How so? OSI did not also make rules based on the assumption of multiple accounts either. Perhaps statloss was good because players had to put that character on timeout, when they weren't in the game (sleep, work, RL). It is technically much easier to deal with here because it doesn't actually cost you money and you have a spare account. Not trying to enflame you, just curious as to why you don't think its suitable. However, I may not be able to avoid flames, by saying that Hybrid players are accustomed to a free ride. They can buy their skills, stats, mils, blessed clothes and whatever else, with real money. Of course they wouldn't have statloss there. If they did, people might suspect that they only added/kept statloss for revenue generation. Hybrid is a profit product and should not have its policies or practices compared to a truly free shard, in my opinion.
Yadood your beating a dead horse, you can't prove someone wrong when they will never admit when they are wrong. I'd just give up.
it's not really important to argue semantics with my points. we want to draw people from other free shards- to quit their own free shard and come over here. i'm not going to argue my side at this point, but i will say that it would bring more people to the shard and fast. OSI had stat loss to stop pk'ing because there were a lot of players joining that didn't want to lose their items that they technically PAID in monthly subscription and hours to get. we don't pay here. we want more people here. we want more player interaction here, forced or not. UO was the first MMO to reach 250,000 players. Even with the rampant PK'ing in the UO:t2a era the pop. never stopped increasing. I think most newbies to UO hated gettign pk'd, but also one day aspired to PvP with the people that were good at fighting. Then they demanded trammel so they could better build themselves up. when all these players demanded trammel to get away from PK, the population hovered for a while, then dropped off as most of the older PvP generation quit en masse. Felucca became how it is on this shard right now, can recall around tons of places, maybe see a few people here 'n there. UO pop. was cut in half over time after Trammel. You certainly had no trouble farming enough for a fortress without much interruption- so let's get some more people to quit their free shard and come here. The shard's mission is history perfected- well they already perfected it for PvM templates, and for crafters, how about a little give for the other styles of play?
You really should give up. Give up trying to downplay my responses with generalizing statements like that. I simply asked him how. We're trying to have a discussion, and you're cooking up dissention. I did not farm uninterrupted. I've been getting PKed here SINCE BETA. I'm sorry you weren't around when Midguard Zero racked up 40+ short term counts though. Or were you? Ok, thanks.
I refuse to play on a shard with statloss, not UO Forever or any lame carbon copy shard. this i guarantee is what keeps most free shards with such low numbers. they are WAY to similar. i was totally on board for this server until i read statloss and murderer hour times, that killed most of the clientele of UO to start. i rarely murder people but i loved the risk. and the fact that that inhibits a segment of the population that made the risk of venturing out so exhilarating. no thanks. il leave my past love of UO in the past and remember good memories there should be a way to punish "murderers" without statloss. This is one thing that lead to a rich segment of population to leave the original UO and lead the path that EA took to catering to the masses. you can say "blah blah mindless murderers should play halo." thats stupid. thats people that got pissed from getting "murdered" who cares it happens. there was a fun ingredient to the game having murders and getting revenge. but i promise you statloss is not the answer. and will keep all these free shards stagnant.
Ok see ya. Seriously? If That's what keeps you out of a game good riddance. Griefing is one of the biggest things that pisses players off in a game.
Adding loot is a pretty lame idea. Not everything needs to be brought down to "loot". There needs to be more gameplay that is simply based on player interaction. In short, make it fun to play with each other. Some of the greatest times I had on OSI was when they had those random PVP servers with castle wars. People used skill gates and just fought hundreds of other chaps. It had nothing to do with loot, just interaction. It seems this server and A^T or whatever, seem to only care about PvM and crafting. All aspects of every play style must have similar footing, or it will stay a ghost shard with farmers adding "rares" to their castles. I logged on for the first time in a long time today, and all I saw around my collapsed house were castles and towers. Sure there was room, but seriously, it seems way to easy to make money here. It is honestly laughable to be able to run around with zero risk. I ran around on my mage just looking around and was not even worried if I died. The outskirts of towns should feel dangerous. Not bleh. I really hoped this shard was going to be fun. I think I am ready to just write it off and move on. If I had the capacity and time I would love to attempt to run a shard of my own (already have it coded to the point of temp stat loss and some other randoms bits) but alas, life. The staff here at renaissance definitely deserves much respect and admiration. The only problem is that the shard seems too easy all with an economy that is out of control. It might seem cool to be able to have all the "leet loot" and have a fortress, but the fact is, if everyone has it, it detracts from prestige overall. Just because one has the time to farm for a fortress or castle should not be the only prerequisite for earning one. There should be a little luck, and hard knocks along the way. Maybe stop counts in high level spawn areas to slow down gold farming ability. Maybe make it so reds get zero loot from drops. Maybe make a the whole account go red due to an Avatar, yet only the actual murderer has the effects of stat loss: Talk about punishment. Maybe three accounts is overkill, and detracts from interaction on the whole? Maybe the bard/tamer should have a pvp character with them; dont blame the PK for killing you, blame yourself. Player. Interaction. Fun. edit: I just noticed that I wrote "maybe reds shouldn't get drops". When I wrote that I meant Reds should not get drops from mobs, but players would still be fair game. The content of that sentence was odd, so I figured I would add context to it.
