Faction Enhancements: Barricades, Base Guards & Teleporters

[Guest]

I had a few new ideas today which I think could help solve current issues and improve factions in general. I even made some screenshots of them.

One big issue in factions right now is how easy it is to get into bases and steal sigils. To combat this players will place blocking items on the ground. However these items are sometimes removed by Gamemasters or players modify their clients to move right through them. If a constructible barricade system was introduced this could be eliminated. It would also be a good place to spend silver, which really has no real use in today's game with bonded war horses and insured armor.

Sigil Monolith Barricades

Crafters will be able to make barricades by combining resources and silver. The purpose is to completely prevent a thief from reaching the monolith. In order to get past a barricade it must be destroyed by damaging it through normal combat means. Warriors can swing at it and mages can target spells. Each barricade has a certain amount of hit points and when it reaches 0, it falls to ruin. There would be multiple types available for crafting.

Wood - 1,000 Hit Points - 1,000 Wood - 500 Silver - Made by Carpenter
Metal - 5,000 Hit Points - 5,000 Ingots - 1,000 Silver - Made by Blacksmith
Stone - 10,000 Hit Points - 1,000 Ore - 2,500 Silver - Made by Masonry (Carpenter)
Magical - 20,000 Hit Points - 1,000 of each reagent - 5,000 Silver - Made by Grandmaster Mage

These barriers must be made on site. They can be repaired 50 hit points at a time using appropriate resources and a skilled crafter. Once the sigil becomes corrupted or the barrier is no longer desired, a crafter can dissemble the 3 physical ones. Resources are returned but only by a fraction. This is further reduced if the barrier is damaged. The magical barrier can be dispelled using the dispel field spell (warning menu to confirm the action will be presented). To prevent griefing, only the faction commander and the crafter who constructed the barricades can dissemble them.


Base Barricades

Not only should there be a way to protect the sigils from thieves, but also the entire base from general intruders. Single tile constructible barricades would replace the items near the front of bases.

Wood - 500 Hit Points - 100 Wood - 500 Silver - Made by Carpenter
Stone - 1,500 Hit Points - 100 Ore - 1,000 Silver - Made by Masonry (Carpenter)
Magical - 5,000 Hit Points - 250 of each reagent - 2,500 Silver - Made by Grandmaster Mage

These are once again constructed on site by the appropriate crafter. There are a few different types as well. There would be a limit to how many could be placed, such as 20. They can also be repaired and disassembled.

As you may notice in the first image, the wooden barricade completely blocks the entrance. How will friendly faction members enter?

Base Teleporter

Outside the base will be a teleporter that only friendly faction players can use. When an enemy attacks, it will most likely be their first target. Once destroyed it can no longer be used until a faction crafter has a chance to repair it.

Base Guards

There are no pictures here, but guards inside bases should be added as well. The current guards are fine (except they should learn how to cure poison and have a line of sight check so they don't get stuck on players they can't see). There would be a limit of 10 or 20. They would get paid by the hour so keeping them up all the time would be impossible unless your faction makes thousands of silver every hour. They would also be stationary and non-stackable.

Something a little more intricate I would dream of seeing is 3 different types of guards: Mage, Warrior, Archer. Mages and Archers would be stationary. Mages would have 2 AI's, attack and defense. In attack mode they function as normal. In defense they will actively seek out to heal/cure/resurrect their fellow faction players. Archers would let you select their bow type and will use the specials on those bows. Warriors will be the only moving guard but only about ~8 tiles. If an enemy exits their range they will seek out another or return to their starting location. They also have a few selectable weapons (Katana, Kyrss, War Hammer, etc.) and use those special moves.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

There's an easier way to defeat a thief - detect hidden.

[/ QUOTE ]
This isn't so much as defeating a thief as it is not letting attackers waltz in any time during 10 hours and take the sigils. Bases should have some defenses which have to be broken before the sigils can be taken, giving defenders time to come and defend. Ideally I would like to see a maximum of 10-15 minutes against a full set of barriers before the sigils could be reached if there was no player resistance if the invading force was a dozen players. Also Detect Hidden stopped being the easy way when they put in the 7 second delay.

In addition, if barriers were added then the corruption time could be raised up significantly back to 18-24 hours. Ten hours is much too short.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

Detect hidden and tracking work just fine and actually give people something to do during the guarding period, JC. Having a somewhat porous base keeps people awake and in your base defending and doing stuff to fill the gaps. Fill it up with barricades and pretty soon everyone will just start slowly drifting away, assuming the barricades and your most stalwart people have got it all covered....

All you'll need is one or two people who jump into your voice chat program and mention what they saw in one of the dungeons or at a champ spawn and WHOOSH....bye bye!!

