The Housing and Poisoning System Poll

[aXe]

I personally don't really care about the housing part, I know I have never got a house deed stolen from me so I'm not worried about that at all. I do really encourage the poisoning change though, the deadliness of poison wasn't that it was hard to cure in t2a, it was that if you didn't cure it, the damage would be overwhelming.

[Hoots]

Now IDOCs will be nothing but guys standing around spamming last object/last target in death robes because they won't fear dying and losing their deed.

More often than not, IDOCs here are about the items in the house as opposed to the land value.

I think it is pretty rare for the actual land itself to be fought over but i can think of a few exceptions.

[Sultani19]

I'm not sure if poisoning is accurate or not right now, but even if it's accurate, that doesn't mean it's not really.... really bad.

As far as housing accuracy, stop talking about newbied deeds or not newbied deeds. Take away secured containers.

[Hoots]

Agreed.

"Stealing" has always been designed to be either an extremely low profit yield investment or an extremely high one in UO.

On the one hand, at most, you're usually getting gold in only the double digits or some regs, crafting materials, etc.

Rarely will you find a player whose placed an extremely valuable weapon or piece of armor in plain view of their backpacks.

Even more rarely? The house deed.

Any logic behind making house deeds newbified back in 99 was one purely of profit on the part of the game developers.

Think about it. You have OSI Shards with several thousand (if not more) players on each and, doubtless, there were hundreds of players bitching because they were getting their hard-earned house deeds stolen by people who are merely taking advantage of the available, if not encouraged game mechanics and then the "Theives" get treated as though they had, literally, hacked into that player's account and cleaned out their banks and houses before erasing their characters.

So what then? You've got current customers bitching and threatening to cancel their account, thusly taking potential profits from game developers. When enough people do this, the company must respond likewise so as to make sure their profit yields meet the status quo.

The same can be said for the implementation of the Trammel/Fellucia system. I can remember the Bulletin Boards being filled with stupid newbies bitching about being PKed.

"That's just my opinion. I could be wrong."

For discussion purposes ill disagree with you here on some of these points.

OSI faced 1 big problem we dont have here. Balancing power gamers who spend their days reading stratics/and msg boards finding every piece of info about UO they can along with casual players who want to log in a couple hours a week and role play or play with friends socially.

The problem with theives is that they were not used, for the most part, as a character class to participate in the world of UO. They were basically used as greif machines. To compound the problem, as you mention above, expereinced/informed players would rarely fall victom to a thief (especially with a house deed) so the theif's targets were 99% new players or less informed casual players.

These players are also the most likely to quit (IE, stop paying) UO over losing a 40K+ deed because it was probably a massive effort put forth to get to that point.

So i will agree that theif nerfing was probably somewhat a financial decision but at the same time it was a balancing issue.

Derrick and company actually have a much easier job here...they dont have to appeal to us. (Not saying that is the case! ) They strive for accuracy! So they have a goal and try to obtain it and player's opinions are not part of the equation. OSI needed new subscriptions constantly so they had to put rules in place to help out new players...

Really OSi was ground breaking in the MMORPG world... New player friendly rules were the only way to even somewhat allow a new player to get started against players with years of experience.

I know people really b1tch about alot of OSI's decisions but to keep the game we all loved going they had to make decisions to get new players and keep them for more than a 30 day free trial. Considering the type and amounts of players who constantly targeted newbs, it probably was not an easy task.

It did suck! I think one of the best classes in the history of UO was the PvP theif. Nothing like getting your pearl then katana then ginseng stolen while trying to fight a theif. It left tanks basically helpless or running.

Its a shame that more people didnt play the class without the sole intention of griefing or perhaps it owuld have survived.

[Faust]

Sultani,

Your perception of good or bad doesn't necessarily reflect another player's perspective in the same manner. This is essentially the reason Divinity and the rest of those other fake t2a shards fail miserably. It doesn't matter what any perception is in regard to any game mechanic on this server. The fact remains that it's still a real Ultima Online version that no one can deny. Sure, you may dislike some things but that's the nature of this server. You can either live with it or leave since no one forces you to play the server.

