Major Crafting Update
Ok hear me out on this and bear with me. First, I'm not looking for an easy button, I've been playing almost since inception and I'm confident in saying I know all of the ins and outs, and I've walked to school in the snow, uphill, both ways blah blah blah. This isn't about that. It's about how my mind works while I"m playing UO. I have multiple accounts, I have all crafting skills maxed on one account, I have 7 slots on my crafting account, so there's no way for EA to make more money from me by my need to purchase another account just for crafting, I"m sure most players are the same as me. That being said I've already thought about the chance of my idea being rejected because it would cause EA to lose subscription money, it's my belief it wouldn't, which leads me to my idea. We already have crafting machines that take the place of tools, we already have repair benches that take the place of tools for repairs, and they are GM or Legendary based on the skill level of the owner. Why can't we now after 23 years, have GM/Legendary machines ?? If I could transfer my (for example) 120 Tailoring off of my soulstone via a context line similar to the one that lets you remove a skill from a stone, and send it to my Sewing Machine, it would become a Legendary Sewing Machine !! My archer can now walk up to it and craft a suit for himself. Afterall, the skills were already available to my entire account to swap and use as I wished, but the convenience given to me now is very valuable , especially based on my limited play time. I would so pay for this service, and by that I mean I would give up the SoulStone with the crafting skill on it by means of dropping it on the machine to transfer the skill. This more or less protects EA from any revenue losses due to a drop in SS purchases. If someone wants to try and exploit it, like building skills by illegal 3rd party means and selling those skills via the machines, it's going to cost them the purchase of a SS token, as well as Vet Reward .
Sorry for being long winded and not going into heavy detail. I'll let others chime in with their likes or dislikes or thoughts. I just think it's worth considering.
Sorry for being long winded and not going into heavy detail. I'll let others chime in with their likes or dislikes or thoughts. I just think it's worth considering.
You and Several Others like this.
Please make the Grizzled Mare a 5 slot mount, it's incredibly rare and deserves it. Some of us have been waiting a long time for this simple addition.
Please make the Grizzled Mare a 5 slot mount, it's incredibly rare and deserves it. Some of us have been waiting a long time for this simple addition.
Comments
Please make the Grizzled Mare a 5 slot mount, it's incredibly rare and deserves it. Some of us have been waiting a long time for this simple addition.
They can detect linked accounts. Make this item work like sovereigns and be able to be used by all linked accounts that are tied to the account that put the skill on.
Great idea, I would buy it.
Please make the Grizzled Mare a 5 slot mount, it's incredibly rare and deserves it. Some of us have been waiting a long time for this simple addition.
I am sorry to be so blunt but I have always hated, wholeheartedly, crafters being used as "mules" just to support one's own fighters....
And now we want to delegate crafting to a machine and make it the ultimate "mule" ?
No thanks, I am sorry, but this cannot find my agreement by no means....
It would be the ultimate depersonalisation of a crafter in Ultima Online which will never find me in agreement.
What I would like is instead the opposite.... which it is, make Crafters played as a MAIN character and not simply a "tool" to service fighters at is was in the early Ultima Online days.
I would also like to see the Crafting Stations be permitted, besides crafting tools up to 5,000 charges, to also be made a container that can hold a large quantity of whatever materials that crafting station would need to make what the crafter can make.....
For example, a Writing Desk could hold, besides the scribing pens, also empty scrolls, reagents and so forth that a Scribe could craft thus no longer being limited to his/her backpack and its capacity to hold materials in it.
But it would still be necessary to have the Character with the crafting skill be present, without this, the machine would be useless....
Please make the Grizzled Mare a 5 slot mount, it's incredibly rare and deserves it. Some of us have been waiting a long time for this simple addition.
Please make the Grizzled Mare a 5 slot mount, it's incredibly rare and deserves it. Some of us have been waiting a long time for this simple addition.
@popps YA buy buying stuff from my vendor named crafty Carl is so personal.
And I am sure the devs chose not to allow materials in crafting machines for a reason.
UO and Diablo have had hirelings for many years so this is nothing new, just updated for UO, you can already do this in Diablo.
