This is worse then the original proposal. I agree with removing account bound rewards. But why in the world would you delete vet rewards and heavy items I'm assuming this being resources and rubble. These are the items that players do idoc for. Not to mention doing felucca idocs where you have to hit a barrel meanwhile getting attacked by 30 people not sure who came up with that idea. But it's not a good one. Why not just fix the timers on the falling houses. The time for house placement and not let packies or Endless Journey accounts in the housing area. This in itself would help idocing 1,000%. A big radical change was not needed. This is a TERRIBLE idea. I have already stopped pvping due to the VVV rules now this! @Uriah_Heep ; your post is 10000% on it.
People who obviously don't play the game, consistently, shouldn't be making these decisions.
Why exactly, are we supposed to be interested in IDOCs after this? The novelty of looting a random junk piece of armor someone was holding onto to unravel later? Or perhaps is those plants we've been growing forever? or the rare sundials that were given out a thousand at a time? /sarcasm sheeesh, whoever decided this, well, I'm speechless. But that won't last long. Someone tell Mariah to get ready for a long night LOL
@KHAN, it does make sense when you factor in that the scripters would take advantage of skills and spells to continue to beat a lot of people to the loot. The fastest I could do a barrel with an unenhanced player was just over 2 minutes. Some people fine tuned their character and got the time down to 15 seconds. You can bet the scripters would have all of their characters down to that 15 seconds.
With the list of everything you're planning to delete when the house decays, what exactly are you thinking will be left at the IDOC?
I was excited to maybe start doing IDOCs again after many years, but with the direction you all are going I think better to just crate it all up for the owner and call it good. No one needs to punch barrels to collect a few carpentry craftables and some plants.
Some suggestions... *If you can move an item into a crate, why not move any stackable item into a commodity deed first. *Many vet rewards also return to deeds, so let the deed go into the crate. If it doesn't go into a deed (vet robes, portals, etc) I have no earthly idea why you would need to delete them in the first place. *Make all rubble weigh 10 stones and put it in a barrel. *Gold checks can still be created, I don't see any value in deleting them. Leave them alone.
@ KHAN, it does make sense when you factor in that the scripters would take advantage of skills and spells to continue to beat a lot of people to the loot. The fastest I could do a barrel with an unenhanced player was just over 2 minutes. Some people fine tuned their character and got the time down to 15 seconds. You can bet the scripters would have all of their characters down to that 15 seconds.
They could have removed extra damage from spells, forms and masteries. That was why some players hit so hard. Could have left more damage if you have Wrest, Tact and Anat.
I did some timings. Skill level no longer changes the damage. But dexterity does. My mage with 19 dex, 125 str, 150 int took on average 1:15 minutes. Changing that to 125 dex, 125 str, 37 int it took on average 50 seconds.
@ KHAN, it does make sense when you factor in that the scripters would take advantage of skills and spells to continue to beat a lot of people to the loot. The fastest I could do a barrel with an unenhanced player was just over 2 minutes. Some people fine tuned their character and got the time down to 15 seconds. You can bet the scripters would have all of their characters down to that 15 seconds.
They could have removed extra damage from spells, forms and masteries. That was why some players hit so hard. Could have left more damage if you have Wrest, Tact and Anat.
I agree. If you skill your player up, you should do more damage.
If you sell UO items for R.L. $$$, you need to quit playing UO , and get a BETTER R.L. JOB!
Please don't delete vet rewards and rubble guys. Rubble was falling fine before when we did the first castle on night one. Perhaps you can simply make so that, if a character gets overweight... the rest of the items go into new barrels? Or back into the barrel and it comes back to life? This would also stop the problem of people hitting 10 barrels and running somewhere and items still filling into their bags as they remove items.
Vet rewards would be cool at IDOCs.... I never in the history have ever gotten a good one at an IDOC before, because that was the scripter's bread and butter. They got every single one always. It was in their list of items to loot for, most certainly. I never got a single garden shed, big ethy, or anything of the sort in all the 1000's of IDOCs I attended.
I would leave vet rewards now so that we have a shot. And Rubble is one of the items I log in to vendor search for. Please leave those guys... find a way. That's tuggin on people heart strings with deco I know. It's getting closer I think.... but those two things need a work around someway.
I think it sounds like the problem was items filling up in our bags after we get heavy? If somehow one of us gets heavy, can't we just be forced to only get that many items and the rest go into another barrel? I definitely don't want the items deleted.... but the self populating thing (character runs away after hitting so many barrels and keeps getting items into backpack from all) might be the problem. Once heavy.... the rest of the items go into another barrel? This would stop people from hitting 10 barrels for 20% damage and running away too.
Looking at the status of RC2 / RC3, it seems that the meaning of the item drop accompanying "House Decay" is omitted from the following viewpoints. -There is no memory / record of the owner (birthday gifts / books arranged on the bookshelf / items with life traces, etc.)
It feels like the owner of the house is not willing to leave the UO in an unwilling state (eg, due to death). In this case, I think it is absolutely necessary to keep the memory / record of the player. As a measure,
-A system that allows you to insert a maintenance GT for the house you want to maintain, such as a past newsletter. -After removing the Decay status from the signboard, which was said at the beginning of Publish108, without resetting the access level, send a notification of "House Decay" to characters above the friend of the house.
Such will be considered.
If you think of House Decay dropping as a "just an item-focused event," you'll be able to manage these changes. (This is an issue that has been going on all the time in relation to RMT, etc., and I think that it is unavoidable that there is some way to take measures) However, if so, isn't it all right to "Erase everything on Corrupt"?
That way, you won't be bothered by the Scripter waiting for corruption anymore.
Full potion barrels are something that could be deleted. That is 100 stones right there. I got several while I was testing the new changes. Something else that can get deleted are gift boxes. Same house as the potion barrels had lots of gift boxes.
tl;dr: OPINION PIECE I understand these changes. I don't like them - but I understand them.
