Insta Hit, Weapon Mechanics, and much more...

[Orsi]

To be honest, I couldn't understand the first post (i read it though). I was just giving my rendition of how I thought it was to see if maybe it jogged some ideas in your head. But if you think you got it right, by all means, go ahead.

[Faust]

I understand your description of the combat mechanics. There are a lot of people including myself many years ago that assumed it worked that way also. However, after understanding the mechanics from the Demo and including all the research that validates those mechanics afterwards concludes that it must have existed during the t2a era too.

[Faust]

I added a short version of the initial response for some of those that don't fully understand it... I hope it helps. It is broken into two parts. A short and long version in the first post in this thread.

[revolutionary]

sounds logical.

[ClowN]

sounds good to me. when is it gonna be implemented here?

[RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR]

I tested some of these new mechanics with Faust on test center yesterday. It brought back the feel of having to use combos like exp eb .. or exp delay hally eb etc ... not just precast ebolt ... hally hally hally release eb harm harm

Actually tried out an archer mage vs hally mage ... not the easiest to play, but possible to kill people with archer mage that actually know what they are doing.

I'm for the update, but at the sametime ... one of the things that allowed this concept to work without making players impossible to kill and have stalemates, was the fact that 7xgm characters were a needle in a haystack. On UOSA, everyone has gm resist or close and 7x gm skills. GM resist actually was a feat, now its just "3 resist sessions" ...

so then the one big flaw in the pvp is that skill gains are to easy one of the few innacurate things on the shard right? its to bad you cant make them accurate but even if u did you would probably have to find a way to stop people from macroing. i could see how uor is more catered to the 7xes in pvp because people actually had 7xes back then with the skill locks and stuff

[Derrick]

Aye. Melee skills especially don't seem to be nearly as difficult here as they were on OSI, although I do belive you'll find more people running around on Second Age, playing the game and having a good time at skill levels well below 7x than I've ever seen since OSI.

The real hesitancy (for me) in make these gains any more difficult is the disparity it's going to produce between players who are new and those that have been here for some time.

[Hemperor]

although I do belive you'll find more people running around on Second Age, playing the game and having a good time at skill levels well below 7x than I've ever seen since OSI.

I couldn't have any more of an opposite opinion on that... anyone on the field is pretty well close to 7x.

I think skill gains should be made harder, it is after all an accuracy issue. A lot of the times when issues like these are brought up the staff says it wouldn't be fair to the newer players because all the older ones didn't have to experience it that way...

You have a large enough population now that the sooner things like these are done, the better. I don't really see it affecting a whole lot.

[Faust]

Well making them "accurate" is easily said than done. There were limitation caps on each skill that contributed towards the harder gains. There is no information in regard to these caps besides the fact that they did in fact exist. Trying to rebalance what has already been built with a merge of this system would take a HUGE amount of testing and time to perfect. This doesn't mean that it won't ever happen though.

[Hemperor]

Well making them "accurate" is easily said than done. There were limitation caps on each skill that contributed towards the harder gains. There is no information in regard to these caps besides the fact that they did in fact exist. Trying to rebalance what has already been built with a merge of this system would take a HUGE amount of testing and time to perfect. This doesn't mean that it won't ever happen though.

Of course, this would me more based off opinions and memories...which have proved faulty more often than not in the past.

I know the whole gaining system needs a whole revamp at some point, as do vendors etc...I guess they aren't top priority right now because there are more important things that affect gameplay.

[RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR]

Aye. Melee skills especially don't seem to be nearly as difficult here as they were on OSI, although I do belive you'll find more people running around on Second Age, playing the game and having a good time at skill levels well below 7x than I've ever seen since OSI.

The real hesitancy (for me) in make these gains any more difficult is the disparity it's going to produce between players who are new and those that have been here for some time.

yeah that seems to be a unsolvable problem, the only way to even the playing field would be a shard whipe and then everyone would bitch about losing everything theyve worked for, not good. although this is the hardest skill gain shard ive ever played, it seems 7xvs.7x isnt very viable for pvp, was it really this way back in t2a (i dont know because i wasnt 7x then).

