Feedback on invasions and bug report

ForeverFun

First, to the UO team, thanks for bringing back some great prior content that many may have missed!

It was good to see the UO team acted on feedback from re-activating the ToT event, including fixing the Serado spawn.

Here's some feedback/request for change for the invasion event:

1. The titans do not seem to have enough hit points relative to current pets/equipment/skills.  The titans are usually dead within 2 minutes, which leaves many players in the town missing the action due to the "titan search"!  Perhaps a fix is to increase the titan HP 5-10x?  Or have it spawn in a fixed location per city?
2. The generals/captains/etc that while alive hold Yumi or Composite bows, or repeating crossbows drop no Bane weapon loot.  Assuming this is because the UO creators do not want bane weapons to exist of these weapon types?  Perhaps a fix for this is to drop the standard bane bow in these situations.  Or allow composite, yumi, and repeating crossbows to drop with the bane property?
3. The logic around spellbook drops could use some adjustment.  It's leading to some very bad behavior in the game -- namely, a small set of players are singling out the mage generals, and they are all dead in the first few minutes of the invasion.  Given there appear to be only 3 books per mage dropping, and very few mages per invasion, this is leading to frustration for many players.  Here are some possible ways to adjust this:

• Remove the 3 book drop limit per mage NPC.  Base it on who gets looting rights.  This would seem to square this with how blackthorn captains have worked in the past.
• Add a chance for a mage book to drop from any general/captain/etc (with caps matching the level of the boss).
• Spawn more mage users over the course of the spawn.  (other creatures get spawned throughout, how about mages?).
• Add a trade-in NPC that allows say 5-10 invasion weapons to be traded in for a book.  The trade in could have a pure SDI book category or a randomly generated slayer book category.
• Not strictly invasion related:  the chances of crafting scrapper slayer books is so low, even with guaranteed improvement talisman -- can this be revisited?  Or perhaps some new recipe drops that allow existing spellbooks to be "upgraded"?

Thanks for considering these -- perhaps others will pile on with other suggestions/comments.

Pawain

Since we have no idea what the next publish will be like, and they are not going to change this content, we just have to hope the next publish will be liked by all players and nobody will complain. 

Drakelord

Where are the Mage Generals?   I have yet to see one

Pawain

They don't say mage on them.  They are the ones yielding Staffs.  If you are Drake on LS, run around at first and find them.  I've only yelled out that info in chat 50 times today...

TimSt

Which client are people using to find the mages so easily?  Even with hooking up to the 55 inch TV it is hard for me to see what someone is carrying in the EC.

Parnoc

TimSt said:

Which client are people using to find the mages so easily?  Even with hooking up to the 55 inch TV it is hard for me to see what someone is carrying in the EC.

Same for me, I have to get out of war mode, click the General, look at their weapon and read what it is, then get back in war mode quickly (if I'm still alive) and in the meantime one of them has dismounted and disarmed me...........   By the time I find one it's mostly dead and by the time I help kill it, all the others have been killed already.   I enjoyed this invasion before but this time it's only a lesson in frustration.

Lord_Frodo

It is not hard to look at the paperdoll of any of them and tell right off the bat which one is carrying a staff (you know the long stick), that is the MAGE.

Grace

ForeverFun said:

First, to the UO team, thanks for bringing back some great prior content that many may have missed!

It was good to see the UO team acted on feedback from re-activating the ToT event, including fixing the Serado spawn.

Here's some feedback/request for change for the invasion event:

1. The titans do not seem to have enough hit points relative to current pets/equipment/skills.  The titans are usually dead within 2 minutes, which leaves many players in the town missing the action due to the "titan search"!  Perhaps a fix is to increase the titan HP 5-10x?  Or have it spawn in a fixed location per city?

Make the Boss replicate more and more after so many players are present, maybe like a Ninjitsu skill mirror image. No one knows what is the real Boss.

