NEWS [UO.Com] Publish 97 Comes to TC1

[zamot]

ok gave up on testing. I dont play that much anymore. I think they should have fixed the pet health bar issue prior to revamping the pets. Initial thoughts are the game mechanics are still messed up.

• Pet health bars do not refresh
• Loring a pet sometimes gets you dashes while other times you get a percentage
• pet targeting-
  • Can be standing right next to a monster and because it is at a different level( on a hill) you r pet will just ignore your all kill command
  • Other times it targets things through walls and will ignore your command to attack something that is attacking it.

While testing my Vollem went from level 2 prior to starting the training. To a level 4 once I started the training. I never got above a 1 percent complete status. occasionally When I would lore I did not get a status bar.
good luck

 

[Uvtha]

Well, to be completely honest with this pet revamp, pretty much every pet, becomes the same thing....

Well, becomes similar to other pets in the same slot anyway, since you can't level all pets up to 5. Most are capped at 3 or lower. I think there are 20 pets currently (and that's counting the crafter beetles) and several new ones will will get that can get to 5. I haven't checked all the current 2 or more slot pets, but I assume all of them but Imps and maybe those beetles will be able to get to 5.

Looking at them, I really think Bake's are gonna be beastly. The base damage is like twice that of WW, and regular dragons, plus they already have pretty high end resists, and magery. All the level ups could go to specials.

That one dinosaur is also crazy balls.

 

[Emily the Tamer]

1) Do you mean same type of pet vs same type of pet? If that's the case then the high stat pet will still be the "best" pet. The higher the tamed stats, the less points you have to invest in stats, the more you can spend in special moves and the like. Finding those high roll pets in the wild will still be worth doing. Think of it as making armor with arms lore vs making armor without arms lore. With those extra free resists you can make a much better suit.

Two things with that...

From my understanding, a high-end specimen of the same species can't be trained as much as a lower end, or at least, that's the plan. It says in the publish notes that the control slot requirement WITHIN SPECIES will vary based on their birth stats, thus higher end pets can't be trained as many times. I also got confirmation of this from a friend, or at least that that's the way it's supposed to be. So I've read and been told that what you're saying is not the case, and all pets, regardless of stats at birth, end up being pretty much exactly the same.

But IF what you're saying IS the way it works (and is supposed to work), that changes how I feel about this greatly. I still don't like it, but it's not nearly the stab to the heart as it would be if it worked the way I thought it was going to. Anyhow, I guess the question then becomes, will the more weight that can be given to other things be noticeable/significant? I surely hope so. Will have to hope I can catch Kyronix on TC within the next week so I can compare good and bad specimens of the same species.

 

[R Traveler]

So what I understand, please correct me if I'm wrong:

• stronger pets have more current points
• stronger pets need more training points to get upgrade
• stronger enemies give more training points

 

[cazador]

So what I understand, please correct me if I'm wrong:

• stronger pets have more current points
• stronger pets need more training points to get upgrade
• stronger enemies give more training points

There's like 3 people who have actually spent 7 hours training to get to 2%. Hopefully they respond... however there's a few that had a Dev actually level their pet because well..who the hell on earth wants to do this twenty hour grind for testing.

However with that said, considering I've gone to the highest spawn level to where my pet can actually not die instantly while I spam GHeal..so I'll be working out the best afk solution. It's stupid in its current state.

2 hours still at 1%..best system everrrrrrrrr

I personally find it comforting to think of it like when I click Begin Training it's a free % from 0 so I guess technically over the last two hours I've gained 1%. It's just a bad run of two hours and no gains.

....

 

[cazador]

I mean think about it, to gain two levels just to say OH I should of gone this way, not this way..it's just another 4 days on test grind..no biggie!! Maybe this is why we get so many bugs. Maybe the Devs forget they can use setskill commands. They actually grind and get bored.. so no testing ever actually happens.


....

 

[R Traveler]

I did 0-1% at shame, 1-3% at snow lady, 3-6% at wrong. Total 4-5 hours. Gains still sucks, but there is some progress.

 

[Keith of Sonoma]

Add a gate to Auto Level our pets so we can play with the different combinations without having to waste hours of our life to test your concept.

Hours? hehe I wish it were only hours. I spent 5 hours killing pretty hard stuff and NEVER got past 1%. I, and several others finally said to heck with it, and haven't been back. Unless @Kyronix @Bleak have finally decided to change the "pet training progress" gain rate (and not tell anyone) it's not even worth bothering to test! They were asking for feedback on how long the training should take, and in my opinion, didn't listen to everyone who told them it was WAY too long! If it HAS changed, awesome, I stand corrected. I would love to test some more. But if it has, I haven't heard about it.

