Sadness

[Picus at the office]

Shard bound EM items are the correct call. PS's have limited value and, while farmable, are not the real money maker. Watch how quickly it all ends when you stop the 20-30 people who really play for the event items, look at the selling forum and how the very next day stuff is on a ATL.

 

[Anonymous UOPlayer]

I have no issues with this by the way Michelle,

The issue though as I see it, is this has become the predominate attitude on forums and in-game.

This game has been driven by over 50's attitudes for too long - ever since the creation of Trammel, which quite frankly is not going to be that attractive to a mainstream audience.

Now I certainly think there is a place for your playstyle, but it should not be driving the game design, or the way things happen.

If anything, it is the loudmouth pvpers, who you all poo poo, they are the ones who are driven by emotion, fun and excitement, they are the ones who should be listened to, in order to give a game life.

If you have them in a game in numbers, the game has life, it has a future, if you don't, the game dies.

Posts like this are held together by something other than evidence. The basic premise is that the game can thrive by returning to a business model that was failing.

Here's some stuff I threw together months and months ago for the custom rules shard threads -- Very relevant for posts like this too.

---------------

If the premise of this post were true, the following list of things also would be true.

Publish 16 never would have happened. Posts from the dev team at the time said that Publish happened because most people had left Felucca for Trammel and there was a need to balance out server loads for a greater degree. If Trammel hadn't been a success, most people never would've left, and Publish 16 never would have happened.

But it did happen.

Trammel never would have been created, because the discontent created by Fel never would have existed and thus there never would have been a need for it.

But it was. (Then see also above.)

Richard Garriott's Memorable Moment from UO would not have consisted of a realization, caused by an incident of one player harming another, that he had to think hard about the rules of the world he'd created.

But it was.
Link: Memorable Moment – Ultima Online

Starr Long would not have indicated that the creation of Trammel was necessary when he spoke at the UO anniversary party.

But he did. (There used to be a paraphrase up someplace of the talk he gave; others will remember it though not all will remember it.)

Siege and Mugen would be the most-populated shards in UO because people would like to play that way.

But they are not.

There never would have been a need to have the Siege housing gimmick as people would have played there without it, because they liked to play that way.

But there was.

The Fel Abyss spawns would be crowded with folks doing them. (The undead one in particular has a lot of cool content and good rewards.)

But they're not.

There wouldn't be posts on Stratics complaining that VvV was dead, because people would jump at the chance to PvP.

But there are those posts.

Games that came out post-UO that had more of a Fel type environment would be prospering, whereas games that came out post-UO that had more of a Tram type environment would be failing.

But that's not the case. Shadowbane is dead. Darkfall has 3,344 likes on facebook;

Darkfall Online

Everquest has 66,431;

EverQuest

UO has 27,757.

Ultima Online

(Facebook likes aren't a perfect indicator of a game's popularity but it's a much better metric than individual posters.)

No likes for Shadowbane because it died.

I found a Facebook page for a free shard! Number or likes: 3,773.

I found a Facebook page for another free shard, specifically dedicated to the Second Age era. Number of likes: 1,680.

Finally, Fel would be so popular on its own that threads like these wouldn't exist.

I could go on and on but that's enough for now. Ultimately the argument of these types of threads is "Trammel failed, because failure is defined by the original poster not liking it."

There was a time when most players would see posts like these and just let them pass by, but I'm glad that time is gone. In not responding to posts like these we run significant risks of letting intense opinion be mistaken for popular opinion.

I don't expect to post in this thread again, however, because it'd be pointless.

 

[GarthGrey]

Posts like this are held together by something other than evidence. The basic premise is that the game can thrive by returning to a business model that was failing.

Here's some stuff I threw together months and months ago for the custom rules shard threads -- Very relevant for posts like this too.

---------------

If the premise of this post were true, the following list of things also would be true.

Publish 16 never would have happened. Posts from the dev team at the time said that Publish happened because most people had left Felucca for Trammel and there was a need to balance out server loads for a greater degree. If Trammel hadn't been a success, most people never would've left, and Publish 16 never would have happened.

