Attracting all types of players/making a succesful freeshard

[Calix]

BEST NIGHT SHIFT THREADS TO MYSELF.

Why did Legacy only attract PvP players?

Noxin had one talent, coding. As far as advertising a shard or managing a community, he didn't have much of a plan, mostly because there wasn't any time to have a plan. What was there in place to attract RPers, crafter or PvMers? I know he coded in that 'Gem' system, but it was something for PvPers to do on the side to improve their suits, not something that was ever going to attract a single player just for itself. Obviously the biggest reason for this was it was only in development for about three months, which wasn't even enough time to iron out all the bugs in the PvP system, let alone look at anything meaningful.

Basically it was a shard aimed at us, and our very limited demographic. At the time we couldn't see beyond our own basic needs for a shard to even consider this. The experience of how Legacy played out means we can think differently now.

So how would you attract them?

It's a lot harder than attracting a PvP player, and probably even more difficult to retain.

What attracts/retains a PvP player?

1. Ruleset. PvP mechanics specifically.
2. Opponents.

Legacy had number 1, not much of number 2

What attracts/retains a Roleplayer?

1. GM/World led quests/storylines.
2. Event support.
3. Staff understanding of Ultima lore & history and giving it some relevance in the development of the shard.
4. Giving players the ability to shape the direction of the shard and their in game environment.

Legacy had none of this.

What attracts/retains a PvMer?

1. Wealth aquisition.
2. 'Pixel crack'
3. Challenge
4. New content.

1 and 2 were well catered for I think. I believe Noxin put in server birth/server up rares, added extra artifacts, etc. Not sure if there was much of a challenge, and the shard didn't last long enough to see whether new content was a realistic objective.

What attracts a Merchant/Crafter?

1. I have no fucking idea.
2. Social aspect?

What about other player types? Thieves. Treasure Hunters? Both classes that could have loads of work put into their development. Others?

On top of these, the basic requirements to attract/retain any kind of player:

1. Professional appearance. Good webpage, professional attitude from shard staff.
2. Good communication from staff. Frequent updates and responses to player input.
3. Shard direction and purpose. Set out to achieve something, be it emulating a certain era, or catering to a certain player base, and stick to it.
4. Sufficient playerbase, personalities, rivalries. etc. The hardest thing to engineer, and probably the most important factor in any shard.
5. Based around a popular era to attract an initial playerbase.
6. Continual advertising and promotion.
7. A large, incorruptible, motivated and knowledgable staff.

Where do you start with creating a 'balanced' shard to appeal to all player types that were essential in making a given era succesful? Obviously focusing on AOS here.

AoS was intrinsically a 'bad' era for crafters as far as I understand, they were mostly made redundant by things like BODS, powder of fortitute(if that's the correct name). Obviously the biggest issue was item insurance, which isn't something you can get around without completely changing the entire feel of the era. So how do you make crafters more relevant? When you hear them reminiscing about the good times, it's about standing around at Brit Forge, fixing people's armour. The social element as much as anything. I don't know enough about crafters and their motivations to understand this aspect. Could vendors and towns be looked at in greater detail? Or would this be deviating too far from the game itself?

Roleplayers. Again AOS wasn't good for them, but obviously they had already been told they almost weren't wanted by EA with the Trammel split, the end of the seer/companion program, the end of blessings for players housing, etc. How would you convince a roleplaying community to migrate to your UO server vs. so much competition from other shards and especially other, newer games. It'd only be the 'UO hardcore' that would be interested in the first place. To be succesful you would really have to play to UO's strengths.
Player housing, Ultima lore, run a continual shard 'story' that develops with input from the player base who should be able to influence events to an extent. You would need enough people to play NPC characters to push the event. A good story that people can feel passionate about. Followers of Armageddon story arc is the only one I can remember in 'real' UO that came close to this. Support with enabling the players to better fulfill their 'role' would also be essential. Giving the Orcs a proper orc fort as done on some shards being the best example, but a lot more could be done.
Can anyone remind me what, other than the itemisation of UO, was bad for RPers in AOS?

PvMers. There's obviously still a large group of people that enjoy PvMing in UO, as it's pretty much all that's left on the OSI shards. What do they enjoy? It's obviously a combination of the challenge, the loot and the pixel crack. All of those are things in need of constant renewal to prevent them becoming bored. How do you attract this type of player to your shard? UO is never going to pull players from other games because WoW etc just do it so much better, however much you might put into improving this aspect of UO. So somehow you have to make your shard stand out against other free shards and 'real' UO.

