Insta Hit, Weapon Mechanics, and much more...

[Hemperor]

its hard to test out the changes when im pinging 250+ on test shard

maybe he should have mini healed or something if hes so good

[Hemperor]

5> Hally, Ebolt, Hally, Ebolt (as he tries to heal)

Now let's think about this while including the journal log. Take a special notice to the 3 greater heals. It is quite obvious that the first two of them were disturbed since this guy died in a matter of a few seconds from that point. The hally interupts the first Greater Heal, and the ebolt is released to interupt his second Greater Heal attempt. Another ebolt is casted followed by a hally hit RIGHT after a hally hit just occurred. With a finishing ebolt for the kill. Here is yet more evident proof in a REAL LIFE time span clearly displayed on this journal that shows that you could "ebolt, hally, ebolt, hally". If you had to wait the 5 second delay on the hally there is abolutely no way you could have disturbed three greater heals in this manner without it overriding the delay when you casted a 6th circle spell not to mention even do an ebolt, hally, ebolt, hally this quickly...

Reference: http://www.wtfman.com/oldjov/stories/nhawk19.htm

The guy also doesn't cast a single spell while Nighthawk gheals, paralyses AND explodes. Now I am not quite following here, if hallys were apparently only able to swing at 3.5, how did he manage to disrupt to gheals?

I don't think the screenshot of a journal should be used as reference whatsoever.

[Faust]

The guy also doesn't cast a single spell while Nighthawk gheals, paralyses AND explodes. Now I am not quite following here, if hallys were apparently only able to swing at 3.5, how did he manage to disrupt to gheals?

I don't think the screenshot of a journal should be used as reference whatsoever.

I honestly don't even know what to say to your response. Please re-read it all again, because you are failing to understand what has been said here. I'm not quite sure where 3.5 seconds even came from. There was no mention of anything being 3.5 seconds anywhere. Are you actually reading any of the information presented in this thread?

First, Nighthawk wasn't even the person casting greater heal... It was Sysic. Second, since I know that you never played during '99 it is obvious why you are having problems following this. The spells that are being casted are "fakes", which was a common tactic during pre:uor. People could implement fake words of power to try duping other players into thinking it's a different spell. Please re-read it all again and try to follow. It really isn't that hard to do.

[Hemperor]

So this is all based on a circumstantial interpretation of a screenshot of a god damn journal?

yay pvp

[Faust]

No it is based on multiple "veteran" players that played during '99 that remembers this tactic very clearly. This is one of the many pieces of "evidence" that backs it up. There is an article that I retrieved from the Google 2001 database while it was active that describes this "bug" in a PVP guide. I also have a portion from a UOHOC chat that makes a comment about the bug. If you would prefer present your research that disproves all these veteran players memories when it comes to this issue. We will see how far you get in your research with this discussion. I have more than the required amount of information to support this feature that is remember by so many old school players.

[Hemperor]

No it is based on multiple "veteran" players that played during '99 that remembers this tactic very clearly. This is one of the many pieces of "evidence" that backs it up. There is an article that I retrieved from the Google 2001 database while it was active that describes this "bug" in a PVP guide. I also have a portion from a UOHOC chat that makes a comment about the bug. If you would prefer present your research that disproves all these veteran players memories when it comes to this issue. We will see how far you get in your research with this discussion. I have more than the required amount of information to support this feature that is remember by so many old school players.

I am not proving anything, I am only discrediting the "research" that you have shown so far.

Everything you have stated about that screenshot has simply been assumptions.

[Faust]

Please explain to me how the second hally swing overridden the current delay than?

[Hemperor]

second hally swing....hmmm..is that in the journal?

Please post the rest of your "research" other than just bullshitting us, sure your THEORY about the journal may be right, but it could just as well be wrong. Who's to say a mob didn't disrupt him or anything like that? IMO, this screenshot should not be taken seriously.

EDIT: Also, I wouldn't qualify the memory of "vets" as credible, far more often than not they have been wrong.

[Faust]

What has exactly been wrong memory wise with other vets?

Thank you for clearing up this misunderstanding in IRC. At least we now know that you agree that the evidence presented validates this mechanic.

[LegsLarrySmiths]

I have multiple sources that prove the memories of all the veterans that remember this popular mechanic/tactic.

Can you please post each of your multiple sources?

Also can you refer to the patch notes explaining why they added this mechanic?

[Faust]

Can you please post each of your multiple sources?

I wasn't going to bother posting it in here, because you have only posted two responses in total and it is related to this topic only. Typically this is behavior of a person leaching research being associated with another shard. I have presented these sources in IRC already, so I will post them in here anyways since they have become public.

