Public Works Projects

[EM Dudley]

As indicated from the last Summit meeting with the Crown, opportunities for additions will now be available.

The first available will be the addition of a Stable to approved townships. In order to qualify for the stable your township must complete a series of quests. Every township has the opportunity to do the quest and may do so when they are offered. The quests will surround your (the township) petition to the Crown for inclusion within the transit routes managed by the Livery Guild (they are responsible for managing transportation throughout the realm). This petition will need to be authorized by the Livery Guildmaster, who will only grant a "Designation of Station" after the stablemasters throughout the land give their blessing and give you a "Letter of Recommendation" to return to the Livery Guildmaster. Each stable throughout the land will have their own personal needs and each quest you complete will be different for each stablemaster based on those needs.

Some of the quests include:
Resource gathering/turn-ins
Requests for crafted materials
Animal taming/turn ins
Personal favors of the stablemaster
and some others that will be a suprise, of course.

Please stay toon'd for future information on when and how you can get started and if you have any questions, please post below.

 

[Jamlyn]

I think this is a fantastic idea, and look forward to see just how these quests work. This is going to build more history for each township. A great idea and thank you for going forth with it!

 

[Lord Gareth]

Cool

 

[Nastia Cross]

How will this work, Dudley? Will each town that has completed the quest receive a just stable master or an actual physical building with a stable master?

 

[EM Dudley]

"How will this work, Dudley? Will each town that has completed the quest receive a just stable master or an actual physical building with a stable master?"

Ok, firstly, there will be no NPCs involved with this. Do not ask for NPCs, they won't be involved. Again, let me say, there will be no NPCs involved.

As far as what actually will be placed, it will likely be something simple such as a hitching post with some hay around it. Let's see who can complete the quests first, then the Royal Surveyor can get to work

 

[Lady Arianne]

Can we support and do quests for a town if we are not a resident of it?

 

[EM Dudley]

Sure

 

[Nastia Cross]

Hitching post sounds great, Dudley. Will they be ones that need to be recharged or have unlimited uses?

 

[EM Dudley]

Not sure, tbh... I'd have to discuss it further with the Royal Surveyor.

 

[Lord Gareth]

Let's see who can complete the quests first, then the Royal Surveyor can get to work

Yea....umm... no thanks on that challenge. Learned my lesson already *Winks*

 

[Tanivar]

When do the quests start? I've a young, healer, rogue, and bard who need some hard experience with the wild lands out there.

 

[EM Dudley]

First quest is going to be the middle of this month...exact date is in the Events of August thread...

A bit of insight, the first quest will be resource gathering...but like you've never experienced before!

 

[Tanivar]

First quest is going to be the middle of this month...exact date is in the Events of August thread...

A bit of insight, the first quest will be resource gathering...but like you've never experienced before!

I've played Crafters & Foragers since I came to UO back in 2000. From the easy gathering of feathers to make archery ammo to the OOOoooOOOooo of going after the crafting resources of the 10,000 hp, do 100 hp/sec damage monsters of ML. Something new for us will be a treat.

 

[Lord Gareth]

First quest is going to be the middle of this month...exact date is in the Events of August thread...

A bit of insight, the first quest will be resource gathering...but like you've never experienced before!

Hey Dudley you said the Livery guild quest will be open at anytime correct? So we do not have to do this quest right now correct? Our townships can wait a few months to do it?

 

[Lord Gareth]

That was a waste of my time....Lower your ingot request.

8k iron ingots
4k Dull Copper ingots
2k Shadow
2k bronze ingots

With Random color locations and a four hour time limit (Not to mention killing your fingers) that is way to high.

 

[georox]

There was so much opportunity for something like this to be a gold/resource sink.. instead it was just a boring timesink. Oh... yea... mine and cut logs... normally I don't have bad to say about events but... holy **** this was just dull. You can't even do it with people really because nodes get exhausted too fast.

