(IDEA) Builds selection

[Pinco]

I was thinking about a new system for my UI, basically when you enter the game with a character the first time it asks you which build you want to use (only if your total skill points are low), and when you pick the build, the UI will automatically sets the cap and locks all the skills that you don't need.

Also with this system I could add in the skill window an area where you can get info about the build you have chosen and learn what properties you'll need in order to make it work at its best.

And obviously a button to switch build or turn the system off (if you want to do it by yourself).

This system will surely be helpful for new players, but also for whoever wants to try something new

What about if you could import builds shared by other players too?

So what do you say about this?

 

[Smoot]

like everything this seems like tricky area.
it might be confusing to players to see like 50 different choices of templates, unless you are doing very basic like:

caster
wilderness
combat
mule

even that would be tricky because some combat / majic skills are usefull for both at starter levels. like med and focus.

 

[Smoot]

also dont understand how you would determine the cap needed. like it would cap chiv at 85 because thats all you need for the most common chiv templates?

where would the necro cap be? 60? 90?

 

[Uvtha]

I was thinking about a new system for my UI, basically when you enter the game with a character the first time it asks you which build you want to use (only if your total skill points are low), and when you pick the build, the UI will automatically sets the cap and locks all the skills that you don't need.

Also with this system I could add in the skill window an area where you can get info about the build you have chosen and learn what properties you'll need in order to make it work at its best.

And obviously a button to switch build or turn the system off (if you want to do it by yourself).

This system will surely be helpful for new players, but also for whoever wants to try something new

What about if you could import builds shared by other players too?

So what do you say about this?

Why not? Its probably better if people don't have to go to the web for stuff like that. I mean I think people should just experiment, and use skills that sound fun, but, and pardon my "dern kids get off mah internets!" moment, but lots of people just want to know what to do to be effective.

 

[Pinco]

like everything this seems like tricky area.
it might be confusing to players to see like 50 different choices of templates, unless you are doing very basic like:

caster
wilderness
combat
mule

even that would be tricky because some combat / majic skills are usefull for both at starter levels. like med and focus.

yes, the idea is to give some basic build choice by default, then you can download more so you don't have to always have the website open while you are working on your skills.

also dont understand how you would determine the cap needed. like it would cap chiv at 85 because thats all you need for the most common chiv templates?

where would the necro cap be? 60? 90?

The basic builds must be for newbies, advanced build should be available for the download so you can choose which one you want.
Besides I'm going to make another post in order to gather builds if I can't find anything suitable around

Why not? Its probably better if people don't have to go to the web for stuff like that. I mean I think people should just experiment, and use skills that sound fun, but, and pardon my "dern kids get off mah internets!" moment, but lots of people just want to know what to do to be effective.

yes, at the beginning the people always looks for the faster way to get on their feet, then they'll start to experiment...

 

[Smoot]

The basic builds must be for newbies, advanced build should be available for the download so you can choose which one you want.
Besides I'm going to make another post in order to gather builds if I can't find anything suitable around

my point is, that it should be noted somewhere in the process that these are only starter builds and not very effective.

i just dont want people to pick a build, and forget about it. if the ease of picking a premade build has people going around with 120 necro on a sampire or necro mage, 100 chiv, even 100 parry because "pinco suggested this build it must be good" the process would be a failure.

i would suggest some explanation of skills, like that not all skills have benefits maximized vrs skill level at 120.

maybe give options like: 85 chivalry if your using it for enemy of one
120 chiv if your relying on it for swing speed

if you make something easy for someone, they are less likely to ask questions. when people stop asking questions, they wont figure out what is actually needed for a good template.

Even the beginning skills. anyone who creates a character with more than 2 skills at 50 has basically already failed.

 

[Pinco]

my point is, that it should be noted somewhere in the process that these are only starter builds and not very effective.

i just dont want people to pick a build, and forget about it. if the ease of picking a premade build has people going around with 120 necro on a sampire or necro mage, 100 chiv, even 100 parry because "pinco suggested this build it must be good" the process would be a failure.

i would suggest some explanation of skills, like that not all skills have benefits maximized vrs skill level at 120.

maybe give options like: 85 chivalry if your using it for enemy of one
120 chiv if your relying on it for swing speed

if you make something easy for someone, they are less likely to ask questions. when people stop asking questions, they wont figure out what is actually needed for a good template.

