Underwhelming Announcement
Hate to say it but it seemed not so exciting of an announcement. What I gathered from the live stream was this: We've basically put the production shards on autopilot with no plans of expansion or updating other than the occasional TOT type events while we spend the next year working on a project that will appeal to a small percentage of players. When? Soon.
Honestly I feel their pain, the dev's I mean. They get so much crap from us that they should at least be given an award for putting up with us. But honestly the "trailer" reminded me of UO2 with the dance battles. This, to me, was not something you hype up for 6 months then have a huge release announcement. I don't see it driving old players to come back to UO. If EJ didn't do it then perhaps they should have put more energy and money into putting the game in front of a lot more people. A Steam release might have done that. Maybe not.
I remember the old days of preordering the new expansion from my local game store. The excitement that brought. Especially when there was a new special item only available to those who put the money out. I have a teenager at home still and he buys into that hype. Why? Because it works.
UO has failed at a lot of things. But the one main thing that has been the biggest failure, in my opinion is not keeping up with what is going on in the gaming community for the last 20 years. Now given, I play UO because I invested a lot of time to create characters and build them. I like the 2d atmosphere. Newer games in 3d make me nauseous, literally. I started playing because it offered an unending world with no way to win.
Will UO last? Probably. Will it evolve? Probably not. You get to the point where there is nowhere left to go. No one asked my opinion but I am sharing it anyway. Is there a solution? Sure. Is it easy? Of course not. I would have started merging shards a long time ago. I would have brought it to 1 shard per US timezone. 1 shard per other country. And I would have found a way to strip down the code to create a classic server. Someone out there has the code for pre tram. Maybe it would have to be a stand alone client. But not having that pre tram option ran off a lot of supporters.
That is my $.02 worth. I will continue to play until they pull the plugs on the servers as will many others. Hopefully that is far in the future.
Honestly I feel their pain, the dev's I mean. They get so much crap from us that they should at least be given an award for putting up with us. But honestly the "trailer" reminded me of UO2 with the dance battles. This, to me, was not something you hype up for 6 months then have a huge release announcement. I don't see it driving old players to come back to UO. If EJ didn't do it then perhaps they should have put more energy and money into putting the game in front of a lot more people. A Steam release might have done that. Maybe not.
I remember the old days of preordering the new expansion from my local game store. The excitement that brought. Especially when there was a new special item only available to those who put the money out. I have a teenager at home still and he buys into that hype. Why? Because it works.
UO has failed at a lot of things. But the one main thing that has been the biggest failure, in my opinion is not keeping up with what is going on in the gaming community for the last 20 years. Now given, I play UO because I invested a lot of time to create characters and build them. I like the 2d atmosphere. Newer games in 3d make me nauseous, literally. I started playing because it offered an unending world with no way to win.
Will UO last? Probably. Will it evolve? Probably not. You get to the point where there is nowhere left to go. No one asked my opinion but I am sharing it anyway. Is there a solution? Sure. Is it easy? Of course not. I would have started merging shards a long time ago. I would have brought it to 1 shard per US timezone. 1 shard per other country. And I would have found a way to strip down the code to create a classic server. Someone out there has the code for pre tram. Maybe it would have to be a stand alone client. But not having that pre tram option ran off a lot of supporters.
That is my $.02 worth. I will continue to play until they pull the plugs on the servers as will many others. Hopefully that is far in the future.
ICQ 568300481
Comments
Am sure many people have logged in and quit because of the complexity, boring ways of
training skills, and high cost of player goods on the regular shards. I have personally known
several.
Underwhelming news for us established players? In the short run yes, in the long run no.
This is a good direction for the long term health of the game in my opinion.
But yes, vets do still need some interesting things on the regular shards and I have hopes they come through with that.
Let me explain my thinking better.
IN THEORY, the idea to give to New Players a Shard where they have 1 Year to build up and Develop, and THEN move onto the other Shards when the shattering takes place on the New Legacy Shard is a good idea BUT, it much depends on what types of gameplays the New Shatd will support and promote.
IF it will mainly or only promote and support PvP, then I agree with you, this New Shard will only cater and interest only those few players interested in PvP (most players enjoy PvM and are not interested in PvP) and, mind you, not even all of them IF these New legacy Shard will still be plagued by rampant cheating, scripting and hacking that we see on the regular UO Shards.
A lot of players, infact, who "might" still be interested in getting into PvP, give it up when they see that quite a few of their fellow PvP players like to get an edge from scripts, hacks and cheats from Third Party Programs.....
