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Merlin
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Ha. There's an idea.
By all means, I know the anti-PVP crowd would find it reprehensible to add fighting into the mix - but if these IDOC's are going to be boring 10-15 hour sessions of just waiting around hidden or invisible, I really don't see the point in changing them from current ruleset. If they're going to change the rules yet again, make it truly worth while to do and bring some excitement back into it.
Some great ideas, and the advisor thing is disturbing and they should be removed immediately (offenders).
At the moment I don't want all the ideas to sidetrack an immediate, seemingly simple fix, to just shortening the timer to at least a ten hour cap. (Again, 5 hours is optimal).
There is a great deal of ideas that could make Idocs more enjoyable but these should be several different steps.
What we have now is horrendous and I think if we can focus on that and then long term changes we will be coming along nicely.
At the moment I don't want all the ideas to sidetrack an immediate, seemingly simple fix, to just shortening the timer to at least a ten hour cap. (Again, 5 hours is optimal).
There is a great deal of ideas that could make Idocs more enjoyable but these should be several different steps.
What we have now is horrendous and I think if we can focus on that and then long term changes we will be coming along nicely.
. Here is an idea when a house drops DELETE the items, this will help out the economy. Everyone talks about gold sinks well gold is only 1 problem and the other one is the massive amounts of items that have been created from duping.
that is so funny, so you did sooo many Idocs in the past and you made Billions of gold from it and now because you dont play that much or dont like the new system, you want to all the items to just vanish??
no comments
that is so funny, so you did sooo many Idocs in the past and you made Billions of gold from it and now because you dont play that much or dont like the new system, you want to all the items to just vanish??
no comments
I agree 100% with some of the suggestions!
Idoc could be 5 or 10 Hours TOP, or even better random system (20 min to 2 hours) after it Turned Idoc.
But in reality, nothing will ever happen, unless something "break" again and the Devs need to "fix"
Idoc could be 5 or 10 Hours TOP, or even better random system (20 min to 2 hours) after it Turned Idoc.
But in reality, nothing will ever happen, unless something "break" again and the Devs need to "fix"
Just be sure it doesn't fall immediately when the account closes. I got an email last night that my main account closed because the credit card was rejected - no good reason for that, of course, and I fixed it (I hope). Not sure how much time is reasonable to fix their problems, but there needs to be a buffer.
It is interesting to me that the other day someone was playing the housing roulette game and allowed the house to be in the idoc stage for 9 hours before refreshing.
Another waste of time and shouldn't have been able to occur.
I had nothing invested in it other than leaving an extra screen up for the 9 hours but if a system is subjective to being abused, it generally indicates a problem that should be fixed.
I too has the same problem this week, guy refreshed it after the first tick of the idoc stage, maybe he was messing with idocers lol. I guess if you had multiple accounts you could just place houses and keep them private and waste people times with them. Load items in bags or make it look real nice. Colossal waste of time and you could even time it to where it falls in the wee hours of the morning. Takes greifing to another level
With a challenge being made that you can't eliminate scripting at IDOCs or make them fun, I had to write this up.
Preface
This idea of a redesigned house collapse system builds on many different things. It is about keeping the spirit of the original system back before Trammel. It is about reducing the advantage of scripting and cheating as much as possible. It is about adding more in-game elements to a house collapse and making it more fun. It is about eliminating time being wasted and frustration. It is about keeping alive a game style that many players enjoy.
There are really two separate and important things that happen at an IDOC.
This design will completely split them apart into separate sections.
History
Originally looting and placing happened at the exact same moment. The house disappeared and the loot fell on the ground. Way back before the addition of Trammel the house placement rules were such that you could not place a house on top of any object or player. Of course this had to change under the Trammel ruleset so you could now place over anything and it simply got moved under the house sign.
After many years of this, players began ramping up complaints about how pushing everything on one tile under the house sign made looting basically impossible and gave scripters a huge advantage. Thus the system was modified so the house would disappear but you had to wait a time before the house could actually be placed. This made things a lot better in the loot aspect.
