ATTN DEVS: 5 Days for Ship Decay?

[Pandora_CoD]

Devs,

My guildies and I worked for WEEKS to get our guild's Orc ship. This means we spent MILLIONS on supplies and such to farm up the pirates and get the quest done... ammunition is FAR FROM CHEAP!!! We traded whenever we could the ship pieces and even bought a few from other players.

Unfortunately this week, my company suffered a huge contract loss that had us putting in a lot of overtime and I was busting my butt to get us new work or face having to lay off people. Today I log in after the last time I used our new Orc Ship, which was just this past Saturday, to find it had decayed.

Now, most of my guildies play on weekends or just casually 2-3 days a week and we did not know that our ship would decay if we can't get it refreshed in FIVE DAYS. You are clearly not thinking about those of us that have real life committments or have emergencies that creep up on us.

1) Five days is just too short a time. At least 7 days or 10 days would be more viable... allowing us to play on boats on the weekends without having to be mortified that we lost our boat --- be it the 220k gold one you or the ones that you SPEND WEEKS UPON WEEKS TRYING TO QUEST FOR!!!! Those Questing ships should have a much longer shelf life than 5 days.

2) You make it damn near impossible to always dry dock your ship as an option. It takes so much time to unload a ship with a bunch of HEAVY CRAP ON IT!!! So either make commodity deeds more versatile so that they can hold ALL types of items or make it so that we can dry dock with the cargo hold full.

3) Saltpeter for christ's sake NEEDS a freaking PRICE ADJUSTMENT! Its far far too expensive for anyone that isn't loaded up the wazoo to enjoy this expansion pack with any ROI (return on investment) for the $15 you made us pay for it.

4) Those of us that have worked our ASSES off trying to get these questable ships should see those questable ships returned to them by the GM's and not some "Sorry, you are **** out of luck." excuse. The GM's didn't even come talk to me to see what happened or anything --- just expected me to be able to say what I needed to say in 200 characters or less? W.... T..... F.... Where did your customer service standards go?!?!


Please MAKE SOME CHANGES!!!!


- Pandy

 

[Viper09]

Well, it is what it has been. You're also not alone here and understand the extreme frustration. Something does need to be changed though for the big boats. The decay system was perfectly fine for the old boats but not the news ones. There has been tons of great ideas posted in other tthreads on how to change the system for them.

On another note couldn't your guildies that worked to get the boat have refreshed it? Can never be too safe on these boats, a simple opening the plank and leave would work.

 

[Viper09]

Although dry dock complaint? Really? Not their fault. You don't want it to be so hard to dock it then don't load it up so much. I really wouldn't trust their code if it allowed us to dock with items and not lose them.

 

[Tazar]

I am curious what was on the boat that could not be put into a commodity deed... lumber, cloth, ingots (Repair items) leather, ore (loot), Cannon balls, shot, fuses, etc. (cannon shot stuff), stacks of fish, etc. all go into the deeds...

Looted food? No big deal... Smuggled liquors? Ok... that one won't, but really is not that hard to replace.

Loot from MIB's is the only real thing that I can think of - and most of that is junk...

 

[hawkeye_pike]

I think I read somewhere that if a new ship decayed, it would go back into the owner's backpack as a deed (similar to the rowboat). I never had the nerve to test it though, and obviously it isn't true.

That's why I always dry-dock my ship, although it would look pretty by the shore in front of my house. I also never use the ship's hold for storage. Sorry for that loss!

 

[Viper09]

I think I read somewhere that if a new ship decayed, it would go back into the owner's backpack as a deed (similar to the rowboat). I never had the nerve to test it though, and obviously it isn't true.

That's why I always dry-dock my ship, although it would look pretty by the shore in front of my house. I also never use the ship's hold for storage. Sorry for that loss!

I think that was just one of the ideas for a new system someone bought up. Was it posted by a dev?

 

[Basara]

You must have a bug. Last I heard from the devs, and from most I know, the decay rate is supposed to be TWO WEEKS for the new ships, not 5 days.

That, or they forgot to put the 2 week timer on orc ships.

 

[zamot]

Basara, You replied to my thread about this same thing. I suggest that you let your boat go 1 week without refreshing or post a link that the DEv's stated that it is 2 weeks. PUT UP OR shut up.

 

[Apetul]

My Orc ship (and my other ships too) have a decay of 2 weeks aprox.

