House of Commons from 2009-12-22

House of Commons from 2009-12-22

Zephenia	Welcome everyone to the Ultima Online chat on Stratics! Please post your questions to [QT]Tazar and [QT]Kiminality only. The chat will be starting momentarily!
Mesanna	Merry Christmas Everyone!
WilkiEA	Hi, I'm Wilki, and I'm a designer for UO. Good to see all of you here!
Mythic_Phoenix	Howdy all! I'm a UO systems designer. I worked on UO from 2000 to 2005 -- back then I was Vex. I joined UO again at Mythic late in 2009, and I'm happy to be back! Happy Holidays!
Supreem_EAMythic	Hellooooooo. Supreem here. Lead Engineer reporting for duty!
MythicAndy	<< Community Guy. *wave*
Mesanna	Hi I am Mesanna, I am an Associate Dev Manager, and over the EM program
Mesanna	Calvin is stuck on the road but he is he with us via phone *waves*
Sakkarah	Howdy folks, I'm Sakkarah, Live Lead Designer who wisely avoided the snow storm my fellow colleagues are currently enjoying!
Zephenia	And a reminder - Please post your questions to [QT]Tazar and [QT]Kiminality only.
Zephenia	<galen> With Draconi seemingly gone, is there a team member with similar responsibility for in-game events, fiction, story arcs, etc? If so, who is it? And if not, how are such matters being handled? (for example, through a committee of team members or something.)</galen>
Sakkarah	I have been responsible for in-game events and fiction since the launch of SA. I'm also currently developing the next story arc which, as announced previously will revolve around the reconstruction of Magincia.
Zephenia	<nhbdy> Are hot air balloons going to be craft and use-able at any time?</nhbdy>
WilkiEA	I'm guessing that this comes from the book that was added in Stygian Abyss featuring plans for a hot air balloon. Basically, the SA collectable books were a bit of an easter egg nod to Ultima 6. While hot air balloons are an interesting idea, they're not currently something we're working on.
Zephenia	<cody> Question: How do you plan to compete to upcoming MMOS like Mortal Online</cody>
Mesanna	We don't see ourselves in competition with other MMO's. We would rather put our efforts to making our player base happy. There have been millions of players that have played UO over the last 13 years, that says alot for the game
Zephenia	<cirno> Will the global chat ever feature the ability to be in more than one channel at the same time? Currently, with only one channel at a time, the busiest one gets used for trade spam, chatter and everything else, leaving no option for filtering </cirno>
Supreem_EAMythic	We have lots of ideas for ways to improve the global chat feature.
Supreem_EAMythic	The main goal of the first pass for this feature was to get all new players into a common Help channel where veteran players can help steer them on the right course.
Supreem_EAMythic	Now that the feature is out there, we are looking at the next steps. Being able to be in multiple channels is one possibility.
Supreem_EAMythic	We definitely want to give players an easy way to ignore players in the chat. We've already started working on that. We also want to improve on the spam filtering and increase GM's ability to moderate these channels.
Zephenia	<nhbdy> "The Stygian Abyss seems to be biased in difficulty towards the Stygian Dragon, I was under the impression that Slasher would be the most difficult to slay, and lore seems to lend in his favor. Will we see an increase in Slasher's capabilities?"</nhbdy>
Sakkarah	The Stygian Dragon is definitely meant to be a formidable foe. The Slasher isn't quite where we want him to be, nor is Navrey. These two bosses will be getting some love in the future. Some of the adjustments have already been published for Navrey but she's still a work in progress.
Zephenia	Remember folks - post your questions to [QT]Tazar and [QT]Kiminality
Zephenia	<gunga_din> Hello, I have a question. I returned to UO because of the live events and interaction between the game masters and community. Are there plans to increase the amount of live content and ingame interaction between EM's and the community?</gunga_din>
Mesanna	We're always listening to the community for feedback about how we can improve the Live Content and ingame interaction. Right now we're very happy with the way Live Content is progressing and look forward to the coming year's events. If you have any suggestions please do email either your EM or myself.