Facts:
- Secure containers existed in the time frame that we are replicating. This game feature will not be removed ever.
- Newbied house deeds is era accurate for the time frame that we are replicating.
- People may be yielding house deeds that are newbied at IDOCS but they will not be able to place the house unless all items and mobiles in the targeted house location are out of the placement boundaries since a house cannot be placed in this manner.
- The poison changes should be implemented due to the overwhelming evidence that supports the change. We are using a post UOR curing system that was implemented in AOS....

[Mephistopheles]

Thank you for the response. My turn! =]

The problem with theives is that they were not used, for the most part, as a character class to participate in the world of UO.

A falsifiable statement. The "Theif" class plays in UO, therefore they are a part of the "world of UO".

They were basically used as greif machines.

Not necessarily true. Any grief caused by a theif was only on the half of the person being stolen from and that was only if that player was genuinely upset by it.

To compound the problem, as you mention above, expereinced/informed players would rarely fall victom to a thief (especially with a house deed) so the theif's targets were 99% new players or less informed casual players.

All part of the game. "Chalk it up to life experience." <- From the manual.
Much in the same way as you would learn to never leave your wallet on the counter in a public bathroom, a new player would learn not to put their newly acquired house deed on the first level of their backpack after the first time it was stolen from them.

These players are also the most likely to quit (IE, stop paying) UO over losing a 40K+ deed because it was probably a massive effort put forth to get to that point.

This goes back to my previous statement. If you can't stand the heat, step out of the kitchen.

So i will agree that theif nerfing was probably somewhat a financial decision but at the same time it was a balancing issue.

Any "balance" was merely on the consideration of their checkbooks. Zing.

Really OSi was ground breaking in the MMORPG world... New player friendly rules were the only way to even somewhat allow a new player to get started against players with years of experience.

UO was the first MMO so it would only be natural that it would be "ground-breaking in the MMORPG world". As well, this all goes back to the financing thing. I'm certain there were plenty of new players who didn't go crying to OSI whenever somebody griefed their new Warrior at the Brit GY.

I know people really b1tch about alot of OSI's decisions but to keep the game we all loved going they had to make decisions to get new players and keep them for more than a 30 day free trial. Considering the type and amounts of players who constantly targeted newbs, it probably was not an easy task.

You make a good point. The simple fact is it's any "pay-to-play" company's goal to make sure that people don't end up weeping at their keyboard like in that Youtube video. I'm just really glad it's not like that here.

It did suck! I think one of the best classes in the history of UO was the PvP theif. Nothing like getting your pearl then katana then ginseng stolen while trying to fight a theif. It left tanks basically helpless or running.

And on the other hand, theives are free to be killed by anyone out of town and, as well, turn right back to grey if they had stolen from anyone since the last time they died. Sounds like a good system to me.

Its a shame that more people didnt play the class without the sole intention of griefing or perhaps it owuld have survived.

I love griefing. It's what made UO special. Any actual "grief" felt on the receiving party's end is, as far as I'm concerned, a non issue.

Because this is a game.

Numbers on a screen. Never forget that.

[noxmonk]

Anonymous disinhibition at it's finest.

[Hoots]

I love griefing. It's what made UO special. Any actual "grief" felt on the receiving party's end is, as far as I'm concerned, a non issue.

Because this is a game.

Numbers on a screen. Never forget that.

and there is the basic issue. You were paying your $10 a month to greif people while others were paying $10 a month to enjoy gameplay in a manner they conidered "fun".

Who is right? You are both paying customers. You both want to pay to play what you consider "fun" styles.

The problem is... Your fun included denying others of fun. Which is exactly why thieves received nerf after nerf from OSI. Thats the real shame in it... As i said above, the PvP theif, IMHO was one of the best classes in the history of UO. It had real creativity and got people out of their confort zones..(Hello, carring 5 katanas to fights or having to stack all your reags in piles of 10...) If there is some MMORPG constitution written somewhere likely one of the basic points would be against denying others of fun...aka griefing. That is what forced newbie deeds, that is what forced trammel/fel, that is what started item blessing and so on.

