Kyronix, any updates on War On 3rd Party Clients?
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Comments
I appreciate your point of view and understand the concern about game balance. I'm not saying that extreme automation is good, but it's undeniable that the gameplay in UO has changed over time. What used to be normal (spending hours farming or searching for a house) is now simply unfeasible for many veteran players who have less time.
Your idea of having different shards with different rules sounds interesting, but don’t you think dividing the player base even further could be an issue? With the current number of players, is there really enough to sustain a Banworld or a "free client" shard without them becoming deserted or, worse, bot farms out of control?
Maybe the solution isn't to block third-party clients or create separate shards, but to improve the official client to include similar quality-of-life tools. This way, the dependency on external programs could be reduced without affecting the game's accessibility. But for that, real development investment would be needed, which, as you mentioned, seems complicated with the current management.
Another issue is the lack of new, well-designed content. Instead of focusing only on automated events where you basically just stand there and hit a monster until it falls, they should add more expansions, more quests, and content that truly makes playing fun, not just endless farming. Lately, events seem designed only to artificially extend the life of the game, rather than offer truly engaging experiences for players.
Unfortunately, the idea of starting a shard from scratch without transferring equipment or items from other shards sounds more viable. This way, everyone would have the opportunity to grow from the same starting point, establish a new economy, and perhaps a new set of rules to make the game fairer and more balanced from the beginning.
And not to mention the Artifacts Rarity, which in theory should be better than normal items, but they’re practically never used, or at least some of them. They should improve these items because, at least in my case, I don’t use rares since I have event gear, and the farming in these events is so easy that it simply outweighs the traditional loot. This makes traditional loot irrelevant and makes many crafting and gathering mechanics pointless."
By the way, I’m curious about your opinion on the SA mechanics and Alta Mar. What do you think went wrong with the progression and balance? Because no doubt, some design decisions left a lot to be desired.
Oh and incase anyone is wondering why you page on these players at a ToT ad nauseum and it seems like nothing ever happens and they run 24/7, well... this goes a lot deeper than even the Devs know. They run scripts that integrate with Discord and relay GM prompts to their guild's Discord where they( or others) can reply to GMs. Wouldn't even be surprised if they use some AI API to generate responses for them too. Reason #9000 these clients need to be rid of.... @Kyronix making your support team irrelevant. Hope you have something cooking to rid the insane O client.
It's like some sort of organized crime syndicate in UO. Pretty pathetic
(pic from the discord)
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It is a chicken and egg scenario - if they could bring on another programmer, designer, and artist, and get them up to speed with how UO works and how to handle UO's quirky "2.5D" layout as Darkscribe called it, we could get more content that could be charged for and that could bring in more revenue and maybe lead to more devs. But somebody at Broadsword and/or EA would have to sign off on investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into hiring and training new devs (and there would have to be a lot of on-the-job training/shadowing of current devs because UO is unique with its game engine), and a case would have to be made that they will be able to bring in enough revenue to cover their salaries.
I don't know Tim Cotten, I only met him once and that was in passing, but I did follow him while he was on the UO team and after, and even he admitted (including the article I mentioned above), that one has to be wary of consequences on how you deal with the botters/scripters/dupers/etc.
If you create a paid shard that has no rules on clients/scripts/botters/whatever, you have a few problems:
- It's not good for UO's reputation if we get tied in with the scripters/botters being sanctioned, even if it's only for one shard. Would Blizzard/Microsoft or Square Ennix sanction WOW or FFXIV servers that allow people to run whatever clients they want?
- Would EA/Broadsword want to let people running any client they want having access to official UO infrastructure? Not that these people can't monitor the data streaming between official clients and official shards, but do you want them to actually be inside the official infrastructure with those clients? Which leads me to
- If they are playing on an official/sanctioned shard that has no rules about clients, what happens when they get bored of going up against other people who are using the same tools as they are and either beating or at least matching them or where everybody has bank boxes and castles/keeps/towers full of whatever resource or weapon they could possibly want? They login with their EAMythic account and are presented with a list of production shards that are full of thousands of people who are presumably not using non-sanctioned clients and therefore would be easy pickings. It just seems like you are inviting trouble.
