(OT)Anyone here playing AC?
sunday
EQ? Worse than either or both? Hell, before today I did not even
realize it was publicly out!
I doubt I will give it up UO for it, but it may be a nice diversion for
a month or two.
--
Sunday
"Three may keep a secret, if two are dead."
-Benjamin Franklin
JetSki6181
Online as well.. I say probably only because if UO was ran correctly, didn't
have GM's that abuse their postion and sell stuff on Ebay, and had decent
programmers, UO would be untouchable in my opinion. The current state of UO..
AC is probably more enjoyable in many aspects. Just my opinion, you may want to
get a few others.
Reece Hardy
UO server? NO. Better than playing UO? Definately.
The terrain and speed gives a level of immersion not found in other
games, and coupled with the best archery skill implementation I have
seen yet it equals fun. It basically gives you the freedom of UO with
the major design flaws fixed. (ie - magery into seperate schools,
rudimentary AI implementation and item "uniqueness"..)
Oh - trade skills suck, UO is still king of the trade skills for all the
masochist's out there....
As soon as the box arrives on Australian shores (ever?) I will be on
board, but not before.
Reece
sunday wrote:
>
> Anyone here playing AC, if so how is it? Better than UO? Better than
> EQ? Worse than either or both? Hell, before today I did not even
> realize it was publicly out!
> I doubt I will give it up UO for it, but it may be a nice diversion for
> a month or two.
>
Richard Cortese
news:384203E0...@uq.net.au...
> Oh - trade skills suck, UO is still king of the trade skills for all the
> masochist's out there....
the profit and fun out of them. Bowyering killed with the archery patch,
blacksmithing made more difficult, taming requires animal lore now, price of
thread increased by 7x and almost impossible to tailor leather into anything
but footwear.
Mat
news:s45090...@corp.supernews.com...
> Actually, trade may be there, but OSI is trying to catch Verant in
wringing
> the profit and fun out of them. Bowyering killed with the archery
patch,
nope, bows still sell for a ludicrous price to NPC vendors, you can make
1000gp in the wink of an eye ( 1000 gp / ~30gp = 33 bows , 33 bows = 231
wood = 24 chops ), 24 successful chops and making the wood into bows
while chopping (which you can do easily) would make you make about
4000gp / hour easy.
> blacksmithing made more difficult,
blacksmiths still turn a nice profit, especially since they can smelt
items into ingots
> taming requires animal lore now
which is no big deal
> price of thread increased by 7x
This was the only sane thing to do, with 7x the thread price i can still
make like 2000gp in half an hour
> and almost impossible to tailor leather into anything but footwear.
True, leather items require an insane amount of skill, but it's only
good like that imo.. also if you've noticed, since tailoring was made
less profitable, it's also a lot easier to raise to leather-crafting
levels.
--
Mat
Merusalem
<sun...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> I doubt I will give it up UO for it, but it may be a nice
> diversion for a month or two.
In this case, absolutely get it. Actually, I found it so diverting that
I stuck with playing it almost exclusively. ;-)
Contrary to UO and EQ, AC is an easy-going game. Dying is not a big
deal, unless you overdo it once you are in the higher levels, and even
then it is pretty easy to recover from your weakened state. And only a
few (or for levels 1-10, one) items stay on the corpse, you keep the
rest.
The first two or three levels are sort of hard if you are new to the
game, because you will find few loot (and probably die a lot), but
after that it gets easier, and by level ten you no longer worry about
gold.
Most of the environment graphics are very nicely done - I bet you will
find yourself staring at a sunrise over the ocean, and not care about
hunting for a bit.
The experience/leveling system is a nice break from the one used in UO
or EQ. Essentially, you get experience for anything you do, be it
identifying weapons, baking cookies, or killing critters. Then you
distribute this experience on any attributes or skills. Also, whatever
you do, you get better in it (apart from basic skills like running or
jumping).
All in all, in my eyes, it is a fun game.
Merusalem
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
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Richard Cortese
news:bIv04.701$4K3....@news.eunet.fi...
> "Richard Cortese" <rico...@netmagic.net> wrote in message
> news:s45090...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> > Actually, trade may be there, but OSI is trying to catch Verant in
> wringing
> > the profit and fun out of them. Bowyering killed with the archery
> patch,
>
> nope, bows still sell for a ludicrous price to NPC vendors, you can make
> 1000gp in the wink of an eye ( 1000 gp / ~30gp = 33 bows , 33 bows = 231
> wood = 24 chops ), 24 successful chops and making the wood into bows
> while chopping (which you can do easily) would make you make about
> 4000gp / hour easy.
Last night on Baja, someone was spamming "150 bolts for 350 gold". No takers
because archery has been nerfed. I bought them so the newbie wouldn't get
discouraged.
It isn't just the money thing. I only bring my bowyer out maybe an hour a
month. They carve up a bunch of exceptional bows and a few heavies, but the
heavies are completely pointless to make except for skill, and high skill
bowyering is pointless now.
Right now, I just collect wood off of corpsers and reapers, arrows off of
everyones kills since nobody even bothers to take them off corpses anymore.
I drag my bowyer out to carve several hundred boards my other chrs have
collected into arrows, then put him away.
My bowyer was the 2nd character I created in UO and the first I created on
Baja when it opened. Now it just kind of sucks, I don't like the changes.
>
> > blacksmithing made more difficult,
>
> blacksmiths still turn a nice profit, especially since they can smelt
> items into ingots
Yes, but it gets back into the making wooden shields to sell to NPCs forever
mode if you are looking for cash. I have just had a rough week where I
burned through about 10,000 ingots to get a character from a bought 30 skill
to 65 smithing.
Smithing for money is great now that I am up to 65, but for anything less
then that you have trouble even making good profit on wooden kite shields.
Context of the thread was mostly about problems with low level trade
characters. Low level mining/smithing used to be great, now it kind of sucks
for a week. I would rather it start off with a better profit/loss such that
it encourages new players to try it.
