PvM Frustrations of a dexxer guild.

I suspect a large part of this is the reason that any player who starts on that server is unlikely to ever find a stable in which to place their pets. With the stables having only limited space and players intentionally stuffing them as a griefing tactic it is only feasible that someone farms with pets if they go out and tame them every single time and just release them once they are finished. (Or pay some griefer for stable spots)

This is actually something we have customized here as well. The lower the poison the monster can inflict, the lesser chance that the monster can poison you on a successful hit. Default mechanics are 50% of every hit will poison you. While here a scorpion might only poison you 10-20% of the time. Silver serpents are just as deadly however.

This is a good example of someone coming to the staff long ago, from your old server with this exact complaint. Our solution was to balance poison application to how deadly the poison the monster was trying to apply.

Generally that is one of the more appealing things about the Renaissance era is that monster AI is much more challenging. However not all monsters do this, and they rarely will spam heal to heal themselves fully. But if you walk away from a magic caster as their AI cycles they will heal themselves.

We can review this however we have added the boss type creature (A T2A/UOR Variant of the paragon system) which can be quite tough but with some efficient cross healing and teamwork can be taken down for much larger rewards (Monster Statues, Platinum, Peculiar Meat)

Spawning the world to match what we experienced on OSI in 2000 can be tough and we are always open to player opinions on spawns as they relate to experiences on OSI and how we can achieve that classic feel.

This I will have to look into, I was not aware that monsters even used the mind blast spell as it is designed specifically for player to player interactions.

Barding here is difficulty based, however most monsters in the world can still be a bit easy for them to address. However compared to your previous server barding's difficulty should be night and day. One of our more popular templates is the dexer/bard which is very effective at some of the new content we have added.

1. This was something we considered for quite a while and initially limited players to a single bonded pet. But in an age of servers sending DDOS attacks against other servers the bonding system is an important part of the ecology of the server. Players enjoy their pets and generally prefer to not lose their favorite ones. Compared to OSI we have required our players jump through a variety of "hoops" in order to bond their pets. And while the general assumption is that every tamer on the server has 100 stabled bonded pets the taming quest that can grant up to 10 players 1 extra bonded pet has only been run 70 times. Having more bonded pets is the endgame system for tamers and requires quite a bit of work (or money) to accomplish. The next patch will return skill loss for pets as well.

Based on a review of recent forum posts if someone wanted to buy a nice dragon, a bonding quest spot and the 3 peculiar meat needed to bond the dragon it could cost anywhere from 150k to 300k per bonded dragon. Obviously we want to encourage players to accomplish this via playing but this illustrates the point this is not a cheap or easy endeavor. Any methods that are being used for easy mode taming training, or easy mode farming with a tamer have been addressed as well.

There is currently an open thread for allowing players to hire and potentially bond NPC's in a similar manner to pets to allow this playstyle a new wrinkle. I will try to look up the link and post it here but that was a notable idea.

2. Mass curse can cause you problems with your pets but it can also be used as a griefing mechanism as well. I am open to discussing its use here, however allowing players to go stand near someones dragons to pile murder counts on tamers would be a problematic mechanic. My memory of your previous server is a bit different as players there would take 50 dragons/WW's to a dungeon, block them in with alts and basically just sit and collect gold for 3-4 hours.

3. I suspect this is someone who used the sacrifice virtue. This skill requires quite a deal of work to level up but can provide an emergency resurrection when in a pinch. However most likely the pets were on guard as the player died and retaliated after the player died. There has been some discussion on how to handle pet commands when a controller dies. Given that the tamer was most likely killed quickly it would have triggered the pets guard mechanic, or the reds attacked the pets and were unprepared.

More info on the Sacrifice Virtue > http://uorforum.com/threads/a-guide-to-virtues-sacrifice.1048/

Some other players have made good points in this thread about steps we have taken to make all playstyles more enjoyable. On the average day there are just as many, if not more, people fishing than there are animal tamers working in dungeons. We have taken steps to improve the chance to hit for players versus monsters across the board. We have a planned review for Parry to see what options we have to perfect it for our ERA which we welcome everyone to be involved in the discussion.

We also have a variety of fun events, monsters, and instances that are geared towards the non tamer, non bard playstyle.

While I cannot fundamentally change UO to balance out what OSI created we do what we can here to make sure that there are equal opportunities for all players, of any playstyle, to find things that are fun an enjoyable to do.

I am always open to discussing ideas how we can make the server more enjoyable for all our players. But knee jerk reactions to situations that are sometimes overestimated can result in a server where the mechanics are endlessly adjusted to adjust something that inherently cannot be controlled.

A good example of how we could improve this situation is to help players find the best places to hunt, things to do, and ways to get started with this playstyle. Several players have asked in IRC for tips on playing this character template and we have a lack of information in that area.

Telling new players who start here "Tamers own everything just quit" or "Your starting a tamer? Delete it and make another character" are only serving to alienate players from Renaissance and an experience they might enjoy if they can get past the negativity.