Some Feedback for DEV's Ask the DEV's

[MalagAste]

Music box's and gears...

The biggest reason to remove gears would be.... I have music box A, it has 35 songs in it.... I have Music box B I got at an IDOC... Music box B has 23 songs in it.... but 5 of those songs would go in Music Box A.... putting me that much closer to a FULL box.... but I can't drop gears from box B into box A..... so now I have 2 boxes.... neither of them are full. Bummer.

Navrey..... Fixes... Oh my I sure hope so! Standing about for that 15 min is boring....

Renowned.. they do need some love. I was glad you gave them a snap back.... but yes they seem to break.... for whatever reason.

Cross shard trade... This has been an issue since the whole Xshard transfer program began.... I really don't see that you can do much about it. As I would HATE to see things NOT given away at all..... that would be a sad, sad day indeed. However... what is sad is that there are soo many greedy people who are just there to "get stuff" and they have no qualms about who they take money from or where. As for me... I think it is sad that some folk know what's going on when and they come to other shards to take advantage of the EM's... I also don't like having the same Event run on more than one Shard with all the characters and times/places and passwords the same from one shard to the next... this allows for serious abuse of the EM program.... because Jane Doe on shard G knows exactly what happens first before Jo Q Public on Shard W... and so Jane Doe travels to Shard W and gets rewards there that Jo Q could have had a shot at.... but then worse yet Jane Doe takes the prize and flee's back to Shard G where they now have 2 of the item... and she sells one for 100+ million gold... and sadly no one on Shard W stood a chance because Jane already knew everything to expect.... and she brought over her best 6 friends who swindled all the rest of the items from Shard W.

 

[XLaCeDX]

"Cross shard trade... This has been an issue since the whole Xshard transfer program began.... I really don't see that you can do much about it. As I would HATE to see things NOT given away at all..... that would be a sad, sad day indeed. However... what is sad is that there are soo many greedy people who are just there to "get stuff" and they have no qualms about who they take money from or where. As for me... I think it is sad that some folk know what's going on when and they come to other shards to take advantage of the EM's... I also don't like having the same Event run on more than one Shard with all the characters and times/places and passwords the same from one shard to the next... this allows for serious abuse of the EM program.... because Jane Doe on shard G knows exactly what happens first before Jo Q Public on Shard W... and so Jane Doe travels to Shard W and gets rewards there that Jo Q could have had a shot at.... but then worse yet Jane Doe takes the prize and flee's back to Shard G where they now have 2 of the item... and she sells one for 100+ million gold... and sadly no one on Shard W stood a chance because Jane already knew everything to expect.... and she brought over her best 6 friends who swindled all the rest of the items from Shard W."



EM event items either need to be made NONtransferable OR enough of them need to drop during the event that they are NOT rare or unique.


F U N is what ingame events should be, not an opportunity to get rich quick.

I WILL NOT CONTINUE TO DIE AT EVENTS AND WASTE TONS OF MY GOLD ON INSURANCE PAYMENTS IF THE EVENT ITEMS ARE HAULED OFF TO ANOTHER SHARD.

I'm not yelling but I wish to be very plain.

The last event on Pacific was crazy spawn where most Pacificans died whilst a visitor from Baja seemed to know just where the boss would with the uber boss loot item.

A person whose dropped in for an hour shouldn't be allowed to haul of bits of Pac's history.

So I decided to declare war on Baja and went to make a char there and tuned into chat, just in time to here a well-known rich Bajan say:

"The trick is making sure they stay on Baja."

My sentiments exactly but change the shard name from Baja to Pacific.