 

[Arabella]

JC, I appericate all the hard work you have done and ideas for changes in factions to improve them. But all you would be doing is making it easier for the faction that stole the sigils off the town post to hold them. The only way these should be made possible is if the remove trap would be able to disable the barricades or tinker had some type of kit to make to be able to counter it. You have to offset a change like that with something to disable it.

Use your imagination to guard the base. I understand ppl have ways to move bag balls and candlbras, but that can be worked around as well. Good ole energy fields and posions fields work well. I have yet to see a gm remove any items placed in the way of an entrance to a base. Now I have seen people walk over bag balls, but that can be stopped by altering the items used to defend the base. Tracking and detect hidden are your best way to detect a thief. If you are human, you can pick them up with tracking after several trys using your jack of all trades. Have your guys that are defending run it, someone will pick them up!

I am always of thinking of ways to defend or to find my buddy Tinkz the theif from TB. I came up with the idea to use unicorns in the sigil room of the SL base, was a good idea until my guildies came in and the buggers attacked them. You cant trap them upstairs in the sigil room with bag balls they walk over them!

 

[Tink'r Toiz]

JC it is obvious you put a lot of time and effort in to factions. For that, I thank you and commend your work.

For me, simply, the barracades would cause me to quit factions. That would make a base defendable with one person and a couple accounts. IMO, Faction play was meant to be a "team" effort. If we really want to improve defenses, etc., then imagination and more people playing factions is the answer. I have, with a single mage/thief, defended Brit for 45 minutes against 4 attackers. Even though I lost the sigs in a relatively short time, I have never had so much fun in all my life. Those running battles, knowing you are most likely going to lose, then planning a way to get the sigs back, slipping in against greater odds, getting out and running like a "purple wolf on fire" is what makes factions. Well, for me anyway.

Each base has it weakness and strength and yes, a couple have an advantage... but it is the planning, strategy and working with other players that makes factions special. Not just the "winning the towns" although there are plenty of players to whom that is all factions is about ... winning.

Those few players (who are there just for the winning) wouldn't stay long in factions even with the barracades, from my experience, and if the barracades caused us more veteran "rabid" faction players to quit ... I think you see what I am saying.

Again, that is all my opinion and of course I would check out any changes with an open mind ... provided we had a way to revert if the majority of players did not like the changes

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

The only way these should be made possible is if the remove trap would be able to disable the barricades or tinker had some type of kit to make to be able to counter it. You have to offset a change like that with something to disable it.

[/ QUOTE ]
Why can't they be countered by destroying them? The weakest barricade would be destroyed by a single player in 10-20 hits. These are meant to slow people down, not halt them. Destructible barricades should have been put in a long time ago.
<blockquote><hr>

For me, simply, the barracades would cause me to quit factions. That would make a base defendable with one person and a couple accounts. IMO, Faction play was meant to be a "team" effort.

[/ QUOTE ]
It would be impossible for a single person to be able to defend alone against 2-3 attackers unless they were really inept. That one person could slow them down, but eventually they will break inside.

Sigils are much too easily stolen, wiping out hours of hard work. This would also prevent the multiple exploits which allow thieves to steal sigils from the roof of a base. It would also prevent someone from stealing and running around for 30 minutes to simply reset it, not giving you a chance to get it back.

The cost of these barricades is supposed to be high enough that you can't simply throw them down all the time, only when you are really serious about it. At a cost of 40,000 silver (personal player silver, not faction stone silver) for a magical barrier on all sigil posts, that is quite expensive.

 

[Guest]

I like it if i can use remove on it and get silver for removing it.

 

[Guest]

Cool addition, I like it!

 

[imported_Tina Small]

JC, as bad as the QA testing for UO has gotten and given the amount of time we generally get to test things on Test Center, I would be extremely concerned about implementing these barricades because they just might end up as unwanted and unintended permanent additions to faction bases. Look at how long it's taken to just do something as simple as fix the steps in the SL base so ghosts can get out. We also have other structural problems and exploits with the bases that need to be addressed first before we add more things that have the potential to make them even worse.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Just because people use cheats and whatever else in the game, doesnt mean all people do. I am so tired of the honest players being penalized because of cheaters.

[/ QUOTE ]
This isn't only about preventing cheating, it is about making factions more interesting and fun. It is not very fun to have stealthing thieves running off with your sigils and GMs constantly deleting the items you put down because they think it is not allowed.

The fact is players don't want to wait around for something to happen like we did 8 years ago. Bases need to have some defenses so that defenders can have a chance to respond to an attack.

