Suggestion/Request Vision, Goals, and Objectives for the Stratics Forums

[Lord Nabin]

Let's chat about what you expect, Would like to see, and how you would like to approach this forum as a community.

Open Mic, Here we go.

Stratics was secured by the community a few years back with the idea of developing, encouraging, and building the Ultima Online Community.

Now we understand that there is an official UO forum. That is focused on UO.

Stratics however was secured to focus on building the UO Community......

Engagement, Activities, Helping new players, building guilds successfully. Let's face it.

Guilds are where community happens long term players are developed, and the core values of being an avatar are developed.

How would you like to see Stratics progress towards the end of engaging in this?

If you are not for building community, or a current player, you might be in the wrong place... Stupid Drama has no place here.

Let's turn a corner and get back to getting things done.

 

[Lord Nabin]

Remember Stratics should be all about the community, Not about the game.

Stratics was saved by the community, funded by the community, and engaged by the community. Community is who we are, who we serve, and who we value.

All else falls by the way side, as it should

 

[petemage]

The official forum neither allows for criticism nor gives EJ accounts a voice. If anything, Stratics should not become like this.

 

[Picus of Napa]

I'm not really sure what the point of this thread is. I thought Stratics was a forum mostly about UO and UO related conversations. Possibly the direction and development of UO. Could be future additions, expansions or modifications to UO and how they could enhance or hinder UO. How to play UO....you know, UO stuff.

If the official forum is the place to talk about UO this board only serves to provide a secondary place to talk about UO in a slightly past tense way. You can touch it and mold it slightly but you will never have any influence in the growth....sorta like having a child but allowing someone who's maybe not quite as aligned in it's well being raising said kid. It's ok though because you get to talk to the neighbor about how much it annoys you....

 

[Captn Norrington]

From the staff side, we've always been a bit torn on opinion between what's best for the community and what's best for the game. It's become very clear over the last few years that what's good for the community is not necessarily always good for the game.

Personally, I've always been a supporter of the community over the game itself, as when it really comes down to it UO is easily replaceable by any number of free shards. We don't need Broadsword or EA to have a UO community anymore, but we very much do need the community of players supporting it for UO to exist in any form. Other current staff members feel similarly, and the ones who originally were more in favor of the game itself seem to be slowly sliding to my point of view, and the policies of the site reflect that in the form of the new Unleashed forum where the rules are relaxed.

I'm not sure I've ever publicly posted some of the things I think would help Stratics, but among them are:

- Organized efforts to help new players and guilds. The lack of this is mainly because we just don't have the people for it anymore. It would be awesome for a few posters to target new players to help, similarly to the way Freja did with her NEW2 guild on Siege Perilous.

- Stratics sponsored player run events. We used to do this, and had a couple staff member event coordinators, some forum contests, in-game events etc. but everyone faded away and it died pretty rapidly within a year even though people seemed to enjoy it a lot. Renewing it would be great.

- Removing the rules against talking about script programs entirely (nearly everyone uses them now, I don't, but I can't think of more than a handful of others like me so it's kinda pointless)

- Removing the prohibition on naming scammers. It's not our job to sort out trade disputes and too often we end up accidentally helping the scammer by not allowing them to be named (this is now allowed in the Unleashed forum).

- Having representatives from the most popular free shards here who can speak freely about their shards, as long as they're not actively trying to get people to quit production UO (we already have one such person who is an old friend of mine posting in the Unleashed forum)

- The recovery of former Stratics members. Quite frankly, way too many people got banned from this site in the old days over minor things. I can see most of the old records from back then, and the criteria for a warning or perma ban was wayyyyyy lower 10 years ago than it is now. I'm not blaming the old moderators for that, it was just the policy at the time that they were following. It doesn't seem fair to me to keep people banned still when what got them banned isn't even against the rules anymore in some cases though. It would be nice to find some of those people and bring them back onto the site. I've tried to do this individually with people and am currently working on one such case after seeing an anti-Stratics post on a different forum and talking it through with the person.

- Interaction from the EM's. Not official interaction to be clear, just them interacting with posters about event ideas and things like that. A lot of them are still here on their personal accounts, or will occasionally PM me with their old official EM accounts sometimes when the need arises. Nearly all of them seem to still want to participate here, and just aren't allowed to because Mesanna wants UO staff to post exclusively on the official forum. The developers, I agree, should post on the official forums like any other game (Kyronix and Bleak still read here frequently though, which I greatly appreciate even if they aren't allowed to post). The EM's are not devs, and are ultimately still volunteer players, so they should be free to interact with other players if they want to.

- More transparency from us, the moderators/admins on moderation. I've constantly pushed for this the entire time I've been on the staff. There are so many problems that have been caused solely by misunderstandings between a poster and a moderator, where the moderator was not allowed to explain things which could have quickly deescalated the situation. It really baffles me why the former policy until around 2017ish here was essentially "sweep it under the rug, knowingly allow misunderstandings to cause drama, and beat into submission anyone who gets upset by any part of the rug sweeping." Again, not blaming the old moderators, just the policies of the time. Like....why....I can see every one of those things that were rug-swept and only maybe 10% of them actually needed to be handled the way they were to prevent more problems. All the rest could have been resolved with a straightforward public explanation of why the action was taken and the reasoning behind the policy it was enforcing, but instead the total silence from the staff about it, including myself a few times, just created conspiracy theories, resentfulness, and posters leaving the site in anger after a bad interaction (moderators are now allowed to openly discuss warnings/locks/bans if we're questioned by the person it happened to in the Unleashed forum fortunately).

