I have to say that I was nervous with the changes being made, but I think you're on the right track.
Here are some quick observations, both the maps I did were stashes.
Please fix "something is standing in your way" - very annoying when trying to loot and there are corpses on the ground next to the chest
Graphics when chest is digging seem to be off on the z-axis? I dont see the chest at all until the moment the guardians are spawned. I am using the classic client.
Maybe increase the item count a little.
I do like the new mage reagent bag.
Anything you can do about the overlapping of trees on the chests? There's a bit of difficulty involved just clicking on the chest. the circle of transparency doesn't seem to work as well as it should.
Like other posters have mentioned. Please disable Detect Hidden from using Remove Trap.
I'm simply amazed by how many people don't seem to realize this content is in the testing phase and Kyronix even said that nothing is set in stone yet and he is looking for constructive feedback.
More amazed by the amount of people that clearly haven't even read the full publish notes to understand the full gamut of what is being proposed before complaining about it.
Don't like what is proposed in the publish notes? Go and test it, and give constructive feedback. Some things are clearly broken (like the no loot in chests), which I am sure is being addressed. They are not going to go live with no loot in chests or maps that won't decode.
Sadly in my LONG time experience once something has gone to TC there are very very minor tweaks but what is proposed ends up going in irrespective of HOW much feedback they get. That has been demonstrated over and over and over again. They fix 'bugs' but not the overall concept. This idea of 'remove trap' being a requirement has been in this from the start and I guarantee you it WILL GO LIVE. I have NO DOUBT about that, irrespective of whether or not you don't think it will go in. Or whether or not it is stated that this is all 'not set in stone'.
This isn't true, especially since we've had the forums here to aggregate feedback. Sure, there are times the playerbase wants a change to be made, but unfortunately sometimes those wishes cannot be acted due to their impacts on the longer term health of the game world. Beyond that if someone provides reasoned, considerate, and respectful feedback we are willing to act on it. This was absolutely the case with regards to the cost of the Castle Conversions, of which I personally thanked you for doing exactly the type of feedback I described above. I'm encouraged you can do that again.
Not all of us can 'test' on TC as some of us can't hardly MOVE on that shard so trying to test anything is like face-planting over and over again.
This is an unfortunate for our friends in far away locations. Best I can offer is a discussion with engineering on possible solutions in the future.
As for this: "Treasure Maps that lead to a Stash, Supply, or Cache have been balanced
for solo encounters while Hordes and Troves are more geared towards
group encounters."
This is what is going to totally BORK it. Right now with a bit of patience and care I can do all level t-maps, there is NO chance in hell on small shards of getting groups to do stuff so yet again we are gonna be forced to forgo content due to lack of players.
T-mapping was the ONE thing that I enjoyed doing solo.
None of the creatures that spawn with regard to maps have been changed out or changed (except in Eodon, which didn't have any in the first place). All that has happened is the creatures have been redistributed among the new level scheme as a result of removing two unnecessary levels. If you were able to solo ALL map levels, then you can still do that. If Remove Trap, ends up being a requirement you will have to sacrifice up to 100 skill points (maybe less, depending on the final implementation and how modded RT gear would come into play). I'm also a bit perplexed at your assertion that there isn't anyone around to group up with on Oceania. We were there recently for a Meet & Greet and were met by a very welcoming and hearty crowd of locals to that shard. Are you telling me you couldn't rally them together to go after some T-map loot? Especially new stuff?
If the loot is scaled so that the only decent stuff is in the high level tmaps, which is most likely given what is written in the notes, then again, no point to doing them any more. As stated:
"There are 4 factors that influence what items end up in a chest if
succesful random rolls are made, Map Level, Profession Package, Chest
Quality, and Facet" No doubt the high level 'group' maps in fel will have the only decent rewards, yet another attempt to force people into fel.
Yet again, as I said, we are gonna all find solo t-mapping is borked.
Would love to be proved wrong, but the second they do this remove trap as a requirement it just waters down whatever template you take in. I have managed without mining up until now by not caring if it took me a little longer to dig up a chest, if it meant I could save those 100 points. Most ran with LP/Carto and mining, try squishing 100 remove trap onto it is just the straw......
We are still in the process of balancing the loot distribution as well as creating new loot items. Nobody is attempting to force people into Fel, as the majority of the loot is available across all facets with specific facets offering specific item types as described in the notes. The only must-have Fel specific item is Powerscrolls, this continues to be in line with the current design implementation of those items. Care is being taken to distribute it so this scenario is not the case, and we look forward to feedback as we move through the process.
@JenniferMarie - MIB/SOS loot is completely separate from this and will come in a future update.
