Things I wish were changed

[martimus]

So after being back for a few months and gaining considerable strides in my character's advancement, there are a few things that I strongly think need adjusting. I'm by no means an expert or a developer, and these are obviously just my opinions but I am older and have played nearly every MMO ever made, some extensively, many I still play (including UO).

After discussing these things with others in my guild and some random veteran players, I think it's safe to say that crafting is in a pretty terrible spot right now. I'm not sure how long it's been like this, but it's darn near useless to even be a Blacksmith, Tinker, Alchemist, or Tailor.

I absolutely despise that high end crafted weapons don't have the same leveling points as things just found on an enemy. It's extremely detrimental to crafting. Why even have the ingots in the game if we never put them to use or make any kind of sales? I think this is a massive imbalance that needs to be addressed. It will drive people away who may want to make their fame and fortune via crafting their own armor and weapons. We don't all get to be blinged out looking like a circus clown with pink robes and purple bows and a giant green torch with the stats of a <insert really hard to find artifact you can't possibly get by yourself>.

I mean no offense to anyone, but I'm starting to lose my desire to stay on the shard. Is balance being looked at? Are changes in the works? It doesn't seem like anything is actively being maintained. I've made a few donations and I am concerned that I may have made a mistake. In the time I've been here, we have had only one very tiny patch.....

I have to say that so far, people have been really kind and generous to me, but some of us want to be totally self-made. As it stands now, it is not possible to craft a balance, competent suit of high end armor and weapons to compete with others in any way. Why? It's rather sad for me to come to that realization. Can we at least have crafted weapons have an EQUAL amount of leveling points as found items when the leveling deed is used? Can we have set bonuses for crafted items together of the same ingot type? SOMEthing to make crafting worth a toot?

I had dreams of people seeing my crafted goods on a vendor I rent and going "hey nice! i'll buy that and use it" or "dang, he's out of <insert weapon or armor> I'll PM him to see if he can make me one soon" and have my maker's mark mean something like it did way back on live.

Is everyone just a relayered Blaze of Death Bow, Dex tamer? That's how it seems...Does anyone actually melee any champions? And if you do and you get instantly one-shot, doesn't that show a massive problem with player life totals, champion damage, and armor effectiveness?

Just some things to consider. I like it here, pretty much, and I want it to stay thriving.

[Charon]

Ok, I'll bite.

What you are asking for is PRE-AOS UO which is looooong dead so forget the dream,
Players always want more shiny new, better, more awesome uber whatevers and after 20+ yrs of UO adding new stuff eventually you need some really overpowered stuff to keep players interested.
For any game to retain players its needs to feed them new gear, options and fun stuff.

Are the long term player here over powered compared to the monsters, damn skippy they are!
They earned the power they have, it wasn't given to them, they hard to grind like everyone one else.
Isn't the reason to play any game is to get better, stronger, faster, do more damage, take more hits, get more gold, bigger house, more toys?

You mention We don't all get to be blinged out looking like a circus clown with pink robes and purple bows and a giant green torch with the stats of a <insert really hard to find artifact you can't possibly get by yourself>.
Agreed some don't, and many more can't afford them, which is why we need smiths, tailors, bowcrafters and tinkers to create decent affordable gear that you say are useless here, newer and mid level players NEED good affordable gear, that player crafters can and do supply.

Making your own Bows, jewelry is still a good way to make money. No you wont be able to create the ultra uber weapon to compete with some super high end loot (ultra rare drops btw).
The tougher the monster, the greater the risk the better the loot and crafting is generally a pretty darn safe thing to do.
Ive been here 3 yrs+ and i dont have an end game weapon and most of my weaps are player made I also wear some player made jewelry as do a great many other players. There are also some reallllllly good player made items out there that are USEFULL.

"Is everyone just a relayered Blaze of Death Bow, Dex tamer? That's how it seems...Does anyone actually melee any champions? And if you do and you get instantly one-shot, doesn't that show a massive problem with player life totals, champion damage, and armor effectiveness?"

You don't bring a knife to a gun fight, players use what does the most damage and offers the best safety aka bows and pets.
Lots of people melee champs, only a few champs can drop a midlevel player in one hit. Also champs here are geared towards low to mid range players and system rewards them with better scrolls then the veterans get. Cranking up the bosses will prevent the players that need the scrolls from earning them and forces them to buy em.

We do have some "specials event" bosses that can one hit anyone on the shard and have left countless ghosts standing on the screen wondering what the hell happened.

If you want the monsters to be tougher go find a Exceedingly fast, supremely accurate, vanquishing silver katanna
and have at it.
You could also self limit your own firepower and armor.
Make a character and go old school, no leveling weapons, no relayers no event items, no PETS, and use 720 skill cap.
99% of the monsters here are vanilla UO anyways.
Seek help from others when you are outclassed, the way the game was originally intended.

