City stones and how they should actually work and what they should do..

[Velvathos]

http://stratics.com/community/threa...r-system-to-fel-and-how-it-could-work.313427/

Posted this in the governor forums, I am getting all the ideas I can.. Originally I was just coming up with ideas of how they could incorporate PVP into the Governor/City Stones and the best way would be to eliminate factions and make the Governor system apart of Fel as well.. So I pulled some stuff from my hat and the link above is what I have so far.. It's not complete..

So I want to use this time here to discuss my thoughts.. As I have been saying since the system was first introduced, the only interaction whatsoever between the Governors and the citizens are the trade deals, there is no other interaction.. That's it, period.. Where's the risk vs reward, where are the incentives at? it's a giant gold sink for governors so 2 or 3 players could use the trade deals, it is as it sits, a broken system and it does nothing to enhance role-playing.. So I came up with my own system above in the link. I am still adding to it and I want to get everyone's feedback and ideas.. As I think some of mine are good.. *grins*

 

[Jerec KTM]

Not to poo poo on your idea, but Mesanna said on Wednesday this is not happening. Someone started to suggest something very similar and she said "let me cut you off right there" so I hope that helps give an idea of how unlikely it is to happen. Vice&Virtue is the system that is being brought to Fel. It will not be associated with the governor system on Tram.

Sorry, I didn't want to be the messenger when I saw the suggestion earlier today, but I guess someone had to give you a head's up.

 

[Velvathos]

There still needs to be some kind of interaction between each town, the governors and their citizens and it needs to be addressed, it is a broken system and it needs fixed and my proposal/proposals would fix up several problems..

 

[Velvathos]

This is what SHOULD happen when you double click a city stone as a non-citizen.. But nope..

 

[Tazar]

The King reigns in Trammel where Minax has over-run Felucca. There is no king for a governor system in Felucca. That kinda kills it from a historical storyline perspective.

 

[Captn Norrington]

From a historical perspective Blackthorn is dead anyways lol, he was killed by Lord British in Ultima 9 at the bottom of the Stygian Abyss. His grave is located at the Blackthorn Castle in felucca as well, a large coffin in the courtyard.

 

[Kayhynn]

From a historical perspective, UO was set between Ultima IV and V and moved further into 5 with the destruction of Maginica.

 

[Dot_Warner]

UO is "past" Ultima V, since the Shadowlords have been defeated (the recent discovery of the BMV Ararat is just a retrocausal headache) and is somewhere in Ultima VI/Underworld I with hints of VII here and there.

However, confusingly, we still haven't "beat" Ultima II or III, nor gone through IV.

So yeah, UO is Ultima history in a blender viewed through a kaleidoscope.

 

[Captn Norrington]

Hmm, I thought UO was supposed to be after Ultima 9, at the end of that game the Avatar "ascends" into a higher plane of existence. I figured the higher plane of existence was UO, where all the other "Avatars" (players) had also ascended, and could start a new journey together.

 

[Dot_Warner]

When the Avatar ascended with the Guardian at the end of Ultima IX, they became a Janus-like conjoined entity. In what would have been Ultima X, which went through multiple names, said entity was to rule over a world called Aulcinor. (Which going by the fiction, sounded like a version of the holographic universe theory...)

UO exists separately from the cannon timeline, having diverged immediately after the Stranger defeated Mondain by shattering the Gem of Immortality (Ultima I). Don't ask about the individual shards, that's migrane inducing territory.

 

[Promathia]

UO exists separately from the cannon timeline, having diverged immediately after the Stranger defeated Mondain by shattering the Gem of Immortality (Ultima I).

Exactly. When the gem was shattered, the world was copied into each "shard" of the gem. Each world is thus a divergent reality, where the people + events have changed. They are all alternate timelines so to speak. The Ultima games are merely how that reality/timeline happened, not how it happened for each server. Since our worlds don't have the Avatar, our events have diverged greatly from Ultima Prime.

