Shadowguard changes

Mervyn · June 2018

Merus said:

Petra_Fyde said:

Auto stable is not a bug, it was put in to avoid people losing their pets when they lost connection for whatever reason. That's not just Kyronix's opinion, it's the TEAM's stand on the question, blaming Kyronix is just 'shooting the messenger'. However, it is widely abused. I, personally, would be quite happy if the pet was auto stabled and stayed there, meaning that when you logged in you'd have to go to the stable and fetch it.

So any random lost connection basically ends whatever you happened to be doing if you are playing a tamer so you can run back to town and get your pet. Maybe not a big deal if your play time consists of sitting at Luna bank, but utterly horrible if your out actually playing the game, particularly in a keyed encounter.

It's stupid comments like these that get these pancaked ideas put into the game.

Hello @merus did you read the link about the proposed auto pet log out fixes?

https://forum.uo.com/discussion/227/16-bugs-to-be-fixed-for-publish-100-please#latest

I encourage you to do so. As contrary to your scenario. The pet would actually remain in game for 5 mins and would continue to defend you. And if you reconnected before your player was fully logged out, you would not need to retrieve your pet from the stables. The proposed changes to auto pet log out actually help tamers, as they make characters with veterinary more desirable and are more friendly vs genuine disconnects.

Petra_Fyde · June 2018

Merus said:

Petra_Fyde said:

Auto stable is not a bug, it was put in to avoid people losing their pets when they lost connection for whatever reason. That's not just Kyronix's opinion, it's the TEAM's stand on the question, blaming Kyronix is just 'shooting the messenger'. However, it is widely abused. I, personally, would be quite happy if the pet was auto stabled and stayed there, meaning that when you logged in you'd have to go to the stable and fetch it.

So any random lost connection basically ends whatever you happened to be doing if you are playing a tamer so you can run back to town and get your pet. Maybe not a big deal if your play time consists of sitting at Luna bank, but utterly horrible if your out actually playing the game, particularly in a keyed encounter.

It's stupid comments like these that get these pancaked ideas put into the game.

Well I did say it was my personal feeling - I lose con seldom, and when I do 9 times out of 10 when I get back in game I'm dead and get a 'pet cannot be returned to you' message so the pet's staying in the stable anyway. No difference. Just FYI - I avoid Luna unless someone asks me to go there to trade. I spend the vast majority of my game time far away from towns and houses.

Merus · June 2018

I’m sorry but until you are ready to suggest that every other class of characters armor/weapons revert to a characters bank box every time they log in, suggesting it for tamers primary armor/weapon is ridiculous.

The ONLY time pet auto stabling has any impact on actual game play is during PvP, which is very simple to fix. Pet auto stable should be tied to the PvP aggressor flag. Worrying about how someone might move their pets from A to B in PvM is a sad endeavor.

Teapot · June 2018

Merus said:

I’m sorry but until you are ready to suggest that every other class of characters armor/weapons revert to a characters bank box every time they log in, suggesting it for tamers primary armor/weapon is ridiculous.

The ONLY time pet auto stabling has any impact on actual game play is during PvP, which is very simple to fix. Pet auto stable should be tied to the PvP aggressor flag. Worrying about how someone might move their pets from A to B in PvM is a sad endeavor.

The same thing could be said by how did the roof bugs affect his life?

jaytin · June 2018

@Uriah_Heep hehe nice try, I wish!!! Those keys are such a damn nuisance, hours to get keys and minutes to kill the Boss, where is the logic?

Pawain · June 2018

Merus said:

Petra_Fyde said:

Auto stable is not a bug, it was put in to avoid people losing their pets when they lost connection for whatever reason. That's not just Kyronix's opinion, it's the TEAM's stand on the question, blaming Kyronix is just 'shooting the messenger'. However, it is widely abused. I, personally, would be quite happy if the pet was auto stabled and stayed there, meaning that when you logged in you'd have to go to the stable and fetch it.

So any random lost connection basically ends whatever you happened to be doing if you are playing a tamer so you can run back to town and get your pet. Maybe not a big deal if your play time consists of sitting at Luna bank, but utterly horrible if your out actually playing the game, particularly in a keyed encounter.

