House of Commons from 2009-09-23

House of Commons from 2009-09-23

Zephenia	Greetings everyone and thanks for coming to this House of Commons chat with the Developers of Ultima Online. Please direct all questions to [QT]Anubis and [QT]LairSpirit . We will be starting momentarily.
Uriah	Uriah — Cat Herder and resident guy who constantly loses his glasses
WilkiEA	Hello world! I’m Wilki, UO Designer. THanks for coming out tonight!
Chrissay	Hey guys this is Chrissay the Community Coordinator for Ultima Online
Sakkarah	Howdy everyone, this is Sakkarah, UO Live Lead Designer and resident noobie, at your service!
Mesanna	Good evening everyone, ADM and Event Moderator protector
Phoenix	Howdy! I used to be Vex, then I went away for a while and now I’ve all like returned to UO and stuff. :) I’m the newest (and oldest) Systems Designer on the team now.
Zephenia	Stranger: I am unable to access Thepem’s Tier 3 quests after completing ten of her Tier 2 quests. Is this a known issue and if so when is it going to be fixed?
WilkiEA	Thepem only has two tiers of quests, but doing quests for Thepem will give you access to Zosilem’s quests.
Zephenia	Sable: In the release notes, it was stated SA could be used on Win98 machines, yet it seems Win98 machines cannot play UO now. This seems similar to a previous publish/patch. Are you guys working to fix this to allow players with older computers to keep playing?
Uriah	For Windows 98 we’re discussing how to support that OS in the future. As Microsoft doesn’t currently support it, its going to be difficult moving forward, but we’re figuring out what can be done for our players still on that platform.
Zephenia	Stranger: Why do the iron beetles respawn so slow? They drop an item that is needed for two quests and yet they only spawn in one location at a very slow rate. Is something going to be done about this?
Sakkarah	The beetles are just being shy at the moment seeing all these new faces around! Give them time!!
Sakkarah	But on a more serious note, we will look into it so the availability of quest items is more reasonable.
Zephenia	Sable: I noticed some new inaccessible areas in Despise Dungeon some time back. I thought these would be entrances to the Stygian Abyss. Will they be in the future?
Sakkarah	I’m afraid not. There are no Abyss entrances planned in Despise Dungeon.
Sakkarah	The two entrances through Deceit and Hythloth for the Champ Spawns are pretty much all you will get as far as dungeon entrances aside from the Volcano.
Zephenia	zared: How come gargoyles dont have extra attributes like elves have extra mana…since they are bigger more powerful doesnt it stand to reason they need more strength or hitpoints..As it stand now not many peeps dont see a need to make a gargoyle!!!
WilkiEA	While gargoyles don’t have any bonuses to things like strength or mana, they do have other things that make them different. First, they can fly, which is pretty darned cool in and of itself. But they also get bonuses to several skills, including a success chance bonus to imbuing which can really help when you’re trying to imbue at a high difficulty.
Zephenia	Iann: Will you ever allow us to craft things like the Black Staff? As it stands now we can only use looted or npc bought ones for imbuing.
WilkiEA	There is no good reason why you shouldn’t be able to craft things like the black staff. I will look into it and see what we can do about adding them as craftables. If you have any particular requests for items you want to see added, please feel free to create a thread in Uhall and we’ll go from there.
Zephenia	Nhbdy: Renowned loot seems depressingly bad for the ammount of time it can take to kill some of them, yet there are unconfirmed reports of new drops, an official statement?
Mark	11. I think the problem is that a few specific renown mobs are not dropping good loot (rats) and we are looking at that now to get them on par with other renowned creatures
Uriah	woot Mark’s First Post!!
	* Sakkarah cheers *
	* Uriah applauds *
Phoenix	Looks like his eleventh to me.
Chrissay	eleven is that number still around?
Zephenia	Basara: New question: I have a 100 ping rate to my shard, and find it impossible to complete the colored room quest. any chance you could give us a few tenths of a second more, for those of us not geographically close to our shard?
Sakkarah	There are a few things currently being considered to help people with lag issues to complete the quest.
Sakkarah	The difficulty is finding a middle ground that doesn’t make it cakewalk for people with a good ping.
Sakkarah	So any change we make will likely not be significant in the allocated time, and if it is, it will come with some sort of penalty elsewhere.
Zephenia	Tazar: Rumor is that there has been a change to the damage between the slayer and the super-slayer class to make a normal slayer produce more damage. Is this true and if so, why was this change made?
WilkiEA	The rumor is true! Single slayers now do more damage than super slayers. The simple answer for why is to give players a reason to want to use single slayers again.The rumor is true! Single slayers now do more damage than super slayers. The simple answer for why is to give players a reason to want to use single slayers again.
Phoenix	Teh deja vu, it gives me teh dizzeh!
WilkiEA	oops, double post!
Uriah	noooooo
Zephenia	Crazywoman: When can we expect an eta on fixing the mud puppy and red herring trophies. If you put the up and then reded them they become normal big fish
Mark	the mud puppy and red herring trophy buggos are going to be fixed for the next publish :)
Zephenia	Crazywoman: Any particular reason the soulstone timer was removed?
Sakkarah	Since you could already use multiple fragments to bypass the timer and we made soulstone fragments craftable, there really was no reason to keep the timer on soulstone.
Sakkarah	As long as you’re using it from a safe log out location, Whether you burn through 10 fragments or use your full soulstone, does it make much of difference?
Zephenia	Tazar: Can the clients, both classic and enhanced, be changed so that they store the value selected at the last time for each property on the crafting menu of Imbuing.
WilkiEA	Yes, it’s posssible, and we’re going to be looking into making the imbuing process more streamlined.
Zephenia	Tazar: How can i get enough loyalrating on my worker char? Is there any other instead of fighting to get this much loyalrating on my worker?
WilkiEA	That’s a great idea, mind if we steal it? :) Seriously though, that’s something we’d like to implement in the future via quests, or other means perhaps.
Zephenia	Nhbdy: When creating new stealables, what goes into consideration? Is it simply making an item out of a piece of art that has not been used, or do you attempt to curve duping with the drops?
Sakkarah	They are not necessarily meant to curve duping. Though if it helps accomplish that, we certainly wouldn’t weep over it :)
Sakkarah	It’s mostly a matter of desirabily and art availability. But I’m all in favor of killing two birds with 1 stone.
Sakkarah	ps. no animals were hurt in the process
Zephenia	Tazar: Can the item property selection screen be cleaned up a bit? Especially for jewelry. All properties seem to be randomly thrown into the selection menu.
WilkiEA	YES! That will be part of the streamlining process for imbuing in general.
Zephenia	Tazar: Pets that are autostabled while under Medusa’s petrification are staying petrified after several days. Is there a fix coming soon to save beloved pets from this fate?
Phoenix	Yes, I’ve been asked to take a look at that for next publish. Assuming I’ve knocked most of the rust off, I should be able to address it for next update.
Zephenia	Well ya’all, THANKS FOR COMING! We are done for this chat, all the remaining questions will be sent to the Dev Team for possible inclusiuon in future FOF’s and HoC’s. Thanks for coming!
Zephenia	And thanks to the UO Dev team for taking the time to come and chat with us! :>)
WilkiEA	Thanks everyone for coming this evening, I’m off to deal with a mongbat* infestation.
WilkiEA	* no mongbats were harmed in the production of this episode. *
	* Sakkarah eyes Wilki suspiciously *
Chrissay	Good night everyone!! It was a lot of fun!!!
Uriah	Thanks all!! Be well
Phoenix	Last post!
Sakkarah	Take care all!