Discussion: Limiting Razor for era accuracy

[Hemperor]

Why aren't we implementing this for UOSA???

http://www.uosecondage.com/faq.aspx

Second Age is set in the T2A era of UO. These were very dangerous times in the land of Britannia; as such, citizens who wander outside the protection of the guards do so at their own risk. Know how to protect yourself for you will be out of the reach of Lord British's assistance. Please make your way to other sections of this site such as Information/Features, T2A WIKI, and the Forum for more information.

*There is a three account limit on Second Age.
*House decay is 14 days.
*Boat Decay is 14 days.
*Reasonable character names are encouraged but not required.
*All characters on Second Age may own one house, this is effectivly a 15 house limit.
*We allow unattended macroing with Razor (Download Here)

Maybe you should have chosen Divinity or some other freeshard if this bothered you so much. FAQs are meant to be read

Let's leave this dead horse alone now, shall we? I can understand wanting to remove features such as the Light Filter but complaining about a feature on a freeshard that you joined up of your own free will is kind of childish.

No one is asking to disable unattended macroing.

I think you should read a topic and know what you are talking about before replying

GM Taming isn't needed to make 120k an hour

Nitpick... but you can't make 120k per hour with taming unless you're pulling some UNREAL weapons. Not even close.

Factoring in banking, time to tame dragons, dying and losing dragons, etc, I'd estimate 50-65k per hour, assuming you have a very good vendor and can sell everything of value you pull, from vanq hally's all the way down to fireball wands.

You estimate? Cute. As soon I was given a tamer I made a tower in only a coupe of hours right after dinner before I had to go to bed.

Ask Felix, OlMan, well any tamer you can think of really... They make tons of money with hardly any risk, which is accurate, however creating one with literally no effort isn't.

[Mikel123]

Yes, I estimate. As in, I've spent quite a few hours farming and timing myself, because I'm curious as to "true" hourly rates. You hear the same kind of BS like your two-hour-tower from poker players. Remarkably, everyone I've ever met who's played online poker has come out on top. Amazing!

Unless those guys can make gazers or blood elementals or lich lords spawn faster, they can't pull even 100k per hour. I spent 62 uninterrupted minutes hunting gazers a few weeks ago and pulled 80k... somewhere around 80,300 to be exact (gold and gems only). It was more focus than I care to spend on UO, but it was a pretty flawless hour in terms of killing every spawning gazer ASAP, taking <10 seconds per banking trip, etc.

As for the effort to make a tamer, it was a little harder than you make it out to be. It took me 3 months or so; there was plenty of macroing, sure, but plenty of macro interruptions from players as well. Also, since this was only my second UOSA character, I didn't exactly have a base to start with. Of course if you have 500k in the bank, thousands of each reagent, and plenty of runes marked to everywhere you want to tame, you can do it much faster.

But I still see a pattern between those that think things like taming are "too easy" or "too quick", and those that don't. If you play 8 hours a day, yeah you can accomplish some things pretty quickly. And of course it's much faster than it was on UO. We have accurate min skill tables to tell you what to tame when, established rune libraries on our shard that are far more complete than anything I remember in 1999, and I think somewhere between 1/5th and 1/10th the population, meaning you had 5x to 10x the amount of people messing with your macros, casting Magic Arrow on things you're trying to tame, etc.

[Hemperor]

The only thing you need is bandages, and thats not until you hit the 80s... Trust me, Wong did it not too long ago, it took less than 2 weeks and that was extremely relaxed, the macro wasn't always running etc.

Wong is a horrible UO player, he should never have a tamer, but he pressed Play and now he does.

[Duke Jones]

Well, it does seem that this server is "skill balls with a waiting period."

[Mantis Atlantis]

I've got to agree with Mike here. 60 GM tamers is still pretty scarce, and even with macroing And playing 24/7 these skills won't GM overnight. I doubt the general population is as lazy as the anti-Razor side is making them out to be. It still takes time to build up those skills, during which you've got to be doing something to keep you interested in the game and this shard. Otherwise you're being patient for rewards that hold little value to you.

Also, technique has a lot to do with the speed at which you gain in a skill. Sure, with perfect technique, some research and just the right resources (and little to no competition) and a wicked macro you can speed things up quite a bit. Still, only a minority seem to have this approach. Maybe Senrtinel is right. Sure, you can sneak into a movie theater and watch whatever you want for free and probably not get caught. But few people actually do this because there are moral implications. But we've probably all done it at aome time or another and maybe even feel guilty about it. All we can do is make assertions about what may be true. Unless there is a demonstrated problem with game balance that threatens the economy and the playability of the shard that runs contrary to the T2A ideals, leave the dead horse dead.

Derrick, thanks for that skill distribution chart. That's a perfect visualization of the skill balance issue here. To Hemperor's request, it would be nice to see the skill distribution by points where points > 50 and only for "active" accounts, but maybe this is just a statistician's wet dream.

