A sincere discussion about Murder Counts, does it make sense

[gustopalis]

So my argument on this subject is in no way striving to make the game easier to be a pk, nor is it an attempt to make the game any different from "what it used to be like" aka era accuracy.

That said, I hope people can read this while taking into account the arguments I'm making rather than condemning them by assuming I'm trying to "trammy-tize" the best game ever made.

So here it goes:

Why are we sitting around all day afk on our dead stat loss pks? Whats the difference in penalty between that and not running that client at all?

That's the basic question, and what I mean is, if the penalty of having murder counts means we must isolate ourselves while staying logged in to slowly drop the counts, the same requirements can/should be met while logged out.

Before we jump to the counter argument of era accuracy, please correct me if I'm wrong, but back in the day OSI didn't let people stay logged in indefinitely. So already we've tread upon non era accuracy grounds - but hell that was a silly rule since everybody got around that one way or another. Same goes for murder counts.

The point was that murderers had to be in game risking their lives in redness in order to eventually drop the counts.
Well here on this wonderful server (still want to call it shard) we have no reason to be logged in if we aren't going to be playing the character anyway.

And a couple things wrong with the current sitaution:
-afk dead reds give misleading info/statistics on who/how many people are online.
-leaving the computer running all day to drop these counts is very uneconomical in various ways.
-I assume but could be wrong, but all the dead afk clients logged in are contributing to UO's arch nemisis: lag.
-People are less compelled to return to the game after leaving to revivie their stat loss reds/start a new character.

Also, honestly, if anyone is saying that "well those are the costs of being red! deal with it!", just about everyone playing here is amply experienced in UO and definitely has at least one red PK. We're all in the same boat.

My suggestion isn't and won't make it easier to be red, it's just another thing like the "remain logged in" feature that everyone eventually realized is necessary, as should be considered with this other very old and pointless OSI rule.

Thanks for considering.

[GuardianKnight]

Setting reds up so they don't have to play to lose counts means they get to constantly farm people who are actually contributing to the economy and when they die.....oh i guess we'll take a week off the game. Sorry if you want to be a pk then you have to pay with a headache for being a headache.

[archaicsubrosa77]

I say remove statloss and insert the bountied head will cause instant death thing when returned to the guards.

That way PKs can exchange services or barter a deal with those who have bested them in which they will not lose their lives at the most critical times in them returning their head on a whim to the guards.

[sirrayiv]

Similar to the why can't we have blessed runebooks discussion.....The main focus of this server is to emulate the original UO, before it was Trammified. So this whole topic, regardless of how you feel about it, is basically pointless.

[Faust]

The original poster is mixing policy with game mechanics. We replicate game mechanics but you not policy as that was determined different from one shard to the next on the EA servers since all the GM's were different in their own way. Some shards brought out the whip on macroing but others took a blind eye. Policy can't be replicated since there were numerous shards and choosing one shard over the next isn't wise at all.

[Dagon]

Why are we sitting around all day afk on our dead stat loss pks? Whats the difference in penalty between that and not running that client at all?

The difference is that counts are lost through time logged in, not logged out. There's no distinction of being "in penality" online or offline. Counts are lost through logged in time, period. If you want to talk penality, then the "penality" is not being able to use 4 other characters on the same account and losing counts at the same time.

if the penalty of having murder counts means we must isolate ourselves while staying logged in to slowly drop the counts

... you choose to isolate yourself. You can always go to town as a ghost and maybe someone will talk to you with spirit speak.

please correct me if I'm wrong, but back in the day OSI didn't let people stay logged in indefinitely

Correct, so to replicate that behavior any ghosts that are online should be prompted to answer a question every so often in order to not be disconnected (but only for ghosts, the rest of us want to be indefinitely not-bothered :p)

Well here on this wonderful server (still want to call it shard) we have no reason to be logged in if we aren't going to be playing the character anyway.

How is that ANY different than OSI? You still had to be logged in to drop counts even if you were a ghost and not playing the character.

And a couple things wrong with the current sitaution:

lol to all your reasons to try and make your statloss any easier by trying to say it would be better for the server overall

Fact is, whether or not you agree with it, being logged in in order to lose counts is era accurate, so nothing should be changed.

[Duke Jones]

It all comes down to multiclienting. When the game was made, the system was created with the thought that most players would have ONE account, with a few exceptions, but it wouldnt be the rule. Here, Its the opposite. And additianally to this point, aside from multiboxing, the ability to run multiple clients at once wasn't as common as it is here, too.

