bring em back

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Boomland Jenkins
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Re: bring em back

Post by Boomland Jenkins »

Pro wrote:Tell Derrick he's cray cray
We would never implement duping here even if we had it 100% figured out in regards to accurate mechanics. Why? Because duping in era was a bannable offense and I can't see any sane reason to add game-breaking features to the game that require GMs to moderate/ban for.

Said it before, but the LOS bug would totally get you banned on OSI and I don't think we need much proof. OSI would ban for abusing many bugs, especially bugs that produced a negative result. On top of that, many times when you were banned, you weren't given the specific reason as to why you were banned (in some cases, you were).

There's no reason for this bug to be active on UOSA, but Kaivan thinks we do need it, and I have not heard Anarcho's opinion on it.
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Re: bring em back

Post by Chicanery »

It is important to say the transparency in shard policy is a good change in the right direction.

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Re: bring em back

Post by Abyz »

Chicanery wrote:It is important to say the transparency in shard policy is a good change in the right direction.
^
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Re: bring em back

Post by Kaivan »

Boomland Jenkins wrote:
Pro wrote:Tell Derrick he's cray cray
Boomland Jenkins wrote:We would never implement duping here even if we had it 100% figured out in regards to accurate mechanics. Why? Because duping in era was a bannable offense and I can't see any sane reason to add game-breaking features to the game that require GMs to moderate/ban for.
We may not implement it, but without some policy change, it wouldn't be due to our position on how broken it was.
Boomland Jenkins wrote:Said it before, but the LOS bug would totally get you banned on OSI and I don't think we need much proof. OSI would ban for abusing many bugs, especially bugs that produced a negative result. On top of that, many times when you were banned, you weren't given the specific reason as to why you were banned (in some cases, you were).
This is still conjecture since we don't know exactly what OSI's position on it. We can use other bannings and general OSI policy to guess at what they would do, but without a direct example of someone being banned for using this, nor a fix being rolled out for this in the entire history of the game, we have no certainty on the subject. We don't even know if OSI recognized this as a bug or not.
Boomland Jenkins wrote:There's no reason for this bug to be active on UOSA, but Kaivan thinks we do need it, and I have not heard Anarcho's opinion on it.
I've spoken to you on the subject, but I'll reiterate it here. The issue with attempting to fix this behavior is how we go about doing it, and what it produces as a result. Specifically, if we decide to fix the behavior where players can target houses via uneven ground, how will we go about fixing it, and what else will it affect? Do we simply mess with the code until it doesn't allow you to do that anymore, or do we attempt to make significant changes to how LoS works by putting in new algorithms? In both instances, do we consider the effects that a change in LoS will have on other valid behaviors, or do we ignore the wider effects of any changes to LoS and simply make changes to prevent this behavior? In my book, any attempt to fix this behavior will almost certainly make LoS work very poorly in a host of other completely valid circumstances, which makes any attempt to fix this cause more problems than it solves.
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Re: bring em back

Post by Roser »

If possible it would be nice if this bug was reverted to how it was before it was patched in, it would probably also fix the ledge dropping inconsistency as it was the same patch that broke that function.

I know the jury's out on ledge dropping in these specific homes, but yeah the introduction of this bug also created more problems that were not intended at all.
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Re: bring em back

Post by Kaivan »

Rose wrote:If possible it would be nice if this bug was reverted to how it was before it was patched in, it would probably also fix the ledge dropping inconsistency as it was the same patch that broke that function.

I know the jury's out on ledge dropping in these specific homes, but yeah the introduction of this bug also created more problems that were not intended at all.
I think that this is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about. The previous code for LoS didn't handle targeting spells and combat similarly to OSI servers at all, and as a result it produced a lot of poor functionality that simply wasn't the case on live servers. As for ledge dropping, I don't recall exactly what the behavior was before, but it sounds like another significant problem associated with non OSI LoS code.
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Re: bring em back

Post by DKS »

Is the true goal of the shard era accuracy? Let's take a look.

If the shard were to dwindle down to 3 players daily and the shard still wasn't 100% accurate, would Derrick still pay the monthly fees to maintain the shard 'forever'? My guess would be no.

If the shard had 1000 players playing daily and the shard still wasn't accurate, would Derrick pay the fees 'forever'? I say yes.

