Spock's Beard tells the developers what to do because he's awesome and knows everything.

[Tyrath]

And I fall back on my claim from another thread that on most shards it's tough to put a group together. Ive done some shard hopping just looking around, and except for Atl and a couple of other shards, The only time I can find more than 6-8 people on is at EM events. And most of those arent shard's players, but xsharders that work EM events for a living. Forced grouping for a lot of our shards is just wasted content.

LOL I watched a IDOC on Legends a while back, nothing big or spectacular but 5 people camping it and all X sharders. Since it was one of my houses that I emptied out when I closed accounts and left to decay. I found it amusing. Not one single legends regular. The house loot a chest with a Book that Said "HAHAHAHA" But if all you get are X sharders at a 18x18 IDOC how in the hell do you get a group to do the big stuff. The biggest group I have seen in Months outside of Atlantic was Jirel, Luc, and me working together to tame a particulalry mean GD. LOL I will probably get a Perm ban for mentioning Jirel

 

[BeaIank]

They really need to improve how peerless drops work.
It gets tiresome to not see any of the higher drops after doing 200 runs of the same peerless.

 

[Tyrath]

They really need to improve how peerless drops work.
It gets tiresome to not see any of the higher drops after doing 200 runs of the same peerless.

Sounds like you are suffering from Lady M and Dread Horn burnout as well

 

[BeaIank]

Sounds like you are suffering from Lady M and Dread Horn burnout as well

Absolutely.
From the Eodon release up to June I did more than 200 Dread Horn runs.
All I got from them were mushrooms, mangled head, pristine head, Dread horn manes and the horn of Dreadhorn. Not a single flute, dread's revenge or a crimmy. That was with 4 people getting looting rights and instanced bodies.
So, you can could that as 800 kills. Without a single decent drop.

 

[Uriah Heep]

it is just another complex grind that a year from now, very few if anyone will be doing.

3 months...

 

[Tyrath]

Absolutely.
From the Eodon release up to June I did more than 200 Dread Horn runs.
All I got from them were mushrooms, mangled head, pristine head, Dread horn manes and the horn of Dreadhorn. Not a single flute, dread's revenge or a crimmy. That was with 4 people getting looting rights and instanced bodies.
So, you can could that as 800 kills. Without a single decent drop.

Just think you would probably have 75 dino hunter titles and 25 banana piles if you had just directed your game play they want it spent.

 

[Drakelord]

Just think you would probably have 75 dino hunter titles and 25 banana piles if you had just directed your game play they want it spent.

yep, on Sonoma the PAS people do the Trex and Ape once a month, three runs, I got like 27 tiles from Rex and another 27 skulls from the ape. I have a few from the hatchling and cubs as well, but digging the last one is a royal pain in the rear. I hate digging up lava stones

 

[Tyrath]

yep, on Sonoma the PAS people do the Trex and Ape once a month, three runs, I got like 27 tiles from Rex and another 27 skulls from the ape. I have a few from the hatchling and cubs as well, but digging the last one is a royal pain in the rear. I hate digging up lava stones

Lava stones were kind of fun the first time

 

[drcossack]

Lava stones were kind of fun the first time

They were? When I first did it on Test: "This is ******* stupid." When it went live on all shards: "This is REALLY ******* stupid and I am never going to do this again. I'll just get the lava rock from other people by trading quest rewards" (which was easy, because I killed dozens of Great Ape & T-Rex.)

 

[Tyrath]

They were? When I first did it on Test: "This is ******* stupid." When it went live on all shards: "This is REALLY ******* stupid and I am never going to do this again. I'll just get the lava rock from other people by trading quest rewards" (which was easy, because I killed dozens of Great Ape & T-Rex.)

Hey what can I say it was interesting for a hour or two. Did not say I fell in love with it and was going to grind it to death

 

[Spock's Beard]

I actually really like the idea of the Myrmidex war. It just takes way the hell too long and everything has way the hell too much HP. The quests that came afterward were fine. The boss was stupid though, like if I were melee I don't think I could have even hit it, and one-shot instakill mechanics are bullcrap.

 

[Drakelord]

Lava stones were kind of fun the first time

Ya I agree there, but as someone said you can only do so much with banana piles and titles.

A Valley of One Quest Chain – Ultima Online
You receive a bag with a unique treasure, one of six special items randomly selected from:

• Lava Rock Display
• Tiger Rug – House addon, available in orange (common), black (uncommon) and white (rare)
• Banana Hoard – house addon, can be placed as small, medium, or large
• Dragon Turtle Fountain – house addon
• Reward Title Deed: Dinosaur Hunter
• Pet tiger cub statuette, upon use grants the user a pet tiger cub

The only thing I am looking for these days is the black and white rugs for the wife. Sadly there are no points for throwing this stuff away, so I give it away freely on Sonoma. On Siege I don't miss with it, I been to Trex and the Ape with [GIL] I put the quest items in a box and forgot them

 

[Tyrath]

I actually really like the idea of the Myrmidex war. It just takes way the hell too long and everything has way the hell too much HP. The quests that came afterward were fine. The boss was stupid though, like if I were melee I don't think I could have even hit it, and one-shot instakill mechanics are bullcrap.

