It's time to have a serious talk with the devs about incentivization and grind.

[Meatbread]

Decay of city loyalty.
Decay of virtues.
Decay of faction points.
Junk artifacts no one will equip.
Ephemeral artifacts that decay.
Cora is just a mess and certain templates can't even participate.
Crafting items with timers so they can't be sold.
Monsters with a zillion HP.
Monsters with 160 skills and 90+ resists.
New loot system just a trash farm for cursed/brittle junk to unravel.
Every event arc quest being a massive grind.
Still no reason to fight High Seas pirates.

Lately it seems like everything in UO is designed to be as tedious as possible while granting as little reward as they think they can get away with. They've added tons of content in the last year or two and yet I always seem to find myself banksitting because I don't feel like taking a beating and coming away poorer in the end, or because I don't want to be on the hook to keep whatever from decaying. Supposedly logging in once per day can keep some things from decaying, but nobody understands how this "moons" stuff works and it seems to be broken anyway.

So here's some stuff I just feel compelled to say, and others can feel free to join in.

A) Dear devs, can you please explain to us what sort of bad thing you think would happen if Virtues didn't decay? I'm willing to hear you out.

B) Dear devs, I remember Logrus on here a year or two ago saying that he felt the combination of leeches and slayers was "overpowered". If that's the case and you all really feel that way, please just stop adding new weapon artifacts to UO for us to throw away and focus your attention on adding other things. We have imbuing, we'll handle it.

More to come as I think of it.

 

[Frarc]

I disagree with everything.

 

[Lord Frodo]

I disagree with everything.

You would.

 

[Meatbread]

Seriously, outside of the magical world of Stratics, this "ephemeral" thing is being slagged by everyone who hears of it, as far as I can tell. My entire guild has sworn off the Void Pool.

 

[SunWolf]

"Cora is just a mess and certain templates can't even participate"

Which ones can't participate? Everyone of my charaters can go there and help out in a group other than crafters and tamer. Tamer can do it if they stay dead but still participating.

 

[Meatbread]

If they stay dead. lol

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

Decay of city loyalty.
Decay of virtues.
Decay of faction points.
Junk artifacts no one will equip.
Ephemeral artifacts that decay.
Cora is just a mess and certain templates can't even participate.
Crafting items with timers so they can't be sold.
Monsters with a zillion HP.
Monsters with 160 skills and 90+ resists.
New loot system just a trash farm for cursed/brittle junk to unravel.
Every event arc quest being a massive grind.
Still no reason to fight High Seas pirates.

Sorry, but I disagree on most all of that. In order from top to bottom:

Decay of virtues should happen. One should have to prove they are virtuous daily, not just by grinding and stopping.
I could care less, I don't do factions, but I would imaging I would feel the same way on this as I do the top one.
Junk artis? I think you should take a look at those new glasses. If that's junk I will take them off your hands.
Yeah, nothing should ever decay. Sorry, decay is one of the things that drives the economy.
Umm nope, folks just can't solo her and have to work as a group. I know it's an unusual thing in MMORPG's huh?
Sorry, they can be sold. Have watched a few people spam about them, find buyers then go get the items and sell.
A stretch on the figures, but high hp's needed. We should not be able to kill everything in under 10 minutes.
See above. Although no stretch on the figures here.
Nope, there are quite a few nice pieces being pulled.
True to a degree, but nothing should be given out easily.
I guess the main reason to fight them could be that they are not monsters with a zillion HP and they do not have 160 skills and 90+ resists.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

There are a lot of grind intensive things in the game, but it's never dawned on me until this last batch of "new" stuff to do that it seems to be becoming a keep busy scheme with repetitive tasks (grind) more and more which each little push. Perhaps this is just some little trend to keep us busy while they bring out something truly invigorating to the UO experience. My gut tells me now but my hope hasn't totally flickered out meow.

On the subject of junk artifacts I do love me some unraveling ammo, still get happy feelings gettin a kinky stack of relic fragments after a long haul somewhere funky.

Ephemeral stuff, I'm not sure how the idea came about. We already had brittle and cannot be repaired tags, but now we get a different kind of brittle and cannot be repaired to go with it that doesn't even need to be hit to loose durability, you get into a fight and the timer starts tickin til it's over. Some people may not fight as much as others (I haven't been doing as much fighting as I'd like lately), so I suppose there are some who will really get into ephemeral items, I however do not intend to.

"Cora is just a mess and certain templates can't even participate."
On some level I agree, and on a different level I do not. The mess part is that it's just an open spawn, that anyone can come down to and completely mess up. WOO. More on that in a second. Anyhow I like that there is a big community monster. I like that the idea behind it is to make it challenging. I like that there is a the possibility of death and I DEFINATELY like cool stuff and powerful yummies for my templates. I do not like that to get to Cora, you have to teleport into a room that is usually littered with the new Covetous monsters and usually in mass amounts, you're dead before your screen loads half the time. I realize this is in part due to either people intentionally draggin monsters to the steps that lead down for the sole intention of griefing, or someone honestly accidentally was "that" guy or gal that just happened to aggro everything on the entire floor to that 1 room somehow.. completely on accident. Or instead of tele'ing there you can run the gauntlet to get to her and hope you live.

