by Azaroth | August 10th, 2009
Discussion continued from here.
One of the largest problems I found we had with IPY was the disproportionate ratio of pvp players to “regular” players. That’s not to say it was completely lopsided. It was just completely lopsided compared to any EA UO server in the previous ten years or so. But there were far more non-pvp players on the server than it seemed like, due in part I’m sure to the size of the shard. Naturally players and their friends gravitated toward the most popular server.
Or, that’s what I assume. Because I certainly didn’t do anything to attract them. Or, enough. To be honest, I never had time to think about it properly. I was consumed by a lot of other things at the time, and my gameplay concentration generally revolved around PvP when I had time for it to revolve around anything.
Sure, there were some events. Most of them were pretty slapdash. There was never a recurring villian or an epic storyline. The world never changed and there was never an opportunity to be a hero. Even when I did appoint eager volunteers as Seers, their events were worse than mine – even sometimes harmful until I put hard restrictions on how items got made and things got spanwned.
So let’s discuss “regular players” and things that can be done to both attract and keep them. “More events” and “better events” is obvious enough, what else?
Keeping ‘everyone else’ happy is absolutely key to a healthy world.
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I literally made a song, 4 years ago, where the only vocals are me mumbling from a super old vent recording talking about how I had been up chopping trees for 24 hours straight. Just thought I’d mention that before we get this topic humming…
I considered myself a “regular player”. Me and mamo were always terrified of the prospect of PvP and we were too figure out how to run scripts so we did things the hard way and went mining by double clicking our shovels and then clicking the ground over and over, same thing with chopping wood. However that was sufficient enough to entertain both mamo and myself along with running away screaming “HELP DOOD IT A RED” as soon as a murderer was spotted
we were too dumb to figure the scripts and stuff out*
I’m going to start by saying a lot of things that are, I think, pretty obvious, but I figure that a well-documented foundation might be helpful in discussions down the road:
The pool for “regular players” is never going to be what it was during glory-days UO (~97-99, if you ask me). I don’t think a playerbase like that will ever exist again in any MMORPG. I don’t think it will ever come close. There are many reasons for this, most of which seem only on the periphery of my consciousness: for instance, I think a lot of this has to do with complex psychological factors involving a general naivety about online gaming and also about the game itself. When UO was unleashed upon the general public, the vast majority of players were, to the best of my understanding, people like myself, which is to say they were totally fucking unprepared. And this made for a great and wondrous time, because as it turns out, relatively unprepared people interacting produces results that, frankly, far exceed anything that even the best drugs can offer. But those days are long gone are probably never going to exist in that kind unadulterated capacity again: I feel grateful just to say that I was a part of it.
So where in glory-days UO, powergamers were a relatively rare bunch, and the degree to which they could succeed was to at least some extent proportional to the amount of “regulars”/casuals/sheep/dumbfucks around at any given time, this kind of system is, I think, too archaic to work to the degree that it did before. To some extent, the lifeline can be extended by injecting new casuals into the system, but in this day and age, and especially with this particular game, those people are going to be few and far between, to say the least. So, rather than relying on blood transfusions for sustenance — IE the need to bring in casuals — I think the goal should be to create an ecosystem that can exist in-and-of itself.
To simplify a great deal and to skip a few steps in the name of brevity, I believe that the vast majority of this shard will be what one could refer to as powergamers. The mechanics will be dissected with extreme efficiency and then almost immediately digested by the hungry masses. To an extent, I think this is just part of the MMORPG landscape these days. People who didn’t do this kind of thing have cut themselves out or been cut out of the equation long ago. This is especially the case in a game as awesomely unforgiving as glory-days UO, and as such, even those who come on to this shard as true newbies will soon learn the game to an extent that far exceeded the general knowledge base we were working with back then.
Now, as I see it, we can either use this knowledge to lay back on a recliner, close our eyes, and essentially get off on how sweet things used to be, or we can try and use it to make the IPY experience sustainable and enjoyable on a level that for all the reasons tangentially discussed, wasn’t possible then.
