Dumbest Bods

[Theo_GL]

Time to have some laughs at some of the idiotic bods released with the latest skills.

Tinkering
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Jeweled Figigree - (2 ingots, 1 star saphire, 1 ruby) Small bod, no combining, requires 40 gems to complete 20ct.
Farspeaker - (20 ingots, 10 emeralds, 10 rubies, 1 copper wire) - Small bod, no combining, requires 400 ingots, 200 emeralds and 200 rubies and 20 copper wire for a 20 ct bod for 1 point.

Alchemy
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Gold Dust - (1000 gold 33% success rate at GM) Small bod, no combining, requires 1000 gold per gold dust. Thats 1,000 x 20 = 20k gold plus failures for a 20ct bod for 1 point.

and the stupidest... drum roll please...
Nexus Core (crushed glass 5, dark saphire 5 spiders silk 10 mandrake root 10) - small bod, non combining, requires 20 crushed glass and 100 dark saphire to complete a 20 count bod. Ha ha hah!

Do the devs play the game? Do they even look at the ingredients for these bods?

These are nonsense bods and no one should ever complete them. Remove from the system already.

 

[Lore]

There was another thread about the Sugar ones for cooking recently too.

 

[Adrahil]

Inscription is just as bad if not worse. I really am not sure they thought any of it through. There are bods that don't even fit into larges. 20 magic arrow scrolls are not the same as 20 rez scrolls, but they are both worth 1 point. SMH

 

[Uriah Heep]

Yeah any rookie and fill a 1-4 bod, for one point.
Skilled scribes doing 5-8's still only get one point.'

Someone shoulda played the game and done bods a little bit before coding this. But like most everyting else bugged and messed up, I imagine we are stuck with it forever and ever

 

[Anon McDougle]

All Bods are Dumb we should just be able to buy the rewards make them expensive but let us buy them...

 

[Fridgster]

All Bods are Dumb we should just be able to buy the rewards make them expensive but let us buy them...

I disagree! I actually enjoy doing BODs. Yeah that's right I said it. I do however only deal with tailor and blacksmithing. The others are just way too resource intensive.

 

[Lore]

I hope they really have a huge crafting patch where they make BOD system a great crafting system. I really see huge potential.

 

[Lord Arm]

I have many large bods ill probably never fill, some are large 20 cooking with savage skin paint needed and the other is large 20 cooking, needing 20 sweet coco butter, takes 20 sugar. totally, got like 40 partially filled. what a waste lol, there are many smalls not worth doing.in many craft areas. these are ok, I just don't fill them is all. simple.

 

[Spartan]

I hope they really have a huge crafting patch where they make BOD system a great crafting system. I really see huge potential.

Annnddd - the bold part is why you won't see it in your lifetime. Sorry.

 

[Spartan]

I have many large bods ill probably never fill, some are large 20 cooking with savage skin paint needed and the other is large 20 cooking, needing 20 sweet coco butter, takes 20 sugar. totally, got like 40 partially filled. what a waste lol, there are many smalls not worth doing.in many craft areas. these are ok, I just don't fill them is all. simple.

I have stayed with the Smithing and Tailor BODs ... and the Tailor ones are no great shakes. But they allowed my crafters to advance while I got the rewards. <shrug>

 

[Basara]

The savage kin paint smalls are relatively easy - go to areas with savages, kill the females. you get the Berries easily enough, but they really do need to make the berry something that can be grown as a resource.

Sugar should be buyable or at least give seeds.

You have to make flour using your tool gump instead of the in-game flour mills, to get exceptional. Of course, you have to look hard to find that out. And, if you are going to have craftable flour, wheat needs to be buyable as well.

Then, there are the big issues, such as

Tinker:
The Tool large is normal quality only, despite all the component smalls being capable of being exceptional.
The only Jewelry larges are for normal gemmed jewels, topping out at 250/50 banked. There are colored metal plain jewelry smalls, but no larges.
Reduce the numbers of small BODs with no large

Carpentry:
So many things that are regular wood only, normal quality only, or both.
Reduce the number of small BODs with no large

Fletching:
The elven bow LBODs types are regular normal wood only, though some are bugged to be bribable to higher wood, where they are unfillable. Only the base Elven Composite Longbow and Magical Shortbow smalls can be colored wood.
There are still occasionally bugged Crossbow LBODs spawning despite multiple attempts to fix the issue - though occasionally the bods fix themselves (may be a result of a GM investigation concluding after I log out)

Inscription:
While I can understand the "all smalls the same" bit, as it would require massive rewriting of the BOD code to change, the fix here would be to redo the larges. Make all scroll BODs fit a large, and increase the value of said larges.