But it did happen.

Trammel never would have been created, because the discontent created by Fel never would have existed and thus there never would have been a need for it.

But it was. (Then see also above.)

Richard Garriott's Memorable Moment from UO would not have consisted of a realization, caused by an incident of one player harming another, that he had to think hard about the rules of the world he'd created.

But it was.
Link: Memorable Moment – Ultima Online

Starr Long would not have indicated that the creation of Trammel was necessary when he spoke at the UO anniversary party.

But he did. (There used to be a paraphrase up someplace of the talk he gave; others will remember it though not all will remember it.)

Siege and Mugen would be the most-populated shards in UO because people would like to play that way.

But they are not.

There never would have been a need to have the Siege housing gimmick as people would have played there without it, because they liked to play that way.

But there was.

The Fel Abyss spawns would be crowded with folks doing them. (The undead one in particular has a lot of cool content and good rewards.)

But they're not.

There wouldn't be posts on Stratics complaining that VvV was dead, because people would jump at the chance to PvP.

But there are those posts.

Games that came out post-UO that had more of a Fel type environment would be prospering, whereas games that came out post-UO that had more of a Tram type environment would be failing.

But that's not the case. Shadowbane is dead. Darkfall has 3,344 likes on facebook;

Darkfall Online

Everquest has 66,431;

EverQuest

UO has 27,757.

Ultima Online

(Facebook likes aren't a perfect indicator of a game's popularity but it's a much better metric than individual posters.)

No likes for Shadowbane because it died.

I found a Facebook page for a free shard! Number or likes: 3,773.

I found a Facebook page for another free shard, specifically dedicated to the Second Age era. Number of likes: 1,680.

Finally, Fel would be so popular on its own that threads like these wouldn't exist.

I could go on and on but that's enough for now. Ultimately the argument of these types of threads is "Trammel failed, because failure is defined by the original poster not liking it."

There was a time when most players would see posts like these and just let them pass by, but I'm glad that time is gone. In not responding to posts like these we run significant risks of letting intense opinion be mistaken for popular opinion.

I don't expect to post in this thread again, however, because it'd be pointless.

I would have "liked" this post until you did the mic drop...

 

[Merlin]

Folks -

Had to do some thread clean up to remove some posts that touched on politics, included insults to others and were derailing the thread topic.

Please keep RoC in mind when posting (Rules of Conduct | Stratics Community Forums) and stay on topic.

 

[TB Cookie [W]]

The basic premise is that the game can thrive by returning to a business model that was failing.

Your basic premise is incorrect, therefore the rest of your point becomes pointless.
(And by the way, which do you suppose is the bigger business failure - the Income generated pre Trammel, or the Income today?).

The basic premise is not to return to once was, the premise is, the solution was botched, and surely by now it is obvious to even you, with hindsight, many of the game systems have not coped due to this.

Solutions could have included;

1. Creating pure Felucca or Trammel servers.
2. Creating Trammel in addition to Felucca on the same server- but allowing no drops whatsoever in Trammel. It could have been used as a peaceful place for Housing, Crafting, Gossiping, Decoration. {If players truly wanted safety only, this would have sufficed, but they are truly hiding Greed, they really just wanted free stuff}.

Instead, they merged the solution, which of course seemed to work for awhile - until the systems bent so much the game is completely out of shape.
It is only too obvious everyone moved to and farmed in Trammel, the Risk v Reward equation had been broken - this therefore debunks every single argument whereby you say Trammel is/was more popular in comparison to Felucca. There is no equal comparison. Trammel has 98% of game content free and on tap.

• You have 2 Ice Cream vans next to each other, one gives away free ice creams, and the other you have to pay for, which one gets the longest queue?
• Which one is sustainable?

