UO Second Age

I can imagine how it was ten years ago was pretty fun, but I think it's a matter of actually getting people to stay. I also imagine back then there were millions of people with constant interaction relentlessly. What about the trophy point system? Is that era accurate? I am sure you can pick and choose what is era accurate or not but I don't think many people care about multiclienting. I took a look at the patch notes a few days ago and saw that there are like a million patches and major changes to the game which I think is good. Yeah it's good to be era accurate but this isn't necessary. You might as well remove the trophy point system to if your trying to remove multiclienting. I imagine if you had it all your way there would be no one left to play with.

Resource gathering, and gaining in combat skills involve you in moving around and interacting in the environment and have an element of fun to them. Alot of skills however, are compromised of just sitting there for days. Afk or not you still are just sitting there.

Ghosting or other forms of surveillance using multiple accounts, or team building just takes the game to another level. I don't have a single red character, but I know the main reason people ghost is because they have characters in statloss, or fear statloss.

For a shard like this statloss isn't a deterrent as much as it's an aide in some aspects for PKs. Maybe if we had it so that the counts are calculated when they are not logged in as well in the fashion of not being able to login on your red character for a few days time...not to the extent we have now where it can take weeks. That fear in statloss causes even more characters to be generated afk, and even more situations of ghosting.

That way if reds want to monitor a spot they can hunt while doing so, or hide in wait, instead of acessing the situation first...gearing up, calling every Gary, Tom, and Larry, then finally gating in with a mob.

princesspeach wrote:I can imagine how it was ten years ago was pretty fun, but I think it's a matter of actually getting people to stay. I also imagine back then there were millions of people with constant interaction relentlessly. What about the trophy point system? Is that era accurate? I am sure you can pick and choose what is era accurate or not but I don't think many people care about multiclienting. I took a look at the patch notes a few days ago and saw that there are like a million patches and major changes to the game which I think is good. Yeah it's good to be era accurate but this isn't necessary. You might as well remove the trophy point system to if your trying to remove multiclienting. I imagine if you had it all your way there would be no one left to play with.

Trophy point system is another issue, which you may have some good points on.

However saying, "ten years ago was pretty fun, but lets be realistic, playing ten years ago at the rate of 4x is better" really defeats the main goal of this shard.

Duke Jones wrote:The simple fact is multiclienting and having multiple accounts (regardless how "awesome" it is or how "cool" it is to run/macro 3 clients while leaving the computer), it BREAKS aspects of gameplay.

I agree. I suggested allowing only two clients at once as a compromise in the other forum: http://forum.uosecondage.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12030

archaicsubrosa77 wrote:That fear in statloss causes even more characters to be generated afk, and even more situations of ghosting.

So... we go from like 95% afk macroers, to, like 98%? Oh noes!
Take a look around. Go to banks, go to docks, go to player houses. It's already the standard. It can't really get that much worse.

I am ok with the two clients compromise I think it's a good idea.

Duke Jones wrote:

archaicsubrosa77 wrote:That fear in statloss causes even more characters to be generated afk, and even more situations of ghosting.

So... we go from like 95% afk macroers, to, like 98%? Oh noes!
Take a look around. Go to banks, go to docks, go to player houses. It's already the standard. It can't really get that much worse.

Why do you care so much about what other people do? If you don't like it, then don't use it and have fun crafting your goods by hand. Removing this isn't going to suddenly have a bunch of people beating down a door to buy your "macro free" goods just so you can make a few gold on a low pop server.

Its not hard to escape PKs if you're paying attention. If someone is too lazy to carry a few trap pouches and gheal pots then thats their problem. Better yet, reds have no risk? Well then you go right ahead and form an anti pk group (which I would join) and fight back. That's definately 98 OSI accurate, as there were MANY Anti PKs. There's no risk because YOU don't fight back.

I multi cliented all the time on OSI. Was I ever banned? No.

Unattended resource gathering IS A SEPARATE ISSUE.

As much as many might think otherwise, multi clients were around and still are in the main stream UO. Sure they had to pay to have another account and I know many that did. EA didnt care as long as they had your money

Duke Jones wrote:

archaicsubrosa77 wrote:That fear in statloss causes even more characters to be generated afk, and even more situations of ghosting.

So... we go from like 95% afk macroers, to, like 98%? Oh noes!
Take a look around. Go to banks, go to docks, go to player houses. It's already the standard. It can't really get that much worse.

Duke once you are done making all your characters in all your respected blood,sweat, and tears...and I mean that, and start coming up with a ton of ideas you want to experiment with outside of test, I promise I won't say a word if you start macroing off some newbies...I promise on my life.

sorry...repost.

princesspeach wrote:I can imagine how it was ten years ago was pretty fun, but I think it's a matter of actually getting people to stay.

