The Potential of Militias

[AreYouKidden]

Like many I was incredibly excited when I heard at the end of September, they'd be rolling out a more guild oriented consensual PvP system (Militias), which had been in development for months, with a whole pile of promises from Shane. The launch was really buggy, and lacking that development that was discussed, and now 6 weeks later, we still haven't even scratched the surface of what Militias could be. To be honest it was a poorly executed launch, where eppy has said many times he didn't have much of what was talked about even developed, nor did the system get tested to what was needed.

With that said, as the consumer, I want my experiences to all be good - and in the absence of that, one starts to theory craft. So I've put together what I've envisioned as the Militias system - it's a long read, and is obviously open for a ton of discussion, and number tweaking, but in my eyes this would be way more compelling than what we have now (and Militias will get there), are all things we've had in the past with factions (mostly), and would be a true starting off point. And besides, @Shane said he wanted ideas, so here, you've got all of mine in one place.

What is the intent of Militias?
Militias is a consensual competitive PvP playground for guilds who have a PvP focus, and/or are looking to provide small bonuses to their guild. By providing this playground, you pull top level PvP’rs off the field of Blue vs. Red, giving new players a chance to get their toes wet, without getting over run by an influx of reds.

How do we realize this intent?
In order to get players into the Militias system and off the standard field, it needs to be compelling on a number of different levels, but also needs to cater not just to the 10v10 larger scale warfare.

Proposed Vision: (more on these high level visions below)

• Seasonal leaderboards – players and guilds compete quarterly to be the best on the shard, you accrue militia bounty (guild is separate from individual), through various activities, and through killing one another. At the end of the quarter, the leaderboards are archived (both on the forums and in game – hall of heroes), so there is a past history for those who have competed. This helps to feed the egos of PvP’rs which is a big key to making PvP compelling for many – but not all.

• Guild Bounty - The guild bounty pool can be used by the guild leader – and assigned generals, in order to provide perks to the guild as a whole. This creates incentive to get new players into PvP, and for guilds in general to participate at different levels. Perks are not necessarily tied to in game perks – there will be items above and beyond these.

• Individual Bounty - The individual bounty pool can be used by each member to buy aesthetic items off the vendors, generally decoration, or clothing oriented items, nothing to provide a bonus in PvP. (willing to see small bonuses in PvP, like war horses that have meaning – please introduce mount stam and war horses would have a higher stam, or shrouds with a 2-3 AR bonus)

• Activities - Activities for both the 10 man group, and for individuals. Bounty should be able to be farmed both by capture points (for the groups who want to farm it quicker), and by killing higher end mobs (for individuals who don’t have groups to run with), and potential by crafters (based on slayer crafted items)

More Detail on the Proposed Vision Above
Seasonal Leaderboards
Leaderboards are something that are directly aimed at a PvP’rs ego. There are many who won’t care about their ranking, however creating an archive, and potentially giving statues for the guild or for the individual for winning a season, is a great way to give bragging rights, and retain a history for the shard, something that is sorely needed here. These statues would be replaced each quarter, but imagine going to the hall of hero’s and seeing yourself every day for 3 months, or seeing a plaque for your guild. Scoring would need to be determined, max points caters to who has the most game play time, but tying it to points farmed per hour in militias (min 30 hours over 3 months), would give a more valid assessment.

Guild Perks – and the guild bounty pool
There should be a number of things you can do as a guild to make Militias compelling. There could be some high end deco items that could be purchased with large amount of bounty points. Some ideas but not limited to:

• Setting a Guild Color: These are unlockable colors used for other deco items by achieving a set number of points in the guild. Standard Colors, 10k points, BOD colors, 20k, 30k, 40k, 50k, 100k (dependent on bod level), Unique colors (250k+ dependent on the rareness – PW, Blood Red, Blaze, Pure Black etc..)

