[UO Herald] Letter from the Producer

[Wenchkin]

Wall of text warning... sorry!

Art changes - YES!!! Please focus on existing art only till that's all up to standard and all looks cohesive. One of the things that sticks out with UO art just now is things like the elven furniture are styled so differently that UO looks like several games mashed together. I'd love to see all the art look "UO" and have the bad bits corrected before we get new stuff.

Vendor search - No, please no lol. Don't have a Luna shop, don't do anything shady or condone it. The search sites should have been closed down a long time ago. If I wanted to increase sales at my shop I simply promoted it. If sales dropped it was my fault, not the fault of Luna or some search site. For years I had folk tell me how I was nuts having a shop in a remote bit of Fel. But it sold more than I could keep up with.

Control slot/Pet changes - Very wary about these. I really don't see any room to change control slots without causing a significant power shift for tamers. I'm apparently one of few tamers who doesn't want to double up in power, which is why I'm worried that's the direction we're going in. Pet boosts make me nervous too. Please be reasonable about these changes, don't just give in to power hungry tamers who seem to see their pets as living spawn mowers and meat shields. It's a huge turn-off to some of us. I don't want to return to the all kill, no skill days where every event was packed with tamers dominating the other classes.

New Paperdoll (time to change the diapers) - LOL!! I guess those 15 year old knickers are getting a bit risqué nowadays, threadbare isn't very PG

New tasteful hues on tameables other than cu sidhes - As long as they look like animal colours and not kid's toys, I have no probs with colour on pets. Especially if you give us shadow dragons. Don't want any other colour, but a shadow draggy has been on my xmas list for a while now....

Enhanced UI Improvements for EC client - Thumbs up!

Currency Conversion (gold would be on character/account, no checks) - Good idea, though I'm guessing this would mean we wouldn't have gold on us if we died either - no more liches running off with 10k? The Lich Union may object to this...

Revising UO Armor to make all types useful again - Yes! There should be a use for all armour even the old stuff. Please try to help out on crafted gear too - when I say crafted I mean old school tailor crafted, no runics etc. That stuff doesn't really have much real use with all the new powerful gear.

Chaos/Order and doing away with factions - I'd kinda miss factions, but I would like to see Chaos/Order return.

What I'd love to see more than that is a PvP system that players really want to participate in. Not just to get scrolls or faction gear. I'm looking at the reputation system. If we're going to keep a reputation system with blues, greys and reds I think it also needs some attention. Fel used to be a community with all sorts, the good normal guys, the thieves, murderers, RPers... I spent years chasing crooks in a RP anti PK guild and running a RP village there. But there was a penalty for the PK when we caught them. You could actually find a live thief too lol. There are still systems in the game for these things but I'm not sure the devs treat Fel as a full facet anymore. It's not just about powerscrolls and factions. People used to live their whole lives in Fel. Crafting, RPing, running taverns. Some of us used the dungeons before they were turned over to champs. I know a lot of folk didn't like Fel, but there are umpteen facets in the Tram ruleset now. Fel was where we started 15 years ago, I think now would be a good time to give it some love. Not lure people in, but enhance the play experience for those of us who do see Fel as home. Things like random overland spawns would be a great addition for example.

Reworking champ spawns (improving mobs, loot etc) - Please consider just nuking the champs in favour of more interesting spawns Spawns with increasingly tougher monsters are predictable and boring, it really doesn't matter how cool a monster is, I know what's coming and I know there will be a silly quantity of them when they spawn LOL! It's repetitive as anything. In Fel they need to be restricted to say T2A so normal dungeons can be revamped. Always seemed odd to me to take a multi-level dungeon and butcher it with a champ spawn in the middle. Then you end up where the dungeon around it is just bits round the champ.

Add new items to fishing and fishing quest rewards - Yay!

New sea creatures and encounters - Yay!

New wearable’s for both male and female - Yay!

Working closer with Stratics to streamline the search to help filter out duplicate questions so the team can address some of the player questions weekly - Well I'm not going to argue with that one obviously

Meer/Juka Loyality quests - Another thumbs up.

Battleground shard - Focus on Siege instead and create a good kick-butt experience in normal Fel first. We wouldn't need any new shards if the existing ones had enough interest. PvPers are already spread kinda thin on the ground.

Wenchy

 

[Petra Fyde]

Pet revamp, I think that's a 'wait and see'. Things like maybe the skree isn't worth 4 slots, even at all GM the poor thing can't take a poison ele unless you peace for it.

 

[SirZ]

Nice plans, but no mention on the CC.
This is sad

 

[Winker]

Well it looks like were going to get more done in the next 12-18 months than we have had done in the past 15 years. Its going to be a fun time ahead

 

[NuSair]

It's certainly the standard for themepark games but UO is a world. Vendor search/Auction houses and non physical gold just chip away at that little last rock of immersion we have left in the game. If we have to change it please limit it to a search so people at least need to drop by my vendors and see my little corner of the world.
I want to play in a sandbox Sossaria not a spreadsheet Sossaria.
No I don't use search sites. No I don't have a Luna/Zento house. I have my vendors in Skara, Felucca.

