by Azaroth | October 8th, 2009
Being free to play is great – until it comes to enforcing the rules. There’s little justice to be had in a world of self controlled reincarnation.
Enforcing the rules isn’t even the biggest problem. One of the most frustrating things I come across when I sit down at night and try to work game systems out onto paper is how inject some sort of account accountability. If it’s Whacking Day for instance and the goal is to get the most snakes – what is to stop someone from opening up eight accounts, macroing the Whacking skill out in the forest, bypassing the character limit on snake collection, and then bypassing the account and IP checks when they turn all of their snakes in for rewards?
There’s a simple solution for other games. Either you’re paying for your accounts and if you want to open 20 of them that’s fine with us – or our game is free, casual, aimed at kids, and we don’t implement systems that can be in any way exploited or interesting. You whack away at your monsters and nothing you do has any effect on anyone else whatsoever.
I’m in the middle here. Wondering how I can approach this, I turn to the illustrious rabble on this blog. How do you run a free game if you want to have interesting and meaningful player participation without leaving everything entirely open to exploitation. I could put up a WoW server and let people collect as many soulbound christmas muffins as they want, I suppose. But I’d like to do an interesting UO server here, and I see no way to do that without some way to definitively track users as human beings.
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This does need addressed. We really need to get a forum for the different thoughts arising from all these discussions – its becoming a pain in the ass to follow and quantify the different aspects around here.
lol.
Hybrid sucks.
“hey look I can cast poison harm and arrow isn’t that awesome! Now look at my gay neons and bank account.”
Zigo stop scripting. God.
oh yea, and einsacks is absolutely right about macroing. He basically took my sentiments and threw them into an analogy that most people are too stupid to understand.
One thing that crossed my mind is that people might just find remote areas within dungeons and box themselves in (so mobs don’t attack them) and then macro in the dungeons.
It would obviously be fixed by having no skill gain player vs player, but I think that might be taking it a little too far. We want it to be hard to build skills. Not completely impossible.
I think skill gaining on players should be nerfed to the point where it’s much more efficient to go mob hunting.
I dont think making skill gaining on players impossible is the solution.
Lefty
Well you can check for movement, but the system that grants better skill gain needs to be “black boxed”, because everything is exploitable. Granted you can develope some decent AI around skill gains, but I feel it is wasted effort, when that is not really the main point of UO, nor the reason why people still play the game.
As for those who wish marcoing would be pulled out of UO, it will never happen. Even big named coding companies still have this problem, even with “watchdog” type software checking the client side.
On another point the VERY portal used by 90% of the free UO shards, Razor, has quite a robust macroing system in it.
Before anyone gets upset, I for one agree macroing takes so much out of the game, but we have to open our eyes that it is human nature to lean toward least resistence, as with most 99.9% if not 100% things.
This old game does not need to have people trying to skill up in town/house for weeks, maybe months, on end before they enter the “world” and start interacting. This is not want free UO shards are all about. Free UO shards are about memories and getting the players up to speed of what they remembered and back to the heat of action, whether is be tmaping, PvM, or PvP. (Personally PvP is the only real thing UO has over other MMOs as no other system has touched it, and no Darkfall and that other junk has not!)
We need to concentrate on why people grief and how to bring it under control, as least within this post.
Maybe later AZ would like to bring up, what makes people want to play UO still, this is where the server should be concentrating on when being developed because it is the core, but I leave that disccussion for a later date.
*Back to the topic…
In my past life dealing with hosted servers (not games) and we were not able to get rid of some users causing issues with a service, we tracked down the IP and contacted the ISP. Once the ISP was contacted we asked that this user no longer be allowed to route to our service as they were voliating our terms and agreements, which in turn sometimes dishes out a letter from the ISP to that user. Granted I don’t know how well this will work in IPY’s case since the emulator is not own by us, and is techically could be “illegal”, I’m not sure since EA lost its court cases against emulators, but it would be a decent deterent. I know for one this works great with Comcast users in the States, as that ISP will drop you as a customer on only a few complains.
