Bring back Factions (Consensual PvP)

[Lexington]

Incentives to pvp... blah, blah, blah. Why do you need incentives to flag orange to someone else... you either like to fight or you don’t!?

If you need incentives... join a capture the flag, take part in the next tournament or just go out and fight one of the guilds doing champs… the best rewards in game await you!

 

[AreYouKidden]

The reality is PvP is purely a gold sink for most, so incentives just help to offset that. I want to feel that I'm achieving something by fighting orange, to orange, other than a GG pat on the ass, and I feel many others share the same opinion, though some may want the GG pat too..

 

[Lexington]

The reality is PvP is purely a gold sink for most, so incentives just help to offset that. I want to feel that I'm achieving something by fighting orange, to orange, other than a GG pat on the ass, and I feel many others share the same opinion, though some may want the GG pat too..

Problem is everyone is trying to over complicating what in reality should be a basic system. That's why factions failed in the first place. It was always too complicated... even for those big OSI servers. You can't have that big of a system on a small populated servers cause you'll always end up with the 247's and EQMS's.

 

[Swayze]

First off, factions are dead. They are not coming back. We are not taking militias out and putting factions back in so lets just get that out of the way.

Our goal is to improve militias. Is it a work in progress? yes

We obviously want to get the communities opinion on certain things and don't usually dismiss things very quickly.

As Lexington said above, Factions was overly complex and really didn't need to be. On paper, factions was an amazing idea but in reality it never worked the way it was supposed to.

The faction system was basically just 4 of the biggest guilds. Back when EQMS was around it was "you cant join minax unless you are in our guild" and the major complaints of people joining minax to just leech the benefits. The militia system now allows guilds to actually work for the benefits and there are now complaints of that. As most game mechanics, you will never find a solution to make everyone happen but lets answer the core questions in order to improve. A lot of suggestions are so complex and get off track so it is very hard for staff to interpret them.

Lets get down to the core of militias:
1. Orange vs Orange
2. Capture points for benefits
3. Exclusive item pvp mechanics (wands, fire horns)

People want incentive to pvp, which I am all for but the things people want are not realistic 9 times out of 10. We are all for giving things out to people who pvp but a lot of suggestions don't take into account the entire server.

Another thing that a lot of people struggle with is this concept of "This is how it was before, it should be this way now" or "Back in the day on other servers, it was like this... this is how it should be". Just because it was in "back in the day" doesn't make it right, it makes you used to that system. We are trying to put our own custom spin on Ultima Online but give the feeling of old school UO. It is a challenging balance to accomplish but we are trying our best.

I would like suggestions on how we can improve militias and give incentive but only if it well thought out and with the entire server (crafting, pvm, resource gathering, economy, etc.) taken into account.

I am fully expecting a reply from AreYouKidden with a link to all his suggestions. Yes we have looked at them and yes we are considering implementing some of them but we need to improve the core of militias before we start adding additional functionality.

 

[Swayze]

Incentives to pvp... blah, blah, blah. Why do you need incentives to flag orange to someone else... you either like to fight or you don’t!?

If you need incentives... join a capture the flag, take part in the next tournament or just go out and fight one of the guilds doing champs… the best rewards in game await you!

I tend to agree with this statement.... why cant fighting and winning fights be incentive enough? I am not suggesting we will not be putting in incentive but I always struggled with this.

 

[Wildboar]

I know in the past my young friends who love to pvp were forever broke, ;] , they often had to borrow from me to buy armor and regs. I'm not sure but that may be part of the problem, allowing them limited regs at a lower price the way it is done in Wind Mage shop with its 50 each limit could be a way to limit an impact on the crafting community.
Being certain management wouldn't or couldn't consider giving Militia a 20% year round discount on donation coins, shouldn't as far as I know impact merchants. It might bring in more donations since young people have access to more cash than the determination it takes to grind out gold.
Have no idea if it is possible to put unlimited reg charges on Militia robes that can only be used in service to the Militia and/or special weapons that revert to force or lower when used for on anything or anyone not in the Militia.

 

[Lexington]

I know in the past my young friends who love to pvp were forever broke, ;] , they often had to borrow from me to buy armor and regs. I'm not sure but that may be part of the problem, allowing them limited regs at a lower price the way it is done in Wind Mage shop with its 50 each limit could be a way to limit an impact on the crafting community.

Not directed @ you Wildboar

I’d say this typical mentality is probably the biggest problem with PVP and free shards. Players expect to come here create a 7x GM character within a few hours and be able to compete with the established player base. They want everything with little or no effort. The shitty thing is they are getting it! Every six months or so we get a new group of players whining and complaining about how this isn’t right and that isn't right…. when I played here it was like this blah, blah etc. Then we see changes… ugh!!