I appreciate your view, but it is misguided at best. The vendor search already exist. And it is already used. A lot.

I guess you don't realize (and maybe don't care) that your shop would most likely get MORE traffic if a UO wide in game vendor search were implemented.

The problem here is that people cannot see beyond what they want and how it affects them and their point of view of the game.

How does Vendor Search chip away at that? It has already been done and it's already being used by a lot of people. To say that implementing it UO would do anything like you are suggesting is short sighted- because it (vendor search on a small scale) already exist.

 

[NuSair]

Yeah, I have concerns similar to Crysta's. If there was a way for the owner of a vendor to see who bought items and then be able to ban/bar a buyer from using the NPC, that might be a solution. However, I have no idea how difficult that would be to implement, especially on a vendor by vendor basis in a house where multiple players have vendors. Banning now works at a house level, so something would have to also be implemented to be able to ban per vendor in case other players with vendors at the house and/or the house owner don't want to ban a specific buyer. Or another solution might be for a seller to be able to set a limit on how often the same account can purchase items from a particular vendor or to be able to place a cap on the quantity of an item that can be sold to the same account within a specified timeframe.

There is no way you can stop buying and reselling. It's been going on since there have been vendors in UO. It's part of a 'free' economy. I used to do the same thing way back when.

I ran a reg/scroll/potion shop outside of Ocollo (way before tram) and everyday I was restocking everything to the point that I didn't have time to keep up with my potion vendors. So, I found several that sold them at the same price or lower than I did. And resold them. I am sure people did it to me (I sold regs at +1 gold from what I bought them at).

There is no way to stop it. Sure, you can put restrictions on it. Given the number of accounts people have, restrictions like the one you mention are nothing more than a nuisance than anything.

 

[Taylor]

Ridable dolphins notably absent.

Looks promising!

 

[Tina Small]

There is no way you can stop buying and reselling. It's been going on since there have been vendors in UO. It's part of a 'free' economy. I used to do the same thing way back when.

I ran a reg/scroll/potion shop outside of Ocollo (way before tram) and everyday I was restocking everything to the point that I didn't have time to keep up with my potion vendors. So, I found several that sold them at the same price or lower than I did. And resold them. I am sure people did it to me (I sold regs at +1 gold from what I bought them at).

There is no way to stop it. Sure, you can put restrictions on it. Given the number of accounts people have, restrictions like the one you mention are nothing more than a nuisance than anything.

I'm all for the vendor search. However, I'm not sure what it would hurt if a seller decided they wanted to limit sales from a particular vendor to one item per customer per day, or something along those lines. If the devs can program the new steward NPCs with that kind of a restriction, and have for years had the ability to set up EM "vending machines" to only allow one item per character forever, I would think they could implement something similar for vendor NPCs.

I think adding a vendor search capability has the potential to get a lot more people back into running a shop in their own home. Knowing that they have the option to place a restriction on how much is sold to any one character at one time may give more people the confidence to at least give a new system a try. I'm afraid that without anything like that in place, people who have had a bad experience in the past with someone coming along at wiping them out in one fell swoop of things that were quite labor intensive to create (e.g., full spellbooks) or acquire may be leery of even trying it out.

 

[Uriah Heep]

New sea creatures and encounters - Yay!

Could be cool, as long as it's not just another silly mob tossed out there with 10 million hps and called exciting (a la scalis)

 

[NuSair]

I think adding a vendor search capability has the potential to get a lot more people back into running a shop in their own home. Knowing that they have the option to place a restriction on how much is sold to any one character at one time may give more people the confidence to at least give a new system a try. I'm afraid that without anything like that in place, people who have had a bad experience in the past with someone coming along at wiping them out in one fell swoop of things that were quite labor intensive to create (e.g., full spellbooks) or acquire may be leery of even trying it out.

Given the unique nature of UO, I could see implementing something like that, mostly for people who run things like book stores that have cheap spell books, ect. But even then, it is something that I would be leery of.

 

[Uriah Heep]

I'm all for the vendor search. However, I'm not sure what it would hurt if a seller decided they wanted to limit sales from a particular vendor to one item per customer per day, or something along those lines. If the devs can program the new steward NPCs with that kind of a restriction, and have for years had the ability to set up EM "vending machines" to only allow one item per character forever, I would think they could implement something similar for vendor NPCs.

I think adding a vendor search capability has the potential to get a lot more people back into running a shop in their own home. Knowing that they have the option to place a restriction on how much is sold to any one character at one time may give more people the confidence to at least give a new system a try. I'm afraid that without anything like that in place, people who have had a bad experience in the past with someone coming along at wiping them out in one fell swoop of things that were quite labor intensive to create (e.g., full spellbooks) or acquire may be leery of even trying it out.

