Suggestion/request for feature
The topic description says it is also meant for requesting features, so here it goes. Hopefully devs read these...
There are two things in game (quite more, but ima naggin 'bout these two only) that could get a boost in utility as they are quite pointless in the way they curently work. As they are they might well be removed from game without anyone barely noticing, but since they exist already (got planned and coded and implemented...) then why not just make them ACTUALLY useable?
WANDS
I have read that they were quite overpowered in the past so they got nerfed. The way they worked, as far as I read, was indeed OP'd so a nerf was due, but the measure was way beyond the needed and now wands are barely useable. --> the baby was thrown out along with the bathwater.
Well just anything to give them use would be appreciated. Low level wands (fire arrow, harm, lower heal) have an absurd reuse timer for the damage they make, for instance. These are just junk. -->How about being able to recharge the worn higher level wands with charges from the lower useless ones? Something like a 10-to-1 ratio or recharging a wand with arcane gems, just like it is with arcane clothing.
Really, even giving them some decent cleanup points would do, for pete sake XD Right now treasure hunters and dungeon crawlers keep stocking those wands to no end without ever being able to use them because wands have an absurd incoherent reuse timer for what they DO. Anything helps --> keep the crap damage but lower a lot the reuse timer (or the opposite : keep the long reuse but match the damage), or alow charge transfer from one wand to another, so that the greater heals and lightings can be refilled from the lower level ones, or just give them plain decent cleanup ponts... ANYTHING.
BLACkROCK AUTOMATONS
Now there is one fine TOL adition that just can not be used at all. This is a tinker made mechanical pet that comes as reward on the tinkering BOD system. The one-time cost of 300 blackrock pieces to craft one is not really a problem because it is one-time crafting ingredient, but the 75 cost for each time the thing gets killed/destroyed really makes it unviable. Blackrock pieces (those that spawn off from mining) are too rare to cost 75 of them every time the bot is destroyed. It takes mining nonstop for over an hour to get half a dozen of those. Just any one month of gaming with a blackrock automaton from ONE player could well drain an entire server from every blackrock piece it has. And when these TOL automatons get destroyed they go straight to the backpck as a no-drop item that keeps taking FOUR follower slots, and you can not even bank the thing while you mine (for weeks) after blackrock to rebuild the bot at last.
This very interesting adition of TOL ends up being wasted, as it was created and coded and implemented for nothing, because its use in game is just not viable. --> Why not either increasing blackrock availability or reducing the blackrock requirement for rebuilds/resurects of this pet? The thing will just continue pretty much ignored by the comunity if remaining this way, you know...
Comments
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Yes, of course they can be repaired, I know, I have not said that the problem is that they can not be repaired/healed. My point does not depend on being able to heal because it is not about lack of healing it is about lack of resurrecting. The problem is current cost of maintenance makes it unused and a dead feature in the game.
It exists in line codes, only, not as a part of the game, not in the comunity's custom, it is "wasted code". UO is known for its diversity and this feature aims for that but fails for being broken --> the suggestion is "fix the broken"
The thing WILL die. Eventually things WILL get out of control and a ped dies. What makes a pet an actual usable feature in the game is its permanence : either it can get ressurected or can be easily substituted.
The problem with this pet can be better pictured with a comparison. Imagine what Taming would be in UO if in order to resurrect a pet it would consume
*75 bandages that
*take ~20hours of nonstop mining to be gathered and
*for its rarity the amout for sale in the entire server, accumulated in months by players mining, barely lets you resurrect it a dozen times.
*once the thing dies it becomes a NON-DROP statuette in backpack that takes 4 slots
How often would you get the thing out of stables?
Taming would be as used as Taste Identification.
See, it can not be responded with "dont let them die if you do not have the pieces to rebuild" if the entire point is precisely about the broken availability of pieces to rebuild.
A "dont use it then" answer makes no sense if the problem reported is precisely the uselessness and therefore prectial inexistence of a feature.
Diversity is the entire big deal of UO and this feature (blackrock automaton) aims for that, but fails. In order for it to succed at this then its inviability in the game needs to be seen to.
-->lower resurrect/rebuild costs
or
-->increase the ressurcting/building ingredient (blackrock) availability
Or maybe something else. Anything. As long as it stays this way it will remain unseen in game and a dead useless wasted code non-feature.