Getting the dupes, nonvendorable items out of the game (also known as protecting UO's assets)

[a slave girl]

How about making items that are non-vendorable (duped) being made non-usable as well?

I propose a dupe turn in day, okay maybe 31 days, so that all PAID accounts can participate, even those on vacation and with cash flow problems in real life, where we turn in our dupes for non dupe versions BEFORE duped items are then made unusable (as well as un-vendorable).

WITH PLENTY OF WARNING AHEAD OF TIME, dupes will no longer function, so if non-vendorable, ALL WILL KNOW ITS ALSO UNUSABLE before they buy. Please do state that purchases made from any site other than Origin.com may be UNUSABLE ingame, so BUYER BEWARE, so that there can be no complaints unless you made the purchase from Origin.com.

Any non-vendorable complaints after turn in day, due to shard transfer issues (some claim this made their items non-vendorable) or other possible in game issues, those issues can then be handled as bugs.

Trial accounts can NOT do turn ins (exchange duped items for non-dupes during turn in month) and any accounts turning in more than 5 (3?) duped items are flagged as potential evildoers (dupers, dupe dealers, etc.).

I am an idocer of several years and know I have at least one non-vendorable (duped) ornament of the magician, think that's the only item I have tested and know for sure, but there may be plenty of other duped junk in the things I've picked up over the years.

Even so, I really don't like hearing people selling non-vendorable (duped) items in general chat, even if they weren't the actual person who did the duping. It is depressing.

I feel it's time to go the extra mile and try to better protect UO's assets, especially those items such as tokens that are sold for cash by Origin.com.

Implement dupe turn in day, open to only paid accounts, flag any accounts with over 5 dupe turn ins (3?) and let's start over fresh and beat the bad guys without hurting the innocent.

Then we can go after the scripters, even the attended ones, mu wah haha. I can give you some character names to get you started when you are ready for this stage of clean up UO. (Oh wait, I already have!)



Sidenote:

A scripter recently told me in general chat on Atlantic that he spends $300 a month on UO, as compared to what I spent last month, $39 before tax, so in the small picture UO needs him more than me, in the big picture, how many hundreds/thousands/millions of subs are lost because people won't waste their money trying to play a game they have no chance at excelling at/winning without cheating...

Scripters need to go.

 

[MalagAste]

While this is a great "concept" I can say right now that the non-vendorable items is a lark. Many times after doing spawns many folk have noticed you can't vendor the scrolls you get after you shard transfer them. So WE KNOW we aren't duping them just can't transfer them and be able to vendor them from time to time. This can happen with any number of things. Ask anyone who's done or participated in Rare's Fest! What you had on your vendor on your shard won't go on a vendor on the Rare's Fest shard. You know you didn't dupe it ..... just won't work.

So until there is a solid way of REALLY knowing what really is a dupe or not...... any plans or idea's are moot.

 

[Cyrah]

There is no "some claim it happens" at all. It is a fact. I transfer a lot between Lake Superior and Atlantic. Most of the time something becomes non -vendorable. I am trying to experiment to see if it happens more to pack items or bank ones. I do not use pack animals.

It is really getting old.

 

[a slave girl]

While this is a great "concept" I can say right now that the non-vendorable items is a lark. Many times after doing spawns many folk have noticed you can't vendor the scrolls you get after you shard transfer them. So WE KNOW we aren't duping them just can't transfer them and be able to vendor them from time to time. This can happen with any number of things. Ask anyone who's done or participated in Rare's Fest! What you had on your vendor on your shard won't go on a vendor on the Rare's Fest shard. You know you didn't dupe it ..... just won't work.

So until there is a solid way of REALLY knowing what really is a dupe or not...... any plans or idea's are moot.

This is a valid concern and of course Turn In Day (Month) would not be implemented unless the Dev team is sure most non-vendorable item bugs, including transfer bugs, have been squashed.

I believe they can easily test if transferring items makes them non-vendorable, the same thing would happen to the Devs who transferred the same items, they call this event "reproducable" if it's legit.



Thanks for using the proper form of moot!

 

[Smoot]

wouldnt work until the transfer bug is fixed. imagine the GMs getting multitudes of pages a day about 100s of items becoming non-vendorable and actually be expected to fix them all individually. (and yes i do believe 100s items a day is accurate)

Alot of people rely on alot of non-vendorable items to play. I myself have 2 duped slithers, and maybe about 100 mil in various other arties. all gotten before the patch came out, or as a result of buying or trading. im careful, but sometimes it just cant be avoided. forcing people to re-buy all there non-vendorable stuff would be a disaster for players where gold is an issue.

