10 Hour Timer Sux

[Guest]

Sigils went live around 11 hours ago. We were looking forward to lots of faction fighting this weekend. But SL took them and guarded right after they went live. By the time our guild was active all but 3 were corrupted and the rest will probably be in a few minutes. The reason for the 24 hour time was just this, not allowing people to take towns in odd hours when there is no resistance.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

JC, I think you guys need to get some more thieves in your guild who play in the morning and during the daytime and can prevent the other faction(s) from getting the sigils so easily when the bulk of your people aren't on. That's what happens on other shards, like Great Lakes, that have significant faction activity.

Also see if you can get some of your thieves to log out in the enemy base and then try their hand at stealing sigils and just sitting on them for 15-20 minutes in the enemy base to reset them. If you're lucky, one of your thieves just might nab the sigil that the other faction really wants and resetting it will make them fold right up and walk away until later. It isn't unusual for the other side to get a wee bit ****y (especially if they think no one else is on) and not even notice right away that one sigil is missing. When it pops back on the post, they realize it's been reset and then they have to decide whether to stick it out for ten hours or go to playing sigil tag with the thieves for the next day or so until they can get enough people on again to do a guarding period.

It's not the end of the world if someone got the sigils in the middle of the week and the middle of the day, JC. Keep some of the smaller shards in mind too when you start thinking that a rule doesn't make sense. Not every shard has the population that Atlantic has and can even dream of dealing with 24-hour guarding periods. If we get those back, you just might see factions really die out except on the largest of shards.

Also, I really have to ask this one. If you guys couldn't get enough people on to raid mid-day, how do you think you'll ever get enough of your people on to deal with 24-hour (or longer) corruption periods? Or is it your plan to get the sigils one time and then assume that no one else has the numbers to repeat the feat?

 

[Arabella]

JC, I am a thief on Great Lakes, that does exactly like Tina stated in her post. I normally run the mornings. I steal them reset em and place em on our post at the base. I log my thief out in the most active opposing faction base and log her in and out to check to see if they have the sigils or not, rinse and repeat every couple of hours. For instance, just this past week, we have fought since Sunday to keep the sigils and just finally got them corrupted last nite. It was a blast!

But many times we dont have more then 7 people on at a time to guard. We lost the sigils with only 1/2 hour before they were to corrupt, that bummed many guildmates out including me. I would hate to see the reaction, if the timer to hold was changed to a longer amount of time.

This would be a bad change for factions, 10 hours timer should stay in place.

 

[Guest]

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JC, I think you guys need to get some more thieves in your guild who play in the morning and during the daytime and can prevent the other faction(s) from getting the sigils so easily when the bulk of your people aren't on.

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They took them right at noon time and began guarding them then with traps and barricades. It was impossible to try and reset them, only a full scale assault would have worked. Unfortunatly our guild is only active in the evenings on weekdays so all SL has to do now is guard during the morning and early afternoon to take them.

Ten hours isn't even half the day. A much longer time is needed so people can't guard them when the majority of faction players are not online.

 

[Arabella]

JC as big as altantic is, you guys dont have one thief on during the day to keep the sigils active?

Tinkz will tell ya, we may end up stealing the sigil at least 4 times during the day, until we have enough to guard it.

I dont want to have to worry about guarding a sigil for 24 hours a day, I do like to do other things in the game as well. 10 hours is long enough.

 

[Guest]

The key is to have some thieves that can check it during the day.

If you can steal them at server up, they'll be cooked by the time you get home.

 

[Guest]

I just said that if someone is actually guarding you can't run in a thief and reset the sigils. Perhaps you could do one, but any competent defender can stop a thief. And if the defenders can pull together a couple people all day long and you can't, then they get the sigils. With the previous 24 hour timer there was a chance for everyone to defend their towns.

This is also an issue if we ended up guarding and taking the towns. They will just take them back by guarding in the morning and early afternoon.

