Lord-Xanthor - 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
Lord-Xanthor - 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.
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Lord-Xanthor - 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.
Lord-Xanthor - Enjoy tonight's chat...the topic is Publish 16 General Discussion

Lord-Xanthor - *Blackheath_THB* NPC prisoners will no longer go through gates with the person escorting them. Is this being corrected?
Evocare - We're planning on fixing it, but we're not sure which publish it'll be in just yet.

Lord-Xanthor - *Rim* Do you plan on changing the looting rights for blues in felucca dungeons/LL areas? Is it a possibility?
Evocare - I'm assuming you mean you'd like to be able to loot equipment from blues dying in felucca dungeons? We don't plan on changing that in the immediate future.
Evocare - As UO changes however, it's possible those rules may have to evolve along with the changes, so it's not guaranteed to stay that way forever.

Lord-Xanthor - *Lambana* What are you views on making orange deaths being lootable in dungeons?
Hanse - Peeled or unpeeled?
Evocare - We decided not to make orange-hued players lootable in dungeons because we didn't want them to be overly penalized for participating in the champion spawn activities.
Evocare - Basically, we didn't want it to be a major drawback to be in a faction.
Evocare - I think that by and large, if we had made orange players lootable, those players would have simply used other blue characters on their accounts to "farm" champion spawns anyways.

Lord-Xanthor - *Azlen* Will there be a way to raise banners now that we can't use the interior decorator on them because they aren't locked down?
Vex - Yes, we do plan on fixing that with the same publish that will add the fourth and fifth-year Vet Rewards. I can't say when exactly that publish will happen, but we are currently planning it for some time after the upcoming Scenario.

Lord-Xanthor - *Farnite* <question> Hello. With all the people camping champions now, what measures are being taken that "last-minute" people aren't given as good of a chance as people who have been camping the spawn, and when will those measures be taken?
Evocare - we have plans to track players that actually fought the spawn, and ensure that if you didn't do any fighting, you won't be in the list of eligible players for a power scroll.
Evocare - anti-camper code, in a nutshell ;]

Lord-Xanthor - *LoneWolf* Powerhours, trammel tamers & bards already made their millions and most people already got their skills gmed from powerhours on all shards that are currently out. The damage as already been done. My question, will you be making any new American shards (or�well I am Canadian so how about a Canadian shard)? So that it would be a fresh new beginning with the new rules of publish 16 unaffected by the unbalance that was d
Evocare - The creation of new shards is a business decision i'm not directly involved in... so whether or not we'll be opening more shard(s) in north america in the near future isn't something i can comment on.

Lord-Xanthor - *Lurking_Lyria* It's good that quarterstaves were given back some of their former glory, but why is it that staff weapons still don't get special hits? They get all the weaknesses of being two-handed (no poison, no potion-drinking, no shield et.c.) and don't get armour-wrecking of maces...
Evocare - Quarterstaves have considerably better damage over time values when compared to the "normal" mace weapons. If they had the ability to do crushing blows, they'd be the only mace weapon anyone ever used.
Evocare - ... other then *maybe* a war axe...
Evocare - incidentally, quarterstaves are basically the only weapon pre UO:R macers used for the same reason (damage/time)
Evocare - so, I don't have any reason to believe it would be different now. ;]

Lord-Xanthor - *Lazl0-* Has OSI taken into consideration pvp post pub 16, alot of characters are overkill and unbalanced damage etc, will this be corrected in the near future?
Evocare - Personally, I think it's a little early to have a clear enough idea of all the pub 16 balance impacts to start making changes.
Evocare - Well, near-term changes that is.
Evocare - Players will probably keep refining and tuning their strategies for a while longer before any concrete conclusions can be reached.
Evocare - That being said, there will be a *lot* of combat changes coming to a UO expansion near you. ;]

Lord-Xanthor - *Grania* Why the name change deeds now if we were told it was not a possibliity in the past.
Evocare - The current name change service solves many of the support problems that the "deed" version had.

Lord-Xanthor - *Zeitgeist* Question: Many have complained about massive sub-server lag when the Harrower spawns, is anything being worked on to correct this?
AdrickOSI - The lag is more because of the number of players on the subserver specifically all crowded onto a screen or two - the same would happen most anywhere (quests, etc) so this isnt really a harrower issue but a problem in general with that much traffic
AdrickOSI - we are aware of the slowdown - right now no def plans to address it - waiting to see how the numbers hold up

Lord-Xanthor - *Demoyan* When is the scheduled date to add the trammel facet to Siege Perilous?
Vex - We don't have any plans at this time to add a Trammel facet to Siege.

Lord-Xanthor - *Videric[-C-]* What is the current status of re-re-design (correct term?) of UO3D avatars?
Evocare - The artists are making more modifications to the female model and corresponding wearables.
Evocare - After much scrutiny, the female was determined to be unacceptably disproportioned in a number of ways (neck length, leg length, arm length)
Evocare - The plan is still to get the new avatars out before the end of the year!
Evocare - (hopefully sooner)

Lord-Xanthor - *Ithilkir* In re-gards to the 'anti-camper code' if it's based on how much you kill, will there be anyway to even the playing field with Mages laying down armys of vortexes and eating up all the spawn?
Evocare - An appropriate slayer weapon is a terrific way to keep your damage competitive with others.
Evocare - Also, the kill tracking will probably be absolute, not relative... so it won't really matter if other players are killing more creatures then you are, as long as you kill enough.
Evocare - The only circumstances where this breaks down are where there are simply too many players for that particular spawn
Evocare - However, there are plenty of spawns to go around. ;]

Lord-Xanthor - *Vulcan-AFK* Lot of problems with players being unable to gain stats and skills with the new GGS system.. any reasons for stat gains getting stuck .. see saw no longer works?
MrTact - We have heard a lot of comment from players on this, and we are looking into it.

