Fist de Yuma - February 18, 2003

This and that The column has a few rants this week. Never intended it to be but it just happened. Hopefully Turbine/MS will address some of them. I feel it would improve the game immensely. Rosa has her testing kit and sticking to her strict diet. It is a touch harder for me to plan meals but it will help me eat better as well. Exercise is something we are not use to and we are having a hard time starting. At one time we would do 5 mile walks and I would do 20 mile mountain bike rides. While I don't think we will be back to that we have to do more than we are. For those mired in snow I feel for you. The worst we got was a few days of rain. Rosa made me wear pants instead of shorts. (grin) Remember my bragging about the weather when it is 115 in the summer and I'm complaining about the heat. Rosa is being a trouper with the testing kit. Despite not liking needles at all she is pricking her finger four times a day to get blood for the tester. If she keeps the numbers where they are additional medicine will not be needed. The final section I debated on removing. I have added in a rebuttal and a few comments people from the boards had. This is one that few people agree with me on. I guess that is what makes this such a great game. Failed policy When Turbine said they were going to ban macros we all cheered. Those of us who had even a slight understanding of human nature were disappointed when they said attended combat macros were ok. (Note I said combat. Buff bots and other macros serve a useful purpose.) This meant there was a gray area. Immature people take "gray" to mean, "as much as they can get away with". By allowing attended combat macros to work they made it much harder for the +admits to enforce a probation on unattended combat macros. That was the foundation for failure but it needed more incompetence to make it a total failure. The word we got was a 24 hour ban for anyone caught the first time. That was a very low punishment but it was meant to be a warning. The next time someone was caught was a permanent ban and being put in the "Hall of Shame". Well macros are still rampant and there are no names on the "Hall of Shame". This means one of two things. The current people macroing have never been caught before or MS/Turbine is not following through with the threat to ban those caught twice. As it is well known that many have been caught and banned for 24 hours several times so we can only assume two things from that. They are not enforcing the permanent ban or they are not keeping track of who was given bans. No matter what the reasons it results in the same thing. As more and more people see that MS is not enforcing the rules they start breaking out the macros. There is something called the broken window rule. If a building has no broken windows the windows will not be vandalized. If a window is broken for some reason and not repaired, then all the windows will be broken. The theory for this is people see that the owners don't care about the property. If the owners don't care then why should they? New York used this theory to lower crime in the city. Before they got smart low-level crime was ignored in favor of putting resources into larger crimes. Following the theory people decided that if low-level crime was not punished they could do what the wanted. Then New York got smart and decided to punish all crime. Thus turn-style jumpers found themselves arrested. All sorts of crimes that were allowed before were being prosecuted. The end result was all crime, even large crime, dropped. It was found that the simple crimes, such as turn-style jumping, were being done by the same people who committed the big crimes. By locking them up they prevented the bigger crimes from being committed. It also returned a respect for the law in general. AC at this time is considered the home of grief players and exploiters. Those that play the other games assume that everyone here macros and/or cheats/exploits. The reason for this is our broken windows. Chains, macros and thieves are broken windows. They show the public that Turbine/MS only cares about the money and nothing else. The end result is other games, even those that started later than AC, have more players. Turbine has assumed that it is the type of game that has attracted the players. They saw DAoC get more numbers and assumed it was the similarity to EQ that did it. This could well be the reason that AC2 looks like another EQ clone rather than an updated AC. I believe Turbine's thinking is all wrong. What keeps players away from AC is the assumption that cheating/exploiting and all around grief play is ok. We know better but perception is more important than truth. DAoC cracked down on grief play from the start. The game was boring compared to AC but still gained the numbers. The developers rightly decided that grief players will drive out more player than DAoC would lose with bans. This seems to have played a big role in their passing AC's player base. Until Turbine/AC wakes up and fixes the windows the disrespect for any rules will be the order of the day. Chains vs. Traditional Someone pointed out that a new player starting today would be hard pressed to build up a vassal tree they way we did at the start. Like a lot of what this poster writes it was filled with ignorance and misconception. Very few and only the best were able to create a vassal tree at the start of the game. Most of these were Beta players who knew each other. It was a good three months before I picked up The Saint as a vassal. From there I had a few friends and people I had helped over time join with me. I would say it was a year before I started to