It's stupid comments like these that get these pancaked ideas put into the game.

Spend 30 mins getting to the Mob and then you are stuck there with no pet. 80% of the places that are difficult cant use pet balls. Let gates and pet balls work everywhere and then we can discuss it.

I dont know why but I disconnect in the abyss often. The account thats there disconnects and the others stay on. I often yell, "Allen got disconnected" in chat. Happens to any of the accounts. We do Medusa a lot.

Mervyn · June 2018

Okay, as for why you cannot use pet balls or gate in certain areas such as ilshenar, I do not know. They just decided this is how they wanted it to be... im sure they had their reasons to limit some areas to hard to reach. But the fact that they specifically disabled use of pet balls and gates, they for sure did it for one reason. To stop people from being able to summon their pets there. Yet people bypass it with auto pet log out.

So how this is “working as intended” makes 0 sense.

Sliss · June 2018

Merus said:

Petra_Fyde said:

Auto stable is not a bug, it was put in to avoid people losing their pets when they lost connection for whatever reason. That's not just Kyronix's opinion, it's the TEAM's stand on the question, blaming Kyronix is just 'shooting the messenger'. However, it is widely abused. I, personally, would be quite happy if the pet was auto stabled and stayed there, meaning that when you logged in you'd have to go to the stable and fetch it.

So any random lost connection basically ends whatever you happened to be doing if you are playing a tamer so you can run back to town and get your pet. Maybe not a big deal if your play time consists of sitting at Luna bank, but utterly horrible if your out actually playing the game, particularly in a keyed encounter.

It's stupid comments like these that get these pancaked ideas put into the game.

Exactly. Especially considering that every template other than a tamer will be able to pick up exactly where they left off.

Mervyn · June 2018

Good point @sliss i’m glad someone at least is agreeing with me that archers and warriors continue to swing and attack and defend when they log out/con loss/power outage/crash, mages continue to wrestle and parry. Yet tamers are penalised because their pet disappears insta on crash. It is not fair, the pet should continue to do whatever it is doing until at least your char logs out.

Sliss · June 2018

Mervyn said:

Good point @ sliss i’m glad someone at least is agreeing with me that archers and warriors continue to swing and attack and defend when they log out/con loss/power outage/crash, mages continue to wrestle and parry. Yet tamers are penalised because their pet disappears insta on crash. It is not fair, the pet should continue to do whatever it is doing until at least your char logs out.

Let's not twist my words into something they are not. I was not agreeing with you on this nor pretty much on any other complaint of yours that I saw.

Reywind · June 2018

So this thread about changes to shadowguard is quickly getting derailed into a thread about auto stabling pets when you log out?

I would like to bring the discussion back to the original topic, which is the new changes to Shadowguard. These changes basically only affect tamers, as sampires can still solo the entire encounter. Was the whole point of these changes to make Shadowguard no longer viable for anyone besides sampires, like with doom? Are these changes to deter AFK scripting and multiboxing? Why can't that be enforced through GMs and the reporting system, rather than permanently ruining an encounter for everyone?

Pawain · June 2018

Reywind said:

So this thread about changes to shadowguard is quickly getting derailed into a thread about auto stabling pets when you log out?

I would like to bring the discussion back to the original topic, which is the new changes to Shadowguard. These changes basically only affect tamers, as sampires can still solo the entire encounter. Was the whole point of these changes to make Shadowguard no longer viable for anyone besides sampires, like with doom? Are these changes to deter AFK scripting and multiboxing? Why can't that be enforced through GMs and the reporting system, rather than permanently ruining an encounter for everyone?

Nope the Devs did not know about it until @mervyn brought it up. His one man crusade to eliminate Tram to make the game Fel only. Step 1. Ruin pets.

So they spent their time on the bug fix publish fixing something that the majority of players did not consider a bug.

drcossack · June 2018

Pawain said:

Reywind said:

So this thread about changes to shadowguard is quickly getting derailed into a thread about auto stabling pets when you log out?

