Atlantic Roleplay Community Boards

[Cal Hurst]

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http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/uo/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=7726329&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=31&fpart=1

Gist: All armor made with the EXCEPTIONAL tag should in turn be made Mage Armor. This will break the mold of everyone walking around in leather armor, and will also make more than just leather armor available for purchasing. For instance, bone armor would become popular and widely crafted once again. Chainmail, ringmail, platemail. All of it would be widely available
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[Mairsil]

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I wont deny that this could potentially be a good step in the right direction, but I don't see it as being a magic fix either.

1) The fact that people don't have to wear leather is one thing, but that doesn't change the fact that good runic hammers are way more expensive than good runic kits for the same results.

Alot of people can't afford Val hammers. Barbed runics on the other hand, two mil isnt hard to come by.

2) I have to agree with a point I saw in a breif glance *and if it was disputed sorry I didn't see it at the time*:

Mages should not be wearing metal. Nor should they be wearing studded leather.

From an rp perspective I have a harder time justifing mages wearing plate than I do warriors wearing leather. A warrior can wear leather to sacrifice protection for mobility.

A mage can sacrifice movement and casting ability for...added protection they could of gained with magic?

Not trying to shoot down your idea, just pointing out some obvious problems that come to mind.
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"You see I can not be forsaken, because I'm not the only one. We walk amongst you, beating, r#ping, must we hide from everyone?" - Jon Davis

[Mairsil]

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Because I don't want to come off as a prick, I thought I'd try and think of a counter proposal - or an addendum, to reach the same results.

The first idea that comes to mind is the following:


*Drop the resists on leather armor

- Now, it may seem harsh, but that's the way that uo was created originally. Back in the day you didn't get the metal dex penalty, but it didn't protect you as well. I know we've come a long way since then and we can't jsut revert completely, but it still makes alot of sense. Leather should not protect you as well as metal does.

So, its just an idea, but for the hell of it I'm throwing it out there to see what people think. Drop resists on leather.

If you want great mods and meddable armor? Great, wear leather. Just know that you arent going to be 70/85/70/85/70 with 60 dci.

If you want to be more protected against magics or sword blows with some good mods so that you can keep on fighting but are more so forced to consider strategy in the way you fight - Great. Just know that you don't have unlimitted mana that regenerates itself before you can use it all in the first place.

Just a thought, throw me feedback.
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"You see I can not be forsaken, because I'm not the only one. We walk amongst you, beating, r#ping, must we hide from everyone?" - Jon Davis

[Cal Hurst]

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The point I'm making is that you can already make Samurai Armor with Mage Armor on it. And while I would love if things went back to the way they did, or for some complete overhaul, I'm being realistic. None of that will happen.

Armor no longer gives dex loss, or anything of that nature. The idea that heavy plate offers more protection, and leather armor offers more mobility, was thrown out the window entirely with AoS. I gave up on hanging on to that idea, as it will -never- come back.

As it stands now, 90% of the people wear leather armor. I would love to see a bit more diversity. Some bone armor here. Some DRAGON PLATE! here. Some regular platemail here. Studded leather there. But with the way things are now, it's either val runic samurai plate, or leather armor. Nothing else.
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[Mairsil]

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I'm all for diversity, but that doesn't address either of my points.

And diversity at what cost? We devirsified our colors, awesome. Now half of the new role players we get are covered in neon.
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"You see I can not be forsaken, because I'm not the only one. We walk amongst you, beating, r#ping, must we hide from everyone?" - Jon Davis

[Cal Hurst]

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Well first off, just because hammers are expensive, doesn't mean that this still isn't valuable. The standard RPer, for example, might just want some cool looking bone armor. Then he can just have a tailor craft it up, no runics, and bam. Bone Armor, that he can use while medding.


And this isn't going to be NEARLY as bad as adding ZOMG NEONS to our color tray (and I hope to god that goes away). I know quite a few roleplayers who would be happy that they could craft runic bone armor, without wasting their money.


As far as mages wearing metal.... why not? I cannot think of one good reason why mages can't be in full plate. And we can all agree that fullplate SHOULD hinder movement... but honestly, you're going to be running around just as fast with leather on as you do in fullplate. And there's no dex penalty.

The strength requirement of full plate, however, is rather high. And most mages, in all likelyhood, won't wear things that require 85+ strength (IE: tunic/leggings).

Fact is, there's already mages running around in platemail. There has been for a long time. And there always will be.
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[Mairsil]

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Well, I never said I entirely disagreed with you, I just saw problems with it and that it wouldn't solve all of the problems at hand with leather and metal armor.

This does hold potential, yes.

In terms of cool looking bone armor - yes that would be great. But if it isn't going to be runic it isn't going to be all that great anyways and not being meddable will really have little meaning. You can get crap meddable bone armor now without too much trouble. But yes it would be convenient to be able to craft.

Mages in metal:

Yes we all are going to run at the same speed, con has always been the factor there and always will be. And you are correct, the dex penalty isn't coming back. But whether intentional or not, the ideal that mages can't wear plate is still intact.