 

[Lord Gareth]

I feel sorry for the townships that did this quest and failed. (And I mean every single town that was there.) When 90% of the towns fail the quest then something is wrong. I now know how the people feel that can only play three or four hours a day. I wasted the entire time I could play UO today for the quest.

When I was an active Imperium OOC Leader, I pushed for the Ethereal Void Imperium towns to skip doing this quest for the time being. I am glade that we did.

 

[EM Dudley]

As I stated previously...

These are not supposed to be easy.

There are 10 stables, you need to get the recommendation of 5. Not all the quests will be resource gathering.

Unlike the banners, this is not merely an ask and thou shall receive process. These exercises are designed to evaluate various aspects of the applicant township across a wide range of areas. Tonight's was teamwork in classical resource gathering.

I apologize if you did not enjoy this particular exercise, as we progress we hope to cover as many skill sets as possible. Also, being that this is a series of events geared specifically towards a discrete demographic (the townships) the reward is exclusive and thus the event is more difficult.

One township was successful in completing the request, as well as another being close enough that had they stuck around they would have likely finished it.

 

[Lord Gareth]

As I stated previously...

These are not supposed to be easy.

There are 10 stables, you need to get the recommendation of 5. Not all the quests will be resource gathering.

Unlike the banners, this is not merely an ask and thou shall receive process. These exercises are designed to evaluate various aspects of the applicant township across a wide range of areas. Tonight's was teamwork in classical resource gathering.

I apologize if you did not enjoy this particular exercise, as we progress we hope to cover as many skill sets as possible. Also, being that this is a series of events geared specifically towards a discrete demographic (the townships) the reward is exclusive and thus the event is more difficult.

One township was successful in completing the request, as well as another being close enough that had they stuck around they would have likely finished it.

Sorry but being stuck with a one time offer only and its on this certain day and certain time is ridiculous.

 

[georox]

As I stated previously...

Tonight's was teamwork in classical resource gathering.

Okay... this is not something I normally would say...

But that is complete bull****. Resource gathering, teamwork? Really? REALLY? It takes 20 seconds to empty a resource node... it's not a team project.. it's a run around by yourself clicking every tree/cave/mountain like mad... the most team you could really do is have one person carry stuff off. Teamwork to me generally involves doing things... as a team. This was something that was far from a team effort to me.

Going to add more to this with this edit...

It wasn't hard. It was a timesink. Nothing more. It was spend a bunch of time to collect items that you can get every day... it was going "click click click click" on the pickaxe over and over... carpal tunnel has increased by 0.1, it is now 24.5...

But seriously, it wasn't a difficult event, it was just a very annoying time consuming event. It wasn't exciting... there wasn't a lot of people working toward something wonderful.. it was just... harvest stuff... because... we all know, harvesting stuff is fun. Extremely fun.

 

[EM Dudley]

Sorry but being stuck with a one time offer only and its on this certain day and certain time is ridiculous.

That's why you will have ten total opportunities to complete five quests over a variety of days and times in the coming weeks.

 

[EM Dudley]

Okay... this is not something I normally would say...

But that is complete bull****. Resource gathering, teamwork? Really? REALLY? It takes 20 seconds to empty a resource node... it's not a team project.. it's a run around by yourself clicking every tree/cave/mountain like mad... the most team you could really do is have one person carry stuff off. Teamwork to me generally involves doing things... as a team. This was something that was far from a team effort to me.

Firstly, just as I do not tolerate profanity in the Hall of Commons, neither do I tolerate it here, granted the use of asterisks is covering the actual obscenity the implied meaning is still the same. If this cannot be a place for constructive and courteous exchange than there is no point in participating. Please refrain from using it in the future.

There was quite a lot of opportunity for teamwork within this event. For example...utilizing the various alliances and associations that many of you have forged within the realm you could have easily attempted to fulfill the order for one membership township and achieving the recommendation for that township by banding the resource gathering efforts of multiple townships together. Were the ingot requests high? Yes. Will I adjust things in the future? Yes. But it was not impossible. There is simply no way that a single person was going to accomplish this task, and they shouldn't be able to. That is certainly not in the spirit of the township series.

