UO Blog - The Trammel/Felucca Dilemma - March 10th, 2009

Almost daily we can find discussions about unconsentual PvP in UO on public message boards. Some think that murdering other players is an essential part of the game (risk vs. reward), and those are mostly UO veterans. Others spend all their time in Trammel and do not want PvP (player versus player combat), and those are called "Trammies". And a lot of players are somewhere in between. This debate is almost 10 years old. And still nobody has come up with a decent solution to favor both sides. Until today.

What is the dilemma? The dilemma is the choice you have to make:
1. Stay in Trammel, lead an item-centered life without risk and challenge, and with limited community spirit.
2. Go to Felucca, expose yourself to unbalanced PvP and people who mass-murder without consequences.

Before I start to analyze and explain some interesting ideas, let me take a brief look back at PvP history in UO. (You can skip this chapter if you already know UO from the very beginning.)

Content:

• The History of PVP in Ultima Online
• Conclusions
• Fresh Ideas
• The Witness System
• Criminal Record
• Decaying of Crime Record Entries
• Consequences for Having a Crime Record
• Details About the Witness System
• Detectives
• Punishment
• Final Statement
• Merging Trammel and Felucca?
• Conclusion

The History of PVP in Ultima Online

• November 1997: UO was released. There was no Trammel and no Felucca. Just one Britannia for all. The original philosophy was that players should have the freedom to choose between good and evil and govern themselves. The influence of technical game rules should be kept at a minimum.
• Nowhere was completely safe, you could be murdered and stolen from almost anywhere at any time.
• A Notoriety System ranging from -127 to +127 points allowed players to distinguish good from evil. The notoriety was shown in a character's title and the color of his name (red=evil, gray=neutral, blue=good). Killing red would increase the notoriety, killing blue would decrease it.
• Monsters were red, animals were gray. Healers did not resurrect red characters; they had to resurrect each other or go to the Chaos Shrine. Red characters were not allowed to enter towns.
• Murderers grouped in guilds, visited popular hunting spots, killed and looted everyone and quickly returned to their home towns. Retribution was hardly possible.
• Anti-PK groups of blue players were established. They often were too slow to catch the murderers. Active murderer-hunter groups emerged.
• The typical player would rather avoid murderer confrontation and try to escape instead of fighting them. Thus, Magery (for recalling) and Hiding were popular skills for any adventurer.
• Large groups of players were able to overcome town guards and undermine security in these places.
• Looting other players was not a crime. Often, blue characters would loot other player corpses without consequence. Trapping players and helping monsters to achieve this goal was a popular practice.
• Large numbers of "death robe thieves" frequented towns and dungeons to steal from players.
• A Bounty System allowed players to turn in a murderer's head and receive a bounty, which had been cumulated with the evil deeds of a murderer. However, the system was too weak and often abused.

• 1998: Adjustments were made to the system to counter some of the scams.
• Area effect spells were not allowed in towns anymore.
• Town guards killed agressors with one hit and learned to teleport.
• Players are flagged as criminal (i.e. going gray) for 2 minutes after committing a crime. They could be freely attacked by anyone without consequence.
• The Notoriety System was replaced by the Reputation System. The player title now depend on Fame (power) and Karma (good/evil). This had no real consequence for gameplay, but rather for roleplaying. NPCs would deal with players differently, depending on their reputation.
• To reduce rampant murdering, Stat Loss was introduced for red players. If a red player died, he would permanently lose a percentage of his stats. A lot of murderers quit the game over this change. Mass murders hardly happened anymore in UO.
• A while later, Stat Loss was abolished and Murder Counts were implemented. A player would go red after cumulating 5 murder counts. A murder count would decay after 5 hours of playing.
• Short- and long-term murder counts were invented. With long-term counts you'd become a murderer (red). Long-term counts would decay after 20 hours of gameplay.
• Thieves Guild was created. Only thieves in that guild could steal from players. However, they could not initiate combat and can be killed without consequence. They were allowed to defend themselves, though.

