Here's my full Belfry review since the changes...

Giggles

So tonight I had a little extra time to try belfry again (I get mildly obsessed when I CAN'T do something lol). I gave it three full attempts. The first two, the timer ran out when Belfry was under 5%.... (Surprisingly my keyboard is still intact... I know right?)

Anyways, I busted out my video recorder on the third attempt to show just how ridiculous it was... and as luck or bad karma would have it, I killed him in right around 18 minutes.
Now keep in mind when watching this, there were no oops moments or bad RNG at all, the EC saves me time in finding the feather, time that anyone on 2D would lose a significant amount of. This would be completely impossible without the bard.... And, also keep in mind (not tooting my own horn), but I consider myself to be more of a hard-core, obsessive, perfectionist type gamer. Your average player probably wouldn't get this far. 

And finally, nothing about this was fun.. It took like 15 or 16 teleports up to finally kill him. Extremely redundant, and it takes more focus and effort than fighting the final bosses does. So here it is.. Belfry "as intended" to be completed.....       https://youtu.be/S_LVjOVy7x8

Rorschach

I have cleaned this thread up a bit. please discuss the topic, not each other.

drcossack

Giggles said:

 And finally, nothing about this was fun.. It took like 15 or 16 teleports up to finally kill him. Extremely redundant, and it takes more focus and effort than fighting the final bosses does. So here it is.. Belfry "as intended" to be completed.....       https://youtu.be/S_LVjOVy7x8

Watched this last night, and this is ridiculous.  While it's obvious that the devs do not play UO (I don't blame them, I wouldn't want to play this either if I worked on it), I have to wonder what they're thinking when they do things like this.  Shadowguard wasn't fun already, unless you were one of the people who's never done it & are trying to figure it out.  This just magnifies that tedium to a ridiculous extent.

The_Higgs_1

Just delete shadowguard, it isn't worth the time invested.  Or leave it and add some cobweb deco showing how little people will ever go there.   The encounter took too long when it was full of bugs, reward vs time there is just worth it.

Khyro

Giggles said:

So tonight I had a little extra time to try belfry again (I get mildly obsessed when I CAN'T do something lol). I gave it three full attempts. The first two, the timer ran out when Belfry was under 5%.... (Surprisingly my keyboard is still intact... I know right?)

Anyways, I busted out my video recorder on the third attempt to show just how ridiculous it was... and as luck or bad karma would have it, I killed him in right around 18 minutes.
Now keep in mind when watching this, there were no oops moments or bad RNG at all, the EC saves me time in finding the feather, time that anyone on 2D would lose a significant amount of. This would be completely impossible without the bard.... And, also keep in mind (not tooting my own horn), but I consider myself to be more of a hard-core, obsessive, perfectionist type gamer. Your average player probably wouldn't get this far. 

And finally, nothing about this was fun.. It took like 15 or 16 teleports up to finally kill him. Extremely redundant, and it takes more focus and effort than fighting the final bosses does. So here it is.. Belfry "as intended" to be completed.....       https://youtu.be/S_LVjOVy7x8

My experience was pretty similar. Failed my first attempt and went to record the next attempt and ended up succeeding. The real issue with the fight is that spam healing at ~8% health. Uploaded my video here:

Pinkerton

Did Belfry, took flying pets, didnt summon any drakes.  Killed it in a matter of minutes, not really challenging.  As easy as before.

Violet

Pinkerton said:

Did Belfry, took flying pets, didnt summon any drakes.  Killed it in a matter of minutes, not really challenging.  As easy as before.

And you circumvented the mechanics of the encounter to do so.  This is not what people are talking about.  People are discussing the intended way the encounter was designed to be done.

Parnoc

Violet said:

Pinkerton said:

Did Belfry, took flying pets, didnt summon any drakes.  Killed it in a matter of minutes, not really challenging.  As easy as before.

And you circumvented the mechanics of the encounter to do so.  This is not what people are talking about.  People are discussing the intended way the encounter was designed to be done.

Who decided how the Belfry was "meant" to be done.  Some pets fly, this sure doesn't seem to be an "exploit" to me, just a different way to do it.  Is there official ways to do things now that aren't explained to us and now when we do them our way get chastised?  Have we lost all creativity?

Mervyn

Well, i could quote the designer:
"The core loop with the belfry is drakes -> feather -> dragon, repeat"

The_Higgs_1

Let me quote myself "It took too long before the bug fixes, now it wont be done at all".  Dead content is up to 99% now.  Congrats

Gidge

"The core loop with the belfry is drakes -> feather -> dragon, repeat"

I don't eat apple cores.

