Dear Kyronix, nobody likes fiendish calling AI. It takes otherwise fun encounters and turns them

into tedious frustration-fests. Why do you hate fun?

I mean the idea of a strong boss summoning minions is great, but it doesnt have to summon enough minions to overrun a small nation. it's a bit over the top. and by a bit i mean my allnames macro makes my PC catch on fire.

@Kyronix I counted 57 spawn corpses at one point (after some had already disappeared), while there as part of a 2 man team. I sure hope it doesn't scale the spawn according to the number of players!!!!

I don't hate fun.  I'll take your hyperbole in jest and try to offer some insight...

Boss mobs quickly become overhwhelmed by player pets.  This was true before the Pet Revamp,and given the level of power a pet can reach now, is even more true.  Take a look at any EM event, and you will find even the most beefed up, insanely statted boss mob getting demolished by multiple attacking pets.  They generally don't stand a chance.

With regard to Shadowguard, it currently provides some of, if not the, highest end loot in the world.  The bosses in Shadowguard (and elsewhere) employ a number of AIs to make the fights dynamic and challenging, one of which is fiendish calling.  Previously, this AI had an issue where it would not proc from pet damage.  This lead to a situation where the bosses in the Shadowguard finale could become trapped (for the most part, sans for teleportation abilities) by attacking pets and stand no chance against the onslaught.  The owners would simply need to stand in the back and spam heal.  

With the change to Fiendish Calling, pet damage will now have a chance to proc fiendish calling like all other damage classes.  It is now necessary to control accessory spawn while making sound tactical decisions on how you deal with the added threat.  Do you take a pet that deals more attacks but with less damage, or do you take the howitzer that fires slowly but deadly - and thusly procs less?  How will you structure your party to dispatch accessory minions and heal your tanks?  Will your pocket bard hang back and regenerate your life with enchanting songs while provoking minions to attack one another?  Will your front line fighters cross heal and stand toe-to-toe with even the deadliest monsters?  

That all being said, we put changes such as this on TC for feedback, and given the nature of fiendish calling, we will be evaluating it's performance and adjusting to achieve the following goals, 

• Balancing the frequency of the AI executing based on the number of hits a standard boss takes.
• Allowing adequate cooldown for accessory spawn to be dispatched before another wave is summoned.
• Ensuring all summons can be targeted by barding abilities.
• Evaluating the health of summons as compared to their normal templates (this happens now, where summons have a fraction of the health of their normal counterparts).  

See you on TC!

@Kyronix Thanks for the feedback. Your comment "Ensuring all summons can be targeted by barding abilities" Would be helpful. As it stands now, I know that some of the "summons" cannot be barded. But I can't remember which ones (I'm thinking the Ninjas and Skeletal Dragons for starters). Sorry.

@Kyronix it was definitely in jest - and i actually do like the idea of it. my problem is when it becomes excessive to the point where you just want to give up. Doom/DF gets like that. Group of tamers? Manageable, provided you control the adds. Sampire? Manageable (in a fraction of the time the tamers can do it). Tamer(s) and a sampire? complete and total chaos for the tamers. theyr'e gonna die. A lot. The spawn just comes too fast and too heavy given the nature of sampire / dexer damage. Their panicked frenzy may or may not kill the sampire too.

It definitely spices things up and makes the encounter more interesting with the spawn adds. It's good to have to make tactical decisions as the encounter develops in order to be successful. It's also important to remember that putting together an ideal hunting group of 4-5 different classes isn't always possible on a lot of shards. I appreciate that you're keeping an eye on TC1 and open to revising as necessary though - I'm just worried that roof will turn into another DF-like encounter that nobody really wants to do anymore.

Kyronix said:

I don't hate fun.  I'll take your hyperbole in jest and try to offer some insight...

Boss mobs quickly become overhwhelmed by player pets.  This was true before the Pet Revamp,and given the level of power a pet can reach now, is even more true.  Take a look at any EM event, and you will find even the most beefed up, insanely statted boss mob getting demolished by multiple attacking pets.  They generally don't stand a chance

I look forward to testing this tonight.  However a couple things:

regarding em mobs... majority of the events I've been to the past year have been valorite elemental... it's not the pets taking them down..... it's the armies of (macroed) throwers  as a tamer mage this has been more than frustrating at events.

Kyronix said:

With the change to Fiendish Calling, pet damage will now have a chance to proc fiendish calling like all other damage classes.  It is now necessary to control accessory spawn while making sound tactical decisions on how you deal with the added threat.  Do you take a pet that deals more attacks but with less damage, or do you take the howitzer that fires slowly but deadly - and thusly procs less?  

Except that's not really the reality of pets in game.  All properly trained pets will have 150 stam, they will all hit the same speed.  All properly trained pets will have 700 str so melee hit damage is not the variable, other than resists and the exception of the few overlapped str animals in game. The variable then becomes their magical ability and their innate abilities.  This is yet another nail in the coffin to Magery or true magic pets.  They already are at a disadvantage due to their intensity value because magery has too high of an intensity cost for what it gives (I'm open to debating the costs of magics with you and how things like healing need a high intensity cost~). Now further so due to the negative effect it will have on the spawn due to its more rapid small hits.  Something like the greater dragon, with magic and bleed could be crippling, yet a lot of tamers still use these due to not understanding the taming system.

Based on your howitzer statement and It being based on number of hits, that makes it a very narrow pet spec you will bring to the roof (but it's one I have already used).  It will be nice to tell mages vollems to gtfo though and the cu too~. 

Perhaps something more in alignment with the anon/flesh renderer menchanic where it procs after a certain amount of damage done.

As a returned player I see why roof is getting fixed and tamers just will have to suck it up.  Some encounters just shouldnt be solo'd and so its good to bring a group, not to mention its faster usually as well.  