>
> > taming requires animal lore now
>
> which is no big deal
Huge deal to me. My tamer is also GM weapons, so that means I have to trade
things like hiding, tailoring, tracking, to pick up animal lore.
OSI killed the wandering ranger/tamer types with this. I dislike having to
give up some things like tailoring hides for a profit that compares with a
shop tailor, but I will absolutely hate giving up tracking because someone
thought tamers had it too easy without animal lore. This is a huge setback
for the game.
>
> > price of thread increased by 7x
>
> This was the only sane thing to do, with 7x the thread price i can still
> make like 2000gp in half an hour
OK, but how many other people do you see tailoring? I have been to a lot of
the different shops, and mostly the tailor has 10-19 spools of thread
available. I assume those spools were sold for people that wanted to make
bandages.
>
> > and almost impossible to tailor leather into anything but footwear.
>
> True, leather items require an insane amount of skill, but it's only
> good like that imo.. also if you've noticed, since tailoring was made
> less profitable, it's also a lot easier to raise to leather-crafting
> levels.
Let me see if I can make my point clearer, the modifications OSI has done to
the trades have all resulted in fewer people in the trades. The
modifications have either made it more difficult to start out, or pointless
to reach a high level of proficiency.
Ergo my main point: fewer people are in the trades. I don't think this is
even disputable. You can say my premise is wrong, i.e. fewer people are in
the trades because they have moved on to monster harvesting and guild war,
but I don't think you can dispute the fact there are not a lot of people out
chopping trees.
You can't even make a wooden shield with less then 50 carpentry. They added
profit to miner/tinkers, but you don't reach it until you are 50 skill
level.
This is a bad way of doing things. Should be at least a small profit profit
starting out with a good profit curve going all the way to GM. Head bands
are a good example of how to start out in tailoring, bolts would be a good
example for bowyering.
Kim Rivers
Just a couple quick comments:
//Last night on Baja, someone was spamming "150 bolts for 350 gold". No takers
//because archery has been nerfed. I bought them so the newbie wouldn't get
//discouraged.
That was very nice of you to buy those arrows, Richard. It's little acts like
that that counter (that that? hmmmm..)... anyway, that counter all the crap
that happens in a big, impersonal on line game.
On archery in general:
Maybe it's because I didn't play before this um "nerf" so it's a case of
not knowing What Was and being fairly content with What Is, but my archer
and I get along well.
Yeah, I go through a hell of a lot of arrows, and sometimes the rate of fire
sure seems slow, but I can live with it if I'm not in a hurry. :)
On arrows:
//Right now, I just collect wood off of corpsers and reapers, arrows off of
//everyones kills since nobody even bothers to take them off corpses anymore.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is how I get my arrows. Or by picking up "archer debris" where they've
left theirs all stacked from misses, etc (I don't scarf them up when the archer
is still around of course). I've bought some at 1gp each but that's about it.
//OK, but how many other people do you see tailoring? I have been to a lot of
//the different shops, and mostly the tailor has 10-19 spools of thread
//available. I assume those spools were sold for people that wanted to make
//bandages.
This is something I've never understood. I have NEVER bought wool or thread
or yarn, except maybe 1 ball of yarn to finish cloth. I am forever shearing
sheep wherever they are to be found (Delucia, anyone?) and saving balls of
yarn. So when prices skyrocketed for weaving supplies... well no biggie. Sheep
are free. Granted sometimes someone else has got to them, but if you
just shear one where you find it, no matter what, you'll have a big collection
of wool in no time. :)
Cheers,
kim
Whisper "baa!" of Europa
Yuri Gorlinski
>
> > > taming requires animal lore now
> >
> > which is no big deal
> Huge deal to me. My tamer is also GM weapons, so that means I have to trade
> things like hiding, tailoring, tracking, to pick up animal lore.
My mage and warrior characters have had to give
up many of those same skills in order to pick up EI
and Anatomy. So it goes.
> OSI killed the wandering ranger/tamer types with this. I dislike having to
> give up some things like tailoring hides for a profit that compares with a
> shop tailor, but I will absolutely hate giving up tracking because someone
> thought tamers had it too easy without animal lore. This is a huge setback
> for the game.
Your Ranger/Tamer character is still viable, you
just can't GM all of your skills anymore. Which is
as it should be for characters who choose to develop
a large assortment of diverse skills... Otherwise
we'd be right back where we were a year ago with
all of those damn archer/tank mages running around
everywhere.
And why do you need to tailor for a profit if you've
got high Taming and Animal Lore? Just bring a pet
dragon to your dungeon of choice and it'll help you
harvest as much gold as your greedy little heart
desires.
If not for the dev team being so criminally soft on
Taming, they'd further balance it by requiring
Herding for the manipulation of multiple pets.
Shih-ka'i, OGD
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Quaestor
> Just a couple quick comments:
>
> //Last night on Baja, someone was spamming "150 bolts for 350 gold". No takers
please set your newsreader to use the standard > for showing lines of quoted text.
Thank you.
Richard Cortese
news:83be8b$ctm$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> "Richard Cortese" <rico...@netmagic.net> wrote:
> >
> > > > taming requires animal lore now
> > >
> > > which is no big deal
> > Huge deal to me. My tamer is also GM weapons, so that means I have to
trade
> > things like hiding, tailoring, tracking, to pick up animal lore.
>
> My mage and warrior characters have had to give
> up many of those same skills in order to pick up EI
> and Anatomy. So it goes.
to get enough animal lore to be effective. Embarassed the shit out of me
when I took a golf club to someone expecting it to hit them.
>
> > OSI killed the wandering ranger/tamer types with this. I dislike having
to
> > give up some things like tailoring hides for a profit that compares with
a
> > shop tailor, but I will absolutely hate giving up tracking because
someone
> > thought tamers had it too easy without animal lore. This is a huge
setback
> > for the game.
