Interruption.

[Zigo-U-]

So, I was hit by a an explode, an ebolt and a hally from players and didnt recieve an interrupt on my gheal.... This is not t2a accurate... or accurate to any era of UO pre AOS at least.

[Kraarug]

Thank you. . . Something is a miss.

[Mazer]

Welcome to UOSA Zigo ;p

This is probably the worst thing about the PvP here but it's apparently been looked into heavily and determined to be accurate the way it is now (I think the original demo was used as a source). Low damage ebolts might not interrupt and harm is quite unreliable for interrupts. This is more noticeable since just about everyone on the field has GM resist (maybe this is why it wasn't such an apparent thing back on OSI).

Nothing worse than having extra dice rolls but it's something you get used to. I'm sure Faust will be in here in any minute to explain the rational for the changes.

[Faust]

I sure will be Mazer...

Here is something that I wrote to another person from Divinity that whined and complained about this feature the other day...

There will be a chance of the casting aborting if the mage is struck during his casting process. The chance is based on how much damage you took, and your ability at magery.

The EXACT formula has been stripped from the demo making it a hundred PERCENT accurate.

The problem with most people is that they are simply on a one track mindset corrupted by the typical RunUO code that makes ANY damage interrupt a spell at any given time. I don't know if they were simply too lazy to make the extra modifications in the core or what. However, this is a common misconception that people tend to think is "wrong" when it in fact isn't simply because this person played on a lot of RunUO servers that use the default code for this particular game mechanic.

Also, there tends to be a lot of people for some reason that mistakes an interrupt not occuring based on the fact that they are not used to the damage delay on spells.

PS
5 damage on a grandmaster mage equates roughly to a 50% chance to be disrupted.

The chance of an average ebolt, explosion, or hally hit will always be a constant disrupt.

[UnknownLord]

But say, the player you're fighting is 20hp. You cast 2 harms, he resists both and gets his Gheal now on 8hp ->50.

You're then on 20hp, he casts 3, you get disrupted 3 times and die. thus the win being clearly luck based and there being 0 skill involved. This happens alot and honestly fucking sucks.

[Finesse]

if it was luck there would be no best and no worste pvper this clearly isnt true.

the issue is with weapon hits not disturbing all the time .... they deffently should

[Faust]

Weapon hits disturbing all the time was an interesting theory that was debunked recently when reviewing the demo code even further.

PS
Syn in that situation you can easily counter that with an in mani making yourself at fault if you end up dying. Harm ends up being a 50% chance interruption just like a weapon when missing or hitting. You can either take your chance with a full heal or risk countering it with in mani's until you can fully heal.

[UnknownLord]

So spamming mini heal and chasing them spamming my attack combatant is skill then? "it just gets worse.."

[Faust]

I find it hilarious how some of you people still thinks that it's impossible to pull off a hally hit when someone spams attack last since the introduction of the throttle.

When someone starts mini heal hugging you while sitting at 10-20% hp you simply cast an ebolt following that up with a hally... I know it's a radical concept for you to understand but spamming harm or debuffs over and over isn't always the solution

[Kraarug]

Interruption is still off.

My understanding is that a hit of >5 hp damage results in about a 50% chance of interruption.

So in GM to GM combat, that's a 50% chance of an interruption on a 50% chance of landing a hit. That works out to a 1 in 4 swing to interruption chance? 25%??? Seriously?? That's what is wrong and off.

However, if you cast a harmful spell, it's an easy 50% chance of interruption.

It doesn't take much of mind to recognize why those that use a weapon based attack easily feel that the interruption system is broken because it is.

[Faust]

You are clearly wrong.

Weapons have a much better degree at landing a disrupt compared to spells. Explosions and energy bolts that have roughly around a 5-42(quote similar to a hally) ratio of base damage has a 54% chance to be resisted at 100 Magic Resist. This cuts the damage in half unlike a weapon that can only be absorbed through armor which isn't possible to use with a mage. If you compare a hally to an ebolt for spell interruption a hally will win hands down without any doubt.

This comes down to a simple trade off... Weapons may miss when swung but have a MUCH higher chance to interrupt spells compared to a spell that will always hit but have a MUCH lower disrupt ratio compared to weapons. Weapons consume no resources besides damage to the weapon, while spells consume reagents giving both functions unique traits.

The interrupt formula scales according to the damage, skill, and the circle that is being casted. A greater heal spell that is being casted by the caster receiving 5 damage is slightly over a 50% chance of being disrupted. The lower the damage the lower the chance and vice versa for higher damage having a higher chance.

