Game Balancing Changes for UO

Yesterday, I asked if we were getting PvP arenas soon and while that may still be the case somewhere in the future, yesterday’s downtime was based on game balancing:

From the UO Herald

Summary of the Game Balancing Changes
Bonnie “Mesanna” Armstrong
22 Jun 2011 11:41:01 EST

Greetings,

In yesterday’s downtime we have started to bring some changes to Test Center 1.

The following list is a short summary of the addressed topics:

Focus Skill Spec – Increase of spell damage increase cap from 15% to 40% for templates that focus in only one spell school.

Poisoning – A few tweaks to Poison and Poisoning Skill

Healing Skill

Cure Potions

Cleansing Winds

Enchanted Apples

Petals/Poison Immunity

Special Moves
Lightning Strike
Dual Wield
Defensive Mastery
Block
Psychic Attack
Force Arrow

Chivalry
Divine Fury
Cleanse by Fire
Enemy of One
Remove Curse
Consecrate Weapon

For details of all the changes, please see the discussion thread on stratics.

We look forward to your constructive feedback.

This was a message that Mesanna/Bonnie Armstrong posted on Stratics:

These proposed changes are being put up well in advance of Publishing them to all production shards. We do look forward to your opinions and feedback.

Thanks everyone

Mesanna and Logrus

This is from Logrus, a UO Designer:

Slight mistake in my wording, it should be Greater than or EQUAL to GM Poisoning or Magery. Poisoning won’t be going up to 120 for now.

The Focus effect is automatic. Basically once you hit 30 in one of the other skills you no longer receive the effect, but as long as you remain under 30 you are fine.

If your normal heal time is 4 seconds at 140 dex ( and greater than 80 heal/anat), then you have a chance to cure the poison at the 2 second mark. If you succeed your final heal will amount will be reduced in proportion to the poison level that was cured. If you failed then you will make a second cure attempt at 4 seconds.

My quick opinion – this is a bit of a revamp to PvP, which is needed, and is probably being done ahead of the arena work.

It’s a good sign that they are wanting to discuss it quite a bit with players before the final changes are made, and it’s also kind of sign that there is some serious long term work being done. I harp on this a lot, but looking at my crystal ball, there are a lot of little things being looked at these days.

Are We Getting PvP Arenas Soon?

There is a very short blurb up on UO Herald today, posted by UO’s Associate Producer (Bonnie Armstrong), mentioning “PvP updates” and the Test Center being down:

We will be taking down TC1 to get ready for a PVP update. Please check stratics tomorrow for full details of all the upcoming changes.

We look forward to hearing your feedback.

I don’t know why they would post full details of upcoming changes on Stratics instead of UO Herald, but as soon as I hear about them, I’ll post them.

If you are unfamiliar with the Arenas concept, part of it was tied to the update last month that allowed you to directly copy one of your characters over to the Test Center. That’s copy, NOT transfer. You could then test out a character from a production shard on the Test Center. It would also allow you to take characters from one production shard and match them against other players’ characters.

Back in March, UO’s lead developer, “Supreem” discussed a bit about the need for character copy before arenas went into testing:

Supreem: It needs more work before it can go to a test center and we really want to make sure Character Copy is working before we open our arenas so that you can bring your live characters there, we don’t want to have to force you to spend hours setting up a character so that you can test arenas for us.

Richard Garriott to Keynote GDC Europe, Speaks with Gamasutra

Richard Garriott has been making the news a lot recently, with his talk about the three eras of gaming, his views on social gaming, and his future plans.

He’s going to be the keynote speaker at GDC Europe 2011, which takes place in August in Cologne, Germany. He will be giving his talk entitled “The Three Eras of Gaming and Why This One is a Game Changer” which he has given before, and which is currently driving his gaming plans.

Next up, he spoke with Gamasutra, where Ultima Online was mentioned yet again:

Garriott recalled that the current state of social games reminds him of initial reactions to his classic Ultima Online, which was among the first titles to break into the MMO space. “People, even in our own company, were heavily critical of the game, right up until just before its release when the wave of pre-orders came in at a rate that was hard to ignore,” he said. Today, Garriott sees a similar trend with the reaction toward social and casual games.

He believes we are moving away from MMOs and towards games that offer greater accessibility while lowering the cost.

Garriott defines the second era of gaming as that of the “massively multiplayer game,” which introduced the concept of playing with an community of users, but still held on to some of the limitations of a traditional boxed product.

“That era still required that you go to the store, you pay 50 dollars, you return home, and then before you play it you subscribe to it for an additional 15 or so dollars per month,” he said. “These massively multiplayer games are also generally more complicated; they take longer to get into.”

He believes we have entered into the third era of gaming with the rise of social, casual, and mobile games, as these sorts of titles offer several advantages over traditional single player and MMO titles.

Garriott said with casual or social games, players can more easily access titles they might be interested in. “You remove the barrier of driving to the store, and you also remove the barrier of a significant up-front investment,” he explained, noting that these games are most often available via download either for free or for a very low price.

He has mentioned all of this before, but it’s still interesting nonetheless, and is yet another mention of Ultima Online in the mainstream gaming media.

Community Spotlight: Guardsmen Militia of Yew (Europa)

I’m going to try and make more time to highlight a few player-run groups a week. This week, it’s the Guardsmen Militia of Yew at Stonekeep (Europa).

As their flyers say, they are mostly looking for those who are new to Ultima Online or Europa, but are more than happy to take on those who have been around.

Starting this Thursday (June 16) and every Thursday thereafter, they are invite all new and old players to:

..come along to an evening patrol, hunt, or expedition to Dungeons and different places of Britannia, tokuno, Ilshenar, or Malas.

Our aim is to get everyone to interact with each other, train, teamwork, train your personal skills, and earn some money, but overall, have lots of fun.

The Guardsmen Militia will have veterans leading the event, which will grant you someone with experience to ask if there’s something you don’t understand.

Specifics:
Date: Every Thursday
Time: 8pm BST
Where: Yew Moongate, Trammel
Equipment: B.Y.O.G. (Bring your own gear)
Contact: ICQ 345485202 (Nathaniel Hawk, Rookie Guard)

Links
* Official Website
* Thread at UO Forums

Publish 70.0.5 for Ultima Online to be Released on All Shards

It was just a few days ago that Publish 70.0.5 went up on the Test Center and it looks like it is about to be available to the rest of us. As I mentioned previously, this is a publish with a few bug fixes, that is mainly focused on pushing new content out to the shards, and moving along the Stygian Abyss storyline as well as rounding out the unfinished areas.

These are the publish notes from earlier today:

Publish 70.0.5 will be release to all shards during the next maintenance cycle. These are the complete publish notes:

Publish 70.0.5

Echoes of the Past – Ter Mur Live Event – Phase 1
We are pleased to announce that the Echoes of the Past event will commence shortly within Ter Mur on all shards. The first phase will begin with a quest provided by Queen Zhah herself in the Royal City Throne Room. This quest will take you to a newly opened piece of Ter Mur, and begin to show a glimpse into the history of the Gargoyle kingdom.

We invite you to take part in this story and help save Ter Mur!

Bug Fixes
* Fixed the issue that stopped players from stealing from monsters
* Fixed an issue with Tinkering

News: UO Herald