by Azaroth | July 2nd, 2010
Recently, a blog comment on this site informed me that players would “flock here” when IPY went up. That sounds great, but 10000 players online isn’t exactly guaranteed yet.
I thought I’d ask:
What do you think could be done to ensure more players on IPY at launch?
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Heres an idea I had thanks to Yaht_diz’s comment about a balancing system for the Paladins and Red populations:
You could put in a system where there is a Paladin resource pool (just a global variable) which dictates how many Paladins vs Reds can be created.
Say put the pool cap at 50 and set it so it cannot go higher (pick a number from your ass).
As players become Paladins, the resource pool decreases.
Additionally when a Paladin kills a Red, they take the head and hand it in to an NPC. The Paladin gets a good incentive of gold/karma/fame whatever and in return the resources pool decreases.
When a Red kills a Paladin, they drop an Ankh, if the Red hands the Ankh into an NPC/Shrine the Red receives a good incentive of gold/fame and the Paladin resource pool increases.
*Important:* Additionally when a Red Kills a normal Blue, there is a 20% chance of an Ankh dropping. Same rules apply as above.
If the global Paladin resource pool is empty, players cannot become a paladin.
–Now listen to this–: When a Paladin is killed by a Red, the player is no longer a Paladin. They still may meet all the requirements but they must wait for the resource pool to fill up before they can be re-recruited into the ranks of Paladins, (I actually think a queue system could be implemented if many players are waiting for the chance to become a Paladin.) So a Red killing a Paladin is effectively ending that players Paladin status…read on.
Additionally, Paladins can only be a Paladin for a set time without killing a Red. If a Paladin fails to hand a Red’s head in for a set amount of time, they will lose their status and will need to re-apply to become a Paladin. This means to keep your status you actively have to be hunting Reds and handing in heads.
This way if Paladins are dominating and handing in many more heads then Reds are handing in Ankhs, the population ratio’s will fluctuate to balance depending on which side (Reds/Pals) are winning.
Scenarios:
If Paladins are dominating, their pool will deplete (from all the heads they are handing in) and eventually Paladins won’t be able to re-enlist when they lose their status through death or time-out due to not handing a head in.
If Reds are dominating then the Paladin resource pool will be full (from handing in all the Ankhs) and many more Paladins can be recruited to counter-balance the Red dominance.
Feedback?
THIS IS ***EXACTLY*** WHAT I WAS ATTEMPTING TO EXPLAIN BUT HAD NO CLEAR WAY OF DOING SO.
THANK YOU NIHILUS.
I like the idea of controlling how many paladins are active at one, but what I don’t like mainly from this particular system suggested is this
Paladins hand in heads they get gold/fame/etc
reds hand in heads they get gold/fame/etc
Now remembering one of the big points in the pally system is that they can only kill reds. They can’t be in guild wars/kill an innocent etc, the idea was to reward them for specifically hunting reds via the paladin system (whatever rewards were eventually decided)
Now pks on the other hand can still kill everyone, and in this system also get the same rewards pallys get, just by killing pallys. I know if this system came out the choice on which side to choose would be an obvious one for me. The one with hardly any restrictions that still gets rewards for killing the opposition.
But on that note I still like the idea of controlling how many pallys are out there. Just didn’t like this part of it. So I’m all for the controlling pallys side of it. I definately think the way it should work should have something to do with regular blues hunting reds on regular basis to become a pally. That way you wont just get people popping up when they find out there is available slots for a pally, they should always have to work to acheive it, but not get rewarded untill such a time presents itself.
Yes, your last bit is in the right area. How about requiring X amount of UNIQUE red heads to achieve paladin status. This would be directly tied to the number of reds around and thus limit the amount of paladins that would be around in accordance to not only reflect the NUMBERS of the red population, but also reflect the ACTIVITY levels of reds on a meta scale. Very groovy, baby.
Yeah, that’s a good start. Whatever happens just need to make sure that when someone drops from the pally ranks some random blue that just has high fame and karma can’t jump out of bank sitting or farming lich lords and become a pally straight off the bat. It has to be someone who has been out hunting reds as a blue for ages waiting for the opportunity to be “promoted” to a pally.
No restriction? You’re kidding right?
first restriction to being red – ANYONE, not just a paladin, can attack you.
second, you need two characters to support your red and only one character to be a paladin.
Third, paladins will be buffed while fighting reds.
Fourth, Paladins can always see where you are.
No restrictions? come on…
I feel like the relative population of reds vs paladins will balance itself without specific code in to prevent it since pvp itself will be a resource that is scarce enough to cause paladin numbers to change since they can only fight reds.
Free market for the win.
A core concept of this system Nil and I just outlined is that the system would only manifest itself if all ‘free market’ checks and balances failed to stop run-off ratios of too many reds or pallies. It would act as a parachute failsafe that only triggers at a certain threshold or ratio. Our idea(s) were not fully clarified and it is sort of confusing, nevertheless it would be imperative that the system only clicks on at certain points, like toooooooo many reds or toooooooo many pallies.
The free market needs no checks and balances pinko.
Lol!!!
PS – Hey Smoke!!!
I think another way to look at that system is that it not only balances Paladins vs Reds, but also would safeguard from too many Reds vs Blues by allowing more Paladins to be created, which will in-turn help keep Reds and rampant newb-blue killings under control.
Don’t forget Jay, their will be minimum requirements to being a paladin so even if there were free Pally slots available you would have to meet the Karma/Fame requirements to get in.
Also, the system was a rough outline I came up with and could easily be tweaked to fit as perfect as possible. Your comment about the Reds being rewarded for handing in Ankhs is there to give incentive to hand in the items so it would effect the Paladin Resource Pool.
I think Paladins will VERY be popular despite this. They are an elite status symbol and don’t forget there will be far fewer paladins on the server then Reds for good reason, Paladins will be powerful. We would never want a situation where there were a 1:1 Pally/Red ratio because that would be unbalanced. So in principle, Reds SHOULD be both easier to attain and more attractive to the masses then being a Paladin.
In fact the reward for handing in heads, Ankhs could be linked to the current population of Paladins:
The more Paladins then the better the reward for handing in a head and the worse for handing in Ankhs (Since in this system, the Paladin population would only be high if Reds were dominant).
Conversely if the Paladin population was low (due to them handing in many heads) then the reward received by Reds for handing in Anks would increase.
But as I say, the framework is there, the numbers would be adjusted with testing.
Interested to see what Az makes of the idea tbh.
But I really don’t think pallys should be THAT much stronger than reds. The rewards they get should be cosmetic, and whatever bennefits they have over reds should be limited and difficult to use.
You guys are a bit late. The Paladin thread was a month ago, yo. This system is like 99% coded right now.
(Yes, I actually like it because I like player justice and I like incentives for players to fix things themselves instead of broad, blanket punishments that handles the problem for them – and poorly)
My issue on capping the number of Paladins and so on is that you wouldn’t cap the number of reds, right?
So essentially I have no desire to make sure reds are coddled to the point of having a completely even playing surface, numbers wise, with the Paladins. I mean, this is community driven.
Reds get statloss removed, and blues get a system that gives them incentives to do what they never, EVER have banded together and done before – dish out some real, honest-to-goodness player justice.
Trust me, dying as a Paladin is going to suck. Not as much as dying as a red will suck, but it’ll have much potential for suckage.
I also have an issue with inserting large barriers to entry with the Paladins. Now you create mass PKing for the first month of the game that drives newbies off. That’s not a good system either.
What we’ve got is a system that is relatively simple to join, but difficult to set yourself apart in.
Anyone can be a Paladin and restrict themselves in their combat targets. Very few people will wield the full power of being a Paladin. That’s your barrier to entry. The choke point is inside, not at the door. What the Paladins will need is some good, experienced PvPers to lead the way and allow the newbies to rack up kills to purchase their stuff with. This is community driven, and just like always, a group of newbies with 72 skill is NOT going to run around and slaughter large groups of organized PKs. You won’t have “Paladins” sitting around Britain decked out in their Paladin gear, because that gear needs to be earned the hard way… and without GOOD PvPers leading the charge here, nothing will happen. Which is how it should be, and I hope we’re going to entice some to do that for the community.
