by Azaroth | June 18th, 2010
… So let’s just bless everything. That way PKs can run free.
Statloss has been a topic of choice around here the last couple weeks. Let’s discuss for a moment.
Now, originally statloss was a reaction to a problem. I say ‘reaction’ specifically mostly because it seemed more like a reaction than a plan. UO was designed as an open world with (among other things) nothing to influence a player’s choice between good and evil. However, this “internet” thing was new at the time and players began killing other players at a rate nobody seemed to predict. Sometimes it’d cause canceled accounts. Which was cool when UO was the only game in town and up until EverQuest was about to launch, but then something had to be done immediately.
Of course I’m only assuming that’s how it played out, but I’ve always said statloss seemed like a kneejerk reaction to a problem that required a very careful solution. So now that we’ve had a decade to look back on it, what are our conclusions and what is the solution?
I think I made a post about this last year around this time. However it also had little in the way of discussion because I didn’t have a salivating gang of redassed UO-panzees swinging around waiting for IPY.
Over the years I’ve spoken about statloss a lot. Too much, maybe, if you’ve actively followed this blog (I love you too, fyi). So let’s cut to the chase on this…
Statloss is better than nothing because it provides a punishment, and you absolutely need some sort of deterrent (and you need it from day one). Believe it or not, I enjoy the fact that you can macro statloss off as a ghost (and I have no idea if that strategy was intentional or not), because it lessens the deafening suck of statloss in a way I’ll explain.
The problem is that the system happens to provide disgruntled players what is essentially a kamikaze feature to UO. Get angry or tired of the game? Go on a killing spree, shout various obscenities, quit when you die. So basically you’ve provided angry players who will, you hope, calm down and start playing again (eventually, and maybe even normally) a means to literally explode in emo rage and reduce their chances of ever returning to nearly nothing. Macroing counts off as a ghost ends up being what amounts to a time out punishment. Which is better than a kamikazeragebomb in just about any scenario. The murderer is removed from the world for a period of time, but not necessarily pushed into quitting.
However, statloss also encourages the behaviour you want to see least from your reds – grouping together to find safety in numbers, ganking, running from fair fights and so on. Nobody is going to sit around and roleplay a murderer in the depths of deceit while they’re standing around also roleplaying a sitting duck for statloss at any time, either. It’s just not very helpful in a lot of ways.
Ideally what you want is a system that actually addresses the problem in a more positive manner instead of an entirely negative one. While statloss punishes the bad guy, there’s not much more to it. Where are the incentives for the good guy? What good does it do the victim? Who is, by the way, the person you should probably be most concerned with.
Even if you have statloss, there aren’t that many people out there hunting down reds to inflict it on them. The game just doesn’t encourage it. There’s no benefit, and it’s still impossibly hard to reliably track someone down before they’ve left the scene of a crime anyway. The only benefit is the enjoyment of ruining someone’s character…
.. Which, when you think of it, should probably be enough in a game like this.
The pro here though is that statloss is a generally accepted part of UO, and were you to be looking for the solution with the most teeth that caused the least bitching and moaning, statloss would likely be it. It’s also awful easy to implement, whereas coding something custom up would take quite a bit of effort.
However. I think player justice is entirely possible if you design a system from the ground up to encourage it.
The problem is that, were I to launch the Classic IPY, the first red system that went in would have to be the last.. and I can’t launch without one. Nobody would put up with a switch after six months. Minor tweaks to an existing system perhaps, but there was a lesson to be learned when observing the backlash after the implementation of the statloss system originally, and after the shrill, bloodcurdling red-assed monkey shrieking that went on after IPY implemented its minor and ineffectual-by-committee red penalties last time.
So while I’m not going to be able to implement some massive, complicated and perfect (or “incrediblyflawedbutitried”) system for dealing with PKing, perhaps we could discuss something simpler that could be coded in a reasonable amount of time.
My proposal is to leave the world free of statloss. You’re red, you die, big deal.
For the most part.
So, awesome. No backward designed and artificial systems – the world is free and open as was intended.
However, now we attempt to address the three main factors that any good red system should:
- The Murderer (Deterrent)
- The Hero (Incentive)
- The Victim (Consolation)
To do this, we draw on existing UO mechanics that are understood (like statloss) and use them in a more effective (potentially harsher) and interactive (more difficult to inflict, less likely, more gameplay options) way, playing on their better qualities.
We introduce a hero – perhaps the “Paladin” – and we provide him incentives to kill the killers.
We also concentrate on the guy who has been ENTIRELY left out of the thinking when these systems were created in the past (and the guy that really shouldn’t have been) – The Victim. We leave him something other than high, dry and discouraged when the rest of the story has played out so that he has something to show for it all other than the memory of being camped by 15 reds at Britain GY and being called names while he tried to learn which button made him attack the skeleton.
The Paladin is a character that has entered into the sacred ranks of “The Order of the Shining Serpent” (or a TOSSer, if that’s how you want to look at it) through the completion of various quests and so on. If the Virtues system can be finished in time, there is also a high requirement there. If not, he’ll simply have had to kill a bunch of monsters to get a sweet Fame/Karma title first for some reason.
He receives points for dispatching red players, which can be used for titles, items, and other special perks. At the base level of points, he can purchase a stone that, when thrown into the Seer’s Pool in Trinsic, reveals a list and location of red players online. More points and he can purchase Paladin Armour – a complete set of which is nothing but a set of platemail, but has no meditation penalty (not blessed, but instead blows up like a chaos shield on death and needs to be repurchased. Or starts as normal plate and needs to be redusted/reblessed by a reward item if we’re going to help the player economy out). Massive amounts of points and a player can purchase from a selection of the static houses inside Trinsic as a Lord of Trinsic. Additional benefits could be things like named Paladin clothing, silver weapons or ‘silver dust’ potion for weapons, various PvE bonuses inside Deceit and Hythloth (our two hardmode dungeons), and so on.
