Atlantic Roleplay Community Boards

[Azreal Lu`Rael]

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Been studying game design and programming for a little while now and during the course I ran across a UO emulation community. After reading about the amazing things people had created on their servers I thought it might be fun to program one of my own to refine my programming and add a project to my portfolio. The last few days I have been brainstorming over how I want to program the server and what features to implement. Thus far this is what I have come up with and I basically want to know what you all think of it and of course things I can add to it.

1. Remove all facets but felluca and revert it back into a lush area.
2. Remove all neons and artifacts and go back to the older system of Vanquishing weapons and the like. (Think UO:R era)
3. Keep house customization.
4. Introduce a new chat system (Guild, Alliance, Faction, etc.)
5. Introduce player government systems such as being able to create towns, appoint mayors and respective officials, apply taxation on city vendors, etc.
6. Introduce a system which allows you to rent out sections of your home or land.
7. Add new playable races (Undead, Drow, Orc, etc)
8. Increase the amount of quests and quest givers.
9. Introduce a conquest system which will allow territory to be captured and controlled.
10. Guilds which own land perhaps could spawn their own killable npc guards in areas under their control.
11. Introduce seige warfare. Cannons and like weapons will be able to bring down walls and destroy buildings by giving structures "health points".
12. Expand on the crafting system by adding mines as well as new weapons and equipment which can be customized.
13. Expand on guild controls and functions such as guild equipment "pools", rank system, guild banks, guild auctioners which buy and sell items the GL sets, guild specific equipment, penalty systems, etc.
14. Increase skill gains so training is a little faster.
15. Introduce a arena with a ranking system and unique titles.

These are all just ideas I have had so far, not all of these things I'm sure will make it in as well. Anything you would love to see put in the game or removed? Suggestions and thoughts? Every bit helps.

[Kinn]

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Out of curiosity, are you hoping people will actually play this (ie, will you publish it out as a freeshard you'd like to see people use)? Or is this more of a personal project thing just to see what you can do?

I only ask because if you look at all the popular freeshards out there--only one or two of the fel-only rulesets have a strong population. And if you actually VISIT one of those shards, they only do well with a very focused segment of player (hardcore pvpers). They have little economy, underwhelming pvm participation and next to zero RP. At least the two I tried out were that way, maybe there are more balanced fel-only shards out there. *shrug*

Contrast that with the trammel-option freeshards. Some of them have more people on at any given time than Atlantic does at most hours. The most popular strict-RP freeshard can probably match Atlantic during all but peak hours. And those guys (the Grimmwold folks) have done some amazing custom stuff and have fostered a fabulous community.

The Tram split happened for a reason---if you want people to play your freeshard I'd advise you to reconsider the fel-only ruleset. Otherwise, if it's just a project for your own personal challenge---then go for it! The rest of your ideas sound awesome!

Another idea to consider: I've always thought it would be cool for a freeshard to only allow you to create one character, but perhaps give you 100 more skill points on the cap. It would let you created a deeper character, but would keep everyone from having every "type" of character out there. People would be a bit more "unique" that way and dedicated crafters/gatherers could really shine. Also, to foster a more robust and player-driven economy I'd keep NPCs from selling anything that a crafter can make. You want a chair---find a carpenter to make it, want a sword---make friends with a blacksmith, etc.

[Cear Dallben ZOG]

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sup man. im a game design student too. ill just say if you program in C#, this i a lot of fun.
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[Azreal Lu`Rael]

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Aye, originally I was learning C++ but decided to take C# out for a spin as I would rather focus more time on my projects then on the code itself. As far as whether I would actually open this as a freeshard, I'm not sure. At first I thought it might be neat but in reality I don't know if I would have the time to monitor the server as much as would be required so this is mostly just for my own amusement. If the coding went extremely well and I was able to get some custom art work in I might open it up but this is more for just actually programming it then anything else.

I also like your idea for the skill cap raise and npc vendors, something I will certainly consider while I am working on this as both in theory could be good additions. Thanks for the input! Your thoughts on the regions world rules are valid as well, a true fel rule set may not be the most popular though I am thinking of a way to maybe blend the two together as a hybrid set but I'm not 100% sure how I want to go about that. This will end up being one of those things I will most likely debate with myself back and forth on for sometime.

[TayM'real]

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that should be fun - i messed around with RunUO stuff for a while
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To kill a non-believer tis not murder, tis the path to enlightenment...

[Edda]

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I played a free shard for a bit. It was german. The people were nice...................... I think. Who knows, they were sprechen deutsch and I only took 5 years of it in high school and remembered 2 words. I made one friend. He spoke English.

[Jeren Yendorin]

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To be honest I always wondered why the roleplay Community here never migrated to a freeshard set-up? Your ideas would enhance many of the things we just write or emote ingame come to life. I guess it would srew up the title of the Community a bit if it were to happen! lol

[Jessie]

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Not being able to trust the person running the shard, or the people working as administrators to be completely neutral. Favoritism, unfair treatment [enhanced items for people who kiss admin ass, harsher punishments than normal for those who don't]. These were the most common issues on the freeshards I've been part of. Production shards are at least reliably constant and fair, if lacking in custom content and neat little roleplay-conducive game mechanics.

[Edda]

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Well, the custom content is nice.. but I quit playing on my freeshard and came back to regular ol' Atlantic, because they didn't update expansions.. They seemed to have made it to SE and just stopped. We wanted to try ML..

[TayM'real]

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