UO Second Age

Allowing condemned houses to fall was a necessary change in the same way that allowing some sort of 'Help I'm Stuck' option (introduced on OSI servers on Aug 00) was necessary.

Kaivan wrote:Allowing condemned houses to fall was a necessary change in the same way that allowing some sort of 'Help I'm Stuck' option (introduced on OSI servers on Aug 00) was necessary.

So according to this statement it is 'alright' to bend the 'era accuracy' position as long as it is a benefit to other players??

It seems to me as long as someone is refreshing that house it should be considered being 'used' by someone that plays. If they just log into refresh it that is their right. If it is being used then condemning it seems wrong to me if it is not era accurate.

Now im not bringing this up because I don't believe those houses should not be condemned, but rather to shed some light on things such as Events that were just taken away...

You can't bend on some things and be solid on others when both are not era accurate and expect people to take you seriously on your stance of 100% era accuracy.

Robbbb wrote:

Kaivan wrote:Allowing condemned houses to fall was a necessary change in the same way that allowing some sort of 'Help I'm Stuck' option (introduced on OSI servers on Aug 00) was necessary.

So according to this statement it is 'alright' to bend the 'era accuracy' position as long as it is a benefit to other players??

It seems to me as long as someone is refreshing that house it should be considered being 'used' by someone that plays. If they just log into refresh it that is their right. If it is being used then condemning it seems wrong to me if it is not era accurate.

Now im not bringing this up because I don't believe those houses should not be condemned, but rather to shed some light on things such as Events that were just taken away...

You can't bend on some things and be solid on others when both are not era accurate and expect people to take you seriously on your stance of 100% era accuracy.

Actually, this has a very pragmatic reason for it's existence.

Take, for example, the number of clients that are logged on at any time. OSI didn't have any restriction on the number of connections from a given IP. This is a mechanical issue. However, we do. Despite that obvious point, there is no rational reason to suggest that we should allow unlimited connections from a given IP.

As another example, we can make another point with the number of accounts that a player is allowed to have. On OSI servers, no one person was restricted to owning just 3 accounts; they could have unlimited accounts. Again, this is an obvious point, but it remains a silly proposition to suggest that we allow an unlimited number of accounts per person, and it becomes infinitely more damaging if we simultaneously allowed multiple connections at the same time.

A third example is stuck players. On OSI servers, during T2A, there were a number of GMs on call at any time of the day or night to answer pages and move players who were legitimately stuck. However, we don't have that luxury, which may result in a player who is actually stuck, staying stuck for a long time. Thus, we have a very restricted Help I'm Stuck option.

Finally, we come to condemned houses. On UOSA a house for a banned player will reach condemned status in 3 months time, despite the efforts of any friends of the house to refresh it. This, in part, replicates what OSI did where they would place a permanent wall in front of the house door to a house owned by a player who was banned. In addition to this, we have our normal condemned house policy, which causes a house to go condemned after a full year of not being logged into. This is designed to prevent the acquisition of wide swaths of land by players who have their friends make 3 accounts, hand them house deeds to place, get friended to the house, and keep 15 housing spaces tied up without ever actually playing. If this were not in place, a single player could easily acquire and effectively own well over 50 houses, if they had enough willing friends (this doesn't even assume account abuse). So, we have this in place in order to facilitate rational functionality in-game. Of course, it should be noted that this rule is intentionally minor, and the reason for it is grounded in era accuracy. Since this particular rule covers far smaller offenses than infinite accounts and connections, the rule that is in place should be equally nonrestrictive. As a result, players can still produce the above scenario with multiple houses, provided they can convince their friend to either leave UO installed (or re-install it every year or so). Thus, this rule really only prevents housing abuse by those who are entirely uncommitted to the process.

Beyond these 4 rules, none of our rules reflect something inaccurate compared to OSI servers, and these rules are necessary results of a free server model in the first place.

Kaivan wrote: Actually, this has a very pragmatic reason for it's existence.

