by Azaroth | October 24th, 2009
Exploration. Let’s discuss it.
How important is it to you? How important is it in general?
Once upon a time, Ultima Online was a game of exploration. It was big and mysterious, and we were all playing our own version of Christopher Columbus.
Nowadays, that’s just not true. Exploration doesn’t exist in UO. Not just because we’ve all traversed the map a thousand times in the last decade, but because new games provide bigger and better experiences. More land to explore, more interesting scenery, deeper dungeons and scarier monsters. Traipsing into Wrong to encounter an orc lord isn’t quite the same as it used to be.
Is that important to you? Is the sense of exploring something new, experiencing a new world – is that a priority when you game? Or does the comfort of the old map muster up so many great memories that you float around on a cloud of nostalgia
Mainly, this is a question for vets. New players, well – they wouldn’t know the difference. So while they’re important, a new map would be for you guys.
Do you want a story? Do you want lore? Do you want an epic tale and a world to go along with it? Or do you want Britain, Vesper and Deciet – Cove, the Orc Forts and Earth Elementals in Shame.
Long term. What would interest you more.
The amount of exploration and novelty I can artificially inject into an old map is limited. If I were to do one shard – which would you choose?
If you’d choose a new map and a fresh world to explore, why? What would be the pull? What would keep you playing?
If not, why not? Why is it unnecessary and why is it viable long term.
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If I had to pick only one I’d chose the new world with whatever lore went along with it. If I had my choice I’d cut away a lot of the shard and add some new cool areas, thus keeping it around the same size or even smaller. The new world would have to be good, though. I’ve played many a player run server and have seen a few ‘player’ creations and not all of them were that exciting. Hell even half of the original map is boring. Assuming the new world is ‘cool’, I’d go with that.
One thing that bothers me with “expansions” are the new land masses. Why add new land when you can modify what you have?
UO’s original map was amazing. LOTS of places are empty (go south of trinsic in the jungle..there’s nothing). Not only adding new land is a bad idea imo but making it so you cannot access the land directly as part of the world makes it an immersion killer.
So there’s 2 solutions:
1. build a small and compact new map and release added land mass that are CONNECTED to the current land. Or modify what you have. On all the custom map shards i’ve played I think only one had a real nice map and it was a role player shard on sphere back in 2000. The map was small yet every part of the world seemed to be living, breathing. You cannot make a map that has big ass areas of nothing with a population that is moderate. Even with IPY’s population back then I think the UO map was too big.
2. Use the current map but enhance it or restrict certain areas to make sure the population is and look packed. It is better to have crowded areas than to have dead ones. Dead ones bring death to a shard and kills the envy to play.
TBH i loved exploring in UO i had more fun finding out new stuff then i did actually pvping. It added thrill to hunting and made it seem less repetitive. Seeing the same creatures over and over in the same scenery got boring as hell. When i see a new creature it seems to re inspire the fun of pvm. Its always so nice to see story lines in these new areas like just hints in the scenery showing of something that happened in the past. Heck even seeing some monsters linked to what happens make the monster all more interesting and logical.
That is one of the great funs of uo is exploring and learning. Having seeing new stuff makes me feel like im playing in my newb days again. Its almost like having a fresh restart of my uo experience. As long as the new areas is worked on heavily and made to please the eyes as well as the game play i will enjoy it. Also so long as it isn’t extremely trammie and makes the game a safe haven or just too easy i am fine with it.
Would you prefer a quick answer or a long one?
Personally, I want the old map, but I would love some new shit to do or places to check out – couple new dungeons, new islands perhaps… maybe get rid of some of the boring islands like occlo and Nu’jelm (as much as I love that place the island sucks).
A great world is nice, but an empty worlds wears thin fast – keep the old but add some new interesting places with perhaps some associated lore or quest line to get you to check it out.
Id really like to see a new map, BUT it is so damn hard to come up with a good new map. Many shards failed to do this.
I love exploring the map. The map we have now does nothing for me anymore, there is not even nostalgia. So having new dungeons, new paths, new whatevers intrigues me.
