I've written/polished two fairly long posts tonight, one I started working on almost a year ago. I have a few others that I've been looking at, one of which I also started tonight, but I doubt they'll get published. Two are basically rants about how good dexers have it on PF and another is the expectation of rare items discussion I mentioned possibly getting into in another post.
I'll keep them around and maybe finish/publish them at a later date, but right now they're just sort of aimless musings and stat counting that doesn't get to the point that I really want to make. That's a very common trend when I start writing. Meh.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Things I wish PF would fix
PF isn't perfect, folks. I almost feel obligated to add that, yes, it is one of the best shards out there and no, I don't want to change it to add skill gates or free artifacts or whatever other stupid "arguments" people like to make when anyone brings up fundamental problems with the shard. It's a great shard and I freely and openly tell people that. It's far from perfect, though.
I'm not the kind of person to just blindly complain about things, however. There is a lot of basis for the things I'm about to talk about, and if you've ever read anything on this blog before you already know I'm going to say a lot about these things.
So, breaking things down in a few little groups; we'll start with things that need to be added, then things that need to be fixed/balanced, and finally things I'd love to just see removed.
Add:
* Scrapper's Compendium
I honestly don't know why this isn't already in. The shard has had nigh full ML content for years, at the least since I started. Of all the things that can be crafted, this is the only one I've ever noticed is missing. Even before the big upgrade, where none of the ML craftables required recipes and ML ingredients, it was absent and it remains absent today. I've requested it more than once and never heard so much as an explanation as to why it isn't in.
* Bard Masteries
Bards are one of those things that are basically neglected on PF. For years on end, there wasn't even the barding difficulty cap that came in with, what, AoS or sooner? Only last year, when I finally requested it, did it get implemented. Bard Masteries are nowhere to be seen and there doesn't seem to be any plans for adding them. Maybe if I request again we'll get lucky, but I have my doubts.
* Monster stealing
Admittedly, part of this is something I have seen done elsewhere, but it's a good enough of an idea that I'd like to see it on PF. It's also because I'm a sucker for giving use to unused skills as well. Basically, it would be really nice to see a system in play for monsters to have steal-only rares and artifacts. Either a specific area's monsters, specific types of monsters, or some sort of random flagging like the paragon/terragon sort that marks a monster as holding an item that can only be stolen. This would be especially cool if it required you not trigger combat with the creature in order to steal these things. Encourage a bit of stealth. Even if what you were getting were basically trophies to say "I robbed a Ratman Mage and got away with it," there'd be a certain fun factor involved in something on the shard that didn't take hours of effort to do.
Fix/Balance/Improve:
This section will be much longer-winded. The things that PF does wrong are pretty few, but they're glaring. I've mentioned some of these before on the PF forums, but I've never gotten a good response. Needless to say, they still bug me.
* Spellcrafting (Belated 05/06/13 update: Holy shit, they did this)
I wish spellcrafting and Imbuing would simply merge. This is another topic I got heat over before, but until someone actually manages to explain what the flaw is in my thinking, I'm going to keep believing that these systems would be far better together than they are apart.
For one thing, using Imbuing on PF as simply a damage boost to Mysticism is stupid. The only other skill that does this is Tactics, but it at least works on FIVE skills for its purpose. Spirit Speak and Evaluate Intelligence are both stand alone skills outside of their benefits to Necromancy and Magery; granted, they may not be very useful but they do have a use. Additionally, Focus also works for Mysticism in some places and could easily just be the skill for Mysticism instead.
Imbuing *HAS* a use, normally. It's a crafting skill. I understand why they turned it off. I'm saying it was a mistake. Imbuing has a couple things going for it that Spellcrafting doesn't; a place on the skill list, a robust resource system, and useful gump features that are sorely missed. It wouldn't be hard at all to put the two systems together, even if that was simply making it a 85% Spellcrafting-15% Imbuing system.
Why would you want to do this? Oh, I'd be so very glad to tell you.
First off, visibility. Spellcrafting DOES NOT have it. If you don't read the website- no, not the new one, the old one -or the wiki, there is NOTHING that tells you about spellcrafting other than players. If Spellcrafting fell into the Imbuing spot, it would gain a place on the skill list that would catch people's attention. They would KNOW that it was there and it would prompt questions; you can't ask questions about something you don't even know is there.
Secondly, a better gump menu. The spellcrafting book bit was nice before we got all the content to SA, but now that we have it all we should be making use of it. Putting the spellcraft menu into a real gump would give us a lot of convenience things like having the menu automatically re-open after each attempt, telling us in a clear spot what the result of our attempt was, and quicker access to the craft we want via a "spellcraft last" type option. Another bonus the gump might be capable of is telling us just what our crafting range is; I would love to know, without trial and error, just what I could best hope to get at my current skill. I would love a gump like that. Spellcrafting is frustrating enough without a cumbersome gump, so this would go a long way to ease tensions.
Thirdly, more resources to play with. Magic jewels could still be the primary resource, but I honestly like the idea of having more things to collect. Why not? It takes ingots and gems to make jewelry. It takes rare ML ingredients on top of other resources to make the ML artifacts. Why shouldn't something as powerful as spellcrafting require some of the extra resources that Imbuing naturally brings with it? It makes better sense and it adds more challenge to the system, which is something that staff seems to overly love anyway.
Finally, it puts Spellcrafting in it's own place. Yes, it's very clever that we got Spellcrafting thanks to high Alchemy and Inscription skills. But it's time to let that go. It doesn't have to go away; Alchemy and Inscription could still play a part, but Spellcrafting has a chance to shine on it's own and it really should. It is, all flaws and complaints considered, really a beautifully done system and it would be much better if people could see it. Turn Imbuing into Spellcrafting, with it's own skill and skill points, let it be 80% of the equation alone, while Alchemy and Inscription are 10% of things each.
This would put the bulk of the attention on Spellcrafting itself, where it belongs, but still retains a bit of the old system as well. Getting 120s for Alchemy and Inscription would still be very helpful, but perhaps moreso because of those skills themselves. Getting a 120 for Spellcrafting, however, would be the bigger goal, and honestly that's how it should be.
Notice that through this whole thing, I never said anything about making spellcrafting easier. There have been enough posts on that point without any action, so clearly that is working "as intended." The point of this change to have better access to spellcrafting and make its powers easier to use. That's what good designers try to do.
* Evos and Tames
Evos aren't even balanced among themselves. High level evos have a definitive hierarchy, and that's always going to have mercs at the top. The "versatility" of the other evos doesn't come close. Casting spells just isn't that big of a deal. The special moves are useful, but if there's no beef behind them then the evo is just going to be a few hits out of a monster's rampage before moving on to you. The merc is easily the tankiest pet out there because it isn't hard at all to put an additional 40% resist all in his hands, no matter what his level.
Tamed creatures can't compare. They are, for the most part, exactly what you get when you tame them. The only exception to that is if they have skills under GM when you tame them, in which case you can GM those skills with a lot of work. However, if you're taming something with skills below GM, you're not taming anything remotely as powerful as an evo. Even medium stage evos are better than tames. The only exceptions, of course, are the Charger, the old Cu Sidhe, and the Chimera. I could see a case for Tutivilius, but since he doesn't bond he loses a lot of validity.
Three tames, two of which require 120 taming and one that isn't available anymore. That's what Taming has to offer. The worst part of it is evos are a 0 skill investment, while taming is 300 - 360 skill points. This is pretty horrible balance. Things that take no skill at all should not be better than things that do. That's why they balanced potions a long time ago to function better in the hands of someone with alchemy versus someone without, for example.
The trouble with balancing things here is that Evos are already factored in to quest difficulty now, so you can't tone down evos without making things much harder. Likewise, raising the power of tamable pets makes them that much harder to tame and encourages the trend of making them require 120 taming to use. Or higher, since there is a necklace that raises taming over cap. I don't think that would be a good idea. In all honesty, I don't have a great fix for this issue. It feels like one of those things that has gotten out of hand, basically nullified a playstyle, and become so ingrained in the shard balance that fixing it would take a lot of work all around.
All the same, I wish they would take the trouble to do so. I hate that taming is so useless on PF, outside of a creature that doesn't even spawn anymore.