TLDR version: IPY2.0 Pros: less dumbfucks Cons: less dumbfucks
(I should at this point offer a half-assed apology for using the word dumbfucks. If you want to play this shard in order to create a wood-chopping empire then that doesn’t make you a dumbfuck, obviously. Nor are you a dumbfuck if you want to use this shard as an opportunity to carry out a fantasy wherein you are a huge-viking-sword wielding knight that saves virginal women, or if you want to play a miner, mad from verite-exposure poisoning that rapes horses in his small wooden shack in the plains northeast of Minoc. There are certainly more accurate terms for this kind of thing, but I really don’t, for my own well-being, want to explore what those might be, so I’ve settled on dumbfuck because it sits better with me than using the word “casual”.)
Anyway, if you’re still with me and can accept my thesis that this shard, try as we might to alter it, is going to be filled with powergaming maniacs, willing to work on a scope that would have, among other things, bankrupted me as a teenager during glory-days UO, then I’ll move a step or two forward and list some other things I see as given:
As far as I know, by virtue of the connection interface, literally everyone on this shard is going to be using razor, a program infinitely more capable than I remember UO extreme being.
Most guilds are going to be using some kind of voice communication program in addition to IRC. Again, I see this as part of the landscape now. Personally, yes, I feel that this destroys some of the magic, but we could spend hours crying over how different things are now. Who knows, maybe once this shard gets going I will be able to sponsor a weekly event where we do this very thing, but in the mean time, I think it just needs to be accepted that this is going to happen.
In addition, the sad reality is that people are going to do whatever they can to make easyuo work, even though it will almost immediately thereafter start to minimize the amount of enjoyment to be had from the game by those very same people. This kind of self-sabotage is an ugly but immutable part of human nature, laid hideously bare in MMORPG format. As glory-days UO players this is nothing new: we have seen things no men should see.
From my perspective, these four factors (a huge contingent of powergamers, everyone using razor, voice communication, the looming menace EasyUO), are going to make this shard vastly different from the original experience — they are going to shift the balance of the ecosystem. But my hope, the reason that I write this, is that I think if we could counter-weight these factors then we could come closer to restoring the balance and delivering an experience that begins to replicate glory-days UO. To be blunt, I think too much emphasis is placed on replicating the numbers and mechanics of the era without regard for the contributing intangibles that in my opinion are at least as important. An example of this can be seen with the free shard UOsecondage. The fact that nearly everyone has a different recollection of how things used to be (over 100 patches so far) aside, even when all of the mechanics are in place (which they may never be), I strongly believe that such a shard will provide a relatively empty experience. If the end of glory-days UO was like losing a beautiful wife in a plane crash, then uosecondage is dredging up her corpse, conducting massive amounts of reconstructive surgery with second-rate doctors, somehow bringing her back to life and then trying to fuck her again. It’s just not a pretty scene.
That isn’t to say that the mechanics and the numbers aren’t important — they are, of course, but it’s easy to get caught up in restoring things to some totally arbitrary point in the past that really only exists as a feeling in our minds. So, I’d like to see more focus put on creating an experience that would bring us closer to having more of those feelings again. In other words, I don’t want to fuck the corpse of my dead wife, I just want to get laid again. And in these terms, I think that IPY 1.0 came pretty close. More importantly I think that with the proper planning, IPY 2.0 can get there.
TLDR:
necrophilia:bad
sleeping with a woman because she reminds you of someone you used to love: pretty good, all things considered
What I’m getting at here, I think, is that almost anyone who played glory-days UO agrees that it was, to say the least, an amazing, immersive and unique MMORPG experience. People who didn’t feel this way have simply moved on, and for those of us who still remember how great it was, our search goes on for a game that comes close to replicating that experience. In some dimensions, that is not likely going to happen, but in many more ways it is still a possibility, and it isn’t far off: Having played IPY rather extensively, I know this. And if it’s done right, I think this can be an experience that is at least as rewarding as glory-days UO. As for specifics, that’s not really something I’ve concerned myself with at this point. Besides, I’ve gone on long enough.
Good luck in this venture, keep us updated.
Good thoughts. If anyone wants to expand on that and provide some specifics and some solutions, I’m all ears.
We all know that IPY was the Woodstock of MMOs but it wasn’t revolutionary. It was just the culmination of many voices in a rather nichey time and place to fuck each other after losing their loved ones in many plane crashes.