We all wish we were new to uo, so lets try to create such a world in which we all feel like we are starting a new game.
Others mentioned it and I think its very important, the old map was created for 1000+ players, which is way too big if you got a playerbase of say 500. This has to be taken into account.
Lefty
Anything worth doing is worth doing right.
New map.
I have probably spent more time exploring the map within the first 3 years of the game than doing anything else.
I wanted to find secrets, weird things, and loved finding things that were implemented in the game that normally you wouldn’t know about otherwise if all you did was pvp and stay in the towns/hotspots.
Usually it was to find a great place for a house or I was considering creating a roleplaying guild based on the type of theme that unusual spot on the map was (even though I never had the time to put into leading a successful large scale guild)
When I was on OSI, i would go to places like justice island and blanche island, and leave books trying to buy the houses for outrageous amounts of gold (One guy wanted 14 million for his house, screw that). To this day whenever I go on a shard, I will go on the islands and see if the best spots are taken (ie blanche or justice island) and attempt to place… i’ve never been at a launch though asides from ipy so they are all taken.
Now that ive said what I think about exploration, I’ll comment on a map.
A new map would be great, HOWEVER, ive been on custom mapped servers and they have all failed. Everything is too unfamiliar, and too plain. Add into the mix a bunch of unrealistic dungeons that are plain and empty, with custom monsters that either two hit kill you or have a million hp.
Thousands of people make maps for other online games (example counter strike) , and have each probably made 10-15 maps that were playable/somewhat enjoyable, but they will never be as great or have the same dynamics as the ones already implemented in the game. You know a good level when you see one.
So I think there are a few ways to approach this:
1) Release the old map with significant upgrades and remove some cities, to be replaced with different things to make sure population stays together (Ie delete wind, cove, serps hold, etc)
2) Create a new map and have everyone vote on whether they want the old map or the new map.
3) Release a new map, which would take an incredible amount of time to create if done right, and could backfire on you as you wait to see if the complainers are the majority and watch to see if they adjust or all quit the shard.
Oh and I wanted to say that if a new map is done, and especially if it is done right, it will take a large amount of time to complete… a lot of us are very anxious to play and there is a buzz going… however im not too sure that buzz will last the amount of time creating a new map would add onto the project time.
Azaroth, I sent you an email pertaining to this blog.
Just have the classic map be rocked by some sort of cataclysm that destroys cities, sinks islands, and collapses dungeons to allow for some new geographic content to be mixed in with the old.
Make Skara Brae like it was in Ultima VII… burned to the ground and haunted with ghosts… and take ideas from the other Ultima’s for other cities.
I’m ok with the idea of using the old map and making darastic changes. Such as Britian not being the “main city”. Have a few new citys and “sink” a few old ones. Still seems kinda boring though.
I would also like to see the current map modified. Close areas to make the map a little bit smaller and modify some of the less popular cities to make them more interesting. It’d be nice to see some changes to dungeons as well. Due to the lack of variety and valuable monsters in each dungeon, there are only a few places that players consistently visit.
… and they only go there for a little gold farming. I know. ;)
There’s a reason there were expansion packs after T2A – they were just designed around goals we don’t particularly (entirely) agree with in this community. That’s all.
In all honesty the nostalgia from the regular UO map has all but faded for me. I used to take a break for a year and come back and everything would seem new again, but we are looking at a game that is nearly 15 years old. The map just bores me, and it was never the map that made the game in the first place. If your planing on going all out and doing 3.0 from the start, I say new map. To completely recreate the feeling people had playing in 1999 I would almost say its necessary to have a new map. Fresh.
I am wholeheartedly looking forward to somebody with some balls to recreate the UO world. Not the entire map, but give it a facelift.
I enjoy the nostalgia and the world setup the way it currently is, but at the same time there needs to be some driving lore, even if it is somewhat lame.
New monster types.. new dungeons…
I really wish somebody could make animations/models in the same 2d style that the game was released with.
