PvP Thoughts

The Outlands (or UO) PvP Issue 

If you are playing a highly populated, reliable, free Ultima Online server that doesn't include Trammel and has a committed staff team in the mid 2020s, consider yourself very lucky. 

Maybe it doesn't fit your PvP mechanic/ruleset preference, or you think the vast majority of PvPers are mindless zergers, or you think the PK system is too harsh, and so on. Whatever the case, there isn't much of a comparable reliable alternative available in terms of size. When there is, they are usually a flash in the pan. Otherwise, you'd be there now.

For a majority of the active PvP but less vocal scene on Outlands, everything is likely pretty good to them. They fit into whatever events cater to their style, very likely a more entry-level activity such as Town Struggle, and through it's randomization it will lead to some form of winning throughout a week depending on who they are matched with, so they sustain interest. It's the fix they need. 

From an admin/developer standpoint, they may see little wrong with the entire PvP system based on how active it is on a regular basis. This is also coupled with the fact that the louder, unhappy PvPers seem to continually play despite their supposed distaste for the state of PvP, which also doesn't motivate necessary change from a staff perspective - their player base is active, that's what they want. If a restaurant has a line out the fucking door every day, how inspired are they to change their menu?

For the minority players who are looking for more "competitive" PvP, there is an obvious issue, which is simply that the amount of actual competitive PvP players in modern UO is very, very low in comparison to the entire active PvP population. I would argue maybe even under ~15 players at any given time (out of let's say 100-150 PvP active PvPers), total. In terms of groups who are interested in small group field PvP (groups of 3-6 players), I would say there are maybe 1-4 groups like that, if even. Truly. I had a group that was active but most of us ended up doing Arena only or sporadic PK runs because there was just not enough interest from a substantial amount of other players in doing small group fielding to make it worth it for us. Hopping on for Factions to find 4 people at a point and then that 4 turn into 18 within a couple minutes just isn't the content we enjoyed. Sure, I could find 14 other players to help in that situation - it's just not what I prefer to do.

I empathize with people who are also annoyed at this, but it is what it is.

The problem comes down to a very fundamentally obvious thing - most players do not enjoy losing. Especially repeatedly. It's the same reason Arena is such a tiny part of the total population, the learning curve is high for your standard player. It takes too many losses to start winning. Therefore, in general, players more likely to lose by being out played by a more technically skilled small group end up creating a larger group... and then larger.. and then larger. This heightens their chances of winning. It's not fucking rocket science. It doesn't matter what mechanics you throw at these players - no matter how dynamic, if they simply lose more than they win over the course of time, they are going to zerg instead of getting better. If they are forced to have even fights - they eventually just stop being active.

"Over the course of time" is a good distinction, too, because every time there is a new significant PvP related change or maybe another server opens up, you will see an active amount of this type of less-zergy PvP temporarily until enough days or months go by that the dominant group(s) are established, the Discord drama becomes recycled, interest lowers again, and zergs reform.

The further symptom of all of that is a big portion of the "competitive" (it's important to put that in quotes sometimes) players who are left over end up feeling like they need to combine with each other to defeat whatever zerg-of-the-moment that is throwing 23 ebolt rails on them, and therefore you have the majority of the "top" remaining PvP players combined into one group, so now there is no other squad for them to get even fights with, which is what they wanted in the first place. 

The even further symptom of all of that is a bunch of bitter, upset elitist players who often blame the staff, mechanics or server design for this environment, when it is more so the decision of the players themselves and just the natural dispersal of game approaches within the given PvP population. 

Could different rulesets, events, and incentives change MENTALITY? Not really. Changing any part of someone's mentality, even at a tiny level, can takes years of fucking therapy, so don't count on it in a game. 

