Q1: Why can't you make old soulstones crushable to be used as a resource for new soulstones?
A1: While this would be good for fragments, I'd rather not see this for full stones as it would be too easy to do in your own vet reward by accident, or for that matter, one you were "holding for a friend", then crush it the week before they decided to return after telling you they "would never be back" when they left.
Without some checks and balances I can see this happening quite a bit with full stones. Frags I'd go with, tho.
Q2: Why doesnt a Dev answer the request about making UO more random and exploration based? That is walk east and find new stuff/new adventure/new monsters etc.
A2: It's a great idea, but isn't exactly as easy to code as you seem to think it is. The first thing that needs to be done is returning the overland spawn back to the old levels, and on both Trammel & Felucca. Give us some real danger outside our house that isn't the result of someone running back to Yew and dragging a lich to my doorstep. Once that's done, then they can start trying to do more random cross-country spawns (the Gypsies were a good step one - now we need updated evil Mage mini-towers spawning again, and maybe some other stuff - say, void creatures leaking out of Ter Mur, as many shard event mods hint is occurring but is rarely seen?)
You can't tell me it's that hard to ramp up the population and spawn rate overland. I'm willing to bet it's some memory constants that need adjustment and not whole coded routines.
Too bad we can't currently get a Dev to tell us for sure if you or I are more correct.
Q3: Whatever happen to the great idea a poster had about using dress uniforms to hold a set of armour and display its ratings?
A3: I think you mean mannikins or dress forms. Again, it would be nice, but coding it would probably take several devs a week or two to do it, to the exclusion of everything else. After all, we can't currently see those sorts of things on anything other than ourselves, and only half that info on pets.
Er, I hate to say this but why not adjust the training dummy somewhat to be a dress form? As many times as we gripe about rehued graphics, this is one time where re-using one makes sense IMO. Functional "dress code" would be the same as if dressing a vendor.
Q4: Why do you always have to tell us what is dropped on monsters and at events? Why not let us discover it or use in game NPC's to view found items and give us some lore and rarity info? Stop spoon feeding us.
A4: Because if they don't people won't know what to look for on corpses, many items would be left, and scammers will have a field day selling fake event rares, if people had to guess what was a rare.
Okay - tell us what to look for but NOT what the heck it drops on or the frequency. That means still some sense of exploration but with a target in mind instead of aimlessness. <shrug>
Q5: What don't you implement gold sinks as many have suggested here. 100 million for a basement. 1 million gold spins for wheel of decorations. ETC. Give us reason to waste gold.
A5: The "Wheel of fortune" idea is good, but the devs have been saying for years that basements would be too difficult to code in, because of how the terrain works in relation to housing. Note, however, that coding gold sinks would take time from coding other things that might be more important in the long run.
There is a housing server is there not? Use it. When a basement is purchased, the current size of the house determines the length/width of the basement. The floor and walls are fixed ... with the player able to choose from the housing tile set. If player decides to later remove the basement, only 1/2 of the purchase price is refunded ... making this still a sink of some value.
Purchase is via the NPC Architect or Real Estate Broker (the one who sells housing tools) in deed form and activated within the house plot itself by double-click. When/if basement is dismantled with 1/2 cash going into the bankbox, the deed reappears. Usage of the deed will deduct FULL basement cost from the bankbox once more.
Customization of the basement cannot be done except to add interior walls - if that - and at the going rate of cost as in customization. There will be a teleporter in the house and a matching one in the basement NW corner, security settings as in normal TP tiles. Where the teleporter in the house goes is restricted to floor #1 and the player designates 1 tile where that access will be.
Lockdowns = 10% boost to overall ones and if you want to get fancy, make the basement lockdown total/used counts a separate tally in the housing gump. House owner would see one added line for "Basement" - grayed out if not having one, active display if it has been purchased. Total lockdowns in the basement is 10% of the base house total. You cannot exceed that nor can a player use the added locks anywhere BUT the basement.
Plot resizing cannot be done with a basement in place - it must be dismantled, and removed from the house before the resizing can happen. This is to avoid customization issues going up or down in size as compared to the basement - and because lockdown counts might need recalculation. Still constitutes a sink as 1/2 of the basement purchase price is not refunded.
My question would be ... how many folks REALLY want/need that basement as compared to the number of houses total on any one shard. Would enough gold be pulled from the economy as a result?