Azeroth, consider this:
What gives an environment value? For starters, it provides an emotional connection between the user and the story. A user stepping into a cavern surrounded by lava encrusted mountains and a scorching pit of fire could reasonably assume that the adventure forthcoming will be exciting and engaging, because they’re being presented with a refreshing theme. The introduction to the story is an integral component in capturing the user’s attention, and more importantly, interest.
Additionally, the environment shares a necessary relationship with the story. Would you want to participate in an epic storyline [content] that was absent of a descriptive and rich introduction [environment]? Unlikely. Likewise, would you appreciate a powerful introduction [environment] without a purposeful and engaging experience [content]? Doubtful. In that respect, environments and stories are only effective together, and the difficulty of their integration relies heavily on their compatability.
So, my recommendation to you, is to be compatable. If the original map offers enough flexibility to implement imaginative and engaging experiences that are believeable in the context of the original map, take advantage of it. Otherwise, channel your creativity without obstacles through a custom designed map that will enable you to introduce those storylines adequately.
Don’t compromise your story. If your content maintains to be refreshing and engaging, the choice of environment should be irrelevant to the community enjoying it.
Well, I can actually go either way. Going way too nuts may not be the answer, necessarily. If there’s only going to be one server, certainly, a balance needs to be struck between the two rulesets. Something that hopefully doesn’t turn traditionalists off too much while providing something to fill the huge gaps that UO ’99 has.
So, since in a way I’m sure the majority of traditionalists probably prefer the old map and a map change wouldn’t really have too much affect on the newbies, finding a middle ground there might be in order too.
But in the end I’m sure there’s the ability to slide into a dimension where I’m cursing my desire to compromise. Quinn and Maggie would never show up to save me from UO shard mistakes.
And that’s reasonable. Once you’ve decided on a medium between the two, use it to determine which map is most compatible with those compromises.
I appreciate the original, unmodified rule-set as much as any other traditionalist. Still, I recommend otherwise for the sake of longevity.
(I have no idea who Quinn or Maggie are.)
“So, since in a way I’m sure the majority of traditionalists probably prefer the old map and a map change wouldn’t really have too much affect on the newbies, finding a middle ground there might be in order too.”
I think you’re wrong on this. I am certainly a “traditionalist” to a certain extent, it would depend on what you’re talking about. In this case you’re talking about the map and I’d say that most people don’t really care that much about the map. Of the two extremes we have the “pvpers” and the “pvmsers”. I’d say that pvmers would welcome a new map, and those who say they only pvp wouldn’t care that much. I’m someone who does everything in UO, but pvp more than anything else. Based on my experience in UO and the people that I know and have known (mostly pvpers) I’d say that pvpers won’t give that much of a crap about the map being how it used to be, and pvmers would certainly appreciate new places to go and see. There are some people of course that hold certain areas dear to their hearts and perhaps once an area is gone we’ll all realize that we really liked a certain area. As long as the new map is cool and has that UO feel I don’t even think it’s an issue.
I’ll just say explicitly, that I believe it’s reasonable to expand from within the original map (there’s plenty of undeveloped/underdeveloped land, and any existing development can be modified, changed or removed) while maintaining nostalgia. I don’t agree that the ‘amount of exploration and novelty that can be artificially injected into an old map is limited’, because I see a land that is begging for volumes of lore to be written.
On a side note: When I was a subscriber, I was always disappointed that the original map was continuously ignored. If it weren’t for the necessity of income, the content included in a number of the expansions could have easily been implemented in the original map, where it was needed most.
Hey – do something cool with the hedge maze… that place has always been a disappointment except for the very first time you approached it as a newbie….
and then you got to the middle.
Why not make a poll on this one, see how it turns out. Guessing wont help.
Lefty
Truncated landmass.
Put in dungeon “holes” if you want access to other dungeons (if they are cut off by said Truncated landmass).
Redeco dungeons and certain parts of the land for spawns/fun/excitement.
I don’t think their is a reason to re-invent the wheel here and do a total custom map. Just adapt the parts you like and put in whatever custom parts to help.
I think a large part of the new IPY population is going to be people who have basically not touched UO since IPY went down a few years ago. So while you guys might be bored with the traditional map, it’s what attracts this other group of people to come back. I think they want something that they can hop back into and feel like they never left.
