Dynamic events, paragons, and mounted combat
Long post. Sorry in advance.
I play primarily as a tamer and have been investing a fair amount of time in the most recent “Treasures of” event in Hythloth. I wanted to provide some feedback on mounted combat, unmounted combat, and the paragon combat rules.
I recognize and accept that a tamer isn’t going to kill at the same rate as many melee templates running 100% elemental weapons, double slayers, with leeches and AOE galore, but also know that a properly kitted tamer is one of the most efficient templates for killing the big paragons that prowl the dungeon.
Being a non gargoyle tamer using a 5 slot pet means I am on foot at all times. The big issue I’m facing is that quite a few times while I’m hunting a hallway or side room, here comes melee player X on horseback running at Mach 3 pulling paragons right to me! I’m generally hunting the prison cells or the room that spawns the gargoyles at the end of the first floor hall, so I’m not becoming collateral damage as they run for the entrance, these are players who come up the stairs and come in my direction because I’m there. Last night I confronted a Sampire about it, and admitted it t was by design, hoping I would heal them. As a vet I heal animals, not people.
When this happens, if I can mount up I will, and just recall back to the entrance to start slowly working in again. Because the Gargs that spawn in those rooms have AOE attacks, and because sometimes the dog does what he wants despite 120/120 real taming and lore, I’m often far enough from my pet that I don’t have a chance to mount. In this case I’ll stand stone still and hope for the traffic to circle back out, but if mach 3 gets far enough to break Agro while I’m in range, or the paragon has an AOE and re-targets to me, I’m toast. I’ve got absolutely no chance at outrunning the paragon. I’ll generally pound my recall key until I die or (occasionally) recall out.
Can something be done to address this imbalance? Once upon a time the handicap was often argued as a trade off for the superior power of the tamer pet. Those days are long gone. There’s no competitive advantage to be gained by providing some type zero pet slot vehicle that allows tamers the same movement rate as every other class.
Can something be done to address this imbalance? Once upon a time the handicap was often argued as a trade off for the superior power of the tamer pet. Those days are long gone. There’s no competitive advantage to be gained by providing some type zero pet slot vehicle that allows tamers the same movement rate as every other class.
Since the zero slot mount has been suggested many times before with no movement(it’s the right answer y’all), I’ll make a few other suggestions.
1. change the paragon chase speed back to normal MOB levels. Another post on this board suggested rubber banding them to an area. It’s unnecessary, just keeping them at a normal run speed will solve most of the problem. To farm areas that paras have spawned, a slow chase speed will allow players an opportunity to rally and kill them where spawned rather than drag them to the entry point as the designated paragon dump. On slow shards where there are few players, still possible to move paragons to manageable areas.
2. Add “dismount” as an ability to all paragons and allow players to determine for themselves whether to go on foot or risk mounting up. Ethereal mounts will rule the landscape so offer a few for sale in the store to combat scarcity. If you’re feeling really nice, a token for a free 1st year vet reward solves that problem too.
3. Don’t allow mounted combat within the dungeon at all. Everybody’s on foot. No flying either for the garg players. Sorry all three of you out there. At that point, melee players have their high offensive arsenal, tamers have their high defensive arsenal, and casters have a nice mix of both.
1. change the paragon chase speed back to normal MOB levels. Another post on this board suggested rubber banding them to an area. It’s unnecessary, just keeping them at a normal run speed will solve most of the problem. To farm areas that paras have spawned, a slow chase speed will allow players an opportunity to rally and kill them where spawned rather than drag them to the entry point as the designated paragon dump. On slow shards where there are few players, still possible to move paragons to manageable areas.
2. Add “dismount” as an ability to all paragons and allow players to determine for themselves whether to go on foot or risk mounting up. Ethereal mounts will rule the landscape so offer a few for sale in the store to combat scarcity. If you’re feeling really nice, a token for a free 1st year vet reward solves that problem too.
3. Don’t allow mounted combat within the dungeon at all. Everybody’s on foot. No flying either for the garg players. Sorry all three of you out there. At that point, melee players have their high offensive arsenal, tamers have their high defensive arsenal, and casters have a nice mix of both.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Maybe another way to fix the imbalance is to not allow healing of pets in the dungeon. That would even out the no life leech.
There is no issue that needs fixed. Not all dungeons will have balrons.
*Paragon appears,
Tamer invis,
Tell pet to kill,
tamer invis again,
paragon auto-reveals,
targets tamer,
tamer invis,
takes one step back,
tamer invis,
paragon auto-reveals and targets tamer,
tamer invis,
takes another step back,
tamer invis,
paragon auto-reveal and targets tamer
tamer invis,
takes another step back,
tamer invis,
paragon auto-reveals*
If it's a Hell Hound, Elder Gazer or Deamon it takes a minute for me or Me/My pet to kill them and I promise you 99% of the time, no matter what I do...invis and take a step or two away or invis and teleport a few steps away, invis again....99% of the time the paragon will re-target me.
I drag paras down the hall every day. They stay on me unless someone runs or an archer attacks them. Archers are the most disruptive to dragging cause they always run in the wrong direction.