Alchemy:
get rid of the crap BODs.

Cooking:
Already discussed.

Smith:
Stop the insanity of the "famers" - give us large BODs that take shields and helms, and move the weapon/armor check to be after colored check, and force all "color" results to be armor only. Currently, the bonuses to colored chance at 110 and 120 skill result in 65% Iron and 55% Iron respectively, not 70% color and 90% color, because 50% will ALWAYS be iron weapons.

Tailor:
Rework the point system to be in line with the point systems of the other skills. Unlike the other skills, Tailor only has an ex bonus of 100 (not 200), Ex bods are only 1/3 (not 50%) of BODs, and there is a HARD CAP on the point values (at 700), despite some larges actually having a point value that should be up to 800, maybe more. The end result is that there are about 10x as many BODs that can give the highest Tailor reward, than equivalents in any of the other skills.
The whole tailor system is thereby flawed, and needs to be reworked to work exactly like the others (and, you could do an Apron like the Master Chef Apron to improve exceptional chance, or even enhance chances like the ASH, for the level above the Barbed kit that is currently being truncated)

 

[Anon McDougle]

I disagree! I actually enjoy doing BODs. Yeah that's right I said it. I do however only deal with tailor and blacksmithing. The others are just way too resource intensive.

I understand i Love to mine ! The issue for me is the randomness say i want a Val hammer first i have to hope i get the large i need then find all the correct smalls might be years now i do live on Origin so there are not a lot of bods for sale which makes it harder still..i don't mind having to work for it and having it take time but the odds really stacked against a fellow here...

 

[Uriah Heep]

I understand i Love to mine ! The issue for me is the randomness say i want a Val hammer first i have to hope i get the large i need then find all the correct smalls might be years now i do live on Origin so there are not a lot of bods for sale which makes it harder still..i don't mind having to work for it and having it take time but the odds really stacked against a fellow here...

I just bribe the hell out of em...especially making the rounds of the fel smiths bribing (usually cheaper, havent been bribed up as high as trammel ones)

 

[Mr Bug]

Hey they did get rid of a crappy Alchemy bod, the hovering wisp. At 4 captured essence per wisp you would only need to kill Shimmering Effusion 40 times to fill a bod for 10 if you got the captured essence every time! I actually kept several of those bods in case they are rare one day. Plus they look really cool locked down next to the alchemy workstation. Gold Dust and Nexus Core go straight to the ground. So yeah I hear ya on that part.

 

[Lord Arm]

I have stayed with the Smithing and Tailor BODs ... and the Tailor ones are no great shakes. But they allowed my crafters to advance while I got the rewards. <shrug>

the new loot really hurt tailor and smithy bods rewards. new loot so much better and comes with 255 durability. i fill bods when i want to relax lol.

 

[Fridgster]

I understand i Love to mine ! The issue for me is the randomness say i want a Val hammer first i have to hope i get the large i need then find all the correct smalls might be years now i do live on Origin so there are not a lot of bods for sale which makes it harder still..i don't mind having to work for it and having it take time but the odds really stacked against a fellow here...

On slower shards I can take plain iron bods and bribe up to val plate for under 200k gold

 

[Uriah Heep]

Hey they did get rid of a crappy Alchemy bod, the hovering wisp. At 4 captured essence per wisp you would only need to kill Shimmering Effusion 40 times to fill a bod for 10 if you got the captured essence every time! I actually kept several of those bods in case they are rare one day. Plus they look really cool locked down next to the alchemy workstation. Gold Dust and Nexus Core go straight to the ground. So yeah I hear ya on that part.

And this, my friends, is how we know the devs don't actually play the game as players.

 

[TB Cookie [W]]

Good thread, and replies, I see most of us see many of the same issues.

From my personal perspective, I like the BoD system, and think it is 90% there, could just use a couple of tweaks as mentioned above.

My main issue, is the equipment that can be crafted once you have got the runic kits, I would like it to be far closer to PvM looted drops.
Specifially, I would like Greater Reforged Armour to be improved - I have a real issue with the new properties on Looted gear, and would like to put my characters back into Greater Reforged gear I can fully repair and PoF.

