House of Commons from 1998-07-02
House of Commons from 1998-07-02
Contents
| DenDragon | Hello everyone! |
| DenDragon | Thank you for attending tonight's conference |
| DenDragon | You can look above at the title bar for tonight's Topic: |
| DenDragon | "Reaction to the Reputation System and other Misc. Things" |
| DenDragon | In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Aphrodite, Fot, or Fallo. |
| DenDragon | Let the meeting commence! |
| FrostByghte | or Glamdring :) |
| DenDragon | *Borric* Fame loss upon death has to go. There is no PvPer that can maintain the amount of Fame required to be in an Order/Chaos Guild. And that is where OSI wants the PvPers. You are trying to limit pking, yut murderers are cropping up because fame cannot be maintained... When are you going to correct this? |
| DesignerD | We are indeed looking at that. It's a concern. We do find fame loss at death a valuable mechanic though |
| DesignerD | it fills the need we saw for death to have meaning, without damaging your character's abilities. So we like it |
| DesignerD | But it is true that the order/chaos issue is a problem. I don't have an answer right now, but possibles are: |
| DesignerD | 1) removing or lowering the fame req for order/chaos |
| DesignerD | 2) somehow trying to detect order/chaos death and not applying the penalty (abusable, this one, of course) |
| DesignerD | 3) lowering the fame loss (which we don't wanna do) |
| DenDragon | *Bowrest* When will the Rep. System be considered implemented and we get along with other patches like the house patch? |
| DesignerD | You the Bob Bowrest of the shop? :) We have just a few issues to resolve with the rep system, as you know: |
| DesignerD | 1) the whole "change name" exploit, which we have been completely unable to reproduce :( |
| DesignerD | 2) problems with criminal flagging when doing things across guild lines (looting for example) |
| DesignerD | 3) a few other small things. |
| DesignerD | We plan an update that will cover stuff on Coming Soon and rep system issues before we get to house ownership... it'll be a few weeks though |
| DenDragon | *Wisdom* Any chance of putting the same kind of stat loss for murderers on theives? They can ruin ones game as much as a murderer. Right now there is no risk for a theif. |
| DesignerD | Not currently being considered |
| DenDragon | *Sera* Ever since the rep patch, a lot of people have been gating tough monsters as a form of pking. Are there any plans to either get rid of this or have some sort of in-game consequences for gaters (victims reporting them as murderers, karma loss, etc.)? |
| DesignerD | We are very concerned about this. We are simply going to have to prevent gating of monsters |
| DesignerD | So expect that change in the next update. We realize it will break fight nights and people who make dungeons and the like |
| DesignerD | but they can and should contact Seers about getting help for those things. |
| Stormwind | illl take it |
| DenDragon | *Smith_Kender* My question: It has been said that vendors without a house will be removed. When will this happen, and is there any way to make an exception for popular vendors? |
| Stormwind | Yes, vendors that are not attached to houses will be removed unless they can attach themselves to a house owned by their owners. We have no plans for making exceptions since it will be an automated process, sorry. |
| DenDragon | *RainmanTDA* what is going to be done about looting and hiding... ppl just run up to corpses, hide, and loot and you can not fire field because the person may be blue. I believe that when a person removes a item from a corpse they should become unhidden...what do you think? |
| DesignerD | We agree with you. Looting will unhide people. |
| DenDragon | *Trigelion* Can you comment on the new monster AI mentioned at luncheon? |
| Stormwind | We plan to generally improve the monster AI. Better fighting tactics, able to pick up and move items out of their way, stuff like that. |
| DenDragon | *Rahl* Will there be a way for players to become a Glorious Lord/Lady other than being a mage? I mean only mages are able to kill Ancient Wyrms and Balrons. Any non mage players cannot kill or attempt to kill monsters such as those. Is the reputation titles based soley on mages? For they are the only ones who can get the greatest title. |
| DesignerD | Groups can also kill those monsters, and the karma and fame goes to the person who lands the final blow... |
| DenDragon | *Cryph* What are the plans on determining house ownership once the house patch comes into effect? |
| Stormwind | The plan: you will be able to turn in a key using the new multi (ship and house) interface to claim the house. At the end of a fixed period (7 days?), the house will be awarded to either the person who turned in the master key or the first person who ... |
| DesignerD | (Master key defined as the one you got when the house was built) |