 

[Arabella]

I understand your frustration about guarding them to lose them after so much time. I just feel that it would kill factions in the long run, with people so busy in real with work kids and other activities. Our world has changed so much in 8 years. The only reason I am able to play now, is because I am laid off due to automotive strike, as soon as that is settled I may go days without being able to play.

 

[Guest]

I think the answer should have been making it easier to guard sigils over 24 hours, not shortening the timer and keeping the difficulty the same. It prevents people who only play at a certain time of day from being able to really participate. Once you have the towns guarding the sigils shouldn't be mandatory, just resetting them.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

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Once you have the towns guarding the sigils shouldn't be mandatory, just resetting them.

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JC, can you please elaborate on what this means? I'm lost.

 

[Guest]

It means if you own the town, then you shouldn't be forced to guard the sigil every time it comes live in order to keep it. You should just be able to prevent other factions from taking it.

But as it stands you could be 10x as powerful as another faction, but all they have to do is guard when all your people are offline.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

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It means if you own the town, then you shouldn't be forced to guard the sigil every time it comes live in order to keep it. You should just be able to prevent other factions from taking it.

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How would you do this? How much time would it take?

 

[imported_Cardell]

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It means if you own the town, then you shouldn't be forced to guard the sigil every time it comes live in order to keep it. You should just be able to prevent other factions from taking it.

But as it stands you could be 10x as powerful as another faction, but all they have to do is guard when all your people are offline.

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See this is the kind of stuff that makes you look ********. You have the biggest guild in the game and you cant find 1 person who plays in the morning to put a char in the factions with 20 stealing to run sigs once or twice a day.... There is nothing wrong with the timer... As it stands, you DO NOT have to guard every time the sigs are live and all you have to do is reset them to prevent others from getting them. It takes 20 minutes to reset sigs and someone in your HUGE guild has to do it every couple of hours.. Trust me you can manage if my 10 man guild has done it for 6 years..

You have to look at what you are doing Link.. You cried and now the GMs are letting you put your 400 man roster in factions and now you are trying to make it so the ONLY way you can be successful in the factions is to out zerg the other factions. Sorry but thats just stupid.

 

[Guest]

Oh boo hoo hoo, get with the program, lol

 

[Guest]

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See this is the kind of stuff that makes you look ********. You have the biggest guild in the game and you cant find 1 person who plays in the morning to put a char in the factions with 20 stealing to run sigs once or twice a day...

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It is not I that is posting without a brain here. I have mentioned at least twice that resetting the sigils in the morning was not an option because they went live around noon. Then they proceeded to guard for the rest of the day and by the time we were active all but 3 were corrupted.

If the timer was 24 hours like it used to be they would have not been able to corrupt them because ~12 hours into guarding we would have crushed them. If they started guarding at 12AM, we would have beaten them at the 20 hour mark.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

<blockquote><hr>

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See this is the kind of stuff that makes you look ********. You have the biggest guild in the game and you cant find 1 person who plays in the morning to put a char in the factions with 20 stealing to run sigs once or twice a day...

[/ QUOTE ]
It is not I that is posting without a brain here. I have mentioned at least twice that resetting the sigils in the morning was not an option because they went live around noon. Then they proceeded to guard for the rest of the day and by the time we were active all but 3 were corrupted.

If the timer was 24 hours like it used to be they would have not been able to corrupt them because ~12 hours into guarding we would have crushed them. If they started guarding at 12AM, we would have beaten them at the 20 hour mark.

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JC, I have to be completely honest with you here. I've tried posting replies and comments in this thread and the one about barricades as politely and respectfully as I can. However, I'm really at the point where I can't shake the feeling that you are very disappointed that your large guild got into factions and perhaps has been outwitted a couple of times by a smaller group of people. While I can empathize with how that must feel, what is really concerning me here is that you seem to have some sort of pull with the developers/programmers and this experience is causing you to come up with a lot of ideas that you will present to them and they will implement just because it's you making the suggestion.

