*Note* - This will be a list of aspects and ideas that made UO great and why they worked/could work with URPG. Please keep in mind that Richard Garriott(RG) has expressed his concerns with setting the standard twice in his life, and this could be a very real third standard with URPG. Bearing that in mind I will be discussing UO aspects(because this is a UO spiritual successor) in the most part with ideas from various other post on here, that I will do my best to give credit to, in which I believe give a good basis of where RG is trying to go.
It took a while to read all the post, but I finally did, and I must say there are some really great ideas out there, as well as some that I believe unknowingly really take away from the overall game aspect/idea I believe RG is going for.
1. Risk/sandbox/simple/skill based world - no radicly different servers (Raptor85 - #4)
*It's pretty safe to say most people crave the risk based world of UO. Everyone talks about it on here, but they are concerned about griefers/exploiters.(I will explain ways to curb that later/throughout.)
*Ultimate sandbox world. People want to be able to be/do whatever they want in game.(I see a few comments about how people ultimately always played the game for combat, and I have to say I agree to a point. It's hard to fault a player base for having grown up playing games that always revolved around combat from feeling the need to step outside of their comfort zone and into the realm of everything else UO truly had to offer. I always wanted to have the option of doing other things besides for just combat in a game, and UO offered that, so I took full advantage of that. RG has also pointed to games like Farm ville being a perfect example of how the player base is there for wanting to do other things besides just combat in a game.)
*Simple rule sets. This would add to the ultimate creativity of individual players, and is one of the reasons everything worked so well in UO from housing, decorating, combat, sense of achievement(something as simple as a pure black bye bucket, or when ranger armor first came out. These were very simple aspects that gave a great sense of achievement for acquiring. Dark green armor that no one could make, great stuff.). Less is more, and more rules force your hand at what you truly want to do.
*Skill based world. Allows a sense of accomplishment that keeps newbs to veterans on a fairly level playing field for being able to adventure and enjoy a broad variety of social activities.(No need to worry about all of your epic players sticking to one side of the world, and newbs only ever being in another part that grows stagnant as soon as they outgrow themselves.)
*RG has pointed toward not wanting different ruleset servers, and here is why. If you have all your PVE who bring certain commerce in on one world, and PVP who bring in substantially less, but add unique and creative environments on another world, then you get two broken worlds in the end. PVE needs the creativity of the PVP community so there isn't the feeling of the no risk grind that always sets in sooner or later, and PVP needs the people of the PVE community to bring those commodities to continually bring an ever changing creative social realm that benefits all. (There are ways to make both play styles enjoyable in a combined world which I will explain in detail later.)
Notes - There is a general lack of true PVPer discussion on the boards, and a general consensus that everyone is concerned of griefers/exploiters, which points to the underlining assumption that everyone truly wants a RG world of full risk, but not something that is going to make you want to rip your hair out while playing.
Simple world design enables a bigger sandbox effect, and talk of a bounty hunter guild system leads to more forced rules that ultimately do very little to curb the abuse of a bounty reward type system from exploiters, and more hoops to jump through for you being the victim of a crime from being able to exact justice upon the criminal by whatever means you see fit.
2. PVP
*PVP encompasses a wide variety of encounters. Whether we are talking about murderers, thieves, traders, opportunist, or whatever else you can come up with. These people are players just as you and I are, and deserve to have a fair and enjoyable experience in their practices as well. They paid their money to play as well, and there are ways to curb griefing/exploiting, but if they want to spend the money to have 2 or more accounts to play at once, then I say they deserve it, they paid for it. (Bad Karma said it best when he talked about PVP needing to have the feel of an art in game, and not just about button mashing skill. I remember spending weeks working on a sneaky rogue shortly after my first ever house deed got stolen from me at the bank. I was so pissed at the time, but I was also very excited too because that crafty ******* worked his butt off getting his skills high enough for me to never even notice he went into my bag and through my goods for his prized reward. I knew at that moment that I also could try and be just as successful as that guy was too, and all it required were some skills that if played correctly with each other would turn out to be successful for me as well.)
*Risk. Just as there is open world risk for all the good guys, there needs to be a more fair risk for PVPers as well. Not over bearing, just fair. I think one of the main problems people had with PKers in the early days of UO is that you could be a full blown fighter just out enjoying the fresh air far from town and a high level mage with nothing more then a hat, robe, and a few regs could destroy you and take all your gear. On the other hand if you managed to kill your combatant, the reward was fairly lack luster. A simple way to fix this is to make the act of performing evil deeds cost something in return, such as casting a spell in an evil way requires certain reagents that are fairly hard to come by or cost a fair amount resources. These items when looted would be fairly valuable in comparison to what a decked out warrior would normally carry with a medium sized loot load. Same thing would apply to tamers. Certain items should be required to maintain control of certain creatures. A special dragon taming orb that when lost would be very valuable to a crafter for being able to hone their craft. Thus evil people can still be evil and not feel greatly penalized any more then a good person would be for suffering the consequences of death, but both parties are happy no matter what side they are on, for the rewards are always just as great.