- UOPowergamers PVP Guide February 2000 -
Things to Remember:
Use the instant-hit with your weapon whenever possible (instant-hit= where you arm your weapon right after you cast a spell on your opponent---with pre-casting gone remember to target first!!!---then run up to your opponent with weapon in hand. This is a bug that lets you get a free hit off, with no delay. So use it while you still can.). Second, Try to preserve your mana as much as possible (more on this later). Finally, with pre-casting gone, almost all of the tactics revolve around the use of the greater heal spell, so let's hope OSI decides not to f*ck with it

- February 3rd, 2000 - UOHOC Discussion -
Glamdring - *Aegean_LS* Is anything planned for the insta-hally hit? Is it supposed to skipp the delay?
Sage - Yes. We are currently looking at the insta-hally hit, and considering its removal.

If you include all three of these sources including the hally, ebolt, hally, ebolt source there is aboslutely no doubt that you could skip a hally delay. This falls right in place for all the veteran players that remember this common tactic all so well.

Also can you refer to the patch notes explaining why they added this mechanic?

I have already explain this in my initial response. When insta hit was implemented you could equip a katana at 100 stamina which converts the delay to 1.3s, and wait that delay out fully to be able to equip and have a swing ready once more. What they did was add an average unequip delay that converted your delay to 2 seconds anytime you unequipped a weapon. This gave birth to the insta hit refresh or "fast swing" that some people like to call it to be able to skip a previous delay.

[LegsLarrySmiths]

source there is aboslutely no doubt that you could skip a hally delay.

I still fail to see that there is "absolutely" no doubt regarding this matter.

You also failed to produce any patch notes instead just reasserting that this existed.

- February 3rd, 2000 - UOHOC Discussion -
Glamdring - *Aegean_LS* Is anything planned for the insta-hally hit? Is it supposed to skipp the delay?
Sage - Yes. We are currently looking at the insta-hally hit, and considering its removal.

How exactly does this translate into your system again? You seem to be twisting alot of peoples words to fit your own idea of how insta hit worked.

- UOPowergamers PVP Guide February 2000 -
Things to Remember:
Use the instant-hit with your weapon whenever possible (instant-hit= where you arm your weapon right after you cast a spell on your opponent---with pre-casting gone remember to target first!!!---then run up to your opponent with weapon in hand. This is a bug that lets you get a free hit off, with no delay. So use it while you still can.). Second, Try to preserve your mana as much as possible (more on this later). Finally, with pre-casting gone, almost all of the tactics revolve around the use of the greater heal spell, so let's hope OSI decides not to f*ck with it

This also sounds nothing like what your talking about.


None of these supposed sources claims anything at all about switching from slower to faster weapons.

Also if it was such a big part of the game where are the patch notes mentioning how and WHY it worked that way?


Are these the only sources you have for this bogus system?

[Faust]

...

You are being quite vague with your questions. You did not specify which of the two mechanics you were inferring too. I presumed that you were asking about the insta hit refresh, since that is what we've been discussing and what the sources refer too that you asked for.

There are two systems that are being discussed in my initial response that end up correlating with each other when insta hit was patched in...

- Equip Delay on Weapons
- Insta Hit Refresh

The equip delay is present on the UO Demo and in the patch notes.

- 12/16/97 Combat -
Equipping a weapon in combat will restart your weapon swing.

This means when you equip a weapon it changes your current delay to the weapon that you just equipped. Here is this process based on the formula presented in the UO Stratics '99 web site.

When you equip a weapon...
Current Combat Swing Delay = 15,000 ÷ ( [Stamina +100] x Weapon Speed )

That is how the process works on the UO Demo, okay...

Insta hit was implemented in February '99. If an equip delay is applied when you equip a weapon it wouldn't be insta hit... Now we know for sure that the equip delay existed in t2a because of the mention of it being shortened in the UOR publish. We also know the equip delay was present in UOR.

This means that you would have to put a condition that your delay is zero for it to be able to swing immediately aka to be able to insta hit, or if it isn't zero the equip delay would occur since we know it existed during the t2a era and after. Try thinking about what will happen now... If you hit with a hally your delay goes to 4.5s. Now you equip a katana your delay would be converted to 1.3s at 100 stamina because an equip delay was added... If you waited out this delay you would be able to swing with ANY weapon since the equip dealy doesn't apply with an inactive combat delay... This allowed a dexer at 100 stamina to swing a hally just as quickly as a katana to create an exploit by arming/disarming the two weapons...

Now we go into the information that I have already presented in the first post with the first piece of information being a patch note and an article that describes the patch...

Mini-update with small fixes Feb 26 1999 11:25AM
An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed.

Markee's Dragon - February 26, 1999

10) The disarm/arm exploit to get slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed. It will not be to your advantage to disarm/rearm a weapon. Please note one important omission!! There will be no current changes to Architect NPCs concerning better methods of buying back house deeds. Expect this to be added in the next major update though which is tentatively scheduled for around March 9th.