EM boss fights are ok aside from the mob that does AoE DP?  Thats prob the most annoying thing going on during those fights, its like cast greater cure then greater heal and repeat and hope the lag doesnt mess your spells up too much and you die.  (as a tamer there)

Client needs some sorely needed optimizations as well. A newer pc shouldnt really be having issues when hitting all names or doing other things.   

Syncros said:

As a returned player I see why roof is getting fixed and tamers just will have to suck it up.  Some encounters just shouldnt be solo'd and so its good to bring a group, not to mention its faster usually as well.  

EM boss fights are ok aside from the mob that does AoE DP?  Thats prob the most annoying thing going on during those fights, its like cast greater cure then greater heal and repeat and hope the lag doesnt mess your spells up too much and you die.  (as a tamer there)

Client needs some sorely needed optimizations as well. A newer pc shouldnt really be having issues when hitting all names or doing other things.   

Odd how you claim tamers solo it yet no one has come forward to say they do.  You know why?  Because it's not doable.

I agree that there should be damage thresholds that have a chance to proc Fiendish Calling, instead of every hit. This would balance the encounters around any group comp and not require you to run a very specific combo to be the most efficient. I believe that is the balance you are looking for in content @Kyronix. People would still need to put in thought to how they play, but it would allow a more diverse set of specs to participate.

Let's look at an example encounter:

1. Fiendish Calling has a chance to trigger on any damage
So in this case, you are penalized for bringing a variety of things to the encounter:

• Any weapon with an On-Hit effect
• Any pet with Bleed
• Mages casting summons
• Any Damage-over-Time spells
• Newer players with non-perfect gear (they do less damage)

Having Fiendish Calling trigger on any damage done is what currently leads to the very streaky spawn of adds. I'm not sure what the current safeguard is for a FC trigger, but I know I've seen 3+ back to back triggers in as many seconds. 

This often leads to VERY chaotic fights, with many deaths, and people generally feeling extremely frustrated and demoralized. They can plan and prepare all they want, but when it is 100% RNG based, there is only so much you can do.

2. Fiendish Calling has a chance to trigger after X amount of damage
In this case, you can not only directly control how difficult the encounter should be by adjusting for X in the formula, but you also make it possible for a wider variety of players to participate in the content without having perfect specs.

For instance, if you have FC trigger (either a % chance, or guaranteed) after every 500 damage received, the group can correctly anticipate the adds better and be prepared to deal with them. This would also not penalize pets with Bleed, weapons with on-hit effects, mage summons, newer/lesser geared player, or other smaller damage, as it all just adds to the counter for the next FC proc.

This would also give you great control over how difficult encounters could be. Adjust X to every 200 damage on encounters you want to be very difficult, and give the boss 10000 health. Now you know the group should receive 50 FC procs in the encounter. You can adjust it to every 1000 health for bosses intended to be easier, and now you know the group only has to deal with ~10 FC procs for that boss (assuming 10000 health).

I understand that RNG adds an element of suspense and on-your-toes thinking to encounters, but I really feel there needs to be a balance between RNG and predictability. 

Kyronix said:

I don't hate fun.  I'll take your hyperbole in jest and try to offer some insight...

Boss mobs quickly become overhwhelmed by player pets.  This was true before the Pet Revamp,and given the level of power a pet can reach now, is even more true.  Take a look at any EM event, and you will find even the most beefed up, insanely statted boss mob getting demolished by multiple attacking pets.  They generally don't stand a chance.

With regard to Shadowguard, it currently provides some of, if not the, highest end loot in the world.  The bosses in Shadowguard (and elsewhere) employ a number of AIs to make the fights dynamic and challenging, one of which is fiendish calling.  Previously, this AI had an issue where it would not proc from pet damage.  This lead to a situation where the bosses in the Shadowguard finale could become trapped (for the most part, sans for teleportation abilities) by attacking pets and stand no chance against the onslaught.  The owners would simply need to stand in the back and spam heal.  

With the change to Fiendish Calling, pet damage will now have a chance to proc fiendish calling like all other damage classes.  It is now necessary to control accessory spawn while making sound tactical decisions on how you deal with the added threat.  Do you take a pet that deals more attacks but with less damage, or do you take the howitzer that fires slowly but deadly - and thusly procs less?  How will you structure your party to dispatch accessory minions and heal your tanks?  Will your pocket bard hang back and regenerate your life with enchanting songs while provoking minions to attack one another?  Will your front line fighters cross heal and stand toe-to-toe with even the deadliest monsters?  

That all being said, we put changes such as this on TC for feedback, and given the nature of fiendish calling, we will be evaluating it's performance and adjusting to achieve the following goals, 

• Balancing the frequency of the AI executing based on the number of hits a standard boss takes.
• Allowing adequate cooldown for accessory spawn to be dispatched before another wave is summoned.
• Ensuring all summons can be targeted by barding abilities.
• Evaluating the health of summons as compared to their normal templates (this happens now, where summons have a fraction of the health of their normal counterparts).  

See you on TC!

The taming revamp brought many returning players back to the game and many new players have a chance to do higher end content. That they were not able to do before. People have been playing longer, more often and having fun.  Why is that something that needs to be changed???

Many players like to play a tamer.  They would like to also be able to defend a Fel spawn, where thay can get scrolls.  They cant.  Sampires can.

They would like to go to Doom and get a slight chance at the most expensive item in the game.  They can't unless they slowly take down the spawn for an hour and half the party gave up in frustration. Sampires take 15 minutes to solo Doom.

You are comparing this to an EM event where most of the players dont have a good suit or weapon or skills because they are from a different shard.  Sure the resident players will have a better chance against lousy templates and greater dragons.

We don't want to play a Sampire.

Shadowguard is instanced.  It affects nobody but the players inside at the time. The tamers are not stealing kills from the sampires or anyone else.

