Black Gate Feedback

popps

Larisa said:

I am going to interject here....I know that it's hard to find needed items on smaller shards but that's why the shard population has to work together to make it happen. 

I currently have  an empty vendor...I loaded it up with imbuing ingredients, fish, just random stuff..stone furniture...nothing sold...nothing sold....I had to shut my accts down for a few months....but about a month went by before that and my vendor was full. When I got back it was empty so things DO sell..maybe not right away, you won't get instant gratification like on ATL but you will get it

As far as the things you mentioned..I have put those things on my vendor....in fact I will be stocking more soon....but one person cannot do it alone. HELP your shard...HELP make it inviting to other players, new and old alike.

I spent a few hours yesterday making gate and recall scrolls...am working on stocking necessity vendors but again I am only ONE person. Talk to the people on your shard, get them to put a vendor up, even if it's just one....arrows, bolts, aids.....spellbooks.....I get .1 transcendence scrolls out of my painting and put those on my vendor for 500g...seriously....working on scroll binders

And the good thing now is, that with Commission Vendors one can just place items up for sale on them on a Low Population Shard and forget about it without worrying about daily fees....

YET, those items sitting on those Vendors will eventually sell making the buyer who was looking for them and who needed them happy....

As you well said "...but about a month went by before that and my vendor was full. When I got back it was empty so things DO sell..maybe not right away, you won't get instant gratification like on ATL but you will get it "

It might not be an efficient and fast way to make gold as on Atlantic but, it sure can help one's own Low Population Shard to get repopulated....

And, IF Commission vendors could "also" be rental vendors, that is, not only Vendors in one's own home but also in other players' Homes who "rent" them out to other players (often for free....), I am confident that this could greatly help out repopulate those Low Population Shards and rejuvenite their economy...

Infact, one of the reason why people are reluctant to play Lowly Populated Shards unless their Home Shard where they have a Home on, is that they have a hard time to find items up for sale which they might need.

BUT, if "Rental Vendors" could be permitted to be also Commission Vendors, I am confident that this would greatly help out the economies of those Low Population Shards.

Yes, Commission Vendors take up Lock Downs....

How about having then "Rental Commission Vendors" have it possible to have the House Owner and the other player to whom the Vendor is rented to "negotiate" the amount of Lockdowns that such a Rental Vendor can have ?

This way, it will not be possible for the player managing the Rental Commission Vendor to exceed the amount of Lockdowns allowed by the contract and the House Owner will not be worried that the player could place too many items on that Vendor thus using up more Lockdowns that they are willing to give away for that.

I think it would be a good enhancement towards helping out Low Population Shards.

@Kyronix , @Bleak , does that sound a good way that could contribute to help out the economy and thus the re-population of Low Population Shards ?

Norry

@Larisa you know you can buy recall scrolls from a mage in haven right?

Lady_Storm

recalls can be gotten in the mage shop in moonglow  take the hedge tp to the top shop

Larisa

I know you can buy recall scrolls from an NPC but I give them for free, easy to make and if a new player needs a runebook with full charges I am happy to give them out

Bilbo

popps said:

BUT, if "Rental Vendors" could be permitted to be also Commission Vendors, I am confident that this would greatly help out the economies of those Low Population Shards.

Yes, Commission Vendors take up Lock Downs....

How about having then "Rental Commission Vendors" have it possible to have the House Owner and the other player to whom the Vendor is rented to "negotiate" the amount of Lockdowns that such a Rental Vendor can have ?

@ Kyronix , @ Bleak , does that sound a good way that could contribute to help out the economy and thus the re-population of Low Population Shards ?

WOW  Even though IMPO @popps does not play UO sometimes he does stumble on an idea that could help UO.

ZekeTerra

After several trades completed the collection.

MissE

@Cookie and the problem with the commission vendors is they take up lockdowns so for any serious vendor merchant they are next to useless.  They are for players who only have a few things to vend or are spasmodic in their stocking.  I do NOT have the lockdowns to avail myself of them as my houses and castles are FULL. Not only that there are no commission rental vendors so given I rent myself vendors as the house here is on a second account but my main account stocks and runs it. @Bilbo no vendor mall is gonna let rental vendors use their storage, no chance. Unless like with mine all the rental vendors belong to me, but even then impossible as there are no lockdowns. The vendor mall I use on Atlantic also has no lockdowns available and all the vendors there are rentals. Not gonna  happen.