I would like to bring the discussion back to the original topic, which is the new changes to Shadowguard. These changes basically only affect tamers, as sampires can still solo the entire encounter. Was the whole point of these changes to make Shadowguard no longer viable for anyone besides sampires, like with doom? Are these changes to deter AFK scripting and multiboxing? Why can't that be enforced through GMs and the reporting system, rather than permanently ruining an encounter for everyone?

Nope the Devs did not know about it until @ mervyn brought it up. His one man crusade to eliminate Tram to make the game Fel only. Step 1. Ruin pets.

So they spent their time on the bug fix publish fixing something that the majority of players did not consider a bug.

...but it WAS a bug. Fiendish Calling (or a variant of it) exists in other places, most notably Doom, Abyssal Infernal, and Neira. In all 3 of those, pets AND players trigger spawn. The only place where this was not the case was Shadowguard, where pets did not trigger it (when they should have been doing so for the past 3 years.)

@Reywind - have you even DONE Shadowguard, or the rooms, since the changes were implemented on TC1? For both you and Pawain, I would guess the answer is no. Anon and Ozymandias are no different than they were before, in terms of difficulty. Virtueband and Juo'nar are...but they were also considered the harder pair of the 4 bosses even before the bug fixes.

The encounter's ruined for everyone? Why? Because you can't abuse the spawn being bugged? If it's ruined for everyone, why were people able to clear it on TC? And why was I able to, DURING my attempt at the Roof on TC, able to handle Ozymandias/Anon with 3 tamers? Sure, the fact that I use 3 clients is likely indicative of the fact that I'm not a 100% casual player...but the only reason I ran that many clients was for extra drop chances.

Neither Shadowguard nor Doom aren't exclusionary towards tamers. You can still do both with them. It's merely a question of how efficient it is to use alternate group compositions. Tamers handle the rooms of Doom just fine. The Dark Father is where they have issues - Pawain, if he weren't so stubborn, would tell you this. But he thinks running around and dying repeatedly/pets dying repeatedly is fun. In Shadowguard, you have to manage things more carefully. But tamers aren't any less useful there now that things were changed.

Reywind · June 2018

Pawain said:

Nope the Devs did not know about it until @ mervyn brought it up

I don't for one second believe that. None of these changes make sense. If it was to deter AFK scripters, it can still be AFK scripted on a sampire. If it was to deter people from soloing the encounter, it can still be soloed by a sampire.

Pawain said:

So they spent their time on the bug fix publish fixing something that the majority of players did not consider a bug.

now this I can believe, but the question is why? Why would they want to confuse and frustrate the majority of their player base? Why would they jump at the smallest excuse to make it harder for everyone, while simultaneously still leaving it viable for sampires? Under the guise of a "bug-fixing patch" where not very many bugs have been fixed at all, you can still feed the orchard apples to your pets without causing spawn, and I don't believe that's intentional either.

Call me crazy or a conspiracy nut but I'm pretty sure someone is bribing the devs, or whoever needs to be bribed, in an attempt to favorably influence or exert control over the game economy.

Mervyn · June 2018

Reywind said:

So this thread about changes to shadowguard is quickly getting derailed into a thread about auto stabling pets when you log out?

I would like to bring the discussion back to the original topic, which is the new changes to Shadowguard. These changes basically only affect tamers, as sampires can still solo the entire encounter. Was the whole point of these changes to make Shadowguard no longer viable for anyone besides sampires, like with doom? Are these changes to deter AFK scripting and multiboxing? Why can't that be enforced through GMs and the reporting system, rather than permanently ruining an encounter for everyone?

I think you’ll find, this is what the original post is about, the belfry pushing the tamer off, which was only introduced a a way of countering logging out and in to move your pet up the top without having to get another feather.

The original post is not about fiendish ai calling.

Mervyn · June 2018

Sliss said:

Mervyn said:

Good point @ sliss i’m glad someone at least is agreeing with me that archers and warriors continue to swing and attack and defend when they log out/con loss/power outage/crash, mages continue to wrestle and parry. Yet tamers are penalised because their pet disappears insta on crash. It is not fair, the pet should continue to do whatever it is doing until at least your char logs out.

