>> Master Five on Friday List

Leurocian is Back! (Oct 13, 2006)

I see that Leurocian is back! What is he working on?

Patrick “Leurocian” Malott, Designer: I’ve been working on additions and bug fixes for the heritage items such as adding fruit on the apple and peach fruit trees and allowing the curtains to open and close. I’m also working on design documents for UO: Kingdom Reborn as well as collaborating with our other designers on resolving ‘hot topic’ issues such as Evasion balancing.

Fun Loot in the Future (August 11, 2006)

I’ve really enjoyed collecting the new loot that drops from Ophidians. Could we see more fun loot like this in the future?

Ixthiassth the Ophidian: Yesshhh, oh, and ssshouldesth I peristh… pleassh gifth myy shjournal to myy family.

Ophidian Berserks and Looting Rights (August 4, 2006)

What’s up with looting rights on Ophidian Berserkers?

Draconi: The Ophidian Berserkers absorb damage much differently than the other Ophidians. It seems the original version, while still letting incremental damage build up, wasn’t adding players to the loot table unless they managed significant damage. So if someone walked in and hit it last, they received the loot rights by default. We’ve fixed this by ensuring at least 5% of your damage is applied directly to the Berserker, however, the Berserkers have become slightly stronger to deal with their now weakened shielding.

Power, Vanquishing, Mystic Weapons against Berserkers (August 4, 2006)

How exactly do Power, Vanquishing, and Mystic weapons help against Berserkers, and to what extent?

Draconi: The Power, Vanquishing, and Mystic weapons cut directly through the Berserker’s magical shielding to deal a certain percentage of the damage you would’ve done normally to it. Power does the least percentage, and Mystics do the highest. The damage numbers you see when dealing damage to Berserkers is the 5% mentioned above, and doesn’t include the extra damage the magical weapon has included as well.

Cap on Melee Damage (July 21, 2006)

Has there been any discussion amongst the dev team about implementing a cap on melee damage? (e.g. to stop 60-70 damage concussion blows against 70 physical resist)

MrTact: No. We’d rather switch to a damage model that makes more sense. Obviously, that’s a huge undertaking and we’re not sure when that might be able to happen.

Discord and Loot (July 21, 2006)

Does discord negatively impact loot drops?

Wilki: No, it does not. Each monster has its own loot table, with luck playing a small role in determining what is actually generated upon death.

Next Combat Changes? (July 14, 2006)

What specific changes are you thinking about next for combat?

Wilki: We’re looking at quite a few combat related changes, and will be releasing more details about this in the near future.

PvP and Hit Modifiers (June 2, 2006)

I like some of the changes for PvP in pub 40, but you left in one of the most glaring problems: hit procs like hit lower defense, mana leech, etc. Any plans to address those anytime soon?

MrTact: Yes, we want to look into those, we just ran out of time. My current thought is to scale the amount of the effect based on the speed of the weapon, so a consistent amount of the effect is applied regardless of how fast your weapon is.

Felucca - Attracting Players (June 2, 2006)

Do you have any ideas on how we can get more players to play in Felucca?

Darkscribe: Yes. First off, we have to make PvP and combat more balanced and more fun. “One template rules all” or “one set of high-level items rules all” isn’t fun. Also, “one hit, one kill, battle over before you know what happened” isn’t a good experience. So, we want to first fix the core mechanics of PvP. After that, then we’ll deal with the “why PvP?” question.

Review of Monster Stats/PvM (May 19, 2006)

Some of the changes that have been proposed are going to make PvM more difficult, especially when it comes to the peerless bosses. Are there plans to rebalance PvM after combat has been changed?

MrTact: If we were to tweak weapon and spell damage values as part of the balancing process, it would pretty much mandatory for us to review monster stats in that light.