So the Paladin system is going to be simple, possibly entirely unfair to one side or the other depending on what YOU guys do and not what’s coded, and it’ll have enough incentive for blues to get involved that we can, once and for all, call Player Justice a complete pipe dream if it doesn’t work.
..
….
Then come the horses.
;)
Az said: “What the Paladins will need is some good, experienced PvPers to lead the way and allow the newbies to rack up kills to purchase their stuff with.”
Yes. This process is exactly what is needed for Paladins to be successful.
Anyways the reason I brought up the whole “cap / revolving door” concept for Paladins was to draw attention to the potential for either side to snowball out of control, to the point where the other side is rendered helpless and rather impotent as a meta-game threat. I think the Pally system that’s going in still has, as Az just stated, room for exploitation for either side. However, I also appreciate that the potential for snowballing is solely in the players hands and not relying upon a Hand of God -ish mechanic. That Az is laying this Paladin system on the line for us to either enjoy or potentially wreck shit with is both ambitious and innovative; I’d like to think that the players will be willing to keep things on an even keel, which would effectively keep the balance good in terms of competition.
As long as Az stays faithful to the concept that Paladins have perks but cons (like PKs), and large groups of players do not find a way to exploit this system, then leaving the paths to either side open and free of systemic barriers is going to be a good thing unless it does indeed snowball.
I’d like to think it will not, and if it does, that other options and solutions will have popped up and made themselves seen to the community before it’s too late.
Now let’s be honest – the only thing that will keep a new notoriety / factioned system like this from succeeding would be a massive backlash against change, and honestly I don’t think that all the so-called purists would maneuver around this system when it would appear to most as a new way to interact and get involved with the PKing side of PvP.
The only real people who won’t give a shot about this system are people who only do dueling, group/guild PvP, and crafters/merchants (even PvErs will get pulled in at various points of this system).
More and more I think about it, the better this system looks. It’s a win-win for everybody involved – even true PKs like myself will enjoy the prospect of at least a FEW bloodhounds on our trail, and the hardcore PvPers will still see this as a positive because it will inevitably lead to more action outside of Guild towns and rune houses…
Sort of eclectic post but I acquiesce to Az’s notion that as long as the playerbase keeps itself in check, then this system will lead to more variety and exciting situations from prey to predator to predator-predator. Mmmm.
The system, and the shard, are very intentionally your own story and a struggle for its inhabitants – it’s not supposed to be my struggle against you or your struggle against me.
So what you do is go beyond providing toys in the sandbox and provide tools in the sandbox. From there, everything depends on the actions of the community, and it’s specifically set up that way. Everything I intend to be on this shard is very specifically not a rollercoaster, but instead a handsaw. Rollercoasters are fun and flashy, but you’re on a set path and you’re one of ten million so it doesn’t REALLY matter what face you made in the snapshot (except that you had a good time, which I’d argue isn’t necessarily the be all and end all, and a lot of these games specifically attempt to give you a good time while WASTING your time).
Well, with the handsaw you’re less guaranteed a good time and more guaranteed the options to have a meaningful experience if you so choose and make it happen yourself.
The Paladin system is a bunch of tools for the community where they required tools. At no point were the blues able to keep up with the reds in UO, and we all know the reasons why now. So we incentivize, reward, entice, provide the tools for blues to succeed… but don’t, as Yaht says, introduce The Hand Of God – extreme examples of which are PvP switches and other such nonsense.
I’m giving everyone equal opportunity to rape and pillage here. The reds may completely obliterate my Paladins and do what they always have. The Paladins may roll in unending waves of experienced PvPers with bonuses against reds and drive them from Sosaria. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and neither do you. But both are equally possible and I think that’s a great thing. In fact, I’d say that’s the entire point.
You know what I’d be if I introduced a system assuming I knew what the outcome would be.. and, really, not only assuming, but counting on the fact that I knew what the exact outcome would be? I’d either be a large asshole or I’d be God. I know I’m not one of those things, and I try real hard not to be the other.
If any ANY point you operate some sort of an online game that allows any sort of meaningful player freedom, you have no freaking clue what people are going to do with your game systems. Most especially if they involve player killing and griefing and PvP and player justice and…
I think, in the end, we’ll achieve some sort of balance between those two extremes that’ll wax and wane entirely based on the community’s actions… and that’ll be very interesting, and just what I’m looking for.
This particular post ^ is probably the most coherent and on-point statement you have made yet regarding the long-term vision and concept for 2.0.
Word up.
That’s cool that the system is 99% coded already, but until it’s open for testing we’re probably going to keep arguing points of what should and should not happen with the system, simply because we havn’t had a chance to see what it’s actually like.
On that note, I hope its coded that someone can’t have a red and a pally. Because I see that as defeating the purpose almost completely.
I know this is going to come a bit off topic and its possible it has been answered previously but I am going to ask anyway.
Azaroth, after your comment about the paladin system you ended with “and then come the horses” so my question is, are you planning on having mounts? or was this simply a joke?
I ask this question because it is imperative to my decision of playing on the shard or not. Thanks.
He mentioned something on his twitter feed along the lines of “IPY Overpowerd idea of the day Pallys get horses”
I commented almost instantly begging it to be a joke and he said more or less that he wanted to stir us up and said something on IRC about seeing how quickly he could stir shit up with that message.
So yeah as far as I know he was just dangling it as a bit of a stir up. But I’m not him so I have no idea what’s going on in his head.
I’m just stirring the pot, girls.
Thank god.
Just read the twitter “paladins in” I’m guessing that means the systems finished.
Wicked, whats next?
“In” always means “In”. Not “finished”. ;)
There’s a couple things to fix up.
The Alpha version is in. It’s largely finished. Couple small things to get finished, and testing to do.
Good to hear, put the word out when you need people to test anything. Cos you know people are dying to do so.
Of course the way this is going, I expect “finished” to come in 24 hours.
Don’t say that, now people will think the server is up tomorrow :)
Beast
hey guys heard the servers up tomorrow?
Dang, just started to play Eve Online. Love it, such a great game hehe.
On the other hand: Go IPY!
turning on and off the paladin system at certain points based on ratio of reds / blues is a good idea. However I believe that can be achieved by much easier means. Just make the incentives for being red or being a paladin equal. That wy there wouldn’t really be a substantial benefit and mass flood of one class opposed to the other.
Az, I’d absolutely take your small house bet that a paladin system in itself would yield more pking than a straight statloss system.
Why? Because the system to curtail PKing in itself can’t be shown to be the sole contributor to the increase or decrease in PKing without considering what’s really the catalyst – the skill gain system.
and yes, I understand that the small house thing was a purely hypothetical bet… considering there is absolutely zero basis for comparison due to non-existence of tow shards with similar skillgain, one with straight statloss and one with the pally system.
What we need is to force people to make a choice… you either are on the PK side of the war, or the Paladin side, or you chose neither and do guild wars and all that jazz.
What I am saying is I don’t want to see the number one Paladin guild on the server have a set of alts that are also one of the top PK guilds on the server. Just switching sides randomly or based on whatever yields the most action for them that night. Similar to how people constantly “cross realmed” in DAoC (if anyone here played that they will know what I mean). It really, really takes away from the sense of community.
There should be a switch on the accounts, if you have a red you can’t have a Paladin on that same account, if you have a Paladin you can’t have a red on that same account… or something similar.
Or make penalties for having both on the account, like skill detriments by 10% or something similar.
That particular switch is in the process of existing. Plus, I don’t really think it’s a faction thing that people are going to want to switch back and forth to get PvP inside of. When a Paladin kills a red, they take statloss. They can take the reduced statloss if they get to the Chaos Shrine really fast, but that’s expensive.
There’s going to be paladins and stat loss? That seems pretty harsh. Could you give us a general overview of the Paladin system as it stands currently?
Also…what ever happened to the FAQ?
Sigh… You guys still completely miss the point. Just quickly going to address some points..
Jay – Yea I understand the benefit of being red in regards to being able to fight anyone at any time. This benefit is SEVERELY outweighed by the necessity of having two characters in order to do that, since supporting your PK blood thirst will only be able to happen by having another blue character to farm with. It’s not hard. Paladins can see reds automatically. Therefore reds cannot farm without being ganked. How does a red stay stocked up and ready to fight? by having a separate blue farming character. Paladins don’t need that. They can farm themselves.
