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If I were in charge of UO, what would I do to make the game better?

  • Thread starter georgemarvin2001
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G

georgemarvin2001

Guest
1. I would make the imbuing skill available to players who didn't upgrade. The new dungeon is a great incentive to upgrade. Crippling crafters who can't afford to upgrade isn't a good idea; they will have to either upgrade or leave. And some of them will do the latter.
2. Lower the subscription price back to the original $9.99. It's a mature game, everything's already built. It doesn't cost a lot to maintain. Its subscription rate shouldn't be as high as new games.
3. Item #2 only works if we get new players. Don't send them to a production shard for 14 days. People are getting the trial accounts just to keep their current house after they place a new one, or to transfer a pet. Put all the new players on their own server. That way, the bank spammers will have to get a paid subscription to keep spamming, too.
4. Give new players 5 advanced character tokens after they pay for their first month's subscription. Give them a personal bless deed. Make an undesirable area in which only starter homes with minimum storage can be placed, and only players under 90 days old can place there, but once placed, they can keep the home until they get another one. They can't sell the starter home, though; once they place or buy another house, it becomes an IDOC and another new player can place a house there when it falls.
5. Reduce the number of damage types to three: Physical, elemental and magical. Return the magic resistance skill back like it was originally: The equivalent of armor to protect against magical spells. Armor will resist physical and elemental damage. It'll be a LOT easier to figure out whether a piece of armor is worth looting if it just has 2 numbers for resists.
6. Get rid of that AoS random-number-generated system where every monster drops multiple items, 99% of which is junk, even on the highest-end peerless. Only the highest-end monsters should drop an item every time. And it should be something worth having. A skeleton should never drop anything more valuable than maybe a 1 in 100 chance of dropping a piece of regular bone armor. A Dark Father shouldn't drop massive amounts of pure junk. A simple subroutine that checks item intensity and doesn't allow high-end monsters to drop loot with an imbuing value of less than 400, or low-end monsters to drop anything at all most of the time, would help.
7. I would go ahead and make UO Cartographer an approved program, and pay the author a small stipend to maintain it, with the provision that all rights go back to UO if he quits, and they can hire somebody else to keep it up. Let's admit it: Most players like the current client. Since UO Automap has been broken, they have wanted a replacement.
8. I would make some 1-on-1 arenas, where players could do PvP without risking losing anything. They could place wagers on the outcome. A couple of players could see which is better without risking murder counts or equipment. Veteran PvP players might wager a million gold that they were the better fighter. Both players would return to the regular server with everything intact, just like they left, after the fight. Item insurance wouldn't be necessary in the arenas, since they would return exactly as they left.
9. I have mixed feelings about the EC. It has some great ideas, like the new map, compartmentalized looting, etc.
However, it needs some pretty hefty programming upgrades.
A) THE NUMBERS IN THE HOTBARS ARE TOO SMALL!!!! I have to lean up and look closely at the screen to see my current health, etc.
B) The EVs look really weird in EC. Several other items do, too. The EVs especially have a blinking white light, which looks weird and it's annoying.
C) The menubar button to toggle war and peace should turn red when you're at war.
D) We should have the option to keep corpse loot compartmentalized, but leave the legacy bags and chests.
E) New background colors for the compartments, and make them larger. It's hard to see a lot of items in them.
F) Fix the offsets. Especially when we're dead. I have to walk through a wall, because the street acts like a wall and the wall acts like the street. Dying in the Labyrinth is the worst.
G) make an easily-seen way to get rid of pathfinding. It seems to turn on at odd moments, for no apparent reason, and it's HIGHLY annoying.
H) Make a button to LOCK THE HOTBARS! I have accidentally drug and deleted macros before.
10. Make some small dungeons in Ter Mur, something like the Lurg cave or the Miasma area in the Labyrinth. Places where there will be several players gathered all the time.
11. Make a way to search all of the vendors on the shard for an item. Ever since the Age of Junk, IE AOS, there has been so much junk on vendors that it's almost impossible to find the one item you're looking for. There are several websites that do the service for Luna vendors, but only a few ultra-rich players live in Luna. We need something for the whole shard.
12. An auction house to COMPLEMENT the vendor system, not replace it.
13. Fix factions. It'll be a massive undertaking.
14. In-game support for guilds. Guild houses, guild banks, guild items based on membership, basically encourage people to participate in guilds.
15. Make Felucca more attractive. Better monster loot, a new dungeon, items that we can only get in Felucca, more reasons to play there.
16. The power scroll system was the WORST.IDEA.EVER. Make the skill cap 840 and make 120 powerscrolls easy enough to get that everybody can get them. That will restore the balance so that veterans don't have the extra skill points, a few leet PvP guilds won't monopolize them, and everybody can have 7 skills again, like was originally intended. As it stands, the power scrolls and corresponding limits so that we can only have 6 maxxed out skills are one of the biggest reasons NOT to play UO.
17. In an effort to make the player base more profitable, I would offer artifacts and power scrolls for cash.
18. I would also reduce the gold on the ML monsters to levels that are somewhat in line with their abilities. ML made gold farming so easy it isn't even funny. Miasma, troglodites, etc. are especially underpowered for the amount of gold that they give. My warrior can just stand in the trog cave, never use a bandage, and collect 50k in gold every few minutes. They should be MUCH harder to kill, or give about 100 gold instead of 450. Miasma dies in a matter of seconds, instantly respawns, and gives 2,500 gold and over a dozen items to unravel. I can collect about 1,000 residue and 125,000 gold there in an hour, with very little risk, even taking turns with whoever else is there.
19. Since the non-paid trial subscriptions would be on their own server, I would let the players keep all the skills and items their character had earned when he/she bought a subscription. The characters would be moved to the shard of the new player's choice. They could only move to one shard, and it couldn't be Siege.
20. For the next expansion, I would make a boxed copy, sell it at major retail outlets, and advertise it. I would also print new game cards to sell. I would make the price $19.99, including 45 days free game time for new players, and $14.99 for existing players, with a nice item that players would want, like a choice of an exclusive, but not overpowered pet, or a named sword, or a bless deed, or a name change token, as an incentive to upgrade.
 
