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Devs.. Please make getting rid of checks as a priority

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Blood Ghoul

Sage
Stratics Veteran
I know it's on your list of things to do but please make it a priority. With the out of control inflation within UO it makes organizing checks a total disaster. Over the past few months I have been selling off tons of stuff to get ready for the "Rares Fest" being held on Atlantic. With items now costing in the billions the logistics of setting up a vendor on the target shard, making numerous transfers to stock the vendor up with gold by purchasing 100 million gold items off your own vendor, and then having to use another player as a middleman/middlewoman, then collect gold off your vendor at say 100 of the million checks at a time, until you pay the broker the agreed upon amount.

The entire hassle of finding a vendor, bonding packies to one way gold mules, stocking their banks, running back and forth from the vendor to buy something then take gold out of a packie to put in the bank is a total pain.

I am not crying about having too much gold but complaining that a change in the banking system would make everyone's life easier. You'd also save a number of players from the scammers out there who just play to rip others off. Real banks will deposit all the cash you want to put into them and while UO is not the real world, getting rid of checks and making the gold total tied to the account is a smart change to the game.

BG
 

Winker

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I know it's on your list of things to do but please make it a priority. With the out of control inflation within UO it makes organizing checks a total disaster. Over the past few months I have been selling off tons of stuff to get ready for the "Rares Fest" being held on Atlantic. With items now costing in the billions the logistics of setting up a vendor on the target shard, making numerous transfers to stock the vendor up with gold by purchasing 100 million gold items off your own vendor, and then having to use another player as a middleman/middlewoman, then collect gold off your vendor at say 100 of the million checks at a time, until you pay the broker the agreed upon amount.

The entire hassle of finding a vendor, bonding packies to one way gold mules, stocking their banks, running back and forth from the vendor to buy something then take gold out of a packie to put in the bank is a total pain.

I am not crying about having too much gold but complaining that a change in the banking system would make everyone's life easier. You'd also save a number of players from the scammers out there who just play to rip others off. Real banks will deposit all the cash you want to put into them and while UO is not the real world, getting rid of checks and making the gold total tied to the account is a smart change to the game.

BG
That made me lol and I agree, things are way out of control now with the price of goods we need to ditch the checks fast and do straight bank transfers
 

andyjacksons

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
pleas please dont ever get rid of checks it may be hard but its the small things like that , that keep uo different to all other games once we are the same the axe will fall we all hate the grind of doing skills etc but nothing that is easy is worth having keep it as it is PLEASE PLEASE
 

Winker

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
pleas please dont ever get rid of checks it may be hard but its the small things like that , that keep uo different to all other games once we are the same the axe will fall we all hate the grind of doing skills etc but nothing that is easy is worth having keep it as it is PLEASE PLEASE
Sorry to burst your bubble but Mesanna has already stated that we will be moving away from Checks some time in the future
 

Warpig Inc

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
pleas please dont ever get rid of checks it may be hard but its the small things like that , that keep uo different to all other games once we are the same the axe will fall we all hate the grind of doing skills etc but nothing that is easy is worth having keep it as it is PLEASE PLEASE
Remove the last digit from every pile of gold/gems, check and vendor holding. Only do this after every gold sales sites owners/controllers are drawn and quartered. Under the new economy something worth 125,000,000 before, is now worth 12,500,000. No need for two players to get naked to exchange gold. Be wary wary quite and just do the money change. Please dont forget to make videos of the quartering as a warning to new butmunches that want to do UO harm. To save time just daisy chain them together like some freackish sky diving formation. Some would survive to tell the tale. Little "Money for nothing" could be a music choice.
 
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Winker

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Sorry to burst your bubble, but they say alot of things :)
Here is what Mesanna said, I will highlight the items she has produced or has admitted they will be with us soon.


Quote Letter from the Producer 2012 Aug 29


Now for the exciting part of the letter. Remember what you are going to read after this is not written in stone….*takes a deep breath* This is a list of things we have been talking and brainstorming about:
  • Vendor search
  • High Res Art
  • New Art pieces such as new furniture ( if we don’t break the new artist to much maybe even new armor and new monsters/tameables)
  • New Paperdoll (time to change the diapers)
  • New tasteful hues on tameables other than cu sidhes
  • Enhanced UI Improvements for EC client
  • Currency Conversion (gold would be on character/account, no checks)
  • Revising UO Armor to make all types useful again
  • Revising pet slots
  • Pet Revamp
  • Chaos/Order and doing away with factions
  • Reworking champ spawns (improving mobs, loot etc)
  • Add new items to fishing and fishing quest rewards
  • New sea creatures and encounters
  • New wearable’s for both male and female
  • 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
  • Meer/Juka Loyality quests
  • Battleground shard
So my friends this is what the team has worked on, is working on and wants to work on in the future.


Now not that i'm a sceptic but that's not a lot of progress in 8 months
 

cazador

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Soon™..also it's been 9 months with no word..smoke & mirrors
 

Aurelius

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
As always, they seem to ignore the option of us having a choice for each our accounts to either keep gold, and cheques, or not. If it takes up extra storage space - so what, it's the storage in MY banks and MY houses, let ME choose if I want that 'inconvenience' or not. There's no conceivable problems with the number of cheques causing a processing problem for the servers. If I want to have all, or some, of my in-game gold as a graphic of a pile of coins, or a gold coloured deed, or an abstracted number tied to my characters, or a mixture of all three, so what. For once let me make the choice!

