House of Commons from 2010-03-03

House of Commons from 2010-03-03

Zephenia	Greetings all! We will be starting very shortly. In the meantime, send your questions to [QT]Tazar and [QT]Kiminality as they are the only ones who can accept your questions.
Zephenia	Greetings all and welcome to the Stratics House of Commons chat with the Developers of Ultima Online. The chat will start right after a short set of introductions.
Kestrel	<generic all="" your="" base="" joke=""></generic>
Kestrel	Hey guys. I'm Jimmy, QA madman.
Axel_Mythic	Hello hello, everyone! I'm Billy Teng, software engineer
James_Mythic	Hi all, I'm James Nichols on the Community Team here at Mythic
Uriah	You don't know me ... I just show up for the food
Mythic_Phoenix	Howdy! I'm Mike, Systems Designer, currently with my head buried in the Factions system.
MythicShade	Hi, this is Mark and I'm a designer on UO... those who have my Jack-O-Lanterns know me as Shade
Kestrel	Literally. buried.
GrimmOmen	Hello, I'm JP, Assoc. CG Supervisor.
Mesanna	Good evening everyone! Assoc Producer.
Uriah	Yay !
Zephenia	Send your questions to [QT]Tazar and [QT]Kiminality as they are the only ones who can accept your questions. And Welcome Everybody!
Kestrel	Can lefty re-send his question in in two chunks? It got truncated.
Zephenia	<notaspy> Hey, I noticed a bit back you said you were on the last 5% for stopping the Speed hackers other programs of the sort, how much of that 5% is left now?</notaspy>
Uriah	In regard to the last 5%. That was in regard to movement only. I also commented that it would take the longest to get that part done. The first part is to work on the movement and latency, the next part is the 3rd party program detection. On the movement, it's done internally, and Derek posted an update last week to the Stratics forums. When we are ready to put on test center we'll let you know. For right now, we're closer, but not ready for public consumption ...
Kestrel	We're still digesting.
Kestrel	Tasty, tasty questions.
Zephenia	<percy> Greetings, with many player run towns finally receiving some sort of recognition in the form of banners built by Mesanna, are there plans or discussions to implement a system that would allow more specialization for towns and encourage players to be part of community?</percy>
Mesanna	Currently we are doing town recognitions thru the EM program, maybe in the future we can look at something more detailed.
Uriah	hey guys ... we're wading through all the questions right now ... so please be patient
Zephenia	<ghyde> Why does my imbuer keep running into items his item ID skill says should unravel but don't? Most of these are player-crafted or enhanced items from IDOC loot and have either junk or mismatched properties on them.</ghyde>
Kestrel	*clicks, whirrs, hums*
Kestrel	If that's the case, please email in details ( [email protected]! with screenshots! ) about the items in question to us and we can take a look. I can't really tell without seeing, and knowledge is power.
Zephenia	<malagaste> Next Question.... Now what Sakkarra is gone.... Who's working on the stacking issues??? When will we see some fixes here?</malagaste>
MythicShade	All designers have worked on stacking issues, myself included. We are making these changes on a case by case basis because some items being able to stack affect game balance.
Zephenia	<gareth> Any chance we can have more sea creatures to fight? EM Dudley had some great monsters that he colored and renamed such as Diabolical Seaweed, Pirate Captain, Undead Sailor etc. Maybe have them spawn when fishing up SOS?</gareth>
GrimmOmen	Generally speaking, adding creatures is reserved for major publishes and expansions since there is so much overhead in getting new beasties in the game. So most likely not anytime soon, although we like the idea of adding sea creatures. How about something amphibian?
Zephenia	<vaenswiftar> Greetings. My question is simply about those who have yet to receive their town structure. The ones you have done so far Mesanna are awesome, and we really appreciate you taking time out of your day to do these. Is there a way that we can perhaps make this easier on you, by scheduling a day and time to meet so that we aren't meeting by chance/luck? Again, thanks for all you</vaenswiftar>
Mesanna	If you would like to be present when the banner is built please state that with your contact info when you present the design to your shard EM's.
Zephenia	<joo> Phoenix mentioned having his head buried in the factions system. Are you all at a point where you feel like you can discuss what direction you want to take factions and what ideas you might have right now?</joo>
Mythic_Phoenix	We are working to get a lot of good stuff to a public test center. These include a brand new score and ranking system, leaderboards, and three brand new Faction strongholds. For the score system, we want to move in a direction of having scores measure several areas of player combat performance and comparing them to shard-wide averages, to create a system of relative scores that tells you how you stack up against everyone else.
Mythic_Phoenix	The fortress changes create new strongholds that are more balanced and move them all away from town guard zones. Our engineers have also worked up a system to allow us to publish the fortress maps to Test Center without affecting live shards!
Zephenia	<cirno> When does the rebuilding start on Magincia?</cirno>
Uriah	On the rebuilding of Magincia ... we've actually outlined the story arc for the live event through December of this year. Magincia is part of that plan.
Uriah	In the short term, we are going to introduce some old and new major villians in the interim. Look forward to the next supplement to the story by the next publish.
