Without the influences of Trammel: A Discussion about Risk within UO:R

At the direction of Chris, the point of this thread is to discuss the risks experienced by each skillset within UO so that the players can better understand the decisions made by the UO:R staff.

From the outset, I've approached UO with the understanding that the game is about risk management. Risk most often takes the form of death and/or criminal activity. Players die. Reagents are consumed. Equipment breaks or may be stolen. Pets should die. In the sand box environment, you are allowed to piece together the tools and skills you'll use to mitigate risks to a level of your choosing.

In most cases, death should set you back to 0.

Upon death, a mage may lose reagents. Perhaps, they were looted.
Upon death, a bard may lose his instrument. Perhaps, it was looted.
Upon death, a warrior may lose his armor and weapons. Perhaps, they were looted.
Upon death, a tamer will not lose his/her pets. No, they won't be looted.

Very quickly, there is an apparent imbalance between the four main classes. I think it is fair for players to question this imbalance. Unlike the mage, bard, or warrior, the tamer is clearly getting special consideration. Why is there a need to coddle one of most powerful templates in the game?

Advertised on the home page of this server is the following statement:

"UO:Renaissance is an Ultima Online free-shard, based on Renaissance era mechanics, without the influences of Trammel."

To me, this is a clear call to the players out there willing to accept risk as part of the UO experience. I'd argue this is even more apparent in that the players here choose a shard without a cash store.

I'd argue that inherent risk keeps economy from stagnating. Without loss, crafters would hit market saturation for non-consumables and tamers wouldn't have a reason to sell shiny slayers to the warrior who just lost all his gear from a great mishap.

So, here is my call to admins to weigh in on this topic. How do you see the balance of risk within this server? If you can agree that there is imbalance, why is this acceptable?

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As an aside, why don't mages lose their spellbooks on death?





Anyways, Chris has said skill loss will go back in once he's happy with the DDOS protection. Do you not find skill loss an acceptable amount of risk? What level of skill loss would you find acceptable? To me, 7.5% sounds like it would be fair. There is quite a bit of setup and time invested in training pets, and money is needed for private resist sessions when resist hits a low enough level that it needs to be trained. Having been on both sides of the coin, I find the skill loss penalty far more annoying than replacing GM instruments or even slayer instruments.

Slayer weapons are the odd-ball out when it comes to risk. No other template, tamer or not, is risking anything close to what a dexxer risks with a high-end slayer.

The skill loss just doesn't mean much. Even if it was 20% skill loss on pets we'd still be in the same boat. Tamers have too many hit points and too much damage and tanking power. And we will continue to see more players triple box tamers until something is changed (and I've no reason to think anything will be changed.) Long ago staff said that once the bonding quest went in they would probably reduce the amount of big pets one could have. Since that didn't happen I assume this is now just the hand we were dealt.

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Bards who want to hit big game will have slayer instruments that should really be something on par with slayer weapons, for amount in existence/value in gold to players. The problem is drop rates on weapons were fucked up for a long ass time, so we have a major shortage of slayer weapons to drop that are comparable.

If tamers don't have pet death (this is never changing), they need skill loss on pets and 10% is something I consider fair, to balance their actual resulting capabilities in the field. None of the other templates can match the HP/Damage, as Mes said, and considering there's no more permanent loss, SOME replacement/detriment for failure has to exist. That's not really a topic, we know skill loss will come back but we should really be talking about making it actually hurt. 2.5% only sucks if you come back 10x with those pets. Knowing you're suffering 10% x3 for getting dirted while triple boxing, is going to make someone consider some personal restraint or template variety. (Yes, I know, non-tamer bot/vet/%lolskills% characters will be the future)

As long as slayer weapons, that bring warrior templates on par with the rest of the shard, are as valuable as high stat tames but unable to be blessed, this imbalance will be a major concern.

Gideon, my only opposition to your suggestion list is more dexxer optimized content. The content is fucking dope here, we just need to give players the freedom to enjoy moderate risks for big game hunting, like everyone else does. More slayer weapons was the answer but bonding would make it easier without ruining that precious market (lol).

If pet skills and stats were permanently reduced/capped by some percentage once tamed I think that would also accomplish what I think needs to happen. I think this number would have be in the 25-30% range to make much of a difference. In my opinion, a large amount of dragon/mare damage comes from firebreath and only reducing the pets' HP changes that.

Alternately, capping fire breath damage somewhere lower than the 40-50 it is now would be another nice alternative. There was a time when Rikktor firebreathed for ~80 and Telamon capped it at some lower amount (50 maybe?). If firebreaths were capped even lower that would make a big difference. They'd still need more changes to reduce their tanking ability (like reduced HP/combat skills).

edit: I apologize to the OP if this thread was not meant to be about bringing tamers in line with other characters.

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Agreed, tamers still need to be able to be the best for tanks and damage output. They are still a bitch to train, even though everything is fucking candyland to train here, relatively speaking.

I've never wanted to be a tamer-level tank, in the image of a single warrior. No one should feel like they're missing the boat, for playing any viable sensible template, though. If you risk half-mil slayers at a champ, you're out of your fucking mind. If you risk your reagents and 2.5% or even 10% skill loss on your pets, you're taking advantage of the obviously 'best' method, with the risk of tedium. As a warrior, I can still just bounce out in the event of a problem or better yet fight back without having my tames be my only offense.

