Motivations behind some for 'era accuracy'

[Kraarug]

I saw this in another thread, and, I'm sorry If I take this out of context, but the person quoted has requested the "I'm Stuck" portion of the help menu to be removed a few times.

I saw remove the im stuck option all together, it's not era-accurate.

I wonder why this portion of 'era accuracy' is apparantly so dear to his heart. . .

Here is my post, copied from another thread.

This fellow from T-B, healing himself on the "ouch" hill in Delucia.

When I opened a gate to go loot him, he popped back on through!!!
Still macroing!! So I decided to return him to where I found him...

Looks like, with out a automated stuck option, this person would have loads of fun waiting for a staff member to get him back.

Value added? 0

I'm all for era accuracy, in terms of making the game play mechanics feel like T2A, but we are not playing on an OSI shard with staff 24/7.

So yeah, could someone have done this and yeah, would the target have to wait for a staff member to get them unstuck in T2A? Absolutely.

I say, when the shard is staffed 24/7, the "I'm Stuck" button should be the first thing removed.

[BlackFoot]

agree

[Wise]

agree

second

[MatronDeWinter]

Oh lol,
Cortez good work on the research there. You know, I did (and do) wish the help option was removed, and I never really considered the player-caused legitimate uses of it oddly enough. Thanks for the laugh, I was looking into the thread expecting to find something completely different, and instead I get comepletely busted!

Good work.

[Fwerp]

I don't. This would just turn into a nightmare for staff, and to what end? Allowing a few prolific griefers to gate people (mostly new players) away to isolated and bugged spots, while they wait hours for a GM to appear? Plus, it's only a few months out of era. Seems like a change that doesn't deserve high precedence..

[Fwerp]

Of course you want it removed Matron, you want to gate new players to bugged tiles in a ten year old game...

This will surely help the shard!

[Wise]

Of course you want it removed Matron, you want to gate new players to bugged tiles in a ten year old game...

This will surely help the shard!

the edit feature is your freind Fwerp, it doesent bite!

[Kaivan]

I rather think that removing the help I'm stuck option is an exceedingly good motivator for not macroing in an unsafe area such as that, especially if you can be killed and then trapped for having done so. It just serves to be another risk involved with macroing iself.

[Eulogy]

Nevermind I figured it out..

[Fwerp]

Well, then we should also add the prompt before going through any gate from town to an unknown location that was added in 12/1997?

[RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR]

12/9/97

This patch and fixes made to it bring your client to version 1.25.19.

