Automated Events Thread #1,000,000

[Jupiter]

wall of text, I don't play anymore, I tell lies about how many people were in the field during and after automated events

The server was devoid of action during and after events. If you'd actually been on this shard when they were at their height, you'd know this. But you weren't, so you just repeat things Sandro told you. gg

I'm not sure what corner of town you were begging in at the time or when the tournaments were at their height. I joined here in the begining of 2011 and played a few tournaments, some CTF, some Dom, etc. I watched a ton more tourneys than I fought in but all in all, from my perspective there were a ton more people in the tourneys and the field after them.

For what it's worth, I barely have or do communicate with Sandro. Not that I have any issue with doing so. It's no different than any other person on these boards. Another guy who plays UO and gives a shit about it. I do so appreciate your attempts to invalidate my opinion based on your assumptions of how much I play or who I associate with though. GG sir, GG.

Chainsoar is right about a lot of people(nightshark, sandro, Eo, ect. <insert shitty hally jouster pvper name here>). These guys have no clue about the shard's pvp scene and they don't even know who the current best pvpers are(not talking about duels, duels aren't real pvp, just dexer hally joust). All they do is forum pvp and occasionally log in once a month to gank a bard with 4 other trammie duelers and say "lol current pvpers suck".

Zing! I do believe we have a zinger! I love being a fly on the wall and watching halbu take on a group 4v1. Also watch out for the leader of Ascalon. Both formidable power houses.

[Guerrilla]

thing is, magic items/weapons make anybody a formidable powerhouse

[Jupiter]

thing is, magic items/weapons make anybody a formidable powerhouse

I am living evidence that this statement is completely inaccurate. magic items/weapons in my hands are really just pk's weapons and items that I'm holding for them.

[Guerrilla]

Okay, for your sake i'll go ahead and correct myself, magic items/weapons, make anybody with half a brain a formidable powerhouse. Thanks for the heads up...

[Malaikat]

Thanks for that 10 vanq hally I took from you last month, Guerrilla.

[[Uhh] Eo]

Chainsoar is right about a lot of people(nightshark, Eo, <insert hally jouster name here>). These guys have no clue about the shard's pvp scene and they don't even know who the current best pvpers are( since all they have to go on is what other forum pvpers like them say. Aside from pure forum pvp against the real UO players, they occasionally log in once a month to gank a bard with 4 other trammie dueler friends and say "lol current pvpers suck". Completely hilarious....

Haha.. he's SO ANGRY!!

God damn nightshark you and I must be killin' it to inspire this sort of rage.

[Halbu]

LULZ, your forum pvp skills aren't good enough even.

[Kaivan]

Try not to turn these threads into forum PvP threads. Little discussion can be had in such a thread.

[the bazookas]

A. He points out people are to lazy to host tourneys or events or to join them. Which is a player base related problem 'i want to log on do some leet trammel pvp then log off'.

I personally agree with his opinion of how much work it takes to run even simple events, and why they don't happen more often. If it says anything about the playerbase, it's that (1) like Blaise said, they want to come to play, not to work, and (2) the amount of work it takes to host even a mildly complex event (given the tools available to players) does not appeal to players who have that perfectly understandable (and expected) attitude.

B. He points out T2A mechanics that make the world dangerous and the sandbox that is?

Not sure I understand this.

C. He points out people want a safe haven to play in. (not era accurate to t2a , go play a trammel shard)

I think his point was that without some sort of mechanical structure behind an event, it's far to easy to grief or exploit (without every single player involved agreeing on the rules--which makes large scale events virtually impossible), and therefore without some sort of event system in place that provides that extra mechanical structure, we simply will never (or VERY rarely) see a wide variety of potentially awesome events on UOSA.

D. Add potential rewards + taking people out of feluca to points B an C and these events become all sorts of wrong.

I agree.

So what do you think about automated events where the reward comes from a buy-in and it takes place in felucca? It seems like people keep bringing it up but the discussion always swings back to the old "trammel" events.