Stepped away from the craziness ...
Had visitors (who are also gamers - and some are programmers - ALL are familiar with UO).
I've been working on convincing these guys to join me on Catskills - some are old-skool players who left after the RP died on Napa. They've been lurking forums (from Reddit to Stratics to here) and reading.
The first thing one of the dudes said when he came into my house: "[insert my real name here], they gonna DELETE VET REWARDS?!?"
I left a rather important RP event on Cats when these people surprised me with a pop-up-visit and we sat around eating, drinking, and talking about games, programming, business, my drastic career shift, how one's programming differs from another's, and the joy of UO.
We hypothesized the reasons behind the IDOC changes... and something one of the guys said actually struck a chord...
"The items on the IDOC Deletion List (specifically stackable resources, veteran rewards, bank checks) have been duped very badly over the years, haven't they? They are the easiest and most popular things sold via RMT, right?."
But where are all these dupes?
In the massive storage houses of the RMT people.
And lo! What should happen if the accounts for those RMT people are banned?
Well, their houses will eventually go IDOC.
And that causes a huge issue for the Devs.
If those items get into the hands of innocent players - well then - is it right to penalize the finder or to remove those items before that even happens?
An argument arose - just delete the house and all the items of the banned account when the account is banned.
True - it was done before (we shall not mention his name). But.. that was ONE guy (and his several accounts). Imagine 5 RMT guys and all their accounts - and the mass amount of work to track them down and associate to the houses...
Then I asked if it is _really_ that hard to trace from the account to the house to the item DBs and get them all. "Depends how old, how large, and how busy the DB is. Want the Atlantic shard to go down for a week? Or worse, revert over a week?" A sobering thought that.
The main hypothesis - to get rid of the scripters once and for all, you have to get rid of their reason for scripting. If one scripter guy gets banned, and his houses drop - well, the other scripters just step in and grab his loots. We are not talking about the normal "player got bored of playing UO" IDOC... but a mass of IDOCs because one, two, or 5 RMTers get perma-banned, and ALL those storage houses with illegal dupes will be falling..... If even ONE of those bigger guys were perma-banned, and his 3-full-castles-per-shard go IDoC, imagine all that stuff (legal and duped) suddenly hitting each shard's economy. Imagine that for a few minutes before letting your fingers fly over your keyboards. It made me stop to think for a bit.
Then, looking at it from a business perspective, one can understand to some degree the decision. After all, BS wants people to subscribe - and a perk of that subscription is the count toward a Vet Reward. More consistent subscriptions is the goal (which is more predictable revenue) and something BS wants to show EA. Okay, I get that. It makes business sense to encourage steady subscriptions and discourage the 90-day-roulette. After all, vet rewards are so readily available all over the place. There is no incentive to _really_ keep a steady subscription. Joe Blow the Player could just go to shady RMT site and buy a Garden Shed (or 5) because RMT dude has 50 of them duped in storage.
Emotionally it suxxors the big green one. Every time I see a house fall, I imagine the player that owned it, and what happened to him/her that they could no longer pay the account. Are they okay? It makes me think about when my first large tower fell because I had hit on hard times and couldn't afford to buy ramen let alone keep internet going or pay for an online game. I had to focus on my sons, and not a game, so I didn't have internet for almost a year. I remember the bittersweet of getting back into UO and realizing all the memories that were lost in the IDOC.
And one of my more nerdy DBA friends broke me out of that train of thought by saying that marking a hash for deletion it is one thing - making sure you got ALL of them without affecting unmarked hashes is another, especially with how the UO DBs are reportedly done. What better way than to just get rid of everything at the IDOC? He's impressed they are taking this step.
To quote him, "Is a bold move."
So... they promised big & bold.... *sigh*
I understand these changes. I don't like them - but I understand them.
im glad you understand them I dont and im dead set against them, it basically destroys the part of gameplay that is idoccing as i have said before. I am not gonna say what I really think about these new changes because itll just get deleted, what I will say is hell no quite honestly I didnt like the fact resources were getting deleted, I didnt like that ppls soulstone and account bound items were getting deleted but vet rewards and heavy items? thats crossing the line. just delete the damn idocs then
tl;dr: OPINION PIECE I understand these changes. I don't like them - but I understand them.
Stepped away from the craziness ...
Had visitors (who are also gamers - and some are programmers - ALL are familiar with UO).
I've been working on convincing these guys to join me on Catskills - some are old-skool players who left after the RP died on Napa. They've been lurking forums (from Reddit to Stratics to here) and reading.
The first thing one of the dudes said when he came into my house: "[insert my real name here], they gonna DELETE VET REWARDS?!?"
I left a rather important RP event on Cats when these people surprised me with a pop-up-visit and we sat around eating, drinking, and talking about games, programming, business, my drastic career shift, how one's programming differs from another's, and the joy of UO.
We hypothesized the reasons behind the IDOC changes... and something one of the guys said actually struck a chord...
"The items on the IDOC Deletion List (specifically stackable resources, veteran rewards, bank checks) have been duped very badly over the years, haven't they? They are the easiest and most popular things sold via RMT, right?."
But where are all these dupes?
In the massive storage houses of the RMT people.
And lo! What should happen if the accounts for those RMT people are banned?
Well, their houses will eventually go IDOC.
And that causes a huge issue for the Devs.
If those items get into the hands of innocent players - well then - is it right to penalize the finder or to remove those items before that even happens?
An argument arose - just delete the house and all the items of the banned account when the account is banned.
True - it was done before (we shall not mention his name). But.. that was ONE guy (and his several accounts). Imagine 5 RMT guys and all their accounts - and the mass amount of work to track them down and associate to the houses...
