What made UO PvP so great and what is missing in SotA...IMO

I played UO from opening day for 10 years. What I loved about PvP in UO had nothing to do with full loot. I remember the guild rivalries we had with guilds like NBk, UOF, RED, KoA, BSR, COP and others. We battled over Yew gate, Bucs Den, Brit Gate and for control of dungeons and later champ spawns.

As a member of OO, all we did was hunt down reds on LS like Fidel Castro, Faramir, Rainstorm, An Ettin, An Orc, Ronald McDonald, Wolf, Disco Stu, Zero, and Hades, or we were hired by miners to protect them as they mined.

We have that opportunity to do that again in SotA. I am hoping once guild warfare is implemented we will see those rivalries start. It is nice to see that some players and guilds are hosting some nice PvP tournaments and we are starting to see more open world events like the Capture the Flag or Control the Zone.

It would be awesome if when its all said and done, I will remember the guilds and players I fought with and against in SotA PvP.

 

There was a real sense of loss to death in UO.

Even if it took a week or a month, there was no safety for the red that killed me. Because even if he had turned back to blue, i still had the option to turn red and seek my vengeance.

Here in Sota?? After im killed, the killer can run to town and INSTANTLY flag back to non pvp........... Or he can Instantly Load back to world map....

 

The freedom and how conflict was possible.

SotA offers consentual PVP but no system or lore to back it up and generate drivers for PVP to happen. Same goes for most player interaction. Roleplayers have the same problem. There is no depth in the mechanics.

 

Hard Caps
Balance
Counter System
full loot, constraint bag mode
less important gear
...

 

edit:
Missread the title in the priview.. sry.

 

Long ago @DarkStarr or was it @Lord British in a video talk about a machine for guilds. Any guild that was PvP oriented would be able to use this machine that would give a bonus of some kind to the guild. Basically as I recall any PVP guild would be able to gather/steal parts to build this machine but the machine could be stolen so there would be this constant conflict over control of "The Machine".

I wonder if the Devs still remember?

 

You answered you own question with the first statement "played from opening day for 10 year" in UO you where probely at the top of the food chain. Now you come sota, gone from king of the hill to sheep getting slaughter.

That my opinion on uo pvp players

I too am a sheep

 

In UO you had hard caps and need to decide how to contribute your points.
In SotA it is only about time skilling as much as high as possible.
The entry point to be competetive in pvp is too high.
Very much too high.
The limitless system destroys every interesting and diverse pvp interaction imo.

 

IMHO the main problem of PVP is lack of players due to PVP being incomplete for so long in the beginning and till now no real features have been established.

A PVP system is also needed. Currently it is just like DayZ... everyone is KOS unless you maybe know him etc.

A system is needed. If that is sth like red vs blue, order vs chaos or virtue vs cabalists... doesn't matter. Currently there is no system behind it and no real reward cycle other than the salt you get from people whining over PMs.

UO had such system. Virtue meant something and I remember my newbie days in UO when fellow blues would watch out for each other in a dungeon, reporting reds etc. Same goes for Order vs Chaos battles later on. SotA needs "managed" conflict.

 

I think guild wars were supposed to be in the game per the dev's own schedule what over a year ago now?

good to see you back Vallo

 

Maybe we could begin with colors for nameplates, depending on the level difference.

For exemple : lets say that you try to kill me (just to get the picture, as we both know that you would never do that, do you ?), but your adventurer level is 15 levels higher than mine. As long as we are both tagged for PVP, your name is displayed in yellow or red for me. Mine is green for you.
We have this system for PvE. I don't see any good reason to make things different with PvP. Information is important and we should be able to chose our fights wisely.

We could also imagine a reward system based on challenge. In my exemple, if you kill me, the Oracle will pick up loot among the cheapest objects I have in my inventory or even nothing because I was an easy target. We also could imagine a courage virtue hit on your score. If I kill you, however, I should be able to get at least one artifact in your inventory, or anything really valuable. Big risk, big reward. Low risk, low reward.

The idea is to discourage any attack from the best players on the weakest while encouraging the weaker to hunt the best while being in parties. You want the glory ? Pay it with your skill.