This idea actually got me into my first RunUO coding experience about 9 months ago. It was actually an attempt to create an environment where a "board" was randomly selected from several places in Felucca: various islands, rat valley, different dungeon locations (Hyloth level 4), buc's den--I had worked out quite a variety, and those that joined the game were randomly assigned to teams (it would be very easy to make a buy-in), where the teams were separated by a large stone wall (you could set how many teams you wanted, up to 4, and the board could be set to be randomly selected) until a couple minutes passed and the wall dropped. Furthermore, the board was bounded by some markers that indicate to the players that leaving the board results in death AND players who enter the board who are not players are automatically flagged criminal and occasionally revealed and booted off their horse (if it was a horseless event), so that they can be dealt with by the players without penalty (could even have players sign up for the event as a referee, and make it so they cannot harm those who are actually players, but get to keep their horse and can attack intruders).

Also, I think participation in such an event is such that the buy-in could include the cost of supplies for a given event. It's also super easy to clean up "eventsupply" as I found on Rel Por after the event is over--even making it so you can't trade it if you are a player in an event. These are the kind of mechanics that an automated event system could EASILY provide, that are simply impossible without that extra structure... and yet it still is costing money to participate and use the supplies--you don't get something for nothing. And if you wanted to bring magic weapons /potions and what-not, that could easily be allowed, while basic supplise (regs, etc.) are provided. Increased risk=better chance to win?

In fact, I think it'd be easy to allow a player to host this sort of event too, and even select from a variety of event types, etc.

That's what I think the best approach is. I haven't looked at it for a long time, but I recall my implementation actually worked really well, though nothing's been done with it). It being the first thing I did, I know of tons of ways to increase the interactivity of it now.

So, iamreallysquall, what do you think about THAT kind of automated event system?

[Populus]

@bazooka - Why would that event have to be automated or scripted? You should do that event by gathering interest on the forums!

[iamreallysquall]

A. 1- so people should come and play here on a t2a shard for what t2a was, you know. . . that's the goal of this shard. if t2a mechanics don't appeal to certain people then they should play some other shard with all the shiny custom perks and leet pvp mechanics and whatever else they can dream up. They are you know only tons of custom shards.
2- people have hosted all sorts of events and have had success These people act like it take 8-12 hours of actual time to make a forum post to host a tourney or something. I mean that's what they are bitching about pvp in a box that's grief free.

B. All he did is point out that t2a mechanics make the world dangerous and events should be in some safe haven exempt from normal t2a mechanics. which is junk considering events like this never happened in era.

C. That's the risk you take hosting an event, tons of people do it and the risk involved is what makes events fun. Why should people have a safe haven from t2a mechanics ? Why should a special rule set exist for these events? We won't see large scale events that's bull, you know why because i have seen plenty of player run events of all sizes.

D. The entire concept of automated events sickens me. You're suggesting we modify how standard mechanics work in the real world now for these events? Yeah i don't think so ... Introduce more shiny pixels (rares) for a buy in of stuff that we have literally tons of on the shard to generate some crap that is going to sell for millions yeah i think not.

events should be run by players in the real world, or on rare occasion by staff like we see with no special circumstances.

@populus indeed thats how it should be done.

@kaivan yeah this thread is getting mucked up.

[the bazookas]

@populus (and somewhat @iamreallysquall):
The main reasons I don't is because:
1) it's a BIG headache to get people into a guild where notoriety / reporting isn't a problem (particularly for people who are participating but are also idiots)... and limiting those who participate to those who either aren't idiots (or at least limiting it to those who the event host knows they can trust) would be limiting the amount of people who can participate very significantly. Even if you are playing with people you trust, it's still annoying to have some people noto blue, grey, green, etc.
2) it's extremely difficult to control a lot of event conditions (the only way to really control what participants can bring to an event is to gate them in as ghosts, which is also a huge headache). Even getting everybody to the right place takes time and effort--like herding cats.
3) a variety of things (e.g. capture the flag), are very difficult to pull off without some special mechanic or staff assistance being in place, EVEN WITH a lot of extra man-power during the event to referee, etc.
4) it's easy for people to grief (as Blaise said), and there's often no way to protect yourself--even from blue people who just jump in to wall of stone or steal the flag or whatever.
... I'm sure there are other reasons too.