* Items
Items are a mess. Essentially, if it's not spellcrafted or an artifact, it just isn't used. If my understanding of the way drops work is correct, there's a fairly easy solution to this: Make drops actually worthwhile. Instead of using the same intensity drops that Production UO uses, increase the property intensities to just above spellcrafting levels. Cap items to only spawn with one or two properties.
What this does is create a reason to look at all the items that are dropped by monsters for more than things with old school properties. Imagine finding a chest piece that had 23 HP bonus on it; that's just ripe for spellcrafting more sweet properties on. As long as creatures aren't dropping items with a full five mods better than spellcrafting, it's not outright over-powered. Even if you find a piece with 23 HP bonus, you still have to hope like a mofo that you don't blow it up the second you try to place the next mod on it. Believe me, even if higher powered items like that were dropping, the vast, vast number of them would be lost in the process of filling the remaining slots.
Alternatively, just stop dropping gear items at all. In their place, drop ingots, leather, and/or gems. Or their base cash value. I just feel that it's pointless to sort through 10~15 items on a terragon creature to see that none of them are even worth selling. The item hunt is half of the purpose of a game like this considering what inspired the drastic shift AoS brought. It would be nice if that wasn't completely nullified.
Regardless of the above, the Mage Weapon and Spellchanneling properties should be removed entirely. They're pointless; spellchanneling is innate throughout the shard. Mage Weapon is only useful when skill caps are in play. Any item that seems Mage-ish but still has Mage Weapon, and thus a penalty to Magery skill, is just wasting time. The *only* use for Mage Weapon is as a way to speed up gaining Magery in the first place, which is not remotely a valid reason for keeping this property around.
Also on the items point, I'd love to see more done with talisman, wands, and clothing. These are greatly under used and even I'm creative enough to think of fun, balanced, things to do with these items. I feel that the limits on what we can do with UO these days are far fewer than they used to be. I've seen shards, PF included, do some very creative things. I don't see why any existing resources should be left to decay like this.
On the 'really, really never going to happen' scale, I'd like to see things complete re-done so that there's less definitively best gear. I understand making donation gear as top of the line, but it's done to excess here. Nothing can compete with Undead stuff. For that matter, a lot of drops are that way as well. Skull Thunker, for instance, is really the best non-donation item in the game aside from Bequest of the Assassin, because they're both the same item other than being a sceptre and a bladed weapon of some sort. There's no such thing as dressing to impress anymore because everyone is wearing most of the same things. The difference these days is with the colors you use.
It would be nice if the difference between spellcrafted and artifacts was lessened. Artifacts with a few more properties at equal or slightly less intensity as spellcrafting can do or fewer properties but higher intensities would create a much more diverse gearing system and maybe give use to a lot of those artifacts that just lay around and collect dust. Again, it will never happen, but I dream that it could.
* Crafting
This is a whole lot of crafting related changes that really need to happen, just to add some value back into things on the shard. I'll do this by each skill. Overall though, for anything I don't mention, since Spellcrafting has become the standard, the standard should be Spellcrafting.
Tailoring: Leather types should be re-balanced. Make all types give the same total resists, somewhere around what Aquas or Vulcan does now. Instead of simply having more resists than the last leather, each type will build on what Production UO started. The different types have one innate property of spellcraft-level intensity. Aquas might always have 3-5 HP regen, Vulcan might have 18-22% SDI, etc. The point would be that the leathers are better balanced among themselves so that everything short of Armageddon isn't a waste (beyond filling BODs).
Smithing: Similar but lesser effort for the colored ingots, in that things would be closer together. Most ingots would be raised closer to Platinum's level of resists and have some uniqueness to them; Plat could remain the best average resist and keep five open spellcraft slots, while the others might have slightly lower total resists but be potentially better in one area or have a really nice innate property.
Inscription: Scrappers would be added, as would the spells and spellbooks for Spellweaving and Mysticism. Crafted Wands would be enspelled by Inscription. Crafting spellbooks would be less of a crapshoot and the properties would be greatly improved to be more like Spellcrafting levels. Books would be able to hold five properties.
Carpentry: Craft blank wands, yo.
Spellcrafting: Wands and Spellbooks would be allowed spellcrafts from the Jewelry pool. Add new spellcraft gems; Slayer and skill gems. Slayer would be titled after their Super Slayer variety and add only from that group, not stacking with one another (so no Demon Slayer and Gargoyle Slayer on the same weapon. Demon and Undead slayer on one weapon would be allowed). Different flavors of slayer could happen, though. The five skill gems would be grouped by certain types, which follow the standard groups that items currently drop with. As per how skills stack on items currently, the skill gems can be added on top of the five slots items already have. The groups can be seen here: Skill Bonuses
Misc skills: Whatever needs to be added so that the item that recharges some talisman can be crafted, as intended. Any other missing crafting content should also be added. (just to cover bases)
* Spellweaving
It's kind of trashy, because it depends on having a high level crystal. It isn't easy finding that many people that have the skill and availability to make a focus with. It also isn't really worth the time and trouble of doing so. Make the levels count double, as in a crystal made with two people is a +4 crystal. It won't fix most of the problems with Spellweaving, but it would at least help.
* Mysticism
Really. I don't even really know what else to say about Mysticism. It's a mess. At least one other shard has it working properly, or at the least better than PF does. I don't even know that I can say it needs to be fixed as much as fully implemented.
* Summons and Mirror Images
Mirror Images were rebalanced for the sake of "fun," then the shard was balanced around them because they've been made over-powered. They're a 10 mana, skill 20 ability, yet they do more than any other summon we have. It doesn't matter how long they last, anything that is completely disposable and has 95% all resists is going to be very useful. Even moreso when they can wheel out damage and be directed with pet commands, something only the 8th circle summons. At two control slots per image, who is going to use any of the other summons?
Especially since none of the other summons have been buffed. AT ALL. That has to change.
Blade Spirits also take two control slots, but don't have remotely the same usefulness as a mirror image. Energy Vortexes are well above Blades, but no where near MIs, also for two control slots. The other 8th Circle Summons? Psh. They're even worse off. For the cost in mana, skill, and control slots, you'd think that these things would be more useful; not remotely. Nevermind that 6 of the 8 spells in the 8th circle of Magery are, in fact, summons and therefore represent the peak of a mage's ability.
The fix? Blades should wheel out much more damage. Make them very dangerous, but just as frail, and maybe they'd be more useful. None of the 8th circle spells should be dispellable. Energy Vortexes should get their old school power to curse and deadly poison on hit. Summon Daemon might as well summon a Balron; honestly, even that powerful of a summon isn't going to make a huge difference against PF creatures. The elemental summons should be made more unique; Earth with higher resists all around, water and air with powerful spells and spellweaving or necro, and Fire with more powerful physicals on top of their existing spells. For two slots each and 50 mana, that would at least give them some function as pseudo-pets for the two minutes they live (at best).
Spellweaving gets Nature's Fury, which I have to admit are pretty powerful for their cost. No where near MI level, but they're about par for their price. Summon Fey and Summon Fiend? Trash. A horse can kill either one of those creatures. Summon Fey/Fiend should automatically give up to eight creatures. Since the creature summoned isn't altered by higher level focus crystals, make the base creature stronger; buff the health and resists on both, with the fey getting higher resists and health while fiends get better magic/eval.
Mysticism's Rising Colossus is soooo crap right now. It should be the strongest summon, period. Even at 120 skill, it has a chance to fail, something very few other abilities share (and certainly not shared by Mirror Images). If it isn't dispel immune already, make it so. It's stats and resists need a massive raise, especially energy; leaving energy as the weak resist is no big deal, but where it stands right now is just a joke. This thing is supposed to be the default tanking summon, and it should be made that way. It should, in my eyes, out tank everything but top tier evos, but maybe that's going too far. Definitely, definitely improve it a whole lot, however.
Animated weapon, eh... I don't really know what to say for that one. Maybe make it higher damage than a Blade Spirit per hit, but far lower health; good for sneaking in hits on something that is distract but nothing that will take too much time to get dead.
