Glamdring - Good evening everyone, thank you
for coming to tonight's Ultima Online open house. This Stratics House of Commons
chat is a direct connection between you the players and the designers and programmers
of Ultima Online.
Glamdring - This chat will be in a moderated
format. To ask a question of the developers, please /msg or /query the question
takers that will be listed in the topic of the channel and have [QT] in front
of their names. These question takers will then present the questions to the Ultima
Online development team here with us this evening.
Glamdring - I will be our moderator tonight...I
will post your question into the House of Commons chat channel and the Developers
will answer those that they can. Please /msg or /query different question-takers
at different times, in order to balance the load and speed the process up.
Glamdring - 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.
Glamdring - Enjoy tonight's chat...the topic
is Publish 16�s Housing Changes, new Guaranteed Gain System, and Combat
Glamdring - *Chocolate-Ice* can we submit
questions? If so: Pertaining to GGS, Is there code that is disabling log in gain
log off? Many people would benefit from this as they casually play UO and would
only gain a couple points a week.
Prophet - There isn't code that specifically
disables gains after logins but your chances of gains from GGS are lower for a
time after you log in.
Glamdring - *Azlen* If GGS has predefined
guaranteed gain intervals, how can gains be going too fast or too slow?
Prophet - Remember that gains can come from
non GGS. So GGS only means you will gain after a a certain period if your are
successfully using your skill at the appropriate difficulty. It doesn't mean its
going to fast or to slow. I hope that answers your question.
Glamdring - *Eisernes* What do you plan on
doing to fix the out of control stat gain problem?
Prophet - We are in the process of developing
a stat locking mechanism much like the currently enjoyed skill locks.
Glamdring - *Kakarott* Hi, my question is,
are there any plans to re-implement insta-swing? What I mean by this, is a constant
timer in between swings, instead of the timer being reset after a re-arm.
AdrickOSI - no plans to re enable insta hit
we will be evaluating the viability of pure classes and hybrids
AdrickOSI - after publish 16 but at this time
there are no plans to re enable insta swings
Glamdring - *Ertai* On SP and SP ruleset shards,
why can blues throw purple pots and cast field spells which hurt red hued characters
but not blue hued characters? Don't you think that this will lead to an imbalance
of pvp and a huge advantage for blue hued characters?
AdrickOSI - No because part of the new rules
mean that if your red and in the same guild with another red the guilded red will
take no damage either
AdrickOSI - we feel that to disallow blue
players from using field spells is the imbalance - and moreover this is exploited
by those who want nothing more than to grief faction fights by running into an
area and giving counts
Glamdring - *Albretch_Minorac* Will GGS make
skills like Resisting or Poisoning easier or harder to gain?
Prophet - We feel that it will make gaining
hard to gain skills easier, as the rate of gains will be more constant. This is
one of the advantages of this system in that all skills are treated equal so if
you use a skill you should have an equal chance to learn it through GGS as any
other skill at the same difficulty level.
Glamdring - *Thomas* An email notice was sent
not long ago giving warning of Publish 16's implementation. Many on the boards
have mentioned they never received this email, even though their email is supposedly
on file. What steps can be taken to insure someone gets future notices, where
in the past they've missed out on them?
Sannio - There are definitely a significant
number of updates and new features as part of that publish, and we knew it was
important enough to do all that we could to make sure as many players as possible
were alerted to these changes, and thus a few hundred thousand e-mails went out.
We tried to e-mail that Publish 16 alert to all our players, but unfortunately
a lot players truly don't keep an up-to-date e-mail address in our system.
Sannio - The best suggestion I can give is
to try to make sure your game account's e-mail address is up to date. (You can
do that at the account management page at http://www.ultima-registration.com/).
Sannio - Other than that, just keep an eye
on our Update Center section of UO.com, where we post the latest FYIs and development
cycle news.
Glamdring - *Grond* I'm confused about the
nomenclature surrounding GGS -- we've been told about things that affect our "chances"
of a guaranteed gain. Is the gain guaranteed, or is there just a *chance* of a
gain?
