If you were to dev an MMO similair to UO but its own unique Intelectual Property, what would you scrap or borrow?

[morPR]

Power Scrolls would be the first thing to go. I'm not sure how I would make a system better but they pander to the players who have more money than others in order to surpass the Grand Master status which in the day was quite well respected.

I would include special game skills. Maybe you would gain levels by GM'ing special skills in a template. You'd gain 1K HP / 1K MP per grandmastered skill. Instead of causing you to have 120 potential skill points or whatever, you get stronger or wiser the better you are at a discipline.

Wresling needs an overhaul It looks more like punching but punching causes you to disarm or paralyze your opponent temporarily. Imagine adding throws or submission moves.....

Certian templates dictate a play style. I'd bring back witches and witch hunters from Warhammer Online in that you could stealth and attack your enemies from unawares. You'd inherit certain Ninja skills. A thief could stealth about, steal objects or use stunning blows with their fists or throwing techniques. He'd even know how to hide a body.

In fact, combine many elements from Warhammer Online and put in a seperation of all the skills. To be continued.

 

[Chap]

Scrap: Trammel
Having two facets with two different ruleset is not a good idea, espesially when one is a clone to the other.
Sure you could have a all felucca ruleset where the towns are protected with guards, and thus still somewhat "safe zones".

Borrow: Red versus blue. With rich resources outside guardzone you would have a need to leave the safe zone, risk versus reward. With red versus blue you would still have a pvp system,
and in addition its own pvp system with guilds or faction, vvv for example but with strongholds and battles lasting more than 20mins, an actual meaning to the victory or loss a town.


The most important would be to stay within a storyline and concept, like either you have the midevil or future, not both, its like a viking swords and helmets and you have ufos flying around lol wouldnt work.

 

[Lore]

Scrap:
Powerscrolls
Felucca/Trammel separation
Multiple Clients
Skill point limit.
Boss difficulty being if they can kill you in one two hits or not.
Anything that requires more than one previous craft to make the next crafted item.

Borrow:
The absence of levels.
Skill system only for strength.
Paperdoll
Items having permanence and a representation in game.
Spellbooks, but there will be rare spells and more balanced.
Isometric style. No more trying to make a UO successor that is not in the same gorgeous style as Classic Client UO.
Taming system, but I'd rework how it's trained.
UO has surprisingly good humanoid monster AI.
Keywords to trigger story
Player input journal that is viewable by others.
Persistent player housing in the world, but also instanced housing neighborhoods. Houses not instanced would be more limited than the instanced housing.

New:
Bestiary that adds stats if you have Lore or just flavor if you don't.
Game (not player) Journal with a list of keywords learned, lore, and flavor.
Transparent subscription cost for what your money goes toward, but probably a higher subscription than normal. Small server populations, which would be the main reason for the additional costs.
Only cosmetic shop, but never better than what's in game and only for special events or charity.
Server population limits.
Resources (even ores and wood) pooled for all characters.
One character can learn and grow all skills, but only a balanced amount can be active. Swapping active/inactive can only be done in limited ways.
Red/Gray/Blue system, but going to Red has more serious consequences and is long lasting. The point being that going red is a long term play style.
Player defined filters for desirable loot. The player can decide what loot they are looking for and the game will tell them the RNG for it and highlight it if it's dropped. The game will also favor those drops with the RNG getting lower the stronger it is.
A clearly defined main path to doing content. With lots of sidequests and paths that are more like UO and open world sandbox.
When a player loots an item or possesses it in anyway it is flagged immediately with that player's ID. Players can't see it, but an item will have a history of player handoffs.
I'd allow a healthy mod community with restrictions.

 

[Cymidei]

Instance housing, everyone gets a castle sized plot, that requires significant time and resources to develop, it never decays. Offer non instanced housing areas like Luna/New Mag that decays but players have to pay a premium in auctions to obtain it. Borrow NPC Trusts from FF 14 so you don't ever have to rely on pathetic scrubs to do dungeons/group content ever again but if you do party with other players you get better rewards.