1. The generals/captains/etc that while alive hold Yumi or Composite bows, or repeating crossbows drop no Bane weapon loot.  Assuming this is because the UO creators do not want bane weapons to exist of these weapon types?  Perhaps a fix for this is to drop the standard bane bow in these situations.  Or allow composite, yumi, and repeating crossbows to drop with the bane property?

Booby prize I gather, like the whip from the turn in Pirate. 

1. The logic around spellbook drops could use some adjustment.  It's leading to some very bad behavior in the game -- namely, a small set of players are singling out the mage generals, and they are all dead in the first few minutes of the invasion.  Given there appear to be only 3 books per mage dropping, and very few mages per invasion, this is leading to frustration for many players.  Here are some possible ways to adjust this:

• Remove the 3 book drop limit per mage NPC.  Base it on who gets looting rights.  This would seem to square this with how blackthorn captains have worked in the past.
• Add a chance for a mage book to drop from any general/captain/etc (with caps matching the level of the boss).
• Spawn more mage users over the course of the spawn.  (other creatures get spawned throughout, how about mages?).
• Add a trade-in NPC that allows say 5-10 invasion weapons to be traded in for a book.  The trade in could have a pure SDI book category or a randomly generated slayer book category.
• Not strictly invasion related:  the chances of crafting scrapper slayer books is so low, even with guaranteed improvement talisman -- can this be revisited?  Or perhaps some new recipe drops that allow existing spellbooks to be "upgraded"?

I agree.

Thanks for considering these -- perhaps others will pile on with other suggestions/comments.

Seth

Its either not enough people to clear useless spawn, or too many people attacking a few mage general. Only consolation for clearing the spawn is to hope something good drop after killing the boss.

Once everyone get tired, the few players may farm the spawn and get hundreds of +50 SDI spellbook or slayer easily... lol.

If it is sure drop when there are only 3 player attacking a mage general, why not every shard create a queue, and players take turns to kill the Mage general haha.

popps

As I said in the other Thread "Loot Rules" at https://forum.uo.com/discussion/comment/41495/#Comment_41495 , I think that personally the mechanics to award drops should be changed for FUTURE content so that TIME spent working a spawn (regardless whether it is low Monsters or High Monsters) was to be the meter by which drops would be awarded to participant and NOT this thing of the "top damagers" which only favours those players which all scrolled up Templates in high end gear and Artifacts or all scrolled up pets doing tons of DPS (Damage Per Second) which only kills the chances of nwe or returning players to compete and participate, not to mention the issue of these uber Damaging Templates coming, getting all of the goodies in 5-10 minutes and then leave other players to have to work hours to clean up the trash spawn all for nothing or for very little .....

I sure hope that @Bleak and @Kyronix and all the UO Developers will want to modify, for FUTURE game content, the way that drops will be awarded in UO so that these thing will no longer happen and TIME spent working the new content, regardless from the toughness of the Monsters tackled, will be what will tell whether a player will get a drop and its quality.

At least, that is the way I see it.

MissE

popps said:

 I think that personally the mechanics to award drops should be changed for FUTURE content so that TIME spent working a spawn (regardless whether it is low Monsters or High Monsters) was to be the meter by which drops would be awarded to participant and NOT this thing of the "top damagers" which only favours those players which all scrolled up .........

And then you will complain it only favors the people who don't work or have no-commitments and can play all day.  Those that have 10 hrs a day or more to do it.  I can hear it now.

Yes it is a mad dash for the general mages, but seriously there are anywhere from 2-8 or so that spawn , and each drops 3 books, then the captain mages also drop 3, as do some of the lesser ranked.   That being said, on any spawn 13 or more mage types will spawn, so be one of the first 30 people on em.

ActionElly

Well they won't be changing this, so it's up to people in each shard to come up with ways to help the community. I didn't do the invasion this weekend because it was a mad fest of the best players killing mages and leaving.

I'll get back to it when the dust settles some, but otherwise maybe we can pull the mages aside somewhere and call out to let everyone get a chance? I don't even know if there's a legit way to accomplish this, lol.

Seth

Get the real bugs solved first... now my shard Vesper invasion spawns cleared, no cultist around, but also no boss. The Town Crier says it is still going on. We ran like 10 rounds and its a huge place, but could not find anything.