I play Oceania as my main shard, one of the smallest.  Just so you can see the level of 'work' I put in this is a snapshot of my operation there as of today in pictures it is the reason I get so annoyed with people who make comments when they really don't have a clue. (and not referring to you but just some players who put in zero thought but have heaps of 'opinion' in areas they don't actually play in)  My shop in Luna provides the shard library, which I keep up to date. 

It also provides portals, as well as the full set of dye tubs with dyes supplied, a fully stocked repair bench, a public access davies locker and seed and commodity deed boxes. All set for public use. 

I then have dozen vendors all stocked.  The chests behind the vendors and the backpacks on the ground in front of them contain 'stock' for restocking.  All those chests and backpacks are full.  My crafter pictured runs the shop and has all skills to craft and stock directly to the vendor.  If i have a day when I don't feel like doing much I will craft the backstock for the vendors.

These are just some of the items I stock, and anyone will tell you these vendors are ALWAYS stocked.  (although I actually do need to do a bit of stocking right now as I have been slack!)

These are just some of  the back packs of 'most' of those vendors up there.  As you can see I don't focus on 'high end' stuff but stuff that is needed and used by all players.  A lot of the stuff is 'hidden' as I play on a laptop and the screen ain't that big lol.

That is the shop, I then have my warehouse that contains MORE stock so as you see one side is chests all labelled so I can find stuff, and then I have my bod vendors so If anyone is looking for a bod I can assist them.  I  do some bods myself but find I only concentrate on filling them if I need a particular item ie a shadow runic or whatever although I collect regularly.   I do NOT have the storage for bod books hence the opted out vendor storage.

And the warehouse roof also has stuff that needs sorting and selling.  I am in between growing my resources so the beds are currently empty.  You will notice the sheds as that castle is also full to the brim.  I then have another castle that is storing more stuff.  The middle two floors of this building contain an auction house (not used much as there are zero players to attend one) and a casino that I run for player events at xmas and other times.

I have another 6 vendors on Atlantic where I make a plat or so every couple of months.  I try to go there once a month and take over 250-300 items every time.  Those vendors are hard to keep stocked as stuff SELLS on that shard and as I only have 6 free rental vendors there at the Oceania shop SW luna (thanks Wind for the spots!). I will stock ONE despicable quiver on Oceania and it may take months to sell, in the same time I will take over 4-5 to Atlantic and sell em all in a month or less. That is why @Popps making stuff shard bound will just KILL small shards.  If no one has something like on Origin you wouldn't be able to get it and take it to them.

This is why when I see 'shard bound' I get super pissy.  Shard bound stuff ends up in the BIN as the market is so small you just can't keep storing it.  People who don't play as full on merchants really have no clue about how destructive that tag is. 

@Larisa ; I agree that small shards need their populations to help, however I am ONE person and I do this.  Granted I have been running malls for years so am experienced and I am a pretty high end player when it comes to this type of gaming, yet even this year I have been slack and have not played much for months at a time, yet I still log in and stock even if I don't do anything else.

I actually get pretty sick of people on small shards trying to blame the 'system' for failures to supply items. As you see above, any player can supply pretty much everything a shard needs.  I DO. As for those yelling for shard bound stuff well that will do NOTHING to assist the problem only make it worse.  As demonstrated this week on Origin, you cannot find a mastery you cannot get one from a shard that has it if it is shard bound so you are completely out of luck.

Anyways you can see quite clearly that if you are on Oceania as a new player if you shop at my shop you will get whatever you need, whenever you need it, not only that if you ask for me I will even toss you a mil to help you get the basics.

Lastly do NOT use the excuse that players don't play small shards as they can't get gear or items, that is a failing of the players on that shard who can't be bothered to supply.    Oceania is one of the smallest shards and you can get anything you need yet we still have NO players.   If I don't have something I can get   it on Atlantic and bring it back for you.  SHARD BOUND will certainly kill that.

As for running something like this means I don't get to play other content, then that is crap too.  The last rehashed invasion I managed to get over 300 spellbooks including about 9 50% sdi ones as I worked that event the whole time it was on, and NO I didn't just kill mages and bugger off I cleaned as many towns as hours allowed.  This 'new' event I am not gonna even bother with due to the shard bound and one per toon limitation.  If they continue down this road then I will be calling it quits.

