Some thoughts about the Huntmaster Challenge

[FrejaSP]

I really like it and It's damn hard to resist trying to get your name on one of the trophies.

1. The rewards need an update, who need a Horn of Plenty, that do not give new charges at the moment. Maybe have 1-3 rewards, that will changes over the year, could be items hard to get for young players, maybe items from earlier gift boxes over the years or items from the reward system, so young players have a way to get something, they else should wait years to get.
One of the rewards should be a Taxidermy Kit, maybe with 3 charges so the winner can make trophy of his deed and maybe make money from selling it or use it as gift to friends.

2. We could have more than one hunter guild, with different set of trophies and rewards. Maybe some bigger mobs between, like Dragons, Drake, Gazer, Raptor, Deep Sea Serpent, Scorpion, Crane.

3. Make this work for big fish too, so the fisherman can document his fish and register it and join a monthly fisherman challenge, where his fish trophy will be shown at a Fisherman guild.

4. Make a shard wide message, when someone set a record.

 

[Uvtha]

I support #4 for sure. Would be cool.

 

[Spiffykeen]

Oooh a shard wide message would bring out the wolves if it said where the critter was killed

 

[DJAd]

I had totally forgot about the huntsman thing. I did a few the day it was out and then didn't go back. Are the rewards worth it or just more typical UO grind?

 

[FrejaSP]

The rewards is not worth it but still great to see if you can keep your scores.

 

[Spock's Beard]

The rewards is not worth it

Well the rewards may not be worth it, but at least the mighty creatures they ask you to kill are suitable challenges for our veteran playerbase.

Oh wait.

Seriously, 75% of the content in the game goes unused and this sort of fluff is what they spend their meager dev resources on? God.

 

[FrejaSP]

It is a nice gold sink and it would not be hard to tweak it with a few more challenging mobs

 

[Gidge]

I read it as the Hamster Challenge. *sigh* I am soooo tired.

I like all the ideas.

 

[MalagAste]

I rather like the idea's too..... big thumbs up!

 

[Goodmann]

Well the rewards may not be worth it, but at least the mighty creatures they ask you to kill are suitable challenges for our veteran playerbase.

Oh wait.

Seriously, 75% of the content in the game goes unused and this sort of fluff is what they spend their meager dev resources on? God.

You could make a huge list of new additions they add and after a cpl weeks there a wasteland. A couple for fun -Casino and the Void Pool
All the thought and design to go into projects and there longevity is a cpl of weeks.

 

[MalagAste]

I hear you there Goodmann but you get that in any game. How many rushed to get the new WoW expansion and finished that in 2weeks and are bored again? And how many months did that take them to work on?

 

[Spock's Beard]

Armor Refinement didn't even get a couple of weeks, it was just DOA. JC was reporting VvV fights with no other participants within days of launch, on Atlantic. Then there's Charybdis and all that Epiphany Armor nobody ever wore, remember that? And all the Ephemeral junk nobody wanted. And the maze in... Wrong I think... that gives Assassin Honed stuff. And all the High Seas pirate crap that everyone complained about being unrewarding in beta and then they never really did anything about it. And I gotta tell you, I haven't heard anyone make a peep about those city trade caravan dealies outside of Stratics.

WoW content gets consumed. UO content gets ignored because the devs seriously jerk off with meaningless **** like giving you an unrewaring way to kill animals that die in one shot.

 

[Kyronix]

I really like it and It's damn hard to resist trying to get your name on one of the trophies.

1. The rewards need an update, who need a Horn of Plenty, that do not give new charges at the moment. Maybe have 1-3 rewards, that will changes over the year, could be items hard to get for young players, maybe items from earlier gift boxes over the years or items from the reward system, so young players have a way to get something, they else should wait years to get.
One of the rewards should be a Taxidermy Kit, maybe with 3 charges so the winner can make trophy of his deed and maybe make money from selling it or use it as gift to friends.

2. We could have more than one hunter guild, with different set of trophies and rewards. Maybe some bigger mobs between, like Dragons, Drake, Gazer, Raptor, Deep Sea Serpent, Scorpion, Crane.

3. Make this work for big fish too, so the fisherman can document his fish and register it and join a monthly fisherman challenge, where his fish trophy will be shown at a Fisherman guild.

4. Make a shard wide message, when someone set a record.

These are all great suggestions. The Huntmaster's Challenge proved to be quite popular for how simple the concept is. Moving forward we hope to add more depth to the hunting simulation and open it up to more challenging creatures, as well as keep the rewards up to date. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[DJAd]

I'd love to see bigger foes. Chuck in some stuff like Balrons etc. That would spice it up a bit.

