Excelsior

Greetings all,
First and foremost I write this with nothing but the utmost respect for the server players, staff, and admin. This is just meant as a way for me to share my thoughts thus far. I've been here almost 3 weeks, play daily, and am planning on staying. It seems frequently servers can get 1 tracked the older they get, so I offer my fresh insight. I've played uo off and on since release and even gm'd for a few years on a private server.

[claim should have a command to incorporate specific desired items. I played on a server that had this and it was magnificent. You just typed [claimadd "itemname" and it would include that item. At the very least I feel gems/ore/leathers should be included as they are essentially money.

Bard Mastery spell book would make an excellent ED item to breath a little excitement into the vets gameplay

The vendors.uoex.net site should have a link on the home page. So many players come here and dont know anything about it.

Realestate is pretty scarce out there. A server with potentially unlimited housing slots should have some sort of house decay. Otherwise certain people will end up owning large chunks of land leaving us new people to fight for scraps. Many people come back to uo because of the house customization and the potential is severely limited here.

Newbie champ has not given out a 120 powerscroll the past 5 times i've done it to any participating members. This champ is fairly time consuming for us and I'm to the point where its just not even worth spending an hour on for 115 cooking. I've even completed it solo and not gotten a 120. If this is intentional I dont really have a problem with it, we dont need to flood the market with PS any more then it already is. I just wanted to point this out.

Player's taking the liberty to flame people for things that are "against" the rules is a bit out of hand here sometimes. Staff is responsible for this, not players (within reason of course, some players need a heads up). I see this as a form of harassment and I've seen people get yelled at for mentioning alcohol in passing in global. There are several bars in game, and even custom pets that talk about and condone alcohol use. This is just one example but if the game can talk about it, why cant players without getting harassed by others that don't approve. What could be done about this I do not know but I feel it should be addressed.

Finally I would add not to forget about us new players. Sure there is a relatively large dedicated base of veteran players here, but eventually those numbers need to be replenished. I recently attempted the Mid lvl winter event quest and it took me nearly 5 hours to complete because the spawn timer had been up'd to accomodate the players that could fly through it in 10 minutes and didnt want to have to wait for respawns. I dare say those players calling for a faster respawn didnt even want to wear the earrings, they just wanted to lock them down in their houses for deco. Again this is just one example but it certainly illustrates the point.

All in all this is a great shard and I am happy to play here. There are a ton of features here that have far surpassed my expectations and long time experience with uo. I just thought I'd take the time to address these things with the hopes of bettering our commuity.
Respectfully,
Oaken

I'll reply with a point by point breakdown of my own thoughts regarding this. Its not meant to be anything more than the opinion of an old cranky dude.

I like the claim idea, but it would severely unbalance the economy. If you want the items, you have the option to loot them, otherwise, its just overkill and we would need more gold sinks.

Bard Mastery sounds cool... what is it exactly?

The vendors site... yeah, useful to new players, but i still think plays a role in devaluing items, as people do a quick lookup, and drop the price for a quick sale, which leads the next person to drop the price further, etc in a big black hole.

More Real Estate coming soon i believe keep your eyes peeled.

I don't think any champ should drop 120's at all since we have powerscroll bags, and believe those bags should be restricted to 1 per account. I have gone into the why's in other threads, and don't feel the need to repeat my reasons here.

If you're speaking about me saying something to someone, is this is a family friendly shard first and foremost. Yes, there are bars in the game. But that doesn't mean its ok for a global chat topic. Staff can't always be around, and its us, the players that have to take responsibility sometimes. It falls on the players as well as the staff to make the shard awesome.

The topic title is a bit misleading...

[claim:
I agree with Asmo on this - it'd destabilize the economy even further if we were allowed to add whatever we want to the claiming. Personally I'm happy with the gold and an ointment or two. The prize for looting by hand (or risking an autolooter) is that you get more stuff=more money. If you want fast, you [claim. That way you can choose how much time you want to devote to getting the loot and in turn - how much you earn.

Vendors:
From what I've seen most (if not all) MMO's have a system like that and it works. It actually allows for the prices to relate to difficulty (time wise) of obtaining the item as well, insted of simple supply/demmand . If something is hard to get - it will still be expensive because no one will want to supply the item if the price is too low (no one would farm the GoC quest if the going price was 200k). The Vendors site just serves to stabilize the prices around the point of no profit. Since that point is (usually) below the price that everyone considered to be regular you have devaluing.

Housing:
I'd agree with Oaken - the space available is limited. True - you can still find a 18x18 or a castle spot. But it's not easy, and if you want something bigger - forget it. And there is no possibility of negotiating with a neighbour to move (for a considerable fee) so you can add another 18x18 to your plot - 90% of the neighbours aren't there anymore, just their houses.