 

[Picus of Napa]

Everything that was said above, well done.

 

[Stinky Pete]

@Captn Norrington, what is preventing those changes from being made? They seem pretty logical to me.

 

[Captn Norrington]

@Captn Norrington, what is preventing those changes from being made? They seem pretty logical to me.

For the event related ones, a lack of people and time. Our event coordinators got busy in real life and then never came back.

For the free shards, naming scammers with personal information, and scripting related ones, deeply ingrained thoughts that anything not allowed in UO itself should not be allowed here which a sizable amount of the community and staff have had for years. It's been very difficult to shake people's perceptions of Stratics being the "unofficially official" site of UO, along with all the required old rules that came with that. A lot of things were allowed on the site before it became the official UO forum, including real money sales for in game items, which are no longer allowed now just because once those rules were put in place at the request of the dev team they kind of got permanently stuck in the site culture.

EM interaction, is all Mesanna. She created an internal rule that UO employees may not post on any forum except the official UO.com one from what I've heard from some EM's. Nothing can change about that until she personally agrees to it.

The transparency/moderation policies could change at any time, and we've had quite a few disputes with each other on the moderation team over the years over it. In my opinion it seems to be that Stratics moderation policies are extremely slow to change because people are used to the old procedures, and whenever we do try to change something we end up in months-long debates over it where we confuse ourselves so much that we push it off for a future discussion endlessly. The former owner Ron Bron and I basically rewrote the entire trade forum rule system by ourselves around 2015 to expedite that, because so much had become severely outdated but was still being enforced just because no one could agree on what the new policies should be. It worked pretty well, and the current leadership rewrote all the rest of the rules around 2017, along with a new disciplinary system, which has also done well.

Just like UO is an old game, Stratics is an old site, and the early 2000's standard moderation mentality on most sites, of meeting rule-breaking with instant discipline followed by subsequent discipline instead of removing the root of the problem is difficult to shake from people's minds when those discussions pop up. The "discussing moderator actions" warning in particular exemplifies that. In theory it's supposed to get people to put complaints through the proper channels by PM'ng us instead of inflaming drama, but in practicality it's basically just used as a weapon to make people shut up, with little to no productive outcomes. In the old days, people would routinely get like 2 or 3 discussing mod actions warnings in a row which damaged their account far more than the original infraction did and simply made them more angry. There have been a couple times someone just wouldn't stop bashing me publicly over their warning and I had no other option but to keep slapping them with discussing mod action infractions as required by our policies at the time. Watched them go from no punishment, just a post deletion, to like 6 conduct points where a week long suspension kicked in, then they made a new ban-evasion account to keep complaining and I had to perma ban them for ban/suspension evasion. Perfectly normal posters without a history of causing problems, but they went from no punishment at all to perma banned within an hour because of the discipline upon discipline policies. That just feels so unproductive to me.

The unbanning previously banned people idea is mainly held back by "what if they actually deserved it and cause problems again" thoughts. To be fair, there are a large amount of people who were rightfully banned and will certainly cause problems if they came back, as well as a lot of people we don't even have documentation on why they were banned due to how old the ban is, but I personally think it's worth the effort to deal with the ones who cause issues a second time to allow the good ones to have another chance at contributing to the community. The handful of people we've reversed bans for over the last few years have done pretty positively overall since then.

 

[Scribbles]

From the staff side, we've always been a bit torn on opinion between what's best for the community and what's best for the game. It's become very clear over the last few years that what's good for the community is not necessarily always good for the game.

Personally, I've always been a supporter of the community over the game itself, as when it really comes down to it UO is easily replaceable by any number of free shards. We don't need Broadsword or EA to have a UO community anymore, but we very much do need the community of players supporting it for UO to exist in any form. Other current staff members feel similarly, and the ones who originally were more in favor of the game itself seem to be slowly sliding to my point of view, and the policies of the site reflect that in the form of the new Unleashed forum where the rules are relaxed.

I'm not sure I've ever publicly posted some of the things I think would help Stratics, but among them are:

- Organized efforts to help new players and guilds. The lack of this is mainly because we just don't have the people for it anymore. It would be awesome for a few posters to target new players to help, similarly to the way Freja did with her NEW2 guild on Siege Perilous.

- Stratics sponsored player run events. We used to do this, and had a couple staff member event coordinators, some forum contests, in-game events etc. but everyone faded away and it died pretty rapidly within a year even though people seemed to enjoy it a lot. Renewing it would be great.

- Removing the rules against talking about script programs entirely (nearly everyone uses them now, I don't, but I can't think of more than a handful of others like me so it's kinda pointless)

- Removing the prohibition on naming scammers. It's not our job to sort out trade disputes and too often we end up accidentally helping the scammer by not allowing them to be named (this is now allowed in the Unleashed forum).

- Having representatives from the most popular free shards here who can speak freely about their shards, as long as they're not actively trying to get people to quit production UO (we already have one such person who is an old friend of mine posting in the Unleashed forum)

- The recovery of former Stratics members. Quite frankly, way too many people got banned from this site in the old days over minor things. I can see most of the old records from back then, and the criteria for a warning or perma ban was wayyyyyy lower 10 years ago than it is now. I'm not blaming the old moderators for that, it was just the policy at the time that they were following. It doesn't seem fair to me to keep people banned still when what got them banned isn't even against the rules anymore in some cases though. It would be nice to find some of those people and bring them back onto the site. I've tried to do this individually with people and am currently working on one such case after seeing an anti-Stratics post on a different forum and talking it through with the person.

