Developer Meet and Greet ~LOG~ Lake Austin - March 22, 2021

[Larisa]

Lake Austin M&G

 

[Coco_Zamis_DF]

.new transportation on nl.
Maybe a Hot Air Ballon.?

 

[Larisa]

Kyronix mentioned that it wasn't going to be how it is on prodo now...you can't just mark a rune anywhere, they will have specific areas that you can recall/gate to. He also gave an example about how maybe you accept a quest from some NPC and the NPC will then either give or sell you a rune to a location where you would start that quest.

 

[John Knighthawke]

As always thank you for your work in making the transcripts available and comprehensible.

 

[Keven2002]

A lot more of the same small group requests again that don't really have a greater impact on the game.

Someone asking about books upgrade... aside from a handful of people not sure how this helps anyone....

Someone wanting a boat in Skara for trade deals...

Someone asked about more dye colors...

Someone asked about if the mannequins can just switch the clothes into the backpack, which kind of jumped out to me. As far as I know, everyone (CC & EC) have the Undress macro don't they, so why do we need this?? So it's as simple as "switch clothes" and then pressing the undress macro. I'm not sure why Mesanna even entertained that idea and why nobody else thought about the very easy current solution... this is something that with limited resources they could say there is already something in place for this so they will not spend any other time on it.

 

[Jepeth]

A lot more of the same small group requests again that don't really have a greater impact on the game.

I'm going to keep asking about books because they are a huge part of my UO gameplay. I take the time to formulate a question in advance and attend the M&Gs because this is a topic that is important to me. In the same way that if you have a specific issue with something you do you should make the time to attend. I can't speak for you because I don't know what you're into. Trying to speak for others is never a good look.

I have tried to ask questions of a larger scope but frankly the dev team doesn't respond well to them. Now that I've attended a good dozen or so of these since returning I'm starting to get a better sense of what questions get fruitful responses (i.e. responses of substance) and ones which either elicit ire or immediate dismissal. Short, specific questions on topics which they have not recently answered seem to do better.

 

[S_S]

I still baffled WHY they can't do something about "Discount."

 

[Victim of Siege]

Thank you @Larisa for taking the time to do this.

 

[Victim of Siege]

I still baffled WHY they can't do something about "Discount."

If this "Discount" is spamming in General then he is using a paid account. keep reporting them and they will eventually get tired of wasting money to advertise. they will eventually reach a point that kills their profit margin.

 

[MalagAste]

If this "Discount" is spamming in General then he is using a paid account. keep reporting them and they will eventually get tired of wasting money to advertise. they will eventually reach a point that kills their profit margin.

Often accounts like that use stolen cards or something to do that stuff ... so don't think they care... and obviously, someone buys this stuff or they wouldn't do it.... which is the sad part...

 

[Victim of Siege]

Often accounts like that use stolen cards or something to do that stuff ... so don't think they care... and obviously, someone buys this stuff or they wouldn't do it.... which is the sad part...

Yes but they would still rather use the stolen cards more for profit than advertising. Well, if they have any clue about business. But I would imagine they’ll eventually give up


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Keven2002]

I'm going to keep asking about books because they are a huge part of my UO gameplay. I take the time to formulate a question in advance and attend the M&Gs because this is a topic that is important to me. In the same way that if you have a specific issue with something you do you should make the time to attend. I can't speak for you because I don't know what you're into. Trying to speak for others is never a good look.

I have tried to ask questions of a larger scope but frankly the dev team doesn't respond well to them. Now that I've attended a good dozen or so of these since returning I'm starting to get a better sense of what questions get fruitful responses (i.e. responses of substance) and ones which either elicit ire or immediate dismissal. Short, specific questions on topics which they have not recently answered seem to do better.

My post wasn't really a knock on people requesting very personalized game play things. Request away. I was just posting a little preemptively for those people saying something about how M&G are a waste of time and it's always just the same responses that come from them. That said, when you are the only person asking about books time and time again it does start to look like all the M&G have the same answers time and time again of "no not at this time" or "we will look into it" etc... does anyone expect different answers to the same old questions?

