I have been reading posts about rumors of yet another dupe of items in UO.
Those who have played Ultima Online for quite a few years, may remember that over the years the duping incidents have been quite several. And each time, IMHO, a lot of harm is done to legittimate players as the flooding of duped items lowers the value of all those items, even those that were obtained legittimately through great expenditure of one's own time playing the game.
Basically, as I see it, duping makes it not worth to spend time playing the game to get those items, much more efficient to do else and buy those items dead cheap.........
Worse, I think, if what is duped are gold checks, the sudden flood of gold in the game boosts inflation thus making the game much harder for new players or returning players.
What I am trying to say, is that from each angle I see the problem of duping, I end up thinking that this is a very bad thing for Ultima Online as a game as it either may deter current players from playing the game as the items they get are not worth their time, or it may deter perspective returning players or brand new players to actually want to come back to Ultima Online because competitive items' prices may have sky rocketed...
Now, if duping is quite a bad problem for UO, shouldn't a "good for all" solution be found to deal with it once and for all ?
Since I keep hearing about this problem, even years after it first showed up in UO, I seem to guess that it cannot be made impossible to come back, eventually, sooner or later, be it for a bug or whatever.
Now, if it ain't possible to make duping impossible to show up, then why not deal with it in a different way ?
I seem to remember that since a while back all items in UO have a unique identification number.
Now, how about when an item is duped (thus the game gets 2+ items with the same identification number) then all of the items with the same identification number gets deleted automatically but 1. Problem solved.
Besides, the game could have a sort of an alarm bell built in that rings up in the Developers' room whenever the game detects multile items holding the same unique identification number being created. That is, the Developers could get to know of a new duping issue the same exact time it shows up in the game............
Checks.....
Well, if 2 items are not allowed to hold the same unique identification number more than for a split second since only 1 would remain in the game and not get deleted, checks holding the same identification number would be automatically deleted.
But in order to deal with the problem also in cases this did not happen (items not getting automatically deleted), how about adding an "items' database" to the game that basically, at least for sometime like a few months to give enough time to Developers to deal with duping situations ?
This items' database would basically register for the time set all changes to that item's unique identification number and accounts' transfers thus allowing the developers to track down duped items even though they changed unique identification numbers and account holding them.
For example, say that a check is numbered 00123. It gets duped and somehow the duped check also numbered oo123 has not been deleted. The duped check is then turned into gold having the item number 00124 and then back into another check with number 00125 or perhaps in 2 checks of half the amount each numbered 00125 and 00126. Well, all of these changes would be added to the history of the original check numbered 00123 thus making it possible, once the supe has been discovered, to find out what items have been actually duped and what happened to them in the game. Of course, the faster a duping would be dealt with (and actions taken), the sh0rter the time this database should be needed to be memorized for. If the duping could be discovered in a couple of weeks and be dealt with in such a time frame, then the database could be cleared every 2 weeks to minimize the amount of memory needed for storage.
I think that it could make it possible to take care of the problem even after the duping occurred, and deal with it thus fixing whatever harm was done to the game by the flooding of duped items.
Would this slow down the game a bit ? I am not sure, perhaps (maybe most of the work can be done daily when servers are down from maintainance ?), but I do not think we can have the cake and eat it too, if duping is a problem and it hurts the game, well, then I think that some compromise must be found with solutions which may not be perfect, but at least try to deal also with the harm that duping does to the game after the duping has already occurred.....
Those who have played Ultima Online for quite a few years, may remember that over the years the duping incidents have been quite several. And each time, IMHO, a lot of harm is done to legittimate players as the flooding of duped items lowers the value of all those items, even those that were obtained legittimately through great expenditure of one's own time playing the game.
Basically, as I see it, duping makes it not worth to spend time playing the game to get those items, much more efficient to do else and buy those items dead cheap.........
Worse, I think, if what is duped are gold checks, the sudden flood of gold in the game boosts inflation thus making the game much harder for new players or returning players.
What I am trying to say, is that from each angle I see the problem of duping, I end up thinking that this is a very bad thing for Ultima Online as a game as it either may deter current players from playing the game as the items they get are not worth their time, or it may deter perspective returning players or brand new players to actually want to come back to Ultima Online because competitive items' prices may have sky rocketed...
Now, if duping is quite a bad problem for UO, shouldn't a "good for all" solution be found to deal with it once and for all ?
Since I keep hearing about this problem, even years after it first showed up in UO, I seem to guess that it cannot be made impossible to come back, eventually, sooner or later, be it for a bug or whatever.
Now, if it ain't possible to make duping impossible to show up, then why not deal with it in a different way ?
I seem to remember that since a while back all items in UO have a unique identification number.
Now, how about when an item is duped (thus the game gets 2+ items with the same identification number) then all of the items with the same identification number gets deleted automatically but 1. Problem solved.
Besides, the game could have a sort of an alarm bell built in that rings up in the Developers' room whenever the game detects multile items holding the same unique identification number being created. That is, the Developers could get to know of a new duping issue the same exact time it shows up in the game............
Checks.....
Well, if 2 items are not allowed to hold the same unique identification number more than for a split second since only 1 would remain in the game and not get deleted, checks holding the same identification number would be automatically deleted.
But in order to deal with the problem also in cases this did not happen (items not getting automatically deleted), how about adding an "items' database" to the game that basically, at least for sometime like a few months to give enough time to Developers to deal with duping situations ?
This items' database would basically register for the time set all changes to that item's unique identification number and accounts' transfers thus allowing the developers to track down duped items even though they changed unique identification numbers and account holding them.
For example, say that a check is numbered 00123. It gets duped and somehow the duped check also numbered oo123 has not been deleted. The duped check is then turned into gold having the item number 00124 and then back into another check with number 00125 or perhaps in 2 checks of half the amount each numbered 00125 and 00126. Well, all of these changes would be added to the history of the original check numbered 00123 thus making it possible, once the supe has been discovered, to find out what items have been actually duped and what happened to them in the game. Of course, the faster a duping would be dealt with (and actions taken), the sh0rter the time this database should be needed to be memorized for. If the duping could be discovered in a couple of weeks and be dealt with in such a time frame, then the database could be cleared every 2 weeks to minimize the amount of memory needed for storage.
I think that it could make it possible to take care of the problem even after the duping occurred, and deal with it thus fixing whatever harm was done to the game by the flooding of duped items.
Would this slow down the game a bit ? I am not sure, perhaps (maybe most of the work can be done daily when servers are down from maintainance ?), but I do not think we can have the cake and eat it too, if duping is a problem and it hurts the game, well, then I think that some compromise must be found with solutions which may not be perfect, but at least try to deal also with the harm that duping does to the game after the duping has already occurred.....