lets try and cut the Dev team a break shall we?

[Blade_Thugluv]

I have noticed more and more crying on the forums as of late. I have even posted a few things myself. I am thinking that maybe its time to give the DEV team a break. They are doing their best to make the player base happy and have their own stresses to. I mean given that EA Just laid off ALL of the Q&A team and a good part of the Dev Team then turned and sent part of the Dev to work on Warhammer leaving not much of a Dev Team left and Mystic to cover for UO for the most part. I think the Dev team is doing well.

The new events are cool and alittle slow but how well would you work if you were in their shoes? Trying to please the fans who play the game and also stressing about maybe being the next layoff if you dont do something just right?

The dev teams job is not as easy as we like to believe. Think about how many people before them did the coding. Each one adding their own touch. Coding in their own way.

The Dev makes some mistakes but at the end of the day i believe they really only have us in mind. We ask them for something and beg for it then when they add it was spit in their face because its not good enough or we didnt really want it.

The bugs that come up happen. Theres the good bad and ugly but one thing is for sure guys, With out the Dev we wouldnt have UO. I myself and making plans to be at the San Diego townhall and the Seattle Townhall. I do have a ton of questions for them but at the same time i want to thank them for the work they have done.

For once cant we just step back and give them a thanks instead of just crying over changes and bugs and what we want for the future? can we go 1 week with out bashin the Dev Team? Complaining about the event? 1 week?


Dev Team this pints for you!

~Blade

 

[Redxpanda]

For once cant we just step back and give them a thanks instead of just crying over changes and bugs and what we want for the future? can we go 1 week with out bashin the Dev Team? Complaining about the event? 1 week?

No! They appreciate us keeping them on their toes. If it wasn't for our feedback, they would be clueless.

 

[THP]

The devs have been godlike!!!

new great turn in event

new safe house resizing

ongoing ingame worldwide event

Hey im not complaining but my boss is at work because im never there!!

Another pint for the Devs and one for my Boss

 

[Hunters Moon]

lets try and cut the Dev team a break shall we?

Thats against Stratics policy,and as such,giving the Devs a break is a bannable offence.

 

[K'torr]

I have noticed more and more crying on the forums as of late. I have even posted a few things myself. I am thinking that maybe its time to give the DEV team a break. They are doing their best to make the player base happy and have their own stresses to. I mean given that EA Just laid off ALL of the Q&A team and a good part of the Dev Team then turned and sent part of the Dev to work on Warhammer leaving not much of a Dev Team left and Mystic to cover for UO for the most part. I think the Dev team is doing well.

I am not faulting the DEVs. I feel, for the most part, that they are doing their best. And you said it your self...

"EA just laid off all their Q&A team"
"sent part of the Dev to work on Warhammer"

It's the shirts at corporate who I blame. The newest of neubs care more for UO than they do. To them, we are nothing but cattle for them to milk for as much as they can get.

 

[MoonglowMerchant]

I have noticed more and more crying on the forums as of late. I have even posted a few things myself. I am thinking that maybe its time to give the DEV team a break. They are doing their best to make the player base happy and have their own stresses to. I mean given that EA Just laid off ALL of the Q&A team and a good part of the Dev Team then turned and sent part of the Dev to work on Warhammer leaving not much of a Dev Team left and Mystic to cover for UO for the most part. I think the Dev team is doing well.

The new events are cool and alittle slow but how well would you work if you were in their shoes? Trying to please the fans who play the game and also stressing about maybe being the next layoff if you dont do something just right?

The dev teams job is not as easy as we like to believe. Think about how many people before them did the coding. Each one adding their own touch. Coding in their own way.

The Dev makes some mistakes but at the end of the day i believe they really only have us in mind. We ask them for something and beg for it then when they add it was spit in their face because its not good enough or we didnt really want it.

The bugs that come up happen. Theres the good bad and ugly but one thing is for sure guys, With out the Dev we wouldnt have UO. I myself and making plans to be at the San Diego townhall and the Seattle Townhall. I do have a ton of questions for them but at the same time i want to thank them for the work they have done.

For once cant we just step back and give them a thanks instead of just crying over changes and bugs and what we want for the future? can we go 1 week with out bashin the Dev Team? Complaining about the event? 1 week?


Dev Team this pints for you!

~Blade

I credit them for their honesty if I see any.

Until then, I'll keep insisting on significant upgrades and complaining about re-cycled events and fluff.

 

[love2winalot]

The Dev's dont read this board anyway. Only the couple that have to.

 

[Hanna]

The problem isn't coding mistakes, we expect them and expect them to be fixed. The problem is the poor concept changes. Making resource gathering a scripter hayday, while screwing the real player base.

BOS changes the again screw the real player base mainly PVMers as PVPers get the gold deposited right to their accounts. But do not in anyway deter the script gold famers.

