Suggestion for Returnees and New Players, Dev's please read

ActionElly said:

Good evening and thank you for reading 🙂

I've a suggestion that would be really great for us returnees like myself and new players as well.

--Daily login rewards for subscribers--

Daily login rewards are a great incentive to get people to login, but it also gives a sense that a game is alive while also helping out the struggling new/returning player.

As for UO obviously people pay their accounts monthly to get their veteran rewards and keep their houses. However, these rewards wouldn't be directed towards them nor hurt the vet reward system in anyway since the items would be temporary. They could have the option to not take the reward or trash them for points.

The kind of rewards and time frames could be random each calendar month with the best reward on the 30th day a player logs in consecutively.

Examples:

1. Player logs in 7 days in a row and receives a temporary soul stone fragment (2 uses)

2. Login 2 weeks - commodity deed box (3 to 5 uses)

3. 3 weeks - random dye (1 use) or vanity pet from store (3 days; these temp pets could potentially encourage players to buy the permanent item)

4. Gold coin worth 2 million or so (RNG on the amount of the gold coin)

5. 4 weeks - Shard visitor token (allows the player to visit any shard) good for a round trip there and back. Once the player chooses a shard to visit they would go with what's in their pack and have a time limit of an hour before it would bring them back to their original shard.

Player's could also receive potions that give bonus benefits like luck increase for one character,  or skill gain increase for 30 minutes.

I'm sure a lot of you could come up with even more ideas 🙂

Anyway, I hope we could see this implemented at some point in the near future.

Don't we have, already, VETERAN REWARDS which prize the players who contribute in bringing resources for the upkeep of Ultima Online ?

Sure, it IS, to my opinion, a real bummer and totally unfair that a 22, 21, 19, 18, 17 and 16 Years old paying account is valued the same (since they get given the same Reward....) as a 15 Years old paying account ( @Mesanna ? ) but that's another story.....

I get what you are saying, but items you have listed would just encourage short term visitors. Once they burn through the goodies. What next? That is part of what sets UO apart from other games is that we are "Not Like Other MMOs"

Tibia offers boosts for consecutive logins  which last only a certain period of time for the one toon that claims them, account wide.

However, I don't think Soulstone fragments would be a wise item to offer. Most people don't use them until after they've GM'd a few skills, and that could take months in some cases.

Maybe "young" tagged players would get xxx healing potions or bandages. Or a "ghost mount" that lasts for 7 days.
After dropping the "young", offer up xxx recall scrolls or 5x each reg up to 6 months. 

Would have to be enough of an incentive, but not giving the game away. Also encourage game play and not just logging in for boosts.

About the only other thing that would be worthwhile of offering would be gold *cough* - but the abuse there would be astronomical. Most players new or returning, have the main goal of getting a house. 

Maybe reinstitute the beloved Tent for those who continuously log in from 6 months to 2 years (eta: in account age). Maybe a weekly check on this to keep the tent. Portable housing back in the early days was awesome.

(also eta): getting the gold to buy even a small, secure house, is what drives a lot of people to play. A Tent, with minimal lockdowns, that packs up and is transportable, would be a nice way to help young/new players. Returning players.... well... most have Banks full of stuff. The best way to keep them coming back is to let them at least access their full bank.

Of course, none of this would be usable for EJ accounts.

Is a thought anyway.

Looking back to why I kept playing, even when I really couldn't afford to, it was the community within which I played that kept me coming back - not so much any other perk in game. I honestly didn't have the gold for a large house until I was almost 6 years in UO.... most of my gold back then was spent on buying suits and paying for repairs to crafters - is why I made a resource-gatherer... is how I made my gold (mine, smelt, sell @ minoc bank, repeat). Back then, the community mattered. 

Many of us forget what it was like with only a couple of toons, living out of the bank-box, and working with others to train, hunt, skill-up, gather this suit or that suit for different types of hunts... I honestly had 8 different suits in my bank, depending upon where the group went hunting and what role I would be on that hunt. Those days are long gone. Everything is so powerful and plentiful...

