How to Fix Resource Farming Exploitation

[allie_oops]

Since the last thread was open to opinion on "do you want to catch a scripter?" and then became flooded with various opinions on the topic, I felt like the clearly outlined bug and fix got [willfully by some ] tossed aside.

Let's keep this one on point (with cooperation with the mods ! )and get a Dev to give this a read, and maybe give some thoughts.




Run down this check list :

A) What's the problem?
B) What's causing the problem?
C) Who is making the problem?
D) What solutions can be found to resolve the problem?


So to take the check list for example and complete it :

A) What's the Problem?
Scripting Resources (Mining/Lumberjacking) done on a large scale [6+ accounts] provides extremely large amounts of resources, which then get turned into crafted items and sold to NPC vendors for 'new' gold, or fill up vendors until the market reaches a saturation point and the player market price continues to decline.

B) What's causing the problem?
The resource system currently allows you to recall all over the world, smacking a tree, grabbing wood, recalling to your bank/house, dropping it in a secure and rinse/repeating until the end of time. It ends up being ~100 stones of product, every 15 seconds. From start to finish of a cycle.


The second part of the problem is that the NPC vendors will buy player crafted items at a standard price and don't "fill up" until they run out of gold. At which point you recall to a new vendor, and continue on the cycle , eventually the vendor will respawn with more gold.


C) I don't know names. This is more for Private Messaging Devs

D)

If you were to limit the total quantity of wood and ore farmed per account per day, you would be able to set hardcaps that could not be abused. Sure, someone could open up another 5-10 accounts to TRY and make up for it, but you'd have sealed the dam, to allow a faucet to drip. As long as this change was out of the scope of the regular (even hardcore) player, it'd be very beneficial. Even the most hardcore player is not recalling to tree -> swing -> bank -> drop every 15 seconds for 5 hours straight.

To test which items give the best bang for the buck when sold to an NPC, requires simply making a few of each carpentry and fletching item out of each wood type. Then checking the sell price/wood per item. This would show which items are most easily exploited, and could allow for a quick and simple mark down to be followed by a system change when Dev time was more available.

In reference to a previous statement that "60k frostwood would sell for more on a player vendor", I believe this to potentially be true. Since you receive exponentially more 'normal' wood which is less valuable as a player market commodity, I think this is where you'd assume the margin is to be made.


And in regards to mining, for those of us that have been around pub16 onward, making Shadow Heater Shields was the old means of doing this. Exceptional high durability shields sell for a good chunk of gold. This still may be the case. I'll go through each item this week for each system and we can see where the potential for profitability in an automated system lies.



Knowledge is power, and some of us don't mind sharing
Allie




Not so hard, you just have to address the problem and take responsibility for finding a solution.

 

[popps]

D)

If you were to limit the total quantity of wood and ore farmed per account per day, you would be able to set hardcaps that could not be abused. Sure, someone could open up another 5-10 accounts to TRY and make up for it, but you'd have sealed the dam, to allow a faucet to drip. As long as this change was out of the scope of the regular (even hardcore) player, it'd be very beneficial. Even the most hardcore player is not recalling to tree -> swing -> bank -> drop every 15 seconds for 5 hours straight.

Good luck.

I mean, I have been trying for I forgot how long now (http://vboards.stratics.com/1393338-post58.html and even before then...) to see something done to stop scripting and I think that the idea to limit the quantity of resources, BODs whatever can be scripted with a hard CAP per account per day or week is a good solution as it would make scripting pointless and at the same time not harm much regular players who have limited time for playing UO, but I am still waiting to see something change as I'd wish in that regards......

 

[Raptor85]

Limits are never a proper answer, It always ends up punishing players as well and rarely has effect on scripting. scripting's cause is a core problem with the system. The design of the system is
1. simple and repetitive
2. rewards time spent significantly more than effort

which makes resource scripting exponentially better than doing it manually (made quite a bit worse with the randomization, as now the amount of high end ores gained is purely a matter of time spent) And while some would say "it's not a problem, it makes things cheaper for everyone!"....what about all the crafters and miners who played that as their primary who's time spent was utterly devalued by this?

The fix is to create a system where effort can be more rewarding than time spent. One fix would be to change the randomization to only change ore spots daily or weekly. Changing on every refresh makes it far too random, and random makes it not terribly worth doing. This would have more of the intended effect of still keeping the higher end ores/wood more rare to find, but re-value player time and de-value scripted time. Yes a scripter can simply create a new runebook every week, as players could, but it brings it more in line where a player can actually compete and bring back such things as skirmishes around valorite veins or frostwood trees (it would no longer be viable to simply sit in out of the way areas in fel, as they do now, as those areas will no longer produce all the ores/wood)

Another fix i'd like to see is further bonus for dungeon mining, in areas that cannot be gated into or out of, and a minor bump for lumberjacking/mining in ilish.

