It cost me like 2 mil every time I die, about the same prices in cursed arties and marties....
To me its really all the same, only difference is now everyone IS NOT running a tamer/stealther because with decent gear, those all reward/ no risk templates arnt that good.
The problem is that you guys are relating one thing to another,
Your relating item based combat to faction arties and they are not one in the same.
Half of you hate item based combat, the others are arguing FOR faction arties, faction arties ARE NOT the cause of this, only its newest form.
People like myself, BR and the other better pvpers on Siege are saying that even before faction arties we ran very similar suits. Yeah the suits are better, and cheaper but thats THE POINT!
Before, you had people like astynex who ran a stealth bokker whose entire suit consisted of cursed arties, and even peerless crimson cintures and just the best of the best, probably would cost 5-10 mil to replace.
Then you had other pvpers who ran gm armor just getting murdered by people who could offord these suits, ever looked at Nyms or shaks castle? They have like 100+ of the best arties there are, ready to be used.
I used to sit at miasma all day trying to get just one artie for my suit. Now I can farm silver and am guarenteed to get something.
To sum it up folks, these faction items lessoned a problem we already had, item combat, and its not a Siege problem, its a UO problem. If you get rid of faction arties, you go back to only the millionaires running uber suits and the rest of us being slaughted in GM armor.
And that my friends is trammel at its finest, "The richest person wins UO"
Cash makes some VERY good points here.
I am going to speak from my OPINION only, and how it relates to how I play. You only get 1 character per account on Siege. Typically this means you can be a crafter, OR good pvm'er OR good pvp'er. You can't have it all (unless of course you spend MORE MONEY/GOLD on soulstones and such) but I at least am trying to get away from that.
Years ago I built up Bruin as a nox fencer, because i enjoyed fencing and poison was good in pvp, and I enjoyed pvp. Now Bruin the character template was good at pvp, but sucked in pvm. Therefore I couldn't farm for hours on end and make millions and millions of gold. Besides the fact that I dislike gold farming, I'm not very good at it. After being on Siege for 5+ years, the current gold across all my characters is close to 300k.
Cash says he runs a 2 million gold suit. I can't afford that. I will never be able to afford that. And lets be honest here, I can't compete in pvp anymore. I run basic GM armor and jewels that give me 20 HCI. People in factions now run 65+ DCI and 45+ HCI. That means effectively, they have an 80% chance to hit me and I have a 40% chance to hit them (on top of MR 6 or whatever they have). How will I ever kill someone who can hit me twice as often as I can hit them and basically has a mana pool double than I do - ALL BECAUSE OF ITEMS, NOT BECAUSE OF SKILL.
But lets say one day I do - lets say one day I build Bruin to be a tamer, farm for 20 hours, and buy my first 2 mil pvp suit. Yay, one death and it's over. I'm sorry, that's too high a price to pay. 20 hours of farming for effectively 2 fights, assuming I win one and lose one? Not worth it. And I consider myself decent at PVP, how about those that aren't good or just learning, and only win 10% of the time? For every 10 fights they gain a 2 mil suit to resell, and lose 20 mil gold worth of gear, how are we ever going to teach them the joy's of PVP?
However, even today if I run around in GM gear and kill someone in a full artied suit, guess what? It's either faction gear or evil dyed 99% of the time so I can't do anything with it. How's that Siege like? It'd be different if at LEAST I could wear it. At least that way I could wear GM gear, get into 50 fights, lose 45, win 5, and now have 5 good suits to pvp with - but that's not happening.
Truthfully, there are two ways of dealing with this - both points have been made. The basis of both of these is to take away the ability of those who have money to acquire the best gear, and reduce the disparity between the haves and have nots:
1. You make good gear EASILY available to everyone. Then a good suit doesn't cost 2 mil, it costs 20k, I can afford that. This is what the purpose of faction artifacts were on prodo shards, great idea for them, bad idea for us. It means good gear is only available to factions because you can't run basic arties on siege. If everyone is running around in great gear because everyone can afford it, there are no haves and have nots.
2. You make good gear available to no one, no cursed arties, no awesome gear, no faction artifacts. If everyone is running around in GM gear, there are no haves and have nots.
So, do you prefer a world of item based combat? Then you prefer option 1. If you prefer a world without item based combat, then you prefer option 2.
Some people still prefer a world of haves and have nots, where there is great gear that only the rich can use. I understand that, I disagree with that. ESPECIALLY ON SIEGE WHERE SUCH GEAR IS FACTION ONLY OR BECOMES FACTION ONLY VIA HERO/EVIL DYE. All the best non-faction gear becomes faction only gear on Siege because of the Hero/Evil dye system. I've seen and owned plenty of cursed orny's in my life, they've all been evil dyed so I can never use them. This on Siege again creates a class of haves (factions) and have nots (non-faction).
