The new eye candy is nice, but when will refinements be fixed?

[The Zog historian]

Out of 60 invulnerability attempts, only five times have I gotten all five. This stated 15% chance is complete rubbish. For Protection through Fortification, I'm not even running at 10% success for the bonus mod, despite the official 30% chance. Today I actually got two invulnerability refinements for studded leather. Both gave me four properties. A hardening refinement gave me just three. Statistically that's a roughly 50-50 chance of all three failing to give the bonus mod, but cumulatively with my last several weeks, something is broken. I never, never had a reason until now to believe there's any problem with UO's RNG.

Compounding this is that refinement types are so specific that many are useless. Woodland? Hide? GARGOYLE STONE?! I can't even give those away.

And getting refinements by stealing is an insult to intelligence until NPC behavior is overhauled. My other character two tiles away doesn't notice the theft of an item weighing one stone, but an NPC eight tiles away does? There are certain shops so crowded that it's not worth the bother.

Because of all the guard whacks, I use that second character to res my thief, rather than repeatedly running to the healers. I could almost swear a GM was playing a guard, because when trying to res a few tiles away, oftentimes a guard who was formerly still would suddenly start wandering around and stop right on the ghost, preventing me from ressing.

Come on, Devs, you implemented this new system. At least tell us if you've given us something crappy that you're going to abandon!

 

[atinycow]

C'mon man, if the developers cared what anyone had to say about that system, we wouldn't have it right now. They grimly pushed it to the finish line through a hail of hurled tomatoes, and now we get to live with it.

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

Yeah, i say Invuln Refinements should have 100% chance to apply a 5th mod, since it's such a pancake to get an Invuln Refinement in the first place, let alone one of the type you need/want.
What they should've done, is simply had 3 Types of Refinements, Blacksmithing, Tailoring and Carpentry. Then gone from there with Defense, Guarding, Hardening, Fortification and Invulnerability. A Blacksmithing Refinement would affect any armor made by Blacksmithing, a Tailoring Refinement would affect any armor made by Tailoring, and a Carpentry Refinement would affect any armor made by Carpentry or it's "sub-skills" (Stonemasonry). Would've been a much simpler, much easier, and much better process.

 

[startle]

Along with Tina Small and a few others, I too have been trying to get a handle on several aspects of the new "Refinement" system - and what I've found is a bit disturbing (more on that in a sec).

According to Petra's excellent work on describing the basics of the system (from the official documentation here) , Refinement Components can be collected from:

•Treasure Maps​

•MiB Chests​

•Merchant Vessels​

•Pirate Vessels​

•Felucca Town shop container stealables (see image above)​

•Champion Spawn Bosses​

Since I have 2 dedicated fishermen on 2 accounts (and grandchildren who I've contracted to fish serpents for the MiB Chests), I decided to see what the drop rate is for Refinement components in these chests. In just over a month, I've collected data from over 1500 MiB Chests and will discuss the results shortly.
I began this project initially as an effort to determine the amount of "work" required in the collection of these components - in order to determine what I would need to charge for them on my vendors. I was seeing people trying to sell even Defense components for a half million each, which I thought was absurd (and it is). I did, however, in the end determine that high prices for Fortification and especially for Invulnerability components are certainly warranted - given the sheer amount of time involved in procuring them.

My data is entirely from Trammel MiB's, but according to Tina's collected data from Treasure Maps the drop rate is similar to MiB's. That leaves Merchant and Pirate loot, container stealing and Champ Bosses (which are even more time consuming than doing MiB's or Treasure Maps).

To summarize what I've found from doing over 1500 MiB's:
Only 35% to 39% of ALL MiB chests contain ANY refinements at all - so slightly more than 1 in 3 have some sort of refinement.
Considering ALL chests: only 7% of them will have Fortification and slightly less than 1% will have Invulnerability (.008 to be exact).

When you consider that there are 12 types of armor, the chance of obtaining an "Invulnerability" component for a specific type of armor is even less than that 1% - making them seriously rare. Look at the pic below for just how difficult it is to obtain a specific refinement for a specific armor type:

As you can see above, the chance to get an Invulnerability component for any given armor type is very, very low. For some (Dragon, Gargish Stone, Platemail Samurai, Ringmail, Studded Leather and Studded Samurai) fishing up 1000 MiB's gave exactly ZERO for them!