Smith, Tailor, Scribe, Carpentry - I have really nice systems for these, and enjoy them. I would just like the gear you can make from the Runic kits to be upgraded.
Bowcrafting, Tinker - I have just started. I would like a Tinker Runic Reward - that allowed Greater Reforged Jewellery to be crafted.
Alchemy and Cooking I have not started yet, but have been collecting BoDs and resources. I agree some Alchemy BoDs are just off the planet stupid and should be removed.

 

[Fridgster]

I think that my biggest concern is that they would even put out some of these BODs. Someone actually had to think to themselves that the BODs mentioned above and many more were actually a good idea and worth the reward. That's frighteningly out of touch.

 

[Uriah Heep]

I think that my biggest concern is that they would even put out some of these BODs. Someone actually had to think to themselves that the BODs mentioned above and many more were actually a good idea and worth the reward. That's frighteningly out of touch.

Exactly

 

[skett]

I think that my biggest concern is that they would even put out some of these BODs. Someone actually had to think to themselves that the BODs mentioned above and many more were actually a good idea and worth the reward. That's frighteningly out of touch.

Exactly

This pretty much sums up UO and the current team (well most of the current team) for me lol

 

[Basara]

Don't forget that, while they were hosting that Player wiki (giving it the appearance of officialness), they never had anyone on staff go over the tables for the BOD rewards.

The poor woman who actually did the charts was given piles of erroneous information, and the resulting tables caused all kinds of confusion. With some help from Stratics and others, she was able to fix most of it - but Broadsword SHOULD have had someone take 5 minutes per BOD page, note what BODs were not actually implemented, and sent in the corrections to her. They could have done it while on coffee breaks (you don't need hands to READ a wiki page).

 

[Theo_GL]

Don't forget that, while they were hosting that Player wiki (giving it the appearance of officialness), they never had anyone on staff go over the tables for the BOD rewards.

The poor woman who actually did the charts was given piles of erroneous information, and the resulting tables caused all kinds of confusion. With some help from Stratics and others, she was able to fix most of it - but Broadsword SHOULD have had someone take 5 minutes per BOD page, note what BODs were not actually implemented, and sent in the corrections to her. They could have done it while on coffee breaks (you don't need hands to READ a wiki page).

Again - the dev team could create some focus groups with players and go over these changes before implementing and we could have saved alot of extra coding and poor choices that will likely never get fixed.

Ask Basara, myself and a couple other crafters and we'd never let stuff like this happen in the first place.

I used to have a direct line to Patrick Mallot/Leurocian and we did a pub where we fixed a long list of crafting issues. It was extremely helpful but alas he's gone. Since there there have been no fixes and just more broken content.

 

[Lore]

I gotta say, I hate the idea of players having this "expert" feedback to Devs. I also hate that the Devs don't actually play the game though.. at this point I'm just getting more disheartened by the game everytime I check either forum.

The reason I don't think players should drive it is that the players of UO are very dumb, I'm sorry. I see stupid stuff all the time. Everyone, including myself, thinks we know everything. Very few of you can put your thoughts into well formed sentences. A lot of us are biased to our play styles. Many of us have a very different view for the direction we'd like to see things taken.

I just think what we need is a dev with a vision for this game. A well written mission statement for each patch cycle. And, a place and very specific template for feedback.

 

[Theo_GL]

I gotta say, I hate the idea of players having this "expert" feedback to Devs. I also hate that the Devs don't actually play the game though.. at this point I'm just getting more disheartened by the game everytime I check either forum.

The reason I don't think players should drive it is that the players of UO are very dumb, I'm sorry. I see stupid stuff all the time. Everyone, including myself, thinks we know everything. Very few of you can put your thoughts into well formed sentences. A lot of us are biased to our play styles. Many of us have a very different view for the direction we'd like to see things taken.

I just think what we need is a dev with a vision for this game. A well written mission statement for each patch cycle. And, a place and very specific template for feedback.

Which is why you have FOCUS groups of a few players that you trust instead of feedback from everyone.

For reference I'm a VP at a billion dollar software company and my job is providing customer feedback to our product managers to improve our products on behalf of our customers and partners. Its not like this is a foreign concept to me. We do it for high priced enterprise software powering the largest companies in the world. I think I might be able to provide a few well understood tweaks to bods to make the system better for everyone if our dev team doesn't play the game enough to know that some bods are completely stupid given the materials it takes to complete.

We only have a limited amount of developer horsepower. I'd like to see us get more value from it. As it is they are building content that release after release is broken, half baked and never completed.

