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STOP The Decay of Town Loyalty NOW! NOW!!! NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

L

lupushor

Guest
Just stop it!

Worst idea ever!

I spent countless hours getting way past adored mark on 3 characters, then left town for 2 weeks and now, after another 3 hours of loyalling, I am STILL stuck as Respected so I can't collect the banner I deserved.

How dare you mock me and my time? Give me back the hours I wasted on your "idea".

At a medium rate of 100 rioters, 5 rioters decay per day is 5%. NOTHING is 5% per day, either good or bad. Maybe on Mongbat Dung Planet that would be ok, BUT NOT HERE !!! In 3 weeks one gets from adored to unknown, where are we? Twilight Zone ???? I just had to redo more than half my work on one character, and I didn't even touch the other 2. I could have just started now, or I could just start later, waiting for something more "interesting" than another bunch of shiny colored items. How did you even come up with this system?? Rewarding someone for their work is one thing, but taking away everybody's gains at this rate is UNACCEPTABLE!!!

STOP IT NOW !!!


(I thank the stratics mods for not answering my pages, as I had time to cool down before I posted this, so this is a sugared version of the original acid thread I was about to post. It had way more references to ogres, mongbats and orcs.)
 

Shakkara

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The decay has already been reduced to 1%.

But I agree that the people that started early are penalized hard. You might as well have started now, there is no reward for the people that have kept up the grind for months to combat the decay.
 

Kylie Kinslayer

Stratics Legend
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Awards
1
No!!! No!!!! Noooo!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!!

Leave loyalty decay in. The banners and whatever is next should be hard to get. I do agree with Shakkara though, they should have left the decay rate the same so the newer folks have to combat the same problem the early folks had to.

Guess in all the future events I will hang back, wait and wait until the gripers start doing their thing and folks give them their way much like that mother with the three year old pitching a fit for the candy bar in the checkout lane. Sometimes authority figures just need to learn to swat them on the butt and say NO. Just my .02 of course.
 

georox

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
No!!! No!!!! Noooo!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!!

Leave loyalty decay in. The banners and whatever is next should be hard to get. I do agree with Shakkara though, they should have left the decay rate the same so the newer folks have to combat the same problem the early folks had to.

Guess in all the future events I will hang back, wait and wait until the gripers start doing their thing and folks give them their way much like that mother with the three year old pitching a fit for the candy bar in the checkout lane. Sometimes authority figures just need to learn to swat them on the butt and say NO. Just my .02 of course.
So you would like to encourage people not to care about events until the end, that way they do the work once to get all of the rewards, instead of earning their spot early and actively following the event? So... why should they bother to write the early part of the event?
 

kelmo

Old and in the way
Professional
Alumni
Supporter
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Dread Lord
Why?
Why should anything in this game be hard to get?
*Winks*

@Wolfy... I just got home from making cookies. I see yer PM, I have not read it yet. I really did just get home. Yer post seems OK in this version...
 

Lady Storm

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
To be honest at events there should be a way to let players get the item deemed for and have fun doing it. Now I dont condone that just cause a small handfull can get in there with the new favorite way of killing and grab all the goodies! It is not fair for the healer who is rezing the players so much they cant get a slepp in edge wise to warrent a chance.

I like when at the end a totum is used and all get a prize. Now if you get a different prize if the machine is set to rendomize the gift for your work... ok thats a great idea.
The thing is that if they do show up and do honest fighting they too should get a gift.
 

Martyna Zmuir

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
"Point Decay" is a terrible grind mechanic that the Dev Team needs to stop using. UO isn't WoW.

People play this game casually, sometimes taking weeks off at a time. They should be penalized in an event like this why? UO shouldn't penalize us for having Real Lives (tm).

"Loyalty" in this context is a bad joke. We run around feeding & clothing the poor, arresting pyromanic rioters, and killing/arresting raiders. We get up to Adored/venerated just to lose it a few days later? Are Britannian's that forgetful, or just jaded and callous?

If you poke at the concept of loyalty for a few minutes, it all breaks apart RP-wise. Why are we limited to one city? Why would Yew care that someone who has been helping their city also helps Skara Brae? Have the Virtues been totally tossed out the window? Shouldn't we be striving for unity and to ensure that all the people are fed and "happy"?

Where is the "fun" in this grind?
 

Arrgh

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
"Point Decay" is a terrible grind mechanic that the Dev Team needs to stop using. UO isn't WoW.

People play this game casually, sometimes taking weeks off at a time. They should be penalized in an event like this why? UO shouldn't penalize us for having Real Lives (tm).

"Loyalty" in this context is a bad joke. We run around feeding & clothing the poor, arresting pyromanic rioters, and killing/arresting raiders. We get up to Adored/venerated just to lose it a few days later? Are Britannian's that forgetful, or just jaded and callous?

If you poke at the concept of loyalty for a few minutes, it all breaks apart RP-wise. Why are we limited to one city? Why would Yew care that someone who has been helping their city also helps Skara Brae? Have the Virtues been totally tossed out the window? Shouldn't we be striving for unity and to ensure that all the people are fed and "happy"?

Where is the "fun" in this grind?

Ditto.
 
W

Woodsman

Guest
Leave loyalty decay in. The banners and whatever is next should be hard to get. I
You're confusing "hard" with "tedious" and they are really two different things.

Like Martyna said UO is not WoW. Grind mechanics can ruin a game or a system in a hurry. While UO has it's sharing of grinding, and lord knows enough of the people who made Warcraft the grindfest that it is came out of the early UO development teams, you can get by without a lot of the grinding.

If I'm in a situation where I want to participate in such a game mechanic, but I'm unsure of whether I will be able to login enough or keep up a certain amount of activity, I'm going to be less likely to engage in said activity. The problem is that if I engage in said activity, have to stop for a certain amount of time, and I lose a lot of what I had previously gained, I'm less likely to resume said activity because it now becomes a grind.

That's counter-productive for the devs - they want to implement new things that more people are going to want to participate in, not less. As a matter of fact, last year, Mesanna talked about how they wanted to get away from the mindless stuff and grinding. Having bad decay systems on things like this can turn just about anything into a grind.
 