 

[Lord Gareth]

That's why you will have ten total opportunities to complete five quests over a variety of days and times in the coming weeks.

Alrighty well I got my answer and thank you for the responses. You're the EM, its obviously your call and I respect that. Don't worry you wont hear anything else from me about it, especially with time limits, only certain days, and the towns unable to pick a day and time when they are active. Its not very appealing for me to devote my time too but I'm sure this is another persons cup of tea.

 

[EM Dudley]

Finding the best time for optimum participation based on any township's peak activity is something I'm certainly interested in. But remember that scheduling anything can be a real nightmare between....

My RW job offering me very little advanced notice to my future schedule...

Working extra events in beyond the 4 Hall of Commons meetings, 2 Summit Meetings, Fishing Tournament Window, and Fair games that happen every month...

and eating/sleeping/bathing...so that must be why my keyboard is covered in tomato sauce...

All kidding aside, if there are specific times that are peak hours for your township please send me an email to let me know, and I will do my best.

 

[Hinotori]

So this was pretty much a just go mine/lumberjack one of each ingot/wood type and drop the old ones on the new one so they all have the new one's info? Cause it sure wasn't a gather them legitimately in that time frame with that amount.

And resource gathering isn't a team project. It's a solo thing. Actually it's more of an encouragement for people to run a script in order to get the stuff, since there is a carpel tunnel problem with resource gathering.

I farmed and farmed and turned in every resource I had for the forts against the Despise invasion. That made sense. Give up your resources to do some good. It was a great financial cost. I spent many an hour making gears (or was it springs?) for that. That took time and much effort.

With how this is going, I think I'm better off spending some money and just buying several hitching posts for my town. Farming for ropes and bridles to charge them would be a better use of my time.

I've been getting extremely disillusioned with these events. The last one was geared more towards giving the xshard traders something rather than giving a reward since it was the people with newbie chars that got the tons of them, while those who were searching for and fighting the last golems got nothing. Ah, but who cares about the common players who never get anything because they play by the rules.

I'm suprised there isn't more complaints here. But then since most people do not come to Stratics, or know to look here, I shouldn't be.

 

[EM Dudley]

So this was pretty much a just go mine/lumberjack one of each ingot/wood type and drop the old ones on the new one so they all have the new one's info? Cause it sure wasn't a gather them legitimately in that time frame with that amount.

And resource gathering isn't a team project. It's a solo thing. Actually it's more of an encouragement for people to run a script in order to get the stuff, since there is a carpel tunnel problem with resource gathering.

I farmed and farmed and turned in every resource I had for the forts against the Despise invasion. That made sense. Give up your resources to do some good. It was a great financial cost. I spent many an hour making gears (or was it springs?) for that. That took time and much effort.

With how this is going, I think I'm better off spending some money and just buying several hitching posts for my town. Farming for ropes and bridles to charge them would be a better use of my time.

You have to rely on a sort of Honor code, but we were also watching to try and make sure nobody was using pre-farmed resources. Oversight only goes so far. If someone cheated tonight, well that's upsetting and I hope they are cursed with a life of hangnails.

I also pointed out that of the ten offered opportunities for getting the recommendations they aren't all going to be resource gathering. We're also taking feedback from tonight and using it for future resource gathering events (it's difficult to make them fun and exciting, we've already got ideas for the future).

Also, these quests are designed for townships that are comprised of more than one person, a group of players working together. They are not designed for a single player to accomplish on their own. A medium sized group of people, working together within the time allotted could accomplish the goals.

 

[Lord Gareth]

Don't worry you wont hear anything else from me about it...

Okay yes I did say that but, but, but you know my mouth doesn't know when to shut it.

You have to rely on a sort of Honor code, but we were also watching to try and make sure nobody was using pre-farmed resources. Oversight only goes so far. If someone cheated tonight, well that's upsetting and I hope they are cursed with a life of hangnails.

