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DOCTOR THUNDER wrote:
I have not read the entire thread yet, but I agree 100% with Altar on this one. The custom stuff is kind of crazy and probably needs to be toned down too. But here is a good example, awhile ago I got a Sacred Elemental bow in gauntlet. It was a gauntlet arty, and its a FUCKING demon slayer bow. Thats bullshit. If you are going to make an arty, make it worth using. I went to forums and said "the Sacred Elemental on display at the casino is a double slayer, why is mine only demon?". The response was, "We forgot about that one, its only supposed to be demon." Its fucking junk, but I had to kill 50 gauntlet bosses to get it. thats the type of bullshit that makes people mad. Now multiply that by about 100, once for every time the aoas, tamables, and pvp have been changed. Thats the reasons why people quit, they would rather play on a stable server.

Ya that's another thing. Artifacts are not slotted according to the task involved in getting them. Some AOAs trump pretty much everything else. In fact, numerous AOAs are better than some gaunt artifacts which does not make sense.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23174

Seer Death wrote:

DOCTOR THUNDER wrote:
I have not read the entire thread yet, but I agree 100% with Altar on this one. The custom stuff is kind of crazy and probably needs to be toned down too. But here is a good example, awhile ago I got a Sacred Elemental bow in gauntlet. It was a gauntlet arty, and its a FUCKING demon slayer bow. Thats bullshit. If you are going to make an arty, make it worth using. I went to forums and said "the Sacred Elemental on display at the casino is a double slayer, why is mine only demon?". The response was, "We forgot about that one, its only supposed to be demon." Its fucking junk, but I had to kill 50 gauntlet bosses to get it. thats the type of bullshit that makes people mad. Now multiply that by about 100, once for every time the aoas, tamables, and pvp have been changed. Thats the reasons why people quit, they would rather play on a stable server.

QFT

Ya that's another thing. Artifacts are not slotted according to the task involved in getting them. Some AOAs trump pretty much everything else. In fact, numerous AOAs are better than some gaunt artifacts which does not make sense.

The artifacts need to be revamped. The huge choice is great. Keep the dyes, deco. The other artifacts need to be balanced, with runics and the other arties. There should be no clear path to 'the best'...this was/is the mistake of other games. (Diablo much??[..of the Zodiac..of the Whale])

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23175

DOCTOR THUNDER wrote:

TriX wrote:GAME left because they felt picked on. I know your reasons for doing it, but it was a little under-hand.

Another point I agree with. Both sides of it. There have been a lot of times when people have felt picked on, and thats mostly the reason for quitting.

Almost happened with me once upon a time. So it doesn't surprise me much.

Don't get me wrong. I love and appriciate everything you two (Red and Death) have done with AoV. Thats why I eventually decided not to leave. But most of the time if you target an update directly at soemone they will probably leave.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23176

Plastic Man wrote: Almost happened with me once upon a time. So it doesn't surprise me much.

Don't get me wrong. I love and appriciate everything you two (Red and Death) have done with AoV. Thats why I eventually decided not to leave. But most of the time if you target an update directly at soemone they will probably leave.

To be fair, we only notice things as a problem arises. We can think up all kinds of scenarios and exploits and miss 1 detail, then a player discovers that detail and tries to use it to their advantage.

Many do not even think it's a problem, but others KNOW it's a problem and will continue to use it to their advantage before we find out. It's not targeting somebody on purpose, it's the act that person did that causes concern and needs to be addressed.

As developers, we DO observe things that go around on the shard and make note of it as there's a greater chance of loopholes and exceptions to the code we've released as our test base isn't as large as an official server such as OSI.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23177

^^ What he said.

Not to bring up a dead horse, but I'll use the oracle as an example. When we coded it we ensured it could not be abused. We made it so you can't use it to escape from PVP, or escape from places that you normally can't recall from, etc... lot of stuff was considered.

Then we missed one thing. We never considered the danger to the economy and the kick in the face to miners/lumberjackers it caused when someone went in there with 5 pack horses. Unlimited resources that can be bought in very little time, when a resource gatherer char has to work hard for it.

