Kehleyr - Welcome to the 77th UO House of Commons Chat!
Kehleyr - This chat will be in a moderated format. To ask a question of the OSI Staff, please /msg or /query the question takers that will be listed in the topic of the channel. These question takers will then present the questions to the Ultima Online evelopment/community/programming team here with us this evening.
Kehleyr - make that development *glares at Hanse*
Kehleyr - Our question takers are: Magellan, Kiir & Lord-Xanthor
Kehleyr - They are easily recognisable by the [QT] in front of their names.
Kehleyr - .
Kehleyr - I will be your moderator tonight... I will post your question into the House of Commons chat channel and the team will answer those that they can.
Kehleyr - Please remember that your question may have been asked previously or may not be able to be answered in a public forum. Please do not message or query myself or anyone from OSI, these questions will be ignored. We encourage you to read the logs of the previous Open Houses, which are available at http://uohoc.stratics.com
Kehleyr - Tonight's topic is: .Publish 16
Kehleyr - All other questions will be ignored, so please only ask questions about Publish 16.

Kehleyr - *Corsair* Are there any plans to revert the anatomy+eval/2=chance to be hit mechanic or is that still a go for Publish 16? I'm looking to change my characters now before Publish 16 hits.
Evocare - It's still a go. No reason to believe at the moment that it'll get removed from the publish.

Kehleyr - *FireBird* Can Anyone tell us anything about the New FireSteed and will Taming Req be above 100?
Hanse - Fire steeds are not available yet, but they should be soon. They require a client patch to be available on test.
Hanse - They will require more than 100 taming skill.
Evocare - ... and they're very r33t!

Kehleyr - *NotSoWise* 1. You have revamped the monster AI, but was the instant casting that is now in efect intensional or was it an unexpected side effect? And more importantly, Are you leaving it in?
Evocare - Yes we did, yes it was intentional, yes we're planning on leaving it in.

Kehleyr - *Canamile* What aspects of publish 16 will specifically =not= be applied to Siege Perilous?
Evocare - Some of that is still up in the air... we'll release a final list when we've made our final decisions. =]

Kehleyr - *Tras* Will resurrecting bonded pets require vet?
Evocare - Hmm, none of us remember for sure. Oaks has the answer and he's not here. Sorry!

Kehleyr - *Thomas* I think the primary problem with Champion Spawning may be the length of the timer. Have you dev folks considered testing it with a 15 or 20 minute timer per round to see if it helps?
Evocare - We've considered it, and decided it might be too easy. We'd like to err on the side of too hard rather then too easy.
Evocare - Oh, before I forget, we did decide to lower the "fallback" percentage to 20% from 50%.
Evocare - That means that you only have to kill 20% of the monsters to keep the spawn from losing a red candle.
Evocare - This should help in situations where several party members taste dirt, and a few have to hold the fort.
Hanse - That hasn't been published to TC2 yet, though.

Kehleyr - *NotSoWise* With the new leather types and the changes to color armor making armor crafteble with nearly same AR as invul...what are you going to do about magic armor? It will be practially worthless now?
Evocare - We're still evaluating the situation, and making balance adjustments as needed. =]

Kehleyr - *Vic_Twenty* On Test Center 2 boats are decaying in 3 to 4 hours. Is this an intentional change to ships that will be a part of Publish 16, and if so why was it not announced nor discussed with your seafaring community?
Hanse - We've already corrected this issue and it should be available for testing on TC2 in the near future (may be already...haven't checked today's schedule).

Kehleyr - *Alex_Dragondeath* will the Armor hardness (AC) be tweaked before final publish or is it more or less what it is on TC?
Evocare - With respect to AR values for armor of different ore and leather types, we're pretty happy with the way it is on TC2.

Kehleyr - *DarkHand* In regard to housing, after the publish is live, can we still sell houses if we own more than one without endangering the rest?
MrTact - Yes, selling or giving away houses does not affect your other grandfathered houses.

Kehleyr - *Night_* Regarding the champion spawns, what protection (if any) is in place to stop people coming in at the end of hours of work and killing the champion ?
Evocare - Your superior champion-killing skills.
Evocare - That's your protection. ;]
Evocare - There's a good chance the system will be tweaked in the future.
Evocare - We'll see if this behavior is overly problematic before we try to take heavy-handed measures to prevent it.
Evocare - Players can theoretically already do this in Ilshenar
Evocare - In Felucca, we don't want to police more then we have to... it is Felucca afterall.