If the shard had 1000 players playing daily and the shard reached it's goal of 100% accuracy, would Derrick continue to pay the fees 'forever'? Probably.


My logic says that the REAL goal of the shard is to have people playing on it. There is some balance of play vs accuracy of course, but things that hurt the 'true' main goal of the shard outweigh their accuracy IMO.

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Re: bring em back

Post by Boomland Jenkins »

Kaivan wrote:Specifically, if we decide to fix the behavior where players can target houses via uneven ground, how will we go about fixing it, and what else will it affect? Do we simply mess with the code until it doesn't allow you to do that anymore, or do we attempt to make significant changes to how LoS works by putting in new algorithms? In both instances, do we consider the effects that a change in LoS will have on other valid behaviors, or do we ignore the wider effects of any changes to LoS and simply make changes to prevent this behavior? In my book, any attempt to fix this behavior will almost certainly make LoS work very poorly in a host of other completely valid circumstances, which makes any attempt to fix this cause more problems than it solves.
So the purposed (and current) solution is to "do nothing" rather than "try something" in regards to how it could and could not work. Is it so much to ask that we actually try to fix a potential exploit (let's call it what it is, this is an exploit of LOS). Maybe you're right, and any changes we make here will create a whole lot of problems elsewhere, but we don't know this for certain and that's why code is developed and tested before going to production. I have little experience working with RunUO code, but I would be amazed if there's not a way to add specific flag for tiles relating to housing.

Worst case, we don't implement a line of code, but at least we looked into it and actively try something.


DKS wrote:Is the true goal of the shard era accuracy? Let's take a look.

If the shard were to dwindle down to 3 players daily and the shard still wasn't 100% accurate, would Derrick still pay the monthly fees to maintain the shard 'forever'? My guess would be no.

If the shard had 1000 players playing daily and the shard still wasn't accurate, would Derrick pay the fees 'forever'? I say yes.

If the shard had 1000 players playing daily and the shard reached it's goal of 100% accuracy, would Derrick continue to pay the fees 'forever'? Probably.


My logic says that the REAL goal of the shard is to have people playing on it. There is some balance of play vs accuracy of course, but things that hurt the 'true' main goal of the shard outweigh their accuracy IMO.
No where on the website have we ever stated that we were going for 100% mechanical accuracy and actually it states the following:
Diversity of players and play styles is a necessity of a healthy shard.
(source: http://www.uosecondage.com/About)

We can't rely on code 100% to keep a shard healthy, community is necessary. Without players, UOSA is essentially an odd version of the UO demo. We already have that, we don't need another one.
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Re: bring em back

Post by Kaivan »

Boomland Jenkins wrote:
Kaivan wrote:Specifically, if we decide to fix the behavior where players can target houses via uneven ground, how will we go about fixing it, and what else will it affect? Do we simply mess with the code until it doesn't allow you to do that anymore, or do we attempt to make significant changes to how LoS works by putting in new algorithms? In both instances, do we consider the effects that a change in LoS will have on other valid behaviors, or do we ignore the wider effects of any changes to LoS and simply make changes to prevent this behavior? In my book, any attempt to fix this behavior will almost certainly make LoS work very poorly in a host of other completely valid circumstances, which makes any attempt to fix this cause more problems than it solves.
So the purposed (and current) solution is to "do nothing" rather than "try something" in regards to how it could and could not work. Is it so much to ask that we actually try to fix a potential exploit (let's call it what it is, this is an exploit of LOS). Maybe you're right, and any changes we make here will create a whole lot of problems elsewhere, but we don't know this for certain and that's why code is developed and tested before going to production. I have little experience working with RunUO code, but I would be amazed if there's not a way to add specific flag for tiles relating to housing.

Worst case, we don't implement a line of code, but at least we looked into it and actively try something.
Actually, yes, the proposed solution is to do nothing about a mechanic that's working the way it did during the era. More on that later.

Also, if I read your suggestion correctly, I'm guessing that you're asking for a flag to prevent players from targeting tiles related to a house. If we take that course of action, then we prevent players from targeting spells in houses at all, or at least prevent players from targeting explosion potions in houses at all. Whether this is or isn't your proposed solution, it highlights the problem with just "fixing" the problem. A quick fix like this takes away valid uses of an item in an attempt to fix something else. The "fix" broke a normal mechanic in place of preventing odd behavior, which is a far worse result.
Boomland Jenkins wrote:
DKS wrote:Is the true goal of the shard era accuracy? Let's take a look.