Now, when a new player comes on board, IF they meet up with other people, suits are given to them - for we are eager to have new blood! We bestow rune books with several marks, hundreds of recalls, bandaids - IF that new person meets up with others. The new player doesn't realize what it takes to get their gear/kit together.. everything is handed to them by others. I fell into doing this myself.... giving a young player a full sorcerer's suit - and they had no concept of gathering reagents... they never needed them. 

kinda kills the game a bit when you think about it.

I'm all for some sort of reward system to help new/returning players to keep coming back - especially on shards other than atlantic. What the only incentives I can think of would be to contribute to skill building (power-hour for the young would be awesome!), housing, and gold.

Returning players are another matter and need a whole different think-tank to work on that.

ActionElly said:

Good evening and thank you for reading 🙂

I've a suggestion that would be really great for us returnees like myself and new players as well.

--Daily login rewards for subscribers--

Daily login rewards are a great incentive to get people to login, but it also gives a sense that a game is alive while also helping out the struggling new/returning player.

This is a really easy way to turn an enjoyable game into a chore. People who feel like playing will login regardless. Others will login just to get the reward, and they will grow to hate the experience (and UO) in no time at all.
I have quit otherwise good MMO's that go nuts with daily quests/rewards stuff. After awhile a realization comes - "You know there is another place where you could do the same boring thing every day, over and over... It's called a job, but they give you money there" 

Sliss said:

This is a really easy way to turn an enjoyable game into a chore. People who feel like playing will login regardless. Others will login just to get the reward, and they will grow to hate the experience (and UO) in no time at all.
I have quit otherwise good MMO's that go nuts with daily quests/rewards stuff. After awhile a realization comes - "You know there is another place where you could do the same boring thing every day, over and over... It's called a job, but they give you money there" 

@ActionElly

Talk to Allen.  We are doing the high seas bosses every night.  I can get you some pet scrolls and Soulbinders.  LEXX donated 40k Sand for all of us.

ActionElly said:

@ Tyrath If it wasn't for the most helpful community ever on Lake Superior then I wouldn't be able to get the gear and items I have now.

I'm going to guess you made a Sampire and did it all on your own? That's why you can solo all content; peerless, champ spawns, doom, etc and got your gear and PS in a month?

For me it wasn't easy to come by, I was stuck doing first level shame monsters even though I had 110 to 120 PS from my guild events from years before because of my gear, lol.

Not everyone is going to be this lucky coming back, I guess it depends on the shard's community. It's not enough to expect that from every shard though, and do you really think all new players are going to be able to solo everything in a month?

On LS they hold weekly community events so I was only able to get legendary gear for most of my characters within a month and a half. I guess I'm a major noob :P

Honestly, this isn't about the gold. I'll gladly work for everything the game offers I actually enjoy the grind. It's about all the walls I keep hitting. I'll go through a few of them.

When I came back I was extremely excited about the new taming system; it's what reeled me back in.

After getting decent gear I started the process of taming new pets. Everyone was helpful in teaching me the ropes, all is going good and then it's like well you now need powerscrolls to finish the training process.

So they said go to Atl and get them, dot dot dot. Or I can go online and buy them and some gold, needless to say my pets are all sitting in the bank half trained until I can get there in 5 years or I guess until someone tells me the most legit gold site to buy my stuff from. 😂

So, I moved on bought high seas and thought I'll craft, fish and kill pirates; sounds fun. I really hate the idea of pointing arrows down on my skills and losing them because I lost all my soulstones, but since that's how the game was originally that's what I've been doing. It really sucks and even then I still cannot fit all the skills I need in most cases.

Again, I'm to go buy everything online or from the UO store. However, I have already spent $40 and I still need to get time of legends to get in on the masteries. To get everything I need and want I'll have to spend $200 or so dollars. OR the devs could start offering us poor little beggars a few morsels, scraps if you will to us lowly peasants.