All we need is Terms and Agreement log IP, done. The Terms and Agreements would have to apply to connectivity to the hosting server rather than actual game play, since IPY does not own the IP/software. It would be along the lines if, you have been banned, meaning IP restricted from the server and you circumvent this, then your ISP will be notified. **Just a thought**
K. But what would constitute a violation of the terms of use? You basically went over what you think would be a good way to stop people from doing something… But didn’t really say what it is that you want them to stop doing.
It’s obviously not feasible in your mind to stop people from macroing, so what is it you’re trying to stop people from doing? Just griefing? That’s part of what makes this game fun, and sadly, likely one of the reasons people still play this game.
On divinity unattended resource macroing is a banable offense. People get caught and have that enforced ALL THE TIME. And it was true even when there were like 1000 plus players. It wouldn’t be that hard to manually check to see if people were macroing. And again, even if you didn’t check, just letting people know that it’s a bannable offense would in itself deter people from even trying it.
Also I agree with what Geryon added to the idea of skill scrolls. Definitely should be random skills with more coveted skills dropping from hgiher end mobs.
Possible problems might include the ability to use a scroll when a skill is already capped. Obviously would need to be looked in to.
No Fuck skill scrolls. The only type of scrolls in my opinion should be like they have it on Hybrid for tailoring and blacksmithing. I dont agree with the wep/rewards system they have for it but something similar would be nice if we were going to use any type of scroll system.
Say no to scrolls
They aren’t power scrolls that add +5/10/15/20 to the max skill level. That’d be dumb. They’re just small skill boosts (ie. go from 85 to 85.1) to promote people killing mobs to develop their characters instead of macroing.
I guess at no point should they have been referred to as “Skill Scrolls”. You can’t expect people to read every word of a 150 comment thread or whatever.
It also needs to be noted that this is discussion about the second server – the custom ruleset. Not IPY2.
Another thing that needs to be noted is that this was just an idea off the top of my head. This is a problem that can be easily fixed in any of a thousand ways.
Whichever path you choose, making UO a game that rewards actual playtime again is a good priority.
Somehow we’ve all decided that UO means recording the macros, pressing play for 2 weeks, and spending the rest of our UO days logging in for 30 mins to cruise past the graveyard, a tournament, or some other pvp spot. I’d certainly enjoy seeing people interact/pvp throughout all levels of the game again.
I think the scroll idea could work. Someone mentioned a tier system earlier; thats a good idea. Bronze Scroll (1-64) Silver scroll (65-80) Gold scroll (81-90) or something.
I still think some of the core mechanics need addressed – especially the PvE disparity between skills.
Ive reviewed the sill scroll idea from both my bitchy hatred side and also my optomistic side, and considering that UO now is a sit in house and macro game, I agree, skillscrolls are a very good idea.
Hi I used to be in [fku] and was wondering if you were going to restore accounts and houses Az or if you are starting over. Either way I am sure lots will come back , I was just dreaming of mah large tower :< . When you go back live get cursegaming to announce it , if you want tons of players again.
and hmm..
If you need and video editing work for it , lemme know !
and fook all the pve talk , dont mess with any spells/ruleset changes from what you had before… uo + pve = LOL
*facepalm*
http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/3375/yahtzee.jpg
<3 yaht
If I remember correctly, IPY was shut down because of a corrupt world file. I don’t know what the technical implications are or if that’s even the real story, but it sounded like the data had been lost.
If the data is available/recoverable, it would be cool to do a special event every now and then where Az could launch a test server to the last day that IPY was alive and let people cruise around and visit their old houses, etc.
Just gonna put this out there since Azaroth has mentioned gaming conventions in the past..
Launch Party in Las Vegas, anyone?
I think that the idea about Skill Scrolls is something that could be quite an eye turner for the shard.
I would love to see it alongside some kind of AntiMacro code released on IPY 2.0
Make it no longer possible to gain on one particular target for more than a few gains or something like that.