Zephenia	<nhbdy> The Stygian abyss, in compliance with lore, has multiple levels, with the addition of another land mass [ter mur] will we see expansion to the dungeon it's self?</nhbdy>
Sakkarah	The Stygian Abyss of lore is a huge dungeon. Recreating all the levels isn't something we are currently planning on doing. We already have a lot of land that isn't being used as much as it could and should be. So before we add new landmass we are more likely to focus our efforts and revitalizing existing ones.
Zephenia	<naughty-santa> Players creating 14 day free accounts continue to spam gold selling web sites. Any plans on preventing this?</naughty-santa>
Supreem_EAMythic	This is a problem that plagues many MMOs with trial account options. It's difficult to find a balance between stopping the spammers and restricting legitimate new players too much.
Supreem_EAMythic	We have already made lots of changes to make it harder for them to spam. We will not give up the good fight. Hopefully, adding the ability to easily ignore players in global chat channels will be a big step in the right direction.
Zephenia	<iann> Wilki! Can you give legacy weapons some love please? Pretty please? </iann>
WilkiEA	The imbalance between some of the newer weapon types and the legacy weapon types is something we want to address. We'd like for most weapons to balance their average damage and swing speed so that they have roughly the same base DPS. The difference should be in the special moves available, and the "feel" of the weapon, such as slow and heavy hitting vs. quicker and less damage per hit.
Zephenia	<ashlarrr> assuming I can still ask a question, I want to ask: What is the status on the Enhanced Client? There's very little information from devs and despite the many bugs, it hasn't had a big update in a while.</ashlarrr>
Supreem_EAMythic	We are still committed to improving the Enhanced Client experience.
Supreem_EAMythic	Billy Teng, one of our illustrious client engineers, has spent the last few weeks leading up to Christmas fixing as many bugs as he could. Expect some nice love for the Enhanced Client in our next publish.
Zephenia	<nhbdy> Speed Hacking and Script-Fighting has been "hinted-at" recently, what exactly is going to be done?</nhbdy>
Supreem_EAMythic	Yes we are dedicating resources to curb cheating in our game. Unfortunately, we can't tell you about them because we don't want them to know what to expect.
Zephenia	<nhbdy> The Christmas gifts this year are exceptional, but saddly some items that logically could be dyed with natural dyes [icecicles, food, etc.] will not dye, whilst items constructed of metal will change hues without a problem, be thar any plans to expand what can/cannot be dyed with Natural Dyes, or any reason behind what cannot be dyed?</nhbdy>
Sakkarah	Some items aren't dyable simply because they were overlooked. Fixing that is a minor issue. Make sure to send us feedback on that and we can do the needed tweaks. Some other items however are deliberately made non-dyable through the staining system for various reasons. As far as foods are concerned, I'm not sure I would like to eat dyed caked! Maybe we need to look into food colorant!
Zephenia	<cirno> A long time ago, one of the devs said that the fancy new patcher would replace the Classic Client's patcher. Is that still going to happen? Also, can we get a "check files" type button to allow broken installs to be fixed?</cirno>
Supreem_EAMythic	We are still working on adapting the Mythic patcher to work with the data files used in the Classic Client. Unfortunately, we don't have an estimate for when this will be completed. Just know that we want it to happen as badly as you do.
Supreem_EAMythic	*whistles a tune*
Zephenia	<nhbdy> In regards to story arcs, will the world of Britannia ever play host to the exploits of an Avatar again?</nhbdy>
WilkiEA	The Avatar from the single player games isn't found in any Ultima universe except for what we call "Ultima Prime", which is the original timeline that unfolded in those games. So, you won't see the Avatar in UO, as there can only be one Avatar, who is only found in Ultima Prime. Outside of the lore, the Avatar was really a reflection of you, the player. In UO you are represented by each of your characters.
Zephenia	<spiderman> Town bulletin boards can be a very useful (in character) tool for player interaction, especially in RP. However, they don't save posts past server up? Any chance someone can take a look at it and make it more flexible and powerful?</spiderman>
Mythic_Phoenix	We will look into it!