@Arroth_Thaiel - Ideally I would have liked to have done what you suggested, and toyed with a scheme that matches what you proposed pretty closely. Unfortunately, in the end, there just wasn't enough loot to go around to make each chest interesting to go after. The main goal of the revamp was to provide a reason to target lower level maps instead of just higher ones, and provide a means to target the specific items you find valuable, while avoiding what you would consider junk. Hopefully with the new package distribution you will be able to do that.
See more of my answers in-line above, but with that being said I'll close with this...
We appreciate everyone who has taken the time to provide feedback so far, and look forward to more of it as we move through the testing process for Forgotten Treasures. With anything new, there is certainly going to be some relearning, re-configuring, and re-adjusting. The proposition of that should be exciting and welcome in a world where we are constantly barraged with cries of "make the world more interesting and give me a reason to log in!" When we are met with immediate dismissal of any change at all from the status quo, it makes delivering on that request extraordinarily difficult. Despite those challenges, we hope the final product will be something that encourages those to brave the wilds and rediscover some of those Forgotten Treasures!
We are still in the process of balancing the loot distribution as well as creating new loot items. Nobody is attempting to force people into Fel, as the majority of the loot is available across all facets with specific facets offering specific item types as described in the notes. The only must-have Fel specific item is Powerscrolls, this continues to be in line with the current design implementation of those items. Care is being taken to distribute it so this scenario is not the case, and we look forward to feedback as we move through the process.
You say the only Fel-specific item is powerscrolls, does that mean that SoTs are no longer Fel-specific?
You can get SoTs in all facets, the value of the skill points gained is based on chest quality and the facet where Felucca offers .6-1.0 and other facets offer .1-.5
I just solo'd a horde chest. Still doable. Failed to remove the trap, so that's the first one to blow up in my face. Managed to get a greater artifact in what remained of my loot, a pair of elven glasses. I feel like those are new.
Thought of something to try while doing that... so I went and did a supply chest (formerly level 2-3) and tried magic unlock. No longer works, for anyone curious. Still not getting any real loot in the lower level chests, but I did get a runed sash of warding this time along with the gems and gold.
Oh, and I did have some bugged, indecipherable maps. Seems leaving them for several hours and trying again worked for most... and few worked after being locked down, and I have one who chooses to remain obstinate.
Edit: And my OCD must ask why there's suddenly an extra 1 gold in the gold piles... 10,001, 20,001... Seems weird.
Most of it looks good. But, a few things I would suggest: (note: not had a chance to go to test yet)
1. Consider making Telekinesis not work on anything over a level 1, but allow it for the level 1 with no penalty. After all, someone that is a T-Hunter in training is far more likely to not have significant levels of Remove Trap until they are also closing in on level 2 maps. Open Locks should not work on map chests, or require GM+ for level 1s, only. 2. Instead of DESTROYING items when Remove Trap not used, make Remove Trap give some sort of bonus loot. Say, an item dropped into the pack of the person using RT. The COLOR TEXT for doing so would say that they saved an item from being destroyed by removing the trap, but that would just be for RP purposes. It would probably be lot easier to code an extra random item drop, than deciding what randomly gets destroyed, and to debug it/get it to work properly (based on my experience as formerly being a CS/math teaching major). 3. If not already done so, remove the 50-stone weight property from items placed in Treasure Maps. No sane pirates would carry those things to the middle of nowhere to bury, and they make looting current chests a pain in the rear, when looting items for a training imbuer to unravel. 4. Consider some sort of new level 0 map for "young" characters as part of any revised NPE. I saw a significant drop in new T-Hunters after those new player quests that gave those maps went away. 5. Make sure that the chest damage levels are normalized when adjusting the new maps (the current level 2 massive damage bug is real, even though you may not have encountered it personally. As most people never do level 2s (but they are my favorites from balance of difficulty and loot - see the screencap below - it's a level 2...), it's been under-reported). 6. And, as some people earlier in the thread reported, the "dig spot not at the pin" bug is also alive and well, as mentioned in my private message to you a couple days ago. This is a screencap of one of the incidents I mentioned (this one is on Amoeba, but I had it happen on Valor Island, with the river south of Britain moongate, and the 3 branches of the river between Vesper and the Sacrifice shrine). The pin is entirely on the other side of the river. The chest was to the south and east (and the dead stuff on the other side were things that attacked me when I searched in vain when the pin told me to look).
7. Lastly, please consider rebalancing the skills needed for each map to not be as severe a jump as current Cartography and Lockpicking (which has a 40-ish point jump between level 1 & level 2).
The new Level 1s need to be accessible to anyone with BOUGHT levels of Cartography & Lockpicking (and if you added a T-hunter template, someone with 30 LP/Cart/RT/magery). Prior to this TC publish, a character STILL needs to train LP & Cart a few points beyond bought points, if doing it without using magery for Open Locks and TK.
