30 July 2014 - Shard News Update

[Ryan]

If you keep the staff of old I suggest since everything is getting overhauled that any old staff that have been pegged as corrupt or "holy" get name changes so people don't know their in game characters.... *cough* Slow King...
Now they always said "but our logs are monitored by Francis etc."

There is not enough trust with the former actions of Picard etc. Especially when they are not paid positions.

So all I am saying is potentially changing GMs names so that players don't know their in game characters and cry/moan corruption or say oh your in Holy no wonder you know the time of the IDOC you got two GMs and a counselor in your guild.

Well - there's two ways to handle this... hide from it or actually go to town with transparency and simply list who every GM is on a player character.

As for IDOC stuff - I've considered the idea of making all properties of houses accessible to only the "Owner" level on the shard which would limit it to Suzy and Myself.

 

[gimp]

Well - there's two ways to handle this... hide from it or actually go to town with transparency and simply list who every GM is on a player character.

As for IDOC stuff - I've considered the idea of making all properties of houses accessible to only the "Owner" level on the shard which would limit it to Suzy and Myself.

Well then yes let's either have full transparency or hide.

But number two should be implemented now as if it's the case where any GM can see when a house falls there's no way for them not to look and either indirectly influence others when houses will fall (hold an event when they see 50 players at an idoc either means they know it won't fall or they know it will and either 1. Want to lure people away or 2. Don't care about idocs and hold events to interfere.

 

[Silly Santa]

I have to politely disagree with it being beneficial to the server with re-releasing kasas. High value items like the kasa, shrouds, PW bears, ranger armor, phoenix armor, singing crystal ball, etc etc... items like these a lot of vets had some players either spent a lot of gold on them or donated a lot of USD for them, such as the kasa and shroud.

When someone had an asset that's worth 80-100million like a full phoenix set,, and it gets re-released and now sells for 13-15m I was seeing.. like.. its a very good reason to piss someone off enough in making them wanting to quit because they got screwed over. That's something I don't think that Hybrid should be jeopardizing given its "aging active playerbase". Currently the way things are, I do not think its easy for hybrid to attract and keep new actual players that find this shard, which I think makes it imperative that the shard does not intentionally screw people over.... re-releasing items like those I think should have been carefully analyzed and had a lot of thought put into first before it was done.

I know it is not easy to please everyone, but I do think that its not too difficult to come up with cool new rares to release for X-mas that don't impact previously released high value items. Just because there are a lot of players that didn't have these items and wanted them, I don't think they should be catered to in a sense that the items should be released to satisfy them.


As far as poker.. is this ever going to be closed? People DDoS people there and use poker bots .... people seeing this happen and it not being closed does not leave a good view on the shard.

Im not saying btw that u shouldn't get donations to fund the shard.. but in any sense - there is a way better structure that the store could be running under.. even if you cant fund the shard with non-gold items.. the store should still be set up a totally completely different way and u wouldn't need to worry about if the shard can be funded with gold donations or not. Being able to donate for gold took people out of dungeons and gave people no incentive to farm anymore.. people viewed it as a "time saver" because they can get 5m gold within a minute compared to weeks of farming.

 

[Boomshakalaka]

I have been around for a while, and while I have dick proof, events were largely held during an IDOCs fall window. While sheer number of IDOCs that I've attended may chalk it up to coincidental, several detective shows on cable tv lead me to believe that coincidence doesn't exist. Is this something that the former GM's used to do to help their guild obtain IDOCs? Or is gimp just getting me in a tangent for no reason.

 

[Ryan]

I have to politely disagree with it being beneficial to the server with re-releasing kasas. High value items like the kasa, shrouds, PW bears, ranger armor, phoenix armor, singing crystal ball, etc etc... items like these a lot of vets had some players either spent a lot of gold on them or donated a lot of USD for them, such as the kasa and shroud.

When someone had an asset that's worth 80-100million like a full phoenix set,, and it gets re-released and now sells for 13-15m I was seeing.. like.. its a very good reason to piss someone off enough in making them wanting to quit because they got screwed over. That's something I don't think that Hybrid should be jeopardizing given its "aging active playerbase". Currently the way things are, I do not think its easy for hybrid to attract and keep new actual players that find this shard, which I think makes it imperative that the shard does not intentionally screw people over.... re-releasing items like those I think should have been carefully analyzed and had a lot of thought put into first before it was done.

I know it is not easy to please everyone, but I do think that its not too difficult to come up with cool new rares to release for X-mas that don't impact previously released high value items.

