by Azaroth | November 2nd, 2009
- The results of the poll suggest a compromise may be ideal in the question of one ruleset versus two.
- 52% of voters prefer one evolution ruleset. These users are split exactly down the middle on the issue of trusting me to go as far as I want with that ruleset versus suggesting I play it conservative and add lightly on top of the existing IPY ruleset.
- 32% believe two rulesets to be the correct answer – though they are split between two servers (18%) and expansion pack solution (14%). Adding the expansion packers to the “Evolution” side would raise the voter majority to 70% for “Evolution – One Server”.
- 14% want one server with a classic IPY ruleset. Only 4% overall want absolutely no changes. This was surprising.
- 3% think I suck, will complain and make up wild tales about my devil worship no matter what I do (not to say it doesn’t necessarily happen – I just wouldn’t call it ‘wild’).
These numbers suggest to me that the proper course of action would be a compromise – a single hybrid ruleset, building upon the old and attempting to fill holes where need be, leaving superfluous changes out of the equation and leaving the flavour of oldschool Ultima Online intact.
This is a challenge in many ways. It’s also mildly disappointing that I end up scrapping so much of my design. However, one server concentrates the population, and I’m confident I can marry the two rulesets effectively without upsetting either in too serious a fashion. Concept, features, lore, screenshots, website (and yes, forum), will come at a later date.
One of the ideal parts about putting up two servers is that I could put the first up fairly quickly. This is no longer the case. Please be patient – I believe this will be the correct choice for the long term health of the game.
In addition, I’d be pleased not to trod upon the current territory of the existing shard operators. This is something I had wrestled with previously.
- I’m seeking More Programmers Please. The guys I have right now are great – but there’s always more work to get done. Even after I’m done paring down the design for the new 2.5 ruleset, there’s still going to be an incredible amount of coding.
- I’m going to run a super fast PvP Alpha coming up shortly. I wanted to do this quietly, but organizing people for any sort of testing phase is difficult. Please send an email to azaroth@gmail.com titled “IPY PvP Alpha 1″ and do not expect a reply. I’m going to pick a SMALL group of guys and we’ll do the test shortly. This is strictly a test of the OLD mechanics – to see what’s right and what’s wrong, what needs fixing and what we missed. Listing your PvP history and what you look for in Pre-UO:R shards as far as PvP will be helpful.
For the love of God, please do not get angry with me if there is no reply or you don’t get in to this tiny testing phase.
- Mapmakers. Come out come out wherever you are. I hate UO mapmaking tools and I’d rather not spend my time wrestling with them – if you’re REALLY good at making maps, let me know.
- There should probably be something about taming here, I guess. There will be changes and additions to Taming, but we’re not discussing those just yet. I just like the picture.
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Changing explode’s timer won’t solve the problem as Choppa pointed out we’d just switch to FS.
The problem I think needs addressing is when guilds can actually sync something so you have NO chance of healing through it.
I know it’s shitty of me to accuse, but what FS! used to be able to do in GvG pvp was simply unfair – MAYBE they were really fucking good at it.. but not even the ‘best’ players on the server or the guilds with them were able to do it. Surviving a sync from ? or from c2w was much much easier then surviving one from FS!, despite having much higher individual skill levels in the former two guilds.
I was lead to believe that insta sync via scripting had become more common – and it that’s true that would ruin GvG pvp – a type of pvp (syncing/cross healing) that made UO so enjoyable for me. Although I’m unsure because I haven’t played UO since Az put up that fateful message a few years back.
I hope the alpha test has a fair spread of player types, and you don’t get a bunch of whiners who want to play dexxers – already an extremely overpowered class when played right.
I was implying that as a game goes through its phases of maturation, different players come and go and there is always quality gamers to be found through all phases… I thought that was self explanatory given the context.
I wanna step in and say maybe I got out of line calling names and hurling some insults, but when people come at me off the bandwagon with things like “Iced just sucks at mage” and “Iced was never in a good synching guild” I have to call them out on their lies.
“Wigger” was unnecessary. It’s just the mental image I have of you guys after being in the various Ventrilo channels. ‘Yo Dawg, get it up. 2 1 Drop….YEAAAH BOYY Owned Biatch’
“I hope the alpha test has a fair spread of player types, and you don’t get a bunch of whiners who want to play dexxers – already an extremely overpowered class when played right.”
Dexxers are overpowered in the context of Group against Group pvp? Do you really know what you are talking about? Please, if you have not participated in IPY group pvp, do not try and insert such bullshit. Dexxers were worthless as tits on a nun on IPY and that’s why none of the ‘good’ guilds had any in their groups. There was no room for them, it’s just Too Easy to synch and kill people.
I still say Unstack the explosions. I don’t care what anyone says, it’s easier to heal thru a guild trying to all ebolt synch someone down than it is a Surprise Explosion from 5 different guys hitting u out of nowhere. Unstacking explosions is the simplest way to make room for other templates on the field.
“There’s already enough random rolls in UO as it is. You either hit or miss, get decent spell damage or get resisted, get a big hally hit or a small one.”
Choppa this is so disingenuous. It completely ignores the core of the entire debate, which is the fact that Mages being able to all land explosion Ebolt with 100% certainty that it’s gonna all at least Land and pretty much kill every drop (if your guild is ‘good’)
trumps any other possible game mechanic. So what if you might get 55 dmg combos instead of 80 sometimes, so what if your bow may whiff the instahit, the fact is that no other character class is capable of 100% destructive certainty.
A lot of that Destructive Certainty comes from the fact that dropping so many explosions on someone together at the same time creates such a gigantic amount of damage. I still don’t know for certain that Real Pre UOR UO even let people drop explodes on ppl at the same time. Coulda sworn that a some point, every explode dropped after the first was just wasted mana.
Mages need to be nerfed and newbies who want to play their warriors and fight for order or chaos need to be given a chance to make a difference in combat. Slow pvp down. Make healing easier. Unstack explosions.
“I still say Unstack the explosions. I don’t care what anyone says, it’s easier to heal thru a guild trying to all ebolt synch someone down than it is a Surprise Explosion from 5 different guys hitting u out of nowhere. Unstacking explosions is the simplest way to make room for other templates on the field.”
Wrong. When a group of guys are syncing ebolts on someone, they make sure they are all on the same screen as the target. The target will instantly die. There’s no warning whatsoever. When someone drops an exp on you, you have time to react by chugging a gstr/gheal pot to get ready for it or even off-screening to insure no weapon hits occur. The only time synced explode dumps are viable are in 2v2s in a box or to be funny when its 3v1. No one in their right mind would choose to sync explodes when they can ebolt, which is how I can tell you are very inexperience in UO group pvp.
“Mages need to be nerfed and newbies who want to play their warriors and fight for order or chaos need to be given a chance to make a difference in combat. Slow pvp down. Make healing easier. Unstack explosions.”
Stop making suggestions. Period. UO is not a game for newbies. There are plenty of new games out that hold your hand and walk you through quests. The new generation of gamers enjoy the best graphics possible and tons of pixel crack. The people who still play UO realize that no other game has the same kind of pvp that can make you sweat when things get intense, and don’t need 3D graphics. If you are wanting slow, easy to heal, “accurate” pvp go play secondage. You will be bored out of your mind with how dull the pvp is.
I’d also like to add crafters and rpers to “The people who still play UO realize that no other game has the same kind of pvp that can make you sweat when things get intense, and don’t need 3D graphics.” UO provides you with the freedom to do anything you want. I remember just watching the Yew Militia prepare for a battle with the orcs and being very amused with how well they roleplayed. I, on the other hand, play UO to pvp, and I realize not everyone does. But to be honest UO’s PVE is quite dull, which is why many play it for PVP exclusively.
I have to agree with choppa on his last comment. Only reason i still play uo is cause there hasn’t been a game yet that can compare to it. The freedom in this game is quite amazing i must agree there. I do a little bit of everything in UO i mostly like the pvp but I even love the to deco the houses i pvm on occlusions just for the hopes of getting some leet weapon. For a short period i even played as a crafter. Over the years the the main that that has always remained fun in uo is the pvp tough. Thats why im hoping for the pvp here to come as close to perfect as possible. I personally like stacking explosions. But I would like to see a small random delay put on explosions, But the delay i would like to see would have to be like a 200ms or less variable in the delay. Making it too long would ruin sync dumps which would be bad and i am against but at the same time i like to see the cooperative team work pay off with there timings. So why not have a small delay meaning you get “skilled” enough (quoted skill due to the variable in opinion) to heal trough this short delay then you deserve to live. But lets not make it so dump syncs are useless. so a 100-200ms variable in the delay would be nice unless my prediction is wrong with this and a lower number may be needed.
I’ve read the majority of the debate and have played enough UO to know that a mage is top tier in UO compared to any other class. Especially with ‘sync drop’ pvp. Perhaps an interesting approach to UO is about class/skill/spell balance that allows for unique experiences and classplay. Below I brainstorm (first draft) some cool ideas (at least in my head).
Consider one or more of the following:
What if magic damage/healing was D/HOT relative to your magic resistance and damage/heal input (more damage/healing = faster D/HOT). Where as melee/bandages where relatively instant damage/health. You can even have spells effects the rate giving more use to debuffs and buffs. Maybe posion scales with AR.
Removing random procs from melee skills and utilizing the newer ‘ability’ features at the cost of stamina. Then allowing an average random output (concs wont always do 50 int, but vary in a range).
Increase the success of a hit but introduce glancing blows which dont do full damage or interrupt or succeed in a special ability.
Change the paralyze to encoumber a player over time based on movement instead of disable him outright.
Create multiple rates of meditation based on combined weight of equipped items. More weight means slower mana regen, where as a clothy gets mana back faster.
Make teleport a fast spell, with low recovery rate, but a decent cooldown, allowing for a new dynamic of chase. Have it drain stam based on equipment weight.
Give more use to fields in PvP, lower the times for casting walls of stones and dispel field.
Now imagine if you took all my rules I just laid out and took two teams of good players (5 on each team), and had to pick classes.