Funny how Yoshi can get 500+ drops from his afk tamer and not have problems with paragons.
Also maybe the difficulty is why the 2 dungeons with Balrons have lasted 2 months. Maybe we are not expected to get as many drops/time as we did in the easier dungeons.
Make an area for NOOBs. Deceit was a good example. It had mostly low level mobs on the first floor, especially by the cells. On LS we left it for them because the rest of us like more challenge from the Rams and LL.
Hythloth could have just low level spawn that gives less points but they are easy to kill. This should be on the first floor.
Then the other floors or areas have the tougher spawn for those wanting more adventure.
I doubt they change anything anyway. The only difficult mob here is the Balron. If they did not have the Balron this would be a very boring place.
Note: You can practice on them year round at Chaos. Those paras also re target.
I keep saying that the game hates my tamer...she has more problems then any tamer I know...I think it's because of the blackrock..I seriously do.... she's had issues ever since.
ESRB warning: Some Blood. LOTS of Alcohol. Some Violence. LOTS of Bugs
I enjoy a whole lot more playing a Tamer yet, because of the way that these "Treasures of" Events have been designed, I have found myself, unfortunately, having to make a Warrior.
My opinion ?
These Events are imbalanced out between different Templates.
There is one type of a Template, the Warrior, in various variations, which rules it all, getting drops a go-go (I heard of someone with a Dexer, using the Store bought Potion, getting 60 drops in 1 hour...) and then, all of the others, including Tamers as well as other Templates, who lag behind, getting the left overs from Warriors if there is too many around, or having to play at off hours when Warriors are not around.....
I have been asking @Kyronix ; to balance these Event and have different Templates be more "equally" able to get drops yet, the answer which I was given was....
https://forum.uo.com/discussion/comment/60800/#Comment_60800
And that is why, even though I wanted to play a Tamer, I ended up making a Dexer....
I would have at least hoped in an answer that these "Treasures of" Events would have been Designed with a "rotation"....
That is, one time an Event where Dexers would shine, next Event would have been one where Tamers would have shined, then the following one would have seen Bards who had come on top, and then the following one again would have been Designed for Rogues, for example, to be the "best" Template for the job.... and so forth......
Yet, "Treasures of" Event after "Treasures of" Event I keep seeing Warriors as the privileged Template to be used, if one wants to get drops...
And, to my opinion, this is a serious problem for those players who play other Templates...
Why ?
Because the Designers have to well keep in mind the much higher drop rate of Treasures of Artifacts that Warriors can get when they set the "cost" for the Rewards otherwise, players getting drops with Warriors would get them by the dozens....
So, prices for Rewards end up being very high for players using Templates other then Warriors... and they have a really hard time getting some of those Rewards, especially the higher end ones which are more wanted, obviously.
As I said, to my opinion, it is very much unbalanced in between different Templates and their ability to get drops and I wished that the Developers fixed this imbalance.
Oh well....
The Treasures Of Paragons are super beefed up versions, faster, stronger etc. So it's not fair to say *Oh just practice on them over there* because it is 100% not the same.
And that also, having Events being Designed to possibly cater to a larger variety of Templates, as much equally as possible, is important to maintain a variety of Templates to exist in the gaming Environment.
Yet, if these "Treasures of" Events always cater to the same one Template, doesn't this kill diversity of seeing varied Templates around ?
Sure, one can see "occasionally, a few Tamers or a Bard in them, but that is not comparable to the tons and tons of Warriors that attend them.
I mean, evnetually I had to give up and had to make a Warrior myself, if I wanted to have decent chances to get some of the nicer Rewards at these Events....
You may disagree, and that is fine, but, personally, I consider this as imbalanced Design.
I hate your abbreviations - really - what is BS supposed to mean now? In Germany it could well stand for "Bescheuertes Spiel" (> stupid game)
Chaos Shrine in Ilsh can never have two Paragons there at the same time, because only one Balron spawn place was set there. What can happen to you, however, is that 2 Balron paragons can spawn directly behind each other. According to my observation, the Ilsh Paragons are also designed quite differently than the Treasures of... Paragons: In Ilsh they are not autorevealed
, in Ilsh these paragons can also
be lored with Animal Lore, which is not the case with the Treasures of ...
Paras, and in Ilsh there is double gold as Loot what Treasures of... Paras
don't give away either, but then they have 5 times the amount of HP, which I
also find totally exaggerated with the Balron 
- the triple amount of the
original hitpoints would have been enough in my opinion.
So in generell you cannot compare these two types of Paragons
They are different in some points!
What's equal to both type is: they are as double fast as the normal Monster, and we can observe a fast double para respawn behind each other.
Even I with actually quite good equipment and a 30 Demon-Slayer Spellbook can't manage it - in Wildfire Event it worked sometimes quite well because there was more space and the spawn was distributed a bit more, but Hythloth doesn't allow it. Hytloth only has Balis in the depths from the third level on - at normal times, so please, what are they doing on the first floor? In comparison to the Chaos Shrine - there I can park the annoying lower spawn further down in the botany without killing them. That's not possible here in Hythloth - it happens exactly that what Larisa describes.