Totally with you on the massive HP and Insta kill. The HP just makes it boring and the Insta kill makes it frustrating..... A deadly combination for the content.

 

[BeaIank]

Pretty much everything in Eodon suffers from massive HP problem. It just makes the whole place annoying to visit.

 

[Spock's Beard]

The thing with the developers is that they get hung up on particular consequences. Like look at artifacts. For the longest time their priority with artifacts was clearly "Can't make them overpowered!" so we have whole generations of them that are so suboptimal nobody cares about them. Like when's the last time anyone went out of their way to get any of the Ararat artifacts? Most people have probably forgotten they exist.

They were so worried about artifacts outcompeting crafters (or whatever they were worried about) so much that they were basically wasting their time adding artifacts in the first place. Thankfully going into ToL we had a lot of talk about the subject and at least one thread legitimately asking if the first iteration of Shadowguard artifacts were even meant to be used, and they saw the light and buffed everything.

They need to have that same sort of moment when it comes to content development in general. Whatever consequences they think would ensue if content were too convenient or too quick or too easy, they can't be as bad as the content being forgotten about a couple weeks after it comes out.

 

[CovenantX]

You need to revert Despise and dump the arties from it somewhere else. You just do. If it were some other dungeon you slapped that minigame into we could just ignore it, but you literally paved over the game's de facto newbie dungeon. This isn't just some content addition being nitpicked by forum goons, you actively damaged the game with this change.

You know, Siege doesn't have a trammel despise, Cora from Covetous drops the artifacts that come from Andros on Siege.
so half of what you're asking for already exists.

I wouldn't be opposed to them making that change, Cora would need a faster spawn-rate though & hopefully a much higher drop-rate.

Quivers would become much harder to get... not only in difficulty, but the RNG of getting 1 of 8 different items would be absolutely horrible. not to mention the RNG of the items being human or gargoyle, or even a specific resist type... Oh... the RNG is killing me just thinking about it..

 

[Basara]

RE: Spined leather. Ratmen. Lots of Ratmen. Alternatively, gators and giant serpents on Valor island (so you can get bones from the serpents)

As for advancing the pit....

IF A PLAYER CHARACTER DOESN'T DAMAGE A CREATURE, IT WILL NOT COUNT TOWARDS MOVING THE SPAWN.
Period.
You can sit and watch the two sides kill each other all day and nothing will change.
But, if you AoE one side one or two times, or run around and get hits on all the side you're working against, you can advance it by yourself.

 

[MalagAste]

You know the sad fact is that certain devs went to school where they were taught that grinding was good and there is a formula for how many drops per whatever.... but in truth the time invested in lets take the roof... to get a group of 10 people to do the roof with each having to do the rooms it takes a good hour or 2 to do that and another hour or two to actually kill all 4 mobs... well this is a LOT of time invested and when 1 person in 10 gets a drop and the others having wasted 4 hours get nothing???? How many times do they invest the 4 hours to get a 1:100 or more chance at a drop and a 1:20 or more chance at getting the 1 item they give a rats about... you're talking about it taking probably 2 or 3 years before they get the 1 item they wanted and that's if they did the roof regularly...

But for folk like me got to do the roof 3 times and then no one wanted to go again... I can't solo it so now I can't do it at all. I'm not going to another shard to do that... and with more and more crap being non-transferable who'd want to??? Oh... and while I have enough accounts to do it I could cheat use a program to run 10 of my accounts as one and solo whatever I want.... but what would be the point???

The more complicated and unrewarding the quest become the less likely folk are going to invest time and energy in them... and the less and less we play the more and more likely we are to close the accounts and quit...

If I could get over not wanting to throw stuff in the trash and just walk away I'd have left months ago. But I'm always left wondering what to keep and what to throw and with so many houses full of stuff I just get really depressed thinking about it and just don't do anything... though the more and more frustrated and irritated I get with the game the closer I get to just walking away.

Couple that with the problem of now I work nights which is great for me in some ways... since I finally can sleep... no more pretending to be a day person... but sadly there are few folk I know who are up all night... and even fewer who play UO or want to do the things in game that I want to do... or play on my shard (which I have zero intention of leaving I started there... I'll end there). So finding people to game with at 1 or 2 in the morning is next to impossible.

 

[Tyrath]

The grind is not all bad and what they teach in game design school, is grind in balance with progression followed by. reward. More and more we just have the grind. We are being herded to the content they want us to like and use. Well I don't like the new content and am not going to utilize it. But wait as bonus they nerfed the drop rates, I am like Bealank and wondering if Dreads even drop the higher end stuff anymore. Yep we got the grind, there is no progression or feeling of accomplishment because it seems the only reward is the GRIND.

