Random Mini Arc Events

[TullyMars]

This is just an idea.

One problem I see players express is they have done this and done that and there is nothing new.
New content comes out...everyone does it for awhile...learns it inside and out...then gets bored.
UO doesn't stay fresh day to day, and I imagine that the devs don't find it easy to keep up with the player demand for new and exciting content.

So what if there were a bunch of coded random mini events.
Each event would have a 1 in 500 chance of going off any given day after server maintenance.
Any number of events could fire off.
Each event would have an end game, be it simply time (ends at next server maintenance) kill points (ends when players kill 100 of the monsters) or some other qualification (find an object and return it, kill a skull totem like the halloween event 2008) etc.

The developers can take some of their favorite events from the past, or they could add a few new ones.
New events can be pretty basic, with little story arcs or not, like today if the rng says so 1000 orc brutes are going to spawn in Cove and will continue to respawn in Cove daily till players kill 500 of them.
Or a couple of the bane chosen fanatics decided to ban together in a little rebellion in a city to avenge the defeat of Virtuebane.
Imagine if you logged on today and found the slimes invading again.

You code up 20 of these to start and keep adding more and more to 500 or even more.
You could work in little story arcs that draw from our past or that are completely independent and are just thought out by thinking stuff like "What do these brigands in this camp want, what is their motivation? Well any given day they want gold and treasures so perhaps they spawn a bunch along the roads of britannia to control commerce and take their cut and as a result all reagent npc vendors have to charge triple till players find and kill the Brigand King monster I just created"

The point is the events can be simple or complicated but have a small chance of turning on the active-inactive boolean any given day.
Daily you could go to the town crier and choose to join in or not.
It might keep people interested, give the world some more flavor, bring back some events and items from our past that are no longer available, and just shake up each player enough to get them out of whatever cycle they are in (log on, check house, empty reagent kitty, stock vendor, do Oaks, do Slasher, get bored, logoff, post on forums how the game sucks, log back on the next day, rinse, repeat)

 

[Salivern_Diago]

I like the sound of this, it could be expanded to include random quests too. It would be awesome to have these mini arcs. Things like.. you go to Yew and speak to one of the jail officers, they explain that a high profile prisoner has escaped and a bounty is on thier head. You then go and find all the bandit camps till you find the guy and then (like the pirates) capture him and drag his ass back to jail. The rewards could range from special titles, gold (alot of gold not just 2k), special deco items (Items that are unique to the player.. much like the AoS clothing) all the way to special previously unavailable housing locations (Obviously a very rare reward and limited).

Definately a good idea!!

 

[Ned888]

This is a very good idea!

Personally, I think that this should be implemented and then they should phase out the EM's and move them into more of a 'design' capacity.

The events/arcs could be added to the game and then once there are several in these in play the EM's could get down to writing the content for the next round of arcs.

Hopefully these would stay in play for a long time so that a new player jumping in would be able to start from the beginning and viola! We have a quest system in place! Everyone wanted that I think, right?

The EMs do a great job, but the attendees get out of control sometimes and ruin the events for everyone. I personally appreciate their efforts (the EMs, not the players ), but I think it might be time to direct them to a more effective delivery system for their ideas.

Just my two cents.

 

[Mirt]

Brilliant idea. It actually sounds like a modified idea that was discussed at the start of the game about having things changed based upon what players did like kill all the rabbits have orcs and headless move into the town... kill all the orcs and watch dragons invade. They were never able to work it out but this sounds like a decent enough way to get it started and it can't be all that hard to just turn on and off spawn tiles.

 

[TullyMars]

Thanks for the positive responses.
Unfortunately, with the next publish coming the new is back again and this thread will get buried for a couple weeks until everyone figures out the new stuff and gets bored.
The devs are doing some new, interesting, and neat things, but the chance of something different happening each day and the mystery random server events bring can ease their job and keep things fresh.

I do think the EM's could theoretically accomplish something like this without any system change, but it would work them to the bone and if they have an event and someone misses out on something then they spend the next weeks responding to complaints. A preset system would take the onus of them.