Let's not twist my words into something they are not. I was not agreeing with you on this nor pretty much on any other complaint of yours that I saw.

But you wrote “Exactly. Especially considering that every template other than a tamer will be able to pick up exactly where they left off.”
A tamer logs in dead because whatever was aggressing the pet aggresses the tamer after a crash. So you did agree with me whether you like it or not.

Cookie · June 2018

Whilst I get that Shadowguard changes are technically bug fixes, and it is now coming back to what it should be, they need to think about what is fun for a player also.

They are caught in a tough place I'll give them that, because Trammel is easy-mode, and they can't make it too easy or people farm end-game items like water, but they are taking the fun out to compensate it feels like.

As Mervyn said, none of this bothers me anymore. I've quit production shards and now play on Siege only. I'm tired of the unbalanced pvp (dismount), broken economy, over itemisation, unequal facets (Trammel too easy-mode), and class balance (Sampires dominate all).

Most players do not like playing Sampires. They like Tamers, Mages, Pure Warriors, Craftsmen, Rogues, T Hunters, Bards - anything except Sampire. To have completely designed production shards around Sampires is just completely opposite to what the game is meant to be.

I can't get into Shadowguard too much, because in itself, it is not the issue, it's just another symptom. It will go the way of Doom, and pretty much all other content, because the developers focus is in the wrong direction.

I don't really care anymore, I used to for the last two years, come and join me on Siege tbh, is an option for any of you who want a far more simple, fun game, where none of this really matters.

jaytin · June 2018

Welcome to Sampires Online!
For those of us that refuse to make a Sampire things are going downhill fast.

Nikard · June 2018

I think you guys are missing the point.. shadowguard was meant to be a challenging encounter from the beginning.. thats why the loot and items it drops are so crazily strong in comparison to the rest of the game. The ONLY reason it was easy, is because you guys found ways to break and/or exploit every room. Instead of being mad about bug fixes you should be thankful you arent getting ban for intentionally exploiting game mechanics.

Cookie · June 2018

Just in case all that sounds negative and jaded, which it possibly is!

I still love the game itself, and am certainly having a ton of fun doing my thing on Siege.

To clarify a positive course of action I think the developers should be focusing on, in case I haven't made this very clear before........

I think they should be focusing on devolving Sampires, and opening the game out to far more classes, to allow them to do more content.

This course of action is just so obvious, I don't get why they don't see it, or are not implementing things in this direction.

I would actually be interested to hear their current opinion or thinking on this area.

The last time I saw a comment from one of the Devs, was something like - "they do not even see the issue and believe it is all in the right place..."

I was pretty gobsmacked at this. I'd be interested to hear if this is still their viewpoint?

Nikard · June 2018

Because nerfing something is not how you increase fun. Instead you make aweful classes better. Like they have been doing. [Except in the case of poisoning, which is stupidly overtuned.]

Mervyn · June 2018

Pawain said:

Reywind said:

So this thread about changes to shadowguard is quickly getting derailed into a thread about auto stabling pets when you log out?

I would like to bring the discussion back to the original topic, which is the new changes to Shadowguard. These changes basically only affect tamers, as sampires can still solo the entire encounter. Was the whole point of these changes to make Shadowguard no longer viable for anyone besides sampires, like with doom? Are these changes to deter AFK scripting and multiboxing? Why can't that be enforced through GMs and the reporting system, rather than permanently ruining an encounter for everyone?

Nope the Devs did not know about it until @ mervyn brought it up. His one man crusade to eliminate Tram to make the game Fel only. Step 1. Ruin pets.

So they spent their time on the bug fix publish fixing something that the majority of players did not consider a bug.

This is pretty slanderous.

I think you’ll find my blue is a tamer, and every bug report I post is simply to better the game for everyone.

As for how much influence I have over the development team, I’m one of the oldest players, and have a clean sheet, no illigal programs or abuse given to other players. Also, people actually come to me with their issues as they’re aware I’m able to post factually and logically to explain the problems. So they’re not all “my” bug fixes. And I can tell you I’ve had my fair share of arguments with developers. But they are mostly reasonable people who listen to reasonable logic.

