Obligatory WUA UO post! Game free through the 12th!

[Arthur_Parker]

Stop for a second and think do you believe UO should be more like WoW

Yes?  Is that supposed to be hard or at all objectionable?

Can't be both?

In UO, a complicated crafting system makes sense because the objective is to have lots of items and options, collectors like to display their individual preferences in a house/fort/castle that can also be customised, rares being the top end items.  The exact number of clicks/items needed to create a cannonball can be argued, with me generally taking the view that the fewer the better, but replacing it all with just a cool down?  That doesn't fit with the game logic.

In WoW, a simple crafting system makes sense because the rares are largely obtained through mob interaction and WoW is largely PVE based, resources are limited and spread out to slow down how fast they can be gathered, even mastery in crafting professions is level restricted.

You might as well suggest removing housing from UO, WoW doesn't have it so it can't be that important.

[Paelos]

My feelings on this thread so far:

   

Btw, I love hardcore crafting (as evidenced by my Galaxies mancrush) but some of the shit yall are talking about having to do to fire a cannon? Yeah that's not even fun in spreadsheets.

[Lantyssa]

Galaxies required a bit of thought (and patience and business acumen) to pick the best materials to make the top tier of gear.  What is described there is nothing but grind.

I like your summary.

[Slyfeind]

What on earth would be the point of turning a 12 year old game into a 12 year old bad copy of WoW?  They're well past the stage of attracting new users.  At this point their best bet is just to hold on to as many of the old users as they can for as long as they can.  If those people wanted WoW that's what they'd be playing already.

Yeah, or they could go F2P, monetize the fuck out of it, and put it on Facebook.

[Sheepherder]

Stop for a second and think do you believe UO should be more like WoW

Yes?  Is that supposed to be hard or at all objectionable?

do you believe UO should be more like WoW

more like

What on earth would be the point of turning a 12 year old game into a 12 year old bad copy of WoW?  They're well past the stage of attracting new users.  At this point their best bet is just to hold on to as many of the old users as they can for as long as they can.  If those people wanted WoW that's what they'd be playing already.

That's really not something to froth your neckbeard about.  That's like a slow pitch over centre plate for a six year old.

RE: Slyfiend

Incidentally, Blizzard has actually announced an intent to go F2P with WoW as it reaches the end of it's life.

[Slyfeind]

That's really not something to froth your neckbeard about.  That's like a slow pitch over centre plate for a six year old.

HEH!

Incidentally, Blizzard has actually announced an intent to go F2P with WoW as it reaches the end of it's life.

Yeah but you could fit UO on Facebook. Although by the time WoW is ready for the F2P thing, the web might be ready for a WoW client too....

[WindupAtheist]

Stop for a second and think do you believe UO should be more like WoW,

In terms of quality of life and ease of use? Yes. Yes. Yes.

A system should never insist upon a greater number of inputs than it has potential outcomes. The cannon does only does one thing, it fires. There is absolutely no good reason to require four inputs just to generate that single output. Functionally speaking, CLEAN->LOAD->PRIME->FIRE is no different from FIRE->CONFIRM?->CONFIRM?->CONFIRM? but we'd all rightly shit a brick if anyone put three layers of confirmation on anything.

Similarly, there is no good reason for... say... crafting matchcord to be a separate process from crafting a match, when matchcord has absolutely no reason to exist except to be made into matches. No one is ever going to sell matchcord. No one is ever going to buy it. It's an extra and completely pointless layer of meaningless pseudo-interaction. One that is, for the most part, new to UO with this expansion.

A few infrequently-crafted tinkering items like clocks have useless intermediary stages, but for the most part crafting any one item is one step. A sword is made out of ingots, not ingots made into a blade combined with ingots and leather made into a hilt, etcetera etcetera. Crafting a robot golem requires some ingots and a couple of dropped items but only a single intermediary step.

When putting together...



...is less complicated than manufacturing...



...then yeah man, something is amiss.

[Arthur_Parker]

In terms of quality of life and ease of use? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Ok granted, I still think you have to have a certain level of crafting complexity to keep things interesting.  Is it overly complex in this case?  Maybe, it's been too long since I played, I don't trust myself to judge.  But if you personally don't have a crafting character, as was stated earlier, then I do think your threshold for all the involved bullshit is liable to be lower than "normal".  But I'm aware that "normal" in this case refers to people still playing UO in 2010, so maybe that's not a bad thing.

[Lantyssa]

But who would win in a fight between ED-209 and a UO player-crafted ship?

[Arthur_Parker]

The Mech would win, if he had posted a tank picture, I wouldn't have been so sure.

[WindupAtheist]

If ED-209 keeps its distance and moves around a lot, the ship is unlikely to hit it with anything important and the robot can just spray it with gunfire and rockets until it runs out of ammunition. Whether or not this constitutes fatal damage will likely depend upon whether or not an uncontrollable fire is started.

 

Anyway, I'd be a lot more sympathetic to a lot of this cannon crafting shit if some of the materials could also be used to... I don't know, make bombs or rockets or something. If they served some purpose besides just being the pointless in-betweens of an ABCD progression. Having a resource that can potentially become one of several useful products is one thing. But if the resource exists for only one reason, then sweep that shit under the rug with the four zillion different tools and intermediate stages nobody gives a shit about that would otherwise go into making a sword or breastplate.