Hiro: Here are a couple scenarios where no one would PK.
1. Less exendable characters – self explanatory and already in place.
2. Being auto tracked by a gank squad of blue characters who outnumber you because they never had to worry about character expendability from the offset – also already in place.
you guys are assuming that people are going to go red and start pking with their only characters right from the beginning. I’m telling you, that is not going to happen unless you offer reds a hefty some of gold for killing paladins. Otherwise they’ll eventually run out of resources. Without making a blue character first, there will be no real pks.
not to mention, sure, paladins can’t participate in guild wars.. but other blues can, and other blues can also attack reds. Let’s also consider for a moment that paladins are NOT going to be the only characters attacking reds.
agreed, you should get gold for killing paladins otherwise there will be no reds until they build a second character
Are you serious, man? Do you seriously believe there are “scenarios where no one would PK” on IPY?
This is a classic wheat from chaff situation. And, yes, there will be wheat left after the wind sweeps through, no matter how hard it blows.
^^^ we are older now and dont have 120+ hours to attendedly macro individual characters – especially when we don’t have a guild to compete with the zerg fest/ventrillo fest that UO has become.
if im lucky I will might be able to cram 10 hours a week into IPY if I feel motivated enough to play and manage my time better. I’ve played maybe an hour of videogames in 3 weeks.
i quit wow for good at level 53 if that tells you anything.
im assuming that SOME people (the majority I hope) would be the same way, but then again…
so in saying that.. yeah, one character will be enough for me, i won’t be going red unless skillgain is 100x easier than i expect it to be or I break my leg irl and have to stay home.
Keuse, I’m going to reply to your comments again because I believe you still do not fully get it.
You are going to be allowed to put as much time and effort into your IPY characters as you want.
Sorry that you won’t be able to invest more than in previous UO years, and thus won’t be having as much fun as many of us other posters hope to have, but please don’t attempt to have the bar lowered simply because you won’t have time to teach your wife/baby how to turn on your macro.
Domnu.. the brand you give the shard means very little. look at the proposed mechanics. it’s going to be almost impossible to pk unless you’ve got 10 other people with you, and even then they need to be self reliant enough to stock up, aka, they need another character.. If the mechanics prmote anti pking so hard that there’s no benefit to doing it, then yes, I am serious.
My understanding is that there will be a natural ebb and flow.
PKs and antiPKs will be reacting to each others’ actions as distinct communities, but communities that are inter-related.
For example…
If PKs zerg newbies, paladins will have the opportunity to counter-zerg. Even if they are less skilled and less numerous, they will sometimes succeed.
If paladins zerg and camp PKs, PKing will drop off, which in turn leads the paladin community to disintegrate.
If you’re a solo PK…yea you might get hit in the crossfire of a few paladin zergs. However, to be a successful solo PK you’ve got to have some nuts anyway, so a few knocks shouldn’t be unbearable.
I don’t see the paladin zerg on the solo PK happening a whole lot, to be honest. paladin zergs will ONLY exist if there are corresponding PK zergs that are actively giving them shit to do. That being the case, the paladin zergs aren’t going to be motivated to go out and hunt down random solo PKs when there’s bigger game out and about.
The more I think about it, the more impressed I am with the idea…
The paladin system is actually sort of like the human immune system:
When the human immune system identifies a bad bacteria (pathogen) in the body it responds by creating white blood cells (T cells) that are specifically geared to destroy the pathogens. When the pathogen has been destroyed the immune system naturally stops producing the T-cells, and the already existing T-cells eventually dissolve to be used for something else.
In theory, it’s the same model being applied to the IPY community. When a PKer (pathogen) is out doing evil, the community has the opportunity to respond with anti-PKs (white blood cells, T cells) that are specifically there to destroy the PK. When the threat is neutralized, the paladins will get bored and dissolve to do something else.
Very cool system, I can’t wait to see how it works out.
I like the way you put this :) good post dude.
I was thinking very similar ideas but could never work out an easy way to put it across.
Az… Put up some forums, I keep wanting to edit my posts but I just have to whack another one on the end instead!
Sultani – You know I like you and respect you, but I gotta call out some things.
You are incorrect about PKs requiring a blue to support them. I am proof of this because I specifically played The Yahtzee Nazi exclusively as a character until the last 2 months when I played Fantastic Damage, also a macer, when the vast majority of potential victims had either finished farming their char development, finished their house farming, or been ran out of dungeons completely by ppl like us in FB. It was in these last couple months that the server really saw people who’s forte is not pure guild vs guild, throw up their hands and get involved. Your notion that reds are not self-sustainable is completely false. When we handled places like the Gem Room, Lich Lords Deceit, etc… every person in our squad would roll up around 1000 of each reg in a session (not counting gold or other stuff). Now of course, that wasn’t really profit as much as it was a paycheck-to-paycheck way of living (500 recall regs a session would get used typically) then you can see how it may not be opulent or glorious in terms of phat loot, but it was legitimately feasible to sustain a PK in our group and make a decent living doing so.
You mentioned less expendable characters as a reason PKs need a blue farmer alt – again untrue. You know there are people who ONLY gamble high stakes? There are people who play Ironman UO still, for pete’s sake. These particular people, or even just people interested in raising the challenge, will certainly appreciate the difficult dynamics put in place for PKs to succeed.
PKs require sound guerilla tactics to be successful in their specialty. Just because ‘pk tracking’ will be in game, doesn’t mean PKs have no way to react… and if not, I guarantee the successful PKs WILL adapt and be able to handle the inevitable hunts where the tables are turned. It’s really about awareness, and there will be a learning process involved, but it’s not insurmountable.
“I’ve got Leda down here in Despise Evil Mages..Wait, nm, Got ‘er”
Say what you will about Sensation calling us to ahem Room 10x a day, Leda was a top five all-time troll in my book. I’ll NEVER forget how funny and gimmicky he (she) was.
Yaht… anything you’ve done previously as a red, solely a red, is not a viable argument. you didn’t do it when there were buffed blues who could auto track you anywhere on the map. See how that works for you with that in place.
The way to react to this is really quite simple, roll with more people. Which, as I previously said, is a bad idea. You don’t want to create a shard where people won’t play unless they have 5 – 6 of their friends on line.
so, what are people goin gto do if they log in solo as a red, only to go out and get shit stomped by ten paladins? they’ll play their blue. If they don’t have one, they’ll log off.
oh yea, and also, there’s currently zero incentive for a pk to want to fight back against paladins.
I see where you’re coming from too sultani but we’re really going to have to wait and see what happens cos like Az said, the system is 99% complete and we’re a little late for the discussion. So only playing the game now is going to decide which way the pally system goes.
well, when there’s already 19231293012939120321 paladins on the shard by the time the first reds start popping up, I’ll just say I told you so.
I’ll be happy that only a certain ammount of people can give me stat loss as a red. Even if a large percentage of the server is playing a paladin the percentage who arn’t still counts for a lot more players I can die to without getting stat loss. A lot more than a standard stat loss system.
I don’t know how PKing will be that hard.
There’s no statloss. You can kill whoever you want.
You just have to book it after the deed is done if you don’t want the cops to catch you.
I’m not sure how truly and insanely difficult that is.
Will statloss be harsher when you end up taking it from a Paladin because skill gain is slow and macroing is even slower?
Sure. But skill gain is harder for everyone.
I think that’s fair, considering you won’t take statloss much of the time you die. You’re not going to take 20% statloss for losing connection and dying to a dire wolf – you can actually duel and play the game and so on with your red. Even when you DO manage to take statloss, you can book it to the Chaos Shrine (on a timer) and pay most of it away.
How hard this ends up being on reds depends entirely on the community and what they do with the tools provided to them. Isn’t that fair? Do you really have so much faith in the community to dole out player justice in an effective manner, even provided some minor buffs?
I don’t. I think you’re nuts.
You keep complaining about reds banding together and there being no incentive to PK. I don’t think you understand the original statloss system. Magnify those problems by ten. There’s still no “incentive” to PK, EVERYONE (and their dog) puts you into statloss, there’s no reprieve of any kind, and banding together becomes the most necessary thing in the world.
I also don’t think you understand that I’ll -never- provide you an incentive to be a PK. Ever. PKing happens because it can happen. I don’t need to give people rewards for racking up newbie kills.
