Provocation - The way it was

[Storm]

I played a bard extensively in T2A. The skill check if the monster is targetting you, based on the monster's intelligence, was never part of the provocation skill. Hopefully some of you remember playing a bard also and can back me up on this. I can find no documentation that supports the way it is now.

Bards in T2A were overpowered, just like tamers were. And in that respect, provocation took forever to GM just like taming did back then.

[Falx]

This is how it worked.

Your provocation skill = your chance to provoke a mob. No matter what, no matter if the mob was a mongbat or if it was a dragon. Trust me, I farmed demons my entire time on OSI before the difficulty based provo, with around 80-85ish provoking, and had an 80-85ish chance to succeed each attempt.

No 'verbal taunts' message, no difficulty check. ever. Word is, Derrick added the verbal taunts to balance bards, but, even with bards the way they should be, tamers are 20x more powerful. The way it is now, it is niether balanced, nor accurate.

Make bards useful, make it the way it was (that IS what we are shooting for here right?) instead of making tamers the only viable, powerful, pvm template.

edit: the 'verbal taunts' message only came when you tried to provoke a player character or yourself.

[Falx]

Found a quote from the UO developer VEX;

"Bards are this effective with a relatively small investment of skill points and character building time. The Provocation skill is devastatingly effective even under 80.0 skill points, because the skill level only determines chance of success. Since Provocation can be used every few seconds, a failure means little. Given time, success is guaranteed"

NOTICE; "because the skill level ONLY determines chance of success"

another excerpt from the post; "Provocation is extremely effective at lower levels. From 90 to Grandmaster, for example, the 10% chance to fail a provoke dwindles down to 0%."

again, note, that at GM provocation, you have a ZERO percent chance of failure. Straight from the Devs mouth.

Found the info in a long winded post preserved by Ianstorm,HERE. Look about halfway down the page for the 2002 post made on UO forums by VEX.

edit: another thing, VEX made this post in response to peoples reactions on provoking becoming difficulty based, after it not having changed since UO was born.

[Storm]

edit: the 'verbal taunts' message only came when you tried to provoke a player character or yourself.

That makes complete sense, because only PC's would respond to verbal taunts. Monsters wouldn't understand you, so why would a verbal taunt be more effective?

[Leroy-]

Posting for agreements sake.

[~|~Damaja]

link your bard info falx. If spawns and AI were made t2a accurate then it would be more balanced. Unfortunetely jsut like erverything else from this era its all attached some how. So you need to have it realy accurate for it to be balanced. Dumb t2a ai makes barding a little less effective plus t2a spawn amounts make less things to provo on other tihngs.

[Falx]

As I said in irc, you didnt do it in town back then, you trapped chickens in your house with boxes. Same difference.

[Coffee]

I played a bard in T2A and beyond, and can't really remember seeing the "verbal taunts" message. I assumed I had simply forgot, but what you guys are saying here makes sense. I spent my time barding dragons -- not so much other players.

[~|~Damaja]

I'll post it then ....

http://web.archive.org/web/200008311750 ... bard.shtml

this is from july 2000 which yes was in uor times but the bard patch when things changed was in 2002 which storm has the link for. So this would work just the same for t2a purposes.

[Falx]

I did link my info, if you look in my post, my link was to a preserved post that was made by a Dev, explaining how it worked, and how it would be changed in pub16.

[Derrick]

Thanks much for digging this up. I've looked high and low for good documentation on the Provocation skill and came up empty handed many times. This is the solid doc I need to make the skill accurate. Thanks.

[alatar]

So now we are making bards even more powerful? Why..?

[TwoTon]

its the way it was

[Falx]

uhmm more powerful? as it is, they are completely useless. at gm you cant even provoke spectres, its not accurate to t2a or any other era.

Also, this is how it was in t2a, same with 4 dragons tamer, dont YOU have a gm tamer? even with the correct barding abilities in, tamers are still much more powerful, so whats the problem?

not only is peacemaking completely useless here (as it was during t2a, same with enticement) provoking here is jacked up, so 'bards' in general are way nerfed even from difficulty based pub 16 standards.

[Storm]

So now we are making bards even more powerful? Why..?

Yeah you've been here long enough where you should know it's all about accuracy.