UO Blog - What Ultima Online Could Be - July 4th, 2009

- Who'd wander through Britannia on foot, searching for secrets and landmarks?
- Who'd account Felucca for a place worth traveling to?
- Who'd venture to old anti-virtue dungeons to explore them from top to bottom?
Not many, I guess. The world of UO has a gigantic potential, which is far from being fully tapped. I put together 10 steps that would enhance the gaming experience enormously, and diminish some of the problems (scripting, duping, farming, boredom) at the same time. The goals would be to encourage expeditions and discoveries, get rid of repetitive treadmill activities, make the world unpredictable and dynamic, and revive the old forgotten places in Britannia. These measures would breathe back adventure and excitement into the game.

Content:

• Step 1: Reduce Item Importance
• Step 2: Limit Item Insurance
• Step 3: Improve Monster Spawn and AI
• Step 4: Enhance Existing Dungeons and Places of Interest
• Step 5: Add Community Features and Player-Run Towns
• Step 6: Add Treasures & Adventure
• Step 7: Enhance Existing Landmasses
• Step 8: Revamp Runic Crafting
• Step 9: Improve the Game Atmosphere
• Step 10: Solve the Trammel/Felucca Problem

Step 1: Reduce Item Importance

Once players are forced to have rare powerful items to compete, they will get their head down to acquiring such items, and the spirit of community and adventure will suffer. Too powerful and expensive items (which come as high-level artifacts or high-level runic crafted items) should become available to a broader range of players. This would level-out player economy and lower the entrance barrier for PvP, making PvP accessible to normal players. People might then focus more on constructive gameplay instead of item farming.

Step 2: Limit Item Insurance

Limit item insurance to 8 pieces per character. This way you can insure your armor and a weapon, but you cannot insure every item you carry anymore. It would bring back a little risk to the game, especially to those who provoke it (criminals). Today, death has no consequence to the player, which sounds comfortable, but makes the game quite unrealistic and only favors the rich.

Step 3: Improve Monster Spawn and AI

Monster behavior is predictable and static. Monsters spawn always in the same place. You slay one, a new one spawns and attacks you again. You can stand in the same spot all day long and kill monsters, and you wouldn't even have to touch the keyboard once. Monsters always behave in the same way. They carry always the same loot. This encourages item/gold farming and makes it easy for players to automate their characters. It also kills adventuring. No need to explore and discover, just use a recall rune to your favorite spawn location. Monsters should spawn in alternating areas, which would encourage adventuring and exploring. Monster behavior (AI) should be improved a little. If a number of monsters is slain, monsters should react accordingly (flee or move elsewhere), or call for reinforcements (stronger versions of their kin). Monsters should change their combat tactics, and probably cooperate to defeat the intruders. Monsters could become more powerful the more players they have killed.

Step 4: Enhance Existing Dungeons and Places of Interest

Recalling into a dungeon should not be allowed anymore (it has been disabled in the new Britannian dungeons, Ilshenar and Tokuno). However, adventuring down into the deepest levels of a dungeon on foot should be made more interesting, exciting and worthwhile. Monsters should cooperate to fend off dungeon intruders (see above statements). They should not respawn immediately after they have been slain, to allow players to work their way through the dungeon from top to bottom. Dungeons should be increasingly dangerous the lower you go, but also increasingly rewarding (see Treasures). A lot of secrets, puzzles and traps should be added to the dungeons, but most of them should appear in random places, so the dungeon adventure will be absolutely unique and unpredictable.

Hundreds of beautiful and mystical overground landmarks are waiting to be animated! Adventurers should be able to discover hidden secrets and treasures, if they're lucky. Invisible monsters guarding a secret should be added, coming forth whenever one gets too close. Deadly traps should be added, that require a Trap Disarm skill to discover. A treasure hunter could dig in a forgotten graveyard and accidentally find a secret message. Each landmark should have a history and a meaning, but not always should they reveal their secrets.

Step 5: Add Community Features and Player-Run Towns

While the community is the backbone of Ultima Online, they have been left alone over the past 10 years. Player commitment should be cultivated and encouraged. Active player communities should be equipped with features allowing them to enhance their player towns and offer special services and events to other players. A lot of ideas and suggestions can be found here.

Step 6: Add Treasures & Adventure

A lot of secrets should be added to make adventuring and wandering more worthwhile. With people recalling to a place of interest and recalling out, all the landscape and dungeon levels become obsolete. The secrets, riddles and quests added to land and dungeon should appear randomly (changing its location every 24 hours, after server maintenance). These secrets should be hidden in a way that they can be discovered by accident or by examining the details of the environment. They should yield interesting things for the player, like random single-use recipes to craft new potions, special ingredients you need to craft or improve certain items, unique (but not overpowered) pieces of equipment, hints leading you on a quest. The variety of these rewards should be HUGE, so adventuring will never become boring.

Step 7: Enhance Existing Landmasses

Most landmasses are quite boring and consist of a lot of unused space. A lot of life should be added to those. For example, the ocean of Britannia is a huge unused area. Many dungeons in Ilshenar and Britannia are boring. Malas seems to be made only for housing. The Concept for a Seafaring Expansion is one example of what could be done.

Step 8: Revamp Runic Crafting

Repetitive mindless tasks encourage scripting and cheating. Make runic crafting available for a broader range of players, not only for those who spend 24/7 at their screen (we already have library contributions). Add more versatility, fantasy and adventure to this task. Make runic tools better available for everyone to prevent duping and macroing.

Step 9: Improve the Game Atmosphere

This is about sound and graphics. Based on existing technology, a lot of improvements would be possible. Enable individual environment sounds for each area (like jungle sounds, forest sounds, sea sounds, etc.). Footsteps should sound different, depending on the ground. Nights and dungeons should be dark so you hardly can see. Night sight should not make them bright as day, but only a little brighter so lighting effects still can be enjoyed. Transition between night and day should be smoother (at least in 3 steps). Color of light should change depending on the daytime. Weather effects and sounds (thunder, lightning, snow, rain) would add a lot to the atmosphere. In the morning, fog could appear randomly at the coastline, sometimes spitting out ghost pirates or undead.

Step 10: Solve the Trammel/Felucca Problem

In detail described in the column about the Trammel/Felucca Dilemma. Abolish the choice between no-risk-carebear-Sims®-land Trammel and l33t-PK-unbounded-massmurder-land Felucca. More intelligent solutions to protect innocents and control/punish murderers are required. Committing crimes should be (only theoretically!) possible anywhere. However, committing a crime should have long-term consequences. If there's a witness (NPC or "good" player), the criminal would be in trouble. This way, criminals would suffer more severe and realistic penalties, and victims could easily protect themselves. Detectives can catch players with a criminal record and put them into jail. If a criminal is caught, he should be punished according to his crime record (which can even lead to putting the character out of business for several days). Felucca would have to be overhauled and turned into a ruined Britannia full of haunted places, secrets and adventure (not just a mere mirror).

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