Necromancy... oh boy. The summons here are so bad. Animate Dead is marginally okay, but those creatures could use a bit of a buff. The revenant could stand to work, period. If it did that much, it'd be a lot better. Perfect, probably. Summon Familiar, though? It's a mess. Without a doubt, Horde Minions should be immune to dispel simply because dispelling them also destroys anything they're carrying; that's very bad. The Shadow Wisp should get the medic's non-attacking script, even if that means making it invulnerable; all it does is periodically restore a few mana, so that's not remotely over-powering. The wolf, adder, and bat need massive buffs, at least enough to make them useful against Blood/Poison elemental level things seeing as pretty much every custom creature is at least that strong. Also, it would be really nice if the special abilities of the adder and wolf actually worked.
Mirror Images should have their resists capped at 70~75. If that happened, I think I would have a lot less issue with them. I also think people would use them a lot less in favor of other summons and pets.
No summon that takes 20 skill should be better than those that require 50 or even 90 skill. It's a huge imbalance and frankly, it shows favoritism towards one playstyle over another; that's not the GM's decision to make, especially when you're playing in a sandbox that was *more* balanced between "classes" than when you changed it.
* Quest Balance
I could link to an old forum post that resulted in some pretty epic fail on the part of staff on this very topic, but I'll refrain from that because I'm still trying to purge it from my memory.
The topic of this post is actually one I addressed before about the very same issue. It boils down to actual progress versus the perception of progress from the player's point of view. If a quest requires an item that has a 5% drop rate from a monster, this is either going to be a slightly annoying quest or a very annoying quest. If the monster in question is a mongbat, which isn't that rare and has a fairly high density spawn, the quest will be slightly annoying at the worst. If that monster is an Ancient Tree, which is somehow both rare to find *and* rare to find alone, you have a seriously annoying quest on your hands.
Yes, I was not the only person annoyed by that particular quest and for that very reason. It hinges on the fact that, in the case on PF, this quest has a lot of time where the player makes no actual progress despite their efforts; you might kill ten of those stupid trees before you get even one of the quest items you need. This is not challenging as much as it is just a time sink, and a boring one at that.
The difference between the way things are, where it may require killing 30 trees for six quest items versus (the better way of doing it) killing 12 rarer trees for a required 12 quest items is MASSIVE from the player's side of things. Even if it takes just as long to kill those 12 trees, every kill is progress in the quest. This is an important psychological difference, and one that the PF staff failed to grasp when a player dared post this same thing on their forums.
To this date, I haven't done that particular quest again. I have no intent to do so either. There are many quests that behave in a similar way and I take the same views on those. Part of the reason Merlin's Quest is as popular and over-done is because the quest drops are 100%. It's a long quest, but it doesn't *feel* long. What irks me most about the new quests is that in many cases they just flat get wrong what earlier, more enjoyable quests got right the first time.
The challenge of a quest does *not* hinge on how long it takes you to do it. It hinges on actually being challenging. The monster at the end of the Evo Tree quest was perfect, and if not for having to go through who knows how many Ancient Trees to get to her, I might do that quest again just to fight the boss.
Remove:
* Nothing
Honestly, I don't think there's anything that PF has that I would like to see completely removed. I believe that everything on the shard is good in some way and very creative, even if it could maybe stand a bit of tweaking and polish. This might be the biggest indicator that the staff hasn't created a flustercluck of mistakes; in the 8! years the shard has been running, there's nothing they've put out yet that is so misguided that it makes even the most annoyingly analytical of players want it out.
Being a Mage - Part Alpha
It's been nearly two years since I started this blog, and only now has it occurred to me that players undertaking this play style could do with a warning. A brutally honest warning about how inequitable playing Mage is on NPF.
Sadly, there are a few things you'll have to bear in mind as you go. The shard is not nearly as with you as other shards my be. In this case, warrior-types are far better favored. As long as you understand this and are prepared, you should be able to get along reasonably well.
* Items
Items were not made with you in mind. Period. Most of the things that will be of great benefit to you are going to be hard-fought artifacts or annoyingly-crafted books and jewelry. Most of the mage-themed items are from UOStandard and completely dwarfed by spellcrafting and NPF-tier items.
Spellcrafting, as I have mentioned more than once, is a pain. Especially for mages. Where warriors really need five mods total, six if you count Luck, mages easily need between 6 and 8, depending on how you prioritize DCI and Luck. The mods warriors need also come in better intensities, so they need fewer items; Wanting 100% item DI sounds daunting until you realize that weapons can be crafted with 40% out the gate and spellcrafting can put up to 40% on jewelry and weapons. Many artifacts, including the nigh freely given Skull Thunker, bring far more DI than this along with other mods.
SDI, on the other hand, has a 125% cap, comes in at up to 6% on spellbooks and to 25% on jewelry. The best one-handed weapon with SDI is, sadly, Spirit of the Realms at 25% SDI and -15 Mage Weapon penalty. Mondain's Staff, when polymorphed, gives 50% SDI and a few others mods, but this is the exception to this lesson.
In a similar story, Str crafted on Jewelry goes as high as 20, while Int only goes to 16. Faster Casting has a cap of 4 to 7 (depending on your source) and comes in at a massive 1 FC per item.
Spellbooks are another issue you'll run into. Getting good ones is very time and resource consuming. Scrapper's is not craftable and the mod intensities on crafted books still obey standard UO. The only books that are of any use to you are those crafted with Super Slayer or Resisting Spells bonus.
Artifact books on NPF are a joke. Other than the UO Standard books, which are interesting at best, NPF has three readily available spellbooks: Tome of the Arch Mage, Tome of Wind Raising, and Tome of the Forbidden Art. Arch Mage and Forbidden both have 1/2 FC/R, 6 Int, 3 Mana Regen, with Arch Mage's final property being 6 Mana and Forbidden's being 6% LMC. None of those are above what you can craft yourself, aside from there being more properties on each book. Wind Raising, on the other hand, is just stupid: 15 Dex, 15 HP, 6 Int, and 6% LMC.
There are a few uber books *somewhere* that were up for auction a time or two, as a set. Each book had massive properties and two Super Slayers. The problem is that they're rare and likely in the hands of a player who bough them just to collect them and may not even play PF anymore. It also just goes to show that staff can bypass the current limitations on spellbook mods and chooses not to.
Other held weapons are entirely pointless, a non-issue, and not magely. There's no point in having a weapon in hand, even if it's a bow; you can't swing/fire a weapon while you're casting, and if you're a mage you should be casting all the time anyway. You also can't swing a weapon from a distance, so why hold anything that doesn't give you a benefit in some way, such as Super Slayer on your spells or Resisting Spells bonus when slayer is no good. Now that Wraith form absorbs mana via spells, only high karma mages have any excuse for using a weapon at all, and only if that weapon has mana leech.
The artifacts you want are very rare and top-end. Undead Gear, Elite Elysium gear, and perhaps the Virtue set are the only things outside of spellcrafted gear that is really any use. This lies with the fact that very few artifacts and zero spellcrafted armor gives intelligence, which is the only way to (minutely) increase your damage once you have Slayer, 125% SDI, 120 Eval, and GM Scribe.
I am, of course, talking about artifact armor. Artifact jewelry is entirely useless, for much the same reason. You need the Int more than the other mods in most cases. Not to mention that the really good jewelry for mages is very rare. Merlin's quest drops some pseudo-mage jewelry, but it's not that impressive. Merlin's Earrings, for example, have (low) DI, SSI, and RPD, but no Int, SDI, or mana.
The main mage jewelry is going to be from Standard, which of course means it fails against Spellcrafting. Ornament of the Magician's mods look really pretty, until you realize that you can craft equal or better for all of them, save the FC/R. You also need SDI on your jewelry if you want to hit the cap while you're in crafted armor as well, and likely after you've gotten a few good artifact armor pieces as well.
One thing to keep in mind about jewelry, if you're really lucky. There are a few pieces that come blessed, such as the ring from a quest in Brit (S/SE of WBB). Spellcrafting does work on that particular ring, so if you manage to not destroy it in the process you can spellcraft a nice item with a free bless, saving on insurance and the expensive bless deed.
New Haven (aka Tram Haven) is also a good place for some quick early items even on NPF. There's a free Undead Slayer to be earned from the Scribe's quest. Ring of the Savant, from the Eval Int quest, is blessed with 1/1 FC/R and 3 Int. It can be spellcrafted, potentially improved to 1/3, 16 Int, and two other mods of your choice (with 120/120 skill, of course. You should be able to pull 1/2, 12 Int no problem even at just GM/GM).