Even the beginning skills. anyone who creates a character with more than 2 skills at 50 has basically already failed.

yes, some notes are necessary, but keep in mind that at some point the starter build will no longer work, especially if the player goes against stronger foes. At that point they should start to see that the build is not endgame... or if they don't they will start to lose serious insurance money

 

[Dot_Warner]

If this delays the new version of your UI, my vote is no.

To get this right would take a lot of research time, most of which could be wasted effort the next time the devs decide to reflexively "balance" something.

Right now, I'd prefer to just have a working version of Pinco's to use instead of the complete shambles the devs have saddled us with. New bells and whistles can come later.

 

[MalagAste]

If this delays the new version of your UI, my vote is no.

To get this right would take a lot of research time, most of which could be wasted effort the next time the devs decide to reflexively "balance" something.

Right now, I'd prefer to just have a working version of Pinco's to use instead of the complete shambles the devs have saddled us with. New bells and whistles can come later.

I agree with this. But if you want help for these builds especially Tamer builds and such for stuff down the road I really like the idea. Perhaps Stratics might step up as well and help "newer" players. Since it's really well known that there isn't any sort of new player help until "after" they start the game and only then "if" some of us Vets are around to help folk but by then they have already created something on their own.

So my suggestion would be that if Stratics and Pinco and the DEV's could work together with the vets of the community we could come up with a "starter" page perhaps on Stratics that the DEV's could direct new players to BEFORE they chose a server, before they attempt to download the game and before they try to make a character. Something that perhaps would go over the finer points of UO..... Like perhaps the Governors of each shard could get together and make a sort of "profile" of their shard and what it has to offer... Kind of the this is the sort of community we have available on say Great Lakes. ( Like I could say we have a small but loyal close "family" of Role-players on our shard who do many activities we follow the meta fiction of the game and promote the EM fictions along with many great guilds who do everything from hunts to champ spawns we even have some folk doing the VvV regularly as well as having an active group of fishermen in the Fishing Council of Britannia. )

Perhaps also listing a few guilds who would want to help new players get started in what they might be interested in.... This would go along with your idea Pinco of Builds... So say they want to be a fisherman.... there are several builds out for fisherman.... archer/fishers, mage/fishers etc... if they want to PvP perhaps there might be some local groups willing to help newer players get started with that... Most shards know who can and can't be trusted for such things. Perhaps interested players could form some sort of shard leader community resource group that folk could get together and try to promote the various aspects of their shard on these Stratics forms in a place designed for newer players to find contacts and guilds to help them... something to give them some idea of what is in the game... and where they might go for help.

Now I know each shard has a forum..... but I'll again go with what I know. On our shard GL's the forum really doesn't consist of anything that would tell anyone what is happening on GL's except for the regular posts every week by Galen when he posts the weeks calendar. We kinda lack a reporter but many of us in the RP community work to fill this gap if we can by posting events we work to bring thru the Governor program.

Anyway I'm thinking as a community perhaps we could all get together to help put something out that would help new players to get a sense of what our game has to offer. If we could put together something of that nature perhaps here on Stratics then perhaps the DEV's could support it on the official website where the downloads are for the game and folk might have a better idea of what UO is about and has to offer and maybe ..... just maybe that might make folk more inclined to actually try UO.

I honestly love the idea Pinco. I just think it could use a large community effort with it to make it really functional in a way that would be great. We have all kinds of tools available to us now.... way more than back in 1997 when UO was young. There is Twitch, Youtube and all sorts of resources we might utilize to not only do what you are suggesting but to go that extra mile to promote UO. Perhaps someone with good Twitch, Youtube video skills might put together some sort of video about how to get started in UO. How to go about creating a character, how to begin, where to go... what to do to say get started. Showing things like how the New Haven quests work... About BoD's for Crafters. Fishing for fishermen... About combat... both PvM and PvP... What to watch out for... About the Bank system, Pets, Bonding, Taming, and about how to go about placing a building a home. Perhaps someone civic minded who's good at making video's could put together some "help" video's about that sort of thing and they could be put into links for new players to view.

