Dedicated ghosters/trackers

[Ripplinger]

I still don't see anything you can do to limit/curtail/get rid of ghosting solving any issues at all. Might make it slightly more difficult, but not by very much.

This is what previous discussion on this subject have come to. Only extreme measures such as removing ghosts from dungeons unconditionally would have any effect, and this would have an enourmous impact on normal gameplay.

how about making pcs and npcs (in dungeons maybe?) invisible to ghosts, except for city nps & wandering healers? pretty evident that its nea but...

How could you res someone then? You couldn't, which means they have zero chance of getting their gear back if they need to leave the dungeon and walk to a city to find an npc healer (if they died to mobs and not a PKer). Big reason there I wouldn't like it. (Yes, whoever was there to res could also grab their gear/loot if room, but again, another inconvenience to a player not causing any harm.)

It would not let you explore like I occasionally like to do to find spawns, etc.

And as someone who uses ghosts just to check if a spawn spot is occupied or not before dragging out a wyrm and gating there, I wouldn't care for that change. It just gets down to more of my time wasted. Yes, just a few minutes you might think, but do that 4 times plus waiting for mana everytime you might have a little bit of free time to play, and it eats that up rather quickly. Able to get around this one with just more time, but still not something I'd like at all since my time can be limited.

[Rammar]

I'd much rather just delete two of my accounts than have to see most any of the suggestions in this thread come to light.

As I see it, the root of this problem (and many, many more) is the availability of multiple free accounts. If you're serious about this, then either make them not free (ingame currency, other possibilities?), or make them not multiple (single account, time quotas, etc.).

As to "idle"-timeouts, wasn't that originally added to combat primitive macroing which spammed the server (roll of quarters technique )?
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... a77c5adc42

[nightshark]

As to "idle"-timeouts, wasn't that originally added to combat primitive macroing which spammed the server (roll of quarters technique )?
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... a77c5adc42

I don't think the people in this thread know what they're talking about. I used to macroing some skills by jamming my key down overnight, in mid '99 all the way through to when I quit in 2003 (to macro off counts).

Idle DCs only happened when there were no actions performed in game for a period of time. (actions meaning anything that required a key or mouse press)

[Sum_Mors]

I've started a thread of my own on this before. It is my firm opinion that the number of accounts should be limited. There is no reason to have 15 characters, and I believe it even limits the diversity of the shard. Sure, you can have one of most every effective template to try, but part of the game (and the community) was to team up with those that had what you did not. You found a crafter to sell you wares. You got a treasure hunter to help you get that chest from the map you found. You allied with the guy who had tracking to go on the hunt if you didn't have it.

Why would you do this here? You can have all of those characters yourself. In no time at all, really.

The second issue: Dying. In the time frame, dying mattered. Dying sucked. There was actual loss. Where is the loss here? Dying is a minor inconvenience. You log onto another character and continue playing, or your coffers suffer an insignificant loss. Murder counts are nothing when you have 14 other characters to play. While some people had other accounts in the time frame, they probably didn't have 5+ other 7xGM characters ready to go.

Another issue is just plain cheating with accounts. Sure we're limited to 3, but is it really that hard to "have a brother that plays too"? Are you really willing to bet that people aren't using a 4th or 5th account that their "friend left them" or "I'm just house sitting for"? Really? Not to mention being logged on all of those separate accounts may attract use of non-razor programs to assist in maintaining several clients at once.

In my opinion there are only two ways to fix these problems.

1) Limit the number of accounts. One per person. Ignore the whiners. They are trammelites in disguise. They whine about "trammel" and yet they "need" 15 characters to avoid real loss. Hypocrites.

2) Make skill gain OSI accurate. A glaring inaccuracy that nobody wants to bring up is the skill gain. We know its not era accurate. Make it era accurate, and do a shard-wide wipe on skills. Perhaps not a full wipe, but halve all of the existing numbers so the people with already set characters have a starting point, and the new players don't feel totally cheated. Make it so unused characters/accounts get skill decay. I know the game isn't a job, but it wasn't also meant to be so easy as to have a "level playing field" of EVERYONE having max abilities/max stats/max skills at all times to even feel competitive. If you can't deal with this kind of info, you're probably another trammel hypocrite. Don't worry, you're probably actually the majority around here.

