Hi Chris, I've been playing for a couple months now and having a great time. I think you did a smart job with the AFK gathering gump. It frees GMs from having to be bad-guy policemen over something trivial and it makes enforcement of the rule consistent and predictable for us players. It's a good thing. That having been said, if you'll hear them I have some suggestions for improvement. With these suggestions I made a couple of assumptions. If the assumptions are wrong then the justifications I offer for change will be in error as well. The assumptions: * Though the exact details vary, essentially every free shard makes it against the rules to macro-gather resources like ore, logs and wool while away from the computer. * Were it allowed, a cadre of 24/7 macro-gatherers would seriously dent server and network capacity for the game, impairing the enjoyment sought by folks who actually want to play. * Too-easily stockpiled resources would distort the game economy, making portions of the game unplayable to anyone unwilling to compete in macro-bot wars. Based on these assumptions I have some suggestions for improving the gump: 1. Change the response timer from 2 to 10 minutes. The purpose behind the rule is still served: the extra time won't make a difference to anyone running a bot afk -- they'll still go to jail. But, someone in a desperate fight in another window, visiting the fridge, or God forfend peeing, won't get burned because merely because memory of the attended gather bot fled in the face of urinary urgency. The classic reason for requiring a fast response is that there's a flesh-and-blood GM sitting there waiting to hear it. Asking him to wait and see if a player comes back isn't reasonable. But you've done away with that problem -- no GM is involved in the afk gump. So why not make the rule and its enforcement flexible enough to allow for common reasons to briefly be out of one's seat? You'd serve the purpose of the rule without needing to make enforcement as rigid as other shards do. 2. Give us a second chance! Morning alarm goes off, check email, gather bods, get a shower, get dressed. Bleary eyed and not quite away yet, I've answered the gump wrong more than once. To err is human. If you give me a second chance gump in response to a wrong answer (not a timeout) you'll avoid a lot of false positives. No need for a long timer either -- if I'm legit then you know I'm there and paying attention. 3. Jail cooldown timer. Despite every effort, someone being honest about gathering will still occasionally end up in jail. That's not a real problem -- wait a few minutes and you're out. BUT, as the shard ages folks who've been around for a while will slowly but steadily rack up an accidental jail count which extends that period to hours, days and then weeks. It isn't a problem today, but in four or five years I'm likely to have racked up enough jail time from mistakes with the gump that my lumberjack and miner essentially become unusable. This could be fixed with a cooldown. Every month without being jailed for afk gathering, drop the jail count by 1. Or, every 10 successfully answered gumps in a row, drop the jail count by 1. Maybe have a floor to reward folks who are extremely conscientious: the cooldown won't drop your jail time to less than an hour. But do something along these lines so that characters built for gathering don't become disabled over time due to honest mistakes. 4. Big gump. Even if you can't increase the size of the items, make the gump itself bigger. When I play on multiple monitors, I don't always notice the gump appear out of the corner of my eye. But the large change in the screen when I'm transported to jail catches my attention immediately. If the appearance of the gump made a large enough change in the display on the monitor, I'd be more likely to notice while there's still time to answer. Anyway, those are the ideas and my analysis of them. I offer them in the hope that any or all will prove useful. Regards, Wil
1. If you're going to the bathroom, why not just pause your macro? 2. At what point in that morning routine did you fire up your macro? The gump is "one of these things is not like the other.". It is LITERALLY a game on Sesame Street. If your mental state is not such that you can successfully play a game for 2 year olds, are you really "attended"?
The only thing I'd agree to is having a cool down on jail times. Make it monthly, yearly, for XX amount of consecutive times answering correctly, whatever. I have been jailed a couple of times by my own mistakes (mostly literally snoozing at the keyboard), and would love to have a second chance for those. Kind of like murder counts. The rest really defeat the purpose of the system, and I actually think 2 minutes is too long, I'd say 60 seconds is more than enough. I must confess that I sometimes take liberties because I know I have 2 minutes, and will go pee without stopping my macro because I know I'm gonna be back in less than 2 minutes. If it were 60 seconds, I'd definitely stop my macros because I wouldn't be able to gtee to be back in less than 60 seconds. The system is not intended for you to leave it running and have it only as an afterthought. You should be paying attention to it, so I also don't think the gump should be bigger, flashier or come accompanied by a sound notification. I like the way it is. It is noticeable enough.