Newb champ:
I'd actually make it into something... unique. Not just another MoA, but an easier (and perhaps less rewarding) champ that would actually serve to familiarize players with the idea of champing and the rules of it without significant danger. Not just some newbie-exclusive MoA.

"Family friendly":
As far as the issue mentioned by Oaken, the rule is - if it's part of the game itself it's ok, if it's player action or word it's against the rules. At least that's how it was explained to me by some staffer (I think it was +Chaos, a long time ago). I do find it ridiculous however. All this talk about family friendliness and yet you can kill someone, chop him to pieces and then decorate your house with said pieces. Seriously? All you parents don't see anything bad in it, as far as your 12-year old kid is concerned? Yet you scream out in anger when someone uses the word "damn"? Even though we have Balron damnation? Wow. Just wow.

Rminding:
I think that reminding people about the rules is good. It's just that some take it too far. When someone does something against the rules it's ok to say "This and that is against the rules. Please stop it." It's actually all that should be said if you're not a GM. Arguing in global about said offence, multi-line rants about "kids these days", "noobs", "idiots" or whatever else - that's too much.

I agree with everything Ilsanor said. And I wasnt directing anything towards you Asmodean. You mention something is against the rules and leave it at that, which is perfectly acceptable. Like Ilsanor says though some people just take it too far and start threatening staff action and just being very rude about it. Its not a player's place to threaten staff action against another player or to interpret the rules based on their own beliefs. Its immature and I see it as a form of harassment (which is also against the rules).

As far as the bard masteries it's something osi implemented awhile back. Its basically gives a little more combat power to those musically inclined. It essentially just provides party buffs and mob debuffs. Nothing too outrageous that I would call it overpowered but it's definitely fun to mess around with and can be very effective. Compared to the druid spells the bard masteries are nothing lol.

Oh and sorry if the topic title is misleading. A compendium is a list of things relating to a specific subject. As a new player I composed a list of things relating to how I feel the shard could be improved based solely on my opinions.

I do not feel that [claimadd would debunk the economy in any way. My main issue with it is I cant get gems. Autolooting scripts are available, and if players didnt take advantage of gm inactivity and afk combat then this wouldnt be an issue at all.

I believe there is an old thread where we calculated the actual profit gains from adding gems, etc to claim. The result was actually a lot more than youd think. While I agree its a great idea, its not really economy-friendly.

Its a huge profit gain if you can get the gems. Its the main reason why I [claimall. Then Every half hour of fighting or so I spend about 3-5 minutes dumping trash which nets me a ton of tokens. 3 days of my regular farming after purchasing a gem pouch netted me a whopping 22k gold worth of gems (not counting the handful of the custom rare gems I acquired) I think itd balance out eventually. This server doesnt seem to be overly concerned with economy friendly things ie,. pet breeding, powerscroll bags, druid spells, razor, easyuo, etc. Gems in claimall wouldn't even scratch the surface of the economic impact these other things provide. Especially considering the ability to autoloot using EUO

**Just as a side note (i have no real issues with pet breeding, I'm glad its here as it does draw in a lot of players) I think pet breeding is by far one of the best and worst things ever done to this game lol. Its a lot of fun and everything but it just makes this game so easy its ridiculous. I'm not bashing it, I know a lot of people thoroughly enjoy pet breeding and healing their pet's while they do all the work for them =P But if we're gonna talk economics...

Oaken Stone wrote:
[claim should have a command to incorporate specific desired items. I played on a server that had this and it was magnificent. You just typed [claimadd "itemname" and it would include that item. At the very least I feel gems/ore/leathers should be included as they are essentially money.

This would Totally kill a dying economy for commodities as it already is basically dead for most of them. Imagine how low the price of Gold skulls would be if you could loot bones for summoning with [claimadd . Not a good idea in the matter of how bad the economy is.

Oaken Stone wrote:Newbie champ has not given out a 120 powerscroll the past 5 times i've done it to any participating members. This champ is fairly time consuming for us and I'm to the point where its just not even worth spending an hour on for 115 cooking. I've even completed it solo and not gotten a 120. If this is intentional I dont really have a problem with it, we dont need to flood the market with PS any more then it already is. I just wanted to point this out.

All champs are that way. Ive done 20 champ in a week without a 120, then done 4 in a day with 4, i think its just percentage based on if it goes out. nothing on dmg, or anything.

Oaken Stone wrote:Realestate is pretty scarce out there. A server with potentially unlimited housing slots should have some sort of house decay. Otherwise certain people will end up owning large chunks of land leaving us new people to fight for scraps. Many people come back to uo because of the house customization and the potential is severely limited here.

