Useless Plats

[Brother Timothy]

I remember there were many arts that I as a player was loath to plat, because platting them had no real in game benefits. Locate dreamer, sense dreamer, trail, give, and the list went on. Some I had to plat because of my position as a teacher, others because of made up rules about sphering. It would take a lot of work, but I believe it would be of great benefit to the game if this list could be minimized. Many ideas come to mind for this. The sot art break through system, scarcity of long duration alts, the oft suggested adding names when platting locate dreamer, are but a few.

[Shae]

We were given 'birth art' plats pretty freely at the end of this last run. I know there had been talk about increasing those as your dreamer advanced as an automatic thing, also. I can't remember if that actually went through, or not. So when your orbits increased, your birth arts increased at the same time. Orbit 7, Locate Dreamer 7, etc. The GM team had been handing out arts as rewards from the city when you did good jobs, etc, also.

[Koi-Spark]

I absolutely agree that there were, and still are, many arts that you'd rather just not bother with plateauing because there is no added benefit except maybe a fraction of a second shaved off the evoke time. If anyone has any ideas on how to improve those kinds of arts, I'd love to hear them! I'm personally all for making improvements to arts whenever possible, especially arts that really don't make much impact on game balance.

I'd like to look more into the possibility of adding names to the Locate Dreamer list, for instance, but I think the limitation there was with server packet sizes, but it may be something we can address/update in the future.

[Dakkoth]

I absolutely agree that there were, and still are, many arts that you'd rather just not bother with plateauing because there is no added benefit except maybe a fraction of a second shaved off the evoke time. If anyone has any ideas on how to improve those kinds of arts, I'd love to hear them! I'm personally all for making improvements to arts whenever possible, especially arts that really don't make much impact on game balance.

I'd like to look more into the possibility of adding names to the Locate Dreamer list, for instance, but I think the limitation there was with server packet sizes, but it may be something we can address/update in the future.

Here's two suggestion for Locate Dreamer:

1.) How about it has a small percentage chance (that increases with each plateau) of stating the exact room somebody is in when you locate them from a different plane? (locating somebody in the exact room hey are in at Umbric when you are in Lambent as an example)

2.) You limit the amount of people that can be located at one time and increase it with each plat. So they could retain a list (like they used to) but instead of being able to locate everybody on it at once, it locates say 1 person unplat then 3 additional per plat or something.

And Random... there's some ideas to completely change this:

1.) We make Random a duration / effect that lasts at a random amount of time (like unplat it last randomly between 1-5 minutes) and increases with each plat (so say first plat increased it to 2-6 and next plat 3-7, etc.)
2.) Then we give it a purpose. It could randomly affect talisman use, art use, etc. either positively or negatively. Positive would be things like a.) random chance for art casts to not consume focus b.) random added extra duration of an effect (to name a couple that comes to mind). Negative would be a.) random chance for art casts to consume double the amount of focus b.) random duration penalty. Ofcourse the success rate between positive to negative effects could change with plats as well to have more favorable outcomes then unfavorable.

I'll think up some more about he other arts but I need to remember what they are first.

[KirtesOmathear]

I personally believe that a level 50 Locate Dreamer should trump a level 10 Mind Blank.

[Myridian Sun]

I personally believe that a level 50 Locate Dreamer should trump a level 10 Mind Blank.

maybe a % chance to find the person. otherwise all your high level dreamers will be able to defeat the bulk of the dreams MB with ease. Odd to think of locate changes as balance required hehe

[Dakkoth]

Well the % chance for locate to work over mindblank would be a breatkthrough mechanic. Would it not? I wouldn't mind breakthrough if the % was balanced. Like I said in a previous post, the % of breakthrough should not only be affected by the casting art's plat but by the protective art plat on the dreamer. For example if a level 29 locate dreamer was used on a level 29 mindblanked dreamer and the success rate was say 5%, it should be the same 5% when speaking of a level 59 locate against a 59 mindblank. From what I understand, the breakthrough % was only affected by the caster art's plat and therefore the higher art plat was, the more successful regardless of the protective art plat.

