UO Second Age

son wrote:What the hell constitutes abuse? If I'm dead and I use it but I could walk for 20 mins or login on alt and gate, is that abuse?

Was wondering the same thing to be honest. What if you're stuck on an island, abuse?

What about dumping chars in the middle of nowhere?

If a character is legitimately stuck, they will be freed to some random location on the map. If a character is not legitimately stuck, they wouldn't even bother to use the help menu as it would not help them at all. The "random locations" would be preset dump-in-the-middle-of-the-wilderness nowheres.

On OSI T2A we did not have the help stuck menu at ALL, so I don't see why we should be getting free rides to any town at all.

son wrote:What the hell constitutes abuse? If I'm dead and I use it but I could walk for 20 mins or login on alt and gate, is that abuse?

I will add logs to the use of this, it's very easy to do; but I don't forsee a lot of abuse with these changes. Waiting an average of 5 minutes to be trasported to a random town, one of which may be Cove (without a Bank) is not likely the most effecient way to get home.

nightshark wrote:What about dumping chars in the middle of nowhere?

This is another good posibility. Make a list of fixed locations and transport the player to the closest one. This is the way the "lost at sea" player move works.

Lets not get too creative in making things inconvenient. I hardly use the help/stuck, and I'm all for trying to stem the abuse and era accuracy, but 10 minute death runs doesn't sound fun.

Make it a couple minute wait to get to a random town and call it a day...

punk wrote:Lets not get too creative in making things inconvenient. I hardly use the help/stuck, and I'm all for trying to stem the abuse and era accuracy, but 10 minute death runs doesn't sound fun.

Make it a couple minute wait to get to a random town and call it a day...

Who said it is a 10 minute death run?
The whole point of the option is to have a way to get moved when there is no GM online, and you are stuck. Stuck as in, cannot move, bugged, trapped under the ground, somehow found your way into the middle of a mountain on no walkable tile, or you are using the wrong client and keep getting stuck.

The fact that you hardly use the option is irrelevant. It should not be used unless you are stuck.

I dont think "on an island" is stuck, nor is "stuck behind friends table barrier", and "I'm dead in hythloth and want to get home" is certainly not a legitimate use I would imagine.

MatronDeWinter wrote: Who said it is a 10 minute death run?
The whole point of the option is to have a way to get moved when there is no GM online, and you are stuck. Stuck as in, cannot move, bugged, trapped under the ground, somehow found your way into the middle of a mountain on no walkable tile, or you are using the wrong client and keep getting stuck.

The fact that you hardly use the option is irrelevant. It should not be used unless you are stuck.

I dont think "on an island" is stuck, nor is "stuck behind friends table barrier", and "I'm dead in hythloth and want to get home" is certainly not a legitimate use I would imagine.

My point is that it's not era accurate either way, so why go completely out of your way and have a brainstorming session on how to make it as inconvenient as humanly possible? No matter how inconvenient you make it, it still isn't going to be era accurate.

We've had this system now currently for however many years, and its not era accurate but it will never be, we've concluded that.

On one side of the spectrum you have complete convenience for everyone, with some abuse, on the opposite end you have complete and utter mind numbingly inconvenience, with little abuse, and in the middle I feel like there is a solid compromise that curbs most of the abuse without making me rage quit on the one time a month I may actually use the help/stuck option.

My suggestion:

You really really really should not track abuse.

Build safeguards into the system, and then just let it run it's course.

You have to assume that everything you enable in this game is going to be abused. Razor is going to be abused. LOS bugs are going to be abused. Fishing quirks are going to be abused. Etc. There is no such thing as abuse in UO. There isn't. Every feature, every item, every skill, is available to a crafty player to use to their advantage as best they can.

If you have some notion of what constitutes "abuse" - for example, number of uses within a certain time period - just cap the function at that point, make that number public, and never worry about it again. If it's more of a location thing... well, that's probably tougher to code safeguards for. But in any case... you really can't blame players for taking advantage of details or quirks in a system.

Mikel123 wrote:If you have some notion of what constitutes "abuse" - for example, number of uses within a certain time period - just cap the function at that point, make that number public, and never worry about it again. If it's more of a location thing... well, that's probably tougher to code safeguards for. But in any case... you really can't blame players for taking advantage of details or quirks in a system.

I agree.

punk wrote:

MatronDeWinter wrote: Who said it is a 10 minute death run?
The whole point of the option is to have a way to get moved when there is no GM online, and you are stuck. Stuck as in, cannot move, bugged, trapped under the ground, somehow found your way into the middle of a mountain on no walkable tile, or you are using the wrong client and keep getting stuck.

The fact that you hardly use the option is irrelevant. It should not be used unless you are stuck.

I dont think "on an island" is stuck, nor is "stuck behind friends table barrier", and "I'm dead in hythloth and want to get home" is certainly not a legitimate use I would imagine.

My point is that it's not era accurate either way, so why go completely out of your way and have a brainstorming session on how to make it as inconvenient as humanly possible? No matter how inconvenient you make it, it still isn't going to be era accurate.

We've had this system now currently for however many years, and its not era accurate but it will never be, we've concluded that.

On one side of the spectrum you have complete convenience for everyone, with some abuse, on the opposite end you have complete and utter mind numbingly inconvenience, with little abuse, and in the middle I feel like there is a solid compromise that curbs most of the abuse without making me rage quit on the one time a month I may actually use the help/stuck option.

"Help stuck" is not supposed to be about convenience. Being stuck is not convenient. Honestly, how many times HAVE YOU ACTUALLY BEEN STUCK in game? I know I've played for 11 years and I have never once legitimately been stuck on the map anywhere.

So let's change that and pretend I get stuck in game once a year (11 times more than I really have been). That's once a freakin' year I would have to run 5 minutes to get back to town when I am stuck in game. Whoop-de-doo. I'd prefer that over some trammel feature that eliminates all inconvenience from UO.

Would be better to simply remove any help stuck or any modified version of the automated system for era accuracy. However, a system should be put in place to queue a stuck request(even for a logged out character) to allow the staff to simply click a deny/approve button to generate one of the random spots listed above for the person if it's approved. The system could track how many times a player has done it to prevent abuse for the sake of the staff and something like this would definitely never be used for travel since it could pend until a staff member actually logs on. There are 3 other accounts with a total of 15 other possible new/old characters to play.