As for me I'm more of an "idea's" person. I can come up with a million idea's in a minute. But that's just how my brain tends to work. I don't really know how to go about making the idea's a reality... I just know what I think could help.

Those are my idea's on the matter and maybe ..... just maybe we can make it work.

 

[Pinco]

I agree with this. But if you want help for these builds especially Tamer builds and such for stuff down the road I really like the idea. Perhaps Stratics might step up as well and help "newer" players. Since it's really well known that there isn't any sort of new player help until "after" they start the game and only then "if" some of us Vets are around to help folk but by then they have already created something on their own.

So my suggestion would be that if Stratics and Pinco and the DEV's could work together with the vets of the community we could come up with a "starter" page perhaps on Stratics that the DEV's could direct new players to BEFORE they chose a server, before they attempt to download the game and before they try to make a character. Something that perhaps would go over the finer points of UO..... Like perhaps the Governors of each shard could get together and make a sort of "profile" of their shard and what it has to offer... Kind of the this is the sort of community we have available on say Great Lakes. ( Like I could say we have a small but loyal close "family" of Role-players on our shard who do many activities we follow the meta fiction of the game and promote the EM fictions along with many great guilds who do everything from hunts to champ spawns we even have some folk doing the VvV regularly as well as having an active group of fishermen in the Fishing Council of Britannia. )

Perhaps also listing a few guilds who would want to help new players get started in what they might be interested in.... This would go along with your idea Pinco of Builds... So say they want to be a fisherman.... there are several builds out for fisherman.... archer/fishers, mage/fishers etc... if they want to PvP perhaps there might be some local groups willing to help newer players get started with that... Most shards know who can and can't be trusted for such things. Perhaps interested players could form some sort of shard leader community resource group that folk could get together and try to promote the various aspects of their shard on these Stratics forms in a place designed for newer players to find contacts and guilds to help them... something to give them some idea of what is in the game... and where they might go for help.

Now I know each shard has a forum..... but I'll again go with what I know. On our shard GL's the forum really doesn't consist of anything that would tell anyone what is happening on GL's except for the regular posts every week by Galen when he posts the weeks calendar. We kinda lack a reporter but many of us in the RP community work to fill this gap if we can by posting events we work to bring thru the Governor program.

Anyway I'm thinking as a community perhaps we could all get together to help put something out that would help new players to get a sense of what our game has to offer. If we could put together something of that nature perhaps here on Stratics then perhaps the DEV's could support it on the official website where the downloads are for the game and folk might have a better idea of what UO is about and has to offer and maybe ..... just maybe that might make folk more inclined to actually try UO.

I honestly love the idea Pinco. I just think it could use a large community effort with it to make it really functional in a way that would be great. We have all kinds of tools available to us now.... way more than back in 1997 when UO was young. There is Twitch, Youtube and all sorts of resources we might utilize to not only do what you are suggesting but to go that extra mile to promote UO. Perhaps someone with good Twitch, Youtube video skills might put together some sort of video about how to get started in UO. How to go about creating a character, how to begin, where to go... what to do to say get started. Showing things like how the New Haven quests work... About BoD's for Crafters. Fishing for fishermen... About combat... both PvM and PvP... What to watch out for... About the Bank system, Pets, Bonding, Taming, and about how to go about placing a building a home. Perhaps someone civic minded who's good at making video's could put together some "help" video's about that sort of thing and they could be put into links for new players to view.

As for me I'm more of an "idea's" person. I can come up with a million idea's in a minute. But that's just how my brain tends to work. I don't really know how to go about making the idea's a reality... I just know what I think could help.

Those are my idea's on the matter and maybe ..... just maybe we can make it work.

Guilds and governors are mostly a secondary content... what I'd like to make is actually not possible just through the UI :/

This game has a huge fictional background, but if you don't search on the web you will know nothing about it, except few books here and there...
What I'd really like to make is a system that provide all the info. For example a "book system" that when you read a certain book will unlock the lore of a monster, and by doing that it will also unlock the basic stat/res info, so you won't have all the info for free, but you'll have to unlock them.
Same for any dungeon, city, monuments, etc... having books around that unlocks the lore and by doing that you'll also unlock the secrets of those places.
Obviously there should also be a menu where you can read what you have already discovered.

