Reset to 0 and temporary xp cap in Ep2

Sounds like difficulty is going to become user defined. IE, you choose how hard it is and the loot, enemies, XP scale. That's a great solution for a game with an exponential XP curve, as it lets most anyone play any scene, if done correctly.

On Ep 2 success: If this were my business, I would be planning a huge event and party that prominently features all the devs, right now. Planning it for months from now. Planning it with the tried and true event creating players. Making damn sure that LB and Darkstarr show up, and that they know their lines. LB personally emailing and calling every single UO and Ultima fan site. Creating a war chest guarilla advertising budget to be used all in one moment. Prepping an advertising firm (no more Dev ads!) AND a PR firm for a coordinated push in the two month lead up. Coordinating streamers to stream in shifts, on schedule, in the lead up.

Build the excitement. I am not seeing much of that at the moment. If it doesn't exist then it's not even a launch.

And then finally realize that to have success the new players are coming in through Ep 1! Paraphrasing from memory so I may have this wrong, but didn't Chris say in a stream a month or two back "The First Outskirt have a 12% retention rate, which is really great for an MMO, and shows that we are wasting our time on those early scenes so we won't be doing that any more".

Maybe I have that wrong, but it sure seems to me that if your early scene is doing great for MMO's, then the next step is to carry that success forward! Players are super lost when they step out of the Outskirts and it doesn't take much to guide them. Point them to the next Outskirts after they do the Soltown quests, also very good scenes. Maybe you can get that 12% up to 24%!

Finally, Quest XP is garbage except in the Outskirts, and it's truly unbelievable. 5 Million XP an hour, right, that's where we are in Grindtown?

That's more than ALL THE QUEST XP IN THE GAME COMBINED! Shows where priorities are.

 

I certainly hope there’s no level scaling based on my level, that is terrible and lazy game design.

If however we can alter a scenes difficulty by doing something in a scene to effect the difficulty (like how Ulfheim works) that’s totally fine with me.

 

I think you just choose at the outset of every scene, and it will be across the whole game. There's no way they will go back and modify all the scenes to put in an Ulfhiem style in scene selector.

 

It will be interesting to see how it plays out over the new scenes in Ep2. I'm sure we'll get a better idea of how it will all work the closer they come to releasing some areas.

 

Yes most game I have played do.... only in some cases if you are a subscriber do you get the expansions free. kinda like vip etc

 

After 120, it takes so many xp to go up, and would also help lots of veteran players who are not 120 yet.

But anyways, best option is cleary making mobs scale up to the strongest guy in the party, this would prevent alot of nerfs and etc.

Skeletons with 2k HP must really suck for melee/average players.

 

Personally I don't think the problem is solved by wiping and this comes from someone who if I did return would be miles behind many people here.

I think the problem will be that whatever the quality of EP2 is/isn't while EP1 still has all its issues and problems few new players will endure grinding through it in order to even get to EP2

Fix EP1 !

 

I see absolutely no point in comparing how much EXP I have to anyone else. That smacks of a miserable way to play games, IMO.

I think its a horrible idea to do any kind of "stand alone" games for expansions. Hardly anyone plays EP1. If the games are "stand alone," then each world will just be a ghost world with no players. The players have to be consolidated between worlds, its already empty AF.

Dont turn this into Trammel.

 

Harsh but true.

 

Long thread, but an important one I think...

My vote - NO WIPE! Episode 2 content will hopefully be interesting (quest-type stuff in EVERY zone) and challenging towards the end story enough. I'm sure there will be plenty of new grinding grounds as well for higher-leveled ppl... and lot's of stuff for us hovering around level 90-110 or less.

 

Trammel was the popular one that stopped the exodus of players from UO.

 

I guess in my mind, it was the "Event" of Trammel happening that made UO a ghosttown. Yeah, I played in Felucca, but it was like "great an online game with no players" /quits after playing since launch

I cant imagine all of the releases actually being stand-alone games - its so unlikely to really come across other players in SOTA as it is, I cant imagine how few of you I would see if you were split between ~5 other games :-/

 

Hmmm wondering why I have 10,000+ games of Free Cell (solitare) atm. Only progression I experience is the number of games I have played and the win percentage... Trying to relate.....How about 20,000 arcane catalyst in the ole back pack?