Discussion on Siege changes

Started by Nonel, November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Nonel

A discussion has sparked up again on some changes to Siege. Some ideas being discussed in Max's Siege Discord for Shalimar to send off to Mes. Most seem fairly agreeable to an array of different people on the shard. But a few that might not be, and have already been argued.

Anyway, heres the current list of ideas copied and pasted from the Discord (not my writing so don't argue with me damnit :P ) :


1) The old Hero/Evil system with the ability to incorporate VvV artifacts for easy suit building and HCI, DCI, SDI, FC AND FCR for buffs dependent on whether mage or fighter. Everything should be unblessable. We all know turning on VvV artifacts has been an issue in the past, but the time is right to allow them on Siege, unblessable, where if you die the artifact is lost and your killer can either sell back or claim points on it perhaps.  New players will be able to take advantage of this and be able to gear up faster. Or - Keep VvV and simply allow the artifacts, unblessable. Production players want to be able to gear up fast and want to be able to participate quickly, if they join VvV they can take advantage of this system and get suited and booted faster.
 
2) Update Blackthorn artifact menu to include past event items, unblessed, unbless quivers and add to Blackthorn for 10 points. There are so many haves and have-nots things have become  unbalanced so this would be a good move. Timed events with powerful blessed items are a problem for players who were not here 'at the right time' and these events cause a real imbalance over time, so if they can be made available by adding to Blackthorns would help greatly in sorting out this disadvantage. Events are good but maybe keep any 'blessed'  drops to deco items only.
 
3)Improve town buffs for all, eg: 2/6 casting

4) Enable passive detect. Stealthers should have a risk of being exposed when moving around other players and thieves should be flagged grey to anyone they have stolen from until killed by that player. At the moment there is no risk to a stealther or thief character.
 
5) Keep Sacrifice but only so it resurrects you without your gear, seed of silver sapling as well,  gear should be left on corpse. Selfres is abused by some afk scriptfarmers, who are killed and simply use this to come back and continue afk scripting. Unless the ToS is strictly enforced this abuse will continue and these players lose nothing, aka no risk v reward, so if ToS can't be strictly enforced the only option is to selfres with no gear. Use of Undertaker Staff should be limited to a safe logout location.
 
6) Remove ability to hide/invis/move when using help/stuck and increase waiting time. Unless a player is physically stuck in game this shouldn't even be used. You're not stuck if simply using this feature to get away from enemies or get to a safer location.
 
7) Turn off instanced areas or put a time limit on them – when the time is up they become public. Instanced areas are 'safe' and this needs to be changed, so if players have a set time to do them - a challenging time (short) then they will become public is a compromise to having them completely safe or completely public.
 
8) Make NPC vendors work for reds

9)There should be no safe guard zone farming.

10) Possibility of free transfer of gold from Siege to production at 1:25 so that farming small stuff is more viable on Siege than farming big stuff on production, protecting Siege economy - enforce ToS properly to stop scripting. If you can't strictly enforce ToS, ignore this point.
 
11) Make it a reportable offence to use EJ accounts as bot cameras - getting caught 3 times is a permanent ban on the account.

12) Reduce vendor contract costs. Sometimes items sit on vendors for a long time costing the seller a lot of gold especially if they are only able to have a vendor placed for them with a daily cost instead of being the house owner with ability to place the owner contract which takes a percentage of the sale. This doesn't mean the unselling item has been overpriced, it just means that a buyer hasn't wanted it yet.

13) The ghost houses on Siege placed by production players who never play on Siege need to have a frequent refresh rate or be charged gold by the day...amount to be determined. Or if you can just drop the dirt plots scattered everywhere by production players would help. One suggestion which I think works is that you delete empty dirt plots with no inventory/used storage taking up housing space that an active Siege player could use. You could put a timeframe on how long these empty dirt plots can stay 'as is' before deleting so the player has warning of what will happen if they don't use it.
 
 - A few asks that would be for all shards...Jewellery boxes need filters, so we can find the jewel /Talisman type we're looking for quickly. We have to rummage through jewel boxes at present hovering over the items to see if we have what we're looking for. While we appreciate these are very good for saving our house storage, they can be improved.

- VS type search of your house.

- Chance for crafters to make artifacts from runics.


