by Azaroth | November 22nd, 2009
So first, let’s take a moment to re-discuss dungeon scrolls in a clean space.
The background here is as such:
During a previous discussion on this blog (possibly about loot or macroing), I threw out the idea of increased skill gain inside of dungeons and little skill gain bonuses as loot. These come in the form of Dungeon Scrolls, and while the idea was completely off the top of my head, it’s stuck. I fully intend on integrating something of the sort into the new IPY.
So let’s discuss the concept. In actuality, the basics are being coded up right now. So now is the time to propose your ideas and give your stern warnings regarding game balance and so on.
The goal here is to significantly slow skill gain through macroing and significantly increase it while playing the game. Wacky concept for UO, I know.
Obviously this system is altered to have little effect on new players.
Beyond that, I intend on doing something along the same lines for crafting and miscellaneous skills. This, I’ve intended on doing for some time – but it’s virtually the same idea.
Things like loot, rewards, and questing are severely lacking in Ultima Online. Things like Dungeon Scrolls and adding training scrolls as quest rewards for crafters, thieves and so on go at least some way to addressing that, I feel.
Resource gathering is also an important subject when discussing macroing, skill gain and so on. I have my own ideas for addressing the problems that are presented here – but I’m interested in officially hearing yours before anything is set in stone.
So here it is. This is the thread for discussing all things related to:
Macroing!
Resource Gathering!
Dungeon Scrolls!
Crafting and Crafting Quests!
Here’s your chance to leave your mark and have me seriously consider what you have to say. Just… no PvP arguments, please. ;)
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Could you link the previous post that explains the mechanics of dungeon scrolls?
Actually, that discussion is buried deep in another post somewhere with a couple hundred replies I think. :)
Well im all for this dungeon scroll stuff so long as it doesn’t increase skill gain in huge increments (like 0.1-1 point with the scroll give it like random skills that drop on the scrolls also like make it so its somewhat rare like a 15% chance of drop for like things like bloods or larger creatures) on a side note i am fully against afk resource gathering, but i support regular macroing so long as these macros aren’t effecting pvp… for that’s what some would call “Gimp”. As for Crafting and Crafting quests or maybe just quests in general. Why not have it so these quests maybe last like around 6 months per quest or such fourth then it expires leaving possible rares to expand into the economy. I mean theres quite a few “Pixel Whores” out there. I would be all for that so long as it isn’t a bunch of neon trammie stuff. Maybe make some chain quests and quests that are just hard to figure out or find out about. Heck maybe those skill things could be implimented as a reward for like crafting quests. Like if you complete this quest you get “5000 gold plus a 0.5 scroll of blacksmithy” and such fourth. This could also diverse some of the economies resources.
and also “no PvP arguments, please. ;)” Owned 1v1 newb!
Putting skill gain scrolls on higher end monsters seems to cater towards the already established players, but it would still be nice to pick up these scrolls once in awhile for loot.
I completely agree thou these scrolls need to be scaled with the monsters. Earth Eles drop +.1 scrolls… Blood Eles have a chance to drops +.5 scrolls.
Resource Macroing:
Ban it. Its proven to upset the economy and make prices become way deflated vs their true value (Gm halberds for 150gp… pretty far off).
Scroll drops will be rare, but always useful for the character looting them. The skill increases will always be small.
Also what about guild chat. I dont recall the old IPY having this will this possibly be implanted? or even debated on.
This is a crucial question because it has the ability to determine what kind of community and game will be on the server. So, how much time do you want people to spend in the development stage before they reach the end-game? I can see a lot of merit in having people really commit to spending time developing one particular character and experiencing the game and the atmosphere of the server through that one character. If you made the comparative benefits of playing in dungeons and actually killing monsters significantly greater than the benefits of macroing up characters there would be a whole lot more genuine, purposeful player interaction than there has been on most servers. This could be a really great thing for this ruleset.
Basically, I can see a lot of positive aspects to having a balance where the vast majority of people depend on playing the game and killing monsters in order to reach the end-game. There are a lot of ways to do this, but before you get into the specifics I think it’s important to determine whether or not this is the balance you want (do you want to encourage dungeon-play over macroing?), and just what will that balance be (3 months straight of macroing vs 4 weeks of playing in dungeons -OR- 2 months of straight macroing vs 2 week playing in dungeons? -OR- some other ratio?). Once that’s been established the particulars can be ironed out. But maybe you’ve already figured that sort of thing out?
Other than thinking that your dungeon skill gain/scrolls as loot idea is a good one, I don’t have anything to add to it, keep up the good work. As for resource gathering I think that most people agree that it’s not good. I’d say that it can be fairly well policed with someone spending some time on finding and penalizing the bad-doers. I base that opinion on other servers I played where people were caught in the act then publicly flogged on the forums via razor video, as well as getting marks on their accounts and eventually banned.
I don’t think most people have much of a problem with macroing of the other sort.
Well skill gain will be normal inside of a dungeon for combat related skills. Outside of a dungeon, the skill gain will progressively slow down to about 50%. These skill scrolls will actually make skill gain faster than before, but require that you do not macro because they are loot-driven rewards.
Can I still macro?
I think I represent a small(or large?) percentage of players who play strictly for the end game PvP. I don’t have the time, due to real life restrictions, to play like I did as a teenager or even during my undergraduate degree. Also I doubt I have the desire. Thus, my question: will AFK macroing for the necessary skills (magery/resist etc) be doable still?