Prophet - I agree the nomenclature is a bit
confusing. The very first design of the system was such that gains were in fact
100% guaranteed. Since then we modified the design a bit here and a bit there
and one of the things that happened was that gain's no longer became 100% guaranteed,
but still very close to 100% (and certainly within a few minutes of your timer
for a ggs gain going off it becomes 100%). So we continue to call it the Guaranteed
Gain Sy
Glamdring - *madh4x0r* will there still be
stat loss for factions?
AdrickOSI - yep no changes to the faction
skill loss penalty
Glamdring - *beans* Is it true that GGS removes
see saw stat working? If so, why was that removed, and how can players get their
stats to the level they want it to be at?
Prophet - Yes its true that Pub16 removes
the "see-saw" method of stat gain. If I went into the full reasons for its removal
we would be here all night explaining. It was a complex decision but primarily
(and this isn't the only reason) we didn't feel it matched the ability to gain
skills through GGS. Of course the flip side is people can't tailor their stats
the way they want to. To address that we will be adding stat locks.
Glamdring - *Keith[FaT]* When is the new GGS
time table going to be updated, and at high level skills, for example if I had
98.9 resist, would I be able to login FS myself and then gain .1 if my guarenteed
gain was due? i.e. logging in once a day to do this?
Prophet - Sannio is in fact feverously trying
to post it now. I don't have the numbers in front of me so you will have to wait
till he posts the values.
Sannio - He's not kidding. I'm working out
some kinks with the HTML even now.
Glamdring - *Barrackas* If I only own one
house on my account, will it automatically become the "Primary" house once the
housing changes are implemented, or will I need to manually set it?
Prophet - You will have to manually set it.
We thought about doing this automatically but decided against it for a couple
of technical reasons.
Glamdring - *XzzyLS* how long till stat locks?
Prophet - Honest answer, don't know. We have
been working on it for a couple of days now and are making good progress. We will
keep you updated as things progress. It's our number 1 priority right now.
Glamdring - *DrGhost* Many people have complained
about +5 and +10 skill scrolls being to common - will the odds of getting these
scrolls be reduced any?
AdrickOSI - we are monitoring the number of
scrolls being given out and like what we have seen so far - we wanted people to
get a taste of them and are hoping it will give them the determination to go after
the harder to get ones +15 and 20 :) so answer right now no plans to tweak them
down
Glamdring - *Vasic|AG* how different will
the skill gain be compared to the old days? In other words are the gains going
to be just like outside ph now.
Prophet - They will be similar to gains outside
of power hour but more predictable at higher levels (and for some skills much
more common at high levels) We will continue to monitor the gains carefully.
Glamdring - *Daemon-* What is the reasoning
behind not allowing players to see house decay status? Is Osi trying to bring
the land surveying tool back into action??
Prophet - There are a couple of reasons. One
of them is techniqual but also because we didn't feel that the general populace
needed to see the state of a house that didn't belong to them or they weren't
friended to.
Glamdring - *RJO* what type of schedule are
we looking at for the various stages of housing control implementation?[02:44]
<Prophet> Phase I has already started on Pacific obviously. As each shard
is published with Pub16 they will start with Phase 1. Once the last shard has
been published with 16 we will move to Phase II. This is where houses are tracked
globaly (but don't decay yet) and co-owners get to claim houses. There is no set
time for how long we stay in phase II but I figure its about a month. After that
we go to Phase III which is where houses start to decay again.
Prophet - Phase I has already started on Pacific
obviously. As each shard is published with Pub16 they will start with Phase 1.
Once the last shard has been published with 16 we will move to Phase II. This
is where houses are tracked globaly (but don't decay yet) and co-owners get to
claim houses. There is no set time for how long we stay in phase II but I figure
its about a month. After that we go to Phase III which is where houses start to
decay again.
Glamdring - *Grond* Stats on Pacific seem
to be using Siege RoT rules, i.e. maximum gain of one point per hour, maximum
gain of six points per day. This wasn't announced, and hasn't been acknowledged
(as bug or feature) on the boards. Was it an intentional part of GGS?
