Brekkee - Good evening and welcome to another great Stratics House of Commons chat, tonight our guests are the developers of Ultima Online! Tonight’s topic is Samurai Empire. Remember that this is a development chat, and as such only questions relating to the topic will be answered.
Brekkee - Please send your questions to [QT]Elm or [QT]Tolkin - to do so type /query NICK and type in the window that pops up. Questions sent to me or the developers will not make it into the lineup, so don't bother. Full logs of the chat will be up on http://uo.stratics.com shortly after the chat.

Brekkee - We'll start with a brief introduction from the developers, now would be a good time to send those questions.
Leurocian - Hail and Well Met! I'm Leurocian, Designer UO Live
wilki_EA - Hi, I'm Wilki, UO Community Rep!
OSI_speedman - I'm speedman... but i guess you could see that by my name... :)
EvilMantis - EvilMantis, UO Live programmer
Saralah - Saralah...programmer
Niobe - Hiya, I'm still Niobe and I'm a designer
Fertbert - Howdy, I'm the Live Team Lead
Binky_EA - Welcome - I'm Binky, Online Community Manager

Brekkee - *Lyrian* What were the 3 sea creatures that didn't make it into UOSE, and how soon could they be added (if they ever are)?
Niobe - Hi Lyrian
Niobe - The sea creatures that did not make it into UOSE were a mixture of beasts from Ultima fiction and Japanese Lore
Niobe - They were cut fairly early on in the project in order to focus our efforts on some higher priority designs, as much as we would have liked to keep them.
Niobe - It would be fairly difficult to add these exact creatures in because they never reached an implementation stage and art is not available to quickly add them to the game.

Brekkee - *ghyde* I have been adventuring in the UOSE lands on the island with the volcano, and I find the tsuki wolves seem to respawn a little faster than I can handle them - are there any plans to tweak UOSE spawn levels?
Leurocian - While there are no specific plans to alter that particular spawn at this time, we do have an advanced spawner that has been in the works that we plan on debuting soon to a shard near you :)

Brekkee - *Phantame* Is there any chance of Cranes being made tameable? They're one of the cutest new creatures in SE and I'm disappointed I can't tame one.
Niobe - They are cute, aren't they? I dig those cranes.
Leurocian - We really should make them tameable :) Can we? Can we?
Niobe - We decided that we needed to keep a particular creature, in this case the cranes, as a symbol of the Tokuno Islands
Niobe - And we worked with our marketing department to select a creature that is not aggressive and could represent the new landmass.
Niobe - In order to keep the crane from leaving its home, we needed to keep it from being a creature that can be tamed
Niobe - so that is why the crane is not a creature that can be tamed.
Niobe - I hope you get a chance to visit the cranes in the new lands.

Brekkee - *LBeth* Leurocian mentioned recently that the team would be working on crafting changes for one of the next publishes. This triggered some very long discussions among concerned players. When might we expect to hear more about any changes, and will the appropriate devs make themselves available to join in discussions when that time comes
Fertbert - Let me start by quoting a post I made on Stratics this morning:
Fertbert - "We're still in the design and planning stages. We're striving to be the best in crafting so we're approaching this cautiously and making sure that we have a solid long-term game plan before we start any part of what is very likely to be a phased implementation. There aren't likely to be any considerable crafting changes in Publish 29. Further out, I can't yet comment as we're still in the early planning phase for Publish 30."
Leurocian - But Crafting is definitely something I want the Live Team to address soon. speedman has some cool ideas as well for crafting. We'll keep you all posted when we have more to share.
Fertbert - As we fill out the high level design and start work on the design details for each phase you're likely to see additional player<->developer interaction.
Leurocian - Definitely.

Brekkee - *Looker* SE gave us so many Japanese items, but not futons. Since the artwork is in game, is there any chance they will be made craftable?
Niobe - Hi Looker
Niobe - We received the futon art assets really late in the development cycle and there was a chance they would not get in at all
Niobe - Fortunately we were able to use the art to decorate some of the towns and such before we had our final lock down on world building
Niobe - In order to get the futons as a craftable, there's additional and significant art that needs to be done....
Niobe - Also, our version of getting the bed in the game took a bit of special placement the art with other collision materials. I'm not sure it would be possible to add it without redoing the piece entirely..
Niobe - So I'm not going to tell you it's impossible, but it may be lower priority than bugs and other content the live team would like to get in the game.

Brekkee - *C_Talanithus_UOLS* THere are still various house tiles missing, both from the AoS as well as SE tile sets. Is this something we can expect the Live Team to correct, or must we wait for the next expansion?
Fertbert - The live team will work to correct the remaining problems with the existing tiles (bad lights, tiles that don't line up right, etc), but it's unlikely that we'll add too many of the "missing" tiles in the near future.
Fertbert - These however will be handled on a case-by-case basis as time permits.

