Fist de Yuma - June 3, 2003

Teamwork I had just got my Pincers and Tusk with Jr. Jr had and easy time with the 80+, which was a disappointment. It is the one great adventure of the month. I make it about half the time. This time the dungeon was so hunted I could almost run to the end without a battle. A while later I was doing the same with Deadeye Fist. I had my Pincers and was in the 70+ getting a Tusk. Abin logged on and asked what I was doing. He needed Tusks as well and ran to meet me at the Rampager. From there we decided to hit the 80+ and try our luck. I knew that Deadeye could kill Tuskers faster than Jr, despite being 31 levels lower. I have also noted that, for one on one battle, Deadeye is hit far less than Jr or Fist. This is despite having 50 points less melee defense. Where Deadeye has trouble is with more than one. In the 80+ you're lucky not to be fighting five or more. Nevertheless I figured it would be worth the attempt for Abin and me to do. Success is worth as much as a pincer for me and even more for Abin. There were a few people at the start. I was thinking this was going to be another disappointment. After that we had full spawns and no help. There is nothing stronger than a Mage/Archer team. Mage/Melee is very strong but the M&A team shines like no other. Abin and I would quickly clear anything that got in our way. We only had one iffy part. Just before we hit the last passage Abin got trapped. I had got all the way to the passage before noticing he was not with me. I sent him a message saying, "West". He told me he was trapped and in this place that is bad news for a mage. The Assaulters hit hard. Fortunately both of us had a good supply of gems so we could remove the Tuskers Gift. I have over a pack of gems I carry myself. I had two Monkeys in front of me. I could not see Abin on my screen or get a visual sighting of him. The way the Tuskers were running around one pillar I was sure he was behind it. I cleared my battle and raced to his rescue. He looked in total defensive mode by then, healing and draining. I quickly targeted the ones he had vulned and started clearing. After getting them down to three I cleared his back while he started blasting those in front. This battle was so long that I needed a few stamina elixirs to finish it. After Abin filled my stam tank back up we moved to the Tusk room. There it was easy as we could clog the passage and take them a few at a time. With my attack skills and Abin's Vulns we had it cleared in record time. This was how it should be, hard but not impossible. Abin's view After reaching that wonderful plateau I was talking to Fist who informed me he was going to do the tusks with Deadeye. This was perfect for me because I had done them with him previously so my timers were the same as his. I logged for a bit and came back on, finding out he was on the island already. I had just buffed and ported over. We did three of the tusks, the plated, assailer, and rampager. Each dungeon had people in them but there were a couple scary moments. When we were in the Assailer dungeon I got separated from Fist. Normally this wouldn't be a problem but I was surrounded on all sides by the monkeys who were using my head as if they were training for a fight with Tyson in his prime. I was holding my own but not really gaining any ground when Fist came back and saved my butt. With my vul's and his arrows the Assailers were falling quickly. We moved in and got the tusk and moved out. We didn't stay in any single place for that long. We did our best not to interrupt the players hunting in the places who were fellowing. Fist ported out as he had to log, I didn't have another gem on me so I decided to run back to town to turn the tusks in. After looking at Maggie's site I figured out which order to turn the tusks to max out the exp. I turned them in and got nearly 20 million all said and done. A nice chunk of my next level taken care of, at my rate of hunting that saved me about 3 hrs on the plains. John Kovacich's adventures I got the below letter from John Kovacich. He seems to have a nice hybrid archer that is used to great effect. My Archer will never have his life skills but he is showing how effective a hybrid archer can be for solo play. I seem to recall a column you had written about the phantom weapons and executors. I also think I vaguely recall that you felt the monster upgrades (especially missile upgrades) might make the phantom bow obsolete. Well the past week has been inspiring for me, and I would like to relate some with you. Out of boredom, possibly depression and excess time on my hands, having just been laid off, I decided to get a hollow and phantom bow, both in a single run. I set out with my level 88 archer and completed the low ore without a scratch. This certainly added to my feelings of invincibility. On the way to the high ore mine, I came across a lugian I had never seen before, took him down, and was now the owner of a soul staff. And as if that was not enough, within radar range was a sentinel who kindly gave me a small. So already it was a good trip. The trip was only slightly soured when I found the high mine a little too tough to solo comfortably, so I called on a vassal to join me, and the two of us breezed through. One of my favorite places to hunt is outside Nexus. It has been a favorite spot since before redistribution, and I am too stubborn to give it up, even though I can no longer traverse its hills and mountains solo as I used too (yet). One day, near the nexus portal I spotted an inquisitor guarded by several executors, hollow minions, various virindi and a rampager. Now I have already learned how to dispatch executors using martyrs