House of Commons from 1998-07-16

House of Commons from 1998-07-16

DenDragon	Thank you for coming everyone, tonight's topic is "Thievery-related skills, Breaking into Houses and Illegal Activities".
DenDragon	Please phrase your questions accordingly :)
DenDragon	Also, please remember that we may not be able to answer your question
DenDragon	if not, please try again next time.
DenDragon	Our moderator for tonight is Glamdring. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Aphrodite, Drax, or Cironian
DenDragon	Let the meeting commence!
Glamdring	*Borric* Hail! Two part question here... First: was it designed so someone in full plate attacking you with weapon in hand could steal from you in the middle of battle? Or is it an exploit of some sort?Second: DD when do i get the exclusive interview....?? I'm sure you've heard about my show by now. The people want to hear it!!
DesignerD	We'll look at the stealing thing. You shouldn't be able to steal while in the midst of combat, IMHO... as far as the show--is it a nice show? I haven't heard it yet. ;)
Glamdring	*Hymn* Lockpicking seems far to... useless esspecially considering the spell unlock. Any hopes of making the lockpicking skill more useful?
DesignerD	More likely, we'll have to revisit the unlock spell. :) I'll check into that.
Glamdring	*Kieran* Speaking of thievery, are there plans to make spellbooks able to be opened within vendors or trade windows to ensure you are getting what you're paying for?
DesignerD	Hadn't had any plans for it, though I can see the need.
Glamdring	*Torr* Will thieves still be able to steal a key and block your access to your house with a guildstone after the house ownership patch?
DesignerD	No, because only the actual owner of a house will be able to put a guildstone in that house.
Glamdring	*Bosola* Is anything being done about the poisoning skill bug? Currently, high level assassins have LESS of a chance to apply a strong dose to a blade than lesser skill assassins.
DesignerD	We will indeed be fixing any problems that may exist there. This came up in the chat on Tuesday with the Counselors too.
Glamdring	*tusk* I was wondering if OSI could make the other two doors inside a two story lockable for added security, I'm sure all two story owners would agree.
DesignerD	I believe that also came up in the chat on Tuesday and we're looking into it.
Glamdring	*Bowrest* Can I get an official position from the GM Staff concerning "Water Tiles?" Some GM's seem to not think they are good to have and take them from me, and some others don't seem to care. I would like to know one way or another as to whether they are illegal or not to have.
DesignerD	I can't give you an official position from the GMs, because I am not one. But I can tell you they ARE a bug, of course. Generally, a fairly harmless one, except when clever people find a way to twist them into house breakins or whatever. :P
DesignerD	We intend to fix them, of course.
Glamdring	*Baja_Hep* I'm wondering if you could present a "timeline" of sorts, on what OSI has planned for changes in UO for the next couple of months.
DesignerD	Sure. First, we have an update coming hopefully next week.
DesignerD	This update covers mostly exploits, some of which have been around for a while.
DesignerD	You'll be glad to know we built the task list by going to Sploitz, the Bug House, Doomshack, and a couple others and just running down the lists. :)
DesignerD	After that, we'll probably do house ownership next. It's still weeks and weeks away, though. We have a pretty solid idea of what we are going to do, but it's a fair amount of work
DesignerD	The Counselor chat log has some nice details on how we'll go about it
DesignerD	Weapons will probably have to come after that. :( We contemplated doing weapons sooner, by putting in just the revised stats, before tackling more substantial revisions, but decided against it. * DesignerD reminds everyone that questions need to go to a moderator, not directly to him!
Glamdring	*Coflo* #1 If someone steals from a creature, shoudln't that creature break all previous engagements and go after the thief? #2 Why can't you implement the weapons stat change now, and make the changes to combat later? 5 months with nerf weapons is far to long!!!
DesignerD	The first suggestion is a nice AI enhancement... as far as the second... we discussed it a lot, and basically concluded that since it wouldn't really fix the problem with unbalance, it would be sort of misleading to all of you to give a partial solution
DesignerD	especially since players would feel that it was supposed to be the real, full solution
DesignerD	we'd end up revising the weapon stats yet again when we revised th combat code anyway, so it'd be a lot of changes, with little intermediate gain
Glamdring	*Kieran* As always, looting is a problem. Are there any plans so that once a thief steals something from a person, and is killed by a guard, that ONLY the victim can retrieve the item that was taken from them?
