Possible Suggestions
I am sure this has already been suggested, but I have not logged in here since the IDOC change, which has worked out spectacular.
Devs, would it be possible to block EJ from both Vendor Searching and using General Chat? I think we all know of the pitfalls of them using general chat. But I would also like to point out that people are likely using scripts to scour vendor search with EJ accounts. I have noticed a lack of several items on vendor search ever since EJ came out. These are not newbie items.... but certain rare items that have never appeared again.
Someone told me once that the "elites" were making 1p a week off of vendor search alone, and I think that is the case. They are using them to search all 30-32 shards at once and taking any valuable items away from players. Please consider helping out in this. I know it is a big step to block them from using vendor search, but I think the rewards justify the means for players who actually play the game. Returning "real players"..... not bots abusing EJ, will already not know what VS is and will go around looking at vendors anyway. Perhaps starting them off at Luna bank would help out a ton, as most of the actual new "returning" players never even make it to Luna before quitting. They do not know what Luna is; they sure do not know what vendor search is. They login, open their backpack, paperdoll, and skill tab, and options to set their macro.... and that is about the end of it. They see no players in Haven/Britain and often unsubscribe thinking not many are playing. Please start EJ accounts at Luna bank. Please stop the "elites" abusing EJ from using general chat to spam and VS to rob everyone (they are multi-boxing multi-searching all production shards at once.)
Thank you so much for the IDOC changes; while they are still using barrel punching "programs" and multi-boxing that and doing the same for house placement...... I am actually getting server births and I my wife got a tinker legs today. So thank you for changing the IDOCs, it has helped greatly.
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The purpose of Endless Journey accounts is that of trying Ultima Online as much as possible to then decide to stay and move to a subscribed account.
Vendor Search and General Chat, especially for a New player, are fundamental parts to get started in Ultima Online be it to seek help or find equipment to play.
The real problem here, to my opinion, is the ability of players to run scripts.
These RMT people, I imagine, do not sit at the keyboard spending their time to spam their Web sites in Chat.... I guess that they use scripts.
Well, then it is about time that in Ultima Online this scripting ability goes away for good.
It would fix soooooooooooo many issues and problems from farming to RMT spamming and so forth.
Personally, I would be happy NOT to see any new content nor anything at all in Ultima Online for even 6 months IF the Developers would just spend 100% of their time to find a way to get rid of scripting in Ultime Online for good.
It would solve so many issues and problems with this game that it would be a dream come true, to my opinion.
I honestly do not understand why we keep lamenting issues that ALL root to AFK scripting but we do not see this being addressed and stopped for good.
The problem is SCRIPTING, S-C-R-I-P-T-I-N-G !!!
So, instead of patching here and patching there, what would need to be done is to find a way to STOP players' ability to script using Third Party non authorized Scripts.
I said it already and will repeat it here.... I would be IMMENSELY happy if the Developers stopped any work related to Ultima Online such as new content, fixing of bugs EVERYTHING, and started working to find a way to stop FOR GOOD the ability for UO players to use non-authorized scripts to farm, spam in Chat RMT web site and so forth.
Even for months upon months, even for 6 months as long as they come up with a solution what would get rid of scripting in Ultima Online for good I would be immensely happy to see ZERO new content, ZERO bugs fixed, nothing else but working to find a final solution to stop scripting in Ultima Online.
It would solve sooooo many issues and problems which players have been lamenting for ever in Ultima Online so, why not putting this as the very # 1 priority to work on ?
Scripters use VPNs and a few of them have 10 different computers set up with different settings. (When you access websites and everything, it leaves a fingerprint of your PC details, software, windows, IP, and much more.) They can identify people by those PC settings. But by using VPNs in conjunction with certain software, they can replicate any type of "appearance" they want. If they wanted it to say they were using Windows 95, North Pole, and IP address 1000000001 it would. That it why it is virtually impossible to ban those guys.