Over these changes, many old players left UO while the game became more friendly to the unexperienced players. Subscription numbers increased significantly (approximately from 100,000 to 250,000). To improve the protection of new players, a young status was granted to new accounts.

• 2000: The world was split into Trammel and Felucca.
• Felucca was mostly abandoned, as many old players left the game for good. Communities and big guilds broke apart and vanished.
• The new generation of players advanced in the safety of Trammel and never went to Felucca.
• Thievery and non-consensual PvP practically died, and thus died the original philosophy of UO: The moral freedom.
• The subscription numbers increased.
• As everything could be done in Trammel now, a big part of social interaction in UO was lost: Players grouping to guarantee safety, or to assault other groups of players. Players did not necessarily need to stick together anymore. Instead, those who wished to PvP stayed in Felucca (a small minority). The rest of the players went to Trammel and stayed there.

At a later time (after the release of Age of Shadows), item insurance was introduced. Death lost significance. Powerful items were brought into the game, and now they could actually be used without any risk. This established a large entry barrier for players who wanted to PvP. You could only compete in PvP if you had the best and most expensive equipment. At the same time, risk and thrill of PvP were completely gone, as no valuable items could be lost. Gameplay changed; items became the most important aspect of UO. Instead of socializing, people becan to focus on searching for better items.

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Conclusions

Richard Garriot's vision of a community was implemented with the Early UO. Step by step, these freedoms were stripped away to increase subscription profits. Superficially, it did work out. Many players had been annoyed by the rampant PKing. With the anti-PK changes, the subscription numbers increased while PKs were indirectly evicted from the game. However, many players left for more challenging MMORPGs, and many new players are not interested into a gaming world, where the biggest risk is slaying a peerless monster with predictable AI, and where people focus on collecting items.

What we had back in the Early Days of UO was not really social freedom, but a flawed system. Garriot's vision did not work out, as the system was exploited to a massive extent and allowed almost unlimited player griefing. However, the changes that were made to solve these problems created a whole lot of new ones! They flipped the coin by 180 degrees and established a world of so-called "Trammies" without any risk, without consequence, and without significance. While during the Early Days, UO was dominated by PKs, today it is dominated by item-hoarding "care bears". Social interaction between players is mostly limited to item gathering and item exchange. UO has become more like "The Sims" and less of an RPG.

To my opinion, the rampant PKing should have been countered with more intelligent solutions. PK switches, safe zones, and world splitting are no good measures to solve the PK problem. Players should be given more realistic in-game tools to govern themselves. Being a criminal should be possible everywhere in the gaming world, but it also should have serious consequences depending on where and how the crime was committed. Just "being red" is not really a serious consequence. Also, players should have the possibility to choose the amount of risk they're exposing themselves to, without having to abandon important game content. However, they should not have the possibility to switch off that risk completely.

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Fresh Ideas

I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't already thought about possible solutions. The whole system cannot work with the Trammel/Felucca split as it is today (more about the Trammel/Felucca merge in the last chapter of this column). The center point of my thoughts was, to make the system more realistic and more adventure-like. The basic ideas are:

• No more big difference between Trammel and Felucca.
• Committing crimes is theoretically possible anywhere.
• However, committing a crime will have long-term consequences.
• If there's a witness (NPC or "good" player), the criminal is in trouble.
• Detectives can catch players with a criminal record and put them into jail.
• If a criminal is caught, he will be punished according to his crime record.

In the following, I will elaborate on the features of such a system:

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The Witness System

If somebody steals from you in a dark alley in Britain, he probably would get away with it, unless you hunted down the thief by yourself. However, if he'd be trying to steal in the center of town and there's a witness around (both players and NPCs count as witnesses), he'd receive a long-term mark on his criminal record and can get arrested. If you go down into Covetous Dungeon all alone and get murdered, the murderer will probably get away with it without a serious consequence, as there was no witness. However, if you're a group of players (potential witnesses), the murderer would be reported and would receive a mark on his criminal record. Thus, if you wander around in the wilderness all alone, the risk of being victimized is much higher as it would be if you'd stay on the safe roads (which are frequented by NPCs and players).