• You have a horde of locusts in 2 fields. Which field will last longer, the one with a flock of birds in it, or the one without? The one without, has no system balance, the grass in the field will be decimated, and that entire ecology will be destroyed, wiping out every living creature in that environment.
• Going back to these 2 fields, in the past, there was only the one field with a flock of birds in. Then the farmer added another field with no birds and the rush of locusts from the fields with birds in, to the field without birds, is the same temporary influx of popularity that occurred when players rushed from Felucca to Trammel. Then the grass ran out (game content got wiped {free farming, scripting, multi clienting, multi boxing), so they had to add another field with crops (content - Illshenar) in it. Then another (Malas). Then another (Ter Mur). Then another (Shadowguard). Then all those fields seemed to die regardless, and this cycle just seems to continue - at what point do you realise the system is out of balance? All this time, the original field with the flock of birds in it, is doing pretty well, except of course, there are a lot less birds.

My question to you is, do you see the broken systems? Economy, PvP, Crafting, Less Player styles (pure mages, pure warriors, rogues, bards), Domination of Sampires/Tamers.

How would you fix it?

Sometimes, it seems like only I see the systems, or even attempt to give solutions to help give the game balance, which will in turn, bring about a better playing experience for all.





Edit - To Add - Bringing Siege into this debate as a comparison of popularity between styles is also misleading. I believe there are 30+ ruleset differences listed between Siege and a current day Feluccan production shard. Siege was always Hardcore, even back in the day. To use this in your debates, shows complete lack of knowledge of the game.

As it does when people say Felucca is empty, or nothing happens in Felucca. I play there consistently, and see a ton of action. I keep posting personal experience, but again last night, you can ask anyone involved, we had a 3 hour intense PvP battle that was at least 20v20, as we fought over a Europa Harry. The tactics, strategy, fun, intensity of a 3 way battle, were a lot of fun. Again, I went to bed with a huge smile on my face from UO, how many of you can say that?

 

[Anonymous UOPlayer]

I would have "liked" this post until you did the mic drop...

That's standard text I use -- it's a post I designed to deal with custom rules shard threads. Like Cookie's reply, most posts in such threads consist of opinions and logical fallacies in place of facts. And there's basically no point in replying to those.

Having said that: Feel free to like or not like any post you choose based on whatever criteria you see fit. I don't do posts go get Likes, I do them to be as correct as possible. I just figured knowing the full picture might be good, given that whatever a "mic drop" is, you seem to perceive it as a bad thing!

 

[Anonymous UOPlayer]

This post consists mostly of logical fallacies and opinions put forth as fact. I lack the time to reply to all of it but here's a couple of them, cited solely as examples.

[which do you suppose is the bigger business failure - the Income generated pre Trammel, or the Income today]

Logical fallacy, comparing apples and oranges. Pre-Trammel, UO had no real competition. As competition came in and people left, Trammel became necessary. Which do you suppose is bigger, the income pre-Trammel or the income from World of Warcraft, where PvP is tightly controlled. Do you suppose the population in the areas of Eve Online with controlled PvP or uncontrolled PvP is bigger? Posters here have indicated it's the areas with the controlled PvP.

Also that ice cream cone stand analogy you made is....Odd. Fel players and Tram players both pay the same amount per account. The analogy therefore falls.

Yeah looking over your post again most of it is simply an elaborate way of missing the point and not dealing with the obvious facts.

This is why I am not fond of replying twice in a thread. There's precious little point.

Your basic premise is incorrect, therefore the rest of your point becomes pointless.
(And by the way, which do you suppose is the bigger business failure - the Income generated pre Trammel, or the Income today?).

The basic premise is not to return to once was, the premise is, the solution was botched, and surely by now it is obvious to even you, with hindsight, many of the game systems have not coped due to this.

Solutions could have included;

1. Creating pure Felucca or Trammel servers.
2. Creating Trammel in addition to Felucca on the same server- but allowing no drops whatsoever in Trammel. It could have been used as a peaceful place for Housing, Crafting, Gossiping, Decoration. {If players truly wanted safety only, this would have sufficed, but they are truly hiding Greed, they really just wanted free stuff}.