Any word devs?

 

[Hera - Siege]

@Lady Emily

I understand where you are coming from, but I would like to present a couple points:

1) Your collection of Cu's from what I see isn't any less valuable. There are very few people who are going to have your selection of colors, much less a blaze Cu, and with the revamp, as opposed to that pet being most likely a vanity pet or a weaker Cu [I'm assuming your blaze isn't a 4+, if it is, congrats!], but rather you can actually use it. What it does do is make it easier for people to amass that collection of 'good' ranked colored pets. [It still doesn't mean that those colors are any easier to find], but if this is the only time in UO where something you've spent countless hours doing is now easier thanks to a change, you should consider yourself very fortunate.

2) I've been playing this game since Beta and while in my mid 20s I had a much more free time to devote to UO, that has dwindled due to other responsibilities. Farming gold, pets or anything is tedious and honestly kills my enjoyment of the game. I don't want to have to spend countless hours waiting for the one perfect pet to spawn or farming gold to buy one. While that may be something you enjoy, and I respect that, I hope you also can respect that other people don't have the time or desire to do so.

2a) I've been attempting to get my daughters into UO, and one of them would like to be a tamer [Oooh! Unicorn! ] The new changes are exciting for me because I can introduce another person into UO hopefully keep their interest with a pet that they think is awesome and not have to say 'Oh, and you HAVE to have a GD, otherwise there is some content that is unreachable.'

3) I adore Cu's as well, they are my favorite pet hands down, but the Cu pales in comparison to a GD in most upper level situations: roughly half the hit points, max of 100 in skills, physical resist is lower. It's great for fighting anything that deals a majority of it's damage as cold, but that's about it, and even with cold damage, GD has greater survivability in a 4+ due to higher HP and higher max resist in it's weakest category.

Now the above being said here's some things I agree with you on:

1) The official pet rating should *NOT* affect the initial slots. People like you who have put in the time to find the near perfect pet shouldn't be penalized for doing so in the new system. It also makes finding those initial starting points still highly desired, which is good.

2) Not sure if it was you or someone else, but I do agree that it seems the current path is that in the end all the upper level pets are going to be the same aside from some abilities. I hope the Devs do not allow you to change the damage type, this would completely kill any reason to have different pets. Different damage types for different situations.

2a) To keep high end pets high end, I would like to see something more toned down. Say my Awesome Cu with 61P 45F 84C 47P and 85E could be bumped up to 70 70 84 70 85, IE anything below 70 can reach 70, anything higher is the benefit of using that type of pet. I also can increase HP and skills if desired. This give me the option to use the Cu as a tank with more all around survivability, but doesn't diminish the value of a GD with it's physical resist. I agree that the current system seems to really be overpowering pets.

The current percentage timer issue aside, I'm hoping it gets tweaked to keep current 4+ rating pets as awesome and not penalize them, as well as reducing the sheer ZOMG! OP! of training to a 5 slot pet.

-H

 

[Uvtha]

It says in the publish notes that the control slot requirement WITHIN SPECIES will vary based on their birth stats, thus higher end pets can't be trained as many times.

Yeah I heard that, and I'd like to know how that works exactly, like what exactly is factored in. I honestly don't like that idea for reasons you note. Maybe it can be changed, if it's pointed out why that's lame.

Anyhow, I guess the question then becomes, will the more weight that can be given to other things be noticeable/significant? I surely hope so.

From just what little I know, I think they will be. Base damage boost, Armor ignore, high damage area attacks... all that sounds damn groovy.

 

[Kyronix]

I've not put as much time into this as I would have liked to yet. Question: Is it possible to take a 3 slot pet and train it, but stop aat 4 slot, or will the training take it up to 5 without the opportunity to stop? Anyone know or is this a question for @Kyronix ?

You have to opt in to continue training beyond whatever slot level the pet is at.

 

[Emily the Tamer]

What it does do is make it easier for people to amass that collection of 'good' ranked colored pets. [It still doesn't mean that those colors are any easier to find], but if this is the only time in UO where something you've spent countless hours doing is now easier thanks to a change, you should consider yourself very fortunate.

Ha, well see that's the thing, taming is pretty much the only thing I've done in 8 years. To quote a friend, "Ill be honest I never even knew you had other characters" and such would be the case for anyone who's never needed crafting from me. In any case, that's not quite my protest. Make GOOD pets easier for the average player to obtain? Sure, I can see that, depending on who you ask, pets are pretty weak relatively speaking. But with the current system that's in place, there won't even BE good vs. bad pets, merely trained vs. untrained as, from what people are telling me, there are stat and resist caps that anyone can hit with enough training (which will take far less time than what it takes to find a 5.0 specimen of the species which would STILL be subpar to a fully trained pet.) This is atrocious to me.

