shocking development?

[atinycow]

so anyway, like a month and a half ago they put out publish 81 even though everyone kinda totally hated refinement

now it's a month and a half later

i can't find anyone in luna on atl wearing any refined armor

i can't find anyone on the trade forum trading refinement items (only went back 2 pages)

there's a thread on refinement in the crafting forum with like 6 posts

could it be... that a system nobody wanted turned out to be a system nobody uses? shocking

i mean i lurked thru that whole big arguement with the devs, fine let them do what they want, but this is a failed system and if theyre going to force it on us they should have to fix it

 

[DJAd]

I've seen two people on Atlantic so far with refined armour. Yes I think your right. Maybe not very popular.

 

[pumpkin_escobar]

Fix what? It being popular? I'm still looking for more invulnerability mats before I start adding it to a suit.

I think people are still figuring out reforgeing IMO

 

[Nails Warstein]

Why couldn't they just have employed my idea of Transmogrification posted here - http://stratics.com/community/threa...s-proposals-and-pitfalls.285779/#post-2185221?

I have always advocated the idea of "TRANSMOGRIFICATION" which could be a skill, a scroll, a tool, and/or some type of gold sink that does the following:

A menu offering you the ability to change the physical appearance of your armor piece without changing its name and its stats. Example:

Say your template has woodland leggings of slaughter, hat of the magi, midnight bracers, leather gorget from the royal britannian zoo, spined leaf gloves, and rune beetle carapace.

With Transmogrification, you can change the physical appearance of each piece to now resemble all platemail armor, tokuno style armor, elf style armor, dragon scale armor. No need to alter game mechanics, save a lot of work on coding.

Transmogrification definition - To Change into a different shape or form, especially one that is fantastic or bizarre.

 

[Uvtha]

so anyway, like a month and a half ago they put out publish 81 even though everyone kinda totally hated refinement

now it's a month and a half later

i can't find anyone in luna on atl wearing any refined armor

i can't find anyone on the trade forum trading refinement items (only went back 2 pages)

there's a thread on refinement in the crafting forum with like 6 posts

could it be... that a system nobody wanted turned out to be a system nobody uses? shocking

i mean i lurked thru that whole big arguement with the devs, fine let them do what they want, but this is a failed system and if theyre going to force it on us they should have to fix it

I surmised it would be a forgotten system within 6 months and I stand by that. As for it being something no one wants... that doesn't matter. They are supposed to introduce ideas that make the game fun not give us what we ask for.

The idea, of being to alter what your armor was good at, was fine. The execution on the other hand was one of the worst possible. Like I think they would have had to try to make a more poorly designed system.

And I think its perfectly fine that not everyone uses it, there are a lot of little things in this game that people don't use much. Just adds to potential individuality. My problem is that it was a system I WOULD use if it weren't for the absurd way it was designed to make it as hard to interact with as possible.

 

[Uvtha]

Why couldn't they just have employed my idea of Transmogrification?

Cause the link goes to a blank page.

 

[Tanivar]

They are supposed to introduce ideas that make the game fun not give us what we ask for.

So when is someone who they will listen to going to tell them that? They seem to have missed that memo.

 

[Uvtha]

So when is someone who they will listen to going to tell them that? They seem to have missed that memo.

They may fail, but its up to them as designers to design the game. Honestly I see a great deal of terrible ideas around here, so I doubt highly it would be any better if they just did what the players asked for.

And while I disagree with their whole apparent design plans (time grinds = content) they have added good things recently and fixed a lot of bugs.

The refinement system... not one of the good ones. The idea sure, but as I said above... just terrible implementation. Arguably the worst the game has seen imo.

 

[Nails Warstein]

They may fail, but its up to them as designers to design the game. Honestly I see a great deal of terrible ideas around here, so I doubt highly it would be any better if they just did what the players asked for.

And while I disagree with their whole apparent design plans (time grinds = content) they have added good things recently and fixed a lot of bugs.

The refinement system... not one of the good ones. The idea sure, but as I said above... just terrible implementation. Arguably the worst the game has seen imo.

What about the Arena? Could have been great if it had been implemented properly by adding PvM to it, created reward based competition, and at least release it with some fanfare.

 

[cazador]

Refinements are..eh ok. Not my cup of tea, but at the same time I've farmed a bit of them and have helped people put it into their suits, and it's worked out nicely. Useless, to an extent. The system as a whole could be tweaked and redone just a bit to make a more significant difference in whatever style you play.

Lets say you can stack refinements on to one piece, wether it be +resist - Dci or whatever there should be a cap of +5 or -5 per piece but not in -1 increments. There should be no limitations on what I want on any specific piece, for instance my platemail gorget I'm willing to give up -5 in energy resist for the +5 DCI bump in one piece or whatever increment Id like to, obviously it would need a hard cap of -/+ 5 per piece.

But then again maybe it isn't a very functional system if I have to explain everything I've just said above :/

 

[Lady Storm]

While Dev teams of the past have refrained from going all out when they design and turn out to us things that should be more promoted....
We must give this dev team a fair play on time...
Mesanna and the team are now a bit short on members and they did have a big list of things to do...
Coupled with us nagging for things and wanting to influence them on choices we really need to back off for a bit.
While I think this refinements thing is still very early...
I mean how many of you have a full set's worth of them for one suit??
It's not like you can get a set amount of what in hunting.. they are random and the luck that you will get what you need is shall we say like a needle in a hay stack....
I'd give it a few more months to fill out a bit more...