IPY 2.0 cannot possibly be a clone of IPY, just like IPY wasn’t a clone of old UO.
If thats the case then humble yourself before things like Vent and scripters and a shift in the ratio of powergamers to gimps (particularly after game maturation as extreme as this case). Things are going to change the game over time indirectly like those, and we can all figure out a way to overcome the negative aspects or throw our hands up and say “well thats it, it’s ruined!”
It’s not ruined but it’s a far cry from emulation of emulation, which is what it is in this theoretical discussion.
Carbon copying is not lossless… sparkle is constantly wearing off of everything… all I’m saying is this needs to be done with new inspiration rather than a throwback (which I know it isn’t for us mulling this over, but for the other people who log in we can’t say).
I think the big problem with this one is that when you’re trying to go at it from a classic angle, you can’t change anything. How far can you go before you’re not a classic server anymore? If it’s not very far, do you just roll the dice and hope for the best?
Even something as easy as saying “Better events!” isn’t as simple as it seems. Volunteers can be sketchy and past experiences allow for a minimum of trust there. Hopefully you luck out and end up with a few great people that can run fantastic storylines and such, but that all depends. If the population isn’t incredibly massive and most people are there to PvP, it becomes pretty difficult to pick great Seers out of the bunch.
But that’s only events and quests. Doesn’t truly balancing the population require going much further? Can it be done with a “classic” ruleset?
Sure you can it’s possible but you gotta get the right people to help you out and you need all your ducks in a really tight row. With all the talk of making sure to limit succeptibility and that shit, you gotta iron all the bs out first if you want this to rival your first endeavor…
“But that’s only events and quests. Doesn’t truly balancing the population require going much further? Can it be done with a “classic” ruleset?”
having stat loss on death as a pk(and not on rez) is a good way to balance the population. I think a server where there is no penalty for reds when they die will drive away the other types of players.
Yeah, I posted about statloss a little while ago. I might drag that one up again and see what people have to say.
Realistically, though, I think people just want to play and don’t give a shit about the discussion. I doubt most people think in terms of the long term and would just wander off if they got bored or displeased. Which, I suppose, is why I’m looking for a little conversation from people who really want a solid experience and a place that sticks around for a long while without ending up with 80 people online.
Although most of a classic server’s population does participate in pvp, most of them are not hardcore pvpers. On most of the servers I’ve played, it’s been unusual to find more than 10% of the online players out in the field looking for pvp. It’s probably much less than that. Even if most of the population enjoys the idea of pvp, you’re still going to have a good number of people who truly enjoy treasure hunting, collecting rares, running vendor shops, etc. Crafting, PvM, and everything else that affects the economy are equally important to a server as pvp is.
Skill gain is relevant as well. We all want to pvp asap, but difficult skill gain limits the number of characters people have and it keeps them farming in the dungeons for longer periods of time. IPY had a pretty balance on skill gain.
Yeah I imagine only 10-15% of people play JUST to pvp.
i just want to ond noobs
aheaheahehaehaeheah
taking screenies
-Dex
avernus, i’ve missed you, will you have my irc babies?
We don’t even have a forum! What makes you think Azaroth will give us IRC? :(
I’m not even sure I want to give you jerkies a UO shard.
did someone say IRC?
irc.dal.net #ipy
that irc sucks fotdick, nobody in it but you
If you want any serious hope of keeping those miners, lumberjacks, farmers, tamers and so on, deal with the pking. But maybe that is the subject of discussion 3? :)
Well, I did statloss a while ago. I suppose I could go with that again and see what people have to say. Or we could make the discussion a bit broader.
Five kills, char goes perma red. Theres regular decay timers for counts up until the char turns red, then it’s just perma… unless…
If someone kills the red / cuts head off / turns it into a NPC, the red char goes to 7×0.00 skills! Total reset!
Keep skill gain same as IPY was or maybe a little harder also.
Maybe no banking for reds?
Man that’d be fun as hell I think.
2 chars per account? 1 account per IP?
This is just off the top of my head but I’m just trying to spark some ideas here around this stat loss and “bulwark” style of design being discussed.
