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Let's Clear the Air Shall We?

Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2019 10:53 pm
by GM Oden
I am going to in this post bring up "hot button" issues that have been thrown out to staff in the last week or two, some I have engaged in discussion wise, others I was unable to intercede and thus decisions were made that should not have been, so let's dig in shall we?

Religions & Canons:
1.) Staff no longer sanctify, alter or in any other manner, mess with canons.

This has been decided, as of this post, Law has 36 members, Imperial 22 members, this should be more than enough to get your merry band of men together and macro up canons, foci and symbols, after all, I was reasonably assured that this part of the religion system was/is not an issue for people, when I was talking about cutting it out from religions, so I am expecting people to prove that to me.

2.) Piety, you join a religion, 30 piety, don't ask for more, feel free to ask for less.

Due to a miscommunication, I will take the blame on this, I have been bumping people to 40p regardless of placement time in a religion. This ends today, sorry folks. Again, I don't expect there to be any dissension for this, because people just loves their piety timers.

Macro Checks, Macro Check Alarms & Leniency:
1.) Macro Checks are here to stay, they are not going anywhere, they are not going to be touched anytime soon. Let me clear "touched anytime soon" up; will not be modified, will not be changed, will not be removed, will not be switched out for a new system, will not be disabled, will not be in any other fashion altered, adjusted or refitted or even retrofitted. Don't ask and I shan't tell.

This has been a recurring curse of a discussion for me brought on by players, skills no longer are dropped to 0 and stats no longer dropped to 10, staff have also been more lenient on the rule of every three macro checks failed that player is jailed, so for now, they will remain as they are.

2.) Macro Check Alarms are legal, in other words, "permitted by law; lawful". They are allowed to be used, punishment for use of a macro check alarm has no penalties, you are free to use them barring one or two restrictions found in the rules section of the main page.

Now that is cleared up, my thoughts on why I brought this up. The legal status of something is defined as:

Code: Select all

adjective
1. permitted by law; lawful
2. of or relating to law; connected with the law or its administration
3. appointed, established, or authorized by law; deriving authority from law. 
We will use definition 1 for this discussion but 3 would apply as well. Within the construct of the definition itself, something made legal, in this instance, Macro Check Alarms, are allowed to be used without fear of consequence, punishment or any other repercussions from staff, simple right? I thought so to. However, recent discussions have lent this notion of being legal to be warped and has been suggested by a couple player's that the legality of using such alarms should also be "respected" by staff. Respect is a curious term, here is the definitions for "respected":

Code: Select all

noun
1. a particular, detail, or point (usually preceded by in)
2. relation or reference: inquiries with respect to a route.
3. esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability
4. deference to a right, privilege, privileged position, or someone or something considered to have certain rights or privileges; proper acceptance or courtesy; acknowledgment 
We will use definition 4 for this one, it is not a right to use macro check alarms on Pangaea, it is a privilege so that is the line of thought to go on, we can discuss rights vs privilege later if someone wants to tack me down on this over Discord or ICQ.

Do I respect the privilege given to players to use macro check alarms?
yes.
Do I respect the people who write the alarms?
More or less, yes.

That clears that up, you are free to use them and there are no repercussions to be had, however, you've just been down a couple rabbit holes of definitions so I will get to my point, while staff respect your ability, your tenacity, your vigor, your privilege in using these tools, it will not, will not, WILL NOT be made any easier to use them via a system message or any other server side code that expands the use of Macro Check Alarms. As I told a person the other day, we are not as staff obligated by any sense of duty to maintain, expand the uses of or in any other fashion make Macro Check Alarms easier to use by putting in code server side. It is simple, if your macro check alarm is failing you, ask for assistance. If your sound is not playing, I bet you are doing something wrong as an example I know happens quite a bit and I have had to diagnose for people many times.

3.) To grant leniency or not? That is the question, leniency is granted every so often on some occasions. Now, there are a couple points to be made about leniency and threats made to staff.

When one fails a macro check, one does not need an intercessor to do what intercessors do, to intercede on his/her behalf. Knowledge or ignorance of the person who failed the macro check of someone interceding on their behalf does not really matter, this is here so that everyone knows, if there is a dispute with a macro check fail, it needs to be made by the complainant and not by another player believing it is their civic or chivalrous duty to intercede on another's behalf. If you fail a macro check, if there is an issue with the problem, you, yourself, need to make that complaint to the staff. You are all capable of typing fairly decent English, the only language I speak and read at any great adeptness, so go to one of the staff and make your complaint known. IF you are thinking of interceding on another's behalf, don't bother, this will only prolong any judgement made and may in fact hurt the actual result and find the person that failed the macro check wanting.

