Rewarding Greed in UO ..... all PAS please read this!

[KDSonoma]

*gets on his soapbox*

Im always disappointed when UO adds something new ingame that rewards selfish, greedy behavior.

Most of you who were here when the peerlesses started know my rant back then about the fact that groups of players were farming multiple sets of keys, then doing back to back to back peerlesses, blocking others from doing them.

I thought UO should have made 5 or so "instances" of each peerless so that 5 groups could fight that champ at once, allowing plenty of options for back to back without blocking others.

I chided PAS members back then that tried to do back to back peerlesses by being sneaky about it, trying to block others by dropping keys before others could to start one.

The problem was created by UO .. they rewarded people that did that, and they made the rewards so great that it enhanced the selfish play and rewarded selfish, greedy players with not only chances for cool stuff, but much cooler stuff than had been seen ingame before (crimsons, etc).

But even though that problem was created by UO, that didnt mean our folks needed to act selfish and greedy, and I saw a real ugly side of some PAS in those times.

Well its happening again, and I need to post something so everyone knows exactly where I stand on this.

This Melissa quest has done a few good things. UO has encouraged (to an extent) cooperation to kill her and do the quest. Thats good. They have given everyone their own loot from the monster based on damage done ... thats good, it gives everyone a chance at something.

But what it encourages is greedy, selfish game play in this sense: If I am trying to maximize my damage on melissa, and someone dies, I stop and res them so they get back in the fight (PAS or otherwise, anyone other than zogs). I dont expect everyone to do that, but I expect everyone to make that attempt and to do it often.

And if its a PAS that dies, I expect every PAS to stop and res them, even if it takes away from your possible loot.

Why? Cause thats what good guys do, and we are the good guys.

I have watched and not commented ingame at Melissa, and have witnessed several situations where small groups of PAS didnt stop to res anyone till they looted the champ, and even then they were pretty complacent about ressing others.

I know that some of you have camped those spots, and have had non PAS idiots not res you when u died, so u were paying them back, and in some cases those idiots deserved that kind of treatment.

But realize how that makes us look when we dont res others .. when we put loot first. Thats not how we play.

I havent said anything, and I wont name names, because I wanted to give this a few days before I jumped to any conclusions.

So here's a quick edict and a promise. I will be going there from time to time, sometimes on PAS chars, sometimes not, sometimes visible, sometimes not. If I see any PAS exhibiting selfish and greedy behavior, I will talk to them privately in vent, in icq, in a party, etc. I will warn them that their behavior is not consistent with what PAS stands for. And I will be brutally honest with them that if I see them continuing that behavior, they risk demotions and other penalties up to and including booting from PAS.

I take this stuff very seriously.

The only exceptions to this are zogs (any member) and Sir Scott. Scott is a zogs sympathizer and has been labeled as such from PAS. PAS are not to help him ingame in any way. I'm not going to boot someone for ressing him, but I will talk to that PAS and let them know ressing or otherwise helping Sir Scott is eqivalent to helping a zogs ingame in my view.

If you are personal friends with Scott, help him on a non PAS char, but please dont do it on your PAS char. And never ever help a zogs. thats an even bigger no no.

Any other guild we will help ... that includes all the fel guilds. Even if we fight them one minute and are at melissa the next, I expect PAS to res and heal and help other players at Melissa.

I know there are people abusing the new char situation to take advantage of Melissa, and some are asking you to add them to your party so they get looting rights. I dont expect you to do that, because we dont encourage people abusing the game. but its hard to know whether that crafter looking character is a new char of someone trying to abuse the game play for their advantage, or if it happens to be a KD alt that just has no skillz *smiles*.

So be careful in jumping to conclusions.

Please pass this on to others you see, ask them to come read this on our forums.

AND PLAY NICE. Remember that some people may only see 1 PAS in their UO lifetime. it may be you, and how you act to them ingame will determine how they view all PAS forever. So be the nice guys that we are.

And have fun!

KD

[AshOfCaine]

As an example of karma paying off, I had let someone party up to try and get credit for Melissa (doesn't work BTW). Being on a tamer at the time, I was free to rez one person and then another ghost popped up, so went to rez them and while rezing 3 people (I fizz a lot) Melissa dropped. I kept rezing (fizzing) away while the person I had partied looted and pulled a crimson off of the corpse.

Not to say I am a saint, as the night before I was guilty of being less than helpful towards players that were harassing me, and that night I was killed and a Balron looted something that I hadn't insured.

If I am there I maybe a little slow as KR gets laggy when too many people (why I can't do Doom on tamer) so hard to grab a bar or may have to switch suits. Only thing that keeps me from helping at times is if mine is only dragon there, because if he falls everyone will die.

So not so helpful and I lost an item vs being helpful and got my first crimson, coincidence or karma is up to the individual. Me, I believe in karma.

[Lord Drakelord]

I normally try to get people res before the lady M drops. Sometimes I busy with getting the pet back before I do that as many times when my pet is down and I am resing folks an imp or worse spawns on top of us. So if you see me standing next to a ghost pet, know that I am trying to res that pet back first before I res you so we have some sort of protection.

As for looting, alot of times I am resing folks when it drops so it a minute or two before I get to it. So I will not party with folks down there unless I know them very well. There been times I have turn a invite down during the spawning of Lady M because I do not know that name.

Also there been times I just do not see the ghost till just before Lady M drops and I go dang, stop shooting ebolts and hit med to get mana up to res them, good thing that new suit has mana regen 2 on it.

However if I see you fall, I will alert others that you are down or try to get to you, if there is a paragon near by you have to come to me. Being I am set for run any movement from me will cause my death as well.


As for Sir Scott, he has res me many a time before and I will res him if he comes to me for aid as I am returning the favor. Its only fair that I do since I am "one of the good guys". However ZOG will have to crawl out of the dungeon as I will not res a ZOG member.

[Atta Kquast]

I have been outta town since this whole thing started (just back today *waves*)...but this is the EXACT reason i dont goto doom any longer (as Atta).

Mages have always been the characters to ress and keep the other chars alive in the gauntlet. And rarely are players truly x-healing, since the staple template these days are sampires or stealth archers. (yes I know there are exceptions, remember the soap box is out so generalizations apply). With archers, generally they may not have healing or cannot afford the mana to chiv heal close to other players, or are on the constant move. With necro, healing is abandoned for spirit speak. With bushido it focuses on the self with confidence and evade. Rarely do you ever see necros carrying healing/anatomy with the idea to help mates. There are exceptions but generally rare.

I think the power and allure of being one of these chars (in general) and the EA design of effectively making these chars so they abandon group play (heal/ress i mean), AND the odd decisions over item based loot has created alot of this problem. Spellweaving with gift of renewal is an exception to the above, but spellweaving into the sampire or archer worlds is very rare...so its funny for EA to nerf arcane focus a bit, and not address the necro item issue. Which I think is a larger problem, but isnt a problem for the majority. So its either build an archer or sampire and joining the machine, or get frustrated by it trying to play underpowered/outdated templates, or avoid the areas altogether.

Yep this arguement if FULL of holes, but thats the fun of soapbox.

Oh and as for naming names of, its not what im good at, but there are more greedy and selfish folks out there than I can remember in the past couple years (since AoS). But if it walks like a wolf, talks like a wolf, and smells like a wolf, it might be a wolf. MOre FOr us to watch out for and avoid.