The only way that sheep will play a game is if the game is new. Unfortunately, something like IPY is based on an old game that’s already targeted at a very niche demographic. Only those that even know what it is would initially be drawn to it. I’m still baffled as to how IPY managed to attract so many newcomers in the first place. Maybe it was because MMOs were still fresh to a lot of people back then, it was 2003/2004 or something right? Whatever bizarre phenomenon that caused that to happen would surely be impossible to recreate especially with the MMO genre so popular now thanks to WoW. It just seems impossible these days to have as many sheep as we had back then and not because any one particular experience is ruined by the continually added conviences of 3rd party programs like Ventrilo, EZUO, etc, but because the overall experience of a persistent world has lost its former wonderment. Sadly I have no suggestion on how to recreate that other than when “marketing” the server to stress the emergent gameplay that a game like UO can offer. EVE’s Butter Effect trailer does a good job of that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq2oxt7Nrxo
I’d like to say though, that I myself am a sheep and if IPY 2.0 were offered I would definitely log in to chop wood. I’ve always enjoyed that aspect of UO more than anything. I enjoyed playing with the music on, and heading out into the woods to cut trees or mine until my bags were full. It was very relaxing. I remember during my first week of IPY I was crafting at the Brit Smithy when a new player ran up to me. He asked if I could make him some gear so he could survive at the graveyard up the road. He didn’t even have any money to give me, but I made it for him anyways and said he could pay me back sometime. I didn’t expect him to pay me back at all though and when I finished up I left. Surprisingly, he later found me in town still wearing the gear I gave him and paid me back with what he earned while fighting. For some reason that simple memory sticks with me from IPY and I thank you for allowing that Azaroth.
Some of the friends that I brought into IPY were first time UO players and thought the PvP hardcore aspect of the game was the only thing worth doing. They often mocked me for being a crafter and questioned why I enjoyed it so much as if it were some taboo side of the game that only a casual could find entertaining. As much I enjoyed and held my own in PvP, for some reason crafting and communicating was always infinitely more enjoyable to me. If I ever ran into someone out in the woods I’d get so excited just to see someone way out in the middle of no where and try to talk to them. It’s just something that makes the world feel alive. I didn’t even really roleplay though. I wasn’t much of an RP kinda guy. I didn’t even mind that the majority of IPY’s playerbase were wannabe thugs (btw what a bad medium to act like that in) I just simply liked to socialize in-game. There’s nothing worse to me than encountering someone who doesn’t even respond only to find out they’re a bot. The whole illusion of the persistent world comes shattering down and at that moment you question the quality of the game and server. So yeah, if anything can be done to prevent that kind of botting I’d put a lot of effort into it.
I really don’t know if I’ve made any point. I just started typing and going on tangents. I didn’t have any objective when I started this comment lol. I’m glad to see that you’re interested in doing it again though
Well, don’t thank me for allowing anything. I put the server up because I love the game. I’m personally thankful to the people who actually created the game:
http://www.uoherald.com/credits/creditsUO.php
Even if it did waste amazing amounts of my time.
You come to realize that it’s still the best game available to us, and it gets you interested I guess. It’s funny, because I don’t even think I want a 3D UO. What I’d love is a smooth new 2D UO that expands on the type of gameplay UO already has. If only doing something like that were at all possibly profitable.
Anyway, there are always more “sheep” than one would realize. Wolves are more visible and more vocal. The e-thugs never actually outnumbered the regular players, it’s just that the ratio is totally out of whack during IPY and might be even worse if there were an IPY 2.0. The hardcore kind of player might be more interested than the average person, who, in 2004, might still be interested in just picking up UO and playing it. What options did they have back then? EQ1, AO, AC?
Of course, when I point out that most of the MMOs that launched back then were pretty awful, someone will probably mention that they still are. Which is true. Unless you like WoW or EvE or a couple other things, there’s not a lot to play that isn’t crap. There’s just a lot MORE crap than there used to be.
IPY has name recognition, and those that missed out know they missed out on a good thing.
Once the shard is open, I can just spam a few irc channels and the numbers will start pouring in like a landslide.
I think you dont have to worry as much about players leaving as in past shards, as people have continued to play on complete crap for shards and put up with a lot of bullshit from admins and players in the past, and continued because there was nothing else out there.
