Player: i want to pwn whoever suggested capping it in the first place with arrows irl.

Wilki: Ahh, but in preperation for the development of Samurai Empire, I trained in Japan for many years; thus my skill in Arrow Evasion is now Legendary.

No PwN 4 j0o!

But, really, what's so bad about reagents? Wouldn't it be cool if spellweaving used them too? Maybe Bushido skills could use honor, and Ninjitsu.. hmm... ninja stars? Ok, I'd have to do something thinking on that one, obviously...

"Casting" something without using resources at least some of the time just doesn't seem very UO-like to me. After all, aren't reagents and magery are like Brad and Jennifer, or Ben and J-Lo!

Oh wait... bad examples.

Wilki: To be blunt, I think that most polls on these forums aren't very useful if your goal is trying to figure out what the entire UO player base wants. Sometimes the results are close, but I've seen them be wildly off as well.

Basically, what you're finding out is what the people who read this forum, who bother to login, and who choose to reply to the poll think. That's not very representative of the entire audience.

That said, there seems to be two very distinct camps on this issue. The first hates the idea, with the main reasons being that LRC is convenient, they've grown used to it, and then there is the group that would feel cheated out of all the time they spent trying to put together a "good suit". The second camp thinks the idea is good, as LRC shouldn't have been allowed to go to 100%, and believe that mages should have to carry reagents for various reasons (gold sink, nostalgia, limit the ability for people to jump back into a PvP fight, etc).

If we actually did anything to LRC, and that's a big if, it probably wouldn't be a cap. However, I don't believe magery would be ruined, LRC would be useless, or that a mass exodus off players would leave the game if we did. After all, mages functioned perfectly well without it for nearly 6 years, and even for a time after AoS 100% LRC was not very common. Also, saying "don't you dare touch my mage and leave (archery/bushido/spellweaving/critical strikes/1 second heals/etc) alone!" isn't really a valid response, as there is no way in searing depths of the Britain forge that we're not going to tweak archery, bushido or any of the other big, obvious things that need addressed. I don't care how much beer and donuts bushido archers send us in the mail, we just can't be bought like that! I swear!

In all seriousness, please, there is no need to make multiple threads a day on the subject. I know that many of you hate the idea, I got that part already :-P

Hopefully, I should have some more information on what may be in Pub37 and our PvP/combat plans after that in the next week or so. MrTact has also been threatening to show up on the boards again as soon as he comes up for air sometime next week along with the rest of the dev team (told ya they've been busy on something :-) so expect him to tell you that I'm smoking crack with some of my ideas (he said exactly that at lunch today).

Ok, it's Friday night, which means it's time to go see if I can find some helpless miner's to PK somewhere!

Player: and yes, all "spells" should cost something more then mana.

Wilki: Yes, they should!

I'm thinking... oh... $0.50 each as a power-up service?

Though, Flamestrike might have to go for $0.75, and a rez an full $1.00. I wonder what would be fair to charge Ninja's for using smoke bombs? Maybe $0.10 per tile they are from their attacker? *ponders*

Player: I understand you probably haven't been playing this game so much lately, and that's why i'm excusing your grave error in judgement.

Wilki: I think the nearly 7000 hours across my 3 main accounts, the vast majority of that in Felucca, more than qualifies me to be excused from the "you don't play UO, so you don't know what's going on" argument, no?

Player: LAC and LRC have no correlation whatsoever.

Wilki: I don't remember making a correlation between the two.

Player: 2. Logically, LRC makes complete sense. The idea that items could allow a mage to cast a spell without regents sounds very reasonable. There's no logical reason to keep these mages from accumlating these items to the point to not having to use any reagents at all. LAC, on the other hand, is, logically, the most idiotic thing ever introduced into the game. It makes no sense to any sensible person how an arrow could but hurled at someone through the air that's not even there. It's not the mage community's fault you guys made something as stupid as Lower Arrow Cost, we shouldn't suffer because now everyone's crying about it.

Wilki: I thought 100% LRC was a bad idea from the very moment I discovered that it wasn't capped after AoS. LAC has absolutely zero to do with my opinion, especially since it doesn't scale up to 100%. As for the argument that you could shoot an arrow without an actual arrow, I'll just point out that magery is a completely imaginary concept. If you can resurrect dead people, with or without reagents, I think shooting an imaginary arrow isn't too far fetched. While some game design is based on logical real world principles, it certainly is not the guiding factor, and in UO can't be used as a reason to not implement a system in a particular manner.

Player: People have spent unbelievable amounts of gold on their suits.

Wilki: The amount of gold that players spend on items should not direct the design of the game. IMHO, if we identify something as being a "hey, we really shouldn't have done that", the fact that players have used resources because of that change shouldn't prevent us from correcting the mistake. I believe that to be true for 7AE items that are blessed on Siege, and I believe it be true here. There are very valid and compelling arguments to leave LRC alone, but this is one that shouldn't matter.

Player: 4. Reg pouches are no compensation. You want balanced pvp? Instituting reg pouches to compensate is going to create mages with the most unbelievable suits imaginable, and they'll be able to function the field just as well as LRC mages. 70s resists, 40 lmc, 14 mana regen, 45 dci mages are just going to reek havoc. You think you're doing all the kids who can't afford lrc a favor? You're dead wrong.

Wilki: You're assuming that 40% LMC, 14 mana regen and 45 DCI will be possible after the combat changes, or that those properties will have the same effectiveness. I wouldn't assume that at all. Bringing balance to combat is going to require a lot of things to be modified.

Player: Or at least do me this favor: Instead of beating around the bush, just issue a shardwide message that the dev's would really just prefer that everyone play a dexer.

Wilki: Or, how about if I issue a board wide message that if the dev's wanted to play a certain template, they'd simply remove all the others.

One more time: the capping LRC idea is MINE. I threw it out there to generate discussion and see what people thought about the idea of modifying LRC. There is no secret dev plan to remove LRC, with me being sent out to soften up the players to the idea. I promise!

Please, take what I say at face value, and don't try and read between the lines, as there is nothing there but what I'm actually saying.

*chuckles* Wasted words... Wilki could be discussing his pet cat and it would evolve into a rant about skill-nerfing and end on thread #4123 with theories that UO is being shutdown soon. *snickerz*

So true, so very true

LOL!

I actually odnt mind going back to regs...might make things less easy for afk scripters or evers.