Ultima Online Storm Chat 7
Date: April 17, 2003
Topic: General Discussion
Moderated by: TrinityX
TrinityX - Welcome to the 7th UO StormChat! Thankyou to everyone from Origin for attending!
TrinityX - This chat will be moderated, general chat can continue during in #ultima-online. To submit a question, please /msg one of the question takers listed in the channel topic. Please do not message myself, or anyone from EA: Origin, they will be ignored.
TrinityX - Our question takers are:Peaches, CaBoT, Meerkat and Silverfoot
TrinityX - They are easily recognisable by the |IS behind thier names.
TrinityX - Tonight's topic will be: General Discussions. All inappropriate questions will be ignored!
TrinityX - *Ilex* now that reds have no stat loss. can we have no stat loss on our pets?
Vex - We are considering making some modifications to taming, including a reduction in the skill/stat loss penalty on pet death. But any changes won't happen until publish after next.
TrinityX - *Mythh* As everyone has seen there has been many Posts on Champ titles. All Dev responces i have seen on it have been about Title Toggles. And not concerning the lack of Decay. my question is, has this been looked into by you guys, and is there any remote or distant ETA on a fix for the decay rate on Champ titles?
MrTact - As I mentioned in a thread on the boards the other day, we do know about this but it isn't high on our radar.
MrTact - There are a lot of outstanding issues that are gamebreakers for many people, and we are focusing our attention on those first.
MrTact - (I believe the phrase I used was "it's annoying, but it's not preventing anyone from playing the game")
TrinityX - *ghyde* Could the Dev Team please consider coding in potted plants for shards that don't have them, I saw the house contest entries, and some of them have done fantastic things with a simple potted plant that I can't do with an artificially made simulation of one.
Vex - We're likely to see potted plants again in an upcoming holiday gift -- there are no solid plans right now I can speak about, but it's certain to happen again at some point.
TrinityX - *Azrile* Are there any other BOD systems currently in development?
MrTact - Not in *development*, no.
MrTact - But we would like to consider doing them for some other crafting professions.
TrinityX - *JCtheBuilder* A player has suggested tying the maximum elemental resistance cap to your magic resistance skill (IE: at GM resist you have max 50, at 120 resist you have 70). How has the dev team viewed this idea?
Vex - We have been looking into making Magic Resist skill affect your *minimum* resistances, so that at GM level your minimum would be about 40 or so. That is enough to be useful and would allow more flexibility when building suits of armor -- though getting an all-70 suit would still be an extreme challenge.
TrinityX - *Dizzy* Can treasure hunter's loot be looked at? Vorpal bunny loot is better, and those 2-stacks of reagents are a pain. *crosses fingers* You have no idea how irritating a L5 t-hunt can be with 50 stacks of 2 reagents in it.
Vex - Some loot is being re-evaluated for the upcoming Publish 18. I am not sure of the exact details -- sorry I can't be more specific.
MrTact - Also, wrt to looting stacks of stuff, we have something tentatively planned for Pub 19 that should make you smile.
TrinityX - *Flutter* :) What's on the horizon for 6th year vet rewards?
Vex - As we stated when we published 4th and 5th year Rewards, we do not intend to add any further reward items. Of course, each year will continue to add another reward to your account, forever.
TrinityX - *pittminion* Will there be a fix to use locked down items? Such as the Ask and answer ball or even locked down fishsteaks.
Vex - Yes. :) We are fixing tons of housing-related bugs in Publish 18. Like MrTact said, we'll likely make more details available in May.
TrinityX - *Oisin* When will soul stones start spawning? I am kinda looking forward to reconfiguring some of my characters... heh
Vex - We do plan to complete the development work started on Soul Stones, but right now they are not slated for a specific publish. We will give more information on this later, as our planning for future publishes progresses.
TrinityX - *Minotaur2k* Are you required to have very high luck(1000+) in order to obtain any artifacts from the Doom Bosses? And do the "Mini Bosses" drop Artifacts?
Vex - The artifacts were intentionally set to very high rarity. After reviewing our logs, we have determined that we made them *too* rare, and that will be altered in Publish 18. All the Doom bosses can drop artifacts. I am not certain how Luck figures into it.