Oh, and eliminate all tedium and carpal tunnel inducing repetitive activities that aren't fit for human beings to perform such as mining, fishing, lumber jacking, camping spawns, stuffing cannons, etc. . This sort of stuff causes burn out and encourages bots and scripting because it is just so boring. Why can't I do a quest and hire a NPC to do that stuff for me? If it's not fun, and it's just a repetitive grind why do you expect players to want to do it? UO really made me happy when they introduced the garden beds for example. Things players do often ought to be fun, and challenging!

I think MMORPGs will have to rethink the whole idea of servers in the future. Invariably they end up unbalanced, divide the community and create more problems than they solve. How will they solve it? Maybe have more things instanced/layered like housing, major cities, and divide players up into cohorts (people you friend, guild with, party with, etc. end up together in the same layers). One economy for the whole game!

Thanks for a thought provoking topic op!

 

[Angel of Sonoma]

Get rid of everything that requires a spreadsheet or calculator

 

[petemage]

I think MMORPGs will have to rethink the whole idea of servers in the future. Invariably they end up unbalanced, divide the community and create more problems than they solve. How will they solve it? Maybe have more things instanced/layered like housing, major cities, and divide players up into cohorts (people you friend, guild with, party with, etc. end up together in the same layers). One economy for the whole game!

Think thats only the problem when not everyone is free to move servers. I used to play Ark a lot where you can transfer servers every 15 minutes. People tell you which server they have their base and you just go their and be back 30 minutes later. There is no unbalance and there are no hubs. It's really just the way UO let's half of the people do transfers for free, while charging the other half $15 per trip. First take advantage over the latter.

 

[petemage]

In general I believe the skill system is a big keeper. Always had fun exploring the system itself. Sure many spells and skills feel useless, but it's part of the charm to figure it out. Many more modern games I plaqyed felt way to progressive and clean in the skill tree, with every new skill being somewhat useable. Go try telling that to a GM mage that just summoned a water elemental.

 

[morPR]

Thanks for a thought provoking topic op!

You're very welcome.

 

[Lord Nabin]

Get rid of everything that requires a spreadsheet or calculator

I mean, I have a lot of spreadsheets for various reasons.....

 

[Dragkarah]

Scrap: Trammel
Having two facets with two different ruleset is not a good idea, espesially when one is a clone to the other.
Sure you could have a all felucca ruleset where the towns are protected with guards, and thus still somewhat "safe zones".

Borrow: Red versus blue. With rich resources outside guardzone you would have a need to leave the safe zone, risk versus reward. With red versus blue you would still have a pvp system,
and in addition its own pvp system with guilds or faction, vvv for example but with strongholds and battles lasting more than 20mins, an actual meaning to the victory or loss a town.


The most important would be to stay within a storyline and concept, like either you have the midevil or future, not both, its like a viking swords and helmets and you have ufos flying around lol wouldnt work.

no no tram thing was tried by UO... and it was going to kill the game (and i'm a huge proponent of fel), its also caused or been a major contributing factor in multiple darkfall games, mortal online, and atlas online to fail.

 

[Cinderella]

Similiar to UO, but be different...

==========

One client like EC but with CC graphics.

No weight limit for your backpack.
No 50 stone items

Let all the facets be different, no Felucca.
If you wanted to pvp, there would be battlegrounds specifically for that.
where nobody can loot you and that all your stuff will go with you when you get rez.

Housing: instance house, where you can place a plot to build what you want. If you want people to view your house, they must party with you.

Special Housing in Hub Cities: the house that anybody can view without being in a party with you. But you have to win a design competition in order for it to be built there. The design competitions take place twice a year in cities somewhat like New Magincia, where they have to bid on the plot. After the building period, people vote and top four votes get built.

No shard shields, but you can send stuff to chars on the same account using the ingame post office. And you can purchase items on a shard wide auction house.

===================

I know many won't like these ideas...
but for some people decorating and designing their houses is what they love about UO.