[Kraarug]

Here is a short and long version of the description for what is incorrect about weapon mechanics currently. I wrote the short version in another thread to explain it further. It doesn't add any proof with patches, research, etc... If you want all of that you will have to read the long version of the article. I'm adding the short version, because this entire process has been very complex for a lot of people to grasp or understand. I hope this helps for more understanding towards the problem and the solution for this.

Short Version:
RunUO timers are static for all weapons. We put in the instant hit refresh based on memories and documentation that back those memories up. This was the first phase where you could "speed" up your swing. I guess some people like to call this a "fast swing" on here. The problem with this was that it had a bug to where you could swing around 1.5 second instead of the 2.0 seconds that existed back in t2a. Also, the way it worked is kind of a mystery. We know it works but there is no hard code to duplicate the feature. The only logical explanation that we could come up with was basing it off of wrestling, since you unequip a weapon it converts the delay to 2 seconds etc... However, this was the incorrect approach after my later discoveries that is explained in the long version involving a similar unequip delay based off of an average delay of 2 seconds. This is where the new combat changes sprung up pretty much. There was still errors in the combat mechanics besides this though.

There has always been an equip delay when you equip a weapon. I will explain an example of this by using a halberd. A halberd has a swing delay of 4.5 seconds when you swing the weapon. Well on the Ultima Online demo if you equipped a weapon your delay would reset the swing delay. This means soon as you equipped a halberd your swing delay would be 4.5 seconds and you couldn't swing again until it ticked down to zero. This same equip delay exists in present UO and is in the RunUO default code as well.

All shards end up removing this delay because obviously you could not insta hit if a delay was reset everytime you equipped a weapon. Right? Well the problem is that this equip delay was still present in UO based on a patch note that describes it being tweaked in the UOR publish for archery. Well how it works is very simple. If you have an active combat delay the equip delay would be applied and if there is no active delay your swing would be ready for an insta hit. This is why hallies can seem "slower" if you think about it. If you mess up like I previously said while equipping your weapon you can reset your swing delay. This takes a lot more accuracy and precission skill wise to get your swings off correctly without screwing up your combat delay.



Long Version:
A few weeks back I found some pretty impressive information in regard to the way combat mechanics and refreshing your insta hit works. First, I want to tell you that this will probably be one of the longest posts that you will ever read, because there is such an enormous amount of information that will be presented in the post. Please try to bare with me for this very reason.

People need to remember that this shard is all about accuracy. I want to show everyone what I know and found to simply discuss in a civil manner and to get your opinions. This isn't a discussion to suggest other ideas or what might be better to do etc... It is a discussion to solve the major problems that I discovered with the way weapons function here that makes more sense if you follow all the precise information that I have found. Hopefully if there is a positive reaction we can fix some of the major problems with PVP right now. Please try to follow the information below the best you can.



We have officially confirmed that refreshing your swing was possible during the '99 era through relentless research that falls in line with the memories of many Ultima Online veterans that played the game then. Those that are not familiar with this discussion here is an article I wrote in regard to this previously.

More information dug up. This was obtained from an old JoV post that Nighthawk(an old friend and fellow guild member) from wtfman.com posted up many many years ago. The interesting part about this story is the real time involving the journal that is displayed in a picture on there.

Take a special look at the 5th line beside the picture...

5> Hally, Ebolt, Hally, Ebolt (as he tries to heal)

Now let's think about this while including the journal log. Take a special notice to the 3 greater heals. It is quite obvious that the first two of them were disturbed since this guy died in a matter of a few seconds from that point. The hally interupts the first Greater Heal, and the ebolt is released to interupt his second Greater Heal attempt. Another ebolt is casted followed by a hally hit RIGHT after a hally hit just occurred. With a finishing ebolt for the kill. Here is yet more evident proof in a REAL LIFE time span clearly displayed on this journal that shows that you could "ebolt, hally, ebolt, hally". If you had to wait the 5 second delay on the hally there is abolutely no way you could have disturbed three greater heals in this manner without it overriding the delay when you casted a 6th circle spell not to mention even do an ebolt, hally, ebolt, hally this quickly...

