▒ - NEW IDOC'S CHANGE - ▒

Lynk

Lol at people who threaten to quit over idocs.  Youre doing it wrong.

Kirthag

Interesting conversational bits.

I still think having GreenAcres Free-For-All event would be fun, but I can see how that will take up EM time (now that they are working on 3 shards). So I understand that being a no.

My second fave would be to just have everything go into a "storage unit" and returning players have to pay extra to get it back. After an additional period (another 90-days? or maybe after a year), then the storage unit is pieced out to GreenAcres for a Free-For-All! 

@Polaris talks some sense in his post, I need to gnaw on it a bit more but it sounds... sound.

And I'm with AR in that ... well.. and yes I've had houses fall on me... the "change" makes no real sense actually.

• If an account holder/homeowner steps on the house steps...
• but wait... that account holder/homeowner is an INACTIVE ACCOUNT!
• So if the account holder/homeowner must first ACTIVATE the account to go step on the stair... to be told the house is IDOC? 
• But... that utterly defeats the purpose of "ADVANCE/DIRECT NOTIFICATION" for the account would *cough* be reactivated and thus the homeowner would be refreshing the house... 

*somewhat confuzzled - so what is the change?!?*

OH... no STATUS on the SIGN...
But that only really eliminates the random-run-by person, like me. The only time I do an IDOC is when I run-by and actually find... SCRIPTERS... camping a house. We all know them and know their tell-tale stance. Seeing a random pack llama in the middle of the woods near some home is another sign there is a ghost-scripter hanging out. So there must be an IDOC nearby, and I investigate, then, sure enough, there is a house from another inactive account. 

*sigh*

TO THE PROGRAMMERS

There must be some way to scan through the housing database, build a bridge to the account database, and ALERT the ACCOUNT HOLDER of house status/decay. If I can scan through a custom AUZBASE and port that data into MySQL for WordPress conversions - map 1973 CADOL data into a modern e-commerce site - I'm sure something similar can be done between the data stores of UO. If you guys are ready to dedicate resources (time/money) into the housing issue - it is essentially a User Account issue as well as User Retention.

Which all goes back to Customer Service, Public Relations, and Marketing.

Is it all really about IDOC and the playstyle?

It is really about the Scripters and the rampant scripting that has plagued UO since forever. The scripters are taking advantage of the IDOC feature - once that hole has been plugged (**cough**) then they will find some other feature to take advantage of. THAT is the issue really. Right now, IDOCs are profitable enough for the scripters to invest their resources. Remove that profitability (say, move house contents into storage - see above) - because so much has been vested into scripting, the people behind such will just find another feature to script. We see this with EM events and drops, Blackthorn's Dungeon, etc. We saw it in the past with Swoops and other boss content.

What I'm saying is that IDOC is highly profitable, kill that profit and the scripters will still want ROI and will find something else and just adjust their scripts. It is business for them, NOT ENTERTAINMENT.


The best for all involved would be to temporarily shut down the entire IDOC feature, and dedicate resources to kill scripting. Invest in a service agreement if you must (battleye.com for example) and suck up the subscription losses, for there will be a loss there. IF Broadsword spins it well, it could mean a huge return of players who have left because of the scripting (although they never say so, they just stop paying), may even lure back those who are doing the free-shard thing. You could promote it at E3 as "... the grand-daddy of MMOs takes on the Scripters - FOREVER..." 

The bad thing is not the IDOC (well, maybe the 5/10/15... but I digress), the REAL ISSUE is the scripting.

JackFlashUk

Last I saw bank boxes can hold a max of 175 items....

So here goes,
1.Player gets bored, owns a castle , leaves game, castle falls, 7500 somehow goes to a bank box? 7500 into 175? The player never returns, 7500 lost items

2. Player gets bored, owns a castle , leaves game, castle falls, 7500 somehow goes to a bank box?  The player  returns, 7500 in bank, So he/she will HAVE to somehow get a castle to be able to collect things.  Good luck on Atl shard.

Or are you suggesting that the 7500 items can be cherry picked as and when they return??
What about EJ acct rights, can they access 7500 items?

