Huge High Seas Update Proposal - Changes to many UO systems / skills

Calavera

Hello all,

I spent a few days putting together a design document that outlines a big update to High Seas. I put a lot of thought into it, and the forum interface subsequently mangled it

Also, apparently 31,000 characters exceeds the single post limit....who knew?!

So I attached it as a text file (forum doesn't allow other text formats? again...who knew?!)

The attached "UO High Seas Update.txt" has had its formatting ripped out, but you can still get the basic idea. I hope that, if nothing else, it gets a real discussion started among the developers about High Seas changes.

Items of note: update to stealing, snooping, forensics, item id, several crafting skills, animal taming, treasure hunting, fishing, and many others

The proposal also includes an invasion-style event that has pirate fleets attacking ports.

Trade-runs get a boost as well as player-named items (similar to Halloween graveyards).

Enjoy!

- Calavera

Calavera

Actually, I was able to post the entire plan in its whole form over on https://stratics.com/threads/major-high-seas-update-proposal.401406/ which may be easier to read.

Thanks!

Mariah

You might consider sending this as an email to uo@broadsword.com

Rock

I read the proposal at Stratics and like it a lot.  If implemented it would likely get me to buy the High Seas expansion on two accounts.

For those who have not read it, the proposal involves more than sea-related stuff.  It includes offering more purpose to underused skills such as Begging, Cooking, Stealing, Snooping, Item ID, and Forensics.  @Calavera probably thought his/her proposal was already pretty big, and left out Taste ID and Herding.  Although if one could herd special fish, and identify them thru taste ...

The one part which seems over-complex to me involves the section involving "Slim's Cousin, Shifty" and the Hidden Cache.  To take advantage of it, a player with a very specialized thief template would be necessary, including GM Snooping, GM Stealing, GM Forensics, and GM Detect Hidden.  Either that character or another character working with him would also need GM Lockpicking.  Is Forensics useful to a thief outside of your proposal?  If not, I'm not sure how many players would build specialized characters for this one use.  Personally I'd leave Forensics out of this equation.

Perhaps Forensics could be used more generally within your proposal, though.  Examining the bodies of any of the defeated new NPC types might yield some sort of document which would fit within other aspects of your proposal.  Plus not requiring that it already be GM level would provide another means for training this awkward skill.  The same goes for the Item ID parts of your proposal; pre-requiring it to be GM level removes the possibility of your additions offering the ability to help train the skill.  Maybe lower the minimum skill levels for Forensics and Item ID to 60 or 70 to be useful within your proposal, with higher skill level equating to higher success..  (While the same idea holds for Begging, this is a skill which already offers straight-forward means to be trained, so the GM requirement is not on the same level as a missed training opportunity.  OTOH, if a begger might be successful at only 80 or 90 skill, it certainly would not hurt to have your proposal help train this skill as well.)

Calavera

@Rock Your comments are spot on, I had a much larger Thief / Detective plan in mind, but when I realized I was already at 30,000+ characters (15 pages in my doc) I thought I needed to stop where I was. Using GM level was originally a placeholder for me to go back and refine but I didn't get there.

Another piece I cut was a Huntmaster monthly bounty system for fishing, with sea serpents and krakens. Except since it was fishing, I was going to have a "Big Fish Yarn" type mechanic where when you hand the permit to the NPC, you could bribe up the weight

That had to be saved for another time as well.  I also cut out the Champ Spawn, which is probably for the best. I got carried away, what can I say?

@Mariah I did email it to the team and Mesanna sent me a nice note and said she passed it to the rest of the team. So that was nice.

Thanks to those who read it and provided feedback.

Garth_Grey

Good stuff my friend, and thanks for this part "Grizzled Mare can now be trained to 5 slots."

Rock

Refining your proposal to allow for skill training need not be a major overhaul.  You already have suggested several result probability tables (RPTs).  Allowing for training can be accomplished with a little math.  Let's assume certain skills that are currently marked at exclusively GM can be used from 70 skill onward. I'll make up a simplified RPT:

skill  chance  result
 100   always  some jewels
 100     50%   NPC strikes player once for 50 damage
 100     20%   good result 1
 100     20%   good result 2
 100     10%   great result
  90   always  80% of jewels at 100 skill
  90     60%   NPC strikes player once for 50 damage
  90     16%   good result 1
  90     16%   good result 2
  90      8%   great result
  80  usually  60% of jewels at 100 skill
  80     70%   NPC strikes player once for 50 damage
  80     12%   good result 1
  80     12%   good result 2
  80      6%   great result
  70   seldom  40% of jewels at 100 skill
  70     80%   NPC strikes player once for 50 damage
  70      8%   good result 1
  70      8%   good result 2
  70      4%   nothing
  

Note that this particular NPC cannot be attacked, even if he just hit you.  It was a warning blow, and he only hits once per event.  The attempt can be repeated, but with maybe a 10 sec delay in addition to the time to heal self. Repeatability is useful when training a skill.  Perhaps from 90 to 100 skill, the number of times an action can be repeated is gradually reduced to five attempts at 99.9 skill and just one attempt at GM level.

Minerva_Foxglove

I thought, and hoped, HS upgrading was about making the existing contet more fun and worth doing. Ofcourse i like the suggestions here but maybe we cant have  so much new content , who knows.
I think the concept was great when HS came out but all figures need to be changed. Everything is too expensive and time consuming to make and for few and low rewards. 

If i start with the bosses, Scalis is fine and popular ecept the white nets , as they are hard to get , should summonn a Scalis more often.  Corgul is not bad but by now some new item in the loot could make it more interesting to go there.  But then we have Charybdis.. the fight is different and spectacular. But how many have been to such fight? and whats the reward exept the fun? The fisher get a armor piece of no use ..and there are garg and human pieces so whos fisher have yet a full armor for their mannequin?.. The others get nothing really.  The hunt takes a ship, ideal a Britannia ship, that will need repairs . Also an Oracle that is a very high fising quest reward and rare. And thats not enough. You need Charybdis  baits that are also high reward and almost as rare! 
Fishing quests are for powerscrolls, hooks, baits (to catch rare fish..most likely you dont get one fish of the kind the bait should get you, need a big change there) lava traps .. im sure i forgot something. I like the quests if only the rewards was working and if that 120 ps really ment something. And if the lobster traps wasnt so tight with named lobsters and sunk all the time.  

The fish pies we can craft needed us to buy an ingredient costing 1 k and even selling them for the cost to make them without counting the cost for the rare fish..didnt happen. The pies wasnt good enough or lasted long enough..I tried. 
The lobster traps got complaints they were too expensive as you needed loads. As they sunk. And lots of useless lobsters were caught. This was quickly a grind. Could have been fun if not so time consuming and expensive . 
Capturing Pirates and get Orc ship tiles was nice guild hunts all got atleast something . 
But the cannons to build and use was too complicated and expensive. Big time, We heard about that alot. Its a very important issue. Its yet another thing that seems fun first but ends up in anger . 
I was never into pirating and merchant ships (the cannon thing) so hopefully others will report about any issue. Using cannons are more expensive than the value of the loot?

It has always been very hard to tell new playes why they shoud spend money on HS . SA was easy , but HS.. we use to say sometime in the future they will have to fix the dissapointing things and it will be fun as the concept is really great.  Kyronix already asked us to report the problems with HS and this is my input. Im retired, and rich in UO , and yet I stopped fishing eventually...everyone state  im super stubborn as well so this tells something how hard it should be for people with scool or job and young kids .