UO Second Age

Derrick wrote:

Mikel123 wrote:I cannot understand why we know exactly how something operated in 1999, but refuse to implement it as such.

Certainly not refusing to implement it, we're working on implementing it.

We used to kill the stablemaster in Serps during T2A. That certainly helped limit the problem (the stablemaster had like hundreds of shrunken pets in it's bag if you haven't ever seen it).

I don't think the "Invuln" thing even existed until after UO:R so if you fixed that, the issue would be self-limiting... It would also take care of the non-era bulk dragon issues.

Mikel123 wrote:

Kaivan wrote:however we cannot argue that because extra stable masters were put in place on OSI servers, that we should do the same to an extreme degree on UOSA. If we follow that practice and end up with over 100 stable masters to deal with players locking up limited reousrces, then the entire concept of limited stables is useless, and would be better managed by having unlimited stable space.

I think you can argue that. It's not an "extreme" degree... on OSI, stablemasters were added as needed. Adding them here as needed would be the same degree, IMO.

There are two things to address here.

First, it is a supposition that stable masters were always added as needed. This is evidenced by the taming archive, which shows that among the North American servers, the number of stable masters between the shards varied a very sizable amount. Assuming that the servers had a remotely even distribution of players, we can see that many servers were effectively left out to dry relative to other servers. What's even more compelling is the fact that the newsgroups cite this issue in several threads, which shows that it was a problem for the players during the era.

Second, the issue that was dealt with on OSI servers is a far cry from what we are dealing with here. On OSI servers, it was unlikely that players would intentionally fill up hundreds of stable slots with animals, just to keep them out of other players' hands. Thus, the idea of adding a stable master if the GMs felt it was necessary was usually effective. On the other hand, UOSA's problem is exactly the problem that OSI didn't have. We have a much smaller population, and more stable spaces than every server except one, yet our stables are constantly full. This does not speak to an issue with players simply having too many pets that they legitimately wish to stable, but speaks to an entirely different issue of players acquiring as much of a limited resource as possible. This issue cannot be effectively dealt with by increasing the stable limit by two or three stable masters, and would require us to increase the number of stable masters to the point that all players who wish to acquire and hold these spaces cannot feasibly afford the task. Without doing the math, it becomes obvious that the cash outflow would need to be many times the 117k per week that the entire shard requires at this point. The end result of such a move would be that these players would dump their stable spaces (because they can't have them all anyway), effectively leaving a huge void of 200 or 300 stable masters that would be functionally identical to unlimited stable slots. It is this end result that makes any idea of increasing stable limits a silly proposition.

Mikel123 wrote:My hunch is that the limit on stabled pets had nothing to do with an actual game design decision... I assume it was because of server resources, since stablemasters were incrementally increased as needed. I guess this is an opinion, but I can't imagine it was a "concept", since the concept was constantly - on every single shard - mitigated. Now, whether "as needed" on this shard is 100x or 1/100th of what it was on OSI, I couldn't care less. The actions of the GMs, plus the reality of the hardware back then, indicates to me that it wasn't intended as a concept, since when it became a consequence it was mitigated/eliminated in short order. Unless there's some UOHoC chat somewhere in which one of the devs was asked about stable slots and said something like, "Stable slots are limited; deal with it", I just don't believe it was intended. And given the lack of an aftermarket for the slots, I don't think it occurred.

Take this particular change for what you will, but stable slots were, at one point, unlimited. They were severely limited with the 3/18/98 patch notes:

Stablemasters will have a limit on how many creatures they can stable.

The reason for this change isn't exactly made clear anywhere (there were no public HoC chats held at that time for the question to be asked).

ihatemmorpgs wrote:

Derrick wrote:

Mikel123 wrote:I cannot understand why we know exactly how something operated in 1999, but refuse to implement it as such.

Certainly not refusing to implement it, we're working on implementing it.

We used to kill the stablemaster in Serps during T2A. That certainly helped limit the problem (the stablemaster had like hundreds of shrunken pets in it's bag if you haven't ever seen it).

I don't think the "Invuln" thing even existed until after UO:R so if you fixed that, the issue would be self-limiting... It would also take care of the non-era bulk dragon issues.

Stable masters were actually given invulnerable tags across the board starting in September 99, essentially because players were killing the stable masters and forcing other players to lose their pets.