| Stormwind | ...turned in the normal key. All noclaimed multis will then be destroyed. Afterward multis will have strict ownership (one owner) who will be able to make keys, change locks, and transfer ownership. |
| DenDragon | *Maxium* Under the new system, when someone has a bounty on there head could they have a (bounty) flag over there head? |
| DesignerD | Never seen the idea before... they could, i suppose. I wonder how much it would affect spontaneous attacks, rather than careful bounty hunting though? |
| DesignerD | I'd prefer bounty hunters to pick targets from the board, and hunt them down, not kill any bounty they see walking by |
| BugKiller | Better fictionally that way as well.. :) |
| DenDragon | *Mantis* Why dosn't it ever rain in Britannia? The ability is already in the client, just never used. |
| Stormwind | We plan on using the weather effects better and more often. |
| DenDragon | *shamino* Archery is way too strong, fencing on the other hand is fast but the damages it does are way too low to harm even a rat... swordsmanship is good only with halberds and so on... What do you plan to do with the combat system? Like Rahl said only Mages are able to kill great wyrms and the like, BTW the new rep system rocks =) |
| DesignerD | We plan on making the melee weapons mor competitive, finding a way to make archery less powerful (probably greater penalties for hit and run or some such), and maybe making dex matter more if we can |
| DenDragon | *Mephisto* What about giving split karma to all that damaged the creature youre group/guild just killed? And what are you going to do about people gating npcs gaining a ton of karma and fame? |
| DesignerD | We've talked about this, but haven't made any plans to put it in effect. As far as the gating, we'll reassess how much you get for doing it |
| DenDragon | *Solor* It seems that under the new reputation system there is no penalty for having low karma (slightly or greatly low) and very litte benefit to having high fame and karma (other than Order/Choas Guild). Why is this? Wouldn't it be beneficial to reard those who follow the way of the Virtues? |
| DesignerD | We don't actually regard karma as "the way of the Virtues." We are still looking at different ways of getting the Virtues into UO. |
| DesignerD | Fame DEFINITELY has nothing to do with Virtues. |
| DesignerD | There is actually some penalty to low karma, but we regard karma as mostly a roleplay tool. |
| DesignerD | As far as benefits to fame--fame is ayardstick fo ryou to measure your character's achievement. That's pretty much all it is. |
| DenDragon | *Dryac* I've heard from people that murderer bounties are being exploited, quite badly, as well -- Here's an example : Bob the killer raises a considerable bounty then has his friend Will kill him and return the head; they then share the profit. What do you have to say about this? |
| BugKiller | Bounties are intented to be mainly for role-playing, and secondarily as an incentive to make sure the murderer dies... thus taking the stat hit. We can't really enforce who does the killing. |
| FrostByghte | Please use irc.stratics.com or irc4.stratics.com to connect...we have been having trouble with irc3.stratics.com today :) |
| DenDragon | *Drusus* Has the dev team decided whether to leave combat in towns or take it out, and if combat is left in town will offensive spells ever be enabled? |
| BugKiller | Thus far, we haven't seen that much problem with combat in town. And given the option, I like the freedom that it gives players. Regarding magic damage... I made a promise that it would be enabled, and I keep my promises. It's just a matter of when. |
| DenDragon | *CoconutMonkey* Hey, what're the chances of having a sort of "thieves' forest" or something in UO Gold where PvP combat can occur between all, regardless of guild affiliations, and no penalties are incurred? |
| BugKiller | Originally, Buckaneer's den was intended to be a penalty-free area, and that's still something we're entertaining. But even that's not something that could be put in lightly. |
| DenDragon | *Troll-LotD* When will monsters be more aggressive towards thieves in dungeons? |
| DesignerD | On monsters and thieves in dungeons: we can look at making the monsters angrier at people who steal from them |
| DenDragon | *PainPills* Why do underpowered monsters such as orc mages and bone magi give more karma and fame than drakes and liches? |
| DesignerD | on the "out of scale" creatures--we will check. |
| DenDragon | *Costanza* Can an innocence query similar to a notoriety query be added? I can not distinguish between a 2 minute criminal and a life criminal, and one time guard-died because someone turned innocent right when I clicked to attack, though their highlight was grey. |
| DesignerD | We don't have any plans for an "innocence query" |
| BugKiller | Unfortuately, the query, in it's current implementation is done on the client, so if a player does change colors during the .07 second brain delay, plus your .3 second lag time, you may hit them at the wrong color. |