The new Level 5s need to be GM, of course.
Levels 2, 3, and 4 need to be more evenly spaced than the current level 2-6 that they replace. A lot of would-be T-hunters have given up in the past, because the 40 point gap between minimums for level 1 & level 2 maps was so big a stretch that they felt like they were making no progress (not seeing it through to where the gaps between levels switches to 10 or so between each level after reaching level 2s, going up to GM). Say, something like:
@Kyronix So Far i have dug up 4 maps the guardians have spawned killed them my RC and gone to chest and all i have is a pile of dirt no t-chest to try and detrap or open
just tried 3 more level 1 maps same thing guardians and no chest
Just tried to decode a Supply and a Cache Trammel map and it tells me "You study the treasure map but need more time to attempt to decode". Any other map worked including Supply and Cache Felucca maps.
Reached a spot of a map but I get the message "you are already digging" but nothing happens. When i move away from the spot I get the typical message "you did and dig but fail to find any treasure".
-- I worked Detect Hidden and Remove Trap up when I originally made my T-Mapper, but stoned them off once I was told about the magery spell "telekinesis".
Logically, I always wondered why that worked. Setting off a trap on a treasure chest would surely effect what is inside the chest. [[Yes, I get this is a video game and so "logic" has about as much place as "reality" but still ... in any world setting off an explosion would effect stuff inside a chest.]]
So I have to say, I am actually happy Remove Trap will be needed. I just truly hope that it gets disconnected from the Detect Hidden skill. I mean, obviously a treasure chest is going to be booby-trapped. It's not a secret, so Detect Hidden really has no place there.
As for the rest ... some clarity: current treasure maps inside my Davies' Locker ... when it says they will be randomly updated - is that just with the name of the chest? [[Artisan/Mage/Assassin, etc]] Or does this include their level as well?
Because I only have Level 5 and 6 maps in my Locker on GL ... -_-
@ Kyronix
" I mean, obviously a treasure chest is going to be booby-trapped. It's not a secret, so Detect Hidden really has no place there."
Tha fact that one "knows" that there is a Trap in a Treasure Chest to protect its contents, does not excluse, to my opinion, the possibility that such Trap could "ALSO" be well hidden and, thus, require Detect Hidden to be founf, prior to Remove it with the Remove Trap Skill....
Perhaps such an "extra" caution by whomever has hidden the Chest would be more justified in presence of better value loot (higher level Treasure Maps) but, nonetheless, my argument is that even the certainty that a Chest has a Tarp with it does not exclude the possibility that, as an extra caution, that Trap is ALSO well hidden within that Chest....
I'm simply amazed by how many people don't seem to realize this content is in the testing phase and Kyronix even said that nothing is set in stone yet and he is looking for constructive feedback.
More amazed by the amount of people that clearly haven't even read the full publish notes to understand the full gamut of what is being proposed before complaining about it.
Don't like what is proposed in the publish notes? Go and test it, and give constructive feedback. Some things are clearly broken (like the no loot in chests), which I am sure is being addressed. They are not going to go live with no loot in chests or maps that won't decode.
Sadly in my LONG time experience once something has gone to TC there are very very minor tweaks but what is proposed ends up going in irrespective of HOW much feedback they get. That has been demonstrated over and over and over again. They fix 'bugs' but not the overall concept. This idea of 'remove trap' being a requirement has been in this from the start and I guarantee you it WILL GO LIVE. I have NO DOUBT about that, irrespective of whether or not you don't think it will go in. Or whether or not it is stated that this is all 'not set in stone'.
Not all of us can 'test' on TC as some of us can't hardly MOVE on that shard so trying to test anything is like face-planting over and over again.
As for this: "Treasure Maps that lead to a Stash, Supply, or Cache have been balanced
for solo encounters while Hordes and Troves are more geared towards
group encounters."
This is what is going to totally BORK it. Right now with a bit of patience and care I can do all level t-maps, there is NO chance in hell on small shards of getting groups to do stuff so yet again we are gonna be forced to forgo content due to lack of players.
T-mapping was the ONE thing that I enjoyed doing solo.
If the loot is scaled so that the only decent stuff is in the high level tmaps, which is most likely given what is written in the notes, then again, no point to doing them any more. As stated:
"There are 4 factors that influence what items end up in a chest if
succesful random rolls are made, Map Level, Profession Package, Chest
Quality, and Facet" No doubt the high level 'group' maps in fel will have the only decent rewards, yet another attempt to force people into fel.
Yet again, as I said, we are gonna all find solo t-mapping is borked.
Would love to be proved wrong, but the second they do this remove trap as a requirement it just waters down whatever template you take in. I have managed without mining up until now by not caring if it took me a little longer to dig up a chest, if it meant I could save those 100 points. Most ran with LP/Carto and mining, try squishing 100 remove trap onto it is just the straw......