[Rammar]

2) Make skill gain OSI accurate. A glaring inaccuracy that nobody wants to bring up is the skill gain. We know its not era accurate. Make it era accurate, and do a shard-wide wipe on skills. Perhaps not a full wipe, but halve all of the existing numbers so the people with already set characters have a starting point, and the new players don't feel totally cheated. Make it so unused characters/accounts get skill decay. I know the game isn't a job, but it wasn't also meant to be so easy as to have a "level playing field" of EVERYONE having max abilities/max stats/max skills at all times to even feel competitive. If you can't deal with this kind of info, you're probably another trammel hypocrite. Don't worry, you're probably actually the majority around here.

If you feel a skills gain is innaccurate, bring it up with some proof in its own thread. However, not much is going to be done about your desire to have skills innaccurately difficult either.

Whether for skills, items, or housing, new players always want wipes. If you've been here longer, you've been able to take advantage of more open land, less competition, special events, and yes, bugs and innaccuracies too. You can't wipe a skill/item after every fix -- or any fix really (where do you stop?). Thats not how UO was then, and thats not how it is here either.

Your cries about requiring max skills/stats to be competitive are completely era accurate.

[BobDobbs]

I've started a thread of my own on this before. It is my firm opinion that the number of accounts should be limited. There is no reason to have 15 characters, and I believe it even limits the diversity of the shard. Sure, you can have one of most every effective template to try, but part of the game (and the community) was to team up with those that had what you did not. You found a crafter to sell you wares. You got a treasure hunter to help you get that chest from the map you found. You allied with the guy who had tracking to go on the hunt if you didn't have it.

Why would you do this here? You can have all of those characters yourself. In no time at all, really.

The second issue: Dying. In the time frame, dying mattered. Dying sucked. There was actual loss. Where is the loss here? Dying is a minor inconvenience. You log onto another character and continue playing, or your coffers suffer an insignificant loss. Murder counts are nothing when you have 14 other characters to play. While some people had other accounts in the time frame, they probably didn't have 5+ other 7xGM characters ready to go.

Another issue is just plain cheating with accounts. Sure we're limited to 3, but is it really that hard to "have a brother that plays too"? Are you really willing to bet that people aren't using a 4th or 5th account that their "friend left them" or "I'm just house sitting for"? Really? Not to mention being logged on all of those separate accounts may attract use of non-razor programs to assist in maintaining several clients at once.

In my opinion there are only two ways to fix these problems.

1) Limit the number of accounts. One per person. Ignore the whiners. They are trammelites in disguise. They whine about "trammel" and yet they "need" 15 characters to avoid real loss. Hypocrites.

2) Make skill gain OSI accurate. A glaring inaccuracy that nobody wants to bring up is the skill gain. We know its not era accurate. Make it era accurate, and do a shard-wide wipe on skills. Perhaps not a full wipe, but halve all of the existing numbers so the people with already set characters have a starting point, and the new players don't feel totally cheated. Make it so unused characters/accounts get skill decay. I know the game isn't a job, but it wasn't also meant to be so easy as to have a "level playing field" of EVERYONE having max abilities/max stats/max skills at all times to even feel competitive. If you can't deal with this kind of info, you're probably another trammel hypocrite. Don't worry, you're probably actually the majority around here.

UOSA provides you with the opportunity to do all of those things. You can choose to find a crafter to buy wares from. You can choose to hire a THunter or a tracker to interact with.

In my opinion you could fix a lot of these issues by taking it upon yourself to make UOSA enjoyable. Then the staff doesn't have to do a thing but work on what they are already working on. The staff cannot make people form the type of community you remember, only give players the opportunity to do so themselves.

[Tom]

Only extreme measures such as removing ghosts from dungeons unconditionally would have any effect, and this would have an enourmous impact on normal gameplay.

I don't think I understand. How would booting ghosts from dungeons after 10-15 minutes to the entrance or a random shrine and prevent them from entering a dungeon while dead have an enormous impact on normal game play?

[Sum_Mors]

Your cries about requiring max skills/stats to be competitive are completely era accurate.

Oh no, I've made some points. Now my ability/playtime/whatever is being called into question for no reason! My points are viewed as crying even though there is nothing about it! Obviously my motives are that I'm a new player and I'm jealous of all of those characters that took a whole week to finish. Making money is the hardest thing to do in the world for me.

Are you really trying to tell me that skill gain on UOSA is even vaguely similar to OSI's T2A, or are you just making an ass out of yourself to seem cool on a forum? Put some content in your posts.

The staff cannot make people form the type of community you remember, only give players the opportunity to do so themselves.