>
> Your Ranger/Tamer character is still viable, you
> just can't GM all of your skills anymore. Which is
> as it should be for characters who choose to develop
> a large assortment of diverse skills... Otherwise
> we'd be right back where we were a year ago with
> all of those damn archer/tank mages running around
> everywhere.
healing too valuble.
Somehow I liked it better when you got attacked by a fully armored avatar vs
naked mage. Consequence of losing is the same, but a win is only 1/2 of what
it used to be.
>
> And why do you need to tailor for a profit if you've
> got high Taming and Animal Lore? Just bring a pet
I don't, character concept got lost when the animal lore snafu came in.
This character was mostly [archery, maces, tactics, wrestling, tracking,
taming] with just enough magery to recall and tailoring to make boots.
What I will do is [archery, maces ~70, get magery 72 for Wind, tactics,
wrestling, animal lore, taming] =>642. So it looks like I will end up with a
ranger that can't track, hide, or make their own shoes and I can get enough
resist to fend off a shade. Maybe can do one of them halfassed.
As Dundee points out, why should my tailoring or tracking be so useless
compared to say magery and meditation that 1 point of tailoring means 1 less
point of magery?
So everyone makes the choice, forget everything but the skills you need to
kill or to keep from being killed. I don't like the choice myself. I don't
mind a trade person with a 100 point penalty from stat cap i.e. taming, but
a 200 point penalty is just too much.
> dragon to your dungeon of choice and it'll help you
> harvest as much gold as your greedy little heart
> desires.
Ain't about the gold. It's the lack of diversity in the game.
>
> If not for the dev team being so criminally soft on
> Taming, they'd further balance it by requiring
> Herding for the manipulation of multiple pets.
No, 1 bug with taming, the teleporting bears. Take them away and game is
pretty balanced. I have never been killed by a tamer or a bard, NPC AI is
just too weak.
But your views are probably closer to what OSI thinks then mine. I caught
myself thinking my bowyer needs to get GM swords. I am still stunned by the
stupidity of this.
But basically you are telling me if I want to have something like tailoring,
my tough luck right? With EI, Anatomy, Meditation, added to the list of what
a murderer can do, my character will lose everytime.
That is my point. OSI is loving the pooch on this one. They juiced killing
and nerfed taming.
They are basically saying "If you want to do anything other then fight in
this game, you have to play the victim and do so at a disadvantage to the
murderers."
I really don't mind my characters being at a slight disadvantage. My sleeper
anti never wears more then studded, let's his life bar go 1/2 red, hunts
alone, and never uses a horse, but that is about as far as I will go.
This price is too high.
Eric A. Hall
> No, 1 bug with taming, the teleporting bears. Take them away and game
> is pretty balanced.
Heh. I had my tamer/ranger on SP a few nights ago. A twink was screwing
with me so I had my griz kill him. Damn if the griz didn't turn around
and kill me. I'd say it's pretty balanced but I'd like to see that bug
removed alright ...
> They are basically saying "If you want to do anything other then
> fight in this game, you have to play the victim and do so at a
> disadvantage to the murderers."
Or keep the character in town. My merchant never, NEVER goes outside of
his house or the town walls. With zero fighting skills, he can't.
If everybody were limited to one character, it would be somewhat
different. In that regard, SP is on target, since you have to carry a
large number of skills to do anything. But even there the professional
fighters have second accounts so they can load up on fighting skills
(right Yuri?), putting everybody else at the same disadvantage.
Brandy
> No, 1 bug with taming, the teleporting bears. Take them away and game is
> just too weak.
>
The biggest problem I see with taming is that any idiot with ~150 skill
points to spare can buy and control a dragon.
Since skill locks came in, I have been macroing up animal lore (and dropping
tactics, yay) on my mage/tamer as I get around to it. It took roughly 10
hours to get from bought skill to master level. So with my 81 taming and 90
lore I can go out and buy a dragon without paying the price of raising
taming to the point required to actually tame one myself.
This is WRONG. I could make a newbie tamer, macro (attended of course) for
a couple days and have access to the most powerful weapon / money machine in
the game. I don't consider that to be balanced at all.
Brandy (WE, LS)
Quaestor
> > No, 1 bug with taming, the teleporting bears. Take them away and game
> > is pretty balanced.
>
> Heh. I had my tamer/ranger on SP a few nights ago. A twink was screwing
> with me so I had my griz kill him. Damn if the griz didn't turn around
> and kill me. I'd say it's pretty balanced but I'd like to see that bug
> removed alright ...
One of the lovely parts about violating the Never Use Kill Orders rule. The
way that always works for me is to have them guard you, and you attack. As
soon as the target does you any damage, or if he targets you first and the
critter sees that, the critter will attack, and there is no bug associated
with this.
If one of your pets does go after you, even if you attacked it, just give it
ALL STOP and ALL STAY, and run away. I have had probes with bears, dragons,
wyrms, and survived quite well this way.
Richard Cortese
news:83c7if$fpl$1...@oak.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
is
> > just too weak.
> >
>
> The biggest problem I see with taming is that any idiot with ~150 skill
> points to spare can buy and control a dragon.
>
> Since skill locks came in, I have been macroing up animal lore (and
dropping
> tactics, yay) on my mage/tamer as I get around to it. It took roughly 10
> hours to get from bought skill to master level. So with my 81 taming and
90
> lore I can go out and buy a dragon without paying the price of raising
> taming to the point required to actually tame one myself.
Back when I was doing it a lot, I would tame them for the sake of taming
them. I even kept a book with all their names, why I named them that, how
hard they were tame, where I got them, when I got them. Then an unannouced
stable wipe.
>
> This is WRONG. I could make a newbie tamer, macro (attended of course)
for
> a couple days and have access to the most powerful weapon / money machine
in
> the game. I don't consider that to be balanced at all.
You do need some gate scrolls 50ish magery too, but point made. Somebody
with room temp taming but great animal lore will be able to rock a GMs
tamers world if he doesn't have the animal lore to back him up.