Farming gold, pets or anything is tedious and honestly kills my enjoyment of the game. I don't want to have to spend countless hours waiting for the one perfect pet to spawn or farming gold to buy one. While that may be something you enjoy, and I respect that, I hope you also can respect that other people don't have the time or desire to do so.

There's gotta be some grind, though. There will be parts of the game that are tedious and boring. And as previously mentioned, I think gold is easy to farm if you can figure out how to do it efficiently - certainly easier than farming the uber pets directly, and no harder than the new training system as it is proposed now.

The new changes are exciting for me because I can introduce another person into UO hopefully keep their interest with a pet that they think is awesome and not have to say 'Oh, and you HAVE to have a GD, otherwise there is some content that is unreachable.'

3) I adore Cu's as well, they are my favorite pet hands down, but the Cu pales in comparison to a GD in most upper level situations: roughly half the hit points, max of 100 in skills, physical resist is lower. It's great for fighting anything that deals a majority of it's damage as cold, but that's about it, and even with cold damage, GD has greater survivability in a 4+ due to higher HP and higher max resist in it's weakest category.

Again I remedy this by playing the game with other people, but I can definitely see how this is a concern when you play mostly solo.

The official pet rating should *NOT* affect the initial slots.

Yeah, I think pet slots are EXTREMELY sticky to mess with.

I hope the Devs do not allow you to change the damage type, this would completely kill any reason to have different pets.

For sure, one of the big reasons I adore cu sidhes.

Say my Awesome Cu with 61P 45F 84C 47P and 85E could be bumped up to 70 70 84 70 85, IE anything below 70 can reach 70, anything higher is the benefit of using that type of pet. I also can increase HP and skills if desired. This give me the option to use the Cu as a tank with more all around survivability, but doesn't diminish the value of a GD with it's physical resist

That's a really interesting idea actually. And one would still have to find a pet that is naturally high in that resist, ex. a dragon that spawned with full 90 fire resist will still stand very far out from one that spawn with say 72, which is still above that 70 margin but far below what it could be. Very clever.

 

[Great DC]

You couldn't have 5 of them. If you train a frenzy it gains a control slot, so at most you could have 2. 11-17 in a pack of 5 is 22-34 x 5 = potential damage limit of 170. 24-33 in a pack of 3 at most (with one untrained ostard) 36-49 x2 + 16-25 = limit of 123. So survivability would be better (obviously), but the damage impact would be like 30% less.

You can train these things up and not change slot level actually. I have seen him test those ostards that are upgraded to max amount before changing slots so you can still have all five. Each one does minimum 40-45 dmg- Times that by five. It does well over 200 damage. In most cases the player died before two of the ostards even hit him. INSTA death!! The player was wearing a max resists suit without curse or any resist lowering spell. I am currently attempting to test hellhound theory, I will post results when Im done. This current setup on TC will completely destroy pvp in every way.

 

[Great DC]

For those people testing training on the pets. You HAVE to fight things with high HP. There are things you fight that will gain 5-10 percent per kill with a 4 slot pet. 20-30% per kill for slot 3 pets and even more on lower slot pets. Greater dragons are not high HP, think like 10000+ HP.

 

[Ru TnT]

For those people testing training on the pets. You HAVE to fight things with high HP. There are things you fight that will gain 5-10 percent per kill with a 4 slot pet. 20-30% per kill for slot 3 pets and even more on lower slot pets. Greater dragons are not high HP, think like 10000+ HP.

I spent a couple hours training my fire steed on gaman, and while I got the gain message quite often, I never got past 1%. Tried to find something else that was durable, and not too dangerous to fight with my steed. Figured I'd try the low/ruddy bouras, but I found an Anlorvaglem first. After killing 4 of them, which aren't easy to find regularly, my steed is at 8%. Still trying to find something with a normal spawn, that my pet can handle, and gives decent gains.

 

[Larisa]

Having a hard time finding something to kill with my spider...killing toxic sliths and lowland/ruddy bouras gets the gain message a LOT but still at 1%...and this is a lvl 1 pet...he hasn't gone through the first round of training yet...you'd think a lvl 1 pet would gain faster but I'm gaining the Gargoyle queens loyalty faster

 

[Basara]

What are you all not getting? Pets that are regarded as the best of the best, and the effort that went into them, will become obsolete. With this change, it becomes irrelevant that I put my time and effort and passion into obtaining them. Something that was once amazing and rare and valuable will become disposable. Now, anybody can put in substantially less effort than I (and many other high level tamers) have, and get, quite literally, the EXACT same reward. Why is it so difficult to understand that this is not okay?

