NPC Escorts, Magic clothing/Jewelry, Locked NPC vendor Strongboxes, Harvestable Cotton/Wheat/Food, Pets stacking

[paradise of perfection]

NPC Escorts - Any chance of these making a return?

Magic clothing/Jewelry - Commonly found in locked dungeon chests with attributes like +/- stat, protection, reflect, sometimes cursed.
I miss rummaging through this stuff even if it were mostly trash it spiced up lockpicking a dungeon to feel a little more like a treasure hunting adventure. These were also true to the era I believe this server is inspired by?

Locked NPC strongboxes and various random loot containers inside vendor shops in town.
These were a fun new player lockpicking/stealing experience. Strongboxes held random small amount of gold/jewels. Storage containers would hold random low value items related to the store they were in. Players could make stealing attempts on these items at the risk of being noticed by the NPC and being terminated by guards.

I also notice many of the use function of certain plant in the environment no longer work. Double-clicking Wheat, cotton, turnips, carrots, etc in NPC farmlands on the map to yield food/material.

NPC tailors will not buy clothing, is this intended? Were sheep farmers too OP?

Pets stacking - I think pets look really silly when they stack one big blob on top of each other, from a purely aesthetic perspective and just my opinion. Do they not have stamina values?

I imagine much of these suggestions may be limited by the way the server has been structured.

As a new player to Outlands, I will say I get a slight impression some of very low level new player experience has been overshadowed by a high demand and focus on streamlining players as quickly as possible into what most consider viable skill levels to begin "playing the game". example: new player dungeon/macroing

Don't get me wrong, I love pvp and the first thing I did when I started was immediately begin planning my tank mage and collecting bandages to macro. But secretly when no ones looking, I'm on an alt taming mongbats and fighting zombies pretending I'm a wizard in a far away land.

 

[Owyn]

Much of what you're suggesting has been removed due to rampant abuse and economic instability experienced on previous shards & projects.

 

[paradise of perfection]

Much of what you're suggesting has been removed due to rampant abuse and economic instability experienced on previous shards & projects.

Is there a way to possibly amend some of these features without fully removing them?

 

[Elric]

NPC Escorts - Any chance of these making a return?

These were really minor quests that didn't have much reward overall. You could have them in Outlands but disabling any recall or gate functions for these would probably leave the citizen dead about 20 tiles outside the city gates as someone would kill them out of spite.

I miss rummaging through this stuff even if it were mostly trash it spiced up lockpicking a dungeon to feel a little more like a treasure hunting adventure. These were also true to the era I believe this server is inspired by? Locked NPC strongboxes and various random loot containers inside vendor shops in town.
These were a fun new player lockpicking/stealing experience. Strongboxes held random small amount of gold/jewels. Storage containers would hold random low value items related to the store they were in. Players could make stealing attempts on these items at the risk of being noticed by the NPC and being terminated by guards.

Although these sound like fun elements to add, I can see that players would be on Discord, or these forums, complaining how they can never find a box to unlock because some other player got it and it hasn't respawned yet. Then they would say how some guild keeps recalling around and unlocking everything or that they have cams setup by container spawn points waiting for it to show up again. Then suggestions would fly around about how we need more containers to unlock or the respawn time needs to be quicker or that they should do IP checks and only allow an account to unlock 1 box a day. It was just simpler to design the game to a "kill the monster and get the treasure".

Magic clothing/Jewelry - Commonly found in locked dungeon chests with attributes like +/- stat, protection, reflect, sometimes cursed.

The game tries to keep such magics to the minimum to encourage crafting and to avoid overpowering characters getting a bit too geared up. They keep the clothing much like the very early days of UO, where it is strictly cosmetic.

I also notice many of the use function of certain plant in the environment no longer work. Double-clicking Wheat, cotton, turnips, carrots, etc in NPC farmlands on the map to yield food/material.

These are inconsequential game elements that are not really required for this particular server. This isn't some clone of Ultima VII where one can do much of the mundane things. Baking bread in Ultima VII didn't help you win the game. It was just something you could interact with. Taking this feature out of the game leaves the world decorated as is instead of a bunch of empty farm fields because they are constantly picked clean.

NPC tailors will not buy clothing, is this intended? Were sheep farmers too OP?

We used to get rich selling clothing because the materials were the easiest and quickest to get. It is just to help the economics.

Pets stacking - I think pets look really silly when they stack one big blob on top of each other, from a purely aesthetic perspective and just my opinion. Do they not have stamina values?

This is just the default pet AI. Outlands would have to add some additional code to have them stand at least 1 tile from each other. It usually comes down to not blocking a bunch of tiles with pets.

As a new player to Outlands, I will say I get a slight impression some of very low level new player experience has been overshadowed by a high demand and focus on streamlining players as quickly as possible into what most consider viable skill levels to begin "playing the game". example: new player dungeon/macroing

You can explore and do whatever you want, but Outlands caters a bit towards new gamers that need a bit more of a push into a direction. When Outlands started, it was a standard adventuring server where the devs thought people would literally log in and play the game. They quickly found out that people would play for a bit and then beg the devs for more events and telling everyone when events occur. Their majority player base didn't really want to play the game just to play it. They want to be told what to do and where to do it.