UO Second Age

Downs wrote:The policy has been made to make it a community decision to grant add-ons, does it work in reverse too (honest question to staff)?

You can argue all you want about what you do and why you deserve them, but if staff decides it comes down to the community, then it's that magic community opinion that matters.

This is a good point. I think player towns should be opened to the community at large, not only for events. It should be accessible at all times, and while people might be killed there, it shouldn't be by the hosting guild. The exceptions should be guilds like [Urk] or something, whose add-ons and such are used as plot and event devices where the entire shard, at one time, comes to kill them. In such a case being killed or killing others in their "town" or whatever is the whole reason of going there, and everyone knows it.

I know nothing of [K^A]'s events or involvement in the community. I know one [K^A] that I like (and I don't know if he's even a member anymore, as last time I saw him he didn't have a tag), but the others are far from impressing me. That said, this isn't about them (to me) anymore, but about player towns in general on the shard.

Giving the option to the community shows that the town does something for the community as a whole, new players and veterans alike. If the town's only being used for events, then I still think the point is being missed here. It also reflects the guild as well. If the guild in general is becoming unfavorable, the guildmaster and other guild leaders will need to rein in their bad members or cut their losses, or else suffer consequences for it. This way, it keeps the guild responsible for their actions.

Either way, I think each town add-on should be looked at from the perspective of the guild's charter, and not through some sort of generalizing blanket set of rules. In this way you can cut down on people using loopholes (I don't know if it was in planning or not already, but I have noticed a [K^A] event being set up after this post was made, and that seems rather coincidental) to maintain their goodies.

Cataclyst wrote:Why forcing PvP guilds to run events for their player towns is unfair.

1.Money
We all know, PvPers normally aren't rich people. PvPers give to the community, whether you like to admit to it or not. We buy your weapons that you craft, we buy your overpriced bulk reagents. Being an active PvPer, and having money to give 100-200k worth of prizes out, doesn't fit in with most pvpers "budget".

If money is the #1 issue then you cant afford Town add-ons anyways....

Maahes wrote: Additional notes:
-Any custom town improvement will still cost the guild a substantial amount of resources and gold.

Cataclyst wrote:2.Community Size
If you've noticed, PvPers are a minority on this shard. For every 30 farmers/crafters/thieves/macroers, you'll have maybe one pvper. Given there are normally 400~ unique IP's on, that leaves you roughly 13 PvPers on at any given time. Try and run one of your events for 13 people, and tell me how that is giving to the community. It's no secret that running and organizing a PvP type event is 100 times harder than a chicken fight, or other similar things.

Again your MAKING UP STATISTICS, PKs are a constant issue on Secondage, not to mention the fact that the majority of guilds on second age are PvP guilds.... from the My UOSA Webpage this is pretty obvious

Secondly the top skills on UOSA (I know this is not up to date but still reflects the shard) are PvP skills

Anatomy 3,971 [Dexter skill & Farmer skill]
Hiding 3,397 [Dexter Skill, Theif Skill, PvM skill]
Tactics 3,393 [PvP skill]
Evaluating Intelligence 3,286 [Tank mage skill]
Meditation 3,103 [Tank Mage skill]
Swordsmanship [Tank Mage skill]
Musicianship 2,664 [The fist NON pvp skill 7th most popular]
Magery 2,637 [PvP skill, all around useful skill]
Wrestling 2,240 [pvp skill, this i feel give a very good representation of the Tank mages on UOSA]
Snooping 1,746 [First Theif skill]


I am not going to list every skill, but the crafting skills are at the botom

Blacksmithy 270
Alchemy 252
Tinkering 150
Carpentry 95
Inscription 93
Poisoning 69
Tailoring 59
Bowcraft/Fletching 32

Cataclyst wrote:

3. The main purpose of player towns is to promote active communities and create activity in different areas of our world. This is the key element to obtaining any special add-ons to your city. This means you will need to promote your guild within the community with things such as events, quests, fight nights, anything that will spread your guilds name in a positive way within second age. Because in the end it will be your co-players choice whether or not you get add-ons.

3.No where does it say "In order to have a guild town you MUST run events". PvP guilds are constantly fighting in their town. Lots of fights happen in TB, I'm sorry you're not there to see them? Every guild can also attest to fighting always happening in mYm town, as well as TG town. If TG asked for addons, for that reason alone I'd vote Yes to them getting them, even though I do not care for them.

Also, can make a nice little point off this line alone

anything that will spread your guilds name in a positive way within second age

positive is the key word, players dont tent to find PvPing and PKing Positive, much less the 30 to 1 ratio of crafters & farmers...

