I figured i better make a news post about today's patch.
As always you can find the full changelog posted in bugs/suggestions.

After the overwhelming response to the magery patch, among others, it has been decided to remove the difficulty to gain for magery and a few other skills. This does NOT affect crafting skills.
HOWEVER, that means that the secondary solution has been put into effect.
Echo has graciously volunteered to be the bearer of bad news, and so any complaints with it go directly to him.
Suffice to say, the differences between the old and new systems are as followed:

Old System:
Affected only magery and a few other skills
Required you to do higher leveled attempts to get gains
Could be done macroing, but would take 4-5x longer than if done through normal usage of varied skills while playing(verified through testing, once a month, since the patch went in).

New System:
Affects all skills that aren't crafting skills
Does NOT require you to attempt higher level attempts, but as always higher level attempts do gain faster
Prevents almost all attempts at macroing up skills. Go play if you want to gain. Again, crafting skills are excluded. It will take you ages longer to raise a skill by macro than by playtime.

I was in favor for the system that didn't remove your option to macro for (a lot) slower gains, but apparently all everyone wants is faster gains, so you're now forced not to macro. Have a nice day.

Give the patch 2 weeks(as i always ask) before you get on your high horse and see if it actually affects you. Not just your feelings that something's wrong or that it won't work, play it, see, come back later and complain if it's valid.

Now as to why we took this measure:

Obsidian is not a gm in a day shard, but it is also not a gm in a year shard. Each skill (should) take approximately the same amount of worktime to gm. worktime is a little weird concept, but it comes out right.

For the past years all you hear people b**** about, and staff b**** about, is the following 4 things:

Gains are too hard
You have to macro
People are macroing and not doing s***
Make gains harder so people don't macro up a gm mage(or any of the other 5 buy-to-gm skills) in a week

In the past this locks you into a vicious cycle of players macroing, staff raising gains to keep the worktime the same, and players macroing more.

Now, As i said, i'm more in favor of a system where if you choose to macro, you can macro to gain a skill, but it'll take you 5x longer than if you play the normal way. The system that was in just now worked like that. Now there's a different system that is a little more harse on macroers, and it may take them 10,20, or even be impossible for them to gm skills if they are just macroing instead of playing.


You all are complaining, quite literally, that you want your cake and want to eat it too. You want low gains, you want to not have to work for your characters, and you want to be able to just have an isntantly gm character while claiming you "worked" for it because you sat in front of a computer reading a book or doing something else while a macro did the work for you.

So shush and give the patch a chance before you whine and see if it even affects you. I LITERALLY heard this conversation twice in the past month, one of them was last week.

Player 1: I finally got 20k of each reagent from reagent shopping. Took a while.
Player 2: Hey cool, why so many?
Player 1: Because that's the cost of a gm mage, now it's a few days of sitting around. Good thing i have movies.

I am honestly not making this s*** up. That is how 95% of people look at gm mages, as a buy to gm skill. If we wanted to embrace this concept like some of you are suggesting, we'd just put in stones where you can buy skills for gold or just put in a paypal button to donate for skills. And that is EXACTLY what half of you are suggesting we do in your complaints.

Obsidian is not that. Obsidian will not be that.

I reiterate what i said at the start.

If you are actually playing for your gains, this will not affect you. In fact it will probably make your life a tad easier because we can lower some of the gain rates again that broadband's kept high to "compensate" for macroing(yes meditation i'm looking at you).
If you are just bored as hell and reading a book and playing with the other hand just to keep staff off your back while your macro runs. This is going to screw you over.

And i'm going to be monitoring the script for any flaws that make it kick in when it shouldn't very closely over the next 2 weeks as well. If it does bug up and hits people when it shouldn't, i'll get it fixed.

Good news but I have a few questions. If I try to train my mage, what would be considered macroing? How does this new anti macro system work? Can I just not cast spells on myself? Any info would be great.

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ya, we need a kinda guide to what macroing is, is using UOloop at all macroing?
is it no AFK macroing ur forced not to do, or just plain macroing?

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king of the run on sentence.

No info is going to be provided. As with any system that is designed to monitor behavior, if it is known how it makes determinations one could then make a program to beat the analysis.

Suffice to say that the detection itself relies on many different things to be true to enforce it as macroing and will get updated as time goes on to reflect changes or inefficiencies in it.
If it makes a mistake, it will be on the side of thinkign you're not macroing, rather than falsly assuming you are.

That being said if you are actually playing the game, it will not affect you.
It's only the grey areas of how lazy can you be before you're not playing that it will matter on.

and in your post you mentioned gains,,,
does this make crafting gains any harder?
becaue i can't seem to gain even at 30.7 skill, ever since the resync i haven't recieved a gain ... see now would be a good time to know if its the macro system at work.... and maybe it bugged out to affect crafting skills also...

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king of the run on sentence.

So we dont know if uo loop is macroing? I thought it was ok to macro if you werent afk. Which brings me to my point. Why not just make an auto boot. When your afk say 2-3 min it boots you from the server. But idk that make more work. Just a thought

exactly what iwas thinking but w,e lmao
i dont get why stuff that isnt broken is being amped...

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king of the run on sentence.

IF.. i am hearing this correctly, your saying we can NOT sit and macro and talk to someone at the bank anymore if we want gains?

i dont understand WHY you guys have to make it a decision to either macro and not gain or gain and not macro.
i bet the biggest reason ppl dont stay on this shard when they first start was because they couldny afk macro, not saying thats right or wrong ...but you cant take away the TINY bit of macroing that is(or was) allowed.

i start to feel like your trying to piss ppl off more than make the shard better.

ppl were complaining about gains becuase on the OLD OLD system you could maco fireball to gm.
hence , less regs, less mana. then it went to having to use bigger spells to gain. and then you couldnt gain much cuz of mana it takes per spell went up.

