C
Coppelia
Guest
[EDIT: I'm back but I leave the comments from when I quit]
I'm closing my account, but UO will always be my first love. It's been a lot of fun to play, lots of great people to meet, and lots of stories to dream. If anyone said something bad about UO, I'd kick him in the nuts!
So I'm going to try to give a constructive feedback, because I'm not leaving because I'm forced to.
The evolution of UO's universe.
Personally I'm not fond of Ultima's solo RPGs going into space, or with bobbits and fuzzies and all. What brought me to UO was the medieval/renaissance + magic universe. It had a lot of a celtic legend. So I didn't appreciate much the addition of weird weapons (AoS) and LBR's robots. Controlers with golems were nice, juggernauts were more for Fallout. The Samourai Empire was brought as a complete set and was easier to accept, although I saw it a cheap sell-out for asian customers. Finally I was totally outside the spirit of ML. With all the armors, weapons coming with stupid colors already ingame, adding more was beyond me. I know a lot of friends who were RPing elves were very happy to see the new race, but to me the colorful cliché fantasy Everquest finished to run on UO with that expansion. The new best pet was... not in my taste. Lately the greater dragons have marked a shy return of the previous UO spirit, even if it's clumsy (greater dragons at the entrance of Destard... erm erm).
The evolution of gameplay
I'm not going to say pre-pub 16 was great. While it was funny to tame a gazillion of pets, it was stupid. I'm not going to say UO:R killed the game, because even for the RP towns which were supposedly killed by the move had a hard time with PKs and too many players left because of that. A long time after Ren was out, while speaking about UO to a friend, the first things he said was "UO? Isn't it full of PKs?". IMO it was a good thing, particularily to set rules in RP PvP and help the players who were uncomfortable with PvP to add more player interaction. For the brigands who lost their preys, I can't feel bad for them. UO has a very bad PvP system, and nowadays you just have to see how being red is just a part of the deal to understand there's a problem in the design. There are games with full PvP which aren't infested with PKs having nothing more to do than waiting newbies to come out of town.
However I must say I prefer the property system of pre-AoS era for several reason: while hunting you collect the items and when you finished hunting you open the gift boxes (identification), a few pieces of loot on the corpse, not a huge box full of insignificant properties, a few types of weapons/armor making it easier to find your favorite weapon with good stats, no useless elemental damage...
I find absurd to have to scavenge through every mobs' corpses to find something. For a boss (ML or Champs), it's ok because it marks the end of the fight. While hunting in a dungeon it kills the rythm. It took a particular proportion of non-sense with fandancers. Those small creatures carry a full weaponry.
That leads to bags of sending. I always liked to hunt through a dungeon or Ilshenar even when they were declared deserted, because I would progress through the spawn, loot at least the gold coins and when it was a big creature I would check the items, and then continue my adventure. It brought me many stories, challenges and odd discoveries. But it had a sense because I could loot the coins. It was part of the fun, part of the sense of the adventures. If I needed gold, I would go and have fun. With the changes of bag of sending, the only valid playstyle has become the intense farming on the same spot to pile up gold coins and then coming back with a blue beetle to collect it. I've tried it, and I hate it. Rotting Corpse chamber, Succubi in Fandancer Dojo... bleeeeh! I can't anymore.
A quick mention of paragons: they brought activity in Ilshenar during a few months, but it soon returned to its quiet state with only few spots being farmed. Good on the short term, but very bad in long term because they don't fit in the spawn. Clearly if you want to hunt paragons at your reach, you have to slaughter tons of stupid critters. And if you want to hunt normal spawn of your level, a paragon will kick your butt (and camp your corpse of course). To have difficult monsters to beat is fun, to have a bunch pixels zim-zoom and insta-kill you, not. Plus the client is unable to correctly display mobs above a given speed. The client makes them run up to a given speed and will warp them to catch up with their real position. And of course, poor dial-up users!
Also a small note on the last event I took part in, there were NPCs collecting event items to give you points. Well I wasn't able to get Pyro Staves and Berserker Scythes to get the nice rewards, but I found fun to have an incentive to hunt the remains of events like the ophidians giving food rations. I don't understand why removing content. I think that giving a reward for giving the special items dropped by some mobs is nice. When it's not stupid like the collection proportions.
You understand that PvM being closed for me, RP community becoming very sparse and the universe becoming a stranger to me, the last great things of UO aren't enough. But I must mention them.
The depth of content
First of all the house customisation and decoration is IMO one of the greatest strenght of UO. Just for that I can't regret the evolution taken by UO. Even if some roof sets are not complete and we could have a few more ground tiles (for transitions for example), it is a very powerful tool and combined with the decoration possibilities that offers 2D, I think UO has the greatest housing system.
