent Stratics smearing campaign, it ought to be pretty funny. They seem to have quite a taste in their mouths for us lately. No such thing as "bad" press, right?
A friend told me in regards to this whole "episode": a battle of wits with the unequipped is about as thrilling and hollow a victory as beating a dyslexic in a Spelling Bee.
Don't fuck with Nieves or UOPG.
::goes back to chasing Purty Pink and Purple Polkadotted butterflies::
Hasta. |
^ top-Nieves On The Daily Herald.
[Nieves] March 24 - 10:44 PM EST | Like you give a damn about it right?
Noleeens: Any thoughts on the GL community as it stands today? You love it, you hate it, you think should change?
Nieves: I loved it, hated it, felt indifferent, and now love it again.
Nieves: What I think should change is this:
Nieves: quit the fucking crying. Get your head out of the game if the in game shit makes you cry like a baby away from the monitor. It's a GAME. Play it.
Nieves: And all this manipulative bullshit has got to stop. If someone is playing mindgames with us as a community, we should step up, give the person/people playing the games the finger, and walk away and not play with them anymore.
Read the rest.
My version isn't censored. ::winks::
Hasta. |
^ top-Its coming. . .
[FrozenFire] March 24 - 4:49 PM EST | *background plays the evil empire score from Star Wars*
Its official on the uo.com boards: The dreaded publish 16 is almost ready to hit the test center. So whatever you planned for your powerhours you should do *now*. Especially all of those who wanted GM resist should get ahold of some scrolls and friends and work those demons. . . .or not.
The rumors that publish 16 will be the death is PowerGaming are quite exaggerated. Some skills just wont be as *easy*. We have all grown soft and complacent in the secure knowledge that we can create a new 7GM in a few weeks (shorter if we really work at it), and these changes will actually be for the better. Mores the pity that 7GM became the norm so quickly. And now there is no turning back is there? Before UO:R people debated whether 7GM was even possible; and now I have several friends with 35GM accounts. But better late that ever, or so they say.
Powergaming will survive after publish 16 and once it hits the servers look here for the best ways to PowerGame post publish 16. But in the meantime, use the time to your advantage. . . |
^ top-Well said..
[Kaara] March 24 - 2:35 PM EST | I found this today on the Catskills Stratics board, Thanks to Darvo Sett for bringing the post forward.
I was reading on the UO boards today when I read a post by Dark_Vengeance that was so powerful I was shaken. I, after some deliberation, finally brought it here because- although troubling it is valid, and brought back to me memories of a game that I loved more than any game either before or since. Oh, I get moments here and there when I remember the way things used to be- like a few months ago when a (young) player told me a wisp had actually spoken to him... I, surprised, asked "what did he say?" to which he replied "he told me I was bad with my weapon then he killed me"... I laughed for hours and remembered being him- but the changes as they happened were so many and so subtle that the fact that I was losing my game didn't really dawn on me. Please heed this warning, read further at your own peril.
I have been playing this game since beta, and over the past year or so, I became genuinely disenchanted with both Ultima Online, and its Development Team. So for almost a full year, I have been trying to put my finger on specifically what I miss about the "old days".
Recently, I realized it in a single moment of clarity.
In the early days of UO, players had to rely upon each other to accomplish most tasks. Skill gain was so slow that not everyone COULD have a GM smith...although everyone certainly wanted one. Not everyone COULD become a GM scribe, or tailor.....and very few could get multiple "mule" characters to high enough skill levels to completely supply their characters. Given the rate of skill gain, even after 5 years, you STILL wouldn't have been likely to see people with accounts that have a single "mule" and 4 adventurers.
Don't worry, this isn't about the rapid skill gain brought on by impatient players and a poorly-conceived powerhour system.
In the old days, you had scores of Dread Lords stalking the countryside, looking to slay anyone in their path. Even leaving town was dangerous.....and dungeons were a central point of conflict. You found friendship fast on either side of the war....because you needed friends to survive.
Don't worry, isn't about statloss or Trammel. It's not about the changes brought on by players who continued to complain about PKs, even after statloss eliminated 95% of all red characters. And it's certainly not about the rushed, inane "solution" to alleviate the housing shortage, and create a geographical PvP switch.
It's about being NEEDED.
Let me say it again.
It's about being NEEDED.
In my early days of UO, I had grand dreams for my original character on Chesapeake. He is a swordsman, named for my favorite character from my tabletop roleplaying days. This is a man that strives to embody all of the traits of goodness in his heart. He killed without enjoyment, slaying undead to release them from torment, slaying Orcs at Cove to protect the town, and slaying PKs to defend those who couldn't defend themselves. He is a quiet, sad man....one that detests what he must do, but dutifully complies because the people NEED him. Without him, who will slay the ogres invading Vesper? Who will chase off the madmen murdering gleefully at the entrance to Covetous? Who will answer the clarion call of someone shouting "HELP ME!" in earnest?
Those days are long since past.
Players now are getting everything they ever wanted. Skill gains that allow maxxed characters in days, and each new scenario or patch seems to contain some new item or change that makes someone MORE powerful. As player powers increase, interaction decreases proportionately.
The Virtue system literally defies the spirit of Ultima 4.....using the names of selfless attributes to describe tasks that players are encouraged to pursue out of self-interest and lust for greater powers, without any appreciable drawbacks. The Unbridled Ambition system is more like it.
Trammel's very existence has driven down player interaction. No longer do you see people running from monsters screaming "Help!" and responding with gratitude for assisting, instead they say "heal" and "mine".
The network of "mules" on various accounts has made NPCs all but useless.....and other players? Bah. If you need something you can't make, you've got thousands of player vendors across each shard. It doesn't really matter if you actually got to know your customer....after all, you got your gold, right?
Ebay runs as rampant as ever, primarily because it reduces "account churn". Sold accounts are reactivated, and stay open longer....and Veteran Rewards actually rewards the players who buy accounts on Ebay, over those that buy the game from a store shelf. Meanwhile, resource sellers have made every conceivable item available...for a price. 5 million gold is less than a day's pay.....1 million gold costs less than some customers weekly allowances.
You have masses of people complaining about only getting a 60% chance to provoke two dragons onto each other!! Yet others are complaining about only being able to use a single dragon as a puppet in battle. And with Golems, its debatable as to whether anyone needs to fight for themselves anymore.....let alone to fight for anyone or anything else.
You have appealed to greed, fear, ignorance, cruelty, and impatience. You've appealed to those that want instant gratification. You've appealed to those whose sole aim is to find joy at the misery of others...all behind a cloak of "innocence". You've appealed to those whose only desire is for ever-growing power and wealth....and to lord it over others. You've appealed to those who don't WANT to learn how to protect themselves....and removed the need for anyone else to protect them. The basest elements of human nature.....some of the most primal and instinctual, and morally deplorable attributes of mankind.
You've stripped the world of any true evil that is left, and turned us all into either legendary heroes, or virtually impotent villains....with no reason for one to oppose the other. None save greed, cruelty, impatience, fear, and ignorance. How are we to fight those evils, those that exist within us all? Make no mistake about it, they are the only evils left in UO.
UO has lost its need for heroes. It has lost the need for people who do things for others without thought of reward.....for others have no need. It has lost the need for people to help those less fortunate than themselves.....for there are few that aren't fortunate already. It has lost the need for people who will steadfastly fight for a cause to believe in.....unless, of course your beliefs revolve around the colors blue, red, green, orange, grey, or black. It has lost the need for those who will protect the weak....for none are weak any longer. It has lost the need for those who will vanquish the wicked.....for the truly wicked are invulnerable to the law-abiding.
Give me a heroic deed to accomplish, and I will be there. Give me a real cause to rally behind, and I will shout its merits to all who can hear me. Give me a reason....no, a PASSION for anything within the world that COMPELS me to log in at every opportunity, and I will. Give me SOMETHING to make me feel like Britannia (and its people) NEED ME, and I will be there to do all I can.
We are heroes that have been denied the ability to do heroic deeds. We are villains that have been stripped of every capacity to be villainous. We are merchants with wares that are available in surplus.
We are 200,000 people with no "supported" means of showing our worth to this world beyond rares, and bank balances, and daemon bone armor, and above-Grandmaster skill titles, and Virtue levels, and fame & karma, and pure mares, and Champion titles, and easily-manipulated "showscores", bounties, or murder counts.
When will UO stop addressing those with ego or self-esteem issues, and start addressing those whose primary interest in a massively multiplayer persistent world was to have a personal and positive impact upon it?
When will UO start living up to its name as an Ultima, and stop being a contest of maximizing skills, and collecting items that don't truly exist?
UO is no longer a "fantasy" game in the sense that it once was. It used to be a fantasy about living in a world rife with sorcery and dragons and evil.....and fighting against that darkness. Now its just a fantasy of being wealthy, famous, and powerful.
The worst torture a hero can endure is life in a world without evil, and devoid of those that need to be protected from it.
Bring the noise.
Cheers...............
While he does not seem to be a big "powergaming" fan I too mist up remembering the days when anyone over 70 parry kicked ass and those with 90 weapon and tactics seemed god-like...
How many of you would trade your 7x mules for that excitement again?
|
^ top-Just something OT that caught my eye.
[Epyon] March 23 - 6:32 AM EST | We always hear about our soldiers doing this and that, here is a tribute to those they leave behind while they are doing their duty. Send this to your wife Gator ;)
The Difference Over the years, I've talked a lot about military spouses...how special they are and the price they pay for freedom too. The funny thing about it, is most military spouses don't consider themselves different from other spouses. They do what they have to do, bound together not by blood or merely friendship, but with a shared spirit whose origin is in the very > essence of what love truly is. Is there truly a difference? I think there is. You have to decide for yourself.
Other spouses get married and look forward to building equity in a home and putting down family roots. Military spouses get married and know they'll live in base housing or rent, and their roots must be short so they can be transplanted frequently.
Other spouses decorate a home with flair and personality that will last a lifetime. Military spouses decorate a home with flare tempered with the knowledge that no two base houses have the same size windows or same size rooms. Curtains have to be flexible and multiple sets are a plus. Furniture must fit like puzzle pieces.
Other spouses have living rooms that are immaculate and seldom used. Military spouses have immaculate living room/dining room combos. The coffee table got a scratch or two moving from Germany, but it still looks pretty good.
Other spouses say good-bye to their spouse for a business trip and know they won't see them for a week. They are lonely, but can survive. Military spouses say good-bye to their deploying spouse and know they won't see them for months, or for a remote, a year. They are lonely, but will survive.
Other spouses, when a washer hose blows off, call Maytag and then write a check out for getting the hose reconnected. Military spouses will cut the water off and fix it themselves.
Other spouses get used to saying "hello" to friends they see all the time. Military spouses get used to saying "good-bye" to friends made the last two years.
Other spouses worry about whether their child will be class president next year. Military spouses worry about whether their child will be accepted in yet another new school next year and whether that school will be the worst in the city...again.
Other spouses can count on spouse participation in special events...birthdays, anniversaries, concerts, football games, graduation, and even the birth of a child. Military spouses only count on each other; because they realize that the Flag has to come first if freedom is to survive. It has to be that way.
Other spouses put up yellow ribbons when the troops are imperiled across the globe and take them down when the troops come home. Military spouses wear yellow ribbons around their hearts and they never go away.
Other spouses worry about being late for mom's Thanksgiving dinner. Military spouses worry about getting back from Japan in time for dad's funeral.
And other spouses are touched by the television program showing an elderly lady putting a card down in front of a long, black wall that has names on it. The card simply says "Happy Birthday, Sweetheart. You would have been sixty today." A military spouse is the lady with the card. And the wall is the Vietnam Memorial. I would never say military spouses are better or worse than other spouses are. But I will say there is a difference. And I will say that our country asks more of military spouses than is asked of other spouses. And will say, without hesitation, that military spouses pay just as high a price for freedom as do their active duty husbands or wives. Perhaps the price they pay is even higher. Dying in service to our country isn't near as hard as loving someone who has died in service to our country, and having to live without them.
God bless our military spouses for all they freely give. And God bless America.
By Colonel Steven Arrington
17th Training Wing vice commander
Goodfellow AFB |
^ top-Blade 2
[Nieves] March 23 - 2:20 AM EST | Uber Vampires.
Awesome fight scenes.
Lots of blood and gore.
Betrayel.
Suplexes.
Go see it.
Hasta. |
^ top-What should I GM before GGS hits?
[Nieves] March 22 - 12:20 PM EST | The answer is simple really. EVERY FREAKING SKILL YOU CAN.
Why? The skill gain system we play under now is familiar to us. We know it's nuances and we know what to do to gain the skill points we want.
We won't know exactly how GGS will affect Powergaming or game play. I am assuming, along with everyone else, that it will slow character progression WAY down. Some are saying that it will just be like the old days and you will just have to work it a little longer to GM your skills. And if you aren't gaining as well, you will get your "push" to gain your skill. Hell, I am thinking it could kill the Powergaming process for us UO players. But before screaming "the sky is falling", I am just going GM all the skills I can right now and let GGS comes when it comes.
Don't worry about "should I do this now or later?".
Once a skill is GMed, it's GMed. You don't have to do it again. After GGS you won't be sitting there crying: 'why the fuck didn't I do that before?'
Hasta. |
^ top-Bard FAQ
[Nieves] March 22 - 8:39 AM EST | In reply to:
Barding questions....(Can the Dev Team Answers these questions as a FAQ or something? I see these questions pop up quite a bit lately. Thanks!
In reply to:
1. I want to provoke a blood elemental and a daemon to fight each other. If I have a daemon dismissal instrument does that mean I have to target the daemon first in a provoke? In other words, if I have a blood drinking and a daemon dismissal is there going to be a specific sequence that I will need to do?
The instrument modifiers are applied per creature as a modifier that reduces the difficulty of using bard skills against the creature. When using provocation, the difficulties of the two creatures are averaged. You can only use one instrument in a provocation attempt. Here are some examples involving an instrument of Daemon Dismissal:
Provoking two daemons to fight: Each daemon becomes easier to provoke by 10 points of skill, meaning the overall chance of success increases by 20%.
Provoking a daemon to fight something that is not a daemon and not an elemental: The daemon becomes easier by 10 points of skill, but you get no difficulty modifiers for the other creature. The net effect is that the overall chance of success increases by 10%.
Provoking a daemon to fight an elemental: The difficulty of the daemon is reduced by 10.0 points of skill and the difficulty of the elemental is increased by 10.0 points of skill. It is a wash, and attempting this provoke is done at standard difficulty.
All provocation attempts treat the first and second targets identically. It doesn't make a difference which creature is targeted first. Think of it as provoking two creatures to fight each other, rather than provoking one creature to attack another.
In reply to:
2. Will dragons auto-dispel and EV or a BS even if continually peaced, or will they only attempt to dispel if they shake off the effects of the peacemaking?
Magic-using creatures will attempt to dispel any summoned creature, elemental, spirit, or vortex that targets or does damage to them. This is a defensive action that will not be suppressed by the use of targeted peacemaking.
In reply to:
3. As question #2 except will other spellcasting creatures (such as orc mages, daemons, blood elementals, etc.) attempt to dispel an EV or a BS even if continually peaced, or will they only attempt to dispel if they shake off the effects of the peacemaking?
Same as above.
In reply to:
4. Double-clicking on an instrument will set that instrument as the default instrument for bard skills. When wanting to switch to another instrument (such as from a blood drinking instrument to a daemon dismissal instrument), will double clicking on the instrument decrease the number of available uses for the instrument?
Playing an instrument by double-clicking it exercises the character's Musicianship skill and flags the instrument as the character's Last Instrument. This action does not incur a skill delay, nor does it cause wear and tear on the instrument.
In reply to:
5. Will having 120 musicianship (from a musicianship scroll of power) give any benefit, or is this something that was left over from a previous bard revision?
Musicianship will be removed from the list of skills able to be raised above 100. It is a non-difficulty-based skill and there are currently no plans to change it to difficulty-based. A non-difficulty-based skill cannot normally be raised above 100.0 skill.
In reply to:
6. When taming a creature and 'angering the beast' (such as a dragon, white wyrm, etc.), will it attack the tamer even if continually peaced, or will it only attack the tamer if it shakes off the effects of the peacemaking?
If a creature becomes angered while being tamed, the peacemake effect has the standard chance to stop the creature from becoming aggressive toward the tamer.
In reply to:
7. If someone casts invisibility on a bard while he has a bard song in effect (e.g., provocation, discordance, peacemaking), will the bard's song cease to function since the bard must remain visible?
The timeout for all bard effects terminating for lack of line-of-sight, being out of range, the bard being dead, or the bard being invisible will be a minimum of five seconds. This means that the bard can become invisible, break line-of-sight, or dash out of range for up to five seconds without breaking his ongoing bard effects.
If someone casts invisibility on the bard, the bard need only become visible again (by moving or performing any number of actions that reveal a hidden character) within five seconds to preserve any existing effects. Leaving the choice up to the bard leaves team play options open while reducing "grief play" potential.
In reply to:
8. If a bard provokes two creatures to attack each other (such as two trolls), will the bard be able to provoke a third creature (such as an ogre) to attack one of the other two trolls already under provocation?
Yes. Furthermore, recent tweaks to the updated bard ruleset remove the "uniqueness" restriction from Provocation, meaning a creature can be provoked by or provoked onto by multiple bards. In other words, this particular game dynamic now remains unchanged.
In reply to:
9. Will the number of uses left in a musical instrument be a cryptic description when single clicking on the instrument, or will the exact number of uses be displayed when single clicking on the instrument?
Communicating precise numbers is called for in this circumstance, to avoid any potential for scamming in the trading of these new magic items.
In reply to:
10. If a aura enchanted creature damages a bard while the creature is under a continual peacemaking effect, will the creature immediately attack the bard since it damaged the bard, or will it only attack the bard if it shakes off the effects of peacemaking?
The radius damage effect is passive. Targeted peacemake will not turn this effect off, so even if the creature does not target anyone it is still possible to become damaged by walking too near the creature. Causing a character damage in this way will not cause the creature to attempt to aggressively target the character.
In reply to:
If anyone else has any other questions, feel free to post them in this thread. Please keep any posts in this thread constructive so hopefully the Dev Team will answer our questions.
Thanks!
- Nadya Modavia.
Other rule notes: The chance for an established Peacemake effect to suppress subsequent attacks will be a minimum of 50%, with the chance scaling upward to 100% depending on the creature's bard difficulty and the bard's skill. This means the difficulty of establishing a peacemake will remain unchanged, but once in effect its ongoing aggression suppression is more effective.
Hmmmm...me reads it again latah.
Hasta. |
^ top-I WILL SKULL FUCK YOU!
[Nieves] March 21 - 1:49 PM EST | HOLY HELL, I love John Mullins!! I wanna bend over and squeeze out his babies and spread for more because he's a GOD DAMN AMERICAN HERO. He can crack a commie's skull by planting a high jacket round through the core of the left eyeball and celebrate with a warm glass of his blood. OOH-RAH! I CANT HEAR YOU. OOH-RAH GOD DAMMIT. I've even seen that piece of commie cry-baby queer-as-folk shit Arcadian Del Sol talking about playing online. Oh My GOD! He is a killing machine reborn god dammit. I saw his war face and it looked more like a whore face but he's working on it. GOD BLESS WAR AND GUNS. GOD BLESS RAVEN SOFTWARE. I AM SO GONNA KICK SOME WET DIAPERED ASS IN THIS GAME.
Arcadian Del Sol's new poster so fucking owns...
If you get a chance, read Arcadian's interview with Calandryll. You will know why Nieves thinks Calandryll is the coolest motherfucker he has met in a long time. When Cal speaks, he gets me more excited than a nineteen year old rice cropper virgin at Fort Apache during weekend leave.
Hasta. |
^ top-Dubugging Your Bards.
[Nieves] March 21 - 12:52 PM EST | For the use of internal Quality Assurance, the new bard code has debugging information built-in that causes targets of bard abilities to announce their difficulty. Furthermore, the bard character itself will announce its overall difficulty for Provocation attempts, taking into effect the averaging of difficulties and instrument modifiers.
I've been given permission to leave this debugging output active when these changes go to external test shards. So, rather than just posting a huge table listing all approximate bard difficulties, for a time you will be able to see the actual numbers in use.
The difficulty will be given as a whole number. For instance, when you provoke a Terathan Avenger on a Terathan Matriarch, the Avenger might say "My bard difficulty is 959" and the Matriarch might report "My bard difficulty is 918". (Those are realistic examples.) Your character would then say "Overall difficulty of provoke: 938".