Of course the ABUSE this can lead to with RMT sellers having closed a throw away acct LOADED with stuff in a house hidden away somewhere is huge.  Wait 120 days and get free access to items.  Over 100's of accts. yes. that works very well for scripters.  

Clearly these stupid suggestions are NOT coming from idocers as we would NEVER want items to go to a bank box of a player that will prob NEVER return.  

Can a Dev actually enlighten us as to howe many players actually return after quitting and houses fall? of Course they cant, but I would suggest its low

It has already been mentioned that the script cheats are creating scripts to look for grubbers already

SCRIPTERS WIN AGAIN

A scripter at an idoc tried to convince me that they were not using an illegal script looter but was in fact using UO assist.  Now many years ago when I played 2D I am sure there was not a looter in there.

This is a poor fix once again. Punishing the legit players,  not that there are many idocers now that are legit. Many running some out of looter as I mentioned above. Many, not all, we know who they are, so not going to name names......

WHY CAN'T ALL 3RD PARTY SCRIPTS BE BLOCKED.

Punish everyone because of the cheaters. Cheaters will overcome Great move once again

Idocs are now once and for all DEAD for idocers. Business as usual with a few tweaks for the scripters and EJ abusers 

Ivenor

JackFlashUk said:

Last I saw bank boxes can hold a max of 175 items....

So here goes,
1.Player gets bored, owns a castle , leaves game, castle falls, 7500 somehow goes to a bank box? 7500 into 175? The player never returns, 7500 lost items

(...)

Ehr, Jack, do you realize that we are NOT speaking of REAL Objects & Space here, yes?

We are speaking only of DB pointers (BBox of Toon A has tot iteration of Item X, tot of Item Y, and so on), and the difference in REAL storage (Cloud memory & processing) costs between 175 & 7500 STATIC (considering that the Player is NOT accessing them) DB POINTERS is NEGLIGIBLE???

Uriah_Heep

True.  The only reason that an 18x18 can't have the same lockdowns and storage as a castle is mostly because, TBH, they just don't want to make that happen.  No idea why, unless they are somehow benefitting from the high $$$ paid for castle spots on busier shards...

AtlanticRealtor

@Ivenor just to help others understand game mechanics and current system, lets help clarify!
Current EJ accounts can NOT access their bank contents, so the so call Abuse system , will not exist, Lets use the example of his falling castle scenario with the 7000+ items, those items will be into a house moving crate or something, like suggested before and the "return" player if ever come back will only be able to access if he subscribe again, so as you can see the system is already there and EJ accounts can NOT access them, until they pay. also something that can be add to prevent the "abuse" if any, even if the person subscribe back again, he can only access his regular bank storage, but the "saved" house moving crate he will be forced to plot or buy a house on any shard that he may pick and than retrieve.

You claimed that the suggestion is also not coming from an "Idocer" and Here I am as an Idocer also suggesting that If they will change something and prevent any further problems, may as well have the entire content of the house goes into the moving crate / bank / account owner and is done. Find something else to play on UO.

JackFlashUk

Ivenor said:

JackFlashUk said:

Last I saw bank boxes can hold a max of 175 items....

So here goes,
1.Player gets bored, owns a castle , leaves game, castle falls, 7500 somehow goes to a bank box? 7500 into 175? The player never returns, 7500 lost items

(...)

Ehr, Jack, do you realize that we are NOT speaking of REAL Objects & Space here, yes?

We are speaking only of DB pointers (BBox of Toon A has tot iteration of Item X, tot of Item Y, and so on), and the difference in REAL storage (Cloud memory & processing) costs between 175 & 7500 STATIC (considering that the Player is NOT accessing them) DB POINTERS is NEGLIGIBLE???

With 60% bonus an 18x18 is over 3838 storage or something like at a castle 7.5k storage. How does that fit in a bank box. How can you access it when and if you return.  And what if you decide to come back from Europa Like I did and start on Atlantic, are my 7500 going to have a fee transfer with me. Or are the 7500 items going to be stuck on a shard you dont even play.
Or that you are forced to return to a ghost shard just to get you old crap back ?

it does not make any sense.  You are being rewarded by quitting and returning when you don’t deserve it because you stop paying subs.  It’s a joke right?

all this dancing around is still not tackling the obvious problem.  Scripting and cheating at idocs.  