Also what makes UO really interresting is all the "useless" things you can do. Throwing objects on the ground is important for RP. Chess, bagball, dice, aquarium, gardening... It gives matter to the universe.
The pet system is nice too, althought the limitation of stable slots is frustrating. But taming all those animals and creatures and raising them was fun to me.
The evolution of graphics
At first the true isometric view was a bit strange for me, it gives a bit the impression that the ground is a wall and your character will fall. But nonetheless 2D was the only thing that interrested me for UO. I prefer a square of pixels that gives me the feeling it's grass than a colored polygon like 3D was until a few years ago.
What bothered me with UO is the will of some dev teams to force it into 3D. That lead to ugly models of the beginning of 3D, injected in 2D client. I thank recent devs for the effort to put 2D daemons back in legacy client. Alas there are a lot of mobs that will stay with the old 3D model. With jolty animations. In fact, what I was waiting for a new client, was the same feeling of pixel art but with 32-bit colors and a higher definition because I know people have stupid native resolutions on their monitors now.
A few words about KR: I was attracted by the first screenshots. But there are big problems with KR. The new possibilities in interface don't justify the plethora of bugs we had or still have to go through. Also I'm satisfied with neither of KR normal items or legacy look. KR original look problem IMO is that the items are too big and there is no outline. The outline is great to help contrasts and avoid the blurry look KR has. Legacy items just don't fit in the background. I won't talk about paperdolls in detail, but they're a failure. Armor and clothing pieces don't fit, males are ugly, the pose is strange. Also, the animations are very wrong. I heard that they were reworked for a new version of the client, so I wish good luck to the current team, there's a lot of work there! Finally what buggers me is KR has some great monsters designs (awesome dragons and spiders), but a lot of them are too large for the one tile system.
The economy
Just before paragons, the gold coins drop was increased. It was a mistake. Of course you need a bag of sending when a poor mongbat gives more than thirty gold coins! And it devaluted the money. I've noticed that the last dev teams were listening to the players, and I thank them for the correction of the mistake on dread spiders. But on bags of sending, it would have been better to lower the loot rather than just force them to recall more. Plus loot really needs to be changed. Lots of players suggested to only rarely put one good item in the loot bag rather than a ton of craps.
A small word about bots: I won't insist because I've heard they were working on that, but of course BOD lottery works in a way that it's not up to the player to make a difference. So it's botted. And Heartwood quests, I don't know who thought them but it must have been on a bad day because it's the perfect feature for bots and nothing interresting for players.
To get rid of bots easierly, I'm sorry that will make some players yell but UO needs server merges. I know it sounds like a dark fate, but EA's budget for UO is short and let's face it, there are not as many players as before. Less servers are easier to monitor for the few GMs UO has.
EA's policy
I'm sorry for the current dev teams who made a lot I must say (snow in winter, additions to gardening, New Haven, events...), I was happy that after giving nothing for 9th anniversary, they decided to give lots of 9th anniversary codes for the 10th. Thank you. But a subscription at the height of the top dogs of the market + expansions you have to buy + a cash shop... I feel like a milk cow. I bought a 6th slot because let's face it, with the number of skills UO has, I wanted another slot to enlarge my possibilities of gameplay. Now the 6th and the 7th are for sale together for the same price, and if I want a 7th slot (for a gargoyle), I should rebuy it?
I don't appreciate either the anniversary boxes with content that should be ingame, available from craft, drop or quest. Those boxes aren't for new players to catch up with the expansions, they are for veteran players to spend more to get special items. And that sucks.
Also I have splitted feelings about veteran reward system. I don't have a better idea I must say, but the current system is walking on the head, or at the very least frustrating. When I was interrested in runebook dying, I wasn't allowed to use them. When I wanted to use an ankh in my house design, I wasn't allowed. When I was allowed (for both), years later, that wasn't my interrest anymore. I don't understand why block content the dev team spent time on. I don't know, maybe just a big pool of vet rewards available for any year, and you get points every year. So if I don't care about statuettes and stated clothing, I don't have to wait years to get a vet reward. Plus 10 years vet rewards don't make any sense for new players. That's somethings they'll never see, and I'm not saying UO will die, I'm just saying that very few people play the same game over 10 years. It stalls the game. They need to throw content ingame, not block it. So vet reward or anniversary box/cash shop items... not a good idea.
I'm sure I forgot a lot of things, but there's enough to prevent a lot of people from reading it. Sorry!
Again I wish good luck to the devs, tell EA that cutting budgets because of the crisis is a big mistake! Gaming industry won't suffer that much because games are a necessary escapism. They just need to focus on quality rather than overused licences.
For all the players of UO, have fun I'm sure some good things are coming!