The overall chance of successful provocation is computed as follows: Divide the difficulty number by 10, and subtract it from the bard's skill level. Multiply the result by two, then add 50%. This is the bard's chance of success. With the above example, a bard at 95.0 skill would have a chance of 50 + 2 * (95.0 - 93.8) = 52.4%.
The bard can attempt any provocation at (Difficulty / 10) - 25 skill points. This is the point at which the bard has a non-negative chance of success. In the above example, the bard could attempt that provocation at 68.8 skill.
Very cool :)
On a different note, people at the UO Discussion boards are bitching (big surprise right) about people putting items from UO up for sale on EBAY. EBAY *is* the Devil! I don't necessarily believe in selling UO items on EBAY but it sure is tempting <-- IGNORE THE DEVIL!
Here is what Calandryll has to say about a specific case of selling a set of 94 Vanquishing weapons on EBAY:
94 swords of vanq out of 2500+ items is less than 4% of the total items for sale. :) And 94 sales out of the hundreds of thousands of accounts is statistically insignificant. Really what buying this items boils down to is a trading of resources. They spend money (a resource) in lue of spending time (another resource). Again, if someone mines for a few days to sell the ingots on an auction site, they are not taking up the only mining spot in the game. People who want to mine for themselves or to mine to sell for gold are not hindered by the few people mining to sell on eBay. Now if there was only two or three spots to mine in the entire game and the auctioneers were camping those spots, keeping other people out, the issue might be different.
Let them EBAY. It's their choice. And it's allowed. To me, the stupid ones are NOT the ones selling the items, it's the ones buying them.
Hasta. |
^ top-IanStorm Interview
[Nieves] March 21 - 11:13 AM EST | IanStorm.com are proud to announce the 2nd UO chat with the Ongoing Design Team. This is your chance to ask all your questions about the upcoming and past scenarios!
With all the changes apparent with the release of Ultima Online: Lord Blackthorn's Revenge, this is one you will not want to miss!
Our special guests will include: Ignatz, Gromm & Augur!
The chat will be held this Thursday, March 21st at 7pm CST in
#StormEvent channel on the Storm IRC Server. You can connect to IRC by using the following server in your chat client:Or you can use our JAVA based chat, by pointing your web browser to http://irc.ianstorm.com/.
The chat will be in a moderated format, but feel free to join in with the general chat in #StormCenter before, after and during the chat.
Events Team
http://www.ianstorm.com
Enjoy.
Hasta. |
^ top-Current Cost to GMing Poisoning
[Nieves] March 20 - 5:59 PM EST | Well, as promised, here it is, my essay regarding poisoning worked along side a newer version of the alchemy system.
The Alchemy Changes
First, for those that don't know, this "new" alchemy system was instated a couple months ago, and instituted a smaller penalty for failing to make a certain potion. For example, at GM Alchemy, you have a 20% chance to create a Deadly Poison potion. Each potion costs 8 Nightshade to make, however, the failed potions carry the same pricetag. For those that aren't familiar with the old system, that equates to about 4,000 Nightshade PER Deadly Poison keg.
Now with the new system in effect, when you fail to make a Deadly Poison potion, or any potion for that matter, you lose only a fraction of the regular cost in reagents. You now only lose 1-4 Nightshade (from what I've seen, the loss is randomly chosen by UO) when you fail to make Deadly Poison, making a total keg of Deadly Poison cost about 1,500 Nightshade to manufacture. Hooray!!
The Total Price(s)
I'll start from what I did before I even started poisoning, then at 0 on up to 100 skill.
Gold Cost
30 Empty Kegs = (500 Gold * 30) 15,000 Gold
37,800 Nightshade = (3 Gold each) 113,400 Gold (Ok, I didn't know the exact amount of shade before I started, this is the total amount I used)
200 Mortar/Pestles = (9 Gold each * 200) 1800 Gold
40 Butcher Knives = (6 Gold each * 40) 240 Gold
1 Pouch = (6 Gold each * 1) 6 Gold (gotta put the knives somewhere :P)
0-35 Skill = 328 Gold for NPC Training
Total Gold Spent: 130,774 Gold Pieces
Nightshade Useage
35.1-60 Skill = (6 Regular Poison kegs @ 200 Shade per Keg * 6 Kegs) -1,200 Nightshade
60.1-89 Skill = (24 Greater Poison kegs @ ~400 Shade per Keg * 24 Kegs) -9,600 Nightshade
89.1-100 Skill = (18 Deadly Poison kegs @ ~1500 Shade per Keg * 18 Kegs) -27,000 Nightshade
Total Nightshade Use: ~37,800 Nightshade
Conclusion!
If you ever GM your poisoning, consider yourself one of the few who have. I consider GM'ing poisoning a great accomplishment, moreso than GM'ing almost any other skill in the game simply because it is one of those skills that requires a great deal of patience, not to mention the incredible value of the rewards granted with the "Grandmaster Assassin" title. Thank you all and good luck!
Give props where deserved.
Hasta. |
^ top-What PvP Template Do I Pick Anyway?
[Nieves] March 20 - 4:04 PM EST | One approach towards constructing your PvP template would be to first consider those templates that are 'easier' to play... with the fewest number of discrete actions per second required and with abilities that tend toward the automatic rather than the triggered. Examples might be parry-warriors or lumberjacks.
The other school of thought is that you shouldn't get into 'bad habits' or lean on 'crutches' and should thrust right in to the most difficult types of templates to play.
My take on it is that when I was learning to PvP, I changed my template a kabillion times as I got real experience as to what combat was like. And no, playing on Test Center is not the same.. on the real shards, everyone isn't a 7X GM, and resource management, risks over losing l33t crap, murder counts and many other factors come into play which are blithely ignored on test center, and you don't get an accurate appraisal of how people will really behave and react.
Fortunately, you needn't worry about rebuilding from scratch all the time if you follow a few rules. Deciding between warrior and mage is the first decision. (thieves are something else altogether and that somewhat throws a kink into my outline, but we'll deal with that later.) As a warrior, you'll have five core skills, and two supplementary skills. The supplementary skills and an appropriate stat combination will define you, and these are what might change as you get experience.
These core skills are: Anatomy, Healing, Magery, Tactics, and Resist. (if you're going to do without Resist, you'd better have a good reason. Being a thief with the many skills associated with it is one reason.) Note that one of your secondary skills must be a weapon skill. The other is free to be anything.
As a mage, your five core skills will be: Magery, Meditation, Eval int, Wrestling, and Resist. Again, you have two free slots to play with that will define you.
So, you'll know that at a maximum only 2 of your skills will be dumped and changed around, so raise the core skills first and toy with various secondary skill combinations.
Thank you, you Rat Bastard.
Hastsa. |
^ top-Memories
[FrozenFire] March 20 - 12:32 PM EST | Time passes quickly. UO has changed quite a bit over the years, and looks like it will change even more with publish 16. Once it hits test well get some more stuff to talk about; how to powergame champions. The new best bard template and so on. But for now, lets look back.
Back in 97 and 98 hardly anyone was a powergame, at least not the way we think of it today. I remember running through some fire fields and ws happy to have my resist up to 45 or so. Of course I was attacked a couple of times by field jumpers, but that was normal (and pretty exciting too). Actually, in a sense I was powergaming even them. Firefields didnt go any damage in guard zones and if you could find a secluded spot noone would call go grey and call the guards on you. I think I finally hit 57 or so, just using the fire fields.
Some time later another method was discovered The Wind resist method. Hiring mages to cast at you in Wind. This was at the time when spells didnt do damage in town. So the thrifty budding powergamers hired a ton of mages and had them positioned in town while they stayed on the outside. Wind with its miniwalls and ample supply of NPC mages made many a player GM resist.
The Wind method was fixed when they made it so mages would cast at you or some such. But, spells still didnt do any damage in town. I know guilds that would team up 10 or more members inside town and then blast one member outside the town limit. This worked pretty well up to 85-90 but was a tad too slow for most people to keep going to GM.
So what was the next big thing? Unattended macroing was HUGE in those days, and it was easy to take a stroll in the suburbia that is UO and see chars casting spells on themselves all night. Some fools even did so in plain sight near banks and such. Enterprising budding griefers, helped themselves to the regs by suicing using, either explosion or DP daggers.
Unattended macroing is what made the 7GM the norm in pvp. Alot of players had achieved the other skills, but GM resist was really rare to see, until unattended macroing became the norm. And to put it in perspective, there was a time when people who claimed to know someone with 7GM were laughed at. . .
Anyways, unattended wasnt the only way to raise resist quickly. STanding on top of Blade Spirits could yield crazy gains and going from 80 to GM was only a matter of a couple of hour. All you needed was a place where the BS could be directly underneath you. Tower wings were perfect for this. Have a friend bandage you and get some heavy armor and you were good to go.
With UO:R unattended macroing was shot down in flames. Powerhour and 8X8 actually made most skills easier, but how to powergame resist? Demons were the answer. They are easy to find and have alot of mana. The new code did make it harder in that you needed a lot of demons blasting you at the same time to gain at high levels.
On my shard at least, the solution was the tower in the hedge maze. Accessible through a semi-secret passage under the farm, demons could be summoned using the brazier at the top. As the demons spawned a couple of floors down, you had time to prepare and as I recall, wooden boxes were the barrier of choice. It was easy to summon 10 demons milk them and then dispel them, rinse and repeat.
The methods have been numerous and creative, but the goal has always been the same: Obtaining the best template and getting there as efficiently as possible.
What are the current powergaming paths to GM resist?
After a while the braziers ability to summon demons were turned off, and a new supply of demons had to be found: scrolls. This is the current "best" method to GM resist and P-Nut were the first to post the method on the powergaming forums. Basically you get a boat and bring a few friends. Have some summon demons on the shore, using scrolls, and some friends to keep you alive with bandages.
If you dont have a reliable supply of summon demon scrolls or friends to help you, you can still use monsters to GM resist. I recommend a visit to the Skeletak Knights in Deceit 2 or trying out the Reapers in "reaper valley" (located just NE of the minoc passage to the Lost Lands). It will take roughly double the time as summoning demons will, but hey, its free!
Note: Some of these methods have been frowned upon by OSI and some were even branded as exploits after a while. If you value your account (and you should) dont go near anything that can get your account into trouble. The current method with summoning demons is nowhere near an exploit so dont hesitate to use it.
Share you memories of training resist in the UO PowerGamer Forums |
^ top-Now This Is Roleplaying...
[Nieves] March 20 - 11:54 AM EST | The Guardians Of Undead Lords at War.
Own.
You know, I just had a thought. The general contention by "hard core PvPers" is that Roleplayers sucks. Well, I have yet to hear "Adam Ant sucks" from anyone and we all know he's big into Roleplaying.
Hasta. |
^ top-Not UO Related..
[Nieves] March 20 - 9:19 AM EST | But I thought I would share:
Richard, (my husband), never really talked a lot
about his time in Viet Nam other than he had been
shot by a sniper. However, he had a rather grainy,
8 x 10 black & white photo he had taken at a USO
show of Ann Margaret with Bob Hope in the background
that was one of his treasures.
A few years ago, Ann Margaret was doing a book
signing at a local bookstore. Richard wanted to
see if he could get her to sign the treasured
photo so he arrived at the bookstore at 12 o'clock
for the 7:30 signing. When I got there after work,
the line went all the way around the bookstore,
circled the parking lot, and disappeared behind a
parking garage.
Before her appearance, bookstore employees announced
that she would sign only her book and no memorabilia
would be permitted. Richard was disappointed, but
wanted to show her the photo and let her know how
much those shows meant to lonely GIs so far from home.
Ann Margaret came out looking as beautiful as ever
and, as 2nd in line, it was soon Richard's turn. He
presented the book for her signature and then took
out the photo. When he did, there were many shouts
from the employees that she would not sign it.
Richard said, "I understand. I just wanted her to
see it".
She took one look at the photo, tears welled up in
her eyes and she said, "This is one of my gentlemen
from Viet Nam and I most certainly will sign his photo.
I know what these men did for their country and I
always have time for "my gentlemen". With that,
she pulled Richard across the table and planted a
big kiss on him. She then made quite a to do about
the bravery of the young men she met over the years,
how much she admired them, and how much she appreciated
them. There weren't too many dry eyes among those
close enough to hear. She then posed for pictures
and acted as if he was the only one there.
Later at dinner, Richard was very quiet. When I
asked if he'd like to talk about it, my big strong
husband broke down in tears. "That's the first time
anyone ever thanked me for my time in the Army",
he said.
Richard, like many others, came home to people
who spit on him and shouted ugly things at him.
That night was a turning point for him. He walked
a little straighter and, for the first time in
years, was proud to have been a Vet. I'll never
forget Ann Margaret for her graciousness and how
much that small act of kindness meant to my husband.
I now make it a point to say "Thank You" to every
person I come across who served in our Armed Forces.
Freedom does not come cheap and I am grateful for
all those who have served their country.
If you'd like to pass on this story, feel free to
do so. Perhaps it will help others to become aware
of how important it is to acknowledge the contribution
our service people make.
Whether this is a true story or some kind of urban legend, I think the message behind it is especially important today.
Our US Armed Forces have been sent to places that we US Citizens sometimes didn't agree with. But that makes them no less important and we should always remember and honor their work and sacrifice. After September 11th, the operations tempo these service members are experiencing on a high track. A track they haven't experienced in I believe 10 years. With what was done in the last 10 years to gut our military and with the smaller amount of resources than they are used too, the US Military has it very hard. They will succeed, but they need our support.
America is at war. It's not a declared one like World War II. But it's war nonetheless.
They are our sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandmothers, and grandfathers. Remember and honor them.
Hasta |
^ top-ScreenShot Contest
[LadyGrania] March 19 - 8:30 PM EST | BestGameShots.com is holding a UO Screenshot contest. Rather than just allowing you to submit the pixels to a predetermined panel, you can both submit, and judge the pictures submitted.
You can check out all the details here.
They say that you can download a program called SnagIt, which I suppose is all well and good, but it's no better than any other screen capture program out there.
So, Submit your shots. Let's see what you got!
Love ya! |
^ top-Can I Use Two Computers To Play UO??
[Nieves] March 19 - 12:30 PM EST | Hi,
To over-generalized answer is that using two computers to play UO is fine, but there's a couple of things to consider first.
If you can manage both computers at once, without leaving one to manage the other, then that's a good start at determining if you're in an acceptable position.
Also, if you spend less than 5 minutes with one account (5 minutes being the "inactive character time-out" period), and then less than 5 minutes with the second account, and keep jumping back and forth like that, then that should be fine.
BUT, if you've set up one character with a continuous macro (or maybe even one so elaborately long that it is essentially continuous) in an effort to allow you to spend hundreds, tens, or even just more than 5 minutes in front of one computer/character and essentially zero time in front of the other computer/character, that's not acceptable--even though you may be in the same room. Basically, we look forward to active players, and passively compelling a character to stay in the game while you're not directly attending the related instance of UO that's running is what we frown on.
For example, let's say you have two computers running, where your "Character 1" is training in combat with your "Character 2."
- If both computers are side-by-side, and you spend a few seconds using attacking Character 2 with Character 1, and using healing rags with Character 1, then switching to Character 2 so as to attack Character 1 and also use healing rags, that's not really an issue, since both accounts are active and there's clearly someone at the helm playing both accounts "simultaneously" (attending to both within a 5 minute period).
- If the player instead stays at the Character 1 computer, and only plays this character as it attacks & uses Character 2 as punching bag, then Character 2 isn't really part of a healthy play atmosphere. And simply switching to Character 2 so as to turn him every so often (or some similar minor activity) to keep him from timing out will not be considered actively playing that account.
I guess, ultimately, when an account logs into UO, there needs to be someone truly playing with it, and not just doing the minimum necessary to ensure the related character doesn't time out.
I hope all that helped.
Sannio
Er...I think the answer is no.
Thanks Sannio!!
Hasta. |
^ top-Request
[Nieves] March 19 - 9:32 AM EST | I would like to put together a collage of images from the Invasion of Trinsic days.
If you have images please email them to me. This includes invasions of the various cities by Ratmen (Brit), Trolls (Yew), Ophidians (Papua and Delucia) and Gazors (Cove).
If you have URLs to websites that have this information, that would be great to have as well.
Hasta. |
^ top-As The UO.com Turns...
[Nieves] March 16 - 8:58 PM EST | You got to read it for yourself.
Hasta. |
^ top-SWGPowergamers.com For Sale
[Nieves] March 16 - 2:39 AM EST | Acero is selling the domain SWGPG.com.
Anyone interested, please contact him about your interest in buying the domain name.
Oh, before I forget, Software, Etc. has a shelf date of June 25th, 2002 for Neverwinter Nights. Thanks Pepper.
Hasta. |
^ top-Tajima Lays The Smackdown
[Nieves] March 15 - 12:18 PM EST | Watts, I really think you would like this guy...
Vex was assigned this difficult task by Evocare, at my request. As Senior Producer for the Ultima Online development team, the buck stops here.
-Tajima
Senior Producer,
Ultima Online
That was in referrence to Vex getting the shit from people in the UO.com Boards: I cannot make this type of game-altering decisions without the direct and involved support of my team and my company's management. I'm just a soldier in this army, and by no means is this my game to do with as I please.
I am personally not happy that I have to be the one to break the bad news to you about the serious changes being made to bards. But the changes have to be made. There is no reason to attack me personally.
For what it's worth, I apologize.
Vex
Designer, Ultima Online
Vex, Vex, Vex, Vex, Vex. Never apologize to people that insult you personally. Especially when you are just doing your job. Explain it like you did and move along. No matter what you do, you can't please everyone. Nieves found that out the hard way...
Moving right along:
you cannot use Veterinary on animals that are not tame. That's all. You will still be able to use the healing spell on your pets.
White wyrms, dragons, nightmares, ki-rin, unicorns, and any other high-level tames that might be added will all have the "angered the beast". This was added after the post to In Development.
Whatever....
1. If you failed your attempt to tame the unicorn, it suddenly distrusts you and wants you away from it. It could teleport away, but killing you is better and will allow it to make sure its horn is still nice and sharp.
DEATH BY HORN! Killer :)
2. It's for gameplay. Taming a unicorn is like taming a horse once you have the minimum skill. Boring! High-level tames should be challenging. Once you convince the unicorn that you'll be a good companion, it's not going to go on a killing spree the next time it sees an ethereal warrior...
Hmmm...see a Dragon, "oh look, something to tame" doesn't sound as fun as: "oh shit, I am going to fucking die". At least, that was my reaction at a D&D gaming session when I saw an Ice Drake in an iced over dungeon a few years ago. I think my character is still a permanent part of the decor as an ice statue...
BRAINSTORM! "Ice Wyrms now have the ability to breath a cold breath. This breath will freeze you and root you to the spot you are standing at until a friend casts a fire related spell at you. While Frozen you are taking damage at the same rate as being regular poisoned". Phear it.
Hated enemy was dropped due to the exponential testing time that would be required. The time that would have been spent developing it, however, will be used to introduce new tameables.
Great. More Tameables. As if we don't have enough? Anyway, doesn't affect me since I don't stand at the Brit Bank longer than it takes to take the gold given to me for an item I am selling...
The bonus skill gain for taming aggressive monsters really won't be needed with GGS.
Really now?
Once the changes go onto test center, we'll see how well someone can play with 80/80 and a dragon. If it needs to be adjusted, we'll adjust it. =)
....
Keep in mind that you have a 0.6% to get the dragon to listen at 80/80, and guard checks now require loyalty... so about all you could do is ride it around (if it's a mount) or let it auto-defend and auto-attack.
:D To all you twink tamers: eat THAT dick :)
You will be able to bond with your legacy pets. Once bonded, you will also be able to resurrect your legacy pets.
Legazy pets are those bright white or pure black animals people paid millions for right? The ones that are spawning again? Just checking.
Bard stuff:
Q: Also, you have eliminated any mention of multiple song effects. Can I peacemake a dragon while still provoking another pair?
A: Yes.
Very cool :)
Q: Are discordance affects of multiple bards cumulative?
A: A creature can only be under influence of one Discordance at a time.
Er...time to change the skill guides again...
Q: Discordance may be better served as a direct damage tool. As it is, it seems group focused. A: By itself it has little benefit. Combined with Provoke, the bard can use it to help balance an uneven fight. Combined with other combat skills, it can severely weaken a powerful creature, making other means of killing it more useful.