What are you talking about? You’re providing them an incentive to pk by opening an oldschool uo server. There’s going to be blues galore, and with paladins around probably more blues feeing big enough to go out and hunt all the time. So the incentive is more blues than ever to take your pick from pking.
The insentive has been and always will be freedom to kill and freedom to loot. The problem in the past is that there has never been an insentive to counter this. Ever. Sure if you’re blue you can feel the safety of town. but that’s part of the problem, it isn’t attracting you to going out and fight is it?
That’s my point. ;)
This system lays everything on the line based on what the community does – which is what UO is and how UO should be. For once, victims can be compensated and good guys can be rewarded… but the community has to make that happen.. because I’m not handing out automatic gold, inflicting automatic statloss, or giving automatic buffs. There is no Hand Of God here.
If the community doesn’t make it happen, the bad guys can dominate just as they did when there was no statloss (because there isn’t).
I expect, and hope for, epic battles between Paladins and PKs… just because a little thing like, you know, the outcome of the entire shard depends on what they do, how they recruit, every fight they have.
What could be more epic?
Logically then you can only come to the impression that with the vanilla pal system (albeit I don’t know the full system in detail as you) what will likely happen if a Red sees a Paladin is that he runs.
In fact as a Red, your never gonna bother facing a Paladin and risk stat loss if you can go and kill blues and earn the same reward for no stat loss risk. So basically if i’m understanding right, your intention is to create a “police” like system where the Reds are always on the run and never stand and fight with the Paladins. (like criminals vs police).
The ONLY scenario I can imagine a red risking fighting a Paladin would be if they are in a gang of reds vastly outnumbering the Pals.
Is this what you mean by Epic battles? Because it sounds more like Reds will have to rely on gorilla tactics rather then pitched battles.
Well, I can’t paralyze reds once a Paladin is on the screen. ;)
Any time you stand to lose something when you die, you’ll tend to want to run away.
How’s that any different from statloss?
At least the reds will be forced to do LESS running away.
Quick question about the system that I think is important and could lead to imbalances:
The paladins use their well to track reds – are the trackable reds only those that have recently commited a crime, or will it provide the general whereabouts of any red online at the time? Or is it just going to provide the last known commited offense of that red? Or have your plans for the tracking system changed?
Or maybe I’m asking for way too much info here.
Congrats on getting it coded!
I missed the word location in the above post somewhere. I think it still makes sense though.
The location of a murder is reported. It’s not an all-purpose tracking system that’s impossible to hide from.
If you kill someone and then skidaddle, you may be just fine.
Is there going to be a flagging system?
What I mean by that is, if you attack someone and then start getting you’re ass handed to you can you recall? Or will it be Wouldst thou flee during the heat of battle?
hey i’m an old player on IPY, first time ever posting on your site though… reason i’m here is because violent dave told me you’re really wanting to bring it back last night, but TNT (captain morgan?) told me otherwise about a week ago… as this all looks pretty recent, i guess i’m going to have to go with VD’s word
anyways, i know quite a few people who will be very excited to hear IPY’s coming back, if it actually is… but from a marketing standpoint, one of the worst things in the world to do for a game/community is to create hype (which was some of the earlier suggestions)… so many games and communities have failed strictly because it either didn’t live up to the hype or took too long to live up to the hype… fable, darkfall, APB, just to name a few
last thing is, some of the oldschool rules are a little… overbearing for this generation… non-blessed runebooks, super slow skill gain (power hour? lol) can really turn people off… as nostalgic as it might be to play those super old school hardcore rules, it just gets annoying at this point, 13 years later, when most of the population has played this game time and time again… things like non-secure chests so you have to block them off and use a trash barrel, fine.. oh! and watch out for footstools :P
anyways i wish you all the best and really hope IPY finally comes back (hype)
The trick with IPY info is that if it didn’t come from me, it’s probably not worth much. ;)
I don’t know. Am I creating hype with blog posts? I thought that was the best way to inform/involve without creating unnecessary hype. I could be wrong, obviously. ;)
The mention of the Paladin system being finished wasn’t necessary. It’s just that I had people telling me what an asshole I am for dreaming it up and how it’d take a year and IPY would never be finished and so on… so I suppose that was more about craws and sticking things in them. In a friendly way. ;)
Typically I don’t chat much about progress or current development, and I’ll keep it that way. Hype is a bad thing. Your game will run on its own legs if it’s good. Hype only creates massive expectations in people who have nothing but their own imaginations to rely on… and that’s never good.
ah no i wasn’t really saying you were creating hype with these posts, but it would be silly to say that they aren’t creating any at all either… i just saw some people telling you to create as much hype as possible and thought it was a bad idea…
the hype that’s being created right now is hype that you can’t stop, and it’s not going to be detrimental to your operation… it’s simply from old community members that are just excited to finally see a good server come back, from a provider that at least most of us trust to make awesome again
Yeah fundamental, this is more like awareness than hype. Don’t get me wrong, it can be considered hype, but only 2 names come to mind when I think about the discussions that have occured here over the past year(s). In that sense I think everything so far has not only been healthy but beneficial – forums / irc / etc were never this positive and rigorous in discussing issues of this scope.
I’m sure the real hype is coming soon, though…
I meant to say only 2 negative people come to mind when I think about this entire process and discussion. Sorry I had dental work today, sort of loopy…
The thing is though, super slow skill gain is only annoying and stupid when you macro, because you aren’t playing.
If macroing did nothing and skill gain was super slow and got nearly impossible towards gm it would create skill gradients and add that cool thing that made UO awesome. People would rely on strategy and their own pvping skill in pvp, and not up the ante by always having 7x gm everything, forcing other to have to be 7x gm and therefore limiting gameplay and creating 95% of pvpers with the exact same skillset. That’s stupid.
Hard skill gain and no macroing makes skill gain something worthwhile and makes each day fighting or doing whatever an accomplishment instead of a chore you have to get through to get to the end result of pvp which, when you get there, lets you down because of aforementioned limited options in terms of actually participating.
These people then make tamers and/or provokers to crank out money and it inflates the economy and creates 30 multi-millionaires and a few hundred people without much, who then quit because some people have castles and shit and they have nothing making the illusion that they have to play 55 hours a week to even participate in the game with houses and money and rares so they give up not knowing you can put in 3 hours a week and have a blast.
my 2 cents
yeah i plan to actually PLAY the game as a shitty warrior, die constantly to one single creature like an orcish lord or build up my skills fighting monsters in groups – the way UO was supposed to be played before powergaming ruined it all. no rush to gm anything… and have a thief on the side.
Um.. Do you remember what happened when the population od divinity went to shit? People would sit around doing absolutely nothing… then as soon as there was a red, and people had something to do, it was all, “OMG SOMONE TO FIGHT GOGOGOGOGO” and every single player would bum rush that one player. I agree that the paladins will probably desintegrate… especially at the beginning when there’s tons of them and zero reds. but for the ones that stick it out, you’re insane if you don’t think they’re all going to zerg the one red blip on their map in order to get some ‘leet skill points’ or whatever the hell they’ll be getting.
Why would anyone be a red and be willing to endure that if there was no incentive to do so? They wouldn’t.
“skill gain and macroing is harder for everyone.”
Again, a red needs two characters…. A a paladin doesnt. that means macroing / gaining skills for a red is going to be twice as hard / long.
“you can book it to the chaos shrine…”
Yea, and run into the 25 paladins camping it ready to res kill you as soon as you spend the money.
Again, the player’s choice to be a pk usually has very little to do with what checks are in place to control it and moreso to do with how expendable your character is. If you joined a server that allowed free skill / statballs, but when you died as a red you’d take 100% statloss, which side of that do you think would make people choose / choose not to PK? the fact that they can easily and instantly have another character ready? or the idea that there’s statloss? Ease of skill gain IS what drives that decision.
I’ve said all I care to about this. And when this all manifests and there’s no pks for like 12 months and all the paladins quit because there’s no reason for them, then yea.
you can make it so that the area around the chaos shrine is combat free, but then there would need to be limits in place to avoid reds from camping it and running back and forth like on uogamers..
so with paladin system i agree with sultani, you will have 2 types of pks:
1) pk with their first character, have fuck all for resources, grief the shit out of everyone and end up quitting early
2) blue that has a pk after a year
exactly. I already suggested that paladins shouldn’t be allowed within a certain distance of the chaos shrine.