 

[Uvtha]

What about the Arena? Could have been great if it had been implemented properly by adding PvM to it, created reward based competition, and at least release it with some fanfare.

A monster area would be pretty cool.

 

[atinycow]

I just think this isn't working out how they expected

Like they figured it was just five or ten mean people on a forum telling them their idea stinks, and if they just told us to STFU and put it in anyway, all the "real players" would totally fall in love with it. but that's not how it's gone down

And yeah i know a couple people are gonna be like "hey i know a guy who refined a piece of armor once, this system is great success" but consider this: they added a crafting system with like 100+ different unique components... and nobody on the trade forum is even talking about it. at least not within the most recent couple of pages.

I ask you, how is that even possible? if they added 100+ different beanie babies that did absolutely nothing, people would be more excited. so let's not pretend everyone is out excitedly fighting over refinement materials just waiting to make rad new suits. the refining thread on the crafter forum petered out after like 5 posts

 

[Daelomin]

The majority of new additions have failed.... Refinements, Revamped dungeons, Revamped Magincia, Ship upgrades, City Loyalty, Faction changes etc.
Systems that are rashly added to the game only to be abbandoned after a few months are wasted resources and make players lose confidence...
If its so hard to come up with new unique game designs, why not focus on existing systems and bring some life into them... Doom Overhaul... bring back ToT with new desirable items, Replace Champ Spawn Artifacts etc...

 

[Shakkara]

I really hope that the devteam learns from refinements, but as it is, the system could be salvagable. The idea of modifying resist caps isn't THAT bad by itelf. The two key points where the design went wrong was that there are too many different components, and that the items themselves are not stackable. If the component diversity would be reduced to just the main armor category (wood, metal, leather) instead of subtype (ringmail, studded, bone, etc) and the remaining items would be stackable, I think it is actually quite a usable system.

City loyalty has this awesomely complex loyalty system with love-hate-neutral components, which COULD really result in some awesome gameplay. But there's nothing tying into this loyalty system at all. The rewards would be "so great" for being venerated. So where are these rewards for venerated people? We're now one year down the road and nothing came except titles that you have to pay for. It would've been awesome if there were more ways to interact with the towns and that towns would do something back or grant privileges depending on status.

Factions are now quite ruined and would have to be reworked from the ground up. I would hope for some fun, low-barrier-to-entry and objective-based PVP with a place for both casual and more hardcore PVPers, and that it is easy to understand and fun to try out so that people new to PVP have a reason to join in.

Magincia's design is pretty terrible, but I like the pet shops as it allows me to easily purchase pets from people when the population on the shard is so low. With the election/loyalty system, I was hoping we'd see features like that rolled out to all cities. And that players would be able to design and place buildings inside the city to brigthen it up. But once again, we have this awesome election system, but nothing tying into this system to give it purpose. Right now I gather that the elected people will have to beg with the EMs for everything they want (and I can see the 'favoritism!' drama coming a mile away), instead of there being systems tied into the election system that allows the players to interact with the sandbox directly.

 

[MalagAste]

On GL's I've heard a few folk in Gen Chat asking about getting certain pieces of the refinements..... however they didn't seem to have much success.... to me it's just another 600 things to waste and take up my lockdown space... and honestly at this point I really don't care to do that.

Another overly complicated system I really am not going to use. But I suppose if someone has 600 lockdowns to waste then far be it from me to stop them...

I'd rather be able to alter things .... I'm tired of having my "suit" dictated to me by the need for them... robe..... sash.... ugly boots.... and stupid half apron. I'd much rather wear a woodland belt, tunic (with some neat symbol of my city or such on it)..... thigh boots (because I love them)..... etc... But if you want to have the best suit with all the bonus's then you have to wear UGLY clothes.

As for life in the game I already said that to bring life back to the game they need to just rotate some good events.... Bring back ToT add some new dyes (that have MORE THAN ONE USE and/or STACK!!!!!) to get update the old items with new updated items that are better..... Put the Vanguard in Blackthorns old spot in Illsh.... let us tame the Dread Warhorses again.... this would make tamers happy! ...... start up the ophidian/territhan war again..... put the Bane invading Papua or something...... Have demons pour out of the Demon Temple..... Have some sea monsters attack costal shores at random..... Near Brit, Skara Brae, Trinsic, Vesper..... Moonglow.... etc... But global events that are ongoing which we can participate in more than 1 or 2 days a week..... EM events are ok and all but they only last ONE day..... if you can't be there for that 2 hour event or whatever then you are left with NOTHING new.... Want to know why people flock to other games????? Because there is NOTHING going on here.....

Global events are needed to keep folk focused and give them things to do... just pick a dozen or so events heck even 5 or 6.... and ROTATE them on a month off a month.... turn one on for a month at a time leave a month in-between each event and just rotate... add a new one and take one away and revamp it from time to time but honestly it can't be that hard or that much work to turn on something that's already been coded.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Much of the Publish, to my pleasant surprise, has been a resounding success.

I've even seen balanced two-handers out there. Saw, of all things, a halbred last night. A balanced one no less.

Refinement was always going to be, at best, a niche market.

Those ingredients for it do sell, I'm informed, so people seem willing to play with it if the price for the stuff is low enough.

But it'll never be more than a niche market. Most of us look at the potential tradeoff and decide it's best to just stand pat with the current caps.

-Galen's player

 

[The Zog historian]

If anyone else has been cursed by the RNG gods as I have, there's your answer for why refinements aren't much used. Recently I've given up. I would have had some PvM use for refinements, but my problem is that out of several dozen Invulnerability refinements, only a couple have given me the full 5 mods.

