Leveling, Experience and Perks

The argument isn't that a fresh dragon cannot be made effective. But rather, we were comparing the levels of risk. And the fact is, a fully trained Dragon is loads more investment in terms of time, and thus a much greater loss, then the loss of a Slayer Weapon, some Reagents (as if that's really a risk!), or an Instrument.

And I contend that by taking a portion of that investment via stat loss is a fair balance of risk in terms of loss as compared to other play styles. And, of course, this still doesn't address how much easier it is to remove a Slayer Weapon from the zone of danger. Recall is faster and more effective than Gate Travel. And you even have the option of stashing the weapon behind a wall or on a corpse and retrieving it on an alternate after the danger has abated.

Skill loss isn't destroying all the value of a dragon. The stats are it's main value. We could also argue about the difficulty and real time consumption to train a dragon... training a dragon over night via macros isn't really that hard, or?

When the slayer weapon is gone, it's gone. Zero value for you. Full loss and pain.

I won't even start about that getting away statement... the amount of thriving PKs says it all.

100,000 gold can be had on a Bard in Despise in roughly three - four hours.

A Dragon with all GM Skills will take days. Indeed, the loss to Resisting Spells, alone, will take more than three-four hours to correct once Stat Loss is re-implemented.

You are right about a Dragon's stats being it's main value, which only strengthens the argument to keep bonding. When you consider the time invested in finding a decent dragon, stat wise, coupled with the time needed to train one, the time investment in a dragon is even greater!

I have seen near perfect dragons sell for ~1m. I have seen the same for slayers, just some days ago one hit the 1m.

One of these values is set to zero for the owner, one to, I dunno 95/100? Or let's say even 75/100 (which is a ridiculous assumption). You see the big difference here, or?

And now add to that, that you can have 100% value back after some time of macroing.

And now answer me the following question: Would you use your perfect dragon, if it wasn't bonded and would be permanent dead after dying? And how would you feel about that while you are farming?

I actually don't have any bonded pets yet! Although, I don't have a "perfect dragon" I do hunt with two well trained dragons (not fully). But, to be fair, I haven't been playing much lately because I am studying for the bar exam and really only have about a month's experience logged on UO:R.

Bonding just isn't going away at this point in UOR. Skill decrease on death is the tool we have to keep it in check, it just needs to be tweaked. Obviously 0% is outrageous and temporary. 2.5% was not super effective either. I would say 7.5% or 10% deserve a shot.

(Also keep in mind training pets is not always free. When that resist tanks far enough, you need a private resist session to train them back up).

Decreasing maximum control slots to 5 would also work, I think (or increasing dragon/mare control slot cost for the same effect).

I dont care about bonding but I agree it won't be going anywhere.

The biggest problem I see aside from my own coin per hour being reduced is how unfair it is for newer players to come on here and taming gets nerfed. So we have all these people that for years were able to farm x amount per hour and now the newer players would not be able to.

I still don't understand why so many people can't understand that tamers are supposed to be the most powerful farmers.

Also, dexxers should not be able to farm all mobs and you shouldn't be able to do everything a tamer can with a dexxer.

Period.

When did Lord British make this royal decree? Did I miss it in the UO manual? I do have the original Renaissance manual in my closet. No creases...

In this current climate of UO, where every skill is just macroed to GM status, it doesn't make sense that one build should be so powerful/risk-free over the other. Back on OSI, sure, it made sense that tamers were incredibly powerful but it was also a really difficult skill to GM. I only knew a few tamers and it was almost awe-inspiring when you'd see someone with a dragon pet walking around. Now on every player shard I've been on, it's become commonplace to see people walking around with all their dragons and wyrms in tow.

Stat loss is a decent compromise. Restricting control slots would also be a good compromise. Just anything to add in a little risk to balance the reward.

This will be my last post in this thread as I feel I have posted too much as it is.

It may not be in the manual but a tamer with 2 dragons and a mare should always far exceed damage output from a single guy with a sword should they not?


Anyways; skill loss will be brought back when the server can handle the DDOS attacks better as Chris has stated.

Right now bonding is the equivalent to blessing an item.

Why not downgrade it from blessing to more like item insurance: a tamer pays 10,000 go to "charge his bond' sort of speak. When the pet dies the 10,000 gold drops on the pet so a pk or whatever can pick it up and get a reward.

Also @ Gideon, why so negative? Even if this is all hyperbole doesn't mean it cant be useful for making new ideas etc. At worst this thread is just harmless fun. At best an idea never before fathomed in game design can be born

And another one missing the entire point.

Nobody is arguing about damage output to mobs. Nobody wants dexxers to do the same damage as the tamers.

The point is, one of them can lose everything and other can't. They want that to be changed. Please do not derail from the main point of the discussion.

I still don't have a valuable content from Gideon Jura about content dexxers can but tamers can't do. Battle mining? Why not take mining on a tamer? Does it stop you from killing elementals? It doesn't.

Well for starts I am not derailing shit. There have been probably 20 points in this thread brought up and that actual point of this thread when it was started was someone throwing the idea of an Everquest type leveling system for dexxers and go figure made no mention about tamers being OP and yata yata.