PvPers are the easiest to attract. I think mostly because no other game has managed to match UO for us. For all other types of players, something has come along to replace UO, and probably surpass it in most ways beyond player housing and the unique social aspect that UO had around a shard community, and geographical communities within it. For PvPers, you need to give them a ruleset they remember fondly, tweak it slightly, and give them the promise of enemies.
Some purpose helps. UOR shards have factions, AOS shards have champion spawns. Ideally you can combine the two like on Legacy. Only t2a shards have nothing beyond guildwars, and it's the main reason I can't get into UOSA. I need an over-riding goal, and I think it's the same for most people. Retaining PvPers is much harder than attracting them. So many shards have begun with a healthy population of PvPers, Legacy being one of them. The problem is, once they realise there's no community beyond themselves and their enemies, the appeal wanes. It's just an FPS. There's no reputation to gain or community to impress. No roleplayers to grief, no PvMers to hunt. No crafters to supply you. Most free shards begin just with a ton of PvPers and nothing else, and fade away because of this.

Other player types. What other types are there? I guess treasure hunters really go under the PvMer category, and thieves under the PvPer heading. I think both classes could have a lot done with them though.

Skills: Always thought a much better use for the UO expansions would have been to make some of the useless and near useless skills relevant to the game, rather than needless new content and items.

Landmass: Did anyone actually want anything beyond the old lands and t2a? t2a was pretty much just a wasteland until p16, and so much more could have been done with the original dungeons. Mabe even t2a wasn't neccesary and I just include it through my own personal love for it. All that ridiculous new content from trammel onwards could have been improved and placed in old locations rather than making needless extra lands. I don't think I ever went to Ilshenaar, and didn't go to Malas beyond Luna vendors. How about replacing/modifying some of the 'old lands' landmass? Explained with Lore, etc.

Systems: Champion Spawns were the best thing ever added to UO in my opinion, speaking from the position of a PvPer. With traditional PKing, you reached an area, attacked a PvMer, either you killed them or they left. On the very rare occaision they would return with friends, or on an alternate character. Basically it wasn't conducive to creating more PvP in the same area after the initial encounter. There was no reason for the PvMer to return to that area unless they wanted direct confrontation with the PK, which was obviously rarely the case.

With spawns it was very different. The rewards only came at the very end of the spawn, which obviously encouraged people to return, even after being killed multiple times. The spawns also lasted long enough for lots of different groups to come across them, creating mass conflict. Order/Chaos, Guildwars or Factions were never as succesful as this. Partly because the rewards from the spawns were potentially so great. Factions were a good system, just didn't come close to their potential. Linking them into spawns and crafting like on Legacy took them in the direction they should have gone on OSI. Rewards like guards, warhorses, reg vendors etc. were nice, but not close to getting a +20 Magery from Neira. Legacy got all of this right, or nearly right.

Are non PvP players of all varieties that bothered by recieving an authentic 'era accurate' experience? Do they care as much as we do about "how great p25 was" or whatever? Or are they happy just to get a shard that gives them a lot of what they want? I think so personally, and it's only the PvP players and their specific mechanics that you have to worry about getting exactly right. With everything else you have much more scope to change and improve.

Getting the right 'feel': The hardest thing to do? I know everytime we've tried to play a freeshard one of our biggest problems is that it just doesn't feel like old UO. Mostly this is a community thing, partly explained by it being a new shard, with none of the 'history' we had on our old shards, no old faces or names, etc. And partly because any freeshard hasn't actually managed to produce such a diverse and well developed community as an OSI shard. It's obviously also due to razor and runuo being slightly different to what we're used to, although I think this is easily overcome if the community part is right.

4 more night shifts to do so more to come!

[Fatalist]

I imagine what calix is basically saying/leading to is:

"who wants to chip in some time & money to develop the perfect shard" ?


I do.

[Calix]

I really would consider starting to get together the ideas for a shard to be opened in a year or two years time. I know it's basically just you and me here that are interested, but I quite enjoy even the planning. Once there's a basic premise for a shard there's plenty of other people that would be interested in getting involved in the planning/running.

I'll just spam here when I feel like it and see if anything takes shape.