(And no, you can't have my stuff, I may come back)
I'm closing my account, but UO will always be my first love. It's been a lot of fun to play, lots of great people to meet, and lots of stories to dream. If anyone said something bad about UO, I'd kick him in the nuts!
So I'm going to try to give a constructive feedback, because I'm not leaving because I'm forced to.
The evolution of UO's universe.
Personally I'm not fond of Ultima's solo RPGs going into space, or with bobbits and fuzzies and all. What brought me to UO was the medieval/renaissance + magic universe. It had a lot of a celtic legend. So I didn't appreciate much the addition of weird weapons (AoS) and LBR's robots. Controlers with golems were nice, juggernauts were more for Fallout. The Samourai Empire was brought as a complete set and was easier to accept, although I saw it a cheap sell-out for asian customers. Finally I was totally outside the spirit of ML. With all the armors, weapons coming with stupid colors already ingame, adding more was beyond me. I know a lot of friends who were RPing elves were very happy to see the new race, but to me the colorful cliché fantasy Everquest finished to run on UO with that expansion. The new best pet was... not in my taste. Lately the greater dragons have marked a shy return of the previous UO spirit, even if it's clumsy (greater dragons at the entrance of Destard... erm erm).
The evolution of gameplay
I'm not going to say pre-pub 16 was great. While it was funny to tame a gazillion of pets, it was stupid. I'm not going to say UO:R killed the game, because even for the RP towns which were supposedly killed by the move had a hard time with PKs and too many players left because of that. A long time after Ren was out, while speaking about UO to a friend, the first things he said was "UO? Isn't it full of PKs?". IMO it was a good thing, particularily to set rules in RP PvP and help the players who were uncomfortable with PvP to add more player interaction. For the brigands who lost their preys, I can't feel bad for them. UO has a very bad PvP system, and nowadays you just have to see how being red is just a part of the deal to understand there's a problem in the design. There are games with full PvP which aren't infested with PKs having nothing more to do than waiting newbies to come out of town.
However I must say I prefer the property system of pre-AoS era for several reason: while hunting you collect the items and when you finished hunting you open the gift boxes (identification), a few pieces of loot on the corpse, not a huge box full of insignificant properties, a few types of weapons/armor making it easier to find your favorite weapon with good stats, no useless elemental damage...
I find absurd to have to scavenge through every mobs' corpses to find something. For a boss (ML or Champs), it's ok because it marks the end of the fight. While hunting in a dungeon it kills the rythm. It took a particular proportion of non-sense with fandancers. Those small creatures carry a full weaponry.
That leads to bags of sending. I always liked to hunt through a dungeon or Ilshenar even when they were declared deserted, because I would progress through the spawn, loot at least the gold coins and when it was a big creature I would check the items, and then continue my adventure. It brought me many stories, challenges and odd discoveries. But it had a sense because I could loot the coins. It was part of the fun, part of the sense of the adventures. If I needed gold, I would go and have fun. With the changes of bag of sending, the only valid playstyle has become the intense farming on the same spot to pile up gold coins and then coming back with a blue beetle to collect it. I've tried it, and I hate it. Rotting Corpse chamber, Succubi in Fandancer Dojo... bleeeeh! I can't anymore.
A quick mention of paragons: they brought activity in Ilshenar during a few months, but it soon returned to its quiet state with only few spots being farmed. Good on the short term, but very bad in long term because they don't fit in the spawn. Clearly if you want to hunt paragons at your reach, you have to slaughter tons of stupid critters. And if you want to hunt normal spawn of your level, a paragon will kick your butt (and camp your corpse of course). To have difficult monsters to beat is fun, to have a bunch pixels zim-zoom and insta-kill you, not. Plus the client is unable to correctly display mobs above a given speed. The client makes them run up to a given speed and will warp them to catch up with their real position. And of course, poor dial-up users!
Also a small note on the last event I took part in, there were NPCs collecting event items to give you points. Well I wasn't able to get Pyro Staves and Berserker Scythes to get the nice rewards, but I found fun to have an incentive to hunt the remains of events like the ophidians giving food rations. I don't understand why removing content. I think that giving a reward for giving the special items dropped by some mobs is nice. When it's not stupid like the collection proportions.
You understand that PvM being closed for me, RP community becoming very sparse and the universe becoming a stranger to me, the last great things of UO aren't enough. But I must mention them.
The depth of content
First of all the house customisation and decoration is IMO one of the greatest strenght of UO. Just for that I can't regret the evolution taken by UO. Even if some roof sets are not complete and we could have a few more ground tiles (for transitions for example), it is a very powerful tool and combined with the decoration possibilities that offers 2D, I think UO has the greatest housing system.