Nothing stops it being a choice we can make, except the relentless assumptions of the Devs that they know best - or at least know better than we do - what we would prefer.
 

cazador

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
You can dupe checks..you can't dupe an in game number that's trackable..I'm for no more checks but leaving gold piles..or atleast a way to have all 3 working together with a tracking system..that red flags the server on an influx of gold to pinpoint the duper and ban..and track that gold or the items purchased with it
 

Tanivar

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
It would be a good thing to get any gold in the bank to be just a number there but it will immediately cause the high end priced items to go up in price because paying for purchases will become a simple thing. Right now the hassle, headaches, & risks of charging 99,000,000,000,000 gold for something and taking chances with that much gold restrains people's prices a bit. Once that risk is gone eternity's the limit on price jumps. When the devs do this, they had better code it to allow for LONG price numbers. Damn good thing most have WIDE screen monitors now. :p

Once the gold in the bank is just a number I'll try the Ka-CHING!! style game play as a change of pace. I've held it to 100 mill or so to avoid tying up bank storage space better used for deco and resources. :)
 

andyjacksons

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Here is what Mesanna said, I will highlight the items she has produced or has admitted they will be with us soon.


Quote Letter from the Producer 2012 Aug 29


Now for the exciting part of the letter. Remember what you are going to read after this is not written in stone….*takes a deep breath* This is a list of things we have been talking and brainstorming about:
  • Vendor search
  • High Res Art
  • New Art pieces such as new furniture ( if we don’t break the new artist to much maybe even new armor and new monsters/tameables)
  • New Paperdoll (time to change the diapers)
  • New tasteful hues on tameables other than cu sidhes
  • Enhanced UI Improvements for EC client
  • Currency Conversion (gold would be on character/account, no checks)
  • Revising UO Armor to make all types useful again
  • Revising pet slots
  • Pet Revamp
  • Chaos/Order and doing away with factions
  • Reworking champ spawns (improving mobs, loot etc)
  • Add new items to fishing and fishing quest rewards
  • New sea creatures and encounters
  • New wearable’s for both male and female
  • 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
  • Meer/Juka Loyality quests
  • Battleground shard
So my friends this is what the team has worked on, is working on and wants to work on in the future.



Now not that i'm a sceptic but that's not a lot of progress in 8 months
rather than pancake about 9 months andd smake and mirrors reread the top line talking and brainstorming not in any way a confermation that any of the list will get into the game just thoughts
 

Petra Fyde

Peerless Chatterbox
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
2 items on the 'wish list', but how many on the actual 'to do' list?
I seem to remember a birthday party, an event arc completed, publishes 79, 80 and 81, all the servers moved. How much else?
It's easy to imply little progress when you ignore most of what came before.
 

Manticore

Crazed Zealot
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I for one vote for removing the checks for 1 reason only: prevent dupers from duping them. With this new system in place, you can dupe all the chars you want and your digitized balance stays the same :)
 

Aurelius

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
You can dupe checks..you can't dupe an in game number that's trackable..I'm for no more checks but leaving gold piles..or atleast a way to have all 3 working together with a tracking system..that red flags the server on an influx of gold to pinpoint the duper and ban..and track that gold or the items purchased with it
So make cheques trackable items? Limit the amount held as 'cash' before forcing it to be a cheque. Anything above, to pick a random number, 180k in your bank becomes a cheque (ideally with it's own ID, which gets checked at the point of creation on your server and can NEVER be assigned again).

However.... I've never yet seen any evidence or even clear statement that it's the duping of gold they are wanting to address with this move Possible I missed something, but I don't recall being told it, and certainly don't think it's ever been explained in any sort of depth to justify it being done for that reason. Similarly I've never yet seen any real evidence that gold duping is still a huge problem - it might be, people certainly have opinions, but I have not yet seen any evidence for it. I've also never seen any convincing evidence that the 'economy' in terms of the HUGE amounts of gold, in any form, already in the game is going to change one bit by transferring from in-game item data to character linked numerical date. "Good news guys, people won't be able to make any more than the existing billions of copied money that already have"..... somewhat fails to address the problem.

What I do see is yet another in the relentless trend of 'game mechanics' that take away any feeling of immersion in internally consistent world because a developer can only come up with a 'mechanistic system' solution to a vaguely defined 'problem' . Not everything should carry money (why the hell do rats have gold coins on them?), but we look to be moving towards mugging monsters now so we can steal their credit balances from the plastic cards they hand us when they die, taken directly to our accounts via the contactless payment readers we all will be carrying....
 

Manticore

Crazed Zealot
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
So make cheques trackable items? Limit the amount held as 'cash' before forcing it to be a cheque. Anything above, to pick a random number, 180k in your bank becomes a cheque (ideally with it's own ID, which gets checked at the point of creation on your server and can NEVER be assigned again).

However.... I've never yet seen any evidence or even clear statement that it's the duping of gold they are wanting to address with this move Possible I missed something, but I don't recall being told it, and certainly don't think it's ever been explained in any sort of depth to justify it being done for that reason. Similarly I've never yet seen any real evidence that gold duping is still a huge problem - it might be, people certainly have opinions, but I have not yet seen any evidence for it. I've also never seen any convincing evidence that the 'economy' in terms of the HUGE amounts of gold, in any form, already in the game is going to change one bit by transferring from in-game item data to character linked numerical date. "Good news guys, people won't be able to make any more than the existing billions of copied money that already have"..... somewhat fails to address the problem.

What I do see is yet another in the relentless trend of 'game mechanics' that take away any feeling of immersion in internally consistent world because a developer can only come up with a 'mechanistic system' solution to a vaguely defined 'problem' . Not everything should carry money (why the hell do rats have gold coins on them?), but we look to be moving towards mugging monsters now so we can steal their credit balances from the plastic cards they hand us when they die, taken directly to our accounts via the contactless payment readers we all will be carrying....

Just because you don't see evidence it doesn't mean it's not going on. Unfortunately in any organization with a top-down structure information becomes a need-to-know-basis. You're right in that by doing this conversion may not solve the problem of gold instantly but it's like eating an elephant, you can only approach it by taking one bite at a time. You're also right in that illegal ways of making gold in this game is more than just char-dupes but I am sure they are working the best can on finding solutions and facing these problems simultaneously. It's a cat and mouse game since the late 90s with this game and will continue till the end.
 