Instead, they merged the solution, which of course seemed to work for awhile - until the systems bent so much the game is completely out of shape.
It is only too obvious everyone moved to and farmed in Trammel, the Risk v Reward equation had been broken - this therefore debunks every single argument whereby you say Trammel is/was more popular in comparison to Felucca. There is no equal comparison. Trammel has 98% of game content free and on tap.

• You have 2 Ice Cream vans next to each other, one gives away free ice creams, and the other you have to pay for, which one gets the longest queue?
• Which one is sustainable?

• You have a horde of locusts in 2 fields. Which field will last longer, the one with a flock of birds in it, or the one without? The one without, has no system balance, the grass in the field will be decimated, and that entire ecology will be destroyed, wiping out every living creature in that environment.
• Going back to these 2 fields, in the past, there was only the one field with a flock of birds in. Then the farmer added another field with no birds and the rush of locusts from the fields with birds in, to the field without birds, is the same temporary influx of popularity that occurred when players rushed from Felucca to Trammel. Then the grass ran out (game content got wiped {free farming, scripting, multi clienting, multi boxing), so they had to add another field with crops (content - Illshenar) in it. Then another (Malas). Then another (Ter Mur). Then another (Shadowguard). Then all those fields seemed to die regardless, and this cycle just seems to continue - at what point do you realise the system is out of balance? All this time, the original field with the flock of birds in it, is doing pretty well, except of course, there are a lot less birds.

My question to you is, do you see the broken systems? Economy, PvP, Crafting, Less Player styles (pure mages, pure warriors, rogues, bards), Domination of Sampires/Tamers.

How would you fix it?

Sometimes, it seems like only I see the systems, or even attempt to give solutions to help give the game balance, which will in turn, bring about a better playing experience for all.





Edit - To Add - Bringing Siege into this debate as a comparison of popularity between styles is also misleading. I believe there are 30+ ruleset differences listed between Siege and a current day Feluccan production shard. Siege was always Hardcore, even back in the day. To use this in your debates, shows complete lack of knowledge of the game.

As it does when people say Felucca is empty, or nothing happens in Felucca. I play there consistently, and see a ton of action. I keep posting personal experience, but again last night, you can ask anyone involved, we had a 3 hour intense PvP battle that was at least 20v20, as we fought over a Europa Harry. The tactics, strategy, fun, intensity of a 3 way battle, were a lot of fun. Again, I went to bed with a huge smile on my face from UO, how many of you can say that?

 

[Anon McDougle]

While all your arguments seem valid which one of you is moving to Origin ?? half of the SW side of Luna still sits empty

 

[Pawain]

 

[Slayvite]

*notices Pawain walking into a room with popcorn*
Huh?
*frantically looks around for that popcorn I was saving and hurries to find a good seat*

 

[ShriNayne]

I do agree that making Fel rule servers and Trammel rule servers might have been a better idea back then. Let's be honest they would likely still now be suffering the same fate as Fel on almost every server, they would be empty, maybe even merged together eventually if the population was that small.

 

[Anonymous UOPlayer]

While all your arguments seem valid which one of you is moving to Origin ?? half of the SW side of Luna still sits empty

The Fel players successfully have turned this thread into a "tramm sux" thread. Welcome to Stratics.

 

[celticus]

Posts like this are held together by something other than evidence. The basic premise is that the game can thrive by returning to a business model that was failing.

Here's some stuff I threw together months and months ago for the custom rules shard threads -- Very relevant for posts like this too.

---------------

If the premise of this post were true, the following list of things also would be true.

Publish 16 never would have happened. Posts from the dev team at the time said that Publish happened because most people had left Felucca for Trammel and there was a need to balance out server loads for a greater degree. If Trammel hadn't been a success, most people never would've left, and Publish 16 never would have happened.

But it did happen.

Trammel never would have been created, because the discontent created by Fel never would have existed and thus there never would have been a need for it.

But it was. (Then see also above.)

Richard Garriott's Memorable Moment from UO would not have consisted of a realization, caused by an incident of one player harming another, that he had to think hard about the rules of the world he'd created.

