How to fix the virtues in 5 minutes

[Wizal the Fox]

1) Stop all forms of decay.
2) Leave Honor, Valor and Justice as they are: you use it you loose it.
3) Honesty and Compassion should be able to be toggled when you want to use them (the same way as Honor): "You embrace your Honesty/Compassion".
4) Sacrifice should just loose 1 dot everytime you self res.

As you see virtues are very simple to fix to make (almost) everyone happy.

 

[Kojak]

here's another, better, thought - make them like they used to be where they didn't go down when you used them - how about that instead

 

[iamSnippa]

I agree w/ Kojak, just return them to the way they were... otherwise it is a completely useless part of the game.

 

[Wizal the Fox]

If you returned the way they were Justice and Honesty will be exploited to death by a few powergaming people (this was already the case with Justice and Honesty would open a whole can of worms) and nobody else would even try to maintain most of them (How often you have you seen a Knight of Compassion?), let alone on multiple chars when there will be all 8 virtues in the game.

No, the devs did a move in the right direction by putting in place a system of loosing when you use them and slowing down the decay rate, but there are things to fix:
- The ability to toggle Honesty and Compassion would make sure you don't use/loose them when you don't want to, the same way Honor works (beside the stupidly annoying new decay)
- The decay, even small, serves no purpose anymore and just penalizes the casual or RP players.

 

[Chrille]

Yes pls stop it, ive still maintaining one char with knight in all, cause thats the time i have i used to have 6 chars with full knights. But now with honor ive lost all interest but in one char to keep it up and this char i cant ever shop with anymore.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

I believe Honor was always consumed when you used it for the "monster ignore" effect.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

I agree with a toggle for using Honesty IF the decay on use is continued.

Having said that, however, I am NOT in favor of decay via use for Honesty or Compassion. Honesty is just far too much if a grind to raise to Knight, and its not even as well-coded as the other Virtues (i.e. it is missing a lot of important system messages).

Having Compassion decay on use, a use which IS a compassionate act, is contrary to the spirit of the Vitue and just poor game mechanics. I know pleanty of Knights of Compassion who used to be more then happy to res anyone...now...notsomuch. Maintaining Knight after a high-body count EM even isn't very fun.


Return to decay over time at a maintainable level. Grinds are what drive people away, UO should be about fun.

 

[aarons6]

honor, should not decay.. should be used up.. one dot per use.
compassion, decay and not used up with resurections.
honor, decay and not used up when buying stuff.
justice, decay and not used up when you get a scroll..
valor, no decay and used up when you start a champ.
Sacrifice, no decay and used up when you self res.

 

[CovenantX]

honor, should not decay.. should be used up.. one dot per use.
compassion, decay and not used up with resurections.
honor, decay and not used up when buying stuff.
justice, decay and not used up when you get a scroll..
valor, no decay and used up when you start a champ.
Sacrifice, no decay and used up when you self res.

I agree with most in this thread, the decay previously was fine, and same system for All newly implemented virtues.

Some virtues, will be harder to raise (Valor and honor?) with the dungeon revamps and such, keep this in mind.

 

[Wizal the Fox]

honesty, decay and not used up when buying stuff.
justice, decay and not used up when you get a scroll..

I can't agree at all. Having those 2 virtues decay would greatly penalize casual players and not having them drop when used would greatly favor powergamers: Exactly the opposite of the spirit of the virtues.

After the champs guilds and their abusing hidden Protector (who has never actually fought anyone) on secondary account, I can already see the "pro" traders beeing the only ones maintaining Honesty for huge profits while the normal player who wouldn't mind to use Honesty from time to time for an exceptional expense would in fact never maintain it just for that if it decays.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

I can already see the "pro" traders beeing the only ones maintaining Honesty for huge profits while the normal player who wouldn't mind to use Honesty from time to time for an exceptional expense would in fact never maintain it just for that if it decays.

Huge profits from Honesty? Really? Are you imagining buying from an NPC using an Honesty discount and then reselling back to an NPC? IF you could pull off a profit this way, it would be tiny and take many transactions...necessitating a large amount of time dedicated to maintaining the Virtue.

