by Azaroth | August 13th, 2010
(images courtesy of www.sosariantales.com)
I’m somewhat sure we’ve discussed this on this blog before, but I don’t think any ideas that really stood out to me were presented.
A lot of games introduce some sort of organized warfare as a main PvP game. UO eventually had Factions, World of Warcraft has battlegrounds (and arenas), DAoC had RvR, and so on.
Think about these systems, and think about Ultima Online’s Order/Chaos wars. What can be done with them?
More than that, what should be? What SHOULD these systems be? Where do they fail, and how can they be improved. What’s the biggest problem with them? What would be the BEST thing anyone could do with Order and Chaos? Moving forward with MMOs, what would you like to see out of systems like RvR, Factions, Battlegrounds?
I’ve got my own ideas scratched out. What are yours?
Let’s see some good stuff. You might have a hand in crafting the Order and Chaos wars on IPY.
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First off, there is a literal limit on the amount of players that can be displayed in an Isometric game world. This limit is relative to the amount of tiles or space that can be viewed in resolution [in or out of game]. This limit dampens any potential for a large amount of players to be on the screen interacting at any given time. This simple concept severely limits the amount of zerginess that can be represented in any siege mechanic, giant faction vs faction, or “king of the hill” shit-fest.
The way this impacts the game is that you’re simply not going to be able to implement any type of large group/siege/faction system that features LARGE SCALE REAL-TIME INTERACTION. This is literally impossible to do in a practical sense in Isometric.
With that being said, the discussion and innovation should primarily focus on bringing a faction or “meta” fight in via long-term goals, incentives, and mechanics rather than short-term zerg / static mechanics.
I feel that the best system, whether it be RvR, Factions, Battlegrounds, O/C, Sieging, town wars, WHATEVER – if you’re trying to implement the trend in MMORPGs where bigger fights are better [or more important], then they need to be done in a manner that doesn’t dumb down the combat into mindless targetting and meat shielding, the players need to expect long-haul design and expect to be compensated over the long-haul and over the meta-haul, and the systems need to bulwark against early and long-term cheese / exploitation. If these issues can be resolved with a critically innovative system, then I feel that the meta-game, in terms of PvP and world combat, would skyrocket and begin to draw people in for more than the core reasons [loot, good (if not shallow) combat compared to other MMORPGs, and the ability to find combat almost instantly]. When you combine the core combat draws with a meta combat system, then UO would absolutely annihilate all other MMORPGs in holistic risk vs reward and incentives to PvP. The hitch is making a meta combat system work within UO’s template.
Good ideas should be incoming…
Hopefully.
Also, Yaht, I saw your UO duel video. I love those UO song remixes. They’re awesome.
Thanks for the comment about the YouTube vid and stuff! (&rest of u from prvs post)
Some good ideas already let’s see what else comes up.
I really really liked those remixes. I made a remix for the Buc’s Den song years ago but can’t find it now. I stacked samples of the midi trumpet and put one a fraction of a second behind the first and it gave it a cool sound. Keep up the good work.
I thik we’ve talked about this before. I have an idea that I’m sure tons of people will hate, but whatever.
One of the biggest reasons why other MMORPG PvP systems suck is that it becomes a stupid fucking grind like everything else. That, and because there’s no satisfaction in killing someone or dissapointment in getting killed when there’s 8 billion people zerging one target. “OMG I better tmake sure I can click on that target before he dies so that I can get my rep / point / whatever else have you.” Hell, half the time you can’t even tell how you died without scrolling back through some sort of log. This is the exact same reason I completely hated 32 player FPS zerg fests as well.
WoW had that problem, they did a little bit to fix it by limiting the amount of players in one area with 3v3 arenas etc, but the PvP was still based on a rock paper scissors class system, and still sucked.
my proposed method of madness… Limit guilds that are in order / chaos to 3 or 4 people.
In my opinion, 10 groups of 3 or 4 people trying to fight each other would be a TON more fun than two groups of 20 people all zerging one target.
Yea, I know vent would still make that happen, but you’ll never be able to uncreate voice chat systems,.
There’s no solution I love more than a solution everyone hates.
If I desperately wanted to fix THAT particular problem, I would ‘combat lock’ you the second you attacked someone in O/C. A combat lock would essentially lock you into a duel, with no one else able to cast offensive or defensive spells on either participant until the fight was over. This would, in a way, mimic UO PvP before Vent and EUO in that it was typically a huge mess of dudes that you ran into, and ended up in (essentially) a bunch of 1v1s. There was an odd cross heal and 2v1 or 3v2 or whatever in the middle of it, and that was fuzzy and special, but you can’t help that.
Now THAT is a system everyone would hate. But it’d be effective at the same time.
But yes, I’ve considered that zergs suck and standing out is great, and so are 1v1s. I’ve also considered that small group fights are where it’s at, period.
Yea, I included in my original description that maybe guilds on the same side of the fence (order or chaos) would not be able to perform beneficial acts on members of other guilds within the same faction… But quickly deleted it because voice chat systems would pretty much guarantee that someone would be unhealable then.
