Interruption.

[Faust]

If the "piercing" theory is correct in regard to armor piercing that would mean fencing weapons would produce more damage in return having more spell interruptions too.

[Vlastslav]

Never, ever on osi did I EVER not interrupt someone with my weapon. I dont know if your getting your info from the demo or patch notes or whatever. But I can honestly say from 97 - 2006, every single weapon hit ive ever done has interrupted. We are attacking naked mages with no AR, there is no reason that a 1-50 dmg weapon hit should not interrupt, maybe if they were wearing leather but they are not. I suggest relooking at the disrupt code for weapons (not spells, just weapon hits) and see if it can be corrected, because right now its completely fubar, 40 damage halby hits while someone is casting a 4th level spell and they dont get disrupted..... yah right.

My theory is reinforced by the fact that when mages punched each other on osi during t2a it was a high high chance to disrupt, currently on here you can punch all you want and will never be interupted.

[Kraarug]

Never, ever on osi did I EVER not interrupt someone with my weapon. I dont know if your getting your info from the demo or patch notes or whatever. But I can honestly say from 97 - 2006, every single weapon hit ive ever done has interrupted. We are attacking naked mages with no AR, there is no reason that a 1-50 dmg weapon hit should not interrupt, maybe if they were wearing leather but they are not. I suggest relooking at the disrupt code for weapons (not spells, just weapon hits) and see if it can be corrected, because right now its completely fubar, 40 damage halby hits while someone is casting a 4th level spell and they dont get disrupted..... yah right.

My theory is reinforced by the fact that when mages punched each other on osi during t2a it was a high high chance to disrupt, currently on here you can punch all you want and will never be interupted.

I agree with Vlastslav and his point about mages punching is a pretty strong indication that he is on to something.

I think that someone here (maybe even Faust) posted a resource confirming that punches were just as good as a katana for interruption due to speed.

A >5 hp punch is not something I would be depending upon if I was a 1999 OSI Mage and the UOSA ruleset for interruption was in place.

Now about the fencing weapons, for my dexxer I chose fencing for it's speed and ability to interrupt mages. For some reason I would like to use daggars in 1999 for that specific purpose. First, after surviving the first wave of mana dumps, my tactic was to whack them with a DPed Kryss and then switch to one of several dped newbie daggars I carried. When I thought the dp charge was depleting, I would switch to another daggar.

These duels didn't last too long. The combination of my speed and choice of weapon, along with being deadly poisoned, gave little chance for a mage to get a spell off. They certainly NEVER stood in place and spammed GH, I've only ever saw that here on UOSA. I've also only ever watched a mage try to stand toe to toe to a dexxer here.

This is why interruption is one of my key issues with accuracy. Magery's strengh was the fact that it was the most powerful and ultil ranged attack. A mage's bane was close order combat and, if they couldn't put distance between themselves and a fast fencer, they were going to go down for the count every time unless they got a recall off.

[Kraarug]

This should be interesting and lends credance to what I was saying about fencing tactics and what Vlast says about interruptions wrestling...

http://web.archive.org/web/200103111520 ... tock.shtml

Recall Blocking

I strongly believe this is one of the least used tactics in the game. Yet, its almost one of the most important group tactics in battle. So many times I see groups of Dread archers and mages come running at an opponent only to be greeted with the famous words of "Kal Ort Por". They dreads then sit around going, "fuk, d00dz, we need to kill faster". This is entirely false. While its beneficial to kill your victim asap, its not entirely necessary. A good strike team can easily prevent recalls by hitting them during the spell delay. So many people underestimate the usefulness of spell blocking it's surprising. Right now in the current state of UO, there are two decent ways to prevent recalls. Naturally, both are melee attacks. Archery and Spells are not fast enough for any consistent results. I think there are two decent methods of accomplishing this task.

#1 GM Fencer using a kryss: This is the oldest and most commonly used technique. Kyrss' are the fastest weapon in the game as of now. They can easily stop a recall if the fencer can hit with consistency. Of course, your consistency improves when the Fencer is at GM and skill the victim has low wrestling. An added advantage of this method is using Deadly poison on the kryss. While poison isn't as powerful and useful as it used to be, it can still do considerable damage and also usually causes your opponent to panic.