I bet we could come up with some pretty cool builds for our Soulbots. @Kyronix
Especially if what you choose as your alternative skillset also makes meaningful additions to your primary skillset. With fletching as my alternative skillset I gain +5 HCI because I know how to adjust for slightly warped arrow shafts. With blacksmithing as my alternative skillset my weapons and armor decay just a bit slower because I know how to care for them.
I also feel that crafting has become way too individual. Complete self-sufficiency, to me, isn't very fun game design. For example, I'd LOVE if there was a crafter's cart that functioned as a pet. It followed me around and where ever I am I could offer repairs.
My customer could double click the cart bringing up a gump where they drop their item and it shows percentages for the various levels of repair I could charge for. Because I'm using the cart there may even be a good chance to repair without durability loss.
Something like:
The more players are self-sufficient thanking to their "mules" or "crafting machines", the less Crafters have business to do in Ultima Online....
It does affect those who like to play Crafters as a business and service to others in UO, it sure does... and a whole lot too.....
To my opinion, the Developers should, instead, make changes to crafting that would bring it back to what it was in that early Ultima Online, NOT put the final nail in the Crafters' coffin in UO...
Nice idea @garth_grey.
You know what, in today's UO, I don't think it is a rude word to say make the game "easier","less complicated", or more "intuitive", they have gone so far the other way to make the game "immersive", or mainly to fight scripters, and usually end up just making the game harder for the normal players.
So anything that goes the other way cannot be bad.
I have a crafter, he is my 2nd main, after my mage, with me right from the beginning, he has at least 15 maxed crafting related skills, I have acquired about 25 Soulstones for my characters over the years, I have a 7 characters account, I have 7/10ish of the Craft Station Vet rewards, I have the games largest castle that has so many BODS in it, I cannot physically have any Deco (not that I want to, but the top 3 floors look very bare lol - another topic), etc etc, very much the same as you.
To @popps about hating Crafters being treated as Mules, fair enough, and I respect players that play crafters as mains and in that style. My crafter is very much a mule. From the beginning when I would lose all my gear pvping, I'd have to come back to my house, and remake my entire set of armour and stocks with my crafter, before I could go out again. I loved it, going out and pvping in my crafter made armour. My ultimate aim in this game, would be to be wearing armour and equipment, made by my crafter.
Crafting has always been one of the important aspects of UO, but it was taken away when it was allowed to players to become self sufficient and use crafters as a tool for their fighters...
If accounts were to be specialized, like being either fighting accounts OR crafters accounts, at least to make the good and high end stuff, then crafters would be back in business to be of service at least to those other players not having multiple accounts....
How to achieve this ?
Easy, players would need to "declare" their account either a fighting account OR a crafters account and this, if they declared it a crafters account, would "open up" new crafting options for high end items....
So, a fighters declared account could still have crafters and use them BUT, only to make mid to low end stuff.... only an account fully devoted to crafting could have access to making the good, high end stuff....
Of course, the same would be for a fighting declared account which would have access to fighting prowess that a crafters declared accounts would not have....
Sort of like some "uber masteries".... declaring an entire account for either fighting or crafting would enable these uber masteries in either type and, of course, a crafters account could still have characters in it capable of fighting, but not as good and as proficiently as a fighting declared account would be able to....
Needless to say, that free, Endless Journey accounts, would be made incapacitated to make such a focusing declaration of either being a Crafters or a Fighters account and, therefore, could only have access to mid to low abilities as compared to a fully subscribed account... of course, if an EJ account was to turn into a subscribed account, then such a focused declaration that would a unlock either that fighters or crafters high end content would become available.
Sure, players with multiple accounts could still get both worlds, but they also would pay double subscriptions.... which I guess it would be good news for the upkeep of Ultima Online...
At least, those who wanted to play a focused Crafters account could still do business with those players with only 1 account focused on fighting and, thus, needing others' crafting services for the really good, high end crafting stuff...
This is only 1 suggestions, likely more could pop up with due thinking... the real point here, is whether the Developers are interested in bringing back crafting in Ultima Online as a serious and focused main activity for players, as it once was in UO....
@Kyronix , @Bleak , what are your thoughts about crafting in UO ?