Also what makes UO really interresting is all the "useless" things you can do. Throwing objects on the ground is important for RP. Chess, bagball, dice, aquarium, gardening... It gives matter to the universe.
The pet system is nice too, althought the limitation of stable slots is frustrating. But taming all those animals and creatures and raising them was fun to me.
The evolution of graphics
At first the true isometric view was a bit strange for me, it gives a bit the impression that the ground is a wall and your character will fall. But nonetheless 2D was the only thing that interrested me for UO. I prefer a square of pixels that gives me the feeling it's grass than a colored polygon like 3D was until a few years ago.
What bothered me with UO is the will of some dev teams to force it into 3D. That lead to ugly models of the beginning of 3D, injected in 2D client. I thank recent devs for the effort to put 2D daemons back in legacy client. Alas there are a lot of mobs that will stay with the old 3D model. With jolty animations. In fact, what I was waiting for a new client, was the same feeling of pixel art but with 32-bit colors and a higher definition because I know people have stupid native resolutions on their monitors now.
A few words about KR: I was attracted by the first screenshots. But there are big problems with KR. The new possibilities in interface don't justify the plethora of bugs we had or still have to go through. Also I'm satisfied with neither of KR normal items or legacy look. KR original look problem IMO is that the items are too big and there is no outline. The outline is great to help contrasts and avoid the blurry look KR has. Legacy items just don't fit in the background. I won't talk about paperdolls in detail, but they're a failure. Armor and clothing pieces don't fit, males are ugly, the pose is strange. Also, the animations are very wrong. I heard that they were reworked for a new version of the client, so I wish good luck to the current team, there's a lot of work there! Finally what buggers me is KR has some great monsters designs (awesome dragons and spiders), but a lot of them are too large for the one tile system.
The economy
Just before paragons, the gold coins drop was increased. It was a mistake. Of course you need a bag of sending when a poor mongbat gives more than thirty gold coins! And it devaluted the money. I've noticed that the last dev teams were listening to the players, and I thank them for the correction of the mistake on dread spiders. But on bags of sending, it would have been better to lower the loot rather than just force them to recall more. Plus loot really needs to be changed. Lots of players suggested to only rarely put one good item in the loot bag rather than a ton of craps.
A small word about bots: I won't insist because I've heard they were working on that, but of course BOD lottery works in a way that it's not up to the player to make a difference. So it's botted. And Heartwood quests, I don't know who thought them but it must have been on a bad day because it's the perfect feature for bots and nothing interresting for players.
To get rid of bots easierly, I'm sorry that will make some players yell but UO needs server merges. I know it sounds like a dark fate, but EA's budget for UO is short and let's face it, there are not as many players as before. Less servers are easier to monitor for the few GMs UO has.
EA's policy
I'm sorry for the current dev teams who made a lot I must say (snow in winter, additions to gardening, New Haven, events...), I was happy that after giving nothing for 9th anniversary, they decided to give lots of 9th anniversary codes for the 10th. Thank you. But a subscription at the height of the top dogs of the market + expansions you have to buy + a cash shop... I feel like a milk cow. I bought a 6th slot because let's face it, with the number of skills UO has, I wanted another slot to enlarge my possibilities of gameplay. Now the 6th and the 7th are for sale together for the same price, and if I want a 7th slot (for a gargoyle), I should rebuy it?
I don't appreciate either the anniversary boxes with content that should be ingame, available from craft, drop or quest. Those boxes aren't for new players to catch up with the expansions, they are for veteran players to spend more to get special items. And that sucks.
Also I have splitted feelings about veteran reward system. I don't have a better idea I must say, but the current system is walking on the head, or at the very least frustrating. When I was interrested in runebook dying, I wasn't allowed to use them. When I wanted to use an ankh in my house design, I wasn't allowed. When I was allowed (for both), years later, that wasn't my interrest anymore. I don't understand why block content the dev team spent time on. I don't know, maybe just a big pool of vet rewards available for any year, and you get points every year. So if I don't care about statuettes and stated clothing, I don't have to wait years to get a vet reward. Plus 10 years vet rewards don't make any sense for new players. That's somethings they'll never see, and I'm not saying UO will die, I'm just saying that very few people play the same game over 10 years. It stalls the game. They need to throw content ingame, not block it. So vet reward or anniversary box/cash shop items... not a good idea.
I'm sure I forgot a lot of things, but there's enough to prevent a lot of people from reading it. Sorry!
Again I wish good luck to the devs, tell EA that cutting budgets because of the crisis is a big mistake! Gaming industry won't suffer that much because games are a necessary escapism. They just need to focus on quality rather than overused licences.
For all the players of UO, have fun I'm sure some good things are coming!
(And no, you can't have my stuff, I may come back)
