Bag of Sending and Ilshenar

[Guest]

Speaking to the dev team...are you guys ever going to address the fact that the bag of sending change rendered the Ilshenar dungeons and Terathan Keep pointless?

I'm already tired of our guild hunts being tied to locations where we can hop a quick gate to the bank every couple of minutes.

 

[Korso]

Wheres that horse at? I thought I left it over here.........

 

[imported_Fran Fury]

*drags up another horse*
*drops bag of sticks on the ground*

The devs have been listening more lately I believe, so we can hope that maybe they will listen to us about the bags of sending too. I understand why the change was made and maybe it made a small difference but at the same time it hurt the average players.
Is there some middle ground somewhere??

 

[JoyousGard]

BOS I think is long since gone.

Why can't we open Ilshenar up? Just like anywhere else in the world? It is so old, none of the stuff is even fun or relevent anyway, just make us able to recall there. Big effing deal.

 

[imported_GalenKnighthawke]

<blockquote><hr>

*drags up another horse*
*drops bag of sticks on the ground*

The devs have been listening more lately I believe, so we can hope that maybe they will listen to us about the bags of sending too. I understand why the change was made and maybe it made a small difference but at the same time it hurt the average players.
Is there some middle ground somewhere??

[/ QUOTE ]

They stated at the Town Hall, very definitively, that Bags of Sending aren't going back to how they were.

Though at the time the change was made, they said it was NOT about scripters, they have now said it was. And they have stated that 2 major scripting web sites shut down after they made the change.

I really can't dispute this, as unlikely as it sounds...I'd have figured if anything scripters would have it even EASIER, if not in absolute terms, relative to the rest of us.

But....I guess this ain't the case!

-Galen's player

 

[Guest]

Saw a guy hunting with 4 packhorses a lined up to hold gold...
Count me as one who's still unhappy with the BOS changes. Let's nerf the cheaters, not the ones actually out playing UO...

 

[Gheed]

Ya whats to stop a scriptor from opening up the free recall account dedicated to recalling a loop between all unattended farmers picking up their gold when they get full....which most of them did anyway because 100% lrc was cheap and more importantly it can not be exhausted. BOS at least ran out of charges and became saturated. Not efficient to put something like (BOS) that into a script. Major goldfarming sites out of business because of this? Ya right....did they email EA and say that or something?

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Saw a guy hunting with 4 packhorses a lined up to hold gold...

[/ QUOTE ]
But doesn't the thought of a train of gold-laden packhorse seem just really cool on some level?

I can't say the change has impacted me at all - but I only ever used BoS as a way of dealing with accidentally getting overloaded without actually leaving anything behind or to avoid making two trips to level 5 a treasure chest. A full backpack tends to be my "that mini-adventure's finished" alarm.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Is there some middle ground somewhere??

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure there is, they just didn't seem interested in finding it.

Either lower how much gold is on monsters, drastically alter the loot tables to provide something worthwhile other than gold, or limit bags in a less damaging way. Any or all of those would accomplish whichever goal you believe they were trying for.

Simplest way I can think of to limit gold farming but not impact the average Joe is to just slap a timer on bags.

Your account can use a bag of sending as it was, one charge one use, X times in a week.

That would let the average player who only goes out on guild hunts once or twice a week still use the bag for those group events but would limit the folks who sit in one spot and farm for hours on end every day, scripted or not.

I don't see how fifteen to twenty uses in a week would be a bad thing, that's around the average I used to use in a typical guild hunt. That would open up the no-recall areas again like the Ilshenar dungeons, Terathan Keep and Sanctuary and would help out casual resource gatherers.

Right now, without a bag of sending, and figuring just how much loot the average critter has on it...PVM is a joke.

Outside of a few specific exceptions, the only thing worth looting at all is resources and gold, both of which overload you very quickly. Since the bag of sending is essentially gone no one goes to PVM anywhere that you can't recall/gate. It hasn't significantly slowed down how much gold we make, every five minutes or so one of us makes a bank run...takes maybe ten to twenty seconds to recall to the bank, dump the stuff, recall back. It's just beyond irritating to have to do that and it completely excludes large areas that used to be fun to hunt in.