We saw this as a HUGE problem, so we did something about it very fast.

Given UO is an economy driven game we do what we can to ensure stuff cannot break the economy. Specially on a small shard an economy is not easy to sustain, so whatever can break it we fix fast.

That means ubber artys that are easy to get either need to be made harder to get, or nerfed so that other hard to get arties are more worth it.


From the point of view of a developer there is not only lot of technical aspects (how much cpu cycles will something take, or how much extra ram or save time will it take, or how reusable is this concept,so I can plan for future and seperate into modules, etc...) but we also have to consider ingame aspects. There's lot of room for error and it sometimes takes multiple revisions to do it.

Look at the AWs, it took at least 10 revisions to finally turn them into a "status" pet rather then a "ubber kill everything within 25 tile radius instantly" pet. The prepatch are still screwed up mind you. It's stuff like this that drives people away.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23178

I was not saying that you picked on people. I was saying that the way it seems sometimes when things like that happen is it LOOKS like you are and for the players involved it certainly seems like you are. And the perception in some instances is more important than the reality. If someone perceives you as screwing with THEM they will be more likely to take it personally and quit.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23179

Red Squirrel wrote:Look at the AWs, it took at least 10 revisions to finally turn them into a "status" pet rather then a "ubber kill everything within 25 tile radius instantly" pet. The prepatch are still screwed up mind you. It's stuff like this that drives people away.

Red Squirrel! Seriously, are you kidding me? Those AW's are why people JOINED this shard. Many people left when they were nerfed, I know this for a fact. How can you have this so backwards?!

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23183

Red Squirrel wrote:We saw this as a HUGE problem, so we did something about it very fast.

Given UO is an economy driven game we do what we can to ensure stuff cannot break the economy. Specially on a small shard an economy is not easy to sustain, so whatever can break it we fix fast.

That means ubber artys that are easy to get either need to be made harder to get, or nerfed so that other hard to get arties are more worth it.


From the point of view of a developer there is not only lot of technical aspects (how much cpu cycles will something take, or how much extra ram or save time will it take, or how reusable is this concept,so I can plan for future and seperate into modules, etc...) but we also have to consider ingame aspects. There's lot of room for error and it sometimes takes multiple revisions to do it.

Maybe, maybe you should think back to when you started this shard. Maybe you should think back how it was before, how it was for fun, and how the stupid economy did not matter. Then remember that there were 15 - 20 players online most of the time, and there were uber arties everywhere, uber pets everywhere and PLAYERS LOVED IT. I mean, who cares about UO's economy? Games are played for fun?

If the Oracle was that good, then everyone would strive to get one. Boo hoo, so some people won't be sitting in front of a screen pressing keys for hours to get some measly valorite ingots and drooling over their keyboards from boredom. But you know what they will be doing instead? Working their asses off and having FUN and being excited doing Leviathans so that maybe one day they can get an Oracle for themselves (and sometimes staring at it in the museum just for fun).

Squirrel and Death, you guys are great coders but I think the more you guys develop, the more you get involved with code and structure, and the less you are able to see the game from the players' eyes.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23184

dprantl wrote:

Red Squirrel wrote:We saw this as a HUGE problem, so we did something about it very fast.

Given UO is an economy driven game we do what we can to ensure stuff cannot break the economy. Specially on a small shard an economy is not easy to sustain, so whatever can break it we fix fast.

That means ubber artys that are easy to get either need to be made harder to get, or nerfed so that other hard to get arties are more worth it.


From the point of view of a developer there is not only lot of technical aspects (how much cpu cycles will something take, or how much extra ram or save time will it take, or how reusable is this concept,so I can plan for future and seperate into modules, etc...) but we also have to consider ingame aspects. There's lot of room for error and it sometimes takes multiple revisions to do it.

Maybe, maybe you should think back to when you started this shard. Maybe you should think back how it was before, how it was for fun, and how the stupid economy did not matter. Then remember that there were 15 - 20 players online most of the time, and there were uber arties everywhere, uber pets everywhere and PLAYERS LOVED IT. I mean, who cares about UO's economy? Games are played for fun?