| DenDragon | *Zippy-* Any ETA on when we will be able to loot enemy as well as fellow guild members in town? Also, what if anything, is going to be done? |
| Stormwind | The guild member looting thing has been fixed and will be part of the next publish. We looked at things to do about the healers but every solution opened up more holes so we decided to leave it as is for now. |
| DenDragon | *a_mongbat* DD said 'fame is a yardstick to measure your character's achivement', well a non combat GM smith hasn't achived jack then? How about a GM alchemist or scribe or tamer? Isn't there anyway to allow these trades to gain fame from their hard work, which often times takes ALOT more than blade spiriting some stuck drake for 5 minutes? -Cethwyn- thank you. |
| DesignerD | Well, i should have said that fame measures a particular sort of achievement. :) But there were plans at one point to grant fame for skills other than combat, just none of those plans have come to fruition yet. |
| DenDragon | *TialoDragon* Any chance of removing fame gain for killing with BS and EV's? Make people actually earn their fame... |
| DesignerD | no plans for removing that right now |
| DesignerD | But most monsters who can cast spells will be able to dispel EV and BS after the next publish. They will bepretty smart about it too |
| DenDragon | *Bornhald* Have you guys thought about instead of being able to master in two skills allowing one to "devote" themselves to a single skill and be able to bring it up to 200 or give them advantages like giving a devoted mage special spells or a devoted smith superior smith work? |
| DesignerD | No, haven't ever thought about it. Not sur eth skill system woud support that without severe imbalances. |
| DenDragon | *Player* I got a question: Dev team, what are your favorite wish list features you'd like to add to the game? :-) |
| DesignerD | Weather, and that matters (cold, snow accumulation)... more dynamic environment (digging, etc). Ability to compose music int he game. Ability to draw pictures in the game. Necromancy. Player races. |
| BugKiller | I'd like to give players greater control over their environment, and reduce some of the limits we've got in the game and put in place more realistic physical constraints and balance. I'd also like to see a complete skill system revision. |
| DesignerD | Oh yeah--redo every skill, expand and detail it and everything. Schools of magic. Illusions. |
| Stormwind | Dynamic self generating world modifiable by players though game rules. Climate model. Plants growing. More modular player housing. Being able to customize home interiors more. |
| Stormwind | Farming and druid like skills. |
| DenDragon | *pacFalc* will the ability to create fences as opposed to placing of tents as courtyards be available to players? |
| DesignerD | That's come up many times. We are however a little concerned about the day some guild fences in, say, Trinsic. |
| DenDragon | *DarkW0lf* Something very minor, but how bout being able to equip musical instruments. Mages get to equip their books, so why can't I equip my lute. |
| DesignerD | We were able to add mages equipping spellbooks because the 3d animations for that were already on the CD. But there are no 3d animations for the instruments |
| DesignerD | Adding the 3d anims would be around 6 megs of download per instrument :( |
| DenDragon | *Crazey* Is it possible for a temporary shard wide quest somthing with a storyline for those of us who like to role-play? I have talked to many people and they agree that putting a shard wide quest would be great fun! |
| DesignerD | I suspect you underestimate the difficulty of writing a shard-wide quest that actually involves everyone without being tissue-thin in terms of plot. :( |
| DesignerD | One of the most difficult things about UO is that there are so many people wanting quests, but a good quest can't involve too many people, or it breaks down |
| DenDragon | *Wu* Would you consider making Archery as Magic so you have to click on the target each time you want to fire at them? It would solve the problem of people running and healing and being way too powerful with archery. |
| DesignerD | That is one of the suggestions that we have looked at, but it's not how we'll probably handle it. |
| DenDragon | *GrayMouser* Weren't Grandmasters supposed to have their "career" visible at all fame levels? Currently, it's only visible at "Illustrious" or above. |
| DesignerD | I am not sure under what circumstances they were supposed to be visible, but we'd like to find a way for people to display the title they want to |
| DesignerD | possibly with UO Gold's profile feature |
| DenDragon | *ArchMage* Will UO ever be ported to the mac??? |
| DesignerD | There are currently no plans for a Mac port. I myself am a Mac person, and would love to see it happen, but it's not currently happening. Sorry. |
| DenDragon | *Vamphyrie* what is going to be done about firefield/blade npk'ing and guildstone namechange exploit and when? |
