3 Reasons Not To PVP in 2023

I PVP'd during chaos/order and during the early years of Factions.  Both were fun.  I did not PK and I was a little late for the halcyon days of Dread versus Anti. 

Here are the reasons:

1. You have to script or use 3rd party apps to be competitive
2. Very few mature PVP'ers
3. See number 1

Don’t PvP myself but saw what bots could do at last years Easter egg hunt.   The smarter ones could easily outperform any human player.  Amazed at how fast they were.  Don’t know if they were monitored or on their own.  They did not have to move or click on a mouse.  In the time it took a real player to do that they got the egg and recalled out to the next location.

Point 1: This is what @Yoshi is always mentioning here. It really seems pointless to try to PVP without other software or scripts. 

Arnold7 said:

Don’t PvP myself but saw what bots could do at last years Easter egg hunt.   The smarter ones could easily outperform any human player.  Amazed at how fast they were.  Don’t know if they were monitored or on their own.  They did not have to move or click on a mouse.  In the time it took a real player to do that they got the egg and recalled out to the next location.

I've been playing a thief 20 years so i'm pretty good at what i can do and i had trouble keeping up. Even standing still with their pack open i still had a 50/50 shot before their auto insure hit. This also applies to this years eggs as well. Don't forget the piles of auto attack characters in the Destard event too. 

These are only events. Now imagine those frustrations being an everyday issue in the 1 thing you love to do in UO and probably about the only thing that keeps you logging in. PvPers have and always will be treated like orphan kids nobody wants even though they're the ones buying all the loot.

dvvid said:Point 1: This is what @ Yoshi is always mentioning here. It really seems pointless to try to PVP without other software or scripts. 

I honestly think Yoshi falls under the last portion of my above statement.

I couldn't imagine being so frustrated and not being able to voice those frustrations because of a TOS in the only place a dev MIGHT respond. Like real protests, the only way to achieve change is to have open dialogue. 

AoS destroyed REAL PvP.  Now it is Suit V Suit with 3rd party so not much Human skill involved.

“Let me ask you a question.

if you visited uo.com and followed the links to buy game time code and site was down, maybe you send an email and you wait. Okay no response after many months, then still can’t buy game time code, then your house or castle turns idoc. You should be condemned for buying code from third party supplier?

quit demonising the housewives that just want to:
play a game

if you play in trammel it’s same subscription cost if you play in fel but they don’t fix fel bugs because??

stop criminalising players. We all love to play the same game”

Yoshi said:

"according to Pawain you don't need debuff for nervestrike so can PvP fine without autobox,

i look forwards to seeing him in the next tournament. I bet the final will be Pawain and Rorscharch...

since they are both top experts"

Will these programs give me faster reflexes or PvP skills and knowledge?

Or PvP is not about those things?  Its just your robot against mine?  

“I write bug report that missing debuff for nerve strike, you say it’s not bug 
so people must use script to auto box 

if there was debuff, you would be using your reactions to press trapped box macro,  

and not need to have it automatic.

you and Rorschach biggest problem that make people use 3rd party client, writing stuff and interfering with stuff when you never stepped foot in fel and have no plans to”

Yoshi said:

“I write bug report that missing debuff for nerve strike, you say it’s not bug 
so people must use script to auto box 

if there was debuff, you would be using your reactions to press trapped box macro,  

and not need to have it automatic.

you and Rorschach biggest problem that make people use 3rd party client, writing stuff and interfering with stuff when you never stepped foot in fel and have no plans to”

You do not write bug reports, you write reports to put down UO Devs and promote 3rd party apps.  You just like thumbing your nose at the Devs.

Very immature people i agree. would be nice if there was a dedicated pvp chat channel so the rest of use don't have to endure the never ding stream of "NICE DIE 3 VS 1 TURN THE SPEEDER UP, CHUGGER"

Damn, all this talk about 3rd party apps. Going have to google them. What one is better?