B

Beer_Cayse

Guest
1. I would make the imbuing skill available to players who didn't upgrade. The new dungeon is a great incentive to upgrade. Crippling crafters who can't afford to upgrade isn't a good idea; they will have to either upgrade or leave. And some of them will do the latter.
Imbuing was part of the SA expansion. Splitting it off and making it available to all is a great way to tick off those of us who paid for it. You wants the goodies, you upgrade - just like the other folks did. VOTE: Nay

2. Lower the subscription price back to the original $9.99. It's a mature game, everything's already built. It doesn't cost a lot to maintain. Its subscription rate shouldn't be as high as new games.
Pay for 6 months at a time and it's not much more than that. The monthly rate for UO is par or even a tad lower than many of the current pay-to-play games. Because it is mature AND withstood the test of time, perhaps a higher rate is needed? VOTE: Nay

3. Item #2 only works if we get new players. Don't send them to a production shard for 14 days. People are getting the trial accounts just to keep their current house after they place a new one, or to transfer a pet. Put all the new players on their own server. That way, the bank spammers will have to get a paid subscription to keep spamming, too.
So how do you propose these new people get to learn from experienced players? A recent thread had some ideas on restraining trial accounts even more - and they made pretty good sense. VOTE: Nay

4. Give new players 5 advanced character tokens after they pay for their first month's subscription. Give them a personal bless deed. Make an undesirable area in which only starter homes with minimum storage can be placed, and only players under 90 days old can place there, but once placed, they can keep the home until they get another one. They can't sell the starter home, though; once they place or buy another house, it becomes an IDOC and another new player can place a house there when it falls.
Right ... 5 Adv Char tokens, so EA in effect loses out the revenues of those purchases? Economically unsound if I was EA. Honest. Plus raising a char from scratch in a profession gives a better education than leap-frogging 80% of the training. The house idea is not bad for a gold sink, but if I was a new player knowing that the house I purchase is not recoverable funds, I wouldn't place in the 90 days. VOTE: Nay overall but a point for the possible gold sink.