DesignerD	Been seeing this idea a lot lately--having the guards return the stolen item when they whack the thief. It's a nice idea. I like it, and (I can hear the thieves screaming now!) I've got it on the mental list...
Glamdring	*BigBear* Due to lag, which is a big factor now, is their any way you can slow down the theiving process? I mean before I know it I have 3 theifs on me in a dungeon and all my regs are gone, then Im attacked... I know this is due to some kind of lag or latency, aparently thiers is better since they do it all within a few seconds
DesignerD	I haven't heard anything about worse performance in dungeons...
DesignerD	Skills SHOULD take a certain amount of time to complete, of course, ideally.
Glamdring	*Greyfox* Oh good. Since the noto patch, Moonglow and other cities have become hellholes where you can't walk down the street without getting your stuff stolen. Are there any plans to address the plague of thieves in town?
DesignerD	We're very concerned about it. Many of the antisocial players who were indiscriminate killers under the noto system are now indiscriminate thieves.
DesignerD	They just move on to trying to steal as much as possible, and to try to trick you into attacking them so they can kill you
Glamdring	*Felmor* In the tuesday log it said that "newer" houses would keep track of who the original placer of the house was. What does "newer" mean? How far back?
Stormwind	I don't remember for certain, but I believe it was about 3 months ago that the house builder tracking was added. I'll try and find out a more certain date.
Glamdring	*Silk* I find that thieves tend to be a big 'target' for modifications because of their inherently 'evil' nature... but honestly, from experience, it really is tougher than it looks. Anyway, what are the future plans for lessening the power of thieves, if any? I've heard rumours of such things as skill loss for all deaths, etc....
DesignerD	Don't have concrete plans to give you, since we haven't settled on a course of action... We'd like to make being a thief a valid and fun profession, with real growth to it as you specialize in it
DesignerD	I think any true thief is also sort of disgusted by the scads of opportunistic petty crooks running around, and would prefer that dilettantes got out of the way of their roleplay :)
DesignerD	The overly common thievery rightn ow has no style, and gives the thief profession a bad name, IMHO
Glamdring	*Lore* Since the introduction of the noto patch, PK's have been lessened. But that is not good (maybe for the newbies). PK's and NPK's have no challenge anymore. Are you thinking of changing this, or just going to risk the loss of veteran customers bored of killing monsters?
DesignerD	I don't think the right answer to that is making it so that the 10% who are bored can kill the 90% who don't want to get killed. In other words, going back isn't an option, IMHO
DesignerD	The right solution is finding more things for the advanced player to do--we call these "elder games" in the online development racket... owning houses, guild politcs, and running taverns are good examples of them
DesignerD	So we need to find elder games suited for the killer types--something like quests, special monsters, new means of achievement, that sort of thing. ("Become a dragonslayer! You must slay 100 dragons solo"...)
Glamdring	*Balt* Are you ever plannin on making GM lockpickers able to break into houses and boats? And if you are, don't you think that would be a little unfair and chaotic?
Stormwind	Yes, having GM lockpickers pick house and ship locks is on our wish list. We have to be careful tho and balance it with the difficulty of building a house and furnishing it, otherwise players would lose a lot of work when their house is broken into.
Glamdring	*Kael* whenever I steal from someone, I am flagged criminal to EVERYONE for 2 minutes. Instead, shouldn't I only be flagged to the victim, especially if we are the only two people on the screen, where nobody would get the "you notice..." message?
DesignerD	I don't actually know offhand which way it is supposed to be. So I can't really answer ya--I'll have to get back to you all on that one. It's a possibel change that on the face of it seems to make sense, but I'd have to think it through
Glamdring	*Blackhand* Now in real life when you catch someone picking through your belongings it is ussually considered illegal isn't it? So why can people just sit around and snoop though your pack as the will in towns now?