I am not really sure what happened leading up to the most recent changes as I did not play for many years around this time period. In fact, I have not even been to an IDOC under the most recent changes. There is something about monsters taking loot and you having to kill them. However it works today, many people are still unhappy about the IDOC system (as seen in the recent discussions on UHall).
Special Note: Sections in blue are possible system enhancements.
House Decay Process
The account goes inactive and the server determines that enough time has passed to begin the house decay process. The house sign is updated to reflect that the decay process has become ("This house is somewhat worn"). A new building called a "Land Appropriations Office" becomes available in Brtain. Inside you will find:
When the decay timer reaches the final hour, the Property Tax Collector NPC will appear in front of the house. He will make an announcement (Hear Ye, Hear Ye, this structure has delinquent taxes. It is in the process of being reprocessed!). During the next hour players can purchase an "Entrance Permit" from him.
This permit allows access to the player once "the decay" moment happens. Only players with a permit in their backpack are allowed entry. It is important to note that if the house has been set to private you will be gambling on whether this permit is worth the scroll it is printed on!
The Property Tax Collector will appear blue and can be attacked. The following will occur:
Further, the longer you procrastinate to buy your entrance permit the more expensive it will be!
"The Decay"
Five minutes prior the Property Tax Collector NPC will announce the impending moment (Hear ye, Hear ye, This structure is about to be Condemned!). At the five minute warning, everyone is kicked outside if it is a public home.
When the house decay countdown ends, it is no longer possible for the previous owner to refresh or transfer the house. In fact, they are simply another bystander and the house is for all intents and purposes owned by no one. All doors and teleporters have their access set to anyone. Players who have purchased an Entrance Permit can now enter the house and begin the ransacking process.
Players can further bribe the Property Tax Collector NPC to get a head-start bonus. Only a few players can be on the head-start list. The highest bribes win.
The process for looting an item is as follows:
The process is different for containers:
30 Minutes "After Decay"
Whether or not the house has been looted completely, the second phase begins. A few minutes prior to this you begin to hear rumblings (think Earthquake spell). You receive an emote - You feel the ground shaking, it is not safe here! Any remaining items inside begin to fall off tables and contents shift around.
At the 30 minute mark the house collapses. The foundation gives way and you see bits of the house fall to the ground. If you were still inside you barely come out alive.
Left behind on the ground is rubble from the house. There is a percent chance (maybe in the range of 30-50%) for rubble to be on any tile the house sat on. This rubble cannot be picked up. It can either be pushed or destroyed.
Destroy the Rubble
Move the Rubble
Rubble has a lifespan of between 1-2 hours. Of course if enough is destroyed or moved out of the way a house can be placed as soon as it opens up.
Final Thoughts
As stated in the preface, this design is all about keeping the original spirit of the IDOC system while making it more fun and fair in today's UO. Players no longer will spend an unknown amount of time watching a house decay. Scripters will no longer have huge advantages in finding, looting and placing a house. So this is a clear boost for casual players and a bane on cheaters. There are two other groups.
PVP at Felucca IDOCs should remain just as relevant under this system. In fact it should be even greater, with fights continuing on during the looting and placement phases. Stealthers can have fun walking into a house and the murderers can field up the place to flush them out. One additional change I might like to see is you can not be hidden during house placement. The act of using the house tool reveals you and it is like using a skill, so you can't hide immediately afterward.
Players who hunt IDOCs as a profession will be the most affected by these changes. If the hidden house system was implemented, they can still have an advantage in finding all the houses by manually scouting. They will also show up with the appropriate skills for looting and/or placing. There are always other nuances, such as setting a desirable piece of loot to your last object and using a macro before anyone else can grab it. Plus a seasoned team working on rubble should have an advantage over everyone else.
I feel this design closely resembles the original system under a new consensual ruleset. Players can once again do battle by moving rubble around to thwart other players from placing houses, just like it originally was.
Preface
This idea of a redesigned house collapse system builds on many different things. It is about keeping the spirit of the original system back before Trammel. It is about reducing the advantage of scripting and cheating as much as possible. It is about adding more in-game elements to a house collapse and making it more fun. It is about eliminating time being wasted and frustration. It is about keeping alive a game style that many players enjoy.
