New Tmap proposals

LilyGrace

I hear you, Sistah!

Faeryl

@KHAN

For the record... that was someone else's post you were responding to. I merely quoted it.

jaytin

I would rather be thought a whiner than be someone who would trade my current enjoyment for ANYTHING new, even if it was worse than what I already had. As others have pointed out, we already have puzzles in other places in-game, but I bet hardly anyone goes near them. 

KHAN

Faeryl said:

@ KHAN

For the record... that was someone else's post you were responding to. I merely quoted it.

My mistake.

Kyronix

For the record, there was never a stealth Treasure Chest loot nerf.  If you want to believe that, I'm certainly not going to change your mind, but I'm just telling you that we haven't touched T-Map loot since the global loot rollout of Pub 86? (exact escapes me right now)  

In any case - we've adjusted the quality of randomly generated magic loot in the latest release, and brought luck back into the equation .  I encourage everyone to hop on TC1 and dig up a chest or two.  I'll be spending some time on and off TC1 all weekend, so stop by and say hello!

Our current plan is to revisit the current state of things after the weekend and figure out what our next move is.

I will leave you with some thoughts to chew over...

I have no problem removing the puzzles and reverting back to the traditional explosion, poison and dart traps that are traditionally on traps.  We would re-scale the difficulty between magic & RT trap removal, and perhaps tie failure into spawning additional mobs to fight, along with dealing with some damage/poison from the traps themselves.  These are just thoughts, and do not mean that's going to happen.  This still leaves a huge problem with training the actual skill, since puzzles would no longer be a part of it, the main training loop would take place on treasure maps themselves, which may or may not be so bad.  Feel free to discuss.

TimSt

For training the actual RT skill a training box that self retraps and does not cause harm to the user would be nice.  It is automatable and does not require a second skill like tinkering to reset the trap or healing to heal your self on failure to remove the trap.  Have the training box rechargeable with magic trap scrolls that are dropped onto the box.

LilyGrace

I hear you @KHAN. But I think we’re talking apples and oranges. Because I wasn’t really talking about what’s dropping for loot. I’m talking about how we get to the drop. I get you’re saying. 

 

Hotei

Posted this in another thread, but thought maybe this might be a more appropriate setting for my comments. Sorry if it seems "spammish", that is not my intent.

Been playing off and on since '98. Been T-hunting off and on since maps were introduced. Still processing the proposed changes.

I believe that everybody is entitled to their opinion, but I have a problem when seeing (not just in this thread, but in many others) posters making blanket statements about how "most players" feel about any given subject, saying 90% of players want this, or don't want that. One cannot judge what the majority of players think about any given subject based off their own subjective opinion or even by what is posted on this or any other message board. We all know that the majority of players do not post in the forums. All we can do is post what our opinion is.

Many posted that they wanted better/more high end loot in the Treasure chests but seem not to want anything else changed. Seems to me only right that to have greater/better rewards, the challenges should be increased. So often in the past, increased challenge translated into harder or more monsters to fight. This time, the devs are implementing the greater challenge by making use of an existing/underutilized skill. I consider this a good thing, especially since they are removing the need for mining to help locate the chest.

My 1st reaction about the puzzles, like many, was negative. I'm not big on puzzles. But I'm reserving final judgement for now until further testing and giving myself time to let its implications sink in.

My thoughts regarding this right now... The higher your remove trap skill is, the easier the puzzle should be. Maybe even to the point that at GM Remove Trap, there is no puzzle. If I choose not to invest points into Remove Trap, then by default, I am choosing to contend with puzzles in order to open a chest. The lower the skill, the more difficult the puzzle. This seems to me a fair compromise. For the "I hate/am terrible at puzzles" person can choose to GM Remove trap. The "I like/am good at puzzles" person can choose to invest the points into something else they find desireable.

I can't say that 90% feel the same as myself, but it is where I stand at this point in time.

Faeryl

Hotei said:

Posted this in another thread, but thought maybe this might be a more appropriate setting for my comments. Sorry if it seems "spammish", that is not my intent.