Then I asked if it is _really_ that hard to trace from the account to the house to the item DBs and get them all. "Depends how old, how large, and how busy the DB is. Want the Atlantic shard to go down for a week? Or worse, revert over a week?" A sobering thought that.
The main hypothesis - to get rid of the scripters once and for all, you have to get rid of their reason for scripting. If one scripter guy gets banned, and his houses drop - well, the other scripters just step in and grab his loots. We are not talking about the normal "player got bored of playing UO" IDOC... but a mass of IDOCs because one, two, or 5 RMTers get perma-banned, and ALL those storage houses with illegal dupes will be falling..... If even ONE of those bigger guys were perma-banned, and his 3-full-castles-per-shard go IDoC, imagine all that stuff (legal and duped) suddenly hitting each shard's economy. Imagine that for a few minutes before letting your fingers fly over your keyboards. It made me stop to think for a bit.
Then, looking at it from a business perspective, one can understand to some degree the decision. After all, BS wants people to subscribe - and a perk of that subscription is the count toward a Vet Reward. More consistent subscriptions is the goal (which is more predictable revenue) and something BS wants to show EA. Okay, I get that. It makes business sense to encourage steady subscriptions and discourage the 90-day-roulette. After all, vet rewards are so readily available all over the place. There is no incentive to _really_ keep a steady subscription. Joe Blow the Player could just go to shady RMT site and buy a Garden Shed (or 5) because RMT dude has 50 of them duped in storage.
Emotionally it suxxors the big green one. Every time I see a house fall, I imagine the player that owned it, and what happened to him/her that they could no longer pay the account. Are they okay? It makes me think about when my first large tower fell because I had hit on hard times and couldn't afford to buy ramen let alone keep internet going or pay for an online game. I had to focus on my sons, and not a game, so I didn't have internet for almost a year. I remember the bittersweet of getting back into UO and realizing all the memories that were lost in the IDOC.
And one of my more nerdy DBA friends broke me out of that train of thought by saying that marking a hash for deletion it is one thing - making sure you got ALL of them without affecting unmarked hashes is another, especially with how the UO DBs are reportedly done. What better way than to just get rid of everything at the IDOC? He's impressed they are taking this step.
To quote him, "Is a bold move."
So... they promised big & bold.... *sigh*
I understand these changes. I don't like them - but I understand them.
I understand the reasoning behind the vet rewards in that sense. In fact, I have never gotten a decent vet reward at an IDOC anyway... aside from flaming heads or something. I am still waiting on tons of rubble I need to finish my houses though! I login just to search it and log out, lol. : P : P I hope the rubble is reconsidered... or at least that they run a new (short) 1 week event at some point for everyone to try to grab something.
NO Wrestling/Anat/Tac skill (toon is a mage) Set STR & DEX 100 each
Beat on barrels - typical hits ranging from 3 to 16 dmg per hit No more mass-spam when loot drops, but did get MegaCliloc error (see below) LOTS of skill gain, even with a weapon (even if not damaging barrel):
changed wrestling/tac/anat to GM - typical hits ranging from 3 to 18 dmg per hit
LOOTS - Went to some of the smaller IDOCS I've been testing with
CONFIRMED: Guild Stone Deed is deleted (tested on the UOS house belonging to Xena Dragon where a UO Stratics guild stone lived - I got it at the two other fallings, not this one. Huge pieces of history with those guild stones.) Also about half the barrels appeared with the drop - there were only 4 barrels this time
CONFIRMED: Am finding Rubbles - will see if they are heavies or smaller ones... (so far, heaviest is 26 stone, and is a bush thing)
CONFIRMED: Beat up barrel on another IDOC in Minoc Greens, got a whole lot of BoD books. Recalled to Brit Bank, started dumping stuff in trash, 2 more BOD books appeared in pack (wouldn't fit before - item count maxxed).
Parrots are now hanging around after IDOC:
but they do allow for placement after timer expires - and with the barrels still all go under the sign (possible exploit issue)
What's left over as loot when veteran rewards also been deleted?
Even I do very seldom idocs after the change I doesn't see a reason to go for an idoc.
Except maybe on Atlantic for a spot.
I have found legendary (120) power scrolls, scrolls of transcendence, scrolls of alacrity, EM event drops, holiday items, store items, legendary artifacts, various deco items, etc.
Because this is a "pants off" testing, one interesting question is:
Thou dost believe that virtue resides in all people. Thou found a IDOC of a duper. Dost thou:
Personally try to sway him back to the path of good
Call him to justice
I hope to everything the duper and every single form of a scripter (even the ones who ran what they call -minor- scripts in the past) are banned off the face of the planet.
And with that, if it is possible can we please do the auction things for house spots from IDOCs? A ton of people mentioned that, it would be great to get a shot at Luna houses and castles without having to pay 20p (I have never even owned a castle... but it sounds great!) This would be an excellent opportunity for players. I love how hard you guys are working... thanks for all of the effort.
I'm super glad Kirthag was getting some rubble at those IDOCs. I hope most of it stays, all if possible. Thanks again guys. I was sad at first, but I understand the vet rewards goings away potentially. It definitely adds value to the new ones, and will make the older ones and tiny statues much more rare.
the newest changes have strengthened my wish that Felucca and all Siege Perilous should simply remain the way they are now. Do to Trammel whatever you like to beat the scripters but please leave those places where scripters haven't been a problem the way they were.
Deleting soulstones is bad, deleting vet rewards equally bad, it just doesn't make sense. Please reconsider this or at least leave Siege alone. Implement town criers announcing idoc locations and display the decay timer on housesigns but please leave everything else the way it was. Thanks!