Take, for example, the number of clients that are logged on at any time. OSI didn't have any restriction on the number of connections from a given IP. This is a mechanical issue. However, we do. Despite that obvious point, there is no rational reason to suggest that we should allow unlimited connections from a given IP.

As another example, we can make another point with the number of accounts that a player is allowed to have. On OSI servers, no one person was restricted to owning just 3 accounts; they could have unlimited accounts. Again, this is an obvious point, but it remains a silly proposition to suggest that we allow an unlimited number of accounts per person, and it becomes infinitely more damaging if we simultaneously allowed multiple connections at the same time.

These examples don't really count as OSI was a 'paid for' service and no company in their right mind is going to deny its customers to spend more money. UOSA is a free service and the number of accounts a player may have is not a mechanic of the game. OSI's limitation on accounts was in the amount of dollars a person could afford to spend, UOSA's is a specific number and in that perspective it is accurate.

Kaivan wrote:
A third example is stuck players. On OSI servers, during T2A, there were a number of GMs on call at any time of the day or night to answer pages and move players who were legitimately stuck. However, we don't have that luxury, which may result in a player who is actually stuck, staying stuck for a long time. Thus, we have a very restricted Help I'm Stuck option.

This I agree is not accurate, but is 100% necessary to help players with faulty mechanics in the game.

Kaivan wrote:
Finally, we come to condemned houses. On UOSA a house for a banned player will reach condemned status in 3 months time, despite the efforts of any friends of the house to refresh it. This, in part, replicates what OSI did where they would place a permanent wall in front of the house door to a house owned by a player who was banned. In addition to this, we have our normal condemned house policy, which causes a house to go condemned after a full year of not being logged into. This is designed to prevent the acquisition of wide swaths of land by players who have their friends make 3 accounts, hand them house deeds to place, get friended to the house, and keep 15 housing spaces tied up without ever actually playing. If this were not in place, a single player could easily acquire and effectively own well over 50 houses, if they had enough willing friends (this doesn't even assume account abuse). So, we have this in place in order to facilitate rational functionality in-game. Of course, it should be noted that this rule is intentionally minor, and the reason for it is grounded in era accuracy. Since this particular rule covers far smaller offenses than infinite accounts and connections, the rule that is in place should be equally nonrestrictive. As a result, players can still produce the above scenario with multiple houses, provided they can convince their friend to either leave UO installed (or re-install it every year or so). Thus, this rule really only prevents housing abuse by those who are entirely uncommitted to the process.

Beyond these 4 rules, none of our rules reflect something inaccurate compared to OSI servers, and these rules are necessary results of a free server model in the first place.

The point I was making was that just because something isnt good for the game doesnt mean you should get away from accuracy. If this isnt true then the opposite should apply as well.

If A is accurate and not good for shard, change it
If A is not accurate and not good for shard, change it - How can both of these be true?

If that argument is true, and it is according to what you just explained about house condemning, then how can the following not be true as well:

If A is accurate and good for shard, keep it
If B is not accurate and good for shard, keep it

Where B = Events


Some may say that B, or Events, are not good for the shard however I dont believe that to be true. When there is 150 seperate IP's connected and I would assume 25% of those are afk macroing and you see 25-40 people attending each event, 50% of the 'active' shard I would say that that is pretty 'good for the shard'.

Or in the case of alternate housing such as log cabins which were implimented VERY close to our cutoff date. They do not affect the mechanics of the game and I believe they would be 'good for the shard'.

These mechanical modifications exist expressly to facilitate rational functionality in game. It's not rational to expect that you can have an unlimited number of accounts at your disposal, or an unlimited number of accounts connected (despite who may own them), or to have staff stay attached to IRC 24/7 in order to deal with pages, or expect that a player should have functional ownership of huge quantities of houses with no effort involved.

In this regard, events provide no applicable results. They do not shore up a problem that emerges strictly because of the free shard design, thus they can't be adequately compared with the above rules.

