Possible solution to ghosting?

[Dignan]

well macroing is illegal as well and its allowed. alot of people used multi uo.

Ghosts and alive players have different body values it should not be hard to just script it so ghosts can't see alive players after like 10-15 mins. Though staff most likely use the ghost body value but im sure you could just put a check in if account access= higher than 1/player or something like that

Macroing has become a necessary evil to accept with Razor, but I concede that 3rd party macroing was illegal then (except UOAssist), but legal here. However I appeal to the staff that while OSI policy cannot always be enforced, there surely is the ideal to try and uphold fairness and accuracy when possible as it relates to the policies that OSI ran.

Next, while those values could be changed, those changes would not be era accurate, and can alter game play. How would a ghost get a res if it couldn't see living players other to reveal itself and hope something it can't see comes by? The changes I submit would be fitting with era accuracy, I believe.

a healer or shrine. or another player in that 15 minute span.

[Dignan]

Currently on my 7th MMO where i've owned and used multiple accounts.

I did it in UO, Everquest, SWG, World of Warcraft, COH, AC, and now EVE.

It has always been allowed. In UO computers were so crappy that you could not multi client. By the time everquest came out it was "Common" gameplay. People found that they were bored of only playing one charecter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-boxing If you read the wiki, it explains a bit more.

The website http://www.duel-boxing.com came out in 2005, and I have been a member ever since.

When I was playing UO i was 16 years old and working at Wendys. I made plenty of money in order to buy my 3 computers, and pay for 3 UO accounts.

I'm sorry that you were not old enough, well off enough, or a big enough geek that you could not multi client. But many many people did.

Friends in RL allowed thier friends access to accounts too, and whyle this was not an allowed policy, people did do it. every single day.

I would no longer play an online game that I couldnt run multpile charecters. Game developers know this, games like eve not only support multi clients, but advertises it, and give deals for cheaper accounts on the same CC.

I do not like ghosters, i think its silly and wastes time. Most real PK's go through every dungeon every time they PK. I don't understand why a ghost is even all that usefull. When I log in olmanriver for some pk action, i go to every place people go. Why a ghost makes this any easier is beyond me.

Hemp made a sig about this for some reason, so ill repeat myself.

"Derrick knows that many of his players enjoy "Botting" and won't change anything. (The oringinal term for multi-client, or duel box, it's definition has changed to mean "Afk-Macroer" but it used to just mean "alt charecter" "slave charecter" ect.)

So no. you will not get your wish, or you would be supprised how many people just wouldn't play.

i agree. i would not play if you could not multi client.

[Sum_Mors]

I made plenty of money in order to buy my 3 computers, and pay for 3 UO accounts.

So by your own admission, you had three computers to run the three accounts. Perfectly fine under the suggestion I'm making.

I'm sorry that you were not old enough, well off enough, or a big enough geek that you could not multi client.

You're making a lot of foolish assumptions there.

Friends in RL allowed thier friends access to accounts too, and whyle this was not an allowed policy, people did do it. every single day.

And could still do it. Have you read what I typed at all? This doesn't deny you access to accounts. It limits how fast you can switch between several accounts, and your ability to run 3 (in some cases more even) characters on one IP.

games like eve not only support multi clients, but advertises it

I'm sorry, are we playing EVE? I don't see ISK anywhere. Do you?

Again: This doesn't get rid of multi-clienting. Just matches your (as Tekai himself assumes) ability to provide for yourself to the game. I'm sorry if you are not old enough, well off enough, or big enough geek to support the era accuracy of what you want.

[tekai]

Word twist all you want friend. You are not winning your argument.

[LifeForce]

there are simple solutions to the ghosting problem (e.g. ghost can only see living players in war mode). but id would be a NEA-mechanic, so whatever.

[Sandro]

I personally would rage quit the server if the 1 connection per IP was implemented. I'm sure about 80% of the server would follow.

To the OP:

Stop whining about ghosting. If ghosting is such a huge deal, use your own ghost to camp areas and watch for pk's. Grow up people, damn.

[Hemperor]

I personally would rage quit the server if the 1 connection per IP was implemented. I'm sure about 80% of the server would follow.

To the OP:

Stop whining about ghosting. If ghosting is such a huge deal, use your own ghost to camp areas and watch for pk's. Grow up people, damn.

I don't understand how you can claim the solution to an exploitation of the era is to further exploit it.

[Sandro]

That is not a solution, but there is no solution to preventing ghosting, period. It always was/is possible to run multiple clients for Ultima Online.