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Aurelius

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Just because you don't see evidence it doesn't mean it's not going on.

True - now I think I'd prefer some proof it is, and it's not a total fantasy :) I think it's not unreasonable to want SOME evidence to support things, rather then the none we normally get offered before a change gets dumped on us with at best a vague 'it's for the best' non-explanation....

The only issue ever mentioned cheques being a 'duper's method of choice' is almost certainly because by re-cashing and making into a new cheque you flush the old item ID for a new one ..... so the ability to recycle and 're-identify' is the issue, not the idea of the cheque...

Just change cheques. Cheque gets a totally unique, unchanging, ID number on creation - same as other items supposedly do. Once it's a cheque it cannot be re-cashed. Have an option to take a cheque to the banker NPC to be paid in to your 'numerical balance' but NOT made back into gold coins. That way you have gold gathered, as piles of coin graphics, cheques if you want to move larger sums between your own characters or give to someone for them to convert, AND a numerical balance. Insurance money - comes from your gold coins or numerical balance, same for big purchases from NPCs and vendors.

You choose which you prefer, keep your money in whatever form you like, and EA stop the 'duping cheques' issue. More options, you choose which.
 

Winker

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
rather than pancake about 9 months andd smake and mirrors reread the top line talking and brainstorming not in any way a confermation that any of the list will get into the game just thoughts

Get your facts right before you start mouthing off, I never once said anything about "smake and mirrors" nor was i pancakes about anything! Now wind your neck in!
 

Lady Storm

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Ahh..
Aurelius....
Sugar.... way back when I wore a pretty blue robe... I helped nab a gold/item duper red handed and it was not 1 person it was a whole guild full of players who were in on it.
This player thought they were smart and got their whole guild in on it and they were so quiet about it.
It was sheer luck it was stumbled over.
This operation filled not just 1 house but many to their rafters with the duped items that were being sold and the gold it was making also went into the dupe piles...
Every item in the game has a code number, its personal id. This number is generated at time of creation.
Dupers have a system of redoing the checks once duped.. come on... you got to figure they head strait to the bank and cash them in and create new ones to cover tracks.
It's simple logic.
Same for any item worth doing... make it, use dummy account to sell it fast for a few gold less then anyone and return the gold to the active account and delete the dummy all on a 30 day free account.
 

claudia-fjp

Lore Master
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I'd like to point out not all dupes require checks and even games where gold is just a number on your account have been affected by gold dupes. Even UO has had at least 3 that I know of gold creation dupes in its past that had absolutely nothing to do with checks.
 

Aurelius

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Ahh..
Aurelius....
Sugar.... way back when I wore a pretty blue robe... I helped nab a gold/item duper red handed and it was not 1 person it was a whole guild full of players who were in on it.
This player thought they were smart and got their whole guild in on it and they were so quiet about it.
It was sheer luck it was stumbled over.
This operation filled not just 1 house but many to their rafters with the duped items that were being sold and the gold it was making also went into the dupe piles...
Every item in the game has a code number, its personal id. This number is generated at time of creation.
Dupers have a system of redoing the checks once duped.. come on... you got to figure they head strait to the bank and cash them in and create new ones to cover tracks.
It's simple logic.
Same for any item worth doing... make it, use dummy account to sell it fast for a few gold less then anyone and return the gold to the active account and delete the dummy all on a 30 day free account.
So, if I understand this right ... they can change the ID AFTER a cheque, or item is made? If so. there is no point at all in changing how gold, cheques and money work....

Or if you are saying they convert to cash, then make a new check, to clear the ID... my second post suggests a way to stop that and leave all the options still open for players....
 

andyjacksons

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Get your facts right before you start mouthing off, I never once said anything about "smake and mirrors" nor was i pancakes about anything! Now wind your neck in!
sorry wasnt quoting you just using your message because it had the text from missana in
 

MissEcho

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
As always, they seem to ignore the option of us having a choice for each our accounts to either keep gold, and cheques, or not. If it takes up extra storage space - so what, it's the storage in MY banks and MY houses, let ME choose if I want that 'inconvenience' or not. There's no conceivable problems with the number of cheques causing a processing problem for the servers. If I want to have all, or some, of my in-game gold as a graphic of a pile of coins, or a gold coloured deed, or an abstracted number tied to my characters, or a mixture of all three, so what. For once let me make the choice!

Nothing stops it being a choice we can make, except the relentless assumptions of the Devs that they know best - or at least know better than we do - what we would prefer.
There is NOTHING to say there will not be a choice.

I for one WANT the gold in my bank to be a figure, not cheques. I would like to put other things in my bank besides copious amounts of cheques. Nor do I want to be forced to store cheques at home as I do on all three of my accounts because they take up too much room in the bank.

Personally, I don't see why for amounts under 1,000,000 you still shouldn't be able to draw a cheque, or even for any number of withdrawals from the 'figure' in your bank you can't draw a number of cheques. Although the reason they want to get rid of cheques is that they are too easy to dupe, so in my view getting rid of them is a plus not a minus.

As for gold, until it 'goes in' the bank there is no reason for to turn to a 'figure' so you should be able to keep whatever you want in 'gold', I doubt monsters will be having 'figures' on them and given that a lot of ppl want to keep the 'gold' as graphics then shouldn't be a problem for the devs to code it so that the 'figure' only appears once it hits the bank.

As far as I can see the dev's haven't IGNORED anything yet, given that nothing has been implemented. Should probably wait and see what is actually proposed before everyone starts having kittens about it.
 

Aurelius

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
There is NOTHING to say there will not be a choice..
To quote the Producer's Letter shown earlier : Currency Conversion (gold would be on character/account, no checks)

That's not a choice. All we have is 'it's not written in stone' and so far, it has not happened - but there's not been any noticeable conversation such as asking us how we want things to look or work, no real explanation what they want to achieve with that change, or any discussion about how it can be done involving the players.