 

[popps]

Limits are never a proper answer, It always ends up punishing players as well and rarely has effect on scripting. scripting's cause is a core problem with the system. The design of the system is
1. simple and repetitive
2. rewards time spent significantly more than effort

which makes resource scripting exponentially better than doing it manually (made quite a bit worse with the randomization, as now the amount of high end ores gained is purely a matter of time spent) And while some would say "it's not a problem, it makes things cheaper for everyone!"....what about all the crafters and miners who played that as their primary who's time spent was utterly devalued by this?

The fix is to create a system where effort can be more rewarding than time spent. One fix would be to change the randomization to only change ore spots daily or weekly. Changing on every refresh makes it far too random, and random makes it not terribly worth doing. This would have more of the intended effect of still keeping the higher end ores/wood more rare to find, but re-value player time and de-value scripted time. Yes a scripter can simply create a new runebook every week, as players could, but it brings it more in line where a player can actually compete and bring back such things as skirmishes around valorite veins or frostwood trees (it would no longer be viable to simply sit in out of the way areas in fel, as they do now, as those areas will no longer produce all the ores/wood)

I need to disagree.

I have been hearing the argument that scripting is there for a purpose, to automize repetitive tasks, since a very long time ago....

Well, perhaps if in 15 years this has not changed it is because either such a change is not possible or it would require too much effort and resources to make tasks not repetitive and reward the effort more vs. time ?

I mean, if it was reasonably feasible I would imagine that at some point, over 15 years, something in this sense would have changed, wouldn't it ?

Yet, it has not.

So, at this point I think a CAP to the time that could be allocated to scriptable activities could indeed be a good compromise.

How many hours per week does the average player plays UO ? And of this time how many hours might reasonably go into scriptable activities like gathering resources, BODs etc ?

Two hours ? Four hours ? We are talking about "average" player, not powergamers....

Take these 2 or 4 hours and make them a weekly CAP after which engaging in those activities will yield nothing, nada....... Even if the script was to run 24/7 it would only yield for whatever hours the CAP allowed.......

Scripting problem (at least for resources or BODs gathering....) solved without hurting the average player.

 

[Raptor85]

well, if you dont care about alienating players and causing players to quit, which a cap WOULD do, why not just have all ingots available direct from NPC blacksmiths then? Why should a player be actively punished for spending too much time playing the game they pay for?

The answer to why it hasn't changed is simple, EA doesn't care so long as the accounts keep paying. If EA cared a single GM could clear off 90% of the resource scripters in a single day, it's not hard to find them.

 

[allie_oops]

Please respect that this thread is not about your opinion on scripting - on either side of the fence.


Raptor85, in response to

Limits are never a proper answer, It always ends up punishing players as well and rarely has effect on scripting. scripting's cause is a core problem with the system. The design of the system is
1. simple and repetitive
2. rewards time spent significantly more than effort




If you set an obtainable ore/wood amount at a level that would require 5 hours of constant gameplay (ie 5 hours via script) to do , you would not effect even 1% of the playerbase. I can say this with confidence.


The problem is how easy these systems can turn their resources into NPC gold to be honest, if they just bulk sold the resource on the player market our game would not suffer the consequences of a continual influx of new currency derived from it.

 

[Viper09]

No, capping resource gathering will not make things better. Just because you're not a power gamer doesn't mean we should have to start limiting the ones who are power gamers.

I don't even know what gave you this idea:

A) What's the Problem?
Scripting Resources (Mining/Lumberjacking) done on a large scale [6+ accounts] provides extremely large amounts of resources, which then get turned into crafted items and sold to NPC vendors for 'new' gold, or fill up vendors until the market reaches a saturation point and the player market price continues to decline.

Why would a scripter sell resources to NPCs when they could easily get a lot more gold by selling it to players? I always thought the smart gold farmers get their gold from grinding creatures in PvM.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

Why would a scripter sell resources to NPCs when they could easily get a lot more gold by selling it to players? I always thought the smart gold farmers get their gold from grinding creatures in PvM.

He's talking way old skool. Nobody does this anymore. Used to be you could make a good living and if you found the right items and NPCs you could make a ton of gold selling crafted stuff to NPCs. Some even just bought low from one NPC and sold to another NPC paying more. Most all these methods were exploited, advertised, then nerfed. Again, nobody actually does this anymore. The payoff is too low for the time invested.

A scriptor isn't scripting resources in order to script crafting in order to script selling to NPCs. C'mon. Scriptors run their bots all day gathering resources then sell them to players.

BTW, I'm all for just making colored ingots and wood available from NPCs. At least then I get what I need when I need it and gold is removed from the game. Win win.

 

[allie_oops]

60k Normal Boards sell for 110k-495k. Figure a price average of around 300k give or take the day.


There's also over 50 deeds of 60k normal wood hanging out on vendors across servers. The player market has reached a low point, where the resource itself won't sell for a lot from farmer to player. It's simple saturation mechanics, and not to mention these people don't seem to be the brightest business people.