After reading Kirthags post I understand and agree with what they are doing. But in the future, could we have a rubbleevent now and then, like the Magincia rubble, Not as a gift , but an event " minor Magincia style"
I would like to also voice my DISSENT on several of the items that, I seem to understand, might be wanted to get deleted from IDOCs.
My understanding is, that the following items might be up as a List for deletion at an IDOC :
Account Bound Items
House Only Items
Commodity Deeds
Stackable Items
Goza Mats
Bank checks
Heavy items
Linked attendants
Vet Rewards
Water Barrels, tubs, and water containers that weigh 255+ stones
As in regards to items 1, 5, 6, 8 I do NOT have a problem with them getting deleted.
In regards to items 2, 3, 4, 7, 9 I DO have problems (and a whole lot) in seeing them deleted from an IDOC.....
If the problem is with stackables being too heavy, SPLIT THEM UP before generating them into a Barrel so as to have a large stack be sub-divided in multiple smaller stacks which are of a more manageable weight that a character can carry.
Furthermore, doing this will make happy a larger number of players.....
Heavy Items that are not stackable but 1 item only ?
Have these, as an exception, not go into a Barrel but drop onto the ground....
House Only and Veteran Rewards I remain SPEECHLESS to hear that there is an intention to delete them.... frankly, I do not see what the point might be to get these deleted....
As in regards # 10, if we are talking of those containers having a 255+ stones weight SINGLE item which some consider as a rare (think back in the days it was done through an exploit ?), then I have no problem to see these being deleted BUT, if instead, we are talking of containers which may have ingots, wood, fish, crafting materials and what not adding up their weight to way above 255+ stones, then I DO HAVE A PROBLEM to see them deleted....
No material, no resource, no crafting ingredient should be deleted at an IDOC no matter how large and heavy it might be, to my opinion.
If there is a need to bring them down to a more manageable weight, then see my thought on # 4 items.... : HAVE THE CODE SPLIT THEM UP AND DIVIDED INTO SMALLER STACKS !!!
This way, they will NOT exit the economy and MORE players participating at that IDOC will benefit from getting them. These are at least my thoughts on this.
Giving some thought to these changes. Heavy items made a mockery of the 50 items/100 stones requirement and put people overweight and unable to move - not desirable in Fel, and not in Tram if some idiot decides to release a large nasty pet in the area. Vet rewards, I thought at first it was because of shard shields, but they shouldn't have been dropping anyway, covered by the 'account bound' restriction. I was going to post requesting, with respect, that maybe they could look again at that, but Kirthag's post has made me re-think that. Checks - to be honest I thought we were only getting these because of the age of the TC shard back up, before checks were removed for the new money system. House only, pity about the grass tiles, but the system probably can't be selective on which 'house only' items to remove and which to leave.
I've not tested yet, the update happened overnight for me. Off to test now.
Giving some thought to these changes. Heavy items made a mockery of the 50 items/100 stones requirement and put people overweight and unable to move - not desirable in Fel, and not in Tram if some idiot decides to release a large nasty pet in the area. Vet rewards, I thought at first it was because of shard shields, but they shouldn't have been dropping anyway, covered by the 'account bound' restriction. I was going to post requesting, with respect, that maybe they could look again at that, but Kirthag's post has made me re-think that. Checks - to be honest I thought we were only getting these because of the age of the TC shard back up, before checks were removed for the new money system. House only, pity about the grass tiles, but the system probably can't be selective on which 'house only' items to remove and which to leave.
I've not tested yet, the update happened overnight for me. Off to test now.
House only, pity about the grass tiles, but the system probably can't be selective on which 'house only' items to remove and which to leave.
How difficult would it then be to "TAG" house only items with a "sub-group" tag and then, rather then delete all House Only items only delete whatever House only "sub-group" is wanted /needed to be deleted but leave be any other House only sub-group like, for example, green tiles and the likes ?
Here's a few comments and suggestions on some of the latest changes:
1. Idoc PLACEMENT. I think they should make a major change here in conjunction with the barrels. Completely revamp the system for placing a house. Forget this random timer (there's an exploit to it anyways, that 100% favors the scripters). Change the system so that as soon as the last barrel is destroyed - this includes both fence and loot barrel - you can place a house, instantly. Anyone can keep track of barrels being destroyed and be ready to place a house at the right time - no benefit to scripters, you just have to click fast. It also fixes the issue with houses being placed on top of barrels and glitching things up.
2. No skill/stats advantage to Barrel breaks. Good, thanks. I like this. I don't mind the idea of needing some skills for an idoc per-se, but being template specific (to a wrestler) was super lame. Idocs have always been about all kinds of different people/characters showing up and interacting with each other, to chat and talk about upcoming fall. Restricting this to only wrestling-type templates seemed like a very boring idea.
3. Types of items being deleted:
House only Items/Account Bound Items/Goza Mats (thanks!) /Bank Checks/Linked Attendants/ No issue whatsoever. I assume most are fine with these.
Here are the others, with comments/questions:
Water Barrels, tubs and water containers that weight 255+ stones:
Nobody cares about the water barrels themselves. But a lot of people use actual barrels as containers in their house. I assume those aren't affected, correct? Because many of those barrels holding all kinds of various loot likely weight 255+ stones
Vet Rewards:
First question I have is: Why? Is it because a certain specific vet reward - or a few of them - are causing issues/bugs? For example - i remember people posting about issues with Bloody Pentagrams parts getting stuck in backpack, or weighing 255+ stones. If the logic behind this changes it to eliminates issues with such items - why do a blanket deletion of vet rewards, vs just deleting a specific few?
As many other posters have chimed in so far - vet rewards seem to be a huge part of the attraction of idocs when it comes to loot. If bloody pentagrams are a problem - delete those. Do so for other such problematic items. But what about Ethys? Or other statuettes? Or flaming head deeds? Or any other number of them? I doubt they cause issue. Why not keep those, and delete the problematic Vet Rewards only? Seems like a good compromise.
