What PvP changes would you like to see?

Tried that, lost intererst for reasons posted above, Hazy wrapped it up quite succinctly (Thanks Hazy)

Taking a break, hopefully UO bug will bite again, or maybe other servers will suck and I will come back for my fix with a better attitude.

This server is great for the crafters, the PvMers who enjoy playing tamers (yes I have one, no it's not that exciting) and others who simply enjoy the wonder of UO from the perspective of not having played for 17+ years. Some enjoy the nostalgic casual experience, others like to RP (hopefully this community gets bigger and more involved)
Some love hoarding stuff and setting personal goals as to how their power end-game will be fulfilled, then others like to hang out with friends in-game to waste a few hours. Even PvP has seen a little burst with CTF, which is ok if you like that sort of thing.

All in all it's a nice server and has alot of potential, I really hope it lives up to it.

inre to the weapons discussion: I actually do think normal weapons should be able to kill the kinds of things you find in the occlo dungeon. You can't produce worthwhile hits with GM weapons here either like you could in era. I think it's plausible this could be achieved by lowering mob armor (and in pvp context, barbed leather armor), but I don't presume to know exactly how this kind of change could be best implemented.

One of the things that new players do is they roll a character with swords and tactics perhaps, farm some cotton, then go into that dungeon with the sword they spawned with and try swinging against some mobs. But there is a common complaint that their weapons aren't doing damage. Now before everyone goes crazy like every other post in here and assumes I intend regular longswords to one shot balrons, that's not what I am trying to convey. I'm trying to suggest that those weapons would reasonably get through the armor of low end mobs.

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I always start every shard the same way, which is creating a dexer and farming the heck out of the Britain Graveyard. I bought plain kryss' from the blacksmith just south of the graveyard, and they worked fine on skeletons, zombies, and ghouls.

However, the way that weapons wear down and lose effectiveness on this shard is inaccurate to the era. On this shard, if you have a weapon with, say, 60/100 HP, it will do 60% of its normal damage. Back in the day, the weapon damage decline was only half as steep. The formula was 50% + (HP/maxHP)/2. So a weapon with 60/100 HP would actually be dealing 80% of its max damage.

I have been unable to find documentation about this, but I am 98% sure it can be confirmed on the UO Demo. And also by player recollection - if the durability-effectiveness curve followed a straight percentage, then when you Arms Lore'd a weapon that was "about to break", it would literally have done 1 damage every single hit. And none of us remember that.

Now, let's say the average damage of someone with 50 Swords and 50 Tactics and 50 Anatomy with a store kryss is 10. And let's say a skeleton absorbs 4 damage per hit due to its armor. Under the current scenario on this shard, a worn down kryss will be dealing 6 damage, getting 4 absorbed, and only punching through for 2 per hit. Under the way things should be, the worn down kryss will deal 8 damage, get 4 absorbed, and punch through for 4 per hit.

Numbers mostly for illustration, but you can see that in this example scenario, simply changing the durability rules would literally double the speed at which things can be killed by newer players. And durability rules really primarily effect new players, since they don't have fort powder and smith alts and such.

That's an extremely solid point Dalavar. I was one of the dexxers Gideon mentions from last night. I was rallying with a small handful of folks to spin up a champ. We bumped into some O^S in Delucia and I said if they're down, they should come along. Not sure on total count but there were at least 15+ players out there and I have no idea which guilds. But to Dalavar's point, I started out with a practically unused +25 silver vanq short spear. About half way through the champ, the damage was clearly fading. Fortunately, I had a spare +25 vanq long spear in the bank. Yeah, I'm spoiled as shit but it's taken a long time to get here. In any regard, I was shredding it up and honestly, if it wasn't for Perseus' silver axe, I bet I would have gotten top damage Neira. Point being, damage fades way too fast if I can't run a single champ without a repair.

As to the field PvP and lack thereof, there's just no point to it. There's actually a point to pretty much everything else you can do in the game but without incentive to fight, I just don't feel the desire to. If there's a game of it, great, I freakin love objectives. If it's just who can kill who, then it all comes down to numbers, we know who's got them and when to leave if they show up. Just like Balla in Ice last night when 3+ blues showed up, he ran off, then we couldn't find a red to save our lives. It's just not in the underdog's best interests to hang out for such a fight. Factions provide no incentive at all either, unless you're a big fan of running NPC vendors. If there were any reason other than the fight, to actually go fight, more people would likely take part and risk losing their gear for it.

In CTF a shift in favored templates and play styles/tactics has occured. No longer will the kiting on mounts work. It's toe to toe with slow get aways. Once mana is exhausted there isn't much a mage can do unless he can stun or your a hybrid..... Not that your going toe to toe with an Ax wielding dexxer trying to stun them on your own. So just like factions with the prefered stun mage template - CTF is LJ/Swords/runic. Adapt and move on. Can we CTF with all this back and forth and just play the damn game?

If I'm on a team the first person I want to send back to their base as a ghost is that axer. I'm all for Vent and creating seperate CTF team channels. Use RA and Arch Protection on top of that invuln AR set. If someone works to make a LJ and runic weapons more power to them. They can be dropped easily just like anyone else with cordination and cross healing. I'd like to see more directed teams and cross heaing. CTF/PVP new players - when it comes to curing there's no reason not to have cure pots with a hotkey set. One template is going to have advantages that gives you an edge only issue here is the damage output of runics for some. The work/time put into building the character and obtaining a runic hammer should equate to a high damage output toon.