DesignerD	It seemed an awfully minor thing to essentially put a death penalty on. :)
Glamdring	*thorg* DD how about adding a ladder of status for murders, such as. Weekend, occational, proffesional, mass, and psycotic?
DesignerD	Not sure what exactly you'd mean by a ladder. You mean in the titles, I guess? Those titles as seem sort of (forgive me) cheesy, honestly... :)
Glamdring	*Jithero* any plans to do something with Dungeon Despise? It is huge, but very few players go there because the monsters carry no loot (unless you are a tailor..). Revamping the population of Despise would also help alleviate the overcrowding most dungeons have been experiencing since the Rep system went in.
DesignerD	Been seeing this a lot, so it's been climbing up on my "check into this" list.
Glamdring	*Stitches_Dragon* When will the jailing for criminals ever happen? Will it ever happen?
DesignerD	Wel, we don't even have jail facilities in most towns. So it'd be a feature somewhat hard to implement. Nonetheless we've been thinking about it
Glamdring	*Torr* Any new information on being able to defend your home with force from house looters?
Stormwind	No new information. It is on the wish list, and will be integrated with the reputation system.
Glamdring	*Torr* Are there any specifics that you can give us on how the house ownership changes will prevent thievery and exploits?
Stormwind	If a key is stolen from the owner, the owner can change the locks on the house so that the theif can not continually loot the house.
Stormwind	The owner does not require the key to get into the house or change the locks.
Glamdring	*Qo`ai-morael* I've seen the signs around certain Healer's shoppes, but I am still confused. What is your standpoint on killing newly res'ed thieves? is it punishable in any way?
Stormwind	The publish currently on Test Center has a change whereby criminals can not resurrect until their criminal flag wears off.
Glamdring	*Sensei* How about making exceptionals visible like potions are now, this would be really nice for bowcrafters and smiths who want to sell their wares.
Stormwind	Sorry, I mean healer won't ressurect you if you are flagged criminal :-)
Stormwind	Adding more exceptional items to the crafting skills is on our wish list. I don't know about exceptional not being visible tho, we'll look into it.
Glamdring	*Ramierez* Are there any plans to stop the tactics where the thieves pair up, one blue and one grey. When the grey dies because he got caught, the blue will rush up and loot the grey's corpse.
DesignerD	That's basically why the suggestion is made a lot to have guards return items that thieves steal. Outside of town, of course, that doesn't do anything. Not sure there IS a good solution for that
Glamdring	*Jael-HG* It seems to me that, as you say, a lot of thieves are ex pkers...how about lowering fame requirements for order/chaos guilds so that they can go back to their killing?
DesignerD	Something we are indeed looking at :)
Glamdring	*Skywise* There is no way to identify different full sets of keyrings currently. Can empty keyrings be named like keys are. This could be done by double clicking an empty keyring then targeting itself & naming it like keys are. Many people have more then one set of keys.
Stormwind	Definately something we'd like to do. One problem is that double-clicking and targeting the keyring currently dumps all keys out. We could add a menu to the keyring (empty or rename).
Glamdring	*Kramer* How about making the duration of Incognito more controlable, like after u cast it it slowly drains mana, would give thieves, or RolePlaying thieves more "style"
Stormwind	But only naming a keyring when empty is too restrictive IMHO.
DesignerD	You mean, it would give mage-thieves more "style"... ;) Seriously though... not sure why exactly that suggestion would enhance things that much,
Glamdring	*Smitty* Any plans on making snoopers grey so that victims can protect themselves in town without being guard killed?
DesignerD	No plans to do that at this time. If we flag them criminal, you could call guards on someone for snooping, which seems a bit extreme. Newbies double-click other people's backpack all the time.
DesignerD	we're aware of the problem, and it's possibel to do it with some kind of additional protection for the casual snooper though. But we haven't really worked at it to find a solution
Glamdring	*Craw_UOSS* What's being done about murderers avoiding stat loss by returning their own head? Is this a bug or a feature?
DesignerD	Bug, murderers should not be able to return their own head.