get significant xp from vassals. One of the things I use to do years ago was take stuff I did not need and head out to the starter towns. I would pass the stuff out to anyone that seemed to need it. A guy with no leggings got some. A player with poor sleeves got new ones. It took longer than just tossing the stuff in the ground but it was worth it. Months later some of these people would look me up to be my vassal. That was never my intent. I got some of the best people in the game that way. One, Pantane, is still running the Elder network. That is not something people can do today but the general idea is still valuable. Going out to help people for the pure fun of it, with no thought of reward, will help you in the end. Getting back to the new player and getting a vassal tree. It is harder today to do that. The reason is not the lack of players, though new players are rare, it is the chains themselves that dry up the available pool of players. Why work to get known and build a reputation when you can just join a chain. They will give you a patron and vassals. All you need to do after that is visit the buff bot and go hunt. There are a few alliances that are strong because of leadership and attitude. They would do well if vassal xp was stopped tomorrow. There are only a few proven alliances that have never had a chain and never will. Elder is the largest but the rest could well have as many active players. I have lost several good players who were drawn to Chains. All traditional alliances have that problem. Without chains they would be far larger numbers in the traditional alliances. It is hard to compete with the promise of instance power. The only question is what would the fix be? At this point I don't see one. Killing vassal passup would radically change the game and the word I got was MS is totally against doing so. So Chains are with us for good. I can live with that. What I cannot live with is a chain person, who was giving all his vassals, saying a traditional is just the same because they have vassal passup. It is like someone who inherited their fortune putting down the working class because they don't have money. I find that the "inherited class" are those who love high taxes. They don't want the working trash making enough to move in next door. Not so easy this time RD's Bobo quest is being run on Saturday for a while now. Mostly we have had an army of players, predominantly archers, who blasted their way through with little trouble. This time we had a different group, a few mages but mostly melee. I cannot be sure but I don't think we had a single archer with us. From the start things were going wrong. I got lag turned and missed the crossing to the right island. Many were following me and we all got lost. I was so sure of where I was going that I broke my rule of not getting past the leader. Very stupid of me. We finally got everyone together at the hut, then a fast run to the waterfall. We all buffed there so we would be synched. Chain Effect was leading and RD has someone assigned to heal Chain. I was using Fist de Yuma Jr for this. At 105 and much improved melee defense I felt he would be better than the last time. I could well have done better but, with the lack of players, that improvement was more than compensated for. The first dungeon we had little trouble. We had one death from a player who did not bane. William the Bat stated that those who ask for buffs are generally the first to die. This was exactly the case. The next part was almost a disaster. We were working our way down the ramp. At the bottom someone died at my feet. I sent a quick message about it and tried to clear. I was getting my ass kicked bad. Before I knew it I was at 50 hit points. As I had taking 100 point shots I knew I was in big trouble. Some mage, I don't know who, decided to be my guardian angel. From that point on, most of the time when I got into trouble, I got a heal to get me by. A few times I had to run and heal but mostly that mage had my back. I wish I had time to grab the person name as they kept me in it. It is very hard to stay with swinging at 70 hit points. Without the mage I would have to grab a quick health elixir and then heal. There is a good chance that grabbing the health elixir will get me killed before it takes effect. (Lower melee defense when taking drinks.) You have to trust that the mage will feed you a heal before the monster feeds on you. Finally we got the message to go back up to the top of the ramp to regroup. With a more coordinated group we descended and recovered the bodies. At this point I noted we had far less numbers that before. What happened to them I don't know. I was told later that many were upset at RD because they got abandoned at this point. While RD does make mistakes, who doesn't, he cannot take the blame for this one. Everyone was doing something wrong. The next section was not a danger of battle but a danger of buffs. We entered that part with 25 minutes left on buffs and were promptly lost. We wondered around the maze until I had about 3 minutes on the buffs. I'm not sure if anyone was on a VI timer but if they were they were un-buffed for a time. Finally we found our way out. The last part is quite easy after the bad ones and we made it to Bobo. I ended up being in two battles because of split groups and RD asking me to help with the second. The first one I did about 2500 points of damage to it. I might have done better but had to heal several time. I was taking a beating and missing all lot more than you would think a 560 effective combat skill would. (444 + 26%) RD said he did around 3000 so he was sure he had the kill. The second one had a problem. I