Think Lich Lords on a Level 4 T Hunt. My friend and I are "Pure Mage" T Hunters. For us, there is nothing worse than seeing 4 Lich Lords spawn at once. "Fuck!", is usually our first reaction. Lich Lords have insane magical resist. Checking our reg count is the next one. And keep your "get a bard" comments to yourself, we like challenges. :p
Fuck it, here is the rest of the stuff. You guys break it down yourselves. Work is calling. Lame.
Q: Stamina loss remains a bad idea, consequences in Fel are significant. Mana loss seems OK, as med can compensate. Loss of mana per successful attempt doesn't have Fel ramifications on par with stamina loss.
A: In every other instance where two different skills can be used simultaneously, there is some sort of tradeoff for doing so. You can bandage while in melee, but getting hit causes your fingers to slip. You are the "perfect" healer when you aren't fighting while healing. You can set up weapon+spell combos, but while doing so you are less effecient at both magery and melee -- you aren't mana dumping as fast as if you weren't fighting, and you aren't fighting as efficiently as you would if you didn't have to unequip/re-equip to cast.
If there were no additional cost to using Provocation then you'd be able to freely provoke large numbers of creatures, while not sacrificing any efficiency as a mage or warrior. Without that sacrifice in efficiency, then bard skills become a must-have for any PvM template, because you can add power to the character with no tradeoff.
I personally feel that equippable instruments would be a good way to balance this. Unfortunately, that is not doable for this publish.
Q: Invis restriction really needs to go away; it's an open invitation to twink bards, particularly in light of current creature difficulty tables
A: Being able to dish out damage while invisible is too powerful an ability. If a mage uses field spells and then goes invisible, monsters will leave the field. The mage has to remain visible and in danger in order to effectively use fire field. The mage can cast a blade spirit or energy vortex and then go invisible, but even an energy vortex is a pretty weak effect for the mana it takes. Warriors and archers can't do damage at all while invisible, except if they poison something. But poison is easily cured by magic-using monsters and doesn't do a whole lot of harm to creatures with lots of hit points.
By allowing a bard to provoke and then go invis, the bard is able to guarantee the death of a dragon, the mortal wounding of another, and be completely safe while doing so. The cost would be the cost of the provoke (10 mana for a 100 int char, and some stamina) and 20 mana for the invisibility spell. That is just too powerful.
Q: Characters remain unviable in a PvP environment. A: But bards are still extremely powerful in PvM.
Q: Creature difficulty tables are more than a little high. More later upon further study.
A: It's very possible these will be tweaked. Once we do some heavy testing, we'll know better -- and we do listen to feedback.
Q: In the interests of balance, perhaps some consideration could be given to allowing the Discordance ability to be used against players, thus giving Bards a decent PvP ability. Perhaps a slightly toned down version?
A: It's possible, but in this particular instance it would be navigating a minefield. Since the victim could end the effect by running out of range, breaking LOS with the bard, or going invisible, we would see extremely rapid modifications of player's stats. Historically speaking, when that starts happening the potential for show-stopping bugs and exploits becomes very high. I'm not saying we can't do it -- but we might not have the time needed to do it right.
Q: might i ask why musical instuments takes skill to use unlike warriors slayer weapons which they equip
A: Because we can't make instruments equippable at this time, unfortunately. Q: no doubt will break a lot faster then those slayer weapons and whats more they will NOT be repairable which means that the people who find them will want fortunes for them which in turn will cause more bards to farm gold in order to buy them and cause more griefing from the other classes in the game cos bards are farming gold
A: I intend to make sure these magic instruments are fairly common. Not so common that crafted instruments become useless, but not so rare that bards would be afraid to use them. They won't be limited to just the very powerful creatures, and they won't be limited geographically. In other words, these items shouldn't be farmable.
Q: In other words can I still move within and outside the retarget sphere as long as I don't cross it? Can I teleport across the retarget sphere like I can do now?
A: The triggers that make fire-breathers retarget aren't being modified with this publish.
Q: Vex - can you please explain the reasoning behind the invisibility double standard? Mages have any number of spells that they can work which will provide ongoing damage while the mage goes invisible. (blade spirits, field spells, summoned creatures, etc.) Warriors can also use poisoned weapons and go invisible while their targets take continuous damage. Not letting bards go invisible is a double standard, as well as making dungeon play impossible since spawn doesn't occur in neat little pairs.
A: Monsters walk out of field spells even when they are compelled to stand in it to fight a target. A mage can cast field spells and then go invisible, but the monsters will just wander out of the field, making it ineffective. Of course, if the monster is being cheesed and can't leave the field, that's something different.
Magic using monsters (and most of the most powerful ones are) use dispel, and blade spirit/energy vortex are now widely regarded as much less effective than they used to be. Summoned creatures and elementals aren't very powerful either.
Magic using monsters also cure poison, and many monsters are resistant to or immune to poison.
Those tactics can be used to do some damage to targets while the player is invisible. The difference is the bard can guarantee the death of a creature with hundreds of hit points with a single provoke/invisibility combo.
The bard effect won't end immediately when the bard goes invisible or leaves range. It will actually take several seconds for the effect to end, giving the bard a little bit of an edge.
Q: The difficulty table is confusing. I taught tests and measures at a big 10 university for a year and tutored graduate statistics...and I had to read the darn thing 3 times to understand it. How bout replacing it with a table that gives a simple breakdown of probability to provoke by monster at different skill levels?
A: Here is a detailed description of how most skill checks are done in UO. Like any rule, there are exceptions.
Non Difficulty-Based Skill Checks -- for these, the skill level is the chance of success. If you have 78.3 skill level for this skill check, you have a 78.3% chance of success. Lumberjacking (used against trees, not people) is like this. Typically, skills that are only ever tested in non-difficulty mode are quite effective at low levels. If you fail, you just re-try. When successful, the power of the result is rarely scaled based on skill level. While it takes a huge amount of time to reach GM in these skills, the actual increase in effectiveness is very small, because in the end all the higher skill level does is make accomplishing the task take less time.
Difficulty-Based Skill Checks -- These are a bit more complex because the skill is tested against a difficulty rating. The difficulty rating is defined as the midpoint of the difficulty curve, or the skill level at which the check has a 50% chance of success. Most difficulty-based skill checks use a focus of 50 skill points, though there are several exceptions. For the barding table, here's some rule-of-thumb items to help gauge difficulty. The difficulty of a monster is the skill level you need to have a 50% chance to successfully use a bard ability against that monster. For every 5 skill points below that number, subtract 10%. For every 5 skill points you are above that number, add 10%. If you have an exceptional instrument, add 10%. If you have an aligned magical instrument, add 20%.
Q: This is still a MIGHTY BIG NERF. My read of the table is that at 100 music/100 provocation I have a less than 50% chance to provoke a lousy dragon. Dragons aren't that tough. I recommend reducing the interval (+/- 12 rather than 25) and increasing rate of success.
A: I know we're not going to make everyone happy with these changes. But they do have to be made. There aren't going to be any more major redesigns to this package, but there will be tweaks, and the modified system will spend a good amount of time up on a test center.
Q: [Explanation of target switching]
A: What is being referred to here is the "target switching" behavior of fire-breathing monsters. It is primarily keyed off the movement of potential targets. By being careful how you move, it is possible to avoid being re-targeted.
Q: Did any of you actually think of that? I doubt it....
A: With instruments having several hundred uses, I doubt that keeping a supply of them will be much of a problem.
While it is certainly unfair to bards that bards need to occasionally replace their tools, hopefully this change will be viewed as beneficial to the carpenters who make them.
Q: By the way, how comes that each of the dev team is already calculating with 100+ skill points?
A: None of the design team operates in a vacuum. Everything we do is a team effort. Team members take ownership of different tasks and we spend a great deal of time communicating about everything we do. It only makes sense for us to begin planning now for the entire set of changes in the upcoming publish.
Q: There also needs to be some concessions. How about making provoke easier to gain in, and taking away the delay in the skill.
A: It will become easier to gain by virtue of the fact that it becomes difficulty-based. We might tweak the delay (but not eliminate it), though, once this gets to a test center. There won't be any more major redesigns here, but there will be tweaks. I know not everyone will be happy with these changes, but we do want to find a happy medium.
Q: And removing the stupid rule that some monsters are 'immune' to provoke
A: We will eliminate the "no bard" restrictions on several monsters. Though some of them, like some of the Exodus army and golems, will remain immune for fictional reasons.
Q: Can anyone please explain where did those beautiful buffs go? :( If instruments will wear off, why don't make them at least equipable? I really would like to kick some monsters (and friends) with my lute!
A: The additional new abilities had to be scrapped for no better reason than we simply ran out of time. It doesn't mean the idea is permanently dead, but they definitely aren't going to make this publish.
As far as equippable instruments go, that is more doable in the 3D client, but we simply don't have the art resources needed to accomplish it in 2D. Since it's not feasible at this time to do it for both clients, this item has to go on the "possibly sometime in the future" list.
Q: the buff's and other things went to the back burner for a while I think......... they want to make sure we accept the new system......... lotta peeps complained hehe oh wait that was us. and they just wanna make sure the survival rate for bards is feasable..... some red correct me if I'm wrong
A: These modifications will spend a good amount of time on an external test shard, with myself and others playtesting them very carefully. We fully expect there to be more tweaks, but no more major redesigns.
I know we're not going to be able to make all bards perfectly happy with these changes. But we sincerely do want to find a happy medium.
Q: I have a question. If I have 100 peacemaking and an exceptionally crafted instrument, then what is my % chance to peacemake a dragon? The dragon difficulty is 107.5%
A: In targeted mode, your chance at 100.0 skill would be 50.0 + 2.0 * (100.0 - 107.5) + 10.0 = 45%. 50.0 is the base chance, 100.0 is your skill level, 107.5 is the difficulty, and 10 is the instrument bonus.
In this instance, if the attempt succeeded, the dragon would stop fighting. Then, every time it acquired a new target, there would be a 45% chance of it being peaced again.
Q: Peacemaking currently lasts a few seconds, giving Bard time to move away or allowing Bard to get the monster to stop targeting his friends. Now it seems that area peacemaking will only make the monster stop (until the music stops??) and it is not clear if monster will un-target. Not very clear on this. Will there be no "pause" in the monsters attack??
Q: In "standard mode" it will work exactly like it does now. The only difference is the radius of effect depending on skill and having to target yourself instead of just using the skill.
Right now, the peacemake effect simply causes an NPC to stop fighting and clears its target list. It typically takes the AI a brief time to decide to start fighting again. Peacemake against a player causes the player to drop out of war mode, and the player can go back into war mode immediately.
In targeted mode, the effect becomes continuous, and each time the monster's AI acquires a target there is a chance it will instead clear its target list and stop fighting.
Vex
Designer
Ultima Online
Someone that's Tamer Qualified want to post the Tamer stuff from yesterday??
Hasta. |
^ top-What The Frack Is GGS Anyway?
[Nieves] March 15 - 10:46 AM EST | Defined by Rat Bastard:
Think of GGS as the polar opposite of ROT.
Guaranteed Gain enforces a FLOOR (a MINIMUM amount of increased skill in a given interval of time.) There is NO LIMIT to the amount of skill you can gain...you may train normally throughout the interval and receive increases equal to that of current non powerhour time. You are simply awarded a .1 every x minutes if you HAVEN'T ALREADY received it and been unlucky. It is a barrier against total frustration..you're given a 'pity point' if you've hit a wall and your gains have been shit this hour/2 hours, whatever. It is a boost to current skill gain rates and makes them less harsh.
Rate over Time enforces a CEILING (a MAXIMUM amount of skill gain in a given interval of time). If you have reached the prescribed limit, then any further training will not yield any gains until the timer has expired.
It is a restrictive factor to standard skill gain rates and makes them more harsh.
Hopefully that makes it clear.
And a further note from his Bastardness:
There is no way to predict what will become of 8x8 and other movement-based skill strategies, but unless something hidden is added with the publish, it should remain the same. You simply will not be able to use techniques that rely on failure gains such as using Earthquake right from the beginning of 50 magery. You will have to practice using only spells/skills appropriate to your level, as only successes will yield gains (like it used to be).
Thankyouveddymucho.
Hasta.
|
^ top-2002 Bard, GybStyle
[Nieves] March 14 - 3:42 PM EST | Are you reading OSI?
New Bard Strategy Ideas
Since Vex (the programmer working on the bard changes) has said revision 3 IS happening, with only the possibility of minor tweaks, I figure it is time to come up with advice for how to make the most of these changes. Also I just think about this too much Plenty of bards will be asking if/how they need to change their templates, so here are my thoughts, please add your ideas and suggestions.
To begin, why is each new version of the bard skills useful?
Provocation: It is getting nerfed, but it still has the same functionality. Any template based on provocation is still viable; it will just take longer and be trickier to kill high-end spawn. If you want to keep your template with just music/provoke, feel free – having Peacemaking or Discordance will NOT improve Provocation success chances, although having Peace or Discord may improve Provocation play (see below). Delay between uses of provocation should remain 10 seconds.
Peacemaking: This skill is getting buffed, other than becoming difficulty based. You can still do what you can now (although possibly at a slight range reduction), AND you can keep individual monsters under a peace effect indefinitely. According to the newest proposal skill delays remain the same as now, so you can reuse peace every 5 or 10 seconds, depending on success/failure.
Discordance: At 100 skill, you can reduce any monster’s/pet’s skills and stats by 25%, lowering its offensive and defensive abilities significantly. If delay remains same as current Enticement, you can use this once every second or two.
Now, what are some possible interactions of these skills?
Having Provocation and Discordance: It will be easier to provoke two creatures if they are not of the same power level - provoking a dragon against a drake is easier than a dragon on a dragon. But the problem with making dragons kill drakes is the dragon always wins, and drakes have crap loot. But if you use Discordance on the dragon while it is fighting the drake, the odds for the drake improve and you may actually be able to kill the dragon with one or two drakes.
Having Provocation and Peacemaking: Similar to the above but even better, when you have successfully provoked a more powerful creature against a weaker creature, you can Peacemake the powerful one. Which means you could have a drake attacking a dragon while the dragon doesn’t fight back. Combine this with Discord and killing dragons with drakes becomes feasible (not as fast as killing dragons with dragons of course, but we ARE being nerfed after all).
Having Peacemaking and Discordance: This could be the ultimate 1-2 combination, making just about anything easy to kill. Peace it first, then discord, then kick the crap out of it while it just stands there and takes it.
So, one template for a “full bard” would be:
Full bard: Music, Provoke, Peace, Discord, Mage, Med, Eval
Has full range of bard abilities, and full offensive mage power. Can take almost anything one-on-one by using targeted peacemake to nullify the creature’s offense, and then use discord to reduce magic resistance. Uses provocation to deal with multiple creatures. Still an extremely effective PvM character if I understand the changes correctly. Only weakness is lack of defensive skills (wrestle, resist), which is no different from how many current bards play anyway.
Thanks Gyb for a breakdown of the effects of the latest bard changes.
And to those asshoes on the UO.com boards saying the Devs should lose their jobs for some ideas they came up with, suck a big green one.
Actually, I say we put those heartless fucks in a locked room with Helios, Adrick and Tajima. Helios and Adrick will hold them down while Tajima beats their ass like the dirty French cop in Kiss of the Dragon did to the Chinese "businessman".
I feel that wishing someone loses their job is lame. If you haven't guessed.
Hasta. |
^ top-My Hero Fury
[Nieves] March 14 - 2:02 PM EST | I have/am receiving so much info I thought id give back to the community by writing this up for the next person who buys UO. This comes from my own experience - and the only thing id add is to 'know' that you will create a few guys before getting the hang of it...knowing is 1/2 the battle.
The Newbie’s Newbie Guide!
Setup.
First make sure UO Automap is installed and setup. Now go get UO Assist from tugsoft.com. The trial version is free. Once you have that on your system UO is much easier. Some of the things you can do with this, and that you should take the time to setup:
1. Make hot keys for arming a weapon.
2. Picking up nearby regs
3. For counting resources (keeping track of regs in bags)
There are other things its nice to do with UO Assist. You can use it to organize bags, run macros. You can also now type to UO Automaps chat window while staying in the game. Just hit --.
Now lets setup UO itself.
First, don’t run in full screen mode. Keep it windowed but expand the window. Now you should see your game window and the rest of your cpu screen should be black. Move the game window to where you can see it best. (I like lower left).
Now right click yourself and bring up your paperdoll. Move that on the black.
Left click yourself and drag your hp bar on to the black. Dbl click that for numbers instead of bars.
Dbl click your bag from your paperdoll. This is your main pack, keep it open and move it. Open up your spellbook. Go through the book and left click drag every spell icon you think you will use and move that to the black too. I have cure, heal, night sight, reactive armor, magic reflect, bless, fireball, energy bolt, flamestrike, res, recall, mark, gate and a few others up at all times.
From the paperdoll.
Hit skills and bring that up. Make a new group and call it ‘main’. Now put the skills you know you want on your character and drag them to that heading.
Hit options.
Go through each one adjusting for your playstyle. I have the circle of transparency off. The attack tab off (so I can toggle in and out of war), pathfinding off. Change your text color to something other than gray – preferably something for others to easily read.
Save the macros for last. You want to set up some just to make life easier. Remember that UO Assist has some also, so you can have conflicts – best thing is to hit a key and see what happens and if nothing you know you can use that one. : )
F9 is use last object
F8 is use last skill
Cntr+Q is ‘say’ ‘vendor buy’ (so you can buy from vendors)
Cntr+W is ‘say’ ‘vendor sell’ (so you can sell)
Cntr+E is say ‘Bank Open!’ (so you can access your bank).
I have others but you get the idea. From UO Assist I have F5 as arm, F6 as disarm. F2 picks up regs/arrows on ground for me.
Now we are pretty much done with the interface. Lets get to gameplay.
You have to eat. Usually every 10-15 minutes or so. You learn to get the timing of it. The ideal place to be is ‘quite full’…you don’t want ‘stuffed’. Remember its better to be hungry than stuffed.
People have vendors outside and inside their houses. Dbl click these npc’s to see what is for sale. Use your ‘vendor buy’ macro and you can buy stuff using money from your bank.
Armor Rating will go down with use. You can use the skill ‘arms lore’ to check the condition of your armor. What I do is I see what my AR is and if it ever goes down I know I have a piece(s) that needs repairing. Seek out a smith.
Some armor will drop dexterity. The better the armor the worse your dexterity will be.
Stats: (basic, skill gains, lots of things are affected by each, but this is basic)
Str: How much extra you hit for, how much you can carry, what kind of armor you can wear, and how many hit points you have.
Dex: How quick you can hit, how much stamina you have.
Int: How much mana you have.
What should you do first?
Fix your stats / skills the way you want.
1. Go train in all the skills you have chosen under your ‘main’ tab. Than train in others. Train in every skill you can (except item id, snooping, and mining) Check the ‘unmodified’ gem in your skill menu – once that hits 700 your gold. Train by left clicking on NPC’s in town and seeing what they train in. Choose and it will tell you how much gold they need to train you. Plop that amnount of gold on them and you get skill.
2. Once you are at 700 Lock every one of your skills. Notice the arrow in your skill menu? Up, down, and padlock? Lock each one of them.
3. Now you have to identify what stats you want your character to have depending on what you want him to be. If hes a fighter, he might want high str and dex. If hes a tank/mage he might want high str and int and low dex. Whatever.
To raise str:
Get a few shovels and run to the mountains. Dbl left click the shovel and select the mountain where it meets the ground. Put MINING up and choose another skill to go down. Work this skill until mining has gone up 10 pts.
To raise int:
Take off your breastplate/tunic and put your ITEM ID skill up and another skill down. (put mining down!) Use this skill on your tunic until Item Id goes to 10.
(now you can go back to mining, raise it 10 and than switch…you get the idea.)
To raise dex:
Have a friend get you a pack mule. Dbl click the pack mule until snooping is 10. (Raise SNOOPING up, and lower another one). (snooping a pack mule is not criminal and you can just keep dbl clicking it without closing the bag).
The REASON you did this is because skill gain is affected by your stats. Also, you WANT high stats so you can carry more, have more hp, cast more spells, whatever. This takes maybe 40 minutes and I recommend it for every new person to do it as soon as you can.
When this is done go back through all your skills and unlock them. Have all those skill you don’t need and point them down, and the ones in your main point them up.
Monster Interaction:
When you fight make sure you left click / drag the targets health bar. Attack it by dbl clicking this health bar instead of the target itself. Much easier.
As your fame and karma increase you have to keep fighting tougher mobs.