- Interaction from the EM's. Not official interaction to be clear, just them interacting with posters about event ideas and things like that. A lot of them are still here on their personal accounts, or will occasionally PM me with their old official EM accounts sometimes when the need arises. Nearly all of them seem to still want to participate here, and just aren't allowed to because Mesanna wants UO staff to post exclusively on the official forum. The developers, I agree, should post on the official forums like any other game (Kyronix and Bleak still read here frequently though, which I greatly appreciate even if they aren't allowed to post). The EM's are not devs, and are ultimately still volunteer players, so they should be free to interact with other players if they want to.

- More transparency from us, the moderators/admins on moderation. I've constantly pushed for this the entire time I've been on the staff. There are so many problems that have been caused solely by misunderstandings between a poster and a moderator, where the moderator was not allowed to explain things which could have quickly deescalated the situation. It really baffles me why the former policy until around 2017ish here was essentially "sweep it under the rug, knowingly allow misunderstandings to cause drama, and beat into submission anyone who gets upset by any part of the rug sweeping." Again, not blaming the old moderators, just the policies of the time. Like....why....I can see every one of those things that were rug-swept and only maybe 10% of them actually needed to be handled the way they were to prevent more problems. All the rest could have been resolved with a straightforward public explanation of why the action was taken and the reasoning behind the policy it was enforcing, but instead the total silence from the staff about it, including myself a few times, just created conspiracy theories, resentfulness, and posters leaving the site in anger after a bad interaction (moderators are now allowed to openly discuss warnings/locks/bans if we're questioned by the person it happened to in the Unleashed forum fortunately).

Perfect.

 

[JohnnyO]

Remember Stratics should be all about the community, Not about the game.

Stratics was saved by the community, funded by the community, and engaged by the community. Community is who we are, who we serve, and who we value.

All else falls by the way side, as it should

I realize this has been moved, but it was originally posted in UHall, the description of Uhall is "This is the place for general discussion about Ultima Online gameplay, development issues, and related Ultima Online issues."
If you come here to socialize that's great but I come here for information on the game if it wasn't about UO it would just be facebook.

 

[Captn Norrington]

I realize this has been moved, but it was originally posted in UHall

Just to clarify, I did that. Nabin posted it here in the suggestions forum only, but not many people read anything here other than admins, so I moved it to Uhall for a few seconds and back to create that redirect link for others to notice this thread's existence, and share their opinions if they want to, while keeping the thread in the correct site suggestions forum that can be ignored easily by people who aren't interested once the redirect deletes itself. Figured since he's specifically asking for community feedback the community should have a better chance at seeing it.

 

[Victim of Siege]

- Removing the rules against talking about script programs entirely (nearly everyone uses them now, I don't, but I can't think of more than a handful of others like me so it's kinda pointless)

I think it's just you and me at this point Cap.

 

[kelmo]

Well. Aren't the two of you just special...

Cheating is not nearly as prevalent as either of you think. Yes. Some people cheat. That is a fact. Lots of people do not.

Now is cheating what we are here to talk about?

 

[Naxatilor Feluka]

@Captn Norrington Most of your post just made me think you are being offered cash to support free servers.

I question your morality if you are about to support the theft of EA's intellectual property that is being used for individuals to profit, and sending a playerbase their way via the existing ultima/stratics community users is DIRECTLY damaging the game.

Edit - My comments on 'cheating'

There should be no rule that prohibits the classic client from being functionally equal to the enhanced. In addition, players should not have to pay tugsoft 10$ per account to equal the playing field. Lets be honest, uo assist doesnt hold a candle to the enhanced client anyway. The best way to handle it is to talk with developers and get other 'assist' programs added to the approved list, NOT change the stratics rule.

 

[Captn Norrington]

@Captn Norrington Most of your post just made me think you are being offered cash to support free servers.

I question your morality if you are about to support the theft of EA's intellectual property that is being used for individuals to profit, and sending a playerbase their way via the existing ultima/stratics community users is DIRECTLY damaging the game.

Edit - My comments on 'cheating'

There should be no rule that prohibits the classic client from being functionally equal to the enhanced. In addition, players should not have to pay tugsoft 10$ per account to equal the playing field. Lets be honest, uo assist doesnt hold a candle to the enhanced client anyway. The best way to handle it is to talk with developers and get other 'assist' programs added to the approved list, NOT change the stratics rule.

I find it interesting that out of my gigantic post, you somehow took the literally one sentence about free shards as "most of my post" supporting free shards.

I'm not being paid or compensated in any way, by anyone associated with UO, Stratics, or free shards. In fact my friend I mentioned offered to make me an administrator/developer of his free shard when he first created it 5ish years ago and I declined the offer. I don't even play on free shards myself beyond taking tours of them occasionally from former production UO friends who now play there. Notice how I didn't name which free shard it is, or what the owner's name is? If I were a paid shill I'd be a pretty bad one for not even advertising the product name. I also specifically said they're only allowed here if they don't actively try to get people to quit production UO. It doesn't harm production UO's profit at all for someone to play a free shard in addition to playing production UO. If they then decide the free shard is all they need and quit production UO later, that's the fault of the production UO developers for not offering enough to keep the player's interest.

