2 months here, my impression

General discussion pertaining to the Demise shard. Off-topic posts will be moderated.
Nocturne
Posts: 18

2 months here, my impression

Post by Nocturne »

Good afternoon,
I'm just going to give my vision of the server, I've been playing for 2 months 8 hours every day.
I'm not trying to offend anyone, it's just my point of view.


The last time I played the ultima online, it was 5 years ago.I played with razor and some small script of easy uo,doing harrower was quite an event as it was strange to do it,m for example doing oak was hell or mephitis.. necro tamers with good strategy and luck.
Demise is full sampires, with this char you can do all champions in 30 min.
In pvp full script auto field in tile, auto teleport AUTO play.



- The skill rise seems perfect in terms of training time.

- Server population is fine, I think about 100 real people will play.

- I can understand why spells are more slow in FEL, probably all wizard with scripts.. magic arrow, posion weaken..

- i can't understand why heartwood macro has been edit to prevent afk macro... but you go to HW city and you can see 500 afk players running scripts..

- i cant`t understand why exist anti multicombat rule and when players has been reported with video and photo Gm not do anything

- I can't understand why players can throw 2000 explotion potion at the same time :S


I have the impression that demise is in a bad time, players with a big name in this shard are leaving..and they are searching another shards..
I have 200 ping when I play in demise, on other servers with 200-300 ping I can take apple and healing potion (press r to appel and Z to heal pot), on this server I can't "you must wait to perfom another action" i try with razor, uo steam, razo enchanced etc etc and setting delay action option.. to 500 600 550 700 800 900... and the same msg appear.. a lot of player tell me that the problem is "the new host" :S

On many occasions when I try to hit a player who is close to me with my weapon, I do not hit even though he is right in front of me,
at the moment I use resynchronize client but,but i don't hit.
I have some friends who want to start on the server, but they don't want to be like me.
I cannot use characters with shields, because if I remove shield, drink potion and put shield, the shield is not put, "you must wait to perform another option" appear,I can't play with a warrior because I don't hit the blows when my enemies run close to me.
I don't feel heavy, I run well, I don't have stops,I have 4 computers and different internet connections but the same thing happens everywhere.in other servers away from my country, this does not happen.the solution is easy, make an archer like 99% of the server.

but we don't all want to be archers, use scripts and macro hw 24 hours.

my opinion.
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Calvin
Posts: 5686
Location: UK

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Calvin »

Nocturne wrote: November 30th, 2020, 8:07 pm I've been playing for 2 months 8 hours every day.
I have 200 ping when I play in demise
that there is proof it's still a good game.

criticisms aside for a min, as most are known issues..
do you feel you still have plenty of stuff to get, aim for, and things to do?
what would you like to see in the future, what would make the gamre more fun, and what are you looking forward to?

seems the main problem is still the ping
Nocturne
Posts: 18

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Nocturne »

Really, I know that the best thing I have experienced in this game was in the past, it will not happen again.

I have always created my own clan with my friends and we have been one of the best clans where we have gone, we have a good team fight and many years playing together.

Now I'm alone.

Thanks to the good speed of my hands I have been able to fight against very powerful scripts.

Now "you must wait to perform another action"


I don't really expect anything, just try to pass the time until one day I leave or the msg "you must wait to perform another action" disappears


I understand that it is a free server and that gms do not get money for their time, but for that reason they should accept videos as proof that players are breaking rules.
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Calvin
Posts: 5686
Location: UK

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Calvin »

just sounds like you're having a good game but you wanna win more :P

lag, ganks, and script are all issues yea, but they are kinda things we have to live with i guess.

not really an issue for me cos i dont rly do the pvp
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Bug
Posts: 386

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Bug »

Staff has been doing a lot about afk scripters lately. Just a couple weeks ago I knew of a guy that had all his belongings deleted for breaking the rules. Yesterday I was collecting keys for paroxsymus and I got one of the automated afk checks. Staff themselves will appear at times to thwart even those that have built in to their scripts ways to avoid that auto afk checks.
Nocturne
Posts: 18

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Nocturne »

Bug wrote: December 1st, 2020, 3:40 pm Staff has been doing a lot about afk scripters lately. Just a couple weeks ago I knew of a guy that had all his belongings deleted for breaking the rules. Yesterday I was collecting keys for paroxsymus and I got one of the automated afk checks. Staff themselves will appear at times to thwart even those that have built in to their scripts ways to avoid that auto afk checks.
yeah.. ofc..
Hogoulart
Posts: 7

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Hogoulart »

One thing i dont like here is the respown time, u kill one blood elemental and, at same time, another apears.
Looks like the only thing important is the macro and reward.
Hogoulart
Posts: 7

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Hogoulart »

UO is the oldest game, with a big world, but with alot of useless places.

Workers get bods for rewards
Pvm is Doom, ilshenar ir Champs
And If u dont have money take 4 lrc kits and macro logs

O dont know, but looks like the game Lost its essence, explore the world.