I think you missed his point, he wasn’t saying a new player could do what he did in a month, but that if a player was given the information that he has acquired in his UO lifetime instead of gold and stuffs that they would be able to earn their own gold and items much faster. Too many times you’ll see someone drop gold and gear on a Noob and they’ll play a couple of weeks/months and be gone. But if you were to drop some knowledge on them and guide them through the learning curve you will likely create another addic, errr lifetime UO fan. 

Victim_Of_Siege said:

ActionElly said:

@ Tyrath If it wasn't for the most helpful community ever on Lake Superior then I wouldn't be able to get the gear and items I have now.

I'm going to guess you made a Sampire and did it all on your own? That's why you can solo all content; peerless, champ spawns, doom, etc and got your gear and PS in a month?

For me it wasn't easy to come by, I was stuck doing first level shame monsters even though I had 110 to 120 PS from my guild events from years before because of my gear, lol.

Not everyone is going to be this lucky coming back, I guess it depends on the shard's community. It's not enough to expect that from every shard though, and do you really think all new players are going to be able to solo everything in a month?

On LS they hold weekly community events so I was only able to get legendary gear for most of my characters within a month and a half. I guess I'm a major noob :P

Honestly, this isn't about the gold. I'll gladly work for everything the game offers I actually enjoy the grind. It's about all the walls I keep hitting. I'll go through a few of them.

When I came back I was extremely excited about the new taming system; it's what reeled me back in.

After getting decent gear I started the process of taming new pets. Everyone was helpful in teaching me the ropes, all is going good and then it's like well you now need powerscrolls to finish the training process.

So they said go to Atl and get them, dot dot dot. Or I can go online and buy them and some gold, needless to say my pets are all sitting in the bank half trained until I can get there in 5 years or I guess until someone tells me the most legit gold site to buy my stuff from. 😂

So, I moved on bought high seas and thought I'll craft, fish and kill pirates; sounds fun. I really hate the idea of pointing arrows down on my skills and losing them because I lost all my soulstones, but since that's how the game was originally that's what I've been doing. It really sucks and even then I still cannot fit all the skills I need in most cases.

Again, I'm to go buy everything online or from the UO store. However, I have already spent $40 and I still need to get time of legends to get in on the masteries. To get everything I need and want I'll have to spend $200 or so dollars. OR the devs could start offering us poor little beggars a few morsels, scraps if you will to us lowly peasants.

I think you missed his point, he wasn’t saying a new player could do what he did in a month, but that if a player was given the information that he has acquired in his UO lifetime instead of gold and stuffs that they would be able to earn their own gold and items much faster. Too many times you’ll see someone drop gold and gear on a Noob and they’ll play a couple of weeks/months and be gone. But if you were to drop some knowledge on them and guide them through the learning curve you will likely create another addic, errr lifetime UO fan. 

Suggestion for Returnees and New Players, Dev's please read

Pawain said:

@ ActionElly

Talk to Allen.  We are doing the high seas bosses every night.  I can get you some pet scrolls and Soulbinders.  LEXX donated 40k Sand for all of us.

Exactly what I've been saying, everyone is helpful there I've already gave 2k worth of sand myself. 🙂

Victim_Of_Siege said:

I think you missed his point, he wasn’t saying a new player could do what he did in a month, but that if a player was given the information that he has acquired in his UO lifetime instead of gold and stuffs that they would be able to earn their own gold and items much faster. Too many times you’ll see someone drop gold and gear on a Noob and they’ll play a couple of weeks/months and be gone. But if you were to drop some knowledge on them and guide them through the learning curve you will likely create another addic, errr lifetime UO fan.

Mariah said:

Suggestion for Returnees and New Players, Dev's please read

A Summary for Returning Players

Beginning the Adventure

Ahh yeah, I read this right when I came back. It was very helpful!

Tyrath said:

  That is it exactly.  LOL I have exactly 1 sampire character and rarely use him. To put that in perspective that is 1 character out 1,449.  The characters I use the most are tamers, some flavor of mystic and necro mages.   My absolute most used character is a mystic treasure hunter. 