Regarding the owners profiting off their free shard, eh....that's debatable. Most of them aren't popular enough to make any money at all, and the couple that are spend half of the few thousand a year they make on prize giveaways, technological improvements, or paid contractor work for specific coding they can't do themselves to reinvest in their shard. I only know of one free shard owner who has made any significant amount of profit off it, and that's after 10+ years of running it. I'm not sure how many people are left who realize it, but Stratics technically owns a private inactive free shard that was gifted to the site an extremely long time ago before any of us were on staff. I believe they used it briefly to test some stuff for the strategy guides before test shard was a thing.

EA is the height of incompetency, which we have all seen a thousand times over. I used to feel the same way about theft of intellectual property a long time ago, but after witnessing what is legitimately possible to make in this game from free shard owners after being explicitly told for years by actual UO developers that those things are impossible from a technical level, I have no sympathy for them anymore. If paid professional developers and the largest gaming company on the planet can't do things even half as well as unpaid random former UO players, and don't make any effort to stop the free shards in the form of lawsuits etc. then there's just no reason to care anymore. Why would I invest effort into protecting a company's profit margins that makes no attempt to help themselves.

As for talking to developers instead of changing Stratics rules....that's exactly what I was talking about when I said people's perceptions of this being the "unofficially official" site have been difficult to change. Why do those two things have to have any relation to each other? What the developers want and what Stratics wants don't automatically have to be in sync anymore now that they have their own forum. By the way, I fully agree with you on getting the devs to legalize more programs, but literally hundreds of people have been lobbying them for that for almost a decade and they still haven't added a single one, so it's not likely. All they've really said about it was the time Mesanna accidentally admitted at a meet and greet that she uses some of the illegal programs herself, and said the infamous "win any way you want to win" comment.

 

[Captn Norrington]

Well. Aren't the two of you just special...

Cheating is not nearly as prevalent as either of you think. Yes. Some people cheat. That is a fact. Lots of people do not.

Now is cheating what we are here to talk about?

Maybe not on Siege or among the more casual players, but on Atlantic and among the active daily players....yeah just about everyone uses at least one program these days even if it's not with cheating in mind. Almost the entirety of the Atlantic Roleplay community uses skill-training scripts to grind out boring skills on new RP characters or other various tools to run events, and have done that for many years for example. I personally saw it on their forums when our Atlantic governor forum was hosted there. Many don't consider it cheating since it's just skill training, but it's ultimately still scripting. I haven't met anyone who does BOD's in large quantities for years who doesn't use a program for it. Malicious cheating is not the only form of using illegal programs, most of it is just convenience at this point. People also forget that before UO Assist was legal, huge portions of the community was still using it for years. I've noticed a lot of the players who rail against illegal programs use UO Assist and believe it's fine now that it's legal, even though it has not changed at all from when it was illegal and got popular while illegal. What's the difference between that and the newer programs? They were made to accomplish the same things. All the new ones really do are slight improvements upon what UO Assist or the Enhanced Client do also, the only difference is one software owner, Tugsoft, had the connections to get it legalized (while making money off it on top of that, all the illegal programs are free) and the rest didn't.

We're here to talk about anything the community wants to talk about I suppose, since Nabin's original post called this thread an open mic. I rarely get a chance to comment so thoroughly on topics like this due to being a moderator and having to not comment on threads with drama to maintain impartiality, which is why I've posted so much in this one.

 

[Naxatilor Feluka]

Cheating ; I dont see why anyone should have to click 1,000 times while watching the screen vs clicking 1 time while watcing the screen for the same amount of time. [That doesnt mean I agree with the blatant abuse of relative tile targetting.] With that being said, I dont think its wise for stratics to allow it here, only because its not a box easily closed once you let it out.

Private shards - I dont believe there is a law that protects games from being emulated. Cant find anything online setting a precedent for a MMORPG emulator. I think its probably not for lack of interest that they havent gone after free shards, more likely its impossible or not worth it.

Community - If we really want to be in a position to support new/returning players, we need a proper all encompassing guide. Something that provides links to resources, in depth tutorials, guides to templates, how skills interact alone and with one another, how and where to find other players. And this info needs to be easy to find, up to date, and not buried in two decades/spread across dozens of semi-inactive forums.
-- EVENTS that do not conflict with eachother are a great way to keep people active during slow periods.

 

[Captn Norrington]

Private shards - I dont believe there is a law that protects games from being emulated. Cant find anything online setting a precedent for a MMORPG emulator. I think its probably not for lack of interest that they havent gone after free shards, more likely its impossible or not worth it.

Blizzard Scapegaming Lawsuit | Private Servers | The Mary Sue

Back in October, Blizzard Entertainment filed a lawsuit against Alyson Reeves and her company Scapegaming, for violating the end user license agreement of World of Warcraft by setting up a private server for her own profit. On Thursday, the California Central District Court ruled in favor of the...

www.themarysue.com

Blizzard’s lawyers are busy again, this time suing yet another overseas company for ripping off WoW | Massively Overpowered

massivelyop.com

Blizzard and other large gaming companies have been doing it for a long time and pretty much always win. It's just EA chooses not to for some reason. One of those links is from 2010, and the other is from 2019. They consistently enforce their rules against server emulators and can easily be used as precedent in court for UO.

