Fostering The RP Community

[Stephan]

Az I would strongly recommend listening to Leonardo he's been doing this a while and has a great sense of what real role players want. I would also recommend reaching out to the ones who have invested so many hours in the past years While I've only been here a few months I assure you I know who the heavy hitters are currently and who they were last month for I have put in more hours in the last two months than some put in in a life time. Unfortunately I have watched all of Yew over night pack up and leave. Its not just Yew our allies are gone our rivals are gone this whole thing of ours is falling apart. While I was greatly upset about this I wasn't willing to follow them out of here for I had just built my account and was making a good amount of gold. I wanted to enjoy IPY a little longer. I stayed Loyal. Loyal and Lonely. I would get on Vent and ask my friends whats so great in other places heres what I got..........1)"Our pirate system is so much better they will be able to board your ship and take your boat"while I dont know what pirates want from UO I do know who does POLE he's the real deal pirate and if you see him run LOL. 2)"Our PVP system is awesome arenas, constant wars, and battles" while anyone who knows me can tell you I don't really pvp to much again I assure you I know who does for my game time is beyond to often. AZRIA Bellona Xiled just to name a few could tell you all you need know about what they are and what they want. 3)"Rares Will be unique new and unheard of they will spawn so that you dont have to be super hard core to get one. All the good items will not come from events" This one really touched my heart because I must admit I like the rares. I have made most all my gold buying and selling rare items and in my short time here on IPY I have built a small empire however I never get anything cool in game without buying it why because just like my friend said it all seams to come from events that really aren't safe for a merchant like myself to attend. While my rares knowledge has come along ways Your heavy Hitters are the obvious Dedalus Dooms Bongo These guys buy and sell all day if they spent as much time on the stock market as they do trading rares they'de be billionaires IRL and surely they could tell you what mearchants needs and wants from IPY. I guess the over all of this message is "Keep Your ear to the street" Or in your Rh-elm "Keep your ear to the Keys" To sum it all up Azria could tell ya what pvpers want and need Dedalus could tell how to improve your rares Pole could tell ya how to make a successful pirating system Leonardo or Kachina could tell you how to keep your role players around and limit your griefers. Please AZ Contact these people and save this shard cause some of us really love it and want to see it succeed. Thanks Leofrick P.S. I forgot to mention the most common answer among all when asked where did everyone go the most common response anyone recieves is "I think their just waiting on 2.5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

holy paragraphs, batman

[blacklabel]

paragraphs and punctuation, who needs em?

[Az]

Az I would strongly recommend listening to Leonardo he's been doing this a while and has a great sense of what real role players want. I would also recommend reaching out to the ones who have invested so many hours in the past years While I've only been here a few months I assure you I know who the heavy hitters are currently and who they were last month for I have put in more hours in the last two months than some put in in a life time. Unfortunately I have watched all of Yew over night pack up and leave. Its not just Yew our allies are gone our rivals are gone this whole thing of ours is falling apart. While I was greatly upset about this I wasn't willing to follow them out of here for I had just built my account and was making a good amount of gold. I wanted to enjoy IPY a little longer. I stayed Loyal. Loyal and Lonely. I would get on Vent and ask my friends whats so great in other places heres what I got..........1)"Our pirate system is so much better they will be able to board your ship and take your boat"while I dont know what pirates want from UO I do know who does POLE he's the real deal pirate and if you see him run LOL. 2)"Our PVP system is awesome arenas, constant wars, and battles" while anyone who knows me can tell you I don't really pvp to much again I assure you I know who does for my game time is beyond to often. AZRIA Bellona Xiled just to name a few could tell you all you need know about what they are and what they want. 3)"Rares Will be unique new and unheard of they will spawn so that you dont have to be super hard core to get one. All the good items will not come from events" This one really touched my heart because I must admit I like the rares. I have made most all my gold buying and selling rare items and in my short time here on IPY I have built a small empire however I never get anything cool in game without buying it why because just like my friend said it all seams to come from events that really aren't safe for a merchant like myself to attend. While my rares knowledge has come along ways Your heavy Hitters are the obvious Dedalus Dooms Bongo These guys buy and sell all day if they spent as much time on the stock market as they do trading rares they'de be billionaires IRL and surely they could tell you what mearchants needs and wants from IPY. I guess the over all of this message is "Keep Your ear to the street" Or in your Rh-elm "Keep your ear to the Keys" To sum it all up Azria could tell ya what pvpers want and need Dedalus could tell how to improve your rares Pole could tell ya how to make a successful pirating system Leonardo or Kachina could tell you how to keep your role players around and limit your griefers. Please AZ Contact these people and save this shard cause some of us really love it and want to see it succeed. Thanks Leofrick P.S. I forgot to mention the most common answer among all when asked where did everyone go the most common response anyone recieves is "I think their just waiting on 2.5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I appreciate this. Thank you.

