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UO-HoC Chat Log: September 23rd, 2009

T

Tazar

Guest
Below you will find the chat log from tonight's UO-HoC Developer's Chat. Overall, we had about 60 participants and a lot of great questions.

If your question was not answered tonight, I have submitted them for potential inclusion in a future "Five on Friday" or the next HoC.

Zephenia Greetings everyone and thanks for coming to this House of Commons chat with the Developers of Ultima Online. Please direct all questions to [QT]Anubis and [QT]LairSpirit . We will be starting momentarily.
Uriah Uriah -- Cat Herder and resident guy who constantly loses his glasses
WilkiEA Hello world! I'm Wilki, UO Designer. THanks for coming out tonight!
Chrissay Hey guys this is Chrissay the Community Coordinator for Ultima Online
Sakkarah Howdy everyone, this is Sakkarah, UO Live Lead Designer and resident noobie, at your service!
Mesanna Good evening everyone, ADM and Event Moderator protector
Phoenix Howdy! I used to be Vex, then I went away for a while and now I've all like returned to UO and stuff. :) I'm the newest (and oldest) Systems Designer on the team now.
Zephenia <Stranger> I am unable to access Thepem's Tier 3 quests after completing ten of her Tier 2 quests. Is this a known issue and if so when is it going to be fixed?
WilkiEA Thepem only has two tiers of quests, but doing quests for Thepem will give you access to Zosilem's quests.
Zephenia <Sable> In the release notes, it was stated SA could be used on Win98 machines, yet it seems Win98 machines cannot play UO now. This seems similar to a previous publish/patch. Are you guys working to fix this to allow players with older computers to keep playing?
Uriah For Windows 98 we're discussing how to support that OS in the future. As Microsoft doesn't currently support it, its going to be difficult moving forward, but we're figuring out what can be done for our players still on that platform.
Zephenia <Stranger> Why do the iron beetles respawn so slow? They drop an item that is needed for two quests and yet they only spawn in one location at a very slow rate. Is something going to be done about this?
Sakkarah The beetles are just being shy at the moment seeing all these new faces around! Give them time!!
Sakkarah But on a more serious note, we will look into it so the availability of quest items is more reasonable.
Zephenia <Sable> I noticed some new inaccessible areas in Despise Dungeon some time back. I thought these would be entrances to the Stygian Abyss. Will they be in the future?
Sakkarah I'm afraid not. There are no Abyss entrances planned in Despise Dungeon.
Sakkarah The two entrances through Deceit and Hythloth for the Champ Spawns are pretty much all you will get as far as dungeon entrances aside from the Volcano.
Zephenia <zared> How come gargoyles dont have extra attributes like elves have extra mana...since they are bigger more powerful doesnt it stand to reason they need more strength or hitpoints..As it stand now not many peeps dont see a need to make a gargoyle!!!
WilkiEA While gargoyles don't have any bonuses to things like strength or mana, they do have other things that make them different. First, they can fly, which is pretty darned cool in and of itself. But they also get bonuses to several skills, including a success chance bonus to imbuing which can really help when you're trying to imbue at a high difficulty.
Zephenia <Iann> Will you ever allow us to craft things like the Black Staff? As it stands now we can only use looted or npc bought ones for imbuing.
WilkiEA There is no good reason why you shouldn't be able to craft things like the black staff. I will look into it and see what we can do about adding them as craftables. If you have any particular requests for items you want to see added, please feel free to create a thread in Uhall and we'll go from there.
Zephenia <Nhbdy> Renowned loot seems depressingly bad for the ammount of time it can take to kill some of them, yet there are unconfirmed reports of new drops, an official statement?
Mark 11. I think the problem is that a few specific renown mobs are not dropping good loot (rats) and we are looking at that now to get them on par with other renowned creatures
Uriah woot Mark's First Post!!
* Sakkarah cheers *
* Uriah applauds *
Phoenix Looks like his eleventh to me.
Chrissay eleven is that number still around?
Zephenia <Basara> New question: I have a 100 ping rate to my shard, and find it impossible to complete the colored room quest. any chance you could give us a few tenths of a second more, for those of us not geographically close to our shard?
Sakkarah There are a few things currently being considered to help people with lag issues to complete the quest.
Sakkarah The difficulty is finding a middle ground that doesn't make it cakewalk for people with a good ping.
Sakkarah So any change we make will likely not be significant in the allocated time, and if it is, it will come with some sort of penalty elsewhere.
Zephenia <Tazar> Rumor is that there has been a change to the damage between the slayer and the super-slayer class to make a normal slayer produce more damage. Is this true and if so, why was this change made?
WilkiEA The rumor is true! Single slayers now do more damage than super slayers. The simple answer for why is to give players a reason to want to use single slayers again.The rumor is true! Single slayers now do more damage than super slayers. The simple answer for why is to give players a reason to want to use single slayers again.
Phoenix Teh deja vu, it gives me teh dizzeh!
WilkiEA oops, double post!
Uriah noooooo
Zephenia <Crazywoman> When can we expect an eta on fixing the mud puppy and red herring trophies. If you put the up and then reded them they become normal big fish
Mark the mud puppy and red herring trophy buggos are going to be fixed for the next publish :)
Zephenia <Crazywoman> Any particular reason the soulstone timer was removed?
Sakkarah Since you could already use multiple fragments to bypass the timer and we made soulstone fragments craftable, there really was no reason to keep the timer on soulstone.
Sakkarah As long as you're using it from a safe log out location, Whether you burn through 10 fragments or use your full soulstone, does it make much of difference?
Zephenia <Tazar> Can the clients, both classic and enhanced, be changed so that they store the value selected at the last time for each property on the crafting menu of Imbuing.
WilkiEA Yes, it's posssible, and we're going to be looking into making the imbuing process more streamlined.
Zephenia <Tazar> How can i get enough loyalrating on my worker char? Is there any other instead of fighting to get this much loyalrating on my worker?
WilkiEA That's a great idea, mind if we steal it? :) Seriously though, that's something we'd like to implement in the future via quests, or other means perhaps.
Zephenia <Nhbdy> When creating new stealables, what goes into consideration? Is it simply making an item out of a piece of art that has not been used, or do you attempt to curve duping with the drops?
Sakkarah They are not necessarily meant to curve duping. Though if it helps accomplish that, we certainly wouldn't weep over it :p
Sakkarah It's mostly a matter of desirabily and art availability. But I'm all in favor of killing two birds with 1 stone.
Sakkarah ps. no animals were hurt in the process
Zephenia <Tazar> Can the item property selection screen be cleaned up a bit? Especially for jewelry. All properties seem to be randomly thrown into the selection menu.
WilkiEA YES! That will be part of the streamlining process for imbuing in general.
Zephenia <Tazar> Pets that are autostabled while under Medusa's petrification are staying petrified after several days. Is there a fix coming soon to save beloved pets from this fate?
Phoenix Yes, I've been asked to take a look at that for next publish. Assuming I've knocked most of the rust off, I should be able to address it for next update.
Zephenia Well ya'all, THANKS FOR COMING! We are done for this chat, all the remaining questions will be sent to the Dev Team for possible inclusiuon in future FOF's and HoC's. Thanks for coming!
Zephenia And thanks to the UO Dev team for taking the time to come and chat with us! :>)
WilkiEA Thanks everyone for coming this evening, I'm off to deal with a mongbat* infestation.
WilkiEA * no mongbats were harmed in the production of this episode. *
* Sakkarah eyes Wilki suspiciously *
Chrissay Good night everyone!! It was a lot of fun!!!
Uriah Thanks all!! Be well
Phoenix Last post!
Sakkarah Take care all!
 