I feel that policy prohibiting multiclienting would fix this and bring the stat loss back to "working as intended." Because let's face it, Stat loss isn't stat loss anymore. It's "let me jump on my other account while this times out." It completely defeats the purpose of stat loss as it was intended when it was implemented. It was meant for a system where most players had 1 account. I think was intended to curb relentless griefing of characters by waving a risk vs reward warning over their head saying "If you're going to kill players make sure it's worth all the loot you get. That way, PKing for fun and profit still works and the statloss/timeout curbed the overpopulation of reds and and griefers. Each count and bounty made the Red forced into proving his pvp skills, or finaly break under the weight of his "sins" and bounties. As the system is now, there is nothing to curb this, because PKs have a conga line of back-ups. The result is that, the red-blue ratio on this server is way different than classic T2A. This is a textbook case of Policy compromising gameplay mechanics/intent.

[Nevermore]

Dagon's post sums up pretty anything that need to be said about this issue, so good job to him.

It all comes down to multiclienting. When the game was made, the system was created with the thought that most players would have ONE account, with a few exceptions, but it wouldnt be the rule. Here, Its the opposite. And additianally to this point, aside from multiboxing, the ability to run multiple clients at once wasn't as common as it is here, too.

I feel that policy prohibiting multiclienting would fix this and bring the stat loss back to "working as intended." Because let's face it, Stat loss isn't stat loss anymore. It's "let me jump on my other account while this times out." It completely defeats the purpose of stat loss as it was intended when it was implemented. It was meant for a system where most players had 1 account. I think was intended to curb relentless griefing of characters by waving a risk vs reward warning over their head saying "If you're going to kill players make sure it's worth all the loot you get. That way, PKing for fun and profit still works and the statloss/timeout curbed the overpopulation of reds and and griefers. Each count and bounty made the Red forced into proving his pvp skills, or finaly break under the weight of his "sins" and bounties. As the system is now, there is nothing to curb this, because PKs have a conga line of back-ups. The result is that, the red-blue ratio on this server is way different than classic T2A. This is a textbook case of Policy compromising gameplay mechanics/intent.

So if we prohibit multiclienting, what about the fact that some people have three or more computers in their house? If we say they can't run more than one client on one, they run to another. Then prohibiting multiclienting is just putting the less well-off at a disadvantage or people who don't need more than one computer. OSI had no system in place to curb griefing by limiting accounts, it's unlikely that they ever even took anything about multiclienting or people having multiple acccounts into account. They probably just say every seperate player account as just that, a seperate player account. Not a way for someone to ruin another person's game while working around the 'statloss' and still playing on their other account.

[Arkosh Kovasz]

It's really too late in the game to prohibit multi-clienting, but just imagine how dedicated to your characters you would be if you were only allowed 5! If we could only play one chracter at a time it would bring back that UO feel where everyone had one account and not everyone was a 7xGM everything. The economy would be better, the PK situation would be better. If only that limitation had been in place here since day one. *Dreams*

[Duke Jones]

So if we prohibit multiclienting, what about the fact that some people have three or more computers in their house? If we say they can't run more than one client on one, they run to another. Then prohibiting multiclienting is just putting the less well-off at a disadvantage or people who don't need more than one computer.

This is a very interesting point. "People who own more than one computer, have the advantage." In fact, one could draw a parallel to people who could afford to buy more than one account on OSI. A 1 computer - 1 account policy *MIGHT* help try to replicate the player community back in T2A Payshard.

OSI had no system in place to curb griefing by limiting accounts, it's unlikely that they ever even took anything about multiclienting or people having multiple acccounts into account.

The reason for this is that OSI's thinking was. "If you want to shell out money for X number of accounts, that's fine by us!" It's essentially a money issue that doesn't really exist here. You know there would be ALOT less reds in the population if they were limited to 1 computer - 1 account, because this greatly *REDUCES* the exploitation of ghosting, and the broken mechanic of Statloss.

They probably just say every seperate player account as just that, a seperate player account. Not a way for someone to ruin another person's game while working around the 'statloss' and still playing on their other account.

I disagree. I bet they say "More accounts = More money for us!" But either way, it's still an exploitation of being able to run multiple clients/accounts for one player. The only difference is that Multiple accounts was the exception on OSI, and it's more of the rule here. And the result is the rampant use of exploits due to multiple accounts and the compromise of Intent for T2A Era Mechanics.

[Arkosh Kovasz]

So if we prohibit multiclienting, what about the fact that some people have three or more computers in their house? If we say they can't run more than one client on one, they run to another. Then prohibiting multiclienting is just putting the less well-off at a disadvantage or people who don't need more than one computer.

This is a very interesting point. "People who own more than one computer, have the advantage." In fact, one could draw a parallel to people who could afford to buy more than one account on OSI. A 1 computer - 1 account policy *MIGHT* help try to replicate the player community back in T2A Payshard.

OSI had no system in place to curb griefing by limiting accounts, it's unlikely that they ever even took anything about multiclienting or people having multiple acccounts into account.