Given there was no choice about how item properties display, no choice about the content or size of the new bigger 'character status' block, no noticable discussions about the consistent non-stacking items issue before we got the armour refinements system dropped on us (surely by now they should get that we prefer things to stack, it's been asked often enough in the past!) why are you led to expect there will difference for this change? Care to bet we'll not just get given what someone decides is good enough for us, yet again?

What I to use your peculiar phrase 'have kittens' about is the endless failure to ever let us have any choice how stuff is displayed on our PCs, or to have input into bizarre choices about systems (Why must everything devolve into a grind against the RNG? Why are so many things utterly unintuitive? How is it even good ideas and simple things are made overly complex, time consuming and frankly dull?). We just get someone's bright system-insrpired ideas dumped on us, over and over again - and honestly I'm getting sick of it. It's NOT a difficult thing to to in the overall scheme of programming, whilst in the classic client we still have utterly worthless coding about how your power hour works, plenty of ridiculously outdated code - and no choices for us to define how much of the spreadsheet of data for items we want to see, or what character data is shown, or how we'd like things like gold presented in game. Get rid of the garbage in there and give people options instead of yet more of the same old 'take this and like it' style of customer management......
 

Lady Storm

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Was watching tv and was running this through my head about them changing the gold to account wide access and no gold in any form outside on the account....
Then it hit me... what happens when you get hacked.... all your gold is at their fingers on one shard.. one character.. your bled dry in one swoop...
It's a great idea .. at first I liked it.. then I got to thinking about it... hacking is only one way your assets are at risk.
One mad kid gets in your game... poof... or mate who is mad your on game .... oh the ways it can all go wrong.....
Yea I know its doom and gloom talk but these things happen and to sweep it under the rug for the sake of ease cause the Gold standard in UO is super over the top.
Why not do what Lord B was thinking of way back in beta... add in platinum to the money. Originally the idea was to have copper, silver, gold and platinum in our money system.
They nixed the copper and the silver was reused by a dev team for factions money years later..
We got the gold.. they never dreamed we would make so much that this would ever be that big a deal... duping was not even thought of.. goes to show how nosy people can get.
We are thinking of these changes cause some found a way to make crime pay... even in a game geesh.
It would be more logical to add in a second higher money system.
1 platinum coin could = 1000 gold or even a million gold it would still let you have piles of gold in game and be able to store mega amounts and take up less space.
Question is which is easer to do....
 

Theo_GL

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Remove the last digit from every pile of gold/gems, check and vendor holding. Only do this after every gold sales sites owners/controllers are drawn and quartered. Under the new economy something worth 125,000,000 before, is now worth 12,500,000. No need for two players to get naked to exchange gold. Be wary wary quite and just do the money change. Please dont forget to make videos of the quartering as a warning to new butmunches that want to do UO harm. To save time just daisy chain them together like some freackish sky diving formation. Some would survive to tell the tale. Little "Money for nothing" could be a music choice.
So frustrating...how many times do I have to explain that this is NOT A SOLUTION.

This harms people who keep their wealth in gold and makes no difference to those who keep it in items. Its fine by me if you want to do this because I store my wealth in items.

Lets say I have 10 barb kits and no gold. You have 30m gold.

After this change - I have 10 barb kits. You have 3m gold.

You know what the price of barb kits will be? 3m gold. Why? Because prices of good do not reflect the money supply - they reflect the opportunity cost to acquire the item vs farming gold.

Now if you reduce the amount of gold dropping from monsters by a factor of 10 (mongbats drop 5 gold instead of 50) then it might drop the cost of some goods but you cant do that for anything that costs less than 10 gold. So if I stock up on millions of regs - you can't drop that by a factor of 10 so those people will jump the shark here.
 

Lady Storm

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I do not support the change.. its that simple..
Put in Platinum with the value of 1 coin = to 1 mill, 60,000 stack like usual and DONT make it into a check like the gold... think of it to sell that item you want 10 mill for its a small stack of 10 Platinum coins ... light weight and didn't take up tons of room in your bank.
Now there is one draw back... the dupers. They will try to copy the coins...

I think the glut of gold will not go away even if you put it in the account based system.
In fact it will still be there big as brass and twice as busy... Items will skyrocket though.
Can you imagine what players will charge for the simplest items?
As for Dupers..
You think this will stop dupers? Hell no.
All this does is move them to top gold selling items.. unless you make them account bound.
Now there is an idea... yes I know mommy is devious... I for one know this idea will go over like a lead balloon.
The gold issue is not insurmountable, its just going to take an effort to combat. To go in a different direction with this change you so whole heartedly want.
I see flaws.
Wow put in a system that the big ticket items that are person bound could be traded to a group member while still in party when the item is gotten might be something to look into and make things like them in UO character/account bound. Cant dupe what you cant trade. This cuts off the outside company's who have milked the game for years as the big ticket items will no longer be available. This includes the Gold.
Price wars disappear.. gold sinks..
Sorry I like my gold tangible, to know its in my hand and not on some task bar or statue bar as some odd number like my luck.
If your sitting on that much gold it eats up your house lockdowns then I'd say you need to spend a few coins and invest in things..
UO is for fun. Go to rare fest spend some...
 
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The Zog historian

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
So frustrating...how many times do I have to explain that this is NOT A SOLUTION.

This harms people who keep their wealth in gold and makes no difference to those who keep it in items. Its fine by me if you want to do this because I store my wealth in items.

Lets say I have 10 barb kits and no gold. You have 30m gold.

After this change - I have 10 barb kits. You have 3m gold.

You know what the price of barb kits will be? 3m gold. Why? Because prices of good do not reflect the money supply - they reflect the opportunity cost to acquire the item vs farming gold.