Anyhow, more about the fight itself. I'm trying to word this properly and clearly, but it's a complex matter, so if I need to go back and clarify I will. Anyhow, moving right along meow: I like the difficulty of peerless bosses, I like the strength of the items in general, and I like that Cora is an evolution on those ideas. Hell I also like that i don't have to go farm keys for 30-40 minutes just to see her and have a chance to beat her. Hell, I will say I LOVE THAT aspect, more than I will elaborate on. What I do not like about the current implementation is that EVERYBODY ELSE likes this too, and they can get in there and destroy a solid set up with 0.5 seconds worth of showing up and being like "HEY GUYS! LOOK AT ME!!?! I WIN THE GAME WEE!!!" and boom, everyone gets hit with multipe 60 damages to the point of death, in the event a healer survives and decides to rez everyone, usually that same guy gets rezzed and tries to go get his body INSTANTLY, and drags cora on top of the healer or whoever else.. and gets everyone killed. I think part and parcel of why I liked the old peerless boss encounters is because you could choose to bring your friends, or just go it alone and test things out. Cora being in her current implementation is just a massive charlie foxtrot. Massive on a scale that hasnt' been created yet. Now I have successfully killed her once, and also just showed up and instantly died a few times because of what I'm talking about here. Perhaps we can strike a happy medium here. Do kinda like medusa or stygian. Instead of farming keys, to access an instanced version of that peerless, just make the staircase an instance teleporter that you can only get into every 45 minutes per account? Wait as I typed that I realized how awful that idea is too.. but hey at least I can see that. Ok onto more points MeatBread is bringin up here.

"Every event arc quest being a massive grind."

I don't think anyone in their right mind can deny the fact that the grind is somehow intentionally and developmentally painful. I participated in a bit of it myself, and got the ol' digital slap in the face via loyalty loss like many others have claimed. Anyhow, grind of the level we have seen with the sand sifting and loyalty thing in particular coupled with incredibly messed up decay timers hitting people is not enjoyable. From personal experience, and lots of it, I can attest it sucks. SUCKS. Big time. Does it shake my internal desire to play UO.. No, not in the slightest. But it does make me worrisome about what we can expect in the future. Again my hope is leaning on the idea that perhaps this is just busy work to keep our attention away from things they are bringing up that are genuinely inspiring and enriching to the Ultima Online experience. And instead of giving us like Town Loyalty (which I don't think I ever saw a single post about in my entire time here), why not address HIGH SEAS pirateering by giving us loot we care about, or shake the community with some Basement tokens or something, hell I'd buy one for both accounts. Perhaps those who got Viscount or above with their respective cities get access to special city specific housing spots based on their current rank, in addition to their homes they already own? Hell, we paid 10-50 mil in alot of cases, that's the going rate for decent 18x18 spots on most servers. And while we're on the subject of genuinely enriching to Ultima Oline, LET ME CRAFT CINNAMON ROLLS MAN! Or even a cinnamon roll man! Like ginger bread man.

 

[Eärendil]

The Arc is awesome: I love sandsifting, I love the deco you get there, I love the new titles (dit it til Earl, the higher ranks get too expensive for me). And the Covetous-revamp is awesome, too (much better than the others...). Why? Because it brings people together, you dont have to make appointments for a special trip: You go there, have a look - and find, that there is always a bunch of nice people fighting. I do it just for fun - in order to get up the ladder and to earn my place in highscore. And because its challenging from lvl 50+. And the arties? Who cares. At least the crafter-items are nice... Thats a good incentive. So, my personal opinion: Well done! Last publishes broguht much more fun than many before! THANKS!

 

[Woodsman]

Sorry, but I disagree on most all of that. In order from top to bottom:

Decay of virtues should happen. One should have to prove they are virtuous daily, not just by grinding and stopping.

Hmmm..

Like somebody else said, I can go through a lot of effort to keep a status I earned now for the next however many months until the next publish - most likely two months, assuming something matters/happens that is affected by loyalty status. It could be the September publish, in which case 4 months of logging in and keeping my stats up.

Or I can ignore it for the next 6 weeks (or 14 weeks) and then spend a little bit of time doing it right before the publish.

If somebody from EA said the loyalty status is going to be important sometime in the next two weeks, I would care. I would do what needs to be done.

But doing it on the off chance it will matter 2 or 4 months from now?

No thank you. I'm grinding enough through Diablo 3.

If the UO team wants to give me a title because I dealt with however many NPCs in the current arc, fine, give me a title.

If you want to take away that title, take it away because I cheated on one town with another town or I encouraged some NPCs to do something that I shouldn't have. Don't take it away because I didn't login during a certain amount of time.

 

[Woodsman]

There are a lot of grind intensive things in the game, but it's never dawned on me until this last batch of "new" stuff to do that it seems to be becoming a keep busy scheme with repetitive tasks (grind) more and more which each little push. Perhaps this is just some little trend to keep us busy while they bring out something truly invigorating to the UO experience. My gut tells me now but my hope hasn't totally flickered out meow.