SaulGoodman1 said:

Very immature people i agree. would be nice if there was a dedicated pvp chat channel so the rest of use don't have to endure the never ding stream of "NICE DIE 3 VS 1 TURN THE SPEEDER UP, CHUGGER"

They can do this already but then they would have no one but themselves hearing it.  They are all 3 years old craving attention.

Rocko said:

2. Very few mature PVP'ers

“I am not really sure what you mean by this, could you elaborate?
are you meaning people trash talk?
if that is the case, I don’t experience any of it as
a) I don’t log into general chat
(b) my vision problem means I can’t read much over head chat) 
but people v rarely type things in overhead chat as they’re normally too busy fighting to multitask 

I think we enjoy a good rapport with rival guilds, if we lose a fight very often they will ask if we’re returning etc and we will say yes give us x mins or no we give up so people not waiting around for nothing. 

If a person can PvP without #1 & does not mind #2, my hat is off to you.  PvP is definitely about player skill whereas PvM is more about method, both relying on good equipment.  I do not see a solution for #1 coming from the players and #2 will never change.

I"ve never been more than a mediocre novice, and I"m embellishing here, pvp'r. But I'll chime in anyway. PvP will never be an even playing field, and no one wants it to be. Are you seriously telling me that after a 45 minute bok bok, spell spell,,run heal run heal..teleport..blah blah fest, opponents will suddenly stop all sweaty and say "damn that was great lets do it again"? hell no, someone always wants to win and winners will always find a way to win, and losers will always find a way to not be losers.

The most disheartening thing, at least for me, is that, out there, there is a whole world of Anti-Cheat programs developed so that Designers might be interested to use them in their games so as to stop players from cheating in those games....

Some Games make use of them and actually make life more difficult to cheaters, sometimes a whole lot, depending on what the Anti-Cheat software for that game is and what Third Party it can detect and stop from being used with that game Client, some other games do not....

Yoshi said:

"very few people are actually cheating,

broadsword have forced people to use this 3rd party stuff just to play without bugs,

additional unwanted stuff comes shipped with it"

This is an outright LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE.  Yes I am calling you a LIER.
If all the PvP guilds are requiring you to use illegal clients then every one of you ARE CHEATING including you.

" @Frodo , how many times should a player expect to die from bugs before they use third party?"

Yoshi said:

"very few people are actually cheating,

broadsword have forced people to use this 3rd party stuff just to play without bugs,

additional unwanted stuff comes shipped with it"

Hi Yoshi, this is untrue. I use the EC. I like it, I don't need or use any third party apps.  I know this is your forum theme but it is not true, no one is forced into 3rd party apps.

PlayerSkillFTW said:

However, nowadays, the scripts are simply too advanced and prolific, with even third party clients now running numerous scripts at once. As i saw cheating becoming more rampant in UO, i did say that eventually PvP would no longer mean "Player vs Player", but "Program vs Program". I refuse to use cheats, so have stopped frequently seeking out PvP in UO. I got my PvP fix through other games.

Exactly the same sentiments I’ve had for years & have been vocal on it. One of the worst decisions UO has ever made, imho, was to fold under pressure during the PunkBuster controversy.

Marketing information like this has been around for +20 years & why its been ignored is beyond me : 

“Recent studies show 96 percent of customers will not complain, and 91 percent will simply never return.”
- Feb 20, 2020

With the sheer numbers complaining over the years of rampant cheating in UO, I’m truly baffled why more hasn’t been done to address it. It time, just how many players one of the greatest online games has lost due to this will be a dire warning to any serious future game developers.

Acid_Rain said:

Exactly the same sentiments I’ve had for years & have been vocal on it. One of the worst decisions UO has ever made, imho, was to fold under pressure during the PunkBuster controversy.

With the sheer numbers complaining over the years of rampant cheating in UO, I’m truly baffled why more hasn’t been done to address it. It time, just how many players one of the greatest online games has lost due to this will be a dire warning to any serious future game developers.