Just because there are a lot of players that didn't have these items and wanted them, I don't think they should be catered to in a sense that the items should be released to satisfy them.

Your opinion is noted, but the entire purpose of running a shard is to cater to the masses, so I'm not sure that you're hitting on all chords here. Regardless I am well aware there is a negative impact to some people but there is nothing about staff created rares that guaruntee they will be around forever, nor that they will be one of a kinds etc... we do our absolute best to ensure that we dont trample on players who've done things like donate for items etc... but there are times we have and probably will be in the future. Icky has been one of our staunchest of supporters and he's had this happen to him in the past... he's never raised a stink about it and basically takes the stance that what is good for the shard is good for him.

I understand the reactions... it's why I'm taking the time to address them... but at some point we're beating a dead horse.

 

[Ryan]

I have been around for a while, and while I have dick proof, events were largely held during an IDOCs fall window. While sheer number of IDOCs that I've attended may chalk it up to coincidental, several detective shows on cable tv lead me to believe that coincidence doesn't exist. Is this something that the former GM's used to do to help their guild obtain IDOCs? Or is gimp just getting me in a tangent for no reason.

This is a new one for me... the idea that someone would hold an event to interfere with an IDOC is one of those 'hadn't crossed my mind' situations. This is something we could easily remedy though... sounds like something good for an update for next server wars.

 

[Silly Santa]

I just think that if someone plays the shard for say 5 years, they amass a lot in gold and assets totaling 40m, 50, 60mi, 100m+ etc ... and then comes 1 holiday years later and their fortune is cut by 50% or more.. Besides Icky.. I think most other players would have a huge problem with it. I personally have seen a lot of people leave this shard for 1 or another reasons.. but this is 1 reason that can be easily avoided I think.

I mentioned it in my trammled thread.. but I do think there should be a list of items that are only released one time. This would give people an incentive to work hard for these kind of "very desirable items" via farming and merchanting... I mean personally - if there was an item that's worth 50 million right now.. what incentive would I have to work hard to obtain that kind of gold, if I had to live in fear of it being worth pennies on the dollar in a year or 2 from now and all my hard work would go to waste?

 

[DragonSlayer69r]

Well - there's two ways to handle this... hide from it or actually go to town with transparency and simply list who every GM is on a player character.

As for IDOC stuff - I've considered the idea of making all properties of houses accessible to only the "Owner" level on the shard which would limit it to Suzy and Myself.

Imo there should only be two faucets.

Staff or player.

I can list numerous past staff that only did that. Staff.

And it worked SO well. I don't understand why this isn't the norm as is.

When you take a player, and give that player staff powers, as proven thus far, they WILL corrupt.

I know a little more about past staff members then the average joe, and baring a few (Suzy, in particular is great. And we should have had him/her 8 years ago) most recent staff members are the most corrupt I have ever seen.

Spawning gold, Springing event's during idoc fall windows (Didn't mean to bring this up again. Took me forever to write this), Friend handouts, Ect. It's almost saddening.

The fact that one guild holds a percentage of staff members, it's silly.

What used to be a rarity, is now commonplace, accepted, and forgiven.

I do love the fact your being active again. Nothing stirs the server up like you coming back.

 

[Silly Santa]

DS - That's why I always thought... and I think they would have a lot better people on staff that don't end up corrupt - if they got paid. I mentioned this in my trammeled thread as well.

I know we cant have 20+ people on staff getting paid.. that would be a huge payroll increase. However, there are only 2 reasons people join staff now. One is if they just loveee this shard to death and want to help it in any way possible by donating their free time... the second is to gain an advantage in-game... by taking peoples items, giving out secret knowledge to guildies, etc etc.... but I don't think a lot of people do join staff tho just for the "love of the shard", some do but I think a lot don't.

But - even if its just a handful of GM's that help Suzy and Francis.. i think it could do wonders for the shard.. but this would be contingent on them being given certain responsibilities ... and this would be reassured by the oversight of Suzy, Francis and Ryan to see if these GMs perform their responsibilities.

I just think it would give people an incentive to do a good job.. and to not jeopardize their given opportunity.

 

[Ryan]

I just think that if someone plays the shard for say 5 years, they amass a lot in gold and assets totaling 40m, 50, 60mi, 100m+ etc ... and then comes 1 holiday years later and their fortune is cut by 50% or more.. Besides Icky.. I think most other players would have a huge problem with it. I personally have seen a lot of people leave this shard for 1 or another reasons.. but this is 1 reason that can be easily avoided I think.