 

[Spock's Beard]

Yeah they seem to think we'll automatically do any content that's new, so they may as well make it super grindy so it lasts us as long as possible. The idea that we'll just take a pass on it doesn't seem to occur to them. Much like they used to think we'd automatically want any new artifact, so they may as well make them really suboptimal so they don't nerf crafters or whatever.

Cora would need a faster spawn-rate though & hopefully a much higher drop-rate.

Cora is one of the most baffling things they've ever added. A publicly accessible boss that insta-kills everyone if more than one person gets within combat range of it? What? Why? What possibly motivated them to design it that way?

 

[Merlin]

They really need to improve how peerless drops work.
It gets tiresome to not see any of the higher drops after doing 200 runs of the same peerless.

Absolutely.
From the Eodon release up to June I did more than 200 Dread Horn runs.
All I got from them were mushrooms, mangled head, pristine head, Dread horn manes and the horn of Dreadhorn. Not a single flute, dread's revenge or a crimmy. That was with 4 people getting looting rights and instanced bodies.
So, you can could that as 800 kills. Without a single decent drop.

The entire loot table needs to be adjusted for Peerless bosses. 99% of what drops on their corpses is unusable. Even some of the regs (i.e. BLIGHT), are just not worth even picking up. I'm not saying they need to make the loot the equivalent to what you get on Exodus or Scalis, but atleast throw us a bone.

Peerless artifact drop rate appears to have gone down since ToL released... however... the other side of the coin is how many Crimmys (and other Peerless arties), do we really need floating around in game? I think that Lady M and Medusa in particular are way over run by most PVM guilds (mine included). The Medusa drops (aside from Slither ofcourse), are only good for Clean-Up points and drop too often. Even the Fey Slayer bow is no longer useful now that the Fey Slayer property can be imbued. While I agree that there needs to be some better balance... I'm not sure increasing drops on Lady Mel/Medusa/Dreadhorn makes sense. Maybe some of the lesser run Peerless bosses (Chief Paraxymous, Grizzle), could use an increased drop rate, but not the ones where you can do 9-10 runs in an hour and a half.

The other idea is to take a page from what they are currently doing with some of the Doom artifacts that are now to be used on Kotl City event recipes... make the lesser used Peerless drops into ingredients for something new in the future.

 

[CovenantX]

Cora is one of the most baffling things they've ever added. A publicly accessible boss that insta-kills everyone if more than one person gets within combat range of it? What? Why? What possibly motivated them to design it that way?

Honestly, (IMO) it's literally the only place in UO that the "Peacemaking" Skill is useful without the mastery songs.

Peacing her resets that "insta-kill" ability, if you area peace every so often she won't even use it.

 

[BeaIank]

The entire loot table needs to be adjusted for Peerless bosses. 99% of what drops on their corpses is unusable. Even some of the regs (i.e. BLIGHT), are just not worth even picking up. I'm not saying they need to make the loot the equivalent to what you get on Exodus or Scalis, but atleast throw us a bone.

Peerless artifact drop rate appears to have gone down since ToL released... however... the other side of the coin is how many Crimmys (and other Peerless arties), do we really need floating around in game? I think that Lady M and Medusa in particular are way over run by most PVM guilds (mine included). The Medusa drops (aside from Slither ofcourse), are only good for Clean-Up points and drop too often. Even the Fey Slayer bow is no longer useful now that the Fey Slayer property can be imbued. While I agree that there needs to be some better balance... I'm not sure increasing drops on Lady Mel/Medusa/Dreadhorn makes sense. Maybe some of the lesser run Peerless bosses (Chief Paraxymous, Grizzle), could use an increased drop rate, but not the ones where you can do 9-10 runs in an hour and a half.

The other idea is to take a page from what they are currently doing with some of the Doom artifacts that are now to be used on Kotl City event recipes... make the lesser used Peerless drops into ingredients for something new in the future.

I do believe that increasing the drop rate is in order. At least of their base artifacts. The drop for the rarest ones such as the crimmy and the slither could be improved a small bit (by adding 1% chance more to drop maybe), because they definitely reduced the rate of the drops. The crimmy itself can be easily obtained at Blackthorn's in a few hours of slaughtering captains, even. Much faster than farming Dreadhorn.
It wouldn't hurt for dread flute to drop more often either. It is not even a slayer instrument. But going months without seeing a single one gets very frustrating. :|
Or at least make it exceptional or random slayer if they are keeping the drop rate so artificially low.

 

[Ender]

I haven't truly enjoyed a new boss in the game since early SA. And even then, two of those were annoying as **** to fight because of a paralyze that you can't break or resist.

Everything since then, even quite a few non-boss enemies, have been way too high on hitpoints, resists, or both.

And another frustrating grind that you guys may or may not agree with me on, is the masteries added in ToL. I never saw a level 3 one after doing quite a few solo Fel spawns. I was so excited to get to use them but can't get the highest level ones to drop.