Gold Worthless now?

[Sevin0oo0]

Could this be a good direction? ...no fence-sitters

I don't multitask well anymore, and there were too many things to think about concerning this
I also currently, do not like to repeat myself, ever, so I'll do this a bit differently by including a couple quotes first, just to kick it off.

said: the end drawing near for the gold system? the Next Big Thang - Points? They don't take any room, fast to count, and carry it all with you. interesting.

It's kind of funny how people are already complaining about the points being a grind when all you have to do is kill stuff, which is probably the most enjoyable thing about any game IMO. I get to kill stuff and not think about it until I cash in when I'm done? What is this, Chuck E Cheese? It's going to be great. UO's personal pan MOBA-style mini game. I'm going to Pizza Hut all over that joint. Where's my quarters? It's arcade time, waffles!

Maybe you don't enjoy the PVM/PVP aspects, mainly socializing, crafting, growing plants, etc., but you want a new Deco, oops, points only, why should you be forced to endure something you don't particularly like?

Trash loot, permanently gone, I didn't say Loot Free. No checks, no dupes. No storage issues. Secure high-value trades. Missed that loot because the mob got covered over by mounding dead and decayed, get swamped by other mobs and didn't have time, it died unreachable, whatever the reason, you get credit for the kill, which is the main thing isn't it? The mad dash to get spawned gold on the ground, automatically divided. Had to leave and go home because you got 'heavy', only from items now.
The exchange rate? unknown, but it's settable by Devs, possibly not as inflation control, but inflation removal - No more Quarters, Debit card used here.
...just something to think about while playing Cove *NEW* . Thoughts?

 

[Tina Small]

I actually use loot items, and not just to unravel them.

Hard to say why they're putting in the points system. One more thing to have to stop and look up on your loyalty page? It's already gotten to be a pain to look at it.

Changes like this that are made with no explanation for their purpose make me feel like UO is nothing more than a testing ground. Maybe the EMs are in on the reason for the change, but I guess the rest of us just have to sit, wait and wonder and ask ourselves why we keep paying for this stuff every month.

 

[silent]

Nope, despite all the junk loot it's always a nice surprise to see something worthwhile.

 

[Uriah Heep]

I vote no, change just for change's sake to see what happens is just an experiment. And we've been test subjects too many times, I think.
The statement about no more dupes kinda fired me up, cause it makes me think this is the EA way...just toss systems out and start over.

A novel idea, if you dont like people duping, then fix the flaws in the system, not just throw the whole thing out the window!

Or, since gold is too much of a hassle, we could all go play some other game where points is all you have to worry about...

 

[Sevin0oo0]

I actually use loot items, and not just to unravel them.

How much 18-23 total AR (w. no other mods) loot do you keep? Altho one step Above store bought, still pretty poor for a noob
I use a lot of loot too, mostly for durability, resists, and other aspects, and for imbuing/unraveling. I don't even open the corpses of mongbats, not worth my time.

I went back and bolded 'Not loot free'. What good is Cracker Jacks, if there's no prize inside?

 

[old gypsy]

I may not have a good understanding regarding "points", so please excuse me if I am wrong; however, I think there may be many players who aren't into accumulating "points", and to whom the UO gold system is of great importance. If they must grind for "points", they might not see any reason to continue playing.

 

[Bob the Merchant]

What about those of us with 10 vendors full? *sighs*

 

[Sevin0oo0]

I may not have a good understanding regarding "points", so please excuse me if I am wrong; however, I think there may be many players who aren't into accumulating "points", and to whom the UO gold system is of great importance. If they must grind for "points", they might not see any reason to continue playing.

You kill/grind for gold, what's the difference? 'trashcan' points, 'Cove' points, it's here, and it looks like the points idea is expanding, city points, loyality, etc.


--> Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a good or bad direction, there's just too much to take in, is why I brought it up. If I obtain 125 mil (in bank) times 6-7 characters, Excluding house storage, is there any need for Me to continue playing? Banks all full, guess I'm done, unless I convert to RMT, how pathetic, might as well be AFK.

