What's up with the gank squads?

People should just use which method works best for them.

Well I'm glad that's established, here I was thinking they were going to choose what works worst!!

Human error will enter the equation if you do it wrong, not one way or the other.

In the end, of course. In the end.

Great info, thanks all




Be safe

Westra

.

I agree.

What a great conversation everyone. One thing I have noticed on UOR that I never remember on OSI is the recall thing. I was never ready to recall at the first sign of a pk, let alone have a one key macro that recalled me to safety, and I played UO on OSI from the release of Renaissance to the release of Mondain's Legacy. I understand why pks roll in groups and sync drop as many people as they can. It's because 95% of blues they encounter recall away in under a second. It doesnt seem like the way UO was meant to be played, or the way it was played back in it's hay day. I'm not exactly sure why this is so prevalent here when it wasn't on OSI. Maybe it is the smaller population? Any thoughts you guys have would be great. I also remember OSI eventually making it impossible to recall in or out of dungeons. This added a very fun and risky aspect of hunting in dungeons. I also believe they upped the loot found to compensate for the risk. I am not saying this should be implemented but just think of what it would do. Let's be honest. If you are paying attention and prepared to recall, you should never get pked. That in itself seems silly to me, and promotes overpowering strategies of pks to drop people before they can recall. There is never a fight. It is either the blue escaped or died. Where is the fighting?!

.

I actually posted some thoughts on this that might be more fitting for this thread.

To answer your question Mimic, I'd say the reason you don't see much fighting is because PK's on free shards have typically gravitated towards hunting in packs, and thus seek each other out and hunt in groups of already like-minded people. While most blues tend to isolate themselves and hunt alone. If you are alone, even if you want to fight, 1 v 4^syncd = dead. I agree I'd like to see more fighting, but it essentially means that PK's hunting in packs would have to intentionally handicap themselves. It is rather contrary to most human nature, especially the dominance types, to handicap themselves just for a more 'fair' fight.

I have thought long and hard about why we don't see more blues traveling together, and I think this concept can sum it up: Just because we are both blue, doesn't mean we are both like minded.

It's rather like assuming "Oh if you're black then you must get along well with all other black people"

Thus, blues don't always manage to find other like minded blues because our general goals can vary drastically. It becomes hard to create the same formidable packs as the Reds do. The Red PK packs are already united on a common goal: they want to find and kill targets.

Quite frankly, people farm solo for one specific reason and perhaps many not so significant. Greed. The take is far greater when you're not waiting for someone else to restock, coordinating a party or heaven forbid, having a conversation. As I'm sure we all know, social interaction is the bane of profits in UO.

Gank squads are an essential element that should, in time, not just encourage, but force group farming. Group farming was something that really made my UO day when I got back into the game 4 some odd years ago. It is pretty rare here outside of champ spawns. Having a bard, or a tamer or tamer bard, with a pack of fighters actually capable of fighting back, is wonderful.

While I have spent countless hours pumping gold into my bank, I have grown weary of it and welcome our new PK overlords. My recall macro is so efficient, not only does it recall to safety, it drops the gold in my bank and restocks my reagents too. So split that gold, hang out with friends and fight those bastards.

The game was never Intended to have pks. Beta testers discovered that other players had better loot than monster drops and so the cycle began. I recall reading the developers were quite taken by surprise.

Oh man no way! That is hilarious!

The game was always intended to allow players to kill one another. It was designed as a completely open sandbox where players could engage in thier own playstyles. The supprising part was that players killed each other with so little regard. Additional systems had to be put in place to disuade the behavior.

What players need to understand on this shard, and indeed any shard with 100% non-consensual PvP is that that blues are being baited into the PvP area as prey for the reds.

On OSI, the only reason you get double resources in Felucca is to bait miners into being gank bait. The only reason you get double mob drops in Felucca is to bait PvMer's into being prey for gankers.

The only reason this shard invests in the best UO:R era PvM content available is to get players on the shard to act as prey for a another, smaller group of players with a different playstyle.

Please know that I love this shard's PvM content, and I really respect it's core community (most of which are PvPer's). But new players to the shard need to be aware that if they want to live the PvM lifestyle here they are also acting as prey for the PvPer's. If they are not comforitable with that the only option is to no play here.

I disagree. Perhaps some of the most vocal are serious PvPers, but it is hardly the majority. If players choose to venture to dangerous places without the ability to defend themselves, that is the risk they have chosen to take. Having packs of brigands (murderers) roaming the lands is fairly realistic and you either learn to fight back or learn to flee. This is just natural for any open world environment, even the real one. However, you're last statement is correct. Although, there are plenty of relatively PK free PvM things to do. Lower end spawns, treasure hunting, etc.

.

Same. Also I fear commitment.

I always mined in Fel on OSI for the double resources. Unfortunately for the PK's, my smith was also a 5x mage that kept a regular horse with him in addition to two packhorses. Last time I played him, two of them popped out of a gate, and killed my packhorses while I hid. I ended up trotting behind the last one alive while he tried to limp away, after he ran out of red pots. Glad I had time to tell him how lame miner PK's are, while mocking him and magic arrowing him to death.

Moral of that story is that if you make a toon that's all about efficient solo farming, don't expect to have fun PvP'ing with it.

At it's core, your reasons are the same as Blaise stated. You need to get farming done, and it's more efficient for you to just grab a dragon or a drum, and go kill something rather than wait for people to help you. Your rationale might not be pure greed, but the end result is the same. This is an MMO, and yet the only things people usually do with multiple players are things which are impossible, inefficient, or extremely risky to do without them. Aside from actually killing things, just about every other economically beneficial thing to do in UO is also a solo activity. Crafting, fishing, dungeon chests, vendor upkeep, etc. That's not exclusively a UO problem, either, but one that has plagued MMO's since the moment they made it possible to kill things with good loot by yourself. That's why social media games are overtaking MMO's. It might seem they lack depth, but those games fill the hole people have in their lives for efficiently farming pixel crack without all the hassle of dealing with other players.

That would require a lot of re-balancing to fix, and if you consider how complex those systems are, it's not an effort to be undertaken lightly. Even with some good ideas, and a solid plan to implement them, you'll still have to consider all the backlash from people that are doing it out of pure greed, and the effect it would have on the economy, especially for new players that aren't rich yet. I could throw together a list of changes in a heartbeat that would make grouping more fun, rewarding, and challenging than soloing, but I guarantee you half the players or more would throw a tantrum if they were implemented.

Precisely. UO isn't about having fun, it's about having MORE!!!

lol

.

X, or X+Y still equal more than you actually need, therefore, greed.

Let's not pretend like you don't make millions on vendors regularly or selling BoDs that you pulled which cost you practically nothing, with no risk, to obtain.

.

In the context of 'gank squad' conversations, I'm sorry if you are offended that I define greed here as going to farm when you do not require more gold. If farming in peace for 15 minutes is your meditation or relaxation time or something, I'm sorry for missing that context. The point is that gank squads provide balance and you don't need to farm gold any more than they need to kill you while doing so. The part about "and perhaps many others" can easily be applied to farming for kills or farming for the hell of it really. My point was that the most common (I guess) specific reason for solo farming, is greed.

We all got really comfortable solo farming from Beta onward because everyone was grinding towards big game items and the PKs were few and far between (or friends) Now it's populated and harder for the newer folks, so the onus to support those efforts with defense is on all of us elders, if we choose to take it up. Unfortunately most choose to take up the darker side or just get pulled into the billion other aspects of the game.

Of course we all have our own situations but if we choose to farm alone it's not the fault of a group of friends who enjoying killing people.