Without a 'Trammel'
Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 9:11 pm
How do people get established? It's doable on non-AOS shards, there's no certain spawns you need to work, or items you need to get before you can be even close to competitive.
Say 4 months into a shard, an old PvP guild decides to start up. They're straight away targeted by some established guilds. Is it possible for them to get established and catch up with the rest of the shard in a reasonable time? If there's any doubt as to the answer to this, how bad is it for a single player, especially one new to UO, or without much AOS experience?
In a way the shard we're proposing is daunting even at shard opening, no safe zones outside of the towns, and even with everyone in the same position, certain players/groups will race ahead and gain a bigger advantage than would be possible on a non-AOS shard.
So what measures can we take?
We've already decided on increased insurance costs for murderer characters. Currently set at 4x price, probably realistically we'll end up at 3x. This is obviously only an effective measure for more than a month or two if we manage to develop a reasonable shard economy. As soon as the better players have almost unlimited money, increased insurance costs mean nothing to them. It's not just murderers that can 'grief' people off a shard either, and this rule has no effect on people that just want to grief without going red. We have 0 discouragement for that type of player currently.
We've spread the 'top item' spawns around a lot. Lost Lands are open, meaning even on a high population shard, groups can manage to do Champ spawns unhindered some times. Doom items and other high end loot is spread across 4 different dungeons, and there's lesser-but-still-useful stuff like horned kits available in an absolute ton of locations.
If we want a shard to have a decent player base, which relies on a steady stream of new players to replace the old that naturally drift away, what other measures could we consider?
Say 4 months into a shard, an old PvP guild decides to start up. They're straight away targeted by some established guilds. Is it possible for them to get established and catch up with the rest of the shard in a reasonable time? If there's any doubt as to the answer to this, how bad is it for a single player, especially one new to UO, or without much AOS experience?
In a way the shard we're proposing is daunting even at shard opening, no safe zones outside of the towns, and even with everyone in the same position, certain players/groups will race ahead and gain a bigger advantage than would be possible on a non-AOS shard.
So what measures can we take?
We've already decided on increased insurance costs for murderer characters. Currently set at 4x price, probably realistically we'll end up at 3x. This is obviously only an effective measure for more than a month or two if we manage to develop a reasonable shard economy. As soon as the better players have almost unlimited money, increased insurance costs mean nothing to them. It's not just murderers that can 'grief' people off a shard either, and this rule has no effect on people that just want to grief without going red. We have 0 discouragement for that type of player currently.
We've spread the 'top item' spawns around a lot. Lost Lands are open, meaning even on a high population shard, groups can manage to do Champ spawns unhindered some times. Doom items and other high end loot is spread across 4 different dungeons, and there's lesser-but-still-useful stuff like horned kits available in an absolute ton of locations.
If we want a shard to have a decent player base, which relies on a steady stream of new players to replace the old that naturally drift away, what other measures could we consider?