House of Commons from 2003-08-07

House of Commons from 2003-08-07

Lord‑Xanthor	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 and programmers of Ultima Online.
Lord‑Xanthor	This chat will be in a moderated format. To ask a question of the developers, please /msg or /query the question takers that will be listed in the topic of the channel and have [QT] in front of their names. These question takers will then present the questions to the Ultima Online development team here with us this evening.
Lord‑Xanthor	I will be the moderator tonight...I will post your question into the House of Commons chat channel and the Developers will answer those that they can. Please /msg or /query different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load and speed the process up.
Lord‑Xanthor	Please do not send the same question to multiple question takers, those that do will be ignored. Thank you =)
Lord‑Xanthor	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
Lord‑Xanthor	Enjoy tonight's chat...
Lord‑Xanthor	Tonights Topic is 'Publish 19'
Lord‑Xanthor	Please /msg /query [QT]Grayred, [QT]Malaki, [QT]Ling_ma.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Oisin* Before Pub19, the top damager's luck was used to generate loot and calculate artifact spawn chances. Is it the same after Pub19, or is it random now?
MrTact	Luck did not change in pub 19
Lord‑Xanthor	*Andurlin* PvP on all shards is now very limited due to trammel and sometimes hard to find a fight, does your team ever consider opening up an all pvp shard to address the pvpers concerens, maybe a preuor shard?
Fertbert	You may find the PvP you seek on Siege Perilous, our all felucca ruleset shard.
Lord‑Xanthor
Lambana	will you consider making artifacts cursed in felucca ?
Vex	That's not something we think is really necessary at this time
Lord‑Xanthor	*godski* How scalable are the new BOD books? Can the same idea be applied to any sorts of items? You just know people want some sort of ring and bracelet "books" as well as tmap books among others.
Hanse	Alrighty
Hanse	heh
Hanse	The books I wrote are specific for BOD's.
Hanse	Although, it's a simple system that could be adjusted to other items.
Sannio	Jumping back to the Siege Perilous answer for a moment: If you'd like to find out more about this specialty shard, please visit http://guide.uo.com/siege_0.html
Lord‑Xanthor	*Minotaur2k* Many people since Publish 19(myself since AoS) have been getting nothing but Iron Smith BODs there seems to be a problem with the system, do you plan to check on it?
Hanse	I've read many threads on this topic.
Hanse	Most of them say "I'm getting bad." and "I'm getting good." evenly...
Hanse	We're not seeing any issue with the current distribution, although we do understand the frustration of the randomness of the system.
Hanse	We've brainstormed on ideas and may have something in the future on our website on this topic.
Lord‑Xanthor	*angelus_* Are rares still spawning as often now pub 19 is introduced
Hanse	Rares that spawn at locations and are stealable were not modified for publish 19. They are spawning as they have in the past.
Lord‑Xanthor
Krump	Currently if a house collapses, all the items in the moving crate stay there. Are there plans to change this, to make the items free lootable? Or is IDOC'ing just completely nerfed? That was the best skill ever *grin*
Vex	It was not intended that items in a house crate would be unlootale after a house collapse. We should be able to get the fix for that bug in one of the next couple publishes.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Barney_Wobba* We want to know if there are any changes planned over the next few publishes for improving the faction system, and if so what time scale has been attached to them. Factions need a bit of a boost, and though p19 has helped a lot we really would all love to see something new, and fixing many bugs that have been ignored for some time.
Vex	For the immediate future, we'll be fixing some faction bugs as part of our normal bug fix efforts. More significant changes to the faction itself beyond fixing broken things are most likely to happen later in the year.
Lord‑Xanthor	Please only message the people with [QT] in theirnames. Any questions sent to me or the dev will eb ignored. Thanks =)
Lord‑Xanthor	*UOnuts* Any thoughts about looting right improvements?
MrTact	I have been discussing this with the designers this past week in response to the recent board posts about PS "kill stealing"
MrTact	Collectively, we feel the looting rights are in a pretty good place right now, so we're probably not going to make any changes to it, at least for a while.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Akara* Are there going to be anymore events like the Lord Blackthorn/Dawn event?
Sannio	Most likely, yes. We've been having two or three such events a year for the past two years or so, and people seem to like them a lot. We've had to juggle manpower a bit with some of them to help bring things together, but many of you have seen we recently solicited for "Event Moderator" positions. Our plan right now is to look into using these EMs for a different sort of event later on this year. Please keep an eye on UO.com for related news.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Aexial_Derull* Are player races actually in consideration, or was the question posed earlier this week simply that, a question.
Vex	They're not in consideration in the sense that they're likely to appear on "In Concept" for any of the next few six-week publishes.
Vex	Rather, they're a topic of discussion that comes up in our design meetings often and they're something we'd like to consider for long-term plans.
Vex	SunSwords questions on the boards were prompted by such a discussion -- his questions were basically questions that designers posed and didn't necessarily agree on.
Sannio	Some people seem to not have received the tail-end of my reply up top. Here it is again: Our plan right now is to look into using these EMs for a different sort of event later on this year. Please keep an eye on UO.com for related news.
Lord‑Xanthor	*linuxkungfu* The publish 19 patch was supposed to fix the boat refresh bug. When I click the gangplanks on my boat I do get a message saying your ship's contents and age have been refresed. However when clicking on the tillerman the age still remains "slightly worn", not "like new"
MrTact	That's because his item properties are not updating. We'll fix that in a future publish.
