URK conquer and siege: feedback

[Ronk]

So, for the most part, the story arc is completed now. The orcs took cove, took skara, were repelled from Vesper, and had their fort sieged.

Id like to hear some feedback here in regards to future quests. What did you like, what did you dislike, what did you agree with, what did you think was unfair. Etc. I think it'll help the staff (and other people like me who occasionally plan these things) to get things right in the future.

Thanks

[Blaise]

Initial thoughts before sleep:
Granted, there was the service disruption that threw a lot of things out of whack, but no matter, the plan unfolded.

The sheer numbers in Vesper were trainwrecking my client. It was the most awesome time I've had lagging like mad in a while. The coordination of all the guilds was epic, with C^V/DG/BUM/K^A/WL and several others I'm sure I'm missing, all patrolling the islands.

You stood no chance of taking Vesper.....without Krembluk....

Had you summoned him first, that might have been quite a mess!!!

I felt the action was good, the big boss with no loot was fun as hell, but again, really laggy. I'm pretty sure that's just going to happen with that much madness on screen.


I really appreciate the nicety of a trophy for participating but I have concerns with how they were doled out. I don't know the criteria or distribution process, but mine appeared in my pouch in the midst of battle with Krembluk! People had them stolen, others were killed and looted for them, it was kind of messy. After all the efforts put forth by the staff and the players, to get some good action outside of Trammel, it would have been nice to see some sort of blessing on the items for a day or so.

There's no trophy to be had in your death robes when you got drylooted the second everyone around you realized you all just got trophies.
I'm not saying I have a solution, or I don't appreciate the token, but those who got shafted feel a bit....shafted, despite the good RP they may have put forth in this.


Overall, I love it. Fighting with the Urks is a blast and the boss battle effect was totally fun. I was hoping the fort would come down and Krembluk would just rampage around killing everything. Maybe no silver but a champion spawn style loot next time with 500 piles of ~1000gp falling all around.
Not era-accurate, but a great promoter of field gaming!

[Ronk]

My feedback regarding the trophys. I agree. I understand the idea but there were certainly some problems with the way it happened. I think its a learning curve for the staff...its hard to figure out a way to do it. I can't help but wonder how many orc tropheys ended up on our corpses. Maybe the best/most fair solution is to just remove all of the trophys that were given out (then again, if anyone sold theirs, that'll leave upset people).

The only other thing was the dragons. They were dealt with but not quick enough. I certainly dont' blame anyway but on the orc standpoint, we didn't have enough mojokas. Nerull was out on vacation, another mojoka got calld into work. The mojokas that were in our fort were mostly alts (and controlling two chars isn't easy) that were there for the summoning ritual. Obviously we couldn't plan for someone being called into work but it certainly made gating out/handling dragons that much more difficult. Not to mention the lag.

I think, overall, the dragons caused extra lag and ended things far sooner than they should have. In the future I would like to see more protection against dragon turrets. I'm not sure what to suggest or what would be fair but I do know you didn't see hordes of dragons during era events. Though there are many other topics regarding that.


Regarding Skara, I think dropping a big city helped make the impact we wanted but it also left many people confused and questioning how fair things were. People who looked ingame, roleplayed with us, or read the roleplay forums figured out what was going on...but everyone else was left in the dark and confused.

Overall, im happy with the way the story panned out. It took a little longer to complete than I intended but I think most everyone involved had fun and I think it put a lot of various ideas/concepts to the test.

[xevec]

My intital thoughts;
First it was awesome to see the whole server come together like that, I think in my year here, this takes the cake for player coordination, and guilds working with eachother.
I think announcing the event ahead of time had a huge effect on #1.
I had initially geared up 4 characters to fight what I thought was going to be a long seige on vesper. I'm quite surprised I didn't see hordes of red pkers pouring into Vesper, I think the Urks could have used some assistance in that particular night.
I think there were like 15 Urks vs like 60+ people defending Vesper.
The Krembluk was a pretty impressive boss, because he was able to heal massive amounts of damage, and it took quite a while to kill him.

I'm glad that for this fight there were clear set win/lose conditions for each side.
I think this win/lose system is a good model for future Urk invasions.
Thank you staff and all the players who participated.

[tanmits]

I'm quite surprised I didn't see hordes of red pkers pouring into Vesper, I think the Urks could have used some assistance in that particular night.

I'm glad that for this fight there were clear set win/lose conditions for each side.
I think this win/lose system is a good model for future Urk invasions.

Last night showed the problem announcing invasion intentions. Combined with the complaint thread regarding OP NPC orcs, Urks were basically asked to go 15 mostly unfinished dexxers versus 30-40 (+ all their dragons) highly organized mages, tamers, and dexxers. This was hyped for 2 weeks and basically ended after 5 minutes in Vesper and maybe 8 minutes at the fort for the player Urks. We were prepared to lose badly, but it would have been nice to shoot more than one bolt from my +15 power xbow before a dragon ate me.

But as long as all the ummies had fun, that's what we're in it for. Hopefully no one raged too hard about their trophies being stolen/looted. It happens! The planned chaos was amplified by the over hour-long server outage before the event that caused delays and gave us almost no prep time, so apologies to all for being tardy!

