Suggestion on the direction we should take for PvP

[Jaster]

What I know about PvP during T2A based on memory and research about the era:

*Spell Casting Times [i.e. 1.75s to cast a 6th circle spell]
*Spell Interruption [i.e. having a harm interrupt a greater heal]
*Self-Disrupt [i.e. equip a weapon mid cast to make yourself fizzle]
*Spell Damage Delays [i.e. 1 second delay on lightning/e-bolt]
*Insta-Hit
*Fast casting was the only way to “spam” spells, and it could only be 2 spells in a row, not a 3rd or more.
*You could not stand toe to toe with another player during T2A and trade 2 second halberd hits.
*No one spammed Attack Last or Tab during the era. [this is not to say it could not happen, but it didn’t on Atlantic where I played]
*Being disrupted meant by spells made the recast time longer.
*The main damage came from magery [from mages] and weapons [from townies/dexers]
*Hally Mages were the most powerful mage spec of the era, but Archery, Macing, and Fencing were not unheard of to have. They were also very good and able to play in a 1v1 or group setting just as effective.
*Most townies/dexers had parry even though it was very difficult to GM because it absorbed and blocked a lot of damage from melee hits. They also used Order/Chaos Shields because they were free and gave a good amount of armor.
*Fencing was the weapon of choice for most townies/dexers because the kryss/warfork/short spear/long spear options gave fast swings and more damage on average than any other weapon class.

This is some of what I remember and have researched about the era. Currently on UOSA, we have a lot of players and staff who are unsure about certain things because we don’t have enough information about them to pin point their numerical accuracy. We have a lot of players who disagree with certain things involving the way PvP works here, and are tired of hearing the same quotes over and over again from Faust. We hear them so much yet no one cares tbh. They don’t care because of the manner in which he reports his information … like we are all idiots for thinking otherwise. A lot of information that Faust as well as other researchers on this shards mechanics has been great, but there is still a lot that is up in the air. I believe a lot of the “flaws” seem to stick out because we are mixing correct mechanics with incorrect mechanics, and what is happening is those that are incorrect are being abused and show up that much more. I understand that it is difficult to just fix everything in 1 shot and have it be correct … hell its probably impossible without Designer Dragon handing over his notes.

My suggestion is that we as a server …. Players, researchers, admin … take what we know for sure, numbers aside [only because we have extra interference that we can not change, i.e. razor, faster connections, multiple clients] and create mechanics that are not against accuracy, but feel correct.
For example: We know certain things for sure, yet others we are unsure about only because not all information is easily found with the numbers next to it. We know that the spell times are correct, the damage delays are correct, but you could not spell spam unless spells were fast casted … so lets work at trying to get a reasonable time to make it feel correct. We also know that you would never see 2 tank mages standing toe to toe during t2a tab spamming and attack last hally hitting every 2 seconds … so lets work on making a system that supports insta-hit but doesn’t allow this because it never happened [even if it was possible]

Discuss.

[Hemperor]

Having never pvped in the era, my opinion without research can't mean a whole lot...However, I and many others feel the disrupts here are pretty quirky. They are ripped from the "pre-t2a (basically) demo". There is a patch note or two after it that mention interrupts, it's really a cloudy subject. It's just a little weird that we used ripped code from the demo, which has many things incorrect from actual T2A pvp already and IMO (and others, there's been a poll) has taken PVP here down the most.

Not sure where to start with something like that though, Stratics is surely no help.

[Jaster]

The only reason I will agree with the disrupts is because if you were to put it disrupts like divinity where harm always disrupts and all weapon hits always disrupt .... add in the disrupt delay from test center along with fastcasting actually working, and a dexer will run right through a mage everytime ... it will become a disrupt era.

Harm not being 100% as well as a hally/katana allowed the disrupt delay to be what it was ... it was a dice roll just like everything else in the era.

[Kraarug]

The only reason I will agree with the disrupts is because if you were to put it disrupts like divinity where harm always disrupts and all weapon hits always disrupt .... add in the disrupt delay from test center along with fastcasting actually working, and a dexer will run right through a mage everytime ... it will become a disrupt era.

Harm not being 100% as well as a hally/katana allowed the disrupt delay to be what it was ... it was a dice roll just like everything else in the era.