Also to loop you in, when I attended the last M&G I asked questions about Hooks map and upcoming content so that everyone would have an idea of what to expect. So I don't really try to speak for what others want in terms of content but I do try to ask questions that would benefit people other than myself to gain knowledge.

 

[Basara]

A lot more of the same small group requests again that don't really have a greater impact on the game.

Someone wanting a boat in Skara for trade deals...

Amazing how you didn't actually READ what was being asked. Do you always do that?

The "boat in Skara" was MY brute force approach to fixing an issue. I wasn't ASKING for one.

What I was asking was for there to be a change to how the ferry works at Skara, PERIOD.

As it is, any quest chain (example: the trade orders, especially for Krampus) that prevents you from teleportation or recalling prevents you from crossing that ferry. You have to launch a boat, cross on the boat, then recover the boat (unless it's a rowboat). The Trade orders to Skara (which take longer to set up and take down a boat, than it does to make the crossing) don't pay any better than ones to Yew or any other town that doesn't require several minutes of sailing

Many times, there are people having private access ships parked there blocking the way (especially on more populous shards).

I found, by accident, that a Britannian ship can be used as a field expedient bridge - but that's an expensive bridge, AND I still have to take that ship out occasionally to fish. I would REALLY like to use my ship more often as a boat, not a bridge.

What was being asked for was if they could use NL to research and eventually bring over to the main servers, a REPLACEMENT for the CODING of the Skara ferry, to where it didn't use the teleport code.

BTW, I was asking in my position as a GOVERNOR of one of the other cities - NOT necessarily for myself.

 

[Lord Nabin]

My post wasn't really a knock on people requesting very personalized game play things. Request away. I was just posting a little preemptively for those people saying something about how M&G are a waste of time and it's always just the same responses that come from them. That said, when you are the only person asking about books time and time again it does start to look like all the M&G have the same answers time and time again of "no not at this time" or "we will look into it" etc... does anyone expect different answers to the same old questions?

Also to loop you in, when I attended the last M&G I asked questions about Hooks map and upcoming content so that everyone would have an idea of what to expect. So I don't really try to speak for what others want in terms of content but I do try to ask questions that would benefit people other than myself to gain knowledge.

It's by definition a Meet and Greet. The purpose is to provide the regular player an opportunity to interact with the Development Team and they the players.

I am fine with anyone asking whatever they like. It is their concern or question and the point of the meet and greet. If you want to ask about future content so you and the rest of the community have a clue, great. It doesn't make a question about books or a change to the Ferry any less important or valuable.

You are making it a knock by comparing in your opinion a "very personalized" game thing vs your masterful questions designed to enlighten the entire community. All questions are valid. The answers sometimes interesting, and from time to time we see some results from asking them.

*Closes the latest chapter in @Larisa ongoing works, gives it a thoughtful pat on the binding, and places it back on the shelf till next time*

 

[Zeke]

I just want to ride my pet tiger...

 

[Larisa]

I just want to ride my pet tiger...

Yeah her answer to that made no sense....it's like..she's got her mind set..NO YOU CAN'T! No because it's a vet reward?

Horse
Ostard
Llama
Unicorn
Kirin
Ridgeback
Giant Beetle
Swamp Dragon
Cu Sidhe
Reptalon
Hiryu

All of THOSE are vet rewards, yet we can RIDE them as a normal mount in game.

*shakes head*

 

[Zeke]

Yeah, I called her out on that too

 

[MalagAste]

Yeah her answer to that made no sense....it's like..she's got her mind set..NO YOU CAN'T! No because it's a vet reward?

Horse
Ostard
Llama
Unicorn
Kirin
Ridgeback
Giant Beetle
Swamp Dragon
Cu Sidhe
Reptalon
Hiryu

All of THOSE are vet rewards, yet we can RIDE them as a normal mount in game.