Of course, Paladins could not participate in regular guild wars or take murder counts, and their points would decay and need to be kept up to certain levels relative to the number of murderers online (at average) to use their items, titles, and estates. We don’t want full plate Paladins running around in O/C or guild wars, or murdering blues with their unique advantage. Paladins would be characters strictly usable in PvP against player killers to keep them in check.
Now of course Paladins couldn’t gain points simply by killing red players. That’s far too exploitable. Points would be gained on the death of a red player, by your hand, once he’s debuffed and in statloss. Or “dispatched”.
The trick here is that Paladins would be able to stack debuffs on a player – weaken, clumsy, feeblemind, etc. Mindblast at various distances would temporarily lower skill points (slightly, gaining strength as you cast it closer to your target). If the murderer is killed under these effects.. they stick. Statloss.
So now punishment exists. Incentive (strong incentive, I think) is given to live the life of the Anti-PK (or the ‘No Fun Faction’). However, PKs don’t necessarily need to live entirely without honour – they just need to get the hell out of dodge when the Paladins roll in.
Giving a red player no option to macro off his counts is harsh, and we still haven’t addressed The Victim. So in order to escape death at the hands of a Paladin without statloss, a PK must be ressurrected at the Chaos Shrine within X minutes. No gating, no Help->Stuck. Playing a murderer isn’t supposed to be the easiest thing to do in the game. No red system should be a cakewalk. The Chaos Shrine isn’t the Compassion Shrine, either. You’d better have gold in your bank box, and lots of it.
If you do, the gold is taken from the bank box and distributed by Lord British to the less fortunate. Or more accurately, the people you’ve killed since you were last ressurected at the Chaos Shrine… in a little bag in their bankbox, complete with a handsome note.
“Dear PlayerNameHere,
Fantastic news!
The Paladins of Trinsic hath once again slain an enemy of these lands. The dastardly and malicious Dread Lord PudS met an untimely end on the blade of Lord Azaroth, Grand Templar of Trinsic. Enclosed is a small portion of the bounty, which the Paladins graciously donated to ease the suffering of the citizens.
Enjoy thy adventures in Britannia.
- Lord British”
Your bloodthirsty, murdering character is resurrected with a small percentage of the statloss you would have otherwise taken just to show the malevolence of the Chaos Shrine. No, we won’t be doing a murder-for-gold system.
… and so on and so forth.
So ultimately, a (deceivingly) simple system ends up effectively doing what we wanted it to do – and it does it very simply without many bells and whistles (I’m a big ‘bells and whistles’ guy, so that’s difficult).
In the end, this is far less restrictive on the average red player because instead of EVERYONE whacking you into statloss, you might have to watch out for 1-5% of the population (depending on how points decay, how many are needed to retain rewards, and how difficult doing that is made to be) – and even then, there’s a get out of jail free goldsink. However, on the flip side, there’s nothing that says we can’t provide Chaos Shrine discounts for banked Paladin heads. There’d just need to be a little work to make sure it wasn’t exploitable (no Paladins and Murderers on the same account, diminishing returns on discounts for the same Paladin’s head, Paladin loses some points for his head being used at the Chaos Shrine, and so on).
The goal here was never to make life easier for reds though. So an adjunct to this system would be something I’d pull from another larger system that was planned for launch. In fact, it looks a bit like something that was suggested in the last thread on this site. It’s more complicated and time consuming to code, but luckily some work has been done on it already. It involves NPC ‘guards’ (killable, of course) spawning at a certain percentage rate (climbing with more kills) when you kill someone, then attempting to kill you and place you in the Yew jails. Once there, occasionally there are opportunities for escape that benefit murderers with nonessential skills. So your murderer/thief, or tinkerkiller, lockpicking mass murderer, or beg-and-stabber or whatever will find themselves doing far less jailtime if they’re smart. The catch is that these opportunities have to be watched for, so macroing your time off while you dip out for a bucket of finger lickin’ KFC is less advisable if you want out really soon. Again, we’re suggesting… not demanding.
The goal here, and with the Paladin advantages, is to not only encourage different styles of play (something that I feel is sorely lacking with all of UO’s possibilities), but to solve one massive, until-now-unavoidable problem:
The good guys stink.
The big problem with Player Justice is that the bad guys are always the dudes who are good at PvP, know all the tricks, run all the third party programs, etc. The typical Anti-PK is the guy with a viking sword of power, a mismatched set of ringmail and a dog and three rabbits following him who decides it’d be great to play the hero. Surprise, this doesn’t work out well and you never hear from that hero again.
Well, let’s even the playing field a little. Not forcibly, but let’s drop incentives for the game to be played a little differently. When my character has GM tinkering or is largely a thief/lockpicker, suddenly Joe NewAnti has a much better chance. He might actually kill me if he plays his cards right, and he’d never know the difference. He killed the PK, that’s what he knows – and it was totally gnarly to him. Me? Well, I can console myself with excuses about my build. Then go get my 7xGM red and slaughter that dude.
So while I think this is all a smarter and more holistic approach to a red system, I’m going to hope that players who intend to be red don’t freak out at the suggestion. Mostly because it’s a penalty and mostly because they can. The fact that it’s not fifteen years old like statloss gives you more room to complain. It seems reasonable. It’s easier to attack. So I imagine they will. But that’s okay. Just be constructive.
This isn’t a system that’s set in stone, either. It’s just something that I figured seemed simple, easy to understand, and potentially effective enough to meet all of our needs and even give actual player justice a shot for once.
In fact, I’d even love to do things like leave Trinsic unguarded under this system and let Paladins police their own city.
So in the end, I think the beauty of something even as simple as this is that it specifically hits the basic targets for what the “red system” should do. Your killed newbie is consoled, informed of the destruction of the red’s character (schadenfreude points!) and compensated with a nice little chunk of gold that’ll make him forget the whole nasty business once his mind starts racing about all the great stuff he can buy. Your PK suddenly doesn’t NEED to roll in groups of ten, won’t get discouraged and quit when he loses connection and dies to a pack of mongbats in the forest, can actually participate in some real PvP, and has tools at his disposal to avoid statloss (which will have him participating in things like gold sinks and giving back to the victims) – Life is generally just better. The Anti-PK actually has an incentive, actually has a chance, actually has to apply some strategy, actually has some tools at his disposal, and *actually* gets to roll in and play the hero. And best of all, there’s no quitbomb in the game anymore.