Kaivan wrote: First, it is a supposition that stable masters were always added as needed. This is evidenced by the taming archive, which shows that among the North American servers, the number of stable masters between the shards varied a very sizable amount. Assuming that the servers had a remotely even distribution of players, we can see that many servers were effectively left out to dry relative to other servers. What's even more compelling is the fact that the newsgroups cite this issue in several threads, which shows that it was a problem for the players during the era.

It is a supposition that the servers had a remotely even distribution of players. I don't believe they did - Atlantic was far more populated in fall 1999 than a shard like Chesapeake. Furthermore, the tamer population being a subset of the few thousand regular players on any given shard... it's mathematically very easy to demonstrate how one shard could have twice the number of desired slots that another would have.

I've never argued that it wasn't a problem at some points. However, is there any flaw in the logic here:

1) Put stable limits for bandwith reasons
2) Players need more slots
3) Add limited amount of stablemasters so as to help out players and not vastly increase server load
4) repeat 2 and 3

Kaivan wrote:On OSI servers, it was unlikely that players would intentionally fill up hundreds of stable slots with animals, just to keep them out of other players' hands.

This, too, is a supposition. And furthermore, it's chicken-and-egg! If GMs added stablemasters shortly after limits were reached, what would be the point of doing this?! Of course no one would. The biggest reason this occurs on this shard is because we haven't added stablemasters, and you continually refer to the fact that we won't be, thereby essentially guaranteeing that the value of this behavior will hold!

Kaivan wrote:This does not speak to an issue with players simply having too many pets that they legitimately wish to stable, but speaks to an entirely different issue of players acquiring as much of a limited resource as possible.

Emphasis mine, but I don't see how this word should enter the discussion. Furthermore, if you really are concerned with "legitimate" use of stable slots, the only way to ensure they're used legitimately is to remove the cap or add stablemasters as necessary! You're passing a negative value judgment on a behavior that you are implicitly rewarding!

Kaivan wrote:This issue cannot be effectively dealt with by increasing the stable limit by two or three stable masters, and would require us to increase the number of stable masters to the point that all players who wish to acquire and hold these spaces cannot feasibly afford the task. Without doing the math, it becomes obvious that the cash outflow would need to be many times the 117k per week that the entire shard requires at this point. The end result of such a move would be that these players would dump their stable spaces (because they can't have them all anyway), effectively leaving a huge void of 200 or 300 stable masters that would be functionally identical to unlimited stable slots. It is this end result that makes any idea of increasing stable limits a silly proposition.

And here is the fundamental issue we have. You see a finite number of stablemasters from one snapshot in time, along with a few scattered posts, and think that they were finite. I see stablemasters added willy-nilly across shards in this snapshot, have little if any memory of there ever being a problem on my shard (Chesapeake, FWIW), and certainly no memory of there ever being some kind of secondary market - which surely would have been the case if the resource was indeed as restricted and valuable as it is here - and think that they were essentially infinite.

Kaivan wrote:Take this particular change for what you will, but stable slots were, at one point, unlimited. They were severely limited with the 3/18/98 patch notes:

Stablemasters will have a limit on how many creatures they can stable.

The reason for this change isn't exactly made clear anywhere (there were no public HoC chats held at that time for the question to be asked).

Quoting this does nothing to invalidate my point; I'm not sure what your point is. We are human beings, with the ability to reason. Is it really a stretch to think that they were originally made unlimited, proved costly in terms of bandwith/server load/whatever, and then limited to help reduce that cost? Can you think of any more likely explanation for this?

Mikel123 wrote:

Kaivan wrote: First, it is a supposition that stable masters were always added as needed. This is evidenced by the taming archive, which shows that among the North American servers, the number of stable masters between the shards varied a very sizable amount. Assuming that the servers had a remotely even distribution of players, we can see that many servers were effectively left out to dry relative to other servers. What's even more compelling is the fact that the newsgroups cite this issue in several threads, which shows that it was a problem for the players during the era.

It is a supposition that the servers had a remotely even distribution of players. I don't believe they did - Atlantic was far more populated in fall 1999 than a shard like Chesapeake. Furthermore, the tamer population being a subset of the few thousand regular players on any given shard... it's mathematically very easy to demonstrate how one shard could have twice the number of desired slots that another would have.