In regards to the cooldown & account marks expiring over time, while this isn't something that is part of the system now, we have the ability to reset or modify the number of marks against an account if necessary.
Howdy, Why should you have to? How does that enhance the game experience for you or for anyone else? When I'm playing a game, I don't sit in the chair for endless hours. I get up and check the fridge. I hit the head. I walk over to the other side of the room and admire one of the pictures on the wall. I take my dishes back to the kitchen and load the dishwasher. I walk to the laundry room and move clothes from the washer to the dryer. Even when I'm in the chair, I check my email and write replies. I check Slashdot and other web sites. I write messages on the game forums just like this one. I'm playing the game. I'm enjoying the game. But it doesn't have my continuous undivided attention. A rule for the rule's sake is of no value. Rules have a purpose. If the purpose can be achieved with a less onerous rule, why not adjust the rule? Perhaps 10% of the item selections aren't obvious without a second glance. Which of these 4 glass containers is not like the other. Oh, it's the bottle that's just a hair smaller than the three potions, not the purple potion versus the nearly-same-color yellow and orange potions. And the icons are small. My vision isn't what it was 20 years ago. Regards, Wil
Yes, rules have a purpose. And the purpose is so that you don't continue to gain resources when you check the fridge, hit the head, or do laundry. That's whole point. It's not onerous at all; it's exactly as onerous as it's intended to be.
Then you must not be playing Ultima Online. Aside from crafting in my house, there is very little I can do in UO that allows me to just drop the mouse and walk away without some sort of action to protect myself. Either by getting inside out of PK/Thief range or stopping my macros that might get me jailed. Two minutes is already too much of a window. Enough of a window that the nefarious could quite likely have a screenscrape of some sort that alerts them to the gump with ample time to spare, thus defeating the whole system. I've been jailed a couple of times and rightly so as I was not attending my macro. You want resources? Go get them and pay attention while you're doing it, or suffer the consequences. The system is amazing and should not be altered to provide any more lenience than it already does. That said, I do appreciate the time you've spent to write up this post and share your concerns and ideas about the shard. Despite disagreement, opinions and ideas for the betterment of UOR is always welcome.
Unless you are playing a turn based strategy game or something pausable I dont see how you can load a dishwasher and say you are playing at the same time. Doing that while you are running a crafting macro is fine. Because you are crafting. The whole point of this system is to make sure people DONT GATHER UNATTENDED. Attended means you are watching the screen and tending to the game. The looser the checks the more room for abuse. If anything cut the timer to 1 minute because even the hardest of the gumps should not take anyone longer than 20 seconds to figure out. If you're eyesight isn't what it used to be, get glasses. You can't seriously expect an entire sever to change the way it operates because one person doesn't like a feature because it makes it too hard to collect loot with zero effort. Its supposed to be a pain in the ass to gather resources otherwise the market for them would not exist, cutting out a huge element which makes the game more enjoyable. Yeah I tab out sometime when I'm farming and yes a bunch of times I either die or don't loot the corpse in time. Should I ask staff to give me a free rez every time I die, you know as a second chance in case I dies by accident the first time or allow auto loot for when im doing my laundry. This game is built around risk vs. reward and if you take away the risk of AFK punishment, the reward will diminish for all. /rant
Well, I mostly do play turn-based games. How do you think I got hooked on Ultima in the first place? Regards, Wil
I would guess because it's actively engaging all the time, considering Ultima has never been a turn-based game. They have been real time since Akalabeth......
I honestly cant see this getting more simple. The questions are easy for most humans. The gump is huge... My eyes suck too but the gump is not that small. If you are mining or logging or whatever, just be at the keyboard. The items being gathered retain some value simply because you must be at the keyboard. Unless I am missing some other subtle point. Which is entirely possible...
