NEWS [UO.Com] Answers and Changes

[UO News]

From the Devs
2015 Mar 17 18:40 GMT



Happy St. Patrick’s Day Everyone!!!

I wanted to address a few things from Stratics regarding IDOCs. I would also like to tell you about a few changes we are going to make. Currently in game, once a house goes into IDOC we had stated it would drop on the 5, 10, or 15th hour instead of 20. What was not said is it had to wait for a decay tick after those times. I will take blame for the miscommunication on this fact. We are fixing it so it will not wait for the decay tick and it will fall on the 5, 10, or 15th hour.

The Grubbers that appear when a IDOC house falls will lose all their items in their packs when they cross a server line. We have no plans to change the wiping of the co-owner or friends list. The owner of the house has the ability to re-add them at any time.


We hope this answers some of the questions and concerns we have been seeing.

Changes we are making...

• We are fixing the gold pick up at champ spawns so there is not any delay.
• We are fixing players being able to get their house back even in the IDOC state. You must renew your account at least 2 hours before it drops or it will not be given back to you. (Until this fix is published you can email [email protected] if you renew your account and your house is not being returned to you, list the shard, and house location and name when you email me. I do not need you there to make it do a warehouse check for an active account.

You should see these changes within the next few weeks when we publish out our items for Easter.



Have a safe evening!

UO Team

Continue reading...

 

[Dot_Warner]

• We are fixing players being able to get their house back even in the IDOC state. You must renew your account at least 2 hours before it drops or it will not be given back to you. (Until this fix is published you can email [email protected] if you renew your account and your house is not being returned to you, list the shard, and house location and name when you email me. I do not need you there to make it do a warehouse check for an active account.

Wow. Hate your subscribers much?

Let me fix the first sentence for you, since "fix" obviously doesn't mean what you think it means:

• We are screwing players from being able to get their house back in the IDOC state.

If someone resubs before their house falls, give them their house back just like you have for the last 17 years. Continuing to needlessly redesign and encourage IDOCs as some sort of perverse, parasitic minigame is swiftly eroding what little good will this team had managed to accrue.

Shame on you.

 

[Merus]

Wow. Hate your subscribers much?

Let me fix the first sentence for you, since "fix" obviously doesn't mean what you think it means:

• We are screwing players from being able to get their house back in the IDOC state.

If someone resubs before their house falls, give them their house back just like you have for the last 17 years. Continuing to needlessly redesign and encourage IDOCs as some sort of perverse, parasitic minigame is swiftly eroding what little good will this team had managed to accrue.

Shame on you.

Seeing as the previous policy (as far as I know) was up to 24 hours before it would refresh, 2 hours is a pretty good improvement. If you have waited 90+ days and lose your house because you waited down to the final hours you get what you get IMO.

 

[MalagAste]

I'd like to know how a house can go from Not in any state of decay on a Tuesday and on the ground by Friday afternoon.

 

[Merus]

From the Devs
2015 Mar 17 18:40 GMT



Happy St. Patrick’s Day Everyone!!!

I wanted to address a few things from Stratics regarding IDOCs. I would also like to tell you about a few changes we are going to make. Currently in game, once a house goes into IDOC we had stated it would drop on the 5, 10, or 15th hour instead of 20. What was not said is it had to wait for a decay tick after those times. I will take blame for the miscommunication on this fact. We are fixing it so it will not wait for the decay tick and it will fall on the 5, 10, or 15th hour.

The Grubbers that appear when a IDOC house falls will lose all their items in their packs when they cross a server line. We have no plans to change the wiping of the co-owner or friends list. The owner of the house has the ability to re-add them at any time.


We hope this answers some of the questions and concerns we have been seeing.

Changes we are making...

• We are fixing the gold pick up at champ spawns so there is not any delay.
• We are fixing players being able to get their house back even in the IDOC state. You must renew your account at least 2 hours before it drops or it will not be given back to you. (Until this fix is published you can email [email protected] if you renew your account and your house is not being returned to you, list the shard, and house location and name when you email me. I do not need you there to make it do a warehouse check for an active account.

You should see these changes within the next few weeks when we publish out our items for Easter.



Have a safe evening!

UO Team

Continue reading...