I think there are lot of map modifications/additions that could be made without upsetting this group of people, but any major overhaul of cities or primary dungeons could turn people off to playing UO again.
In my opinion, the best modifications are player driven. The allure of any map mod by itself fades, just like the hedge maze or whatever did for us on production shards. Player towns though, with a community supporting them, endure. I think it’d be cool if you could figure out a way to incentivize the formation of roleplaying or quasi-roleplaying communities would be cool. I was never an RPer, but hanging out in a good player town was always cool and a lot of times I’d end up participating in the events anyway.
I’m skeptical about how I would even cognitively deal with a new map. I would love to have one as it would be basically getting a new game with new lore and such, but after playing this game off and on for what like 12 years now, I’m pretty sure that I will just be pissed off time and time again when things aren’t where I remember them being – UO has been automatic in a lot of ways for a lot of people. Now, is that a reason not to do a new map? Probably not in and of itself – but it is a factor when trying to gauge the ‘fun factor’ of a new shard.
The original landmass is so large that you could probably just utilize under used pieces of it to the extent it appears like a new map. Or use Malas, Ishenalar, or whatever the fuck they’re called – I’ve never been to those places, maybe they aren’t so dried up – maybe they are and I never interacted with it.
[img]http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/576/truncmap.jpg[/img]
I like that.
Truncating the map really is a separate issue. The population hasn’t been determined, so constraining content to a smaller area may not be appropriate.
Still, I think it’s more appropriate to provide content to underdeveloped/undeveloped regions of the original map, than to truncate.
You don’t need to funnel players to any specific region. If the content isn’t there, they won’t be there in the first place. Focus on providing the content where it is needed.
This is an interesting topic – I apologize for moving out-of-state over the weekend and not being able to jump in sooner. Seriously this is best topic so far, because it is so intimately related to all of the previous topics that it might as well be the most direct indicator of what we’ll all be seeing before and after the launch.
I have tried to read all of the posts as thoroughly as possible, but I am reaching critical mass for mental memos; bear with me as I quip rapid fire on several things.
To explain my first comment above about this topic relating to the pulse and rhythm of IPY X.0 in general, understand how the “map” or “setting” or “theme” is really a microcosm of the larger “nostalgia vs new shit” discussions. For the first time, people are really talking about something tangible and we’re seeing the clash of the style titans – 1.0 vs 2.0 vs 3.0. Good shit. Weird, wild stuff. Ok so basically we’re finally getting into the nitty gritty, and this is the first topic that zooms the scope in on something you could actually identify instead of the bird’s eye view we’ve been talking over for the past couple months. Awesome!!!
Now that I’ve put it into my own layman terms for you to relate, I’ll start with replies and musings -
In response to the OP; Az look at the god damn header. It’s the UO map. So obviously nostalgia and memory does hold a lot of water, it is a part of the legendary fluff that makes UO unique and special. Is it a deal breaker? No, but obviously ‘places’ even if they are fake [like in video games] are some of the most powerful events that people experience – this is important because ‘places’ can are both 1) experienced by many, and 2) common experiences. So from a mental standpoint, I think that UO is no different from a real locale – you have boring parts, and beautiful, inspiring, memorable parts. Just like your favorite city. Or countryside. Or region. Or sexual partner. So this is both good and bad. You had people who mentioned the flux of population having both negative and positive implications – lets take housing for example. If theres little pop, or you are part of initial pop, you have better chance to place a house in a better spot. On the flip side, even if there is little pop, that means the real estate market is probably not ‘poppin’ (yeah I just made a pun) and thats an indication that the server probably isn’t ‘poppin’ either (which sucks). In the macro perspective, lets take population in the holistic context – basically it’s like any 5x or sim game or RTS – you’re either holding too much territory or you’re in need. It’s always a problem surrounding expansionism, or lack thereof. You’ll have ghost towns, or Brit will be a “BANK GUARDS I WISH TO PLACE A TRASH BARREL RECSU RECDU I WILL TAKE THEE I MUST CONSIDER MY SINS” wall-o-text lag fest. So it’s always a delicate thing, one that needs constant retooling along the bell curve of a games maturation and lifespan – you know, costly expansions with new territory in addition to the land of Az”E”roth as the one dude humorously referred to you. Personally I think the new map should be Kalimdor, but I digress.
