Patch 77 - December 24, 2008: Spells, Pathfinding, Stealing

[Abyss]

I like the idea that you guys stay T2A era accurate, but in my opinion I believe there are some things that should be left alone. The only thing I see happening with the changes with thieves is a dramatic drop in the amount of thief characters a person will play. If a thief steals from someone and that person decides to attack them, that person has chosen to engage in combat with the theif and should not be given the ability to attack with no risk. Kind of falls along the lines with stuff like items being returned to a player if the thief dies within 2 minutes of the steal. Catering to the people whining cause they don't want to lose their shit and trampling on the players who like to run a thieves template without restricting rules that ruin the template altogether.

I dunno...maybe I'm misunderstanding the whole concept of how this works, I guess I'll have to make myself a thief and try this out.

[Hemperor]

thieves, they were far too overpowered. Without spell damage in town the only way to attack a thief was to leave yourself open to the rest of your getting stolen. I love the stealing changes and the patch overall.

One thing I don't like is the dumb downed monster pathfinding...people already farm the out of certain spots, they don't need to be any stupider than they were.

[alatar]

One thing I don't like is the dumb downed monster pathfinding...people already farm the out of certain spots, they don't need to be any stupider than they were.

Agreed.

[Hemperor]

Glamdring - *harkon* I have a question regarding PvM combat, specifically, with regards to Bards. Will bards ever be able to gain Fame/Karma again? We realize it was a coding issue with regards to the controlling flag, etc., that first led to its removal, but surely that can't be an unsurmountable obstacle in itself at this point in time?
DesignerD - Bards will be able to gain fame and karma once the party system is in, by sharing in the fame and karma gained by the party.

Bards should not be able to gain fame from provocation apparently.

[Faust]

Bards gain fame from provocation only if they deal the killing blow.

The pathfinding is necessary to be accurate. Smart pathfinding is what killed PVP in dungeons on OSI shards if you didn't know that already. All smart path finding does is REQUIRE you to make a bard or tamer to farm with. It is as simple as that. Why do you think tamers and bards were the only viable money maker after the UOR patch?

There are so many farming spots that seize to exist because of smart pathfinding and who knows how many more that I'm not thinking about to include. Dumb pathfinding will put more of your mains in dungeons because you can actually farm with one if you wanted to. This means more possible PVP encounters in the long run with people besides a bard and tamer. If you want smart pathfinding than all you're going to get in dungeons are bards and tamers.

Smart pathfinding only enchances tamers on top of that. During t2a you could not control a thousand dragons that new exactly how to navigate to their way point. If you add the capacity of smart pathfinding with a billion dragons that just causes inaccuracy and trouble on top of that. It was very hard to control that many dragons when they were so stupid and getting stuck behind objects.

[Milford Cubicle]

That is how it's suppose to function eby. If anyone notices any differently please let us know.

Might be a dumb question, but I'll ask anyway. If the thief steals from person A and steal unnoticed, which flags him perma grey, would person A be able to attack, and upon death give a count, or... call guards upon getting hit? Also, if a random person knows the thief is perma and attacks, would that person be blue or grey to the thief?

I guess to dumb the question down. Is the person the thief steals from the only one able to count the thief upon death? And does perma grey affect that at all, or only being seen stealing?

[Abyss]

I noticed after this patch now when you provoke a monster onto another monster even when it says you are successful there are a number of times both monsters will still come after you. Not sure if that has something to do with the Monster AI thing, but is there any way this could be fixed? One of the biggest things I did not miss about Divinity and now it's come back to haunt me.

[Faust]

There seems to be a lot of AI functions that were broken from this patch. The energy vortex trick is no longer working and needs to be fixed too. I'm not sure what else there might be. Hopefully not a whole lot.

All those that keep thinking the thief changes isn't accurate here is an article from the Stratics web site.

Getting Attacked

Often times aggravated victims, who lose there goods to you, will attack in an attempt to get there stuff back. Now one of two things will happen, upon being attacked the opponent will highlight grey, which means your free to attack back and kill if you got the skill too. Or they will highlight blue, if they turn up blue you cannot attack back or you will be flagged an aggressor and then be guard killed. Even out of town you want to avoid the blue attacker, for if you win the battle he can still give you a murder count and kick you out of the guild for a week. The best thing to do is run when they highlight blue, and be careful to not auto-attack and hit him, or he can report you if he dies later. Now to prevent him from dying later and giving you a count, is to simply put your valuables in the bank and commit thieving suicide, or purposely get guard killed.