 

[CovenantX]

If they could somehow set item IDs as game-wide instead of shard-wide dupes would be easy to detect, and transferring wouldn't change item IDs either.

This way when an item is dropped say on Shard A, when the item is then xferred to Shard B it may get an ID that is the same perhaps as another item on the shard, then becomes non-vendorable. (just a guess), but if that's the case a game-global item ID would fix it.

I don't xfer often, I've probably only used my shard shields like 5x in the last 2 years, but I did end up having one item becoming non-vendorable (that i tested it with) usually I don't xfer to sell things, so most of the things I take to other shards never get placed on vendors. I do know the item was a Slither the one I had equipped on the character I xferred, but all the other Slithers I'd taken were vendorable and I farmed every single one of them myself.

This was sometime ago and I posted about it shortly after the "dupe detection" was implemented, because I had bought a non-rep gladiator's collar, 20 stealth cloak & 2 LT sashes about a month prior to it. and apparently I ended up with all original non-replicas, so it's obvious it doesn't work since I now have 2 non-rep glad collars and there was originally only one... both of mine are vendorable

 

[Voodoo Bad Mojo]

so historically there has not been.... and still isn't any way to tell if the item you are buying is duped.
so for the people who are honest players who have unknowingly purchased a duped item loose out?

there is only one cure for duping and that is to continue what was started years ago and actually investigate and hunt down the dupers and burn their houses in effigy and ban them.
and when they come back and do it again you ban them again.

but, in this day and age of the game where we are in janitor mode this isnt gonna happen.
you cant even get a GM to come to you in game much less stake out a duper and catch him in the act.

this ship has sailed and there is no cure.
much easier to just keep calm and march on.

hell, i have a item blessed Orny that i personally got in doom and used my own item bless deed on and i cant put it on a vender as it says its duped. thats how good of in game system we currently have.

 

[James [W^H]]

Dev team is sure most non-vendorable

"Most" items is not acceptable! How about just fixing the problem? I have personally purchased an item from a vendor, put it on my vendor on the same shard, then transferred it to another shard to sell, and it would not go on the vendor.

Katrena

 

[a slave girl]

wouldnt work until the transfer bug is fixed. imagine the GMs getting multitudes of pages a day about 100s of items becoming non-vendorable and actually be expected to fix them all individually. (and yes i do believe 100s items a day is accurate)

Alot of people rely on alot of non-vendorable items to play. I myself have 2 duped slithers, and maybe about 100 mil in various other arties. all gotten before the patch came out, or as a result of buying or trading. im careful, but sometimes it just cant be avoided. forcing people to re-buy all there non-vendorable stuff would be a disaster for players where gold is an issue.

I did say Turn In Day, maybe I wasn't clear, for each paid account you own, during the 31 day Turn In Period, you get to trade in 5 dupes per account for the same item in non-dupe form.

5 x your 20 accounts means you get 100 dupes turned vendorable...

Anyone who owns more than 5 dupes, to be honest, probably isn't very.

 

[a slave girl]

"Most" items is not acceptable! How about just fixing the problem? I have personally purchased an item from a vendor, put it on my vendor on the same shard, then transferred it to another shard to sell, and it would not go on the vendor.

Katrena

That's a lot of vendoring you've been up to, wow! Makes me tired just reading it.



With all that vendoring, I know you most of all would want your sale items to not be dupes.

1...purchased an item from a vendor >>>2... put it on my vendor >>> 3...transferred it to another shard to sell...would not go on vendor...

I do wonder, did you ever manage to sell this mystery item? (general chat non-vendorable?)

 

[Smoot]

Its a great idea. The whole duped / non-vendorable thing is just as distasteful to me as most other people. The ongoing transfer bug is just horrible, every time i do a transfer its in the back of my mind that something might end up non-vendorable, and i might not even know it (because most the stuff i transfer i dont put on vendors) I have a box with about 60 different dyes in it that i use for armor and stuff. just in that box i know that about 10 are non vendorable. one of which is a black natural dye and a stack of 3 white natural dyes. Just saying, theres ALOT of non-vendorable stuff out there now.