This makes it to where the only feasable way to gain in combat skills is to hit the dungeons or forests to smack different targets, and those targets would either have to become higher in power to gain more in the higher levels. Every 10th monster may drop a “Combat Scroll” that if you double click it on the corpse lets you add either +.1, .2, or a rare .3 to either Swords, Fence, Mace, Wrestle, Archery, Parry, Healing, Tactics Anatomy
In addition, you would gain also gain magery in much the same way, by blasting different targets. It could have the same anti macro code as the combat skills. You wouldn’t even be able to cast Invis on yourself or someone else to gain magery after a certain number of gains.
The reason you will want to gain magery off of higher level monsters is a)the loot and b)every 10th one will drop a +.1 or +.2(maybe even a rare and awesome +.3) “Arcane Scroll” that your character may use OFF THE CORPSE. They have to double click it on the corpse to use it, it cannot be dragged. When you double click an “Arcane Scroll,” a menu pops up giving you the option to add the bonus points to either Magery Meditation or Magic Resist. It instantly applies the gains when you choose one.
You could leave all other skill gain alone. Macroable but slow. You could macro tactics/anatomy/healing overnight and only gain from 82 up to like 83.3
But Fence Swords Wrestle Magery Resist Archery would all be on a code that limited gains off one target to +.5 or whatever, requiring players to be out there doing something that is worth their time in loot to build their characters.
This will inevitably lead to more and more player interaction and interdependence.
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this– but the problem with the skill scroll/dungeon character building model is that you’d essentially create a situation where a few power gamers would grind up to around 5x or 6x pretty quickly (maybe slower than normal, but still faster than all the casual or new people) and would then have free reign over the dungeons with tonsss of prey. It would likely turn pretty quickly into a scroll market that is dominated entirely by PKs, while people are forced to result to the same shit they use to fund macroing anyway just to buy skill scrolls. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing necessarily, I’m just saying I don’t think this kind of system would create the utopian game dynamic that it first brings to mind.
There is an advantage in macroing, in that you give people a chance to build a character quickly without just getting consistently griefed two steps out of Britain.
This sort of thing sort of happened with the skill scrolls on production shards. A few people got the key scrolls fast, and then just dominated the pvp seen with their jacked characters while everyone caught up. The scroll market became entirely dominated by a guild or two on every shard, and the whole point of the system (to get more people into dungeons, I imagine) failed almost entirely. The only good think that came out of it (arguably) was a new kind of PvP dynamic, that was pretty strictly reserved for the few legitimate PvP guilds on the shard.
Mr. Amateur… please read where we said that you would not be able to sell scrolls or give them to other players.
I figured I would miss something. I think that’s a good idea.
Man I can’t believe you guys want to make skilling up hard.
Hasn’t years and years of UO taught you that the real fun part of the game starts when you reach the end game and everyone is on an equal footing.
No macroing I can deal with if its possible to get a decent character in 40 or so hours of play.
But if you’re telling me I have to fucking farm orc mages for hours on end and hope for random drops so I can start casting energy bolt….. no thanks, I’ll play Darkfall where I don’t have to grind anymore. Especially if those scrolls are soul bound and you can’t PK people for em.
Granted, it is a great solution to discourage people from macroing.
Personally I really enjoyed having a couple accounts on IPY. Not sure why it needs to be discouraged. Maybe to avoid resource collection bots.
Just make collecting resources en masse a dangerous endeavor – make only the minoc mines have enough ore to sustain a bot like that. Which everyone will know and thus occasionally PK there.
I guess in my mind the idea is not to throw up more rules and restrictions but to change the incentives so that players partake in desirable behavior. The skill scrolls and the selective(non random) high yield resource nodes do that.
Also, skill scrolls that are on the order of .1 per ten kills is just ridiculous. No one wants to grind like hell at a 12 year old game. Darkfall had a grind like that and it killed the game.
Good idea to let cursegaming announce it!
Lefty
Can the scrolls potentially be linked to the same mechanism that distributes karma? This way, the person that does the most damage gets the scroll in their pack. This would eliminate at least two scenarios:
A) The advanced super guild harvests scrolls for new members who passively sit back and get an accelerated character build.