 

[imported_Spiritless]

Said this right at the start when the changes were being talked about. Tons of heroes decided to shoot down my point and painting a picture of pack horses being a perfectly legitimate method of looting in Illshenar, totally overlooking the fact that no one serious would actually bother doing all of that and would just avoid Illshenar, as has been happening. Shame they were listened to, I guess.

The problem recently is that developers have been listening to players more, when most don't really have a clue about what they're talking about the majority of the time.

 

[Slapshot]

I would have personally rather had it be on a timer basis, so still viable yet limited to say a 10 minute use rule, not kill it alltogether for the non-cheaters.

I'd much rather have them address the real issue on things, ASK THE PLAYERS for god's sake. Many MANY great ideas out there if you open your eyes and stop thinking of a quick fix to be done with it and move on to other things. It saddens me when i see things done hastily that negatively impact the whole playerbase due to a few, while the real issue isn't looked at from all angles.

Smart man once told me if you don't have the time to do it twice better do it right the first time. Well, a giant step in accomplishing said goal would be to poll the players, not on stratics. through emails or UO's website to ask players their thoughts on things. Might just be surprised how insightful and cognizant some of the thoughts on things are!

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>


be to poll the players, not on stratics. through emails or UO's website to ask players their thoughts on things


[/ QUOTE ]

They have that poll about KR or whatever it is that players answer in game, and you get that buff, why couldnt they have a gump like that ingame to get players to vote and send feedback?

At least then they would cover EVERYONE who plays the game.

 

[imported_Fran Fury]

<blockquote><hr>

Saw a guy hunting with 4 packhorses a lined up to hold gold...
Count me as one who's still unhappy with the BOS changes. Let's nerf the cheaters, not the ones actually out playing UO...

[/ QUOTE ]


I have someone do that too. The easy answer that many gave was to just use pack horses and/or a beetle to make up for not using the BOS.
Problem with that is what if I am using my tamer to hunt? Do I only hunt earth eles and lower spawn with just a mare so I can have pack horses following me?

Now bos has limited where to hunt and honestly what I hunt. I used to go after harder monsters with higher loot since I really don't go out "farming" all that much. Get the most gold for my time. Now I can still do that but I am having to make frequent trips to the bank, more loot = full backpack faster. So now I go after mid range stuff just so I don't feel like I am leaving for the bank every four or five monsters.

 

[_Uriah Heep_]

oh fer cryin' out loud...Put em back like they were

and let the max powders ya can get be 10 per quest
and 50 total uses on the bags, then they poof!

At least that way, the casual gamers still get a bit of use out of them.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Ya whats to stop a scriptor from opening up the free recall account dedicated to recalling a loop between all unattended farmers picking up their gold when they get full....which most of them did anyway because 100% lrc was cheap and more importantly it can not be exhausted. BOS at least ran out of charges and became saturated. Not efficient to put something like (BOS) that into a script. Major goldfarming sites out of business because of this? Ya right....did they email EA and say that or something?

[/ QUOTE ]

I just spit my drink out all over my keyboard. Seriously this statement says it all. BoS was not the proper way real cheaters were dealing with gold. To think that just limiting the bags would be enough is insane. I think the scripting sites they mentioned shutting down must have been the smallest and most inefficient of the lot and would not be something I would consider a win in the battle against cheating lol.

 

[Gheed]

<blockquote><hr>

<blockquote><hr>

Ya whats to stop a scriptor from opening up the free recall account dedicated to recalling a loop between all unattended farmers picking up their gold when they get full....which most of them did anyway because 100% lrc was cheap and more importantly it can not be exhausted. BOS at least ran out of charges and became saturated. Not efficient to put something like (BOS) that into a script. Major goldfarming sites out of business because of this? Ya right....did they email EA and say that or something?

[/ QUOTE ]

I just spit my drink out all over my keyboard. Seriously this statement says it all. BoS was not the proper way real cheaters were dealing with gold. To think that just limiting the bags would be enough is insane. I think the scripting sites they mentioned shutting down must have been the smallest and most inefficient of the lot and would not be something I would consider a win in the battle against cheating lol.

[/ QUOTE ]

Probably the main target of the BOS nerf was the little guy. Randomized resources and BOS were tied to a bigger animal....community collections. Collections were probably the single largest crushing blow to the economy short of gold dupes.