As you can see, there is no totally safe zone anymore, but you as a player have realistic possibilities to minimize the risk extremely. Murderers and thieves can still exist, but they have to be more sneaky and more careful (no more mindless killing anywhere anytime). Of course, the criminals can be punished in a way that has a real consequences for their gameplay, however without ruining their playing style. More about punishment, see below.

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Criminal Record

Each character has an individual criminal record. It will contain your personal reputation and crime rating. Your crime record determines your title, and the consequences/punishment in case you get caught. All entries will be added to a total amount of points, which determine the severeness of punishment in case you get caught. The following entries can be made on the criminal record:

• Felonies: Severe crimes you committed, like murder. A murder counts 10 points.
• Crimes: Lesser crimes like thievery, looting a blue corpse, or killing an NPC. A crime counts 3 points.
• Suspicions: Crimes (murder, looting, theft) without any witness. Unreported crimes. A suspicion counts 1 point.
• Previous Convictions: Number of previous jail times (only 2 or more weeks in jail count).

Killing, looting or stealing from red players do not count as a crimes. A player can check his personal criminal record anytime.

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Decaying of Crime Record Entries

• Previous Conviction: Decays after 6 months.
• Felonies, Crimes, Suspicions: Decay after 3 months.

As you can see, a criminal will have to deal with the risk of being caught for a few months! The total number of points you accumulated will change your life: The more points you have on your crime record, the more insistently you will be hunted down for prosecution and the more severe your punishment will be. This will limit your radius of movement and will make your in-game life more challenging. Conclusion: Crimes can have severe consequences, but do not destroy a criminal's play style!

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Consequences for Having a Crime Record

• 30 points or more: The popular areas in cities are restricted for you. Guards will arrest you if you stay in the vicinity of city banks.
• 50 points or more: You cannot enter cities anymore, or you will be arrested by the guards.
• 80 points or more: Avoid the vicinity of cities, guard towers and moongates. If you enter these areas, you will be arrested by guards, if they are called on you. You will highlight red and can be freely attacked by any player.
• 120 points or more: The wilderness and solitude is your home. NPC detectives patrolling the roads and dungeon entrances will arrest you. Access to the first dungeon levels is restricted.

A notorious criminal will have to move his house into the wilderness. He cannot show his face in public places anymore. He has to retreat to his secluded home and be very careful.

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Details about the Witness System

Crimes will only be registered in your criminal record, if there was a witness. Witnesses can be NPCs or players with no previous convictions and less than 20 points on their own crime record, who are alive and unhidden within 20 tiles of the crime scene when the crime happened. It does not matter if the witness was killed afterwards or not. Ghosts do not count as witnesses. To ensure the relative safety of roads, NPCs will frequent the roads of Britannia. The well-known gypsy camps that sometimes spawn in the wilderness, as well as wandering healers or other NPCs will count as witnesses as well. Hired NPCs do NOT count as witness!
If there was no witness around, you will receive a Suspicion mark on your crime record, which does count much less than a regular crime. Also, players can choose whether they will be counted as witness automatically, or not (in case they want to support criminals). However, if they choose not to be a witness, they will highlight grey to everyone and receive 1 suspicion point each time a crime was commited in their vicinity.

For your own safety, you should go on adventures or gather ressources in a group, or in areas that are populated by players or NPCs. Otherwise, clever criminals may sneak up on you and attack you when there's no witness.

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Detectives

You can actively fight crime by registering as a Detective in the Intelligence Office in Britain. The prerequisite is a Forensic Evaluation Skill of at least 50, a criminal record with less than 20 points, and no Previous Convictions. You then will receive the title "Detective" and can arrest criminals. Detectives are players who can prosecute a criminal anywhere, if they have picked up their trace. By using the Forensic Evaluation skill, they can examine a victim's corpse and thus find out the name of the murderer or looter. This means, a victim can call for a detective to examine the crime scene and hope he gets there in time (before the corpse decays). A detective can also examine a player who has been stolen from. The criminal will receive a notificatin when he has been identified. The identified criminal will highlight purple to the detective until the record of this crime has decayed (which will take 3 months). If the detective finds such a criminal, he has to say "I arrest thee" and target that person, who then will go to jail immediately to receive his punishment.
A detective cannot evaluate NPC corpses, only player corpses.