PK Pud says: Bring it.
No pussy ass proximity.
actually, I guess zero pks is a little extreme.. you’ll have your initial early load blowing reds that go red immediately, die to a paladin, quit, and never come back because they don’t want to take that kind of hit.
biggest problem with free shards…. ‘OMG PKs are a problem fix fix fix fix…’ PKs aren’t a problem. PKs are needed for balance.
Oh my god…. I just read this part..
“There has never been an incentive for countering this. Ever.” – Jay in regards to countering PKs.
Are you fucking serious? Have you ever played UO before?
I guess there was never a bounty system. I guess no one ever went out hunting reds hoping to be the people who captured the 200k + bounty. Jesus fuck….
Um… So yea.. It dawned on me that I may have this backwards, and it could be the case that the paladins only begin to increase in numbers AFTER reds start to run amok, not before.
I also just read the tracking system to be a report of where a reportrd murder takes place, not an automated tracking system of the exact location of a red player… making it possible to actually sustain yourself in a dungeon as a red..
disregard my last 35 posts it seems. FML.
you goofball
Saw the light huh.
no, I just had a misconception of what this “tracking system” was going to look like. Since reds can farm without being auto detected (they’re not murdering people while farming….. all the time) they can support themselves and therefor don’t absolutely need two characters. All is well.
lol.
If it is simply a report of where a murder takes place, we still face the same problem that created a shitty PK situation on other classic shards.
A red recalls in, kills someone, recalls out. Logs.
I don’t see how anything but a limit on the ability to either recall or log or both will change that behavior. Without a limit on the ability to do the above a Paladin system seems pointless.
With my reds I would do just that when I didn’t have 10 other reds to run with through hotspots with. Recall. Kill. Loot. Recall. Log. Then log into a blue character to do something else.
People on UOSA did the same thing like -r. No risk. Just kill and log.
I certainly understand that problem, and I’ll likely continue to toy with travel spells.
There is already -no- recall/gate into or our of dungeons, or on Fire or Ice island. On its own, those rules make dungeons very dangerous for blues. With Paladins, they make dungeons very dangerous for blues and reds.
A+++++++++++++ to no recall/gate to/from fire and ice island.
Game Design Philosophy Comment of the day:
All i know is from playing online games for as long as they were invented….if there is something that can be exploited, players WILL 100% exploit it and that players are magnetically drawn to the path of less resistance (easy mode).
When designing, the best you can do is minimise the number of exploitable systems by putting in contingencies (like the system I mentioned above).
I appreciate that Pals are “in” but who’s to say they will never be tinkered with so I reserve the idea that a contingency system may need to be implemented at some point.
I get Az’s theory about you need to let the players control the servers destiny and not implement “hand of gods” systems all the time to force a gameplay style and he’s fucking dead on with that. However it’s a balancing act. Yes make the server organic with open gameplay with loose systems, but at the same time, sometimes you just HAVE to implement a structure to gameplay elements to prevent broken gameplay or exploitation.
It would be great if players played UO with honour and respect and only played their characters in a way thats good for the server but come on….lets get real here, we are all in this for our selves at the end of the day.
Sandbox is great as long as their is some controlled systems. I.E, gold generation (endless faucet of gold spawning on the server/NPC’s). This is a “hand of god” system that is just 100% needed, another is housing limitations and decay…again a needed “hand of god” system. So although the “let the chips lay where they may” design is good to a degree, it may turn out that the Paladins system on its own will either be exploited (50 Pals beating on single Reds) or broken (No reds for Pals to kill/No Pals for Reds to worry about).
Only way to really know is to observe what happens and hope it won’t already be too late.
This is exactly why I said a Hand of God could be necessary at some point, if things got too extreme or not. But Az’s point is that if it did get that far into a pally or pk snowball, the community will have nobody to blame but themselves, for things like ‘taking the easy road’ (joining the heavier dominant side), or grouping up into ‘zergs’ (being scared rather than motivated into your decision), etc… If that happens, it’s our fault as a playerbase and something we will have either to learn to deal with and rise up an conquer as a community, or we can let it destroy us as a community and server, or we can try different ways of adapting and turning back the tide to a more balanced situation through cooperation or subversion, or we can all cry about it if it gets bad and hope Az patches in a Hand of God.
So how about some transparent limits from the beginning.
ie. When one team is showing obvious disadvantage several days in a row, move the handicap up one notch.
Ever done the handicap in bowling while bowling against experts?
So instead of contingency planning, let’s discuss what the handicap sensitivity could be, in terms of # of days one team is owned in succession, as well as what the tweaking of the handicap bar could be.
Yes this is an interesting idea; as long as the system is capable of fluctuating to either extreme then a handicap system would need to be equally weighted for either side. Is this possible given the fundamental differences between a Pally and PK?
While it is a decent solution to create balance, I still feel tweaking the pally abilities until something equalizes would be better than a bandaid approach.
Completely unrealted topic but since there’s no forum or anything I’ll suggest it here:
I was reading Az’s closing IPY epitaph message again and he mentioned the dicks that IPY 1.0 attracted, ultimately destroying the server. He also mentions wanting to make the game “unattractive” to jackasses but without dumbing it down like WOW.
One idea that might seem a little stupid to us adults here but none the less could really help clean up the IPY image and help maintain a good reputation is enforced profantity censorship and maybe even a step further where it could cause detrimental effects to your character.
Don’t get me wrong, I like to fucking swear as much as anyone ;) But it was just an idea that at the end of the day, can’t hurt the server and might just put off the pricks that IPY often attracted (the kind that would verbally abuse newbs for instance).
Obviously, the censor would need a good healthy database of keywords including words like 3a5t4rd, tw4t and c0ck etc…
I don’t want to turn it into a nanny server but really, do those of us from the UO generation (20+ years old) really need the ability to swear at each other in a virtual world. If you want to do it, you can do it outside of the game on ICQ/Messenger to each other. At least others wouldn’t need to see it.
if anything it will keep things friendly and make us resort to Monty Python-esque slurs such as “Your Mother Is a Hamster and Your Father Smells of Elderberries” kind of stuff that lets be honest is wittier then calling somone a dicksmoke…. *restrained snigger*
Thoughts?
I like the idea.
Good idea
against it.
1) its hard to say whether or not the server is going to be full of griefers/morons or ‘swearers’ from the getgo.
2) we are ‘adults’ but dont need to act like senior citizens in regards to profanity.
Hah.
1) No it’s not. ;)
2) True, plus people will find ways around the filter. It’s probably better to just take action on the accounts of repeat offenders. An offender being someone who is genuinely griefing and taking things way too far, way too often. Etc.
1) How do you know it’s not?
2) Are you really willing to create all the extra hassle of policing verbal griefing that would be impossible if they can’t…actually verbally grief.
1) b/c azaroth said so
2) theres a difference between someone saying “fuck off” a few times to players and someone running around brit bank spamming racial slurs.
UO was definitely a less idiotic place when being under 18 was a crime and you’d be reported to a GM if you said bad words.
I’d prefer that, but it seems like a hard thing to enforce, especially the under 18 part.
What I’m really tired of in UO is white kids calling other white kids nigger. Or racial slurs in general. Could you please wtfpwn these nerds?
1. Newblood griefers VS IPY Veteran status griefers will be an interesting match. Of course, the newbloods will quickly learn this isn’t a uogamers server where you can spam FS and win by numbers- not skill.
2. Use the profanity filter that came with the game. I never understood why the real “kids” would report the rest of us if we slipped out a cuss, when they have a feature in their own personal options to filter our sailor mouths.
my insults are generally something off the wal ridiculous tand relatively clean anyway.. like if some 12 year old gets extremely clever and says ” F’ed ur mom lol noob,” I’ll just call him a turkey melon…
It’s actually kind of amazing hiow effective that can be.
I remember my favorite tactic around IPY time, if I had to pick just one single pure insult, was right after someone died, if I wasn’t still under duress, I would stand on their corpse, spin around while still in War-mode stance, and just say “Win” several times. So stupid yet so pure.