• Guild Banners: Using the guild color set above, a standard deco banner that provides the main guild color plus an off color. For guilds to hang from their guild hall walls. - 100k. (variations could be provided with higher costs)

• Actual Perks: (purchased as an upfront fee – so the guild leaders can have control over how guild bounty is spent, max of 3 active perks at a time)

• Pet Rez (cost: 300 bp + (population * 10) – for 100 accounts it’d be 1300 bp) – this perk lasts 72 hours, giving the guild the benefit of resurrecting their pets for 5k + (1k * population) cap of 20k gold, as well as a 5% damage buff in PvM.

• Talisman Juju (cost: 300 bp + (population *10) – for 100 accounts it’d be 1300 bp) – this perk lasts 72 hours, giving the guild the benefit of a 10% decrease to all relic timers, at the cost of a 10% + (1% per population, capping at 100%) increase to the tribute costs, to reactivate your talisman before the temporary downtime timer ends.

• Wealth Perk (cost: 300 bp + (Population * 10) – for 100 accounts it’d be 1300 bp) – this perk lasts 72 hours, giving the guild the benefit of a 5% increase to gold dropped on mobs.

• Gatherers Perk (cost: 300 bp + (Population * 10) – for 100 accounts it’d be 1300 bp) – this perk lasts 72 hours, giving the guild the benefit of a 5% chance to harvest double the resources.

• Crafters Perk (cost: 300 bp + (Population * 10) – for 100 accounts it’d be 1300 bp) – this perk lasts 72 hours, doubling the chance for slayer crafted books & weapons, and also giving crafters in Militias the ability to gain 1 bounty per slayer item crafted.

• Militias Perk (cost: 300 bp + (Population * 10) – for 100 accounts it’d be 1300 bp) – this perk lasts 72 hours, giving the guild the benefit of receiving 1 bounty per evil monster (400 hp or more) mob killed.

 

[AreYouKidden]

Individual Perks – and their bounty pool
Using your individually gained bounty, members can purchase mainly aesthetic items only.

• Mounts: (could do different types of mounts for different prices – I won’t list them all)
  • Ethereal War Mount - horse (cost 500 bp), Ethereal War Mount – polar bear (cost 2500 bp), Ethereal War Mount - tiger (cost 5000 bp) - this item would last 7 days, and would come in the current guild color. After 7 days it’d need to be re-purchased.

• Shroud: (cost 1000 bp), this item could provide a 3 AR bonus, and would come in the guild color after 7 days it’d need to be re-purchased.

• Blessed Weapon: (cost 5000 bp), this item would cap out at +7 (power), and would come in the guild color and after 7 days it’d need to be re-purchased.

• House Deco: (varying costs 1k bp – 50k bp + additional gold) – I’d love to see some house deco item options open up, that are tied to the PvP system. Let PvP’rs be able to decorate their homes as though they are fighters. Could be shields for the walls, crossed pikes, swords, sword & shield, statues, practice targets/forms, there’s a ton of cool stuff you could actually open up to PvP’rs, also allowing them to re-sell at a profit, because right now you spend a ton of time in the PvP system, and amass no wealth for it – don’t make it easy to achieve though.

Activities:

• Town Sigils: Add 6-8 town sigils to be captured – messages would go out to all Militia players while these were uncontrolled, or if they were being captured - these would be owned for 7 days, 48 hours prior to the end of the 7 days, guilds could battle for the sigil every hour, building up points, at the end of the 7 days (48 hour battle zone), the guild with the most points on the Sigil takes control for the week. Control of a town sigil will allow players to control tax rates – increasing/decreasing the NPC vendors in the town, similar to factions. This would also allow them to use the 10 vendor rental deeds in the pre-determined vendor staging area for that town. Imagine getting your own vendors in town. The vendor cost per day would be affected by the increase or decrease in tax rates set by the guild, and would also despawn and all items go to your bank after the 7 days if your guild did not retain ownership of the sigil. You would be limited to controlling 1 Town Sigil at a time, so one guild cannot get a monopoly, if that guild were to win control on a second sigil, they would have the option of relinquishing control of their other town, to take over the new one. If they opted to not relinquish control, then the sigil would be put into another 48 hours of contestation. Taxes: Increasing the tax rate, would increase your bounty pool daily, but cost make your vendors cost more daily, and decreasing the tax rate would decrease your guild bounty pool daily, while making your vendors cost less daily.

