Someone posed a question the other day about what Siege has to offer over other shards and that question sort of inspired me to give that some thought. Now stay with me here, because this is just an idea... a rough draft of what Siege could become. Its something we can maybe expound on, if we work on a new model of Siege together and its a little [okay, a lot] outside the box. If nothing else its a collection of cool ideas that will go nowhere, but might be fun to consider, or maybe we can take a few ideas from it.
Lots of coding for some of this, but if we have willing Devs, something like it may be a possibility to do in phases, as mentioned at the recent meeting.
Note: Not all of these are my own ideas, but have been expounded upon and a number of them are my own.
First and foremost, this "hybridized" verson of Siege would not include insurance or Trammel, so that aspect would be the same. There are no transfers to or from Siege. No selling to NPC's, BUT it does away with 3x trammel prices to purchase items. Recalling is allowed, but recall takes 15 seconds and player is frozen for that duration and must not be hidden, but can be invis'd by another player. Players may not recall if flagged on players or monsters. No recalling out of Dungeons, Faction Bases or any other area that Siege currently does not permit. .
Totally different school of thought on skill gain!
To offer something different, Siege would become an Accelerated Game play Shard with a lot of risk vs. reward. A shard where training your character is fairly quick, but has lots of risk involved. A shard where greater rewards come with that risk. New Siege Settlers would, however, be at less of a risk, but later settlers... It could be ugly, but largely beneficial to them if they can stand the heat. [Muahahaha] Its similar to some of the things we've discussed, but sort of twisted. Here are some of the details:
For those who wish to train in the safety of their homes - Your skill gain is the same as it is was before the last round of tweaks. You want safety, you get it... but at a cost... Which is your time and tedious/lengthy skill gain.
For those willing to risk it - Your skill gain will take place in your choice! of either T2A Blackrock Gain Areas OR 2 other Accelerated Skill Gain Outdoor Training Areas. [ASGOTA's]
These two areas work much like Blackrock Skill Gain Areas, but with a few twists
At 500 skill points, players no longer get to enjoy life in the easy lane!
T2A Blackrock Skill Gain Areas [BSGA]
The Rewards!
In order to bring down the cost of equipping in PvP, [A serious problem on Today's Siege] increase arty drops throughout the land.
Lots of coding for some of this, but if we have willing Devs, something like it may be a possibility to do in phases, as mentioned at the recent meeting.
Note: Not all of these are my own ideas, but have been expounded upon and a number of them are my own.
First and foremost, this "hybridized" verson of Siege would not include insurance or Trammel, so that aspect would be the same. There are no transfers to or from Siege. No selling to NPC's, BUT it does away with 3x trammel prices to purchase items. Recalling is allowed, but recall takes 15 seconds and player is frozen for that duration and must not be hidden, but can be invis'd by another player. Players may not recall if flagged on players or monsters. No recalling out of Dungeons, Faction Bases or any other area that Siege currently does not permit. .
Totally different school of thought on skill gain!
To offer something different, Siege would become an Accelerated Game play Shard with a lot of risk vs. reward. A shard where training your character is fairly quick, but has lots of risk involved. A shard where greater rewards come with that risk. New Siege Settlers would, however, be at less of a risk, but later settlers... It could be ugly, but largely beneficial to them if they can stand the heat. [Muahahaha] Its similar to some of the things we've discussed, but sort of twisted. Here are some of the details:
For those who wish to train in the safety of their homes - Your skill gain is the same as it is was before the last round of tweaks. You want safety, you get it... but at a cost... Which is your time and tedious/lengthy skill gain.
For those willing to risk it - Your skill gain will take place in your choice! of either T2A Blackrock Gain Areas OR 2 other Accelerated Skill Gain Outdoor Training Areas. [ASGOTA's]
- None of the above described areas will be guard zone protected.
- These areas will have no housing or guard zone protection anywhere in sight...IE Players cannot easily run to safety - They are truly at risk for their reward.
- Gaining will be much, much easier, but all training must be attended lest ye be killed constantly and probably paged upon and once an evil GM gets ya, well... You're on your own.
These two areas work much like Blackrock Skill Gain Areas, but with a few twists
- They are located in remote area's of Ilshenar, where PK's cannot simply gate in to slaughter newbies. They must travel to find you and you must travel the perilous lands of Siege to get there.
- Each ASGOTA contains a bank for storing supplies, etc, but one cannot train near the bank for such gains.
- Skill Cap is 10 pts per skill per day in the ASGOTA
- Each ASGOTA contains unkillable elements that serve to assist gains in most skills until a player reaches 500 skill points
- A set of 8 stationary, non magical creatures that serve to assist in melee skill gain. [maybe something similar to golems, which can be set to train melee skills alone or melee skills and healing]
- A set of stationary creatures that cast constant debuf spells to gain resist. [Think Water Elementals]
- A set of stationary creatures to cast upon to assist gaining in magery/chiv, etc, type skills.
- Fishing holes or a shoreline available for fishing gains.
- Mountains for mining the perimeter.