Dexxer, if they got toe to toe, did run through a mage every time if they had an ounce of skill. They didnt' disrupt with every hit, but you were basically toast if you tried to stand up to a dexxer with 100 or 120 stamina and a fast weapon. In town? You could forget about it having a better than 50% chance of making it out with your regs if a dexxer locked on you.

There is no doubt, however, that Tank Mages were powerful out of town and the odds were turned against a dexxer. However, if you survived the mana dump and avoided a heavy hit, then the odds turned quickly away.

Most people seem to remember a severe dominace of the tank mage and pull up everything they can to show how l33t they were but the fact is that in '99 it was very rare to have GM resist, especially for dexxers. So... you exp ebolt hally most sheild carriers and they would fall with their 60 resist. You meet one with 80s or 90s resist and then all of a sudden it was a different situation. I know, my townie had 92 resist and was bad ass for the time.

The fear of a dexxer DOES NOT EXIST HERE. I am pretty much sick of watching naked mages survive a full on toe to toe melee attack. It's not right, not correct, and totally unbalanced. Mini heals coudn't be interrupted, but a greater heal could and most of the times did get interrupted with high stamina and a fast kryss or daggar.

NO ONE had a template that was superior in every situation and it's about time that it gets looked at for repair here.

[Fwerp]

The good thing is we have the test server as a palate.
And I think there is something to be said for game mechanics "feeling" right. With so much information lost over time, this is a route to seriously consider, at least on the test shard to start.

[Senses]

I agree based on the fact that if you *know* something is wrong, then why leave it wrong on the argument that you don't *know* what is right. Certainly something approximate is much better than the absolutely wrong.



"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."
-Mark Twain

[Finesse]

insta hit on osi was certainly not two seconds it was around four although i never counted this and was always considered a bug by programmers [you could indeed stand still and insta hit] also hallys and heavy x bows were the only weapons that people ever used insta hit on macers would always use q staffs and keep them armed much like uor with spells precast[it was insanely fast at 40 dex.

the main diffrence and reason why the insta hit needs to be speeded up here is because debuffs do not disturb after the first debuff witch they 100% did on osi.

harm is correct as is magic arrow it disturbed around 50% of the time because it was easily resisted at gm resist lighting should disturb around 90% as its less likely to be resisted propely.

a massive mistake ive noticed here is weapons dont always disturb it seems to be if the damage is low this is completely incorrect and i dont understand why its in.

if you were disturbed during the casting of a spell by another players action your recast delay did become longer i beleive the formula was [time to finish spell + fastcast delay time]

if you were disturbed by your own action your next spell was instantly recastable

fastcast has always been a part of ultima online casting system all it is doing is holding your spell to take up the recast delay and id love to see it added.

[Jaster]

We aim to replicate the T2A era as best we can and within technical limitations as a whole.

The quote on the main page ...

"As best we can" ... the best that can be done sometimes is having no information but trying something to get it to feel correct at least for majority of the player base and yourself.

I would love to see those players that have played during T2A share their memories involving PvP ...

What was it like?
Was it fast paced, medium paced, or slow paced?
Was their Spamming?
Were hally hits being abused often?
Did people unequip, tab, tab, reequip attack last over and over?
Was it this easy to get heals off and recall off when being chased?
What were the usual things that you saw [i.e. exp eb hally? eb hally eb hally]?
How did dexers/townies fair against mages?
What kind of mages did you see often? archer? fencer? swords? macer? pure?
What made pvp fun for you?

[Faust]

This is the second thread you have made discussing the same thing... Derrick isn't going to make a shard based on how you or anyone else thinks the era worked. You got some evidence to prove something is inaccurate you present it like everyone else. Until you do this than ranting on about how the shard isn't accurate will just hit deaf ears. Plenty of people rant on about this crap, but nobody but the same whiners and complainers will listen until you have evidence.

[Hemperor]

Plenty of people rant on about this crap, but nobody but the same whiners and complainers will listen until you have evidence.