 

[Naxatilor Feluka]

@Captn Norrington i appreciate the links, thats exactly what i was looking for... probably just a matter of value then, even the biggest uo emulators probably dont make anywhere near that lol

 

[Stinky Pete]

I don't think that we need a separate section for discussion of freeshards or third-party apps, but not even being able to mention them seems a bit rediculous to me. I can go in game and discuss these things at length in gen chat with no fear of action, but to come here and say, "I really like how (free shard) solved some game issue," would likely get my post removed. I find it hard to believe that anyone would agree with that. Why is stratics enforcing rules, that EA/BS don't bother enforcing themselves? I think at this point stratics should be welcoming any genuine conversation it can generate, certainly not trying to stifle it.

 

[Captn Norrington]

I don't think that we need a separate section for discussion of freeshards or third-party apps, but not even being able to mention them seems a bit rediculous to me. I can go in game and discuss these things at length in gen chat with no fear of action, but to come here and say, "I really like how (free shard) solved some game issue," would likely get my post removed. I find it hard to believe that anyone would agree with that. Why is stratics enforcing rules, that EA/BS don't bother enforcing themselves? I think at this point stratics should be welcoming any genuine conversation it can generate, certainly not trying to stifle it.

I agree entirely. The Unleashed thing is more of a compromise and a test to see what happens when things are allowed than a permanent plan. Ideally the things allowed only there would be legalized on the rest of the site too eventually (after more months of confusing ourselves in staff discussions no doubt, yayyyyy). The reason for enforcing rules EA/BS doesn't enforce themselves was originally a goal with good intentions by the board members to maintain the standards the game should have been upholding themselves, and provide a place for players who disliked the rule-breaking in game to talk about stuff without being harassed like they are in general chat when those topics come up. That, along with other goals with good intentions from that time....kind of, um, failed miserably and died a horrible drama-filled death in practicality. We mainly just ended up having to defend rules that we ourselves often didn't even believe in hoping to uphold that higher community standard goal. I think a lot of it was just purely not realizing what a huge amount of the community was in favor of free shards, illegal programs, and RMT transactions.

 

[Lord Nabin]

All good conversations so far.

I think there are a couple things to keep things clear.

1. Stratics is a UO Fan Community site mainly. There are a few other games discussed but it is mainly a community of people who like to play Ultima Online.
2. Stratics is not an EA/BS/UO run, obligated to EA/BS/UO, or managed by EA/BS/UO.
3. Stratics is managed by community volunteers for community members who in turn support the Stratics site with their time, cash, and or knowledge. Everyone supports the site in their own way. Sometimes by just being present.

The Stratics communities are fairly big, varied in cultures and desires in regards to how they engage the Ultima Online game.

Having different areas to discuss things like Scripts, Freeshards, RMT, Guilds, Playstyles, basically any topic the community wants to discuss should be fine.

Set them up as categories and if you do not want to personally engage in that area or topic you do not have to.

Sure there should be some guidelines for the moderators and community to keep things civil.

The main focus should be on engaging the community where the community is at and providing a safe place to discuss ideas, concepts, and methods. Coordinate player events, and grow.

The community's needs and desires will change a bit over time and that's ok. Being flexible to that change is what helps the site evolve and grow.

A group of community members pooled their resources together to make this a community run site free of strings, attachments, and corporate ownership. The keys to the kingdom to make this what you will is all up to you.

My advice is keep the community in mind, that their are different interests, and provide the space for those ideas and discussions to grow in a civil manner.

 

[skett]

Well. Aren't the two of you just special...

Cheating is not nearly as prevalent as either of you think. Yes. Some people cheat. That is a fact. Lots of people do not.

Now is cheating what we are here to talk about?

I’ve always liked you here kelmo And backed you years ago when you almost quit so please don’t take this wrong Or as an attack

I have used uo assist once about 10 years ago I tried uo auto map once couldn’t get it to work other than that I never even thought of or even tried to use any other programs.

I feel it’s absolutely absurd to pay for a game that I have to cheat to play
I just recently this year finally tried to multi client which again is more discouraging

After reading this thread and seeing that free shards can do things this team can’t is very very disappointing

I’m not trying to be a goodie two shoes here it’s more principal than anything

As far as stratics and it’s bans I was one of those back around 2007 OlduoFan I deserved it I was immature and selfish back then. I do understand @Captn Norrington completely and totally agree with him

I believe it’s more of a leadership problem with uo than anything

 

[skett]

@Stinky Pete

I Know OT

 

[Scribbles]

Supporting Ultima players in all of their ways of playing would be extremely beneficial to stratics. I definitely think its time for stratics to stop being held back by rules that no one else is enforcing. Especially considering how the leader of OSI UO has treated stratics in the past and currently.


Long Live the Players!

 

[Picus of Napa]

I think that those who are passionate about the game wish to talk in a open format, it's just that simple.

Free shards should be viewed as sandbox themselves and should be discussed openly for what works and what didn't simply to drive more revenue streams for the game, why this never seems to have been done I don't get. Some of them are stupidly cool with really well thought out buildings, cities and different gameplay mechanics while others are glitter fest places that make EA banksitters look tame but they all offer insight as to what people are looking for. I wonder if broadsword is worried about getting sued themselves?

Script away, it is clear people do it and to the benefit of UO. Sadly those programs provide what us aging players can't or won't do: the massive clickfest that is crafting, gathering and playing UO.

 

[Lord Arm]

Im glad a person can post on stratics and not get their post deleted or locked without good reason. you would not believe some of the reasons, posts get deleted on another forum, no names lol. I haven't posted on this other forum for a long time now and don't even remember the password lol. I agree that both clients need to be on an even playing field.