5. Reduce the number of damage types to three: Physical, elemental and magical. Return the magic resistance skill back like it was originally: The equivalent of armor to protect against magical spells. Armor will resist physical and elemental damage. It'll be a LOT easier to figure out whether a piece of armor is worth looting if it just has 2 numbers for resists.
Okay now you got my attention. I can't see any reason to NOT drop to 3 damage types and I definitely would like Resist back to it's old glory. It was useful. VOTE: Aye with the reservation on 3 damage types.

6. Get rid of that AoS random-number-generated system where every monster drops multiple items, 99% of which is junk, even on the highest-end peerless. Only the highest-end monsters should drop an item every time. And it should be something worth having. A skeleton should never drop anything more valuable than maybe a 1 in 100 chance of dropping a piece of regular bone armor. A Dark Father shouldn't drop massive amounts of pure junk. A simple subroutine that checks item intensity and doesn't allow high-end monsters to drop loot with an imbuing value of less than 400, or low-end monsters to drop anything at all most of the time, would help.
Agreed. VOTE: Yea ... and return plate armor to top of the heap as well!

7. I would go ahead and make UO Cartographer an approved program, and pay the author a small stipend to maintain it, with the provision that all rights go back to UO if he quits, and they can hire somebody else to keep it up. Let's admit it: Most players like the current client. Since UO Automap has been broken, they have wanted a replacement.
Mixed bag here ... Approval? Yup. Payment for services/maintenance? Nope. And UOAM is NOT broken ... the creator left the game, stopped updating and will not release the source to others which is his right under US Copyright laws. VOTE: Aye for approval; NAY for payment.

8. I would make some 1-on-1 arenas, where players could do PvP without risking losing anything. They could place wagers on the outcome. A couple of players could see which is better without risking murder counts or equipment. Veteran PvP players might wager a million gold that they were the better fighter. Both players would return to the regular server with everything intact, just like they left, after the fight. Item insurance wouldn't be necessary in the arenas, since they would return exactly as they left.
No problem here ... Dueling pits/arenas would be a nice addition. VOTE: Aye

9. I have mixed feelings about the EC. It has some great ideas, like the new map, compartmentalized looting, etc.
I too have mixed feeling on this. While it has its good points, I cannot play it because stuff is simply too small to see half the time, the graphics hurt my eyes after an hour or so - unlike the crisp lines in the 2D client. You have some good points, tho.

However you gripe about factions and other stuff that is game mechanics and not just EC issues. Separate them from the EC issues and you might get some good feedback just on that alone.
 
K

Kiminality

Guest
1. I would make the imbuing skill available to players who didn't upgrade. The new dungeon is a great incentive to upgrade. Crippling crafters who can't afford to upgrade isn't a good idea; they will have to either upgrade or leave. And some of them will do the latter.
Imbuing was part of the SA expansion. Splitting it off and making it available to all is a great way to tick off those of us who paid for it. You wants the goodies, you upgrade - just like the other folks did. VOTE: Nay
Plus, they'd still be moderately "crippled", because they can't get a bunch of the ingredients.
 

AxiamInc

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
1. CTRL

2. ALT

3. DELETE

All of your problems are now solved...you may thank me later. :thumbup1:
 
G

georgemarvin2001

Guest
@Kiminality: Resource trading is different from skills. Even if they have the expansion, most crafting characters can't collect all of the resources they need. They either buy them from other players or have warrior or mage characters to collect them. Not being able to collect his own resources isn't fatal to a crafter. Not being able to train the only currently effective crafting skill is. Having half of your player base effectively crippled in either combat or trade skills after each new expansion isn't good for the long-term health of the game. If only part of the player base can get resources, they will still be available for the other half to purchase within a matter of hours after the expansion goes online. The players with the expansion will make a profit, the players without it will buy the resources from the players with the expansion. Nobody is crippled. The price of the new resources will adjust to market rates as more players compete to sell them. For instance, lots of blacksmiths aren't miners. They buy their materials from other players. Iron ingots on vendors are often cheaper than they are from NPC vendors.

Each new expansion shouldn't include a skill that is so powerful that all of the other skills in the category become obsolete. A craftsman who spent a lot of time training all of the craft skills should be able to continue to use them after an expansion. Imbuing is a great skill. But that's the point. In a matter of minutes, and using resources that are fairly easy to obtain, a legendary imbuer can create an item with better properties than you could get by burning a dozen valorite hammers that took years of collecting BODs to get.