I would probably want at least two support mages, at least one pure dexer with a few Tele scrolls, and probably one offensive mage.
Now lets change the pace to a 1vs1 with two different classes:
stun/heal mage with armor vs dexxer (swords,lj,healing,anatomy,magic resist,tactics, 50 magery, 50 med).
we will assume this a duel and nobody is using MR/RA/Prot (those really just slow down fights)
Dexxer charges mage, mage walls off dexer from the front and teleports backwards and starts casting before the dexer has a chance to see what the spell is, as soon as the dexer gets in range the mage drops a paralyze. Expecting this out of his opponent the dexer stops in his tracks and drops his preloaded teleport right when the mage is loading up his flamestrike (just an example). Swing, and it glances because the mage is also good at wreslting. It still does enough damage for the mage to notice hes been hit, and he knows that he cant just let the dexer chew him up. Since he cant teleport again so soon, he begins to kite him off, and prepare a mini heal. The dexer drops in with a conc blow, reducing the mages intel by 36, startled the mage teleports away, and starts applying a bandage. The dexer now is ready to make the kill… he goes another conc blow after drinking a stam potion, but wait… he cant move, the mage has stunned the dexer using his carefully trained wrestling moves and his knowledge of anatomy. quickly realizing this to his advantage the mage loads up paralyze and attempts to snare down the warrior. The warrior cant move, but the mage is out of mana… in the end the fight is left up to the player, not the class.
That fight described is possible because dynamics have changed, but in the end you still have a wonderful world.
Maybe this kind of idea is better left to IPY 2.5 or w/e az is talking about.
Sorry for the wall of text.
TL;DR: Balancing out already implemented ideas with creating new ones has a lot of potential to really give life to this game again.
“I still say Unstack the explosions. I don’t care what anyone says, it’s easier to heal thru a guild trying to all ebolt synch someone down than it is a Surprise Explosion from 5 different guys hitting u out of nowhere. Unstacking explosions is the simplest way to make room for other templates on the field.”
Wrong. When a group of guys are syncing ebolts on someone, they make sure they are all on the same screen as the target. The target will instantly die. There’s no warning whatsoever. When someone drops an exp on you, you have time to react by chugging a gstr/gheal pot to get ready for it or even off-screening to insure no weapon hits occur. The only time synced explode dumps are viable are in 2v2s in a box or to be funny when its 3v1. No one in their right mind would choose to sync explodes when they can ebolt, which is how I can tell you are very inexperience in UO group pvp.
Im glad choppa takes the time to respond to your idiotic reasonings. Seriously hit up Faust, see if you can get a 1 on 1 with him, you guys could go for hours.
“Mages need to be nerfed and newbies who want to play their warriors and fight for order or chaos need to be given a chance to make a difference in combat. Slow pvp down. Make healing easier. Unstack explosions.”
And you call Choppa a trammy? Get real.
Lefty
“I still say Unstack the explosions. I don’t care what anyone says, it’s easier to heal thru a guild trying to all ebolt synch someone down than it is a Surprise Explosion from 5 different guys hitting u out of nowhere. Unstacking explosions is the simplest way to make room for other templates on the field.”
Wrong. When a group of guys are syncing ebolts on someone, they make sure they are all on the same screen as the target. The target will instantly die. There’s no warning whatsoever. When someone drops an exp on you, you have time to react by chugging a gstr/gheal pot to get ready for it or even off-screening to insure no weapon hits occur. The only time synced explode dumps are viable are in 2v2s in a box or to be funny when its 3v1. No one in their right mind would choose to sync explodes when they can ebolt, which is how I can tell you are very inexperience in UO group pvp.
Im glad choppa takes the time to respond to your idiotic reasonings. Seriously hit up Faust, see if you can get a 1 on 1 with him, you guys could go for hours.
“Mages need to be nerfed and newbies who want to play their warriors and fight for order or chaos need to be given a chance to make a difference in combat. Slow pvp down. Make healing easier. Unstack explosions.”
Really? And you call Choppa a trammy? Get real.
Lefty
Lefty – Iced is right about slowing down the combat being a positive. I’m sorry but the combat mechanics in UO are unbalanced – THIS IS WHY PvP IS BASED AROUND MULTIPLE PEOPLE DUMPING INSTANT DAMAGE SPELLS!!! There is no “dice roll” on the damage itself – the damage is high. One third of your bar. The only possible roll against this instantaneous damage is your resist.
The fact that there is only 2 heals [one small and no big], all being instant on landing, means there is little room for creativity.
Basically what is an undisputable fact about UO is that the combat mechanics are very simple, unbalanced, and uncreative.
There is no denying that other games have surpassed UO in terms of complexity, balance, and viable creativity.
The MAIN reason a lot of you still enjoy the PvP is because it is simple to learn, hard to master. It’s hard to master because we’re talking about miliseconds across the internet here – lag can change a fight from a SINGLE lag spike blip. A fight can change from ONE guy rubberbanding against a tree. A fight can change with ONE guy hitting “F3″ instead of “F4″ on his hotkey list. A fight can change with ONE group having a better Vent chemistry. I’m sorry, but those aren’t very big reasons for why someone is better than another – that’s why the “best PvPers” are those who can do it consistantly, and in different types of combat [duels, pking, fields, anti, town, templates, diff gear, etc]
Changing explosion may be the simplest way to change the combat – but I’m sorry, “simple” isn’t really a bastion of excitement. What I believe IS needed is a flurry of subtle and creative changes with respect to numbers, mechanics, and viable playstyles as a result of tweaking the game and its code.
I’m sorry, but all the “really good PvPers” aren’t still playing UO because “it has the most balanced and simple combat” they are playing other games and have been for almost a decade. The reason we like UO is all of the fluff, ON TOP of the simple and relatively accessible style of combat in the game. If you play UO still because you think it is the “best PvP game ever” you are someone who can’t afford a new game, or is afraid of losing your comfortable and recognizable place in UO. The game is one of the greatest ever, that is a fact, but the combat itself is ANTIQUATED and STAGNANT. In the words of Iced, it doesn’t matter if 54 people disagree or agree – I can show you millions who understand and support my talking points here.
We HAVE to try and explore different possibilities while the opportunity is available – aka RIGHT NOW is the time to get all of these wild ideas out on the table, and sift through them and view all of them carefully with different lenses – assuming they will all be bad simply shows logical fallacy when clearly other games and other people have come up with new and challenging ways to kill people with spells and swords and dice rolls. Keep it real.
To further drive my point, here are a few other things to note -
Combat damage in UO scales at a much higher rate in respect to character development than HEALING.
There are very few hard and soft counters in UO – Paralyze, Teleport, Wall of Stone, Potions – EVERY HARD AND SOFT COUNTER IN UO IS A MAGERY SPELL EXCEPT FOR POTIONS. [There are small examples like "fish steaks" when you are out of stamina, but that is such a tiny insignif example that it proves my point]. This is a problem with game design because it means that one MUST HAVE MAGERY and UTILIZE IT FREQUENTLY – negating other viable templates and minimizing other mechanics in the game from being useful in most situations…
Think of UO like a car model – it is the Model T of cars. The first catalyst for this amazing and revolutionary industry [MMOs and online games in general], but that doesn’t mean it still WOWS [yeah thats a pun] the crowd like it originally did. Theres nothing that says we can’t update the model with some awesome spinnin rims and a l33t spoiler. Maybe a “Az sucks wang!” bumper sticker.
Rather than argue with each other please try and explain your thoughts rather than jockey for poll positions, folks… it looks bad on all of us! This is a clean slate, all of the shit that’s happened before between you or him or whoever doesn’t mean anything, everybody should respect everybody’s opinions and intentions – I think we’re all trying to get to the same thing – a fun game for all, no matter how “noob” someone is or how much you disagree with em.
The dude who was bringing up a thoughtful example of what PvP would be like with different rules is great – we should all try and come up with new ideas and wing them out here [in organized form]. It gets your juices flowing and theres a chance that each of us could throw out some profound nuggets of wisdom that change the game for the better. Remember, it’s not about GAME CHANGING ideas, but lots of little ones that most people would enjoy put together that create something fresh yet familiar. We need to chase the spirit of IPY but put a 2010 spin on it. I wish every time I posted I had a new idea to toss out, but it’s hard, because we’re talking about something that is so close to our hearts and our hotkeys that it’s difficult to change perspectives on the fly as we explore the possibilities and unknown.
iced earth regardless of what you think about choppa and mazer, your suggestions that might seem good to you will seem bad to everyone else in the event that they were implemented. you are destroying constructive conversation and if you stopped giving as much of a shit about everyone else and didnt get so caught up in the trash talking, you would enjoy the game a lot more.
oh and voice chat *ruined* ultima online pvp, fyi, and unfortunately you have to use it now to be on somewhat equal playing field with all of the uber nerds.
One of the biggest pitfalls with the game mechanics is also one of the most interesting aspects, the lack of skills for class development.
Possible damage classes:
The Mage:
Magery, Eval Int in there template.
The Dexxer:
Weapon skill, Tactics, Anatomy
These are the only skills required to do damage.
Perhaps looking into buffing skills like Parrying, or even utilizing Age of Shadows skills could allow us to really give a lot more flavor to the game. Of course AoS felt very unbalanced to begin with, but nobody has really tried to see the outcome if that was due to the new item system.
The biggest pitfall of Age of Shadows is that is almost completely sacrificed any significant skill level in the field and made way for a Diablo II’esq item system. The item system in UO has always been one of my favorites. Perhaps a middleground solution for new magical items would be allowing weapons to be able to spawn with magical spell charges.
Perhaps trying to break the mage down into two classes, even three, the priest, the wizard, and the hybrid.
Melee/Ranged classes need more than one/two abilities, they need to be able to do more than just chase and beat down.
Perhaps introducing new passives for each GM’ed skill or even higher stats would allow for better balance.
GM Healing should be required to take full advantage of heal potions, spells, and bandages. Doing this would buff melee, and gives a class option to mages.
