Im not sure if this has been discussed a lot. Ive played a few freeshards like this one, uosecondage and one other. There is always problems as far pking, ghost watching, housing spots, figuring out money sinks and problems keeping new people. One simple idea is this. If there wasnt a way to recall or gate it (basically remove them) would change the way game played and ultimately lead to more diversity. Such as pvp builds, more would be useful. Even your original fighting character may be worth sticking with. It would also help with some overpowered builds and make things more balanced. The point being it would solve problems. Newbies would have a chance because it would not be easy for a pk to just recall to 50 spots and pick them off. Ghost watching would be tougher cause you would physically have to run them there. It would also reduce the number of items just for the fact they are harder to move. Housing spots would remain more open than it is and people would probably stick to one area instead of being all over the map. It would make you think if your well established. It may actually make people interact with their neighbors and make more towns useful. It would slow the rate in which money is collected because making it would be a journey in itself, no more recalling in and out. Certain items like pack horse or boats would become useful and depending on what you do necessary. Even a few not or underused skills would become more popular. Maybe even more of a sense of pride when you accomplish something. I could see a major plus side to a shard like this with those 2 things removed. Maybe its just me but it makes a ton of sense. Maybe you guys can weigh in and give some thoughts but i think its something worth thinking about.
I have said it from the beginning. Disable recall spell, and do not allow gate travel into a dungeon, only out of it. @Mandevu and I played a shard for many years with the same exact game mechanics, set in this era of game play. It was beautiful!!!!! By far the best when it came to pvp. Recall is the suck...
So every time you wanted to go to your house or bring valuables from it, you had to run across the whole map ?
I play on another shard where recall and gate travel are extremely limited. The gate travel spell requires a hard-to-acquire reagent, a Dragon's Heart, to cast, so most traveling is done by horse or boat. It's awesome. Housing though is focused more around the NPC towns though so there is no need to run half way across the continent to get to your house.
I dont think anything in the OP is actually a "problem". I also dont follow the logic exactly of how it "solves problems." The whole "harder for PKs to kill newbies thing?" Just make a Razor macro for casting recall onto your stone. Map it to an easy to hit key combo. See a red name? Press macro. PK frowns. In fact, recalling is pretty much the only viable defense a "newbie" (presumably, out of Ocllo...) has. I do understand the desire to force players into more cooperative behavior - i.e., depend on mage entirely for far reaching travel. I have played on servers with mechanics where one can not recall out of a dungeon. Those mechanics were pretty good (but it was pre-t2a era freeshard), I diddnt mind them. Unfortunately, it makes it easier to get PK'd because of above. It does make it harder for the PK to escape, but, I havent seen a whole lot of red hunting on this shard (compared to reds hunting blues, anyway). In any event, its a mute argument: getting PKd is part of the UO experience. Laugh and revel in the hilarity when it happens! Its the only thing that actually sets UO apart from other games! I dont believe for a moment that this would have any effect on housing. People arent going to not place a house because its too far, and only use a bank instead. People will just be pissed they have to travel so damn far to get home. This also has that effect of making a dexxer-with-low-magery/pure-melee character even more useless. Pls do not get rid of recall, thats insane. --- However, I am all for eliminating mounts. I have played on many mount-free freeshards, and its always a good thing, especially for PVP. It also tends for encourage players to band together for mutual gain.
As far as housing it would make you think about where you live and how you move. Thats the point of removing recall or gate. Where you live becomes more important and how you do things becomes more important. It would reduce the amount of items people have and if you have a ton of items you may consider not moving at all. Probably would want to live closer to a town or a dungeon and spaces farther from town would clear up a bit.
Yea I'd quit. For real, not about to spend what limited time I do have in game spending 70/80/90% of it looking at my horses butt bounce around.
As far as it being easier to pk. Ya it would be easier to pk if you found someone and put it the way you put it. The whole point of what i said was this. It would be harder for pks to find someone and cover the whole map. It would reduce encounters cause of that fact. It would be way more work than a pk would want to do in some cases.
You do understand that this is not 50 people online shard where you have monopoly of choosing where you live ? You can't just pop a house 1 screen away from big town because there's not a whole empty grass area to do so.
@Larloch I love the disable recall idea. PKs would run on-screen with that pre-loaded instead of explosion and you get better pvp. Note that I dont have a single PK and I die 90% of the time a PK shows up lol On the topic of this thread, no changes to recall or gate please. If you want to run everywhere, go play WoW or one of the other MMOs that support such a massive amount of time wasting.
I wasnt talking total era accurate. Just a simple fix for problems that seem so hard to fix when you listen to people discuss them. Gate and recall seem to be the root problem to all them. Thats my main point. People may want to pick on one thing it changes and hate it but thats not the point. Im just talking on the fixes it would have overall.
To clarify, by making it better for pvp, I meant the tamers couldn't recall away. But to the flip side of that, if a tamer works his was deep into a dungeon, there was no one just to pop up outta no where. Most dungeons were pretty strong, so running into 3 levels just to look for someone was not high on the priority list. You would have to play it to understand it best. It really did help out both side of the community. Traveling across the wolrd was done by gate travel. So there was no gimpy mid level magery going on. For the sake of finding people it made it much harder, as far as the people you finding being able to run away, not gonna happen.
I was actually trying to think of a way for ghosts to be forced into a different location after a certain amount of time, but I like this. Ghosts visible at all times only to people with spirit speak though, not at all times.
@One i wasnt talking to change it. It honestly would be something that would have to happen from day one. The 2 previous shards i was on were as big as this one and they have faded away pretty bad:/ and were around a long while. Im glad this one is doing well but i have seen it happen before with the peak and slow fade.