House of Commons from 2005-11-30

House of Commons from 2005-11-30

Brekkee	Good evening and welcome to another great Stratics House of Commons chat, tonight our guests are the developers of Ultima Online! Tonight's topic is general discussion.
Brekkee	Please send your questions to [QT]Eldorian OR [QT]zigzag - to do so type /query NICK and type in the window that pops up. Questions sent to me or the developers will not make it into the lineup. Full logs of the chat will be up on http://uohoc.stratics.com shortly after the chat.
Brekkee	We'll start with a brief introduction from the developers, now would be a good time to send those questions.
Wilki_EA	Hi everyone, I'm Wilki, UO Community Coordinator. Thanks for coming tonight!
PurpleTurtle	Hello everyone
Serado	Hey guys, Serado here tonight :)
Ando	Hello, I'm Ando from QA.
PurpleTurtle	I have two turtles
Niobe	Hi everyone, I'm Niobe and a designer on UO.
Draconi	Hi! It's me Draconi, another designer on UO, glad to see everyone!
JIB	G'day, I'm JIB and engineer
JIB	oop, an not and
PurpleTurtle	I'm a developer on UO, nice to see you here
Serado	Im am from QA with Ando
Brekkee	*Creed* Hi, My question is Can we expect any faction changes in the near future? and if so, any hints?
Wilki_EA	We've recently been discussing some changes we'd like to make to revitialize factions, but there are no set plans at the moment. We've got PvP to focus on now, along with a few other projects that you'll be hearing about soon. Factions may be something we address after that, but I can't say for certain when/if that will happen just yet.
Brekkee	*ktorr* Will items like Arcane Gems, Granite and Sand ever be stackable ?
Niobe	Hiya ktorr!
Niobe	So to answer your questions, right now it is difficult for us to add stacking to certain items because of code that is associated with them.
Niobe	For example, an item may use the same art as another item but a script might be attached to it that differentiates the two of them.
Niobe	Our engineers have been improving how this operates in the back-end so I there is a potentially to add stacking to more items in the future, but here is more work that needs to be done and it has to be prioritized with other things that also need to be done.
Niobe	And That's a really long sentence :)
Brekkee	*Masacre* Is it true that they are bringing back the ability to accually resist spells if your skill in magic resit was high enough (kinda like parry) like old times????
	* Niobe also points out that my keyboard is randomly adding/losing keys. *
Wilki_EA	We have been talking about changing magic resist so that it works a bit more like it used to, however that is purely theoretical at this point. It may be considered for some of the upcoming combat/PvP changes, but we haven't finished hammering out our plan yet.
Wilki_EA	Stay tuned, as we'll be throwing some specifics out there for you on the Stratics Developer's Corner and getting your feedback on them. This change might just be one of them.
Brekkee	*Ryunosuke* Mr Tact posted a post several months ago about making UO a less item based game, is there any update on this, or any further plans for this?
Wilki_EA	MrTact unfortunately couldn't make it tonight, but I do know that his general idea was to make items play a bit less of a role in deciding combat. How exactly we go about doing that, again, remains to be determined.
Wilki_EA	Along with the last question, there are some ideas we're going to be talking to you about in the near future, so you'll have plenty of time to comment on them and let us know what you think.
Brekkee	*Cavalier* Will you ever implement a system on the production shards like on test whereby we see our levels of HCI/DCI, FC/FCR, DI/SDI, LRC/LMC/LAC when we mouse over our own character?
Niobe	Hi Cavalier!
Niobe	So, we've been in a lot of meetings and discussions about ways we can look to the future of UO and continue to grow and improve it....
Niobe	I can't tell you whether something like this IS coming in the future (near or far)
Niobe	But it is something we have been looking at.
Niobe	So what I'd like to ask all of you, and start a thread on the message boards for us to watch..
Niobe	What kinds of things like this would help you? What would you like to see?
Niobe	We do track these, even if we can't always put them in right away.
Brekkee	*Teserax* I know Wilki cannot answer but I feel obligated to ask this question - Can he comment on whether anything has been researched recently in a legal and business manner on whether the counselor program will return.
Wilki_EA	The short answer is yes, we've been looking into perhaps restoring some sort of volunteer program. I really don't have any more detail that I can give right now, but rest assured that we're excited about the possibility.
Brekkee	*Ryunosuke* Is there any plans for revamping skills in general, such as Item ID, Arms Lore, Taste ID, Forensic Eval, etc?
Niobe	Well, there's certainly always a lot of talk about it. :)
Niobe	I think it's something we'd like to do, but again no firm plans.
Brekkee	*Zed* Question: Are there any plans or discussions to modernize the interface to UO?
Niobe	There's quite a bit of discussion about interface improvements
Niobe	And we've collected quite lots of information from the players through the message boards, town halls and these chats (etc).
Niobe	This is another area that I'd love to see some threads on including the rants.
	* Niobe dons teflon. *
Brekkee	*Sylo* Is there any chance of a pre UOR or Pre AoS server in the future?
Wilki_EA	Weeeellll... there is always a chance, but it's not something we're looking at doing at the moment. However, the topic does come up now and then, and we are aware there is some demand for such a shard. We can't rule it out, but it's not likely in the near to mid-term future.
Brekkee	*Ruffled_Feathers* with the new "tattered wall map" that Cartographers can now make are we going to have some way of verifying who decoded the maps?