When you look at the odds, it's actually better to apply an Invulnerability refinement in the hope of getting four mods. Now what kind of a system is that?

It's already hard enough that a spawned refinement is of a type I want. I junk those like bone, woodland, and hides. Then because the effects can't be stacked, I toss Defense, Protection and Hardening as completely and utterly useless. Then to fail almost every time in getting five mods? It's insulting.

The one big change: make the effects stackable. If you've applied physical, fire and cold, then you can use two Defense to modify poison and energy. If that were done, I almost couldn't care about the refinements themselves not stacking.

 

[Uvtha]

The majority of new additions have failed.... Refinements, Revamped dungeons, Revamped Magincia, Ship upgrades, City Loyalty, Faction changes etc.
Systems that are rashly added to the game only to be abbandoned after a few months are wasted resources and make players lose confidence...
If its so hard to come up with new unique game designs, why not focus on existing systems and bring some life into them... Doom Overhaul... bring back ToT with new desirable items, Replace Champ Spawn Artifacts etc...

Whats wrong with the revamped dungeons? I only hunt in the revamped dungeons. Ship upgrades were great. The only problem with ship upgrades was the stupid complexity of cannon use. Magincia is just butt ugly... they could fix that anytime they wanted to though. Function wise its fine. The merchant stalls are handy, but very limited in number. City loyalty like refinments was a nice idea, but was also poorly implemented. Its much better now than it was in the beginning though. There are things you can do that are fun like champ spawns that boost your loyalty rating.

 

[startle]

If anyone else has been cursed by the RNG gods as I have, there's your answer for why refinements aren't much used. Recently I've given up. I would have had some PvM use for refinements, but my problem is that out of several dozen Invulnerability refinements, only a couple have given me the full 5 mods.

When you look at the odds, it's actually better to apply an Invulnerability refinement in the hope of getting four mods. Now what kind of a system is that?

It's already hard enough that a spawned refinement is of a type I want. I junk those like bone, woodland, and hides. Then because the effects can't be stacked, I toss Defense, Protection and Hardening as completely and utterly useless. Then to fail almost every time in getting five mods? It's insulting.

The one big change: make the effects stackable. If you've applied physical, fire and cold, then you can use two Defense to modify poison and energy. If that were done, I almost couldn't care about the refinements themselves not stacking.

This ^^^^^

 

[atinycow]

Whats wrong with the revamped dungeons? I only hunt in the revamped dungeons. Ship upgrades were great. The only problem with ship upgrades was the stupid complexity of cannon use. Magincia is just butt ugly... they could fix that anytime they wanted to though. Function wise its fine. The merchant stalls are handy, but very limited in number. City loyalty like refinments was a nice idea, but was also poorly implemented. Its much better now than it was in the beginning though. There are things you can do that are fun like champ spawns that boost your loyalty rating.

all my friends just cant get enough of the void pool and the fantastic ephemeral items it rewards. what a great idea. oh and the ephemerals from despise, what a hit. we just can't get enough of them

and when we're not doing that, we're off on exciting pirate adventures, dreaming of fabuluos wealth. i hear you can earn 10,000 entire golds pieces from taking down a pirate. why if i did a hundred of those i could be a MILLIONAIRE

of course while we're on the sea we also have to go after charybdis and get some fantastic regeneration armor, the hottest new thing in UO that everyone wants

and once all that gets old we go off and fight in the awesome and totally not dead faction system

man this dev team adds so much great stuff that everyone wants and totally isn't forgotten about a week later

 

[Lady Storm]

There are a lot of things I would change given the chance..

You have to admit they tried to change these dungeons and situations with pirates, the sea creatures and such to enhance our play... some miss the point while others are fine.
I think a lot of players give up after a while not cause they are bored ... things change.
The void pool is for groups of players.. not for a lone player.
Wrong has its good and bad points its not for everyone....
I do wish they would only do 1 thing to Destard and nothing more... limit the Greater Dragons to ether an area of their own or cut back on how many spawn.
This was one of the few dungeons used on most shards daily and by many...
People trained not just their character but pets..
Gathered leather, made some spare change, got some items for the crafters in their life... etc..
Now.. well its more a need to group up to handle the possibility you can get nipped by more then 1 GD...
Grouping is fine if the friends have the time together to do it, but most have found its not that easy as it was a few years back.
Many are quested out.. while some like the quests... there is no solid ground to equate a balance.
There is a reason that the refinements is not going so well..... too many items and inconsistency of getting them, enough to get a suit made at the very least.
The chance of making that top suit is also a big concern. I agree the idea was sound but no one had this in mind.....
Crafting should have had more of a input on this, perhaps that if they were craftable. New components... more input to make rather then hunt them down. Not cut out the way we have now but also make them by other means. Involve other skills for parts to do them as in other things... anything to make them more interactive and accessable.
Use all the skills of the crafting fields.
I know this or any other fix cant happen soon, the Dev are penned in for the year...
If wishes were fishes we all would have plenty to do.. and might have more vet's return to the game.... crafting was a big deal in UO, its why when the Dev put out one of the expac's and you ignored them they left by the drove.
Failing to listen except to the loud screamers who are few but defining screaming their wants at you drowns out the true good players who have wants and needs to keep going.
I cant blame this Dev team for it, its all the past teams who had their own idea of what UO should be, not what it is.
Each one had their dream of what and how to change the game, we all know how well it went over......
Dreams are fine... but the over all need is greater then dreams can produce....