I don't think making them less effective versus players is going to solve anything. If firebreath is such an ordeal in murderous/combat situations, bring a tamer.

I have been playing UO since 99. I have a tamer, bard, and warrior. I enjoy playing all 3. I really can't understand all the tamer bashing. I've had to deal with a lot of nerfing on OSI/EA over the years in pvp because some class or template was unbalanced and people would bitch and moan that until they nerfed it until it was useless. I've never has to deal with pvm nerfing. Tamers has ALWAYS been the most powerful class. It's been that way for over 15 years and I really don't think it needs to be changed now. If you nerf tamers it's not going to make slayer weapons start spawning like hot cakes! If you can't compete on your warrior then make a tamer or get over it!

Just my 2 cents..

No, but adding slayers to treasure chests, where they belong, would solve for the ridiculous scarcity of vanquishing slayers. We have a major glut of normal slayers and silvers from the early shard life. Really good slayers are selling for half a mil and there's no way that makes sense to field.

When I got here, players would still pay high coin for high stat/skill tames, that actually died. They had huge risks so it wasn't so easy to say they had it on easy street.

I agree that the slayer issue needs to be addressed.

With regard to the risk/reward issue, my vote is for 2.5% and not more, for the following reasons:

• I understand the desire to try to align PvM effectiveness with risk, but I think that goal is short-sighted. Encouraging tamers to take their dragons into risky situations increases participation in end-game content (champ spawns) where tamers are required but dragon deaths are most likely to occur; that is good for the shard.
• As Gideon demonstrates, the risk faced by every other template is largely a financial one (with the arguable exception of slayers, which are rarely on the market). Pet training, on the other hand, is boring and time consuming, and it adds absolutely nothing to anyone else's gameplay experience. That's fine in moderation where necessary to keep things challenging, but as a matter of game design, should be relied upon only as a last resort.
• The fact that dexxers bear outsized risk isn't a justification for making other classes more risky as well. The current slayer situation on this shard is broken; swinging the NerfHammer at tamers doesn't do anything to solve it. Add slayer bonding (with a zookeeper-like quest that is exclusive to the warrior class) or increase the number of slayers on the shard by increasing the drop rate, putting them in treasure chests, or making them craftable.

I understand that there is a vocal group of players that strongly dislike the fact that pet bonding was implemented in the first place. But extending a benefit (pet bonding) and then nerfing it (by significantly increasing pet skill loss) is a really bad way to administer a game. Benefits should be carefully and rarely extended, and once extended, they should almost never taken away. Any other approach engenders distrust and frustration and isn't conducive to player participation and shard health.

ADDENDUM:

One way to add risk without the need for boring / unproductive gameplay (see my second bullet above) would be to restore pet skill loss at a higher rate (say, 5%) and add some consumable-based functionality for resurrecting pets at a lower skill loss (say, 2%). For example, making it so that a cook that has animal lore and veterinary can cook a type of food that requires rare/expensive ingredients, but which restores some of the skill lost by a recently-resurrected pet. It would add a gold sink; make the cooking skill useful; and restore tamer risk to roughly where it was before the DDOS relief was granted (slightly less skill loss -- 2% instead of 2.5% -- but at a higher financial cost).

Let me answer this for busy ol' Telamon,

If you smoked cigarettes and I gave you a free pack, would you bitch about what brand they are, or just smoke them.... exactly

the shard is free, play the game, stfu.

I get it.. and I don't.

I can't bring my tamer to CTF or holloween, or use him in Ironmans, or battlemine, or....

But i can dex and stealth and mage and bard and fish and mine and use other skills?!

So why does it matter that tamers are better at farming terribly boring super repetitive lich lords to spawn bosses.. which all the PK's know about and still manage to kill plenty of tamers.


On the other hand - not that it matters at all, because it won't be remove, but bonding should have never been a free for all. If you lose a drag, you should have to go get another one. If you get one to 7x GM you should be able to sell it for as much as slayers are worth now and people should be wary of bringing them out. But obviously its too late to put that cat back in the bag so I then go back to my first point...

Not every class should be able to do every thing. Ultima has like 50 skills you can pick from. Not all of them are even. Noone is screaming for the Parry Buff or the bring back spiritspeak healing from corpses....Or let my tailor solo champions.

Chris invited discussion regarding this and other topics. To reiterate:

1) Do the admins find the current risk faced by each class balanced?

2) If they do not find the risks balanced, are they developing changes to balance these risks?

An additional question:

3) Are tamers meant to be seen as end-game content offered benefits not offered to other classes?

When a server bills itself as uninfluenced by Trammel, I think these are relevant questions which help us understand the current setup and the direction this server may take in the future.

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I think that's true for many of the posts made regarding the subject and not just mine. I should add that I already stated that the intent was to get the opinion of the admins.

In another thread it was suggested and I would agree with decay of bonding based on death. We will approach "market saturation" of bonding slots very soon and the taming quest will become novelty versus necessity.

I also favor adding some kind of added content for non-tamers. Truly I don't think the goal for the dexxer is a weapon but perhaps more access to them. I wonder if there could be a "dark tower" quest that wouldn't allow followers or high level magic to be cast? The loot at the end of the quest would guarantee 3-4 high level slayers with a bunch of low level weapons throughout?


I just don't like the idea of bonded weapons, but I do like the idea of increased availability.