Is there really a potential paying audience for people who want to play an official shard that sanctions currently illegal clients? This very forum, and potentially this thread, has people mentioning publicly that they use these clients, so why would they want to pay to use a separate shard that is full of people using the same software, because they wouldn't have an advantage in PvP or their bank boxes and houses would be full of everything they want, and they apparently already have the ability to automate a lot.And I get wanting to automate some stuff - I'm watching my kids work on GMing some stuff for their chars (alchemy, blacksmith, tailoring, and some of the other crafts in particular are tedious) and I'm finally building a true treasure hunter (I always relied on friends who could do the maps and I would provide the muscle). There's a lot of non-fun stuff. But then again, it's the same thing on FFXIV and WOW, except maybe their questing system makes it seem more tolerable since you are out and about in the world doing various things, while in UO we are sitting in our houses running whatever macros we run through the EC. While I'm posting this, I keep alt-tabbing over to UO to keep my daughter's character working on GMing tailor. It's boring and I keep forgetting that she does have an item limit and the salvage bag needs to be emptied and refilled, etc.
It also seems to me like the people who want to run these clients and play on official shards are already doing that and maybe some of them just want some legitimacy for running those clients on the prodo shards. And when I came back and started reading various sites/forums elsewhere and looked at those shards, I saw a whole lot of people who had no intention of ever coming back to UO. Many had never even logged onto an official UO shard and had been third-party from the time they started. They are playing free shards that are customized to exactly the era/ruleset they want, why would they want to give up a lot of stuff to come pay to play on an official shard?
As for top 10, it would take a massive investment. There's easily a dozen+ MMOs with a million+ players (and arguably there are dozens that have that many players, depending on your definition of MMO). You would have to have a content schedule (and scope) the size that they had up through Stygian Abyss, but it would have to be yearly, matching the first 6-7 years of UO.
More importantly, more clients are not the solution for UO, but the client(s) are the problem with UO. It's insane to think how with KR, they planned on dropping the classic client if it ever hit 95% KR usage. They knew that while a lot of us were intrigued by the Third Dawn client and even tried it, at the end of the day it didn't move the needle as much as they wanted, and nobody was willing to make the hard decision to pick a single client and stick to making it what it needed to be.
It is what it is. We have to live with the fact that decisions were made 15 or more years ago that affect UO to this day in terms of the playerbase size. I'm just grateful it's still around for my kids to enjoy. It's ironic that the graphics don't turn them off, but they grew up on Minecraft and the cartoony vibe of WOW can get old after a while.
It really isn't like some sort of organised crime syndicate.
It is more like an old fashioned hobbyist in his basement with a model railway.
You really do blow things out of proportion.
Lot to be said for positive attitude and view in life, as opposed to negative people, forever trying to get people banned, cancelled, pull people down.
Located here @firec
At the end of the day, I’m glad the game is alive, and there’s so little left where one player’s cheating truly adversely affects another anyway. It’s just a shame that we are seeing this topic reveal yet another deficit between official UO and private servers where even private servers are cracking down on clients that may be used and what scripts may be employed.
As far as cheating affecting players you must be as delusional as some of the other posters are. The core mechanics that DEFINE this game, PVP, IDOCS, etc., are all destroyed. You wonder why you can't place a 18x18 on Atlantic yet one guy is selling a dozen at any time, can't do a Fel spawn without Discord ghost cams sounding alerts, can't do a TOT without the amount of bots lagging the servers to a snails pace or even sell the items from them for a reasonable price. They've decimated the economy and made any profitable activity to a normal player worthless. I can't think of anything that these clients haven't ruined. Are you ok bud? Maybe your post was sarcasm "Like everyone’s perspective, Cookie’s is valid" seems like sarcasm I hope it was.
I will be slow to reply because I cannot log in/stay logged in to the forums.
Make this your signature if you are tired of Vendor Search being broken, over FIVE YEARS and counting.
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@covenantx we're on the same boat.. I log ~3 times since dec 7th?
Open 2 doors for 2houses and disconnect.. at this point i'm just keeping them up cuz I upgraded my potato.. gonna record better footage on stream.
Logicly, I totally agree with you, but right now.. for the West we have like 1-ATL, 2-EU then 3-Pac (something along those line) as top 3 shards.. most of the remaining are ghost town; if u don't count the bots and multi client. They have plenty of room to at least try.
For that you have EC+Pinco.. You can automate A LOT of stuff and still be legit.
Here, consider this:
When Mythic came in.. they wanted a new hype 3d client... we should consider ourselves lucky to still be able to play on the CC, at this point.
This is one of many mistakes from the past.. if today, they make the CC a good option and does real work on it.. it would be consider a corporate failure since ~2006 (mythic era.. same to this day).. It would take big cojones and some money to do that.. like work on a legit up to date add-on.