Now if you reduce the amount of gold dropping from monsters by a factor of 10 (mongbats drop 5 gold instead of 50) then it might drop the cost of some goods but you cant do that for anything that costs less than 10 gold. So if I stock up on millions of regs - you can't drop that by a factor of 10 so those people will jump the shark here.
People who think cutting off the last zero are ignorant (and I don't mean that derogatorily, just that they're unaware) of what happened in Zimbabwe four years ago. After creating massive inflation it wouldn't admit responsibility for, the central bank said it would seek currency stability by chopping off 12 zeroes from then-current values. But turning a Z$1 trillion note into Z$1 still had no effect, because of all the new money that continued to be created.

A large part of the increase is that there's so much gold compared to the expense of hunting. It used to take a bit of a bankroll, mainly regs, before hitting Shame for bloods or Deceit for lich lords. The advent of LRC suits did somewhat reduce gold going back into the game, but without LRC, consider the regs purchasable from killing just a couple of liches. I don't see that the greatly reduced need to buy regs and the like is a significant part of UO gold growth.

We could use gold sinks that people would want, like 10 million gold for one piece of awesome colored cloth, but that would primarily benefit dupers. I can't say they can still dupe or if they can't, but I lean toward the belief that they still have ways. I personally think targeting dupers should be the main strategy, but I also think The Powers That Be are deliberately not as interested as they could be, since it means fewer accounts. This isn't the old MDK guild, which committed outright sexual harassment and heaven knows what else, and who nobody misses. They were also a mere 250 accounts at UO's peak. Dupers are different. They're a group whose effects are perceived chiefly on a macro level. Individually the effects are more easily absorbed and tolerated by other players.
 

Merus

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I do not support the change.. its that simple..
Put in Platinum with the value of 1 coin = to 1 mill, 60,000 stack like usual and DONT make it into a check like the gold... think of it to sell that item you want 10 mill for its a small stack of 10 Platinum coins ... light weight and didn't take up tons of room in your bank.
Now there is one draw back... the dupers. They will try to copy the coins...

I think the glut of gold will not go away even if you put it in the account based system.
In fact it will still be there big as brass and twice as busy... Items will skyrocket though.
Can you imagine what players will charge for the simplest items?
As for Dupers..
You think this will stop dupers? Hell no.
All this does is move them to top gold selling items.. unless you make them account bound.
Now there is an idea... yes I know mommy is devious... I for one know this idea will go over like a lead balloon.
The gold issue is not insurmountable, its just going to take an effort to combat. To go in a different direction with this change you so whole heartedly want.
I see flaws.
Wow put in a system that the big ticket items that are person bound could be traded to a group member while still in party when the item is gotten might be something to look into and make things like them in UO character/account bound. Cant dupe what you cant trade. This cuts off the outside company's who have milked the game for years as the big ticket items will no longer be available. This includes the Gold.
Price wars disappear.. gold sinks..
Sorry I like my gold tangible, to know its in my hand and not on some task bar or statue bar as some odd number like my luck.
If your sitting on that much gold it eats up your house lockdowns then I'd say you need to spend a few coins and invest in things..
UO is for fun. Go to rare fest spend some...
So your solution to trades of big ticket items is to not allow them to be traded in the first place. Sorry but I think this is far worse than the fiasco we have already.
 

yars

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So, if I understand this right ... they can change the ID AFTER a cheque, or item is made? If so. there is no point at all in changing how gold, cheques and money work....

Or if you are saying they convert to cash, then make a new check, to clear the ID... my second post suggests a way to stop that and leave all the options still open for players....
without details yes the ids can be changed, when you have ancient coding like UO its only getting easier. this whole idea rings of "you cant stop a thief you can only slow them down"
 
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claudia-fjp

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Sadly what UO's economy truely needs it will never get, a total gold wipe. After 15 years of countless dupes a large majority of the gold in the system never saw the inside of a monsters corpse or treasure chest. A lot of players don't even bother to loot gold piles from things they kill, not worth the time. Imagine if all the gold was removed how many people would be out and about actually playing the game again with something to do.

As an IDOCer you can generally tell wealthy players from poor by the kind of items and the size of their house. You remove all gold and rich people will still be rich and poor people will still be poor. The difference is gold would again have a value instead of being nearly worthless forcing us to do transactions for rediculous ammounts.
 

Lady Michelle

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Sadly what UO's economy truely needs it will never get, a total gold wipe. After 15 years of countless dupes a large majority of the gold in the system never saw the inside of a monsters corpse or treasure chest. A lot of players don't even bother to loot gold piles from things they kill, not worth the time. Imagine if all the gold was removed how many people would be out and about actually playing the game again with something to do.

As an IDOCer you can generally tell wealthy players from poor by the kind of items and the size of their house. You remove all gold and rich people will still be rich and poor people will still be poor. The difference is gold would again have a value instead of being nearly worthless forcing us to do transactions for rediculous ammounts.
I seriously hope a total gold wipe doesn't happen because the honest players should not be made to suffer, lose their gold due to dishonest dupers ?
 

claudia-fjp

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I seriously hope a total gold wipe doesn't happen because the honest players should not be made to suffer, lose their gold due to dishonest dupers ?
Of course it won't, simply because of people like you who want to hold onto their gold that has been made completely worthless at all costs instead of doing the right thing, doing a wipe to fix the economy, and giving it value again. It really isn't about if you cheat or not. It's the fact that the entire gold pool as a whole has been so tainted and you now have to take wheelbarrels of checks to buy items.

You're already being made to suffer. A trasfer token or event items used to cost 1/3 of what they are going for today just a year ago. If you weren't one of the ones duping then yeah your gold was being devalued.
 

Lady Michelle

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Of course it won't, simply because of people like you who want to hold onto their gold that has been made completely worthless at all costs instead of doing the right thing, doing a wipe to fix the economy, and giving it value again. It really isn't about if you cheat or not. It's the fact that the entire gold pool as a whole has been so tainted and you now have to take wheelbarrels of checks to buy items.