A valid point. However, I think there cannot be era accuracy made when there are blatant inaccuracies that are not conducive to forming those types of player communities. You can't give 3 accounts and expect everyone to only use one even though it might be better for the gaming community. You can't give increased skill gain and expect era accuracy in other departments. Lastly, I think at the very least, in determining what to give a UOSA player when he/she starts here, you don't go on stuff like "Well you could have 3 accounts on T2A at the time!" Doesn't that sound a little convoluted on the people who're arguing for that? It just makes UO not UO.

[BobDobbs]

A valid point. However, I think there cannot be era accuracy made when there are blatant inaccuracies that are not conducive to forming those types of player communities. You can't give 3 accounts and expect everyone to only use one even though it might be better for the gaming community. You can't give increased skill gain and expect era accuracy in other departments. Lastly, I think at the very least, in determining what to give a UOSA player when he/she starts here, you don't go on stuff like "Well you could have 3 accounts on T2A at the time!" Doesn't that sound a little convoluted on the people who're arguing for that? It just makes UO not UO.

What everyone else is doing doesn't matter. It seems like you want UOSA to provide the UO you remember. It doesn't work that way. You have to make the UO you remember.

I wanted to run a vendor shop like I did on GL. If I had worried about multiple accounts and everyone having the ability to make what I was selling, I wouldn't have done it. I decided not to worry about what everyone else was doing and started my shop.

Now I can't keep the damn thing stocked.

[Sum_Mors]

No, I realize it can't always be how one wants it to be. But I also don't wear the rose colored glasses that others do, where everyone had 3 accounts, and nightmares on every character, and 15 houses, and the world was raining candy from the sky.

My point is that 3 accounts just isn't era accurate, and neither is the skill gain. Why strive for accuracy based on inaccurate means and mechanics? I know the ability of having 3 accounts was possible then, but the argument that "We don't know exactly how many people did/didn't do this." is very convoluted and proves nothing. Who cares if you and your imaginary next door buddy shared accounts. Two accounts between 2 people is not the same as having 6 accounts here. I'm saying the baseline for what we have when we start should be the same as what was then. At least start with one account accessible, move up as the account ages, or who knows what.

[Derrick]

Only extreme measures such as removing ghosts from dungeons unconditionally would have any effect, and this would have an enormous impact on normal gameplay.

I don't think I understand. How would booting ghosts from dungeons after 10-15 minutes to the entrance or a random shrine and prevent them from entering a dungeon while dead have an enormous impact on normal game play?

At minimum, it prohibits ghosts from exploring dungeons, and it's a free ride to the surface when you die in a dungeon. I'm sure like anything in UO there are all kinds of other aspects to this that wouldn't be thought of until exploitation was found after implementation. The concept of the shard, in not tinkering with the mechanics is based partially in the belief that unexpected results are the norm. The fact that other things are not correct is also not a justification for intentionally changing (read as attempting to balance) proper mechanics. While this is simply my opinion, it's also the basis for UOSA.

[BobDobbs]

My point is that 3 accounts just isn't era accurate, and neither is the skill gain. Why strive for accuracy based on inaccurate means and mechanics?

Because the accuracy is an ideological one, meaning if those who run the shard think that it mirrors their ideological goals, then it is as accurate as currently possible. And I'm okay with that.

[Rammar]

Your cries about requiring max skills/stats to be competitive are completely era accurate.

Oh no, I've made some points. Now my ability/playtime/whatever is being called into question for no reason! My points are viewed as crying even though there is nothing about it! Obviously my motives are that I'm a new player and I'm jealous of all of those characters that took a whole week to finish. Making money is the hardest thing to do in the world for me.

Never said anything about gold, but silly me, I assumed you were speaking personally about the rest:

I know the game isn't a job, but it wasn't also meant to be so easy as to have a "level playing field" of EVERYONE having max abilities/max stats/max skills at all times to even feel competitive.

Are you really trying to tell me that skill gain on UOSA is even vaguely similar to OSI's T2A, or are you just making an ass out of yourself to seem cool on a forum? Put some content in your posts.

Its similar enough I haven't noticed much difference lately. As you seem to be so emotionally distraught over the issue, perhaps you should do as I recommended and make a thread detailing your findings. You're the one making accusations here without showing substance.

[Sandro]

I think it's time to start ghosting.

[Ripplinger]

I also don't see any difference in skill gains here than it was on OSI during T2A. It might seem easier since you can freely macro the boring stuff, but do something like animal taming, lumberjacking, carpentry, tinkering... they're just as slow and painful as they were on OSI to me, and I've been trying quite a few characters out. Taming is much harder here than is currently on OSI since you can't gain skill off any previously tamed animal (which is exactly how it was in T2A), it's likely that's the case with other skills also.