February 9, 2007

MrTact goes digging through the code, because he loves you:

"What is the formula for pack instinct animals and increased damage? Does this include spell damage too? SSI?"
MrTact says, "It’s a flat 25% bonus for each creature in the pack after the first. It *does* affect spell damage, but has no effect on SSI."

"From my experience, if a piece of armor or weapon has multiple mods that are close to the cap (i.e. mana regen 2, LRC 20, etc.), the chance to successfully enhance it is greatly reduced... Is this intended?"
Basically, yes. If you try to enhance something that already has those attributes, your chance of failure goes up. (This does not include base resistances; it does include resistances over the base for that piece.) The chance of failure scales based on how close to the cap the resistances are. High skill (specifically at GM, Elder, and Legendary) slightly decreases your chance of failure.

"Does dex affect vet time? Does it have the same heal times as healing or are they different?"
Veterinary skill is treated exactly like healing, with one exception: if you're healing your own pet, you get a bonus to heal speed.

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Leurocian loves you, too:

"What are the duration formulae for "essence of wind" and "thunderstorm?""
Leurocian says:

"Thunderstorm reduces spellcasting recovery by 6 for 5 + focus duration.

Essence of Wind reduces enemies' swing speed by (1 * (1 + focus)) and reduces casting speed by (2 * (1 + focus)).

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Kingdom Reborn stuff!

"Are we losing the "Black Area" on the screen with KR?"
This is direct from our engineer JIB:

"The plan currently is to support the "black area" as an option."

"The "zoom" function is really cool/unbalancing/unfair - but awesome. Are we going to get it?"
Also from JIB:

"That is still under debate. If we do allow this it will not give players any advantage over others, it would only show static map data and maybe cached housing."

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"What's the deal with the Feedback forms?"
The new feedback system is your direct line to the UO team. This doesn’t replace other means for us to hear your feedback (like message boards, town halls, and carrier pigeons), but will definitely add a whole new dimension.

Many players feel like their voice can be drowned out, and sometimes people need to exaggerate to cut through the noise. With feedback, you get someone’s undivided attention for as long as it takes to read your message. And we don’t just stop at reading it - we pass it on to the devs. We use this information to demonstrate trends, illuminate dark corners, and more. Sometimes, it takes a pie chart to make a point, and every feedback form is a vote to be counted.

How do you submit feedback? Go to this link. Notice all the drop down menus? That helps us to sort the feedback, so make sure you choose the category that best describes the content of your letter. Fill out the form as completely as possible, and hit submit.

Congratulations. Your feedback is being read, and counted, and submitted to the development team.

Now, this is important - we do not answer messages left for us in the feedback forms. We are 100% committed to reading every single form that you’ve taken the time and trouble to send, and many issues brought up through feedback will be responded to here, in the Five on Friday, but individual questions will not be answered. We’re not saying you should stop posting to boards - far from it. Half the fun of being part of a community is hanging out and talking with your friends. But if you have something burning in your heart, and you want a dev to know about it, send the feedback form.

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Remember to RSVP for the Town Hall in New York - it is approaching rapidly. Have a great weekend!

- Jeremy