According to Chris list of UO:R relevant OSI publishes, Publish 16 is supposed to be part of this shard: http://www.uorenaissance.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=52 Now obviously we don't have power scrolls and such but this was a HUGE publish and I wonder which party of it are actually active here. Can anyone help me with these rules: Is Guaranteed Gain System active ? I had the impression sometimes ... When a non-Murderer is killed in the Dungeon/Lost Land areas of Felucca, all of the character’s items other than gold, gems, ingots, ore, leather, hides, wool, wood, boards, and cursed items will remain on their ghost (unlootable). When stealing from innocents, thieves will only be able to steal gold and gems in the Dungeon/LL areas of Felucca. Thieves will continue to be able to use the full range of their thieving abilities against consensual-pvp opponents (guild wars, order/chaos, factions). The bounty system will be removed.
PARTS of Publish 16 are part of the shard, such as pet bonding and the crafting resource changes. However, I think you misunderstand what Chris is saying about those publishes. That is not, by any means, a definitive list of publishes that are part of this shard; that is instead a list of all publishes which staff feels may contain aspects for research relating to the shard. Not by any means are any of them, in their entirety, implemented on here. As far as the specific systems you asked about: -Guaranteed Gains are not active here. -The non-murderer/loot change was an inherently Trammel change, does not exist here and (I hope) will never exist here. -There are no such limits to rogue behavior here. -The bounty system was not here at one point, and has been re-implemented since; I imagine it is here to stay. Most of the discussion related to these has been in past threads relating to stat loss/PK punishment change requests and discussions -- usually it leads to an "If we have this, then we MUST have that!" argument -- which is invariably a lousy straw man argument, because if the systems are unrelated then there is no correlation between them -- and they usually are. Staff weighs the pros and cons of all decisions in the context of THIS shard, without Felucca, and without the influences of what OSI dealt with. Decisions to include, or not include, aspects then boil down to whether the change A) is good for the shard as a whole, B) how the change fits in with the complete removal of Trammel, and C) what mistakes, from a players perspective, existed in these systems before. If something doesn't pass muster with at least those 3 basic checks, then it gets shelved. Don't read OSI patch notes with a hardlined assumption that it is going to function that way here; its not quite so cut and dry and due to the nature of this shard, theres a bit of cherry picking from publishes that are included. Thats part of the concept of 'history perfected'.
That's exactly what I thought. I have the impression quite a lot of these changes were done to promote champion spawns and buff both the champion spawn hunters and the reds going after them. Maybe Chris has the time to comment a little on the publish list and roughly point out which parts went into UO:R and which parts didn't. It adds to the confusion that he mentions core changes of the publish in his list which then haven't made it into this shard. And while you're right with the cherry picking allegory, the one man's cherry is the other man's broccoli. But rest assured, I wouldn't want to see any blessed/unlootable items. As much as I hate to lose stuff (you probably figured ...) making items unlootable will drive this game towards an item based game. And when UO turned item focused, I lost interest. Piece of s**t doom artifacts ... Even though it's not a doom artifact ... wtf.
UO Renaissance is best described as a Publish 1 shard. Starting in November 1999 we review each change that was applied and attempt to determine what influence, if any, trammel had in the design of that element. We try to put ourselves in the position of OSI developers who never had the idea of trammel and continued to develop a felucca only server. This requires that we look deeper into the patch notes. As for things like the Guaranteed Gain system, this was implemented during a period of high activity and increased server stress for the Ultima Online developers. Since everyone was paying 15$ a month anyway. If we encourage people to log in less often, but improve the skill gain during those periods, we can reduce the load on the server. In an environment where people are paying to play, this has some merit. We welcome discussion of this process in our ERA Discussion forum should you have any ideas or suggestions regarding changes made after publish 1.
He lists the core changes involved in each patch, because those summaries were originally provided along with the full layout of the patch notes, by OSI. I don't believe he wrote any of the summary information you see there. Again, this is more about confusion of what that list of publishes is for -- which is research, and not hard-set rules -- and less about how its detailed. IMO, the best way to understand the mechanics as they apply to this shard is not to focus on the data like this, but instead look at the patch notes section in the forum, specifically for shard patches. Reading through the changes that have occurred helped me understand where the 'line' was drawn on this shard, and how the mechanics actually functioned. The most important thing here is don't look at that as a list that, by any means, is included here. Use it as a reference guide, if you wish to make suggestions. Having actual historical evidence to back up your argument/debate point goes a long way towards solidifying a point you're trying to make -- and this is mostly there to help facilitate such research on your own... one less thing to search for.
regarded the garanted gain system... I had something very odd happened to me a while back. My tamer had 99.8 magery. I had not logged/played it for a few months. I log it in, get its pets, and cast gate twice, and each gives me +0.1 magery. I do not believe in me being so lucky; I have over 10 GM mages on this shard and this never happens Any insight?
Same experience here. First time I use a skill appears to have a much higher gain probability. It feels a little GGS ...
That actually, is more indicative of the randomness of rolls for gain in general, and not GGS. Look at the table at the bottom of this: http://www.uoguide.com/Publish_16_-_Gua ... ain_System The relevant parts are as follows: So.... at best, with low skill, you'd be looking at at least a few hours before gains would have been awarded by the guaranteed gain system. Potentially a day or more. If you're gaining them back to back, as Aegis stated, then theres absolutely no way the GGS system would have any affect on the gains.
Once we have the regular Test Shard again, we could do some testing. Could be a nice feature if skill gain works better when you use a skill for the first time after a long pause. Especially for resource hungry skills this would really help. On the other hand, cartographers and lockpickers would have found out if there was a reliable GGS..
Yes, thats exactly my point. Feel free to test away, but I'm sure what you will find is that it is nothing more than coincidental. As humans, we try to find patterns and correlations in everything around us -- artificial and natural -- and when we think we see one, we adhere to it. The reality is more that the universe, both digital and 'fleshy', are much more random than a human mind likes to accept -- and coincidence is a common occurrence. This would just be one of those patterns -- trying to grasp at thread endings within the massive ball of twine, and just assuming that somewhere in the middle of the knot they are connected together. I would be interested in your findings.
