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Ultima Server Is Declining


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On 7/29/2019 at 7:18 PM, Kikori said:

There's one simple step that can be taken to make this server better. Take a step back and realize you're on a server dedicated to a nearly nineteen year old game that only attracts an incredibly tiny amount of people. This is a small community. I like small communities; people know each other well enough before long that you've got connections, easily recognized names and faces, support and comradery that can ascend further into real life friendships, all the stuff you don't find as easily in much larger places. All due to a very old piece of work, a game old enough to be considered an adult, that has basically fallen off the grid for what its original creators put their foot down on.

This is the online version of a social club that gathers multiple times a week for board games, card games, movies, grill-outs, whatever club your happy and socially healthy elder relative may have talked about in the past. The only difference is it revolves around a game where teamwork is not only encouraged but expected, where time spent needs to feel rewarding, and challenges need to remain.

It's safe to say, a lot of people here understand these three needs. After all, we've had no less than four topics about people trying to offer their two cents on the balance of one new item because the majority of them care about class balance, an item's worth, and the loss each other suffers when a change to an item wastes time and money spent on said item.

Larva, I still don't envy your position because the head of a staff has to deal with the most crap and do the most thankless work. But how you treat the above facts is, as Mud summarized, hurtful to the community.

The community cares. You make it a point to not include them.
You offer no transparency about discussions. Then your exact opinion on the result happens. Not only that, but down to the letter.
After promising a discussion, you mention your staff was involved in a discussion, but later make the changes on your own whim and cause one to play catch-up in figuring out what you changed.
During the conversations about the item, you lose your cool and shitpost, proceed to mock others, and rebuke more "shitpost" from someone calling out your offense.

I quote one Julius Campbell to Gary Bertier: "Attitude reflects leadership, captain."

We have an entire topic devoted to improving the server, but for the sake of really removing one of the big problems the server has to keep players around, my two cents? Events. They're wonderful because people come around... for a week or two. Then people get the one thing they want once it's found out, and they're gone for a while. Then another event, everyone's back for their item upgrade, buy the base, new item... and gone. There is no reason whatsoever every single item can not exist as a static drop year round.
We have a 1/10000 chance sword for a single ID against a creature difficult to kill en masse. Is a 1/10000 chance for a PGF from Falz for one uncommon ID year round so detrimental to server stability? 1/15000 chance for C/battle from Epsilon for one ID? Serene Swan is now basically an in-between of mid and high grade pistol, it can probably keep the 1/1500 drop rate from Sorcerers for one ID (still making it harder than Spread Needle and Panzer Faust combined, upgraded to superior items anyway).

Nobody cares what mud says...

Edited by RogueZ
2 much info
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5 hours ago, RogueZ said:

Nobody cares what mud says...

gms feel free to change my forum name to Nobody because i care what mud sais

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5 hours ago, RogueZ said:

Nobody cares what mud says...

 

2 minutes ago, griffeni said:

gms feel free to change my forum name to Nobody because i care what mud sais

 

i stand with mudkipzjm

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On 7/30/2019 at 4:40 AM, R-78 said:

I actually play this game a lot (maybe too much) but you probably don't know because I'm 99.4% of the time using a character you don't know (non GM accounts) and usually in Lobby 04.

I can vouch for this.   I swear @R-78 doesnt sleep,  she charges lol    All though I miss the days were we hunted together :)

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get rid of the dts system and roll back the monster evp buffs. move event drops to regular table , start removing some junk items in turn. why the fuck is pgf a once a year drop? Im trying to think of another game that pulls some shit like this but Im pulling blanks. time gated hunts are cancerous and only encourages players to play on a cycle.

add a item that functions as dts currently do. im sure the only thing people do with dts is add% so that should not be too hard to facilitate.

sure this might be a old game but that is no excuse to let it run so poorly. psobb servers are flavors. ephinea's vanilla might be the purest and best tasting but I can't help but want chocolate sometimes

why is real life money the premier currency in a game as old as this one? shit EA could brand this server and I wouldnt know the difference.

shit aint hard ya'll just dancing around the most obvious flaws.

as always though with these "addressing the state of the game" posts , these always get buried and forgotten about.