Then there was the dude who brought up the setting, and how it should ilicit feelings from the player. I spoke on this earlier, but this always needs more emphasis. Sure the game is 15 years old, but I’m willing to bet some of you people have spent the last 30 years in your moms basement. Being able to stumble through the dark to the bathroom and back without stubbing your toe is nice, and comforting. Maybe too comforting, it’s a game supposedly laced with fear, god dammit! Enough of being able to roll from Shame Blood Eles to the entrance without Night Sight! Stump your sandaled toe on a stalactite as you run away from that nasty Poison Ele! Die, motherfucker!!! You forgot which boulder rubberbands!!!
Anyways, I think it’s akin to sports stadiums in some ways. Yankee Stadium had a lot of legends pass through and many championships were decided there, but if the money is calling and the bathroom stalls are stiffling and stanky, then rebuild that sucker with new and improved technology. The six million dollar server – we can rebuild him. Harder, better, faster, stronger, whatever.
What I’m getting at is that it boils down to maintaining the spirit and the balance of a map in relation to it’s users at a near maximum in playability and interactive satisfaction, but also chasing an elusive ideal that cannot be contained or bottled. See, we have a tendency to be inquisitive and curious by nature (again with the mental), so there is no doubt in my mind that 15 years is enough of chasing homos down the same exact city street or through the exact same orc fort and watch them get fireballed by the exact same lich lord over and over. With all do respect to the great land of Sosaria, it might be time to consider changing some aspects of it or even going balls out and hitting the ol’ Bulldozer icon for some completely new shit.
There are way too many opinions here for any one specific thing to just grab your focus and run away with it, but definitely take the time to see the deeply rooted reasons why people feel the way they do, because it is very important to keep a uniform and consistant setting no matter if you go buck wild with a new map or keep it real by rockin the old school.
TLDR – read it cuz I fuckin dominate, you want cliff notes, go fuck yaself
Seacrest OUT
I think the Post-Apocalyptic Brittania was a great suggestion. Replace some buildings in certain cities with ruin graphic, drown some cities, populate some with mobs etc…
Or let’s touch on some political issues: Make it a post global warming Brittania. All the cities are underwater and Lord British has been replaced by Al Gore.
One of those two was a joke.
But seriously: A new map is I think too vast a job to do really well(although it’s doable, I just know I wouldn’t want to put all that work in), where as working with the old map you can get the best of both worlds.. nostalgia + new shit.
Also: I did read Yahtzee’s post. It was entertaining but I partly disagree with his conclusion.
New map is a bit much imo.
Already got a lot on your plate in terms of new mechanics/additions.
Whatever is ur plan, im here to stay.
This has been by far the most difficult question for me to answer.
Much as I’ve been spoken to reform and general evolution, I cannot deny the soft spot in my heart for the Top of the Trinsic bank and other familiar places. But if this were an easy issue, discussion wouldn’t be necessary.
When I try to distill what it is that made the UO world so captivating to me, the thing that I can most steadily grab a hold of is that it was filled with living, breathing entities that were keeping the landscape dynamic and interesting. No, I’m not talking about ettins or lizardmen, but the actual players themselves and the marks they left. The Shame Blood Elemental room, near as I can tell, is pretty unremarkable in and of itself, at least from a design standpoint, but for a year of my life it was a captivating place to be. Essentially, it became a hangout spot. Generally, I knew who I could find there, I knew who I could trust, and I knew who was likely to toss a few ebolts in my direction if I wasn’t careful. This is the kind of thing that makes the UO landscape great. The design itself is, at best, secondary. The same goes for the non-dungeon landscape: it was the communities (official or not) that inhabited the places that made them so interesting to me.