Expansions shouldn't cripple the people who don't upgrade. UO should make each new expansion attractive to new players and veterans alike, but they should be combat- and skill-neutral. If you make new skills that only the people who buy the expansion can use, they shouldn't be any more powerful than any of the current skills in the category.

@ Beer Cayse: Umm...Factions are point #13. The EC is point #9, with the sections labeled A through H. Although H is about the SA expansion in general.

UO DESPERATELY needs new players, or its future is going to be dim. The ideas for getting new players into the game are economically sound because UO makes the majority of its money from PAID subscriptions. UO might lose 1,000 one-time purchases of advanced character tokens per year, but it can gain 100,000 new subscriptions at $10 per month by lowering the rates slightly for the people who subscribe monthly and enhancing the new player experience. Most of us veterans will pay for 6 months at a time. New players haven't committed to play the game over the long term yet, though. They want to reserve the right to just pay for one month, and decide at the end of that time whether they want to continue to subscribe.

The tokens don't cost a cent to produce. New players will still have to work hard to get to GM or legendary in a skill. They don't hurt veterans, and they would give new players a leg up toward competing with those of us who have been around since the game began. The new players will still have to work hard to get power scrolls and become legendary in all 6 skills. At this point, though, they do need a little help and incentives to be able to compete within a reasonable amount of time.

Skill gains are actually harder now than they used to be, too. We don't have power hours anymore, or the way I first gained skills way back in 1999. It was an open secret for months back then that there was a vendor in the tunnel under Bucs Den who would train you almost to GM in several skills. The Devs finally deleted him, but almost everybody I knew had visited him by then. Then there were the blackrock areas where you could gain .5 at a whack in any skill a while back. Or the fact that you could just run back and forth through your own energy field and GM healing, anatomy and magic resist in a matter of minutes before Trammel came along. There have been lots of other ways to train skills easily over the years, but almost all of them have been fixed. And I don't know what they did to the skill system when they introduced AoS, but post-AoS, some skills were totally broken, so that it was practically impossible to GM skills that had just taken a few hours to train, and it remained that way for years. The point is that the new players have to grind a lot more than we did when we trained our skills way back in the early days of the game.

One reason for putting new players using FREE TRIAL accounts on a separate shard is that they would be able to learn from each other. You could give veteran players an incentive to make counselors on the trial account shards and help the new players learn about the game. The old counselor program had problems, but it was overall pretty good. With a little tweaking, it could be great. Another reason for giving the trial accounts their own shard is that, by monitoring their actions, the Devs could figure out what they need to make the new player experience more fun. Also, it would make the people who get the trial accounts just to hold onto a second, third and sometimes even fourth house, actually pay for the privilege. And finally, it would make the people who use multiple trial accounts to spam at the banks and on the chat pay for that privilege, too. When they are ultimately banned, they can't just open another free trial account and be spamming again in a matter of minutes, for free.

The PAID new accounts would start in New Haven on a production shard. It's just the free 14 day trials that need to be on a separate shard, because of the abuses of the system. Letting the new players remain on production shards but not allowing them to talk, chat or use containers would mean that the REAL new players would have a terrible experience, and never become PAID subscribers, but the spammers and house holders would still be able to find workarounds.

Let's admit it, UO's old client isn't as nice and shiny as the newer games, and the new EC one hurts our eyes if we play more than a few minutes, and the numbers in EC hotbars are too small for us older players to read easily. But it is still the best effort they have ever given to making a new client, though. And, with just a little work, it could become the client of choice for the majority of us.

UO is still one of the most immersive, well-thought-out games, an entire world to explore and interact with, instead of just a fighting game, and it's really great for those of us who play it. But it does need to do something to get new players, or it will just become another footnote in the history of MMORPGs, instead of remaining a part of its future.

UOAM IS broken. I could still use it until I re-installed Windows. I couldn't get it to re-install right because I can't download the updates. It doesn't include a lot of areas, and the author isn't maintaining it. It only works as long as you have an old copy of it installed. It's useless to new players who don't have an old copy lying around.