But it's a different dynamic. A handful of folks spent the time combing through the forrests for that book of frostwood spots. When it was completed they altered their mining scripts to allow for wood hopping and set it all in motion. Then automating hand in they sold the rewards on their vendors.

Now if your the average every day Joe, what would you rather do?:

A. spend countless hours/days of your precious spare time coming the forrests for your own rare spots then more hours chopping wood only to hope that 800k points you spend on the reward weapon of your choice rngs the right slayer property. If not, back to chopping wood for another round. Then realizing the 5 other folks already found your spots and you'd be damn lucky to get wood from them anyway.

B. Spend a fraction of that time woth your BOS farming gold then just buy the reward you want from said scriptor's vendor.

Well I think most folks choose B. Now here's the damage. Duping (non gold) does not flux new gold into the system. Probably more dupes were so high priced they sold for real $$. Not UO gold. So the UO Economy wasn't hurt as bad. But for a mere mil you could have just the reward you seek from collection. So this sent an army of average Joes into the high gold spawn farming them at nausea and gold came pouring into the economy.

And it was just insane when ML came out. I spent two solid weeks searching for frostwood trees. Didnt even get a full book of runes before I started chopping it. I did it all by hand and I made 100 mil in a very short time. Was the most gold I had ever made from such an easy resource to farm. I was selling it for 100 gps per...I sat there for hours choping in awe of that every chop was 10 boards..1k..every chop. Imagine the Fel choppers....I know of shop owners who claimed to have moved over one billion in collection rewards. 1 billion.

Now I would imagine that:
A. some stat was gathered in EA HQ that said folks just loved collections.

B. Whatever dev created collections realized just how bad they mucked up the economy and tried to cover it up by nerfing BOS and resource farming

C. Whatever dev created collections realized just how bad they mucked up the economy and took the easy path of fliping the switch on the randomize ore code and quick BOS nerf formula. Instead of fixing collections.

D. Some or all of the above.

If I were to predict the future I would guess that the next expansion will be plum filled with these collections type quests. My reasoning is first Wilki's "gotta do it for new and wonderful items (insert collections rewards here) coming in SA" So where is SA? Oh ya...we don't know. The above statement combined with "rare resources should be rare"...um ya ok. This light bulb flickered on after almost 10 years of non random resources and no one really complaining about it? Ya ok....save shadow heaters what demand was there for anything but iron before community collections? I found more truth in the final comments on the issue from Jeremy:

<blockquote><hr>

We didn't make the change to thwart scripters. As everyone has pointed out, it would have been a really bad way to do it No, this change was purely aimed at the economy, scripters and all.

[/ QUOTE ]

This statement basically says "oops we screwed up with community collections and every other excuse we gave you on the issue was just a bunch of crap we made up.

and...

<blockquote><hr>

Valorite, frostwood, etc, are *supposed* to be rare and hard-to-get - being able to pick them up casually does weird things to the economy. (For gold or dollars, either way - they're pretty much freely convertible.)

[/ QUOTE ]

i.e. community collections created a rediculously high demand for resources that served no purpose other than filling BOD's.

So there ya have it folks. Its all just theory and maybe i'm just too glass half empty on the matter. In retrospect I suppose I had it coming. Most of my time in game has been spent mining. I watch the boards in silence for years as folks moaned and groaned about their playstyles getting nerfed for this and that reason. I watched with immunity as the inevitable "shut up and adapt" post made its appearance. Well it's just my turn now I suppose. Maybe 8 years is too long to play...or maybe I should realize that I just can't beat'em..and download a solution.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, I knew this would happen, and I said it would happened, but everyone pooh poohed me and the others who said the same.

And on siege its even worse because there are MANY more places you cant gate out of that there are on regular shards, leaving huge areas of the world pretty much pointless in terms of hunting grounds.

I said it then and I say it now, the BOS change was fine and dandy but unless you alter loot so that a player can hunt for more than 15 minutes with out being OL the actual players, the ones playing because they enjoy the game, not to make a buck, are going to suffer. Now you see it happening.

Gold amount dropped needs to be lowered, resource weight needs to be lowered.

 

[Guest]

...


Why can't we open Ilshenar up? Just like anywhere else in the world? It is so old, none of the stuff is even fun or relevent anyway, just make us able to recall there. Big effing deal.

