Economic & PvP Changes.

[Syntax]

I've been brainstorming some ideas for the past few years that I've been playing UO. I've seen what you all have seen also.
1. PvP scene get stagnant and that scene is obsolete on a server.
2. Crafting items never change and no future content.
3. PvMing easily done with 1 tamer without the need of anyone else, and no changes to mobs.

We've seen the same shit over and over with economies.

1. People get super rich and therefore have no need to farm.
2. No farmers, no pkers, no pkers, no noto pking....etc etc.


What I've learned is that it's all a chain reaction. Normally what starts the chain reaction is the economy and pvming (realistically they go hand in hand) These the two most important aspects of a shards long term health. I have some ideas that I think would help create a healthier economy in the long run, while also giving the players a new goal to work towards. Also small pvp related ideas. These are loose ideas that obviously input is more than welcome to, I'm not going to call these "proposals" of any sort, rather just ideas.


Town Houses
Take one second and think of all of the unused housing in every town. Some are obviously used (mage shops, provisioners, etc). There are houses in every single town that are empty, and serve zero purpose and there's a %99.9 chance never will. Why don't we utilize these houses? Requirements is something that can be ironed out at a later point BUT, if these houses were to be put up for auction or a steep price tag (maybe the owner would have to disclose purpose of house and be held accountable) I think these houses would become a huge gold synch. They could be used as guild houses possibly, or even vendor houses. Some thing that would come along with these houses to keep it out of the hands of a player to just hold onto.

1. Strict guidelines upon purchase.
2. Property taxes.
3. Report of what the house has been used for on a monthly/bimonthly basis.
4. Resale of house will also be subject to same rules including providing a purpose of house by the new owner.
4. Resale of house will have to be sold to next owner at a price of previous auction + a % that gets deleted.

T2A Houses
Another example of a ton of unused property that has never been explored. Everyone has ran across the lost lands in t2a and realized how much empty land there is. Opening up a very SMALL portion of this land to housing for again, an extremely high premium, would be another way to get the rich to synch their gold. Land would originally go up for auction or for a large for sale price. Resale of house will have to be sold to next owner at a price of previous auction + a % that gets deleted also here.


Player Ran Towns
Promoting role playing (even if its in the slightest form) helps shards. Creating a gold synch while promoting role playing is even better. Player ran towns were a part of UO on OSI and have been created on freeshards. They've proved to be an attractive feature for players of all kinds. Attracting more players is key, as well as creating reasons for people to spend gold, resources, and farm. This would be another condition where requirements and accountability would be enforced.

Perma Grey in Bucs
No caption needed. No brainer and always has bucs popping.

More to come.

[HateCrime]

No to town and T2A homes. I can get behind player ran towns if players have to come up with say 5 million ore, xxx gold etc to place certain things in their town. I'm also all game for the Bucs idea. It would make bucs the hotspot on the shard but that's just fine with me. It could be a ton of fun.

[DKS]

None of that will help. Problem is it's too easy to farm gold and with so few people playing the shard there is little risk to farming. All your proposal does is encourage the rich to farm more.

Main issue here is that it is very cheap to play the game. With 300k you can buy enough supplies to pvp for months and it doesn't take long to farm 300k.

Something that may help: take all of the main farming spots and increase those monsters difficulty to kill and increase their damage and decrease their gold by 80%. Then if spots change, rinse and repeat.

[Yitamin]

this will just make it to where the animal tamers are even more powerful than they already are.  I love the being gray in bucs idea.  Does the no short term counts whilst in bucs happen here?

[Jack]

None of that will help.  Problem is it's too easy to farm gold and with so few people playing the shard there is little risk to farming.  All your proposal does is encourage the rich to farm more.

Main issue here is that it is very cheap to play the game.  With 300k you can buy enough supplies to pvp for months and it doesn't take long to farm 300k.  

Something that may help:  take all of the main farming spots and increase those monsters difficulty to kill and increase their damage and decrease their gold by 80%.  Then if spots change, rinse and repeat.

Though I agree with the sentiment, I really don't think the solution is anywhere near that simple. Slowing down the gold rates and increasing difficulty would have a dramatic effect on the difficulty for a new player to get started, and much less effect on established players. And unfortunately, no matter how strong mobs are, there'll always be a tamer with 20+ dragons there to trivialize it, so increasing difficulty would create a stronger divide between those who are tamers and those who aren't.

[Abyz]

I like the buyable houses in town idea... For personal OR guilds. Just make it extremely expensive to buy and a chore to keep the repo man off your back. I like t2a to be wild. Player run towns is an excellent thing.

With mini bosses and platinum drops, it will be a very very long time before I stop farming. The pvm is a lot of fun here, and there are a ton of cool things to farm plat for and spend plat on. This shard has me motivated to pvm unlike any free server I've played before.