 

[OvenBird]

I'm all for the points in addition to gold. It makes me think of the two definitions for the word fortune: position in life as determined by wealth, or luck. With gold, some of us in UO are rich, and that should (should) be the mark of hard work and cunning. Others are lucky, and have been praying to God RNG every night. But the two are not mutually exclusive, and neither are particularly fair. Points help to balance that out. Got luck? You still have to work for something. Work hard and don't seem to hit the RNG? You're covered too.

If points became transferable then the auto honor/kill scripters would still be dominating the economy. Keeping them on one character helps nullify that. Too, the economy is already, from a UO world standpoint, about as anachronistic as it could become: automatic transfers from vendors, item insurance. It might keep the citizens of Britania calmer to know their knights aren't hoarding all the gold, but then again I've never seen them take on dungeons!

 

[Uriah Heep]

I hate to see us moving yet closer to being "just another game" instead of being true to ourselves. :/

What will be next? Tossing out skill points and going with XP?

 

[old gypsy]

You kill/grind for gold, what's the difference? 'trashcan' points, 'Cove' points, it's here, and it looks like the points idea is expanding, city points, loyality, etc.

Not necessarily. I've known a few players who don't hunt anything if they don't have to... mainly people who enjoy peaceful occupations like basic resource gathering, lumberjacking or mining, for instance. I don't think there are any points awarded for those activities.

 

[Ron Silverbeard]

So, will my luck suit be an advantage to get more "kill points" to turn in somewhere, somehow, sometime?
Or should i sell my high luck pieces off - yet...

 

[G.v.P]

The exchange rate? unknown, but it's settable by Devs, possibly not as inflation control, but inflation removal - No more Quarters, Debit card used here.
...just something to think about while playing Cove *NEW* . Thoughts?

I don't think gold will be replaced by a points system. I understand the idea of trying an anti-dupe, but being able to trade and pick up gold makes it tangible, and I think the game relies on gold, or gold checks, being there as items. I don't know.

Before checks we'd all aspire to get castles so we could dedicate one room to treasure, taking six gold coins out of a stack to form piles and piles. The weight of gold, as well, helps prevent its flow. I mean, not by much anymore, after they allowed us to carry even more gold. But a problem you run into with points is they have no weight. To me, points would be easier to farm than gold. You'd try to prevent duping then end up with more scripting. In other words, I don't think the devs will prevent cheating by going points-only.

Getting gold isn't really that much of a grind IMO. Nearly everything has gold, so it's not like you have to wait on the RNG. I remember when I made my first million killing Elder Gazers in Covetous...of course, now I won't ever be able to do that again, haha. It's just if you try to compete, you're competing with people whom have played for several years, even a decade or longer. Trying to catch up with billionaires just isn't practical for a noob, and, fortunately, no one has to be rich to play UO, you just have to have a few capable friends. Then you grind. You grind BODs, imbuing, peerless and champ spawns, trying to get arties and items you would rather get for "free."

Part of what makes this new artifact system via Covetous interesting is the arties come on the heels of a huge factions change which prevented a great deal of players from using the top tier artifacts. These new Gauntlet-inspired creations won't balance that loss but will give cross-sharders an accessible way to obtain easy, preset items that can certainly bolster a suit. But to me, the most important thing about Covetous is the spawn system itself. Themed, RNG, no loot necessary, just kill, defend, heal each other, and play the game. Everything is stripped away and the end result is just a group of people fighting to obtain a unified reward. That's something this game has been missing, and I hope the devs can apply this new "defend a point" mini-game to Factions somehow, somewhere between Shard of the Dead and Covetous.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

will my luck suit be an advantage to get more "kill points" to turn in ...?

Excellent point!! thank you. What effect will Luck suits have on the New Cove 'lootless' mobs? You'd think it would - another reason why
Luck should affect more than just loot - like HCI/DCI, etc.

 

[Ludes]

I'm just gonna have to convince myself they wouldn't be that stupid.

"I believe".... "I believe"... "I believe"....

 

[Lady Storm]

Ok I am about to play..... Bear with hehe
Ok lets look at this from a Dev point of view.
We have been clamoring for larger checks, easeier looting of kills, and a general stopping of the duping of gold in the game for years.
They have plenty of game models to go by that in their own game world work pretty well, ie: Wow as a example. Most here have general knowlage of wow I assume? If not it's a simple thing you kill or sell and its all on that character in a running total on your display, You can transfer it to any of your accounts members by ether mail or if your smart you have a guild bank to be accessed for it.
I for one see a way to end the constant complaints of not being able to access kills that fall out of reach, too many in the pile of dead to get all or part. Then you have the suspicions of player with so much gold that one feels the only way such a mass amount of gold could have been gotten is duping... (not always the case in the market of event items these days).

