AFK Gump? Please at least try to read before voting, this is why we ended up with Trump

Once you give into mob rule (in a sense) on one issue it is very easy for the players to develop a fear that if you rally enough voices to your side you can defeat players you do not agree with not on the field of battle, but in the field of public opinion. I watched this play out on my last server as former/inactive players endlessly lobbied for changes to a server that they barely played on. Their desire to "beat" the players they did not like was so strong that they would lobby endlessly for the server to change. Don't like the Pvp'ers and the automated events? Lobby endlessly to get them removed. And they were successful. Don't like unbreakable blessed items? Lobby endlessly for new blessed items to be breakable punishing all future players to bless and item.

We are always open to sound ideas. But "one player is to good at a known mechanic, that mechanic must be changed" is not a valid reason for change to the server. Additionally the assuming keeps being made that somehow this cancels out other players ability to get the same timer, camp the same decay, obtain the same loot, and place the same houses. A timer is a small part of the overall house decay process.

I have personally watched the player in question, and even asked to be shown his macros. It requires a great deal of manual targeting to set up and is very susceptible to other players interfering with. Even without something that complex a player who wants to time a house decay can achieve the exact same results with the following macro

Use Skill Item ID
Target House Sign
Delay 2 Seconds
Take Razor Screenshot
Delay 120 seconds
Loop

So my question still stands. If a player can run a macro to get times on 6 houses at once. And a player without the same razor skills can still easily get a timer on a single house of interest. From that point forward how exactly does player A. and Player B. not have the exact same chance at success at the house decay.

The answer of course is all the work they do after obtaining a timer. Is it fair to players who put the time in to be punished in this manner? In any situation?

This highlights my point about TheoryCrafting and Fearmongering being way worse than anything that actually happens. I will guarantee you that in the 6 years of UOR existing not a single player has attempted and succeeded with this method. On a server where you can place over items/players maybe. Even should you stay online and try to macro place a house you would be caught by our AFK system that monitors for things like a player trying to spam house placement for 15 minutes straight.

But please do not imprint the cheating that happens elsewhere with the mechanics here. This is exactly why we resist change in these situations. The reasons the changes are demanded can be based on situations that don't even exist. Simply fears from other servers and the abuses that take place there.

Again you are making assumptions about players in this thread. I don't play here, and I hate IDOC's personally. As the owner of this server ever time a house decays it means I have lost a player. It is a playstyle I used to enjoy as a player. However it is something that saddens me as a server administrator.

All of the methods that you need to be successful at camping house decays have been shown in this thread. Anyone can get started in this trade. However it is not timers, or macros or anything else that leads to success camping house decays. It is teamwork and trust between a group of players working towards a common goal. It is one of the harder things to do in any online game, it is very time consuming and also commonly vilified by other players as a negative.

Will it be easy to compete against Vets in any situation? Of course not. But it can be done. When I played I faced some of the best Pvp'ers on the server camping decays (former server) and I knew i could not beat them fighting. So I made a ton of stealthers, all with the same name, and make sure one was always in the thieves guild. And once I have them convinced they would not get murder counts for killing me. I would send in the clones to farm murder counts until the cows came home. I would snipe house spots out from under them. I fought them tooth and nail. Until we developed mutual respect for each other and joined forces.

Like all things in UO, if you put the time in, you can be successful.

We consider everything Cheapsuit and we strive for the server to be fair for all. Idea/Changes have to stand on their own merit. Not simply because players or the staff demand a change. This higher barrier for change has protected UOR from wildly varying mechanics to try to solve problems/control the players.

We will however always resist against changes based on punishing the successful teamwork of other players.

And again keep in mind I am speaking very generally about the server a whole. If players wish to put forth a valid change to help the server then it needs to exist on its own merrits as improving the server for all and meeting our mantra of rewarding players and not encourating cheating or illegal 3rd party applications.

The most recent example of this was the change to allow players to combine wand charges. This change helped us defeat 3rd party applications that allowed players to auto heal themselves by reading the charges available on wands. And allows our players who strategically used wands with razor or manually an advantage by being able to merge small charge wands into larger ones to be more effective in the field. This change removed tedium from an aspect of the world, rewarded players playing fair and removed a feature from applications we do not allow here. This is the logic that goes into changes on Renaissance. Not "I run the place and deem it so".

A. No one can time anything down to the second. I've made that pretty clear.

B. Characters checking house signs are not immortal, this is not trammel. You. Can. Kill. Them. The only way to get a timer on a house, without watching the screen is to be vulnerable to other players interaction. This is a valid point if we allowed ghosts to click house signs till the cows come home. We do not allow that unattended.

C. And if they are "AFK BOTS" like everyone claims this effectively takes away their timer.... Unless they rez their character and restart a macro... like an... attended player.

D. No one has yet to answer the core question of how getting a timer on an IDOC house magically results in profits that you can realize by simply logging out once you have the timer and never logging in again. We cannot proceed to "explore" the topic any further unless someone can explain, in detail, how getting a timer on a house, and that alone, rewards a player in a financial manner.

E. Even with the best, most accurate timer on a house, you cannot time a house decay exactly. The system is designed to have a base level of randomness in it.

Several servers tried this, and it was a massive failure. Angel island being one of the most notable failures to have a NPC at the bank announcing IDOC's as a vain attempt to force activity.

You punish players who put the time in to track decays, and reward the players who put the least amount of effort with the expectation of a reward. This is the complete opposite of the spirit of Renaissance.

Again I feel like I am mentioning this in every single post. Please explain how someone can get an IDOC timer under trammel rules with zero risk and then someone log out and profit from that information. This is like saying I passed my drivers test, went home, and woke up to a new, fully paid for sports car in my driveway the next day. There are some steps everyone is leaving out in their race to demonize a playstyle.