Reference: http://www.wtfman.com/oldjov/stories/nhawk19.htm

The major hurdle for implementing this system into UOSA, which we have already done was to come up with a logical reason for this feature to exist. What we concluded was that it had to be involved with the wrestling timer after you unequipped the weapon. However, I found some information a few weeks ago while researching that contradicts this entire theory that actually explains how it worked based on patches, articles, and other related Ultima Online information. Here is an article that I wrote that discusses this.

Here is the piece of information that I found that solves the mechanical functions of the insta hit refresh. I stumbled upon this information while doing research for a non-related issue. Here is the quote below from a person complaining on Stratics about the changes and upcoming changes in early February of '99.

Disarming Weapons: gives a 2 second delay. Ok, wonderful but this goes hand in hand with the hit being calculated at the beginning of each swing to cause further inbalances.

Reference: http://uo.stratics.com/warfare/hallnews ... ocookies=1

This above was the last section on the article referring to the new changes. What this means is that when you disarm a weapon your combat delay was changed to 2 seconds. The reason this was implemented was to fix a bug where someone could significantly speed up a much slower weapon delay. This below will explain the fix that implemented this delay.

Mini-update with small fixes Feb 26 1999 11:25AM
An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed.

Here is the explanation of this patch on the old Markee's Dragon web site.

Markee's Dragon - February 26, 1999

10) The disarm/arm exploit to get slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed. It will not be to your advantage to disarm/rearm a weapon. Please note one important omission!! There will be no current changes to Architect NPCs concerning better methods of buying back house deeds. Expect this to be added in the next major update though which is tentatively scheduled for around March 9th.

Reference: http://www.markeedragon.net/uomall/february.htm

After doing all this research it completely clicked like a light was just turned on in my mind. I remember when this bug was fixed. What you could do is swing with a very slow weapon and arm a very fast weapon to convert your delay to that of a slower weapon. The reason this works is because of the same mechanic that is apparent in the UO Demo. When you equip a weapon with an active swing delay your swing delay would convert to the weapon delay of the weapon that you just equipped. For example, if you hit with a halberd that made your delay 4.5s you could equip a katana converting your delay to a little over 1 second. If you equipped the halberd after waiting out the katana delay you would have a hally swing ready to go. All you had to do was hally, katana, hally katana, and repeat this entire process using the katana as a buffer to speed up the process by converting the delay. A dexer abusing this bug would obviously be devestating one can imagine.

What OSI did to fix this solution was to add a 2 second delay described above when you unequip a weapon. If you did the same process with the halberd and katana your delay would always be two seconds after unequipping the weapon to prevent converting the swing delay to something so awfully low. If you would try to equip a hally after unequipping before waiting out the two second delay it would simply reset your swing delay upon equipping.

When OSI implemented this change it gave birth to the insta hit refreshes that I've talked about so much. If you unequipped a weapon your delay would convert to 2 seconds, which is roughly a little over a 6th circle spell or two second circle spells casted back to back. This process makes much more sense than the theory involving it around the wrestling timer.

I hope all this makes sense to those who read it and fully understand how it actually worked.

I posted a follow up article that explains the process above based on a timeline of events while including some more extra information. Here is that article below.

Timeline:

I made the comment about weapons resetting upon equip with an active delay one post up. What this means is that when you equip a weapon there is what you would call an "equip delay". This delay would be the current weapon's delay at that very moment when you equip the weapon. This is the same delay that is discussed in the UOR publish that tweaked the long equip delay for archery.

Here is the patch notes for the equip delay in '97.

12/16/97 - Combat
Equipping a weapon in combat will restart your weapon swing.

Now this mechanic is also present in the UO Demo and the last time I checked on OSI it was still very much alive there too. At least this is the case for all weapons besides bows for obvious reasons. There is no mention of the removal of the equip delay in any patch notes besides the one involving archery during the UOR publish. There is no reason this mechanic shouldn't be present since there is no evidence that suggests other wise.