[Sheepherder]

Ok granted, I still think you have to have a certain level of crafting complexity to keep things interesting.

Except the extra steps are really not interesting.  Other games have pretty much conclusively proven that crafters are appreciative of mini-games, exploration, and customizing their own work.  Which is where EA should have taken UO crafting, if they really want to go down the path of catering to crafters.

Which might not be the most sound business decision, because UO's reputation for crafting is preceded by it's reputation for corpse rape.

[ghost]

FIRE->CONFIRM?->CONFIRM?->CONFIRM?

I'm really hoping that this actually happens. 

[sinij]

Based on number of charts, the new guy is pulling ahead.

[WindupAtheist]

So the expansion has been out for a little over a week, and on Atlantic I'd be doing well to fire one shot from one cannon for a price any less than 4 or 5 times the total reward of bringing down a pirate. Almost no one is selling the shit, and those who are selling are charging ludicrous prices.

Basically, it's mule or get the fuck out. Or sort of the exact opposite of what assgoblin was hoping for. You still won't make any money even if you mule, but at least you won't go bankrupt in two days.

[jcthebuilder]

The pirate loot is obviously not balanced correctly. You only get like 5k and it will cost double that to fire enough cannons to board the ship. It takes about 20 minutes to take down a ship. The only known reward is you can get enough pieces to make an Orc Ship. In the end the booster could have used another 2 weeks beta but it had to be rushed out.

Now they have to work on 13th Anniversary gifts, 13th year veteran rewards, Halloween events, whatever they are planning on doing in Magincia, moving the Council of Mages faction base and there is of course that rumor of a big layoff in November.

[Arthur_Parker]

Ok granted, I still think you have to have a certain level of crafting complexity to keep things interesting.

Except the extra steps are really not interesting.

I said all I wanted to say about it, I had a couple of crafting characters I really liked but crafting sure wasn't enough to keep me playing.

[Falconeer]

Ugh, firing cannons?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9JiT-TLPJc

You only need to look at the first 45 seconds.

[Mrbloodworth]

POTBS it is not.

[Lantyssa]

...

[ghost]

That video really makes any argument about how good this pirate ship add on is completely fucking retarded.  Wow. 

[Sir T]

Wow, bringing the thrill and excitement of Eve POS management to UO! 

[Rasix]

Ugh, firing cannons?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9JiT-TLPJc

You only need to look at the first 45 seconds.

 

[Paelos]

That kind of combat also doubles as a sedative.

[Nebu]

Reminds me of how tolerant we all were of bad game mechanics 10+ years ago. 

[Fordel]

Reminds me of DaoC Siege weapons.


Though those at least had a little power bar meter that you were theoretically supposed to try and time your ram swings with or whatever.

[Falconeer]

Don't know if you noticed, by the author of that video is our truly jcthebuilder. He really wears the whole cannon thing with pride.

[Simond]

Have they brought back precasting yet?

[WindupAtheist]

But but but! If the system didn't revolve around laboriously pushing four or five different things in between selecting huge amounts of weird little crafting doohickeys, there wouldn't be a (tiny, overpriced, mostly stillborn) market for crafters to enjoy!

[Sheepherder]

You know what would have been cool?

If I hadn't been able to duplicate almost exactly that in 1993 by dropping a cannon onto the deck of a ship in U7 with the hack mover cheat.

[Cheddar]

Ugh, firing cannons?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9JiT-TLPJc

You only need to look at the first 45 seconds.

First 15 seconds.  I am being completely serious right now. 

This is a joke, right?

I mean, the JC thing.  Obviously the pirate boat shit arrrr is CRAP.  But.  How.

How is any of this wanted.  Why would anyone do this.  Forget price of items.  Forget gathering of items.  Assume I can get it all in 5 seconds.

Who the fuck wants to sit there and click that.  Why.  I almost didn't watch the video... but.  Why.  How.  Why.  How.

This made it into production?  Tell me you do not have to pay for this.  I.  What? 

[jcthebuilder]

Have they brought back precasting yet?

Precasting has been back since like 2000. It isn't exactly the same as the old way, but you can hold a spell for up to 45 seconds and move around. You can't drink a potion or use a skill while holding a spell.

As for the cannon video, that was to show people how firing works.  If I was in real combat I would either have a UOAssist macro hotkeyed to do all that or one of the Enhanced Client built in macros.

You mean I have to press buttons on my keyboard to play this game? How outrageous!

[lamaros]

 

[sinij]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9JiT-TLPJc

 

As for the cannon video, that was to show people how firing works.  If I was in real combat I would either have a UOAssist macro hotkeyed to do all that or one of the Enhanced Client built in macros.

 

I forgot all about UOAssist, UO is about the only mmorpg out there that outsourced all UI development to 3d party.

[Sheepherder]

Who the fuck wants to sit there and click that.  Why.  I almost didn't watch the video... but.  Why.  How.  Why.  How.

This made it into production?  Tell me you do not have to pay for this.  I.  What?

It's a $15 booster.

The best part?  I could do this in Ultima VII by dropping a cannon on the deck of a ship, both movement and firing worked, and you didn't have to do each step manually - the cannon would automatically consume a nearby powder keg and cannonball.