You're gonna have to explain the problem to me, I don't get it.
I put whatever I'm selling on my vendor, at the price I want to sell it for...
If Tina comes along, and buys everything on the vendor, and takes it and sells it for dbl that, what's that matter to me? I was paid what I asked for, I sold it to you, what you do with it after that is not my concern.

In fact I used to make a good living doing just that, I knew my stuff was going to Luna, but didnt care, I was getting what I thought was a fair price for it before it went there

(using Tina's name was cause i'm replying to her, not an attack)

 

[LordDrago]

You're gonna have to explain the problem to me, I don't get it.
I put whatever I'm selling on my vendor, at the price I want to sell it for...
If Tina comes along, and buys everything on the vendor, and takes it and sells it for dbl that, what's that matter to me? I was paid what I asked for, I sold it to you, what you do with it after that is not my concern.

In fact I used to make a good living doing just that, I knew my stuff was going to Luna, but didnt care, I was getting what I thought was a fair price for it before it went there

(using Tina's name was cause i'm replying to her, not an attack)

I believe the issue people are concerned about is that they do not want any person or group of people to be able to control the market by buying up all of the "fairly priced" item X, and then charging ungodly sums for it.

 

[Uriah Heep]

In the old days, that might have been a concern. Now? I still don't see it, all of us have been here long enough to have our own crafter, gatherers, what-have-you. There's not enough people playing now, that don't have these characters, for anyone to control the market except on the most highly used items (PoF comes to mind) . It didn't work for relic frags either,. because as people worked their skill, more and more were getting their own, and now the price is dropping...

Besides, those of us selling "fairlly priced" items are just gonna restock em anyway and raise the price slightly if we see a continued trend of sales...

Free market will take care of itself, in the long run.

 

[Lord Frodo]

I believe the issue people are concerned about is that they do not want any person or group of people to be able to control the market by buying up all of the "fairly priced" item X, and then charging ungodly sums for it.

Befor you stock vendor make sure you have lots and lots of product X on hand, restock at different times every day, place bulitin board so people can leave you a message, shout out in gen chat to that person to come pick up his/her product X. There are ways to prevent this and soon the reseller will find he/she has a lot of Product X that isnt worth what they thought it was going to be. Buy/Resell has been going on for 15 years and I dont know anybody that has a control of one single item in UO.

 

[Picus at the office]

If anything a larger global vendor search will allow a player to view the market and undercut everyone, this is what I and every other person I've spoken to does. Search item on main shard, then on a global base and then price and wait.

If the powers that be wish to go this route there is nothing I, or anyone else, can say as long term it is clearly good for the game but short term IMO the resources should be placed better elsewhere. Can anyone argue that?

 

[Uriah Heep]

If the powers that be wish to go this route there is nothing I, or anyone else, can say as long term it is clearly good for the game but short term IMO the resources should be placed better elsewhere. Can anyone argue that?

For me, I would rather simple stuff be fixed, like when my warrior is standing in the middle of a spawn, I use "target next mobile" and "attack selected target", got em macroed. It's really disgusting to be getting your ass handed to you by 12-15 critters, hitting the macro, and getting the message over and over that there are no mobiles on the screen.

My mage would like to cast evs at the spawn, around the edge of a crowd, and not have them freeze up and stand there till its almost time for them to dissipate. I really do feel sometimes, that I should charge them admission to the show!!

But my priorities are a bit different than everyone else. And ya can't please ALL the people...and I understand that

 

[Wenchkin]

Pet revamp, I think that's a 'wait and see'. Things like maybe the skree isn't worth 4 slots, even at all GM the poor thing can't take a poison ele unless you peace for it.

Aye, there are good pet revamp opportunities that we really need. I just hope the good options like that aren't missed in favour of the very vocal tamers who seem to want everything at GD level.

The one way I can see EA keeping balance as it is and still changing the slots is if they change our 5 slots into 10 and double up the slot requirements for our existing pets. Then there are more "in-between" levels for pets that aren't quite a 4 slot and such and that would give them some range to move pets up or down without totally changing the pet combinations many of us enjoy. That would make sense, and give the option of making really small pets into 1 slotters... Killer frog army lol!

Wenchy

 

[The Craftsman]

Thats a long list of welcome changes, if implemented right.

And the most discussed of them all on this thread is Vendor Search. Really people? All of those great changes and Vendor Search is the most important or debate worthy?

Uhall has some strange people with strange priorities.

 

[Tina Small]

You're gonna have to explain the problem to me, I don't get it.
I put whatever I'm selling on my vendor, at the price I want to sell it for...
If Tina comes along, and buys everything on the vendor, and takes it and sells it for dbl that, what's that matter to me? I was paid what I asked for, I sold it to you, what you do with it after that is not my concern.