Might not be fancy, but in my eyes it’s practical and straight to the point.
One downside is that you’ll have more reds. But that’s fine as long as Paladins have enough incentive to hunt them. But if they don’t, or if a system like this were to fail for some other reason, obviously there’d be the inevitable toldyouso’ers snorting and chortling about how player justice is impossible and how stupid it was to take out statloss. Fair enough, but if our goal here is to provide long term viability (obviously) while forging a new path with new goals and principles that forks from the path that lead to UO’s existing expansions, I think it’s a fine gamble to make.
As I see it, another big downside is how personal it is in comparison to the statloss system. Statloss is just there, when it happens it’s not a personal thing. Maybe you were killed by a mongbat, or slain by an elf. Either way it’s just there no matter what, and it’s a fact of life as a red.
When a Paladin sits and stacks debuffs on you and then executes you, you might get a little pissed off. At that person, at the server that has the Paladin system in place, etc. Statloss has been around for ages and is generally accepted and impersonal. There’s not a whole lot of room to complain. It’s UO’s red punishment, end of story. Get with the program, etc.
However, under a statloss system I think red characters are used for a lot of suckerpunching. Something happens in Deceit to your blue character – someone steals your loot, or is farming your spot, or says something about your mother. You recall and log out, get on your red, recall back in and PK him. Then you leave and log your red character right out. Where does the role of the Anti come in?
So statloss has people playing their blues mainly and the system I spoke about in this post would have people on their red characters more often. You’ll probably even increase the amount of PKing in the world. However, as I see it, it’s better than letting everyone and their dog have red “suckerpunch” characters that are only online for five minutes at a time and make any sort of reprisal against the murderer next to impossible. That’s artificial and stupid. We need a situation that BOTH introduces danger to the world and enables some sort of reasonable chance that the good guys win once in a while.
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I am first on this? Weird..
I like the Paladin system, I think it is cool that they can sort of track the locations of PKs. I always thought that a global chat system that spammed “Lord Unther NerdVirgin was murdered by The Dread SisterFister in the second level of Deceit!” every time someone was PKed would be a good idea. It automatically broadcasts that there are PKs in location X, go check it out. The only thing is that is easily exploitable as bait… which is true… but if you could fine tune that some how.
Now with this Paladin system you could make it so that spam shows up for the Paladins only (incentive to join, you get red kill spams so you can find instant action).
I love PKing, I always have, but this Paladin system would make me seriously reconsider which side I am on… not to crazy about the debuff stat loss though. I think if you are going to do that, just make it either a crap ton of gold to res without penalties like you said, or just scale it down to 5 or 10%… because that debuff stuff is lame. I can see a group of 8 pallies just para ganking some red, making sure he has full debuffs first then dropping him.
If it was say in a 1 on 1 fight and the pally used strat and skill to pull it off that is awesome… but we all know that won’t happen.
I think you are on the right track with that but imo that system is a bit off. I really do like the Paladin idea though, and giving them pixel crack that doesnt affect anyone else in the game is a great way to draw a bigger crowd.
I find it appealing to me because I still get to hunt people (which is my favourite part of PKing) and with reduced or removed stat loss there will be a lot of reds to chose from. Where as if we have stat loss I will play a red because then I will have more blues to chose from.
But I dunno… I just cant think of a medium for stat loss, I guess that is why I am not a game designer…
I like it, being a paladin sounds kinda fun. Something I might try out.
Hopefully it doesnt take too long to code.
Also, say a red dies to a ancient wyrm’s random fireball of 90 damage, does he suffer the gold penalty too or is it just when slain by the Tossers?
But some respect for trying to get creative with the murderer deterrent system.. sounds like a good idea.
Will it be tough to code?
the bigger questions imo are:
how much of this have you coded already and how long is it going to take to code?
i sort of skimmed through the post (im at work at the moment) and still think that:
1)one char red = all chars red on account
2)red ghosts cannot be resurected or gated, must walk to chaos shrine
3) no recall for reds
and perhaps making it so reds cannot ban from houses would be a good alternate to statloss.
I also think that adding no recall/gate for reds is a simple and effective addition to statloss. Bonus is that it takes virtually no coding time. It’s just sort of a halfass solution – but it makes statloss a far better system without a lot of work.
I’d be interested in putting statloss in with no recall/gate for reds during beta and seeing how it works out.
I’m not sure how much reds would enjoy that it, but it’d make being red an actual (difficult) -playstyle-, instead of making reds phantom gankers who appeared and disappeared after you insulted some blue. That kind of thing was part of my motivation for removing recall/gate in dungeons.
Maybe no gate/recall in dungeons coupled with a slightly reduced statloss. Reduce the statloss even further and add another inconvenience to pks. Like having to run to the chaos shrine to res.
I really like this idea. It’s hard to go out on any kind of ledge and innovate in any meaningful way once people have an idea in mind of what something “is”. And, I would argue, that’s why most MMORPGs and a lot of things in general, I guess, die these very slow, drawn out and ultimately pretty pathetic deaths. Everyone sees it coming from a mile away, the complaints are written a thousandfold in every direction, but all this noise seems to do is tear down or otherwise muffle any voice or suggestion of an actual concrete step toward improvement.
So, to that end, all I can really say is that this is exactly the kind of thing that gets me excited about UO again. I’m sure the system will need to be tweaked, etc, but it’s a hell of a start.
I think the most important period will be getting at least some crude implementation of these ideas in, that way the theorycrafting can have a base of legitimate experience.
I’m actually pretty surprised by the largely positive response to this point. I hesitated to post this because I wasn’t entirely sure of the idea – but I was quite sure that a lot of you guys might not like it. It’s a little outside the box for UO, I suppose.
I’ll probably come up with a couple of alternatives to this and post them too, then see where we are with responses.
Feel free to make your own suggestions. This is just here for discussion right now.
The Pal system is a very cool idea and I can see it working.