They are getting banned however. The huge 1000p+ castle that fell by fel Cove on Drachenfels 6 months ago is proof. Endless journey however, gives them an endless supply of replicatable bots that they can use. They do not even create bots.... they can use programs to recreate bots with different names every few days. They can use programs to sign up to email and Broadsword every few days with a brand new email and create brand new EJ accounts, every few days. EJ does not have to be tied to any other account, only an email which a bot can create in 20 seconds. Why do you think every site has those pictures like "Check all Crosswalks" or "Check Every Picture with Cars." The programs can do all of that outside of UO. Ultima Online, nor any game, has any way to detect outside programs aside from seeing a repetative string, such as when a bot gets stuck. As far as I know, the only thing they have to really do is transfer gold between accounts.
Leaving EJ with gen chat privileges and VS harms the actual player base. Every item that people collect is getting swiped up by bots within hours after being placed on VS. Anything that meets their "threshold to buy" is getting bought and repriced. They should not be able to use 32 chars and vendor search every shard with replicatable accounts / bots over and over.
The only way I can think of to fix this would be to stop EJ from using vendor search. Stopping them from gen chat would fix the gold sellers.... but I do not care so much about that spamming as I do about the vendor searching.
Devs listened to me about the IDOC changes, and absolutely everyone is eternally grateful. The change was miraculous. Whoever came up with the barrel idea on top of what I was floating around was a genius. Please try to find a way to stop the abuse of EJ accounts though. Making an EJ only chat (that normal vet players could join too) is not a bad idea. That would funnel all the EJ players in together and they could easily make guilds and join up. They would not have to hear the toxic 12 year old chat going on on Atlantic gen chat.... which causes a ton of people to quit the game actually, trust me. Give them an EJ only chat and start every EJ char in Luna so that they automatically know where the people and vendors are. Most returning players never even find out what Luna is. A ton of guilds who want to recruit will go to the EJ chat and recruit people, trust me. It would likely be a hundred times better than general chat itself. There is no real need for EJ chars to vendor search. They are fighting mongbats and earth eles. They don't have nor should need an item that costs 5m.... little lone 175m or 5.5p. Stopping them from using gen. chat and VS would greatly help out the real players that have been playing for 10 or 15 years and want to play and are planning on staying.
Apparant Cons: Gold sellers will just go to the EJ forum to sell gold. This is a major win still.... they will lose a ton of their funding. The people trashing Mesanna would lose their funding. The Devs could even put out their own spam message on the EJ chat every 15 minutes that says "Buying Gold from those Websites is Illegal and You Will Be Banned. You also risk compromising your data and putting your PC at risk."
Pros: 1) No more gold sellers on general chat. No more "anonymous" people on general chat bashing Devs, players, and Mesanna. Everyone on general chat should be tied to a paying account so that they are ban-able. 2) Actual new returning players will start in Luna. They will see people actually instead of someone selling gold on a chat. 3) EJ players won't be overwhelmed by prices so quickly. It will give them a more authentic Ultima Online feel and nostalgia. 4) There will be a new EJ chat channel. This will encourage groups, guilds, friends, and veteran players helping them out. 5) This will block scripts from searching vendor search. Vendor search will be a lot more efficient I bet! Meaning it will work better. 6) Veteran players will be able to collect the items they are after for once, instead of people buying / repricing items. 7) EJ accounts will be able to find vendors selling "lower tiered armor" that someone else is not buying up.
I could list like 20 more Pros..... but you get the idea. Thank you for all of your work Devs, I hope you can take a look at this thoroughly and not just take someone's word that it would not work. It could potentially work greatly, just like the IDOC changes were superb. Thank you again.
-Polaris
Do a sting operation on the websites and ban the account about to sell you 20Plats.