Reference: http://www.markeedragon.net/uomall/february.htm

This fix was roughly a few weeks after insta hit was implemented after the exploit was created.

What they did to resolve this solution was to add an average weapon delay of two seconds to your current swing delay when you unequip a weapon... This is where the "insta hit refreshes" feature described in the previous sources that I showed you was created.

UO Stratics February 1999
Disarming Weapons: gives a 2 second delay. Ok, wonderful but this goes hand in hand with the hit being calculated at the beginning of each swing to cause further inbalances.

This is the patch note described above that says "An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed." in the same time frame. It was simply a way to counter the arm/disarm exploit for slow to faster weapons...

When you unequip a hally your delay resets to 2.0 seconds because of the unequip delay. This allows someone to be able to cast ebolt, hit with a hally, cast ebolt, and hit with a hally. The two second unequip delay "skips" the current hally delay and if you wait it out you can swing again...

Here are the same sources that describe this piece of information that I already showed you that explains this...

- UOPowergamers PVP Guide February 2000 -
Things to Remember:
Use the instant-hit with your weapon whenever possible (instant-hit= where you arm your weapon right after you cast a spell on your opponent---with pre-casting gone remember to target first!!!---then run up to your opponent with weapon in hand. This is a bug that lets you get a free hit off, with no delay. So use it while you still can.). Second, Try to preserve your mana as much as possible (more on this later). Finally, with pre-casting gone, almost all of the tactics revolve around the use of the greater heal spell, so let's hope OSI decides not to f*ck with it

- February 3rd, 2000 - UOHOC Discussion -
Glamdring - *Aegean_LS* Is anything planned for the insta-hally hit? Is it supposed to skipp the delay?
Sage - Yes. We are currently looking at the insta-hally hit, and considering its removal.

If this doesn't help you understand it than I don't know what will... It isn't too hard to figure out if you follow the timeline of the mechanics from pre-t2a that lead into t2a that generated all of this.

[Orsi]

Maybe I'm kicking a dead horse, I didn't read through the entire thread.

Thought I'd just add this. After you hit with your halberd and unequipped it, you had to toggle war/peace in order NOT to use wrestling and fuck up the timer.

The delay from RE-equipping was static. Under no circumstances, when it was functioning properly, were you able to switch to a Katana and get a faster swing timer. You would get an insta-hit from the Halberd, your re-swing timer would start counting, and if you un-equipped and put on a Katana, you had to wait out the rest of the Halberd timer plus the static re-equip delay from changing to a new weapon. Now at this moment, when the Katana timer starts, if you put on the halberd you would have to wait the Katana timer plus the static re-equip.

If you fucked up changing your weapons and swung with one, you got royally fucked on timing. The whole premise was to swing the Halberd, un-equip it and toggle out of war in order to avoid starting the wrestling timer(remember, your not 'equipping' your hands), cast E-bolt and target it, and then when you put the Halberd back on you would only wait out the few remaining moments of the initial swing timer. Since you never re-equipped another weapon, and your fists never swing at the target, putting the Halberd back on doesn't initiated the re-equip delay.

I hope that helps....

On a side note...

it was possible to get your target to re-agro you by going peace/war and double clicking them again, thus enabling you to cause them to use wrestling. This could possibly be pre-T2A as my only distinct memory of it was UOE/UOA users using Last-Target to re-agro me in hiding, making me swing at them and appear again.

[Faust]

The delay from RE-equipping was static. Under no circumstances, when it was functioning properly, were you able to switch to a Katana and get a faster swing timer. You would get an insta-hit from the Halberd, your re-swing timer would start counting, and if you un-equipped and put on a Katana, you had to wait out the rest of the Halberd timer plus the static re-equip delay from changing to a new weapon. Now at this moment, when the Katana timer starts, if you put on the halberd you would have to wait the Katana timer plus the static re-equip.

This is not how the weapon mechanics work on the demo. If you equipped a weapon on the demo your timer would reset to that particular weapon delay EVERY time. This same feature existed and probably still exists in the current EA servers. If you would like try hitting with a heavy weapon on the demo and switching to a katana to see for yourself. If you read my entire first post thoroughly you would see the cause and effects of this system when it was introduced into the t2a insta hit era based on patch notes, articles, and research.

This same combat system worked even in the t2a era, because there are patch notes that indicate a change to the equip delay with ranged weapons in the UOR publish. How can you insta hit if a delay is applied everytime you equip a weapon you may ask? Well the equip delay would only occur when your timer wasn't zero... So if you had a swing ready you could swing. If you didn't than it would reset. It is very simple once you understand the constructs basing it off of the demo combat mechanics that were present even past the t2a era.