Request for Comment - Champion System

Even then the advantage is far in the favor of a group of blues (whether thats invading blues or defending blues). They can choose as a group to attack a grey target and take no counts. Greys would have to wait to be attacked. And it's kind of a cheesy way to envision a combat system. I don't think that's much of an example of what a fight should look like.


If the problem alone is : too much plat is coming into the sysem
Then this new change really does address it in a meaningful way

So this isn't negativity about an upcoming change. But it's concern about new issues that may arise. The fear is that player response may be to not summon the harrower. Either way I'm just eager for this system to come back.

Yep.
I'd imagine the invading group would want to get them to flag gray and pick them off.
This would be pretty easy at a harrower.

One thing I know I'd do is bring in a dummy character with no equipment to run in as they meteor swarm. I'd get them gray and die and count them all at once with that. Then I'd flip over to my other client and kill their gray characters will all of my buddies.

You are right, none of that matters.


What DOES matter, is how exactly the loot distribution is going to work.

Set amount of plat dropped sounds awesome. I guess we will just have to wait and see how the defense/raids actually end up playing out. I envision them being run successfully, and defended successfully. What is awesome about this system is other then a core group of like 2-3 people(who would be relegated to tending to the harrower), everyone could just handle defense while the boss gets pounded out. Then those 2-3 people can just divvy the plat out to those who provided defense. What DIDN'T work previously was defense due to the fact that by participating in defense you would be not earning platinum.
I think concerns regarding the camping of the star-room are over-exaggerated. Sure, its theoretically possible to keep eyes in there at all times, but realistically I see groups getting away with private harrowers more often then not. Anyway, if a group is going to run the harrower, they are going to check the star room for ghosts, and run it as fast as possible. In my experience Harrowers go faster with smaller groups that know what they are doing. Even if you get successfully raided and lose the plat, that sounds like an awesome proposition imo. Any in game experience that leaves you with your heart thumping and butterflies in your stomach is something that very few games can deliver. Previously harrower spawns did not invoke visceral emotions from me, they were too easy, too worry free. Everything is about to change

The difference in risks and how rewards are distributed are relevant to a discussion about harrower events and what behaviors are incentivized or encouraged there. re: Chris's post.

We're discussing controlling champ spawns/harrowers. Truthful, accurate descriptions of examples you're attempting to use in which the people who started the spawn were still able to counter it are both relevant and important to this discussion, even when it hurts your feelings. I'm uninterested in bickering with you, your ink spurting, or your fragile excuses for why you're not going to provide a legitimate response.

No we didn't reach the same conclusion. We could stop invaders and did. Sometimes we failed. Sometimes, we chose not to because going red was not worth the cost of stopping your attempts to grief (or at least not in comparison to trying to counter your attempted griefing without murdering you blues). No part of this requires that we were powerless or couldn't stop you. You're drowning out any reasonable point with hyperbole.

Just because it's not always an intelligent or reasonable choice to murder on stat reds, go into stat, or copiously murder blues doesn't mean there is something wrong with the risks/rewards.

Let's be real real son:



No stat-loss in harrower dungeons will primarily (and likely exclusively) benefit the group of players who have made it their endgame content to grief others and make their playing less enjoyable. It's these players who have deep stat reds they are currently too afraid to use and these players who have shown time and time again they both have the desire and motivation to mercilessly grief other players and their gameplay.

No amount of whining, projection, trying to accuse other players of doing something similar, or pathetic attempts to play the victim will change that. Notice that none of the desired behaviors is currently impossible. In fact, murdering lots of blues and res killing them is currently very possible. Their issue is that it's not easy enough for them to do it, the risks are too high, and the consequences for failure (dying in stat) is too much to justify them doing it.

Stopping other players from joining or benefitting, murdering blues and other innocents, and raiding others' events at the time which will be most beneficial to you and most griefy should be hard things to do. Making these things easier is not good for this server, it does not encourage game play, and it is not what endgame content needs.

I have a question for you: if the risk associated with harrowers isn't intended to be other players, what is it?
It was a high risk activity on production servers because the only way to see a harrower was to go to a place where you could be killed by reds who weren't subject to statloss.

Why is it a high risk activity here? It's not any risker than anything else. It's not like the harrower itself is particularly deadly.