I don't know how it's confusing to anyone why a bunch of old UO players prefer to zerg-to-win and have no interest in improving in technical PvP ability after UO careers spanning twenty something years with absolutely no upward curve in their positioning, timing, target accuracy/cycling or reaction time (while being told that they repeatedly that they suck) with very little avenues or players willing to teach them or sharing a positive spirit around them even trying. I imagine those players really enjoy zerging and aren't interested in being respected by whom they consider insufferable *sweats*.

It's Fun, Not Impressive

Niche PvP communities in modern UO or like Outlands would be less toxic if players acknowledged that whether in the field or Arena, winning is fun but not very impressive. It's such a tiny number of total players, how is it relevant enough to adapt any ego around it? You're the best ice fisherman in Hawaii. Sick, your cousin is happy for you. It's the insecurity or constant need for external validation that makes it hard to take any outspoken PvPer's feedback seriously. 

It's not super notable to kill other players in Outlands, especially within it's modified T2A mechanics, in my view, no matter how you do it or what the situation is. Between two skilled small groups in the field, it often heavily comes down to either who-has-better-RNG trades of arrow hit/miss and spell damage ranges, stun chance, or which player(s) ultimately compromise their position, sometimes out of sheer boredom. All of that can and should be enjoyable to strategize. Sure, groups or players can stand out, but beating each other isn't really that interesting in UO (mechanically speaking), regardless. What should be fun in PvP is to hear the death cry sound and manually dragging a reg pouch behind a random house, mid-fight. Stuff like that. I believe this has changed in modern UO, and that the most obnoxious PvPers are playing in hopes to make their opponent feel bad about themselves as people or some weird personal shit and are not really concerned with "better quality PvP" at all.

Even with noting the non-impressive aspect of technical PvP, I would STILL suggest a better, more intentional reward and ranking approach in Outlands (mentioned below), because it could have a more humbling effect on dislikeable players and change what the squabbles are actually about or play to their "competitive" interests.

It's not even a sign of meaningful superiority to kill other players while being outnumbered which is the biggest thing players like to brag about on UO. This predominantly happens against players who are very casual in their technical PvP skill, thus their incentive to be in larger groups, and thus they often have little interest in becoming a better player. If a decorated swimmer wins a freestyle 50mm race against 10 local rec club swimmers, it's not amazing - it's expected. Again, it's FUN bro, but not impressive.

I say all this to point out that if the egos and shaming weren't so rampant, players might feel less weight around the result of a field fight and would be excited about learning something maybe a bit out of their wheelhouse, which could lead more to the so-called desire for quality organic PvP. Players could encourage others to practice, offer to teach them tips without presenting themselves as narcissists, do set-ups without the goal of proving something, make their own stupid guides on how to call/drop, literally anything, but that isn't the route most taken. Instead, it's the same 4 arguments, regurgitated for an eternity, in some drunk little online village bar where the goal is to prove who the "bigger nerd" is, but they never quite find out. Raging might be part of the gameplay for some people, I like to scream at every missed halberd hit, but you know... like... to myself or my friends, not outwardly to my opponent or in a public channel like a fucking psycho. 

There is not a single notable consistent good dueler I can think of that spends all day yelling at other duelers in a channel about a match result from 4 months ago or making a less skilled player feel bad for not being some type of absolute beast by default. There would be no Arena participants at all, if that was the case. It's the opposite, most good duelers just say GF and move on immediately. There's a top down effect where since that's the behavior of successful players, everyone else mostly models after that or they look stupid. That is the positive result of doing a ton of fights in a forced rule/enclosed environment with no excuses, you get used to situations out of your control enough that they don't bother you, or you look back and wonder what you could have done differently and put your energy into that instead of being a little bitch. It seems like the opposite in the field.

You will never convince me toxic arguments lead to any meaningful changes or translate to more game action enough to be worth it. I'd say about 99% of the time, they don't even lead to a fight. You'd think at this point people could find more commonality or respect towards each other for continuing to play this ancient sandbox after all this time together, but nah. 

Pull away the self importance and the community can take itself less seriously to have more fun. 