• Overland Capture Points: Add 6-8 overland capture points, these would be in various spots like the no-cut, the no-mount orc area, basically well-known areas around the map, outside of towns, and dungeons. These would announce when they were 50% of the way to be captured, allowing some of the smaller guilds to sneak some points out of the system, if they weren’t regularly monitored by PvP guilds. Creating more points of interest for guilds to capture, and would reset every 2 hours.

• Dungeon Capture Points: Add 6-8 dungeon capture points – I’d recommend putting them around champ spawns, to create more chance for conflict. These points would give no warning to those in Militias they were being captured, but would hopefully be caught through patrolling & guilds doing the champs/dungeons. These would reset every 1 hours, and be another place where smaller guilds could sneak out some points.

• Mob Farming: Once you’ve activated the Militia perk – you are able to farm 1 bounty per mob, based on killing evil mobs only (400 hp+), I’d potentially want to see a daily cap in here of 750 points per day. However I’d be open to suggestion. (750 pts * 3 days = 2250 points farmed less the cost to activate, which for guilds of 100 pop or larger, it’s 1300 to activate – smaller guilds benefit)

• Crafter Farming: Once you’ve activated the crafter perk – you are able to craft slayers at an increased rate, but will also gain 1 bounty per slayer item crafted. I’d potentially want to see a daily cap in here of 750 points per day. However I’d be open to suggestion. (750 pts * 3 days = 2250 points farmed less the cost to activate, which for guilds of 100 pop or larger, it’s 1300 to activate – smaller guilds benefit)

Hopes & Dreams
Quality of Life
The ability to set yourself active or unactive at the guild gump - so you can allow others to take active part in the 10 man group, while retaining any points you may have gained in the system. With the 10 man limit we can't all play all the time, and there needs to be a limit to create a more even playing field.

Townships
I’ve heard of township systems on other shards, where you buy a township stone, and it allows you to blanket an area with an aura of sorts, where you could actually purchase town NPC’s (bankers, healers, tailors, mage shops, guards), control guard zones (attack blues on sight, attack criminals on sight), control recalling/gating in/out of an area, essentially create a player run town, it has extremely high costs for all of the features, and are all individually additive, so you could customize the experience of your town but it'd require a combined guild effort. I’d love to see this sort of system in conjunction with Militias, so that you had to farm bounty & gold, in order to achieve different stages in townships, that'd sure make Militias compelling to play.

 

[girana]

the main problem with militias is the stupid cap.

ė

 

[AreYouKidden]

I'd be shocked if that was the actual consensus Girana.

 

[TrustyPatchez]

Looks like you have put a lot of thought into this, we'll done. Excited to see if anything comes from it. My only comment is that the militia was on test for about a month so it was able to be tested a bit. My guild tried it out a few times but being such an underdeveloped system our main concerns pretty much started and stopped with the ability to remove militia members that became inactive. This was not addressed when it became live so for the first few weeks we were stuck at something like 7/10 at all times lol

 

[AreYouKidden]

Thanks Trusty - and yes thus far it's definitely been under-developed, I'm looking forward to seeing what else they do with it, to make it worthwhile to play.