I truly don't want to discourage your suggestions, JC, but I am really concerned that you're being premature in making these suggestions and only thinking about factions from the point of view of how to attain dominance with a large guild that perhaps includes a number of people who are brand new to factions and are perhaps a bit intimidated or overwhelmed by all its intricacies.

After reading your latest posts, all I can think is that we may actually see this stuff implemented and it will mean that small guilds stand no chance at all of surviving in factions. That makes me very sad because I am enjoying the heck out of the tiny guild I'm in now. We are not always successful at grabbing and corrupting sigils, but with the rules the way they are now we have a good time relying on our skills and our wits to have a good time. That will end if factions turns into something where objects and numbers are all that's important. I do not want to go the route of having to join a large guild just to continue participating in factions. Nor do I want to see my characters' skills replaced by objects. That is already a big enough problem in this game.

If you do indeed have the ear of the developers, then I guess all I can do is ask that you and they don't make a lot of sudden changes and try to elicit feedback from additional people before proceeding with a lot of changes. I expect that just the few simple rule changes that will be implemented in the next week or two are going to end up being quite significant in terms of the activity they cause. Let's try to get through at least a few months of playing with those changes and see how the dynamics of factions may have changed before we proceed to making changes that were suggested and are based on a period when far fewer people were in factions.

 

[Guest]

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However, I'm really at the point where I can't shake the feeling that you are very disappointed that your large guild got into factions and perhaps has been outwitted a couple of times by a smaller group of people.

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Our guild may be one of the largest but 75% of us are only active in shard prime time (8PM-12AM Eastern). Any group of 10-15 players on during the morning/early afternoon can easily dominate.

Capturing sigils when your opponent does not have a chance to fight back may be smart, but it discourages people from playing in factions. People are forgetting that factions was designed for mass PVP but has dwindled to either no activity or only tiny guilds. Having a porous base worked when you have 2 dozen people guarding for 24 hours, it doesn't when you have a handful. People who are against large guilds participating are asking for something other than what Factions is supposed to be.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

JC, I'm not at all against large guilds participating in factions. I was (and still am) in one of the largest faction guilds around last year and know what it is like to be in the dominant faction guild on the shard. It got to the point where we were actually not taking the sigils so the other factions would grab them and we could have a fight.

Does your guild even have any thieves or characters with tracking and detecting skills? Why can't you convince a few people to get on during the earlier hours of the day and play sigil tag and help keep the sigils moving? That is what almost everyone else does on other shards, JC. It really isn't the norm for people to be able to successfully pull off a guarding session during the day in the middle of the week. If someone did do that to your guild, then consider it their way of thumbing their nose at you and the best response you can make is to do it back to them. To come here on the forum and cry for rule changes just comes across as whining and I don't think too many people who have been doing factions for years, in big and small guilds, will have a whole lot of sympathy.

Give your guildmates a chance, JC. They're still new at this and they need to learn to strategize and be a bit sneaky. And yes, maybe some of them that really want this to work need to give up a little bit of sleep and go grab sigils in the early hours and put them in your base. And maybe some of your thieves need to start learning to log out in the enemy base and take a chance at resetting the sigils right under the enemy's nose. Yes, they are probably going to die the first couple of times they try it, but that is no big deal. It's how you learn.

Or learn to park a thief that can rez in an out of the way corner of the base and send in some other characters as ghosts and let them get rezzed in that out of the way corner. Then try your hand at surprising the enemy in their base. Try it too when you have guys out in front causing a distraction. It isn't always going to work, but at least your folks who like to be sneaky can have some fun giving it a try.

I don't know what else to suggest, JC. However, I do know that going back to a 24 hour corruption period, or adding all kinds of semi-permanent objects that you can use to barricade a base, or even eliminating the corruption period and letting the dominant faction have an easy way to keep control will make me leave factions. And I suspect I won't be the only person who feels the same way.

 

[Guest]

I am speaking in general terms, not just our situation. The fact is that a 10 hour corruption timer prohibits people who do not play at all times of the day from being able to compete in factions. That is why the timer was originally 24 hours and should never have been changed. Corrupting towns when no one can fight you is not faction warfare, it is lame as hell.