If the Oracle was that good, then everyone would strive to get one. Boo hoo, so some people won't be sitting in front of a screen pressing keys for hours to get some measly valorite ingots and drooling over their keyboards from boredom. But you know what they will be doing instead? Working their asses off and having FUN and being excited doing Leviathans so that maybe one day they can get an Oracle for themselves (and sometimes staring at it in the museum just for fun).

Squirrel and Death, you guys are great coders but I think the more you guys develop, the more you get involved with code and structure, and the less you are able to see the game from the players' eyes.

What he said.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23185

I don't know what the problem is with the playerbase. You normally have like 4 people on all the time. OSI would be good, but then it must be exact. And main reason many people dont start OSI clones is because they have to restart their chars. So if you were to make a OSI clone you would have to have:

1 free advance char per account
Exact UO:ML
Exact UO:OSI/ML
Spawnable rares true and i and once in a lifetime spawns such as the 4 sisters etc.
New player ticket that will give a piece of ranger armor/potted plants for the first 4 months just to get them in the game.
Keep the loot better and not OSI accurate.
Maybe take trammel away and make malas, Ilshenar and Tukuno felucca.
Have ToTs avaible for the first 4 months.
And so on.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23186

And of course costum scripts and items are always welcome as long as they are balanced.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23187

dprantl wrote:

Red Squirrel wrote:Look at the AWs, it took at least 10 revisions to finally turn them into a "status" pet rather then a "ubber kill everything within 25 tile radius instantly" pet. The prepatch are still screwed up mind you. It's stuff like this that drives people away.

Red Squirrel! Seriously, are you kidding me? Those AW's are why people JOINED this shard. Many people left when they were nerfed, I know this for a fact. How can you have this so backwards?!

Sure people who have them. But someone new who joins the shard and sees that is turned off.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23193

dprantl wrote: Maybe, maybe you should think back to when you started this shard. Maybe you should think back how it was before, how it was for fun, and how the stupid economy did not matter. Then remember that there were 15 - 20 players online most of the time, and there were uber arties everywhere, uber pets everywhere and PLAYERS LOVED IT. I mean, who cares about UO's economy? Games are played for fun?

If the Oracle was that good, then everyone would strive to get one. Boo hoo, so some people won't be sitting in front of a screen pressing keys for hours to get some measly valorite ingots and drooling over their keyboards from boredom. But you know what they will be doing instead? Working their asses off and having FUN and being excited doing Leviathans so that maybe one day they can get an Oracle for themselves (and sometimes staring at it in the museum just for fun).

Squirrel and Death, you guys are great coders but I think the more you guys develop, the more you get involved with code and structure, and the less you are able to see the game from the players' eyes.

The shard SUCKED at that point. Items were tossed around like hotcakes and there was absolutely no skill involved to get anything. We pretty much HANDED out stuff for free. One event I got 15 aoas no joke. That's not the kind of shard I want to code and to be perfectly honest, I don't want players around who want everything handed to them or constantly ask for events and stuff. Play the game and you'll eventually be rewarded for your hard work. It may take awhile but you play a game to take up your time anyways.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23199

here another idea make this shard completely balanced, then just start working on a new one and add it to the list... makes more sense and would actually bring players to both shards because they see multiply ones when they log in

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23201

Redrum lot- wrote:here another idea make this shard completely balanced, then just start working on a new one and add it to the list... makes more sense and would actually bring players to both shards because they see multiply ones when they log in

That's what this topic is really about. We probably wouldn't "wipe" the current shard because there's enough server resources available to run 2 at a time. We would just not update the old one as frequently.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23203

Seer Death wrote:

dprantl wrote: Maybe, maybe you should think back to when you started this shard. Maybe you should think back how it was before, how it was for fun, and how the stupid economy did not matter. Then remember that there were 15 - 20 players online most of the time, and there were uber arties everywhere, uber pets everywhere and PLAYERS LOVED IT. I mean, who cares about UO's economy? Games are played for fun?