Been playing off and on since '98. Been T-hunting off and on since maps were introduced. Still processing the proposed changes.

I believe that everybody is entitled to their opinion, but I have a problem when seeing (not just in this thread, but in many others) posters making blanket statements about how "most players" feel about any given subject, saying 90% of players want this, or don't want that. One cannot judge what the majority of players think about any given subject based off their own subjective opinion or even by what is posted on this or any other message board. We all know that the majority of players do not post in the forums. All we can do is post what our opinion is.

Many posted that they wanted better/more high end loot in the Treasure chests but seem not to want anything else changed. Seems to me only right that to have greater/better rewards, the challenges should be increased. So often in the past, increased challenge translated into harder or more monsters to fight. This time, the devs are implementing the greater challenge by making use of an existing/underutilized skill. I consider this a good thing, especially since they are removing the need for mining to help locate the chest.

My 1st reaction about the puzzles, like many, was negative. I'm not big on puzzles. But I'm reserving final judgement for now until further testing and giving myself time to let its implications sink in.

My thoughts regarding this right now... The higher your remove trap skill is, the easier the puzzle should be. Maybe even to the point that at GM Remove Trap, there is no puzzle. If I choose not to invest points into Remove Trap, then by default, I am choosing to contend with puzzles in order to open a chest. The lower the skill, the more difficult the puzzle. This seems to me a fair compromise. For the "I hate/am terrible at puzzles" person can choose to GM Remove trap. The "I like/am good at puzzles" person can choose to invest the points into something else they find desireable.

I can't say that 90% feel the same as myself, but it is where I stand at this point in time.

I like that idea. 

LilyGrace

Kyronix said:

This still leaves a huge problem with training the actual skill, since puzzles would no longer be a part of it, the main training loop would take place on treasure maps themselves, which may or may not be so bad.  Feel free to discuss.

TimSt said:

For training the actual RT skill a training box that self retraps and does not cause harm to the user would be nice.  It is automatable and does not require a second skill like tinkering to reset the trap or healing to heal your self on failure to remove the trap.  Have the training box rechargeable with magic trap scrolls that are dropped onto the box.

I've been thinking more about the bummer of losing the RT Training Puzzle Boxes if puzzles aren't put on TChests. Would we really have to lose them? Does training RT really have to only tie into Treasure Chests? 

Why not leave them in and let those of us who were happy to do the puzzles train RT on them? Just tie them in some other way. Khaldun has the cylinder puzzles. Call that one the Khaldun Puzzle Box, etc. If folks that don't want to do puzzles on treasure chests don't want to use the boxes to train they can use the tinker made boxes.

And / Or give us three other types of boxes, along the lines of what Tim suggests. Drop 100 poison potions on the Poison Trap Training Box. Drop 100 bolts on the Dart Trap Training Box. Drop 100 Explosion Scrolls on the Explosion Trap Training Box. 

I don't want to go back to tinker crates myself. :-(

Pawain

Make the puzzle boxes loot in the T chests.  It would turn into a deed when you complete the puzzle.

Make a number of deeds turn into something like the orc ship deeds do.  

Then players could call out in chat for someone to open them.  Like players do with paragon chests now.   If they do not want to open them themselves.

The Puzzle boxes can still be used for skill training.

Strings

I already trained remove trap on Atlantic Shard to 100, it wasn't fun but when is it ever.  I would advise not making remove trap to easy to skill up.  With tinker skill you can train it just fine.  After all that work I feel a bit let down.  I transferred my T-hunter to the test shard.  Most of the maps are unreadable that I held in my Davies lockers.  I was not able to loot a trove chest I completed and I could not open the bag in the chest, no obstructions.  I did about a dozen maps and was disappointed with the nearly empty chests and gave up.  I don't understand the reasoning behind the sub maps. I do not treasure hunt for gold, gems, or minor magic items.  I am always in search of that elusive legendary artifact.  I have not gotten 1 Legendary from the Test Shard.  On Atlantic with my luck suit I can expect 1 legendary every 3 chests.  Keep in mind most Legendaries still suck.  I am pretty sure most would agree with my post.  All we want is more Legendaries, so we can find better Legendaries.  Also the Puzzles aren't worth my time if I can't get 1 Legendary out of it.  On a busy day I can do 20-30 lvl 6 t-maps solo.  Now I don't even want to see a t-map if this is how its going to be.  I might as well use the 1500 T maps I saved for trash points.  If anyone remembers the first treasure chests they had vanquishing and power swords and it was like the greatest feeling when you found 1.  Now its like oh another chest full of crap but just maybe a legendary.