Staff Related

Owyn is the server administrator and from what I can tell he will advocate for player suggestions or requests when they are organized and shared by multiple members of the community, but final decisions come down to Luthius as the head coder. Owyn is busy juggling many other administrative things not related to core design on a daily basis, so his energy there seems limited at best. A lot of times, he will say "message Luthius". When every UO player views themselves as a game designer, there's a natural defense for staff to hear suggestions with skepticism.

I would say a problem in terms of PvP is I am not sure that anyone on the Outlands staff actively ever played UO through the experience of an ambitious PvPer, so it is difficult to have productive conversations or build any clear understanding about some of the nuanced design issues that more technically skilled players feel are at play or think could be updated to improve the experience. Combine this with the bipolar personalities and attitudes of those needy players, you end up with unhealthy dialogue and some resentment from staff and players alike.

Although it's true that a similar consensus of what can be improved is often hard to reach for PvPers, I think normally the avid ones share the same main bullet points. I do not think player consensus is the only issue, my experience with Luthius during Factions design and also trying to advocate for Arena changes came with frustration to the point where I just decided to let things go because they were exhausting conversations. Either that, or an update would go in, it would be partway there or missing a component and then trying to convey that would go nowhere. It is standard in any game design or system to receive feedback on new changes and make minor revisions, but it felt very all-or-nothing for parts of PvP with little room to concede that something needed basic tuning to have a positive result.  In some examples, it was just impossible to get him to agree about factors that felt blatantly obvious from even a more objective standpoint. He is a stubborn person and wouldn’t deny that, I am sure he could argue that in some places that trait has been a net positive. 

It seems Luthius would rather not spend time coding things that he believes may not move the needle in terms of increasing population or activity. I'd argue that it's equally impactful to increase the experience for players, even in minority groups like Arena or small groups, and that can have a chain reaction effect, influencing other sectors while bringing up overall morale (which in turn can increase numbers/activity). There could be certain PvP related experimenting on test server that is rather minimal in terms of time investment (changing a value or a delay) but doesn't happen. It can be irritating to see patch after patch with new interfaces, adjustments and meta updates to PvM related or non-PvP sectors. You start to imagine what the possibility of that same attention to PvP could look like - but again, the sentiment staff shares is that PvPers are less grateful or agreeable, overall. It's not their priority due to that.

Luthius sometimes views suggestions from avid PvPers as self-serving, and not considerate of the total PvP population, when the truth is they should be viewed differently. Refining elements/events for the minority (arena, small group oriented players, etc) and refining other elements/events for the majority can have two approaches for two play styles. Inclusive and exclusive can co-exist.  If the only goal really is just more activity and player count, you would simply increase the RNG across the board to cater to one play style everywhere and see higher participation instantly (see Jousting event turnout versus Arena).  It's like there are two concurrent opposing design philosophies happening on opposite sides of the spectrum, inversely (making entry level more competitive and competitive more entry level), and therefore they both suffer a bit.

Whatever the case, I am not here to knock Luthius and his years of success as admin/coder with active communities in such a classic MMO. Owyn has also gone to bat several times for player ideas and created avenues for those discussions that have lead to fully implemented systems like Factions. The staff doesn't have to go through that type of work or offer those opportunities - they have chosen to. It just shows that when you combine the player volatility and the developer's hesitation, whether both are warranted or not, you have the result we have now. 

IF you are lucky, there will be long grueling arguments between players and staff that finally lead to a significant change, but that change will be criticized heavily by somebody, no matter what it is. It's a self fulfilling cycle, in that way.

PvP Changes

With all of the above in mind, should more miracles ever happen and developers/players unite enough for updates, here are some things I think would be worth trying:

ARENA BASED:

Damage Range(s): Subtle to significant damage range updates for us to experiment with on Test Center. There is a desire to tighten the range of damage for weapons and spells now that the meta is more established. Take in mind, even changing some of these by at least values by 2-4hp in the spectrums would still be noticeable.