A Hawkwind robe cost 35M last year before the revamp. The Obi 15M.  Look at Atl for a week and you will see the prices are about the same.

The tamers doing shadowguard did not flood the market with items.

The loot:

Sure you get a few legendaries after a lot of time spent doing the floors.  But, how many of those legendaries are kept or put on a vendor.  Most are dropped on the ground outside so they players can go try again.  I've never found a good enough dex piece to keep.  The only piece I have found there is a shield that I found with 4 others with the same stats but different types.  Its worth maybe 10M.

For the good of UO you as a developer should ask:

Was this change needed?

Were tamers in Shadowguard ruining the economy?

Will this bring new or returning players to the game?

Will this cause player to play less because of frustration?

Will this cause accounts to be dropped?

I shall say this once and only once. I agree with Kyronix. 

Kyronix, you should get used to this reaction from hard core easy mode blues. They cry wolf hard over this, imagine the outrage when you fix the auto pet logout exploits that they’ve been abusing so much that they think it’s real gameplay to log out. 

If only they didn’t log back in..

Kyronix said:

With regard to Shadowguard, it currently provides some of, if not the, highest end loot in the world.

Loot really needs to be adjusted. There's too many newer and returning players that will never make it in Roof while they watch people farm it daily with great reward. I know it's been stated there is a chance at major to legendary artifacts from other things but there really isn't. I have farmed some high end material and I have only gotten 3 usable pieces since the loot change.

Science has proven discouragement is the leading cause of subscription cancelation.

The great unwashed don’t actually know what they want. They think they want things really easy, they think they want milk and cookies uo. But they don’t yet realise that the harder the goal, the greater the sense of achievement. They don’t yet realise that although it’s more difficult, it’s more fun to play with the cheats turned off. 

I can see how being a game developer is like being a goalie, people only remember if you get it wrong. But on this you’re not wrong. But they will never thank you in the long run. Just know yourself what it right and be happy knowing what you do is for the good of the game.

Pawain said:

Kyronix said:

I don't hate fun.  I'll take your hyperbole in jest and try to offer some insight...

Boss mobs quickly become overhwhelmed by player pets.  This was true before the Pet Revamp,and given the level of power a pet can reach now, is even more true.  Take a look at any EM event, and you will find even the most beefed up, insanely statted boss mob getting demolished by multiple attacking pets.  They generally don't stand a chance.

With regard to Shadowguard, it currently provides some of, if not the, highest end loot in the world.  The bosses in Shadowguard (and elsewhere) employ a number of AIs to make the fights dynamic and challenging, one of which is fiendish calling.  Previously, this AI had an issue where it would not proc from pet damage.  This lead to a situation where the bosses in the Shadowguard finale could become trapped (for the most part, sans for teleportation abilities) by attacking pets and stand no chance against the onslaught.  The owners would simply need to stand in the back and spam heal.  

With the change to Fiendish Calling, pet damage will now have a chance to proc fiendish calling like all other damage classes.  It is now necessary to control accessory spawn while making sound tactical decisions on how you deal with the added threat.  Do you take a pet that deals more attacks but with less damage, or do you take the howitzer that fires slowly but deadly - and thusly procs less?  How will you structure your party to dispatch accessory minions and heal your tanks?  Will your pocket bard hang back and regenerate your life with enchanting songs while provoking minions to attack one another?  Will your front line fighters cross heal and stand toe-to-toe with even the deadliest monsters?  

That all being said, we put changes such as this on TC for feedback, and given the nature of fiendish calling, we will be evaluating it's performance and adjusting to achieve the following goals, 

• Balancing the frequency of the AI executing based on the number of hits a standard boss takes.
• Allowing adequate cooldown for accessory spawn to be dispatched before another wave is summoned.
• Ensuring all summons can be targeted by barding abilities.
• Evaluating the health of summons as compared to their normal templates (this happens now, where summons have a fraction of the health of their normal counterparts).  

See you on TC!

The taming revamp brought many returning players back to the game and many new players have a chance to do higher end content. That they were not able to do before. People have been playing longer, more often and having fun.  Why is that something that needs to be changed???

Many players like to play a tamer.  They would like to also be able to defend a Fel spawn, where thay can get scrolls.  They cant.  Sampires can.

They would like to go to Doom and get a slight chance at the most expensive item in the game.  They can't unless they slowly take down the spawn for an hour and half the party gave up in frustration. Sampires take 15 minutes to solo Doom.

You are comparing this to an EM event where most of the players dont have a good suit or weapon or skills because they are from a different shard.  Sure the resident players will have a better chance against lousy templates and greater dragons.

We don't want to play a Sampire.

Shadowguard is instanced.  It affects nobody but the players inside at the time. The tamers are not stealing kills from the sampires or anyone else.

A Hawkwind robe cost 35M last year before the revamp. The Obi 15M.  Look at Atl for a week and you will see the prices are about the same.

The tamers doing shadowguard did not flood the market with items.

The loot:

Sure you get a few legendaries after a lot of time spent doing the floors.  But, how many of those legendaries are kept or put on a vendor.  Most are dropped on the ground outside so they players can go try again.  I've never found a good enough dex piece to keep.  The only piece I have found there is a shield that I found with 4 others with the same stats but different types.  Its worth maybe 10M.

For the good of UO you as a developer should ask:

Was this change needed?

Were tamers in Shadowguard ruining the economy?

Will this bring new or returning players to the game?

Will this cause player to play less because of frustration?

Will this cause accounts to be dropped?

Mervyn said:

Kyronix, you should get used to this reaction from hard core easy mode blues. They cry wolf hard over this, imagine the outrage when you fix the auto pet logout exploits that they’ve been abusing so much that they think it’s real gameplay to log out. 

If only they didn’t log back in..

We wont.  You would love it.  All the shards would be Fel only because no one is in Trammel.

