I figure there is going to be a LOT of bitching, so this is the thread to do it in.

Go nuts.
Keep it civil.
Keep it on topic.

Most importantly think about what you're about to post. If you haven't given it a chance or tried to consider how the new balance is supposed to work, go play a bit more.

Everyone hates change, that's not a good enough reason to never change for the better though.

FAQ so far:

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Q: My char has lost skills because i changed race before the guide was posted, is it going to stay like that?

A: No, once we finish a few more bugs there will be another rollback, due to people exploiting houses + the races being posted late. So everyone will start with their character at full stats/skills before deciding whether to keep the current race or transfer it to a different one.

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Q: What if i have a nonhuman race and want to go human, what happens to the 100 extra skill points I earned? Or what if I have 1 or maybe 2 skills that i will lose to 0 but the rest fit my race?

A: You can page a gm once in the race change room, and they will transfer one GM skill to another character so that you do not lose anything. You will have to patient though, and may have to use other characters for a day or few until a staff can get to you.

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Q: This sucks, you made my character worthless. Why can't we just leave races able to gm everything and have an extra 100 skills and keep them overpowered?

A: Because that is unfair to every player who chose human, back when races were first put in and it was said that humans would be the ONLY RACE who could gm every skill, which is why they didn't get a stone or the skill point bonuses. It is just a little late getting the individual skillcaps working, that is all.

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Q: Bob you suck, staff don't listen to players, this shard is dying and you're breaking everything!

A: I don't suck, staff do listen to players, the shard is doing great, and 95% of these skillcaps are from what was unfinished of the original race system as Broadband had intended it. That's why we're working on balancing them and seeing if we need to update any of the skill lists.

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Q: Staff can't do this, they shouldn't change races after they've been in the game for 3 years. They never warned us!

A: When races were selectable, it was said that humans would be the only race who could gm every skill. It was on the website and it was on the race selection stone.
If you need an example, here's the old race guidelines on the website back when races were first put in, listed as "class restrictions", and the fact that humans would not have them:Internet Archive

How about removing fishing/cooking and alchemy on wood elves and giving them blacksmithing/mining?

edit. and let ice elves gm alchemy*

reading `Frost Elf - from the frozen tundra, these elves have spent their efforts improving their civilzation. At home in the cold mountains and great halls, they enjoy work in all manner of crafts, and while not the masters of all, they are the fools of none. But because of their secluded nature, they have not required much need for combat and malice, instead focusing on their crafts and healing.`
and then looking at the new skillcap sheet where it says frost elfs are capped at 60 healing . now i dont think that would be a problem for a craftsman frost elf , but i rolled a cleric a while ago .
now i ve no idea if there has been looked at the different classes , or if its for all the races . and i m to afraid to login to see me healing drop .

Well the best way i see, it would be better to give humans that extra 100% of skill cap and leave other races as they used to be.

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"Blessed be the noobs, for they shall inherit Obsidian" - Seer Thassius

Dude just go human and transfer one skill, ANY skill, to another character! When I first came here, I actually chose to start a human warrior/mage of sorts because I read the limitations of the other classes. I thought well damn, I want to be able to do whatever I want in a sense and don't want this limitation.

Nearly a year later when I try my hand at PvP, everyone is like "Hahaha stupid Jiz, a human warrior! You moron! Your character is worthess!" Indeed, I was moronic for not realizing that I could just use an overcapped vampire at the time. Now finally this is starting to get straightened out, and all you want to do is complain and damn the future of the shard due to your protest of making ANY compromise. But I mean really... would you rather all the old characters like yours and vamp warriors just be converted to a human and remove all racial bonuses? Because essentially you want it both ways... both racial traits AND the lack of drawbacks to being that race. We all know it wasn't fair the way it was.

But anyway... the Frost Elf / Wood Elf thing. I really don't want mining or smithing to be added to a wood elves arsenal. It just doesn't make since... that's what the frost elf has an advantages for. The Wood Elves get their own advatages for nature hippy stuff and woodworking stuff. To me, that makes sense. If you learned every craft in the book, then just dump that universal crafter to human and whatever skill you had to give up... just throw it on another that it would be more useful for.

As far as the vampires, let's say specifically Unkuth or Azimuths characters. If I remember right, both had archery skill GM'd. I too don't really see the problem with this as there are anti-counter measures such as the healing issue. Perhaps they should be allowed to use all weapons and be allowed to GM parry... but leave the heal cap, cap wrestling at 50% or whatever. I'm vague on this one as I only played around with a buddies vampire for a few minutes once.