 

[imported_Cardell]

I don't like the teleporter ideas at all. I've always said teleporters should be removed completely from house creation and everywhere else if possible. There should be very few teleporters, adding them to faction bases would just be stupid imho. Baracades would be cool i guess, they would have to be countered like Arabella said and they shouldn't be able to be repaired while being destroyed.

 

[Guest]

I forgot to also mention the lag factor. If we were to guard sigils today we might end up using over 10,000 items to blockade the base. That is not some number I made up, it is a realistic figure of what it would take to guard Minax base.

Now would you rather pick up thousands of candabras or destroy a couple barricades?

 

[imported_Tina Small]

JC, it isn't all that realistic to expect that you would fill up your base with 10,000 items for an entire 10-12 hour guarding session. All those items decay in a matter of hours. Unless you have a bunch of people willing to sit around and constantly shuffle them, or log out on the far side of the base where you started laying them down, you will lose them soon enough.

What you need are some detectors and trackers who are willing to stay put in the sigil room while you guard. Yes, it's VERY BORING. I've done it many many times and was always so grateful when the other side at least tried to send in a couple of thieves and they actually managed to make it into the back of the base.

I really think that if you make it possible to have impregnable faction bases, you are going to lose folks out of factions. We don't need more objects introduced into this game, JC. What we need are things for people to do and reasons for them to use the skills that it took them so long to train up. I know I wouldn't stick around long in a faction that valued barricades over my characters' tracking and detecting skills.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

JC, it isn't all that realistic to expect that you would fill up your base with 10,000 items for an entire 10-12 hour guarding session. All those items decay in a matter of hours.

[/ QUOTE ]
It is realistic and I already have created a plan to do so. But then factions fell apart on Atlantic and I didn't get to put it into action. Instead of reshuffling them we would replace them as they decay.

If we guarded sigils I wasn't going to do it half-heartedly.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

JC, you guys need some trackers and detectors. Seriously. Putting a bunch of stuff in the base and trying to keep it all refreshed is a major major pain. Your guys can't move around in the base and they'll all be stuck out in front. No safe place to go to if your numbers dwindle and they get attacked and need to retreat into the base, field up the front and try to defend with smaller numbers.

 

[Poo]

as i sit here in my factions TS i hear them complaining about this idea of stuff to put in the bases.

and i must admit i thought it was a good idea.... until i got to thinking... not everyone is a honest and good player.

i fear your new stuff would get rolled into stuff like this

now see, what we got here is a factions who didnt like our little guild coming to play with them.
so what they did was put a tinker in EVERY guild and place 40 traps at the entrance to thier base.

so lets add your walls ontop of that say.... all the way accross the entrance and about 10 tiles deep?
then have 40 faction guards outside on partrol, or heck, let up them in a vender turret.

then as per your suggestion lets put another 100 guards INSIDE the base.

so now what do we have.
we have a base that an army of 100 players will not be able to get into.
all being done by 1 player.

ya...... thats not a real good thing.

 

[Guest]

All I see at the top of this thread is laziness, and complete disrespect for factions in UO. Im just sick to my stomach just thinking this tripe would get in...

 

[Poo]

(the above pic was taken AFTER our trap remover killed off half the traps)

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

as i sit here in my factions TS i hear them complaining about this idea of stuff to put in the bases.

and i must admit i thought it was a good idea.... until i got to thinking... not everyone is a honest and good player.

i fear your new stuff would get rolled into stuff like this

...........

so lets add your walls ontop of that say.... all the way accross the entrance and about 10 tiles deep?
then have 40 faction guards outside on partrol, or heck, let up them in a vender turret.

then as per your suggestion lets put another 100 guards INSIDE the base

[/ QUOTE ]
The bonus that TB has being at the edge of a guard zone is irrelevent to the idea of adding barricades inside bases. If you want TB entrance moved then start a topic on it, I already did in the past.

You also seem to have glossed over the limits I suggested. You can't place 100 guards, only 20. And those guards are paid by the hour which will quickly drain silver. Putting barricades 5 wide and 10 deep is a total of 50, but I suggested a limit of 20. So you would only have to destroy 4 in order to break through.

 

[imported_Insta]

Dont bother fixing any timers 10 hours is fine, dont bother with the uber fences. Just make it in order for the sig timers to be reset, they must be on a sig post in a faction base for 25 minutes.

This would make it where you have a chance (a small chance) to get them back if your entire base was rolled and everyone got put into stat. It would also make it where a solo thief cant just steal it, stealth off with it in animal form, or run in a house and hold it until it resets.

That's just kinda the way my thinking is.

 

[Poo]

<blockquote><hr>

The bonus that TB has being at the edge of a guard zone is irrelevent to the idea of adding barricades inside bases. If you want TB entrance moved then start a topic on it, I already did in the past.