I suggested the sting operation thing a few years ago. I am sure they have. But most of those sellers are likely smart enough to take the money first and give the gold on an EJ account. Sting failed.... that easily. Now if they could track gold transfers, that would be another story. But then you would have EJ bots trading varying amounts of gold 20,000 times a day so that it would literally become untrackable. There are methods to avoid detection in everything. With computers and repetitious bots it quickly becomes more difficult to catch than to not be caught. That is what I am guessing has always been happening. You can catch a person. You cannot catch the computer. The computer is not autonomous, but can repeat anything you or I can do a million times over before I can even write this reply to you. That's the sad reality.
Or are you saying those bots are making money by buying mis-priced items?
What type of a solution ?
Coding the Ultima Online Client so that, if it detects any non authorized software running together with the UO Client, the UO Client would simply "shut down".... just like we get that ahead warning before server down for maintainance....
Only, that it would happen at any time throughout the day as soon as the UO Client detects non-authorized Third Party software running alongside with it....
Want to play UO ? Sorry, you cannot use non-authorized software with it... put it in the TOS, and those players who still will fire up Third Party software to script in UO will simply end up with a game that is unplayable, since it will shut down as soon as the UO Client will detect un-authorized software up and running with the UO Client.
It would not be necessary to track down the players and ban their accounts, they would simply be unable to do whatever they want to do using non-authorized scripting Third Party applications because the Ultima Online Client would self shut down and, thus, make that scripting simply impossible....
This is only 1 possible idea about many that perhaps could be possible without having to play the cat and mouse game, endlessly...
Also, I need to say something about Gold selling.....
Why there is players capable of selling Gold in Ultima Online ?
The easy answer is, because there is other players buying that gold....
If there were no buyers, there would be no market and, thus, no sellers.....
So, let's question ourselves.... on WHY there is players willing to buy gold (and items) in Ultima Online...
The answer is, to my opinion, TIME.
Since it takes time to stock up that gold or earn in game those items, some players figured that they are better off using their real life money which took them LESS time to earn, and spend it to buy UO gold or items....
For example, how much does 1 Platinum of UO gold goes for ? Let's assume it is 150 US$.... now, even at 7.25 US$ per hour at minimum wage, that is about 20 hours of work... and there is lots of people that can earn better then minimum wage... so, let's assume that, for the average UO player, about 10 hours are sufficient to put together 150 bucks....
How many hours, in the game, would be necessary to stock up 1 Platinum UO gold ?
I would think a lot more hours that 10, 20 or even more....
So, the reason why there is a market for Gold or UO items for real money is, to my opinion, due to the fact that it takes too much time in game to get that much gold or items and, therefore, several players think it a TIME SAVER for them to use their real life money to buy UO gold or items.
To kill such a market for good, that is, make it pointless, all it would take is to make gold and items take much less time to be obtained in the game... at that point, why would players want to spend their real time money to buy them ? They would just spend a little time in the game and get them by themselves, saving up their real time money....
So, it is my opinion, Ultima Online is victim of its own fault, is how I see it, by making gold and items not easy enough to be obtained, it basically is making it possible for this Real Money Trades market to go on since it makes it convenient for some players to want to use their real money to be spent on UO items and gold as this saves them time.....
Make gold and items easier to be obtained in UO thus reducing the time it takes to get them in UO, and the RMT Market will melt like snow on a sunny day for luck of purchasing players, me thinks.
I think its not that the Dev team not wanting to do anything about scripting,
1) Is it even possible for a system that is 20 over years old?
2) If yes, how much effort and cost is required? Need to rewrite entire code?
3) If any of u are software engineers and have a cost effective solution, contact Mesanna or Bleak?
ESRB warning: Some Blood. LOTS of Alcohol. Some Violence. LOTS of Bugs
Answer: It's impossible.
There are only a few ways to help. I suggested 2. Here is another that I hope the Devs take a serious look at.
1) Stop IDOCs completely. Let players loot go into a storage vault in a bank. They get it when they come back. No gold sellers, no scripters, no IDOCers like me complaining. No body losing sleep over a bunch of gold sellers destroying Ultima Online. This would be the single best thing ever and would take very little coding and have all of the desired effects.