 

[Viper09]

Basara, You replied to my thread about this same thing. I suggest that you let your boat go 1 week without refreshing or post a link that the DEv's stated that it is 2 weeks. PUT UP OR shut up.

Why so hostile? Basara was actually quite polite, very unlike you, so unnecessarily rude. Read that thread beneath you while you're at it.

 

[Basara]

Basara, You replied to my thread about this same thing. I suggest that you let your boat go 1 week without refreshing or post a link that the DEv's stated that it is 2 weeks. PUT UP OR shut up.

OK, I've put up. I've ALREADY let my ship go EIGHT days in one stretch, because I got caught up in trying to defend cities, to go fish - it didn't go away (which is a good thing, because almost all my fish were aboard).

As for Dev statements:

from the transcript of one of the Video HoC
http://vboards.stratics.com/uhall/229224-developer-stream-transcript-completed.html

Question from Twitter:
When you don’t refresh a new ship and it goes away what happens to the quest that you had?

Your fish monger, you kind of, you can quit the quest. There is no way to get the box back. That is kind of outside the parameter to that quest for your boat to go away while your crate is on it. You’re not just out of luck, but you would have to quit that quest and restart. The decay timer on ships is actually pretty long. You have to be gone for awhile for your ship to decay. Like 2 weeks. So we are not talking about something that is going to happen cuz you fell asleep at your keyboard.

Suggest you follow your own advice.

 

[Petra Fyde]

I don't want to appear to be stupid, nor to imply that you are, but are you absolutely sure it has decayed? Have you been to where it was last?

I have had 'boat can not be found' when I know I only left it moments before. On one occasion I sailed out to it from the nearest shore by rowboat because I left it too close to a server boundary.

 

[Tazar]

If you left the boat in Fel and it was accessible to guild-mates or anyone, they also can sail it through the serpent pillars into the lost-lands and then leave it there... since fel-lost-lands is a no-recall zone, you would then not be able to recall back to your boat making it appear to be lost.

Be careful with boat settings - especially in fel.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

since fel-lost-lands is a no-recall zone, you would then not be able to recall back to your boat making it appear to be lost.

wow, almost Siege-like?, never knew that - Excellent reply,thanks

 

[Lord Raven]

I feel for your loss as I had a Tokuno ship disappear on me. Well, not quite... I went to recall to it (not sure but it was close to a week) and the rune in my runebook changed to "Simon Lantry's ship the unknown." I know I had the security settings set to Guild and it's a family guild so I know none of my guildies stole it.

When I try to recall it says "that ship is in drydock." How did my boat get taken by someone else? I sent in a bug report as I seem to recall a dev message some time back about boat bugs but don't know if there has been any new info on that.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

BTW, I often hunt pirates and have a spare pirate ship which I would be glad to give to you (original poster). I'm on the Atlantic shard though so I'm not sure that helps you. Offer good for the OP only... PM me if you are on Atlantic.

 

[Farsight]

This has little to do with the original post besides to let everyone know that something went wrong.

I lost my tokuno ship on purpose the other week (I didn't have six hours to wait for a GM to fix a problem, easier to just let the problem disappear). The decay went exactly as so:
Day 01 - Slightly Worn
Day 02 - slightly worn
Day 03 - slightly worn
Day 04 - somewhat worn
Day 05 - somewhat worn
Day 06 - somewhat worn
Day 07 - Fairly Worn
Day 08 - Fairly Worn
Day 09 - Fairly Worn
Day 10 - Greatly worn
Day 11 - Greatly worn
Day 12 - Greatly worn
Day 13 - In danger of collaspsing
At the end of day 13, the ship sank.

This means one or more of several things.
1. Pandora's ship was bugged and decayed too quickly
2. Pandora's ship wasn't bugged, and the orc ship decays quicker than a Tokuno ship
3. Pandora's ship is still out there and either stolen or inaccessable.
4. The GM gave her very clear misinformation.
5. My boat, which was confirmed as bugged already, ran into another bug which made it decay more slowly (unlikely, but not impossible). (side note: my time study was a repeat of someone else's as well, with the exact same results. Both tests were done in January)
6. Boats have changed in the last month.

Not that it's any comfort to Pandora, who is still out of a ship and was told by a GM that all ships decay in five days (which may be true).

 

[Viper09]

There is one other possible reason:
Pandora didn't refresh the boat since it was obtained by using the tillerman or opening the plank.