Also: I have no intention to ever AFK for resources… I’ll play to gather the necessary capital to build my characters but that’s really it.
Btw, this is a great idea to make playing worthwhile.
Yes you can still macro, except macroing will take twice as long as the person who is actually running dungeons. You will also be missing out on skill scrolls which will drop a lot off mobs at lower skill levels.
Ultimately it does as intended, discourage macroing by encouraging playing.
Initial thoughts on these matters:
Macroing: I favor no macroing at all, and that goes very strongly for resource macroing. I feel less strongly about skill macroing, but I’d still rather it was policed heavily. It has already been discussed in other comment threads why resource macroing is harmful to a shard, so I’ll leave that out.
As far as skill macroing goes, I sympathize with oxandrolone, his time constraints, and why he plays UO. However, I think that part of the reason he feels the way he does is that he’s been playing on shards where everyone is skilled out already, so there’s no fun to be had in skilling. I feel that if IPY were to successfully create an atmosphere where it took a good while for people to max skills out, that he would be able to find the in-between bit fun again. Not because he’d be present for the dings, but because he’d be present for the interactions that occur in an environment where everyone is skilling simultaneously.
I have no experience with the dungeon scroll mechanic, so I can’t give a fully fleshed out opinion. However, it does seem to me that there are 2 ways to get people in dungeons, and that each way has a different effect on where/why people are there. Dungeon Scrolls would would get people into dungeons and keep them there, even after they had maxed the skills they want, because they could (I guess? making an assumption here) sell scrolls to others who are skilling up. This would continue until the majority of the people in the shard have skilled up as many toons as they want (or are allowed, depending on how many toons are allowed per acct.), but would (I feel) cease to be a draw to dungeons after that point.
The other method that has been mentioned is increasing skills gain rate while in dungeons. It seems to me that this method would greatly increase (to a much higher degree than the Scrolls would alone) dungeon presence at the beginning. However, (this is pure conjecture, based on what my personal reaction would be) after the first wave of toons had been skilled up, the numbers in dungeons would drop precipitously, as most would be more inclined to level a side project toon in the safety offered by leveling in other places or at off-peak times.
All that being said, I don’t know which route I would take. I do know that if I were going to implement the increased skill gain in dungeons, I would make sure the increase was significant enough to actually draw people to the dungeons.
I’ve never had a crafter primary, so I don’t have enough experience in the mindset to offer a useful opinion.
There’ll be endgame reasons to go into dungeons beyond gold, so don’t worry too much about that. I’ll expand on that much later.
Compared to skill gain outside of dungeons, the increase will be significant. But skill gain will be pretty slow period.
If you think about the old IPY – at the moment, combat skill gain in dungeons will be faster than that, but you’ll also be playing the entire time which will make it seem slower overall.
Macroing outside of dungeons will be possible… but a slow, inefficient process. It’ll be worth it to get off your duff and go play the game for your skill increases. At the moment, that’s based on guesstimates – tweaking needs to go on during beta.
I’ve been trying to come up with a way to incorporate a similar scroll system to crafting in the form of BODs. However, given how people generally gain crafting points, it would be very difficult to work out a system that’s actually worthwhile. To fill a BOD, you need to use materials but that item might not necessarily be something you gain off while doing so. It may have been better just to make platemail gorgets (or whatever is best for a given skill) with those ingots. I tooled around with it for a while but never could set it up in a way that makes sense.
I think the stock BOD system in itself isn’t bad. I kind of came up with an alternative version to make it more of a long term collection ‘game’ on paper if you haven’t already got something worked out with BODs.
Resource macroing needs to be strictly patrolled. Unless you can come up with an interesting set of code to make it easier to watch over, I think you’ll need several dedicated staff members to look around for these people and make it clear to the population that it needs to be reported. Not a lot of commands are necessary for the staff either so the trust issue shouldn’t be a big deal. On the topic of resources, I’ll throw out coloured ore/leather/wood in case it hasn’t been mentioned yet. Ore should be in for sure (up to valorite), not sure about the others.
As for the scroll idea, does the ‘bronzed’ bit deal with how many points it can give, or at what skill range is it applicable? I would rather not see people hording them until they hit 90 and then just GM’ing a skill that way. I suppose you could restrict the way in which scrolls can be used. Perhaps a timer on them (must be used within xx ingame time, etc) so that people can’t just buy up characters. Overall though, I really like the idea since it still allows macroers to do their thing at the expense of taking longer.
That’s all I got for now.
There’ll be no hoarding. The prefix (bronzed) refers to the power of the scroll. The suffixes refer to the skill level they’re applicable to and the skill they work with.
They are non-transferable, non-lootable, have a decay timer, and so on. So no, no hoarding (and no instacharacter rooms in your tower, stocked to the ceiling with scrolls). If you want them, you have to go farm them yourself.
Sounds good. Got anything planned for BODs?
Presumably the prefix (bronzed, silvered, etc) of the drop will be dictated by monster level?
No, that’s random (to a degree – drop rates of higher levels are obviously better on higher level monsters). Higher levels are just more rare.
What bracket of skill level is applies to (journeyman, expert, adept, so on) depends on your level and the monster level. So you can’t get a master scroll as a journeyman fighting slimes, for instance.
These aren’t meant as awesome drops for sellin’ and so on – they’re supposed to make individuals play the game actively and get loot that benefits their goals directly.
“(to a degree – drop rates of higher levels are obviously better on higher level monsters)”
Comparatively.