But it was.
Link: Memorable Moment – Ultima Online

Starr Long would not have indicated that the creation of Trammel was necessary when he spoke at the UO anniversary party.

But he did. (There used to be a paraphrase up someplace of the talk he gave; others will remember it though not all will remember it.)

Siege and Mugen would be the most-populated shards in UO because people would like to play that way.

But they are not.

There never would have been a need to have the Siege housing gimmick as people would have played there without it, because they liked to play that way.

But there was.

The Fel Abyss spawns would be crowded with folks doing them. (The undead one in particular has a lot of cool content and good rewards.)

But they're not.

There wouldn't be posts on Stratics complaining that VvV was dead, because people would jump at the chance to PvP.

But there are those posts.

Games that came out post-UO that had more of a Fel type environment would be prospering, whereas games that came out post-UO that had more of a Tram type environment would be failing.

But that's not the case. Shadowbane is dead. Darkfall has 3,344 likes on facebook;

Darkfall Online

Everquest has 66,431;

EverQuest

UO has 27,757.

Ultima Online

(Facebook likes aren't a perfect indicator of a game's popularity but it's a much better metric than individual posters.)

No likes for Shadowbane because it died.

I found a Facebook page for a free shard! Number or likes: 3,773.

I found a Facebook page for another free shard, specifically dedicated to the Second Age era. Number of likes: 1,680.

Finally, Fel would be so popular on its own that threads like these wouldn't exist.

I could go on and on but that's enough for now. Ultimately the argument of these types of threads is "Trammel failed, because failure is defined by the original poster not liking it."

There was a time when most players would see posts like these and just let them pass by, but I'm glad that time is gone. In not responding to posts like these we run significant risks of letting intense opinion be mistaken for popular opinion.

I don't expect to post in this thread again, however, because it'd be pointless.

No: Your post is both good and appreciated, and well-annotated.
You may be surprised how many people in the game agree with you.
One of the problems with the game and this PvP/PK issue was enhanced by the pet revamp mistake, much awaited for and touted widely:
**Taming training not only requires either : Pay US $$ to get advanced character token, then grind forever to raise skill, OR start at taming of 50, and then grind taming for countless weeks, months sometimes years depending on RL obligations. Thats just the taming skill itself for the player.
**But ALSO spending hours/days/weeks of time skilling pets various ways.
**PLUS obtaining overcap scrolls eg Wrestling/tactics etc. that cost money that an incoming tamer player has NO CHANCE getting in the game, and would need years to accumulate gold needed, or become able to farm PS in spawns.
**PLUS same tamer player now decides to come to Fel spawns and try to farm his/her own, and after much effort to work the spawn, gets PK'd.
The whole ordeal of taming is bound to lead to game fatigue, and loss of interest and we will likely see people very disillusioned, and guess what they will do..
== Lots of old and new players were lured to UO by EJ and the fabled and flawed "Pet Revamp". Problem is that the whole system should have been planned more carefully from the beginning, before publishing it. Player or Toon PS should NEVER have been same item to upgrade pets. This has created issues that will not auto correct. The prices of some of these PS are dropping, and it is likely this may be happening due to diminishing demand, due to diminishing buyers, possibly due to player dropout? As tamers DROP OUT, we will also see drop in PS prices, and less and less PS farmers.Only time will tell.
PS is just ONE of the problem with the new pet system, but an important one.
Older players like myself, have other characters that can farm PS and Fel content and PVP (never PK) till the cows come home, time allowing. But for newcomers and returnees, things can be very disappointing overall.

I think that EA/BS/Devs etc need to take another HARD look at the game and their new toy pet revamp, and see what they can do to improve the overall endurance of the game. And yep : the population seems decreasing sadly.
PVP and Fel also PK were ok and half balanced before pet revamp..now, not anymore.
This is a mess that may have no easy solutions. There are other UO spinnoff's outhere, that have done some solving of this, in different ways.
One thing, actions lead to reactions, beyond what EA/Devs etc. planned or desired. The flaws of the pet system are touted in multiple posts, at least here we have a more democratic system to discuss and critique them.