I understand how you feel and mostly I agree. I think it takes something from the immersion of the game when you can go straight from the stables where fluffy was waiting to the bottom of hythloth. Although this is a whole can of worms and I don't want to go further into that here and now. I imagine you all already know how I feel about the event center and things of that nature.
This is horrible. I hate it. I loathe it. If it is patched in I will spam Telamon with so much whining that Tater would think it too much. It's great that you feel like running around the lands sometime, but don't force that desire on everyone else. Sigil runs are long enough, especially when you have to run multiple sigs. Running all 8 sigs can take 45 minutes to an hour of just running, under current conditions. It's boring as shit, and most sigil runs are unopposed. They only turn into chases in the extreme minority, usually all of the bad guys are either dead or not around when you're running sigs. It's also not era accurate. You could use public gates on OSI. Don't fix what isn't broken.
Gideon, I really think you drank the koolaid. Those statements may be true for you, but I know they're not true for the people you play with. I get dry looted every time I die. I get res killed every time I'm stupid enough to res around oranges. The people on your team definitely do that shit. Sorry you don't believe me, but I've experienced these things directly. I also take issue with this statement. I have never denied using cheap tactics, and I haven't seen anyone in SL doing that either. My message has always been that everyone uses cheap tactics and there isn't a problem with that. It's infinitely frustrating to me when people harp about how horrible and cheap we are while glossing over their own shortcomings. Here's a really really recent example. During the latest sigil defense, we brought in guards. We brought in guards because Amfekk and Bog were abusing the ddos protection (which made them unkillable) to bum rush the sigils again and again. We "killed" amfekk 10-20 times that night to have him teleport back to town. We killed at least five thieves just rushing for the sigils hoping to get teleported away with them. Whenever anyone says anything about it, they gloss over TB abusing the ddos protection and go straight to how we're terrible for bringing guards in - completely overlooking the fact that we would have been unable to defend against the ddos protection abuse without them.
Long enough? Seriously? What run in all of UO takes more than 5 minutes (especially with ZERO mount fatigue)? This is suppose to be a team game, team effort and era accuracy is entirely moot in the name of perfection. Vendor/guard turrets were accurate and also utterly terrible and continually abused. Forcing players to actually travel to their destinations is right in line with the immersion intended for UO and providing shortcuts only suits to keep players from the rest of the game world. If you don't like traveling in UO, don't run sigils. The change would literally only impact the distance on a handful of towns anyway. Telamon is already accustomed to incessant whining from various parties so I'm sure he'll have no problem ignoring you more. Gideon, amfekk ghosts and people definitely dryloot, but mostly SL because payback is expected after how they've chosen to treat their opponents. Otherwise your post is pretty spot on. I've been trying to encourage no-loot for three years because it simply = more fights. SL has been on a long run of button pushing so the payback isn't likely to stop for them for a long time. I still don't dry loot unless it's fairly obvious they are not coming back and I'm generally only going to res-kill if it's someone in the base trying to take sigils. This isn't the same for everyone in TB. Also Mes, I wholly agree the event center needs to auto-kick on timer after events and the gates need to disappear literally right when any event starts. Hell, I'd even go so far as to disallow trade in any form in the event center, including dropping things on the ground, if possible.
When you log on a faction character, you are consenting to combat. Whether your on a crafter or not. When you scout the towns on a factioner and a gank recalls in, why should you get to take your consent and say, na nevermind and mash recall. RUN. RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! Or call in backup. Crafters can run just like everyone else. Also just use your head. If your on a pvp factioner, you need to be on high alert. The same should hold true for a faction crafter. Be sneaky about when you go to town to do your crafting, bring others to protect you, etc.
I doubt you've ever run sigs alone or with 1-2 people. It takes about 30 minutes for two people to run 8 sigs from minax to SL base. It's an annoyingly long time. If you feel like running around the woods, please go do that. Please don't force it on everyone else because you're the one that's feeling nostalgic for it.
Also I don't understand why everyone acts like looting is this horrible act of terrorism. You loot people you kill. That's part of UO. If you don't like looting, there is CTF and tournaments and all kinds of other stuff. Just let factions be factions, please. We don't need hand holding in all corners of the game. I assume my loot is gone whenever I die (and it usually is) Res killing is the same. It's common sense to keep the people you've killed dead, or they'll restock and get back in the fight. It happened to us constantly when we weren't res killing, it's annoying as shit. I also get res killed every time I res around oranges (that's why I don't res around oranges) and bear it without complaint. Once again, if you dislike res killing, there are plenty of other pvp options.
also w/r/t looting: stat loss is 5 minutes long. you need to loot someone to prevent them from instantly re-joining a fight.
This is specifically why I don't loot. I WANT them to restock and get back in the fight and a lot of people play similarly. I would never go so far as to expect this however, and there is a problem with not looting in that people somehow get so used to not being looted that they take great offense to it when it does happen. This is silly. Go out there with the expectation of being ganked and looted.
You can speculate about how I run sigils all you like. Again, you make brazen accusations with literally nothing to back it up. There are literally only two towns that require moongate travel and the time it takes to get from base to monolith is really not a great deal different without the gate.
DDOS protection goes both ways. Your telling me your guys didn't ever get too low on HP and get teleported away?
Prove it. I'm sorry none of you follow Mes' in regards to not making this a pissing match. GG as usual SL. Gideon, for the most part we don't. It does happen and I have been in mumble when other folks have mentioned having ghosts, but generally speaking it has been in strongholds standing next to enemy ghosts. As for looting, I have no concern for the value of the loot but the time wasted to get back to fighting (remember, the fun part). Honestly when JLeeM cleaned me out the other day I figured "Whatever, he probably does actually need the gear/supplies". The rich folks I'm like "Guess they really don't want to fight more" because there's only so much time I'm going to spend suiting back up before I'm bored of suiting back up. I'll fight over and over and over again until the time spent restocking outweighs the time spent fighting. Then it's not worth it and I'll go do something else. Yeah, I die a lot. lol
It's impossible to win a fight if the people you kill just get back up and rejoin it instantly. During the no-looting days we would leave when we died, but the bad guys (who often outnumbered us anyway) would just loot and rejoin the battle. It's not a fun experience. Looting is a part of the game anyway, I don't understand why people are so opposed to it. We had one death. They had 10-20 at least. They also knowing they were invincible bum rushed the sigs trying to get a steal off with no regard for their own lives. Our guy was fighting legitimately and trying not to die and just happened to. There was no abuse on our end, but they were taking advantage of the fact they knew they were unkillable. "You can't prove we did anything bad so we must not have" is another one of the attitudes ruining the scene.