B) The hiding thief/pk simply loots scrolls off of other peoples kills. ** If rampant pking was a problem on IPY1, imagine how bad it will be if they can get skill gains from raping people.
“Man I can’t believe you guys want to make skilling up hard.
Hasn’t years and years of UO taught you that the real fun part of the game starts when you reach the end game and everyone is on an equal footing.”
The idea is that people don’t have to macro for 1 – 2 weeks just to get on an equal footing with everyone else.
If the standard isnt 7x right from the get go, people won’t feel like they have to macro for a week before they can play.
I don’t expect you to read all the posts, but you’ve obviously missed some important ones.
Multiple accounts also needs to be discouraged because it is detrimental if people can be 100% self reliant in a matter of like 2 weeks.
Read through to see thoughts on that. :)
Avernus I think that not allowing the scrolls to be dragged at all, making it to where a person has to double click them from the corpse would be a good way to make sure that people don’t harvest them for other characters.
I don’t know about how to stop Hide/Stealth players from just walking around and waiting for a monster to die and double clicking the SkillScroll for themselves, but stuff like that has always been part of the UO Human Condition
So, how fast is skill gain going to be on the IPY IRC server? I’d like to gm irc trolling as soon as possible.
Oh and for multiple accounts, 1 account per IP would be good, if someone wanted another account they could donate like…30 bucks towards the server. I don’t know about you, but I know I would be hard pressed to even consider paying 30 bucks for a video game account
irc or forums
PLS
irc AND forums
PLS
ipy forums were what got me through highschool, and i was able to pass algebra from talking to you guys in IRC whilst doing algebra homework
You should keep it NO MOUNTS it made group fights so much more fun. I think it should be 1 character per account and you only get 2 accounts… you can buy additional slots. I hope you don’t mess with the fighting skills , just make them hard gains. you could give a benefit to doing it another way that would increase the rate of gains. Crafting skills it would be cool to see made hard with a scroll idea above or something else so not everyone and their mother had a crafter and self sufficient.. make resources more scarce also except in a FEW key areas to promote hotspots. You should keep the bounty system IPY got shortly before its demise. I hope the rule set is the same as far as precasting goes and the poison nerf. I think it would be fun to put 2 of the factions in with sigils in only brit and glow with 48 hour cap time. Don’t do custom housing :<
just my preferences above , I really hope you don't make the skill gain all pve orientated though. If anything do it through pvp and make it fun instead of a grind ala WOW :<
bk are you thecouch ? ohgod
well my AIM is “uhcouch” and i used to have like a geocities website called theuhcouch or some shit, why?
“The idea is that people don’t have to macro for 1 – 2 weeks just to get on an equal footing with everyone else.”
This is a delusion that seems to persist despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary. A steep skill gain curve in an MMO is simply a time sink that is delaying the inevitable if the end game is poor. We know the end game in UO is not poor, so all that would happen from a difficult grind is to filter out a large number of players that dont have the time or desire to work that hard at a 12 year old game. The players that would be attracted to IPY want to come here to PvP. A steep skill curve will separate those that can spend an absurd amount of time gaming and those who cant – just like it did in Darkfall.
Sure you might pull some guys who enjoy a steep skill curve and that elite feel they get when they get on top of it – but there are much shinier objects for them to become attracted to out there – a 12 year old game that has a chance to close down at any point isnt ever going to be able to attract that niche.
There will be guys who get to the top of the skill gain curve much much faster then everyone else – it is a fact that can not be avoided.
In UO, as in most games, the fact is the guy at 7x gm has a huge advantage over a guy who has 50 tactics and 60 magery. So in turn, those of us who want to compete WILL have to grind.
Also Ièm sorry I didnèt use any apostrophes, as you can see, something JUST got fucked up in my firefoxÈÈÈÈÉÉÉÉ why the fuck is my punctuation all of a sudden french characters!
Oxandrolone type of guys are 10% of the playerbase who want to grind to 7x asap, want no other form of player interaction other than to pvp and pk newbies, log in for 30 minutes a day, and will quit within a few months after gming or if population takes a slight drop.
shut up.
