You know I'm the one who has been pushing for this so let me give MY reasons.
#1 a few arguements here.
People have said in this thread, get with the times. Well if you haven't noticed, Trammel, insurance, and pixel crack are all part of the times, its where uo has been heading for 9 years now. We play Siege where at least the first two do not exist, but we are stuck in 1999 for at least those reasons.
#2 - why I am pushing for this.
I like pvp. It's one of the main reasons why I enjoy this game.
I'm sure people have noticed, with the release of AoS, combat became more dependent on items. But back then items complemented your abilities and skills.
Remember when AoS was first released, warriors would wear probably about 15 HCI on jewels and bless a hit lightening 20 kryss with 15 mana leech. Mages would bless an uber 1/2 with 9 DCI or 8 SDI and run with a throwaway 1/1. Yes items existed, yes they were used, but they didn't overpower your skills or stats.
Now, the items are more important than your skills or stats. When having 30 dex and an SSI 40 bow you swing faster than having 120 dex with no SSI, that means 40 SSI > 90 dex. Stats/skills no longer matter, item properties do.
In itself, I don't like it. I prefer skill based combat to item based combat. However if the items have to be there, I'll accept it, provided that they are usable and attainable by all/most. And that's the catch.
Back then you needed 30k in gear to compete, and if you died and lost it I could deal with that. Now, you need 500k+ in gear.
Now lets look at the economics of this 500k in gear. My guildmate, a tamer, raves about this place he found where he can kill monsters and make 40k every 1/2 hour. Wow, that's 80k an hour. That would take 6.25 hours of farming in order to buy enough gear for 1 death. And that's if I was a tamer, I'm not.
500k in gear is also $2-$2.50 if you went out and bought gold.
Maybe I'm old fashioned. You can call me an old fogie. You are welcome to say get with the times, or move on, whatever you feel like. But I draw the line at some things. And I refuse to either:
- Pay $13 a month, train up a tamer, then farm for 6.25 hours to have enough gold just to compete for one death in pvp.
- Use my character to farm up gold, which would probably take 10+ hours to get 500k gold to compete per death.
- Buy gold in such a way that it ends up costing me $2-$2.50 to compete per death.
The barriers to entry to pvp on Siege are WAY to high. That's fine for the rich folk, since well they're rich, they have the best items, and they dominate in pvp. But for the rest of us, it sucks @ss.
So yes, I'm proposing a way to bring back pvp fun to the masses, while removing at least a big part of the barrier to entry - faction gear.
Don't want to do it? Fine, don't join in. Think I'm an old fashioned fogey and live in 1999, by all means call me what you want. But you will never ever ever convince me it is worthwhile to farm for 10 hours for a 5 minute fight - or keep paying real $ to do so. So I'm doing what I can to bring back the joy in pvp for me, and hopefully others.
Ever notice how many people run stealth templates? Even the damn mages are running ninja/stealth now. Know why? Because it's easy to get away as a ninja stealther, and people are afraid of losing their gear. And I'm sick of it.