think it was the de-buffer as after a full minute of battle the darn thing was at full health. We took so long that the Imperil and Fire Vuln ran out and had to be replied. An Archer who joined us at the end got the kill there. So it looks like another few weeks killing Tuskers before I'll be ready to do this again. When you miss 5, hit 1 and miss 5 you know something is wrong. At 26 million a point raising my UA much higher will take a lot of time and effort. Melee Defense was working but when hit I was losing a third of my health or more. So not only do I have to work on Melee but I need to add a lot of health. BM Death I have my BM to 48lv and working toward 50. I have several Pincers ready for when he hits that magic number. Right now he is in the Guard dungeon and looking forward to hitting the Silver. I've been in a few good fellows that were friendly and fun. About the only problem is it being small and easily cleared by six people. Still we were pulling down three million an hour. Given that most things still cost under 500k that is a lot. To keep me in the fellows and not be unfair to the fellow members I put Fist de Mage at the start for buffing. Most of the players would port back to their mansion to get buffs. I'll be happy when I have the skills to be self-buffed. I was tired and ready to park my Fist's Armorer for a while. To get back to the start I would fight to the end and take the portal out. I would then re-enter the dungeon portal and be back at the start. I had learned to wait for a few seconds before moving. If I didn't I would get and error message at the portal saying I had ported to soon. I waited until fully downloaded, which took a while. I should have taken that slow download as a warning. There was a lot of lag. Around the portal was all sorts of nastily stuff. I waited a second and then stepped forward to enter the portal. No dice, to soon. From there it was down hill all the way. The monsters beat his poor ass into the ground while I desperately tried to get into the portal. Now I had a problem. I could recover with Fist de Mage but it was not going to be easy. For one I had on some really weak armor. I had put the good stuff on the BM. For another the body was in the middle of about 5 spawns of rapidly regenerating monster. I did not have the armor to just go in and grab the stuff. I was going to have to clear it out. After a running battle to get away from the portal I started to work them down. The big problem was attacking one monster got a bunch more pissed at me. Tuskers were not a big problem, unless I was de-buffed or there were to many of them. The big Reedsharks were less of a problem than they were before. I have leaned that slashing works well on them. They die to a single vuln and blast. Still they hit hard and fast so any battle with them was a danger. While in one big battle I saw a guy way off to my left along the beach. He had a lot of Tuskers after him. He saw me fighting and did a 90 degrees turn to come right at me. There was no doubt that he was going to use me to brush off his trailers. I was not in the least welcoming his trash when I already had my hands full. I sarcastically said, "Thank". Being a wise ass he said, "Welcome". After getting away he returned to pick off one or two Tuskers while I battled the rest. I cleared mine and was ready to start on another spawn. This happened to be more Reedsharks. I vuln'd one and blasted it as five more charged. Being Reedsharks two of them decided to take out the wise ass. Last I saw of him was as he took off with the two sharks on his tail. I finally cleared everything and was ready to get the body. I saw the body was right in the center of the portal. I had to be careful to open it and not step into the portal. The only thing of value on the body is my Minor Creature, Minor Strength helm but I kind of value that. Only down side to it is the 9k value, which make it hard to protect. So now I have both players back at the mansion. I'll have to get them both back to the Guard dungeon to start leveling again. Two nastily runs, one with weak armor. Lazy, Fearful, Ignorant? I'm having a big problem leveling my BM. He just made 49 but should be far higher. There is a lot to hunt and some great people to hunt with. The trouble is most places are filled with people 10 to 40 levels above the minimal for the dungeon. This started to show as I moved to the higher dungeons. At the 20+ I found 35 to 40 level players. At the 30+ I found 40 to 50 level players. In the 40+ it was not as bad. There I found 45 to 49 mostly. Of course the 40+ is very small and has few tuskers in it. While running to the 40+ I saw a 45+. It turned out to be the Silver Tusker dungeon. My map is wrong as it shows it to be 50+. I found it might as well have been 55+ because anyone lower than that was not allowed to hunt much. It was filled with 55 to 70+ players with a few 100's in there. They were not just helping but actively hunting. At 48lv I had little trouble killing the Silver Tuskers. I can only imagine how easy it is for 70+ players. When I was there today it had three packed fellows hunting. I saw a 48lv Crossbowman who it might have had a hard time there except he had a 109 mage as support. Every room had two players waiting for a spawn. Earlier I was holding one of the rooms solo and it was boring. I got the room because the fellow of 50 to 65 level players give it to me. It was nice of them to give me a spot to try and get to 50 but a single room was far to easy to hold. So why did the later people need a 60 and 79lv to hold one? The second I'm eligible for the fellows here I'll me moving to the 50+. Why hunt in a place to low for my