I dislike the honor code because not many follow it. As for cheating.... I don't have much to say on that in this part but for me personally, I could never stand to log into Ultima Online every day and see a stable that I know, I cheated to get. That would just sicken me. On to my point....instead of ingots, have them turn in Ore. The "raw" Ore because not many farmers keep it in raw form. Weight wise they can combine it to the little pieces. I think its 2 little ore pieces = 1 ingot. Same thing for the wood. Have them keep it in log form.

I also pointed out that of the ten offered opportunities for getting the recommendations they aren't all going to be resource gathering.

This is where I am stumped.....will this ever be offered again? Townships that could not attend? Townships that chose not to attend? Townships that failed? Townships that haven't been created yet?

We're also taking feedback from tonight and using it for future resource gathering events

I honestly would have rather had to mine 100,000 "Raw" Ore in two weeks, then 8,000 Iron ingots in 4hours. The townships ability to setup "mining outings" and gather their people to successfully complete the task, would be a true test of a townships ability. With this you are testing the townships government ability, crafting ability and teamwork. Allot goes into setting up "mining outings".

The EMs could request a list of days and times the townships have setup for their outings. Check up on them to make sure they are actually following though when you can.

Could the townships cheat to get them? Yes they could but they still have to live with the fact their township cheated to get it. (Also you can bust those cheaters that make the Free accounts to mine.) If you really want to know if they are cheating then send the miners names over to Mesanna. She can pass it along to Cal to see if they match up.... but if Cal is smart enough he will just give her the list and say have fun *kekekek*

 

[Bombastic Fail]

My only gripe was; some towns aren't as large as others (hence; this is what makes towns/cities/kingdoms unique right?). Like our newly developed town is only 5-10 buildings large. (working on upgrading; but we are new to this)

Anyways; the point is; with a small town is a smaller "guild" or "township" or whatever. I know myself; we only had 3 people on last night. Nastia (who did A TON of work and I applaude her greatly and wish I could of helped more) who is a ljer & miner (both gm), Broli/Turles (who only has an LJer), and myself (Who is a LJer and a LOW miner. Under 75 at the end so I could ONLY FARM the low end stuff with SMALL chances of other stuff. Granted this helped A LOT with iron; didnt help crap for the others).

Anyways; long story short; 1 GM miner; and one LOW miner (trained from 50 & +5 gloves). 2 people..

2 PEOPLE BREAKDOWN -

8k iron ingots (4K each; 1K per hour per person) - DOABLE
4k Dull Copper ingots (2K each; 500 per hour per person) - POSSIBLY doable if RNG is on your side && using prospector tools ever spot
2k Shadow (1K each; 500 per hour per person) - Not likely; even with good RNG rolls and prospector tools
2k bronze ingots (2K on Nastia ONLY 500 per hour for her) - Def. not going to happen; even with good RNG rolls and prospector tools


This is saying we did NO LJING and left that all to Turles (which that DEFINATELY wouldnt have happened with just 1 person.)

Luckily for the trees; we LJ for imbuing ingrediants && bark fragments for armor; so we had spots marked for all the higher end wood. And the requirements weren't ridiculously high.


But; I am suggesting either 1 of 2 things for future reference.

A. Keep the really high requirements. This is fine. But allow people to use their pre-existing materials. This would make it fair and even because smaller groups could have some stashed; or could even buy some. ORRR you could even hire people to work for you or sell you some of their left overs.

or

B. Base it off your township size. Sure; ACTION got it finished. (Congrats BTW!!). But compare their township size to ours. How many people did they have working for them? Even some of the other bigger towns (such as Gareth's town) had a lot and still couldnt get it finished.

If you based it off a township size; everyone would have an equal oppurtunity.

Perhaps; base it off of the biggest town; and make it % wise lower based on your size. If you are half of the largest; then you have to get 50% of what they do. If you are 1/10th of their size; 10% is adequate.


