Why Open PvP with full Loot worked in UO.

http://www.gamespot.com/ultima-online-the-second-age/user-reviews/202762/platform/pc/

 

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The thing about discussing UO is it really depends which timeframe of the game you pick to talk about.

There was indeed a time when griefing wasn't an issue. That ship has sailed, and crashed into a cliff.

Players as a whole are more clever now. There are also players now who are more e-thug-toughguy than before, and could care less about anyone but themselves now.


So, the game has changed completely since 1999.

 

only because the game has become a midnless grindfest with no need for interaction or support from other players.
pretty much like almost every other mmo nowadays. Except maybe Eve.
thats it.

 

I personally cannot wait for PVP in UO again! I hope that they do bring back full looting when you kill someone. Trammel Killed UO because people who enjoyed the game the most left when they got nothing for killing people and trapped in a world with no one. I was Stryder on Catskills and played since Beta. I was a PKer since I could and never stopped. Eventually when Trammel came out I was eventually killed and had to macro my toon for 13 days strait to be able to res... once I did There was no one left to kill ... I still stuck with the game until AOTS but left shortly after that. Almost everyone I used to play with still agrees to today that the PVP was the best part of the game and they all hated when full looting went away. Not only was it worth trying to kill someone, but it made a good reason to fight to stay alive. Made the game WAY more realistic, and thats just what MMOs need again... Realism.

 

wow those quotes are really so upsetting, it is like watching end of a golden era, disappearing before your eyes... all because of whiners. so sad story.


not only that, EA also added insurance system that made the game PERFECT SAFE lol. there was no longer reason to be in felluca but dueling with some kiddo. i am really afraid of having dejavu with SotA. we will see everything after pre alpha-beta, then i will have to make a decision.

 

So am I. I haven't played a decent MMO in years. Ever since Shadowbane got shut down I haven't really fel the thrill of hunting or being hunted. I played WoW for a few months but that was just something to pass the time.

The closest thing to my early UO experience that I've found so far is Space Station 13, it's a session-based RPG. You can look it up on google if you feel like RPing, if you find a good server you'll have tons of rp as well as some hardcore action.

 

When I say worthless I mean easily replaceable with either crafted or found equipment. Sure you can roam the wilderness with that +10 sword of godship, but if another player comes along and kills you they get to take it off you. Its your own fault for leaving town with it.

In UO and Eve Online there is one saying and it goes, Never go out with more than you can afford to loose. If you do you are asking to be ganked and robbed.

In UO I had some nice weapons and armour, but only ever wore them on guild events and dungeon crawls when we had one or two full groups. Solo I would go out in GM crafted gear and still be effective.

I stopped playing UO shortly after Trammrel was released and Origin was disolved by EA. I even remember the news when UO2 was in development and EA shut it down in fear of it competing with UO. I think thats the day I quit my subscription.

 

people keep talking total nonsense about how everyone hoarded magical equipment cause they were afraid to lose it.
This is lies, only an autist would do that. Everyone carried magical stuff, especially in PvP.

I remember something that happened many years ago, on a free server that impressed me a lot. It happened on a private server.
We had unicorns there, but not the crappy trammel unicorns. They were like horses but a little bigger, white like white wyrms, glowing like wisps and their mane was beautiful, not simple like the mane of ordinary horses. It could take anything from a minute to ten hours to tame this creature and it was extremely strong and dangerous.

I was a youngster back then, wearing crappy armor leveling up my skills. I was at the Minoc tent camp, observing the PvPers from a safe distance. And then I see this guy. Riding forward into battle on his white unicorn, clad in the best plate armour in the whole world of Sosaria, dark-red and imbued with magic, carrying the best sword you could find in the realm. He killed someone then just stood there. Eventually his friends left to search the nearby woods for enemies and he just stood there, nobody dared approach him alone.

For a week or so I saw him every day and he never fell in batle, never lost his unicorn nor his equipment.
It was like looking at a real hero, a legend.
So yea, my two gp.

 

Which is why I gave up on UO while I was still researching the game, before even purchasing it back then, and left EVE while still in the trial week. Not only losing things I worked hard to get kills whatever fun I could have with the game, but having a "never go out with more than you can afford to lose" unspoken rule removes any excitement I could get from gear and makes me never use anything that takes more than 15 minutes of farming to get back. This makes games like those completely unsuited for my leisure time.

I can deal with gear loss if the gear is always easily replaced with identical copies, but whenever that happens I don't look at what I lost as gear; I look at it more as a small gold fee, with an annoying forced trip somewhere to be put back in fighting condition tacked on it. In other words, if gear is so meaningless I can mostly ignore it.

Granted, not everyone is like me, and there are many players that enjoy the risk of losing their gear, but I'm not sure those players alone could sustain a game with a good budget. The fact current day UO has most of it's player base in Trammel, and that the Siege Perilous shards that partially mimic pre-Trammel UO are less numerous than conventional shards, seems to point that even within UO's player base most players didn't really enjoy the risk.

I can understand this on an intellectual level. I would never be able to do this, though; looting another player would make me feel as bad as if I broke into his (real world) house and stole something.

