UO Second Age

I'd like to see Faust's proposal implemented.

Derrick wrote:Kavian,
In the summary: February 98 to October 98 weaponry.
should be Oct '99?
October 98 to February 2003 weaponry.
should be:
October 99 to February 2003 weaponry. ?

If so, and I just want to make sure that I have that straight first, are there any other changes that came with the Oct '99 weapons change that would make our current combat system inconsistent if we switched to the pre-Oct.'99 weapons.

Forgive me if something in you above post already indicated the answer to this, it's been a long day

Actually its 98. The stratics pages and the patch notes verify changes to weapon damages in February 98 and in October 98 (November 98 if you go by the patch note release itself). It’s a surprisingly long time for a set of weapon damages to stay static.

There are several inconsistencies that occur with using an out-of-era weapon scale with our current weapon system; mainly in patch consistency. If we were to use the old weapon scale, we would run into issues of the lack of a thieves guild, anatomy and eval having no effect on damage, and meditation as a skill simply not existing. These are some of the systems that were in place at the time of the old weapon scale (or not there to be more accurate) and would not fit the combat system as a whole.

Aside from the mechanics issues of using a system that doesn’t coincide with our current combat formulas (Anatomy and Eval being useless, Meditation not existing, etc), the justification that the system for combat was considered "T2A accurate" is merely a technicality due to the time that it was actually part of T2A for - anywhere from a month to 3 days, depending on the sources that you use. The argument for its inclusion is in direct opposition to many of our other decisions to not include many other patches due to the fact that they are merely "T2A accurate" by definition and not in spirit and in duration of existence.

Finally, there is the issue of balance in combat. While this system might offer more consistent damage for a few weapons, it is not guaranteed to make all weapons more consistent. In order to determine whether the system as a whole would be a warranted change, regardless of accuracy, we would have to prove that the system had a positive shift away from a more random system as a whole. On top of that, we would also need to prove that the system kept each weapon as effective as it was beforehand. In order to do so, we would need to prove that the weapon speed increase or decrease to each weapon when shifting from the new weapon scale back to the old weapon scale is met with an equal and opposite shift in weapon damage at the same time (meaning that slower weapons would hit harder and faster weapons would hit for less). If it is clear that no real significant damage changes occurred, then the change from the newer weapon scale back to the older weapon scale could be justified, if accuracy was not an issue (I can tell you from the few calculations that I did comparing the first few weapons on the two lists, most weapons suffer a speed decrease and a damage increase under the old weapon scale).

I still don't mind doing a thorough test of the older damage scales simply for informational purposes, but the scale should not be implemented here due to its disassociation with our target time frame (much of the information regarding the old weapon damage scale can be derived using statistical formulas to see how consistent the damage is as well as other key pieces of information about each weapon). A thorough test of the pre October 98 weapon scale will reveal if it is, proportional to the post October 98 weapon scale, more consistent or less consistent.

If you see my post there are three different scales on stratics...not two. Perhaps that is where the 98 vs 99 confusion is coming from.

There is Feb 98, May 99, and Oct 99.

Kaivan,

Ronk is correct. If you take a look at the tables listed under december 12, 1998 it lists the October values we are using now. However, a couple months later the table that I produced is dipped into for a few months on Stratics.

The arugement you present is that there was a delay on getting the correct table on Stratics after the weapon change patch all the way till October of '99 could simply not be true, since in fact they are being used in October '98 on the site. This means that they in fact had the table after that change without a huge delay. The mystery is to why they changed that table for a few months until putting the previous table back in in October '99.

I investigated further into the matter today on the archives. I see where you are coming from with the arguement about stratics consistency, and I see where the confusion about combat table referencing comes from, but that does not necessarily invalidate the evidence. I'll explain the investigation that I did, and the results that I pulled from it.

First, I conducted a search on the archives for direct links to the weapons table page. To do so I searched for uo.stratics.com/arms.htm on the archives page. I was given 2 links as a result:

• 19990502202037 - May 02, 1999
• 19991013070417 - October 13, 1999

Second, I did a check to see what versions of the combat pages were referenced from the main stratics pages. To do this, I searched for uo.stratics.com on the archives, checked each main page that they had archived, and right clicked on the link to view the properties of the archived hyperlink. This allowed me to see exactly which version of the weapons page was being referenced from any given main page. I was given several results from that search*:

• December 12, 1999 - 19990910111840 - September 09, 1999 - New weapons scale
• January 25, 1999 - 19990422183230 - April 22, 1999 - Old weapons scale
• Febuary 10, 1999 - 19990422183230 - April 22, 1999 - Old weapon scale
• April 22, 1999 - 19990422183230 - April 22, 1999 - Old weapons scale
• April 29, 1999 - 19990422183230 - April 22, 1999 - Old weapons scale
• May 02, 1999 - 19990422183230 - April 22, 1999 - Old weapons scale
• October 12, 1999 - 19991022231151 - October 22, 1999 - New weapons scale
• October 13, 1999 - 19991022231151 - October 22, 1999 - New weapons scale

*Note: The archived pages from January 99 until May 99 had a redirect pop-up on the page that would alert you about being at an old page. In IE, regardless of whether you try to close the box or click ok on the box, it attempts to redirect you to the new link. However, in Firefox version 3.0.4 (not sure about other versions), simply closing the redirect pop-up allows you to access the entire page.

