Suggestion to refresh factions and provide incentive to PvP.

We currently require taking 8 cities.

I propose shrinking this down to 1 city and changing that city to Bucs Den.

Pro's:
- More PvP to the island of PvP.
- More incentive to own towns, one town to own, one goal to fight over for total control.
- Want to buy regs from faction vendors? Have to do it the risky way, in Bucs.
- More participants in factions, reds can participate in fighting within the town and so forth.
- SL should be on board, they already own property on Bucs.
- Smith/Tailor already present in the city.

Con's:
-List them, I can't think of any. (Make it constructive, please)

This will refresh factions and make Bucs the central PvP hub of the server, not just for factions but for O/C, warring guilds, and reds.

As the server grows I would suggest taking another look at factions and perhaps opening it back up to all cities. (At that point nix trinsic, vesper, or yew in place of Bucs)

it's not our MO to fight in/near houses (see: how we asked tel to grandfather the area where your faction's house used to be outside of our base).

- Reductive custom content will drive new players away.

sample irc conversation:
<UOR_1337> is therre factiaons herea?
<helpfulPlayer> We have a custom version of factions where there is only one sigil and it is located in Bucs Den.
<UOR_1337> LOL WOT

now this is not to say that i'm totally against the idea, just that there is at least one glaring Con that you missed.

what i will say, though, is that i think your logic is somewhat fallacious. just because there is only one town to capture, doesn't mean that factioners will fight in that town. people don't actually fight at sigils. fights happen in moonglow because fights happen in moonglow. a precedent was set at some point and now people fight there. changing how sigils work probably won't affect that.

even if changing where the sigils work did affect where fights actually occur, moving faction fights to Bucs would negatively affect factions by including reds in every fight (reds who don't take faction statloss). this would further complicate issues that SL already has (everyone hates us) by including reds in the enormous anti-SL conglomerate gank-squad.

i judge this idea to be poorly thought out and ineffectual.

good day, sir.

The big one is that random reds who have nothing to do with factions would certainly pop in to screw with whoever is in the town.

I thought our custom content is what drove more players here in the first place? Factions here is custom already, TB base isn't traditionally located at Blackthornes Castle, CoM base doesn't traditionally have all those walls, etc.. I understand what I propose to be a deep customization but I don't see it driving people away, especially when it's really not attracting many new comers either.. I think this is as a result of PvP getting a backseat for so long though, and as such this argument is better suited for a different thread.

You can change where you want to fight simply by taking your team some place else. I don't guarantee that 100% of fights will happen on Bucs but I do believe it will attract more attention, thus, increasing traffic and thus increasing possible pvp targets.

Who cares if reds get involved in faction fights, it works all around here, everyone has reds. Reds can take a bigger stat loss here too, worse than faction stat loss. You already can have reds involved in SL or Minax bases which we've all seen before. How is this any different? I think thieving would thrive too, but again, argument for a different thread.

I judge your rebuttal as biased and a poor rebuttal. (See I can do it too..) You are basing your thoughts on how it affects your team, and not for the betterment of pvp or the server. If everyone hates SL it's because you designed it to work that way.

That's pvp. It isn't screwing with anyone, it's just good, plain ol' pvp. There's not one person playing UO that doesn't think that walking into Bucs can result in someone attacking you. If you start running around the TT fort, Ebolas tower, the -3- Fort, or Bart's house, you should expect the same result.. someone coming out to PK you.

Reds can "screw" with factioners now right outside their bases (SL/Minax), this is no different. I would be shocked if a red, who can be placed into a long stat, came to Bucs to fight against faction blues.. That's silly on their part. Will it happen? Sure, and that's what the purpose of creating a PvP hub is for.

i mean there's a reason non-faction chars can't enter faction bases.

am i biased or is your idea bad? let's let readers decide.

I know you guys don't use weapons that much, but having only one town to control would greatly increase the importance of town ownership for the purposes of blessing weapons. That's probably a good thing in terms of driving people to want to have town control.

I would respond fully but after reading what's been said so far, I suspect you can't be reasoned with. So I will respond to the larger culture of the players that think there's a pvp system that needs fixing.