Microtransactions are a profitable part of lots of games. You were just talking about UO losing revenue if it gave new players advanced character tokens. Those are a microtransaction. The fact is that UO needs to consider some new financing sources to increase its revenue base because its parent company, EA, is losing about $1 BILLION dollars per year. UO is one of the few actual profit centers in the whole company. And the MMO games that are grouped with it in the Mythic division, Warhammer and The Sims, are total disasters that cost tens of millions of dollars to produce, and are bleeding money profusely. They are losing more money than UO is making. If the rest of Mythic goes under, it will take UO with it. And I don't want to lose my #1 favorite online game. WoW gets too boring to even look at after a while. Selling a few in-game items for cash might not make a lot of money for UO, but every little bit helps at this point.
 
L

Lore Master

Guest
I am only going to post a small handful of things that I would do if I was in charge of UO. here is a list of some not in order of importance to me.
  1. I would make castles and keeps costumizable.
  2. I would allow castles and keeps to be placed in every land except ish.
  3. I would add a casino to both tram and fel each would have there own rules so in tram no cheating stealing or killing in fel it's up for grabs.
  4. I would add champ spawn and power scrolls in tram but making power scrolls drops in tram a bit more rare then the fel power scroll drops.
  5. I would add a dwarf race both player and non player.
  6. I would add a Halflin race both player and non player.
  7. I would give players more storage and lower the price of UO.
  8. I would add more characters per account per shard maybe up to 10 Characters per shard per account.
  9. I would add costumizable and craftable ships.
  10. I would allow a second house per account for everyone no restrictions except what we have now just with more storage.
  11. I would add basement, cellers or dungeons to each house.
  12. I would raise the skill point cap quite a bit so we could fit more skills then balance things based on that.
One more thing I would add a special moongate a shard moongate you have to pay a fee everytime you use it lets say one hundred k each way so we can visit other shards with our characters as often as we like as long as we are willing to pay the fee.
 
X

XD4_GL

Guest
I am only going to post a small handful of things that I would do if I was in charge of UO. here is a list of some not in order of importance to me.
  1. I would make castles and keeps costumizable.
  2. I would allow castles and keeps to be placed in every land except ish.
  3. I would add a casino to both tram and fel each would have there own rules so in tram no cheating stealing or killing in fel it's up for grabs.
  4. I would add champ spawn and power scrolls in tram but making power scrolls drops in tram a bit more rare then the fel power scroll drops.
  5. I would add a dwarf race both player and non player.
  6. I would add a Halflin race both player and non player.
  7. I would give players more storage and lower the price of UO.
  8. I would add more characters per account per shard maybe up to 10 Characters per shard per account.
  9. I would add costumizable and craftable ships.
  10. I would allow a second house per account for everyone no restrictions except what we have now just with more storage.
  11. I would add basement, cellers or dungeons to each house.
  12. I would raise the skill point cap quite a bit so we could fit more skills then balance things based on that.
One more thing I would add a special moongate a shard moongate you have to pay a fee everytime you use it lets say one hundred k each way so we can visit other shards with our characters as often as we like as long as we are willing to pay the fee.
Adding something like a cellar or basement to a house would require a huge patch to add craters into the world. We would probably need a new patch each time a new home is placed as well.
 
H

Heartseeker

Guest
I wish I would be able to play a client that looks a little better than my niece's crayon drawings.

But I guess that's just me.
 
M

Mitzlplik_SP

Guest
Wow george, you type to much.

If I were in charge of UO I`d start off with the burning of Luna that would make Mag look like a flash in a pan. I dunno where I`d go after that...... I mean how much better could it get? I really can`t think of anything......
 

WootSauce

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
"I would add a Halflin race both player and non player"

Weren't they called bobbits?
 
S

Smokin

Guest
Um only going to respond to the first two cause I think the rest are even more silly, You do know they just gave away all expansions except SA right. So now you want to give away SA content after what 3 months, that is insane.

The second thing about lowering the price I don't mind that and I think that should be done or have freebie accounts limited too 1 char and other major restrictions such as no houses,trammel only travel and I don't mean malas and other lands.
 

Bobar

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Introduce a Quality Assurance section that actually does something and then follow that by starting an effective Customer Service.
 