A reworking of the Parry skill that removes the need for shields but give shield users a nice buff would open the door to perhaps a shield wielding mage, and more single handed melee users.
Using a skill like Focus that was introduced in AoS and have it allow for health/stamina regen would be a great compliment to meditation.
Keep making small changes here and there, and you have a new dynamic of gameplay that increased the complexity.
There is also no reason why we can’t keep two rulesets, one for PvM (thus making it a lot more interesting) and one for PvP. Even keeping a classic ruleset and giving players the ability to create duels based on these rules will allow everyone to be happy.
Ideas people. not arguments.
I’m glad people see that just removing syncs in one or all forms will not solve the overall issue. It would take a complete revamp of the game for this to work. Granted, there hasn’t been much said that I totally like the sound of (it’s obviously a huge undertaking to even consider it) but simply making explosions unstackable will not mean shit in the long run.
Yaht is right we need fresh ideas, but I am afraid as cool as sgormans ideas are, they may be a bit politically unfeasible.
I personally could imagine an AOS combat system that was limited to GM equipment would be really fun and something lots and lots of people may enjoy. AoS without the ridiculous items and crap might have been cool, we will never know.
But seeing as this is IPY, we are gonna have to go wayy more subtle than that. I have a feeling lots of people are gonna come out for IPY again, and they are all gonna be expecting a certain something. A system that added new special attacks and things of that nature will be too radical for IPY. T2A is what people are coming for, and if what we have isn’t T2A I think it just doesn’t work. I may be wrong…but I think our changes are gonna have to be more subtle.
My Ideas to create fun pvp for the new IPY:
a) Nerf Explosion.
I’m sorry, but it has to happen. I believe that only one Explosion should be able to be dropped on a target at a time.
The fact that a group of mages can all just hold an explosion, get someone’s life bar, and run around until the person calling targets on Vent says “Drop” then target the explosions, cast another spell and instantly kill other players is just too much.
My opponents main argument against this nerfing of explosion is summed up in Choppas post which included this: ‘Wrong. When a group of guys are syncing ebolts on someone, they make sure they are all on the same screen as the target. The target will instantly die. There’s no warning whatsoever. When someone drops an exp on you, you have time to react by chugging a gstr/gheal pot to get ready for it or even off-screening to insure no weapon hits occur.’
Choppa has been completely disingenuous throughout this whole debate and I’m pretty convinced it’s because he’s still a kid. He’s a good kid, got talent and all, but still just a kid, thinking about what he and his small clique of friends and like-mindeds enjoy.
But I’m sorry, everyone dropping a hidden, high damage spell that no one knows who the hell is targetted that is followed by another high damage spell that is usually just icing on the cake is WAAYYYYYYY more deadly and potent than everyone dropping a single spell on someone at the same time. You can at least see the animations of a single ebolt being dropped on a guy and heal according to that. But explode does such overwhelming damage to someone out of nowhere, it’s ridiculously difficult to heal and it’s just too overwhelming in power for any other character classes to play a part.
There are too many pvmer and rper minded players that may participate in pvp if mage crap wasn’t so overpowered. Can you imagine the potential for giant battles? The Synch people think so small. They want everyone to run around in 4-5 man groups. Such small thinking in a game that has such broad appeal…
There is room for compromise, I suppose. You could make it to where Explosions doesn’t stack in Town, making kind of a Quasi-Townie effect like the days of olde, but I’d prefer the full on Non Stacking Explosions.
That’s my take and my mind can’t be changed by Synch Conservatives. The Dead Horse is beaten to a pulp and all have seen my stand on this issue.
b) a Mini Bandage Heal
Dexer healing options have always been why they are usually so unappealing. I could see adding a “Minor Bandage” that is a seperate Key than your normal Bandage macro. It would take only 3 seconds from pressing the key to complete, but it would only restore something like 15-25 HP and getting a Finger Slip really hurts it bad. Like you can go for the quick aid but if you get 2 Finger Slips you’re only gonna get back like 12 HP max. This adds a new element of strategy to warrior. Would only work on self.
My changes may appear like I hate mages, but that’s not true. I think mages are really fun to play. I just believe that people who want to play warrior should have a chance to live more than 3 seconds in a group battle, no matter what guild he is in.
It shouldn’t require 6 years of experience and ventrilo to at least COMPETE with other guilds in this game.
c) My Order/Chaos combat system
For years I have argued that a problem with UO pvp was the way that guilds just all gated around to a few different hotspots where there may or may not be people to kill and with no overarching objective.
My Order Chaos system is simple, and does not SOUND difficult to code, but I can’t know that hehe.
When a set number of players from the same faction, let’s say 10 chaos guys, have all entered the guard zone of a city and all double click a certain Statue or Sigil or some kind, a System Message that every client that is logged in can see will begin to spam “The Forces of Chaos are Sieging the City of Skara Brae!!” every 3 minutes. There could be an option to disable the messages.
This simple message let’s everyone who has an order or chaos character know instantly where they can go to find a big battle.
There could be lots of ideas for adding in rewards and bonuses, such as “Order Liutenant/Order General” etc. for kill points. There could be ways to capture the cities if your occupation goes unanswered for a certain amount of time. You could have it to where the look of certain cities changes depending on who controls it. If Order controls a city for a certain amount of time, it has majestic statues and ponds and stuff, if Chaos controls it, its a big shithole with litter all over the place and depressing atmosphere.
But the automated System Messages to get huge battles riled up for cities is the key element. It’s simple but really effective in letting everyone know where the action is.
i disagree with (A) Due to the fact 2v2 battles would be kinda stupid and lame and would last way to long. As for (B) I can somewhat agree but why not have bandage timer like 10 seconds and heal for 25% less so like 55-70 health with gm anat/healing. as for (C) Heck that sounds like it worth a shot, sounds alot like factions tough not to say anything wrong with it lol. I guess we all have our own opinions tough.
Games need to progress in order to survive, otherwise you are not playing a game, but merely a memory. Any form of a progressive combat system for UO without making it item based will require more-than a subtle change to one spell. It will require a new publish with a lot of game changing aspects.
People remember UO for it’s freedom and thrills, not for it’s synch dumps. It’s unfair to throw out new ideas before they’ve been tested. A test center is going to be crucial to get things right.
Again the year is 2009, not 1997. Things need to move forward.
You couldn’t pay me to play on a server run by iced earth.
“Let’s try shit a ton of other servers have already tried, whilst insisting it will have different results than what ALREADY ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED IN REALITY.”
It takes 4 6th circle spells to kill someone from full health without heals. This does not matter whether its 2 explodes and 2 ebolts, 4 explodes from a group, or 4 ebolts from the group, or any match of the combination. If you time them at the same time, and there’s 4+ of the 6th circle spell and you catch no heals, you’re going to die. I can’t believe you can’t understand that. It’s not just explodes, it’s not just explode ebolts, and it’s not just ebolts.
It’s like arguing with a fucking retard. Just stick your fingers in your ear (and ass) and keep doing the “na na na na na” thing. You’re seriously fucking stupid, inexperienced at group pvp, and just all an all around bad player at the game. You are the group of players accusing the GOOD players of using scripts. We didn’t cheat, we didn’t use scripts. You are so fucking stupid, I honestly can’t believe it. You need to learn to read.
With all due respect, you’re the one with your fingers in your ears… the reality is that “4 spells = you’re dead” does not equate to skill. The point is that there is an opportunity here to explore other avenues in regards to combat.
Rofl – leave town for several days and this whole thing escalates like a bar fight. Additionally, I realize now that what I originally was talking about with spell timers isn’t actually spell timers – I misunderstood what the common understanding of what spell timers meant. What I was referring to in increasing the randomness of timers was not the spell timers themselves but the timer between casting spells which I suppose in retrospect is actually the recovery rate (sue meh – I haven’t done serious pvp since I quit OSI in 2002). I agree that changing the timer intrinsic to the spell is probably bad, but I am still of the opinion that random (this is subjective word, everyone is assuming it means totally chaotic) delay/recovery timers would eliminate the ability to easily script out the dumps which a) means that people can’t whine when they get dropped and claim it was hax, b) introduces more skill into the equation by requiring active participation and perception of a changing combat scene. For example, if say each spell you cast had a chance to increase the recovery timer to the next spell or if that recovery timer varied over a range and was not a static variable – one would be forced to adapt to how the timers were playing out over the course of time and would complicate the ability for groups to prep the dump because its not going to be consistent and/or always predictable. I don’t know – it’s not THE solution at all, I just think it’s an interesting way to change the t2a style of pvp without rehauling the entire system.
On the other hand, there were some redeemable aspects to UOR and the introduction of more than two templates that are capable of holding their own. Now, while not being able to heal through poison seems to me like the worst idea ever in light of voicechat and sync dumping – but I will admit that the changes to mindblast, the introduction of special hits for melee, inscription/poisoning being useful, and the improvement of spells that weren’t in the sixth circle were really legit for mass field fighting. That being said, the problem is that mounts + broadband = sillyness. Moreover, UOR/AOS sped up combat to hedge against broadband – it didn’t slow it down, which most everyone seems to agree is a desirable goal (in relation to the rapid fire of Divinity for example). So I feel that if IPY 2.5 is going to not have mounts, which it probably shouldn’t, then we need to think in context of the t2a pvp system and how to deal with voicechat radically changing the way this game is played.
Whether or not sync dumping is skillful is irrelevant – no one here advocating that style of play gives any logical argument as to why it is GOOD FOR THE GAME. It’s all ‘u sux noob’ type of elitism that doesn’t come to grips with the fact that the super-elite cadre eventually gets bored and moves on, its the casual (not retarded, I mean those that don’t enter a shard already in the know for who’s who and what guild they need to join to be competitive but ultimately can’t because those guilds already have their core 4-5 that work well together) players and the non-hardcore pvpers that work for the health of a shard over long periods of time. I think that means we need to get past whether or not it is a SKILL, and focus on how we can surpass that divisive issue and bring something fresh but still nostalgic to the table.