Your play style is in Fel. You cry over not being able to kill the mount of your victim. 

Removing an area from a large group of players who have been doing the content for a year, Why do you think powerscrolls get to stay in Fel.  

Removing one of the few fun things to do in a group UO helps nobody.  We have a commonality with other tamers and we like to play in groups with similar tastes.

Now we are told by @Kyronix ; to take a sampire with us.  Why?  The sampire  or most any Melee toon can do the content alone in 1/4 the time it takes to do on a few tamers that want to complete it.  This is now.  So a group of tamers need to take 3 or 4 times as long and die over and over. ( the main person in the group would be the hidden mage to Res the tamers).

Why does the bug need fixed?  How long does it take you to do the roof with your Ossein Ram?

Stop the spawn for everyone then.  The spawn is the bug.

Stop summons from getting the spawn.  Maybe more players will make Mages and Mystics.

They cant play their now.

Pawain said:

Why does the bug need fixed?  How long does it take you to do the roof with your Ossein Ram?

Stop the spawn for everyone then.  The spawn is the bug.

Stop summons from getting the spawn.  Maybe more players will make Mages and Mystics.

They cant play their now.

He just seems to be in cloud9 knowing his report are leading to the nerf. A huge amount of his posts seem to be to antagonize most people.  I guess that's one form of entertainment. 

How about they award everyone with a winners trophy just for turning up?

Okay so look, you can’t afk solo the roof anymore, have you stopped to think that now nobody can afk solo the roof so when you do manage to find a friend to do it with, your reward will be worth more?

Mervyn said:

The great unwashed don’t actually know what they want. They think they want things really easy, they think they want milk and cookies uo. But they don’t yet realise that the harder the goal, the greater the sense of achievement. They don’t yet realise that although it’s more difficult, it’s more fun to play with the cheats turned off. 

I can see how being a game developer is like being a goalie, people only remember if you get it wrong. But on this you’re not wrong. But they will never thank you in the long run. Just know yourself what it right and be happy knowing what you do is for the good of the game.

I can only speak for myself, as I would not be so presumptuous as to speak on what others think or want. But for me, I don't play the game to fulfill my own need for a "sense of achievement". I feel I have done that in real life. I play the game for enjoyment. Do I enjoy the accomplishment of winning a good fight, you bet! But I do not depend on it in order to have a "greater sense of achievement". 

Like I said most people have no idea what they want. If they gave you what you think you want I’m sure you’d get bored fairly quickly and quit paying your subscription. 

Pawain said:

We wont.  You would love it.  All the shards would be Fel only because no one is in Trammel.

Your play style is in Fel. You cry over not being able to kill the mount of your victim. 

Removing an area from a large group of players who have been doing the content for a year, Why do you think powerscrolls get to stay in Fel.  

Removing one of the few fun things to do in a group UO helps nobody.  We have a commonality with other tamers and we like to play in groups with similar tastes.

Now we are told by @ Kyronix  to take a sampire with us.  Why?  The sampire  or most any Melee toon can do the content alone in 1/4 the time it takes to do on a few tamers that want to complete it.  This is now.  So a group of tamers need to take 3 or 4 times as long and die over and over. ( the main person in the group would be the hidden mage to Res the tamers).

Kronal said:
Odd how you claim tamers solo it yet no one has come forward to say they do.  You know why?  Because it's not doable.

I can solo eveything but the roof (havent tried) on my tamer since my pets arent 120's and fully trained up.   My friends can solo it on their sampires but its risky and takes a long time, just like some rooms on my tamer.     

drcossack said:

Pawain said:

We wont.  You would love it.  All the shards would be Fel only because no one is in Trammel.

Your play style is in Fel. You cry over not being able to kill the mount of your victim. 

Removing an area from a large group of players who have been doing the content for a year, Why do you think powerscrolls get to stay in Fel.  

Removing one of the few fun things to do in a group UO helps nobody.  We have a commonality with other tamers and we like to play in groups with similar tastes.

Now we are told by @ Kyronix  to take a sampire with us.  Why?  The sampire  or most any Melee toon can do the content alone in 1/4 the time it takes to do on a few tamers that want to complete it.  This is now.  So a group of tamers need to take 3 or 4 times as long and die over and over. ( the main person in the group would be the hidden mage to Res the tamers).

We've been over the Powerscroll issue over and over.  Why bring it up again?  Nobody is stopping you from doing Fel champ spawns and getting your own scrolls.

Question: Why are you so opposed to the sampire?  Do you remember the recent Doom community hunts on LS, where the tamers took forever to kill the Dark Fathers?  Who do you think helped you speed up those Dark Fathers, simply so you didn't have to run around non-stop and die repeatedly/watch your pets die repeatedly?  Oh, that's right, it was the two guys who were playing dexers.

Also, the spawn is NOT the bug.  Tamers' pets not triggering it is the bug.  Look at everything else that summons spawn while things are killing them: Barracoon, Neira, Abyssal Infernal, Dark Father, Underwater boss, and others I'm probably forgetting.  All of those can do it whether you use pets or not (although the Underwater Boss is limited to Paralithodes.)  Why is it only different for pets in Shadowguard, when it works properly literally everywhere else that it can happen?

As I said before, it's about nothing more than efficiency.  You can still work together with your group of tamers.  But there's no reason why you can't bring a sampire to speed things along.  I don't know about you, but using a bad group composition and needing 2+ hours to do something, when a better group composition can finish it in AT LEAST half the time, just isn't fun to me.

Im comparing the fact that they wont change powerscrolls to them changing the Roof after it has been in place for a year  for one persons enjoyment.  Prob Kyronix enjoys it also.

From reading some of the comments in this thread, I now understand how the crowd shouted to free Barabbas!

Syncros said:

Kronal said:
Odd how you claim tamers solo it yet no one has come forward to say they do.  You know why?  Because it's not doable.