Making monsters over powered because 10 people have gotten the ability to solo them, instead of looking into the problem of the overpowered player, they change the monsters so the rest of the players are misserable. Adding necro to spell casting monsters when necro is so over powered, and then letting them stack the spells was a mistake. It ruined many fighting spot in tram as well as ilsh. Places that many poeple played frequently are now wastelands.

Addin greater dragons into destard, horrible concept. It was a great place for the casual player to play and still have some challenge, a place people could gather resources. Now it's a place for tamers to gather greater dragons.

If they needed to fight tougher dragons they could have walked down stairs and fought shadows or the ancient wyrm. The whole change only benefited tamers.

Personally I think UO is deliberately trying to drive all PVMers fromthe game, nothing in the past few years has benefited the PVM playstyle. Too many items, too many artifacts, too many monster buffs. Sure you got a bunch of scrolled out maxed out players that tweak the lastest fan template. But you lost so many paying customers that didn't play 70+ hours a week, just logged int to have fun. But quit because they insisted on making the game worse then going to work everyday.

 

[ColterDC]

They are doing their best to make the player base happy

No they're not..they're doing the bare minimum to keep the masses from leaving.

 

[Thrand Graywolf]

They are doing their best to make the player base happy

Honestly...I hope not. If this is their best, we got troubles.

 

[JC the Builder]

Lets just go over the current issues:

Unannounced Doom Gauntlet Change
There is clearly something wrong with the publish announcement process if virtually every publish they are leaving off major changes. It is always "Opps, we forgot that one". The first time is a mistake. The second time means that something needs to change. The current distribution of publish notes is in complete shambles. There are obviously balance issues with this change but since we didn't know about it until the publish went live, players are going to have a difficult time in Doom for a while.

Monster Cursing Change
This was an unintentional side effect from the publish before last. QA should have been able to catch this first of all. If it says -10 resistance cap, then why didn't QA say "hey this isn't in the design document, we should ask if this is intended". Then there is how long it took for the developers to even acknowledge that it was unintended. Now we have not been updated as to whether this is still being evaluated, is going to be reverted or staying permanently. It should take only a couple minutes to give and update like this but we still don't have one.

Current Event
It was stated that after the publish the event spawn would get more intense. That didn't happen. I haven't seen any developer communication saying whether this is intended or they are looking into it. There is probably going to be something in the Five on Friday, but a quick message until then would be good. Even if it is just telling that details will be in the FOF.


I think those are pretty much the three top issues at the moment. They are only issues because we are not having adequate communication from the developers.

 

[Basara]

Lets just go over the current issues:

Unannounced Doom Gauntlet Change

Monster Cursing Change

Current Event
It was stated that after the publish the event spawn would get more intense. That didn't happen.

Let's see....

1. Doom Change: It actually worked like this for a while last year - until the Dark Fathers would die without leaving a corpse and respawn.

Sounds to me like it IS working as originally intended back then, and they finally fixed the issue that caused the previous revert.

2. Curse: This I agree with you on.

3. Current Event: I don't know where you've been fighting the spawn, but it sure got a HELL of a lot more intense on Lake Austin (pun intended). We have Demon Berzerkers for the first time since the FIRST DAY of the vanguard, and even going near the Nujelm palace entrance is getting to be lethal, as the spawn will now teleport OVER the walls surrounding the palace ground - including Berzerkers, Demons, EVEN THE BRIGANDS AND ELES! If that's not more intense, you must think an 8.0 earthquake is a foot massage. (MOO!) HOWEVER, they still need to fix the vanguard getting stuck underground. I don't think the fix they attempted worked in Nujelm.

 

[Bardie]

edited b4 i sent it in:

Thank you devs for your hard work, coding sux

Realize this is though in fact your job to code (even if alot written by other people)

EA = F everything up (not hiring enough, taking away from are already barebone staff as is)

This event i personally have had fun, its been slow and i play on napa and its only one controller show up dies and that's it...that wouldn't b more intense is it?

k im done

 

[RaDian FlGith]

I am thinking that maybe its time to give the DEV team a break. They are doing their best to make the player base happy and have their own stresses to. I mean given that EA Just laid off ALL of the Q&A team and a good part of the Dev Team then turned and sent part of the Dev to work on Warhammer leaving not much of a Dev Team left and Mystic to cover for UO for the most part. I think the Dev team is doing well.

To put it succinctly, no.

I don't care if EA fired everyone and left only one DevTeam member on staff, as long as I am a paying customer, I have a right to voice my opinions on the development of the game.

And I'm not sure where you heard the entire QA team was laid off, or that a good part of the DevTeam is now working on Warhammer, but I've heard no such thing. The DevTeam is split between UO and DAoC, that much I'm aware of. And there was a huge move from CA to VA. And it was handled poorly because EA couldn't handle a move without bungling it up.

But all of this goes back to the mentality at EA, and if you think that just because things are rough at work for the DevTeam that it somehow means that we should be light on them when they bork systems, implement bad strategies, or make bad decisions, then, frankly, you're mistaken.

Giving them credit when things go right is equally important. But right now -- aside from a fluffy Clean Up Britannia II, which, frankly, is questionable at best, but a good distraction -- not much is going on that is going well.