hectacomb, but it is hard to take on large groups this way. The first in my sights was a Virindi Consul. They have soft bellies and go down swiftly. I quickly found myself surrounded with hollow minion, so pulled out some frost arrows. These were ineffective, until I imped them, at which point they went down quickly. Next were the executors, I had to get them to separate. I imped one to lure it away, he came with friends, but not all of them. I used martyrs hectacomb and killed the first, but quickly was too low on mana and stam to finish a second, so I switched to my new phantom bow and deadly chorozite arrows. I found that I did hit them, but at only 20 a shot with 40 crits, it would be very long and drawn out. Fortunately, in the mean time, I had recovered some mana and was able to switch back to my staff and recover the rest of my stam and mana, and imp the executor. Now he went down a bit faster. After polishing off the rest of them with a combination of martyrs hectacomb and phantom bow, the rampager went down without a whimper, and I faced the Inquisitor. I had always thought the red guy was mage only like the executors, but this is not true. My AR bow and slash arrows brought him down, while not quickly, there was never any question who was winning the battle. The next real test for the phantom bow, however, was when I was attacking a similar group of executors mixed in with paradox and pandemonium shadows. I was blindsided by cyrstal that spawned directly behind me and killed me with two shots. When I returned for my body I found a profatrix had joined the group. It took a long time to whittle the group down to just the profatrix left standing, and once I did, I found that he was semi-immune to my arrow attacks, so I pulled out the phantom bow and wailed away. He just stood there. His healing rate was higher than my ability to hurt him. This was not going to work. I imped him, small improvement. Now he had to cast a heal, but just barely. I noticed that the chorozite arrows were producing piercing damage, so I pierce vulned him. He went down like a load of bricks. In retrospect, since you cannot buff the weapon, debuffing the target makes perfect sense. Imp/vuln had the phantom bow producing damage like I am accustomed to with my regular bows and regular targets. I still prefer to use martyrs hectacomb to take out executors, but when I run out of mana, it is nice to have a backup plan. Now if only it were easier to switch weapons. With melee weapons, you simply change weapons, but with these bows, you sometimes have to unequip the bow, change the arrows then equip the new bow. Very inconvenient. Thanks for listening, Happy Hunting John Kovacich The Greater IB, lvl 89 archer, Leafcull This and That For most of this week I thought I would be publishing a short story here instead of my normal column. Then something happened that got me inspired to write the below essay. I'll not go into that but if you are a reader of the MT-VN boards you know what happened. It was a combination of immature players and my naivety. I really thought they would care. I love this game and most of the people in it. I would hate to see short-sided managers let the immature people destroy it. The points I'm making is very likely a total waste of time. Those that cheat are convinced of their right to do so. Those against it don't need any more motivation. Nevertheless it is something I had to get to get off my chest. One point I need to make. I do not condemn or even blame those who are in chains. This is Turbine's mess up, pure and simple. If I were to turn back to clock to 1999 I would be working hard to start a chain. There is an off chance that someday I'll join a chain. There is no punishment or even a stigma for doing so. Some of greatest players in the game are in or have been in chains. So why not? The macros are a total different story. Everyone knows they are cheaters and it is just a matter of how lucky or smart they are. Some are caught but most are not. With pass up many feel the risk is well worth the rewards. If they lose a 140+ player the can start macroing another one. Meanwhile everyone up the chain gains and only the one is at risk. AC at the Crossroads For me at least AC is all about fun. Never has a game held my interest like AC. I've been a game player for as long as I can remember. I was taught chess before the age of 10. I got my first war game, Tactic II, in the early 60's and currently have over 200 war games on my shelf. I would spend hours working out tactics and situations on the boards. I prided myself on versatility. I was known as the master of the fighting withdraw by some and the master of the blitzkrieg by others. The best thing about this form of gaming is the complete inability to cheat. The drawback is finding people to play against. I was introduced to role-playing games in the late 70's with AD&D. I was in Okinawa Japan at that time. I was lucky in that I was taught by some of the best players ever to play the game. Of course the full rules for AD&D were not out at that time. We used common sense and hints from the Dragon to create our rules. To our surprised, when someone shipped in with the new books, the new rules were almost exactly what we had been playing. Other than a few diehards who wanted things harder we loved it. To give you and example on the quality of play; We had a DM who was notorious at best. Standard saying was, "Larry is running a game, feel suicidal?" Larry always tried to make trouble for the group by tossing in real life problems that PPLs seldom find. It was also insured that there would be at least one overpowering monster that could finish off the group