House of Commons from 2003-12-04

House of Commons from 2003-12-04

DevilHimself	Welcome, everyone, to tonight's HoC. Please make sure you submit your questions to either [QT]GreyPawn, [QT]Ling or [QT]Varrick. After a short introduction from the devs, we'll be on our way!
Fertbert	Him, my name is Fertbert, and I have a problem. I'm a client programmer. :)
MrTact	Hello, I'm MrTact, lead server programmer & head whipping boy
Hanse	I'm the mongbat lord.
Hanse	Oh, and I'm a designer...
AerynOSI	Aeryn - QA. I kill mongbats.
Sannio	I'm Sannio, and I'm on the Community Relations team.
DevilHimself	*Tyrone_Shoe* Is the slow movement of pets and the inability to call back attacked pets a feature or a "feature"?
MrTact	It's a bug
MrTact	There's a fix for it in code review & should be on test center shortly
DevilHimself	*Gamera* Vex stated during the May 1st UOHoC chat that soulstones would be coming sometime after publish 19. Can you update us on that?
MrTact	Sure
MrTact	"After pub 19" is a long, long time.
MrTact	In other words, there are no firm plans for soulstones right this moment
DevilHimself	*RowenaR* Many players in Trammel would like to see champ spawns there or in Ilshenar (with +15 & 20 scrolls). Is the Dev Team considering this?
Hanse	Nope...Felucca gets the priviledge of having powerscrolls...
Hanse	there are champion spawns in ilshenar, but no powerscrolls...
DevilHimself	*FatManDancing* Is there anything being done so that casual pvpers can manage to compete in pvp? How is a casual gamer supose to get the power scrolls, items and money in order to compete in this game?
MrTact	Our long term plans for PVP do address the casual player.
MrTact	I can't really go into detail about that right now though.
DevilHimself
Durnik	Regarding Ilshenar champion spawns -- Last I heard, they were "broken" -- unable to pass a certain point, no matter how fast you kill the spawn. Is this true? Will there be a fix?
AerynOSI	This has been written up.
speedman	I completed an Ilsh champ spawn the other day
speedman	They are doable :)
DevilHimself
jiinx	question for Hanse: are changes/additions to the plant system anywhere on your radar?
Hanse	Ah, I think we're busy working on pub 22 right now... I know we didn't have anything planned for this publish.
	* speedman makes radar beeping sound *
Hanse	My radar has big things on it in the future, but I'm keeping my mouth shut til management lets me speak about em. :)
DevilHimself	*Mantees* Will chefs and fisherman get some love in the near future? Will food ever be _useful_ in the game?
Hanse	Fishermen get a boost in publish 22.
Hanse	fished up treasure chests will have better magical loot in them...
Hanse	which is a side-effect of a fix we did today for treasure maps....
Hanse	As far as chefs...we've been getting a good bit of requests from Japan to beef em up...but I don't know what will be done in regards to that...
DevilHimself	*Lanto[factions]* Q: Sannio, Wanna join me on a champ spawn one day?
Sannio	That sounds like it would actually be pretty fun. However, my combat style is pretty much based around me diving into the mix and getting beaten to a pulp. I don't think I'd do much to advance the champion spawn to the next stage. :]
Sannio	But, I'm a go-er. Lanto (and *only* Lanto, all you opportunists out there ;), send me an e-mail at [email protected] and we'll see if I can work something into my schedule.
DevilHimself	*Siber* what is the problem with luck? why does it never seem to work properly? when will it be fixed?
Hanse	You're just unlucky.
	* MrTact thinks Hanse is *so* clever to bash our paying customers *
MrTact	So, I think I have a handle on the issues with luck at this point
MrTact	Some of it is perceptual, where players think that with a massive amount of luck they should always be getting uber-l33t items
MrTact	which isn't really true
MrTact	But the loot that is dropping IS on the mediocre side, and as I mentioned in the meetup the other night . . . well . . . it's all my fault
MrTact	Long story short, I hope to be able to remedy this within the next couple of publishes
DevilHimself	*Coop* Aeryn.. will you go a little in depth about your QA procedures? What I'm trying to get at is for instance pub21 enhancement changes.. do you actually grab a bunch of items and try to enhance them with all types of materials and record results to see if the desired change is actually working as intended or what?
AerynOSI	We do actually create the items and enhance them and compare that to what is supposed to occur.
AerynOSI	We also rely on the people playing on the Test Centers to also do the same.
AerynOSI	Those extra thousand eyes do help!
DevilHimself	<perianwyr-food> The UO economy is undergoing changes, with the vendor stuff being hopefully only the first of many. What else is coming with regards to gold faucet/sink management?
MrTact	We don't have any plans at the moment for specific tuning on the economy.
MrTact	Aside from fixing any bugs that might crop up, that is.