You're already being made to suffer. A trasfer token or event items used to cost 1/3 of what they are going for today just a year ago. If you weren't one of the ones duping then yeah your gold was being devalued.
Im not being made to suffer I careless about transfer tokens, or the event items. Here is a thought just stop buying the over priced items that should bring the prices down. Who's to say they do wipe the gold 2 months later a duper who as 10 inactive accounts that he shut down 8 years ago with over 1 bil on each. reactivates 2 of those accounts he as 2 bil I have hardly anything because my mils were wiped out. My motto is if its over 2 mil I'll do with out. So I will stand on no gold wiping for me, If this gold wipe is what you seriously want others want this to. Here is the best solution for you its called a one way ticket to not coming back your way. Its called your trash barrel one way deposit never to be seen by you again gold wipe.
 

Speaking the Truth

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Was watching tv and was running this through my head about them changing the gold to account wide access and no gold in any form outside on the account....
Then it hit me... what happens when you get hacked.... all your gold is at their fingers on one shard.. one character.. your bled dry in one swoop...
It's a great idea .. at first I liked it.. then I got to thinking about it... hacking is only one way your assets are at risk.
One mad kid gets in your game... poof... or mate who is mad your on game .... oh the ways it can all go wrong.....
Yea I know its doom and gloom talk but these things happen and to sweep it under the rug for the sake of ease cause the Gold standard in UO is super over the top.
Why not do what Lord B was thinking of way back in beta... add in platinum to the money. Originally the idea was to have copper, silver, gold and platinum in our money system.
They nixed the copper and the silver was reused by a dev team for factions money years later..
We got the gold.. they never dreamed we would make so much that this would ever be that big a deal... duping was not even thought of.. goes to show how nosy people can get.
We are thinking of these changes cause some found a way to make crime pay... even in a game geesh.
It would be more logical to add in a second higher money system.
1 platinum coin could = 1000 gold or even a million gold it would still let you have piles of gold in game and be able to store mega amounts and take up less space.
Question is which is easer to do....
That's not a valid point at all. If someone is on your account all your stuff is still at their finger tips. It can just as easily be put in a bag and dropped for said player to pick up on their own account. "Platinum" wouldn't change that either.
 

claudia-fjp

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Im not being made to suffer I careless about transfer tokens, or the event items. Here is a thought just stop buying the over priced items that should bring the prices down. Who's to say they do wipe the gold 2 months later a duper who as 10 inactive accounts that he shut down 8 years ago with over 1 bil on each. reactivates 2 of those accounts he as 2 bil I have hardly anything because my mils were wiped out. My motto is if its over 2 mil I'll do with out. So I will stand on no gold wiping for me, If this gold wipe is what you seriously want others want this to. Here is the best solution for you its called a one way ticket to not coming back your way. Its called your trash barrel one way deposit never to be seen by you again gold wipe.
You missed the point. If you don't spend much gold anyway then how would you suffer with a gold wipe? Just because you don't buy certain items doesn't mean your gold isn't just as devalued. If they did a gold wipe it would effect all the closed accounts too, just because an account lapses doesn't mean the character info isn't still kept on the servers. But like I said twice, its a moot point because they won't do it even if it is the only way to get rid of the 1,000,000,000,000,000 gold thats been duped in the past 15 years, thanks to all the people with their 2 million gold who would rather hold onto it with clenched fists instead of fixing the damn broken game economy.
 

Warpig Inc

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So frustrating...how many times do I have to explain that this is NOT A SOLUTION.

This harms people who keep their wealth in gold and makes no difference to those who keep it in items. Its fine by me if you want to do this because I store my wealth in items.

Lets say I have 10 barb kits and no gold. You have 30m gold.

After this change - I have 10 barb kits. You have 3m gold.

You know what the price of barb kits will be? 3m gold. Why? Because prices of good do not reflect the money supply - they reflect the opportunity cost to acquire the item vs farming gold.

Now if you reduce the amount of gold dropping from monsters by a factor of 10 (mongbats drop 5 gold instead of 50) then it might drop the cost of some goods but you cant do that for anything that costs less than 10 gold. So if I stock up on millions of regs - you can't drop that by a factor of 10 so those people will jump the shark here.
If our 300 million becomes 30 million. You can kiss my pixeled round bottom if you think your 50 million EM candy deco is still worth 50 million. Not been the exchange of gold from monbat slayers to vendors that all this gold came from. I proposed a one shot wealth reduction and not a running effect. Only AFK gold farmers can avoid going insane collecting hoards of gold. What our goods are worth is what players are willing to pay for it. And if a gold sales site 44 billion has been reduced to 4.4 billion. Then the knuckleheads will be paying $3 for a million gold and not $0.30. The ammount of monbat slayers gold collecting over over a decade does not justify the ammount of gold in the game.
 
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Theo_GL

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Sadly what UO's economy truely needs it will never get, a total gold wipe. After 15 years of countless dupes a large majority of the gold in the system never saw the inside of a monsters corpse or treasure chest. A lot of players don't even bother to loot gold piles from things they kill, not worth the time. Imagine if all the gold was removed how many people would be out and about actually playing the game again with something to do.

As an IDOCer you can generally tell wealthy players from poor by the kind of items and the size of their house. You remove all gold and rich people will still be rich and poor people will still be poor. The difference is gold would again have a value instead of being nearly worthless forcing us to do transactions for rediculous ammounts.
Actually what they should have is a shard wipe - all houses, goods, gold everything but skills gone. We all start acquiring from scratch. That would be the level playing field change.

Since the hoarders would hate this - the other alternative is to create new shards that you can only transfer toons with skills to that have new rules/items/encounters. Eventually everyone will xfer to where the game is being played and leave old shards/stuff behind.

Gold wipe penalizes those that keep their wealth in gold and favors those that keep their wealth in items (me).
 

Lady Michelle

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You missed the point.
I didn't miss the point I got it loud in clear. I just don't agree to your point of view on wanting a gold wipe.

If you don't spend much gold anyway then how would you suffer with a gold wipe?
By not spending much of my gold would mean the gold wipe would wipe out my stockpile of checks.