Are we going to have to deal with shitloads of gold scrolls of master cooking?
Or does using a skill against a mob increase it’s chance of dropping that skill scroll?
Scroll drops will be tuned to the player they’re dropping for.
I realize this is getting specific and technical, but I’m curious: What dictates who the game sees as “the one it’s dropping for”? Last hit? % dmg done?
If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the one who gets the fame – ie the last hit. Would make life easier on the coder.
a bronze scroll? bro you cant write on bronze, that scroll loses
“Bronzed” – v.
To have given the color or appearance of bronze to
You, not the scroll, lose.
The only thing i have against the macroing in dungeons is for the skill of taming. I mean there would points where there is nothing good to tame in dungeons. And Taming over all is a super slow skill. Just figured i’d point that out.
The original IPY didn’t have taming, not sure if this incarnation will be the same.
Personally, I hope it isn’t there. Nothing says let’s not PvP like “all kill”.
Meh, nobody uses taming in pvp anymore, I say let there be tamers. I don’t think the dungeon scrolls or the slow skill gain would apply to taming if there is taming. It seems like taming is always hard enough.
Macroing – we have to face the facts that being banned over macroing or jailed was a real pain in the ass. We used to be teenagers, now some of us have a job plus other commitments. While trying not to be pesimistic, you have to think of the life of past player run shards… They usually don’t last longer than two years. If I have to spend 8 months of play time (5-10 hours a week) to get anywhere close to 7x gm it will be quite a hassle. (Yes i understand the slow game mechanics are meant to bring out people that arent 7x to compete, but you get the idea)
Good ideas worth considering would be:
- macroing in town significantly slower (macroing outside of town is a bit faster)
- Make explosions stackable so that there are tons of little bastard town killers right off the start to kill macroers.
- Macroing combat skills on another player is EXTREMELY Slow to gm… as in it would take 5-6 times longer than being in a dungeon.
- Trade skills should be hard as well before everyone has their own mule and vendor prices go to crap/there is no reward in having a vendor house
- Taming should be very hard as well.
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Resource Gathering – put in the rules that it is a 1 week ban if caught (everyone KNOWS THE RULES and knows EASY UO is banned – it was common knowledge 4-5 years ago ) – I would even say perma ban if caught first time.
Dungeon Scrolls – I am for em’ 100% no questions asked. It is good to get people in dungeons.
Crafting and Crafting Quests
Im not sure what you hand in mind in regards to crafting quests – I did however like the BoD system with differnet type of rewards. And I think an important crafting skill (ie blacksmith) should be brutally hard. So hard that little will attempt to gm.
The main concern I have with forcing new characters into dungeons is that in the later stages of the game when people are actually established they will get continuously ganked by PK’s.
I know in a past blog entry you mentioned trying to stay away from the type of player that was attracted (or maybe this was in your good bye letter) to IPY in the end. I remember the specific example of the kid trying to RP a bard at Brit bank and being called a “fag” etc.. and made fun of until he left.
This is setting the stage for that kind of behaviour. The initial rush will see the bigger guilds thriving by controlling the dungeons (Just like we saw on SP) and the smaller guilds or individuals either forced to play with people they don’t like, or be farmed.
Now I keep using the word force, I understand you aren’t telling them they have too, but honestly if you are going to gain skill faster.. and a night of macroing only gets me .5 magery, of course I am going to want to be in that dungeon.
The solution I see to this, is stat loss. I think that for IPY to survive this time around and keep a steady player base, you need to put in stat loss. With the risk of losing 30% of your hard earned stats, you will see a lot less PK’s running through your dungeons. Sorry let me re phrase that, a lot less REDS. There is a difference between a Red and a PK. On IPY 1.0 we saw a lot of reds, but not a lot of PK’s. The PK’s will continue to PK no matter what you do, stat loss, no recall, etc.. but the reds, well the guys who say they want it rough and tumble but actually don’t, they will just stay blue and your Order/Chaos wars will flourish.
In this sense we can see dungeons return to what we saw post rep patch and pre trammell in OSI servers. Every level with people fighting monsters and the odd PK comes in and causes trouble, but not a ghost town like we are going to see if this goes live without stat loss. One of the main drawing points for people in UO is that it is a viable solo game.. if you force people into dungeons and then unleash an army of reds to prey on the weak.. well you are ruining and removing the solo game.
This is coming from someone who was red from 97-2002 (when I quit UO), and plans to PK through stat loss on IPY 2.0.
I agree 8000000 percent, the risk of ruining the fun of the vast majority of players far outweighs the risk of ruining the newbie pks who think they should be able to kill whoever they want without any risk of losing anything themselves. While statloss is kind of a lousy thing for a person to have to deal with, there simply never was and probably never will be any other way of accountability in UO when it comes to pks.
I am confident that Az will implement (if not at launch, then the months following) reasons for high skill pointed blues to still occupy dungeons.
Also considering skill gain will be brutally hard, nobody will want to pk if there is statloss… who wants to lose connection/get ganked/ or chase/purple potted to death and lose 30%? Thats no fair even if you are a d-bag newbie killer.
Some other sort of system would be nice (ie you need to pay XXX amount of gold to resurect the red depending on number of kills)
This would also be a nice gold sink.
See now that right there is why I want stat loss. The people who truly enjoy PKing will PK no matter what. Even OSI knew that stat loss was a must. How long was the game live without stat loss? 8 months?