If you add to that what Zog historian said about actually using Invulnerability components:

Out of 60 invulnerability attempts, only five times have I gotten all five. This stated 15% chance is complete rubbish. For Protection through Fortification, I'm not even running at 10% success for the bonus mod, despite the official 30% chance....

then the chance to both find and then successfully use Invulnerability components to get all five is horribly small.

My requests to the Dev's would go something along these lines:

1 - Seriously UP the rng for both Fortification and especially Invulnerability drops.
2 - Make the distribution of refinements for armor types more uniform.
3 - Make them STACK for pete's sake, given how many different types there are.
4 - FIX the guard whacking silliness for container stealing...
5 - Implement what PlayerSkillFTW said, below :

Yeah, i say Invuln Refinements should have 100% chance to apply a 5th mod, since it's such a pancake to get an Invuln Refinement in the first place, let alone one of the type you need/want.
What they should've done, is simply had 3 Types of Refinements, Blacksmithing, Tailoring and Carpentry. Then gone from there with Defense, Guarding, Hardening, Fortification and Invulnerability. A Blacksmithing Refinement would affect any armor made by Blacksmithing, a Tailoring Refinement would affect any armor made by Tailoring, and a Carpentry Refinement would affect any armor made by Carpentry or it's "sub-skills" (Stonemasonry). Would've been a much simpler, much easier, and much better process.

 

[Frarc]

I like working with the refinements but my biggest concern is getting enough Invurnable pieces for a suit.
The other BIG problem is storage.

I made a suggestion (with rough numbers) in the Tweak Requests & Suggestions forum :

This could be a solution if they can't make them stackable.

Refining Refinements:

Give us a way to "upgrade" our refinements.

I will give a example. Numbers can be adjusted.

Normal plate , Reinforced:

4 Scour of Defence needed to upgrade to 1 Scour of Protection.
8 Scour of Protection needed to upgrade to 1 Scour of Hardening.
10 Scour of Hardening needed to upgrade to 1 Scour of Fortification.
12 Scour of Fortification needed to upgrade to Scour of Invulnerability.

Do it trough a NPC that gives it as a quest or a box where we can exchange them.
Put this Box or NPC at one place (New Haven) So players can gather at that spot too and exchange refinements or even ideas how to use the refinements.

Like this low end refinements are still desired to get better refinements and it could reduce the storage in the long run. Most players want to go for the invulnerable items anyway.



To comment on the guard whacking , a NPC should NOT be able to see you and call the guards on you if they not in the same building. Even if they look at you. I doubt they have X-ray vision.

I don't have a problem getting killed if the shop keeper caught me but not 5-6 times in a row with legendary skill.

 

[Kyronix]

My requests to the Dev's would go something along these lines:

1 - Seriously UP the rng for both Fortification and especially Invulnerability drops.
2 - Make the distribution of refinements for armor types more uniform.
3 - Make them STACK for pete's sake, given how many different types there are.
4 - FIX the guard whacking silliness for container stealing...
5 - Implement what PlayerSkillFTW said, below :

I noticed that you were fishing up MiBs in Trammel. You have a far greater chance of getting higher level components in Felucca. This is the case for all situations where components are generated (T-Maps, Mibs, Champ Spawns etc.) As for the distribution of the armor types for each component, a random armor class is chosen at the time of creation for the specific component. One thing to remember when looking at the results, is that this random selection applies to every instance where a component is created on the server, not specifically the ones you pull out. As I've stated in the past, in order for an item to stack all data stored on that specific object must be identical, and that is not the case with components. The stealing issue related to components spawning in out of reach containers is something that will get fixed in a future publish, in addressing that I can have a look at the NPCs calling guards as well...while they should definitely not have X-Ray vision, even a legendary thief that tries to steal from a container isn't going to be 100% successful if the NPC is staring them down. This has been the case since as long as I can remember stealing dried onions from the Moonglow Alchemists way back when they were the hottest thing since fruit baskets.