The OP is stating that it is unfair for others b/c ghosting allows other players (PK's) to farm vision on certain areas. Ok? Big deal.. You can easily place your own ghost in that same area to see if it's being ghosted by another player. I don't see how the risk of being player killed is any higher simply because somebody knows your at a spawn.

The truth is that PK's run dungeons, every day. Whether or not they have a ghost in one particular area doesn't mean you aren't going to see/get pk'd in that area. We are playing on a server that doesn't even enforce the "Heat of Battle" flee-tag, so casting recall is a 100% guarantee, every time. If you can't even manage to cast a 4th level spell (or hide) before a red manages to recall in, locate you, and then engage in combat, run you down, AND kill you (keep in mind wep timer advances only while standing still) then you probably have no reason being outside of town, anyways.

There is no Era-Accurate way to "fix" this issue which isn't even broken. Somebody who is choosing to ghost is sacrificing 1 of their 3 available accounts just to ghost, anyways. I never ghosted when I trolled dungeons, and I managed to find/kill more farmers than a lot of people here do. I would rather choose to idle murder counts or run a macro to finish off a char as opposed to letting a ghost idle in a dungeon merely to farm vision on one spot..

The biggest reason people get so upset is because so much has evolved after so much time. In 1999 OSI, people went to farm in GROUPS. There were usually groups of at least 3-8 people at a time who would all hunt together, because nobody was a 7x gm Bard, who could tackle the entire dungeon by themselves. The risk of dying, whether to spawn or PK was a lot greater, because people knew a lot less and HAD A LOT LESS in 1999. On Atlantic in 1999, there were MASSIVE Anti-Pk guilds, most of which were farmers who banded together to hunt safely and discourage PK's. UOSA, we have no Anti-PK guilds. Why? Because everyone is independent and have learned the easiest way to perform maximum efficiency, while remaining solo.

This is 2010, adapt, or get out. If you want to tackle a dungeon solo, with your 7x GM Bard, so be it, but at least acknowledge the fact that you are choosing to farm alone, which means you are AN EASY TARGET FOR PKS. I don't see why this is such a hard topic to understand, this has always been the case.

[benny-]

The whole "solution" of ghosting an area to watch for other ghosts is simply idiotic. Best case scenario; you have blue ghosts spotting ghosts belonging to reds, the blue then knows he cant use this spawn. So the solution then is to see decreased activity, the best spawns ingame left unused because idle ghosts are occupying them?

The entire problem with ghosting is decreased activity, inaccuracy and changes to field pvp. Suggesting that pvmers use ghosts themselves only furthers this problem.

Best case scenario to deal with this problem is to once and for all address inaccuracies with multiclienting.
Other approaches could be taken to at least make it more difficult. Such as requiring ghosts to be in warmode to see mobs (not accurate I know) or maybe reinstate the idle timeout (which I am quite sure is accurate)....Im not positive on how effective this would be to reduce ghosting, but I personally think it'd be a headache to have to switch through 4 different clients every few mins to keep the ghosts from logging out. Dunno, just some small ideas anyway.

[Sandro]

The whole "solution" of ghosting an area to watch for other ghosts is simply idiotic. Best case scenario; you have blue ghosts spotting ghosts belonging to reds, the blue then knows he cant use this spawn. So the solution then is to see decreased activity, the best spawns ingame left unused because idle ghosts are occupying them?

The entire problem with ghosting is decreased activity, inaccuracy and changes to field pvp. Suggesting that pvmers use ghosts themselves only furthers this problem.

It is people like you who whine and gripe and complain all day long on these forums that lead to the introduction of Trammel.

This is not OSI, and your complains will not merit you a fairy world where you cannot be harmed. Your beating a dead horse with this topic, because there is nothing MECHANICALLY WRONG with what is being done.

>>Edit: It's not hard to block idle time-out. I can run a macro on my ghost to make him walk 1 tile north then 1 tile south, and loop it. Time-out defeated.

Sorry, but this issue will not be addressed because there isn't anything wrong. Give it up.

[Hemperor]

The whole "solution" of ghosting an area to watch for other ghosts is simply idiotic. Best case scenario; you have blue ghosts spotting ghosts belonging to reds, the blue then knows he cant use this spawn. So the solution then is to see decreased activity, the best spawns ingame left unused because idle ghosts are occupying them?

The entire problem with ghosting is decreased activity, inaccuracy and changes to field pvp. Suggesting that pvmers use ghosts themselves only furthers this problem.

It is people like you who whine and gripe and complain all day long on these forums that lead to the introduction of Trammel.

