UO Second Age

What changes have I proposed? None. The shard population isn't at an all-time high, the amount of people bored and macroing more characters is at an all-time high.

Yes I know. That's why I wrote 'will propose' and not 'have proposed'.

I'll only propose changes you'll like.

That's impossible since I don't like any change.

maybe from time to time there should be parties of npc guards patrolling the entrances and exits to dungeons, so new players can get into some of the more frequented hot spots and have protection available at the entrance.

Orsi wrote:The shard population isn't at an all-time high, the amount of people bored and macroing more characters is at an all-time high.

Wrong, newbies are joining everyday.

Of course lots of people macro, welcome to UO. Nothing new.

Psilo wrote:

Orsi wrote:The shard population isn't at an all-time high, the amount of people bored and macroing more characters is at an all-time high.

Wrong, newbies are joining everyday.

Of course lots of people macro, welcome to UO. Nothing new.

Agreed. Macroing is as "1999 T2A" as the Lost Lands itself.

I am not able to create a char and play at the moment, but may I offer a couple of thoughts? Thank you, I will. ^.^

First, an observation...the suggestion of npc guards wandering to random hot spots is not a good idea, since it's a step to destroy player interaction. If you want to be safe(r), hunt monsters with a band of people, not just by yourself.

It's not necessarily game mechanics that need to be changed. Really, you can look at any MMO out there, and everything stays pretty much the same, just with small changes here and there that, for the most part, may stay un-noticably except by a few. Only big changes will be noticed, and we all know that it's not necessarily a good thing.

Again, I haven't been able to play in this shard yet, but from what I've read around on the forums, it seems really close to what T2A once was. So, how can we keep the shard lively and vibrant?

Well, you could always introduce new items, explorable lands and dungeons, story-lines, quests and such. Really, that's all you can do at this point, game world wise. There's nothing wrong with that. The mechanics stay the same, but the content changes.

But don't do it at a rapid pace. Have a seperate test server set up where a few select players can try things out. You could use the GM lands to test certain items, but that could botch the main server up, so I suggest sticking with a seperate test server that wont take much bandwidth up. You can even modify the main map to just be a block of green test space.

You need to expand on community building features. Maybe make plantable wheat to grow a farming community. Same with some basic reagents, like garlic and ginseng. Think of new ideas for treasure hunting. Make up a new landmass with a whole story around it about the ancient Sosarian races, opening up new ancient Tombs and dungeons that will need many VARIOUS skills to overcome (lockpicking, trap finding, magic to light a path, warriors for protection, cartographers to MAP the new land.) You can even make an entire underworld, such as the one back from Ultima 5.

And then there's the multitude of small things that can be done. Little items here and there... perhaps increase the usability of different things, such as, being able to throw a mug of ale at someone. Well, that example may be impossible to achieve, but you get the idea.

The main thing is, increase community building features without defeating the mechanics behind what makes this game mechanically great.

Well, I'm sure that this is WAY off topic, and feel free to move this if it doesn't exactly fit in here, but either way, from what I've read here (and no, I haven't read everything) there seems to be a lot of focus on the mechanics of the game, yet a bit of a blockage on community.

And yes, this is in part, a responsibility of the players of this shard. We can't expect the GMs to make up new quests every week, and even if they did, what would you do between those events? You need to endorse your own, to draw in those new players, and keep the current ones alive. And yes, roleplaying can be a great boost to this as well, but simple storytelling can be a great imagination booster. Such as, the history of the virtue shrines and such.

On the GM's part, and this is my suggestion for story at least, is perhaps you can create a history for this shard, and just secretly place several objects, books, and other items in different key points of the land. Make each object give a clue to another, but nothing so obvious that a single person can achieve the entire history in a single night, week, or even a month.

Well this is my two and a half gold pieces. Again, I'm not a player currently, so my thoughts are only half-informed. So, please, keep your flames below 210 degrees farenheight.

I've thought recently about what could be done to further the T2A feel of the shard and what I've realized is it is entirely up to the community. The social structure is the biggest factor in recreating the atmosphere, so any encouragement to build communities within the shard are most likely a good improvement.

Yes, community involvement is the next step. Perhaps a seperate thread should be made for those types of suggestions, since this thread isn't really towards that subject.

I think we need quests. There was a few quests around in t2a and besides we have scavenger hunt.

We need more RPG-type quests that you can get from various NPC's and have to travel around collecting or doing certain things. Slaying a monster type ect. The more quests the better, we need more things to do for players who don't need or want gold.

