NPC Resources DIscussion

[Magus Zeal]

PATCH LOG - January 2021 - Patch Log

Additions A new reward title deed "The Legend" can now be claimed from the Legacy reward system. Requires 300 Legacy to obtain and use. Changes Included more spacing in the Community Collections reward menu to make it easier to distinguish between items (glasses). Items too close together...

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Was just wondering what everyone was thinking about the resource changes.

@Dan I was curious if you were going to share why this change was done? What's the endgame? Maybe this community can get you there with some other suggestions?

 

[Calcutta]

Leave arrows/bolts on npc vendors or make changes to ammo usage.

This is in response to Dan removing arrows/bolts from npc vendors. Mages have the ability to completely ignore reagent cost by adding LRC to their gear. When a mage logs into the game they don't need to worry about going to a shop to restock their ability to deal damage. Nor do they have to...

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[Magus Zeal]

Glad arrows are back on NPC's....

 

[Magus Zeal]

I'm more interested in why NPC's are being altered to begin with. What is the endgame?

To me, I would change nothing on a server promoted to be "OSI-Like" unless there was a REALLY good reason.

When NPC's were changed so gems couldn't be sold. Ya I got that. I am a miner and if I sold my gems I could print gold.

When NPC's were changed for thematic reasons - like removing items from tinker/bs that those vendors "shouldn" make...OK maybe.

Removing NPC's from selling resources. Ya this one I can't think of a benefit. These vendors delete gold - which is exactly what we need more of - things to spend gold on.

 

[Dan]

NEWS - Heritage and Looking towards 2021

For the last 4 years, the basic design and implementation of systems for Heritage has almost solely been around production UO and testing the various systems, as they were be coded for the first time, on ServUO. We are now at a time in emulation history where we are mostly caught up with...

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To keep things feeling fresh, and also different, on Heritage our plan moving forward is not to emulate production UO but to instead forge our own unique legacy.

Just pointing out that no longer is the goal to emulate UO.

Production UO has moved onto the New Legacy shard, at least for the next year or two, leaving behind a mess of other issues on the normal EA shards. The current production UO state is in no way a state I want to replicate on Heritage. Things will change overtime here.

A lot of changes or design decisions are based on my own readings of Raph Koster and various other MMO devs. Raph's Website – Raph Koster's personal website: MMOs, gaming, writing, art, music, books

Essays – Raph's Website (raphkoster.com)

The evolution of MMOs | Playable Worlds

As well as from things brought up in my software engineering/video game design class.

I absolutely value the feedback though and it does give me some things to think about. The goal isn't to see anything die off but to instead ensure we remain stable for years to come while also not becoming stale.

I think the second we stop tinkering with things or thinking about ways to balance while adding new content, it will burn out. I also think these conversations had after the fact offer great insight and absolutely do influence certain shard changes.

"Since different brains have different strengths and weaknesses, different people will have different ideal games". - Raph Koster

 

[Magus Zeal]

Thank you @Dan

I appreciate you providing feedback and encouraging discussion. What specifically drove this particular decision? From my limited understanding of MMO economics - deleting gold is a good thing - and other than convenience I don't see a reason to buy resources from vendors otherwise - they are far to expensive at scale due to inflation every 500 units. So to me we just lost a gold sink that only richer players would use.

I am probably missing something though and would be interested in your motivation behind the change.

 

[Dan]

It is to just potentially open up new markets for lower level players to take over, economically. Not an attempt to influence gold as much with this one.

Though we have the time factor added in now + the potential of a 5% deletion of gold if used through the vendor system.

I'm creating a rental version of commission vendors as well as creating a 1× per account quest that accounts under a certain Legacy can do once to get a discounted 7x7 house.

Currently the quest is a collection quest meant to explain housing, vendor search, and common commodities that one could sell while having you go out and search for a few things like commodity deeds and using the vendor search system to produce a vendor search map in an attempt to further increase the ability for all levels to participate, set up, and have a roll to play in the shard economy.

