Glamdring - Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's Open House.
Glamdring - Tonight's chat is "Party System and the Latest Publish"
Glamdring - I will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Jerrith, Niobe, XenaDragon or Tigger.
Glamdring - Please /msg different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load and speed this process up. Do not msg anyone from OSI, or myself--these questions will be ignored.
Glamdring - Remember that OSI may not have the opportunity to answer all of your questions. In addition, some questions may not be answered if the Dev Team feel that it is not appropriate or that it has been better answered through some other question.
Glamdring - In addition, please do not submit any questions that have already been answered during past conferences. We encourage you to read the logs of the previous Open Houses, which are available at http://uohoc.stratics.com.
Glamdring - Thanks for coming, everyone. We will now begin accepting questions.

Glamdring - *Banstyle* So, this party system will allow you to "ally" with people that aren't guild members, aye? Is this the ally system for guildstones you spoke of in the past, or is that something else waiting in the wings?
tOAD - The party system as it stands now will let players who are not part of the same guild be in a party together, though it will probably do some checking to make sure that they aren't opposed. But this is not the system of alliance that was mentioned earlier for the guild system. That is a completely different system that has to do with guilds and guildstones, just like declaring war.

Glamdring - *ImaSupa* How do you envision the Party System interacting with the Guild System and the Reputation System, and what kind of changes might be made to the latter two to accomodate the Party System?
tOAD - We are going to be very careful about integrating the party system, guild system, and the reputation system. We don't want to make the entire thing too confusing to use, so we
tOAD - are working on ways to make sure that they integrate fluidly.
tOAD - We probably won't allow warring guildmembers (as I mentioned before) join up as party members, and we will be careful about what happens when one of your party members is attacked by his enemies. These are all things that we're currently working on as a group, and as such I'd still like to get some feed back from you (players)
tOAD - as to what you think about all of this. I'd like to know what you think about integrating the party and guild systems, as well as what to do if you're in a party with someone and they're attacked by a warring guild? Should the party be able to help defend? We've got some ideas on this, but I'd like to hear your take on it as well.

Glamdring - *Chronos187* Is the test shard gone now???
Runesabre - Test Center is being used internally by OSI QA and will remain unavailable for the weekend.
Runesabre - I hope to have Test Center available to the public starting next week again.
Runesabre - Sorry for the inconvenience this causes everyone.

Glamdring - *Cyndarz* Is a Party System really needed? Is this what players have been asking for? I don't think so. Why do you refuse to work with us on something like secure house trading? the things we really want.
tOAD - Well, this is kind of a tricky question, so I'm going to be careful how I answer it. I certainly understand that many many people would like to see secure house trading.
tOAD - But there are also many many people who want to see a working party system. At the current time we are working on making secure house trading a reality, but not everyone on our team is working on the same thing at the same time, and the secure trading is going to come at a later time. As of right now the party system is getting closer to becoming a reality.
tOAD - So for the time being, we are implementing the party system soon, and other things like secure house trading later.

Glamdring - *Hythlodaeus* In addition to people being in a party without being in a guild, why not make a way for two willing people to duel without getting into a guild war (or turning grey)?
tOAD - Well, it's unfortunate that Sunsword's not here, since this has been one of his pet ideas for quite some time now. I'm not saying we will do a dueling system or that we won't do a dueling system, but rest assured it's been discussed.
tOAD - :)

Glamdring - *Lord_Kythorn* How will you ask someone to join the group?
tOAD - Right now we're thinking of starting a party off with speech trigger, and then having buttons on the party system gump to add new members to a party later.

Glamdring - *Magellan_THB* While this will definitely be a boon to treasure hunting, do you have anything specific planned regarding the party system and treasure hunting? For example, "key" the chest to the treasure hunter and his party, and either a) make it unlootable by anyone else, or b) criminal flag anyone not in the party who loots it?
tOAD - Currently we don't have any specific plans regarding the party system and treasure hunting, but you have made an interesting suggestion. I'm not sure if it's something we will do, but certainly we could consider it.

Glamdring - *Onelist * Distributing Karma/Fame seems to be a pretty complicated issue, especially in a Party System. How do you plan to implement this? A couple issues I see are letting non-present party members share in it and/or allowing party members who do no damage to a creature sharing in it.
tOAD - This is one of the hottest topics of debate right now concerning the party system. We have discussed such things as forcing players to be within line of sight to gain Karma/Fame for a kill, as well as giving non damaging members equal fame/karma (gotta give something to the healers). Our biggest problem right now is trying to determine a good balance for the split.
tOAD - Send me ideas if you have em. (I may not respond, but I'll certainly read em.)
tOAD - [email protected]

Glamdring - *Kazz* Concerning the latest patch, am i supposed to expect exceptional gains from Difficulty based skill usage from outrageously tough skills IE Eval and Anatomy..or will the changes be more subtle...I have experienced attended macro sessions of 15+ hours with little or no gain.
Runesabre - The latest skill gain rates to non-difficulty based skills should raise noticeably easier than before...
Runesabre - escpecially in the 90.0+ range. Naturally, it won't be "easy" but definitely not prohibitively hard as it currently is.
Runesabre - I would be interested in feedback on how the new rates for both stats and non-difficulty skills feel in actual play.
Runesabre - Email me your results [email protected]

Glamdring - *Riptide* Is there any plan to make it so party members show up on your radar?
tOAD - We've discussed that, but at the moment I can't say one way or the other. At the moment I'm leaning towards it probably won't happen, but, you never know.