Heavy items (in particular - Rubble):
I'm not exactly sure what are considered heavy items, outside of rubble (and resources). But I think Rubble should absolutely not be deleted. Rubble are some of the absolute most sought after collectible/rare items in-game, don't spawn anymore - and getting them at idocs is something that should not go away. Find a work-around. Commodity Deeds + Stackable Items:
What's the reasoning here? If it's about deleting resources to force players to go camp resources, and delete all the excess in-game - sure, I could get behind this I suppose. It'll cause prices in-game for resources to sky rocket soon, but that's fine.
Many players are saying "instead of deleting stacks of resources/ingots/ingredients - have them turn into commodity deeds that weight 1 stone". I assume this is too complex a change which is why they aren't doing that. That - or if the reasoning behind it is getting rid of excess resources altogether, as I allude to above. However - if that's not the reason why, if it's simply a matter of having no real way of fitting stackable items that weight so much in a barrel, how about an add-on along the following lines for overweight items:
Suggestion for looting overweight Items/stackable resources:
In my opinion - Rubble is an absolute necessity. Do no delete those. Stackable items like resources - can be included here too if Devs want. Why not find a different solution for those type of overweight items, outside of outright deleting them? Here's 3 different potential options:
1. Option 1 - overweight items (rubble especially - possible resources too) - simply fall on ground, with no barrels - after idoc falls. They don't get put into barrels. When the fence is broken - players can rush in and just loot them off ground, as you could in past.
This still allows for scripters to come scoop up items off ground fast it's true - but with the high weight limit, it does limit how much you can hold. Non-scripters who can recognize the "rarer" rubble can go for those first. And obviously with no packies allowed - there's a limit to how much you can loot anyways.
2. Option 2 - create an extra Barrel - a golden barrel - that contains overweight items/resources. Those can hold up to 125 items - but no limit on weight
You have to break those golden barrels same as the rest. The difference is when you do - the loot falls on ground. So when you break one golden barrel - possible you see 25 stacks of 60k Ingots fall on ground. Possible you see rubble, or other heavy items. Since items fall on ground - you have to loot those items off the ground, rather than falling in your backpack. 3. Tie it to house placement, if you take my first suggestion at the top of my post. As soon as last barrel goes away - whoever places a house first - also gets all of the heavy items from the idoc in a packing crate in their house. Would have to be a bit careful with this one - as you don't want it to be too big of a competitive edge. But I do like this option - since since the start of UO, idocs had always been about "placing" a house, not just looting. This once again gives a reason for people to compete over "placing" a house.
How difficult would it then be to "TAG" house only items with a "sub-group" tag and then, rather then delete all House Only items only delete whatever House only "sub-group" is wanted /needed to be deleted but leave be any other House only sub-group like, for example, green tiles and the likes ?
I don't know, do you? It's easy to assume something is a quick and simple change, but is it? There are a lot of people happily demanding that they do 'this' or do 'that', no one seems to stop to wonder whether what they're demanding is possible.
I've now watched a house fall and emptied some barrels. Here's what I found that I would have considered keeping: Scrolls, power, alacrity & transcendence Runic tools Less common holiday gifts EM event drops Heritage tokens high stat crafting talismans
And here's what I'd have handed in for clean up more common holiday gifts named, artifact weapons (banshee's call, valkyries glaive, life syphon, storm caller etc) various stealable artifacts
My conclusion: I got plenty of stuff that would be useful to me in playing the game, or in passing on to others to help them play. It would be less attractive to people who's main purpose was 'profit'.
So, i talked with Kyronix for a long while on test last night. The team seem deeply offended that we are questioning their loyalty to the players rather than the gold sellers and big scripting teams. I tried to explain to him that by deleting the Vet rewards it would only allow 3rd party sites to make even more money off the hoards of this stuff they had stored.... he didnt seem to think it would. I also pretty much begged him to reconsider because of the people who will never make it to getting 15-20 year vet rewards.. i will sum up what he told me best i can... they basically see no reason why we should have access to another persons vet rewards because a person paying for that account had earned them, i countered this by saying that the age restriction should have never been lifted from them then... to which he said no they earned them they can do what they want with them... * go figure cause they cant sell their shields if they want to so that seems an invalid argument to me also" I ask him if he was even reading the forums to see how unhappy people were about this, they are reading this but he also said that the people at the meetups were largely unhappy about players having vet rewards they didnt earn " even though they still wanted to be free to sell theirs" it came across to me as the opinions of the people at the meet ups, the people he met in person, those are the people whos opinions they actually value. " I wonder if he knew how many of those people that were there shaking hands and brown nosing actually are running gold selling sites, because atleast 3 people that i saw in the photos of the 20th meet up do own gold selling sites....it probably funded their trip to the meet up lol"
I sold my vet accounts when i found uo to be hopeless and corrupt. 3 idoc teams ran that packy loading script for over a year with no action taken on them what so ever. they have more in stock than your average idocer , hell they have more in stock than your average scripter will ever have. Normal people will never be able to get a leg up in this game. There was a time i could devote hours and hours to UO, and i did.... i cant do that anymore, i can barely stay logged in long enough to do anything more than play with deco at my house. When i read about the new idoc changes, when i 1st tested them even i was thrilled! no having to run a shard, no having to time the stupid thing, and no having to sit and wait at 5, 10, and 15 hour hoping that a house will fall and fingers crossed that i get to pick up at least one item before the packy scripters make everything vanish..... i was over joyed at the thought of being able to go to a house when its going to fall and being able to get something i could use to deco my house, a vet reward i needed possibly " a water wheel and garden shed being at the top of my list" .... I actually lost sleep over this last night, thats something that as a mom i cant afford to do. For me coming back to UO was a mistake, and the Dev team catering to a certain group of people is a mistake. It will cost them subscriptions, it will cost them mine. Im just done guys, im over it... i will never be as valuable of a customer to them as the handful that they keep on the pedestal....