No. No they have not. What games do you remember playing? U1 through U6 were strictly turn based, although I vaguely recall it automatically passing your turn if you waited like 30 seconds or a minute or something without entering a command. Do you not recall Ultima 3 where you moved each of your four characters one square, then all the enemies moved, then you moved each of your four characters one square, etc? U7, SI and U8 were still more or less turn based. For all intents and purposes, only the very last games in the Ultima franchise were realtime: The UWs, U9 and UO. And I would know. http://www.ultimacodex.com/archive/ . All the crappy icons, box thumbnails, map scans and the walkthroughs to 2 and 4. I made those better than 15 years ago now. The .au game music files started on cassette tape from Panasonic recorder held up to my 13" TV in the '80s. Yeesh. That's soundly a lot like a damn-kids rant. I better quit while I'm ahead. Regards, Wil
1 - The timer was recently doubled from 1 minute to 2 minutes. I think this is enough. If you are leaving your macros unattended for 10 minutes, then you should probably just pause them instead. 2 - Agree - As stupid as it sounds, I've answered wrong in the past. Also, I believe the staff will free you from jail if you answer incorrectly as it is. So this would only be automating that task. 3 - Sure, I can get behind this one. Maybe 1 count removed every 3 months. 4 - Eh, I'm indifferent. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While we're on this topic, this GUMP combination needs to go:
I think we should definately have a cool-down timer. Seems just to me. Staff will certainly let you out, though. I've talked to quite a few people that've told me a story and said, "but Telamon let me right out." If I were a GM I'd have let most of 'em rot in there.
What we mean to say Wil is that we appreciate your input and feel your thoughts and opinions matter I agree with Basoosh's points: 1 - The timer was recently doubled from 1 minute to 2 minutes. I think this is enough. If you are leaving your macros unattended for 10 minutes, then you should probably just pause them instead. 2 - Agree - As stupid as it sounds, I've answered wrong in the past. Also, I believe the staff will free you from jail if you answer incorrectly as it is. So this would only be automating that task. But perhaps reduce the timer on the second gump even further? You get 2 minutes for the first response, 45 seconds for the double jeopardy round. GAME ON! 3 - Sure, I can get behind this one. Maybe 1 count removed every 3 months. 4 - Eh, I'm indifferent. haha. Coming from somebody who struggled with story problems in school, I could see myself using the entire two minutes to try and rationalize why one Jar is not like all the other jars.
I've also mentioned in the past I thought the gump window should be bigger, though for different reasons. I was powering through some sheep-shearing and clicked to target a sheep and got a checkbox on the gump. If the gump was larger (or longer, top-to-bottom), all checkboxes would be well beyond the 2-tile range from center of screen that 99% of us are clicking when doing attended things (whether to target a tree, a mountain, or a sheep). I just disagree with your definition of "attended" Wil.
Hi Dalavar, Good point! Let's not argue definitions of attended. Look deeper. Why is it OK to camp in a house and macro herding against a sheep, but we need a rule against camping in a house and macroing shearing against a sheep? We all agree this is the case, right? The herding macro is OK and the shearing macro isn't. Remember, according to Origin, the herding macro wasn't OK either. Yet on all the free shards there's pretty much universal agreement that the herding macro is OK and the shearing macro isn't. So what's the difference? Why is one OK but for the other we need elaborate software to detect and prevent it? The gain from herding is inherently limited. Best I can do with it is max my attributes and max the skill. Then I'll stop the macro. Using it won't pound the server for months on end and it won't distort my presence in the game world, giving me an unreasonable advantage over other players. On the other hand, if I shear 22 sheep in a small every hour 24/7/365 and then have a recall-tailor turn it in to clothes that are sold, I can very quickly buy that fortress. And I tend to deny other players' access to the tailor too -- they never have money to buy from anybody else. Not only does it pound the server, it distorts my presence in the game without requiring me to, well, play. That's why a 24/7 shearing bot is so bad we need elaborate software to detect and prevent it. Now, let's evaluate my fridge run by the same standard. For the 6 minutes I spend selecting and nuking a hot pocket, does my shearing macro pound the server 24/7/365? It does not. Does it distort my presence in the game, giving me an unfair advantage over other players? Still no. Can it be allowed without also allowing the 24/7/365 bad behavior described earlier? Yes, yes it can. Increase the gump timer a few minutes but not long enough for the 24/7 macro to be practical. So if there's no harm, why should there be a foul?