* Monsters
Monsters are not balanced with you in mind. At all. The standard UO content is mostly in tact as standard, but custom creatures are created with Mirror Image in mind. At best, they were balanced against evos instead.
This gets really frustrating, believe me. There's nothing fun about running across a monster with 65000 HP, 4600+ in each stat, and skills over 200 including Magery and Eval. Put simply, you will not kill this thing without Mirrors. The bonus damage from 200 Eval is pretty massive alone, but 4600 Int means it does another 460% of that base damage; in just about every case, this is going to be more than your HP in a single spell. As a point of reference, the Black Liche is not nearly this powerful but still manages 50~ damage Flame Strikes against 70s Resist.
Still, not everything custom obeys this rule. Things like Ancient Dragons/Trees, most quest creaures, and Terragon creatures in Tram are manageable with some skill and innovation on the player's part. Purgatory creatures are also mostly possible, but you have to be a lot more careful there. Whether the trouble is worth the effort in a lot of cases I'll leave to you to find out.
* Spells
Not all of them work, work as intended, or work as effectively as other options.
Magery's summons are pretty lackluster, though Blades and EVs are still useful against creatures that give you the "refuses to attack" message when you direct pets/summons/evos/mirrors. Mind Blast will also just about never give you great damage, but many things that are immune to spells are somehow not immune to Mind Blast, so I keep it hotkeyed anyway.
Necromancy is mostly good these days, but still the most useful spells are Evil Omen, Vamp and Wraith forms, and perhaps the poison spells. Wither *is* nice, but it's really mana intensive, so I prefer just about anything else to it.
Spellweaving is best as a back-up plan. None of the spells seem to take FC/R the way they're supposed to, so as nice as Word of Death may be, it's really hard to use in tense combat situations. Getting a full focus is also not the easiest thing in the world all the time.
Mysticism is pretty much useless beyond Spell Trigger'd Clensing Winds (instant cast, no mana, never consumed, free mini-heal, curse removal and cure to 5th, 100% success) and Bombard. If Razor hotkeys/macros for Mysticism spells worked they might see more use. I've heard that using Sleep and/or Mass Sleep has crashed the server, so I'd shy away from those regardless. The broken Mysticism spells have been broken since they were added, so who knows when they'll get fixed.
* Mirror Images
I find them very annoying in general. Even though I don't use them, they are the instant answer to any monster problem. It's annoying to see. Honestly, I fail to see where it's fun at all. You might as well just roll a 5x120 build and call it a day if that's all you're going to do. Oh, I'm sorry, I guess some people do use Chiv or Magery to get around.
Mirror Images are what makes NPF really hard to play on. They are what "balance" is checked against as far as monsters go. They are the simplest and most over-powered solution to at least 99.9% of the enemies on the shard; apparently staff hasn't yet noticed that this issue just feeds on itself. Because MIs are over-powered, monsters have to be over-powered in order to give MI users a challenge even though these monsters can easily be killed by MI users who require more over-powered enemies to challenge their over-powered MIs...
It's very frustrating. Be prepared for that.
If you can deal with all these things, you might make it playing mage on NPF. This test of tolerance will be the biggest obstacle you face. I speak from experience on this. The inequity of it does drive me to try out other shards from time to time, and I can also tell you from experience that you're not going to find anywhere more enjoyable to play than NPF.
Sadly, there are a few things you'll have to bear in mind as you go. The shard is not nearly as with you as other shards my be. In this case, warrior-types are far better favored. As long as you understand this and are prepared, you should be able to get along reasonably well.
* Items
Items were not made with you in mind. Period. Most of the things that will be of great benefit to you are going to be hard-fought artifacts or annoyingly-crafted books and jewelry. Most of the mage-themed items are from UOStandard and completely dwarfed by spellcrafting and NPF-tier items.
Spellcrafting, as I have mentioned more than once, is a pain. Especially for mages. Where warriors really need five mods total, six if you count Luck, mages easily need between 6 and 8, depending on how you prioritize DCI and Luck. The mods warriors need also come in better intensities, so they need fewer items; Wanting 100% item DI sounds daunting until you realize that weapons can be crafted with 40% out the gate and spellcrafting can put up to 40% on jewelry and weapons. Many artifacts, including the nigh freely given Skull Thunker, bring far more DI than this along with other mods.
SDI, on the other hand, has a 125% cap, comes in at up to 6% on spellbooks and to 25% on jewelry. The best one-handed weapon with SDI is, sadly, Spirit of the Realms at 25% SDI and -15 Mage Weapon penalty. Mondain's Staff, when polymorphed, gives 50% SDI and a few others mods, but this is the exception to this lesson.
In a similar story, Str crafted on Jewelry goes as high as 20, while Int only goes to 16. Faster Casting has a cap of 4 to 7 (depending on your source) and comes in at a massive 1 FC per item.
Spellbooks are another issue you'll run into. Getting good ones is very time and resource consuming. Scrapper's is not craftable and the mod intensities on crafted books still obey standard UO. The only books that are of any use to you are those crafted with Super Slayer or Resisting Spells bonus.
Artifact books on NPF are a joke. Other than the UO Standard books, which are interesting at best, NPF has three readily available spellbooks: Tome of the Arch Mage, Tome of Wind Raising, and Tome of the Forbidden Art. Arch Mage and Forbidden both have 1/2 FC/R, 6 Int, 3 Mana Regen, with Arch Mage's final property being 6 Mana and Forbidden's being 6% LMC. None of those are above what you can craft yourself, aside from there being more properties on each book. Wind Raising, on the other hand, is just stupid: 15 Dex, 15 HP, 6 Int, and 6% LMC.
There are a few uber books *somewhere* that were up for auction a time or two, as a set. Each book had massive properties and two Super Slayers. The problem is that they're rare and likely in the hands of a player who bough them just to collect them and may not even play PF anymore. It also just goes to show that staff can bypass the current limitations on spellbook mods and chooses not to.
Other held weapons are entirely pointless, a non-issue, and not magely. There's no point in having a weapon in hand, even if it's a bow; you can't swing/fire a weapon while you're casting, and if you're a mage you should be casting all the time anyway. You also can't swing a weapon from a distance, so why hold anything that doesn't give you a benefit in some way, such as Super Slayer on your spells or Resisting Spells bonus when slayer is no good. Now that Wraith form absorbs mana via spells, only high karma mages have any excuse for using a weapon at all, and only if that weapon has mana leech.
The artifacts you want are very rare and top-end. Undead Gear, Elite Elysium gear, and perhaps the Virtue set are the only things outside of spellcrafted gear that is really any use. This lies with the fact that very few artifacts and zero spellcrafted armor gives intelligence, which is the only way to (minutely) increase your damage once you have Slayer, 125% SDI, 120 Eval, and GM Scribe.
I am, of course, talking about artifact armor. Artifact jewelry is entirely useless, for much the same reason. You need the Int more than the other mods in most cases. Not to mention that the really good jewelry for mages is very rare. Merlin's quest drops some pseudo-mage jewelry, but it's not that impressive. Merlin's Earrings, for example, have (low) DI, SSI, and RPD, but no Int, SDI, or mana.
The main mage jewelry is going to be from Standard, which of course means it fails against Spellcrafting. Ornament of the Magician's mods look really pretty, until you realize that you can craft equal or better for all of them, save the FC/R. You also need SDI on your jewelry if you want to hit the cap while you're in crafted armor as well, and likely after you've gotten a few good artifact armor pieces as well.
One thing to keep in mind about jewelry, if you're really lucky. There are a few pieces that come blessed, such as the ring from a quest in Brit (S/SE of WBB). Spellcrafting does work on that particular ring, so if you manage to not destroy it in the process you can spellcraft a nice item with a free bless, saving on insurance and the expensive bless deed.
New Haven (aka Tram Haven) is also a good place for some quick early items even on NPF. There's a free Undead Slayer to be earned from the Scribe's quest. Ring of the Savant, from the Eval Int quest, is blessed with 1/1 FC/R and 3 Int. It can be spellcrafted, potentially improved to 1/3, 16 Int, and two other mods of your choice (with 120/120 skill, of course. You should be able to pull 1/2, 12 Int no problem even at just GM/GM).
