UO:R Siege Perilous

I was thinking to myself a few days ago, how cool it would be to see a Siege Perilous mirror of this shard's build. I never really played SP back in the day but the concept sounds great.
If you are unfamiliar, here is the UOGuide pertaining to the Siege Perilous Ruleset

What I propose, regardless of how well it is received or liked by any, is that perhaps on the 2 year anniversary of UO:R, an SP replica be launched. Tailor the SP Ruleset to meet the goals of UO:R (History Perfected) as I feel some things in SP may have been in appropriate. However, at a base level, force the use of Razor to connect, with Feature Negotiation turned on and literally disable macros. I suppose there shouldn't be an issue with Hotkeys for certain item uses because it shouldn't be a painful experience, just a challenging one.

The main detractions from such suggestions (as I've seen on other shard discussions of the same nature) are the removal of the SP players from the primary non-SP shard.
My answer to that is that it is strictly limited to one account and one character, per player. Most folks aren't going to spend the majority of their time there, but even if they do, so what?

I think there is a strong calling for a shard of this nature and as a sister shard to UO:R, I think it would be a fantastic option or alternative.
In all reality I don't think it very likely to happen, but in the very least I thought it would be a fun discussion to have here on UO:R forums.

What say you?

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have fun when all of your equip breaks in an hour or two and your tools wear out in 10 uses I never was a fan except for the hero/evil system and stealing after it was nerfed on the other servers

Wouldn't this detract from the number of people to interact with on the regular shard at any given time?

Seems to be the same as adding more lands and further dispersing players, except in this case you really have no chance of interacting with them. UOR is a good server, but it needs full dedication from the admins in order to continue growing. A Siege Perilous shard would only detract from that.

On a personal note, I wouldn't play it. I've grinded enough skills over my lifetime. It's plenty enough for me to do it on this shard again. To play on a shard with slow and capped skillgain along with the inability to macro skills just doesn't seem fun.

However, the idea of limiting people to only one account is a good idea if this were to go forward. I wouldn't limit people to just one character though. You will severely limit options this way.

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It would seem most reasonable to me to at least allow macroing then, otherwise a good chunk of time is going to be devoted to only skillgain.

Perhaps allow two characters though? Not many are going to just want to craft, or just pvp, or just pvm. It will still force interaction while allowing people a little breathing room for what they want to do.

Exactly, we're just tossing some ideas out there. Like honestly, you might band together with a few friends to split up some responsibilities of skill, such as certain crafts that would be essential for higher level activities. The entire premise of SP as I gather is the brutal hardcore mode, hence the increase costs and time required.
I'd probably rock a warrior with some blacksmithing skills to repair my armor and weapons and perhaps craft good ones someday.

It is not for everyone. The reason UO has lasted this long in all honesty is probably how easy it really is to train up. The truly hardcore crowd is very very small, much like our little group of naturalists. As such, in time, it would be truly such a small portion of the population who played there it wouldn't be very noticeable. I would be happy to sign an NDA with staff for a copy of their RunUO build so I can host it myself also. Whatever works, I just wanted to kick the idea ball around and see what floats.

As someone who played Siege Perilous for quite some time -- I'm against this. No need to split up the playerbase we have when it's just now startin' to fill the land.

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I agree.

Hence the suggestion for something a year (or even more) from now. When the vets are looking for a little something extra to do and the hardcore players out there who miss old-era SP and just don't play freeshards because no good one's exist, it would draw more people to UOR in general.
While most of the negative arguments are geared toward fragmenting the playerbase, I hardly think that would be the case. As I guess, the number of people inclined to do such a thing is a negligble percentage of the existing base.

Not that I don't understand the concern but it's not a great reason for not providing something people in the UO community (not just UOR) have desired for some time.
Anyway, thanks for the input.

Sounds fun, I would likely give it a shot. I missed the Siege Perilous days and always thought the ruleset was interesting.

Completely disabling Razor macros may be more pain than its worth. Though perhaps not as robust, there are plenty other programs out there that can macro. Gideon's idea of anti-AFK gumps all over the place sounds like it could work, but it could also get tedious. That said, if you're playing a no-macro Siege Perilous-esque server, you've likely got no problem with tedious tasks in the first place, heh.

Siege Perilous in a nutshell:

You cannot sell to vendors and they sell everything, including regs, at an EXTREMELY inflated price.

Also -- reds can come into town as long as they don't attack anyone, but if you attack them you're fair game.

That's about it -- it's silly.

Warning: Text Wall Collision Eminent in 3. . . 2. . . 1. . .

I fully support this!

I've played on more than half a dozen different free servers since I left Siege. With the exception of the Angel Island Siege Perilous copy and UO Primitive/Purely Primitive (which made the Siege ruleset look like Trammel) there have always been people that brought up the possibility of a Siege ruleset change or addition to each of these shards. In fact, threads like this one that I've seen in the past have always been very lively and/or heated. This clearly shows that there is a demand for such a server.

