House of Commons from 2001-07-05

House of Commons from 2001-07-05

Kehleyr	Good evening everyone, thank you for coming to tonight's Ultima Online open house. This Stratics House of Commons chat is a direct connection between you the players and the designers, programmers and community staff of Ultima Online.
Kehleyr	A belated 4th of July Greeting to all from everyone here at Stratics, for the Americans amongst us :)
Kehleyr	This chat will be in a moderated format. To ask a question of the OSI Staff, please /msg or /query the question takers that will be listed in the topic of the channel. These question takers will then present the questions to the Ultima Online evelopment/community/programming team here with us this evening.
Kehleyr	Oh and Canada day for the Canucks and every other country day for other people :P
Kehleyr	Our question takers are: Tybalt, Palor & Lord-Xanthor
Kehleyr	I will be your moderator tonight... I will post your question into the House of Commons chat channel and the guys (and girls) will answer those that they can.
Kehleyr	Please remember that your question may have been asked previously or may not be able to be answered in a public forum. Please do not message or query myself or anyone from OSI, these questions will be ignored. We encourage you to read the logs of the previous Open Houses, which are available at http://uohoc.stratics.com
Kehleyr	Tonight's topic is open to General Discussion :)
Kehleyr	*Deagol* When can we expect the PvP changes to go in? Will precast be included?
Evocare	The combat changes listed in development will get published when they're ready... they're not yet in active QA testing, so not for a while.
Evocare	As far as precasting goes, we've re-evaluated our stance on precasting and are seriously considering re-introducing it as a gameplay feature. However, we haven't decided what the final implementation will be just yet.
Kehleyr	*Shuyun* Anything new regarding four year veteran rewards?
Vex	Nothing new as yet. We wanted to post that there would in fact be fourth year rewards before the Rewards system was activated, in order to give players enough notice. We wouldn't want people using all their rewards up thinking that third year was as far as they would go.
Vex	As far as design and development go, we will continue on that down the road a piece, once the Infamous Publish 12 is released worldwide and the first 3 years of Vet Rewards are working.
Kehleyr	*Jondo* My question is, will the new orcs, the savages and the assorted new items they carry as loot continue to spawn when the event ends and, any clues as to when the next event will begin?
Calandryll	All of the new monsters and items (with the possible exception of the frightend orcs) will remain in the game after the scenario ends
Calandryll	As far as the next scenario, it will probably start about 4 weeks after the current one ends.
Kehleyr	vic|* Will insta-hit even be thought about being added in with the new changes?
Adrick‑OSI	no plans currently to enable insta hitting - main reason here being it makes every weapon in the game second to the one with the most dammage (the hally)
Adrick‑OSI	however investing in high dexterity is a way to get the *insta hit*
Kehleyr	*Ryan* when will statues and singing balls be able to be turned on or off again?
Prophet	We will be working on those but have been concentrating on fixing other things first. All in due time.
Kehleyr	*Jhesi[DW]-* My question is: Whilst BNN is all good and well; will you consider making it far better to rp (*points to her guild abbreviation*) in the next quest; by adding spawning parchments and books that contain the same, or similar text to BNN... it would be far better in my opinion; and allow us to have real roleplaying capabilities in the quest... so is it a considered thing or not at all, if not at all, why not?
Gromm	We've kicked around a lot of ideas for getting the fiction more prevalent in game, currently we have some ideas on the back burner for using the in town barkeeps to do a bit more interaction possibly
Gromm	A lot of the ideas we've had we're going to take our time with, make sure we don't do anything too hasty. Bear in mind we're still in the 1st scenario and have a lot of stuff we want to do that hasn't had the time to be implemented yet
Kehleyr	*Degamra* Could gold looted from monsters in Fel be possibly 2x greater than in Trammel to attract more people so that they get more for taking a risk?
Evocare	We're intrested in finding effective ways to get more effective and fun use from Felucca, but we aren't currently considering that particular method.
Vex	I'd like to point out that in addition to perceived risk versus reward, we have to take into consideration the effects such an action would have on an already problematic economy. Dumping more gold into the game, when the gold coin is already pretty well devalued, won't help that situation.
Kehleyr	*Milklover* With the latest BNN article hinting at a greater force behind the savages, will we see this "master" as a force comparable to Minax? (main figurehead opposition to the virtues etc.)
Calandryll	Can't give away anything specific, but I think it is safe to say there is far more behind the savage's attacks than meets the eye.