There are really two separate and important things that happen at an IDOC.
- The contents of the house becomes lootable by anyone
- The house disappears allowing a new house to be built
This design will completely split them apart into separate sections.
History
Originally looting and placing happened at the exact same moment. The house disappeared and the loot fell on the ground. Way back before the addition of Trammel the house placement rules were such that you could not place a house on top of any object or player. Of course this had to change under the Trammel ruleset so you could now place over anything and it simply got moved under the house sign.
After many years of this, players began ramping up complaints about how pushing everything on one tile under the house sign made looting basically impossible and gave scripters a huge advantage. Thus the system was modified so the house would disappear but you had to wait a time before the house could actually be placed. This made things a lot better in the loot aspect.
I am not really sure what happened leading up to the most recent changes as I did not play for many years around this time period. In fact, I have not even been to an IDOC under the most recent changes. There is something about monsters taking loot and you having to kill them. However it works today, many people are still unhappy about the IDOC system (as seen in the recent discussions on UHall).
Special Note: Sections in blue are possible system enhancements.
House Decay Process
The account goes inactive and the server determines that enough time has passed to begin the house decay process. The house sign is updated to reflect that the decay process has become ("This house is somewhat worn"). A new building called a "Land Appropriations Office" becomes available in Brtain. Inside you will find:
- Bulletin Board - showing name, coordinates, and final decay date of houses
- Property Tax Collector NPC - this NPC can be bribed with gold to give the whereabouts of "unlisted" homes ("There is a home south-east of Britain which will be repossessed soon")
- Between 20-40% of homes can be unlisted
- The more gold you bribe the higher chance you will learn of a good home (more stuff inside)
- Whether a house is listed or not is sort of random
- Homes with a lot of "stuff" are more likely to be unlisted
When the decay timer reaches the final hour, the Property Tax Collector NPC will appear in front of the house. He will make an announcement (Hear Ye, Hear Ye, this structure has delinquent taxes. It is in the process of being reprocessed!). During the next hour players can purchase an "Entrance Permit" from him.
This permit allows access to the player once "the decay" moment happens. Only players with a permit in their backpack are allowed entry. It is important to note that if the house has been set to private you will be gambling on whether this permit is worth the scroll it is printed on!
The Property Tax Collector will appear blue and can be attacked. The following will occur:
- Up to 10% damaged - He will warn you to stop immediately or face dire consequences. (Thou art making a grave mistake)
- Up to 40% damaged - He will pull out his sword and fight back, although pitifully, he is not much of a fighter (*flails his sword around wildly*)
- At 40% damaged - he will summon guards to his aid (Guards! Guards! I need thee!)
- He casts a moongate and guards pop out in proportion to the number of players in the area
- These guards are tough, fast and not to be taken lightly.
- Guards will have special AI to attack offending players (including healers) 1 on 1
- If you are participating in the attack your Entrance Permit is voided (*poof*)
- The Property Tax Collector will heal himself if not attacked for a time
- Guards will remain in the area and dispatch anyone who disturbs the peace from now on
- If the guards are defeated or the Property Tax Collector is brought down to 10% health he will retreat, allowing anyone to enter the structure without a permit during the looting phase.
- In contrast, if he is attacked and is not defeated, anyone who attacked him that wants a chance to loot will have to repent with a fine 10x more than the normal entry fee.
- You may be asking "why would I want to attack him?", without the NPC there is no five minute warning, you won't have to pay to enter, and no one will be able to bribe for a head-start
Further, the longer you procrastinate to buy your entrance permit the more expensive it will be!
"The Decay"
Five minutes prior the Property Tax Collector NPC will announce the impending moment (Hear ye, Hear ye, This structure is about to be Condemned!). At the five minute warning, everyone is kicked outside if it is a public home.