[Kraarug]

There was a reason why I let both of my Tank Mages sit dormant in 1999 and I moved to playing a dexxer nearly exclusively for PvP. That reason does not exist here and I don’t know why.

I do know this though, that on UOSA there is no town fighting and unless you are stubborn like me, playing a non-magic orc warrior, and or masochistic, playing anything other than a hally tank mage for PvP is still not a good idea HERE.

You know what? That was not the case on 1999 OSI.

The kind of PvP that actually existed on OSI during T2A is all I’m wanting. I understand that Razor and connection speeds changes the perception of PvP however, these changes should affect all templates and thus should be a wash.

Playing a dexxer here feels ‘clumpy’ and slow as if playing in molasses as compared to playing a mage here. I could live with that if interruptions worked better.

I know that there is a case to keep things the way they are, however, I think the key to creating the feel of 1999 PvP is to re-address interruptions from weapons and look into how the system treats the timing of spells.

When doing the math, the difference between a fast weapon at 100 stamina and 25 stamina isn’t all that great.

For instances, look at the Kat and Q stave…

Katana Speed 58
@ 100 Stamina Attack Speed = 1.29 sec
@ 25 Stamina Attack Speed = 2.07 sec
Delta: .78 secs

Q Stave Speed 48
@ 100 Stamina Attack Speed = 1.56 sec
@ 25 Stamina Attack Speed = 2.50 sec
Delta: .94 secs

So, given this, there has to be some qualative and quantitive difference between the combat styles. That difference is not present here for some reason and I think it has to do with the interruption of a spell casters ability to cast spells that both heal and attack.

Simply put, landing a hit should interrupt more often.

The current system does a 'double discount'. First by reducing the chance of a hit by 50% between GM and GM. Secondly, by applying some formula that FUTHER discounts a chance for interruption by using damage AND the targets magery.

It's that part of the forumla that needs to be readdressed and simply using the Demo, which everyone knows is not a replication of 1999 pvp is just not sufficent.

I want to play a replication of 1999 T2A not an online version of the Demo.

[Faust]

The spell interruption formula is without a doubt a hundred percent accurate based on the SAME code that OSI used...

There is one slight problem with the current setup with the spell interruption delay though. For example, the delay is based on when the spell was interrupted forcing you to finish out the spell. This same delay is quite similar to the same setup that the weapon delay used. It is another value that uses a date stamp. What does this mean again? It clearly means that the "exact" time frame is forced out instead of the "tick based" time frame.

How about we use an example? A greater heal spell that takes 1.25s to cast is interrupted at 0.49s into the spell. The delay value would equate to ( Spell Delay - Interrupt Point ) = Disturb Delay until you can attempt casting another spell. If you put these values into this formula the result would be ( 1.25 - 0.49 ) = 0.76 delay. Now if this was based on a tick based system it would be ( 1.25 - 0.25 ) = 1.0 recast delay instead...

I'm pretty sure Derrick didn't code this part of the code into a tick based structure...

[Kraarug]

The spell interruption formula is without a doubt a hundred percent accurate based on the SAME code that OSI used...

There is one slight problem with the current setup with the spell interruption delay though. For example, the delay is based on when the spell was interrupted forcing you to finish out the spell. This same delay is quite similar to the same setup that the weapon delay used. It is another value that uses a date stamp. What does this mean again? It clearly means that the "exact" time frame is forced out instead of the "tick based" time frame.

How about we use an example? A greater heal spell that takes 1.25s to cast is interrupted at 0.49s into the spell. The delay value would equate to ( Spell Delay - Interrupt Point ) = Disturb Delay until you can attempt casting another spell. If you put these values into this formula the result would be ( 1.25 - 0.49 ) = 0.76 delay. Now if this was based on a tick based system it would be ( 1.25 - 0.25 ) = 1.0 recast delay instead...

I'm pretty sure Derrick didn't code this part of the code into a tick based structure...

That is similar to something that I've suggested too.

Putting spell casting and delays on the same tick system as object based tactics would certainly put both systems on the same time line and even things up.

It could be the 'it' factor we're looking for.

[Derrick]

One of the "it"'s that I really personally have a hunch on is the differing damage types of weapon classes, slashing and piercing especially. I think this is going to be the item that makes the fencing class as equally desirable as it was in era, a lot more information is needed as far as what the difference is, but the information is out there, it just needs to be parsed.

We've demonstrated as was stated above that both spell and weapon damage did pass though the same interruption check, so we are certain that physical damage was never a guaranteed interruption.