Well, theres still nothing else out there, but IPY will give people hope.
For a while. :)
as far as EUOing…
I think perhaps getting a solid counselor base (overnight – with not a lot of powers other than the ability to teleport and jail) to visit all players online whenever there are not any pages to answer and make sure that nobody is using euo to macro…
also, make sure there is 0 tolerance for euo and resource macroing.
everyone knows by now that EUO is banned and resource macroing is the highest offence in the game – its just common knowledge.
I have a friend who used to resource macro and find ways around detection, and whenever he was caught, he would say he didnt know it was an offence and get off.
players just exploit kindness and try to BS like they don’t know its an offence.
just ban them.
Pretty much spot on. But I’ve never been afraid of rocking the ban hammer pretty heavily. I think people know that already.
I actually made myself a promise that I’d be far easier on people this time around. I’ll keep that promise. Just not with EUO.
Even though I used to log on, and see tons of names that had to do with sexual orientation, racism, or downright derogatory nature, i was fifteen or sixteen and used to laugh my head off at how moronic people could be.
However, it does eventually lead to the downfall of the shard as people are at an age now where its just completely annoying and many cant stand to play videogames with teenagers anymore.
But you can’t really ban for that. Ideally you have a decent enough filter to prevent it, and if an obvious enough name slips through and you get complaints, you simply allow the user a chance to pick a new name and put a note on their account.
so in conclusion… the ban hammer is necessary.
yeah, or more so the players that follow people around spamming racism at them and whatever else, i dont know, we probably have different views and will probably change once I start playing again – heh.
The Ban Hammer Is Necessary.
But also..
The Customer Is Always Right.
Find a way to strike a logical balance or enjoy the heat of the flames you’re going down in.
Some things just happen. They happen because of people, but those people are not a random occurrence or something you couldn’t plan for. People trying to put in childish or racist names is going to happen. It just will.
Thus if your filter sucks too much to catch something (and it will, because people will sit there for hours to beat it), it’s your job to handle it properly and professionally. Or to train your staff to do so (which is harder).
The above is why I consider EVERYTHING that happened on IPY my fault. I often talk about it and make no excuses.
Nothing that happened was a variable. It was a given. It was obvious. I suffered a lack of experience and sometimes a lack of logical thinking and I failed to either prevent the problems or, sometimes, deal with them in the best manner possible.
I’ll make mistakes again, too. But it’ll still be my fault if I do. Making excuses for something under your control that you simply failed to plan for correctly makes you an asshole. A lot of people are expecting a lot of things from you in any area of life. Whether that’s parenthood, at your job, or running a game server for thousands of people. Screwing up is nobody’s fault but your own. People are always counting on you way more than you expect they are.
Azaroth said it best, there needs to be a balance between satisfying the ‘customer’, and delivering the ban-hammer blow. However, I feel that if a stern enough message regarding zero-tolerance for blatant acts of disruption — or cheating — is effectively communicated to the playerbase, it will — by and large — be followed. There will always be deviants, and those will be the reminder to the rest of the population about the zero-tolerance policy.
What about just removing stacking explosions? IPY was like that for a short while due to a bug. Was better that way imo. Stacking explosions went in before there was vent.
1. Police the Community – So many of these freeservers are FILLED with gigantic asshole spewing dickheads. Can I ignore it? Sure. It just makes the server look like trash to anybody on the outside looking in. I’ve tried to get friends to come play UO before… they check the forums and decide against it. Cleanse the community of parasitic individuals.
2. Base Storyline/Active Plotline – It doesn’t have to be amazing, but there is always somebody out there willing to write something up and play Seer. Have a progressing storyline that will “justify” additional mechanics in game. It sounds silly but if I knew there would be a huge storyline event going on I’d login to check it out. The catch is finding a good Seer with a good storyline who is able to do this simply because they enjoy it. Ridiculous items need not apply. This idea is sort of like what WoW has done with some of their released content (serverwide unlocking/progression).