I can solo eveything but the roof (havent tried) on my tamer since my pets arent 120's and fully trained up.   My friends can solo it on their sampires but its risky and takes a long time, just like some rooms on my tamer.     

This topic IS about the roof, not everything else. You will not be able to solo the roof with a tamer 120s or no 120s. You would have trouble killing some of the bosses with a single pet even with a full bard support.

Pawain said:

Im comparing the fact that they wont change powerscrolls to them changing the Roof after it has been in place for a year  for one persons enjoyment.  Prob Kyronix enjoys it also.

We just did 2 runs on Test Center...5 of us, all tamers, one bard tamer...2 dimeasaurs, a dread spider, a cu and a fire beetle for the first run. Kyronix said he cut the spawn in half from what it was yesterday, this is the first time I have been able to test it.

It was tricky, even cut in half the spawn was insane! BUT if you know what you're doing it's not bad at all.






The worst was Ju'nor.....we didn't have any deaths until him lol but we ran off, rezzed up, regrouped and got it done.

The second run we went in with different pets, some weaker...I brought my phoenix, most of the pets had some sort of AOE though so that helped a bit with spawn.

The second run was much worse..I think he might have upped the spawn a bit just to test...a LOT more deaths the second time around, a LOT more spawn...but we managed to get it done too.

He said he will be tweaking it a bit for the next publish, but from my point of view? IF you know what you're doing it's not bad at all. You have to pay attention and be good at healing pets and party members...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Pawain said:
For the good of UO you as a developer should ask:

Was this change needed?

Were tamers in Shadowguard ruining the economy?

Will this bring new or returning players to the game?

Will this cause player to play less because of frustration?

Will this cause accounts to be dropped?

Very well reasoned post. I would like to add another point for Kyronix. To me the idea behind any creative change in the game is to improve player engagement. Fiendish AI does the opposite.
First, let's clear up some misinformation that is being spread. You can't solo roof on a tamer. Even in group using a tamer requires constant interaction. There is no AFK mode. Tamers do die frequently on the roof.
But you know who can solo the roof? Yep, our friend the sampire. Currently casters are excluded from the roof altogether, and tamers require a group to do it. Instead of making changes that would allow casters to have meaningful participation, the new changes pretty much limit the viable templates to Sampires. Apart from this making for a very boring game, it is a huge turn off for all those returnees that we are getting with EJ. 
You can make a viable caster in a week. A tamer would need a month or more. A good Sampire suit (the kind that can do roof) may need year+ to be put together.This change limits the top content of the game to the template that has been overpowered to start with, and the one that is inaccessible to returning players within a reasonable span of time.
Shadowguard is grindy enough already where it's in no danger at all to flooding the market with Arties. Remove the fiendish AI altogether so that it's accessible to templates other than Sampires. Engage more players rather than driving them away.

Larisa said:

We just did 2 runs on Test Center...5 of us, all tamers, one bard tamer...2 dimeasaurs, a dread spider, a cu and a fire beetle for the first run. Kyronix said he cut the spawn in half from what it was yesterday, this is the first time I have been able to test it.

It was tricky, even cut in half the spawn was insane! BUT if you know what you're doing it's not bad at all.






The worst was Ju'nor.....we didn't have any deaths until him lol but we ran off, rezzed up, regrouped and got it done.

The second run we went in with different pets, some weaker...I brought my phoenix, most of the pets had some sort of AOE though so that helped a bit with spawn.

The second run was much worse..I think he might have upped the spawn a bit just to test...a LOT more deaths the second time around, a LOT more spawn...but we managed to get it done too.

He said he will be tweaking it a bit for the next publish, but from my point of view? IF you know what you're doing it's not bad at all. You have to pay attention and be good at healing pets and party members...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

There were plenty of us having fun before the change.  I never heard a player say, I really wish this was more difficult.

Cut the spawn by half again and it may be fine.

I again have to disagree with you Pawain, I’ve been in discord with other tamers doing the roof and we all for sure were bored. (Although it gave people the opportunity to play another game or browse the web at the same time) they all agreed it was so boring without spawn. 

Mervyn said:

I again have to disagree with you Pawain, I’ve been in discord with other tamers doing the roof and we all for sure were bored. (Although it gave people the opportunity to play another game or browse the web at the same time) they all agreed it was so boring without spawn. 

Then you should have told them to go to Doom if they want spawn.  Easy fix?

I dont believe anyone would talk to you anyway.

deleted

It's fine now....why do you want everything so easy? The roof before...at least for me..was a snore-fest...hardly any healing...nothing taking damage..no spawn to contend with....THAT isn't fun...for me anyway.

Mervyn said:

I again have to disagree with you Pawain, I’ve been in discord with other tamers doing the roof and we all for sure were bored. (Although it gave people the opportunity to play another game or browse the web at the same time) they all agreed it was so boring without spawn. 

Larisa said:

We just did 2 runs on Test Center...5 of us, all tamers, one bard tamer...2 dimeasaurs, a dread spider, a cu and a fire beetle for the first run. Kyronix said he cut the spawn in half from what it was yesterday, this is the first time I have been able to test it.

It was tricky, even cut in half the spawn was insane! BUT if you know what you're doing it's not bad at all.






The worst was Ju'nor.....we didn't have any deaths until him lol but we ran off, rezzed up, regrouped and got it done.

The second run we went in with different pets, some weaker...I brought my phoenix, most of the pets had some sort of AOE though so that helped a bit with spawn.

The second run was much worse..I think he might have upped the spawn a bit just to test...a LOT more deaths the second time around, a LOT more spawn...but we managed to get it done too.

He said he will be tweaking it a bit for the next publish, but from my point of view? IF you know what you're doing it's not bad at all. You have to pay attention and be good at healing pets and party members...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Thanks for not posting a picture of me wearing a death robe! 🙂

Larisa said:

...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Can you elaborate?