First, let me make it clear to those of you who didn't play Siege or click Blaise's link that the two most important points to the Siege Perilous ruleset are the one character limitation and RoT (rate over time) skill gain. Many people aren't aware or don't properly recall that these features were much more responsible for what made Siege Perilous great than any others. If you can have multiple characters there is no need to consider the other differences. Period.

In addition, the RoT skill gain makes the use of macros for skill gain a complete non-point. The RoT skillgain system detailed in Blaise's link is not the original or era-accurate version, however. More research would be required (I'm not certain that the information from UOguide is accurate as per current rules.) With the original RoT skillgain macroing a skill makes no difference. You're eligible for a skill gain after a certain period of time that increases the higher the skill. Once this time has elapsed, you will gain a skill point the next time you make an action that could yield a gain. A lot of people dislike this idea but, in reality, this RoT skillgain system can be very convenient for the more casual player and much more satisfying for quite a few others. It's all very easy, it just takes a lot of time but not actual playtime. Everyone that thinks this sounds like a horrible grind could just log in and collect their RoT skill gains just like they collect BODs. (You can GM skills like taming and poisoning in under 1000 skill attempts, theoretically.)

I also think the detractors here (including my longtime Siege guildmate, Vlar) might not be seeing the whole picture, let alone the possibilities. Many of the people that I've tried to lure here are people I knew from Siege and most just weren't interesed. Most also suggested that they'd certainly be interested if the Siege ruleset was used. I think we could actually see a boost to the regular shard activity if we implemented a Siege Perilous-style sister shard. Particularly if implemented correctly.

Recall that Siege Perilous was supposed to be the veteran shard. One needed a "veteran" (700 skillpoints) character and, I believe, a month of account age. A restriction such as this should be required here. I think a registered account, welfare silver eligibility, a certain amount of gametime and skillpoints be required, at least. We could even make a gold sink out of it. I'd pay any amount of gold to get that one Siege Perilous character slot. What this means is that even if a player is only interested in the Siege server they've still had to show a good amount of commitment to UOR in general. (This would further strengthen the community at large in my opinion.)

We already have instanced events and a plethora of activities to entertain the player-base that don't require one to leave guardzones to partake. We have a system that encourages players to remain logged in just sitting AFK for hundreds of hours each month (HUNDREDS!?!?!. . . AFK!?!?!. . . ) as well as 100% secure housing to aid in your shard sanctioned AFK freebie gathering. If you're worried about taking players out of "play" you should probably oppose welfare platinum, AMIBs, holiday events, CTF games and the BOD system rather than spend your time posting here about how a Siege ruleset server would detract from your UOR experience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to these systems as I believe that for every player they take out of dungeons they bring another to the shard or keep a vet playing longer (not to mention enjoying a bit of Trammel, myself.) I believe we should look at the addition of a Siege ruleset server as an extension of these very cool and very successful policies. It'd be one more game system that you have the option of partaking in whether you're bored with the rest or simply want to experience everything that UOR has to offer (or might have, I should say.)

Now, I've opposed a second Siege ruleset server in the past on other shards because, as much as I might personally want one, I didn't see how it could be implemented without damaging the rest of the community and gameplay. I've also seen it done to much ill effect, in my opinion. Here on UOR I feel differently. I believe we have the right staff to responsibly and properly bring something like this about and do so with benefit to all. I also believe we have the player-base to support such an addition. Not so much in terms of numbers but in personalities. What I imagine is a group of veteran players banding together to create a greater experience in a Siege Perilous atmosphere while still supporting and actively participating in our current system. I wouldn't stop PMing newbs IRC to make sure they got their question answered if I had a new Britannia to adventure in, Blaise wouldn't stop organizing resist sessions and Gideon wouldn't stop writing guides.

For those players that are still predominantly interested in the standard gameplay currently experienced, it would still be there. However, these players could spend a few minutes a day getting RoT skillgains on UOR:SP to train a character that they could use in the Siege Perilous instance of holiday events, for example. Or these players could train a crafter to trade Siege Perilous items and services for compensation on the regular shard. This could inspire more standard shard gameplay from our Siege player-base. We could even allow players to transfer Siege gold to the standard shard at a loss, thus creating another gold/time-sink which I think would make for a more realistic economy on the Siege shard as well as introduce a new distraction for players mostly involved in the standard gameplay. In other words, if you spent an insignificant amount of your time training a useful support character on UOR:SP you could charge the Siege players an commensurate amount for your services. You could then add to your riches on the regular shard all the while keeping gameplay harder for the Siege players and even more interesting for those part-timers. This would also allow Siege players the option of enjoying a full-time Siege challenge while still interacting with the general population or splitting their time to support a Siege character partially through standard shard gameplay.

