Why was horse removed from the Kal Xen spell?

psycho · March 13

You know, youre in a hurry, you just need that horse to run. You pull up the magical spellbook and 3 magical seconds later: A panther, an alligator, a walrus, a snow lepard, another alligator, a brow bear, a polar bear, a scorpion, another walrus, a giat serpent, a grey wolf, another panter, a grizly bear.... I could go on an on, I am no longer in a hurry, but still in need of a horse.

So the question boils down to, why was a horse removed from the level 5 spell summon creature (Kal Xen)?

Its the only usefull creature lol

Together we make the game greater!

Victim_Of_Siege · March 13

It hasn't been removed. Got one on the third cast

Image: https://forum.uo.com/uploads/editor/63/zr43zv2slx1u.png

Petra_Fyde · March 13

@psycho RNG hates you

Hates me too as it happens.

I can give you an ethy, don't need to 'magic' that up.

keven2002 · March 14

Petra_Fyde said:

I can give you an ethy, don't need to 'magic' that up.

Kids are so privileged this days.... back in my day I had to run up hill to the Britain graveyard (both ways!) to find a horse to try to tame until my account turned 3 years old and was old enough to actually use an ethy!!

psycho · March 14

First of all, thank you for the offer of an ethy Petra, but I say no. I have many ethys on my accounts, of various types.

Secondly, just fyi to Keven2002, I did play in 1998 and forward, here we are in 2024.
I may be privileged, but can hardly call myself a kid anymore.

On a different note, its interesting how a mange with 120 mage and magery mastery 3 cant cast a level 5 spell to summon a specific creature

However I like random, that being, if it does spawn a horse, to me its still just a myth

Grimbeard · March 14

Same with create food..should be a drop down list not a random spell

Feigr · March 14

"I swear this has never happened to me before." He says as she waits for him to turn into a horse.

But in all seriousness... there's a serious issue with the community here that should be addressed. Just because something was some way in the 90s doesn't mean it has to stay that way or that it was fun. Or, it could also be that the context of the situation has changed enough within the game that makes it less fun.

The whole "You're trying to make the game easier" argument is flawed. There's definitely a spectrum and "Too Easy" is on it, but there's a lot of area in between what we have now and "Too Easy."

Being able to choose would be nice. But this is more of a quality of life thing than a difficulty thing.

Pawain · March 14

And we should be able to choose which reward we get from The Roof or Peerless. If you want them to recode the game for a horse you can tame at the first gate in tokuno in 20 seconds or buy from a stable, recode it for the good stuff.

Why did thread continue after the OP was wrong, you can make a horse.

Feigr · March 14

That's called "What About". You can't focus on a single topic and don't have a valid argument against why a gump would not just be more fun or user friendly.

There's no argument for not having a gump for the spell to choose the form. Or for Create Food for that matter.

Pawain · March 14

Buy your horse or food from and NPC if you don't like random.

Things must be going well in UO if the randomness of the create food spell is a major issue.

Feigr · March 14

Pawain said:

Buy your horse or food from and NPC if you don't like random.

Things must be going well in UO if the randomness of the create food spell is a major issue.

No one said it was a major issue either. You're exaggerating because again... you don't have an argument against giving it a gump.

Pawain · March 14

Neither need a gump. We can get the item we want eventually or just buy it from an NPC. It's free way to get an item. Random is the price you pay.

shootgun · March 14

I will quietly leave this here and be on my own merry way...

shootgun said:

Dude stop!

There are few people on this forum whose entire purpose is to argue and shit talk. They will not contribute anything to any discussion. Often times, they will not even have a point in their posts. For them the sole purpose of visiting this forum is to tell people how wrong they are. You are wrong, they are right. That is all there is to it as far as they are concerned. They will argue and shit talk non-stop for days/weeks/months just to tell you that they are wrong. I suspect severe mental illness on their part.

Over time, me and many others learned not to read their posts. Do the same, if you see their name, just skip and read the next post.

Lord_Frodo · March 14

Feigr said:

Pawain said:

Buy your horse or food from and NPC if you don't like random.

Things must be going well in UO if the randomness of the create food spell is a major issue.

No one said it was a major issue either. You're exaggerating because again... you don't have an argument against giving it a gump.

It is suppose to be a random spell not a gump spell, why, because that is the way they made it, what 24 years ago. Maybe horses do still spawn and the RNG hates you. Did you cast that spell 1 billion times to verify that horses were removed.

Mariah · March 14

Any excuse to argue? Stop it. Please.

Victim_Of_Siege · March 14

Lord_Frodo said:

Feigr said:

Pawain said:

Buy your horse or food from and NPC if you don't like random.

Things must be going well in UO if the randomness of the create food spell is a major issue.

No one said it was a major issue either. You're exaggerating because again... you don't have an argument against giving it a gump.

It is suppose to be a random spell not a gump spell, why, because that is the way they made it, what 24 years ago. Maybe horses do still spawn and the RNG hates you. Did you cast that spell 1 billion times to verify that horses were removed.