 

[Cid]

Thanks for putting the arrows and bolts back on the NPC's Dan. From my standpoint, I can live with the rest of the changes.

Today as I was grinding out some Tailoring BODS I needed to get some bones from the Ter Mur Mystics. Since I was following this thread I decided to load up on bones before they too were no longer available. I scored 20k bones before I got tired of buying them....

Leather will be a commodity that I will need to farm on my way to the 120 Tailoring level. Looks like T2A will be busy with peeps farming the bulls , me included.

@Dan When the changes came about regarding the vendors' increase in commission, I dropped my vendor in Luna. I would be interested in the rental version and how it would all work. I may well put my vendor back up....

Finally, I like seeing the shard evolving into it's own unique custom rule set. Other shards I played on were, in my opinion, dry. No evolving at all....it was the same thing over and over.....boring, lets get tacos...

My 2 cents worth.....

 

[Omalley]

Thanks for putting the arrows and bolts back on the NPC's Dan. From my standpoint, I can live with the rest of the changes.

Today as I was grinding out some Tailoring BODS I needed to get some bones from the Ter Mur Mystics. Since I was following this thread I decided to load up on bones before they too were no longer available. I scored 20k bones before I got tired of buying them....

Leather will be a commodity that I will need to farm on my way to the 120 Tailoring level. Looks like T2A will be busy with peeps farming the bulls , me included.

@Dan When the changes came about regarding the vendors' increase in commission, I dropped my vendor in Luna. I would be interested in the rental version and how it would all work. I may well put my vendor back up....

Finally, I like seeing the shard evolving into it's own unique custom rule set. Other shards I played on were, in my opinion, dry. No evolving at all....it was the same thing over and over.....boring, lets get tacos...

My 2 cents worth.....

All my vendors are commision vendors, the chunk it takes is not that bad..

 

[Omalley]

It is to just potentially open up new markets for lower level players to take over, economically. Not an attempt to influence gold as much with this one.

Though we have the time factor added in now + the potential of a 5% deletion of gold if used through the vendor system.

I'm creating a rental version of commission vendors as well as creating a 1× per account quest that accounts under a certain Legacy can do once to get a discounted 7x7 house.

Currently the quest is a collection quest meant to explain housing, vendor search, and common commodities that one could sell while having you go out and search for a few things like commodity deeds and using the vendor search system to produce a vendor search map in an attempt to further increase the ability for all levels to participate, set up, and have a roll to play in the shard economy.

Sugestion, dont use a 7x7 house.. use one of the classic houses, this will make the world look a little better. Empty plots are ugly I suggest the sandstone with patio.. perfect new player house.

 

[Meireffer]

@Dan Question related to this topic. Now that we have to farm for basic crafting materials, would you consider turning back on 2x resource bonus in fel? Believe it would be fair to give it back to us in current situation. Currently there's no point in even going there besides recalling in front of LL passage to make some champ spawns. Please. Consider this.

 

[Dan]

The reason it was removed is due to the fact of there being 0 risk, due to population, while most botted attempts being there due to 2x resources.

No plans of changing that at this time though I am open to ideas to make it more Risk vs Reward as originally intended.

Brainstorming, what if OnSuccessfulHarvest(you get a log or ingot) it puts a timer on you that limits travel spells for X amount of time? Since before Felucca was just the occasional quick recalling minor / lumber bot. (no plans to do this just giving an example)

 

[Cid]

@Dan Back in the day it wasn't so easy to move from facet to facet. When Trammel was created one required a moonstone to get to either Tram or Fel. Gates and recall's were not allowed forms of travel between facets. If my memory serves me correctly, the Fel stones were black and the Tram ones were dark green in color.

The moonstones were given as loot from monsters on either facet. IE: kill a mongbat in Fel you have a chance to get a Tram moonstone on the corpse, same for Tram, kill a monster in Tram and have a chance to get a Fel moonstone on the corpse. As it is now with the ease of travel and multiple pack horses, which follow you with the recall spell, there is no need to even go to Fel. Resource gathers can accomplish the same task in Tram it just takes longer.