When the house decay countdown ends, it is no longer possible for the previous owner to refresh or transfer the house. In fact, they are simply another bystander and the house is for all intents and purposes owned by no one. All doors and teleporters have their access set to anyone. Players who have purchased an Entrance Permit can now enter the house and begin the ransacking process.
Players can further bribe the Property Tax Collector NPC to get a head-start bonus. Only a few players can be on the head-start list. The highest bribes win.
The process for looting an item is as follows:
- The player must be adjacent to the item and double-click it, the process takes several seconds
- A message appears over your head - *You grab and secure the item*
- Players with the stealing and/or snooping skill get a time reduction bonus
- If anyone else attempts to pickup the same item they receive a message - *Someone is already grabbing that!*
- If you move away during the process it fails
- Upon success, the item is placed into your backpack
- You can only grab one item at a time
The process is different for containers:
- The player must be adjacent to the container and double-click to attempt to open it
- A message appears over your head - *You fumble around trying to open the container*
- Players with the stealing and/or snooping skill get a time reduction bonus
- Players with the lockpicking, detecting hidden, and/or remove trap skill get a success chance bonus
- Upon success the container opens - You manage to get inside!
- Upon failure nothing happens- You can't get it open.
- Multiple players can open a container at once.
- Once a player has opened a container, it becomes more difficult for others to do so - So-so blocks you from looking inside!
30 Minutes "After Decay"
Whether or not the house has been looted completely, the second phase begins. A few minutes prior to this you begin to hear rumblings (think Earthquake spell). You receive an emote - You feel the ground shaking, it is not safe here! Any remaining items inside begin to fall off tables and contents shift around.
At the 30 minute mark the house collapses. The foundation gives way and you see bits of the house fall to the ground. If you were still inside you barely come out alive.
Left behind on the ground is rubble from the house. There is a percent chance (maybe in the range of 30-50%) for rubble to be on any tile the house sat on. This rubble cannot be picked up. It can either be pushed or destroyed.
Destroy the Rubble
- To destroy rubble you use either an axe (on wood) or pick axe (on stone/glass) - *You hack away at the rubble*
- Players with lumberjacking and/or mining get a time reduction bonus on the appropriate material
- It takes longer to destroy rubble than to move it
- If you move away then process is cancelled
Move the Rubble
- You cannot be mounted
- Stand beside a piece and double-click on it to begin the process
- The rubble is pushed a tile further from where you are standing - *You push the rubble out of the way.*
- Time spent pushing depends on your Strength, Gargoyles also receive a further bonus
- You can not push rubble into a space that already has rubble or into another obstacle such as a tree
Rubble has a lifespan of between 1-2 hours. Of course if enough is destroyed or moved out of the way a house can be placed as soon as it opens up.
Final Thoughts
As stated in the preface, this design is all about keeping the original spirit of the IDOC system while making it more fun and fair in today's UO. Players no longer will spend an unknown amount of time watching a house decay. Scripters will no longer have huge advantages in finding, looting and placing a house. So this is a clear boost for casual players and a bane on cheaters. There are two other groups.
PVP at Felucca IDOCs should remain just as relevant under this system. In fact it should be even greater, with fights continuing on during the looting and placement phases. Stealthers can have fun walking into a house and the murderers can field up the place to flush them out. One additional change I might like to see is you can not be hidden during house placement. The act of using the house tool reveals you and it is like using a skill, so you can't hide immediately afterward.
Players who hunt IDOCs as a profession will be the most affected by these changes. If the hidden house system was implemented, they can still have an advantage in finding all the houses by manually scouting. They will also show up with the appropriate skills for looting and/or placing. There are always other nuances, such as setting a desirable piece of loot to your last object and using a macro before anyone else can grab it. Plus a seasoned team working on rubble should have an advantage over everyone else.
I feel this design closely resembles the original system under a new consensual ruleset. Players can once again do battle by moving rubble around to thwart other players from placing houses, just like it originally was.
You didn't time it properly, this whole thread is pointless.
It's okay to be bitter, I wouldn't expect any less of you.
Um, JC, not to rain on your parade, but if they can't figure out how to put the timer back to it's default state, how they hell do you think they could ever code all this?!?!?!