"No doubt the high level 'group' maps in fel will have the only decent rewards, yet another attempt to force people into fel."
Powerscrolls made an exclusive of Felucca have proved OVER and OVER that they only served to create a Monopoly in the hands of a limited number of players and at the expense of a LARGE number of other players, created an outrageous inflation in Ultima Online AND forced many many players into absurd and alienating GRINDING in order for them to then be able to afford the outrageous, inflated prices of those Powerscrolls....
And for many of these players the absurd amount of grinding which they had to go through in order to then be able to afford those Powerscrolls' outrageous prices BURNED THEM and kicked them out from playing Ultima Online....
Result ?
Loss of players for Ultima Online.........
And did it even help PvP in Felucca ?
Not at all, considering how Felucca has been and remain deserted by players....
It has ONLY, to my viewing and opinion, created a VERY LIMITED number of players in UO having and holding tight the Monopoly of those Powerscrolls and thus being able to set however high prices for them as they wanted.... very few players became uber rich in Ultima Online (and thus were able to further be able to boost their templates and suits and gear thus becoming INVINCIBLE to other players in PvP) and the rest of players, the largest chunk of them, were relegated into having to go through mindless, absurd GRINDS in order to put together the tens of millions needed to afford the purchase of those scrolls.
And pets' training, as we know, made all this EVEN further a nightmare.....
Was this good for Ultima Online ?
Not to my opinion, because it LOST players for UO....
Was this good for PvP in Ultima Online ?
Not to my opinion, because Felucca KEEPS being deserted and void of players SAVED when a RAID can take place.... PvPers with their uber suits and gear monitor with ghost cams the areas and then come to Raid at the very last minute when PvM players have already done the most and time consuming work to work the Spawn...
OF COURSE that players are then deterred from wanting to play with such mechanics....
So, I frankly do NOT understand why the Developers might want ti "insist" on have best items still spawn as an exclusivity of Felucca.
It is BAD, VERY bad for Ultima Online (it looses players...), not a good thing, to my opinion....
"Would love to be proved wrong, but the second they do this remove trap
as a requirement it just waters down whatever template you take in. "
What if, FOR EXAMPLE, the need to have Remove Trap on the Treasure Hunter's Template was used as that COMPROMISE to make SAME LOOT QUALITY for Felucca and ALL other Facets Treasure Chests ?
Finally, PvM players could have the SAME quality of items (Including POWERSCROLLS !!!) as those obtained in Felucca when they did them in Trammel, Ilshenar, Eodon, Malas....ONLY, they had to have Remove Trap on their Treasure Hunting Template in order to get those items in the Chest....
Would this be a price worth paying in order to wave bye bye to thos Monopolists trying to gauge prices for those "Felucca items" up the rook and beyond it thus inflating the economy of Ultima Online to the point of breaking it and having players alienating playing UO because of the absurd grinding then necessary to afford those inflated and outrageous prices ?
If Remove Trap is needed for some bonus extra content then that's okay, it's up to individual choice, but if it will become a requirement for all t-hunters then that is definitely not okay. People have crowded templates and if you already accept that not everyone had mining to replace with Remove Trap then you are seriously messing with people's templates. I have mining but I don't want the strain on my hand of GM'ing Remove Trap. I was happy with t-hunting as it was. @MissE I agree with pretty much everything you said, past experience has shown it to be mostly the case.
Powescrolls only in Fel feeding the egos of the PKs again treating the PvM comunity like second class citizens again. It seems that all the time whatever the PKs whinge about they get i have 3 subbed account so if this change messes my fun up i can guaratee you will lose £20 a month to start with as i will be cancelling 2 of my subs and can see a lot more doing similar after being driven from the game again At this stage i would have thought your best plans would be to keep current level of players and try to encourage more players to stay in the game to keep it going and not deter and drive players away. I hope you can see some sense and try to be fair towards the PvM crowd and not keep trying to force life into fel which has been a dead shard for me since it came in in 2000 keep the life in Tram where the biggest no of your player base is.
I like the addition of the powerscrolls, and Ok with limiting them to Fellucca. I've done hundreds of maps in Fel and haven't seen a soul in months, but this risk/reward balance *should* strike a nice compromise with the pvp crowd.
I don't see any remove trap requirements, which is good. I don't know how I'd re-tool.
I don't understand the "cartography" level though.
I agree @Gauge 'UO - catering to minorities since 1997' I rarely do chests in Fel, I've done a few but I won't be making my t-hunter's career out of them. I really only like the Trammel and Malas ones, most of the other places it takes longer to clear the surrounding area than it does to do the chest. I've had some real stinkers in Ter Mur... I was going to copy my t-hunter over to test but if there are so many bugs I think I'll wait until things work properly first. Also I don't have any remove trap skill so I guess I can't actually do anything anyway.
