UO Second Age

I have the original Second Age manual too. It sucks.

The speed of a katana should be 58. Currently it's 48 on Second Age, which is erroneous. This was a huge discussion some time ago, possibly this thread? But Kaivan uncovered some pretty conclusive evidence not long ago that we (I) made the wrong move on this one.

Would love to see this, being as I was perhaps the primary person who was (a) originally convinced it was 58, and then (b) persuaded that it was 48 based on other evidence from Kaivan and others.

IIRC, the most intriguing piece of evidence was an email to Xena Dragon from our era in which someone timed the # of swings in 60 seconds, and it was the precise number you'd get if katana speed was 48.

The full explanation is very long and contrived, but the short version is this:

Items on the smithing menu appear once you have enough skill to have a 0% chance to create something (note, this is meaningful because you can have a negative chance to do something) based on its "relative difficulty". The absolute difficulty for creating an item is calculated based on its stats and materials required to create it. That absolute difficulty is then scaled between the two extreme ends of difficulty (buckler and platemail tunic for anyone interested), creating the relative difficulty. Since this relative difficulty is based on the stats of an item, we can cross-reference the difficulty of creating any blacksmithy based item with stratics tables from the era. It turns out that those tables reflect exactly what would be expected for the difficulty in creating a katana if the katana had a speed of 58 with its expected damage and resources. This expected calculation follows through UOR (and the relevant changes to platemail), and matches with UOR information pulled from the new crafting menu that was put into place during mid-UOR which provided detailed statistics about success and exceptional rates.

Ultimately, this may seem somewhat uncomfortable to some players, considering the result is that we started at 58 speed, reduced the speed to 48, and are now reversing that decision. However, this is a good example of using our best information to guide our mechanics, and at the time of the speed reduction, the best information was that the speed was probably 48.

Kaivan wrote:The full explanation is very long and contrived, but the short version is this:

...(nerdy stuff)...

Amazing find.

Good Find.

Kaivan wrote:The full explanation is very long and contrived, but the short version is this

Thanks again for closing the book on this one. And thanks to everyone who resisted this change in the first place as well!

This reversion is in for next patch.

Great work guys!

You guys are amazing. I am humbled to be in your presence.

That said, as a humble vendor and katana wielder, I simply must ask what the timeline is for such a patch? I don't want to hurry you in any way, but curiosity kills this cat.

Though, it can be said that curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.

Hopefully sometime this week. Maybe Monday, but if so it'll be small.

Kaivan wrote:The full explanation is very long and contrived, but the short version is this:

Items on the smithing menu appear once you have enough skill to have a 0% chance to create something (note, this is meaningful because you can have a negative chance to do something) based on its "relative difficulty". The absolute difficulty for creating an item is calculated based on its stats and materials required to create it. That absolute difficulty is then scaled between the two extreme ends of difficulty (buckler and platemail tunic for anyone interested), creating the relative difficulty. Since this relative difficulty is based on the stats of an item, we can cross-reference the difficulty of creating any blacksmithy based item with stratics tables from the era. It turns out that those tables reflect exactly what would be expected for the difficulty in creating a katana if the katana had a speed of 58 with its expected damage and resources. This expected calculation follows through UOR (and the relevant changes to platemail), and matches with UOR information pulled from the new crafting menu that was put into place during mid-UOR which provided detailed statistics about success and exceptional rates.

Ultimately, this may seem somewhat uncomfortable to some players, considering the result is that we started at 58 speed, reduced the speed to 48, and are now reversing that decision. However, this is a good example of using our best information to guide our mechanics, and at the time of the speed reduction, the best information was that the speed was probably 48.

Are you arguing that it was implemented in the code based on these variables? Or that they determined the table from these variables, and then hard-coded those results?

I find it hard to argue with the actual in-game data from Xena's email. Is it possible it was intended to be 58 but was in actuality 48 or 45?

I can't think of a way a guy with a stopwatch could screw this up and miss 6 swings within a minute's time, unless maybe the client and server were out of sync.

Mikel123 wrote:

Kaivan wrote:The full explanation is very long and contrived, but the short version is this:

Items on the smithing menu appear once you have enough skill to have a 0% chance to create something (note, this is meaningful because you can have a negative chance to do something) based on its "relative difficulty". The absolute difficulty for creating an item is calculated based on its stats and materials required to create it. That absolute difficulty is then scaled between the two extreme ends of difficulty (buckler and platemail tunic for anyone interested), creating the relative difficulty. Since this relative difficulty is based on the stats of an item, we can cross-reference the difficulty of creating any blacksmithy based item with stratics tables from the era. It turns out that those tables reflect exactly what would be expected for the difficulty in creating a katana if the katana had a speed of 58 with its expected damage and resources. This expected calculation follows through UOR (and the relevant changes to platemail), and matches with UOR information pulled from the new crafting menu that was put into place during mid-UOR which provided detailed statistics about success and exceptional rates.

Ultimately, this may seem somewhat uncomfortable to some players, considering the result is that we started at 58 speed, reduced the speed to 48, and are now reversing that decision. However, this is a good example of using our best information to guide our mechanics, and at the time of the speed reduction, the best information was that the speed was probably 48.

Are you arguing that it was implemented in the code based on these variables? Or that they determined the table from these variables, and then hard-coded those results?

I find it hard to argue with the actual in-game data from Xena's email. Is it possible it was intended to be 58 but was in actuality 48 or 45?

I can't think of a way a guy with a stopwatch could screw this up and miss 6 swings within a minute's time, unless maybe the client and server were out of sync.

It was actually implemented in the code based on the item's stats and resources. The results for stratics Blacksmithy tables 'fall out' of the weapon statistics & blacksmithy code.

Gotcha, thanks. Very cool. Still wondering how this person emailed Xena with precise data that's contrary to this, but hard to argue with actual equations.

It was a surprise to me too for what it's worth, but I think back calculating it from the other known variables and formulas is more conclusive. Stuff like this certainly keeps things interesting. Thanks for everyones work on this over (literally) the years.

Were other weapons checked for discrepencies between smithing and combat properties? Maybe some of the weapons that had property changes over the various patches?