Official Forums & Direction Of The Game

Archnight

Hey,

I just wanted to post a few observations about the new forums and hopefully the focus of the devs for our unique game, I would like to enjoy a lifetime of UO as there's no other game with the same freedom and depth... where you can fight, pvp, idoc, craft, vendor, decorate, collect rares and customize your home. People keep coming back for a reason, but we need better ways of actually keeping them

Official Forums: Though i'm not crazy about logging in with my personal account details, I guess since other games are doing it then it's ok... just hope our security is as strong as theirs lol. I think most of the forums will do just fine for the most part however the Trade Forum is pretty much useless if you can't edit after the one hour limit, bump every 24+ hours or even "like" threads (that also goes for all the other forums actually hehe). One thing that might not have been considered with these forums is that some of the most vocal UO posters on other sites don't even have an active account... they're either taking a long break from the game or playing something else while still being very passionate for UO, others play on those annoying freeshards and want to voice their opinions. EM's all had a nice welcome thread in their respective forum and the dev's would also need to be more present going forward, but I will applaud Kyronix for stepping up as he always does

Direction Of The Game: Though the game is still here after 20 years, we need to keep going strong in order to stay alive. There's a bunch of those freeshards for a reason, people enjoy the lore of UO but might not always agree with the direction of the prodo shards. Here's my opinion on how we can make things better this year

- F2P/Unlimited Trial: Endless Journey is without a doubt the best thing to be implemented in years as far as attracting new and old players to the game, those restrictions will be needed in order to avoid and negate the cheaters but it's a step in the right direction overall. There's so many free games out there these days (including those freeshards) and having something longer than a 14 day trial is crucial to get people hooked and eventually subbed back to the game

- Content: EM events have always been great, really enjoy the stories and the rares that come from them. Only problem is that there seems to be too many of them going on (rares included) especially when compared to global events/story arcs, why not have part of that team work on EM events while the other half work on global events for the rest of the playerbase? Dividing the content this way would be a win-win solution for everyone

- Economy: This has been inflated for years now and we need to fix it or at least try. Adding more gold sinks or selling specialty items for in game gold could help with this (ex: Hair Dyes, Tattoos, Piercings, Mounts, Pets, Decorations, Weapons & Armor Dyes etc). I would say we sell those items between 100m and 1b in order to remove large amounts of gold from the game. Another idea would be to do gold wipes like they've done in the past by deleting the gold from the cheaters, scripters and dupers. This should be done every year and would delete billions of gold from the economy

- Daily Incentive: Just like veteran rewards, I think UO should add a daily reward system for players when they login. It could be a treasure chest that pops up when you login, rewards could range from a temporary skill/stat boost to rare items that are either replicas or account bound. It would encourage people to login daily and a chance for players to get a rare item

- Advertising: Other than a page on social media this seems to be lacking, there's alot of options out there for low cost online advertising and at the same time why not spam those million email accounts from the past? Word needs to get out there especially with EJ coming up and our "Longest Running MMORPG" tag

Obviously game fixes such as balancing, bugs and gameplay are a given. The key is to make UO better and keep people playing!

@Mesanna, @Kyronix & @Bleak

Feigr

The only thing that will fix the economy is to make gold irrelevant by introducing a new currency. But everything else looks spot on.  Your EJ comment looks edited and not understandable.

Archnight

Feigr said:

The only thing that will fix the economy is to make gold irrelevant by introducing a new currency. But everything else looks spot on.  Your EJ comment looks edited and not understandable.

Introducing another currency would make no sense... what's needed is more gold sinks, some type of ingame novelty store with items for gold and gold wipes which were done in the past. Agreed it's super inflated at this point but doesn't mean it can't be better than it's current state
 
My EJ comment is meant to say that it's needed but has to be restricted to avoid any abuse, some would rather it to be fully F2P... but to me that would be the end of our game

DJAd

Archnight said:

Introducing another currency would make no sense... what's needed is more gold sinks, some type of ingame novelty store with items for gold and gold wipes which were done in the past.

They should just erase all curreny in the game and start over. 

Feigr

Archnight said:

Feigr said:

The only thing that will fix the economy is to make gold irrelevant by introducing a new currency. But everything else looks spot on.  Your EJ comment looks edited and not understandable.

Introducing another currency would make no sense... what's needed is more gold sinks, some type of ingame novelty store with items for gold and gold wipes which were done in the past. Agreed it's super inflated at this point but doesn't mean it can't be better than it's current state
 
My EJ comment is meant to say that it's needed but has to be restricted to avoid any abuse, some would rather it to be fully F2P... but to me that would be the end of our game

I agree with what others have said on this.  It's time to stop punishing players for the abusers.  It's never done correctly.

Archnight

DJAd said:

They should just erase all curreny in the game and start over. 

But how will that solve the problem? Same people running scripts 24/7 will still be on top of the game and banning everyone from such cheating would probably result in the game closing. I still feel what i've outlined above is the best way to tackle the problem, it will take time but atleast it would be a step in the right direction

Feigr

You'd track the money.  It's all non-physical now for the most part and easy to follow.  You wouldn't have to ban them.  Just remove the currency and that's punishment enough.  Why would people continue to buy money from someone if the money is just deleted later?

PenNPaper

Economy wise crafting needs to be profitable. Which means inflating item prices which unfortunately means players need to pay more for items. This can be countered with better money making quests and item quests. Inflating prices would mean more money for newbie crafters.

 Craft items need to be superior to standard store bought items.

Archnight

PenNPaper said:

Economy wise crafting needs to be profitable

This is more of a balancing than an economy issue though, throughout the years this has switched between loot and crafting... right now it's loot that's on top while crafting is left below. Can't really blame the devs though as it's hard to find that right balance between the two

Feigr

New BOD system has a lot of potential.

SwordofExcalibur

I mean, I always see new/returning players calling out for crafted suits/luck suits all the time, so I would assume there is still a market for crafting.

Besides that, as a crafter, I really spend all my money on mats that I don't have time to farm for myself usually.  So, I'm making a few usual spots in Luna rich.  *You're welcome.*

Archnight

SwordofExcalibur said:

Besides that, as a crafter, I really spend all my money on mats that I don't have time to farm for myself usually.  So, I'm making a few usual spots in Luna rich.  *You're welcome.*

Well if you`re on Atlantic I`ve probably have all the mats you need, so hit me up if ever (ICQ in signature). *You`re Welcome* as well hehe