Finally, I did a check using each of the direct link values in the URL: http://web.archive.org/web/*/uo.stratics.com/arms.htm where the * was replaced with the direct link value for each different date. There were a total of 5 dates to check, and these are the resulting pages that loaded when directly linking to those pages:

• 19990422183230 directed to 19990502202037 or to the May 02, 1999 page.
• 19990502202037 directed to 19990502202037 or to the May 02, 1999 page.
• 19990910111840 directed to 19991013070417 or to the October 13, 1999 page.
• 19991013070417 directed to 19991013070417 or to the October 13, 1999 page.
• 19991022231151 directed to 19991013070417 or to the October 13, 1999 page.

From this, we can find out what combat pages were really linked to by each of the archived stratics pages. These are the pages that were actually referenced for each of the archive dates between December 12, 1998 and October 13, 1999.

• December 12, 1998 references the October 13, 1999 weapon table, or the new weapons table.
• January 25, 1999 references the May 02, 1999 weapons table, or the old weapons table.
• Febuary 10, 1999 references the May 02, 1999 weapons table, or the old weapons table.
• April 22, 1999 references the May 02, 1999 weapons table, or the old weapons table.
• April 29, 1999 references the May 02, 1999 weapons table, or the old weapons table.
• May 02, 1999 references the May 02, 1999 weapons table, or the old weapons table.
• October 12, 1999 references the October 13, 1999 weapon table, or the new weapons table.
• October 13, 1999 references the October 13, 1999 weapon table, or the new weapons table.

From this, we can see that there is consistent behavior in terms of timelines. The problem arises from which page the archives actually references. For some reason their system chose to reference a page that was nearly a year outside of the time frame for the December 1998 archives page. While we can't be 100% sure what table should have been referenced in December, it's a pretty safe bet that the May weapons table would be the correct table to be referenced by the archives.

As for the consistency behavior of stratics with regard to updates, stratics was not the main source of where I referenced the information regarding the discrepencies on the new weapon scale. I had been referring to the possible lag time between the release of T2A, which would have been the logical time to introduce the new scale, and the actual patch note date. Depending on which source you went with, the lag time was anywhere from just a few days to nearly a month.

Another thing to consider is this: If we were to consider the stratics pages information on weapon damage to be 100% correct information with regard to the time frame and patch count (remember we are adding an extra patch during mid-99), we would be forced to do 3 distinct things. First, we would be forced to ignore either the November 10th patch notes that quite openly state that a major overhaul to weapon damage had taken place, or the Febuary 12th patch notes, which are directly referenced in the old damage table pages. Second, we would also have to assume that a patch occurred during mid T2A, somewhere between May and October 1999, which overhauled the entire weapon system at that time. Unfortunately, there is no such patch note which suggests such a sweeping change to weaponry during this time. Finally, we would have to ignore stratics reputation of releasing information well after it's release on OSI servers. There are several example of this with regard to many significant changes to the game in which stratics waits anywhere from 4 to 8 months to update their pages (in some cases it's even longer).

Kaivan wrote: Pre Febuary 1998 weaponry.

All weapons created before Febuary 1998 follow the origonal weapon damage scheme found here. These are the origonal damages that were used starting in day 1.


Febuary 98 to October 98 weaponry.

This is the patch note that notes the change to weapons that occurred on Febuary 12, 1998:

A general pass on balancing weapons has been done to ensure that there is no "best weapon" in the game, and that each of the three weapons proficiencies is a competitive choice depending on your stats and tactics. Note that this only affects new weapons, not existing ones.
This is where stratics gets the archived page in May of 98 displaying the weapon damages.
This also gave birth to the "pre-patch" weapons that had existed during UO's early days.
The Febuary 98 weapon scale can be found here.

This timeline based on your notion of weapon changes is invalid. The demo uses the set of weapons that you label the "Pre Febuary 1998 weaponry" table. I have pin pointed the demo's creation in between 6-11-98 to 9-7-98. I have also confirmed in the demo code that a halberd uses "weapon.15-Weapon Class: 4d12" for it's weapon damage inside of the demo code. That is the same weapon and dice damage values that it uses in the table that you listed "Pre Febuary 1998 weaponry". It also lists the same previous speed of "20" that it used to have in that table. This simply means that the weapon changes according to your timeline physically woudln't be possible.