A detective will receive a blessed "Wanted" poster for each criminal he has identified. He can lock those down at his house, and everyone can check them out to see who the criminal is. The poster will have a timer; after 3 months it will decay. A detective can make 2 copies of the poster and hand them out to other detectives, who then will be able to arrest the criminal as well. If a wanted poster is locked down at a house and has the access level "Anyone", up to 2 other detectives can make copies by themselves and try to arrest the criminal (given that the owner of the posters hasn't made copies yet).

After a number of successful arrests, the detective will receive a random character-bound reward. These could be certain pieces of useful equipment, a special title, or a special weapon limited to detectives only.

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Punishment

If a criminal is caught by a detective or by the guards, he will go to jail immediately. Depending on his crime record, he will receive certain punishment. After the criminal has served his sentence, he will be let off with probation and his criminal record will be wiped clean, but receive an entry called "Off with Probation". This entry will decay after 4 weeks. If the person who was let off with probation commits another crime during that time (i.e. receives 3 or more points on his record), he will immediately go to jail for another week, and his "Off with Probation" entry will be renewed. This method should take notorious criminals out of business for a while.

Types of punishment:

Jail
Each criminal who is caught, goes to jail. The sentence depends on the points on his crime record (1 real life day for 2 points). Each time you were sent to jail for 2 or more weeks, you will receive 1 point in your crime record for Previous Convictions. For each point of Previous Convictions, your jail time will increase by 10 days (which will also have consequences for Bailment and Expropriation).
Characters who go to jail can actually be visited in the Yew Prison. They will be locked up there without the ability to leave.

Bailment
You can shorten your jail-time to a minimum of 2 weeks by paying a bailment of 200,000 gold coins for each day you want to reduce your jail time. You cannot reduce your jail time below 14 days.
For example, if you were caught with 62 points on your record, you would go to jail for 31 days. You could reduce your jail-time to 14 days if you would pay an amount of (31-14)*200,000 = 3,400,000 gold coins.

Expropriation
If you get arrested for 30 days of jail or more, everything the character carries on him or in his backpack while being arrested will be confiscated and demolished (exception: blessed items). Tamed pets will be left behind and will most likely be lost.

Pillory
If you get arrested with 50 points or more, you will be sentenced to public pillory. This means, the character will be pilloried by the Britain bank for 2 hours, where people can actually throw fruit and cabbage at him (this will work similar to the dart board game). The pillory schedule will be published at the bulletin board by the bank.

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Final Statement

A system like described above would solve most of our problems (both evicting murderers from the game, and making UO a riskless simulation game) and have lots of advantages:

• Trammel/Felucca split and murder count system all had the disadvantage that you have to choose between total risk and no risk, good and evil. There was nothing in between. This new system would merge the playstyles without the possibility of rampant player griefing.
• Good players will not have to fear massive griefing, but experience a slightly higher risk and much more social interaction on their adventures.
• Evil players will not be deported to a parallel world or evicted from the game anymore. Instead they will find their niche and their challenge in the universal gaming world of UO.
• The more crimes you commit the more severe are the consequences. There is a huge difference between someone who commits 10 and someone who commits 100 murders. The more crimes you commit, the more difficult life will be for you. There's no more black and white (or red and blue).
• Mass murdering will lead to severe punishment. An evil player can choose from how much risk he is willing to take.
• If you commited a crime, you cannot get away with it anymore. Instead, you risk being caught for 3 months after you commited the crime.
• Good players can minimize their risk by avoiding certain locations or traveling in a group. You still can go on adventures alone, but you have to be more careful.
• Mass-murdering, mindless killing of newbies, repeated player griefing and PK guilds who control whole dungeons will no longer exist. Instead, criminals will have to be very sneaky and careful.
• No more death robe thieves swarming city banks. Instead, thieves will have to watch their ciminal record carefully and keep away from the masses.
• Being a Detective will be a totally new playstyle. They can police the land and receive rewards for it.