 

[THP]

quite simply its been made far to complicated to bother with

 

[S_S]

For almost 30 mins now I've spammed in general chat telling people this is all over Moonglow bank area for free, I had 1 person show up and snag a handful and that's it. Doubt I collect anymore.

 

[Vexxed]

MONKEY SEE....MONKEY DO!


This is what will happen with refinements. Think of it like this.....

1) 50% of the populace have the money to refine suits if they wanted
2) 20% of them understands how refinements work in detail.
2) 10% of those that understand the system & have the innovation to think of the perfect spot / purpose to use a refined suit for.

So... ultimately maybe that 1 person in 100 has been busy lately... Dont worry youll see him on his sampire rocking his 80% energy / 60Dci suit...He will be rocking a 100% poison Air ele slayer and dropping runes to his vendor filled with 50m+ jewelry... This is where

MONKEY SEE MONKEY DO... comes in for the other 99%..... if you still dont follow...99% will have to do for ya. KEEP an eye out youll see how its done.. heh

MMuhahah

 

[Obsidian]

I am collecting defense refinements to reduce resist and add DCI on studded leather and samurai studded leather. If you are giving them away I'll put them to use as I experiment with suit variations post pub 81.

 

[Adol]

For almost 30 mins now I've spammed in general chat telling people this is all over Moonglow bank area for free, I had 1 person show up and snag a handful and that's it. Doubt I collect anymore.
View attachment 14644

Oh dear.

But yes; I've been picking up refinements, they're in MiBs and the holds of both pirate ships and merchants, they're in treasure maps... and you know it's a terrible inefficient system when you've got 54 already (non stacking) and you think "I'll wait until there's 100 to put it in auction, won't be long"... and then a screen shot like this confirms what you already suspected, that no one is going to bother bidding on even 100! And the best bit? I've no idea if anything in the chest is worth holding onto, I don't really have the interest in learning... and they aren't worth any Spring Cleaning points either.

Of course, if I bin the lot anyway, the 2 people on the entire server who understand it and actually want a particular piece may never get it because the majority of people hate the system and are binning them en-masse. If there was some sort of lockdown saving, searchable bod books for people or vendors it might have been salvageable, I could just put them up and let people take what they need. But as it is... horrible, horrible system.

Still, I'll give the devs credit; they have tried to help older systems. Treasure Maps are worth doing now, and although grinding for cannon materials is still monsterous, the rewards are actually pretty good, especially if you attack merchantmen who don't even need cannonfire (but karma loss, not a problem for pirates) to loot. The odd ork piece and 10k for taking a pirate back is merely a bonus... so hopefully in time they'll get around to the second pass at refinements again too, which fixes what is often a horrible, horrible first design.

 

[Theo_GL]

I surmised it would be a forgotten system within 6 months and I stand by that. As for it being something no one wants... that doesn't matter. They are supposed to introduce ideas that make the game fun not give us what we ask for.

The idea, of being to alter what your armor was good at, was fine. The execution on the other hand was one of the worst possible. Like I think they would have had to try to make a more poorly designed system.

And I think its perfectly fine that not everyone uses it, there are a lot of little things in this game that people don't use much. Just adds to potential individuality. My problem is that it was a system I WOULD use if it weren't for the absurd way it was designed to make it as hard to interact with as possible.

Just think about all the interesting things they COULD have built with that time. Thats what makes me angry. My subscription dollars went to fund something that no one wanted. Thanks Messana and the dev team - another epic fail.

Go look at the thread on 'wanted' enhancements. Note how many 'likes' my post have gotten. Maybe you can start there instead of wasting time on refinements that has done NOTHING to make people wear plate/bone/studded/dragon armor. Waste of time....

 

[Theo_GL]

I just think this isn't working out how they expected

Like they figured it was just five or ten mean people on a forum telling them their idea stinks, and if they just told us to STFU and put it in anyway, all the "real players" would totally fall in love with it. but that's not how it's gone down

And yeah i know a couple people are gonna be like "hey i know a guy who refined a piece of armor once, this system is great success" but consider this: they added a crafting system with like 100+ different unique components... and nobody on the trade forum is even talking about it. at least not within the most recent couple of pages.

I ask you, how is that even possible? if they added 100+ different beanie babies that did absolutely nothing, people would be more excited. so let's not pretend everyone is out excitedly fighting over refinement materials just waiting to make rad new suits. the refining thread on the crafter forum petered out after like 5 posts

Truer words have never been spoken.

 

[Uvtha]

Just think about all the interesting things they COULD have built with that time. Thats what makes me angry. My subscription dollars went to fund something that no one wanted. Thanks Messana and the dev team - another epic fail.

Go look at the thread on 'wanted' enhancements. Note how many 'likes' my post have gotten. Maybe you can start there instead of wasting time on refinements that has done NOTHING to make people wear plate/bone/studded/dragon armor. Waste of time....

Well there will ALWAYS be a lot of people saying "they should have done something USEFUL with their time!" thats simply the nature of catering to thousands of people at once. There will always be someone getting what they didn't want.

As for the ideas forum that just came to be this month. I don't think you can blame them for ignoring it quite yet. Again in my opinion its not the developers job to just follow consensus. If they did that the game would be full of even worse ideas. I think the dev team should absolutely listen to what people want, but I do not think that simply because a lot of people want something that it should be put into game... unless it actually is a good idea and it fits in.