In fact I used to make a good living doing just that, I knew my stuff was going to Luna, but didnt care, I was getting what I thought was a fair price for it before it went there

(using Tina's name was cause i'm replying to her, not an attack)

I believe what has happened in the past is that some people have set up shops with low-priced basic-needs items (e.g., full spellbooks, empty rune books, etc.) with the idea of running a shop that caters to new/recently returned players and would oftentimes find that someone was buying out all the full spellbooks and placing them on their own vendor to sell at a hugely increased price. As you probably know, filling spellbooks can be incredibly time-consuming, whether you scribe all the scrolls yourself or you loot them from monsters. So it can be very frustrating to try to sell full spellbooks at what you hope is a price most newcomers can afford (e.g., in the 10-25k range) and then have someone else come along and buy out your whole supply in one pass just to make sure their shop is fully stocked. Another example is selling full runebooks for cities, dungeons, quests, etc. I think what particularly grates on people who have had this happen is that the items in question have their own crafter's name on it but are being resold by someone else, apparently without any qualms.

Maybe the people who have had this happen to them enough times to make them blow a gasket over it can provide more details. I really wouldn't expect that people would place such a restriction on ALL of their vendors, but rather just something like a vendor selling full spellbooks or full runeboks, i.e., something that is very time consuming to make but that you sell at a reduced price because you're trying to provide a service. I would hope that people understand that asking the devs to spend the little bit of extra time it would take to program something like this, that is apparently already programmed for the new steward NPCs, might make the difference between once again seeing fully stocked "shops for newbies" or continuing to not being able to find those shops at all on most shards. I really doubt that most people would use it except in a situation where they are trying to sell something at a fair price to get it into the hands of newcomers, who shouldn't need ridiculous amounts of the item, but that other people are too lazy to produce or acquire on their own.

 

[CovenantX]

Reading this letter brought tears of joy to my eyes, I was very impressed.

looks like a lot of exciting things coming around although I can agree with the whole gold tied to character/account thing doesn't sound so promising, *hopes I'm wrong*.

I especially like the Hi-res art, chaos/order - removal of factions, & this battle ground shard sounds like it could be interesting.

 

[Tina Small]

Thats a long list of welcome changes, if implemented right.

And the most discussed of them all on this thread is Vendor Search. Really people? All of those great changes and Vendor Search is the most important or debate worthy?

Uhall has some strange people with strange priorities.

I think it's being discussed because it potentially affects everyone who plays, regardless of their playstyle.

 

[Reth]

There is no argument to be had about whether we should have vendor search or not. None at all.

Hen pretty much gave the same reason I was going for. Whether you don't agree with it doesn't make it wrong. Guess we can chock it up to difference of opinions.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

There is no argument to be had about whether we should have vendor search or not. None at all. Vendor search has been here for years and will always be here. If you oppose EA adding their own vendor search then you MUST explain why you think leaving control of the economy in the hands of dupers and goldsellers is good for UO.

Well, and let's be honest... the best argument for an in-game search function that isn't handled by those less than ideal search sites is that they pick and choose which vendors they list. Which is to say that if they don't want to list your vendor, they don't. This isn't by chance. Sure, you can "submit your vendor," but most times, that vendor is not added.

As for the economy... to whomever was worried about undercutting... you know, undercutting only works to a certain point. At some point, the price point becomes so low that someone else just buys all the stock and turns around and resells it for an acceptable market value. Some might argue that "Hey, an in-game search would allow people to do just that... OH NOES, THERE WILL BE MONOPOLIES!!!" To which I would respond, "It has failed to happen yet, and if you don't think the same people running the search sites are capable of doing just that if they wanted to, you're sorely blind to the reality of the situation." The reason monopolies don't tend to happen in UO (or any other game for that matter) is because the resources aren't real. They're never-ending. Someone could have a short monopoly for a short time, but people will find a way around paying exorbitant prices for things. The only "monopolies" in UO tend to center around Feluccan commodities that can't be gotten without risk of PvP -- and people have found ways around that too.

 

[Miri of Sonoma]

Nice letter! There are lots of potential things to look forward too! I mean what could be bad about new underwear!! *laughs*

 

[FrejaSP]

I look forward to see what your guys are going to do, the last years had been a blast.