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Merging Trammel and Felucca?

The separation between Trammel and Felucca as it is today, will become obsolete with the system described above. So, what should happen with those two parallel worlds? Due to player housing, merging them simply is not possible. However, having an exact copy of the same world seems rather dull. Instead, if you go to Felucca, you should find a whole new adventure. The idea is that the new Felucca will allow you to travel back in history and visit the shattered ruins of the Early Days of Britannia.

• Felucca will not have a different ruleset than Trammel. The only technical difference is:
• The restrictions that you suffer from when having 30 or more points on your criminal record, will not apply to Felucca. (That means, NPCs still can witness a crime, but you cannot be arrested by NPCs anymore, as cities and guard towers are ruined and deserted. Even dungeon entrances are accessible to all criminals.) Only the moongate areas are guarded and restricted for criminals with 80 or more points. You still can be arrested by player Detectives everywhere in Felucca, though.
• The land of Felucca is turned into an old Britannia lying in ruins. A Britannia that is destroyed, but still breathes the history of the Early Days.
• Cities and guard towers in Felucca will be redesigned and will lie in ruins. Shops will not function anymore. No more guard protection in town, no more NPCs (except for wandering healers). Instead, cities will be haunted by Undead and other evil creatures. Only Buccaneer's Den will have functioning shops and a bank. However, Buc's Denn is randomly invaded by evil NPC pirates. A handful of bankers can be found in gypsy camps in the wilderness (similar to Gypsy Camps in Ilshenar).
• Cities will be like overground dungeons. They will be home to dangerous creatures, and you can detect secret vaults and cellars beneath the debris of the old houses.
• The dungeons of Felucca will be removed (we don't need copies of Trammel dungeons). Instead, all dungeon entrances in Felucca will be connected by a gigantic web of underground caves and tunnels, that will serve as a new vast dungeon system in Felucca. These caves will be home to ancient horrors of the Early Days of Britannia.
• Housing areas in Felucca will remain mostly unchanged.
• This way, Felucca will become a whole new interesting area which can be visited by both, criminals and good people. The risk for adventurers is only slightly higher (due to a lack of NPC guards) but still acceptable. Traveling there will be worthwhile. (Not like today, where you may be immediately mass-ganked when entering Felucca.)

To make this whole system more interesting, insurance should be limited to 5 items per character. This way you could still insure your most valuable items, but being a criminal (murderer, thief, looter) will not be completely useless anymore. Also, it will prevent people to equip themselves 100% with too powerful items. It will add to diversity.

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Conclusion

Would these changes satisfy every player? Let's look at different perspectives:

From a Trammel Player's Perspective:
There is more risk in the game. But those are risks you can easily avoid, if you don't go to remote places all by yourself. If you stay on the road or if you have company, you should be rather safe. Once you get acquainted to this, you will probably begin to like the increased risk and realism. You have to plan your adventures a little more carefully. This challenge will encourage the spirit of the community.

From a Player Killer's Perspective:
Life will change. No more mindless mass-ganking of innocents. Instead, you have to be more careful in picking your victims and the crime scene. If you are cleaver and sneaky, you may get away with most of your crimes unpunished. Like a true criminal, you have to be careful about whom you show your face. Beware of Detectives! If you are caught, the penalties can be significant, but will not destroy your play-style. You miss the challenge of mass-murdering and battles without penalties? You can join Factions or guild wars! They offer you all of that.

From an Adventurer's Perspective:
You want to focus on catching murderers? Offer your services at Britain bank, and make a fortune! Investigate crime scenes and try to find the hiding-spots of evil players. A whole new type of adventure can evolve from these changes. Besides, the new Felucca will be a challenging place for adventure. Murderers can roam there freely, but there's also a lot of new things to discover in the ancient ruins of Britannia.

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