Return Advanced Character Tokens to Siege?

[IanJames]

So, I created a poll for this, who knows, maybe if response if favorable we can get them turned back on.

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

I voted yes for it. While it is easy to get skills to 70 but this also gives you 3 skills at 85 plus your stats are set as well. For someone new wanting to play Siege, this makes a huge difference. Having a skill at 85 saves roughly almost 15 hours of skill gains. It would still be a long haul for that character to be able to actively compete in spawns, factions, or much else so Advanced Character Tokens are not going to upset the balance of Siege, just let new players start a bit higher and not get quite so discouraged. I put my archer on hold for a little while so I can work up my fisherman and crafter. This is allowing me the time to make more money to be able to better outfit my archer when I go back to working him. I took a couple of dirt naps on him while trying to work my skills and am having a tough time replacing his gear. It wasn't anything high end but it was allowing me to fight higher end spawn which was killing the monotony of the ROT gains.

 

[Wolfman]

I voted yes for it. While it is easy to get skills to 70 but this also gives you 3 skills at 85 plus your stats are set as well. For someone new wanting to play Siege, this makes a huge difference. Having a skill at 85 saves roughly almost 15 hours of skill gains. It would still be a long haul for that character to be able to actively compete in spawns, factions, or much else so Advanced Character Tokens are not going to upset the balance of Siege, just let new players start a bit higher and not get quite so discouraged. I put my archer on hold for a little while so I can work up my fisherman and crafter. This is allowing me the time to make more money to be able to better outfit my archer when I go back to working him. I took a couple of dirt naps on him while trying to work my skills and am having a tough time replacing his gear. It wasn't anything high end but it was allowing me to fight higher end spawn which was killing the monotony of the ROT gains.

I also voted yes (my chars are done but the newbies should not get too frustrated imho). But I disagree with one of your point: When I have 3 skills at 85 and a veteran imbuer helps me, I get some skill jewlery together, and the new char can jump into the middle of a spawn or even faction fights, as long as you do not try to go 1v1 right away. With the adv char token, I think we would get more new blood, which would be good.

 

[kelmo]

Yes.

 

[FrejaSP]

I say YES too, I believe it will be good for Siege. It will make it easier as start as new here but they will still have some training to do before their chars are done. Sure a few may be a pain, until they learn the ropes here, but rather that than an emty shard.
I also believe we should drop the one char slot thing. I can affort multi accounts but not all can that. I would love to see more players here and it won't make me close any accounts as my main chars do have the skills they need on soulstones, the rest is more or less house owners. With other words, it can only make EA get more money not less as players will stay longer before they get bored as they can test out new templates and still have a main char or two.

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

I also voted yes (my chars are done but the newbies should not get too frustrated imho). But I disagree with one of your point: When I have 3 skills at 85 and a veteran imbuer helps me, I get some skill jewlery together, and the new char can jump into the middle of a spawn or even faction fights, as long as you do not try to go 1v1 right away. With the adv char token, I think we would get more new blood, which would be good.

But the beauty of Siege is that it is hard to find a veteran imbuer and the right skill jewelry and even with that, most likely even a character with skill enhancements but unfinished template is going to die more often than not and lose the imbued items. They are then right back where they started. They can however get involved more quickly and more likely to stay.

 

[FrejaSP]

But the beauty of Siege is that it is hard to find a veteran imbuer and the right skill jewelry and even with that, most likely even a character with skill enhancements but unfinished template is going to die more often than not and lose the imbued items. They are then right back where they started. They can however get involved more quickly and more likely to stay.

I would not be worried about that. Crafting do take alot of time now so you still have to make choices. Also it is much more complicated now, I believe alot rather buy the stuff if they can affort it.
I can make almost everything but I don't have time to run alot of vendors, I have to choose what to sell and I do have to buy alot of my imbuing resources as I don't have time to do all the farming myself.
In old days, where I could sell alot GM stuff, I only needed time for doing some mining, killing dears and lumbering. The crafting took very little time. I was selling armor, weapon, potions, furnitures, bandages, arrows ect.