•Vendor search - We had wanted that for long time. It will help vendor owners at more desert places. I don't think it should be possible to seach the whole shard at same time.
If we could seach on subservers, maybe from an interface at the banks at the sub server. That would give the players a reason to traveling. When you had found an item, you can choose to get a map with the place for the shop or a tracking arrow to show you the way to the shop.
•High Res Art- Nice but not the most important to me.
•New Art pieces such as new furniture - New items are always nice, I would like some granit benches and if you could make me some doors and walls to plave in my castle to make smaller rooms I would be so happy.
•New Paperdoll (time to change the diapers) - *Slap fingers* stay away from my CC paperdoll, more choices would be nice and some new hair. I really hate to know, the one playing EC see my paperdoll in a different way, than I want it to look
•New tasteful hues on tameables other than cu sidhes - Ok with me but can live without.
•Enhanced UI Improvements for EC client - If it can draw new players, then go for it
•Currency Conversion (gold would be on character/account, no checks) - Yes but keep the coins on monster loot and player corpes. I think you still should need to bring the coins to your bank, vendor or community box. Some do RP "your gold or your life"
•Revising UO Armor to make all types useful again - Yes yes yes, bring the smiths back to business. We need armor for casters and armor for warriors and so on. Maybe limit some mods to some matrialle.
•Revising pet slots - Also for stable, Crafters need more slots, beetles, leather wolves and other pets that do not need taming.
•Pet Revamp - Yes I think this are needed. Don't make them to powerfull
•Chaos/Order and doing away with factions - I would love to see that, also to see a way so the whole guild don't have to join Order or Chaos.
•Reworking champ spawns (improving mobs, loot etc) - I have never really done any champ spawn, I don't like big spawn with alot of players and mobs. I would like to see more mini champ spawn, maybe on some over land spots.
•Add new items to fishing and fishing quest rewards - Yes, fishing still get boring very fast even when it is improved alot. Also the SOS need some new drop and I would like to see some special boots with mods like stats.
•New sea creatures and encounters - yes, what about some squids and some nice looking whales (not for hunting). Also some seals and penguin at the beach. Also some floating wreckage could be nice.
•New wearable’s for both male and female - Always nice, we sure need more female armor, a light metal one, the only metal one we have is far to heavy.
•Working closer with Stratics to streamline the search to help filter out duplicate questions so the team can address some of the player questions weekly - This is really great
•Meer/Juka Loyality quests - More quests are always nice, some of the old ones need some love and better rewards, Heartwoods quests comes in mind.
•Battleground shard - Not sure about this one, I think there need more non con PvP sones on normal shards.

 

[blinkdog]

If the powers that be wish to go this route there is nothing I, or anyone else, can say as long term it is clearly good for the game but short term IMO the resources should be placed better elsewhere. Can anyone argue that?

I'd argue that leaving control of the economy in the hands of goldsellers for this long has been a long-running black eye for the game and that an in-game vendor search is long overdue.

 

[Goodmann]

Best letter we have received! Look out Jeff looks like Mesanna will have your job soon.........

lol look who liked my post - jskalski likes this.

 

[Picus at the office]

The gold sellers hardly run the economy of UO and might enhance a returning player in getting footed back to the game but indeed it has been a black eye yet since the cat is out of the bag, then moved across the street and bought a fourplex to which he rented out three units to questionable other cats whom you and I cannot evict I'd say the best thing to do is make the whole block look better.

 

[LordDrago]

hmmm...vendor search followed closely by Luna invasion anyone?

 

[Uriah Heep]

hmmm...vendor search followed closely by Luna invasion anyone?

Nah, they can't do that because they know too many people paid way to much money for those plots, and they don't wanna lose the customers...

 

[phantus]

Nah, they can't do that because they know too many people paid way to much money for those plots, and they don't wanna lose the customers...

Lol! Never stopped them before

 

[Merus]

Hen pretty much gave the same reason I was going for. Whether you don't agree with it doesn't make it wrong. Guess we can chock it up to difference of opinions.

All that is really needed is a vendor toggle to include the inventory in the shard vendor search. Then if you want your inventory private you can do so. However, I'm guessing given the option the vast majority would list the inventory.

 

[Woodsman]

If the powers that be wish to go this route there is nothing I, or anyone else, can say as long term it is clearly good for the game but short term IMO the resources should be placed better elsewhere. Can anyone argue that?

If it's just a search, it shouldn't take many resources with a competent database developer. There is a thread on Stratics that discussed the search sites in detail, but in short, the search sites rely on scripted accounts/bots to get their data. The UO team doesn't have to go that far - they can interact with the database directly.

If they keep it simple, then they would be displaying the items, quantity, price, vendor name, and location, and that's it. There may need to be some more database work done to bring that information together or make it easier to assemble, but the game needs somebody doing some database work anyway, if we want MyUO to come back, and if they are going to do the currency conversion.

They could even just treat it like MyUO and just have it spit the information out into a website if they wanted to. Imagine a UO.com with MyUO back, along with a vendor search. If they did a database that had external hooks for a website, they could even allow authorized fansites to display that information. Imagine looking something up on UO Guide and then being able to see where you can buy it! World of Warcraft has all kinds of hooks for authorized sites, would be a forward-thinking move for UO to go there, even if it's just vendor items.

This is taking data that already exists and presenting it to us in a GUMP. Plus, the UO team already laid the groundwork with some of the New Magincia stuff with the commodity vendors.

On that list of things, high resolution artwork, vendor search, enhanced UI improvements, the gold conversion for accounts, and Chaos/Order are all things that are going to make UO more attractive and more accommodating to people who have never played UO, and that should be the priority - more players. Out of that little group, vendor search and UI improvements should be the easiest.

On that list of things Mesanna mentioned, the person who works on MyUO and a vendor search would probably be the person doing the currency conversion, but there is not much else on that list they would be working on, since so much of it is either design or graphics-related.