I don’t think blatant censorship is healthy, but I do think virulent and personal threats should be considered a detriment to the community and as such we should not be afraid, as a community, to call these people out if they begin to cause problems on a meta level or attempt to take the threats outside of the game world.
Racism should not be allowed, if it’s something like a black character named ‘Hot Chocolate’ then who cares, but again, if there are 80 GM smiths named ‘a team of slaves’ then that shit has GOT TO GO.
I’m only suggesting we as a group premeditate fallback solutions for after the first couple months, when the blues realize they’re fu*#ed. hey! …TF?!
Censoring swearing would be dumb, but keeping racist names to a minimum is fine. I can’t stand those twelve year old white kids screaming nigger all over Xbox live.
Also handicapping dominant sides in Paladin vs Red wars is also unnecessary and in my opinion detrimental to the fun that could be had. Zergs vs smaller numbers of more talented players makes a challenge for the talented players and gives the zerg a chance to win.
Look at when Gluttony build that 2000 strong army in Darkfall and was fighting a group of like 500 or so. Who do you think had more fun in that war?
That is the nature of MMO’s.
However If you have a group of 5 people that are good enough, with vent, running with explo precasted then drop, then continue running (rinse,repeat)- you can easily take out a group of 10-12.
I was not only community staff in Darkfall, but I also took my MMO clan to Darkfall. I knew Glut and some of the old SDS clan for years, like when they rolled with B&B on IPY and even before that when SDS goofed off on Lake Superior on OSI waaaay back.
I could write a novel about all the stuff involving the mega-Zerg we put together on Darkfall, but I’ll keep this short. Ox, the reality is that the ‘zergs’ were fluid and changed constantly. A lot of drama, politics, and subterfuge went on for those 3 months post-launch. All I am willing to divulge about what really went down, is this… It was not fun for either Zerg. It was always an anticlimactic snooze-fest that involved more politics than action. We, clan leaders and alliance statesmen, made all decisions with full knowledge that our clan members were really just pawns. Warm bodies there to protect and serve the real power brokers. Glutt was good at juggling and spinning the interest of many different groups of players, successfully uniting against an endless wave of Roleplayers, but it was really just a proxy war which provided Glutt and several other Goons (and other various GLs) with the opportunity to take advantage of obscene amounts of labor for their exclusive benefit. I was a part of this process and it got to a point where I had to quit the game because I grew so disgusted with playing politics instead of playing the game. For the record I am not bitter, I quit the game on a high note while holding territory adjacent to The Mercs, who provided the only challenge in PvP (Our alliance Zerg and the RPer Zerg were both chock full of noobs, srsly). I think it was an exciting and interesting experience, but I would rather PLAY a game than SPIN the game, which is what we did 95% of the time. I mean, both of the large alliances had over a dozen clans and thousands of members throughout that first major war, and yet the fights were always a letdown or done in a way to avoid going full-on head-to-head. Also, Glutt was a little sketchy at times. After I had quit, two weeks later, he tried to sell my territory to another ally. Some of my clan were still around, and defended the territory and botched the sale effectively. I am pretty certain that this makes me the only player in the history of Darkfall to successfully hold territory while being the only member on the official clan roster who managed to defend his territory without even logging in to do so. Eventually I did log back in one more time to give the leader who had tried to purchase the territory his wager back (clans had to pay gold to siege territory in DF). I effectively sold it to that GL and told him to forget about Glutt making a cut off the deal. Glutt didn’t care cuz he knew that I knew what he was up to, and having quit already, was pretty ambivalent to the whole thing. Darkfall was all politics and positioning, all talk and meta-gaming, while everybody who was playing did nothing of importance yet actually enjoyed playing. Funny how that works, huh.
I was actually referring to the second war, as I wasn’t involved at all in the Hyperion-COTC war. I was in that SB alliance and as it was ended up on the Mercs side of the war.
What guild did you run.. you must have been in Andruk?
Ahh, SB vs Merx vs server war… WW2…
Yes I watched that happen and sort of laughed. Undead Lords and a couple other guilds that made an IPY appearance were in SB alliance. I actually thought SB was the “nicest” alliance.
The Mercs are the text book definition of “powergamer”. Only problem was that they played Darkfall. And had no lives and exploited with the ferocity of a rooster in a cock fight. Only problem with that is even if you win, you’re still a just a giant cock and nobody gives a fuck about Darkfall. The Mercs are like some normal person winning the special olympics while juicing on roids. Absolute travesty.
I took The Empyreans to Darkfall, but I’m not the true guild leader nor did the vast majority of the guild play Darkfall. The rest of the clan geared up for an equally disappointing endeavor – Aion.
Your comment really puts a smile on my face. Not only did I run with SDS for a short time on Lake Superior as a Healer Mage named Sinaj. (Tsunami and Glutt are the only other two names I can manage to recall at this point.) Just a little while before Trammel and afterwards, for alot of Yew Moongate area fighting. But I was also in Yew Milita in Darkfall which was part of CoTC. Good times.
The only two SDS I ever really got to know were Glutt and Envy. Envy mostly from UO and Glutt from DF mostly. Honestly they’re good people, but we (Chillin and Hyp and SB, etc) sort of hurt the game by grouping up so early and effectively carving the map by our own discretions. I remember Glutt leading other GLs in the alliance on, you know, GL would ask about help acquiring territory and Glutt would give the runaround, the rest of us GLs would follow suit because we either had territory already and welcomed the idea of smaller clans being used as buffer zones between Chillin and Hyp, or they were so negligible that they’d have no option except to go along and keep faith that they’d get territory. 90% of those clans never got territory or were swallowed up by others as time wore on.
Yew Militia was a total CLASS ACT from my experiences with them. They were also a little deceitful (you know), but at that point, it was almost obligatory. Good times, for what Darkfall was worth…
I bet you could take all of Yaht’s posts and make a book out of them.
No recalling into or out of dungeons is going to make things extremely difficult for everyone. I haven’t given alot of thought to that, but I think there’s going to be alot of people hiding next to the roads leading to dungeon entrances ready to grief travellers.
sounds neat.
Agreed :)
But for every time I wait on a pk to kill people leaving on blues, there will be blues waiting for me to leave after killing blues. So it should be interesteing. I expect dungeon entrences to be the centre of a lot of pvp.
darkfall talk?! time for a forum
Hey, so theres an IRC up? what is the info?
Not yet, brah. Actually, there’ll be vent before there’s IRC. I hate IRC, and Yaht has offered us a vent that he’s willing to moderate. That’s a huge +++ to me. I can’t be asked to moderate shit like that.
Urf, We need IRC.
Could gladly look into hosting one. Vent is awesome and should be used, but it will be like a chickenhouse, and people can’t chat generally on vent like that.. not those numbers of people .. :)
Don’t worry, everything will definitely be taken care of when people start playing.
I’m going to be hosting a 100 slot IPY vent when server launches. 100 should be enough when it starts, of course can be upped.
I will be moderating it and allocating channels and handling registration so it will be legit and hopefully a good place for on-the-fly communication in a meta sense.
I have looked into hosting IRC, but I would rather have a dedicated person admin it. I can moderate and whatnot but it’s not my forte and I would rather focus on the Vent myself.
Just sit tight people, relax and things will fall into place like forums, irc, vent, etc.
Oh, i think you missunderstood my point.. :)
100 will surely be enough, but who knows.. Either way, people are going to want to speak to people that want to speak to other people etc.. The way people use IRC. I would doubt that only vent would work, thats what i was trying to say :P
IRC is a great platform for the purpose when it comes to servers like these, to quickly throw out information out of game, Especially when server is down ( or in this case, not up yet ) .
Not to mention the support posibilitys, people ask questions quick and easy that would take time to answer ingame :)
And that’s what i said, i would gladly look into Managing IRC, still think it would be irc.ipyuo.com , people will ‘Flock’ to IRC *evil grins*
I gotcha Arra it’s cool. My main priority staffing Darkfall was moderating a 2000 person IRC channel at launch. However, thats still easier than moderating forums in my opinion.
I would honestly like to have IRC hosted alongside (the Vents up and ready but not going to be released for use until server launch), but I’m waiting to see who’s on board with community moderation and it will probably go from there. If you’re interested then put in a word with the man upstairs. I would rather have a more experienced and focused IRCop than myself.
