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After having just fought "Murdok", I have to say that I'm getting pretty tired of these events. It seems like every "event boss" is the same: a disturbingly beefed up monster that requires "the one strategy": swarms and swarms of EVs.

Now, being the optimistic young go-getter that I am, I charged in with sword in hand thinking I would do glorious battle with this foul brigand, only to find that I'm taking 70 damage just for charging in. Realizing that I just took a substantial amount of damage, I retreated, only to get hit again for some reason and I die.

Basically, the battle for me consisted of either trying to recover my stuff, actually trying to hit the guy for a few seconds or getting killed in one hit because Murdok was in the corner of my screen. And just in case anyone is wondering, I have pretty decent gear; 67/70/56/65/64

Look, the point I'm trying to make is, there is nothing fun or challenging about a monster that can kill someone in one hit or in one second. When something can kill you in one hit, there is no guard against that. There's nothing you can do to avoid it, deflect it, or anything. There's no point.

I don't mind a monster that can hit hard or takes large amounts of people to take down, but I'd at least like to be able to stand a chance against what I fight. Otherwise, what's the point?

Hey, I'm enjoying the plot as much as the next guy, but the whole "one hit kill" thing has to stop. It's just not fun.

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Wilki_EA VIP
UO Community Coordinator

To answer the question in the subject line, the answer is yes!

We most certainly are.

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Actually, a year or so ago, there was something that EVs couldn't take down on Lake Austin - nor pets.

The pets and summons were useless on it - then in rode my Paladin with his broadsword and ARMOR IGNORED IT

Bam! Where everyone else's pets and summons were doing 0 to 5 points to it, I was popping it for 80 points per run-through. I begin calling out my strategy, but it takes a few minutes for people to get it.

A creature that the tamers and mages hadn't scratched in 20-30 minutes, died in 3 to a coordinated group of dexxers with armor ignore weapons.


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I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a few more monsters with the same ability that the ophidian berserkers have, that prevents most damage except from special weps. It wouldn't even need to be such a high % of damage reduction as the ophidians have, even 50% reduction except from a certain weapon would be enough to give people a reason to fight it as a melee'er instead of just a tamer or mage using pets/summons.

I thought the ophidian berzerker mechanic was very interesting. The trick would be to figure out how to let players figure out the weapons needed to fight a creature without outright telling them or forcing them to go through trial and error. And even though they hit hard, they were spread out enough that they could be fought by a warrior one-on-one and the gameplay of the joust was fun.

I think it would also be fun to see an attempt at squad-level AI some time, where creatures would be aware of what their fellow spawn were doing (not that I'm suggesting ratling archer gank squads where they collectively all target the same person).

I also think it would be neat to see some different variant "personalities" betweren creatures of the same type so that you wouldn't automatically know the AI of a creature until you started fighting it.

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DIscuss !!!

Yeah I know where you are coming from and I agree, there is nothing more annoying when I have to fall back and use my tamer to sometimes defeat things that my warrior who is a complete template and has top end gear and weapons can't defeat cause he gets killed before delivering more than a couple of blows... especially when its my warrior who I want to be.......

..... *sigh*

Must this be a 1 sided game where anyone can do everything?

I don't mind getting my a** handed to me against certain monster types with 1 type of character, but barely breaking a sweat with another.

Agreed. There shouldn't be a "one size fits all" template out there. I like having to use my macer for this, archer for that and then my mage of that over there. My macer is by far my favorite character, but when it gets to be event time, I usually leave him at home and opt for a more rounded character. I'll hop on my Necro/mage/Sw'er and see what he can do to help. Sometimes that is fire power, other times it will be in more of a support mode with rezzing, healing and/or fielding.

I agree with what you are both saying, that there shouldn't be a class that can defeat all monsters etc, but she wasn't saying that (or at least i wasn't), its not fair when a fully kit'd out warrior with over 110 hp dies in 2 hits,.. overpowered Monster yeah sure thats ok, I find battles where i am healing like mad and virtually dying each time my bandies kick in, but just holding on!!, and just pray my fingers don't slip, hehe quiet fun.. but when I stand no chance at all thats when its not fair and not fun....

I think they are made like that to make the battle last for awhile. Since chances are there is going to be 20-30 people smacking it, it has to have something to make it be dangerous to stand in front of it. If it was only able to do "normal" monster damage, then I could stand there and tank while 3 others x-healed (I know that's a dirty word to some :grin: ) me and 26 others hit it with no fear of any retalitation.

Well, what I've noticed is that a lot of these monsters now take a lot less damage from ev's then they used to. I myself was blasting Murdock with every spell I could think of, which did include throwing a fwe evs, but mostly it was flame strikes and ebolts, and I actually noticed when I did damage to him. What I noticed most was that the lack of cordination was making it so hard, once we on Cats got it down though, it went way smoother. Chain Lightning to take out the dupes, then blasting Murdock with spells, and warriors charging in and dying. Though he did have a gnarly area attack that at one point killed over 40 players in one go, that was friggin awesome!

Wow, that sounds pretty cool(the 40 dieing at 1 time). I think for the most part players don't realize that if there is not an all-powerfully one-hit crushing move that monsters can do then it really makes zero risk for going in to fight. Especially when it's an event where there will be 20-30+ people fighting 1 enemy (even with lesser spawn).

I am sure the current systems won't allow it, but the only other way to make it difficult for players would have newer moves for bosses. Something like damage to summons damages the caster (your EV dies, you lose 30% life or something) or something that lessens the effectiveness of healing, or raises the cost of mana for special moves.

As it is, the only way I see it for any event to become anything more that an angry mob of UO'ers crushing an enemy without an actual fight would be to either

A. Create massive Spawn that will outnumber each player 10 to 1

or

B. Give a main boss an extremely powerful move that can and will kill in 1 hit, 2 max.

I have no problem w/ 1 to 2 hit kills by a boss since it is a boss. It makes people have to work together. I think soloing really hard monsters takes away from the game since then you will have less intereaction. Also, it takes away from actual strategy when fighting a monster. Tanking everything is not strategy but neither is getting your pet and vetting him while the monster is peaced. A balance in monsters would be nice but you can't have warriors even in a pimped out suit killing everything since many PvM people don't go to Fel since they would get smoked. Dip makes good suggestions and that may be the way to go.

Most ppl are not geared up to stand toe to toe with a boss like Dip. I am all for forcing team work on everyone in a shard event. I would like to see a couple of bosses team together against the shard.

*waits for Sherry the Mouse to morph into a giant red rat*

The only reason Maddux brings that up is because it would take large numbers to bring me down...

Not because I kill everyone outright, they just get tired from all the running around they pass out.