House of Commons from 1999-12-16

House of Commons from 1999-12-16

Glamdring	Well folks, due to the current situation...we will have an abbreviated chat, but the chat will go on =)
	The "current situation" being the constant attacks on the #uohoc channel by a large number of people.
Glamdring	Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's Open House.
Glamdring	I will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Destiny, Tigger or Niobe.
Glamdring	Please /msg different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load and speed this process up. Do not msg anyone from OSI, or myself--these questions will be ignored.
Glamdring	Remember that OSI may not have the opportunity to answer all of your questions. In addition, some questions may not be answered if the Dev Team feel that it is not appropriate or that it has been better answered through some other question.
Glamdring	In addition, please do not submit any questions that have already been answered during past conferences. We encourage you to read the logs of the previous Open Houses, which are available at http://uohoc.stratics.com.
Glamdring	Thanks for coming, everyone. We will now begin accepting questions.
Glamdring	*Asparouh-LoD* Archery is the least popular fighting skill now and continues to go down. Are you going to at least fix the extremelly long delay before a bow starts shooting when equipped?Any changes planned to make crossbows and heavy crossbows useful again?My bowyer is starving!
Firedog	Much of our attention is focused at this time on the six-month plan. Making adjustments to specific skills will most probably
Firedog	not take place until after we implement that plan.
Firedog	After this happens, there will certainly be more time to look at individual skills, and archery is certainly one
Firedog	that I would like to take a look at.
Glamdring	*Krazar* Currently some spells overlook the noto query and it only works sometimes. Is there any plans to fix it?
SunSword	Yes
SunSword	We'll be looking at noto query within the next few months.
Glamdring	*[PAC]Trizik* If you attack a blue player INSIDE a PvP area, will you be flagged grey and accountable for a murder if they die?
SunSword	can't really get into detail about this at the moment, but certainly several things about reputation and murder reporting are likely to change in this scenario
Glamdring	*Castoro-fan* Why did you choose use-spell/casting/targetting instead of use-spell/targetting/casting that's more "realistic" and seems to be better for ppl who are laggy when pvp? Right now, you can cast a spell at 3 screens far from the battlefield without being disturbed, that's looking like a little "exploit" i think :) Is it more a programming issue or just a (un)thought-out choice?
SunSword	It's a design choice that needs to be considered. You may see some movement on that front in the near future.
Glamdring	*DogMeat* Will the new system have terriories ruled by different factions with thier own ruler?
SunSword	We're going to be exploring how we can have factions/guilds have an impact on the world. You'll probably see some things on "In Concept" about it. We're still exploring the possibilities. There are a lot of ramifications to letting groups of players impact the environment ;)
Glamdring	*Nicolai* Will old land areas be designated pvp - or is that limited to the expansion area lands?
SunSword	It may not work in the fashion you expect it to. Again, details forthcoming.
Glamdring	<[Ches]soy> Is Ultima Online Y2K Complient? I am worried that my house will decay on Y2K!
SunSword	we've been running tests for y2k compliance for some time, it's not a thing we take lightly.
Glamdring	*Beans* There have been a lot of interesting debates re the PvP area proposal you made recently. What are some of the more interesting things you've read from the debates?
SunSword	Well, suprisingly, a lot of the things I've seen have been discussions on the community impact of our geographic solution for PvP
SunSword	There are some that claim that "segregating" the players by geography will destroy communities
SunSword	There are others who believe that creating new lands with new rules will merely change the dynamic of the community
SunSword	and of course there's been lots of discussion on how we can change the rules to make reputation meaningful on either side, and keep the playstyles interesting. Lots of thoughts on "faction" systems and city states, not much commentary on the party system though, I find that interesting.
Glamdring	*Hark* How will Siege Perilous be affected by possible PvP changes? Because of no stat-loss on SP, a huge percentage of players are red/murderers, in order for unrestricted PVP. Where will they stand?
SunSword	Well, the nature of red/blue may change, perhaps even significantly. We'll definitely have to make sure that the SP rules for combat and reputation change accordingly (and in a useful manner)
Glamdring	*Ason* Is there any plan to do away with the current murder system, in the old system, if someone was kill stealing or kill looting, the player could at least attack and kill this player. Currently, there is nothing one can do if their not willing to take a murder count and you can only take so many.
SunSword	As I mentioned above, the rep system may change significantly. As I've mentioned before, I'm predicting that we may be able to remove stat-loss for murders in the PvP+ areas. There's going to be a lot more discussion about this over the next month or two.
Glamdring	The_Sinful* I can imagine it will not change now, but was there ever any thought into purposefully slowing connections (maybe around the 150 ms ping) in order to even the playing field? PvP sems primarily dominated by fast connections (the cable/dsl haves and have nots)
SunSword	Well, actually, as many of you know, there's a framerate limitation on the client for that very reason. I doubt we'll ever filter or purposefully slow people's connections down. That really would make us the lag monster, eh?
SunSword	Thanks for coming everyone. I believe we're about to wrap it up.
Glamdring	I would like to thank everyone for attending tonight's Chat
Glamdring	The log will be posted on Stratics shortly