Plus, even if what is taken is worthless and easily replaced, being looted in a game makes me feel as bad as if I was mugged in real life. Despite the fact I've never lost anything that would take more than a couple of hours to recoup in my past attempts to play games with this kind of PvP, any time I was looted made me permanently leave the game (most of them mobile or browser online RTS games with PvP and player looting, though).

This is why I won't ever take part in a PvP mode with player looting anymore. It doesn't matter if the risk is low, it doesn't matter if what is taken is worthless and easily replaced; having that done to me makes me feel bad enough to leave a game, and being expected to do that to enemies I defeat makes me feel even worse.

Sincerely, even if open PvP with full loot was forced on everyone playing in the open play online mode (which it isn't), you still wouldn't see anyone that wasn't itching for a fight. Between the already revealed single player and friends play modes, the offline mode, and the modding capabilities, anyone that wants to be perfectly safe will be able to do so.

If, to find the game interesting, you need to know that no one, at all, is safe, this isn't the game for you. If merely being able to attack anyone that you see, with everyone you can't attack being invisible for you, is enough, then you should find a quite acceptable game.

Not everyone hoards the best equipment, but enough players do for it to be seen as a real problem by developers, with that bit of information used to justify not having any kind of gear loss in many modern MMOs; in Bioware's TOR forums I remember taking part in a long thread, long before launch, that was sparked by the devs saying that the fact players tended to never take hard to get gear to places where it could be lost was the main reason they weren't even considering any kind of gear loss on death.

Not really at nothing, but at possibilities. The same way many won't tempt their luck walking in the bad parts of town after dark, even if the chance of something bad happening are actually quite small.

Ever played EVE?

Most of the player base are loners that never, ever, leave high sec, and spend most of the time grinding. And in high sec not only Concord (the "guards") will kill anyone that even fires at another player within a few seconds of the attack starting, even finding a way to avoid being killed when Concord attacks can be a bannable offense, not to mention that the target of a high sec attack has the option to make his attacker a legitimate target for retribution, by anyone, even in high sec - in UO terms, make the attacker gray - for a whole month.

Not to mention that EVE has one of the most comprehensive "AH" systems ever devised for a game. There is no need for personal contact for selling or ordering things.

In other words, EVE allows playing without interaction or support from other players, and is even more of a grind fest than almost anything that is not a Korean grinder, for players that don't attempt to get into PvP or leave high sec - which the vast majority of EVE players don't do. Collaborating with others is only really needed for some low sec and null sec activities. And, on top of that, EVE's economy is utterly dependent on people that endlessly grind in high sec.

 

I really wonder how you live with the risk of getting killed by someone in real life, you must be swearing to god "why are you forcing PVP in real life !"

 

Living with the risk is perfectly doable. It's just not fun, so it's not something I'm willing to put up with in my leisure time.

 

uhjj excuse me I dont see this as a problem of the game. You were scared to lose your items. Other people were not scared and wore top tier magical items all day long.

 

+1

An hour ago logged into wow, wanted to get that feel of nostalgia or whatever. Wandered around aimlessly for 15 mins, met two ally dogs. Killed them. Remembered I cant loot them. Alt+F4, 1/10, wouldnt play again.
sigh

 

Absurd comparison is absurd. And flirts with the definition of trolling.

Though in fairness, I shouldn't single you out. The discussion as a whole is getting unpleasant again. Mind thy tones, all and sundry!

 

@Ultima Codex b-but this is a pvp thread...we are...pvping!

 

Shroud of the Avatar doesn't feature open, non-consensual PvP, and neither do these forums.

I encourage self-moderation at all times and whenever possible in the discussions that transpire here. Failing that, I will provide the moderation.

 

When most people talk about how much fun UO was they are usually refering to the pre 1999 era. It was pretty much after this point that hordes of free servers began popping up to retain the game they loved.

MMOs have changed so much since this time that its almost impossible for someone who did not truely experience the game in that period to understand why it would be fun to have open PvP with loot. Look at MMOs now, where leveling your character to "Max Level" is the simple part and is usually done in a drone like manner in a matter of days or weeks with limited player to player communication. I have played a number of MMOs recently Tera, Neverwinter to where I never even really spoke to anyone else before i reached maximum level, because I never needed to and had not joined a guild until well after. Though soloing was very well possible in UO, the community was essential and natural where as most games feel like you are playing a single player game with a bunch of people.

The other problem with current MMOs is that true worth of your character becomes your gear. This was not the case in UO. Your skill took time to build and shaped your character. Learning the game and elements of it was a bigger part of your character abilities so you really didn't have to rush to max your character out to experience the full game.

 

By the way, though I am completely for open PvP with full loot im not for a game where PKing runs rampant. Just like real life i think the game needs elements that make killing and looting another player a difficult choice to make where you must balance the risk vs the reward.

If they can do this you end up with a game where there are just as many if not more people willing to help you as there are willing to hurt you.

 

What Codex is demostrating is an example of checks-and-balances and not an example of player management.