Just because you don't buy certain items doesn't mean your gold isn't just as devalued.
I never said it was or wasn't I said because of the dupers I wasn't going to give up my gold because of their cheating ways.

If they did a gold wipe it would effect all the closed accounts too, just because an account lapses doesn't mean the character info isn't still kept on the servers.
Sorry but this I wouldn't take a chance on because this shows no valid proof it that would or wouldnt happen, just because you say it doesn't make it so.

But like I said twice, its a moot point because they won't do it even if it is the only way to get rid of the 1,000,000,000,000,000 gold thats been duped in the past 15 years,
If you knew this was a moot point why post it in the first place?

thanks to all the people with their 2 million gold who would rather hold onto it with clenched fists instead of fixing the damn broken game economy.
You got that right I'm going to hold onto my way way way way over 2 million gold stock pile with clenched fist.
 

The Zog historian

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Actually what they should have is a shard wipe - all houses, goods, gold everything but skills gone. We all start acquiring from scratch. That would be the level playing field change.

Since the hoarders would hate this - the other alternative is to create new shards that you can only transfer toons with skills to that have new rules/items/encounters. Eventually everyone will xfer to where the game is being played and leave old shards/stuff behind.

Gold wipe penalizes those that keep their wealth in gold and favors those that keep their wealth in items (me).
You want to end the game for 99.9% of players?
 

Speaking the Truth

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I think it would be easier for Theo to quit instead of driving all the other players away. That was the two worst ideas in a single post I've seen so far on stratics. Pretty impressive actually.
 

Lady Storm

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Thing is if the Dev do a gold wipe how fast do you think the gold will be right back up to current levels?
And who will make money hand over fist?
The Dupers.
I don't know if any of you have watched your gold making power of late but the average player can in a day or 2 be up by more than a few mill.
A fisher with a supply of sos's can make millions in a day.
T hunters just about as much as the fisher.
Those who go whole hog in the hunting can do well too.. So if you think that a wipe will get rid of the trouble in 1 felt swoop... I got news for you.
Now to put this is prospective when a new shard came out how many of you from scratch built had a million in gold for your castle's by days end?
Now think of it if you had your best money maker doing it... how far would you have had to go to get that mill? 1, 2, 3 hours?
Do you honestly think this would stop duping?
Oh I don't doubt it would slow them down a tad but in a few days they would be hawking gold for sale at much higher prices... and like idiots many would buy it.
If you think the duping public out there hasn't gotten a brain for the math think again... They don't dupe one item they dupe the most you can in one go..

Zog, Theo_GL is only saying what players have for years who think it would make things fair for all. Granted it would make it even but for who? He thinks its not fair that many old players have such wealth, forgetting that they have been in UO a very long time. You cant make fair Time.
It's like the younger players wanting vet rewards other aged players have. Ok they want to use things like dye tubs, robes and the first year ethereal mounts, but that's not where they want the cut off. They want full use of things the 16 year vet get.. make shard shields sellable so they can have them and be used... well sorry I don't go for it. Using a tub is one thing or even a 1st year ethy. But giving them rights to use something that took me or someone else 15 + years to get............... sorry you didn't earn that right no matter how much you yell at the dev.
Theo_GL and others who think this wipe should happen are not looking for equality but the end of UO as we know it.

Sometimes I wonder if when someone says something that should be done for UO isn't for the Death of UO so a newer version they hope would spring up after the games death. EA owns the rights to UO guys... do you honestly think they would allow it to be done by another? or once declared dead would plan a "NEW" version of it? UO is not some butterfly trapped in a silk cocoon awaiting resurrection in spring.
 
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Theo_GL

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Zog, Theo_GL is only saying what players have for years who think it would make things fair for all. Granted it would make it even but for who? He thinks its not fair that many old players have such wealth, forgetting that they have been in UO a very long time. You cant make fair Time.
It's like the younger players wanting vet rewards other aged players have. Ok they want to use things like dye tubs, robes and the first year ethereal mounts, but that's not where they want the cut off. They want full use of things the 16 year vet get.. make shard shields sellable so they can have them and be used... well sorry I don't go for it. Using a tub is one thing or even a 1st year ethy. But giving them rights to use something that took me or someone else 15 + years to get............... sorry you didn't earn that right no matter how much you yell at the dev.
Theo_GL and others who think this wipe should happen are not looking for equality but the end of UO as we know it.
The game needs new players to survive and everyone agrees the economy is borked.
New players that are coming in to compete with players like me that have billions of gold and items often quit quickly when they realize how far behind everyone they are.

You cannot remove gold to fix the economy and inflation. The only way to fix it is to wipe all gold and items, fix the amount of gold that drops and create/boost gold sinks.
Unless you do this - the economy will be the same so stop complaining about it or suggesting gold wipes.

Would a shard wipe push alot of players out of the game? Maybe, but how many would it bring to start anew?

The problem with UO is the game is only left with uber rich item/pixel hoarders. There is no attraction/ability to get new players. If you can't get new payers - the game will wither on the vine as it has for the past 5-7 years.
 