I've never argued that it wasn't a problem at some points. However, is there any flaw in the logic here:

1) Put stable limits for bandwith reasons
2) Players need more slots
3) Add limited amount of stablemasters so as to help out players and not vastly increase server load
4) repeat 2 and 3

It's not necessarily impossible that they would add more stable masters, however you're talking about a solution to a problem that is very different from the problem on UOSA.

Mikel123 wrote:

Kaivan wrote:On OSI servers, it was unlikely that players would intentionally fill up hundreds of stable slots with animals, just to keep them out of other players' hands.

This, too, is a supposition. And furthermore, it's chicken-and-egg! If GMs added stablemasters shortly after limits were reached, what would be the point of doing this?! Of course no one would. The biggest reason this occurs on this shard is because we haven't added stablemasters, and you continually refer to the fact that we won't be, thereby essentially guaranteeing that the value of this behavior will hold!

Again, you're ignoring the fact that we have increased stable slots a sizable amount in the last year. Just because we haven't transferred over to a system that shows an increase in the stable masters walking around does not mean we haven't increased the stable slots. What I'm saying is that we've been chasing a problem that exists due to the fact that the resource is limited, not due to the fact that we haven't done anything about it.

I've said it 3 times now, UOSA has more stable slots than any server's total number of felucca stable masters, with the exception of one, yet we have completely jam packed stables, and we have approximately 1/4th the players as OSI at our peak time. It's silly to think that we're suffering from the same problem as OSI servers, and it's silly to suggest that we attempt to solve a different problem with a solution for an entirely different problem.

Mikel123 wrote:

Kaivan wrote:This does not speak to an issue with players simply having too many pets that they legitimately wish to stable, but speaks to an entirely different issue of players acquiring as much of a limited resource as possible.

Emphasis mine, but I don't see how this word should enter the discussion. Furthermore, if you really are concerned with "legitimate" use of stable slots, the only way to ensure they're used legitimately is to remove the cap or add stablemasters as necessary! You're passing a negative value judgment on a behavior that you are implicitly rewarding!

I say 'legitimately' to differentiate between players who stable their animals because they need a place to stable the animals they work with, and players who tame or purchase hundreds of small animals with the exclusive purpose of acquiring stable spaces.

Mikel123 wrote:

Kaivan wrote:This issue cannot be effectively dealt with by increasing the stable limit by two or three stable masters, and would require us to increase the number of stable masters to the point that all players who wish to acquire and hold these spaces cannot feasibly afford the task. Without doing the math, it becomes obvious that the cash outflow would need to be many times the 117k per week that the entire shard requires at this point. The end result of such a move would be that these players would dump their stable spaces (because they can't have them all anyway), effectively leaving a huge void of 200 or 300 stable masters that would be functionally identical to unlimited stable slots. It is this end result that makes any idea of increasing stable limits a silly proposition.

And here is the fundamental issue we have. You see a finite number of stablemasters from one snapshot in time, along with a few scattered posts, and think that they were finite. I see stablemasters added willy-nilly across shards in this snapshot, have little if any memory of there ever being a problem on my shard (Chesapeake, FWIW), and certainly no memory of there ever being some kind of secondary market - which surely would have been the case if the resource was indeed as restricted and valuable as it is here - and think that they were essentially infinite.

I certainly don't see a finite number of stable masters on these servers, however I do see a difference in policy regarding the way that the servers were run. As a case in point, 8 of the stable masters on Napa Valley were located in player towns, while other servers had 1 or 0. This is a difference in administration regarding player blessed towns on these servers. It's not a stretch of the imagination to suggest that administration differed in other aspects, including the willingness to add stable masters to appease players. That is to say that some servers would be more willing to add more stable masters as the current stable masters filled up, and others wouldn't.

Also, regarding the player count on servers, we can actually get a very good idea of what the player count was on servers during the era. Here's a page from the GM handbook that gives us a snapshot of a typical Saturday on UO during T2A:
Assuming that this screen shot is typical of UO at that time, we can see that the player count on Napa Valley is only 2/3 of other US servers, yet it has (approximately) 30% more stable masters than other US servers. Assuming that identical policies were applied on each server, there would need to be a much larger component of players on Napa Valley who needed stable space than on other servers.