Also, Fel is not run by Minax for whoever said that. Felucca is in constant war with the Factions vying for control, (Aka Sigils). Each individual faction does not work for the crown, and the crown has shown no interest into controlling those lands again.
I assume the fiction will be changed when Factions is removed and the new system is put in place, but I hope they keep it similar. The idea of fighting for control over the land is pretty cool, there just hasn't been a ingame reason to actually capture sigils for a long time.

 

[Pandora_CoD]

The King reigns in Trammel where Minax has over-run Felucca. There is no king for a governor system in Felucca. That kinda kills it from a historical storyline perspective.

So center it around Minax. If the EM's can play King Blackthorn, why can't they play Minax?

 

[Tazar]

So center it around Minax. If the EM's can play King Blackthorn, why can't they play Minax?

I think there is a limit to what they can do due to families, etc. At some point another council to run probably means less events. That might be favorable to some, but not to others. If we had two EM's per shard, that might work - since one could handle each council.

 

[Pandora_CoD]

Exactly. When the gem was shattered, the world was copied into each "shard" of the gem. Each world is thus a divergent reality, where the people + events have changed. They are all alternate timelines so to speak. The Ultima games are merely how that reality/timeline happened, not how it happened for each server. Since our worlds don't have the Avatar, our events have diverged greatly from Ultima Prime.

Also, Fel is not run by Minax for whoever said that. Felucca is in constant war with the Factions vying for control, (Aka Sigils). Each individual faction does not work for the crown, and the crown has shown no interest into controlling those lands again.
I assume the fiction will be changed when Factions is removed and the new system is put in place, but I hope they keep it similar. The idea of fighting for control over the land is pretty cool, there just hasn't been a ingame reason to actually capture sigils for a long time.

Actually both stories are right. The sorceress Minax held complete dominion over Felucca when Lord British was forced to abandon it according to the lore of the facet splits. The way I have always seen it has been the other factions vie to get control of Felucca from Minax... it is one of the reasons early on we chose Minax as the faction for Xiled from Humanity; our pvp guild. In current times, however I do realize that the four factions all vie for control of Felucca, but the story did begin with her at the helm. The fact that the factions function the way they do, is just game mechanics. And we all know that game mechanics has rarely if ever been truly tied to the lore of previous iterations of Ultima lore or heck even lore created under the space of UO itself.

 

[Pandora_CoD]

I think there is a limit to what they can do due to families, etc. At some point another council to run probably means less events. That might be favorable to some, but not to others. If we had two EM's per shard, that might work - since one could handle each council.

I am hugely in favor of a minimum of two EM's per shard... 3 maybe for Atlantic since its the biggest. If there was 2, it could also be split in the way that one could handle events, while the other is dedicated solely to government.

 

[whiterabbit]

THEY CANT EVEN GET ENOUGH PEOPLE TO MAN, 1 ON EVERYSHARD

 

[Pandora_CoD]

Oh its not for lack of trying... I know several folks that have continuously applied to be EM's but for one reason or another they are denied. I know that I myself used to function as SRC back in the days on Lake Superior for quite a while but I have had no real desire to apply for the EM program because I feel they are way to limited and there is no consistency between the shards in that program.

What I mean by that is what I could do as SRC in LS I could equally as SRC in say Pacific... whenever I had to fill in, which was pretty often as any one that was a part of the Counselor program will tell you, we had identical tools on all shards and we were able to use them equally. The Seers had a different set of tools, but all Seers had the same tools available to them and they had free reign to use them as they saw fit. I feel that's how it should be! (YES... bring back Seers while you are at it!) Some EM's has their hands tied a lot because they follow the "rule book" where other EM's in other shards just bend the rules more or downright break them. It also comes to time... some EM's have more time and do more because of it (and just because they get paid as much as someone that only does the x-number hours a month the program allows doesn't mean they can't go past that) it appears they do more than other EM's that do not have the extra time. So there is an inequality there. That needs some balance.

 

[LetheGL]

All those perks are already present through various systems in the game. There would be no point in them putting the time and effort into a system that doesn't introduce anything new to the game.

This is what SHOULD happen when you double click a city stone as a non-citizen.. But nope..