  Ask anyone that has killed me on Siege and they will tell you mongbat has better loot than a Tyrath 🙂  Yet I make as much or more gold as anyone else on Siege.  I wear mostly the junk quality suits on Prodo, the exception being my max luck suits that are on the high end of max luck suits...... my miner characters wear those 🙂 

  120 scrolls are nice but 115s work just fine for a tamer what you want is 230 total between taming and animal lore and that gives you very reliable control over the pet.  Scrolling pets up is a luxury not a requirement. 

  120 mystic and 120 Focus or Imbue is more important for a mystic and 120 lore and tame is for a tamer.  You can do A LOT of high end content with a 120 mystic wearing a junk loot suit.  You can do A LOT of big gold making content with a 110 mystic wearing a even junkier looted suit. 

 One small example of how to make tons of gold fast......... Farm the Fairy Dragon/Wyvern Spawn in the abyss.  A 110 mystic does very well there with the wyvern renowned being the only real challenge and it helps to have Spellweaving and a circle to drop WOD on it to avoid the hovering spam healing.  A couple days of farming there and  you have enough gold to buy yer 120 tame and lore 🙂  A week or so and you have the gold to buy yer tame 3 primer. Maybe much sooner if the RNG does not hate you and you get a few tinkers legs drops.

  I am totally excluding EM event item drops and selling them. Talk about EASY Big Gold.  Not even multi boxing (Cheating) you have a reasonable chance of getting a drop worth A LOT of mils. 

  You are fixated on 5 years. I assume that is how long until you can get shard shields.  Yep they are nice, nope they are not required to be successful.  If you feel like you have to have crap from atlantic there are plenty of us with shields that will take  yer gold on the home shard and buy what you want with our gold on atl and bring it back for you.  Most of us don't even charge you anything......... Other than what your stuff being brought back cost.

  Seems to   me you are too focused on what you can't do or at least think you can't do, instead of everything you can do.  Daily, Weekly or Monthly freebies is not going to change that. 

ActionElly said:

Exactly what I've been saying, everyone is helpful there I've already gave 2k worth of sand myself. 🙂

Great you can get a bag of ten soulbinders every time you need them.  Just ask.  More Scalis from EQ tonight.  Ill be at a Wedding.

Thanks 🙂

Pawain said:

ActionElly said:

Exactly what I've been saying, everyone is helpful there I've already gave 2k worth of sand myself. 🙂

Great you can get a bag of ten soulbinders every time you need them.  Just ask.  More Scalis from EQ tonight.  Ill be at a Wedding.

Send 400 over to Lake Austin for me 🙂  I am about out and really not looking forward to mining the sand to make another 400 LOL.

ActionElly said:

Good evening and thank you for reading 🙂

I've a suggestion that would be really great for us returnees like myself and new players as well.

--Daily login rewards for subscribers--

Daily login rewards are a great incentive to get people to login, but it also gives a sense that a game is alive while also helping out the struggling new/returning player.

As for UO obviously people pay their accounts monthly to get their veteran rewards and keep their houses. However, these rewards wouldn't be directed towards them nor hurt the vet reward system in anyway since the items would be temporary. They could have the option to not take the reward or trash them for points.

The kind of rewards and time frames could be random each calendar month with the best reward on the 30th day a player logs in consecutively.

Examples:

1. Player logs in 7 days in a row and receives a temporary soul stone fragment (2 uses)

2. Login 2 weeks - commodity deed box (3 to 5 uses)

3. 3 weeks - random dye (1 use) or vanity pet from store (3 days; these temp pets could potentially encourage players to buy the permanent item)

4. Gold coin worth 2 million or so (RNG on the amount of the gold coin)

5. 4 weeks - Shard visitor token (allows the player to visit any shard) good for a round trip there and back. Once the player chooses a shard to visit they would go with what's in their pack and have a time limit of an hour before it would bring them back to their original shard.

Player's could also receive potions that give bonus benefits like luck increase for one character,  or skill gain increase for 30 minutes.

I'm sure a lot of you could come up with even more ideas 🙂

Anyway, I hope we could see this implemented at some point in the near future.