A waste of resources would be having a database programmer designing new quests or spawns.

 

[Woodsman]

I think adding a vendor search capability has the potential to get a lot more people back into running a shop in their own home.

It does, it will level the playing field between those who have homes in Luna/Z who are covered by the search websites and those who don't.

I believe the issue people are concerned about is that they do not want any person or group of people to be able to control the market by buying up all of the "fairly priced" item X, and then charging ungodly sums for it.

I think some, hopefully not in this thread, are more unhappy that it takes an advantage away from the Luna houses. I don't think Luna will suffer that much - people still go to shopping malls even though Amazon.com exists and offers many of the same items for cheaper.

I will say that for a few years, I made a lot of gold buying and reselling colored ingots and lumber. I specialized in it, and I had runebooks full of shops that sold ingots and lumber. In some cases, I bought and sold ingots and lumber at a loss just to keep my shop stocked and customers coming in - it was worth it to me and my shop's reputation over the long run to occasionally do that. Some of the people I was buying out, who just cared about the gold and not running a shop, realized what I was doing, got my ICQ and just sold to me directly for slightly less. They didn't have to mess with vendors or anything and it was like an ATM machine. If they needed gold, they go mine a few spots, ICQ me, and if I was around, they had gold within minutes.

It's different these days with all of the scripters running around - I wouldn't bother competing with them on many of the commodities, but ultimately this levels the playing field for everybody.

 

[chise2]

Pet revamp, I think that's a 'wait and see'. Things like maybe the skree isn't worth 4 slots, even at all GM the poor thing can't take a poison ele unless you peace for it.

Yeah they need to take a look at the underpowered underused pets but donlt buff the already powerful pets.

 

[Minerva Foxglove]

I believe what has happened in the past is that some people have set up shops with low-priced basic-needs items (e.g., full spellbooks, empty rune books, etc.) with the idea of running a shop that caters to new/recently returned players and would oftentimes find that someone was buying out all the full spellbooks and placing them on their own vendor to sell at a hugely increased price. As you probably know, filling spellbooks can be incredibly time-consuming, whether you scribe all the scrolls yourself or you loot them from monsters. So it can be very frustrating to try to sell full spellbooks at what you hope is a price most newcomers can afford (e.g., in the 10-25k range) and then have someone else come along and buy out your whole supply in one pass just to make sure their shop is fully stocked. Another example is selling full runebooks for cities, dungeons, quests, etc. I think what particularly grates on people who have had this happen is that the items in question have their own crafter's name on it but are being resold by someone else, apparently without any qualms.

Maybe the people who have had this happen to them enough times to make them blow a gasket over it can provide more details. I really wouldn't expect that people would place such a restriction on ALL of their vendors, but rather just something like a vendor selling full spellbooks or full runeboks, i.e., something that is very time consuming to make but that you sell at a reduced price because you're trying to provide a service. I would hope that people understand that asking the devs to spend the little bit of extra time it would take to program something like this, that is apparently already programmed for the new steward NPCs, might make the difference between once again seeing fully stocked "shops for newbies" or continuing to not being able to find those shops at all on most shards. I really doubt that most people would use it except in a situation where they are trying to sell something at a fair price to get it into the hands of newcomers, who shouldn't need ridiculous amounts of the item, but that other people are too lazy to produce or acquire on their own.

This is exactly what I do and I have probs with resellers as it is. Idea is good for everything else I guess, but new players wont find any cheap books at my place or anywhere else. There are still a bunch of players who take pride in doing hard work , keeping vendors look good and well stocked. That is the joy with the whole vendor thing to see happy cusstomers find certain things and being able to afford them. To get response from customers about the shop. People that dont want a vendor in Luna or can cope with resellers finding them too easy. There should be an option if you want to be in or not. Please?

 

[Picus at the office]

If it's just a search, it shouldn't take many resources with a competent database developer. There is a thread on Stratics that discussed the search sites in detail, but in short, the search sites rely on scripted accounts/bots to get their data. The UO team doesn't have to go that far - they can interact with the database directly.

If they keep it simple, then they would be displaying the items, quantity, price, vendor name, and location, and that's it. There may need to be some more database work done to bring that information together or make it easier to assemble, but the game needs somebody doing some database work anyway, if we want MyUO to come back, and if they are going to do the currency conversion.

They could even just treat it like MyUO and just have it spit the information out into a website if they wanted to. Imagine a UO.com with MyUO back, along with a vendor search. If they did a database that had external hooks for a website, they could even allow authorized fansites to display that information. Imagine looking something up on UO Guide and then being able to see where you can buy it! World of Warcraft has all kinds of hooks for authorized sites, would be a forward-thinking move for UO to go there, even if it's just vendor items.

This is taking data that already exists and presenting it to us in a GUMP. Plus, the UO team already laid the groundwork with some of the New Magincia stuff with the commodity vendors.