These are my thoughts for now, will add more later when ever I think of something else. I'm optimistic things can be balanced eventually!

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Ultima avatar: The Famed JIZABOZ,GWAR Guildmeister

Thread pruned to try to get it back ontopic about discussion of balance, and not just bitching of changed. If you want to bitch about change is bad or that it sucks your overpowered race got balanced, you can discuss that in the official bitching thread.

jan irri maul wrote:reading `Frost Elf - from the frozen tundra, these elves have spent their efforts improving their civilzation. At home in the cold mountains and great halls, they enjoy work in all manner of crafts, and while not the masters of all, they are the fools of none. But because of their secluded nature, they have not required much need for combat and malice, instead focusing on their crafts and healing.`
and then looking at the new skillcap sheet where it says frost elfs are capped at 60 healing . now i dont think that would be a problem for a craftsman frost elf , but i rolled a cleric a while ago .
now i ve no idea if there has been looked at the different classes , or if its for all the races . and i m to afraid to login to see me healing drop .

Don't know why frost elves are capped on healing, as I said earlier, i didn't make the skill lists, i only used what was there from the unfinished system. So lets see how we can balance it out.

Healing should at least be gm, anatomy possibly 90 because of their seclusion from the other races?

And since they're not exactly the most friendly elves, to balance out we could lower their peacemaking to 60%, so they're only really effective in the provocation brand of music, as well as reducing tailoring max from 80 to 70 due to their reliance on metals?

Wizard_Of_Gore wrote:As far as the vampires, let's say specifically Unkuth or Azimuths characters. If I remember right, both had archery skill GM'd. I too don't really see the problem with this as there are anti-counter measures such as the healing issue. Perhaps they should be allowed to use all weapons and be allowed to GM parry... but leave the heal cap, cap wrestling at 50% or whatever. I'm vague on this one as I only played around with a buddies vampire for a few minutes once.

I believe the original intent behind removing vampire archery is to give people a reason to go human for some types of warriors. With vampires not having archery, some people will prefer humans, while others will prefer vamps. It's not an easy or automatic decision either way.

That's my guess anyway. Lets work on the premise that we could give vampires archery, what could we balance that with enough so that they can still play the game and pvp, but would not power them enough so that every warrior on the shard would want to be vampire.

If we lowered vampire healing to say 60 or 70, kept anatomy at Gm, and say gave them 60-70% archery, they would still be viable in combat and pvp, but would be unable to ressurect and would not be the best in long, drawn out fights. However would that be enouh to balance them so that people would want to be human or vampire, or would it tilt the balance too much in the direction of one race?

Where to start?

First I don't care about crafting skills and who can gm what crafting skills.
As I'm sure 98% of the players don't either. Balancing crafting skills is just plain dumb. And a bit nerdy. Who really cares if a wood or frost elf can gm every crafting skill. I always thought it was down to what Racial Abilities you wanted.

Now to the part I do care about.
VAMPIRES
I keep hearing you was warned.
I get warned about smoking ever time I look at a pack of smokes.
But I don't think I'm going to drop dead out of the blue one day.
And I don't hear anything about the sub-class of each race?
First char I made was a Vamp-warmage named Xkill.
He was a cool char other than the fact that after 3 months playing him BB made it where he could no longer wear plate armor. I over came that bump in the road. And then I seen the race skill guide that I beleave it was regiss made. And seen what he was capped on. So I them knew he was mainly for a magic char. But the problem there was he was capped at 30 magery. warmage capped on magery. Screw that. I deleted him and made DD. Because he was a Vamp-warrior <-- see the subclass. And I remember the subclass say a master in all weapons. HMMM I thought a bow was a weapon.

Now the other 4 char's I have are human because they was better for what I wanted to do. Because you coulds gm any skills and (You fore get to state these advantages) you could state any skill at 50 and you could set your starting stats. Races was lucky to start at 30 tops at a skill. I don't really care about the skill cap total. For all I care the best way you could have when about full balance would have been to up humans total by 100 and left the races as they was. Then the gming of all skill and starting stat/skill points of humans would be balanced out by the Racial Abilities, which are balanced by the races skill caps. I am sure that way of balancing would have been a lot less painful. And you would still get what you want.(less race chars) And yes I know this would make the humans more powerful. But that is where you balance the Racial Abilities at.

Ok lets talk race stones.
They are used to balance the skill caps.(as I see it)
No magery so the race stone lets me hide, nightsight, and recall to 1 place.
I can heal via Berzrk and sacrifice blood (which takes 10 HPs from me to get back later) And might I add the blood bottles will get you killed more times than save you. You get 10 HP for each bottle thats 50 HP. It takes you long to drink them than a FS to hit you(FS= about -61 HPs) Yes berzrk was over powered but it got rebalanced and like I said before warmages armor got rebalanced(this is just the rebalancing that I felt) because played crying about it. But i don't remember anyone crying about archery on a warrior vamp that is a master or all weapons.