Zephenia	<lefty> Publish 46 Intoduced the requirement for Tactics to use special moves. This has dramaticly removed a lot of templates from the game. With the current balances in place would it be considered to be removed?</lefty>
Zephenia	Send your questions to [QT]Tazar and [QT]Kiminality as they are the only ones who can accept your questions.
Logrus_Mythic	Question 46: Players have unlimited time to test functionality whereas QA has test deadline goals to meet and a limited pool of perspectives to apply to the task
Logrus_Mythic	Question 35: There is no plan to remove tactics from the special moves requirements.
Axel_Mythic	*throws a boot at Logrus*
Logrus_Mythic	Sometimes I make a stupid
Kestrel	*stands back, takes pictures*
Uriah	Ignore the dev in the corner .. we don't let him out much
Kestrel	They get gamey if you let them run wild.
Zephenia	<ghyde> How is it that the bugs with the Gardener's Toolbox went unnoticed until the patch hit live servers? (Question #46)</ghyde>
Zephenia	<anon073> Is there plans for upping the love for fisherman? as in monster loot? better stuff ect?</anon073>
Mesanna	We are looking into updating the MIB's and Treasure Chests in the future. As far as new fish you guys almost got one this upcoming publish but Grimm would not help us =P
GrimmOmen	HAhah -<sings> No one knows what it's liiike to be the baaad maaan... to be the sad man.... <\sings></sings>
Axel_Mythic	I can make a mean fish... ><))>
GrimmOmen	A Herring!!
Kestrel	I'm resisting the troutslap, Axel.
Zephenia	<galen> As a follow up for my own Faction question, and the related one by someone else that was just answered as I type this, does '3 new strongholds' mean there will only be 3 Factions now, or will 1 stronghold remain untouched and the 3 remaining ones all changed?</galen>
MythicShade	There are going to be 3 factions.
Kestrel	Dun-dun-DUNNNN!
Zephenia	<anon1108> Any chance there'll be another storage upgrade for either bank or home? I play on multiple shards and sometimes have to live out of my bankbox and it can get hard.</anon1108>
Uriah	#48 ... We have chatted about it, but it's not on our radar in the near term right now.
Zephenia	<gareth> Can you make glass staffs useable in crushed glass? Because the success rate is low. 50 swords takes about 2 hours to farm and you dont even get half what ur suppose to.</gareth>
MythicShade	Good suggestion! We will look into it, stay tuned
Zephenia	<notaspy> You stated in march (I realise it is just the start) that there will be Mysticism spell enhancements, is there a closer eta for these changes to be on test center or even hitting shards live? </notaspy>
Logrus_Mythic	Key mysticism spells have been re-vamped and are undergoing QA with an ETA of next publish. (and they are quite phatulous)
Kestrel	nom nom nom.
Uriah	QA with an ETA for some PB&J ASAP
Kestrel	^QFT^
Zephenia	<obsidian> Can black staffs be added as a craftable? If not, can monsters drop exceptional ones? This goes for all of the uncraftable common items (deer masks, pitchforks, wands, etc)</obsidian>
Mesanna	Yes we can make black staffs craftable.
Zephenia	<cirno> Why was Mysticism changed from needing Eval AND Imbuing (one of the harder skills to train), to needing Imbuing OR Focus (perhaps the easiest skill to train?</cirno>
MythicShade	We wanted Mysticism to be more accessible and more attractive.
Zephenia	<xaicoro> When do you repair the bug that a target comes off when I use "dart trap box"?</xaicoro>
Logrus_Mythic	Question #54: Don't use a dart trap while targetting?
Zephenia	<gareth> Will you let us Engrave tombstones so we can build better RP graveyards? Id love to have "Here lies my tongue please don't step on it" - On the serious side it could also help with those who wish to make memorials for lost friends.</gareth>
Uriah	Absolutely. Since joining the team, it's something that we have permanently in our minds. It's not a question of schedule, but coming up with a reverent and
Uriah	solid design. We've discussed everything from something like the Veteran's Memorial to something simple like Arlington Cemetary. Unfortunately, we know that there would be
Uriah	folks who would disgrace such a thing, so we also need to make sure it's bulletproof. If anyone has any ideas I am open to suggestions via PM.
Zephenia	<chargar> Any use for blackrock in the future?</chargar>
MythicShade	There is no plan for it, maybe we'll let you use it to make black staves
Zephenia	<anon642> As one of many who plays on multiple shards, could we please be able to have our characters co-owned to more houses?</anon642>
Mesanna	We are not totally against this but we will have to look into it before we actually make any decisions.
MythicShade	Thank ya'll for coming. Here's a little hint about what is coming in the next patch... Gargoyle glasses and sashes... changes to gargoyle racial abilities... more mysticism love... a new contest!
Mesanna	Great questions tonight!
Mesanna	Guys we have fixed the Gardners Toolbox and you should be seeing it again in the next publish.
Zephenia	Thanks for coming folks! The log of this chat will be posted on Stratics a little later in the evening and --ALL-- unanswered questions are given to the Devs for the 'Ask the Dev' section and future HoC's. Thanks again!
Zephenia	And /join #ultima-online for further discussions!
Kestrel	Buh-bye!
GrimmOmen	Bye Everyone!