"Pangaea 2" progress

[Iktomi]

Just an update to everyone regarding progress on the RunUO project.

We are in the process of reviewing the RunUO core and seeing what things are needed to make it more closely resemble the core things on Pangaea. Likewise, we're also making an assessment to see whether such a project is feasible (and under what timeline).

If we do go ahead, we will try and stay true to many of the core factors of Pangaea, for example classes/religions/roleplaying/PvP, etc.

That said, there are also some core changes that we're considering such as:
- Possible consolidation of some classes
- Decoupling religious characters from mandatory guilds
- Creating a balanced religion system (i.e. where any character can potentially have access to any rite)
- Does the heightened system as it currently stand make sense?

As things progress and we get more detailed ideas, we'll be sure to also ask for player input.

Just as an additional note, we're also looking at some more administrative things such as clearer division of responsibilities, to hopefully resolve some of the issues that we had from a GMing perspective since Boris left.

[Tyrion]

This looks great. Thanks for sharing!

[Ert]

I believe the focus on the class system is good, and we shouldnt worry about heigten untill later. We can discuss it later, but getting the basics down sounds the most important. Also +1 for rethinking some classes.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

I think the current heighten system does not make sense it widens the gap between veterans and new players by quite a bit, whether is a real gap or perceived (ie if that 5% makes a huge different or not).

[Bella Pious]

It makes big difference in some cases : try heal Dragon without 115 vet/Animal Lore, and try taming Ancient with 110 taming/animal lore.

What exactly is the problem with the system? It is opened to everyone. If you want "no gap" , why not ask for character wipe?

If you want to talk about losing the time and effort some of us have already put into training, then let it be fair. I think what Iktomi suggested about limited character transfer works best. It will bring down population of the existing-class, such as tinker and alchem, but we have a fair choice as far as what we keep/lose in terms of the time we put into our training.

It is fine if the staff wants to change heighten requirement such as timer, but it makes no sense to sacrifice what was already been done and achieved. Plus if we have limited character transfer, most of us would be busy training other characters than having time for heighten.

[Iktomi]

We would like to have some sort of "heightened"-type system available at launch, so that people who transfer over heightened characters haven't lost all that work. Alternatively, we could transfer over some sort of credit token, so that when we do implement some sort of endgame system, heightened players from POL could immediately benefit from the work they've already done.

[Ert]

My problem with character transfer is this: ive trained 3 characters a ton (i imagine some have more), if i could not take all of them i would have to chose. This would be a very hard choice for me, if we are starting fresh i believe my own mind would have an easyer time accepting all of them gone.
Yes it sucks that all that time would be gone and some are going to be upset over that, i understand that. But without the heigten system a "fully trained" character wouldnt mean much in the first place.
At the same time i would like to see a change in how grindy it is to train some skills meaning those that lose their fully trained charcters would have an easyer time training them back up to where they want them to be, as well as making it easyer for newbs to start -playing the game-
Im sure many would be ok with training their characters again if it was easyer than it is now.

[Cirius Do'Brim]

All the best with the RunUO project. Otherwise my offer still stands on the current core.

If shit hits the fan (which is my guess), I'll be back again in a few months.

[Glarundis]

That said, there are also some core changes that we're considering such as:
- Possible consolidation of some classes
- Decoupling religious characters from mandatory guilds
- Creating a balanced religion system (i.e. where any character can potentially have access to any rite)
- Does the heightened system as it currently stand make sense?

-while we should definately have a class system, i think we should perhaps have some new classes/delete some of the existing ones and definately not be afraid of changing the skills inside each class if we see fit.

-i don't know about that

-i don't know about that either, i don't see why a knight/ranger (or whatever we'll have in this new shard, if it comes to be) should have access to the best rites...those classes are supposed to have something else that is good enough to make up for not having all the rites

-the heightened system will make sense if skills work the same way, like bella said, you need 115 vet to heal those harder dragons. the way i'd want it to work though, would be without heighten system at all, and skills would be even harder to train than they are now (yes, harder!) but they'd also be substantially better. so you KNEW FOR A FACT that if you ever ever reach 100, it will be kickass (right now, you can reach 100 fairly well, but it is still crap). very few ppl would have gm skills, if any at all. it seems (imo) much better than having tons of players with gm skills and then a few that bothered to max all the other chars and enter this heighten system and have skills that once were gm mean shit now (it's either that, or players are paranoid about this and 100 is as good nowadays as it was years ago before the heighten system)

-change mechanics that are stupid and create ways so that the classes are actually used to do what they're supposed to do. i'd expect to see thieves stealing instead of lockpicking, i'd expect to see assassins with a fully redesigned stealth/hiding/backstab system so they can be assassins instead of fencers with 100 poisoning. archers/rangers using archery in pvp instead of fencing..etc etc etc

[Arden Darkfall]

I disagree with limited character transfers.

Those class numbers will go down one way or another. Most are inactive or left the shard aeons ago. In my opinion, forcing people to lose characters is just another issue to demotivate them to play again after this is done.

I've trained one ancient character, 2 nearly legendary ones, a 4th well trained character with a collection of the hardest skills in this game and a 5th which ironically is the one with the most online time in my account. I like each one of them. I've a different set of mind when playing each, and they're the reason I still play >anything< at all. When I stopped playing, I didn't miss the game, I didn't miss the shard, I missed my characters.

I realize many people have time / play 50 different games, so character creation is basic, they've done it hundreds of times and don't even remember half of their characters' names, it's only a bunch of pixels to get their screen centered for them. I also realize most Pang players have one main character which they play extensively and a bunch of support ones that they do not care that much about. For me, this is simply not the case. You can resume my game playing time in the last 10 years to UO, and even when the shard was out, when I gave a try to other shards, it wasn't the same because my characters weren't there.

So foolish romanticism aside, why not use the restoration character system instead? Have one free transfer for those that only care about one, but give the option to restore more characters and sponsor the shard. Win/Win, everybody happy.