Uvtha

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Just stop it!

Worst idea ever!

I spent countless hours getting way past adored mark on 3 characters, then left town for 2 weeks and now, after another 3 hours of loyalling, I am STILL stuck as Respected so I can't collect the banner I deserved.

How dare you mock me and my time? Give me back the hours I wasted on your "idea".

At a medium rate of 100 rioters, 5 rioters decay per day is 5%. NOTHING is 5% per day, either good or bad. Maybe on Mongbat Dung Planet that would be ok, BUT NOT HERE !!! In 3 weeks one gets from adored to unknown, where are we? Twilight Zone ???? I just had to redo more than half my work on one character, and I didn't even touch the other 2. I could have just started now, or I could just start later, waiting for something more "interesting" than another bunch of shiny colored items. How did you even come up with this system?? Rewarding someone for their work is one thing, but taking away everybody's gains at this rate is UNACCEPTABLE!!!

STOP IT NOW !!!


(I thank the stratics mods for not answering my pages, as I had time to cool down before I posted this, so this is a sugared version of the original acid thread I was about to post. It had way more references to ogres, mongbats and orcs.)
I agree that I see no point what ever to the decay as the ONLY purpose it serves is to make people annoyed, but I think you are being a touch melodramatic.
 

Uvtha

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
You're confusing "hard" with "tedious" and they are really two different things.

Like Martyna said UO is not WoW. Grind mechanics can ruin a game or a system in a hurry. While UO has it's sharing of grinding, and lord knows enough of the people who made Warcraft the grindfest that it is came out of the early UO development teams, you can get by without a lot of the grinding.

If I'm in a situation where I want to participate in such a game mechanic, but I'm unsure of whether I will be able to login enough or keep up a certain amount of activity, I'm going to be less likely to engage in said activity. The problem is that if I engage in said activity, have to stop for a certain amount of time, and I lose a lot of what I had previously gained, I'm less likely to resume said activity because it now becomes a grind.

That's counter-productive for the devs - they want to implement new things that more people are going to want to participate in, not less. As a matter of fact, last year, Mesanna talked about how they wanted to get away from the mindless stuff and grinding. Having bad decay systems on things like this can turn just about anything into a grind.
Agree. The grind to get to adored is already a mega snooze fest. Punishing people who may be unable to play for a week, or simply don't like to repeat the same 3 activities over and over every week to maintain loyalty.

The fact that of all of the different loyalty ratings from the gargoyle queen to all of the various NPC groups we have had the choice to be loyal to... none of them have ever had decay. My ophidian loyalty is the same as it was 5 months ago. What is the point of deviating from the standard loyalty rating MO. There is no justification of decay.

The only thing decay does is create a needless obligation. The question is, and always should be... is this fun?
 
L

lupushor

Guest
The concept of grind is to "engage in repetitive and/or boring tasks" in pursuit of some reward, either it is money, an item, to unlock something or just for a personal quest. You are presented with what you have to do, what you gain by doing it and it's up to you if you do it or not.
With town loyalty they are on to something way worse. One has to grind continuously only to preserve what he/she already gained by previously grinding for hours/days. And what's that gain about? Some abstract notion that may or may not help somewhere in the future to get something that may or may not be desirable. I'm not talking about if it's hard or not to do the stuff needed for this loyalty, I'm talking about the mindblowing gaming concept behind this event. How can you even come up with a reward that would make up for all this trouble you imagined? What monumental reward could keep the proportion towards the playtime/grind needed to get it and ... let's say a Mesanna Roulette Lantern and the trouble one get through to get it?? If one can get a 200mil item in 30mins at one of these "wonderful" Messana Roulette Events, what should be the reward for grinding 15mins a day per character all the way to september??? This system is doomed from the start. And even worse, you didn't even bother to mention how this will work. You never said "go keep peace in your favourite city and, oh, when you stop, it will be like it never happened". I would have never joined in such a silly event. I was tricked to waste time for nothing and I even had to pay money for it. I am very sorry that I actually do have a life and that I want my time spent in an online game to be meaningful and fun.
You cancelled my work without any previous notice or consolation reward, or even the slightest apology for screwing this up. I have lost COMPLETE interest in this event. Way to go to celebrate the long struggle to keep playing one of the most challenging and poorly run games ever.
 

Nimuaq

Lore Master
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The question is, and always should be... is this fun?
It is not, most of us already stated that:

And the total click fest of clearing the mess and fire is less than appealing.
Certainly I have already become bored with endlessly arresting rioters, clearing rubbish, and putting out fires. What should be a game and fun is like work and an endurance test.
The things that are being asked of players are, unfortunately, tedious (putting out fires, handing out food/ clothes, arresting rioters). It is not terribly engaging, which is what the main objective should be when you want to appease players. You want to give them a continuing reason to want to log in. For a select few, I am sure this may be entertaining. From reading these boards and my own personal experiences from listening to numerous players from two shards, the majority do not find this fun or exciting. Which is a shame... because the notion of cities in chaos could be very, very enticing.
Needlessly over-thought new game system Check Decay rate making it pointless/annoying to maintain Check Carpal tunnel syndrome inducing repetitive actions Check Tissue paper thin in-game rationalization Check "Fun" dissipates after the first hour or two Check Vague references to later stages "changing things" Check
It is NOT fun if i work the system today, just to be set back when i find the next time to play. I pay for the accounts, why punish me with decay? I don't get the point of decaying virtues/loyality.
I'm also sad to say that, if I had to choose between training taming and participating the event, I would probably train taming. There is absolutely no challenge to it and a game without a challenge is just plain boring. I'm quite disappointed.
I hope new ways to help the city show up soon. As it is the 2-3 things that you have to do to gain loyalty, are super repetitive.

I did the current stuff far longer than was borring, and I'm just at respected.
But I guess they just couldn't end the event after some of the players spent long boring hours to get to the highest loyalty ratings. I think this is their reward, I don't think they are expecting other players to participate in this act from scratch and they shouldn't! It is really boring!
 