I don't mean to complain; but as I was telling Gareth.. I could of EASILY went to luna and said to people "HEY I WILL PAY PEOPLE XXX MILL TO GET ME THESE ITEMS IN 4 HOURS!!" People would of JUMPED all over the free gold. But that is COMPLETELY the opposite of what a township is suppose to be right? It's suppose to be YOUR TOWNSHIP doing THEIR OWN WORK to get things DONE FOR THEM right?

But again; you were vague on your rules; and we could of bent them but choose not to because we were afraid of how people would view us. Could you imagine what people would of said about our small town if we did it that way and got it finished while others didnt?? rolleyes: But under those circumstances; it almost came down to that. It was "FAIL WITH DIGNITY" or "DO WHAT WAS NECCESSARY". We choose fail.

 

[Tanivar]

If your EM ears are ringing this morning it's due to me and the other older players who went through last night thinking unkind thoughts towards you this morning. I can barely write this morning due to my hands reaction to last nights 4 hour rapid mousing & clicking fiasco.

This was my first full experience with one of your events and after the series of quests are done, likely the last. Your OP gave me the impression we'd be finding out about the Livery quests last night and could do them has we could get the people together to do them, turning in some item as proof we had completed each one. Suddenly finding out I had commited myself to helping in what was going to be 4 hours of the exact kind of high-intensity mousing I normally avoid like the plague, and that had to be done right then, prepared in RL or not, was Not Good(tm). That was a work night and many probably couldn't stay up that late for a game and go into work the next morning half asleep, or had RL obligations to deal with.

I think the average age of UO players is up there a bit. You may want to adjust your EM events to allow your players a little more leeway in getting ready for them, if possible. You might see more players getting involved in them if you do.

Your RL job may not give you much advance notice of your schedule but you need to give the paying customers of your employer more notice, and some slack. We are in this game to enjoy ourselves. Last nights liitle shindig was not enjoyable.

 

[Nastia Cross]

I have a few things I want to add. I did enjoy the chance to RP with both EMs last night and found it entertaining, but for a quest situation taking an hour to receive instructions was a bit much. 8pm was the start time listed and we didn't get going on the resource gathering until 9pm. Like Lox said we have a small township and while we are allied with UHOH, all of our guildmembers are more interested in pvp (they did two harrowers last night).

The boards part of the quest was easy; the ingots part was not, especially due to the restriction against recalling. While I applaud the EMs bringing back some old school, the only mining available in the immediate area was almost instantly dry. Being the only one of us with a GM miner and with 3 hours (not 4 because like I said we didn't get the ok to go until about 9pm) to collect all the resources, I quickly became discouraged. I don't know about everyone else but being up til midnight on a weekday is really not possible for me so I called it quits at around 11:15. I really was looking forward to this quest but a little more time to gather resources would have been appropriate.

I wish that there was a way to set up an NPC like the ones in the Brit Library through which we could have turned in our resources over a period of a few days. While I understand the negatives against this (how could they control the honesty of that situation unless they had the turn in items as ore and logs as mentioned above by Gareth), it would give townships ample time to gather resources manually and turn them in without the EMs needing to be present. Perhaps the EMs and Mesanna could look into this possibility for future quests.

That being said, I hope it doesn't discourage the towns from participating in any further quests from the EMs. They're really going out on a limb here in terms of what they offer to us and we have to remember that they're pretty much learning as they go. Instead of threatening never to participate again, maybe we could take a deep breath and offer constructive criticism.

 

[EMDrosselmeyer]

Firstly, I'd like to jump in and emphasize a point that Dudley made that is being glossed over a bit....

EM Dudley: I also pointed out that of the ten offered opportunities for getting the recommendations they aren't all going to be resource gathering.

This means that tonight was merely one of ten opportunities. If you didn't finish tonights, it is not a big deal; Remember that you won't always triumph with every kind of quest. If something doesn't play to your strengths, do your best, but don't worry too much about it if you don't get victory.