*Full loot. UO originally made it fairly easy to obtain items, and because of this even if you lost everything upon death, it really wasn't horribly difficult to get right back to where you were. This also provided the perfect opportunity to work on alternate career paths to obtain money to repurchase lost items, or craft them yourself. It also gave you time to go back to the drawing board for making your character more powerful skill wise so this would not happen again. Death in UO was just part of the learning curve, and learn we did. (Today's games seem to be all about the gear and loot, UO never was about that. It was about being creative, and having something appealing.)
*RPing PKing. (4th3ist said it best on this one) The problem with most PKers is that they want to blitz attack without giving the victim any sort of mediocre warning of whats about to happen for reasons of... This doesn't need to be a drawn out/no chance of PVP surprize either. A 10 second option table of mild RPing options would do wonders here. It would give the PVPer the options of robbing them, killing them, or deciding maybe they really don't want to mess with this target, and the victim has the options of complying, fighting regardless of provokers action, or running away. (The further out into unsecured land you go the fewer options you have, less time to react, or no options at all, just full on FFA PVP.)
3. Bounties and Jail system
*Bounties can be done without having them being exploited, and with the use of a jail system it's even better. There are two ways of doing this. One being a non transferable town reward/credit(money) system that would give the hero access to certain none monetary goods/properties. Two being that evil guys cant receive any money or items from good guys. There can be a simple script that embeds itself on any item that when transferred or dropped it labels it as an item that was derived from a good source, and thus an evil guy could never pick it up in a reasonable amount of time to make it worth their time to try and have a friend get the reward. (This also leads into the need for a one character per server system, which isn't that bad when I get into skills later. Also this doesn't mean that the bounty system can't be exploited, but what it does is make it next to impossible to reap the benefits of having his buddy kill him. His buddy would still get the reward which would still only benefit the forces of good, which is better explained in housing of good vs. evil players, and if the evil guy really wanted to spend all the time and resources going from evil to good, just to be able to get his hands on the prize, then by that time he would have exhausted more resources then what was gained by the bounty reward.)
*Jailing. Upon end of combat with a murder there should be an option to either land a killing blow, or to deliver the criminal to jail. This would also work against thieves as well. Crimes should add to an overall time in jail algorithm with 1 full real world day being the minimum jail sentence up to 2 full weeks being the max.(not in game time) Now I'm sure PVPers are like "No way would a ever play a game like that. That takes all the fun out of PVPing." But here is where you are wrong. In jail is where the PVPers get to have their fun by partaking in virtue activities to either raise or lower their virtues, skill training opportunities, and depending what jail system in the world they are housed in there can be different cell types between isolation and group settings, and even labyrinths to train skills/get out of jail early. Even in different jail settings there could be a try to escape if you dare, where being jailed for 2 weeks might be shortened to a few days or a week if you are creative/crafty enough to figure out how to escape.(I think this jail system gives thieves/murderers a real sense of risk beyond "oh, I died, that's ok, I didn't have anything on me anyways." to "This is going to be just as challenging as some goodie goodie stepping foot onto my turf.") (XDarkxMageX and Shakkarastarted to steal my thunder on a jail idea, but good work.)
4. Zoning, housing, and combat systems
*Eve does a great job with it's security zone rating system, and I think a similar type of system could add some unique dynamics to a UO styled game. Some of these things I talked about earlier. Zoning could make guards and healers fewer and further in between in lower security zones. It can give PVP surprise elements a more rewarding feel in lower security zones by taking away certain options, shortening the decision time, or getting rid of all options for full on FFA PVP. Housing communities can receive better bonuses for being closer to cities in high security zones. Higher quantity and better quality resources might be found in lower security zones, as where rare resources can still be found in high security zones, but just not as high quantities, or great qualities for refining. (Cirno)
*Housing of good players in higher security zones is always safe, but as you start to do evil things your properties risk being repossessed by the community if the community has certain bonuses, or nearest city if they aren't part of a bonus community. The further out into low security zones you go the more safe your housing becomes from being repossessed based on your actions and deeds. Thus if people were trying to exploit the bounty system and just collecting wares and items for an ultimate property they would be forced to build out in low security zones so that if they ever wanted to go evil they wouldn't lose all their stuff, and their evil buddy would have access to all this great gear their good guy got. But being that they live so far out in nowhere they can't build communities, and thus don't ever get any community bonuses, and since they are evil, they can't participate in bounty hunts. The only way to do bounty hunts again from evil would be to go totally good, and perform a special virtue quest which makes trying to go back and forth to collect good loot from the bounty system a real chore. Which if they do, then they earned it.
*I'm only going to touch on it lightly, but there was a comment made in here somewhere about Dark Souls having a great combat system, and I have to agree with that, but it would also be important to mix a style of skill based combat from UO with player personal skill level. Not everyone out there is a quick moving button masher, and some think and move steps in advance instead, and they shouldn't be penalized for that. DS also did stamina well. One of the great things about UO was that there was always a need to do small simple things that you would need to do in real life as well, such as eat food/drink. It would be nice to see stamina used in game similar to how it was used in DS whether fighting, running, or crafting. Being properly fed should give bonuses to overall stamina and stamina recovery rate.(No game will ever be all things to everyone, but there is definitely great middle ground we can generally agree upon.)