__________________

 

[UOKaiser]

"Cross shard trade... This has been an issue since the whole Xshard transfer program began.... I really don't see that you can do much about it. As I would HATE to see things NOT given away at all..... that would be a sad, sad day indeed. However... what is sad is that there are soo many greedy people who are just there to "get stuff" and they have no qualms about who they take money from or where. As for me... I think it is sad that some folk know what's going on when and they come to other shards to take advantage of the EM's... I also don't like having the same Event run on more than one Shard with all the characters and times/places and passwords the same from one shard to the next... this allows for serious abuse of the EM program.... because Jane Doe on shard G knows exactly what happens first before Jo Q Public on Shard W... and so Jane Doe travels to Shard W and gets rewards there that Jo Q could have had a shot at.... but then worse yet Jane Doe takes the prize and flee's back to Shard G where they now have 2 of the item... and she sells one for 100+ million gold... and sadly no one on Shard W stood a chance because Jane already knew everything to expect.... and she brought over her best 6 friends who swindled all the rest of the items from Shard W."



EM event items either need to be made NONtransferable OR enough of them need to drop during the event that they are NOT rare or unique.


F U N is what ingame events should be, not an opportunity to get rich quick.

I WILL NOT CONTINUE TO DIE AT EVENTS AND WASTE TONS OF MY GOLD ON INSURANCE PAYMENTS IF THE EVENT ITEMS ARE HAULED OFF TO ANOTHER SHARD.

I'm not yelling but I wish to be very plain.

The last event on Pacific was crazy spawn where most Pacificans died whilst a visitor from Baja seemed to know just where the boss would with the uber boss loot item.

A person whose dropped in for an hour shouldn't be allowed to haul of bits of Pac's history.

So I decided to declare war on Baja and went to make a char there and tuned into chat, just in time to here a well-known rich Bajan say:

"The trick is making sure they stay on Baja."

My sentiments exactly but change the shard name from Baja to Pacific.


__________________

You know am going to get into this. Fun is in the eye of the beholder. This is a game if someone has fun just killing a blue mongbat for no reason then great. But for most of pvm players fun is in the reward or chance to get something that only a few people or nobody have. Those who wish to show it off great those who need gold and wish to sell it fine thats why gold is in the game. Those who buy it probably want to collect it or show it of in there museum. this is the nature of the PVM community it's what we do. Just like the pvp community nature is to kill someone else or whatever. We PVM like to collect items. If the item is common we don't want it it will be left on the corpse for decay.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

Okay - as someone who has not ever x-shard traded, but is trying to look at this a bit differently. So here's how I break it down:

Issue: EM/GM/Dev-run event items should not be able to be cross-sharded in order to preserve some bit of the shard history and story.

DEV Response: Sorry, can't see our way clear to preventing this.

My Response: If Shard "A" has an EM/GM/Dev-run event items for that event should be locked to the shard. Similar to account-binding for soulstones and whatever, why not shard-bound special items?

Effect: If done, an item tag could read "bound to Shard "A" and prevent cross-shard travel of anyone who carries or packs it. A shard-bound item must then remain on that shard. Period.

 

[Walker B]

DEV Response: Sorry, can't see our way clear to preventing this.

Besides, how would they make money from selling character transfer tokens if they didn't allow EM items from being transfered?

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Fixing cross shard issues is EASY, but it will NEVER be done.

DISALLOW THE X-FER OF ITEMS.

When you X-fer you should x-fer your character with skills and stats, then get the usual starting equipment you get with a new character based on the three top skills (chosen at random if more than 3 are equally high).

X-ferring items has been more trouble than it has been worth from destroying shard history to completely screwing up the game via endless duping and "laundering" of said duped items.

You might make an argument for gold, but beyond that... NOTHING ELSE aside from character, skills and random starting equipment.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

Cross shard trading IS annoying, especially of 'historical artifacts'. Adding a 'shard bound' property is the most logical step


Best way to end gold duping is to make it a character-based 'stat'. Nothing more then a number. Once gold from monsters hits the bank then it simply adds to your ammount of gold. Gold for purchases is auto debited, and gold from sales/vendors is auto credited.

Removing gold/checks as a 'physical' item will end all duping of it. (unless someone dupes a 60K stack that is). The reasons for it taking up space in the bank box are long since pointless since vendors can hold obscene amounts...

This idea has been suggested for YEARS, and is the only finite solution.