Because Ilshenar is not meant to be a gold camp ground. It's meant to be a more advanced PvE/PvM facet, one of the advances is the inability to Mark inside Ilsh.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Because Ilshenar is not meant to be a gold camp ground. It's meant to be a more advanced PvE/PvM facet, one of the advances is the inability to Mark inside Ilsh.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's the point, and that's what is really sad about the bag of sending change.

If I want gold, there's a half dozen places I go to where I can rake it in easily as long as I feel like sitting there doing it. The only thing limiting my bank account is that I get bored quickly.

As a guild we'd go do the Ilsh dungeons top to bottom because it was fun and more challenging than sitting around Deceit whacking liches.

Now...there's just no point to it. Most of the folks in my guild don't have bank vaults filled to the brim with dozens of 1 mil checks. They actually need to make a little gold on the hunt to help cover insurance. Trying to do an Ilsh dungeon now is often a negative for gold...and there's just nothing you get there as a reward that makes it worth the trouble.

I also couldn't imagine keeping pack animals alive in one of those dungeons.

Last time we tried it, we actually had two people die so many times they emptied their bank and auto-renew failed on their insurance. They both lost pieces of their suites and were out of action for quite awhile trying to recover. What exactly is fun about that? We won't be back in the no-recall spots again unless the bag of sending is fixed to make it useful. And that's a shame, because they made for a fun guild outing.

I'm concerned about the whole direction the devs are going of late. They seem to be trying to fight scripting with more tedium. That ain't gonna help subscription numbers much.

 

[nineninefour]

Stop talking about BoS, everyone. Seriously.

The change was a good and long overdue one. The change is here to stay because it makes sense, and no one has yet provide a viable argument as to WHY it wasn't an appropriate move.

Does everyone whine because they can't absolutely farm gold in every sense of the word anymore? You know, the same people on this and other boards constantly complaining about gold farming.

Or is it that you hate effort that much? Like it isn't bad enough you're sitting in front of a computer screen fighting little digital orcs on a saturday night, but now you actually have to make a few extra clicking movements and run back to the bank, too! No!

There are several published ways around the BoS changes that do *gasp* take a bit more effort, but work nearly as well as the original farfetched unrealistic economy destroying monstrosity. BoS now serves the purpose it was meant for: to send excellent items you're happy to keep, but would rather not insure for the duration of your current adventure, safely to the bank. It shouldn't be anything more than that.

Now can we read up, adjust ourselves like adults, and stop beating this completely dead, decayed, vulture picked fly ridden skeleton of what I think was once a three legged horse?

 

[Guest]

So speaketh the UO apologist.

 

[Guest]

I have never got this gump you speak of. And I log in at least once each day to get my one tailor/blacksmith bod.

personally I never used the bos for sending gold. Now sending bulk items, heck yes. I spent many days harvesting leathers/bones/ingots/ore and shipping to the bank. i was surprised by how much bulk goods you go thorugh fill bods. So I tried to keep my stocks up.

 

[stevensnr6]

Or they could implement the WoW (and many other games system) of simply a running balance for Gold...instead of making people carry coins or checks about.

Attempting to buy yet another studio (Take Two Interactive and their one popular property) is just symptomatic of the problems EA has. They buy decent games and then let them die on the vine...Bullfrog...Origin. If I had an aging game property, hell yeah I'd sell out in a heart beat....EA takes over and experiences all of the downside.

 

[imported_Tabby Kapak]

Is no one carrying piles of 30, 60, 120 or whatever amounts of translocation powder? That way you can send piles of 15k several times before you need to go back. Even our weaker chars can send 15k... Still more hassle than before for sure, but not impossible?

 

[imported_Skrag]

I can run from any point in Ilshenar to a bank in one minute. Two, tops. If you were using BoS in Ish in the first place, you were just lazy.

 

[imported_Coppelia]

So now we have heroes who can do horrible grind and accuse others being lazy.
Yeah right, then how comes you don't hunt in Ilshenar?

The fact is that some players weren't drooling after money, but enjoyed a hunt starting to a place, going to another, traveling through the lands AND they were able to loot the monsters they kill, so it was fun. Now gold farming is a blind grind where fun is forbidden. You must find "solutions". Of course there are solutions, but I'm not playing a game to have a second job.
If Ilshenar is only a place to take a walk and enjoy the landscape, and places like Destard are the money factories where you're a chain worker... that's completly stupid.