Sir_Bolo

Sage
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UNLEASHED
Sakkarah Howdy everyone, this is Sakkarah, UO Live Lead Designer and resident noobie, at your service!
Inquring minds want to know.... What is Draconi doing now that Sakkarah was promoted to his position?

Congrats Sakkarah BTW!
 

GalenKnighthawke

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Zephenia <Nhbdy> Renowned loot seems depressingly bad for the ammount of time it can take to kill some of them, yet there are unconfirmed reports of new drops, an official statement?
Mark 11. I think the problem is that a few specific renown mobs are not dropping good loot (rats) and we are looking at that now to get them on par with other renowned creatures
...

No....The issue is that all renowned creatures don't drop loot that is even close to their difficulty level. It's not just the one you mentioned....It's all of them.

Also, you didn't answer the question about "new drops" at all.

Now my feeling is that the renowned creatures maybe aren't supposed to drop anything special, I think they might be intended as obstacles to farming the Imbuing ingredients.

Now if that's the case, I understand that. While I'd prefer something special, I'm ok with it if there isn't.

However......You should at least have specified if there's something special that's supposed to drop from them, or not. It's not like this is some long ago system no one remembers the design to!

-Galen's player
 

Flutter

Always Present
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1
I heard the whole mongbat thing was a lie...
 