Brekkee - *Ravenspyre* is there any plans to address the disaprity between some of the new weapons compared to the old ones, for isntance, the wakizashi, smaller, and does less damage than the katana, but has a speed of 44 compared to the katanas 46 speed. Right now fencers are favored too much in the speed department for weapons.
Niobe - Hi Ravenspyre
Niobe - During initial weapon balancing and through final tweaking we compared speed and damage rates to current weapons within weapon types and across the board
Niobe - If you take a look at the weapon's in game, they are not all equal for dps...
Niobe - But we also adjusted for special moves associated with the weapon.
Niobe - So some may have a lower dps but have a powerful special move..
Niobe - With that said, we want your feedback on the weapons and weapon balancing.
Niobe - And if things are really out of whack we'll want to address it.

Brekkee - *Aucillion2000* A: is their any chance the skill cap could be raised for cramped ninja templates and B: will their ever be a ninja guild to buy some of the stuff you have to use the thieves guild for with out the no murder count restriction in the thieves guild since ninjas are assassins
MrTact - You will probably not see the skill cap raised, no.
MrTact - Soulstones were our way of addressing the skill point squeeze from adding the new professions.
MrTact - There are other changes to skills planned that should address this problem as well, but I can't really talk about them at this juncture.

Brekkee - *Kuja[OES]* There are still some issues with the new war system introduced with Samurai Empire, such as crosshealing problems among warred guilds in Felucca. Are these being addressed?
EvilMantis - I have this very issue on my todo list.
EvilMantis - Depending on circumstances, this could either make Pub29 or Pub30

Brekkee - *Telnarn* Can we expect any SE themed Power Up programs in the near future? If so, what?
Binky_EA - Look for some UOSE themed PowerUp! Programs coming in the VERY near future. I can’t give any specific dates at the moment, but keep an eye out on uo.com and stratics for the details.

Brekkee - *Alderis* I've noticed my rune beetle after death never recovers any skill loss over 100.0 so while it might take another 200 deaths it will eventualy be down to only GM poisoning, is there any plans to allow pets to regain skill over GM?
Leurocian - This is also on my ToDo. I'm going to look into this tomorrow internally and see if it is something we can slate for publish 29/30.

Brekkee - *Draconi* Fictionwise, what political relationship do the Tokuno Islands have with greater Britannia? Unlike Malas the cities weren't dead when we got there - so, does it have its own government?
Niobe - Hey Draconi, that's a really interesting question
Niobe - We don't know much about Tokuno and it's overall political structure....Looks like a bit of a mystery to me..
Niobe - I'd be interested in what all of you think about the politics and culture in the new lands!

Brekkee - *agentmith* any intention of undoing the 10 mana cost for smoke bombs? Ninjas are already strapped for mana as is, I don't see how the mana cost balances anything.
MrTact - The ability to hide at will, even during combat, is a powerful one.
MrTact - We wanted to limit the degree to which ninjas could use this ability over a short span of time.
MrTact - Requiring an item doesn't really do that, because they smoke bombs don't weigh all that much. Making the ability use mana use is the obvious candidate to create the desired effect.
MrTact - So, short answer, "probably not"

Brekkee - *Lyrian* Will the Siege Perilous problem with training in Ninjitsu/Bushido from 0 skill be addressed in the next publish?
Leurocian - This is on my ToDo as well. So hopefully we can address this in publish 29 (no promises).

Brekkee - *LBeth* Is there a chance you would make bigger Bonsai trees? They are so tiny
Niobe - Aww, but they are sooo cute!
Niobe - We are not able to resize the art so i don't see larger Bonsai trees coming anytime soon
Niobe - But maybe if you have a really good green thumb, who knows. :)

Brekkee - *Steel* Will there be major artifacts (such as axe of heavens, etc.) based off the new weapons? And if so, how soon?
Leurocian - Possibly...as far as when, perhaps soon :)

Brekkee - *elmo2* Has fame/karma been changed on lesser hiryu's before pub28 i gain fame at Glorious Lord now i get no fame from then at all
Niobe - The fame and karma was adjusted downward because of a bug
Niobe - The Lesser Hiryu, much less difficult compared to the normal Hiryu but had the same fame and karma levels
Niobe - it was supposed to be fixed before we went live and I apologize the chance wasn't done before launch.
Niobe - It still should have fairly high levels though :)
Niobe - er and that's CHANGE not chance

Brekkee - *LBeth* Will we be receiving any special items for completing Tukuno champspawns? If so what do you have in mind?
Leurocian - Very possibly so....
Leurocian - As far as what do we have in mind? Soon :)

Brekkee - That will wrap it up for tonight. I’d like to thank the devs for coming! The log for tonight’s chat will be up shortly on http://uohoc.stratics.com

Brekkee - Thank you all for joining us! You can join #Ultima-Online to chat more about the game.
Niobe - Night everyone! Thanks for coming!
Binky_EA - Thanks all for joining us tonight!
Leurocian - Have a good night!
OSI_speedman - Good night!
wilki_EA - Farewell!