"Every event arc quest being a massive grind."

I don't think anyone in their right mind can deny the fact that the grind is somehow intentionally and developmentally painful. I participated in a bit of it myself, and got the ol' digital slap in the face via loyalty loss like many others have claimed. Anyhow, grind of the level we have seen with the sand sifting and loyalty thing in particular coupled with incredibly messed up decay timers hitting people is not enjoyable. From personal experience, and lots of it, I can attest it sucks. SUCKS. Big time. Does it shake my internal desire to play UO.. No, not in the slightest. But it does make me worrisome about what we can expect in the future. Again my hope is leaning on the idea that perhaps this is just busy work to keep our attention away from things they are bringing up that are genuinely inspiring and enriching to the Ultima Online experience.

I do hope there is some huge reason why they are going down this road. It is intentional, they know how pissed off people are, there has to be a reason for them to have done things this way. I can't see anybody signing off on this without acknowledging it would piss people off, which means there has to be a justification for it.

If there is no justification, if this is the way things are going to be going forward, I anticipate a lot of people not participating in these stories, or half-heartedly participating.

The bad thing is that there are some really good things being done within UO, but there some things that are overshadowing those good things.

 

[Petra Fyde]

I disagree, quite strongly, with much of this.
I would also point out that all of these activities are voluntary. You don't have to work the virtues, Town loyalty is easy to maintain if you only do it with one character, there is no requirement that you collect all the town banners and if you have no need for more deco items, don't do the sand sifting.

IF you want to own everything possible in game then yes, you have to put in considerable effort - but there's no penalty for not owning everything. Do or not do, UO is all about choice.
btw, those 'trash' items in Shame, one of my characters is entirely dressed in them. She does very well with them. She especially likes the MR9 mace she holds to help her maintain her barding masteries.

In UO the idiom 'one man's meat is another man's poison' applies. Just because you don't enjoy something, or don't have a use for something, doesn't mean that no one else does.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

I disagree, quite strongly, with much of this.
I would also point out that all of these activities are voluntary. You don't have to work the virtues, Town loyalty is easy to maintain if you only do it with one character, there is no requirement that you collect all the town banners and if you have no need for more deco items, don't do the sand sifting.

IF you want to own everything possible in game then yes, you have to put in considerable effort - but there's no penalty for not owning everything. Do or not do, UO is all about choice.
btw, those 'trash' items in Shame, one of my characters is entirely dressed in them. She does very well with them. She especially likes the MR9 mace she holds to help her maintain her barding masteries.

In UO the idiom 'one man's meat is another man's poison' applies. Just because you don't enjoy something, or don't have a use for something, doesn't mean that no one else does.

I agree with your statement that it's all a choice, but if these are the "choices" that are going to be given to us, many will choose to just not participate as mentioned above, and also development time is wasted on things more and more people will not be doing. On the topic of the dungeon revamps though I do like those. A LOT. Like holy crap we should have gotten this when ML came out or shortly there after. I can say though, there is no game in the current available company ran market that holds a candle to what Ultima Online does for me, but some of these new choices they are implementing are unquestionably questionable.

 

[Eärendil]

Absolutely right! I love the new add-ons and I see many people sifting sand, arresting NPCs - and there will be many people participating in the coming parts of the events... You don´t have to participate. And I love UO for what it is and I appreciate the way it´s going at the moment.

 

[Meatbread]

In UO the idiom 'one man's meat is another man's poison' applies. Just because you don't enjoy something, or don't have a use for something, doesn't mean that no one else does.

One man's meat is another man's six months of rant threads about grinding, a casual poll where like 7 out of 8 posters considered the current arc the worst ever, my whole guild bailing out of Covetous the minute they knew what ephemeral meant, and one humilitating instance where a complete set of artifacts was scrapped in testing for being complete laughingstock garbage that nobody would use.

I mean we actually had to TELL THEM that a Berzerker's Maul with one extra mod and all that other trash wasn't going to be hot new stuff worth grinding for? That's the most terrifying example of developer obliviousness I've seen since someone designing High Seas went "And then everyone who killed the pirate splits ten-thousand gold! That's a lot, right? Okay quest finished!"

Decay of virtues should happen. One should have to prove they are virtuous daily, not just by grinding and stopping.
I could care less, I don't do factions, but I would imaging I would feel the same way on this as I do the top one.

So let's punch the entire playerbase in the crotch for some vague roleplayerish ideal about "proving you are virtuous daily". Hey by that rationale Karma should decay too, as well as all other reputations. Maybe if you don't suck up to Queen Zhah enough your Gargoyle Queen loyalty decays and she burns down your Ter Mur house.

Junk artis? I think you should take a look at those new glasses. If that's junk I will take them off your hands.

It's sort of telling when your chosen winner of the group is an inferior clone of an existing item.

Yeah, nothing should ever decay. Sorry, decay is one of the things that drives the economy.

The ephemeral items are transparently designed to keep us grinding away in Covetous forever. Except I think they miscalculated both the value of these items and people's tolerance for like the millionth new grind added in the last year.