I think that the only response to you on this is, THANK GOD.....

We're getting it. You, on the other hand, are so fixated on "uber leet pets" you've lost track of the game.

There's two kinds of tamers in UO
Those that obsess over their pets' ratings
And
Those that actually PLAY UO to ENJOY IT.

I still use my first GD - he's the only pet of any type I've ever even bothered to check the "score" on, and he's in the mid-3s (and that was mainly at friends' urging). But, he's near max in physical resist and HP, and as a result can tank things that the more balanced 4+ rating GDs of some of my friends repeatedly die against. Some of them even use their high rating of the pet to justify not taking Vet all the way up, then wonder why their pet healing isn't keeping pace with mine, even though they are vetting more often. And, even those friends say they'll most likely stick with the pets they know, and only experiment tentatively with training up some of their pets that they used to enjoy before the devs made GD use almost mandatory.


I do agree with one thing - there's WAY too many abilities being offered. Flaming goo? REALLY??? There's absolutely no reason for any pet other than a fire ant to have that. They should cut those special powers down to about 1/3, and put more limitations for the ones that remain (currently, about the only realistic limits that are apparent are the facet of origin limits for bushido & ninjitsu, and the karma limits for necromancy & chivalry - the last ironic since the devs ripped the still-beating heart of chivalry out on the altar of Mondain, to turn it from alignment based to skill-based to reward the sampires and PvPers, while giving those that actually role-played a positive karma alignment the shaft.

 

[Hera - Siege]

There's gotta be some grind, though. There will be parts of the game that are tedious and boring. And as previously mentioned, I think gold is easy to farm if you can figure out how to do it efficiently - certainly easier than farming the uber pets directly, and no harder than the new training system as it is proposed now.

I agree, there should be some required time investment, although to be fair, the time invested in getting a character to 120 & 6 GM is dramatically reduced these days. I wanted a ABC Archer on Great Lakes and I think it took maybe about 24 hours total to get all skills to GM, I can't recall the time it too to get to 120 Archery, but it wasn't horrendous either. A tamer shouldn't have to invest all the time getting taming to GM+ [110 being the current must-have for GD control], then grind excessively to find a good pet, then grind to train that pet. This is one the reasons I hate WoW, it's the hamster wheel: grind to max level, now grind for gear, lather, rinse repeat. The current training system allows you to select the pet (that is trainable to 5 slots) you want, and then grind to get it suitable for upper level play.

Again I remedy this by playing the game with other people, but I can definitely see how this is a concern when you play mostly solo.

I mainly play Siege and Great Lakes, both of which are not heavily populated [my typical play times is later evenings and that's rough as well], so I spend a fair amount of time solo. Once again, you pay your $13/month and can play however you like, but just because you have people you play with that bring a GD to tank doesn't alleviate the issue that the Cu is severely disadvantaged compared to a GD. The point I'm making and you're seemingly agreeing with is that a GD is a required pet for high end content, which just shouldn't be the case. You should have a plethora of options for high end content, not just one must have. Additionally, while you are fortunate enough to have friends who are willing to play their GD so you can play your Cu. Once again, the Cu is at a disadvantage even with a GD as a tank as I would suggest you are hurting the group in that your Cu is hitting less and doing less damage against high end content. Additionally what good is a Cu's healing skill if you're always using it as DPS with a GD tanking? Finally, I also find attempting to solo higher end content rewarding, as I enjoy the challenge, but I hate always having to use a GD to do so. I welcome the chance to use another pet.

Yeah, I think pet slots are EXTREMELY sticky to mess with.

Agreed. If a cu drops to 3 slots for in order to make it comparable once it reaches 5, then all should. See final comment below.

That's a really interesting idea actually. And one would still have to find a pet that is naturally high in that resist, ex. a dragon that spawned with full 90 fire resist will still stand very far out from one that spawn with say 72, which is still above that 70 margin but far below what it could be. Very clever.

Thanks! I really hope there's implementation of this. This would make finding that perfect starting pet still a desirable thing to do, but wouldn't disadvantage someone greatly if they just wanted to grab the best one of the immediate spawn. I think the current amount of training time and what you get is ridiculous, it needs to be toned down, but at the same time a lot of tamers are using solely a GD for all content because it's simply the best. I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to use solely a cu, hiryu, or any of the other high end pets if I want. I'm a bit more on the fence about adding skills, I think combat skills should be able to be increased to 120, but if you want that bleed attack, well, pull out your cu. You want a magery pet? Bring out the nightmare [my 2nd favorite pet], Rune Beetle, or choice of dragon. But since those pets were lower when they started they're going to be 70s in all resists max. Once again, damage type, initial skills/etc all could play into your pet selection for a particular encounter, but the survivability for all 5 slot pets [meaning HP, weapon skill, etc are all equal] would be approximately the same [again with advantages in resists due to some initial factors, but I don't think 70s in all resists is at that much of a disadvantage over and 70+ in one or two, and once again, pick the pet that has the pet 70+ resists for the job].

