Request for Comment - Champion System

Not sure why anyone is putting stock in the serpentine dragon ability, not only are tamers usually hidden anyway, you just create a macro saying all kill, target absolute target (harrower) and tab twice on loop

Reduced amount of plat per char. OR linking all 3 accounts together to make so only 20plat can be obtained by one person.

Increasing the difficulty is fine, in my opinion.
An idea for that would be giving the Harrower the ability of the other 6 champs and you wont know which ones he is going to have that fight. So at 1-25%, 26-50%, 51-75%, and 76-100% hes can do randomly 1 of any of the 6 champ bosses abilities. So it will create difficulty, strategey and communication.

• So potentially 1-25% u could be fighting with mass undead spawn around (Neira), then 26-50%when he start EQing everyone (Rikktor) while your trying to kill spawn, then 51-75% reflecting everyones dmg cause they aren't female (Semider) and finaly all kinds of ratmen spawn at the final phase (baracoon) but always random between all 6.

Agreed, the serpentine dragon ability isnt to hard to get away from.

Also, in my opinion, difficulty and required communication will promote guilds keeping spawning the Harrower more secretive in order to prevent chaos and failure.

Now that's a cool idea, Arnold Lutz!

And a big thank you

All of this is great. While I don't think we need to remove all of the platinum from the Harrower, I think the platinum hose needs to get a big kink in it. I can recall or gate into a Harrower event playing a mage or ranged melee character, assist with a few tentacles (or not), then proceed to mana dump a few times while the multitude of dragons are taking the damage (agro) and space. I get my 20 platinum then promptly recall out. I've been on the server long enough now that I've done enough of these to have enough gold to stay in regs, train up a bunch of characters and get what I believe plenty of housing (nothing large). While I could stick around longer to collect gold and try my hand against PKs, the PvE risk at a Harrower is quite low.

What I am going to say isn't going to be popular, but I would love to see a multitude of different class needs when performing a Harrower other than 'all kill'.

This is much akin to the piracy debate imo. Youre screwing the people that play fairly over the people that do not. Its now join a big guild or never see the harrower.

Your overestimating people's ability to be prepared.

Great to see staff asking for feedback. If your trying to curb the platinum graphs accession stop the three account 60 platinum drop with AI or IPs. Make it harder and someone will probably find a way to still use three accounts. I prefer regular Fel rules with no modifications to dungeon rule set while the harrower is active. I've used my archer at Harrowers mainly for the tentacles, actually getting enough damage input (for plat drop) in the final stage is difficult since the dragons cut it down so fast. Not a fan of any ideas/systems of exclusion even though I dislike last minute drop-ins. I do like improved AI for reward with damage input coupled with proximity from near start to finish during Harrower's two or three stages... don't set the bar too high so as to limit templates. In regards to melee character champ and harrower feasibility I'm hoping (possibly?) future pvm parry changes can help. Since staff is reading this thread....

p.s. Chris: I'm still upset staff (you) took away my tame quest tamed drakes. Dragons or WWs will out dps them by a mile, they were something unique.

You killed the wrong person with them.
People call us conspiracy theorists for pointing these things out, but that's exactly what happened.

You're underestimating the intelligence of our player base.

Preparedness does not equal intelligence. Some people are not interested in min maxing or having macros running all the time. Technically everyone could 3 box for efficiency but they don't. Don't put words in my mouth, mucho gracias.

Not sure if making fun of self.

Way to back pedal, I assure you the vast majority of people running harrowers are very organized and have a very deep understanding of the game. I don't know many people who would chance 60 plat on not being prepared.

Keep things how they are. It was tweaked before and hardly anyone did spawns. Now people are and let's put a halt to any incentive to do one again? The only thing that will happen, is you make all the plat hoarders which are players who have been here for a lot longer to demand a premium price for plat to go up considerably. The new player base you want to keep is only going to have to work harder and put in more time to obtain it. There will be less interest to do spawns or harrowers with these changes and is going to result in a less active server. People were getting on and everyone doing stuff together and I do think many people enjoyed that, now the plat changes because people were having fun being active. A spawn, harrower, fights, thieving, chaos, fun people were having at it.

Don't change it.

Before the last change, people were humping Barracoon like dogs in heat because it was so easy. At least they spread out to different champs now but it's still, in my opinion, way too fucking easy if anyone can actually run three chars there at once without dying all over the place.

If fun to you is coming in at the end of a champ to 3x spam ebolt, I don't see any reason to keep that going. There's plenty of actually fun things to do and like a junkie saying shooting up is fun, it's just an excuse to support their addiction.

*cooks up some plat*

This is what should happen. This should be shouted from the rooftops.

Personally I don't see private harrowers becoming public harrowers as a problem. They are supposed to be difficult and they are supposed to be subject to murderers, thieves, blue-looters and all the nasty business we all know and love about old UO. If you want to kill someone because you don't like them or you feel you should control the spawn, take the counts or take off. There's no reason to give more concessions to murderers who already idle for plat in stat, by letting them go orange and murder with impunity at the hardest spawn in the game.

I guess you missed the part where Telamon said harrowers being public plat fests is the problem. The harrower is not currently subject to murderers because no one is crazy enough go bring a red into dozens of people with dragons. I think a nice solution to most issues currently being discussed would be to reduce player damage from tames. Make dragons do 50% damage when targeting players and harrowers will be MUCH more defendable and attackable. This would also effectively nerf pets in pvp situations, ie factions.

While he was fairly vague about what exactly the 'problem' is, I think he means players lumping all of their accounts to the harrower to sap maximum platinum at the end. It also seems like a poor choice of words to say the system wasn't designed for that many players (characters would suit better). Quite frankly, if it were only one character per player showing up, it wouldn't be nearly as crowded and insane. The problem is multiplying your take by three without any serious risk for the 400k value payout at the end.

Removing the effectiveness of 3x accounts in a way that gets people to go there on a single character instead, will actually result in the community needing each other more and additionally reduce the number of firebreaths you're likely to encounter when you do raid a champ. Now I know from the years I've spent here that there's only like five people on the whole fucking shard who appreciate necessity of cooperation. That doesn't mean that it's wrong or out of place in an MMO.

Let me also make something perfectly clear. There is literally no such thing as a private harrower or champion spawn. You can't take them home with you and they exist in finite locations, all of which can be checked within 10 minutes of Recalling around. Whether you announce it or not, does not make it public or private. That said, I also feel like champion spawns and harrowers should have town crier alerts to notify the people that evil is spawning and needs to be thwarted by the good citizens of Britannia!

Want to save the world from evil? Get out there and get slaying! Want to wash the masses in the blood of innocents? Get out there and get slaying! Want to make 60 plat for Recalling in and casting ebolts for 2 minutes? Log off, and go bludgeon yourself.

I am not hitting the champ situation much in this post so apologies for the slight derail.


Nerfing pet damage in a zone where the harrower is - OK.
Nerfing pet damage in faction situations potentially (orange on orange) - OK
Nerfing pet damage across the board - absolutely not.

A single tamer out in a dungeon defending himself against a red or groups of reds is squishy enough. Not so much with my straight tamer (wrestling/resist) but something like a provo tamer with no wrestling and no resist is enough of an easy target. 50% reduction in damage across the board is crazy.