 

[Elizabeth Gold]

Ok I'm going to venture into dangerous waters here as a non-pvp player in a vocal pvp environment but i feel there are some design flaws with militia (and the old factions) that are more important than the content that militia's could potentially offer:

• There is a reason why people avoid PVP activities/playstyles yet now they are inclined to participate in it, therwise they are missing out on benefits/perks/utilities. This is exactly what EQMS offered and why Minax was so popular, benefits without having to deal with the PVP and pay some kind of fee to keep their PVP core doing it for them. I understand the intend to give the existing PVPer/groups more activity/objectives but it will NOT encourage non-pvpers to participate in the long run. There will always be a few dominating guilds which will discourage others to enter the scene. As an individual, it's easier to join one of the existing groups rather than making an effort to find 10 or more similar minded people without ties to them, and create a new militia that can challange them.
• A shitload of development effort is being put into a PVP system and militia that keeps demanding more and more development time to keep it balanced / optimized / exploitfree. Just look at the change logs, wands this, horns that, limit this, remove that. It's a never ending time sink. Worst of all, after all this effort, there isnt much to show is there? Just like AreYouKidding said in his opening statement.
• Limiting group PVP isn't going to work in an MMO game. For something to work like that you need a controled environment. CTF is one good example but how is that working out (I honestly don't know, this is a genuine question)? One of the most succesfull MMOs tried to solve that by making 'battlegrounds'. Despite having MILLIONS of subscribtions, they had to revert to server-merged sollutions to gather sufficient participants to make it work.
• Last but not least, I don't believe UO is the right game for group PVP. The only skill it takes is coordination of pressing the same macro at once. EQMS has proven that over and over again: "E-bolt nearest target, every noob can do that". There is no resource management involved, no role differentiation, no environmental awareness and to be brutally honest: no skill (compared to solo/small gang pvp). If you want group PVP, go play Overwatch or something.

 

[AreYouKidden]

So the gist is that group PvP should not exist and we should pack up and go play Overwatch?

The whole point of Militias was to limit the numbers of one guild dominating everything, if you remove consensual group PvP, you are left with groups of PvP'rs controlling all the PvM content (which was what EQMS did). You are left with roving guilds of PK's, groups of many reds running together, slaughtering the innocent and running them off the share. I understand your sentiment, but when the world is looking grim, because there is a horrible over population of reds, what will then be the suggestion to fix it? Stiffer punishment for reds? Turn them all into PvM'rs?

 

[girana]

eqms never controlled PvM content

 

[AreYouKidden]

It's funny though, when they were here, they were the only ones I ever saw at champs, and they didn't let others do them with them, to the point in the end that they actually hosted a week of champ runs for the server, to try to hide the fact they were very toxic to the server, and build up good rapport with people.

Anyways - the point of the post was to discuss Militias, so no point in the back and forth on EQMS. Elizabeth's post had some great insights, I just don't know they really hit the mark for me. Curious to know how others feel about the current state of Militias, what they'd like to see in a system? Is it all much to do about nothing, and people are content with how things are?

 

[Ace Mason]

I complained about the lack of an ability to control who is in militias, and having a way for leadership to remove inactive players of the fly to even up fights. I was nearly chastised in Discord about it, and even had Shane privately message me about it. This still hasn't been fixed, and has lead to stale/no group pvp on the server. The illusions of grandure in Staff's mind about what militias could be is great, but without the development and testing we are set for some slow times ahead. I get not wanting to overload the system with features right off the bat, but give us some core functionality and some perks to get started with.

 

[AreYouKidden]

but removing players from Militias isn't the answer anyways, because we build up points, and those go into the guild pool - if you remove someone you've entirely negated their efforts. There needs to be an active/inactive flag, that allows you to retain those points, while not being on the active Militia roster, and a means for the leader(s) of a guild to toggle that flag if someone is offline.

But overall - if the system doesn't become more compelling soon, no one is going to bother with it at all, and the first perk we finally got, from my own guilds perspective, 170 pts to rez a pet, you can gain 300 pts from capturing a point every 30 min (only one point on the shard), we can rez 2 pets every 30 minutes, you can imagine with 166 accounts, there's more than 2 people wanting to rez pets. The way the perk eats bounty points is entirely broken, and unmanageable by the guild leader. There needs to be an upfront cost for a limited time, to unlock that perk, which is multiplicative of the population - so a small guild is only paying 500 bounty, while a larger one pays 1500, 2000 points. But more so, if we don't get more capture points, then having that cost scale by guild size, is truly impossible for larger guilds.