Kel · June 2018

Nikard said:

I think you guys are missing the point.. shadowguard was meant to be a challenging encounter from the beginning.. thats why the loot and items it drops are so crazily strong in comparison to the rest of the game. The ONLY reason it was easy, is because you guys found ways to break and/or exploit every room. Instead of being mad about bug fixes you should be thankful you arent getting ban for intentionally exploiting game mechanics.

Something most people seem to keep overlooking is the fact that if it was like this for a month or so after release and then fixed in this manner, fine. There would have been a limited amount of people who could have "exploited" Shadowguard and the user base would have remained roughly the same during that time.

Instead, it's been this way for YEARS and the majority of people who have been playing throughout that period of time have everything they could ever want as far as legendary gear goes. So now they decide to nerf Shadowguard shortly after they lure a bunch of new/returning players to UO? Does this hurt the rich/existing players? Not really. For the most part they're geared. This hurts the new/returning players an extensive amount.

As a returning player, I found the gear discrepancy almost too much to bear. However, I talked myself past that and eventually got a pet good enough to do roof so I can get some gear remotely close to what most players have. Three weeks of doing roof on the same level as most players have for years and now they nerf it.

Good call. Let's take another stab at new and returning players. Lets make the path of entry even harder and more annoying. This is a pretty dumb change this late in the game and is just going to chase additional people away. Being a part of a handful of returning players who are pretty done right now and about to call it quits, I don't have high hopes for the future of UO if they continue to make contradicting decisions like this in the future.

Teapot · June 2018

Kel said:

Nikard said:

I think you guys are missing the point.. shadowguard was meant to be a challenging encounter from the beginning.. thats why the loot and items it drops are so crazily strong in comparison to the rest of the game. The ONLY reason it was easy, is because you guys found ways to break and/or exploit every room. Instead of being mad about bug fixes you should be thankful you arent getting ban for intentionally exploiting game mechanics.

Something most people seem to keep overlooking is the fact that if it was like this for a month or so after release and then fixed in this manner, fine. There would have been a limited amount of people who could have "exploited" Shadowguard and the user base would have remained roughly the same during that time.

Instead, it's been this way for YEARS and the majority of people who have been playing throughout that period of time have everything they could ever want as far as legendary gear goes. So now they decide to nerf Shadowguard shortly after they lure a bunch of new/returning players to UO? Does this hurt the rich/existing players? Not really. For the most part they're geared. This hurts the new/returning players an extensive amount.

As a returning player, I found the gear discrepancy almost too much to bear. However, I talked myself past that and eventually got a pet good enough to do roof so I can get some gear remotely close to what most players have. Three weeks of doing roof on the same level as most players have for years and now they nerf it.

Good call. Let's take another stab at new and returning players. Lets make the path of entry even harder and more annoying. This is a pretty dumb change this late in the game and is just going to chase additional people away. Being a part of a handful of returning players who are pretty done right now and about to call it quits, I don't have high hopes for the future of UO if they continue to make contradicting decisions like this in the future.

Well said, Im part of this group too. I did get to farm it a extra month than you so I actually have a good stockpile already now. I even started a third paid account to help do it more since my server is dead.

Minerva_Foxglove · June 2018

I just made the fountain ..twice.. just to check this out. First , we can still exit and go back, no change there . I started doing so and then built canals to all four "boxes", Spawn was incredibly slow as before. But I got more of the best pieces esp the straight ones. So it didnt take much longer than before. Then I took My t-hunter that never has been to the rooms and did another fountain using just 2 boxes. Sloooow spawn, good pieces this time again, I bet something changed there..I never ever got this good canals ! And she got credit for the Fountain. My T-hunter has the Fountain green now. So it might have changed from the other day

drcossack · June 2018

Larisa said:

As for the belfry...pets have always been pushed off the platform, as far as players being pushed off now? While I hope that's not intended, because it is a pain in the rear lol, it's really not that bad, killing the drakes is fairly easy and that's how the room was intended to work in the first place, so technically being able to get your flying pets up there without having to kill drakes is a bug, I know it's just using game mechanics and sure it makes it a lot easier to NOT have to kill the drakes but now I feel with these changes it's working the way it's always supposed to...since Shadowguard is Kyronix's baby maybe he can chime in