Frankly, if it takes unchecked sociopaths to keep the shard populated, I no longer care if it's populated.

princesspeach wrote:I also imagine back then there were millions of people with constant interaction relentlessly.

There were never millions of active subscribers to UO. It peaked at less than 400,000. And I don't think OSI ever released hard per-server numbers, but at peak hours on the most heavily congested servers, population could not have been more than 2000-3000. And frankly, servers that crowded weren't much fun.

The game world cannot support more than 1500-2000 people at once without increasingly serious consequences from lag and resource depletion ("resource" being defined broadly to include things like vendor reagent stock, monsters and animals to kill, etc.). Even on the more normal shards, I avoided peak hours unless I wanted to get to some special event.

princesspeach wrote:What about the trophy point system? Is that era accurate?

Actually, it sort of is. It wasn't on this scale, but OSI did hand out prizes and such for participation in events. It would have been much more common, but OSI never seemed to be able to get events right, and as a consequence they were only held occasionally. The trophy point system is a reasonable attempt at replicating this mechanic in a way that is fun, accessible, and makes efficient use of staff time.

Importantly, it also provides a reasonable mechanism to introduce era-accurate items that had little or no mechanical gameplay effects, and existed only because of special one-off OSI events and various obscure bugs.

And most importantly it has no significant impact on game mechanics, unlike multiclienting.

princesspeach wrote:I am sure you can pick and choose what is era accurate or not but I don't think many people care about multiclienting.

Some people care a great deal, this thread being direct evidence. You seem to care, too.

I firmly believe that those most hostile to the concept of restriction to one client are mostly sociopaths who cannot fulfill their need to hurt others in the real world. I don't feel much need to accommodate their neuroses.

But I'm only somewhat in favor of restrictions, because multiclienting can be used to the general benefit of the shard as a whole. I personally witnessed numerous positive uses of multiple clients on OSI in-era, and a lot of multiclienting behavior that was fairly neutral, benefiting the individual player without significant harm to anyone else.

The problem is that restrictions are trying to reproduce is real-world economic factors that meant only a subset of people were willing to pay for additional accounts. That unique mechanic had the additional advantage that most of the true sociopaths were unwilling or unable to afford extra accounts for reasons specific to that group, balancing the multiple account holders more evenly between "blue" and "red" players than might otherwise have been the case.

There is no easy answer here.

Zorce wrote:As much as many might think otherwise, multi clients were around and still are in the main stream UO. Sure they had to pay to have another account and I know many that did. EA didnt care as long as they had your money

Pretty sure it is illegal...
At the same time, how many of the people that flip out at the mention of removal of multiclienting have even donated? You had to pay monthly per account on OSI.

Teg wrote: I firmly believe that those most hostile to the concept of restriction to one client are mostly sociopaths who cannot fulfill their need to hurt others in the real world. I don't feel much need to accommodate their neuroses.

I actually facepalmed while reading this paragraph. How on earth you ever survived on OSI back in the day without quitting I'll never know. You really picked the wrong game.

Frankly, if it takes unchecked sociopaths to keep the shard populated, I no longer care if it's populated.

Well this says it all. If you weren't willing to fight back, you had 2 choices on OSI.
1. You never leave town or your house
2. You quit and found something else to play

The fact that you would knowingly subject yourself to this type of behavior when you know its common has me wondering about your own mental state.

Hemperor wrote:

Zorce wrote:As much as many might think otherwise, multi clients were around and still are in the main stream UO. Sure they had to pay to have another account and I know many that did. EA didnt care as long as they had your money

Pretty sure it is illegal...

True multiclienting (two clients on one computer) was technically illegal, at least at one time, but really only because it required use of an unapproved third-party program to enable (but there were programs that had _no_ effect beyond allowing you to launch a second client).

You were and are on OSI free to run clients on multiple computers (even in-era, having multiple computers that could run UO well enough to just stand around wasn't hugely unusual for the playerbase), and even when multiclienting on one PC, you couldn't be "caught" unless you actually told somebody you were doing it. OSI didn't have a way to simply detect it, making discussions of legality mostly academic.

The primary mechanic at work was money, plain and simple.

Hemperor wrote: Pretty sure it is illegal...
At the same time, how many of the people that flip out at the mention of removal of multiclienting have even donated? You had to pay monthly per account on OSI.

Its also illegal to drive 56 mph in a 55 mph zone. When is the last time you ever heard of someone getting a ticket for it?

Yeah, the fact that you don't have to PAY for the 3 accounts you can have here makes it more common. Most people had 2 accounts on OSI as well. In 9 years I played OSI off and on I never once heard of anyone getting banned simply for multiclienting.