[Jack]

Player Ran Towns
Promoting role playing (even if its in the slightest form) helps shards.  Creating a gold synch while promoting role playing is even better.  Player ran towns were a part of UO on OSI and have been created on freeshards.  They've proved to be an attractive feature for players of all kinds.  Attracting more players is key, as well as creating reasons for people to spend gold, resources, and farm.  This would be another condition where requirements and accountability would be enforced.

It's my intention to get a system in place for creating player run towns soon.

I am probably less familiar than many when it comes to what should be in these kind of things. I've never been involved with a player run town, so I am open to proposals on how such a system should work. I don't believe it should cost a silly amount of resources/gold that require massive amounts of grinding, but rather keep the costs involved reasonable and provide these type of addons to guilds that are actively playing the shard.

[Blaise]

The most use I would support in actual town structures would possibly be some sort of high cost player vendor placements in unused/marketplace areas. Not sure how that could pan out but I never want to see a player's home in any city.

In regards to player towns and add-ons, I think that a significant up front gold cost would suit with perhaps weekly upkeep fees. If the add-ons came with an immovable container that any player could deposit gold into, it would make it accommodating to guilds who require their members to provide such upkeep costs. The larger the additions, the larger the fees. Clicking the container/double clicking could give a gump report of fees currently owed and perhaps a balance. In order to avoid someone just lumping down a million gold in pre-payments, do not allow payments/contributions to the add-on container to exceed the current fees due for that week. I dunno, just a thought that would not only give players motivation to play more but keep stagnant player towns from blocking up real estate. I'd even go so far to say that add-ons cannot exceed parameters that would potentially impede further home placement in the area, within reason.

I've also always been a fan of the concept of a housing tax for large properties. Something not too excessive but enough to make it costly to have say, 15 castles. There's room for about 90 castles or so on any standard Britannian map. Perhaps no taxes on your primary home on each account, but each additional home would require taxes be paid regularly. If taxes are not available in the owner's bank account, decay time cuts down to one week. I know the land hoarders wouldn't appreciate it but honestly, there should be a cost for such an action, that is not recoverable by redeeding.


Another edit: I do not support the concept of perma-grey in Buc's. If I'm there to hunt murderers, I should not be subjected to criminal flagging just for being there. I do however think that removing the ability to give murder counts on the entire island would be interesting to see play out.

[DKS]

I agree it isn't that simple.  There could be a system where each mob can detect which tamed creatures and how many, are within a certain area and adjust their own stats and loot accordingly to even out the ease of elimination.  

This would prevent people from farming millions of gold per week and help keep the economy in check.

[Syntax]

I think that if you're willing to put in the work, then you're entitled to the gold. So prorating spawn gold and items is not a good idea. We have to concentrate on population to regulate how much a tamer can farm a hotspot (need pks, other tamers lobbing for position etc). That is boiling down to a population issue, which hopefully sort itself out as we continue to grow the shard, expand our horizons, and continue to release content and goals that have not been explored, or offered on other shards. The set it and forget motto doesnt work, we know that. There are numerous shards that we could use examples. To create something long lasting and ingenius, WE need to think outside the box. I like to use UO Forever as an example. Old game, endless new ideas, endless new mobs, endless new crafting system, endless ideas. This keeps people interested. They give each type of player something to strive for.

I like the idea of houses in town being used as a vendor house. I think that's acceptable and with the right price tag, would have people spending money that otherwise would probably be sitting in their banks. And with all due respect to the player ran vendor houses, I'm tired of running around the outskirts of yew moongate to find a yellow keg. I know an arguement will be "well if you have vendors in town, no one can steal/pk someone at vendor houses". Lets be honest here, when was the last time anyone had anything stolen from them at a vendor house, or had gotten pk'd at a vendor house? I'm hoping you can't remember. Again, strict rules and high upkeep.

I've also always been a fan of the concept of a housing tax for large properties. Something not too excessive but enough to make it costly to have say, 15 castles. There's room for about 90 castles or so on any standard Britannian map. Perhaps no taxes on your primary home on each account, but each additional home would require taxes be paid regularly. If taxes are not available in the owner's bank account, decay time cuts down to one week. I know the land hoarders wouldn't appreciate it but honestly, there should be a cost for such an action, that is not recoverable by redeeding.

I agree with this idea, this was going to be one of my later ideas but I was trying to dance around it. Glad you brought it up. A couple houses I get, hoarding houses is just silly. On top of all of the aforementioned points, like I said we need gold synchs.


Another edit: I do not support the concept of perma-grey in Buc's. If I'm there to hunt murderers, I should not be subjected to criminal flagging just for being there. I do however think that removing the ability to give murder counts on the entire island would be interesting to see play out.

If you remove the ability to give murder counts on the entire island, it's kind of like being grey on the island the whole time?