Jeremy Dalberg
14 Mar 2008 15:27:03

Hats, cats, and, um, bards - check it out!

"Why does crafting with a runic sewing kit NOT add any properties to hats?"

Hats are not considered "armor" by the crafting system, although they are for loot drops. This is probably an oversight, considering they do have resists and behave exactly the same way as leather or metal helms; making them craftable in the same way would give everyone more fashion options! It's something we can certainly investigate in the future.

"Why are caps and bonnets not possible (so it seems) as magical loot on monster corpses?"

I have no earthly idea. They definitely are not on the list of possible random armor pieces that can spawn on monsters, though, unlike all the other hats. This has been submitted as a bug!

"How are the stats/resists/skills of animals and monsters (including tamables) generated? Are they generated separately? In other words, is it possible to have top stats/resists/skills on the same animal/monster, or there is a hidden cap preventing this from happening?"

Leurocian says,

"Each creature is generated with a set range of stats/skills. Some of the stats/skills may be fixed and can only be one value. Others may have a minimum and maximum range. In the latter case, it’s a roll of the dice. It is possible, though, for a particular creature to have the maximum stats/skills for its kind upon spawning, but that’s highly unlikely."

"Do the mod intensities from runic made armors/weapons still have a linear distribution?"

Yes they do - what this means is if a runic hammer has an intensity range of 60% to 100%, it's exactly as likely to get a 60% intensity property as a 100% intensity property.

"What is the barding difficulty for players and other NPC who can't be lored? Does hit point affect barding difficulty of players the same way as on other monsters?"

A creature or NPC treats a player character as having a barding difficulty of 125, with one possible exception - if the player has been Discorded, his barding difficulty will be 120. Hit points, skills, stats, etc, do not affect that value - it's fixed.

NPCs, even human ones, have a barding difficulty range based on their stats/skills/etc. just like any other creature does.

What's To Come:

The big news this week is that we are rapidly approaching a Test Center publish - shooting for mid-next week, barring complications. We also have the next event all QAed and ready for live testing - some of you may remember that the clock has been ticking in Moonglow for quite some time. Well, that clock is winding down...

Since these announcements have been stretched out over several weeks, I've consolidated them all here so you get an idea of some of the non-event-related things that are going to be in this publish (this is not the full list of publish notes, just the highlights):

New this week:
# Darkwood Armor will now have 100 Luck instead of Night Sight as part of its set bonus
# More relatively minor worldbuilding fixes (incorrect tiles, spots where players got stuck)
# Insured items can no longer be placed on a vendor for sale
# Hairdressers and body sculptors will no longer go on walkabout
# Several other smaller bugs and exploits fixed

Previously announced:
# Weapons should no longer lose properties when runic- or exceptionally-crafted. This should apply to everything, including ML recipe weapons
# ML recipe bows will be able to be exceptionally crafted and get the Arms Lore bonus as well
# Greater Dragons will give scales and barbed leather
# Armor that doesn't have a meditation penalty - like leather armor - won't lose properties when runic-crafted
# Runic-crafted elven armor won't roll Night Sight as a property
# Parasitic, Darkglow, and Invisibility potions can be placed into kegs
# Greater dragons are visibly named "Greater dragons"
# Fixed a couple of worldbuilding trouble spots (places where folks would get stuck - one in Wrong, one in Magincia.)
# Made several fixes that we ain't telling you about until they're live on all shards ;)

Pet Ball Changes:
# Pet summoning balls should unhide the summoner when attempting to summon her pet.
# Pet summoning balls should have a couple second casting animation with the chance to disrupt like other spellcasting.
# Pet summoning balls should have a reuse delay of 15 seconds.
# Pet summoning balls cannot be used while in animal form.

Here is how the new AI should behave:

Commands:

Guard - The pet should guard as it does currently.

Follow - The pet should follow. It will not attack anything, even if it is attacked. (unless it is guarding)

Come - The pet should walk to. It will not attack anything, even if it is attacked. (unless it is guarding)

Kill/Attack - The pet will attack its target as it does currently.

Stop - The pet will stop attacking. It will not attack anything, even if it is attacked, and may wander.