 As I mentioned, the 2nd run didn't get tweaked like the first one since they had to be done manually and I had to go.  In the first run, with the exception of the streaky-ness that will be resolved in the next update, you guys steam-rolled through each of the bosses with relative ease with the exception of Juo'nar.  Even then, when the party had to face some deaths, the arena was large enough to accommodate a regroup/rez area that got you all back in the fight fairly quickly.

I agree with @Larisa , it IS doable, but, in my opinion, the spawn from Jou'nar needs to be cut back. I will continue to test, especially after the next patch to check Jou'nar out. 

Kyronix said:

Larisa said:

...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Can you elaborate?

 As I mentioned, the 2nd run didn't get tweaked like the first one since they had to be done manually and I had to go.  In the first run, with the exception of the streaky-ness that will be resolved in the next update, you guys steam-rolled through each of the bosses with relative ease with the exception of Juo'nar.  Even then, when the party had to face some deaths, the arena was large enough to accommodate a regroup/rez area that got you all back in the fight fairly quickly.

@Kyronix Thanks for following along and seeing the results. I don't think it's all that bad. EXCEPT for that Jou'nar guy, and his spawn! He sucks. LOL

I mean I understand some ppl getting frustrated, but we are talking about the highest level end game thing you can do in all of UO. @Kyronix seems to be on the right track here, can we at least let him get through the trials and publish the final result before we declare the sky is falling?  

Kyronix said:

Larisa said:

...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Can you elaborate?

 As I mentioned, the 2nd run didn't get tweaked like the first one since they had to be done manually and I had to go.  In the first run, with the exception of the streaky-ness that will be resolved in the next update, you guys steam-rolled through each of the bosses with relative ease with the exception of Juo'nar.  Even then, when the party had to face some deaths, the arena was large enough to accommodate a regroup/rez area that got you all back in the fight fairly quickly.

Yeah I figured the second run was like it was yesterday.

The complaints I heard were:

Too much work for no to very little reward...spending 30+ minutes to do the rooms (Which we didn't have to do) and an hour on the roof, fighting all that spawn, pets dying and losing skill points which you have to work back up and then to get no drop at the end made it not fun for them.

I countered with:

It's basically end-game content and they don't want to flood the market with tons of arties/legendaries, getting items like that is supposed to be hard and you're supposed to have to work for it, and you don't get NOTHING...you get gold (I get roughly 200k sent to the bank before we get kicked out, which might not be a lot but it's not nothing!) and some pretty good loot off the corpse.

It took an hour to do the roof with six people?  Now we have to find 6 others who are roof ready and then spend an hour there.  

Does not sound like fun.

Larisa said:

Kyronix said:

Larisa said:

...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Can you elaborate?

 As I mentioned, the 2nd run didn't get tweaked like the first one since they had to be done manually and I had to go.  In the first run, with the exception of the streaky-ness that will be resolved in the next update, you guys steam-rolled through each of the bosses with relative ease with the exception of Juo'nar.  Even then, when the party had to face some deaths, the arena was large enough to accommodate a regroup/rez area that got you all back in the fight fairly quickly.

Yeah I figured the second run was like it was yesterday.

The complaints I heard were:

Too much work for no to very little reward...spending 30+ minutes to do the rooms (Which we didn't have to do) and an hour on the roof, fighting all that spawn, pets dying and losing skill points which you have to work back up and then to get no drop at the end made it not fun for them.

I countered with:

It's basically end-game content and they don't want to flood the market with tons of arties/legendaries, getting items like that is supposed to be hard and you're supposed to have to work for it, and you don't get NOTHING...you get gold (I get roughly 200k sent to the bank before we get kicked out, which might not be a lot but it's not nothing!) and some pretty good loot off the corpse.

Great feedback, and thanks for spending the time to test! May be interested to know your run time was around 25 minutes give or take,

Kyronix said:

Larisa said:

Kyronix said:

Larisa said:

...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Can you elaborate?

 As I mentioned, the 2nd run didn't get tweaked like the first one since they had to be done manually and I had to go.  In the first run, with the exception of the streaky-ness that will be resolved in the next update, you guys steam-rolled through each of the bosses with relative ease with the exception of Juo'nar.  Even then, when the party had to face some deaths, the arena was large enough to accommodate a regroup/rez area that got you all back in the fight fairly quickly.

Yeah I figured the second run was like it was yesterday.

The complaints I heard were:

Too much work for no to very little reward...spending 30+ minutes to do the rooms (Which we didn't have to do) and an hour on the roof, fighting all that spawn, pets dying and losing skill points which you have to work back up and then to get no drop at the end made it not fun for them.

I countered with:

It's basically end-game content and they don't want to flood the market with tons of arties/legendaries, getting items like that is supposed to be hard and you're supposed to have to work for it, and you don't get NOTHING...you get gold (I get roughly 200k sent to the bank before we get kicked out, which might not be a lot but it's not nothing!) and some pretty good loot off the corpse.

Great feedback, and thanks for spending the time to test! May be interested to know your run time was around 25 minutes give or take,

You know me, I LOVE testing stuff! It was my pleasure! And only 25 minutes for the first run? it felt like a LOT longer lol...all that spawn! But I had a blast...I felt like I was actually working for something...I am looking forward to this change 🙂

Ran it three times tonight, this was without Kyronix to adjust the spawn down for us.

Spellweaver Tamer(without focus) w/ AOE Pet & Sampire
Spellweaver Tamer(without focus) w/ Single Target Pet & Sampire
Spellweaver tamer (without focus) and Necro Tamer w/AOE and Single target pet (non-optimal pets).

All were doable.  Sampire and Single target pet was the quickest.

Two tamers w/AOE AND Single target was definately doable.  We messed around a lot.