Glamdring - * Onelist * A Party System would be great to enhance temporary Duels. Do you plan to make membership short enough/easy enough to join to allow two players to just fight it out on the spot?
tOAD - Well, this isn't the current idea behind the party system. We have talked about duels, but in a different context than the party system itself. Also, if it's too easy/short to join and quit parties, then you could simply drop out of the party when you start losing a fight. That would be counterproductive.

Glamdring - *Mord|Work* Speaking of fame/karma, can you make it like SP where NPCs give murder counts and remove the murderer title so we can get rid of poseur Dread Lords?
tOAD - It's possible that we could make NPC's give murder counts, but I'm not sure that we will (or would want to) on normal shards. It may be a good idea, I haven't had time to think about it myself so I won't dismiss it out of hand either. As for removing murderer titles, I'm not sure that we would gain much from that. Many of the evil roleplayers I know relish the murderer title, even though they aren't necessarily pks.

Glamdring - *Cepheus* How many people can be in a party at once?
tOAD - At the moment our plan is no more than 10.

Glamdring - *Pfredd* How is the Patch doing on Pacific?
Runesabre - The publish on Pacific is going great. Considering the amount of fundamental changes it included:
Runesabre - - Monster death to unreachable or unused critters ( birds on top of Britain buildings, cats in walls )
Runesabre - - Change to stat gaining rates
Runesabre - - Change to non-difficulty skill gain rates
Runesabre - - Introduction of house item decay
Runesabre - - Fixes to house placement rules
Runesabre - This publish is probably the most successful publish I have been involved with yet.
Runesabre - There are a couple issues we are resolving that have sprung up as a result of the new monster decay.
Runesabre - Those issues involve the dramatic increase in escorts and the massive spawn of orc camps on Ice Island.
Runesabre - Those are being addressed as we speak. Pacific and Great Lakes will have the publish activated tomorrow.
Runesabre - And both shards will be heavily monitored over the weekend but I don't expect any real issues to come up.
Runesabre - If anyone has feedback on the latest changes please feel free to email me or others on the Dev Team.

Glamdring - *Austenite* Regarding decay, does each item have its own timer, or does a mystical janitor do periodic sweeps? i.e., is the the decay time for any given object predictable?
Runesabre - One of tOAD's tasks as lead designer is to periodically cleanup the shards. He sweeps everyone's houses out on a daily basis.
Runesabre - *chuckles*
Runesabre - Seriously, I don't really want to get into the details of how item decay works, but, generally...
Runesabre - It does item decay in a way that tries to reduce the overall stress on the UO servers.
Runesabre - The new implementation of item decay is slightly more efficient than before so that coupled with way fewer items...
Runesabre - now that houses aren't able to be crammed to the gills with stuff should mean improved server performance.
Runesabre - To the players that means less server lag. :)

Glamdring - *Fizzle* What happened to taming? not even the best tamers can keep control of their pets?
Firedog - While I have heard a *few* scattered reports of people having trouble with pets.
Firedog - From what I can tell, the system is working as it was
Firedog - intended to at this time.
Firedog - Some tamers of middle skill are unable to control
Firedog - pets that they couldn't tame
Firedog - And some of higher skill are having difficulties with
Firedog - pets whose loyalty got too low.
Firedog - Both of these are *intended* results.
Firedog - If there are problems beyond this, I would be happy
Firedog - to hear them -- either through the tamers' board
Firedog - or in my mailbox ([email protected])

Glamdring - *Tybalt* In the new patch, a lot of people have been complaining about not being able to make a Exceptional Plate Chest as well as they were able to, is this just an unwanted effect or was this intended?
Runesabre - The blacksmithing changes we were going to put in this publish were removed, so Blacksmithing is unchanged for now.
Runesabre - We will be addressing the intended changes to smithing next time around so when we get TC running with the new changes...
Runesabre - You will be able to try them out and tell us your results.

Glamdring - *SolarPoweredCowKiller* What else can we look forward to besides the party system?
Firedog - Well, my favorite feature (of course) is the new monster AI improvements.
Firedog - With better, smarter, more dangerous monsters, you can also look forward to
Firedog - (hopefully) better treasure and more variety in behavior.
Firedog - Plus, if I can squeeze it in, some more critters, too.

Glamdring - *brianhj* What exactly is the point of a party system...
tOAD - The point of the party system is to encourage group activity, to promote cooperation, and to give some benefit to players who already do so.

Glamdring - I would like to thank everyone for coming tonight. Thanks to tOAD, Runesabre, Firedog and Calandryll for taking the time out to meet with us. Have a good night everyone.
Glamdring - For unmoderated chat please join #ultima-online
Glamdring - the log will be posted soon
Runesabre - Good night Britannia
Firedog - Night!