The reason for this is that OSI's thinking was. "If you want to shell out money for X number of accounts, that's fine by us!" It's essentially a money issue that doesn't really exist here. You know there would be ALOT less reds in the population if they were limited to 1 computer - 1 account, because this greatly *REDUCES* the exploitation of ghosting, and the broken mechanic of Statloss.

They probably just say every seperate player account as just that, a seperate player account. Not a way for someone to ruin another person's game while working around the 'statloss' and still playing on their other account.

I disagree. I bet they say "More accounts = More money for us!" But either way, it's still an exploitation of being able to run multiple clients/accounts for one player. The only difference is that Multiple accounts was the exception on OSI, and it's more of the rule here. And the result is the rampant use of exploits due to multiple accounts and the compromise of Intent for T2A Era Mechanics.

/uberagree

Damn....just thinking about no multiclienting on this shard gets me aroused.

[tekai]

Duke ill say it again

Most of the population here would not play if we could'nt multi-client. So you would have your 1 charecter with no one elce to play.

I was one of the people that paid for more then one account and I had a triangle of computers infront of me, and that is the gaming i wanted to emulate when i came here. I don't want to have to depend on anyone, I like being able to do EVERYTHING myself. The rest of you are simply fodder, and thats what this game is about.

You make the point that there are a lot of reds.. That is not really true. There have been mym pk Ganks, and Ace ganks, but there are still only probably a half dozen accual PK's, that PK to kill people for money instead of farming. This is a reasonable playstyle, and being that we dont have 1000+ people playing, represets a balanced play. People would get bored if they were able to farm off the hook and never get pked. People would not learn how to defend themselves and one day reach the PvP status thats required to compete in the group battles.


Even griefing pancakes is a good thing, eventually she will stop thinking "poor me" and start thinking "revenge, trickery, deciet". The important things you need to think about when playing a sandbox game such as this.

Every game from this point on in time will have people playing on more then one account, becuase generally its TO EASY to just play one charecter, and its starting to bore us power gamers.

With the new line of games coming out, i will be getting several accounts for Mortal online, and use my Keyclone program to its full extent.

[Nevermore]

Tekai has the right idea on most things.


The reason why there are plenty of reds here and on every single other free shard you'll see is because it's fun. Not because they can skirt being red by hopping on another account. We remember t2a being fun, being scared to leave town, all the fights and grudge wars against people, etc. You have to remember UO is an old game, we know everything there is to know. So we go to free shards for easy fun, which in this case is messing with people and PKing. It has nothing to do with multi-clienting or multiple accounts. I'm pretty sure that almost everyone who's red on this server joined the server with the intent of being red, regardless of any multiclienting or account limit ruiles.


Besides, UO is an easy game, if we had no multi-clienting and one account per person it wouldn't change the amount of reds. If a red was so deep in statloss and died, he could much more easily just delete his character and use razor (Which we know you dislike very much too, duke) and macro up a brand new pk quicker than any sort of statloss waitout period

[Hoots]

[quote="tekai"]Duke ill say it again

Most of the population here would not play if we could'nt multi-client. So you would have your 1 charecter with no one elce to play.

I was one of the people that paid for more then one account and I had a triangle of computers infront of me, and that is the gaming i wanted to emulate when i came here. I don't want to have to depend on anyone, I like being able to do EVERYTHING myself. The rest of you are simply fodder, and thats what this game is about.
quote]

Well, i dont know if i would agree that most of the population wouldnt play without multi... Could i accept losing 10 of my chars? Unlikely. Could i accept 10 of my chars being moved to my oldest account (1 account, 15 chars) and lose nothing but the ability to multi? Sure i could! It would suck getting used to it but in the end im not sure that wouldnt be better for the long term life of UOSA.

Im not sure if UO should be able to be solo'd as you mention you prefer to in your 2nd point. UO being soloable is very debatable.

I think something that isnt debatable is that multi-clienting provides endless benefits that 99% of us didnt see in 99. For those that did multi in 99 it was no where close to as effcient as what we have today. Multiing anything more than simple ghost ressing for healing gains was very resource intensive. So even though you could multi in 99 you could not do 1/100th of what you can do today.

[tekai]

It's not my fault that you were poor during t2a.

Learn to farm with dragons, making a tamer was one of the first things I did, and I was very good at it. I also worked nights at the time, so I was able to be online in the middle of the night.

Someone had to own those castles and rares your remember from so long ago.

Thank you Greatlakes for absolutly no staff support stoping macroing.

EZ Macros was the best program there ever was.

If there was any way to look up charecters and skills I could show you that my accounts have not been active in 10 years and I had a gm tamer, GM smith, several GM hide / healer mages, and my dexer Tekai spread out between 3 accounts.