Where the hell do some people find that idea you should work in a game?

If you have a little knowledge in game designing, you know that a game is to entertain people and that the rewards you give will give the players the direction to take. If you split the fun and the reward, that's frustrating.

I don't enjoy hunting anymore. If nothing changes before this summer, I close my account. It's sad because there are fixes I was waiting for a long time just coming now like the pet AI. But what's the use of being able to control pets in a crowd of mobs if you can't get any reward from killing the mobs...

 

[Stigmatas]

Go to illshenar.

Kill creatures.

Collect gold.

Stash gold in non-obvious area.

Finish hunt.

Get packy.

Run back get gold.

Simple.


In my day we had to farm gold in the snow. And do it uphill both ways. This is not a game stopper.

This is but only one method.

 

[Joobulance]

Why not just impement this change after someone has sent say... 1 million gold in a day. That is nothing for scripters, but a cap I doubt many normal players would reach.

 

[_Uriah Heep_]

In my day we had to farm gold in the snow. And do it uphill both ways
-----------------------------------------------------------------


My Father!!!

 

[imported_Coppelia]

Simple?
How do you bring your packhorses to the overseers dungeon or the nightmare lair?
It's far from simple.
And of course it doesn't work for the example I gave in the post you're replying too.

And again, you can find a lot of solution to circumvent the problem, but the problem is still there, you need to do annoying things.
I don't care if you had to shoot your own arms to get a penny in your old times, nostalgic masochism is hardly a reference. If splitting fun and reward is the only thing that team can come up with, it's not an evolution, it's a regression.
Unfortunately, I don't applause regression. Eh, not like there aren't any other pasture to check if it's greener.

 

[Spree]

How did you play before they added BOS? BOS, fort powder, insurance buying and selling items to npc are things that never should have been added to the game. If you can do everything by yourself, solo every monster in game why not just play a single player game. EA needs to take the easy buttons out of UO.

 

[Slapshot]

No, they don't! They need to stop making things so utterly frustrating and so appalingly overpowered and bring back FUN. Get off yourself, you and all the others like that. I'm not going to say anymore, i've been shaking my head at you UHell fools for 10 years now; there's only 1 way that the direction of games are going to change and that's if players speak up.

Use the feedback form page folks, Feedback Form tell EA just how you feel about all this nonsense. Maybe one day these so-called Dev's will wake the hell up and see that they're not the only ones capable of making decisions, not the only ones who have a clue as to what is working, what is good and what is bad. Unfortunately, they'll just NEVER know by browsing here on statics uhell and reading the same old people saying the same old things to the same old issues that never get fixed right.

Poll your players EA it's the right thing to do, or continue as you're doing as apparently subscription rates are at all all time high now and that being said you must be doing everything right enough not to listen to the people that really count... THE PLAYERS INGAME.

 

[Kith Kanan]

bos change = me not picking up ANY gold anymore = only hunting stuff that has item drops that worth keeping atleast once every blue moon = using 1/1000 of the hunting options in the game or less .......

 

[Slapshot]

just thought i'd get my last post on uhell before i deleye all bookmarks to ultima, deleted all characters and dropped house due to horrible customer service on an issue involving a house placement exploit. these guys don't care folks... moving on to any NON EA game.

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

<blockquote><hr>

just thought i'd get my last post on uhell before i deleye all bookmarks to ultima, deleted all characters and dropped house due to horrible customer service on an issue involving a house placement exploit. these guys don't care folks... moving on to any NON EA game.

[/ QUOTE ]
awwww
too soon
?? too late ...
*shrugs*

<blockquote><hr>

<blockquote><hr>

*ponders* I wonder what this will entail.

[/ QUOTE ]
Some clarifications:
<ul>[*]The next publish (after Valentine's) <font color=red>will have features</font color=red> related to house plots, including some fun things and long awaited bug fixes to combat scripting house placement[/i]
Until then, the flaming rubble will remain, and the house plots you see there will not be placeable
Do not mess with our new designer, Adida - <u>she has serious skills</u>

[/ QUOTE ]

 

[Guest]

Well, I for one, like the new BoS changes...