| DesignerD | We have not been able to track down the name change problem--haven't even been able to replicate it. :( |
| DesignerD | As far as the NPK'ing... we are aware of it, but our tack is more along the lines of finding alternate spells that we can make so there are other choices beyond the damgerous ones that exist now |
| DenDragon | *Soaren{GSV}* Why doesn't parrying attacks keep you safe from arrows? Cant you parry an arrow? Parrying should be far more powerful, you should even be able to block magic with the shield. |
| DesignerD | Parrying blocking archery is indeed something we have on the list. |
| DenDragon | *Chemical* DD, since everyone is using mark/recall and gating, will you be deleting ships all together to create less lag? And will doing this cause any new bugs to be implemented? |
| DesignerD | No, we like ships. :) And there are (believe it or not) a lot of folks who don't have the recall spell yet. Mostly newbies. ;) Lastly, we don't implement bugs purposely, unless they involve llamas. |
| Stormwind | We also plan on making recall less powerful, such as making its mana cost based on distance travelled (gate travel too). |
| DenDragon | *AlphaSoul* Are there ever going to be red gates? I remember hearing about intershard travel a *long* time ago but nuttin ever came of it. |
| DesignerD | There won't be intershard travel. |
| DenDragon | *Nox* It seemed like we saw some really cool AI on test center, that was grouping monsters around leaders (I watched some orcs while dead)... Are we ever going to see this AI in the game proper? |
| DesignerD | We do have some AI like that in the game now, but groups don't tend to last long enough for it to matter. :) I am not sure when you saw the stuff on TC, |
| DesignerD | but there's also the concern about too much AI being too expensive given the thousands of creatures we are running at once, too. |
| DesignerD | We have had to pare down AI in the past because of that. :( |
| DesignerD | Improving AI as mch as we can remains a major goal |
| DesignerD | Particularly, I'd like to get some of the A-life based stuff back in. |
| DenDragon | *RandUOVault* OSI, why did you choose to create a system where the adverse effects of murdering can be reversed by macroing all night? |
| DesignerD | Rand, basically we could make a system whereby you redeemed yourself over time, with a particular action, or never redeemed yourself at all. |
| DesignerD | If it was with a particular action, the murderer would be back on the streets in minutes. |
| DesignerD | If it was never, we'd fall below a certain threshold of quantity of murderers. And we feel that we DO need to have a certain amount of them in the game. |
| DesignerD | (Note how many complain now that there are too few). |
| DesignerD | That left doing it over time. |
| DesignerD | which is what we chose to go with. |
| DenDragon | *Kropotkin* What do the designers think of their Rep system, now that it has been put to the test? |
| DesignerD | So far, we're very happy with it. Some people don't like it, but way more like it a lot. Some people quit over it, but WAY more decided to stay, came back, or reactivated because of it. From our point of view, it's not only a success, but I think it's actually a significant development in online gaming. |
| BugKiller | I've seen complaints from a few groups of people, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. I've seen more complaints from people who miss murderers, than from victims. |
| DesignerD | It's actually a a system where things aren't "yes/no" but have shades of gray, and players have more control over policing the environment. |
| DenDragon | *Magn_s* Do you ever plan on making a potion that will restore mana? |
| DesignerD | No plans for it |
| DenDragon | *Vamphyrie* Why was a system of voluntary pk/npk not implemented a la EverQuest? |
| DesignerD | Long answer coming, be warned. :) |
| DesignerD | First off, said systems tend to break down. They generally only trap direct aggression, meaning A attacking B. |
| DesignerD | Anytime they have to track something more complex, like A hires B to kill C, they result in "exploits"--ways to get around the system. |
| DesignerD | For example, say I am not pk-enabled, but I hate Stormwind, and he IS. So I hire Den Dragon, who is PK eabled, to kill him. |
| DesignerD | Stormwind's only recourse is to call an admin. This drastically increases admin costs. |
| DesignerD | Now, on a small game, you can handle this. After all, you have a really great admin-to-player ratio, usually. And you tend to know your players |
| DesignerD | personally, so you can figure out who is telling the truth and who is lying. |
| DesignerD | But in a really big userbase, this breaks down badly. |
| DesignerD | Plus, as we all know, if people find an exploit or a way to abuse the rules, they will do so. A lot. |
| DesignerD | And a system that is inherently abusable just causes headaches for the admins then, not only because of calls, |