Some observations:

Jou'nar was the only one which presented any challenge, for a couple of reasons (but still extremely doable)

1.   Mortal Strike from Banshees.
2.   Streakiness, within seconds of the pull 1 set of Skele dragons had spawn, within seconds of that, a second set spawned.
3.   Chain pulls into Jou'nar, like nonstop
4.   Occasional para from adds and consume dropping as a result (mostly due to Jou'nar's chain pulling)

I threw down a poison field on Virtuebane to see what would happen.  HAHAHA~  Over 10 different add waves spawned because of that alone. Just in case anyone was wondering if small damage has an effect.... IT DOES!  

I only kept record of Ozzy.  Took 10 minutes for the two pets to kill it, and we had 16 add waves spawn in that time.

We experimented a lot with the two tamers so we took our time.  Would guess under 30 minutes to kill it with 2 of us if we were to go again with the current add spawn rate.

So my takeaway from people who have actually tried it is. They thought they wanted easy mode but when presented with a challenge and overcame it, they were given a higher sense of achievement and enjoyment. 

Maybe now it’s time to start riding the bicycle with the training wheels off?

Perhaps you’d all also enjoy the content more if you couldn’t just log out to prevent your pets dying. Maybe take a veterinarian with you to res those swampies for the sampires?

Who reported the lack of spawn as a bug?  Mervyn
Who is spreading the misinformation that it can be solo'd by a tamer afk?  Mervyn again

Maybe it is a bug, and maybe it does need to be fixed, just as long as everyone is aware that it's nowhere near as easy as Mervyn likes to make out and extra spawn from this fix doesn't make it OTT.

I only ever go there with my alliance friends, we are a mixed group of tamers, mystic weavers, an archer or sometimes two and I usually go on my bard with provo masteries running.  As it stands the only one of the four we manage to do with minimum extra mobs is Annon, all the rest summon a lot, and while I provo as much as I can given the wait time between uses, most of Juanor's summons can't be provo'd and you can't provo anything onto Virtuebane.

The group has already abandoned Doom as no longer fun, we don't want to have to abandon this too.  Doom would be ok if we could do one dark father at a time, but the leash is too short to do that. 

I don't, won't, play a sampire. Personally I don't think such a character should be possible. You can't be 'good' and 'evil' both at the same time. Chiv and Necro should not be possible in the same template.  But that's just my personal opinion and choice.

 Petra_Fyde said:

Who reported the lack of spawn as a bug?  Mervyn
Who is spreading the misinformation that it can be solo'd by a tamer afk?  Mervyn again

Maybe it is a bug, and maybe it does need to be fixed, just as long as everyone is aware that it's nowhere near as easy as Mervyn likes to make out and extra spawn from this fix doesn't make it OTT.

I only ever go there with my alliance friends, we are a mixed group of tamers, mystic weavers, an archer or sometimes two and I usually go on my bard with provo masteries running.  As it stands the only one of the four we manage to do with minimum extra mobs is Annon, all the rest summon a lot, and while I provo as much as I can given the wait time between uses, most of Juanor's summons can't be provo'd and you can't provo anything onto Virtuebane.

The group has already abandoned Doom as no longer fun, we don't want to have to abandon this too.  Doom would be ok if we could do one dark father at a time, but the leash is too short to do that. 

I don't, won't, play a sampire. Personally I don't think such a character should be possible. You can't be 'good' and 'evil' both at the same time. Chiv and Necro should not be possible in the same template.  But that's just my personal opinion and choice.

This is just a perfect post, I'd like to officially invite you to be my winglady in Felucca Petra, you display a lovely combatative attitude. ❤️

• Harrassing Mervyn - Tick Box.
• Team Player - Tick Box.
• Understand the root flaw regarding Sampires - Tick Box.
• Beautiful Grumpy Attitude - Tick Box.

We need more players like you. 🙂  

Mervyn said:

So my takeaway from people who have actually tried it is. They thought they wanted easy mode but when presented with a challenge and overcame it, they were given a higher sense of achievement and enjoyment.

 
Dont try to speak for me.  Or anyone else.  I had no problem with the change, just that how it spawns needs evaluating, and Kyronix is doing that. So please, again, don't speak for me.

Wow @Petra_Fyde I totally agree with everything you just said!
I don't have a Sampire, I don't want to have a Sampire, Sampires should not exist and the Devs should have made that template impossible to use.
I don't play a tamer either, I don't want to play a tamer.
The Roof used to be one of my favourite group activities, GROUP as in 6-8 of us usually, I don't know anyone who could solo it. The Rooms are a necessary chore but not fun.
Let's just re-name UO as Sampires Online and be done with it.

People also should try adjusting their pets, maybe take one with frienzied whirlwind rather than sticking armour ignore on every single pet they own.

Mervyn said:

People also should try adjusting their pets, maybe take one with frienzied whirlwind rather than sticking armour ignore on every single pet they own.

drcossack said:

Mervyn said:

People also should try adjusting their pets, maybe take one with frienzied whirlwind rather than sticking armour ignore on every single pet they own.

great idea, take a multi-hit ability like Frenzied Whirlwind to the roof on TC where pets can trigger spawn through Fiendish Calling.  Do you have any idea how bad an idea that sounds?  Do you WANT tamers to get destroyed?

The best way to help control the spawn is to have pets with some sort of AOE ability....we had pets with goo, pets with WW, pets with wither, pets with poison....it helps the spawn control A LOT.

drcossack said:

great idea, take a multi-hit ability like Frenzied Whirlwind to the roof on TC where pets can trigger spawn through Fiendish Calling.  Do you have any idea how bad an idea that sounds?  Do you WANT tamers to get destroyed?

Thats actually what we used last night, it wasn't a problem. However saying that, I disagree with Larisa, I think taking the amount of pets she had with AOE most likely increased the spawn, particularly the goo/wither/etc.  