Actually, rereading the posts makes that first paragraph distinction between timers and recovery kind of silly. I don’t know what I was thinking. I did also see a good argument as to why randomness could be bad because it would fuck with 1v1 with relies on the interrupt timing to be effective. Truth and touche. That makes sense.
That being said, I don’t think that accounts for the majority of pvp on a given server and at some point we (and really I mean Azaroth) might have to choose between gimping to some extent gvg or 1v1/2v2 (mostly 1v1) because I really still cannot see how syncing is going to benefit the shard over a period of time longer than like 3 months or so and it certainly true that the suggestions proffered by the anti ‘as-is’ or anti-dump peoples would hinder if not eliminate the ability to easily sync.
Really, we just need to focus on the arguments for why syncing or not syncing is good for the long term health of the shard and stop just jumping all over each other’s shit every time you disagree.
How on earth is removing syncing going to do anything positive for the game? What do you expect field pvp to be like without syncing? Organized pvp is what makes UO fun, and outsmarting your opponents is how you win. Putting restrictions on what you can do is not going to help a shard grow. It will just give people an excuse to not play the server.
All of the people here who are saying syncing should be removed are not actually active pvpers who have been pvping on the shards since IPY was shut down. They haven’t played the game for 3+ years and want things catered to them. Stop talking about removing syncing/unstacking explosions and start thinking of things to add on to the old IPY ruleset, because that is what everyone wants to play again. All the shards after it tried to imitate it and failed horribly.
If you remove syncing the pvp will be clucky and unorganzied, the opposite of what it should be. If you add non-stackable explosions no one will play the server(anyone who pvps that is). The only opposition I am seeing here are people who I have never heard of, and people who did not do anything other than solo field on other servers. I am not counting Iced Earth in this because I think he is as delusional as Satan, Faust, and Dreadgar.
Dude. Choppa. There is nothing in UO PvP to outsmart your opponent on. Nothing. Duel? The most creative tactic I’ve ever seen was Fatduck winning a second round fight with explosion-hally-earthquake. Not exactly the pinnacle of gamer wit. Field fights? Outsmarting??? What are you talking about – it’s Gheal counters and ebolt syncs. In fact I think PKing is the only example where you TRULY outsmart the other player, and that’s not always the case if you roll up on a no-mana’d bard, etc. There is some level of outsmarting but it’s not on a level comparable to a more complex game that builds the proper environments for that type of strategic and tactical gameplay. It’s there in UO, but just barely – time has largely negated the “outsmarting” part of the skill equation in UO (think about how long most of people have been playing, things like Vent, etc.)
Sorry about this break in my comment this is from my iPhone. Two other comments -
Post-IPY it became obvious to the vaaaast majority of gamers that other shards carried neither the spirit or ruleset and coding of IPY. Now THAT was a reason for the majority to leave, like you fear happening by removing syncs. It’s not even about syncs and removing them – that’s only a part of the problem. The real issue is how to bulwark against game changing realities like Vent and syncing. Obviously of you acknowledge this, the first premonition you would arrive upon is taking things OUT of the equation to render things like Vent less potent. But this is not always the beat solution, so calm down -you’re overreacting to peoples initial brainstorms. There’s already been several other good ideas in this thread and we should be eager to ponder them and discuss them. For the record I’m not for removing syncs; and you damn well know who I am. The point is, other people are trying to get ideas flowing and there’s no reason to throw them under the bus a yell things like “omg nobody will play!!!!” like Chicken Little. Iced has some great thought provoking points no matter how retarded he is in game.
Also, I am curious. Who are madterk, sgorman, Lefty Lazar, Einsacks, and Oxandrolone? Not knowing who the people making these suggestions are doesn’t help much.
Just someone trying to give some ideas to alternative combat systems. That is not to say I couldn’t hold my own in a synch dump field fight. In the end it doesn’t matter if your a 10 year vet, or a 4 month vent. There is nothing challenging about hitting your target last; cast ebolt; delay macro; target last macro.
If skill could be defined as the ability to react to a situation, and complexity defined as the number of unique situations possible. UO combat has little room for variance in skill (this means, either your the best, or your terrible), and is ultimately very simple. (synch, heal, synch, heal).
Mix it up with the fact that everyone runs around, and you have a game of group tag. Two teams chase each other down and play a weighted game of rock paper scissors. The weight is the average skill level of the guild.
And honestly, I don’t recognize many names in this thread either except FS! since I had some friends in the original OSI guild on GL. (unless its some different FS! we are talking about).
But it’s been many years…
Choppa – I was in fku.. characters were Oxandrolone, Kiyomi and Candy Bytch.
While I agree with you that the group PvP on IPY does not need changing, how do you suggest we address this; taken from a previous post of Azaroth’s:
“Essentially the advent of modern programs offers the ability for a group to precisely time spell “dumps”, allowing for a generally instant kill of a member of the opposing group”
Also I can’t believe we’re discussing changing PvP. It’s what made UO great. We don’t want to fuck with that or else we just try and turn UO into Darkfall.
The PvP in UO WAS about strategy – but not the kind of strategy discussed by Yaht above. I would call it microstrategy – in the same sense you have microstrategy in a game of chess. Move , counter-move. Bait and retaliate. Darkfall did not have this, but it had a great deal of macro strategy. Both games have their pros, but what UO presented could NOT be duplicated by any other game.
In UO the better player will win 99% of the time. In Darkfall the better player will only win when a series of other factors fall in his favor (who gets the jump, who the mobs target, etc). I prefer the UO model – plus it takes less dedication in my life than Darkfall did.
I was hoping someone would bring this up so I have the opportunity to elaborate on this point…
The micro in UO has been superceded by other twitch-related action-based FPS [Unreal, CS], or strategy related micro-based RTS [DotA].
Darkfall is not a good example for anything except explaining why the Dodo went extinct. The game is just horrible from top to bottom, and I speak with intimate inside experience and as a top-end player from release til we all realized it sucked and quit [3 months later]. Even KoC quit that game and those guys are committed like mental patients to playing shitty games.
Understand that Darkfall is really a wholly-political game that is played on a macro level. Now THAT is a game like chess, where everything was calculated before it plays out. The game is like playing a marching soldier unit in an entire army in a medieval RTS. It’s sad. 5 hours of waiting before the siege can begin after declaration? If that doesn’t scream “the few rule the many” I don’t know what does. All events of signif in Darkfall take a day to occur, and even then a lot of times you just get zerged down by laggy swathes of naked noobs – beyond retarded. It’s just not a good example for anything except playing a first-person view of a single soldier of a glacial-speed RTS, in MMO form.
UO is like playing poker with people you know – theres no bluff they can pull, theres no “weakness” that hasn’t been dealt with – it boils down to guile, focus, situational awareness, and luck (numbers [NOT enemy numbers, dmg numbers]).
The majority of names in this thread either competed or worked together on the initial IPY.
FS! was a significant guild on the initial incarnation of the server. I believe they did come from GL. They had a few notable solo players, the one that comes to mind for me was “furb”. However for the most part FS! was only very deadly when in a large group of five or so.
Rumors existed that they used some third party program to synchronize their clients to release exp/eb combos at the exact same instant, effectively making it impossible to heal through. And indeed some incrimination screenshots did come out but the rumors were never proven nor disproven.
Man I can not figure out how to use this damn comment section. The above was meant as a reply to sgoran’s comment about 5 comments up. Apologies.
You guys have such low reading comprehension. Yaht, while I disagree with you that synching dump pvp takes less skill, I see what you mean about the lameness of it to the people who don’t enjoy it/partake in it.
NOW WHY CAN’T YOU SEE THE POINT I WAS MAKING IS, REMOVING STACKING EXPLOSIONS DOES NOT REMOVE THE SYNCH DUMP INSTAKILL.
Why is this sentence not appearing on other people’s computers? Why is this sentence uncomprehendable by all of your idiots? We are just going to roll with 5+ players, 4 will precast ebolts, and I shall precast magic arrow. We will get our target, i will drop his reflect, say now, and we will all synch 5 ebolts followed by a bowshot, on the target, thus instantly killing him the same as if we had used stacking explosions followed by ebolts. The kicker is, while larger combat is wholly unchanged, 2v2 or hell 2v3 and 3v5s have been severely negatively effected.
How hard is this to comprehend? I’ve even linked videos showing this. Divinity removed stacking explodes, half the population quit, the other half started doing ebolt bowshot synchs instead. THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED, I REALIZE ALOT OF YOU QUIT SINCE 2004, BUT I DID NOT. THIS IS THE REALITY OF THE WAY THE GAMEPLAY CHANGE MECHANICS YOU INSIST UPON WILL PLAY OUT, NOT FORUM-POST-FAN-FICTION like alot of you are getting so into, having not played a single group fight in nearing 6 years.
Point ? Find a better solution than a half assed “remove stacking explodes” idea, or don’t touch it at all.
I played on gamers where explosions stack, and it’s still the lame synch-dump-kill combat. I fully understand you, and I am glad to see other smart people see the patterns.
Pisces personally I didn’t mention that in any of my posts because i completely agree with you. Not only would changing explosion really not do anything at all special but it would also take away in my opinion one of the simplest but best ways to add a new element to PvP: a spell with it’s effect delayed.
I hope everyone understood that my initial posts about changing “damage delay” had nothing to do with explosion but about a slight variation(maybe 0-0.2 ms) of when damage for all spells is recorded after they’re cast to make it possible to heal through even a perfectly synced dump…
..this would necessitate the use of alternative techniques for preventing team mates from crosshealing instead of just being REALLY fucking good at syncing(which can be scripted).
Of course like having a dexer on your team. Even those simple changes will allow more dexers to play. I think this is a great starting point just to mix things up. It might not be the best way, but its a very easy challenge to find a new way to kill people.