| DesignerD | but because the flaw in the system causes the players to lose faith in the admins. |
| DesignerD | So from that side, a PK flag system is problematic. |
| DesignerD | It's also problematic from another side... it's a paternalistic system. Basically, you are relying on the "gods" of the game |
| DesignerD | to maintain order in a really fundamental way--by altering the laws of physics around some people. |
| DesignerD | Under this system, you basically trust in the code and the admins (when the code fails) to handle problems for you. There is no |
| DesignerD | burden or responsibility on the player. |
| DesignerD | From the beginning, UO was intended as a living, breathing world that could develop into new and interesting |
| DesignerD | societies online. And if the game is doing too much handholding, that cannot happen. |
| DesignerD | I think the many player cities with player militias and player governments that have developed are evidence that we made the right choice. |
| DesignerD | Basically, a "simple" system is trying to put a bandaid on a problem that is NOT simple (social control and government), |
| DesignerD | plus it would lead to HUTGE admin headaches, making the game more difficult (and expensive) to run |
| DesignerD | plus it is actually much harder to code because of the loopholes, and would take way too much programmer time. |
| DesignerD | So the short answer to "why didn't you use this system" is "bcause we think it's a bad bad bad idea." |
| DenDragon | *NoVaH* Will there be a brief period of time where those who have named their characters with silly/offense or otherwise un-medieval names will have the chance to rename their characters to something more appropriate? A one time only offer might allow those new then that are now experienced to get more involved; starting with a new name would be nice. |
| DesignerD | no plans for it at the moment. |
| DesignerD | But it's a nice idea, so we will -- ready for this? "add it to the list." :) |
| DenDragon | *FancyPants* How about karma not going down for healing negative karma people, just for healing criminals? |
| DesignerD | next update, you will never lose karma for casting a beneficial spell, no matter who you cast it on. You can only gain from it. If it would have lost karma now, it'll just not do anything to karma instead |
| DenDragon | *ElowynOfMoonglow* Currenty if you poison yourself with a lesser poison, you get immunity against greater poisons, will this be changed in the future ? ie, if poisoned by a Poison Elemental its poison will over-ride any lesser poison in your system. |
| BugKiller | That's been fixed. It'll be updated when everything else is :) |
| DesignerD | I have to go now, but the other folks on the dev team will still be here for a little longer. :) Good night! |
| DenDragon | *Mephisto* How about adding a msg similar to the snooping/stealing msg relating to trapping and looting, ie: you notic bob trapping a chest, or you notice bob taking items off of tim's body? |
| Stormwind | Neat idea. We'll ... add it to the list. :-) -Pretender^- Any chance of fixing the VENDOR BUY BANK GUARDS bug? |
| DenDragon | SoB* What about 2 guilds at war. If one gets in over there head they can just quit whenever. There should be some sort of penalty for doing so. If 2 countries are at war one cant just quit for no reason and not have anything happen to it. |
| BugKiller | If you can attack the guildmember before he quits. They will still appear gray to you. Unfortunately without placing strange restrictions and conditions all over the code regarding when you can enter or leave a guild, it's not an easy problem to solve. |
| Stormwind | Guild warfare was designed to only be usable by two consenting groups. If one of the groups no longer consents then the warfare should not occur. If you don't like a group who withdraws from war when they start losing, don't war with them again. |
| DenDragon | *Stevens* I'm a Dragon tamer and before the rep patch it was hard to control , but with the patch each time the dragon attack by it's own i get flagged criminal and everyone attack me. Plan to do something about that? |
| BugKiller | Perhaps dragons should be a bit more controllable. However, currently when tamed, they are still more wild then most. And if someone takes a wild animal into a crowded area (even on a leash), and it bites someone. It's still the fault of the guy holding the leash. |
| DenDragon | *Zarak* I would like to ask what is going to be done about thiefs snooping and following poeple about until they steal from a person then recall away. You can not go anywhere without being stolen from now days. |
| Stormwind | We are considering several ideas to make stealing harder. One idea currently under discussion is for bankers not to accept deposits from criminaly flagged players. |
| DenDragon | Well, that's all for tonight... |
| DenDragon | Thank you all for coming! |
| DenDragon | The log will be posted within 20 minutes at http://uohoc.stratics.com |
| Stormwind | Thanks for coming! |