Adol

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
To add my voice to the many expressed here; this event design was so bad, I actually stopped playing Ultima Online for fun, logging in now only for plant watering and the EM events. Even during such events though, the civil war story line is changing the nature of the game. The EMs on Europa are roleplaying city allegiances too, which has meant for a good number of them I've ended up refusing to fight the Bandit spawn we've been led into. Why? Because it would have further wrecked the "progress" of my own character because the game mechanics would have counted that as working against my "own" city, which as we've been warned time and time again will destroy the overall arc for us. Which is quite, quite ridiculous. And roleplaying resistance to the entire arc because my character in game, and my personality out of game refuses to bow before the petty appeals to the greed of those who cannot conceive of anything higher than the self, which means that all I'm doing is logging on to seem difficult and arrogant for getting in the way of the opportunities of others to gain Phat L3wt.

And that loot? What joy is there in material rewards which are themselves a grind to achieve, and a shameless money grabbing one at that? Because no one can own all 8 banners on a single account, because you can only get 7 characters to place? And the Meer/Juka rewards aren't even visually attractive, and in turn treat decency and support for their race as a simple currency to buy ugly vanity items, an incredible oxymoron.

But then, there was loyalty decay on top of this. Which having popped by Stratics today I now discover was originally 5 percent. 5 PERCENT. What the hell were you thinking? Do you believe all of us value our personal lives so, so very little that we'd not mind that you sliced away 5 percent of the time we'd sacrificed in the hopes this soulless grind had a point?

Oh, I know in the reality of your own day to day professional lives you have to work with limited budgets, tiny programming teams, and pressures from suited corporate drones who demand server usage figures and revenue streams... that you need to generate hours of addictive content for very little design work and as cheaply as possible... but we don't live in that world in Brittania. It's our escape from it, we come home for escapism and aspire to better or just more exciting things with our spare time. And saving your job means understanding that. This isn't just rhetoric; look at the practical consequences. If you'd have been working on the Diablo series, Age of Shadows would have been a success. But instead it's itemization marked the first real collapse in subscriptions, because you're not working on Diablo. You're working on Ultima Online. And we the community as a whole didn't want grind for item stats here.

"But why do people play the grinds we patch in then?" you may ask. Because affection is something people don't let go very easily, and they want to remain in love with Ultima Online. And if that's the only content you give them...

"It's a viable model though" you could claim; "World of Warcraft proves it". Yes, but the thing is, the people who want to play that model have largely left and gone to World of Warcraft. And back in the mists of time, if they were in the mood for that too, they were playing Everquest Online 1 instead. Ultima Online is in the same overall genre of game, but it doesn't have the same design ethos or audience. You may want to try and lure some of WoWs audience here; but they aren't going to go back to a graphical style from the 1990s with a majority of code and design from a different perspective entirely.

Simply believing you are celebrating Ultima Online's history doesn't mean that you actually are. Not if you aren't celebrating the true Spirit of it all. In fact, let me explain with a contrast. THERE WILL BE EVENT ARC SPOILERS NOW. Be warned.

I've hinted before I suspected what we were seeing was the rise of a Fellowship kind of movement. And with the death of Queen Dawn, I think I can see where the parallel you are trying to draw is. Ultima 7 is the first of the third of 3 cycles in Ultima History, the so-called Guardian Trilogy. It's been interpreted as a reversed mirror image of the first Trilogy (Ultima 1-3) which shows the unification of Britannia and the rise of the Avatar, the embodiment of virtue; where as the final trilogy leads to the splintering of Britannia, the rise of anti-virtue as symbolised by the Guardian, and the end of the Avatar's involvement in Britannia.

I doubt you are planning for the end of the game though. No, what I suspect is someone was inspired and thought "Hey, we can use that mirror-trilogy concept though; We can't use British or associated characters, but we do have the coincidence of the 15th year anniversary, and being roughly around Ultima 7 in the Prime lore we've used, so we can tie the two together and have a rebirth. Let's kill off Dawn, have a period of instability, the beginnings perhaps of the rise of the Guardian equivalent... but see a new Britannia and new leader emerge from the chaos"

Who it will be, I have no idea. Or even what style of Government, beyond "fresh start at 15!" Perhaps this time around the Guardian is going to be Virtue-Bane, which is basically the Guardian's character as his name... Anyway, it's an interesting take on the Prime lore if this what the design really is; but remember I said it doesn't count at all if you don't remember the Spirit?

You see, in Ultima Prime, we not only explored the entire world, lolly-gagging in fields with cows if we wanted, but largely helped shape that world, being the main narrative focus.

In Ultima Online, what we're doing is grinding one small part of the world over and over again. Not because we're heroes or villains, but because we dare not miss out on potentially time sensitive pixel crack. Being cynical, I suspect for a good reason, because there's not enough dev time to do more than plot what ever the Big Event will be. so we've been given something to do to fill out the hours until then. I just hope it's not as half-assed as throwing pies at Virtue-Bane, because someone didn't understand the difference between humiliation and humility.

And as a consequence, what I'm actually doing in real life instead is, having just chased an enormous bumble bee out of my flat, I'm now grabbing a book and catching the last of the evening sun, in a park here in real life Britain. Another extremely early heat wave again... but still, despite what it hints towards, sunshine and a book is so much more refreshing to the soul than worrying about hours of dull gameplay to prove my virtual house more pimpin' than my neighbours.
 

LordDrago

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
To add my voice to the many expressed here; this event design was so bad, I actually stopped playing Ultima Online for fun, logging in now only for plant watering and the EM events. Even during such events though, the civil war story line is changing the nature of the game. The EMs on Europa are roleplaying city allegiances too, which has meant for a good number of them I've ended up refusing to fight the Bandit spawn we've been led into. Why? Because it would have further wrecked the "progress" of my own character because the game mechanics would have counted that as working against my "own" city, which as we've been warned time and time again will destroy the overall arc for us. Which is quite, quite ridiculous. And roleplaying resistance to the entire arc because my character in game, and my personality out of game refuses to bow before the petty appeals to the greed of those who cannot conceive of anything higher than the self, which means that all I'm doing is logging on to seem difficult and arrogant for getting in the way of the opportunities of others to gain Phat L3wt.

