Trade Orders : Is it my impression or the Rewards are NOT dependant on time and length of Travel ?
I am quite surprised....
I was expecting to receive "payment" for the Delivery of a Trade Order, depending on the complexity (i.e. number of items which it means more running around Towns to purchase the items to then deliver...) of the Trade Order and, of course, from the length of the Delivery with longer Routes paying more and routes involving Sea faring also paying more (i.e. a better Reward...).
Instead, to my surprise, I have received Orders from Vesper to Minoc which take only a few minutes give a better "payment" as, say, having to Walk AND Sail from Trinsic all the way to Moonglow which can take a whole lot of time ....
What gives ?
What is the point of having more complex (more items) and more lengthy (and time consuming) Trade Routes if then this does not award a better payment ?
Then players who cancel all lengthy Trade Routes and only accept short Trade Routes (like Vesper to Minoc....) do the right thing because, hey, there is not even a penalty for cancelling an "unwanted" Trade Route because too long ?
I do not get it.....
I hope that I am wrong, because, to my thinking, more complex (more items) and more lengthy Trade Runs should always "pay" more as compared to less items and shorter Trade Routes....
Also, cancelling an unwanted Trade Route should bring some penalty or players would, of course, always "pick" those Trade Routes which they find more convenient because shorter....
And taking Trade Route from the Town where one just delivered an Ordered should be more beneficial (i.e. grant a bonus) as compared to always recalling to the same Town and taking Trade Orders in between moreless always the same Origin and Destination....
I was expecting to receive "payment" for the Delivery of a Trade Order, depending on the complexity (i.e. number of items which it means more running around Towns to purchase the items to then deliver...) of the Trade Order and, of course, from the length of the Delivery with longer Routes paying more and routes involving Sea faring also paying more (i.e. a better Reward...).
Instead, to my surprise, I have received Orders from Vesper to Minoc which take only a few minutes give a better "payment" as, say, having to Walk AND Sail from Trinsic all the way to Moonglow which can take a whole lot of time ....
What gives ?
What is the point of having more complex (more items) and more lengthy (and time consuming) Trade Routes if then this does not award a better payment ?
Then players who cancel all lengthy Trade Routes and only accept short Trade Routes (like Vesper to Minoc....) do the right thing because, hey, there is not even a penalty for cancelling an "unwanted" Trade Route because too long ?
I do not get it.....
I hope that I am wrong, because, to my thinking, more complex (more items) and more lengthy Trade Runs should always "pay" more as compared to less items and shorter Trade Routes....
Also, cancelling an unwanted Trade Route should bring some penalty or players would, of course, always "pick" those Trade Routes which they find more convenient because shorter....
And taking Trade Route from the Town where one just delivered an Ordered should be more beneficial (i.e. grant a bonus) as compared to always recalling to the same Town and taking Trade Orders in between moreless always the same Origin and Destination....
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Comments
It is called RNG.
Cheers MissE
Cheers MissE
I HATE work arounds....
I like when the system is fair, and I follow the rules and go by the rules.
Now, shall we look at how Trade Orders are set up ?
No, it is not the RNG as others say....
Or, at least, the RNG should only be "part" of the equation, to my opinion.
The system should be organized to be fair to those participating in it.
More items in a Trade Order should provide an increasingly better "payment" for the delivery of that Trade Order, to my viewing, since one needs to run around Town more to find and purchase those more items (takes more time the more the items...) and Longer Routes should as well provide a better payment, even more of a better payment if the Route was to involve also sailing, besides running, since salining takes longer then running.
I do not understand why you get upset at me, if I understood it correctly, you find Trade Routes as boring, is that correct ?
If so, shouldn't then the "payments" for delivering Orders be at least Designed to be fair and "metered" on their complexity (more items to be delivered) as well as with longer Routes and also slower because involving Sailing providing a better payment upon delivery ?
Sure, the RNG plays a role BUT, nonetheless, the quality and worth of the "payment" Reward should be commensurated to the Order taken....
Also, since, to my understanding, Trade Orders have been conceived to also be a way to support Towns, I think that the Developers should incentivate players to do Trade Orders from and to ALL Towns and not just 2 Towns which are the closest or the fastest or easiest to connect....
Sure, there is a penalty to cancel a Trade Order but, at least that I could see, it is not "that" of a big deal since, when I have cancelled a Trade Order which I did not like, I could get another shortly after....
Personally, I think that the penalty for refusing Trade Orders should be more significative....