 

[imported_Loquacious Wrath]

I too like the changes. I have been playing for a bit over two years and have always thought BOS makes UO "too easy". I mean really... some bag that magically transports loot into your bankbox?!

No. I think BOS either should go away or be limited further. Getting powders of translocation and BOS should be made HARDER.

A guild interested in loot should have to designate one guildmember to managing a train of packies. They would be responsible for keeping the packies alive and filling them with loot. They would also be incharge of having bonded and trained packies in their stable. In Felucca areas, they would be required to keep an eye out for thieves, revealing often. I like the idea of training your beasts of burden in order to increase your loot survival odds.

 

[Guest]

...

I still don't like the BoS changes, but I have a better understanding of them now that more front-end gathering changes have been made since the BoS change.

I also know the likelihood of the changes being tweaked are slim to none.

However, by the same token, it did a disservice to a LOT of players not just for resource moving (especially leather), but because the quests involved in getting the BoS and later powder supplies were a few of the more enjoyable and useful quest threads in the game and one of the few older portions of game content that saw constant use.

As for how it pertains to Ilshenar, the way I see Ilshenar is that it is and was always meant to be a more advanced PvM facet (thus the no Marking (and no Recall until they allowed Recall out), Paragons, Champ Spawns, and harder creatures.

It was never meant to be a campground for people to harvest gold (although even WITHOUT the use of a BoS, you can still rake in a TON of gold if you know where to go and how to use the area).

The removal of BoS with Ilshenar doesn't bother me in the least. I still enjoy the facet for what it is, and know of a couple of spots to rake in the gold (with STUPIDLY EASY access to a bank in the process) without the need for BoS.

 

[candlemass]

Well all they would have to do is cap it,as in how many times you could use the BOS in 24hours per character,just like they do for Luck Vase.Maybe like 3times every 24 hours,soo on average they could only send like 20k to bank per via bag of sending,put the charge use back to normal(as in before they changed everything),that way it wont be ruined for the person that only plays a few hours a day.and that could still hold the scripters at bay.

 

[Stigmatas]

It's simple.

Do your hunt, down there in Exodus, or wherever your talking about, anywhere in ish. Don't bring your packy. Hunt as usual. Dump your gold on the ground. The chances of someone actually stealing it are slim to none. Depending on where your hunting. Esp. now since all the noobs don't wanna hunt in ish anymore.

When your done, or reach about 75K. Recall to the stable, and get your packbeetle that you have been bonding for the last week. You do have one, right? If not, go get one.

Run back to your pile, pick it up and recall to the bank.

Rinse repeat.

You can be ANYWHERE in ish inside of 2 minutes.

OR......

If your not using a tamer, which by no means you don't always have too, take your packbug out of the stable, tell it to stay in a safe area...house maybe, do your hunt, collect gold, log out and back in, POOF, packy appears next to you. I don't use this method anymore myself because it's just as simple to recall to the stable and get my bugs, which I now have on just about every battle char I have.

Not the end of the world.

If someone would happen to come by and scarf up all your gold (highly unlikely) consider it a gold sink

.....and note the persons name and never res them again.

<blockquote><hr>

And of course it doesn't work for the example I gave in the post you're replying too.

[/ QUOTE ]

It works everwhere.

It's just that much easier if your not hunting in ish, or fel. Recall 4tw.

Simple.


<blockquote><hr>

And again, you can find a lot of solution to circumvent the problem

[/ QUOTE ]

What problem? You call this a problem? You know what I call a problem? Someone running a kill/loot script 24/7 with BoS and powder raking in millions of gold a day unnatended. It happened. I've seen it. Day after day. Dread spiders in Fire, Crystal demons in Prism, Fan Dancers in Dojo...the list goes on.

Sure BoS had a nice run.. I used them often. They would probably have never been a problem if it weren't for scripting. But they were. Thats the problem. Not to mention the fact that if someone is too lazy to use a packbug or recall to a bank, they don't deserve the gold.

My god, we have been given ridable packbugs, ridable smelters, virtues that rez you, that make monsters ignore you, and yet some of you still complain.

Come now.