[Tiwstacain]

Epic guys, I noticed as soon as we got to the fort that the mojokas were on the very light side. I noticed no blocking the entrance with stonewalls near as there should have been to crush the drag turrets. I am not quite sure why someone brought a ton of drags to a 16 urk vs server kinda fight. I had great fun, wish urks woulda at least had a better help. UWL had mentioned helping the urks. Kinda thought that it might be an overrun of the the undead/orcs destroying the humans. The Urks could be the most epic rp guild that actually invades cities, defends its fort, i love it. Thank you to the urks that perrished and the GMS that made it happen. Was a highly entertaining evening




TC

[Ronk]

Epic guys, I noticed as soon as we got to the fort that the mojokas were on the very light side. I noticed no blocking the entrance with stonewalls near as there should have been to crush the drag turrets. I am not quite sure why someone brought a ton of drags to a 16 urk vs server kinda fight. I had great fun, wish urks woulda at least had a better help. UWL had mentioned helping the urks. Kinda thought that it might be an overrun of the the undead/orcs destroying the humans. The Urks could be the most epic rp guild that actually invades cities, defends its fort, i love it. Thank you to the urks that perrished and the GMS that made it happen. Was a highly entertaining evening

TC

On this note, though slightly off topic. A big thanks to both Derrick and Yoda. Both helped make this happen and put up with a lot of nit picking details by me.

[Ronk]

How would people have felt if the orcs were buffed in some way? Temporary higher strength, dex, something. In this way, fewer actual players would better be able to compete against hordes of enemies without having to resort to single super powered entities and/or NPC spawns?

This was an idea I tossed around but I figured it would cause too many complaints of fairness. In addition, I didn't think it would be necessary (I think a block on gating/recalling into our fort woulda been more beneficial, lol).

[xevec]

How would people have felt if the orcs were buffed in some way? Temporary higher strength, dex, something. In this way, fewer actual players would better be able to compete against hordes of enemies without having to resort to single super powered entities and/or NPC spawns?

This was an idea I tossed around but I figured it would cause too many complaints of fairness. In addition, I didn't think it would be necessary (I think a block on gating/recalling into our fort woulda been more beneficial, lol).

I would rather the Urks made some allies to boost their numbers instead. I think this would be the most fun and it would help even the numbers some so that its not Urks vs Whole Server.

[Blaise]

Allies, or a battleground devoid of dragons/daemons.

I agree, the dragons made a mess of things. I was trying to tell people not to bring them, and maybe just have a few positioned at the banks/main entrances, not turrets.

Can't control the crowds though, they'll do what they want.

It was AWESOME I didn't even have to break out my 77AR suit

Maybe next time.

[Boone]

Next event should be held at a more Europe friendly time.

[GuardianKnight]

I couldn't make it but I can guess why the tamers turreted this event. The skara siege, we were told that we lost the town because we didn't kill the player urks fast enough. Vesper: problem solved
My plan was to ignore the spawn and go straight at the orcs with dragon spirit bombs...guessing someone else had the same idea.
Shame it stormed here or I would have definitely been there.


As for complaints:

1.Guard zone came back on every server up so the orcs would basically get murdered by guards every day so the bank wasn't really unsafe.

2. lack of silver (yes i know it's disgusting). What's the point of having a spawn in a town that people are just going to ignore? ...and to have named general orcs that are just there...that's it..just there. Could kill a dragon in less time with less interference and come out with more for your time.

3. Trophies are not era accurate but GM made items that look cool that drop on some spawn are era accurate. It wasn't uncommon for someone to loot a black halbard or a red sword after one of those events in era. We need more of this instead of points.


Suggestion:

1. Put orc heads on so many corpses to be used as currency to get a letter of thanks from the "town council" with your name on it. Maybe it could say something extra or different or give better praise the better you do...hell it could update your current letter the more heads you put into the vendor. This would be a nice reward that couldn't be over spawned until it's worthless.

2. Fighter mercenaries that help the cause (npcs) I don't care...there needs to be an npc hero running around screaming CHAARRGE! and giving random insults to the things you are fighting.

3. Bloodrock orks need some mages...If you are going to have overpowered orcs...you need overpowered orc mages.

[Ronk]

Well, as ive said before elsewhere, I have no intention of spending my time working on events for the shard in an effort to pay people out. You can either participate because its fun or you can go farm destard. Rewards, leet loot, and free give outs are not the point.

[Tiwstacain]

hell ya!!!! there for the fun




TC

[GuardianKnight]

My point is not a buyout. It's the carrot on a stick method of dragging people to do things. That is the only reason WOW is so popular. For anything you do, there is a reward.

The whole reason EA changed UO to be more player friendly was because a sandbox with limited sand doesn't bring in the kids. They'd rather go play on a jungle gym where you might make a friend that might give you some of their cupcake.

I understand your intent and I promise i'm not trying to crap all over it with my earlier post or this one. In a "game", doing things for just the sake of doing them is rarely a sought after option. Risk vs. reward has always been the UO way. Get rid of the reward, then why take the risk?