So while it can be said that UO doesn’t have a world as immersive as, say, World of Warcraft or really any decent MMORPG coming out these days, I’d make the argument that this is only true if you’re running through the gameworld by yourself. For instance, the difference between playing wow with three other people and three thousand other people is pretty minimal, at least compared to a game like UO. I think the mechanics of UO and player housing make the landscape inherently more interesting/interactive then anything else I’ve played, because the UO gameworld is shaped by the players that are inhabiting it to a remarkable degree. I’d go so far as to say that this is one of the Core UO attributes, and no other game I’ve played has come close in this regard. So, provided that the basic mechanics (you can kill/loot whomever you want, you can place houses basically wherever, and you can have said houses looted, to simplify a great deal), then I think that whatever map file you choose to load is going to work out fine. The vast majority of the exploration is going to take place based on where various guilds choose to place their houses, where the dungeon hotspots are, etc. IE — it’s going to depend on where the other players are; In UO, the landscape itself is just the easel, it’s not the picture itself as it is in other games. And thank God for that.
So, what’s the best play? Well, let me first outline some of my considerations, because I’m still really conflicted, and maybe, if I’m lucky, an answer will appear to me as I go along (I was kind of hoping that was going to happen earlier):
- First and foremost, the most important thing is to have a healthy server population. If the map is great but people aren’t playing it, then it’s not doing much good. I think I’m only stating the obvious here.
- For better and for worse, the map is only a small part of the equation — it’s not going to make or break the experience in any direction — regardless of map file, the UO world will be able to feel fresh and new so long as the experiences that take place therein are allowed and encouraged to remain dynamic and interesting. All of my life, I’ve played basketball on the same style rectangular court — With few exceptions, the dimensions have been constant no matter where I’m playing — Yet the court is never boring, it’s never really held the experience back. If anything, it’s been a nice constant to have as a backdrop for the endless new experiences that take place there. I guess what I’m saying here is that if the UO landscape is a court, then I’d worry more about fielding enough guys for a good pickup game then I would about where to put the three point line.
- The idea of injecting exploration and novelty in a game like UO has always been rather difficult, to say the least. [As a tangent that might eventually shed some light: I never played Angel Island, but I would love to hear the perspective from someone who has of how the prison system/other-new-ideas-that-were-implemented-that-I-don’t-know-about worked out]. It’s one thing to add “new and exciting” quests and exploratory zones in a game like WoW. It’s easy because that game spoon feeds everything to the customer like an infantile, and with that amount of control, content generation is quite simple. In UO that’s a lot harder. Again, thank god. But the more I think about this, the more I realize I’m overstepping my bounds and I should probably offer a disclaimer: I’ve never really participated in UO questlines, storylines, or anything of the sort — Once I got my haircut by a gm roleplaying a barber — so I really have no idea on how to gauge the success of these kinds of things. In any case, I would guess that the map wasn’t the limiting factor, but I can’t say.
- Depending on what timeframe were looking at, any map file will eventually be totally discovered and become stale. It just doesn’t take that much time to explore every nook and cranny and figure out where all the spawns are, essentially. Even in a world as mammoth as WoW, which is probably a few hundred times larger than UO, this can be done in a few weeks. But whereas with WoW and other such games they have no alternative but to release expansions and create a larger gameworld, essentially distracting their base from the mind-numbing tedium of the treadmill by dangling a “new and exciting” flavor of cheese in front, UO has a much more interesting and viable alternative because there are endless variations that can take place within a given map file itself. This is how a shard like IPY can deliver an experience that far, far exceeds anything that ever happened to me in WoW on roughly 1/1,000,000 the budget.