 

[Stigmatas]

<blockquote><hr>

And again, you can find a lot of solution to circumvent the problem

[/ QUOTE ]


Had to quote this again.


Umm, welcome to life?

Seems your answering your own question here. Finding solutions to problems are one of the many aspects to UO. Tactics, game mechanics, templates, equipment, optimization of one's own computer, learning, adapting.

Welcome to UO!

 

[imported_Trokip]

Players have been complaining about Unattended Macroers who use the sending bag to continually send gold using a third party script while they are not even there. The location of these people has been pointed out to the the GM’s and Everyone else right here on these boards. But did they go out and stop them? NO! Instead they nerf the Bag Of Sending. Was that necessary? No again! They could have limited the amount of gold one account can send in a 24 hour period using a BOS. The point is they did not even try to think of something different. So now that people are complaining on the Boards that scriptors are using recall and gate in their scripts is that next? Take the easy way out and get rid of recall and gate?

Now as far as the amount of gold is concerned. The amount of gold acquired in one day could have been controlled. But aside from all this the Economy of UO is a closed Economy. There are no other countries, or forms of currency (excluding the negligible silver currency) that can affect the Economy of UO. So basically the UO Economy works on one principle. Supply and Demand. When the Supply goes up, prices come down. This has been recently demonstrated with doom arties that have fallen substantially in price since the change that increased the artifact distribution (Supply Increased) while demand stayed relatively constant. If you look at other items however, like a 120 Magery Power Scroll, A Crystalline Ring or a Castle basically the price has gone down but only slowly and not nearly as fast as Doom Arties. The reason being that demand is still high and supply relatively constant. The reason they do go down in price is because those who have them increases while those who want them decreases (Demand) and Supply slowly increases.

So over time what will be the net effect of reducing the amount of gold in the system by limiting what players farm? Over time players will have less gold in their banks. Prices of items will fall somewhat to a level known as what the market will bear. In essence what this means is this. If you cut the amount of gold in the banks by 50% and the prices are reduced by 50% you have a total wash. In other words no change. As an example lets say you have 1 million (1,000,000) gold in the bank. Lets say you buy a 120 power scroll for 1 hundred thousand (100,000) gold. This is 10% of your total gold. Lets say this great new plan works and we reduce the gold in the UO economy so you now only have 1 hundred thousand (100,000) in gold in your bank. Lets even really fanaticize and believe that the power scroll mentioned earlier drops to 10 thousand (10,000) gold. This is 10% of your total gold. So other than more space in your bank box, how are you better off? Either way you spent 10% of your total gold.

What is more than likely to happen is that as players decide to farm less for gold and the supply of gold that players own dwindles, the amount of gold sold on the outside will significantly increase. In other words the demand for gold will increase while the supply decreases. Gold selling for $1.00 per million on the outside now will go for at least $10.00 per million but probably much higher. This will increase the number of people looking for a fast buck and will turn to more unattended macroing or in the case of some foreign countries like China it may become well worth it to pay someone .$50 per hour to farm gold all day long, even without the sending bag.

The reduction in gold can only be accomplished by Developer/Town Vendor gold sinks. There has to be things worth buying on these Vendors that can be purchased no where else. If Artifacts would have been available on Vendors instead of given away in some twisted perversion of a Lottery, the gold supply would have never gotten out of hand. If the artifacts, power scrolls, runic kits etc. etc. were distributed by how hard you work for them, again not by some lottery system, and available to all this would not have happened. And if they continue to add artifacts or other items that people want and keep using the same perverted lottery system this whole process will do nothing but continually repeat itself and programmers will see it profitable to develop third party software to cheat the system. We can keep going around in this circle or they can stop it by increasing the Supply of existing Artifacts, Power Scrolls, Runic Kits etc. which will lower the prices which will then create an atmosphere of not needing as much gold, which will then reduce the supply of gold.

 

[Basara]

If you want to make Bags of sending gold sinks, instead of using outrageous numbers of charges, have them charge 50 gold (taken from the player's bank) per stone weight sent.

That way:
Gold sent: net gold = 0 (costs as mich to send gold as the gold being sent).
Gathered resources sent: Person gathering leathers or mining would have to keep gold in bank, requiring some trips to personally drop off gold, in addition to the leather sends (since you couldn't send the gold). Would elevate leather (if not ingots) to about their GP value at the donations.
Other items: well, paying 50-2000 to send most non-stackables isn't all that bad, and would be a minor gold sink.