He didn't need to, I got one on the third cast of my testing his hypothesis here:

Victim_Of_Siege said:

It hasn't been removed. Got one on the third cast

Feigr · March 14

Regardless of getting it on the third cast or not, what's a real argument against adding a gump? That it's always been inefficient and random so it should forever stay that way? To me, that's not a reason to not make it better. I think the only reason it hasn't been made better is because it's so low priority and/or the spell is used that much.

But, just saying "It's always been like that." is completely ignoring the point.

Making the game better is a good goal. Even if it's in small nibbles. Maintaining a list of things that can be made better can also make it so if someone is fixing another issue there's a chance they can fix smaller things at the same time. Or if someone gets burnt out they can just start picking at the little things to fix before returning to big projects.

Sometimes it just feels good to get something done, even low hanging fruit.

Feigr · March 14

shootgun said:

I will quietly leave this here and be on my own merry way...

shootgun said:

Dude stop!

There are few people on this forum whose entire purpose is to argue and shit talk. They will not contribute anything to any discussion. Often times, they will not even have a point in their posts. For them the sole purpose of visiting this forum is to tell people how wrong they are. You are wrong, they are right. That is all there is to it as far as they are concerned. They will argue and shit talk non-stop for days/weeks/months just to tell you that they are wrong. I suspect severe mental illness on their part.

Over time, me and many others learned not to read their posts. Do the same, if you see their name, just skip and read the next post.

I saw it the first time you posted it. I'm not one of those that minds having people reply to me or topics getting posts. That's another weird thing I've noticed on this forum. Why are people so annoyed that conversation is happening? Just having a back and forth is not bad. Are we not here to talk about things? Even with a Pawain or Frodo? If they have terrible arguments, just tell them they have terrible arguments. It's not a big deal. I understand that they are the chronically online types and want the last word. It doesn't bother me.

Victim_Of_Siege · March 14

Feigr said:

Regardless of getting it on the third cast or not, what's a real argument against adding a gump? That it's always been inefficient and random so it should forever stay that way? To me, that's not a reason to not make it better. I think the only reason it hasn't been made better is because it's so low priority and/or the spell is used that much.

But, just saying "It's always been like that." is completely ignoring the point.

Making the game better is a good goal. Even if it's in small nibbles. Maintaining a list of things that can be made better can also make it so if someone is fixing another issue there's a chance they can fix smaller things at the same time. Or if someone gets burnt out they can just start picking at the little things to fix before returning to big projects.

Sometimes it just feels good to get something done, even low hanging fruit.

Where did I say I was against a gump? I simply tested and showed that Horses hadn't been removed from the spell. My stance is this, Pawain makes a good argumant that it isn't needed because if you want a guarantee to receive one, go buy it. But in the end, I could care less and if they add it fine, if not, fine.

Pawain · March 14

@Feigr

Long ago Lord British called all of the guilds in the lands controlled by Brittania to a meeting to create

The Fair Trades and Practices of Britannia.

Much debate insued over these topics. I'll highlight some posed by this thread.

Article 6: Food products.

Paragraph C section 2.

Food products produced as a result of magic or conjuring, including food created from objects must have an element of randomness. Only approved food products listed in section 4 can be produced by magic.
Food products created by magical means must have equivalent shelf life and nutritional values of same food created by farmers or tradesmen. Specific food choices can only be sold by approved vendors listed in section 5.

A similar section has the conjuring of live animals.

Mariah can post a link to this document in its entirety.

Feigr · March 14

That would be a good argument against a gump for create food. See? I didn't have to ignore you. I'm also not emasculated by saying you had a good argument.

Unless Lord British was eating people who turned into Horses, what's the argument for that one?

Pawain · March 14

Feigr said:

That would be a good argument against a gump for create food. See? I didn't have to ignore you. I'm also not emasculated by saying you had a good argument.

Unless Lord British was eating people who turned into Horses, what's the argument for that one?

Same idea the NPC animal vendors would lose sales if we could chose what we make. Also the breeders that provide to the zoo would have fewer players using their Polar Bears and such. Breeders get a kickback when their tagged animals are given to the zoo.

Lord_Frodo · March 14

Feigr said:

Regardless of getting it on the third cast or not, what's a real argument against adding a gump? That it's always been inefficient and random so it should forever stay that way? To me, that's not a reason to not make it better. I think the only reason it hasn't been made better is because it's so low priority and/or the spell is used that much.

But, just saying "It's always been like that." is completely ignoring the point.

Making the game better is a good goal. Even if it's in small nibbles. Maintaining a list of things that can be made better can also make it so if someone is fixing another issue there's a chance they can fix smaller things at the same time. Or if someone gets burnt out they can just start picking at the little things to fix before returning to big projects.

Sometimes it just feels good to get something done, even low hanging fruit.

Why no we need an easy button for everything.

Mariah · March 15

It might be nice, but, what players don't have to consider, and devs do, is. 'is it a cost effective use of development time?' Time costs money, and it's a balancing act to decide what is worthwhile and what isn't.