Mikel123 wrote:

Kaivan wrote:Take this particular change for what you will, but stable slots were, at one point, unlimited. They were severely limited with the 3/18/98 patch notes:

Stablemasters will have a limit on how many creatures they can stable.

The reason for this change isn't exactly made clear anywhere (there were no public HoC chats held at that time for the question to be asked).

Quoting this does nothing to invalidate my point; I'm not sure what your point is. We are human beings, with the ability to reason. Is it really a stretch to think that they were originally made unlimited, proved costly in terms of bandwith/server load/whatever, and then limited to help reduce that cost? Can you think of any more likely explanation for this?

It is actually quite a stretch, considering a policy of increasing the stable limit whenever stables became unavailable. If UO had enough animals before stable limits to cause resource issues, it's counter-intuitive to the goal of limiting stables if they increased the number of stable slots whenever they ran out of space, because you would invariably end up in nearly the same situation you had before.

Kaivan wrote:I've said it 3 times now, UOSA has more stable slots than any server's total number of felucca stable masters, with the exception of one, yet we have completely jam packed stables, and we have approximately 1/4th the players as OSI at our peak time. It's silly to think that we're suffering from the same problem as OSI servers, and it's silly to suggest that we attempt to solve a different problem with a solution for an entirely different problem.

I've ignored this because I don't really see what your point is. I never said we were suffering from the same problem as OSI, in fact I've said the opposite. And this has nothing to do with "solving a problem". I've never once said that stable slots are a problem, that the market for slots is a problem, or even that the fact that new players here can't effectively mine with a pack horse and stable it is a problem.

Kaivan wrote:it's counter-intuitive to the goal of limiting stables if they increased the number of stable slots whenever they ran out of space, because you would invariably end up in nearly the same situation you had before.

I don't think so. Again, the goal IMO wasn't to limit stables, it was to limit risk of lag and such. Limiting stables and increasing as necessary is a way to both allow players to stable as needed, and to ensure you are incrementally testing and maintaining amounts of animals that are safe for the shard or subserver or whatever.

Kaivan wrote:Assuming that this screen shot is typical of UO at that time, we can see that the player count on Napa Valley is only 2/3 of other US servers, yet it has (approximately) 30% more stable masters than other US servers. Assuming that identical policies were applied on each server, there would need to be a much larger component of players on Napa Valley who needed stable space than on other servers.

Interesting screenshot. I remember when joining (fall 1999), there were a lot more accounts on Atlantic, for example, and the lag made it difficult to play for me. Chesapeake was much less laggy. I suppose though it could have been high item count on Atlantic that made it as such.

In any case, out of those 1500 players online (or the, say, 10,000 players who were online at some point each week), how many do you think had pets? 5%? I doubt it was even that high. Most people ran around mount-less in 1999, and even those on mounts would have no need to stable them. Taming was perhaps the hardest skill to train, and you didn't need slots until you got up around dragon-taming range. And packhorses were slaughtered routinely. Not to mention the variance in the number of pets being stabled, too. And the variance in where people tend to stable in the game. Whatever shard UTB was on would probably require much more slots than their population would dictate. It's very easy to imagine there being a high variance of stable need in different places across different servers. It's almost a mathematical certainty.

so did this guy cancell or did he stop /crying and keep paying after he got what he wanted?

Naljier wrote:so did this guy cancell or did he stop /crying and keep paying after he got what he wanted?

I take it you were one of the afk scroll macroers as you seem to be the only one opposed to that rule clarification.

Naljier wrote:so did this guy cancell or did he stop /crying and keep paying after he got what he wanted?

*Def Con 1* * Troll alert*
Members of the UOSA nation, I implore you not to feed this starving fellow!
Any attempts of information exchange will be rebuked with further luke warm logic and attacks of character!
*Def Con 1* * Troll alert*

Nidaic wrote:

Naljier wrote:so did this guy cancell or did he stop /crying and keep paying after he got what he wanted?

*Def Con 1* * Troll alert*
Members of the UOSA nation, I implore you not to feed this starving fellow!
Any attempts of information exchange will be rebuked with further luke warm logic and attacks of character!
*Def Con 1* * Troll alert*

*Code Red* *Uber Troll Alert*
Members of the UOSA player base, I demand that we avoid giving this creature a foothold!
Any replies to this foul creature will end in constant ignorant attack to gain attention.
*Code Red* *Uber Troll Alert*

GuardianKnight wrote:

Nidaic wrote:

Naljier wrote:so did this guy cancell or did he stop /crying and keep paying after he got what he wanted?