The last time I remember aware of even a semi-organized team PvP event involved a 4v4 (I just happened to remember it due to Lightshade posting an image of it on the pic of the day)--happened a long time ago.

I'm Mistah T in there if you didn't know.
If I'm not mistaken, this happened after Flea had organized a player-run capture the flag (obviously putting a lot of work into it) at Bucaneer's Den that completely failed due to it requiring a little staff assistance and the GM involved had some Real life stuff come up that prevented him from showing up. After that had fallen through, lot's of people left, but some of us (we had about 8 ) decided "hey, why not do something else". We did, and it was fun, but as I said, even with that small group, it took a long time to get people into a position to start... AND we had the special twin tower CTF course. As I recall, we actually didn't do CTF--I'm not sure how else to reasonably do a player-run CTF outside of Rose's "Capture the Capital" type idea of carrying heavy ore from the other team's box to yours, or somehow ending the game after a single capture--and even then, it requires those who are involved to control themselves to play by the rules--limiting, again, the number of people who can participate. We were doing the simplest event of all: a team FFA. Probably took an hour and a half before everybody could organize themselves together to make it happen. Was it fun? Definitely. Why don't we do it more often? I think that I've made that abundantly clear.

I share that long-winded experience because I think it is illustrative of how it is fairly silly to expect players to keep organizing such events given our limitations, as well as WHY we don't see even small-scale player run events like this on a regular basis--especially ones that involve group PvP.

now, more @iamreallysquall
I don't know think mechanics governing events are or should be limited quite as much as you have made it out to be--In the T2A era, I never saw a chest that only allowed a particular guild (Urk) to put heads into it (and spit out Urk heads if they tried to put in their own)... yet we had it here. Why? because it made for a really neat event. Sure, you could have had a player sitting there all the time being the "head collector", but that's be way more effort than creating a simple "mechanic" on a chest that allowed the process to be automated. I don't hear anybody shouting NEA about that chest... why? Because it added value without touching the core T2A mechanics. What about other aspects of the Bloodrock Urks? As far as I can tell, there was no mechanic I was aware of that aligned monster AI with a particular guild; yet here it is? And I'm not aware of OSI providing a special region where a particular gulid could attack anybody without penalty... these are all "new mechanics" as you seem to be defining them. It's not very far from that what I'm talking about.

And I think these Urk mechanics are great--that's my whole point. I would like to think that Derrick & Co. is not opposed to a new mechanic for the sake of generating content to at least some extent. Obviously he has to draw the line somewhere, but the fact is that there is certainly a precedent here (using Urk as an example) for creating a system of mechanics that can be utilized by players to make for interesting content should tell you that it's certainly not out of the question (thank goodness). The core mechanics of the game are obviously quite untouched by the extra Urk mechanics--I think that's the important part.

And due to the minimalistic approach of staff involvement (which isn't a bad thing overall), I personally think that many of the cool events and things that COULD happen IF staff were personally involved, should be, in some way, made available to the players inasmuch as it does not open up big exploits, etc, for the sake of keeping this 15 year old game interesting. Read Derrick's quote in the OP. Re-read it. I think it's clear that there is some room for creating really neat event-specific mechanics on UOSA, at least in Derrick's opinion. And I think that's certainly the way it should be, especially for a game this old.

I'm not sure how you keep getting off on this idea that those who want to see more of this kind of content are trying to "Introduce more shiny pixels (rares) for a buy in of stuff that we have literally tons of on the shard to generate some crap that is going to sell for millions yeah i think not", and yet what I and others have suggested is pretty much 100% gold sink and redistribution. I don't know how to make that more clear. I'll try though, Here's an example: Everybody pays 5k to get in. The winner gets NumPlayers x 2.5k in a reward. The rest disappears, and everybody had a good time. Maybe the 5k buy-in bought the player a few basic supplies that they start with in their pack... you really think such a mechanic is outside the goals of the shard?, or that we would be introducing more pixels?

