Magic, Combat, and Crafting Skills

My bad. Sloppy language... You are indeed correct

 

No problem. I'm here to help. ☺

Sent from my Galaxy S5 using Tapatalk.

 

Where medium armor school ? i dont see this....

 

It was removed and replaced with Tactics

 

I cannot thank you enough for the detail you've put into this.

 

They should have kept it and added Tactics.

 

Actually it wasn't needed. Light armor is cloth and leather, and heavy armor is metallic armor.

The skills in the medium armor skill tree really seem to be more logical to be allowed to be learned by players wearing any armor type... grapples and armor preservation etc. So it isn't like we lost that skill set. You can still wear chainmail and get those same skills, while having armor that has less encumbrance, and you have the addition of getting knight's grace and the other heavy armor skills.

It really is better because it allows us to create more versatile characters.

 

Quick background: my first Ultima game was Ultima III: Exodus. I also played Ultima Online: The Second Age back in 1999, and also recently (2010 to 2012) on a free-shard called UO Second Age.

I'm sure that RG, SL, and the team have everything in hand. I just want to share my 2 GP worth...

Consensual PvP

A gentleman early in this thread said that he wasn't here to bake bread, he was here to "crush". PvP, in other words. The reason why consensual PvP is important is because if it isn't consensual then it is a play-style that is forced upon you. How would he like it if I could force him to bake bread? Forcing him to do something that wasn't his play-style, something that he finds boring. He logs in, eagerly looking forward to crushing some noobs, then here I come along and - against his will - force him to spend the next 30 minutes baking two dozen loaves of delicious bread. Not what he is looking for in a game. After many frustrating sessions of trying to log in to PvP, but instead finding himself chained to the oven baking bread, he will rage-quit... and go find a game that allows him to pursue his play-style ("die noob!! i pwn u!!!").

That being said, it makes sense to have one or more dangerous areas (like Buccaneer's Den) where anything goes - no PvP consent needed, enter at your own risk.

Economy

Some players seem to get worried about not having enough gold sinks. From what I can see, the only real issue is whether the server has enough storage to hold all the objects that players hoard. Gold itself is cheap for the server to store, because it stacks and each gold piece is identical to another. Tracking unique objects (like swords, shoes, and delicious bread) costs memory.

I think one of the lessons learnt from early UO is: Keep It Simple. Trying to have a closed economy just didn't work, and isn't necessary for fun and enjoyment. Introduce gold into the game through an infinite tap: mob drops, NPCs buying goods from players. Gold is removed by sinks (or drains): tax on property and vendors, gold paid to NPC vendors for items, gold left on the ground (which like any item disappears after a time period - probably won't occur much with gold though). What people often forget, is that HUGE amounts of gold are effectively removed from the economy by player hoarding (e.g. a goal for some players is to become a millionaire in-game). Playing hoarding is not necessarily a gold sink, because the gold is still in-game if they are still playing, but if that player quits permanently that gold is removed practically speaking (and is truely removed if accounts are deleted :-O ). Even if the player doesn't quit, if they never spend that 1 million gold it is still effectively removed from the game economy.

Keep it simple, and have the NPC vendors pay the same amount for crafted items, with variations for quality. Maybe a low quality dagger is 1GP, a dagger is 2GP, and a high quality dagger is 3GP. This sets a base-line for the economy, and ensures that every crafter experiences the same journey through their profession. We can have short-term overages/shortages on NPC vendors, e.g. they buy 50 daggers then refuse to buy any more... until 10 mins later when they will buy another batch of 50. Same with selling, you can buy a vendor's entire stock of a reagent, then 10 mins later they have refreshed their stock.

Back to the vendor buying daggers. Say a GM blacksmith creates a GM quality dagger. The NPC vendor buys it at 3GP, and lists it on their inventory for 5GP. Players wanting a GM quality dagger can get one from the NPC vendor for 5GP, or the GM blacksmith can set up their own vendor selling them for 4GP. This type of price-setting allows the GM smith to make more profit selling daggers on their own vendor AND allows players to buy them more cheaply than they would get them from an NPC vendor. Player-run vendors need to be the best vendors in the game.