Maybe if cannot quality assure all the bugs, perhaps exclude vesper and trinsic from the invasion city because it is really huge place.

And as usual... GM always popped up on the ball when we are macroing but urgent situations like this, they are not as responsive as 10 years ago. How do we apply for GM job

Seth

Other than Britain, Moonglow also had an invasion without any soldiers. We spent hours to clear the spawn, no invasion, went to bed. While a bunch just waited for us to clear, and waited for Moonglow bugs to clear, and have a free spin of 50SDI lottery. Wow.

There are alot of bugs in this invasion, I think its about time to switch to other events. Before very soon we get 50 SDI spellbooks going for 10 pcs for 1000 GP only.

While it is still going on, could you also stop the soldiers from "teleporting" away suddenly in the middle of a fight? They are not lured outside of town or invasion zone.

This invasion is rated 1/5, would have been 0/5 if not for the spellbook drop that actually works!

Cinderella

Seth said:

Get the real bugs solved first... now my shard Vesper invasion spawns cleared, no cultist around, but also no boss. The Town Crier says it is still going on. We ran like 10 rounds and its a huge place, but could not find anything.

Maybe if cannot quality assure all the bugs, perhaps exclude vesper and trinsic from the invasion city because it is really huge place.

And as usual... GM always popped up on the ball when we are macroing but urgent situations like this, they are not as responsive as 10 years ago. How do we apply for GM job

Vesper has a couple islands that you have to take a row boat too.there may have been some on them. Also make sure to check across the bridge from above the bank. follow the water east past the tailor shop... usually after that, then the frost dragons start to appear. And they sometimes spawn on top of the water. 

Trinsic, some of the captains, etc will spawn inside the walls. The only way to kill them is to use spellweaving spell or to page a GM to move them. And there is one spot that you have to teleport down to. 

Pawain

We had Lythos spawn in a wall in Trinsic.  He was near a corner so he rolled in the wall and around the corner. Was pretty funny.
GM brought him out in less than 5 mins.

Seth

We did go on the boat to hunt around and inside Vesper, but they should not allow the spawn the go out too far. We often see soldier's jumped back to some default spot, which I think is unnecessary. They just need to stop the the spawn from going out of certain zone (like in champ spawn).

As long as GM comes quickly to resolve the Trinsic wall issue, I think its fine. But shouldn't the Trinsic city be renovated to remove those unreachable wall area...

Pawain

The Governor of Trinsic brought up the need for wall maintenance walls to the King in our meeting this month.

Estel_Randir

This particular invasion is seriously flawed in the way that rewards are handled. It was flawed the last time(s) it was implemented & people complained, but fixes were not implemented.

The weapon drops are only good for unraveling for relic fragments. The bane weapons are situational at best. There are only two (I think) bane weapons. I have multiple bane heavy x-bows. I put 30% SSI on one & after using it for a while on generals, I cannot justify using them in place of my 40% SSI composite bow. I would need to have 60% SSI increase for them to be nearly as effective, imo. And as others have mentioned, where are the other bane weapon types? If the property were on melee weapons, these weapons might become useful (and possibly overpowered).

The main issue is, of course, the spell books. They are the main draw for most of us participating in this invasion. If you want a good chance at a book, you have to rush the spawn looking for mages in the first 15ish minutes. Like this reality or not, if you do not, you either get no books, or compete with a dozen people over the same mob (if a mage respawns during the invasion). When the mages are dead in the first rush, at least half the people leave. Then it is just a grind. Do I blame the players for this behavior? No. The book drops are poorly handled. They should not be tied to the mage type mobs. They should be random on any of the human invasion mobs. The higher the rank, the better the quality. This would encourage people to clear the invasions as a group. You would not have to compete with a dozen people over the same npc, or have to rush for the mages.

Many many years ago the invasion of this type did not have slayer books, only 30% max SDI books & weapons. I really do not remember this mage only thing being an issue. I threw away a ton of those books years ago they were so plentiful.