The ‘lock thing’ is kinda interesting to me. I wonder what a response would be to this type of ‘lock’ system where say, only three (or 2) people are allowed to cast either beneficial or negative spells on a target, and once that thresh hold is reached, no one else can.
Imagine the chaos and increased need for coordination. You’d have three people dumping on a person and one person in their group mini healing the target so that the opponents couldn’t adequately heal themselves, since you’d have taken up one of the beneficial target locks. Of course, you’d run the risk of having youre opponent all run in and cast In Mani on one person so that no one can heal him. Maybe also lock the number of people you are able to cast beneficial spells on to like three? That would also seem to eliminate such a tactic, since you wouldn’t always want to use one of your ‘beneficial lock’ targets on an opponent.
Thinking of these things as I type, so sorry if it doesn’t make sense or the idea sucks.
New PvP tactics?
Nah, lets just stick with pressing the EB hotkey and holding down last target when someone says “now.”
I like it. The lock turns combat into a bunch of 1v1s. The multi-lock turns combat into a bunch of 3v3s in a chaotic environment. It also, theoretically, gives a small group an advantage over a large group in much the same way the 1v1 lock does wherein the PvP is turned into an old kung-fu movie (opponents come one after another).
Except this is a bunch of small group fights that can, if you’re good enough I would suppose, cut down a larger group.
It would have to be situational. As in, contained entirely within O/C wars. You could never change PvP entirely to look like that, but you can make an opt-in system (with a larger reason to join, otherwise gank guilds never -would-).
Love it!
if you guys are looking for a UO fix until IPY is up, divinity was wiped and is now under test center rules (set skills, etc)
I wonder if they’d allow an IPY advertisement on the Divinity boards.
Oh well. Rock on!
rest assured im sticking w/ ipy -i support your vision azaroth!
Remember those words when the new Divinity launches sometime within the next 30 days (probably). It’s mind shattering what they’ve done.
I hope there are enough players for everyone’s shard, really. I don’t see why UO shards have to be a huge, immature pissing contest.
I’m sure Divinity will be fantastic. If someone likes it more than IPY, rock on. I hope they have a great time.
With competition comes innovation!
I’m ready to play both, more so IPY because of the way Az communicates and I can see he loves the game and the community it can create as much as all of us.
The more I think about that kind of mechanic, the more I begin to realize how many things it fixes.
People have often complained that the ease of healing made pvp lame due to razor’s healself feature. Wouldn’t be that way if you had to coordinate who you were even able to heal on the fly, and had a monkey wrench thrown into that by your opposition tossing heals on you mid dump.
People have often complained about the monotony of “on so and so, ready now” synch dump pvp. This would add some flavor to that as well, and make it far more challenging to pull off correctly.
Large zerging and following complaining? Done. If no more than three people can attack a single target in OC, then you’d never get stomped 10 on 1, and this would promote groups of 3 – 4 people banding together rather than super large zergs.
That is also good due to the literal contraints the game has instilled in it that yaht was mentioning.
the target locks would have to work in a way so that a negative action target lock could not be filled be a member of you own faction. Otherwise a group of three or 4 people could run in and coordinate a circle jerk of attacks againt each other and be unattackable.
yes, agreed that it would have to soleley be exclusive to OC, and yes, a smaller group could cut down a larger zerg group, unless the larger group coordinated their heals and attack locks in a manner so that three or so people were essentially sub groups, which would in turn make it a bunch of 3v3v3v3v3′s anyway.
It would be awesome to see how something liek that would work.
lol… spinning while healing so that your opponents don’t catch who used up all of their beneficial targets.
Agan though, how many people would be in favor of such a drastic change to group strategy?
how about a third o/c faction?
O/C/A
order / chaos / apathetic
Battlegrounds in UO would be amazing….
everyones seen how popular capture the flag can be
an automated system where 5 people can queue up for a CTF and play another 5 (or 10 if it was a 3 way)
or 10 people queue up for a Trinsic type siege where you need to destroy walls to get to the objective
winning could give points that could allow you buy differently hued items or something.
these are directly stolen from WoW but i dont care, i think it could really work in UO
If you do things like this you quickly take away from world pvp, a lot of people will only “queue ctf” and that will be enough pvp for them and you wont see them out world pvping. Just like in WoW. Need to limit the ammount of events like this all together. So many player run servers have gone from having pvp 24/7 to only having people log on for events like CTF where they can get there fix when a massive bunch of newbs are rushing in and not caring about dying because its a no loot, easy respawn system… Then they log off and the server goes quiet again.
I think anything that would stop people from just grouping in huge numbers is a great idea. The whole idea of safety in numbers is why PvP in every other MMO is just watered down shit.
I like the lock concept but what if instead of a combat lock it makes you ‘blue’ but blue like old factions where you can’t receive beneficial spells from anyone and without mounts most fighting will be in town so opposite players can’t attack blues without getting guard whacked or something like that.
I like the idea of lot’s of 1v1 fights in the middle of a zerg like a scene from Braveheart lol.
I would like to see some kind of points or reputation or something for O/C kills, similar to faction points but without the point holders.
