Storm Chat from 2003-02

Storm Chat from 2003-02

This chat was originally posted at the now-defunct IanStorm.com .

Kehleyr	Welcome to the 6th UO StormChat! Thankyou to everyone from Origin for attending!
Kehleyr	This chat will be moderated, general chat can continue during in #ultima-online. To submit a question, please /msg one of the question takers listed in the channel topic. Please do not message myself, or anyone from EA: Origin, they will be ignored.
Kehleyr	Our question takers are: Peaches, Shroud, Meerkat & TrinityX
Kehleyr	They are easily recognisable by the [IS] in front of their names.
Kehleyr	Tonight's topic will be: Age of Shadows. All inappropriate questions will be ignored!
Kehleyr	*Raven* if you could please ask them if they ever intend to make archery count towards best weopons skills as it stands now an archer is unable to use a sword that has best weapon skills
Vex	Unfortuantely, we didn't get as large a turnout of UO design team personnel tonight, and the people best qualified to answer that question aren't present. All I can say right now is "we'll take that into consideration." Sorry I can't offer a better answer.
	<font* Sannio notes there's still some bad weather conditions in the area, and some people are having troubles getting home
Kehleyr	*wilki24* In regards to the higher rarity weapons and armor that spawned in Doom, like the Zyronic Claw, what is the spawn rate on the level 9, 10, 11 and 12 items, and will they spawn different items over time?
Vex	I don't know the details -- Helios and others worked on the rare spawn in Doom -- but I do know that at the higher levels of rarity the spawn interval can be weeks or even months. I believe the plan is to cycle new items into the mix over time.
MrTact	- style="vertical-align:top;"
MrTact	Expect to see proper answers on the MyUO boards in day or two.
Kehleyr	*Zzyn* What prompted the move to make the new rares only available to thieves? And so readily? It seems unbalancing to the overallplayer base and shifts the coin(and the goodies) in a most interesting direction... Can you comment?
MrTact	Well, seeing as we've nerfed a lot of thief abilities over the past several publishes, we thought it was about time to give something back to the profession.
Kehleyr	*Coop* When it comes to enhancing items. Is your success/failure rate based on your smith/tailor skill? Do we get a bonus in success rate for being over GM, 120 smith for example
Vex	The success rate depends on a number of factors, skill included. AFAIK having skill over 100 does help. The biggest factor, however, is how many magic properties the item has to begin with and how many you are trying to add. The more there are, the greater chance of failure and the greater chance of catastrophic failure.
Vex	There is some info about this available in the UO Playguide at http://www.uo.com/
Kehleyr	*IceWyrm* Will you be fixing the Runebook lockdown and Potion keg issues?
MrTact	Hell yes
MrTact	Issues like these are very high on our priority list, in roughly this order:
MrTact	Shard crashers
MrTact	Blackholes
MrTact	Serious gameplay issues, such as the ones mentioned
Kehleyr	*MaddMatt* The 'new' 3D avatars have not been accepted well. Will there be any changes?
Sannio	Their acceptance or not is a subjective matter, but it is safe to say that artwork will continue to be tweaked in the 3D client over time
Sannio	We're always looking to improve our artwork, and appreciate all feedback you care to give. A great place to share opinions are the UO.com boards.
Kehleyr	*FireBird* As someone who holds monthly pet tournaments for tamers and with the HP's reduced so much with pets such as Frenzied Ostards making a battle between them last less then 5 seconds thus taking away from the taming community, is this being looked into with some possible changes?
Vex	Game balance, combat system included, is something that we continuously review and tweak. I can't say specifically at this time whether the damage rates of tamed reatures will be adjusted in the near future, but we'll be sure to take this into consideration.
Kehleyr	*MyN_Fusion* Is The Damage Dealt By Monsters {IE. Imps Dragons) Supposed To BE So High? Especially Getting Killed By One Fireball From A Dragon?
MrTact	Well, dragons are SUPPOSED to be tough . . .
MrTact	Imps, on the other hand, we have it on good authority that someone sneakily imbued them with a bit more power than intended.
MrTact	So you will probably see them get adjusted back to a more sane power level in a future publish.
