There have been a lot of insurance posts of late. However dead the horse is, people keep whacking at it. Lest people get the wrong idea about some of these proposals (that they are good ideas), I figured I'd toss together some of my arguments against them. This isn't an exhaustive list of arguments. In fact just before I posted I thought of several more, but in the interests of length I decided to post "as is," more or less.
As these issues keep popping up, I'm going to save this material and drag it out again when the time arises.
In this message are the reasons the following often-proposed changes to item insurance are bad ideas, one and all. I tried to stay relatively short.
-Removal of insurance entirely;
-Removal of item insurance from Trammel (that one's just in there to cover all bases);
-Removal of item insurance from Felucca in particular;
-“Scaling” of item insurance to the “worth” of an item.
Why would it be a bad idea to remove item insurance entirely from the game?
Because UO is, since the release of Age of Shadows, more of an item-based game than it once was. A character's suit can be carefully tailored to its needs, even when the player is “only” a casual player. In many cases, even most cases, to permanently lose an item would be equivalent to permanently losing skill points under the old system. Sure, a new item could be made or found, but one may never-again find “just the right” item.
This would lead to frustration. While frustration is part of the UO experience and always has been, no one plays a game, any game, specifically to be frustrated. So it's best when frustration is kept to a minimum.
Why would it be a bad idea to remove item insurance from Trammel?
In Trammel, no insurance would lead only to frustration, with other players attempting to ensure they stood by every lich corpse until it went public, when someone has recently died in the area.
Also, because no one wants it.
The argument presented below for Felucca is also valid for Trammel, but less so.
I left this one in just for thoroughness purposes. I can't think of anyone who has argued to remove insurance from Trammel but leave it in Felucca.
Why would it be a bad idea to remove insurance specifically from Felucca?
In Felucca, no insurance would GREATLY favor large, “zerg” guilds. These guilds could pool their resources to easily replace anything that was lost, could cut their losses down to an absolute minimum by guarding corpses carefully when a death occurred and by having people who fall below half health drop “to the back of the line” until they heal up. Under the current system, these tactics can be and are employed. However, a smaller guild, or a solo player, can fight a “zerg” guild and, in the event of a death, recover with no permanent loss of effectiveness. The issue would under a no insurance system be that the bigger guilds could maintain their effectiveness, even in the face of superior combat skill. A solo player or a smaller guild who got completely overrun would have their effectiveness completely wiped away in one single blow.
To some of you, that's the point. But it wouldn't be a good thing for the game.
Why would it be a bad idea to make item insurance “scaled” to the item's property or worth?
Several reasons.
One, “worth” is a subjective concept, related to the player's needs of the moment. Suits can be highly customized, and what might be trash to one equipment template might be gold to another. The Ornament of the Magician is considered the “best” item in the game by many, even by dexers. But my current bracelet suits my needs a lot better. No matter what system they devised, it would be severely flawed, and there would be weird results, for which we would savagely ridicule EA.
Two, UO would become even more complicated than it already is. Sometimes more complexity is needed but the threshold for making the game more complex should be pretty high.
Three, and most importantly, it would hurt newer, poorer, and more casual players. Let's say a casual player, with say just a few hundred thousand gold in the bank (there are more players like this than some people like to admit) makes his way to Doom, and winds up with the Ornament. He decides to keep pushing to see if he can get any additional artifacts, rather than leave immediately. (He might do this just for efficiency's sake, or because Doom is fun, or because he wants to use the Ornament and wants another artifact to compensate himself for the cost of the gold skull.) He of course insures his Ornament. However, he proceeds to die a few times. His account drains, he loses track, and his Ornament (and indeed his entire suit) goes un-insured and is looted by a lich lord.
This could easily happen, and that's in a setting where you can be reasonably expected to get something uber, where someone might try to prepare. What about the lucky soul who is working skills, or getting cash, on Ice Fiends and happens to get an uber item? (Others have gotten very good items off of Ice Fiends, so this is very much possible.) Someone in this situation wouldn't even necessarily have thought to make sure he had enough gold in “cash” form (you know how we're all paranoid that insurance doesn't always “read” checks?) to cover an uber item he might happen to stumble across.