I have to check animal lore for both my baja and hokuto tamers, I am pretty
sure they are finally to the point where they can control a grizzly.
BTW: Dundee was right about grizzlies being identical in combat to dire
wolves, I ran a few competitions and they finished even.
I also got a frenzied ostard to play around with. Damn things can stomp a
giant serpent, you just need to heal/cure them occasionally.
I am also looking at bandage healing pets, but only on hokuto with a fairly
low level tamer. I could never keep up healing a dragon in the middle of a
good drake spawn, be interesting for me to see just how good pet bandaging
works. So far I have been able to do things like have a grizzly kill an air
elemental by just using a few bandaids on him.
I guess now that dragons aren't nerfed, haven't tried looking at them
lately. Matter of fact, I can't now! Back when I was doing it, they could be
killed by a giant serpent.
Quaestor
> I guess now that dragons aren't nerfed, haven't tried looking at them
> lately. Matter of fact, I can't now! Back when I was doing it, they could be
> killed by a giant serpent.
When I go into Shame to mine gems, facing anything in there I just turn the
dragon loose. Surrounded by 5 earths, slimes, rats, big snakes, fires, the
worst thing that can happen (other than disconnect) is that I'll lose track of
him and have to go looking for him.
The obverse of this is, any gm mage can come in and toss an EV, and cost me a
dragon. And any critter that can poison can kill any critter, even an OL,
titan, or panzerkampfllama, if you don't watch carefully after every encounter
with such a critter.
White wyrms and trained dragons certainly can dispell EV, but those can also
cast mass curse. And that gets you killed.
It's not all that easy, running them big boyz.
But it sure is fun. :-)
Yuri Gorlinski
So you know I'm not the only one who hates 'em. 8)
>I had to drop maces to under 70
>to get enough animal lore to be effective. Embarassed the shit out of me
>when I took a golf club to someone expecting it to hit them.
Did you have a pet attacking as well?
*snip*
>I don't, character concept got lost when the animal lore snafu came in.
>
>This character was mostly [archery, maces, tactics, wrestling, tracking,
>taming] with just enough magery to recall and tailoring to make boots.
>
>What I will do is [archery, maces ~70, get magery 72 for Wind, tactics,
>wrestling, animal lore, taming] =>642. So it looks like I will end up with a
>ranger that can't track, hide, or make their own shoes and I can get enough
>resist to fend off a shade. Maybe can do one of them halfassed.
If you really want to carry so many different skills then you'd be
better off going with just one weapon skill, either archery or maces.
Here's how I'd make your ranger:
100 Taming
100 Animal Lore
100 Tactics
100 Archery
75 Magery
65 Hiding
50 Wrestling
40 Tracking
35 Magic Resistance
35 Tailoring
For a proper ranger I'd like to have more tracking and hiding, but if
you want to be a 4X GM in the taming and combat skills then your other
skills are going to take a hit.
>As Dundee points out, why should my tailoring or tracking be so useless
>compared to say magery and meditation that 1 point of tailoring means 1 less
>point of magery?
You're getting too philosophical for me here.
>So everyone makes the choice, forget everything but the skills you need to
>kill or to keep from being killed.
Come on Rich, if all you want to do is keep from being killed then
the only skills you need are all-names incoming and enough Magery to
use a Recall scroll.
> I don't like the choice myself. I don't
>mind a trade person with a 100 point penalty from stat cap i.e. taming, but
>a 200 point penalty is just too much.
Taming is extremely powerful. Specializing in Magery requires four
slots, combat skills take up three... Tamers get off on the cheap IMO,
they sink 200 points into it and they get pet dragons which can be
used to easily earn unlimited gold, fight off multiple enemies, and
basically do all the heavy work.
>Ain't about the gold. It's the lack of diversity in the game.
There's still plenty of room for diversity so long as you aren't
hung up on GMing all of your skills.
>No, 1 bug with taming, the teleporting bears. Take them away and game is
>pretty balanced. I have never been killed by a tamer or a bard, NPC AI is
>just too weak.
Tamers who can lead around multiple dragons cause big-time imbalances
in PvP, especially on SP where BS and EV have been nerfed. The rampant
pet hoarding is also a real mess, especially with regard to rare creatures
like nightmares. And then there are dragons on the other end of the
scale, entirely too commonplace for creatures of such power...
>But your views are probably closer to what OSI thinks then mine. I caught
>myself thinking my bowyer needs to get GM swords. I am still stunned by the
>stupidity of this.
Few of my characters are GM anything, I'm very lazy and I usually just
try to get by with sub-par skills. My trade characters all have miserable
fighting skills, just enough to fend off a mongbat or two provided they
are of the lesser variety.
>But basically you are telling me if I want to have something like tailoring,
>my tough luck right? With EI, Anatomy, Meditation, added to the list of what
>a murderer can do, my character will lose everytime.
It sounds to me like you want to be able to carry eleven different
skills, have five of them GM'd, and have the other six all at a
functional level... And you also want to be on equal footing with the
PKs and PvPers who have highly specialized characters with all 700
points dedicated to seven pure combat skills.
I'd be slightly more sympathetic with your plight if it wasn't for
the dragons.
Shih-ka'i, OGD
Yuri Gorlinski
>
>If everybody were limited to one character, it would be somewhat
>different. In that regard, SP is on target, since you have to carry a
>large number of skills to do anything. But even there the professional
>fighters have second accounts so they can load up on fighting skills
>(right Yuri?), putting everybody else at the same disadvantage.
My primary character on SP is a red mage and I use a blue mule to
purchase reagants. Most of the people I fight are dedicated PvPers,
7X GM types whose characters are far more advanced than my own...
To be honest with 'ya, my connection to SP sucks and I end up eating
dirt more often than not. But I'm sure my enemies -- most of whom
are red -- all appreciate your sympathy with regard to their being at
a disadvantage.