The idea of no gate/recall for reds (especially for the first server) seems a lot easier and easily a good quick fix imo.
I think that the idea is great. So long as the incentive to be a paladin remains strong and that the price to resurrect without/or with less penalties is high, I think that you’re really onto something cool and effective.
There are only two things in your idea that I’m not sure about. The first thing is mindblast lowering your skills/stats during combat. While I like the overall idea regarding the mindblast/debuffs stacking (if I understood it correctly) and it potentially sticking after death (creating the cool idea of getting to the shrine on time, paying to avoid, etc..), I can’t say I like the idea of a spell taking away actual skill points from a player during combat. It just seems around the lines of paralyzing/concussion/crushing blow/stun/etc.. While it’s not a “luck blow” like the four that I just mentioned, it is something that kind of takes the skill level out of the pvp and makes it more character/luck based. Maybe if you could elaborate on how exactly that works. I understand that part of the idea behind mindblast lowering skills was “leveling the playing field to help the newbiesauce anti”, but your idea sounds cool enough and factiony enough that real pvpers will participate. I know I’d designate a character/account to it. Maybe if you could elaborate on how exactly that works.
The second thing I’m not so sure about is the lack of statloss. I think that your idea is a great pk deterrent but maybe not harsh enough to actually deter pking. You said it yourself, there would probably still be plenty of pks. I’d suggest coupling your cool idea with a lesser statloss. Lower the max amount of statloss from 20 percent to something like 10 or lower. Lower the amount of time it takes for a murder count to go away. I suppose that if the fee to pay off your statloss at the chaos shrine is high enough it could work just as well if not better than statloss. I’m just not sure about how something like that will play out, gold comes easy in UO no matter how hard the server is. I’m set on the idea that less pks is better for a shard. Even if the gold reward that is distributed to the victims after the death of a pk from his payment to avoid the penalties is high, I’m not sure if that will make the majority of blue pvmers on the server feel better about getting wtfpwned all of the time. Then they go play Everquest. If your idea alone deters pking, that’s awesome. If your idea alone doesn’t deter pking, I say either hike up the price to pay off whatever penalties you have in store, or couple a mild version of statloss with perhaps a reasonable but not super high penalty waiver price.
Other than those two uncertainties I sincerely think that your idea is awesome. When I first saw this; “My proposal is to leave the world free of statloss. You’re red, you die, big deal.” I was like Oh no he didn.
Where’s the edit button when you need it?
Fixed.
Why would the t even be added in that? What are we some kinda Canadians?
PKing is a lot of fun.
Uhhh breadsticks. And sausage reggae
So yeah, I don’t really think any statloss needs to be incurred if you’re going to force a stiff monetary penalty AND an internment in jails when a Paladin kills a red.
Speaking of that monetary penalty – What would be appropriate? Maybe 2500 gold per kill? A random player kill can be so variable – guys killing a deceit newbie might get squat, but also you occasionally come across a bone head who has killed 5 bloods without banking.
And the jail time – its almost equivalent to AFK-ing off murders as a ghost… so yeah, I don’t see the need for stat loss.
I think that we all know that gold in UO is perhaps the easiest thing to acquire. That coupled with “paladin head discounts” and a jail (which as far as I understood it wasn’t part of the pay-to-avoid-penalties-idea) doesn’t sound that harsh at all. Az said it himself; “One downside is that you’ll have more reds.”. I was only stating my opinion that less reds is better for a server, and offering my suggestion to pair with Az’s existing cool idea to possibly curb pking where his cool idea might not.
But like I said, his idea may very well play out in a way that is even MORE difficult for reds to die. It all depends on the price per kill that reds have to pay to avoid the penalties inflicted by mindblast (or however that works). 2500 per kill? Give me a break. Even with 100 kills that’s a measly 250k. Now if the kills didn’t burn away after they are payed off and the pk had to pay off those kills again the next time he died, that’d be something.
I think Az’s idea is super cool, but when he himself doesn’t think it will curb pking that much, how cool is it for the people that get pked over, and over, and over? No amount of gold would make that okay for me.
250K! I never even had half that much.
I had three 7x on IPY1, two reds that I pked with daily. I never had more then 100k gold until I started to farm MOBs regularily, sadly near the end of the server – cause I wanted one of those small towers.
Yeah I had lots of stuff, but never ever that much gold.
Yea I guess 250k is no small amount. But when it comes to paying off your statloss compared to reworking your skills I know which one I’d prefer. Especially on a server where skill gain is slower than the typical freeshard (assuming it will be). I don’t know, maybe it will all work out awesomely. I actually think that it could work just as planned or even better, without additional statloss added. It’s just hard to speculate how it really WILL be. All I have to go on is the knowledge that getting gold in UO is easy. You might have more than 100k in your bank this time around if it means paying off your statloss.
I say just go with it and see what happens. If anything it will be better than just not having statloss at all. On top of that it will add a really fun feature to the game.
One thing that I really like about this idea that wasn’t pointed out in the OP was the need for pks to take into consideration where the chaos shrine is and how to get there from where they are pking. Certain spots will be extra dangerous for pks, while other spots (Despise) will make for a short painless journey to the chaos shrine. Die in Deceit level 4 and you might miss your payment deadline. How would they even get off of islands, anyway?
Btw, that “my computer ate me homework” excuse only works at school Az, it doesn’t cut it while we wait for info regarding the seconding coming of our UO savior.
Sounds like a great system. I’d actually have a really hard time deciding between Paladin and PK, which I think says a lot.
If you can work out the potential exploits associated with paladins and pks farming each other for points/heads, I think this could be a really enjoyable solution to the red problem.
I think the paladin anti concept is pretty neat. We’d have to see it in action though to really know if it’s popular or not.
This is pretty classic Azaroth “take a good, simple idea and make it so convoluted and complicated that it’ll be never be implemented” syndrome. Here’s a good paladin system:
1. You can join a paladin guild in Trinsic by double clicking a stone or saying something when you have level 4 Fame and Karma or whatever.
2. That character can’t leave the paladin guild for a week and is incapable of harming innocents while in the paladin guild.