*shakes head*

It's like her saying that you can't imbue Spellbooks because then Inscriptionists won't have anything to do...... though you have to craft the Spellbook in the first place therefore still need Inscription... it's not like Blacksmiths don't still craft the base stuff to imbue, refine and reforge... .... or tinkers or tailors... it's the same freakin thing... lamest dumbest reasoning EVER.... I just have to sometimes give a massive eye-roll to the ridiculous thinking of the DEVs sometimes... Any other weapon class can make their weapons... But mages nope... And you still need inscription to fill spellbooks.... so please... give me a break.

Though I will say that mages make out pretty good with the armor and jewels I find... seems to me that 90% of loot is geared to mages...

But yes... made that same argument over and over again... Kinda like not being able to ride a dragon or any of that stuff...

 

[Keven2002]

Amazing how you didn't actually READ what was being asked. Do you always do that?

The "boat in Skara" was MY brute force approach to fixing an issue. I wasn't ASKING for one.

What I was asking was for there to be a change to how the ferry works at Skara, PERIOD.

As it is, any quest chain (example: the trade orders, especially for Krampus) that prevents you from teleportation or recalling prevents you from crossing that ferry. You have to launch a boat, cross on the boat, then recover the boat (unless it's a rowboat). The Trade orders to Skara (which take longer to set up and take down a boat, than it does to make the crossing) don't pay any better than ones to Yew or any other town that doesn't require several minutes of sailing

Many times, there are people having private access ships parked there blocking the way (especially on more populous shards).

I found, by accident, that a Britannian ship can be used as a field expedient bridge - but that's an expensive bridge, AND I still have to take that ship out occasionally to fish. I would REALLY like to use my ship more often as a boat, not a bridge.

What was being asked for was if they could use NL to research and eventually bring over to the main servers, a REPLACEMENT for the CODING of the Skara ferry, to where it didn't use the teleport code.

BTW, I was asking in my position as a GOVERNOR of one of the other cities - NOT necessarily for myself.

I read it just fine and if you want to attack me personally because I don't agree with some request about a permanent boat being placed for trade orders than that is up to. As a mod though you probably shouldn't be in the habit of doing so. I think your anger is misplaced by being mad at me because you were shot down because the Devs explained to you that saying "cross" is actually teleport and a boat is not teleporting. I knew that and could easily use personal attacks on you for not reading how the game works but I didn't.

Funny how the owners of the things that were called out felt compelled to come on the boards are try to justify them and try to come at me by acting like I'm clueless. That tells me all I need to know.

Again as I already said, I don't care what anyone asks for but don't give the Devs grief for giving the same responses when asking for the same old things or asking for things that already exist.

Carry on.

 

[Drakelord]

You would think it be a easy fix on the Aquariums. If there was a problem with color wood before why release it to the game till it was fix, all that color wood and we cannot make what we really wish to have.

I can only hope they got what I was asking about in the sea of mini bars during a battle.

@Kyronix and @Mesanna

 

[Basara]

I read it just fine and if you want to attack me personally because I don't agree with some request about a permanent boat being placed for trade orders than that is up to.

HOLY HELL. YOU NOT ONLY DIDN'T READ IT (or my reply), YOU DOUBLED DOWN on a KNOWN TO BE WRONG snide comment. If anyone is attacking, it's you.

YOU are the only one mentioning a "PERMANENT BOAT"

Dear god....

I was asking for the ferry system to possibly be replaced by A SYSTEM NOT CODED TO ACT AS THE EXISTING TELEPORT (and therefore blocked by things like the trade orders). A boat (my boat, on LA) is the CURRENT FIELD EXPEDIENT, NOT what I was "Asking for". Even having the ferry work like BOARDING a HS boat would be an improvement (but not what I was asking for or even mentioned there), but what I was asking for was something more like how you get relocated from one point to another when crossing a server line on foot or on a boat, which isn't considered magic.

