It's that time of year when Mervyn's on one of his missions. With the dwindling UO population I wanted to address the issue of the dwindling amount of elite players. The issue is, there's no more fresh ones coming through, and why is that? I beleive its because the game is so complex, but as i've mentioned in the past, it really needn't be that confusing, all we really need for both clients, is a good enough CHARACTER SHEET/STATUS (depending on your client)
All we really need to help a player understand our game mechanics are to add the CAPS (see what i did there?)
I've recently submitted about half a dozen bug reports with the EC's default UI about the figures and discriptions of the character status. I know they just copied from Pincos and didn't correct them so i thought i'd bring up the flaws with them.
There were several things wrong/incorrect with the EC default UI character sheet, here we go:
Hit points, mousing over it, tells you no information about where we arrive at this figure, should display 50 + str/2 + items.
Hit point increase: just didn't work, mine displays (+0/+25) when i clearly have +25
Strength: similarly when you moused over it, said nothing of it's impact to weight carrying ability/damage output, it did say it was related to hit points, but didn't provide any more information.
Dexterity: mousing over told us almost nothing about this, perhaps something about 80 being needed for parrying would be nice.
Intelligence: mousing over it told you nothing of its effect on spell damage and resisting spells.
Hit point regeneration: when you moused over it, it didn't actually tell you what this figure represents, in mathematical terms, that is to my understanding, the amount of hit points regenerated over 10 seconds)
Reflect physical damage, given /105??? it's not capped at 105, it's just not capped.
Resists: there's not a lot to be said about this, but mousing over them, still tells us nothing. When mousing over energy, perhaps tell us elves get /75?, or at least tell us we can raise the caps with refinements.
Lower mana cost: /40? still displays this even when you wear armour that increases the cap...
now we get complicated.
Sepll damage, no cap given?? okay there's no cap in PvM, but Damage Increase correctly displays the PvP cap x/100. So what UO needs to do is formulate your cap depending on your skills and display it here. This is absolutely vital to do. WE CANNOT HIDE MECHANICS.
now we get more complicated.
Faster Casting: x/4 hmmmmmm. Yes and no, it's /4 for chivalry (if magery is below 70) spell weaving, bushido, and ninjitsu, but /2 for magery, necromancy and mysticism.
So perhaps there should be 2 figures and caps shown here, one for chivalry, weaving, bushido, ninjitsu, and another for magery, necro, and mysticism.
But what if magery is over 70?
So we'd need to either have three figures showing the FC caps....
or... Apply the same casting caps to spellweaving, bushido, ninjitsu as for chivalry,
and make it so they're all also capped at FC2 with magery over 69.9.
Either way for the player to undestand the caps in game, more than one figure needs to be displayed here.
EC CHARACTER SHEET: NEEDS MUCH IMPROVEMENT.
CC CHARACTER STATUS: ABORTION.
While i may sound petty, it's these little touches that can make a huge difference in cleaning up the game and making it more accessible to new people.
All we really need to help a player understand our game mechanics are to add the CAPS (see what i did there?)
I've recently submitted about half a dozen bug reports with the EC's default UI about the figures and discriptions of the character status. I know they just copied from Pincos and didn't correct them so i thought i'd bring up the flaws with them.
There were several things wrong/incorrect with the EC default UI character sheet, here we go:
Hit points, mousing over it, tells you no information about where we arrive at this figure, should display 50 + str/2 + items.
Hit point increase: just didn't work, mine displays (+0/+25) when i clearly have +25
Strength: similarly when you moused over it, said nothing of it's impact to weight carrying ability/damage output, it did say it was related to hit points, but didn't provide any more information.
Dexterity: mousing over told us almost nothing about this, perhaps something about 80 being needed for parrying would be nice.
Intelligence: mousing over it told you nothing of its effect on spell damage and resisting spells.
Hit point regeneration: when you moused over it, it didn't actually tell you what this figure represents, in mathematical terms, that is to my understanding, the amount of hit points regenerated over 10 seconds)
Reflect physical damage, given /105??? it's not capped at 105, it's just not capped.
Resists: there's not a lot to be said about this, but mousing over them, still tells us nothing. When mousing over energy, perhaps tell us elves get /75?, or at least tell us we can raise the caps with refinements.
Lower mana cost: /40? still displays this even when you wear armour that increases the cap...
now we get complicated.
Sepll damage, no cap given?? okay there's no cap in PvM, but Damage Increase correctly displays the PvP cap x/100. So what UO needs to do is formulate your cap depending on your skills and display it here. This is absolutely vital to do. WE CANNOT HIDE MECHANICS.
now we get more complicated.
Faster Casting: x/4 hmmmmmm. Yes and no, it's /4 for chivalry (if magery is below 70) spell weaving, bushido, and ninjitsu, but /2 for magery, necromancy and mysticism.
So perhaps there should be 2 figures and caps shown here, one for chivalry, weaving, bushido, ninjitsu, and another for magery, necro, and mysticism.
But what if magery is over 70?
So we'd need to either have three figures showing the FC caps....
or... Apply the same casting caps to spellweaving, bushido, ninjitsu as for chivalry,
and make it so they're all also capped at FC2 with magery over 69.9.
Either way for the player to undestand the caps in game, more than one figure needs to be displayed here.
EC CHARACTER SHEET: NEEDS MUCH IMPROVEMENT.
CC CHARACTER STATUS: ABORTION.
While i may sound petty, it's these little touches that can make a huge difference in cleaning up the game and making it more accessible to new people.
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