* Monsters
Monsters are not balanced with you in mind. At all. The standard UO content is mostly in tact as standard, but custom creatures are created with Mirror Image in mind. At best, they were balanced against evos instead.
This gets really frustrating, believe me. There's nothing fun about running across a monster with 65000 HP, 4600+ in each stat, and skills over 200 including Magery and Eval. Put simply, you will not kill this thing without Mirrors. The bonus damage from 200 Eval is pretty massive alone, but 4600 Int means it does another 460% of that base damage; in just about every case, this is going to be more than your HP in a single spell. As a point of reference, the Black Liche is not nearly this powerful but still manages 50~ damage Flame Strikes against 70s Resist.
Still, not everything custom obeys this rule. Things like Ancient Dragons/Trees, most quest creaures, and Terragon creatures in Tram are manageable with some skill and innovation on the player's part. Purgatory creatures are also mostly possible, but you have to be a lot more careful there. Whether the trouble is worth the effort in a lot of cases I'll leave to you to find out.
* Spells
Not all of them work, work as intended, or work as effectively as other options.
Magery's summons are pretty lackluster, though Blades and EVs are still useful against creatures that give you the "refuses to attack" message when you direct pets/summons/evos/mirrors. Mind Blast will also just about never give you great damage, but many things that are immune to spells are somehow not immune to Mind Blast, so I keep it hotkeyed anyway.
Necromancy is mostly good these days, but still the most useful spells are Evil Omen, Vamp and Wraith forms, and perhaps the poison spells. Wither *is* nice, but it's really mana intensive, so I prefer just about anything else to it.
Spellweaving is best as a back-up plan. None of the spells seem to take FC/R the way they're supposed to, so as nice as Word of Death may be, it's really hard to use in tense combat situations. Getting a full focus is also not the easiest thing in the world all the time.
Mysticism is pretty much useless beyond Spell Trigger'd Clensing Winds (instant cast, no mana, never consumed, free mini-heal, curse removal and cure to 5th, 100% success) and Bombard. If Razor hotkeys/macros for Mysticism spells worked they might see more use. I've heard that using Sleep and/or Mass Sleep has crashed the server, so I'd shy away from those regardless. The broken Mysticism spells have been broken since they were added, so who knows when they'll get fixed.
* Mirror Images
I find them very annoying in general. Even though I don't use them, they are the instant answer to any monster problem. It's annoying to see. Honestly, I fail to see where it's fun at all. You might as well just roll a 5x120 build and call it a day if that's all you're going to do. Oh, I'm sorry, I guess some people do use Chiv or Magery to get around.
Mirror Images are what makes NPF really hard to play on. They are what "balance" is checked against as far as monsters go. They are the simplest and most over-powered solution to at least 99.9% of the enemies on the shard; apparently staff hasn't yet noticed that this issue just feeds on itself. Because MIs are over-powered, monsters have to be over-powered in order to give MI users a challenge even though these monsters can easily be killed by MI users who require more over-powered enemies to challenge their over-powered MIs...
It's very frustrating. Be prepared for that.
If you can deal with all these things, you might make it playing mage on NPF. This test of tolerance will be the biggest obstacle you face. I speak from experience on this. The inequity of it does drive me to try out other shards from time to time, and I can also tell you from experience that you're not going to find anywhere more enjoyable to play than NPF.
A Different Faction Idea
(Or, I'm a crafty bastard and more people should want to be like me.)
Currently the only PvP on UOPF is consent-only in an arena. I'm perfectly okay with this myself, but others have expressed interest in more wide-spread PvP. Botnick stated on the forums that guild wars are apparently okay, so that's an interesting tidbit. Other than the part where most people are in either one of three different guilds or that a lot of guilds set themselves up to support new players, this is a pretty great idea.
It could be better, though. I can fully understand the line of thought that doesn't want random PvP going on at Brit bank on a shard that claims to be a family shard. However, PvP doesn't have to be direct. Competition can be both indirect and cooperative.
Enter... FACTIONS
Oh, trust, not the same as UO standard. I'm not that lazy. I do like the general statement about Factions on UOGuide: "The Faction System is a broad game system designed to promote organized player conflict within the society of Britannia." My own goals with a system like this would be, firstly, to give people something new to do on PF with some of the classic spawns that are largely ignored these days; create a pseudo-PvP aspect that covers more than just a small, underused region of the shard; implement another Virtue;let me take over a few orc forts impact the world in a more meaningful way than currently possible.
I'll cover each of those points one at a time.
1) New use for classic spawn.
Anyone that pays attention at all may have seen that there are a few warring groups in UO. I say we make this the basis of the faction system, and allow players to align with one (or more?) of these groups. I have three in mind:
Orcs versus Tribals
Ophidians versus Terathans
Meer versus Juka
I think it would go better on bigger shards with just one faction per player, but since PF doesn't have a mountain of players I could see allowing simultaneous factions, such as a player that fights for Tribals, Meer, and Terathans. Each would track separately, so just because you work with Jo Blo in the war against the Orcs doesn't mean you won't be seeing him on the other side of the Meer versus Juka conflict.
The big advantages to these are that they all have existing bases; Orcs have the Yew orc cave, Tribals have the camp in central Ilsh, Ophids and Teras have their own keeps in T2A, Meer have the village in Ilsh, and Jukas could take either Blackthorn's Ilsh castle or Wrong. All of these places would make great strongholds without a need for spawn changes.
Each faction would have a Marker that sets you as a member of that group (and thus non-hostile to that group), similar to the Mask of Orcish Kin. As long as you hold/wear that marker, members of the your side will not be hostile to you and that side's enemies will give you faction points upon killing them. Obviously each opposing faction needs to use the same item spot for the marker, so if the Kin mask was used for the Orcs then tribal masks would have to be used for the Tribal side. I would rather a single item type be used universally, such as the back slot for a Quiver-type item or one of the relatively unused clothing slots. This way even if you fight for multiple factions, you couldn't do it all at the same time (not that you really would anyway).
If people were too opposed to giving up an item slot for factions, then maybe just a quest item type token could be used; a no-drop/no-trade item that would stay with you on death and still mark your alliance to one side. It would also be a way to ensure that people who betray their faction can't escape the big BOOM they so rightly would deserve (as the Orc Mask/paint does when you attack an orc/tribal while wearing it).
Each faction would let you earn faction points that you could spend for rewards/benefits. Something similar to the current community collections would be ideal. There would be NPCs for each faction that you would interact with. The first would be a merchant who would let you trade in your faction points for standard items; deco, weapons, armor, talisman, and maybe some special clothing items (the kind that can't be equipped with opposing faction clothes). They could be all-new items or, taking the cue from UO standard, they could be slightly modified "faction" versions of existing items, such as My Book talisman with 5% SDI bonus added.
Another of the NPCs you would deal with would be a Craft Master. Through him, you would be able to donate faction points for items that would directly boost your crafting skills similar to the gloves and smith hammers. They would be limited in some way, such as time or per use, and would only have effect in the faction's crafting space.
The final two NPCs you would interact with would also tie in with the new virtue, Spirituality.
2) New Virtue: Spirituality
I think Honor is a bit more thematic for this, but meh.
Spirituality would be earned in the same way that Valor is, but only for fighting your faction's enemies. Unlike faction points, these would be earned for all enemies you fight; that is, if you're part of the Meer and Orc factions, you would only earn faction points for the Orcs by killing Tribals or Meer faction points for killing Juka, but you would earn Spirituality for killing either Tribals or Juka.
Spirituality would be used for two things, both of which would give up your points in the virtue for one of two effects.
The first of the Spirituality NPCs would be a priest/shaman/spiritual-leader type guy (Orc Mage, Ophid Shaman, etc). This one would let you donate your Spirituality as a way to fortify the faction base with soldiers and/or traps. Each feature would require a certain amount of Spirituality to purchase. These soldiers would be challenging, and the traps very lethal.
The second NPC would require both faction points and Spirituality. This would be the War Leader, who takes faction points as a way to finance a raid mission and Spirituality as a means to inspire followers. Donating to him would be the most costly for both currencies and would allow players to participate in a raid on the enemy stronghold, in hopes of felling their leader and stealing their sigil.
3) Indirect PvP
The key of all this is that aligning yourself with a specific faction does *not* make you hostile to players in the opposing faction. Instead, the PvP aspect plays differently.