It is semi scarce, Scarce for if you are tryign to maybe place a castle outside on your own. Colibri does drop houses randomly at diff periods of times. The staff however can place things for you for a small fee, over twigs and little rocks *trees cannot be blocking the spot or elevation differences that are dramatic*

Oaken Stone wrote:The vendors.uoex.net site should have a link on the home page. So many players come here and dont know anything about it.

I am totally not a big fan of this option. Too easy to lower the price, even for your own good or say you just want to be mean to everyone and ruin the economy for anything. You can just login to this site, search, find all the prices, set yours lower, Announce in world chat that "well the normal price is now 1200 gp" even though its just one person out of 20, People like to think if one thing sells for it, even if the player put the wrong price on accident on their vendor, that that is the new going rate. So I really don't like that site, or find it useful other then "Who can go lower faster" its like how [exex allows u to put like 5 eds at one price, Then someone else lowers by 10 gp, then the next lowers back at 10 gp, then another lowers at 10 gp, and half the time, one of the people lowering, might be just lowering with 1 ed each time. Doesn't mean that's the new going rate. My thoughts

Oaken Stone wrote:Player's taking the liberty to flame people for things that are "against" the rules is a bit out of hand here sometimes. Staff is responsible for this, not players (within reason of course, some players need a heads up). I see this as a form of harassment and I've seen people get yelled at for mentioning alcohol in passing in global. There are several bars in game, and even custom pets that talk about and condone alcohol use. This is just one example but if the game can talk about it, why cant players without getting harassed by others that don't approve. What could be done about this I do not know but I feel it should be addressed.

Sometimes yes a player might come off rude telling you the rules. but a lot of the times, that could come as a benefit to you of them telling you instead of the staff either Chat banning of Jailing you for something. Sometimes it can be better to just see the players all warn you about it, then you say kk sorry, and the staff see and not give the discipline. I mean If you spam in wc, and a person warns you, you might not get 2 hrs or however many they give for it, of not being able to talk in wc.
Don't always think its players trying to be rude....Its like when we write wikis for things, and 10 players in the same 2 days ask 30 questions on there, Yes it might be faster to answer them for their response time, but if I have to answer 30 quetsions 10 times to each player....I am taking far more time out of my game play. Which Could be simply solved by reading the wiki's that we took the time to write for them in the first place.

The vendors issue is tricky, and often times a double edged sword. While [exex allows you to easily acquire materials, ammo, etc. and prevent rampant "buying out" of NPC vendors so that you can quickly acquire materials, regeants, etc. to GM skills, it also destroys the player-vendor market for selling materials, etc. I have only seen ingots for sale on one vendor at TC, and when I played OSI UO I distinctly remember ingot/lumber commodity deeds being hot sellers on player run vendors. Still on the fence about this issue and I wasn't around before it was implemented (if it was implemented vs. being on the shard from the beginning), so I'm unable to speak intelligently on the merits of having it in place vs. not aside from what I mentioned above.

Again, as convenient as the world-teleporter>shops ability is on this shard, I also think it takes away a large part of the player-run economy, especially when coupled with the fact that there are also rentable vendor locations in TC, Makoto Zento, etc. and the vendors.uoex.net site. One of my favorite things to do as a player was to establish my customer base, even if my small house was in some austere location, through good old fashioned consistent vendor-restocking, competitive pricing, and distributing pre-marked runes to my house around towns and on my player vendor. This also helped somewhat balance the housing market. Even small marble/small fieldstone houses were extremely valuable if they were placed in advantageous locations such as right outside major cities, where both new and old players could quickly run a few tiles away from a major city and buy much-needed items. The road from Vesper to Minoc in particular comes to mind here. There was never room for anything larger than a small stone tower, however those were some of the most coveted housing locations on the shards.

Also a huge proponent of some spring cleaning house decays, lol. I've seen several castles as well as other 18x18s that are just flat-out in cool locations that have been dormant since I began playing this past August. What would be really cool is if the bi-monthly inactive account deletion was posted on the forum announcements and players could make a mad dash on a set date every couple of months trying to find any houses that fell. (Perhaps it already occurs this way. I have not seen it since I began playing here to know for sure).

Just my two cents. Take it or leave it, but those are some of the biggest things (and probably only things) I really miss here compared to the original days when I played UO:Ren through AoS on OSI.

This for the most part is my first experience with UO. My boyfriend played original UO and introduced me to T2A shortly before we came here. Recently have been going back and forth between this and another shard.

I agree with you on the vendor site. It is too easy for people to get ripped off otherwise. It keeps vendors in check and helps a lot in negotiations. It is a huge asset specific to this shard. It sure beats walking around trying to find something specific in a bunch of bags on a bunch of vendors, only to find it for 1/10 of the price later. I think the market should be competitive and fair, and that isn't synonymous with "devaluing" items.