Glamdring	*Kael* When stealing in a closed room in town, when the only occupants are me and the victim, shouldn't the victim be the only one allowed to call the guards? It seems that any NPC or PC within a certain radius can detect the crime and call the guards (perhaps have the crime detect on a line-of-sight basis?)
DesignerD	Line of sight makes sense to me, but I don't actually know how that's working right now. We'll look into it.
Glamdring	*C-Prompt* The strength potion seems useless. How about an invis potion for us thieves?
DesignerD	Not a big fan of invis potions, sorry. If the strength potion is useless, though, we can look at upgrading it.
Glamdring	*`Gandalf* Off topic a little, Will monsters ever be able to leave a house? As it is you walk all over, monsters are everywhere. They are just in houses though.
Stormwind	Yes, monsters being able to move items and escape from houses is on our near-future wish list.
Glamdring	*DigiOger* can u publish this mighty WISH LIST??? on the update center maybe? might stop some repeating questions on chat
DesignerD	Well, we've looked into it. But the decision for now was not to publish it, because it might raise too many expectations. It's a LONG list, and it's not prioritized, and everyone would want their thing done first, and people would think the whole thing was promised
DesignerD	In practice, most of that wishlist may wel never get done, just because new things come up, and new ideas catch fire, and old ones get forgotten.
Glamdring	*Damios* Lately, lamers in opposing guilds enjoy to spam while fighting to prevent healing and it lags you EXTREMELY bad. I am talking about the people who spam ZZZZZZZZ over and over. Could you possibly boot players for flooding with a "CL" or put some kind of spam filter in. As it is, using the ignore command takes too long in the middle of a fight with 3 heavy cbow wielding archers.
DesignerD	So we don't want to publish it and raise hopes of some obscure features which might never materialize
Stormwind	Yes, a spam limiter will be in the publish in testing on Test Center. Basically you can only speak so fast, and the client will queue up speech if you are speaking too fast. The server also verifies that you are not speaking too fast.
Glamdring	*Presto* Every day I lose about 2 hours worth of work when the servers are shut down. Why aren't backups being done immediately before the shutdown?
Stormwind	We are looking into non-daily reboot cycles and making backups faster. The backup actually takes a while to complete, the server restarts as soon as the backup finishes.
Glamdring	*Shalafi* You're NPC escort quests have been a big success. Any plans for similar projects?
DesignerD	We have plans, but nothing that we're really ready to go forward with. I'd like to bring back the "fetch" quests, only make sure that the "target item" is someplace cool and dangerous, like "Fetch me the Golden Sceptre of TooLaRooLa from this obscure island guarded by this mysterious beast."
DesignerD	Almost exactly the same code, but very different feel and adventure :)
DesignerD	Similar thing could be done with the murder quests--instead of a random guy, it makes an evil mage tower in the woods, and asks you to murder the mage...
Glamdring	*Icedude* but when the new house patch comes out will you be lowering prices of houses?
DesignerD	No.
DesignerD	We want houses to be a lot rarer than they are now.
Glamdring	*Keldoryne* Will there ever be a fame gain for rogues when they steal from another famnous person? If a thief suceeds in stealing, say, 400 GP from the Illustrious Joe, then wouldn't he gain some sort of fame since the populace will have heard of him?
DesignerD	We're actually sort of curious about adding fame gain to numerous activities beyond what's there now... in particular, skill usage, if we can find a way to do it
Glamdring	*anakin\vx* What happens to guildstones when someone who is not the guildmaster claims the house?
Stormwind	We are considering adding the guildmaster to the allowed claimants list for houses.
Stormwind	We are also considering either removing the guildstone or giving the owner the option of removing the guildstone.
Glamdring	*`Gandalf* Wouldn't it make sense , in a fight, to have the same effect on a xbow fighter as on a mage. If they are hit they can't reload and fire? Xbows are tough to reload.
DesignerD	Interruption of bow nocking is indeed one of the possibilities for trying to get arhcery back into balance. But we're not sure that it would work, given that the archer can runa nd shoot. So we'd probably need to do more than thatm, or take a different approach
Glamdring	*Mephisto* Are you ever going to get to the reputation related looting issue, by that I mean will you ever reinstate the 'higher noto(rep now) the less items are left on your corpse' idea?