 

[Smoot]

I hear you there Goodmann but you get that in any game. How many rushed to get the new WoW expansion and finished that in 2weeks and are bored again? And how many months did that take them to work on?

wows content lasts for more like 3months for all but the 24/7 power gamers. 6months for very very casual gamers who arent concerned about maxing out gear. thing is, wow updates it content so fast that even for powergamers the "lulls" only go on for a few weeks. There are constant patches adding content to wow during an expansion.

UO, being a different type of game, obviously minimal gear grind, should have lasting content. 3month content doesnt cut it. The rewards / gear system is different so that must be taken into consideration.

Successful content: Exodus encounter - difficult boss whos update via global loot makes it worth doing.

Unsuccessful content: Under the sea thing. bad rewards. not worth doing the long quest. popular for 2 weeks now dead.

The huntmasters challenge was meant to be fluff, i think the devs realized that. Something for casual players that most wont use, but a slight 2 week activity and a solid way to implement some deco. I wouldnt try to look any deeper into it than that.

 

[Smoot]

These are all great suggestions. The Huntmaster's Challenge proved to be quite popular for how simple the concept is. Moving forward we hope to add more depth to the hunting simulation and open it up to more challenging creatures, as well as keep the rewards up to date. Thanks for the feedback!

Personally i would try to add creatures that are "worth" farming. I see the huntmaster as a secondary activity for most, if they are already farming a monster its a nice boost if you get the biggest one and a chance at the additional prize reward. Im talking things like the most challenging overland monsters, or even peerless. I dont see more than the "facebook players" as i call them using this system as primary gameplay (unless the rewards are extremely valuable)

 

[kelmo]

"facebook players"

Everyone pays to play the game as they wish. I do not need or appreciate your judging. *tips hat*

 

[Smoot]

Everyone pays to play the game as they wish. I do not need or appreciate your judging. *tips hat*

i wasnt try to be judgmental at all (sorry if anyone took offense), i know plenty of people who half/play UO while other browser games, facebook, icq etc etc are open. I have UO open and mess around while doing other things often as well. I think this is a very good assessment of how the huntsman's challenge fits perfectly with the playstyle of that type of player, which is wonderful for them, yet alienates those who like more of a challenge. The Huntsman's challenge is a novel idea and i think with some additions it could appeal to the majority of UOers

 

[Gidge]

*thinks of how to incorporate this into a player event*

 

[Riyana]

I just wish you didn't have to fill your backpack with single use permits to participate. Surely this quest can be done without adding seventy zillion items to the world and having to dig and dig and dig through your backpack.

 

[FrejaSP]

*thinks of how to incorporate this into a player event*

I was thinking of that too, but it cost 300k to make a trophy on Siege, else you could make an event, guild or shard wide, with a price for the biggest grizzly of the week and show it on a public house.

Lower the price of trophy to 25 -50k, 300k is crazy, even 100k on normal shards are a lot for young players, if they already used a lot for permits

 

[Spock's Beard]

Put the highest-end enemies in the game on the list and have the chances for really good rewards go up the more people are in your party when the kills are made. Give us a reason to DO ACTUAL CONTENT. Maybe even alongside OTHER PLAYERS. Jesus.

Update some artifacts. Put some new stuff in Doom and on some of the other bosses nobody does. Make up some new statuette mounts and novelty pets and throw those around as rewards. DO SOMETHING. Stuff like the trade quests and this incarnation of the hunting thing are just the devs amusing themselves while players stand around bored ****less thinking of all the bosses they have no reason to fight.

 

[FrejaSP]

I don't think the rewards are that important, if you play chess with a friend, you do not do it for a reward but for the glory

 

[Smoot]

I don't think the rewards are that important, if you play chess with a friend, you do not do it for a reward but for the glory

thats true in real life, but 99 percent of mmo gamers do content to get something that is bigger, better, more stats, or rarer than what they already have / those around them have.
doing content for no reward is a nice thought, but as weve seen bosses like charybdis, the under the sea thing that i dont even know the name of, old doom guantlet, etc etc just never get done. If rewards didnt matter to most gamers this wouldnt be the case.

UO has 1 boss right now in the entire game that has been overwhelmingly successful. Exodus. And thats been possible because of the high quality of shame loot it drops, not even the actual arty table. Even Despise, with the best back-slot in the game has dropped off in popularity because its just not worth doing. your pvm time is better spent elsewhere.

I personally dont pvm at all in UO anymore.
I would if there was something more challenging, or if overall rewards were better.
Or, if enough seconday content like the Huntsman challenge were added, so that the dismal rewards from straight pvm would be suplemented by this type of contest. Currently however, killing bears in 1 hit just for the chance at a useless rewards just doesnt do it for that many people.

I apologize if this seems offensive or unappreciative, its just looking at things on how to appeal to the general player base. I dont think anyone can argue that the huntsman's challenge doesnt have alot of potential, however in its current state i dont know anyone in my circle of 30ish daily UO players who actually does it as it is right now.

