Request for Comment - Champion System

I agree with Basoosh. You'll get less public harrowers and more private guild harrowers.

I wouldn't do anything drastic with changing the mechanics of the AI or the fight itself. Some harrowers, depending on location, can take anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple of hours. Many don't have time to sit here for hours. Making the fight harder isn't the answer. The rat spawn was given some teeth and now people are more inclined to chain meph spawns over a rat spawn.

A diminishing payout system seems like the best course of action.

I'm against any changes, I think the harrower is alotta work to summon and does make for a fun event. Plat prices are still rising, there is no plat gravy train. The amount of harrowers summoned is also misleading because of the massive Vella spike, before Vella and after Vella we have a lot less harrowers.

Furthermore, champions are mostly a tamer game, as a provo mage only some champs I can be handy tier 1 and 2 with Bladespirits and in tier 4 provoking. I make a couple of plat from doing a full champ, maybe. So from the whole champing thing, its the harrowers that get me paid, guys who triple box a champ spawn can make from a single spawn what I make from the harrower.

I worry about a system that rewards plat based on the number of players present at the Harrower. Might turn into a PvP blood bath... motivates experienced players to kill off lesser/newer players to take their share of plat

My only thoughts on improving the system is to make the 3ed stage spawn some adds. Maybe some of the adds cast reveal upon appearing to make 3 boxing more difficult.

• Allowing the final phase of the harrower to be more mobile will be considered.

I like the idea of a mobile final phase. I think the final stage needs aoe damage as well. I remember the aoe dmg from bada santa was just enough that it was nearly impossible to keep a full tamer team up but if you went in with only 1 pet you could concentrate your vets only on it and keep it up. Currently it's "all kill" and forget, so I think adding something that will at least make us try to vet our pets a little. If it were possible this damage would ONLY be on the pets, because warriors already have it hard enough.

• The updated reward system will need to discourage players from inviting the whole server to defeat the harrower for the sole purpose of "free money".

My suggestion for a reward system would be to have a set amount of plat drop on the ground. This would encourage running the harrowers privately and controlling the spawn much better. I would imagine revealing the area and tracking the moments before it dies would be neccesary. Public harrowers could still and would still happen, it just wouldn't be for the free money. You would instruct the new players how to add plat/gold to their scavenger agents, and hope for the best.

Under this system if a new small guild was to aquire the skulls and run the harrower privately, they could be handsomely rewarded for their efforts. Or maybe we vets pk them and take it over at the last minute and secure the plat drops to ourselves. FUN.

• Damage from the first phase, tentacles, and final phase will now be pooled into a single dataset to better determine who qualifies for a reward.

This sounds like a good idea but there are different roles needed to defeat the harrower. I use an eval mage for the tentacles, tamers for the rest. Tons of different templates will help with 1 stage or the other of the harrower but not be viable to do damage on all stages. A warrior for instance is excluded from getting damage in during the tentacle stage since he would just get sucked in. Or the mage that has no eval int so just sits there and tries to gheal people that get dumped on by the harrower and takes a more supportive role during tentacle stage. I think the determination of who qualifies for a reward should instead go to whoever is running and controlling the harrower spawn.

Go back to spawns prior to the past changes. Make it rain!

The only problem I see is being able to police your harrower, I think if you were able to kill unwanted guests without being instantly all kill'd by a gazillion dragons you'd see alot less public events. Currently running an event public is your best bet in things going smoothly because everyone would rather get free money than take shots at each other. Cutting the plat from the harrower to 10 would be terrible, might as well run two lesser spawns back to back in that case.

I almost think you could've simply said "hey guys, do you mind not inviting the whole shard to harrowers? It's a problen because of x, y and z." And stood back to see if the player base would do so without issues. As I see or currently there are only maybe 3 guilds running harrowers anyway, and I don't think they'd argue much over doing so privately

Could make harrowers have the serpentine dragons ability. They will bard pets onto each other.

With the server pop these days, private is pretty much impossible.

i really really enjoyed this on osi

Suggestion:

Zookeeper-style expanded party system that gets added to all champions. The way it works:

• When someone initiates a champion (be it a regular one or the harrower) they are given a blessed "incomplete skull."
• Upon completion of the spawn, ground loot drops as it ordinarily would, but the skull and reward platinum do not. The "incomplete skull" becomes a "complete skull."
• The player with the "complete skull" can turn it in and select [5] – [15] (depending on the champ) players to add to his expanded party (in the same way that players are added to the zookeeper scroll after completing the zookeeper quest).
• Each player in the expanded party receives the designated reward platinum; the champion initiator receives the champion skull.

Benefits:

• Rewards teamwork / punishes free-riding: Only payers who are designated by the champ initiator will receive platinum, so there is little reason to show up at the last second, throw dragons on the champion, and "earn" 3-20 platinum for about 60 seconds of effort.
• More player killing, less griefing: All of this happens under the Felucca ruleset, so PKs are free to disrupt groups that are working champs. On the other hand, griefers can no longer roll in at the last minute and "steal" champs from groups that have been working them for hours.
• Smaller groups / added challenge: Because only a limited set of designated players will receive reward platinum, there is little incentive to work champions with larger groups. That means champs will take longer and be more challenging.
  
• Balanced risk of loss: Ground loot is still up for grabs. However, the platinum rewards are reserved for those that are selected by the champ initiator -- i.e., the people most likely to have helped work the champ from beginning to end.

I would like to see there be three phases each with its own weaknesses to damage. I would include archery in the melee.

