Or from the other perspective, if you don't kill the spawners they will flood the economy with cheap scrolls forcing you to have to earn gold another way and thus spending more time doing things in game that aren't pvp and almost anything in UO that isn't pvp is tedious.
I bolded the part I consider relevant to the discussion...
This is what has been happening for years now, because, the Developers let it happen.
Personally, I think this was a HUGE mistake and it hurt the game a whole lot deterring many players from either playing it or continue playing.
Why ?
I have explained my point of view several times, I will try explain it once again.
Whether Powerscrolls are needed or not to play the game, it is largely irrelevant.
What matters, is what players "feel" and, most players feel that, whether they PvM or PvP they do need Powerscrolls.
Unfortunately, because the developers allowed a limited number of players to hold tight a Monopoly of Powerscrolls, this, as you yourself point out in your reply, has "artificially" kept for many many years the price of Powerscrolls as very very high. much higher than they ever should have been.
This caused, as I see it, mainly two big problems to the game.
# 1
It forced players cut out from getting powerscrolls themselves to have to spend countless hours on boring and tedious activities (as you yourself describe them...) in order to make the many many millions needed to buy Powerscrolls and this eventually got them fed up and bored with the game and had them leave it (loss of subscriptions)
This also deterred new or returning players to stick with the game when they realized the daunting task that was before them and how many millions they needed to buy themselves the powerscrolls needed. More loss of subscriptions
# 2
It brought a huge amount of wealth (from the sale of said powerscrolls) into the hands of a very limited number of players (those holding tight the Monopoly of Powerscrolls) and this wealth was invested in top notch weaponry and items with maxed out modifiers which made these players almost impossible to be beaten in fights in an item based game where it is modifiers who decides who wins and who looses a fight.
The consequence of this has been an impossible "catching up" to do for players not already at the top of the pyramid, and a daunting task, which may have made several move onto other games rather than waste their time on a catching up which was just too time consuming, or which needed more time than what the player had at hand to spend on the game. Result ? More loss of subscriptions.
My point of view is, that there is a reason why UO's subscriptions are lower than they were and to my thinking, it is NOT because the game is old or because of its graphics, the graphics is merely a way to attract new players but no matter how nice looking a game might be, if the content and design is not sound and good, the players after trying out the nicely looking game, would not stay and move elsewhere.
The problem with UO, IMHO, is PvP which is not balanced and levelled out (and this is because it has become too heavily item based, IMHO). Fights are NOT open ended and there is way, but really way too much weight on items and mods in determining who wins what fight.
This might play a role in turning down new and returning players, especially if they do not have too much time to spend on the game.
Having "baits" (powerscrolls ?) is not the right way, IMHO, to have players be "forced" into PvP.
Players should seek PvP
for the sake of it, because fighting a human controlled character is much more thrilling and challenging than an A.I. run one.
But in order to achieve this, it is necessary to get rid of all cheats in the game (scripts and hacks) and item modifiers should be made to have MUCH less relevance in fights.
The outcome of fights should not be dictated by who has the best weapons or gear, but on who plays out the battle with the best fighting strategy and tactics.
So, kill all modifiers making their fighting effect close to nothing and instead bring up readily available tools like potions, special moves and the like which ANY and ALL players can use and sport with only these being a determining factor in saying who wins what fight (better battle strategy/tactics).
Only in this way, I think, will it be possible to have more people get interested in PvP and want to fight it. The key, as I see it, is ensuring that fights are at all times
open ended with either party able to win them.
As of now, instead, most often fights end up with the same parties winning and this, obviously, deters players from participating.
The pardons need to be, if anything, increased. I want to be able to participate in events and shop without having to switch characters all the time.
Pkilling must bring consequences to help contain the problem and not have it spread widely too much, and murder counts can be one such consequence which helps reduce the problem and help contain it.
If pardons lift too much this burden then the containment to the problem will itself be lifted and the whole reason to have murder counts will become pointless.
That's how I personally see the problem.
