@Zynetic
Thanks for the time investment you took here.
Interesting how you just addressed some of the issues I dislike the most.
I have always hated those boosts you mentioned.
Exp x5:
To be able to hit level 200 in no time is for sure hurting the game longevity.
I had a friend who left Ultima 4 years ago (whoās now actively on Ephinea), his reason was: āIām bored now that I am level 200 with no stuffā.
He literally farmed nothing but CCA until 200, so his gear didnāt follow his levels and then lost any interest in Ultima.
Canāt blame him, but since then I often recommend anyone NOT to focus on grinding Exp in no-fun ways with the Exp boost we have, but temptation is usually too strong and then result in the same issue happening again and again. Iām mentioning CCA but when itās not CCA, itās TTF and same problem remains.
When I address this issue, Iām told āhow is that a problem, if youāre not happy you can turn exp boost offā. Sure I can and I already do it for most of my characters, but here Iām talking about other players, beginners etc. Do you feel like telling them āhey there are powerful server boosts right now, those are so OP that I advise you to nerf yourself by typing /exp 0 in lobby!ā ? Of course not.
I did experiment the power of combining Exp boost to CCA no-brain tryhard farming and this is the time it took me to hit 200:
(13 hours, not 13 days)
I used to see some pride and satisfaction to get 200 (or even high level 180+ on GC offline).
No need to say thereās no such feeling now, if not sadness of not being able to earn Exp anymore.
Green Name:
Rare monster appearance is literally 1/2 for some monsters.
This makes every single rare monster drop much less valuable (Heaven punisher, Lavis cannon, Syncesta, Psycho wand), if not totally worthless (hitless frozen shooter, heavenly units etc).
This removes a good part of what used to be considered good hunts during non events.
In most quests, you get lots of rare monsters in the first rooms then nothing more in the rest of the quest because of the 15-rare monsters limit being hit super early. Inciting players to remake their rooms rather than finishing the quests because of that is really bad in my opinion.
This even applies without Green Name actually, while vanilla rare monsters are absurdly rare, they are absurdly unrare here, you can easily reach the 15 rare monsters even without green name in the long quests here: Caverns of Gloom or Lost Master Blaster.
Finally it becomes an obstacle when you are speed running a quest and get those unwanted ārareā monsters.
I remember how I had to remake like 1/3 of my runs because of random rare monster appearances when TAing that quest you made.
Happy Hours:
As you said. Many (I said many, not everyone) just donāt bother hunting anymore when HH isnāt on. If it were only about me, Iād at least nerf the rare boosts from x3 to x2 so it reduces the feeling of āplaying for nothing when HH is offā. But Iām sure this would just lead to dramas (even if I increased all the chart drop rates or doing more HH to make up for it).
On the opposite, when HH is on, many feel somehow āforcedā to play, which is as bad. It is common thought here ādamn HH just started, bye sleep, back to the corves for another 3 hoursā. Then in the worst cases you start to break your IRL habits, sleep late, skip dinner, decline cinema invitations etc.
But my main concern about HH is not even that.
It is about how it just becomes a source of frustration and negativity no matter what happens.
When a HH time is good for a country, it isnāt for most other countries. To that point no surprise, I experienced that myself years ago during Christmas Event when I had to stay awake until 5 am everyday because that was when all the HH happened.
There clearly was a bias for NA timezones. For sure it isnāt cool if specific players are disadvantaged because of their location.
Then I became GM, and started to make some HHs for EU timezones, and you guess what happened: some NA players complained about the HHs I made: āwho tf think it was a good time to make hh when no one is on??ā (sorry if Europe players were a minority at that time), āthat r78 just makes hh for frenchiesā (sure anything between 2 am and 5 pm weekdays is a good time for France), and someone (who I used to consider a friend!) even started to call me names for being āso biasedā.
But even now that I bother logging every single HH and do my best to perfectly spread them over all the 24 hours of a day with visual proof, I still see HH complaints...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jB2zrdLdXs6tRbUaoDr8WX6EIr36FgQI2kyP7fasGIQ/edit#gid=1923746843
This just makes me want to get rid of HHs for good, because it is very frustrating as a GM to take your time to make things as fair and correctly as possible and still get blamed for supposedly being unfair while another random and careless GM who spams HH at same time when they like gets praised for being āgenerousā.
I even sometimes felt bad when turning HH on because couldnāt get rid of that thought āI know some will be upset at this HH because this is a bad time for themā.
Imagine using your time to do something good for your community and worry about their reactions before you even did it.
Some people say HH must be done only at population peak hours. Good, this is how we lost a good part of the already small asian population years ago (I got testimonies proof for it).
Anyway, none of those boosts will get removed, not only because thatās how Larva wanted his server to be, but also since thatās what many players still enjoy. Doing that now would just be a major nerf to the server and - Iām sure - would generate dramas and more quitters than newcomers.
<<Like, does anyone actually hunt Hard/Very Hard rares? No, they jush rush to Ultimate and skip to the final thing to not waste their time.>>
Actually there are still a few items to hunt below Ultimate: Photon crystals, trigrinders and addslots on normal, Three seals, Glide divine on very hard, Smartlink, Liberta in BPD, Crush bullet, Blood tornado for combiners, M&A60 Vise and Vjaya...
Now about the seasonal events, my opinion differs.
I like how the items are seasonal.
You join Ultima, there are so many things to hunt, you donāt know where to startā¦ But Triforce Event is live! So letās farm Hylian Shield for now.
Wanted a Proof of Sonic Team instead? Then nothing prevents you from farming that Hylian Shield and trade/sell it for Proof of Sonic Team someone farmed during previous Easter event.