[Hemperor]

I've got to agree with Mike here. 60 GM tamers is still pretty scarce, and even with macroing And playing 24/7 these skills won't GM overnight. I doubt the general population is as lazy as the anti-Razor side is making them out to be. It still takes time to build up those skills, during which you've got to be doing something to keep you interested in the game and this shard. Otherwise you're being patient for rewards that hold little value to you.

Also, technique has a lot to do with the speed at which you gain in a skill. Sure, with perfect technique, some research and just the right resources (and little to no competition) and a wicked macro you can speed things up quite a bit. Still, only a minority seem to have this approach. Maybe Senrtinel is right. Sure, you can sneak into a movie theater and watch whatever you want for free and probably not get caught. But few people actually do this because there are moral implications. But we've probably all done it at aome time or another and maybe even feel guilty about it. All we can do is make assertions about what may be true. Unless there is a demonstrated problem with game balance that threatens the economy and the playability of the shard that runs contrary to the T2A ideals, leave the dead horse dead.

Derrick, thanks for that skill distribution chart. That's a perfect visualization of the skill balance issue here. To Hemperor's request, it would be nice to see the skill distribution by points where points > 50 and only for "active" accounts, but maybe this is just a statistician's wet dream.

Not to attack you, but it appears that you just registered today. From my personal memories of OSI up and through UO:R I would say that there is probably 5-10 times the tamer ratio (90 and up) and this is no joke, many will agree on this. This isn't simply because we are more informed, it's simply because
Use skill taming
Wait For Target
Target Closest Grey
Is all you have to do... A three line macro, badaboom go dragon farming.

This isn't an attack on tamers, rather support for disabling razor features which were NOT possible in the era... The one in this case is "Target Closest Grey"

[Orsi]

I'd like to reiterate that this isn't an 'anti-Razor' suggestion. In fact it is the opposite, we are asking for Razor to be required to play. The suggestion is to use the Negotiate Features with Server option and for Derrick to restrict certain features which were not capable by any legal third-party applications back in T2A.

Unattended macroing will still be allowed. Removed features would prevent long, elaborate macros which are capable of automating skill gain with crafting and certain skills which were not possible with UO Assist.

[Neoptolemos]

I'd like to reiterate that this is an 'anti-Razor' suggestion. In fact it is the opposite, we are asking for Razor to be required to play.

So now you're all for forcing people to use a program they may not want to. Awesome idea.

[Hemperor]

I'd like to reiterate that this is an 'anti-Razor' suggestion. In fact it is the opposite, we are asking for Razor to be required to play.

So now you're all for forcing people to use a program they may not want to. Awesome idea.

All the people?

You mean the one guy that MAY be on right now without it? I bet it's at 0 at this very moment.

[Derrick]

All the people?

You mean the one guy that MAY be on right now without it? I bet it's at 0 at this very moment.

It doesn't matter that it's zero. We are going to support UORice, ConnectUO, and UOGateway regardless. We will not be requiring Razor to connect to UOSA. This has been stated and explained in countless threads.

[Faust]

I have stated this in the past and should be the final word on this issue... This problem will not be resolved until the JoinUO project creates their Razor equivalent. However, until that day happens this won't be changing anytime soon unfortunately.

[Orsi]

It doesn't matter that it's zero. We are going to support UORice, ConnectUO, and UOGateway regardless. We will not be requiring Razor to connect to UOSA. This has been stated and explained in countless threads.

Your previous replies in this thread did not state this at all and suggested otherwise. If this is your stance now, please reaffirm it as this entire discussion is based off of it.

[Derrick]

I guess I left it a little more intrepretive in the earlier post, sorry if it was confusing.
It would possibly be nice to be able to limit some of the Razor features, but not at the expense of requiring Razor.

[Mantis Atlantis]

For what it's worth, there is currently no difference at all between Razor and non-Razor traffic when it comes to authentication, receiving the character list, and actually logging into the world. The packets are exactly the same. Even with the "Negotiate features with server" checkbox enabled, it would seem that unless the server asks for it, Razor doesn't volunteer to negotiate.

I was checking to see if it was possible to limit Razor features without requiring Razor.

EDIT: This claim is made all over the place, I just had to see for myself.

[Hemperor]

For what it's worth, there is currently no difference at all between Razor and non-Razor traffic when it comes to authentication, receiving the character list, and actually logging into the world. The packets are exactly the same. Even with the "Negotiate features with server" checkbox enabled, it would seem that unless the server asks for it, Razor doesn't volunteer to negotiate.

I was checking to see if it was possible to limit Razor features without requiring Razor.

EDIT: This claim is made all over the place, I just had to see for myself.

If the boot was removed if the player isn't running Razor (sever doesn't receive Negotiation check) then it would be wide open for exploits and extremely easy to get around.