 

[Lord Arm]

borrow: ban all cheaters/enforce the rules. honest people wont quit and/or honest players may return. dont give back banned accounts.

scrap endless cheating accounts, too many reasons why to post lol

scrap vvv, enjoyed red vs blue. not fun where all vvv people are yours enemy.

some people have some good ideas but theres no way i would want many of them due to existing bugs and other issues that need to be fix or improved first. just my opinions

 

[morPR]

some people have some good ideas but theres no way i would want many of them due to existing bugs and other issues that need to be fix or improved first. just my opinions

What bugs? I am literally working on planning a UO-like (but NOT freeshard version of) original MMO property. How would bugs in UO code affect a new game?

Now I wanna know WHAT TO CREATE?

 

[Lord Arm]

What bugs? I am literally working on planning a UO-like (but NOT freeshard version of) original MMO property. How would bugs in UO code affect a new game?

Now I wanna know WHAT TO CREATE?

if no bugs you should be a dev lol.

 

[morPR]

if no bugs you should be a dev lol.

I know there will be bugs, but not UO's current cadre.

 

[morPR]

Oh, and eliminate all tedium and carpal tunnel inducing repetitive activities that aren't fit for human beings to perform such as mining, fishing, lumber jacking, camping spawns, stuffing cannons, etc. . This sort of stuff causes burn out and encourages bots and scripting because it is just so boring. Why can't I do a quest and hire a NPC to do that stuff for me? If it's not fun, and it's just a repetitive grind why do you expect players to want to do it? UO really made me happy when they introduced the garden beds for example. Things players do often ought to be fun, and challenging!

Click the box to the right of an item's name in smithing menu. It should tell you how to create the item. PLUS there's an option to "MAKE MAX" ... click that. As long as you have enough mats as well as a fully serviceable tool used, you will auto build the item you want to build . Only ending when you run out of mats or your tool is desttroyed. This works in EC but I dont have CC to test if it works on this or other skills. I think i noticed it also in Tailoring.

 

[MalagAste]

What bugs? I am literally working on planning a UO-like (but NOT freeshard version of) original MMO property. How would bugs in UO code affect a new game?

Now I wanna know WHAT TO CREATE?

Personally... I'd look at Black Deserts housing system of Instanced Housing... anyone can come visit your house and whatnot... and you can Sim's style change the flooring and wallpaper... which I like... I'd prefer if one could take a bit of that... with UO out of town housing... maybe with Instanced plots of various sizes... I would seriously simplify the weapon/armor thing but keep much of the customization... and probably again borrow from Black Desert in having 2 paper dolls sort of a "decorative" part where you can choose what people see on you in-game... and a functional part that you use. Not a fan of Black Deserts crafting system... if you think you get a lot of fails in UO well UO ain't got nothing on Black Desert for failing to improve armor/weapons...

Some of the best things about UO is that it's not Level Based... and you are free basically to mix and match all you like with skills... Now again I'd steal from Black Desert and put crafting skills separate from fighting skills... allowing everyone to have crafting skills on a character should they desire... as well as hunting/gathering skills... It's nice to not have to swap characters every time you run across a good resource to gather. Store items should however be exclusively just deco... there should NEVER be a pay to win. I think that's been proven again and again that players do NOT like that... I also like their shard system where you can freely move from shard to shard and because housing is instanced it moves with you... allowing you to really just leave if there are people on the shard that annoy you. Someone farming where you wanted to farm you just pop over to another server and see if that one is clear... it's nice and free... You are restricted from popping around over and over by a timer that lasts about an hour or so... but it's good.

But then I'd also like a game like UO lore-wise that has the freedom to build like Landmark had... allowing you to build both above and below ground or all above-ground real high or all below ground super deep... that was amazing. I often dreamt of marrying Landmark and UO together... super awesome 3d graphics and manipulation with UO... where when you felled a tree it fell... dug out minerals in the earth and left a hole (granted these things returned or respawned elsewhere over time but it was cool)...

 

[Uriah Heep]

Get rid of everything that requires a spreadsheet or calculator

This. Spreadsheets and the current team...have to go

 

[Uriah Heep]

Would also let each account be it's own account...none of this Master account and llinking and all that ********.