 

[Ender]

If they'd actually fix some of the many bugs, problems, glitches, whatever in this game then we could cut them a break. Oh wait, what's that? We get new house deco? YES! Just what I wanted, forget making the game more fun!

We've been on this event cycle, if you can call it that, for several months now, correct?. I do appreciate them trying to give us something to do, but the Vanguard event has been going on for over a month now, right? I haven't noticed any major changes to it. The moonglow spawn went on for about two months with no changes also. Is it really that hard to add new content every week, or even two weeks? The same exact thing for months at a time gets extremely boring...

 

[Blade_Thugluv]

To put it succinctly, no.

I don't care if EA fired everyone and left only one DevTeam member on staff, as long as I am a paying customer, I have a right to voice my opinions on the development of the game.

And I'm not sure where you heard the entire QA team was laid off, or that a good part of the DevTeam is now working on Warhammer, but I've heard no such thing. The DevTeam is split between UO and DAoC, that much I'm aware of. And there was a huge move from CA to VA. And it was handled poorly because EA couldn't handle a move without bungling it up.

But all of this goes back to the mentality at EA, and if you think that just because things are rough at work for the DevTeam that it somehow means that we should be light on them when they bork systems, implement bad strategies, or make bad decisions, then, frankly, you're mistaken.

Giving them credit when things go right is equally important. But right now -- aside from a fluffy Clean Up Britannia II, which, frankly, is questionable at best, but a good distraction -- not much is going on that is going well.

well if you read stratics back in oct or watched other sites besides stratics like curse.com there was a news post "UO Team moving to Warhammer?"

also there are news reports on destructoid.com and other sites. i tend to read alot of sites and try to keep up with as much info aas i can.

here is part of a quote from a news report released oct 25th 2007 "....Apparently this is the case. According to a forum post on Stratics, which is also backed up by an article on Destructoid, a goodly portion of the Ultima Online team - including all of QA - was laid off yesterday afternoon...."


~Blade

 

[phantus]

To put it succinctly, no.

I don't care if EA fired everyone and left only one DevTeam member on staff, as long as I am a paying customer, I have a right to voice my opinions on the development of the game.

And I'm not sure where you heard the entire QA team was laid off, or that a good part of the DevTeam is now working on Warhammer, but I've heard no such thing. The DevTeam is split between UO and DAoC, that much I'm aware of. And there was a huge move from CA to VA. And it was handled poorly because EA couldn't handle a move without bungling it up.

But all of this goes back to the mentality at EA, and if you think that just because things are rough at work for the DevTeam that it somehow means that we should be light on them when they bork systems, implement bad strategies, or make bad decisions, then, frankly, you're mistaken.

Giving them credit when things go right is equally important. But right now -- aside from a fluffy Clean Up Britannia II, which, frankly, is questionable at best, but a good distraction -- not much is going on that is going well.

/agree

 

[RaDian FlGith]

well if you read stratics back in oct or watched other sites besides stratics like curse.com there was a news post "UO Team moving to Warhammer?"

also there are news reports on destructoid.com and other sites. i tend to read alot of sites and try to keep up with as much info aas i can.

here is part of a quote from a news report released oct 25th 2007 "....Apparently this is the case. According to a forum post on Stratics, which is also backed up by an article on Destructoid, a goodly portion of the Ultima Online team - including all of QA - was laid off yesterday afternoon...."

Interesting assumption you'd make there that these are the only sites I read. *boggle*

I wonder where the headline "UO Team moving to Warhammer?" would have come from. Because question marks make excellent statements, and Mythic wasn't building Warhammer, and EA didn't move the UO DevTeam to Virginia to Mythic's headquarters, right? The headline is an indication of presumption, clearly based upon the transition.

As for your quote from the news report dated October 25th, 2007, uh, okay, so the QA team was laid off EIGHT MONTHS AGO. Yes. That's certainly a recent development. I think we all know that EARS no longer houses the QA team. We also know that Mythic's QA team was supposed to be picking up the slack. On the other hand, there were plenty of job postings on EA.com after the transition that indicated that hired personnel would be working UO and DAoC.

This is to say if you're still allowing yourself to feel pity for the UO DevTeam because of things that happened at the tail end of last year, then you truly have far wider forgiveness for business related things than I do. If my local theater fired their entire lobby staff eight months ago, and I went to a movie today and the service was lousy, the movie was interrupted due to faulty equipment, the popcorn was stale, and the only good thing was that my Icee was cold, I wouldn't be thinking to myself, "Awe, it's a shame that they had to hire all new people... maybe I should give them a break."

Far too many people seem to look at UO as a game, which, in turn, is allowing the DevTeam to treat it as a game. UO is an entertainment expenditure, and it's about time that EA start treating it like a business.

 

[Joyous2K]

/agree

Agree to that. What is QA? Quality Assurance? Does quality assurance assure that the new publishes are of good quality?

I'm not sure, but that makes sense to me. Lay off the current quality assurance.

