We need a new shard!

[grimiz]

If there were a seasonal shard would you play on it?

A seasonal shard would work as such
- fresh start for everyone
- houses here do not affect non seasonal housing
- increased skill gain at all times?
- no transfers on or off of server
- server only lasts a few months
- season usually has a goal and leaderboards to obtain unique rewards (that would be claimed on a non seasonal shard of your choice after the season is over)

pros
- devs can use this as a proving ground for major system changes that could be rolled into the main codebase after season is over (ideally...)
- could interest people into joining or coming back to uo?
- imo, seasons are an exciting addition to a stale game
- leaderboards are tracked and posted to website for posterity
- seasonal shard is torn down afterwards, thus no real benefit to scripting/farming
- may create a more populated/fun feeling server than the few that exist now
- devs can experiment with overpowered skills/templates/loot without fear of it unbalancing non seasonal servers

cons
- takes development time away from the main codebase
- takes away from the long term community building some servers have
- single location would make it unfair to some players (make the same seasonal server for different regions?)

---------

If you like this concept - let's hear your ideas for leaderboards and/or unique rewards for taking part in the season.

If you don't like it - let's hear why.

 

[arkiu]

No dude.... A practical idea like this would take away dev time that could be used to feed us more deco and complicated/unused systems.... We dont need anything that could possibly be fun anymore...

In all seriousness tho test center is of course a temp shard and could prob do a lot of what you mention. But i like the idea of giving players incentive to visit it by giving prodo shard rewards. Could prob be useful for debugging as you said, leading to less broken systems.

 

[Hannes Erich]

Sounds fun and if it gets people to stress-test new features without feeling like a chore, all the better for the game.

 

[Dot_Warner]

There are several seasonal shards that could be thrown up, though the more recent ones would probably be best. They have seasonal-themes games and such.

Santa's Slay 1998
Shard of Screams 2000
Shard of the Dead 2005/2006/2010
Winterland 2007

It would likely take a bit to make them compatible with the current clients.

 

[IGG A PIE 73]

pre AOS shard maybe?

 

[Prime.]

Snowball Wars on Winterland was always a good time.

 

[Grazz't1970]

Please put up an incomplete temporary shard. We don't have enough to complain about now....

 

[Merlin]

We have too many shards as it is. Another would be unnecessary.

 

[GarthGrey]

It's called Test Center, they don't wipe it often enough though.

 

[Uvtha]

There are several seasonal shards that could be thrown up, though the more recent ones would probably be best. They have seasonal-themes games and such.

Santa's Slay 1998
Shard of Screams 2000
Shard of the Dead 2005/2006/2010
Winterland 2007

It would likely take a bit to make them compatible with the current clients.

Probably means seasonal ala diablos seasons, rather than times of year/occasions.

 

[Alex"Drake Iron Heart"CS]

The idea of testing things out is already in Origin and TC, thats why they always get the content first to iron it out before it goes fully public.

About making the seasonal shards not be a problem for scripting, I see it the other way round, if there is prizes to be won in normal shards then everyone will script to get this rewards if they were any good, if they were crap rewards, no one would use that server so would turn out to be a empty server... Greed being here the main issue, its not the game or content!

Increased gains? For what if the server is going down? so that everyone runs around in 6x120 temps? I dont see the point here , as in TC , you can be made insta Legendary on a skill.
If anything go the other way, non customizable templates, so theres set templates with no possibilty to change the skills, so if you a mage theres no parry, just mage skills, if you are a warrior, theres no necro so no sampires, so basically go back to standard full templates, no hybrids or new template mixes, that could make it more interesting.

About making people join, a new shard wont do that, lowering the price of the sub on a 17 year old game might possibly get you some more players, but the game needs a mayor overhaul to be in any way competitive in todays MMO market. Even saying this, if they were to bring a Ultra HD client, with 3D chars, something that we have been told before could take up to 7 years with the current dev team, by the time they would of patched, created, updated the system, it would be 7 years out of game coding by the time its finished.

Also the seasonal server would really have to be 5 servers to accomodate everyone playing around the world, so there is US, EU, ASIA, AUS+NZ servers and S. America.

An idea that my small cousin has given me for a seasonal server Xmas related is, we are all deers or some animal, and santa wants to catch us or kill us for his sleigh, or something along the lines, we are not human, do something different, make the server where you got to eat/drink or you die, like the good old days.


I hope Ive made some valid points and some people agree, or disagree.


thanks

 

[OREOGL]

The idea of testing things out is already in Origin and TC, thats why they always get the content first to iron it out before it goes fully public.

About making the seasonal shards not be a problem for scripting, I see it the other way round, if there is prizes to be won in normal shards then everyone will script to get this rewards if they were any good, if they were crap rewards, no one would use that server so would turn out to be a empty server... Greed being here the main issue, its not the game or content!