8 months out of 6 years? (There is no stat loss again in UO and it is everything we don’t want this shard to be)
People like myself will PK no matter what, if anything I gain targets by having stat loss because there will be less competition for kills.
I know you are seeing the reasoning behind this Az, because you yourself have said you want it to be different this time. How do you attract the type of players that are necessary for a shards survival? You create a non hostile environment for them to play in. If you think stat loss will stop PKing you are crazy, but it will help control it and stop it from being as rampant as before.
I could be mistaken (as I haven’t taken statloss in a long time) but I believe the maximum statloss one can get is 20%. If people took statloss on OSI (like myself) where the skillgain really WAS burtally slow (at least compared to the freeshards we’re used to) then I think they can handle it on IPY2 where I’m sure the skill gain will at least be faster than OSI. I could be wrong about the difficulty of skill gain on IPY2 of course, either way…
I do like your idea of murderers paying gold to redeem themselves, though.
Oh and Az, I’ve never had my house looted EVER – I have looted a few houses (under 10) but I think it would be a good idea to have lockdowns and secures…. Putting tables all in your house is REALLY annoying and having to lockdown/unlock them over and over again just to avoid some dumbasses is a big annoyance…
Not to mention when someone finally does get their house looted, I could estimate 80% of the time they quit the game.
With player run shards since ipy I have always seen house looting do more harm than good and make people quit the game.
On every shard where house looting is a possibility it’s extremely easy to keep your house secure from being looted. With the exception of some bugs that come around now and then (ressing inside of houses from certain angles in certain houses etc.). I think it’s an important preUOR feature to allow houses to be looted, it adds yet another element of danger which I think enhances the feel of the game.
There needs to be a crime system inside of UO which emulates real life order. Give some use to Forensic Evaluation. Even if it came down to making criminals pay bail, or sit in a jail full of murderers.
No lockdowns/secures =
1) Get their houses looted only by exploits in the game
2) Have to lock down a million tables and shit all over the place just to avoid getting looted.
rarely do you ever see someone (unless they are a complete moron) get looted due to not doing a detect hidden.
As such, no secures/lockdowns due to how unsecure the scripting is, will cause more harm than good.
Stat loss is a shitty idea, especially if you’re going to make skill gain harder.
I like the criminal system solution: How about an NPC that dispenses a quest to ‘capture’ a rogue PK. The quest monetary reward and the internment time depends on his number of innocent kills since his last death. The quest tells you where his last murder took place, too.
To capture him you have to use some object on him, like shackles, that require a “summoning spell” style casting time and the guy has to be below, say, 30% health. So you’d have to injure the guy and paralyze him to use the shackles.
Stat loss sucks, but yes rampant newbie griefing is no fun either.
While I agree that statloss does suck, there simply is no better solution that we know of. I think your idea is a cool one and if it were to be implemented on top of some other more efficient method of accountability that’d be awesome. I don’t see what you suggested actually curbing pking very much or even at all, though. It would offer a cool quest to anyone interested. Other than that it’s not much different than the bounty system and we all know how well that curbs pking. The fact is that it’s much more important to have some kind of murderer accountability on a shard than it is to spare the murderer the suckness that is statloss.
Lock downs and secures are two of the worst ideas ever implemented into UO. Please ignore keuse. He doesn’t understand that UO is about the element of thrill and suspense that is felt because you are constantly looking over your shoulder for some murderer out to loot you and your house.
No lockdowns/secures =
1) Get their houses looted only by exploits in the game
2) Have to lock down a million tables and shit all over the place just to avoid getting looted.
rarely do you ever see someone (unless they are a complete moron) get looted due to not doing a detect hidden.
As such, no secures/lockdowns due to how unsecure the scripting is, will cause more harm than good.
More to the topic; on OSI UOR they had the champ spawns which gave out scrolls which allowed a player to increase their stats and skills above 100. I’m not even close to suggesting this but I wanted to point out that it wasn’t just the person who got the killing blow who got scrolls. I’m pretty sure it was determined who got the scroll by the amount of damage the players did to both the boss and the spawn leading up to the boss.
My point is the code exist (I guess) that will deter people from just waiting for the kill shot to actually participate in the killing. An example of this nonesense would be trammel and only the person who delivered the killshot may loot the corpse. Or factions and getting kill points. That kind of play should be avoided IMO.
Not that I know anything about code but someone pointed out how it would be easier for the coder to just make it so the person who delivered the killshot would get the scrolls.
Yes, the code exists, and acually piggy backs on how loot rights works… (You know if the loot looks grey to you or not)… So thats not an issue of how hard it would be to code into place.
Robin, only self loathing Scum Fucks like you actually enjoy the aspect of the game where you take away from someone what took them hours and hours and hours to obtain.
House looters are the fattest of the fat kids.
Sounds like someone got their house looted.
No it sounds like someone who isn’t a faggot.
I’m sorry, but Iced Earth is the biggest faggot on these boards.
Why would you want to be able to loot houses without consequence. From a development standpoint that’s fucking stupid.
Yeah I suppose I’ll save my thoughts.
Wow, you really know how to derail a constructive thread don’t you?
That was directed at Ice Earth btw, thought I should point that out since my post ended up all of the way down here.
I don’t think anyone is arguing for zero consequence for people for trying to house loot. That’s an interesting idea to bring up and maybe there is a unique system that can be introduced to reinforce risk vs. reward.