If you really wanna piss people off and limit the sync dump BS don’t allow ANY 3rd party programs lol.
What about rotating battle grounds? That days battleground could be announced by an npc at british and blackthorns castle. This would identify an area for the day where O/C could be found in mass numbers. Maybe at the end of each day whoever killed more of the other within the battleground gets some sort of reward. Obviously you would need some checks in place to prevent rez kill of 2nd account or other abuses to win. As for the reward…it could be control of a town…gold…who knows…
I’ve actually been thinking about battlegrounds quite a bit. I haven’t come to any real conclusions yet.
Lock system sounds interesting.
An idea I had is a Line of Sight system to spellcasting, so basically it would work by drawing an imaginary collision line from you to your target, if there’s another player in the way, that player would receive the effect of the spell instead.
What this would do is discourage zerging because if there’s shitloads of people inbetween you and your target (likely in a mass zerg) then you may end up flamestriking your faction mates or worse, healing the enemy. Puts a whole new spin on things :)
So effectively being in a Zerg with a 2D line of sight system, you’d be fucking terrified for your life and would likley want to disperse from all the fireballs and Corp Por’s hurling passed you.
thinking about it, line of sight is already in with regards to walls etc so might not be too tough a thing to test out?
That definitely could be the best idea I’ve heard yet. Not sure if it’s possible though.
Genuinely an interesting idea. I’ll have to think about this one a little today.
If it’s possible achery and explosion pots would obviously need to use the same system to prevent everyone using bows/pots in zergs and I think make it only apply to PVP to prevent griefing in PvE (blocking players line of sight or using it to force a player to hit them with a spell, thus flagging them as grey and easy prey)
Example 1: If your intended target was an orc and a player jumped into your line of sight, the fireball would still hit only the orc.
Example 2: If your intended target was a player and a player jumped into your line of sight, the fireball would hit the player.
bastard lack of editing…
meant to say:
Example 2: If your intended target was a player and a player jumped into your line of sight, the fireball would hit the player *that jumped into your line of sight*
If that’s at all possible, it would completely awesome to see in action & see how it would change the tactics of pvp.
Very Interesting.
There are two preexisting war systems in UO to talk about: Factions and O/C. O/C being the best, factions being the most successful.
O/C is the best because it’s simplistic and allows a guild to start from the bottom and rise to the top in so many ways. I’m sure there’s a better way of putting why I like O/C better but what it comes down to is that I’m a long time pvper and O/C has left the best memories for me. I know I’m not alone in that.
Factions is the most successful because it produced the largest amount of participants, the largest fights, and gave PVP more meaning than it usually has.
It would seem that finding a balance between the two would be something to look into. Encourage larger participation in O/C and allow for pvp to have more meaning than just domination without inhibiting O/C from being as good as it’s always been. It sounds like I just described factions doesn’t it? Well I didn’t fuckzors.
So you think sort of a “Factions Lite” would be good?
O/C is just a way of flagging players to each other. It’s nothing more than that, with pretty (and largely useless) shields that EVERYONE can have. Which is fine, because they’re so useless.
So if we want to discuss a cross between O/C and Factions:
What, for you, made Factions great?
Factions to me were terrible. UO imo isn’t meant for large group pvp. It should be based on small to medium size groups (4-6). If your going to implement factions i surely hope you somehow make it where its medium group pvp not the large 20-30 vs 20-30. Another problem with factions were you couldn’t fight your “teamates”. Just some of my thoughts.
Hope to see this server soon! :D
The town taxes and owning of towns by certain factions, capturing sigs etc, that was kind of a great part of factions, but it was also lacking and not exactly transparent nor simple enough. Specially compared to the Order/Chaos system.
What I liked about factions was that People had to group up to defend the sigil (or what ever it was called been so long cant remember XD) It always that which made people group up so often and inspired the huge GVG battles.
The downfall i feel about this would be to many factions. The travel and trying to cut the person off with the sigil before they made it to there base was plenty fun though trying to be one step ahead of them which made it a bit more of a strategic battle.
Currently I’m wondering if people care for the LoS and Combat Lock ideas.
Both seem as though they’d be very tough to work out but I would definitely prefer trying out the LoS route than the combat locks. Combat locks just seem too superficial and I’d imagine would get complicated whereas LoS is something anyone can understand.
KISS (Keep it simple stupid) principle always works better, especially in games. Discovering a hidden depth later on is always a bonus,being easy to understand on first glance (LOS) will trump any complicated systems (Locks).
Goon just dropped knowledge
Nah, I swear that arrows still pointing up.
What what!
There was some server called Abyss or something with factions and set skills. Each faction had a castle. Those castles had moongates about 10 screens away to a central moongate place (fire temple) where you could then get into a moongate to run to any other castle.
You had to steal the thing from opposing castles.
What if the castles were custom where each faction member could earn a room that would be essentially a small house inside the castle once they got enough points for their faction.
People could live where they fight. House-fighting was never worked out right on UO. It was always pointless. But this way you can live in the castle and have a small-house-safe area but still be in the action.