I really don't feel like there would be any actual downside for the general player-base. A lot of us would have more fun. Some of us would spend more time playing. We'd likely draw players that are only interested in the Siege rule-set. Think of all the players that haven't given UOR a chance because we have stat-loss. We'd get to start adding them to our playerbase. There might be fewer PKs on the regular shard. There could be a whole new PvP/PvM leaderboard to make a mark on. One more chance for that dream house. I think the only people that should fear such a change are Telamon and EZ as they're the only ones I can imagine suffering at all for this.

I know that not very many people are still reading. So if you've made it this far please take into consideration that further posts in this thread may very well be made with no regard to the opinions expressed here. With that in mind, be warned: I will repeat myself and have every intention of elaborating with further text walls. Unless of course someone refutes all this and proves to me why a Siege Perilous server would be so bad. And please, for the love of God, don't quote this whole post. Get your own damn text wall!

I copied your text wall five times and made one into a ceiling. Now I'm sleeping snug as a bug in my Godric Text House.

Godrick you bring an interesting notion to the table, requiring people to have so many days and hours of play on the UOR shard before being able to obtain a character slot of a separate Siege Perilous shard. This would have the effect of helping this shard I believe.

I've always been under the impression that not only could you only gain a certain amount of skill per day, but that it took an extremely long amount of time just to gain that small amount. Do I have this wrong?

I like Godrick's point of required time in regular UOR. While I enjoy the concept of such a difficult shard, I would not be able to put time into it and keep up with real life demands. The idea of playing UO all day is fun to entertain, but just not feasible. I want to make it clear that I am not concerned about my pixels, but the character stories I have built up. I know I am not the first in this uo community to have migrated from one shard to another, but personally I can say I won't do it again.

I could see myself toying around in a siege environment only if I knew I could have some interactions with the characters and other players with whom I've already built stories in the main shard. I can see potential for player/guild events requiring that they obtain X number of siege tokens (gold from the seige shard) or take down X mob type in siege.

- Jupiter the Grey

From UOThief.com:

Rate over Time (ROT) is unique to Siege. Once you get to 70.0 in any skill, all gains are guaranteed, but you now become limited in how often you can gain in that skill with a limited number of gains in a day.

Rate over Time (ROT):
Skills between 70.0 – 79.9 can gain 0.1 every 5 minutes, for a total of 5.0 per day.
Skills between 80.0 – 89.9 can gain 0.1 every 8 minutes, for a total of 4.0 per day.
Skills between 90.0 – 99.9 can gain 0.1 every 12 minutes, for a total of 3.0 per day.
Skills between 100.0 – 109.9 can gain 0.1 every 15 minutes, for a total of 3.0 per day.

Once you get all of your skills to 70.0, it's possible to log on, use each of your skills once, and gain in each of them. If all you're interested in is training your skills as fast as possible, all you have to do is log off, log back in a few minutes later, and do it again.

This is better than the UOGuide information, at least. As I recall there was more detail to this when I first trained a character on Siege prior to Renaissance. Perhaps I'm getting this confused with the later guaranteed skill gain system, though. I'll continue to look for more accurate or credible information.

I would love to sell this Siege Perilous idea to everyone by saying "It's all sooo easy you won't even believe it." But honestly, it will seem considerably harder for a great many of you at first. It's actually much more of a pain than you might realize to train many skills to 70. Sure, all the combat skills are pretty easy. Things like musicianship start to become very hard because you're going to have to stop and scrounge up another 150 gold to replace your broken tambourine every 15 minutes. Magery is even worse. You will likely spend as much time trying to collect the resources to gain many skills as you will spend training. I know this all sounds rather tedious but isn't so bad though. It's still just a very short first step on your path to a fully trained character. Besides, who really enjoys macroing a skill AFK? You'll have much more fun running around trying to earn your way up. And don't worry, you can still macro your snooping to 70 in no time. I don't imagine anyone would spend too much time or effort getting into RoT gains in any skill besides those that require reagents.

Where this system starts to get interesting is when you hit 70 and RoT skill gain actually kicks in. What you'll find here is that the power gamer has less advantage over the casual gamer. The incremental timing and daily limit of skill gains promotes advancement through natural play. This isn't to say that RoT skill gains can't be taken advantage of through modern macroing practices, though. I haven't actually ever heard of anyone doing this but consider the pace of skill gain if a player where to use a complex razor macro to train all skills in the minimal amount of time. This would, of course, require that all resources needed had already been acquired and each skill required was already trained to 70.

