Messiah2
Sorceror
First I will start with a small background and introduction, then I will simply try to describe my thoughts on the topic in detail. Want to note, that I never played on official servers and my experience is strictly measured by emulators.
I've known UO for almost 10 years already. It was all fun at start and I've been immersed by the vast possibilities of the game, I've started to learn, admin, try to set up a server and dig any bit of information, that was interesting. RunUO was like revelation when I first found it, because C# is relatively simple OO language and yet powerful, so it meant anything was possible. For some time I've played in different ways and on different servers, created some stuff (like full russian cliloc translation), wrote some c# code for personal use. As the time passed I was bored of playing eventually, but why?
Simple answer is that I've grown and I am not immersed by the same old things, I've simply used to it and didn't find any interesting alternatives in gameplay. Every time I've started over, I created the same character and done same things, because I wouldn't be effective otherwise with my style of playing, also I couldn't find any group or guild, which would've been as organized and striving for teamplay, not "gamey" teamplay with only goal to kick newb ass with numbers and more powerful weapons/macro usage, but more realistic medieval organizational structure, using some kind of team tactics without running around and casting spells all the time. But why is this happening? Simply because game is not providing right "tools", not encouraging or forcing to do otherwise, thus players act accordingly and adapt to more solo-style play. I've also tried to play on strict role-playing server, but that's not my cup of tea, I'm not used to make up something from nothing and it's simply not fun.
In this case my definition of "role-playing" is not making up some stories and trying to speak/write as my character, but practical role-playing, that is doing/acting in a role.
I'm not blaming players or game designers, because it all comes down to supply-and-demand and I can add interesting quote from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_online#Artificial_Life_Engine
Such a great endevour by the developers was ruined by players behavior.
As far as I remember I started playing since Renaissance and since that expansion everything went more "gamey" and more like any other rpg on the current market. Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to play more early revisions of the game, which (AFAIK) where more "hardcore". Most of the time developer only adds more content, expanding universe, adding creatures, items, but not improving basic mechanics and I don't mean graphics, but for example such things as very primitive hitpoint based health system combined with fighting, which both are not really interesting/fun/realistic, simply a+b-c = damage. That's the way almost in any game nowadays and that's completely understandable, less effort, more content, which matches the demand on the market = profit.
Everything is exposing "mathematical" nature of the system, wherever you look you see numbers and it breaks immersion. Everything from skills to weapon stats. And the main point of this is that people simply want to have more numbers or more efficient combination of the same numbers. It breaks the point of role-playing, because most of the people are simply not interested in loosing, because that's what happens when you're not powerful enough. And loosing is not fun... but
Recently I decided to try out Dwarf Fortress using one of the graphics pack, because ascii is hard to perceive, and it actually inspired me to write this text and start thinking of what it would be like, if UO or any other game had at least some of the features from it. This game is more like strategy it has more basic RPG-elements than UO. Just to name some: every character has it's unique personality with unique traits and this traits actually affect skills and their behavior, comparatively complex injury and combat system, where you don't have hitpoints and every body part can actually be injured or torn off.
That's where I started to imagine how cool it would be to see something like this in UO, but I understand that development of such systems would take huge amount of time and there is no guarantee that anyone will even play such "complex" game, but anyways that's completely possible to achieve and create unique and a lot more beautiful (compared to ascii) representation.
Of course I can continue on and on about "how I would like to see a perfect mmorpg game" throwing out practical examples, but in the end I see no sense, even if I would make such UO modification myself. I don't know what would I do with it when it's done, it's not single-player like DF and it's not fun playing alone...
Why am I writing all this? Simply because I wanted to express my thoughts (IMHO) and look at what others are thinking. Also probably someone can advice if there is such shard/server, where described gameplay already exists, or at least which is heading in similar direction, where you can actually play organized (teamplay) using "practical roleplay", maybe with slight change in mechanics, which encourage such play, and have fun (even loosing). If you read all this wall of text up to this point - thank you
I've known UO for almost 10 years already. It was all fun at start and I've been immersed by the vast possibilities of the game, I've started to learn, admin, try to set up a server and dig any bit of information, that was interesting. RunUO was like revelation when I first found it, because C# is relatively simple OO language and yet powerful, so it meant anything was possible. For some time I've played in different ways and on different servers, created some stuff (like full russian cliloc translation), wrote some c# code for personal use. As the time passed I was bored of playing eventually, but why?
Simple answer is that I've grown and I am not immersed by the same old things, I've simply used to it and didn't find any interesting alternatives in gameplay. Every time I've started over, I created the same character and done same things, because I wouldn't be effective otherwise with my style of playing, also I couldn't find any group or guild, which would've been as organized and striving for teamplay, not "gamey" teamplay with only goal to kick newb ass with numbers and more powerful weapons/macro usage, but more realistic medieval organizational structure, using some kind of team tactics without running around and casting spells all the time. But why is this happening? Simply because game is not providing right "tools", not encouraging or forcing to do otherwise, thus players act accordingly and adapt to more solo-style play. I've also tried to play on strict role-playing server, but that's not my cup of tea, I'm not used to make up something from nothing and it's simply not fun.
In this case my definition of "role-playing" is not making up some stories and trying to speak/write as my character, but practical role-playing, that is doing/acting in a role.
I'm not blaming players or game designers, because it all comes down to supply-and-demand and I can add interesting quote from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_online#Artificial_Life_Engine
Such a great endevour by the developers was ruined by players behavior.
As far as I remember I started playing since Renaissance and since that expansion everything went more "gamey" and more like any other rpg on the current market. Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to play more early revisions of the game, which (AFAIK) where more "hardcore". Most of the time developer only adds more content, expanding universe, adding creatures, items, but not improving basic mechanics and I don't mean graphics, but for example such things as very primitive hitpoint based health system combined with fighting, which both are not really interesting/fun/realistic, simply a+b-c = damage. That's the way almost in any game nowadays and that's completely understandable, less effort, more content, which matches the demand on the market = profit.
Everything is exposing "mathematical" nature of the system, wherever you look you see numbers and it breaks immersion. Everything from skills to weapon stats. And the main point of this is that people simply want to have more numbers or more efficient combination of the same numbers. It breaks the point of role-playing, because most of the people are simply not interested in loosing, because that's what happens when you're not powerful enough. And loosing is not fun... but
Recently I decided to try out Dwarf Fortress using one of the graphics pack, because ascii is hard to perceive, and it actually inspired me to write this text and start thinking of what it would be like, if UO or any other game had at least some of the features from it. This game is more like strategy it has more basic RPG-elements than UO. Just to name some: every character has it's unique personality with unique traits and this traits actually affect skills and their behavior, comparatively complex injury and combat system, where you don't have hitpoints and every body part can actually be injured or torn off.
That's where I started to imagine how cool it would be to see something like this in UO, but I understand that development of such systems would take huge amount of time and there is no guarantee that anyone will even play such "complex" game, but anyways that's completely possible to achieve and create unique and a lot more beautiful (compared to ascii) representation.
Of course I can continue on and on about "how I would like to see a perfect mmorpg game" throwing out practical examples, but in the end I see no sense, even if I would make such UO modification myself. I don't know what would I do with it when it's done, it's not single-player like DF and it's not fun playing alone...
Why am I writing all this? Simply because I wanted to express my thoughts (IMHO) and look at what others are thinking. Also probably someone can advice if there is such shard/server, where described gameplay already exists, or at least which is heading in similar direction, where you can actually play organized (teamplay) using "practical roleplay", maybe with slight change in mechanics, which encourage such play, and have fun (even loosing). If you read all this wall of text up to this point - thank you