Kehleyr	*Coop* With the changes in AoS, Luck being the main factor here for increased chance of better items, kill stealing has become an even greater problem. Are looting rights up for some changes to prevent people from casting a single fireball and looting your loot?
MrTact	OK, so let's be clear on the whole Luck deal
MrTact	Luck gives you a % chance to get one additional item per "loot list" on a creature
MrTact	Higher level creatures (e.g. the Dark Fathers) have 3 or 4 loot lists.
MrTact	Then each item has the same % chance to get one additonal property, and have the property bumped up in its intensity" by a small amount.
MrTact	I've seen some theories flying around about how luck works that were . . . humorous, to say the least
MrTact	But that's EXACTLY what it does
MrTact	As far as looting rights go . . .
MrTact	We see a lot of players that are unhappy with the current situation, so there's a good chance we'd revisit that in an upcoming publish.
MrTact	Can't say exactly when, though
Vex	I think MrTact meant to say that Luck increases the quality of the magic items you get, but not the chance of getting one in the first place.
Kehleyr	*Dementia* Will Tinkers be able to make magic rings or bracelets?
Vex	Right now that's not on the radar. This has been talked about and considered, but no firm decisions on it have yet been made. Sorry I can't give a firm answer here.
Kehleyr	*NotSoWise* Phase 3 any closer? And what about peoples who condemed house's are falling within hours?
MrTact	Yes, it is closer.
MrTact	We desperately wanted to get it out before AoS, if only to annoy certain people on the UO boards :-)
MrTact	But it should be obvious that AoS really needed all of our attention.
MrTact	Once the service is stable, we will turn our attention back to getting this completed.
MrTact	But we're not going to deploy it until it's ready. Obviously, we've gotten a little gun-shy about big launches . . .
MrTact	As for the condemned houses decaying, yes we are actively looking into this.
Kehleyr	*Oisin* I have noticed that champion skulls no longer remain on the corpse but instead appear in one of the players' backpacks. How exactly is the skull awarded in the post-AoS world?
Vex	One lucky soul is selected from the list of people who have looting rights on the corpse, and the skull is given directly to that person. This was done to address an exploit involving looting the skull.
Kehleyr	*Minotaur2k* Will we be seeing any enhancements for player run towns anytime soon?
Vex	Keep in mind that we're still not yet in a position where we are making solid plans for future publishes. However, Sunsword has made it known that we will be returning to a shorter, more frequent publish cycle. This will give us more opportunities to look at long-standing player requests for new features.
Vex	I can't make any promises right now, but it is something we do want to look at.
Kehleyr	*scralings* I had Old style house deeds that were locked down. Aos went live and they were fine. I customized my house and they were in the moving crate. I transfered my house and then they were refunded. Is this intended?
Vex	Basically, the routines that refund the deeds require that the deed be in a player's backpack or bank box, in order to unambiguously determine who owns the deed and gets the refund.
Vex	That is why deeds outside of player packs didn't automatically convert. But, the conversion is not a one-shot deal -- it continues, and whenever a player logs in with a house deed in his backpack or bank box, it will convert and give the refund.
Kehleyr	*Scarlet* Will the decay state of certain houses always be visible now, thereby reviving the IDOC trade?
Vex	I can't promise it'll stay that way forever, but right now we have no plans to alter the decay status display from what it is now. So, basically, yes. But standard disclaimers about the uncertainty of the future apply. ;)
Kehleyr	*Dementia* I have seen a lot of posts concerning the reduced loot in MIBs and MAPs. Does luck have anything to do with what you get in those chests and can you comment on if those items have been reduced?
Vex	I do know that luck does *not* factor into the quality of magic items found in MiB/Map loot. Unfortunately, I don't know in what way the loot templates for maps and messages were changed. However, if you ask on the UO message boards (boards.uo.com) I'll try to get an answer to that tomorrow.
Kehleyr	*Boca* Is there any chance that commodity deeds can be used in home secures?
Vex	Right now, no. Remember, commodity deeds were added for the very specific purpose of trading large stacks of items between players at the bank, and were deliberately limited or that purpose. We don't have any solid plans for doing anything about mass transportation -- but, again, it is something we will take up at some point in the future.
