Post your questions here. As I will be at the meeting in Seattle.

Status on making granite, etc... stackable. And if not going to be put in why?

Cause with the resource changes we need stackable granite. Thank you.

I will be attending as well. I have a nice little list built up.

Wish I Could Be There But Im On The East Coast But As Long As Mr/ Thom O'bedlam(love That Name) Is There We Are In Good Hands

LOL, I fully expect to be banned for life, tarred and feathered, and eviscarated with my questions. They are kinda pointed.

How about, when are they going to try and add mroe events and content for role players, the failed em events were half hearted try but ended up being just anothr thing for item whores to gather and collect trophies.

How about some stuff like the old trinsic envasions and such!

NAH THEY WILL WELCOME YOU WITH OPEN ARMS YOU ARE MAKING THEM LOOK LIKE HEROES

I am really hoping I can attend, but am not sure.

My question(s) are about why the released KR when they did. Who decided that it was done with beta and ready to go gold? Are they getting a lot of corporate pressure to produce quickly?

Okay I got one more:

How can any resource in this game be rare, when the supply will NEVER be exhausted until EAMythic shuts down the servers for good?

It rare in name only.

I had a thought on this. Maybe I should actually work WITH Jeremy and the team. I will post my questions I intend to ask here, so they have time to prepare.

1) Alot of suggestions from past meetups are repeatedly brought up, quoted as good ideas, then no action taken. Not to say that NONE have action taken.
For example, Treasure Map bod books. This was first brought up at the April 2005 Seattle meet-up, then again in 2007. But no action taken. Do you track inputs in any specific manner?

2) Pub 46 is championed as a PvP "fix". But all that was done was nerfs. For example, Honor was MEANT to be used in PvP. Instead of changing it to better support the intent, it was turned off. When are we going to see FIXES?

3)2 months after going gold, KR is still unplayable for 85% of the population (PvP, Doom, Champ Spawns). I greatly appreciate the new decision to delay UO:SA until KR is stable, but I must wonder about the effect of this premature release on subscriptions. How many free trials have NOT converted to subscription?

4) IS the targetting reticule system meant to be standalone? Each option has significant problems. Target hostile is the worst, as it requires you to be targetted before you can switch to it. In practice, it is better to target them FIRST. If it is intended to be standalone, when will you take inputs for both 2D and 3D?

5) Fletching recipe bows. How time consumptive would it be to allow them to be crafted exceptionally? All other recipe weapons can be.

6) Resource change. it was stated that the change had no effect on number of resources obtained from the source. Yet I have found several trees that previosuly yielded 200 logs (400 in Felluca), that now yield 60 (120 in Felluca). What gives?
6a) WE have no choice but to accept this change. But are you aware that this did not make the resources rare? They are merely harder to get, like Hat of the Magi, and other artifacts. Oh, wait, those are readily available now.
6b) Why the hiding change? Combined with the resource change, the ONLY people you impacted were regular players.
6c) WHEN is this change going to reflect the new added resource? Isn't it a bit premature, considered we can't even launch the next phase of the current story arc?
6d) Item enhancing. Is there any intent to make ores comparable to woods?
6e) Why do the Heartwood elves want dragon armor, when it patently sucks? Can anything be done to change the base resists?

7) As to the story arc, when do we advance? THe fircrackers threw me for a loop, I thought they actually had something to do with it. Also, I have found the stories, though creative, to be so cryptic that I cannot extract any useful information from them. Would it be possible to throw in a little more info?

8) Treasures of Tokuno turn in system. This was heralded as a new concept in UO, one with the different applications. Yet it is turned off, never to be seen again. Will we ever see something similiar introduced? I had an idea that you could re-introduce this in conjuction with the Trammel champ spawns. New items for the "legacy" cchampion spawns, and the Treasures of Tokuno for the Tokuno champ spawn. This would ensure they are rare. You could even go so far as to introduce one theme set for each champion spawn. That way all rewards would be equally hard to get.

9) Library rewards "right sizing". I see here a continuation of an overall trend. Why has it taken so long to admit that some of the rewards are poorly balanced in regards to the effort needed to get them?

10) Heartwood quests. I see tons and tons of heartwood and yew runics for sale in Luna on all shards. Yet I have only gotten an oak runic. I made it to GM Fletcher, turning in ALL the bows I made for quests. That was 90k boards, or around 8500 bows, 850 quests turned in. So, how are they getting THAT many?
10a) I have constructed a list of all quest givers in hehartwood, sorted by difficulty of monsters. It is possible to go all the way to 120 in a PvM skill with this list. Is there any way to link the heartwood quests to the New Haven quest? This would really give some flavor and direction to the game, since all the basic elements exist.
10b) Why are the New Haven quests under the legacy quest system? Wasn't the new quest system meant to obviate it?
I was really confused when I could not get the Solen Quest started because of the Newbie Quest.

