12-03-2007, 07:51 AM
Tailoring
Tailoring should be a little bit harder than it currently is, with a small profit during the skillgain with vendors. This rewards the tailorer further than just a dye tub. A dye tub is nice, but tailoring does not fuel the economy hardly at all, so the tailorer should receive some profit other than his once in a while gm tub sale. Since this is not a direct boost of the economy, it should be vendor run and not player run. Anyone can get a dress, so no one is going to buy 10k from a person.
Carpentry and Tinkering Should both be equally hard as they go hand in hand. Carpentry and tinker should be a little bit easier than blacksmithing though, as they are not economic neccessities, they are however a big part of UO decoration.
Resource Gathering skills
Resource gathering from any skill should take at least 1hour to 1.5 hours to gain at most 1000-1100 units per, it should also have a decent amount of weight so that it creates more time spent with the craft then just gathering resources really fast. Polymorph should play a roll with resource gathering aswell, increasing strenght increases weight capacity. All resource gathering skills should be at most 1/3 easier to gain than crafting skills. This limits the flood of rare materials.
Mining should be a little bit harder than other skills as it is more economically direct than fishing. Ingots fuel hunting, PVP and include decoration advantages aswell. Mining any ore should seriously be revamped. At gm you should still get about 65-70% of the time iron or even higher. Sapphire should take about 3-4 hours to get just two ores, and thatââ¬â¢s even if you manage to smelt it(make that about 90% success rate on sapphire. And go from there on the rest)
I am going to skip fishing. Ill leave that up to someone else.
Lumberjacking should be just as hard as mining.
Loot
All monster loot should be catagorized by the monster. It is much easier to just classify a monster by level of difficulty.
Example: A moongbat is level 1 Where as a level 1 would probably drop anywhere from 1-50 gold.
Example: Guardian Of Wrong is Level 10 Where as a level10 would drop anywhere from 10-15k just in gold. But the difficulty of the monster is so hard it takes a party to kill it. Keeping especially rare items only towards this level type of monsters decreases flooding of items and increases profits made from sale of items to players.
Now based on that example, you classify monsters by their levels according to their stats. Then you distribute loot based on their stats. But keep in mind the balance of Weapon damage vs Monster Stats. A Katana of ruin isnt going to hurt a dragon, so you would think that with that weapon, perhaps it has a chance of critical hit of maybe 2-5% on a random counter each swing, thus giving that katana anywhere from 2x-5x the normal damage it would do (also base the x scale on a random interval aswell per critical hit. This is just an idea, not an exact proposition.
Combat skills
Combat skills should always be hard to obtain no matter what. You donââ¬â¢t want everyone ganking everyone because they got zomfgkkthxbyehaxorzmyboxorz skills within the first week. This makes hunting way more unbalanced against craftables, UNLESS you make hunting loot decreased more than it currently is at the moment. (currently I could make 100k in one day if I hunted from dusk till dawn, though its hard because I like to play other parts of the game such as roleplaying) I would spend probably 10k total in that day for resources, most of which I could get from archer monsters. This needs to be checked out seriously. Either make combat skills harder to gain and more loot for monsters, or keep it as it is and make loot smaller.
Fencing
Fencing is completely ridiculous, I wonââ¬â¢t say anymore.
Mace Fighting
Is useless
Swordsmanship
Is The only melee skill currently popular (BAD idea, this brings less diversity to someoneââ¬â¢s personal favorite class and reduces role play factors aswell)
Archery.
Need I say anymore other than its uber strong?
Tactics
Tactics should be about as hard as mining currently is to Grandmaster
Parrying
Parrying is ridiculous aswell, this should be redone at an even higher difficulty than it currently is, maybe twice as hard.
Special craftables
Now this is a discussion that could take me freakin forever to tell. So I will try to shorten it as MUCH as possible.
Special Weapons
Weapons are a serious issue as of late, you have several levels of items that are currently worthless in damage against monsters that are tougher than an ettin (Ruin) The Power, force, might weapons seem to not do much more damage either. This seriously needs to be revamped. Vanq weapons(Only a few) are worth the time to use, some like kryss and mace items are completely worthless. Attacking faster is nice, but when you yield maybe 1-25 damage with any fencing weapon on a person or high level monster, come on now, thatââ¬â¢s bad! A dragon has at least over 300 hps I am guessing. Probably a lot more.
We need class specific weapons to be equal with the speed vs damage ratio.
We need more special craftables with extremely hard to find ingredients, rather than making an uber weapon within 5 seconds.