You keep posting how you want factions to stay exactly the same. Staying the same means hardly anyone wants to participate with 2/3 of shards having zero activity. The current situation might be fun for a few thieves who want to play sigil ping-pong all day, but it is not for people who want big fights.

 

[Foxie]

Factions was designed to incoporate multiple templates, playstyles and times. Factions is not a prime time only kind of thing.

Problem: You don't have the thieves needed to reset the timers during the non-prime time hours.

Option 1: Recruit.

Option 2: Ask a guildy or two who play during non-prime time hours to make thieves so they can reset the timers.

Option 3: Get others who are not in your guild, but in your faction to help reset timers during your guild's off hours.

Option 4: Ask for a rule change on the boards.

 

[Guest]

Once again another person misses the point entirely. The 24 hour timer was so everyone had a chance to participate. A 10 hour timer makes it so only people lucky enough to be able to play during the morning are able to. Imagine if all the events currently running only ran at 6-10AM, how many players would enjoy that?

 

[Foxie]

Oh I got the point all right.

Problem: People may not be able to log in and participate due to the shortness of the current corruption timer of 10 hours.

Option 1: You're going to miss fights no matter what the corruption timer is. Deal with it.

Option 2: Ask for a rule change on the boards.

 

[Guest]

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Option 1: You're going to miss fights no matter what the corruption timer is. Deal with it.

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So what if you can't make every fight? The point is that every person has a chance to make a difference in helping defend their base, no matter what time of the day you play UO. When the timer was 24 hours and factions was active, there were always massive fights in prime time hours because that is when you had to have the most people guarding.

Timer reductions were discussed when factions started to wane in 2002-2003 but they always included the sigil not be available for corruption during non-peak hours. But then the change was made to 10 hours and you could corrupt any time of the day, which is the worst.

 

[Foxie]

Do you truely believe that if the timer were switched back to 24 hours, that more people would start playing factions?

 

[Guest]

Not that change by itself, but as of right now it ruins the chance of controlling towns for current participants. And the problem will only become much worse if a good reason is introduced for people to start thinking about capturing towns again. Then it becomes a race to see who can field the most players in the morning hours.

 

[Foxie]

You're absolutely right. Rules that allow (or even encourage) people to play factions during non-prime time hours need to be changed!

 

[Guest]

*shakes head* I will have to agree with most of the other folks here. The changes you suggest here are detrimental to factions. The points I have are already argued by others.

 

[Guest]

So the only point I have seen made is that 24 hours is too long in today's UO, that individuals can't dedicate all that time to guarding. Well to that I have to say that guarding should be a faction-wide effort. No one is expected to guard 24 hours or even 10 hours. You are just supposed to have enough players able to defend the sigils during the corruption period. Players will log on and log off the entire time.

It sounds like some people are saying they guard for the entire 10 hours instead of handing it off to multiple people. That is individual not group play.

 

[Guest]

you can try to get other guilds to join your faction. I dont know your guilds rep but a bad rep can keep guilds from joining a faction.

 

[Guest]

Oh how freakin funny! Leave my damn factions alone! Get OUT! *kicks the cat*

Factions is WAR!!! Anyone know what that is?? Its not some frilly tea party, its tactics, death, and destruction. Its not "oh dear let's wait for the enemy so everyone gets a turn".
I'll say it again, silly wabbits who have no idea how insane that 24 hour hold was and how much it created a vaccum so only the haxxor leet players controlled everything forever should stop flapping their lips!!!
IMO, the only reason uo goes back to a 24 hour hold is if someone has paid someone else some cold hard cash to revert back to that lame crap.

If anything, shorten the damn timer, not lengthen it, then interested players can use their brains to observe and understand the eb and flow and acutally be successful instead of a one time all out battle, then POOF nothing, because not one player will ever want to do a 24 hour hold in the gaming world ever again, its plain 100% moronic and super egotistic...