11) New Haven. I have sent input on the oversight of continuation. The newbie graduate is given no direction AFTER New Haven. All of this SHOULD be in game, rather than require them to go to the play guide (which is out of date) or Stratics (which is slowly getting updated). Do you have any plans for giving direction?
11a) The new player is again not given direction for skill gain in game AFTER they reach 50. Are there any plans to adress this? There are numerous in game guides written by players. Perhaps a contest can be held, with the winners' guides being copied and given to newplayers upon completion of each quest? Of course, the judges would have to be knowledgeable players/ EA staff that know all CURRENT skill gain techniques.

12) Expansions. Historically, Development teams start of STRONG on expansions, with very nicely done additions. Near the end, things start getting slipshod, and remain so for years. Examples: AOS, UOSE, UOML. How do you intend to avoid repeating past mistakes with Stygian Abyss? Why are you trying delay fixes for known problems until you start work on it? Why not, as you did with PvP, adress all known issues NOW, so all you have to worry about with UOSA is those issues?

13) A long time ago, EA cared about why people terminated their subscriptions, and gave us a chance to state it. Now you have to actually call them, and they do not even know which game we are talking about. How do you gather data on why people leave the game?

14) Weapons. Have you considered the irony of what a "dexer" is, compared to the actual meaning? In reality, because of the 140 dex healing reequirement for 5 second heals (15 seconds is just unbearable), ALL fighters have to be "dexers".
14a) Weapon generation. When you create new weapons, what criteria are used to select the swing speed, damage, and str. requirement? Has any though been given to refreshing weapons, so that across classes, everything is similiar except specials? Why would I use a halberd, when I can use an ornate axe that swings faster, does more damage, and has a lower STR requirement? If you did this, you would REALLY fix PvP, as everyone would be in a scramble for months to find their new favorite weapons. In UO, PvP has always been best when changes that affect accepted standards are introduced.

15) Given all the controversy over luck, would it be possible to introduce an effect on items that shows when it is affected by luck? Ideas would be
name color - additional item drop
Property color- additional property drop
intensity color- intensity bump
15a) in the same vein, why does a person who gets hit by hit lower defense, hit lower attack see a message, but not the attacker? Should they not be aware too? Especially when the target is a monster. They are notoriously stingy with feedback.
15b) Would it be possible to also add an effect for peace? Be nice to know when it ends other than spamming peace.

16) Tameables. Going back the the champion spawn ideas for Trammel, how about pet power scrolls? Looking at all aspects, this would go a long way to correct certain imbalances with pets. This alone would be worthy of a full point paper actually.
16b) When you create new pets, how do you decide taming requirement versus abilities, resists and statistics? Looking at the Fire Steed (which is about all it is good for), you can see that there should be some sort of standard.


... Will add more later

You know Baldguy, I usually read your posts because you have logic behind your reasoning.

And your questions are valid, but I personally think you should revise the list.
Why? because if you think through your questions you can answer many of them for yourself.

You should at least pair the list down to questions you can not answer yourself.

If jeremy answered all your questions here are the most likely answers (from personally observations of EAMythic respnses over the years):

1) Yes we do track your input. We value it highly. Thats what the feedback link is for. I read them all, obviously I can't reply to all your feeback *smiles* but it does all go down into the master spreadsheet, be it good, bad, or indifferent feedback, I log them all.

2) This was just the first pass and addressing the imbalances in pvp, All I can say is stay tuned, we are not done yet.

3) I am sure you understand the need to keep some numbers internal to the company, so unfortunately I can't give you that information.

4) OK BALDGUY : ask this one, I have not idea what the answer could be.

5) We understand that there are issues with heartwood quests drops, these will be reviewed and addressed when we get to the crafting overhall. Makes note to ask about heartwood drops.

6) We want rare resources to well...be rarer. I will have to ask you to bear with us, we have big changes planned for crafting, you are going to love them, but I can't reveal anything at this time.

7) Sorry we dropped the ball on this one. Right now though it remains all hands on deck for KR, hopefully soon? Sorry guys, I know you are tried of hearing that word.

