Ideas - From an Original UO Player

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Wryson Rose
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Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by Wryson Rose » Sun Oct 04, 2015 8:50 pm

Greetings everyone. I am Wilderness.

As you may have guessed, I am relatively new to the server.
Years ago (probably 12-15 years) I played Ultima Online on the official servers, specifically Lake Superior.
I am what could be considered "old school" - By that, I mean I played from the original release, up to Age of Shadows, and quit soon after it was released, for a total of about six years in-game.

With that in mind, I've noticed quite a few things that were present in the original Ultima, but are not here. I feel that some of them could be introduced here, and add more depth to the server. Please note however, that the ideas and suggestions I put forth here are meant to be helpful, and are coming to you from the experiences and adventures of a long time Ultima Online fan, who felt that Ultima Online was their home for a long, long time.

With all of that said, here are my suggestions, thoughts and observations during my playtime. I will add to them as I continue to play.

1.)Vendors are somewhat unwieldy and not easily worked with. Note that I'm talking about NPC vendors, AND player vendors.

Original UO had a couple features that could potentially be implemented to help with this:

First, walking up to a vendor (within one to three paces) and saying "vendor buy" or "vendor sell" would open the appropriate menu. Of course, this seems to be already present, but it seems to be spotty. By that, I mean they respond to their name, but not "vendor"
Second, the merchant would scan your inventory and choose the items it would be interested in, based upon the merchant type.
Example: Mages would buy regular and magic scrolls and basic reagents. Alchemists would purchase all reagents, alchemical suplies, and various other materials.

Second, I'm noticing that player merchants have half of the interface that basic merchants do, but they don't have the option to buy. Would it be possible to scan the list of items the merchant would buy, and apply that filter to your packs?

TL;DR version: Make town merchants buy only specific things in line with their profession, and then set them to scan your entire backpack (including other bags) for those items. Second, make player merchants scan your pack for items they are authorized to buy. Third, have them respond to the words "vendor buy" or "vendor sell" - Targeting/typing out their name exactly is sometimes a pain.

2.) City guards.

I'm curious on this one. Why is there no guard service within the cities to keep the hostiles out of the city?

In original UO, if someone was a criminal, went criminal (via theft, or something) or attacked someone, the player (or any nearby NPC who saw it) could say "Guards" and a pair of guards would immediately show up, kill the offender, and then wait around for about thirty seconds to a minute, before vanishing. If the suspect was a creature, no corpse is left, but a player corpse would be left behind, and freely lootable.

As it currently stands, I've been in Asgard, Ashbenford and many other cities, and have watched orcs and other creatures roaming through the city attacking me. I've seen a couple of actual "guards" roaming the cities, but they are few and far between, and don't do anything if they're not near the point of conflict. Now for an experienced character, this may not be a problem. For a new character, well...

TL;DR version: Make NPC guards spawn by a player or npc saying "guards", and kill/teleport anything that attacks a player, or goes criminal within any major city. Only player corpses would be left. As it stands. hostiles wander cities freely, and can kill new players.

3.) Blue animals.

This may just be me seeing it oddly, but I've noticed that some pets (mainly horses) are roaming around with a blue bar/name. To me, this indicates that they've been tamed, and cannot be re-tamed. This doesn't hold true all the time however. Can this be changed so that only creatures tamed are blue, and every other is gray and/or red?
Last edited by Wryson Rose on Mon Oct 05, 2015 12:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wryson Rose
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by Wryson Rose » Mon Oct 05, 2015 12:10 am

Crafting and resource recycling:

This may not be something that's feasible in the short term, but I'd personally like to see it here, as it is in Original: Smelting Items

Smelting, cutting up, or otherwise recycling crafted items:

I'm wondering if it would be possible to include a 'recycling' system for crafting. For example:

Let's say Joe forges some platemail armor. It's not up to par, OR he's in training, and needs to hone his technique.
Rather then simply selling the item to the merchants, why not smelt it back down into ingots, with some loss of resources based on skill. This way, he is able to make better use of his resources. He won't be able to get FULL reclamation, but he can get maybe 60-80%, depending on the resource used.

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Thrudd Treebeard
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by Thrudd Treebeard » Mon Oct 05, 2015 3:24 am

Fully agree with you about guards in towns.

Of course getting killed by guards for whatever reason would not leave chars lootable because of the Valhalla death system.

Player vendors will buy goods if set up to do so by their owner.

Crafted items such as armour can be recycled and materials reclaimed already.

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Allanon
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by Allanon » Mon Oct 05, 2015 5:30 am

For player vendors just say Buy or Sell.
No need to use their name or vendor.
Not many player vendors buy items, but some do.
For the NPC vendors you need to use their name.
You can also use the vendor search facility to find what you need.

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Allanon
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by Allanon » Mon Oct 05, 2015 5:41 am

And if you go to a NPC Vendor, just say (Name) sell bag and they will buy everything they want from the bag that you nominate. Assign your loot bag as .grab bag and all your looted items will go into that bag. And .grab will loot everything on the corpse. .autocarve will also take the skin and meat provided you have a dagger in your main pack.

Wryson Rose
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by Wryson Rose » Mon Oct 05, 2015 1:30 pm

@Thrudd: I've not yet seen the option for recycling items. But, I've not made my dedicated crafter as yet. Even still, I've yet to find out how to smelt down the armor I've gathered from my hunts.