So if you have 60K boards and you can turn the cost of per board at 5gp or higher in a craftable item, you're achieving the ultimate goal:

Instantly disposing of your product for gold similar to player market value



You're saying that a "power gamer" would manually farm wood at the optimum rate for 5 hours straight? So that requires a few separate actions. Which would get very tiring and tedious even to the most hardc0re player. I've been wrong on occasion, but the idea of a 5hour hardcap is meerly a discussion point, though I don't see how on earth you could imagine that being an action ANY single player does by hand for that long. I can get the resource numbers on what that would be. And furthermore, that would ONLY hurt scripters and would not hurt the average player at all.

To further explain when I say 5 hours I mean the total amount of wood being able to be farmed optimumly in 5 hours. This is what someone would be doing by hand for 5 hours straight, at optimum time frame:

Open Runebook
Page 1
Recall/Chiv

Use Axe Macro
Target Relative
hold down

Cast Recall
Recall to Bank
Hit Bank Macro
Drag Logs from Pack to Bank






I do understand that most UO players don't think like I do, and the one that do would prefer me not saying half the things I'm saying. I want to fix exploitation and help improve the longevity of our game, this is what I do for fun. If you are having a difficult time grasping the concept after this explanation please let me know, and I'll gladly assist further.

 

[allie_oops]

Your opinions of disbelief are genuinely appreciated and expected. This IS going on, whether you're privvy to it or not. Our goal is to draw attention to it

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

You can't really use regular boards as an example though. Most players could get 20k regular boards in an hour and half.

Really the only reason to buy 60k or more regular boards is if you're training and you don't want to gather the wood yourself.

And.. as you mentioned the player base has dwindled down to the point where the scripters have too few customers on many shards.

 

[allie_oops]

How can't I use 60k normal boards?

If you were going to turn something from Resource -> Item -> NPC Gold you would want to use the most readily available resource.. which is 60k normal boards.


My math makes perfect sense, right? I just would like to make sure that it's being grasped properly.


Regardless if the final cost per item was 3gp per board, you'd make 180k per 60k boards, which I can give you an actual amount of time on this week. The optimum item I'm sure will end up with a far more appealing boards to gold ratio than even 5gp.

I'll test the whole system out, but I know for a fact that this IS being done (i've watched the rise in script LJers that are actually maintained well) and the devaluation of currency, which only happens with an influx of new currency. Not player market trading.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

No I was referring to the availability and price of normal boards currently on vendors.

Of course you would use normal boards to craft stuff to sell to NPCs.

 

[allie_oops]

No I was referring to the availability and price of normal boards currently on vendors.

Of course you would use normal boards to craft stuff to sell to NPCs.

Ah gotcha

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

What I'm saying is scripters script mine and script jack for rare resources. The normal ore and boards are just a byproduct. Hell, some scripters drop the normal ore and boards, they don't even keep it.

 

[Zannette]

BTW, I'm all for just making colored ingots and wood available from NPCs. At least then I get what I need when I need it and gold is removed from the game. Win win.

Ezekiel is right. Resources should be available at all time and at constant cost regardless of the amount bought. If scripters want to farm so that they can undercut NCP vendors they can go for it.

If someone would rather mine instead of pay for it, this is still an option.

This would stabilize resource market and give casual player a fighting chance. Even power players would benefit from this if they don't enjoy farming resources.

By resources I mean Ingots and Boards (including rare resources) and not imbuing ingredients or anything else. The system that is in place for reagents and scrolls works well and it should be applied to Ingots and boards as well.

I enjoy filling BODs but I don't enjoy mining 100k iron to do it especially when I play 5-10 hours a week.


Z

 

[CovenantX]

I would wager the whole "gold" problem is the fact there are very few gold sinks removing gold from the game, as stated before its been 14+ years now that gold has been traded between players.

The 180k gold per 60k boards doesn't amount to much considering you can solo a champ spawn in 10-15mins easily, and get roughly the same amount just by looting the gold at the end, (not counting what you could make in scroll/replica drops).

I wouldn't argue that scripters ruined the market at all for resources, but
if the higher end resources were made more common/easier to farm by hand, people wouldn't be scripting it anywhere near as often. honestly the last time I seen a miner/LJ actually there mining/LJing and not AFK, was before special materials spawned in random locations. and it was still pretty rare before that.

I think scripting should be legal, as long as the person is not unattended macroing. some people wouldn't agree, but if it were made legal, people wouldn't be arguing over things like this.

Making it legal would be faster & easier than stopping it.

 

[allie_oops]

That 180k per hour would be an extremely low ball figure and that's per account. When it's fully investigated I bet we learn the Board to Gold ratio is higher than 5 at the very least.


Unlike a champ spawn, where you can do 1 despise on Pacific, you can do 15 of this at the same time.


This is just a single issue that needs addressing. Yes their are other issues involving other things, but to focus on Resource Farming Exploitation would allow us to achieve potentially some hugs from devs!