The Honesty discount is only 30%, hardly an unbalancing advantage. About the only things people will save a "large amount" on is overpriced consumables such as saltpeter and fish pie ingredients, or gold sinks like taxidermy kits and fishtanks. Not items in massive demand...

Now, one could, if enterprising, buy things like reagents, scrolls, or bottles and sell them to other players...but the profits would be negligable. Again time vs profit margin.

 

[Raptor85]

Honor sacrifice and valor I have no real issue with how they work now, not really that different from before for those. Justice compassion and the new honesty though you lose all of it very quickly after gaining it, so much so that if you're working them with intent to use them they're absolutely useless. Especially justice, now that you lose it with every sot and 105 scroll you'd have to rework it after every spawn to keep using it, which takes hours, so it's not even worth it....instead of reworking it it takes less time to just do another spawn. (lately we haven't bothered with it anymore, i guess if a guild has someone dedicated entirely to reworking justice who's doing nothing else that might work but we don't have anyone who's entire purpose in UO is to sit an not attack at spawns while killing someone's red every 8 minutes for a few hours....which now that you lose on use is the only reasonable way to gain justice anymore, you lose it too quickly to be able to maintain justice from killing other players legitimately.)

 

[aarons6]

I can't agree at all. Having those 2 virtues decay would greatly penalize casual players and not having them drop when used would greatly favor powergamers: Exactly the opposite of the spirit of the virtues.

After the champs guilds and their abusing hidden Protector (who has never actually fought anyone) on secondary account, I can already see the "pro" traders beeing the only ones maintaining Honesty for huge profits while the normal player who wouldn't mind to use Honesty from time to time for an exceptional expense would in fact never maintain it just for that if it decays.

you make no sense..
if the virtues decayed say once a week, then you gotta work them every week.

but having them used up, you would have to work them every day or hour as it is now.

and it wouldnt change much as the 'champ guilds' as you say now they have a stealthed in RED too to kill when the virtue gets low.
its not like they are actually out fighting reds. lol.

 

[CatAClism]

here's another, better, thought - make them like they used to be where they didn't go down when you used them - how about that instead

Totally agree here.

Honesty in particular needs a major adjustment...it takes a very long time to get knight/max lvl and it goes away very quickly.

Not worth the effort imo to even attempt to get this virtue as the cost heavily outweighs the time spent gaining it.

They can have passive decay over time, say a dot a week MAYBE, I know we want to make them useful, not Knight every virtue and then never do another virtue quest again, that would take out a big chunk of the game..no more gaining valor/honor blah blah...that's not good either.

So a good balance in the middle is what's needed...as of right now they are in major need of an overhaul.

 

[Wizal the Fox]

Huge profits from Honesty? Really? Are you imagining buying from an NPC using an Honesty discount and then reselling back to an NPC? IF you could pull off a profit this way, it would be tiny and take many transactions...necessitating a large amount of time dedicated to maintaining the Virtue.

It would be paradise for scripters, they could just make money automatically 24/24 hidden in a shop and only work the Honesty decay once in a while. Oh well, the good point is there would be less script miners I guess...

Honor sacrifice and valor I have no real issue with how they work now, not really that different from before for those.

Obviously you haven't tried to maintain Honor on a non-warrior since they put the new decay. It takes hours to reget the last dot that you loose every week.

Especially justice, now that you lose it with every sot and 105 scroll you'd have to rework it after every spawn to keep using it, which takes hours, so it's not even worth it....instead of reworking it it takes less time to just do another spawn. (lately we haven't bothered with it anymore, i guess if a guild has someone dedicated entirely to reworking justice who's doing nothing else that might work but we don't have anyone who's entire purpose in UO is to sit an not attack at spawns while killing someone's red every 8 minutes for a few hours....which now that you lose on use is the only reasonable way to gain justice anymore, you lose it too quickly to be able to maintain justice from killing other players legitimately.)

That's because you assume Justice should give the advantage to be able to farm twice Powerscrolls systematically, while in fact a casual player would just protect for extra scrolls once in a while, as an added bonus.

you make no sense..
if the virtues decayed say once a week, then you gotta work them every week.
but having them used up, you would have to work them every day or hour as it is now.

You think like a powergamer. Nobody said Virtues should be farmables for huge benefits.