Shih-ka'i, OGD
Richard Cortese
> rico...@netmagic.net wrote:
> >
> >My tamer is now my most attacked character.
>
> So you know I'm not the only one who hates 'em. 8)
>
> >I had to drop maces to under 70
> >to get enough animal lore to be effective. Embarassed the shit out of me
> >when I took a golf club to someone expecting it to hit them.
>
> Did you have a pet attacking as well?
they do is attack every animal I am trying to tame and if that doesn't get
me to attack them, they attack.
>
> *snip*
>
> >I don't, character concept got lost when the animal lore snafu came in.
> >
> >This character was mostly [archery, maces, tactics, wrestling, tracking,
> >taming] with just enough magery to recall and tailoring to make boots.
> >
> >What I will do is [archery, maces ~70, get magery 72 for Wind, tactics,
> >wrestling, animal lore, taming] =>642. So it looks like I will end up
with a
> >ranger that can't track, hide, or make their own shoes and I can get
enough
> >resist to fend off a shade. Maybe can do one of them halfassed.
>
> If you really want to carry so many different skills then you'd be
> better off going with just one weapon skill, either archery or maces.
A well developed ranger should be just as tough as a well developed warrior
with respect to fighting monsters and only slightly behind with respect to
PvP. A well developed ranger in UO would be lucky to end up with 50/50
weapon and tactics and would be creamed by a newbie with a good weapon.
The fact that a well developed ranger will absolutely get their assed kicked
means people do exactly as you say which is stop trying to be a ranger and
become one of the cookie cutter warriors. You like the warrior type
characters, so you don't have a problem with it. I like ranger type
characters, so I have a problem with it.
>
> Here's how I'd make your ranger:
>
> 100 Taming
> 100 Animal Lore
> 100 Tactics
> 100 Archery
> 75 Magery
> 65 Hiding
> 50 Wrestling
> 40 Tracking
> 35 Magic Resistance
> 35 Tailoring
Already above that on MR, but I think I will drop tailoring anyway. Master
wrestling because I didn't use the chest/blocking exploits for taming vermin
when they were available.
But then, that is my point. I have to lose almost 50 points of wrestling
because of animal lore, need to add 50 points of resist because someone else
macroed EI, completely forget about maces.
Any character with adept healing/anatomy/weapon would slaughter my 4x gm
ranger in this game.
> Come on Rich, if all you want to do is keep from being killed then
> the only skills you need are all-names incoming and enough Magery to
> use a Recall scroll.
Nope, you aren't getting it.
Try this for a while if you have a chance. Walk some escorts to there
destination on an established shard. Do it after school lets out.
What happens is at every city entrance where there is a crowd, everyone
automatically assumes you don't have enough magery to gate and attacks your
escorts.
It is like that with tamers now as people pick up how weak they have become
in combat. As soon as they see the taming spam, they come out of the
woodwork to annoy you. I have had assholes follow my tamer around on several
occasions being assholes and I am not the only one.
>
> > I don't like the choice myself. I don't
> >mind a trade person with a 100 point penalty from stat cap i.e. taming,
but
> >a 200 point penalty is just too much.
>
> Taming is extremely powerful. Specializing in Magery requires four
> slots, combat skills take up three... Tamers get off on the cheap IMO,
> they sink 200 points into it and they get pet dragons which can be
> used to easily earn unlimited gold, fight off multiple enemies, and
> basically do all the heavy work.
Bull. Magery and EI is optional. Last asshole that was harassing my tamer,
brought out my scribe with an EV scroll and dropped it on him. Don't even
have EI on my scribe, don't need it with EVs.
> Tamers who can lead around multiple dragons cause big-time imbalances
> in PvP, especially on SP where BS and EV have been nerfed. The rampant
> pet hoarding is also a real mess, especially with regard to rare creatures
> like nightmares. And then there are dragons on the other end of the
> scale, entirely too commonplace for creatures of such power...
Nobody uses multiple dragons that I know of. I assume everyone either knows
about the mass curse problem or just can't handle the situation.
I don't even get more then 2 escorts at a time because the follow AI is so
weak.
> It sounds to me like you want to be able to carry eleven different
> skills, have five of them GM'd, and have the other six all at a
> functional level... And you also want to be on equal footing with the
> PKs and PvPers who have highly specialized characters with all 700
> points dedicated to seven pure combat skills.
Nope, you have this backwards. I really *DON'T* want to carry GM animal
lore. I can't make it any clearer that that.
I don't see how you have missed that in my posts.
I am perfectly happy within the system with 70ish magery, some tracking and
tailoring. Read my post again, it is OSI that wants me to have GM animal
lore, that is what is killing an established character.
Rhetorical question; how would you like it if OSI out of the blue says, "In
order to be an effective warrior, you now must have detect hidden to see
where to strike or suffer more misses"?
This is exactly what happened to taming, and out of the blue skill was added
to the list of things you needed. It didnt' enhance the tamer like anatomy
did with fighting, it made them less effective.
Yuri Gorlinski
But this isn't AD&D Online. People forget that the Avatar was a
7X GM tank mage... There is no Ranger class here, the way UO works
everyone gets the same 700 points to work with, and you can break 'em
up however you so choose. I like the way this sort of system works,
but it means you have to be willing to limit the number of things you
specialize in with each individual character if you want to be very
good at everything you do.
>A well developed ranger should be just as tough as a well developed warrior
>with respect to fighting monsters and only slightly behind with respect to
>PvP. A well developed ranger in UO would be lucky to end up with 50/50
>weapon and tactics and would be creamed by a newbie with a good weapon.
It's a problem in UO because rangers draw on a very large group of
different skills, works fine with AD&D's class system but it uses
up too many points to jive with UO's skill system. It would be a lot
more workable if not for archery being so nerfed, and your subsequent
need to use multiple weapon skills. I think you could make a pretty
good UO ranger despite all that, but it wouldn't be exactly like an
AD&D ranger...