I imagine a system where a 5 slot pet is approximately the same as any other 5 slot, but there are advantages to starting with a better pet.
IE: Your GD, or CU example. I find that perfect CU with max cold and energy, everything else I can bump to 70. While having below 85 resists isn't horrible and 70+ is great, 85 is REALLY nice and it will still take some time to find a pet with those good initial resists.

Same goes for stats. I get that Cu with the high starting STR, that is rewarded within the system vs one with a lower starting STR.

I believe there's a way forward that still offers a clear incentive to find the perfect starting pet, which some clear advantages, but not so much that taking a lesser pet becomes non-viable.

 

[Poo]

You can train these things up and not change slot level actually. I have seen him test those ostards that are upgraded to max amount before changing slots so you can still have all five. Each one does minimum 40-45 dmg- Times that by five. It does well over 200 damage. In most cases the player died before two of the ostards even hit him. INSTA death!! The player was wearing a max resists suit without curse or any resist lowering spell. I am currently attempting to test hellhound theory, I will post results when Im done. This current setup on TC will completely destroy pvp in every way.

2 things.
1) i have about 10 packs of 5 fully trained ozzies on random shards, i use to use them in Factions on my dismount archer tamer.
you make the ozzies sound like they are new and have never been overpowered. that is truly a falsehood.
my 'old' ozzies instantly kill people before they can even seen them. all guard, dismount shot up, dismount hits ozzies auto protect and attack = insta kill.
in days of old when i use to pvp i would walk out into yew moongate and drop 10 'leet' guys in seconds before anyone would organize a defense and start putting up fields.
so to say that they are all of a sudden overpowered is not accurate, they have ALLWAYS been overpowered for the damage they can unleash.
the problem is keeping control of 5 pets that die to pretty much just 1 hit.

the 2nd this i dont understand what he is doing with his ozzies.
i have not gone onto TC yet as i have been busy with work and RL but i thought... thought that with any pet that once you started 'training' them they increased in stable slot amounts.
with the ozzie listed above it still at 1 stable slot yet maxed out, im not sure that is working as its suppose to.

dont get me wrong, i would LOVE for it to be like that, hell if all my packs of ozzies convert over to that im gonna rule the universe!

guess i should go lot in and have a look at how this works.
still not sure how he got his ozzie that high in everything and it didnt go up in control slots.

 

[Poo]

i dont understand how we are suppose to test the 'imbuing' part of the pet training.
it would take like a week of grind to get a pet to 100% would it not?

im reluctant to put in a week of grind on test center for it to be deleted.
is there not a gate somewhere that will 'fully train' my pet on TC so we can test that part of this?

 

[Keith of Sonoma]

i dont understand how we are suppose to test the 'imbuing' part of the pet training.
it would take like a week of grind to get a pet to 100% would it not?

im reluctant to put in a week of grind on test center for it to be deleted.
is there not a gate somewhere that will 'fully train' my pet on TC so we can test that part of this?

That would get me back to testing again!

 

[Kyronix]

i dont understand how we are suppose to test the 'imbuing' part of the pet training.
it would take like a week of grind to get a pet to 100% would it not?

im reluctant to put in a week of grind on test center for it to be deleted.
is there not a gate somewhere that will 'fully train' my pet on TC so we can test that part of this?

At this stage in testing we are focusing on the training part so we can dial that in before we move on to the next phase of testing, which includes the "imbuing" part. When we get to that stage, we'll provide advancement gates to speed up the training process.

Now is the time to provide actionable feedback so we can iterate over the training process and tweak it where necessary. We have quite some time before this publish even gets to Origin, so there is still plenty of time for testing. I encourage everyone to head over to TC1 and check it out, as now is the critical period for testing, tweaking, and iteration.

 

[R Traveler]

In proper group at proper location I got from 9% to 75% in 3 hours and stopped gains.

 

[Grace of Minoc]

Care to share what a proper group/location is? At least can you confirm or deny if the fame level has anything to do with gains>?

 

[sablestorm]

There's like 3 people who have actually spent 7 hours training to get to 2%.
....