Can we just do away with the final option... If you insist on a variable time instead of the fixed time like it used to be, 5 or 10 is more than sufficient.

 

[MalagAste]

I give up. So no fixes on the looting problem? Or dying in the EC?

 

[The Craftsman]

I particularly like the way Mesanna obviously wrote this when she refers to 'I' and 'me' after giving out her email, but didnt have the balls to sign it off.

 

[Ender]

Well. I was kind of hoping there'd be answers on.... well, anything else.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

Wow. Hate your subscribers much?

Nope, just you. ...la

 

[Dot_Warner]

Seeing as the previous policy (as far as I know) was up to 24 hours before it would refresh, 2 hours is a pretty good improvement. If you have waited 90+ days and lose your house because you waited down to the final hours you get what you get IMO.

Aye, it "could take up to 24 hours to refresh," but rarely if ever did. More often than not, it was nearly instantaneous.

Punishing your players even if they resub the account, especially since this 2-hour window could end as soon as the 3rd hour of being IDOC, is never the way to go. It pretty much guarantees that the account, and possibly more, will be permanently closed. That's bad for UO.

 

[The Craftsman]

From the Devs
2015 Mar 17 18:40 GMT
Currently in game, once a house goes into IDOC we had stated it would drop on the 5, 10, or 15th hour instead of 20. What was not said is it had to wait for a decay tick after those times. I will take blame for the miscommunication on this fact. We are fixing it so it will not wait for the decay tick and it will fall on the 5, 10, or 15th hour.

You didnt 'miscommunicate' it Mesanna. It didnt work as intended as you well know.

If it was working as intended you would have simply let everyone know about the delay tick once you realised that people were complaining about the idocs not falling on 5,10,15 and there was no need for a fix to remove it. It was 'not said' (as you put it) because you didnt know about it.The reason you never communicated the delay tick in the first place and have now changed it is because you released a buggy piece of crap which didnt work as intended.

You overlooked the delay tick, you did not miscommunicate it. Cut the BS.

 

[Thrakkar]

What's this uproar about house decay all about?

It takes friggin' 90 days, that's 3 months, before it even starts to decay.

So who gives a damn about the last few hours?

 

[Giggles]

At this point I honestly think people are complaining just to complain. 90 days plus 5 days of decay is more than generous in my opinion. if I lose a house after all that time, I would be more inclined to blame my own stupidity, rather then a silly 2 hour rule...

Just my two cents.

 

[jrede23]

Wow. Hate your subscribers much?

Let me fix the first sentence for you, since "fix" obviously doesn't mean what you think it means:

• We are screwing players from being able to get their house back in the IDOC state.

If someone resubs before their house falls, give them their house back just like you have for the last 17 years. Continuing to needlessly redesign and encourage IDOCs as some sort of perverse, parasitic minigame is swiftly eroding what little good will this team had managed to accrue.

Shame on you.

I got a very simple solution, HOW A BOUT U DONT CYCLE YOUR ACCOUNTS AND TIE UP A HOUSE PLACEMENT. Very simple it should be 30 days of inactivity and then the house falls. They aren't real subscribers if they are only paying 3-4 times a year lol. Pay your monthly subs and maybe they'll have enough influx of cash to hire people who actually know anything about gaming and can fix problems, not just make them worse. Glad to be of service braniac

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

You didnt 'miscommunicate' it Mesanna. It didnt work as intended as you well know.

If it was working as intended you would have simply let everyone know about the delay tick once you realised that people were complaining about the idocs not falling on 5,10,15 and there was no need for a fix to remove it. It was 'not said' (as you put it) because you didnt know about it.The reason you never communicated the delay tick in the first place and have now changed it is because you released a buggy piece of crap which didnt work as intended.

You overlooked the delay tick, you did not miscommunicate it. Cut the BS.