YES house decay. However, most unoccupied houses are huge and have tons of high value items. House drops of this kind could have a huge negative effect on the economy and I think it would be better if everything inside decayed with the house.

Oaken Stone wrote:
Finally I would add not to forget about us new players...

This is the biggest one for me. This shard is heavily geared towards vets and those who donate. One example that baffled me is when admins jailed (kind of) all new players during the last auction without warning or explanation. I get that some people make new characters to troll the auction...but for REAL new players, was not very welcoming and if that had happened to me I would have logged off and found another shard. Been here for a few months now, haven't donated yet. Dungeons are either ridiculously difficult (except for maybe level 1), or stupid easy and only fit for a true noob. Recent dungeon re-vamps adding extra spawns have only contributed to this...dungeons I used to find easy/challenging suddenly have a room packed with higher level mobs that kill me and my pets without breaking a sweat. I think that staff and players have gotten out of touch with what it means to not have relayers, maxxed mules, and insta-heal, and make the game less fun for those of us that don't aspire to that.

Not trying to be offensive, but Oaken is right about the importance of fresh insight so there it is.

Dianne wrote:
This is the biggest one for me. This shard is heavily geared towards vets and those who donate. One example that baffled me is when admins jailed (kind of) all new players during the last auction without warning or explanation. I get that some people make new characters to troll the auction...but for REAL new players, was not very welcoming and if that had happened to me I would have logged off and found another shard. Been here for a few months now, haven't donated yet. Dungeons are either ridiculously difficult (except for maybe level 1), or stupid easy and only fit for a true noob. Recent dungeon re-vamps adding extra spawns have only contributed to this...dungeons I used to find easy/challenging suddenly have a room packed with higher level mobs that kill me and my pets without breaking a sweat. I think that staff and players have gotten out of touch with what it means to not have relayers, maxxed mules, and insta-heal, and make the game less fun for those of us that don't aspire to that.

You do realize they stated their reasoning for doing what they did before that auction. They didn't just blindly make a jail cell there, they even said why in wc and in the auction room.


And what dungeon has been re-vamped recently with "higher level mobs" iirc they have all been re-vamped with more of the same exact spawn that are in said dungeons.

Yeah maybe it stinks to try to kill with one pet, But most of those dungeons you could probably still do without even having 220 dex and a yumi, or a pet with proper keys for [cs touchoflife and [band for using vet. If u can do a champ with a pet, u can definatly do these "re-vamped" dungeons with pets.

We have to agree that A lot of us use different fighting skills, and maybe someday somehow there can be ways to figure out to make a balance with all of them used at once. Probably not very possible. But don't say that a re-vamped dungeon has new higher level mobs. Destard was Re-vamped over 6 mos ago, maybe about a year ago and shame dungeon, never saw a complaint about those from anyone, but then again, Not always on.

Deorum, exex is fully stocked by players, just not on an actual vendor, like the old days.

Dianne, i think its great you find things challenging, and other things easy. I'm almost 2 years old with nearly 4 relayers, and also find some things challenging. Its just a part of your character growing, and progressing, along the path you choose for them.

You have to aspire to something, don't you? This isn't a game where you HAVE to donate to get mega awesome. Some people do. Many of those get bored and quit. I donated a couple times, but I have also earned the gold to pay for 90% of my current stuff. I looted and sold my way to the 2000+ ED for my current re-layers.

The stuff i donated for was a long while ago, and well worth it, but not really neessary, even if it did help me out greatly (bag of holding, and ultimate spellbook, and druid spellbook).

If you are just starting out, i will offer you a tip based on how i did it. Start small.

You aren't going to be elite overnight. Loot EVERYTHING of value. Take your time. Loot the gems, sell them at the jeweler. Loot the spell scrolls, sell them at the mage shops. skin the corpses, cut the leather. Invest in a gem pouch and tailors keys. Sell the leather on exex. Every 10 gold eventually becomes 100, which becomes 1000, which goes on to earn you millions.

If you really want, trash all the weapons and armor in your tokens bag, then sell the tokens. The longer you play, and the better you get, the quicker and easier it becomes. If you don't aspire to relayers, that's cool... utilize pets, or crafting, or GoC armor, or something else.

Asmodean wrote:Deorum, exex is fully stocked by players, just not on an actual vendor, like the old days.

No way! I never knew it was fully stocked by players - that's awesome. I figured it was an automated system with limitless quantities that just adjusted automatically by the demand. That's pretty cool then and will definitely cause me to make adjustments to how I use it.