2000-03-31: Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Mar 31 2000 11:36AM

This was originally posted to Development at uo.com.

Change isn't always an easy thing to deal with, especially when it's big change. People handle it in different ways. Some cringe before it, fearing that if they move, it might pounce and consume them. Others poke it with a sharp stick, figuring that if they annoy it enough, it might just go away. Then there are those that attack change outright, hoping to drive it off before it settles down and starts building a nest. On the other hand, there do exist some personalities that welcome change with open arms.

Like many developers, I am very aware that change can be a very stressful thing in an online game .

Well, as most of you know, there is a bit of change on the way for UO. An almost entirely new play experience will be available for those who wish to participate in it.

To give you and idea of what we are accomplishing, here's my "Statement of Intent" for UO: Renaissance written about 6 months ago:

Events

The Interest Department and our Volunteers have run thousands of events over the last few months, leading up to the map expansion. Almost every player has experienced some part of these events, whether they participated in the defense of Trinsic or were attacked by town invaders.

I should take this opportunity to note that while many players enjoyed the defense of Trinsic, there was criticism that because the event wasn't truly dynamic, many players did not enjoy the event as much as they could have. I'm happy to point out that the Interest group took note and, along with some minor help from the Development team, they were able to make the re-taking of Trinsic a truly interactive event. There were three different ways for players to re-take Trinsic, and as long as players failed to figure it out, Trinsic stayed held. Some shards found the solution as much as a week before the rest. As of now, all shards have managed to re-take Trinsic, but the remnants of the struggle remain.

The UO Live and Interest teams are taking lessons learned from the experience of running such widespread and detailed events and applying them to future events. We've learned a lot and had a lot of fun with it. I hope you have too.

Map Expansion

In addition to running the events leading up to the map expansion, the Live Team was able to find a way to do the map expansion with no download. Not only did we manage to do it, we found a way to make it significantly larger than T2A.

"It's not a mirror"

There has been some controversy over the term "mirroring" when referencing the method of map expansion. Several months ago, I specifically announced that the map expansion would not be a mirror. I've been asked to explain why this is, given the fact that the two worlds are so similar. Many of you have already read my explanation for this, but let me restate my reasoning.

The two worlds are physically similar because they are constructed from the same original data file, however they will provide significantly different experiences, altered look and feel, and even differing locales. The term "mirror" suggests a level of sameness that is not accurate and does not reflect the end result of the map expansion. It contains a connotation that we couldn't combat without giving you all the details (which is what we're doing right now). What we've really created are more like 2 alternate dimensions that share some common traits, but are fundamentally different.

Housing Right now, anywhere from a quarter to a third of our players own houses. The rest do not. This was one of the main issues we had to face when deciding how to allocate the new housing. The second major factor was a concern I touched on at the very beginning of this discussion…change. The fact that we could now present players with two images of Britannia, one based on full consensual behavior and the other taking its cue from the way things are now, meant that we had to decide where the change would occur. Of course, that change would impact housing because some people would want their houses under one set of rules, some under the other.

We decided that rather than install a totally new set of interaction rules that would force every player to change their play-style, it would be best to leave the current world the way it is and make the new lands be completely consensual. The positive side to this decision is that we aren't forcing a change in play-style on anyone. The drawback is that anyone who wants to take advantage of the new lands must move there. Remember the figures from above. This means that less than 1/3 of our players must decide whether they want to move their homes. The large majority of our players (non-house owners) don't need to make that decision. Of course, this is a simplistic way of looking at it. Communities are made up of many individuals, some with houses, some without (many who are co-owners or friends). Unfortunately, we have no accurate way of defining a community within UO so that we could do something specific for them. This is a problem that had never been encountered before and is indeed troubling. The end result is that communities are going to have to up and move like everyone else if that's what they want to do. This is obviously frustrating, because there's no guarantee that the community will be able to reconstruct itself exactly as it used to be. Then again, for communities that were not in an ideal situation, this is a chance for them to start over, or improve.

