I've found this thread to be very informative. I especially have learned a lot about what the real issues are by my question about Siege.
One observation I will make is that there are many people in this thread who feel that the biggest crime of AoS was not so much that they changed the way resists worked but that they encouraged a "Me, me, me. Gotta have it." kind of environment. Having the right gear became more valuable than having the right team.
Let me try to get back on track here and talk about heroes and villains. If I understand the perspective of Morgana and some others, I think you want more advanced social structures and political systems in the game. We kind of started that with the faction commanders but I think we could do more.
One of the keys, I think, is to make the game more about building a civilization... or subverting one. Then the moral relevance of an action stands out with greater clarity. I've always felt kind of odd about rolling up into Cyclops territory and killing them in their homes. That doesn't seem very heroic to me. Looting the dead is also kind of sketchy. Not saying it is evil, just not saying it is good. In all RPGs I'm aware of, pwning monsters is just what you do because the monster isn't really a monster, he is just the avatar of the XP god or in UO he is the wrapper on a tasty bit of candy.
I'm interested in doing some player controlled towns. It would be especially interesting if you could make an area more safe though a game mechanic, probably requiring some ongoing resources. For example, perhaps a player controlled town can extend its guard zone. I'm just kind of riffing here, seeing if any of this stuff sounds interesting.
Heroes would be heroes of the town. And they are heroes because they helped the town and a way that makes sense and in many cases, but not all, involved their ability to hit things really hard.
Villains could either be usurpers or could just try to terrorize the town. They might even control a rival town. Hopefully, the interaction of the heroes and villains actually makes the town more interesting.
What I always value in a game is a good story, and UO has many. Even the stories like, "Back in the old days, money didn't grow on trees. My buddy and I started blacksmithing and we blacksmithed night and day until we had enough money to buy a ship. Then we took the ship to these islands that very few people went to and we would just farm ingots till the boat couldn't hold any more. That's how I bought my first house. And it wasn't one of these new fangled houses with stuff like walls and floors, it was a bunch of loose ingots stacked up on each other in a pyrimid I tell ya! If you sneezed you could cause an avalanche!"
Well, I took some liberties on that last bit. But in more modern games I see stuff like, "OMG, did you see my dps? Last night we did Kraken's Nightmare and I was hitting 100000000 dps for almost 2 hours. I practically wore out my number 1 key." That's not much of a game in my opinion, and that is why I like working on UO.
One of my goals in designing the game is to try to foster those memorable moments for players. And those memorable moments don't usually come from quest text or some new item; they come from achieving a hard won goal.
One observation I will make is that there are many people in this thread who feel that the biggest crime of AoS was not so much that they changed the way resists worked but that they encouraged a "Me, me, me. Gotta have it." kind of environment. Having the right gear became more valuable than having the right team.
Let me try to get back on track here and talk about heroes and villains. If I understand the perspective of Morgana and some others, I think you want more advanced social structures and political systems in the game. We kind of started that with the faction commanders but I think we could do more.
One of the keys, I think, is to make the game more about building a civilization... or subverting one. Then the moral relevance of an action stands out with greater clarity. I've always felt kind of odd about rolling up into Cyclops territory and killing them in their homes. That doesn't seem very heroic to me. Looting the dead is also kind of sketchy. Not saying it is evil, just not saying it is good. In all RPGs I'm aware of, pwning monsters is just what you do because the monster isn't really a monster, he is just the avatar of the XP god or in UO he is the wrapper on a tasty bit of candy.
I'm interested in doing some player controlled towns. It would be especially interesting if you could make an area more safe though a game mechanic, probably requiring some ongoing resources. For example, perhaps a player controlled town can extend its guard zone. I'm just kind of riffing here, seeing if any of this stuff sounds interesting.
Heroes would be heroes of the town. And they are heroes because they helped the town and a way that makes sense and in many cases, but not all, involved their ability to hit things really hard.
Villains could either be usurpers or could just try to terrorize the town. They might even control a rival town. Hopefully, the interaction of the heroes and villains actually makes the town more interesting.
What I always value in a game is a good story, and UO has many. Even the stories like, "Back in the old days, money didn't grow on trees. My buddy and I started blacksmithing and we blacksmithed night and day until we had enough money to buy a ship. Then we took the ship to these islands that very few people went to and we would just farm ingots till the boat couldn't hold any more. That's how I bought my first house. And it wasn't one of these new fangled houses with stuff like walls and floors, it was a bunch of loose ingots stacked up on each other in a pyrimid I tell ya! If you sneezed you could cause an avalanche!"
Well, I took some liberties on that last bit. But in more modern games I see stuff like, "OMG, did you see my dps? Last night we did Kraken's Nightmare and I was hitting 100000000 dps for almost 2 hours. I practically wore out my number 1 key." That's not much of a game in my opinion, and that is why I like working on UO.
One of my goals in designing the game is to try to foster those memorable moments for players. And those memorable moments don't usually come from quest text or some new item; they come from achieving a hard won goal.