GalenKnighthawke

Grand Poobah
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I wanted to squeeze in a sincere complement (so far I see I'll have mostly negative comments, unfortunately): Thanks to Stratics for getting this transcript up so fast, normally it takes a day or two, and to the UO people for talking to the players.

-Galen's player
 

GalenKnighthawke

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I have to say I find it hard to believe that those were the best questions anyone asked...Nothing about the rumored anti-scripting codes, for example, and no follow-up for the rather bad answer on renowned monsters. Wilki's answer about black staffs seems hollow; people have asked about that for many years now.

Overall it seemed a tad boring...Now, granted, I never go to these things, so you could argue "who's he to talk? Show up and ask your own questions!"

That's arguable, I guess.

But I have a hard time believing those were the best questions anyone asked, so I kind of hesitate.

This expansion? I adore it. Adore it more and more every day even though I can't sell half of my Essences of Something and even though the gargoyle artifact market is really soft. This HoC, about the expansion, though? Not so much.

-Galen's player
 
T

Tazar

Guest
There are always questions that are not answered. Some are just not done due to lack of time, some because they are off-topic for the evening, and some because the Dev's simply can't talk about it at that point in time for whatever reason.

I made sure that all of the questions from U-hall were asked. Tonight, from what I saw, most questions were answered and yes, most of the best were.

I also know that from the last two HoC's, most of the unanswered questions were covered in FoF's over the next few weeks.

If you really feel better questions are needed and you can not attend, put them in the U-hall thread and someone will try to get them. :)
 

kelmo

Old and in the way
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Dread Lord
A bit of clarification... To the best of my knowledge. (that means I am guessing) The live team has their tasks. That team has a leader. That team is a part of the lead designer's overall team.

I will bet Draconi has many teams...
 

Gheed

Certifiable
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Stratics Legend
Overall it seemed a tad boring...Now, granted, I never go to these things, so you could argue "who's he to talk? Show up and ask your own questions!"

That's arguable, I guess.

-Galen's player
I didn't think it was all that bad. I had more but I didn't even log into HoC... I was too busy playing the game! I bet a lot of other people were too. Honestly I thought this expansion wasn't going to be all that great. But hats off to the devs... I hope you all have taken a moment to sit back and reflect....be proud of of what you have done. This expansion so far is engrossing, addictive and best of all it feels like uo. And I don't think I have put a scratch in the new content yet. I think I'll goto the EA store and buy something :thumbsup:
 

LadyNico

Always Present
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Stratics Legend
Vex is restored to us!

Ima go ring all my carefully preserved Vex x-mas bells (and the white one twice) in celemabration! :thumbsup:
 

Crysta

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Zephenia <Nhbdy> Renowned loot seems depressingly bad for the ammount of time it can take to kill some of them, yet there are unconfirmed reports of new drops, an official statement?
Mark 11. I think the problem is that a few specific renown mobs are not dropping good loot (rats) and we are looking at that now to get them on par with other renowned creatures
"A few"? Almost every single renowned isn't worth fighting at all currently, aside from the exceedingly uber rare deco rewards that almost never appear.

Wyvern - very tough, about dragon level loot, about the second strongest renowned overall; the spawn is almost never reset out front of the Stygian Dragon lair because few want to deal with both this guy and the Servants, especially since you get next to nothing for it
Ancient Lich - tough with decent loot <- can't complain on this one.. Skeletal Liches are touger though and only have about 2k gold on them...
Goblins - weak, but only normal loot for the goblin types
Fire Daemon - barely above daemon level loot for about balron strength w/ added fire breath.. doesn't even drop the daemon claws normal fire daemons do
Skeletal Dragon - very little loot for how strong it is
Pixie - so tough i've never actually beaten one, and it apparently only has a few gems on it
Devourer of Souls - Barely above normal Devourer level loot, but its not as disappointing as the other ones, really; this one feels about right
Rats - pathetic, as stated by the devs
Fire Elemental - base level fire ele loot and stronger than a fire daemon...
Acid Elemental - barely above normal loot again; the only monster i've seen a rare drop from, and it was a spinning wheel that was unmovable from the corpse >:\

The only extra bonuses are that the Acid Ele and Goblin renowneds seem to drop 2 of their respective ingredients (vial of vitriol and goblin blood).

I'm not looking for exceedingly exceptional loot.. just maybe some guarentee of 1-3 of the ingredient for the spawn would even be enough for me?
 