Niobe	Believe it or not, that would take ...As Mr. Tact would say...
Niobe	A non-zero sum amount of time to do.
Niobe	Added some verification is certainly doable, but some of that code is messy and can cause all kinds of nasty things to happen to crafting.
Niobe	So a nice additional like that tends to fall to a lower priority unfortunately :/
Niobe	Certainly something to keep yelling at us to fix though :)
Brekkee	*Teserax* When will the Christmas tree deeds be turned on??
PurpleTurtle	The christmas tree deed is turned on when we go public with the new publish
Brekkee	*Anoron* As of now the Heritage elves have night sight, yet they are unable to see any candle light or the beautiful ambience of UO's nights in our homes. Will there be a publish to fix this problem in the near future? Perhaps by making us able to turn off nightsight when needed?
Draconi	While I can
Draconi	While I can't promise a timeframe for this issue, we can certainly see how this disturbs the overall ambient effect of playing an elf with this innate ability. Looking into a toggle is certainly an options, and we'd like to hear more about what you all think about this and similar issues.
Brekkee	*athos* Will 7th anniversary items in Siege and Mugen be unblessed?
PurpleTurtle	We know that some Siege/Mugen players want 7th anniversary items unblessed, along with some of the other forms of blessings, we haven't made a decision on what we're ultimately going to do. Right now would be a good time to give us feedback on that in one of the Siege threads in the Developer's Corner on Stratics.
Brekkee	*doc* Any new ideas to Felucca? If you have recently visited Fel (atleast on Europa) its more or less dead. Just same guys running around. Would be nice to get something new to Felucca.
Wilki_EA	Our PvP/Combat tweaks/balances are a good start, as good PvP tends to populate Felucca. As previously mentioned, Factions are also something we'd like to touch again sometime in the future. No promises on when/if that will happen, but our designers have some pretty cool ideas floating around at the moment. That would also go a long way towards making Felucca more exciting.
Brekkee	*_Geo_* Question - Is there any chance to make stealing a real skill anymore?
Brekkee	*Ryunosuke* any plans on changing stealing skill to work with item insurance, or work in trammel?
Wilki_EA	Double Question Time! :-)
Niobe	Hello to both of you!
Niobe	So you may not belive me, but thieves are near and dear to many a dev's heart.
Niobe	believe even (silly keyboard dropping letters again)
Niobe	While we don't have any immediate plans to improve stealing
Niobe	We've got a number of designs that try to address some of the issues thieves currently face.
Niobe	As youse guys know, making changes to stuff can take a really long time, so there's no promises;.
Niobe	But this is something the team would like to and has some interesting ideas (and continue to watch your ideas closely).
Niobe	I can't be any less evasive than that answer. I'm sorry.
Brekkee	*MaDProFF* any changed in the bod systems in the offing, as the rewards are out dated now compared to items you can make, or get from pvm, especially smithy side of things
Wilki_EA	There aren't any changes to the BOD system in this publish or the next, but that said, we do want to continue the crafting coolness we added in Mondain's Legacy. To say on this subject, I have not more. Right now, that is.
Brekkee	*Ryunosuke* what exactly entails the next publish?
Ando	Pub38, which is now partially up on TC2, will primarily contain the improvements to Siege Blessing and a few PVP temporary fixes
Ando	However there expect a few other goodies to find their way in as well
Brekkee	*JCtheBuilder* For Publish 39, will the developers be looking hard at changing the way all weapons work? 90% of UO's original weapons are completely useless compared to the stuff from AOS, UOSE, and UOML. Most notebly are Halberds and War Hammers.
Wilki_EA	Yes, we're going to look at everything relating to combat, which includes the damage output and swing speed of weapons. For instance, we've been actively talking about bows the past couple of days.
Wilki_EA	I know I sound like a parrot repeating the same thing here, but we are still in the middle of thinking about the overall plan, so I don't have any specifics yet to give you right now.
	* Wilki_EA squawks loudly *
	* Draconi tosses Wilki a cracker *
Brekkee	*Ryunosuke* Is there any plans for the vendor issue of not decaying when contracts run out?
Ando	Yes, we are hoping to squeeze this fix into Pub38 - Stay Tuned
Brekkee	*AX* Any thoughts on removing blood oath from the dark father or at least toning down the returning damage.
Wilki_EA	Along with the combat changes will come a look at monster difficulty... and we've heard your feedback on the Dark Father being a bit too difficult. So, yes, there are thoughts about hitting him with a nerf bat a little bit.
Brekkee	Work* ask them if you will ever be able to mount sheep
Wilki_EA	Um, I'm afraid I'll have to defer to my collegues on this one....
	* Wilki_EA runs away *
Draconi	*Kal Ort Por*
Wilki_EA	Ok, guess nobody else is willing to touch that one :-P
Brekkee	That will wrap it up for tonight. I'd like to thank the folks from Ultima Online for coming! The log for tonight's chat will be up shortly on http://uohoc.stratics.com. Thank you all for joining us! You can join #Ultima-Online to chat more about the game.
Wilki_EA	Thanks everyone for coming tonight!
Ando	Seeya guys
PurpleTurtle	Thanks everyone
PurpleTurtle	bye bye
Draconi	*waves*
PurpleTurtle	say bye to my turtles
PurpleTurtle	=)
Wilki_EA	Bye Turtles!