5. Guards
*Just as tamers could tame creatures to protect them, I remember people being able to higher guards to protect them as well. Hiring a guard is a simple and rewarding way to combat against potential PVP risk. Guards should be of different skill level and type, and you should not have access to exactly what you need all the time. It should be like, I'm hiring a guard, there's only one around, I can't really assess whether hes good or not, 500gp, yeah, I guess that sounds fair?
6. Skills
*No skill cap to a point. One of the great things about UO was that it forced you to think about what you wanted to be, even though you could always change that simply by locking certain skills while raising and lowering others. One of the unfortunate things about UO was that you could really only go one path with a character at a time. You really couldn't be a treasure hunting warrior, a tailor/leather working/alchemist mage, or a dungoneering/thief rogue. In reality all of these things are possible when you sit down and simply think of all the things you personally know. (Personally I'm a full blown automotive technician who can fix anything front to back, computer hardware specialist, jewelry maker, political analyst, organic/raw health enthusiast, christian, future father of 4, and so on.) So why can't I play a character who knows more then only 7 things really well? If there was a skill setup to where I could Master(100) 5-8 things, be very competent(80-90) in 6 more things, and be knowledgeable(50-70) in most everything else I take the time to study and learn, then I think we would be golden. Skills such as begging, tracking, and spirit speak were very useful skills to have that unfortunately took away from character builds, and is another reason to have a semi capless skill system. This also would fit perfectly with only having a single character per server, not needing to worry about never getting a chance to take up that one profession you've always wanted to play, and nips exploiting/griefing right in the butt, which is what everyone complains about when they talk about PVP. Not that they are against PVP, but that they can't stand griefers abusing the system and ruining the overall experience for them.
*Certain skills should allow you to only raise other skills so high because of how much knowledge it takes to master those skills, such as being a melee combatant should only let you raise certain magic skills to a range of 60, and range fighting to 70, and visa verse. As where being a Ranged fighter would let you raise both melee and magery skills to a range of 70 because of the common understanding between those skills.
*Skills for gathering information better. A skill that would allow a PVPer to properly assess it's target for robbery or murder. A skill to allow a victim to bluff or intimidate an aggressor to a certain degree. A skill to know if an NPC is giving you a fair price for the goods you would like to acquire, or if that guard you are about to hire is as capable of defending you as he claims he can for the price he wants. A skill that lets you gather local and regional information on marks, targets, or bounties for information such as PCs track record, virtues, fame.
7. Simple design
*An unpolished fantasy world. Another thing that made UO great was that because everything had such a simple and practical use/look to it, people could be as creative as they wanted with stacking order/overlay and make things such as a fish tank. I worry about a system such as Ultimate Collector where because so many things look so colorful and polished the world as a whole suffers from mass uniqueness and items that look great, but are worthless bringing the price and overall appreciation of a more unique and rare item down in the end. This also goes for the possible player editing function of URPG, where the player has potential control of editing an items texture and making something look much more special/polished then what it truly is.
8. Swim, jump, climb
*It would be very nice to at the very least have a swimming skill that would let you transverse water more easily based on what kind of gear you are wearing. Full chain and almost any piece of plate armor would send you sinking immediately, but you could transverse a shallow stream at a reduced speed based on your skill level.
*Jumping would be interesting, and I think the Elder Scroll games did a pretty good job with this system.
*Climbing would be interesting as well, and I was originally thinking of it being more for the crafter classes for finding ore, or getting to certain cave systems. Rogues would have a blast with this kind of system.
(Most of those would obviously involve some pretty advance game mechanics that could prove to be to challenging, but possibly very rewarding?)
9. Weather
*Seasons and weather that would change creature/monster zones/paths, and also certain resources/goods(farming)
10.Pay to play vs. micro transaction
*Pay to play sure does help keep everyone on a more even playing field then paying real money for in game items. I like to think of the difference between they guy who spend 4 full weeks of playing to save up enough for his awesome stone keep. if you factor in what he would have made in the real world working a job then lets say he spent $2000-$4000 to play this game. Then some guy drops $50 to buy a stone castle that puts your keep to shame and only plays an hour or 2 here or there. The company is happy because they made their money, the player on the other hand is pretty upset that he spent all that time that he could have been making real world money to only have something half as nice as the guy who dropped real world money on the game for a quick fix.
In closing I will say this. It's hard to tell what direction this game will go. It seems a lot of people are against the mobile capability because of it bringing down the overall awesomeness this game has the potential of being. On the other hand if you read RG's company profile you will notice that a lot of the money is tied into mobile gaming and F2P companies that very well could try and hold RG's feet to the fire and tell him he has to do something that might not be the best way to go about this thing. Can anybody say EA? I think Richard Garriott is a great man, a visionary, and a legend, and I have faith in the man being able to pull off "The Third Standard."
