Hello, All!

I wanted to do something significant with my 1000th post on UOForums.

In the past (in my stratics days) I contributed ideas which either paralleled what the devs were already thinking, or gave them good fodder and (although I’ll never be able to prove it) in my heart I know I contributed significantly to the creation of the Pixie Swatter, the Alchemist’s Bauble, the increased karma loss of the Ossian Grimoire and the “charge” spell effects of talismans.

With that in mind, I’m hoping you’ll enjoy reading my 1000th post as much as I enjoyed imagining it! It’s not perfect, complete or properly balanced…that’s what the Devs and Designers get paid to do!

Some of the below concept might exist in another form in another MMORPG. I don’t play any others, though, so any similarity is entirely coincidental.

I’m open to criticism and feedback, but only if you read the whole thing

~M

The Player Recipe System

Purpose: To enable players to customize powerful, balanced items tailored to specific templates or individual preferences. This is ‘end-game’ level content, requiring in-depth knowledge of game mechanics, a highly developed character, an account of a certain age and a significant amount of resources and time to participate.

Discussion:
Accounts with at least 1 year veteran status may, through questing, unlock access to hidden guilds of experimental crafter NPCs. Once unlocked, a player may “commission“ the NPCs to perform research and create unique objects with desirable properties. Objects can be clothing, weapons and armor, or they can be static items with special properties, in the same vein as the 10th Anniversary Luck Statue, Rose of Trinsic, Stuffy Animals, etc. Clothing, weapons and armor should be limited to things that are not currently craftable using the runic system, like cloaks or boots, magic wands, tribal masks, etc. Player-designed items should not functionally replace existing items. Player-designed equipment should be governed by the same rules controlling loot creation, in terms of property intensities.

Commissioning may only be done once per year, per account, and only once 1 year vet status is achieved. Existing veteran accounts may commission additional items equal to the number of years’ status – not every year, just the first time out. A 10-yr account does NOT get to commission 10 items every year.

In order to commission a project, a character must have achieved Dread or Glorious Lord status.

Only one project may be commissioned at a time, per account. Armor suits may be possible, but only one piece per commission, to encourage group play or give advantage to veteran grey-beards.

The Commissioning Mythos is predicated on a character’s expertise. Therefore, in order to convince the NPCs to research an item, the character commissioning the work must also have exceptional understanding of the skills required. A piece of jewelry can only be commissioned by a Grandmaster Tinker. A piece of jewelry with FC/FCR can only be commissioned by a Legendary Mage who is also a Grandmaster Tinker. A ring with +15 necro, FC and HP regen could only be commissioned by a GM Tinker/120 Necromancer/120 Mage who also has one of the following Legendary skills: Anatomy, Healing or Veterinary (for illustration purposes only – it may or may not be possible to combine these properties on a ring). This is purposely expensive (Powerscrolls), difficult (soulstoning) and time-consuming (skill training) to achieve. It should also be impossible for a standard PvM or PvP template to create an item without sacrificing time to soulstone skills a bit.

Commissioning should be a lengthy process, requiring significant raw materials, magical reagents, rare ingredients and semi-rare monster drops. NPCs should, perhaps randomly, require (for example) 1000 speckled poison sacs, 1500 bola balls, 1000 green thorns, 100 pieces of Valorite-hued stone, or the like in addition to the more standard resources of gold, metal, wood and leather. Requirements of this nature should consider the scarcity of the resource and the “difficulty” (intensity) of the desired property. 100% intensity of a ‘rarer’ property should require larger numbers of a rarer drop item (ex: 1000 stout whips) whereas the Mage Armor or Spellchanneling property might only require 1000 baubles found on the ground in Ilshenar. The list of potential research ingredients should include darn near every object in the game not purchased from NPCs.

Players may commission research for items with up to X properties. The length of time required to research and the amount of gold & resources needed to fund/supply the research will increase with both the number of properties and the desired intensity. It should take several weeks/months or real time for the NPCs to complete the commission. Players should be able to view the status of the project and NPCs should prompt for more resources to continue research or to speed the process – however, a certain minimum time will always be required.

Creation is shaped by the player, but there should be a chance for failure. Possible failure scenario is below:

-NPC indicates that research has faltered; instead of HCI 15%, they’ve only been able to reach HCI 12%. Player is told they may contribute more resources and wait longer (diminishing returns with no guarantee of improvement), or proceed with the next property. Alternatively, the player may scrap the research, recoup some small percentage of investment and begin a new project.

Players must unlock a quest for each type of NPC: If a player wants to create a unique piece of jewelry, the Tinker Research quest must be completed; statues/stonework requires the help of the mysterious and secret Masons Guild; etc, etc. More complex items might also require multiple NPC unlocking quests be completed.

Players may name items in accordance with in-place decency rules. I think three words per item should be sufficient for naming, but whatever.

Players may choose the hue of objects using existing color palettes.

Once the commission is completed, an item will be created and placed on permanent display with the NPC researchers. Displays will include a “Commissioned by: PlayerName” line of text. For space constraints, perhaps only the first 10-20 objects created on the shard will be in display cases; the rest can be in ‘trophy cases’ (bookshelves) accessed by a double-click. Alternatively, every day at server up the display items will rotate to the next 10-20 on the list.