Optional Era Rulesets: Adding the ability to choose a UOR ruleset or other era mechanics to the Arena stone, etc. 

New Arenas: Just some other global arenas to duel in for fun. Waterfalls and shit. Street fighter 2. NPC raising a fist up and down.

New Incentives/Rewards: Whatever the event, the everyone-can-get-anything reward system design (by trading or buying) on Outlands doesn't cater to driven PvP players and creates toxicity within that minority. When everyone is seen as potentially equal skill-wise without having to prove anything with consistent success over time, there is no self-regulating element to silence or lower the community's respect of loud, mid-tier players or even higher tier players that are too insecure to reveal how they would perform in the long-run against players they want to be seen as superior to. This is how the minds of PvPers work. There should be unique, character-bound or account-bound rewards that are wearable items. Create a highly desired incentive for the "competitive" players, retroactively reward those who have already put in the work and decide what the thresholds are, and everyone has to match that work or climb for something uniquely theirs that signifies their supposed "eliteness". That is the PvP motivation in this game. The result is either more activity from those driven players to push towards the rewards or the "competitive" community will simply have less respect (in terms of "eliteness") for the players without them, both cases are positive. I think if ELO and ranking ladders were way more thought out and adjusted across the board this would be less essential, but unique wearables have always been something valuable to compete over in UO for those that don't care about potential gold wealth. It could freshen up the current staleness in motivation and maybe make some players talk less and practice more (I think this could kind of apply across many PvP events/sectors, not just Arena). Make paperdoll badges visual on a character - just something put behind activity and overall success. There have been a wide amount of ideas for further/new Arena stone rewards and/or achievements to maintain interest or create new interest. At one point staff indicated they were coming, then it kind of dissipated. 

Remove/Fix/Hide Arena ELO: Although I think the better idea is just to adjust the current ELO math by simply changing some values and having ELO tiers with thresholds, it seems like too much annoyance from a developer view, so just get rid of it and let it determine byes behind the scene like it does now, even though it won't always be very accurate. It doesn't even seed tournaments, which was the whole point, and there were good suggestions on how to make it so entry-level players could enter tournaments and not duel a top tier player by simply having a combination of seeded and unseeded tournaments or a larger Bye system that matched lower tier players for first round(s). No suggestion was fleshed out with an open mind. For a ladder, it's too wonky to mean much with the current math applied, it currently means you benefit from having success and stopping activity completely, or making new characters to create drastic swings and kind of mess up the whole thing, which is why most active duelers see it as meaningless. Some players have told me other events have similar ELO issues.

~ 5v5 Arena Map: There's a map Owyn made that would be good as an Arena stone option to do mounted 3-5 v 3-5s if not some type of event. I think although this wouldn't be as popular as some believe, it would be a straightforward update to add and would work similarly as duel arenas, with both groups starting on opposite sides of the map. Guilds could use it for quick in-house practice, player-made leagues, yadda-ya.

Halberd Toss: Having to manual aim throwing a halberd at an opponent. I actually just threw this in for Oug. It's a joke, but not really, but yeah.

FIELD BASED:

Other Viable Mage Templates: The main thing here is I think you start with changing the overall stale meta of groups being predominantly archers in combination with stun. Although I love insta-hit archery from a nostalgic perspective, I think if this is removed and put into a delay it opens up other template mages which could be more mixed up and interesting or garner other interest. I have enjoyed running around on a hally mage in the field from time to time, but it can definitely be a disadvantage in the current meta. 

Snowball for Small Groups: I also personally wish there could be some type of snowball mechanics for small parties versus large parties or based on the amount of attackers. That way, although I can't change the mentality of the zergers, I have more options in choosing to fight them at such a disadvantage, and they also therefore have at least some disadvantage in choosing to be the zerg.

(I also think the damage range adjustments I mentioned for Arena could apply to field, as well.)

If you have other ideas or suggestions or agree with any of the above, you should let it be known to staff.