 

[Uvtha]

all my friends just cant get enough of the void pool and the fantastic ephemeral items it rewards. what a great idea. oh and the ephemerals from despise, what a hit. we just can't get enough of them

So you don't like ephemeral (a tag predominatly there to allow people who don't want to camp endlessly to be able to have access to the regular artifact items), and you don't have fun at the void pool. Clearly all 4 of the dungeon upgrades are a failure...

and when we're not doing that, we're off on exciting pirate adventures, dreaming of fabuluos wealth. i hear you can earn 10,000 entire golds pieces from taking down a pirate. why if i did a hundred of those i could be a MILLIONAIRE

of course while we're on the sea we also have to go after charybdis and get some fantastic regeneration armor, the hottest new thing in UO that everyone wants

N one said "its not profitable to be a pirate!!!" what was said was ship upgrades failed. If you ever rode in ships previous to high seas you know that that is absolutely false. I agree, they didn't add enough sea content, cannons are a pain in the ass, and they need to reevaluate sea bosses, but the upgrading of ships was a rousing success.

and once all that gets old we go off and fight in the awesome and totally not dead faction system

Factions are indeed a mess.

 

[Uvtha]

So... ultimately maybe that 1 person in 100 has been busy lately... Dont worry youll see him on his sampire rocking his 80% energy / 60Dci suit...He will be rocking a 100% poison Air ele slayer and dropping runes to his vendor filled with 50m+ jewelry... This is where

If you honestly think that having refinements on your suit will have any effect in how well you kill UEVs I have to wonder if you have fought them at all. You can kill them with absolute ease with I would guess even 50 energy resist. You can tank all three that spawn with little effort on totally run of the mill sampire. I don't even have bushido and I can take 2 of them at once with no problem, no speed loss, and no running.

Refinements would have no noticeable effect on how well you kill them, and would in no way speed up the rate that you get good drops.

 

[Theo_GL]

Well there will ALWAYS be a lot of people saying "they should have done something USEFUL with their time!" thats simply the nature of catering to thousands of people at once. There will always be someone getting what they didn't want.

As for the ideas forum that just came to be this month. I don't think you can blame them for ignoring it quite yet. Again in my opinion its not the developers job to just follow consensus. If they did that the game would be full of even worse ideas. I think the dev team should absolutely listen to what people want, but I do not think that simply because a lot of people want something that it should be put into game... unless it actually is a good idea and it fits in.

I agree that they should not listen to every crazy idea - but seriously - you SHOULD listen to the predominate wants of your customer base. The fact that the game is dying is mainly due to them NOT listening and wasting time on things people don't want. Failed client after client, expansions and other crap that was for the MINORITY.

I work at a very successful software company and we do spend time with our customers and while we don't implement every crazy idea they have - we have key focus groups and listen to ideas and choose those that are asked for by the majority.

Adding things like fish tanks, brewing, parrots, armor refinement are all examples of junk that a small part of the playerbase cares about.

Spend time on things that the majority care about and keep them around.

You have limited resources. If you spend them making 5% of the population happy and ignoring the other 95% - how long do you think the game will survive? This is exactly UO.
The dev team seems to have a hard time separating the vocal 5% from the majority of the playerbase.

 

[Vexxed]

If you honestly think that having refinements on your suit will have any effect in how well you kill UEVs I have to wonder if you have fought them at all. You can kill them with absolute ease with I would guess even 50 energy resist. You can tank all three that spawn with little effort on totally run of the mill sampire. I don't even have bushido and I can take 2 of them at once with no problem, no speed loss, and no running.

Refinements would have no noticeable effect on how well you kill them, and would in no way speed up the rate that you get good drops.

Refinements would mean you take less dmg and thus loose less stamina which equates to no more swings over time. I've BEEN down there on bad luck samp suit & YES I can take down 3 of them beating on me at the same time, but another 5% energy resist would speed it up and having 60% would definitely help. Also 55 lmc wouldn't hurt either.. Every little bit helps.

 

[Uvtha]

I agree that they should not listen to every crazy idea - but seriously - you SHOULD listen to the predominate wants of your customer base. The fact that the game is dying is mainly due to them NOT listening and wasting time on things people don't want. Failed client after client, expansions and other crap that was for the MINORITY.

I work at a very successful software company and we do spend time with our customers and while we don't implement every crazy idea they have - we have key focus groups and listen to ideas and choose those that are asked for by the majority.

Adding things like fish tanks, brewing, parrots, armor refinement are all examples of junk that a small part of the playerbase cares about.

Spend time on things that the majority care about and keep them around.

You have limited resources. If you spend them making 5% of the population happy and ignoring the other 95% - how long do you think the game will survive? This is exactly UO.
The dev team seems to have a hard time separating the vocal 5% from the majority of the playerbase.

I dunno. I think theres a sizable difference between a company providing for the needs of a specific client (a generally singular entity) and an entire customer base comprised of a multitude of uniformed groups.

I DO think they listen to what players want. The whole armor and weapons balance was a direct response to what players want, and it went through several iterations to get to what was generally a well received update. The only part that didn't succeed was refinements, and the only reason it didn't succeed was because of poor design.

The design was poor for one (perhaps more than one) of several possible reasons:

1) The person designing the systems is simply clueless, and should be fired. On face value there is no other explanation for who ever was designing it to not realize that adding 200+ unstackable new items would basically kill the system on arrival... and drive people crazy with questions as to what they were thinking. I don't think thats probably the case... but who knows.