If Remove Trap, ends up being a requirement you will have to sacrifice up to 100 skill points (maybe less, depending on the final implementation and how modded RT gear would come into play).
I'm very confused. I was under the impression that mining would no longer be required. However, I don't see any mention of that in the publish notes. So are you truly saying that we need to lower all the other real skill levels our t-hunter characters have down by enough to add up to 100 points of remove trap skill? I had been hoping to substitute remove trap for mining skill. But it doesn't look like that is going to be a possibility. And if we have to also squeeze in detect hidden skill, then I don't even know what to say.
My current t-hunter "real skills" template is:
100 cartography
100 lockpicking
51 mining
100 magery
69 meditation
80 evaluate intelligence
100 music
120 peacemaking
I've never played the game of using a soulstone to swap skills off and on while digging up maps because I just don't have the money or the extra useless characters to swap skills so casually.
If remove trap must be squeezed in on top of everything else, I honestly don't know how I'm going to even do treasure hunting anymore. It's not like I'm great at it now as it is. I can't solo anything over a level 4 map today because I'm not just not that great of a player at being able to run two characters at once.
So at this point, I'm pretty bummed about these changes. Training remove traps is horrid and also requires training up detect hidden first and then training tinkering as you train remove trap. I really really do not want to do that again because I've done it several times already for now-useless faction characters that are not on the same accounts as the t-hunters.
I feel like I've bumbled along for years attempting to get minor league treasure hunter characters trained on a couple of shards, wasted vet reward picks getting davies lockers, and now it was all pointless unless I want to plan on spending the next several years grinding out a horrid skill and trying to acquire ridiculously over-priced and rare jewelry and other items to gear up still-pathetic treasure hunters.
I'm bummed but not surprised either.
Seems like anymore you guys just keep adding stuff to the game that isn't meant for casual payers who don't want to drop a lot of real cash on UO. I'm about to close all my accounts and say forget it. UO is not for me.
Decoded a second batch of maps this morning. Got 9 with the "Need more time to decode" message but after waiting a short time I was able to go back and successfully decode them. I'm still unable to decode the two maps from yesterday that offer that message.
I brought a number of maps over with a character copy this morning. They all decoded without a hitch, offering the new names and no "Need more time" message.
One odd bit: With decoding roughly 100 maps so far, these include two TC batches generated from bank, maps brought from Chessy, and a very small sampling from the pillar dispensers near Luna moongate, I've had one single TC bank map that offered the old message "The treasure is marked by the red pin. Grab a shovel and go dig it up!"
All the rest offered the message "You successfully decode a treasure map".
Edit: Never mind about the message saying Grab a shovel! I think that's the message you get if you open an already decoded map. I must have hit that map twice to decode it
I know I'm coming into this late but I have strong negative feelings about changing the Treasure Hunter AGAIN. Early on, if I remember correctly, you had to have mining, then it was changed so you didn't need mining, then it was changed again so you did need mining..... Personally I find this change to be needless. I strongly dislike the idea of adding remove trap.
If you really feel that remove trap MUST BE added then how about just making it simple and sell a tool in the store that detects hidden/removes trap? Make some money and we don't have to create completely new(for the most part) templates.
Just fix what's broke with it. My opinion is that the maps needs fine tuning by making the pin locator accurate. Change the loot of the chests and add a couple more advanced levels of chest that require group engagement.
I love the artwork on the new bags! These are fully functional containers.
Not thrilled about having to add remove trap AND detect hidden to my t-hunter. I am not ''saving'' skills points by not needing mining any more because I did not use it before. And, if I understand this correctly, I now must also keep carto on the template instead of just decoding the maps for the evening and stoning the skill. That leaves me with 320 combat skills to do a solo spawn. Having said that, however, it is doable.
My template atm:
120 Mage 120 Spellweaving 80 Med (100 with jewls) 100 Carto 100 Detect 100 Remove Trap 100 Lockpicking
No trouble whatsoever with Malas and Tram lvl 1-3 using just EVs. Malas Horde took a bit longer, but was not difficult. However, I failed several times to pick the lock on the chest and the resulting 4 dust piles made me sad. I realize the other facets have harder spawn, but they have always been more effort than I cared to spend. I will leave the Ilsh, Eodon, etc ones for group hunts, or bring my tamer on another account along with me.
Level 1 and 2 maps did not require lock picking. Magery unlock spell was enough, without causing any dust piles. Even at GM, I often fail to remove the trap on even the lowly level 2 chest. This does not appear to destroy any contents, though. Magery spell remove trap does not work at any level of map.