Arroth_Thaiel

Hey @Strings,

When you are on TC looking for legendaries, stop doing Trove Chests. Just do Cache chests.

Cache/Hoard/Trove all have the same Quality of loot. The only thing that varies is the number of items.
Cache have fewer than Trove, but you can go through Cache chests much faster than Trove. Plus, Cache chests do not have puzzles. Just use Lockpick/Remove Trap on them and they open, no puzzle.

Cache have 6 items each and I have personally gotten a couple legendaries out of them, even with only 290 luck. Hoard have 9 items each. Trove has like 18, but you can probably do 4 Cache in the time it takes to do one Trove.

4 Cache at 6 items (NO puzzles) = 24 items 100% intensity

1 Trove at 18 items (Puzzle)        = 18 items 100% intensity

Just decide what type of gear you are looking for and look for just those chests. If you're after mage gear do Mage Cache - lots of leather armor with mage mods, if you want heavy armor and shields, do Warrior Cache - lots of str and hp gear.

If you want a specific style of gear pick the facet, Garg gear in Ter Mur, Samurai in Tokuno, etc., and just farm for the type of gear you're looking for in that landmass. It really cuts down on the amount of crap you have to sort through and you continually generate the types of item you want. Much better chances of getting what you're after.

Just pick the kind of gear you want and farm for that specific type.

Good luck.

Strings

I have an idea, if there is going to be sub categories for maps.  Why not a big fat juicy legendary map?  You could make them rare like an Ancient SOS, 1 in 50 maps. Perhaps a few legendary and a 1 in 1000 chance of getting a rare artifact.  People would go crazy for T hunting then.  I am not a big fan of killing a rare mob 100 times for a rare item.  But find 1 rare item in a chest would be amazing.  It would also make maps more valuable.  You should also nerf miasma and the room with endless maps in doom.  People could still quest for maps and the maps would be more valuable when dropped.  Who wouldn't want to do the Hag quest for maps if they had too? I would do quests all day if that was the only way. 

MissE

How about if you want to train remove trap you leave the training as it is. Since this whole thing with remove trap has been talked about I have actually trained it weeks ago, sure it is a pain but it is done.  Anyone else could of done the same thing. 

If you want to put in easy mode training for it then make some puzzles ppl can buy at the provisioner that will let them gain in their houses.  Say 50k a pop for a random .5 per completed puzzle gain.  Works as a gold sink.

That way they can train easy mode if wanting to, and then those that have a hard on for doing puzzles can get their jollies and leave the rest of us alone. 

Make it so that Tinkers can craft Remove Trap Kits, without requiring some convoluted bunch of resources, (perhaps using some of the now defunct Mondains legacy peerless regs  to make them relevant again, given that 90% of anything you can currently make with them is irrelevant and not used any more).

The ONLY thing that needed to be different to treasure hunting was a loot upgrade, that was IT.  So ok for that upgrade add in a requirement that you need remove trap to ensure you DON'T blow up any loot.  The fact is if you have GM RT you shouldn't be blowing UP loot.  Less than that, sure, but at GM level remove trap you should NOT be blowing up loot.

So far the loot is actually WORSE than what was in originally, so if you are going to make it worse then you may as well just leave it  as it is and save everyone the grief.  There needs to be a substantial loot bump in order to justify adding remove trap to the template, and as for puzzles find something else to do with them or ONLY put them on the low end chests for people who DON'T wanna train remove traps up or as suggested above make them part of puzzles you buy to train up RT the easy way.

Once you have remove trap there should NOT be a flipping puzzle.