As they said, the current system is considered "magic". They seem to be happy with it, even though it was a cheap cop-out back in 1997 because they didn't/couldn't code the ferries to work AS ferries back then. The ferries aren't even obvious teleports, but require a password (cross may be simple, but you still have to know to say it, and people experienced with modern games would expect the boat to move you across, not teleport you)

Then why even have the PRETENSE of it being a ferry? If it's a "ferry" then it should not be a form of magic teleportation (magic or mechanical moving of the boats, would be a ferry - NOT teleporting from one to another). Boarding the High Seas Boats via the ropes is JUST AS MUCH a teleportation VISUALLY as a shortcut (at least in comparison to the classic boats' gangplanks), yet is not only allowed, but boarding some form of boat is NEEDED for full-credit runs to Moonglow, Jhelom, or Skara Brae - and Skara actually onto the mainland, unlike the others. Because, there was no easy way to code boarding a vessel with such a different Z level from 99% of the coastline. If we can have that conceit for getting on our Orc, Tokuno, Gargoyle or Britannian ships, why not for a SIMPLE FERRY CROSSING?

If it's magic, then a simple teleport pad will do (or, as with many other teleportals added since it, just moving onto it, not requiring a code word to cross). I've seen newbies (and even a couple of returning players that forgot how it works) just STAND THERE, unable to figure out how to use it, over the last 18 years. It REALLY should not interfere with trade orders, since the distance is shorter than the bridges to enter Vesper.

What I was asking for, was for the ferry to act like something mundane like the edges of a server (remember when those actually broke escorts and rescues, but they fixed them in 2006?), or (as an afterthought, NOT at the meeting) like boarding a HS ship - not actually to stick a physical ship there. But I didn't even SAY that. How you came to your erroneous conclusion as to what I was asking for boggles the mind.

 

[Keven2002]

HOLY HELL. YOU NOT ONLY DIDN'T READ IT (or my reply), YOU DOUBLED DOWN on a KNOWN TO BE WRONG snide comment.

As a moderator you should probably withhold being triggered so easily. I'm not going to read any further into your rant about something I don't really care about.

Flame on though bud

 

[Larisa]

Okay children, you better stop arguing or I will turn this car right around!! *Evil Mom Glare*

While I agree that the ferry is a minor annoyance while doing trade runs, it's not that hard to drop a tiny boat and sail 2 screens to the other side.

I know, some people already have boats in the water that they are using for actual boat stuff, I do think that a change to how it works would be nice but it's not something they have on their radar atm because of NL.

We just have to deal with it, as we have for all these years and hope that they took your suggestion into consideration for a later date.

 

[Keven2002]

Well said @Larisa

 

[Drakelord]

Are we there yet

 

[Victim of Siege]

Are we there yet

He’s touching me, mooooooom tell him to stop touching me!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[John Knighthawke]

Amazing how you didn't actually READ what was being asked. Do you always do that?

The "boat in Skara" was MY brute force approach to fixing an issue. I wasn't ASKING for one.

What I was asking was for there to be a change to how the ferry works at Skara, PERIOD.

As it is, any quest chain (example: the trade orders, especially for Krampus) that prevents you from teleportation or recalling prevents you from crossing that ferry. You have to launch a boat, cross on the boat, then recover the boat (unless it's a rowboat). The Trade orders to Skara (which take longer to set up and take down a boat, than it does to make the crossing) don't pay any better than ones to Yew or any other town that doesn't require several minutes of sailing

Many times, there are people having private access ships parked there blocking the way (especially on more populous shards).

I found, by accident, that a Britannian ship can be used as a field expedient bridge - but that's an expensive bridge, AND I still have to take that ship out occasionally to fish. I would REALLY like to use my ship more often as a boat, not a bridge.

What was being asked for was if they could use NL to research and eventually bring over to the main servers, a REPLACEMENT for the CODING of the Skara ferry, to where it didn't use the teleport code.