 

[HD2300]

Cheaters are p(l)ayers too.

The reason why randomized resources happened was the devs got tired of people complaining scripters were hogging known rare spots, so they changed the system so the scripters could script 24/7 in remote places.

 

[frostbolt]

I would wager the whole "gold" problem is the fact there are very few gold sinks removing gold from the game, as stated before its been 14+ years now that gold has been traded between players.

gold sinks won't solve anything. The rich would still be able to buy w/e they want. The middle class in UO would grow poorer, while the poor people wouldn't be able to afford anything at all.

 

[Woodsman]

The reason why randomized resources happened was the devs got tired of people complaining scripters were hogging known rare spots, so they changed the system so the scripters could script 24/7 in remote places.

It'd be pretty easy to flag accounts that were active for like 16 or 20 hours a day, up to 23 hours a day (take into account system maintenance). It would handle both the resource scripters plus the search engine scripters.

 

[Erigo]

But there are some of us with odd-ball work schedules or retired, and we can and often do play 15-20 hours some days at times

 

[Woodsman]

But there are some of us with odd-ball work schedules or retired, and we can and often do play 15-20 hours some days at times

But you aren't going to have a ton of accounts logged in from one IP all active across different shards are you? And you're not doing this every single day are you?

I didn't say ban them, I said flag them. Once they flag them, it would be easy to sort out folks like you who have the occasional 15-20 hour days versus the resource and search engine scripters (which are one and the same).

 

[HD2300]

MEh. When they ban the illegal search sites and they are inoperation for more than 2 months, I know they are serious.

 

[allie_oops]

I think a large problem with Stratics as a whole, and why people feel so frustrated about the lack of productivity on user submitted inquiries, is that the userbase tends to take a thread's purpose and just lose sight of it very quickly.


How can a developer actually look for usable feedback and insight when we end up with a 25-40% ratio of posts that are completely off topic.


HD230's talking about search sites, Frostbolt's talking about how the rich being rich.

Woodsman provided his own concept, which isn't a bad one. WoW successfully did that too to nullify power leveling.

At the end of the day we need one single task fixed here in the short term:

- Selling player crafted items to NPC vendors. This is the topic we should be discussing in the short term as it's easier for the Devs to implement and it would nullify any gold generation opportunities from script farms. It forces their wares into the player market which will dictate the devaluation which we see today, but it keeps the currency value stable and with the help of bod bribery can actually reverse inflation.


Please stay on point everyone, and let's get something accomplished.

Allie

 

[Omnius]

If you think scripters are creating gold in this fashion, you really havent done the math.... It would require multiple accounts obtaining resources, multiple accounts converting resources to finished products and multiple accounts selling the finished products to npcs.

We would see 10 times the scripters under this theory.

Truthfully, we're all complicit in scripting because we all love cheap resources. Scripters limit the amount of time we all spend doing boring repetitive tasks and free us up to playing how we'd prefer.

 

[Meatbread]

I've slagged Allie in the past but this is a respectable idea. It would be trivial to add a per-day resource limit that no human being would ever butt up against, but which a scripter easily would.

Even a retiree playing 16 hours a day stops to eat, and pee, and chat, maybe kill some monsters or banksit or something. They don't chop wood or whatever for every single minute 23.5 hours per day.

 

[Balinor of Pk?]

I skimmed through this thread and the thing that strikes me the most is how most of the people in this thread talk about "limiting" or capping aspects of the game. The lack of creativity is astonishing. The problem here is active accounts. And the scripters have more. Or at least equal to the non scripters. And the devs want to CREATE active accounts, because they probly get bonus' for doing so. What I'm getting at here is most of you are seeing this problem through glasses that no one else is wearing. You're not seeing it like a dev, and you're not seeing it like a scripter. The devs don't want to limit the player base, because that makes people bored, and doesn't keep them playing. The devs ALSO don't want to mass ban lots of scripters because they'd lose a lot of accounts and money. So what I see them doing, and honestly, they're not doing a half bad job of it, is they're challenging scripters, and changing very selective parts of the game, to put major scripting issues out of operation. They're never going to stop scripting completely. But they definately are actively doing things to make it more fair for the regular players. People are freaking out about the bod system. But honestly, what the devs did was take away the exact reason why scripters scripted bods in the first place. The tons of cash involved in getting valorite runics. And the TONS of cash involved in selling powders. Now they're more accessible to TONS of players, not just scripters, and eventually the scripters will need to move on to another more profitable area of the game. You're all getting what you want, just not how you think it should be achieved. The devs are being very creative in the way they're stopping or at least hampering scripting. You should think more like them. Limiting the game only limits you.