Stay - The pet will stay where it is currently, and will not attack anything, even if it is attacked. (unless it is guarding)

Note: The pet will revert out of passive mode if the pet's owner dies, if the pet is stabled, traded, player character transfers, player and pet log off, etc.

QA is currently reviewing these changes internally. Once the changes pass internal review, they should appear on a public Test Center for an upcoming publish.

Examples of new macro command combinations:

You can tell your pet to guard while it's following you. This will put it in autodefend mode for itself and its master.

To turn off guarding, tell your pet to stop or kill/attack.

So for passive follow, you could do 'pet name' stop, 'pet name' follow me, and it will ignore attacks on you or your pet.

For autodefend follow, you could do 'pet name' guard, 'pet name' follow me or 'pet name' follow me then 'pet name' guard. It doesn't matter what order you initiate the guard command. While your guarded, autodefend should work as normal. The pet will follow you in this case, but will fight whatever attacks you or itself.

Next week should be exciting - we can't wait to get this build up on Test. It's just so satisfying to clean up so many of these old issues, plus the event has been a long time coming!

Jeremy

Calvin Crowner

We have some great plans in the coming months. There are three major story arcs in the works culminating in what I can only describe for legal and marketing reasons as an “Epic Event” coming this Spring … Applying my First Rule of Molyneux, make that late Spring.

The first of said events will literally incorporate showing a little love to the players. Well a lot of love to the players. Our lead designer spends way too much time studying chocolate. So if you have an endorphin deficit, the Valentine’s Day Event is for you. Next, the Mad Mage will finally make his way into Britannia. Look for the sightings of general mayhem and schizophrenia some time late March.

Lets hope the late spring mentioned is whats a coming......waits in anticipation

thanks for reposting that statement from Calvin:

There are three major story arcs in the works culminating in what I can only describe for legal and marketing reasons as an “Epic Event” coming this Spring …

I about fell out of my chair laughing after I read that again. Marketing reasons? lol

what marketing? its so funny I am nearly in tears.

We aim to keep our members smiling

UPDATES


regarding



DVI asked


what in the hell is the point of this?

This could actually be detrimental to people, as someone may negelect to realize the item isn't insured, step out into the world and boom you're dead and there goes your new item.

Granted this could occur prior to the change anyways, and sometimes does, but why increase the liklihood of it?

plus its a pain in the a*** to have to go through everything and un-insure it.

~~~~

to which Jeremy replied


Because if you insure an item, then sell it to someone else, it will still say [insured] but it is NOT insured for them, only for you - so if they die, it won't stay with them.

Oh, and the stable slots question got covered last week.

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic
www.uo.com

~~~~

but Dr.Doolittle found

I just placed an insured item on my vendor, bought the item with a character from another account, let the character die, resurrected the character and the item was in the character’s back pack. So, judging by a quick test, I would have to say that your statement is not accurate.

In the past I have moved insured items from character to character and have never encountered any problems with an item insured on one character failing work on another.

so Cowgoesmoo wonders id

Has anyone looked at this a bit closer to make sure that the reinsurance money is coming out to the bank account of the char that died and not that of the char that insured the item?

Also I think that the comment that this could be referring to future functionality is quite possibly valid.

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revenant2 had this to say

Very interesting thought, if SOME of the insurance bug drops (not all) might be caused by such things.

It might be something as simple as the original insurer being logged off, though.

One could test this fairly easily.

~~~~

Sending Jeremy off to check, she came back to report

I checked with QA, and no, I'm not crazy It may not happen every time - I don't have the specific repro steps in front of me - but there is a reproducible bug where the situation I described above can happen, and this is a very bad thing.

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic
www.uo.com

~~~~

A couple of other questions that came up werefrom The Dude

Just curious does this effect the sharing of items between characters? I , like others i know, share suits between there characters. Does this mean everytime i switch suits between them I would have to uninsure and then reinsure everything?

and this from Fran Fury

Jeremy,I am also curious if this bug is only vendor related? I also switch suits between my characters sometimes on 2 different accounts. Although I have never encountered a problem...it would be my luck that now that you have discovered it..I will too.

~~~~

In response Jeremy posted

I have QA looking at it now, but insurance is character-related, not account- or item-related. It's entirely possible that the insurance won't work properly if the character wearing the item isn't the one who insured the item.

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic
www.uo.com

~~~~

Within 10 minutes though,Jeremy was back with thia news.