We are currently investigating a means to allow you to combine lower level components to get higher level ones similar to what Frarc suggested in the thread. Look for this in a future publish. Thanks for the feedback

 

[Gorbs]

I noticed that you were fishing up MiBs in Trammel. You have a far greater chance of getting higher level components in Felucca. This is the case for all situations where components are generated (T-Maps, Mibs, Champ Spawns etc.) As for the distribution of the armor types for each component, a random armor class is chosen at the time of creation for the specific component. One thing to remember when looking at the results, is that this random selection applies to every instance where a component is created on the server, not specifically the ones you pull out. As I've stated in the past, in order for an item to stack all data stored on that specific object must be identical, and that is not the case with components. The stealing issue related to components spawning in out of reach containers is something that will get fixed in a future publish, in addressing that I can have a look at the NPCs calling guards as well...while they should definitely not have X-Ray vision, even a legendary thief that tries to steal from a container isn't going to be 100% successful if the NPC is staring them down. This has been the case since as long as I can remember stealing dried onions from the Moonglow Alchemists way back when they were the hottest thing since fruit baskets.

We are currently investigating a means to allow you to combine lower level components to get higher level ones similar to what Frarc suggested in the thread. Look for this in a future publish. Thanks for the feedback

Kyronix, are these random chances weighted or do you have an equal chance to pull a platemail refinement v. a stone armor refinement?

 

[Merus]

I noticed that you were fishing up MiBs in Trammel. You have a far greater chance of getting higher level components in Felucca. This is the case for all situations where components are generated (T-Maps, Mibs, Champ Spawns etc.) As for the distribution of the armor types for each component, a random armor class is chosen at the time of creation for the specific component. One thing to remember when looking at the results, is that this random selection applies to every instance where a component is created on the server, not specifically the ones you pull out. As I've stated in the past, in order for an item to stack all data stored on that specific object must be identical, and that is not the case with components. The stealing issue related to components spawning in out of reach containers is something that will get fixed in a future publish, in addressing that I can have a look at the NPCs calling guards as well...while they should definitely not have X-Ray vision, even a legendary thief that tries to steal from a container isn't going to be 100% successful if the NPC is staring them down. This has been the case since as long as I can remember stealing dried onions from the Moonglow Alchemists way back when they were the hottest thing since fruit baskets.

We are currently investigating a means to allow you to combine lower level components to get higher level ones similar to what Frarc suggested in the thread. Look for this in a future publish. Thanks for the feedback

If items like this can not be made stackable for all of the reasons you stated... THEN THEY SHOULD HAVE NEEN DESIGNED DIFFERENTLY SO THEY COULD BE STACKABLE!

 

[cdavbar]

As I've stated in the past, in order for an item to stack all data stored on that specific object must be identical, and that is not the case with components.

I still do not see how a wash of defense for hide cannot be stacked with a wash of defense for hide. We are not asking for wash of defense for hide to stack with wash of defense for studded leather.

This is something that seriously needs to be re-thought for long-term success. Or was this a ploy to have us vendor house owners have to pay for more accounts for storage?

 

[Kyronix]

Kyronix, are these random chances weighted or do you have an equal chance to pull a platemail refinement v. a stone armor refinement?

It's all equal.

 

[Shakkara]

As I've stated in the past, in order for an item to stack all data stored on that specific object must be identical, and that is not the case with components.

Well the problem isn't just that they're not stackable, the problem is mainly that there are litterally HUNDREDS of different variants.

Two things need fixing in my opinion:
* No random factor when determining how many resistances are modified: Defense should always be 1, protection 2, hardening 3, fortification 4, invulnerability 5.
* Subtype of armor should be removed completely. Just make these things for tailors (studded, bone, leather samurai stuff, hide), carpentry (stone, wood) and blacksmith (ringmail, platemail, chainmail, dragonarmor, samurai armor, gargoyle plate)

Wooppie doo, now we have just 30 components! Now stack 'em!

Please stop introducing complexity for the sake of complexity. I don't mind complexity if it is fun and intuitive. But the current system is neither fun nor intuitive. Thus KEEP IT SIMPLE!

 

[MalagAste]

Well the problem isn't just that they're not stackable, the problem is mainly that there are litterally HUNDREDS of different variants.

Two things need fixing in my opinion:
* No random factor when determining how many resistances are modified: Defense should always be 1, protection 2, hardening 3, fortification 4, invulnerability 5.
* Subtype of armor should be removed completely. Just make these things for tailors (studded, bone, leather samurai stuff, hide), carpentry (stone, wood) and blacksmith (ringmail, platemail, chainmail, dragonarmor, samurai armor, gargoyle plate)

Wooppie doo, now we have just 30 components! Now stack 'em!