No offense Craftsman but you seem pretty bitter towards Mesanna and co all the time.
Do you still play UO?
I would hate to think you are paying $13 a month for all this hatred

 

[Goodmann]

good start to fixing some problems

 

[Dot_Warner]

I got a very simple solution, HOW A BOUT U DONT CYCLE YOUR ACCOUNTS AND TIE UP A HOUSE PLACEMENT. Very simple it should be 30 days of inactivity and then the house falls. They aren't real subscribers if they are only paying 3-4 times a year lol. Pay your monthly subs and maybe they'll have enough influx of cash to hire people who actually know anything about gaming and can fix problems, not just make them worse. Glad to be of service braniac

*I* don't cycle, but nice try. And have you seen a shard other than Atlantic recently? Most don't exactly have a need for more empty space. FYI, Broadsword has been trying to hire an engineer for the last year+, but not many people are chomping at the bit to work on an unadvertised, ancient, spaghetti code game.

Perhaps if the billing system wasn't such a cluster I'd have less sympathy, but I know that not everyone receives an email when an account goes inactive for whatever reason.

Mesanna's desire to punish her players isn't going to be good PR for UO.

 

[Uriah Heep]

Unless they are a desperate engineer, considering UO's history of push push and them lay off, probably no one wants to be there.

 

[The Craftsman]

No offense Craftsman but you seem pretty bitter towards Mesanna and co all the time.
Do you still play UO?
I would hate to think you are paying $13 a month for all this hatred

None taken.

I have played since January 200 and have 3 accounts but all three are on hold at this present time, brought about by EA and Devs from various studios systematically destroying almost every aspect of a once great game, over a period of time. Posting on this site or having an opinion on Uo is not solely the privilege of someone with a currently active account, although im not suggesting you were saying that.

I still consider myself a fan of UO and keep in touch with the games progress in the vain hope that things will change for the better. They dont. Every now and again I reactivate an account and see whats going on in game but maybe ive done that for the last time. Perhaps. There is no hatred but yes im bitter at what I consider gross neglect and mismanagement of a once great game topped of by appalling customer service bordering on contempt for those paying customers. I live in hope but that hope is almost dead.

 

[Bobar]

No offense Craftsman but you seem pretty bitter towards Mesanna and co all the time.
Do you still play UO?
I would hate to think you are paying $13 a month for all this hatred

Personally I think he got it about right. If you know something has an inbuilt delay you do not then go ahead and state something will happen at a specific time because you also know that it wont. I too think that it is just an attempt to obscure the truth with BS. The one thing I will say is that it is nice to finally get some comment on the nonworking times, took 3 weeks but HEY! for this game that is like the speed of light. Pity tho I still see nothing about the non-falling OSI houses.

 

[Angel of Sonoma]

5, 10, 15 hours is just too long. it should be more like 2, 4, or 6 hours.

 

[WootSauce]

"Managing Expectations"

It's not a hard concept to implement, if you begin to look at what it means prior to (i.e. before, in advance of, etc) making announcements to your customers.

Most folks actually are very understanding of and receptive to fairly negative things, if they were not led to believe that the outcome would be something more rosy...

 

[silent]

Any word on the packet loss some of us are having to the east coast shards? I understand it may not be your provider but somewhere near Amazon things are getting dropped.

 

[silent]

 

[jrede23]

*I* don't cycle, but nice try. And have you seen a shard other than Atlantic recently? Most don't exactly have a need for more empty space. FYI, Broadsword has been trying to hire an engineer for the last year+, but not many people are chomping at the bit to work on an unadvertised, ancient, spaghetti code game.

Perhaps if the billing system wasn't such a cluster I'd have less sympathy, but I know that not everyone receives an email when an account goes inactive for whatever reason.

Mesanna's desire to punish her players isn't going to be good PR for UO.

People who dont pay for their accounts for 90 days should be punished. Give it all to the people who pay every month and don't cycle their accounts . Sound a lil angry, must have lost one of your houses in the past "by not cycling of course" lmfao, I hope I was one of the ones to grab all your stuff!

 

[azmodanb]

ill be honest i cycle an account.. never had a house fall.

my main is paid for a year.

issues happen they are being fixed.

account management issues.. none ever. i pay and i play... i use gametime codes now. but before i left had cc on file. only.time i had an issue was when my account nber changed or i ran out of cash.

and i blamed noone but myself.

 

[Kirthag]

I'm glad Mesanna and the crew are working on things. Thank you!

People across the game cycle their accounts for various reasons, as I have when funds get tight for one reason or another. Won't do that anymore!