This is not OSI UO, this is Excelsior and WE ARE AWESOME!!
Some things for you to consider.

[Gaara]

Just to add to Charon's post, there's one thing crafted weapons got going for them that looted do not: exceptional dmg bonus which goes over the cap and with a bit of RL luck you can get an almost equal weapon to a looted one but that's more min/maxing really (and only really useful for certain single target situations, for example i use an exceptional crafted Demon slayer for Balron hunting).

Oh, and crafted jewelry is useful as well as some crafted gear pieces like ethereal Stitcher's Mittens & woodland belts can get some nice bonuses on em.

[Versales]

Just to tack on to what others have said.

If there were no relayers and we had a base crafting system. We would have a truly unbalanced system. Think about it this way, i can kill paragon rats or Skeletons or similar, and I could end up with a full set of relayered balze of deaths. Sure it would take a lot of time, but I could. Now consider, even if someone donated and bought a full set of bone crusher relayers, the only difference between us is a slight HP difference and a slight DPS (due to str) difference. For all intents and purposes, we would be essentially balanced.

The inherent problem with the crafting system is that it leads (falsely) to scarcity. And an imbalance on who would be able to have the best of the best.

And as others have said, in select cases there are benefits to using crafted good (over cap dmg inc) or jewelry crafting, or belt slots with excellent stats and resists.

I understand the dream of hanging your shingle and being marked as one of the best crafters in the realm. However, if that were how this shard worked, others would have long since monopolized that market, effectively pricing you out. In this way everyone can effectively hang their shingle and it regulates the market. AND people from mid-end game are fairly equal.

Personally, I like it this way, I KNOW when I am looking To buy a ring with 8str/dex that when I see one priced at some exorbitant price that there is more than likely one priced correctly elsewhere. It also lets me have some stability. I know when I am re-gearing (having recently sold all my gear) that I can sort of make a list of what I need to buy and how much I need to save to get it because prices don’t fluctuate all that much. This is more of a boon to younger players than they realize. Think back to OSI and when you wanted to buy a piece of gear you could rarely tell if it should go for 1k or 50 million. Then you might try saying 50 million and think “I am never getting that sword” or heaven forbid, you managed to get it, only to see someone else selling it at 70% less than you paid! Here, you can plan, scout, save, and buy over a longer period of time safe in the knowledge that it’s highly, highly, unlikely that the prices are going to meaningfully shift.

[Muolke]

I don't know that giving crafted weapons 5 points per level would be fair but increasing it to 4 points would be nice. Either that or give a bonus based on a combination of crafting skills.

For example you could to: +3 points for ever 30 BS skill plus another +2 for every 15 Arms Lore skill.

I also think that we need to get the resources market moving again. Just like we repair weapons, armor etc...there should be a "repair fee" for housing. You can call it that or an upkeep fee, restoration fee etc. 10 iron ingots + 10 logs per square every 30 days. It's not an unreasonable amount but enough to get the resource market moving again.

[Gaara]

there should be a "repair fee" for housing. You can call it that or an upkeep fee, restoration fee etc. 10 iron ingots + 10 logs per square every 30 days. It's not an unreasonable amount but enough to get the resource market moving again.

No thank you, mandatory eating was annoying enough and food can be acquired easily with a spell... Gameplay mechanics that force you to do something in this manner are not fun or good.

[Charon]

I also think that we need to get the resources market moving again. Just like we repair weapons, armor etc...there should be a "repair fee" for housing. You can call it that or an upkeep fee, restoration fee etc. 10 iron ingots + 10 logs per square every 30 days. It's not an unreasonable amount but enough to get the resource market moving again.

Not unreasonable? Ummm sure it is....

Using the above suggestion:

A: You would first need to remove these types of resources from [EXEX, thus ticking off the entire player base who is used not farming resources and now HAS to. Otherwise people would buy them from [EXEX and largely bypass what you are tryin to achieve.

B: You would need to create a consquence for NOT upkeeping you house. What do you do with players who are away for extended periods of time due to military service, illness, life sytle changes etc? Do they come back to no house, and house
missing pieces, yard items decayed, gazillions missing from bank account? You need a plausible consequence.

C: Using my house as an example.
10 logs and 10 Iron per square would require over 16000 each per month!
There are houses here that a 10x the size of mine and lots of players with 10 plus houses.
No one is going to want to acquire over 300,000 resources per month to keep their house.

D: The existing player base could not possiby mine enough ore or harvest enough lumber to keep up with the demand which would cause many many players to suffer whatever consequences there are for not upkeeping their house.

Not only unreasonable but not feasible to say the least.

[Muolke]

there should be a "repair fee" for housing. You can call it that or an upkeep fee, restoration fee etc. 10 iron ingots + 10 logs per square every 30 days. It's not an unreasonable amount but enough to get the resource market moving again.