I was against punkbuster as i still am. I don't remember any communication from whatever team was in charge at the time about what could be seen or flagged on the player computer. 

My biggest issue was the fact that i do enjoy some of the freebie shards like many others that play here and we all know it takes a non official assistant to log into these. We couldn't even get confirmation if having this assistant loaded but not running during play here would cause sanctions to our accounts or flat blocked from logging in. 

I am really sad when I think about UO and then hear about some other similarly old MMOs, such as Runescape. I will preface this with I don't play it, and never have, but I have several friends that do. It's a similarly old and skill based MMO. The main difference between UO and Runescape is: frequent updates/content and tough on cheating. Runescape does very frequent updates and also has an interesting system where they allow players to propose game changes (big or small) and then players can vote on it. If the voting passes, it is implemented to the game. Like other popular MMOs, they do massive ban waves of cheaters. This includes 3rd party client Runescape users by the way. I should mention that Runescape often has 100k+ active players. I'm just curious what UO would look like today if the devs actually cared about the game and gave it the attention it deserved. This is not bashing the devs, this is just a fact.

Think the big problem is Mesanna sees these players as just another subscription so doesn't care. She doesn't have the foresight to realize, as many others have said, that the silent majority of people just quit and say nothing. 

Constant regurgitated (and heavily botted) ToTs and letting these 3rd party programs run rampant will be the end of UO. Perhaps we can take a quick break from the new game and give your current subscribers some love @Mesanna ?

“A lot of people would not go back to playing 30fps game, or whatever it currently is (maybe less), after playing at 130”

Yoshi said:

"...Don't tell me its not true, when i have shown the links to the bug reports.

Also my forum theme? this suggests in itself this has been going on for a while..."

Linking bug reports does not reflect a compulsion to use third party apps.

“yes it does, there is no other solution to attunement bug etc using legal means (aside from using EC which is not same game)
nobody is going to play a game where you cast a spell and it casts the spell and then tells you it don’t do anything after you casted it lol..
How this got through any test?
and it don’t even tell you how much longer to wait so you rinse and repeat until death haha, why they would fix this in EC and leave it broken in CC?
publish 86 for EC:
Added a cooldown to the following spells: 

• Attunement
• Magic Reflection

they must not want anyone to play CC or it’s just not supported anymore

both these spells there are cool-down problems on CC and bug reports raised, as the game is letting you cast the spell with no effect instead of presenting you with the cool-down message like evasion”

"(how giving someone an unmanned email address to email bug report to isn't a form of trolling i don't know...)"

“You email report, you get email confirmation back instantly to confirm you submitted, then still nothing happen after 5 year.

it’s unmanned

there’s no evidence it’s manned,
anyone ever received an email back to say okay we’re looking into it or anything?
or request for more info or clarification etc
or even to say if something is working as intended?”

UO is an older game with an older player base.  In the short time I have played a lot of names I used to see here, I see no more.  Don’t think it’s because they went on to other games or just became dissatisfied with this one.  That’s just reality.  Even in its current state UO has all the elements it needs to continue, but just does not know how to put them together in a way to attract or maintain new players.  I don’t do third party programs nor do I do PvP so I can’t speak to those.  Nor, does succeeding interest me that much that I am willing to take the time to learn how to use third party programs, or spend the money or effort it takes to get them.   I use EC and it plays just fine except for the usual bugs, like targeting, that are mentioned here all the time.  Don’t really know the solution, but think it really requires some serious consideration to be given to the effects of past management decisions and maybe input from the player base.  Maybe start out with a in game effort for defining the reasons the player base isn’t growing. See the reasons mentioned in this forum quite often.  Maybe also define just what UO is, have never seen a consensis on that.

“ @Arnold7 you should not have targeting issues on EC please pm me, there is smart targeting with filters (that is not avail on CC) and that should fix issues”