Kehleyr - *JAck[BoH]* Is there going to be any type of countermeasure to prevent blues from basically using blessed vanqs over and over in dungeons versus the PKs who lose it all?
Adrick-OSI - when they die they are out for 30 min - and on a side note we lowered this to 20 min

Kehleyr - *aeg|UDL* Alchemy changes on test allow an imbalancing amount of damage to be stacked - will this be fixed prior to implimentation on production servers?
Evocare - Aaah the price of the freedom of evil... ;] (in reference to JAck's question)
Evocare - We're still doing some tests with the purple potions. However, our tests often indicate that it isn't hard at all to avoid being hit, so we're undecided still.
Evocare - Please feel free to email me with any further thoughts ([email protected]) on the subject.

Kehleyr - *CoifZ-TvF-sK* when this publish comes into play will all the short term counts on existing players be set to 0?
Adrick-OSI - there is no wipe planned for short murder counts - although taking stat loss under pub16 will wipe em

Kehleyr - *Blackheath_THB* Once P16 is fully implemented, including the housing changes, will it still be possible to place a house on a test shard without endangering your existing houses on other shards?
Evocare - I sure hope so... ;]
MrTact - Um, no evo, it won't. But if there's more than one TC up at a time, it will affect other TCs.

Kehleyr - *Lotus* will the new no dex requirement be staying (ie the old instant hitting) and is the new peacemaking planning on being nerfed?
Evocare - Yes, and no.

Kehleyr - *Thomas* One thing I've noticed is that when comparing Tailoring BOD rewards to Smith BOD rewards, the tailoring rewards (with the exception of the Scroll of Power) are not as practical. One possible addition I could suggest is an item which repairs leather? What does the dev team think of implementing this?
Hanse - The tailoring rewards are not interactive with combat at all... true.
Hanse - We're not looking at changing the rewards. Tailoring is more of a decoration/fashion statement. :)
Hanse - So, the rewards reflect the skill itself.

Kehleyr - *Barrackas* Are there plans for any fiction about the Champions and the Harrower? Also, will the T2A area and the Feluccan dungeons get a revamped appearance at any point to differentiate them from Trammel?
Evocare - Of course! We don't do anything these days without fiction!

Kehleyr - *Moo-S-afk* Some of us heard on UO.com mb's that melee special moves would be macroable in pub 16, but its not on tc...what this delayed or canned?
Evocare - Some of you heard wrong. Sorry. =[
Evocare - I like the idea, it's just not going to happen in pub 16.

Kehleyr - *Gara-VJ* Will the Skill scroll that are in Pub 16 hit Siege ?
Evocare - That's one of the "siege only" rules that we're still making a final determination on. It will also be heavily influenced by what Mugen players want (the Japanese "siege" shard).

Kehleyr - *Fenix||Nate* Is there an estimated time so far, as of when Pub 16 will be release?
Tajima - We're looking for a Pub 16 release on one shard the week of June 24th.

Kehleyr - *Mimic* can we get an approx date for pub 16 to be released on main shards, also halberds kill people in 2 hits on TC2 without 100 str, does this mean there will be those dreaded 1 hit kills again when people have 120 swords/tacs/anat?
Evocare - there's a bug on pub16 causing weapon damage to be significantly higher then it should... it will be fixed soon.
Evocare - we may decide on some midpoint between the current TC damage and the current live shard damage, but it won't be as high as it is now on TC.

Kehleyr - *Thor* Are PowerScrolls lootable I've heard from posts on the UO boards that they are not. Also some weapons seem to do alot more dmg on test without increasing skill above 100 this a bug or intentional?
Evocare - 105 skill scrolls are not lootable. However, any scrolls of higher power (110, 115, 120, or any stat scroll) are lootable.
Evocare - The reason is because you can get a 105 skill scroll just by fighting the champion spawn, and we don't want players feeling like they have to stop midway through the process to make a bank run.
Evocare - As far as the second question goes, yes it's a bug (as described in the previous person's question).
Hanse - Keep in mind that you will not get 105 power scrolls for low level spawns.