Do you want it to be subject and subordinated to players who use it mainly and mostly to be self sufficient with their fighting characters or do you instead want to bring it back to the splendor and relevance which it once was, in Ultima Online ?
@popps - Crafters would be back in business if the Devs made their products able to compete with lootable gear.
I see no issue with an account being self-sustainable, some players like to play like that (me - we like to be all rounders, we like many aspects of the game and want to play them), and others don't. There are enough players who don't want to be crafters, to make it sustainable for the ones that want to play crafters.
The main issues to me, re crafters are;
In my opinion, Monsters should not drop any loot at all - except the cleverly designed Artifacts of certain named boss monsters, or smaller mobs even like Raptors Claw.. They should all drop Crafting ingredients, like leathers, essences - Stygian Abyss was very well built In this sense. That would bring Crafters back. The game should be built around Crafters in that sense. Not by making them more unplayable for the average player to force the average player out of crafting, that is another very unsatisfactory own goal.
My crafter has been sat on Ice for years, not because there are not enough players to build for, but because I have nothing useful to make for my characters, and in the global context of my account, it does not make me enjoy the game. And I see Lootable armour and equipment going up into the 100's of millions that I cannot afford unless I were to go out and RMT the gold (another bone of contention for me), the whole thing is getting crazy.
I can understand a player paying for 2 accounts being able to run 1 as a fighters account and another as a crafters account, after all, he or she is paying for both.... but for all those players only subscribed for 1 account ?
If they can be self sufficient in all of their needs with only 1 account because they have both Fighters and Crafters capable of doing also the high end stuff all in 1 account, then, at least to my opinion, that creates the problem that we know..... all of those players interested in mainly and mostly playing crafters, cannot, because of lack of sufficient customers....
Honestly @popps, it doesn't take away from them. As I said, there are enough new, returning, and new build characters for demand.
There are enough players who don't want to be crafters to maintain demand. As I said, I currently have 1 out of 16 satisfactorily geared characters. 15 characters that need rebuilding, and I cannot get the gear through lootable, or crafted means, due to the deficiencies in the Armour system
Your way of thinking, is again, and this is what we see so much, a very protective, limited way of thinking. You want to "protect" crafters, and end up boxing them in and limiting them, a bit like "shard bound". Protectionism really is not the way for an expanding flourishing game, or economy.
The way to help Crafting, in the sense of helping out those players motivated in playing a Crafter most of their time in Ultima Online, to my opinion does not go through simplifying Crafting but, instead, of making it more complex and time consuming so that those players interested mainly in playing fighting characters, would, at that point, not be interested in bothering with crafting because they would have to spent too much of their in game time crafting and not fighting, an activity which they instead prefer...
That is, if we want to break "self-sufficiency" and make Crafting again a main activity for all those players interested in playing it almost full time, we need to change crafting, to my opinion, in a way that it would NOT be appealing (or flat out not possible in my previous example of having to declare an account either a Fighters account OR a Crafters account....) to those who prefer to spend most of their time in the game fighting, and not crafting....
This would result in Fighters again giving business to Crafters as it was back in the days in Ultima Online....
And the more complicated they make it, the less crafters will be interested in doing it.
This is a game, make it fun for the players.
Now I know you will write yet another useless novel proving even more than you are clueless when it comes to UO but go right ahead. By the way did you ever figure out your BOD question, you do understand that even first year BOD collectors knew the answer you were looking for.
The more that Crafting is simplified, made easy, convenient like having a crafting machine that "does it", the more players will become self-sufficient because also those few players who, now, do not want to bother with crafting and have the gold to pay other players who, instead, enjoy playing a crafter, the less that real, focused Crafters will have "customers" to sell their services to.
So in one thread you want to make crafting easier by increasing how many BODs we can get. That will lead to crafters not trading BODs because they have their own BODs. If you want crafters to interact you should want 1 BOD per day so crafters have to interact with others to fill large BODs.
You want us to choose to make our accounts crafter or fighter? Are you not the poster who constantly wants to do Mob killing events with templates that are not made to kill? But now you want other players to choose what their account can do at start up?
I realize they will never let us put crafting skills on a machine but damn we could have a little fun and dream.
I understand what @McDougle is saying. But disagree that it should not be that way. Reforging is much better than imbuing armor.