Renaissance Publish Apr 28 2000 10:28AM CST - Archery
The long equip delay for all bows will be tweaked.

All of this plays an eccentric part in the insta hit refresh.

We have officially confirmed that insta hit refreshes did occur from all the research above that falls in line with many UO vets memories. This means that there HAS to be someway to be able to convert a halberd's delay to around a sixth circle and two second circle spell delays. A sixth circle delay is 1.75s and two harms back to back is 2.0 seconds.

We previously could only come up with one logical way for this to occur. This was the wrestling timer. Since you unequipped and the delay would convert to a wrestling delay of 2.5s, since wrestling was way too fast at the suggested 2.0 seconds. This has obviously been the incorrect approach. Wrestling for one looks to be between 3-4 seconds on the UO Demo. If you take the speed that RunUO suggests for wrestling at 25 stamina that would make it exactly 3.5 seconds. There is absolutely no way this can be suggested to be the culprit for refreshing swings.

Now lets get back on topic shall we. If you take into consideration that the equip delay resets the weapon on equip this brings up a very obvious issue if you think about it. What happens when I swing with a heavy weapon like a hally or bow, and than proceed to equip a katana to shorten the delay and swap back to the heavy weapon after that delay has passed? The obvious thing would happen. You would be able to swing your weapon because your swing would be considered ready after the shorter delay elapsed.

Now came the solution to fix this problem.

Patch February 1999
An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed.

Markee's Dragon February 1999
10) The disarm/arm exploit to get slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed. It will not be to your advantage to disarm/rearm a weapon.

UO Stratics February 1999
Disarming Weapons: gives a 2 second delay. Ok, wonderful but this goes hand in hand with the hit being calculated at the beginning of each swing to cause further inbalances.

This is where the two second delay after disarming came into play and when insta hit refreshes were essentially born. The easy solution for this was to add an average delay after unequipping a weapon. Once you unequip that heavy weapon your delay would convert to 2 seconds. Also, make note that this delay ALWAYS happens unlike the equip delay. This means when you unequip a weapon you will have a 2 second delay no matter what. It doesn't matter if your swing delay is active or not.

So lets say you hit with a hally giving you a delay of 5 seconds(for ease of following). You unequip your hally converting your delay to 2 seconds, and you decide to equip a katana. This would convert your delay to that of a katana since you have an active delay. If you try the old bug where you wait out the katana it wouldn't be possible like it was previously. This is the case because when you unequip the katana a delay of 2 seconds is always added. So if you swapped to a hally before that delay elapsed than you will now have the hally's delay applied instead of the 2 seconds.



Compare and Contrast Both Systems:

The current system is fairly the same thing right now. However, there are some major differences when you break the both of them down side by side. Wrestling is on a 2.5s timer right now and it really should be around 3.5 seconds. This means that you can refresh your hally and hit every 2.5s, but if someone manages to make you wrestle to waste the refresh the wrestling timer would reset back to 2.5s currently. If this was the correct mechanic the timer would go to 3.5s after wasting your refresh, meaning you can actually hit 1 second faster with a hally than what you normally would be able to in the real system.

This matters a whole lot for PVP right now. Also, in the current system you are able to hit with a hally and swing immediately with a fast weapon like a katana. We are having an enormous amount of weapon DPS that should not be the case in the actual system that should be in place right now. One of the major complaints for PVP is that weapons are relied upon too much. With all the extra DPS that weapons should not be able to do, it is very obvious why this would be the case.

Update:
I want to throw a little stats out there to show you the difference with the current system. This would be based on a standard tank mage with swords at 25 dex. It is possible to to deal 12 more hally hits a minute with the current system compared to the actual system if you factor in wrestling disrupts for a hally. This amounts to a 60-588 extra damage depending on weapon rolls and an average of 324 damage a minute... If you factor in the free katana hit after swinging with a hally you can receive 30 extra hits with a katana in a minute. This factors into a 150-780 extra damage and an average of 465 damage per minute. That is enough to kill a character 3-4 times on average alone. These numbers are simply staggering.