Yadda yadda, don't feel like going down the rest of this list as if people AREN'T sick of fighting supermonsters that one-shot people, etcetera. I will however touch on this last bit.

I guess the main reason to fight them could be that they are not monsters with a zillion HP and they do not have 160 skills and 90+ resists.

According to the Stratics Cheerleader Squad, High Seas was great and wonderful and everyone would be delighted to hunt down those pirates for their meager rewards. Then reality struck and the whole system died a miserable death, dismissed and forgotten by the actual playerbase. Sound familiar? It will in a few months.

How many game systems have to die because some uppity Stratics poster said "Well just don't do it then!" and NOBODY DID?

 

[Eärendil]

How many game systems have to die because some uppity Stratics poster said "Well just don't do it then!" and NOBODY DID?

Funny thing is: They do

 

[Petra Fyde]

It becomes apparent that our reasons for doing things are diametrically opposed. I do things because I enjoy doing them, any reward I might get along the way is a nice bonus, but not my main motivation.
You on the other hand, it would seem, do an activity for what you can get at the end of it. Our views are destined to rarely if ever coincide. Therefore this 'uppity' Stratics poster bows out of this discussion.

 

[Gilmour]

One thing i agree with, which is actually two things.

Not letting it known what the reward for venerated is, People expecting it is within reach, then charge a 50m goldsink to get something to show for your work.

Otherwise i disagree.

 

[Eärendil]

It becomes apparent that our reasons for doing things are diametrically opposed. I do things because I enjoy doing them, any reward I might get along the way is a nice bonus, but not my main motivation.
You on the other hand, it would seem, do an activity for what you can get at the end of it. Our views are destined to rarely if ever coincide. Therefore this 'uppity' Stratics poster bows out of this discussion.

THAT´s IT!

 

[Sauteed Onion]

Meow, I don't think there's so much a "SIDE" to be on that needs to be arrived at, but, rather open discussion like this is necessary to formulate things that cause less negative controversy. I like pointing out things I don't enjoy, and I enjoy putting my insane suggestions to fix it in a way I could enjoy, but hopefully others could too.

As far as open discussion, I mean it in the sense that you've got happy/angry/confused/insane/ players posting their thoughts on these recent game mechanics, but I think having an actual developer add to these discussions in a greater sense than "We realize there's a problem with *insert mechanic fault here* and we are working on a fix*, more of a well what would you guys like to see or better yet, actually look at even some of the more recent things that have been suggested.

As far as story goes though, I couldn't have asked for anything better. Some of the recent story things are SUPER yummy. I like the grimness of it. I also like cinnamon rolls. : D

 

[hen]

Far too much grinding and not enough FUN seems to be the way forward under the current leadership. Double clicking piles of garbage.......

 

[Petra Fyde]

Far too much grinding and not enough FUN seems to be the way forward under the current leadership. Double clicking piles of garbage.......

is a way that non-combatant characters can take part in the event - I see it as an attempt to enable all characters, of whatever level, to take an active part in the current arc. How many events have there been when the complaint on these boards has been 'I can't take part, I don't have uber characters'?

 

[Warpig Inc]

I want a mansion.

Choice of any car or truck or five.

Fridge always full of fav drinks and eats.

Security force to watch over me while I roll in it.

Be bland world if everyone had everything. Those that don't find playing the lotto fun will make themselves miserable even winning.

Some find the RNG friendly while others hateful. Took 56 laps in Doom before my first drop. Funny thing when empting my pack found an orny burried in my corpse loot pile. Was having fun even competing with the auto loot programs. Now something that is deco having the insane drops they do might be bit much.

 

[Gilmour]

One of the major reasons WoW lost alot of active accounts past few years, is they started handing everything on a silver platter <- true story

 

[SlobberKnocker]

i applaud the dev's for all the attention they have given the game these past 2 years.

i do think that there is a grind factor however and some casual players can get frustrated as many things worth attaining take a really long time to obtain. the high seas booster really turned me off in this regard as i found you spent most of the time sailing the waters to bring the pirate in rather than the time it took to capture the pirate itself. i really think the dev's dropped the ball with that expansion. they should have made scalis a sea bourne champ that took the use of the new ships to complete. they so dropped the ball there in my opinion.

in my opinion there are things they have done right. lady m or any peerless for example. takes a short time to key and has some challenge to it. takes some time to kill the boss, and the end result are getting lucky and obtaining some of the still most sought after items in the game. it also remains a good guild activity. corgul as well was done right. once dead you can drop another set of keys and go again. champ spawns are the same in this regard. so is navrey.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

I don't think anyone is asking for things to be handed out on a silver platter, or for an easy button. So let's not get caught up in that hyperbolic trap.

People are annoyed with the grinds we've been getting.

Town Loyalty = Grind with no known end (and a bug that quickly eats what you gain! YAY!) I suggested titles several months ago when this arc started. I dunno if they listened or if I was simply being prophetic. Either way, while the banners are nice, the titles kinda tipped into silliness with the 50M price tag (and this is coming from someone who SPENT the 50M to become a Duchess of Yew. Yes, Yew - one of the 3 worst towns to grind in. I did it for RP reasons. Cope.) If the titles are the end of what Loyalty means, then there is a problem. A severe, greatly disappointing problem. The best thing they could have done was at least give some hint to what having high loyalty will mean in the end. Without a decent carrot, loyalty is pointless. Also, the login decay bug needs to be fixed ASAP, not in weeks on months. NOW.