BTW, I was asking in my position as a GOVERNOR of one of the other cities - NOT necessarily for myself.

I remember bringing this up on some board awhile ago, when trade quests were new, they gave approximately the same response they gave for you.

It's kinda depressing to see that they can develop complex systems for a new shard that doesn't exist yet but this is somehow an intractable problem.

Oh well.

 

[Theo_GL]

Lake Austin M&G

Well I have to say this one was more civil and honest even if most of the answers were - 'we don't think spending time on it makes sense'. I'll take that over the past interactions. Maybe things are looking up.

Still always surprising to me with 1/3 of the questions around deco items (Acquarium, Plants, etc). There are so many gameplay issues that we need addressed - deco is usually the last thing on my mind.

I did like the question on the summons bars etc in the client.

Oh how I wish instead of just ctl-shift to show all names we had :

CTL-SHIFT - Show all handles
<hotkey> - Show all corpses
<hotkey> - Show all mobile
<hotkey> - show all aggro

When you are in a huge battle like an event you can't even pull the bar of the bad guy cause its buried under 20 corpses and 40 blue bars of players and pets. I just want to show bars for the aggro.

I know its better in 3d but it shouldn't be that hard in 2d. Its just a filter.

 

[Arrgh]

HOLY HELL. YOU NOT ONLY DIDN'T READ IT (or my reply), YOU DOUBLED DOWN on a KNOWN TO BE WRONG snide comment. If anyone is attacking, it's you.

YOU are the only one mentioning a "PERMANENT BOAT"

Dear god....

I was asking for the ferry system to possibly be replaced by A SYSTEM NOT CODED TO ACT AS THE EXISTING TELEPORT (and therefore blocked by things like the trade orders). A boat (my boat, on LA) is the CURRENT FIELD EXPEDIENT, NOT what I was "Asking for". Even having the ferry work like BOARDING a HS boat would be an improvement (but not what I was asking for or even mentioned there), but what I was asking for was something more like how you get relocated from one point to another when crossing a server line on foot or on a boat, which isn't considered magic.

As they said, the current system is considered "magic". They seem to be happy with it, even though it was a cheap cop-out back in 1997 because they didn't/couldn't code the ferries to work AS ferries back then. The ferries aren't even obvious teleports, but require a password (cross may be simple, but you still have to know to say it, and people experienced with modern games would expect the boat to move you across, not teleport you)

Then why even have the PRETENSE of it being a ferry? If it's a "ferry" then it should not be a form of magic teleportation (magic or mechanical moving of the boats, would be a ferry - NOT teleporting from one to another). Boarding the High Seas Boats via the ropes is JUST AS MUCH a teleportation VISUALLY as a shortcut (at least in comparison to the classic boats' gangplanks), yet is not only allowed, but boarding some form of boat is NEEDED for full-credit runs to Moonglow, Jhelom, or Skara Brae - and Skara actually onto the mainland, unlike the others. Because, there was no easy way to code boarding a vessel with such a different Z level from 99% of the coastline. If we can have that conceit for getting on our Orc, Tokuno, Gargoyle or Britannian ships, why not for a SIMPLE FERRY CROSSING?

If it's magic, then a simple teleport pad will do (or, as with many other teleportals added since it, just moving onto it, not requiring a code word to cross). I've seen newbies (and even a couple of returning players that forgot how it works) just STAND THERE, unable to figure out how to use it, over the last 18 years. It REALLY should not interfere with trade orders, since the distance is shorter than the bridges to enter Vesper.

What I was asking for, was for the ferry to act like something mundane like the edges of a server (remember when those actually broke escorts and rescues, but they fixed them in 2006?), or (as an afterthought, NOT at the meeting) like boarding a HS ship - not actually to stick a physical ship there. But I didn't even SAY that. How you came to your erroneous conclusion as to what I was asking for boggles the mind.

He's a troll, either ignore him or add him to ignore list like many others have and move on Basara.