On that list of things, high resolution artwork, vendor search, enhanced UI improvements, the gold conversion for accounts, and Chaos/Order are all things that are going to make UO more attractive and more accommodating to people who have never played UO, and that should be the priority - more players. Out of that little group, vendor search and UI improvements should be the easiest.

On that list of things Mesanna mentioned, the person who works on MyUO and a vendor search would probably be the person doing the currency conversion, but there is not much else on that list they would be working on, since so much of it is either design or graphics-related.

A waste of resources would be having a database programmer designing new quests or spawns.

Nothing can be said against this, well spoken.

 

[LordDrago]

If it's just a search, it shouldn't take many resources with a competent database developer. There is a thread on Stratics that discussed the search sites in detail, but in short, the search sites rely on scripted accounts/bots to get their data. The UO team doesn't have to go that far - they can interact with the database directly.

If they keep it simple, then they would be displaying the items, quantity, price, vendor name, and location, and that's it. There may need to be some more database work done to bring that information together or make it easier to assemble, but the game needs somebody doing some database work anyway, if we want MyUO to come back, and if they are going to do the currency conversion.

They could even just treat it like MyUO and just have it spit the information out into a website if they wanted to. Imagine a UO.com with MyUO back, along with a vendor search. If they did a database that had external hooks for a website, they could even allow authorized fansites to display that information. Imagine looking something up on UO Guide and then being able to see where you can buy it! World of Warcraft has all kinds of hooks for authorized sites, would be a forward-thinking move for UO to go there, even if it's just vendor items.

This is taking data that already exists and presenting it to us in a GUMP. Plus, the UO team already laid the groundwork with some of the New Magincia stuff with the commodity vendors.

On that list of things, high resolution artwork, vendor search, enhanced UI improvements, the gold conversion for accounts, and Chaos/Order are all things that are going to make UO more attractive and more accommodating to people who have never played UO, and that should be the priority - more players. Out of that little group, vendor search and UI improvements should be the easiest.

On that list of things Mesanna mentioned, the person who works on MyUO and a vendor search would probably be the person doing the currency conversion, but there is not much else on that list they would be working on, since so much of it is either design or graphics-related.

A waste of resources would be having a database programmer designing new quests or spawns.

Sounds good to me

 

[SpyderBite]

Most of that stuff doesn't apply to me. But I am concerned a little about the gold being tied to the character/account.

I hope this doesn't mean that nobody will be carrying gold around in their packs anymore. That would really make looting corpses disappointing in the pvp environment.

As long as gold sits in a backpack until its deposited in the bank, at a bank, I'm fine with a change to the removal of the check system.

 

[startle]

It does, it will level the playing field between those who have homes in Luna/Z who are covered by the search websites and those who don't....I think some, hopefully not in this thread, are more unhappy that it takes an advantage away from the Luna houses. I don't think Luna will suffer that much - people still go to shopping malls even though Amazon.com exists and offers many of the same items for cheaper....It's different these days with all of the scripters running around - I wouldn't bother competing with them on many of the commodities, but ultimately this levels the playing field for everybody.

Exactly... A Sosaria-wide vendor search would level the playing field.. Plus, it would make shopping fun again - going to new vendors, talking to home owners, making new friends... And, for the new player, he/she could actually FIND stuff that a new player needs (which is pretty much impossible now)....

Below are typical examples of what the Luna vendor community has become: (and please don't bother to tell me about how your vendor is there in Luna selling stuff new players need because I know that there are a FEW exceptions, but they are very few, and we all know it.)...

 

[Ludes]

But there has to expensive stuff as well as cheap stuff for sale..

I was gonna leave this one alone ... but decided to get my soapbox out..
You know what killed the vendors? Nobody walks around and looks for them anymore...
Too many people want to sit at the bank and have things hand fed to them...

Sheez we used to actually have to go find crafters and vendors.. we'd share runes and tell folks.. " Hey I found this cool vendor that has killer stuff cheap"
We had to go to the bank just to TALK to other players..

I use pricecheck sites as well so I'm not being all hypocritical..
But adding more reasons to not have to interact with others is just the wrong direction for UO in my opinion!

P.S. My son said I better avoid the flames and mention that I personally use the chat system and don't want it removed.. just mentioned it as part of my rant.

 

[blinkdog]

Gee, these are good and worthwhile ideas, but can we please cripple and ruin them to suit some tiny selfish need of mine? Like I've been ignoring vendor search websites for years, but ignoring an in-game vendor search NPC would ruin my precious and incredibly fragile sense of immersion. Please leave the UO economy in the hands of dupers and goldsellers. It's a small price to pay to keep me from having to walk past an NPC and not click on him.

Also, look, I know that turning gold into a non-physical stat would eliminate the ability to dupe gold once and for all, as well as allow the developers to easily track any oddities in the supply of gold, but gosh can we please eliminate those benefits by leaving gold as an object? One time someone actually died in PVP with gold on them for some bizzare reason, looting it was really fun, and really that's way more important than eliminating duping and all that other stuff.