Sifting = massive clickity-click grind. It was amusing the first week or so, then people stopped doing it due to the depressingly low drop rate. I burned through EIGHT sifters two days ago without a single antiquity fragment. EIGHT. That was 344ish clickity-clicks for no reward and the joy of fighting boring mobs with lame loot. (only exception to that being the paragon scorpions) The drop rate on sifting is far too low for the time spent. People need encouragement, not more clickity-click.

Virtues... Oy vey. These were better before the introduction of Honesty (and I'm a Knight of Honesty...) I think most of us were happy with the decay rate before Honesty... Now we get decay AND "decay" on use! YAY! I mean, seriously, which Dev thought this would be a good idea? Please, step up and own your decision. The fact that Compassion DROPS from rezzing someone (which is a compassionate act) is asinine. At this point, I fear the inclusion of Spirituality or whatever monstrosity is born for Humility - a Virtue the Devs have proven they don't get a la Virtue Bane and the visual abortion that is New Magincia.

Mobs with high HP/resists and kitchen-sink specials. *sigh* Didn't we make it clear with the Night Terrors? 50K+ hp and obnoxious specials DO NOT A GOOD GAME MAKE. Improve the AI, not stack on the numbers. And 97% in a resist? Really? Who wants to fight that doing single digit damages? Remember, not everyone is a twinked out *insert overpowered template du jour*. We would like balanced mobs that we have fun killing. And by "we" I mean the general player, not the handful of pom-pom wavers who would say 'thank you!' for a sack of poop and a kick in the teeth. If you're routinely creating mobs with more HP and resists than say, the slasher, you are doing it wrong.

Void Pools and Cora. Having done both, I give them a hearty MEH. Hearing a Dev say that the Pool spawn is intended to become unbeatable really underlined their inability to add fun content to UO. We have no way to "win" the scenario? Really? Please, tell me where the fun is in a guaranteed defeat... I'll be waiting. Forever. I think we did 20 levels of spawn during the Wreck on Wednesday, I got 200-something points to spend. Yay. 10 more times of that and I can get an artifact that will wear out in 25 hours of use. Then I get to do it again. YAY! Forced grouping is tolerable here. I give it six weeks tops before finding a group there is insanely hard. Cora is...uhm...an EM mob. Nothing special. Zerg her and she goes down fast. Yay for grouping? She'll be empty in a few months, just like Navrey.

High Seas. *sighs* I know a lot of people who like the clickity-click of fishing...I have only brought myself to do it a few times. Pirates and Merchants are a losing proposition when you look at the economics. Even the white dye tubs and orc ships have bottomed out at clearance prices, barely worth looting. Scalis is frustrating and his loot sucks. Corgul is ok... The requirements for Charybdis is far too unlikely to fall into the hands of many players. Kinda wasted content then, isn't it?

I'm not even going to worry about faction points, since a whole 20 people are still doing it. Globally. RIP Factions.

The event arc itself feels very disjointed and half-assed when individual EM run events are taken out of the equation. Global fiction feels badly out of order, the logic behind the civil unrest is rather thin, and the grind-quests basically just insult us. Some people think they are "fun," I think the fact that more people have said they suck or are simply not participating speaks far more loudly of the inherent failures. Personally, I'm happy that Exodus is "back" as it gives us a chance to deal with it like I've been harping on now for 3 years. I'm just hoping that the end of this arc isn't a massive cringe-worthy, face-palm inducing, clusterfrack of clichés. (I'm glaring at you, Humble Pie!)

Shame/Wrong. Yes, they are a wrongful shame. I got bored of mindlessly killing things after 3 days. Only know two people who still bother to go there on a semi-regular basis.

I just want to see more activities/quests that aren't obvious endless grinds and that are actually fun. Yeah, I realize that I'm silly for wanting a game to be fun.

/wall of text

 

[Meatbread]

It becomes apparent that our reasons for doing things are diametrically opposed. I do things because I enjoy doing them, any reward I might get along the way is a nice bonus, but not my main motivation.
You on the other hand, it would seem, do an activity for what you can get at the end of it. Our views are destined to rarely if ever coincide. Therefore this 'uppity' Stratics poster bows out of this discussion.

Yeah, yeah, you're a real aesthetician who gets out and smells the flowers while all us phillistines don't know what we're missing in our greedy pursuit of loot. Whatever floats your boat. Just realize that you're an irrelevant minority and that Doom and all those unrevamped legacy dungeons haven't sat abandoned for a million years just because they got "less fun" somehow. They sit abandoned because they're not worth doing, because they don't have any worthwhile loot.

Funny thing is: They do

Yeah boy, that High Seas sure is a big hit. Gee it's all anyone talks about. For the first two weeks a bunch of cheerleaders like you stuck up for it. After that all talk of ship combat went absolutely utterly silent. I ought to dig up that "So what are your ship strategies?" thread some cheerleader of a staff member started a couple weeks after HS released that fell off the first page with zero replies. I remember how pathetic it was.

