We hope everyone has had a safe and eventful new year so far. For those recovering with their morning coffee, reading the forums, we have shard news to bring to you.
It is a tradition to have a new year's resolution so we have come up with some for the shard this year.
Resolutions for the New Year
One thing we think the shard needs to do, is to attract new players and make it easier to learn the game and get basic items to start off, earned through quests and basic character development. Also, we are looking to fix a lot of lingering bugs.
Through new player quests, an extensive item identification system as well as guides and other communication/information systems (chat, mail, etc etc) we hope to accomplish this goal.
In addition to helping new players connect easily to the shard and stay with the shard, we would like to focus on making the game feel more 'alive'. Throughout the years, Ultima has seen many great, and not so great implementations. In moving forward, many things have been left behind, unused, or forgotten.
A lot of history exists in Ultima that has not yet been brought to light on AOV, and Ultima in general. In the future, we hope to bring back nostalgia from the old Ultima games (before the time of Ultima Online) as well as encourage exploring.
Picture yourself walking through the woods in Britain, and spotting a traveling merchant who will sell his wares. Maybe further down the road, a maiden has been kidnapped by a group of brigands. Find yourself at the yew crossroads and maybe there's a bard there, playing a happy tune on her lute. Come back at night and maybe that same bard is now in the city of Yew, playing her music for the villagers who live there. Speaking of night, maybe a graveyard near Vesper is peaceful in the day, but loaded with undead at night, looking for fresh souls to take.
We would like to remember that Ultima is more than a game, it's a virtual world. Much like a real world, it has people, animals, environments, time and seasons. Many things currently in the world of Ultima are static and predictable. We hope to make things a little more dynamic, adding small bits at a time.
Ideas for New Systems
Here are a few ideas that have built up over the years that we would like to explore in the new year.
These are just ideas and have no guarantee that they will be implemented. They are in no particular order of implementation.
Some of these ideas may grow and take off in the future while others may never see the light of day.
Dynamic world
Focus on building a world that is dynamic and to be explored. Tie back to the old days of Ultima to encourage player exploration:
- Have NPCs change locations at certain times of the day. For example, a quest giver or merchant might be in a shop in Trinsic during the day, but head home at night.
- Certain items may appear at certain times of the day. Nightshade can be harvested at night for example.
- Community Events/Collections available to help build the world.
- Random locations and timelines for quest NPCs
- Have different traveling merchants, hawker of wares and wandering peddlers available throughout the land.
- Town invasions by groups of orc, shadowlords, and other hostiles
Improved Information System
- Indexed dyes with a set name. For example, any use of hue 1167 in game would be known as "dryad green" once identified.
- Use of the Item Identification skill to identify item attributes, hue, how to obtain and many other useful identifiers to create an item database in game that players and staff can use to find out about items.
- Player mailboxes and town criers for shard news.
- Page handling from game to forums
Bard Revamp and Skill Revamping
- Adding in barding difficulty to all mobiles. This changes the generic formula currently used to determine success and fail.
- Update barding abilities for peacemaking, discordance and provocation.
- Possibly adding in bard mastery system
- Update all skills as many of them haven't been updated since SE/AOS. It's time to review them all and ensure they are working as intended.
House Pets
- Being able to set certain tameable creatures as a house pet. Creatures such as the squirrel, ferret, skittering hoppers. Essentially pets you probably wouldn't use to battle monsters with.
- House pets are linked to a house, similar to vendors. In order to design or modify a house, a house pet would need to be removed.
- Adding a house pet is done by saying "I wish to set/add a house pet" then targeting your tamed creature (that you are the owner of). House pets are bound by the house region. They are "blessed" like parrots are and are bound by the house region. You cannot take them outside of your house.
- The number of pets a house can have depends on the size of the house.
- House pets do not lose loyalty and don't 'need' to be fed.
- House pets do not take up a players stable slots
- House pets do not perform special abilities if any exist (Cold radiation, mountable, mounted abilities).
- Releasing a house pet can be done. This essentially removes their count from the total house pet limit, sets them back to unblessed and requires follower slots to reclaim them. Once they are reclaimed, they can be put into a player's stable and would act like their tameable state before they were set as house pets.
Dungeon Revamps and Arena Battles
- Introduce new dungeon revamps to make each dungeon unique and encourage players to return to play in the dungeon.
- Adding new arena battles. Basically these are a copy of a certain map or dungeon with a private boss battle. These are similar to peerless battles and would require some quest or quest key to activate. The difference is these may or may not be timed and will have certain specific rules attached (time limit, # of people in battle, different criterias)
- Adding in unique puzzles to each dungeon with various types of dungeon specific rewards.
- More quests specific to each dungeon.
- Dungeon treasure chest system that works like a 'hot and cold' game.
UOML Completion
- Revamping of dungeons and mobiles, scaling to OSI
- Adding of all quests
- Adding missing craftables.
