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

Ghosts not being able to see players seems silly.

I couldn't count the times I've been rezzed by a friendly passerby.

That solution totally removes this mechanic. A classic mechanic and form of interaction in UO!

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You can check for ghosts, but what can you do to stop them from fulfilling their objective? Nothing short of reporting them.

Killing a bot does prevent their primary objective for a time at least, even if they're ressed again, they can be killed as many times as it takes. No such consideration takes places with ghosts in dungeons.

Basically players have tools ingame to circumvent ID bots, but the only thing you can do with ghosts is send your own ghost in to check first, but typically most players will only see the ghost after the PK squad has rolled through.

I believe it has to do with intent, and griefing. There have been numerous threads on this about new players complaining about ghosts camping dungeons spots, effectively allowing them to come in as soon as a new player starts farming. Despite what some players believe, the end result was that ghosting a spawn was akin to griefing, I honestly don't agree with this too much, but I can see Telamon's frustration from having to answer hundreds of requests/posts over the years as to why ghosts are allowed to watch spawns, finally culminating to the point where it's outright against the rules. ID bots are not a form of 100% unrisked, unattended, unstoppable griefing which is why I believe they are valid gameplay strategy.

Even if you know there's a ghost, there's not much you can do about it, you can either go to a new spot or farm knowing full well a squad of PK's is watching you, waiting for the best opportunity to plunder your hard earned loot.

I'm not 100% sure if this is entirely limited to dungeons, but if you ghosted an overworld spawn and someone reported you, I figure it's likely Telamon would take action. Fortunately this does not occur to often, as most overland spawn is less than desirable for such groups.

But ultimately it comes down to gameplay, ghosts cannot really be countered in any real way, you can only see them with another ghost. ID bots have many counters, don't actively contribute to griefing, and the intent is not to deprive/kill other players, but rather to gain a timer for something that might happen.

@Deacon

Yeah this is the conclusion that we seem to be at.

A system can be developed I think, but it needs to be simple. I think involving skills and such is too complicated for such a problem, no one wants to take 100 points in a skill to combat ghosts, no one wants to take an extra character just to combat ghosts.

This solution provides an automated system that doesn't affect any other mechanic, but does make it so that an AFK bot ghosting must be attended and replaced every X minutes. It may make it too tedious to bother with, especially if we adjusted timers perfectly.

Even a timer that progressively get shorter - say, first timer teleports you at 30min, if you die again within the next 30min, the timer teleports you at 25... and so on.
This would also leave a large sparkling trail of candy for Telamon to identify and address.

Wow. I don't even know you. I know OF you, but I've never had a single encounter with you or any of your cohorts cept for maybe a single sale which coincidentally, if it's the same sale I'm thinking of, I had to remove you from my towers ban list so you could make a pickup. Says everything I need to know.
Would appreciate keeping your paranoid delusions to yourself, as much as I avoid the drama it seems some people just have a disposition where they can't survive without it.

Not quite, could call it burnout and dialing things back down from 11, possibly retirement to the ocean, but I'm mostly around for events and scrolls these days.
I gave up long ago on farming boss statues, decided I can just buy them if I really want them that badly.

TLDR - We need spirit speak implemented to see ghosts, and so we can ban ghosts, as it's a pain in the ass to kill a character just to check the house is secure before starting the amib/tamer quest/xmas scroll.
I'd also support ghosts being unable to see the living if they aren't in war mode, cos if someone wants a res, they'll be running in war mode to be seen.
As for pulling ghosts to a shrine, well after 30mins theres no real reason to be still dead other than wanting a spy somewhere, but with no risk that's a lil iffy if you ask me, can do the same with a stealther, but there's risk with that, plus you need to move slower.
As for the house sign item ID gump, don't care, doesn't affect me. Heard that it was implemented to counter dyne's ghost script when [UO] was making timers public, but alas unfounded rumours and the like even if the timescale does add up, but at the end of the day it's a method to counter non razor scipting and I'm all for it as a countering tactic.

Do we all believe that the rares timers should be somewhat random, as they are now, so that people cannot camp them?

As someone who, in the past, has bot'd the crap out of UO with Razor...I have no issues with doing it again from an ability point of view. It was, however, a cheapened UO experience and I eventually ruined that aspect of the game for myself. Took the fun right out of it after I got past the " #Winning " phase.

I know some people look at it as "I'll BOT this aspect of the game so I can play that aspect of the game," and I've been there and found that I eventually hit that wall where the fun disappears. Every time I find the "fun" again, its through interacting with players....not Razor. BOT'ing is detrimental to the long term sustainability of a shard on every level and should be, in my opinion, coded out whenever possible.