Those are great ideas! No need to name them all, but daily rewards deffo make me login to games I wouldnt login to. Would be fun in UO.

Like you earn some random name points with daily quests and after hitting enough points you can buy some cool stuff. Or just like you said a plain login bonus, better than nothing.

I am personally more a fan of daily quests like "kill 20 zombies in haven", "do a t-map", "fish 10 fish", "do a trade quest", "go to dungeon XYZ", etc. as they promote people playing the game over just logging in and out.

Vet rewards are of course a whole different thing, as they dont promote any game activity at all apart from paying accounts on some ea website.

I just feel you are facing a steep uphill battle with the current UO demographics. Easier to just stick to some other game that already provides the fun you are looking for.

However, if Broadsword added that they would prolly add things like "kill cora" to it that are only accessible to like 5% of the players - as usual...

personally i would like to see things of actual value and use be added as some sort of staple in the game for example the bandage belts and spell damage spellbooks that were given out i believe in last years halloween event rather than a bunch of silly deco stuff like throwing a pumpkin at someones head ONLY if they have a throwing pumpkin in their pack as well aka the snowpiles from like what 15 years ago? if not more

Yeah, I hope they at least bring back the Treasure of Khaldun at some point since those items were really good. I missed out on all that stuff too.

I would like to bring up something. Basically my opinion of something. Playing UO from 97 to 05 on Baja. Before I use to be in a pvp guild and do spawns all the time. I admit I sucked at PvP, but was use to playing Tamer mage template. I started to get hang of pvp, but with to much going on in game especially larger guilds taking over and wanted to devote more to real life I left. We came back last march and had to stop playing for a few months, but came back in July non stop. The people we where playing with keep leaving. The problem is we never did get to level our characters up to 120's and stat scrolls. We can do spawns just 2 of us, but every time we have a new few players bring back pking and kill us every time, last time even taking my pads of cu side. The pk group has crap loads of money and frankly don't care. The point is we cant get those scrolls and level to 120 like everyone else and at least make the gameplay fair, and we cant do doom and we cant do some of the harder bosses without a group. I refuse to pay a lot of RL money on UO when we should be able to get those items free. So imagine any new player coming in this game with 1000 gold or whatever and not have anything. The new player will not be able to get those 120 scrolls or artifacts to at last even up gameplay unless they can find a good group to help them and good luck with that on Baja and some of the shards, because your basically on your own. Sad to say I feel like leaving again.  The developers should at least consider that with high level bosses and pvp they need to make the scrolls available to everyone. Basically I just needed to get some 120's and a level 3 taming mastery book, because I don't have the 20 million.  I haven't been able to even spawn once since July.

110s & 105s are now available in treasure chests, so there is a crack in the wall.

But Nothing as essential as powerscrolls should be only available through one play style (PVP champ spawner).

Conspiracy theory: if 120 were available in more places (non fel) what would the web sites sell?

Yeah, and I know there's scroll binders as well.

• Powerscrolls (Felucca Only, All packages except Artisan, Cache and above)
  • Skill is based on package and level is based on chest quality up to +10

Tim said:

110s & 105s are now available in treasure chests, so there is a crack in the wall.

But Nothing as essential as powerscrolls should be only available through one play style (PVP champ spawner).

Conspiracy theory: if 120 were available in more places (non fel) what would the web sites sell?

What website? Player ran sites? Many games like wow dont let you sell stuff for RL money unless its whole accounts. Unless its through them. Besides the rares and event items are worth more, but how can they expect new players and returning players to be able to fight bosses with just 100 skill level. The treasure maps we did about 60 and got 5 110s and rest was 105s. The binders ask a ridiculous amount of scrolls to be able to level up to 120 you would need 960 level 5 scrolls.

I read it and I support items being in only fel. The problem I have is constantly being over ran by the same 3 with all 120s and artifacts and since returning I cant get those items. When you got 3 all 120s ganking up someone who is just trying to get the scrolls and mastery book to level up to everyone else. If they dont want to make it easier for everyone to level up to 120 without paying RL money then make all the bosses easier for everyone else to kill it.