Would you rather have one good new suit or 35 suits from salvation army? UO is the later. Overwhelming amount of unfinished, poorly designed and forgotten content. But hey - heres to pub 100 and another smelly suit.

 

[Lore]

I would like one person with a vision of what they want and a specific feedback template that everyone can submit. If it's specific enough it would easily be able to gather statistics to make educated decisions. It can be worded to steer the vision and mission plan, but still gather opinions.

Focus groups of players is a flawed idea in video games. It's flawed because by pulling a specific demographic for your focus group it is biased at the beginning. You and I may disagree on crafting. We may not agree on how crafting should get the materials for it's highest end craftables.

As an example, you may feel anything craftable at a level equal to the best PVE loot should have materials from the PVE fights. I would like that material to be from BODs.

Even further, if they got both of our opinions, they would be ignoring the person that just does crafting for the art. Maybe they don't want those high-end craftables to have unique graphics.

 

[Theo_GL]

I would like one person with a vision of what they want and a specific feedback template that everyone can submit. If it's specific enough it would easily be able to gather statistics to make educated decisions. It can be worded to steer the vision and mission plan, but still gather opinions.

Focus groups of players is a flawed idea in video games. It's flawed because by pulling a specific demographic for your focus group it is biased at the beginning. You and I may disagree on crafting. We may not agree on how crafting should get the materials for it's highest end craftables.

As an example, you may feel anything craftable at a level equal to the best PVE loot should have materials from the PVE fights. I would like that material to be from BODs.

Even further, if they got both of our opinions, they would be ignoring the person that just does crafting for the art. Maybe they don't want those high-end craftables to have unique graphics.

Instead we have neither.

No updates, changes, fixes to crafting after the last 'ejaculation' of new content.

Poorly thought out rewards. Bods that don't make sense. Bod systems with tons of non-combinable bods. Etc. It will be years before they do anything with it until maybe, just maybe, they fix or update it 20 publishes down the road.
Some focus groups and real input and they could have shored up much of the easy stuff BEFORE it was ever released.

You can make a list of things that need fixing as long as my arm (community collections, clean up brit, heartwood, doom, abyss, or how about refinements?? etc etc). Yet they find time to add things like coffee making and brewing. Seriously. How many people spend any time per day on brewing beer for the amount of coding effort that went into it?

Yay. 6 people are excited about it. The rest still try to make do with broken bod systems, broken resource gathering, broken loot systems, broken game mechanics etc.

Uo is poor. Its like having $5 in your pocket and instead of buying a meal, or warm gloves, or a blanket you spend it on a pet rock. Its just not practical. Thats whats so frustrating. All these years and its the same old same old same old and look around - the game is NOT growing. Seriously. NOT GROWING.

 

[MalagAste]

Instead we have neither.

No updates, changes, fixes to crafting after the last 'ejaculation' of new content.

Poorly thought out rewards. Bods that don't make sense. Bod systems with tons of non-combinable bods. Etc. It will be years before they do anything with it until maybe, just maybe, they fix or update it 20 publishes down the road.
Some focus groups and real input and they could have shored up much of the easy stuff BEFORE it was ever released.

You can make a list of things that need fixing as long as my arm (community collections, clean up brit, heartwood, doom, abyss, or how about refinements?? etc etc). Yet they find time to add things like coffee making and brewing. Seriously. How many people spend any time per day on brewing beer for the amount of coding effort that went into it?

Yay. 6 people are excited about it. The rest still try to make do with broken bod systems, broken resource gathering, broken loot systems, broken game mechanics etc.

Uo is poor. Its like having $5 in your pocket and instead of buying a meal, or warm gloves, or a blanket you spend it on a pet rock. Its just not practical. Thats whats so frustrating. All these years and its the same old same old same old and look around - the game is NOT growing. Seriously. NOT GROWING.

Sadly people do spend time brewing... and then they name their concoctions BS like Golden Showers... How do you like someone throwing that at you???

 

[Lore]

Instead we have neither.

No updates, changes, fixes to crafting after the last 'ejaculation' of new content.

Poorly thought out rewards. Bods that don't make sense. Bod systems with tons of non-combinable bods. Etc. It will be years before they do anything with it until maybe, just maybe, they fix or update it 20 publishes down the road.
Some focus groups and real input and they could have shored up much of the easy stuff BEFORE it was ever released.