And that loot? What joy is there in material rewards which are themselves a grind to achieve, and a shameless money grabbing one at that? Because no one can own all 8 banners on a single account, because you can only get 7 characters to place? And the Meer/Juka rewards aren't even visually attractive, and in turn treat decency and support for their race as a simple currency to buy ugly vanity items, an incredible oxymoron.

But then, there was loyalty decay on top of this. Which having popped by Stratics today I now discover was originally 5 percent. 5 PERCENT. What the hell were you thinking? Do you believe all of us value our personal lives so, so very little that we'd not mind that you sliced away 5 percent of the time we'd sacrificed in the hopes this soulless grind had a point?

Oh, I know in the reality of your own day to day professional lives you have to work with limited budgets, tiny programming teams, and pressures from suited corporate drones who demand server usage figures and revenue streams... that you need to generate hours of addictive content for very little design work and as cheaply as possible... but we don't live in that world in Brittania. It's our escape from it, we come home for escapism and aspire to better or just more exciting things with our spare time. And saving your job means understanding that. This isn't just rhetoric; look at the practical consequences. If you'd have been working on the Diablo series, Age of Shadows would have been a success. But instead it's itemization marked the first real collapse in subscriptions, because you're not working on Diablo. You're working on Ultima Online. And we the community as a whole didn't want grind for item stats here.

"But why do people play the grinds we patch in then?" you may ask. Because affection is something people don't let go very easily, and they want to remain in love with Ultima Online. And if that's the only content you give them...

"It's a viable model though" you could claim; "World of Warcraft proves it". Yes, but the thing is, the people who want to play that model have largely left and gone to World of Warcraft. And back in the mists of time, if they were in the mood for that too, they were playing Everquest Online 1 instead. Ultima Online is in the same overall genre of game, but it doesn't have the same design ethos or audience. You may want to try and lure some of WoWs audience here; but they aren't going to go back to a graphical style from the 1990s with a majority of code and design from a different perspective entirely.

Simply believing you are celebrating Ultima Online's history doesn't mean that you actually are. Not if you aren't celebrating the true Spirit of it all. In fact, let me explain with a contrast. THERE WILL BE EVENT ARC SPOILERS NOW. Be warned.

I've hinted before I suspected what we were seeing was the rise of a Fellowship kind of movement. And with the death of Queen Dawn, I think I can see where the parallel you are trying to draw is. Ultima 7 is the first of the third of 3 cycles in Ultima History, the so-called Guardian Trilogy. It's been interpreted as a reversed mirror image of the first Trilogy (Ultima 1-3) which shows the unification of Britannia and the rise of the Avatar, the embodiment of virtue; where as the final trilogy leads to the splintering of Britannia, the rise of anti-virtue as symbolised by the Guardian, and the end of the Avatar's involvement in Britannia.

I doubt you are planning for the end of the game though. No, what I suspect is someone was inspired and thought "Hey, we can use that mirror-trilogy concept though; We can't use British or associated characters, but we do have the coincidence of the 15th year anniversary, and being roughly around Ultima 7 in the Prime lore we've used, so we can tie the two together and have a rebirth. Let's kill off Dawn, have a period of instability, the beginnings perhaps of the rise of the Guardian equivalent... but see a new Britannia and new leader emerge from the chaos"

Who it will be, I have no idea. Or even what style of Government, beyond "fresh start at 15!" Perhaps this time around the Guardian is going to be Virtue-Bane, which is basically the Guardian's character as his name... Anyway, it's an interesting take on the Prime lore if this what the design really is; but remember I said it doesn't count at all if you don't remember the Spirit?

You see, in Ultima Prime, we not only explored the entire world, lolly-gagging in fields with cows if we wanted, but largely helped shape that world, being the main narrative focus.

In Ultima Online, what we're doing is grinding one small part of the world over and over again. Not because we're heroes or villains, but because we dare not miss out on potentially time sensitive pixel crack. Being cynical, I suspect for a good reason, because there's not enough dev time to do more than plot what ever the Big Event will be. so we've been given something to do to fill out the hours until then. I just hope it's not as half-assed as throwing pies at Virtue-Bane, because someone didn't understand the difference between humiliation and humility.

And as a consequence, what I'm actually doing in real life instead is, having just chased an enormous bumble bee out of my flat, I'm now grabbing a book and catching the last of the evening sun, in a park here in real life Britain. Another extremely early heat wave again... but still, despite what it hints towards, sunshine and a book is so much more refreshing to the soul than worrying about hours of dull gameplay to prove my virtual house more pimpin' than my neighbours.
I could not have expressed it any better than this.
 
S

Sevin0oo0

Guest
and lord knows enough of the people who made Warcraft the grindfest that it is came out of the early UO development teams
I also see it as another discarded Cal item:"Git 'em in, git 'em out" Remember that? Or maybe I took that wrong in thinking grinds were going away in arcs. I have it on good authority that some UO dev's went to FB - this is exactly the kind of event that should be there instead of here.
 

Bobar

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I really cannot be bothered to detail again my objections to the whole thing so I will content myself by simply agreeing with the O/P. I guess whether or not our opinions have been noted may become evident in future if we get a similar scenario.

The people responsible might usefully peruse the poll about liking the the Loyalty system which currently indicates
Like the system ----13 votes = 22.4%
Dislike the system--43 votes = 74.1%

This would give them some idea of the esteem people hold their brilliant idea in.
 

startle

Siege... Where the fun begins.
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
"Point Decay" is a terrible grind mechanic that the Dev Team needs to stop using. UO isn't WoW.

People play this game casually, sometimes taking weeks off at a time. They should be penalized in an event like this why? UO shouldn't penalize us for having Real Lives (tm).