Okay, I think that jarred some things loose:
Could UO use a new map? Sure. But with most things in this game, I think it really just needs a few touch ups more than a massive overhaul. At least some maps changes are probably necessary. But frankly, I think it’s pretty fucking awesome that a game as old as UO can not only get by on that archaic (by today’s standards) map, but it can deliver an experience that STILL blows everything else out of the water. A game that can thrive fifteen years after the fact on it’s original map delivers quite a statement, and it’s a beautiful indictment of most everything that’s wrong with MMORPGS today. Again, this is the kind of thing that brings us here. Contrary to what Blizzard and Sony might like us to believe, salvation is not a “new and exciting” continent away. IPY 1.0 was proof of that. So, yeah, a new map is a really tempting thing to do, and if it can be done professionally then I encourage it and will help in any way I can. I do think it will make things more interesting and exploratory in a sense, at least for some time. But it won’t make the game any more sustainable, and ultimately, it’s not going to change what makes UO great. Thankfully, I think UO, regardless of map file, is an experience capable of lasting years if not decades. I’d imagine that’s basically how we came to find ourselves here. It has the capability of being dynamic without The Hands of God reaching into the game realm and placing golden sheep for us to find in order to further our pursuit of some vague and tenuous goal. So long as changes are made to facilitate this kind of dynamic world, it doesn’t really matter what the map file is. Hence my hesitation, I guess. I’d suggest changing it where “necessary” (or, more specifically, wherever a really good idea comes up) regardless, but as for changing the whole map, it certainly has the potential to be a great idea, but I think it might cause more interference then it’s worth given a limited timeframe/budget. The fresh world to explore will be there for us regardless of what map file we use. It will be in stalking a new rivals house on Ice Island, or seeing the fish tank / techno paradise someone made out of a large forge on the beach peninsula Southwest of Trinsic. The epic tales will be of guild battles taking place on marble island, and the fights that break out in between Balron spawns.
I personally would like to see the original map, but modified. Condense it, and re-work some of the boring stuff however you see fit. Close a few dungeons, modify a couple of the others to make them more interesting. Slowly open more dungeons as the need arises. If you concentrate on a smaller portion of the map, the quality of the spots you do focus on will be much better than trying to modify the entire map. Close off Dagger Isle (ice island with deceit). Block the entrance to shame.
Write some new role play, make a foreign enemy take over a few towns, making them un-usable to the common player. Only through a series of quests can you gain entrance to this town. Give players something to do, the game needs more content.
Also azaroth if you read this far, making trinsic unguarded on IPY was the fucking shit.
These threads are great to read though.. I hope you leave certain areas untouched but go wild on a few spots to start out. Some of the old hotspots mixed in with new would be awesome.
It would be nice to have a forum, so we could share Halloween party pictures. Slutty girl day is my favorite holiday.
as a looooooong time uo player, ive always despised new maps to explore and LOVE the original brittainia and t2a.
For good reason. Hopefully I can get that problem solved for you.
Since exploration is inherently dead in UO, make the act of exploration rewarding by linking it to accomplishment. The simplest way is to ramp up the health and damage dealt by all mid to high level monsters ridiculously high so that people have to team up and make the loot comparable.
Make it so that virtually no less than a strong, well-equipped, smart party of 4 can make it to the final room of a dungeon. Being able to run through and solo your way there with trickery just to camp the boss room and farm the highest level mob is dumb.
I’ve never played WOW but this concept has been wildly successful there. Massive groups of 50+ are required to take down some mobs.
By the way – hi – this is Minsc from UOMovies.com.
You could also use FPS mod ideas here. Look at Portal or Left 4 Dead for some obvious inspiration of what could be done with dungeons to make them truly challenging to reach the end. A 2D UO based Portal mini game in one of the IPY dungeons that has replayability? Awesome. A dungeon or zone where upon entry you have recall/gate disabled and a hugely fast spawn of skeletons? Would be a cool dexxer challenge. Make teamwork pay by enabling teams to get further. Make a solo run through a dungeon an epic accomplishment pulled off by maybe 1 or 2 people per year. Create some penalty for losing the games, such as no gate/recall so they have to run out – will make them strategize instead of just repeatedly pushing their way through and dying over and over to find the holes. Some spawn randomizer like L4D has would be nice.
This is the first time I’ve thought about UO in probably 5 years… sheesh… thanks a lot puds
What attracted me to this game, was not the lore, or the exploration. I always enjoyed good graphics and lets face it this game didn’t have it. But it wasn’t the graphics that made me fall in love, it was the Player vs. Player interaction.
What attracted everyone that I knew (with a few exception to the crafters) who played Ultima Online since December of ’97 was one thing and one thing only; PvP.