By the way, you've still yet to acknowledge my assertion that the current system does more to make spawners unable to control their own spawns than to dissuade people from raiding harrowers.

You're still operating under the faulty assumption that people need to be protected. The champ spawn system was designed with conflict in mind. There are no helpless newbies here, just endgame players engaging in a (supposedly) high risk behavior for high reward.
Currently, it is insanity to use reds in this kind of situation. Straight up, groups of tamers will murder reds. Ask any red what the riskiest thing you can do is - every single one of them will tell you it's dealing with tamers. That's because tamers can straight up one shot you.



Of course, I'm not even saying taking stat loss out when dealing with harrowers is the solution here. It's just the best one I can think of.
I know you're taking a hardliner anti-grief stance here, but the system as it is encourages the behaviors you're decrying as "griefing". It's going to happen anyway, it's just that it encourages people to do it on blues and leaves the people who actually spawned the harrower with little they can do about.

Scarcity breeds conflict. That's why everyone got along so well with the old system, everyone could get their shit. Now that scarcity is being introduced, there will be conflict. It's not a question of whether players will fight, right now it's about the details that will define such conflicts. Things as they are right now leaves spawners with less ability to defend themselves, not more.

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You want to know why you feel this way? It's because you see things in black and white: red vs blue.

The truth is that lots of people have both red and blue characters. Red characters aren't people, they're characters. Tools. Tools that spawning guilds could use to remove troublemakers.
Without them, spawning guilds are relatively defenseless against blue troublemakers.

I mean, the people who are going to break the system are telling you how they are going to do it and people just don't seem to be listening because they can't break out of their rigid views and personal biases. I will scout the star room relentlessly, I will show up to spawns on my blues and noto PK while handing out counts and generally making people miserable, and I will leech platinum off of other people's hard work.
UO players are generally rational and self-serving and they are quite good at finding the most profitable ways to handle any given situation. I'm not the only person who will do these things - these behaviors are promoted by the system itself. They are the natural conclusion to this proposed set of rules that all players will eventually find. I'm sure that since he's been a developer for the server for so long, Telamon is aware of how good at breaking systems players can be.

In what way did you stop invaders?

• you did not kill me or any of my invading friends
• you lost the oaks skull
• you shared plat and gold with players that did no work

I wish you would. If you aren't going to then just take it to trash talk. Why derail this thread with memes and shit talk? Some people here want to understand the system coming in and voice meaningful concerns before the patch hits. People are asking questions like : what problems are identified and being addressed? What new problems may arise?

Posting shit talk and fiction about your pvp experiences doesn't really help anything. If you want to do this then just make a thread in trash talk and I'll gladly respond if it means not derailing this thread.

I don't believe a single person asked for removal of stat loss in this thread. People did, however, point out that stat loss was removed in this era's relative patch so that players could defend harrowers/spawns and their scarce rewards. Now that we're going back to a situation where the rewards are limited - the question being asked is should harrower hosts be concerned about how to deal with blues in their spawn efficiently? If you think that there won't be serious drama over having blues show up at your harrower - think back to all the threads and crying over losing an oaks skull (or that time one was guard whacked.)

Unfortunately I think you're too blinded by bitterness and rage to think about how this can / will play out. All you seem capable of doing is finger pointing and saying griefing a lot. It doesn't matter who SL is and who you are and what guild affiliations and who's butthurt about what. What matters is how this system will be received and gamed and if it is implemented well or if there are better options.

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How do you propose that spawners stop blues from taking them to task?
Here's a good one to solve. Let's say I show up on my blue and dive into meteor swarms all night to give you guys counts and make you gray so my buddies can noto you. How would you deal with that?

Though I'd like to repeat that I'm not saying we need to remove statloss.
Just that there's a problem and it's the only real way I can think of to resolve it. Champ spawns were designed with people being able to defend their spawns in mind. The whole system is built with the assumption that people will fight over the spoils.

This is holier than thou bullshit.
A large number of people on the server would do this stuff to the UO guild in a heartbeat and justify it as "oh it's their fault for being friends with SL". They'd do it to us and justify it by saying we're mean and have it coming.

For the purposes of this discussion I think we need to drop the mindset that the other side is evil and think about how people who are opposed to each other in game will find ways to compete over the platinum.