"Loyalty" in this context is a bad joke. We run around feeding & clothing the poor, arresting pyromanic rioters, and killing/arresting raiders. We get up to Adored/venerated just to lose it a few days later? Are Britannian's that forgetful, or just jaded and callous?

If you poke at the concept of loyalty for a few minutes, it all breaks apart RP-wise. Why are we limited to one city? Why would Yew care that someone who has been helping their city also helps Skara Brae? Have the Virtues been totally tossed out the window? Shouldn't we be striving for unity and to ensure that all the people are fed and "happy"?

Where is the "fun" in this grind?
Everything she ^^^^^^ said:

;)
 

Aibal

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
To add my voice to the many expressed here; this event design was so bad, I actually stopped playing Ultima Online for fun, logging in now only for plant watering and the EM events. Even during such events though, the civil war story line is changing the nature of the game. The EMs on Europa are roleplaying city allegiances too, which has meant for a good number of them I've ended up refusing to fight the Bandit spawn we've been led into. Why? Because it would have further wrecked the "progress" of my own character because the game mechanics would have counted that as working against my "own" city, which as we've been warned time and time again will destroy the overall arc for us. Which is quite, quite ridiculous. And roleplaying resistance to the entire arc because my character in game, and my personality out of game refuses to bow before the petty appeals to the greed of those who cannot conceive of anything higher than the self, which means that all I'm doing is logging on to seem difficult and arrogant for getting in the way of the opportunities of others to gain Phat L3wt.

And that loot? What joy is there in material rewards which are themselves a grind to achieve, and a shameless money grabbing one at that? Because no one can own all 8 banners on a single account, because you can only get 7 characters to place? And the Meer/Juka rewards aren't even visually attractive, and in turn treat decency and support for their race as a simple currency to buy ugly vanity items, an incredible oxymoron.

But then, there was loyalty decay on top of this. Which having popped by Stratics today I now discover was originally 5 percent. 5 PERCENT. What the hell were you thinking? Do you believe all of us value our personal lives so, so very little that we'd not mind that you sliced away 5 percent of the time we'd sacrificed in the hopes this soulless grind had a point?

Oh, I know in the reality of your own day to day professional lives you have to work with limited budgets, tiny programming teams, and pressures from suited corporate drones who demand server usage figures and revenue streams... that you need to generate hours of addictive content for very little design work and as cheaply as possible... but we don't live in that world in Brittania. It's our escape from it, we come home for escapism and aspire to better or just more exciting things with our spare time. And saving your job means understanding that. This isn't just rhetoric; look at the practical consequences. If you'd have been working on the Diablo series, Age of Shadows would have been a success. But instead it's itemization marked the first real collapse in subscriptions, because you're not working on Diablo. You're working on Ultima Online. And we the community as a whole didn't want grind for item stats here.

"But why do people play the grinds we patch in then?" you may ask. Because affection is something people don't let go very easily, and they want to remain in love with Ultima Online. And if that's the only content you give them...

"It's a viable model though" you could claim; "World of Warcraft proves it". Yes, but the thing is, the people who want to play that model have largely left and gone to World of Warcraft. And back in the mists of time, if they were in the mood for that too, they were playing Everquest Online 1 instead. Ultima Online is in the same overall genre of game, but it doesn't have the same design ethos or audience. You may want to try and lure some of WoWs audience here; but they aren't going to go back to a graphical style from the 1990s with a majority of code and design from a different perspective entirely.

Simply believing you are celebrating Ultima Online's history doesn't mean that you actually are. Not if you aren't celebrating the true Spirit of it all. In fact, let me explain with a contrast. THERE WILL BE EVENT ARC SPOILERS NOW. Be warned.

I've hinted before I suspected what we were seeing was the rise of a Fellowship kind of movement. And with the death of Queen Dawn, I think I can see where the parallel you are trying to draw is. Ultima 7 is the first of the third of 3 cycles in Ultima History, the so-called Guardian Trilogy. It's been interpreted as a reversed mirror image of the first Trilogy (Ultima 1-3) which shows the unification of Britannia and the rise of the Avatar, the embodiment of virtue; where as the final trilogy leads to the splintering of Britannia, the rise of anti-virtue as symbolised by the Guardian, and the end of the Avatar's involvement in Britannia.

I doubt you are planning for the end of the game though. No, what I suspect is someone was inspired and thought "Hey, we can use that mirror-trilogy concept though; We can't use British or associated characters, but we do have the coincidence of the 15th year anniversary, and being roughly around Ultima 7 in the Prime lore we've used, so we can tie the two together and have a rebirth. Let's kill off Dawn, have a period of instability, the beginnings perhaps of the rise of the Guardian equivalent... but see a new Britannia and new leader emerge from the chaos"

Who it will be, I have no idea. Or even what style of Government, beyond "fresh start at 15!" Perhaps this time around the Guardian is going to be Virtue-Bane, which is basically the Guardian's character as his name... Anyway, it's an interesting take on the Prime lore if this what the design really is; but remember I said it doesn't count at all if you don't remember the Spirit?

You see, in Ultima Prime, we not only explored the entire world, lolly-gagging in fields with cows if we wanted, but largely helped shape that world, being the main narrative focus.

In Ultima Online, what we're doing is grinding one small part of the world over and over again. Not because we're heroes or villains, but because we dare not miss out on potentially time sensitive pixel crack. Being cynical, I suspect for a good reason, because there's not enough dev time to do more than plot what ever the Big Event will be. so we've been given something to do to fill out the hours until then. I just hope it's not as half-assed as throwing pies at Virtue-Bane, because someone didn't understand the difference between humiliation and humility.

And as a consequence, what I'm actually doing in real life instead is, having just chased an enormous bumble bee out of my flat, I'm now grabbing a book and catching the last of the evening sun, in a park here in real life Britain. Another extremely early heat wave again... but still, despite what it hints towards, sunshine and a book is so much more refreshing to the soul than worrying about hours of dull gameplay to prove my virtual house more pimpin' than my neighbours.
Perfect. This sums up my thoughts exactly. Damn well done Adol. I'm at the point where I'm not grinding s**t in this game anymore. I will keep one character on each shard I play at adored, and call it good. It started with the decay of the virtues, making the task of keeping up multiple characters in multiple virtues on multiple shards impossible without grinding. I'm sick of the grinding. I don't play WoW, I play UO.
 