What is important are the following points:

• Broadsword noticed an issue with timing and will patch a fix for it
• They also noticed issues with Grubbers, and are fixing it
• Some barked about issues with the EC are also going to be addressed in future patches

All good news as I see it.

Let's keep this positive, shall we?

And please remember, if you experience a bug or in-game issue, please post to the Developer Boards and use the @[forum name] to clue that person in. Also, keep in mind that Broadsword Developers come to Stratics on a voluntary basis - bashing them doesn't really say, "Please communicate with us!"

Since Stratics is dedicated to ONLY Ultima Online again, we would like the devs to come and visit us here. I'm not saying we will whip out ban hammers on people who speak their minds, but do so with decorum and tact please.

 

[MalagAste]

After the EM event this evening I have this to say about the "changes" to @Pinco 's ...

I could open the public corpses that had more than 100 items... but they are all screwy. I could see arrows but when I tried to pick them up I got anything BUT the arrows. I tried looking at the items with mouse over but it would take 4, 5 and 6 attempts to "mouse over" an item to get the information about it. EXTREMELY slow... I tried looting some of those items and half the time didn't get the item I had moused over.

Dying still takes a LONG time. The lag was insane... and opening a corpse took a VERY long time... still got the white screen "not responding" for about 1 to 2 min...

I do NOT have the sort turned on... there were more than 100 items in some of the corpses... and I still could barely loot stuff.

Nice try though Pinco and I will say that yes I could actually OPEN the corpse.. just couldn't loot most of what I wanted.

 

[The Craftsman]

What is important are the following points:

• Broadsword noticed an issue with timing and will patch a fix for it
• They also noticed issues with Grubbers, and are fixing it
• Some barked about issues with the EC are also going to be addressed in future patches

All good news as I see it.

Let me elaborate on your 'important' points:

• Broadsword noticed an issue with timing and will patch a fix for it - No they didnt notice an issue. According to Mesanna they'miscommunicated' the timings. And have now decided to 'fix' it which is ludicrous if it was working intended in the first place. If it wasnt intended then the 'miscommunication' is simply a lie to cover their incompetence in programming changes to the game. Shes lying to us on these boards.
• They also noticed issues with Grubbers, and are fixing it - so another botched implementaation of a system? do these people know what theyre doing? I seriously doubt it. Why was it released to live publish in such a buggy state? Further example of shoddy customer service.
• Some barked about issues with the EC are also going to be addressed in future patches - 'future patches'? Yeah. Right. Probably the same patch that will give us the high res EC artwork.

And on top of that they totally disregarded their customers feedback on clearing lists and timer length.

So ... hardly 'all good news' as you put it.

 

[Hannes Erich]

I hate to add more fuel to the fire, but Mesanna never said they're going to fix the Grubbers behavior, or that she considers it a bug. In fact, her message specifically regards, in her own words, "a few changes we are going to make." I think y'all may be putting words in her mouth. Grubbers losing items across server lines may very well be a feature from Broadsword's perspective, as it reduces the item footprint.

"The Grubbers that appear when a IDOC house falls will lose all their items in their packs when they cross a server line."

Read it. All she's doing is telling you how it is.

 

[Riyana]

Fifteen hours is still ridiculous. Long timers and randomization always and only benefit scripters.

Unless there is something else going on that hasn't been stated, there is simply no good reason to purge the friend/co-owner list. None. You can't realistically say that purging the friends/co-owners list will deter scripting while leaving in a fifteen hour last stage timer that only a script can consistently endure. This all looks like a pure shakedown of cycle paying players at the expense of everyone who shares housing/storage with others.

While I don't agree with cycling and don't do it myself, it's been the way the game has worked for years now, and if they want to end it they should be up front about it and state what is going to happen and when before houses start to fall and people start cancelling accounts instead of chipping away like this. I mean really communicate it. Put it on the login screen, put it on the account management page, put it in a popup gump when you log in... make sure people know what's going on.

And honestly, they should probably wait until we have more players. If that ever happens. Accounts that are paid four times a year are less profitable than ones that are paid every month... but preferable to accounts that are never paid again. Between people losing houses and subsequently closing or consolidating accounts over the initially unannounced IDOC changes and IDOCers throwing in the towel after watching 'miscommunicated' house decay timers for hours and hours and hours, I wonder how many accounts have been cancelled over all this.