I think a lot of just don’t want to see houses become personal super banks with secures and whatnot. To me, that’s stupid from a developmental standpoint of a UO server (I’ll keep away from the T word here). As it is with just lockdowns, there really is no reason to be looted except when someone is careless.
Most people if they are smart keep there most valuable stuff in there bank. There gold for example. So really if your not smart enough to keep your house safe you should be smart enough to keep your gold supply in your bank. Also maybe it would make pvm more interesting if there were some tougher monsters out there. Like ones that would take like 20 minutes to kill with a group of 2-3 people. Have like a higher drop rate on them as well as an increased chance of those scrolls dropping.
Macroing suggestion…
Thinking sort of “out of the box” why not remove System Messages and try to make them over head private messages to curb some Razor automations. Yes I do know that you can use other third party tools but that would be more obvious when a GM is watching you and smites you with the jail hammer.
Also maybe resource gathering should have T-map like chances were it could pull a small spawn, or have a question check to make sure the user is not macroing (this has been done before and it does work).
Personally I feel that having scrolls to increase skills faster will be abused. Maybe we should think toward just an increase for being in a dungen, and even further skill gain when doing “quests”. Granted though this would take a good bit of coding, but I have a few thoughts that could make it much simpler.
Skill gain player/npc combat should be turned off, so the only way you can skill gain will be off creatures, this will curb sitting in dungens and going to a safe location to macro with a friend.
Also within dungens the roaming radius should be toned down so trapping will be reduced for macroing skills once again.
Also make all creature break blockable objects.
On a side note, making skill gain too hard will greatly limit the number of players as most people due to the fact people do not want to wait years to be 7 way GM again, so if the skill gains need to be hard at least keep it in reason of today’s players.
As for those of you derailing the conversation to talk about house looting, here is food for thought…
House looting has been in UO since the begining and was detered with secures. Personally I think House looting should mimic real life in that nothing is 100%, and no where should be a 100% safe haven, including town. This my friends is what made UO great, the risk. Granted I do not believe in gain off someone else ignorance because it was no documented in the game correctly. Thats the fastest way to loose players, so any changes to the housing system should remain in line with the targeting eras.
I also support a no house placement system. This means all the possible houses are already placed and you must buy it from the system, this will stop some inherient issues and also add a new housing market broker profession, which some of you will like to play. Also this system will include city taxation/business taxation to remove sitting on PRIME locations, which are almost always near towns/gates.
Just my 2 cents and I know it is off topic, but appears to be on several peoples minds.
90% of the time people get looted either through an exploit in the game or through counselor assistance. (i’ve played enough shards, talked to enough players, gm’s and counselors for this to be true)
no lockdown/secures is fun fun fun until you have taken all of the measures necessary and get fucked over by an exploit or a gm/counselor (not saying the gm/counselor situation will happen in ipy)
then you have the newbies that lose everything..
either way, house looting will always cause more people to quit than play the game.
You are very correct keuse, but sadly this happens in real life too, corrupt police… You are only as good as the checks and balances can be and in this case I am sure on IPY there will be log parser tools available to AZ, so corrective measures can be enforced quickly because he has the last say.
It is unfortunate to be looted by some oddball security measure that you didn’t know you were supposed to take. For instance; on Divinity for a long time it was possible to res in houses that you weren’t friended to, therefore there were many angels in peoples security wall that one could res through. All you needed to do was macro your ghost walking towards their trash barrel and eventually get it through, then res it from the other side.
Divinity eventually made it so only friends of a house could res in the house. Which I think is a pretty reasonable thing to do considering most people don’t think of those weird angels that people can take advantage of and loot their house because of.
House looting should only be able to be accomplished the old fashion way IMO, that is, a stealthy player trying to stealth into your house as you enter it. If that is the only way to loot a house then I don’t see it as a problem at all, as that is easy to defend against for even the most unknowledgeable of players. Not to say that people won’t get looted, of course some will.
As for bugs or loopholes I guess that’s up to the staff to take care of. I’m someone who’s usually in the know when it comes to how to loot a house and I don’t see very many house looting bugs come around, they do sometimes occur but they are very rare. And GM corruption to loot some ones house is something I’ve never experienced.
I played divinity, more than aware of the ghost resurecting in house bug, hell, I even did it a few times with moderate results.
Since the begining of ultima online, there have been bugs and loopholes as to getting your house looted. The person or person(s) that finds the bug won’t report it until several people complain to being ripped off – and then how many people have to get ripped off and people quit before the bug gets addressed.
As far as Gm’s helping. I have had many instances where certain people I know have become gm’s on shards, even popular shards, and have teleported me to different homes and created gold, rares and resources for me.
Shards include: UO Gamers, Metro, AI, and Secondage.
Those were all shards that I did not care about/the staff were dicks and I don’t imagine this will happen on IPY – I am just using it as an example.
Regardless, the point I was trying to make is:
- 99% of people know to lockdown a million tables and use detect hidden (a huge waste of time and a hassle)
- Players quit over getting their houses looted
- The majority of the time when peoples houses are looted in the past, in the several years now that I have played player run shards since IPY, it has been due to exploit and GM assistance.
in conclusion;
You lose more from having house looting than you gain.
“As far as Gm’s helping. I have had many instances where certain people I know have become gm’s on shards, even popular shards, and have teleported me to different homes and created gold, rares and resources for me.
Shards include: UO Gamers, Metro, AI, and Secondage.”