 

[Smoot]

Put the highest-end enemies in the game on the list and have the chances for really good rewards go up the more people are in your party when the kills are made. Give us a reason to DO ACTUAL CONTENT. Maybe even alongside OTHER PLAYERS. Jesus.

Update some artifacts. Put some new stuff in Doom and on some of the other bosses nobody does. Make up some new statuette mounts and novelty pets and throw those around as rewards. DO SOMETHING. Stuff like the trade quests and this incarnation of the hunting thing are just the devs amusing themselves while players stand around bored ****less thinking of all the bosses they have no reason to fight.

Dead on. UOs problem for years has been adding more and more "2 week content" while underutilizing the vast amounts of content that already exists, and could be fun again with small changes tweaks.

The halloween doom event was a perfect example taken to extreme. I hadnt pvmed in the dungeon for about 10 years, but it was full of players. Slight loot table upgrades, more deco items, rare mounts, etc etc, even if only 10 percent of the changes the doom event brought would be enough to ressurrect old content.

Right now, the Huntsmasters challenge, is already "old content" hate to say it, but its been a few weeks. everyone already has the new deco. Its old. time to move on.

 

[startle]

These are all great suggestions. The Huntmaster's Challenge proved to be quite popular for how simple the concept is. Moving forward we hope to add more depth to the hunting simulation and open it up to more challenging creatures, as well as keep the rewards up to date. Thanks for the feedback!

And thank you, Kyronix, for showing us that you dev's are interested in how we feel about stuff - simply by posting here... That feels good.

 

[GarthGrey]

Make it more complicated. As it is now, a small group of ppl log in at the crack of dawn on reset day and farm it until they're once again the winner. It made me lose interest pretty much immediately.

 

[Spock's Beard]

I don't think the rewards are that important, if you play chess with a friend, you do not do it for a reward but for the glory

Tell it to all the bosses nobody kills. Tell it to all the abandoned content. Every time the developers add some badly-rewarded piece of content, the cheerleaders pop out and say stuff like this, and then the content gets ignored and dies off anyway.

I just can't believe that in a game this starved for content, with this many systems just sitting there waiting to be refurbished and made relevant, the devs couldn't think of anything better to do than jerk off with this huntsman crap telling us to go kill wolves and stuff for no real reason.

 

[a slave girl]

I once again like FrejaSP's ideas on this matter.

The one thing I'd personally prefer is that the creature's weight is a mystery until I return to the Huntmaster.

As it is now, I get ten hunting permits, kill ten random turkeys, know immediately that they aren't heavy enough because I checked the Huntmaster's mounted trophy weights when I picked up the permits, drop the lightweight deeds on the ground, then feel bad that I killed ten innocent animals for no good reason AND then I littered.

Double Buzzkill.

I'd prefer to get ten hunting permits, go kill ten random turkeys, return to the Huntsmaster, have him check the weight of the deeds, tell me the weights and at the same time destroy the loser lightweight deeds, by this time I don't feel so guilty for killing ten turkeys for no good reason AND I don't have to litter skinny dead turkey deeds all about the land.

Add let me see, add pet bonding potion to the monthly champion prize list?

 

[Smoot]

all the devs would have to do to make this content appeal to the masses is add in each peerless in the game, with a Good reward. something like a neon hair dye, abyssal / void / glacial etc armor dye.

thats it. everyone would do it.

until then its a nice, cute activity with some great new deco but without mass or lasting appeal.

 

[a slave girl]

They could also give us one point for each non-winning deed we turn in, then let us redeem those points when we have enough for prizes from the list.

 

[FrejaSP]

They could also give us one point for each non-winning deed we turn in, then let us redeem those points when we have enough for prizes from the list.

The problem with letting the non winning deeds poof, when turned in is, you make it impossible to use the system for player events, where a shard, player town, guild make their own challenge with a price for the best score of the week or day.

The Huntmaster know if you already tried to turn in a deed once, so no reason to make them poof, just make all deed give a point when you document the kill, you can use to claim something.

100 point = Taxidermy Kit
200 point = a bonded Wolf to hunt with, not to powerful, but still nice for a newbie or a crafter as guard, take no taming.
2000 point = a special e-mount, could be a grizzly bear, just new color for the polar bear
5000 point = a Bull, that can be used for Bull-Riding-events, could made so the owner could let someone try to ride it for x sec/min. The Bull will then try to kick him off and local message will tell how long he stayed on the Bull. Maybe let the owner turn it into a statue when not in use.

There are room for more ideas. Remember this Hunter Challenge was not made to add powerful items s to the game but to be a gold sink and to make players traveling the land. Anything that keep the current and new players busy and visual are good for the game.