Maplestone

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I have mixed feelings about the loot. The way I see it, the interesting stuff in those spawns happens in the early tiers. The renowned are basically a "stop farming and deal with ME!" break-point (with a chance of a rare as an incentive to clean things up). Although loot is always nice to have, I prefer that the renowneds *don't* have any ingredients on them.
 
T

The Fallout

Guest
The only extra bonuses are that the Acid Ele and Goblin renowneds seem to drop 2 of their respective ingredients (vial of vitriol and goblin blood).
One of the rat renowneds dropped a delicate scale for me lol
 

RaDian FlGith

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Zephenia <Sable> In the release notes, it was stated SA could be used on Win98 machines, yet it seems Win98 machines cannot play UO now. This seems similar to a previous publish/patch. Are you guys working to fix this to allow players with older computers to keep playing?
Uriah For Windows 98 we're discussing how to support that OS in the future. As Microsoft doesn't currently support it, its going to be difficult moving forward, but we're figuring out what can be done for our players still on that platform.
Waste of development time. The operating system is going on 13 years old. If you're running a machine on Windows 98, at least upgrade to XP; or buy a new computer. THIS is what holds UO back more than anything... wasted development time on 13 year old operating systems. I'm not saying anyone should have to upgrade every time Microsoft releases a new OS... but by now, running on Windows 98, you shouldn't expect any sort of support. I mean, even the OS's name is 11 years old.

Zephenia <Nhbdy> Renowned loot seems depressingly bad for the ammount of time it can take to kill some of them, yet there are unconfirmed reports of new drops, an official statement?
Mark 11. I think the problem is that a few specific renown mobs are not dropping good loot (rats) and we are looking at that now to get them on par with other renowned creatures
Really need to look at the goblins too then; and the pit fiends, and... Yeah, I have yet to see anything that remotely resembles anything good from a renowned creature. They have become what I refer to as UO's new Time Sink.

Zephenia <Tazar> Can the item property selection screen be cleaned up a bit? Especially for jewelry. All properties seem to be randomly thrown into the selection menu.
WilkiEA YES! That will be part of the streamlining process for imbuing in general.
If I may be bold, without being offensive, this kind of design should be part of the initial sit-down and walk-through process. Interface design should be done on the front end of a system, not the back-end after release. Please consider this for future systems.
 
C

Coppelia

Guest
Zephenia <Iann> Will you ever allow us to craft things like the Black Staff? As it stands now we can only use looted or npc bought ones for imbuing.
WilkiEA There is no good reason why you shouldn't be able to craft things like the black staff. I will look into it and see what we can do about adding them as craftables. If you have any particular requests for items you want to see added, please feel free to create a thread in Uhall and we'll go from there.
Pitchfork!


Zephenia <Tazar> Rumor is that there has been a change to the damage between the slayer and the super-slayer class to make a normal slayer produce more damage. Is this true and if so, why was this change made?
WilkiEA The rumor is true! Single slayers now do more damage than super slayers. The simple answer for why is to give players a reason to want to use single slayers again.The rumor is true! Single slayers now do more damage than super slayers. The simple answer for why is to give players a reason to want to use single slayers again.
What about Daemon slayer which has become Demon superslayer? It's now rarer and do less damage!
Bring back the Daemon slayer!
 
C

canary

Guest
God, how many times has the black staff thing come up in years? 'That's a good point' has been stated many times over. Sheesh.
 

phantus

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
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I'm not looking for exceedingly exceptional loot.. just maybe some guarentee of 1-3 of the ingredient for the spawn would even be enough for me?
They do drop the spawn ingredients but a guaranteed 2-3 per renowned would be appropriate.
 

athos_uo

Seasoned Veteran
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Stratics Legend
Below you will find the chat log from tonight's UO-HoC Developer's Chat. Overall, we had about 60 participants and a lot of great questions.
Thank you very much, for posting all the logs in a very easy to read form!
 

Shelleybean

Certifiable
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Mark 11. I think the problem is that a few specific renown mobs are not dropping good loot (rats) and we are looking at that now to get them on par with other renowned creatures
If only a few aren't dropping good loot, then which creatures are dropping good loot? I really want to know because I have yet to see it.
 

RaDian FlGith

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
If only a few aren't dropping good loot, then which creatures are dropping good loot? I really want to know because I have yet to see it.
I'm with ya on this one. I've not gotten but mediocre loot on the renowned, and you'd think, in the same breath, that the Greater Poison Elemental would have greater than poison elemental loot. It doesn't.
 
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