>The fact that a well developed ranger will absolutely get their assed kicked
>means people do exactly as you say which is stop trying to be a ranger and
>become one of the cookie cutter warriors. You like the warrior type
>characters, so you don't have a problem with it. I like ranger type
>characters, so I have a problem with it.
Mocker, my original Chaos gimp on Sonoma, had somewhat mediocre (but
functional) levels of hiding, tracking, taming, and animal lore. They're
all highly valuable skills for PvP if you use them properly.
>Already above that on MR, but I think I will drop tailoring anyway. Master
>wrestling because I didn't use the chest/blocking exploits for taming vermin
>when they were available.
With skill locks you can now lose the wrestling easily, if you wish to
redistribute those points among more ranger-like skills.
>But then, that is my point. I have to lose almost 50 points of wrestling
>because of animal lore, need to add 50 points of resist because someone else
>macroed EI, completely forget about maces.
>
>Any character with adept healing/anatomy/weapon would slaughter my 4x gm
>ranger in this game.
Not if you've got a dragon.
>Nope, you aren't getting it.
>
>Try this for a while if you have a chance. Walk some escorts to there
>destination on an established shard. Do it after school lets out.
>
>What happens is at every city entrance where there is a crowd, everyone
>automatically assumes you don't have enough magery to gate and attacks your
>escorts.
Heh. Sounds like fun... I'll have to try it with one of my characters
on the normal shards, hide the guild title and dress up like a newbie...
>It is like that with tamers now as people pick up how weak they have become
>in combat. As soon as they see the taming spam, they come out of the
>woodwork to annoy you. I have had assholes follow my tamer around on several
>occasions being assholes and I am not the only one.
I tend to meet assholes in nearly every phase of the game, are you
saying that tamers should get a special asshole filter?
>Bull. Magery and EI is optional. Last asshole that was harassing my tamer,
>brought out my scribe with an EV scroll and dropped it on him. Don't even
>have EI on my scribe, don't need it with EVs.
Hmmmm. I've never been killed by EV, isn't that one of those things
that only works on newbies? 8)
Mages, real mages, need EI if they want to be effective for PvP.
Without it, anyone with halfway decent resist will laugh at you.
And mages also need Meditation if they want to be useful after the
first minute or so of an extended combat. And they need Wrestling
too. That's four skills.
>Nope, you have this backwards. I really *DON'T* want to carry GM animal
>lore. I can't make it any clearer that that.
Then go 80 Taming and 70 Lore.
>I am perfectly happy within the system with 70ish magery, some tracking and
>tailoring. Read my post again, it is OSI that wants me to have GM animal
>lore, that is what is killing an established character.
I still see tons of tamers everywhere, more than ever in fact. You
have to come to grips with taming having a skill cost commensurate with
its high value for both PvM and PvP.
Shih-ka'i, OGD
Eric A. Hall
> >No, AD&D bias getting in via osmosis.
>
> 7X GM tank mage... There is no Ranger class here
I tell people that UO is like a multi-player version of Leisure Suit
Larry (the first one), and that some people play Larry, while others
play the shopkeeper, and others play the hookers.
> Mages, real mages, need EI if they want to be effective for PvP.
> Without it, anyone with halfway decent resist will laugh at you.
> And mages also need Meditation if they want to be useful after the
> first minute or so of an extended combat. And they need Wrestling
> too. That's four skills.
Resist makes five.
Dropping tactics and weaps in exchange for taming and lore is workable
if you can stay safe during the transition. I'll probably do that with
my mage, taking him back to his original ranger/mage objective.
Yuri Gorlinski
>
>Dropping tactics and weaps in exchange for taming and lore is workable
>if you can stay safe during the transition. I'll probably do that with
>my mage, taking him back to his original ranger/mage objective.
I believe Brandy's doing this with one of her characters on LS,
going pure tamer/mage. I've actually been considering it for my
character on SP... Never get a chance to use my q-staff in the big
fights anyway, I'm always all-out magery, but if I had a pet or two
guarding me then they'd be able to dish out some melee attacks while
I'm focused on the magic stuff.
Of course, training taming with a red character bearing one of
the most hated guild tags on the shard could be slightly problematic.
And then there's the laziness factor...
Shih-ka'i, OGD
Richard Cortese
> everyone gets the same 700 points to work with, and you can break 'em
> up however you so choose. I like the way this sort of system works,
> but it means you have to be willing to limit the number of things you
> specialize in with each individual character if you want to be very
> good at everything you do.
game is really drifting away from me. It really becoming boring because of
the lack of diversity in the game. Things like forensics used to be a joke,
but other things are joining the list.
Even your complaints about tamers being juiced on TC. Why is that? because
of PvP tamers. I am tired of constant PvP. Only guys that don't get attacked
are my antis and I am tired of running them. I wanted a f'ing break from it
so I figured taming would be a nice outlet, and my tamer has been in a
couple of fights a week now. I don't want to tame a dragon to go kill some
dude, I just want to wander around a dungeon trying and have a reasonable
chance of defending myself vs KOP. Freaking character is 2 years old, both
stat and skill capped for probably 18 monhts.
With no breaks from what is getting me bored, it is probably time to
transfer UO assets to my son.
There are only two viable things you can play now, fighter or victim. I
really got bored doing nothing but fighting every night for months. Now my
tamer is fighting just about every night for the last month.
> >What happens is at every city entrance where there is a crowd, everyone
> >automatically assumes you don't have enough magery to gate and attacks
your
> >escorts.
>
> Heh. Sounds like fun... I'll have to try it with one of my characters
> on the normal shards, hide the guild title and dress up like a newbie...
It is fun, but you have to take on a ton of people. Invariably it will be a
thief type guild with 4-5 members healing. The standard divide them up works
since they don't have the dicipline to stay together or just have one victim
at a time.