Kaivan wrote:These mechanical modifications exist expressly to facilitate rational functionality in game. It's not rational to expect that you can have an unlimited number of accounts at your disposal, or an unlimited number of accounts connected (despite who may own them), or to have staff stay attached to IRC 24/7 in order to deal with pages, or expect that a player should have functional ownership of huge quantities of houses with no effort involved.

In this regard, events provide no applicable results. They do not shore up a problem that emerges strictly because of the free shard design, thus they can't be adequately compared with the above rules.

So then if mechanics of the game are based on rational functionality then how was it rational to remove events when there is a functional silver system in place that is now rendered pretty much useless. It doesnt seem rational to me to change something that has been around since pretty much the start of the shard because 'perhaps its not 100% accurate' when there are things in game that we know are not 100% accurate and we have no intention on changing them.

Robbbb wrote:So then if mechanics of the game are based on rational functionality then how was it rational to remove events when there is a functional silver system in place that is now rendered pretty much useless. It doesnt seem rational to me to change something that has been around since pretty much the start of the shard because 'perhaps its not 100% accurate' when there are things in game that we know are not 100% accurate and we have no intention on changing them.

For one, the silver system is still in-tact. Players can still turn in silver for items. The difference is that the accessibility to the system has been decreased as a result of events being removed. However, even if we were to remove the silver system as well, this would not change anything. It would just be the removal of an inaccurate mechanic that is not necessary for the basic functionality of a free server.

Second, citing necessary inaccuracies as a reason to intentionally leave an unnecessary inaccuracy just because it's been around for a while is ridiculous. There are tons of mechanics that haven't been touched since the beginning of the server, and it would be foolish to suggest that they should not be changed, just because they have been that way for a long time.

One thing about housing seems to be missing. I can't remember if the patch was
before T2A or when T2A was introduced.

The first houses I remember in UO were: The small forge, came with a small forge and anvil. The small tailor shop, came with loom and spinning well. The small cook house,
came with flour mill and oven. and a small house with nothing in it. The only large house with something in it I remember was the large forge,it came with a large forge and anvil. The large forge was what we now know as the large with patio. The forge and anvil were on the patio part. And tower.
There was also two keeps. One I believe was called the small keep One keep had a room on bottom floor that had bars across the entrance to the room. (I might be mistaken on the name. Might have been the small tower ( like we have now, and the
large tower; from what I can remember the bottom floor was similar to the tower of today.)
and of course the Castle. ( won't bring up tents, thread been done on those)

Than a patch was put in place, the build in additions ceased to exist and crafters could
than make "add ons"


enjoy

Westra

Kaivan wrote:

Robbbb wrote:So then if mechanics of the game are based on rational functionality then how was it rational to remove events when there is a functional silver system in place that is now rendered pretty much useless. It doesnt seem rational to me to change something that has been around since pretty much the start of the shard because 'perhaps its not 100% accurate' when there are things in game that we know are not 100% accurate and we have no intention on changing them.

For one, the silver system is still in-tact. Players can still turn in silver for items. The difference is that the accessibility to the system has been decreased as a result of events being removed. However, even if we were to remove the silver system as well, this would not change anything. It would just be the removal of an inaccurate mechanic that is not necessary for the basic functionality of a free server.

Second, citing necessary inaccuracies as a reason to intentionally leave an unnecessary inaccuracy just because it's been around for a while is ridiculous. There are tons of mechanics that haven't been touched since the beginning of the server, and it would be foolish to suggest that they should not be changed, just because they have been that way for a long time.

The Silver System is now the equivalent of the Peso and will take years to gain anything if anything...There is no such thing, as you describe, as a necessary inaccuracy...CAN U PLEASE DESCRIBE AN UNNECESSARY INACCURACY...Because I DO NOT believe that EVENTS are unnecessary...That is where your fallacy lies Kavian...You do not think events should exist because of your one sided thinking....yet I have come up with several fallacies in your argument that you have maneuvered around...Please explain how simple things that are not era accurate are different than complicated things that are era accurate...