Like, trammel just use for houses and tokuno is useless
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The Silvertiger
Posts: 4469

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by The Silvertiger »

Tokuno not useless. Trammel useless. 😹
Never forget June 4th 1989!
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Calvin
Posts: 5686
Location: UK

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Calvin »

Hogoulart wrote: December 13th, 2020, 1:57 pm UO is the oldest game, with a big world, but with alot of useless places.

Workers get bods for rewards
Pvm is Doom, ilshenar ir Champs
And If u dont have money take 4 lrc kits and macro logs

O dont know, but looks like the game Lost its essence, explore the world.

Like, trammel just use for houses and tokuno is useless
this is actually accurate.

but you have the wrong idea of the game.... the game is not the game really, the game is a platform. there needs to be things on the platform.

when you say doom, champ, ilshenar - those are 3 things on the platform, get it?

UO is the world, but you need the players to really make it fun. it's a meta game, where the mini-games add up.

does it not make sense that if you want to make gold, you do the thing people dont want to do, spend your work there, and get paid for it?
or be a criminal and try to make the gold in illegal ways (afk farming)?

UO isn't a theme park, it's a world. not all parts of the world are super interesting and have stuff to do in them, and that's fine, cos maybe that's what you want.

nothing to say you cant build a theme park *in* the world tho.

it's like a buffet of activities, and you choose what you wanna do from your own calculations of risk/reward, fun/grind, etc.
the GM's job is to give you more options, and balance them to be more or less equal so the players have choice; but also provide a scaling skill/difficulty level so people can advance. then you slap the social layer on top with trading, collecting, guilds, factions, etc.

UO itself is not a game really, it's a virtual world.

Image
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Vampire337
Posts: 47
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Vampire337 »

Ultima Online is an old game. In many ways it is locked in its era, to be a relic we play when we want nostalgia, or to experience what 1998-2005 felt like. It's like breaking out the SNES/Genesis. Even to play UO on EA's servers is to play a well-worn, somewhat tired feeling game. You don't compare UO to WoW, let alone Guild Wars or Destiny or Eve, unless you're making a defiant argument that a game that ran on a 56k modem is superior to an MMO with more users in a month than UO actually had at its peak. Compared with one of the myriad of modern offerings that run on everything from next-gen consoles to mobile, UO as a game is in a time capsule of sorts.

As far as I'm aware there hasn't been much innovation in UO in some years. It's kept alive for a devout following who can't bring themselves to move on from their first experiences, myself included. Sure, they added BODs to make crafting digestible, and they added Trammel because people were ragequitting, and they added new facets because people wanted housing. You may love or hate the elemental properties of equipment, but that was groundbreaking. But how long ago was that?

The modern iteration of UO is macroing. Macroing served to both break the game and give it a breath of air that keeps it going. That elation I felt my first hour running around Skara Brae killing birds and making arrows and starting my own PvP guild when I had one character with only 300 skill points, it can't last forever. You have to grind to be something, and there's not a lot of people who want to double-click a spellbook until they GM skills anymore.

That said, Demise is a fun "whatever UO is/was". If UO is the success story of Second Life, where it is a world you exist in rather than a game you win, then Demise is a community where you can make some friends doing the same thing in that world. They could do with making world spawns more realistic or interesting, but to change something for one person would be to wreck it for another.

Of OP's comments, I agree with something about each of them. Yeah, PvP is kindof limited to those with mad scripting skills (or at least the scripts). Yeah, 200 ping sucks, and they could optimize some stuff; at the same time, both the developers and rule enforcers are volunteers, and since you can download your own RunUO server we thus possible that someone could exploit this to make fake videos and screenshots. Yeah, the only way to get the high end equipment is to grind millions of gold or rare stat things, and you will get penalized if they catch you not glued to the screen while doing it. As I see it, Demise is a game. If it's not fun, there's other games, even other UO shards.
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Calvin
Posts: 5686
Location: UK

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Calvin »

the change from UO to WoW, reflects the change in the games industry itself... and the approach to players.. the target audience.. etc..

long story short... it's cos of consoles. also escalating production costs. they became less bothered about making what they wanted, and more bothered about making what would sell and be popular..

and i dont think it was a good move.

you have a legit point about how people play UO, i remember when i started i would say you power play on demise.. like in normal UO you are an adventurer lost in a world; in Demise UO, you manage a small team like rimworld. it is a legit way of playing, but the issue is that it shouldn't replace the old way.. i basically power played for a few years then retired from it, and the game's been a sort of pet project/hobby since; just adventuring around and collecting things.

the point it there should be the option to play it either way. the problem is balancing between them.

" Yeah, the only way to get the high end equipment is to grind millions of gold or rare stat things, and you will get penalized if they catch you not glued to the screen while doing it."
there is another way you know... to play the game for a long time.
should the long term players not be more powerful? things are capped, and the final bits dont make *that* much difference.. it's more for status than practicality.
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Vampire337
Posts: 47
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio

Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Vampire337 »

The industry definitely did make a shift from "nerds in a basement making a game they liked and people bought it" to "bean counters hired writers and directors and managers and programmers and on and on for a set amount of money and they churn out something that marketing data tells them will bring lots of money for the shareholders" in my lifetime. That wasn't exactly where I was heading, but I agree with you. I'm a grumpy old gamer too, and barely old enough to warrant it!