 

[Raptor85]

A casual gamer is going to kill 40-50 reds for the benefit of getting an extra 6 scrolls at a single spawn, probably all 110's? Doesn't sound very casual to me....

I mean, sure, if the idea is for the virtues to be an occasional bonus and not something to be used regularly fine, but as it stands it's not worth even worrying about justice anymore unless you have someone 100% dedicated to grinding justice every day.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

I thought someone brought up that the decay should be turned off if the character isn't logged on. This would make sense for the casual player. Maybe another way would be to adjust the decay timer depending on the uses. So, if I used a Virtue once, within a period of time, the decay timer would stay the same and if I used it twice within that time, there would be a percentage of increase. So, that the designers could control the exact amount of times it could be used by understanding the time it takes to gain.

I think there needs to be an understanding that there will be more to The Virtues in the future and we shouldn't get hung up on the details but look more outside the box for the future.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

Huge profits from Honesty? Really? Are you imagining buying from an NPC using an Honesty discount and then reselling back to an NPC? IF you could pull off a profit this way, it would be tiny and take many transactions...necessitating a large amount of time dedicated to maintaining the Virtue.

It would be paradise for scripters, they could just make money automatically 24/24 hidden in a shop and only work the Honesty decay once in a while. Oh well, the good point is there would be less script miners I guess...

No, really it wouldn't. Do you really think a scripter is going to invest the time into Honesty just to make 100gp? Thats just silly when they can AFK farm MONGBATS for more profit.

When you purchase from an NPC you almost always lose a dot. So, you could purchase about 10 times before the last path is empty... It would then take 120 lost items being returned to the correct person to regain Knight...all for a measely 30%.

Scripters can make a better profit strip mining, clear cutting, or farming mongbats.

Since Mythic obviously doesn't care about scripters at this point, lets stop encouraging them to make play more annoying to the common player in a vain attempt to cosmetically hide the real problems.

 

[aarons6]

i agree scripting is not even an issue here..

its the time wasted to achieve something and then having it decay or get used up before its really useful..

IE, 2 weeks to get knight of honesty, wasted in 1 day of buying reagents. i cant even get to knight of honor on my sampire and i honor EVERYTHING.. it decays faster then i gain and i never use it.

compassion, you can escort those guys so many times a day and with a huge time delay. yet you can lose a WHOLE tier in one outing resurrecting people and pets.

heck i think sacrifice got better.. you can now self res more then 3 times lol. yet you gotta do it 3 or 4 times a day to keep it high enough.

 

[Wizal the Fox]

No, really it wouldn't. Do you really think a scripter is going to invest the time into Honesty just to make 100gp? Thats just silly when they can AFK farm MONGBATS for more profit.

When you purchase from an NPC you almost always lose a dot. So, you could purchase about 10 times before the last path is empty... It would then take 120 lost items being returned to the correct person to regain Knight...all for a measely 30%.

Scripters can make a better profit strip mining, clear cutting, or farming mongbats.

When you quote, please try to read what you are answering to. This message was about the suggestion to remove comsumption by use for Honesty and keeping decay. In that case Honesty would be farmed to death 24/24, and not for 100 gp. This is exactly why I DO support comsumption by use. Now regarding Honesty and Compassion they should be able to be toggled ON/OFF, this is exactly what is said in the first post.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

When you quote, please try to read what you are answering to. This message was about the suggestion to remove comsumption by use for Honesty and keeping decay. In that case Honesty would be farmed to death 24/24, and not for 100 gp. This is exactly why I DO support comsumption by use. Now regarding Honesty and Compassion they should be able to be toggled ON/OFF, this is exactly what is said in the first post.

Nice strawman. I did read it, I just completely disagree with it. The time to profit ratio, even for slow time-based decay, is not something a scripter is going to rush out and abuse when there are FAR more profitable things to do - mining, lumberjacking, AFK gold farming.

If you really think someone is going to spend the time to gather and return (to the correct people) 240 lost items to get to Knight for the 30% discount...just to potentially turn a small profit...even repeatedly...then the scripters are getting desperate. It would be much more simple (and profitable) to farm mobs for gold.