Kehleyr	*Jade_Falcon* I read recently a fix is going on TC for the bug that caused magery to get stuck with a negative modifier from mage weapons will this fix repair chars with this problem or just stop it from occuring? Mainly I would like to know if I should just sit tight for a patch or continue to try to get a GM to fix me?
MrTact	Since the problem was caused by the publish we reverted, there shouldn't be any characters with this issue.
MrTact	However, since it affected your MODIFIER and not your BASE SKILL, even if you are affected, logging out and back in again should clear it up.
Kehleyr	*Wedgebert* Does Mage Weapon *always* use magery, even if your weapon skill is higher? Seems weird to find Mage Weapons with Use Best Weapon Skill on them if only checks magery
Vex	I believe that a Mage Weapon with Use Best Weapon skill will take the higher of your modified Magery or your best weapon skill, but I'm not 100% certain on that.
Kehleyr	*scralings* Five specific resources will be affected in how they are purchased from, and sold to, by NPC shopkeepers. These five commodities are: leather, ingots (iron), wood (boards), crossbow bolts, and arrows. These changes are designed to help accommodate consumers, allowing them to purchase these five commodities in bulk, while not excluding the efforts of related resource gathering professionals. is this ever going in?
Vex	That feature was originally designed in response to big changes to how shopkeepers maintained their inventories. Quite a while back, shopkeeper prices used to rise as they sold off their stock.
Vex	It was also harder to keep them restocking the maximum quantity of an item. That was changed, prices became fixed, restock times were randomized, and they reduced their "target stock" number more slowly than before.
Vex	That made it much easier to buy massive quantities of ingots and boards and other gatherable resources
Vex	Which therefore somewhat "nerfed" resource-gathering professions.
Vex	We wanted that system to basically create a market where the price was determined by actual supply and demand.
Vex	Due to the age of that feature, at this point I'd say it's very doubtful it will ever actually go in.
MrTact	Just FYI, "in design" et al are crack right now
MrTact	We will either be updating these more regularly in the future or we will find some other way to communicate this information
Sannio	AoS comes first, and we'll revise the Update Center as the dust settles.
Kehleyr	*SilverOne* Will anything be done for those that claim items such as vet rewards have gone missing during the revert?
MrTact	We have the ability to track whether or not claimed vet reward items (and shrouds!) are actually in the world.
MrTact	So GMs will be able to replace these items, eventually.
MrTact	You will need to be patient until the queues shrink quite a bit
MrTact	Right now supposedly the GMs are taking something like 70 calls AN HOUR on blackholing issues, so when that gets fixed, it should make life a lot better.
Sannio	We've temporarily put some GM-assisted programs on hold, including recovery of some items lost due to reverts. You can read about it at http://www.uo.com/cgi-bin/newstools.pl?Article=7314
Sannio	This was done to help us handle the more time-sensative, larger issues, and so far it seems to be working.
Sannio	We'll be able to get back to looking into recovering your items lost to reverts as soon as we can.
Kehleyr	*NotSoWise* Have Meditation mana passive regen rates been altered with AoS?
Vex	Yes. On one level, regen rates used to be a bit "jerky". Like, you might get two quick gains, then have a relatively long wait before the next gain. This had to do with how often regen was checked for. In AoS, it was smoothed over. The effect of armor on mana regen rates was adjusted. And, of course, there are now magic item properties that can speed up your regen rates. And there's the Focus skill. :)
Kehleyr	*FatherGanja* Question for Mr.Tact: Now that the LS server problems seem to have been fixed, what was causing the shard to become so unstable?
MrTact	Some jackass was DOSing it. Sorry.
Darksheer	you guys catch him ?
MrTact	Can't really talk about that stuff. That's about all I can say.
Kehleyr	*Minotaur2k* So what might we be getting for that ingame item Cynthe and Sunsword were talking about? Cat Statue???
Vex	There have been well over two thousand posts in response to the threads that Sunsword and Cynthe have started about this. I've personally been reviewing all of them, making a list of every suggestion made.
Vex	Basically, we're still in the feedback gathering stage on exactly what the gift item will be.
Vex	Look for a post from me sometime tomorrow, in which I'll list pretty much every suggestion we've yet seen, and talk a bit about which way we're leaning.
Kehleyr	*IronKiller* Will Overland spawn in Malas be increased after awhile once housing has decreased?