I wish I had some super duper ideas that everybody was keen on, but I don’t. It doesn’t matter if someone hasn’t played in half a decade or never in their life, the song we’re singing remains the same – a lot of drastic changes have taken place since the birth of UO to change the way the combat mechanics operate. The balance is currently in the favor of “zerg target X down” which is much more challenging in games that are custom designed for that type of combat.
If you really want to know what I think, it’d disturb you all. But suffice to say, I will acquiesce to Pisces that the current state is better than the worst possible scenario that we can think of – maybe something as clownish as “removing explosion delay” but the truth of the matter is that there are other possibilities.
If I had it my way, I’d take UO and work in a lot of hard and soft counters – it’s sad that Paralyze is really the only hard counter that is practical in the game play. I definitely think this is something to be considered, but it would involve more than just changing timers – which is why people bring that up about explosion, it’s the first thing that pops out of their mouth… so you don’t have to shoot them for it, just explain that there are other ways. Lets keep brainstorming and talking about it.
I agree with the brain storming. I’d be all for a new badass system, but I don’t think the new system is within changing the damage spells / spell timers / spell delays. I think it’s in changing the way the supporting spells work.
Re-think polymorph, the summons, spells like firefield and energy field and poison field and earth quake and meteor swarm and chain lightning and magic reflect and reactive armor and all the other spells that aren’t the STAPLES of the system. If you make significant changes to the way these spells work, they may be more viable besides the narrow scope they already offer. Not many people would complain if you made meteor swarm into some awesome, group only used spell that requires you to do a certain combo to be effective. Something simple like damage scales 20% higher if the target is poisoned, or if it’s stacked with an ebolt it gets a 10% damage bonus.
Then, you could make spells work the opposite way, with negative % for using the wrong spells on the same target in the same general time, or hell even by order of hitting target. Hitting someone with an arrow, followed right afterwards by a weapon hit, the second damage is now nerfed. Do the same thing with explosions and ebolt, the second damage is cut by 50%. Heals too, greater heal would need diminishing returns (nothing too severe, so gank squads cant just overpower the little groups). First heal is 44, second one is 40, third one is 36, fourth one is 32, ya know something simple like that. This kind of gameplay change would actually force people to WORK TOGETHER without synch instakill pvp being involved.
Make magic reflect, reflect back more spells the longer it’s been on without being taken off, with a cap at like 3 or 4. Then, make it where there’s a recast penalty if you put it on and it’s taken off in < XX seconds. The recast penalty should be short, as to not completely nerf the spells use in quick damage dispursement in group pvp. Something like 20 seconds.
You could get really intricate depending on what ideas you could come up with and manage to code in. If all the spells worked this way, and played off of each other, you could make same-spells not stack, or just do diminishing returns on them, to encourage new combos. If you didn't explain 100% how all the spells worked with each other, it would be some good solid exploration for everyone not in the beta, while everyone who was in the beta, knows how the numbers work will just run amock killing everyone who doesn't, ruining the very idea behind the changes in the first place with the eventually forum/irc whinefest of "this system fucking sucks all these guys do is fucking poison ebolt meteorswarm dump THIS TAKES NO SKILL".
Anything short of a major system overhaul like this, you really shouldn't even fuck with the pvp. Just changing the way one spell works, while leaving the rest untouched is stupid, especially when it's not really giving people what they claim to want in the first place.
Fuck I can't wait for this server to come up, I'm going to roll a stupid fuck double click dexxer and chase iced earth off the server with my guild.
The system you just described is fucking epic and would be worth the effort. Of course the idea is some sort of hybrid of what’s worked previously with some fresh ideas like Polymorph. Dude, polymorph should be cast on ENEMIES not friendlies. That’d be dope. Things like that.
Bring back roach mages!
“Fuck I can’t wait for this server to come up, I’m going to roll a stupid fuck double click dexxer and chase iced earth off the server with my guild”
I chuckled at that :)
I’ve always felt like there should be a passive backstab skill for landing hits out of stealth. Perfect for setting up ambushes.
Detecting hidden should also have a passive bonus to see stealthed players each time they enter a radius around a player.
The ideas that pisces laid out are very interesting, this direction of modification is where we have to look to come up with reasonable fixes.
I have no idea how Az wants to go about renewing uo with these kind of ideas though… Its hard to maintain a balance while introducing a lot of new stuff, you would prolly have to go through several test phases.
Lefty
Personally, I’d just like Az to put up IPY how it was just so there’s a server worth playing.
Pisces most recent post is money – this is exactly what we need, well thought out suggestions for how to change things. I think that it is an example of what I was talking about in the positive parts of UOR when they made massive changes to certain spells to make them more effective, albeit way more detailed than I was willing to get into – kudos to you sir.
Choppa – seriously dude – you did exactly what I called you out for doing, you just lumped all of us together and said we were newbs and not the pro heroes of UO freeshards – conceded, I haven’t done organized pvp since I stopped playing OSI, I said that clearly. What doesn’t make any sense is why that affects the ability for people to make rational arguments – is there like some threshold where we all had be pro at some point on some server to be able to say what we think is bad about UO in 2009? That, for lack of a better word, is retarded and anti-productive. We are all trying to work towards a better shard that can stay active over a long period of time, you just seem to be getting stuck at the ad hominem you sux noobez part. Iced Earth is the only person arguing for unstacked explosions which seems sort of irrelevant to me, I’m arguing for considering the possibility of changing the mechanics of spell casting over time – but as I have said so many times already, I don’t think that is the solution it is just something to interrogate and have a debate about. We’re just throwing out ideas – maybe we can take these suggestions and put them together and try to come up with an overhaul. The ‘spirit’ of IPY is important, we don’t need another clone that’s been super played out. This game is too fucking old to believe that just restarting IPY will solve all of the problems. There is no need to hop on your high horse and bitch about how we don’t understand how the elite guilds did it since the fall of IPY. Who cares? Just because that’s what happened since IPY doesn’t make it good, you still haven’t provided any reasoning for why syncing is good other than its ‘organized’. Yea, that’s why I said it was it was irrelevant if it’s skillful or not, because I am conceding there is clearly a skill to syncing. What you are not explaining is why designing the mechanics to accommodate that style is good for a server when you ‘elite’ people run out of people to compete against, or get bored and move on – it inevitably happens with any game, there has to be enough innovation to encourage constant growth of the shard. Your whole call out of the anti-sync people proves my point, you just want to relive the fights you’ve had over the years with people you already know and respect/hate – we are saying that’s not going to make it sustainable, like what there are 20-30 people you think are legit? That doesn’t populate a server.
Which really I think is what the more reasonable people are indicating here – its suggesting little things here and there and evaluating their effectiveness so that maybe we can spawn some ideas for Az. No one little change is going to fix everything like pisces said and most of us agree – we need to take pieces and put them together and not just take every suggestion as the end-all categorical solution to every problem.
I just thought I’d throw out a preempt to what I think is inevitably going to be said. I am not arguing against organized pvp and squads of skilled and disciplined people rolling around and working that ass. I am saying that scripting is shitty (not all sync dump is scripted, obviously). I am saying that rolling around and being able to just 321 drop people is going lead to squads of people all named .0. and standing on top of each other is going to be hella stratified and boring pvp. I know that’s what I would do if given that chance lol. And those are the things we need to counter in the development of the shard.
Paragraphs man! This skin is difficult enough to read!
While I don’t mind changing the non used spells to make em more useful, let’s not fuck with what made UO great.
But some changes to the shit spells might be fun. As much as I love polymorphing into small animals and running around being a jackass – I think it would be more fun to do it to someone else. Especially if it had a chance to turn you into a demon and give you a melee damage bonus or something. This spell would need a counter though – maybe cure pots?
Actually I take that back – I hate that random shit.
Yea well you’re right I probably should format my shit out more – but people that are predisposed to not care aren’t going to read it anyhow and those that will are going to be able to slog through it, at least it logically flows together ;/
The whole polymorph thing sounds like WoW – which was an interesting mechanic and does prove it needs a counter.
“Choppa – seriously dude – you did exactly what I called you out for doing, you just lumped all of us together and said we were newbs and not the pro heroes of UO freeshards – conceded, I haven’t done organized pvp since I stopped playing OSI, I said that clearly. What doesn’t make any sense is why that affects the ability for people to make rational arguments – is there like some threshold where we all had be pro at some point on some server to be able to say what we think is bad about UO in 2009?”
It is a simple question and you answered it for me. I find it important to know who exactly is making the suggestions. People who haven’t played UO since OSI and haven’t been playing any of the free shards may have no idea what has already been tried.
Hehe. The operative word there is “organized” – I have seen and done some random excursions since then, obviously I wouldn’t have found this blog otherwise. I just haven’t rolled around with a bunch of dudes on voice chat on UOG and such like some of you, I was busy wasting my time with other games. I even know who most of you are :). I’m not trying to be a jackass – I am merely pointing out the fact that it takes all kinds of people to make shit work, not just the elites.
Of course I know the pitfalls of Divinity, and the nonsense of Hybrid – and some others I’ve been involved with which is why I think the nonstacking explosions is not a good argument. And mostly the reason I’m adamantly for totally making scripting impossible, which I have seen first hand with some of my friends being runoff/banned for being too good at customizing playuo.
Edit: Sometimes I should refrain. ;)
Totally took a screenshot of the original post. Goddamn trammie.
Ah, now I want to know the judgment that deserves a recant :(
Yes, me too.
I was just making comments about balance and how other games use it to create rerollers and dissent between the players.
I went on to explain that I wasn’t nearly smart enough to do such things.
Actually PvP in UO would be great if it happened in seasons. Almost how like magic the gathering has editions, so does UO PvP.
True. Maintaining balance is always quite the challenge, hell even slews of programmers and content developers have trouble producing balance even with multiple attempts – that is certainly a pitfall that troubles the desire to make substantive changes.
As a side note, probably unrelated but still interesting to consider in this climate, Divinity staff quit last night – there will probably be just one major t2a-esque shard left now.
From what I know of Divinity, they had some strong, dedicated staffers. I don’t know much about the shard – but they seemed like the best part of it.
