The increase in complexity we are experiencing lately is a worry to me. In the fast food business, the future success of an operation can often be predicted based on the number of menu items listed. The more items that your burger joint offered, the greater chance that it couldn't survive as a thriving business. Marketeers are always tempted to add more and more fluff to attract business until the overhead crushes them. When the uber suit has no definition anymore, when the sheer quantity of rares becomes intimidating, the reason for playing gets lost. The fun is in the journey, be it to riches or fame. When the crimson cincture, the orny, or the title "Glorious Lord" become irrelevant, then what's the point?
-
Hail Guest! We're looking for Community Content Contribuitors to Stratics. If you would like to write articles, fan fiction, do guild or shard event recaps, it's simple. Find out how in this thread: Community Contributions
-
Greetings Guest, Having Login Issues? Check this thread!
-
Hail Guest!, Please take a moment to read this post reminding you all of the importance of Account Security.
-
Hail Guest! Please read the new announcement concerning the upcoming addition to Stratics. You can find the announcement Here!
Complexity issue
- Thread starter Doubleplay
- Start date
- Watchers 3
The complexity actually makes things fun for a lot of people. That is a major new part of the content and encourages those that like to build to hunt to get a better item to build the better suit. This is a common things in games that do not have an end point and is in fact a stable of all pencil and paper RPGs. I am actually glad to see it come into the digital age as that adds in a large extent of what made those games special.
I think this might be a good balance. We shall see how it pans out in a few months of game play.
On one hand, yes, it's very complex with a lot of moving parts, this can be a definite turn off for someone who just enters the game. It also tends to make existing equipment not so attractive (this might be a good thing though, perhaps some of it will get trashed.)
On the other hand, this is a shout out to the original equipment naming conventions. Sort of a classic feel while making Crafting and Outfitting more and more challenging which is the point to begin with, right? Kind of cool.
Again though, we will have to see how it pans out over the next couple of months. It may need to be tweeked.
Either way, I'm looking forward to it!
On one hand, yes, it's very complex with a lot of moving parts, this can be a definite turn off for someone who just enters the game. It also tends to make existing equipment not so attractive (this might be a good thing though, perhaps some of it will get trashed.)
On the other hand, this is a shout out to the original equipment naming conventions. Sort of a classic feel while making Crafting and Outfitting more and more challenging which is the point to begin with, right? Kind of cool.
Again though, we will have to see how it pans out over the next couple of months. It may need to be tweeked.
Either way, I'm looking forward to it!
I don't play origin but on test the stuff was amazing. While a great deal of it is junk there are some true gems. Suits will once again become an ever changing process, which will mean a lot more imbuing. While I don't see this boosting old school crafting much it will give artificers more to do and that is always good. As for the new players even before all this was added UO was said to have a 2 year learning curve. So this isn’t really changing that much and there are always folks willing to help in here. I would assume it’s the same on the shards but I will only speak for Baja and Chesy in that regard. I actually find helping new players more fun then doing most of the in game things. Although when the next patch goes live they may have to search me out in Shame.
You choose what to value in this game. You want to value the orny or the title then fine....if not that's all good too. It's entirely up to you to set values to things because there are no rules that you can violate except your own (unless you cheat).
M
MikevonHammer
Guest
I wish it was back to the "old" days.
When all you had to think about was:
What type of armor do I want to wear? None to full plate [back in the day it had very few "buffs on it].
To how many regs do I need to pack.
I don't even know what weapons I should use, what armor I should wear [for the most part my magic users use the reg reducing armor].
I just miss the simple times. When all you had to do was put on the chain mail, equip your heavy xbox of vanq and go about your day.
I could NOT agree more. I was saying this exact thing to a couple of guildmates in chat yesterday.
I was trying to explain some of the upcomming changes to loot and noting that it was getting crazy complex.
I've played this game nearly 10 years (or 9 according to my account age that can't count right) and have crafted nearly all that time. I still have trouble keeping up with all the options, properties, rules, caps, limits etc to the game to make a decent suit.
I cannot imagine a new player trying to learn all of this. First off the Mythic Entertainment | Ultima Online | Play the 14-Day Free Trial! site is woefully lacking any decent documentation and you need to pour through pages of info on Stratics and forum posts, release notes etc to learn all this stuff.