3. If you kill a red while in the paladin guild they lose 10k from their bank deducted instantly; if they don’t have 10k they take immediate stat loss of something small like 1% flat rate, no waiting around for counts to decay.
4. Send a message or whatever like you planned to the PKs victims.
5. Give paladins a small bonus to damage dealt to reds from spells and reduce damage dealt to the paladin from reds by a small amount.
TA DA. Simple, it would take no longer than 4 hours to implement. Instead of thinking up something DOABLE like this you go off into, “a player can purchase from a selection of the static houses inside Trinsic as a Lord of Trinsic.” This is why only coders should run UO servers; they can be realistic.
There’s a reason coders are coders. Leaders lead. Very few games are produced designed or directed by coders.
Besides that your idea has some interesting positives as well. I’m sure the paladin thing could go a number of ways, but which way is best for long term? Decisions, decisions… Who makes those again? Oh ya…..
No need for any arguments. ;)
Discussion is good. I encourage people bringing up their ideas.
Decisions are about the only thing he makes. IPY just got pushed back another year if you actually expect a system this complex to be in at release.
azaroth: next time you may want to check the date of the last svn commit before writing a novel
6/19/2010 :/
Well, first of all most lead developers actually ARE programmers that have moved up into management positions. That’s the way the world works most of the time. Even the leaders of non-public software companies are all probably going to be software developers. Sometimes there are MBAs managing programmers, but that’s the exception and it never turns out well for the consumer (see EA sports franchises).
The thing is, I tried pointing out exactly what I’m saying in that post to Azaroth when I was working on IPY for a little bit. It’s pretty frustrating to see that he didn’t listen to me one bit, and he is instead still day dreaming overly complex solutions to simple problems. Apparently Azaroth has no interest in seeing IPY 2.0 actually completed; instead he wants to spend his boring work days thinking up extremely complicated systems for a UO server that will never be. Then he wants to use his blog to get other people to circle jerk with him about his ideas to make him feel a sense of completion and worth.
On top of that, Azaroth is in no position to “lead” a UO player run server. He hasn’t even played one since IPY. Imagine how many servers the community has been through since then; I know I’ve been through at least 5 good servers and a dozen more crappy ones. The only reason there’s any hype for this is because Azaroth is throwing around the name IPY. None of the people that did any of the actual work on IPY 1.0 are even around, and Azaroth has stated repeatedly that he doesn’t want the new server to be anything like IPY 1.0.
MIND BOGGLING.
Damn dude. In addition to damn dude; didn’t Azaroth specifically say in his OP that he would be using already existing code for the most part?
He said some work had been done on the jail system which is another massive system he wants to put in.
Interesting… mmm, yes, provocative…
I find snub grudges mind boggling!
Again i think your paladin ideas raise some interesting points and I would like to see some more ideas tossed around so we can really get a bearing on the overall vibe. Changing stat loss to encourage a kore engaging and enticing UO experience is not a simple problem: it can be very difficult to motivate all the old school gamers PLUS noobs to come try out a game in this day and age. I think this particular discussion should provide some clues to help guide us to a better and more relevent PK/victim/anti experience in UO, which is sorely needed in 2010 UO.
Good points and a fair assessment, considering the harshness of the subject.
I think most of us agree that some variation of the paladin system could be an effective alternative to statloss, but I agree that the ratio of day dreaming to coding puts the launch date year(s) into the future. Fortunately, the formula is easy to balance: add coders or subtract day dreaming :)
The post on this blog that preceded this seems to have become topical awful quick. Almost like I’ve seen this kind of stuff before or something.
Anyway, drama is over. Nothing more to see here, I’m not going to participate. Move along, folx.
I didn’t read all of the comments so sorry if this has already been covered but what stops Paladins Bob and Joe from each creating a murderer by murdering eachothers mules and then macro killing same murderers with their paladins?
Any time you’re dealing with points or bounties or whatever (especially on a free shard), you run into a few difficulties. Easy enough to deal with, just have to sit down, think it out, be careful and… test. ;)
I’ve got a list of things I’d consider doing there, and hopefully it’d be effective.
But again, this is just discussion. Like I said, this is not a planned system. Just discussing why statloss sucks, what a red system probably should be doing, and trying to spark discussion.
The paladin idea is fantastic. It holds the killer accountable, opens up an interesting new play-style and provides the victim with some compensation.
As for people saying no recall/gate for reds is just as good of a fix… lol. Blue gaters will ensure that such a mechanic will be largely worthless, unless reds will not be able to enter gates at all (rather than just not being able to cast them).
Ninja Slice.
Artificial systems like reds not being able to recall or go in gates would completely suck and ruin the games sandbox feel. How on earth can a murderer get to the chaos shrine if he dies on an island..? It just won’t work.
This systems seems ok, and a lot of this code, town houses, chaos/order hero/evil items exploding etc is already publicly available, although to call it a “simple system” Azaroth, seriously man, this will take a year of part time coding, to get it completed.
Why not just make it Trammel, with a faction style HERO & EVIL system. Reds VS Blues, then all your adventurer friends would be happy.. NONO I’m joking, this would be terribad. Although, the Evil & Hero system which was used on Siege Perilous did work to an extent and I’m sure has already been coded a million times, so you could just chop and change it to work for you a lot of that system was kinda crap though but it had a lot of the things going for it you’re thinking about.
You need to get what you have hosted and start testing. The simplest solution is always the best Az. More “fluff” can always come at a later date, once the bare bones of a new solution are laid, you will see first hand on a test server what is working, what isn’t and where things could be done to incourage a certain playstyle. I hope to see this up and running before the end of time, if only a test server in the interim, atleast then we’ll have something to discuss and the vapid trolls will have something else to whing about. From there you can go about building a solid system with real time feedback. I think everyone is sick of talking about something which might not even happen, right? :P
Bring on In Por Ylem Incarnate!
I like the paladin idea a lot, this would definitely be a good alternative to stat loss.