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41 minutes ago, Centurion+ said:

get rid of the dts system and roll back the monster evp buffs. move event drops to regular table , start removing some junk items in turn. why the fuck is pgf a once a year drop? Im trying to think of another game that pulls some shit like this but Im pulling blanks. time gated hunts are cancerous and only encourages players to play on a cycle.

add a item that functions as dts currently do. im sure the only thing people do with dts is add% so that should not be too hard to facilitate.

sure this might be a old game but that is no excuse to let it run so poorly. psobb servers are flavors. ephinea's vanilla might be the purest and best tasting but I can't help but want chocolate sometimes

why is real life money the premier currency in a game as old as this one? shit EA could brand this server and I wouldnt know the difference.

shit aint hard ya'll just dancing around the most obvious flaws.

as always though with these "addressing the state of the game" posts , these always get buried and forgotten about.

For as long as I can remember, literally everyone has been asking for year round PGF. I haven't seen a single person besides Larva that doesn't want it, it just doesn't make sense to make it available for one month out of a year. I've never heard a valid excuse to why it is the way it is either. Also if DTs weren't a thing, I think it'd just be there in another form (probably with way more RMT).

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From a balance standpoint, it doesn't make sense. We have difficult rates on a few good items, absurd rates on novelties, and amazing items practically locked behind near impossible rates that happen to be softcore buffed when they're included in popular event hunts. We deal with having them, and they become a "Happy Hour is up, let's go for it!" target in between events, with very rarely successful results but never so rare to deter efforts. We're talking about a drop that would come from a boss; the trickle into the economy would be very slow.

From a business standpoint, it doesn't make sense. More PGF means more Dark Weapons, means more incentive for people to purchase DTs for the hallowed +hit. I can see no alternative on the list of purchasable items that compares to a DW. More event drops to max out (even if only one or two a month) still means more money flow.

Not even just for PGF and Dark Weapons, either. Dozens of 'em get maxed out and could apply to this logic. It's not like the whole server would stop hunting and quit just from getting their first of a weapon.

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Not sure if anyone has brought this idea up before. It'd be cool to give out prizes/rewards at the end of each event to show extra appreciation for those who participated (would also get more people to participate since they know they wouldn't leave the event empty handed). It would be kinda how SEGA did and still does events in PSO games. If you can track kills on certain mobs that drop the high rarity event items or track the total amount of high rarity event item drops themselves (banners), those could be used to gauge what prize milestones were reached for the end of the event to see how many rewards we get (everyone gets all of the rewards from the achieved milestones).

This is just an example: first milestone is 3 photon spheres, 2nd is 2 weeks of 5x exp after event ends, 3rd is 2 weeks of green names after event ends, 4th one is choice of an event item of a certain tier, 5th one choice of a higher rarity event item (if it is a weapon it would have 50% in 2 stats of your choosing each), the last one is free 80 hit and special (if applicable) added to any weapon you have. Just an idea spice things up :) 

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8 hours ago, jj733 said:

Not sure if anyone has brought this idea up before. It'd be cool to give out prizes/rewards at the end of each event to show extra appreciation for those who participated (would also get more people to participate since they know they wouldn't leave the event empty handed). It would be kinda how SEGA did and still does events in PSO games. If you can track kills on certain mobs that drop the high rarity event items or track the total amount of high rarity event item drops themselves (banners), those could be used to gauge what prize milestones were reached for the end of the event to see how many rewards we get (everyone gets all of the rewards from the achieved milestones).

This is just an example: first milestone is 3 photon spheres, 2nd is 2 weeks of 5x exp after event ends, 3rd is 2 weeks of green names after event ends, 4th one is choice of an event item of a certain tier, 5th one choice of a higher rarity event item (if it is a weapon it would have 50% in 2 stats of your choosing each), the last one is free 80 hit and special (if applicable) added to any weapon you have. Just an idea spice things up :) 

I like this idea :)  kinda like a merit system where you work towards new milestones through the event.   :)

 

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Ya'll realize this game is like 100 years old, at some point we gotta move on. Some of the posts in here made me laugh though.

Also most of these ideas should not be considered, fyi. Too much work for this really old game. I do support new quests though.

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3 minutes ago, foiexx said:

Ya'll realize this game is like 100 years old, at some point we gotta move on. Some of the posts in here made me laugh though.

Also most of these ideas should not be considered, fyi. Too much work for this really old game. I do support new quests though.

thx for your clear and detailed inputs

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