I don't know but for most of my life mythlogical beings have always been abit more powerful than humans. That is what sets them apart.

I know you will come back with the same BS to my post what my felow vets have gotten from you, but I just want to show my veiw also on the matter. I too for one don't care to play any more if this is how its going to be. And I not just talking about the skill caps. I have 4 human chars and one vamp that is mostly PVM. I am talking about the way you say its not fair to the noobs that joined after the races was diabled and had to make humans. And that its fair to basiclly spit in the faces of the vets that have stuck around for years even when things was not so good. Noobs come and go but now the ones that never left are getting pushed away. Even Chilly said she would not be playing anymore if this is how it's going to be. I see it like this if you start a new job and stick with the job for years and you are making good money but them some dude comes along and says I know you have been here a long time but it's not fair to the new guys that you make more money so I have to cut you pay to be fair.
This was my 1st UO shard to play. It was not the only one but it was my home. It was not the best shard I have played but it was my favorite.

Man I hate typing.
And forgive me for my bad spelling.

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This is the type of constructive post i was more looking for.
And as i said at the start, i want discussion, because things CAN change, and they probably will, this was the first draft of the race balances, made from the notes left from the FIRST RACE SYSTEM that was made over 5 years ago. So quit the bullshit about a gm on a powertrip.

I didn't make this system, and i didn't create the skills balance list. I just took the broken system that was there, and fixed the bugs so it worked. I didn't mess with the original balance ideas except in a few places, because this was how it was originally supposed to be, and i wanted to give it a chance to see how truely balanced it was for the current shard, and if we need to change parts of it, we can do that.

The one change i did make to the system was i removed the sub-classes, for two reasons:
1. most of them were incomplete, so i took the main subclass from each, which were complete, and made it into their race.
2. Most of the subclasses are mirror images of each other, and this way we have 5 unique classes.

As for upping humans, here is what would have to be done, from my opinion, to make that happen.
All skills stones are removed. For why humans can't have a stone, look lower in this post.
Humans gain 100 to their total skillcap.
All races gain necromancy.

At which point races are merely the color of your skin, and would take away one of the more unique things about obsidian.

Doing anything less is both unfair to humans and to the other race characters, as it will screw one or the other. And you'll end up with either a shard of all humans, or a shard of all race characters.


As I said before, all that this CURRENT SYSTEM is, is the finished original system that was made 5+ years ago. IT needs balancing. That's why it's being done during the beta month. Nowhere is it set in stone this is teh way it will be.

However that being said, races are currently unbalanced, and if you want to preserve their uniqueness in abilities, then we have to give them a handicap somewhere, a handicap that actually matters and give people a reason to pick between a human and a race character.

And no, give humans a race stone and their own race abilities isn't an option... broadband got mad when i suggested it originally.

So with that in mind, how would you suggest rebalancing them in a way that makes them actually worth playing, as both humans and as race characters, so one isn't overpowered?

Xkill wrote: First I don't care about crafting skills and who can gm what crafting skills.
As I'm sure 98% of the players don't either. Balancing crafting skills is just plain dumb. And a bit nerdy. Who really cares if a wood or frost elf can gm every crafting skill. I always thought it was down to what Racial Abilities you wanted.

This is kind of the only thing I have agreed with so far. Kinda...I wouldnt go as far as to call the balancing dumb though - both in this thread and the other, as this is ment to like an overhauling of the shard. Being able to have the crafting skills on one char I just saw as convenient. I do also think that choice for crafters should really be as to which of the racial abilities you'd prefer.

I should point out around about now, that at the moment this isn't actually going to effect me. Having the choice of a Race char was an option removed a few months before i started here - Although that is not to say I will not have one on them future, after all we all get bored and i might wanna try out one of these chars. Previously to playing here my experience of Race chars was that of having the pleausure & benefit of being one of a select few who where gifted Vampire on another shard by the shards staff - put simply, we where both the Hunter's & the Hunted (so yeah mainly to add a bit of 'rp' to the shard in question).

Alot is being said about what Race chars should & shouldn't have. So I'd just like to pitch the idea of adding something to the Humans chars of the shard. What I'm thinking is that if some things are added/reinstated to the Races - in particularly Vampires, then possible additions to humans such as an increase in stat cap and/or total skills cap as a form of counterweight? Obviously there can't be any abilities added to the humans, that would probably defeat the object of the current race abilities entirely. Maybe the Age of char can be utilised as to how and when any proposed human additions are implimented.