There seems to be a fair amount of pvpers and non pvpers that believe that the staff has failed to create a good pvp system and that's why they're unhappy with their current situation. I keep seeing chris called a pve/crafter and people on the forums saying that the pvp mechanics have been neglected. This is just false. The mechanics here exist very close to the way they did in era, perhaps better, and it was a system and era many of us enjoyed enough to still want to play it a decade and a half later.

Do you think that when players search out a server to relive their past experiences in UO they want a watered down, custom pvp system or something more like what they're used to? Personally, when I look at a shard and see that they tried to recreate factions but rename it something like 'town army system' and replaced sigils with lanterns and tried to force it all into a small window I see an obvious flop on the horizon.

This pvp system existed a year ago on this server as it is now and it was a very active scene with constant battling every evening. I say this because I was personally on every night factioning and never had trouble finding a battle. If you take away only one thing from my post let it be this: the only difference between then and now is the attitude and behavior of the players.

The scene is stagnant, the players are bitter and hateful. If pvp was somehow pushed into a box in bucc's den you think that you'd get your crew on and cut through lone newbies like a knife through butter and have a great time every night. But that's not how it would happen. All three of the main groups would ghost buccs constantly and ghost each other. They would only fight with 5+ on. All battles would end with a group running into a house and trying to cast from their balcony. All the solo reds like crooks would still get ganked extremely hard and stop showing up within a couple days. The smaller, less experienced groups that exist now would stick to playing at 4-5am like they do already.

If you want it to be different then people have to change their attitudes and their playstyles and their alliances. Or 20 new active pvpers need to appear out of thin air, I suppose. But that seems unlikely. The solo people that try to enter the scene either join one of the big groups or get run out pretty quickly.


Edit: Have we already forgotten the last big thing that chris just wouldn't listen to everyone on? That if he'd just put regular scheduled CTF in then it would fix pvp?

If Lib would have responded with constructive criticism sans the slightly annoying judgement at the end then this wouldn't be an issue. So I can be reasoned with if for once people can put aside differences and have a civil discussion on how to liven things up.

Now this is more or less the discussion I was looking to create here. I'm not looking to revamp pvp as a whole but to create something different. Drive PvP into one general area where at times you'll get 3-4 massive (hopefully) groups of people getting together to loot each other clean or stragglers passing by having it out for fun. I just find that sigils, as they stand right now, are annoying as fuck. I don't want to touch them and the ONLY reason I would so much as think about grabbing them now is if I'm low on regs. I couldn't care less about blessing a weapon, I have no problem losing gold runics. But to go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth capping and sitting on sigils for hours for nothing is pointless. Some people measure the "winning" team by looking at the team who owns the sigils, in reality the winning team is the one that can consistently beat their opponents on the field until they stop coming back. Sigils, to me at least, are useless and provide me with little to no benefit, so why even fight for them.

The mechanics as they exist is part of the problem. People have already figured out the optimal way to play the game in regards to getting something that they want (a tamer for PvM or a mage squad using voice chat for PvP). It's a catch 22 to change things.

If Chris changes things too much, then he's screwed because the content isn't era accurate. If he doesn't change anything, then people continue to use that optimal method to play the game.

I don't think this is a good thread to debate tamers or pve balance. But in regard to mages in a group on voice - while this is the reality of pvp, there are still three equally large groups of mages on voice that aren't fighting each other regularly but come to this forum to say that they aren't getting enough pvp. It's not a matter of game mechanics because they are all on a level playing field. It's a social issue in my opinion.

There were 6-7 com factioners on last night. They were ghosting buccs and gated in and chased some of our reds off. But when we tried to turn it into a faction fight they stayed in their house. I even sent my lone red to stand next to their ghost and they were so careful to not fight that they ran single trackers around buccs for five minutes before finally gating in 7 com factioners a few screens away. At that same moment we opened a gate with our factioners to engage them and when their ghost saw that they piled back through their gate and hung it up for the night.

It's a perfect example of why trying to pick a new place for fights to take place makes no difference. There were easily 20-30 active pvpers on last night, between com, sl, minax, and the people that play CTF. Everyone is just unwilling to risk another loss at this point and aren't playing for the battle anymore.