Again i’m not speaking for everyone, but I am speaking for at least 50 -100 people I know that would still play if the PvP system was intact properly.
I know people that would just like to drop 100 bucks as a donation for regs and a character to pvp with. No special items, just regs etc.
I know this will take from the dungeon fighting though so I can’t fully agree with this. But my point is the tedious things that once were fun over 10 years ago, are not anymore.
It’s 2010. Lets face the facts if people want substance or eye candy there are much better games than a 13 year old version of Ultima Online.
People honestly flat out do not want to make char after char on servers that keep popping up. (Although we will do it 100 times if we think the server will be worth it)
Im not speaking for everyone dont attack me:)
Everyone that I know just wants to PvP. And if the PvP system is good, and not tiring, or cheap like it has been with so many past servers like Trepidus/Divinity, I think the people will stay! I think the PvP aspects should be carefully crafted and a big focus because I think it’s easier to keep the casual gamers of the shard happier than the PvP players of the shard.
Again not speaking for everyone!
Just a thought from a pvp perspective
Thanks!
Love the dungeon achievement/challenge idea. Head is already spinning with great dungeon challenges.
On gathering and crafting:
I’d love to take your cash in return for a UO character. If it had no effect on the integrity of the game world for everyone else, I’d sell you as many as you want. :)
Can I put up an IPYQuake server that sells characters, gold and reagents? That’d be /awesome/.
Haha. ;)
Take one dungeon and make it a zombie panic style area. Swarms of nonstop skeletons that die in one hit, but so many that getting very far is about as easy as Left4Dead. Disabling recall/gating a must.
CTF mode on another dungeon with a flag, a group of 5 or more must hold the flag in the final room for 30 minutes with decent mobs making it difficult. Achieving this flags all who enter the dungeon with “TDP has held this dungeon for [X] days.” Rewards paid to the holders for incentive. Invaders can take it the same way but the mobs in the dungeon do not attack the current flag owners. Perhaps automatically make some mobs pets of flag owners upon entry – holding the flag would involve walking in and within 5 seconds yelling “a kill” with Lich Lords all up in the invaders shit. Awesome.
Look at the most interesting games of the last 10 years and borrow the best ideas from them.
Screw the UO canon outside of PvP mechanics – that’s all the old timers really care about anyway (the ones that matter). The dungeons were always a snoozefest and nothing more than farms so make them interesting again.
No need to alter the map, use it as a blank slate. Let masses of monsters overrun the majority of the world so that the player population is concentrated. This causes more player interaction. As the population grows implement quests and military campaigns by Lord British to annex back cities and regions.
In response to the statement: “The amount of exploration and novelty I can artificially inject into an old map is limited.”
Never. There are an infinite amount of things you can do to make the old map new and refreshing. Change the spawns drastically. Close off dungeons by ‘cave ins’ on the entrance. Make cities run by demons. Make the seas ridiculously dangerous to travel on and disallow recall. Alter which dungeon you are transported into so that walking into what was Covetous is now Hythloth. Etc, etc.
Creativity is not about creating something new, but about creating something novel with the limits you are given.
Orsi I like your ideas but I think recall needs to stay.
All of these changes that look like a really epic technical undertaking requiring lots of programming skills is making plain ol’ IPY look more and more appealing.
There is literally not a single UO server worth playing out there and it’s been this way for months and months. It’s depressing as other games are just boring and wear out really fast.
Ryan has supposedly “Come back” to Divinity and is currently working on “the new direction” of divinity. I am at the point where if Ryan actually made some decent changes to Div I would play there again, because I Just want to play some decent UO even if it’s not my preference, which would be IPY.
Everyone is talking about bold new directions and thinking REAL BIG when all that’s needed is a small surgical touch here and there to the existing mechanics to create the optimal experience, imo.
Maybe.
But as has been asked on this blog many times – How long does that experience last?
How many people are even interested in the first place?
Not as many people as last time, I would assume. The general popularity level of UO in 2010 is very different than it was in 2004.
Things need to be done. Maybe nothing as massive as I was planning previously, but something.