I like the idea of having reds unable to cast recall. Making a longer cast timer on Gate, would be a must for this to work. (longer then by default) I don’t think anyone would care if they had to wait an extra 10-15 seconds to cast gate unless they were getting attacked and couldn’t recall out. Another idea to add; have the side where the gate appears not appear so you couldn’t jump back and forth.
Stat loss should be taken out completely if even half of the ideas being talked about go into place in my opinion. Having reds pay a nice chunk of gold would good enough. And then to top that off, they have to pay a % to the victims sounds great.
The one thing that really appeals to me for being a paladin is the idea of helping out the victims. Having your name shouted all over the server would be awesome. I like the note the victims get, and I think it could be stepped up a little more.
Maybe have a town messenger at each bank shouting glory stories of the current leader on the paladins kill board. And if they are at the top of the paladin board for “X” time they get a statue with their name somewhere in a well traveled area.
Maybe instead of making it so a paladin gets “X” points to spend, make the Paladin about ranks and each kill would mean he is at “said rank”. With the paladins kills slowly disappearing over time it would mean they would have to keep up pk killing.
If a paladin is at a certain rank he can use what ever skills his rank allows him to and it would set to an unlimited amount of times and at a free cost.
This would mean lower recruits would get near to nothing for items (armor/weapons) and slowly you would notice how a high rank paladin just walked by.
When said paladin died, all his items and what ever else assigned to him/her would go away until they returned to the stone.
This would mean also you could place a title at the top of names. (sort of like factions) I know when I scripted my server I found the faction scripts lying around, so it might be easier to modify one??
On a side note, I think its a lot easier to criticize and say how things people have been working on are crap then actually being a useful part of the world and come up with solutions or talk about something with a little more tact. I have been to a lot of other servers as well, and I enjoyed IPY and am looking forward to playing again.
having pk’s pay a large chunk of gold = all of the nerds that have hundreds of hours to spend playing are pk’s and everyone else will become red, die, have no gold and quit the game.
You obviously never pked on a statloss server. If it were up to me I’d couple AZ’s idea with a less harsh version of statloss. All his idea actually does is give the option to pay off your statloss. It’s either that or just deal with statloss, up to you :)
I got a craving for UO right now..
my craving is dieing
Seriously Azaroth, give us something to nibble on.
Wouldn’t posting the Q&A make me a circlejerker and a loser? ;)
I haven’t gotten it figured out yet. I certainly don’t want to be THAT.
Nope, just posting cool, insanely complicated systems that would never get implemented does that. You’re clear to post the answers to the Q&A!
Yes!
The Rabbi Has Spoken.
So it is pretty clear now that the majority of us like the idea of a Paladin system and it could help promote some balance.
Id like a comment on my suggestion for a Paladin wide death spam every time an innocent is killed.
Lord Puffledick was just killed by The Dread Lord ForeverVirginLivesInMomsBasement in the second level of deceit! Arise Paladins and defend your Lords lands! etc.
If you remove recall/gate from dungeons these PKs have to come out to get out, right? So this means the Paladins know there is a PK in deceit now, and if they get there quick they can head him off before he makes it out, or they are forced to go in after him, which in turn has Paladins patrolling the dungeons and keeping them safer for PvE Farmers.
I think no recall/gate into dungeons JUST for reds is also a very good alternative to stat loss. Gives the blues a chance to get away and the reds are left going WELL WTFUX THIS SUX IM GOING BACK TO BURNING SMALL ANIMALS IN MY MOMS BASEMENT. Win win situation, rules like that will weed out the problem childs.
Sounds like a cool system, I’d love to see it in action.
PALS 4 LIFE
I keep seeing people I used to play MMOs with wishing there was a “new UO”. Darkfall just doesn’t cut it. How’s the shard coming along? Any progress on ensuring that you get the treasure box opening scene?
Dawntide looks promising. Right now it’s basically in an alpha test, everything is so laggy it feels like your character isn’t even synched with the world. Also, you’re fairly likely to fall through the world at any moment, and I heard that it isn’t using the GPU at all right now and that’s making it way too CPU intensive.
With all that said, it looks like it’s basically UO done in EQ style. It has UO’s skill system (or close) with EQ-like interface and mob spawns and stuff. I know the lead dev (sort of, I played on Shards of Dalaya his EQEmu server,) and I have a lot of faith in him. Massive patches are happening weekly that improve performance and other things. Definitely looks promising. As soon as he fixes the synchronization issues I plan to play it a ton :).
After giving Darkfall two tries, I think this game deserves at least one. Thanks for bringing some attention to it.
Haha. That’d be nice.
yeah I had some old guild mates mention that one and say it was in beta, but after they tried it they said that it hardly could be called alpha. Four or five tried it out, two fell through the world instantly and discovered a whole bunch of corpses down there.
I’ll have to keep an eye on that, you know, in case IPY2 is pushed back to 2018.
Stat loss; should be just that. Stats (Str/dex/int) ONLY!
Say 10% stat loss on every death, would only take a few hours depending on stat gains.
PS: I’ve been playing a lot of MO and this is how the system works there and it’s seemingly going very well. Stats take 2 or three days to get from starter character to maxed out. Which is reasonable imo.
Absolutely brilliant. I like the Statloss idea of reducing the basic Stats instead of skills. Normally the most simple ideas pan out to be the best.
Make it a bit harder to gain Stats and there we go: 3-4 hour penalty.
Shoulda probably read a little bit before I posted, but I’m lazy so deal with it.
No statloss. Period. Statloss removes essential checks and balances. Without statloss, you encourage blue farmers to amass riches inside of dungeons with absolutely nothing to keep them in check. Then they get rich fast, get bored, and quit. Statloss was put in originally to deter ass holes from completely disallowing pve players from playing how they wanted to (you don’t need statloss to fix this here).
That’s only a problem if your map size is congruent with a large enough and aptly diverse playerbase. Unless you plan on filling the map with three thousand players from the get go, rampant pking isn’t yet a problem, and thus requires no fixing at this point.
Also lets be real about it. Is there really going to be a shit ton of pure PvE’ers playing here, who have never played UO before and have absolutely no field survivability experience? Probably not.