Please keep in mind that again, we are NOT complete experts on every type of gameplay, and we are constantly learning; we had estimated based on our own experiences using gargoyle pickaxes, prospectors tools, and mining to make these best guesses as to what should be doable for a group that could field at least 2-3 miners. We can only do our best, and sometimes, we don't do it exactly right; We're very up front about that. However, we DO learn, take into account the previous feedback for similar things, and then adjust future similar events accordingly. If we do another resource gathering event, You can be certain that the focus will be entirely different, and will take into account all of the constructive criticism that you can provide for us. So please, do help us to help you!

 

[EM Dudley]

Thanks to everyone for their feedback on this first quest in the Livery series.

We will make some announcements about this series at the Hall of Commons meeting on Sunday.

Thanks again.

 

[Tanivar]

That being said, I hope it doesn't discourage the towns from participating in any further quests from the EMs. They're really going out on a limb here in terms of what they offer to us and we have to remember that they're pretty much learning as they go. Instead of threatening never to participate again, maybe we could take a deep breath and offer constructive criticism.

kk. 3 hours instead of 4. Just up and having to move, I was doing a definite 'Unhappy Camper' routine. Still am actually.

My patience with the EMs learning as they go will be back up to par in a couple of days. Right now my arms and hands opinions of them are having the most influence on that patience.

The tone of that post definitely reflects my current mood. As for threatening never to participate again, it wasn't meant as a threat, just a statement of fact <shrug> Think of the saying "If it hurts, don't do it.".

RL at times requires me to ignore that advice, and pay the price. For a game I play because of it's mega-fun-factor, I'm not willing to pay that price.

Masochism isn't my thing.

 

[Nastia Cross]

As for threatening never to participate again, it wasn't meant as a threat, just a statement of fact.

In no way did I mean my post to be specifically aimed at you. I'm sorry if I came off that way. I just don't want the EMs to stop offering us these special things because people would rather complain than offer help or advice. Trust me, even I'm guilty of a little overreacting last night. I was grumbling about missing two harrowers and not even getting to complete the task (amongst other things I won't repeat on these forums ).

Maybe the EMs should offer us yoga classes so we can all be more serene at events hehe.

 

[Gunga_Din]

I think the main thing here is.... Time. A lot of the player base is older with RL jobs and responsibilities. The quests should only take 1-2hrs max unless you want to make it a week long quest at 1-2 hrs a day.

Still try to make it challenging but maybe less click click intensive and more brain work .

 

[Tancred RedStar]

My 2 cents:
1) The resource requirements were a bit high. Also, they were not scaled to each community's size(as alluded to in a previous post). A village cannot match the manpower/etc. of a kingdom. Flipside of the coin: this was the first time this type of event has been run so it was certainly a learning experience for the players and the EM's, so plz everyone, let's not be so harsh with our words.

2) There was no way this evening's Gyldenfeld crew could hope to complete the list. We did not just give up, we figured we'll just give it our best no matter what, we teamed up with PaxLair and agreed to split everything we got(esp since we were low on lumberjacks and they were low on miners). In the end, we didnt get the recommendation but we still had fun and there was a lot of teamwork building with our communities learning to adapt and work together. I have not mined in *years*! Everyone took on a role helpfully and without being given orders for the common effort/good, to me that is teamwork -- I wish I saw more of this at my job!

3) I'm sure the next chapter/chainlink will be better given the lessons and learnings of this first installment(erm, my packhorse and miner were no match for a mighty mongbat). Let's please stay positive and always give the next installment another fresh opportunity -- we still got 9 out of 10 to go!

 

[Tanivar]

(erm, my packhorse and miner were no match for a mighty mongbat).

I restored mining to my former Thunter and gave him the lumberjacking as well. Randalin's spellcasting is far more powerful than what my Crafter Valana had.

The Foragers on the Tokuno Islands lead exciting lives.

 

[whiterabbit]

*Hands in slighty damp book(yoo kin guess why)* Goblins no needs stinky horses on der island.
Goblins no digs in dirts or chops trees.* pees on book one last time*

Ozog