Mastery... A Good Idea... Expand the concept...

[RaDian FlGith]

Good thing I brought my hard hat and my flame retardant suit.

1: Masteries.
Yep you can only have one. I like it like that. And its easier for -me- to balance game impact that way.
With single mastery choices, it allows players to run around with templates that aren't always cookie cutter.
Hopefully masteries take root eventually and new abilities can be added and new bonuses tied in.
(If masteries had been for archers, there'd be a distinction for cross bows and bows. But I don't think archery is in need of loving right now). {Emphasis mine}

For that specific reason alone, I strongly encourage and definitely hope that in the future other skills will see mastery-style additions to them. Variety and choice is the spice of UO, and what keeps it from being the level grinder that 99% of other MMOGs are today.

With that in mind, I have an additional suggestion... one I'm sure I'm not the first to make, and one I'm sure many people would like to see...

I would love to see items, particularly clothing items, be convertible -- perhaps requiring a tailor to do the conversions. For instance, half aprons are fine for some people (particularly the old PvP crowd back when they did nothing at all), but let's see the ability to take a Crimson Cincture and make a belt, an obi (I think... the SE belt slot thing anyway)... Let's see robes and dresses become interchangeable (no I'm not going to start wearing dresses, but have to be fair here... heh).

So let's continue the trend of "not a cookie-cutter" for characters! Keep up the mastery idea, and expand it into other aspects as well.

 

[Konge]

NO! You disguised another topic within a topic... you... you... TOPIC FIEND! MEH MIND!

But seriously, The mastery concept would be amazing to push on to other skills. Sure it kind of reminds me of WoW and other games with skill trees but... SKILL TREES are fun. Seriously. Have a mage with healing mastery... i don't know. Could add some interesting diversity amount the same skill templates. A wild card if you will. maybe instead of it being tied to skills it's tied to classes, IE, you pick a class that is tied with your highest skill set and then pick one mastery to prevent the Uber leet godly Mages that **** Arrows and Dual wield halberds at 1.25 swing rate with the range of 50 tiles and can pre-cast specials :O

 

[Pinco]

/agree

would be great to see mages with fire mastery/cold mastery/etc...
fencing with polearms mastery/knife mastery
swordsmanship with swords mastery/axe mastery
and so on...

 

[Coppelia]

And everybody would have the same mastery of the month. Story of UO.

 

[Viper09]

And everybody would have the same mastery of the month. Story of UO.

That would only happen for PvPers if there was any significant mastery that would be a boost in combat. For everyone else mastery's would vary from person to person.

/agree

 

[Maximus Neximus]

So we're going from taking WoW to Darkfall?

 

[Aurelius]

So let's continue the trend of "not a cookie-cutter" for characters! Keep up the mastery idea, and expand it into other aspects as well.

Perhaps, if it's done right. However there's a very distinct risk of yet more 'flavour of the month' templates that rise, become controversial, and are nerfed and replaced with another 'flavour of the month'. Creating sub-specialisms within already existing specialised classes seems to me to be a fairly strange way to remove 'cookie cutter' character templates.

At least Logrus' comment "And its easier for -me- to balance game impact that way" is honest. However, it should be about the game overall, and the players, not about how easy maintaining it is. The 'easiest' way to handle game impact was not to impact it at all, the point should be that impacts on game play are positive.

He also says " The abilities are meant to be situationally(my word) useful.They are a good buff for the bard themselves. And with the right suit and skill adjustment most of the beneficial ones can probably be sustained indefinitely.They depend on playstyle and goal."

Isn't that a roundabout way of saying "this is about a single, specific playstyle you can take and make stronger"? Maybe to some that's variety and choice, but surely the real way to open up templates is to work on the ways skills overlap, so there is a point to a range of varied skill mixes rather than a series of sub-classes of existing templates.

Given they are not likely to be overly thoroughly tested on TC (not because the people who try test there won't try hard, but it's still a pale imitation of a genuine active shard, and is a very limited testbed as keeps being proved by stuff that gets through there), we probably won't know how well or badly they affect the game for a few months. I suspect this is an idea that won't survive though.

 

[Konge]

So we're going from taking WoW to Darkfall?

it's people like you that hinder the growth of the game.

Oh my god, this idea is being taken from an MMO i refuse to play so it's a bad idea despite it would actually add a lot to the game and add more diversity.

This is the Video Game industry. Like it or not, ideas from other games are always borrowed to improve current games. Deal with it.

 

[Maximus Neximus]

it's people like you that hinder the growth of the game.

Oh my god, this idea is being taken from an MMO i refuse to play so it's a bad idea despite it would actually add a lot to the game and add more diversity.

This is the Video Game industry. Like it or not, ideas from other games are always borrowed to improve current games. Deal with it.

Actually I always wanted to play Darkfall. Never picked it up because I like UO. If UO gets away from what it is and becomes other games, I may as well play the other games with better service and better graphics.

 

[Viper09]

Why should we care if ideas from other MMO's are being brought into this game?? Seriously. If it works and it's cool, why not? UO will still be UO regardless. It will still be a sandbox game regardless of additions similar to ones in other MMOs. The soul of UO will still be there.

Now if we were going to be restricted from what once was, that's another story. And that is not what is happening.

 

[Konge]

Actually I always wanted to play Darkfall. Never picked it up because I like UO. If UO gets away from what it is and becomes other games, I may as well play the other games with better service and better graphics.

Well, bye. If you haven't noticed, they've been taking idea's from other games since AoS, prolly before and they're prolly not gonna stop. Might as well save some cash now instead of waiting.

 

[yars]

hehe after aos i thought we were going sims meets diablo