Granted if we went to the same system of wow or any of the other games that use point to represent gold. Many here will go batty and run to the exit...
Yes some will be the dupers.. but I bet you not that many... there is plenty of other things in the game to dupe and it will not stop sales of the points ...lets get real here.

Infact thinking it over this makes it so much easer on the sales of "gold" in the point system that the Dev must look at it a bit more I think.
My reasoning is very simple, most of the gold problems in uo are the lower population and the high end gold prices required to buy the player items. Not some duper. Not that they have not contributed to the glut but honestly I personaly know a very large hand full of ways to make a mill gold in afew short hours just doing simple crafter things... mind you they are tiresome but they wil make you the gold if you are in dire straits and in a time rush.
A tamer can with a gd bring in a great deal more.
My son has killed in the dungeons for a few minutes and come out with a few hundred k and he was puttering testing out weps he made!
Gold is not that hard to pile up... It just takes determination to do it.
The only reason at this point in the game to go to a point system is for the clamoring of the larger checks and bigger bank size to handle the gold influx needed for todays vendor sales and prices.

Now the plus side for some..... Space
If we went to points your bank box would be free of the steady pile of gold checks and loose gold that tends to clutter up the average persons bank box. Passing points to your characters would be tricky but not impossible. And if they linked the accounts full character list to the points held on the account the full points would be available to any of your characters, anywhere. It would make purchasing thing to be easy. No more changing characters to get the mill check off or buy with the wrong character an item... In a way its a check book you never loose... there is one tiny down fall to this too though........
If your account is hacked..............your fubared.
When i was hacked on the 3 accounts a few months back the hacker didnt just take the gold and items for himself, he sold them and bought things to launder the gold. With a point system any hacker could go to luna or any vendor with high end items buy till your dry of points trade them to another account and your stuck.
There is another small thing that would stop trade in luna or any other big gathering place for players... the sales of items... that lone character who is selling his soulstone frag(example only) no vendor.... how would a player do it with the point system?? would this stop the non vendor owner from selling items?

I for one if I was the dev, would go to the larger check. Not as large as many here would like but still large enough to warrent the change. 20 mill tops. Reason's for the 20 is simple, 5 make a 100mill so smaller number of checks needed and would put buying a house much simpler for some. The breakdown of the checks in bank boxes would be less stressfull as well no need to enlarge the box more. the 20/1 ratio would make it alot more simpler on players transfering shards.

Jeff if you read this sugar take it from a lady who knows the game alot better then most. This points thing, while its a good idea, we are way too late int he game to put in a points system... Players will balk and we just might loose alot more then you bargaind for. One thing I know well is the players dont take well to big changes and this is a big change if you do it. Like I said if it were I in your shoes, up the limit of making checks to 20 mill. changing the code would be much easer... then changing the uo player mind.

 

[Uriah Heep]

I'm just a stubborn hard-headed old codger. Will I be farming Covetous for points to turn it? I seriously doubt it, that gets old in a hurry, much like I gave up on Library donations because I refuse to spend my life getting enough, and I wont script it.
Spring cleaning? that was easy, I closed down 7 accounts and tossed it all, those were easy points LOL. But since then I havent worried too much about it. If ya want anything from it, find me, Ill get it for ya for the equivalent of 50gps per point (thats half the system price).

With that said, IF the items from the Cove points were great enough, I might be interested. But if its llike the list of "arties" posted, nah. My non legendary crafters and imbuer make items that suit me more than any of that.

Sorry for the ramble, but in the end, I feel most of us really just like to have something to loot, gold in our hand (not some imaginary accountant thing in the sky) because it IS a world, not just a quick game. And to those who have full banks of checks, vendors loaded to the max, houses loaded to the max with checks...if thats becoming a problem, hell, give some away!!! sheeesh

 

[Woodsman]

I'd rather they work on bringing the amount of gold down so that it's worth something or giving us something more to do with it. We're only in this situation because it's so easy to obtain in-game, and cheap to buy in real-life from the scripters. It used to be that having a few hundred thousand in gold meant you were doing quite well.