[Leonardo Reyas]

The thread has gone off-topic, but I do believe that if you want to accelerate skillgain that's all fine and good, but honestly a system that rewards you for going into dungeons and hunting there is much better for several reasons. First, it encourages people to actually play the game, and it would help keep RPers caught up with powermacroers because most RPers will opt to hit a dungeon with their buddies for fun and to farm gold, but many won't have a clue on how to set up an efficient Razor macro and won't care to learn how to set one up either.

I do believe skillgain should be faster, but encourage certain activities to achieve that maximum skillgain so that people see large gains in a short amount of time by actually playing the game.

Change Bronze scrolls to .3, silver skill scrolls to .6 and gold skill scrolls to .9, and double the baseline chance of getting skill scrolls on all levels. Double skillgains in all dungeons from their current level as well, and have it continue to increase as you get a larger party together just as it does now, but maybe amp up that bonus even further.

You'll see alot more people opting to farm scrolls and going into dungeons than macroing. Even though farming scrolls is still the faster way to go right now, it still takes a considerable amount of time to see some progress... I think at this point in the shard's lifespan, you want to encourage people to hit the dungeons hard and for them to see huge gains in those short amounts of time.

Doing this you'll see RPers being able to finish their characters as well so they can get to the RP'ing and RP-PvP... but of course we still gotta get a way to get some EVIL RPers hopping around here that won't break the systems in place to prevent excessive PK griefing.

[Rehsif]

The only thing that really hurt the RP community since launch is the severe penalties for being red. They aren't lying when they say an orc clan is the cornerstone for any real RP community. There must be a common enemy in order for the good guys to fight against. I'm a long standing member of Shadowclan and when I first brought up IPY2 to the clan, I was greeted with "Stat loss? No thanks. We've already played on far too many UO shards and for perma stat loss to be a main feature of the shard, it won't be worth our time.

The no count zones are a great step in the right direction, but more than likely it comes far too late for an really impact.

[Kleus]

When I first signed up, IPY seemed like a fantastic idea. Then I learned that this server mechanics are designed against reds and orc roleplayers. So I tried forming a blue roleplaying guild with other orcs. It failed miserably. I tried doing things with stephan's reddit guild. I lost interest because only roleplaying in uo is fun to me.

Like others have said, it seems a day late and a dollar short for you (Az) to be asking us these things now. We red roleplayers bitched, complained, whined and moaned for months on end without an iota of response. This last ditch effort to appeal to roleplayers is great and all, but there are other servers out there who truly want and value us. Not just when their server is losing steam.

That said, I'll echo my previous posts in months past. Most players do not like statloss. If it's a more fair system of penalties, then some like myself will deal with it. Az, you always state that reds kill servers, and this is not true. A completely penalty free murdering environment may harm a server but reds and especially red roleplayers generate drama and player made content that provides something different than the standard macro->farm->tower->pvp->burnout. This server isn't trammel as some are more apt to scream, but it's a few steps away from it. Keep red penalties, but make them less painful.