8) OK BALDGUY : ask this one, good question

and my 2 cents on ToT event:

Let me review a system, I thought was damn good and fun, and fair for everyone. The first Treasures of Tokuno (ToT) Event. Now I wish I could find the explanation of why the system was developed (not the backstory). As far as I know the ToT system was put in to test if the system where your character goes and does x (kill a number of creatures in tokuno except cranes) get y prize (minor artifact [tomarties]) which can be exchanged with a npc character (Imperial Emissary) for z reward (Major artifacts and original tokuno dye colors [50 uses])
The whole event was to test this type X gets you Y which you trade for Z system to see if it would work and could be added in other places within UO.
This was a great event! Causal players could get the rewards, and yes powergamers and scripters could abuse it, but they abuse every system.

Now I think the system once tested, should have never been turned off. Oh he is killing my "rares" market. Let me explain. They had a system, it worked, people loved it. The event was 10 minors for every major. Now here is how I would have modified the system. The major weapons artifacts would still be there (I think all players - past,present,future should have acces to these weapons) but to get them now the trade in rate would be 25 minors for one weapon major. Now the dyes (not going to argue over the colors) they were/are limited uses (50) that is great it creates a demand. But since you can not get them anymore many players are/were left out of getting them. And if you can find them at least on my shard its 1 million per use left. Lets make the trade in rate for the dyes 75 minors for 1 (50) use dye.

Now I have no idea what the drop rate was for minors? 1 minor every 100/150 creatures killed (I am not sure, I know it used some value system) so let us change the drop rate of minors to say every 400/500 creatures killed. This would lower the drop rate and increase the numbers of minors needed to trade in. The causal player could go to tokuno and know that they had something to actually play toward (not the randomness of mining/chopping we have now). I was just throwing out numbers but it would give players a reason to go to tokuno more than the do now. Besides the peerless, farmers on the lowest level of the fandance dojo and if you live there. Heck with the system tweaked right - drop rate/exchange rate - you could develop a decent market with a steady supply/demand. Heck you could get an artist or two, to change one new weapon (if this is too hard to introduce a new weapon) or new dye color a every three months and rotate them throughout the year to keep it new and keep demand up.

OK and now, back to our scheduled program...

9) We are looking at it and continue to monitor the turn in rates. There might be adjustments when we get to crafting changes, no promises though.

10) Thanks for bringing this issue up. Makes note to look into it.

11) We only provide the world for the customer to play in. It is really up to the individual to decide what to do in game. We rewrote the new player experience, because of a lack of guidance in game for the new player, we are not done implementing all the features of new haven yet.

12) Well...this is your opinion. We stand by all our expansions, and we feel we have done a good job, or we would not be celebrating UOs 10th birthday!
Have there been problems with expansions, Yes and we work to address them as fast as possible. Again we are currently at an all hands on deck status with KR, please keep providing feedback, we read it all.

13) How and why we gather data from former players is an internal company matter, and I can't go into any details here. sorry.

14) I will have to talk to some of the dev team, as I don't know the exact formulas used when creating/making new weapons. Let me prod a few devs and I hopefully will have an answer for a future FoF. Make note to prod devs about this.

15) It might be possible, I will note it down and pass it onto the devs. I will let them look into it.

16) powerscrolls for tameables? ohh that sounds cool! Writes it down. Have to pester a few devs about this.

The one reason I tried to answer these questions is that I know there will only be a limited time to get answers. So the questions need to be as sharp and precise as possible.

Out of the 16 questions you posed, there were only 2, that after I stepped back and thought about them, like I think EAMythic thinks, Most of them answer themselves.

I am not saying not to ask them. By all means ask what you wish. I am not meaning to critize your questions, just trying to revise and focus any possible questions.

Thank you warsong. That was done during a break at work, firing off brainstorm style. (duly chastised ). BUT I did put a disclaimer at the bottom!!!

I do understand that many can be answered by twisty, slidy methods, with no concrete answers :cwm21:. I actually wrote a few of those on purpose. Having been in similiar situations, you always give them a breather question, then slap 'em with the next hard one. You did a credible job of emualtion there Warsong!
(I always wanted to grow up to be a White House spokesperson, and get to dodge bullets like that all day).

Although I did not credit individual comments that caused me to write them down, they ARE a real hodge podge of every valid input I have read on the boards (such as your ToT post, Warsong, which got me to thinking about utilizing the Trammel Champ Spawns)(I read almost all of 'em). Again, because of the slap dash nature of the post (boss almost saw me posting), I did not credit the individual contributors (which is a pet peeve of mine). Sorry all. Next time, I write it in word pad.

I would like to say that I wish to view the forums as a collaborative format. Not all of us can post entirely perfect posts every time. Unlike Stratics' "collaboration", I do enjoy the constructive input. One can hardly be the final say on any subject, let alone on a UO subject.