Sometimes if another person does damage to a mob, or gets ‘last lick’ than you might not be able to loot it for a few mintues.
If you die:
You have about 7 minutes to get ressed and back to your corpse before it turns to bones. If it turns to bones than anyone can loot it without fear. There are wandering healers around, as well as shrines. When you come back to life you will have any newbie items, your spellbook, and any runebooks. (so a charged rune book with spell of where you were can get you back quickly).
That’s about it. I will leave you with newbie hunting spots:
*cemetaries outside towns
*the dungeon Despise. (once you go in go up)
*the dungeon Covetous (harpys – make sure you use knife on em and get feathers for us!)
If you have a buddy, or get your skills to around 70 than go to
*Shame (great money)
*Orc fort near Cove
-Fury
The Newbie Guide by a Newbie. Lovin' it.
Note: UOAssist also has premade macros for bandage self, drink cure, drink heal, drink refresh, and a number of others. And it's HIGHLY recommended you make spell macros instead of using the icons. You can find UOAutomap and UOAssist in our files section. Ignore the old layout...for now.
Hasta. |
^ top-Provoking Difficulty Under New Proposal For Bard Changes
[Nieves] March 14 - 12:34 PM EST | Here you go False Propeht, copied from "BaldEagle" on the UO boards:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For those wanting a formula
You can cut and paste this into an excel spreadsheet.
=IF(IF(B2=0,50-2*(D$18-B2),50+2*ABS(D$18-B2))
Set the Value in B2 = to your Provo Skill, D18 is the Difficulty level of the target.
The Added bonuses for exceptional and magical are added to the answer in the formula.
If you try this you will see that at 100 Music/100Provo using a regular instrument you have a 35% chance of provoking a dragon upon another dragon. You will also see that the answers will match what is in the proposal concerning ancient wyrms.
Enjoy
And yes I am a computer Geek.
GEEKS UNITE!
Hasta. |
^ top-Bard Revisions #3
[Nissa] March 14 - 10:11 AM EST | Well, here are the latest changes to the bards:
This is the third update to proposed changes for the Barding profession, changes that are being considered toward helping balance Barding as a class, as well as toward improving the overall in-game experience of playing a bard. This document completely supersedes previous posts to “In Concept”on this subject.
Please keep in mind as you read this documentation that these changes are not yet finalized, and after testing and reexamination they may enter the game with some alterations.
General Rules
The following general rules will apply to all bard-related skills (Musicianship, Discordance, Peacemaking, and Provocation):
Musicianship: this is the base skill for all bard abilities. Any attempt to use other bard skills is preceded by a non-difficulty based check of the character’s Musicianship skill. If this skill check fails, the subsequent skill check to use the bard ability is never made and the character must wait some time before attempting the ability again. There are currently known issues allowing extremely rapid gain in this skill. These exploits will be fixed as part of this publish.
The musicianship check is already there. So nothing new. Glad to here they are going to finally fix the skill gain on this. Getting GM Music in 1/2 hour with the entice trick should have been fixed a long time ago.
Skill Bonuses: Exceptional instruments and Magical instruments will give bards skill bonuses in certain circumstances.
I actually like this. Instead of bards running all over with a newbie instrument that they never lose. When I die with my bard, I just come back and provoke everything so I can loot my body. My trusty instrument never leaves me. This also gives carpenters some use of their abilities to make instruments. Also sounds like bards will be getting Slayer instruments. Hope it isn't as diversified as slayer weapons.
Ability Range: all bard abilities will have a range. The bard must be within this range of the target to use the ability. Furthermore, the bard must remain within this range or the ability's effect ends. The base range of all bard abilities is 5 tiles, with each 15 points of skill in the ability being used increasing this range by one tile. The Peacemake ability will have an alternative mode usable as a radius of effect. For this variant, the radius of effect is identical to the ability’s range.
So, I am reading this right, a bard with 75 provoking, I have a range of 5+5=10 tiles. A GM bard will have 5+6=11 tiles. A 120 bard will have 5+8=13 tiles. Until I test it, I don't know what impact these ranges will have. They sound kind of small. To only go from 10 to 11 tiles from 75 to GM really doesn't sound like much.
Activation Cost: all bard abilities will have an activation cost equal to 10% of the bard’s maximum Mana and Stamina, rounded down. If the bard is unable to pay this cost, the ability use fails. There will be no ongoing upkeep. There will be no activation cost on failed barding skill attempts.
For example, if your character's maximum Mana was 100 and Stamina was 50 (aside from any “buffs” or “debuffs”), the activation cost would be 10 Mana and 5 Stamina (unless the barding ability attempt fails, in which case no Mana or Stamina is lost).
So, everytime I provoke or peacemake, I am going to have to pay with 10 mana and 3 stamina. In a high spawn area, I can see mana draining rather rapidly especially if you have a bard/mage that uses magic when they are provoking. Again, I will have to test this to see what the effects are in a fast paced area.
Continuation: Once a bard ability has been used on a target, the bard must remain alive, visible, and within line of sight of the target or the effect ends. Regarding creatures with “Dragon AI” (such as daemons, drakes, hellhounds, nightmares, and, of course, dragons): if at any point the bard moves while using any barding song, that may compel the creature to retarget on the moving character.
Now, let me get this right. Only for these monsters I will fail if I move while I am using the bard song. While leads me to ask. How long is the bard song? Is it the same as it is now? If it is any longer, this could get pretty tough. So for every other monster, I can move while I play my bard song?
Uniqueness: A single creature can be the target of only a single instance of each bard ability at a time. A single creature can be the target of both Provocation and Peacemaking, but cannot be the target of two simultaneous Peacemakes.
If a creature becomes under a given barding effect (Discordance, Peacemaking, or Provocation) and a second bard attempts to use that same effect on the creature, then the older effect takes precedence and remains active.
This I like. So if I am in an area provoking and some one comes over, they can't provoke my monster on a different one. I really like this one a lot. I hate when bards come and steal my stuff away. They see I am these 2 monsters fighting and they just don't care.
Repeatability: All current skill usage delays remain in effect, but there are no new limitations other than those stated above on their use. A bard can have several Provocation fights going at once, provided all of them meet the above restrictions.
This sounds like they got rid of the progressively harder provokes. Glad to hear this. In very active spawn areas, that one item would have really made the bard useless.
Bard Abilities
Provocation: In general, this ability will remain unchanged except for these items:
Difficulty-Based: The Provocation skill check becomes difficulty-based. Each creature will have a dynamically computed difficulty score based on its attributes, skills, and special abilities. This means that some creatures of a type might be slightly easier or more difficult to provoke than the average. The base difficulty in provoking two creatures to fight is the average difficulty of the two creatures. A chart showing the average difficulty of various creatures is provided below.
Correct Damage Assignment: When two creatures are successfully provoked by a bard, damage assignment will be correctly handled for both creatures involved, meaning the bard will receive correct credit toward looting rights, fame/karma rewards, etc. without having to perform a second provoke on the same creatures in reverse order.
Regarding looting rights, the bard will receive proper damage credit for all damage done to each other by his provoked creatures.
As an example, consider a bard that provoked two creatures and one has died while the other is left at 10% health. If a passerby finishes off the wounded one, the passerby isn’t likely to get looting rights even though he got the killing blow, because the bard still did the vast majority of the damage.
All these items seem to make sense and should have been implemented a long time ago.
Discordance: this ability replaces the current barding ability known as “Enticement.”
Skill Conversion: the Enticement skill in the game will be renamed to Discordance. Any characters who have skill points in Enticement will have those skill points automatically transferred to Discordance.
Difficulty-Based: This ability is difficulty-based like provocation. The base difficulty of this skill check is the difficulty of the creature using the same computations as Provoke (examples given in the table below).
Targets: This ability cannot target player characters. It can target player pets in Felucca, subject to normal flagging rules.
Effects: This ability applies attribute and skill loss to the target creature. The percentage of attribute and skill loss is scaled on the bard’s Discordance skill. At 50.0 skill, the target loses 12.5% from all stats and skills; and at 100.0 skill the target loses 25% from all stats and skills. Subject to standard rules above, the target will regain lost stats and skills once the effect ends. Note that the creature’s barding difficulty rating does not change as a result of stat and skill modifying effects of any sort, so using Discordance against a creature does not make it easier to Provoke.
Hmm. At this point, I really don't have any use for discordance. I guess it could be cool, but I don't think I want to lose anymore points on my bard/mage. Right now I have to decide whether to drop Eval Int or Magic Resist to add peacemaking. I think I will try that first. My treasure hunter has absolutely no room to add discordance.
Peacemaking
Standard Mode: Peacemake will become a targeted ability. If the bard targets him- or herself, it works in standard mode. This is a one-shot ability that causes all creatures and players in its radius of effect to stop fighting. Creatures and players can immediately re-target and resume fighting.
Targeted Mode: In targeted mode, Peacemake is difficulty-based, with difficulty being computed identically to Provocation and Discordance. Upon a successful Peacemake, the target becomes reluctant to fight. Immediately upon effect initiation, the target stops fighting. Thereafter, until the effect is ended per standard rules, whenever the affected creature is attacked for whatever reason tries to start fighting, there is a chance (based on bard skill and creature difficulty) that the creature will instead return to a peaceful state.
While this ability does not guarantee lack of retaliation from a monster, it does make it a much easier opponent to handle. A player can be targeted with this ability per normal PvP rules (I.E. allowed Trammel guild wars, criminal to use against an innocent in Felucca).
I like the ability to use it either standard or target based on the fly and not setting up in the options screen like many suggested. This way I get the ability to decide based on the situation I find myself.
I don't know if I am reading this right, but discordance is needed to increase the chance to succeed? I hope I am wrong. Hope OSI clarifies that a little more.
Instruments
All musical instruments will begin to wear out with use, including newbie instruments. A non-exceptional player-made instrument or one purchased from an NPC will have approximately 400 uses. An exceptional player-made instrument or a magical instrument will have approximately 500 uses.
The instrument used by a bard skill will automatically be the “last instrument” you double-clicked. This is current bard behavior and isn’t being changed as part of this update. When players wish to change their default instrument (when, for example, you have different magical instruments and need to switch between them during an adventure), they will simply accomplish this by double-click it and having it set it self as the new default “last instrument.”
Using an exceptional player-crafted instrument grants the bard a bonus of 5 skill points worth of effect for using any bard-related ability. This is applied as a reduction in the difficulty of the skill check, and does not have any effect on any calculations that use the bard’s skill level. For example, the bonus for using an exceptional instrument cannot increase the maximum range or radius of an effect.
Magical instruments are to be introduced into the game that will have certain similarities to the “slayer weapons” (what some players call “Virtue weapons”) that are more effective against certain creatures and less effective against others.
Each of these magical instruments will give the bard 10 skill points worth of difficulty modifiers against a certain class of creature. However, possessing these instruments does not cause the bard to be vulnerable to other types of creatures. Instead, when using the instrument against the opposing creature type, the attempt has a difficulty penalty instead of a bonus.
As an example, an instrument of Daemon Dismissal (labeled in the fashion of “a lute [Daemon Dismissal]”) will increase the bard’s chance to use a barding ability against any variety of Daemon by 20% (when that instrument is used). When used against an elemental, however, the bard’s chance of success is reduced by 20%.
Note that it is currently undecided where these magic instruments will spawn. However, they will be fairly common as loot.
Well, based on this, it looks like bards are going to have to take Slayer Weapons 101 to make sure they understand what the are up against. *sees backpack filled to the brim with slayer instruments*. With the reduced success ratings that are going to be implemented, bards are going to need all the bonuses they can get. Think I am going to need another house to store all the different instruments for my bard/mage and treasure hunter. I see UOA hot keys in my future.
Bard Difficulty Table
Difficulty ratings vary per creature and will fall within +/- 2% of the values given in this table. The Difficulty rating is the skill level at which the bard has a 50% chance of success versus the creature. At this skill level -25.0, the bard has no chance of success and can't make the attempt. At this skill level +25.0, the bard is guaranteed success and cannot gain skill against this creature. Using an exceptional instrument grants the bard +10% chance of success. Using an aligned “slayer”instrument grants the bard +20% chance of success. To compute the difficulty of provoking two creatures, average their difficulty ratings.
Example: At 120.0 skill, a bard with a dragon-slaying instrument has approx. 60% chance of success to use an ability against an Ancient Wyrm, or to provoke two Ancient Wyrms to fight. At 100.0 skill, with the same instrument, the chance is approx. 20%.
Target Creature / Approximate Difficulty
Mongbat / 10.0
Headless One / 25.0
Orc / 59.0
Earth Elemental / 70.0
Ophidian Warrior / 74.0
Efreet / 87.0
Terathan Avenger / 93.0
Dragon / 107.5
Succubus / 112.5
Ancient Wyrm / 125.0
So, does this mean with 100/100, I have a 74% chance of provoking 2 ophidian warriors? But with a slayer instrument, I now have 90%? I just want to make sure I am reading this right. Or, at 74 skill I have a 50% chance of provoking those 2 monsters. What about at 100 skill? Need to see if OSI can clarify this more. Or, if I am completely missing the point, please let me know in the thread that is currently in the forum.
You can post your comments here. |
^ top-GM EVAL!!
[LadyGrania] March 14 - 9:03 AM EST | Yes, I know it's late in coming, but I haven't had time to work it since my last post. However, last night I logged on, was at 96.0, and in 2 hours of 8x8 I was GM Eval! YAY!
While sailing around on a boat continually casting on the tillerman is boring as hell, it at least serves a purpose. So total number of hours spent working evaluating intelligence from 30 to gm.... 8.
I'm SO excited!!! (can you tell?)
Next is Magery. Starting from 40.
Any hints or clues? Email me or start a thread in the forum.
Love Ya! |
^ top-My Apologies
[Nieves] March 13 - 11:14 AM EST | To everyone that has found our Forum lacking (in other words: "gone to shit").
To everyone that has been insulted in said Forum and the Chat Room.
I am instituting a policy change for the UOPG Forum. Actually, more of a "policy refocus". Unfortunately, a select few has ruined my tolerant stance towards what is and isn't posted in the UOPG Forum.
You can read that policy refocus here.
Hasta. |
^ top-Yay, I can read the boards again!
[Catgirl] March 12 - 10:40 PM EST | And to celebrate, here's a little tidbit I ripped from them that I think is a very neat idea, that someone came up with:
Recently we've been told of new rules concerning what we will keep when dying in various areas. I find these rules potentially confusing and I propose a different system: Insurance.
Let me explain.
Say a new NPC is created, perhaps to inhabit the now little-used Counselor's guilds. This NPC would be an "Insurance Agent". I could go to this NPC and buy an "Insurance Policy" on my trusty Silver Katana of Power, or whatever, for a price set by the game based the item I am insuring. I would say "insure" and get a target cursor. After targeting my katana, a gump would appear with the price of insurance and a set of confirm or cancel buttons.
The game might determine the price of insurance in the following manner (these numbers are just an example, they would need to be tweeked):
Take the "desirability quotient" (DQ) of the base type of the insured item (something that will need to be figured out based on, among other factors, the prices player vendors ask for them)
(A katana, as in this case, is very desirable, so lets say a plain katana's DQ is 100. A pickaxe's DQ might be around 2.)
Then multiply the price by 10 if it is GM
Then multiply the DQ by 2 for each level of "Accuracy" (if a weapon)
Then multiply the DQ by 2 for each level of "Durability"
Then multiply the DQ by 5 for each level of "Power" (if a weapon) or "Protection" (if armor)
Add those numbers together
And finally double the result if it is a Silver or Virtue/Slayer weapon
(So my Silver Katana of Power can be insured for 125,000gp [DQ=100; Power is the 4th level of "Power" so 5*5*5*5=625; Silver doubles it all; so 100*625*2=125,000]. A GM Katana would cost 1000 to insure, an Eminently Accurate, Substantial Katana of Might would cost 3700gp to insure [the sum of Eminent=2*2*2*DQ, Substantial=2*2*DQ, and Might=5*5*DQ], and a Supremely Accurate, Indestructible Silver Katana of Vanquishing would cost a cool 637,800 to insure)
So. lets say I chose to insure the Katana.
Now when I am killed my Katana wouldn't stay on my body, or travel with my ghost, it would disappear and be replaced with a "Payout" for an amount equal to the cost of the policy on my corpse, and a no-loot/no-steal "Claim Ticket" on my ghost. The "Payout" would work much like the bank checks that the game already has. But, this "Payout" would decay, while on my corpse, at an accelerated rate. The time until decay would be slightly less than the "no corpse loot" time currently in place. The "Payout" would stop decaying after it is looted, either by me or someone who has rights to my corpse (or is willing to go gray in Fel). If nobody loots the payout before it decays, it goes to the great bit-dump in the sky. Anyone could cash any "Payout" at the bank. The Katana (or whatever, along with anything else I've insured) could be claimed by me by going to the "Insurance Agent" and saying "claim" and targeting the claim ticket with the cursor that would appear. I would then have to reinsure the Katana if I still wanted to have it insured.
"Consumables" such as reagents, food, bandages, etc., would not be insurable, nor would gold or any "blessed" item, nor would resources such as ingots or boards.
The advantages of such a system are many. It would allow a player to decide what was most valuable to them and take steps to keep those items. It keeps "Evil Pks" as viable characters while encouraging the use of valuable weapons and armor in Fel (the PK gets the payout(s) and my reagents when he loots my corpse, but I keep the valuable arms, armor, tools, clothing and etc. that I've insured). It adds an additional level of decision-making to the game (since the insured items won't be on your corpse if you die and a friend reses you on the spot, you'll have to decide ahead of time if you take an insured or uninsured weapon [or shield, etc.] when you adventure with friends). It would act as a gold sink (the money spent to insure a weapon is lost forever if nobody loots the "Payout" or that weapon breaks).
Compared the multiple methods of looting/no looting proposed for the next publish (which I think are potentially confusing), and the 50/50 chance of losing items proposed for the Fel dungeons (a PK can have my reagents and the monster loot I'm carrying all he wants, but I am NOT going lich hunting in Fel if there is a 50/50 chance I'll never see my one and only Silver Katana of Power again) I would rather be able to choose what I will keep if killed and looted (for a price, of course). But then, I'm biased.
Any feedback on the idea (yes I know the insurance cost numbers don't work yet)?
I think this is a real cool idea, so go comment!
|
^ top-UOPG Publish
[Nieves] March 12 - 4:15 PM EST | March Archives are up.
Put Essays in different "sections" so it's easier to find them.
"New" Essays added to the Essays Section.
If I missed any essays, send me hate mail.
Oh, and Looters, Inc. has a new story. Check it out.
Hasta. |
^ top-Bod Timers to be Separate!
[Kaara] March 12 - 3:25 PM EST | The players have spoken again and the dev team has decided to separate the BOD timers for Tailoring and Blacksmithy. Friking awesome. Blacksmith BODS are hard enough to fill without people having to choose between Tailoring and Smithing, thus generating half the crappy SBOD's that don't fill LBOD's anyway.
Here is Hanse's post on the UO.Com forums:
Okie dokie...
The concerns on both fronts are the following:
Multi-skilled crafters (blacksmith, tailor, carpenter, tinker, etc) would be adversely affected by a universal timer. This is the majority type of crafter due to the skills complimenting each other.
Single crafting skilled characters, while uncommon but not unheard of, would have an advantage collecting the deeds. Even though the characters are separated, this is not a prevalent grouping of skills on characters.
So, what would this do?
People with multiple crafting skills on one character would feel forced to make a tailor crafter again. Is this fun? I do dare to say: "no". If you're a veteran of the game and have already worked up tailoring once or more, the novelty has worn off. You would be working towards a goal you have already achieved before.
Even though, as a multi-skilled crafting character, you have the choice of getting one deed or another with a universal BOD timer, many would still feel they were missing out on the fun either tailoring or blacksmithy bulk orders. We do not want to stifle fun in our game.
So, we have decided, based on feedback and constructive criticism, that the timer will be separate. All other changes to the system will be bugfixes based on QA and testing on Test Center.
Thanks for all the input folks!
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
Mega Mules of Sosaria Rejoice! |
^ top-UOPowergamers Is Famous.
[Nieves] March 12 - 9:53 AM EST | Well, you already knew that but...
A week ago Noleens of the Daily Herald told me UOPG is listed on page 181 of the new Prima's Official Guide to UO:LBR. I just got my copy today and sure enough, UOPG is listed. Even if they got UOPowergamers listed as UOPowerGamer, I can't complain right? At least the URL is right.