 

[Raina]

I am thinking that maybe its time to give the DEV team a break.

I'm fairly certain they've been on a break for the last 3-4 years...

~Rai

 

[Desolation87]

Thank you devs for blowing up the scripters houses.

Thank you devs for chaging all the vine cord dupes.

Thank you devs for the new event, which is truely hard.

Thank you devs for the new deco.

Thank you devs for the cool new boots!

Thank you devs for the staff of pyros - its way cooler than the magi one!!

Thank you devs for the greater drags it makes pvm alot more viable for support chars when they can hide behind someones drag.

Thank you devs for the beefed up tailoring kits and hammers. I've made some real nice stuff!

Thank you devs for the IDOC an house placing changes. A guildy lost his luna house to ascripter - May it never happen to anyone ever again.

Thank you devs for changes in pet controls, I hated telling a pet to follow me 300 times without him following! Lol!

Thank you devs for the valentine hunt! I had fun ~ shame I didn't win .

Thank you devs for working in an under-staffed highly pressured job and still turning out all these changes/added stuff.


All in a few months. Needless to say this is not everything.

 

[PixelPusher]

The dev teams job is not as easy as we like to believe. Think about how many people before them did the coding. Each one adding their own touch. Coding in their own way.

Which is why I've always believed that they should set aside a small team for no purpose other than to completely re-write the entire code and bring all the 10 year old codeing up-to-date. Huge undertaking I know, but imagine how much easier things SHOULD (not nessasarily, I know) be for them to work with afterward.

For the most part though, I honestly do appriciate them for their work.

 

[Desolation87]

..........
Far too many people seem to look at UO as a game,.....

ROFLMAO!

No? What? Go figure!

 

[T_Amon_from_work]

The problem isn't coding mistakes, we expect them and expect them to be fixed. The problem is the poor concept changes. Making resource gathering a scripter hayday, while screwing the real player base.

BOS changes the again screw the real player base mainly PVMers as PVPers get the gold deposited right to their accounts. But do not in anyway deter the script gold famers.

Man, did that screw me over ... to the point that I've cut back nearly everything I do. I have damn-all little time to play as it is and spending even 10 minutes per hour runing to the bank or the house to drop stuff is silly.

Making monsters over powered because 10 people have gotten the ability to solo them, instead of looking into the problem of the overpowered player, they change the monsters so the rest of the players are misserable. Adding necro to spell casting monsters when necro is so over powered, and then letting them stack the spells was a mistake. It ruined many fighting spot in tram as well as ilsh. Places that many poeple played frequently are now wastelands.

Addin greater dragons into destard, horrible concept. It was a great place for the casual player to play and still have some challenge, a place people could gather resources. Now it's a place for tamers to gather greater dragons.

Add to that the inability to resist any necro spells to any great extent.

As for Destard ... I always enjoyed the fun of a couple dragons jumping me. It was a challenge I looked forward to a lot. Yes I farmed the hides but many times swapped the hides for gems with other folks or vice-versa.

With Greaters in there now and able to basically chain several attracks without MY ability to do so has flat out ruined it and a goodly part of the game for this casual player.

Personally I think UO is deliberately trying to drive all PVMers fromthe game, nothing in the past few years has benefited the PVM playstyle. Too many items, too many artifacts, too many monster buffs. Sure you got a bunch of scrolled out maxed out players that tweak the lastest fan template. But you lost so many paying customers that didn't play 70+ hours a week, just logged int to have fun. But quit because they insisted on making the game worse then going to work everyday.

Disagree to an extent. They got silly and listened to a loud and demanding and minority who whined about needing more challenge without going downstairs. Other than tamers, I don't hear any of the challenge-needers saying they are having fun in there. Do you?

I griped about the Greaters ability to smackdown some damn powerful folks including myself who were fighting as a team with Greaters. So far none of the folks who very vocally poo-poo'd my post have come forth with any proof that their Paladin or other melee warrior has soloed a Greater to the end.

Destard was fun for me, now I don't even try it. I'm solo many times and until Greaters Destard was a fun place for me. No more.

 

[T_Amon_from_work]

Agree to that. What is QA? Quality Assurance? Does quality assurance assure that the new publishes are of good quality?

I'm not sure, but that makes sense to me. Lay off the current quality assurance.

Part of which is the player base that should be testing on TC. That's part of the process.

 

[Joyous2K]

Part of which is the player base that should be testing on TC. That's part of the process.

Cheers to you guys that test. If I was being paid to do that I would. I know, you all love UO much more than me, good, keep testing it. Work for them, and be paid by EA as QA. QA is very much not my obligation with EA. My obligation is to pay them money. They are supposed to provide a service. That service is supposed to be assured of its quality by the people who they pay with my money to test the service.

I don't want them fired... but come on GUYS!! Get in there and test the new publishes by playing UO!! It is a fun game!

 

[packrat]

Thank you devs for blowing up the scripters houses.

Thank you devs for chaging all the vine cord dupes.