MrTact	A temporary workaround is to recall off & recall back to your boat, or sail across a server line.
MrTact	There is a *legitimate* issue with refreshing though . . . apparently you can't refresh off the plank unless your main boat key is in your backpack & not in a subcontainer
MrTact	These combined are a real nuisance, I know, and we're looking into getting them fixed as quickly as we can.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Calculon* Since AoS Golems have become extremely useless. They lose the mana link with their owner shortly after consruction and are thus easily destroyed by ettins and trolls. Also, they have never gotten the bonding ability of other pets and must be gated around. Will golems ever get improvements or at least bugfixes?
Vex	Bug fixes, yes. About new golem-related features I can't say. They're not on the schedule, but they are on my personal wish list.
Lord‑Xanthor	*[MV]Vedrix* With the increase of resists on normal non-runic armour, is there a plan to increase the potential of runics (total resists)?
Hanse	The potential is already much higher than non-runic items. It's just the average rolls below exceptional non-runic bonuses.
Hanse	We're looking at the issue, but no solution has been reached yet. I keep a sharp eye out for good ideas on the stratics boards, as do the other devs that read those boards. :)
Hanse	So, if you have a good idea, please post it...Thanks!
Lord‑Xanthor	*Nadia* In the past OSI has commented that it was at GM that one received a slightly improved chance of being offered better BODs but it was stated at the recent Gencor that it's 100.1, which is correct and care to elaborate?
Hanse	I wasn't at Gencon. I have no idea who was speaking on Bod's there.
Hanse	The increase is at 100 and not at 100.1.
Hanse	You have a higher chance of getting a colored BOD at GM and up.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Angel-O-Mine* Does Luck have anything to do with getting better Bods?
Hanse	Nope.
Lord‑Xanthor	*SmokeSerpent* Is there any new news regarding the craftables that were almost accidentally added with Publish 19?
Hanse	Sunsword questioned me about them.
Hanse	It was an inquiry!
Hanse	Anyway, what happened was the items were added to crafting to make them repairable...
Hanse	The side-effect was that players could craft colored masks.
Hanse	We realise that many people enjoyed that addition, while it was on Test Center.
Hanse	We also received some upset messages that folks were getting more neon items to wear. :)
Hanse	So, since folks can already wear those colors, we may see this decision reversed in the future...
Hanse	I'm not sure when, though.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Drull* Is anything being done to help out us laggers on 56k, and if so what?
MrTact	I have heard reports that modem play had backslid somewhat after pub 18.
MrTact	It is my intent to assign someone to look into that soon.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Drull* Whats up with the shards not allowing people to login, where it hangs at "entering britania.."? is this going to be fixed anytime soon or.. ?
MrTact	We have found the problem & think it might be fixed with the most recent emergency publish.
Lord‑Xanthor	*tbhawke* Will fletchers, tinkers and carpenters recieve their own bod system?
MrTact	In case it's not, we have a stopgap solution in place until pub20, when it will be fixed with prejudice.
Hanse	I've not been given the go-ahead to add that into the game.
Hanse	I would like to add those systems in. The design team has many ideas for those systems. :)
Hanse	We've also learned a good deal from the other BOD systems. I'd like to tweak those, as well.
Hanse	Nothing is on our schedule to do that yet, tho.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Burz`Burguul* What about Phase III? Is it really coming out on Pub20 that is planned to mid-august?
MrTact	Yes, it really is.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Jammer* can we have any new information about EM's job? Are they going to do quests as much as seers used to or are they just there to help OSI in quests?
Sannio	Without giving too much away, the EMs will at least initially be helping out with official OSI-created event activities. We'll have to see how things pan out.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Valador* every now and then(not everytime) when you die. you lose lose an insured item somehow. will this be looked into?
MrTact	Not only will it, I actively AM looking into it.
MrTact	Obviously we're very concerned about this possibility.
MrTact	I found one issue that can cause this to happen -- the infamous "drop what you're dragging when you die" bug
MrTact	I have a fix for that that is in testing, hopefully that will be in pub 20.
MrTact	However, most of the reports I've seen don't sound like that's what's happening.
MrTact	My best guess right now is that items are not reinsuring correctly, and players are missing the notification (because they should have enough cash, & the message is subtle).
MrTact	I may have some stuff going on this weekend where players can help me research the bug. Keep your eyes on UOHall for details.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Newman* Quick question for MrTact: DId you find anything usefull on the bugged Rune Books? I have 5 on napa I can show ya. It really annoying =/
MrTact	Yes, I found the cause for default locations ending up with the wrong world.
MrTact	Unfortunately, it's not an easy fix & we're well past the development cycle for pub 20.
MrTact	I will be working to get that fix into 21 and then we'll see where that gets us.
MrTact	Part of the problem with rune books, I think, is there are a few bugs that are colluding to make the problem exceptionally annoying to find.
MrTact	Gonna have to track em down and stomp em one at a time, as a major runebook rewrite is out of the question right now.
Lord‑Xanthor	*Blackheath_THB* Any chance of Mongbat Lords entering the game soon?
Hanse	I am the mongbat lord. :P
Lord‑Xanthor	I would like to thank everyone for coming tonight!
Lord‑Xanthor	And thanks to all of the OSI folks for spending their personal time talking to us
Lord‑Xanthor	Please join #ultima-online for continued, unmoderated chat
Lord‑Xanthor	the log will be posted shortly at http://uohoc.stratics.com
Fertbert	Thanks all!
Sannio	Thanks for coming, everyone!