This is one of those obvious fix that contribute to the downfall of UO since ~18years.. they would be 9 players total to still be using the EC if the CC had a legit equivalent.. but BS and mythic.. same corporate culture (just a different name).. no one wants to make that kind of noise at BS.. cuz, let's be honest; they kept digging by investing time&effort/money into a "3d" third dawn/KR/EC while ignoring that much the goat.
They know what they doing at BS.. like the follow option only being on the CC.. is such a snake move.. they clearly do not want that on their baby client.. it's been added for obvious BAD reason.. another cover up.
On paper this is New Legacy for you.. I was pumped.. only reason I came back.. go test it out.. just lower your expectation.. this is not UO.
SA did hurt A LOT the Magic Finder.. farming mobs with high luck.. it became very limited and very heavy (soo many mods, it would be longer to loot than kill the mobs, very heavy, way less fun to play the game, almost painful to do MF run).. while nerfing the entire content.. mainstreaming build that should have never been easy to gear up and ultimately handing the economy to the bots for good with their imbuing ingredients.. except peerless everything was meant to be automated with the EC.. then came Alta Mar wich was the final nail to the legit CC.. a big F U!
Leave attended paying accounts alone, these people go thru a lot of trouble to play/automate the game.
-UO official forums, brought to you by BoardSword studio
CM Fenneko have the power of getting those discord ban.. they would need to start hidding and filtering on those discord. Instead of promoting.
We will need to get on vocal one day to talk about UO.. so much stuff I would say.. and I could come out as rude, in text.
I said Facebook validation cuz both FB and Discord are own by meta.. Facebook is just more safe/secure overall, cuz they have to and i'd argue with you on the cesspool..in those 3 (twitter include): discord wins, imo.
It's like irony when I say FB validation for CUO client.. some people really dislike FB but LOVE discord.. when in fact.. same; just less supervise by meta.
Leave attended paying accounts alone, these people go thru a lot of trouble to play/automate the game.
-UO official forums, brought to you by BoardSword studio
I can attempt to prove it, by posting on my actual Alt accounts, everyone knows I have 5 accounts, I will do a first post on each of them, which I may find hard, as I have never attempted to post on the forums with them before.
Re this, no I don't dislike her a lot, I said the opposite, I meant it. The screenshot is what it is, I was playing the game, that is how it came out, I had forgotten about the tree's ofc. But I don't see the big deal, everyone knows my perspective on this - it is a request I have made under PvP - Vision on the PvP boards.
This one here, probably has the mafia quaking in their boots.
So recently, I needed to restock my VvV potions, and when you get 10 supernova kegs, and have to double-click each one 10 times, that is 100 double-clicks to empty the kegs into 100 separate potions that you then need to pick up individually and place them on your storage container to get them to stack. So the process of emptying 10 VvV kegs is 200 clicks, followed by 100 drag and drops = 300 separate motions.
I myself decided, no way, this is too much now, I don't have the time in my life to be doing this, so I set-up an organiser agent to do this. This guy, has set-up a script.
Let's talk rationally. Some players are seeing a need for this. Some do not get involved in this part of the game, and do not see a need. Some people may be happy to sit there doing 300 repetitive motions for 10 kegs, and that was only for 10 kegs, I want 100 kegs, or more.
If the Devs were communicating with us more, and we were able to put these requests in - ie for an Organiser Agent - add this to my pvp request list please - we would not be finding solutions ourselves.
I do not see how this script is impacting on players pvp abilities.
He is making millions in ill-gotten gains here.
I don't even see the point in this one, this process is easy enough, that I fill my first aid belt with 1000 bandages, and it lasts me long enough.
Repair Gear - My most hated task ingame, I have ranted on forever about this, antique brittle, 30 different items, on 30 different characters, every second of my playing time, something else needs repairing. I've finally completed my 20 year quest on my PvPer - my PvP suit is fully Blessed, with fully Repairable or Non Dura loss items. This gets me over the Repair Gear pain, which for pvpers is a lot, as we are destroying our gear the whole time. Repair Gear has become a chore for many of us, a problem we have raised, and now people are finding ways to minimise the pain.
Sigil Thief - He cannot even spell this one, and to be fair, the guy who did this has an IQ of about 10, and irrelevant in PvP, so if he can do this stuff, anyone can. This is probably going too far in gaming terms - BUT, the activity is in Felucca, I regularly find, and kill these guys, problem dealt with, I do not need to complain to anyone.