Some thoughts—
I absolutely loved Abyss (sounds like you’re talking about the original EA Abyss that was around in about ’98?) I dont know if there was a player run server that copied it or whatever, but pretty much this whole server was just dedicated to this war. You logged on, ran through moongates to set your skills to 100, went to an island to pick up a spell book and some supplies then went to another island and picked a color (there was 8 I think) Then it was just a constant run back and forth between these huge castles trying to steal from each other. Certain gates were covered in like deamons and stuff. Everyone would sit around their moongate for about 5 minutes trying to get the courage up, and convince the whole team that “Blues gate is empty gogogo” and then everyone would jump blues gate and get mauled down by 50 camping blues. But shit it was fun.
aren’t raptors from colorado? ive been up in grand county working all summer. if you are from CO az, i like your odell brewery, new belgium sucks balls though, and walnut is nice in boulder
that is all
Just something on organised events and “battleground” type pvp a couple of people (including Az) have been thinking about, I wrote this up further but only today so I’m not sure anyone will get a read of it (been away for the weekend)
If you do things like this (permanent battlegrounds/ctf events) you quickly take away from world pvp, a lot of people will only “queue ctf” and that will be enough pvp for them and you wont see them out world pvping. Just like in WoW. Need to limit the ammount of events like this all together, yeah they are fun but at what cost? So many player run servers have gone from having pvp 24/7 to only having people log on for events like CTF where they can get there fix when a massive bunch of newbs are rushing in and not caring about dying because its a no loot, easy respawn system… Then they log off and the server goes quiet again. And if you dont make them no loot/easy respawn systems they dont really work. There isnt really enough time to go re-equip in a ctf situation etc…
Ok i have laid out this plan before on other shards, only to be ignored completely. But since you, Azaroth seem to be listening, I will take the time to write it all out again hehehe.
“Order vs. Chaos Town Conquest System”
Ok this is an open world system for order and chaos. Not some closed kind of arena type thing, but something more like factions.
This would require coding in some Global Messages, that is the meat and potatoes of this system. It is very much player driven, and very intuitive in that if action is going down EVERYONE will know about it.
Whenever 5 or more Order or 5 or more Chaos enter the guard zone of the particular towns that are up for grabs (You could limit it to Brit, Skara, Glow, Vesper, or more if you wish) then a Global Message pops up on EVERY PLAYERS SCREEN WHO IS IN GAME that says “The Forces of Chaos are invading the city of Moonglow!!” or “The Forces of Order are defending the city of Moonglow!!” This message would appear every 3 minutes on every client that is logged in. (You could put in a toggle in the options to turn off these Order/Chaos messages for people who are not interested in O/C wars)
The effect of this message should be huge. Because now EVERYONE who has an order or chaos character knows where to go for the Big Battle, NO MATTER what character they are on. They can recall home and jump on their O/C guy and join the battle at whatever town is being spammed.
Once one town is ‘under attack’ or ‘being defended’, then no other towns can be attacked or defended until the conflict at the current town is resolved.
You could throw in a Points system for kills, which would mostly only have effects of something just kind of neat like a special Paperdoll title like “Sargeant of Order, General of Order, Master of Order” etc.
Another cool feature would be to somehow track the towns that are conquered a lot by let’s say Chaos for example, if a town is constantly conquered by Chaos(Meaning the Order people have not showed up within 15 minutes of Chaos moving into a town to conquer it) then perhaps the Atmosphere of the town can change. Like there could be litter in the streets, skeletons, dead bodies etc. if Chaos controls a certain town a lot of the time, and if Order controls the town then it could have like nice Fountains and Statues and other cool stuff.
But really, that’s it. It tells everyone exactly where to go if they want to jump into a large scale battle, while NOT infringing on their normal gameplay for the sake of organized pvp.
And the best part is the relatively easy implementation of the Messages that make it all possible.
A lot of this can be expanded upon and made more streamlined, but the main idea is that of the System Messages on EVERY client logged into the game.
I dont mind the general idea of this, but I think multiple towns should be able to be attacked/defended at the same time so people can use a certain ammount of tactics to send x troops to skara as a decoy to send x troops to brit for the full invasion, things like that. The server wide messages when towns are being invaded are a good idea, but maybe it should be limited to those in either order or chaos receiving the message, that way you cant just bank sit on your blue and make the quick switch to pvp when this opportunity arises.
My dream system is similar to factions, but with no points. Factions is a good system, I like warring for control of towns but points pose a problem. Or maybe its just the version of points that existed in factions. The fact is someone makes it to 100 points and is at risk of losing 10 points dying will not go out and solo anymore. I enjoy factions for the large scale town defences/attacks/faction vs faction fights, but I dont like that the points/rank system involved then means that all of the fights turn into zergs, people wont go out and solo because they fear for their points. I think a system similar to factions but either without points, or where you only gain/lose 1 point at a time EVER would be a lot better.
no, no, you definently want every client to see those messages.
You want those bank sitters who would otherwise just be bank sitting to be out fighting the enemy in pvp combat, absolutely.