Y

Yacct

Guest
Hell why stop at a new race or two? If I was overlord, I'd just make EVERY creature currently in the game a playable race! Want to be a ratman scrounging Despise for Cheese? Go for it! UO not challenging enough, play a slime :)

Of course you'd have to be restricted I suppose to play that creature's role, ie grizzly bears can't enter towns or talk to non-grizzlies. Can't cast spells either.

Might take a while to balance the whole thing, but it'd make a pretty diverse landscape I reckon.
 
B

BloodstoneGL

Guest
I would start shutting down unpopulated shards and give the current residents a choice of what remaining shards they would want to move to. Give them a moving crate to pack everything they own in. Yea they'd be homeless but hey you've got to crack a few eggs you know? There are way too many shards out there with today's population. Nothing makes a game feel more dead than seeing no one playing.
 
Z

Zyon Rockler

Guest
Just gonna throw out some ideas for fun...I'm sure everyone has thought about all of these things that are posted and many more to come. It's just a slow proccess and I know in time, even if it's not exactly as we invision it, it will be great.

First thing I would do, increase number of characters you can have by the number of years you have played, with a cap of 10 and a base of 5.

Allow 2 houses on 1 shard on accounts that have been active more than 10 years.

Allow picking a main shard and a secondary, so you can place a house on 2 shards so we can play more than 1 shard, (Siege).

Make skills more useful, like smith and macing, give special move, smash and strength cap increase, etc...

Make it so thief is active in Trammel by creating system that can mask a player's backpack and chests in their homes, so when a thief looks in a player's pack an item can be generated. This item not seen by anyone but the thief and does not exist unless successfully stolen, if stolen the thief takes item and turns grey. Create new item types for the ghost containers. This way a thief will check more people to find those items.

Also, the chests in player's homes should ghost items. A thief would go in and try and open the chest, instead of saying you may not access it would say this chest is locked. If a thief is successful and opens the chest they can remove spawned content. If the thief is caught, they will be grey and can be banned and killed in Trammel/Fel. Again, the ghost items are rare and spawned. You would not lose anything in Trammel and secure items stay secure.

Bring back the bounty system, use NpCs. Place bounties on their heads and make them hard to kill and mean. Let us find them, kill them, loot them and get a reward, also a title option after earning x rewards or bounties.

Factions should get added to, like something we can fight. Each faction gets a super spawn they can use once a day. The super spawns fight each other and create a type of Champ Spawn, very powerful creatures. These creatures would fight each other and defend and protect in unique ways. Also, smaller types could be added that would be brought from the Strongholds.

And a way to remove Sigils or parallel system that interacts with a more dominant capture the flag that never ends but could simply have cool down timer of maybe 4 hours for each Stronghold.

Fix plate for dexer, just add strength and dex bonus and stamina regain. Maybe add skill requirement to have better defense and hit chance, max durability.

Take mage armour tag off plate, call it paladin plate. Give split bonus to same as plate, plus some focus and med intelligent bonuses. Leave leather the way it is but remove mage tags. Create bonuses to each type of material similiar to stealth.

Change loot drops on everything. Take all gold and silver off, except human types. Replace spawn's loot with something like tooth, claw, heart. Turn them in or sell for silver and gold. Allow them to be randomly found and differ in value by age and size.

Items like swords and armour should only be on spawns that are using them. Like a rat archer would carry a bow. More chests guarded by spawns. Improve all loot.

Place Red NpCs that are like player type copies. Place them in dungeons, randomly roaming and searching for players to kill. Allow them to become bounties if they kill players and live for a few days. Do not let them loot, make them fun to fight. Add blue ones in Fel.

There's a few things I would do right away but i'm sure many of these things will come to pass. They should offer family plans to promote families into buying more computers because then we would buy more of their games. They should focus on family, especially in roleplay games.
 
E

Eyes of Origin

Guest
My changes would be these....

1. no more speedhacks

2. no more 3rd party programs(or make them legal, hell why not? EA has let the problem go on for so long, they may as well make it legal for everyone =/ )

3. high res graphics
 
A

altarego

Guest
I would start shutting down unpopulated shards and give the current residents a choice of what remaining shards they would want to move to. Give them a moving crate to pack everything they own in. Yea they'd be homeless but hey you've got to crack a few eggs you know? There are way too many shards out there with today's population. Nothing makes a game feel more dead than seeing no one playing.
If you want to do that, then the only fair thing to do would be to take away all homes and guild names and everything else that cannot be duplicated in both shards.