Calandryll	More will be revealed in future scenarios
Kehleyr	*Lord_Moz* Any chance of a larger scale, longer timeline scenario? One that takes place over a year or more, while other events continue to happen?
Gromm	Who says we aren't? :)
Kehleyr	*Vic_Twenty* In May's UOHoC, Vex promised changes to ships dealing with "shoreline blocking.boat security, and other issues" for the "publish after next". Now that the "next" publish is happening, can you offer any details about these boat changes?
Vex	One of our programmers has made some changes that prevent accessing items on the deck of a boat, unless you're also on the deck of the same boat. Ideas we have been tossing around as well include:
Vex	Fast boat decay, on the order of hours instead of days, requiring that boats be drydocked after use or risk losing them. This alone would inconvenience some, but benefit many by freeing up popular mining spots, shorelines, and docks.
Vex	Other things we're looking at are removal of boat keys entirely, replacing them with an "ownership marker" in the form of a hued ship model.
Vex	And finally, we'd like to rework boat security (in the absense of keys) to give the boat owner much more control as to who can board the boat. Oh, and possibly a "remove thyself" command for boat owners too. :)
Kehleyr	*Mocker* since the scenario is ending in Ilshenar, will we miss the ending on Siege Perilous where we have no Ilshenar?
Calandryll	It's not ending in Ilshenar.
Kehleyr	*Videric[-C-]* How high priority is UO3d and it's enchantment, knowing of all the potential it could be, I am curious what are the future plans?
Alai	Third Dawn still has a lot of our attention. There's a lot of potential there, and we would like to realize all of it. Presently, this is one of my primary focuses.
Alai	If you have suggestions or comments RE: Third Dawn, please contribute to the threads in the Third Dawn message board!
Kehleyr	*Videric[-C-]* What is the situation with Carpets/rugs currently? Can we expect to see them soon or soon(TM) meaning a bit later? *grins*
Evocare	soon(TM) =]
Evocare	We still very much want to do them, they're just not currently in testing, so we can't make any promises on that front.
Vex	Yep. I know it's taking a while. Recently, it seems like our development cycle has been unusually long. They are still in progress, and still slated for a near future publish (not the one being rolled out now). At this point it is still too early to even estimate a date.
Kehleyr	*Kia-BiH* There is definate problems with the faction stones. People have quit UO or quit SP, yet they are on the faction stones taking up space and that is creating an inbalance. Isn't there a way to kick people off the faction stone if they are inactive, like if they don't vote for leadership at least twice in 30 days or something?
Adrick‑OSI	I will look into that - I do know that when you delete a character it is removed from the faction stone
Kehleyr	*WAR[Home]* When is the "gray" agressor moongate jumping going to be fixed
Adrick‑OSI	moongate hopping is part of the publish after this one (Publish 13)
Kehleyr	*Patricia* Will there be seer-like people in future scenarios, making it A LOT easier to really interact with a current scenario?
Gromm	Right now we're trying to only plan for the future with what we currently have access to. Right now there's 3 of us and 240k of you guys. :)
Calandryll	Also, the design of the scenarios are meant to allow those 240k players to interact with all aspects of it. Having human controlled monsters/NPCs limits that. The scenarios are not meant as a replacement for seer quests, they are something totally diffrent.
Kehleyr	*Jobe* Even if vet rewards are going to be delayed (further), is there any chance that a publish to help determine account age would be implimented sooner, so that older accounts that didn't log in while rewards where active can use items such as public leather tubs?
Prophet	The account age determination code is directly tied into the veteran reward code. We won't be activating the system until publish 12 is active on all servers. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Prophet	Although we will be activating rewards only on one shard first once that happens the account ages should be updating on all shards.
Kehleyr	*Mocker* We tamers worked really hard for our skills, can you plz make it so we can ride our tamed dragons?
Evocare	no
Evocare	there are a lot of technical and design limitations that pretty much rule that out for the near future. =[
Kehleyr	*Lazy* Are there any plans to allow thieves to escape guards? As of right now, out of guard protect stealing is practically dead, and it is nearly impossible to steal under guards protection when all the victim has to do is hit a macro that causes the guards to instantly kill the thief, whether he is still in guard protect or not. Also, would these boat "ownership markers" be stealeable?
FierYiCe	No, no plans to make anybody able to escape guards.
FierYiCe	In fact the guards will be able to kill criminals much easier soon.