single-handedly. In this case the real life problem was the loot. We found a valuable rug. Of course a rug was very heavy and awkward to carry. We rolled up a piece of paper and stuck it between two figurines to show us carrying it. When the overpowering monster confronted us and we ran into a room. Without a thought we told Larry we were tossing down the rug in front of the door. When the monster charged into the room we yanked the rug out from underneath him. This resulted in one quickly dead monster. This is just one example of the fast thinking people we had back then. They could play any game better than any group I have ever seen since. Give us lemons and we did not just make lemonade, we planted trees and started a factory. I had one player who's only magic item was a cursed one. It was a gem of blinding. Instead of being mad at having a cursed item for a reward we put it in a box and blinded monsters with it in battle. It was shortly after that I learn how people can ruin a good thing with immaturity and greed. I returned to the states and was looking forward to expanding my circle of friends who played. What I found instead was large groups of players who never read the books. They thought themselves as Gods because they had players that looked like Gods. They did not understand the game or role-playing itself. It was all about EGO and how much better they were than anyone else, even if that power was unearned. They did not comprehend how poorly they played. Who cared that they did not create their player over months or even years of play. They make up some stats, had a friendly DM install God powers on them and they were set. This was not a problem overseas where the good players were. When a player like that sat down with real players they had the shock of their lives. Their lack of knowledge and their general unfitness to run the players was more a joke than a problem. They either learned to play or became the butt of everyone joke. I'll give you and example. I was playing with a new group of players. We had all rolled up new PPLs for this DM. In the first battle one of our members ran away, leaving a hole that almost got us killed. The mage had to pull a dagger to plug the hole he left. I was in a bad mood so after the battle I quickly killed the coward that created the problem. He was crying that he was only a first level. Of course it did not hit him that everyone was a first level. That was my first exposure to Ranger Bob. Ranger Bob was new to the island. He came in with the stateside God players but did not know much about the game. He quickly became a joke. He would do something very stupid, someone would toss a note to the DM, and shortly after his player would die. I was on a different base at this time and did not know about Ranger Bob. I would ride my bicycle to play on the other base when I could. I had trained my own group of players at my base they were great. I might go into them someday. There was a big going away party for a few friends. We had just got the Giant modules and I was asked to run our group through them as a final game for the ones leaving. We had around 20 people playing and planned for 18 hours or more. We had just started and LT tossed me a note. The note said, "Paranoid check on Ranger Bob." Remember every time he had died it was when someone tossed a note to the DM. Other than my one forgotten killing of Bob weeks before I did not know him. I said, "Who is Ranger Bob?" He raised a shaking hand over his head and said with a cry in his voice, "I am". I looked at the note, then LT then Bob and said, "That's cold. Here Jeff, read this." I tossed the note to Jeff. Jeff read the note, looked at me, looked at Bob, looked at the LT and said, "That's cold." He handed the note to the next person who repeated the performance. This went around the table, all 19 people, who did the exact same thing. When the note came back to me I tossed it into the pile and restarted the game as if nothing had happened. We played for half an hour more and no one said a thing about Ranger Bob. Of course Ranger Bob is in tears. "What is going to happened?" he kept saying. Finally I took pity on him and let him in on the joke. In the end the Ranger Bob's of the world got even with me. When I returned to the states I found the entire AD&D scene run by Ranger Bobs. They were immature, unknowledgeable and filled with themselves. Other than one hard-core crowd in San Francisco I never was able to find a group that even bothered to read the books. I see a lot of that in AC and gaming in general today. Cheating is widespread and those that cheat feed on the chaos they cause. Many online games have been pushed to the point of extinction because of cheaters. Working to become a good player is too hard, better to cheat. My first exposure to cheaters came in chess. Before AC I was online playing chess and talking to chess players as much as I play AC today. A year after I started playing the cheaters started to be recognized. We even had close to world class players exposed as cheaters. Fortunately the cheaters were not hard to catch. All games are recorded and can be examined by anyone who chooses to. Programs were created to review and ascertained if it was a person or a program that played the game. The hard ones to catch were the ever-so-often cheaters. Cheating came in several forms. At first it was disconnections. The internet was not as stable as it is today and disconnects were common. The cheaters would hang up when losing, with the hopes that the game would not count. The game could be restarted at the point it stopped, if the cheater would agree to that. Of course they did not. They hopped that the other