This could look something roughly like this:
Day 1
4 hours 11 min. to reach 75 skill
Day 2
4 hours 11 min. to reach 80 skill
Day 3
5 hours 20 min. to reach 84 skill
Day 4
5 hours 20 min. to reach 88 skill
Day 5
You'll reach a new tier halfway through your training today.
Should the previous RoT tier gains count for your new tiers daily total, you will actually spend less time training than yesterday.
I'm not sure if anyone ever knew if this is how it actually worked but I think it's a logical assumption.
4 hours 20 min. to reach 91 skill
Day 6
6 hours to reach 94 skill
Day 7
6 hours to reach 97 skill
Day 8
6 hours to reach 100 skill

7xGM in a grand-RoT-power-gamer total of 41 hours and 22 min. in just 8 days plus whatever time it took to reach 70.

Now, I'm no mathemetician so if I'm off a bit on my hours and minutes feel free to complain to my third grade teacher. I also realize that training like this will certainly seem insane to most of you at first. A macro built to take advantage of this system would involve the use of all skills in which you wish to gain and a wait of whatever the guaranteed gain timer might be minus the total of all skill timers used. I believe such a task is well within the ability of almost every player reading this, however.

Hopefully, at this point some of you are starting to see how this RoT skill gain system is not going to drag you down a road of endless hours of grinding. What I think is most important to understand is how this compares to skill gain under current UOR standards. Can you train a 7xGM in 8 days? Sure, easy enough. It's even been proven that you can achieve this training taming. I bet you can 7x a character with lockpicking and cartography in 8 days with enough caffeine. Sounds even crazier than the pace of macroing I described earlier, though, doesn't it? Can you train any 7 skills from 70 to GM in a total 41 hours and 22 minutes of logged in game time? . . . No, really. Can you? 'Cause I have no idea but it sounds like a good enough general estimate to me. Of course, who would be trying to keep track of a thing like that?

What's this all mean, you say? Well, it seems to me that a character can be trained using the RoT skill gain system in a similar amount of days as is current standard practice. The amount of playtime during these days will likely be greatly reduced from what is currently experienced, however. Consider that after you've hit 70 skill, though, that every single attempt you make could be a gain. This greatly reduces the amount of resources required to GM a skill. You could theoretically GM taming on 300 great hearts or poisoning with only 300 potions after you hit 70 skill points.

Let's look at the pace of skill gain from the viewpoint of a casual gamer. Suppose your playtime averages about an hour a day. At this pace you could have a 7xGM character about 45 days. Does it seem odd to start fresh on a new server and not be master of the domain in your first 45 days? Or better yet, here's my personal experience on this very shard: my main character is just over 9 months old and still isn't 7xGM. Laugh if you must but I'll powergame the hell outta some UO and I'd still have an easier time of it all with the RoT skillgain and a casual play schedule.

I hope I've answered some questions with all this. Having spent the best years of my Sosarian life playing under the Siege Perilous ruleset I can honestly say that the RoT skill gain system is a complete non-point in one's enjoyment of the game. Should you wish to fret over it, though, it basically comes down to this: Powergame your way to 7x in just over a week with a few thousand gold or play whenever and however you like and finish training in less than three days of game time.

If there is any type of player that this system should be a game-breaker for it's those people that simply like to train character after character. Personally, that's a big draw to this game for me. I'm only one character slot away from being out of characters to train, though. So that means that very soon my enjoyment of that facet of the game will run out. Now, I'm not gunna go all Tater on you guys and say there's no point for me to play anymore but that's one less thing that's going to keep drawing me back here. I already own more stuff than I care to have. I've already accomplished nearly every technical goal I've set for myself here on UOR. Telamon and EZ have done a great job adding new content to keep players like myself playing but there will come a time when I have seen it all. At that point only the community interaction will keep me playing. Let's be honest, though. With 15 characters to insure complete self-sufficiency for anyone who cares to put in the time, the future for community interaction may be a bit bleak. Perhaps this is the 'glass is half empty' part of me but it seems that the end-game will simply amount to who can collect the most rares or which veteran can help/grief the most newbies. Sounds a lot like the last two shards I quit.

I don't mean to sound so negative but the idea of defending a system for managing skill-gain in an MMORPG on any sort of mathematical basis is not my idea of a good time. It's obviously something that matters a great deal to me, though. I'd just like to put to rest the idea that RoT is some sort horrendous grind-fest and move on to all the other things that make the Siege Perilous ruleset such a pleasure to experience. It would bring me immence joy to relive my Siege Perilous glory-days but, really, I'm most excited about the possibility of being able to share such an awesome experience with those of you that never had the opportunity to see what it's all about.

Also: At the time I believe the RoT system was a bit about being anti-macro.

It also had the side-effect of people playing more socially after they got their gains etc.

Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? UOR hasn't even been finished and is still an ongoing process, and the way it's set up to get drops and rares and etc takes so long, there is no way anyone has done all there is to do here yet. And you're already pushing for another server that you'll half ass play before jumping to something else? I think this whole idea is ridic.