Please stop introducing complexity for the sake of complexity. I don't mind complexity if it is fun and intuitive. But the current system is neither fun nor intuitive. Thus KEEP IT SIMPLE!

I agree remember K.I.S.S.... ALWAYS Keep It Simple Stupid!

I see no reason to make everything to freaking complicated nor bulky... Honestly unless you up our storage space by another 40% I'm not gonna waste my time on most this junk.

 

[gunneroforgin]

I agree remember K.I.S.S.... ALWAYS Keep It Simple Stupid!

I see no reason to make everything to freaking complicated nor bulky... Honestly unless you up our storage space by another 40% I'm not gonna waste my time on most this junk.

You know that we all just want the top items. ie 120 scrolls and these refinements don't need to be applied to each and every different kind of armor, you really just need one kind to apply to all types of armor.

 

[The Zog historian]

Kyronix, what about Invulnerability always giving five, Fortification always four, etc.? The code should not be hard to modify for this.

Maybe the types of refinements are always equal, but it seems scaled so that Invulnerability is the rarest. As I said, I got two for studded leather the other night, but both gave me just four. I am not looking forward to combining refinements if the odds are still so pathetic.

The best solution IMO would be to stack the effects: a Defense refinement could be applied on top of existing effects, with the current constraint of no more than +1 or -1 to that particular resist cap on a given piece of armor. So you'd need to remove the lines of code that wipe a piece of armor's existing refinements, and add code that tests (ignores) attempts to go beyond +1 or -1.

As I've stated in the past, in order for an item to stack all data stored on that specific object must be identical, and that is not the case with components.

What information isn't the same? Once modified, a refinement saves the chosen mods, and I can understand then that it becomes a unique item. But if I get two Scour of Protection for reinforced platemail, what's so different about them?

And if there is something different, this is all the more reason to simply the system to metal, tailoring and carpentry.

in addressing that I can have a look at the NPCs calling guards as well...while they should definitely not have X-Ray vision, even a legendary thief that tries to steal from a container isn't going to be 100% successful if the NPC is staring them down. This has been the case since as long as I can remember stealing dried onions from the Moonglow Alchemists way back when they were the hottest thing since fruit baskets.

Something is wrong when my other character two tiles away doesn't notice the theft, but an NPC eight tiles away (no wall) does. There are shops so hard to steal in that it's simply not worth the time.

 

[The Zog historian]

And seriously, Kyronix,

WHAT THE FREAK IS WRONG WITH GUARDS THAT KEEP WANDERING AROUND, THEN ALWAYS STOP RIGHT ON MY GHOST AS I'M TRYING TO RES?!

For Pete's sake, just have them stand the freak still.

 

[Uvtha]

I noticed that you were fishing up MiBs in Trammel. You have a far greater chance of getting higher level components in Felucca. This is the case for all situations where components are generated (T-Maps, Mibs, Champ Spawns etc.) As for the distribution of the armor types for each component, a random armor class is chosen at the time of creation for the specific component. One thing to remember when looking at the results, is that this random selection applies to every instance where a component is created on the server, not specifically the ones you pull out. As I've stated in the past, in order for an item to stack all data stored on that specific object must be identical, and that is not the case with components

Then you should have reduced the number of them to one for each skill as was suggested above. One for each type of armor makes the system EXTREMELY difficult to even experiment with let alone functionally use. Even if they are combinable it will still be a major unfun chore if you want to mess with it...

 

[cdavbar]

I would be fine keeping the number of refinements the same (120) and just make them stack-able. Even if only the finished product is stack-able. Or, if it was eaiser for the dev teams, make it like the medusa blood and potion of rebirth. The bloods are stackable, yet the finished product, the potion of rebirth (insurable) isnt stackable. At this point anything would be better for storage than what we have now.

 

[startle]

I noticed that you were fishing up MiBs in Trammel. You have a far greater chance of getting higher level components in Felucca. This is the case for all situations where components are generated (T-Maps, Mibs, Champ Spawns etc.) ....