I have NEVER purchased gold, NEVER bought a single item off an RMT site, never used an illegal program, and I have more gold than I need.   I have just played the game as intended.  I am so over all the 'excuses' for small shards.  I posted this long thread to show that ONE person can actually make a huge difference if they want to.  SHARD BOUND is not the answer for failing shards.  Making stuff SHARD BOUND will actually go further to killing it. If anyone wants to come look at 'my empire' just ask, or hop on Oceania and see for yourself.  The red sparkly teleport pad at the shop in SW luna will take you to the warehouse too. In case you are interested in how I organise.

Cheers
MissE

Pawain

So we put in shard bound items to increase populations of small shards.

Then we put in a new server that will make many players from small shards go to the new server for a year!

Please, that is enough reason to get rid of shard bound items like these..

MissE

Pawain said:

So we put in shard bound items to increase populations of small shards.

Then we put in a new server that will make many players from small shards go to the new server for a year!

Please, that is enough reason to get rid of shard bound items like these..

LOL don't get me started but you are spot on. I only just got through watching that utterly embarrassing live stream, didn't get up at 3am to watch it thank god.   These are tech people yet they couldn't even get that working.  No sound, broken websites, broken video, and a lot of back patting.   As it was I had to sit through the  first what was it 15 mins of screen saying 'coming soon'.  This new shard is gonna kill UO.  It will be an epic failure and take all attention of our HUGE 6 person dev team completely away from the UO game as we know it. Do not expect anything complex, entertaining or thoroughly immersive on production shards for years nor any new expansions or useful items ever again.   As we know their marketing skills are non existent so the only people who will be dragged there will be exisiting users after a bit of novelty.  

I guess the example of a crap rune lockdown after killing dragons, drakes and trogs is the level of event arc we can expect into the future.

Seth

Pawain said:

So we put in shard bound items to increase populations of small shards.

Then we put in a new server that will make many players from small shards go to the new server for a year!

Please, that is enough reason to get rid of shard bound items like these..

lol, good point.

keven2002

Yea I kind of thought the same thing. Shard bound items are designed to keep people on that shard... they literally just made a quest item shard bound when they planned on creating a new shard which will inevitably pull people off some live shards. Bit of a head scratcher. All the while Kyronix was saying the logic was to do it this way to promote people to stay on the low pop shards...

Estel_Randir

After competing this quest once on one of my main characters, I will not be bothering with the quest again.

1) The quest line flow is terrible: Most of it is very easy. Then you hit the "middle" part with Destard. Very unbalanced and burdensome. Way too many mobs to kill for one part. Also, if you do not have help, greater dragons are a huge pain. The whole Destard part should have been broken into smaller "kill this" parts over different dungeons.

2) Compassion sage: Exodus dungeon is one of my least favorite. It is way too crowded with mobs, the drop rate sucks, and the difficulty there is challenging for even veteran players.

3) Random reward & can only be completed once per character: Are you kidding me? Why is it that the Broadsword development team keeps talking about how much they love the game, have all these warm fuzzy memories, that they listen to the player base, but yet you STILL do not understand the player base? We want to collect all the runes. And most people are willing to suck it up and do the quest 8 times to get a complete set - that is if you actually allowed them to. First of all, random reward for something like this just sucks & is unfair especially due to once per character. Second, limiting it to once per character involves words that I am not allowed to use on this board. These are not the old days when most people were actually cooperative with each other traded their extras freely to anyone willing. Veterans sit on and hoard extras to sell, not trade. And they want way too much for everything they try to sell. Less than 24 hrs into the quest being live on my server, someone was auctioning compassion sages for a tidy sum =p.

4) The runes are not up to par with what a virtue rune (one of the most important & fundamental items in Ultima history) should look like. Quite frankly, they are ugly.This is my personal & biased opinion on this. But it is true =p.

Marge

I myself am not collecting a set. But I did do it 4 times (A fifth time once Lilith comes back from her world travels.) just to help others complete their sets. I trade for one of their doubles so that way I'll always have a few on hand to trade around and help.

Just wanted to let you know (if you do decide to do another round) the dragons and drakes can be killed anywhere - not just in Destard. The fire temple was another popular spot for them; also around Valor shrine in Ilsh. (I do agree 40 drakes was a big much - not hard to kill just an awful lot.) Also, Controllers can be found in and around the Mistas area of Ilsh. They are spread out and it is still slow but at least it's an alternative.

popps

Estel_Randir said:

After competing this quest once on one of my main characters, I will not be bothering with the quest again.