Each faction has a sigil. Sigils must be stolen from their stronghold, from the very hands of the faction leader. This would require overcoming the leader, the defenders, spawn, and any traps created by player donations. Traps, again, would be quite deadly. Detecting and removing the traps would be something VERY worthwhile, bringing more use to Detect Hidden and Remove Trap. Scouting the area before a raid with Stealth might also be a very smart move (Traps disabled outside of a raid would only be disabled for a short amount of time, as a means to prevent people from camping an enemy stronghold to amass faction points).
When the War Leader is given faction points and Spirituality to start a raid, he creates a gate to the enemy strong hold and, along with the player and a certain number of followers, launches an attack on their base. The end goal to is keep the War Leader alive long enough for him to combat the enemy leader and take the sigil. Afterwards, the War Leader leads the escape with the sigil and returns to their own stronghold, capturing the sigil and rewarding all members of the faction with bonus faction points, a larger bonus going to any who donated towards launching the raid.
When a raid is launched, any members of the raiding or defending factions that are online are notified, giving them the opportunity to join in. For defenders, killing the enemy War Leader will stop the raid and give their side a faction point bonus for successful defense. Bonuses are given out on defense to those who bought traps and soldiers as well as those who were present for the defense.
In any case, there would, of course, have to be a cooldown timer on raids regardless of success or failure, such as one per day or 36 hours. It would need to be done in such a way that it didn't allow certain players to dominate the raiding schedule and block some players from joining just because of the time of day they play (PF is international, after all).
There is also the possibility of contested, constant battlegrounds. We already see this in the case of the Cove Orc Fort, where tribals and orcs battle constantly or the underground of the Terathan keep, where Ophidians and Terathans are fighting. These places could have some sort of mechanism that would allow players to help tip the scales and take these areas over for their factions for a certain amount of time, earning a bonus for their faction of some sort (more troops for raiding or resources for stronger traps, etc...).
The contested grounds idea could be taken even further, honestly. Seeing as most towns in Tram are loaded with monsters anyway, the system could easily be expanded so that a faction could, instead of raiding an enemy base, choose to raid a town and take control of it for a day or so. This might cause the vendors and services there to become more faction-oriented, such as blacksmiths selling mostly ringmail and double axes when the Orcs are in command.
If creating an impact on the city itself is too much to code, maybe capturing cities would last longer and the effects would be felt in the faction's stronghold instead; a "Moonglowese supplier" might show up in camp after taking over Moonglow, who would provide resources for alchemy or spellcrafting that the faction otherwise lacks.
Either way, the idea could easily be grown into something very visible and enjoyable for everyone. The best way to do that is to make sure that the effects of factions are a positive to the successful faction without being a negative against everyone else.
The key point, again, is that players are not attacking one another. The focus is on the conflict between the faction leaders; this also emphasizes the player's role as, essentially, just another grunt in the eyes of the leader. Success and failure depends on protecting your leader and defeating your enemy's leader, or striking down enemies to capture territory. The faction conflict from the perspective of the player is more of a sporting competition rather than a war. At no point does this require (or allow) attacking other players.
(Though if Botnik's point about guild wars being okay is true, that would be yet another way to allow direct PvP into the system without requiring it of players. It might also inspire roleplaying Orcs again (for example), though hopefully with much more emphasis on the roleplaying aspect than I've seen many times.)
The other important point of this sort of system is that this is one that staff could simply lay out and let the players run. It would require no further input on their part, yet remain as a source of constant and dynamic action on the shard. Honestly, people can only do quests so many times before they want something else. Factions would create a realm that is ever changing based on who players align with, what factions they show preference, and how they use their resources. Players that choose to focus on the raiding aspect might find themselves too vulnerable to being raided to make use of their high aggression strategy.
Though I honestly don't ever expect it, I would love to see a system like this on PF. I'd love to see a system like this anywhere.
Currently the only PvP on UOPF is consent-only in an arena. I'm perfectly okay with this myself, but others have expressed interest in more wide-spread PvP. Botnick stated on the forums that guild wars are apparently okay, so that's an interesting tidbit. Other than the part where most people are in either one of three different guilds or that a lot of guilds set themselves up to support new players, this is a pretty great idea.
It could be better, though. I can fully understand the line of thought that doesn't want random PvP going on at Brit bank on a shard that claims to be a family shard. However, PvP doesn't have to be direct. Competition can be both indirect and cooperative.
Enter... FACTIONS
Oh, trust, not the same as UO standard. I'm not that lazy. I do like the general statement about Factions on UOGuide: "The Faction System is a broad game system designed to promote organized player conflict within the society of Britannia." My own goals with a system like this would be, firstly, to give people something new to do on PF with some of the classic spawns that are largely ignored these days; create a pseudo-PvP aspect that covers more than just a small, underused region of the shard; implement another Virtue;
I'll cover each of those points one at a time.
1) New use for classic spawn.
Anyone that pays attention at all may have seen that there are a few warring groups in UO. I say we make this the basis of the faction system, and allow players to align with one (or more?) of these groups. I have three in mind:
Orcs versus Tribals
Ophidians versus Terathans
Meer versus Juka
I think it would go better on bigger shards with just one faction per player, but since PF doesn't have a mountain of players I could see allowing simultaneous factions, such as a player that fights for Tribals, Meer, and Terathans. Each would track separately, so just because you work with Jo Blo in the war against the Orcs doesn't mean you won't be seeing him on the other side of the Meer versus Juka conflict.
The big advantages to these are that they all have existing bases; Orcs have the Yew orc cave, Tribals have the camp in central Ilsh, Ophids and Teras have their own keeps in T2A, Meer have the village in Ilsh, and Jukas could take either Blackthorn's Ilsh castle or Wrong. All of these places would make great strongholds without a need for spawn changes.
Each faction would have a Marker that sets you as a member of that group (and thus non-hostile to that group), similar to the Mask of Orcish Kin. As long as you hold/wear that marker, members of the your side will not be hostile to you and that side's enemies will give you faction points upon killing them. Obviously each opposing faction needs to use the same item spot for the marker, so if the Kin mask was used for the Orcs then tribal masks would have to be used for the Tribal side. I would rather a single item type be used universally, such as the back slot for a Quiver-type item or one of the relatively unused clothing slots. This way even if you fight for multiple factions, you couldn't do it all at the same time (not that you really would anyway).
If people were too opposed to giving up an item slot for factions, then maybe just a quest item type token could be used; a no-drop/no-trade item that would stay with you on death and still mark your alliance to one side. It would also be a way to ensure that people who betray their faction can't escape the big BOOM they so rightly would deserve (as the Orc Mask/paint does when you attack an orc/tribal while wearing it).
Each faction would let you earn faction points that you could spend for rewards/benefits. Something similar to the current community collections would be ideal. There would be NPCs for each faction that you would interact with. The first would be a merchant who would let you trade in your faction points for standard items; deco, weapons, armor, talisman, and maybe some special clothing items (the kind that can't be equipped with opposing faction clothes). They could be all-new items or, taking the cue from UO standard, they could be slightly modified "faction" versions of existing items, such as My Book talisman with 5% SDI bonus added.
Another of the NPCs you would deal with would be a Craft Master. Through him, you would be able to donate faction points for items that would directly boost your crafting skills similar to the gloves and smith hammers. They would be limited in some way, such as time or per use, and would only have effect in the faction's crafting space.
The final two NPCs you would interact with would also tie in with the new virtue, Spirituality.
2) New Virtue: Spirituality
I think Honor is a bit more thematic for this, but meh.
Spirituality would be earned in the same way that Valor is, but only for fighting your faction's enemies. Unlike faction points, these would be earned for all enemies you fight; that is, if you're part of the Meer and Orc factions, you would only earn faction points for the Orcs by killing Tribals or Meer faction points for killing Juka, but you would earn Spirituality for killing either Tribals or Juka.
Spirituality would be used for two things, both of which would give up your points in the virtue for one of two effects.
The first of the Spirituality NPCs would be a priest/shaman/spiritual-leader type guy (Orc Mage, Ophid Shaman, etc). This one would let you donate your Spirituality as a way to fortify the faction base with soldiers and/or traps. Each feature would require a certain amount of Spirituality to purchase. These soldiers would be challenging, and the traps very lethal.