JackFlashUk

EJ accts can access a part of the bank box.    

Ivenor

Uriah_Heep said:

True.  The only reason that an 18x18 can't have the same lockdowns and storage as a castle is mostly because, TBH, they just don't want to make that happen.  No idea why, unless they are somehow benefitting from the high $$$ paid for castle spots on busier shards...

IMO more as a way to incentivate players that are interested in Houses to have something to aspire to (bigger Houses), and, clearly, to make some money in the process, to keep the lights on: NEGLIGIBLE is NOT the same as ZERO when you scale it up for the whole ACTIVE UO made of [(25 Shards) x (2 Facet each)] + 2 Siege Shards + TC...

JackFlashUk

AtlanticRealtor said:

@ Ivenor just to help others understand game mechanics and current system, lets help clarify!
Current EJ accounts can NOT access their bank contents, so the so call Abuse system , will not exist, Lets use the example of his falling castle scenario with the 7000+ items, those items will be into a house moving crate or something, like suggested before and the "return" player if ever come back will only be able to access if he subscribe again, so as you can see the system is already there and EJ accounts can NOT access them, until they pay. also something that can be add to prevent the "abuse" if any, even if the person subscribe back again, he can only access his regular bank storage, but the "saved" house moving crate he will be forced to plot or buy a house on any shard that he may pick and than retrieve.

You claimed that the suggestion is also not coming from an "Idocer" and Here I am as an Idocer also suggesting that If they will change something and prevent any further problems, may as well have the entire content of the house goes into the moving crate / bank / account owner and is done. Find something else to play on UO.

How do you put 7500 items into a 3838 house when you return and you are lucky enough to place a max storage ATL house without abusing game mechanics.  Leave all the extra items safely in the crate until you wish to access them ?

JackFlashUk

Ban scripters and that kills all RMT sites. Return idocs to 7hr fall time. Keep signs. Get rid of placement rimer

ans yes. Incase it did not sink in. Ban scripters 

Pawain

I agree.  The players who suck up every item in 3 seconds is the issue. 

The signs and timers did not need to change.  Now they will scout around 24 hours a day and send in the cleanup crew when they find the items that fell <15 mins ago.

See no evil.......problem solved.

JackFlashUk

Account goes inactive. House falls. Everything safe in crate in bank.  eJ opened 120 days later and checks bank. You see 25 items. Not that one. Switch to another EJ acct. check bank. Ah yes that’s the one. Full of high end items. Fire up,acct.  the abuse of game mechanics is obvious   

Don’t know why I am even bothering. Idoc stuff isn’t going to bank box anyway

JackFlashUk

New rules just help scripters.  Alway do. If you dont return idocs to a 7 hr fall time within the shards usual 2/3 hour fall window only scripters win.  No sane player will just aimlessly trawl their shard in the hope of finding and idoc

while toy are at it you need to increase decay time aswell so some has a slight chance of finding something

so no house sign. 5/10/15 hr fall windows. Lol what a joke   There is not a legal player on this Earth that is going to pay fees just to run sounds endlessly looking for idocs.   And if there is. Then come see me and I will give you a wake up slap

Ivenor

HEY FOLKS: SHUT YA ALL THE HOLES FOR ONE SEC, WILLYA???

Do you realize that we are having a 4 PAGES LONG discussion WHITOUT ANYONE INSULTING ANYONE OTHER and thus forcing the Mods to lock the Thread???

Methink this is a Britanniabreaking record, and we deserve a collective hug!!!  

Pawain

   I never get threads locked.   

Ivenor

Pawain said:

   I never get threads locked.   

St. Pawain Martyr...

Mariah

Be good!

Ivenor

Mariah said:

Be good!

Done!

Lieutenant_Dan

Spawn difficult monsters with each IDOC when it falls.  Similar to grubbers but much tougher to kill and with a lot more hit points.  Something like the Blackthorn dungeon captains but with +- 10,000 HP each. 
Scale the amount of monsters that spawn to the amount of contents that the falling house is holding.
Put 100% of the house contents on the monsters.

