Accuracy of skill and stat locks

[Soulbreak]

I moved this here to clear up the Patch notes thread.

Therefore we should remove stat locks, skills locks, All Kill commands to be re-instituted and spell damage in town when cast on self does full damage.

Skill locks are accurate to the era, and our cutoff date. All kill did not work during the era, plain and simple. Direct damage spells would produce zero damage in town, regardless of who was targeted (I am aware that ours does 1 damage, and it should be corrected).

Is the following correct?

When you hear someone talk about something being UOSA or T2A ERA accurate, they are talking about how something worked within the ultima online game mechanics during a certain period of time now almost 8 years ago. This ERA or time window existed between the releases of Ultima Online: The Second Age, which was released on October 1st, 1998 and Ultima Online: Renaissance which was released on April 3rd, 2000.

Because if it is then I would like some clarification because I specifically remember it exactly how this website describes it. Any 5x - 6x GM Dexxer can tell you this because if they ever disarmed and used a scroll to recall and accidentally punched something, or if they used healing and gained a point of int it took time to rework everything.


Ultima Online: Renaissance, also known as UO:R, is Ultima Online's second expansion. Released on May 4, 2000, it had an estimated retail price of $19.95 US. However, current subscribers were not required to purchase a CD as the updated features were automatically downloaded to existing accounts.

Skills Design Feature -- Perhaps the most popular introduction was the new skill management system, which allowed for more control over a character’s development. Prior to UO:R, not only could you not lock a skill, your skills could be altered simply by standing too close to another character who happened to be training. You could learn by watching, literally! UO:R introduced the Skill lock and the Stat lock.

Source: http://www.uoguide.com/Ultima_Online:_Renaissance

UO Guide acts as a good source for general information. However, it is rarely a good source for precise information regarding actual dates. For example, UOR was not released on May 4, 2000. It was released as a phased release starting on April 17th 2000, a fact that I detail in this post. Another example is the skill gain system, which is claimed as a UOR feature. This is not the case, as the skill management system was introduced on November 23, 1999, nearly 5 months before the release of UOR. Also, UO Guide's comments on learning by watching are completely off base, given the patch notes from OSI themselves, that disabled learning by watching near the beginning of T2A (November 23, 1998 to be specific).

Please refrain from bringing up unrelated stuff that's been beaten to death elsewhere. That's what the other forums are for.

Here is where I need the clarification, I know the learning skills thing was scrapped and they did publish UO:R stuff early for testing, but you yourself posted links that are referring to UO:R updates!

So you are telling me that you are taking pre launch testing patchs from OSI and implementing them and calling it T2A? If that is the case, then take the vendor patch and apply it here too. I say all or nothing. (for the record I like stat/skill locks).

I played pacific, the 3rd of the test shards and I know for a fact that we could not skill/stat lock in T2A.

If Sonoma's test is your backing for allowing stat/skill locks then how come it can't be backing for the vendor change?

Source: http://web.archive.org/web/200005101041 ... ticle=1940
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/200403122338 ... ticle=1894

[Kaivan]

Again, skill locks were introduced in November of 1999, not with the UOR release. I linked you the patch notes, directly from OSI that states this is the case.

[Soulbreak]

So the effect date is Apr 28 2000 which corresponds with the Renaissance Publish?
http://web.archive.org/web/200903091543 ... n_196.html

Nothing past this should exist on our server, and everything prior should?

[Kaivan]

No, our cutoff date is November 23, 1999, which includes all items up to and including that patch, except phase 2 housing.

[inego]

Pretty sure all follow me was not the t2a way of refreshing your mounts stamina also.

[Kaivan]

It actually was. It wasn't until the UOR publish that this was changed. In fact, our understanding of the code is that the ability to refresh stamina was never a bug, but an intended mechanic. In any event, here is the line item from the UOR patch notes that changes this:

Ride-able Animals Fatigue
The exploit that allows a ride-able animal to be refreshed after becoming fatigued will be addressed. Feeding a ride-able animal food will increase its stamina and all ride-able animals will have the amount of time they can be ridden before becoming fatigued increased.

[Blaise]

Why would they label it as an exploit in that patch note then?

[Kaivan]

For the same reason that pre-casting was labeled a bug. The development team at that time had a different view on what the mechanics should have been as compared to the original development team (Designer Dragon was aware of pre-casting in early 98 right after it was implemented and didn't really care). Also, keep in mind that according to Batlin's work on the demo core, stamina refreshing for mounts looked as if it was intentionally added into the game.

[inego]

We all have skewed perceptions of the way the game used to be back then since it was so long ago. However just because bugs were around doesn't mean they should be in the game. Blade spirits to gm resist easily and being able to walk over locked down tables with food to loot a house come to mind. I can't instantly refresh my own stamina by saying something why should an animal be any different?

Personally I like being able to refresh my mounts instantly, but I don't think it should be in the game.

Back on topic, skill locks is one of those things that would make an already difficult game to play even more so if they were removed. It used to annoy me to no end when my magery or anything else would go from Gm to 99.9

[Kaivan]

On the subject of bugs themselves, we try to have as objective an approach as possible in dealing with them. Mainly, this stems from the fact that we aren't playing developer, and are only trying to be as faithful to the era as possible. Additionally, if we decided to remove bugs from the game, that position would necessarily require us to remove certain mechanics which were viewed as bugs by one set of developers for UO and not another. A case in point might be the prep timer for swinging melee weapons, which according to some interpretations of the information, created the hally cycling we have on UOSA now. Another would be pre-casting itself, which was designated a bug by the second development team. A third would be the ability to check if a thief was perma-gray or not, simply by stealing from them. Each of these "bugs" exist on UOSA, however the interpretation of whether these are bugs in the first place or not has been different at different times.

On the subject of mount refreshing itself. This particular "bug" is one that falls squarely under the category that pre-casting exists in, and is even less ambiguous than pre-casting in terms of whether it is a bug or not. The reason for our position on this is because of the fact that when we observe the actual code used in the demo core, telling an animal to follow you explicitly refreshes its stamina to full. The result, as one might expect, is that an animal who is told to follow successfully will instantly have full stamina. Given this, it's awfully difficult to label this either an exploit or a bug, since the code is intentionally refreshing your mount's stamina for the purpose of following you around.

[Faust]

The "all follow me" command actually doesn't even refresh your stamina. What actually refreshed the stamina was when the pet was in "follow" mode. You do not even have to say "all follow me" to refresh the stamina once the pet is actually following your character. This was probably some quirky fix for pet speed that had unintended results for endless stamina upon dismounting and triggering the pet to follow you refreshing the stamina to full.

[Soulbreak]

We all have skewed perceptions of the way the game used to be back then since it was so long ago. However just because bugs were around doesn't mean they should be in the game. Blade spirits to gm resist easily and being able to walk over locked down tables with food to loot a house come to mind. I can't instantly refresh my own stamina by saying something why should an animal be any different?

Personally I like being able to refresh my mounts instantly, but I don't think it should be in the game.

Back on topic, skill locks is one of those things that would make an already difficult game to play even more so if they were removed. It used to annoy me to no end when my magery or anything else would go from Gm to 99.9

This post was about a larger debate. Granted, I agree stat/skill locks make it easier. I will concede that stat/skill locks obviously were put in at the date at which the admins state. However, it was a key feature and selling point to UO:R. I played pacific, and through reading past patch notes it rejogged my memory and we were a test server after Sonoma. It is what it is, it just didn't sit well with me that a feature that were key to UO:R success are implemented on a t2a server.

[Faust]

Why we should keep or discard the entirety of the cutoff date patch.

Know this will never hapoen though.