The second NPC would require both faction points and Spirituality. This would be the War Leader, who takes faction points as a way to finance a raid mission and Spirituality as a means to inspire followers. Donating to him would be the most costly for both currencies and would allow players to participate in a raid on the enemy stronghold, in hopes of felling their leader and stealing their sigil.
3) Indirect PvP
The key of all this is that aligning yourself with a specific faction does *not* make you hostile to players in the opposing faction. Instead, the PvP aspect plays differently.
Each faction has a sigil. Sigils must be stolen from their stronghold, from the very hands of the faction leader. This would require overcoming the leader, the defenders, spawn, and any traps created by player donations. Traps, again, would be quite deadly. Detecting and removing the traps would be something VERY worthwhile, bringing more use to Detect Hidden and Remove Trap. Scouting the area before a raid with Stealth might also be a very smart move (Traps disabled outside of a raid would only be disabled for a short amount of time, as a means to prevent people from camping an enemy stronghold to amass faction points).
When the War Leader is given faction points and Spirituality to start a raid, he creates a gate to the enemy strong hold and, along with the player and a certain number of followers, launches an attack on their base. The end goal to is keep the War Leader alive long enough for him to combat the enemy leader and take the sigil. Afterwards, the War Leader leads the escape with the sigil and returns to their own stronghold, capturing the sigil and rewarding all members of the faction with bonus faction points, a larger bonus going to any who donated towards launching the raid.
When a raid is launched, any members of the raiding or defending factions that are online are notified, giving them the opportunity to join in. For defenders, killing the enemy War Leader will stop the raid and give their side a faction point bonus for successful defense. Bonuses are given out on defense to those who bought traps and soldiers as well as those who were present for the defense.
In any case, there would, of course, have to be a cooldown timer on raids regardless of success or failure, such as one per day or 36 hours. It would need to be done in such a way that it didn't allow certain players to dominate the raiding schedule and block some players from joining just because of the time of day they play (PF is international, after all).
There is also the possibility of contested, constant battlegrounds. We already see this in the case of the Cove Orc Fort, where tribals and orcs battle constantly or the underground of the Terathan keep, where Ophidians and Terathans are fighting. These places could have some sort of mechanism that would allow players to help tip the scales and take these areas over for their factions for a certain amount of time, earning a bonus for their faction of some sort (more troops for raiding or resources for stronger traps, etc...).
The contested grounds idea could be taken even further, honestly. Seeing as most towns in Tram are loaded with monsters anyway, the system could easily be expanded so that a faction could, instead of raiding an enemy base, choose to raid a town and take control of it for a day or so. This might cause the vendors and services there to become more faction-oriented, such as blacksmiths selling mostly ringmail and double axes when the Orcs are in command.
If creating an impact on the city itself is too much to code, maybe capturing cities would last longer and the effects would be felt in the faction's stronghold instead; a "Moonglowese supplier" might show up in camp after taking over Moonglow, who would provide resources for alchemy or spellcrafting that the faction otherwise lacks.
Either way, the idea could easily be grown into something very visible and enjoyable for everyone. The best way to do that is to make sure that the effects of factions are a positive to the successful faction without being a negative against everyone else.
The key point, again, is that players are not attacking one another. The focus is on the conflict between the faction leaders; this also emphasizes the player's role as, essentially, just another grunt in the eyes of the leader. Success and failure depends on protecting your leader and defeating your enemy's leader, or striking down enemies to capture territory. The faction conflict from the perspective of the player is more of a sporting competition rather than a war. At no point does this require (or allow) attacking other players.
(Though if Botnik's point about guild wars being okay is true, that would be yet another way to allow direct PvP into the system without requiring it of players. It might also inspire roleplaying Orcs again (for example), though hopefully with much more emphasis on the roleplaying aspect than I've seen many times.)
The other important point of this sort of system is that this is one that staff could simply lay out and let the players run. It would require no further input on their part, yet remain as a source of constant and dynamic action on the shard. Honestly, people can only do quests so many times before they want something else. Factions would create a realm that is ever changing based on who players align with, what factions they show preference, and how they use their resources. Players that choose to focus on the raiding aspect might find themselves too vulnerable to being raided to make use of their high aggression strategy.
Though I honestly don't ever expect it, I would love to see a system like this on PF. I'd love to see a system like this anywhere.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Earrings of New
New earrings get.
Not much different than my previous. I dropped the SDI and DI because I was far over SDI cap and I only added DI because there was nothing else worthwhile to add at the time. The Undead Pirate Hat get changed my needs greatly, so this is one of two pieces that I tried to make yesterday to fix things. The UPH also gave me an LRC deficit; despite the fact that I don't really *need* LRC, I've grown so used to having it capped that it's become an expectation now, so I'd swapped out my 10 Int Merlin robe for a 15% LRC robe to compensate. After these new earrings, I've swapped back.
I would also like to note, hopefully without going into rant territory, that Spellcrafting is not fun. It's just not. Those earrings are all I made yesterday after blowing through 250 magic jewels. It takes 1 jewel per successful attempt, which means that I was working at it for more (far, far more) than 250 attempts and made only one item. I can't tell you how many earrings and necklaces I blew up doing this.
I can tell you that I trained a Cu from 0/0 healing and anatomy to 10-ish healing and anatomy from all the explosions. This even with my (excessive) 21 HP regen still in play and it healing 4~7 HP per successful heal. What that means to you will depend on how much you know about training healing on a Cu.
What it says to me is that Spellcrafting is not fun, and I STILL have to do more to get a new necklace.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
On Second Thought...
It turns out that I do like my sheet better than the [armor command. That is, I like my new sheet better; the one I was still using for the last post about the [armor command was not nearly as cool.
This is not to say that I don't like the armor command. It is still very nice and I'm happier to have it than not. Other than miscounting the two Undead pieces, it's great for double-checking my work and getting totals of gear swaps much faster than what I can do on a sheet.
The less good part of it comes in where it requires that I have the items I want to evaluate before I can really do so. My sheet doesn't have that flaw, so if I want to see what Valishan looks like with a Shroud of Paradise instead of a Merlin's Robe, I can just fill in the numbers and it's there. Though for things like that I have a second set as sort of a wishlist/theorycraft set. On my main sheet, I just keep my current gear so I can see what needs improving.
This is not to say that I don't like the armor command. It is still very nice and I'm happier to have it than not. Other than miscounting the two Undead pieces, it's great for double-checking my work and getting totals of gear swaps much faster than what I can do on a sheet.
The less good part of it comes in where it requires that I have the items I want to evaluate before I can really do so. My sheet doesn't have that flaw, so if I want to see what Valishan looks like with a Shroud of Paradise instead of a Merlin's Robe, I can just fill in the numbers and it's there. Though for things like that I have a second set as sort of a wishlist/theorycraft set. On my main sheet, I just keep my current gear so I can see what needs improving.
The old version was just a single sheet where I wrote down the stats of the stuff I was wearing and had it sum them up, plus a few other things that I haven't gotten around to adding to this one. The result was functional but also very hard to read. I had to do a lot of things with colors to make it work for me, but ultimately it didn't. It was also organized vertically instead of horizontally.
The new sheet, seen above, tracks things differently. The screenshot is of the summary page, which pulls the totals from each of the individual tabs that I made (armor, clothing, jewelry, and held, if you can't guess). I still have the basic full total that the [armor command and some EasyUO scripts can provide as well, but I also have individual totals from each category.
This way makes it much easier for me to manage. I know what to expect from my armor since it's pretty much my core at this point, so there's no reason I need to constantly see each item. I can instead go to the summary page and see at a glance what my armor is doing for me. If something is going to change, it's likely going to be in the clothing or jewelry set. The summary page tells me how I need to build my jewelry and what clothing pieces to look for. I also intend to re-add the the cap math for each stat so I can easily tell just how much of an adjustment needs to be made.
Sometimes I'm just too much nerd to handle.
This way makes it much easier for me to manage. I know what to expect from my armor since it's pretty much my core at this point, so there's no reason I need to constantly see each item. I can instead go to the summary page and see at a glance what my armor is doing for me. If something is going to change, it's likely going to be in the clothing or jewelry set. The summary page tells me how I need to build my jewelry and what clothing pieces to look for. I also intend to re-add the the cap math for each stat so I can easily tell just how much of an adjustment needs to be made.