No offence intended to the op but a lot of people really don't know how to refresh boats and always act surprised when it decays despite them sailing on it. Sailing a ship never refreshes it.

 

[Jynxx]

I'll echo the OP.

I just went to my boat after not being there for exactly 3 days. It was at 'Fairly Worn'

2 more days and it was on it's way down.

 

[Wenchkin]

I suspect something might be up...my fisher logged in to refresh her boat as she has done for a few weeks fishing holiday - no boat. Guess I won't need to tidy the hold out now

It was out there for less than a week...Secure, safe mooring location and in good repair. I'll go place another ship near my house and take note of the decay. I wonder if we've somehow ended up with a faster decay cycle than 2 weeks.

Wenchy

 

[Aran]

I guess in the future you guys need to take better care of your toys?

 

[Pandora_CoD]

I'll echo the OP.

I just went to my boat after not being there for exactly 3 days. It was at 'Fairly Worn'

2 more days and it was on it's way down.

So basically, I am not crazy.

I want to thank Vallend, Anne, and Shi for helping me on Catskills to obtain a new orc ship for our guild. Now I am just scared to place it. LOL

I wish dev's would reply and clarify, and then give GM's the ability to help folks that have bugged boats.

I found this quote in UOGuide, but that's certainly not what happened to me... and you dbl click the mooring to BOARD the boat, so if you board your boat, check the cargo hold, and check security settings you should be fine -- but you're not:
Ship Refreshing

Galleons decay similar to houses. In order to refresh a ship one needs to doubleclick the mooring lines. This refreshes the ship even when out at sea. If you neglect to refresh your ship it will vanish after 13 days, going through the following decay phases: Slighty Worn - 3 days Somewhat worn - 3 days Fairly Worn - 3 days Greatly worn - 3 days In danger of collapsing - 1 day

 

[Pandora_CoD]

There is one other possible reason:
Pandora didn't refresh the boat since it was obtained by using the tillerman or opening the plank.

No offence intended to the op but a lot of people really don't know how to refresh boats and always act surprised when it decays despite them sailing on it. Sailing a ship never refreshes it.

None taken, but last Saturday I not only boarded the ship and checked the cargo, but I also double checked my security settings... so I did dbl click the tillerman. Thing is I did this for BOTH ships --- my orc ship and our gargoyle ship. The garg ship was still there, orc ship was gone.

 

[Pandora_CoD]

I feel for your loss as I had a Tokuno ship disappear on me. Well, not quite... I went to recall to it (not sure but it was close to a week) and the rune in my runebook changed to "Simon Lantry's ship the unknown." I know I had the security settings set to Guild and it's a family guild so I know none of my guildies stole it.

When I try to recall it says "that ship is in drydock." How did my boat get taken by someone else? I sent in a bug report as I seem to recall a dev message some time back about boat bugs but don't know if there has been any new info on that.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

BTW, I often hunt pirates and have a spare pirate ship which I would be glad to give to you (original poster). I'm on the Atlantic shard though so I'm not sure that helps you. Offer good for the OP only... PM me if you are on Atlantic.

Thank you so much Nord. I got some of my friends to help me on the Catskills shard.

 

[Pandora_CoD]

I don't want to appear to be stupid, nor to imply that you are, but are you absolutely sure it has decayed? Have you been to where it was last?

I have had 'boat can not be found' when I know I only left it moments before. On one occasion I sailed out to it from the nearest shore by rowboat because I left it too close to a server boundary.

GM double checked for me, no boat attached to my account was found.

 

[Pandora_CoD]

I am curious what was on the boat that could not be put into a commodity deed... lumber, cloth, ingots (Repair items) leather, ore (loot), Cannon balls, shot, fuses, etc. (cannon shot stuff), stacks of fish, etc. all go into the deeds...

Looted food? No big deal... Smuggled liquors? Ok... that one won't, but really is not that hard to replace.

Loot from MIB's is the only real thing that I can think of - and most of that is junk...

I am not sure, I have to check this again... but I did not think you could load up "raw" materials like cotton/wool, ore, or logs. Those are processed to cloth, ingots, and boards, which you CAN place in commo deeds.

Can anyone verify? I could have SWORN I got a message that said I couldn't put this type of item into a commo deed.

 

[Lord Raven]

There is one other possible reason:
Pandora didn't refresh the boat since it was obtained by using the tillerman or opening the plank...

There also might be a difference in the old boats and new boats. There is no plank on the new ones and you can recall directly onto them which does not automatically refresh them.