 

[Guest]

Oh and another thing, if a group of 5 players can take the sigs away from a group of 20 players who don't have the dedication to play factions, then they should just quit now. If your guild can't be dedicated to playing full on then get out now your wasting our time.

 

[Guest]

You rant how it is crazy to guard sigils for 24 hours yet we had someone "guarding" champion spawns almost 24/7. It is only crazy because there currently isn't some huge reward for doing it.

The truth is you are the one who isn't dedicated and just wants to sneak in capturing towns with little effort.

 

[Arabella]

The only thing I do in the morning with my thief is to keep the sigils in play until the evening when and if there are enough people on to defend. Plan and simple!

 

[imported_Tina Small]

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And if there is even one person the guarding the base you end up dead. Then you need to call in some help. Then the defenders call in backup. Then you are frustrated because they have more people on then you do at the moment and don't have jobs or other obligations. Then they capture towns and everyone else logs in that evening wondering why they ever joined factions if all people do is guard in the morning hours.

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JC, on shards like GL where there have usually been a good number of people involved in factions, I believe most of them are mature enough or experienced enough to reach a tacit agreement between the factions to have their thieves play "sigil tag" during the day and yes sometimes on week nights too so that the defending and raiding can occur during the evening hours or on the weekends.

Where I think you may run into mid-week daytime guarding sessions are when one faction is vastly outnumbered by another faction and that is their only chance to actually get town control for a few days so that their members can get some experience appointing and acting as finance ministers and sheriffs and they can put up a horse breeder and buy war horses.

If you really think people are going to want to participate in a faction system where one large faction has the ability to completely and consistently dominate everything, I guess that's your prerogative. I know it's certainly not something I look forward to seeing happen.

Edited to add: Last year before most of the members of KDL quit UO to play WoW, they were playing on Great Lakes. The majority of the people who had most of the kill points lived on the West Coast and worked during the day. However, we had people in the guild who lived all over the country. We were very fortunate to have people living on the East Coast or in the Midwest who loved playing their faction thief characters and were willing to log in bright and early on days when the sigils were in play to steal them. One of these individuals also would log on those days during his lunch break and move the sigils if he had to. He would also make sure they were all shuffled around before he logged off at night. When I would try to log on early enough to help, I could rarely catch him because he was so fast and so methodical about moving sigils.

What was the point of all this effort and dedication? It was to make sure that those sigils stayed in play most of the week so that everyone could have a good time guarding and raiding on the weekend when people did have time to play. Did we get our noses bent out of shape if someone raided and we lost the sigils? No, not unless the reason it happened was because someone was just being stupid. If the enemy (and once in a while it took two enemies working together) came in and grabbed the sigils, well it just meant we regrouped and then raided. And if they managed to hold them log enough that we would have had to do the ten hours over again, well that generally meant more sigil tag for a few days or conceding defeat gracefully. No whining about it on the boards later and no trash talking.

JC, honestly, just let your folks get used to being in factions, come up with some good strategies for getting and holding the sigils, and live with the rules the way they are today. I know I'm just flabbergasted at some of the comments you've made that imply 25% of your folks DO play during the day time and also that you have people who can guard a champ spawn 24 hours a day and yet you are unable to get a few people to do some simple thieving in the morning and throughout the day to keep the sigils moving. If your guild really does have 400 people in it (and not 400 characters), then you have pretty much said earlier in this thread that 100 of them are available during the day to participate in factions. That should be more than sufficient for you guys to never have to worry about pulling off a 10-hour guarding session. The fact that you apparently cannot do that and you're pushing for additional changes really makes me suspect that there's more to what you want than you are letting on.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

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The fact that you apparently cannot do that and you're pushing for additional changes really makes me suspect that there's more to what you want than you are letting on.


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You caught me. What I really want is for Factions to be fun and interesting for players to participate in. Apparently this does not mix well with the current people who want it to remain exactly the same.

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I've never said leave everything as is, JC. You are choosing to interpret my comments that way.

I don't want to see factions turn into something where it's completely dominated by the largest guild(s) on the shard and ALL it consists of is characters fighting each other.