All this effort has been put into a system which, until it suddenly changed without warning, was working just fine except for the scripters and youngs. This is time that could have and should have been spent on issues that actually weren't and aren't working well or right, or on the new expansion or other new content. Or on policing the game better.

Priorities and communication...

 

[DJAd]

So this "patch" is fixing the problems that the last patch made?

 

[Angel of Sonoma]

Fifteen hours is still ridiculous. Long timers and randomization always and only benefit scripters.
...

^ THIS! This is the exact reason the IDOC timer needs to be shortened.

 

[Pinco]

After the EM event this evening I have this to say about the "changes" to @Pinco 's ...

I could open the public corpses that had more than 100 items... but they are all screwy. I could see arrows but when I tried to pick them up I got anything BUT the arrows. I tried looking at the items with mouse over but it would take 4, 5 and 6 attempts to "mouse over" an item to get the information about it. EXTREMELY slow... I tried looting some of those items and half the time didn't get the item I had moused over.

Dying still takes a LONG time. The lag was insane... and opening a corpse took a VERY long time... still got the white screen "not responding" for about 1 to 2 min...

I do NOT have the sort turned on... there were more than 100 items in some of the corpses... and I still could barely loot stuff.

Nice try though Pinco and I will say that yes I could actually OPEN the corpse.. just couldn't loot most of what I wanted.

the limit was 100+ items, I've put 50+ now, let's see if it's better

 

[Zosimus]

Aye, it "could take up to 24 hours to refresh," but rarely if ever did. More often than not, it was nearly instantaneous.

Punishing your players even if they resub the account, especially since this 2-hour window could end as soon as the 3rd hour of being IDOC, is never the way to go. It pretty much guarantees that the account, and possibly more, will be permanently closed. That's bad for UO.

When a player has 94 days and 22 hours to get their house back before the last 2 hours is more than enough time.

Maybe they just allow players to place a house and keep all their items in it even after they close the accounts. Then the houses and items just stay there forever if they come back or not.

 

[MalagAste]

the limit was 100+ items, I've put 50+ now, let's see if it's better

It was doing the super slow opening thing still on 100+ items. It was opening but it was mega slow and like I said I couldn't mouse over the items and see WTF they were... I tried picking up arrows I could see but was picking up other crap not the arrows. This happened a few times while trying to pick up stuff. I had to mouse over the item 4 and 5 times to get the "details" of what it was...

This still makes it IMPOSSIBLE to loot stuff. I swear Pinco it's NOT your UI. It's the EC.

 

[Ender]

the limit was 100+ items, I've put 50+ now, let's see if it's better

Any chance you can upload the old file somewhere? I can't sort t-map chests anymore and I had no issues with them before.

 

[Emil Ispep]

Well i suppose the devs could have made it so all items get deleted inside a house when it falls, right?

 

[old gypsy]

Well i suppose the devs could have made it so all items get deleted inside a house when it falls, right?

Noooo... bite thy tongue!

Seriously, if I was an IDOC person, that would inspire me to close my account(s).

 

[JC the Builder]

People keep saying you have 90 days. You don't have 90 days if you were not aware your account was inactive. At the worst you have 2 days and best 3 days.

The only people getting hurt here are casual players with these ridiculously short decay timers. If they don't want people to "game" they system why don't they just remove the whole 90 day thing and make houses start to decay the moment the account goes inactive? All this is just stressing out players over what should be a really simple system.

 

[Ender]

Well, there's still 90 days to become aware your account is inactive... You can't log in and they email you that your sub expires.

 

[Pinco]

Any chance you can upload the old file somewhere? I can't sort t-map chests anymore and I had no issues with them before.

just for corpses now, give it a try

 

[Uriah Heep]

Y'all still on about IDOCs? Give it up, IDOC'er opinions don't matter. We will get what they want us to have, period, nothing more-nothing less. And certainly nothing that favors a player over a scripter will get preference.

 

[MalagAste]

Well, there's still 90 days to become aware your account is inactive... You can't log in and they email you that your sub expires.