I always cycle around to my boats and double-click the mooring line. That gives me the the "age and contents refreshed" message.

 

[sablestorm]

If you give your guildmates rights to your ship, they can refresh it for you. I haven't tested this fully, but I know I had a High Seas account that went inactive and I forgot to dry dock my ship before it happened. I found my characters on my other accounts could refresh it and three months later I reactivated and all was well. My other accounts had rights to captain the ship, however.

 

[Kas Althume]

My boats are decaying just fine. My boat on europa is somewhere in the middle of the ocean and i refresh it once per week. I always refresh on sundays and its always fairly worn when i get back to it. It has a fish monger quest chest, thats why i cant drydock it.

My boat on Siege does the same. From sunday to sunday its fairly worn. I know i will risk the boat when the server crashes shortly after i refreshed.

You should always check the tillerman before you leave the boat ...

 

[PuddyMae]

Ore is about the only thing I have had to lug off that cant be deeded. The ships hold now acts like a commodity deed box so take some deeds with you. Cloth, cotton, wool, lumber, logs, ingots, chicken, apples, just about anything can be deeded. If in doubt give it a try.

 

[Aran]

Fire beetle. No more lugging ore.

 

[Lady Tia]

You must have a bug. Last I heard from the devs, and from most I know, the decay rate is supposed to be TWO WEEKS for the new ships, not 5 days.

That, or they forgot to put the 2 week timer on orc ships.

No, I kinda thought this weekend I was going crazy as I KNEW I refreshed my boat last Saturday. Logged in this past Saturday and it was gone.

I think I read somewhere that if a new ship decayed, it would go back into the owner's backpack as a deed (similar to the rowboat). I never had the nerve to test it though, and obviously it isn't true.

That's why I always dry-dock my ship, although it would look pretty by the shore in front of my house. I also never use the ship's hold for storage. Sorry for that loss!

I just logged back in to check my pack and it did not redeed in either my pack or my bank.

 

[Petra Fyde]

Seems we may have a problem.

Are all the boats with the rapid decay cycle Orc boats or is it randomly affecting different kinds of boats?

 

[AzSel]

nvm

 

[Lady Tia]

Seems we may have a problem.

Are all the boats with the rapid decay cycle Orc boats or is it randomly affecting different kinds of boats?

Mine was a Tokuno boat.

 

[Wenchkin]

Mine was a Tokuno boat.

Same here...

Wenchy

 

[Basara]

Here's another question:

How close were they to Magincia, or if they were in T2A, the boat-accessible champs?

 

[Lady Tia]

Not close to Magincia, not in T2A and not near a serverline. Out in open ocean probably just south of Skara Brae.

 

[Wenchkin]

I wasn't parked anywhere near Magincia or T2A. Not even on the same subserver for that matter.

I was also parked out the way of any NPC pirate ship hotspots in Tram, so those aren't involved either.

Wenchy

 

[LoL/Sonoma]

I can confirm my Orc ship decays faster than what has been stated above as "normal".

After 3 days i see fairly worn. I'll have to double check that my Gargy ship does the same. The Orc ship is parked next to the island SE of the Pirate area and the other is outside the bouys at the Market.

 

[Pandora_CoD]

Yup, I am not the only one that this has happened to within my shard. A few friends told me that happened to their boats, none of which were Orc ships.

 

[Tina Small]

Is it possible that the shard(s) where boats decayed more quickly than expected had multiple or unexpected server down-times in that period because of the server hardware maintenance? Were things like plant growth cycles, faction sigil corruption/refresh cycles, and pet bonding also messed up around that same time?

 

[olduofan]

I posted this in anther thread but kinda fits this one as well


After i spent days making grapeshot 1000s of them and getting my orc ship only to log in after holiday vacation with the kids all my boats including my fishing boat full of fish was gone. For some reason I didn't thing they would decay I lost 1000s of supply's 60k wood 60k cloth 60k ingots and over a 1000s loads on pac


any clue how long it and cost to make and get the ocr ship let alone the fish and traps. I have not played that expansion since and really dont care to any time soon WAY to expensive and the thought of all that back and fourth sail to the ocean dock is dreadful.

I my fault but I cant help but say to myself WTF why is there a decay rate on these ships especially the reward orc one at least make it like a 6 weer timer WTF what ever uo in its madness "WINS" HaHa

 

[Aran]

Hey remember when houses went IDOC?