I wanted to add something else that I had forgotten about from my original idea.
You could have a voting system to put in place “Chaos Lords” and “Order Lords.” There could be like 3 on each side. These guys would be able to use a ‘/Ordermsg’ command to send up to 4 messages per hour.
Kind of idealistic this idea is, but the people of that particular faction would vote these 3 Lords into place, knowing that they are active players, have a high title, are decent players, etc.
Also have to put in something that makes sure you dont have characters of differing factions on different accounts if that is at all possible.
I dont know, I think if this was the system everyone would sit on their blues until they got a server wide message that said “order/chaos in x” Problem is, everyone is going to be on their blues waiting for the message. If it only went out to order/chaos that would force people to run around on order/chaos pvping untill the message came up instead of just bank sitting waiting for the message. Therefor more 1v1s/small group pvp until there was a build up of players and then large scale group pvp. Under your system I see a lot less 1v1s going on and people just bank sitting and waiting for a chance to log onto order/chaos chars and be involved in zergs.
I like this idea, but jay is right the message needs to be sent out only to O/C people. Huge fights are fun but running around searching for people to fight is a lot more fun.
People would exploit the Combat lock. Such as using it to be invincible while camping Idocs. Also they could have 2 other people on the extra faction as dummies to prevent teammates help.
How’s that Q n’ A coming along Azaroth?
<3
My answers would have been revised several times by now if I had posted it. I don’t think it’s a good idea until open beta.
Yea, there’s things about the combat locks that are exploitable… like attacking each other to make one person invincible.. which is why it was tossed out there about negative acts performed on members of the same faction being extremely limited. You could prevent that by implementing something like a DoT that gets applied to a target if all of his / her negative combat locks are filled by members of the same faction.
With that said, here’s a few reasons why I’m ultimately opposed to the LOS idea.
It seems like a simple enough idea at first glance, but so does combat locks. Sure everyone knows what loS is… But everyone also knows what three is, and what negative and beneficial acts are. It’s when you start thinking about what the players would do with these things when it actually becomes complicated.
First, what would you propose as a width range that would constitute LoS? If it would really only by a width of one tile from the path of your character to the target, the mechanic would almost never matter.
Second, who would be able to be a recipient of a beneficial or harmful spell cast? How would you town fight and risk having your opponent LoS you on a blue bank sitter and get you guard whacked? Obviously, the mechanic would then have to be set so only OJs can be attacked by an O/C member, which would suck for slower times when you want to practice fighting a same faction guild or set up some 2v2, or tournies, or anything else.
If it were not set that way, you could potentially end up dumping on a person in your group, which is stupid and would lead to no one ever chasing anyone.. ever.. because of that.
In terms of exploitability, people would sit there with unequipped characters hidden all over the place ready to pop out and LoS people as soon as they started casting.
It completely defeats the purpose of breaking reflect. . “oh great, I popped someone’s reflect but they just ran behind someone else… I guess I’ll break theirs..” and then they just continue that circle… and PvP turns into a bunch of people running in circles around each other putting reflect back up.
No one would ever chase anyone becase of being fearful of getting LoS of a heal.
So, would the LoS only apply to negative acts? or would opposing factions be LoSing and ‘stealing’ heals too?
How would it effect AoE spells like MS and EQ?
Would it work like other LoS with buildings, for things like hiding? could you just run behind another player and then hide?
And oh yea… Logged into divinity to see what the test was like… There were five people logged in.
There’s a private IP for Revelation btw…
What is the private IP for Revelation?
FYI that’s just the old server in TC mode; it’s not the new server.
I always thought it would be interesting to do away with both factions and Order/Chaos and make it completely player-driven with Guilds/Alliances. This is, however, contingent upon the idea that there’s something worth fighting for, like city control that doesn’t suck (Regional benefits, siege, resource management [Armor for guards, taxes to pay them, building upkeep, etc.]).
I think it would be interesting if an alliance could control one, and only one town, war others to plunder something of value, and defend. This would inevitably lead to a handful of large alliances with lots of guilds, but alliances that control cities would always be at war (Think faction alignment) with other alliances that control cities.
And since you have something of value that must be managed by players, not NPC’s if it had good city control, it leaves things open to all kinds of political intrigue, backstabbing, betrayals, politicking, etc.
Just a random thought. Look forward to seeing what path you follow, Az.
Forgot to mention – It would also allow alliances to take towns they conquered and leave their former city uncontested for another alliance to claim. No sense doing it if you always had to keep 1 city!
“First, what would you propose as a width range that would constitute LoS? If it would really only by a width of one tile from the path of your character to the target, the mechanic would almost never matter.”
- Depends on the angle, if you have a player on all 3 adjacent tiles (including diagnal) that are closest to the enemy your LOS is blocked. It’s supposed to really only come into effect in Zergs so it shouldn’t come into effect in most small group fights like you say.
“Second, who would be able to be a recipient of a beneficial or harmful spell cast? How would you town fight and risk having your opponent LoS you on a blue bank sitter and get you guard whacked? Obviously, the mechanic would then have to be set so only OJs can be attacked by an O/C member, which would suck for slower times when you want to practice fighting a same faction guild or set up some 2v2, or tournies, or anything else.”