I mentioned it in my trammled thread.. but I do think there should be a list of items that are only released one time. This would give people an incentive to work hard for these kind of "very desirable items" via farming and merchanting... I mean personally - if there was an item that's worth 50 million right now.. what incentive would I have to work hard to obtain that kind of gold, if I had to live in fear of it being worth pennies on the dollar in a year or 2 from now and all my hard work would go to waste?

Thanks for your opinion, I'm honestly no longer going to debate with you... I've tried to discuss things with you time and again and it seems your hell bent on always being right, that you know better than everyone etc... I understand that you say you care about the shard but please stop speaking for players until you've actually spent time in the game again (for real) and played it. You admit that you don't play here but you're one of the most vocal on the boards about how we should run the shard... it's just very odd.

 

[Silly Santa]

Ryan.. sorry.. ill stop trying to give you my input/suggesstions/ideas.. this coming from the 8 years I played actively on this shard than.

I don't think you know, but I had one of the top 10 largest guilds on this shard (SE).. I do know a lot of people.. some who used to play here.. and some that still do and that I keep in touch with...

Yea im vocal bc I love this shard and I hate not playing here anymore.. but keep in mind a lot of what I voice is my passion that I had for this shard.. and why i comment on a lot of things is because it pertains to things that i discuss with some of my friends that still do play here.

Sorry.. it wont happen again with my voicing my opinion.. I was not trying to argue with you, I was only trying to voice my opinion which seems to be unwanted

*closes door*

 

[gimp]

Well then yes let's either have full transparency or hide.

But number two should be implemented now as if it's the case where any GM can see when a house falls there's no way for them not to look and either indirectly influence others when houses will fall (hold an event when they see 50 players at an idoc either means they know it won't fall or they know it will and either 1. Want to lure people away or 2. Don't care about idocs and hold events to interfere.

Going more into the GM who have player chars and stealables rares (since you mentioned new rares will be coming.)

Just read the last page of the stealables rare thread to see the conflict on interest (I mean it wouldn't technically be illegal for a GM to log into his GM char after reading Sages global of new rares; then the mg would run through the dungeons invuln holding ctrl-shift seeing new items, then log in there characters and steal
The items.)

http://www.uogamers.com/community/index.php?threads/546903/page-4

 

[Ryan]

Imo there should only be two faucets.

Staff or player.

This is *way* easier said than done... if you spend all your time making something great, of course you want to play it and be a part of it on the flipside. That's why the people who staff and don't play *are* rare.

I can list numerous past staff that only did that. Staff.

And it worked SO well. I don't understand why this isn't the norm as is.

I wish we could make it the norm...

When you take a player, and give that player staff powers, as proven thus far, they WILL corrupt.

I know a little more about past staff members then the average joe, and baring a few (Suzy, in particular is great. And we should have had him/her 8 years ago) most recent staff members are the most corrupt I have ever seen.

Come on, that's simply not true... there have been a plethora of things over the past decade that are far worse than the idea of someone giving out gold, throwing an event during idoc windows etc... and you know that. I've had to take the heat for staff issues every time and I can tell you I take far less heat with this group than any other.

The fact that one guild holds a percentage of staff members, it's silly.

Allegedly... I'm not quite sure it's as bad as you make it

What used to be a rarity, is now commonplace, accepted, and forgiven.

Don't speak in platitudes... be specific please.

I do love the fact your being active again. Nothing stirs the server up like you coming back.

I love being here.. when I can. The problem I have is that it's always hard for me to strike an appropriate balance... I'm not a half in, half out guy... I have to find an appropriate balance for time here and time at home.

 

[amtothepm]

As for IDOC stuff - I've considered the idea of making all properties of houses accessible to only the "Owner" level on the shard which would limit it to Suzy and Myself.

like this

 

[Ryan]

Ryan.. sorry.. maybe ill just stop trying to give you my input from the 8 years I played actively on this shard than. I don't think you know, but I had one of the top 10 largest guilds on this shard (SE).. and I do know a lot of people who used to play here and some that still do and that I keep in touch with... and yea im vocal bc I love this shard and I hate not playing here anymore.. but keep in mind a lot of what I voice is my passion that I had for this shard and also from things I hear when I talk to my hybrid friends.

Sorry.. it wont happen again with my voicing my opinion... the last thing I wanted was to piss you off, believe it or not.