#2 GM Wrestler: This is the technique I'm currently using now. While I used to believe that method #1 was the best technique, I'm now leaning towards this method. Since the statistics on wrestling are widely unknown, it makes comparing the two methods difficult. For some reason though, wrestling has seemed to be more effective lately. I believe that wrestling may be even faster than fencing with a kryss. If you have any information on wrestling speed, I'd appreciate some feedback. But if you haven't tried using a GM wrestler as a recall blocker, I strongly recommend it.

While all this info. sounds pretty basic, most attack groups dont bother to use it. Parties tend to think they'll do better with one extra archer instead of nominating one member the recall blocker. After using these methods for a few times, you'll find that they are far more rewarding.

[Kraarug]

Notice in quotes above he dosen't mention anything about the Magery skill of the victim when considering interruptions?

I think the factoring into the interruption process the victims melee skill for hit avoidance (wreslting) AND the victims Magery skill is a double discount which isn't balanced.

It's clearly an uneven approach as we are pointing out.

I think OSI saw this and addressed in these patch notes from 1998, the only ones of the time dealing with interruption.

Code: Select all

Please note, that the second patch note is dated AFTER the demo so, one could safely assume that the problem addressed in October 1998 patch note is contained in the demo code which is post 1/20/98 AND pre 10/1/98.

Source: http://wiki.uosecondage.com/index.php?t ... atch_Notes

1/20/98
...
* Magic:
...
o There will be a chance of the casting aborting if the mage is struck during his casting process. The chance is based on how much damage you took, and your ability at magery.
...

<insert the distribution of the demo here in the timeline between patches>

10/1/98
...
* Spell casting interruption should now be correct. In the last upadate, a change was made to it which we have determined was not well-balanced. It has therefore been reverted back out.
...

[Faust]

Those two patches don't really mean much in respect for your argument. There are two scenarios that can possibly be presented when following those two patches.

1. The first patch that introduced spell interruption was the formula based that we are currently using. The second patch that you listed clearly states that the previous patch was reverted talking about the patch that introduced it in the first place. If this was the case there would be absolutely no spell interruption.

2. The first patch that introduced spell interruption was the formula based tha twe are currently using. There was some random undocumented patch that went in changing the previous formula resulting in the same revert back the old one...

We know for a fact that there was spell interruption making option #2 the obvious choice unless you prefer no spell interruption at all.

Unless someone can come up with some sort of evidence to dispute the ACTUAL code that existed it's highly unlikely that this feature will ever change. There was a reason that nobody spammed first circle spells to disrupt constantly and this is that reason.

[Hemperor]

Those two patches don't really mean much in respect for your argument. There are two scenarios that can possibly be presented when following those two patches.

1. The first patch that introduced spell interruption was the formula based that we are currently using. The second patch that you listed clearly states that the previous patch was reverted talking about the patch that introduced it in the first place. If this was the case there would be absolutely no spell interruption.

2. The first patch that introduced spell interruption was the formula based tha twe are currently using. There was some random undocumented patch that went in changing the previous formula resulting in the same revert back the old one...

We know for a fact that there was spell interruption making option #2 the obvious choice unless you prefer no spell interruption at all.

Unless someone can come up with some sort of evidence to dispute the ACTUAL code that existed it's highly unlikely that this feature will ever change. There was a reason that nobody spammed first circle spells to disrupt constantly and this is that reason.

He's really just pointing out that it isn't "100% OMG ERA ACCURATE" necessarily just because you ripped it from a pre-t2a standalone version of the game. It basically states that at some point something was done to the interruptions without being documented. This could have happened many times, there could have been a change between the demo and the release of T2A.

[Faust]

When someone shows some proof that this was the case sure thing. However, this hasn't been presented at any point in time, or even has been well after the UOR era. There is one simple fact that everyone well knows. Nobody casted harm harm harm, magic arrow magic arrow magic arrow, fireball fireball fireball, or lightning lightning lightning to disrupt spells constantly during the t2a era. Until someone shows some valid proof besides a "what if" this will never be considered which is my opinion but I very well guarentee it based on the nature of the way things are run on this server.