Role-playing skills

Any plans for RP skills like Begging? Someone on UO Second Age even set up a beggar's guild, it was hilarious!

Macroing / Automation

I don't want to get RSI. In 1999 I played T2A without any assistance at all, did everything the hard way. In 2010 on UO Second Age I discovered Razor, and I really don't want to go back to the click-intensive blow-my-tendons-out method. For those not familiar, Razor (and other assist tools) allowed you to script up actions into a macro and assign that macro to a hot-key (or run it from a menu). I had a script to create a potion keg, which was a lot of fun to develop and de-bug. Also saved me a lot of time and tendonitis when creating potion kegs for my vendor, because creating a potion keg was quite an involved process using many items to build it up (very awesome, actually!).

Some level of automation would be appreciated.

Balance

It would be my preference if all the game mechanics were present for episode 1, and only get tweaked slightly in following episodes due to real in-game experience. Basically, if everything was perfect straight out of the box, that would be great .

The problem with adding skill trees later, is that it could upset the delicate balance between all the skills, and dramatically change the game. Ditto with altering magic.

Episodes 2 to 5 should just be content: more land, more monsters, more story.

I am happy to recant this if the skill trees / magic added later are done in such a way that balance is maintained, it's just so hard to do. More likely is that new skills / magic will make it a "new" game, and that's ok as long as most of us like the new game (some people won't, some people will).

Accounts

If accounts get deleted due to inactivity, an email should first be sent to the account-holder as a reminder, say two weeks before deletion (and maybe another at 1 week, and 1 day, say). This gives the account-holder an opportunity to log-in again and refresh their account.

Account deletion is to save server resource. In an ideal world, if storage costs were not a problem, accounts should never be deleted. Maybe Ancestor accounts and above should never be deleted?

 

Nice! I like the crafting trees, they answer a lot of questions.

 

Would it be possible to get this updated?

 

+1000000
this aspect of the prealpha is cold and dead.

Sent from my GT-S5690M using Tapatalk 2

 

Wouldn't it be funny if when they launched the game, and they still post a link to a forum post from 2013 for all new players?

 

How can you tell if you have the correct level to craft different items? i cant make an iron hilt,or a table?

 

There are no crafting skills yet. Everything is 100% success. If you have all the components of the recipe in the box the craft button should appear.

If you have the recipe in your journal it ahould list in red the resource or tool you are missing in red. Check to see if anything is listed in red in your crafting journal.

 

TL;DR the whole thread

But i was wondering why not use the old system as used in UO?
You use a sword, you get better at swords, you use a bow, you get better at ranged.
Or am i overlooking something?

And where's my isometric!

 

Intellectual Property rights. The bane of American innovation.

 

Isometric has a number of flaws and it is hard to sell/market a 2D/isometric game today (that being said Pillars of Eternity does look great!).

The UO system rewarded macroers and encouraged grinding rather than just playing the game.

 

I partially agree with you: it did reward macroers and encouradged grinding , but you'll allways have those kind of people in a game.
I myself was having a blast repairing weapons and armour and creating new items at britania north forge on Europa. it made interacting so much fun.

And i am not saying it should be isometric, but a choice to go full iso would be nice

 

I don't see an advantage of repetition systems that makes them worth-while since they encourage griefing and reward macroers.

As for isometric, I would support the ability to zoom out and move the camera up.

 

Actually, gaining skill by using the skill isn't the intellectual property of UO (et al). A number of games are using that system, and one I'm playing right now takes it a step further with little twists such as, using calligraphy gives slight increases to swords because of the manual dexterity. The skills interact based on logical use. Adds a bit of immersion. They have other means of deterring macroing and grinding.

I can live with the system SotA has opted for, but it wouldn't be my first choice. I much prefer skill based.