 

[girana]

if you are not in such a big zerg guild pet res would not cost that much.


the higher cost balance it out that your guild has enough players to capture the points 24/7.

 

[AreYouKidden]

Trin is hardly a zerg guild, we're a casual guild of players who are rarely seen in large groups anywhere in the game, unless it's at an RP event. And the reality is, those players could all be the same timezone, so we can't hold points 24/7, but even if we could, with the 1 capture point resetting every 30 minutes, that's 10 plyrs (i'm capping Militias at the intended 10) x 30 pts (300 points) per capture, x 48 possible captures (14,400 points) daily we could potentially capture, which is a total of 84 pet rez's a day at our 170 pts... With our "zerg" like group, that's around a half a pet rez per account daily.... and that's if we somehow manage to control that point during every possible instance it appears, which isn't happening because there are other 10 man groups out there securing the single point there is.

Consider this Girana - a 30 account guild (3 accounts per player) running 10 players max in PvP (due to the rules), playing 6 hours a night, could capture 10x30x12 (3600 points) - which equates to about 3 pet rez's per day per account. Are you really telling me it's not broken? And again, that's only if they spent their whole playtime around holding that point every 30 minutes.

 

[Ace Mason]

Kick, inactive, whatever. There needed/needs to be a way to adjust whos in militias on the fly. If 2 guilds are in a 10v10, and one guild loses 3 people due to needing to log for personal reasons, your stuck at a disadvantage for a minimum of what 2hrs? If you could adjust on the fly, you could continue the even fights a lot longer. This keeps the militias active and fun. If its a 10v10 and one side loses half their force, how many times are they going to come back to the fight, maybe 1 or 2 times. Trin had 10 on the first night and most other guilds didnt even bother to show to West Brit cause no one else could field a full group. The couple that did, lost members shortly after and the fights were done after about 45 min. I haven't see much militia pvp since, although I haven't been super active either.

That alone is a game breaking mechanic, on top of the fact there is nothing worthwhile to fight over.

 

[baseball dad]

Or just play a red and create your own battles.

Militia/factions etc really only cater to a very small percentage of players, and unfortunately these types of players carry huge egos, which in turn kills their own pvp. Most players don't want to have their toon attackable by anyone at anytime, chase their enemy from britain to yew or experience 4v1 automated 1 button delayed wand drops that result in instant death.

With regards to comments on EQMS, i never saw their numbers as a problem, but rather assist programs abusing the 20 yr old game mechanics by enabling basically "auto aim" with 1 key stroke to target closest fs/eb within a 10 tile radius. They basically abused a stupid game mechanic as a group. I've said it for years, but taking away this shit would make this game fair far better, but 20 yrs in, it most definitely is approaching it's finite life.

Anyways, you all suck, fuck you!

 

[RipGrip]

Waring guilds , chaos/order, factions , hero/evil , VvV , and then militias. This system is a hollow shell of all the above . Ace Mason makes a soild point what's the point ? The system in place has a lot of potential . The original poster has some good ideas! I feel this the last shard with the population to make a "factions" system work and get it right.

 

[jkg8787]

[Slightly off-topic but does intertwine with topic. Feel free to ignore]

I've done tons of balance-whining since I got here a few months ago. I come and go on forums depending on topic, but after doing a bit of whining in last PvP thread I stopped coming for a few days.

I'll be brutally honest. It's all a waste of time. For me personally I have too much invested in a memory of an idea from close to 20 years ago. I personally am interested in essentially two things: 1) Insta-hit HallyMage era mechanics 2) a UO:R balance specifically localized to what I remember of my specific shard at that time i.e. in a 1v1 you only drank TRs,Str,Agi, off-screening was looked down on and people respected even numbers (also either going back to no 3rd party or at maximum UOAssist level i.e. worse than razor/steam).