1) The quest line flow is terrible: Most of it is very easy. Then you hit the "middle" part with Destard. Very unbalanced and burdensome. Way too many mobs to kill for one part. Also, if you do not have help, greater dragons are a huge pain. The whole Destard part should have been broken into smaller "kill this" parts over different dungeons.

2) Compassion sage: Exodus dungeon is one of my least favorite. It is way too crowded with mobs, the drop rate sucks, and the difficulty there is challenging for even veteran players.

3) Random reward & can only be completed once per character: Are you kidding me? Why is it that the Broadsword development team keeps talking about how much they love the game, have all these warm fuzzy memories, that they listen to the player base, but yet you STILL do not understand the player base? We want to collect all the runes. And most people are willing to suck it up and do the quest 8 times to get a complete set - that is if you actually allowed them to. First of all, random reward for something like this just sucks & is unfair especially due to once per character. Second, limiting it to once per character involves words that I am not allowed to use on this board. These are not the old days when most people were actually cooperative with each other traded their extras freely to anyone willing. Veterans sit on and hoard extras to sell, not trade. And they want way too much for everything they try to sell. Less than 24 hrs into the quest being live on my server, someone was auctioning compassion sages for a tidy sum =p.

4) The runes are not up to par with what a virtue rune (one of the most important & fundamental items in Ultima history) should look like. Quite frankly, they are ugly.This is my personal & biased opinion on this. But it is true =p.

1) The quest line flow is terrible: Most of it is very easy. Then you hit the "middle" part with Destard. Very unbalanced and burdensome. Way too many mobs to kill for one part. Also, if you do not have help, greater dragons are a huge pain. The whole Destard part should have been broken into smaller "kill this" parts over different dungeons.

Talking about that, anyone has found an efficient and quick way to get the kill done of the Unbound Energy Vortex ? Those things are quite a pain to kill and take forever....

Marge

Ask for help in gen chat. On my shard, many tamers and samps offered to help people kill it.

popps

Marge said:

Ask for help in gen chat. On my shard, many tamers and samps offered to help people kill it.

I was rather more interested in finding out if anyone might have found a way to kill Unbound Energy Vortexes "solo", fast and swiftly....

Pawain

popps said:

Marge said:

Ask for help in gen chat. On my shard, many tamers and samps offered to help people kill it.

I was rather more interested in finding out if anyone might have found a way to kill Unbound Energy Vortexes "solo", fast and swiftly....

Melee or archer. They take only 1/3 damage from pets.

popps

Pawain said:

popps said:

Marge said:

Ask for help in gen chat. On my shard, many tamers and samps offered to help people kill it.

I was rather more interested in finding out if anyone might have found a way to kill Unbound Energy Vortexes "solo", fast and swiftly....

Melee or archer. They take only 1/3 damage from pets.

Thanks.

They take only 1/3 damage from only pets or also summons alike ?

Also, considering how they teleport so much, I'd rather use a melee template to tackle them rather then a ranged character who would have to always move back when teleported...

A melee character can just sit there and bash at them without bothering about being teleported.

Any suggestion on what Melee Template would be most effective to take them down in the least time?

Pawain

Anything that is not a pet. Just stand where they pull you to. They don't change targets.

We call out in chat. 1 player puts a Cu on it so the pet just hold the aggro and others do what they can do. I just sat on it for 10 mins and let some guys crafter shoot fireballs at it.

My basic paladin can kill it pretty quick by himself.  Just don't use an energy weapon. it has 100% energy resist.

Do yall help each other on your shard?

A not very good tamer took my 100 skill swordsman on the quest line. We finished it in a little over 2 hours.

A tamer can take a really lame toon thru all the quests. Let the lame guy do half damage, pets eats the rest. move to next. A crap sword like dragons end works great.

ZekeTerra

Now that I have a complete set thanks to trading with my friends (I ended up getting 6 Honesty & 5 Humility ones lol).  They need to add the anti-virtue tiles so that room is not lopsided....

popps

ZekeTerra said:

Now that I have a complete set thanks to trading with my friends (I ended up getting 6 Honesty & 5 Humility ones lol).  They need to add the anti-virtue tiles so that room is not lopsided....

Congratulations !

That is a fine Collection that you have !

Cinderella

@ZekeTerra Congrats... and your home is awesome.
Thanks for the tour.

