Recall

        Recall was originally meant to be a form of transportation, not an instant escape to a situation you don't have the skills and ability to handle.  For those of you who don't understand what I mean...

Bob kills a bunch of monsters in a dungeon, he is almost overloaded so he recalls to the bank to deposit and sell some stuff. (THE WAY IT WAS INTENDED)
Bob is walking around in the woods, he sees a gray person and attacks him.  The gray person whips his butt and Bob recalls away instantly.  (BUG)

        It's not considered a bug by OSI, but it's common knowledge that OSI doesn't like recall as it is now (because they tried to change it earlier.)  The recall spell is not something limited to UO, the recall spell is a very common thing in many internet MUDs, even for newbies of those MUDs.  The difference?  In those MUDs recall is used as a means of transportation, and in some cases a means of escape - WITH A PENALTY.  If you are going to escape instantly from certain death, why should it be for free?  In MUDs when you recall from battle, you lose exp.  In UO you should lose some fame, karma, maybe a random equipped item when you recall while in combat (a piece of armor will be destroyed.)  It's very unfair that someone can just leave in 2 seconds (yes, 2 seconds it takes to cast recall) and not face any penalties.
 
        Penalties too extreme (and realistic)?  No problem, just increase the time it takes to cast recall.  It takes about 10 or 20 seconds to summon a bunny or cast blade spirits, but you can disassociate your entire body and armor and turn them into little molecules, travel faster than light, then rematerialize in another location of the world in only 2 seconds?  Come on!  How about recoding it so that it takes longer to cast recall if you're in combat?  Combat meaning something is attacking YOU, not something is being attacked by you, which brings me to my next argument.
 

Hiding

        OSI considered hiding while in combat to be a bug, so they fixed it (or thought they did.)  Now you can't hide while you are fighting someone, but if you do the simple task of toggling in and out of war mode, you are able to hide (in plain sight) from an attacker.  Wtf is that?  I know people insult the Origin dev team about their programming skills, but if they know enough to make such a large multiplayer internet game, I'm sure they can fix this little bug.  As it is now, the "You can't hide." is in effect only when you are attacking someone.  How to fix this?  Simple, whenever someone (or something) is attacking YOU, you should not be able to hide (assuming they are a certain distance from you.)  I'd say if you manage to get about 2 screens away from the attacker, then that should be a far enough distance for you to be able to hide.  Just have the game calculate the distance between both combatants  SQR((x1 - Y1)^2 + (X2 - Y2)^2)).  What I just typed out was the distance formula, the square root of X1 minus Y1 squared plus X2 minus Y2 squared.  Simply have the game calculate the distance, then if the two combatants are a certain distance from each other, then hiding will be enabled if one of them is out of war mode (however hiding ability will be removed if the distance is shortened.)

        Secondly, the flagging countdown should pause once a player hides.  I've had a person attack me while I was gray, become gray himself, then after I start killing him he runs away and hides.  He sits there for FIVE MINUTES straight not saying a word then he comes out of hiding and says "Haha I'm blue now!"  Come on OSI, give me a break.
 

Gate Travel

        Now on to my last topic of discussion, gate travel.  OSI is finally fixing the thing with monsters being gated.  Thank you.  That's all I gotta say about gate.
 

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