 

[Goodmann]

I skimmed through this thread and the thing that strikes me the most is how most of the people in this thread talk about "limiting" or capping aspects of the game. The lack of creativity is astonishing. The problem here is active accounts. And the scripters have more. Or at least equal to the non scripters. And the devs want to CREATE active accounts, because they probly get bonus' for doing so. What I'm getting at here is most of you are seeing this problem through glasses that no one else is wearing. You're not seeing it like a dev, and you're not seeing it like a scripter. The devs don't want to limit the player base, because that makes people bored, and doesn't keep them playing. The devs ALSO don't want to mass ban lots of scripters because they'd lose a lot of accounts and money. So what I see them doing, and honestly, they're not doing a half bad job of it, is they're challenging scripters, and changing very selective parts of the game, to put major scripting issues out of operation. They're never going to stop scripting completely. But they definately are actively doing things to make it more fair for the regular players. People are freaking out about the bod system. But honestly, what the devs did was take away the exact reason why scripters scripted bods in the first place. The tons of cash involved in getting valorite runics. And the TONS of cash involved in selling powders. Now they're more accessible to TONS of players, not just scripters, and eventually the scripters will need to move on to another more profitable area of the game. You're all getting what you want, just not how you think it should be achieved. The devs are being very creative in the way they're stopping or at least hampering scripting. You should think more like them. Limiting the game only limits you.

Let's talk about multi-botting archers and how people use a script to use three archers in pvp, kinda sad............. Just ban those people and move on!!!

 

[allie_oops]

I skimmed through this thread and the thing that strikes me the most is how most of the people in this thread talk about "limiting" or capping aspects of the game. The lack of creativity is astonishing. The problem here is active accounts. And the scripters have more. Or at least equal to the non scripters. And the devs want to CREATE active accounts, because they probly get bonus' for doing so. What I'm getting at here is most of you are seeing this problem through glasses that no one else is wearing. You're not seeing it like a dev, and you're not seeing it like a scripter. The devs don't want to limit the player base, because that makes people bored, and doesn't keep them playing. The devs ALSO don't want to mass ban lots of scripters because they'd lose a lot of accounts and money. So what I see them doing, and honestly, they're not doing a half bad job of it, is they're challenging scripters, and changing very selective parts of the game, to put major scripting issues out of operation. They're never going to stop scripting completely. But they definately are actively doing things to make it more fair for the regular players. People are freaking out about the bod system. But honestly, what the devs did was take away the exact reason why scripters scripted bods in the first place. The tons of cash involved in getting valorite runics. And the TONS of cash involved in selling powders. Now they're more accessible to TONS of players, not just scripters, and eventually the scripters will need to move on to another more profitable area of the game. You're all getting what you want, just not how you think it should be achieved. The devs are being very creative in the way they're stopping or at least hampering scripting. You should think more like them. Limiting the game only limits you.

Again, pointing back at the idea that the userbase has a hard time staying on point..

This has nothing to do with the amount of accounts someone runs, or the TONS of cash. It has to do with fixing an exploit involving resource farming. Do your best to stay on topic my dear

There's not many more profitable areas left if this hole is fixed... you're looking at Monster Farming (ask the chinese how that went when they stopped in 2009)... mining (assuming the Crafted Items to NPC Gold fix would apply to this too, then this is already solved)...any more profitable farm mechanics?

Fishing?! So Monster Farming and Fishing?!

This is the black eye, this is the festering wound and it's not about making anyone else agree with it. It's about showing the Developers the games problems and our discussion on potential solutions for it.

Ominus, I don't know what to tell you, if you really can't see how to do this without the extreme amount of extra accounts then you just aren't thinking efficiently. It's pretty easy to see how to do this right.

If you're generating upwards a few Mil an hour which I'm sure this can do across a single shard, you'd pay for the whole operation in dirt cheap gold sales in a few days.


Doing this across multiple servers exponentially increases your output, but our first step is creating the boards to gold cost for every item. That's where we have to start, maybe I'll be able to do that today.


:whip:
Allie

 

[popps]

The devs are being very creative in the way they're stopping or at least hampering scripting. You should think more like them.

Uhu ? Think like who ?

I mean, I read this post [http://vboards.stratics.com/2081744-post20.html] which refers to this other post [http://vboards.stratics.com/uhall/2...nger-banning-cheaters-paged.html#post1925207] and if I read that Game Masters appear to no longer being banning cheaters, then I am sure that I understand what would be these "creative ways" that Developers would be stopping cheating with........

I'd love to be enlightened on what these "creative" way are............

 

[allie_oops]

Save it for another thread, clearly people will attempt to derail threads. You need to be able to recognize why someone is doing it, and just take it into consideration; mental note and move on.


Popps what's your thoughts on a hard cap based on optimum achievable wood for 5 hours?

Do you have any other ideas we can knock around?


Do you see any potential downside with limiting or changing the way NPCs buy player crafted products? (anyone?)