I took my pets (newly tamed frost spiders) to Oaks and killed shadow wisps. Got it up to ki rins and regular wisps which were too tough for my spider's current skill levels, but I got one of them up to 2%. All told, it took me maybe an hour and a half and it might've been quicker if I focused on a single spider rather than having 5. Does this mean it is better to kill a lot of foes as fast as you can to get good gains or were shadow wisps good for newly trained frost spiders because they are relatively weak survival wise?

 

[Uvtha]

You can train these things up and not change slot level actually. I have seen him test those ostards that are upgraded to max amount before changing slots so you can still have all five. Each one does minimum 40-45 dmg- Times that by five. It does well over 200 damage. In most cases the player died before two of the ostards even hit him. INSTA death!! The player was wearing a max resists suit without curse or any resist lowering spell. I am currently attempting to test hellhound theory, I will post results when Im done. This current setup on TC will completely destroy pvp in every way.

Well, that's obviously something that should and will be altered, because well... that would ruin the game completely.

 

[Uvtha]

At this stage in testing we are focusing on the training part so we can dial that in before we move on to the next phase of testing, which includes the "imbuing" part. When we get to that stage, we'll provide advancement gates to speed up the training process.

Now is the time to provide actionable feedback so we can iterate over the training process and tweak it where necessary. We have quite some time before this publish even gets to Origin, so there is still plenty of time for testing. I encourage everyone to head over to TC1 and check it out, as now is the critical period for testing, tweaking, and iteration.

Can you give more insight as to the mechanisms for the gaining process? What makes something a good relative target to train on?

 

[R Traveler]

Care to share what a proper group/location is? At least can you confirm or deny if the fame level has anything to do with gains>?

Let someone tank boss level 10000+ HP monster and join fight. At some point I was able to see training progress %% during battle and I clearly seen progress from 63% to 75% on single monster and after that gains was stopped and nothing happens spammed me in red.

 

[Kyronix]

Can you give more insight as to the mechanisms for the gaining process? What makes something a good relative target to train on?

It's fairly straight forward - the stronger the creature, the greater the value of each reward. In this sense, the "strength" of a creature is determined by all creature variables including all creature stats, damage, resists, abilities & AIs. In practical terms, any of the champions are going to give far more training points per reward than something like a rotting corpse.

We are still working on tweaking a training scheme that takes into consideration the fact that 1 slot pets cannot fight against higher level creatures and take advantage of the higher gains. As we continue testing and iterating we should have a solution for this. The feedback we've received thus far from those who have been so helpful on TC1 is incredibly useful, and we encourage everyone to hop on TC1 and check it out!

 

[Thrakkar]

Well, that's obviously something that should and will be altered, because well... that would ruin the game completely.

Don't think so. From what I get from all of it, the slots are calculated from the actual stats/skills/resists/damage/etc...
So it absolutely makes sense, that the slot req. doesn't necessarily increase when you train it, if you manage to keep below the threshold formula-wise.
Most probably this will also be the formula for calculating the slot reqs. for newly spawned mobs and also recalculating the new reqs., when opting in into the training process. (As it doesn't make sense to use different formulas here).
So tweaking that formula might affect quite a bit here.
Devs were revealing formulas in the past. Maybe @Kyronix can be talked into posting it here, so we can make suggestions of how to tweak it

 

[cobb]

You can train these things up and not change slot level actually. I have seen him test those ostards that are upgraded to max amount before changing slots so you can still have all five. Each one does minimum 40-45 dmg- Times that by five. It does well over 200 damage. In most cases the player died before two of the ostards even hit him. INSTA death!! The player was wearing a max resists suit without curse or any resist lowering spell. I am currently attempting to test hellhound theory, I will post results when Im done. This current setup on TC will completely destroy pvp in every way.

I feel the base damage increase should be toned down quite a bit, at least against players. Instant death should not happen in a balanced pvp setting. Also base damage should not go up if the number of slots stays the same

 

[Perfer]

Really looking forward to this update! Cant wait to tame some new pets

 

[CovenantX]

You couldn't have 5 of them. If you train a frenzy it gains a control slot, so at most you could have 2. 11-17 in a pack of 5 is 22-34 x 5 = potential damage limit of 170. 24-33 in a pack of 3 at most (with one untrained ostard) 36-49 x2 + 16-25 = limit of 123. So survivability would be better (obviously), but the damage impact would be like 30% less.

You can train pets to be extremely powerful without increasing its follower count, (I did this on purpose because the ostard is a pack instinct pet, it would be counter-productive to drop 1 pack bonus by making a 1 slot into a 2 slot pet) if I fully train my ostard, I'd only have 4 of them. because one would take 2 or even up to 3 slots.