But that's where the problem lies. Player and pet are now pushed off with no further chance to do anything to the Greater Dragon - I just tested it myself, to see what would happen. Right now, flying pets getting sent up top is the ONLY way to clear the Belfry. In the time it takes for a player to get another wing, the GD will have healed a fair amount of damage. And they'll have to KEEP doing it until time runs out, because right now, there's no way to finish the Greater in 30 minutes by using the "intended" method with the wings.

@Kyronix is this what's supposed to happen? I'll be able to record the belfry later, both with the wings & without, if you so desire.

Khyro · June 2018

I tried Belfry on my Sampire last night (alongside a tamer). I've done it before on a Sampire, but here are some of the real annoyances of Belfry:

- You only get 1 feather per "Bell Ring", no matter how many Drakes spawn. You should be given enough feathers for everyone in your party to get up there on one Bell Ring (since you get 2 drakes per party member).

- The feathers only last 120 seconds. This is an absurdly short amount of time. By the time the drakes are dead and I actually find the corpse with the feather, it usually has around 60s on the timer.

Now the above is annoying, but at least you used to be able to joust the Greater Dragon while others got feathers, or to try and get good damage in before getting pushed off.

Here was my experience last night with the new changes to the Belfry:

- Ring Bell
- Kill Drakes
- Find Feather with 60s Left
- Use Feather
- Attack Dragon, hitting exactly 1 time
- Get instantly pushed off platform

They need to get rid of the Paralyze effect from the push, or extremely reduce the frequency of the push.

We still killed the Greater Dragon, but it just made a slightly annoying encounter an incredibly annoying encounter instead.

Mervyn · June 2018

Yeah but didn’t you feel a bigger sense of achievement after? Hard is good.

Khyro · June 2018

Mervyn said:

Yeah but didn’t you feel a bigger sense of achievement after? Hard is good.

Nope. Just a sense of complete frustration. The encounter is not difficult or hard.

Beating a difficult encounter would result in a sense of achievement.

The encounter is just a pure annoyance.

Kyronix · June 2018

drcossack said:

Larisa said:

As for the belfry...pets have always been pushed off the platform, as far as players being pushed off now? While I hope that's not intended, because it is a pain in the rear lol, it's really not that bad, killing the drakes is fairly easy and that's how the room was intended to work in the first place, so technically being able to get your flying pets up there without having to kill drakes is a bug, I know it's just using game mechanics and sure it makes it a lot easier to NOT have to kill the drakes but now I feel with these changes it's working the way it's always supposed to...since Shadowguard is Kyronix's baby maybe he can chime in

But that's where the problem lies. Player and pet are now pushed off with no further chance to do anything to the Greater Dragon - I just tested it myself, to see what would happen. Right now, flying pets getting sent up top is the ONLY way to clear the Belfry. In the time it takes for a player to get another wing, the GD will have healed a fair amount of damage. And they'll have to KEEP doing it until time runs out, because right now, there's no way to finish the Greater in 30 minutes by using the "intended" method with the wings.

@ Kyronix is this what's supposed to happen? I'll be able to record the belfry later, both with the wings & without, if you so desire.

The core loop with the belfry is drakes -> feather -> dragon, repeat. You should be able to do upwards of 1000 damage to the dragon before the dragon flaps you off the platform. Anyone who is experience something other than an approximate 1000 points of damage before getting pushed off, or roughly 1/10th of the dragons health, needs to send a report to uo@broadsword.com with a minimum of the following information,
# of characters in the party
templates of the characters in the party
makeup of the players/pets that are doing damage to the dragon before the dragon pushes you off
approximate amount of damage being done to the dragon per hit from all sources

Alternatively, if you can screen cap and send it to the same email address that would be helpful too but also include information listed above that may not be apparent from the video.

Do not post this information on the forums, make sure you email it. Thanks for the reports and patience while we try to address any issues.

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Shadowguard changes

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