You also seem to have glossed over the limits I suggested. You can't place 100 guards, only 20. And those guards are paid by the hour which will quickly drain silver. Putting barricades 5 wide and 10 deep is a total of 50, but I suggested a limit of 20. So you would only have to destroy 4 in order to break through.


[/ QUOTE ]

JC, lay down the crack pipe for at least 5 minutes before you reply to posts.

at no time did i say anything about TB base.
i was talking about your suggestions of base blocking stuff and how mixing that with traps allready in game would make it all but impossible for people to get into the base.

<blockquote><hr>

Putting barricades 5 wide and 10 deep is a total of 50, but I suggested a limit of 20. So you would only have to destroy 4 in order to break through.

[/ QUOTE ]

i would love to see you get into a base with 20 barricades and 15 nox traps under them and 20 gaurds patrolling.

id wager that i by myself could hold off 10 people with that.
and that is not what factions is.

there is allready enough stuff in place to make it all but impossible for thiefs to ply their trade in factions that being able to put up walls is so much over the top overkill that it isnt even worth the argument.

heck, last month on pac i held the towns solo against an entire guild.
they got so ticked i havnt seen them since.

and thats without having walls to put up.


read.
think.
THEN post.

 

[Arabella]

Oh I know, if that timer is extended to set on a post to reset, no opposing faction would be allowed in the base, until it is reset. Now that would be fair dont you think?

Why not while your at it, fix the bases and entrance so that Non-Faction players arent allowed to come in the base or the entrance. Certain Guilds use these players to help defend, which isnt right.

Insta, I dont get angry when it takes 6 of SO to kill me and trash talk how they own my thief. It just makes me more determined to figure out how I can beat you all with my 70 magery thief

.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

read.
think.
THEN post.

[/ QUOTE ]
You are trying to make it like the thief is the most important player in a faction. They are not. Factions is supposed to be about fighting, combat and victory. Stealing sigils is just the method of getting them off the post, nothing more. It wouldn't have made much sense to target it with Taste Identification.

So designing future improvements while worrying about whether a thief can still solo-steal a sigil is wrong from the beginning. All factions should be designed and balanced by is group combat. Destructable barricades help facillitate group combat by not allowing a single player to rush into the base and steal sigils. It will take a group effort to overcome base defenses, which is what factions is supposed to be about.

If ~6 players can kill a peerless with 100,000 hit points in about 10 minutes, then a 1,000 hit point barricade is by no means going to halt a raid's progress. It only hinders solo faction play, what I like to call sigil ping-pong.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

JC, I guess you'll just have to bear with all the comments from the poor schmucks who've stayed involved with factions during UO's decline. At least we had the fortitude to do it without needing a bunch of pixel crack dangled in our faces the whole time as a reward.

 

[Guest]

You really shouldn't try and act like I don't know anything about factions because I haven't played it the last couple of years. I was in factions from the day it was introduced to a couple week after Publish 16 went in. When I left the fights in factions were over and it moved to champion spawns. So thats where I went.

It appears most people active in factions today only care about letting thieves steal sigils and keeping everything exactly the way it is. Well the current way sucks and it quite apparent it sucks because there were only 2 shards with any meaningful faction activity until 2 months ago. It might be fun for the people currently in factions but it isn't for 99% of PVPers who don't take part.

So I posted some ideas to make things more interesting and fix issues, but all I get is a bunch of comments about how difficult it would be to destroy a couple barricades and how thieves would get the shaft. Instead people are currently content at picking up hundreds/thousands of candlabras and having frustrating task of keeping thieves away from sigils unless you have a dozen people in the base.

And another thing, I am quite sick of all this talk about war horses. It comes up in virtually every discussion. You say I require pixel crack when people are discussing letting every faction own a town so they can get their own. In my opinion war horses should not bond at all. Then riding one around would actually mean something. Maybe even go so far as to give riders of a war horse immunity from dismounting. Then you won't have people dismounting and just killing the horses, plus riding a war horse would have a tangible bonus.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

By "rewards" I meant whatever it is that Draconi was talking about a few weeks ago when he said there will be rewards for characters who participate in the war while in factions. There appear to be a number of people who are considering jumping into factions mostly for the purpose of grabbing some new collectible item they can then turn around and sell for a profit.

 

[Guest]

So for them who dont war, but are active in faction will be left out. Typical stupid resoning. There is alot of ways to be active in faction, but devs them self killed all of them by changing the game and to not reward all work done in faction.