For example, HOUSE SITUATIONS...

I could have 15 homes via my 3 accounts at HOME...
I could also have 15 homes via my OTHER 3 accounts at WORK
I could ALSO have 15 MORE homes via my CLOUD account via my HOME or whatever COMPUTER I WANTED account
I could ALDO have 15 MORE homes via MY OTHER CLOUD account........

DO YOU SEE HOW YOUR CONDEMNED ARGUMENT IS SKEWED AND VERY WRONG???

Inaccurate = Inaccurate when it is CAPABLE NO MATTER WHAT U DO!

The 'Help Stuck' option is the only option that can be inaccurate and still allowed.


Player events that give Silver or special items are EXACTLY the same as auto events exept that they dont give results automatically...so why do we still have player events that give rewards????????

Explain ALL since it seems that YOU are the problem with SILVER and EVENTS and GRANDFATHER STATUS...it just seems Kaivan to me that you are against certain people on the shard...




I'M NOT HERE TO ATTACK YOU KAIVAN OR YOUR LOGIC AS I ACTUALLY LIKE DEBATING WITH YOU, BUT REVIEWING MULTIPLE STANCES YOU TAKE ON SPECIFIC ISSUES LEAVES ME TO BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE AGAINST WHAT MOST ACTIVE PLAYERS WANT WHICH IS A GREAT GAMEING EXPERIENCE RATHER THAN AN ACCURATE ONE.....

i have to agree somehow here

Arsen wrote:i have to agree somehow here

with who? hehe =)

Robbbb wrote:

Arsen wrote:i have to agree somehow here

with who? hehe =)

with some parts of your last posts.

Robbbb wrote:The Silver System is now the equivalent of the Peso and will take years to gain anything if anything...

This implies that things should have been as easy to get as they were in the first place. Items off the silver system should have never been that easy to obtain.

Robbbb wrote:There is no such thing, as you describe, as a necessary inaccuracy...CAN U PLEASE DESCRIBE AN UNNECESSARY INACCURACY...

Yes, there are, and I can explain exactly why. Suppose that we did not have any restrictions on the number of accounts that you could create. If that were the case, then why even bother with a housing restriction of 1 per character. At that point, the mechanic is useless, because you can just circumvent it with no effort. The same is true with unlimited connections from an IP. Why bother having a limit of 700 skill points per character under those conditions? Why bother with murder counts? Why bother with gaining skills at all, because you would be able to macro an unlimited array of characters all the time. Ultimately, these exceptions to mechanics exist in order to keep other fundamental mechanics from being pointless.

Robbbb wrote:Because I DO NOT believe that EVENTS are unnecessary...That is where your fallacy lies Kavian...

Actually, it's not a fallacy at all. Automated events do not fill any position that the above mechanics fill, and the fact that you think they do needs to be proven if you're expecting anything to come of this.

Robbbb wrote:You do not think events should exist because of your one sided thinking....yet I have come up with several fallacies in your argument that you have maneuvered around...Please explain how simple things that are not era accurate are different than complicated things that are era accurate...

No, I don't think that automated events should exist because of one sided thinking. I know they shouldn't exist because they aren't accurate, and they don't fill a necessary role in ensuring that other mechanics continue to have a point. They work against those goals.

Robbbb wrote:For example, HOUSE SITUATIONS...

I could have 15 homes via my 3 accounts at HOME...
I could also have 15 homes via my OTHER 3 accounts at WORK
I could ALSO have 15 MORE homes via my CLOUD account via my HOME or whatever COMPUTER I WANTED account
I could ALDO have 15 MORE homes via MY OTHER CLOUD account........

DO YOU SEE HOW YOUR CONDEMNED ARGUMENT IS SKEWED AND VERY WRONG???

