[Eighty Swords]

Two things that makes this shard boring to me is the pits and the "status"-list on the website, which tells the location of each other..

As far as the status page is concerned, I agree with you Led. As it is now it's not very helpful considering half of the locations show up as - and all dungeons show up as "dungeon". So it's not very helpful for PKs, which is why it was added; to try and help promote pking. Personally I think the status page can be taken down for the time being considering we have the new system where players can type something ingame to have a message show when they and other players who enabled the system enter/leave towns.

The only problem with this other system is there's nothing to tell you about it. You have to sort through the literally thousands of posts on the forums to find out it exists or by a one in a million chance ask one of the people who enabled it if such a system exists and how it works. Unfortunately, that person is likely going to say 'f*ck you noobie'. And don't tell me you can just search for this system because you can't search for something, even vaguely, if you don't know it exists. Think about it, if you have no idea what a dog is, how are you gonna search for it to learn about it? By searching for things like furry, 4 legs, tail, cute, etc? No, because you don't know a dog is these things.

On shards I've played, where there obviously hasn't been any pits, you'd interact with people all the time randomly. I've been playing on shards in which the playerbase has been average 30, and still you've been interacting with people alot more than here, even at times we had more than 100 players online.

I can't say that there's no "random" interaction happening. Whenever I've gone to pits I see people there are afk, they're not having a two hour conversation about their whole life or even a 5 minute conversation about a monster they just killed. I have to say all the interaction I have with other players is when I run into them in town. It's not often I run into someone when hunting or exploring.

And to be honest, I feel that some people on INX are such item whores that they wouldn't be having that 5 minute conversation in town instead of in pits since they are so scared to lose a plate mail set and don't want to risk being in a town where guards don't even come to protect you when you're attacked.

There's so many pros in my opinion if we'd skip whole idea of pits. First off all, if people would want to check out what's happening or how active the shard is right now, they'd have to enter Britain or/and Occlo to see what the players who's online are actually doing.

I know that there's alot of people, or at least was, who's checking out the activity of the shard, to make their decision if they want to play or not, by either logging on in pits or already have their UO-window with their logged on character in pits, to see how many people there's there and see if there's any interaction etc.

If we wouldn't have pits, you couldn't assume too much by just logging on and write .on. Like I said earlier, you'd have to recall to Britain and/or Occlo to actually see if anyone's around or if everyone on the .on list is AFK. I think that, at least before, people have been logging on or checking their UO-window more than you might know. Without pits, this would might mean people would start interacting with eachother in different ways. There's alot of chaos/order players here. By having them to actually enter the towns to see what's going on would mean alot of more action.

I think what you've said here is wrong on a few levels Led. For starters, the majority of the real action isn't in Brit or even Occlo. Sure, people gank here from time to time or meet to trade here, but the majority of action is in dungeons, mines, other areas. So in order to get an idea of where the action is right now, someone can't just check out Brit and Occlo.

Secondly, lets say 90% of the action was in Brit and Occlo (which it isn't). If someone is too lazy to log in at pits and walk a few tiles to a teleporter to Brit and Occlo, what makes you think they'd recall from their house (where they probably logged off) to check out Brit and Occlo and then recall back to their house to log out?

Anyone who judges how active the shard is by checking whats happening in pits is a complete moron. Plain and simply, pits is a gathering place or a hub where you meet up with people and go do something or where you go to enter events. There is no purpose to pits other then this so I still can't believe how 3 years later people still take an issue with it and point fingers at it.

Furthermore, if people want a general idea of how active the shard is they see it as soon as they log in with the system message saying how many people are logged in and how many items exist. If people want a better idea they'd simply type .on to see who is on. After that they'd go to town to check out what people are doing, or to dungeons for a better idea. But people don't do this now and you can't honestly believe people would start doing it if you just got rid of pits.

When people die here, it's not really a big deal, most of the times you'll find a rune somewhere really close. Without pits people would start running around the world, using the moongates, try to get themself to a town before they can gear up again etc. If you're in a dungeon you'd preferably tell a friend to gate so you can get out of there.

Here, as it is now, you are so independent of other people it's seriously boring. If I die now as it is now, it's more of a hassle to contact a friend and have him to help me, than just get myself to a rune, gear up, recall back and loot my stuff back if possible.

And how would this change if there were no pits? Instead of walking on the pits rune to get revived and then to a bank to resupply, people would go to a healer to get revived and then to a bank to resupply. And no, most of the time there isn't a pits rune really close. I don't know of a popular or worthwhile dungeon or mine with a pits rune outside it. I'm not saying you have to run for 30 minutes to get to a pits rune, but it's not right outside a dungeon or mine either.