Thank you devs for the new event, which is truely hard.

Thank you devs for the new deco.

Thank you devs for the cool new boots!

Thank you devs for the staff of pyros - its way cooler than the magi one!!

Thank you devs for the greater drags it makes pvm alot more viable for support chars when they can hide behind someones drag.

Thank you devs for the beefed up tailoring kits and hammers. I've made some real nice stuff!

Thank you devs for the IDOC an house placing changes. A guildy lost his luna house to ascripter - May it never happen to anyone ever again.

Thank you devs for changes in pet controls, I hated telling a pet to follow me 300 times without him following! Lol!

Thank you devs for the valentine hunt! I had fun ~ shame I didn't win .

Thank you devs for working in an under-staffed highly pressured job and still turning out all these changes/added stuff.


All in a few months. Needless to say this is not everything.

Besides tamer. what kind of template do you need to do any of the following things you mentioned? I can do those things on a newbie char fresh out of haven. So why do we spend millions and hour after hour building our character when we can just do a 15 day free account and do the same things?
Not to mention how the bod system is screwed up..

 

[christy1221]

I love the dev team but how hard is it to give some kind of answer about the cocoa trees, mouse hole, and new armor. Even if it's telling us we aren't going to get them. I wish they would just say something about them.

But I do want to say I love all the things they have been doing lately. And I have been having fun cleaning out my houses.

 

[Desolation87]

Besides tamer. what kind of template do you need to do any of the following things you mentioned? I can do those things on a newbie char fresh out of haven. So why do we spend millions and hour after hour building our character when we can just do a 15 day free account and do the same things?
Not to mention how the bod system is screwed up..

You can defend, lets say, Nu'jelm on a 15d/o char? Mmmhhmmm. You have enough items to turn-in for all the deco on a 15d/o char? Mmmmhhmmmm. I can't be bothered to do anymore but you get my point.

You and your crappy post are going on my ignore list Sir.

 

[Uriah Heep]

Part of which is the player base that should be testing on TC. That's part of the process.

Cheers to you guys that test. If I was being paid to do that I would. I know, you all love UO much more than me, good, keep testing it. Work for them, and be paid by EA as QA. QA is very much not my obligation with EA. My obligation is to pay them money. They are supposed to provide a service. That service is supposed to be assured of its quality by the people who they pay with my money to test the service.

I don't want them fired... but come on GUYS!! Get in there and test the new publishes by playing UO!! It is a fun game!

QFT!

 

[Chardonnay]

I have noticed more and more crying on the forums as of late. I have even posted a few things myself. I am thinking that maybe its time to give the DEV team a break. They are doing their best to make the player base happy and have their own stresses to. I mean given that EA Just laid off ALL of the Q&A team and a good part of the Dev Team then turned and sent part of the Dev to work on Warhammer leaving not much of a Dev Team left and Mystic to cover for UO for the most part. I think the Dev team is doing well.

The new events are cool and alittle slow but how well would you work if you were in their shoes? Trying to please the fans who play the game and also stressing about maybe being the next layoff if you dont do something just right?

The dev teams job is not as easy as we like to believe. Think about how many people before them did the coding. Each one adding their own touch. Coding in their own way.

The Dev makes some mistakes but at the end of the day i believe they really only have us in mind. We ask them for something and beg for it then when they add it was spit in their face because its not good enough or we didnt really want it.

The bugs that come up happen. Theres the good bad and ugly but one thing is for sure guys, With out the Dev we wouldnt have UO. I myself and making plans to be at the San Diego townhall and the Seattle Townhall. I do have a ton of questions for them but at the same time i want to thank them for the work they have done.

For once cant we just step back and give them a thanks instead of just crying over changes and bugs and what we want for the future? can we go 1 week with out bashin the Dev Team? Complaining about the event? 1 week?


Dev Team this pints for you!

~Blade

Hasn't 6+ years been long enough?

 

[Melina Havelock]

Considering I (and others *points to christy above*) can't even get a damn answer about cocoa trees, I really have no interest in defending this team anymore, let alone the "communications" people. Getting any answer at all without spamming is near impossible. Thanks, but I'm about done with UO. I've spent the better part of a week debating on what to do with my stuff and accounts. I don't want to quit, but they've screwed up so many things the one thing I DID enjoy is so old and outdated that a sliver of hope about some trees prompted me to renew two accounts (I play 2 shards) and plan to garden again. Why, I even worked on GMing my chef. Silly me. Of course, I only did this because we were told in February that they were coming soon.

Oh, the whole "they moved across the country" excuse has run it's course. Lots of people relocate for one reason or another. How many more months should they be given to settle in?

 

[Loqucious]

I have a ridiculously blind faith in the devs. As much as I complain about other areas of UO, I have to admit that I think the devs are probably doing their very best with limited funds. And I think most, if not all of them, probably really do love this game.

Go devs!

 

[kelmo]

One break, coming up... *chuckles* I like this current team. More has been done for Siege on this watch than I have seen since I have been here. There are a few things slipping, though. A couple of broken quests, etc.