1a) The person designing the systems has a design aesthetic that simply does not mesh with how UO has been run for the past xx years. Designing systems with too many steps many of which are based in what seems like an attempt at realism. Refinements and Cannons specifically. I don't think its bad or wrong... but they HAVE to realize that this is not the game for that sort of thing. UO is and needs to remain a "Hammer + Ingots = ability to make all metal items." kind of game. "Hammer + Tongs +Ingot + Stoke furnace 5 times + Use tongs to put ingot into forge + Pound red hot metal + dunk hot metal in Water + (repeat above process 3 times) = Sword." will not do it.

2) The small team makes it hard to add in new content that is actually engaging, so they have to come up with ways to stretch what should be a small addition into something that takes week or months to play through. Refinement are another in a long list

3) Some confusion between design and programing as to what can and cannot be done and in what way.

4) Thought people would like it more if it took them a month to complete that part of their suit rather than just being able to do it.

I'm sure there are more reasons....

Anyway, off on a tangent sort of...

They also have just recently gotten a forum dedicated to what players want and how many players back those ideas. So, give that some time too.

 

[Theo_GL]

I dunno. I think theres a sizable difference between a company providing for the needs of a specific client (a generally singular entity) and an entire customer base comprised of a multitude of uniformed groups.

I DO think they listen to what players want. The whole armor and weapons balance was a direct response to what players want, and it went through several iterations to get to what was generally a well received update. The only part that didn't succeed was refinements, and the only reason it didn't succeed was because of poor design.

The design was poor for one (perhaps more than one) of several possible reasons:

1) The person designing the systems is simply clueless, and should be fired. On face value there is no other explanation for who ever was designing it to not realize that adding 200+ unstackable new items would basically kill the system on arrival... and drive people crazy with questions as to what they were thinking. I don't think thats probably the case... but who knows.

1a) The person designing the systems has a design aesthetic that simply does not mesh with how UO has been run for the past xx years. Designing systems with too many steps many of which are based in what seems like an attempt at realism. Refinements and Cannons specifically. I don't think its bad or wrong... but they HAVE to realize that this is not the game for that sort of thing. UO is and needs to remain a "Hammer + Ingots = ability to make all metal items." kind of game. "Hammer + Tongs +Ingot + Stoke furnace 5 times + Use tongs to put ingot into forge + Pound red hot metal + dunk hot metal in Water + (repeat above process 3 times) = Sword." will not do it.

2) The small team makes it hard to add in new content that is actually engaging, so they have to come up with ways to stretch what should be a small addition into something that takes week or months to play through. Refinement are another in a long list

3) Some confusion between design and programing as to what can and cannot be done and in what way.

4) Thought people would like it more if it took them a month to complete that part of their suit rather than just being able to do it.

I'm sure there are more reasons....

Anyway, off on a tangent sort of...

They also have just recently gotten a forum dedicated to what players want and how many players back those ideas. So, give that some time too.

Well, I think we are getting now the product of a game on life support with only new employees who don't understand the game trying to improve it. We missed golden opportunities to change it for the good.

My complaint over the years is two fold:

1 - Time spent on the WRONG things
2 - Time spent on the RIGHT things but implemented poorly

Take imbuing - in crafting we wanted *some* control over what we crafted (a la reforging). Instead we got imbuing first that basically makes it possible to craft EXACT armor pieces over and over.

Does this make suits easier to make? Yes.

But what was the side benefit/disaster? It absolutely KILLED nearly all hunting. The only things worth hunting is for imbuing ingredients or for artifacts. The days of hunting blood eles hoping for a good weapon or armor piece or jewel you could wear are pretty much gone. They tried to fix later with the 'shame' loot but with all the cursed/brittle/luck -100 crap - those are only worth unraveling as well.

Imbuing was a complete killer. Now everyone could run the same suit with little effort and it drove away most of the PvM folks because - why hunt at all?

Clearly this was not thought through very well. I pointed this out from day one - but crickets from the dev team and they went through with it anyways.

 

[Uvtha]

Refinements would mean you take less dmg and thus loose less stamina which equates to no more swings over time. I've BEEN down there on bad luck samp suit & YES I can take down 3 of them beating on me at the same time, but another 5% energy resist would speed it up and having 60% would definitely help. Also 55 lmc wouldn't hurt either.. Every little bit helps.

The difference would be a) quite minimal and b) in no way worth the crazy effort required to gather the stuff.

You could have just spent that time down there killing them and doing battle with the RNG, which is the only way you will ever get an uber 50+ mil item.

I personally kill them with a disposable "luck suit" (like 700 luck heh) I made in like half an hour with like 90% intensity imbuing, no bushido, and I rarely see my health drop below 9/10. I can only imagine how infrequently a person on a prodoshard with really high end gear/stats and bushido would be in any danger whatever.

I personally think its hard to argue that refinements are worth the time investment in any way.

 

[Uvtha]

Well, I think we are getting now the product of a game on life support with only new employees who don't understand the game trying to improve it. We missed golden opportunities to change it for the good.

My complaint over the years is two fold:

1 - Time spent on the WRONG things
2 - Time spent on the RIGHT things but implemented poorly

Take imbuing - in crafting we wanted *some* control over what we crafted (a la reforging). Instead we got imbuing first that basically makes it possible to craft EXACT armor pieces over and over.

Does this make suits easier to make? Yes.

But what was the side benefit/disaster? It absolutely KILLED nearly all hunting. The only things worth hunting is for imbuing ingredients or for artifacts. The days of hunting blood eles hoping for a good weapon or armor piece or jewel you could wear are pretty much gone. They tried to fix later with the 'shame' loot but with all the cursed/brittle/luck -100 crap - those are only worth unraveling as well.