I have not found a Malas Trove map yet, but I will test that for solo-ability when I do. The group ones can just have a dedicated chest-opener member, I suppose. Brings me back to the old DnD days when you just had to have a rogue on the team for some content. I know lots of people like their solo treasure hunting, and they can still do that. But I am happy that there is a reason for a group to go.
I just hope the TC1 does not crash like last time when I was trying to copy my t hunter over, I want to try my t hunter with this over there, her pets, her suit her skills not making a new one on the spot
Need detect hidden, disarm trap, and lock picking or you blow everything to ash.. not to mention you need cartography on you to get a golden chest.. so much for soloing maps.. you need 400 skills in worthless crap just to dig it up and open it.
From the first part of the Publish notes,
This is the first implementation of our planned Treasure Map update. Everything should be considered a work-in-progress and subject to change and/or removal. This update does NOT represent the final implementation, especially of the following systems as they relate to treasure maps,
Remove Trap
What does this even mean? You need GM Remove Trap for items to not vanish or what? Please give a bit context on "Remove Trap".
Please also increase the skill cap by 100
Just a troll who got told by lesser trolls (moderator classification)
I'm simply amazed by how many people don't seem to realize this content is in the testing phase and Kyronix even said that nothing is set in stone yet and he is looking for constructive feedback.
More amazed by the amount of people that clearly haven't even read the full publish notes to understand the full gamut of what is being proposed before complaining about it.
Don't like what is proposed in the publish notes? Go and test it, and give constructive feedback. Some things are clearly broken (like the no loot in chests), which I am sure is being addressed. They are not going to go live with no loot in chests or maps that won't decode.
Sadly in my LONG time experience once something has gone to TC there are very very minor tweaks but what is proposed ends up going in irrespective of HOW much feedback they get. That has been demonstrated over and over and over again. They fix 'bugs' but not the overall concept. This idea of 'remove trap' being a requirement has been in this from the start and I guarantee you it WILL GO LIVE. I have NO DOUBT about that, irrespective of whether or not you don't think it will go in. Or whether or not it is stated that this is all 'not set in stone'.
Not all of us can 'test' on TC as some of us can't hardly MOVE on that shard so trying to test anything is like face-planting over and over again.
As for this: "Treasure Maps that lead to a Stash, Supply, or Cache have been balanced
for solo encounters while Hordes and Troves are more geared towards
group encounters."
This is what is going to totally BORK it. Right now with a bit of patience and care I can do all level t-maps, there is NO chance in hell on small shards of getting groups to do stuff so yet again we are gonna be forced to forgo content due to lack of players.
T-mapping was the ONE thing that I enjoyed doing solo.
If the loot is scaled so that the only decent stuff is in the high level tmaps, which is most likely given what is written in the notes, then again, no point to doing them any more. As stated:
"There are 4 factors that influence what items end up in a chest if
succesful random rolls are made, Map Level, Profession Package, Chest
Quality, and Facet" No doubt the high level 'group' maps in fel will have the only decent rewards, yet another attempt to force people into fel.
Yet again, as I said, we are gonna all find solo t-mapping is borked.
Would love to be proved wrong, but the second they do this remove trap as a requirement it just waters down whatever template you take in. I have managed without mining up until now by not caring if it took me a little longer to dig up a chest, if it meant I could save those 100 points. Most ran with LP/Carto and mining, try squishing 100 remove trap onto it is just the straw......
Well said! Middlefinger to all us old T-Hunters.
Just a troll who got told by lesser trolls (moderator classification)
Personally, I am fine with less items and higher quality. Tho so far the maps I have done have only had a few items, and nothing spectacular. Did find these tho, and I don't remember the game dropping this style of gear before as normal gear:
-- @Kyronix ... there was no mention in the patch notes of the Scrolls of Transcendence currently found in Fel treasure chests. On top of the addition of a chance for a Powerscroll in Fel, will we still be getting a chance for at least a 0.5 SoT in Fel?
I know that, currently, a lot of treasure hunters do Fel maps solely for that SoT chance and lot will be upset to lose that.
~ Jennifer-Marie
"Insanity is a naturally occurring mutation; humanity has just managed to perfect it." -- JMK [[me]]
Comments
Here are some quick observations, both the maps I did were stashes.
- Please fix "something is standing in your way" - very annoying when trying to loot and there are corpses on the ground next to the chest
- Graphics when chest is digging seem to be off on the z-axis? I dont see the chest at all until the moment the guardians are spawned. I am using the classic client.
- Maybe increase the item count a little.
- I do like the new mage reagent bag.
- Anything you can do about the overlapping of trees on the chests? There's a bit of difficulty involved just clicking on the chest. the circle of transparency doesn't seem to work as well as it should.
- Like other posters have mentioned. Please disable Detect Hidden from using Remove Trap.
- Maybe find a way to make RT easier to gain?