Another nice thing would be to add a sort of dialogue system to the quests so that when you take a quest you have to also think and make choices.

This would be the first step to a less grind-based game, because let's face it, right now it's all about grinding and vending machines... if you exclude PvP, the rest of the game can be totally automated, you can easily have a bot playing in your party and you won't notice any difference

Anyway something like this will just require a massive work, that actually the dev team can't take unless they are willing to spend at least 6 months on it... and I'm not quite sure the result will be very thrilling, because until we still have 2 clients, any new system will have to be downgraded to the primitive technology of CC so this game will be probably stuck on 1997 till the end of time

 

[popps]

I voted yes but what I would REALLY like to see is a suit Builder for crafting......

You can access, I assume, the entire database of all items existing in the game, right ?

The Suit Builder I would like to see is one that a player could start from the modifiers wanted and the UI would look up the database and put together all existing pieces in the game to reach those total modifiers.

For example, say that a player would want a suit with maxed out luck, 4 FC/6 FRC all resistances at 75 and so on.... the player would enter all wanted mods in a"calculator" and press the process button which it would check up all existing items in the game and see if that suit can be made and with what pieces....

Of course, say that the player has certain items that he/she wants to use, they would be able to "lock" those items into the calculator which would then try to "match up" all other pieces "around" those locked pieces to build the wanted suit.

That's a builder I'd really love to see.

It would ease up a whole lot the whole process of designing suits to then craft them.....

 

[Pinco]

You can access, I assume, the entire database of all items existing in the game, right ?

no, that is something that can only be done server side.

 

[Parnoc]

The suit builder is a nice idea, but I have a couple of questions that to me are more important than that one.

When you finish your UI are we going to get back the ability to resize treasure maps and the other items that we could resize before?

Will we get back the ability to right click to loot all containers, not just corpses?

I know there are a lot of action icons missing and I hope they will be back also?

Is the option of coloring all icons coming back, my screen has too many I know, but having some of them colored was wonderful? Right now the ability to color even the handle to the hotbar doesn't work, or doesn't stay persistent on logout.

This is just a few of the burning questions for me but very important to know if they are going to happen.

 

[Yadd of Legends]

It's a cool idea, but I had to vote no - I'd rather you perfect everything else and add this later if you still have the time and energy and nothing else is pressing

 

[Pinco]

When you finish your UI are we going to get back the ability to resize treasure maps and the other items that we could resize before?

yes

Will we get back the ability to right click to loot all containers, not just corpses?

yes

I know there are a lot of action icons missing and I hope they will be back also?

which ones are you referring?

Is the option of coloring all icons coming back, my screen has too many I know, but having some of them colored was wonderful? Right now the ability to color even the handle to the hotbar doesn't work, or doesn't stay persistent on logout.

You have no idea how much I tried to convince the devs that having transparent icons would be the best thing since they were remaking them....
So yes, my UI will have the customizable background but with my old icons.

 

[Parnoc]

which ones are you referring (Actions Missing)?

Well right now I can't think of ones except hourglass, clock, etc but I know you had a whole tab/page/area of your own actions.

Thank you Pinco for all your work, I know I speak for alot of us who are very grateful and are so much looking forward to your new UI coming out. Hard to wait!!

 

[Yadd of Legends]

Well right now I can't think of ones except hourglass, clock, etc but I know you had a whole tab/page/area of your own actions.

Thank you Pinco for all your work, I know I speak for alot of us who are very grateful and are so much looking forward to your new UI coming out. Hard to wait!!

Also the @Pinco AFK button - really nice when you have to take a break but don't want to log out and back in - or when you're running two accounts and leave one of the characters standing around a while

 

[Pinco]

Well right now I can't think of ones except hourglass, clock, etc but I know you had a whole tab/page/area of your own actions.

Thank you Pinco for all your work, I know I speak for alot of us who are very grateful and are so much looking forward to your new UI coming out. Hard to wait!!

most of them are already in the default UI, the afk will return, while the clock will just be an option that turn it on/off from user settings. The rest (with few exceptions) will not be back.