what does "fixed" mean? currently you can recall in the middle of fights after instigating the fights. this does not seem broken to you? what does this even mean? lol. i'll use it, too.
Fixed means the problem causing high skill failure rates was addressed and the faction skill loss timer will be restored to its default value. Faction fight recalling has been mentioned by players but there are no open tickets to make changes to the heat of battle in reference to that. I am open to a discussion on that related to factions but it is not currently a work list item.
And to make my point. I had no idea Gideon purchased and used 2 name change deeds because I do not have all of his 15 character names memorized, and I have client account names masked for all but the highest level administrative functions.
Not being pked and dry looted by 5 ilililillilli's and being pked and dry looted by 5 different names may not really change my distaste for it. I saw TB having guards spawned all over their base for a long time and I read in irc that people were upset when those danky nuggets brought guards into their base. Will you be taking out guards in all bases?
The Faction that controls the town can spawn Faction Guards within the town itself. Faction bases are not part of towns but if you use an alt in an opposing faction, you can get the guards to attack you and lure them wherever you please, for now. Thus far, since the recent revival of TB this year, I have only seen us place guards outside of our base or in town at specific locations (I think bart placed some in Trinsic by his most used bank for a while), mostly for base defense versus a tamer triple boxing with a dozen nightmares. Other factions have done things like luring guards into TB base and blocking them there by placing Faction vendor NPCs on the bridge. Telamon moved the vendors south 10 tiles so the guards could wander back into GZ where they belong, and the enemy was displeased greatly. The guards they lured from Vesper all the way to their base, was likely a longer effort but still more of the same abuse of mechanics they are wont to do. The "fix" will be something on the order of restrictions in spawn rate (ie: not spawning 20 guards in 10s), and a rehoming code so if they wander too far from their spawn point or where they were ordered to go by the town faction sheriff, they will return accordingly. As for being PKed and drylooted, that is Felucca. Everyone should know that is exactly what they signed up for by playing on a non-Trammel UO shard. I would be happy to help you with some best practices and escape methods if you ever want to PM me and ask. Good luck. Furthermore, I'll be happy to rename my The Gold Sync as I wasn't really enjoying adapting a style of gameplay I wouldn't undertake had we not been subjected to it consistently for over a year.
Thanks Blaise, The way I see it, having guards in front or in your base compared to luring guards to in front / in your base is the same thing. Guards were meant to guard a base inside or out. Chris said he was making changes to guards I was wondering if he was taking them out. Yeah I get pked a lot but most don't dry loot except the ililililili's and I saw in irc they publicly ran a player off the shard.
No, they weren't. Guards were meant to guard sigil monoliths and players in towns. Two of the bases are not even in/near town and therefore it would be entirely imbalanced to allow guards in bases. We can't put guards in our base and no other faction can either. If you want to spend the time abusing it though, you can use alts as I said earlier, to get guards where they do not belong in any regard (in bases). As for the player being 'run off the shard' the guy was blowing a gasket and calling everyone cunts. Pretty sure he would have found his way off the shard regardless of the people who didn't appreciate being called cunts repeatedly by a raging little kid.
Sigil monoliths are in the base right? So guards that guard sigil monoliths would have to guard a base...? Sorry don't mean any offense but your logic does not validate. Any player being pked and dry looted would call the pks cunt I'm sure. I was in Moonglow yesterday and saw some Shadow Lord Danky Nuggets kill some True Britanians guys and those TB guys ressed and started calling them scum and cunts etc. The shadow lords didn't say anything and just kept fighting. I held much respect for them seeing that.
Town monoliths. I'm sorry I wasn't absolutely clear. There are monoliths for each town in each faction stronghold. They look just like the ones in the 'center' of each Faction town. Those are where guards belong, not inside the base. Base defense is for players (and their tames, lol). Any player being PKed and drylooted should be understanding of the game they are playing. It's not rocket science and it's not new. Being new to a community, jumping in the main channel of communication and calling people names while you rant like a child is likely to result in being treated the same. Quite frankly, the guy didn't even get trashed talked back that bad. One guy told him to shut up and tone it down. He flipped out more and quit, which was definitely going to happen anyway, whether any fairy godmothers believe otherwise or not. lol, I'm glad that one experience with them bolstered your respect. I assure you they are just as profane and quite regularly, death or not.
Faction Guards My problem with faction guards it there is no cooldown whatsoever between uses, which quickly becomes an abused mechanic. If you have a macro to place 10 faction guards in a split second, then be able to 'fire' those guards once the fight has ended, go to a different location and spam guards to fight as players once again, it's something that needs addressed. "Said" faction has been taking advantage of this broken mechanic for a while now. Furthermore, faction guards are 100% not attackable by player summons or pets. So in essence, it's the equivalent to being able to summon a massive amount of mares on the fly to act as your squad, yet those summons are not able to be killed in the same fashion. Heat of Battle I typically disagree with Liberation on most counts, but I am in complete agreement with the need to remedy the failed mechanic of the aggressor being able to freely attack and instantly recall or hop through a gate at their will. This is always a topic of discussion with my team. This is why 'heat of combat' has been implemented elsewhere. On somewhat the very strange reverse side of that, here is an example of another frustrating mechanic that I think needs addressed: Faction member steals faction sigil and runs to a public moongate. He is attacked by an opposing faction member right before getting to the gate. He is still able to freely hop through the gate as intended, however the attacker is then not allowed to enter the gate (I want to say for at least 30 seconds or so). Why this even exists doesn't even honestly make sense to me, but I will have to assume that is due to unfamiliarity of how the mechanics 'should' work and how they work elsewhere. The simple fix would be to implement the same 'heat of battle' timer for moongates / recall for both members (Orange / Enemies). Name Changes The whole thing around the name changes, what is the reason that a name change deed is simply a place holder that requires you to page a GM in the first place? It is not like that on other shards and you can simply make your name change via the deed on the fly. I will have to assume it is kept like that as a form of policing a name prior to committing, which is the reasoning for causing so much staff interaction, but that's just an assumption. My opinion is that being able to name your character whatever you want (within the confines of the 'LAW') is one of the nice parts of UO. Of course, this is just my spitballing and reguirgitating ideas. I know Telamon is a busy guy and coding these mechanics, is not always easy (although easy to raise your pitch fork and scream burn it down).
Faction guards cost town silver and that is finite, however excessive if it hasn't been used much. I agree they should be able to engage with tames and should have time-limitations on hiring/firing.
It's annoying that TB's bad behavior (they are the lilililis) is being used as a rationale to take away one of our factions in tactics. We don't grief newbies on our faction characters, and we aren't the ones driving people away from the server. Changing our naming scheme messes up one of our targeting tactics, makes it easier for them to call, and actually rewards TB for their bad behavior with the lililis. You should address the actual problem, which is people overhunting dungeons on their reds.
Please, I've read enough complaints about Dank's in IRC in the past few days just the same. I find it hilarious that someone that does this: could ever make any type of remark regarding PKing in a negative manner. When I first started here I could go perhaps an hour in any given dungeon before a gaggle of TT came through a gate to PK me. You guys may have slowed that down a bit in recent months but spare us the holier than thou lecture.
This is getting old. Telamon implemented a new policy because it is something he sees need done. Here is the most recent pic of SL (oops they are on their blues).. guess they don't grief on their faction chars, but their alts are free to do what they want. When this episode happened I saw plenty of new players ask why they are dying at a freesist party in IRC. I will keep hunting in dungeons on my pk. We don't overhunt dungeons. You will most likely get pked and looted and then you won't see us around for awhile.