player would just resign or ask for a draw. We had to have monitors decide who won the games based on the position. To stop that they created a flag for the abusers. If they disconnected it was an auto loss for them. I played and beat people who were extremely poor players. They would ask for a rematch. In the second game they were far better than me. They either used a computer for the second game or had someone play for them. In any case I had to refuse rematches after a time. I had to ask myself why? What gain is there to cheating? Why do people wear war metals they never earned? Why lie about winning when you lost? Maybe I'm different but I've never even thought that cheating would gain me anything. What is the point of winning if you have to cheat? To me cheating is an admittance that you are not good enough to win. You are so bad that you will not even attempt to win on your own. Lets get to AC and cheaters. Some cheating has not affected us much. Duplication created server instability for a while but it was quickly repaired. Unless you were selling on E-bay most of the duplicated items had little effect on people in general. Where cheaters really hurt is in game goals. Why do people play AC? Some to relax and either play solo or are social players. Cheaters did not affect them much. When your game is social or your hunting is unaffected by others then you're mostly safe from cheaters. Then there are those who want to be the best. These are your type "A" personalities who want to strive for power and reconciliation. We had many players of this type when the game started. While some had their bad days for the most part they benefited the game. They created the first big alliances and created massive interactions between players. They had big EGO's but they deserved it. It was smart hard work that gained them their power. Then the cheaters saw that these hard working players had something they did not have and they wanted it. Rather than do what they did, work at it, they cheated. Macros and other exploits were the result. Of course they did not get what the first power players got. Instead they pulled down what the first power players had. There was no more recognition for making a high level player because there are players that are 150lv with less than two months real time. A group created several 140+ players in less than a month and a half. One was 150+ with 32 real life days. Over 32 days he had a 97% online rate. Tell me he did not macro. Several other players made 140 off the pass up. At one time Turbine published a list of the top players stats. It was a point of pride to have worked hard on something and made the list. Now any new player can join a chain and be three times higher than the top of the old list in less than a month. So what goals is there for the power type "A" player. Answer is none. Most of them have left. Those that have stayed have to cheat to stay on top and find it more work than fun. This belittles their accomplishments. What is the goal today? So the cheaters have driven out an entire class of players. What other damage have they done? AC has the reputation in the gaming community as the home of cheaters. How many people have wanted to play an online game and been directed to DAoC or EQ because AC is just for cheaters. Some have blamed the current malaise of AC2 with the reputation of cheaters. I will not go that far. AC2's problems are far deeper than that. Still it had to hurt. The people I blame for this mess are Microsoft and not the players. We did not allow the Ranger Bobs to take over our AD&D game but MS has allowed them to take over theirs. MS/Turbine is not stupid even if they act like they are. They have to understand the broken window syndrome if nothing else. The Broken Window Syndrome is a simple concept. A building with no broken windows or windows that are repaired as soon as they get broken will not have many broken windows. If one window is broken, and not fixed, in a short time all the windows will be broken. There is some debate as to why this is. One thought is that people figured if the owner does not care about the repair of the building why should they? On a bigger scale New York lowered crime by repairing the broken windows. Crime was so great in NY the small crimes were ignored. They felt putting resources into catching the big criminals would be better than worrying about the small ones. Then the Mayor decided to fix it. They cracked down on all crime, not just the big ones. To everyone surprise, except the Mayor's, all crime dropped, not just a little but a lot. One theory is that the small time crooks were also the big crooks. By taking them off the streets they prevent the big crimes from taking place. Other theories hold that it just showed that someone cared. Respect for the law returned. I think that AC is the best game out there. I have studied the other games. I have listened to those who have played them and did a lot of reading. Overall AC is far better for most people. And yet AC has the lowest numbers. Even DAoC, who should be more competition for EQ than AC, has bigger numbers then we do. As it started years after AC we cannot use that excuse. From my being burnt on the MT-VN board the other day it could be that cheaters and exploiters have hit critical mass. That means the majority of player could well be cheaters or in full support of cheaters. I hope that is not the case. With more and more online games coming out AC is at a crossroads. Soon someone will create a game as good as AC but with no cheaters. That has not happened yet but it is only a matter of time. At that point they might as well shut down the servers and start the layoff.