Seasons bring a bit more life to the market.
This applies to Ultima because hit can be added, attributes can be swappedā¦ On Ephinea, since you canāt do that, every single item with hit or specific attributes has already some kind of āuniquenessā so you donāt need events to get some item exclusivity. On Ultima, at the end of the day, everyone has the same gear with same stats so not too much point trading whatās all year round unless you are too lazy to hunt.
I see PBCs, CBs, Hylian, Lindcray etc traded a lot.
While the only non-event item traded that often is RR.
You get a reason to come back later.
If everything was all year round, you could end up farming real hard for a month to get everything you needed, then feel āemptyā and not willing to come back later.
Surprisingly I like how the non-event periods somehow tell you to take a PSO break, so it helps you decide when you donāt know what game to play.
Itās not like they are that long anyway, we have 7 seasonal events spread over every year so the PSO breaks are usually just a couple weeks long.
Many of us see event ends as a relief. Finally the hard farming ended, and we can either do other non PSO stuff, or do the PSO things that donāt require Events: Calās Clock Challenge, World of Illusion, Power Plant Plight, time attack, challenge mode, RR/PD/WD/Glide farming etc.
Well this is my opinion (as a player whoās still farming a lot after 6 years here) and I know there also are many who donāt agree with me, so Iāll respect that, but we had a choice to make and we canāt please everyone. So we keep going with what Ultima was doing since the beginning and how Larva wanted the events to be.
I donāt know if the trend has changed, but when I joined Ultima, I've never seen anyone express their unhappiness about that, back in Ultima prime, when we reached 201 logged players on 12/01/2016 during Christmas event. In fact it was bringing a huge hype towards main events.
I honestly donāt mind seeing our player count drop during some short periods as long as it increases back the next month. It also helps the few players who play on multiple servers. Helps them decide which server to play on, depending on whether or not there is an event going on. (Yes, I can say that because I did play on Ephinea myself! I took the occasion when Ultima server was calm to do it. And ironically I kept the seasonal reasoning to decide when I do, trying to catch nothing but Exp boost weeks because starting from scratch on hardcore mode and refusing any help from higher levels, I wanted to grind exp as fast as possible on Ephinea to optimize/reduce the time spent out of Ultima)
And thereās also some satisfaction to see people back and get back into old hunting once events start.
I am planning to start a mini-event in a bit in order to fill a part of the gap that separates Summer from Triforce events (~2 months) but for sure I donāt expect people not to play anymore until the next time I do it (if it ever happens again), or to totally erase non-event time.
I donāt want Ultima to become some kind of ānew items factoryā. I know many people here would love that and see it as a reason to āplay againā, but it is hard to add an item worthy of use without breaking the gameplay balance or outclassing another existing item (my biggest concern).
Then we get even more item requests. I remember when Psycho Raven was males only, I decided to release Mille Faucilles for female rangers because that gender bias within a same class didnāt make sense to me. It is weaker but has slightly different features (range, autolock).
To that extent, nothing was left behind: Mille Marteaux is required to make Mille Faucilles, Dual Bird and Guld Milla are still usable by hunters who canāt access MF...
But then the logic about how Rangers should be the ones specialized in (mech)guns poofed: I started to see a lot of requests for releasing a new strong mechgun for Hucaseal/Hunewearl so they can compete with their ranger mates, and lately I even got requests for releasing a new strong mechgun for Forces because they are supposedly left behindā¦ and it never ends.
You said people play on a server because it has people.
True enough, Iām still here because even though there were many annoying people who would just always complain about everything and/or make drama, I actually love this community and would have been gone for long if it werenāt for it.
But thatās why we are stuck here. Player count will not magically grow while already low without some good reasons.
With your suggestions of removing boosts and reworking the DTs system, I can hardly imagine using this as an advertisement for Ultima
āHey come back to Ultima! There is no more exp x5, no more HHs, no more green names and you canāt redeem DTs for ingame items or stats anymore!ā.
Now regarding the main topic,
Didnāt post before because I was specifically asked to shut up in the main post, point 6 :ā)
I understand āDMS would be super hard to getā but itās not a good excuse to me. As far as it is obtainable, thenā¦ it is obtainable.
Even if it is just one out of 100 players, I would hate to see some lucky hucast spamming DM in random rooms. What will basically happen when at least one person does that? Other players / newcomers will see that, they will want to have that as well, feel like they canāt accomplish anything without it, they start to hunt it but after hours of nothing but disappointment, they just get frustrated and ragequit the server.
This is exactly what happens with PGF/STA.
Some donāt realize those are very end-gear items hence intentionally HARD drops. But since those strong items exist, they MUST find them.
They run they runā¦ and end up just getting totally burned of PSO and leave.
Counterargument: but those items are event only and available for less than 2 months a year.
I guess but Iāve seen it happen too often after just one or two weeks of event, so even before event ended. If they were to be all year round, the rate must also be adjusted to become even harder (even though some may disagree, rates were chosen to be worthy of the events durations) so that might even get worse.
New overpowered content with impossible drop rates really isnāt the way to go.
I know for sure if DMS becomes a thing, weāll get dramas āthe DMS rate is stupidly hardā.
However, if it was more about cosmetics than āGameplay criticalā as Matt calls it, then at least I would be slitghly less reluctant to that idea. Like simply a skin swap for DM, that would act as some prestige without totally breaking the gameplay balance because of the very few chosen ālottery winnersā who get their hands on DMS or whatever OP item (you listed Frosty Icicle Shooter at 2nd cheapest option, I can tell you this item is second in most broken weapons ranking, right below DMS).
tl;dr: -