 

[Anonymous UOPlayer]

enforce rules fairly & evenly & not based on power & popularity.

problem is everyone who wins in a dispute thinks the rules are being enforced fairly & evenly. & because the powerful & popular usually win, that is that.

 

[Captn Norrington]

enforce rules fairly & evenly & not based on power & popularity.

problem is everyone who wins in a dispute thinks the rules are being enforced fairly & evenly. & because the powerful & popular usually win, that is that.

We already do this. I can guarantee that when it comes to moderation we genuinely don't care if a person is popular or powerful, and I've sent my own friends many warnings. If anything, we're a little more strict on well known people because we know they already know the rules, while an account we don't recognize may have broken a rule entirely by mistake and gets a bit more benefit of the doubt. A fair amount of the time a significant moderation issue happens I get PM's from both people, with both claiming the other is being shown favoritism. Clearly if both think the other has an advantage, then neither actually has an advantage.

 

[Riyana]

There are some fair points in this thread and I'd like to see more people chime in, or if they are uncomfortable doing so publicly, email [email protected] with ideas. I would ask that posters in this thread and anyone emailing us be straightforward about their goals and agendas.

Real life obligations take most of my time these days, but I think it's important to present what I see on the leadership side as well. I am not defending our shortcomings, which I know we have; I am simply presenting my perspective as one of the current leaders of Stratics and as a member of the community. However, I am speaking for myself and my opinions here are my own, not those of Stratics as an entity. Like @Captn Norrington I have held back on my personal opinions and tried to be as fair and impartial as humanly possible. However I feel that this stance has only divided me from the community, and that impartiality is in itself taking a side--and it's not the side I want to take. I fully condemn cheating and dishonesty, and while our rules were meant to curtail these, I concede they have not always had the intended effect.

There is a lot of talk of cheating in this thread. I think part of the problem with the UO community is that there is no common definition of cheating anymore. There have been no clear, official, easily referenced guidelines for what is and isn't allowed in UO for years. Scripters run wild, RMT runs wild, third party programs run wild (and these are all interconnected!), and quite frankly it is appallingly clear that people who engage in behaviors that in the past would have been considered bannable offenses have been listened to and tangibly rewarded by the powers that be (whether intentionally or not). There is absolutely nothing Stratics can do about this.

I want Stratics to be HONEST, but I do not want it to devolve into a trainwreck of flaming, accusation, and forum warring, which tends to happen when people start talking about cheating topics, in part because there is no common definition. I also fear that truly open honest discussion would be harmful to the game because there are a lot of problems with today's UO stemming from that lack of common definition and a lack of enforcement on the few rules that seem to be (?) in place. Numbers in a newsletter don't mean much when we don't have a shared understanding of what constitutes a violation.

No, we are not held back by Broadsword or EA rules or expectations anymore, but we also don't want to harm the game. That said, the Stratics definition of cheating has long been based on the standards of a UO that frankly doesn't exist anymore. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but I do think there is more room for free civil discussion than what is currently allowed.

However, there are things that just aren't practical or realistic for us to try to do. We can't limit discussion to paid UO accounts because we have no way of knowing who is or isn't--and a Stratics account that doesn't represent a paid UO account very well could tomorrow. That would also be eliminating EJ players from participation. We can't catch every ban evader. We can't patrol, control, or discipline what people do in the game itself, and don't have any influence over the people who can. We maintain a high burden of proof and can't verify everything. We will never please everyone with anything we decide. The forums are limited by what Xenforo plugins are available and/or have enough community interest to pursue paying to develop.

"The community" means different things to different people. The UO community is severely divided into sub-communities that have only gotten more divided in the past several years. I'm not going to delve into why in this thread--I certainly have my opinions--but it does present a challenge. I am skeptical that a fansite can serve all interests when some interests are in direct conflict with or actively harm others, but I'd love to hear concrete ideas for how we might do so.

Here are my personal opinions, which again, are solely my own:

• I will never support allowing RMT on Stratics, and believe it would be antithetical to the original spirit of the campaign to do so.
• I will never support every forum being an Unleashed-style free for all. If you want to scream into the void, we have both Unleashed and Spiels and Rants to accommodate.
• I'm open to free shards and think some of them hold to the original spirit of UO better than modern production UO does.
• I'd love to do more contests/events, but our participation was pretty low when we did--how could we encourage more participation?
• Exactly what does supporting guilds look like in terms of what Stratics can do? We had a "groups" feature that guilds could use to create their own spaces, but it didn't get used a lot and doesn't work with the updated Xenforo.
• Regarding naming scammers: we implemented a trade feedback feature a while back that hasn't really been used. Concerns expressed about it included the likelihood of retaliatory bad feedback. How would naming scammers be different and/or what are ideal alternatives?

There are some good general ideas in this thread but I'm particularly interested in tangible, implementable ideas. My starting point is the original promises from the campaign, but of course we can and must evolve and elaborate from there. Give us something to work with. Help us! Stratics is about all of us, not just a few people trying to run the site.

 

[skett]

Very Well Said ^^^

 

[Anonymous UOPlayer]

We already do this. I can guarantee that when it comes to moderation we genuinely don't care if a person is popular or powerful, and I've sent my own friends many warnings. If anything, we're a little more strict on well known people because we know they already know the rules, while an account we don't recognize may have broken a rule entirely by mistake and gets a bit more benefit of the doubt. A fair amount of the time a significant moderation issue happens I get PM's from both people, with both claiming the other is being shown favoritism. Clearly if both think the other has an advantage, then neither actually has an advantage.