We got years out of Doom, but in a few mere months this Void Pool thing is going to be as dead as High Seas.

One of the major reasons WoW lost alot of active accounts past few years, is they started handing everything on a silver platter <- true story

This is delusional poopsock grinder fantasy. WoW started declining slowly after about six years of release, the same as UO did, the same as EQ did, the same as every market leading or former market leading MMORPG always has. Trying to pin it's decline on any particular design decision is basically nonsense.

Also, even if you DO insist on doing so, you're just plain remembering your history wrong anyway. All throughout Wrath of the Lich King, people like you whined about heroic dungeons being too quick and epic items being too easy to obtain, even as subscriptions hit new highs. Then the Cataclysm expansion hit with it's new more difficult and "meaningful" dungeons and whoops, people started quitting.

What's more, whining about people wanting things on a silver platter is MMO masochist garbage. Nobody is talking about a silver platter, we're talking about the developers, in just the last year or two, deciding that everything, EVERYTHING, needs to be agonizing!

"Oh crap guys look, for the last ten years Virtues have been decaying at a very slow almost unnoticed rate! We better crank that WAAAAY UP all of a sudden! Whew, we really dodged a bullet there, this was really destroying UO! Listen to those players scream on the forum! This was a worthwhile change!"

And...

"Uh oh everyone, did you know Doom and Peerlesses and everything all along have been dropping artifacts that DON'T wither away and disappear in a short fixed period of time? We can do better than that!"

It's nonsense. Especially the Virtue thing where they just walked in after a decade and increased the decay rate by an order of magnitude for no damn reason at all.

 

[Picus at the office]

I'm not even going to worry about faction points, since a whole 20 people are still doing it. Globally. RIP Factions.


/wall of text

There was more to be quoted but this part made me laugh. I took the plunge and moved a char to the great land of ATL to only find that there seems to be less faction players there in total than we had on Napa before the great shluk up. Which dev player actually plays this game on a regular basis?

Grinds are not fun, having to log in daily on specific chars is not fun, having to make sure that 10+ other players are on to finish something like Cora is not fun, High Seas was left to float with no follow up at all even though we all paid good money for it, the town quest and this thing called sifting I never even heard about even though I read this stupid site all day what about the players whom do not?

Instead of posting pics of the latest Blizzard game you feel like playing how about one of the team play this game, I'd have fired your azz on the spot for a stupid tweet like that.

 

[phantus]

Seems like they have geared these new grinding daily things to match the facebook games template and not an MMO template. Of course, grinding has always been a part of online gaming and RPG gaming in general.

 

[Meatbread]

Which dev player actually plays this game on a regular basis?

None, dude. Some developer implemented that first joke list of Covetous Artifacts and DIDN'T know they were total crap. How can that even be? Come on Mesanna, I've seen you logged in plenty of times. Open someone's paperdoll and look at their stuff next time.

Edit: Oh yeah, and the new "Grind or GTFO!" design philosophy killed off factions? Oh boy, nobody tell Eaerendil. Between that and High Seas that's at least two dead major game systems.

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

having to make sure that 10+ other players are on to finish something like Cora is not fun,

10+ players to run Cora? Have participated in multiple runs where it only takes 2 or 3 folks to down her. Granted it takes a little while, but imo it should. In all honesty once the trick to her is found, she is really easy.

As for the rest of the debate that rages on....

Everyone is different. Different playstyles, different reasons to play, and definately different wants. Who knows where this current arc will end and what the landscape of UO will be like after it. The way I see it there is a balance. If you are one who likes to grind, guess what... UO has something to offer you. IF you are one who abhors the grind, guess what..... UO has something to offer you. If you don't like the grind but still want the items from the grind, go do something you don't comsider a grind, save your gold and purchase the things from the grind. I am one who does not mind the grind, but even I gave up on farming the Artifacts in the desert after a friend got a multiple para chest from the Scrops. I went and continued on graverobbers, sold the statues and bought the artifacts. BUT, BUT, BUT, buttttttt... Then I can't have a title if I just buy items from the grinds. Sorry. That's life. Gotta roll with the bad just like you roll with the good.

The one thing I have found odd over my years in UO and on stratics is a high percentage of the complaining is usually done by the crowd that fly from UO to this game to that game to yet another game back to UO, rinse and repeat. To me, if I were at the top of ANY game, I would not give a rat's arse about what that type of person has to say. Fair weather friends imo. As for the dedicated UO Player who complains, sadly nobody can ever please everybody all the time. Yeah, everyone has aspects of the game they hate, and aspects they love. UO, just like life its self, is not a utopian society, nor should it ever be.

 

[Madrid]

Decay of virtues should happen. One should have to prove they are virtuous daily, not just by grinding and stopping.

Your high as a kite...

If you have the time and want to go prove your "virtuous" every day then by all means go do so. Myself I have neither the time to keep up with characters on multiple shards nor do I have the desire to do so as doing so would consume most of my gaming time. I've already done it umpteen times on god knows how many characters over the years. I'm effin ' fed up with it...

