Spell Damage Delay

A few months ago damage delay was 0.5 seconds.

Now spell damage is 1.0 second.

I think spell damage delay should be 0.5 seconds. There really is no reason to make it longer other than to make pvp less sharp and precise. Also lets not emulate second age here. Lets go for a good shard that is accurate and good on its own. I do not believe that spell damage on OSI was 1 second during the Renissance Era, but I cannot absolutely certain.

Anyway lets sharpen PvP up a little and return to 0.5 second delay.

agreed

After spending my time reading a 5+ page thread about Spell delay from 2009 on another shard's forums, I'd have to disagree based on standards alone. There was no time in UO history, on EA servers, where spell damage delay was <1s.

Not saying we must stick to OSI accuracy here for any era, but as I have said to Tater regarding the topic, what is a compelling reason to change it? I don't see the field dominated by swordsmen PKing in the dungeons. Last I checked, we were all getting attacked by spell combos, not melee.

I'm not big into PvP but I can say this in regards to combat: In a perfectly balanced fight, the combatants are truly only waiting for their opponent to slip up. If the parties were equal in skill and character build, the ONLY way one will die, is if they fail to do something correctly. For example, getting that Greater Heal cast. If you want to live, as I understand it, there should be nothing stopping you from continually healing/curing to live. It's when you switch to offensive casting that you expose yourself to potential death. Damage amounts are variable so getting that kill shot requires a combination of high damage roll AND your opponent being mid-attack or just missing their opportunity to heal in the first place.

In a perfect battle, resources determine the winner and the person who runs out last, wins. When you run out of bandages/potions/reagents, you lose. If you die before you have run out of something, you messed up and lost the fight.

I understand the chances of such a perfect battle are hard to comprehend. If you can't run up and kill someone at will, it is likely because they are prepared to survive. You will either have to have a long battle to catch them slipping, run them out of resources, or call in the gank squad.

I would link the thread I read, but it's another shard so I'll decline. I will just say the majority of information provided in the discussion was given by someone very reputable in the field of UO mechanics. In summation, the shard patched out the DEFAULT RUNUO spell delay of 0.5 (which is what has a lot of people spoiled) and made it 1s, at which point everyone raged. Some people in that thread are STILL PvPing there......4 years later.


I would really like to see a compelling reason why spell delay should change other than 'it's bad'. If it makes PvP better (balanced) then it is worthy of consideration. If it makes your spell dumps 'sharper' when you group-gank, whatever.

I disagree, if the fight goes to the point where you have to run someone out of resources there is an unbalance of amount of damage you can heal at a time, and the amount of damage that can be applied. Fights that last until you run out of resources, in a community such as this, people stop and go restock and start again.

To sum up, if balanced pvp is who runs out of stuff first, then what is the point?

PvP is competitive by nature, and running someone out of resources to win a fight doesn't give me any satisfaction that I have won, just that i cast enough spells to make him use all of his things.

While I respect your opinion, reading about fighting is not the same as doing it.

And in reference to reading things on your "other shard" they had other options of applying damage, for instance an instant swing, or magic properties on weapons that applied damage. Here there are none of these things so emulating the mechanics of that server will not provide balance on this server.

As a counterpoint to what you read on "another server" I also can read on another server that has the .5 second delay, and is arguably the best server around for pvp mechanics.

When I say perfect battle I mean both opponents NEVER make a mistake. When you are fighting your true equal, you NEED them to mess up to get an advantage. That is COMBAT, not just in UO, but in every single form of combat known to man.

If you play Rock, Paper Scissors and always play rock as does your opponent, it will be a perpetual draw. Until one of you makes a call that is bested or beaten by your opponent, the battle is even.

I respect your opinion as well but I do not believe you understand the basic tenets of combat. The only way you can be the one deciding who dies (your opponent) is if you either outmatch them, run them out of resources, or catch them slipping.

Please explain to me if you can, how any other possibility makes sense. I may be missing something in my assesment of combat as experienced in every game I have ever played. As for 'arguably the best pvp around', how many combat templates are in use there? Let me guess...halberd cycling on wrestling timers and/or 5x duels?