LilyGrace

MissE said:

How about if you want to train remove trap you leave the training as it is. Since this whole thing with remove trap has been talked about I have actually trained it weeks ago, sure it is a pain but it is done.  Anyone else could of done the same thing. 

If you want to put in easy mode training for it then make some puzzles ppl can buy at the provisioner that will let them gain in their houses.  Say 50k a pop for a random .5 per completed puzzle gain.  Works as a gold sink.

That way they can train easy mode if wanting to, and then those that have a hard on for doing puzzles can get their jollies and leave the rest of us alone. 

Make it so that Tinkers can craft Remove Trap Kits, without requiring some convoluted bunch of resources, (perhaps using some of the now defunct Mondains legacy peerless regs  to make them relevant again, given that 90% of anything you can currently make with them is irrelevant and not used any more).

The ONLY thing that needed to be different to treasure hunting was a loot upgrade, that was IT.  So ok for that upgrade add in a requirement that you need remove trap to ensure you DON'T blow up any loot.  The fact is if you have GM RT you shouldn't be blowing UP loot.  Less than that, sure, but at GM level remove trap you should NOT be blowing up loot.

So far the loot is actually WORSE than what was in originally, so if you are going to make it worse then you may as well just leave it  as it is and save everyone the grief.  There needs to be a substantial loot bump in order to justify adding remove trap to the template, and as for puzzles find something else to do with them or ONLY put them on the low end chests for people who DON'T wanna train remove traps up or as suggested above make them part of puzzles you buy to train up RT the easy way.

Once you have remove trap there should NOT be a flipping puzzle.

You’re just miserable. I’ve been talking to developers of this game since beta, when everyone posted on Crossroads. And I raised every skill original to the game to 100 using the original point and click menus. So please don’t be telling me I’m looking for an easy button.

I’m not alone in having paid those dues but that doesn’t mean I think everyone ought to still train skills up with that kind of tedium involved just because, once upon a time, I did. 

But you go ahead and knock yourself out, MissE. Go ahead and bark at everyone with your cranky posts, dotted here and there using all caps to help accentuate just how right you are. 

I’m over it. 

MissE

LilyGrace said:

You’re just miserable. I’ve been talking to developers of this game since beta, when everyone posted on Crossroads. And I raised every skill original to the game to 100 using the original point and click menus. So please don’t be telling me I’m looking for an easy button.

Least I talk about the topic and NEVER resort to personal insults.

Have a nice day.

Tim

On a hole I'm happy with what's on TS1. But after going out and trying a dozen or so No Mod maps in Fel I can honestly say I hate the puzzles. I find that it shifts the needed skills from the character to the player and that's not UO. UO is a strategy game. You train up you character and then let him/her go at it. You don't tell it to swing at the head then the shoulder and so on like a first person shooter. 

Adding the puzzles to treasure chests put me at a severe disadvantage to a player who is good at them that no amount of strategy on my part can over come. I have no problem with it being hard to train my character in remove trap because it should be and will still be easer then training me in puzzles. I've been trying to train me in puzzles for 50+ year and haven't seceded yet.

By the way I do have a personal reason for objecting to puzzles, if I didn't have something to lose or gain and commented anyway I would just be a self appointed know it all spouting off to make myself feel important.

LilyGrace

Who are you kidding? Your posts are full of insults aimed at people you don’t agree with. To coin one of your phrases, you seem to have a hard on for it. 

Violet

Tim said:

Adding the puzzles to treasure chests put me at a severe disadvantage to a player who is good at them that no amount of strategy on my part can over come.

With GM Remove Trap puzzles can become quite easy for those not puzzle inclined.


"the attempt to discern next node" will show you where you need to move. 



The rate of failure at GM remove trap was twice this whole puzzle, no items destroyed.

This took just over a minute to complete this way.


Puzzles just use another form of strategy and some of it is just pure luck.

JollyJade

I'm not going to do the the work for @Kyronix, but the method is easy.

Every level 6 or level 7 chest now has a net value. Junk you unravel to essences, residue and relics. Cleanup point items (refinements, wands, ...) have their gold value defined by cleanup point value. Mana phasing orbs or the like have a direct gold value when you sell them on your vendor. Etc. pp. You can do this for every item in the chest. Every now and then you get a great item worth dozens of millions.