- Am I the only one who doesn’t see the point in Town fighting? If you don’t want to risk fireballing a bank sitter, with all due respect don’t bloody fight around banks or crowded places? Tournies could be held anywhere.
“In terms of exploitability, people would sit there with unequipped characters hidden all over the place ready to pop out and LoS people as soon as they started casting.”
- Details like that can be fixed, just have to find the best solution. e.g, Already said if your attacking mobs in PvE don’t let the LOS rule apply to prevent such exploits. If your spell target is a player then wheres the exploit if you accidently hit another hidden guy? If you lay your bed you lie in it…
“It completely defeats the purpose of breaking reflect. . “oh great, I popped someone’s reflect but they just ran behind someone else… I guess I’ll break theirs..” and then they just continue that circle… and PvP turns into a bunch of people running in circles around each other putting reflect back up.”
- It’s called flanking, if you are in a group of 4 attacking 2, you would spread out and attack from all sides, then who are they gonna hide behind? And as for trees and shit, yeah it would create a cover system which sounds pretty interesting actually.
Above should have been a reply to Sultani, sworn i pressed the right reply button….
Also on town fighting for O/C, just make it so that non-O/C members in towns can’t block LOS and so have no bearing on combat. Coding permitting.
BTW when I say I don’t see a point to Town fighting I meant in the crowded areas like Banks. I think if LOS was added it would put off combat in such places for the reasons you specified. But in reality, it would probably just lead to O/C fighting on the quieter outskirts and town borders.
Also to add, LOS would no question favour melee combat in mass fights or battles in narrow places. I really would like to see a return to a more melee centric PvP so I don’t really have a problem with that. PvP should be more then just dumping on players.
And yes I spammed all this shit because of the lack of an edit button, soz.
at least it made a nice pattern like this
\bla bla bla
\pvp and stuff
\why isnt there an edit button?
/oh well i’ll keep typing
/woah look at my pattern
/win.
damnit! this site didnt let me put spaces before my \ so that last comment was useless!
and now cos I cant edit I’m the one spamming stuff up.
lol.
\
.\
..\
../
./
/
Thats how it was supposed to look :(
hey az, i’m going to attempt to word this question without bias: will you or the staff build any towns or otherwise prepare anything special for large guilds that roleplay? if you don’t want to answer in this, please add it to that Q&A. can’t wait for the server!
I’ve smoked over a quarter pound of buds working on the music project over past month or so full time. I’m a tad over halfway finished and it’s been a lot of man hours and joints.
So I imagine if I was Az, I would probably require about thirty-seven pounds of dank and 3274 man hours to get the server launched from scratch.
I don’t like the combat lock idea at all really. I can understand the issue it tries to adress but UO has always been and open sandbox free game. I don’t like that kind of limitations.
As fot the LoS I have to agree with sultani. There would be no end to people running behind other people to put reflect up. Such a change would shift balance towards heal so much that no one would ever die.
I always sort of liked the way explosion worked on IPY when it was bugged and did not stack. Took some power away from the synch dump. Made people harder to kill but also made fights more interesting imo. There was no teamspeak on osi…
I was forced to jog with my girlfriend the other day and used that time to come up with what I think would improve the O/C system..
The O/C system is just a glorified way of flagging opponents. The only problem with it is there is no real reason to participate besides being flagged and having others be flagged. What I suggest is that the system should be incentivized (is that a word?) with a reward system kinda like the paladin one.
Here’s my idea:
In the major city associated with Order or Chaos (brit or trin respectively I believe) you could put an armorer for those forces. He could sell you semi-powerful armor and weapons with maybe a slight hue change (darker for chaos, lighter for order). Not for gold, but for a number of unique kills of the opposing forces.
Each order or chaos soldier could carry a sigil of some sort – a necklace or something, that they drop on death, and five of these could be exchanged for something like a chaos halberd of power.
To prevent hoarding and the economy fucking nature of giving out free shit, these items are locked to your backpack and on death, transform into an extra sigil. So if you kill a chaos guy with chaos hally, you get his sigil and his halberd’s sigil. Notice that a halberd that cost five only turns into one.
The sigil’s should be locked to your backpack too and could be dropped on death or maybe every sigil over five could be dropped on death or something. Also, only one death a day drops a newly synthesized sigil to prevent sigil hoarding abuse. The idea here is to prevent someone storing 50k sigils in their tower and always being equipped for free.
You could also make the armorer’s inventory list a dynamic thing and hold server wide events to obtain a new item or defend an old item from being taken from the chaos or order armorer. Say spawn an object of power deep on ice island that grants either armorer the ability to sell a 3rd tier magic leather armor set for five sigils and the first side to run it back to their armorer gets that option until the next time you feel like running an event with that prize.
The idea here is to give incentives to O/C wars, to do so with limited abuse potential, and to give an easy option to make large scale O/C battles. Also the objects should not be so powerful as to tilt field PvP to one side or the other.