OK, I think I have it straight now - there are a couple of factors:

- Item insurance is tied to the character that insures it. If you insure the item before you sell/trade it, when that char dies, it's your insurance that works - and you who pays for it.

- If this happens, the character wearing the item won't auto-reinsure it, even if their auto-insurance is turned on, because they never insured it in the first place.

We can repro this consistently, and believe it's the cause of the vast majority of "insurance bug" reports.

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic
www.uo.com

UPDATE contd


Jeremy's post seemingly threw the whole thread into confusion,not least of all AirmidCecht.


So in effect we may have been paying for another person's insurance cost if they died wearing an item they purchased or received from us?

I have given away countless insured items to players, in fact I make sure it is insured before giving it away. You would think my bank account would read zero since the majority of the players I give things to are new and returning players who have been known to die more than a few times on our hunts. Come to think of it I've watched em die on community hunts and manage to keep their items no matter how many times a balron munches their toes.

Or maybe I just read your statement wrong, Jeremy. Color me confused.

~~~~

You pay for it once, then it shouldn't auto-insure. So... do you notice if you lose one, or a few, pieces worth of insurance? I'm not sure I would.


E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic
www.uo.com

~~~~

and The Dude was equally as confused


Ok im having a really hard time grasping this. I have used 2 suits on about 4-5 characters for over 3years now. Nothing has came uninsured and hopefully nothing will(knocks on wood).

But with this so called fix your putting in i will now have to uninsure and then reinsure my suit everytime i switch it from my characters? I'm not exactly sure how this helps people. Its a huge inconveniance. To me it seems theres more a chance of someone dropping something with this new way. Either you forget to uninsure/insure or your uninsuring/insuring and miss click an item or click to many times.

I just dont get how this helps. I guess if the mysterious insurance bug gets fixed it works but this to me is just a big annoyance.

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Tina Small managed to put some thing in response to Jeremy ,that didnt please her at all

Jeremy, is this problem only occurring when the insured articles are passed between characters on the same account? I know I have insured items and passed them on to my other characters way too many times to count and in three and a half years of playing have NEVER been hit by the insurance bug. I've only had stuff drop on one occasion when I forgot to turn on auto renew.

Perhaps in my case I escaped the problem you say you've been able to replicate because I was usually handing the insured articles to a character on another account. However, I know I've also made up bags of insured items, stuck them in a chest, and then pulled them out with another character on the same account and have never had insurance renewal problems or problems with items dropping. I would think if the auto renewal was hitting up the account of the original insurer, some of my characters would be flat broke by now and they're not. I've also insured items and then transferred them to another shard and the recipients have never had insurance renewal problems. I'd think that would definitely cause a problem if the insurance renewal was linked to a character that was on a completely different shard, wouldn't it??

Something just doesn't sound right here and I guess the skeptic in me is starting to think that this is just another attempt at creating a NEW gold sink and a way to get some of the better items out of the game. Sorry if that sounds particularly harsh to you guys working on the game, but gold sinks and getting rid of in-game items seems to be a definite trend lately and this seems like a not-so-clever way to accelerate it.

Color me not terribly impressed if this is what you're really up to. For me it will just be another straw landing on this old camel's back. One of these days the tweaks you're making are just gonna be too much to take.

judging from Jeremy's reply

*blinks* Complaint after complaint about the insurance bug, and when we think we've found the cause, you accuse us of putting in a stealth gold sink?

I'm not sure of the exact details here - as I said, I don't have the repro steps. There are probably factors I'm missing. But we've proved to our satisfaction that using items that someone else insured can lead to flaky behavior from the insurance system. Insure your own items!