[Calix]

Was thinking last night. Would AOS have worked better if a naked char -instead of having 0/0/0/0/0 and no FC/FCR when naked - If say the 'base' setup when naked was say 60 in all resists, with 2/5 casting? Obviously all additional mods could be gained from items, and you could adjust the items themselves so that they didn't build stupidly on top of that base. Like a pair of leggings could have mods, but you could only get say 1 type of resist on each item + whatever other mod, like LMC, or whatever.

Just thinking along the lines of making items still useful, but not a necessity, people could still duel or even field fight on an un-itemed char if they wanted, but items would still infer advantages. Big change I know.

Edit: Just start all chars up with a basic 2/4 casting set, armour to give 60 in all resists, and whatever the equivalent would be for dexxers.

[Mercury]

i love you both.

i would play. i would pay. <3

[KoKane]

You know what I've come to realize for sure now... Multiple accounts/characters ruins a lot of aspects playing and 'immersion or whatever.

Like you mention Calix about the different players and their styles, a guy who wants to be nothing but a crafter is extra gimped because pvprs can automate an account AFK over night while they pk, etc.
I know people would find it almost impossible to swallow that a shard have a very very strict, 1 account, 1 char rule.. but the truth is, they'd probly end up enjoying the fact that they HAVE to leave some skillpoints for a trade skill or whatever, then join forces with other players and each help each other out.

Another thing that is known to be bad but not really considered enough is EasyUO and Razor. They allow players to play in unnatural ways that, to them seem resourceful and clever but from the eyes of the creator and someone who understands what makes the game fun, seems silly.
I'm talking about 1 guy going and farming with 2 accounts casting blade spirits or a dedicated healer or some shit.
On IPYs first or second day, I was in Shame with a guy running two accounts.

Literally straight from character creation screen with 50 Taming and 50 Lore, he could tame 5 scorpians.
On the other account 50 magery and 50 vet. He could heal and cure.
He was making insane money 'semi-legit' for day 1 or 2.
Imagine a co-ordinated effort from a guild doing it.

[KoKane]

http://www.mediafire.com/?njrlzbl66m25ai2

[Calix]

Good post, agree with all of that. You're a fucking hero with scripts. Nice one. A

[Calix]

Anyone want to have a look through the Legacy scripts linked in KoKane's post for Noxin's faction changes? Only thing I've found so far is in the champ files themselves, for example, in Barracoon:

Code: Select all

[// Faction damage bonus
			int dambonus = 0;
			public override void AlterMeleeDamageFrom( Mobile from, ref int damage )
			{

			PlayerState pl = PlayerState.Find( from );

			TownCollection towns = Town.Towns;
			for ( int i = 0; i < towns.Count; ++i )
			{
				Town town = towns[i];

				if ( pl == null )
				{
				return;
				}
				else if ( pl.Faction == town.Owner)
				{
				dambonus = dambonus+10;
				}
			}
			damage += AOS.Scale( damage, dambonus );
			dambonus = 0;
			}

		public override void AlterSpellDamageFrom( Mobile Caster, ref int damage )
			{

			PlayerState pl = PlayerState.Find( Caster );

			TownCollection towns = Town.Towns;
			for ( int i = 0; i < towns.Count; ++i )
			{
				Town town = towns[i];
				if ( pl == null )
				{
				return;
				}
				else if ( pl.Faction == town.Owner)
				{
				dambonus = dambonus+10;
				}
			}

			damage += AOS.Scale( damage, dambonus );
			dambonus = 0;
			}
// End faction damage bonus

[Ingo]

Do you remember what was supposed to be different?

That one just gives you +10 damage against baracoon if your faction owns the town. Pretty fucking time intensive way of doing if the aim was to give +10 damage against all monsters!

[Noxin]

If I remember correctly and there's a good chance I don't, the damage bonus is actually 10% per town. Aos.Scale is what does that I believe and I think I recall it being neccasary for any damage modifications to apply and use AoS armour values.

Usage would be:
AOS.Scale( damage amount, percentage )

It was only against the spawn champz so I just added that to each of the spawn champ scripts.

[Calix]

Fucking hell I wrote a lot. Think you're right Nox. Remember the same.

Anyone got any thoughts on other faction improvements? Did you make a faction necro reg vendor as well? Or did I just dream that whilst touching myself about omen ganking?

[KoKane]

I never liked how factions were something that, if you werent involved, it didnt matter. More incentives to make everyone attackable is good, promoting pvp and action... but its definitely gotta be worth it.