*sighs*

1. you, meaning stratics, asked a question. you, meaning yourself as a representative of stratics, got huffy about my answer. next time: don't ask. or declare who you'd rather have answer, in EA-type manner.
2. your last statement is logically flawed. the powerful are great at crying 'favoritism' in situations where favoritism is being shown to them,. there are many, many examples of this, norry.
3. finally: you've set up a situation where i can't answer you honestly without running afoul of the rules because my understanding is that i can't comment publicly on specific moderator actions. well done!

 

[Captn Norrington]

*sighs*

1. you, meaning stratics, asked a question. you, meaning yourself as a representative of stratics, got huffy about my answer. next time: don't ask. or declare who you'd rather have answer, in EA-type manner.
2. your last statement is logically flawed. the powerful are great at crying 'favoritism' in situations where favoritism is being shown to them,. there are many, many examples of this, norry.
3. finally: you've set up a situation where i can't answer you honestly without running afoul of the rules because my understanding is that i can't comment publicly on specific moderator actions. well done!

1. You seem to have misunderstood. Nabin created this post. He is not a Stratics Staff member. He's a very invested community member. So we as Stratics didn't ask a question and then bash the answer. I was defending our moderation practices because even though it was a general moderation comment only about three of us actively moderate anymore so saying it's unfair is still effectively saying the three of us are showing favoritism. I didn't mean it in an aggressive way.

2. I don't really know what you mean here, but usually it's one non-famous person and one very well known person both thinking we gave them the short end of the stick when it happens.

3. Both posters and staff are now allowed to discuss moderation actions in the new Unleashed forum. I would have moved this there so people could speak more freely, but too many people aren't signed up for it and wouldn't be able to see this thread, including you. So... I suppose that does create a bit of a conundrum for you following the rules like you said.

Considering that situation, for the purpose of whatever you want to say that can't be said according to the normal rules, you now have "Unleashed protection" here with the goal of unfiltered feedback in the spirit of this thread, and will not be punished in any way if you post whatever you can't normally say in this thread even if it's an accusation against staff members (not like, personal attacks, death threats and porn though, obviously). If other staff members reading this have issues with "Unleashed protection", I ask that you guys just move our rule-breaking posts into the Unleashed forum instead of warning Anonymous UOPlayer.

 

[Lord Nabin]

*sighs*

1. you, meaning stratics, asked a question. you, meaning yourself as a representative of stratics, got huffy about my answer. next time: don't ask. or declare who you'd rather have answer, in EA-type manner.
2. your last statement is logically flawed. the powerful are great at crying 'favoritism' in situations where favoritism is being shown to them,. there are many, many examples of this, norry.
3. finally: you've set up a situation where i can't answer you honestly without running afoul of the rules because my understanding is that i can't comment publicly on specific moderator actions. well done!

This reply is a load of crap and you know it.

 

[Anonymous UOPlayer]

1. You seem to have misunderstood. Nabin created this post. He is not a Stratics Staff member. He's a very invested community member. So we as Stratics didn't ask a question and then bash the answer. I was defending our moderation practices because even though it was a general moderation comment only about three of us actively moderate anymore so saying it's unfair is still effectively saying the three of us are showing favoritism. I didn't mean it in an aggressive way.

2. I don't really know what you mean here, but usually it's one non-famous person and one very well known person both thinking we gave them the short end of the stick when it happens.

3. Both posters and staff are now allowed to discuss moderation actions in the new Unleashed forum. I would have moved this there so people could speak more freely, but too many people aren't signed up for it and wouldn't be able to see this thread, including you. So... I suppose that does create a bit of a conundrum for you following the rules like you said.

Considering that situation, for the purpose of whatever you want to say that can't be said according to the normal rules, you now have "Unleashed protection" here with the goal of unfiltered feedback in the spirit of this thread, and will not be punished in any way if you post whatever you can't normally say in this thread even if it's an accusation against staff members (not like personal attacks, death threats and porn though, obviously). If other staff members reading this have issues with "Unleashed protection", I ask that you guys just move our rule-breaking posts into the Unleashed forum instead of warning Anonymous UOPlayer.

well the first answer is the only-relevant one....sorry for thinking that such a request could've come from stratics staff and answering accordingly. looking over at the tons of titles he's got though i guess the error was understandable. not an excuse, though. sorry again.

on 2, i wasn't talking about stratics but making analogies to other things.

on 3 umm.....i don't know that you have the authority for that, do you? either way i guess at some point i'll go over to the forum you mentioned.

 

[Anonymous UOPlayer]

This reply is a load of crap and you know it.

cute, but no. oh well. i thought you were from stratics or i'd not have bothered replying.

 

[Picus of Napa]

3. Both posters and staff are now allowed to discuss moderation actions in the new Unleashed forum. I would have moved this there so people could speak more freely, but too many people aren't signed up for it and wouldn't be able to see this thread, including you. So... I suppose that does create a bit of a conundrum for you following the rules like you said.

This section seems to be refrenced often....um what and where and how is it?

 

[skett]

It say “Unleashed”
click on Stratics scroll down you’ll see it

https://community.stratics.com/forums/stratics-unleashed.1086/

 

[Captn Norrington]

This section seems to be refrenced often....um what and where and how is it?

Here are the instructions on how to sign up for it: Introducing Stratics Unleashed.

well the first answer is the only-relevant one....sorry for thinking that such a request could've come from stratics staff and answering accordingly. looking over at the tons of titles he's got though i guess the error was understandable. not an excuse, though. sorry again.

on 2, i wasn't talking about stratics but making analogies to other things.

on 3 umm.....i don't know that you have the authority for that, do you? either way i guess at some point i'll go over to the forum you mentioned.