I’m curious what the story is.
The easiest way to explain it is the obvious answer that pretty much anyone that has had to deal with him comes to: Ryan is a dick who only concerns himself with Hybrid while placing a powerless Divinity staff at the mercy of the players. They have no coder that does any work and the lead admin was running the vent server out of his pocket, so problems continue to accumulate that no one on the staff can fix.
It was inevitable really, the population was dropping rapidly and the staff was continuing to be thrown under the bus by Ryan and to a lesser extent, Mark.
The fucked up thing is that Ryan hasn’t said anything yet – everyone is just speculating and playing on a dead shard until it probably magically gets the plug pulled sometime soon.
Myrddin’s (Lead Admin) announcement:
“Alright my divinity friends its that time, I have decided to leave and move on. I given so much for it to be just be thrown in my face. There are many things I could blame this on, but I wont sit here and name each and everything. I just wanted to give you all a heads up the current staff will probably not be around any longer we given it the best we can with the owner himself not showing any support and my so called coder doing nothing. If the future holds that you guys cross my paths again then so be it, but as for now I am out.”
Here is Argentus’ (Lead Seer) diagnosis:
“The staff here has been caught in between the proverbial rock (the players, demanding that things that are broken be fixed) and the hard place (the owners, who don’t give a rat’s ass about the shard that you all choose to play on and ‘donate’ money to that goes directly to Ryan’s pockets) for well over a year.
There is only so much time that can be spent bashing one’s head against a wall, before you realize that, in the end, all that will happen is you will be bloody and bruised, and the wall, with the exception of your blood now being a part of the decor, will remain unchanged.
There are a couple things that need to change before this shard will go anywhere:
1. There is literally a grocery list (for a family of 6 in a house with ZERO food in it…) of code changes that need to be made to fix core mechanics that are being abused on a daily basis. We can’t make those changes because they would rather give someone with Zero’s past reputation access to the code before they allow people who truly give a damn the ability to do what is right. These changes ARE numerous, and some affect ALL servers based off of the RunUO software.
2. They, the RunUO team, need to actually give a damn about this place. Without that, there will never be any positive change because no one will be in a position to make it happen. Case in point: It was requested by a staff member that Ryan simply peek in and make his presence felt on Divinity… ACTUALLY ON Divinity, not in IRC, or the forums. His response (paraphrased): “Ask Mark… I am to busy.” The entire following week, Ryan was truly busy… on Hybrid, conducting events and entertaining the players there.
If the above remain true, nothing will ever happen to make this shard better.”
That’s pretty much the extent of it.
Interestingly, not too long after this rant – Ryan showed up and in his normal way of doing things slammed the iron fist down – god only knows where this is going, now the drama begins I would wager.
I know Az likes to play straw man diplomacy here, but in my personal opinion – Divinity was, is, and always will be a joke. Ryan is a total retard, and their staff was unprofessional and pretty unfocused all around. The only thing I saw staff ever do there is try and start “capture the flag” and “2v2 tournies” nightly in prime time. I’m just sayin.
Yes and no. I’ve played Divinity at two different times, 07 and over the past couple of months and the staff each time tries to do what they can to make it the best experience possible.
The problem is like you said, Ryan doesn’t give a fuck about anyone except himself and won’t let staff change the code – also, as argentus said, the coder doesn’t ever do anything or talk to anyone constructively so it just constantly wallows in its own shit despite the best intentions of the volunteers.
Really, the RunUO team is bullshit – the staff on Divinity proper tried, made some mistakes sure, but they tried both periods I’ve been involved in.
I remember a while back one of my pals pissed Ryan off by arguing with him on divinity [back when he actually did play there] well anyways he ended up deleting a major roleplaying guild there called YEW just because he got pissed off at my pal. Funny thing is he let a 13 year old boy get the best of him and took his rage out on a bunch of innocent players. In my eyes Ryan is a immature little butthole. I have never respected Ryan at all ever.
On an alternative note… Why not spread the word that IPY is returning XD. It’ll give this shard a strong start when it finally opens up. Ive gotten about 7 people who is guaranteed to join and about 6-7 people who might come here when it opens meaning at max that might be 13-14 individual players.
In reply to the discussion about deterring people from using “sync programs” I say this; they aren’t really an issue. I started hearing about people using programs to sync dumps just as everyone else has and the idea of it infuriates me too. It’s just that I’ve never actually seen them in use, I’ve participated in nutloads GvG pvp and have sync dumped a million people and have been sync dumped by a million people. After all of that pvp and thousands of pvp videos I’ve never found myself thinking that a particular group was actually using one of these sync dump scripts or programs. Even the best sync dumps are usually not perfectly synced.
So while I’m sure that these programs exist and have been used in the past, I don’t think that they are really an issue. I challenge you all to find me that perfect sync dump on UOmovies or from your personal archives. If a guild is suspected of using a program or script or whatever to sync dump then razor video their asses.
I personally don’t have an issue with sync dump pvp, I prefer it. Yea I remember running around Napa Valley with my guild without vent and yes it was very fun, but the pvp of that time would get face pwned by the pvp of today that takes place on these freeshards. I think it’s more fun and more skill reliant, and I would argue that it’s easier to learn than the pvp of 1999. All you have to do is get the same target via vent and blast them, and heal the dudes on your team that are gettng blasted. Offscreen works! I remember the guilds that did the best preuor were the ones that somehow managed to be on the same target. Our guild had designated guys to lead the attack so we knew who to be on. We used to be able to read each others minds and somehow knew who to attack after the explode was casted. Getting to that point takes a hell of a lot longer than saying “GET EXPLODE UP FOR FUCKFACE, RDY, NOW”.
I don’t wanna hear it! GIVE ME SYNCS OR GIVE ME DEATH, wait…
Seriously people. Sync dump PvP is about as “skillful” as lifting a heavy couch. You get another dude on the other end and go “ok we lift on three… one, two, THREE”
Wow, you moved a couch. Nice skill there.
It’s really not skillful by itself. The real skill is just situational awareness and how much the chemistry between you and others is.
The real skill people keep circling over in this “syncs are l33t” diatribe is the repetoire between you and your friends. Not in the amount of time it takes for you all to target the same spell, but in the nuances of the fights themselves. How you handle the first few moments where someone comes on all-names; how you handle being split apart by things like LoS and targeting distance on-the-fly; how you handle counters like paralyze and wall of stone mid fight; how you handle twitch moments like interrupts, etc.
Seriously… Orcas and army ants sync as well as the greatest UO players. It’s just not all that difficult. The intangible nuances, coupled with adaptation to adverse conditions is what separates the skillful from the noob in UO – NOT THE ABILITY TO SYNC WITHIN MILISECONDS.
So apparently, you want pvp to be each group randomly dropping spells on one another so its easier to heal. The whole point of syncing is for it to be harder to heal, not to do damage over a length of time. The point of about every game in existence is to do burst damage, why do you think for this game it should be any different. The most efficient way to kill things is doing it the fastest way possible.
If I’m saying syncing itself takes little skill, then I’m already stating it is easy. Your attempt to pacify my points by assuming I want it easier is fallacy and derogatory – if I wanted it to be easier I wouldn’t be pointing out that it is easy to begin with.
When you bring up the point that it’s harder to heal, not do damage over time, you just keyed in on the concept I pointed out earlier in this thread, about 80 posts ago – “Combat damage in UO scales at a much higher rate in respect to character development than HEALING.”
However, you miss the entire point – burst damage isn’t the ideal way to damage in a video game. This is why there are games like WoW and Darkfall. WoW has a huge focus on DoT and HoT – to the point where I feel that they are more of a boon than a burden in all aspects. And this is coming from someone who played a top burst-damage mage at release, and then later on played a HoT/DoT priest which is the polar opposite. There is no doubt that the priest is better in all aspects of gameplay, particularly PvP.
The thing about PvP is, if you have someone playing defensively the chances of you killing them are slim to none [assuming they are skillful and not just a noob being pk'ed]. This is somewhat true in UO, where you can run forever – in a solo fight, a pk situation, a field fight, even a duel in a box to some extent to avoid melee hits [cept archery].
Now, to the defense of your argument, there are games like Darkfall which feature *NO* burst heals whatsoever. NONE!!! All heals in that game are passive or HoTs. That the polar opposite of UO combat, and it boggles my mind how people think that the game is similar to UO – it’s not in any way with respect to combat, just risk vs reward.
So again, I think a game like WoW does a good job of balancing HoT/DoT with burst damage and straight dps and dumping. The game has the ability for both, to extremes, but the best players use a mix of both, if possible.
UO could be similar in that regard. The damage scaling towards the 7x end of the spectrum is so lethal and resourceful that it is necessary in all aspects of PvP. Even dexxers will cast Gheal once in a while; mages don’t have to use bandages. Remember how people would spam In Mani early on in IPY tournies and it became one of the few outlawed things [3 in a row was the limit I think]???
Healing and damage numbers, when it comes to magery, are unbalanced. By themselves, or in the holistic context. I think some tweaking to the healing could have great returns if it was done with the idea of making different playstyles viable instead of punishing syncs, which are a very important and necessary tactic in the current world of UO.
Sure, I think there needs to be more spells that are utilized in combat, mostly ones that deal in hard counters [ie Paralyze] or soft counters [ie Spell Reflect, Magic Arrow prep against a Paralyze].
But child please, for you to sit there and act like I want the game to be easier is a joke, and you know it – don’t put words in my mouth. I’m simply stating the game could use some fresh dynamics that spice up and help smooth out damage scaling in its extreme form – syncing (which , for the umpteenth time you nitwits, I enjoy and support).
“However, you miss the entire point – burst damage isn’t the ideal way to damage in a video game. This is why there are games like WoW and Darkfall. WoW has a huge focus on DoT and HoT – to the point where I feel that they are more of a boon than a burden in all aspects. And this is coming from someone who played a top burst-damage mage at release, and then later on played a HoT/DoT priest which is the polar opposite. There is no doubt that the priest is better in all aspects of gameplay, particularly PvP.”