It is like when I was young and tried to play Squad Leader. Its a very involved game and has SO many rules to make it 'realistic' that I gave up. It became less like a game and more like a job.
I applaud the devs for the work to revamp shame and make it more interesting but adding another layer of complexity to armor and loot is making things worse.
I'd really like to see some simplification to armor and properties instead of adding more.
THIS is one of the reason I think we can't hold on to new players - its an overwhelming amount of info to know/learn just to play the game. Too much. We are the Squad Leader of MMORPG's.
I would say the larger reason that we can't hold onto new players is not complexity as for the most part they need to be suited up and equipped by someone anyway. Its more that when they say now what and what answer can we give them? I always say what do you want to do because UO is that kind of game. Sadly that freedom scares away many. UO was widely regarded to have a 2 year learning curve before the AOS changes. Open ended sandboxes are hard. There really isn't much that can be done about it that does not fundamentally make UO not UO but something else. I would imagine that removing the sandbox pretty much takes away the last thing that keeps many from moving on to other games. A larger issue would be that we as a community are generally not that welcoming to new players. We make fun of them in UHall we ignore them in game. Its something that we as players need to look at. I don't think simply removing what allows more differentiation from any game would help keep people involved.
The increasing complexity is a concern, but I can live with that (although I grumble at times). And Mirt is right, of course... if the sandbox nature of UO were to be changed, it wouldn't be the game we love any longer. I hope that never happens.
UO can't hold onto new players because there's nothing for new players to do anymore. Pre AOS you were given a few newbied items and set forth, and you could easily make your first few thousand gold, and get yourself a better suit of armor within a day or two. (delving around the sewers, hunting skeletons, killing brigands on the road to yew, taming horses and selling in town, crafting simple weapons) They were all fairly easy things a new player could do with just their starting skills and equipment, and the gold without all the inflation was actually enough to buy decent items. Now what are players greeted with in joining? They pop into haven and are basicly told to grind skills to GM before they'll be able to actually play, and if you're lucky someone gives you a "cheap" suit of armor worth more than you could farm off every skeleton in haven in a week. Basicly new UO has no "start", it forces players to do boring things to go directly to the "end" if they want to be able to play with anyone or be able to afford anything, existing players know the tricks, golems/etc...and we've put up with it before, brand new players trying uo come in and are told "just hit this golem with this weapon for a day or two" and you get bored newbies that quit.
E
elspeth
Guest
I have been playing WoW for the last few years and they are definitely having increasing complexity as well. I think it is much more complex actually. In UO, I feel that it doesn't take quite so long to get back up to snuff, though perhaps that is because it was my first game. In WoW I dreaded patches and added content because I would have to spend hours just trying to figure it all out again and what would be my best "talents". Perhaps this was particularly bad in WoW because to do stuff you generally had to devote at least an hour a day (like each dungeon takes 1 hour minimum) and that's all the time I had so to spend any of it figuring out my suit and talent set felt like such a waste.
In UO, figuring things out feels like it's part of the game. I can spend maybe 20 minutes reading and on the boards and feel that I've come away having learned more. When I first got back I probably spent a few hours reading up on changes but as for the shame stuff, I read the patch notes and feel that I pretty much already know the deal there, for the most part. And, I can spend 15 minutes in game and feel that I've accomplished something. Go load up my backpacks for loot for unraveling. Go gain fame so I can sacrifice it later. Take care of my plants or spend some time decoing my house for the holidays. All of these things are easily done in small increments. Doing a longer peerless or champ spawn doesn't take too much longer so long as I don't try to solo.
But anyways, they said if people like shame they will be changing loot systems everywhere to use the new system so perhaps that will be like taking a step back on complexity. They just are gonna have to change imbuing to match the new stuff.
In UO, figuring things out feels like it's part of the game. I can spend maybe 20 minutes reading and on the boards and feel that I've come away having learned more. When I first got back I probably spent a few hours reading up on changes but as for the shame stuff, I read the patch notes and feel that I pretty much already know the deal there, for the most part. And, I can spend 15 minutes in game and feel that I've accomplished something. Go load up my backpacks for loot for unraveling. Go gain fame so I can sacrifice it later. Take care of my plants or spend some time decoing my house for the holidays. All of these things are easily done in small increments. Doing a longer peerless or champ spawn doesn't take too much longer so long as I don't try to solo.