For me to be forced to repeat what I've already done in perpetuity (in order to maintain my standing) borders on insanity and only goes to piss me off. Repeating the same time consuming things OVER and OVER and OVER again is not my idea of quality gaming experience for a 15 year veteran.

When I don't log in none of my characters die, I don't change allegiances and I don't perform wicked acts so why should anything "Decay"..if anything my fame should increase as the Bards of the land should be telling tales of my legendary adventures.

Why don't they make a toggle button to turn decay on or off. You can turn yours "ON" and I'll keep my turned "OFF".

 

[Picus at the office]

The one thing I have found odd over my years in UO and on stratics is a high percentage of the complaining is usually done by the crowd that fly from UO to this game to that game to yet another game back to UO, rinse and repeat. To me, if I were at the top of ANY game, I would not give a rat's arse about what that type of person has to say. Fair weather friends imo. As for the dedicated UO Player who complains, sadly nobody can ever please everybody all the time. Yeah, everyone has aspects of the game they hate, and aspects they love. UO, just like life its self, is not a utopian society, nor should it ever be.

You are so wrong it almost pains me to reply. The people who complain(d) are the same people who have been here for years, seen it all and are stunned with how the game has gone. It's the people who have played this game longer than the dev team have collectivly worked here.

 

[MagicStar]

I always liked the old way
I only really used sacrifice to self rez
If i used it up i had to rebuild it
If i wanted to i could save it for a worse situation
Since the change i ignore it completely

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

If you have the time and want to go prove your "virtuous" every day then by all means go do so. Myself I have neither the time to keep up with characters on multiple shards nor do I have the desire to do so

I do not keep all of my virtues at Knight level, nor would I try to keep them all that high. I make decisions based on that character as to what virtues that character needs. To me that is how the game SHOULD be played. All to often people have this "I want it all" mentality. And that is fine if they want to play the game that way. For that type of person, maybe they could chage the decay rate to actual in game decay on that specific character. But yeah, sorry imo, decay of virtues should still continue on not only a use level, but also on a non use one. Sorry you and I disagree, but that's life.

The people who complain(d) are the same people who have been here for years, seen it all and are stunned with how the game has gone. It's the people who have played this game longer than the dev team have collectivly worked here.

I agree some of those that complain fit that criteria. But I covered them in my previous post as well:

As for the dedicated UO Player who complains, sadly nobody can ever please everybody all the time. Yeah, everyone has aspects of the game they hate, and aspects they love. UO, just like life its self, is not a utopian society, nor should it ever be.

 

[Cirno]

Yeah, yeah, you're a real aesthetician who gets out and smells the flowers while all us phillistines don't know what we're missing in our greedy pursuit of loot. Whatever floats your boat. Just realize that you're an irrelevant minority and that Doom and all those unrevamped legacy dungeons haven't sat abandoned for a million years just because they got "less fun" somehow. They sit abandoned because they're not worth doing, because they don't have any worthwhile loot.

Responses like this won't help you any.
You're effectively trolling your own thread

 

[Sevin0oo0]

Personally, I think virtues should swing both ways, perhaps with color from black-white. we have that w/ fame karma, why not virtues?
by definition: A virtue is a positive trait or quality deemed to be 'morally' good and thus is valued, the key word is "deemed".
If Devs what to play goody 2 shoes, then they should do it all the way, no sinister or evil players, no murder since they "deem" it as bad things.
I think the dark side got a huge nurf somewhere back and is still being neglected.
Some like to play evil. If they can't remember I help the needy, and word of my deeds don't spread, the hell with 'em. If you're Adored, wouldn't they come running to you for help? They should follow you like a paragon.

One did run up to me... crying What of the children, she worries no more. since there are none, she was clearly mad. Death becomes her.

 

[hen]

I know George will take in a few extra dollars from having the UO dev team post here occasionally, but we REALLY need the Stratics staff (volunteers etc) to stop this blind cheerleading thing all the time.
Meatbread's style of posting maybe slightly obtuse and antagonisitc, but he is nonetheless correct. The latest additions to the game have been nothing more than crappy grinds. We need to know who is on our dev team and they need to listen to us after testing every publish.

 

[kelmo]

Slightly?

What we really need is for some Stratics users to stop pretending to speak for all UO players.
We need for some users to quit making up numbers and presenting them as fact.
We need for some users to step back and listen to other opinions and consider them instead of dismissing them merely because those opinions do not fit said users model of how things should be done.

 

[hen]

Slightly?

What we really need is for some Stratics users to stop pretending to speak for all UO players.
We need for some users to quit making up numbers and presenting them as fact.
We need for some users to step back and listen to other opinions and consider them instead of dismissing them merely because those opinions do not fit said users model of how things should be done.

Sorry mate but monsters with a million hit points and double clicking garbage are just not fun. The devs seriously need to get a focus group sorted out NOW unless we are just going to limp along to the 15th anniversary with our Minnenova Wands.

 

[kelmo]

hen, that is your opinion. As long as your opinion is respectably presented it is welcomed to be discussed here.

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

Slightly?