 

Tjalle

Thanks for the copy/paste Nonel!
I´m interested to know who the author(s) behind this list is/are. Because the way it looks it´s done by a PvPer/PKer for PvPers/PKs only with no regard to PvMers and other non-PvPers.
It´s been said before, with so many playstyles mixed on one shard, we can´t keep giving one group advantages to make them stronger and stronger. We must try and keep a balance instead.

7 of the 13 proposals only favors one group.


I´ll break down the points as I see them.



Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM1) The old Hero/Evil system with the ability to incorporate VvV artifacts for easy suit building and HCI, DCI, SDI, FC AND FCR for buffs dependent on whether mage or fighter. Everything should be unblessable. We all know turning on VvV artifacts has been an issue in the past, but the time is right to allow them on Siege, unblessable, where if you die the artifact is lost and your killer can either sell back or claim points on it perhaps.  New players will be able to take advantage of this and be able to gear up faster. Or - Keep VvV and simply allow the artifacts, unblessable. Production players want to be able to gear up fast and want to be able to participate quickly, if they join VvV they can take advantage of this system and get suited and booted faster.

Just another attempt to get VvV artifacts on Siege. And this time with additional buffs also. Are we just gonna keep ignoring previous polls?
It would´ve caused a greater power gap between PvPers/PKs and PvMers then and it would cause a greater power gap now. Nothing has changed on that front and never will.
PKs already have an advantage being skilled and geared up to kill players, plus their experience in PvPing, whereas PvMers are set up to fight monsters and therefore vulnerable towards PKs.

"But it´s for PvPers to fight other PvPers! Has nothing to do with PvMers. It will boost PvP activity".
Yeah, right.
For those of us who has played here long enough, we´ve seen what happened with faction gear and the crap show that was. In theory it might sound nice: "A system that will keep the PvP going by supplying much needed suit parts and therefore we will only fight each other and leave non-PvPers alone.".

In reality it will be more like one PvP group will get an advantage, either through numbers, gear or skills, and then once the other group has lost their "good stuff" they will log.
Then the focus will turn to PvMers and the PKing in even stronger and more accessible gear will continue.

I´ll say this though, if it´s coded so VvV gear only can be equipable in an Active VvV zone then I don´t see an issue with it. Once the zone is no longer VvV Active the gear falls into the backpack and you have to equip other gear.

We already have "easy suit building". It´s called imbuing.
Production players should never be considered when it comes to a system that affects all of Siege. Either they play Siege for what it is or they stay on their prodo shard. Because once they go back to their prodo shard, and 15 years of prodo visitors shows us they will, the local PKers will utilize that system to gain an even bigger advantage over the PvMers.

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM2) Update Blackthorn artifact menu to include past event items, unblessed, unbless quivers and add to Blackthorn for 10 points. There are so many haves and have-nots things have become  unbalanced so this would be a good move. Timed events with powerful blessed items are a problem for players who were not here 'at the right time' and these events cause a real imbalance over time, so if they can be made available by adding to Blackthorns would help greatly in sorting out this disadvantage. Events are good but maybe keep any 'blessed'  drops to deco items only.

I don´t mind unblessing certain items that shouldn´t have been blessed in the first place.
And I don´t mind re-introducing old rewards but it shouldn´t be done in a single small, confined, easy to control area. Again, only favors one group.
If anything, add them as rare drops in treasure chests and MIBs and the stock on the shard will rise over time.
There´s a reason spots like Miasma is heavily scouted by PKs.

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM3)Improve town buffs for all, eg: 2/6 casting

No. Silly example.

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM4) Enable passive detect. Stealthers should have a risk of being exposed when moving around other players and thieves should be flagged grey to anyone they have stolen from until killed by that player. At the moment there is no risk to a stealther or thief character.

No. Again, only favors one group.
There are already plenty of ways to reveal stealthers.

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM5) Keep Sacrifice but only so it resurrects you without your gear, seed of silver sapling as well,  gear should be left on corpse. Selfres is abused by some afk scriptfarmers, who are killed and simply use this to come back and continue afk scripting. Unless the ToS is strictly enforced this abuse will continue and these players lose nothing, aka no risk v reward, so if ToS can't be strictly enforced the only option is to selfres with no gear. Use of Undertaker Staff should be limited to a safe logout location.

No. Again, only favors one group.
And using "some afk scriptfarmers" to hide the real agenda is just lame. You just want your victims to have no chance at all to save some of their belongings upon death. Pure greedy and selfish suggestion.