I really feel the RoT thing is in their minds. We will see some sort of response soon. I have faith. *flips a pom pom*

I know 97% of you have other issues. This is not an insult or a slur by any means. It is just math. I am not even sure we rate 3% anymore. You will not find many more passionate about the game the the die hard Siege player.

Smile if you wish. One day, you just might hit that point of "what else".

Keep Siege weird!

 

[Deb]

I agree the team has done a good job...but I do have one question.
Before the Stratics meltdown we were hearing from the Devs alot more
than we are now. I realize a baby was born and a wedding happened,
but I am beginning to wonder why all the silence.
Even Jeremy's posts have become far and few between.

 

[Sunrise]

Thank you devs for blowing up the scripters houses


This says is all!! BIG TIME.

Now for what Deb said
I agree the team has done a good job...but I do have one question.
Before the Stratics meltdown we were hearing from the Devs alot more
than we are now. I realize a baby was born and a wedding happened,
but I am beginning to wonder why all the silence.


maybe the devs dont know about this yet?

 

[Beerman72]

Part of which is the player base that should be testing on TC. That's part of the process.

I agree...however lets expand on this process and make the players aware of the changes scheduled. In order for us players to test the weak spot(the publish) we have to know what to jump on, push, pull, yank, twist, squeeze, or even rub on in order to check it (vigorously)for any issue or error. If the powers that be can let the player base (a troubleshooting group maybe) do this instead of just QA we wont have issue (as often). QA may test the product but its the player who understands it.

 

[Shelleybean]

I don't think the devs have an easy job by any means. I also think they have thankless job. I remember a few years back, Draconi worked on his own personal time to give us the grim reaper Halloween fun. Players were complaining that the event wasn't taking place at a suitable time for them. There was little to no thanks to Draconi who was working very hard on his days off. I think the devs truly care about the game. I think they are working within a lot of constraints that we don't know about. As players we do have the right to agree or disagree with some of the changes they make to UO. I hope they do not take the flack personally. We care about the game too, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Thanks devs for the hard work you do.

 

[Kith Kanan]

I'll give the dev's a break when we have stuff happening like they have on the japanese shards , or they cut my sub's in half , i sure as hell aint getting my money worths compared to those shards !!!!!!

 

[Violence]

Thank you Devs for allowing cheaters to still use their favourite client.

Thank you Devs for never finishing the Virtues.

Thank you Devs for dumping Stygian Abyss.

Thank you Devs for the lazy FOF.

Thank you Devs for taking 4 weeks for each publish doing nothing but adding Turn-Ins and Events instead of KR Bug squashing and whatnot.

Thank you Devs for allowing scripting of all kinds 24/7.

Thank you Devs for making UO's PvM a Tamer's Heaven.

Thank you Devs for all those bugs abused in PvP to go over cap in damage.

Thank you Devs for making skills useless just because gimps exploited them on their gimp PvPers.

Thank you Devs for dumping PB.

Thank you Devs for dumping ANY method that would drastically reduce gimping templates.

Thank you Devs for making WOD so over-powered in PvM, now if we aren't a Wraith Form WODer or a Tamer we can say good-bye to arties and peerless loot.

Thank you Devs for letting consumable items like Conflagration Potions and Bolas destroy skills.

Thank you Devs for never balancing out Poisoning, Disarm and Dismount issues and their respective countering methods.

Thank you Devs for the monster AI getting improved.

Thank you Devs for turning Nerve Strike into renamed Paralyse instead of being creative.

Thank you Devs for allowing Vampire Form to be used through Items.

Thank you Devs for making Crafting useless unless you are into The Sims type of gaming.

Thank you Devs for making several skills impossible to gain without scripting.

Thank you Devs for making ALL items available to players instead of keeping some of it for NPC location decoration, in fact thanks for ruining the essence of some things being "Rare".

Thank you Devs for giving us all the goodies from other games like Recipes to craft items and other cliche elements, instead leaving out the really good ideas like Dual Wield of weapons.

Thank you Devs for ruining Stealing/Snooping.

Thank you Devs for not replacing Item ID with something actually usefull like you did with Arms Lore.

As your customer I am doing my best to still pay you, still play and still ignore these things because I like being with my girl and my friends in UO and have been doing so ever since AOS.

And yes I love insurance for items, your only good idea for ages and it still sucks, in other games you don't even have to pay.
Getting someone's money in PVP sucks I'd like new reasons to fight people.

*Returns to Mindless Drone mode and logs back in KR*
You guys can flame this post all you want... Enjoy.

 

[Xel The Wanderer]

Thank you Devs for allowing cheaters to still use their favourite client.

Thank you Devs for never finishing the Virtues.

Thank you Devs for dumping Stygian Abyss.

Thank you Devs for the lazy FOF.

Thank you Devs for taking 4 weeks for each publish doing nothing but adding Turn-Ins and Events instead of KR Bug squashing and whatnot.