Kehleyr - *Hel* What is the exact degree on the new mace weapon changes?, from what I have seen, the only major perk to the skill (Heavy armor damage) has been scaled down significantly.
Evocare - The mace weapons do about half of the armor damage that they used to do. However, staves now do the extra stamina damage that they used to do (making them much more viable once again).
Evocare - Note that the normal maces still do far more armor damage then other weapon types.

Kehleyr - *Tras* If skill scrolls (a felucca enhancement) are not implemented on Siege, then won't Fire Steeds be untameable there?
Evocare - That would be correct. They would make for nice target practice though. Either way, you win! ;]

Kehleyr - *Satch[LFm]* Is the ability to recall/gate in Ilshenar a planned part of pub 16?
Evocare - no.
Evocare - *zing*

Kehleyr - *Mithra* What is the status of DYNAMIC PRICING, what balance issues are you seeing, and how do faction vendors affect this system?
Evocare - Sadly, it couldn't make it into pub 16 for a number of reasons, although we haven't permanently given up on it.

Kehleyr - *Coop* What is the point of not being able to reenter dungeon servers when killed by a monster? Getting Pk'd I can understand the reason, but not a monster.
Evocare - It prevents ghost spies, ensures that there is some cost to death in those areas, and ensures that there aren't numerous mad 'spl0itz related to cheezing monster death.

Kehleyr - *Karnage* Other than losing their gold... what is the real risk for Blue in a fel dungeon now considering they keep all their weapons, armour, regs, etc upon death?
Adrick-OSI - their time and ability to farm resources such as power scrolls
Evocare - Blues do have a tendency to value their time (believe it or not). And often, significant amounts of it will have been spent attempting to get a power scroll before they were so unjustly removed from the scene.
Adrick-OSI - or justly - thats situational :)

Kehleyr - *bfly* In the event that a multi-house acount (on multiple shards) ever gets deactivated/reactivated and defaulted to '1 house auto refresh'.. which house would be the non-condemned? (assuming player had a tower on one shard and a sandstone on another)?
MrTact - Presently, the last house you placed. Too hard to try and second-guess which house the player would have preferred to keep.

Kehleyr - *Xena12345* What is the current status on the new avatar art, and might it be released anytime soon?
Tajima - The new art is coming along, and we've been plowing through some unforeseen technical problems. Right now, our testers are focused on Pub 16, but the art should be released shortly after Pub 16 goes live.

Kehleyr - *Rockwell* After a guild kills a champion, will they be able to hold onto the skulls in order to summon the harrower at their will? or will the skulls have to be placed on the pedestal immediately after killing a champ?
FierYiCe - You can hold onto the skulls as long as you like. So, yes, you can wait until you have a full set to go to the Harrower's shrine to summon him.
Evocare - I suspect champion skulls will be a very marketable item. =]

Kehleyr - *oddtoddy* Question for the dev: Resist seems to be tweaked a bit on test center 2. It now seems to be more effective. Will this be coming to all the shards?
Evocare - As with all the combat changes, we're still evaluating balance. However, we're pretty satisfied with resist as it is on TC2.

Kehleyr - *Hogan* When GGS goes into affect will the average gains be about the same difficulty as it is out of powerhour now? or will it be harder or easier?
FierYiCe - On average it will take longer than powerhour gains. (Especially the cheezy super fast powerhour gains.)
FierYiCe - On the flip side, all skills will be more consistant as to how long they take to GM...
Evocare - (and far less tedious)

Kehleyr - *SmokeSerpent* Are there plans to modify dungeon spawns based on TC data, or will you wait for data on real shards to consider such modifications?
Hanse - Definitely!
Hanse - I'll be looking at dungeon spawns early next week. Take a look at the dungeon spawns this weekend (and T2A) and let me know at [email protected]...

Kehleyr - *Night_* I noticed on TC2 a daemon named Eracove ... are you running out of names for daemons or is this Evocare's attempt at immortality ?
Evocare - ... and a powerful daemon he is!
Adrick-OSI - hes a chump I beat him in one hit :)

Kehleyr - Thankyou everyone for taking the time to attend tonight's HOC and a special thankyou to everyone at Origin for being here to make it possible, as always we are grateful :)
Kehleyr - The logs will be posted at http://uohoc.stratics.com
Kehleyr - Feel free to join #ultima-online for further discussion :)
Sannio - Thanks everyone for coming.
Hanse - and may the Mongbat be with you...