People need a reason to be here other than to be fodder for others. PvE needs to be meaningful with updated AI. Monsters/PvE needs to be redesigned somewhat IMO…
Like somebody said in another post – It isn’t fun to be one shot by a monster while wearing platemail… the PvP should be challenging but it should also be POSSIBLE.
Late reply, sorry.
I think something that should be addressed is that I can’t speak for everyone but I know majority of people I knew who played UO can agree with this;
Someone mentioned to me that it’s 2010.. and truthfully nobody wants to do all the tedious things they did over 10 years ago when the game was new and spontanious. I have to agree.
“Policing the Community” is the dumbest thing i’ve ever heard
You can’t straight up remove a player because he gets on the nerves of the masses. Thats the risk you deal with when you play an MMO, for chrissakes, you’re playing with REAL people, and lots of real people are stunningly unintelligent and irritating. “cleansing the community of parasitic individuals” is a great way to make the server look authoritarian and filled with whiny bitches. And especially on a free server, where the playerbase is scarce as is, we can’t afford to just be rolling out the UO gestapo.
Banning becomes a reasonable response when someone breaks the Terms of Use they agreed to when they made an account. And even then, verbal abuse is not a real problem because if you get upset over what someone said over the internet, unless it’s some grossly racially charged personal threat to your family by someone who lives near enough to act out said threat and is mentally unstable, you shouldn’t be playing an MMO.
A “storyline” isn’t something I would dub necessary for the shard to run healthily, but the Roleplaying community drawn to UO definitely needs to be recognized. They bring a lot to the feel of a shard.
Being bothered by someone’s name is ridiculous. No matter what, there is always going to be armor crafted by Kids in Malaysia, or A Black Man, etc etc.
Because its hilarious.
I agree that taking offence to a lot of names is pretty unreasonable, but I guess there’s always a line, and the difficult thing is making a judgement on when it’s being crossed.
I have always been a pvper on uo, but I do agree a story line is fairly necessary, it’s not something I’d be overly active in participating in but as Az has said, not enough thought gets put into the pvm/role playing community. A story line gives them something to do and accomplish, and who is to say that pvp cant be a part of the story lines anyway? If your not interested in story line for yourself theres no real harm in letting it run and just ignoring it. But if your not into pvp theres only so much fighting the same monsters can do for you before your going to get bored and find theres not a lot to do. So I definately think ongoing story lines/events are important to draw that side to the game.
In the past couple years, I’ve lamented at times over the amount of energy that companies spend to stymie or flat out curb griefing, harassment, and trolling. However, I find that most of my annoyance comes from the fact that they stop healthy griefing IN ADDITION to direct trolling. Healthy griefing would be like, being allowed to spawn kill. Direct trolling would be making a GM smith and having your entire guild devote ingots to you so you can flood the market with a bunch of fucking katanas crafted by “a burly negro”. That’s straight up fucking sad if you think blatant, unoriginal, and anonymous racism is funny. Straight up fucking sad. I’m all for dominating noons in various forms but trying to act like racist retards for a few cheap laughs is honestly pathetic and not funny. I remember Az specifically telling us in [FB] Vent that we “single-handedly make people constantly”. And all we did was zerg-PK hot spots in a legitimate if not mafia-esque fashion. That shit took a while to sink in, but I still think about it in a context of “will this make me a better player? We will have fun doing it?”. I wish I could go back and res some of those random victims cuz while we were lullin our butts off, some poor sap (“who can’t cut it” according to all the epeen kids) was logging off and walking away from his PC cuz some cross dressing jerk with Nazi in his name just pk’ed the fucker for the third time in Shame Earth Eles.
iPhone bugged out as I was getting to my point… Sometimes we think somethings funny but it’s really not. Like when you drink too much and wake up with a hairy pig lady. Maybe, in sober retrospect, she wasn’t that good looking in the dimly lot bar. Maybe you shouldve taken the time to go to Waffle House before fucking so you could see her in a good light. That’s how you wind up waking up next to Az’s mom. All I’m saying is that there should be a limit on the way people conduct themselves if it truly is hurting the game on a meta level (like, when ppl say “should I play here..? O wait it’s a bunch of racist kids…”) or if the target is being personally targeted in a manner outside of the nature of the game. All I am saying is that I don’t want to see 43 different racially themed crafters by day 3.