DesignerD	No plans for it.
Glamdring	*Citern* the trap spell is utterly useless as it is now, any thief just uses an axe on a chestand it is destroyed, regardless any traps why not enhance it, for example a gm mage could invoke summ elem trap into a chest if the chest is opened with no key or destroyed the elem will be created attacking the one who destroyed/opened it magic untraping chest should always carry a small chance to make the trap go off depending on the casters magery (cre
DesignerD	Frankly, I'd rather leave magic trapping exactly as it is, and enhance non-magical trapping instead. Magic already subsumes too many other skills, I don't see any reason to make it that much cooler ;)
Glamdring	*Valinor* Will the exploit with casting magic lock on a chest so that you can be invunderable to thievary and yet still use the items in the chest.?! It's a clear exploit since they can't be snooped and stolen from, but people can still cast etc without worry.
DesignerD	Yep, we heard about that one today and intend to fix it.
Glamdring	*Felmor* any plans to flag people who assist folks engaging in guild warfare criminal? Guild warfare doesn't work when guilds bring their non-guilded buddies to heal them!
DesignerD	No, we don't have any plans to do so. Our feeling is that if you are engaged in a mutually declared war with people who "cheat" that way, declare peace.
DesignerD	They are craven cowards who wouldn't know a fair fight if it bit them, so why play with them?
DesignerD	There are many worries with trying to flag people who participate on the sidelines in that way, and it also would eliminate the ability to play "Red Cross" types who heal everyone because of their beliefs
Glamdring	*BRAN* In the past the team mentioned more customizing available for housing. I am talking about those rumored independant forges etc you were going to be able to buy, and carpets and so on. Is this still something to look forward to soon, or is this to be expected in UOGold instead?
Stormwind	Yes, they will appear in the near future. We may add the to the publish currently in testing on Test Center.
FrostByghte	The conference will continue for five more minutes everyone.
Stormwind	the = them
Glamdring	*Keldoryne* This has been a topic on numerous BBs and I wanted to know if you guys are looking into fixing some of the issues with fame; if you are Kind at one moment, and are attacked by murderers, and you choose to do the valiant thing and fight and die, you will lose fame...But if you run away you keep it. That really makes no sense in reality, since in the Chilvary Times (as I call them) you would damage your reputation by fleeing from enemi
DesignerD	Well, it's awfully hard to detect that you ran away, unfortunately. The fame scale isn't going to be perfect. The best way to look at fame is to think of it as XP, frankly
Glamdring	*Shalafi* On the archer thread ... Being able to run and shoot is a huge benefit, yet it's realistic and shouldn't be taken away. Perhaps a loss in "to-hit" percentage while moving would help. Resulting in better accuracy for archers who stand still and shoot.
DesignerD	Yes, running and riding horseback while shooting is of course a very valid way of doing things, and it DOES actually hurt your accuracy even now. It may not affect it enough, however. :)
Glamdring	*Roland* What will happen to a vendor attached to a house of which the ownership changes? Also, how about giving vendors a 'friends' list of multiple owners, this should decrease the need for multiple houses/vendors .
Stormwind	If the new owner of the house is not the owner of the vendor, the vendor will go away. The vendor friends list is on the wish list.
Glamdring	*Barticus* Are there any plans on making deadly poison deadlier? Considering the cost/difficulty of making deadly potion, it is way to easy to purge. (Relevant because many thieves use poisoned weapons.)
DesignerD	No plans for that at the moment. Given the popularity of posion right now, we don't want to make it more powerful., We are in fact considering giving a karma hit to people every time they swing with a poisoned weapon. :)
Glamdring	*anakin\vx* you mention that the Guildmaster may be added to the claim list for houses. what will his precedence be? surely not above the master key holder?
Stormwind	We don't know for certain yet. I think the precedence will be above normal key holder.
FrostByghte	I would like to thank everyone for coming to the chat...we are wrapping it up now....thanks to the Dev team for showing up.....
DenDragon	Thanks for attending!
FrostByghte	and the question takers.....the IRCops....and everyone else.
Stormwind	C-ya