So it seems like the solution to GM corruption is simply to keep and eye on YOU, lol. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist because obviously it has happened, I’m just saying that the risk of your house getting looted is pretty slim by any means, let alone by a GM. I think it says something that most of us have never been looted after having played the game for over a decade. It says that it’s not a huge issue and with a little bit of effort things like bug exploitation and GM corruption can be avoided, at least when it comes to house looting.
It’s a matter of the feel of the game being compromised by unnecessary game mechanics preventing some people from being looted so they don’t potentially quit. I for one WOULD miss the element of danger that existed every time I opened my door (even if that danger is very light). I don’t think I’m alone in that.
I agree with you on certain points, it’s just that I don’t see GM corruption and house looting bugs as an unavoidable problem. Other than that you have players trying to stealth behind you while you walk through your one tile where your trash barrel or table is. That’s has at least a 98% fail rate stacked on top of the fact that you have to camp someones house for who knows how long just to try it. It’s simply not an issue outside of bugs and GM corruption. As for locking down “a million tables and using detect hidden” being a huge waste of time and a hassle, a waste of time perhaps, but how much time, one second? And a hassle to unlock/lock your one table? I think not sir.
I wish I could write that much about the topic at hand but I can’t seem to think of anything.
Macroing and resource gathering are tough topics. On one hand, they’re a detriment to any shard that wants to maintain a higher standard for game play than the current hit shards. On the other hand, it’s near impossible to come up with any practical way to police these things.
Obviously set up a warning system for offenders when you find them or they’re reported, and follow through with it. Another affective method I’ve seen done is a C.A.P.T.C.H.A system. Make players using certain skills, like mining, occasionally take a quick automated test to verify that they’re human and at their P.C.
Dungeon Scrolls sound pretty A+ to me. Creative, valuable to the player, and probably a likely addictive adventure. I’m picturing BK walls and organized guild hunts… Something players will really enjoy finding.
Crafting and quests… hm. Quests are always a good idea, as long as it’s not something you absolutely require. Crafters are their own breed, and all the ones I’ve seen just kind of enjoy doing their little crafting thing and selling their wares. In my opinion, the best thing you can do is create ways for them to build their notoriety and reputation with the community. Say, for example, they could join an NPC crafters guild which makes it so that players can rate the crafter and his shop, and make that rating public (would probably be a good idea to make it so that the crafter has to ask for the rating, to keep griefing down).
You’ll also want to regulate the presence of mules. Keep the crafters and vendors busy. They want to be, and should be, an important stitch in the community quilt.
As for the side discussion on house looting. I’m pretty much against it, and this comes from a UO career criminal.
A: The risk : reward is totally lob sided.
B: You don’t gain much from it (imo), and it’s certainly not worth the large audience you lose.
C: I’ve noticed communities in shards with secure housing are a lot tighter than insecure housing. Plus, you gain a lot of player sponsored RP events.
Obviously people have quit because their houses got looted, but calling that amount of people a “large audience” is a giant exaggeration. Unfortunately we don’t have any UO statistics to point to so all we have to back up our claims is our personal experience in UO. In my experience in UO I’ve not personally known anyone who quit because they got looted, and that’s from over ten years of UO. I have heard peoples claims on the forums that they were qutting, as we all have, but even those claims are rare. I just don’t see it and I don’t understand why you guys do.
Looting a house is really hard, I challege any of you to go on one of these freeshards and give it a try. On UODivinity it was much easier to loot a house than any other server I’ve played, and still it was a process with a high fail rate. Yes it is true that there is no real punishment to a house looter if they get caught, but due to the rarity I don’t see why anyone would consider it an issue. It’s just another way that you can affect your world and be affected by your world in UO.
This isn’t even one of the topics at hand and I’m probably more at fault than anyone for continuing it, MY BAD. As of now we don’t have any reason to think that house looting is even up for discussion and since this will be a preUOR server I don’t see why it ever would be.
Sales and subscriptions for UO were at the absolute peak with the implementation of secure housing and other secure features. Even in the PRS world the shards that offer such luxuries are the ones that are flourishing the most.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating trammel standards, It’s just another point to be made along with, again, the communal aspects it brings, and consistency to UO’s ever so infamous risk:reward philosophy.
Also, you claim it’s very hard. It’s not hard, it just takes a degree of luck to find someone who doesn’t take the proper measures to keep his house safe (read: properly blocked from the public).
Once you find that sap it’s a matter of walking in, waiting for him to leave, then robbing him blind of a large mass of his earnings, whilst you risk what ever you have on your toon.
So, touching on the actual “difficulty” which is in fact “rarity” you actually strengthen my point. How is it worth hindering the people who want to do things like host player run towns, with public taverns, and smiths, or host events from their home just so a couple miscreants can get the lucky house loot once in a while? From a communal viewpoint it makes 0 sense, and from a game play view point it makes little sense, and it conflicts with one of ultima’s most fundamental design points; risk : reward.
I realize it complies with another of UO’s core philosophies, in that it promotes it’s classic sandbox style gameplay, but I view this particular element to be more of a hindrance than a benefit.
“Also, you claim it’s very hard. It’s not hard, it just takes a degree of luck to find someone who doesn’t take the proper measures to keep his house safe (read: properly blocked from the public).”
Once again I wish we had statistics to point to so we could actually back up our claims because I’d love better understand how you thought that looting houses was so easy. You make it sound like a walk in the park, you obviously never spent time trying to do it. It takes a lot of time and like I said before, has a 98 percent fail rate, perhaps even 99 percent. It may not be hard as in difficult, but it is certainly hard as in unlikely.