- Trees for lumberjacks
- Pickpocket trainers
- Wrestling trainer NPC's
- Several sets of [unkillable] fighting polar bears for training vet [and maybe disco and provo]
- Training some skills like Treasure Hunting and Taming, for instance, would probably not be available in such areas. Although! A pasture full of say 40 Phillips Wooden Steeds [tamable for a gain only] could be cycled through and each would reset in say 3 minute intervals as you cycle through them. LOL I love this!
- Crafter shops, with multiple trash cans to train various crafting skills, imbuing, etc
At 500 skill points, players no longer get to enjoy life in the easy lane!
T2A Blackrock Skill Gain Areas [BSGA]
- These areas have no training facilities and no nearby banks or healers! Players must, at that point, rely on each other to get certain gains and risk even more for an unlimited skill cap, though these players will have the ability to at least somewhat defend themselves.
The Rewards!
In order to bring down the cost of equipping in PvP, [A serious problem on Today's Siege] increase arty drops throughout the land.
- Turn on Draconi's Magincia Invasion. Its a dead zone on our shard anyway and could be made into a permanent spawn area. Cursed artifacts will drop just as before, but possibly turn off or decrease the silver drop from standard daemons.
- Paragons spawn on all facets and increase the minor artie drop rate.
- Turn the Tokuno Drops on and leave the drop rate as it was.
- Possibly add the cursed tags to the above mentioned items.
- Significantly increase the Gauntlet Artie drops to bring down the price and availability. These items would not spawn as cursed items. The skull to get in should remain the same, but beef up the Bone Daemon a bit to make obtaining the Gauntlet treasures a bit more interesting! [Big bone to the PvMer's! - Pun intended]
- Increase Champ Spawn Replica Drops to 1 per Boss, with a chance for 2 to drop [cursed]
- Duel take place at Wrong Arena
- Duelists can enter their their name and wagers via an entry board at the arena
- Funds are taken from their accounts at time of registry. Winner gets the pot.
- Players are auto-rez'd in the arena within x seconds upon death
- Corpses are only lootable by the owner within the confines of the arena
- Only registered contestants are allowed within the arena at any given time
- Duels that are not carried out within the allotted time are forfeited
- An absent dueler forfeits his wager and it goes to his opponent
- If both duelers fail to show up, the wagers are returned to their bank boxes
- Forfeited wagers remain the the pot for the next scheduled duel
- Players engaging in PvP, Factions and Wagered Duels are ranked 1-10 [For purpose of description of system]
- Each ranked player has a gold value of up to 40k [subject to change] based upon his combined win/loss ratio
- Non-ranked players have no gold value
- Gold is awarded to players engaging in PvP and is distributed based upon the amount of damage dealt that results in the death of an opponent
- Any gold won drops into the players backpack
- If players backpack is full or player is at max weight, gold falls to the ground [To avoid exploiting the system and having gold go directly to the bank and to avoid having players become to heavy during battle or while cursed]
- Any gold won during battle gold is also lootable if player doesn't bank it
- Each town has a an allotment of available vendor pagoda spaces
- Pagodas are located inside certain town guard zones
- Pagodas are basically portable vendors that [possibly!] only hold craftable items, imbued items, BOD's and BOD Reward Items.
- Each Pagoda may remain for up to 72 hours once per month
- Pagoda fees are same as standard vendor fees
- Unremoved gold and items are stored in the owners bank box at the end of the 72 hours. Gold is prioritized and any items that do not fit are permanently lost.
- Vendor Pagodas are designed to promote Role Playing, Crafters wares and Town Crafter Bazaars or other community type events. [Could possibly become a crafter BOD reward or simply purchasable from bankers]
- Move Umbra and Luna Moongates well outside the town limits, about 20-30 screens outside the GZ to increase the danger when traveling to Luna/Umbra and to encourage use of other cities.
- Increase bank box storage to to 500-1000 items.
- Allow a grandfathered-type siege house on accounts with an existing house on another shard.
- OR
- Create rooms for Rent, for a fee. These rooms would have lockable doors with a key [Bonus for Thieves and PK's] and one lockable chest with a 1000 item limit. Payable monthly, in person, to an Innkeeper or risk losing the room and contents. [Perhaps impose a time limit to prevent squatters that no longer play Siege, but try to prevent losing items]
- Rooms For Rent available at any currently built Inn and Buildings such as those outside Moonglow South Gate, those near Brit West Bank, Cabins southeast of Minoc and any other such locations.
- Allow 1 or 2 more extra character slots.
- Add Siege to log-in shard list.
- Reduce 3x cost to purchase items from NPC's. [Mainly to reduce cost of Gems to lower the cost of imbued items]
- Faction arties are available for lower silver cost, but reduced to their standard mods. Benefit for factioners is the ability to purchase items instead of having to farm! Remove the player tag from Faction Arties, but allow faction dying of equipment to prevent hoarders.
- Introduce a Siege Only Bulk Soulstone Package via UOGamecodes and The EA Store. Say... 10 for $60 [Bone for EA MYTHIC Sales!] I'd buy it and newer Siege players could use the break after having to leave theirs on another shard!