Imbuing was a complete killer. Now everyone could run the same suit with little effort and it drove away most of the PvM folks because - why hunt at all?

Clearly this was not thought through very well. I pointed this out from day one - but crickets from the dev team and they went through with it anyways.

Yeah dude you'll get no arguments from me on imbuing. I was also saying at the time it was far too much, as were many others, and before the addition of the new dungeon revamps it almost completely killed non boss non imbuing ingredient farming pvming, and drastically devalued 95% of artifacts at the time or that have been added since.

As for spending time on the wrong things... I personally think any well designed content that pleases any group of people is a good addition, and time well spent. Every small quality addition, even if its not something people were clamoring for is just another layer of quality that will improve the depth and thus the quality of the game as a whole. Brewing or something like that may not be earth shaking, but it does make the tapestry richer.

Of course, as you say, there have been far too many additions that were not well done. And clearly at least to some extent that does have something to do with the fact that the team working on UO consists of 6 people.

 

[atinycow]

So you don't like ephemeral (a tag predominatly there to allow people who don't want to camp endlessly to be able to have access to the regular artifact items), and you don't have fun at the void pool. Clearly all 4 of the dungeon upgrades are a failure...

nobody likes ephemeral, nobody wears it, and these imaginary people who go "gee I don't want to grind endlessly, so I will rely on gear that disappears regularly and needs to be replaced!" do not exist. the void pool is mostly forgotten, despise ruined the best training spot in the game for another dumb minigame, the 'prison of nightmares' in wrong was a hilarious flop that no one even remembers now, assassin honed weapons are worth like 5k, and 4 out of the 8 dungeons are never going to get done.

but if "you can stand in shame and farm UEVs like a robot" is the standard of success then yes, everything went great.

N one said "its not profitable to be a pirate!!!" what was said was ship upgrades failed. If you ever rode in ships previous to high seas you know that that is absolutely false. I agree, they didn't add enough sea content, cannons are a pain in the ass, and they need to reevaluate sea bosses, but the upgrading of ships was a rousing success.

where on EARTH are you getting the idea that when that other guy included "ship upgrades" on his list of failed additions, that he was talking strictly about the animation? and not high seas in general with its lack of content, stupid cannon interface, lack of rewards, and worthless bosses?

these developers do NOT understand the game, or what motivates players, and so much of the work they do has gone to waste because of it. its not their team size. its that they do not understand the game.

 

[cdavbar]

the system could be salvagable. The idea of modifying resist caps isn't THAT bad by itelf. The two key points where the design went wrong was that there are too many different components, and that the items themselves are not stackable. If the component diversity would be reduced to just the main armor category (wood, metal, leather) instead of subtype (ringmail, studded, bone, etc) and the remaining items would be stackable, I think it is actually quite a usable system.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Nothing is more awesome than the following things, all of which have occurred in this thread.

• People take an attack on a mechanic people are not using in great numbers (Refinement) as an attack on a mechanic people are using in great numbers (Imbuing).
• People make unproven and flat-out bizarre assertions about certain content not at all related (or at best only marginally related) to the topic of the thread. (High Seas stuff; monster loot.)
• People who are part of the vocal minority complaining that the team only listens to the vocal minority.

That's only 3 things so I'm sure I missed something.

Just tons and tons of awesomeness. Awesomeness just ****ting itself with more awesomeness, ****ting awesomeness onto the corner, ****ting awesomeness up into the sky, causing more catastrophic climate change.

Oh and by the way, while neither ephemeral items nor cursed or brittle or irreparable items are in wide use, they are indeed in some use.

I have some ideas as to how to make ephemeral items in even wider use which one day I may post, but I'm mostly talking about the Despise items, I don't think anyone can salvage the Void Pool artifacts. However, the Void Pool itself may be salvageable; one day maybe I'll post some ideas.

But at any rate the topic of the thread is Refinement: It's a niche market, at most. Never expected it to be anything else, and as I recall I argued against it at the time.

-Galen's player

PS: Is the Stratics profanity filter working for anyone else? It's not working for me. Oh well.

 

[Tjalle]

For almost 30 mins now I've spammed in general chat telling people this is all over Moonglow bank area for free, I had 1 person show up and snag a handful and that's it. Doubt I collect anymore.
View attachment 14644

You´re welcome to do this on Siege.
I would´ve snatched them all.

 

[Picus at the office]

I posted this issue before I gave up on the game

 

[Gorbs]

Originally I thought only the invulnerability refinements would be worthwhile. I now think the defense refinements have a use as well. The other levels I still can't see. But here's the thing...I planned to make a max DCI suit to carry with my normal DCI suit. I haven't found the inspiration to do so. I did craft a new plate suit for pvm, but somehow botched the job in my spreadsheet and ended up using the wrong gorget. I suspect what happened was I reforged the correct gorget and got something undesirable, like casting focus. Anyhow, my final suit ended up at 75-95-63-70-70 when I'd intended it to be 70-95-70-70-70. I threw on the +2 cold resist boots, but I'm still a 5 resist deficit for cold. I'm planning to go +1 DCI / -1 cold resist on the five pieces now and will then run around with 50 DCI (30 ring/brace, 5 quiver, 5 sash, 5 DCI on 2x pieces).

So the refinements allow me to turn my spreadsheet management mistake into a suit that's not as flawed. Is that feedback glowing enough for justification of the system?

