As it stands, and it seems to vary slightly, when you walk off screen, the mobs you provoked will stop fighting 9 times out of 10, before you get back with more kited mobs. I'm not sure how it was in era. On UOSA, the mobs would fight to the death, even if you recalled out. I'd like to think that maybe this function is intentional, but a bit off. I think it would be good if mobs would stay in the fight with a range of a few screens so a swift bard could kite a real pack of mobs over to the fight. Also, this does not have to do with visibility as I can hide right next to provoked mobs and they will fight to the death. If anyone knows how this should work, share.
I know that provocation is under review. As it is right now, I believe it's still based on a 120 skill system. I think the tile-to-monster ration is also under review at the moment as well. Not sure if they'll extend it to 2-3 screens, but I do believe they'll be expanding it a bit before launch.
You sure had a lot to say in your first five posts, Gideon. I've been fighting the cause of Bards on here for some time now. Let me tell you what makes sense. Sticking to a system, especially a historically accurate one. The goal of UO:R has been stated to be not 100% unyielding era accuracy but it strives to be era accurate as much as possible except in the case of bugs or perceived imbalance. Towards the end of correcting perceived imbalance, staff here purposely chose to implement Publish 16 regarding Bard skills which came months after the UO:R timeframe. My initial recation was horror because the class as it exists now on UO:R is seriously out-classed by almost every other class and is next to useless. However, just the other day I discovered a wealth of developer notes regarding Publish 16 that shows that there was a lot more to it than was understood from the publish notes. There were three different versions of Publish 16 as it underwent changes based on testing and player feedback before it was finally put into the game. In reality the end version of Publish 16 did not cripple bards as badly as the publish notes would lead one to believe. It did make them less powerful than they were in previous eras due to instruments breaking, changes to raising bard skills and monster difficulty, and certain limiting qualifications and ranges for bard skills, but that makes sense considering that people could play in a PK-free Trammel facet. I totally agree that T2A/UO:R bards were too powerful in a PK-free environment. At any rate, at this point anyone interested in what's next for bards should just be waiting to hear from staff regarding the thread in Bug Reports.
It has been a long running tradition in UO that when players don't care for a class, skill, whatever, they rage against the machine to see it nerfed. They don't ever care how hard it is nerfed because they don't play or use whatever it is they hate. Bards have long been the target of this kind of attack. There were people who couldn't stand them back when I played in 1999 even. I don't copy that behavior. I'm very live-and-let-live about the game. I think we're all here to do our own thing and there's enough room in the game for all of us. I don't play murderers and I don't have much respect for many that I encounter. Having played a bard on and off for a decade or so, I'm well acquainted with losing a lot of loot, time, and effort to gank squads in mere seconds. Yet I have no desire to see murderers crippled beyond all reason so that I can PvM fear free. I wish that more players would adopt my outlook. IMHO the balance for bards was always the fact that they were the best at PvM , useless for anything else, and the worst at PvP. No one had an easier time killing monsters than bards but no one got dropped easier or more often by PKs either. That situation changed with Trammel; now bards were amazing at PvM and used few resources to work but didn't have to fear PKing or even having their corpses looted. Monsters were much more difficult to fight but would still be easily mastered under the original rules for bards. It absolutely called for something to be done, and the big something was Publish 16. Now Renaissance here has the harder monsters of the Trammel era and staff here chose to implement what features they were aware of from Publish 16. Weaker skills versus harder monsters without the existence of Trammel which surely precipitated at least some of these changes. And we have PKs; no Trammel safety to counterbalance those alterations. So even if/when they implement Publish 16 in its entirety, bards have quite a bit of adjustment and coping to deal with, and none of it "good" for bards. As my great aunt used to say: It's enough, already. Anyone who feels the class needs to be harassed any more than that simply hates bards.
As I said in my last post and before your edit, the balance in bards from the beginning was being awesome at PvM and the worst at PvP. Musicianship is a useless skill that quite logically fits into the whole barding theme and uses up 100 skill points that could have otherwise been used for combat skills. Intelligent game design; they knew exactly what they were doing.
On that note, I noticed that if you recall while still on the same screen as the provo'd mobs they usually stay in combat, you can tell from the numbers appearing in the top left corner. I'm not sure if its a bug or what, but it's definitely not consistent.
That's not a horrible analogy but there's a big difference there too. PvP is the meat and potatos of UO. For a lot of people it's their pride and the whole point of the game. So you can expand and accent combat skills as much as you want and players will never complain about it. Quite the opposite is true for bards. Like I said, they've always received a lot of hate just for being great at the only thing they were designed to do. You could make Musicianship interesting and useful but I've played with it being useless since 1999 and would rather keep it that way than escalate crying about bards. And not only that but I think it would be hard to make the skill useful without truly creating imbalance in the class.
During EARLY UOR Mobs would keep fighting even if you were off screen. I personally believe that MOBS should continue to fight even if you leave screen. If you want a mechanic to prevent ppl from recalling to the bank and coming back why not make it a 10 screen limit or something? 10 screens is def reasonable distance for a provoker to run around and dodge other monsters but still stay within range of the monsters hes fighting. Personally I think there should be no limit however I am making alternative suggestions. I think a provoker should be able to attempt to take on places like orphidian keep and that requires lots and lots and lots and lots of running around and running off screen.
Another issue is that many times when you provo two MOBS onto one another they still stay aggroed to you!!! thats no good!! This most commonly happens when you are in the middle of the two MOBS
I made the same experience. Also when provoking 2 archers on each other and then adding a 3rd , the first will sometimes start attacking me instead of continuing attascking the other.
Ya stuff like that makes provo frustrating and I know that I've had a firend come to UOR and gm provo then go out and rage quit (not permanently thankfully) because the mechanics of Provo are in need of polishing over. I want this shard to retain player base and I think issues with barding should be fixed!
i completely agree with zagyg that something should be done. you nerf'd bards so badly compared with UOSA. UOSA system meant bards could make tons of money, but would be killed by PK's regularly, and often kept the whole dungeon PvP system interesting because they were a constant presence at spawns. now we have introduced trammel style barding rules designed for champion spawns into a shard with neither. find some common ground, keep the monster difficulty rules- make it macroable to gain feasably. make a compromise if you're going to pick and choose your era accuracies.
The whole bard template is completely unbalanced with the tamer right now. No off-screen as a bard? A tamer can leave his pets at a spawn without fear of them dying for the most part and go to the bank. Monsters difficulty based on a 120 skill point system? Yet we do not have the ability to get 120 skill? Get with it, this stuff was put in Pub16 way after the advent of trammel and it's PvM priorities. This shard is far from that. I hope we can change the bard into a more balanced template soon.
Difficulty rating is not the same as the 120 skill system. The 120 skill influence on all skills was removed a long time ago.. You should try reading the patch notes before posting random assumptions..