"The team seem deeply offended that we are questioning their loyalty to the players rather than the gold sellers and big scripting teams."
well bless their hearts.... Maybe they should stop and think about how all their "combat the crime" steps have favored the scriptors
"It will cost them subscriptions, it will cost them mine. Im just done guys, im over it... i will never be as valuable of a customer to them as the handful that they keep on the pedestal...."
You'll be missed, I am sure a lot of others will be too, it's hard to even want to log in at all.
If your saying that deleting the vet rewards is because it was earned by that player does that mean that you will deleting event items as well? Because they were also earned by a player at some point. You are going to ruin a lot of people reason of playing by destroying idocs. Terrible. @Mesanna@Kyronix@Bleak @ #savetheidocs
If they're deleting vet rewards because players didn't earn them - personally, I don't care, i'm fine with that. I assumed they were doing so because of some glitches with certain item types.
Seems to be a big logic gap though - how have any of the other items inside an idoc been earned by any of the idoc'ers?
Comments
@Uriah_Heep ; your post is 10000% on it.
Why exactly, are we supposed to be interested in IDOCs after this? The novelty of looting a random junk piece of armor someone was holding onto to unravel later?
Or perhaps is those plants we've been growing forever?
or the rare sundials that were given out a thousand at a time? /sarcasm
sheeesh, whoever decided this, well, I'm speechless.
But that won't last long.
Someone tell Mariah to get ready for a long night LOL
@KHAN, it does make sense when you factor in that the scripters would take advantage of skills and spells to continue to beat a lot of people to the loot. The fastest I could do a barrel with an unenhanced player was just over 2 minutes. Some people fine tuned their character and got the time down to 15 seconds. You can bet the scripters would have all of their characters down to that 15 seconds.
With the list of everything you're planning to delete when the house decays, what exactly are you thinking will be left at the IDOC?
I was excited to maybe start doing IDOCs again after many years, but with the direction you all are going I think better to just crate it all up for the owner and call it good. No one needs to punch barrels to collect a few carpentry craftables and some plants.
Some suggestions...
*If you can move an item into a crate, why not move any stackable item into a commodity deed first.
*Many vet rewards also return to deeds, so let the deed go into the crate. If it doesn't go into a deed (vet robes, portals, etc) I have no earthly idea why you would need to delete them in the first place.
*Make all rubble weigh 10 stones and put it in a barrel.
*Gold checks can still be created, I don't see any value in deleting them. Leave them alone.
I made a toon with wrestling. Got it to 100. (not gonna eat a pet scroll) Now useless.
-There is no memory / record of the owner (birthday gifts / books arranged on the bookshelf / items with life traces, etc.)
It feels like the owner of the house is not willing to leave the UO in an unwilling state (eg, due to death).
In this case, I think it is absolutely necessary to keep the memory / record of the player.
As a measure,
-A system that allows you to insert a maintenance GT for the house you want to maintain, such as a past newsletter.
-After removing the Decay status from the signboard, which was said at the beginning of Publish108, without resetting the access level, send a notification of "House Decay" to characters above the friend of the house.
Such will be considered.
If you think of House Decay dropping as a "just an item-focused event," you'll be able to manage these changes.
(This is an issue that has been going on all the time in relation to RMT, etc., and I think that it is unavoidable that there is some way to take measures)
However, if so, isn't it all right to "Erase everything on Corrupt"?
That way, you won't be bothered by the Scripter waiting for corruption anymore.
Full potion barrels are something that could be deleted. That is 100 stones right there. I got several while I was testing the new changes.
Something else that can get deleted are gift boxes. Same house as the potion barrels had lots of gift boxes.
OPINION PIECE
I understand these changes. I don't like them - but I understand them.
Had visitors (who are also gamers - and some are programmers - ALL are familiar with UO).
I've been working on convincing these guys to join me on Catskills - some are old-skool players who left after the RP died on Napa. They've been lurking forums (from Reddit to Stratics to here) and reading.
The first thing one of the dudes said when he came into my house:
"[insert my real name here], they gonna DELETE VET REWARDS?!?"
I left a rather important RP event on Cats when these people surprised me with a pop-up-visit and we sat around eating, drinking, and talking about games, programming, business, my drastic career shift, how one's programming differs from another's, and the joy of UO.
We hypothesized the reasons behind the IDOC changes... and something one of the guys said actually struck a chord...
"The items on the IDOC Deletion List (specifically stackable resources, veteran rewards, bank checks) have been duped very badly over the years, haven't they? They are the easiest and most popular things sold via RMT, right?."
But where are all these dupes?
In the massive storage houses of the RMT people.
And lo! What should happen if the accounts for those RMT people are banned?
Well, their houses will eventually go IDOC.
And that causes a huge issue for the Devs.
If those items get into the hands of innocent players - well then - is it right to penalize the finder or to remove those items before that even happens?
An argument arose - just delete the house and all the items of the banned account when the account is banned.
True - it was done before (we shall not mention his name). But.. that was ONE guy (and his several accounts). Imagine 5 RMT guys and all their accounts - and the mass amount of work to track them down and associate to the houses...
Then I asked if it is _really_ that hard to trace from the account to the house to the item DBs and get them all. "Depends how old, how large, and how busy the DB is. Want the Atlantic shard to go down for a week? Or worse, revert over a week?" A sobering thought that.