Thank you Devs for allowing scripting of all kinds 24/7.

Thank you Devs for making UO's PvM a Tamer's Heaven.

Thank you Devs for all those bugs abused in PvP to go over cap in damage.

Thank you Devs for making skills useless just because gimps exploited them on their gimp PvPers.

Thank you Devs for dumping PB.

Thank you Devs for dumping ANY method that would drastically reduce gimping templates.

Thank you Devs for making WOD so over-powered in PvM, now if we aren't a Wraith Form WODer or a Tamer we can say good-bye to arties and peerless loot.

Thank you Devs for letting consumable items like Conflagration Potions and Bolas destroy skills.

Thank you Devs for never balancing out Poisoning, Disarm and Dismount issues and their respective countering methods.

Thank you Devs for the monster AI getting improved.

Thank you Devs for turning Nerve Strike into renamed Paralyse instead of being creative.

Thank you Devs for allowing Vampire Form to be used through Items.

Thank you Devs for making Crafting useless unless you are into The Sims type of gaming.

Thank you Devs for making several skills impossible to gain without scripting.

Thank you Devs for making ALL items available to players instead of keeping some of it for NPC location decoration, in fact thanks for ruining the essence of some things being "Rare".

Thank you Devs for giving us all the goodies from other games like Recipes to craft items and other cliche elements, instead leaving out the really good ideas like Dual Wield of weapons.

Thank you Devs for ruining Stealing/Snooping.

Thank you Devs for not replacing Item ID with something actually usefull like you did with Arms Lore.

As your customer I am doing my best to still pay you, still play and still ignore these things because I like being with my girl and my friends in UO and have been doing so ever since AOS.

And yes I love insurance for items, your only good idea for ages and it still sucks, in other games you don't even have to pay.
Getting someone's money in PVP sucks I'd like new reasons to fight people.

*Returns to Mindless Drone mode and logs back in KR*
You guys can flame this post all you want... Enjoy.

Flame? Hardly. You pretty muched nailed it on the head. Good on you, and I salute you for the honesty.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

ROFLMAO!

No? What? Go figure!

What'd you do, go to work for Fox News? Nice way to take what I said out of context.

Yes, UO is a game.

But as long as people continue to look at it from that perspective, and NOT as something that they continually invest money in AS a customer service and entertainment expenditure, the LONGER these half-complete attempts at putting stuff into UO will continue.

The KR client, for all of its improvements, is STILL a long way from being capable of sustaining the gameplay that the 2D client currently offers, simply by virtue of all of the things that have been left incomplete in it. We're now looking at it being a YEAR later, and it's still incomplete.

But I'm not going to waste time trying to further justify my statement to someone who picks and chooses half of a sentence to try to use as some sort of intellectual bat. Stop being so pedestrian.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

Part of which is the player base that should be testing on TC. That's part of the process.

No, no it's really not. The problem with relying on people testing things on test center is twofold:

(1) Now you're expecting people to test the game they are PAYING for.
(2) EA provides NO incentive for testing and reporting things.

Now, if they fixed item 2, item 1 would correct itself. However, they're far too concerned about this, that, and the other thing to make any realistically intelligent decisions about testing.

And so test center remains the place people go to do silly things like dye their animals chartreuse.

For the most part, Test is underutilized. And if "getting a bug-free game" is the only incentive to test, EA should hire more in-house game testers. But EA likes to do things on the cheap.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

Considering I (and others *points to christy above*) can't even get a damn answer about cocoa trees...

You do realize, of course, that they will use this very thing to point out why they don't like sharing information with the player base.

Because somehow their inability to complete things in a timely manner is excusable.

And further, they fail to notice that at least saying, "We know you're still expecting the Cocoa Trees, they're not quite ready yet, hold on..." with each publish would at least let people know what was going on.

Of course, for everyone who extolls the DevTeam for this chocolate thing, really, they need to start thinking through things on a much grander scale than they do. How they got to "Let's have chocolate spawn only on paragons" in a game where the ability to create things is paramount, and there are SOOOO many tamer-cooks and warrior-cooks and mage-cooks in the game...

Le sigh.

I mean, it would be different if chocolate gave you some ridiculous buff, or the ability to create some wonderful item. Then the rarity of the resource would make sense. This, however, is more of a case of "Let's add something new as an excuse to kill monsters."

Cocoa seeds on paragons, sure. Make it hard to get them, then they can grow and perpetuate themselves in good gardens.

But really?

Foresight is definitely not a Virtue.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

I'll give the dev's a break when we have stuff happening like they have on the japanese shards , or they cut my sub's in half , i sure as hell aint getting my money worths compared to those shards !!!!!!

True that.

There's not one bloody reason for Japanese only events like are going on currently. And Japanese promotions that never see their equivalent in the US or Europe or Oceania is also tiring.