Vendors
Vendors do NOT need to stock hardly any crafting supplies, all crafting supplies should be found from either monster loot, or be player made only. The most a vendor should carry of any crafting supply is 10 with a random restock rate of 1-1.5 hours. This is only for crafting supplies. Any monster can drop certain supplies, hell, dragons could supply blank scrolls, or high level mages could drop them maybe 5-8 at a time. This makes selling the blanks use more of the economyââ¬â¢s money while giving more competition to strive for that scroll for their scribing skill(Of course any input you place in your quotions should be balanced with the skillgain. Donââ¬â¢t use scribing as hard at is is now and have monsters drop only 5-8 blanks at a time, now that would be ridiculous. Vendors should only carry ringmail at most. All other items should be crafted. This makes relying on other players more effective than going and buying iron platemail for a 70 day hunt. Vendors should never carry ingredients for special items, even when sold to them. This makes it less work for a vendor camp who has a macro set to buy certain items.
Armor
Armor should always play a big part in hunting AND PVP. I hardly see anyone going outside in anything higher than gold armor. What kind of nonsense is that? I donââ¬â¢t even hunt with more than 25 ar, and I go hunting dragons, daemons, dread lords, etc.
To reduce the non use of armor, you could give certain armors certain magic resistance capabilities and then script certain spells for certain elements and go from there on the damage table. Or you could make scrolls do less damage, thus implementing more magic book usage and more use of physical melee and range attacks, thus giving armor more use. Those two ideas work, it just takes time to implement.
Misc Skills lore etc.
Lore skills should play a HUGE part in the game.
Example: Summoning a creature. The creature will disobey your commands more often if you do not have high enough animal lore.
Example: Taste Identification helps with making cooking play a big part in the game. Cooking food gives you a smaller increase when using heal potions. OR the taste skill gives an even higher boost in gaining health with potions.
Example: Arms Lore increases usage time of weapons, thus allowing for less breaks and repairs, but it would have to be a hard skill to master since it would also take away more from crafterââ¬â¢s repairing profits.
Peacemaking could be changed so that even if you are gm peacemaking, the monster has a greater chance to become angered again and fight you more often. (I make easy money EASY money using peacemaking, its ridiculous)
Provoking should NOT allow monsters to fight to the death, even when Gmed, is should just have a longer last effect than normal.
Discordance should play a big role in hunting aswell. Currently is takes 20% of str from monsters when Gmed. This is STILL useless as most players use magic and/or ranged attacks when hunting. And on top of that, most high level monsters use magic anyways. It should be extremely hard to gm and give a stat decrement of 20% in all stats, thus giving it a better use, since it would cut down on mana use from a monster(if implemented that way)
This is all I have for now. I will write more if I feel there is a need. This is ONLY a guide, and merely MY opinions. I do not state this is how the shard SHOULD be, but it is a good guide to follow.
Galens
Tailoring should be a little bit harder than it currently is, with a small profit during the skillgain with vendors. This rewards the tailorer further than just a dye tub. A dye tub is nice, but tailoring does not fuel the economy hardly at all, so the tailorer should receive some profit other than his once in a while gm tub sale. Since this is not a direct boost of the economy, it should be vendor run and not player run. Anyone can get a dress, so no one is going to buy 10k from a person.
Carpentry and Tinkering Should both be equally hard as they go hand in hand. Carpentry and tinker should be a little bit easier than blacksmithing though, as they are not economic neccessities, they are however a big part of UO decoration.
Resource Gathering skills
Resource gathering from any skill should take at least 1hour to 1.5 hours to gain at most 1000-1100 units per, it should also have a decent amount of weight so that it creates more time spent with the craft then just gathering resources really fast. Polymorph should play a roll with resource gathering aswell, increasing strenght increases weight capacity. All resource gathering skills should be at most 1/3 easier to gain than crafting skills. This limits the flood of rare materials.
Mining should be a little bit harder than other skills as it is more economically direct than fishing. Ingots fuel hunting, PVP and include decoration advantages aswell. Mining any ore should seriously be revamped. At gm you should still get about 65-70% of the time iron or even higher. Sapphire should take about 3-4 hours to get just two ores, and thatââ¬â¢s even if you manage to smelt it(make that about 90% success rate on sapphire. And go from there on the rest)
I am going to skip fishing. Ill leave that up to someone else.
Lumberjacking should be just as hard as mining.
Loot
All monster loot should be catagorized by the monster. It is much easier to just classify a monster by level of difficulty.
Example: A moongbat is level 1 Where as a level 1 would probably drop anywhere from 1-50 gold.
Example: Guardian Of Wrong is Level 10 Where as a level10 would drop anywhere from 10-15k just in gold. But the difficulty of the monster is so hard it takes a party to kill it. Keeping especially rare items only towards this level type of monsters decreases flooding of items and increases profits made from sale of items to players.
Now based on that example, you classify monsters by their levels according to their stats. Then you distribute loot based on their stats. But keep in mind the balance of Weapon damage vs Monster Stats. A Katana of ruin isnt going to hurt a dragon, so you would think that with that weapon, perhaps it has a chance of critical hit of maybe 2-5% on a random counter each swing, thus giving that katana anywhere from 2x-5x the normal damage it would do (also base the x scale on a random interval aswell per critical hit. This is just an idea, not an exact proposition.