level? Are these people lazy, fearful or just plain ignorant? Why hunt in a place far to weak for you to be at? It is sure not the xp. At 21k a shot it is not bad but there is a lot better, just up the road. Lazy, fearful, Ignorant Revisited I posted the above in the MT VN board and my alliance board. While not flamed I was not supported much. A lot of reasons for higher levels hunting low dungeons were put forth. The first was they may not have buffs. I mostly discounted this as I saw them two and three hitting the Tuskers. Some might fall into this but I feel it would be very few. Buff bot's have changed the way the game is played. For those who are not using buff bots I apologies. I remember hunting BSD at 60 with Fist, when it first came out. Without buffs even Guards will hit very hard. Higher-level places are full and are forcing people into lower ones. I'm not sure about the 50+ but the 60 plus was not as filled as the 45. The 70+ generally has nine to twelve people in it and the 80+ is mostly packed. This overfilling at the top may be forcing others down. It would be hard for me to gage as this is the first player I have had that is doing Tuskers full time. I play a player a lot different than a mule. Of course it was a holiday so there might have been more players there than normal. I did not hit the higher ones so they might have been filled to the brim as well. Most recommended that I hunt outside or go after Vapors. If this was a main player I would do just that. The advantage with that is you get loot as well as xp. With a mule all I'm interested in is getting him up to 80 where he gets Armor Tinkering. Then there is the "You cannot tell me where to hunt!" crowd. For that I readily agree. Still if you saw a teenager playing with a group of six year olds on the swings you would wonder why. The best rebuttal was from Fair Ellen. This is a great example on how to debate without flaming. Fist, With all due respect *bow*... I have heard you express this opinion before and I totally disagree with you. Where in the CoC does it say I am not allowed in a 50+ dungeon if I am 126, 80, 75, or 61? 50+ means just that, 50+. How can YOU grab some number over 50 out of the air and be indignant if a person over YOUR chosen number sets foot in that dungeon? I read 50+ as: 50 or over welcome, come and have fun, everyone! Different people have different styles of play in Dereth Fist. You are clearly driven to suck up xps as fast as you can. More power to you! Take a look at your sig! Fist de Yuma UA/Gimp (126)Gaerlan Slayer Fist de Mage Og Mage (126)Champion of Dereth Fist de Yuma Jr UA/Life (105)Gaerlan Slayer Deadeye Fist Tank Archer (70) Cliff's Carrier Cook (54) Dye,Alc,Magic Item Fist's Armorer BM/Tradesperson (48) This is a most impressive array of characters Fist. You have undoubtedly worked hard to bring them all to where they are. But I can't find much sympathy for you when you say that there were people in that dungeon that didn't deserve the xps as much as you did because they were too high a level. Or that your getting to 50 was somehow more important than their reason to be there. Did you ever consider that people go there with their friends of varying levels to have fun with their friends, or to see a different dungeon? Is this necessarily lazy...ignorant? Fearful?.... What's wrong with a more cautious style of play? What's wrong with wanting to hunt in a place where you are not out on the edge? As an individual I like feeling in control. I am very independent and it is important to me to be able to take care of myself. I don't want to have to disturb other people's time in Dereth to help me make a recovery in a tough spot. I don't want to have to ask people to replace items that I lost on a corpse because I was in over my head. Are you suggesting that it is only honorable in this game to hunt monsters/dungeons that give you the maximum xps and the maximum threat of death? Is xps all that Dereth is about and does it have to be the same for everyone as it is for you? My character Fair Ellen is my only character and she is 84. I have been in Dereth since April of 2000. I currently have one full time vassal and I have never had more than one vassal. I have been to the silver tusker dungeon once, and I was probably a level 75+. I went with a "brother", can't remember which toon he had, and it was our first trip to Tusker Island and our first time in one of those dungeons. Tuskers are hard on me, I'm an archer and I had never fought the tuskers on that island. I was very wary. I only have item magic and I don't have any VII's. As it turned out I could kill the silver tuskers easily and they didn't do much damage to me, but I had a good time! I looted my first nanners, got a tusk and more xps than I had ever gotten in an hour before. Later that night I invited my patron and my vassal to come, who were also never there before, who were also wary. But they had a great time too! Part of the fun was being someplace we had never been before, part of the fun was being with family, part of the fun was all the xps. It was an adventure for all of us. Now look at your sig again Fist and think of me. YOU would resent ME for taking xps from you in that dungeon? You are deciding how fun in Dereth is to be had and casting aspersions at people who have fun differently. Your words are harsh Fist. Fair Ellen Tank Archer Jojii Zhen Gai (The Order of Jojii) Proud Vassal to Asha'man Perhaps I have misjudged what people are doing there. In a way I hope I am wrong. Meanwhile I did make 50 and on my way to the 50+ dungeon. One thing experience has told me is the 60+ will me my limit for a while. The 70+ is brutal on mages.