So your point is that since the mechanic isn't perfect, we shouldn't have it. Under that position, all of the points that I made before regarding basic mechanics would fall into the same category, and should be ignored as well. In fact, even if they were in place, they would be meaningless, which would make them no better than automated events.

Robbbb wrote:Inaccurate = Inaccurate when it is CAPABLE NO MATTER WHAT U DO!

You cannot expect us to come up with an exception to mechanics that can magically detect who makes an account from a given location. That isn't possible on the internet, and claiming that because we can't do that, we shouldn't have these restrictions, shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the intent for these changes. They are intended to marginalize these problems to the best of our ability without interfering with normal game play (and none of these changes do that).

Robbbb wrote:Player events that give Silver or special items are EXACTLY the same as auto events exept that they dont give results automatically...so why do we still have player events that give rewards????????

Just no. There are so many differences that I could point out, but it's not even necessary. Saying that player run, or even GM created events are the same to the automated events is ridiculous.

Robbbb wrote:it just seems Kaivan to me that you are against certain people on the shard...

I'M NOT HERE TO ATTACK YOU KAIVAN OR YOUR LOGIC AS I ACTUALLY LIKE DEBATING WITH YOU, BUT REVIEWING MULTIPLE STANCES YOU TAKE ON SPECIFIC ISSUES LEAVES ME TO BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE AGAINST WHAT MOST ACTIVE PLAYERS WANT WHICH IS A GREAT GAMEING EXPERIENCE RATHER THAN AN ACCURATE ONE.....

Well, if you meant not to attack me, you did a terrible job of it. This is just an ad-hominem attack (among other logical fallacies) and doesn't address the fundamental differences between an exception to mechanics in order to preserve other fundamental mechanics and automated events. That isn't addressed at all, and you only point to the imperfections of our current exceptional mechanics in order to justify your own. The fact is that I've defended the position that automated events are not accurate, and have explained why on many occasions. This gives you ample information to compare against these 4 mechanics and explain why you think automated events fall in the same category. Until then, your position carries no weight, and I will not respond until you bring something that directly focuses on that.

Kaivan wrote:Well, if you meant not to attack me, you did a terrible job of it.

I do apoligize if you took it as a personal attack. I only directed the argument at you as you are really the only GM that actively participates in the forum discussions.

Kaivan wrote:This gives you ample information to compare against these 4 mechanics and explain why you think automated events fall in the same category.

It is impossible to show that automated events do anything for mechanics so I cant explain it that way, but i believe that you are basically saying these inaccuracies are in place to try and prevent or marginalize the abuse of an accurate mechanic?

If that is the case then you should be able to justify changing the stable system because there have been a lot of players abusing the system and I am sure there are a lot of other accurate mechanics being abused by players to no other end than to grief the shard/players.

Robbbb wrote:i believe that you are basically saying these inaccuracies are in place to try and prevent or marginalize the abuse of an accurate mechanic?

Mostly. They are in place to prevent the abuse and marginalization of an accurate mechanic due to the nature of free shards as free to play entities.

Robbbb wrote:If that is the case then you should be able to justify changing the stable system because there have been a lot of players abusing the system and I am sure there are a lot of other accurate mechanics being abused by players to no other end than to grief the shard/players.

This isn't the same thing. Players on OSI servers could achieve the same result with essentially the same amount of effort. The result takes just one character, and doesn't change when you move to a free shard environment. Thus, no special accommodations need to be made.

At this point, I'm sure we could come up with many examples of how things work differently here than they did on OSI servers, but the important consideration is whether it was possible using the same amount of effort or resource expenditure during the era. For unlimited accounts or connections, players in era would have to pay exorbitant amount of money, whereas players on free servers need only type another name into the account box on the login screen to obtain a permanent extra account. These two scenarios have massively different levels of effort involved, and produce extremely similar results.

Anyway, I've covered this position pretty thoroughly at this point, so I'll conclude my contributions to the discussion here.