Discussion: Limiting Razor for era accuracy

[Duke Jones]

Well, it's a lot more complex than live/let live.

The actions of one part of the community have inevitable impacts on the rest of the community. So thinking that letting some people do whatever they want, wont affect the rest of the community is a bit short-sighted.

[archaicsubrosa77]

Learning Razor > Disabling its functions...

I dont think anyone runs scripts to the extent others may believe them to.
If perchance they do...automation can be as much a hinderance as it could be beneficial.

[Hemperor]

Learning Razor > Disabling its functions...

I dont think anyone runs scripts to the extent others may believe them to.
If perchance they do...automation can be as much a hinderance as it could be beneficial.

REALLY?


People are boat mining right now, people are taking a shit while their 3 clients make full spellbooks..hell they'll even catch a movie after and then sell their 30 spellbooks at 5k a piece.

AFK Ultima Online, just how I remember it in 1998!!! I paid $10 a month for an account and only came to my computer 5 minutes a day to bank all the resources I got and sell all my crazy goods that EZ macro made for me.

[archaicsubrosa77]

Yes thats why its best to be self sufficient with 15 characters, then go hunt and PVP afterwards.

Thats the real fun there isn't it?

How many characters have you made here Hemp?

Tell me you didnt macro most of them off at least a little.

I seen how much estate you own. Give me a break.

[ClowN]

if razor got limited here, everyone would just start using easyuo. that would only make shit worse.

[Duke Jones]

I'm afraid the only "easy" answer is to find trustworthy staff to police this.

And I personally don't think "if you limit razor, people will just use other stuff." Is the right state of mind to have when re-considering policy.
That's what the ban-hammer is for.

[tekai]

Duke how do you police something you can't be sure if they are using.

You are WRONG, people WILL cheat and you will NOT be able to police them. Stop trying to push this issue, you have no idea the implications.

[Kraarug]

I'm afraid the only "easy" answer is to find trustworthy staff to police this.

And I personally don't think "if you limit razor, people will just use other stuff." Is the right state of mind to have when re-considering policy.
That's what the ban-hammer is for.

So many failed, but well meaning, ideas start off this way.

You need to understand the phenomena of 'lowest common denominator' and 'the path of least resistance'.

What you are asking for is more than just a technical fix, you are asking for social engineering and honestly, that's beyond the scope of this game and would require resources that would easily dwarf what seems to be available to our admins now.

Perhaps it will be very hard for you to understand, because you have clearly chosen a strong stance held by a minority, but some people do take a much different approach towards this game, their decisions and play style than you do.

Macroing skills to many who play is no more of an action inherent to the game than saying 'bank guards i ban thee recdu recsu all follow me' by pressing F1.

[Duke Jones]

Ok. Granted, policing it might be difficult.
Now, this might be my own biased view of the game, but when I look at this situation I feel like the following is happening:

"We are reluctant to limit the ability for players to abuse Razor's Powerful scripting tools because we are afraid that it would result in people ignoring new policy and cheating MORE."

Are we really allowing ourselves to be afraid??? Are we really casting a blind eye to the development of era-accurate policy because of fear? The fear of being bullied by abusers and cheaters ruining our goal of era accuracy?

No offense, but F*** that. If nothing else, we should be coming up with a plan, or something and not let some people ruin UO because they feel they need to remove the human element from an MMO, just so they can have a slightly more effecient gold-farming toon or PvP macro champion.

[Hemperor]

I think the real problem is this community having a major fear of a less automated UO, which would hardly even be the case with the proposed changes other than those that are already doing things that were far far too complicated to have done automated back in the era.

Also, the EZ macro arguement is void. Google up the program, use it if you wish, that involves you commiting your computer completely. It functions in no way similar to Razor.

Anything that can be done with any other 3rd party programs can already be done, limiting Razor or not. By limiting Razor, the only thing this does is make it more OBVIOUS who are the ones using the other programs, extremely obvious infact.