Its a no brainer for OSI. One griefer can ruin game experiences for hundreds of people. So just gimp the ways of doing that.

Theifing was an entire different beast than PvP. Thieves had no risk. They just went around in a death robe and if they got wacked, they got wacked. who cares. PvP, even when targeting newbs always had danger bc of the large number of red hunters or newb protectors that would frequent the BGY and dungeons. Entire guilds were build around hunting newb killers...

Greifing... being happy about denying others of fun at often times with no benefit to your own character... A lot of stereotypes have been develeped bc of this... mainly the "i have no control over my own life so i must abuse people ina video game to feel empowered" comes to mind... My guess is... that one if often more true than not.

If you step back and look at it... the people who were most upset about the antigriefing features osi added (newb deeds, tram, etc...that what they were.. antigriefing features) are the same people who were largely responsible for the changes. Irony?

You refer to in your post that if UO is to tough to learn or to hard to play or if you dont like it just leave... While many people share your opinion, Im sure you can understand that that is just that... your opinion. When millions of dollars of subscriptions are on the line my guess would be OSI was about 180 degrees from that.

[Mephistopheles]

nomonk gets off on reading entire threads and then targeting me for his inane little quips. Try contributing something and simply off yourself or take some sutures and sew your fingers together so as to prevent the general dumbing down of the masses with your banality in the future.

Hoots, I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree.

On the one hand, I think that being killed by other players is what you should expect in a game that allows people to kill other players.

On the other hand, you think people who don't necessarily know some good strategies for not getting killed by others should have the last say in how a game should be run.

Oh well.

[Daltrey]

The poll was worded confusingly. I'm pretty sure I voted the way I wanted, though.

Either way, as someone stated, this isn't a democracy, and I really don't think that it should be one.

But, since we are stating our opinions...

I only have an opinion on house deeds in the context of bank checks. If bank checks are going away, I'd like to see newbie house deeds because the player-to-player economy will just crumble if there isn't any way to trade semi-securely. If checks are staying, then I'd rather not see newbie house deeds.

The poisoning system is really confusing to me, though, and I've kept my mouth shut because I'm relying more on memory than empirical data (and we all know that memories from ten years ago can be a little fuzzy). If I'm understanding things correctly, though, it sounds like deadly poison will become much easier to cure -- close to 100% with a standard cure spell on a fully trained mage, and I remember DP being much more tenacious than that. I also think that nerfing poison would make it nearly impossible for anyone to even think about attempting to PVP as a pure dexer.

Just my opinions!

Sometimes it seems like someone should just pick a date and shoot for what OSI was like on that day, with all of its good and bad sides.

I can't read this discussion without remembering fondly my first UO house purchase. I bought a small on the beach near Britain from some guy who was red. I didn't have a clue how to PVP or protect myself from scams, but the guy turned out to be cool as hell.

[Hoots]

Meph, i actually agree with you here... But i understand why OSI made the changes they made.

Being able to kill and loot and steal from people in a game is an awesome idea.. THAT IS WHAT MADE UO GREAT in '99.

The problem is, the player base wasnt ready for the responsibility. Its a simple concept that for the game to survive they needed new subscriptions... As great as t2a was, from a dollars and cents standpoint the game probably could not survive with its hardcore players denying new players of fun. The game gave players too many freedoms...which we all loved, and were all pizzed when taken away.

Look at all the things in UO that have not been replicated with newer MMORPGs... as much as we love those things (which is why we are here right?) it probably isnt good business or every new game would have copied the "features"

[Mephistopheles]

Changed the poll title so as to prevent further confusion. I'd also like to restate that this thread never had the intention of changing the Admin's minds on any decisions they make.

[aXe]

Let's just get poisoning fixed quickly please, it's really annoying having to cast cure atleast 10 times and about 3 g heals in between after getting hit by poison.

[Mephistopheles]

Poll has been closed. Counting the "mis-votes" I've read about I'm guessing that there were 15 or so that voted on the "They were fine before tonight" option.

Enjoy the new patch folks!