Vex	Malas was designed basically to be a peaceful place for people to build their houses, and the overland spawn was deliberately made light. Doom, on the other hand, is not a safe place to be. Right now there are no plans to change either of those. :)
Kehleyr	*Obelisk* Can you comment on the bug which occurs after customizing a house, and unpacking, you cannot put anything into your normal subcontainers, saying thier moving crates?
Vex	Yes. It is a known issue, and we're working toward a fix. Right now, the best workaround is to simply pick up the affected item and drop it back down. That will shake it loose and make it realize it's not cooped up in the moving crate any more.
Kehleyr	*Rohan_Dem* Is 7th March still the date for the AOS publish to the European shards?
Sannio	Yes, that's still the date.
Kehleyr	*Basketcase* I locked some snow down on my second floor, went to the first to grab something else, we back, and the snow was gone. I take it they are under the floor tile? Is there a fix on the way for this and how can I get my snow back?
Vex	Yes, we believe that is a display bug and are working toward a fix. The only possible workaround is to convert your house to customizable, or to customize it and commit a new design. Doing that will move the item into your moving crate, where it can be retrieved.
Vex	Alternatively, a Game Master can retrieve it for you -- but right now the wait time is still a bit high.
Kehleyr	*James_Steele* At this time is there any review on the combat game mechanics, ie fights too short, resist, etc. or are we likely to be stuck with things the way they are now?
MrTact	Not literally "at this time"
MrTact	Our priorities now are to fix game-breaking issues like crashers, blackholes and so on
MrTact	After that will come serious gameplay bugs
MrTact	Then we will have a chance to revisit game balance
MrTact	But to address the latter part of your question: it's UO, you're not likely to be "stuck with" anything for long!
Kehleyr	*Dementia* Any hint on when the houseing areas still closed in Malas will be opened?
MrTact	(As the IDOCers can now testify . . .)
Vex	Like MrTact said, after other more pressing issues are evaluated, we do intend to go back and re-evaluate things like this. Later, we'll have a better idea of how much server power we'll have to spare for more Malas housing, and if it turns out the servers can take it then we'll open up more land. Just remember it's "if" and not "when" :)
Kehleyr	*FireBird* As seen with some of the American shards, going live with Aos on them created some very long downtimes. With Europa still to get AoS on March 7th can we expect several hours of downtime?
MrTact	Well, when we first converted NA, we had no experience in "publishing AoS" skill
MrTact	We've gotten a lot better at it
MrTact	As you can tell by the generally on-track downtimes we had in JP
MrTact	We think Europe will go smoothly.
MrTact	Plus, it's in the middle of the day for us, so we'll be more awake than we have been!
MrTact	For what it's worth, we booked something like 10 hours of downtime to do all 7 non-abyss JP shards, and that was almost exactly what it took.
MrTact	Europe is only 2 shards, so 6-8 hours is probably realistic.
	<font* Sannio notes "JP" means "Japan"
Kehleyr	*Coop* Is there any kind of target date to have all the AoS problems fixed.. game play issues fixed.. and so on? Or is it just ASAP?
MrTact	We are hoping for the publish that fixes the bulk of the crasher bugs to go to one shard tomorrow.
MrTact	Barring issues, that would put it out to the rest of the world over the weekend or early next week, depending on how aggressive we want to be
MrTact	Immediately after that will be the blackhole bug workaround, minus the deleting your entire stable bonus effect
MrTact	That should be a day or three afterward.
MrTact	We WILL be permanently fixing the blackhole problem, I have one person working on this full-time right now.
MrTact	No ETA for that, however.
MrTact	And then after that will be, as I said, gameplay fixes at a comparable pace.
MrTact	So I know that's not a hard date, but it is a little more specific than "ASAP", I hope.
Kehleyr	This end's our 6th UO StormChat!
Kehleyr	Thankyou to Vex, Kerowyn, MrTact and Sannio for taking the time to answer our questions this Wednesday evening. We hope the rest of the team made it home safely with all the weather problems... *basks under the summer sun in Australia*
Kehleyr	And a special thankyou to everyone who attended tonight!
Kehleyr	Logs will be posted at http://ianstorm.com/ultima/
Sannio	Thanks everyone for coming.