I also saw Black Dagger, UO Journal, UOSS, Crossroads (yeah Heather!) and UO Vault listed, among others. Kudos to all of you.
I skimmed through it and jumped right to the combat section.
A quote from page 208:
The two favored PvP spells are Energy Bolt (every player, at some time in his career, learns to fear the dread words "Corp Por") and the awful Energy Vortex, which offer maximum damage potential in relation to mana expenditure.
Um...who did they talk to? Energy Vortex? Please. I have seen Energy Vortex used ONLY in group combat, outside of towns during RP Siege Battles. Maybe it's used to give a Tamer and/or his pet fits as the PK deals with the Tamer...
Anyway, obviousely, this is WRONG! If I see someone drop an EV on top of me I will do one of two things: I will laugh and kill you, or I will laugh, dispell it, then kill you. And God forbid I see you trying to cast it over and over...
It continues on page 208 about Poison:
Poison use is growing in popularity. Poison weapons are nice, but they do not stay poisoned for long.
And? Jeesuz. Just NOW growing in popularity? Er....me thinks they started writing this section about the time UO:R came out.
Continuing on in the same Poison section:
Poisoning weapons is not the only use for a Poison potion, however. Energy Vortex, the deadliest PvP spell, relies primarily on an extremely virulent poison for its deadliness (that's not the only way this spell does damage, it's just the worse).
Um...I didn't think EVs could poison you anymore...
However, it is an oddity of the game that a character who's been poisoned cannot be poisoned again until the original poison wears off, even if the second poison is stronger. Therefore, some hardcore PvPers have taken to quaffing a minor Poison potion early in combat to pull the teeth of enemy Energy Vortexes.
Sure...two years ago.
This can lead to the rather ludicrous spectacle of a player poisoning himself before battle, then immediately being Cured by his enemy.
Excuse me, I need to get a tissue. I am crying from laughter right now.
Regulus, email me. I need to talk to you.
Hasta. |
^ top-New Leather Types
[Nieves] March 11 - 8:03 PM EST | …Normal leather: non-aggressive creatures...mostly...mongbats are aggressive, but considered in this class.
Spined leather: easily killed aggressive creatures... mostly... dire wolves, alligators, ratmen, and lizardmen are good examples of this type of leather bearing monster/animal.
Horned leather: Drakes, wyverns, sea serpents, ki-rin, and unicorns.
Barbed leather: Dragons, wyrms (all three types), nightmares, etc... tough creatures...experiment.. :)
All the creatures that give leather now either get upgraded or stay the same. Only sea serpents were modified to have leather available on them.
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
Very Freaking Sweet.
Hasta. |
^ top-In Or Out Of Powerhour?
[Nieves] March 11 - 8:00 AM EST | Actually, I work many skills in and out of powerhour. Powerhour does affect gains for ALL skills. It actually increases the rate at which you gain, not just make you gain off fails. I wasted 4 kegs of DP outside ph last week thinking I'd gain at least half what I did in PH....WRONG! Not even a .1 gain. Later that night, PH yielded about 1.5 in gains, using the same weapons, and same poison. I've had the same results with other "gain only on success" skills like provoke as well. I'd suggest not working any resource intensive skills outside ph about 70 skill. Also target based skills like taming & arms lore are pretty much impossible outside ph above 70 skill.
The skills I do outside PH at any skill lvl based on the time/resource consumed are:
Anatomy
Melee skills
Hiding
Eval Int
Meditation
Animal Lore
Veterinary
Lumberjacking
These I work above 80 skill outside PH:
Fishing
Healing
Provoke
Alchemy
Inscription
I ONLY work these in PH, or below 65 real skill outside PH:
Taming
Poisoning
Lockpicking
Archery
Cartography
Parrying
Resist
Detect
Armslore
Alot of peeps would question working inscribe or alchy outside PH, but I've found that the gains are quite reasonable long as you're using them for useful things, as opposed to PH style impossible stuff. For instance, I gm'd my alchy from 92 by making nothing but gr poison outside PH to train poisoning with. Daemon scrolls are always useful to make as well, but I'd actually wait till about 85 to do them outside PH.
Powerhour sucks. Any questions? Kthxbye.
Hasta. |
^ top-News Flash! Eval Intel..
[LadyGrania] March 10 - 4:08 PM EST | Well I learned something important. Evaluating Intelligence is NOT powerhour based.
I know, I know. Most of you probably already knew that. However, I'm still really new to the idea of actually power gaming skills and I didn't know!
Here's my story. I woke up this morning and was bored so I set my coffee on my computer desk, moved the cat outta my chair, and got comfy.
I logged into UO with my new character that shall be a mage one day. She was already on the boat where she's been living since her creation. I decide, I'll try to work eval, and even if it doesn't work, I can always do something else.
I started moving slowly forward, casting poison on the tillerman, magic arrow on the bottle, whatever works. Using the tried and true 8x8 method, I gained 6.2 points of eval in about 3 hours. (I told you I was bored).
Powerhour still won't start for me until 9:30 central tonight.
Wonder if I can GM by then?
*giggles* That's my little bit of info for the day.
Love ya! |
^ top-Information About Minax HQ Move:
[Catgirl] March 10 - 12:05 AM EST | Evocare had this to say, about where the Minax base is moving:
We're carving a rather large hole in the eastern part of the Destard mountain range and putting it in there. There will, of course, be a path through the mountains to get to it. Offhand (I'm at home, not looking at the map right now), I'd say it's about 2 screens or so through the mountains to get to the stronghold, and the pass is probably around 10 tiles wide.
We chose to place it in the mountain range because that's one of the few places we can be pretty much guaranteed that nobody managed to place a house on any shard either legally or illegally at the time it was placed.
Thanks to Ray_CG for hooking me up, since I STILL can't read the official boards.
|
^ top-Hanse Let slip - Tailoring BoD
[Kaara] March 9 - 1:00 PM EST | Hanse UO Live Designer let slip these interesting tid bits about tailoring BODs -
Smiths have 9 colors to work with (normal plus 8). Tailors have 4 colors to work with (normal plus 3). So, the disparity between collections and combinations will be less. Plus, we think the lower end BOD's are interesting to do because of the special colored cloth you receive to make more items to sell. It makes the whole system exciting. :)
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
Great! As if having 6 smiths isn't enough of an obsession... |
^ top-Ore Elementals
[Nieves] March 9 - 8:41 AM EST | Rising Force's Ore Elementals Essay
Introduction.
Mining. Most people think of mining as a skill where you dig up rocks, hoping to find pretty colors. Or maybe where you pound on a mountain 300 times to pull out 6 Valorite ore. And most people's miners are purely mules. Smithing, Tinkering, maybe a bit of Carpentry. In other words...weaklings. Boring to play, and there just to get the work done. Well it is my belief that Mining is not a mule skill. And this essay will show you how. If you enjoy beating a mountain with that super-keen sturdy pickaxe, then by all means, cease reading and continue living out your boring mule's life. If you want to have fun while mining, risk death, and not to mention.....get high-level ores twice as fast.....then I wrote this essay for you.
Ore Elementals.
Ore Elementals are the "secret" to gathering lots of high-level ores in a short amount of time. They are relatively easy to kill and yes, even the mighty Valorite Elemental can be brought down with a couple quick spells. For those of you that dont know, Ore Elementals ( Shadow, Bronze, Copper, Gold, Agapite, Verite, and Valorite) can be found by using a Gargoyle's Pickaxe on an ore vein one level lower than the elemental you wish to dig. For example, If you want to dig an Agapite Elemental, you would use the Gargoyle's Pickaxe on a gold vein. To collect the pickaxes, I powergamed a fencer character, and used a Gargoyle's Foe kryss to kill Stone Gargoyle's near the Lighthouse in T2A. I found a Gargoyle's Pickaxe on approximately 1 out of every 5.
Once you've dug your elemental, you have a fairly strong monster coming inbetween you and your ores. Now it's time to learn how to deal with them. All of the elementals have different strengths and weaknesses. Some will reflect spells. Some will reflect melee damage. Luckily for you, I have done the research for you, so the amount of shock at how fast they killed you will be reduced to a minimum. :)
Shadow Elemental.
This elemental is the weakest (unless you count dull copper, which is absolutely a waste of time to even look at twice). Think of it as an Earth Elemental on sterroids. It does about 5-10 damage with its melee attack, and hits fairly fast. Run in circles and ebolt it a bit, you'll be just fine.
Copper Elemental.
This elemental is among the toughest. Why? Ask OSI, I'm just telling you the facts. It does about 5-12 damage per hit, nothing to sweat about. The big difference is that this elemental reflects magic. If you throw an ebolt at it, it will take the damage, but so will you. The way I kill these is by combo'ing. Explosion followed by a greater heal. It takes a while, but it does bring them down. (who wants copper ore anyways, right?)
Bronze Elemental.
This elemental is just about as strong as the others. It has no reflect, but it does have a special attack. I call it the "freeze ray" because it looks like an icicle getting shoved up your ass, but no clue what it really is. The freeze ray attack is range-based, meaning the closer you are to the elemental, the more damage it will do. It does about 5 damage from long range, and anywhere from 15-20 up close. Ebolt this guy til he takes a dirt nap and move on with your life.
Gold Elemental.
This elemental has no special attacks, no reflect, and basically nothing up his sleeve. He hits fast, and hits hard. Just keep moving and keep hitting him with spells.
Agapite Elemental.
Basically the same as a Gold Elemental, except with better ore.
Verite Elemental.
This elemental has a fast, strong melee attack, but is actually easier than the Gold and Copper elementals. Ebolt/Explosion will do the trick.
Some other tips.
All elementals, with the exception of Valorite, have approximately 150-200 hit points. Their resistance/reflections etc make it harder or easier kill them, but they all have the same hp.
All elementals have a chance of giving you a level one t-map. woohoo.
I have found quite a few Virtue weapons off the higher-level elementals. All have either been Gargoyle's Foe, or Daemon Dismissal.
There is an Ore Elemental camp in Ilshenar, directly south of the Gargoyle City. The elementals that can be found spawning there are Copper, Gold, and Verite.
Valorite Elemental.
That's right, these guys get their own section. I've heard lots of techniques on how to kill them. Archers, fire fields, trap them, ban them from your house, etc. My thoughts on these techniques? Hmm...if you wanna be a sissy and run from the thing, go for it. I drop them in 30 seconds, and I'll show you how. First off, lets take a look at what you're up against.
Valorite Elemental.
This elemental is a combination of the hardest elements of all the weaker elementals. It has approximately 250-300 hit points. It has perma-RA. That is to say, it reflects back a portion of melee damage back to its attacker. So basically, to run up and hit it with a halberd is about equal to beating your own ass. As for magic, it reflects direct damage spells back at you, and takes no damage to himself. It also has the "freeze ray" attack, and hits fast and hard. I dug a few up in Shame on Sonoma once. They literally tore the dungeon up, killing everyone who tried to screw with them, and everyone who tried to run as well.
But fear not, little miner-dood. You're about to make these baddies your bitch. The trick to killing Valorite Elementals is to use a Glacial Staff. That's right, they're not just for mare-riding, daemonbone wearing, neon-haired, glorious lord master stoic bitches at the bank. These staffs can actually serve a purpose, and now you find out what.
Just for those of you who dont know, the Glacial Staff has three spells. Each staff, however, only has 2 of the spells in it, which are random. An Ex Del is a paralize spell. In Corp Del is a spell that does half of your mana total in damage to the target, yet drains 100% of your mana. And finally, Des Corp Del. This is the spell we will be using against Valorite Elementals. I have no idea how it works, or why it works. But it works well, and will kill the Valorite in 2 or 3 spells.
This is how I do it. I set up a UOAssist macro, to arm the staff and say the words Des Corp Del and double click the staff. So I am able to have the staff in hand, charged, and ready for targetting with the touch of a key. Then target the elemental. Be aware that even the glacial staff can be reflected at you, doing around 50 damage to your character. The best strategy is to give yourself a good amount of space between yourself and the elemental, and cast greater heal on yourself immediately after you cast the staff's spell. You should only have to repeat this once or twice more and the elemental will die.
25 Valorite ore and a nice chunk of change in less than a minute. Do I have your attention yet?
My Miner.
Just for your info, this is the character I use for hunting ore elementals.
Rising Force.
GM Magery, GM Meditation, GM Eval, GM Wrestling, GM Inscription, GM Healing, GM Mining.
90 Str, 100 Int, 35 Dex
The magery, med, and eval make for strong offensive spells among other things. The wrestling is so the elementals miss with melee, the Inscription is to make my Reactive Armor spell stronger (always cast RA when fighting elementals) and also useful as another "mule" skill. And the Healing is just an added bonus, another way to heal etc. Not to mention that if you ever did get bored of digging elementals, (god forbid), you could drop the Mining for Resist and have a very nice pvp character :)
There's lots of advantages to your miner being a badass, and not just being a mule. For one, when is the last time you saw somebody hunting in the first floor of Shame? Yes there is Valorite/Verite spots in there, and I go there regularly. Also, try digging up a Valorite and follow them around while they kill everybody in the vicinity. Lots of nice looting for just a miner. Some guy just walked by and slapped your pile of ore into his packhorse? Dig up a "playmate" for him and see how well he can deal with it. Mining can be boring, or it can be a blast. If you think you've done it all and the game bores you, maybe try this for a change. If you like it, maybe I'll teach you how to kill Tentacles of the Harrower with your Carpenter :)
Thanks to my girlfriend Lady Sierra for helping me with research and being an all-around great gal.
Thanks to Rising Force for this essay.
Hasta. |
^ top-Don't Hate Me.
[Nieves] March 8 - 12:26 PM EST | A "gem" by Gyb from a couple of weeks ago:
I GM'd Cooking today. Yes I'm a fool.
By far the most efficient way to raise cooking skill is to make bread. First, set yourself up with an oven and a flour mill - installing them in a house close to each other is the best way to go (you want to be able to stand within 2 tiles of each while you cook). Mark a rune to the wheat fields west of Britain. Wheat, flour, and dough do not stack, so you don't want to make large quantities of these at a time. Recall to the fields and gather wheat for free (I averaged about 5 wheat per field per trip, and there are 2 fields right next to each other, so 10 wheat a trip). Recall back to your mill/oven setup. Make a sack of flour, then alternate making dough and bread. The bread does stack, fortunately. Each sack of flour produces 20 dough, and 1 dough is 1 bread, so 10 wheat has the potential for 200 bread. Note that you also need a pitcher of water on you, but after you have filled the pitcher once it will never run out from cooking (this is changed, in the past you had to refil the pitcher every 5 cooking attempts).
Cooking success is exactly equal to your displayed skill, so once you are over 80 or so you will not fail much. For this reason it doesn't really matter whether you work this skill in or out of power hour. It sometimes felt like I was gaining skill a little faster during powerhour, but there was not a huge difference.
I started at 83.3 real cooking skill (which is about 91 displayed). By the time I reached GM I had 5,021 loaves of bread. It took about 10 hours, and used around 175 skillets. At best, I would get about 2 full points of skill per hour. Whenever I seemed to hit a wall (no gains after 60-100 bread), I would make one or two other items, like pumpkin pie or peach cobler. I don't really know if this helped or not. Cooking large stacks of fish (500 or more at a time) DID seem to help break through walls sometimes - I got a gain either on the stack of fish, or within 5-10 bread after the fish, about 75% of the time.
Note that at this time, the only reason to have any cooking skill at all is that at 80 you can make savage kin paint (and that isn't much of a reason). Any food item that doesn't stack will be marked with your name at GM level.
Someone out there wanted to know how to powergame cooking. I am sure of it.
Excuse me. I need to go hide now.
Hasta. |
^ top-I Am Really Really Trying..
[Nieves] March 7 - 3:46 PM EST | not to be a dick about stuff.
There's no plans to add any sort of "stat lock" feature into UO, either in Publish 16 or thereafter. Although, obviously, some players have been suggesting that they would enjoy such a feature, it would be a tricky thing to put in where we could be confident that such a system would remain balanced. Further, if such a stat lock system were put into place and had any sort of game imbalance, the additions of scrolls of power would serve to magnify that. So while we aren't simply dismissing the stat lock idea, we aren't confident enough yet that simply being able to lock a stat at a certain level would have enough benefits and balance to be implemented into UO at this time or any time in the foreseeable future.
=========
Sannio
Online Community Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
Jeesuz freaking, green encrusted, monkey balls!
Please tell me how adding Stat Locks is imbalancing? Please!!?? If you don't want to imbalance the game by adding Stat Locks along with the advent of Power Scrolls, kill the Power Scroll ideas. We have wanted Stat Locks for years. When did the Power Scroll idea first come up?? What would be more helpfull to the playerbase now? Stat Locks or Power Scrolls? It 'could' be even more difficult to fix stats when GGS hits.
People are screaming that Power Scrolls are not wanted and are potentially imbalancing. BTW: If I remember correctly, Stat Locks was mentioned at the UO:Faire. I can't confirm it because, like, the Nieves Notepad of UO Love is STILL missing. Those of you that found it and won't return it: Bastards! Anyway, I digress, as always.
Stat Locks=Good, Power Scrolls=Bleh. But what the fuck do I know anyway? I only speak for the minority of players anyway, right? Right.
::sighs::
Tailoring is almost done and ready for testing of bugs (putting finishing touches on it today). We'll have more information on our website after our web folks have reviewed the design document.
These changes include seven new rewards for blacksmiths and new weapon large bulk order deeds.
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
Thank you Hanse for the Tailoring information and the new rewards. My apologies for misquoting you yesterday.
Also, congratulations to Canyon for his move to manage the Support Group for the Sims Online. It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Well, except Calandryll. Good luck.
Note: I will take small bills Calandryll. KthxBye
Hasta. |
^ top-Silk Didn't Tell Me!?
[Nieves] March 7 - 12:11 PM EST | Found this on UO Boards by Salt:
When you reach the skill cap of 700 points you need to point skill arrows down for skills that have some points assigned to them in order to gain other skills. This is called decaying skills. Remember when working with the skill arrow to check Show Real, a skill must have real points in order to be used for decay.
Here is the Skill Management page in the Playguide.One of the most often overlooked details when trying to gain skills is the skill that you are decaying. Not all skills are created equal, some skills decay very easy, some decay very hard. If you are trying to gain a skill that decays easier than the skill you are trying to decay, your gains will be slower and in some cases stop altogether.Here is a list of skills in the order of decay rate, the skills at the top of the list decay fastest:
Alchemy
Anatomy
Animal Lore
Item ID
Arms Lore
Parrying
Begging
Blacksmithy
Fletching
Peacemaking
Camping
Carpentry
Cartography
Cooking
Detecting Hidden
Enticement
Evaluating Intelligence
Healing
Fishing
Forensic Evaluation
Herding
Hiding
Provocation
Inscription
Lockpicking
Magery
Resisting Spells
Tactics
Snooping
Musicianship
Poisoning
Archery
Spirit Speak
Stealing
Tailoring
Animal Taming
Taste Identification
Tinkering
Tracking
Veterinary
Swordsmanship
Mace Fighting
Fencing
Wrestling
Lumberjacking
Mining
Meditation
Stealth
Remove Trap
The skills in red are the Rogue Skills. Yes, 9 of 49, or 18% of the skills are ours!!
No wonder Rogues frequently have more than one Rogue character.So if you are trying to GM Begging and decay Stealth, good luck, it will be hard and you will frequently hit walls. Better to go out and buy something that is above Begging on the list like Anatomy, Alchemy or Item ID.Where did all this VOODOO come from? The original idea that skill decay rates affect skill gain comes from the GMs, and is fairly common knowledge. The list came from testing skill decay on test center, a highly tedious process that involves setting every skill to some value (14.2), turning them all down and gaining a skill then check what decayed, lock the decayed skill, record and repeat.
Common myths:Stats decide skill decay rate: NO!The skill you are gaining decides which skills decay faster: NO!
Society of Thieves
I see how you are.
Don't share with the homies.
This HAS to be in UOPG's skill section (if true; anyone refute it?).
Maybe this explains why some characters don't gain like others. The "wrong" skills are pointed down...
Hasta. |
^ top-Stacked Magical Bonuses
[Nieves] March 7 - 11:41 AM EST | I have known for years that Blessings items stacked their bonuses.
I didn't realize you could do that with Strength, Cunning, or Agility Items either.
Check out Crazy Joe's results here.
Scroll towards the bottom and you will see CJoe's post.
No more throwing out magic items with Cunning, Strength or Agility charges for me!
And you people on GL thought "Hammer" was a terror with Doom(C) and his Blessings items. MUHUHAHAHAHA!