 

[QueenZen]

I voted yes too, although I personally never used it, probably never would,
butI know others wish they had it TO use. I don't feel it would harm Siege, maybe even help Siege.

 

[Luka Melehan]

I am with Freja on this.

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

I would not be worried about that. Crafting do take alot of time now so you still have to make choices. Also it is much more complicated now, I believe alot rather buy the stuff if they can affort it.
I can make almost everything but I don't have time to run alot of vendors, I have to choose what to sell and I do have to buy alot of my imbuing resources as I don't have time to do all the farming myself.
In old days, where I could sell alot GM stuff, I only needed time for doing some mining, killing dears and lumbering. The crafting took very little time. I was selling armor, weapon, potions, furnitures, bandages, arrows ect.

I am not worried about that at all. I was just pointing out that the advanced character tokens would not affect Siege in a negative way. ROT is still in effect but it would lessen the pain quite a bit and possibly draw more people to Siege who have thought about playing but worried about the time it takes to make a new character.

 

[Sir Morder]

I was wondering what these tokens were for?

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

Advanced Character Token - UOGuide, the Ultima Online encyclopedia

 

[Bo Bo]

Bo voted NO!
the first 70-80 points of gain isnt the problem. All you are askin for is a bandaid for a bullet hole. Sorry that's just not enough!
Fix the damn timer on rot, really what harm would it do to lessen the amount of minutes. Yall know they screwed up when they fixed it last time, it added more time onto getting to 120, and when it was pointed out they ignored us. 70-80 2 minutes 80-90 4 minutes 90-110 5 minutes 110-120 7minutes
that is fair, and still takes a bit of time to 120 a skill.
OR
Give us the ability to buy and sell skills! this way those that love to build skills and train skills can do so for a profit. There time spent building the skill Bo would gladly pay for. They could do this in a token form and sell the tokens 5 for 10 dollars. Single use token (not a soulstone) once you use the token it disappears. You must than either leave it on your character or soulstone that skill. This would increase the amount of soulstones purchases as well. thats just good business. to bad no one up there is smart enough to see it.

 

[Famine]

It would still be a long haul for that character to be able to actively compete in spawns, factions, or much else so Advanced Character Tokens are not going to upset the balance of Siege, just let new players start a bit higher and not get quite so discouraged.

I agree with Lestat in that tokens promote siege growth without impacting overall balance of the shard.

 

[Raptor85]

voted don't care, 0-70 is the exact same as other shards which for all but very few skills takes less than 2-3 hours, if people want to waste money here doing the easier part whatever (even the crafting skills 90% of the resources you spend on other shards is normally in the 90-120 range of skill) The only two skills it would even help in the slightest is imbue and taming...though for the cost of a token you could actually train imbue just as fast by buying tons of unravel loot from someone. The real grind here on siege is 90+ skill...it's unreal how long it takes to train at that point...and if it's a melee skill holy hell, not only do you need to run out and get between a logout point and something of proper skill level to hit but you also have a 2 minute timer after you've hit it before you can log again....making alacs next to useless.

I vote for "ditch ROT completely"...it's a failed system, it does NOT make siege any harder, it just forces an arbitrarily long period of time for new players before they're allowed to play at all. in 1997 that would not have been as big of a deal as 70 skill you could participate with your guild and take on most everything but with the current game system forcing 90 HOURS of pure skill grinding PER SKILL....minus any percentage from alacs that people help you out with....I mean, is it any small wonder why most players who come to siege end up leaving and playing elsewhere before they've finished training....it's not difficult here it's just unreasonably long.....I mean, to this day on Raptor I STILL use skill jewlery as many of my skills are still not 120.