>
> >It is like that with tamers now as people pick up how weak they have
become
> >in combat. As soon as they see the taming spam, they come out of the
> >woodwork to annoy you. I have had assholes follow my tamer around on
several
> >occasions being assholes and I am not the only one.
>
> I tend to meet assholes in nearly every phase of the game, are you
> saying that tamers should get a special asshole filter?
Once more, a year ago my tamer was one of my toughest characters. Dundee had
about the same charcter in stats and skills if not name on LS. Archery
ruled, and the str and dex from taming coupled with only needing a single
weapon skill meant they had the ability to be as good as any other warrior
in the game.
What happened is mages got juiced with EI, meditation, enabling them to do
damage at double the rate they used to. To counter that, everyone else in
the game, not just tamers, now has to have good resist.
What happened to regular warriors is they got anatomy and maybe healing.
Bingo, you now need anatomy just to keep up with them in a fight.
I look at this as a up to 200 point swing in how diverse your character can
be.
Now if they would have just left everything alone, great. Maybe I couldn't
kill anybody after the bow nerfing, but at least I wouldn't get killed and
have to add resist and I probably couldn't add anatomy anyway.
But then on top of that, animal lore was added so I am down a total of 300
points on how I can develop a character, unless I want to play the victim.
I'm still pretty hard to kill, but carrying around GH and GS potions, GH
wands, all that kind of junk, gets to be a drag.
The days of "You see Death Mage tailoring a fancy shirt" are over now. Death
mage macroed up EI and meditation when they became part of the killing
skills so he doesn't have room for tailoring any more.
I know you have seen exactly the same thing, only difference is you don't
care about it and see the game as being better for it. I just have a
difference of opinion about it. I liked it when the population was more
diverse.
>
> >Bull. Magery and EI is optional. Last asshole that was harassing my
tamer,
> >brought out my scribe with an EV scroll and dropped it on him. Don't even
> >have EI on my scribe, don't need it with EVs.
>
> Hmmmm. I've never been killed by EV, isn't that one of those things
> that only works on newbies? 8)
Hah, Shade got tagged with one from a guy who couldn't even cast it w/o
using a scroll.
Thing about EVs is they put you under an instant GM curse, you take a 10
point across the board hit to stats. For someone near their weight limit
they get overloaded and instant death. The graphics also have a tendancy to
lag the target if not out and out crash them, so that helps too.
>
> Mages, real mages, need EI if they want to be effective for PvP.
> Without it, anyone with halfway decent resist will laugh at you.
> And mages also need Meditation if they want to be useful after the
> first minute or so of an extended combat. And they need Wrestling
> too. That's four skills.
We are in complete agreement. Only thing is I am saying I liked it better
when you didn't need all this stuff and had a little more freedom to pick
skills and were still pretty good at killing each other.
Eric A. Hall
> We are in complete agreement. Only thing is I am saying I liked it
> better when you didn't need all this stuff and had a little more
> freedom to pick skills and were still pretty good at killing each
> other.
Would having separate skill pools change it back sufficiently? Like if
you had 500 points for warfare skills (one of which might be animal
_training_ not taming), and another 500 for non-warfare skills.
It's not entirely practical considering the amount of work that would be
required -- new skills would have to be added, some skills would have to
be split -- but personally I think it would restore a lot of diversity.
When combined with one-char-per-account it could really add a lot to the
game. We'd be citizens first and warriors second. Maybe.
Richard Cortese
news:385AD9C8...@ehsco.com...
>
> > We are in complete agreement. Only thing is I am saying I liked it
> > better when you didn't need all this stuff and had a little more
> > freedom to pick skills and were still pretty good at killing each
> > other.
>
> you had 500 points for warfare skills (one of which might be animal
> _training_ not taming), and another 500 for non-warfare skills.
Odd night, my tamer got PK'd tonight while trying to tame a horse. Two on
one, so to be expected. Taken down by 3-4 spells, didn't check the log, but
I think it was only 3 damage spells. Paralyze and explo, two ebolts from two
mages. Screw EI and the horse it rode in on. Adding killing ability to knock
out a 94 hit point character with 3 spells is fucked. OSI has shit for
brains putting increased ability to kill people in the game, screw them for
the way they made explosion work: Morons. I'm a little be peeved.<grin>
So now I have to get resist up on my tamer became some idiot at OSI decided
it was a good idea to make mages deadlier, like they weren't to begin with.
But I was still feeling the urge, so I started a character on Test Atlantic.
Gave them enough magery to teleport GM hiding. Ran straight to the bottom of
Covetous w/o any serious problems. I have made that run a lot, everytime TC
wipes, so I am getting pretty good at it.
Lots of people down there that didn't really have a clue about how it is
done. Just as many being screwups making things difficult for everyone else.
Gawd Atlantic is a pit!
I have to admit, I did get a chuckle out of "Seaman Stains", but he was
obviously the class valedictorian, most of the other names were pretty far
below his efforts.
But just to see how it used to go one more time, set animallore 1000, set
taming 1000, and got a dragon. This is the first time I have had a dragon
since the animal lore patch went in months ago. Even if it was not on a real
shard, it was kind of nice. It was a lot more difficult then that, bodies
kind of littered Covetous IV and not all of them were victims of dragons. I
think I ended up vile before I got out.
BUGS BUGS BUGS! Nothing to do with blade spirits, but the out of control
drakes causing all the tamers to go gray at one time or another. Something
to do with the two minute timer I think, clown 1 gets rocked by a drake,
clown 2<me in several cases> tames it. Clown 1 brushes up against the newly
tamed drake, and clown 2 is now gray. It could be something else, but the
timing seemed about right and for a change I was not the only gray tamer in
the room.
But by the time I had rezzed and healed numerous "I have never been a GM
tamer before tonight" I ran out of mandrake so not only could I not gate my
dragon out, I couldn't even recall.
So, I bring the dragon up a level and trash a few liches on the way out.
Best damn dragon I ever had.
