Parry Suggestion

In efforts to create some more diversity to the plethora of skills and limited realistically useful builds, I would like to suggest parry to receive a special move.
Shield Bash - 3s Silence.
20 Stam cost.

It could run as a toggle like the other special moves. Upon a successful hit, target cannot cast and functions as an interrupt.

Any feedback?
 

Dewderonomy

Grandmaster
Parry is useful for what it does. The problem isn't with Parry; it's with the base mechanics of combat. With such high ranges of weapon damage and AR absorption, hit locations, and the natural aspect of skill hierarchy (ie, some skills will always be more useful than others), Parrying is just second-fiddle to the more common skills in PvP and PvM.

I believe the slayer armors might fix it for PvM, but when most asshats are running 4 stun mages between two accounts, you just can't validate the use of a skill that helps ONLY against dexxers, especially when even then a war hammer can roll high damage with a crushing blow bonus against a non-shielded part, or even against the shield with a low armor save, still taking 30-40 damage straight up.
 
Parry is useful for what it does. The problem isn't with Parry; it's with the base mechanics of combat. With such high ranges of weapon damage and AR absorption, hit locations, and the natural aspect of skill hierarchy (ie, some skills will always be more useful than others), Parrying is just second-fiddle to the more common skills in PvP and PvM.

I believe the slayer armors might fix it for PvM, but when most asshats are running 4 stun mages between two accounts, you just can't validate the use of a skill that helps ONLY against dexxers, especially when even then a war hammer can roll high damage with a crushing blow bonus against a non-shielded part, or even against the shield with a low armor save, still taking 30-40 damage straight up.

I agree with you on parry and the 'might' on the slayer armors.

It just saddens me when I open up a skill menu and see all these skills and most of them are just a novelty and core combat gameplay is pigeonholed into less than 15 skills.
 

Dewderonomy

Grandmaster
I concur. But that issue is not with the skills, but with the players. If they really wanted expanded gameplay, cool new skills and uses for said skills, diversity in templates, and so on, we'd see a UO:R/AoS uoforever, not this.
 

halygon

Grandmaster
Actually the problems are with the skills. Almost all of the skills that are not used, were not in use in the pre-t2a days. The original dream of ultima online was never fully realized due to budget constraints and a lot of the skills that are not used were part of that dream. Skills like camping, begging, item identification, spirit speak, and forensic evaluation have little value to the actual game and never have.

Other skills have fallen into disuse due to 3rd party programs such as uoassist, razor, uosteam, etc. With as quickly as a Mage can drink potions and use special moves (macros) on the run has limited how dexxors can fight them. Most dexxors in the old days did not have magery, but now it's a required skill, mostly to be able to keep up with healing, curing, and buffing so that mages do not instantly roll them. Add magery and suddenly a dexxor gets one less skill.. Parry gets cut.
 

Dewderonomy

Grandmaster
Actually the problems are with the skills. Almost all of the skills that are not used, were not in use in the pre-t2a days. The original dream of ultima online was never fully realized due to budget constraints and a lot of the skills that are not used were part of that dream. Skills like camping, begging, item identification, spirit speak, and forensic evaluation have little value to the actual game and never have.
Those skills had uses, but they were not AS USEFUL as other skills. Back when you couldn't min/max, I had enough Spirit Speak to attempt to talk to ghosts - back before you had ready access to 3PP chat programs to talk to people, and certainly no Party or guild/ally chat. As a mercenary, I'd use Forensics to screen shot that I killed my marks to email and ICQ (lololol) my hits to employers for proof. I had enough Camping to insta-log out in the woods when I was a red without a house of my own to hide in.

The problem was the game was built around role-playing and immersion, and a lot of players were too busy finding ways to screw with people that it wasn't prudent to be a medium or a detective. OSI did eventually make these skills MORE useful, but even so, the bulk of players were not interested in it. Take Fallout 3 players; a bunch of the Let's Plays you find on YouTube will show 'em in power armor with energy/big weapons; I play a 10 Luck Sneak/Picker/Speech rogue-type template. While I enjoy that element of gameplay options, a lot don't - dare I say most, even if it is only a simple majority.

That extends to UO. It's easier to learn how to kill someone with a sword and loot their corpse than persuade them with words to bend a knee and give over their goods willingly.

Most dexxors in the old days did not have magery...
Most dexxers had magery, especially in the old days; come T2A, you rolled a tank or you got rolled. It wasn't until UO:R that pure dexxers could stand on their own two feet without crossing their fingers, hoping they flipped the imaginary quarter and it landed on heads 5 times in a row. Even then it was only because the third party programs - things like Razor and VOIP - were not in widespread, cooperative use to make it easy for groups to sync dump like they do now (not to mention anything other than UOA was banned as cheating in terms of 3PPs, and most of us couldn't convince our parents to dish out another $25 for a program to help with a game they were already pissed about paying for monthly anyway). That is, of course, if you even knew about the program back then, the piece of hot garbage it was.

There are always going to be skills that have more uses than other skills; you can't fix that. Making one skill too good or even just "better" simply moves it up a few rungs on the ladder of pertinence. Making these "useless" skills more useful means nothing; you'll see 'em more often than now ("at all" versus "never"), but people will still be rolling Taming, Magery, Fencing, and so on. No matter how good you make Spirit Speak, it can't automatically hit a fool in the face with an energy bolt - and that's what players want to do.
 

wreckognize

Grandmaster
''just fucking watch what happens''
quote from dewderonomy when his boat got invaded by pirates and GMs were on the way to remove them.
 

halygon

Grandmaster
Here is pretty much what I got outta that:
I agree with what you said, but I am still going to provide you with an ungodly long rant so that I don't appear to give in too easily.

And get it right, there were tank mages but most dexxors did NOT have magery. Magery was a terrible skill to try to train. It took literally weeks and/or months to train to GM. Most people refused to take that on. Also remember that afk macroing (or macroing at all) was illegal and a ban able offense. Most dexxors had enough training problems with resist and parry to add magery to the list.

Also, I never said those skills were useless.. I said they have little value. So they were novelties even back then. And if you had camping then I probably hated your ass as you are one of those guys that screwed up my skills cause you had to start a fire beside me. "You feel it would take a few moments to secure your camp..." Dammit!
 
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