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM6) Remove ability to hide/invis/move when using help/stuck and increase waiting time. Unless a player is physically stuck in game this shouldn't even be used. You're not stuck if simply using this feature to get away from enemies or get to a safer location.

No. Again, only to gain more advantages as a PK at the cost of legit help stuckers who might want to hide from nearby monsters.
If you know a help stucker is hidden, just reveal and kill them.

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM7) Turn off instanced areas or put a time limit on them – when the time is up they become public. Instanced areas are 'safe' and this needs to be changed, so if players have a set time to do them - a challenging time (short) then they will become public is a compromise to having them completely safe or completely public.

No. Again, only favors one group.

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM8) Make NPC vendors work for reds

Either way works for me. However, I do like the idea of consequences for murderers and this is one of them.

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM9)There should be no safe guard zone farming.

Again, only favors one group. The places I can think of for this are few.
Maybe someone can mention some critical zones that need to be changed?

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM10) Possibility of free transfer of gold from Siege to production at 1:25 so that farming small stuff is more viable on Siege than farming big stuff on production, protecting Siege economy - enforce ToS properly to stop scripting. If you can't strictly enforce ToS, ignore this point.

No. No transfers to or from Siege should ever happen.

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM11) Make it a reportable offence to use EJ accounts as bot cameras - getting caught 3 times is a permanent ban on the account.

I´d say remove EJs all together.

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM12) Reduce vendor contract costs. Sometimes items sit on vendors for a long time costing the seller a lot of gold especially if they are only able to have a vendor placed for them with a daily cost instead of being the house owner with ability to place the owner contract which takes a percentage of the sale. This doesn't mean the unselling item has been overpriced, it just means that a buyer hasn't wanted it yet.

That´s the price you pay when using vendors. They have to eat as well.
Also, we shouldn´t reduce the few gold sinks we have.

Quote from: Nonel on November 02, 2024, 07:46:22 PM13) The ghost houses on Siege placed by production players who never play on Siege need to have a frequent refresh rate or be charged gold by the day...amount to be determined. Or if you can just drop the dirt plots scattered everywhere by production players would help. One suggestion which I think works is that you delete empty dirt plots with no inventory/used storage taking up housing space that an active Siege player could use. You could put a timeframe on how long these empty dirt plots can stay 'as is' before deleting so the player has warning of what will happen if they don't use it.

It would be nice to remove the unused "prodo houses".


Torin

It comes mainly from Shalimar and Max I assume. And I believe it's already too late to take a veto. Shalimar probably sent this suggestions to Mesanna. Really a pity.

Shalimar

I know Gilfane has a presence on Siege discord, and would have expected someone to either get involved in the discussion or copy it to your own forums, private or public for you to discuss though participation along with everyone else would be better.

Before I say anymore, Torin is wrong, this is a discussion for all to take part in, and if players choose to not take part we have no idea what they would do to try to improve our population on Siege. It has not been sent to Mesanna yet.

The post Nonel made with 'numbered points' are being changed all the time which Az, or Mavia or any other Gilfane member on Siege discord can see, ask for changes or just copy here if you don't want to be involved, but that defeats the purpose. I was asked to do this by Mesanna so I put it on Siege discord where most of us have a presence.
Shalimar Guildmistress of NEW

Shalimar

This is the Siege discord thread in its entirety as it stands right now and Shalimar is the only one making the edits to it:

Please don't post here, this is just going to be letting folk know what will be sent to Mesanna so it's transparent and above board. I'll send it some time this week so if there's anything you want altered or changed entirely, please say so in the general channel.

Hello Mesanna, this is Shalimar from Siege Perilous, we met in the Siege Memorial area on Tuesday, 29 October. You asked me to compile a list of simple things that would make Siege more attractive to players old and new from Siege and production shards and send it to you. After asking players for their ideas this is what has transpired regarding changes for Siege that should be done to attract players while not forgetting what Siege is meant to be - A shard for PVP, PVM and crafting; for those who accept there is a risk of death/looting for everyone when doing their chosen activity,  welcomes those risks and enjoys the excitement that comes from being a part of Siege Perilous.

