What a challenge !
Try to give a contribution to a major change to the way PvP happens in Ultima Online BUT in a way that would please BOTH PvPers AND non-PvPers.....
Quite a task but perhaps with good contributions from both sides of UO playing styles some good ideas may come up ?
I think that in order to focus on a PvP system that is a step "forward" from Factions, we need to identify what have been the problems with Factions. Why have players not been involved much into Factions ?
Once we can determine what have been the goods of Factions and what the bads, we can discard the bads for an eventual new system and focus on the good aspects of it enhancing them for more players' participation into UO PvP.
Personally, I would like to see a role of Towns in UO's PvP. That is, make a player's allegiance to a town meaningfull and have towns (through their elected Councils perhaps ?) move war to each other with that making it an opportunity in some way for the conquering town at the expense of the defeated town perhaps ?
Like for example, have the players from the Town moving war to another town have to support a "war funds chest" with the elected officials (because they are those after all deciding upon moving war to another town...) having to support in a larger way this war funds chest as compared to other players who pledged their allegiance to this town. When the war funds chest reaches a balance decided by the PvP engine, the hostilities can begin and the players who have pledged allegiance with the target Town will receive a notification of this upon their logging in.
At this point, a system of points will be awarded for killing players of the opposed Town and which ever Town will reach as first a tally of points set by the PvP engine will with the war.
Now, if war has been won by the defending town the war funds' chest that was set up by the attacking Town will become a war trophy of the defending town and its amount split by the players of the defending town who succesfully defended their town (i.e. based on the points they scored through killing opponents).
I am not sure what could be the prize if the attacking town was to win, though...
There should be safeguards though to avoid abuse of the system like from players having more than 1 account and have their character on account 1 kill over and over their character on account 2 for accumulation of points.
Perhaps a CAP in the points that the same 2 characters can kill each other during the same town war ?
Also, I think that a much stronger town should not be allowed to move war to a much weaker town. So, all Towns should be assessed a strength value by the game engine based on the number of their active loyal participants. I stress on active because on paper a town could have tons of loyal supporters but then only a handfull of those actually logging in regularly.
Then, when a Town moves war to another town, they will need to either do it against a town with a comparable strength OR to various other towns so that all defendants could moreless match the force of the attacker.
If a town will be allowed to succesfully move war to multiple towns because of this strength rule, then all the defending town players will be notified by the game engine that their town have been moved war to and that these towns players will be "de facto" allied in this war against the attacking town and be able to male parties and group together in fights.
Allied town players will NOT be able to hurt or attack each other players, only be able to use defensive actions among them, they will only be allowed to use offensive actions against the town players that attacked them. This is to avoid abuse of the system like the attacking town make a deal with one of the smaller defending towns to all focus on attacking on any other of the defending towns.
That is, Britain is attacking Vesper and Skara Brae. Players from Vesper and Skara Brae will only be able to attack and kill players from Britain and to better reach this goal they will be allowed, for the duration of the war, to party with each other even if they are from 2 separate towns. It will not be possible to see Vesper players attacking and killing players from Skara Brae or vice versa. For defending town it will not be required for defensive actions like healing and such to be necessarily partied with each other. Of course, no player from any of the defending towns will be able to use defensive actions like healing and such in favour of the attacking town players.
Of course those players not pledging their allegiance with any Town in Sosaria will stay out from all this and not be attackable by anyone (i.e. out of PvP entirely).
just an idea.