There are no dots in UO other than poison. Therefore, the ideal way to kill people in group vs group fights is with burst damage, considering there is usually one person per group who is prepping a gheal to heal people getting focused. The only way to kill someone without running the other group out of mana is to do enough damage fast enough that they miss their heal. I would have thought this was given.
This whole conversation is about UO, not comparing UO to WoW.
I am not talking about UO in that paragraph; your context is misrepresented.
We need some forums, responding with this layout is kinda annoying.
Dude are you kidding me? If I can’t discuss a game [IPY 2] at it’s most BASIC LEVEL and converse about ideas for it without bringing up other games, then it is impossible to insert good ideas. It’s like saying the Supreme Court can’t talk or discuss related cases during a trial – there has to be previous precedent than can be looked back upon for guidance or to ascertain observations that have a similar situation.
It’s absolutely important to talk about other games since UO in the same genre; it’s one of the reasons why UO isn’t as popular, and at the root it’s what people went to play after IPY ever since [in a lot of cases]. Of course it’s important!!! I am not trying to take anything away from UO or give anything to another MMO, just trying to make the point known that other games do have great shit that they’ve built upon the shit that UO did first.
All I am talking about is UO. I played a rogue in WoW with a top Horde guild (Overrated) so I really don’t want to compare UO to any other games. All I am saying is group pvp in UO is based upon doing damage fast enough to your opponents for them to miss a heal. Denying this or trying to do it a different way is quite dumb.
I’m not denying it. I’ve stated about five different times that syncing is an important and enjoyable part of the combat mechanics, however it doesn’t do the pinnacle of the game justice. It’s sort of bittersweet. It’s like the last level of a game being dealt with in a cheeselike manner [Think Mike Tyson on NES or maybe that one Mega Man where you killed Wily with Top Man's spinny manuever]. It’s sort of pathetic to be honest – I think noobie duels in UO have the potential for more variety or randomness.
Let me put it as explicitly as possible…
It doesn’t matter if you want to call it “syncing” or “skill” or “doing damage fast enough to your opponents for them to miss a heal” or “being l33t” — I call it antiquated synchronized patty-cake. And for what it’s worth, I’m damn good at synchronized patty cake.
I am talking about the way one replies to posts on this blog. It’s all over the place instead of one after another.
Nice, and that comment wasn’t even supposed to go there.
PEBKAC.
Thing is we have a well established, enjoyable PvP system. If we start changing the entire basis of the system – burst damage combos, then we introduce a whole new host of problems, especially regarding balance, and we risk ruining what made the game so great in the first place.
We can’t reinvent the wheel here regarding PvP in UO. That, in my opinion, is for new games to do. Maybe add some new rims or tires, but the thing has to stay round.
Not to mention the delay that would create in actually allowing IPY to open.
It’s true, that when you change something you run a risk of ruining it. But what’s not often said — and I would argue is just as often the case — is if you don’t change something, if you don’t cater to the times, you end up running the same risk. Ruination is always just around the corner, I guess. Now, in my opinion, if we’re on a slowly sinking ship — and that’s basically how I see traditional pvp in today’s environment — the best thing to do is to calmly patch a few holes, maybe put up some re-enforcements, but to generally keep the ship intact. It’s just suffered some wear and tear over the years; it isn’t totally fucked, nobody panic.
You’re right that we shouldn’t re-invent the wheel, but I think what people are arguing here is that maybe the wheel has, over the years, suffered some pretty major dents while it’s been rolling it’s jolly way around Sosaria. Maybe it needs some repairs just to restore it’s rounded, even-handed goodness.
The very fact that most of the debate here seems to be focusing on sync-dumping tells me that things have become perhaps a bit too stale and formulaic. I say this because sync-dumping takes place on an extremely micro level (we’re talking milliseconds here), and if there were more variation in general, then I don’t think there would be this fixation on such a small factor.
Timing is and always has been a core component of what separates the greats from the elite. And there’s nothing wrong with this. To take this away or to throw it out to randomization would be, I think, a mistake. But I think that having millisecond accuracy with timing should separate the top .5% from the top 1% of pvpers, ideally. To hazard a guess from what it sounds like here, it seems as though it’s become the stand-in for what pvp skill used to mean, and I would say that means it’s time to include some new mechanics to restore it to the fringe where it belongs, especially in a game so latency dependent.
What about enabling things like damage counters. I don’t see why not. Every other game has them.
I know that this thread mentioned a PvP alpha testing so it’s appropriate that we have some discussion regarding pvp. Though I think that we’re talking a little too much about something that already works well (IPY pvp) and not at all about things that have been lacking on all freeshards that I’ve played (everything else).
Pre-UOR pvp is thought by probably all of us to be the best UO pvp of all time, IPY pvp is generally accepted to be a very good version of pre-uor pvp. So there we have it, we’re all set in the pvp department. Moving on to the things that usually don’t do as well on these freeshards is the most important thing. I guess we’re all pvpers here and that’s fine but don’t forget about the core of a server (everyone else). Pvpers are the minority and they already have a system that works fantasticomozorically IMO (cause I like it!). I know that was all a little redundant but I’m not changing it.
It seems to me that it wouldn’t be super difficult to get the economy right for once. Give the bank sitters, pvmers, rare collecters, resource gatherers, roleplayers, and whoever the hell else what THEY enjoyed about preuor. Preuor was an awesome time for everyone, not just pvpers. They could get everything that they want without interfering at all with our pvp kill fest, and vice versa. I’m sure we all have plenty ideas of what would be good for the economy and I’d be happy to share all my thoughts in another more-specific thread. The truth is UO isn’t as good without the whole sandbox community, and for non pvpers it’s not even worth playing.
I will say that I think statloss is the way to go. I know that’s a hot-in-the-pants topic and that’s why I think it should just go in without discussion. Everyone knows that people shouldn’t be able to run around killing whoever they want without any accountability, it was never meant to be that way and it’s lacking entirely of justice. There have been many attempts at player accountability but none of them have worked AT ALL (at least on the servers I played, I never played adam ants). I pked preuor OSI and beyond with statloss, it is SO much easier now to macro your character there’s really no excuse. Skill gaining is always faster on freeshards than it was preuor OSI, macroing unattended is not illegal, opening multiple clients at once is not illegal, having multiple accounts (assuming there will be on IPY) does not cost money, people have better computers and internet connections allowing them to have as many accounts macroing at once as they like, (I had five going at the start of the first IPY lolers) and one can leave their pk logged in 24/7 thus turning your short term counts into long term counts (won’t always work depending on the amount of shorts you got that day of course). Still even with the ease that characters can be built back up from your wopping 5% statloss (because most people aren’t good enough to get enough kills to go beyond that) there is SOME player accountability there. If the pk dies they will be out of order for at least a day, as opposed to five minutes.
I don’t think that there’s any question that UO needs player accountability because of the ability to kill any player, anytime. So if anyone has any better idea than statloss lets hear it. Since I don’t think anyone does I vote for implementing statloss from the start. Avoiding discussion on the forums (what forums?) pre-release to minimize the amount of complaints from newbies who want to be able to kill people who can’t defend themselves properly, without any risk of losing anything themselves. Take it upon yourself to make this decision for the betterment of the server, among other things. So many things benefit from there being statloss. To name a few; less pking = more people doing order/chaos, less pking = the rest of the players on the server aren’t target practice for pvpers, less pking & pking being more difficult = pking is more fun-the thrill and excitement of pking with the added danger and risk element has always made pking more enjoyable to me, much to the distress of my fundamental “dreadlord” homies of early 98 who never got over statloss being implemented.
So lets hear it for the innocent wreaking havoc on your soul upon returning to the living already!
Yaht me and my guild, would smash you and anyone you ever played with or will play with, 100% of the time. If this isn’t skill, I’m really not sure what you measure that shit with. Dying with class? Spamming ebolts? Group fights to be 5 separate 1v1s? I don’t get what you’re going for, but the top tier of group pvp (using synch dumps) is very skillful. c2w used to put it too us hard until we got better. There is alot of situational awareness that goes into this kind of pvp. The ones who suck at it, or haven’t played competitively in 5 years, Don’t realize this.
No synch dumping isn’t skillful. Map awareness is, however. Everyone can synch, being able to synch doesn’t make a good team. Your not good because you can 2…1..drop all at the same time.
Yeah, ok. That’s like arguing it’s not hard to kill someone in a duel, anyone can press cntrl + a -> cntrl + w -> cntrl + q, There’s no skill in this shit invovled at all!
The skill in this game comes from OUTSMARTING or OUTMANUVERING your opponents, and the healing. The healing is what separates the good guilds from the bad guilds, and the only reason healing requires skill at the moment, IS BECAUSE OF SYNCH DUMP INSTANT DEATH WITHOUT HEALS PVP. You guys are not playing the same game as me or something.
Pressing buttons isn’t hard, whether it’s casting an ebolt by yourself, or at the same time as your friends. I can’t believe people are still arguing this shit.
My only complaint is that it’s kinda of lame and it’s hard to tell who the first target is when the explodes are precast, otherwise not really that big of deal. People should be organized and such, I just am ambivalent about what that exactly entails.
As I read through the comments, these ‘schools’ of thought look to be two ships passing in the night most of the time and there is a total lack of consensus about what exactly we are all talking about.
Anyhow, I am more and more unsure that attempting to change the mechanics is the way to go because of balance issues – simplicity and efficiency might trump innovation in a lot of ways.
Sure you’d probably smash me in a game I haven’t played competitively for five years [back when you were bad]… for about a week. Lotta games have come and gone and a lotta epeen glory has been claimed here or there – mostly there. I can’t believe I’m dignifying your dick stroking, but again I’ll acquiesce that you do indeed know what you’re talking about in terms of current PvP hot-or-not discussions; I’m sure you’re quite dialed in. But in terms of holistic skill-based online gaming, UO doesn’t really hold much water anymore. Theres a myriad of reasons for this, most of which have been outlined several times in these recent discussions.