Tina Small

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
In Ultima Online, what we're doing is grinding one small part of the world over and over again. Not because we're heroes or villains, but because we dare not miss out on potentially time sensitive pixel crack. Being cynical, I suspect for a good reason, because there's not enough dev time to do more than plot what ever the Big Event will be. so we've been given something to do to fill out the hours until then. I just hope it's not as half-assed as throwing pies at Virtue-Bane, because someone didn't understand the difference between humiliation and humility.

And as a consequence, what I'm actually doing in real life instead is, having just chased an enormous bumble bee out of my flat, I'm now grabbing a book and catching the last of the evening sun, in a park here in real life Britain. Another extremely early heat wave again... but still, despite what it hints towards, sunshine and a book is so much more refreshing to the soul than worrying about hours of dull gameplay to prove my virtual house more pimpin' than my neighbours.
I won't copy your whole post again, Adol, but it's brilliant. I hope Jeff reads it and takes it to heart.
 
J

Jhym

Guest
To add my voice...but still, despite what it hints towards, sunshine and a book is so much more refreshing to the soul than worrying about hours of dull gameplay to prove my virtual house more pimpin' than my neighbours.
This sort of thing has been happening for years. During the destruction of Haven we had the "blackrock dealers". My characters that had managed to find blackrock were diametrically opposed to handing in blackrock for a reward, so I didn't do a turn in. As a consequence, the hundreds (thousands?) of others who DID managed to get rewards for their collusion, while my characters woke up one day to find Haven island destroyed and left with nothing but blackrock for their ethical stand.

But, of course, the pure gamer types just think I'm an idiot for actually playing with integrity for my pixels people.

However, from an RP standpoint, the past years have been a slow slide into chaos and egotism and greed. When we are given opportunities to "just help out" there's no real feeling of accomplishment over the long term, especially with the loss of position when you take time off. Yes, we get rewards (sometimes) for helpful activities, but for the most part we are left with a lot of time wasted that doesn't really lead to anything fun or wonderful for our efforts.

Do I want a blackrock eating dragon because I worked for four hours a day repelling the same "invasion" over and over? Hm. I can't say I do really, hence why I haven't played a LOT of the events after an initial attempt. I have mostly watched the events from the outside, largely because none of them have a definitive result that would make me (or my characters) proud or happy to have worked on them. I worked on some of the Ophidian invasions largely because they were outside my house or in a town I needed to visit, not because I particularly felt obligated to as a UO "citizen". And even if I DID, my work was undone within a day, sometimes within 20 minutes.

I guess I don't understand the development concept behind these sort of situations. Spawn something annoying, dangerous, deadly; let the players deal with it; give them some small reward; reset the spawn point; eventually patch in some "result" and let the players who got points or items trade in for another reward. It becomes a groundhog day situation where you eventually just go back to your house in exasperation and decorate or fiddle with crafting. There is no real feeling of accomplishment over the long term, since I KNOW 100% that shortly everything will back the way it was and my efforts were wasted.

I haven't played for weeks now because of being snowed under at work, but also because I'm kinda tired of grinding things for "rewards" that I'm not sure I really want -- especially if I have to continually start from the beginning.

Do the devs not remember playing cartridge games without save points? Cause that's what they've been building with their events....
 
S

sirrojen

Guest
I can't imagine why anyone would think faction decay is a good idea, to the point I wonder if the people who voted in favor of decay just did so to grief. seriously dumbest idea ever, i think i am going yo twitter Raph koster and see if him or richard garriot would weigh in.
 

popps

Always Present
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I may have missed it, but has any Developer posted on UOStratics the reasons "why" they put in Town Loyalty decay ?

So far, I have read all sorts of posts from players and about their disliking (myself included...) about Town Loyalty decay but I have yet to read the reasons this decay was put in by the Developers.

If anyone knows of any post, I'd love to get a link to it.

Thanks.
 

RaDian FlGith

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
"Point Decay" is a terrible grind mechanic that the Dev Team needs to stop using. UO isn't WoW.
Just FYI, I can't think of a single system in WoW that uses point decay. Sure, they reduce your current tier points to lower tier points when they drop in a new tier of armor, but that's to be expected. You don't really lose anything... you just have to work for the CURRENT stuff, which is appropriate in my opinion.

Arenas reset points at the end of a tournament season, but that's for the same basic reason.

Other than that... nothing decays.

In fact, WoW's design philosophy has been just the opposite of UO's. They want everyone to experience the various aspects of their game, and so they've taken systems and made them MORE accessible rather than less. Yeah, there remains a grind in the form of daily quests, but you know, you don't really lose anything by not doing them, some things just may take longer. Other areas like the old daily dungeon rewards were changed to a weekly total you could earn so you didn't have to feel compelled to play daily and could just do what you needed to when you had time to.

In short... Blizzard doesn't typically punish the player... particularly on events.
 

MissEcho

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Well I did the grind on 3 of my characters, one for Skara (venerated), Moonglow (adored) and Yew (adored). Got my three banners and that is IT. Was if fun? NO

I figured out pretty quick that dumping money, feeding the population, picking up garbage and putting out fires is a sure way to WASTE money, waste food, and give yourself carpel tunnel injury on those darn garbage piles and fires for very very little reward.

Not sure what the value in being 'venerated' is, but to get to 'adored' the quickest way is just arrest rioters. And if you keep a count at least you have an idea of how much more misery you need to go through to complete the task.

5 Arrests = Commended
another
15 Arrests = Respected
and another
80 Arrests = Adored

tested those on my second two characters. To get to venerated on the first char seemed to take hundreds more after adored, (didn't think to count the first char, plus was doing the carpel tunnel fires etc for the first half to adored until I wised up) and there sure better be some 'other' reward for that misery for those of us who suffered to obtain venerated status, and the maintenance of it, or we are gonna be :mad: .