Brainstorming: Reviving the moonstone travel mode would help populate Fel as one would have to hunt monsters in Fel to get Tram moonstones. Stones would also become an additional resource that one could sell on a vendor. Resource gathers would be at greater risk when pushing the moonstone into the ground to escape an attack by PK's.

Do I agree with the loss of 2x resources in Fel? I'm still undecided, I can see both sides of the equation. Personally, I don't run a bot, I do all my gathering the old school way, manually but then again, I don't sell resources either.

 

[Calcutta]

I like both ideas,. I already live in fel, starting to think i may one of very few, most cause the 2x resources and training points. For the 1st on you could event it and say blackthorn laid claim to all resource's in fel and to harvest them is to be at war with the relm, heat of battle while you harvest.. Cid idea is just lovely always though, always loved that system a useful reutrn would not only be nostalgic, but it could work.

 

[FireFly]

Bring bulls and other animals back to T2a in Fel!

 

[Magus Zeal]

Off-Topic hijackers:
On "double resources". You actually didn't get more resources per resource node - you just mined it twice as fast....So the change just made it take a bit longer to mine a spot out. It's really trivial and didn't change anything since most people bot harvest.

Vendor rentals being commission is great!

On-Topic:
Thank you for explaining your motivation. The change was made to open the market for ingots for new players.

My thoughts on this are they already could do this - all they had to do was undercut the NPC. We lost a gold sink and didn't gain any new markets.

Thanks for reading. Take care.

 

[Noah]

I like it. It gives the player base a chance to sell more of its resources and less stuff sitting around. It will be annoying when vendors run out of resources tho, and force players to get their own. Getting 120 on some skills may be difficult, as it use to take 30k ingots to level it up if no ingots are available. But prices should increase and mining skill will be valuable now.

 

[Omalley]

Give 2x resources in Fel Lost Lands, and Fel Dungeons

 

[Anthar]

So i am quite new here and honestly stuff that drops is insane
But from totally new guy here - some perspective :

* shard population is quite small
* i see that there is oversupply in high end stuff
* there is not enough new guys willing to do the harvest from the perspective of making gold
* gold sink ... is gold sink and for sure we need that

So my small proposal :

* make vendors sell all basic materials but at much more higher price (leather, iron bars, cloth etc)
* make vendors sell all basic and needed goods but at much more higher price (arrows, bolts, food etc)
* reduce price of horses (lol)
* reduce the lifetime of the high end stuff (but i will not go into this)
* reduce weight of some of the materials (maybe)

So now bit more in perspective.
I started as an Archer with plans for more chars in the future.

At start i was working on getting the basic gear, but mostly enough arrows and materials for bandages - 2 first days.
I was not making enough gold to buy that stuff from vendors, quite probably this would be longer but the community gave me insane high end stuff in Luna that allowed me jump start into few tier higher level stuff in terms of PVE.

Thanks to that i don't have to grind the feathers / chop trees to make arrows and i can just buy them from local vendor.
LETS BE CLEAR HERE - i love this fact.
I prefer hunting some better stuff rather than shooting birds and i will gladly pay bit more for that.

Lets not forget that resource gathering (unless this is char running on script on the 2nd screen) is pretty damn annoying.
Resources are heavy and for me simply gathering skins before i get my beetle bonded is not an option.
3-4 monsters dead and you need to get back with skins.

In perspective again i will prefer pay gold to NPC rather than constantly move in out so unless materials will be having lower weight there is no point for me to gather normal skins it will be much better just to pay NPC/new guy willing to do it.

From what i seen already there are not to much new people ... so lets introduce this gold sink in form of NPC. Bigger price will sink more gold from lazy people and high price will potentially create niche for other players.

Like i will not sell 60k of leather for 240k
Work is insane compared to the gold offered now.

If the same skins cost at NPC 600k ... then maybe i would actually gather the stuff for 500k.

Either way it is a win for a shard.