On hybrid, I racked up ~700 counts in the span of the four years I played. If counts mattered there, I would likely have received a lot more and been over 1500 easily. On this server, getting statted with that many counts would have resulted in a large penalty indeed. I don't know what the math would look like for that, but I'd likely just delete that character instead of waiting or paying off whatever ridiculous sum to get out of it. The fact that death to paladin is almost unavoidable and very few options to prevent statloss exist make all of this a big bucket of failure.

What to do about it? Deliver the things you promised. What happened to portals? I was really looking forward to that. What about all the PvE changes? Why was the whole pirating thing abandoned? Also, please look at what happened when EA changed UO to be more blue friendly. It didn't work out well for them in the long haul. Why did you essentially follow that same path here? There needs to be a risk vrs. reward balance or else things get stale.

[Leonardo Reyas]

Az,

I posted a more complete description of my ideas on the Wind forum.

http://inporylem.com/forum/showthrea...vil-RP-and-IPY

I've spoken to several RPers about this and they generally agree this is the way to go, so feel free to read through it and see if this gels with your vision of how this shard should be.

[Rehsif]

Pirates always fail because there isn't enough shard interest as a whole for pirating. When your main enemy is a land based guild and generally refuse to go out on boats unless its to go to Hythloth or Deceit, pirates can't really do much pirating. Might as well be brigands who have sporadic sea ventures because you'll only spend maybe 10% of your time out at sea if you want any sort of interaction.

[Nocturne]

Pirates, need a mechanical way to exist.

Orcs, need a mechanical way to exist.

Good guy guild, mostly just need antagonist to stick around. Hard to be "good guy" where there are no "bad guys". Where "bad guys" can kill everyone.. so they have "purpose".

To be honest, without awesome radical changes the RP boat has passed... many orcs players have already tried the shard out and left. So what would be cool, and a direct incentive to "experiment". A shard saying, we have these awesome mechanical features to foster your experience.


My suggestions:

Introduce shrines in the world that convert "human" characters to a preset. This shouldn't be to difficult to be honest. My suggestions are designed with Dev-simplicity in mind. The change is permanent (so it only reflect serious players).

Orc shrine "Wargod blood bath" located in the Orc Fort.

-Grants perma-blessed orc helm (green and bone).
-Orc-skin hued tone
-+10 to str total, -10 to int
-Perma red
-Faster skill gains while in Orc Forts. (incentive to hang out there, and incentive for good guys to raid)


Pirate shrine "Killa's Code" located in the Buc's Den.

-Grants perma-blessed Pirate Hat and Skull Cap (red).
-+10 to Dex total, -5 to int, -5 to Str
-Perma red
-Some bonus to canons (not mucha navy guy, I recall there are Cannons here..?)
-Pirate Treasure Maps: % chance drop from normal NPC's that drop them. This map leads to greater treasure drops.


Undead shrine "Guardians Blessing" located in the Crypts.

-Grants perma-blessed Skull helm, skull hands, sandals.
-White hued skin.
-+5 to int total, -10 to str
-Perma red
-Faster skill gains while in the Crypt (incentive to hang out there, and incentive for good guys to raid)





Undead shrine "Guardians Blessing" located in the Crypts.

-Grants perma-blessed Skull helm, skull hands, sandals.
-White hued skin.
-+5 to int total, -10 to str
-Perma red
-Faster skill gains while in the Crypt (incentive to hang out there, and incentive for good guys to raid)





"Stuff" placed in the world.

Examples:

-Archery buttes, pcinic tables, ale all over the place, outside the Yew abbey. Yew Militia has been the only strongest standing RP guild, and their hangout is well documented and noted. When a Seer/GM/Az sees this sort of activity, reward them by placing cool stuff like that in their activity spots. Case in points, Seers back on OSI rewarded Undead with unique hanging skeletons/spiders and stuff in their keep. Watch for activity and reward the players. Active RP is super healthy for a shard.

[Degamra]

It would be really nice if there was some sort of "faction"/tag for RPing. There was a thread about making a general roleplaying guild for this very purpose but it seemed to devolve into people that either couldn't commit (like myself) or people being expected to follow rules, potential griefing, etc.

Not sure how much support there would be for this but it would make me more willing to RP on a character or two.