TrinityX - *JCtheBuilder* It seems that scenarios have been suspended indefinatlly. Any idea when they may resume and what happened to the scenario which was put off due to AOS?
Vex - We currently have no plans to resume scenario publishes as they were before, and move to a more regular schedule of general game update publishes on a relatively short and more regular cycle.
TrinityX - *wilki24* What determines the loot list of a particular monster type? Is how much fame a monster gives a good indicator of how good the loot might be? And are some monster types weighted to give different types of items than another, i.e. more armor then weapons, etc?
MrTact - Each creature's loot list is built up from a set of "building block" loot templates.
MrTact - The more powerful a creatures is, the better his loot will be.
MrTact - I plan to release more details about this eventually, as I find the time to complie the information.
MrTact - (And, assuming the designers don't smack me for doing so.)
TrinityX - *Ellisande* Question ---- Are plants going to be put back to the way they were, soon?
Vex - I should have passed on that question for not being clear enough. I assume you mean with regards to watering them when they're locked down -- and the answer to that is, yes.
MrTact - and I worked on fixing that together, yesterday.
TrinityX - *pittminion* Rumor has it that phase 3 will be implemented with Pub 18. Is there any truth to this?
MrTact - Phase 3? What's that? :-P
MrTact - Uh, those rumors are not entirely unfounded . . .
MrTact - But that's hardly a done deal.
MrTact - I would expect the worst and hope for the best.
TrinityX - *Steveo* are there any plans to make forensic evaluation a more useful skill?
Vex - Not right now, no.
TrinityX - *Flutter* Is it true we will see some changes to spell damage with publish 18?
Vex - Evocare is working on about two dozen different tweaks to combat, slated for Publish 18. Many areas are being touched, including special moves, Chivalry abilities, Necro spells, and magery. More details about those will be forthcoming soon.
TrinityX - *Red_Falcon* question: are there any changes planned for enhancement??
Vex - None at the moment.
TrinityX - *JCtheBuilder* Any word on the economy? AOS added some rather large gold sinks, have they slowed inflation or even reversed it some?
Vex - We've been a bit too busy fixing major bugs to really analyze the state of the game's virtual economy lately. So, the answer is "I don't know." However, we are planning on reducing the cost of item insurance in Pub 18.
TrinityX - *Orion_UOC*When can we expect a fix involving board/ingot exploit that is currently ruining the economy?
MrTact - AFAIK that went out over a week ago.
MrTact - If anyone is still experiencing problems with this, please PM me to my Stratics board account right away.
TrinityX - *Coop* Will looting rights be address in pub18? If so, care to explain a little on how they might work?
MrTact - *If* you accept the premise that looting rights are horribly horribly borked . . .
MrTact - *And* it's a given that fixing them would make people happy . . .
MrTact - *And* you buy me telling you that, contrary to appearances, we LIKE making people happy . . .
MrTact - *Then* you could probably reasonably conclude that looting rights would get fixed at the first available opportunity.
MrTact - QED
TrinityX - *Mythh* Will the Smith BoD system be recieving any tweaks with Pub 18 ? I have noticed a drastic drop in Smtih PS's and a Rise in Tailor Scrolls since AoS.
Vex - Not for Pub 18. However, we are looking into doing some cool stuff with BODs in 19 -- so, stay tuned. :0
Vex - Er, :)
Vex - Translation to MrTact's answer to the last question: Yes, looting rights are being fixed for Pub 18. ;)
MrTact - You have no sense of drama
TrinityX - *JCtheBuilder* AOS was supposed to add about 40,000 houses across all shards. But it has apparently added considerable more due to all the different size plots. Is there any concern that all the new houses going up in trammel and felucca may cause strain on the servers?
Vex - Right now things are running nicely, with the exception of some unfortunate hardware problems beyond our control. Our programmers are continually optimizing things as well.
TrinityX - *Ranzor* Is there going to be a fix for people who can not place a trash barrel in their custom houses? For the people who forgot to detroy the trash barrel when they upgraded?
Vex - Yep, that's another item in the Pub 18 bug list. The fix is made and is on its way through the QA testing process.