I think I agree with the sentiments of this thread's OP in that UO should be designed so that you have to interact more....not withdraw to macros via Razor. Its the interactions that make the game great, not hitting Play in Razor. Perhaps this is a fundamental difference in how I view the game given my past experiences. I know of all the best times I've had in UO, only ~1% of them came via Razor macros (House Drop and Scorched Earth Greetings). The rest were good ole fashioned player interactions and 2x clicking.

At the very least, given the track record of player responses to BOT'ing, you'd think from a staff point of view you'd want to code it out of the game as much as possible just to not have to deal with the constant barrage of complaints about it.

Randomizing timers is a simple tweak, so it just comes down to a decision on the vision of what UO should be.

Take Care,

~ L / S

Pretty much this 100x over. Really nothing else to add, I'm now aware that both Chris and Telamon heavily favor the botted version of UO so there's really no other choice than to find other things where it's more minimized.

Everyone that was able to make a coherent point/counterpoint debate and talk like an adult, thank you.

I don't know about you guys but I'm going to conserve my energy for a while. I'm going to save it for a "there's never any reagents to buy and this ain't fair" thread, which should be coming along shortly.

I'm going to study and prepare myself to discuss razor automation and maybe even the recent town killing nerfs.

I hope I do well. I am nervous.

Godspeed, mighty gnome.

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That other server's rare timers are not exact times, nor are they here. They use "windows".

Timer Example: 7 days to 10 days, with a minimum of 7 days and a maximum of 10 days.

If you knew the last gathered spawn time you know that the next one will not spawn for at LEAST 7 days. Then you have a 3 day "window" to camp the spawn to grab the rare. If you do not get the rare in that "window", either your information was wrong or someone nabbed it while you weren't looking.

This allows you to not waste time "camping" a rare when it has zero chance of spawning (similar to not camping an IDOC when it has zero chance of collapsing for hours yet), but you still must "camp" or "check" the spawn during its "window". There is no "exact" time for rares spawns with timers. With houses, there is no "window". There is an "exact" time for the IDOC if you got the timer. With rares, if you got the timer, you still have a "window" to contend with.

I gathered 1,000's of rares with Rammar on that server, trust me on this one. This is literally what caused me to start to hate BOT'ing. The database-driven website with all the time stamps and windows is still online. Knowing what rares to not camp and when allows you to prioritize the resources of your team...which is usually enough to make anyone else give up as they waste countless hours and days camping rares that have zero chance of actually spawning.

Using timer windows and switching up those windows a bit every year or so is all it takes to keep things somewhat "random" and less camp-able. It usually just takes editing a few lines in an XML file, but not sure how its specifically done here. I would imagine a version of XMLSpawner is being used here...though I believe house timers use something different code-wise.

Note: Rare Timers are different for different rares. Some of the lesser rare spawns may be a random daily spawner.

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While the random timer enables accessibility to the rare hunting to anybody, the AFK gump prevents automated scavenging and nerfs camping on UOR. It's doing an extremely good job. I have nearly never seen anything else than attended players. Maybe two years ago, there was a afk camper in Wind, but that's it.

The IDOC timer acquisition on the other side is done mainly unattended and AFK. There is neither a AFK gump for the use of Item ID nor noteworthy randomized IDOC times themselves. That's the whole point of this thread...

The collusion is unreal

I have seen a couple in Hedge Maze and Wind mostly.

i dont understand what sort of player interactions you are going to have recalling to all of the greatly worn houses, quickly clicking a sign, and then recalling to the next...

except for the old "who the hell got ID nerfed"

*waits for the light bulb to turn on*

No one would be bothering to click the signs if the IDOC Time became an IDOC "Window" that was long enough to not make it useful to know when it went IDOC.

Then people would be hanging about more at the houses ( instead of recalling in at the exact moment ), which would attract other players, and probably lead to many "interactions".

Those "interactions" could be everyone shooting the breeze and getting to know each other or.....a complete blood bath. Who knows? Welcome to UO. You'll probably be the same.

Some people would, however, have to find another use for their fish steaks. First world problems.

this assumption that a 4 hour window would suddenly lead to 20 more players hanging around every single idoc because there is now a window?

yeah.. the first one or 2 idocs.

then they realise how shit the change is and gives up.

people have better things to do than literally watch a screen waiting for a house to drop... dont they?

A window would just arise to ghosting and setting up macros to check if the house is still there. As soon as it's not, sends out a guild message.

And if people get ghosting changed for the overland, people will have random characters w/ hiding doing the same thing.

Once it's IDOC, you don't need to do things that will require a gump response to make sure it's there or not.