You can make a list of things that need fixing as long as my arm (community collections, clean up brit, heartwood, doom, abyss, or how about refinements?? etc etc). Yet they find time to add things like coffee making and brewing. Seriously. How many people spend any time per day on brewing beer for the amount of coding effort that went into it?

Yay. 6 people are excited about it. The rest still try to make do with broken bod systems, broken resource gathering, broken loot systems, broken game mechanics etc.

Uo is poor. Its like having $5 in your pocket and instead of buying a meal, or warm gloves, or a blanket you spend it on a pet rock. Its just not practical. Thats whats so frustrating. All these years and its the same old same old same old and look around - the game is NOT growing. Seriously. NOT GROWING.

Sounds like we agree, but we disagree on the fix. I don't like the idea of players driving game design. I've never seen that work.

I like the idea of someone driving everything with a singular vision. At least that way that singular view can be built and designed with fun in mind. Of course that person with a singular vision would be better if they knew the game.

 

[Basara]

Sounds like we agree, but we disagree on the fix. I don't like the idea of players driving game design. I've never seen that work.

I like the idea of someone driving everything with a singular vision. At least that way that singular view can be built and designed with fun in mind. Of course that person with a singular vision would be better if they knew the game.

Lore, the way it looks to me, from many of the changes, is that there are ALREADY players driving everything - a very vocal minority with specific targets in playstyle, and with a mindset that everything must be designed with one certain shard in mind in the West (and maybe a few in Japan), no matter how much that does not work on the other dozen or so in either hemisphere.

 

[Pawain]

Sadly people do spend time brewing... and then they name their concoctions BS like Golden Showers... How do you like someone throwing that at you???

Thanks for the tip!

 

[Uriah Heep]

 

[Lore]

Lore, the way it looks to me, from many of the changes, is that there are ALREADY players driving everything - a very vocal minority with specific targets in playstyle, and with a mindset that everything must be designed with one certain shard in mind in the West (and maybe a few in Japan), no matter how much that does not work on the other dozen or so in either hemisphere.

Agreed, that's what I want to avoid though. We agree on the problem, we disagree on the solution. Assuming you agree with Theo's solution.

 

[Basara]

Neither solution really works by itself.

To me, the optimum solution would involve a strong lead, and focus groups that would be picked from all shards, as follows.

1. Each EM (or someone from BS if a shard is currently missing an EM), prior to a non-drop event (so most attendees would be locals), would inquire about what players on the shard would be best to talk to about certain in-game subjects. Peer recommendations for FG participants, to me, would weigh more than someone actively seeking such placement.
2. The EM would then attempt to contact said players about being in a focus group for those subjects.
3. Each focus group would have more than 2 people from any 1 shard, and would have to be at least 12 people from at least 8 shards (no more than half the shards represented can have 2 people in the group). Groups can be larger, though.
4. Focus groups would have private message boards, plus optional text and/or voice chats.
5. The group would put together a document with suggestions, what systems (including those outside the area of the group) would be affected, etc. that has to be approved by the group (with an appendix for dissenting opinions).
6. The devs still have the final word, though.

 

[Lore]

Your suggestion reeks of favoritism. A mission statement and patch focus with a VERY specific template for opinion where only developer feels they need opinions is what I feel is best. The template could even be disregarded if it removes the fun of the patch mission. Sometimes people just need the illusion of input.

The trouble with what you're suggesting is A) It's a popularity contest. B) It doesn't represent everyone. C) Developers will never please everyone, but they are empowered to create something fun when they don't have to worry about everyone's opinions.

On this topic, for example, this would be something that EVERYONE could just report on the bug forum. It doesn't require a focus group. The source of this problem is something we both agree on. The developers or whoever was in charge of this piece, doesn't play this piece of the game.

Or, and this is possible, they just copied everything down lazily without even looking at it. Rushing a deadline or a promised patch schedule?

 

[Basara]

Your claim that what I suggest has anything RESEMBLING favoritism to me indicates that you think that only those with absolutely NO CLUE and NO INTEREST in a subject should be the ones to try to find and fix issues.

Let me know when you cross a bridge over a canyon, designed and built by people who never learned math or construction skills, and you'll have ground to stand on.

 

[Lore]

You're equating video game design to engineering when it's more like you saying the popular person somehow knows the most on the subject because popularity.


In other words, your point of argument for your view doesn't make sense.

You want the popular person to build the bridge.
I want the engineer to build the bridge in the best way possible and ask everyone very specific and not general questions about the few things that can be left up to everyone.