Player towns are meant to be for the players and by the players, this is why staff will no longer make the decisions about who is deserving and who is not. Staff do not build towns, players do. Any town wishing to add any visual enhancements should already be well established in the community.

just because people know who you are via pvp does not mean your well established in the community....

Cataclyst wrote:Sure, $$$ is known for running events. But what you're known for more than anything, is your overpriced goods. If you consider that to be a positive thing to players, or even the community, then I guess we're all just idiots and jealous of $$$.

well quit buying our goods, and spending money on our vendors? what more can I tell you... its pretty simple ratio of supply and demand called business, if your not happy with the prices of wares, start your own vendors and see how much work it is to keep them stocked a regular basis selling goods with a 10% mark up, players will buy them and re-sell on their own vendors, this is why a system like that does not work.

I don't tell you how to PvP because I cant do it & have no desire to, much the same reason your opinion on prices does not matter, onless I was giving way product players would complain about pricing, its the same in real life.

Cataclyst wrote:also, to wise on your question/statement about TB, we still own the entire town minus like two house spots, all of the members I pointed out above live inside the town still, but also have houses in other places.
More later when I care more!~

[/quote]


good, great your guild owns the houses in your town.... I am pretty sure thats a pretty basic requirement for owning/calling it a town, why dont you try again to explain why TB should be keeping their add-ons?

I've been a member of K^A for over a month now. I have spent the majority of my time in town defending against attacks from enemy guilds, helping players newer than myself find their way around, helping to put together resist sessions (which we can't advertise on the forums because they get griefed by people like felix, but we do spread the word IN GAME to even those not in the guild, specifically newer players from Minoc), building a secondary PUBLIC rune library, and participating in pvp events that we host.

This is a grief attack on the forums because son/felix/r- has been mostly beaten and now his red characters are dead and in stat loss. K^A is very active, and I hope, regardless of your bias, that people realize we cannot post about all of our events because THAT'S HOW THEY GET GRIEFED!

Do not give in to the pure griefers. The more information readily available for them the easier it is to attack events.

And on the griefing note, I have never once seen an innocent being attacked in K^A by a K^A member. I have however seen innocents being attacked by other griefers, and we do our best to defend them. We have and will continue to attack blues in our town if they are known enemies and just there to eventually cause trouble though.

I suggest our enemies take this battle in-game rather than asking the powers that be to act negatively against us. I know the admins are smarter than to give in to simple smear campaigns by griefers. Having enemies in-game is what makes this game interesting, but let's not get personal and political on the forums about it.

I find it comical that this thread is turning into ....MY GUILD IS BETTER THAN YOUR GUILD, NANANABOOBOO...

Van Raily wrote:
Either way, I think each town add-on should be looked at from the perspective of the guild's charter, and not through some sort of generalizing blanket set of rules.

Aye this is important to take into consideration. You shoudlnt expect a merchant guild with add ons to run leet pvper events. You shoudlnt expect a pvp guild to run blacksmithing contests. You shouldnt expect anti 'trammy community' leet pker guilds to hold events without pking everyone. But, A lot of the blanket rules there most guilds will be doing by accident if they are active and generating any kind of input into the in game community.

If you as a guild have been granted permission by the players to buy town add ons from admin, you will have been bringing somthing tangible to the table for the players to have had agreed to grant you the right to buy these add ons in the first place.(some towns such as KA predate this process). Out of curteosy for all those players permitting you to be allowed to purchase add ons these groups should at least say thank you in some form or another.

Thats what happens when guilds start getting defensive over what they have and can-not justify it, rather then proving they deserve what they have, they rather try proving that some one else is less deserving of their stuff!


Like I said, when I get home I am going to compile a thread with Screen shots of ALL the player run towns so people can see whats what

wasn't meant to be a personal attack. we're all adults here and commenting and having opinions is alright i would assume.
whatever i type is my own opinion. not having the same viewpoint is part of conversation. one will interpret a situation any multitude of ways.

i don't see why any large guild or extremely established person should get anything from the gm's.
helping an established shop or location is only going to make it grow larger and encapsulate more land.
it will never help a new player other than a quick grab of items.

let the USA economy be a lesson to what happens when you support small groups of powerful people.
i think making someones front lawn pretty and giving them npc's or special items is counter intuitive.
new players see this and can tell there's favorites. as previously mentioned it discourages shopping around the world
when you have several hyped up locations. not good for new people.
on top of all the ridiculous at times 'era accurate' i'm amazed there's ANY trammel addons.

real estate sellers, major vendors, both doing nothing people joining wouldn't do.
should concentrate on the masses and ways to get more people. not ways to take up more space and solidify someones obvious attempts at vanity.

it's a game with nearly infinite possibility and people are concerned about special items nobody else has as decoration.
sad.

ehafh wrote: i don't trust wise. he's passive aggressive on the forums, and a merchant. the guy is far from being an innocent player helper, although masquerading as such.

ehafh wrote:wasn't meant to be a personal attack.

whoops my bad didn't mean to misinterpret

A few quick points from another perspective

ehafh wrote:
it will never help a new player other than a quick grab of items.