Yes yes yes I see everyone whining about not being able to bless weapons.

You can't derail a thread that has been derailed 20 times btw but good job.

Now this is my official last post in this thread lol.

No one wants to bless weapons except blaise but he might have just been saying that to indicate the ridiculousness of the fact that tamers face 0 risk i.e. its like having a blessed slayer.

You say people are whining about a blessed slayer I think thats just you assigning the worst possible argument to everyone who is trying to get some actual pre-trammel risk to the tamer class because you love these trammel concessions.

@Nymeros You cant effectively battlemine with tamers. Thats what I heard, I have no tamers to try. So yeah, battlemining and fishing are the only professions were 3-box dexxing are actually done. But its like I or Blaise said before, only because there is some tiny content ingame better for dexxers (skip the other crap mentioned, halloween open world isnt true, barding is not dexxing, and instances arent the topic at all), none of the mentioned problems have been solved. Near unlimited, riskfree content for tamers, scraps for the other templates. And high risk for dexxers with alot impossible content (nearly all of the annual events for example that I mentioned earlier, or bosses, or champs, or....)

make it like the murder system right now for players. when the pet dies, you can choose to rez the pet so it takes a 2.5 or whatever is decided stat loss and is ready to roll again immediately or you can retrain, whatever you want. the other option is just keeping it dead. and after a certain amount of time (the time can fluctuate based on how much action the pet had in the hours leading up to his death - highly active will mean a longer waiting period of lets say days, where just getting into the dungeon and dieing will result in a quicker waiting period before it's rezzed with no penalty). but make it a punishment! give us choices! hell if you've had your farm on for 5 hours straight and you fuck up, that's 5 days brotha. is it worth the 2.5%. to some WHO NO LONGER OWN A KEEP it is!

You can battlemine with a tamer. It's not as fast as with a dexer, but it works. I had a setup where I used a tamer, a provoker, and a miner, but of course I could have made it a provo-tamer, a discoo-tamer, and a miner, or something like that.

What? Why?

Halloween open world is absolutely better for dexers. Ask ElHorno and Nonameallstar.

Don't want to count instanced events? Well that's 90% of the shard's custom content. I'm not sure why that's being written off, but it is generally dexer-centric. Halloween is practically dexer-required, at least if you want to have a shot at winning. AMIBs are easier with dexers than any other class. The tamer quest, it appears, is best ironmanned with a dexer and a tamer in equal proportion. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the polar bear ripsaws won't be around for this December's Christmas scroll instances, making it another dexer-centric event.

And of course, you have overworld pvp, Capture the Flag, and the duel/tournament system, which is infinitely more conducive to dexers than tamers.

The fact is, very few people seem to want to play dexers even in the existing places that are pretty well suited for them. Look at the list of people who have completed the AMIB ironman challenges... that screams for dexer use. And there's what, 20 or 30 people total who have ever done it at all? Look at the Christmas scrolls this past year... that was an amazing, awesome ironman challenge for a dexer, with fierce monsters, great custom deco, and a time limit... and no one tried it.

Dalavar, I am getting really tired of this. You pick some details of what I say out and argue that dexxer have their place in this world. Sure they have some special events or places they rock. And I listed already all the long time events, they can't do anything worthwhile. And I listed all the other main content of this shard too. I don't want to repeat myself. I have to say just one new thing about halloween open world: Dexxer/bards disappeared totally after the initial first days in Skara. I have been there, stealthing around, and saw at least 4 or 5 disarmed dexxers that lost their weapons. After that, it was ONLY tamers and mage/bards doing open world.

And that reminds me of the true problem of the situation, which can be pretty well summed up this way:

And this, while tamers have the most posibilities and most available high-end content. Heck, even farming requisites for instances is best done with tamers. Or show me how you do lvl5 and lvl6 tmaps with a solo or 3-box dexxers. And there is also a reason, why christmas scrolls have been mainly farmed with tamers, you can't kill any of the stronger dark elves without extreme risk of dying (actually, you can't avoid it at all, remember the fencer dark elves, or the commanders? it's impossible without a proper animal tank)

That is a definite problem, but it's definitely not just that one issue that people are upset about. The problems are:

#1 - Tamers have no risk of losing anything on death currently. Dexers lose their equipment on death.
#2 - Tamers are able to solo most content in the game. Dexers can not.

Each problem has a different solution, I think. And each each change would be met with different degrees of vitriol, which I think is important when discussing the realistic chances of them being implemented.

#1 I think can be solved with a stiff enough skill reduction penalty (~7.5%?) on pet death. I think a change like this would go over well with the vast majority of people. The current system of 0% is widely known to be temporary and I think most people recognize 2.5% wasn't cutting the mustard either.

#2 I think can only be solved with a direct nerf to tamers or big boost to dexers. Reducing control slots from 8 to 5 could work. I think this change would get a lot of backlash. Making heavy armors like plate and such provide extra PvM damage soaking could also get the job done. This one would perhaps have less backlash.




(For what it's worth, I'd be in favor of fixing #1 and #2)

Dalavar you're talking about sporadic events and or pvp content that has nothing to do with the risk free tamer farming which is what everyone is trying to highlight as anomalous in the context of a pre-trammel game.