Thats all for now. Thanks@Arroth_Thaiel - Ideally I would have liked to have done what you suggested, and toyed with a scheme that matches what you proposed pretty closely. Unfortunately, in the end, there just wasn't enough loot to go around to make each chest interesting to go after. The main goal of the revamp was to provide a reason to target lower level maps instead of just higher ones, and provide a means to target the specific items you find valuable, while avoiding what you would consider junk. Hopefully with the new package distribution you will be able to do that.
See more of my answers in-line above, but with that being said I'll close with this...
We appreciate everyone who has taken the time to provide feedback so far, and look forward to more of it as we move through the testing process for Forgotten Treasures. With anything new, there is certainly going to be some relearning, re-configuring, and re-adjusting. The proposition of that should be exciting and welcome in a world where we are constantly barraged with cries of "make the world more interesting and give me a reason to log in!" When we are met with immediate dismissal of any change at all from the status quo, it makes delivering on that request extraordinarily difficult. Despite those challenges, we hope the final product will be something that encourages those to brave the wilds and rediscover some of those Forgotten Treasures!
I just solo'd a horde chest. Still doable. Failed to remove the trap, so that's the first one to blow up in my face. Managed to get a greater artifact in what remained of my loot, a pair of elven glasses. I feel like those are new.
Thought of something to try while doing that... so I went and did a supply chest (formerly level 2-3) and tried magic unlock. No longer works, for anyone curious. Still not getting any real loot in the lower level chests, but I did get a runed sash of warding this time along with the gems and gold.
Oh, and I did have some bugged, indecipherable maps. Seems leaving them for several hours and trying again worked for most... and few worked after being locked down, and I have one who chooses to remain obstinate.
Edit: And my OCD must ask why there's suddenly an extra 1 gold in the gold piles... 10,001, 20,001... Seems weird.
I would definitely call it group content.
And we got two hives to spawn while killing the guardians and yes the t-rex was a guardian.
One issue with the T-Rex, it's inheriting the quest flag so you cannot damage it unless you have The Great Hunt quest:
I ran over to Sakkhra and picked up the quest and was able to damage the T-Rex after that.
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(note: not had a chance to go to test yet)
1. Consider making Telekinesis not work on anything over a level 1, but allow it for the level 1 with no penalty. After all, someone that is a T-Hunter in training is far more likely to not have significant levels of Remove Trap until they are also closing in on level 2 maps. Open Locks should not work on map chests, or require GM+ for level 1s, only.
2. Instead of DESTROYING items when Remove Trap not used, make Remove Trap give some sort of bonus loot. Say, an item dropped into the pack of the person using RT. The COLOR TEXT for doing so would say that they saved an item from being destroyed by removing the trap, but that would just be for RP purposes. It would probably be lot easier to code an extra random item drop, than deciding what randomly gets destroyed, and to debug it/get it to work properly (based on my experience as formerly being a CS/math teaching major).
3. If not already done so, remove the 50-stone weight property from items placed in Treasure Maps. No sane pirates would carry those things to the middle of nowhere to bury, and they make looting current chests a pain in the rear, when looting items for a training imbuer to unravel.
4. Consider some sort of new level 0 map for "young" characters as part of any revised NPE. I saw a significant drop in new T-Hunters after those new player quests that gave those maps went away.
5. Make sure that the chest damage levels are normalized when adjusting the new maps (the current level 2 massive damage bug is real, even though you may not have encountered it personally. As most people never do level 2s (but they are my favorites from balance of difficulty and loot - see the screencap below - it's a level 2...), it's been under-reported).
6. And, as some people earlier in the thread reported, the "dig spot not at the pin" bug is also alive and well, as mentioned in my private message to you a couple days ago. This is a screencap of one of the incidents I mentioned (this one is on Amoeba, but I had it happen on Valor Island, with the river south of Britain moongate, and the 3 branches of the river between Vesper and the Sacrifice shrine).
The pin is entirely on the other side of the river. The chest was to the south and east (and the dead stuff on the other side were things that attacked me when I searched in vain when the pin told me to look).
7. Lastly, please consider rebalancing the skills needed for each map to not be as severe a jump as current Cartography and Lockpicking (which has a 40-ish point jump between level 1 & level 2).
The new Level 1s need to be accessible to anyone with BOUGHT levels of Cartography & Lockpicking (and if you added a T-hunter template, someone with 30 LP/Cart/RT/magery). Prior to this TC publish, a character STILL needs to train LP & Cart a few points beyond bought points, if doing it without using magery for Open Locks and TK.
The new Level 5s need to be GM, of course.