 

[Dol'Gorath]

UO is "past" Ultima V, since the Shadowlords have been defeated (the recent discovery of the BMV Ararat is just a retrocausal headache) and is somewhere in Ultima VI/Underworld I with hints of VII here and there.

However, confusingly, we still haven't "beat" Ultima II or III, nor gone through IV.

So yeah, UO is Ultima history in a blender viewed through a kaleidoscope.

UO will never progress past Ultima 5. The Shadowlords appearing are fine because they had nothing to do with The Avatar, they were just fragments of the gem of immortality. However, since Britannia never had an Avatar in UO, there was never an evil alter-ego to split off the Avatar. There is No Guardian in UO. Pagan, if it exists, is still the Zealan homeland as it was before The Guardian and would not be the Pagan of Ultima 8. The development of Gargoyles in UO is also vastly different from what happened in Ultima 6. In canon Ultima, the Gargoyles and Humans don't get along and humans consider them to be the same as Demons and there is heavy anti-gargoyle racism in Britannia [If you remember the league of human purity in Vesper]. Where as in UO we've developed a more friendly and allied stance with Gargoyles, even going as far as to save them from a plague with the help of Lord Blackthorn.

I guess my point is, that comparing UO to canon Ultima is no longer possible because after the destruction of Magincia, UO history diverged so far from canon Ultima that comparing the two isn't possible anymore.

 

[Dol'Gorath]

I am hugely in favor of a minimum of two EM's per shard... 3 maybe for Atlantic since its the biggest. If there was 2, it could also be split in the way that one could handle events, while the other is dedicated solely to government.

There used to be two EM's per shard, but it obviously didn't work out because some shards like Sonoma, have like 5 people on at any given time and it's not cost effective to pay 2 EM's for a handful of players.

 

[Jerec KTM]

I am hugely in favor of a minimum of two EM's per shard... 3 maybe for Atlantic since its the biggest. If there was 2, it could also be split in the way that one could handle events, while the other is dedicated solely to government.

Atlantic already has 3 EMs, just a FYI. I don't know if anyone that doesn't play Atlantic knew that.

 

[Promathia]

Atlantic already has 3 EMs, just a FYI. I don't know if anyone that doesn't play Atlantic knew that.

To be fair, that 3rd EM is splitting time between Oceania and Atlantic, and has yet to actually hold an event on ATL.

The population of the game does not warrant more EM's for certain shards. The small ones get 1, and that seems to be more than adequate right now.

Leave Fel in control of players, give us the reason to fight to "own" the land. Throw in the city buffs into the new pvp system. No need to creating ANOTHER government, when some shards struggle to even fill the Trammel one.

 

[Jerec KTM]

To be fair, that 3rd EM is splitting time between Oceania and Atlantic, and has yet to actually hold an event on ATL.

The population of the game does not warrant more EM's for certain shards. The small ones get 1, and that seems to be more than adequate right now.

Leave Fel in control of players, give us the reason to fight to "own" the land. Throw in the city buffs into the new pvp system. No need to creating ANOTHER government, when some shards struggle to even fill the Trammel one.

Well, my understanding or at least what I've taken from the meet & greet and the lack of individual events since is that Balthazar is more of a support role for Atlantic. That is totally cool, some of the things done on Atlantic could certainly use a third hand.

I just wanted Pandora to know it since she suggested they have 3

 

[whiterabbit]

PANDY. WOT I AM SAYIN IS THAT MANY MAY APPY, FEW ARE CHOSEN. THEN AFTER THEY DO GET CHOSEN THEY LEAVE AFTER A MONTH OR SO.ITS A THANKLESS JOB,REQUIRING A LOT OF WORK. I WOULD NOT WANT ONE.

 

[Riyana]

PANDY. WOT I AM SAYIN IS THAT MANY MAY APPY, FEW ARE CHOSEN. THEN AFTER THEY DO GET CHOSEN THEY LEAVE AFTER A MONTH OR SO.ITS A THANKLESS JOB,REQUIRING A LOT OF WORK. I WOULD NOT WANT ONE.

No kidding. I thought about applying to be an EM, but I don't want to deal with all the grief. I love getting an EM drop, but the drops have fostered a pretty toxic environment at EM events.