minimalist default world and UO's ecology

[One Sick Puppy]

I wonder if we could all agree that a certain, significant, percentage of Britannia's default urban zones are ABSOLUTELY USELESS - even for aesthetic value.

I say this because I remember even when I left OSI's UO, 3 years after UO was released, there was still many urban areas that were useless.

So, the thought occurs to me that a default world for player run shards (that will certainly have far less players than OSI) should have much less urban area - perhaps even just one town - and let the players (and/or admins) build towns as needed based on a standard of overpopulation.

One of the natural benefits would be that the world would feel much less empty for newbies and regulars alike, in the case of a server only attracting a limited number of players. I remember logging into shards that apparently have hundreds of players, but barely even seeing a couple of them and thus having much difficulty "getting into the game".

Hell, one could even make a default world without any towns or with just a small village like Paws that carried ONLY items not found in nature or able to be produced by players.

Personally, I think it would be really neat to have a world where players had to, at least, find their own Mandrake and Nightshade. Those who played Ultima 4 should understand how this affected the game, beneficially.

As great a goal as emulating OSI UO is, OSI had some very serious and elementary flaws in its ecological engineering, particularly with respect to vendors stocking items that were readily available in nature or that could be manufactured by players. I think it would be great if, on top of simply making a new emulator, that the inherent imperfections in UO's ecosystem and free market be fixed, as well.

For example: simply removing or limiting food for purchase would, theoritically, increase the value of the baking and other food-related skills. That is, of course, if food has any effect on player health (I can't remember if it ever did or not).
Make the world spawn some apples and fruit, naturally.
... and if one wanted to make the world a bit more complex, have some NPC's that went out to hunt, fish, etc. and could be mugged thus allowing for more benign evil activities.

It just seems to me that there are a many simple things that could have been done to improve the system itself, yet OSI chose to focus on other things that might have resulted naturally had them more perfected the ecosystem and market.

As a largely single-player game (which RunUO has the great potential to accomodate and UO is, naturally, to a certain extent) making tedious endeavors more profitable and worthwhile would help reduce the inherent need that UO has for player-interaction to provide entertainment value. The effect, theoretically, would be that many more players would occupy themselves in more secular activities than what UO naturally accomodates for, at present.

bla bla bla bla bla... I'm sure most of these ideas are not new, but I think they are still important, if not more so, especially now that RunUO is allowing the players more control over the game itself. Sorry about the verbal diahrea... if you made it this far.

[dubious_advocate]

The original UO, the first few months, had a "true" ecology. Monsters & animals could be hunted out, they hunted each other, and they respawned based on a global table of resources or "energy". Regs were sold but were rare and meant to be gathered in the wild.

It was a wonderful idea and would have worked except that more people showed up to play than the devs had anticipated, there was never anything to kill, and the players turned on each other.

This idea would work pretty well on player run shards, but GMs would have to make sure they encourage enough crafters & gatherers to show up, or at least intervene now and then.

I started UO in the 1997 beta - I saw it all except for the last year and a half...

[David]

I very much agree with what I think you are saying... I suppose I am somewhat of a rarity here as I have never played on OSI. My UO experiance is limited to several player-run shards. Some Sphere and some POL--of the two, I like POL far more.

When I play, I am looking for social interaction more than adventure. I could be perfectly happy never going into a dungon, in fact I can not think of many times I did other than helping with a rescue of some sort. A stable economy and player craftsmen are very important to me. I do plan to have all the basic reagents harvestable, perhaps for sale as well, but not in large quanitity.

I have noticed in the vendor scripts submitted so far, that OSI prices on goods seems way more than huge. What was it... 30 something gold for an arrow? Does that seem a tad high to anyone else?