It’s meant not to add an extra grind, but to take away a grind in that you can arm yourself just by participating in chaos an order wars. Maybe give the option to exchange sigils for reagents, weapons, armor or whatever at the armorer.
Only problem I see with this is if non O/C players kill an O/C player – what happens to the sigils. Can’t come up with a solution to that myself.
Aaanyways, that’s my idea. Thanks for listening!
I know this post derailed, I don’t have much to say on the group combat thing as I thought it was fine on IPY1.
Ok I read the derailed thread and I have to say that these solutions to relatively small problems are sounding pretty damn complicated. Adding an LOS to mobiles? I can’t imagine that’s an easy feat in UO where only statics can create an LOS obstruction.
Also that drastically changes the game. I mean, maybe it would work but that would that require some serious testing in large scale combat.
The only problem that I think exists is blue healers in O/C wars – the solution is to flag them the same as whoever they are healing for an extended period of time – maybe an hour?
And the combat locks – man that would get complicated. I like the romantic idealism of returning to a day before voice comm but I just think it’s too complicated. Imagine restricting group size to three or five, and then locking groups in combat with eachother. But then, what happens when you have six guys. One guy is fucked.
I would have to hear a more fleshed out plan for this idea, but all the ways I imagine it outside of 1v1 locks, gets far too complicated.
Yeah Ox, there’s been a lotta good ideas and some eyebrow raising ones so far, but this has been an interesting topic so far and some of these ideas aren’t half bad. I dunno if any of the big ones so far are feasible or necessary but it’s good food for thought so far.
My biggest concern in this whole thing is whether or not it will add a new element to PvP and somehow fit the setting of UO properly. Maybe more refinement and tweaking is needed rather than giant overhauls. I dunno, let’s see what else comes up.
I just dropped “so far” 4x in a single paragraph. S’what happens when you type while pretending to listen to people hitching in your ear!
I’m 100% against the combat locks, once we start heading this way its like ox said, you’re taking away from the sandbox experience, the original idea of UO which i think is what we all miss is the freedom to do what you want and how you want it. Once you put something like combat locks in and you cant gank someone 5v1 you’re taking away from this experience. I know zergs and ganks get annoying as hell, but it is part of the game and can go both ways I guess. I think rather than locking people out of the ability to do this, there should just be incentives/encouragement to take part in both styles of pvp, large scale 5, 6, 7v7 + situations but also a reason to solo or go out looking for 2v2 that you can’t accomplish in large scale fights.
New Ultima Producers Letter hints at possible official Classic UO shard:
http://www.uoherald.com/news/news.php?newsid=1082
he made a hint that he might gather a team to look at it.. Next year? or so i understood it :P
I don’t get why they’ve “hinted” at a classic server since the moment the game play changed and people starting calling the old shot classic. Sort of boy-who-cried-wolf at this point.
Playing official UO in 2010 even if it was a “classic” server would be akin to sticking ur wee
…stickin it wee-wee in a wood chipper. Fuckin iPhone browser…
The thing that happened with this is in March for the first time the Devs mentioned they might consider a classic shard, someone I know who still plays EA UO told me about it so I went onto stratics and signed up, made a thread asking what a classic server means to them and weather people were supporting it and why? It got overwhelming response to the tune of like 2k+ posts within two weeks and they had to lock the thread because people couldnt get through the 20 odd pages on it and it was slowing shit down or some crap (dunno they probably made it up)
Anyway the reason everyone got so interested is that players have thrown around the words “bring back a classic shard” for years but the devs have always shut it down pretty quickly, this was the first time the Devs (without being provoked even) brought up the chance of a classic shard. I posted about 400 posts within a month and then it all went quiet until this.
So like has been said they are probably just dangling the carrot to keep people interested in whats happening with EA uo, but if it ever happens, as much as I love what player run servers have done for the UO community, I hope everyone makes a quick return to the real UO. Nothing will ever compare to what it is unfortunately, it seems weird thinking about it because you can get basically the same thing, and for free from player run servers, but it just feels different for some reason.
The idea about combat locks is I guess essentially the same thing as a damage limitation such as exp not stacking (in the end)…
Though, all that did was promote larger groups. That’s where the combat lock idea is different. In terms of difficulty, I’m just gonna assume you’re talking about coding, because yea, there’s a ton of things that would need to go into it to make it work properly..
When you think about it, the LoS idea is no less complex (likely.. I have no idea how to code anything.. lol).
So we’re always talking about the idealistic return to absence of voice chat programs and automatic synch dump pvp in large numbers… For me, the proposed suggestion to return to that in lieu of removing voice chat programs was more for being viable if you were trying to play solo. Log in, go out in the field, find a fight, get para’d and synch dumped by at least for other people instantly.
I’m not saying field pvp should be all dueling and whatnot, I’m jsut saying that playing the game solo shouldn’t benerfed so hard that it’s not even an option.
As much as I think combat locks would be a step in the right direction to that, I’ll just toss this out there..
How hard would it be to code something like… your client automatically gets a critical error if you have ventrilo, skype, or teamspeak open?
Not hard. It’d also be a massive invasion of privacy.