Sometimes I'm just too much nerd to handle.
As you can also see from above, I know how to hit the 300 Int cap. Though you might already note from the 40s in all resists in the clothing column that it pretty much requires a donation item to do so. There is a slight bit of leeway that I haven't tested yet, namely Hastu's Smelly Shoes instead of the Virtue shoes. I think that swap would have a negative impact on LRC, not to mention how uncommon those shoes are, so there's still some evaluating to be done. Getting to 300 Int also requires that the Lt. Royal Guard sash exists, which so far I'm uncertain of so I definitely won't be donating for the robe before I have one of those.
Looking at all of this again has lead me back to a topic that I thought about a while ago but never got around to talking about, whether or not it's realistic to expect the high-end PF items. I'm sure I'll wind up exploring that idea a bit when I have more time. For now, I'm going to enjoy the potential path to victory that I've found.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Absences
(or, I do this disappearing thing way too much)
So a few months ago, shortly after my previous post here actually, I had the lovely experience of a full-stop computer crash. I do have another laptop, but it is quite old and the display is buggy so I have to use an external monitor with it, making it a poor fit for playing UO on (and as I later learned, pretty harmful to my neck). I wasn't in too much of a rush to fix my gaming box because, honestly, I could stand to be less distracted by gaming and I still had a computer around to get the things done that needed to get done (like logging in to PF just often enough to keep my accounts alive).
That's all well and good as a hypothesis.
As it turns out, I actually shouldn't be gaming less. My stress level without gaming of some flavor is really high. Playing and theorycrafting about games are both equally useful to me as stress relief. So with that, and the previously mentioned neck issue, in mind, I got a new laptop. I resisted UO for a while because having to put a mouse on a laptop takes away a bit of the portability that is nice about them, but I've finally caved and even played a bit last night.
It's nice to be back on PF and ambling away time on silly things like personal character goals and stat counting. I see that I have a few drafted posts here that I never finished and there are a few topics I have in mind to add, so I'll probably work on that more than I will actually play on PF for a while.
So a few months ago, shortly after my previous post here actually, I had the lovely experience of a full-stop computer crash. I do have another laptop, but it is quite old and the display is buggy so I have to use an external monitor with it, making it a poor fit for playing UO on (and as I later learned, pretty harmful to my neck). I wasn't in too much of a rush to fix my gaming box because, honestly, I could stand to be less distracted by gaming and I still had a computer around to get the things done that needed to get done (like logging in to PF just often enough to keep my accounts alive).
That's all well and good as a hypothesis.
As it turns out, I actually shouldn't be gaming less. My stress level without gaming of some flavor is really high. Playing and theorycrafting about games are both equally useful to me as stress relief. So with that, and the previously mentioned neck issue, in mind, I got a new laptop. I resisted UO for a while because having to put a mouse on a laptop takes away a bit of the portability that is nice about them, but I've finally caved and even played a bit last night.
It's nice to be back on PF and ambling away time on silly things like personal character goals and stat counting. I see that I have a few drafted posts here that I never finished and there are a few topics I have in mind to add, so I'll probably work on that more than I will actually play on PF for a while.
Valishan's Goals
One of the things I love about UO, and that PF does very well, is that it's really sandbox-y. There are in-game quests, but ultimately what you do depends on you, the player. Even with every skill at GM and some above, it is me, the player, that makes Valishan a mage rather than a tamer, warrior, or bard.
As nice as sandbox mode is, it's also a double-edged sword. Once the player does what they wanted to do from the start, they're at the mercy of needing continual goals. If, for example, what you really wanted to do when you made your character on PF was get to GM Magery/Med/Eval so you could e-bolt things, once you hit that goal you either have to find a new goal or you lose interest in the game/shard.
This is one of my biggest problems. I started with the plan in mind that I would play Valishan more like a Rogue/Ninja/Archer type because I used this name for a character like that in another game and I'd never played on a UO shard with ML content and Ninjitsu. That plan quickly changed when I saw just how cliche that type of character is on PF (also the want for e-bolting).
The new plan to play mage was emphasized even more when I saw just how counter-balanced the shard is towards mages. Yes, Mages are very powerful, but gear and rule wise we are at a pretty harsh disadvantage. I took this on both because at heart I honestly love UO mages more than any other playstyle and also because I wanted to succeed at it in spite of the disinterest the shard seems to have for mages.
Success in UO is really hard to define, however. I never really sat down to plan out what accomplishments would ultimately mean Valishan had succeeded. Which leads us to the point of this long-winded post...
As nice as sandbox mode is, it's also a double-edged sword. Once the player does what they wanted to do from the start, they're at the mercy of needing continual goals. If, for example, what you really wanted to do when you made your character on PF was get to GM Magery/Med/Eval so you could e-bolt things, once you hit that goal you either have to find a new goal or you lose interest in the game/shard.
This is one of my biggest problems. I started with the plan in mind that I would play Valishan more like a Rogue/Ninja/Archer type because I used this name for a character like that in another game and I'd never played on a UO shard with ML content and Ninjitsu. That plan quickly changed when I saw just how cliche that type of character is on PF (also the want for e-bolting).
The new plan to play mage was emphasized even more when I saw just how counter-balanced the shard is towards mages. Yes, Mages are very powerful, but gear and rule wise we are at a pretty harsh disadvantage. I took this on both because at heart I honestly love UO mages more than any other playstyle and also because I wanted to succeed at it in spite of the disinterest the shard seems to have for mages.
Success in UO is really hard to define, however. I never really sat down to plan out what accomplishments would ultimately mean Valishan had succeeded. Which leads us to the point of this long-winded post...
Valishan's Goals
Valishan's top goal, above all, is hitting 300 Intelligence without losing out on other important mods (ie, the casting mods). I know it is possible thanks to math and UOGuide, but this also assumes that all of the items necessary are found in PF. This is honestly what I was planning out from the start, and I feel it should be the goal that trumps all others. But of course, there are more.
1) Skill goals
* Getting the mage-related powerscrolls: Magery, Necromancy, Spellweaving, Mysticism, and Imbuing. Alchemy and Inscription are also important to me.
* Secondary to that, getting the 120s for Music, Peace, and Animal Lore are also on the list.
2) Item goals
I've accomplished most of these already since much of what I wanted at the start currently makes up my suit. There are a few, however.
* Transmuter (because I don't like the pirate hat look)
* Lt. Britannian Royal Guard Sash
* Illustrious Wand of Thundering Glory
* Perfect +15 Resisting Spells spellcrafted jewelry
* Paradise Reading Glasses (Because really, who doesn't have this on their list?)
* Scrapper's Compendium (currently uncraftable)
I also have a couple secondary goals, things that I'm not entirely hot for but I wouldn't mind having. There aren't as many of these, but I'm more likely to add to this list than the above.
* Cloak of Humility
* Fallen Mystic's Spellbook
* My Book talisman that doesn't lack Inscription bonus
* Merlin robe/kimono/cloak complete set
3) Creature goals
aka who I still need to kill.
* Gwenno, because I'm not sure a mage can even do it thanks to that HP fireball.
New Toy for Stat Geeks
So this is the new "armor totalizer" that we have on PF. I wasn't playing when the quest for it was installed, but we've had the command to use it for a good while now. To get it, one has to do a very simple fetch quest in Fel Brit (which I won't spoil), and upon finishing your [armor command will finally do something for you.
The only thing I have to note about this is that it reads the information straight from the item description. This only matters in the case of the Undead Chest and Undead Leggings, both of which have hidden stats that aren't counted here. My str/int/mana bonus counts should be a bit higher than it reads here. Otherwise, it works perfectly as far as I've seen.
Long before this came around, I was using spreadsheets to track my item totals. This is much easier to read, less tedious to update, and otherwise nice to verify that I'm counting and adding right on my sheets.
It also really highlights some issues I've gotten with my gear due to updates, such as the extra 35% SDI that is doing nothing for me. My luck is also really low now, and apparently that matters because a recent change made it so that terragon drops take luck into account and spellcrafting luck can get way higher than before. I was browsing jewelry a night or so ago that had upwards of 2000 luck.
So once again, I have to update my jewelry. Stay tuned for that fun experience. *grumble grumble*
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)