Hasta. |
^ top-What You Get When Achieving Levels In Justice
[Nieves] March 7 - 9:03 AM EST | The reward for someone who pursues Justice is a higher chance to receive a scroll of power from participating in the defeat of a champion "boss monster" in an "Evil in a Can" spawn situation.
(The basic premise of Evil in a Can, for those who do not know, is a special type of monster spawning that gets tougher the longer you continue fighting, and at a certain critical point toward the "end" of the battle a champion of that spawn appears. A stat or skill cap-increasing "scrolls of power" has a chance of being awarded to a character who defeats such a champion.)[…]
Wee! AN EXTRA SCROLL OF POWER!? WOOPEE! I am so excited.
Let's think about this: I go out and kill a bunch of reds. I gain Justice points and then, later, I team up with some "buds". We go out, and spend hours trying to get Mr. Harrower to spawn. It does. We kill it. I get an extra Scroll of Power. Neato.
You know, in the UOPG Forum, someone reminded me about my statement about changes in game: "people should try something before knocking it down".
Well, how many of you think Scrolls of Power suck?
::counts the hands::
Ok. How many of you thinks this system for Justice is the suckage?
::counts more hands::
Most times, I try to give an alternative to a proposed system. I am not even going to fucking bother.
Why? Because I am extremely frustrated.
A lot of things were covered at the UO Faire. I have yet to see much, if any of it, come to light. Ok, Tamers and Bards are getting "fixed". Anyone else want to tell my Alzheimer's infected ass anything else that's been changed or improved based on the suggestions given at the Faire?
Where are the In Concept changes to combat that were discussed? Crafting? Alchemy? Magery? Where is the break out notes to what was discussed at the Faire?
Where these things coming out now already in the works before the UO Faire? If yes, aight, fine. Tell us so.
Well, I guess it boils down to this: I still have the OPTION to not participate in any of the current proposed changes. They don't affect me. I don't go looking for Virtue Points. I don't have a Tamer and my Bard sucks on dust bunnies (Sorry Vas). And I hardly, if ever play my Fisherdude. I just smith, kill oranges (or die trying), dig maps and hang with the guildmates. The current set of proposed changes don't affect my game play. Cool beaners.
Anyway, I digressed. So sowy.
People get busy. Priorities change. But keep us informed dammit.
Ok, I am going to take my red pill now.
Quick Note: OSI's Dev Team has gotten MUCH better at keeping us informed. I appreciate it. But sometimes, I feel, they conveniently keep things to themselves I, and many others, feel we should hear and know about. Would it be so bad to have a State of UO address every quarter? Please!?
Que tu piensas?
Hasta. |
^ top-Some info on future 3D avatar changes
[Nissa] March 7 - 8:33 AM EST | Greyburn, Client Programmer for UO, posted this to UO Discussions:
We're still working hard on the new avatar art for the 3D client (i.e. humans and their clothing / armor). We have done a first pass on everything, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us. We have more or less reworked all of the code related to clothing as well as creating new art. So we are going over everything with a fine toothed comb, because we want to be sure we have everything rock solid before we release it.
We are also looking at some new run and walk animations for your avatars. So you have something to look forward to in that department, too! :)
We're all very excited about the way the new art is turning out and can't wait to show it to all of you! Several of us "red names" are spending all or most of our time on getting this done, so while I can't give a firm ETA right now you should be aware that this is a very high priority for us right now.
Well good news for all you 3D users. Someone later in the thread whined about other things in the game needing fixes (rewards and guild stones). Greyburn replied that there are many people working on many different things.
Personally, I will stick with my 2D. When I am in crowded areas, 3D lags so much I can't play it. |
^ top-Scrolls Of Enchantment
[Nieves] March 7 - 8:29 AM EST | I believe the Power Scrolls currently in-concept will hurt UO more than help it.
My reasoning doesn’t differ materially from the many objections already filed. (Nerfing the GM title, balance issues galore, messed up dueling, etc..)
I have cleaned-up, renamed and incorporated some of Ariella’s ideas into one of my recent proposals. I present it here for your review:
Scrolls Of Enchantment
The goal I’m trying to accomplish with Scrolls Of Enchantment is exactly the same goals the Development Team is trying to accomplish with Scrolls of Power.
I would however argue that the Scrolls Of Enchantment are much easier to implement and have less of a negative impact on game balance than do Scrolls of Power.
The idea is that you would find Scrolls Of Enchantment in the same places would’ve normally found Scrolls Of Power. They would also be cursed so they can be looted, etc.. Nothing changes here.
Scrolls Of Enchantment are used to imbue clothing with magical properties not unlike the magic clothing we already have today in-game.
Enchanted clothing would have the following properties:
1. Blessed so you can’t loose them.
2. Takes damage and therefore eventually wears out
3. Cannot be repaired
4. Dyeable
5. Enchanted (Can hold skill or stat charges)
6. Can only be applied to clothing outside a dungeon or T2A
Enchanted clothing is very desirable. Bank Sitters will just love ‘em because they have a really spiffy title and they’re blessed! (Heh, they would never wear out for a bank sitter!)
PvP’ers and PvM’ers would love these garments for the special skill and stat qualities they contain. (Oh, PKs may find a use for them too [wink])
But most importantly we would be introducing a new and fun item in the game that:
1. Would get Trammies into Fel at least as well as the Power Scrolls would
2. Wouldn’t nerf the thousands of GM that are proud of having reached GM status.
3. Preserves the standard Dueling competitions held today. Important point: Duels would be unaffected by Scrolls Of Enchantment because most rules already require contenders to ‘remove any magical garments.’
I would personally prefer the Scrolls Of Enchantment over the Scrolls of Power any day of the week. I’m a vet player and cringe at the thought of restarting my training!
Also the game already supports magical cloths that modify stat attributes. All that would need to be added is the modification of skills attributes.
Scrolls of Power are:
1. harder to implement (more chance of bugs)
2. Massively unbalancing
3. A disappointment to any GM that truly loves their status as ‘the best’
4. Perma-Uberness
5. Loose value as the market becomes flooded
Scrolls of Enchantment are:
1. Easy to implement (relatively speaking)
2. Arguably no more unbalancing than the magic garments of today
3. Not a slap in the face of all current GMs (that care about loosing their title)
4. They wear out, so no Perma-Uberness
5. They wear out, so they are always in demand.
Anyway, this is my idea.
--------------------
Lord Guardian,
Adam Ant
Just because we're a bunch of murderers and thieves doesn't mean we need to act uncivilized.
Adam always has good ideas. Adam and I should get some funding and make that gaming company...
Hasta. |
^ top-Brain Surgery -- Retracted
[Nieves] March 6 - 10:07 AM EST | Because everyone is telling me Hanse didn't post it and, at this point, my opinion isn't needed about the Fishing Changes. My apologies for any errors made.
Hasta. |
^ top-The Virtue of Compassion
[Nissa] March 5 - 11:32 PM EST | This was posted to In Development
Compassion is part of a philosophy within Ultima Online known as the Virtues, and is one of eight pursuits within the upcoming Virtue system.
The Virtue of Compassion has been described thusly:
“Compassion is nonjudgmental empathy for one's fellow creatures.”
Players will be able to pursue the Virtue of Compassion by assisting non-player escorts and prisoners.
Gaining Compassion:
Characters will be able to gain points in Compassion in one of two ways:
1. Successfully completing an NPC escort quest.
2. Successfully completing a NPC prisoner quest.
The amount of points gained for completing a prisoner quest will be more than those gained for completing an escort quest.
Points in Compassion may be earned up to five times in a given day.
Characters that are [young] will not be able to earn Compassion points.
Virtuous Title & Abilities: When a character has achieved any number of Compassion points, he is considered to have achieved a certain step on the path of Compassion.
When a player moves his cursor over the Compassion symbol, a title will be displayed, indicating the step currently achieved in Compassion for that character.
First step: Seeker of Compassion
Second step: Follower of Compassion
Third step: Knight of Compassion
Players who progress any number of steps on the path of Compassion, but do not continue to actively pursue it, may discover that this Virtuous title reduces in steps over time.
Gaining steps in Compassion will grant a character the ability to improve the results when resurrecting characters other than himself.
Characters resurrected in this manner will return to life with a higher number of Hits than which they would normally resurrect.
First step: Resurrected character returns to life with 20% of their maximum Hits.
Second step: Resurrected character returns to life with 40% of their maximum Hits.
Third step: Resurrected character returns to life with 80% of their maximum Hits.
This ability may be used as often as the player wishes.
Note: you must have the ability to resurrect through the use of spells or Healing skill in order to benefit from the use of this Virtue. |
^ top-Fishing Changes
[Nieves] March 5 - 7:34 PM EST | I have no fucking clue how this one slipped by us here at UOPG:
If you have any opinions on (or suggestions for) the list below, please share them. I didn't write this post because I find typing fun (well, not mainly because I do), but because I honestly want Fishing to be better and more fun (although I expect some of my opinions to deviate from the widely accepted norm).
Right now, Fishing is DULL. In this document I've included some ideas that I think would help make the skill more fun, for me and others.
To begin with, Fishing should be slightly changed in how it works, in order to make it more comfortable and a bit less annoying. The design I picture is that whenever you fail to catch anything, you do not get a message saying so. Instead, an automatic retry is made (but without a new fishing swing taking place). In effect, you keep fishing until you catch something (or stop fishing, by using the fishing pole again before the timer is up). This would not only cut down on the annoyance of fishing as it currently is (imagine that you never fail to catch anything, and don't have to hit the same macro key over and over as much), but also work very well with the fishing lures and sinks detailed below.
Secondly, food must be important. If food is made more important, the fish is as well (since fish is a kind of food). I won't go into the specifics, as that is purely a Cooking matter. I just want to state the need for change from a fisher's perspective, and recommend that small (magic) fish are made especially useful for such purposes.
Thirdly, I think that you should not catch any footwear anymore. Not only does it make no sense that you regularly catch such items out in the middle of the ocean, it also serves to "nerf" the footwear market for tailors.
Fourthly, sea serpents should produce a special resource that tailors can use to make special armour. Since such a system is already going in, going into any details is pretty much pointless.
IMPORTANT: Fifthly, fish should be given a varying weight, to promote limitless long-term goals and a sense of great achievement (and a worthwhile goldsink). Every fish caught would have a base weight of 1 stone. If it is caught in Felucca or the dungeon server, the weight would be +1 stone heavier (to reward those who fish in the more dangerous waters; it would be +2 stones for the Felucca dungeon server). The weight would then be increased according to the following algorithm:
A roll (0 to 1000) is made.
If the roll is equal to or below five times your Fishing skill (500 at GM), it is a success.
If the roll is a success, the weight is increased by +1 stone. Go back to 1.
If the roll is a failure, the logarithm ends.
As you can see, there is no practical limit to how heavy a fish could get. That means you could, potentially, catch the biggest fish in your shard's history, if not all of UO. Of course, your record fish would carry your mark (if you're a grandmaster fisher), and display it's weight when single-clicked. The same information should, naturally, display for fish trophies as well; under this system, any fish could be used to create a fish trophy, and the "big fish" would be removed as it would no longer have a good place in the game. Any existing "big fish" would be converted into 8-stone fishes upon the creation of this system. All fish would yield a number of fish steaks equal to 4x their weight (unless the designers think fishing provides too much raw food already, in which case it could end up at only 1 steak/stone).
Wouldn't it be fun to have the biggest fish ever caught displayed in your house for all of the world to see?
Sixthly, the Bulk Order Deed system provides a lot of fun, as well as a sense of purpose and achievement, and peaceful fishermen could use a little extra income and fame... In case you're not clairvoyant, I might add that I want to see a similar system added to Fishing (along with a Fishing revamp; the varying weight of fish detailed above would almost be a prerequisite for such a system, if it is to have any variation (and varying degrees of difficulty)). If a BOD system is put in, the SOS bottles and treasure maps should be removed completely as fishables; not only is the concept fairly unrealistic (fishermen catching treasure maps and bottles regularly, yeah right...), it also serves as a source of frustration whenever your luck runs low. Instead, the ship recovery bottles should be put in as a low-end reward in said BOD system. It would be just like a "guaranteed catch system", which some fishers have called for, but much better (especially as all the mundane fish you catch would be worth something and thus no longer be so mundane).
Seventhly, we should be given more control over what we fish for. To start with, tinkers could craft lures that target a single specific creature (fish, small fish, dolphins, sea serpents or krakens (or any other possible future addition)). You would only be able to apply one lure to a fishing pole. The benefit of using a lure would be that you would have a greater chance of catching the specific creature; before any normal Fishing roll is made, a special roll is made to see whether you catch the specified creature or not. If that roll fails, the normal Fishing roll is made. They won't guarantee that you catch something, but they will make it much more likely. Of course, it may be harder to catch a kraken than an ordinary fish... Another tinker-made item would be a "sink", that would make sure that you don't catch any "small fish" or fish with a weight of 5 stones or less (either would result in a "failure").
Other issues that need addressing:
Fishing poles should wear down with use, mainly for economical reasons. Of course, exceptional fishing poles should give some sort of bonus beyond an increased durability. This would also make the "sturdy fishing pole" reward (of a possible BOD system) more realistic and not quite so junky.
The skill title should either be gender-sensitive ("Fisherman" and "Fisherwoman") or neutral ("Fisher" or "Angler"). I assure you, Lyria is not a very manly woman.
The fish populations should be interactive, in the sense that rarely fished spots should have more (and bigger) fish than the ones fished out regularly. This way, the random-weight system described above could be enhanced even further, adding an exploration aspect to the skill and making for personal "fishing spots" that are shared with noone; perhaps we will even see PK fishers in Felucca one day...
Shipwreck recoveries should also take place in the Lost Lands.
The Siege Perilous MIB rates should be unnerfed, to make them more competitive with the special fishing nets, though I suppose a BOD system would fix that issue as a side-effect.
Small fish should be stackable; they are caught frequently, and they all have the same properties, so I don't see why they should not be that way.
Other ideas for Fishing and Fishing-related content:
It would be nice if the fish had other names than just "fish", although I don't know how compatible that would be with the random-weight change listed above.
Diving gear (flippers, heavy weights or something else - I don't know what is doable) that lets the fisherman dive in deep water (in order to harvest items that are normally found at the bottom of the sea) would be an interesting new tool to use. Using the item would supposedly make the character seemingly jump (improvised animation) into a targeted water tile nearby (producing a sploosh) and disappear for a few seconds. The items you find down there could either be purely random or decided in advance, as well as depending on whether the water is deep or shallow - I'm not sure which would be the best model.
Fishing nets could be made by tailors and allow the fisher to catch many things at once, but also "fishing out" an area much quicker as well... They would also have a very limited durability (20 uses?).
Harpoons made by blacksmiths or bowyers (don't know where it belongs fictionally) would be especially effective against sea creatures (double damage). The harpoon would look like a grey spear and be a thrown weapon, using the Fishing skill for accuracy (unless a skill for thrown weapons is added).
Netherfish: these odd creatures live and lurk in the great black depths, but somehow they have managed to learn how to produce light. By cutting a fish like this, the fisherman can produce a special kind of glowing cream, that will make whatever it is used on (including characters) glow in the dark, for a limited time. If dyes are used on the cream, the light produced will be coloured accordingly. The light radius starts at that of a torch, but goes down to that of a lantern shortly before it runs out.
Jellyfish: if you catch one of these, it will appear on the deck as a "frozen" slime labelled "a jellyfish". A skilled poisoner can extract the poison from it by using an empty bottle on it. The poison will completely paralyze a character for at least 15 seconds.
Pearls could be obtained by diving to the ocean floor. White pearls could be used in jewelry, while I've also suggested elsewhere (in another document) that you should be able to harvest black pearls by doing this.
Seashells could also be obtained by diving into the ocean. They can be used to create the decorative "string of shells" items, or just used as decoration the way they are. I think there should be some alchemic use for them as well, such as perhaps a potion that temporarily increases your overall AR or gives a slight bonus to Resisting Spells, or some other effect. With this system for obtaining them in place, seashells should be removed from the shipwreck pre-chest loot list, mainly because there is little point in keeping them, and because they don't really belong in it anyway - it is a shipwreck loot list, after all.
Cooks should be able to create other things from ordinary fish than just fishsteaks. As new options in the Cooking menu, I'd like to see "cut fish" (used to create "cooked fish") and "fish head" (used by alchemists to create Intelligence-enhancing potions). Fish steaks would still be created by cutting fish with a bladed object. Another item that I think could have lots of potential for other crafting skills would be glue. Yep, in the old days the Swedes made glue from the skin of a particular common fish.
Serpent scales (taken from sea serpents) could be used to create poison gas bombs.
It would be fun to have new shipwreck loot (such as "ruined"/"broken" items, the item specifically called "garbage", dirty plates and so on). It would also be good if we could have our catcher's mark on items recovered from a shipwreck, when recovered by a grandmaster fisher.
Erf.
Note: Thanks UOLS for the above.
Hasta. |
^ top-Ack
[Nieves] March 5 - 6:39 PM EST | Markee and Co. is experiencing problems with their servers. Please be patient as they work on the problem.
Hasta. |
^ top-Nieves Take On The Proposed Changes
[Nieves] March 5 - 10:04 AM EST | Tamers, Bards, and PKs, oh my.
There is a principle I learned in the Army that served us all very well. It was the K.I.S.S. principle.
In effect: Keep It Simple Stupid. The more you complicate something, the higher the likelyhood of failure. I haven't had the time to read everything that's proposed to change Tamers, Bards, and Felucca. From what I did read, it sure does look complicated.
Here is what Nieves would do if he had Tajima's job.
Tamers-Can't Tame, Can't Own.
Bards-Difficulty Based.
Stat Loss-No Stat in Fel T2A and Dungeons. 50% of loot on blues. 20% of loot on reds.
Simple no? But we know OSI always wants to add "cool things" to UO. And humans, by nature, always wants to complicate things. So, I will give my complicated version.
Tamers
Can't Tame, Can't Own. The system looks back and checks to see if you have a pet that you can't normally own and it goes poof. And you must have the required Taming and Lore skill level to tame the appropriate animal.
Lowering the taming level of the Drake works.
Bonding is ok. Healing and feeding the pet adds to the pets bonding or loyalty level. You can only be bonded to one pet at a time. A bonded pet will guard your corpse or open a gate for you and follow you through that gate (a toggle upon death will ask which you would like to happen). Being able to give commands when dead opens up too many issues.
Tamed animal strength maxes out at 4/5 the power of a wild pet. Which means your pets can be trained as before. GM Animal Lore will tell you if he is traned up to max (as it does now).
GM Vet allows you to do a "bonus" max heal (25% chance) if the pet isn't poisoned. Poison must be cured first as always.
GM Taming allows you to control two pets max.
The Animal Lore "information database" proposal sounds cool, but eventually people wouldn't use it anymore if ever at all. Sounds like a waste of hard drive space to me. I say at GM Animal Lore, give them an extra stable slot and keep the current information given when using Animal Lore on an animal.
Allowing Pets to Greater Poison with a bite is interesting (allowing them to gain Poisoning skill points). At first I thought it was bad. But if you you can only control two at a time at the GM level, it could be manageable. No pet would be able to Deadly Poison. Think 4/5th level power of a regular pet.
On a Side Note, can we have a Black Dragon that "spits" a Poison Cloud? PLEASE!?
Allowing pets to gain skill points sounds reasonable. Although I thought they already did that.
The Special Abilities proposed sounds reasonable.
Resurrection? Nope. I can see the bugs now.
Bard
Difficulty Based. At GM Entice, Provocation and Music, you have a chance to Provoke Ballys and Ancients.
Bard songs sounds very cool. I like the Bard Damage effect. I can see it now. *You see Ariel Songbird attacking MaNiAC* Deathmoan. 00ooo00ooo. Translation: "sHiT, h3 b33t m3 wiTH a luut!!!111"
Watts told me he would come back and play his Bard PK again if they put the bard damage song in.
Holding a Song for more or stronger effects sounds cool.
Make Peacemaking an option, not a requirement. This allows Bards to continue being a viable character and not nerfing them TOO much. Entice would now be required for "stronger" provocation effects. So you got 3 checks being made.
In effect, Bard templates could wind up: Entice, Provoke, Music, Magery, Med, Eval, and the 7th skill would be an optional skill of your choosing. Yes, you could say these changes will hurt the Bard T Hunter, but if you drop Eval for Lockpicking and pick up Cart as your 7th skill, you could still be a viable T Hunter. And if you don't want Cartography, you can play him/her as a Provocation/Chest looter. Also, you got things like hiding, peacemaking, resist, and wrestling to choose from.