“So, touching on the actual “difficulty” which is in fact “rarity” you actually strengthen my point. How is it worth hindering the people who want to do things like host player run towns, with public taverns, and smiths, or host events from their home just so a couple miscreants can get the lucky house loot once in a while? From a communal viewpoint it makes 0 sense, and from a game play view point it makes little sense, and it conflicts with one of ultima’s most fundamental design points; risk : reward.”
I don’t see in any way how anything that I said strengthens your point, please be more clear. Also, I don’t see how requiring a few tables to be locked down in your house hinders any of the things that you mentioned in this paragraph. I’m guessing that you mean that since players cannot have their belongings in chest that are not locked down behind a security wall of tables, that they are not able to reach the items that are being used in said events, or taverns. How is it that having secure chest which they also cannot get into unless they are friended/coowned is any different? And if they ARE friended/coowned then why are they unable to get into the chest behind the security wall? As for your last sentence stating that making houses lootable conflicts with risk vs reward, that doesn’t make any sense. You want to take out the -risk- of your house being looted in order to comply with -risk- vs reward? Obviously you were referring to the risk of the looter, and you have a point, there is no risk for the looter aside from potentially being UO killed. My counter to that is that it IS difficult to loot a house contrary to your belief and it IS a rarity. Again it is unfortunate that the only way we have to back that up is personal experience in UO. I’ve never once been looted in UO after 12 years, how is house looting not a rarity?
You can’t attribute UO’s subscription success of that time to secure housing, considering there was so much implemented at once that played a role. Most UO players saw the creation of trammel as new lands for housing, that’s what the buzz on the street was. The other ideas were no secret but they weren’t getting as much attention. The original map or “Felucca” had no room for houses for a long time. Trammel was going to be a land of equal size with no houses yet placed. Also what was being introduced to UO was a “one house per account” rule. Add the “one house per account rule” to a new land for everyone to place houses and what do you get? A big fat subscription increase.
That is in my opinion is without a doubt the MAIN reason that UO saw a subscription increase like they said that they did. I’m sure that turning UO into a single player game with an interactive chatroom included also encouraged some people to stick with UO longer. It also encouraged thousands of players to quit, sooner or later, because our chess game was turned into a game of checkers, thanks to all of the checker fans out there.
My point is that I don’t see trammel as a big success as it was touted to be, and what success it DID have isn’t mostly due to the actual game mechanic changes. Everyone and their dog tried to place a house in trammel, and you can bet that more than half of them already had houses on at least one account. It was a great idea for OSI (or whoever owned UO) as implementing the one house per account rule not only deterred players from owning 200 houses but it also guaranteed a huge spike in account subscriptions.
Trammel and all that it is affiliated with sucks.
There will be secure containers.
Will these secure containers have a weight limit and will locked down containers not?
There’ll be limits.
I’d be interested in working out a system wherein warring guilds (O/C, otherwise, etc) could loot each other dry (note: this is difficult with a free game) – but intentionally making it so that bugs and abuses will allow for the drylooting of Sally Tamer is not something I’m at all interested in. Won’t happen.
That’s an interesting idea. Though IMO when it comes to housing and personal belongings in general, sally the tamer and b0ned3wd the peeveepeer aren’t any different. What I mean is that if sally the tamer is safe from being looted then plated3wd wants to be too.
If making houses more secure would increase the population of a server then I’m all for it. I don’t think that houses being lootable is a super significant part of the game that shouldn’t be changed. On the other hand I’m not convinced that it causes a significant amount of people to quit, as some seem to think.
I can’t really put my head around the idea of only o/c guilds being able to loot one another. I just don’t see how it would work, seeing as how these o/c members could just use houses not affiliated with their o/c chars. I’m sure there would be other ways around it as well.
Perhaps a guilds guildhouse could acquire some kind of guild items that can only be stored at their designated guild house. It sounds like a cool idea it’s just hard to imagine.
Correct, more people like more secure things. You can’t say for sure that secure housing is a big one but I don’t think we’re making points for a moron, and see no reason to dance around the obvious. It wont trick anyone.
Aside from that, 1 house per account came into affect long before trammel, and after it did there were plenty of people buying those houses up, and plenty of people needing houses to place in trammel. They advertised it as a place for extra housing, because there was already a demand for extra housing. Yes, I’m sure people made second accounts and put houses on them, don’t personally believe there was such a mass of parents paying an extra $30 a month so little timmy could have extra UO storage, that it launched an online video game into record sales.
What more likely brought sales up was that they catered to the cries and demands of their community, which attracted people, and brought people back. Some of those demands, IMO were good, some were bad. Secure housing being one of the better, more rational ideas.
And again, communal aspects, roleplay, risk:reward.
“Correct, more people like more secure things. You can’t say for sure that secure housing is a big one but I don’t think we’re making points for a moron, and see no reason to dance around the obvious. It wont trick anyone.”
Not to be rude but I honestly don’t understand what you’re trying to say in these two sentences.
“Aside from that, 1 house per account came into affect long before trammel, and after it did there were plenty of people buying those houses up, and plenty of people needing houses to place in trammel. They advertised it as a place for extra housing, because there was already a demand for extra housing. Yes, I’m sure people made second accounts and put houses on them, don’t personally believe there was such a mass of parents paying an extra $30 a month so little timmy could have extra UO storage, that it launched an online video game into record sales.”