1.  The old Hero/Evil system with the ability to incorporate VvV artifacts for easy suit building and HCI, DCI, SDI, FC AND FCR for buffs dependent on whether mage or fighter. Everything should be unblessable. We all know turning on VvV artifacts has been an issue in the past, but the time is right to allow them on Siege, unblessable, where if you die the artifact is lost and your killer can either sell back or claim points on it perhaps.  New players will be able to take advantage of this and be able to gear up faster. Or - Keep VvV and simply allow the artifacts, unblessable. Production players want to be able to gear up fast and want to be able to participate quickly, if they join VvV they can take advantage of this system and get suited and booted faster

2. Update Blackthorn artifact menu to include past event items, unblessed, unbless quivers and add to Blackthorn for 10 points. There are so many haves and have-nots things have become  unbalanced so this would be a good move. Timed events with powerful blessed items are a problem for players who were not here 'at the right time' and these events cause a real imbalance over time, so if they can be made available by adding to Blackthorns would help greatly in sorting out this disadvantage. Events are good but maybe keep any 'blessed'  drops to deco items only.

3. Extend town buffs to include more choice and increase amount of town buffs,  as not everyone wants to be in VvV or PVP and it would help those not in VvV to build their template.
 
4. Enable passive detect. Stealthers should have a risk of being exposed when moving around other players and thieves should be flagged grey to anyone they have stolen from until killed by that player. At the moment there is no risk to a stealther or thief character.

5. Keep Sacrifice but only so it resurrects you without your gear, seed of silver sapling as well,  gear should be left on corpse. Selfres is abused by some afk scriptfarmers, who are killed and simply use this to come back and continue afk scripting. Unless the ToS is strictly enforced this abuse will continue and these players lose nothing, aka no risk v reward, so if ToS can't be strictly enforced the only option is to selfres with no gear. Use of Undertaker Staff should be limited to a safe logout location.

6. Remove ability to hide/invis/move when using help/stuck and increase waiting time, using help/stuck from inside an instanced encounter should remove your character from that instance while waiting to be teleported. Unless a player is physically stuck in game this shouldn't even be used. You're not stuck if simply using this feature to get away from enemies or get to a safer location.
 
7. Turn off instanced areas or put a time limit on them – when the time is up they become public. Instanced areas are 'safe' and this needs to be changed, so if players have a set time to do them - a challenging time (short) then they will become public is a compromise to having them completely safe or completely public.
 
8. Make NPC vendors work for reds.

9. There should be no safe guard zone farming. Gathering resources or anything else should have the risk element on Siege.

10. Make it a reportable offence to use EJ accounts as bot cameras - getting caught 3 times is a permanent ban on the account.

11. Reduce vendor contract costs. Sometimes items sit on vendors for a long time costing the seller a lot of gold especially if they are only able to have a vendor placed for them with a daily cost instead of being the house owner with ability to place the owner contract which takes a percentage of the sale. This doesn't mean the unselling item has been overpriced, it just means that a buyer hasn't wanted it yet.
 

A few asks that would be for all shards...Jewellery boxes need filters, so we can find the jewel /talisman type we're looking for quickly. We have to rummage through jewel boxes at present hovering over the items to see if we have what we're looking for. While we appreciate these are very good for saving our house storage, they can be improved.

VS type search of your house.

Chance for crafters to make artifacts from runics.


12. The ghost houses on Siege placed by production players who never play on Siege need to have a frequent refresh rate or be charged gold by the day...amount to be determined. Or if you can just drop the dirt plots scattered everywhere by production players would help. This idea worked at first but most of these players have gone from Siege, they only left an empty dirt plot...just because they can. One suggestion which I think works is that you delete empty dirt plots with no inventory/used storage taking up housing space in a sought after area that an active Siege player could use. You could put a timeframe on how long these empty dirt plots can stay 'as is' before deleting so the player has warning of what will happen if they don't use it.
 






Shalimar Guildmistress of NEW

Tjalle

If we really wanted transparancy, we would´ve had this discussion in the Siege section on the official UO forums, UO.com. That way the devs could follow the discussion and see the arguments and counter arguments that lead up to whatever list is given them.
And then they can make up their minds based of that as well as the list.

In fact, there´s nothing that stops us from continuing it there.

Just post on the Siege Discord that we move the discussion over there. Make a post on the Stratics Siege board and other Siege related places as well.
Let´s have an official discussion on this important matter.

I mean, we get attention from the devs every tenth year if we´re lucky so why wasn´t an opportunity like this mentioned in other places than on a Discord forum?
You only met her a week ago so there´s plenty of time to have a discussion over on the official forum instead of rushing to send a one sided list of suggestions.
Also, only players with active UO accounts can post there and those are the only voices that should matter when it comes to moments like this.