Lady Storm

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Theo_GL you sound like some of the 3rd world country's out there who want so badly to fit in they will go to any length to get it.
Wiping out UO's wealth and player holdings is tantamount to killing the game.
Your willing to kill off 99% of the players in the game to get an imaginary army "new blood" in?
Yes I understand it is daunting to a new player to come in and see wealth beyond their owning in a short time.
But the average new player who is not a child will understand it took years and time to get such wealth and holdings.
Many are willing to work to get there. I have met many and helped them on their way to getting there.
You make it sound like every new player we get is a whining child who sees a new toy and cry's till you give it to them.
That Sir is far from the case in my experience of new players.
In fact many I have helped over the years are very well off because of players like myself who took time to teach them skills and methods to advance in the game.
Yes I agree we need new players. But at the expense of every old player?
Oh and there is one thing you forget... EA would never go for it. Thing is if they lost 99% of players in one stupid move like your proposing they wouldn't wait for the "rush" of new blood to find UO. UO would be shut down in a heart beat.
If your after a full wipe forget it. EA and the Dev are not that dumb.
 

yars

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I agree partially,a mindset of "new frontier" needs to be instilled,instead of retrieving everyone's gold,maybe the rich would be allowed to use there resources and hoard to fill the frontier,not like.magincia,but rather true building and expeditions, rares used as deco for the frontier.billionaires could set up their own banks,provide grants to new players,as the new players grow so does the billionaires assets,reputation if were talking removing gold as an item,I see more possibilities.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2
 

Theo_GL

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Theo_GL you sound like some of the 3rd world country's out there who want so badly to fit in they will go to any length to get it.
Wiping out UO's wealth and player holdings is tantamount to killing the game.
Your willing to kill off 99% of the players in the game to get an imaginary army "new blood" in?
Yes I understand it is daunting to a new player to come in and see wealth beyond their owning in a short time.
But the average new player who is not a child will understand it took years and time to get such wealth and holdings.
Many are willing to work to get there. I have met many and helped them on their way to getting there.
You make it sound like every new player we get is a whining child who sees a new toy and cry's till you give it to them.
That Sir is far from the case in my experience of new players.
In fact many I have helped over the years are very well off because of players like myself who took time to teach them skills and methods to advance in the game.
Yes I agree we need new players. But at the expense of every old player?
Oh and there is one thing you forget... EA would never go for it. Thing is if they lost 99% of players in one stupid move like your proposing they wouldn't wait for the "rush" of new blood to find UO. UO would be shut down in a heart beat.
If your after a full wipe forget it. EA and the Dev are not that dumb.
Actually some of the most fun I have ever had in the game is when several from my guild went to an overseas shard and built toons from scratch (no shard transfer). There were hardly any vendors so we had to build again, gather and work our way up. It may the game new for us.

At any rate - i don't care whether they wipe it or not - but my point for the dim witted is that a GOLD WIPE is not a solution so stop talking about it. It fixes nothing. Either wipe everything (items/gold) or nothing.

That is the point.

Wow.
 

Merus

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At the essence of the economy problem is that more money is entering the system than is leaving it. This can be attributed to various factors... duping, easy of monster farming, 15 years, lack of adequate gold sinks.

I would propose this idea: remove gold as future loot. Consider the idea... With no new gold sink you instantly fix the problem of more gold coming into the system than is leaving. This locks in the current amount of gold, which should slowly decrease over time from things like insurance, bribes, purchases from npc, etc. It also does not impact anyone's current fortune.

It would take time for this solution to work its way through the economy. Those with loads of gold or valuable items would still be "rich" compared with the average player... But I think over time a finite amount of gold would filter across the entire player base through buying and selling items.
 
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The Zog historian

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Theo_GL you sound like some of the 3rd world country's out there who want so badly to fit in they will go to any length to get it.
Wiping out UO's wealth and player holdings is tantamount to killing the game.
Your willing to kill off 99% of the players in the game to get an imaginary army "new blood" in?
Yes I understand it is daunting to a new player to come in and see wealth beyond their owning in a short time.
But the average new player who is not a child will understand it took years and time to get such wealth and holdings.
Many are willing to work to get there. I have met many and helped them on their way to getting there.
You make it sound like every new player we get is a whining child who sees a new toy and cry's till you give it to them.
That Sir is far from the case in my experience of new players.
In fact many I have helped over the years are very well off because of players like myself who took time to teach them skills and methods to advance in the game.
Yes I agree we need new players. But at the expense of every old player?
Oh and there is one thing you forget... EA would never go for it. Thing is if they lost 99% of players in one stupid move like your proposing they wouldn't wait for the "rush" of new blood to find UO. UO would be shut down in a heart beat.
If your after a full wipe forget it. EA and the Dev are not that dumb.
In UO and real life, it's impossible to make everyone rich, but it's very possible to make everyone poor. Theo's argument comes down to the latter. Because some players are too rich, sometimes by illicit means, he wants to punish everybody? Like in real life, this is great for people who have little or nothing, but bad news for those who worked a long time to acquire their things.

And let's be realistic: despite great gameplay, no fresh start will lure new players to UO. The Classic Client has outdated graphics, and the EC is just plain ugly compared to what's out there. The best thing to do is help any new and returning players along, and metaphorically speaking, teach them to fish. Most of us wouldn't blink twice and would be happy to give a million or two to a new player.

Lately I've been playing a dungeon game, quite fun, with the common model of being free to play, and in-game gold that can be bought with RL money. There are lots of elite items to buy from the game, and I thought, darn, does one really need to spend so much money for the top levels? Actually, items just as powerful, sometimes better, started dropping from monsters at higher levels. I just had to work for it. Once upon a time, some of us fought ettins just outside the Brit mountain pass, ogres and ettins in Wrong, then liches in Covetous, getting enough gold to train magery and get into Wind for daemons, and finally casting EVs on balrons and lich lords.

In real life, If tomorrow I lost everything I worked for all my life, and I had to start again with my children and my wife, people would grudgingly rebuild. EA and the Devs know that people would simply quit UO if they lost all their gold. During the late 1998 Followers of Armageddon quest/storyline, some twits on Stratics started the rumor that failure to stop them would result in wiping all shards. There was a huge outcry then, with the game just a year or so old. By then we were used to timewarps, and some people had fully corrupted characters (with no Mesanna to roll up her sleeves and restore them manually), but there was still no way EA/OSI

As I've pointed out before, these aren't just pixels. These represent time, and people in 1998 were already outraged at the thought of losing months of work. The newbies I met when Age of Shadows launched are now seasoned veterans with accounts a decade old. Too many of us have spent years redoing character templates, crafting new armor and weapons, relearning game mechanics, and most of us won't bother redoing them again.
 
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