No thank you, mandatory eating was annoying enough and food can be acquired easily with a spell... Gameplay mechanics that force you to do something in this manner are not fun or good.

It isn't mandatory, you can choose not to have a house or just rent one from the shard. In life to make societies work there are plenty of mandatory things. Think of vaccinations, taxes etc. A little effort to jumpstart the economy will benefit everyone. Eating food had no benefit on the community so that's something completely different.

[Muolke]

I also think that we need to get the resources market moving again. Just like we repair weapons, armor etc...there should be a "repair fee" for housing. You can call it that or an upkeep fee, restoration fee etc. 10 iron ingots + 10 logs per square every 30 days. It's not an unreasonable amount but enough to get the resource market moving again.

Not unreasonable? Ummm sure it is....

Using the above suggestion:

A: You would first need to remove these types of resources from [EXEX, thus ticking off the entire player base who is used not farming resources and now HAS to. Otherwise people would buy them from [EXEX and largely bypass what you are tryin to achieve.

B: You would need to create a consquence for NOT upkeeping you house. What do you do with players who are away for extended periods of time due to military service, illness, life sytle changes etc? Do they come back to no house, and house
missing pieces, yard items decayed, gazillions missing from bank account? You need a plausible consequence.

C: Using my house as an example.
10 logs and 10 Iron per square would require over 16000 each per month!
There are houses here that a 10x the size of mine and lots of players with 10 plus houses.
No one is going to want to acquire over 300,000 resources per month to keep their house.

D: The existing player base could not possiby mine enough ore or harvest enough lumber to keep up with the demand which would cause many many players to suffer whatever consequences there are for not upkeeping their house.

Not only unreasonable but not feasible to say the least.

A. There's no need to remove those resources from ExEx. Part of the issue right now is that those resources barely move off of ExEx and who does most of the mining and logging on the shard? Newer players. This would help insert new players and give others options rather than running around with mules to get some gold.

B. The consequence is simple: If you don't pay your monthly upkeep charge you can't access your houses. Like a credit card...if you're late with your payment you can't use it until you make a payment. Same with housing. If you don't pay after 6 months your house goes *poof* just like for players that don't log on for 6 months.

C. Using an 18x18 example you would need 3,240 iron ingots and 3,240 logs per month. That's nothing. In order for you to need 300,000 in logs+ingots per month you're going to have a house that's 15,000 squares...or a 125 x 120 house. If you have a house that big...300,000 per month in resources is nothing to you.

This shard has become a plutocracy and those with the most housing paying a small amount to get things rolling and improving things for those at the bottom is a good thing...unless you don't care about the overall health and survival of the shard and player base.

D. There's plenty of resources and plenty of people sitting on hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of ingots and logs. With much greater demand you'd see the price of those resources go up and therefore be worthwhile for players to spend time farming those resources which would in turn drive up supply as well.

[Animol]

Part of the issue right now is that those resources barely move off of ExEx

You are so, soooo wrong.

[tiggerjlk]

I don't know, Just because someone used some ED's to get a giant house, doesn't mean mining 300k logs is nothing for them.

I don't have a giant house, or even a joined house. I tend to be self sufficient when I can, and buy things that I don't think would be fun to get myself.
doing quick math:
2 tree strikes about every 4 seconds to get 20 regular logs, would be around 18k logs an hour. So it would take around 16 hours a month just to mine the logs, not counting ingots. I would not enjoy logging in, and spending that amount of time sitting in front of a tree.

And in a nefarious way, a small group of wealthy people could buy all the available logs in the market, and force houses to collapse, or force people to sell the items in their house for a cheap price, before they disappear. Then next month, sell all the logs to other people.

It would kill the house market. Everyone would get rid of their large homes, have no more decorations, in the house or yard. That would end all the crafters who make all of those house decos, rare plants, etc.

The point of this game is to have fun, and escape the real life of taxation, wealth restrictions (or unbound wealth). If you put in 20 hours a week doing work towards getting a lot of gold, you will get a lot of gold. If you spend 20 hours a week in front of a bank, wishing you had gold, you will get zero gold.

If new craftables are created in the game, are hard to make, and are useful, they will sell for a lot of money...for awhile. Eventually, even those once rare crafted items, will become standard, unless there is only a limited time that they can be created. If we are all here long enough, everyone will have a full relayer set of SoT's or bone crushers.

[Muolke]

Part of the issue right now is that those resources barely move off of ExEx

You are so, soooo wrong.

I buy and sell things on ExEx all the time. As a matter of fact, i've had 2K Plat ingots on ExEx for over 2 weeks now at the buy now price and only a couple hundred have sold. I stopped doing logs because they would sit there for months. So no...not wrong.

[Muolke]

I don't know, Just because someone used some ED's to get a giant house, doesn't mean mining 300k logs is nothing for them.