IF, instead, the New Legacy Shard will be built to promote BOTH gameplays, PvM and PvP likewise, then a lot more players might be interested in playing on it to then move on, when they will be developed more, to the regular and current shards when the shattering takes place after a Year or so.
BUT, of course, IF we are going to want to conceive a New Shard where PvM and PvP will want to co-exist, THEN it will be necessary to Design a mechanics which WILL effectively contain and limit player killing or, give it a few weeks, all PvMers will bail out....
This will mean, to my viewing, a mechanics with Notoriety and Rewards and Prizes to give to "Blue" PvPers who will hunt down actively and succesfully "Red" PvPers thus limiting and containing their effects on PvMers gameplay.
As of now, and it is before out eyes pretty much on all shards, even on Siege and Mugen, most PvPers if not all of them, make Reds and go killing Blues.
Where do you see Blue, skilled PvPers going out and actively killing Red pkillers ? On no Shard, pretty much, not even on Siege or Mugen, that I can understand of.
This simply is, I need to gather, because the current Design and mechanics promotes more a PvPer to become a Red killing Blues, rather then a Blue killing Reds.
So, IF we want the New Legancy Shard to host BOTH PvP AND PvM, I think that the Designers will need to conceive a Notoriety system and Rewards and Prizes to award to "Blue" PvPers to want to actively go out there to help out and protect PvMers against "Reds" Pkillers....
Basically, if we want the New Legacy shards to have Criminals and Cops likewise, so to speak, to then permit PvM gmeplay on it also, it is also necessary to give to PvP players incentives to make a "Blue" PvPing "cop" that hunts down "Red" UO criminals....
And it got to be something different to what we have now since, as I said, currently most players PvPing are all Reds, hardly any PvPer does it with a Blue character going actively after Red characters...
The problem that I see though, is that it al depends on whether the current Developers' Team wants to support on the New Legacy Shard PvP AND PvM gameplay....
I might well be wrong (which I hope as I am more for PvM gameplay...) BUT, from listening to to day's Live Stream, I personally got the impression that the current goal might be more pointing towards PvP for the New Legacy Shard, with not much for PvM....
So, the Project might be helpfull for Ultima Online overall but only, at least to my thinking, if the New Legacy Shard will promote and suport BOTH PvP and PvM gameplay, likewise.
If it will only or mostly cater for PvP, leaving PvM players to their faifth and doom, after a few weeks of being bashed over and over these players will bail out of the new Shard which will then become only a niche Shard for a few PvP oriented players like the Siege and Mugen Shards are.
That is at least how I see it.
Basically, IF this "legacy shard" is going to be similar to Pre-Tram UO... I can see people coming back. IF the devs put in a bounty system, that will just make it even more interesting. Personally, I miss the classic bounty system - it helped balance the rampant PKing of non-combatants and gave some PVMers a chance to learn PVP in a real role-playing sense (I am one of those). I can also see this being a -reason- to actually form community again, something seriously lacking.
What would be good for this little ... uh... experiment - keep it to a single toon per player. THAT will drive the community aspect of it (like on SP & Mugen) and force the socialization that is kinda missing in most prodo shards.
Excuse me, is mid-terms... I really should be studying ethics and not reading up on my favorite addiction. <span>
I have a tiny glimmer of hope.
kirthag.blogspot.com
Cheers MissE
Some shard, with an undetermined ruleset, with something like VvV, but we haven't decided what time frames it will encompass...
To paraphrase Vendor Search, Your Message Was Too Vague, Please Try Again Later.
And some of the old schoolers might even be excited, if we knew when the hell we were talking about. Pre AoS? T2A era?
Cheers MissE
Cheers MissE
Player killers were cashing their OWN Bounties using their Blues to kill their Reds....
Raph Koster (UO Developer back in those days we are talking about in this thread) in this live forum https://www.raphkoster.com/games/interviews-and-panels/live-forum-qa-with-raph-koster-1016/ says....
To be noted : "Bounty systems became high score tables. Rewards were claimed by dummy accounts."
And I will add, if the pkillers did not have a second, dummy account, they would just use a friend to kill them and then share their own Bounty...
No thanks.
Been there done that, the Ultima Online Bounty system did not work since its start.
If the current Developers, @Kyronix , @Bleak ; want to put in for the New Legacy Shard a mechanics that would actually WORK, they need to learn from the past Development of those Years back then and see all that did NOT work, including the Bounty System where Reds where, one way or the other, cashing their own Bounties.....
And, to my opinion, a System that would work is one that would cause for the Red a loss that has a higher value as what the benefit would be for those doing the killing of the Murderer.
A SIGNIFICANTLY higher loss or it would still not work.