As I said, what annoys me a lot about the "Goldies" there is the exaggeratedly high number of hitpoints to be fought, especially exclusive to the Balron. The basic idea was to use these beasts to avoid afk farmers, but after reading various postings here and in the other forum, I can't shake off the impression that the whole thing is once again a homemade problem from ATlantik, since it seems that once again a few wimps or particularly important people don't get their fun out of the game, while we keep getting the boomerang for it through this design and take the blame for it.
It's good that many more people now realise that the paragons are not running optimally - especially the balrons. It's good that more voices are now being raised by tamers who have had similar experiences. Not everyone plays their Tamers in a super-styled gaming room at home, but perhaps only on a single monitor with one computer.
A little less ego-thinking, know-it-all and rumbling compared to others who aren't so "great" and the UO-life would be a whole corner easier
(Ein bisschen weniger Ego-Denken, Besserwisserei und Rumprollerei anderen gegenüber die halt nicht so "toll sind" und das UO-Leben wäre ne ganze Ecke einfacher)
I see the same threads on the boards that were referenced above, players getting 60+ drops in an hour... good for them. I can scrape about 5 or 6 drops per hour as a 6x 120 tamer and I'm fine with that. I've got melee characters that I'm sure if I dusted them off would get more drops that the tamer, but I like taming. That's what I choose to play and I'll live with the consequences of not getting as large a slice of the pie, I just want an opportunity to sit at the table. Even with a zero slot mount you could argue tamers are still disadvantaged because the pet wont run the same speed. As a community though, I think we'd much rather deal with that problem than no mount at all.
As much as I and every other warrior would hate it, we shouldn't be able to ride a mount into a dungeon or any other cave or underground system. If we were somehow to coax the pet inside I can't imagine they wouldn't buck us right off or being so closed to the ceiling wouldn't impede our swinging movement.
Only tamers, who have cultivated special relationships with their pets, should be able to use them indoors/underground like that.
But here's where people will argue that it's been this way for 24 years and it works fine, thank you very much. "Don't fix what isn't 'broken!'" Even if the developers did make such a drastic change, I cannot image they would enjoy listening to people complain on the forums and the meet'n'greet about it until the end of time.
We have no working doors on LS. I have heard players from other shards putting the Balrons away and getting many drops from the rest of the spawn.
So, I went to second floor. Spent 5 minutes dragging all the Balron paragons past the slippery hall so I could have the whole floor to myself. I set my 2 tamers in the most northern room. It was full but I emptied it and left them there.
Clicked my statue and ran around killing everything with my Swords paladin. I died once to a Hell hound and wisp para. Only 3 or 4 Demon paras popped, EoO and AI kills those fast.
@Wrac ; I got 12 drops that hour and was killing things as fast as I could. I also do not see the 60 drops per hour players brag about. Bought me a Demon platter.
That crowded room turn out to be a bust. Those 2 guys got 3 drops total that hour. Once you clear a room, the spawn rate is very low. like 1 demon a minute.
So, if you scout the dungeon a casual player can sit in a room and kill things as slow as they want to. If they want more they can control 2 rooms.
I think LS is the only shard with no doors so you can move the Para Balrons away from you.
Don't be a @Larisa and expect to run up and down the first floor hall and not expect someone to run a paragon by you. And ooo they have more HP Same thing!! Just fight longer.
To wrap it up. This dungeon has a place for ALL level players and templates. You just have to put a little effort in to find your corner.
Did you park your tamer in a crowded area and live through repeated instances of mounted players dragging paragons through you? No... that's not what you did at all. You parked them in isolated rooms while you ran rampant on a dexxer character. What on earth was your point? That the taming community should be satisfied with marginalized opportunity for play? Super, but again, not the point I was arguing at all.
By the way, you're also wrong that the paragons here are the same with only more HP. I mean we cant lore the balrons to be sure but what I can tell you is that I can kill paragon balrons at Chaos with no bandaging or healing, just running consume on my pet Cu. Dog will never drop below 90%. The same dog in Hythloth right now gets wrecked by balrons unless I'm backing up the consume with constant vetting, so its not simply a matter of more HP. Dont get me wrong, with 120 disco and 120 vet I can absolutely solo them, but these are an entirely different animal that the chaos shrine. If you're gonna claim otherwise, back it up with more than "ooo". Give us hard numbers. Run a data log and show us a report.
You are correct I do not understand your point. My tamers do not have the problems yours do. I don't run when a paragon approaches. If i am not interested in that fight I stand still and let it pass.
Sure you die once in a while. So does any other template. They all die equal here.
Use orange petals and poison does not make you get aggroed again.
Do not step on other templates to bring yours up! Learn to play it better. Leave others alone.
At least make up BS that could happen.
I die a lot on my armored swampy whaa wha wha.
Have some cheese with your whine.
You say so they have more HP, just fight longer? Well I can't...I don't have millions of platinum of gold to spend on an OP pet and gear that can handle a paragon balron. The other paragons my pet can handle just fine, though it takes longer then most because he's not scrolled out to 120 everything. You expect everyone to be able to play like you...well we don't do stop making others feel inferior.