 

[MalagAste]

Oh.... and before I forget... Please dear gods do NOT give everyone under the sun the ability to use those god awful hideously ugly crystal tiles...

For the love of god.... and mercy to all who have to play UO.....

Either fix the dang ugliness of the crystal tile set or have mercy and keep them impossible to obtain.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

As I understand it, x-sharding was NOT to be the sole support for the movement of special items like these from shard to shard, but to facilitate the movement of players and some of their possessions that way.

Just because someone decided to do this with special event items does not make it right for the shard losing those items, nor for the one gaining them. I am almost positive that more players than just the OP dislike the usage of the EA service to move special items off their shard.

 

[UOKaiser]

Oh.... and before I forget... Please dear gods do NOT give everyone under the sun the ability to use those god awful hideously ugly crystal tiles...

For the love of god.... and mercy to all who have to play UO.....

Either fix the dang ugliness of the crystal tile set or have mercy and keep them impossible to obtain.

I like the crystal and the shadow. I mix them together in all my homes. I love them.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

I sdislike the crystal ones but have used the shadow and garg together. not too shabby.

 

[Beastmaster]

IF the reason for not allowing cross sharding of EM items is truly to preserve shard history as several of you have proclaimed, then the solution is VERY easy. EM items should be locked down in public buildings/locations. If the players ALSO must have bragging rights then it should be labeled with the players name as "donated by playername".

 

[Konge]

Okay - as someone who has not ever x-shard traded, but is trying to look at this a bit differently. So here's how I break it down:

Issue: EM/GM/Dev-run event items should not be able to be cross-sharded in order to preserve some bit of the shard history and story.

DEV Response: Sorry, can't see our way clear to preventing this.

My Response: If Shard "A" has an EM/GM/Dev-run event items for that event should be locked to the shard. Similar to account-binding for soulstones and whatever, why not shard-bound special items?

Effect: If done, an item tag could read "bound to Shard "A" and prevent cross-shard travel of anyone who carries or packs it. A shard-bound item must then remain on that shard. Period.

You do understand that most EM items are not actually coded by the EMs right? They're generally normal objects that are changed in some way. The devs would have to either revamp the EM's "power" system to allow the toggle of account bound (Which would probably make every event item a token as thats probably the only realistic way to account restrict an item that I can think of) which wouldn't stop trading at all, they'd just trade tokens. Adding a no drop system would make the items hard to give to players as, they wouldn't be able to drop the item themselves. So it is much to complicated to implement , hence why they said that.

I love when people say things are easy when they lack the knowledge to understand what they're asking for realisticly. Besides, some people like selling things in game, thats fun to them. Why deny someone else's fun? If they're selling for RL money, that's a different issue entirely.

 

[Konge]

IF the reason for not allowing cross sharding of EM items is truly to preserve shard history as several of you have proclaimed, then the solution is VERY easy. EM items should be locked down in public buildings/locations. If the players ALSO must have bragging rights then it should be labeled with the players name as "donated by playername".

That would be the only realistic fix. But, people like to have their "bling."

 

[Basara]

The other reason for being able to remove music gears, would be to allow people to SORT the gears how they wanted, instead of being stuck with the random 5 starters out of order. Of course, adding a sort function to the music gear gump would also fix this issue. (sort by name, sort by rarity, or both (by rarity, then by name in the rarity groups))

 

[Beer_Cayse]

It does not matter who makes the item. If account-bound items can be made, then shard-bound ones can also be made. What's to say part of that change to make it special doesn't include a shard-lock?

I've been a programmer and database admin for over 30 years. I know for a fact that many things can be done when given the right code or data design. Some are easy, some are not ... but it can be done.

 

[Konge]

It does not matter who makes the item. If account-bound items can be made, then shard-bound ones can also be made. What's to say part of that change to make it special doesn't include a shard-lock?

I've been a programmer and database admin for over 30 years. I know for a fact that many things can be done when given the right code or data design. Some are easy, some are not ... but it can be done.

You really don't understand do you? Name one item you can't trade?

Soul stones you can trade.

Only things you can't trade are quest item, non-drop items. Those are coded into the game.