Parnoc

Mervyn said:

Well, i could quote the designer:
"The core loop with the belfry is drakes -> feather -> dragon, repeat"

And that's a message to all of us that we can't use the legal abilities of our pets?  Where was that posted?  Nice try, I don't think so.

Mervyn

I would never ever ever blame a player for doing ANYTHING, if the game allows a player to do something, EG dupe the roof bosses, it’s never the player’s fault. So I would not say players should not fly their dragons on the belfry platform without ringing the bell, but rather players should not be able to. (If that’s how they intend it to be done) 


Same as I do not say that players should not log out and in to move their pet from A to B without using a pet ball summoning charge. But rather players should not be able to.

players will do anything they can, we are like robots. If they introduced a weapon that hit for 150 damage in pvp, everyone would use that weapon. People are very predictable.

Bilbo

Mervyn said:

I would never ever ever blame a player for doing ANYTHING, if the game allows a player to do something

BULL-DOOKY You owe me a key board, now get off your high horse about auto stabling BECAUSE THE GAME ALLOWS IT

Giggles

Well I am hoping we can get some official word on this, and if they plan on toning down these mechanics "soon", and/or fixing the ability to bypass mechanics via flying pets.. If not, I guess it's just time to get some flying pets trained up like everyone else... 

Teapot

Seems like the team might be on vacation this week as there has been not a single reply to anything on this subject.  Maybe next week we will see something, at least a flat "no, deal with it".

Mervyn

I think it’s unacceptable that the change was not even listed on the publish notes. So nobody was even given an opportunity to comment on the proposed changes or test it. 

Let us talk about how they slipped in the vanity pets being resurrectable without veterinary into a bug fixing patch. At first, there was no caveat about it only being possible to do so in trammel, could you imagine how much they would’ve ruined the game if they just added a stealth update without allowing people the opportunity to point out the obvious flaw that it should not be possible to do so in fel. We dodged a bullet there however this is why they need to tell us about proposed changes. 

KHAN

@Bleak @Kyronix PLEASE fix the bug that causes pets to get "stuck" at the belfry. It is unacceptable that we should have to spend the time doing the rooms, AND THEN wait 15-30 minutes for a GM to come "unstick" the pet/pets that can no longer move, EVERY TIME we do the belfry. 

Mortmal

I dont understand the developers logic either. They just ran an EJ program to get new players in, but made it extremely  restrictive, not even bank storage,  and kept the price "high", you can get modern mmos at that price. So that diddnt work  so well and right now except on atlantic population is on low. On Europa you can count people online on  your fingers.I know its summer, there's soccer, but that's quite worrying really.

Population never been so low, what do they do ? they make the ONLY high end content harder more tedious.Thats all there was to do to get good gear really!
Doom ? no one wants to do it anymore cause artefact drop is so low you'll never get what you want. The shadowlord in sunken ship ? it requires a wow raid setup someone tanking and others healing, quite not compatible with uo mentality, rewards arent there anyway .Time of legend encounters ? they are fun once, but require to redo many steps each time and again, oh  rewards aren't there either.
   
  I returned with EJ and thanks to the guys in wraith , i could get up to shape. Thanks to them for  many gifts, equipment ,  and scrolls , those are absolutely unattainable for a new player without veteran help. Champion spawns are camped by soullesss  PVPERs with years of experience billion worth of gears and scripts who will take  the boss and everything in the end then drink your tears....Probably selling their loot on RMT sites too.Oh yes the game is plagued with RMT advertisement too on general chat.

That doesnt leave many things to do in the end ,they should have planned better to bring more new players, that's sorely needed.

Uriah_Heep

very well said

Obuw

On the "Publish 100 Hotfix" patch notes, there are these two points:

• Fixed issue where pets participating in the Belfry Shadowguard Encounter could become frozen.
• Adjusted Belfry Dragon’s AI based on player feedback.

Can anyone comment on whether these have improved the experience? Does the dragon not spam-heal anymore? Or has he stopped paralyzing players? I haven't been back to the belfry yet so I can't comment.

Teapot

Obuw said:

On the "Publish 100 Hotfix" patch notes, there are these two points:

• Fixed issue where pets participating in the Belfry Shadowguard Encounter could become frozen.
• Adjusted Belfry Dragon’s AI based on player feedback.

Can anyone comment on whether these have improved the experience? Does the dragon not spam-heal anymore? Or has he stopped paralyzing players? I haven't been back to the belfry yet so I can't comment.

Feels just like prepatch belfry again for me, smooth ride.