Back when you used to pay to play there was luck! Anybody remember that? You had to go to all the shrines to complete the circle on the pentagram of your paper doll, which added luck. Also there was jewelry that enhanced luck, which in turn, increased the probability to receive rare loot from mobiles! Just wondering if anybody remembers?
This is one of those things where I read ad my first thought was reply "Well that was after UOR, and good thing, nobody wants to equip a ton of rare items to get more luck to get the chance of getting some rare items" But after thinking about it... it makes more sense on UOR. If all the monster statues and other rare drops were increased by characters wearing an increasing number of NON BLESSABLE luck boosting items, they would have to *gasp* take a risk when they go out to min-max farm. I am all for that. But also due to that reason, it will never happen.
I remember when UO was about having a fun experience and not chasing rare pixels. Everyone was able to create all the things they needed, and exceptional was the highest tier of item. Then we spent the rest of our time looking for other people to play with. It seems that as storytelling and player interaction/involvement waned; mmo's created "rare items" to substitute and retain players and their gametime. Rather than going around to populated areas looking to make new friends, we now go to areas where 1/100whatever items drop and try to shoo others away so we can have the shiny. *Grumble grumble grumble, back in my day, trails off*
I get that, but its also how you go about it. First guy here that actually took the time to show me where ancient lich lords were, best way to kill them, how to semi-defend myself against pks and how to trammel all within a 2 hour period of meeting me gave me more momentum than i had prior to that, into socializing more in game and putting myself out there to help others as i gained more knowledge about UoR. @Valrick I like snaps idea with having unblessed gear to boost a little luck. Can even introduce it to shields to give parry a little somethin somethin. Im sure there are better ideas than that though.
Pretty sure I was already moved on when luck was around back then. Or I was too young and dumb to notice. Wasn't that around LBR expansion?
I just want to say that rare hunting is as old as UO. The creators were surprised that people rapidly created a market for found, usually inadvertent rares. Introducing rewards and rares manually was also something around from early days and was a response to the ecosystem the players created. That's UO, chasing pixels for some, RP for others, l33t PvP. As for exceptional being the highest tier, I dunno magic items i.e vanqs were always around just rare and pricey. Another thing that occured regarding making friends in populated areas is that if you just chill somewhere crowded, some thief is going to come and try and steal your rune in no time. It's a hassle to deal with and that is why people don't hangout except in secret. Back in the day of WBB bank sitting there was so many blues thieves seemed like a smaller they'd get gwhacked cuz they sucked. Now you can train GM stealing quickly and for free, so there is always some amateur doing nothing more than just hassling people at banks. That's also UO.
You can train it easily, just like you can train all skills on this uo freeshard easily as long as afk macroing is fine. The ironic part is stealing here has a much greater chance of guardwhacking than it ever had on actual UO, and to make matters worse there are 4 guards for every 1 that existed in 1999. I agree with you, bank thieves are bozos, but the ease of training the skill has nothing to do with it here as a GM thief at the bank has just as much of a chance as a 50 stealing newbie did in 1999.
I am not bitching about the thief as a class. The reality as I see it is that most thieves are basically griefers and thus impede chilling in public spaces chit chatting. If I go to ocllo some nub is coming after my mandrake root in minutes. This forces me to be on my guard in town, ready to recall or run or deal with the hassle. Furthemore, when it comes to meeting people is that UO can be savage and is more savage than in 1998. As for stealing being harder here, I dunno, seems the same to me. Watching grey robes get gwhacked was a pretty frequent event in 1998s WBB. If you're out farming or whatnot and see a blue you better run cause hes probably griefer, or his PK friends/alts will follow shortly. Everything is cliquey, there is not trust or benefit of the doubt. We are all cynical in todays UO.
I remember luck. It came out with AoS. It made sense in Diablo2. Honestly what i miss most, is slow skillgain and power hour. I really liked that era of uo. Every night I remember logging on and powergaming like mad for an hour, then actually playing the game for the rest of it. With slow skill gain you actually "got to know" your toon and the game instead of rushing to the endgame in a couple days. I re-roll toons all the time, and i would love it taking about 2-3 weeks of hardcore macroing to make a toon.
I agree.. people for the most part who play uo, have been leveling chars on and off for 20 years. Most just want to start playing their maxed out chars. You can always choose to play the game at a slower pace than out of the norm. Last year Gideon took some time to level up a char around fire island the more natural way and i thought it was pretty cool. Even made it into a small series. http://uorforum.com/threads/done.26833/
Rare hunting and collecting is fun! Ive always enjoyed it and have met many players hunting trading discussing rares. Some of them *gasps* i even hunt with trade other items assist when requested etc. The beauty of UO is there are many aspects to the game, playstyles, and things to do. None of them are invalid or less pure because they were introduced later or an activity you dont appreciate.
@Gideon Jura s escapades are similar to the most fun I've ever had on uor: naturalists! No macros no easy way. Tons of fun and lots of camaraderie there. Took us weeks to get through despise, lol...
Yeah I have heard quite a few people talking about how stealing is nerfed here. I mainlined a thief in Baja 15 years ago, and here I am doing it again. Its been fifteen + years, but I don't feel like it's any worse on uor than it was then. It takes some timing and a bit of trickery to do it properly, but I'd say it's just fine how it is. Of course some luck plays into the actual steals, but that also keeps things interesting. I have fun with it anyway, and I definitely don't think it's nerfed. As far as luck items goes, it isn't something I'm familiar with, but it seems interesting enough.
This post isn't really about stealing so I think we came far off topic. But in response to @Daggoth , it's not really a matter of "what it feels like". One can simply get the success and failure rates, and calculate the weight of items on UOR in order to see how the actual skill is in fact nerfed, by quite a bit, specifically for stealing stacked items where it is actually cut in half, and also note the increase in weight of some common stealable items to prevent thievery, the addition of more than 5x the number of guards at banks, increased failure rate near NPCs, which is fine by itself, except with added NPCs that serve little purpose other than to reduce the stealing rate and serve as npc witnesses. It's really nerfed. Add the fact that the game has changed, and nobody is trading near towns or providing any of the moderately lucrative money making opportunities that existed in 1999 (though this is no fault of UOR), and it's worse. You also probably don't realize that recently traded items simply cannot be stolen. Yes that's right, you get a "failed to steal" message. But in reality any item placed in a trade window is totally unstealable for many seconds. I can sit at the bank with a 10,000,000gp 1 stone weight rare and just keep opening a trade window with an afk player every 15 seconds or so and you will never steal it no matter how hard you try. The list goes on and on I'm afraid. Can you still steal? Yes. But it is significantly nerfed on UOR.