And if we´re gonna present suggestions, they can´t be unbalanced. Because the list that has been presented here only empowers one side while nerfing the other.

Shalimar

You mean uoforums Siege where the only one to have posted anything at any time recently is EM Kincaid? Those forums?
You mean uoforums Siege where the last poster to actually get a reply from another player was Blargety - last post October 2018? Those forums?
Or uoforums @devs section where there's been 5 comments since August, not including New Legacy posts? Those forums?

I'll tell you why I chose to post on Siege discord and only Siege discord - it's the only Siege forum including Stratics that gets any bloody traffic, that's why.

If you know another forum that Siege players actively use these days please tell.

I wasn't even asked to put it to players, she approached me and asked me to compile a list of simple changes to help populate the shard. I decided the fairest and best way to do it was to ask the players who play on Siege and most of them are on Siege discord.
Shalimar Guildmistress of NEW

Tjalle

Heh, I´m not criticizing you Shalimar and I apologize if my wording makes it sound that way. In fact, I appreciate you taking this project on because I know many people would not.
But yes, I still think it´s a shame it was only mentioned on a Discord forum and not also mentioned elsewhere as this is kind of a big deal for Siege players. Just because a forum is quiet doesn´t mean people don´t check in to read them. As an example, I check the Siege boards on Stratics almost daily and the Siege forum on UO.com fairly often as well.

And yes, those forums.
Just because the Siege board over there is quiet now doesn´t mean it will remain quiet if the discussion is steered that way. You could make a single post on Discord informing people and I can make posts on Siege Stratics and the general forum on the official boards informing people.
Requires little effort from us both and people can just copy/paste what they want from their Discord postings to bring the discussion up to speed.

And then you can just sit back and relax and send the list when we´re done. I mean, why rush this? It´s too important.
If the devs can´t see the discussion behind it they will think that whatever list is sent is "what Siege wants" when in reality it might only be what a portion of Siege wants.

For example, I don´t see a single point that would benefit PvMers, only stuff that nerfs them, and quite frankly not a single point that benefits crafters either as I don´t see the artifact from runics ever happening.
So yeah, veeery one sided.

Shalimar

We have the biggest representation for SP on Siege discord. It has been very active since it began. Other forums for Siege are dead. I was fine with my ICQ before discord, I'd spent ages going through hoops to get my account back, and wasn't sure I wanted to try a new way of communicating, but discord is fast moving if you want it to be, post/reply/send pms, it's something that works and I'm glad I joined.

Since I posted about this subject a week ago Siege discord has had approximately 300 replies on the subject of changes to make Siege's population grow, consisting of ideas/suggestions/maybe/yes good/no bad etc., with reasons given for these opinions. I have also had numerous pms from players who would rather spectate and have opinions or ideas but choose not to post, so I will do it for them anonymously if that's what they want. If no reasons are given other than 'so I can pk everyone' or 'so I can stay safe' this sort of stuff will not be taken into the final outcome. It is not one-sided at all and is a discussion on how to bring players back or tempt new players with ideas on how to do it. I see no need to have it drag on and on until Mesanna forgets what she asked me to do or I lose the will to live.

Everyone is welcome - past, present and future Siege players. Sure, there's a few insults posted here and there but nothing major because there are rules.

I'm not going to waste time posting on dead forums for the sake of one or two players who are too stubborn to join Siege discord just because it was Max Blackoak who set it up. This has been a success since day one and as I say, it's the only forum that anyone bothers to post on now with any regularity.  Vice have their own discord, just for them, same as I have one for NEW, and UWSP have their own DRMA, WAKA etc., all have their own discords, with everyone being able to have their say on the Siege one.
Shalimar Guildmistress of NEW

Tjalle

How can you say it´s not one-sided when the list literally shows us how one-sided it is?
100% PvP/PK improvements, 0% PvM improvements/100% PvM nerfing and (realistically) 0% crafter improvements.

But alright, at least I tried.
Let´s hide the discussion then.

I´ll check out the Siege Discord. *nods*
Although I don´t see the point of having a closed discussion with a group of people who only wants what´s been presented so far.
And the reason I´m not there has nothing to do with Max. Why would it?
It´s the concept of Discord itself I´m not into.