*Def Con 1* * Troll alert*
Members of the UOSA nation, I implore you not to feed this starving fellow!
Any attempts of information exchange will be rebuked with further luke warm logic and attacks of character!
*Def Con 1* * Troll alert*

*Code Red* *Uber Troll Alert*
Members of the UOSA player base, I demand that we avoid giving this creature a foothold!
Any replies to this foul creature will end in constant ignorant attack to gain attention.
*Code Red* *Uber Troll Alert*

Wow GK, all it took was 1 thread calling you out and now I have a fan stalking my every post. Do you even play anymore, or do you just refresh your stable slots, further enhancing the servers problem? This thread was very constructive until you stepped in... similiar to almost anything you do here anymore...
Want to be SA discussion mod so you can wage more personal war with your whiteknight super-ego?

*EDIT* (here's my personal attack bros, get RDY) You're the only UOSA ego-stroker I can't stand. Even Sandro and Fede have SOME class and ability to back up their forum warrioring. You have.... Purple horses and a history of rage edits! Good game GK... Good game.

to stroke my ego and massage your hurt one.

Regardless of how valid your points are, you need to remember the follow:

1. This is a free shard that most likely puts Derrick in the red on his balance sheet every single month. Not only is this a money synch for him, it's also a time synch and time is money. So while I can appreciate your subscription, and I'm sure everyone else does also, I'm sure Derrick makes a subscription of 10x that amount every month to a shard that he doesn't even play.

2. Derrick has put/puts TONS of hours into the coding, along with research (thanks to other staff and players also) making the shard as accurate as possible. I'm sure between coding and daily maintenance for the shard for the first few years he logged enough hours to consider this a full-time job.

3. The staff does the best with what they have. They go on research and facts, if available, to make changes accordingly. It's normally a clear cut decision for them to make, either it's accurate or not. I understand there are some things that bend, some things that should bend but don't, and some things that don't bend at all. That's life in UOSA though. Do I agree with the stables having limits on them? No, not everyone on live shard was wealthy enough to be wasting any type of money keeping chickens stabled etc, but you know what? It is technically correct.

4. If the staff hasn't been as present as they have in the past, so what? How many times have ALL of us taken an extended break away from the game? Over 3 years straight is a longer run than anyone on the shard has had, they're entitled to fall back a little bit. They did a lot of upfront work so at times like these they can more so "set it and forget it".

You're better off taking a controlled approach to getting things changed, rather than rag unsubscribing. If you have a thread where you're pleading your case against the "stable fiasco", I'll become part of your movement. Posting an unsubscribing complaint thread, which can be threatening to the shards well being, I don't think anyone will get behind that. Best of luck.

Well said, Mirage.

Also, I would like to add this to the AFK Gathering: AFK Rare Gathering

I was guilty of doing this once upon a time. I realized how terrible it is and that it should not be done. It was one of those "this is too good to be true" things that you find every once in awhile. Since then, as countless posts, PM's to players/developers, and even emails can attest to....I have been trying to get this and all AFK Gathering done away with so that the players can get back to actually playing the game. Having seen how this all works first-hand, I can say that it is a terrible thing for the players of this shard and needs to be dealt with.

Sometimes you find yourself doing something...and you take a step back...and say to yourself: "Just because I can, doesn't mean I should." It is my opinion that AFK Rare Gathering needs to be done away with. At the very least, it is not Era-Accurate in any way.

-L/S

Though, AFK reg buying is definitely something that needs looking at. This game shouldn't be run by bots. Staff probably agree this is an issue and it's more to do with enforcement - which falls under the same category of (1).

I am usually quiet on my point of view when it comes to breaking "era accuracy", I will say so. I think there are some gamebreaking aspects of how T2A was laid out. No matter what era of any game you play, there will probably be some "gamebreaking" aspect. In UOSA's case, it's the stables. UOSA's problem is that things that genuinely are an easily fixable problem, can never be fixed.

There are lots of things I really like about UOSA, and though I may not play much anymore, I will continue to support it.