The commissioning player will receive a recipe scroll (not the completed object) that is account-bound and (possibly) character bound. In order to read the recipe and create the item, the character must have all the same skills required to commission it in the first place. Creation will require 1-10 of each item used in the research, i.e. 10 speckled poison sacs, 1 stout whip, 5 baubles, plus standard wood/metal/leather/cloth and peerless ingredients as appropriate. Some of the really complex commissions might also include the need to alter an existing high-end object, perhaps turning the 10th Anniv statue into another magic statue or converting an Orny into something similarly powerful and flexible.

Recipe scrolls obtained in this manner are blessed.

Players may create and sell the item as if it were any other crafted item.

In order to ensure commissioned artifacts with a great deal of history and significance to the shard or its population are not lost when a player departs, other players who have unlocked the quests may be allowed to purchase one-use-only copies of the recipe from the NPCs. The prices are set by a formula which includes, by way of example:

(% of gold used to research)+(commissioning player’s royalty)*(multiplier representing number of legendary skills needed to commission object)*(multiplier representing time required to research)

Commissioning Players receive a royalty from every copy purchased. Players may elect to set the royalty to zero.

Commissioning Players may also elect to designate a recipe as a ‘guild secret,’ thereby preventing any other player from buying a one-use-only copy of the recipe. ‘Guild secret’ items on display at the NPC research guild should have properties masked in some manner, or be removed from the display altogether. Royalty rights cannot be sold or otherwise transferred to other players. Intended price range for a one-use-only copy is 1-2M gold, for the most desirable items. Recipe scrolls obtained in this manner are cursed and decay in 6000 seconds.

For role-playing purposes, if a commissioning player designates the final product as ‘guild secret,’ the NPC who produced the recipe should immediately die to protect the formula. That player would then be required to recomplete the unlocking quest(s) again.

If transferred between shards, original and one-use-only player recipes become gingerbread house recipes. Characters that have ‘eaten’ an original recipe scroll can still create that item after transferring shards.

When crafted, Commissioned Artifacts do not receive material or runic bonuses. They can be repaired but cannot be fortified. Self Repair is not available as a property on these items, or perhaps limited to Self Repair 1. When repaired with a deed, Commissioned Artifacts will always lost 10 points of max durability.

Commissioned Artifact properties might also have consequences. Some examples might include:
-Necromancy bonus = increased karma loss
-Unable to tame/ride/control animals used in the creation of a Commissioned Artifact when equipped (or forever?)
-Only Humans can use human-commissioned Artifacts; same for elves, and future races.

Some Commissioned Artifact properties should be mutually exclusive, for role-playing purposes:
-Cannot have Necromancy and Chivalry on the same item
-Cannot have Ninjitsu and Bushido on the same item
-Karma linked: Good- or Evil-aligned characters cannot wield/equip/use artifacts Commissioned by the opposite alignment
-Chivalry or Bushido bonus = no use of poison or poison-specials
-Other restrictions as appropriate

Skill bonuses not currently available on items should remain unavailable. Exceptions might be consumable items with a small (+5) temporary skill bonus. Hypothetical example: Magnifying Glass of +5 Forensics; double click, target player and a charge is consumed (100 charges?).

Thoughts?

**end

i like this idea alot and it has worked with many other games ive played before (including the greatest MUD of all time Legends of the Lakes... yeah im a nerd so what?)

I would love this idea implemented and i rate it 5 stars out of 5

Great input, great system.

I really like the way the system puts value into skills and limits one particular template from becoming uber-alles.

I see however, the potential for a shift away from traditional artifacts to this new artifact system.

Regular artifacts, armor sets, and reward pieces (museum/library) may be de-valued to the point of being worthless. Unless of course these would be heavily utilized in the new system as resources.

@Magister ... do you have a way to address this to allow your system to co-exist with or compliment the current one?

@elffyb -

My concept was to make the new items so incredibly expensive and time consuming to research that it would take years for them to proliferate to the point of displacing the current system.

Having said that, I do allow for the need to modify existing high-powered artifacts to create custom Commissioned Artifacts (see the part about modifying an Orny or a 10th Anniv statue). I also wanted to stay away from any weapons or armor pieces that can currently be runic crafted, so there will always be room for Armor of Fortune as a chest, Shadow Dancers as legs, etc. My system makes wands, tribal masks, earrings, statues, etc - not studded, plate or leather armor.

Although, it *could* make those - I'm just not looking to put any existing system out to pasture.

I hesitate to use Museum/Collection items as ingredients or precursors, since 1) they can be scripted and 2) it takes so many resources to acquire them already. I really do intend for a player to have to gather resources for most of the year before they can Commission a custom recipe. I'd rather not have two layers of resource gathering.

It's going to take months to gather enough stout whips, honeydew melons, tribal paint and translocation powder to make "Mum's Magic Mixer" anyhow!

~M
1001

curse you -M, I will catch you yet *shakes fist*

someone please submit this idea to a designer lol i love it

Thanks for the positive feedback! It's nice to find acceptance of an idea you've put a lot of thought into.

Perhaps I'll send it to Jeremy with "FoF in the title to assure she notices it =P

~M

Good idea, I bet you came up with it while you were f'ing Matt Damon.

And congrats at the 1,000th post!

A-a-a-are der medals or sometins' fer 1000 posts. Maybes we can asks Adams abouts da need fer somes.