[imported_Tiesto]

The pits thingy has been discussed plenty of times.... besides removing the pits Right at this moment like the situation is would just make the interaction between the populaton worst than it is already due to the low player base these past weeks

[imported_Eru]

The reason I usually avoid these threads is because they very rarely introduce anything new. After reading through this one, I have a case in point.

(read the next part in Yahtzee Croshaw's voice)

Give people what they want.
Everyone wants different things, and there's no way for everyone to have everything.

Change skillgain
Plenty of people are GM in all skills with nothing more than turning on a macro while wanking about somewhere else. It's not hard, and to make skills drastically more easy devalues the work the existing players put in.

Changes to crafting
Sure it gives a temporary boost to interest, but after hours of scripting a few new hues onto your jock strap or a cool pair of dealy-boppers, it's only new and interesting for so long before people lose interest. Not to mention stacking more and more tools on to the already huge assortment you need.

People want it to be like it used to be.
Sounds great till you realize the source of the shard's population merges from two drastically different playstyles. What we have now is a very good melding of both styles and aside from the occasional bug fix or balancing, changing it is just like constantly adjusting a picture-frame on a window trying to level it. Someone's always going to think it's crooked.

Remove/Don't Remove the pits
For a bustling shard of hundreds, the pits would become crowded and mostly unusable for anything but tourney meetups. You'll meet plenty of people in towns as well, so there's no need to go. With smaller populations, the people in the pits give an appearance of population, even if there's not one active at the time. Point is, it serves a purpose when the population is low and it's needed, but when the population gets high, it becomes less valuable de facto.

Status Page
This one I don't even want to touch on, because it is inherently flawed. I personally don't like it because it's unrealistic and instead of gameplay, you're pressing F5 on your browser, then recalling to look for the person you think you can find and kill. Sure it boosts PVP activity, but at the cost of PVEers griping about being hunted, then the PVPers saying how hard it is to find someone even with their area. Bottom line is, NOONE will ever be happy with the status page, so there's no point in proposing ways to fix it.


OKAY ERU! You just blasted all our ideas, so if you're so smart, YOU fix it.

Short answer is, I don't know how, but I can guess. Longer answer to follow:

We seem to have NO problem at all retaining people who have devoted themselves to the shard and have managed to make it through the skill-up process and learning to hunt.

The people we seem to lose are the new players, so THOSE are the people we should be listening to the most instead of rearranging bits that only 10% of the peak players ever see.

I remember when I started here, there were very few easy dungeons. I'd recommend just making pitifully easy dungeons full of mongbats and headlesses, weakened zombies, etc. The loot would be terrible, but there's a lot to say for being able to log into a game and start killing the shit out of things right off the bat.

More automated events that players can happen in on. Ideally there would be dozens of these, with each reoccurring every 1-2 weeks. This would give a fairly constant mix of events going on that draw in players and give a sense of storyline, which brings me to my next point:

Lore and storyline. We have no notable kings, heroes, places, or quests. It would be nice to have a bit of lore behind things that are integrated via XML dialogues, spawners, etc.

To sum up what I think needs to happen: IMMERSION

[Eighty Swords]

As far as skillgain and crafting are concerned leave these as they are. It's nice to get some new craftables from time to time but there's no need to make new crafting skills or rework the entire craft system to do this.

As far as the status page is concerned, as Eru said nobody is really happy with it. In other words the PvMers don't like it because they feel less safe, the PvPers don't like it because it's not precise. Simple solution: take it down.

We seem to have NO problem at all retaining people who have devoted themselves to the shard and have managed to make it through the skill-up process and learning to hunt.

I don't think we can keep new or old players. Sure, there are people like me, rabbi, kandorin and a few others that are on now and then, but most of the players who have invested a lot of time here are gone. The majority of the spanish community, scarecrow, smoke and a lot of others are gone too.

The people we seem to lose are the new players, so THOSE are the people we should be listening to the most instead of rearranging bits that only 10% of the peak players ever see.

I fully agree that someone new should be entitled to their opinion, but the problem I've seen in the past with new players expressing their opinions is two things;
1) Older players say 'stfu you're a noob, you don't deserve to say anything' which just results in the new player leaving
2) New players want to change the core elements of INX to how they like instead of only small things.

Really, it comes down to the fact that everyone wants things their way and aren't willing to compromise. I have to say I am one of the few people willing to compromise.

I remember when I started here, there were very few easy dungeons. I'd recommend just making pitifully easy dungeons full of mongbats and headlesses, weakened zombies, etc. The loot would be terrible, but there's a lot to say for being able to log into a game and start killing the shit out of things right off the bat.