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Stop them how?

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Well
Consider this a freebie, I won't be this generous with good advice once the patch hits.

My advice is not to take counts for us when we come to raid your harrowers, we travel light and enjoy handing them out and making people red. It's very easy to screw people over once you get them red/gray. The speed at which most of us can res/recover characters is beyond what you'd be able to keep up with, particularly since those of us that are harder to kill/receiving heals will require multiple players to bring down.
The best course of action when blues show up to raid your harrower is to bend over and give up the plat and do your best to avoid going gray at all.

Would you like to elaborate on this statement?
Are you claiming that our spawns have never been raided? That UO's spawns have never been raided? That we're the only people on the server who play aggressively?

It's funny that people are so quick to decry us as terrible griefers when they gladly engage in the same behaviors that we do while saying we have it coming for being so mean. It's literal doublethink.

But you just don't know what you're talking about Gideon.

You couldn't dive into fields or meteor swarms in this era.

If you were blue your aoe spells would only hit reds/oranges. They would never hit guildmates. So you could defend a dungeon with field spells and aoe spells without going red.

As a red you could cast fields that would not hit your blue/red guildmates but would hurt everyone else.

Why?

Because this system was designed to be defended. That's why stat loss was removed for this system as well. So that a harrower could be defended by reds that belonged to the host's guild.



And once again - we're not asking for removal or suspension of stat loss. We're just pointing out that this is how EA planned and designed this system in this era and it was meaningful. Since we do have stat loss and we don't have those tools here on UO:R - it's worth talking about now that the rewards will be scarce again and guilds will feel the need to stop outsiders from getting a slice of their reward.


Remember that this is what Chris said in the original post

The staff has been discussing these aspects for a few weeks now and we have a rough plan for an improved system that is already being coded. However we would like to hear from the players and make sure their concerns are incorporated into the final version.

Note: Negative statements will be removed from this discussion. This is not the place to air your opinion regarding various templates, playstyles or the behavior of other players. This discussion is focused on improving the champion system and fairly rewarding the effort of the players who go through the trouble of summoning him.

The purpose of me being in this thread is not to be negative. It's to talk about how to improve the champ spawn system and fairly reward the effort of the players who summon them. As Chris stated this isn't the place to complain about playstyles and the players you don't like. It's to talk about how to improve the system.

Are you being serious?

Kill them? Then they cannot count for 5 minutes. I can eat 12 counts personally before going stat, that buys a LOT of time. Spread that out over a guild and you got yourself a decent defense plan. At the rate us old timers gather the skulls to run harrowers we can all be back to 0 long term counts in no time. A properly executed harrower doesn't take long. The only time I see harrowers taking more then 30 minutes is when they are public.

Welp, wish you guys luck with that one. We're going to hand out counts until you can't afford to take them anymore, while noto PKing the greys. Assuming we all count on 2-3 accounts, and it takes more than one of you to bring each one of us down (it will) that's a lot of counts to have to take.
I guess we're at that point where you guys argue with the message because of who is saying it. Hopefully I've gotten my point across so I can at the very least say that I told you so in a few months when people decide we're horrible griefers and the system is broken.

Of course, any harrowers we do will suffer the same issues. I'm not claiming that we'll be immune to such tactics, the heavy burden in all of these situations will be on the people who worked hard for the skulls and spawned the harrowers. I'm sure we'll have internal talks about when and how to spawn harrowers in ways such that we minimize the risks of such things. I don't expect that anyone thinking rationally will want to spawn harrowers during prime time with this system being the way it will be.

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You've made a lot of assumptions here. Like that you're going to kill each player by yourself. More than likely you're going to need several people to take a count for each person you want to remove from your spawn. Those people will have alts. Those people will self res and rejoin the fight very quickly. Those people will lose a small amount of supplies that will weigh much less heavily on them than the 40 hour long term and 8 hour short term you'll need to take (multiplied by the amount of people you need to attack each target.) A harrower will last more than five minutes. Even if you're able to kill some invaders, how long can you keep this up before you're dead and in stat?

If it's so easy to defend - why have reds never successfully invaded a harrower to date on this server? Why have reds never successfully defended a harrower from invading blues on this server?