Apologies for not having read all of the prior posts in this thread.
Also apologies for not doing my usual trick and focusing on the positive things while I let others worry about the negatives. The positive things I think are pretty obvious. There's certain things that I think might be negative that I fret few on Stratics will think to say, but the regular players of the game (the ones who don't post here) might agree more with me than will the self-selected group here.
Anyway....These are just random. And just a few of them.
1 - It looks like the Trade Quest rewards are lopsided towards the evil side, at least in terms of the personal rewards. Am I misreading this? If not, some may consider this appropriate but I'm not one of them. Ultima's never been dark fantasy in the same way that, say, A Song of Ice and Fire is. It's appropriate for there to be evil rewards, I suppose, but not for the particularly notable person-centric rewards exclusively to reside with doing the wrong thing. There should be some notable, individually-useable rewards for the good side too. Remember that this is ongoing content. Not, say, an EM event wherein one shouldn't expect a reward every time. Wouldn't it be awesome if a good guy character could make a living (maybe even a good one!) from doing the trader quests, and be rewarded appropriately? Isn't "caravan guard" or "transporter of goods" a perfectly valid profession in a fantasy environment?
2 - It's unclear to me if Virtue/Vice is going to be Felucca-only. That was the implication and I support it being done that way. The idea is to replace Factions, and Factions is about controlling the Felucca map. By contrast the Trammel map is King Blackthorn's and, to a lesser degree and in a different way, the Governors'. Some would say that the fighting, at least, should be continued into Trammel like the old Order/Chaos, but I am not one of them. I think both sides benefit from having a place to cooperate and rest. If they want constant war there's an easy answer: the guild/alliance war system.
3 - Please change the name and fictional concept behind Virtue/Vice. It shouldn't be between camps with stark moral lines. I think it's more fun, and logical (I'll explain shortly), from an RP perspective if it's something like 2 old noble houses, neither good nor evil just at odds with one another. It's more fun because it gives us something sorta Game of Thrones-ish to play, where there's good and evil on both sides. (We already have Absolute Good and Absolute Evil in many aspects of the game. I'm just saying we don't need it in ALL of them.) And it's more logical because t's not out of the question that people in each camp will end cooperating on the Trammel side at, say, EM events, or global events, or RP stuff or random hunting. And if the differences they fought over in Fel weren't good/evil but, rather, just something like competing claims, it'd make more sense from an RP perspective if they could put that side when they weren't in Felucca. There's got to be one or two royal houses in the UO lore someplace, one that comes to mind is Baron whatever who has a cloak as one of the Community Collections rewards. He's been in the lore a few times and surely his family might think it has a claim. There's probably another one too. Hell make it some kind of unusual, civilized, non-evil orc king. (By making him different than his fellow orcs you don't necessarily run the risk of ret-conning the evil nature of orcs in general.) (But just please look to the lore before you just make something up, if you go this route.)
4 - I take it that the 1,000 Luck bonus for hunting in Fel is over and on top of whatever bonus there is already? I would urge you to remember that Fel is a niche market by definition, and that attempts to mainstream it over the years have failed, and for good reasons. Most of us don't want to PvP. There's already power scrolls, unique content, unique artifacts, double Fame, double resources, and most people still don't want to go there. I appreciate that you on the dev team don't get this, but it's still a fact that, I argue, you should deal with in order to continue the viability of this product called UO.
5 - Please, please, please, as others have asked, make the Trader's Quest town rewards go to the town you're coming FROM, rather than the town you're going TO. The logic behind the way you have it now is not clear to me.
That's all for now.
-Galen's player
Also apologies for not doing my usual trick and focusing on the positive things while I let others worry about the negatives. The positive things I think are pretty obvious. There's certain things that I think might be negative that I fret few on Stratics will think to say, but the regular players of the game (the ones who don't post here) might agree more with me than will the self-selected group here.
Anyway....These are just random. And just a few of them.
1 - It looks like the Trade Quest rewards are lopsided towards the evil side, at least in terms of the personal rewards. Am I misreading this? If not, some may consider this appropriate but I'm not one of them. Ultima's never been dark fantasy in the same way that, say, A Song of Ice and Fire is. It's appropriate for there to be evil rewards, I suppose, but not for the particularly notable person-centric rewards exclusively to reside with doing the wrong thing. There should be some notable, individually-useable rewards for the good side too. Remember that this is ongoing content. Not, say, an EM event wherein one shouldn't expect a reward every time. Wouldn't it be awesome if a good guy character could make a living (maybe even a good one!) from doing the trader quests, and be rewarded appropriately? Isn't "caravan guard" or "transporter of goods" a perfectly valid profession in a fantasy environment?
2 - It's unclear to me if Virtue/Vice is going to be Felucca-only. That was the implication and I support it being done that way. The idea is to replace Factions, and Factions is about controlling the Felucca map. By contrast the Trammel map is King Blackthorn's and, to a lesser degree and in a different way, the Governors'. Some would say that the fighting, at least, should be continued into Trammel like the old Order/Chaos, but I am not one of them. I think both sides benefit from having a place to cooperate and rest. If they want constant war there's an easy answer: the guild/alliance war system.
3 - Please change the name and fictional concept behind Virtue/Vice. It shouldn't be between camps with stark moral lines. I think it's more fun, and logical (I'll explain shortly), from an RP perspective if it's something like 2 old noble houses, neither good nor evil just at odds with one another. It's more fun because it gives us something sorta Game of Thrones-ish to play, where there's good and evil on both sides. (We already have Absolute Good and Absolute Evil in many aspects of the game. I'm just saying we don't need it in ALL of them.) And it's more logical because t's not out of the question that people in each camp will end cooperating on the Trammel side at, say, EM events, or global events, or RP stuff or random hunting. And if the differences they fought over in Fel weren't good/evil but, rather, just something like competing claims, it'd make more sense from an RP perspective if they could put that side when they weren't in Felucca. There's got to be one or two royal houses in the UO lore someplace, one that comes to mind is Baron whatever who has a cloak as one of the Community Collections rewards. He's been in the lore a few times and surely his family might think it has a claim. There's probably another one too. Hell make it some kind of unusual, civilized, non-evil orc king. (By making him different than his fellow orcs you don't necessarily run the risk of ret-conning the evil nature of orcs in general.) (But just please look to the lore before you just make something up, if you go this route.)
4 - I take it that the 1,000 Luck bonus for hunting in Fel is over and on top of whatever bonus there is already? I would urge you to remember that Fel is a niche market by definition, and that attempts to mainstream it over the years have failed, and for good reasons. Most of us don't want to PvP. There's already power scrolls, unique content, unique artifacts, double Fame, double resources, and most people still don't want to go there. I appreciate that you on the dev team don't get this, but it's still a fact that, I argue, you should deal with in order to continue the viability of this product called UO.
5 - Please, please, please, as others have asked, make the Trader's Quest town rewards go to the town you're coming FROM, rather than the town you're going TO. The logic behind the way you have it now is not clear to me.
That's all for now.
-Galen's player
or I was very lucky