Again, I would like the mechanics to be FAIR and commensurate to the work and time that a player was to put into it and one that could not instead permit work arounds to circumvent its core Design so as to bypass whatever one was not to like about it.
What is so wrong, if I may ask, about wishing that a given in game mechanics was to be fair and commensurated to the higher amount of work and time that one was to put into it ?
Why should a player doing a Trade Order that only takes a few minutes get the same (or even better) payment as another player who picked a Trade Order that, instead, took 20 minutes to Deliver ?
Risk vs. Reward does not only mean higher danger to get a better Reward, to my viewing, it ALSO means that more time invested into a given mechanics, for example like Trade Orders, should yield a better Reward and associated payment for delivering that more time consuming Trade Order.
I see it as a BALANCING issue.
My apologies if the bringing of this argument may have upset you, I did not want to.
I am just bringing it up for the better sake of Ultima Online and of its mechanics.
I really think that the more they are FAIR and BALANCED, the better overall it would be for UO as a whole.
Please make the Grizzled Mare a 5 slot mount, it's incredibly rare and deserves it. Some of us have been waiting a long time for this simple addition.
Which it means, at least to my understanding, that the game engine DOES HAVE a way to "see", and consequentually award, a better payment to the City Treasury.
My question is, WHY the same does not also happen as a payment to the character that is delivering the Order.
I find it quite unfair that smaller and faster Orders can get a better payment to the character as compared to lrger and more time consuming Trade Orders... because of the RNG.
It should not be so, at least to my opinion.
The mechanics should be fairer and more balanced with more complex (more items) and over Longer Routes Trade Orders (worse if involving very time consuming sailing also) paying ALSO to the character a better Reward.
At least, that is how I happen to see it.
I am just bringing this up because I do think that it should be better for Ultima Online as a whole to have mechanics that were to be, as much as possible, more fair and balanced to the amount of time that the player invests in the game for that given task.
Cheers MissE
My point being, that with more items and longer time comsuming Trade Routes having been delivered (also if involving much time consuming sailing), for example, Scrolls or Transcendence should be for more valuable skills, for example Tactics, Taming, Magery etc. and for more points decimals (like upwards 0.5+ skill point raise) as compared to less complex and less time consuming Trade Routes....
I mean that, when I talk about payment....
The more one does, the longer time one invests in doing that, the MORE one should get in return, is my point of view....
In this sense I am saying that I feel there is an inbalance in how currently Trade Orders might play out....
What I am trying to say, is that seeing the RNG award a Scroll of Transcendence for 1.0 of Taming for a 1 item Trade Order from Vesper to Minoc (just using that because it is the shortest walk there is among them all...) and then seeing instead the RNG award a 0.1 Scroll of Transcendence for Delivering a 3 items Trade Order all the way from Trinsic to, say Moonglow, involving also slower sailing, to me looks totally unjust and unfair and the Design of the mechanics should NOT, to my opinion, permit such inequities to happen....
That is why I said it is a matter of fairness and balance, to my viewing....
Can you post the spreadsheet that shows the cities and rewards so it does prove what you are saying? Or did you just do two to come to this conclusion?
There are quite enough genuine posts without the need to invent topics.
Try making a note of those.... the skills you get and the amount of points raised when you get one for Delivering an Order and depending on what Route it was given for.
I have gotten useless skills for for low points for very long and time consuming skills and, instead, gotten tough to raise skills and very high points like .8 or .9 for very short Trade Routes....
kirthag.blogspot.com
Below are links to two spreadsheets I happened to do over the last couple of years to capture data from trade quests:
I am saying that it "should not be" like that and that, instead, skill and value should be commensurated to the Route and, thus, time investment, that the character has spent....
Longer, more time consuming Trade Routes and for a larger quantity of items should, to my opinion, have a higher chance at rewarding more wanted skills and for a higher value to avoid getting high value Scrolls of Transcendence off of short and easy Trade Routes and less wanted skills and for lower values afte one has invested a considerable time in that Trade Route....
I think it should be more balanced out towards the time invested in a given Trade Route....
You tell em Popps.
I mean, how much sense does it make that a character does a 1 item Vesper to Minoc Trade Route that only takes a handfull of seconds or minutes and gets, say, a 1.0 Taming Scroll of Transcendence for delivering that Order while then another character, by doing, say, a much longer and very much time consuming Jhelom to Vesper (one of the longest and most time consuming Trade Routes) gets given upon delivering that very much time consuming Trade Order a 0.1 Camping Scroll of Transcendence ?
How fair and balanced is that, if I may ask ?