There are ways to control the spawn, it all comes down to tactics. I would have loved to see how they engaged the encounter. 

Lol picking up the gold. I think you need to reassess your time management skills. Meaning, stop picking up the gold. It’s the equivalent of instead of buying reagents in a shop, going out into the forest and picking them up one by one.

Also, pardon my ignorance but what has changed in despise?

People are crying foul because pets and tamers are now subjected to the same experience as every other class...? It's hardly the end of the world. As some have mentioned, it's completely possible if you go in tactically. It's a higher level encounter, it's not meant to be easy.

We ran several runs on TC. Juo'nar is the only one that can be a problem, and that's more due to his "pull in" mechanic than anything else:

Khyro said:

We ran several runs on TC. Juo'nar is the only one that can be a problem, and that's more due to his "pull in" mechanic than anything else:

I can’t speak for everyone but I’m afraid I’m going to take umbrage with the title of this thread. I would actually say that a lot of the following people would approve the changes:
1 anyone who plays any template other than a tamer.
2 many tamers who found it boring. 

And that probably constitutes the vast majority, rather than “nobody”.

Mervyn said:

Lol picking up the gold. I think you need to reassess your time management skills. Meaning, stop picking up the gold. It’s the equivalent of instead of buying reagents in a shop, going out into the forest and picking them up one by one.

Also, pardon my ignorance but what has changed in despise?

Well said @MissE I couldn't have said it better myself! 

Okay I didn’t realise you played siege. But then your issue is specific to siege.

CovenantX said:

I'll just leave this here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxZl_qtCW5k

However, if this "Fiendish Call" ability gets any adjustments such as a cooldown or reduced chance to proc, is it also going to affect other encounters that have this ability as well?

personally I don't think it's that bad, but I don't use tamers for the most part anyway.

However, I won't complain if it spawns less often for the templates I use either. =D

How is it that in the beginning of this video you had to switch between clients to get everything set up, but once you started attacking with the main client you were able to use a bard ability without tabbing over to that client ? Asking for a friend.

That must have been it, it happened while the warrior was the active screen, and I heard the instrument...not a big deal, thanks for clarifying.

The funny part is that the dev are not listening people.
Look only 1 or 2 people agreed with this change and over 100 complain.
This game/team is such a joke.

Where are you getting your numbers? Are you suggesting that 98% of the players are selfish tamers? There are even tamers (like myself) that are fine with it. You should give people more credit. And not think that the vocal unsavory characters are representative of a majority.

Some turkeys are voting against Christmas, let us cancel Christmas.

I was actually going to go through this thread and count how many people were actually against the bug fix, until i realised that even the OP said it would spice things up and would be okay if the spawn is manageable.

Mervyn said:

I was actually going to go through this thread and count how many people were actually against the bug fix, until i realised that even the OP said it would spice things up and would be okay if the spawn is manageable.

drcossack said:

Mervyn said:

I was actually going to go through this thread and count how many people were actually against the bug fix, until i realised that even the OP said it would spice things up and would be okay if the spawn is manageable.

I'd have to go through the two forums, but I think the ones complaining the most are Pawain, who hasn't even tested this, and Malagaste, who, well, complains about everything.

Honestly, Shadowguard is boring, and it'll be even more so after the publish.

You can add me to the unhappy ones. 
Most people who do roof do not know that a publish about to drop, much less what's in it. Devs can look forward to a nice pancakes-storm once it goes production.

Agreed with( bits of)Merv and Kryonix. It's not fun being an archer or a mage and feeling like you're almost in the way of tamers, across the revamped dungeons and the new bosses. 

Some do of course enjoy a single or solo boss fight, however. But I just think that single steroid-fuelled bosses aren't the way to go - throw some spawn in for fun and it keeps things dynamic. Doesnt have to be tough to kill - just lots and lots! Then again, perhaps I've played too much "They Are Billions" lately..

Sliss said:

drcossack said:

Mervyn said:

I was actually going to go through this thread and count how many people were actually against the bug fix, until i realised that even the OP said it would spice things up and would be okay if the spawn is manageable.

I'd have to go through the two forums, but I think the ones complaining the most are Pawain, who hasn't even tested this, and Malagaste, who, well, complains about everything.

Honestly, Shadowguard is boring, and it'll be even more so after the publish.

You can add me to the unhappy ones. 
Most people who do roof do not know that a publish about to drop, much less what's in it. Devs can look forward to a nice pancakes-storm once it goes production.

Mervyn said:

Where are you getting your numbers? Are you suggesting that 98% of the players are selfish tamers? There are even tamers (like myself) that are fine with it. You should give people more credit. And not think that the vocal unsavory characters are representative of a majority.

Some turkeys are voting against Christmas, let us cancel Christmas.

I was actually going to go through this thread and count how many people were actually against the bug fix, until i realised that even the OP said it would spice things up and would be okay if the spawn is manageable.

I will admit my title was entirely facile, I like to exaggerate. 

If we're being totally honest, I've only been back in the game for six months and actually haven't even done shadowguard yet. I have no issue at all with the addition of extra spawn, I'd just hate to see it become like doom which is WAY over the top between the rate adds spawn, the leash, and the teleporting.

I like to play a tamer since my return (was pure mage for everything in my original go-round), but I've been learning my sampire the past few weeks and am really enjoying that as well. I do think it's important to make endgame encounters doable for all properly equipped, viable pvm templates though. Not so folks can easily solo things, but so a group of people can bring the characters they *enjoy* playing and have a reasonable chance at completing the encounter without it becoming overly tiresome or frustrating. Me? Give me a tool and i'll use it - doesn't much matter to me if i'm racking up hits with a cu or an axe or a bow. Many are attached to a specific type of character though, and I don't necessarily think they should be penalized for it provided it's a usable pvm template and not something ridiculous.