If the Oracle was that good, then everyone would strive to get one. Boo hoo, so some people won't be sitting in front of a screen pressing keys for hours to get some measly valorite ingots and drooling over their keyboards from boredom. But you know what they will be doing instead? Working their asses off and having FUN and being excited doing Leviathans so that maybe one day they can get an Oracle for themselves (and sometimes staring at it in the museum just for fun).

Squirrel and Death, you guys are great coders but I think the more you guys develop, the more you get involved with code and structure, and the less you are able to see the game from the players' eyes.

The shard SUCKED at that point. Items were tossed around like hotcakes and there was absolutely no skill involved to get anything. We pretty much HANDED out stuff for free. One event I got 15 aoas no joke. That's not the kind of shard I want to code and to be perfectly honest, I don't want players around who want everything handed to them or constantly ask for events and stuff. Play the game and you'll eventually be rewarded for your hard work. It may take awhile but you play a game to take up your time anyways.

This is exactly the disconnect. If 80% of the players want what you don't like to code, then what we have is AoV. And then you cannot claim the shard is for the players, right? I'm not saying that people should be getting 15 AoA's per event, but over the last year or so things have gone from too easy, to too tedious IMO.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23204

dprantl wrote: This is exactly the disconnect. If 80% of the players want what you don't like to code, then what we have is AoV. And then you cannot claim the shard is for the players, right? I'm not saying that people should be getting 15 AoA's per event, but over the last year or so things have gone from too easy, to too tedious IMO.

We've come to realize that you can't truly build a shard for the players because all players want something different. If the shard was "truly" for the players, then this poll would not be needed as everyone would think the same thing.

Player have made very good suggestions that were great additions to AOV sure, but there are many more suggestions or ideas that were not so good. Some people like tons of artifacts, others hate em. Some people love quests, others hate them and would rather camp spots while afk. To each their own I guess.

UO has always been tedious. If you give players everything they desire right away, there would be no point in continuing to play. Likewise, if you make things too boring + a grueling task then that's no fun either. Quests pretty much solve that scenario.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23205

Redrum lot- wrote:here another idea make this shard completely balanced, then just start working on a new one and add it to the list... makes more sense and would actually bring players to both shards because they see multiply ones when they log in

Add this to the poll and see if more players like this idea, I think it's great and it solves your problem. You could design your new shard just the way you want.
I see valid points to both sides of the argument and this seems to address them both.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23206

Red Squirrel wrote:The reason we made it harder for game to farm is because the way they were doing it was a banable offense to begin with. Instead of policing and taking action only for it to happen again, we decided to change the game mechanics to try and stop it. It worked, maybe too well. We were either going to ban most of them, or make it harder/impossible to farm the way they did. (AFK) We kind of figured they'd quit over that as we never really saw them actually PLAY the game so if we stopped scripts we pretty much stopped them period, but at least there was a chance they'd stay. That's why we chose that route.

Actually I believe this is wrong. What you consider afk farming was us running multiple instances of Uo and linking them with a script but we always controlled the main account so it was never afk. You are splitting hairs with that afk stance because one client wasnt being watched 100% so how could we have been banned? We asked up front if script were ok and was told yes then maybe then now find we were on the verge of being banned...lol....The main reason for using multi clients was becasue of shard population and AI...we werent hurting anyone, unless they raided our spawns while we ran double archers, we were just enjoying the game trying to get established for long term pvp and factions which it takes gold and items to do, but hard due to creature AI on this shard so we adapted. One instance where I can point to is three of us were tackling the putrifier becasue of his high ML drop rate and the respawn timer kept getting longer then he became some toxic creature that made it a waste to even take on. All in all in our defence ...we were always at the keyboard and played, like we still do on OSI shards to this day with scripts and multi clients... I love Valor because of it's customs til they became to frustrating to bother with. There isnt a large enough player base to take a huge group out just to tackle a creature you are supposed to be getting keys from for what is supposed to be the hard monster.

I still strongly disagree with the afk accusation, and i think it's a matter of perspective because we double cliented. As far as bannable offense, this is the only freeshard that has ever mentioned banning a multi client scripter and if you want proof I can name you four right now that I play or have played on that have no problems with it .