Let's discuss threats, the one I hear most often. First it should be noted, there is absolutely no money to be made in what we do, if I spent the time I have spent working on stuff for this shard working, I'd be a happier person likely, my bills would not be in the state they are in now I'd hope. Second, we as staff actually like having players, however, there is one threat that cuts no quarter with me.

"This happened and I am QUITTING!"
quitting, the threat of that is, this has been brought up from players starting with the letter A all the way to Z, I have heard it before, it sucks to see a player quit because they themselves are frustrated by something that occurred. I know full well what it is like to have someone quit because of something shitty happening, I know about 5 people in real life that quit Ultima, Pangaea specifically who quit because of PvP or Macro Checks or some other shitty thing happening. But threats of quitting, the hypothetical discussion about changing/removing xyz because of people quitting and any other discussion or threat made about quitting because "I did not get my way" or "This happened", I will not be held hostage to this.

You are free to play here, it costs you nothing in fact, the mansion you might think I live in was not made off the backs of your hard earned Euro or Dollar or in the case of Candanavia, Dollarettes. Shitty things happen, we have certain rules in place that have consequences, if you did not read the rules, I suggest you read up on them, if any need to be revised to reflect current policy, feel free to let me know and I will, but as I told one player, IF we were to take all the reasons why people quit Pangaea and try to fix them, it would be an impossibility.

Boredom, training skills too hard (they're not hard but that is the complaint), heightened is too slow, I died and was looted by a Troll, I died in PvP and was looted by Bob Smith, Fred visited me at the bank and thieved my Indestructible robe of Macefighting, Tactics, Meditation, Healing and Anatomy, It is unfair I have to start out as a brand new character when everyone else has well trained characters, it is unfair that my house is smaller than that persons, it is unfair that I don't even get a free house, it is unfair that I can't have this name, it is unfair that PvP is allowed in towns, it is unfair that religions are so powerful, it is unfair that the <insert class> is so sucky compared to <insert class>. I know that does not cover all the complaints but you get the idea.

4.) A staff member's decision is final.

If you have asked one staff for something, they say no, do not try to play the staff like the child playing the parents. What do I mean, when you were children, and your Mother said no you can't go outside to play, invariably you went and asked your Father hoping to get a different response. If in the future it is discovered that this occurred, consequences for the offending player will be swift, just and harsh, we're adults here, don't try to play or pit the staff's decisions against each other. Simple!

Notes:
This post nor any of it's contents are directed toward any one person or groups of people. These are issues that have cropped up over the last couple to few weeks and have festered and today just boiled over into the post you have hopefully just read. Sorry for the length, I had to cover a few things in here and make sure that certain things were hopefully made more clear.

No we will not be giving out free fully trained characters, don't post the idea, it ain't happening unless someone else wants to script it and by that point I think my job will be done here.

No, we are not going to mess around with macro checks, don't ask, don't even message me about it, I have spent close to 8 hours with players discussing macro checks, so ya, kind of sick of it and one person made it on my ignore list for a month or two for going on and on about it so, if you would like that, by all means.

I hate to see a player leave, but don't threaten that and expect staff to bend over backwards to accommodate you while others have had to take their medicine, let me put it simply, if the widespread belief amongst players is that threats of quitting will get staff to give into a player's demands, I say this knowing full well that I would have just wasted a year for you guys despite it's bumpiness, we shut the shard down now and shelve it. Solution solved, you have nothing to quit, we have nothing to give into.

Definitions brought to you by: This Dictionary

Re: Let's Clear the Air Shall We?

Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2019 11:48 pm
by tehsquish
I was one of the sad bastards that got hit with a macro check and decided the game isn't worth my time anymore.

Just to be clear:

I've drank a lot of shitty medicine playing this game over the years. I think we all have.

I didn't ask for leniency - in fact I haven't communicated with the GMs at all. I posted one message in the discord relaying my feelings that macro checks serve to do nothing but destroy people's urge to play the game, which I stand behind.

If I was offered leniency I'd turn it down - and I had discussions today with other players about this. I don't want any special treatment. I want to play a game that respects the time I put into it - and this just ain't it. I've put hundreds of hours on a character I've never been able to hunt on due to balance issues, class changes, and macro checks and I am just tired of it.

I'm sorry if you felt I was making a threat or anything but that is just not the case. I respect the effort you've put into the shard and appreciate it - and I've told you as much.