I believe in Publish16 you did not receive murder counts in dungeons nor stat loss. I think also you didn't drop your gear if a player killed you. Just gold and maybe a few other things...regs and bandages perhaps. It was pretty fun. But it's always a slippery slope. I spent the majority of my UO career as a red and had thousands and thousands of longterms. When you take too much risk out of being red, you end up in a situation where players can't get established and reds just travel in big groups and leave ghosts watching farming spots, while they themselves aren't even bothering to play the game. People still PK'ed during this time of stat loss, I know I did. And it makes reds not want to take 5 counts for one guy and that's a good thing too IMO, since it discourages that kind of ganking. I do think 8 hours is too long for a short term, I think it'd be cool if it was half that time, or a quarter of that time. Edit: And another thing...I see A^T catch some grief on the forum that I totally don't understand. Players like them are the life blood of UO and this server would literally be a ghost shard if it wasn't for them. We should be glad to see any active guilds and we should be glad to see variety in the playstyles of players. This game has something for everyone and it would be a shame if we all only played one facet of it.
Thank you Mes, and honestly we do care about PvP as much as anything else GONG. I may not be good at it, but player interaction is WHY I play UO. None of the pixels. What matters to me is that everything gets its fair share of attention, balance and improvement. I'm not terribly opposed to shortening stat timers or adjusting the numbers but it would have to be heavily weighed by the staff with all consideration for the impact on the players. Truly though, once you build the characters, gold is always easy to get. That's the nature of UO unless you've got a Siege ruleset. So economy really isn't an issue. Alas, people just writing the shard off and moving on because it's not what they wanted, yet all of what they made it, is what really kills shards. People are too blinded by (low) population to look at the good aspects or potential and just give up. See what's good, help us fix the bad and add more good and this will be the epic shard I'm confident it is bound to be.
Thanks for the reasoned replies. As Jura wrote, "people quitting because after 6 months people have fortresses and towers" is a huge reason. The shard is to easy, and the economy is broken because everyone is rich. There is no supply or demand, simply farm it and be done with it. No true gold sinks. With three accounts everyone can have almost every play style with all crafters ect. It eliminates the need of others and the actual role of crafters to the shard economy overall. PVP is great in all forms, but it seems from previous replies that it must be consensual. The idea of being attacked anywhere at any time made this game interesting. Stat loss just removes a player for to long on such a small server. Sure one can say make mutliple pks, but why? To circumvent the rules in place to stop the exact behavior that stat loss is trying to disrupt? That is why I thought a temp stat loss similar to factions would keep action going. There is just not enough player interaction. Setting up interaction outside of the game through events takes away from the spontaneity of the game. Events are great, but if that is the only way to get a lot of people together, the player base is doomed.
would it be possible to add some sort of housing tax? I suppose that might be hard to code as I don't think there's anything in runUO about that... but really if you think the issue is too much gold, and I do agree to some extend, you need to nerf severly two classes: bards and tamers; it's so easy to farm with these it's ridiculous (and I do have some and play them... for this very reason). Make polar bears, maybe frenzied ostards the strongest creatures you can tame. For provoc, make it so that the provok creature will attack once or twice, then choose his own target; for peacemaking, make it stop working after the creature is hit. Then big mobs will become challenging again! Regarding original topic, with 3 accounts and the easiness of creating toons... i'm not sure the length of the stat loss is any deterrant or has any relevance... on OSI some PKs had hundreds of long term counts in the T2A era and even before, and money was much harder to come by and macroing much more tricky/risky! so grow some balls and go kill people if that's what you want!
I was working on housing tax on my shard but havent touched it in awhile. There are scripts out there that do it, that is if you can log on to that horrid forum over there. I know about bards, my brother and I farmed enough in two days for a large house. Two. Days. Jura, from reading your posts you also have three crafters churning out bods as fast as you can. I noticed you are quite well off in UO terms. So why change it when you profit from the way the economy sits? If someone can farm really quick from mobs why create a crafter themselves? You clearly said you are "constantly sold out", which shows no lack of gold in that sense. Even when I had a Gm smith on LS, I used to buy from vendors if I was lazy, sometimes its cheaper to let someone else waste their time mining ect. When you can make gold hand over fist at spawns, why waste time making a crafter? No idea why you keep bringing up UOSA, it has nothing to do with making UOren a better, more exciting place. Just because afk gold farming is less, doesnt mean it isnt a problem. I was able to do 10kish about every 45 mins switching from titans and spiders near pap(probably faster but didn't want to mislead). Not like I was even rushing. In UOSA I couldn't do harpies that long before I was bothered by SOMEONE.
Ill bother you, just let me know when your on and your usual farming locations lol. jk. On a serious note though, Im about to start PKing more heavily on my days off. At least until faction action picks up.
I can't believe this thread got resurrected. I'd hoped that we were all just going to let the gravedigging random first comment from some unknown, and since inactive, user fade away ignored and unanswered. Since it didn't happen that way, I guess I'd better speak my mind again. All servers are like this when they first start up. I've played on several other free servers at or shortly after the time they went live. There were always roughly 50 players online farming the mess out of the world and basically leaving each other in peace as they did so. I got on UOSA in the first year it was live. Built a bard and farmed balrons in Terathan Keep for as long as I wanted every day without ever seeing another soul for months on end. And as a natural consequence, everyone who gets on early gets riches coming out of their ears before the server pop ever breaks 200. That's the way it always happens. It's normal. More than that, it's eminently sensible. And the only people who have a problem with it - the people who think it woulld be better if when the first ten people joined a server, five of them built PKs right away and started killing the other guys - either don't play and just rant on the forums or they play a little, rant a while, and quit very quickly. We've seen a few of both of those types here already. All I can say is Thank God that some people here can see the bigger picture. I know more than a few players here that have been content to slow play the PKing for the sake of the server because they aren't here to bitch and run or recreate some broken server they quit a year ago; they're here for the duration, they understand what staff is trying to build here, and they know that inevitably field PvP/PKing will come in time. I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you come to a start-up server with a low population and complain about the PK situation when you could easily and instantly go to any of a number of other servers and get yourself ganked within a few hours of creating an account, you're just trying to start trouble.