Vent will be open to all. I’m not playing just modding, so it will not be biased against anyone or any guild. The basic idea is that any user can register on Vent and then just hang out, or request a channel, etc. It might prove to “open” and give away info like how many ppl a clan has on and thus some might want a private Vent, but for others it may be nice to help boost their social interaction in the community and provide a meta level for spontaneous communication.
IRC will always have a use in games especially ones like UO. The best use of it is staying connected to discussions and news outside of formal announcements (like a forum post), and yet still useful for anonymous or spontaneous discussion. I think of IRC like an “at work” tool.
Then finally, forums / site. I would rather have nothing to do with either in terms of hosting or admining. Nor am I particularly good at sites or coding, so, that’s totally in Az’s ballpark and not mine.
Anyways just wanted to clarify some things and provide a little info since we’ve been mute about it in general. Don’t think I’m asking people to ask Az about helping. I’m not him and I don’t make these decisions so I don’t want to step on any toes here. I just wanted to give everyone a little heads up since the pitchforks are starting to perk up a bit.
There’s a lot more info but there’s no rush and no real reason to set anything in motion yet. All that will do is cause more impatience and get people shuffling their feet when it’s really not necessary at this point.
Any other questions relating to IRC or Vent just ask but don’t expect any secret hideouts like a Zelda game. Plus why start the need to mod yet when the real labor can’t be quantified yet and the community mediums haven’t surfaced.
Yaht , yes that is my point.
But i dont think managing vent will be easy either, alot of people is going to be excited and rushing etc once server is up, and its gonna be a mayhem as usual ;)
I´d say forums are easier to moderate than IRC, been there, done both.. and IRC is usually alot more ‘fast’ in all ways as of discussions get out of hand alot quicker etc.. Well Duh, its realtime!
All in all, i am really excited to see that vent is getting up, i just hope the playerbase will use it. it’s also a great medium for Support, alot of people rather talk thru things than type!
In Regards to Community Staff, already talking to him (Az) About it , But just as you say, there are little to no reason to focus on that before the server is up, however much restless and impatient i am ;)
PS – This post should not be interpreted in the context of time-to-launch, what’s the staff situation, or anything like that. I just felt like I would explain a little bit in case some of you felt “in the dark” about the community mediums aspect of IPY compared to the actual game / server. Consider this post a boilerplate and also understand things are always subject to change.
Good point, i forgot this is the internet!
Word will spread that the server is UP, but you need to pay Az $100 to get access. Consider it ‘closed’ Beta.
*grins*
As Az pointed out before, this is not really a development blog.. Just .. Discussing! :)
Dude, IRC is my life, I’d moderate the fuck out of it. I grew up in IRC and it’s what made me the fine upstanding citizen I am today
I realize this is way late in light of how far along the Pal system is and all that, but I am in the midst of a discussion with a clanmate about IPY.
I played IPY back in the day and enjoyed it, but I’m having trouble recalling exactly what caused the server to spiral into the ground. I looked for the IPY farewell message but couldn’t locate it. I know it’s partially because the community was exhibiting faggotry of the highest order, but I was curious to pin down the nature of the faggotry.
This relates back to the discussion I was having in that my clanmate is concerned that the Pal system is going to encourage reds grouping into ganksquads (which is one of the things you mentioned was wrong with statloss initially when you first introduced the Pal system), and according to HMU’s farewell it seems that roaming ganksquads were what made PvP uninteresting and contributed to the demise of the server.
I guess what I’m asking is, do you see the encouragement of grouping into large ganksquads to be a major problem?
It’s an interesting question that keeps getting asked (about ganksquads).
I think the thing here is to keep a few things in perspective. The first being that the statloss system basically FORCED reds into gank squads if they wanted to do anything other than kill/recall away.
Paladins won’t fix people grouping together, because you can’t really fix that. I’m sure we could make reds die and suffer 100% statloss if they got within 20 tiles of each other, but that wouldn’t be very fun. Then, after that, we’d have to somehow balance Paladins from grouping together and…
So you can’t force solutions to things like that, I don’t think. What you can do is nudge. By making it so that reds don’t take statloss when they die to skeletons and mongbats and lost connections and lag and newbies, I think we’re loosening the leash on them a bit and freeing them up to play the game a bit more normally on those characters instead of always being grouped up for protection against the ever-looming threat of statloss. We’re then concentrating the ability to deal with them into a few power users, and I hope that’ll even things out.
Additionally, I think Red/Paladin fights will be a little more oldschool and disorganized. Huge groups won’t necessarily be quite as huge a problem because of one item in particular Paladins can get their hands on that heavily discourages synch dumps.
We’ll also be watching for automated dumps and banning for it.
“Huge groups won’t necessarily be quite as huge a problem because of one item in particular Paladins can get their hands on that heavily discourages synch dumps.”
This could be interesting. I hope the group you’ve got beta testing are circumspect dudes.
I just hope they’re circumcised.
Wouldnt just be easier to not allow Kirrios and Easyuo instead of having to watch people casting non stop?
I know you can do it in razor but its not as easy. If it were me I would try and figure out a way to block some of that shit server side.
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/215984/lord-british-wins-28-million-in-ncsoft-lawsuit/
lol he should fund this server
no kidding, if i was a multi millionaire and created a game which people 14 years later still speak of in high regard, id drop money and time to recreate a game like it or a player run shard.
Im going to make some statements here from what is by what i have read , the other side of the fence.
Im an old pacific player. I love mmo’s and UO is my favorite of all time (until everyone left for tram). But how i play the game does not fit into what so many people say with definitiveness is UO. I dont pk. Ever. I always play uo’s in a similar way. I play the economy. I make money. I buy and sell , forge and tame , pve and socialize. I play it like a life sim. Turning the server (which kudos you arent going to do) into a strictly pvp server would simply drive me away. Which , is why i just recently left Hybrid. Its a gong show of a server overrun with pks. There is no balance and it does not at all suit someone of my play style.
So please dont assume because you play the game in a certain fashion that all will/do. Because i am evidence that not everyone is so limited in sight as to see only a sliver of the vast spectrum of possibilities UO offers. Which is why i was drawn to it to begin with.
However i do have some questions. Perhaps they have been answered but i am not willing to spend the next 5 hours reading through everything. Its about thieves. In hybrid they do handouts (god awful idea. Its ruins the economy) and donation items (im more open to this…. but still somewhat against it) So where do you stand on these issues? Also back in the osi days , being a thief was a very lucrative means of attaining a steady flow of gold. However it seems , with all the private run servers , everything is blessed or insured. I generally make a tamer , a thief , a miner/blacksmith and a pvp char (which i use the least. And its usually a dexxer or tank. But in this case i will be making a paladin). So , will you guys phase out the thief char with your policies too? Just curious as to what sort of role you see the thief playing in your world.
Lastly i would like to know how fast people skill. In hybrid it was ridiculous. I made a 7x gm tamer in 2 days. It was too much for me.
So ya , thats it. What role does the thief char have in your world? Will there be handouts (in items or gold) and donation items (anything other than ethy mounts i will object to)? How fast do people skill? And i suppose i would also like to know about house placement. How many houses per account? Or is it per char? Lastly how many accounts can 1 ip have?
Handouts, as in GMs giving stuff to their friends?
That won’t happen under penalty of torture here.
Thieves will be fine. I’m not nerfing them.
I think he is refering to handout simular to other servers, where you suddenly get stuff in your backpack cause GMs want to keep people happy… Not GM’s giving people to friends ..
But i guess the answer is same to both scenarios .. THings will not be handouts? And with no horses etc, you won’t see any ethys either ;)
And be patient, Site will come up with all information you will ever need!
And in responce to your questions… I don’t know if i missunderstood you insanely much, But there are no Bless or insurance on IPY .. The thieves have the role they were made for.. Stealing stuff from people … Something that can be *very* Profitable.
And skill gain… Yeah.. You will NOT make a 7xgm .. Well.. In a LONG time.. And you don’t get as good skillgains macroing in a house , as you do out there in the world adventuring . . Thats how it was, and you can only assume that is how it will be ..
