Devs; Please Save Our Sparklies!

[Harb]

As last week progressed more and more folks mentioned the ever increasing number of "stuck" red sparklies, asking that someone on the team do a dungeon walk and clean out the errant ones. At this point, "walks" seem to be a rather time consuming proposition. Several dungeons are now almost completely unusable, and there are at least some levels in every dungeon no longer spawning "viable" sparklies due to the excessive number of inaccessible ones. Rather than a "walk," is it possible for you guys just to delete them completely and allow the spawner to start over?

While it’s true some folks hate this event, and others love it (I fit into this group), it’s a certainty it serves no useful end to have it end as an exercise in frustration for all, which is what it's destined to become if the nasty inaccessible sparklies don’t exit in rapid manner! Thanks in advance.

 

[soze]

As last week progressed more and more folks mentioned the ever increasing number of "stuck" red sparklies, asking that someone on the team do a dungeon walk and clean out the errant ones. At this point, "walks" seem to be a rather time consuming proposition. Several dungeons are now almost completely unusable, and there are at least some levels in every dungeon no longer spawning "viable" sparklies due to the excessive number of inaccessible ones. Rather than a "walk," is it possible for you guys just to delete them completely and allow the spawner to start over?

While it’s true some folks hate this event, and others love it (I fit into this group), it’s a certainty it serves no useful end to have it end as an exercise in frustration for all, which is what it's destined to become if the nasty inaccessible sparklies don’t exit in rapid manner! Thanks in advance.

yep, I mentioned this when I realized how much of a grind the "robe" quest was becoming and getting the red sparklers was getting harder due to them stuck in unreachable areas...
Cool event otherwise, but If I wanted to grind stuff out in UO, I'd train Animal Taming

 

[ACB1961]

yep, I mentioned this when I realized how much of a grind the "robe" quest was becoming and getting the red sparklers was getting harder due to them stuck in unreachable areas...
Cool event otherwise, but If I wanted to grind stuff out in UO, I'd train Animal Taming

I agree.

I play uo, therefore I grind.

 

[Snakeman]

Sparkles should be on a Timer, IMO. if in 15 or 30 min's it has not been gotten, Poof it moves to another location. About everything else in this game can be timered, why not the Red Sparkles.

So ya don't think were all nuts, these were all fixed. Now about 24 hr's later

And many top landings to different levels. If there is a top landing area, there can be up to 4 Red Sparkles there that no one can get to, because the last set of stairs you step on pops you into the next dungeon level.

 

[Harb]

Wow. Somebody is cleaning up Destard/ Chessie as I write. Thanks devs, appreciate the efforts, this has got to be painful for somebody. Would have thanked ya in person, but you're invisible. Watched the sparklies go "poof" in the basement, then watched you working your way up. For all of us players, expect great things on a shard near you soon!

 

[Deb]

This is awesome news indeed. In Deceit alone there are almost 2 dozen that
are in unreachable places on Napa. And I won't even go there about Destard
and Despise.

 

[LordDrago]

Chessie destard does seem ot have gotten some attention. I have evennoticed that one area at teh very bottome, they actually moved some of the stalagmites, but not the large group in the center, the one juts east of those, spread themn out so the sparklies don;t get stuck there. However, I cannot find any evidence that any of the other dungeons on Chessie has received this attention.


However, whoever is taking care of Chessie/Destard. Good Job!!!

Destard is actually where I do most of my sparklie hunting

 

[MalagAste]

I begged a GM to remove the sparkles so they could be reached.... but was stuck in Q on 8 so long I finally just logged out... dunno if they were ever fixed or not... but I tried.

 

[Harb]

I did wait it out a few days ago, the GMs were not able to help. A little PM leads me to believe this was the handywork of Sakkarah herself.

 

[Adora]

I did wait it out a few days ago, the GMs were not able to help. A little PM leads me to believe this was the handywork of Sakkarah herself.

LS is all cleared up, or was as of last night. Made collection much easier! Thanks much to whoever did this!

 

[Sakkarah_]

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for the stuck sparklies. There are however enough available ones in the various dungeons that you guys should be able to continue the quest despite this annoying inconvenience. Since it is fairly time consuming to remove the stuck ones in all dungeons on both facets, we cannot do this every day. It takes about 3-4 days anyways for a large number of the sparklies to become stuck. As there will not be another publish before the event is over, we will try to do a quick cleanup pass every 3 days or so.

Sorry I cannot give you better news.

 

[Aurelius]

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for the stuck sparklies. There are however enough available ones in the various dungeons that you guys should be able to continue the quest despite this annoying inconvenience. Since it is fairly time consuming to remove the stuck ones in all dungeons on both facets, we cannot do this every day. It takes about 3-4 days anyways for a large number of the sparklies to become stuck.