@Thrudd: This isn't really directed at players, as it seems that murderers (reds) are welcome in all towns. Rather, it's geared more towards keeping hostile NPCs (Orcs, ents, grizzly bears, etc) out of the cities, where they can easily kill starting players, or fight town NPCs.

@ Allison: In-town merchants do not respond to 'vendor sell' - they respond to <Name> sell or <Name> buy. And some names are difficult to type out (or I just have fat fingers), as well as them moving around makes it hard to target them for the context menu. If they responded to 'vendor sell' it would make life easier. Walk up, vendor buy/sell - Done. Simplistic and less hassle.

@ Allison: Player vendors don't have the interface for buying items from you. They simply pop up a list saying "hey, I'll buy this." As far as I can tell, in order to have them buy anything from you, you have to drop the item on them. And if you've got a LOT of stuff to sell...oy.

@ Allison: Having a town, or player vendor buy everything they want from a bag instantly isn't feasible. Sure, I've been hunting and gathered a lot of things in the loot bag, but that doesn't mean I want to sell everything I looted. I want to pick and choose. Which is why I suggest the vendor checks your entire inventory and then offers you the choice to pick what you're willing to sell.

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Thrudd Treebeard
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by Thrudd Treebeard » Tue Oct 06, 2015 4:54 am

Re Guards

I was agreeing with you about keeping hostiles out of town, just pointing out the knockout system. If you as a player upset a guard they will attack you and if you're low level they will kill you if you don't run away fast enough.

Creatures that guards 'remove' from towns are sent to Rimstone Abbey graveyard.

Red characters on Valhalla aren't murderers. They choose to be red (usually for RP purposes). They used to be chased by order guards in Asgard, but as there are no order guards there anymore I don't know if they still are. Conversely, Chaos guards in Impalenth certainly chase 'blue' characters.

Re Resmelting

Blacksmiths can melt down crafted items, so the failures to make a masterpiece can be resmelted to reclaim a percentage of the ingots used. As far as I know loot, magic and owned items cannot be resmelted.

Re .grab

There is also another command .grab autostack. This will stack looted items in other bags outside your grab bag as you loot.


Re Vendors

I can see what you mean but consider this : There is no weight limit on Valhalla. Some players I know have more gear in their character's backpack than I have on all my five chars, in my house and in my bank. If a vendor was to start listing everything in a certain crafter's backpack the server would probably come to a standstill.

Put what you want to sell in your main pack and either say [name] sell or click the vendor and select sell from the menu (doesn't work on some vendors out in the sticks.


I hope this is helpful to you. I would also remind you that the scripters here on Valhalla are volunteers and spend many many hours simply keeping things working, stopping bug exploits and trying to strike a happy medium between keeping things working and keeping players happy :)

Wryson Rose
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by Wryson Rose » Tue Oct 06, 2015 3:05 pm

@Thrudd:

With regards to guards, let me be clear here.

If an NPC, such as an orc, or a grizzly bear wandering into town and attacks, any NPC within range, or any player can say "guards" in any form. At this moment, a guard or guards will appear, and instantly smack the offender. Perhaps not kill it, but immediately send it to the abbey. They can then stay around for half a minute or so to keep watch, before they vanish back into nothingness. This keeps NPCs from potentially causing havoc with shopkeepers, or new players.

With regards to PLAYERS causing havoc, this is another matter entirely. Since I don't quite understand the nuances of player vs player interaction, and the current setup with regards to gray/red, I'll refrain from this point for now.

As to recycling items, I have not made my pure craftsman like I did in original UO. So perhaps my skill isn't sufficient yet to resmelt/re-work the item I've recently crafted. I had also forgotten about the E in the top left for the additional options it offers. My fault on that one.

For vendors, this is more for player merchants who are authorized to purchase items then the others. Essentially, it seems that in order to sell to a player vendor, you have to drop the item it wants onto them. Is it possible to change this so that there is an interface for selling to them? Or at least the "<name> sell bag" style?
In another aspect, would it be possible to allow 'vendor' to take the place of the name of the NPC? They already seem to respond to the word, but not to actually opening either the buy or sell interface.

Call me mental here. It just seems that it would make it a bit more friendly towards working with merchants.

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Lord Odin
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by Lord Odin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:54 pm

You can also use tooltips to open buy and sell and train..................just left click on them
Law of Probability
The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

Wryson Rose
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by Wryson Rose » Tue Oct 06, 2015 11:30 pm

Training requires you to drop coins on them. If they're moving about, it's hard to target them. Especially if you've got slow reaction time. This applies as well to the context menu.
Being able to simply say "vendor buy" or "vendor sell" would make things simplier. It would also hold them in place for a moment in case you wish to train. This allows things to be a bit more user friendly, at least for those with fat fingers and/or slow reaction time for one reason or another.

hugin
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by hugin » Sat Oct 10, 2015 4:57 pm

if you are a tradeskill blacksmith you can melt down your goods back into ingots, here's how!

Image

and then!

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A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
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Wryson Rose
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by Wryson Rose » Sun Oct 11, 2015 12:47 am

Huh....

You have to be focused on blacksmithy to smelt items? That's something I never expected.
Still, it's useful information, and explains a few things. Thanks for the tip Hugin.

hugin
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Re: Ideas - From an Original UO Player

Post by hugin » Sat Oct 24, 2015 6:20 pm

you're welcome!
A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
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