Out of the imbuing menu you get after leveling a pet to 100%. the things that take the most points to increase, are stats Str Intel, Hp & mana (stam/dex are really cheap)

With that being said, HP can be low when your pet has 70s & 80s in resists. you'd only need to worry about things that Armor ignore, but mobs don't "Spam" specials, so technically you don't even need to worry about that... some of the triple damage pets can get kills on the ostards sometimes and obviously Slasher would take em out... but there's not really anything else in the game that would be difficult to fight with 5 of these ostards.

as a matter of fact, if my base damage increase on my pets didn't reset after I logged out, I bet you I could kill a Greater dragon with 0 ostard deaths, in about 4-5 seconds. likely won't even need to heal my pets lol...

 

[Pawain]

It's fairly straight forward - the stronger the creature, the greater the value of each reward. In this sense, the "strength" of a creature is determined by all creature variables including all creature stats, damage, resists, abilities & AIs. In practical terms, any of the champions are going to give far more training points per reward than something like a rotting corpse.

We are still working on tweaking a training scheme that takes into consideration the fact that 1 slot pets cannot fight against higher level creatures and take advantage of the higher gains. As we continue testing and iterating we should have a solution for this. The feedback we've received thus far from those who have been so helpful on TC1 is incredibly useful, and we encourage everyone to hop on TC1 and check it out!

I don't like this at all. You are designing it so a pet will only gain when they fight Champions. We shouldn't have to fight things with >100,000 hit points to have our pets gain. Why cant they gain when fighting Greater Dragons?

 

[Keith of Sonoma]

I don't like this at all. You are designing it so a pet will only gain when they fight Champions. We shouldn't have to fight things with >100,000 hit points to have our pets gain. Why cant they gain when fighting Greater Dragons?

I agree completely! In my opinion this is turning into what the military would call a "Charlie Foxtrot"

 

[Grace of Minoc]

It's fairly straight forward - the stronger the creature, the greater the value of each reward. In this sense, the "strength" of a creature is determined by all creature variables including all creature stats, damage, resists, abilities & AIs. In practical terms, any of the champions are going to give far more training points per reward than something like a rotting corpse.

We are still working on tweaking a training scheme that takes into consideration the fact that 1 slot pets cannot fight against higher level creatures and take advantage of the higher gains. As we continue testing and iterating we should have a solution for this. The feedback we've received thus far from those who have been so helpful on TC1 is incredibly useful, and we encourage everyone to hop on TC1 and check it out!

Thank you for this direction. Managed to gain more in two hours (5-11 %) solo, by the way, then going blind for last few days to gain 0-4%.

Personal note, I like that it is hard. Just the going in completely blind was frustrating. Was the rotting corpse comment because of me? lol

 

[Grace of Minoc]

@ Lady Emily

I have been testing with a "decent" 3 point something trained cu sidhe over on test center.

Yes, he has died a couple times, but he gains the skills back fighting again-but the healing
past 90 (*le sigh*)

Change can be hard yes, but if you pop on over there and try it out I think you will have fun and
be very challenged in using your cu sidhe fighting to make it eventually awesome!

Cheers


PS it is not always about the "rating" of the pet, but the skill of its Master

 

[cazador]

I don't like this at all. You are designing it so a pet will only gain when they fight Champions. We shouldn't have to fight things with >100,000 hit points to have our pets gain. Why cant they gain when fighting Greater Dragons?

They do just not as much. They also gain with hellhounds in blackthorns dungeon. Just..again. Not as much. They gain a ton on Fezzik the Cook, he's a beast tho. They also gain on Ancient Wyrms, Shadow Wyrms, Drakes and Wyverns..just not as much. See the pattern...? I'm also willing to bet they also gain on mongbats. As I'm sure you guess though, not as much.


....

 

[Grace of Minoc]

I don't like this at all. You are designing it so a pet will only gain when they fight Champions. We shouldn't have to fight things with >100,000 hit points to have our pets gain. Why cant they gain when fighting Greater Dragons?

I think I can answer this. When first starting at test center, consume damage worked. Now it does not (changed a day or two ago)
Ya gotta sweat and bleed to train your pet it appears.

 

[Lord Frodo]

So taking your pet out and fighting with them like before all this BS doesn't work now. I didn't do any Champ Spawns training any of my pets but now I will have to. UO use to be so simple to play and very enjoyable and now it is turning more and more into a grind. It is getting harder and harder to just log in and play with other people without worrying what they are going to ruin next.

 

[skett]

A lot of people here are complaining about how hard it is train pets 10 hours still at 1%

Did you really believe that this team was going to put something enjoyable and not overly complex?