 

[a slave girl]

so historically there has not been.... and still isn't any way to tell if the item you are buying is duped.
so for the people who are honest players who have unknowingly purchased a duped item loose out?

there is only one cure for duping and that is to continue what was started years ago and actually investigate and hunt down the dupers and burn their houses in effigy and ban them.
and when they come back and do it again you ban them again.

but, in this day and age of the game where we are in janitor mode this isnt gonna happen.
you cant even get a GM to come to you in game much less stake out a duper and catch him in the act.

this ship has sailed and there is no cure.
much easier to just keep calm and march on.

hell, i have a item blessed Orny that i personally got in doom and used my own item bless deed on and i cant put it on a vender as it says its duped. thats how good of in game system we currently have.

"...thats how good of in game system we currently have..."


I know, I know.

But that doesn't mean grown UO players can't still cry. Or hope.

 

[4gregu]

5 x your 20 accounts means you get 100 dupes turned vendorable...

Anyone who owns more than 5 dupes, to be honest, probably isn't very.

I own 1 account. I currently have 14 unvendorable items that WERE vendorable before I transferred from Chesapeake to Europa and back for rares fest. So by your logic not only am I not honest, I would also lose 9 items. Nice.

 

[WootSauce]

Its a great idea. The whole duped / non-vendorable thing is just as distasteful to me as most other people. The ongoing transfer bug is just horrible, every time i do a transfer its in the back of my mind that something might end up non-vendorable, and i might not even know it (because most the stuff i transfer i dont put on vendors) I have a box with about 60 different dyes in it that i use for armor and stuff. just in that box i know that about 10 are non vendorable. one of which is a black natural dye and a stack of 3 white natural dyes. Just saying, theres ALOT of non-vendorable stuff out there now.

Its not just a "transfer bug". Known duped items go right onto vendors with no issue (2 story statues, "real" LT sashes, "real" Ari shrouds, one of a kind King of Gladiator boots, etc). This has been called out since the implementation of this system and never been addressed or clarified.

 

[James [W^H]]

That's a lot of vendoring you've been up to, wow! Makes me tired just reading it.



With all that vendoring, I know you most of all would want your sale items to not be dupes.

1...purchased an item from a vendor >>>2... put it on my vendor >>> 3...transferred it to another shard to sell...would not go on vendor...

I do wonder, did you ever manage to sell this mystery item? (general chat non-vendorable?)

It was a Race Change Token. Since I originally purchased it off of a vendor, then either the system does not work or it was not duped. I was able to place it on my vendor so again, either the system does not work or it was not duped. After transfer, it would not go on vendor. My guess is that the system does not work. I sold it at Luna bank and I never considered it a duped item.

Katrena

 

[BrianFreud]

Anyone who owns more than 5 dupes, to be honest, probably isn't very.

You're making a lot of unfounded assertions... I'm tempted to say accusations.

I have never duped anything in my entire time playing UO. I have however, had good items go bad due to transfers. I've done over 60 of them. Even with your allowed 5 per account, I'd still lose out. I resent your implication that I am not honest, and I doubly resent your assumption that simple ownership of multiple unvendorable items defines you as somehow dishonest and a duper. Given that I've had more than 5 items go non-vendorable in a single transfer, anyone who transfers often you've essentially now re-dubbed a duper, simply because we've had items go bad due to buggy code. This also is not rumored buggy code causing items to become non-vendorable; Mesanna herself confirmed that this is happening at the last rares fest.

Simple example; just considering costumes, after consolidating all my items from every shard, I had 40 duplicates to sell off. Of those 40, 5 were non-vendorable. Given that I have 14 maxed max-storage houses, would you like to consider just how many items I have which have been affected by this bug and become non-vendorable?

Non-vendorable does not equal duped. Non-vendorable means one of at least two possible things, only one of which is "duped". You said

5 x your 20 accounts means you get 100 dupes turned vendorable...

Let's be clear here; 5 x 20 means I get 100 of my items that were affected by a bug back to a state they can actually be sold. For all the rest, I get screwed, AND according to you, because I have more than 100 bugged items, I must be a duper.

Thanks.

 

[Dol'Gorath]

While this is a great "concept" I can say right now that the non-vendorable items is a lark. Many times after doing spawns many folk have noticed you can't vendor the scrolls you get after you shard transfer them. So WE KNOW we aren't duping them just can't transfer them and be able to vendor them from time to time. This can happen with any number of things. Ask anyone who's done or participated in Rare's Fest! What you had on your vendor on your shard won't go on a vendor on the Rare's Fest shard. You know you didn't dupe it ..... just won't work.

So until there is a solid way of REALLY knowing what really is a dupe or not...... any plans or idea's are moot.