Ok Mes, whatever you say buddy. Some of us look for even fights. When you and your 10 buddies are standing around wondering why you can't find any fights, CoM and Minax are organizing 4 on 4s and such. Your Claypools are the problem on the server. Sorry, but it's true. The only ones unwilling to risk a loss is you. You will summon daemons, summon faction guards, arrange a 'fair fight' only to show up with a couple extra. It's not even fun to fight you guys anymore, unless we drag you out with our reds, and then come on on factioners so we can fight you someplace that isn't fucking moonglow. And even that is rough, but we will fight outnumbered...to an extent. Sorry, but if you want PVP to really happen again on this server...hang up the claypools. Split SL up and you will see field fights again. Be the bigger man. You guys won. You control PVP.

Now let's see if you have any real cajones.

And you guys always have the most entertaining math skills. It's quite fucking funny to be honest.

Well I guess Telamon should be patching claypools then. Sounds like you have it all figured out. And since com and minax are having constant 4v4's, I guess this thread is no longer pertinent.

The saddest thing is, I think you've fed each other that bullshit enough that you almost believe it. There should be an IQ test to post on the forums. This game is like 17 years old so I suspect most of you guys are adults. All I can think is the public school system really failed you.

I think this slayerik person drove my point home better than I ever could have, so I appreciate that.

LO FUCKING L!

This is why using sigils to alter player behavior is mostly a pointless endeavor. No one cares enough to try too hard for them as they provide little benefit. Even blessed weapons aren't really a big deal since 90% of pvp characters are all the same old scribe/stun punch template.
The natural response to this would be to suggest to add more incentives to cap the sigils, but I don't like this approach either. In this case you would have people who aren't actually interested in pvp trying to faction for the incentives, and it would end in them whining about getting killed by other factioners while pursuing the goal of whatever it is getting the sigils will get them.

So what I'm basically saying is that the only way that pvp will be "fixed" on the server is a change in player attitudes. As mes noted earlier in the thread, putting all of the sigils in one place would just turn bucs into a hellish ghost fest where groups of players swoop down on people when they're alone and stay home when a group that can fight them shows up.
Besides, we put all of the sigils together in one place all the time. People don't attack faction bases with sigils in them, I doubt that they'd treat bucs any differently.

Factions needs to be over-hauled. There are toooooo many teams and not enough players.

I think that you're partially right when you say that it's a social issue, but you also have to look at the current game mechanics and how technology and how player's understanding of the game as time has gone on has changed the way that they fight. With the exception of TEX there aren't any guilds out there that are inviting new players and getting them up to speed. If I wanted to do things in this game like I was doing them ten years ago I would get absolutely crushed.

I don't see why you need a guild, or anyone for that matter, to get started here. I'm not knocking guilds, or people, that help newer players out. I have helped a handful in my time here and I entertain PM's all the time as I'm considered the resident expert of the bard dexxer.

But no one held my hand when I started here and I've come a long way.

There are guides, there are forums, there is IRC. Some of the notable pvpers on this server can be the biggest assholes you've ever played with but I would never peg any of them to be too elite to provide pvp help to those seriously looking to learn.

You also have CTF where you can somewhat learn to pvp. To this day I still don't understand why SL doesn't participate in CTF. Some of the CTF's run light and could use stimulation from one of the largest group of pvpers.

I don't think it's really about getting started, because that is something that is super easy to do even if you've never played the game. So you're right about not needing a guild or anyone else to get started here. Instead, I think it's more about new players finding guilds that do things differently. Certain ways of playing the game are extinct at this point (and so are the guilds that relied on playing the game that way) because of technology and game mechanics.

For example, the largest guild in OSI history was Shadowclan which played on Catskills and Siege Perilous. About 99% of the players who were in it never touched a mount, had magery, or used voice chat. All they did was PvP. They got through T2A because mount stamina was a thing in that era, and most people even on a mount were playing on slower connection speeds. They got through OSI Renaissance because of bolas. It would be super hard to pull that sort of thing off here currently.