Increased gains? For what if the server is going down? so that everyone runs around in 6x120 temps? I dont see the point here , as in TC , you can be made insta Legendary on a skill.
If anything go the other way, non customizable templates, so theres set templates with no possibilty to change the skills, so if you a mage theres no parry, just mage skills, if you are a warrior, theres no necro so no sampires, so basically go back to standard full templates, no hybrids or new template mixes, that could make it more interesting.

About making people join, a new shard wont do that, lowering the price of the sub on a 17 year old game might possibly get you some more players, but the game needs a mayor overhaul to be in any way competitive in todays MMO market. Even saying this, if they were to bring a Ultra HD client, with 3D chars, something that we have been told before could take up to 7 years with the current dev team, by the time they would of patched, created, updated the system, it would be 7 years out of game coding by the time its finished.

Also the seasonal server would really have to be 5 servers to accomodate everyone playing around the world, so there is US, EU, ASIA, AUS+NZ servers and S. America.

An idea that my small cousin has given me for a seasonal server Xmas related is, we are all deers or some animal, and santa wants to catch us or kill us for his sleigh, or something along the lines, we are not human, do something different, make the server where you got to eat/drink or you die, like the good old days.


I hope Ive made some valid points and some people agree, or disagree.


thanks

Yeah, due to greed, rewards are not probably reasonable. I've also stopped playing Diablo 3. I didn't care for the seasons and the instances there seemed pretty repetitive to me.

I like the holidsy shard idea like they used to do, but I don't agree that it'd take more than one server since that's already been proven out before.

However, with a few devs I'm not sure upkeeping seasonal shards is even an option.

Either way, I'm ready for something bigger to occur than Bods and Pet revamps.

 

[grimiz]

Yeah, the term seasonal was poorly explained, I meant it to be more of a ladders type system like D3 or PoE. A lot of people aren't understanding the main point of a seasons server being that it is a challenge to compete specific goals first and/or conquests in a set amount of time in order to earn rewards. It's basically a long running EM event that results in something unique(ish) for the people who invest time. In many games people mainly play the season servers and only play on the non season servers when they seasons are not available or when they have completed the challenged/gotten bored (usually a week or two downtime between seasons)

This is not a test server... I shouldn't have even mentioned "testing" changes. Usually new features are rolled out to a season server first and evaluated during/after the season is over then rolled into the non season servers after they have been tweaked. At least, that's a better development process than - hey here's some new **** on tc1 that you guys are going to have to eat, it's going in in 1 week so hopefully there's nothing wrong with it. enjoy!

 

[grimiz]

Some people enjoy the idea of a fresh start and a challenge.

Imagine the season server goes up on a Monday, and a thousand (we're pretending here...) people decide they want to play it. This season the only starting city is Britain and every other city has been taken over by monster spawns. There isn't any economy, you're selling stuff to vendors trying to earn enough for a house, building your skills on mongbats and rabbits. Maybe you want to earn the first Tower or first Castle achievement. Maybe you want to earn the kill one of every reptile type creature first achievement. Or maybe you want to earn the legendary blacksmith achievement that let's you claim your uniquely dyed and named blacksmith apron on your non season shard.

And then the season is over and the shard is wiped. But you'll play in the next season again because you just missed out on that reward you wanted by a little bit and you know you can do better next time.

I mean, it's about having just a bit of creativity and making something actually interesting in the game again. I own high seas and eoden, but I've never even been there because I know it's just more of the same ****.

 

[OREOGL]

Yeah, the term seasonal was poorly explained, I meant it to be more of a ladders type system like D3 or PoE. A lot of people aren't understanding the main point of a seasons server being that it is a challenge to compete specific goals first and/or conquests in a set amount of time in order to earn rewards. It's basically a long running EM event that results in something unique(ish) for the people who invest time. In many games people mainly play the season servers and only play on the non season servers when they seasons are not available or when they have completed the challenged/gotten bored (usually a week or two downtime between seasons)

This is not a test server... I shouldn't have even mentioned "testing" changes. Usually new features are rolled out to a season server first and evaluated during/after the season is over then rolled into the non season servers after they have been tweaked. At least, that's a better development process than - hey here's some new **** on tc1 that you guys are going to have to eat, it's going in in 1 week so hopefully there's nothing wrong with it. enjoy!

Yeah, I knew what you were referring to, since I played Diablo 3.
The intro to the game really sucked me in, and I had forgotten how much I had enjoyed that type of gameplay.

After that and doing the rifts repeatedly seemed pretty dry.

It could be because I was also using a mage which made me continually get my ass kicked that probably didn't help.

Should have went with a barb or something.

I suppose if implemented correctly a new weapon or armor for a reward would be fine for all those that complete the tasks and not base it on a ranking system.