UO is about options. Don't restrict my playstyle dammit.
If a player does pick up Peacemaking, give the bard a cookie and a dunce cap. Ok ok, I will play nice.
If a player does have GM Peacemaking, he acquires an "Peacefull State" ability. There is a chance that all creatures become stunned for 4 seconds and are effectively in a paralyzed state. In Felucca this is an aggressive act. In Trammel, this will only affect Oranges. Can you see the guild warring potential?
Stat Loss
Fel Dungeons and T2A equals NO STAT. All characters get a one time reprieve of counts to start the system fresh. Kill the bounty system since it's not really utilized. You gain long term counts, not short. The issue of whether or not players are given the option to give a count could be a big one. Personally, I say fuck the option. If you kill someone, you take the count.
Give players a "voluntary stat loss option". If you go to one of the shrines, you speak a phrase, a count is dropped (to a minimum of 1 count) and you take 20% stat in ONE random skill. Might NOT be a popular option, BUT, it's an option players could use to avoid going "red". It's never a hard thing to train skills back up in this day and age of Powerhour Powergaming. When GGS hits in a few months, I say let this Shrine Count Reducer option stay. An option is always a good thing.
If a character kills another character in a dungeon, a Revenant spawns. 50% of loot, rounded up, stays with character, the rest on the corpse. If a PK dies, 20% stays with character, the rest on the corpse.
If a red dies, he has the option of gating to the Chaos Shrine. When a Blue dies he isgiven the option of gating to a city of their choice.
Reds are not attackable for 2 minutes upon resurrection. Reds cannot attack either. Same for blues.
Thieves still go aggressive when stealing. Think "Blue Tank Thieves" and you might know why I am against the OSI proposed change to stealing. I had to be convinced of that by Pepper. Thanks.
Fel dungeons are no recall into. You can gate in or out.
Double resource spawn in Felucca.
If a PK dies in Stat, give him the option of going to Angel Island to do Penance. :D
Throw out the "30 minute out" restriction. What's the point in grouping if you can't resurrect a fallen guildmate?
Oh, and before I forget. Fuck Skill/Stat Scrolls. 120 Eval, Magery, Anatomy, Tactics and GM Swords/Jacking: Explosion, Precast Ebolt, Axe hit, and release Ebolt equals deathmoan to EVERYONE. That's IF the Axe hit didn't kill you in the first place. Might as well have left the old Precasting system in.
The discussion about adding healing or damage potential to your spells at the expense of the other spells would be the better option IMHO.
Just make the special moves macroable. kthxbye.
Flame me at will.
Nieves needs to win the Super Lottery and make his own Gaming Company.
Nieves Games...
Yeah, I can see it now... We Crush Worlds!
Hasta |
^ top-Confirmed: Dragonkind stays as powerful when tamed
[FrozenFire] March 5 - 7:54 AM EST | Well apart from a slight stat loss which can be trained back. No wonder the thread where it was announced is filled with gushing tamers. What happened to the "doing potentially 1200 damage per minute" being unbalanced?
Also several of the mentioned "other" nerfs Tamers were supposedly going to get, like dragons needing to be fed gold, Cant Tame, Cant Own (CTCO) is not mentioned in the new revised design. Were they dropped or just forgotten? These are the words from the original proposal:
- Reducing the hit points and overall melee strength of white wyrms, dragons, drakes, and nightmares.
- Increasing the resources/player skill to keep a pet faithful and happy. Tossing a rib to your 12-ton dragon is not likely to max out its loyalty, but a pile of gold will probably do the trick.
As ImaNewbie usually gets to say at the end of a strip: This doth not bode well. . .
As far as I can see, the new changes takes care of the 70/70 twinks, but it does not do much to adress the relative power of the tamer class itself. Gold farming solo is definitely here to stay.
Heres the sad thread where Oaks displayed the onset of his insanity. Notice all the positive feed back hes getting. Its great to be the bearer of gifts, and if everyone applauds you (and no doubts tamers are relieved!), then its very easy to fool oneself into thinking that approval equals doing the right thing.
So make sure Oaks sees the other side of the argument and head over there now - even if you avoid it at all costs - and explain why tamed pets cant be as powerful as wild pets. Keep it decently civil or it will just be dismissed as senseless flaming.
|
^ top-The Latest on Taming Nerfs
[LadyGrania] March 4 - 6:58 PM EST | Once again, a wonderful cut and paste brought to you directly from the Update page at UO.com.
Scary thing is, I kinda like it! WOOHOO
And off we go!
The following proposed changes to the Taming profession and pets are being considered toward helping balance Taming as a class, as well as improving its place within the greater gaming systems that comprise Ultima Online. Please keep in mind as you read this documentation that these changes are not yet finalized, and after testing and reexamination there may be some exclusions, alterations, or additions to this proposal.
The usage and utility of the Animal Lore skill will be altered in the manner described below. (The exact nature of how "Legacy" pets are incorporated into this system has not yet been determined.)
Animal Lore
Upon successful use of the Animal Lore skill, players can see the following data for any tamed creature they control, or any tamed creature within a trade window:
Exact numeric data for: All Skills, Strength, Hits, Dexterity, Fatigue, Intelligence, Mana, Number of Previous Owners, Damage, Natural Armor, and Loyalty.
A list of all foods the creature can eat.
A list of all special abilities (See "Pet Special Abilities," below). If the pet has the "Enemy" special ability, it will display the potential enemies as well as developed enemies.
A general description of how well you can control the pet based on your skills, the taming difficulty, orneriness, and current loyalty.
Animal Lorists with 100.0 skill can view the above statistics for any tamed creature.
Animal Lorists with 110.0 skill or greater can view the above statistics for any tameable creature, even if it is not tamed.
Animal Lorists with 120.0 skill or greater can view the above statistics for any creature in the game.
YAY! Now I can see how stupid my mare REALLY is!
Stable Slots
In additional to the current stable slot system (which is: two pets may be stabled if Taming, Veterinary, and Animal Lore total to less than 160, three if between 160 and 199.9, four if between 200 and 239.9, and five if at or above 240), players will be awarded another slot for each of the following skills at 100.0, 110.0 and 120.0: Animal Taming, Animal Lore, and Veterinary. In this way the maximum possible number of stable slots will be 14.
That's too damned many! I can't keep track of 4
Pet Limit
You will be limited in the number of pets you can control. Keep in mind that you don't need to control a mount to ride it, so you'll only need to keep control slots open for your mount if you plan on dismounting and using them to fight.
The number of pets you can control is directly related to your Animal Taming and Animal Lore skills. At 90 Animal Taming/90 Animal Lore, you can control one dragon or white wyrm. At 100/100, you can control one white wyrm or dragon as well as one drake, ki-rin, unicorn, or nightmare. These numbers are not exact or set in stone, and won't be until we have crunched enough numbers, play tested, and considered feedback.
Finally, you can never control more than 5 pets at once.
SO THERE! No more farming with 5 dragons! yay! I can actually play with a tamer now and not be labelled a "Gold Farming Twink"
Pet Loyalty
The following activities can increase a pet's loyalty at any level:
If the pet's owner heals it with the veterinary skill.
If the pet's owner successfully commands the pet.
If the pet feeds on something it killed (automatic).
If the pet kills a hated enemy (see Pet Special Abilities).
Feeding a pet can only raise it to 80% of its maximum loyalty.
The following activities will decrease a pet's loyalty:
If the pet's owner unsuccessfully commands the pet.
If the pet cannot see its owner during combat.
Pet Bonding
Pets that are treated extremely well over a period of time may bond to their owner. If an animal requires more than 29.1 minimum skill to tame, you must have the minimum skill to tame that animal before it will bond with you.
You are limited in the number of pet bonds based on your Animal Taming, Animal Lore, and Veterinary skills. You receive the ability to bond with 1 pet regardless of skill, 2 pets at 200 total points, and 3 pets at 300 total points.
Bonded pets receive the following special benefits:
It will be easier to control your bonded pet, and they will lose loyalty at a slower rate.
Instead of the usual "[tame]" tag above its name, a bonded pet will display "[bonded]" above its name.
The Veterinary skill will be slightly more effective for bonded pets.
Your bonded pets will recall with you.
Upon the death of a pet, those which are bonded pets will turn into a "pet ghost" (see Pet Resurrection).
The bonded pet keeps friends, but will not listen to them. Friends of bonded pets will not be able to command the bonded pet, but will be able to resurrect the pet upon its death.
The bond is only broken if the pet goes wild, is released, or dissipates.
Casting the 5th circle Summon Animal spell normally brings forth a random animal, but if the casting player has a bonded pet, this spell will instead always try to summon your bonded pets (if they are not nearby or in the stables). This spell works even when the bonded pets are in ghost form.
Great. It's not bad enough that people get so attached to virtual pets... now they get attached to you!
Pet Resurrection
When a bonded pet dies, it turns into a "pet ghost." This ghost can still obey the movement commands (follow, come, etc.). If not resurrected within an hour, the pet ghost will dissipate and is gone forever.
If the owner or a friend is nearby, the pet ghost can be resurrected with bandages by any player with at least 80.0 Veterinary and 80.0 Animal Lore.
Resurrected pets suffer a permanent skill penalty of 1 to 2 percent. However, it's possible to regain those lost skill points through continued training of your resurrected pet.
This is a *STUPID* idea! If it dies it dies. Good grief. Absolutely ridiculous.
Pet Taming
If the tamer hides or becomes invisible while taming, any Animal Taming attempt will fail.
If an animal cannot pathfind to the person trying to tame it, the taming attempt will fail. This limitation includes situations where the creature is blocked by placed objects, walls, energy fields, and any other such object.
Paralyzation taming will remain as a valid technique. However, a bonus is granted to the skills, stats and bonding time for any animal that is tamed without the aid of paralyzation.
Pets will suffer some level of skill loss (not stats, armor, or damage) after they are successfully tamed, but will have full potential for training.
If it can't see you or get to you, you can't tame it. Try not to paralyze it or cause it any kind of "trauma" and it will love you more.
Pet Skills
Spellcasting pets (see the "Spellcasting Ability" in the "Pet Special Abilities" section, below) will automatically use their Meditation skill to regain their Mana, and will be able to gain Meditation skill when they do so.
All pets will be able to learn Anatomy, Resist Spells, Tactics, and Wrestling.
Pets with the Spellcasting ability will be able to learn Magery, Evaluate Intelligence, and Meditation.
Pets with Natural Poison will be able to learn the Poisoning skill. The Poisoning skill is used to determine how often they inject poison in combat.
Bonded pets will learn skills more quickly.
Pets with 90% or higher loyalty will learn skills more quickly.
well that's self explanatory
Pet Special Abilities
Some pets will have innate special abilities, as per the list of abilities below. Some creatures/pets may have more than one special ability.
Pack Instinct. When more than one of this animal is grouped with others of its kind, it gains more Hits, does more damage, and is easier to control while in the pack. The bonus is cumulative.
Hated Enemy. This pet has the potential to develop enemies. Each time this pet kills a creature of a type that is a potential enemy, there is a chance it will develop into a "Hated Enemy." After a pet has developed a Hated Enemy, it becomes more fearsome in battle against that type of creature by inflicting more damage. The potential enemy types for a pet are innate. For example, a hell cat could develop ice, canine, and faerie enemies, or a unicorn could develop demon, orc, ogre, troll, and undead enemies.
The current types of possible enemies are Acid, Animal, Arachnid, Canine, Cold, Demon, Domesticated, Dragon, Elemental, Faerie, Feline, Fire, Gargoyle, Giant, Human, Insect, Juka, Living, Magical, Meer, Metal, Non-living, Ogre, Ophidian, Orc, Reptile, Sea Creature, Terathan, Troll, and Undead. More types may be added later.
Iron Stomach. Pets with this ability can eat almost anything, including metal and leather. Feeding your pet magic items causes temporary, random magical effects.
Human-Healer Friendly. This pet is especially receptive to the Veterinary skill and will be easier to heal. This ability can be developed.
Natural Poison is an innate ability that allows the pet to poison a foe with a successful attack and poisoning skill check. This ability is developed as the pet's Poisoning skill increases.
Fire Breather. This pet can breath fire. Roar! This ability can only be developed by increasing the pet's strength.
Spellcasting is an innate ability. This pet can cast spells, although it makes its own decisions on what spells to cast and when to cast them.
Once again, says it all.
Veterinary
The bug that prevents you from using veterinary due to the z-axis or flying pets will be fixed.
Using Veterinary to heal a pet will increase its loyalty.
Taming Difficulties and Skill Gain
The minimum skill required to tame a Drake will be lowered to 84.3.
Taming aggressive creatures will give a slight bonus for skill gain.
Miscellaneous Taming Issues
The "guard" command will require loyalty checks similar to the "kill" command. (/b>
So there it is. All the news fit to "borrow". Learn to enjoy change. It's a natural part of life.
Love Ya! |
^ top-Account Age Clarification
[Nissa] March 4 - 4:25 PM EST | This just in!! :)
Around the beginning of each month, we’ve taken quite a few calls from players who are concerned that their account ages have not updated. The account age system does not actually update itself at the beginning of each calendar month, but should update itself within two weeks of the last time the character was logged in. If you’ve been logged in and noticed your account age is wrong, then please check your account creation date in the Account Management section of our web site, and also please be sure you understand how your account age is calculated, as described in the Rewards Program documentation at http://update.uo.com/design_350.html (your account may appear to be up to 2 months older than it really is - this is normal).
If it’s definitely wrong, and you log back in after two weeks to find it has still not updated, then use the Ask a Question feature of the Game Wizard at http://support.uo.com to submit your inquiry. When making your inquiry, please be sure to tell us your account name, and the shard you noticed the discrepancy on.
So, if you are having this problem, following the OSI instructions to make sure.
Also, on a side note, they were having problems with reward gumps not showing up on log in. OSI is award of the problem. They claim it is the system just running slow. Your rewards are still there, you just have to wait until they clear it up. |
^ top-A Contract For Your Transactions
[Nieves] March 4 - 4:08 PM EST | A while back I sold a couple of houses on another shard to some Japanese players on my regular shard, just thought I would let you know how I did it. I bought a couple of books, blue ones I think, and then I wrote out a contract, like, 'I promise to sell so and so a Log cabin, situated etc., for a certain mount on a certain date'. Then I got the other guy to write in his book something like 'I promise to pay so and so a certain amount for the log cabin, situated etc., on a certain date' and then we exchanged books. Being a trusting soul to a certain extent, and figuring that these were not bad guys, I transferred the houses before actually getting the money, and I had no problems, the money was paid in full after the transfers. Of course you can get ripped off with any method, but this way at least you have a record to use later if anything goes wrong.
If they won't do this, they probably don't want the deal.
Oh, by the way, I am back. I think.
Hasta. |
^ top-Not the 9 o'clock news. . .
[FrozenFire] March 2 - 11:25 AM EST | Some people keep their sense of humor no matter what. The following words of profound wisdom(??) come from SmackeyTheFrog over at the uo.com boards:
In an effort to balance skills without nerfing bards or tamers, I suggest the following:
Warriors will have access to scrolls which will enhance their weapon. Such effects would include monsters fleeing in fear and running head first into dungeon walls causing instant death. The chance of this effect taking place would be approx. 60%
Mages who specialize in Meditation may be able to 'hypnotize' monsters into thinking the mage is a piece of celery, thus making the monster no longer aggressive. As most monsters dislike celery (and other leafy vegetables), the monster would become irritated at the monsters in the nearby area and turn on them. Chance of success: 60%
Tinkers will be able to create super-strong 'Golems' which would be able to fight for them. Oh, wait a second...
Grand Masters in Taste ID will be able to lick high end monsters to death. Since, as my girlfriend says, licking is considered a beneficial act, the monster would not grow angry and attack the 'licker.' Chance of success: 60%
Fishing poles will be usable weapons. Sea Serpants will die instantly if poked in the eye with a fishing pole. Chance of 'eye-shot' : 61.2%
Archers with GM anatomy will be able to aim for a dragon's groin. Draw your own conclusion here. Chance of success: 60%
Grand Master Herders will be able to herd all of the cats in Britain into Deceit. Have you ever seen The Mummy? They hate those things... Lich Lords will trample themselves attempting to escape. A GM herder controlling 50 cats has approximately 30% chance to cause a LL stampede. GM herder with 100 cats: 60%
With the plant scenario will come the ability for grand master alchemists to grow a new type of plant. Gold will now literally grow on trees. The trees will generate a limit of 240k gold pieces per hour, thereby making it slightly less lucrative than masking yourself as celery or cat herding. Alchemists will be the only class of character worthy of being called "Gold-Farmer."
The price of houses will increase ten-fold due to the influx of gold. To cope, a new skill will be introduced to the game: Mortgage Brokering. You may not train in mortgaging until you have at least 25 Million gold pieces in your bank box (typically 2 days work in initial tests).
With all of these changes, bards and tamers will quit their b1tching about nerfs...for now.
If you fail to see the point of this post, email me and I will be sure to ignore you as soon as possible.
Beneficial acts just took on a whole new meaning to me. . . |
^ top-And the battle rages on
[FrozenFire] March 2 - 10:41 AM EST | And here I was thinking that the old "We are famous" thread was big. The thread discussing the changes to Felucca over at uo.com boards makes the "We are famous" thread look like a dingy next to the Titanic. Anywas I tried reading it, but I gave up after 30 minutes of bitching and moaning, and in between some constructive arguments. I did scan the rest of the thread and found these tidbits for you all:
Clarifications from Evocare:
I'd like to quickly (if that's possible ;]) address some of the recurring concerns I'm seeing in this thread...
Q: "Won't pk's camp the dungeon entrances!?"
A: Personally, when you consider the sheer number of entrances to the dungeons and the lost lands (almost 20?), and the fact that there will be teleporters linking the lower levels of all dungeons (it's in the proposal in case you missed it), I don't believe it'll be a significant issue as long as players are reasonably cautious about their entry/exit methods.
The reasons I include the Lost Land entrances as legitimate points of entry are because...
1. There will be about 12 champion regions in the lost lands (so you can certainly hunt there rather then in the dungeons if you so choose).
2. After entering a dungeon in the lost lands, you'll be able to use the teleporters to get into the "normal" dungeons from there.
Q: "Scrolls of Power will imbalance PvP!"
A: Nuh uh! ;] Seriously though, I completely understand the ramifications of how the possibilty for greater specialization impacts the viability of hybrid character templates. I also understand the concerns regarding high-damage melee weapons. Although I can't go into more detail here, I'll once again try to give my best assurances that some modifications will be made along several fronts to compensate for these considerations. Can I guarantee that PvP will be perfectly balanced? Probably not. However, I believe we can get pretty close, and make UO more fun and interesting at the same time due to the new choices.
Q: "Why no Scrolls of Power for crafting skills?"
A: We hope to introduce crafting scrolls of power through other means.
Q: "Do the no recall/gate rules mean I can't recall from inside the Lost Lands to somewhere else inside the Lost Lands?"
A: Correct, you will not be able to recall/gate from a dungeon/LL area to a dungeon/LL area.
I bet there will be risky but not impossible to enter these areas. Camping dungeon exits isnt exactly new and most newbie Pks on my shards liked to camp the SHame Entrance for some reason. I dont mind, Dungeons should be risky, want the l33t loot you must be prepared to run the gauntlet, and better yet bring some friends to back you up.
Getting the scrolls will be hard folks. Evocare isnt saying it out, but I dont think hed be as confident about balancing unless he knew they werent giving out the +20 scrolls in serious numbers. And after so many important changes I think we can expect 6 month or more of fine tuning "nerfs" and "unnerfs" before the dust settles over at the UO corral.
Crafters, rest assured, not only are you getting BODs (presumably Tailoring seems slated to go in before Carpentry with the new leather types under consideration; whats next various sorts of wood for carpenters?)
And finally dont dream of sneaking in one area and then start recalling/gating in the "underland". Evocare just killed the last hope. I love my ethereals even more now, theres going to be a lot of running (and pissed off tamers; walking with their pets as sitting ducks isnt going to be popular) to arrive at wherever the actions at. Heres even more on the reasons of disallowing Recalling/Gate:
I'd like to explain some of our reasoning behind the no-recall/no-gate rules for the dungeon/LL areas of Felucca.