Staff, under era-accurate mechanics, can certainly do a TON of stuff. My point is that, given the amount of work it takes to do that stuff as a member of staff, and the fact that staff on UOSA are very hands-off, that I think creating a system whereby players can access some of that stuff in an unexploitable (and gold-sink) sort of way in order to create neat events and good times... what are the downsides here? We could talk about schedules and things--people logging in only for scheduled events and logging off... but people do that for player run events too? Furthermore, a system as I described that is player-driven doesn't NEED a schedule.

I'm at a loss for coming up with the downsides here.

Also, iamreallysquall, (and I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything, just asking because I really don't know how much you've actually tried and I'm curious what you have previously done)--what events have you hosted?

[the bazookas]

One of my main points is this:

large group PvP and PvM events (and a huge swath of other potentially awesome events) are simply unachievable without certain mechanical systems in place. When was the last time you saw a 10v10 CTF? They just don't happen... a player simply could not make such a fun thing happen without staff help or an IMMENSE amount of work (and then it'd probably get griefed). PvM is obviously pretty much completely outside a player's power.

Heck, why not take it a step further?

Pay 500,000 to some orc NPC and you start a raid on a city.

You get a gump letting you choose which city to raid
You get a gump letting you choose to pay more for extra mob spawns or special events
You get a gump letting you choose to other aspects of the event (infinitely customizable) for more money

Then suddenly *poof* a broadcast message "The Town of X is under attack by ___ and his gang. We need to beat them back before Y", and if the shard doesn't step up to the task and destroy all the "boss" mobs, then the town is taken over for a while, and whoever paid for the raid gets some renumeration of some kind--incentive for them to help the raid succeed and for other players to stop the raid--those that stop it would be awarded out of the cost of the event based on the number of kills they got or some other point system.

With the XMLSpawner system (at least as I had hacked it into Rel Por), one could code that up in XMLSpawner scripting in a few hours--way less time than it would take to prepare even as a staff member hand-running the event. And it would be available regularly--perhaps even in an automated way, easy to limit it to once per week or per day or whatever.

Sounds pretty fun imo. I don't see anything trammel about it. Oh, and it's automated. Hurray! Gold sink + PvP + PvM + no staff intervention required + player driven = fun... sounds like a pretty good equation to me.

[Malaikat]

LeLouche doesn't want anyone to have fun. That's the point of all these threads. Silly zooka.

[Kaivan]

Something that I would like to point out which is relevant to this discussion...

While it's true that certain mechanics existed on UOSA to support guilds such as the Bloodrock orcs, the reason that these mechanics exist here, and existed on OSI servers, was to support an RP environment. As an example, on OSI servers, there were many special quest events held for RP reasons that involved special items or mechanics. One such event on the Catskills shard involved secret passage that was activated by key word (I don't recall the keywords anymore). Another example is the Shadowclan orcs on Catskills, who literally took over the Yew orc fort as their own special RP area (see screenshots in the history section for pictures of special chests and other additions). Other such examples included bona fide blessed houses, which were blessed and decorated in ways that couldn't be achieved through normal mechanics, and couldn't actually decay (a suspension of a mechanic). These houses were afforded such luxuries because of their dedication to some sort of RP. Additionally, we can look at the participation of players in special events such as those talked about on the Bloodrock history page where special colored dragons were utilized (did not exist anywhere else in the game, and thus a different mechanic), or the existence of special items from various quests with different properties (again, a change to the mechanics).

These special quest mechanics and items that sometimes had properties that couldn't be obtained in any other fashion were all specially designed for a special RP event or environment. This is a major difference between suggesting that we allow any and all type of player to have some sort of access to special mechanics (e.g. CTF mechanics) or allowing any player to suspend the mechanics for whatever reason they want (e.g. preventing players from being attacked by other players when they are dueling), particularly when those mechanics effect the game on a much larger scale (removing risk vs reward).