 

[Tjalle]

Anyhow, my final suit ended up at 75-95-63-70-70 when I'd intended it to be 70-95-70-70-70. I threw on the +2 cold resist boots, but I'm still a 5 resist deficit for cold. I'm planning to go +1 DCI / -1 cold resist on the five pieces now and will then run around with 50 DCI (30 ring/brace, 5 quiver, 5 sash, 5 DCI on 2x pieces).

So the refinements allow me to turn my spreadsheet management mistake into a suit that's not as flawed. Is that feedback glowing enough for justification of the system?

There should be earrings with 2 resists if that helps you.

 

[atinycow]

the fact is, our 4 person dev team may as well be a 2 person dev team, because at least 50% of the content added is just unusable.

i mean for example, charybdis, wtf? anyone who thought players would want that regeneration armor does NOT understand how armor works in UO. and because that developer did not understand how armor works in his own game, that entire boss went totally to waste

and the thing is, i read this forum, people always tell them and they never listen. refinement being a flop wasnt a surprise, the death of factions wasnt a surprise, the only people surprised by those failures were the devs

Oh and by the way, while neither ephemeral items nor cursed or brittle or irreparable items are in wide use, they are indeed in some use.

if i can play atlantic for a solid month and never see one solitary person using new item X, then new item X was probably not worth the development time it took, even if some cheerleader claims he once saw someone using it

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

the fact is, our 4 person dev team may as well be a 2 person dev team, because at least 50% of the content added is just unusable.

i mean for example, charybdis, wtf? anyone who thought players would want that regeneration armor does NOT understand how armor works in UO. and because that developer did not understand how armor works in his own game, that entire boss went totally to waste

and the thing is, i read this forum, people always tell them and they never listen. refinement being a flop wasnt a surprise, the death of factions wasnt a surprise, the only people surprised by those failures were the devs



if i can play atlantic for a solid month and never see one solitary person using new item X, then new item X was probably not worth the development time it took, even if some cheerleader claims he once saw someone using it

The names change, the insults do not. I am not a cheerleader nor have I ever been one.

I gave you an honest, reality-based assessment.

It clashed, however mildly, with your ideology. I do not weep.

-Galen's player

 

[Uvtha]

nobody likes ephemeral, nobody wears it, and these imaginary people who go "gee I don't want to grind endlessly, so I will rely on gear that disappears regularly and needs to be replaced!" do not exist. the void pool is mostly forgotten, despise ruined the best training spot in the game for another dumb minigame, the 'prison of nightmares' in wrong was a hilarious flop that no one even remembers now, assassin honed weapons are worth like 5k, and 4 out of the 8 dungeons are never going to get done.

but if "you can stand in shame and farm UEVs like a robot" is the standard of success then yes, everything went great.



where on EARTH are you getting the idea that when that other guy included "ship upgrades" on his list of failed additions, that he was talking strictly about the animation? and not high seas in general with its lack of content, stupid cannon interface, lack of rewards, and worthless bosses?

these developers do NOT understand the game, or what motivates players, and so much of the work they do has gone to waste because of it. its not their team size. its that they do not understand the game.

I think the point of the new dungeons was to give people something worth hunting for, and some gimmicky thing to do if they are bored. To that extent they succeeded. And there are many better and less borring things to fight that UEVs.

And I assumed that because the didnt say "High seas" he said "Ship upgrades". Ship upgrades refers to the actual ships. If he would have said high seas, I would have agreed it was not a great expansion. But even if the content in that expansion did not satisfy the upgrade to ships was a ringing success. If they made cannons a 2 step process (load and fire) and made cannon stuff easier to make I think ship combat would be much more fun.

Ill happily admit that the current devs either are stuck making less that great content because of team size, or they are simply not that great at designing for this game, but that doesn't mean that there aren't good elements of what gets added into the game, and I think that a reason and place to pvm, even ignoring the gimmicks of dungeons, was a needed and basically successful addition. As well ship upgrades was one of the better improvements this game has had in a LONG time. The downside is they didn't add enough sea content to make using them something people do that often.

 

[Merus]

Too often what would seem to be a nice idea does not get thought through enough and subsequently fails in execution. IMO there was nothing wrong with the idea of giving players a way to boost the resist caps on thier suits, even at the expense of a little defense chance. Idea = ok (even if not everyone will use it). However what we got from that idea was a completely fubar system to utilize it. Quite frankly I think they know it, and did it on purpose. They want the system to be as cumbersome as possible with the aim of keeping us logging in trying to collect 474347744687 refinement pieces so that we can eventually complete a full suit with +5 mods on each piece. The same thing goes for not making so much of the new content in the last 6 months stackable. I call BS on the idea that the refinement components could not be made stackable if they had gone with a simpler system... so why make them complicated and unstackable? I think it is blatantly to create a need for more storage space, which they will sell you in the form of boosters or additional accounts.

 

[Tina Small]

I think the next publish we get, if there are things in it that people do not like, you need to go test it yourself on Test Center. Then post your feedback in the special forum for Test Center, post it here, and use the feedback form on the uo.com website to send in your feedback that says you actually TESTED IT. Don't be an "armchair quarterback" and just sit here and criticize the devs' work. Go try the changes. Put some effort behind your feedback and maybe it will carry more weight with the devs. I know I was discouraged to realize that weeks after Publish 80 went live, some people who post here regularly still didn't understand some aspects of refinement because they clearly never bothered to actually try it on Test or anywhere else.

I'm not trying to be rude to anyone. I understand a lot of people don't think it's their job to test stuff and I agree that it isn't the job of players to have to test things for quality control. However, if a new system is going in and we have the opportunity to try it out, why just read about the changes and miss the opportunity to actually do a real test drive?