True, however what I got from this thread that people were going to discuss as a group what they thought should be right and research from there? Maybe I'm wrong

[Senses]

He already makes a shard on what you think is correct Faust. You take an obscure line and extrapolate Faust's vision for PvP then spend countless hours selling it to the "stupid." That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that the finished product is flawed, which means Faust's vision is flawed. Thats fine, your human, whatever, but I think its gotten to the point that I and everyone else on this shard would really just prefer some other guy take over delivering the server vision because frankly, you aren't a people person.

Accuracy is really alot more important than your ego Faust, and if we have to take a few guesses that circumvent Faust's Vision, then I think the vast majority of us are willing to go on test and just try things out.

[Jaster]

This is the second thread you have made discussing the same thing... Derrick isn't going to make a shard based on how you or anyone else thinks the era worked. You got some evidence to prove something is inaccurate you present it like everyone else. Until you do this than ranting on about how the shard isn't accurate will just hit deaf ears. Plenty of people rant on about this crap, but nobody but the same whiners and complainers will listen until you have evidence.

The problem with you is that you feel that no one other than yourself is correct. You have shut down 99% of anything that anyone else has put up here about reasons why things are not correct. You are looking for why something is correct or what the new fix for what should be correct is. What you are overlooking is that maybe people aren't able to find what is correct, but perhaps they are able to find why something is not correct. These "rants" that I and many others have put up here are to get people motivated to finding the answers, searching their hard drives for old pictures or information showing something maybe we are missing.

If you haven't noticed, but many of our sources are what other players remember and are documenting what happened in a situation, just like your infamous WTFMAN.com picture .... why should someone's interpretation be better than another persons? If you are going to discredit everyones memory, you can't use any source that is post t2a for anything, because all they are then are players interpretations on what happened ... Oh wait ... that's what our rants are!

[Hemperor]

Faust really should stop seeing himself as above any of us, he does get to take a look and tweak the pvp code though, maybe that has what influenced him to make macros for everything with the exact timers...including HALLY EQUIP/UNEQUIP LOL

that's why he doesn't want to see it gone

[Faust]

I will be waiting for an enternity like always when you prove one of my research items to be incorrect Senses.

Thanks,

[Finesse]

t2a was imbalanced to a few templates [fencing mages for instance] all in all was the best pvp system uo ever had some dexers were unbeatable with the correct equipment and magery unless you pinged really well

Was it fast paced, medium paced, or slow paced?
medium without a doubt not as fast as uor with poison locking not as slow as pre t2a game release days where fights could last an hour easy.

Was their Spamming?
you could easily disturb peoples spells with debuffs but no they wernt spammable. there was delays

Were hally hits being abused often?
i wouldent say abused but you could see a massive diffrence in two pros fighting hitting there weps perfectly in time.


Did people unequip, tab, tab, reequip attack last over and over?
deffently loads of people used uoloop but insta hit didnt reload as fast as here

Was it this easy to get heals off and recall off when being chased?
simple answer no not nearly as easy unless the player was pretty slow

What were the usual things that you saw [i.e. exp eb hally? eb hally eb hally]?
standard field combos in group fights were always explo eb hally or just random spells it really depended on the players skill level you saw alot of people in one v one doing explo hally hit para explo eb hally hit. and every good fielder used poisoned weps

i pinged well during this era and dueled alot explo hally hit weaken eb was deffo a good combo disturbing with debuffs was a massive part of the pvp fireball had no dmg delay was used alot lighting wasnt very good dmg for mana eb was used as a finishing spell most the time.

How did dexers/townies fair against mages?
purely depends on the dexers connection imo some dexers just dropped dead then youd have the ones you couldent do much against because ud run out of orange pots so fast.

What kind of mages did you see often? archer? fencer? swords? macer? pure?
pure mage is intresting i never saw anyone using them to pvp solo but the leader of a guild i was in on drachenfels always played one so he could rez whoever died during fights
fencer mages you didnt see many that were purely mage alot would play like a dp dexxer with more int and more dmg to spells [but it wasnt a much used template]
macing was a well used skill for mages because q staff was so good most would play with less int and more dex
archery depends if you played pre archery nerf every single archer mage seemed to swap for swords when that patch hit.
there was some good pk guilds who used hide mages.

What made pvp fun for you?

although i played all types of chars templates guilded unguilded and pks
my favorite play style was to duel the whole spellcasting mechanics i guess