 

[Sevin0oo0]

no personal offense intended, but just my opinions also

--> caps!
Sometimes, and many times, I play All Day, All Night, for several days in a row, just strip mining, or strip LJ'ing, going from one 8x spot to the next.
There are resource squares that give 10k'ish amounts of wood, just how many would boards/logs would you have me be limited to? not happening, sorry

--> Resources should be available at all time
might as well say "Give resources". Some things need to be worked for, and Earned. Devs know it's a grind, why do you think they made Conversion Quests?

--> Selling player crafted items to NPC vendors.
I thought selling Anything to NPC's was nurfed, as prev stated, more you sell, the lower the price goes, or do you know this to Not be the case?

--> mass ban scripters - They are NOT going to mass ban anybody, already been stated

--> generating upwards a few Mil an hour which I'm sure this can do
And you know this to be True, how? you or someone else doing/done it? Ban them, oh wait, you're not the sheriff, PM Mesanna with all the details, they are the ultimate authority.

Since Devs can't/won't participate in threads of this nature, I don't think we'll ever get really on the right track, however well intentioned. They know very well what's happening in the game, have stated so, and knowing their limitations, ultimately probably don't need our help.

 

[Idahoan]

Put the rare ingots & wood on NPC's. Be sure to set NPC buy rate MUCH lower than the rate they sell the products at.

This allows those who enjoy mining/lumberjacking to still do what they do and sell to NPCs if they like. NPC's with rare ingots/wood allows those who want to purchase when they need an avenue without have to harvest themselves.

This is a gold sink that would overtime remove much more gold than they current system.

The new BOD system is going to create more demand for the higher end rare ingots. The Bribe system will remove gold as well as NPC's selling rare ingots would also have an effect.

Create a market that removes the demand for scripting. Or better yet, create an flagging system that the server detects repetative acts where timing is constant. IF a character is mining, recalling, unloading and the timing is ALWAYS the same, flag it as possible scripting, then have a GM verify and ban.

Capping will only drive those who legally mine/lj away from the game. Even though repetative, people enjoy doing these things. That is what makes UO so much more enjoyable than other games.

 

[allie_oops]

Where I stand, the last thing I could take is offense

In regards to Caps...

You saying that someday you strip mine or lj ALL day is either exaggerated or not done to the absolute optimum? Either way you would represent far under 1% of the playerbase in regards to just hanging out , farming wood, all day, just hanging, smacking trees. All day.

If unfortunately you had to stop your day long lumberjack-palooza at the optimum rate of wood at 5 hours (which would take you much longer if done by hand), so be it right? Are you going to quit UO because you want more wood today? Caps make sense, that's why they're in games like Runescape to curb similar exploitative systems.

--> Selling player crafted items to NPC vendors.
I thought selling Anything to NPC's was nurfed, as prev stated, more you sell, the lower the price goes, or do you know this to Not be the case?

This only is the case with stackable items, ie commodities.


--> generating upwards a few Mil an hour which I'm sure this can do
And you know this to be True, how? you or someone else doing/done it? Ban them, oh wait, you're not the sheriff, PM Mesanna with all the details, they are the ultimate authority.

I've used a calculator for a fairly long time now, number1 * number2 = answer

Let's try it like this :

[GoldPerHourPerAccount]*[AccountsRan]=Total Gold Per Hour Per Server

more specifically

300K* 10 = 3,000,000 gp



I'm not a sherrif, though I must say you seem a bit perturbed by this being an issue at hand?


I think drawing attention to the serious issues of the game needs to be done, and we don't need a Dev to respond to us. We need them to take in the actual information, digest the possible solutions, and then come up with their own answers. We're here to help solve problems as quickly as possible, we don't need a high five


Thank you for your opinions

Allie

 

[allie_oops]

Put the rare ingots & wood on NPC's. Be sure to set NPC buy rate MUCH lower than the rate they sell the products at.

This allows those who enjoy mining/lumberjacking to still do what they do and sell to NPCs if they like. NPC's with rare ingots/wood allows those who want to purchase when they need an avenue without have to harvest themselves.

This is a gold sink that would overtime remove much more gold than they current system.

The new BOD system is going to create more demand for the higher end rare ingots. The Bribe system will remove gold as well as NPC's selling rare ingots would also have an effect.

Create a market that removes the demand for scripting. Or better yet, create an flagging system that the server detects repetative acts where timing is constant. IF a character is mining, recalling, unloading and the timing is ALWAYS the same, flag it as possible scripting, then have a GM verify and ban.

Capping will only drive those who legally mine/lj away from the game. Even though repetative, people enjoy doing these things. That is what makes UO so much more enjoyable than other games.

It's not about if someone wants to the crafted items to NPCs... that's where the effect of farming gets extrapolated.

You cannot allow me to make 100 Wooden Tables (EXAMPLE, ACTUAL ITEM TESTING NOT DONE YET),
sell them to Joe the NPC,
recall back,
grab some more wood,
make another 100 tables
until Joe runs out of gold.

Being the gold digger i am, I'll recall to Sammy the NPC next time !

Cycle starts over when vendors respawn.