Kyronix: Why do you continue to do this? Is there some "master" code that can not be changed regarding the spawning of resources? Surely you are aware that the vast majority of us "Trammies" have zero desire to travel in Felucca, and yet you (devs) continue to attempt to force us to.... Why do you (devs) continue to give such love to the tiny community of PvP'rs that live in that place?

 

[cdavbar]

Why do you (devs) continue to give such love to the tiny community of PvP'rs that live in that place?

I reside in Fel although I no longer PvP (factions suck, bring back order/chaos!). Not everyone in Fel is a PvP'r and I do not see the issue with Fel having some bonuses compared to tram rule-set areas.

 

[startle]

I reside in Fel although I no longer PvP (factions suck, bring back order/chaos!). Not everyone in Fel is a PvP'r and I do not see the issue with Fel having some bonuses compared to tram rule-set areas.

I understand what you're sayin', cdavbar - but resources are used/needed by everyone. Why should Fel provide more for the same effort?

 

[Uvtha]

I understand what you're sayin', cdavbar - but resources are used/needed by everyone. Why should Fel provide more for the same effort?

Because it's potentially more dangerous.

As for "giving such love" to fel... really? Tram gets the vast majority of developer attention, and fel only gets the occasional stray bone like a higher drop rate for this... a system so poorly designed that it goes generally unused from day one. What love.

 

[startle]

I disagree with you completely, Uvtha... but this has, no doubt, been hashed and re-hashed over the years... So I'll let it go at that we disagree...

**EDIT***
Sorry, but I just can't let this go un-challenged. You say Fel "only gets the occasional stray bone", eh? That's like saying to the people who live in a desert: "Hey you guys got all the good places to plant your orchards, and you have all the equipment to farm and all we got was the water". You own the only really important resource in this freekin' game - POWER SCROLLS (which have make your guilds very, very rich over these years) - and that MORE than makes up for any "perceived" advantages in Tram.

 

[Uvtha]

I disagree with you completely, Uvtha... but this has, no doubt, been hashed and re-hashed over the years... So I'll let it go at that we disagree...

**EDIT***
Sorry, but I just can't let this go un-challenged. You say Fel "only gets the occasional stray bone", eh? That's like saying to the people who live in a desert: "Hey you guys got all the good places to plant your orchards, and you have all the equipment to farm and all we got was the water". You own the only really important resource in this freekin' game - POWER SCROLLS (which have make your guilds very, very rich over these years) - and that MORE than makes up for any "perceived" advantages in Tram.

And thats the ONLY substantial thing. It's a good thing, but hardly the be all end all of this game, and people are ALWAYS trying to take it away. And when did fel get powerscrolls? Like 12(!!!) years ago now, so fel has gotten no major additions that tram didn't also get in WELL OVER A DECADE. Unless you count factions which is a different kettle of fish, and even that hasn't had many serious updates in a similarly long period of time.
On topic adding higher drops (no one really know how much higher also) to an unused system is not some giant boon.

Tram has had Ilsh, Doom/Malas, Tukuno, Ter'mur and The abyss/underworld (outside of the 2 abyss champ spawns), I could go on, but nearly every addition and every new event since the fel tram split has been tram focused.
People seem to think that fel getting ANYTHING that tram doesn't have despite the litany of things that tram has that fel doesn't, that it's some giant pro fel bias. Fel has power scrolls, a bit more ore/leather and SOME higher level of refinement drop rate... That's it. Stack powerscrolls up against arties, imbuing ingredients, massive areas for risk free monster bashin, new town elections on and on... hardly a pro fel tidal wave.

Thats OK though. Most people do play in tram. But that doesn't mean fel should never get a unique bonus.

 

[Doubleplay]

This fight about refinements in Fel is much ado about nothing. I do level 6 and 7 chests in Fel and Tram every day. Since the introduction of refinements, I see absolutely no difference in loot between the two rulesets. Perhaps there is a difference, but on average you would be hard pressed to demonstrate it.

 

[Rastaboo]

We are currently investigating a means to allow you to combine lower level components to get higher level ones similar to what Frarc suggested in the thread. Look for this in a future publish.

I'd like to offer an alternative opinion. Namely that refinement is a stillborn and unsalvagable system, already largely forgotten by the general playerbase if they ever noticed it in the first place, and that further development resources expended on it would just be a further waste.