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic
www.uo.com

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AlanofCats showed little sympathy either

Wow... frustration already? You've been back less than a week! I'd say the fel folks have good reason to complain. Does this mean I'll have to reinsure items that I switch out between characters? Between accounts? What if I buy it from someone via a trade window? Are we allowed to trade insured items? Ah that's right you don't have the repro steps. Prolly shouldn't have brought it up in the FoF then. Seems like EA tradition though. Insurance system is bugged? OK lets fix the vendors!

Fix the issue not the symptom!

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Tina managed to bring her comments more in line though by posting

Jeremy, I just wanted to expand on what I said earlier. I don't mind that you're trying to put in gold sinks and also trying to get items out of the game through loss of durability or other means. I understand that for many players the daily grind of trying to make gold to acquire items is what what keeps them playing and paying. But it becomes very frustrating when it seems like the methods being used to slow down the accrual of gold and items also have the effect of discouraging people from even playing. You do things like randomize ore and lumber and then on top of that throw in the BREs. Wouldn't the randomization have been enough? The BREs were just insult on top of injury and I'm glad you finally turned them off. Another example is nerfing the BOS and almost simultaneously slowing down the spawn rate in multiple places. And all of this is happening in an environment where events are practically non-existent and the few that do occur happen at odd times and are sparsely attended.

I have generally tried to stay pretty positive and supportive of what you guys are doing with a limited staff. But this whole topic of fixing the insurance bug, coupled with mysterious comments about other changes being made that won't be announced (if at all) until after they are published, smacks of more manipulation of the game to achieve some hidden objectives.

I keep telling myself that what you're after in the long run is to lower the amount of gold in the game and get as many existing items out of the game so people keep playing to make gold and you can introduce an improved crafting system to make better but less durable items. That would be truly wonderful, Jeremy, if you guys can get us to that point. But in the meantime it seems like a lot of incremental changes are being done based on faulty research and/or by people with limited understanding of the game. I'm not saying I understand the game any better than you do....I'm 100% certain there are many many things about UO that you know that I'm completely unaware of. However, this "solution" just seems like it's off-track somehow.

~~~~

to which Jeremy replied

I'll have to do some more research into the underlying issue to figure out what's going on - but the goal is to prevent unexpected item loss. The gold involved doesn't have anything at all to do with it.

As for the other stuff that we're not talking about yet - they're exploit fixes, and we'd really not like to tell everybody where the holes are before we patch them. Sorry!

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic
www.uo.com

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Jeremy didnt have anything else to say on the subject,but plenty of others did,which you can read by clicking on this link

So, If your not sure on some good stuff you have. I'd eat the cost. and reinsure the item

Definately !!!

Well, what really angers me, is that she hopped on the accusation of putting in a gold sink but never finally answered the ten times asked question if you have uninsure/insure items every time you switch them between characters. This would suck horribly, because I'm am switching constantly... *sighs*

Yup her answers just confused me... I have a suit that I switch between characters and accounts, and I've never lost an item. And they've all died numerous times. Do we really need/have to uninsure/insure everything everytime we do that?

Well, no It's insured, but it will come out of the original insurer's account. It's the AFTER death part, you WILL have to manually reinsure it with the char that is using it. The auto-insure function only works if that CHAR has initiated the insurance. So the steps would be

1. Transfer equip from char to another char
2. Char with equipment now dies.
3. Insurance kicks in and you get the stuff back
4. Auto-insurance DOES NOT kick in
5. Manually insure it with the char that has possesion
6. Now char dies insurance kicks in , you get stuff back. Auto insurance NOW kicks in.
7. Transfer stuff to another char, start back at 1.

Way too much to keep track of. I don't usually swap out equipment as each of my chars are dressed in their own fashion. So I'm just going to make sure that the insurance is correct, because I have bought items already insured. So I'll eat the cost and uninsure. reinsure them.

Did I make it more confusing?

Well that's what I thought we'd have to do now Se'an. Just gonna log in and check again. And see if gold is taken out of the original insurer's bank, and if the item gets auto-insured after I die.

People tend to change characters in the heat of the moment, depending on the situation, and this would be a big hassle. I've never been hit with the insurance bug, but I don't want to jinx it.