CyberNickel, in regards to selling INGOTS and WOOD to an npc, knock yourself out. Commodity values decline as intended. It's non-stackable items that don't.




A Server flagging would be good, but it can't be based on exact timing, it's easy to make something appear random in duration. Though I think this is a good idea as well, Server Flagging people that are mining/lj'ing constantly.

 

[Viper09]

You know people are doing this because you use a calculator? Sorry but that doesn't actually prove people are doing anything. Why not use that calculator and see how much more gold they would make selling it to players.

 

[allie_oops]

*blinks repeatedly*

Hrm. One more time

*blinks*

You do understand my point is this is an exploit that's allowing the creation of bulk gold right? With that being the case you can either :

a) build a house out of the checks and play pretend
b) sell it to players
c) disperse it through the game buying up items
d) build an addition to your check house referred to in a)



Do you have any constructive thoughts about any of the points we constructively discussed, or were you just looking for the post count?

*eye drops*

Allie

 

[Viper09]

*blinks repeatedly*

Hrm. One more time

*blinks*

You do understand my point is this is an exploit that's allowing the creation of bulk gold right? With that being the case you can either :

a) build a house out of the checks and play pretend
b) sell it to players
c) disperse it through the game buying up items
d) build an addition to your check house referred to in a)



Do you have any constructive thoughts about any of the points we constructively discussed, or were you just looking for the post count?

*eye drops*

Allie

I might ask you the same question, lol. But not really, I'm not at all convinced this is a real issue and you seem misinterpret skepticism over your attempt to convince people here as trolling.

My point was your answer to how you know people are doing this was very unsatisfactory. You may as well just said that you don't know if anyone is actually doing this. My second point you managed to completely miss which was that selling to players gives you A LOT more gold. I was sincere in suggesting that you calculate the difference between selling to NPC and player. The difference in the amount of gold you can get by selling in bulk to players is significant enough to make the idea of selling to NPC relatively moot. Even if the scripter has to wait a little for the items to sell it would be worth the wait as all scripters seem to have is time.

Also it should be pointed out as I believe Sevin0oo0 is correct, selling too much of the same item to NPCs should devalue the item to the point where you only get 1gp per item.

 

[andartshome]

there is only one way to stop scripting CLOSE THE CLASSIC CLIENT if you use the cc you can make this game to EASY you can collect resources all day 24 7 there are bots that will craft your tool when it breaks mine recall from danger auto close down if gm arrives etc etc etc there is no such scripting program for EC

 

[IMTHEWHITERABBIT]

Is there really an abundance of ingots on any shard. If there is i havent seen it. 1000gps per val ingot, very limited quanities. 1000gps per shadow ingot. If and when you can find it on a vendor. Its a joke. Nobody wants to mine all day. NPC should sell colored ingots

 

[allie_oops]

The price devaluation on NPC vendors only happens with stacked items, commodities, like ingots, gems, wood, etc.

It doesn't happen on shields, bows, tables, etc. That's what needs addressing.


There's a big difference in making a calculated amount each hour, then waiting for players to buy things. Might as well do both, but from an organization standpoint it'd be silly to rely on the player market when you can manufacture you're own gold.



Convincing you of this being a real issue is not my concern, lol. The point is to show a flaw to the Developers that allows bulk gold to be created.

Nothing more.


Flaws need attention drawn to them when they have the potential to ruin things... yes people are doing this, I didn't just make this up.

You don't have to believe me, just believe the math

 

[Woodsman]

Save it for another thread, clearly people will attempt to derail threads. You need to be able to recognize why someone is doing it

Real-life money is a pretty good motivation.

You really can't remove it from the equation. As long as there is real-life money involved, there will be plenty of people who will script because to them, UO is not a game or a virtual world to hang out with friends, it's a business and a very easy business at that.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

I'll admit it was non-optimum with only UOA & 1 packy, but yeah, pretty much all day/night, sans lunch & dinner (i can drink beer and play, no problem). Sometimes divided, LJ, then come back and mine it. I usually followed the path of others. probably the rest of that 1% and have since sold it all, 20mil boards easily. Yeah, I'm to the point now where i might actually join them, still sitting on the fence, i can already understand/mod scripts, signed up at the sites, all that, so i know - cheating is boring, especially if only used for cheap resources. Used to have binders full of UO stuff, spreadsheets showing gold return rates, and i continually look for the best money makers. If i want gold, it won't come from gathering resources to make items to sell to an NPC, I can assure you.

I only get perturbed when someone wants to dictate how i'm to play a game i pay for, even if it's a Dev, trying to force a certain play style - (the #1 reason for my sig). but about me is really off topic.
Since many scripters have so many accounts, what % of the total player base accounts do you think are scripting resources, being controlled by how many people (%)? It's just to give us an idea of how few people are having this big of an impact on UO's economy.
It's been a long time, but i seem to kinda remember the seriousness of this coming up before, next I knew, we got rotating spots, which unless you strip cut/mine, most people still don't like. Another change could make it even worse.