What really sucks is after suffering through that tedium, to get the 'reward' you have to pay 250k. Sucks totally having only restarted on a new shard with new characters and their 1000 gps to have to shell out that kind of money just to 'participate', especially when you need to outfit your chars and get established in so many other ways in this hugely expensive economy that UO has become. Totally new players are basically excluded from this as it is unlikely they will have the spare cash.

It better not be the case that if your 'loyalty' dwindles due to decay that you will not be able to 'place' your banners if you re-deed them when doing deco etc. That would be the icing on this stale cake.
 

Kas Althume

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I approve this message
I approve this approval.

*edit* As I'm running a company my gaming time is very limited. I have given up on any of the newer addons because of all the decay garbage. Shouln't they implement funny and entertaining stuff for the cash they get from us? Can't they just check the towns to see barely anyone is bothering with the crap?
 

Coldren

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Adol did an excellent summary, but I'll vary from it slightly with a reason.

I'm a roleplayer at heart. Throughout my time playing UO, I can safely say well over 90% of my time that wasn't spent in mines farming ingots has been spent in my city of choice, Trinsic. I don't know why, but I am extremely attached to this city. My house is little more than extra bank space, I spend only the bare minimum of time there I need to transfer items from one character to another, or if I'm just self-casting spells to gain skills.

For this reason, and this reason alone, I will grind for my reputation with the city of Trinsic until my fingers bleed. It's MY city. To me, the reputation with my city of choice is my reward - The banner is just icing on the cake, as likely will be anything that comes after.

I don't like grinds, but I'll do them. The problem with THIS grind is that it has been implemented in a way that's not conducive to fun. Grinds in WoW only work (Now, more than in the past) because:
  • There is a clear indicator of your progression. You can easily determine how much time you will need to accomplish your goal, and find the best way to maximize your gain and maintain a certain level of enjoyability.
  • It never degrades. There are a few reputations where if you gain with one you lose with the other, or their used to be, but these were minor and insignificant reputations.
  • They incorporate every day activities into the process. You can wear a tabard and gain reputation in dungeons, having fun and doing what you would have done anyway. They have daily quests which reward good money and reputation, and they vary. Killing certain monsters can gain you some reputations.
  • They are rewarded not only with fluff stuff like titles, toys, and decorative things, but they can also access some OK equipment.. Not so much that it can't be beaten through other means, but makes for good starting equipment on your path to something better.
These 4 things are CRITICAL to why they work, and why players bother. The grind for this arc has NONE of these things. Omissions of points 1 and 2 are the worst of it, IMO, and sadly, the easiest things to fix.

They could have done so much more to incorporate more playstyles in fun and dynamic ways instead of clicking random things for unknown amounts of time.

What else could they have done?

  • Make it so killing mobs in the cities antivirtue dungeon raises rep. This incorporates casual play and builds meaningful rep.
  • Make turn-ins via daily quests or a per-day limit available for crafters to bolster the cities coffers and supply it's guards. Fits right in with the lore too.
  • Turn off degradation. There is no need for this.
  • Turn on a numeric indicator. We're past the point where not knowing how you are progressing in something that can easily be measured is interesting or mysterious.
  • Don't have rioters and protestors spawn in walls you can't access. This just slows it down even more.
Regardless, Trinsic is my city. I'll do what I must, even though, really, it's not fun or interesting doing it. Hopefully I'll at least get a nice city-centric title to let people know I am now, and always will be, a citizen of Trinsic.
 
S

Sevin0oo0

Guest
What else could they have done?
Thinking about loyalty... Thinks Ter Mur... That was a 'little' grind, still ongoing, but it was enjoyable. You always knew where you stood, and how much was left.
Anybody can do it, at whatever pace they want. I never look at my points anymore, but I'll have a new Panda toon soon that will need it - and I already know I'll enjoy raising it again. Little, Fun, unrestricted, informational - get a benefit - Win
 

Coldren

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
You always knew where you stood, and how much was left.
That is a big part of it for me. Everyone agrees that the grind isn't particularly fun. And that presents a problem.

Psychologically for me, it's harder to motivate myself to do it because I never really know where I stand or how fast I'm advancing doing something I don't particularly enjoy. And I don't think I'm alone.

Sure, you can say, "Don't do it then", and you'd be right. But as a system, as a developer for a game, the choice should never be "Grind it out not knowing how you are progressing doing something that isn't fun" and "Just don't bother if you don't find it fun". That shows, right at the start, a lack of planning in the structure of it, that you knowingly created something that isn't fun, but you hope the carrot (Defined or not) at the end of the string is enough to get people to participate.

In my opinion, of course.
 

Frarc

Stratics Legend
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The decay is a lot less now. Did not dropped out of Venerated since a few days. Normaly it was every day. So something has been changed. :)
 

Adol

Certifiable
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Stratics Legend
That is a big part of it for me. Everyone agrees that the grind isn't particularly fun. And that presents a problem.

Psychologically for me, it's harder to motivate myself to do it because I never really know where I stand or how fast I'm advancing doing something I don't particularly enjoy. And I don't think I'm alone..
Neither of you are wrong, nor even disagreeing with me as such; I've played my share of grinders too, and these are indeed the core mechanics which make that model work. You are simply moving the location of the fun achieved from the mechanics of the game (say something like Tetris which is just inherently addictive as is) into the rewards for completing the action... something closer perhaps to the old Dragon's Lair games. I wouldn't deny it's fun for many, and has been for me in the past too, it's just fun expressed in different ways.

I just don't believe it works here.

And I have my concerns about it becoming the dominant model in general and what it's doing to our personalities in the long run... I've been trying Star Trek Online recently, and got into a debate over their new Duty Officer system, and I want to repeat the outlines of my point here; Someone commented that (what turned out to be a bug) which duplicated the amount of work people had to do, for an already complex and confusing system, however gave a small chance at one or two extra missions because the duplicate list was very slightly different somehow, and thus was a good thing, because it meant they could do that extra work and get a few more missions. I asked how many hours a day he played, and he replied about 16 hours; So I pointed out that "The problem is that game developers have heard the of the phrase "I'd crawl through a mile of crap to get to the diamond in the centre" and not understood that if you set it for the kind of people who, like you, are playing 16 hours a day, if they put the diamond at 16 hours, people who play 5 hours a day, 10 hours, even 15 hours a day just play crap for hours."