-Galen's player
As these issues keep popping up, I'm going to save this material and drag it out again when the time arises.
In this message are the reasons the following often-proposed changes to item insurance are bad ideas, one and all. I tried to stay relatively short.
-Removal of insurance entirely;
-Removal of item insurance from Trammel (that one's just in there to cover all bases);
-Removal of item insurance from Felucca in particular;
-“Scaling” of item insurance to the “worth” of an item.
Why would it be a bad idea to remove item insurance entirely from the game?
Because UO is, since the release of Age of Shadows, more of an item-based game than it once was. A character's suit can be carefully tailored to its needs, even when the player is “only” a casual player. In many cases, even most cases, to permanently lose an item would be equivalent to permanently losing skill points under the old system. Sure, a new item could be made or found, but one may never-again find “just the right” item.
This would lead to frustration. While frustration is part of the UO experience and always has been, no one plays a game, any game, specifically to be frustrated. So it's best when frustration is kept to a minimum.
Why would it be a bad idea to remove item insurance from Trammel?
In Trammel, no insurance would lead only to frustration, with other players attempting to ensure they stood by every lich corpse until it went public, when someone has recently died in the area.
Also, because no one wants it.
The argument presented below for Felucca is also valid for Trammel, but less so.
I left this one in just for thoroughness purposes. I can't think of anyone who has argued to remove insurance from Trammel but leave it in Felucca.
Why would it be a bad idea to remove insurance specifically from Felucca?
In Felucca, no insurance would GREATLY favor large, “zerg” guilds. These guilds could pool their resources to easily replace anything that was lost, could cut their losses down to an absolute minimum by guarding corpses carefully when a death occurred and by having people who fall below half health drop “to the back of the line” until they heal up. Under the current system, these tactics can be and are employed. However, a smaller guild, or a solo player, can fight a “zerg” guild and, in the event of a death, recover with no permanent loss of effectiveness. The issue would under a no insurance system be that the bigger guilds could maintain their effectiveness, even in the face of superior combat skill. A solo player or a smaller guild who got completely overrun would have their effectiveness completely wiped away in one single blow.
To some of you, that's the point. But it wouldn't be a good thing for the game.
Why would it be a bad idea to make item insurance “scaled” to the item's property or worth?
Several reasons.
One, “worth” is a subjective concept, related to the player's needs of the moment. Suits can be highly customized, and what might be trash to one equipment template might be gold to another. The Ornament of the Magician is considered the “best” item in the game by many, even by dexers. But my current bracelet suits my needs a lot better. No matter what system they devised, it would be severely flawed, and there would be weird results, for which we would savagely ridicule EA.
Two, UO would become even more complicated than it already is. Sometimes more complexity is needed but the threshold for making the game more complex should be pretty high.
Three, and most importantly, it would hurt newer, poorer, and more casual players. Let's say a casual player, with say just a few hundred thousand gold in the bank (there are more players like this than some people like to admit) makes his way to Doom, and winds up with the Ornament. He decides to keep pushing to see if he can get any additional artifacts, rather than leave immediately. (He might do this just for efficiency's sake, or because Doom is fun, or because he wants to use the Ornament and wants another artifact to compensate himself for the cost of the gold skull.) He of course insures his Ornament. However, he proceeds to die a few times. His account drains, he loses track, and his Ornament (and indeed his entire suit) goes un-insured and is looted by a lich lord.
This could easily happen, and that's in a setting where you can be reasonably expected to get something uber, where someone might try to prepare. What about the lucky soul who is working skills, or getting cash, on Ice Fiends and happens to get an uber item? (Others have gotten very good items off of Ice Fiends, so this is very much possible.) Someone in this situation wouldn't even necessarily have thought to make sure he had enough gold in “cash” form (you know how we're all paranoid that insurance doesn't always “read” checks?) to cover an uber item he might happen to stumble across.
-Galen's player
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