I don't have a giant house, or even a joined house. I tend to be self sufficient when I can, and buy things that I don't think would be fun to get myself.
doing quick math:
2 tree strikes about every 4 seconds to get 20 regular logs, would be around 18k logs an hour. So it would take around 16 hours a month just to mine the logs, not counting ingots. I would not enjoy logging in, and spending that amount of time sitting in front of a tree.

And in a nefarious way, a small group of wealthy people could buy all the available logs in the market, and force houses to collapse, or force people to sell the items in their house for a cheap price, before they disappear. Then next month, sell all the logs to other people.

It would kill the house market. Everyone would get rid of their large homes, have no more decorations, in the house or yard. That would end all the crafters who make all of those house decos, rare plants, etc.

The point of this game is to have fun, and escape the real life of taxation, wealth restrictions (or unbound wealth). If you put in 20 hours a week doing work towards getting a lot of gold, you will get a lot of gold. If you spend 20 hours a week in front of a bank, wishing you had gold, you will get zero gold.

If new craftables are created in the game, are hard to make, and are useful, they will sell for a lot of money...for awhile. Eventually, even those once rare crafted items, will become standard, unless there is only a limited time that they can be created. If we are all here long enough, everyone will have a full relayer set of SoT's or bone crushers.

In order to require you to pay 300k logs per month you would need a house that's about 175 x 175. An 18 x 18 would require 3,240 logs. Also, in Felucca you get double resources. So with an 18 x 18 house you'd have to log for about 11 minutes per month to meet the required amount. Also, the 10 number I threw out is just an example. Could be less or more. The point is to get all parts of the economy going again.

[Charon]

A. There's no need to remove those resources from ExEx. Part of the issue right now is that those resources barely move off of ExEx and who does most of the mining and logging on the shard? Newer players. This would help insert new players and give others options rather than running around with mules to get some gold.

Well, it wouldn't help player vendors if the resources were avail to be purchased anywhere at anytime via {EXEX,
so yes you would need to remove them.


B. The consequence is simple: If you don't pay your monthly upkeep charge you can't access your houses. Like a credit card...if you're late with your payment you can't use it until you make a payment. Same with housing. If you don't pay after 6 months your house goes *poof* just like for players that don't log on for 6 months.


So what happens it most of your cash is in your house or for that matter your resources? Do we need to page GM to get in to pay for upkeep? POOF someone house because they cant play for extended periods? You cant be serious!!
Lets say I'm away for 5 months overseas serving in the military. I now have 5 months of upkeep to catch up on?
81000 logs and 81000 Ingots, that's 1.6 million based on [EXEX current prices. Forget that!


C. Using an 18x18 example you would need 3,240 iron ingots and 3,240 logs per month. That's nothing. In order for you to need 300,000 in logs+ingots per month you're going to have a house that's 15,000 squares...or a 125 x 120 house. If you have a house that big...300,000 per month in resources is nothing to you.
Well my friends place is roughly 4200 squares so 42000 of each resource per month x 10gp each is approx. 850,000 gold per month.

This shard has become a plutocracy and those with the most housing paying a small amount to get things rolling and improving things for those at the bottom is a good thing...unless you don't care about the overall health and survival of the shard and player base.

Countless times they have given gear, scrolls, gold, advise, assist in quests, donate time and you come on the forum and say they PAY A SMALL AMOUNT TO THOSE AT THE BOTTOM?? Just exactly who do you think you are saying that?

D. There's plenty of resources and plenty of people sitting on hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of ingots and logs. With much greater demand you'd see the price of those resources go up and therefore be worthwhile for players to spend time farming those resources which would in turn drive up supply as well.[/quote]

Yes lets drive up the prices! Like that's a good thing, remind me not to ever vote for you.

Further more you forget
1. If a player needed to upkeep their place and they had the skills then they would mine the ore use it for upkeep and not sell it, thus negate the whole thing your are failing miserbly to accomplish.

Lets add a housing tx of 10 gold per square too, while we are at it.

[Muolke]

1. The point isn't to help player vendors, but players. Anyone can buy/sell on ExEx.

2. How many people with that big of a house don't have 1.6 mil either in their bank box or ExEx ledger? Come on...let's be real and not try to play victim because you don't want anything that could possibly take away from your little treasure.

3. Yes, and if he has that big of a place 850,000 gold per month is chump change. That's 2 champs worth of gold.

4. I've been on the shard 4 years and know exactly how much Vets help. This isn't an effort to bash anyone. View it as a small investment instead of viewing it as someone robbing you.

5. Vote for me for what??? This isn't a Miss America contest.

6. Yes, because most prices on resources are lower today (deflation) compared to 2 years ago.

Lastly, yes...some may go out and mine on their own. But many will also not bother and waste time so they will ultimately end up buying them.