And that's what we're largely doing in Ultima Online right now. When we should be playing Panda Tetris.

Panda Love 41 Piece Tetris A61320F505B Jigsaw Puzzle - JigZone.com

(Congratulations to Nimauq for having his work on UOGuide recognised however, and what is almost certainly a funny April Fool (there were no Pandas in Ultima IV)... The devs are human just like us of course, and all criticism is impersonal)
 

Coldren

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Just out of curiosity I parsed my chat log..

Bare in mind I was adored for at least 2 days before I noticed my chat log wasn't turned on. This was over a 10 day period where it was all I did when I was on (Only an hour or less some days, more when I could). I have to walk my arrests since I can't gate travel, and scrolls fizzle far too often to be practical.

Since then:

716 Fires
163 Piles of Garbage
42 Angry Protesters given maximum donation of Bread
50 Arrests

... STILL Adored.

Hopefully the decay is off, but a numerical indicator would be very welcome indeed.
 

GalenKnighthawke

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Without saying whether I disagree or agree with point decay, I must point out that negative loyalty also decays.

And that much has proven quite useful.

I also, I should point out, disagree with Martyna on this all making little sense RP-wise. (Reference is to the concept, not to the mechanic, the latter of which I'm not commenting on save for the above.)

-Galen's player
 

Martyna Zmuir

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Going by the metafiction, the civil unrest facet came out of the blue - without any fictional explanation. Granted, Queen Dawn's death would have been a morale hit, banishing Virtue Bane, (re)building New Magincia, "killing" Scelestus, etc. should all have been high points. Whatever government we have has been rather hands-off. So the "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" of the citizenry is a bit mystifying.

Now, on GL, we've been given a decent groundwork for why people are unhappy. The 'Assembly of Lords & Guilds' is a group of inept/corrupt/entitled aristocrats who don't give a flying F about the rank and file citizen. And at least one of them actively pursuing a vendetta against a group (and it's leader) who has protected the kingdom.

So while GL makes sense, and each shard's EMs may have given a specific rationalization, the metafiction has failed on this point so far. While the recent fiction posts have all been far better than what we got for the last arc, they have been annoyingly light on the "why" detail. Its kind of like a television episode that starts after the climax, then tells the story through disjointed flashbacks. The mystery of the "why" is wearing a tad thin. (If Exodus is behind it all, then the Callie story should definately have been the first part of Act I)
 
L

lupushor

Guest
Without saying whether I disagree or agree with point decay, I must point out that negative loyalty also decays.

And that much has proven quite useful.

I also, I should point out, disagree with Martyna on this all making little sense RP-wise. (Reference is to the concept, not to the mechanic, the latter of which I'm not commenting on save for the above.)

-Galen's player
I think you need to elaborate on your two opinions:

1. Why do you think that the decay of negative loyalty is useful?

I know that if I'd RP a villain and go smack some greys in Skara, I would go insane if in 2 weeks the townsfolks would call me "bud".
And I hope you were reffering to the passive decay, which is the subject here, not the active do good/they forgive "decay" that nobody challenged.

2. What are the aspects of the arc RP that you like?

Martyna made solid arguments against this sudden riot-mania and also against the city segregation, which is absurd from both UO and human point of view.
 

THP

Always Present
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
No!!! No!!!! Noooo!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!!

Leave loyalty decay in. The banners and whatever is next should be hard to get. I do agree with Shakkara though, they should have left the decay rate the same so the newer folks have to combat the same problem the early folks had to.

Guess in all the future events I will hang back, wait and wait until the gripers start doing their thing and folks give them their way much like that mother with the three year old pitching a fit for the candy bar in the checkout lane. Sometimes authority figures just need to learn to swat them on the butt and say NO. Just my .02 of course.
well act 2 ....5000 x2 =10000 points took about 15 hours play to get..that was about 15 x 1 hour grinds.....200 gravediggers per statue....x2= 400 kills for 2 statues!!!!!!.....so a bloody proper grind that would put off the casual gamer type....
Then act 1 takes about 50?? rioters jailed ...3-4 hours on a mage ...lot harder on someone that cannot gate....to get all 8 ....+++24 hours......no thankyou...i have a real life to live too!!!!! muahhahahhahhahaaaaaa....grinding to the up most maximus....stupid....and mindless
 

Adol

Certifiable
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Stratics Legend
Having spent a little while looking over the mechanics, there's a number of further issues that I've been made aware of, as to why this is very poor design;

1.) The Banners that are the rewards apparently need the Reputation to be placed. So unless this is changed at some point, it ruins the ability to use the decoration... Once the event ends you won't be able to place it at all after a little while of decay. Even if the decay is frozen at the end of the event, if ever you want to re-deed and replace it, you're going to have to keep grinding reputation to negate decay, up until the point of freezing, to ensure that character ends up with enough at the end.

2.) The "Civil War" theme may be dramatic, but it can't really be implemented alongside the current reputation design; on Europa there are some impossibly hard raiders from Jhelom attacking Moonglow, which means people simply can't do the reputation grind in Moonglow for now (and crafters probably can't even when the normal raiders are there). So either the EMs have to keep the events under control, and thus lessen the drama, or bugger it outright for the few people who want to earn the banner for that city.

I wonder if the Dev Team has the figures for how many of these celebratory "rewards" have been claimed? It really can't be many at all. So once more, I'm begging them to reconsider as soon as possible these horrible mechanics.
 
S

sirrojen

Guest
I honestly feel bad for people who have been doing this grind since day one, once the non deco awards come out ill start working a town, and if any of those who had grinded to the max could not play for a bit, they will be on even footing with me when i start.
 
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