* Known Issues
o Sitting to the north and west looks a little goofy. Since there are no animations for sitting at all (it was done by sprite distortion), and since the chairs were not drawn to support this, it will never look perfect.
o The problem with being able to drop items in invalid locations (see below) that was fixed means that there are now a lot of items players have left in invalid locations. These items will still be vulnerable to theft or being taken, until players move them.
* Last minute changes
o Graphical glitches with some types of hats when sitting north and west have been resolved.
o Wooden shields have been removed from the blacksmithing skill, pending their move to the carpentry skill.
o Guard calling should work correctly if there is no victim now.
o Stealing will now work with pack animals.
o The lack of ore should be resolved.
o Aggressive spells cast from wilderness into a safe area will now call guards properly.
o You can't herd tamed animals.
o Magic arrow damage is fixed.
o Pets will no longer carry out cancelled orders the next time you give them a certain different order (this caused pets to attack sometimes when you were giving them a different order).
o A cause of server slowdown has been fixed.
o A harbormaster problem found during testing has been fixed.
o A problem with text collision detection introduced by this patch was fixed.
o A problem with the incognito spell was fixed.
o Archprotect will no longer cause permanent loss of AR.
o A problem in bounty hunting was fixed.
o Recalling using previously marked runes to the location of a newly made building will no longer work.
o Pets will now follow players through gates made by gate travel.
o A problem that allowed players to drop items in invalid lcoation (such as partway through walls) was fixed. This led to the ability to "take items through walls."
o A data glitch was found that caused some items to have extremely high or low amounts of hit points--skullcaps in particular were very high --which led to strange prices for these items. Expect numerous changes in item prices and in item resistance to damage as a result of this.
* Virtue guards
o To join the virtue guards (either Chaos or Lord British's) you must have the highest possible notoriety--just "great lord" will not do.
o Find an NPC guard of the type you wish to join, and say "virtue guard" to them. if you qualify, you will be given a shield.
o If you drop the shield, give it away, or die, it vanishes. This includes putting it in the bank.
o If you fall below great lord while wearing the shield, it blows up and kills you.
o Those who have Order shields may attack and kill those with Chaos shields without suffering any notoriety penalty, and vice versa. Note that if you kill them a second time, you WILL suffer, since the shield vanishes when they die. You can do this even in towns, so you can, if you wish, choose to storm Blackthorn or British's castles.
o You must have the shield equipped to be considered a virtue guard! It won't vanish if you have it in your backpack, but it won't be conferring the benefits either.
* Client changes (will require a client patch to be visible)
o A circle of transparency will allow you to see yourself behind buildings and other large obscuring objects, and manipulate items that are behind it.
o Set the UO.CFG option UseCircleTrans=yes to enable it. (There is not yet a macro key for it).
o This may affect your graphical performance, depending on your machine.
o When ghosted, there's some nifty partial coloring effects.
o You can now sit in all four directions by merely walking up to the chair, bench, log, or rock in the appropriate direction.
o The AllNames macro now brings up the names of all creatures, players, and NPCs, plus also corpses.
o You can now target the names of creatures and corpses, so you can hit AllNames, and then open your corpse behind a wall.
o There is now a scrolling tab and scroll bar on the server choice menu.
o The client title bar will display the server name.
o Bow and salute now work for GMs and counselors
* Quests
o A fix was made to keep escorted NPCs from just wandering off.
o Unwarranted notoriety losses from doing fetch-and-carry and delivery quests have been fixed.
o You no longer double-click the escort NPC to get him to follow, since people were doing that to look at them. Instead, you must say "I will take thee."
o Excess prisoners and escortees now clean themselves up. (The excess nobles were because of this)
* Ships and houses
o Ships are now movable with the plank extended.
o You can no longer use gate travel to break into houses.
o Ship planks are now locked upon creation.
o The gate travel breakin exploit is fixed.
o The recall breakin exploit is fixed.
o Masterless pets and hirelings no longer wander onto ships.
* Server issues
o The delay on character deletion will now be seven days instead of one.
o Players will now receive a message if they reconnect from a lost connection.
o With much help from players, a cause of slowdown when crossing internal server boundaries was tracked down. This slowdown dated from the installation of the safety deposit boxes feature. If you closed your client or rebooted your machine during this slowdown, it caused "timewarps" on occasion. We have put in a fix for the slowdown--the cause of the timewarps is still unresolved.
* Game mechanics
o Notoriety changes
+ If you are below dastardly, newbie items are no longer exempt from falling to your corpse.
o Spells
+ Beneficial spells case by good people on bad people will now lower notoriety slightly. The rule is, if your target highlight is red, it will result in a notoriety loss. There is a cap on loss that is based on the circle of the spell. Affected spells are:
# heal
# night sight
# reactive armor
# agility
# cunning
# cure
# protect
# strength
# bless
# arch cure
# archprotect
# greater heal
# incognito
# resurrect
# invisibility
+ An across the board revision was done to spell damages.
+ The method by which area effect spells damage you has been changed to account for distance from the center of the effect.
+ All spells should now be cancelable.
+ The paralyze effect now cancels when you are attacked
+ Incognito was thoroughly went over to ensure that it could not be used to prevent notoriety changes.
+ When stepping into a gate that goes from a guard-protected region to an unguarded region, you are now given a confirmation window to ensure that you don't step into a trap.

That'll learn em.

[MatronDeWinter]

When stepping into a gate that goes from a guard-protected region to an unguarded region, you are now given a confirmation window to ensure that you don't step into a trap.

Just for everyones information, that pool of water I gated him into was still under protection of the town. He would not have gotten a gump anyway.

[Kraarug]

I don't. This would just turn into a nightmare for staff, and to what end? Allowing a few prolific griefers to gate people (mostly new players) away to isolated and bugged spots, while they wait hours for a GM to appear? Plus, it's only a few months out of era. Seems like a change that doesn't deserve high precedence..

I'm in complete agreement. Some things really were improvements.

My other point was, however, that the moment the UOSA gets staffed like a 1999 OSI shard, then feel free to remove the automated stuck button. After all, that would be the most accurate right? Players could wait for a staffed GM to come and move them if they are actually stuck on a bugged tile.

I guess though, just leaving them stuck forever would certainly add risk to macroing in unsafe locations. It would also teach them not to have a house to macro safely in. i mean.. come on.. let's not make it easy on anyone right?

[Derrick]

12/9/97
o Ships are now movable with the plank extended.

Nice patch, not to derail the thread, but this is something another player was asking about this morning.

Yes, the in-town confirmation gump was enabled throughout era, although I believe there was a way to disable it in the client, but that functionality was removed, which is why we do not have the warning.

I could add a toggle command similar to the way the crafting gump works to provide this feature, and reenable the warning menu.

I personally hate that people use the stuck menu as a free ride so often, however people do often really get stuck in the map, often due to a 6.x+ client. I am very open if not entirely obliged to remove it, like trade confirmations and other minor post era features that are still in.

[Senses]

I'm on Matron's side for this. The why's and how's of appeals for era accuracy are almost always selfish, but who cares if thats what it takes to get people motivated to actually do some research. Afterall, she is *right,* that it is not era accurate, so who cares if she and other disreputable people might benefit from it. Personally, I would be far more appalled if someone is sitting on something that they know to be era inaccurate because they benefit by the innacuracy.