This would indicate that the second table had to of been generated after 6-11-98 for a hundred percent certainty now. It could very well be valid now that the second table did exist during early '99.

Keep in mind that the demo also contains a full list of the weapons that utilized the post Febuary 98 values as well in the 'stats' file. The fact that they chose to use one set of values as opposed to another is a question that we will never get answered, but choosing to use the older values over the new ones in a demo version of the game does not deny that the list was created and used on live servers before the creation of the demo. Also, to suggest that the new values were added as late as June of 98 begs the questions: Where did Stratics get its information about weapon damages and the date that the weapon damages were valid through (basically, how did stratics 'know' that the values which weren't to be created for 4 months were valid in Febuary 98), and, What did the Febuary 98 patch actually change the values to, if it was not the values shown on the stratics page (basically, we assume stratics is dead wrong on their table about the time between Febuary and June - keep in mind that stratics would have been wrong and then suddenly correct without changing anything starting in June - and that the values between Febuary and June 98 were different, then what were those values and how did stratics know values from before and after that middle tiime frame but not those values themselves)?

In all honesty, patch note consistency is what we need in order to accuately describe this. If we assume a mystery patch that wasn't recorded did indeed exist, then much of the information that we rely on from stratics regarding weapon simply flies out the window in terms of reliability because of an apparent memory lapse on the part of OSI and Stratics to mention the existence of an entire patch to weapon damage (mind you, we are missing a patch which mentions changing to this undocumented scale, and we are missing patch notes which mention shifting away from this scale). Occam's razor provides us with a consistent and reliable answer to the question that fits with the available information.

Edit: Regardless of whether the values that I have recorded for the Febuary values were created in Febuary or in June, that does not invalidate the information about the weapons change in November of 98 for T2A (unless we are assuming that there were two undocumented patches about weapons).

Can we have a definitive weapons damage/speed table implemented in the wiki, and what is proposed on the test server as well?

This is the definitive chart. I don't know if it's in the wiki or not.
http://www.uosecondage.com/stratics/arms.html

Looks like you guys put a lot of effort into this research, I wasn't able to read the whole 2nd page, too much for me heh..

I will say that I would love to at least test this out, weapons are pretty random (sometimes spells too...) and I think there should be more of a middle range to stick too. Test center!

What ever happened to this? I was looking forward to testing it out.

It was pretty well domonstrated that these weapons stats were pre-Feb '99 if not pe-T2A entirely and as such are inconsistant with the rest of our current system. When it comes to systems like the combat system we try very hard to make sure that we don't introduce elements into it that never existed side by side, for example, the damage bonus to Anatomy, speed being based on stamina and not dex, and the stamina hit for macing weapons were all introduced Feb 2 1999.

FYI on this topic.

The December 12th, 1998 weapons chart that is the same as the October '99 chart lists the special ability of maces dealing out stamina loss upon being hit. This would conclude that this particular chart is in fact incorrectly placed on this time period of stratics since stamina loss from maces didn't occur in a patch until early '99.

There are three tables that has existed during the history of UO.

First: Stratics claims it existed before 2/12/98, but it is used in the demo that was last compiled after June of '98 for certain.
http://web.archive.org/web/199905082158 ... rms212.htm

Second: Stratics claims it existed after 2/12/98, but it is listed as the official table until may of '99.
http://web.archive.org/web/199905022020 ... m/arms.htm

Third: What we currently use of course.
http://web.archive.org/web/199910130704 ... m/arms.htm

Since the December '98 table is obviously a mistake this leaves the second table having to exist sometime after June of '98.

My personal opinion on this matter isn't the same as it was when I started this thread. I'm essentially on the fence leaning towards keeping the current system. The values for a lot of the weapons are more consistant with the 2nd table chart but some of the traditional attributes for weapons would not be the same as I remember. At least from a logical sense. I still would be curious to see how the 2nd table would look from an experimental view.

Ok, I know that in the spirit of The Second Age we should stick to one set or the other. But if everyone agrees that weapon damage is spiky and random, I see no reason why Derrick can't go in and based on Weapon Speed and Damage adjust the low end up and the high end down, proportionally on all weapons so that average DPS remains the same...just more consistant.

I say, why repicate a system that obviously had flaws (otherwise new expansions would have kept the same mechanics) and instead create a t2a that plays well and keeps the spirit of the era intact.

Thats my 2cp
If I am way off base you can give the change back.

-Warder

I've brought this up in the past relating to modifications. The problem with diving into that perspective is that everyone has their own opinion on how things should be. In the end nobody really has the right to dictate what is correct and what isn't. That is why we have to go by the book on accuracy. This of course isn't the only reason, this is after all a t2a shard that strictly is based on an accurate replica of the era.