Architect Archive

I've posted this on a couple of the boards. Looking for opinions. The post:

Raph Koster, creative designer, the Mighty Holocron wrote a lenghty dissertation on the "rules" for designing a successful MMORPG. In case you don't know, Raph was the lead dude for Ultima Online as well.

He said, in that finely written paper, (and I'm paraphrasing) "Areas where players try to automate a process often identifies a design flaw on the developers part"

This is SO true in this case. I personally have 8 harvesters going now, 4 are dead due to 24 hour resource shifting and the other 4 are pulling in about 8k per day total of materials. They cost me money, they make me run around picking them up and putting them places. They are buggy as all heck (the power issue, the poof issue, etc.).

My character on the other hand, can sample 9k in resources on a 75% vein in 24 hours. I set my macro up, go to work and return after work, ready to play. I even use my macro when i'm in front of the machine. You know why? Because /sampling is BORING. In REAL DOLLARS I am paying 15 bucks a month to purchase 250,000 in resources, and that's if i never move/play whatever!

So what to do? If they take macros out of the game (they are in game don't you know, there's a whole section for using them) then people WILL turn to third party software programs to do it for them. Think back to the UO days. There was a program called UO extreme that, among other things, automated some of the processes, such as last target, use potion, etc. People also used EZMacros day and night to mine for ore, double click it next to their forge, and turn them into ingots. Raph saw this and guess what, in future updates for UO, they incorporated ALL of these features into the game. Why? Because giving everyone access to these tools levels the playing field. If EVERYONE can set up a game sanctioned macro and have the same chance to get resources as everyone else, it is fair in an odd sort of way.

Some of the solutions I've seen posed are well intentioned, but are destined to fail.

1. Make sampling less effective, people will stop macroing then! No they won't. If my take went from 9k per night to 1k per night, I'd still macro. It takes me no time nor effort to set up

2. Make harvesters more effective, that'll stop them! No it won't, I'd still set up my harvesters and then sit next to them and macro sample

3. Make harvesters cheaper, that for SURE will get them to quit! Again, as long as ANYTHING has a cost, macro sampling is FREE and I'd still do it.

Now, for my proposed solution. Do ALL of the above three, AND make sampling give your Action bar wounds. Yes, that's right, wounds. Make it so that an average person would completely black out their bar in 3 hours of sampling and you'll **edit** it right in the bud. You can't sample in buildings so you wouldn't be able to heal your wounds via a macro and as you lose your action pool, you have less and less ability to sample. If you do this, you would also be increasing the Medic's usefulness because all of us crafters who NEVER go to a hospital will HAVE to go to get our action bar healed up from random sampling. Heck, maybe the medics would even heal me if I provide them some resources (two birds, one stone).

Second part to the resource equation. Make a person capable of being an administrator/hopper cleaner on 10 total lots (or 20, but you get the picture). This will serve to cripple uber guilds by forcing their buddies to actually do the running/restocking/moving/replacement/powering/paying/recovery instead of just putting a couple of people on the admin list of 200+ harvesters. Ifeveryone in a guild has to go out and do harvester runs for a buddy instead of working on their own characters it will get old, and quick. Now,if a crafter wantsmore resources then he/she can pull from his/her own allotment of harvsters he will have to PAY another character to do it for him, including travel costs, resource cost, ect. (Sounds alot like the mining profession, doesn't it).

This solution will more or less put a limit on how many resources a crafter can collect on their own in any given period. Then and only then will prices reflect the true market cost ofcollecting resources. You won't be seeing any more of this 2k for a small house crap, and scarcity and rarity will play a role in this game. Can you even imagine the price of resources if all a person could collect in one day was "insertnumber here" I'm willing to bet that alot of the issues caused by shifting resources, planet-wide depeletion, and the like will be solved by this as well.

To summarize:

• Limit macro sampling by making the /sample command cause action wounds
  
• Limit the number of harvesters a person can have admin/hopper access to.

Push this one to the test server Raph, wipe the characters and let it run for a couple of weeks. See if you don't have a stable economy ina hurry.

Floyd Wright,

Architect, Bria Server

Here's a post for you to sink your teeth into:

Raph Koster, creative designer, the Mighty Holocron wrote a lenghty dissertation on the "rules" for designing a successful MMORPG. In case you don't know, Raph was the lead dude for Ultima Online as well.

He said, in that finely written paper, (and I'm paraphrasing) "Areas where players try to automate a process often identifies a design flaw on the developers part"

This is SO true in this case. I personally have 8 harvesters going now, 4 are dead due to 24 hour resource shifting and the other 4 are pulling in about 8k per day total of materials. They cost me money, they make me run around picking them up and putting them places. They are buggy as all heck (the power issue, the poof issue, etc.).

My character on the other hand, can sample 9k in resources on a 75% vein in 24 hours. I set my macro up, go to work and return after work, ready to play. I even use my macro when i'm in front of the machine. You know why? Because /sampling is BORING. In REAL DOLLARS I am paying 15 bucks a month to purchase 250,000 in resources, and that's if i never move/play whatever!

So what to do? If they take macros out of the game (they are in game don't you know, there's a whole section for using them) then people WILL turn to third party software programs to do it for them. Think back to the UO days. There was a program called UO extreme that, among other things, automated some of the processes, such as last target, use potion, etc. People also used EZMacros day and night to mine for ore, double click it next to their forge, and turn them into ingots. Raph saw this and guess what, in future updates for UO, they incorporated ALL of these features into the game. Why? Because giving everyone access to these tools levels the playing field. If EVERYONE can set up a game sanctioned macro and have the same chance to get resources as everyone else, it is fair in an odd sort of way.