I just dont see why we cant have DECENT gain rate and macro at the same time...its like we are being punished.

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Falin(ROT)-Bully
Galen Soulhunter(Deamons)-Money maker
Cutler-Worker Bee
Hook(Daemons)-Mild mannered reporter/Tamer
Mr.Obvious-SUPER Crafter

Yea i agree with Falin and as I've been talking to other's about the matter it seems like they all share the same opinion =/ Making magery a little more gainable is a good result but the macro thing =/

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Jimmy[Cult]-Pvp Warrior
Tristan[SOS]-Pvm Mage
Cilit Bang-Alchemist
Bruno Novak-Tamer/Fisherman

this is the same problem from the begining........

STAFF DONT listen to the players, they do wtfeva they want, yeha they make pools and discussing post but they barely care about players opinion.

THE OLD system was fine, all u need to do was fixed the bugs not change all, ok u did it , well players didnt like it ,they start leaving, u try new stuff didnt work , can we have the old system back free of bugs or at least most of them?, still dont get it what u want from players cus if the point is keeping it, well is not working they r leaving, if u r trying to make a better place well is not working, is not that we dont like change or dont wanna change, is just that most of the change SUCK , staff dont care they just do what they want or at least that the impression.


Now i agree with chips what is macroing, cus one time u say its ok next u say is not next u say u can macro but u cant do it in this situation, wtf.... is that " No info is going to be provided. " ur the one making the rules and u dont wanna tell us, so next time someone is "macroing" he get banned for something that wasnt clear.

the problem with the old system was the gains and always as been THE GAINS... slow gains, ppl get tired and leave, ok i got it.. they r slow so once u GM the skill u feel proud , ok i LUV that idea but putting slow gains in skills that for regular player take like 2 months to GM or MORE thats wack.

i dont wanna sound rude or anything or make ur work less, i know that is hard work and sacrifice of ur REAL LIFE TIME, but since GMbob took the full control of the scripts this shard is getting worse! for every 1 thing good(perfect) 3 things bad.

players MAKE shards !! and if u keep making wrong decisions this shard if gonna be empty... actually is empty ... player just keep coming because WE LUV THIS SHARD !! cus its special for us....


damn dude this shit make feel sad...... we did it ur way and is not working , maybe is time to do it our way players way..... player can make good decisions too and improves, staff and players can work together, read the forum its full of complains about this and that , that not the way of a better shard.


damn too much inside that need to get out.... lol

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Obsidian Characters:
Iori Yagami - The Old Fisher Of Obsidian
Yashiro - From Old School
Saga - Golden Wizard
Orochi - The Vamp Stoned
The Sorrow - In The Darkness were he belong
[ Merovingian's Dynasty ]


Click here to feed me a Star Fruit!
Get your own at Flyffables!

9 second healing delay? GM healing & 140 dex...63 anat...Surely that cant be right? Before the patch i was 7 when most where 4...How does that work?

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WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!

I just have to say why touch the skill gain rates at all?
I belive (after speaking to some ppl) the whole reason people stuck around on obsidian was because it wasnt one of these uo games where you can GM a skill within a hour. Skill gains imo were fine the way it was (except maybe med could of been a lil easier).
I also love the friendly/unfriendly chat people have at the bank as that is how you get to know people and make friends, then guilds form, then group hunt and even wars. Most people sit at the bank training up there mage, training anat, or sitting fighting each other to gain. Atleast this way people accually spoke.
Now there is no way of sitting at the bank and making friendships unless you just want to waste time doing nothing. If you want to train a character you have to be always out fighting in dungeons and stuff to gain. Atleast with the old system if you like chatting and making friends you can train at the bank. If you prefer not to make friends and get on with it you could go out and play to train.
There is pleanty of skills where people have to play to gain, such as mining and fishing, when you get bored of being in the middle of nowhere alone you log onto a fighter and train up with friends at the bank. What was wrong with that?
Bob some of the work you do is amazing and we all apprechiate it, but I think players need to be listened to ALOT more, we are just getting the player base back up and at this rate we will lose players all over again. At the end of the day what is a game without players?

Before everyone flips out we should see what kind of anti-macro script is in place.

Its not just magery azi, i sat at the bank training anat (by hand) no macros, and didnt get one single gain. Seems the only way to gain is to be poisoned and heal. With you not been able to poison yourself you cant train poison and anat together, u need either someone throwing pots at you or find a monster that will poison you alot.


p.s not sure if this has anything to do with this topic as bob said it dont effect crafting... But training scribe on pinky i just burnt throgh 300 scrolls and tons of regs and not got a single gain. I was training at vesper bank and out of town so no idea what is causing me to not beable to gain?!?!? I dont .skilltest and it wasnt saying i couldnt gain from it so i guess i can? also i was doing a pretty high circle scroll so should 100% be gaining.

I was just thinking about this a little...other shards use anti-maco scripts that can be manipulated to the players advantage. It might take 2 months to GM a skill through normal game play, but you can use techniques (such as the 8x8 method) to gm in about 3 days....I was thinking that something like this would work for obsidian, but after sitting for bit, I realized that even if techniques were found to increase skill gain, those techniques will be quickly removed by the admin here, be classified as an exploit,and might involve punitive action.

I honestly don't recall anyone asking for this extreme of measures...I just wanted to feel like my efforts to train were not being wasted. This almost feels like a punishment for complaining rather then something to make things better.

I'm going to hold off on much more comment until I actually test this system. It's going to be hard to overcome a preconceived notion that this is a crappy deal, but I'll do my best.