See this is exactly what I'm talking about... "take my ball and go home". If you want to voice your opinion you could start off by recognizing what I've spent copious amounts of time explaining here and the benefit that it will have for the players of the server over the long haul. It's frustrating that all you do is keep banging on the same things instead of recognizing there is good in what I'm proposing and realizing that this shard, UOGamers is not a destroyer, it's an aircraft carrier. You have to plan moves in advance and you can't possibly turn on a dime. We're doing good work here... I'm just sorry it's not up to your lofty standards and ambitions. We obviously have failed... because we have no passion right?

 

[Farrel]

Ok you can take all the gold out of the economy you want you can make the rich poor but you won't do any thing for the poor or the new player until you get them a job. you used the US economy as a example so let look at the past US history the best economy was when you had a strong middle class working with good wages 1950 to 1970 now look at it bad economy low wages no jobs. The best time I've seen on UO was back when a person could make a decent living off of gathering resources BOD stuff was of vale Rare were far and few between A vanq weapon was worth it weight in gold. Now Ore, Cloth, Leather, is really of no use Tailoring Blacksmith has nothing to offer and what little crafting dose offer, everybody has a craftier only the lazy people buy stuff bod cloth is a joke when you got so much rare hand-out cloth floating around oh and weapons & armor the crafted items are Ok for training but if framing spawn is the only way to make gold then you should get plenty of good weapons & armor, that wasn't enough let hand out some high end armor & weapons oh yeah I forgot Blacksmith are in demand in factions if you get the high end bod that I know all new & poor play will have. So I said let not cut out the gold with sink holes lets find a way to make people spend it on player items up the craftier skill and their item created some new crafting item maybe place some vendors that will buy all craft item back their nothing wrong with getting Rich or been Rich it only bad when the gold stop going around. I believe that the player base of this shard could come up with some new items to be crafted and revamp the bod system oh and you PKer don't forget the more resources people need the more player are out in the world for you to kill or be killed lol

Ps This post is not about my English or grammar I understand it's bad so get past it please
Thank you

 

[Silly Santa]

btw.. I never did say you failed and all you staff have no passion... the fact that u would even say that like.. actually like hurts.

Some staff do have no passion - Todd, Piccard.. but that's not to say that I think all staff is bad.

 

[DragonSlayer69r]

Don't speak in platitudes... be specific please.

Staff members creating gold. Admitting to creating gold. And staying staff.

I'm not here to throw out names.

 

[Ryan]

Ok you can take all the gold out of the economy you want you can make the rich poor but you won't do any thing for the poor or the new player until you get them a job. you used the US economy as a example so let look at the past US history the best economy was when you had a strong middle class working with good wages 1950 to 1970 now look at it bad economy low wages no jobs. The best time I've seen on UO was back when a person could make a decent living off of gathering resources BOD stuff was of vale Rare were far and few between A vanq weapon was worth it weight in gold. Now Ore, Cloth, Leather, is really of no use Tailoring Blacksmith has nothing to offer and what little crafting dose offer, everybody has a craftier only the lazy people buy stuff bod cloth is a joke when you got so much rare hand-out cloth floating around oh and weapons & armor the crafted items are Ok for training but if framing spawn is the only way to make gold then you should get plenty of good weapons & armor, that wasn't enough let hand out some high end armor & weapons oh yeah I forgot Blacksmith are in demand in factions if you get the high end bod that I know all new & poor play will have. So I said let not cut out the gold with sink holes lets find a way to make people spend it on player items up the craftier skill and their item created some new crafting item maybe place some vendors that will buy all craft item back their nothing wrong with getting Rich or been Rich it only bad when the gold stop going around. I believe that the player base of this shard could come up with some new items to be crafted and revamp the bod system oh and you PKer don't forget the more resources people need the more player are out in the world for you to kill or be killed lol

Ps This post is not about my English or grammar I understand it's bad so get past it please
Thank you

Good Ol' Yoyo

Your point here is actually not a bad one... but let's be clear the 'middle class' on Hybrid is very well off.

The average player on this shard (counting everyone who's been active in the past calendar year) has about 125,000 gold. There are people who are really rich and some who are really poor (1000 starting gold etc...). You are 100% right that you have to have a lucrative position on the shard to make it worth while... and to give players a lucrative position (job) we are removing gold, thus making the crafted items more valuable etc... we also will need to create new items and possibly bring new skills to Hybrid to give players an incentive... there's a lot of this stuff on the 'todo list'...

 

[Ryan]

Staff members creating gold. Admitting to creating gold. And staying staff.

I'm not here to throw out names.

You're welcome to send me a PM here telling me whom you're speaking about...