Only allow lower level runics? No runics? GM only would equal terrible damage output. I really don't like any of those options. Say keep it as it is for now and let people adjust. I'm all for fixing one handers where parry and poisoning template would be viable.

Anyone saying that the high end runics are OP in CTF, seemingly did not play last year before they existed. We were out there with vanqs and getting synch-dropped by mages pretty much non-stop. Now that they're dying at relatively the same pace, it's a problem? I mean seriously, throw up some RA/Protection like Artex said and get out there and do work. These weapons are not the hand of god in the game. I still hit for low damage pretty regular with a valorite war hammer, when I land hits.

Mages > Weapons in regards to pvp and even ctf. Use teamwork and that extra 4 (?) dmg from a runic really doesn't matter. If 4 dmg is the deciding factor in your death then you were dead anyways.

That's true. I remember being at Godric's hizzle back in highschool izzle (in time right before in game UOR events started) and him showing me his badass new vanquishing broadsword.

He ran off into the Yew wood on Napa, his name was Anders, and started cutting down an orc. He killed it pretty fast but I wasn't impressed... he said, "Maybe it's kinda dinged up." Then as he troted back to the bank he decided to try it on some random animal. On the first swing, it broke and it was most certainly not doing 1 damage.

Agree with HC magic damage is insane here, a perfect sync is very hard to heal through. As for needing an objective to pvp I just want to find random fights at random times. I get bored pretty quick recalling the hot spots and finding nothing but tamers and bards. I have always been an avid pker but have yet to step into that seriously here. I don't see much of a challenge in dropping a bard with 0 resist. I want a fight and a good fight when I log in. I play UO to pvp not to farm but to find action I have to camp artics on a pvper casting blades praying for a red to show his face.

As for factions sure you can find fights sometimes, but I am not going to run around and the only fight I find is 4-6 other oranges who get a stun on me and I die. I won't even bother restocking at that point just log till the next day. Keep ganking it is part of the game, but it certainly doesn't help others find fights when the only form of pvp they come across is a zerg. To cry about newbies in occlo not doing enough damage and complaining on mobs well, same goes for a newbie wanting to try pvp here. What will he think when he/she gets dropped by 5 people.

I'm not Brymstone, but I think the top end for dexers is currently fine. The place I'd like to see improvements is on the low end - I think a weapon damage crunch could move up damage for lower level players while leaving the rich people unaffected. I don't think things are currently era accurate here in that regard, GM weapons are pretty worthless.

If durability rules are causing lower damage outputs, there's definitely room for revision there.
I do think that low-end weapon damage here even when fully repaired is quite low compared to OSI, and the 1 and 2 damage hits that take place here also have a much stronger presence here than on OSI. That randomness can be a matter of life and death for newbies here.
Another problem that they face on the pvp end is that everyone on this server has much higher AR values than during this era on OSI - people on OSI during this time wore normal leather and had 14-19 AR. Most people here wear barbed leather which is in the 36-39 range.
I think that the higher AR here is necessary due to the wide availability of runics and magic weapons, but the higher around the board AR values hurts the effectiveness of GM weapons.

Ive hitten harder with regular vanq hally than 57, so I also call your story bullshit.

Low end weapon dmg should be raised up, all weapons should be looked at and new life breathed into them.

Base damage is 5-49, so yes, a vanquishing halberd (+9) should be capable of 58 damage hits, versus an entirely un-armored target. Or perhaps it was just a headshot on a mask-wearing target. If you're claiming that was versus someone with a full suit of any armor on, I'll be happy to call your story more bullshit.

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I absolutely agree that Parry should be applied to deflecting blows with weapons, not just shields. Not sure how well it would balance out but it would make sense, especially for pole-arm and staff users.

this existed in aos (although these hits were literally deflected, not absorbed as current era parry mechanics operate)

weapons could parry at half the chance of shields

It's a cool concept but feels a bit out of era to me. I like what it does as far as opening up templates. You could be a macer and parry a bit with qstaff and war hammer, still have room for magery. Or you could be a lumberjack and forgo magery altogether in favor of some extra avoidance. But again, getting above 50% avoidance is a very AoS thing and I wouldn't expect to see it here.

Yeah, that's what I thought but wasn't sure. I've got my parry macer who would absolutely benefit, when fighting other dexxers. Perhaps it could be viable if it wasn't a pure deflection like AoS and just worked like maybe buckler level parry. Meh, it's no bigs really but would be cool and logical.

yeah I imagine if it came here it would be more like you described. I don't think it would be a bad thing at all. I've always wanted some more legitimacy to parry (even more so to actually holding a shield)

Even though I do not pvp here, I have played this game some 15+ years, so I will put my 2 cents into the mix.

1. Fix the issues related to armor absorption, archery, and melee damage as people have listed here, and do something with the ignorantly overpowered magic damage.
2. Give people a reason to pvp. I doubt most people care about trophy's etc..., and would much rather have plat. Since we obviously have the capability of creating new content, why not take a page out of the most successful pvp game on earth (DAOC) and create a zone that is only open to the faction that controls the most cities. This new zone could have higher end mobs with increased drop rates of plat and gold. I guarantee that you would have a large influx of people joining factions.