Then spend a few weeks consolidating Dev and GM structures and enhancements to the geography - eliminating any that conflict - so that no one gets preference.

Then let everyone log back in at the same time to a single shard and have a mad land rush...

-

Actually, that sounds exciting.
 

Black Sun

Grand Poobah
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
2. Lower the subscription price back to the original $9.99. It's a mature game, everything's already built. It doesn't cost a lot to maintain. Its subscription rate shouldn't be as high as new games.

3. Item #2 only works if we get new players. Don't send them to a production shard for 14 days. People are getting the trial accounts just to keep their current house after they place a new one, or to transfer a pet. Put all the new players on their own server. That way, the bank spammers will have to get a paid subscription to keep spamming, too.

5. Reduce the number of damage types to three: Physical, elemental and magical. Return the magic resistance skill back like it was originally: The equivalent of armor to protect against magical spells. Armor will resist physical and elemental damage. It'll be a LOT easier to figure out whether a piece of armor is worth looting if it just has 2 numbers for resists.

11. Make a way to search all of the vendors on the shard for an item. Ever since the Age of Junk, IE AOS, there has been so much junk on vendors that it's almost impossible to find the one item you're looking for. There are several websites that do the service for Luna vendors, but only a few ultra-rich players live in Luna. We need something for the whole shard.

12. An auction house to COMPLEMENT the vendor system, not replace it.

14. In-game support for guilds. Guild houses, guild banks, guild items based on membership, basically encourage people to participate in guilds.

19. Since the non-paid trial subscriptions would be on their own server, I would let the players keep all the skills and items their character had earned when he/she bought a subscription. The characters would be moved to the shard of the new player's choice. They could only move to one shard, and it couldn't be Siege.

20. For the next expansion, I would make a boxed copy, sell it at major retail outlets, and advertise it. I would also print new game cards to sell. I would make the price $19.99, including 45 days free game time for new players, and $14.99 for existing players, with a nice item that players would want, like a choice of an exclusive, but not overpowered pet, or a named sword, or a bless deed, or a name change token, as an incentive to upgrade.
These are the only ones I can honestly say are good ideas. The rest are lukewarm at best.

#3 I am on the fence about. I can see how a new player shard might help people ease into the game, but I can also see it as a big deterrent. The spammers aren't going to pay to keep spamming, Why target an established playerbase? The new players are the ones who need the leg up and most likely would be the ones buying from these people. Also, a newbie shard sounds like a place for jerk vets to go and harass the fresh meat (on a new account). Not sure how good of a learning environment would be, it would need some pretty good safeguards put in place.

#20 could backfire. I'm all in favor of a box on the shelves, but doing that requires more money for advertising, purchasing the actual supplies (boxes, CD's paper for manuals etc.), thus causing the overall cost for UO to rise. Not sure how this and a price drop back to $9.99 would work out. Frankly, if I had the choice I'd rather keep paying my current price and get some boxes on shelves.

And that's not to mention all the people (new players) who purchase the upgrade version at 14.99 by mistake and get pissed off because they need the new player version. The current old box system seems to work pretty well. Lets say 29.99 for a box gets you your CD, your manuals, a code for a new account with 30 days of game time, an upgrade code, and a little pixel crack to entice you to buy.
 
B

BloodstoneGL

Guest
If you want to do that, then the only fair thing to do would be to take away all homes and guild names and everything else that cannot be duplicated in both shards.

Then spend a few weeks consolidating Dev and GM structures and enhancements to the geography - eliminating any that conflict - so that no one gets preference.

Then let everyone log back in at the same time to a single shard and have a mad land rush...

-

Actually, that sounds exciting.
No one said anything about making it fair.
 
P

Phineas le Monge

Guest
The idea of the "bounty" npcs sounds like fun. One of the things I hear old timers talk about is hunting down a pk'er and taking his head for the bounty. This would make some old skills like forensics and tracking, possibly others, come back into regular use.