One would have to consider, in some instances, the cost vs. benefit of sending some items.

 

[imported_Skrag]

<blockquote><hr>

So now we have heroes who can do horrible grind and accuse others being lazy.

[/ QUOTE ]

So I'm in Ilshenar and I'm full up on gold. I can run to Gargoyle City, a two minute run even if I start from Britain freakin' Bank. I can run to the nearest gypsy camp, which takes maybe a minute since I know where they are. Or I can run to the nearest moongate, pop through to Luna, and run one screen over to that bank.

You crybabies don't realize how small the land is, and how close the banks actually are. As you're sitting there in Ilshenar, chances are there's one practically right next to you.

<blockquote><hr>

Yeah right, then how comes you don't hunt in Ilshenar?

[/ QUOTE ]

I do. I did before BoS, and I still do. Seriously, what did you do before BoS were added?

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

<blockquote><hr>



One would have to consider, in some instances, the cost vs. benefit of sending some items.

[/ QUOTE ]
OR
howabout a %LOSS for sending via bos?
one by one single items ... bing! no problem

bulk gp or resources ...
eh?eh? wadda ya think?

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

A guild interested in loot should have to designate one guildmember to managing a train of packies. They would be responsible for keeping the packies alive and filling them with loot.

[/ QUOTE ]

Riiiiight. You ever been inside an Ilshenar dungeon?

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

I can run from any point in Ilshenar to a bank in one minute. Two, tops. If you were using BoS in Ish in the first place, you were just lazy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Key word you are missing here is "dungeon".

If you are down on level 4 or 5 of an Ilshenar dungeon you aren't running to a bank in a couple of minutes. Even if you did try to run out and rush back in to the same point without dying you'd be bringing along one heck of a train of monsters.

There's just no longer a point to Ilshenar dungeons. Or the Terathan Keep, or Sanctuary.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

How did you play before they added BOS?

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly....we never managed to loot that much gold. There was less gold on monsters. There also weren't any no-recall areas except maybe Terathan Keep...I forget the order they added this stuff. By the time people were all overloaded, we just left. In the odd case that we still wanted to hunt, a quick gate to the bank and we went back at it. That still works everywhere except the no-recall areas. The problem is that now you get overloaded on gold in quite literally five minutes.

The devs actually raised the amount of gold as loot in one of their many economy fix attempts...rationalizing that it would make it easier for a noob to catch up to a vet. Heh.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

The change was a good and long overdue one. The change is here to stay because it makes sense, and no one has yet provide a viable argument as to WHY it wasn't an appropriate move.

[/ QUOTE ]

It doesn't even remotely make sense.

It doesn't stop gold farming at all. When I want to make gold I can make just as much as I used to with a bag of sending. Honestly...I tend to make more because I hated running a bag of sending out of charges and would often limit myself to how many times I used it. Now...no limits, endless recalls. The only difference is a mild amount of tedium.

But that's when I'm alone, farming gold. If I'm with a group it becomes another matter entirely. Especially if we want to go somewhere there is no recalling, such as deep in the Ilshenar dungeons. Places like that have essentially been abandoned due to the BoS nerf. Heck, they weren't very crowded to begin with because they did generally take more than one person due to the lack of recall and the fairly large numbers of nasty paragons down there and you never could make as much gold off them as you could in a traditional farm spot. We would do them for fun...now there's just no fun anymore.

As for using the bag for something besides heavy resources and gold...who on earth ever did that? If the item is worth keeping, it's worth insuring...especially considering how expensive bags were. Not that I can imagine finding an item worth keeping outside of Doom or a Peerless...but that's another matter.

So...since the change didn't accomplish whatever goal they had in mind, and it did make fairly large chunks of the gameworld nearly pointless...I fail to see how it was a good change.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

You can be ANYWHERE in ish inside of 2 minutes

[/ QUOTE ]

Ilshenar has dungeons, you know. Large ones, with relatively tough spawn compared to the rest of the dungeons. Running in and out of them every five minutes is not practical.

If they wanted to cut the amount of gold in game...whey the heck didn't they just reduce the loot tables back to a sane amount?