Combat skills
Combat skills should always be hard to obtain no matter what. You donââ¬â¢t want everyone ganking everyone because they got zomfgkkthxbyehaxorzmyboxorz skills within the first week. This makes hunting way more unbalanced against craftables, UNLESS you make hunting loot decreased more than it currently is at the moment. (currently I could make 100k in one day if I hunted from dusk till dawn, though its hard because I like to play other parts of the game such as roleplaying) I would spend probably 10k total in that day for resources, most of which I could get from archer monsters. This needs to be checked out seriously. Either make combat skills harder to gain and more loot for monsters, or keep it as it is and make loot smaller.
Fencing
Fencing is completely ridiculous, I wonââ¬â¢t say anymore.
Mace Fighting
Is useless
Swordsmanship
Is The only melee skill currently popular (BAD idea, this brings less diversity to someoneââ¬â¢s personal favorite class and reduces role play factors aswell)
Archery.
Need I say anymore other than its uber strong?
Tactics
Tactics should be about as hard as mining currently is to Grandmaster
Parrying
Parrying is ridiculous aswell, this should be redone at an even higher difficulty than it currently is, maybe twice as hard.
Special craftables
Now this is a discussion that could take me freakin forever to tell. So I will try to shorten it as MUCH as possible.
Special Weapons
Weapons are a serious issue as of late, you have several levels of items that are currently worthless in damage against monsters that are tougher than an ettin (Ruin) The Power, force, might weapons seem to not do much more damage either. This seriously needs to be revamped. Vanq weapons(Only a few) are worth the time to use, some like kryss and mace items are completely worthless. Attacking faster is nice, but when you yield maybe 1-25 damage with any fencing weapon on a person or high level monster, come on now, thatââ¬â¢s bad! A dragon has at least over 300 hps I am guessing. Probably a lot more.
We need class specific weapons to be equal with the speed vs damage ratio.
We need more special craftables with extremely hard to find ingredients, rather than making an uber weapon within 5 seconds.
Vendors
Vendors do NOT need to stock hardly any crafting supplies, all crafting supplies should be found from either monster loot, or be player made only. The most a vendor should carry of any crafting supply is 10 with a random restock rate of 1-1.5 hours. This is only for crafting supplies. Any monster can drop certain supplies, hell, dragons could supply blank scrolls, or high level mages could drop them maybe 5-8 at a time. This makes selling the blanks use more of the economyââ¬â¢s money while giving more competition to strive for that scroll for their scribing skill(Of course any input you place in your quotions should be balanced with the skillgain. Donââ¬â¢t use scribing as hard at is is now and have monsters drop only 5-8 blanks at a time, now that would be ridiculous. Vendors should only carry ringmail at most. All other items should be crafted. This makes relying on other players more effective than going and buying iron platemail for a 70 day hunt. Vendors should never carry ingredients for special items, even when sold to them. This makes it less work for a vendor camp who has a macro set to buy certain items.
Armor
Armor should always play a big part in hunting AND PVP. I hardly see anyone going outside in anything higher than gold armor. What kind of nonsense is that? I donââ¬â¢t even hunt with more than 25 ar, and I go hunting dragons, daemons, dread lords, etc.
To reduce the non use of armor, you could give certain armors certain magic resistance capabilities and then script certain spells for certain elements and go from there on the damage table. Or you could make scrolls do less damage, thus implementing more magic book usage and more use of physical melee and range attacks, thus giving armor more use. Those two ideas work, it just takes time to implement.
Misc Skills lore etc.
Lore skills should play a HUGE part in the game.
Example: Summoning a creature. The creature will disobey your commands more often if you do not have high enough animal lore.
Example: Taste Identification helps with making cooking play a big part in the game. Cooking food gives you a smaller increase when using heal potions. OR the taste skill gives an even higher boost in gaining health with potions.
Example: Arms Lore increases usage time of weapons, thus allowing for less breaks and repairs, but it would have to be a hard skill to master since it would also take away more from crafterââ¬â¢s repairing profits.
Peacemaking could be changed so that even if you are gm peacemaking, the monster has a greater chance to become angered again and fight you more often. (I make easy money EASY money using peacemaking, its ridiculous)
Provoking should NOT allow monsters to fight to the death, even when Gmed, is should just have a longer last effect than normal.
Discordance should play a big role in hunting aswell. Currently is takes 20% of str from monsters when Gmed. This is STILL useless as most players use magic and/or ranged attacks when hunting. And on top of that, most high level monsters use magic anyways. It should be extremely hard to gm and give a stat decrement of 20% in all stats, thus giving it a better use, since it would cut down on mana use from a monster(if implemented that way)
This is all I have for now. I will write more if I feel there is a need. This is ONLY a guide, and merely MY opinions. I do not state this is how the shard SHOULD be, but it is a good guide to follow.
Galens