 

[Death God]

<blockquote><hr>

as i sit here in my factions TS i hear them complaining about this idea of stuff to put in the bases.

and i must admit i thought it was a good idea.... until i got to thinking... not everyone is a honest and good player.

i fear your new stuff would get rolled into stuff like this

now see, what we got here is a factions who didnt like our little guild coming to play with them.
so what they did was put a tinker in EVERY guild and place 40 traps at the entrance to thier base.

so lets add your walls ontop of that say.... all the way accross the entrance and about 10 tiles deep?
then have 40 faction guards outside on partrol, or heck, let up them in a vender turret.

then as per your suggestion lets put another 100 guards INSIDE the base.

so now what do we have.
we have a base that an army of 100 players will not be able to get into.
all being done by 1 player.

ya...... thats not a real good thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

how can you have 40 traps? does not let our faction on legends place any more than 15....and the sad thing is...we don't even get to place them ourselves! the TB faction put a tinker in our faction and places the traps in the middle of no where.....so finding them to remove em is a bit dificult...Just another messed up part in factions. Only the faction leader should be able to place the traps!

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

By "rewards" I meant whatever it is that Draconi was talking about a few weeks ago when he said there will be rewards for characters who participate in the war while in factions. There appear to be a number of people who are considering jumping into factions mostly for the purpose of grabbing some new collectible item they can then turn around and sell for a profit.

[/ QUOTE ]
You should go look back when my original post about the Epic Factions event was. It was before Draconi said he was making Factions a part of the ongoing events. So I don't see why you are claiming I am only interested in this for rewards when there were none to begin with.

Just keep on bashing the person who helped get all this attention on factions.

 

[Foxie]

Link. lol. Go back and read the thread. She wasn't bashing you in any way shape or form.

Step back
breath
and accept the fact that we don't see the same faction that you do

 

[Guest]

Yes it seems almost no one posting on this forum actually fights in factions, just plays thieves. This isn't the thief forum you will find that here. I know thieving has been nerfed to hell but thieves are at the bottom rung of importance in factions, not the top.

 

[Guest]

I now understand why you want to nerf factions in your favor...
Atlantic Faction Guild Rankings
Guild Faction Kill Points
Xtreme ROFLcopters Council of Mages 231
Just Rotten Shadowlords 88
slap True Britannians 58
The Barnyard Animals True Britannians 22
Too Hot For Factions Minax 2

enough said...

 

[Guest]

Actually we don't have many kill points because COM left Atlantic the day after we joined and SL only guards when we are not online. TB just picks off people on their stealthers. Thus, we haven't had a chance to earn some points.

Also, lol at caring about faction points. They don't mean much of anything.

 

[Arabella]

Your the one wanting to change the timer and add this stuff into the game. Then in response to this post, people offer advice to improve your situation on Altantic, you blow it off. Come on, your guild is #1 overall, and you simply can't find someone in your guild to run the sigils for you all until you all are on to defend?????
My thief was made for Factions only, I don't want or need the junk that theives can get now. I have no intention of posting anywhere else but here.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Your the one wanting to change the timer and add this stuff into the game. Then in response to this post, people offer advice to improve your situation on Altantic, you blow it off.

[/ QUOTE ]
I have already posted several times in respond.

1) We have been resetting sigils as much as we can.
2) You can't reset sigils when there are a couple people guarding.
3) As soon as we steal sigils, they wait until we leave and then steal them back. They avoid fighting us and even gave up corrupting the remaining few sigils when we were about to launch a raid.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

<blockquote><hr>

I have already posted several times in respond.

1) We have been resetting sigils as much as we can.
2) You can't reset sigils when there are a couple people guarding.
3) As soon as we steal sigils, they wait until we leave and then steal them back. They avoid fighting us and even gave up corrupting the remaining few sigils when we were about to launch a raid.

[/ QUOTE ]

JC, do you get any kind of reaction out of the other factions if you take the sigils that are available and actually try sitting in your base long enough to corrupt them and take the towns? It sounds like you had the opportunity at least once to grab them in an uncontested raid. What was the end result that time? Did you take those sigils and corrupt them?

 

[Guest]

No, we raided an empty base and took the remaining 3 sigils. This is when they were mere moments from being corrupted but abandoned them as soon as they saw us coming. We hung around our base for a short time but no one showed up. Thirty minutes later I checked back and the sigils were stolen again. SL is completely avoiding fighting us, especially now that they got all the towns by guarding when we were not online.

Before two weeks ago both SL and COM had people on all day long. COM is now gone after we joined so it is only Minax and SL. SL is on all day long, Minax is only on in the evening. SL completely abandoned their guarding effort as soon as we raided in the evening. They don't want to fight us and are taking advantage of the 10 hour timer which people are rigorously defending on this forum.