Psilo wrote:I think we need quests. There was a few quests around in t2a and besides we have scavenger hunt.

We need more RPG-type quests that you can get from various NPC's and have to travel around collecting or doing certain things. Slaying a monster type ect. The more quests the better, we need more things to do for players who don't need or want gold.

See, the way I look at it, the more NPC Quests, Automated Events, et cetera there are then the less the player relies on themselves and others to go do something. We need things in the game to inspire players to start doing these events and quests on their own.

If a quest or event is implemented to force interaction the problem isn't solved; the problem is that players are relying on someone else to do it for them. We need to foster an environment which makes players get up and host tournaments themselves, to manufacture quests themselves, to go on adventures themselves. That isn't going to happen with a particular event or quest. It'll happen when an overall general sentiment is reached among the players. The question is, how to do that?

Well, quests aren't a bad thing, but they should promote people to band together to complete them. Make quests that need multiple skills to complete. That way, if you don't have someone that has certain skills, then you can't complete the quest, or the entire quest line.

Orsi wrote:I'll reiterate my stance again. In order to move forward with this shard, I believe the emphasis of 'accuracy' and progress should be turned towards not mechanical aspects but towards what the designers of that period were trying to achieve. Any change that may be brought forth should have supporting evidence in the means of related era changes, designer comments, test center proposals, etc, in order to show how it could be seen as being in the 'accuracy' of T2A.

I tend to very much agree with this statement, and i will urge people to read this:

http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uo ... ce-system/
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/04/uo ... em-part-2/
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/05/uo ... em-part-3/

There's plenty of more interesting things Raph Koster has on there. His and the other developer's vision for Ultima Online was incredible, i'm sure plenty of inspiration could be grabbed from his blog.

Yohanu wrote:

Orsi wrote:I'll reiterate my stance again. In order to move forward with this shard, I believe the emphasis of 'accuracy' and progress should be turned towards not mechanical aspects but towards what the designers of that period were trying to achieve. Any change that may be brought forth should have supporting evidence in the means of related era changes, designer comments, test center proposals, etc, in order to show how it could be seen as being in the 'accuracy' of T2A.

I tend to very much agree with this statement, and i will urge people to read this:

http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uo ... ce-system/
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/04/uo ... em-part-2/
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/05/uo ... em-part-3/

There's plenty of more interesting things Raph Koster has on there. His and the other developer's vision for Ultima Online was incredible, i'm sure plenty of inspiration could be grabbed from his blog.

When my friend first bought UO I remember reading all this stuff in his original UO manual that came in the box with the cloth map and pewter pin. It really got my attention. I thought this was absolutely awesome and impressive. It brings the world alive in an organic way. I was going to make a post here about these mechanics at one point as they were hinted at in the manual. I didn't really want to get into all of it. I figured it would be such a huge undertaking if even possible to replicate them. It was also pretty obvious that these systems never seemed to be implemented from what I remember from 13 years ago and that it was probably just hype. The hype worked tho and its still a great and visionary concept that is doable now with current hardware. Thanks for the link, enjoyed reading it, I had always wondered about this system. I have always felt one of the next big advancements in MMOs will be when you cant hardly tell the difference between an NPC and a player because everything is so vibrant. The world has to be alive for the players to get caught up in it. That why UO's the best. At least the players are free to make content happen in an organic way even if the world itself is almost completely static. No cookie cutter quest, arbitrary event, and no grand prize goodie will ever be as exiting as something novel and unpredictable that happens as a natural part of a games organism. The idea behind UO is to lay the foundation for content to occur naturally, not to lead you along and hold your hand as you go through the motions.

As far as this shard, I'm not railing against automated events. I'm just asking if your really so exited about that npc who wants you to go slay a bunch of ettins; knowing that his only purpose in the game is to sit there and ask people to go slay ettins... Sure the newbie might think its novel the first time. If your interested in any reward hes promising then go slay liches. Or is it that awesome storyline that he has to tell you about some other npc your rescuing from those ettins whose only purpose is to get caught by those ettins so you can rescue him? Its different when that npc actually does something in the game that makes him worth saving such as farming a resource. If his only purpose is to stand there indefinitely and tell everyone he meets the same story he told me then I'd rather just slay him. The point is that the story happens when two independent forces who have their own integrity and are otherwise self actualizing are unpredictably forced to negotiate with one another in order to fulfill their destiny; ie: the dragon ventures farther out of his cave to find meet because the wolves have killed all the dear because the newbie killed all the rabbits... etc. An unpredictable, bubbling cauldron of possibilities both provident and perilous is essentially what DD was after.