To my opinion, it should need no pointing out that the set up of Rewards being given upon delivering a Trade Order should, particularly for Scrolls of Transcendence, take into account the time invested in that particular Trade Route....
If it was too complicated and was to require too much work to assign "weights" to Scrolls of Transcendence "skills" in relation to the length of a Trade Route, at the very least, when a Scroll of Transcendence gets generated as a Reward, it could be created with lesser decimals of a point for shorter Trade Routes and with higher Decimals of a point, often with a full 1.0 Point, for longer and more time consuming Trade Order Routes.
At least, a Vesper to Minoc Trade Order Scroll of Transcendence would only come with 0.1 while a Jhelom to Vesper one with a 1.0 full point, regardless of whether it is a wanted or unwanted skill that it comes as....
It would be at least a tad more fair and balanced in respect to the different time that it takes to fullfill different Trade Orders' Routes, to my opinion.
If they did what you think should of been done, then creates a whole another issue, no one would do the small runs, and just do the longs for higher point Sot's and we have more farmers/scripters abusing it, and if you don't think its possible, then you would be dead wrong. So your idea would break the economy even more because you want stuff to fit your play style. This is one reason why everything is based on RNG the way it is.
They will never be able to stop scripting abuse as long as the they keep classic client around, and good luck trying to get them to drop that client, half the players would quit.
Game needs more KISS.. not more time investment for even less rewards ONCE AGAIN....
They are AFK so, the length of the Trade Route is irrelevant to them.
Yet, for players who actually DO play sat at the keyboard, instead, and DO use their in-game time to actually move a character from Origin A to Destination B, to receive Scrolls of Transcendence without any relation to the investment of time which they did in delivering that Trade Order, can be quite upsetting if, for a very long Route one gets a minimal 0.1 Scroll of Transcendence and for an unwanted skill also....
So, is my opinion, Scripters have no problem in abusing Trade Routes regardless of their distances, players who actually sit at their keyboard, instead, can be quite upset for getting very little reward for a very large investment of time they put in that Trade Route delivery....
if one does not enjoy them, they have plenty other things which they can do, in Ultima Online.
I have no problem in walking and sailing to Deliver my Trade Orders just like I have no problems in fishing for Crabs and Lobsters or for Shore, Deep Water and Dungeon fish. And this, controlling personally my character, no scripting.
Not all content is for all players, some enjoy some type of content and others enjoy other type of content, players are not all the same.
This said, though, I think it should be a FUNDAMENTAL rule that players' time in any given activity gets rewarded and this, proportionally to the time invested.
The most valuable commodity we have in life is TIME. The time that passed can never be gotten back. It is gone for good.
So, activities in the game that are more time consuming, to my viewing, should absolutely be more rewarding as compared to activities which are less time rewarding,
I do not see why Trade Orders should be an exception and see short Trade Route provide a better reward for completing them as compared to long Trade Routes....
Trying to understand your mindset, I really struggle to see how that would be more fun just by taking 5x as long. Like the people who say the love how there is less loot in t-maps for more effort. To each their own.
I have been doing 5 part trade orders for quite some time.
I used to turn them in at the destination city and pick up the next one there.
But last year, with Krampus, someone said that Britain was sorta like the halfway point to everywhere... so I've been doing that city since then...
I am the governor of Minoc, but after turning in all those cargo at all of the cities...
The treasuries of all the cities have greatly improved.
So I feel that it doesn't matter which city you should start at.
The other day I was somewhat frustrated...
I had a trade order that had 20 of each item (only one was stackable).
And these were the most expensive items...
I ran all the way to Trinsic for a 0.2 SOT, think it was tracking or item id...
And at the same time, someone ran from Minoc to Vesper and got a 1.0 SOT in a crafting skill...
I almost gave up for the night, but chose to do one more run.
And on that run I got another guild sign...
It was actually one of the signs that I still needed to collect...
but if it wasn't one that I needed, I would have put it on my vendor for 1 Mil.
@popps you keep making comments about crafters not being able to afford the recipes from Krampus... You can do the trade routes and sell the guild signs to make money. There will always be people who would buy those signs. I have personally purchased them for 1 Mil each. And that's not even mentioning the SOTs you can make money off of.
They DO NOT need to make Trade orders more complicated. In my experience, when you start getting smaller SOTs, its usually followed by big rewards. It may not be the very next one, but you will get better items... but then again, in my opinion, there is no bad reward for doing the trade routes... I might not like an item I get, but that could be treasure to someone else.