That has to do with the way Shard Transfers are programmed. When you Transfer, the server makes a temporary copy of your character and everything on it and then sends it to the other server and then deletes the previous character. Somewhere along the line the system flags these items as illegal dupes even though they were properly duped [and then deleted] by the transfer system. I think the coding needs to be looked at and cleaned up here.

 

[Dol'Gorath]

If they could somehow set item IDs as game-wide instead of shard-wide dupes would be easy to detect, and transferring wouldn't change item IDs either.

This way when an item is dropped say on Shard A, when the item is then xferred to Shard B it may get an ID that is the same perhaps as another item on the shard, then becomes non-vendorable. (just a guess), but if that's the case a game-global item ID would fix it.

I don't xfer often, I've probably only used my shard shields like 5x in the last 2 years, but I did end up having one item becoming non-vendorable (that i tested it with) usually I don't xfer to sell things, so most of the things I take to other shards never get placed on vendors. I do know the item was a Slither the one I had equipped on the character I xferred, but all the other Slithers I'd taken were vendorable and I farmed every single one of them myself.

This was sometime ago and I posted about it shortly after the "dupe detection" was implemented, because I had bought a non-rep gladiator's collar, 20 stealth cloak & 2 LT sashes about a month prior to it. and apparently I ended up with all original non-replicas, so it's obvious it doesn't work since I now have 2 non-rep glad collars and there was originally only one... both of mine are vendorable

That would require entirely re-making UO and that's not gonna happen. Making item-Ids worldwide would require a central server to handle all item generation and be connected to all servers at all times and if by some reason the item server went down then monsters would not generate loot till the server was back up. Think of the housing server as an example of this, occasionally it goes down and no one can place a house, but also, houses aren't being generated every millisecond like loot/items are. It would require tremendous resources to get something like that to work and not even modern MMO's have done something like that.

It's obvious the dupe detector needs to be fixed, as well as the way items are handled during a transfer.

 

[Flutter]

Transferring with a regular token or a shield token can make the items you transfer unvendorable. They are not dupes, they are getting bugged somehow in transfer.
Great idea if this wasn't the case, but sadly it is.
Any time you transfer you take a risk that any or all of the items you transfer can become non-vendorable. These are legitimate items that could be put on vendors before the
transfer.
It seems by your replies to this subject that you do not understand.
Imagine transferring 300 items and finding when you arrive at Atlantic to stock your vendor half of them become non-vendorable.
You said you're going to let me trade in 5? Thanks! What about the other 145 items?

 

[Acid Rain]

I've been xferring with shard shields since they came out. I've now got around 15 shields and xfer all over. I buy stuff cheap when I see it & bring it back to Atlantic for resale. Mostly I just go sight-seeing but I do engage in cross-sharding sales when I see deals I can't pass up. I've been doing this for years now.

Not once have I returned to my home shard with an item I bought off a vendor on another shard and been unable to vendor it on Atlantic. I've heard alot of complains on these boards and ingame but never once have I experience legit unvendorables. Just my 2 cents.

On a side note: only 2 items I own (that I'm aware of) that can not be vendored are items I purchased from players in game that were never on a vendor. The same line was used from both players at different times, "I really need some gold man or I'd just keep it and use it myself." (A tangle and a gladiator's collar.)

 

[4gregu]

Not once have I returned to my home shard with an item I bought off a vendor on another shard and been unable to vendor it on Atlantic. I've heard alot of complains on these boards and ingame but never once have I experience legit unvendorables. Just my 2 cents.

Then you have been very, very lucky.

 

[flappy6]

that is the silliest thing i ever heard..... thats like saying its ok to dupe....... why would they take illeagal items and spend time fixing them (rewarding the duper)?

 

[Riyana]

that is the silliest thing i ever heard..... thats like saying its ok to dupe....... why would they take illeagal items and spend time fixing them (rewarding the duper)?

What are you responding to here? As many have stated in this thread, separated and bolded for emphasis:

NON-VENDORABLE IS NOT THE SAME AS DUPED

Carrying items across shards sometimes erroneously flags them in the dupe checking system. The dupe check doesn't work correctly.

Duping is a problem. I think we can all agree on this (well, except dupers). But the original post is barking up the wrong tree by conflating two different problems and calling cross-sharders dupers when they aren't.

 

[The Zog historian]

That would require entirely re-making UO and that's not gonna happen. Making item-Ids worldwide would require a central server to handle all item generation and be connected to all servers at all times and if by some reason the item server went down then monsters would not generate loot till the server was back up. Think of the housing server as an example of this, occasionally it goes down and no one can place a house, but also, houses aren't being generated every millisecond like loot/items are. It would require tremendous resources to get something like that to work and not even modern MMO's have done something like that.