Levels 2, 3, and 4 need to be more evenly spaced than the current level 2-6 that they replace. A lot of would-be T-hunters have given up in the past, because the 40 point gap between minimums for level 1 & level 2 maps was so big a stretch that they felt like they were making no progress (not seeing it through to where the gaps between levels switches to 10 or so between each level after reaching level 2s, going up to GM).
Say, something like:
just tried 3 more level 1 maps same thing guardians and no chest
@MissE I agree with pretty much everything you said, past experience has shown it to be mostly the case.
At this stage i would have thought your best plans would be to keep current level of players and try to encourage more players to stay in the game to keep it going and not deter and drive players away. I hope you can see some sense and try to be fair towards the PvM crowd and not keep trying to force life into fel which has been a dead shard for me since it came in in 2000 keep the life in Tram where the biggest no of your player base is.
I don't see any remove trap requirements, which is good. I don't know how I'd re-tool.
I don't understand the "cartography" level though.
I rarely do chests in Fel, I've done a few but I won't be making my t-hunter's career out of them.
I really only like the Trammel and Malas ones, most of the other places it takes longer to clear the surrounding area than it does to do the chest. I've had some real stinkers in Ter Mur...
I was going to copy my t-hunter over to test but if there are so many bugs I think I'll wait until things work properly first. Also I don't have any remove trap skill so I guess I can't actually do anything anyway.
My current t-hunter "real skills" template is: 100 cartography 100 lockpicking 51 mining 100 magery 69 meditation 80 evaluate intelligence 100 music 120 peacemaking
I've never played the game of using a soulstone to swap skills off and on while digging up maps because I just don't have the money or the extra useless characters to swap skills so casually. If remove trap must be squeezed in on top of everything else, I honestly don't know how I'm going to even do treasure hunting anymore. It's not like I'm great at it now as it is. I can't solo anything over a level 4 map today because I'm not just not that great of a player at being able to run two characters at once.
So at this point, I'm pretty bummed about these changes. Training remove traps is horrid and also requires training up detect hidden first and then training tinkering as you train remove trap. I really really do not want to do that again because I've done it several times already for now-useless faction characters that are not on the same accounts as the t-hunters.
I feel like I've bumbled along for years attempting to get minor league treasure hunter characters trained on a couple of shards, wasted vet reward picks getting davies lockers, and now it was all pointless unless I want to plan on spending the next several years grinding out a horrid skill and trying to acquire ridiculously over-priced and rare jewelry and other items to gear up still-pathetic treasure hunters. I'm bummed but not surprised either.
Seems like anymore you guys just keep adding stuff to the game that isn't meant for casual payers who don't want to drop a lot of real cash on UO. I'm about to close all my accounts and say forget it. UO is not for me.
I brought a number of maps over with a character copy this morning. They all decoded without a hitch, offering the new names and no "Need more time" message.
One odd bit:
With decoding roughly 100 maps so far, these include two TC batches generated from bank, maps brought from Chessy, and a very small sampling from the pillar dispensers near Luna moongate, I've had one single TC bank map that offered the old message "The treasure is marked by the red pin. Grab a shovel and go dig it up!"
All the rest offered the message "You successfully decode a treasure map".
Edit: Never mind about the message saying Grab a shovel! I think that's the message you get if you open an already decoded map. I must have hit that map twice to decode it
Not thrilled about having to add remove trap AND detect hidden to my t-hunter. I am not ''saving'' skills points by not needing mining any more because I did not use it before. And, if I understand this correctly, I now must also keep carto on the template instead of just decoding the maps for the evening and stoning the skill. That leaves me with 320 combat skills to do a solo spawn. Having said that, however, it is doable.
My template atm:
120 Mage
120 Spellweaving
80 Med (100 with jewls)
100 Carto
100 Detect
100 Remove Trap
100 Lockpicking
No trouble whatsoever with Malas and Tram lvl 1-3 using just EVs. Malas Horde took a bit longer, but was not difficult. However, I failed several times to pick the lock on the chest and the resulting 4 dust piles made me sad. I realize the other facets have harder spawn, but they have always been more effort than I cared to spend. I will leave the Ilsh, Eodon, etc ones for group hunts, or bring my tamer on another account along with me.
Level 1 and 2 maps did not require lock picking. Magery unlock spell was enough, without causing any dust piles. Even at GM, I often fail to remove the trap on even the lowly level 2 chest. This does not appear to destroy any contents, though. Magery spell remove trap does not work at any level of map.
I have not found a Malas Trove map yet, but I will test that for solo-ability when I do. The group ones can just have a dedicated chest-opener member, I suppose. Brings me back to the old DnD days when you just had to have a rogue on the team for some content. I know lots of people like their solo treasure hunting, and they can still do that. But I am happy that there is a reason for a group to go.
for
Treasure Hunters
Please also increase the skill cap by 100
all of this and we just wanted a bump to loot...
will be interesting to see the finished product tho
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