Anyway, what we were told and now what I have read about bannings it's probably good for both sides we limit our playing time here...

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23215

Friar wrote: The main reason for using multi clients was becasue of shard population and AI...we werent hurting anyone, unless they raided our spawns while we ran double archers, we were just enjoying the game trying to get established for long term pvp and factions which it takes gold and items to do, but hard due to creature AI on this shard so we adapted. One instance where I can point to is three of us were tackling the putrifier becasue of his high ML drop rate and the respawn timer kept getting longer then he became some toxic creature that made it a waste to even take on.

Actually, putrefier's abilities were scheduled for change a long time ago along with a ton of other mobile fixes where their special abilities were missing (Such as the ancient lich polymorph and summoning as well as a ton of other mobile fixes). It was just waiting to be launched with the rest of the mobiles (You can check the listing for all the mobiles that were launched at the same time if interested, it should be in the news section somewhere). A good majority of that list took about 3 weeks to complete.

I'll admit to increasing the respawn time in the meantime though as his difficulty was under that of a paragon balron for 5x the artifact chance so my apologies on that matter as it seemed logical at the time.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23216

The AFK thing was touchy since I understand you guys liked to multi client.

But basically if we would show up for ~5 minutes and the player does not answer we considered it AFK resource gathering.

Also we are continuously revamping mobs/items if we find new data from OSI so lot of changes are not always targeted to anyone. We check what players are doing to get an idea of what people like to do so while we're player hopping we may notice a mob or item and go "oh yeah, we need to fix that" and put a ticket for it and fix it later or right away. Some stuff does not get ticketed but we try to ticket even the smallest things so there's a record of it.

The putrefier is a good example of that, we found out a few things about it then later on implemented them.


Anyway to get an idea of the stuff pending for change it can usually be found here:
http://www.iceteks.net/devel/index.php? ... x&switch=1

So if you see a change that was dated before you been to that mob/place you'll know for sure it was not targeted. Though don't count on that as sometimes we only ticket stuff after it was fixed, or within same hour.

But since we're taking a vacation we'll be adding lot of tickets to go to later.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23218

I cant say much that Friar didnt, except... before I had even one mob kill on this server I asked Red point blank if scripting was ok. He said yes. I scripted. It takes more tallent and at keyboard game play to efficiently run 3 accounts with or with out scripts. We were punished for being to good at UO plain and simple. When you allow scripts there is a line. AFK is allowed or not allowed, one of the two. AFK means that there is no one at the keyboard on any account. Not AFK means there is some one there controlling atleast one account at a time. I have 0, count them 0 bot scripts in my arsenal of magnificent pieces of art work. I have several semi afk scripts that I use but still require me here, and a few scripts that run multiple characters. Another guildy and I (him mainly I helped at the end with the auto attack) just finished a duel tamer script that is almost identicle to our duel archer script (ftw) and it isnt considered an afk bot on the current server we all play on.

You can make whatever server however you want it, but targeting a player base for playing the game will always lead down a path of mediocracy.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23221

Red Squirrel wrote:...

But basically if we would show up for ~5 minutes and the player does not answer we considered it AFK resource gathering.

...

AFK resource gathering is understandable of course I bought my resources so no harm/no foul, but the way these posts were reading is we turned on uo and went in the living room for the night..lol...I wish I could script like that cause I would...lol...

In defence of resource gathering though, some of our guys that are into the crafting end might have ran a miner or LJ script but was usually on another client and if they werent and you jailed em then thats the consequence of breaking the rules.

I actually like Valor and it's customs...I dont like pulling out my hair for gear...lol

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23222

Scripting was allowed as there was no real way of stopping that and actually proving without using false positives. Red decided to allow it in that case. However, there are legitimate script usages and illegitimate script uses. Both were seen in use and were either allowed or denied along with additions to the rule list.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23224

what was being considered an "illegitimate" script usage....only thing I could see as illegal scripting would be afk...

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:3608, old post ID:23225