I respect your in-game ability which I have witnessed over the years making amazing strides, your passion which has amazingly remained high, and your…… lets call it ‘gamer ethic’, but you’re clearly dancing around the concept that damage and healing are not balanced in their extreme form [several 7xs zerging a single target on call]. In order to better serve the gamer with a legitimate skill-based environment, several things could be put into play to displace emphasis away from the only reasonable tactic being boring ol’ dump zerging. Read einsacks post if you feel too emotional to consider what I’m trying to explain.
Maybe your crew would beat the old [?] crew, but I doubt it – most of us have gone our own ways and have owned other games since IPY and it appears you’re still after yours. Maybe when this eventually gets running for real we’ll finally lay to rest whos the greatest and who is a total noob with the new server – wait, nevermind, there will be hardicks here in 2016 talking about how Rio sucks as an Olympic host and how they’re gonna own noobs in IPY 4.0. I respect your ability as a gamer and respect your knowledge on the subject [and all posters here] – but please, show a little bit of class… people’s track record doesn’t detract or add to their ideas or opinions at this most ethereal level of discussion. In fact it’s that type of elitism that decreases the chances that someone will speak up if they’re a no-namer, and we’ll need a lot of no-namers if we want to see IPY holding a sizable pop. Every game needs meat shields and ample bodies and their opinion shouldn’t be downplayed by an extremely small and shallow pool of loud voiced monks of UO. You can pretend to be baffled and befuddled but the reality is that most people would like to see the gameplay rejuvinated in some areas with some fresh ideas and concepts – you know damn well this is true and your ideas that you posted a couple days ago are evidence of your prior acknowledgement.
The game could simply use some more counters, some numbers adjustments, maybe a couple timer tweaks. And after that? Well, like the saying goes – anything worth doing is worth doing right. If it delays the server a couple months, it’s worth taking the time to make sure any idea is thoroughly vetted and tested against all types of grindstones. It’s worth the time to get everything right.
Tag. Das ist Bruno! Syncing! In oder aus?
I didn’t even realize there was an issue with pvp, not sure why this discussion has been going on and on. It’s like someone accidently mentioned something about pvp and what they thought might be a good idea and this happened. Other than people potentially using scripts to auto target/sync dumps what really is the issue? It’s balanced, skill based, and the people that actually do it like it.
I thought people would be able to settle on the Explosion timer going from 2 seconds to a random timer of 1-2.5 seconds, but that’s not even good enough. That barely even touches the mechanics but yet it does so in a way that will make fights a lot more interesting.
Non stacking explodes is pretty much the only way to go.
Another idea is maybe a message that pops up above someone’s head after they have been targetted by more than one explosion similar to the message when someone is poisoned. Something to the effect of “The air around Player gets intensely hot!” to let people know someone is about to be synched. This could at least take away the Ultra Powerful surprise damage element of the Sync Dump.
Once again I will address the In Sync crowds favorite line:
‘Ppl will just run around with ebolt precasted and drop their bow and it will be just as bad.’
Stop making this disingenuous point. Healing over direct damage is easier than healing over a well timed explosion ebolt. That is a fact. I will heal a guy getting ebolted at the same time all day long, but sometimes a Synch renders it Utterly Impossible to heal a guy. That just shouldn’t be. Stop making this bunk ass point that i have shat upon numerous times now. Yes, even 5 guys dropping Ebolt Bows on someone is WAY EASIER to deal with than 5 guys doing explosion, ebolt bow. I can’t believe that you are really trying to argue something that is so obvious.
For you to lean on this point is weak, and I will continue to call you out on this every time you try to make it.
Iced Earth,
While it certainly can be difficult to heal a synced dump, especially by 5 people, I wouldn’t say it’s ever impossible. It’s not an uncommon occurence at all actually. Even the best guilds are going to miss heals now and then, that’s the way it is. As you say it’s hard sometimes to know who the sync is on, well that’s half the battle. There are many signs that one can see by being aware of what’s going on around you in order to see who’s getting dumped. The direction the casters turn after dropping the explosion, be aware of who’s being debuffed/weakened, and many other things to see during a fight.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that people can and do learn and adapt to todays UO pvp, there were many guilds on the server that you played for the last however many months or years (divinity) that were able to heal through sync dumps, some better than others. It’s fun and skill based, why does it need to be easier? I can’t quite understand what you’re trying to gain by making sync dumps less effective other than making UO pvp easier. Am I wrong?
I think I recall another post of yours stating that it was unfair for dexers as they obviously don’t sync dump. While you DO have a point there, that dexers can’t sync dump. I wouldn’t say that it’s not fair, dexers can be awesome-mean-beast that can make a mages day hell. I don’t think it’s any different for a group of dexers to wreak the same havoc, well coordinated, well equipped dexers with right template could be a very formidable force. I’ve played my share of dexers, even on divinity as you did, and in an even matched (numbers wise) fight mages vs dexers, that sync dump isn’t going to always be all powerful. I think I may even get a group of hybrid-dexers together with some med and wrestle and have my way with the mages of the land.
There’s already HARD-COUNTERS (as you put it) in game for synch pvp. Watch some videos of my guild pvping on http://www.uomovies.com
1) We keep reflect on, and you stay at 120 strength. This is the first and easiest way of avoiding getting synched on.
2) If you are the target, you fall back in line in the fight, and let everyone know (in case anyone in your squad missed it) that your reflect has been busted.
3) If you feel you are getting synched on, get out of line of sight and say “heals on me”. (Note : This part only works if your guildmates can land well timed cross heals.) This includes offscreen, cutting a corner on ANYTHING, or casting teleport. Using a reflect item charge or teleport item charge is also super clutch.
4) When you target someone, your feet turn towards them. We always used this method of telling who the “super secret” precasted dump was on.
There’s so much skill involved in the large group synching pvp, i could go on for paragraphs and still not even get it all out. Knowing when to cancel that explode your caller just told you to load, know when not to even cast the fucking spell in the first place, cause if you stop for ANYTHING you’re gonna get hit with 10 explodes. Being able to time a greater heal pot and a greater heal on yourself PERFECTLY otherwise you died. Getting off an awesome teleport right as you were getting nailed by the 6 ebolts and your guildmates land sick ass heals on you and keep you alive. Then your caller says “everynoe got yahts target? good alright just keep moving, ebolts on yaht (and they don’t precast em, they wait til i say now to even start casting without me having to clarify this) now and you run right the fuck in it because you had explodes up waiting on the right time to drop us. There’s nothing like 2 guilds, stopping to dump each other at the same time, noticing the dump is on yourself, arming that fucking bow and getting off screen , alive, while the other guy is now a ghost.
You guys don’t even know until you get in a real guild and fight other real guilds. I’m sure it’s not fun just getting blasted by those of us who have been playing together awhile.
Using these methods, we have beaten guilds literally in 4 v 12(it’s on http://www.uomovies.com, against furb and FS! no less) matches, us being the 4. I don’t think this kind of win would be possible, if you removed synch dump pvp. We would get chased down by the giant group until we are out of mana and then die.
Pisces, I used to watch y’all roll on Divinity back in 1.0 and you were legit and it was fun to watch. I am just having a hard time reconciling what you are saying with the group of people that I did Hybrid (maybe it was some other defunct UOR shard) with, in which we were all the same name and stood on top of each other as the encounter happened. I want to say that in the abstract you are totally right, if everyone is skilled and has a bit of self respect to not cheat like its their fucking job or be super lame and exploit the holes in this old ass game then you’re spot on.
My ambivalence comes from the disconnect that has with the general type of player that’s attracted to the unlimited freedom of UO.
1) is a soft counter
2 – 4 are not counters, just situational awareness, which is the real key to winning PvP after the glass ceiling for team chemistry has been breached.
I agree with the majority of your epeenery and wisdom in this post though, even the part about *UO* being about burst dmg.
There is room in UO for spells like Polymorph working like they do in WoW, which is a way better spell and is an enjoyable dynamic for combat. It’d just be like having another type of Paralyze. More things like poison, which was explained to be the only DoT in UO, could be expanded upon [as was seen later on in real UO]. Yada yada yada, theres room for variety in the game which would at least produce different results and hopefully displace some of the emphasis on pure sync/heal chemistry over VOIP.
A rule against using clone characters to pvp would be a simple fix if that’s your largest gripe with it. It would be easy to enforce too, with a random name and appearance for rule breakers.
All I am trying to say here is that things sounds good in theory and then have a tendency to fall apart in practice. Your practical solutions though are definitely what we need to hedge against these practices, I’m glad you’ll engage the arguments and have reasoning behind your shit – its refreshing.
I hope what ends up happening is that there are enough people and good new people that it’s not the same old freeshards crews rolling around alone. That and maybe there will be a hope that some of us truly oldschoolers will find our way into a new mix.
Well what I was describing wasn’t really theory, I was seriously just sitting here and remembering some good times we had pvping in the recent years. It works out this way, alot of people just don’t realize it because the fight can potentially be over in SECONDS, and it’s hard to get better / learn from your mistakes / enjoy the fight in something like that. I realize this style is bad for new players, but then again ultima online isn’t really kind to new players in any way shape or form anyways.
The only way i can describe a fight with me and 4 of my guildmates vs another skilled guild is like playing Command & conquer with real people as your little pieces. I had so much fun micromanaging the fights with my crew, and we had this understanding that it worked both ways. Nights that even ONE member of our guild was off, the whole squad suffered big time on the field. Madterk i enjoy reading what you’ve been posting too, you’re looking at the REAL cons of this system. “People use the same names and stand on top of each other” is a real problem i’ve actually encountered while playing ULIMTA ONLINE, as opposed to “I die too fast can someone fix this?”
Ultima has always been about the burst damage, always. This is why you only get 100 strength and 100 hit points by default. I think alot of you have been playing too much WoW and are getting used to this “death by attrition” pvp. You have 100 hit points and the average spell takes away about 30. Think about that, and what you’re trying to change about the game.