None of that will happen.

And most of what others want won't happen. There really isnt a consensus and anything you do is wrong to someone else.

I just have a romanticized idea in my head of what some sort of chivalrous 1v1 mage duel should be like and want to sort of force that idea on to others. I guess itd be much easier to do what I want thru the duel system and let others be.


FWIW I think anything over groups of 4-5 is ridiculous and can't see why people would want to do that other than the social aspect of wanting to game with a big group of people you know.

But thats my thing. Ive basically always been a solo UO Player. So while I support Militia in theory I really don't think its for me anyways.


I do want to say one thing though, to anyone who does want changes. This is your chance. Not to be a downer but I feel like UO:F is the last UO server. lol. So if you want something specific, now is your chance to ask for it. The staff here are actually great people. Unfortunately it seems they just try to please some and end up making the other group mad only to try to correct and have the reverse happens.


As for me I will (attempt) to bow out of balance-whine posts in the future and just let UO:F be what its going to be. If I want a specific romanticized 1v1 scenario like I imagine in my head I'll just ask people on Discord/Forums for 1v1 duels or something.

The good part: the PvM content here is top notch.

 

[Anton [TBH]]

I'll be brutally honest. It's all a waste of time. For me personally I have too much invested in a memory of an idea from close to 20 years ago. I personally am interested in essentially two things: 1) Insta-hit HallyMage era mechanics 2) a UO:R balance specifically localized to what I remember of my specific shard at that time i.e. in a 1v1 you only drank TRs,Str,Agi, off-screening was looked down on and people respected even numbers (also either going back to no 3rd party or at maximum UOAssist level i.e. worse than razor/steam).

Hello 1999!
Hally mage and the off screening pulled on my feels. You can't drop a heal if they run off can you?

Anyway - I like the pop cap on militias. I don't play a lot anymore so PvP is a hazardous maze of poor timing and mis-hit keys for me. But with that said, I can run through Brit on a militia character and not get insta zerged. The biggest disadvantage I've been at is a 1 v 3 and they pulled off when I fled into the city. That never would have happened with the old system.

The days of guilds claiming certain cities have been over since Factions was released on OSI (Trin excluded?), as are the days of guilds milling around outside of their informal strongholds or protecting miners. Nobody is going to send "PKS AT MINES" over ICQ anymore

UO used to have a handful of "jedi" on each shard - now the non-OSI servers are filled with legit UO pros. 1997 to 2017 is a legit full 20 year career - there aren't any mechanics to balance that out.

The question is - where's the fun? Winning trinkets (Factions) was lame. Precast + target nearest victim (with your 15 closest friends) is boring.

I saw a guild try and enforce their champ spawn with a few reds over the weekend so that was cool to see and kinda old school. But as far as guild warfare - it's too easy for big ego's to rage quit and go to another server.

The fun was in the "i effing hate you" wars and I'm going to stalk and kill you and all of your friends and their alts until it's quashed - trinkets and points can't replace that.

In case it got lost in the above: I like the militia stuff. Good job to the staff; And if you wanted to go to the T2A spells within city limits rules...long live townies!

 

[AreYouKidden]

So yesterday I log into the game - I've been unable to connect much due to some health issues.. 3-4 days, nothing serious... And wow, it looks like the two new capture points were removed? or were they just moved? I see two new silver vendors for season 1 & season 2? Are these new militia vendors? Is this the new currency, are we trying to eat up the old currency? I don't have a clue what is happening with Militias anymore, from a 3-4 day reprieve? That's just wrong. Why do changes have to be so willy nilly? why are things implemented, and tore out immediately without any heads up to people? This isn't a way to run a server, no one even knows what game they are playing when they log in anymore..

I'm all for changing things when they need changing, but communication has to happen with those changes, a heads up things have changed.