For future use though, isn't it possible to give them or similar things a shorter 'life' before they are respawned elsewhere in the dungeon? It would be frustrating for one to vanish just before you reach it, but not as frustrating as watching a line of them sit in an inaccessable place for a couple of days or more.

 

[MalagAste]

Couldn't a timer be placed on them?

The trouble with doing nothing is... eventually law of averages has it so that eventually there ARE No available ones.... because eventually all the sparkles are now stuck in area's that are inaccessable....

I've been in Wrong and there are NO accessable sparkles on the second level now..... all the sparkles down there spawn in area's that are 100% blocked. Leaving the available ones only on the first floor.. and currently there are about 10 there that are now completely inaccessable....

So I moved to covetous.... where I discovered another 3 dozen sparkles that are totally inaccessable... so I moved on to despise..... finding even more sparkles that are 100% useless...

Eventually I decided it's not worth the bother...


Also could you advise folk that red crystals are only useable by the one who gathers them.... I've found that any other red ones can not be traded..... turning them in gets you the message that those are not yours.

 

[Sakkarah_]

As stated before, there is no quick fix for this as it would require a publish and there won't be one before the event ends. But for future events, there definitely are a number of approaches we can take to prevent this.

You can trade your red crystals with anyone. But as stated in another thread, characters must complete the non-repeatable portion of the quest at least once in order to turn in their first red crystal.

 

[OxAO]

easy fix would be to just reset them on server up.

 

[athos_uo]

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for the stuck sparklies. There are however enough available ones in the various dungeons that you guys should be able to continue the quest despite this annoying inconvenience. Since it is fairly time consuming to remove the stuck ones in all dungeons on both facets, we cannot do this every day. It takes about 3-4 days anyways for a large number of the sparklies to become stuck. As there will not be another publish before the event is over, we will try to do a quick cleanup pass every 3 days or so.

Sorry I cannot give you better news.

Thanks for your favorable post.

But I fear that these measures will not be taken by EA Japan, because this is only posted on Stratics. Staffs of EA Japan might not read Stratics.

Could you take trouble to inform EA Japan UO team about this, or let someone who is in charge of that do it?

 

[TheLetterQ]

First. Thanks for taking the time to reply! It gives hope that the powers that be do listen!

Second. Let me just say even with this snafu, this is a fantastic event. I've been having a blast!

Thanks for all you efforts.

Q

 

[Tyranissa Wrath]

Deceit, Destard, Orc Caves - please clear the sparkles out of the stalagmites...

 

[Basara]

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for the stuck sparklies. There are however enough available ones in the various dungeons that you guys should be able to continue the quest despite this annoying inconvenience. Since it is fairly time consuming to remove the stuck ones in all dungeons on both facets, we cannot do this every day. It takes about 3-4 days anyways for a large number of the sparklies to become stuck. As there will not be another publish before the event is over, we will try to do a quick cleanup pass every 3 days or so.

Sorry I cannot give you better news.

Sakaarah:

1. There appears to be a bug with the Event NPCs. If they reach despawn time without being cured, they can despawn, and be replaced by THE CREATURE they look like on respawn, not the event NPC. IF you kill enough of the creatures, they MAY respawn back as the NPC. Currently, Lake Austin's Trammel Ice Gypsy has been MIA for 3 days, replaced by a second Ice Fiend.

I figured out that this was going on when I was in the Shame tower, curing the female of the twins, when the male (Eric?) DISAPPEARED as an evil mage, then an evil mage spawned elsewhere in the tower. After waiting about 20 minutes for him to respawn, I started killing evil mages, and after I killed about 20-30 of them, 1-2 at a time, FINALLY Eric respawned, so that my friend with me could cure him.

2. Trammel Despise is in bad need of fixing on Lake Austin - most of the sparkles are in the swamp bowl (that only monsters can reach) at the top of level 2, and the (event?) area unreachable by players south of the Acid elemental spawn with 2 huts.

3. Perhaps you all should note the spots that you are cleaning, so that the other (non-event) half of the dev team can go in and fix those areas to where stuff (chests, sparklies, creatures, etc.) can no longer spawn in the unreachable areas in the future. It would really help those of us that frequent the dungeons even outside of events.

(note: also sending this as a bug report)

 

[MalagAste]

I hate to tell you this Sakkarah,

But for starters.... if only 12 people were intended to get the robe per shard... you would have 12,000 people pretty torked off...

Why? Because the event starts at server up..... when everyone is in school or at work...

So basically the only 12 people getting the robes either don't work or don't go to school...

If it was supposed to be THAT rare should have been part of the EM event.... NOT this way.....

Secondly Law of averages says... if you don't clear up the red sparkles and "fix" them then sooner or later..... there will be NO accessible red sparkles.

