PvP Inaccuracies

[Luca|Blight]

Yeah, I remember fastcasting mini heal..

I'm curious what is your OSI/freeshard history. Cause I value a player's opinion more than some random national enquirer article. Do you specifically remember during t2a, not warped by freeshard pvp, that you could, and did, spam mini heal as fast as it is here? Also did you use a 3rd party program to do it (UOE/UOA)?

[Rdb]

This is a lil' list of my pvp observations and what can be changed to make this shard's pvp even more true to what t2a was.

Attack Last: Currently you can spam an attack last macro and trigger your opponent to reinitiate combat even if they had tabbed out. This causes your opponent to "lose" their next weapon hit if they had unequipped weapon to cast a spell. Attack last existed during t2a and is even a built in macro in the UO macro list, BUT if you were to tab out, you would not be forced to swing again until the combat timer of 2 minutes passed, making attack last spam pretty much useless. This timer is the same timer used for going grey, or if you go in combat with someone and both parties just stand there for 2 minutes you will go out of combat and have to reattack.

Mini Heal: The amount healed seems correct and I think has been confirmed through multiple sources. However, there is no way no how you could mini heal spam through mage combos or even through a dxr attacking you. It's unreal how powerful this is here. There was definitely more of a delay between the casting of this spell otherwise it would have been just as abused on t2a, which i don't ever remember seeing, because it didnt exist.

Hally Swing Timer: To me this is the most obvious fault on the shard. AS IS with 25 DEX you can swing a halberd approximately every 5 seconds. From what I remember a hally was only slightly faster than a heavy xbow. AS IS a heavy xbow with 25 DEX fires approximately every 12 seconds. Seems a bit off to me. Halberds were almost exclusively used as combo FINISHERS during t2a for this reason, they were SLOW, but here you can time your hally hits to literally be your only source of melee damage. On t2a when mana was low you would duke it out with a katana, not run in circles with your hally timer. Maybe this is a RUN UO default or something, but it seems to define freeshard pvp (along with interrupts) and is quite lame.

Deadly Poison: I don't know WTF is up with poison here, but it's ridiculously inaccurate. If you happened to get DPed during a fight on t2a it would be something to seriously worry about because it was HARD to cure. I would say a GM mage had around a 50-75% chance of curing it, same with greater cure potions. So you would be spending 1-2 spells/potions while your opponent was still attacking you and the poison ticks were raping you, yeah it was definitely something to worry about. As of right now you can cure DP with a STORE BOUGHT POTION, I think common sense says something is wrong here. Not to mention the poison damage is overall extremely weak. Tinkers would love to make POISON traps over EXPLOSION traps because the poison was so brutal and would kill so quickly, I don't think I've ever seen a poison trap used here...

Amen Brotha

[nickhimself]

Hemp, you're missing one of the points about curing DP here. You should NEVER be able to cure DP with anything less than a G Cure pot. Disregard spells or bandages. I'm talking strictly potions here. Cure potions from vendors should NEVER cure a DP. Ever. That's how it was on OSI. You had to have a G Cure, spell, or bandage. If not, you were done.

[Mazer]

Fastcasting is just casting a spell, holding onto it for a second (or whatever the exact 'recast time' is for a spell here), so that you avoid the 'you must wait to cast.." message. It really doesn't affect a mini-heal spam since after the second mini-heal, "fastcasting" won't actually make a difference. It's moreso for people trying to double ebolt quickly (cast ebolt, hold for a second, target ebolt, cast another ebolt) or when you need to sync explo-eb. The recast delay would slow down the ebolt too much unless you pause with the explo cursor up for a second so that you can start the ebolt immediately after targetting the explode.

Not sure what the specifics for tabbing and attack last are actually correct considering how many differing views there are and that I never played enough when I was 10-11 to remember, but if you removed the ability to force people to wrestle you, people would be swinging their hally every 2.5 seconds or so. If you swing, unequip, then stand still for that long, you'll have a fresh hally swing when you re-equip (someone correct me if it's been changed in recent months). Allowing people to tab out would make it far too easy to swing that often since you'd never punch accidentally. I'm not particularily fond of the overall setup, but you can't have this supposedly accurate weapon timer system in place without the auto-defend system to somewhat balance it out.

[dexter4321]

Even though I want DP to be more effective it would suck if it was changed. I just adapted to not even using it cause it's a waste of a skill slot imo, everyone uses cure pots I have never poisoned someone who did not cure it instantly. Plus you only get 12 hits and 25% to poison your target. So you gotta keep reapplying it which takes a split second to do while you in mid battle and could be focusing on other things. Then you reapply and they just cure again instantly. It just comes down to who has more poison or cure pots.

[Luca|Blight]

Not sure what the specifics for tabbing and attack last are actually correct considering how many differing views there are and that I never played enough when I was 10-11 to remember, but if you removed the ability to force people to wrestle you, people would be swinging their hally every 2.5 seconds or so. If you swing, unequip, then stand still for that long, you'll have a fresh hally swing when you re-equip (someone correct me if it's been changed in recent months). Allowing people to tab out would make it far too easy to swing that often since you'd never punch accidentally. I'm not particularily fond of the overall setup, but you can't have this supposedly accurate weapon timer system in place without the auto-defend system to somewhat balance it out.

This is the exact scenario I'm talking about, and this is how pvp on freeshards is defined because attack last combined with fast hally swings go hand and hand. If you didn't have either (which is how I remember it) it would be more accurate. Like I said hallys were always a combo finisher not a constant source of melee damage. Sure you COULD prep an ebolt and equip a hally but you didn't see people firing the ebolt and then requiping the hally again for a second hit cause it was so slow. Dueling was more about doing burst damage rather than timing hally swings and then disrupting. People would equip their katana, let it hit, and then equip the hally about 2-3 seconds later in place of the next katana swing for that guaranteed hally swing because it was so slow otherwise.