The game as it is now expects you to be 100+ skill within the first few days, aside from stealing and to a lesser extent magery there's not much you can do below GM anymore. It's neither fun nor challenging in the least to watch tv pressing a button every 15 minutes to gain...and much like I said in another thread as a point of referenece as to how long it takes to train skills on siege...In the time someone here can start to finish build a dexxer I could 100% play through, max leveling characters in the entire baldurs gate series and still have time to finish Neverwinter Nights.

If we ever want to maintain a population post-ML...ROT has to go...or at the very least not kick in until GM skill.

 

[IanJames]

Bo voted NO!
the first 70-80 points of gain isnt the problem. All you are askin for is a bandaid for a bullet hole. Sorry that's just not enough!
Fix the damn timer on rot, really what harm would it do to lessen the amount of minutes. Yall know they screwed up when they fixed it last time, it added more time onto getting to 120, and when it was pointed out they ignored us. 70-80 2 minutes 80-90 4 minutes 90-110 5 minutes 110-120 7minutes
that is fair, and still takes a bit of time to 120 a skill.
OR
Give us the ability to buy and sell skills! this way those that love to build skills and train skills can do so for a profit. There time spent building the skill Bo would gladly pay for. They could do this in a token form and sell the tokens 5 for 10 dollars. Single use token (not a soulstone) once you use the token it disappears. You must than either leave it on your character or soulstone that skill. This would increase the amount of soulstones purchases as well. thats just good business. to bad no one up there is smart enough to see it.

I get what you are saying....just to keep things on topic then... why no? What if we could get both ADV char tokens AND a fix to rot that we asked for years ago and was told we would get but never did?

 

[TheDrAJ]

Lets see - buy a tamer ACT and get 85 taming. Now add 30 in taming rings and bracelet and a +5 taming and instant 120 tamer.
Gee that makes a lot of sence for this shard. Give me a break.

 

[ii ii]

Lets see - buy a tamer ACT and get 85 taming. Now add 30 in taming rings and bracelet and a +5 taming and instant 120 tamer.
Gee that makes a lot of sence for this shard. Give me a break.

Well I agree - in fact AJ i think we should not mess with ROT at all.

 

[Lady Raja]

I voted no...

Part of the fun is training, at least for me it is. Since I been back, I have had to get with the times and train Mysticism. I have to admit. It has been really fun training it up to 70. I know I have a while to go before I hit 100. I know there is an even longer journey to go to find/buy a 120 Mysticism scroll and then train it up to 120, but that is part of the fun, nostalgic if you will...

Since I don't PvP, I know what I am saying is kind of one-sided, but it is like when you start anything new, you have to put in the time to reap the rewards. Sure I have to go hunt small things at first, but wow, the graveyards have never been so much fun! It humbles you and makes you gain that innocence you once had when you first started. And once my skills are higher, I can finally kill that Lich that seems to linger around some graveyards...

Maybe it is just me, but putting in that time and earning that right is what Siege Perilous means to me. That is why I came here so many years ago and that is why when I came back, I came back to Siege Perilous. And sometimes Mugen, just for fun... Kinda... Forget I mentioned Mugen... It is Siege Perilous all the way!

:mylittlepony:Thanks!

 

[FrejaSP]

Lets see - buy a tamer ACT and get 85 taming. Now add 30 in taming rings and bracelet and a +5 taming and instant 120 tamer.
Gee that makes a lot of sence for this shard. Give me a break.

Yes but you may get PK'ed alot and you can only bless the ring or the bracelet. I believe players should have to lose their Siege bless option when they are using more than 1/5 in the pet slot.