Yes mages have always worn metal, but there is a difference between wearing a peice or two (i.e. fey leggings) and being Barron Von Tinman the Wizzard.

I have a hard time letting go of what rp ideals they haven't entirely destroyed.


I would love to see people wearing things other than leather, trust me. I'd love to see warriors in metal, mages in leather, and whoever wearing combos. I'm just proposing maybe readjusting the plan to get to that point.

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Edit:

Perhaps I should of come up with a better example. What comes to mind now is quivers.

Most of the community uses quivers now, and most do it entirely for pvp reasons. I'll admit I use one on a character that isn't an archer, and its all well and good we come up with rp excuses to do it - but the fact is that its a small sacrifice to rp that is now the norm. Metal armor on a mage is no different, except its a much more obvious injustice. I wouldn't argue this if I didn't feel that our community was full of quality role play, I just hate to see it threatened in any small way.
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"You see I can not be forsaken, because I'm not the only one. We walk amongst you, beating, r#ping, must we hide from everyone?" - Jon Davis

[Cal Hurst]

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I agree with your plan, of dropping resists on leather armor. That would be perfect. And I would put that plan out with graphs and pie charts if all I had to appeal to was our roleplay community. Unfortunately, I have to draw up a plan that appeals to "LEGOLEZZ DA ELF" and "Meaty Fingers" the crafter.

It seems that if I was going to get a plan across, this was going to be the best shot.
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[Darrien Church]

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Now, I'm going to say I role-played extensively on Europa.

That being said, while I know it won't/can't be a part of Role-play on Atlantic that we use only GM crafted items I can tell you that from experience and comparing the two there is DRASTICALLY more effort put into role-play in a place or a time (pre-AOS, as some of you older Atlantians will agree) where for the most part items, weapons, armor and gold were not a determining factor in how well a guild faired.

Now, in terms of the use of plate or bone ect...

Even if it no longer matters, we are role-players, having a better suit, or having a more diverse costume for aesthetic purposes should be secondary to our attempt to have as close to full immersion as possible.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that we need to take into account as much realism as the high-fantasy setting of our community allows when deciding what we wear, how we role-play, and what we know.

When we start to have some sort of a pvp-community style arms race to see who can get the best equipped what we do in essence is discourage in some cases conflict role-play between individual guilds, simply because some of our smaller guilds cannot invest as much IRL money into the game.

The best armor, the best template and the better items should always be secondary to the character. If you role-play a librarian but your warrior...add inscription in there. Wanna be a poet or a song-writer but your not a tamer? Throw in barding anyway! Role-play a bum...ever think of becoming a GM begging?

Remember, when role-playing it's not winning that's important, it's creating the BEST role-play situation and plot-lines possible. I've always felt a lot of the combat mods we have been thrown into over the years via new game-mechanics and a shift by the devs for many years to cater only to the pvp community and not role-players, crafters, casual players has really had terribly negative effects on the community.

Context over content, quantity or quality for role-players.

[Mairsil]

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Aye. Woe to the day that a role playing game catered to role playing.


But true enough.
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"You see I can not be forsaken, because I'm not the only one. We walk amongst you, beating, r#ping, must we hide from everyone?" - Jon Davis

[Cal Hurst]

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[Darrien Church]

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The arms race thing I'm not concerned about starting now, it started years ago, when gear became paramount in winning a fight.

In terms of the "this is role-play" speech, that's exactly my point, this is role-play and we need to account for that when selecting a wardrobe. Given the setting, time period and nature of Ultima-Online, and the sort of community have a mage in full plate-armor would just look silly.

Role-Play has never been about a free-for-all with the laws of physics, gravity and commonly accepted (mostly D&D lore and ideas) truths.

Just because the mechanics of the game change, why would something that has been the commonly accepted role-play norm for ten years (such as mages don't usually wear plate-mail) change?

[Cal Hurst]

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[Kaelthir]

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I would love it so much if Vaen's change went in. I hate having to carry around RP gear and good gear all the time, it pisses me off having to stop off at my house and drop off my RP bag all the time if I want to do anything. As well, it makes IC hunting harder. Or IC PvP. Do you people know how hard it is to get your hands on a decent mage armour bone helm? It'd also be nice to see unused armour be useful, such as dragonscale. It -looks- badass, but why go to the insane effort of making it? Same with bone arms, I've seen some very classy uses for the armour which just isn't practical for RP use.

Making gear models more accessable will make roleplayers look BETTER, not worse. I don't see how having more options would turn new RPers into neon blobs, look at how people are dressing now. frack, just look at how many mages wear quivers! Let's face it, nobody wants to carry around 100 stones worth of extra crap on them. It would also open up opportunities for people to look different. Most people are stuck wearing robes because their armour looks retarded, which is also probably why 90% of people wear leather armour-- you can dye it and make it not look retarded.

[Darrien Church]

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