Discuss.

Your timeline seems off and, unless you have something else, perhaps the whole 2 second hally hit is off too.

You show in your time line to support your case is...

Patch February 1999
An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed.

Markee's Dragon February 1999
10) The disarm/arm exploit to get slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed. It will not be to your advantage to disarm/rearm a weapon.

UO Stratics February 1999
Disarming Weapons: gives a 2 second delay. Ok, wonderful but this goes hand in hand with the hit being calculated at the beginning of each swing to cause further inbalances.

When actually it is this...

UO Stratics February 1st 1999
Disarming Weapons: gives a 2 second delay. Ok, wonderful but this goes hand in hand with the hit being calculated at the beginning of each swing to cause further inbalances.

Patch February 26th 1999
An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed.

Markee's Dragon February 26th 1999
10) The disarm/arm exploit to get slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed. It will not be to your advantage to disarm/rearm a weapon.

Unless there is something in subsequent patch notes to re-instate the bug to allow slow weapons to hit faster then this updated timeline suggests that the bug was removed on Feb 26th 1999.

Markee Dragon may have gotten all the mechanics wrong like many era sites falsely reported on how to do the dupe exploit. I know…. I tried all sorts of things!!!

[Faust]

If you notice those were upcoming changes that were posted on Stratics for the 1st of February... These were not changes that were added on the 1st of February. You would have clearly realized that if you took closer notice on the meditation(channeling) part for that same article. Meditation wasn't activated until well after the 1st of February... Insta hit wasn't live until the 2nd of February, which is being discussed in that article too...

Do you realize that test center showed "upcoming" changes quite frequently before being published on the live shards? These changes were often discussed in a manner such as this, and still are to this very day.

The article written by this individual on stratics was CLEARLY a negative rant towards the upcoming changes that was live on the test center.

[Kraarug]

If you notice those were upcoming changes that were posted on Stratics for the 1st of February... These were not changes that were added on the 1st of February. You would have clearly realized that if you took closer notice on the meditation(channeling) part for that same article. Meditation wasn't activated until well after the 1st of February... Insta hit wasn't live until the 2nd of February, which is being discussed in that article too...

Do you realize that test center showed "upcoming" changes quite frequently before being published on the live shards? These changes were often discussed in a manner such as this, and still are to this very day.

The article written by this individual on stratics was CLEARLY a negative rant towards the upcoming changes that was live on the test center.

Oh, I’m familiar with UO In-Testing announcements.

On that same page there's talk of Parry being used against magic spells, of healing requiring both hands to be free and the use of arms lore when wrestling. Just cuz it's on that page or being considered in-testing doesn't mean it was enacted as described or even at all.

[Faust]

There is a difference between saying something will do *insert action* than something that says it does *insert action*. How do I know that the disarm delay was added for sure? I took a look into the default code for this function. I have clearly stated this position already a number of times previously in the past. This same code exists in the default code as well.

Here is a portion of that code below...

Code: Select all

public override void OnRemove( Mobile m )
{
 BaseWeapon weapon = this as BaseWeapon;

if ( weapon != null )
m.NextCombatTime = DateTime.Now + GetDelay( from );
}

There was no mention of a disarm delay EVER in the history of Ultima Online besides this comment in Stratics. Did it happen to *poof* and appear out of no where in Ultima Online? I hardly think so... It is also just ONE big COINCIDENCE that it all meshes together and solved the double hit exploit, huh? After all it's quite logical that an exploit that involves cycling a weapon being abused with the equip delay would apply an unequip delay that still exists to this very day in Ultima Online...

I have seen the parry issue discussed in every single discussion about the skill in UOHOC chat logs... However, it was just talk just like I stated above. The parry issue is a clear maybe. Meditation, insta hit, and several other things discussed in that article were clearly not the same case.

PS
What solved this double hit exploit if not the disarm delay? How and when did the disarm delay get into UO? Please show me some evidence to back the both of these answers up to these questions.