You are actually arguing my point, currently it is impossible to "make a mistake" any spell but harm right now you can cast a greater heal spell through, negating any offensive damage from any number of combinations, if you want all pvp to be poison harm then that's fine I guess, but it's not really fun.

as far as other templates there are

• alchy dexxers
• alchy stun mage
• stun heal mage
• inscribe mage
• poison inscribe mage
• bola tamer
• tank mages
• poison dexxers
• inscribe dexxers
• lumberjack alchy dexxer
• alchy archer
• stealth archer
• bola stun mage

People have been so accustomed to keeping the same gear for long periods of time because "its so easy to get away". This is totally the wrong mentality to have in UO. You are supposed to die, you are supposed to lose everything you have and buy more stuff, promoting player vendors selling things like weapons and armor. Not have the same vanq weapon and armor set for a month because you can escape any situation easily. Balance should be gm weapons and armor are actually something worth using, so when you die you restock easily instead of feeling like you just kicked a baby.

You are not playing versus robots, no matter how much it may seem that way when you fail.

Opponent mistakes are what win fights Tater, not ultra dominant spell combinations that cannot be stopped. Every single action has, or should have, a counter or defense for it. When the target messes that up, they lose.
If I want to focus on heals and completely avoid offensive spells/attacks, I should be able to survive, considering all factors being equal.

Ya I have to disagree with Blaise on this one and agree with tater.

PvP is NOT who runs out of resources first. Thats silly.

AND

The fact that people can cast recall and Greater Heal through almost any spell is completely ridiculous. It totally removes skill, sharpness, and accuracy from PvP. Basically PvP mechanics right now are designed so that you almost never die unless you are totally reckless. That is not how PvP should be. Blaise just wants a safer world to play UO in because he doesn't like PvP. And that's fine, but that's just not how UO has ever been or should be.

Spell Damage delay needs to be decreased back to where it was.

Translation:

"I should be able to not die if I don't want to die."

That's just an absurd statement. It should require skill to survive and skill to fight. With one second spell damage delay anyone can just spam greater heal and survive. There is NO skill required to survive.

This concept of "balance" is often over used and misinterpreted. Its not the server's job to balance someone's lack of skill to someone's greater skill in player verse player combat.

I would rather it be .5 seconds just because it feels more modern, 1 second delay makes you feel like you lag

That's the problem, it never was. 0.5 is a fabrication of RunUO developers, NOT Origin/EA. FIFTEEN YEARS they have been running with the exact same damage delay on spells. Please link me to the countless threads that MUST exist on the topic regarding OSI's spell damage delay.

You are both completely ignoring the other factor I'm stating ad nauseum. Equal parties cannot beat each other unless one makes a mistake or runs out of vital resources. In boxing, what happens when no one gets knocked out? They get judged on who put up a better fight. No one really won so someone makes the call based on their impression of the action. I do like PvP but it is not my entire game here. I have played countless games versus other people, in real life, video games, board games, etc. The winner is either better at the game, or caught their opponent making a mistake when they didn't. That is combat/competition.

Here's the closer for both of you. Magery is NOT a combat skill Check your skill scroll for the category the developers placed that in, if you don't believe me. Therefore, it should not be possible to best someone completely on spells alone, 1v1. If you supplement a proper attack wtih a Combat skill, using magic, you are more likely to find victory. Expecting to be able to mana dump your way to the victory, is much more ridiculous than people being able to heal damage from a spell.

The 'skill' you're claiming is NOT involved, is where one chooses to heal at the right time (so as not to be disrupted) and if they choose to bail out, that should be possible. If they want to COMBAT YOU they will have to cast an offensive spell, opening the door for a counter. I'll repeat, Magery is NOT a combat skill. If it required 'NO skill', how do I die to PKs? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE WHEN I HAVE THE GREATER HEAL SPELL!?!?!?!?!

I must agree with Russell here. It is just so disheartening when you are comboing someone and they are able to G heal right in the middle of it because your E bolt (or whatever spell besides harm) is delayed. Viva La Revolucion!