Personally, I played from the day I discovered IPY to the day Azaroth put up the closing down message, which lasted over a year and saw the population drop from over 1000 to a few hundred.
That’s after years of searching for a shard just like IPY, and trying dozens of them.
And yeah, I can only play for 30 to 90 minutes a day. I macroed 2 or 3 characters the rest of the time, but stopped once I had all the character types I liked to play as.
As much as I would love a diverse crowd of PvPers, PvEers, roleplayers, newbies and veterans alike… I just don’t think that’s feasible in an antiquated game that enables the sort of griefing that drives off all but the most sincere PvPers.
But hell, I could be wrong. I’m clearly biased in trying to mold a game that caters to my niche.
Just look at the Darkfall model: an incredibly steep skill-gain curve that crashed when people neared the end of it and made two distinct classes of players: those that could play all the time and those that could not. Do you really want this in UO?
There is an easy solution for those of you that do not wish to make the investment to skill of your characters/macro and that would be for a “donation” of some sorts to buy a skill gain increase for a duration, or maybe a instant x number of skills points ganed. There are several ways to go about this.
Before anyone gets started about this being a free server, but the sad fact is someone has to pay for the bandwidth, server, and housing as this server should not be placed on someone home server on their broadband, as that most likely fail due to outages, etc. (but it could be possible as I house a few servers this way)…
Any who… needlessto say someone has to front the bill and thats where donations come into play.
I know having to gain skill will drive away players, but having to skill up was 25% if not more of what UO was about, and sadly macroing killed it.
Personally, I don’t feel IPY should try and remove macroing because it will be a steep uphill battle, but stay looking toward making skill gain faster and easier when done in a MMO fashion (ie. interacting with other players).
To keep things short and sweet, yes this is an old game, but that should be no reason to put it into easy mode.
Oxandrolone**
This is toward your comment regarding the niche of people who might like a steep skill curve, but the server may shut down at any moment.
FYI, even games you pay for the software and have monthly fees can shut down at ANY moment with no refund per the TOS you agree to.
It sucks but is true and there have been several MMOs that have had to do this as was seen by the great creator of UO (Lord British) and Tablua Rasa (ya I can’t spell, sue me), which was shutdown this year… at the age of barely 1 year old…
Ox, Darkfall and UO aren’t really alike. The only similarity is Risk vs Reward for materialistic and end game materials and objectives, and even then it is hollow because the pros are outweighed severely by the cons (ie, way more risk than reward in terms of items, and way more risk in terms of 24/7 monitoring for zergs in sieges with no signif returns in guarding said city).
That being said, the SKILL gain and CHARACTER MATURATION between the two games are not similar, either (in their current states). Darkfall was powergamed and exploited heavily by a very very very small minority, and everyone else was left in the dust. The difference between the two is everybody could at least DOWNLOAD Razor; in Darkfall, you either knew exploits from beta or were in a guild that knew. Big difference between powergaming a char to full [UO macroing, 100% accessible], and exploiting PLUS powergaming a char to full [macroing + exploits, 10% accessible).
if you guys are bored heres a wigger i added to my fake facebook and harassed
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I would just like to remind everybody that this thread is supposed to be about 3.0. I’m pretty sure 2.0 is going to be ipy as we remembered it.
No faust, No….
Hey Az, saw your twitter post and as I hit reply it vanished, so i’m leaving that message here.
I manage and promote my band “Scarlet Stoic” (Google us if you are interested), as you can clearly see :P
If you want some advice regarding internet as well as IRL promo methods let me know man. I’m no Bill Graham, but ive got a few tricks up my sleeve
Sure, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Shoot me an email.
Ya…
“I would just like to remind everybody that this thread is supposed to be about 3.0. I’m pretty sure 2.0 is going to be ipy as we remembered it.”
This is nice to remember cause just yesterday I heard someone saying that on IPY it shouldnt be any 7x GMs cause skill gain was reallly hard….
Skill gain was pretty tough on IPY compared to what we are used to now, but not like 3.0 will be; I suspect anyway.