It's a good idea except that after people play in the easy dungeon for 30 minutes they will realize they are making no money and won't bother hunting here anymore. So then they'll try the regular dungeons, won't be able to survive here. In the end people will say hunting is not worth it or too hard. It's all about finding the happy medium, and I think that's what Taran suggested a while back.

Basically, Taran suggested that whenever you enter a dungeon you pick 'easy' or 'hard' from a gump and this way you get to choose how much of a challenge you want. The hard option would be as it is now, and the easy option could be made from the identical dungeons in Trammel. I'd say cut the loot and strength down to approximately 50% strength and this would be fair. You're making less money but you're fighting weaker monsters, but monsters that still make hunting worth your time.

More automated events that players can happen in on. Ideally there would be dozens of these, with each reoccurring every 1-2 weeks. This would give a fairly constant mix of events going on that draw in players and give a sense of storyline, which brings me to my next point:

Great idea! lets start another thread with a series of automated events there presently are, and ones we could add. My main recommendation would be that people actually get a prize for winning at the end of the event, or at the end of the week the person who won the most automated events wins a few tickets.

Lore and storyline. We have no notable kings, heroes, places, or quests. It would be nice to have a bit of lore behind things that are integrated via XML dialogues, spawners, etc.

I don't have a background in this sort of thing but I'd be more then happy to try it out! If people can write out some good story lines that a group of people can take part in that would be awesome.

[imported_Necro]

Not trying to be a downer but Automatic Events aren't needed (right now at least) as if I try to host an event I get between 0-4 people.....soooo without people you can't have an event. Just pointing that out.

[Eighty Swords]

Not trying to be a downer but Automatic Events aren't needed (right now at least) as if I try to host an event I get between 0-4 people.....soooo without people you can't have an event. Just pointing that out.

On the other hand you can't deny that after an event is hosted you notice a temporary boost in players. Whenever I'm online and see a GM is offering to host an event I message everyone on my MSN list that is online or that I think would be interested in joining (I'm not about to send a message to Taran telling him there's an event lol).

And at the same time, when staff offer to host an event and 0-4 people show up, the event shouldn't be cancelled otherwise those 0-4 people will start thinking 'well only 0-4 people showed up and events are cancelled with this amount of people so I won't come anymore'. Then the next event gets 0-3 people, and so on.

It's a vicious circle and somebody has to take the first step.


Furthermore, the interesting thing about automated events is that if there are a few that can be automated and one is chosen at random, people never know which event it will be and maybe they will log on more often to see if there is one.

Here's the key to a server: the more quality features you have to offer, the better the chance someone comes. If you have nothing to offer don't expect people to come. As it stands today, INX has TONS of features to offer people but we haven't been thinking along the right lines in order to keep getting players and to keep players.

Now if you come and read this Taran please don't think I am trying to tell you how to run INX as you've done a great job since taking over from Maka and Colddrake and I don't think many people could have done as good a job. I am just trying to help out.

[Sinchronic]

Idk if this happened to more ppl before, but tbh, what made me and my friends not join/continue.. is the number of account by IP, i had 3 friends come here and i managed to make em wants to comeback, the only little prob is that they wanted to play with me here in lan, thats a huge part of the fun in uo.. playing with close friends.

Me and my bro just stopped checking mail until like 3 day ago, and still no reply of admin or seer, sounds like the server head isnt here, and we arent going to wait playing with only one character.

Skillgain and hunting is fine(even tho blades/ev spam is getting old fast w/o PK or ppl to PK) deadly poison runs was making a change of that old blades spam and was making whole game more fun.
Just my 2cent while passing by, have fun guys.

Btw, anyone remember if it was in A9 or XUO that llama kamikaze were working? XD full a pack llama with Xpots and light it after all kill, that was just awesome.

[imported_Gatin]

msg taran or emalil him with u ip adress? later taran make it posible.

[imported_Eru]

Or give GMs privs to set the multi-account property.

[imported_Epistemology]

Btw, anyone remember if it was in A9 or XUO that llama kamikaze were working? XD full a pack llama with Xpots and light it after all kill, that was just awesome.

Dude, holy shit, I forgot all about those!

You guys should bring back llama bombs and get rid of all the guards and make zombie spawns everywhere, kind of like a post-apoc setting. That would rock....

[imported_Paulie]

The PVP sucks plain and simple.....IM OUT!

[imported_phobia]

The PVP sucks plain and simple.....IM OUT!

the only reason the pvp sucks is that there is never anyone to kill other than that it is great