With the skills as they are now, people who want to be competitive will have to level skills in almost every magic tree. That means that the people who can play all the day will get an advantage because the exponential cost of skills is not so a burden when trying to level everything to 80 or even 100 (depending on the time you have, of course). This logic should be inversed. At least, casting spells from one school should improve the fizzle chance on all other schools, especialy the opposed one. Same thing with attunement, attunement in one school should lower other schools attunement, especialy the opposite one (just to avoid the necromancer healing himself while leeching others health, you know ?). Personaly, I would love to unlearn some spells just to train those which comply with my play style. That would make me very happy.

As a further idea, if you want people for pvp, switching the tag should not be a concern. Some people simply don't tag because they fear to be killed when crafting or dealing with merchants and they simply don't want to lose time visiting the Oracle every two hours. So they just don't bother. Then, we could imagine that fights in town should be a crime with guards attacking the offender.

 

I think you're referring to this:

 

Great post @Hornpipe

If lets say somebody 5 levels above me, would become red and for example would be attacked by Guards in all Cities expect Bloodbay what is open PvP this would be a 1st punishment in the right direction.
Or if people pk greens they get no loot, no Bodyparts, no incentive to do so only punishment for doing so.
If someone want to b that bad guy, then live with all consequences, Stigma of beeing a bad guy and almost very hard to survive then. Everybody want to kill you, you cannot unflag as a red pk.
Things like that. People who kill reds get honor and titles.
Reds can earn titles to and if they attack yellows or to him red-difficults they earn honor too, but beeing a bad guy need to be bad and the hardest way to survive.
Many things like this need to be implemented to overcome the actual Situation.

 

What we need on the one hand is a JUSTICE system that rewards successful PKing with balanced ransoms as payment and cool titles etc. (right now it is nowhere near that) - but on the other hand has consequences - Guards attack you in neutral cities, Bounty Hunters can pay scouts to track you for an amount of money, Debuffs when killed or even Jailtime. There have been enough Bounty systems in place that avoid exploits in other games... e.g. Players place the bounty and can give the contract to bounty hunters of their choice... Hence avoiding the risk that the PK claims it.

Second and I assume that will be what we get first since its much easier to implement is a general CONFLICT in the game... GOOD vs EVIL... red capes vs blue... I dunno.
You pick one side, and go for it. I don't think they can implement another flag for that in the near future... So maybe instead of a Justice system we might just see the PVP a little bit less chaotic, but
it's not really clear to me what to fight over. Buffs? Perks? Control Points?

Portalarium never really talks about this.. all info I ever got from Darkstarr was that at the end of the story there is a decision that will somehow be connected to such a system.

 

That's maybe the decision if you hear and follow the Dire Prophecy and what the Oracle says or if you say: I give a **** on you Mrs. Screwhead.
The bad about this would be, i need to answer a lie to be no red pk

 

Guild warfare is already in the game.
To start a guild war, both guild's leaders must be on the same map.

 

Ill repeat what I have said in the past. None of this stuff will matter at all for PvP and is not the reason why PvP is not happening. To fix PvP we need one and only one thing fixed, population playing this game. If we had an influx of 10,000 active players tomorrow, PvP would pick up immediately.

 

And immediately die off. Because population is a symptom not a cause. We had a HUGE source of population from the old pre split UO crowd. The free shard types. We didn’t keep them. Answer the “why” didn’t we keep them before we add the population.

Because they are hard to bring back

 

chicken and egg.

If we had 10,000 more players, the dev's would have had far more money over the past several years and have the resources to hire enough people to build some very complex PvP mechanics. They just dont and probably wont have the resources to do anything more then a simple system like many of the things we have today (sieges for example).

 

Your analogy covers assets to feed/nurture the chicken and egg.

SotA doesn’t feed the chicken. The chicken moved on to greener pastures. The egg hasn’t been nurtured and hasn’t hatched.

It’s not a chicken vs egg situation because we had people willing to PvP. They left. We have the egg still unhatched.

Of course Port could do more with more chicken feed. But Port isn’t spending stratch on nurturing that PvP egg.

Population isn’t the problem they are there waiting.