The fact that people are having to deal with the issue of not being able to hold enough checks....maybe rather than deal with the symptoms, deal with the root cause.

Inflation happens in all long-term MMORPGs. I have around 125,000 in gold on my main World of Warcraft character. Once upon a time that meant I could buy just about anything I wanted. Now it means I'm only a couple of purchases away from being "poor".

 

[Jhym]

Points, imho, are for achievement comparison and turning in to get special awards that are not needed to play.

Gold is to buy/sell items and materials to play.

In a nutshell, that is the distinction and it makes sense to keep it distinct the current way we play. I have played a few games that had reward money just banked when you killed things, and while it was much more convenient, it meant you had no concept of VALUE. In the real world, people have the same problem with cash versus credit/debit. It has been shown that if you have 10$ in front of you versus 10$ on a debit card, you are likely to be far more careful with the actual cash and be less likely to spend it. I suspect this is true even in the virtual world.

I think it is good to force us to have tradeoffs when receiving loot -- should you take the junk, the one item you like, the money, or all of it? It forces you to think and watch what is going on (what's the use of having 40K from monsters when a lich can curse you and beat you to death in a slap fight?)

The original limitations on the number of resources that can enter the game were there to foster player interaction and keep it from becoming a mad dash to "get the most". However, many of those restrictions are gone or altered, and so some of the odd limitations really don't make sense in our current "world'.

For instance, the 60K limit on stacks, the restriction of checks to 1M, the the overall weight of gold.

There is also the non-value of many items. By this, I mean there are items and materials that were arbitrarily set a value when the game was new, and even at that point the prices made no sense. Why is a mace 12 gold, when the 6 ingots cost 48? Why are reagents 3-5 gold? Most of the "true" valuation occurs between players (which is abhorrent to people who believe everyone cheats and couldn't possibly have worked for millions of gold to buy things with.)

I think if they do anything with the gold economy, allow special checks of 5M, 10M, 50M and 100M, that can be broken into the lower values (100=2x50, etc.); and force a complete revaluation of all npc prices based on underlying materials and time used to craft everything. I also think player crafting needs to be generating the best items in the game, not just great.

*shrug*

 

[claudia-fjp]

"Gold worthless now?"

No, gold worthless long time.


It used to be:
"I'll give you hundreds of dollars for that event item and/or castle!"
"Ok."

Now it's:
"I'll give you 400,000,000 million gold for that event item and/or castle!"
"How about 50 bucks?"
"Sheesh, no thanks."

Probably has to do with an amount of gold so high I'd have to use scientific notation to write a number that big being duped and never deleted over the years...

 

[Sevin0oo0]

Like the proposed faction artie vending machine on Siege, I think I found one hitch with this concept...
Trammie gets PK'd for that nickel in his pocket... oops, Killer gets the empty hole in them pants?

Side Note: Jyhm said, "and while it was much more convenient, it meant you had no concept of VALUE", I take this as a Plus, it's not like you get anything repo'd from overspending. People feeling free to spend, on a Whim, why not, it's fantasy after all. Get it, Spend it, it's all virtual. If it stimulates community spending, not a good thing?

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

The "problem" with gold having such a high number is that that "number" has never been hidden. In games that use staggered currency systems (copper -> silver -> gold -> plat -> ???), they are generally tiered so that 100x = 1 y. So take for instance WoW...

In WoW 100 copper = 1 silver, 100 silver = 1 gold, so 1 gold = 10000 copper. Copper is the BASE currency in WoW, anything above is simply used to hide the larger number in appearance of value.

UO does NOT have this hiding mechanism since gold is the BASE currency. If you compare them on equal terms, 10,000 UO gold = 1 WoW gold, and therefore 1,000,000 UO gold = 100 WoW gold. Now take the appropriate time frames into account (~15 years for UO, ~8 (I think) for WoW) and compare the two and the values actually come much closer for general ingame expenses. Also if I remember correctly, LotRO uses the same system but has either the copper or silver values go to 1000 instead of 100 before hitting the next currency making 1 LotRO gold = 100,000 UO gold

As for Covetous, I look forward to checking out how the new dungeon works. Hopefully it won't be too melee unfriendly. The rewards look interesting and non-permanent, which gives value to continued PvM in Covetous.