Hahahaha!!! I love it, now that would be fun. However under the current staff i dont think they would be able to code it with out breaking every section of the game.
The goal of a troll
Would be nice, but I can only see something catastrophic occurring as a result.
Like, "Well, sorry guys, felucca got deleted. Hope that isn't a problem, here's a free flag."
First off... A very nice, and well thought out post. Feasibility of implementation aside, here are a few thoughts:
1. Anything to do with bribes will inevitably lead to a system which is skewed toward the already wealthy. I think one of the great things about IDOC was the chance for virtually anyone to have a chance at good loot with only the investment of playtime to find/track the decay.
2. Allowing people into the house prior to collapse led to a major scripting issue. While I am sure there are scripts out there that have a long list of items to look for and loot, I think most of the script looting was very item specific... They would go into the house and scope out all the rares, etc. Then set up a script to pick up just one or two items per character. Finally, just before the house collapse they would gate in as many trial accounts as it took to loot every item they wanted. The end result was when the house fell, virtually everything worth anything would be instantly picked up by a young player. I was very much in favor of the change to make houses go private when they entered the decay cycle. I think keeping everyone out of the house until it drops needs to remain.
Overall, my only issue related to the changes they made are to do with the timer. Predictability is a good thing for real players. Randomized tends to favor the scripters. Yes it was an issue to see all the trial accounts being gated in just before the fall, and I'm sure the different fall times were an attempt to combat that. However, I believe the other changes were more than sufficient to deal with the looting scripts without alienating the honest players.
If it were up to me, I would add a random countdown timer between 1-10 hours that would update in 1 hour increments starting with the idoc stage. Once the timer reaches < 1 hour it could fall any time. This means
1. you would need to be checking the sign to get the appropriate time of the fall.
2. no one would ever know the exact time of the fall
3. if you were paying attention, you would never really need to "camp" an individual idoc for more than 1 hour (which I think is a reasonable time).
Bribing adds a gold sink to the game, which is clearly needed. Whatever the final numbers would end up being, players who wish to manually scout houses can still do so. You don't need to pay a single gold piece to locate every collapsing house. If you don't want to spend the time you can try to use bribes, but there is no guarantee the NPC will tell you about every house.
Personally, I don't like messing with anyone's house until it "decays". It is still their house up until that moment. Some people have played jokes allowing their house to decay into IDOC state and that can be fun.
The issue of trial accounts can be fixed simply by not allowing trial accounts to purchase entrance permits. If the additional stuff with attacking the Tax Collector NPC was implemented, obviously trial accounts can enter if he is defeated. But you could be on the side of healing him so that does not happen. This would give you direct control over the outcome.
As it is now, trial accounts can loot everything off the ground anyway. This looting method would give a huge boost to casual players to get desirable items.
Not to side track too far, but so you think a small gold sink is possible at this point?
People are running around with billions of gold, I'd think these would have to be pretty large bribes to be an effective gold sink.
One of the other changes they already made is that young players can't loot at idocs.
I realize the bribes may not be a huge factor in locating the idocs... But buying early access tickets and early looting rights most certainly would be.
Well that doesn't make any sense since the items are on the ground. At least with this new system there is an actual reason why trial accounts are denied looting (*The Tax Collector does not feel you are worthy of a permit*).
This is just a general idea, there are lots of fine details that can be worked out. When I said head-start I was thinking of 5 or 10 seconds. If someone wants to pay millions of gold to get a 5 second head start to grab one item they really want, good on them.
I feel the solution to inflation is to add gold sinks. Not do nothing and watch every-day items cost 1 million gold or more. To be fair to me, this topic is about fixing IDOCs, not the economy.
Just curious since part of the reasoning was a gold sink.
I did not even use the words gold sink originally because it is all about game play. Gold sinks should be natural game elements. A system design such as this offers the opportunity to help remove gold in a new and interesting way. You should not be thinking "well this is an obvious gold sink".