Or, not actually any real invasion of privacy, but as has been discussed with multiple coders before, I would never perpetuate the idea that spying on what your computer is doing so you can play a game (or whatever) is okay. That’s a slippery-assed slope, and I’ll be no part of the degradation of your rights as a consumer or as a human being.
If we fix a problem, we fix it in the game. Not on your computer.
“Everyone has two cents, but it’s only worth taking from very few people. Most people just swallowed a couple pennies and expect you not to mind when they come out covered in shit.”
Also, I apologize for my lack of comment on a few posts in this thread. I’ve felt ultimately I should probably leave some things until later.
I don’t get this whole discussion about 1vs1 in the order/chaos discussion ( even though i didnt read ALL , i admit ) . To me, the entire idea about O/C is Group fights, Guild vs guild etc..
And ontopic , i would see somekind of system where O/C affect things around the world. Merge i together with the system Factions use, except the acual Economy touch.. but say… Chaos ‘Lead’ the war, and some sertain spaces are overwhelmed with monsters etc.. Take the meanings of the Chaos/Order literally and have it represent just that. order and chaos..
Other than that, i wouldnt really know.. I like it the way it is, but with some kind of reward for doing it .. or recognition in a way.
Heh.. I’ve read literally this entire thread and um.. very little of it (though there is some) is in regards to discussion about 1v1s… not really sure what that comment is about.
Having the O/C actually have an effect and be tied to the rest of the world outside of PvP is a good idea, as it’s in line with something that I’ve said about 10 million times that I still feel is of critical importance. Interaction of all play styles at all stages of the game including development and end game.
O/C does not have to be only about interaction between pvp’ers.
Let’s plan for Order on IPY, and hope for Chaos.
Or lets not.
hope for chaos that is
NO we want chaos, but prepare everything for order.
It’s the way of the UO young vonzer.
Uo at its best was 98-99 before it was chaotic. I personally do not mage pvp and think gank squads and incessant pking to be highly detrimental to the uo world. Im waiting for ipy because azaroth is apparently trying to create a server which is less chaotic. If you want mindless chaos , go play on hybrid. Because to me you just sound like an idiot who will hurt the game.
Are you serious..
I am merely suggesting that no matter what systems are in place, players always find a way to either grief or take advantage of said systems in such an open mmorpg.
You flying off the handle and calling people idiots without actually knowing a thing about me, is a trait I’m sure gets you places.
Ps, UO was chaotic before it left beta.
No no no. I never called you an idiot , i said you sound like one. Big diff. I personally believe anyone who hopes for chaos is hoping for that servers demise , which is imo dumb.
But yes , i agree with you. Azaroth will not be able to stop gank squads and rampid pking scaring away all noobs.
ps back in 99 i used to chill at the moonglow graveyard and kill liches with groups of 30-40 other noobs without ever being pked. In fact , 7x reds would occasionally drop by and join in the fun. Not that it never happened , but nothing like what came to be. And yes , we all know about Rainz
are you really trying to win this argument to give yourself a sense of gratification or are you just an idiot?
shut up and talk about UO, worry about yourself instead of trying to sway people into your way of thinking.
the fuck are you talking about jackass? I was talking about UO at its best when there was little chaos. And i was talking about uo you intellectually deprived fucking ape.
WHY CANT I DELETE! 20 hours without a smoke will do that to a guy. Either way your still a little fucking cunt to stupid to realize that putting your nose into something that isnt any of your business and insulting me with the intent of stopping me from putting my nose in someones elses business is blatantly fucking hypocritical and speaks to your serious lack of intellect , but still , i shouldnt have had that outburst. Luckily for me though i have 4 ip addresses. So on second thought , go fuck yourself moron.
qq
go smoke some cigarettes
loser
So I’ve been playing this PC game version of Magic: The Gathering that came out in 1997. It was super hard to get installed and working right but man is it fun. Reminds me of when I was a nerdy lil teen right before UO came out and I sold all my cards cuz pking ppl all night long was more enjoyable than pking boobs at the hobby store for an hour after school. Too bad the cards I’m playing with in the game are worth around $5,000 if they were real and I sold all mine for just a few hundred like a decade ago. Anyways here’s a link if anyone wants to check it out… There’s even an RPGish feature in the game which takes it to a whole different level – http://slightlymagic.net – the program is called Manalink.
It’s a gift, I’ll admit it.
It’s awefully quiet here :(
I hope the people aint too busy with another UO Related launch that we do not speak of :P
let’s QQ less, let the grown-ups talk, and discuss IPY instead of flexinf wannabe-E-Muscles? :)
AZ should make a new post and get something happening asap..
So I started reading up until Factions Lite.
I’m down with that idea. But you know what I always liked? Dungeon PvP. Maybe every town should (already does) have a dungeon/shrine associated with it. Maybe the O/C or faction bonuses that apply to the town also apply to the dungeon. Or people in the owning faction get a bonus in that dungeon. Or faction guards in the dungeon. A way to affect the world. That’s what UO was always about. Affecting the world around you. Let O/C do that.