Back to the point about map size; on OSI pking was a problem because there were pks camping just about every major PvE spot. If you plan on having a full map from the beginning, that’s not going to be the case.
On player run shards, it’s been my experience that most of the time, reds are PvPers, not PKs. If a red attacks a PvP capable blue player, they fight for awhile, and the red ends up winning, penalizing him for doing so is retarded.
Several more reasons why a form of statloss is a bad idea, and I’m sure anyone who’s ever seen me post elsewhere knows what mine are.
Also, when statloss only lead to large zerg groups for safety and the rampant pking wasn’t really deterred, well, we all know what came next.
Regarding map size:
Anyone could run through every decent farming spot on the whole server in a bit over ten minutes before having to make the rounds of opposing PvP guild headquarters.
That consister of all the dragon/demon/high level elemental/high level undead spawns that yielded the best loot.
Although Az seems intent on disallowing recall into dungeons… so that will drastically up the time it takes to do a PK run, since each dungeon can take ten minutes to run through. Especially Hythloth, that place was such a pain in the ass. Those fucking hell hounds. Balrons will probably be a pretty safe spot to farm.
So yeah, I don’t think map size will make a big difference, but I do agree that stat loss in unnecessary.
I still cant believe after all these years people are still so up in arms about stat loss. I Pked with stat loss for years and it never bothered me any. It is so easy to build a toon in UO.. it isn’t like any other game where it takes countless hours of hard work.
Even with a ROT system stat loss wouldn’t even be a big issue. I love stat loss for one simple fact; it seperates the red wanna bies from the PK’s. The guys who think it is just cool to be red because they heard it was fun in the Dread Lord days that they weren’t a part of.
With stat loss I get a lot more targets to hunt, without stat loss every single person on the server will be red. It is supposed to mean something to be a PK, the same it means something to be an anti.
What is for sure is that something equally or more effective as statloss needs to be on UO servers. The “reds will group up more with statloss” argument doesn’t make sense to me. Considering we’ve all seen gigantic groups of reds on a regular basis on servers like IPY, Divinity, Redemption, etc… Other than that there’s the argument that reds will run 1v1, so what, this isn’t duel-online. There are more than plenty opportunities to find 1v1 through O/C, unofficial/official duel pits, etc… The fact is that most of them will run 1v1 regardless from some of us :)
I don’t think that just simply removing gate/recall for reds would do much at all. Not to say it’s a bad idea, I just don’t see it actually curbing pking that much. If anything THIS will cause them to group up because they really don’t have means to escape.
I don’t even care what the penalty to reds is, just as long as it’s harsh enough to accomplish what statloss did. Statloss did the job, nothing else ever has. And the job needs to be done.
i only 1 on 1 to drop miners and newbies
I agree with all the talk about 1v1 and stuff, since when was UO about code of ethics and what not? In the original days of the game getting killed was a big deal, a huge deal. That is something I would like to see again.
I disagree with the recall/gate not having any effect. If a blue can recall out as soon as he sees a red name, but the red can’t sneak up (besides stealth, which puts him at a handicap because he has to sacrifice 200 skill points), then you will see a lot less deaths. You can position yourself in the spawn so the mobs are between you and where the PK will enter. I know on SP I constantly lost blue targets. I would enter a room they would be on the other side and by the time I got over there they had left and invised/hid somewhere else and I could not find them.. without the tracking bug :) Which I assume wont be on IPY. If those blues could have recalled out as soon as they saw me then I would have never gotten a kill without being crafty.
This promotes thinking and planning and logistics into PKing. Not omfg being red is so uber cool let me kill your lumber jack 5 times so I am red right off the bat so I don’t look all nub1sh attitude that today’s UO gamer has adopted.
“The guys who think it is just cool to be red because they heard it was fun in the Dread Lord days that they weren’t a part of.”
Come on, man, that was over a decade ago. Can we stop being pompous elitists yet? Like somehow being a part of the Dread Lord days entitles you to play the cool card for the rest of your life.
In terms of stat loss sucking – if we can come up with a good way of regulating PKing then there isn’t any reason to introduce stat loss. I think some of the regulations that Azaroth has suggested would be great ways to curb PKing: limiting spell travel abilities for PKers, having a PK alert system, including a rewards system for anti-PKing (paladins), limiting resurrection capabilities (shrines only?).
All of these things are going to separate the wheat from the chaff in creative ways that don’t just destroy characters. With all these in place it will be very hard to be a PKer.
1 – BC is right about the whole ‘front’ people put on in regards to old UO. The way people act, you’d think everybody “was in the UO beta” or “had 2000 kills on their red w/o dying” or “owned 3 castles”. But I understand what you’re saying.
2 – “I think some of the regulations that Azaroth has suggested would be great ways to curb PKing: limiting spell travel abilities for PKers, having a PK alert system, including a rewards system for anti-PKing (paladins), limiting resurrection capabilities (shrines only?).”
Domnu just basically summed up everythin so far. And it may just be enough. Hmm… Tough to say.
It seems like the system hinges on the rewards system being enough of a draw for people that there’s some real pressure put on the PKer.
It’s definitely possible. Like a few people have mentioned above, one of the big draws of PKing is the promise of PvP on-demand. If the paladin rewards are done properly, anti-PKing could offer the same any-time-you-want-it PvP with a little extra sugar on top.
Now that I’ve taken thetime to actually read the OP and explanation of the paladin system, it actually sounds pretty awesome.
The biggest reward to the Paladin system isn’t any pixel bullshit, it’s that pond idea that tells you where murderers currently are on the map.
To me, that’s the meat of this idea – a great way to find the reds that you’re supposed to be hunting. I’d only be red in the first place to find PvP – if I could do that and still be a good guy then why the hell not.
I dunno if I’m alone on this, but I always seem to choose the good guy role when I play those single player games that make you make all those moral decisions. (bioshock/fable/dragon age etc). But then I have no qualms when taking someone’s hard earned loot online.
I agree, rewards don’t necessarily need to be items or neon pixels, they can be capabilities. Rewards could be things like ongoing locators of PKs, or…something like a paladin’s paralyze spell not be nullified by popping a trapped pouch. Small things like that that don’t throw off the balance of PvP, but at least force the person who decides to PK to face the paladin that comes at them.