The main hypothesis - to get rid of the scripters once and for all, you have to get rid of their reason for scripting. If one scripter guy gets banned, and his houses drop - well, the other scripters just step in and grab his loots. We are not talking about the normal "player got bored of playing UO" IDOC... but a mass of IDOCs because one, two, or 5 RMTers get perma-banned, and ALL those storage houses with illegal dupes will be falling..... If even ONE of those bigger guys were perma-banned, and his 3-full-castles-per-shard go IDoC, imagine all that stuff (legal and duped) suddenly hitting each shard's economy. Imagine that for a few minutes before letting your fingers fly over your keyboards. It made me stop to think for a bit.
Then, looking at it from a business perspective, one can understand to some degree the decision. After all, BS wants people to subscribe - and a perk of that subscription is the count toward a Vet Reward. More consistent subscriptions is the goal (which is more predictable revenue) and something BS wants to show EA. Okay, I get that. It makes business sense to encourage steady subscriptions and discourage the 90-day-roulette. After all, vet rewards are so readily available all over the place. There is no incentive to _really_ keep a steady subscription. Joe Blow the Player could just go to shady RMT site and buy a Garden Shed (or 5) because RMT dude has 50 of them duped in storage.
Emotionally it suxxors the big green one. Every time I see a house fall, I imagine the player that owned it, and what happened to him/her that they could no longer pay the account. Are they okay? It makes me think about when my first large tower fell because I had hit on hard times and couldn't afford to buy ramen let alone keep internet going or pay for an online game. I had to focus on my sons, and not a game, so I didn't have internet for almost a year. I remember the bittersweet of getting back into UO and realizing all the memories that were lost in the IDOC.
And one of my more nerdy DBA friends broke me out of that train of thought by saying that marking a hash for deletion it is one thing - making sure you got ALL of them without affecting unmarked hashes is another, especially with how the UO DBs are reportedly done. What better way than to just get rid of everything at the IDOC? He's impressed they are taking this step.
To quote him, "Is a bold move."
I understand these changes. I don't like them - but I understand them.
kirthag.blogspot.com
I understand the reasoning behind the vet rewards in that sense. In fact, I have never gotten a decent vet reward at an IDOC anyway... aside from flaming heads or something. I am still waiting on tons of rubble I need to finish my houses though! I login just to search it and log out, lol. : P : P I hope the rubble is reconsidered... or at least that they run a new (short) 1 week event at some point for everyone to try to grab something.
patched, logged in
NO Wrestling/Anat/Tac skill (toon is a mage)
Set STR & DEX 100 each
Beat on barrels - typical hits ranging from 3 to 16 dmg per hit
No more mass-spam when loot drops, but did get MegaCliloc error (see below)
LOTS of skill gain, even with a weapon (even if not damaging barrel):
changed wrestling/tac/anat to GM - typical hits ranging from 3 to 18 dmg per hit
LOOTS - Went to some of the smaller IDOCS I've been testing with
but they do allow for placement after timer expires - and with the barrels still all go under the sign (possible exploit issue)
kirthag.blogspot.com
I have found legendary (120) power scrolls, scrolls of transcendence, scrolls of alacrity, EM event drops, holiday items, store items, legendary artifacts, various deco items, etc.
Thou dost believe that virtue resides in all people. Thou found a IDOC of a duper. Dost thou:
Deleting soulstones is bad, deleting vet rewards equally bad, it just doesn't make sense. Please reconsider this or at least leave Siege alone. Implement town criers announcing idoc locations and display the decay timer on housesigns but please leave everything else the way it was. Thanks!
My understanding is, that the following items might be up as a List for deletion at an IDOC :
- Account Bound Items
- House Only Items
- Commodity Deeds
- Stackable Items
- Goza Mats
- Bank checks
- Heavy items
- Linked attendants
- Vet Rewards
- Water Barrels, tubs, and water containers that weigh 255+ stones
As in regards to items 1, 5, 6, 8 I do NOT have a problem with them getting deleted.In regards to items 2, 3, 4, 7, 9 I DO have problems (and a whole lot) in seeing them deleted from an IDOC.....
If the problem is with stackables being too heavy, SPLIT THEM UP before generating them into a Barrel so as to have a large stack be sub-divided in multiple smaller stacks which are of a more manageable weight that a character can carry.
Furthermore, doing this will make happy a larger number of players.....
Heavy Items that are not stackable but 1 item only ?
Have these, as an exception, not go into a Barrel but drop onto the ground....
House Only and Veteran Rewards I remain SPEECHLESS to hear that there is an intention to delete them.... frankly, I do not see what the point might be to get these deleted....
As in regards # 10, if we are talking of those containers having a 255+ stones weight SINGLE item which some consider as a rare (think back in the days it was done through an exploit ?), then I have no problem to see these being deleted BUT, if instead, we are talking of containers which may have ingots, wood, fish, crafting materials and what not adding up their weight to way above 255+ stones, then I DO HAVE A PROBLEM to see them deleted....
No material, no resource, no crafting ingredient should be deleted at an IDOC no matter how large and heavy it might be, to my opinion.
If there is a need to bring them down to a more manageable weight, then see my thought on # 4 items.... : HAVE THE CODE SPLIT THEM UP AND DIVIDED INTO SMALLER STACKS !!!
This way, they will NOT exit the economy and MORE players participating at that IDOC will benefit from getting them.
These are at least my thoughts on this.
Heavy items made a mockery of the 50 items/100 stones requirement and put people overweight and unable to move - not desirable in Fel, and not in Tram if some idiot decides to release a large nasty pet in the area.
Vet rewards, I thought at first it was because of shard shields, but they shouldn't have been dropping anyway, covered by the 'account bound' restriction. I was going to post requesting, with respect, that maybe they could look again at that, but Kirthag's post has made me re-think that.
Checks - to be honest I thought we were only getting these because of the age of the TC shard back up, before checks were removed for the new money system.
House only, pity about the grass tiles, but the system probably can't be selective on which 'house only' items to remove and which to leave.