That's not to say I actually know anything about Broadsword's decision making, I'm just using a bit of old fashioned common sense.

keven2002 · March 15

Mariah said:

It might be nice, but, what players don't have to consider, and devs do, is. 'is it a cost effective use of development time?' Time costs money, and it's a balancing act to decide what is worthwhile and what isn't.
That's not to say I actually know anything about Broadsword's decision making, I'm just using a bit of old fashioned common sense.

Spot on Mariah! It's basic return on (time) investment. A bit off topic for this thread but my understanding of the situation is that this is basically what the Dev team has done for adding new items to the game via ToT (ie points to claim something off a vendor) rather than retooling loot tables and how RNG would work.

Feigr · March 15

Mariah said:

It might be nice, but, what players don't have to consider, and devs do, is. 'is it a cost effective use of development time?' Time costs money, and it's a balancing act to decide what is worthwhile and what isn't.
That's not to say I actually know anything about Broadsword's decision making, I'm just using a bit of old fashioned common sense.

Players shouldn't have to consider that. There's nothing wrong with slapping it on a list for later. Especially something this minor. How many times have they added gumps for other spell schools since Magery? The people over the game at the time could have just used a known issue/minor fix list to see if there were any low hanging fruit that would benefit at the same time.

Also, besides this obviously minor observation, there's diminishing returns on the excuse of not having enough resources. If everything is too expensive/time consuming it's obvious that things are being poorly managed. I'm not claiming they are. I'm just saying that it highlights a problem with constructive examples.

And there is also the comparison of what others are able to do and what the professional team is able to do. So when you bring up time and costs, people are naturally going to compare. I'm just using a bit of old fashioned common sense.

keven2002 · March 15

Feigr said:

Mariah said:

It might be nice, but, what players don't have to consider, and devs do, is. 'is it a cost effective use of development time?' Time costs money, and it's a balancing act to decide what is worthwhile and what isn't.
That's not to say I actually know anything about Broadsword's decision making, I'm just using a bit of old fashioned common sense.

Players shouldn't have to consider that. There's nothing wrong with slapping it on a list for later. Especially something this minor. How many times have they added gumps for other spell schools since Magery? The people over the game at the time could have just used a known issue/minor fix list to see if there were any low hanging fruit that would benefit at the same time.

Also, besides this obviously minor observation, there's diminishing returns on the excuse of not having enough resources. If everything is too expensive/time consuming it's obvious that things are being poorly managed. I'm not claiming they are. I'm just saying that it highlights a problem with constructive examples.

And there is also the comparison of what others are able to do and what the professional team is able to do. So when you bring up time and costs, people are naturally going to compare. I'm just using a bit of old fashioned common sense.

Generally speaking - I agree with things being added to a backlog and the "not enough resources" line gets used a ton.

That said, it can totally be a can of worms saying something like this is "minor" or low hanging fruit (unless you have some intimate knowledge of the code I don't know about). That's usually an assumption being made that it should be minor but for all we know they go to make this "minor" fix and suddenly other summons aren't working correctly.

Even if, for argument sake, it is a minor update that won't snowball then I'd say that same thing could be said for another hundred items we encounter in the game on a way more frequent basis (like ghosting HP bars etc); so why should summon creature RNG update / selection jump to the front of the line? I think if there was a poll for what people would rather see; Would you rather have... some sort of update to how summon creature is casted or fix something like the ghosting HP bars or targeting summons in tram it would show how many other things are higher priority? I don't think there would be many votes for summon creature.

This isn't directed at you Feiger, but some people need to realize a game like UO isn't their own personal custom game with their own development team to create every little whim they think of. Over the years I've seen people request to most specialized/smallest niche things that really only apply to them or maybe a handful of people. Sure maybe it isn't a ton of effort to make the change but if the team spent all their time doing things like that (I know there is a lot - just see what people ask at M&G) there wouldn't be any time to code scalable / widespread content for the greater population in the game.

Feigr · March 15

Oh yea for sure. I know that what I may describe as low hanging fruit may not be. It still should go on a list. I also don't think that every thing people say, myself mostly, should actually be considered as the voice of everyone. But if I'm given a forum to post an opinion on, I'll speak my opinion. I also try to limit speaking for others by saying things like "A lot of us" or "Most people" when what I really mean to do is just speak for myself.

keven2002 · March 15

Feigr said:

Oh yea for sure. I know that what I may describe as low hanging fruit may not be. It still should go on a list. I also don't think that every thing people say, myself mostly, should actually be considered as the voice of everyone. But if I'm given a forum to post an opinion on, I'll speak my opinion. I also try to limit speaking for others by saying things like "A lot of us" or "Most people" when what I really mean to do is just speak for myself.

Well said!

Pawain · March 15

If these were not random.

A player could find the vendor that buys Apple's for the highest price and make apples constantly and sell them without having to buy and sell from a different vendor.

A player would stand at the Zoo and make polar bears without having to tame them.

The randomness makes these actions messy.

You have to consider what players would do when making changes.

Lord_Frodo · March 15

LMAO
Dear UO Players
I want my EASY Button so would you please stop using your brain and coming up with logical reasons why I should not get my easy button. Stomps foot and walks away crying, they hurt my feelings.

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Why was horse removed from the Kal Xen spell?

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