We continuously ask for feedback as Stratics Staff, we have yearly update/improvement posts in the announcements section and probably around 5-10 Uhall threads about it over the years. Plus people can PM us whenever they want. I've kind of hijacked Nabin's post here accidentally and Riyana posted here too, so we definitely see and consider all the feedback posted here like we would in an official Stratics Staff thread.

Whether I have the authority for that, I have no idea, but it generally takes us weeks to decide on anything official which is unhelpful in instant situations like this, so considering I'm the most active moderator I figure if anyone theoretically had the ability to do it randomly it would be me. It's better than just telling you to PM me about it right? The goal is open feedback and objectives for the site like Nabin mentioned so personally I think it should all be public to avoid any confusion. We don't really have established procedures for that sort of thing. If they disagreed, the higher ranking staff could simply move the posts as I mentioned and I would get the blame not you.

I look forward to you joining us in Unleashed!

 

[Riyana]

Let's keep this on topic. If you have specific moderation action issues you can email [email protected]. if you want to publicly air your grievances you may do so in Unleashed, but note that our replies will be public too.

 

[skett]

Taking weeks to discuss an important issue and come to a logical decision is far better than being rash
old saying, sleep on it don't be hasty

 

[Lord Frodo]

To be honest I want to say HELL NO but the more I think about it the more I want to say GO FOR IT. UO had/has the ability to make playing UO easier for us older than dirt players and trust me I ache a little more each day with all the key strokes. As far as I am concerned just about anything that makes it easier to play should be allowed. The EC is IMHO the biggest cheat program allowed and it is legal so why is Razor and I think it is Steam which to me is upgraded UOAs not allowed. I am not talking about programs that allow you to multibox but programs that allow you to do more automation. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Captn Norrington]

Taking weeks to discuss an important issue and come to a logical decision is far better than being rash
old saying, sleep on it don't be hasty

For conceptual things like implementing new systems I agree, but not everything needs an in depth discussion. For example the bump rule in the trade forums. It took a solid month of us talking about it to agree on changing it from once every 48 hours to once every 24 hours. It's just excessive sometimes in my opinion. We've been off and on talking about the new unleashed forum for 4ish years before it happened (which I'm happy about) when worst case scenario it could have just been created in a week and removed like the old No Holds Barred forum was if it became problematic.

 

[Stinky Pete]

I still don't see what's stopping you from making these changes. Is it @Archnight? If it is, I vote to just get rid of him.

 

[Captn Norrington]

I still don't see what's stopping you from making these changes. Is it @Archnight? If it is, I vote to just get rid of him.

Well, for me personally, I'm not on the board of directors anymore so can't actually enact changes by myself *shamelessly pushes the work onto Riyana's desk*

I'm more than happy to help turn any of the the above listed things into reality though.

No, it's not Archnight. If they got rid of him I would be the only active moderator left....and then I would have total control....and then I could do whatever I wanted.....and.....that would be....hmm....yea, you know what, yeah It's Archnight

 

[Stinky Pete]

I suppose I could apply and we can fire @Archnight. How do I get onto the board of directors? That sounds like fun.

 

[Stinky Pete]

By the way, what's the point of having a bunch of mods that aren't active? I know they're just volunteers, but if they aren't doing their job, or are total turds like @Archnight, I don't see a problem with letting them go.

 

[Captn Norrington]

By the way, what's the point of having a bunch of mods that aren't active? I know they're just volunteers, but if they aren't doing their job, or are total turds like @Archnight, I don't see a problem with letting them go.

They all used to be active. Which is a continuous problem on the staff. We hire people, have a good solid amount of active staff for a year, then they all disappear and we end up back at 1-2 people moderating everything with nobody else signing up. When Arch was hired, I was training 4 other moderators too. When Riyana was hired, again I was training 3 other people too. Now they're each the only ones left from their hiring groups. I'm the only one left from my hiring group when Nexus and Zuckuss hired me. Nexus and Lestat are the only active ones left from the entire 1997-2014 era. They're volunteers so we can't make them keep showing up, and it seems counterproductive to remove their staff abilities for inactivity when they do sometimes reappear for a month or so, but we have removed a lot of inactive staff who hadn't logged in for years over time.

To be honest if we hired new moderators at this point they'd be too bored to stay and very difficult to train due to the severely decreased amount of reports. There were more reports in my first month as a mod than in the last year combined. Hard to train a moderator when there aren't any good examples to let them practice on and not much drama left to deal with. Content creation is a much more needed area for staff at the moment, since we have like one person making new content, news articles etc. after hiring more than 10 reporters/editors a few years ago.

 

[kelmo]

Give it a couple more years and at this rate Stratics won't need mods. A single janitor will do.

 

[petemage]

The EC is IMHO the biggest cheat program allowed and it is legal so why is Razor and I think it is Steam which to me is upgraded UOAs not allowed.

Not that you seem interested in the answers since it has been pointed out multiple times throughout the years, but let me write it down once more:

The former does allow you to automate things to a certain degree but puts limits to it as the developers intended. You can't move your character, can't cast skills, can't switch between characters, etc. pp. without actual user input (a mouse click or keyboard input) from outside the client.

The latter have no restrictions and allow for fully automated bots not needing any user interaction at all. Those have never been intended by the developers.