DevilHimself	*Gamera* There has been some talk about combining Carpentry and Bowcraft. Is this something you're considering? If so, can you tell us when it might be implemented?
Hanse	That's something management would bash my head in with a rusty heater shield if I commented.
Hanse	It's still being discussed, but no decision yet.
DevilHimself	*ghyde* So the Xmas gifts are all-new, with new graphics, when can we expect a teaser/spoiler to be thrown out??
Sannio	Well, we're still keeping the gifts a bit mysterious, but I will say that the art is all new. (And if you were expecting bells you're going to be disappointed. ;)
Sannio	We had several members of the team work on the art.
DevilHimself	*John* Thieves have been unable to steal containers of any kind from another players backpack since AoS came out. Are y'all working on a fix for this?
Hanse	That's as designed and not a bug.
Hanse	We're not considering changing it, at the moment.
DevilHimself	Urtuk* erm, well, Do you plan on leaving the test center like that? I kinda liked it when I was able to set skills instantly and try new things. Instead of having to advance my character to a point, and if I wanted to chage, grind my skills again. This is what I do on normal shards.
MrTact	Yes we do.
MrTact	We debated endlessly the pros and cons of the configuration choices we made, and we feel we have the best combination of options to help us catch the bugs that have been slipping by us the last few pubs
MrTact	The heart of the issue is, no matter how rigorously QA tests, they aren't playing the game. We feel that, while not as many people are going to be attracted to Test Sosaria as if we left it as a sandbox, this is going to create a more accurate play pattern which will turn up those bugs.
MrTact	I know a lot of people are upset that we aren't going to have that permanent sandbox, but we have limited test center resources & we had to make a decision about how to deploy in the manner that best serves the service as a whole.
MrTact	And in a few months, if that doesn't bear out, we will investigate changing it. But for the foreseeable future, that's how it's going to be
AerynOSI	Remember [email protected] for test center found bugs!
DevilHimself	*Trelim* Why are non-faction players getting silver from faction alligned monsters.
AerynOSI	That is a bug and it has been written up. It shoudl be fixed for publish 22.
AerynOSI	written up in our bug database. *looks at Sannio*
DevilHimself	*Shad* There is no insurance on Siege. I'm afraid in the future, new players will be unable to compete in PvP due to a lack of a PBD. Maybe we could possibly continue giving out PBDs on Siege?
Hanse	personal bless deeds were a reward for a bug earlier this year
Hanse	erm...I actually don't remember the exact details...
Hanse	it's possible we could do a "every character gets a pbd", but right now they're turned off... We'll review this for a possible future change...no eta, tho
DevilHimself
Merleena	For dialup users that have no hope of obtaining DSL or Cable..We cannot participate in the Gauntlet, Champ Spawns or in any EM events...Is that going to change? Is there anything that can be changed in game settings to improve this?
MrTact	Naturally, speedman just left
MrTact	However
MrTact	I can tell you that he has been hard at work picking the low-hanging fruit on the lag tree
	* MrTact wonders if that metaphor was totally incomprehensible *
MrTact	ahem
MrTact	Anyway, he has some fixes that he's checked in that I'm pretty sure are going to make pub 22
MrTact	I also intend to keep him working on lag fixes for a while, so we should see some real improvement in the near future.
Fertbert	As for setting, you could put item properties into single click mode (in the options gump), and you could assign keys to the update range macros and decrease your update range...
Fertbert	You can also try increasing the size of your housing cache in the options gump.
Fertbert	Do things things should help a bit.
DevilHimself	Alarin[TSE] In Malas it seems that tracking is not working properly. Any chance we can see a fix to tracking? (The arrow appears far above the person you are tracking)
AerynOSI	I've not heard of this issue, but I can definately check it out tommorrow and enter it into the bug database if Malas tracking is broken.
Fertbert	*to clarify my previous response "Doing these things" is how the beginning that last sentance of mine should have read.
DevilHimself
Alexander	Question: A GM told me that if someone attacks you outside of a guard zone while you are in a guard zone, calling guards on them will no longer work. Is this a bug or was it changed?
AerynOSI	This is a bug and the issue has been written up in our bug database.
DevilHimself	*Mantees* we know that PUB22 will be mainly focused on bug fixing, but will be there any new features in it too? If yes, can you hint us something about it?
	* AerynOSI starts humming a Christmas carol. *
	* MrTact rolls on the floor laughing *
DevilHimself	*Gamera* Hanse, are mongbats unisex?
Hanse	eek
Hanse	I'm not an expert on that.
Hanse	thanks, g'nite...
DevilHimself	And that's the game!
DevilHimself	Thanks to the members of OSI that came out to visit tonight. And thanks to all of you for attending.
DevilHimself	More general UO chat can be had in #ultima-online
Sannio	Thanks for coming, everyone!