If the shard were to dwindle down to 3 players daily and the shard still wasn't 100% accurate, would Derrick still pay the monthly fees to maintain the shard 'forever'? My guess would be no.

If the shard had 1000 players playing daily and the shard still wasn't accurate, would Derrick pay the fees 'forever'? I say yes.

If the shard had 1000 players playing daily and the shard reached it's goal of 100% accuracy, would Derrick continue to pay the fees 'forever'? Probably.


My logic says that the REAL goal of the shard is to have people playing on it. There is some balance of play vs accuracy of course, but things that hurt the 'true' main goal of the shard outweigh their accuracy IMO.
No where on the website have we ever stated that we were going for 100% mechanical accuracy and actually it states the following:
Diversity of players and play styles is a necessity of a healthy shard.
(source: http://www.uosecondage.com/About)

We can't rely on code 100% to keep a shard healthy, community is necessary. Without players, UOSA is essentially an odd version of the UO demo. We already have that, we don't need another one.
I'm really not sure what you're reading, but here's what that page actually has on it:
Since inception, the goal, vision and rationale of even creating this accurate T2A era shard has been very simple but unique:

We aim to replicate the T2A era as best we can and within technical limitations as a whole.
We do not intend to ever change any aspect of normal game play to particularly favor any play style or to protect or further expose any players to the in-game risk that was a large part of this era.
We will especially not pull aspects of other eras into this one, even with an overwhelming demand of players.

We believe that "proper" game play can only be achieved by taking the era as a whole and accept it for what it was. Tampering with the era in hope of achieving balance is not something that we will do, nor do we believe is achievable across all play styles. Diversity of players and play styles is a necessity of a healthy shard. Every type of play depends on another, and this is why UO is absolutely the greatest MMORPG ever crafted.

With that said, we do still continue to strive to become more correct and true to the era. Player feedback and research is a big part of this process. We don't claim to have everything perfect yet, but we do continue to actively work towards that goal.

We recommend client version 5.0.8.3, but all client versions above 5.0.0.0. are supported. If you do not have your UO installation CDs, you can download a modern client from the downloads section, here. We have a guide on the forum, here, to assist you with downloading, installing, and connecting to Second Age.
The above quotes sound like a call to achieve mechanical accuracy as best as possible, which is the only kind of accuracy that we have any control over.

But to further expand on my point, here's some direct quotes from Derrick on the subject:
Derrick wrote:It's good to have you here, and I do appreciate the feedback. The majority of work here, both in research, publicity, and even the cool installer is done by the players. While I do I guess make the final decisions, it's done so with immense participation from everyone, and we have moved very slowly. We have of course not met the goal of 100% mechanical accuracy so it's very easy to pick things out that aren't right, and I encourage it fully.

I didn't start UOSA to compete for players, and that's never been the goal. UOSA will survive even if our client count is 10. We've have more clients online and we've had less, but we've always worked in the same direction. We don't intend to change core aspects of era mechanics for the potential satisfaction of players, and it's a widely held belief (here) that it's not a viable strategy to try and do so. This of course undeniably is contrary to common development and design principles of online gaming, but it's what we do here.

To answer your question about the lag, it's garbage collection due to low memory. We intend to resolve this fast; and we are in no way lacking for spare CPU cycles. So far Moores law has served us well beyond it's own projections and I expect it will continue to do so.

I'm glad that you are enjoying the shard, and understand that no one can be expected to be satisfied with every aspect of UO as the depth of the game mechanics are unrivaled.

I encourage you to challenge any misconceptions you feel we have about era mechanics, but please do so with the deserved notice and respect to those who have spent so much time on the issues prior to your arrival.

Welcome to Second Age friend.
Derrick wrote:
Derrick wrote:
BlackFoot wrote:how many of these bugs only existed for a really short amount of time and then were fixed
which ones do you chose to add in and which do you chose not to?
I think that if it's just a silly cute bug, like the one where you drop the titled book on the npc for example, we can somewhat ignore the timeline just for the novelty of it (not that I know if this function ever changed of not, just an example); but typically any bugs that came and went are likely related to mechanics changes that effected more than just the bug itself, in which case it's important to keep consistent mechanical accuracy. Things shouldn't be designed (hacked) directly into emulating a bug when possible, it's preferable to emulate the entire mechanic that caused the bug.