For example:

Phase 1: weak to tames/magic
Phase 2: weak to melee/magic
Phase 3: weak to tames/melee

Then reward appropriately.

This is a great idea and I hope it gains some traction. Make the available slot 10-15 players that way champ guilds can include most of their members plus include a few public people (I could see slots for harrower going for sale like zookeeper slots now).

Personally, I'd still show up for the gold at the end. I love seeing the explosions and gold appearing.

I'm against tying the harrower to an instance, but what if we made it so harrower has 1 in 5 chance to drop 1 of 10 items required to open a portal to the harrower's root structure? (Tie this to Fins idea so only party members have chance of receiving the item even if somebody else kills the harrower.)

Going there and completing the root structure quest would help you build up an immunity to the harrower tentacles teleport and 1 shotting.

I like Mike's idea of making the final form like a serpentine dragon, and maybe making it resistant to dragons, like shadow elementals. It would be kind of cool to have to try to kill the final form with a dexer.

So.. currently, we have a problem.

.

Or maybe Chris asked for us to come up with some new ideas and we're all brainstorming?? I don't see anyone mad here.

Take away the plat on the endboss, let it rain gold. Plat should be gained on being online, and very rare drop on world bosses. The end boss,harrower, already has enough drop if it rained gold. I believe that would fix the plat farmers.
I havent run the skulls here, but its the only server I havent run them on. Works perfect everywhere else. With all the gold raining, they can then buy plat. It keeps the value high.
I know plat has gone from 6 to 7 k....but its only people getting ready for the motes for plat. No one knows how much it will cost, and since it will be the 'got to have' thing, every one is willing to pay more. I predict...if Chris announces that motes will cost 1k plat a week before it goes live, people will paying up to 10k per and there will be people that have more than the 1k will be auctioning their plat. Once all fortreses and such have the motes, the plat price will drop back down to 6k ish.
When someone wants a plat reward bad enough, they will pay good for it. Its just UO gold, something very very easy to make here once your established.(a week at most)

Just brainstorming.

I really like that idea, very creative. But Chris, will that involve a lot of coding?

Interesting idea, like the structure of it with lots of room to adjust quantities for balance. A few random thoughts:

- I really like the idea of re-balancing the payoff from spawns a little more towards those who start it and carry it the distance. The "party" system could help set a floor for rewards ASSUMING you substantially participate and complete the spawn. Before anybody suggests otherwise, the payoff in plat from working t1-t4 varies wildly and is almost certainly not worth hours of game time in and of itself. I understand why this is low and it should remain so, but this means that the bulk of the loot lies with the champion itself which is a very problematic free-for-all.

- Opinions will certainly differ on this, but the play style of scouting/stealing spawns has really gotten out of hand lately, at least in my experience. A number of players are very regularly scouting altars and raiding spawns right at the end, reaping nearly the ENTIRE reward. Unless you're a large well-organized group, guild, or playing at odd hours/weekdays, this is pretty difficult to defend against. I'd like to see some recognition that griefers get some payoff in the form of satisfaction from ruining the experience of others and don't necessarily need the ENTIRE loot incentive to raid spawns. Not trying to deny anybody their preferred play style here (even though it drives me crazy sometimes), but I wouldn't mind flushing out some of the players who do this solely because it is ridiculously easy, low-risk money. Note that by low-risk I mean in terms of time/focus invested.

- This kind of system would also encourage more open advertising of spawns for pick-up groups on IRC, random encounters, cooperative social behavior, more inclusive to new players, good for the server etc etc.

- PKs/PVPers could still raid spawns and murder people for plat on player corpses.

- One problem with this system is that the spawn is a shared resource and I could easily see blocking being an issue, so it would have to account for relatively fast (1-2 hours?) resets if no progress is made.

- Finally: Just wanted to agree that the Harrower experience was totally busted and fully support making it more difficult!


Anyway, thanks Telamon for taking a look at the issue and soliciting comments.

Good thread and I'm digging Fin's idea about a party system for the champion itself, but not the waves. One thing mentioned here regularly is the sniping at the end where people who don't do shit come in and tap the plat keg like a drunk. I've grown increasingly disinterested in champions for various reasons, multi-account ebolt barrages being one major one. That was always the slap in the face, when I spent an hour or more mopping up spawn and risking my gear on a warrior, only to get literally nothing because I get dueced at the end trying to get good damage on the boss. I've done Semidar with a group and gotten a single plat from the entire session because drop rate on wave spawn got crimped a long time ago and I can't even get more than a swing on her before getting wasted. (FYI: I hate the gender-bias champs too, lol)

I just had another thought, in regards to pooling data over the course of the champ. Would it be possible to have a [champ command/gump that could be used by players to see their own progress as it pertains to the completion of the champion itself? Keep regular mob drop platinum on the waves but tally up kills (maybe even cross heals/bandaging party pets) for 'points' and depending on how much you contributed over the entire course of the champ directly translates to how much plat you will get when the champ dies. If there's even a fixed amount of platinum per champ (say 1000, rough example) then no one's going to overload the champ and if you gave players a brief window of time (30 seconds, when the champ dies, deposits payout to pack directly) to claim their champion plat and only allowed it once per IP (sorry, if you're family, you're sharing).
If that worked, the gump could show total mobs killed from that champion spawn so far and how many of them you killed and perhaps a percentage?

Just kicking idea cans around, but I like the direction of the conversation despite some triple-boxer cringing.