I got into factions with a thief because I wanted to see what it takes to do PvP. I'm still not all that sure about my ability to do real PvP and therefore enjoy playing my crummy little thief and tamer/tracker/detector characters that you think are such a nuisance. Get rid of the ability for more Trammies like me to get into factions and have something meaningful to do with crummy little thief characters and what do you end up with? The same people you have elsewhere in the rest of Fel, doing the same old stuff. No intrigue, no challenge, no real reason to be in factions unless you have characters with uber gear, you know how to fight, and you're content to be a part of the masses in the one or two dominant guilds on the shard.

 

[Guest]

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I got into factions with a thief because I wanted to see what it takes to do PvP.

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So all you do is steal sigils? No wonder you are posting what you are. Thieving is not the focus on factions, fighting is.

 

[Foxie]

No thief, no fight.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

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I got into factions with a thief because I wanted to see what it takes to do PvP.

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So all you do is steal sigils? No wonder you are posting what you are. Thieving is not the focus on factions, fighting is.

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JC, one of the types of characters I typically use is a thief who also has tracking, detecting, trap removing, and magery. I use these characters to steal sigils, yes. They also, obviously, remove traps. Much of the time, though, I use them to track down and reveal stealthers for someone else to kill and also to put up fields to help defend the base.

The second template I use is a tamer character that also has tracking and detecting skills. I use these characters to find stealthers and kill them.

The third template I use is a peace tamer whose main purpose is to get pets for other characters in factions and to farm faction monsters for silver. Once in a while she'll help kill faction guards with her pets.

The fourth template I use is a paladin archer. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of experience using that type of character for PvP yet.

The fifth template I have is a crafter. For now this character's main purpose is to make traps and trap removal kits. However, if faction crafting ever gets fixed, I hope there will be other things for them to make.

If you think I've made lame characters, I really don't care. I enjoy playing with these types of characters in factions on several shards and I think they serve useful purposes when playing as part of a team. There's no way I think that they are the end-all be-all to factions. However, I do think that they are just as integral to the faction's success as the fighters are. If and when I decide to go full-bore into fighting, I will. For now I'm content to play what you obviously consider useless and annoying characters.

 

[Guest]

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However, I do think that they are just as integral to the faction's success as the fighters are.

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All thieves do is take sigils off posts. In fact with all the stealing skill items added with Age of Shadows you only need what, 20 stealing? I used to have Stealing on my character because it was just a tool used to get sigils. Fighting is what is supposed to decide who wins and loses, not thieves stealthing around.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

Ummm, JC, the word "they" in the sentence you quoted was not only referring to my thief character....

 

[Foxie]

With that kind of attitude toward thieves, its no wonder your guild doesn't have the thieves needed to reset the timers.

 

[Guest]

We have plenty of thieves, we don't have the interest in resetting sigils 12 times a day. Right after we steal them, they take them back. When we hang around they just wait for us to leave. If we took the towns we would lose them a few days later to their guarding effort in the morning.

The 10 hour timer ruins everything and why current faction players don't see this I don't know. Several people I talked to about the event were stunned to hear the timer was reduced to 10 hours. The only thing I keep hearing is "reset the sigils" "reset the sigils" but that isn't possible when someone is actually guarding. If you want to keep the 10 hour timer fine, but then it should only be possible to corrupt during a shard's active hours, which is about 2PM - 2AM.

 

[Arabella]

Mine is a theif with stealing, only arti I have is the burglar which i use for stealth more then stealing. She also has other skills such as detect hidden, remove trap. lockpicking and with soulstone tinkering. I worked hard on this character thank you very much. I can tell you it took me longer then 3 days to get this character up and ready to play factions. I think you just dont like losing to a theif probably from a small guild that is ruining your domination of a shard in factions.
If you dont have the interest to reset them during the day, why complain about it. If your changes you want were put into place, and people figure out how to get around them which they will. Whats next, you want a theif to be able to steal the sigil only one time a day???