The primary reason we favor restricting the ability to recall/gate out of the areas is to ensure that the first player to grab a scroll of power off a champion's corpse isn't always absolutely guaranteed to be the player that keeps it. Although we recognize that under the current set of proposed rules, the player that first loots a scroll could conceivably use it right away (assuming it isn't for a skill they already have an equal or higher skill limit in), it does remain a possibility that the player might have to make a mad dash to exit the dungeon/LL area in order to get to safety. It seems to us that the excitement generated from that dash could be pretty entertaining. ;]
There are a few main reasons we favor preventing players from recalling/gating into the dungeon/LL area of Felucca. First, it should manage to slow the rate at which players (red or blue) can respond to a lost battle by switching characters and rejoining the fight. Second, it prevents players (red or blue) from instantly zapping around from champion spawn to champion spawn looking for juicy targets.
So the short version is that if you get a scroll, you better be prepared to run like hell for it, unless you plan to use it right then and there. Because youre going to have to carry it to safety, past camping thieves and reds. Now thats a chase that will be fun! Also, for those of you that missed it, Evocare implied that the 30 minute timer will be per character, as opposed to per account. I wonderif the decay is real time or character time. Otherwise all youd need is 2 characters and switch when you die. Youd loose some time running (and its likely risky doing a solo run back, but hey, risk is where the fun is!).
And now, Sannio on how the different scroll "plusses" add up:
So let's say you had two scrolls in your hand: a +5 magery scroll of power and a +15 magery scroll of power. While you could use both the +5 and then the +15 scrolls, I wouldn't. You can jump right to the +15 level and change your magery skill cap from 100 to 115, and then save, sell, or trade the other scroll. In this way you don't need to use the "in between" scrolls of power in order to use the higher one (although what will probably happen is you may work hard to collect several +5 versions, use them, and at some point come up with a rarer +10 or higher scroll and use it as you find it.)
Ok, so you cant go the cheap way of 4 +5 scrolls to raise the skill cap to 120 in a skill, you have to have the real deal. Expect the desirability of +20 scrolls be be surpassed only by their rarity.
This is further confirmed by FierYiCe:
Each champion spawn is created with certain character classes in mind. One group might be easier for your tamer, but hard for your mage. One easy for a bard, hard for a warrior. One easy for a warrior, etc, etc... There will also be 17 different area's that the champions will be available at so hopefully you can avoid the PK's if you really want to. (Plus the PK's have to deal with the monsters as well.) These spawns are also not designed for solo players. They are supposed to be difficult. These items are intentionally going to be a bit rare because of this. We don't want everybody with 120 ability in all skills the day the changes go live. :)
So they intend to make it hard. Dont think this will be another Demon Bone Spawn folks, it clearly wont be. Also a nice tidbit about 17 hero spawns in the Lost lands alone. I wonder how many more in the Dungeons proper (Ice and Fire dungeon is probably included in the Lost lands and thus the 17 spawns)?
Heres Cynthe offering yet another clue as to how the dev team look at the scrolls:
basically, the idea was that by not raising the skill cap, we feel that these rewards won't be completely necessary to be competitive... but that people with the rewards will have more control over how they want to tailor their character, by giving them the option to raise certain skills higher
So more control, not necessarily more power. Well, as PowerGamers we will find out the best templates once they manage to push this publish past QA. (Can you say D-E-L-A-Y? Good, thought so.) Stay tuned.
And heres Sannio on using moonstones to sneak into the underlands from Trammel:
No, you would not be able to use the facet stones to enter or exit the Lost Lands. (Nor, as a side note, would you be able to recall or gate into, out of, or within the Lost Lands.)
Ok, so that loop hole was closed as well. I wonder what theyre missing so far?
And it finally dawned upon me why ghost cant enter the "underlands". Evocare:
You're right Xavier, the FAQ is incorrect on that point. Ghosts will not exist within the dungeon/LL areas of Felucca, and therefore cannot be resurrected there. We'll do our best to make sure there isn't any sneaky stuff like dying and quickly hitting the instares option from the Sacrifice virtue to get around it. ;]
The FAQ should state...
"Nope! Even if you have short term murder counts and would typically take statloss in the main Felucca area, you can die in the dungeon or lost lands server and be resurrected in the overland (non dungeon/LL areas) of Felucca with no stat loss."
Otherwise stat loss Pks dying in the overland would simply avoid stat loss by ressing in the underland. Doh! And here I was thinking it was to avoid people using ghosts as nearly undetectable scouts. . .
And thats all the reading the UO.com board I can take in one day folks. Ill get back with reports on how the Tamers and bards are doing. Until then, start working on your new underland PKs. . .
[Edit: Heres another comment from Evocare about the "unbalancing" power scrolls:
First, you're talking about a character that has managed to get five 120.0 scrolls of power, a +25 stat scroll of power, is under the influence of a bless spell or greater strength potion, and has reached (and maintains) a level 3 of Humility? Even then, my calculations say you wouldn't be able to get your strength that high (it's possible you have some outdated humility info, or I'm completely forgetting about something off the top of my head).
Second, and more importantly, you're making the rather large assumption that the bonuses for going beyond normal skill values are linear, rather then offering diminishing returns. This is a crucial point, since this method allows us to give characters increased power for higher skill levels while keeping the effects under reasonable control.
And heres more from Evocare on the reasons behind the power scrolls. VERY interesting:
Well, there are lots of reasons, and were we speaking in person it would be considerably easier to go into greater detail. So, here's the best quick summary I can muster right now...
1. The scrolls of power provide a new dimension in skill gain. Rather then simply going through the rote process of exercising a skill until having reached the top tier, a character can only get so far (100.0) before having to take on a meaningful challenge in order to continue their development process.
2. Due to the above, we (the dev team) feel players will feel a greater sense of achievement once they reach the top tier of their skill development. This sense of achievement will be underscored by the fact that players at that top range will know their peers did not simply "powerhour" their way to the top in a short period.
3. The scrolls are a meaningful resource for the majority of players, thereby (hopefully) establishing a centerpiece for conflict that is fundamentally more compelling then "I want to kill you because you're on the other team".
4. The scrolls will allow players to specialize better, without having to develop more "helper skills" (ie: Eval Int or Anatomy). Assuming we balance the post 100 skill effects well, and implement some other changes effectively, we'll also maintain the viability of hybrids.
5. Players that still have goals for character development are less prone (IMHO) to feel they've "done it all".
Heres my take on this:
1&2: To nerf powerhour. Also its convenient that GGS gies in at the same time. Now add that with the small fact that Prophet mentioned 40h between "guaranteed" gains in the 99 range. I dont even want to know how long its going to be in the 119 range. . . Of course non PH ways would still presumably work so 8x8 would still be around. . .or could it be that Evocare and CO have more surprises in store for us?
3. The new pvp for a reason - since factions seems to have failed.
4. Variety in templates.
5. Introduce challenge in the game. If youve soloed Wyrms and Balrons, odd colored monsters just dont excite you as much anymore. New *real* challenges is always good.
Evocare is all over trhe boards these days, I wonder what Adrick is doing, since this is kinda his area too. Anywas, Evocare:
In all honesty, speculation as to whether or not PvP will or won't be balanced to your satisfaction isn't going to be very productive right now, especially when making the majority of that assessment based on incomplete and/or incorrect information. ;]
Let me try to leave those of you here with two thoughts to mull over...
1. I hear your concern, and we'll do our best to ensure that UO PvP as of publish 16 stays at least as well-balanced and fun as it is right now (although I believe we'll actually have an even better balanced, more diverse system after all the changes).
2. In order to ensure that you'll have ample opportunity to air your concerns again before the changes go live, you'll get to try the changes out on Test Center once they're ready (assuming we go ahead with it all). Once you've had a chance to duke it out with a variety of new skill & stat combinations, I'll be looking forward to your feedback on these boards once again. =]
Did you see those three small letters? a. l. l. Yes, there is more to come it seems. And it looks like this is whats going into production, more or less, balancing is another matter so once this lands on TC well get to influence things again. Joy.
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^ top-Well, the nerf stick just got a little smaller...
[Nissa] March 2 - 9:48 AM EST | A new revision was posted to the Bard Forum
The interruption chance will be eliminated. Becoming invisible, recalling/gating, and starting a new song will still halt the bard's current song. No other activities will be able to interrupt the bard. If the bard is unable to pay the upkeep cost, the song continues — the bard will just be out of stamina (and possibly Mana).
The chances to provoke various creatures will be raised. Right now we're looking to go to about 60% for dragon-level creatures at 100.0 Provocation, with magic instruments able to raise that to 80%.
Provoke bonuses from Enticement and Peacemaking skills will be removed — the chances stated in #2 above would be with just Provocation.
There will be the possibility of provoking ancient liches and ancient wyrms with Provocation beyond 100 skill.
Note that all of the provocation difficulty numbers given above assume 100.0 Provocation skill provoking two of the same creature type onto each other. It is still intended that provocation will be somewhat easier when one target is less powerful than the other. Generally, the difficulty of a provoke will be the average difficulty of the two targets.
It will remain true that difficulty of additional simultaneous provokes will rise. Provoking one pair of dragons to fight will be very possible, but provoking a second pair at the same time would be unlikely. Skill above Grandmaster of course would make it more of a possibility. In other words, bards will have no problem provoking groups of medium and weak creatures, but will have great difficulty doing it with groups of tougher creatures.
Peacemaking will be dual-mode. In one mode it will be a radius-effect one-shot, with the radius determined by skill level. In the other mode it will be usable as a targeted ability that keeps a target from retaliating. This allows players the choice of using either option.
Enticement will be given additional effects that will interact with as-yet-unannounced game changes. More info on this will be posted later. Enticement will become more useful on its own rather than as a support skill that just gives the bard access to additional abilities.
I am running out the door to take my daughter to swimming. I will add my comments later. I just wanted to give a heads up on this.
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^ top-And the Bard Gods have spoken...
[Nissa] March 1 - 1:13 PM EST | Well as you all know OSI has brought out the Louisiana Slugger nerf stick out for bards. I have spent many hours over the past week and a half reading the OSI boards and the UOPG boards to see what people have to say. I was hoping with the tremendous out cry from the players, OSI would see the light and bring out a lighter nerf stick. But based on comments made by Vex, Sannio, and recently Prophet, I was beginning to realize that OSI pretty much has made up their minds on this.
However, due to the overwhelming respond from players, Vex decided to enlighten us with some more thoughts that were posted to The Barding Forum:
With the recent huge upheaval on our boards regarding the upcoming changes to Bards, I feel it is extremely important to make a few things clear. In this article, I will explain in detail several critical issues regarding the Bard changes, and I’ll try to stick to the facts. Until now, these are things we have not directly stated, but I think they may help explain our reasonings for the recent changes we’ve posted into In Concept.
Finally, someone is going to talk to us. Oh great Bard God, please tell me you have seen the light!!
The tone of this is intended to be neutral, so if it comes off as abrasive, then I apologize!
Hey, I’m an adult, I can take abrasive. Come on Vex, tell me about the light!
As it stands, the Ultima Online Bard is capable of single-handedly defeating over 95% of the game’s content. Bards can destroy most of the toughest creatures in the game quickly and efficiently. Bards have the greatest access to loot in the game, including gold, powerful magic items, and high-level treasure maps. Bards can single-handedly take on and quickly defeat the entire spawn from those treasure maps, which gives the bard access to still more high-level loot. To be able to do this, the bard doesn’t need much in the way of equipment. The cost and risk is very low relative to the reward. Granted, bards do often die, but death means little in a game where you can resurrect and return to where you were within minutes.
Bards overpowered. Well duh!! We have been telling you this for months if not over a year. Ever since Trammel, we have been telling you to make this skill difficulty based. A young adept stoic should not be able to provoke a whole spawn of dragons. Ok, so we are in agreement.
We know of many accounts less than six months old that have many millions of gold accumulated as well as significant caches of the most powerful magic items in the game. Our Game Masters regularly observe bards with both the Illustrious Lord/Lady title and the [young] tag. Several members of the UO Live team have bard characters and experience firsthand what they are capable of. UO designers do observe the game. We use anonymous normal characters, we travel the game invisibly observing using development tools, and we extensively review logs.
Again, we all know this and we all agree it needs to be changed. Glad to hear that you are following characters around and watching what they do. Yes this character is strong, again no argument.
Bards are this effective with a relatively small investment of skill points and character building time. The Provocation skill is devastatingly effective even under 80.0 skill points, because the skill level only determines chance of success. Since Provocation can be used every few seconds, a failure means little. Given time, success is guaranteed.
Hello, are you seeing a pattern here? Again, yes. This has been a problem since Trammel opened. I have nothing to lose so let me go to the hardest places. No push through, so I can just zip around the dungeons provoking over and over until I hit. Let me say this again, WE HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR THIS TO CHANGE FOR A LONG TIME!
When the Live or Ongoing Content design teams work to add new content (monsters, and everything else) to Ultima Online, one of the first questions raised is, “How will bards impact this?” For example, bards are able to gain Fame and Karma much faster than non-bards. This means that bards are naturally able to achieve and maintain the highest level in the Sacrifice virtue much easier than non-bards. And the benefits bestowed upon the bard from that virtue only further decrease the risk for the bard. Recently, several new monsters added to the game have been made resistant to or immune to bard abilities, in order to see that other characters have an equal opportunity to benefit from the new content. That is by far not the ideal way to do it.
Understandable. You have to take all classes into consideration when creating these new monsters and scenarios. Tamers got the savages that destroy tamed animals. Bards got monsters that cannot be provoked. The ore elementals handle damage differently. Some are not hurt with magic, some are not hurt with melee. This is great. Different monsters should have different pros and cons attached to them.
One thing is extremely clear. Bards are just plain too powerful. That power must be curtailed. Not for any kind of nefarious motives, but simply for the good of the game as a whole.
When OSI starts using the word nerfed I start getting nervous.
We have been asked why we can’t simply make other classes more powerful and balance them that way. That solution would certainly not work. If all characters are able to attain a power level where they are able to defeat the game’s most powerful creatures quickly and efficiently, solo, then all of the problems related above just become worse.
I agree to a point here. I for one don’t think all classes should be handled the same way. Each class takes a different amount of time, energy, money and patience to build. A warrior is the easiest to build., and should the least effective. A mage takes longer and costs more. They naturally are more powerful than warriors. Tamers are the next most powerful and takes longer than a mage. And then the bard. A true bard, I said TRUE bard. Not a bard with 50 provoke and 100 musicianship that goes to provoke dragons, but bards that have been persistent in building a character. Going out and just provoking over and over to build the skill, are by far the hardest character to build in the game. And if you are a treasure hunter/bard, then you have the added bonus of add 2 more of the hardest skills to GM, cartography and lockpicking.
Many posts on our boards have argued that it takes an extremely long time to raise the Provocation skill and relatively little to raise melee combat skills, and because of the long time it takes to raise Provocation, those characters should be able to wield such extreme power. This is just not true. First of all, Provocation is extremely effective at lower levels. From 90 to Grandmaster, for example, the 10% chance to fail a provoke dwindles down to 0%. While it may take the player many months to make that skill increase, the benefit gained is little. There are few consequences to missing a provoke attempt to begin with, and simply lowering that chance of failure from 10% to 0% does not make a huge difference in the skill’s power.
Now, it seems Vex is not really hearing what the players are saying on this one. We don’t say we should wield extreme power. What we are saying is that we should be more powerful than other classes because of the time put into the character. The problem is the skill check. A GM bard should never be able to provoke the really tough monsters 100% of the time. A mage cannot cast 7th and 8th level spells a 100%. A warrior does not hit 100% of the time. GM crafters cannot make the hardest things 100% of the time. We all agree that this needs to be changed. But 20% chance of provoking a dragon with 400 skills points invested (Provoking, Musicianship, Peacemaking, and Enticement)? This is where I think the light is starting to fade.
I would like to see bards only needing 3 skills for provoking. Remove enticement and make it provoking, peacemaking and musicianship. Then, I would think that each monster is giving a rating. For example. A dragon would have an 80. Which means you need at least an 80 to even attempt to provoke it. A GM bard (in all three required skills) would have a 75% change of provoking that dragon. A bard with 80 provoking, 90 peacemaking and 100 musicianship would have a 54% chance of provoking that dragon and a bard with 90 provoking would have a 61% chance of barding that dragon. And a bard with 80 in all three skills would have a 38% chance of provoking that dragon.
While I haven’t really thought up numbers for each monster, you get the idea. No one should be able to provoke 100%.
I also think the loss of stamina and/or mana is not a bad idea. Make the bard lose something while he/she is playing songs.
It has been suggested that Provocation be kept at a very slow gain rate and its power level be scaled based on time invested in increasing the skill. This cannot be done. We simply cannot allow any character to wield that much power, because of the very unbalancing effect it has on the game’s economy and any new content added to the game.
This leads to the next issue, where many players make a distinction between responsible and irresponsible bards. The UO design team believes that there are many players who do play responsibly and don’t use their bard’s power to farm gold and loot and fame, and who do make an effort to assist other players. We have seen it in action. Just like we have seen the high level of abuse that bard power leads to as well. It is impossible for us to design a way for any player to wield such extreme power and then limit them to using it responsibly. “Responsibly” is a very subjective term, and computer programs are incapable of making that kind of judgment. No matter how good a set of rules and conditions and restrictions we could invent and program into the server, someone would find ways around them. Furthermore, it’s not feasible to use customer service representatives to police this kind of thing. Since there is no way for us to successfully limit bard power to responsible use, there is no choice but to remove the avenue for abuse.
No way to police the twinks. :(
In summary, drastic alterations to bards’ power absolutely have to be done for the future of Ultima Online. We can’t make an attempt to fix the problems with the game’s economy until we curtail the ability for practically anyone to rake in gold and rare, powerful loot at high rates. Any new high-level, long-enduring player-versus-monster content added to the game will be somewhat meaningless to characters who can defeat it single-handedly and quickly. With so much power, content that is intended to be a long-term goal is almost reduced to triviality. So long as any type of character has such an amazingly high level of power as bards, two things will happen. Non-bards will perceive an injustice against them, and more players will create bards. Both of those are trends that have long been in progress.
Yes, we all agree, something needs to be done. But the nerfs they have proposed are too extreme. There must be some middle ground that will benefit both sides.
We are still refining and balancing the final design, but the UO design team feels that the list of changes currently In Concept for bards leave the skill set with a highly potent combination of skills and abilities. Even though bards will no longer be able to increase their wealth and fame as fast as before, they will still be able to find challenging and interesting gameplay.
Let me read between the lines for everyone. STOP WHINNING, THE CHANGES ARE COMING WHETHER YOU LIKE THEM OR NOT.
The feeling that I am getting from this last paragraph, is thanks, but we have made up our minds.
I am not disagreeing with OSI’s nerfing; long over due. It is just too extreme. While I won’t get on the band wagon and say that I am quitting this game, I am saying that this is the first time I have considered selling my account. And it is not because of the changes, but because of OSI’s lack of give and take on this issue. Up to this post from Vex, the feedback from OSI in respond to the outcry of the players was nill. It seems like they are jamming this shit down our throats and it is leaving a very bad taste in my mouth.
If you would like to express your thoughts, Just Go Here. |
^ top-More Information On Housing
[LadyGrania] March 1 - 8:46 AM EST | A cut and paste special with permission from Lord Markee Dragon.
Houses from closed accounts are still standing!
Posted on Wednesday, February 27 @ 19:44:46 EST by Markee Dragon
If you closed your account between the time that they started auto refreshing the houses and now then all of your houses are still standing! Everything should still be there unless it was somehow stolen and all of your ownerships also remain intact.
I confirmed this last night with 6 different accounts. 4 of the accounts were closes January 9th of this year and two of the accounts were closed mid November. All of the accounts are still fully intact. It has been stated by OSI that your houses will decay at a normal rate once you close your account. But this appears to NOT be the case.
I personally reactivated 4 accounts last night to find that all 8 houses on these 4 accounts are in perfect order. I even found that stabled animals have not been decaying after 10 days as the stable master states when you stable pets.
I assume that this is all part of the auto refresh that OSI put in place after September 11th. I have contacted OSI about the status of this to find if it is a bug or an anticipated side effect of the auto refresh. At this point I have not received any official word on this.
So what does this mean to everyone? Two things. For those of you that quit within the last several months you may have just gotten a second chance to get all of your stuff back by reactivating your account. The second thing this means, and I'm assuming on this part. Is now that condemned houses will begin to fall that all of the houses from closed accounts will begin to fall as well. This is very good news to anyone who has been looking to place a house.
I will provide confirmation of all of this as soon as OSI provides it.
More IDOCS!!!!
Love Ya! |
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