But anyways, they said if people like shame they will be changing loot systems everywhere to use the new system so perhaps that will be like taking a step back on complexity. They just are gonna have to change imbuing to match the new stuff.
Well that seems to be something that the new loot in shame is being designed to address. I for one am hoping it works well. Also when I came in new I was helped but it was mostly being shown which dungeons it worked to go hunt in with the new armor system.
AOS came out like 8+ years ago, enough with the crying about how you miss GM armor and Vanq weapons being cutting edge.
I don't know how people on the other shards will feel about the items to be gathered from Shame. The items have many properties of value offset by the many negative properties making, in my estimation ,them near useless except for unraveling them in to relic fragments.
You've got to be kidding me. I played WoW for two months. I had my first 85 within a week, my second was taken from 1-85 within a few days. Every class and spec has a pre-determined set of armor for each level. All you need to know is what your stat priorities are and you immediately can identify the best piece of armor to use. There is absolutely no imagination when it comes to building a character. The spec trees have very little room to play with because most of the abilities you learn are either amazing or flat out suck for you character.
Even PvM in WoW is extremely simplistic, even though it is its greatest strength. Every boss fight/trash pull happens the exact same way each time (barring any morons who constantly aggro extra pulls). Once you learn the strategy for each fight, there is really nothing more to the game. Every character has a specific rotation you must follow for the most part if you don't want to suck.
I quit WoW after a couple months of playing out of sheer boredom. Not once during my time playing did I think to myself, "Wow, this is really fun!". It's just one grind after another whether it be PvM, gold farming, resource gathering, leveling, or training professions. I went from having 0 knowledge of the game to being able to tank or heal (i never finished my 3 button mage dps) anything at my gear's level with ease in about a month. It took me literally I would estimate 3-4 years to become extremely familiar with all aspects of UO.
Sorry, I just couldn't let this ridiculous statement go.
One thing that would help ease up the confusion from the complexity of items, modifiers and their overall effects, would be having handy a template editor with a database of all existing items and their possible combinations of modifiers (of course taking into account all of the various CAPs and limitations by design).
This way, a player could enter the result effect wanted (in terms of resistances, modifiers etc.) and the editor would list all of the items needed (picked from the database of all existing items or their possible combinations...) to build up such a suit.
At that point, all a player would need is to go seek these items one way or the other (i.e. hunting for them or buying them) to achieve the suit with the wanted results.
Such an editor could save up a few headaches.....
This way, a player could enter the result effect wanted (in terms of resistances, modifiers etc.) and the editor would list all of the items needed (picked from the database of all existing items or their possible combinations...) to build up such a suit.
At that point, all a player would need is to go seek these items one way or the other (i.e. hunting for them or buying them) to achieve the suit with the wanted results.
Such an editor could save up a few headaches.....
Not like that would take years of programming and development to achieve.
E
elspeth
Guest
You played for 2 months. I played for many years. I can't even count the number of times they reset my talent tree and changed around all the talents requiring me to go back and read up on each and every one in order to find the ones that work. Yes, there is "predetermined" armor in a sense but it is not that easy to get and you have to figure out where to get decent armor from other places just to be playing at a level where you have a chance at getting that armor that you're "supposed" to have.
The games have complexities in different ways. Absolutely UO has a lot more possible combinations and possibilities and to "understand all aspects" would indeed take a long time because of how many possibilities there are but if we are talking about just one character that you play in UO vs. one char for wow then I stand by what I said. WoW kept changing the basic gameplay. My pally tank went from using a certain set of spells to entirely different spells a couple of times over the time I played. UO does occasionally change how a spell works but rarely. Thus, even as UO adds more complexity in other ways it doesn't really affect my basic gameplay with my avatar and I can thus get back into the game and play UO again without hardly reading about any of the changes. And this is absolutely true, because I just came back to UO after those several years playing WoW with my friends and found that while I do need to get myself a greater dragon on my tamer, overall, my peace tactics and the magic spells I used to use are still the ones I use now. I have discovered I can get an imbued suit that would be a lot better than my current armor but I'm still able to kill enough to get fame and run champ spawns with the armor I had on last. In WoW, they would have reset my talent tree and I would need to understand all the changes before I could even get back into the game and do decent damage!
Popps many of us have built spread sheets for that.