Silver Farmer - the same, in Felucca, I will kill him.
Restock Vendors/Get Vendor gold - cannot blame him, boring repetitive task. Many players probably using tools to help them here, and do not consider themselves cheats.
Seed Farmer/Petal Farmer, Yes I get it, I need to set this one up for myself, the process is seriously painful with mass Garden Beds.
Mops PvP. I've never heard of him, or witnessed him, he cannot be anything special.
Collecting River Moss for Barrab Potions etc - I get it, boring, long winded task for those trying to play the game.
Etc.
My point is, look at the underlying reasons.
But is any of this, coming out as an organised crime syndicate?
Or just a guy making his life a bit more fun to play by automating tedious tasks.
Can you show me where Meta/Facebook owns Discord? I would love to read more about that.
As for the cesspool part, my senior citizen parents and aunts/uncles and my elderly aunts/uncles are not on Discord, but they are on Facebook, and I have friends and younger relatives on twitter, and they are constantly bombarded with misinformation and disinformation by celebrities and bot farms and they constantly repost it/amplify it, even when I easily poke holes in what they are pushing. Neither FB or twitter are interested in stopping the disinformation and misinformation by the influencers and bot farms, because they are making money off of it.
The fact is the die was cast when EA cancelled Ultima Worlds: Origin, aka UO2, back in 2001 and didn't sink the freed-up resources into overhauling the whole game and instead just put them into generating more revenue through expansions, and then when they didn't make some hard decisions in the KR/SA era. At the end of the day, UO is what it is because of what EA management did in 2001-2007.
So here we are, and as I said, I'm grateful and amazed that 5-6 people are keeping a 28 year-old MMO going.
They have the room to try because it's cheap to spin up a new server on Amazon.
I know you are not implying that they should experiment on shards that aren't ATL/EU/PAC, but some people have implied that, regardless of the fact that those shards have their players who have their houses, etc. and are paying for those shards to stay up and not be messed with. Messing with those shards is a good way to start losing thousands of dollars in monthly revenue when the cost to spin up a new server on Amazon is very cheap and very easy.
I don't know what their long-term plan for NL is, but I'll be curious if they are able to take the code and do other experimental shards/rulesets.
Yes, people do enjoy doing tedious tasks, in game and real life. Why? Because not many people like to do it and it adds value to their game play. Some may enjoy fishing 8 hours a day in game, other may enjoy 8 hours of dungeon-ing, others 8 hours of making potions. And the fact that they're the few that do it and enjoy it add value to what they do. They can take their passion make gold off it and trade for something they dislike doing. When it's all automated, like what you're suggesting, what little gold they can make for the huge waste of time they lose. These are the legitimate players, the core of the player base.
Let's take MOBAS and Shooter games for an example.
In MOBAs The skill is being able to multi task and have game knowledge that only comes with playing. MOBAs such as DOTA2 with complex characters as Invoker or Techies, difficult skill shots such as Pudge hook, etc etc. Having map awareness, having up to 6 items in your inventory that have long cool downs but very powerful abilities, weaving abilities in correct order, using buffs, killing monsters in the jungle, keeping timers on everything. That's skill. What you're doing in UO is equivalent to MOBAS using a maphack, a program to automatically use items for you, and a program to move your character around for you. All your doing is occasionally clicking.
Being able to throw pop flashes in CS2 or know smoke lineups/pixel gaps. Crosshair placement, movement. The skill comes from game knowledge and play time. Actual skill. What you do in UO is the equivalent of having a shooter game move, buy, aim, use utility, and all you are doing is clicking a button when the crosshair automagically goes over people's heads.
And that's what you're missing. When you automate any of these things it's cheating and you can cope and seethe and make excuses all you want but you're still cheating. When you rant on and on and on about how good of a PVPer you are don't forget no one asked and no one cares. But you'll surely never understand this, all you care about is afk botting with your dozen toons and being a l33t PVPer with zero skill. You are nothing without your 3rd party program crutches, never forget. You have minimal skill in the game.
I will be slow to reply because I cannot log in/stay logged in to the forums.
Make this your signature if you are tired of Vendor Search being broken, over FIVE YEARS and counting.
Vendor search rendered useless after Publish 106 – Forsaken Foes on August 14, 2019.
If person A presses a button 300 times to empty 10 kegs, and person B presses 1 button, does it genuinely make person A a better and more skilful potion stacker?