You’re right they did implement the one house per account rule, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “long before” but even if it were it doesn’t change anything. People still opened new accounts to place houses and you’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. I was there playing the day it opened and the days leading up to it and I personally know plenty of people who opened new accounts to place a house. Also, not everyones parents payed for their UO, and not everyone was a “little timmy” when they played UO. UO was serious business if you may recall, people farmed gold and sold it on ebay, a large tower sold for 300 dollars + on ebay. People did whatever they could to get ahead in UO and you think people didn’t open second accounts to place a house in trammel?
Look, secure chest in houses isn’t the end of the world to me, I’m just arguing here that house looting isn’t such a great problem as people are making it out to be. Now were talking about the success of trammel related to secures in houses and I firmly believe that secure housing is way down on the list of things which attributed to subscription increases during trammel days.
I specifically said it happened, but not to a degree that it was wholy , or even marginally responsible for UO’s record subscriptions.
Hell, the reason they amended the rules to specify 1 house per account in the first place was because too many people were complaining about the lack of housing spots, yet you try to make it out to be some sort of marketing scam that resulted in record breaking sales and subscriptions.
I mean, yea it sounds pretty and all when you say “1 house per account… trammel… think about it,” as long as you completely ignore everything that lead up to the opening of trammel and the fact that the 1 house per account came long before, and the fact that even after trammel opened there still weren’t enough housing spots for everyone. You said it yourself, towers were selling for $300
or if you also completely ignore the fact that you can run from bank to bank, and dungeon to dungeon, and count the thounsands of people that were play -at any given time-, and just tell by looking at the map that there is no way in hell there was enough housing spots for everyone that actually played each shard.
Hehe, where are you going with this? Are we still talking about the reasons for the significant subscription increase or? I never said there were enough housing spots, in fact I said there were not.
I’m saying sales were up because people like secure things like secure housing, not because of some elaborate scam that spanned over at least a couple years.
While I wouldn’t disagree that many of the game changes of UOR increased the population, I don’t believe that they were nearly as effective at increasing subscription numbers as the 1-house-per-account-rule was. I’m not saying it was a scam, it was simply a good idea; both from the financial standpoint and from the in-game standpoint. Do you really think that OSI didn’t think about people buying more accounts to place houses in trammel? I don’t remember the exact date the onehouseperaccountrule was implemented but it was definetly right around the time of Trammel.
UO being safer for the players undoubtably encouraged many to stay longer than they might have before. It also encouraged many players to quit eventually. Did more stay than quit? I think so. Are either of these variables significant compared to thousands upon thousands of people opening new accounts so they can place another house? I think not.
Now you can argue that thousands upon thousands of people is an exaggeration if you like, but I think that your argument would go against any reality of UO that we’ve witnissed. And it would certainly go against my personal experience in UO, as I said before I knew plenty of people who were in fact getting another account so they could place a house in trammel. Knowing UO players, naturally they would if they could, any many could and did.
OK, well we’ll just ignore all points other than the fact that there were more lands added, at some point in time a rule was put in place that allowed only 1 house per account, and assume that such a number of people used this to benefit their housing situation that it resulted in UO’s record holding subscriptions, and call you right.
We will, again, completely ignore the fact, a fact that anyone who played before trammel knows, that there was a massive demand for more housing before trammel opened.
We will ignore our own perceptions, and the fact that you could see thousands of players on any shard at any time, then look at the map and know instantly that there isn’t enough housing spaces for everyone.
and we will ignore the fact that trammel opened in may of 2000 and UO’s highest subscription period was in 2003, looooooong after everyone “bought more accounts to place them in trammel.”
I don’t see how you repeatedly pointing out that there was demand for housing negates anything that I’ve been saying. Yes I know there was a demand for housing from the time I started UO in 98 and I’m sure before. How does that help your argument that people didn’t open up accounts to place houses in trammel as much as I think they did?
You’re right, UO’s subscriptions peaked in 2003 when they opened yet another land where people can place houses, this time with cool stuff to do with your houses. I wonder if people bought accounts to place houses that time.
Here are some interesting timelines that don’t necessarily go for or against anything I’m saying: (I’m at my parents house for thanksgiving and I have a lot of time on my hands) http://www.swivel.com/data_columns/spreadsheet/1006164
I couldn’t find many sources to confirm this but I’m fairly certain that the one-house-per-account-rule went into effect january 2000.
Trammel was opened may of 2000.
UO3d (or whatever it was called) went in march of 2001. This expansion also included the landmass Ilshenar (houses could not be placed, only those who purchased the 3d clients could access this land).
Fubruary 2003 the expansion that included the land mass Malas (where houses could be placed), also included was the option to customize your house. Subscriptions reached a peak of 250000 at this time.
There were other less significant expansions in between and after that I didn’t mention.
You’re denying these timeless don’t negate your argument?
You saying that I’m denying the timelines is based on your opinion of what caused the numbers on the timelines. My opinion differs.
Azaroth,
If houses are secure on IPY2 as they were during trammel might I suggest adding custom houses. The only thing I had against them was that I thought they’d be too easy to customize in a way that makes them unlootable. If they are unlootable anyway I think custom houses are something that people really enjoy working towards having.
With that said, customizing houses should cost a lot more than on normal servers.
*denying these timelines negate your argument.
Anywho, this is obviously a downhill battle. You win.
If you want to talk about the numbers on the timeline we can. You don’t have to get pissy :)
I’m not being pissy. this is pointless and we’re spamming, so game over. Don’t be offended.