Patch 56: September 16th 2014 - Renaissance Achievements! CTF v2!

I have a GM lockpicker on OSI's Siege Perilous which I played from server birth until 2002 full time and then occasionally until about 2010.

There are a few discrepancies in how RunUO works. As you point out, most traps were spawning not permanent, although I am pretty certain they mostly spawned in the same tile. The green gas traps were poison and if you triggered one, or removed trap on one, it disappeared and respawned later. They were also hidden until you detected them or trod on them. At high detect skill, they would be revealed automatically as you approached which was very cool.

Also detect hidden revealed which chests were trapped in a dungeon as far as your detect hidden would work. I have yet to find a RunUO server on which this happens. Although you can reveal PEOPLE in dungeons, detect hidden lighting up [Trapped] in red (or green for poison) over a chest/crate only happens in town!

On Siege, you could not unlock a chest and then step back and open it and you couldn't step away and Telekenesis on it like you can on regular servers. You had to have the remove trap skill of the appropriate level for the chest. Although we all hated this when that amendment was brought in for Siege, it actually makes sense when you think about it. I'm not saying that should be brought in here, but the detect hidden should be made to work in dungeons and the floor traps should be hidden until revealed.

Well, I finally got around to trying a CTF out here.

My first thought was that the teams should be randomized. No, I don't care if you can't play with your buddies. I've seen how this ends up on a few other servers. Its a crap idea to let the players pick the teams.

My second thought was on the way damage was awarded.

Within the CTF gameplay, you routinely get into stalemate fights where each side is just healing through and the other side can't seem to kill their opponent. You start to time your opponents heals and know when to drop your delayed combo. You kill your opponent....yet you get no credit for it because you did not deal out the most damage. It is irrelevant that the person who "dealt out the most damage" couldn't finish anyone off and that it was you timing the drops that actually kills the person.

I don't know how many times I picked off people in the latest CTF, dozens, but got credit for 1 kill the entire match. Its not stealing kills when the kill would never happen without your timed dropped.

Anywho, thought it completely absurd that surgically picking people off and being smart about timing spell drops is punished while a dexxer just sits there swinging away with a helping healer and gets all the kill points.

Overall Thoughts on CTF: I was quite disappointed in them.

Oh, I didn't know that was how the kills were awarded, interesting. I suppose one could argue though that the person who got them to 40%, or whatever you needed them to be at to finish them off, was equally as important as you.

Maybe the best system would be the one we have with the boss monsters, where the highest damager gets the best chance at getting the kill, and other damagers get some other percentage chance.

True, the kill never would have happened without a deathblow. However the kill equally would not have happened without the person whittling them down. I personally like the "call of duty" solution to this: the deathblow dealer gets the kill and the other damagers get assists.

(Yes, I know this systrm did not originate in call of duty...)

The more I think about this, the more I don't find the complaint warranted. Here are my recent CTF scores:

Tank mage: average = 7.8
5 kills
7 kills
9 kills
7 kills
11 kills

Lumberjack: average = 9.8
13 kills
8 kills
4 kills
14 kills

Much of this depends on teammates and general team balance, but I actually prefer playing the tank mage. I find him to be a better teammate than just going around auto-attacking guys with my lumberjack. But you can very certainly kill plenty of people with a mage.

If you're worried about racking up the most kill points, bring a dexer perhaps. If you want to try to help your team win, keep picking people off with spells. There's a bunch of ways to play in the CTF, I like it a lot and I haven't even tried being a flag-capturer, a Wall-of-Stoner, or a healer.

Fuckin' A right Dalavar!
If I'm going to be a runner, I'll bring a dexxer with enough gear to handle it and generally roll with 1 or 2 other folks so we can spread out the potential targets when we get to an enemy base.
If I'm not running, I'll be hanging back around the flag on a mage looking to waste anyone who comes in the room. Generally speaking, this does not require more than one other person.

That being said, I've never cared about kills or deaths in any objective type game. This is the nature of the game. I will die a lot to get the flags and try to kill anyone impeding that objective. Otherwise, they are just distractions from goal. Granted, I occasionally take to the distraction and attack people who are just being annoying, but otherwise, I'm all about that flag, bout that flag, no kills.


It's really not that hard to communicate, even with strangers, to try and come up with a strategy. If you have at least ONE other person on your team that will coordinate with you, you are going to do better. Can we please stop pretending like teams and encouraging and/or enticing teamwork is a bad thing?

I would say more attention to the "assists" would be a good compromise.

Why not just have a damage column?

That wouldn't solve this complaint because it would track pretty closely with the Kills column..

my submission would be that CTF's don't exist to award skill

this is an issue moreso with poorly-set expectation than it is with the actual system

I'd like to request a color for the CTF Teams be replaced. The orange color is the default Razor/UO Enemy color and really made things confusing during a recent match. I know that I can change the huing of that in my clients, but I would imagine that its something that should just be changed in general as that is the default for everyone.

Thoughts?

I know Valrick would like to see Purple.

I agree.

I suggest a hue of purple, similar to the one your name is in your profile picture

I already did, four weeks ago:


I guess you just don't think it works well enough. However, I daresay after playing with fiddler and my RunUO instance at home, this was the best I could come up with and YES, I did test other colors that were not purple. The only other option is yellow, which tends to be MUCH brighter than the other hues, which is why I didn't suggest it.

Not only that, but the four faction colors are red, green, blue and purple. It's perfectly fitting, makes the most sense and damn if it doesn't look great.

I was trying to think of how to give that "Assist" guy a trophy and I was thinking that it could just be an average of all points for an "All-Around" Trophy, perhaps? I see a lot of matches where 1 guy will be 1 kill less than a teams's leader and a hair under their team's leader in healing. We all know a guy that does that well in both categories contributed a lot. Perhaps a trophy for that, assuming some minimum threshold of points in the categories of healing and killing, could be considered?

Dunno, just trying to think of a way to say "good job" to the guy that helps out the entire team when needed.

I personally feel like it would be healthy to give everyone who plays CTF (with IP restrictions enabled...) to get a single piece of platinum for playing. This way, even if you suck, you get a nice tip for efforts. Leave the trophies in for the MVPs because that's cool and gives the "participants" something to strive for.

Hooray! Hopefully player characterss AFK in their own (small or other) houses will no longer come back to a grey screen because someone EQed them for counts!

I hope the haters can see how much work you do @Chris/Telamon!