HellRazor
Knight
sicron;720910 said:
I think this may be true in some cases. But you really have to dig a little deeper.
For instance, why do players macro mining? Personally, I think its because mining is boring and isn't very fun for most players. You spend a huge amount of time clicking mountains, several dozen hours at least, sometimes for months on end, and for what? To be able to get ore of a different color.
Then you combine this with the fact that a lot of players don't have months and months of game time to invest in clicking mountains. Its a system that practically invites someone to design a utility to make the chore easier.
I'm not saying it should be easy either, but I'm saying there could be a better (funner) way of achieving the ability to mine valorite that doesn't involve mindless brain-and-finger-numbing repitition.
Example: An extensive in-game quest that the player has to complete to learn how to find valorite. Or a scripted system that automates mining for players (i.e. lets their character mine while offline, or an in-game macro that will let the player's character mine until they log off or physically stop).
But if you're really set on just making them spend hours and hours mining, you have to expect that some players won't want to do that, and some players WILL pursue other options that are available instead of doing without valorite. It's human nature.
I think the players determine what the game is to be about. Often it doesn't turn out the way the developers originally intended, UO is living proof.
And overall, the players have been proven to prefer means of making some tasks easier. The massive sales of UOAssist, and the huge number of people using Razor and EasyUO, are a testament to this.
Any system that is based on the repitition and speed of mouse clicks literally gives these tools a reason to exist and prosper. I bet if one was to ask CEO why he developed EasyUO the answer would have something to do with being tired of sitting there clicking his mouse to do boring, repetitive tasks. This is one of the worst aspects of UO's design, and one that is not really repeated in any of the later MMORPGs because they learned from UO's successes and mistakes.
Short of totally redesigning UO there is literally no way to prevent this. There are dozens of tools out there (many not even designed for use with UO) that will let players automate mouse clicks.
The thing is, you need to live in the real world. No matter how anyone feels about it, the fact is, EasyUO, Razor, UOAssist, and many, many other utilities DO exist that do all of the things you wish they couldn't. These tools came into existance because UO has design issues that allow them to work, has system flaws that make them convenient if not necessary, and they fill a void that many players perceive to exist. And with Pandora's Box now open, if you vacate that void, something will take its place to fill the space in again (at least until UO's popularity diminishes to the point where no one bothers with making tools for it). There is literally nothing you can do about it.
CEO could stop development of EasyUO today, but the minute he does, someone else will be looking at making an EasyUO clone. It's really not as difficult as it may seem if you know the tricks. There are even open source tools out there that do many of the same basic things that EasyUO does.
I mean, I understand your frustration, but you should focus your energies on things you can effect rather than things you can't effect. I'd do some brain storming on developing server-side systems that will either cut back on the ability to cheat, or which remove the incentives. I'd also invest time in offering something else for players besides UO-standard stuff. UO *can* be improved and one of the great things about RUO is that it is open source. The sky is literally the limit.
Look at each system in your shard and ask yourself "is this fun" and "how could this work better"...then take action to maximize the fun.
There's the perfect world, and then there's the real world.
In the perfect world, none of these tools would exist and none of them would be necessary and every aspect of UO would be so fun that no cheats would be wanted.
In the real world, these tools DO exist, and many players DO want to use them. And they are difficult to track and impossible to block.
So if you really think they are that big of a problem on your shard, you need to look at the things you can actually do something about, because there is no sense getting too bent out of shape about the things you can't effect. We can all complain about 3rd party tools all we want but they are here, have always been here, and they aren't going anywhere.