The demo is a very prominent source to use for game mechanics that can't be validated for its removal after its decompilation. There has been a huge number of game mechanics that exists inside of that demo that pin points the last decompilation around August of 1998.

[Derrick]

I think we're mostly all on the same page that the interruption seems correct for spell based damage. The question is on weapon hits. There's a few possibilities that could be considered (I'm just throwing this out there), one is that the damage for disrupt was the damage "before halfling". I've been scouring this evening trying to prove that, but have so far some up empty handed.

[Vlastslav]

Everyone knows its wrong, you can just feel it when your fighting. People did not cast gheals and ebolts through katana hits, im shocked that there is any evidence of weapons hits not being 100% disrupt, cause as I said before on OSI it just never happened. Didnt matter if it was a halby, dagger, or your fists... you were gona stop people from casting if you hit them.

Hopefully Derrick can find something wrong in the coding and correct it to be accurate, cause right now getting off recall is as easy as casting magic arrow.

[Faust]

The damage state before the code cuts the damage in half is an interesting theory that could go as far as even the state before a spell is resisted when that damage gets cut in half. However, this probably is a far stretch in regard to the interruption formula itself though. I'm not too confident that anything will be found to support this in my opinion.

[Kraarug]

I'm starting to come around to Derricks theory that physical damage used for the formula was before the halving. It would explian how wrestling was able to block spells because the damage posted to a victim is just too little to be reliable as the tactic explained in the stratics post provided above.

It would also be similar to how Parry is treated in the combat formula, with it's effect calculated on undiminished damage. I can not see how interruption would be any different.

What we see now on UOSA live is not what we saw on 1999 T2A.

[Freeza]

Everyone knows its wrong, you can just feel it when your fighting. People did not cast gheals and ebolts through katana hits, im shocked that there is any evidence of weapons hits not being 100% disrupt, cause as I said before on OSI it just never happened. Didnt matter if it was a halby, dagger, or your fists... you were gona stop people from casting if you hit them.

Hopefully Derrick can find something wrong in the coding and correct it to be accurate, cause right now getting off recall is as easy as casting magic arrow.

Not that this really means anything but wtfman.com has a whole video about dex monkeys and this being the era for them. How could this be the era of the dex monkey if the tank mage can cast through weapon hits? I believe most complaints on OSI at the time were skilled veteran players (mages) were losing to newbies with a death robe and a practice spear because they could not get a spell off.

[Arkon]

Haven't done much pvp on this shard.. yet, but as a predominantly medi/eval dexxer from 97 - 2002 I will say no mage stood toe to toe with me and was able to cast anything above first circle spells. Whether I was using a kryss, a dagger, a katana, etc, it just didn't happen. Mages would run, LoS, hide, or just teleport forcing you to re-attack while they ghealed or readied hard-hitting spells like explosion or ebolt.

That said, if mages are able to do so here, and easily, then it's inaccurate. Things like experience and advent of programs like Razor really don't play into it when talking about spell disruption.

[Kraarug]

Everyone knows its wrong, you can just feel it when your fighting. People did not cast gheals and ebolts through katana hits, im shocked that there is any evidence of weapons hits not being 100% disrupt, cause as I said before on OSI it just never happened. Didnt matter if it was a halby, dagger, or your fists... you were gona stop people from casting if you hit them.

Hopefully Derrick can find something wrong in the coding and correct it to be accurate, cause right now getting off recall is as easy as casting magic arrow.

Not that this really means anything but wtfman.com has a whole video about dex monkeys and this being the era for them. How could this be the era of the dex monkey if the tank mage can cast through weapon hits? I believe most complaints on OSI at the time were skilled veteran players (mages) were losing to newbies with a death robe and a practice spear because they could not get a spell off.

I know you could drop mages with a death robe and a newbie daggar if they stood still and tried to cast through.... even freshly ressed. That was a particular joy of mine to see the OooOoooing after wards