Zephenia	<nhbdy> The Community seems to be widely displeased with the way Halloween's red crystal exchange went down, any plans to allow those whom may have flirted their possible fortunes away? Are Halloween Costumes here to stay? And for that matter, with Polymorph ever be updated with all the new fauna thay has found it's way infront of mages wishing to eat grass or whatever reason one would polymo</nhbdy>
Sakkarah	There are no plans to reintroduce red crystals. In the future, there will likely be new ways for players to acquire more of the costumes for those who didn't have enough Halloween costumes to trade. As far as the Polymorph spell is concerned, while I cannot give an ETA, it certainly would make sense to look into updating the available choices a little.
Zephenia	<xevei_gl> Any particular reason why we can't run multiple clients without needing to do the user switching? As long we have the accounts, what's wrong with running both at the same time? I like to banksit in one, and sort my things in the other </xevei_gl>
Supreem_EAMythic	I'm sure there was a reason why they implemented it this way years ago. I'm not exactly sure why they did it. We will look into this, but I can't promise that we can change it.
Zephenia	<nhbdy> Druidic Runes are traditionally used in Britannian signs on the roads and shops, any plans for a return to our roots, forcing the player base to understand them? As it stands we only have Lich spawn deco drops, and I can only spell MMORA so far.</nhbdy>
Sakkarah	I'm definitely in favor of "encouraging" the use of things such as the runic alphabet, the Gargish, lizardmen and frankly even the wisps' languages. I do not believe we should force players into learning them however. But expanding the Gargish dictionary and making some of the runes available to the players through the Primeval Lich spawn were the first steps.
Zephenia	<airmid> is the warhammer influencing the direction of PvP in UOMesanna No these are two totally different games.</airmid>
Zephenia	<airmid> can we get some left over event things wrapped up, like bank deco and NPC escorts to towns that are no longer invaded</airmid>
Mesanna	We have finished the bank decorating on all shards, as far as quest npcs we try to fix those as we find them.
Zephenia	<galen> If supreem's whistling was a reflection of a lack of questions...Can you give us a clue about the mechanics of rebuilding Magincia? turn-in? Kill monsters? Gather components? Etc. And while we're at it, thank you for returning Dawn. She's a lot better now that she's being played by the EMs.</galen>
Sakkarah	The event design is still in progress but it will definitely involve player contributing in time and resources (both harvested and hunted). No fairy will wave a wand for the town to suddenly be back up how it originally was. The amount of commitment of each shard will definitely impact the end result.
Zephenia	<airmid> currently to do the compassion escorts NPCs are not requesting to go to cities like Britain or Vesper or other towns that were invaded</airmid>
WilkiEA	This was an oversight, and will be corrected in a future publish.
Zephenia	<nhbdy> What does the team want for Christmas?</nhbdy>
Mesanna	I want all this dang snow out of my driveway!
WilkiEA	A pony!
Supreem_EAMythic	Hmmmm... I want a performance upgrade for my Pontiac Solstice... but I know I'm never gunna get it!
Sakkarah	I want a moongate linking my house in VA to my parents' house in Montreal (to steal some of mom's awesome cooking!)
Mythic_Phoenix	A cup of hot apple cider.
Supreem_EAMythic	Oh and I want more snow... so it can fill up Mesanna's driveway again!
Sakkarah	I second Supreem's request!
MythicAndy	I just want to find the new rocket launcher in TF2
Mesanna	Can you feel the hate!!
MythicAndy	and more snow for Mesanna's driveway!
Sakkarah	You'll feel the hate when you drink your eggnog and realize I slipped a rotten egg in it :/
Zephenia	Thank you all for coming! Logs will be posted sometime in the next little while - and you ALL have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday! And thank the Devs and all for showing up Christmas week for a chat!
Mesanna	and Calvin wants everyone home for Christmas.
Supreem_EAMythic	Thanks guys!
Supreem_EAMythic	*waves happily*
Zephenia	*waves*
WilkiEA	*wave*