Since the new level 3 maps are meant to be exactly like this, anything short in value of that will be considered a NERF. More so if it takes even more skills and time to do it.

You can also put average times to chests depending on their level. Absolute numbers will differ for people, but I think we can all agree there is some added effort the higher the level.

If the new chests take say 10% more time, their contents should be worth 10% more in the market.

Just make sure that's assured.

JollyJade

KHAN said:

@ Kyronix You said, The base loot tables are exactly the same for Lvl 3 as they are for Lvl 4 and Lvl 5. I am taking this to mean that the loot is exactly THE SAME in all 3 levels of chests. What am I missing, because that CAN'T be correct. otherwise, why even bother with the 4's and 5's????? 

Only time will really tell the truth, but I fear it's along "you can get a clean legendary from a mongbat" .. if you kill them 24/7 for 10 years..

Tim

Violet thanks
But that one is so easy it's just a pain and a wast of time with GM remove trap. My problem is with the sliding pitchers my mind just doesn't work that way.
But regardless I don't think they belong on treasure chests. When I do a night of treasure maps I don't want to spend most of the night doing puzzles especially an easy one. I can't do one type and the other two once you figure out the method are just boring. If they are included in the final release I will end up abandoning a third of the chests (if the RND likes me that night) and spending more time on a puzzle that I know the key to then killing the guardians.
The best I can come up to explain what I mean is they are like a book of cross word puzzles that only use the same ten short words. Maybe fun the first few times but doing ten or twenty in a night?

I do think the puzzles are well done and a good item in the game if used sparingly. Maybe once in a rare wile on the odd quest but not multiple time a night. 

Tarragon_Slayer

At present, the master skeleton key is a guarantee that no items will be lost.
Would it be acceptable to eliminate the puzzle on a hoard chest if a treasure hunter with GM Remove Trap opened it with a Master skeleton key?
If I have the time, I'll be testing it on TC. This might be a solution to the problem (I tell myself)

MissE

LilyGrace said:

Who are you kidding? Your posts are full of insults aimed at people you don’t agree with. To coin one of your phrases, you seem to have a hard on for it. 

show me where i have ever called people names?  As you did.   You just don't like the fact I am not a pom pom waving fan boi.   You are the one calling people names, not me.  In fact go through this thread and quote me anywhere where I have attacked anyone on a personal level.  I have disagreed with the odd point or corrected an assumption on something someone has attributed to me, like character copy etc, but the ONLY person making personal remarks and attacking anyone  is you.

jaytin

Well they already called everyone that didn't agree with them 'whiners' so I guess personal attacks were the next step. I thought the rules here meant people couldn't call each other names? 

MissE

jaytin said:

Well they already called everyone that didn't agree with them 'whiners' so I guess personal attacks were the next step. I thought the rules here meant people couldn't call each other names? 

Yeah I noticed that.

LilyGrace

I didn’t call any person out by name for being a whiner. And that had absolutely nothing to do with whether I agree with someone or not.

There are plenty of folks on test center checking out new content who will offer feedback and ideas on how they might improve or change something. And others who might not visit the test center but have ideas and feedback to share. I don’t always agree with what’s being offered up. But I respect the effort and certainty don’t see them whining.  

I think I was pretty clear what I meant by whiners. And I don’t need to call anyone out by name on it. 

If you want to take me to task for saying you’re miserable for the way you’re speaking to people in you posts, MissE, go ahead. But I stand by what I said. Many of your posts are nasty in tone. And I find them insulting toward other players and the devs. 

Edit: To say, go ahead and have the last word. I’m done beating the dead puzzle trap horse. 

Rorschach

Lighten up and cease the petty bickering or this thread will be closed.

MissE

And I find your posts insulting and note you can't quote anywhere where I have insulted anyone. Putting on your 'edit' re the last word is also kinda funny when that is what you were trying to do.  As I said you are the only one slinging personal insults.  Have a nice day.