Suggestions for Season 2
- Congiarium is brilliant–it gives a flavor of the very early days of UO when players were underpowered
- Alternative currencies are great (legendary foe points in particular were a stroke of genius)
- Blackthorn’s gameplay loop is really fun (if maybe a little too easy at the end of the season)
- Treasure hunting is fun–antiquities and heirlooms are great rewards
- Inflation is relatively under control (although many items are bartered)
- House upkeep requires players to actually play the game
Suggestions for Season Two
More Housing Options
Housing is core to UO. The 25 tiles inside a small house are not enough to express your vision for a home. I suggest allowing individuals to own small stone workshops and small marble workshops (70 tiles if I’m counting correctly). I think it’s reasonable to also allow individuals to own small stone towers. There’s plenty of space left for housing, those extra 7 tiles in the footprint won’t be missed. Add some other houses to the guild system if needed.
To help the economy, you could require a gold upkeep payment to the city for the privilege. Alternatively, if you have the dev effort, you could add a new item created by crafters with high board / ingot cost that is consumed for upkeep. A home repair kit that requires 2500 ingots and boards. Maybe you could buy this for an exorbitant amount from NPC architects as a gold sink.
Maker’s Mark on Exceptional Items
I’m surprised this one isn’t fixed by now because I think it was mentioned very early on in the development of NL. It’s so painful to identify exceptionally crafted items. Exceptional items aren’t particularly useful at non-zero levels of the Congiarium, but during the first month they are. Now’s the time to fix it: allow GM crafters to mark exceptional items.
Scale Pet Base Damage with Congiarium Level
Warrior, archer and mage DPS scales with Congiarium level, but pets provide full damage. The only thing that prevents a tamer from doing Dragon Wolf level DPS at the zeroth Congiarium level is access to 100 legendary foe points. To fix this mismatch, I recommend scaling pet base damage with Congiarium level. Admittedly, this might be a tricky dev lift, but 50-75% at level zero sounds reasonable.
Improve Crafted Gear
The quality of exceptional gear should scale with Congiarium level. With how plentiful magic items are and how hard it is to craft exceptional armor, I’m not convinced exceptional gear should be worse. At the very least, exceptional gear should be one level behind the Congiarium. Ideally, it should be the same (with invulnerability / vanquishing gear only from legendary foes). Maybe there could a very rare chance to create exceptional gear with +1 resist cap -1 DCI to differentiate crafted gear. This might create demand for skilled crafters to make specific suits for specific fights. If you tie the resist to the ingot, then there’s also a reason for the mining gameplay loop.
Slow Congiarium Progression?
Personally, I think the game is most fun at the earlier Congiarium levels. You could consider slowing the progression to 45 days per level.
Staged Addition of Legendary Foes with Congiarium Level?
One of the best parts about early NL development was constant addition of new cool bosses. You could sort of re-create that feeling by tying some bosses to Congiarium level. For example, you could re-use Oaks, Mephitis, and Semidar and add them to overland T2A. I have a sneaking suspicion someone was planning Abyssal Infernal and Primeval Lich too. Add one per Congiarium level automatically so people have something to look forward to.