Some of the solutions I've seen posed are well intentioned, but are destined to fail.

1. Make sampling less effective, people will stop macroing then! No they won't. If my take went from 9k per night to 1k per night, I'd still macro. It takes me no time nor effort to set up

2. Make harvesters more effective, that'll stop them! No it won't, I'd still set up my harvesters and then sit next to them and macro sample

3. Make harvesters cheaper, that for SURE will get them to quit! Again, as long as ANYTHING has a cost, macro sampling is FREE and I'd still do it.

Now, for my proposed solution. Do ALL of the above three, AND make sampling give your Action bar wounds. Yes, that's right, wounds. Make it so that an average person would completely black out their bar in 3 hours of sampling and you'll **edit** it right in the bud. You can't sample in buildings so you wouldn't be able to heal your wounds via a macro and as you lose your action pool, you have less and less ability to sample. If you do this, you would also be increasing the Medic's usefulness because all of us crafters who NEVER go to a hospital will HAVE to go to get our action bar healed up from random sampling. Heck, maybe the medics would even heal me if I provide them some resources (two birds, one stone).

Second part to the resource equation. Make a person capable of being an administrator/hopper cleaner on 10 total lots (or 20, but you get the picture). This will serve to cripple uber guilds by forcing their buddies to actually do the running/restocking/moving/replacement/powering/paying/recovery instead of just putting a couple of people on the admin list of 200+ harvesters. Ifeveryone in a guild has to go out and do harvester runs for a buddy instead of working on their own characters it will get old, and quick. Now,if a crafter wantsmore resources then he/she can pull from his/her own allotment of harvsters he will have to PAY another character to do it for him, including travel costs, resource cost, ect. (Sounds alot like the mining profession, doesn't it).

This solution will more or less put a limit on how many resources a crafter can collect on their own in any given period. Then and only then will prices reflect the true market cost ofcollecting resources. You won't be seeing any more of this 2k for a small house crap, and scarcity and rarity will play a role in this game. Can you even imagine the price of resources if all a person could collect in one day was "insertnumber here" I'm willing to bet that alot of the issues caused by shifting resources, planet-wide depeletion, and the like will be solved by this as well.

To summarize:

• Limit macro sampling by making the /sample command cause action wounds
  
• Limit the number of harvesters a person can have admin/hopper access to.

Push this one to the test server Raph, wipe the characters and let it run for a couple of weeks. See if you don't have a stable economy ina hurry.

Floyd Wright,

Architect, Bria Server

I think the SIMPLEST solution would be that when you go auto AFK, your character SITS. And remove the option to change auto AFK time out.

Buhbye macro sampling.

Mike

AKA

Oka Higre
President, HigreCorp

Opinions on what?

The macro commands are in the system. Holo has already said that using the game's system to macro is just fine,however using hardware to macro is bannable.

I dont get this.. Whats the matter with macro sampling?

Theres a reason that there isnt any advanced surveyor - that is because after leve IV, You dont get any further XP.

The harvesters work good. I got 10K steel from two harvesters, in two days. Thats more than enough to catapult me all the way to marster artisan.

After I figured out how to make harvesters, I never ever macro sample. Why? Because the things that I DO need, and that I havent configured my harvesters for, I either trade for or quickly sample in the amount necessary.

If You like to pay 15$ a month to have your character stand in the middle of no-where, then Im all for it. That leaves more contend and less crowding for the rest of us. If removing macroing will bring You back into the city, I say: Let it stay!!

WhiteFur.

There is a solution to just about every attempt to curtail this sort of behavior. If you make AFK break it then someone will use a random mouse movement program to never go AFK, etc, etc, etc. Although I think that the wound thing might actually work.

The realsolvent the supposed problem is what the poster above said. Now that I have placed my harvesters I rarely macro sample anymore. Resources are just not that much of a bottleneck to crafting once you can create extractors and macroing sort of looses its appeal. Not to mention the fact that the macros NEVER turn off and I really dont like seeing my character try to sit down during a heated battle.

You've come to the wrong place if your looking for support on such a hair braned scheme. You are overlooking a number of issues.

#1) The game is designed and centered around the casual gamer, this is why you can in game macro, this is why sampling is not going to generate wounds ever.

#2) The economy is working just fine .. it is not working how you (or I really) want it to work but it IS working just fine. There is supply and demand, it just tends to favor those in demand right now that will likely change as people are now having more difficulty getting resources they will stop selling medium houses for 20k. Small houses are always going to be cheap, they dont take anything to make. Once you start having to use those **edit** gas turbines tho people wont let them go cheap.

#3) Again this is a game for the casual gamer that is the most important thing for you to realize, they are not going to make it "harder" to be an architect like you want. My god .. limited access to hoppers ? No hand sampling ? I can only "skill" up about 2 hours a day now even though i'm online 20 and have 3 other people dedicated to supplying me with materials.

You've missed the entire point.

Holocron stated on a post that he feels that macro sampling is wrong and that they are going to change it.

My post is an attempt to come up with a soultion before they totally destroy the /sample command.

As it is, they just increased the amount of action required to sample (this morning's patch).

They are going to change it, whether you like it or not.