This is just a few ideas. I just wouldn't like the human chars to be forgot about when this discussion continues

Again this is just a few ideas for the discussion, in no way do I think any of these ideas should be taken as a final word on how things are/should be/could be


EDIT!: Just saw Mr.Bob's post mentioning possible human additions, Decent

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Miner/Smith/Lumberjack/Carpenter/Cartographer
Alchemist/Fisherman/Tamer/Warrior/Daemon

GMBob wrote: As for upping humans, here is what would have to be done, from my opinion, to make that happen.
All skills stones are removed. For why humans can't have a stone, look lower in this post.
Humans gain 100 to their total skillcap.
All races gain necromancy.

This sounds like a start in the right direction.
I am just not sure what you mean when you say Skill Stones.
Is it the race stones you are talking about?

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Yes xkill, skill stones would be the racial skill stones. Races would be essentially a cosmetic feature at that point, which I am pretty sure broadband would not be happy with. Having unique races with different styles of play is one of the features of obsidian that has been aroudn for a while that he made personally.

Ok, that's a possible idea tax, broadband is probably going to get a little miffed at it though, but as i said, i want balance ideas that we can try out and see what works best.

Possible option:

Races get most of their skill limits removed. Maybe a few of the more traditional ones remain, only a very few limited or nonexistent skills per race.

Humans gain a bonus related to their age in either stats, skills, or both.
This would make their advantage only evident to players who want to play a long time, and would be surpassed by the other races in early game, but make their late-game potential greater.

At which point we might be able to rebalance some of the other racial abilities, so they grow stronger as the character gets old as well. (Spoiler: The vampire patch for next month already has some of these options being considered, so it would not be out of the question).

Good idea, lets see how everyone likes it, as with the other ideas.

As stated earlier, I have no attatchment to the current system, i'm just trying to be neutral enough to find a way to make it balanced enough that we don't see all vampires, or all humans, and this system was already 90% made so we finished it to see how it would work.

Sry my last post sounded like a bitch fest...whatever ...But you can't open the book of spells to the mages and not give a warrior his weapons.

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I don't see your analogy.
A warrior can still function on melee weapons alone, or ranged weapons alone.

Having both just makes them more versatile, and would be a reason you'd go human. That being said i know there are plenty of chars who don't have a bit of archery and do perfectly fine in pvm and pvp as warriors.

Yes it would be a deteriment for vampires to not have bows, but not a huge one. And again, if we don't like it, lets propse different ideas for how to balance it out enough that some people will still want to be human, and some will want to be vampire.

What if you could:
Add the 100 points to humans skill cap.
Races keep their old stones.
Make the races a bit more dry cut:
Vamps-warriors (No magic/crafting)
Necro's-mages (No weapons/crafting) Cap magery at like 80.
Elf's-crafters (no weapons/magic)
Humans-whatever Cap Necro at 0
Use the stones to do some balancing.
Humans get an upgrade like starting with 2 skills at 70 or 3 at 50.
Humans keep the right to adjust stats when making them.

I know what your thinking at this point:
All warriors will be Vamps
Most ppl will make Necro's not mages
But you got to remember there are only 7 skills you can GM at 1st.
With 7 skills you can't make a perfect char.
Vet points. Can't you make it where humans get more vet points with age than races?

This way you will have to think about what you want to do.
Warrior:
Do you want a vamp with no magery but you get the stone or do you want a human with no stone but you can do magery too.

Mage:
Do you want a Necro with the stone but capped at 80 magery or a Human mage with no necro but can train a weapon.

Crafter:
Do you want an elf with a stone but can only train crafting or a human that can do crafting and say magery.
And for the wood vs frost, what race abilities do you want?

And then you have to think:
After you take all this in do you think the race stone is worth the lower vet points?
Because if you say start at 750 cap and humans get 5 points every month and races get 5 points every 2 months. The human would have the 8th GM skill in 10 month where the race would have to wait 20 months. But there would have to be a cap on the vet points that you would have to think about. I think is cap should make you rethink it again. Say like Humans capped at 150 and races capped at 200. Humans would cap at 900 (9 GM skills) in 2 and 1/2 years. Races would cap at 950 (9 GM Skills and 50 points) in 6 years and 8 months.

BTW all numbers are used only for examples.

P.S. Why must you guys do stuff like this that makes me think and type?
I hate doing both of them.

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I love the way XKill is thinking...
I like all them ideas and points.