TrinityX - *Flutter* Mr Tact are we to assume by your answer that looting rights are working as intended? IE: Minimal damage (magic arrow for instance) gives anyone looting rights?
MrTact - No, I was trying to be funny.
MrTact - Looting rights ARE horribly borked
MrTact - That will be remedied imminently.
Vex - You are not supposed to gain looting rights from doing one minimal-damage hit. That will be fixed in Pub 18. Just to be 100% clear. :)
TrinityX - *Minotaur2k* Any chance of getting a mana potion in the near future(Warriors has Total Refresh, why not a Mana Pot?)
MrTact - Dude! We already have mages ranting about you guys pwning them with double-strike, and you want us to make it EASIER for you?
MrTact - Probably not anytime soon :-)
TrinityX - *Mythh* What are the "Fire Bombs" People are playing with at WBB .. is this a "bug" or new feature ??
Vex - I think that might be an easter egg...
TrinityX - *Fuddrucker* Are there any enhancements to PvP planned? Most notably horse stamina, and the current godliness of high end (60-70's resist) armor?
Vex - Yes, a lot of Evocare's Pub 18 balance tweaks affect PvP. I do know he's specifically addressing the leetness of high resist, but I don't know the details right now.
TrinityX - *kelmo* Will the pre aos runic hammers get recharged, or should I just use them as is and move on?
Vex - Yes, the plan is to retroactively fix runic hammer charges.
MrTact - IN PUB 18, to be perfectly clear
MrTact - :-P
TrinityX - *Flutter* If someone with 1200 luck has a 51% chance of improving loot than does that person also have a 49% chance of getting the same item as someone with 0 luck?
MrTact - I would like to direct anyone with really nitty-gritty luck qs to this thread:
MrTact - http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/uo/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=uouhall&Number=3896026&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=&vc=1&what2=postlistdev&selv=&vwhich=&PHPSESSID=
MrTact - I have given WAY more detail about luck there than I could possibly give in IRC, so there you go.
TrinityX - *Fuddrucker* Stratics recently announced their "Stratics Plus" plan to increase revenue. What is going to happen if this plan fails and Stratics can no longer afford to be the "official" host for the uo boards?
Sannio - We're confident that Stratics will be able to continue improving their service, and that the Stratics/OSI relationship will continue to grow.
TrinityX - *Azrile* Mining gloves and ASH's being fixed with pub18
Vex - Yes. :)
TrinityX - *Huitzilopoctli* Stealing artifacts has become a pretty big hit. Is there any chance in the future that new artifacts will be added? Or perhaps added to different dungeons?
Vex - I'm not even certain all the existing artifacts have been generated yet. But, yes, I believe the plan is to add new ones over time.
MrTact - In general, we like to add to stuff that the players have clearly expressed a liking for, and thieves have been neglected for some time.
MrTact - So we'll probalby do more stuff like that to make thieving more interesting.
TrinityX - *Steveo* if you got to add 1 thing, no matter what the players thought, what would it be?
Vex - I'm partial to gambling games. I'd probably carve out an unused section of dungeon and install a weirdly themed, literally underground casino. :)
MrTact - This will sound like the brown nose answer, but I personally don't want to add anything to the game without regard for what the players think.
MrTact - That's not to say that we won't sometimes add stuff to the game that we know will probably annoy some people *cough*one house per account*cough*, but we balance the value that adds to the game against how annoying it is.
TrinityX - *JCtheBuilder* Xena wants to know if Mr Tact is free for dinner sometime (if he is single).
MrTact - Alas, I am happily married, with two kids.
MrTact - Besides, I'm a programmer, so as you can reasonably expect, I am like the personification of The Comic Book Guy from Simpsons.
TrinityX - This end's our 7th UO StormChat!
TrinityX - Thankyou to Vex, Sannio,and MrTact for taking the time to answer our questions this Thursday evening.
TrinityX - And a special thankyou to everyone who attended tonight!
TrinityX - Logs will be posted at http://ianstorm.com/ultima
TrinityX - If you wish to continue talking to other UO players, please /join #Ultima-Online