 

[a slave girl]

Oh!

Change that bull to a cow and make it difficult to stay on the darned thing and I'm in.

I've always wanted to see people in UO slipping and sliding off cows at cow races. It will remind me of when my then 13 year old younger sister hopped onto a strange passing pony's back and he took off running with her hanging on for dear life, slipping and sliding, her long legs dragging the ground at times. It was the funniest thing ever.

I'd still want creature weight to remain unknown until hand in and that the Huntmaster make my losing filled hunting permits poof, so they could make that part optional, have a menu option so we can choose once but if we like later go back and change it.

 

[Spock's Beard]

The Huntmaster's Challenge proved to be quite popular for how simple the concept is.

Said the guy who still insists in public that refinement wasn't a flop nobody uses.

 

[Smoot]

Said the guy who still insists in public that refinement wasn't a flop nobody uses.

i use refinements theyre really great but not many people take the time to make specific pvm suits. personally id like to see more content where refinements are actually needed. For soloing content, a 65dci suit vrs hard hitting monsters really makes a difference. agreed the setup isnt user-friendly, takes way too much time and the payoff is small when it comes what you actually get for your time, but in general i think anyone who bashes refinements just doesnt need them. I also agree that most UOhallers are too lazy to utilize new possibilities and rather have 1 average knock around suit, die repeatedly, then say things are "too hard" than 3 or 4 specific ones that make very difficult encounters more manageable.

 

[Spock's Beard]

I mouse over people's gear on Atlantic at random times and have never seen one refined piece of gear. And they burned HOW much time on that ****?

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

I really like it and It's damn hard to resist trying to get your name on one of the trophies.

1. The rewards need an update, who need a Horn of Plenty, that do not give new charges at the moment. Maybe have 1-3 rewards, that will changes over the year, could be items hard to get for young players, maybe items from earlier gift boxes over the years or items from the reward system, so young players have a way to get something, they else should wait years to get.
One of the rewards should be a Taxidermy Kit, maybe with 3 charges so the winner can make trophy of his deed and maybe make money from selling it or use it as gift to friends.

2. We could have more than one hunter guild, with different set of trophies and rewards. Maybe some bigger mobs between, like Dragons, Drake, Gazer, Raptor, Deep Sea Serpent, Scorpion, Crane.

3. Make this work for big fish too, so the fisherman can document his fish and register it and join a monthly fisherman challenge, where his fish trophy will be shown at a Fisherman guild.

4. Make a shard wide message, when someone set a record.

Good ideas, maybe different towns have different trophies and larger scale foes to kill like you suggested.

I would also like to see a town guard that sold monster hunting permits where you hunt things like daemons, undead, orks, ogres, juka, meer, etc. You could maybe buy the permits from the town and have the proceeds go into the town treasury. People turning those in would would earn town loyalty and maybe a discount on town titles or something.

I would like to turn in the permits that don't win for points with the huntmaster. Those could be different points for different deco items and would obviously take a lot of points. It would give further use to the permits and keep the land from being littered with them. At the very least they could be worth clean-up points.

Does luck figure into the RNG with the weight of the kill?

 

[Smoot]

I mouse over people's gear on Atlantic at random times and have never seen one refined piece of gear. And they burned HOW much time on that ****?

i seriously doubt that. i see refined gear even in luna, where most serious pvm characters never go. if im in luna, ill be on a bank character. that being said, ive seen many pvp characters with refined gear. Personally i think refinements is a waste in pvp, except if your an elf maybe to add 5 or 10 dci (not really a game changer) but i do see it on suits that i personally wouldnt bother to refine.

theres even a nice archer suit for sale right now thats fully refined. I used to refine all my no-dci ranged event suits, but its not really needed now with the drop changes from a year ago.


Thing is, we need more bosses where you Need refinements. Right now most content just isnt hard enough to force people to use them. If there was a new boss that hit for 100 hp with a reward worth 100mil, i am sure people would be making 70 dci suits in droves.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

These are all great suggestions. The Huntmaster's Challenge proved to be quite popular for how simple the concept is. Moving forward we hope to add more depth to the hunting simulation and open it up to more challenging creatures, as well as keep the rewards up to date. Thanks for the feedback!

I'm not surprised. I think, and for a long time have thought, that the future of the game lies in new content, which in its simplest form means stuff to do. Different types of content for different types of players. Dungeon loot, Ilsh spawns, the Doom Gauntlet, crafting, suit-making, merchant-ing, rares collecting, antiques selling (my semi-RP term for selling rares as opposed to collecting them), the Hunt quest, EM events, global events of different types and colors, the trade missions, and so on and so forth. (I didn't count RP separately because, to me, that's just something I'm doing more or less all the time in-game anyway. So why would I count it separately?)

-Galen's player