The documentabion of a bug can give a great glimpse into how the entire mechanic was coded.
Derrick wrote:
Derrick wrote:
Light Shade wrote:does:
Mechanical Accuracy = Code
-or-
Mechanical Accuracy = How Things Worked In Era
-or-
both
Well, the code is the definition of how things worked, but in some areas we have only been able to approximate this. In other areas we are using verbatim OSI code; however this isn't possible for every mechanic in the game, it's still a RunUO server.

We can't replicate or attempt to replicate the fact that most people were on dial up connections, or that those with more money or lived closer to cities had better connections. This could be considered how things worked as well, but it's out of our hands.

There are a lot of tiny little things that are quite diffiult to fix. But we'll continue to work on it as we have time. Please remember that there is very little that we can do that doesn't gernate hate-mail from someone or another, and quite typically both sides of the dispute have valid points. What we would like to do is maintain the shard in as stable of a state as possible, and leave the world to the players.

In the void of staff intervention creativity thrives.
So yes, his position as referenced on the about page does indeed refer to mechanical accuracy, bugs included. And to the previous point about population, he's already answered that as well. I hope this clears up the position.
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Re: bring em back

Post by DKS »

If this is true:

Why can we not recall into water and into the air? This was removed for...?

Why can we not teleport next to homes? This was changed to prevent breaking into castle CY's and is not era accurate.

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Re: bring em back

Post by bigbob »

Boomland Jenkins wrote:beb
^thats what i got at least.

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Re: bring em back

Post by Boomland Jenkins »

Kaivan wrote: Also, if I read your suggestion correctly, I'm guessing that you're asking for a flag to prevent players from targeting tiles related to a house. If we take that course of action, then we prevent players from targeting spells in houses at all, or at least prevent players from targeting explosion potions in houses at all. Whether this is or isn't your proposed solution, it highlights the problem with just "fixing" the problem. A quick fix like this takes away valid uses of an item in an attempt to fix something else. The "fix" broke a normal mechanic in place of preventing odd behavior, which is a far worse result.
I suggested that we try something and test said adjustment. I did not suggest a "quick fix" like you are implying.


As for your Derrick quotes, we can play this game all day but it's quite simple. Derrick has changed his viewpoint on how specific he'd like UOSA to be. In fact, just the other day, I had found this one:
Derrick wrote:100% mechanically, with the possible exception of off map game type events
(just my vote)
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Re: bring em back

Post by DKS »

Boomland Jenkins wrote:

As for your Derrick quotes, we can play this game all day but it's quite simple. Derrick has changed his viewpoint on how specific he'd like UOSA to be. In fact, just the other day, I had found this one:
Derrick wrote:100% mechanically, with the possible exception of off map game type events
(just my vote)
Annnnnnnd BOOM goes the dynamite!!

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Re: bring em back

Post by Brules »

And again, more examples of arguing with Kaivan is equal to beating your head against the wall.

I am on Booms side - we need community over mechanical accuracy. Kaivan has had his way since Derrick went AWOL and look at our server #'s.......this place is dying for a reason, and most of those reasons can be laid at the feet of Kaivan going over the top for accuracy.

We are maxing out at 132 CLIENTS a day......

As long as Kaivan is around and in a position of power, this place will continue to die a slow terrible death.

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Re: bring em back

Post by Boomland Jenkins »

Brules wrote:And again, more examples of arguing with Kaivan is equal to beating your head against the wall.

I am on Booms side - we need community over mechanical accuracy. Kaivan has had his way since Derrick went AWOL and look at our server #'s.......this place is dying for a reason, and most of those reasons can be laid at the feet of Kaivan going over the top for accuracy.

We are maxing out at 132 CLIENTS a day......

As long as Kaivan is around and in a position of power, this place will continue to die a slow terrible death.
I don't always refer to statistics, but when I do...
Image

Looks like more than 132 clients for several days this week. I understand your argument though, but use real numbers please.

Also, you haven't been around on a daily basis, but we've been having (for several weeks now) a problem with networks and user disconnects. You'll see 120 people online one time, and moments later it will drop to 60...100 people. This along with the daily server reset impact the "Online Count" greatly. With that said, I would like to see the daily reset removed and pushed to a weekly reset. That's a whole other can of worms though.
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