For example, let's s say that a Blue killing a Red would be awarded 100,000 gold (just making up a figure for the sake of the discussion) for killing a Red, that same Red who got killed, should be taken from his/her Bank account like 200,000 gold if not more.
This way, no Red in his/her sane mind would let them get killed by their own Blue or a friend's Blue for a Profit because that kill would STILL cause them a flat out 200,000 - 100,000 = 100,000 gold loss, plus, likely, some Notoriety loss....
This UO player here https://community.stratics.com/threads/why-do-people-hate-pvp.418565/post-3057110 , mentioned something which I found interesting...
I reckon that "charging Reds" means here "making them pay" from their own UO gold.... that is, inflict them a painfull loss for their being killed.....
As I said, "if" the Developers want to have on the New Legacy Shard to co-exist PvP AND PvM, they need to come up with a way to contain player killing or, give it a few weeks, and PvMer will bail out of it leaving it a niche PvP Shard who might even hurt Siege Perilous already low population.... I imagine that it might look appealing to PvPers from Siege to want to start anew on a new Shard where they might be expecting to find more targets as they may have on Siege....
I am not mentioning Mugen, because, as we know, in PvP connection is quite important and, as it has been announced that the new Shard will be US based, unless it will be based on the West coast the connection for Asian PvPers to it might not be much appealing to go play there....
This way to contain players' killing need to be one where the loss for the Red getting killed by a Blue will have to be significantly higher as whatever Reward the Blue will receive.
Otherwise, we will see back again Reds' cashing their own Bounties either through their other account Blue or via a friend doing their killing as it was back in the old UO days....
That is at least how I see it.
And one very notable difference that I see between today and back then, is that back then, while there were "some" cheats available for PvP, it was nothing like the plethora and vastity of Cheats that a player can take advantage of today to get a serious edge in their PvPing in Ultima Online.
So, putting out a new PvP Shard where "anything goes" without seriously contrasting and fighting the ability of today's UO PvPers to be able to use amazing scripts, cheats and hacks that basically make them almost unwinnable, is only, to my humble opinion, a futile exercise....
There is plenty of players who "would like" to engage in PvP but then stop short of it when they see what some players use as far as cheats, scripts and hacks go, to get a serious edge in their PvPing.
What is the point, if one does NOT want to cheat in their gaming, to engage in "any" PvP if they then have to face, with quite some likeliness, fellow players using cheats, scripts and hacks who give them a serious edge ?
Which means, that the New Legacy Shard, to my opinion, would FIRST need to have a new UO Client that was cheats, scripts and hacks PROOF.
Proof, in the sense that, suchn a new UO Client would either not permit the use of such cheats, scripts and hacks OR, could automatically detect their being used and consequentially ban the user, automatically.
THEN, we could talk about a new PvP Shard....
That is at least how I see it.
"As for your former guildmates, ask em how will they feel dealing to PvP against quite a number of fellow players who might be using today's advanced cheats, scripts and hacks giving them a hell of an advantage in PvP...."
What would they do ? Fight without using any cheats, hacks or scripts and thus being always at a disadvantage ?
My point being, is there even a point for those PvPers who do NOT want to use cheats, hacks and scripts to join a PvP server where, if the current Classic and Enhanced Clients will be used, as my understanding is from the Live Stream will be, chances are that there will be hacks, scripts and cheats going to be used like they are on the current Shards ?
With ping 100+ we cant really enjoy the biggest announcment in 15 years... lol
I was so destroyed when i lost my house few months ago but now? Im ready to dig a grave for my credentials because this is huge for everyone outside of US..
(not talking about this dumb system where your not even being warned by email or so that your house will fll down in a game that is so hugely oriented around storage and nostalgia - sooo dmb because even fans are making tools like UOmobile but official team cant even make a warning about a house decay)
Never be afraid to challenge the status quo
Pointless raging about pvp on the new shard, until it's clearer how it will work. We only know it won't be the uncontrolled 'daren't leave town' version from the early years, they said so. Pointless wondering about training characters, because they've said that won't be the way it is on current shards. We need to wait and find out.
Furthermore as @Seraphim reminded this is a US shard... so i fully agree the topic that this is an underwhelming, major update.
There is nothing to be excited about in this update for the rest of the world and vet players
If there is no marketing, you can make 100 newbie shards and no one will even know UO existed.
ESRB warning: Some Blood. LOTS of Alcohol. Some Violence. LOTS of Bugs
Cheers MissE
They may want to see how successful the new shard is before they offer it to other regions of the world. I see no reason they couldn't offer it for EU players a couple of months down the road if it is successful for North America.
Never be afraid to challenge the status quo
Never be afraid to challenge the status quo