The EMs don't code. They just "Spawn" the item and change certain properties about it. You can't just spawn an item and make it account bound without changing the tools the EMs use. Plus, we don't have a decent system that an EM could give you an account bound item without making it extreemly complicated or having it spawned on the floor which causes room for greifers.

The point is, it's overly complicated to do, hence the reply stating that.

* I'm not claiming I know how any of this is done, this is just given educated guesses on how things may, and probably do, work.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

Didn't say "can't trade" ... the original topic was disallowing x-sharding of special items from events. If a special staff is given out on a shard by an EM for an event, as far as I am concerned, it can be traded and/or sold as many times as the game will allow - on that shard.

BUT - in light of the original premise ... it should NOT be cross-sharded! Period. That is my premise. What is given/gifted in these events on LA should stay on LA and not got to ATL, PAC or whatever.

But further down Beastmaster suggested a commemorative museum where items were "donated by ...". That's a good one ... and the player could get a [Replica] (1 copy only please!!) of that item for their collection/use - thus satisfying your remark of "gotta have bling".

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

The EMs don't code. They just "Spawn" the item and change certain properties about it. You can't just spawn an item and make it account bound without changing the tools the EMs use. Plus, we don't have a decent system that an EM could give you an account bound item without making it extreemly complicated or having it spawned on the floor which causes room for greifers.

The EMs don't 'spawn' any items. They are all created by Mesanna. So yes, since she uses a god client she can pretty much do whatever she wants. All that would need is the "shard" flag to be created and added to the game - then it would be a matter of toggling it on item creation.

 

[athos_uo]

EA Japan UO team has begun Twitter, and answers sometimes to players' questions there. A player questioned as follows in regard to an answer in "Ask The Devs": "[Q] Wondering if you would consider some updates to the music box? How about making the drop rate of music gears a little better? Or the ability to remove gears from boxes? [A] Of course we will consider doing some updates to the gears and drop rate. Since there is no limit to the amount of gears a box can hold is there another reason you would like to have the gears removeable?"

Q. Can you allow us to change orders in which songs in Dawn's music box are put in?
A. Allowing to change orders of songs in Dawn's music box takes more troubles than adding new songs, but it seems not to be impossible, so we will look into it.

I think that EA Japan UO team asked the dev team and got the answer.

 

[lucitus]

...

Fixing cross shard issues is EASY, but it will NEVER be done.

DISALLOW THE X-FER OF ITEMS.

When you X-fer you should x-fer your character with skills and stats, then get the usual starting equipment you get with a new character based on the three top skills (chosen at random if more than 3 are equally high).

X-ferring items has been more trouble than it has been worth from destroying shard history to completely screwing up the game via endless duping and "laundering" of said duped items.

You might make an argument for gold, but beyond that... NOTHING ELSE aside from character, skills and random starting equipment.

Iam using the Xfer also much, to get here and there, but without my armor, no!

I use it normal and not duping items! I know there were the last bug duping with it, i knew ppl who could do it and done it. But this is not the fault of the char transfer, we are living in a world in which big data bases are standard, so i cant understand why items are not checked every transfer, if id doubles dupe detected destroy both. Also this check should be done every maintenance period in the morning!

 

[MalagAste]

EA Japan UO team has begun Twitter, and answers sometimes to players' questions there. A player questioned as follows in regard to an answer in "Ask The Devs": "[Q] Wondering if you would consider some updates to the music box? How about making the drop rate of music gears a little better? Or the ability to remove gears from boxes? [A] Of course we will consider doing some updates to the gears and drop rate. Since there is no limit to the amount of gears a box can hold is there another reason you would like to have the gears removeable?"

Q. Can you allow us to change orders in which songs in Dawn's music box are put in?
A. Allowing to change orders of songs in Dawn's music box takes more troubles than adding new songs, but it seems not to be impossible, so we will look into it.

I think that EA Japan UO team asked the dev team and got the answer.

Being able to take the songs in and out like a bod book would be preferable... sorting would also be a great thing.