I think the best part of the pond idea is it will lead to blues banding up since they have a meeting spot.
I agree with your line of thinking, however an un-poppable paralyze spell seriously unbalances PvP.
Unrelated but I’ve gotta nag azaroth some more. I’ve had two or three opportunities in the last few days to point people towards IPY as they are looking for a new mmo and are UO vets… throw that Q&A up soon so we have some substantial info to spread around!
It’s only a real problem when you’re solo and trying to escape a gank. However, If a grip of paladins come after a solo PK, I don’t see that as a big PvP imbalance. If it’s a group fight you should be able to counter it by casting ma or harm on you or your partner.
The idea is to be considerate of the fact that the people who play paladins are going to be making sacrifices; their only PvP will come from anti-PKing, and thus they’re going to need incentives and assurance that they will get what they’re looking for: fights.
I’m not necessarily in love with the idea, but it seems like you get the point.
Please learn to use the reply function properly. You’ve messed up several “threads” by just mashing reply at the bottom instead of replying to individual posts.
I don’t think the price of reagents is going to be a substantial hook for new players. ;)
No. Best reward to the paladin system is that it provides the player with a new, unique, and interesting play style that UO has never had before. That should be enough incentive to make people want to do it. I think red vs Pally fights is going to make IPY2 something truly remarkable, and it really goes wonderfully with the virtue system.
I see some things that might happen with this though, unless travelling is going to be hindered with paladins as well, or they won’t be allowed in certain areas. If PKs need to res at a chaos shrine and paladins know this, they will camp the hell out of the chaos shrine and res kill the crap out of reds. If this problem hasn’t been hashed out yet, here are a some solutions… as well as some general ideas for the system.
1. Paladins are not allowed within X steps of the chaos shrine.
2. A timer such as “If you’ve resurrected with statloss, you cannot be attacked by or attack another player for the next 25 seconds.”
3. We don’t want paladins being retardedly overpowered. Make any character with the paladin title have the debuffs they cast scale depending on how many PK kills they have (would obviously need a cap).
!!!
what if when someone was murdered and it said “Johnny was murdered by dreadlord Alfred in despise dungeon, come quick to avenge his death!” and a gate opened at brit bank close to where he was located
ehh?ehh?
not sure if you’re being serious, and i don’t mean to discourage ideas getting tossed around, but um.. nah. :)
See, this is me replying to you Sultani. I really wish everyone would actually do this!!!!
a little off topic but look what losers on divinity are doing now:
http://i45.tinypic.com/21loe4w.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v512/kalduo/Setzer_3-3_2035.gif
look @ all of the SYNCHRONIZING and automated guild chat for actions.. god… this reminds me of when aimbot was invented for counterstrike… just fucked everything up completely.
uo gamers****
hybrid has always been no-skill central
That’s just Krrios client (Sallos), it has been able to do that for years now.
Aimbot was Quake 1 yo
Your mom is quake 1.
Just spit-balling…
My thought is that Paladins should be able to PK, but if they ever turn red, there should be stiff consequences. E.g., that character and any other character on that account is permanently banned from the Paladin path.
Paladins should still be able to mete out vigilante justice, but they should have to be circumspect about it.
spells
I had to register just to say what a great idea this sounds like. And the added comments by Saltani really added to it. Having played UO for longer than I’d care to admit. It’s nice to see some fresh ( Good ) ideas being brought to the table.
And to add to the whole idea of IPY2 I just have to say how nice it is to see someone (Azaroth) who wants to add something new to the game and move forward. I love classic UO, don’t get me wrong. But it gets old very quickly. It’s not the Mid 90′s anymore. And i’m not a confused teenager playing on Hokuto wondering why I can’t understand anyone, hacking trees and making bows to sell for some meager amount of money, ending up with a character that has Bowcraft/Fletching, Swords, Tactics, Healing, Resist, Magery, Anatomy, Parrying, and whatever else I decided to try and not knowing how to do any of it very well.
True newbies to this game are very far and inbetween, the majority of us know how to 7x a character in a week or so. And know how to get the ball rolling for us quickly.
So, with that in mind, I go back to saying, it’s nice to see something new coming out of a game this old. UOSA pretty much has the T2A period covered.
Hopefully with IPY2 the tradition of evolving the game continues. When the whole Minax thing was happening on OSI/EA servers. I really had high hopes, thinking how nice it was to see the story line progressing and a new land coming out of it. But the fact that it was just an exact copy of the orignal lastscape with a list of laws, really just left me feeling cheated.
So maybe we could look forward to one day seeing a new landscape on IPY2. Although with a bit more thought process put behind it. The lore of Ultima Online says that the shards were created as copys of Britannia, but not that they all have to evolve the same way, so there is alot of room there.
Anyways, that’s just about my thoughts to share on things. I’m sure that wherever this vision leads, at the least, it’ll be something new for us all to experiance.
Awesome. Thanks, I appreciate the comments. ;)
No problem. I guess what I was trying to really say, was do whatever you want to do. Make the server that your going to be happy with come end result, people are either going to be happy with it and play, or not, but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing it was your creation, and not a bunch of shit you threw together to try to please the masses, I mean lets face it, you’ll never please everyone.
And when it comes to statloss, at least your looking for a creative and working solutation to the problem, the problem being what it’s always been, a lack of a well thought out system to give PKs something to think about, before blindly doing what a PK does.
As well as something for the victim to look forward to. I’m very curious to see how things turn out.
Big big fan of this idea.
I feel the main reason most shards lose their luster for me is the lack of fresh faces – you just don’t come across new players on free uo shards.
I know I’ve done my hardest to get my friends to play it, get their skills up etc etc but they just end up being lost as fuck and dead somewhere.
I totally forgot what i was supposed to be saying, but I love anything that will help alternate playstyles remain viable – I don’t really want to play the game to see how many young players i can gank in one night, or have my body camped for x amount of time.
Obviously it’ll still happen. But that is okay. And this is cool.