It's Rare that i ever mine/LJ anymore, it's so much easier/faster to just buy it, as much as i want, (and i usually never use existing gold, i get new gold to buy what i need), so a cap would affect 'me' nada, and the game is all about what i want to do, so add caps to the list, i'll sign it. I vote around 180K logs per day. The per xamt-hrs is harder for the Devs I think, and for players to keep up with (as bad as the old power hour) - have timer reset at server up


cheers mate

 

[virtualhabitat]

Early on in this thread Raptor85 suggested that some sort of bonus be granted "in areas that cannot be gated into or out of." I will add here that to be effective, transport needs to be blocked only one way -as in the case of Ilshenar.

You can recall out all you want, but for scripting to be efficient/effective you would need the ability to recall in as well.

This idea makes good sense, particularly if you understand what Balinor was saying about looking at the problem from the perspective of a developer.

Casual, non-power gamer players could easily be satisfied with colored wood and ore spawning in predictable locations in predictable amounts into these areas. Fel dungeons, T2A (Fel), Ilshenar, both Wind dungeons, and the Abyss.

Scriptors would not easily take advantage of these locations if at all.

The casual, non-power gamer could easily compete with scriptors on high end resources if these areas were made 'bountiful' and predictable.

 

[Hi my name is]

Early on in this thread Raptor85 suggested that some sort of bonus be granted "in areas that cannot be gated into or out of." I will add here that to be effective, transport needs to be blocked only one way -as in the case of Ilshenar.

You can recall out all you want, but for scripting to be efficient/effective you would need the ability to recall in as well.

This idea makes good sense, particularly if you understand what Balinor was saying about looking at the problem from the perspective of a developer.

Casual, non-power gamer players could easily be satisfied with colored wood and ore spawning in predictable locations in predictable amounts into these areas. Fel dungeons, T2A (Fel), Ilshenar, both Wind dungeons, and the Abyss.

Scriptors would not easily take advantage of these locations if at all.

The casual, non-power gamer could easily compete with scriptors on high end resources if these areas were made 'bountiful' and predictable.

Or they could just use rails instead of recalling...

 

[virtualhabitat]

Or they could just use rails instead of recalling...

they could use rails instead of recalling, but rails are much more difficult to script properly and are hardly more efficient/effective than simple scripts.

I did not claim scriptors could not or would not take advantage of these areas, I said they "would not easily take advantage of these locations if at all."

 

[Hi my name is]

they could use rails instead of recalling, but rails are much more difficult to script properly and are hardly more efficient/effective than simple scripts.

I did not claim scriptors could not or would not take advantage of these areas, I said they "would not easily take advantage of these locations if at all."

Rails are not more difficult at all...maybe more time consuming. There's no such thing as a "simple" mining script it's a pretty complex action and requires quite a bit of code. There are so many things wrong with UO, but resource gathering is not one of them. Nobody wants to double click a pickaxe and target a wall for 5 hours to get 500 ingots.

 

[Raptor85]

thus the point of dungeons and ilish, sure they can use a rail, but the walk is pretty far and there are mobiles running around that will trip them up, in such a complex situation they would be FAR less effective than a human player, and would be better off sticking to their recall mining/lumberjacking. The idea isn't to find a technical solution to 100% stop them, that's impossible without at least minimal GM assistance, the idea is to make doing it by hand more profitable per time spent than doing it via script.

 

[Woodsman]

A Server flagging would be good, but it can't be based on exact timing, it's easy to make something appear random in duration. Though I think this is a good idea as well, Server Flagging people that are mining/lj'ing constantly.

The idea isn't to find a technical solution to 100% stop them, that's impossible without at least minimal GM assistance, the idea is to make doing it by hand more profitable per time spent than doing it via script.

I think in the end, the easiest (and cheapest) way is to have the server flag for certain behaviors and ultimately let the GMs deal with it.

I think I see now where allie_oops was going, and I agree with them that trying to restrict or cap certain behaviors is not the solution, because that requires a lot of development time and a lot of testing to make sure that innocent folks don't get impacted.

Have the server flag people who exhibit certain behaviors. A good database person should be able to easily have the server flag for accounts that are active so many hours a day for so many days a week, or flag for accounts where you have a bunch of active accounts all logged in at the same time from the same IP doing a lot of the same type of repetitive activities that are a clear sign of scripting.

At that point, let the GMs handle it. If it flags somebody that has 15 active accounts all doing scripting-related activities at the same time, the GM should be able to tell if it's a scripter or if somebody had a party where they invited 14 friends over to all mine or lumberjack or make items to sell to NPCs or drop books with links to third party sites.

I know those types of parties are insanely popular, but a GM should be able to differentiate between those parties and scripters. Every week I get bugged by like a dozen people who want to come over and spend the next 16 hours lumberjacking or making stuff in UO, and I have to be firm with them and tell them next week or the week after.