Most thriving MMOs raise the floor every so often. Level caps go up, the top end for equipment stats goes up, new loot is incrementally better than the old loot, etc. UO did this for a time, rewarding the veteran players with increased skill caps that were attainable over time by players who stuck around for at least a year or two. But 720 has been the hard limit for a minute now. Even the veteran players want something to scramble for, some new trinket or some weapon with slightly higher stats than the old ones. If EA were really maintaining a game worth asking $12 a month for, we'd see at least annual boosts to the skill cap for all players, and we'd see a lot more weapons and armors, and who doesn't release a mobile client for a game nowadays? UO is the laundromat of online gaming: It's an old, solid building that churns out quarters reliably and doesn't require a lot of upkeep, as long as your customers don't mind that the game room smells like pee.

Specifically for veteran players and powergamers, there must always be gold sinks and flashy status items for the rich who fund the servers and the dedicated who have played for forever. It does get tricky when you give them strategic bonuses over the noobs, lest you become a P2W, or worse, make the game harder for the new players. As an example, Fortnite does a great job of only offering skins and decorative nonsense, and thus isn't P2W in nature. I don't believe the longterm players should have much of an account advantage; they already have the benefit of experience to give them an edge. The current system of giving them better ethys is fine, and maybe expand it to unlocking better materials for building housing. But that would require client edits and nobody's got time for that.

I guess I don't know what middle ground exists for UO. Who is playing this except the nostalgia buffs and the longterm diehards? I struggle to imagine a younger audience looking at the graphics and thinking "this looks like the thing I want to play instead of my PS5". I brought a young friend into Demise, and he's enjoying the game; but if I weren't running macros and showing him all the old stomping grounds I roamed in Pacific & Atlantic, I doubt he'd have given it much of a shot. Really, my stance is that UO is itself stuck, and Demise's greatest millstone is that it wants to remain locked into the epoch of SE, rather than expand the mechanics. And again, for a free server that's completely understandable. Just seems kindof a shame, if not as big a shame as watching EA squeeze quarters from leaking old washing machines.
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Calvin
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Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Calvin »

"Most thriving MMOs raise the floor every so often. Level caps go up, the top end for equipment stats goes up, new loot is incrementally better than the old loot, etc. UO did this for a time ....... UO is the laundromat of online gaming: It's an old, solid building that churns out quarters reliably and doesn't require a lot of upkeep, as long as your customers don't mind that the game room smells like pee."

that's true of the production shards, but it's not true of here, and it's not true to garriot's original vision of UO. what you are talking about there is market extension strategies.... which is like GCSE business studies lol
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z ... revision/3

UO was never supposed to be a theme park style game, it was supposed to be a virtual world - pretty much the first ever vitrual world.
possibly the only real attempt at a virtual world.

see after that, they stopped trying to make them. they realized the limitations of things, and they chose to concentrate on making disposible experiences instead.

-----

the free to play business model... urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg, right, concise...
you need the poor people to play, to make the rich people feel special, but the things the rich people pay for have to be cosmetic, or the poor people wont play it, and there wont be anyone to impress... because of how wealth is distributed, games actually make a lot more off a few rich people, than they would charging everyone the same... a chunk from a rich person, is more than a little from everyone.. cos like... well.. the real world.
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Calvin
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Re: 2 months here, my impression

Post by Calvin »

the problem with uo getting new players is that it's all substance and no flash.. and yeah, kids like flash.. but funnily enough, things are actually going in the other direction now - indie games have become more popular, and simple graphical games like among us, rimworld, etc.

games that have good gameplay mechanics, made by small teams, who have a vision in mind.

that is old skool development, and im very happy to see it coming back.

it's much better than games made by committees of 100s of people, and sanctioned by publishers that dont understand the nature of games, and think you should only make what's tried and tested as a safe bet.


well... the other problem is that you're joining a game that everyone on there has effectively completed, in a sense of you can only progress to a certain level. but it's not about advancement really, uo is not a theme park game, it's not made to successively trigger your reward centers, it's about taking your character on adventures and things.... effectively when your character is an adult, they're an adult, that's it, you dont just keep growing older and better lol.

it does kinda lack in end game content i suppose, relative to the growing up content, which should take a year or 2 to get through in the original game. 7x gm in the original game was hard to get ^.^

i've made a case for them adding some content for the level that we're all at (end game). but it's tricky, because they wanna stay close to the era and original game.. it's the selling point of the server. modding it too much will detract from that. my suggestion is basically parallel games, with all the original legacy content still available and intact. just an extra facet with a new land... problem is im talking about an expansion really, but an expansion in the vein of the original game... but if you're doing an expansion, the obvious thing, is the actual expansions, like stigian abyss and stuff. just they go in the wrong direction...
Last edited by Calvin on December 15th, 2020, 4:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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