This is a 2nd source of information in regard to this topic. We have the words from the leading Ultima Online developer at the time discussing the changes, and we also have an article written at Stratics that clearly demostrates this change. There is no reason to discuss if it ever existed or not from now on.

[mrbojangles]

In my opinion this patch (in regards to the stealing aggressor changes) was implemented on OSI when they were taking steps towards trammel. It seems to be taking this server away from what it should be(the dangerous world of T2A), and I feel these changes were made just to accommodate the whiners, not because of era accuracy.

Maybe I'm just saying this because my favorite character has just been nerfed to a point where I might as well not play him. Not being able to defend ones self completely destroys the pvp thief template and play style.

I can also see alot of thieves receiving counts from auto-attacking the blue attacker, cant wait to get kicked out of the thieves guild for not even fighting back.

Not allowing a thief to defend themselves is equitable to saying if a red is attacked without initiating the aggression, when he fights back he should get a count.

I doubt what I say will have any impact, but thats my two cents.

[Purge]

STEALING -
So what determines when they go grey to you or not? Shouldn't anyone attacking you make them grey?

Hell couldn't the thief accidently auto attack back when the dude attacks him dealing 1 pt of damage, then the guy kills himself thus giving you a murder count? I'll hop on my thief tomorrow and see exactly how this works out, hopefully my fears arn't true.

[Ezp]

I remember stealing in this era and it did suck because you couldn't fight back. Just have to steal and run now, it's just how it was.

[Abyss]

There seems to be a lot of AI functions that were broken from this patch. The energy vortex trick is no longer working and needs to be fixed too. I'm not sure what else there might be. Hopefully not a whole lot.

All those that keep thinking the thief changes isn't accurate here is an article from the Stratics web site.

Getting Attacked

Often times aggravated victims, who lose there goods to you, will attack in an attempt to get there stuff back. Now one of two things will happen, upon being attacked the opponent will highlight grey, which means your free to attack back and kill if you got the skill too. Or they will highlight blue, if they turn up blue you cannot attack back or you will be flagged an aggressor and then be guard killed. Even out of town you want to avoid the blue attacker, for if you win the battle he can still give you a murder count and kick you out of the guild for a week. The best thing to do is run when they highlight blue, and be careful to not auto-attack and hit him, or he can report you if he dies later. Now to prevent him from dying later and giving you a count, is to simply put your valuables in the bank and commit thieving suicide, or purposely get guard killed.

This is a 2nd source of information in regard to this topic. We have the words from the leading Ultima Online developer at the time discussing the changes, and we also have an article written at Stratics that clearly demostrates this change. There is no reason to discuss if it ever existed or not from now on.

Regardless of whether it was like that before, this change will destroy an entire template and class of players on this server. You know the old saying "If it ain't broken then don't fix it." This server is by far the best server I've played in a long time and it is very disturbing to see that like all of the other servers, changes are being made that clearly are going to have a negative impact on the playerbase. When I came here from Divinity there was a population of about 145 people on at a time...now there is 350+ on at a time. Question is why when obviously how it was 2 days ago was working quite well, do people got to mess around and change shit. The changes pretty much screwed bards, thieves, and tamers. Though change to thieves won't really have much effect but dropping the amount of thieves on the server, the rest will just start a chain reaction. Less farmers in dungeons, less pks roaming around looking for farmers, and ultimately leaving nothing but the PvPers to run around looking for each other until they grow tired of it and move on. Goes without saying, the very disease each and every other server has suffered from. SecondAge was T2a accurate for the most part 2 days ago. Adding in the shitty parts of T2a might make it seem more accurate, but it ain't gonna get you a 600+ population.

BTW Dragons have NEVER casted Mass Curse...so don't you think if we are trying to stay T2a accurate you might think about getting rid of that?

[alatar]

Dragons cast mass curse when their magery has been trained to 60+

[Hemperor]

@Abyss: It's accurate, and stealing was such a problem here. NONE of the thieves did anything to earn their skill other than afk macro and all they have to do is hit their hotkeys to steal shit, hardly accurate either. This is one major blow to thieves that I'm all smiles about, I can only dream of more!

[DrFaustus]

@Abyss: It's accurate, and stealing was such a problem here. NONE of the thieves did anything to earn their skill other than afk macro and all they have to do is hit their hotkeys to steal shit, hardly accurate either. This is one major blow to thieves that I'm all smiles about, I can only dream of more!

At least you can roleplay at brit bank now. I'll bring my nun costume.