I have zero grasp of game design and can't see past my own nose, but this is America and I have the right to an opinion whether I know what I'm talking about or not.

 

[Reth]

Gee, these are good and worthwhile ideas, but can we please cripple and ruin them to suit some tiny selfish need of mine? Like I've been ignoring vendor search websites for years, but ignoring an in-game vendor search NPC would ruin my precious and incredibly fragile sense of immersion. Please leave the UO economy in the hands of dupers and goldsellers. It's a small price to pay to keep me from having to walk past an NPC and not click on him.

Also, look, I know that turning gold into a non-physical stat would eliminate the ability to dupe gold once and for all, as well as allow the developers to easily track any oddities in the supply of gold, but gosh can we please eliminate those benefits by leaving gold as an object? One time someone actually died in PVP with gold on them for some bizzare reason, looting it was really fun, and really that's way more important than eliminating duping and all that other stuff.

I have zero grasp of game design and can't see past my own nose, but this is America and I have the right to an opinion whether I know what I'm talking about or not.

Gotta add in for you unless my sarcasm detector is broken.

 

[Tjalle]

We´re in America now?

 

[Felonious Monk]

We´re in America now?

Ha!
I like it. It IS an international game and has been for awhile.

 

[Driven Insane]

Control slot/Pet changes - Very wary about these. I really don't see any room to change control slots without causing a significant power shift for tamers. I'm apparently one of few tamers who doesn't want to double up in power, which is why I'm worried that's the direction we're going in. Pet boosts make me nervous too. Please be reasonable about these changes, don't just give in to power hungry tamers who seem to see their pets as living spawn mowers and meat shields. It's a huge turn-off to some of us. I don't want to return to the all kill, no skill days where every event was packed with tamers dominating the other classes.

I'm so glad someone else is concerned with this. Pets have always been a very hard thing to balance and if you screw it up we have a serious problem, especially in PvP.

Also people are so defensive of their Tamer chars. God forbid anyone ever talk about how low skill and overpowered tamers really are.

Tamers are honestly the easiest chars to play and there's no reason they should be the most powerful. Every no skill noob that I've helped start this game I tell em "go make a tamer" It costs nothing to work, hell you can do it naked, and once you are a full fledged tamer, you can kill the strongest monsters in the game while wearing a no resist 2000 luck suit. No other class can get away with crap like that. I know a tamer who does Fel spawns and harrowers on a stealth/tamer. He tows his GD there, hides and with the exception of occasionally poppin out to give a command, he just sits there hidden watching tv while the GD stomps around killing everything.

My 65 year old mother in law has played this game for the last 6 years. The only char she can do anything on...... yep a tamer. Put her on a mage... she dies. Put her on an archer.... she dies. But she is damn skilled at "all kill", watching her GD or Doggie kill whatever and occaionally throwing a bandaid or GH on it. And if the crap hits the fan.... a tamer can just run away, log out, back in and start again.

Yep takes alot of skill running a tamer.

 

[FrejaSP]

All that is really needed is a vendor toggle to include the inventory in the shard vendor search. Then if you want your inventory private you can do so. However, I'm guessing given the option the vast majority would list the inventory.

Agree, it would be nice to be able to choose if you want a vendor listed in the shard seach. I have vendors I have hard keep up stocking and they serve the local community. Then I may have vendors Iwould like listed in the shard seach.
When I had my vendors in a desert player town, I really needed the option to add them to a shard seach but now, where they are in New Magincia, I would like them to not show in the listing.

 

[FrejaSP]

Exactly... A Sosaria-wide vendor search would level the playing field.. Plus, it would make shopping fun again - going to new vendors, talking to home owners, making new friends... And, for the new player, he/she could actually FIND stuff that a new player needs (which is pretty much impossible now)....

It may also bring back the life in player towns around the land, as the crafters can run their shop in the player town and again be the backbone of the community in the player towns.
I would like to see markeds places with stall vendors in all towns and in player towns too and see them listed in vendor seach too

 

[Petra Fyde]

It would be a fine balancing act to get this right.
Resellers gutting the little shops is a valid concern. It's the reason I stopped stocking vendors on Europa. It's soul destroying spending hours stocking vendors only for your regular customers to find they're always empty because they're bought out the minute you put the stock on.
On the other hand it could be beneficial in lots of other ways, not least of which is removing the need some people feel to use the illicit sites. I have never used those sites, simply because I heartily disapprove of their methods and refuse to support them. That's a personal choice. I would use a proper, in game, facility of that kind.

 

[Ron Silverbeard]

its not that easy to put a vendor search option in game - you will also need a possibility to LEAD the customers to the vendors they want to buy from - this might work if you have a "gate" or "recall" option to the vendor on the menu - or simple get teleported there if you wish to (Nice for FEL Vendors and Traps lol) - there should not be a auction house and the unique vendor system cancled PLS dont even think about it DEV's!