I dont think this is true. Large community events are a great way for new players to immediately feel part of the community. Nothing helps retain players like friends to play with. Use the dungeon crawls as an example.

ehafh wrote:let the USA economy be a lesson

This isnt a real economy or a good model to compare it to in any way. Infinite resources

ehafh wrote:new players see this and can tell there's favorites.

The favourites are determined by the players. If the player base says no, then you dont get additions.

ehafh wrote:'era accurate' i'm amazed there's ANY trammel addons.

They are era accurate. Red Devils and Kazolas are just 2 examples of the dozens of OSI player ran establishment and towns. One of the lead developers of UO said these were what he was most proud of about UO.

ehafh wrote:solidify someones obvious attempts at vanity.

You cannot know other peoples motivations or claim to. Judge them based on their actions not their words or dont judge them at all.

Wise wrote:

ehafh wrote: i don't trust wise. he's passive aggressive on the forums, and a merchant. the guy is far from being an innocent player helper, although masquerading as such.

ehafh wrote:wasn't meant to be a personal attack.

whoops my bad didn't mean to misinterpret

saying you don't trust someone isn't really a personal attack.
it just means i don't trust you. you moonlight as some super good guy,
but it's all a tightly knit click of established people. no two ways about it.

have at thee knave.

you guys can gaggle on about your diary of trammel tents and yellow brick roads i guess.
my opinion has been stated in a concise manor
no need to further reiterate, since i have no magical gm connects.

This is why I suggested, as Van Rally noted, to keep the focus on KA in this thread (while acknowledging that there are other guilds who fit the bill). Guild flaming is just derailing the thread.

As Downs posted, KA is the biggest and most blunderous rule breaker for town add on requirement upkeep.

Just keep voting, its quite clear most agree.

Look only 3-4 guilds have actually earnt their addons and tbh its a bit silly that the guilds who bought their addons should be able to retain them without adding anything to the community.


Now by adding to the community i don't mean just holding events (although the $$$ events are awesome and the legend of barry the chicken and marks rise to greatness will live on forever even if matron used a hacked chicken), other stuff should consitute as adding to the community but only if enough members partake, having a town the size of TB (example only) with 2-3 active members is just stupid and thats really what should be reviewed.

This whole system isn't working, IMO.

How does one (or an entire shard for that matter) measure an action that benefits the community? The number of events they hold?
How does one measure "activity in a town"? The number of events they hold? How many members on the stone?

Does one certain action benefit the community more than another?
Does a very public action benefit the community more than a very private action, regardless of the action?

Does a Cock Fight event benefit the community more than teaching a dozen newbies how to play the game? Are they about equal? If one were to teach a dozen newbies how to play the game and the one teaching isn't the type to brag on the forums about it, who would know?


This whole systems foundation is based upon how other people would measure what they think some other guilds "merits" are, and the good judgement of people who don't "play" the game.


I think Cat has a good point on PvP events vs non-PvP events. A PvP guilds daily activities are almost like PvP events without the tournament bracket structure. These events are centered around numerous locations, with some of the most frequent being: The guild town, an enemies guild town, and other various PvP hotspots.

Some PvP events can take as long as two hours, and the whole two hours, the person running the event is paying close attention to a multitude of things including the actions of the duelists and the spectators, not to mention the win/loss bracket.

Most non-PvP events are pretty laid back, and held within someones home so they can utilize the Ban feature. Sure, you would have to pay attention to the contest and participants, but you wouldn't have to think twice about using the pisser.


For the record, I am not on the offense or defense on this matter.
I just want this system to work a little better, and the add-ons to be a lot less available.
As it is now, its easier to get a lamp post than it is to get a CBD.

Pro wrote:having a town the size of TB (example only) with 2-3 active members is just stupid and thats really what should be reviewed.

So, is there a difference between 2-3 active members and say, 4-6? What about 7-9?
What is the tangible difference? I mean, whats the minimum amount of active guildmates before add-ons are deleted? What about a time frame? None of these exist, and currently is left to other players opinions.

When you say "having a town the size of TB" do you mean houses, or add-ons? How are you judging the size?

Organized events are only one way to contribute to a community. There are many ways, some are just more visible and easily 'measured' than others. Using the word loosly.