I walk him outside and to the bottom of level 2, lots of corpsers and they
have drake as loot.
Absolutely the finest beast I have ever owned, and I have probably had 40
before the animal lore patch. Walked around the corpser area like he was
grazing. Corpsers give 2 of one type [drake, garlic, moss, ginseng], and
maybe 35 gold. By the time I was there what seemed like 10 minutes, I had a
dozen drake and just under 600 gold from the corpsers.
So I get the dragon out, use moongates to Skara and stable him. I go back,
but the situation has continued to deteriorate on Covetous IV. There are 3
people trying to kill dragons, 3 people trying to tame them, and everybody
trying to kill everyone else. I kind of enjoyed it.
So the tamers give up, pointless to kill the monster harvesters anyway. They
are dying multiple times trying to train the drakes and dragons on the
tamers, but no stat loss, not a real shard, instant rez and "Set str 100".
So I gate one of the tamers back up to the surface, give away the dragon,
check in on the newsgroup before I go to bed.
>
> It's not entirely practical considering the amount of work that would be
> required -- new skills would have to be added, some skills would have to
It should be ready right after the necro patch.
But let's face it, the game is about killing each other<now>. All that other
stuff that was put in, unless it is related to killing people is now passe.
If you have an alchemist, it is because you want to crank out deadly poisons
for killing people. They may also make a few greater heals so you don't die
will trying to deadly poison someone with your kryss, but only so far as you
staying alive means the other guy has a better chance of dying.
Used to be a lot of people like Janey who tailored for fashion's sake,
Dundee who tamed and bowyerd for the sake of taming and bowyering, Ingot
Head who blacksmithed because he found it attractive.
Now if someone tailors, it is because they want to buy phat regs for their
mage. If you want to tame, it is so you can bring a dragon to the C/O wars.
If you have a blacksmith, it is to supply your real character with GM
weapons and plate so they can kill better.
> be split -- but personally I think it would restore a lot of diversity.
> When combined with one-char-per-account it could really add a lot to the
> game. We'd be citizens first and warriors second. Maybe.
Would be nice, but it doesn't seem to be the way the game is evolving. Kind
of evolved out from underneath me. I am really thinking it would be nice to
GM animal lore so I could have a dragon again, but then I think 90+ str, 2
mages 3 spells and I am dead. Just doesn't seem worth it. OSI has already
been lovin the pooch by increasing offensive power of people trying to kill
you while increasing the number of skills you need to survie the attacks.
They would have to take out anatomy, EI, and probably meditation to restore
some sense of balance to the game, and I really don't see that happening.
The game will do fine as it is and I don't think anything will change its
direction. Just headed somewhere w/o me.
Damocles
<rico...@netmagic.net> wrote:
>
>Odd night, my tamer got PK'd tonight while trying to tame a horse. Two on
>one, so to be expected. Taken down by 3-4 spells, didn't check the log, but
>I think it was only 3 damage spells. Paralyze and explo, two ebolts from two
>mages. Screw EI and the horse it rode in on. Adding killing ability to knock
>out a 94 hit point character with 3 spells is fucked. OSI has shit for
>brains putting increased ability to kill people in the game, screw them for
>the way they made explosion work: Morons. I'm a little be peeved.<grin>
To your original point on taming: the only change I'd make to it is to
restrict the number of pets a tamer can control and stable. That's not
for pvp, it's to control the greediness a few tamers have, with the 40
nightmares they keep stabled to sell on Ebay. Q posted a pic of
someone with a whole army of them lined up.
Yuri Gorlinski
>
>Yeah, your right, but a ranger character was viable under the old rules. The
>game is really drifting away from me. It really becoming boring because of
>the lack of diversity in the game. Things like forensics used to be a joke,
>but other things are joining the list.
>
>Even your complaints about tamers being juiced on TC. Why is that? because
>of PvP tamers. I am tired of constant PvP. Only guys that don't get attacked
>are my antis and I am tired of running them. I wanted a f'ing break from it
>so I figured taming would be a nice outlet, and my tamer has been in a
>couple of fights a week now. I don't want to tame a dragon to go kill some
>dude, I just want to wander around a dungeon trying and have a reasonable
>chance of defending myself vs KOP. Freaking character is 2 years old, both
>stat and skill capped for probably 18 monhts.
>
>With no breaks from what is getting me bored, it is probably time to
>transfer UO assets to my son.
>
>There are only two viable things you can play now, fighter or victim. I
>really got bored doing nothing but fighting every night for months. Now my
>tamer is fighting just about every night for the last month.
You might like the PvP- lands if Sunsword and co. ever manage to
deliver on them.
>What happened is mages got juiced with EI, meditation, enabling them to do
>damage at double the rate they used to. To counter that, everyone else in
>the game, not just tamers, now has to have good resist.
>
>What happened to regular warriors is they got anatomy and maybe healing.
>Bingo, you now need anatomy just to keep up with them in a fight.
>
>I look at this as a up to 200 point swing in how diverse your character can
>be.
In the context of PvP I see it making the field more diverse. Before,
the vast majority of players used those 200 points to make a standard
archer/tank mage. Now we've got warriors that rely on healing instead
of magery, mages that are vulnerable in close combat due to lack of armor,
and of course those goddamn tamers I'm always bitching about. If there
are three standard PvP character archetypes, well then, that's two more
than there were before. And there are any number of different variants
on these which can be effective after their own fashion...
But I can see how it's made it more difficult to mix in non-PvP
skills for characters that want to be able to do other things.
Shih-ka'i, OGD
Corwin of Amber (WE/LS)
>the most hated guild tags on the shard could be slightly problematic.
>And then there's the laziness factor...
>
>
>Shih-ka'i, OGD
>
You'll also spend a lot of time eating fireballs and yelling
stop/stay.
Tamed Dragons do still attack REDs on sight without provocation or
command. Happened to me a couple of weeks ago on LS with Nikime's
beast.
Is that different on SP?
Corwin