This would turn the IDOC into a little mini event of sorts.
Everyone there killing the IDOC monsters gets a fair share with the loot split when loot rights is divided up on the corpses.  Loot scripting problem is solved with nothing on the ground to vacuum up.

They started with grubbers but unfortunately grubbers only take a few items from the house.  They are also way to easy to kill.  If they made them deadly and with a lot more hit points then grubbers would work.

They could also leave the house signs displaying the decay status if they do the above.  But the only problem with leaving the house signs on is that it doesn't do anything to address script house placers (house placing is still a problem with scripters even with the timer on the placement tool).
That being said I am still all for shutting the house signs off so long as they e-mail the account owner during different stages of non-payment.

quickblade

After reading it all here's my 02 cents :

- Remove the ''step message thing'' and instead put the state of the house back on the house sign but only visible to the players that were : friend/co-owners/access to the house in question. (Can still clear those people from house access at decay start, but make them able to see the state of the house on the sign) . Problem fixed , I like this whole new idea overall , complicate the scripters life to detect idocs by +1000% , it's a step in a good direction.

Pawain

quickblade said:

After reading it all here's my 02 cents :

- Remove the ''step message thing'' and instead put the state of the house back on the house sign but only visible to the players that were : friend/co-owners/access to the house in question. (Can still clear those people from house access at decay start, but make them able to see the state of the house on the sign) . Problem fixed , I like this whole new idea overall , complicate the scripters life to detect idocs by +1000% , it's a step in a good direction.

Or, only paying accounts can see the status.

Soldahouse

Im happy something is getting done. My 1st vote was for stopping the cheating if that couldn't be done then 2nd vote was for putting stuff in a crate for when players came back. 

having friends only see the house sign doesn't really matter I don't think. houses fall in 5 days so instead of clicking on sign you now see if you can still step in house. If you cant then better hurry and let friend know something is up. 

5, 10, 15 thing... Its  good. Some players are not at home to do 5 hour idocs so they get the ones at 15 hours. 

As idoc are right now you don't have to cheat to find or time them, just spend a stupid amount of time doing it. With the change we might see a new playstyle, folks just running the lands looking for free stuff all over the ground or castle spots. I don't think this is going to stop the cheaters, I think this might help them because they will set up programs to search for items and spots without having to play the game and will have no competition from other players picking up free items or placing.  But then again maybe this will stop the cheaters and they will not be able to search everywhere all the time. 

Please don't make all items go on a monster. There are some players in this game that don't have fighters and as it is now we only get those neat deco items if we buy them, get lucky on a holiday gift or pick them up for free off the ground. 

I don't think hiding the statues on the house sign is fixing the problem at all, but im glad something is getting done. 

Max_Blackoak

Garth_Grey said:

Max_Blackoak said:

This change will not prevent idoc scripters, in fact it will help them by removing their non-scripting competitors.
The problem was not the decay status on the house sign but the third party programs people use to find decaying houses, time when they go idoc and then auto loot when they fall.
Instead of preventing people from loging in using third party programs to solve this problem the devs listened to the wrong crowd and are going to implement a system that will make it near impossible for a non-scripter to find and attend a falling house. The fast decay rate of items isn't helping either.

The worst part about it is that this is mostly a trammel issue but still all facets will be affected by the change. I don't know about felucca on normal shards but on Siege Perilous scripting never was a problem at idocs because of the all fel ruleset.
I'm going to miss the fights over idocs :-/

@ Kyronix @ Bleak @ Mesanna please reconsider this decision, it is a step in the wrong direction!

Max, come on brother. The "Scripting was never a problem on Siege" is a ruse..the IDOC fights, yeah those are real and will be sorely missed by those that enjoyed them.

What do you mean a ruse?! I said scripting AT IDOCS was never a problem on Siege.

I've done idocs pretty constantly over the last years on Siege. I didn't need to script anything because I had my guild and we were organized to catch most of them and even got the timing down to about an hour usually.Sure we missed some when people were too busy to check their area but for the most part it worked great, no scripting involved.

Never have I seen scripters with 5 pack horses each vacuming up all items in seconds when the house dropped. They and their pack horses wouldn't have lasted long enough.