It just isn't worth it to put more of my energy into the game at this point. As I said in the discord I'll probably be back again. Regardless of whether I or anyone else quits the game due to X Y or Z I think you should reexamine the macro check policy as it is just flat out bad game design.

If the oldies don't want it to change then fine, but I think that is a mistake.

Love y'all and catch ya later.

Re: Let's Clear the Air Shall We?

Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 1:20 pm
by Glarundis
tehsquish wrote: Sun Apr 14, 2019 11:48 pm Regardless of whether I or anyone else quits the game due to X Y or Z I think you should reexamine the macro check policy as it is just flat out bad game design.
I gotta back this up.
There is simply no reason to keep macrochecks as they are right now. I understand that staff holds final word and it's not that players can make demands or anything. However, the truth is, at this point, macrochecks are nothing but a deterrant that will
1)make people suffer a few more hours to complete the training
2)leave the game

what's the point?

Re: Let's Clear the Air Shall We?

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 1:47 pm
by Edward Sinclair
Problem is that if you remove macro checks, the shard will be full of AFKers and everyone becomes uber... Unless I'm mistaken in some way? But it sure as hell sucks macroing stuff.

Re: Let's Clear the Air Shall We?

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 2:45 pm
by Glarundis
Edward Sinclair wrote: Mon Apr 29, 2019 1:47 pm Problem is that if you remove macro checks, the shard will be full of AFKers and everyone becomes uber... Unless I'm mistaken in some way? But it sure as hell sucks macroing stuff.
The shard is already full of AFKers and everyone is either heightened/elder/legendary. Who cares at this point? People want to play, or not play, according to the IG content. Why force people through some difficulties attached to training when the objective of the game shouldn't be the training itself?

Re: Let's Clear the Air Shall We?

Posted: Sun May 05, 2019 8:11 pm
by GM Oden
Been awhile since I've been to the forums.

That's the game, agree, disagree, love or hate, you train and in the end you get skills where you want them.

Macro checks are going no where, as long as macroing is a thing, we need a policing system. Punishment of that system is another story but at some level, punishment also needs to be more than a DC and can't gain in that skill or skills for x time.

Macroing to build a skill will remain to be a thing because we're not putting in place the run around and auto gain skills there's only potentially two skills that could or would work like that, one is Focus, which we don't have, the other putting in the broadest interpretation of the skill could be Animal Lore IF one thinks of it more than just animal knowledge but more of the D&D "Knowledge: Nature" skill but sense most of you are not very familiar with D&D, the paper and pencil edition, I doubt anyone thinks of the Animal Lore skill as such.

I get it, macroing the great scourge, it's the necessary evil we're stuck with. I'm sure in other games most of you have played there is some semblance of using a skill over and over again to gain in it, the P2P games usually make these retardedly easy to gain in but on Pangaea and many a UO shard, you've to spend time training a skill. The difference beyond this fact is you can use macroing tools to train in these skills.

Hate to burst anyone's bubble, I've argued until I've become angry, any system devised thus far to facilitate the removal of the macro check system is not a sound enough reason to get rid of macro checks. I was not a fan of them as a player but saw it's need, punishment has been scaled back, we've essentially given the inch and it feels like now you're trying to take the mile. I guess it's human nature, but I don't know some greatfulness in the fact your skills aren't dropped to just 0 and stat to 10 would be nice instead of the same old tired bitchfest about macro checks?

Can the system be improved, yes, can punishments be more pronounced and initially less intrusive, yes, can we start jailing after three macro check fails? Yes, we don't, I don't at least.

But for now it's what we have, again with lighter punishment than it was so I'd be thankful for that but I guess we should go back to "Pangaea: Medieval Torture", punishments involving players balls in a vice, staff being complete and utter cunts, almost nonexistent scripter - player interactions and everything else just being archaic and dreadful.

Trying to take the mile on this one is a lose lose proposition for you so my advice, here's the cunt in me, suck it up buttercup. I at least think I've been relatively fair in dealing with you guys and have even given you guys the mile after player's cried to their other parent for this or that, so that seems to have done nothing really but give some of you license to try to go further. Thanks for that, definitely appreciative of that, really makes me feel wonderful decisions are being second guessed when a fair answer was given.

Re: Let's Clear the Air Shall We?

Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2019 5:57 am
by Talerco Pious
Edward Sinclair wrote: Mon Apr 29, 2019 1:47 pm Problem is that if you remove macro checks, the shard will be full of AFKers and everyone becomes uber... Unless I'm mistaken in some way? But it sure as hell sucks macroing stuff.
I'd be glad if the shard was full of anything and it's not like there's any RP these days anyway