It's obvious the dupe detector needs to be fixed, as well as the way items are handled during a transfer.

Exactly right. There isn't an easy way around the current system, which is the only practical one just because of stacking and pulling off items. Imagine the load on a central server every time someone splits off so much as one fish steak off the pile, which by necessity creates a new item ID (here UOA is great to see how complex the string is). Even if there could be a central server, there isn't a feasible way to keep track of what was original and what was new.

What gets me is that there's someone, how shall I put it, "strongly suspected" of dealing with a lot of duped items. He's openly claimed that he has no problem paging to get an unvendorable item "cleaned." I hope it's that he's only blowing smoke out the lower end of his alimentary canal, but it wouldn't be surprising if his ilk get away with it, while honest players suffer from bugged transfers. I've yet to, though I don't always resell what I've transferred.

 

[azmodanb]

this whole thing i can guarantee is an issue with item ids .. While finding a dupe years back.. items with the same id would vanish...

i turned the dupe in of course...

but with shard transfers.. gotta be what is causing the non vendor b.s. that some players have witnessed..

ids on one shard interfering with another shard

 

[DJAd]

Talking of duping I've seen a lot of glacial long pants for sale recently...

 

[cazador]

I have like 10 characters suited fully and a house full of stuff..don't sell anything for the most part..so what you propose is I check every individual item I own within 31 days or they become not useable..I'll pass then sub up to ESO when key parts to a suit become trash..it would just be a MASSIVE hassle


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[SlobberKnocker]

a good intentioned original post but something if implemented would cause a massive cluster you know what.

The Dev's already waived the white flag here. limited dev time and resources are better served trying to keep up with certain members of the playing base whose sole intent is to exploit and market for pixel reward gains.

 

[Winter]

Some items that end up in the Caverns get bugged... not able to place on a vendor or eat (multi-layer cakes for example). There was a bug fix a while ago that may have fixed that. But this bug is everywhere.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

I like the fact that items transferred from other shards have vendor issues.
Stop all the bs nonsense with gimps playing dead shards just to jack up and sell their transferred crap on my populated shard.
It's actually kinda sad imo that people pay $13 a month to do weird **** on dead shards just to make gold elsewhere. But to each his own I guess

 

[BrianFreud]

Goldberg, from your name I assume you play Chesapeake. I do as well. A good amount of the item sold on Chesapeake these days comes from Atlantic. Would you consider Chesapeake or Atlantic to be the dead shard?

 

[AtlanticRealtor]

Same here!!!
I probably have 20+ Active accounts.... most holding Houses, Castles and so on... I do Idoc Worldwide and bring to Atl to sell.... and yet I have to hear that people that owns more than 20 Accounts are cheater's!!!! so sad!

 

[DJAd]

WITH PLENTY OF WARNING AHEAD OF TIME, dupes will no longer function,

Please explain this system in a bit more detail. Surely it would only work for items that can be equipped? Orny, Slither stuff like that?

Whats to stop people duping other "deco" items that don't really even need to function? 2 story statues, sphinx statues etc etc.

The trouble with the idea is that is is flawed from that start. I don't even think they (the devs) can even tell what items are duped in the first place. Surely if they did then the dupe detection system would work? Its clearly not working as intended and many duped items can still be placed on a vendor.

 

[THP]

but to get rid of dupes the dupe detector needs to be fixed first.

one step at a time please

 

[a slave girl]

Thanks for all the excellent responses.

It is true I do not do a lot of transferring or selling items, I like to keep my stuff and I just tend to make new chars on new shards when I'm tired of the old shard.



Not accusing anyone of being an evildoer just because they own many accounts, but if you do and you are, you know who I am talking about and what you said in gen chat on Atlantic.



I'd like to mention that one of the persons posting here is supposed to be "THE DUPER".

Lol!

Okay...

Naturally, players who sell UO items for cash don't give a fig newton if those items are duped or not.

But, given the in-game vendor search difficulties, (one of the posters here, again, you know who you are, is quite delighted that Broadsword's in-game search doesn't work while theirs does...),

given the Broadsword plaque promise to be up when all shards published with vendor search, last I looked days later Catskills still wasn't up,

days of UO seeming more like work than fun checking for plaques still not up...

*sighs*

No point beating a dead horse, I guess you guys are right.