Max_Blackoak

JackFlashUk said:

WHY CAN'T ALL 3RD PARTY SCRIPTS BE BLOCKED.

Punish everyone because of the cheaters. Cheaters will overcome Great move once again

Idocs are now once and for all DEAD for idocers. Business as usual with a few tweaks for the scripters and EJ abusers 

quote for truth... :-(

monkgamer

After reading more, I have a new idea, an amalgamation of some I read here:

1. only paid accounts can see the status of a falling house
2. When the house falls, all the items fall into separate boxes
3. only paid accounts have access to those boxes, and there is a random delay from picking items up from the chests, so no macros or scripts can nab the items form those chests immediately.

or to support UO:


only accounts that purchase a "clean up crew" token with origin coins, can loot the boxes. This token lasts for 30 days, and costs 10 dollars, and is good for getting items from chests that fall from idocs for that month. Or maybe 5 dollars a month etc That way, the idoc fun stays, but you gotta kinda pay for access. This increases the ods since not everyone will pay, and cuts out those randoms completely.

Or those tokens are given out randomly to people, so everyone has a chance?

Just shooting out ideas

Soldahouse

Is there anyway for them to ban pack animals from a large area around a house that has fallen? 

Urge

monkgamer said:

After reading more, I have a new idea, an amalgamation of some I read here:

1. only paid accounts can see the status of a falling house

Paid accounts are the ones bringing in all the EJ vacuum cleaners. Actual EJ players have no storage and can't place vendors.

Polaris

I hope this explanation helps more. For solutions please see my post at the end of page 3......

You know when we see those chars just run by our houses every 10-30 minutes? Those are bots, EJ accounts using path-finding to run routes and recall around. There is no human active.... it is simply a bot and nothing more. They can answer because if stopped / paged it "dings" the owner to alert them a GM is there. Can we simply run around on bots 24/7? We cannot..... I cannot, but some people can.

These changes remove all competition from the cheaters. Instead of getting 90% of items, they will now get 99% of items. They have bots, sort of like ghost cams at champ spawns that login / logout at every champion spawn once per hour to see if it is active. The same bot'ing programs spam messages over and over in general chat selling gold, there are never "people" there. They have the same bots that are programmed to login every 20 minutes and start their route. It takes hours to run the world... that's why they use 10 bots on Atlantic. On other shards... they only have to use 4 or 5 because of the profit margin and competition being lower. The teams split up, and each run several bots on each shard to find Idocs.

They will now simply program their bots to.... search for "fallen contents" on the ground rather than "scanning house signs." They will know all loot locations 2 or 3 hours before any honest player. Not just that... you won't even find items on the ground before they disappear most likely. They will, they will now get 99% of the loot instead of 90%.

Not only that, everyone is missing the obvious in that.... they will know a house is IDOC as well because it will change from public to private. They will still know the exact time it changed to within 20 minutes (based on their route time.) They will simply adjust the routes to try to step on every step as they run around. No need for house signs, it will do nothing for advanced programmers / website owners. So they simply wait 112 hours (fall time is roughly 114 hours from start I just read on Stratics) and login all of their vacuum bots.

There is no stopping the scripters by any sort of manipulation of house signs. The amount of time they have for bots is the issue. For my ideas on the best ways to actually stop them and help everybody, please read my ideas at the bottom of page 3. All I can give are ideas. I have no knowledge of the programming complications or anything of the sort, but I am sure anything is possible with the current team. Please take a look at my solutions on page 3, and tell me what everyone thinks. I hope my ideas are helpful and thought over a little. I truly want to stop them with all my heart and have thought about how for years. Good luck and good hunting all, see you guys back in game.

Olahorand

Attaching the Moving crate to the bank box as read only container should not be a big problem. No abuse by EJ possible.

Overloaded moving crate would block the bank box, therefor an incentive to place a house again.

Placing the moving crate too full for the house it is reclaimed in would block locking down any items, so you can only take from it, what fits in your backpack unto the total number is lower than what the house supports.

(I don't care if it is 500 or 7500 items - I never understood why initially the items one can lock down are different for players paying the same fee.)

*Salute*
Olahorand