I've not tested yet, the update happened overnight for me. Off to test now.
1. Idoc PLACEMENT. I think they should make a major change here in conjunction with the barrels. Completely revamp the system for placing a house. Forget this random timer (there's an exploit to it anyways, that 100% favors the scripters). Change the system so that as soon as the last barrel is destroyed - this includes both fence and loot barrel - you can place a house, instantly. Anyone can keep track of barrels being destroyed and be ready to place a house at the right time - no benefit to scripters, you just have to click fast. It also fixes the issue with houses being placed on top of barrels and glitching things up.
2. No skill/stats advantage to Barrel breaks. Good, thanks. I like this. I don't mind the idea of needing some skills for an idoc per-se, but being template specific (to a wrestler) was super lame. Idocs have always been about all kinds of different people/characters showing up and interacting with each other, to chat and talk about upcoming fall. Restricting this to only wrestling-type templates seemed like a very boring idea.
3. Types of items being deleted:
House only Items/Account Bound Items/Goza Mats (thanks!) /Bank Checks/Linked Attendants/ No issue whatsoever. I assume most are fine with these.
Here are the others, with comments/questions:
Water Barrels, tubs and water containers that weight 255+ stones:
Nobody cares about the water barrels themselves. But a lot of people use actual barrels as containers in their house. I assume those aren't affected, correct? Because many of those barrels holding all kinds of various loot likely weight 255+ stones
Vet Rewards:
First question I have is: Why? Is it because a certain specific vet reward - or a few of them - are causing issues/bugs? For example - i remember people posting about issues with Bloody Pentagrams parts getting stuck in backpack, or weighing 255+ stones. If the logic behind this changes it to eliminates issues with such items - why do a blanket deletion of vet rewards, vs just deleting a specific few?
As many other posters have chimed in so far - vet rewards seem to be a huge part of the attraction of idocs when it comes to loot. If bloody pentagrams are a problem - delete those. Do so for other such problematic items. But what about Ethys? Or other statuettes? Or flaming head deeds? Or any other number of them? I doubt they cause issue. Why not keep those, and delete the problematic Vet Rewards only? Seems like a good compromise.
Heavy items (in particular - Rubble):
I'm not exactly sure what are considered heavy items, outside of rubble (and resources). But I think Rubble should absolutely not be deleted. Rubble are some of the absolute most sought after collectible/rare items in-game, don't spawn anymore - and getting them at idocs is something that should not go away. Find a work-around.
Commodity Deeds + Stackable Items:
What's the reasoning here? If it's about deleting resources to force players to go camp resources, and delete all the excess in-game - sure, I could get behind this I suppose. It'll cause prices in-game for resources to sky rocket soon, but that's fine.
Many players are saying "instead of deleting stacks of resources/ingots/ingredients - have them turn into commodity deeds that weight 1 stone". I assume this is too complex a change which is why they aren't doing that. That - or if the reasoning behind it is getting rid of excess resources altogether, as I allude to above. However - if that's not the reason why, if it's simply a matter of having no real way of fitting stackable items that weight so much in a barrel, how about an add-on along the following lines for overweight items:
Suggestion for looting overweight Items/stackable resources:
In my opinion - Rubble is an absolute necessity. Do no delete those. Stackable items like resources - can be included here too if Devs want. Why not find a different solution for those type of overweight items, outside of outright deleting them? Here's 3 different potential options:
1. Option 1 - overweight items (rubble especially - possible resources too) - simply fall on ground, with no barrels - after idoc falls. They don't get put into barrels. When the fence is broken - players can rush in and just loot them off ground, as you could in past.
This still allows for scripters to come scoop up items off ground fast it's true - but with the high weight limit, it does limit how much you can hold. Non-scripters who can recognize the "rarer" rubble can go for those first. And obviously with no packies allowed - there's a limit to how much you can loot anyways.
2. Option 2 - create an extra Barrel - a golden barrel - that contains overweight items/resources. Those can hold up to 125 items - but no limit on weight
You have to break those golden barrels same as the rest. The difference is when you do - the loot falls on ground. So when you break one golden barrel - possible you see 25 stacks of 60k Ingots fall on ground. Possible you see rubble, or other heavy items. Since items fall on ground - you have to loot those items off the ground, rather than falling in your backpack.
3. Tie it to house placement, if you take my first suggestion at the top of my post. As soon as last barrel goes away - whoever places a house first - also gets all of the heavy items from the idoc in a packing crate in their house.
Would have to be a bit careful with this one - as you don't want it to be too big of a competitive edge. But I do like this option - since since the start of UO, idocs had always been about "placing" a house, not just looting. This once again gives a reason for people to compete over "placing" a house.
There are a lot of people happily demanding that they do 'this' or do 'that', no one seems to stop to wonder whether what they're demanding is possible.
I've now watched a house fall and emptied some barrels. Here's what I found that I would have considered keeping:
Scrolls, power, alacrity & transcendence
Runic tools
Less common holiday gifts
EM event drops
Heritage tokens
high stat crafting talismans
And here's what I'd have handed in for clean up
more common holiday gifts
named, artifact weapons (banshee's call, valkyries glaive, life syphon, storm caller etc)
various stealable artifacts
My conclusion: I got plenty of stuff that would be useful to me in playing the game, or in passing on to others to help them play. It would be less attractive to people who's main purpose was 'profit'.
well bless their hearts....
Maybe they should stop and think about how all their "combat the crime" steps have favored the scriptors
"It will cost them subscriptions, it will cost them mine. Im just done guys, im over it... i will never be as valuable of a customer to them as the handful that they keep on the pedestal...."
You'll be missed, I am sure a lot of others will be too, it's hard to even want to log in at all.
Seems to be a big logic gap though - how have any of the other items inside an idoc been earned by any of the idoc'ers?