[Kraarug]

The resources that would be required to eliminate Razor and try to police away other programs would be detrimental to the development of the shard simply because rather than programing in era accurate features, the staff would be following players and trying to determine if they are cheating.

Then spending hours and days on the boards listening to the pissing and moaning of banned players suspected of cheating on the boards.

No matter how you slice it, that is the simple and cold facts of the matter.

And do not discount for one second the motivation of a majority of players to find another macro program if Razor is disabled. Within days those that had never used EUO will be switching.

Macro programs were available in era and Razor, being the closest thing to the OSI approved UOA, should be available here until a better UOA emulator is developed.

To advocate for removal of macro programs is a simplistic and native argument that would deliver no era accuracy while making the shard less attractive.

Put in 4 letters? F A I L -on all accounts.

[Hemperor]

The resources that would be required to eliminate Razor and try to police away other programs would be detrimental to the development of the shard simply because rather than programing in era accurate features, the staff would be following players and trying to determine if they are cheating.

Then spending hours and days on the boards listening to the pissing and moaning of banned players suspected of cheating on the boards.

No matter how you slice it, that is the simple and cold facts of the matter.

And do not discount for one second the motivation of a majority of players to find another macro program if Razor is disabled. Within days those that had never used EUO will be switching.

Macro programs were available in era and Razor, being the closest thing to the OSI approved UOA, should be available here until a better UOA emulator is developed.

To advocate for removal of macro programs is a simplistic and native argument that would deliver no era accuracy while making the shard less attractive.

Put in 4 letters? F A I L -on all accounts.

A little hostile, but nonetheless, the "resources" required to eliminate Razor are actually copying a couple kilobytes file over to the server, setting a few values to True/False and TA DA! I have confidence in Derrick, 50k says he could do it in under 45 seconds.

Now, if Razor looping was limited to running UO Loop, essentially removing the capabilities to resource macro...who will be the ones turning to "other" means to perform what has been removed, seems to me like it will be pretty much resource macroers. It will be ten times easier to weed out the cheaters, people are cheating right now...that's a fact you need to realise, with these changes there will be no confusion if someone is or isn't. People won't be reluctant to ask etc.

It will simply be, he's cheating. Derrick currently receives reports of cheaters and handles it accordingly, this change would make that no different, only easier on the reporters end.

[tekai]

I dont want to have to download another 3rd party program.. i dont even know , or a care what "Uo loop" is.

You also expect me to die and loose 100k (what all my charecers run at) so i can then call derrick and cry i was EUO Hacked. Then he would have to proove it somehow. This is laughable.

[Duke Jones]

It will simply be, he's cheating. Derrick currently receives reports of cheaters and handles it accordingly, this change would make that no different, only easier on the reporters end.

makes sense....

Currenty:
-Report on afk resource gathering: This player is running a script, but are they at the computer? "Hello? Are you there? Hello? Please respond."

New Policy:
-Report on afk resource gathering: This player is running a script, is this his first violation? Jail them. If it is a repeated, ban them.

Maybe I'm over simplifying it but it does seem easier. Play the game, or log out. That simple.

[Kraarug]

The resources that would be required to eliminate Razor and try to police away other programs would be detrimental to the development of the shard simply because rather than programing in era accurate features, the staff would be following players and trying to determine if they are cheating.

Then spending hours and days on the boards listening to the pissing and moaning of banned players suspected of cheating on the boards.

No matter how you slice it, that is the simple and cold facts of the matter.

And do not discount for one second the motivation of a majority of players to find another macro program if Razor is disabled. Within days those that had never used EUO will be switching.

A little hostile, but nonetheless, the "resources" required to eliminate Razor are actually copying a couple kilobytes file over to the server, setting a few values to True/False and TA DA! I have confidence in Derrick, 50k says he could do it in under 45 seconds.

If you read hostility in that reply then you are over reading.

I think it's clear what I mean by resources. Maybe you haven't worked for very long managing projects but programing and QA is perhaps the simplest part of a project. It's the support and policing of those changes that takes considerable resources. It shouldn't be too hard to imagine what the game and situation would become.