 

[Melina Havelock]

Radian,

I don't want to quote your entire post to me in #44, but I agree with you 100%. I'm sure there are days my cousin in PR doesn't want to deal with certain customers or put out a press release with bad or incomplete info, but she does it. The public and customers expect communication from her and it IS, afterall, her job. Any answer, even disappointing, is better than NO communication. Par for the course with EA/Mythic and UO.

 

[Wenchkin]

I have noticed more and more crying on the forums as of late.

Comes as standard with Uhall dunnit? Alas it's not enough to be a drama queen here, you also have to up your game to be better than the last ones, otherwise you'll never stand out in the crowd.

I'll give the devs a break on one condition....

Carry out a proper and concerted attack on cheating. It's wonderful to see burning houses, the sandals being nuked etc etc. No denying that. But nothing has been done which deters cheats, and certainly nothing to make them look over their shoulders every 5 mins, knowing if a GM shows up they will get a ban. Nobody is scared of being caught. The cheating will never stop if new cheats keep popping up. Action needs to taken and be seen to be taken otherwise it's pointless opening the match box in Luna. It's just a show of what-the-devs-can-do-if-they-wanted-to. GMs need to cart people off, we need to end the cheating in PvP and so on. Otherwise no amount of great content or events will ever make UO a shadow of its former glory.

The devs are doing a fantastic job, but they have been not only allowing cheating, they've encouraged it by introducing bad systems like community collections, Heartwood quests, satyrs, golems, shadow eles... all of these offer rewards to players who bot. All could be changed to suit proper players if the bots were nuked.

And before the usual quip of "they'll never truly rid UO of cheats Wenchy", let me say this. If EA have that half-baked attitude of "let's just do what we can" then my money is on the cheats. Because you either set out to the job fully and comprehensively, or you stay in bed. Half measures get you nowhere.

Wenchy

 

[Hanna]

...

The devs are doing a fantastic job, but they have been not only allowing cheating, they've encouraged it by introducing bad systems like community collections, Heartwood quests, satyrs, golems, shadow eles... all of these offer rewards to players who bot. All could be changed to suit proper players if the bots were nuked.
...

Wenchy

On the contrary it's not the introduction of these items, but rather they made them so misserable to do that scripting them becomes profitable. Training some skills is completely misserable, heatwood quests are a pain the the @#$$, and even more so for the comunity collections. That makes the rewards for these items rare for those that don't script, and many end up buying them from scripters because of the way they are setup.

The same is true for resource gathering, more scripters now then before the change and fewer real players gathering resources. More scripters botting gold farmering and fewer real players looting gold, because of the BOS changes.

Scripters don't script things that can be done just as easily by regular players, with the exception of doing it 23/7 compared to the real player of a few hours a day.

The problem as I see it is the DEV/Concept people have no clue as how to impliment contraints that makes something challenging to obtain, all they do is buff monsters, add clicks (this is the biggest scripter maker on UO), put in constraints that actually benefit scripters while hurting real players. Then they go back to the cubicles and pat eachother on the back. The new DEVs have no imagination when confronting problems or implimenting new systems.

 

[Inspector]

okay there is no way i am reading through 50 other posts, so i might be a bit late on this....
But there is no way in HELL that anybody should have to cut the dev team any slack! Everybody who plays here pays what? like 11-14 dollars a month to play this game, when we could play it for free? I don't think so Jack.
Its ******** how badly they have broken this game, I started playing again like 3 months ago and sadly to say the Dev's have messed up pretty badly in this time, they dont get publishes out very quickly, they break other code everytime they do get a new publish out. Its bull crap, if EA was a factory or something like it ALL THE DEV's would have been fired for thier crap work that is happening.

 

[Nosuperiors_Damnfewequals]

This is the only break I ahve for them. They can only do what they are allowed to do. The problems we have, for the most part, come from the top.
Bob (if still around) and the other one, whose name eludes me at the moment, need to have their feet to the fire, once and for all. Put up or get the hell out, and let someone with a clear direction, clear goals, (that be be spoken cause they are REAL, and not kept secret because they are abstract and vaporous) and the DRIVE to get it done have the reins.

Draconi, I salute you.

Chrissay, I admire you, was there at the valentines events, and I must say you are a person of infinite patience. Had I been in your place, a GM would have been whisking some people off to jail on a regular basis.

Sakkar I mean Regine, you did a good job trying to keep QM going on Atlantic, and you pvp'd. So you have a good idea what it will take to allow the player base to run their own stories, and the support we SHOULD be able to count on.

Jeremy, the instinctive feeling is that you are okay, but someday, you are going to have to bite thru the muzzle, or no one (hope it's not too late already) is ever going to believe anything you report...

I read post today about KR, and the patch time. [digression] The dozen KR players we have here should be able to read the writing on the wall. When the "Swift Disc" that gets mailed out isnt even anywhere near updated, and the latest downloads of KR are over a year out of date, no patches, content not even configured for it, says volumes for what its future is. Face it, drop it, admit it, and get on with supporting one client until a real upgrade can be done. [/end digression]

That's the break for the devs, it's up the chain a bit from them, that the root of the problem lies. [/rant]