Lord-Xanthor - *TaranKain* About how many powerscrolls are given out when the champion dies (counting those given for spawn kills as well)?
Hanse - Six are guaranteed to be given out.
Hanse - After that, Justice virtue kicks in...
Hanse - If you are protecting someone and are on the top tier of justice...and that person gets a scroll...you have a 100% chance to get the scroll
Hanse - Justice is all where it's at for getting more scrolls.
Hanse - The maximum amount of scrolls is 12 (double the base) for champions.
Evocare - FYI, we are carefully watching the numbers of scrolls making their way into the world, and will probably make tweaks accordingly.
Hanse - Yup, I just got the results for LS today and I'll look into the statistics tomorrow...
AdrickOSI - some dread lords would dispute that but code wise that is correct :)
* Hanse just likes statistics. *

Lord-Xanthor - *Zeitgeist* What do you think about the massive gold given at champ spawns, as well as the massive amount of gold in the econemy. Or is this just inflation as the game ages.
Vex - The amount of gold given out on the death of a Champion is indeed pretty large, but it really is a drop in the bucket considering it takes several people a lot of time to make the champion spawn and then to kill it.
Evocare - It's also miniscule compared to the amount of gold lost at those spawns from unlooted monsters.
Vex - Taking into account the time it takes to transport gold from the champion location to the bank, farming champions for gold is also far less efficient than traditional monster hunting. When you're out getting gold that way, it's a quick recall to home or the bank to drop off the gold when you get heavy.
Vex - The only thing the gold at Champion deaths is, is a lot of gold in the same place. It's doubtful the amount of gold being added to the game via champion spawns is very significant.

Lord-Xanthor - *Allanon|TheMurderer* Is it a possibility that reagents will become counted among hides and ore, so that they drop to the corpse? My primary supply of reagents used to come from my victims.
Evocare - maybe, but it's too early to know for sure.

Lord-Xanthor - *beans* what is being done to eliminate rez killing at chaos?
Evocare - right now? not much other then natural selection. :P
Evocare - we're considering sprinkling some "evil" healers in the valley near the chaos shrine, but we're not commited to it yet, so it isn't scheduled for publish.

Lord-Xanthor - *LoneWolf* Personally I think that the risk of losing only gold/other "useless items" for the risk of being pked in fel is a very small risk. While reds lose their stuff don't you think the risk should be augmented a bit?
Evocare - It's obvious that many reds agree. However, we're still evaluatating the current model.
Evocare - In the future, champions will continue to get more unique loot possibilities, so don't worry about them becoming unpopular.
AdrickOSI - Im open to feedback on this [email protected]

Lord-Xanthor - *Nuke* Is the BOD system going to be changed? Since the pub 16 "fix" I've gotten a steady supply of weapon BODs and far less "higher end" ones, which I wasn't getting more than once a week anyway. Any plans on changing the kinds that are given out?
Hanse - I've posted a few statistics on our boards.
Hanse - We have had reports of many undesirable deeds being distributed with a higher percentage to desirable deeds.
Hanse - We'll look into it some more. I've received some log files that I'll review tomorrow.

Lord-Xanthor - <Andurlin> is opening a pre uor server ever been considered by the development team?
Evocare - As I mentioned earlier, the development team isn't responsible for making shard creation decisions.

Lord-Xanthor - *Leafbeach* Will you change the number of control slots blade spirits and energy vortexes take? As a warrior, it is hard to get kills in with the high number of those roaming around dungeons since the risk for casting them was taken out.
Evocare - We are continuously monitoring general combat balance. However, with respect to the BS/EV spells, we'd be more likely to try some alternative solutions first (like making monsters smart enough to somtimes attack the controller rather then the EV/BS)

Lord-Xanthor - *Guest8660861* Can you tell us something about the new szenario? Will Blackthorn strike back? Will the Yew swamp dissaper?
Evocare - I can tell you this scenario has been bugging me a lot. hoho (super sneaky pun)

Lord-Xanthor - *Temptress* Do you plan on doing anything about the exceptionally strong blows dealt by runic weapons? Currently they deal GM damage + (say power in this example). Mages were told that an armor would be given to us in Publish 16 to help with this, but 24 ar barbed leather is a joke compared to 90 damage blows from verite axes, not even mentioning the valorite ones.
Evocare - Combat in general will evolve quite a bit with the release of AoS. =]

Lord-Xanthor - *beans* Lugh, the LS Reporter, would like to know if Evocare would duel 1v1 :)
Evocare - Evocare duels 1v1 on most nights, you just don't know who he is. ;]
Hanse - Mongbats duel better than Evocare. :P
Evocare - Invuln ones...
* AdrickOSI laughs *

Lord-Xanthor - I would like to thank everyone for coming tonight!
Lord-Xanthor - And thanks to all of the OSI folks for spending their personal time talking to us