This is not OSI, and your complains will not merit you a fairy world where you cannot be harmed. Your beating a dead horse with this topic, because there is nothing MECHANICALLY WRONG with what is being done.

>>Edit: It's not hard to block idle time-out. I can run a macro on my ghost to make him walk 1 tile north then 1 tile south, and loop it. Time-out defeated.

Sorry, but this issue will not be addressed because there isn't anything wrong. Give it up.

This is coming from the guy would always refused to step on the field unless he had 100 reflect and gheal charges, and then went to exploit Derrick and the shard by making his payroll.

I don't think you understand what this era is about. Benny put it best:

The entire problem with ghosting is decreased activity, inaccuracy and changes to field pvp. Suggesting that pvmers use ghosts themselves only furthers this problem.

[Sandro]

Hemp, you're trying to put my PvP skills into the equation of how this is mechanically incorrect? You're bad, period. Again, you try to bring the staff in, against me, like I am playing here illegally. Sorry, but, wrong again. Derrick knew what I was doing, how do you think I got the email verifications changed so that I couldn't just revoke access after they were sold? You probably didn't think that far ahead, did you?

As to your idiotic response about gheal and reflect items. When you have the courage to run a stat-loss murderer with 100+ short terms in the field, come talk to me. You don't need these items when your farming gold to pay for your "Canadian Empire".

Please bro, spare me. I would like to rant about how bad you are, but im sure everyone knows by now, and I would like to stay on topic here.

[Sum_Mors]

I don't believe my OP was whining in any shape or form. In fact, it was a suggested solution. If you don't like it, you don't have to start dragging the discussion down with questions to their playing career.

And simply put, I can sum up all detractors arguments in one line: "Multi-clienting was possible in the past with multiple computers, I feel entitled to be able to do this now without the means."

It screams of selective accuracy to the era. You only want era accuracy where it isn't any loss of convenience to you.

Your own arguments that it was possible go against you. You say it was possible to do then... It would still be possible now. You'd just have to do it legitimately. Why do people think everything needs to be handed to them without effort?

I could blow apart your entire argument piece by piece Sandro, but I don't think it'd matter. What the hell...

It always was/is possible to run multiple clients for Ultima Online.

Please learn how to read, and then read previous entries in the thread.

There is no Era-Accurate way to "fix" this issue which isn't even broken.

Derrick himself has said ghosting is an exploit. And while it IS era accurate to an extent, it is still an exploit. Exploits are still bad, and combated against if they are harmful to the shard/game play.

I believe you can't draw a distinction that when people try to fight ghosting, they aren't saying being a murderer is bad. Murderers can go about their jobs all they want. Nobody is saying we can't deal with the danger of a PK. We're saying we don't want them using an exploit to spy on us unhindered. There is a reason your viewing screen doesn't span the entire map.

I've yet to see anyone viably argue that what I suggested is not era accurate. All I see is "I'd quit artificially inflating the account numbers with my bots."

[archaicsubrosa77]

How about no insta logging on ghosts under any circumstance. If the PK dies and is ghosting on one or more accounts...he has the possibility of jumping right back into the fight instantly on only one non ghosted account if any.

It wouldnt do much for a gank squad in which each member had his own ghost in a spawn area yet still it would be at least a small hinderance in many cases.

[platypus]

I don't understand, this is literally like the 10th post I've seen about ghosting. Here's what I think:

If you are bothered by people ghosting certain spawns, GO TO A DIFFERENT SPAWN TO FARM.

There are at least 50 decent farming locations on the shard, which I hardly ever see anyone at when I go to them. When I go to lich lords or bloods or elders or cove lich, I nearly always see a blue farming or a red PKing. These are also the only locations I have ever seen a ghost at. You newbs need to see the whole picture. You might get 10k less per hour while farming at say fire dungeon, but you make up with this loss in income by not getting PKed, having to run from PKs every 10 mins, etc. So in the long run, you're actually making MORE gold by farming at shitty spots. If you're gonna farm at a prime farming location, like bloods or lich lords, don't be a pussy and whine and ask admins to change rules just cuz you aren't skilled enough to get away from a PK.

Ghosting never has and never will change anything, all it does is save the PK 10 seconds of time and a couple recall regs. If ghosting was eliminated somehow, more PK guilds would have hidden characters at farming spots, accomplishing the exact same thing. A PK guild could also bring a blue character around to spawns as a "scout" and gate in all the reds when he finds a blue farming. There's so many ways of accomplishing this, so its completely pointless to make threads about or discuss ghosting further. Stop plz