One of the next long-term goals of the UO design team is to find ways to give players more ability to establish official communities through in-game activities so that they may be taken into consideration during future updates. This would allow us to avoid the quagmire of favoritism because we're allowing all players with established communities the same opportunity to participate.

Some players have asked that we allow house owners to indicate (through the house sign or by some other means) which facet of the shard they wish to be on, so that we could automatically move their houses. While it make sense to those who own houses, this idea is not fair to the thousands of players who have not had the opportunity to place a house. Why should those who already have the luxury of a home, also get a free ticket to place their houses in the new lands? This idea certainly isn't fair to those who are not yet landed.

Finally, there are a lot of questions about how house placement will work with the new lands, what houses will be allowed, whether current house deeds will work, etc…here are some answers:

• Current house deeds will work.
• There will be a short time period where only larger house types will be placeable
  • Phase 1, several days: Castles and Keeps
  • Phase 2, approximately a week: anything larger than the small house footprint
  • Phase 3, everything else
• We have several new house candidates; they are scheduled to enter public testing soon.

It's all about Consent

This is truly what UO: R is all about. Trammel lifts the restraints that have kept UO in the darkness for 2 years. Some people might get really upset about that statement, but I truly believe that the major issue that has kept UO from growing to it's full potential is the fact that almost any experience outside of a justice region turned into a predator vs. prey situation. The average Britannian doesn't want to be prey. They want to explore, socialize, compete, and fight the good fight. We've decided to give players a choice about their level of acceptable risk. A few of you may not want to hear it, but there's very little fun about true evil. If UO were a combat only game, and not an RPG, then it would be fine that everyone attacked everyone else on sight, but that's not the expectation. This behavior, engaged in by a small minority (and I do mean small) of our players, has kept the rest of our community under the dark cloud of fear.

Even with long-term murder counts, perma-red, and stat-loss, players still fear venturing into T2A or going to the dungeons. Of course, this is what the predatory-style player-killer wants: to exert power over everyone else. So, now we're giving the rest of the players the opportunity to engage in the activities they've always wanted, without being harassed and interrupted by the predatory-style player-killer. Sure, there are different hurdles to clear with a PvM world, but given the pay-off for the players, the UO Live team is ready to tackle them.

PvP Enhanced: No reprieve for the indiscriminate Player Killer

Having made our intentions clear in the above section, it's time to discuss the nature of Felucca, the world as you know it. Is it an oasis for PKs? No. Is it a place that provides a context with real-world ramifications for player vs. player combat? Yes. Are we going to remove stat-loss? No. Why? Because player-killing without context is meaningless and regresses into the predator vs. prey experience I discussed above. Are we going to allow player killing? Yes. The reason for this is that we do believe the players who wish to stay in Felucca will be more likely to be combat savvy and therefore have the mindset of a combatant rather than that of a victim. While we cannot guarantee this, given the nature of the two facets it is a true possibility. As long as this is the exception and not the rule, it should be tolerable. However, creating a free-for-all player killing zone would do two things:

1. Create a poorly populated area of the shard (see Abyss, TC, or any other MMPOG's "pvp" worlds for evidence).
2. Inflame the larger communities that might not want to move to Trammel.

It is not in the best interest of the greater community to remove stat-loss. We aren't doing it.

In Testing

Almost all the features for UO:R are in testing [[2]]. I highly recommend that all players take a moment to log on to TC and check it out over the next week. This team actively responds to input, so now is your chance to voice your opinion. There's a lot of change on the way, and I rather that the communities greet it with a handshake rather than with the poke of a sharp stick (although I have no illusions).

Thanks for taking the time to read through this. I had hoped to post it earlier, but the actual task of implementing all these changes has been quite time consuming. As always, you can email me at [email protected].

Anthony Castoro (SunSword)
Lead Designer, Ultima Online

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