- Deciding on strategy to implement all recipes with current craft system
- Complete community collections and upgrades
- Aquariums
Talisman and Slayer changes
- Fixing lesser slayers to do 3x damage where super slayers will do 2x damage
- Possibly adding in new slayers such as plant and equine
- Fixing existing talismans to use a new class that is more easily expandable with more control over properties
- Having talisman drops the key component to many UOML and generic quest reward drops (Craftsman satchels, treasure bags, strongboxes). With the talisman expanding, it would be easier to add better talisman drops to harder quests.
- Adding more killer and protection bonuses to talismans with increased rarity (Bosses are possible but very rare). Protection talisman bonuses hard capped at 60%.
- Incremental talisman rarity. The closer to the max/cap a certain bonus, the rarer it would be to obtain. For example, trying to get a 30% bonus crafting talisman would be incredibly rare.
- Better slayer entries and oppositions in scripts. If a mobile is demon, then fey would automatically be assumed as the opposition.
Timeline and Pinpoint Spawners
- Spawners set to date and time ranges. Some spawners will only spawn between certain real life OR britannia times (For example, a britannia day or night).
- Some spawners might spawn at certain times of the year such as winter reapers in the winter or certain environmental effects for the spring/summer.
- Pinpoint spawners would have an array of XYZ + map coordinates. Instead of spawning within a range, it would spawn with a waypoint that is tied to the mobile or item, at a random XYZ coordinate within the array list.
Loyalty System
- Players would be able to accumulate loyalty points with certain clans and races in the world (IE: ophidians, terathans, savages, orc, etc etc). Having different levels of loyalty to a group would allow players different advantages such as friendship, quests, use of certain items.
- Some opposition groups (ophidians/terathans) would not be pair able with same loyalty (EX: You cannot be loyal to ophidians and terathans on the same char).
Completed Virtue System
- Implement OSI's honesty virtue
- AOV Humility virtue involving community events. Different scenarios will exist with a large reward that all players can enjoy and humility points for players who help out. Examples may involve helping to rid a town of an invasion, build a bridge across water, provide more guards in an area.
- AOV Sprituality virtue (To be determined)
Collision System Expansions
Expanding the collision system to affect more and have different elemental effects:
- Physical: Shatters brittle things or can cause things to break such as stones, crystals, etc etc.
- Fire: Causes things to burn, ignite or explode
- Cold: Causes things to freeze such as water or other liquids. Cools down hot things, extinguish flame.
- Poison: Causes living things to die or wither, such as strong vines or living walls. Can also have a lasting effect on areas.
- Energy: Can activate or fry machinery. Can cause metallic items to conduct.
AI System Expansions
- Have all spells available to cast by monsters such as polymorph, forms, chivalry spells, summons of different difficulties, etc etc.
PVP Everywhere System
- Allow players to engage in a pvp everywhere system by will
- Allow a player to intentionally add difficulty to their gameplay such as invoking original UO rules such as no insurance
- Possibly tie the PVP Everywhere system into factions with different rules. Allow to conquer towns and certain landmarks or locations. Have different rules which only affect those from within the system.
Pet Calculator and Pet Metamorphosis
Introduce a pet calculator function in game that is auto-incorporated into the animal lore gump. This pet calculator is essentially using the formulas from the following popular pet rarity website:
http://www.uocraft.com/taming/pet-power-calculator/
So when a player goes out to tame a creature, they would be able to see how close to the max the creature is (In terms of stars. A 1 star pet would be terrible whereas a 5 star pet would be truly rare). This would make it easier to know if a pet is good or bad.
Pet Metamorphosis
Exposing certain pets to different scenarios will allow you to upgrade them into a new version of said pet. This would help bring life back into lesser pets.
For example, if you use a nightmare frequently, the pet owner will be given the option to put their pet under a metamorphosis after certain conditions are met.
A pet that has gone under a metamorphosis can change stats, resists, abilities, hue, name, control slot, etc etc.
For a bit more clarity, you could essentially have (Only an example):
Nightmare:
- Cauchemare: +5 all resists, strong multi-breath attack, increased wrestling cap, 3 control slots instead of 2
- Demon Horse: +10 physical resist, mass curse attack, increased magery cap, 3 control slots
- Dreadmare: Increases stats and new mounted ability.
Your pet would have a requirement in order to metamorphose into one of the new pets. For example, in order to obtain a dreadmare, the pet might be required to slay a large amount of fey and good karma creatures as well as taking on boss monsters.
Property System
This system is large scale but would improve many systems in the long run. This system would make it easier to apply bonuses and additional properties on items in different scenarios (loot, craft, etc etc). Right now it's more complex than it needs to be so having a system to auto manage properties and bonuses in every circumstance would help speed up development of important systems such as imbuing and crafting/recipes.
AOV 5th Anniversary
Age of Valor celebrates its 5th Anniversary this year. Five years ago, on December 23, 2005, AOV opened up for players to enjoy. It started off as a gathering place and turned into a shard of its own.
Join us in celebrating our 5th year. We have placed a statue in luna which will reward players a commemorative statue for our 5th anniversary
Note: Statue color is random from bronze, silver and gold.
Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6395, old post ID:37592