I think the next step is going to be resource required for each skill you want to add or change

You mist first do a quest for each resource needed which requires multiple keys

After that you'll have to grind the dungeons with no less than 5 other players and have a 1 in 1 gizzilan chance to get said resource if your team has at least 10000 combined luck

Oh and this has to be done from 3 minutes to 13 hours only way to know is when you return to the quest giver

I'm sure they can think of many more very fun and exciting features to add to this taming upgrade


As to stable slots that's coming as well an extra $4.99 per pet per month

Almost forgot there will be no mountable pets above 3 slot because the pvpers have a forgot how to dismount people

And the gargoyles don't like it so I say if a gargoyle tamer has a pet 4 or above out of stable they can only move as fast as humans that's fair right ?


Well I'm sure the trolls post are coming for me grab your popcorn folks

 

[Kyronix]

We shouldn't have to fight things with >100,000 hit points to have our pets gain.

You don't have to.

Why cant they gain when fighting Greater Dragons?

They do.

 

[Keith of Sonoma]

You don't have to.



They do.

Unfortunately, not for me they didn't. after 2 hrs. 0 gain. My fault I'm sure. But enough to keep me from bothering.

 

[Poo]

At this stage in testing we are focusing on the training part so we can dial that in before we move on to the next phase of testing, which includes the "imbuing" part. When we get to that stage, we'll provide advancement gates to speed up the training process.

Now is the time to provide actionable feedback so we can iterate over the training process and tweak it where necessary. We have quite some time before this publish even gets to Origin, so there is still plenty of time for testing. I encourage everyone to head over to TC1 and check it out, as now is the critical period for testing, tweaking, and iteration.

roger!
gave it half an hour earlier today and ill go back and give it another hour here now.
i took one of my fully trained (old) Cu's and converted it over to the new system, it lost a stable slot, haha!

 

[Pawain]

You don't have to.



They do.

Reading some post about people killing GDs and getting no gains. I'm fine with greater gains from harder mobs, but dark father and zippy are not pet friendly. Hopefully the dragon turtle will be one of the ones that pets get good training on.

As long as I can kill the things like GDs and get gains, Ill be fine. Have to trust the devs on that. Leather and gains FTW!

 

[Larisa]

If you're getting the message *You're steeds battle readiness has increased* then you're gaining...maybe very very very slowly! lol but you're gaining.

I killed 15 Lowland bouras with my dread spider,they have relatively high hp and are pretty tough for a little itty bitty spider and hit 2%....ran around to find some void critters and killed an Anlorlem for 3%, then an Anlorvaglem which gave me another % and then an Anzuanord which put me up to 6%

Each of the larger void critters has 4k hp, it took my spider about 25 minutes to kill one...yes I timed it...so roughly 2.5 hours for 10%.....if I just kill those...less if I do what I would normally do an just go about my UO day and get gains while I'm actually playing.

 

[skett]

I never had or played a tamer, so I don't have any dog in this fight. But I rather see it pretty positive. The list of new pets sounds awesome. The training also pretty reasonable, unless the very slow gains from what I read.

I only dislike by their decision to still keep old pets the best pets. They immediately discard half of their content there. Why tame those new creatures if they won't be stronger than the old pets? I see there are a lot of people attached to their pets, but if all we want is to keep the status quo, what's the point of a revamp than?

IMO new pets should be OP to old pets. Thus having people to actually play the content.

This is exactly what I have been thinking

Why add this to the game if pets can't become better than what's in the game now ?

Seems like a waste of time, I want my gd to become better
I realize the lower level pets can become better but we all know for bosses and em events every tamer uses gd

So this new taming system really seem like a waste of resources why not fix the bugs in the game

 

[sablestorm]

Got really good gains on the Great Ape. My frost spiders can't take a hit though, which I'm hoping this training with assist with. I wonder what type of gains Lurg and Grobu would give.

 

[cazador]

So taking your pet out and fighting with them like before all this BS doesn't work now. I didn't do any Champ Spawns training any of my pets but now I will have to. UO use to be so simple to play and very enjoyable and now it is turning more and more into a grind. It is getting harder and harder to just log in and play with other people without worrying what they are going to ruin next.

After some testing and them tweaking the gains gains due to feedback it's very easy to go from 0-100% interestingly(couple hours) no Champ spawns were hurt in my process from 0-100. So rest assured, you can still hide in Trammel and gain pets, and still have time to come to Stratics and troll away. We both do adore the art of trolling so much.. friends for life!


....

 

[Kojak]

I see a million posts about being stuck at 1% (always followed closely by "I'm giving up")

I can't believe they haven't realized that it's so easy to fix this - show the decimal point like when your character is training skills

so you wouldn't be stuck at 1%, you'd be stuck at 1.3% or 1.7% - at least people would have a sense that the skill is going up that way and not get so discouraged - it's an easy fix