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

AJ not everyone wants to be a tamer. I have been here for a few months now and I have read back through the forums. People leave Siege for 2 main reasons. First biggest is that current players feel that Siege is dead and most who leave seem to go to Atlantic. The second is that newer players that come and get frustrated with all of what goes into creating a character and how long it takes so they get bored or frustrated and leave. So I guess what really needs to be asked is what are the Siege vets willing to give up to get new blood. Garth Grey is a perfect example of a new player getting frustrated with the ROT grind. He has not left but has talked about the frustration. I haven't played my archer in close to a month now. I am tired of fighting the same things at my level and I for one have never been into the skill based items plus it is hard to find them on the vendors because of so few vendors. In my few months here I have seen more veterans leave than new people come to replace them. So what are you willing to give up to get newer blood here? In a post about ROT there wasn't a lot of support for changing it or getting rid of it and while many have voted yes to ACT's, there are a few that are dead against it. So where does that leave Siege? Even with ACT and no ROT, it is still a unique server due to everything being a few ruleset and no item insurance. Maybe we should have a poll that reads do you want new players Yes or No. I am not a vet here but I am part of the new blood that people have been wanting.

 

[IanJames]

The times have changed a lot since the vets first started on Siege. I didn't start here until 2005 or so and it has changed dramatically since then. The population is incredibly lower. Let's face it, I think we all want more people to play with. IF the ACT was available for Siege, and someone made that $$ investment, they'd probably stay. Maybe.

Yes it's true that someone could purchase an ACT and get their hands on a few jewelry items that would bring them to max, but that's no way to run long term. They probably won't be able to run a decent defensive suit with their jewelry tied up in skills and once they get pk'd a few times and lose those jewels, they are going to want to quickly get those skills worked up so they aren't dead in the water everytime they die.

There are a ton of other good ideas in this thread as well. Let's keep discussing.

 

[kelmo]

Accounts are getting harder to come by... Stratics does not allow sales of accounts. EA/Bioware does not allow it any longer. Times have indeed changed.

 

[Ginsu's]

I voted no.. if i wanted free skills, I would just go to the Test Center and play.
Set parry 1200 :loser:

 

[kelmo]

Free?

 

[chise2]

I voted I donlt care. Like others have said the problem is ROT. And you know while I wouldn;t want them to get rid of ROT because in general I like it. Something does need to be done about the timers to make it not take so long to train a character up. I would not mind if they brought those tokens back though I think it wouldn;t be the fix/change we really need but it would help probably.

 

[Kael]

I voted no.. if i wanted free skills, I would just go to the Test Center and play.
Set parry 1200 :loser:

Or just do a spawn and get a sot...or a treasure chest with an alacrity

Or just buy gold and buy the alacrity and sot's off someones vendor

Or macro overnight in your house...lets be honest there is tons of options free skills to be had but the advance char really the only option that makes EA money and perhaps adds a person to the shard playing effectively fairly quickly

 

[Alcor]

I have advocated ACTs for a while now. Siege's biggest problem these days is the lack of population, which in turn puts off many new and returning players, and something to get a few more people here is good. Anyone that doesn't want to use one can just save their cash. But if it gets some folk here AND puts a few $$ in UO's coffers on behalf of Siege, then I don't think it can be a bad thing. It also may be the case that someone who has invested a few dollars in such a token may be more inclined to give Siege a full trial.

The biggest problem, as ever, is getting the Devs to even think about implementing it, let alone acting. I discussed the tokens with Cal last year and told him that they did once work here. He agreed that if was the case of just "turning them on" then it would be something they should consider. He was going to look into the matter, but I never heard back from him again and of course he was not around much longer. I certainly think that if it is not something as simple as toggling them on and requires a fair amount of coding to get them to work on the shard, we can forget them ever doing anything.

As for ROT, once again the issue is getting the Devs to actually put it into their schedule. It took long enough for them to make those changes a few years back, and apparently even that was not a simple job. The person who did the coding (I think it was Sakkarah) has long gone *sniffs*. Again, I don't believe they would spend any time changing Siege back to the normal system , but they may alter the timers. I think a flat five minutes between gains would be fine and keep the benefits of ROT (where they exist) whilst eliminating some of the drudgery as well as simplifying the system.

 

[IanJames]

A little bump. Any more comments?