What we really need is for some Stratics users to stop pretending to speak for all UO players.
We need for some users to quit making up numbers and presenting them as fact.
We need for some users to step back and listen to other opinions and consider them instead of dismissing them merely because those opinions do not fit said users model of how things should be done.

Well said.

but we REALLY need the Stratics staff (volunteers etc) to stop this blind cheerleading thing all the time.

We need to know who is on our dev team and they need to listen to us after testing every publish.

I take HUGE exception to the first point. Oh wait, that's right in order for people to volunteer for Stratics they have to drink the Kool-Aid and of course they ALL have to hold the same opinions *rolls eyes*. In honesty it is the other way around. Like minds seek each other out. Have you ever noticed when one troll hits a thread, they all seem too? Same principle. I can not think of a single person I have met that is on Staff in any capacity who has even attempted to control others opinions or words, let alone tried to move us towards blind cheerleading. So we can squash that blind cheerleading stuff right there imo.

On the second point...... Maybe if more people would log on to TC when the content hits there they would find the Devs ALOT more receptive to changing things. From their standpoint TC is where it gets tested out by us, then rolls to Origin for final testing. But folks {myself included on most occasions} do not want to be bothered to test the content until it hits prod shards. I can see to where the Dev team could sit back when we start complaining at that point thinking to themselves "well, nobody griped about it when it was on TC, so lets just watch and see how it plays". Not to mention when it is on TC I would imagine changing some things around could be easier than once it hit prod shards, not to mention them possibly being more receptive.

I have witnessed Mesanna herself on SEVERAL occasions posting how they hear this or they hear that and are working on a solution. That's all we can really ask for. And on some things we as a whole should be told.. NO. There are those in game who are like the kid in the buggy at the grocery store pitching a fit for a candy bar. The parent either tries to reason with a toddler and the battle rages on until they are out OR the parent says no, when the toddler persists they pop them on the leg or butt. Child gets the message and stops. Maybe it's time for the Dev Team to start popping some butt....... Just my .02 tho.

 

[Taylor]

There are things I like and dislike. Dislikes are voiced by posters significantly more frequently than likes. When 30 people have complained about something, I don't see a benefit of being the 31st. If there's something I feel especially strongly about (e.g., account unfairly closed, house abruptly deleted, etc.,), I take it to private conversation. Cal received more than his share of PMs from me.

I wish folks didn't pretend that they know everything staff members think. They're entitled to say that they know, but they're also wrong.

 

[Sprago]

i know this will be frowned upon but i personally think UO is doing a good job. Keep em coming these revamps have been very enjoyable. if i had a complaint it would be only that they need to work on the stability of the EC client and updating the UOherald community pages (fatcion, guilds pages, and such)

 

[Sevin0oo0]

squash that blind cheerleading stuff

There's been many times I fret coming here, fully expecting to see that I've been banned again, so I'm definitely not a pom pom waver, but I have learned throwing poop at a problem doesn't make it any better, nor does it for others to throw some too. They know what grinds are, and I think they're honestly trying to make them fun, in some way. That's hard - how do you make it appealing to the most playstyles, and without an easy button, because easy gets old too, or we could all just play TC. I think there is some cheerleading that goes on, dunno if blind, but it seems so at times, but it's also their right to cheer as they see fit, just as it's mine to not. If it's a Stratics' requirement to cheer, I say lets get ol' grump-a-grump and dress him up for the part with a little tutu and bow on his head

 

[kelmo]

I say lets get ol' grump-a-grump and dress him up for the part with a little tutu and bow on his head

*stares*

 

[Picus at the office]

I have witnessed Mesanna herself on SEVERAL occasions posting how they hear this or they hear that and are working on a solution. That's all we can really ask for. And on some things we as a whole should be told.. NO. There are those in game who are like the kid in the buggy at the grocery store pitching a fit for a candy bar. The parent either tries to reason with a toddler and the battle rages on until they are out OR the parent says no, when the toddler persists they pop them on the leg or butt. Child gets the message and stops. Maybe it's time for the Dev Team to start popping some butt....... Just my .02 tho.

Once a quarter does not equate to SEVERAL postings, sorry to say but get real. The last recent posting that I can recall was about the useless revamped doom items that everyone and thier dog knew were pointless.

I also noted that the majority of the cheerleaders in this thread also seem to have some moderator title, not sure how one gets this but leading a cheer seems to help, no?

 

[Rusko]

we REALLY need the Stratics staff (volunteers etc) to stop this blind cheerleading thing all the time.
Meatbread's style of posting maybe slightly obtuse and antagonisitc, but he is nonetheless correct. The latest additions to the game have been nothing more than crappy grinds. We need to know who is on our dev team and they need to listen to us after testing every publish.

 

[Rusko]

Once a quarter does not equate to SEVERAL postings, sorry to say but get real. The last recent posting that I can recall was about the useless revamped doom items that everyone and thier dog knew were pointless.

I also noted that the majority of the cheerleaders in this thread also seem to have some moderator title, not sure how one gets this but leading a cheer seems to help, no?

DOUBLE

 

[kelmo]

Once a quarter? What do you base this figure on?