[Star Scream]

I really enjoyed Lyra-UL, in all its glory as well as all of its flaws. I know SS has a bunch of useless art plays up to around level 39 and some higher just for the simple fact that in the old days it was an expectation with getting sphere tasks. Once they got lax with those rules I stopped bothering with it. The problem with this "breakthrough" idea that I see right off the top (besides it being illogical with the game mechanics), is that if you have level 19 mind blank (an unstackable art because evoking it a second time simply removes the art from your character) and an enemy has level 19 locate dreamer so they decide to sit on a dreamsoul pad and evoke locate over and over until a "breakthrough" occurs. To me this type of opportunity renders a lot of arts pointless. People want to know that an art that the have is going to actually work like its supposed to. I hated having to track down hidden DoLers in the unknown or Albino while they were MBed but it added a bit of challenge and mystery. I'd hate for us to change UL just for the sake of changing it. If there wasn't a legitamite -problem- with something, please don't push to change or "improve" it. We might all wake up one day and say to ourselves
S, man I sure wish I had old UL back... Like we have been saying since '06 and now we are saying, yeah but how can we change it. PLEASE don'tchange the ooriginal game mechanics, that's why I hated SoT so much that I couldn't even get into playing it. Give me old UL with new stories, a clash of dreams! Give me old UL with a few tweaks, like waxing your old Camero, but please don't make it -just- another version of this game we all once loved. Lyra-UL was magic, we ddon't need to rewrite code and slaughter mechanics to the game to make it iinteresting, all we need to do it reboot with a fresh storyline and the players will take it the rest of the way.

[KirtesOmathear]

I cant argue with Star Scream.

Maybe new arts, maybe new chaks for higher ends. Beyond that tweaking the system does take away the allure which makes UL.. UL.

[Dakkoth]

Couldn't agree with you all more! Now it's up to Koiware to revert the SoT changes. If a vote was done, I'm sure Koiware would see the large number of people in favor of the Lyra-UL mechanics over the SoT mechanics.

From what Koi has stated, the game will be SoT mechanics upon startup. However after that they can work on tweaking it. Hopefully they will heed our request, go with the popular vote, and return UL to it's former glory (Lyra-UL that is).

[Koi-Spark]

Dakkoth, I have no idea what forums you were on, but I don't think anyone has said we'll be in SOT mode at the start. Quite the opposite. The code we are using is Lyra circa 2006. Characters will be imported, with few exceptions, from the Lyra and SoT databases, or completely new. We are slowly implementing some changes from SOT when feasible, but many of the changes to gameplay mechanics may not be implemented at all. Hopefully this clears up any confusion

[Dakkoth]

I forget which post I was reading but I could have sworn it was the latter. My apologies for the misinformation. I'm very glad to hear I was wrong.

[Koi-Spark]

Well, I don't doubt it's been posted at some point. Early on, we were working from the latest SOT client/database, but we were able to secure our old friend Lyra-Hawk (Mark) and he worked some magic on getting the old Lyra server up and running on a whole new system that will prove to be more reliable and faster than what Underlight has ever seen. Since that happened, we've been able to work directly from the old Lyra Underlight client and start working from there. Since it's been over 7 years since it was last used, it has taken us some time to get everything set up to work with updated technology and standards, as well as a few other changes we're implementing. While we have the client and server working almost flawlessly now (save for some ongoing issues we're fixing on Windows 8 systems), the last few hurdles we have are primary web-based, making sure the account management system and GM tools are working with our latest websites, servers, and e-mail addresses. Once we iron out and tinker just a few last details, we'll be ready for a couple weeks of open Beta, where everyone will be invited to participate, and then our official release.

All in all, we are getting very close to making that happen.

The last major issue we have (right now) with Windows 8 is when it comes to clicking and dragging, such as picking up items or arranging your inventory. Doing so causes the GUI to go completely black, an issue we're tracing back to Windows 8 dropping support for DirectX DirectDraw rendering, which is what the entire Underlight client is based on. We are working on a more permanent resolution in the future, but just so we can get a "mostly working" client out to our Windows 8 users, it will have to go on the "known bug" list for a future fix. As we understand, Shades of Truth worked some programming changes that managed to alleviate these issues, so we'll be working on importing some of those changes over to be sure it's not an issue anymore.

Thanks for keeping up with us! I hope to see you all in game very soon.

[Star Scream]

It is so amazing to me that we all are a community of UL-geeks and somehow, as different as we all are, we are so alike in so many ways. Underlight is my favorite game of all time. I always wished I had the money to get my hands on the rights or the education and skills to make the real magic happen. In a world were so many gamers want the best and brightest. They want something new and groundbreaking. This is the majority of course because you see the popularity of inferior games like " World of Warcraft". Though technically a great game it is missing so much heart that I could never really enjoy it. So, somehow in the world, a game that dates as far back as 1995 I believe, has a core of like minded people that would take the time to put everything into it 20 years later. I'm so thankful that I was not the only wierdo that fell in love with this game like my wife thinks. Those of you who have given up your time, your finances, and your energy to make my "dreams" come true, I thank you. I'm headed to the casino now and if I hot the jackpot, I got y'all. Lol!

Peace, I'm outta here!