That's the way it's SUPPOSED to work yes. But in actuality that's not really the way it works. "Sometimes" you get an email. Not always... Supposedly you have 90 days but "sometimes" it's like 30 or 60 days... and "sometimes" it's 85 days.

I personally don't play roulette with my accounts. I would be done with UO if I lost one of my homes. And folk play roulette for all manner of reasons... some legit some not so much. I know folk that have to buy the gametime codes rather than use a CC and such because they can't use their CC for UO. Which means if they have a health related issue or some get called away to service over seas.. they can't get on and "fix" the issue... can't even check their email. Sometimes the "notice" gets lost if the box is full.. which if you were in the hospital for a few weeks can happen...

You all act like everyone who plays the roulette game does so because they are cheap or whatever. That's not always the case.

I'd like to say that @Mesanna, @Bleak and @Kyronix if you are watching this thread... one VERY nice thing would be to add a text messaging capability to the Account Management... that way even if you are at work or whatever you'd know.... Ooo! My subscription is down! It would be nice if you could also get a "text" alert if your house goes into Decay or some sort of message other than just on the house. I have at least 9 active accounts and I can honestly say that I don't go to every house I have every day or even every week. I might go there once in a while. I have 1 or 2 "main" houses I go to all the time... the others might sit there 2 or 3 months before I visit them depending on what I keep there or if my RP takes me there.

 

[azmodanb]

People keep saying you have 90 days. You don't have 90 days if you were not aware your account was inactive. At the worst you have 2 days and best 3 days.

The only people getting hurt here are casual players with these ridiculously short decay timers. If they don't want people to "game" they system why don't they just remove the whole 90 day thing and make houses start to decay the moment the account goes inactive? All this is just stressing out players over what should be a really simple system.

No.they have 90 days.

They get an email when.there account goes inactive at least I do.

So basically your saying.they have two.days cuz.that is when the house starts decay... i get.it. at that point friends can tell them etc.

Well I am all for an account going.inactive and insta going to the first stage...for 90 days.. then continuing.. if that somehow helps people pay there bill.

 

[Vampyre Kitty]

I can confirm that I did NOT get an email when my account went inactive this past week. The only reason I knew my acct was off was because I tried to log in and couldn't. Typically I keep my cut off dates on a note pad but if my hard drive crashed well then I wouldn't know unless I managed to try and log in on another computer. So its not working as intended. This isn't the first account this has happened on either.

 

[The Zog historian]

I can confirm that I did NOT get an email when my account went inactive this past week. The only reason I knew my acct was off was because I tried to log in and couldn't. Typically I keep my cut off dates on a note pad but if my hard drive crashed well then I wouldn't know unless I managed to try and log in on another computer. So its not working as intended. This isn't the first account this has happened on either.

What have you done to determine why you aren't receiving the e-mails? Did you once mark the the EA sending address as spam, or did you block it entirely?

"[email protected]" is what I get notices from, and I get every one as expected.

 

[Vampyre Kitty]

I've never marked anything for EA as spam, I even go as far as check all my folders to make sure nothing is sent in there to be safe so I have no idea why I do not get them all the time.

 

[The Zog historian]

I've never marked anything for EA as spam, I even go as far as check all my folders to make sure nothing is sent in there to be safe so I have no idea why I do not get them all the time.

Make sure you haven't blocked the address, set a rule that permanently deletes based on a keyword, or set your inbox to "exclusive" (that it'll accept e-mail only from whitelisted senders). Add the EA e-mail address to your trusted contacts list. I have never failed to get an e-mail from EA, using my account at a popular web-based service.

 

[MalagAste]

Make sure you haven't blocked the address, set a rule that permanently deletes based on a keyword, or set your inbox to "exclusive" (that it'll accept e-mail only from whitelisted senders). Add the EA e-mail address to your trusted contacts list. I have never failed to get an e-mail from EA, using my account at a popular web-based service.

I have a LARGE number of accounts and quite often one or two will end up NOT telling me they were inactive. It's 100% RANDOM it's not always the same account that does it.. and it's not got anything to do with the Email on the account. Just randomly there IS NO email.... just like how randomly EA will bill me from the Netherlands or some other NON-US country.