For the 100th time, we could easily guard and take every town. They won't fight us. They will simply wait to retake them in a few days when we can't raid.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

JC, it sounds like you expect all the guarding times to be when it's convenient for you and your group only and you will only stick around and guard if you think you're going to be raided.

Expecting to only have to guard when it's convenient for you doesn't sound entirely fair if there's another time to guard that's convenient for the other guys. Perhaps they all work night and weekend jobs? If yes, what makes their subscription dollars and attempts to have a good time any less valid than yours? Just because they MIGHT happen to play at times that are not the norm for many people on the shard doesn't mean they should be forced to adjust their schedules to yours. Saying something like that comes off as sounding extremely selfish and egotistical.

And if you and your folks only want to guard when you think you're going to be raided I don't see how you possibly expect to pull off 24-hour guarding sessions. I guess I'm forgetting you somehow think you'll only have to do that once and never again. Still mystified on why you think that's even a possibility though.

Why can't you settle for a situation where someone else corrupts the sigils in the middle of the week and you corrupt them on the weekends? Better yet, give in and admit that you need to recruit a few people with odd work schedules into your faction so they can try to disrupt the other factions' mid-week daytime guarding marathons. A thief or two and one or two people to cause a distraction outside their base just might do the trick.

 

[Guest]

This is absurd. I keep countering all points and all you can say is "well you need to recruit more people and reset sigils all day long". This isn't about convenience, this is about players taking advantage of something that was supposed to make guarding a more realistic goal, not avoiding fights completely.

What this comes down to is I want fighting and you want to play thief with sigils.

 

[imported_Tina Small]

I'm stumped, JC.

I cannot figure out how to tell you that I understand factions wasn't meant to be just thieves playing sigil ping-pong.

I cannot figure out how to tell you any other way that the only practical solution I see to your problem that you want to do all your guarding and fighting in the evening but someone else wants to guard sigils during the day is to get thieves to steal the sigils for you during the day and reset them until your main force can get on in the evening.

And I cannot even begin to find the words to tell you what I think going back to 24-hour guarding periods will do to factions on sparsely populated shards.

I guess we've reached a stalemate.

Have a wonderful weekend. I hope you finally get lucky and get in some good faction fights.

 

[imported_Cardell]

<blockquote><hr>

This is absurd. I keep countering all points and all you can say is "well you need to recruit more people and reset sigils all day long". This isn't about convenience, this is about players taking advantage of something that was supposed to make guarding a more realistic goal, not avoiding fights completely.

What this comes down to is I want fighting and you want to play thief with sigils.

[/ QUOTE ]

What points have you countered? You have made NO points, moron. YOU, ARE ABSURD. You complain that people guard while your guild is not active and that everyone is trying to avoid fighting. YOU ARE WRONG. We would gladly fight you all day every day but your guild avoids fighting by staying on your blues and only doing factions and/or spawning when you have 1000 people on. You are complaining about the parts of the factions that just show that your guild is not built for the factions and the only people you can blame for that is you and your members. There is a whole 4 HOT on all day and then come 9:00 - 11:00 there is about 50 of you. Unfortunately factions require more dedicated and consistant game play. If your guild had 20 ppl on in the morning and 20 ppl on at night, you would still outnumber any other faction guild and you would not be crying about this.

The shortening of the timer makes it possible for smaller guilds to compete. If the time is 24 hours then the larger guilds can muscle shards with a zerg. If the timer was 24 hours then the big guilds can log on once a day and reset the sigils with all there members. THAT IS LAME, YOU ARE LAME, S T F U.

You are trying to change the factions to suit your guild Link, whether you realize that or not.. you are. Why don't you just suggest making all the towns unstealable and they are owned by HOT at all times so you guys don't have to worry about fighting or stealing sigs at all. That would help you guys out so much.

You keep arguing this like you know what you are talking about, you don't know jack about factions and there is no way to get it through your thick ass skull. Trust me, 24 hours is too long, anything above 14 hours would be too long. Take it from someone who has been in factions since they came out.

 

[imported_Cardell]

<blockquote><hr>


What this comes down to is I want fighting and you want to play thief with sigils.

[/ QUOTE ]

And just to respond to this... any day you want to set up a 10 on 10, you name time and place and we'll gladly accept.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

You are trying to change the factions to suit your guild Link, whether you realize that or not.. you are.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, I want it changed so everyone has a chance to participate. There is a reason it's called prime time hours, it is because that is when the most people are playing! If a major UO event was held outside of prime time hours there would be a huge uproar about it. Why else were Event Moderator events always held in the evening? So the most people had a chance to take part. Factions is currently setup a small group can avoid fighting when the most people are online.