I've been pretty much doing my runs exclusively in Wrong.. (mostly since this is near my home). And it's now to the point where there are NO red sparkles you can get on the second level because all of them spawn out of reach.... First level has about 8 sparkles you can get... there are now 3 that in completely unreachable.... and down where Sakarii was spawning there is 1 now you can not reach because it's stuck inside the teleporter sparkle. I've run through dozens of other dungeons and found that more often than not the sparkles are out of reach... Shame is such a HUGE dungeon it takes far to long to effectively run through and find sparkles... too few and too far between there.

So I'd like to say you do an event like this again something needs to be addressed with the spawn spots.

Another thing.... I think that it would have been preferable to have the 140 luck robe spawn on the harbinger..... rather than from healing the gypsies....

Oh and as far as healing the gypsies goes.... really seriously this was supposed to only happen one time???? Then why so many blue crystals?? And no one but 12 people getting a reward on a shard like GL's???

What are you mad?????

I guess you want to tick off the last of the player base eh? Lucky for you it's broken... or certainly most of the player base would be cursing you right now.

 

[Busters]

Sonoma is in great need of a cleanup in many dungeons. If it is not resolved soon, then most people will only be getting 1 per round, because they will have to run the entire dungeon to get all 5 sparkles they need. I went from being able to get 11 a round and now am down to 6 or so each round, which is terrible because i know it will only get worse with each day.

 

[Sakkarah_]

Secondly Law of averages says... if you don't clear up the red sparkles and "fix" them then sooner or later..... there will be NO accessible red sparkles.

I seem to recall saying I would be doing that every 3-4 days. I would do it every day but that would be half a day gone deleting sparklies in every dungeon on every shard on both facets. Can't do that if we're to deliver the next publish on time!

Oh and as far as healing the gypsies goes.... really seriously this was supposed to only happen one time???? Then why so many blue crystals??

Because there will be a use for them in an upcoming event arc? I seem to recall reading something about the blue crystals being a very powerful cure for pretty much anything. I wonder what else might be in need of healing..

And no one but 12 people getting a reward on a shard like GL's???

Everyone is getting the reward with a little bit of effort (Harbinger), just not the 140 luck version. Going forward, there will continue to be rare items in shard-wide events. What the distribution method will be, we'll cross that bridge when we get there. The discontent of some players with the method used for this event has been noted for future reference.

What are you mad?????

Actually, yes.

I guess you want to tick off the last of the player base eh? Lucky for you it's broken... or certainly most of the player base would be cursing you right now.

There will always be someone ticked off and cursing. Nothing I can do about it nor will I lose sleep over it. There will be hits and misses. It comes with the turf. That doesn't mean that we have some sort of funky conspiracy going on to make players quit. It simply means that we are trying different things to keep it fresh instead of safe and boring. And then we take the constructive feedback and criticism into consideration when planning future events.

 

[Harb]

Sakkarah, as you may have noted, when deservant (and maybe not so much so) of a bit of criticism, I'll be honored to pile on where appropriate. It's not here. You did well. Very well. No matter which way you folks tend to carry anything, some of we players will always have a "better" idea. Sure, timers on sparklies are a viable lesson learned, or a server up deletion, or whichever of the various recommendations you guys may choose to use in the future. In your shoes, I would not have seen this one coming, and there are few if any who've put in more hours into our little gaming world than I. I can't fault the oversight, and would encourage anyone who does to reconsider the human aspect of what the dev folks do. As to the harbringer v. gypsie argument, you went exactly in the proper direction. As is, anyone vesting the time and effort can attain the higher reward. For those of us who've done the creature, well, not everyone other than those playing in groups are going to find it comparitive to simply grinding out the help fullfil the gypsies needs No need at all to let this get to you in anyway - well done, and further, the fact that you are doing all that is feasible to help manually, leads me personally to an even more satisfied conclusion/ viewpoint. Just my 2 gps.

 

[Adora]

Sakkarah, I think you're doing an AWESOME job, and I thank you and the rest of your team for the continuing effort!

 

[Deb]

"There will always be someone ticked off and cursing. Nothing I can do about it nor will I lose sleep over it. There will be hits and misses. It comes with the turf. That doesn't mean that we have some sort of funky conspiracy going on to make players quit. It simply means that we are trying different things to keep it fresh instead of safe and boring. And then we take the constructive feedback and criticism into consideration when planning future events."

AMEN, You guys keep doing what you have been, there are a lot of us
that do appreciate it and like the variety.
And no the only robe I have gotten was given to me by a friend. I will
be trying to get one on my own this weekend. And glad to hear that the
blue crystals will have a use in the future maybe. And if not, they make
great deco. I am a deco nut.