If anything, I think @Shane has made it too easy to max out a PVP character. That’s why you never see those types of players commit to the shard. They don’t have anything invested. Hell they don’t even stay when they get what they want. Pisses me off!!

In the beginning we needed easy skill gain to attract players… but at this stage in UOF’s life I doubt it. I say force players to invest time into the game and maybe you’ll see more stick around?!?!

 

[baseball dad]

What are some things that were in factions that you want implemented in militias?

"1 button delayed wand drops" - said every marathon mage.

I appreciate staff's efforts to appease the .001647% of the shard who enjoy "running the map on sallos with modded clients, 1 button wand drops and lots o target acquire", but you're never going to make such players happy. They simply have too much e-peen but no actual balls.

I've always been a red pvper, i fight all types from newbs, zergs, marathon mages, target closest cannons and even blue valhalla mages when they build up a week's worth of courage.

The problem isn't lack of "consensual pvp" but rather egos stopping genuine ultima online play.

 

[Epic Flail-]

I tend to agree with this statement.... why cant fighting and winning fights be incentive enough? I am not suggesting we will not be putting in incentive but I always struggled with this.

A lot of the reason is people want pixels. Segregating pvpers and pvmers is always a thing on every server, but so many people who WANT to pvp and are decent usually get out numbered so bad that there is no reason to continue to try. So they cry and whine about incentive and perks and this and that. You guys implemented perks for crafting, skill gain, farming, training pets etc, no pvp perks. Oh but hey there we go crying over incentives and perks right?


Anyhow I am looking forward to see what is all included with this new Militia system.

 

[Swayze]

Do you have a suggestion for a pvp perk that doesnt give a competitive advantage or were you just saying that as a general statement?

 

[Blaine the Gypsy]

Hey remember when you had to pluck the feathers off of birds just to get enough make more arrows? Simple times...

 

[Epic Flail-]

Do you have a suggestion for a pvp perk that doesnt give a competitive advantage or were you just saying that as a general statement?

Mostly a general statement but now I feel like i should really think about it. Hey is there a chance of people who are in combat or flagged they cant house hide? lol!

One perk i could think of is lowered stat loss timer for completing specific missions only enabled if you have been put into stat loss, that's more for reds yes I realize that. Just trying to give ideas. Maybe a Militia perk other than wands/firehorns could be a point system or coin system for purchasing non blessed (unable to be blessed as well) armor or armored clothing. Slightly increased armor ratings Only wearable by Militia.

Just a couple ideas on the fly, probably trash, and not worth the scripting to do them, but at least I'm willing to give ideas instead of complaining about what has already been done.

 

[Lexington]

Do you have a suggestion for a pvp perk that doesnt give a competitive advantage or were you just saying that as a general statement?

A Militia currency that would allow you to use it for item insurance.

 

[Swayze]

Item insurance is a very bad idea

 

[Epic Flail-]

A Militia currency that would allow you to use it for item insurance.

That's interesting. I could see the good and bad from that.

The good, is people are willing to fight because they wont lose high end items.

The bad, its all alchy dp dexxers with Val runics and Plate Invul armor lol.

 

[Abiding Dude]

@Abiding Dude I'd love to know what your thoughts on this Militias System that I mocked up: https://www.uoforum.com/threads/the-potential-of-militias.99428/

I, like many, prefer consensual PvP over the blue/red PvP/griefing - and have been thoroughly disappointed with the current Militia system, I realize it was a shell, a starting point, but it's been two months, and we've seen no meaningful updates. At this point there is little to no consensual PvP, people have got discouraged, bored, moved on. What is the end game for a PvP'r? blue/red really doesn't cut it, and while I don't think factions was really working how players wanted, Militias is a step below even that right now.

I know we're told to have faith, and I've tried, I really have, but you've rolled out a Militia system that doesn't even really scratch the surface, you've rolled out numerous broken elements, and there is no real plan in place to fix this, or even a vision we can latch on to for hope.. We're told just to have faith.

Even fixing these elements won't really change how Militias is perceived today, the reality is they are just symptoms of a system that does not work. But at least it'd be a start in the right direction:

Broken elements:

• without having an active/inactive roster list for Militias, players build up points, and have to leave the Militia so others can join the fight, losing all their points. the cap on a team was a great idea, moving it to 30 to fix the problem I just mentioned, was a horrible solution, make it so players can set themselves inactive with a 15 minute timer, or it sets them inactive when they log out, and don't allow players to flag active, if there are already 10 in the Militia - and allow the guild leader/emissaries to set someone inactive.
• pet rez perk - the math is horrendous, I can appreciate you want to penalize larger guilds - for Trin to use this perk, it costs us 170 bounty points, we can capture 300 points on the stone, every 30 minutes, and that'd be if it was uncontested (which it often is)... So we get less than 1 pet rez for the entire guild every 30 min. This is abusive, not an incentive, especially considering most people have 3 accounts in their guild. It should be an upfront fee, so the guild leader can control the bounty points they are spending, based on teh size of the guild, paying 3k bounty points up front, for 3 days of the pet rez perk would be preferable, to a tamer rezing their pet, and massive amounts of points just disappearing.
• reagents stone - recently rolled out a stone to allow one guild to capture, and gain an advantage in the economy, and crafting.. This isn't providing incentives, it's trying to force crafters, pvm'rs into our consensual PvP system... Build your incentive by capturing a resource stone to lower the costs in a town (or all towns) for all players, and have a % of gold spent, go back to the guild holding the point as bounty points. This allows all to benefit from the lower costs, not creating an imbalance in the economy, and gives a decent incentive to a guild to hold the stone.

And please, for the love of all that is right in UO... put a capture point somewhere other than Brit...

Thanks for your insight on the discussion, I'll take a look at your post for sure. I agree with everything you said, factions were fantastic. I would like to have both, have militias be the new order/chaos system until the all the kinks get worked out.


Would love to see a capture point in bucs, shame such a nostalgia UO town such as bucs is a ghost town here on uof

 

[Swayze]

I agree, I would like to see bucs more populated

 

[Abiding Dude]

@Shane

Do you think pvp will survive a year of waiting for change (for the good) and with everyone going other places to find more enticing and rewarding pvp? I know you guys have lives, families, jobs and stuff. I do appreciate the work you and your staff has done, but it seems lacking and almost abandoned. Trust me when i say we are trying to be patient, at least I know I am. It is just hard, grinding and farming every day gets boring, pvp is many peoples outlet to mix up the mundane farming schedule. If there is no incentives to pvp, there is no incentives to pk. The farmers start hoarding everything, prices skyrocket because select few have cornered the market and forced people away. The Supply is low or nil, the demand is high. I don't see new or young players joining the server and if they do, I don't see them staying more than 6 months. (<--- Just opinion not observation.) The way things are set up now, it seems farming and tamers have been catered too while pvp has been once again put on the back burner.

On another server I played Defiance, a version of meta pets and steeds were implemented, a version of talisman was also implemented, all catered to farming. Several other "farming" or Pixel crack type things all set in place that truly destroyed pvp. Factions took a huge hit when they changed how city status and silver was used a long with the point system, I feel the point system is what drives factions. Within a year the server was shut down, all the while staff, and owner a like were saying "Be patient, more to come, be patient, more to come."

After a year of waiting, owners/staff only doing what they wanted and not taking their community and their valid concerns seriously, people got tired of waiting or not being recognized as valuable and left. Population went from a solid 500+ on to 200 or less in 5 months, 7 months later, ghost town except bank sitters, 9 days after their 7th year anniversary, the server was shut down. It was reset, restarted. Never really bounced back. I would hate for UO Forever to have that happen.

I think it is important to listen to your community and not just dismiss them. It is what makes the server strong. I do however understand it is hard to filter between the cry babies and the ones who are really wanting or trying to help, who are trying to be patient, Yes as of right now I am EXTREMELY disappointed with Militia's, there's no reason to be in it. I feel it was forced upon us without proper planning (my opinion, plz prove me wrong) No incentive other than wands, what do we need wands for when you can throw explo pots every 4 seconds? Spam pots, that's pvp here. Just like Hy-brid, Spam wands that's pvp there. There's no REAL balance

Things that have ALWAYS been core, 11 second bandage timers w/ 90 dex 9 second with 100 dex (heals less hp the more dmg you take up to 50% less, but doesnt slow it down),
8 second explo pot cool down timers,
10 second wand usage,

These I remember from TRUE UO:R servers and OSI to have been core and key to success of pvp. That and a constant stream of new content. Not all of it good though haha! BLEH AoS was gross and clunky.


I know this is long winded and will most likely be passed over or disregarded and I get it, staff and owners are busy. I do however hope this might strike a chord and help move things a long at a faster rate.

Just had to voice my opinion. Would love to work with staff and you to help with ideas. I have several that may or may not be worth while.

+1 solid post m8. Hit the nail on the head with this one

 

[AreYouKidden]

I am fully expecting a reply from AreYouKidden with a link to all his suggestions. Yes we have looked at them and yes we are considering implementing some of them but we need to improve the core of militias before we start adding additional functionality.

No worries, your point was made very clear.. Good luck with all the changes!

 

[Epic Flail-]

+1 solid post m8. Hit the nail on the head with this one

Thanks I appreciate the up vote. Most just told me I'm trash and need to shut up.