<blockquote><hr>

The shortening of the timer makes it possible for smaller guilds to compete. If the time is 24 hours then the larger guilds can muscle shards with a zerg.

[/ QUOTE ]
It is unfortunate that this change was made right before Stratics started keeping an archive. But I did find this post made a couple months later. It explains that the 10 hour change had virtually no effect on increasing factions play. The majority express disapproval with the change and no one comes to defend it. They all cite the same stuff I am posting now.

The 10 hour timer has in no way benefited factions and has caused new problems. It should be reverted or additional changes related to it implemented. Your point that large guilds will have the advantage is voided on three points:

1) Large guilds were not bullying smaller guilds before this change or participating at all.
2) Factions is about factions, multiple guilds can team up in the same faction ior rival factions can truce to take out the largest.
3) There is a cutoff as to how many people you can have before the numbers don't matter. I estimate this is around 24 when guarding a point of entry. It becomes who can best the other team. So if you have 20 and the other side has 50, it does not mean they are assured victory.

 

[imported_Cardell]

<blockquote><hr>

<blockquote><hr>

You are trying to change the factions to suit your guild Link, whether you realize that or not.. you are.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, I want it changed so everyone has a chance to participate. There is a reason it's called prime time hours, it is because that is when the most people are playing! If a major UO event was held outside of prime time hours there would be a huge uproar about it. Why else were Event Moderator events always held in the evening? So the most people had a chance to take part. Factions is currently setup a small group can avoid fighting when the most people are online.

<blockquote><hr>

The shortening of the timer makes it possible for smaller guilds to compete. If the time is 24 hours then the larger guilds can muscle shards with a zerg.

[/ QUOTE ]
It is unfortunate that this change was made right before Stratics started keeping an archive. But I did find this post made a couple months later. It explains that the 10 hour change had virtually no effect on increasing factions play. The majority express disapproval with the change and no one comes to defend it. They all cite the same stuff I am posting now.

The 10 hour timer has in no way benefited factions and has caused new problems. It should be reverted or additional changes related to it implemented. Your point that large guilds will have the advantage is voided on three points:

1) Large guilds were not bullying smaller guilds before this change or participating at all.
2) Factions is about factions, multiple guilds can team up in the same faction ior rival factions can truce to take out the largest.
3) There is a cutoff as to how many people you can have before the numbers don't matter. I estimate this is around 24 when guarding a point of entry. It becomes who can best the other team. So if you have 20 and the other side has 50, it does not mean they are assured victory.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay..I call BS. Large guilds WERE bullying small guilds and that just goes to show you don't know what you are talking about. They may not have been on Atlantic when you played, but they were on Chessy, Pacific and Catskills. It is not so much having more people and being able to out number people. Its the fact that when a guild is big enough to run shifts in guarding for 24 hours, which you had to do, is where small guilds got blown away.

Also, the toughest thing on any shard as of right now is getting 2 guilds to work together to fight a larger guild. Any guild that allies with another is basically one guild. How do you ally 2 guilds and run that with 2 different set of leaders? You can't, it doesn't work. If you played Great Lakes at all you would be able to see that. There has been so many small guilds that tried to ally with each other that just ended up splitting up, ripping both guilds apart and having them join different factions where they have less of a chance at being a force in the factions. The factions are about factions, no one could ever argue that but when it comes to 55 HOT how could you blame SLAP for sitting at the gate and ganking you? Do they realistically have a shot?

Also the point at which a guilds numbers do not matter is BS. No 55 ppl cannot run into Minax base at once, but 20 can, once they die, another fresh wave can move in.

Smaller guilds are at a disadvantage. Smaller sigil corruption requires both guilds to have active members at all times of the day. Smaller guilds are still at a disadvantage but they can at least use some good timing to get the towns.

Trust me, I know, I've been on both sides of the situation. Like I said before,, I don't mind it being a bit longer of a corruption time but 24 hours is too long for small guilds.

 

[imported_Cardell]

<blockquote><hr>

Actually we don't have many kill points because COM left Atlantic the day after we joined and SL only guards when we are not online. TB just picks off people on their stealthers. Thus, we haven't had a chance to earn some points.

Also, lol at caring about faction points. They don't mean much of anything.

[/ QUOTE ]

What BS. LOLz left because you wouldn't join for weeks. We had the wars going, all we needed was for YOU not to drag your feet. Which you did for far too long. They made plans to leave before you joined. Yeah TB picks ppl off, but SL guards when SL wants to guard. We will guard when ever we want, whether you have 20 meat shields on, or whether you have 2 meat shields on. I am on my faction char every time I log in as are several others in my guild, your guild refuses to log on at ANY TIME OF THE DAY. You have been in the factions for how long and have not guarded ONCE. You complain about us guarding when you guys have no one on yet we stole the sigs at NOON and left them in our base unguarded for 6 hours. When we realized there was only 4 hours left we had a few people sit in our base and you never raided. You just sat there and came in after the first 5 corrupted. During which we had 2 people out of the base and 1 in stat. We gated out, brought a few other guildies in and killed you and your guys.