2) When a house falls, auction the plot. Devs did this with Clop's house. Don't let script placers sit here and sell castles all day long. If anyone has been able to "sell" a castle the past year.... they should automatically be banned, because you Know how they got it.
Back in 2006 was when they tried punkbuster... They need to try something like BattlEye.
And if it's the case that it is just their play style and punishing other players.... what about the players that lost all of their items because of Covid or something.... a lost job? Why do we have to worry so much about punishing IDOCers? Why can we not worry about players who lost items because their houses fell returning? If it is the case that we should just let them keep multi-boxing barrel punching characters.... then the Devs just need to come out and tell the rest of us that we can do it too. The day they say that.... I promise I could do it better than them. They can not even play the game.... it is sad. As one person on the "unleashed forums" put it... a very famous girl who posts on here.... she 'only uses the fishing script because her fingers have carpel tunnel.' I play guitar and my fingers have carpel tunnel too.... but I don't get nor want that luxury. If that is how people have to play to enjoy their "playstyle" and I should just go and do something else as you suggest..... then why not open up that playstyle to me? Why do I have to be punished because I follow the rules of the game?
It's funny.... no less than 1 minute after I entered the Unleashed forum on the "other site" and saw that they were literally ALL cheating and sharing scripts.... was the last day I went to that site. I told them all off and got put on Stinky P's (not right name of course) "Something" of the day post. Not the right name.... of course.
@Kyronix and @Bleak , perhaps it might be worth for you to look into this BattleEye to implement it into Ultima Online ?
Like I said, I would rather the devs fix their scripting problems in ways that do not affect my game play. Also I have seen many returning players on LS using EJ. Many have upgraded accounts and are playing regularly. Lake Superior has a totally different group of regular players than it did before EJ came out.
Put your account on a credit card that has a few years on it if you don't want to lose things. Auto renew works just fine.
If you want to leave EJ doing VS..... then the Devs have a problem w/ about 4 players using 32 EJ bots to Script vendor search. They then bring bots on general chat to trash Ultima, trash Mesanna, and make fun of players like me for actually going to work while they are making tons of money in Ultima. Someone said that 3 days ago.... I can go back to work and keep slaving for the capitalist slimes.... paraphrasing what they said..... while they will keep making twice as money money as me from Ultima. Their words..... on gen chat, from one of the guys who is there 24/7 making money.
It sounds like you think everyone is scripting. Birds of a feather flock together.
Want to know how many scriptors affect my play daily? Zero.
ESRB warning: Some Blood. LOTS of Alcohol. Some Violence. LOTS of Bugs
I am sorry if you just want to sit and chat and nothing affects Your game play. But it does affect people's like mine. I want to be able to get some server births, event items, collectibles, and hopefully one day a castle too.
Birds of a feather.... Keith on the other site said that you were now taking the scripter's side as well. I have never scripted in my life and have been the number one voice speaking out against it.
You never said how you know those players at the IDOC are bots. Just because you say they are is not proof of anything. You seriously think that 50 players wont be at an Atlantic IDOC? People go to other shards and announce Atl IDOCs in chat.
The two groups were at war with each other and hated each other. You will notice now... there are two different sets of character names spamming two different websites in general chat. I know exactly what I am talking about. You have no idea... go back to Stratics Unleashed, which you are a member of, and read some more of the posts with the scripts they share. Like Keith of Sonoma said, it looks like you are taking their side now. Funny how the times change, you were on our side before Unleashed came out on Stratics. I wonder what changed your mind? Read Atlantic chat a little bit when the spammers and myself get into arguments. They laughed two days ago and told me to go back to work at lunchtime, they make 4x as much as me from Ultima they said. If I could say their names and make it a little less conspiratorial for you I would. But that I will not. I just hope the Devs get their bots off of General Chat and Vendor Search. You would think it would be a major issue with them on the chat trashing the Devs and Mesanna all day. They should have been banned the first time someone did that.