Merlin
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JC's idea is unique and well thought out. It's not with out it's flaws (as pointed out here in some cases), but overall, I think this would be accepted more favorably by the community than the current system. It provides many other little nuances (gold sinks, giving some additional uses to various skills) that would help the game and give a welcomed change up. Even the Tax Collector NPC is a nice little RPG type nuance that would be probably rather comical to see. Can all this be coded? I'm not in a place to make judgment on that. But this is a good start and probably one of the more positive IDOC change suggestions I've seen on Stratics.
I also wanted to weigh in to say that there is absolutely no perfect system. There will ALWAYS be a way to script to your benefit or other exploits people will be able to take advantage of that will give some players a leg up on the rest of the population. I have never seen a suggestion come up that doesn't have the "but the scripter's can take advantage of that!" response somewhere in the mix of replies. People may not like to hear it, but scripting is here to stay in UO unless the developer team puts significant time and resources into identifying it and policing it, and every game scenario will somehow be scripted.
I also wanted to weigh in to say that there is absolutely no perfect system. There will ALWAYS be a way to script to your benefit or other exploits people will be able to take advantage of that will give some players a leg up on the rest of the population. I have never seen a suggestion come up that doesn't have the "but the scripter's can take advantage of that!" response somewhere in the mix of replies. People may not like to hear it, but scripting is here to stay in UO unless the developer team puts significant time and resources into identifying it and policing it, and every game scenario will somehow be scripted.
Stop trolling.
For the first time in many years I was at an IDOC that fell yesterday. Sort of ironic that it happened to be a log cabin. No one else was there and the loot wasn't anything to write home about. One thing that was interesting was a book written by the owner.
With the house being a log cabin you would assume the owner was someone who hadn't played in years and perhaps their account had finally lapsed. But there were a few clues that they had been on recently. There was a sundial and a spellbook that was from the High Seas. The most interesting was the book I mentioned earlier. For whatever reason, the owner wrote a few sentences hoping Donald Trump beats Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election.
I don't like when I see people asking for the contents of falling houses to be deleted when they fall down. UO is supposed to be a "living world" of sorts. Stuff isn't supposed to disappear and we all get upset when a bug causes us to lose something. Whether it be a malfunction of item insurance or your bonded pet goes away.
I remember a long, long time ago when a guild member just vanished, never to be heard from again. A few months later her castle was collapsing. We all had access and worked out a plan to barricade the outer walls with rows of bagballs so we could secure her possessions. It didn't work out exactly as planned because a gamemaster showed up saying if the house collapsed so would the server.
The point is the contents of player homes shouldn't just disappear with the house. It is a part of the world and should be recycled by the players still in it.
With the house being a log cabin you would assume the owner was someone who hadn't played in years and perhaps their account had finally lapsed. But there were a few clues that they had been on recently. There was a sundial and a spellbook that was from the High Seas. The most interesting was the book I mentioned earlier. For whatever reason, the owner wrote a few sentences hoping Donald Trump beats Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election.
I don't like when I see people asking for the contents of falling houses to be deleted when they fall down. UO is supposed to be a "living world" of sorts. Stuff isn't supposed to disappear and we all get upset when a bug causes us to lose something. Whether it be a malfunction of item insurance or your bonded pet goes away.
I remember a long, long time ago when a guild member just vanished, never to be heard from again. A few months later her castle was collapsing. We all had access and worked out a plan to barricade the outer walls with rows of bagballs so we could secure her possessions. It didn't work out exactly as planned because a gamemaster showed up saying if the house collapsed so would the server.
The point is the contents of player homes shouldn't just disappear with the house. It is a part of the world and should be recycled by the players still in it.
I don't believe we are in any real danger of this occurring.
I know I find it interesting there are those who encourage it after they have already secured what they've needed from Idocs.
Well, that's kinda sad. Sounds a bit like porn
This thread makes me sad and miss all the fun I had IDOC hunting all those years before they ruined it. It's been a year now without IDOC hunting for me because of the changes and I find myself rarely playing anymore. The one thing they did right was making young/trial accounts unable to loot or place but the rest made it unplayable for me.