Then what? You cry for changes and make it sound like no one wants to fight? You make it sound like Link is sitting at the Yew Gate waiting for people to pop out of the shadows to fight you and you super dragon? You a moron and i feel sorry for you. I really try to give you props and defend you when everyone tells me how much of a moron you are but it is settling in, that you are a lost cause.... an absolute waste of life and completely ignorant shmuck.

Does that really sound like the problem with the factions is WE don't want to fight? Or does it sound like YOU are afraid to fight all day every day like it is on GL?

Our stance will always be the same, you want to fight? Icq me and we will set up some fights. Guard the sigs... We just corrupted them again with out seeing one orange try and reset the sigs... If you are afraid of stat loss just declare war on our non faction guild and we would be glad to fight you any time any where.

Lol this is laughable.. You have been in the factions for less than 3 weeks and have complained about every aspect of the game and any faction player on GL could see that your guild is a waste in the factions because you can't move the sigs. Thats your guilds fault,, stop crying about it.



as for the baracades... what ever gets more oranges on I don't care.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Okay..I call BS. Large guilds WERE bullying small guilds and that just goes to show you don't know what you are talking about. They may not have been on Atlantic when you played, but they were on Chessy, Pacific and Catskills.

[/ QUOTE ]

Chesapeake - August 5, 2004
Catskills - August 6, 2004
Pacific - August 6, 2004

Please name which guilds were large and bullying. I would like to check their numbers at the time you claim this was happening. Oh and just for fun:

Atlantic - August 6, 2004

Atlantic had many more than all those shards even though it was considered "dead". I bet some of the guilds are larger than the ones you claim were bullying.

 

[imported_Cardell]

<blockquote><hr>

<blockquote><hr>

Okay..I call BS. Large guilds WERE bullying small guilds and that just goes to show you don't know what you are talking about. They may not have been on Atlantic when you played, but they were on Chessy, Pacific and Catskills.

[/ QUOTE ]

Chesapeake - August 5, 2004
Catskills - August 6, 2004
Pacific - August 6, 2004

Please name which guilds were large and bullying. I would like to check their numbers at the time you claim this was happening. Oh and just for fun:

Atlantic - August 6, 2004

Atlantic had many more than all those shards even though it was considered "dead". I bet some of the guilds are larger than the ones you claim were bullying.

[/ QUOTE ]


2004? Go back further 2004 was when factions were relatively dead. Even then, Holding our Towns was the big guild on chessy, as you can see. And we owned the towns pretty much all the time. I don't think that was 24 hours corruption at that time. I think that was 10 hour corruption there.

I'm not sure what you are trying to point out here. At that period in time I don't think any of those guilds were bigger than the others.

Go back further. Sigil-Stealers bullied chessy for years.


There has been periods of times on all shards where the factions were only occupied by small guilds. But its those times where the HUGE guilds joined up and took over factions that was lame, and yeah it was farther back than 2004. Thats for damn sure. Pre Aos.

 

[Guest]

So you're saying that at the time this change was implemented big guilds were not an issue at all and hadn't been for years. Then what exactly was the 10 hour timer changed for according to you?

 

[imported_Cardell]

<blockquote><hr>

So you're saying that at the time this change was implemented big guilds were not an issue at all and hadn't been for years. Then what exactly was the 10 hour timer changed for according to you?

[/ QUOTE ]


Where did I say that? Big guilds crushed the small guilds out of the factions. Then the big guilds that were left over fizzled and broke up over time. Around that time, where the timer was changed factions flared back up with relatively smaller guilds because there were no more 'faction' guilds left. On Chessy we actually had a big guild Holding our Towns, and fought all 4 factions but most other guilds were between 4 and 10 people.

Changing the corruption timer was supposed to fix the problems the factions were having a year before the changes were made. Like every other 'fix' released it was way too late.

And point rankings show nothing about what towns own sigils.

 

[Guest]

Yep when the timer was changed waaaaayy back to 10 hours by the devs after listening the "majority" of actual players who asked for the change, I have to say it's been a perfect balance. And anyone who says its not, is completely out of touch with the long term game dynamics that have been going on now for ages.
Hey jaylow you want more changes made to factions I think an in game faction character survey is needed here to make that decision and anymore changes from here on in, I think you would find you opinion is in the minority...
I pay for this game as well and your smoke is bothering me.