Prophet - That is correct stats on Publish
16 basically use the RoT rules. It wasn't mentioned in previous documents and
this is entirely my fault. There was a lot that went into Publish 16 and in documenting
everything we missed this one piece of information. Sannio has just posted an
updated GGS design page at (http://update.uo.com/design_425.html) which includes
this design change along with the new GGS timetable.
Sannio - That new document also includes an
expanded skill gain example charrt, by the way.
Sannio - It may help answer some of the other
GGS questions some players have been having.
Prophet - Didn't I say that? :)
Glamdring - *DrGhost* If I wanted to get a
120 skillcap, could I put together a +5 and a +15 skill scroll? If not, what if
i accedntly put on a +5 skill scroll instead of a +20--how would I ever get 120
in the skill?
Sannio - The bonuses you get from Scrolls
of Power are independent of one another.
Sannio - If you have a +5 scroll and a +15
scroll, they can't give you a combined effect of +20.
Sannio - If you use the +5 to boost your maximum
possible value in a skill to 105, and then later use a +15 scroll, your new maximum
value becomes 115 (100+15).
Sannio - In order to get a skill cap of 120
for a given skill, you'd need a "+20 Scroll of Power.
Glamdring - *UncleOzzi* Any plans to deal
with Altar Hiders? People are getting frustrated at working the spawn a couple
of hours while these people wait until the Champ, jump in, and get scrolls
AdrickOSI - we are aware of the issues with
hiders hanging around - we have a tenative plan in place to deal with this although
its not ironed out enough to post details we are looking at a sollution
AdrickOSI - that will address this issue though
:)
Glamdring - *Rez* I want to know if it is
already written in concrete that us multishard home owners must use "grandfather"
rather than being able to "primary" each single house per shard
MrTact - The way of the future is that if
you want to have autorefresh, you must only own one house, and if you want to
continue to own multiple houses they will have to be refreshed.
MrTact - some of the other issues people have
with multiple houses might get addressed in the future, though . . .
Glamdring - *XzzyLS* What are the details
of phase one housing?
Prophet - Phase I is were we start tracking
all your houses with the new housing system but we only track houses by shard
(very similar to the way it works now) so you can continue to place houses without
global penalties on separate shards.
Prophet - ie during phase I you can place
a house on ATl then right away place a house on Pac.
MrTact - Note that if you place a house on
a shard that is in Phase 1, it still condemns all the other houses you own ON
THAT SHARD
Prophet - Yea what he said
Glamdring - *Spyke* The new chart posted,
you gain more often in your total skill level is lower? so it would make sense
to do the hardest skills first?
Sannio - Well, that's certainly one of several
valid tactics. It's likely that players will come up with a number of skill gain
techniques as they grow more comfortable with the changes in Publish 16.
Glamdring - and, in closing....there's always
one of these =)
Glamdring - *JunkHead* hi.. i was wondering...
will it ever be possible to ride an ancient wyrm and fly next to another person
on an ancient wyrm... and switch mounts in mid-flight?
Prophet - uuh you know when I said Stat locks
were my #1 priority.. they are number 2 now.. this is number 1 now.
MrTact - ROFL
AdrickOSI - UO: dragonriders expansion ?
MrTact - Ann McAffrey would sue us
AdrickOSI - :)
Prophet - shhhhh
Glamdring - I would like to thank everyone
for coming tonight!
Prophet - Thanks all! Good questions!
Sannio - Me, too! Thanks, everyone!
Glamdring - and thanks to all of the OSI folks
for spending their personal time talking to us
Prophet - what? I don't get paid for this?
Sannio - I have personal time?
Glamdring - Please join #ultima-online for
continued, unmoderated chat
Glamdring - the log will be posted shortly
Glamdring - THANKS
Sannio - Remember, the new GGS documentation
is now available at http://update.uo.com/design_425.html
Sannio - Bye!