Right now I have the max number of charater slots (7), and can't utilize all skills on a single shard. (Guess you could with soulstones, but I don't have that many). I would love to explore some of the other crafts and templates but don't want to give up the characters I have already built. Perhaps instaed of just incresing the overall cap, maybe make points available per template - crafters having the most points available for all these wonderful crafting skills, and less for templates like warriors. We already choose a template when we start a new character - of course we would need new starter templates for artificers and such - but you get the general idea.
Also make more of these templates available on advanced character tokens.

Get rid of repair deeds. It was a good idea that had a bad side-effect-player interaction around the forge. OR make any imbued item only repairable by an artificer - no repair deeds would work to repair an imbued item. Many people criticize LLTS but they regularly offer repairs for free, repairs done by an actual player instead of a deed. That means someone has to actually COMMUNICATE with someone else in game (other than the trash talk on chat). Bring back this type of player interaction-it builds a stronger community.

Bring back guildstones- long ago you had to have a house to start a guild. This meant you were invested in the game before you could create a guild. It meant that just because you earned 25k killing mongbats today maybe you shouldnt be able to create a guild just to gank other players or give members "crude" guild titles. a guild used to be a sign of respect, trust, and loyalty. Toaday anybody with 25k buys in...

Create dueling arenas in trammel - so you dont have to go to fel and get jumped by 20 gankers, quit/join someone else's guild, etc - in order to settle differences or teste your mettle against another player. Make it a gold sink-charge 10k or whatever for a "dueling deed" and challenge that bigmouth at the bank to put up or shut up - no jump ins, no looting, just FIGHT TO THE DEATH. Yeah thats the ticket.

Restructure the guild alliance system - so many guilds have been born or died since it was implemented - we need a reboot.

Just a few random thoughts...:thumbup1:
 

popps

Always Present
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Me what would I do ?

Without a doubt my #1 priority would be getting rid for good of any and all ways of cheating in Ultima Online including scripting, duping, hacking, AND I would forbid any and all sales of anything game related for real money.

I would only allow sales of entire accounts via the account transfer official program.

That's what I would personally do as most important, then the rest.
 

Assia Penryn

The Sleeping Dragon
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I'd initially focus on cheating/account security, implementing a tutorial for the game to help new players, focus on the uo.com database and information guides and work on improving communication with the uo community to rebuild and strengthen the relationship.
 

Fat Midnight

Visitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
1. Make it possible to have house fires. Then you could have home owners insurance, another gold sink.

2. Make eating required again

3. I dont want have to buy recalls for my chars that dont have magery, can we just add something small like cars, hell people wont even need there own, how about a bus? Even better for more gold you could have like 5 airports per facet!

4. Make Pickaxes MACING weps, tell me this doesnt make sense.

5. EA could just sell UO back to Lord British himself, Richard Garriott.

6. Institute a welfare system and GVT housing. Tax all the rich players and give to all the needy players out there that just havnt figure it out. For the people who cant afford housing, make large apartment buildings that a char can rent for only a few gold a day. If they dont pay, dont evict them, help them with welfare bank checks. We can call it Obameconomics.

7. Allow the ability to invade other shards or to have shard on shard war. Napa vs GL woohoo. Or just make xsharding easier.

8. To finally balance PVP introduce guns into the game. You know what they say "God created man, Sam Colt made them equal"

9. I have one word for you . Drugs.
 
A

altarego

Guest
1. Make it possible to have house fires. Then you could have home owners insurance, another gold sink.

2. Make eating required again

3. I dont want have to buy recalls for my chars that dont have magery, can we just add something small like cars, hell people wont even need there own, how about a bus? Even better for more gold you could have like 5 airports per facet!

4. Make Pickaxes MACING weps, tell me this doesnt make sense.

5. EA could just sell UO back to Lord British himself, Richard Garriott.

6. Institute a welfare system and GVT housing. Tax all the rich players and give to all the needy players out there that just havnt figure it out. For the people who cant afford housing, make large apartment buildings that a char can rent for only a few gold a day. If they dont pay, dont evict them, help them with welfare bank checks. We can call it Obameconomics.

7. Allow the ability to invade other shards or to have shard on shard war. Napa vs GL woohoo. Or just make xsharding easier.

8. To finally balance PVP introduce guns into the game. You know what they say "God created man, Sam Colt made them equal"

9. I have one word for you . Drugs.
I'm really hoping this is sarcasm....isn't it?
 
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