I agree that Economy is VERY important, infact one of the most important parts of a server .. Along with good non-corrupt/powertripping staff.. ;)
ps from what i have read from those who are creating this server , i am very pleased. I was so upset with my return to uo (hybrid) and still hope that someone can get it right. I like what i hear so far , and you can count on me being there from day 1 to see how it all pans out.
can i go on record as to saying that i am very concerned about someone with the personality of Yaht being an integral part of the server.
Azeroth however , it is by reading your posts and vision for the server , coupled with the sense of character i get from you that has won me over. But i gotta say it does not take much salt to ruin the recipe.
I’ll save Azaroth the awkwardness of disowning Yaht and tell you that Yaht (as far as I know) isn’t an integral part of the server. As far as I can tell he’s just like you and I; potential players voicing our opinions on this blog. I didn’t realize he did anything offensive either, hehe.
I already offered Az osso bucco and he turned me down. You have no chance so don’t even try.
lol wha? Me?
I like Yaht?
No no. He did nothing offensive at all. In fact , i truly have nothing against the man. He is somewhat brash for my liking , but that really is a subjective issue with little to no bearing on ones ability to do what i thought his MO was (help run the server).
My objection was with the obvious inclination towards the pk side of things which may induce some subconscious bias when making decisions with respect to the trajectory of the server.
However since it appears i was mistaken , i apologize.
Yeah sure, it’s true; most of my experiences in UO were as a real PK. I guess in that regard sure I am somewhat biased, since I draw upon my experiences and since they were [arguably] positive, at least for me, then I would like to see the possibility of those experiences happening to other PKs exist in 2.0.
Sure I am probably brash, but I am sincerely interested in helping IPY be an even bigger success this time around, and I’m honestly less interested in playing than helping make this a fun time for all the community. I plan on being a sort of presence and hopefully enjoyable part of the game without playing. The podcast / radio thing is still in the works, stuff like that. If anyone feels offended by any comments I’ve made here or remembers that I played IPY 1 with an obnoxious gimmicky persona, then I’m sorry and I hope my commitment to this will show.
Hey , there is nothing i want more than to play on a uo server which is balanced and has a client base of 5000+. I think this is a perfectly reasonable to attain , and im all for everything anyone does to bring numbers in.
But after playing the worst shard i have ever experienced (hybrid) i know that if things go too far towards pk , and any server turns into a pk run server , that ideal simply wont happen. So i am worried about a new server that is stirring up the rumor mill as the one that will save uo. I hope they pull it off , and the only way i see it happening , is if they take a little from the pk side of the balance , and give a little to the noobs.
For example. When i first joined hybrid after a near 10 year hiatus from the game first thing i did was go to wbb. It was barren. I almost quit as i thought the server was dead and playing a populated uo server was just a nostalgic pipe dream. Then i found 1 person and he said everyone moved to delucia. So me and a friend swamped the forums with a “Return to Britain” mantra. And it worked (they even gave out return to britain sash handout). During the first 2 weeks of the repopulation of brit the numbers skyrocketed. At one point there was nearly 2000 uses. In 2 weeks the server brought in nearly 500 new players. Unfortunately however , because its a pk server , they didnt stay long. And it dropped back down to its usual 1000 mark. (with influxes of people coming and leaving ….) So after hearing about this server from the rumor mill , i got excited. What if hybrid wasnt such a lousy server run by people with no concept (or care) of economics. What if newbs could actually be in brit graveyard for more than 2 mins without being pk’ed and having their mounts killed?
Personally i think the demand is out there for this game. Only problem is nobody has been able to find the balance yet. And when servers do become successful , they always get greedy and implement “donations” , which in turn ruins the economy. (america is proof you cant just magically poof money into existence without repercussions) So the bad economics coupled with the fact that reds run rampid and take over the server is imo what keeps the game from really blowing up. So my objections are not with you Yaht , not at all. Just with the philosophy that a new shard should cater to the veteran/pk. Yes pk is a good thing (i never pked yet i loved felucia) but in moderation. So if anything taking a little away from the pk to give incentive to the noobs to keep playing imo is a good thing. And my only concern was that because of your play style , you would orchestrate things towards the other side of the scale , which obviously i believe would be highly detrimental.
Dude you really needed to see IP 1 to understand the mangnitude of this whole thing. You said you had a ten hear hiatus before playing Hybrid. Dude. Hybrid is not even in the same realm. It’s not even close. No UO server has captured the essence of original old school UO since 1.0 and nothing else will ever. Except 2.0. Which, hopefully, will be the UO experience you’ve missed all this time.
As for my playstyle, I understand you cannot run all your meal tickets off the server with unrelenting grief. However, again, the PK scene of Hybrid does not do justice to the earlier OSI PK scene or the IPY 1 scene, either. With a healthy population, with a consistent influx of players, will surely help make the PK scene vibrant and not just a bunch of sharks and a few minnows. It’s gonna be just greatwhen you throw Pallies on top, too.
Yah thats what i heard. And when the rumor mill started swirling about the best free shard ever starting up again , i was stoked.
Ya , i had a long hiatus , but since i left hybrid i have played on multiple shards (some of them capture the essence of the pre-tram old days , except they have a tiny population) but unfortunately they either have handouts/too many pks/low populations which really sour the experience.
Listen. Even though i dont pk (and am against 100% brit graveyard pking. Preying on noobs is low) i really think pk has a pivotal role in uo. Thats what separates it from every other mmo out there , pk/loot/steal. Its why i love the game. Only concern i have is it becomes a pvp server (which i heard it became the last time) and everyone goes red. To the point where new people cannot hang out in brit graveyard for more than 2 mins. Where you die more while hunting balrocs from pks than you do from the balrocs. But i agree , with a large population (ideally over 5k) pk wont be a problem. The issue is to not have them run wild to prevent that influx of new/returning players.
some of my best memories back in the osi days was hanging around moonglow grave killing liches with like 40 other people there. But every free shard i have seen is either barren or run by reds…..
So please understand me , im not anti pk. Im pro pk/loot/stealing. My only concern is that it gets out of hand and prevents newbs or returning players from sticking around long enough to really see the magic of this game. I sure do hope this server is all its cracked up to be. But imo the only thing which will really cure that nostalgic uo itch is if there is a pre 99 uo feel with a significantly larger player base than hybrid. If those can happen , i swear , my girl will leave me , ill flunk out of school and have to resort to robbing convenience stores to pay my internet bills.
ps just out of curiosity did Ipy 1 have a larger player base than hybrid? (1000-1300)?
Yeah IPY had a larger and (most importantly) more vibrant population than any other indie server.
There’s nothing close, man. I always explain it like this to people – if UO is like the 60′s, then IPY was Woodstock. Seriously I’m not even clouded by nostalgia, it was gorilla central, juice heads everywhere! Honestly man it’s going to blow ur mind, make ur gf leave u, make u drop out of school, and give u rugburn. At least that’s what 1.0 did to me. And I loved it!!!
[...]
make ur gf leave u, make u drop out of school, and give u rugburn. At least that’s what 1.0 did to me. And I loved it!!!
I lol’d because it’s true. :)
There really is no way to imagine what it does to you until you try it !
ps im a math guy with crippling dyslexia. Please overlook the poor grammar.
the difference between the average 1000 + online on IPY and the average 1000 + online on Hybrid is that the 1000 + on IPY were actually online, and not people 4 clienting AFK in safe zones waiting for a handout with about 100 people max actaully playing.
Yaht, as I have said before, I would gladly monitor any IRC if no one else wants to do it. You can e-mail me at stfugrizzly@gmail.com
whats the official status of pks and the ability to recall/gate?
Just in case there’s anyone here that plays online games, I thought you might find this interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb7CNfMs65c
To Yaht; how the hell did you get rug burn from playing UO? I’ve been wondering about that.
Well, sometimes you eat the bar… And sometimes, the bar eats you.
In Soviet Russia pussy eats you
I guess I’ll have to leave it to my imagination how you got rug burn from playing UO. *ponders*
The real question is, why are they staying inside to play video games living in Hawaii?? It’s Hawaii!
Well I can’t say I know whether or not those fine young individuals ever get outside for any Hawaii related activities but in their defense; it was nearly midnight.
people that are born there i imagine are not surfing and tanning all day long 24-7 365
Think we need a new Az topic, this ones getting stale…
New topic – Antoine Dodson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw
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