As for gold, since the points can't buy stuff off of player and NPC vendors or from other players, gold still has a place as a medium of exchange.

I could understand having gold spawn on creatures corpses as usual, but then acted as per other systems where it's held in a separate tally while on the character without being a physical total and then "deposited" into the bank for safe storage. Weight would have to play into account as would the use of bags of sending.

I think there is room for both the dungeon points and gold ingame. No need to replace one with the other.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

I have seen nothing that seems to suggest to me that gold is being phased out.

Also when folks say gold is "worthless" they usually mean either that its exchange rate with RL money has fallen (which is the worst possible metric I can think of) or, in the case of posters in this thread thus far, one of two contradictory things: Stuff is too easy to buy, stuff is too cheap to buy. Two contradictory paths to the same statement.

We used to call the same concept "collapsing economy," and per the folks who said this stuff all the time UO's economy has been on the brink of collapse for 10 or so years now. If it actually were collapsing in any meaningful sense it would have collapsed by now. Also keep in mind that economic collapses are hard-enough to define IRL let alone in a game. Also keep in mind that 'stuff is too expensive to buy for me' or 'stuff is too expensive to sell for me' is not the same thing as economic collapse, or gold being worthless, especially when you consider that almost everything useful in this game there's more than one way to get.

-Galen's player

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

What about the simple fact that gold simply fits into the context of the game...Seriously what midevil style society would take "points" off their kills?Thats just lame to me and im not a "hardcore" rper or anything but i enjoy the games rp elements and the point instead of gold thing would just be a huge turnoff for me.I think all the other point systems are fine but i likes me gold!

 

[Cyanide_Mage]

"Gold Worthless now?"


Nope, anywhere from .25-.75 a mil.

 

[Viper09]

"Gold worthless now?"

No, gold worthless long time.


It used to be:
"I'll give you hundreds of dollars for that event item and/or castle!"
"Ok."

Now it's:
"I'll give you 400,000,000 million gold for that event item and/or castle!"
"How about 50 bucks?"
"Sheesh, no thanks."

Probably has to do with an amount of gold so high I'd have to use scientific notation to write a number that big being duped and never deleted over the years...

I don't think that shows that gold is worthless. Rather I just see that what was considered to be a large amount of gold years ago is now "pocket change." Because gold never really leaves the system since all it really does is change hands, prices just keep going up. Gold is not worthless, you just need a lot more of it to buy something good now days.

While I'm not a big fan of WoW, I do believe their system for currency is a lot better.

 

[claudia-fjp]

I don't think that shows that gold is worthless. Rather I just see that what was considered to be a large amount of gold years ago is now "pocket change." Because gold never really leaves the system since all it really does is change hands, prices just keep going up. Gold is not worthless, you just need a lot more of it to buy something good now days.

While I'm not a big fan of WoW, I do believe their system for currency is a lot better.

What you seem to be talking about would just be from normal inflation.

What I'm referring to is people creating many many trillions of gold out of thin air causing it become worthless. If I could walk outside, grab a rock off the ground, chant abracadabra loop de dupe and transmute it to gold, then told the world how to do it, gold wouldn't be worth over $1000 an ounce anymore it'd be as worthless as any rock.

 

[Viper09]

What you seem to be talking about would just be from normal inflation.

What I'm referring to is people creating many many trillions of gold out of thin air causing it become worthless. If I could walk outside, grab a rock off the ground, chant abracadabra loop de dupe and transmute it to gold, then told the world how to do it, gold wouldn't be worth over $1000 an ounce anymore it'd be as worthless as any rock.

Unless you're suggesting that everyone in this game is doing exactly that, inflation is all that is going on with gold. Gold still has its value, however its value has just simply changed.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

Except for the PVP aspects, posts are leaning me to push that Yes button. Inflation seems a normal unavoidable part of (any) game experiences. I think "our" Dev team is smart enough to take control of it w/o making UO a clone of someone Else's game. UO's the Trailblazer, some paths we take, while similar, are, and should, remain unique.