FierYiCe	=)
Vex	Regarding the boat markers, the idea for the boat changes is to make them more secure. The boat ownership marker would be non-lootable and non-stealable. Even though many players have million-gold checks banked, for many younger players a boat is a heavy investment and its loss represents many hours of play time. I know we're talking about stealing Felucca, where only experienced players should be, but a boat is too much a big-ticket item to allow
Vex	I know we're talking about stealing Felucca, where only experienced players should be, but a boat is too much a big-ticket item to allow them to be stolen.
Kehleyr	*koala* On March 14th, regular and ethereal mounts gained a huge increase in stamina. Was this deliberate?
Adrick‑OSI	it was unintended - the team is aware of it
Kehleyr	*fats* Any plans on adding a ally option to guildstones?
Evocare	Alliances are something we want to have, but it has to wait until we can devote very significant amounts of time to it due to the complex number of interactions the system would create.
Evocare	We'd have to revisit many of the guildwar and looting systems at the same time, and that's no small project. =[
Kehleyr	*Barrackas* Would it be possible to deactivate the requirement that you need to own a prize ticket to use it? There are a lot of these lying around from Christmas '98 and '99 and they're not much use at the minute. Would be a good way to introduce some interesting items back into the game.
Vex	We will take it into consideration. But no promises. :)
Kehleyr	*Bell_of_Ygg* Two months ago, Sage admitted the Dev Team saw taming, provocation and bladespirits to be overpowered... but that it would be at least two months before the problem could be addressed. I realize Sage is on a different team now and wish him luck, but I would like to ask: Without making any promises, what direction is the Dev Team currently headed towards taking care of this problem?
Evocare	The opinion of the team hasn't changed significantly. However, we don't want to make any of the skills involved less fun, so the answers aren't simple by any stretch. We want to avoid simple "nerfs".
Evocare	Any solutions will have to involve tradeoffs that ensure those skills become even more "fun" then they are now, even if it means they might not have the same mass-destruction capabilities.
Kehleyr	*Avatar55* How often can we expect improvements on the 3d client to help make the transition to it a little nicer? (I like it now, just a few things seem buggy) :)
Alai	We'll be adding improvements to the UOTD client as fast as we can. The last patch is just the first of many we hope will make that the client of choice.
Alai	The next patch will include several art changes, most of which were suggested by players.
Alai	The one after that will have fixes/improvements/and greater optimization.
Alai	The UOTD client has a good future ahead of it.
Kehleyr	*Keith[FaT]* Ever plan to take out the ability for tamers to friend their pets to someone else in another faction, so the blue tamer can't use them to kill blues in the hq
Adrick‑OSI	Ill be looking into that problem - I am aware of the tamer friending issue with factions
Kehleyr	*AoA-S-* Does the new developement team have any concrete plans on making the gaming experience more rewarding for more experienced players. The lack of noticeable reward for veterans is appalling. Whats to keep our interest once we have millions of gold, houses, have done everything, etc. Are there any plans for some sort of reward system for experienced Roleplayers and Pvpers? (Please dont say Veteren Rewards!)
Evocare	Regarding the "new development team"... really 18 of 20 designers/programmers are still onboard from before, so I wouldn't really say our ideas have changed drastically. =]
Evocare	However, we're always looking for ways to improve the veteran metagames to keep players interested.
Calandryll	Also, the scenarios are made for veteran players, both the new AI for monsters and the new items (as well as the story) are for vets.
Kehleyr	*Videric[-C-]* We know you can patch gumps, but what is in the way of patching (static) objects? It would be rather great to have new furniture etc.
FierYiCe	We cannot really patch in new objects or monsters to 2D because of the large amount of art required.
FierYiCe	We also have had issues of not being able to patch certain things, such as the map, because of minimal installs keeping those files on the CD.
FierYiCe	I have been working on a system that will POSSIBLY allow us to be able to make changes to the 2D map. Artwork is still out though, as those patches would be way too big to download.
Kehleyr	Thankyou everyone for taking the time to attend tonight's HOC and a special thankyou to everyone at Origin for being here to make it possible, as always we are grateful :)
Kehleyr	The logs will be posted at http://uohoc.stratics.com
Kehleyr	Feel free to join #ultima-online for further discussion :)
	* Kehleyr hugs everyone :) *
	* Destiny Tackles the room *
	* Hanse hops around the room screaming "hot hot hot!" after pulling the mongbat muffins out of the oven. *
	* Kehleyr steals them and replaces them with timtams *