(OFF TOPIC)
OOC:
Dear Broadsword Ultima Online Team,
Here is my feedback for the Pub 96 changes to the Doom gauntlet:
The "pull" by darkfathers has come to Baja, and it is horrible.
Every three seconds (this is literal, not an exaggeration), you get pulled to the darkfather.
Hidden? Get revealed.
Get targeted by the excessive amounts of spawn around the darkfather.
Die.
Your body gets looted. You lose your bandages, because you can't later find the body of the lich lord that looted you among the scores of dead spawn littering the floor.
Someone in your party says, "This isn't fun, I'm leaving."
You say "Take me with you."
A couple of hours in the gauntlet, and one person in your party got a Ring of the Elements. No one has seen any of the new things. No one got any recipes, which is what you're looking for.
There's a difference between the immersive "Wow, this is a really dangerous place" and the fiction-breaking "There's a Dev who's messing with us." The Doom gauntlet, as it is now, is too far on the "messing" side.
How to fix this:
o Remove the looting ability of monsters in the gauntlet. Having your body looted isn't fun, ever. Why was a feature added to the game that isn't fun, ever?
- OR make nonlootable items to hold Reagents and Bandages, in the same way that quivers are nonlootable and hold arrows.
o Remove the "Pull" ability of the darkfather entirely,
- OR significantly tone it down to, maybe, the darkfather can "pull" one character only once every forty seconds.
o Reduce the spawn that the darkfather summons. I thought that the amount prior to Pub 96 was just right. I also thought the throwing bones feature was fun, as opposed to the "instantly spawn a huge number of monsters without warning periodically."
o Remove "blood elemental" from the list of spawn that the darkfather can summon.
While you're fixing that, also fix:
o Reduce the Fleshrenderer invulnerability, to, perhaps, going invulnerable for one second, every thirty seconds. The way it is now, is way too much.
- OR just remove the "invulnerability" entirely.
o Some of the teleport tiles that go into the rooms are invisible now (Classic Client). Make 'em visible again.
o Back in the Baja Doom Train heyday, just about everyone got one drop per hour, except the thrower who got two. Please return the drop rate to that previous formula. Just add the new items to the list of things that drop.
o 20 darkfather blood was nice. 5+3+2 is less nice. Please return to 20, and divide evenly.
o I wish: a possibility of getting Gauntlet items in Doom outside the gauntlet, especially recipes.
Sincerely,
James (Baja)
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(RESPONSE)
Hello James,
Thanks for the feedback! To answer a couple of your points...
I'm not sure why the "loot" feature was added, it was implemented by the original team almost 20 years ago! There are some ways to combat this. I usually get around it by never carrying my bandages in a single stack, so I'll always have extra should a monster loot it. If I lose my corpse an undertaker's staff is especially helpful in recovering it. It's certainly not fun getting looted, but I think restricting features in a game that aren't "fun" would leave us a world that offers no risk and ultimately would become pretty dull. There wouldn't be any death, you'd never be able to get PK'd, equipment would never wear out, and resources would be available en masse without having to spend time harvesting them. While it is easy to classify these features as "not fun" and steps have been taken over the years to cut down on the tedium and pain of experiencing them, I think the original intent of the builders of Ultima Online was to create a virtual world that simulates the real world, somewhere along the lines of you can't have happiness without sadness sort of thing. We try to remain true to the original creator's design philosophy in that regard.
We've adjusted the Darkfather's spawning ability over the testing phase in terms of its frequency. That AI also spawns monsters with a fraction of the normal stats they usually have and experience and observations have shown its fairly easy to one shot them. Part of the tactical decision of heading into the gauntlet is how to deal with this ability.
The drop rate for the gauntlet is unchanged from where it was before Pub 96. We've significantly increased the chances of getting a desirable legacy item & the new items & recipes from the drop list. The mechanic still functions the same way it always has, as the more you kill the more likely you are to get a drop - eventually reaching the point its guaranteed. Remember too that players are also awarded credit for tanking and healing, so they are getting on the top attacker list as well, whereas in the past that list was dominated by damage only.
The dark father blood was reduced because after a single day an individual had accumulated nearly 1000 blood. We have to be mindful of resource saturation, especially within a short period of time.
There's always a learning curve in experiencing new content and we try to introduce ways that challenge ways that players usually destroy most of what gets thrown at them, as the majority of legacy bosses in UO have no chance of fighting back against a group of players. Afterall, spamming Armor Ignore, Enemy of One and never watching my health drop below 100% isn't very challenging. Saying "all kill" and spamming greater heal isn't either, nor is running around in circles plinking arrows at a creature that has no chance at striking back. Hopefully you'll find some excitement in experimenting with new methods and tactics to overcome the new challenges presented in the Gauntlet.
Thanks again for the e-mail and have a great day!