I'm glad I could help.

Victim_Of_Siege

Looking for Compassion and Honesty Tiles on Origin, have extra Sacrifice, Honor, Justice and Valor to Trade. Let me know if you are able to help

.

popps

I am so sorry for the players on Siege or Mugen.... with only 1 character per Account and thus 1 Black Gate stone per account and no trasfers in (and out) as possible I can imagine the difficulties for a player there to put a set of all 8 Virtue stones together....

Sure, they can buy them from other players there who do not care collecting them, but it won't be easy nonetheless, likely also quite expensive....

Oh well, sorry for you guys....

Tanager

Oh... you mean you feel sorry for us because we have a stable economy and a community that can work together (when we want to)?

I feel sorry for prodo shards that are glutted with an excess of everything to the point that very little has any real value.

Let's keep the thread on topic please.

Okami

This quest is trash and anyone involved in it should feel like trash for trying to hype it as a standalone update.

Compassion: Fetch Quest from a vendor that can be done in 2 minutes.

Honor: Kill an unbound EV. A mob made for training tamers, that has no real mechanics or consideration to actually fight except deplete its massive bag of hp before it depletes your bag of hp. Or use a pet.

Sacrifice: Literally find a random blood splat on the ground.

Humility: Kill 50 trogs. Because the trogs are terrifying the sheep farmers. That apparently reside in the jungle. And the Trogs never leave their cave. And kill 50. Because reasons. Nothing says Humility like GENOCIDE.

Spirituality: Find a dead ranger in Hythloth. This one had potential! But what does it entail? Holding ctrl-shift to bring up object handles and looking for an oddly named bone pile that stands out in no way whatsoever visually.

Justice: Go into a room and hold ctrl-shift to bring up object handles to find an item visually hidden behind another item   HOLDING CTRL-SHIFT TO LOOK FOR OBJECT NAMES IS NOT AN ENGAGING GAME MECHANIC.

Honesty: Find Compassion Sage, an item that's been in the game for years, and a new spawning item called raw ginseng. It's in "north brittania." Way to narrow it the fuck down. By the way, it's one screen away from the Sacrifice Shrine. Also, WHAT THIS HAS TO DO WITH BEING HONEST IS BEYOND ME.

Valor: Kill 50 drakes, 20 dragons, and 5 greater dragons. Genocide is a virtue, the sequel! YAY. Oh, and these spawns usually take place in the same area, so what happens when you kill lopsided amounts of the lowest tier to rare amounts of the highest? You create an imbalance of spawn presence that means the drakes and dragons are more difficult to fulfill than the greater dragons.

Let's also finish with this quest having no gameplay reward and has very little rp tool relevance and only serves to generate more rares for the rare trading community.

But we're supposed to trust y'all to implement a new shard.

Kyronix

@ZekeTerra - nice job!  That is a lovely home!

Thanks for that very candid feedback @Okami.  Sorry you didn't like the quest, perhaps you'll enjoy the upcoming Champ Spawn and Treasures of Deceit events more.  Despite your assertion, we're feeling pretty good about how the dynamic quest roll out has gone so far.  A quest that would otherwise have taken much longer to implement can now be done in a much shorter period of time.  This first one wasn't as complex or as deep as we could have made it, hopefully you'll find more fulfillment in future events. 

Eisenbein

I really like this quest! The reward could be better, more useful.

Tanager

I think, unfortunately, that every 'useful' thing added to UO after 23 years either reduces the reason to leave ones house (items that give resources, shortcuts of any kind for any thing) or unbalances the game in some way. Event and holiday rewards, in particular, need to be unique for most people to enjoy the novelty, but can create inequality for players who come along after the event/holiday.

So, ideally, new content is best when it isn't temporary. Something new that is added to the game that is challenging to obtain to make it fun to do, but that people who are not up to the task at the time, or who join Sosaria after, can do later. I get it, people want to farm limited-time content to amass a stockpile they can sit on and sell off later. In the grand scheme of things, tho, this is not what is best for an elderly MMO.

So... if there simply must be limited time only content, then it just can't be very useful rewards at this point. It CAN be variations of a useful thing that already exists, however. A new item with new art that functions as a 10th anniversary luck statue. A new mount in crystal dropped from a boss. That sort of thing. I'd like to see content like that in UO.

Jepeth

I think they make the guild and player-city memorial at my library look really nice.