[dexter4321]

sdfadsf

[Hemperor]

Hemp, you're missing one of the points about curing DP here. You should NEVER be able to cure DP with anything less than a G Cure pot. Disregard spells or bandages. I'm talking strictly potions here. Cure potions from vendors should NEVER cure a DP. Ever. That's how it was on OSI. You had to have a G Cure, spell, or bandage. If not, you were done.

oh, I've just always used greater cures. I think they may use the same formula as magery with set values, would have to get derrick to answer that one.

[Faust]

Attack Last/Tabbing/Auto Defend - All three of these are integrated parts in Ultima Online. By altering one of these mechanics it will require one or another to be altered based on the side effects from the change.

I never used either of these two game features back in the day compared to the way I do here either. However, there has been some articles that I have read from Asian shard's that described using this feature in the t2a era. The problem with these features being changed is quite obvious if you go through all of the correlations involving them.

The way auto defend works in the demo is pretty straight forward. When a person intializes an aggressive action such as attacking and hitting with a spell their opponent will automatically attack back when they are not in combat. This includes when an individual tabs out to remove their combat status. The second addition t2a retail box that includes the 800x600 client was released in mid/late '99. The guide states exactly that when you attack someone they will fight back always when you're not in combat just like the way it works in the demo. Attack last macro was also introduced into the client during this same exact time. The t2a era only utilized the attack last for around 3-4 months until pre-casting was removed.

http://update.uo.com/design_25.html

There was probably more of a knowledge factor that played a role in this process than anything else. Also, tabbing and attack still work exactly the same as it does in current Ultima Online to this very day. It just seems too much of a coincidence in my opinion even though I hate specific aspects of this feature just as much as the next person. I just know how much is effected when one of these features is altered and the major side effects that can happen.

Hally Timer - I think what you are talking about mostly is the ability to recycle your hally more so than the hally timer itself. The hally timer is well beyond accurate standing nearly at 4.5-5.0 seconds at 25 stamina. The ability to cycle your weapon is a very simple process and still works to this very day in current Ultima Online. When you unequip a weapon your delay shifts to wrestling which is MUCH faster than the hally timer. When you wait out this smaller delay your swing is ready and can hit with a hally. The only difference with current Ultima Online is the fact that the equip delay is forced at ALL times when you equip the weapon. For those that don't know what an equip delay is it's quite simple too. When you equip a weapon there is a delay of that weapon you are equipping added to your combat timer. That means if you equip a hally at 25 stamina there would be a delay of nearly 5 seconds added until you can swing again immediately after equipping that weapon. The equip delay is only forced when you have a current swing delay in the t2a era.

I think this all comes down to accuracy again as always. People has to accept the bad with the good when playing on a shard that replicates a specifici time frame unfortunately for some.

[Vaathen]

The only part of what you are saying that I agree with is the DP curing rate. I remember failing cures all of the time on poisons. There's no way a regular cure potion should be able to cure DP.

That's how it was though. My buddies and I carried only regular cures in T2A, since they were effective v dp and lvl5 most of the time. The huge cure fail rates came later, just before the UOR "no heal while poisoned" bs.

That said, the T2A system does not make poisoning useless. If someone is chugging orange pots to counter a poison-dexxer, then they are not chucking xplo pots or drinking heals at the same time. Seconds count, as we all know.

[nickhimself]

This isn't part of the era, but being able to heal while poisoned makes poison much less threatening than it should be.

[Twomper]

Yeah, I remember fastcasting mini heal..

I'm curious what is your OSI/freeshard history. Cause I value a player's opinion more than some random national enquirer article. Do you specifically remember during t2a, not warped by freeshard pvp, that you could, and did, spam mini heal as fast as it is here? Also did you use a 3rd party program to do it (UOE/UOA)?

I played a mage on Sonoma and Baja from '97-'00 and remember, frequently, spamming mini heals... I can't confirm or deny if doing so on this shard is "faster" or "slower" than my casting was then... I was playing on 33.6 Kbps dialup in a remote area of California. I can say that my horse seems to run a hell of a lot faster, but I think that may also be connection related. Also, UOSA is my freeshard history.. never bothered with any others.

I think a lot of the inconsistencies we are experiencing now between timing may just be the result of new network and server infrastructure producing a "faster" gaming environment..

As for cures, I remember when Poison Elemental poison (level 6) would ruin you, but that you could cure DP with a couple GM pots or 1-2 100 magery casts, but no way in hell could a store bought pot cure it 100% or, if I remember correctly, ever.

In short: "Heal" feels era accurate to me, "Orange Potions" do not.

[Twomper]

This isn't part of the era, but being able to heal while poisoned makes poison much less threatening than it should be.

It also predicated a change to the way dexterity impacted the rate at which dexxers self healed (down to 6 seconds at 100 dex). Neither are Era-Accurate.

[Fwerp]

The UO macro for attack last was not added until UOR.

I don't believe it was even a UOA feature. I always used spells to re-initiate attacks.

I do not remember gcure potions failing to cure deadly poison, and the halberds now are 2.2 seconds. I do not remember them being this fast to be frank. I also remember a greater range for mini heal.

[Valdric Flagg]

The UO macro for attack last was not added until UOR.

I don't believe it was even a UOA feature. I always used spells to re-initiate attacks.

I do not remember gcure potions failing to cure deadly poison, and the halberds now are 2.2 seconds. I do not remember them being this fast to be frank. I also remember a greater range for mini heal.

This sounds more like what I remember. Hallys seldom hit more than 1-2 times before the average fight was over unless 2 good pvpers were going at it. They were too slow.