I'm rather curious regarding the patch/change here. Can you link me to the patch note when the spell delay was changed here, "a few months ago"?

I do read these rather extensively and I don't think that would have slipped under the radar.

First of all if you think you can greater heal through anything then duel me. In fact a good way to feel out what might not be ideal about the system would probably be to duel people.

I think Blaise is right on some points he's making, like that healing yourself has always been the easiest part of a battle and you should have to make an error in order to lose to magery while healing with magery.

Spell Delay
Do we mean the time from which a spell is targetted to the time at which damage is resolved?

If so, I think that caution should be exercised when altering this window. In fact I think that we are overlooking that that window can actually be a useful tool when used appropriately. I like that spells take different amounts of times to resolve damage and to cast.

I will say that one exception is that I would like lightning to resolve damage quicker. Possibly instantly like debuffs and harm. In the cases of fireball, eb, magic arrow, I think the delays are a good thing. I don't believe they were ever instant.

More than anything, what feels slow to me is the recovery window between casting a spell and beginning a new spell. The longer this window is the more diminished the usefulness of lower level spells are and I think that takes a lot of the finesse out of magery. A good mage shouldn't be someone that can cast explosion and follow it with energy bolt. He should have good instincts for expecting what spell his opponent will cast next and plan to interrupt it or counter it in some useful way. I think the delay on lightning and the recovery time after casting a spell works to punish the use of those spells.

There are only 2 spells that historically have damage delayed, magic arrow and explosion. They require special timers because of it to allow for more then one person to damage another with the spell. You would think the runuo default (runuo came out in 2002) had figured a few things out in those 11 years, moreso than the uodemo that seems to be the guiding light for mechanics. Granted everything is not layed out for you in the vanilla version, but after 12 years of writing code i would think a few spell timers would be something i would have looked at.

That being said the mechanics of t2a, seems to be the way people are leaning to, so why not just call it like it is.

I believe mindblast, fs, fireball, eb, meteor swarm/cl, and magic arrow always had delays. You could precast an eb or fs and very nearly get a poison in before the damage registered, as I recall.

Incorrect. The mechanics of the entire span of Ultima Online's history is what people are leaning to. Please provide information for any time in history that spell damage delay was anything but 1s for the vast majority of spells, on OSI.

The mechanics of Hybrid (RunUO flagship) are what you are so accustomed to, so I'm calling that like it is.

Well I have searched, and searched, for anything regarding any spell delay. And the only thing i have ever seen ever, even mentioning a delay has been explosion, now if you search second age sure you see it because that's the only place it exists. Who got their information from a "demo" and used it as a guideline for their mechanics. So either Faust is an admin here, or they chat with him about how things should be. But even if it is accurate, even if its documented on a demo, was it out of hand before Christmas? (it was .5) Was it even an issue other then someones misguided attempt to revert to era accuracy because it couldn't possibly be fun or balanced making up your own rules?

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1253

How is anything confirmed via the UO demo, reflect what UOR can be?

Its obviously been proven, that things proven about the era are different, because they have been changed. What makes this situation any different?

EDIT I would just like to say that i have played both situations, and yeah perhaps it isn't era accurate to a demo, but if people wanted that they wouldn't come here. And don't get me wrong things are going great, aside from my complaints, The community here and the people who run it are top notch. But I just think we can do better and have fun, without having to be restricted to mechanics that frankly discourage at least myself and a handful of others I know.

EDIT again -> Just keep in mind this is not to make people argue, I just feel like I was hoodwinked creating chars here, endless farming for wands to use, and the assumption that the spells I had been casting weren't going to be put into slow motion by the time I had capital and settled enough to get into pvp. I am not the type of person to do champ spawns or get excited about holiday events, so I judged if I was going to play on the pvp. Now that I have met the people that run/play here its pretty difficult to leave, because where I can find the mechanics I enjoy, the community is no where near as awesome as we have here, and just hope I can find something to keep me going.

I feel it is time to pull pvp to the fore front and off the back burner.