 

[Wizal the Fox]

Nice strawman. I did read it, I just completely disagree with it. The time to profit ratio, even for slow time-based decay, is not something a scripter is going to rush out and abuse when there are FAR more profitable things to do - mining, lumberjacking, AFK gold farming.

If you really think someone is going to spend the time to gather and return (to the correct people) 240 lost items to get to Knight for the 30% discount...just to potentially turn a small profit...even repeatedly...then the scripters are getting desperate. It would be much more simple (and profitable) to farm mobs for gold.

Time to Profit Ratio? Buy 8k worth of crap from NPC, resell to same NPC for 10k, every single second, AFK, hidden, in Tram, in town. that's over 7m profit per hour, wake up every morning with over 50m more in your bank. That is exactly what would happen if you were not loosing Honesty while using it. And I'm pretty sure some people would manage to make even way more.

I can't believe what some people are actually saying in this thread. Are they actually thinking or just acting? Ah well, at least they are not in charge of the game, and hopefully never will be.

 

[aarons6]

Time to Profit Ratio? Buy 8k worth of crap from NPC, resell to same NPC for 10k, every single second, AFK, hidden, in Tram, in town. that's over 7m profit per hour, wake up every morning with over 50m more in your bank. That is exactly what would happen if you were not loosing Honesty while using it. And I'm pretty sure some people would manage to make even way more.

I can't believe what some people are actually saying in this thread. Are they actually thinking or just acting? Ah well, at least they are not in charge of the game, and hopefully never will be.

unfortunately this did not work when i tried it.

if honesty decays at the same rate it does now it will always be useless.
the SMALL discount you get on goods is used up way to fast for it to be of any use.

that is why i think this virtue should not be used up when you buy stuff but it should decay over time, keeping you out finding objects to stay knight.

what youre saying is you turn in 100s of items, and you save a few k on some items that you buy?
the few k in gold you save would have been made easier by killing a few monsters.

 

[Raptor85]

Time to Profit Ratio? Buy 8k worth of crap from NPC, resell to same NPC for 10k, every single second, AFK, hidden, in Tram, in town. that's over 7m profit per hour, wake up every morning with over 50m more in your bank. That is exactly what would happen if you were not loosing Honesty while using it. And I'm pretty sure some people would manage to make even way more.

I can't believe what some people are actually saying in this thread. Are they actually thinking or just acting? Ah well, at least they are not in charge of the game, and hopefully never will be.

Easy fix...make sure even with honesty you can never sell to the same vendor for more than you bought it for.(should never be able to hit that mark anyways)

 

[Sir_Bolo]

If you really think someone is going to spend the time to gather and return (to the correct people) 240 lost items to get to Knight for the 30% discount...just to potentially turn a small profit...even repeatedly...

It's about 3 weeks of work to set up, for a huge guaranteed gain.
Example:

Buy a stack of 500 diamonds at 30% discount = spend 70k
Sell stack of 500 diamonds back to NPC = receive 75k
That's a 5k gain every 2 seconds of scripting, 9M per hour, more than 200M per day.
You can find ways to do much better than that (e.g. buy a stack of 500 of each gem at the same time).

Of course, currently you can't do this, because you'll lose Knight of Honesty after the first purchase. If the Devs removed the decay of Honesty with use, Knight of Honesty would become one of the biggest gold-farming exploits in history (how ironic rolleyes: ).

If the Devs want to remove the decay on use, Knight of Honesty needs to be nerfed first, either by reducing the discount, or by reducing the NPC buyback price.
With the current prices the decay is necessary.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

I don't know if it can be done in only 5 minutes, but basically they should be reverted back to the way they used to work.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

Time to Profit Ratio? Buy 8k worth of crap from NPC, resell to same NPC for 10k, every single second, AFK, hidden, in Tram, in town. that's over 7m profit per hour, wake up every morning with over 50m more in your bank. That is exactly what would happen if you were not loosing Honesty while using it. And I'm pretty sure some people would manage to make even way more.

I can't believe what some people are actually saying in this thread. Are they actually thinking or just acting? Ah well, at least they are not in charge of the game, and hopefully never will be.

Yeah, except you fail to acknowledge or realize that the virtue decays with use, i.e. purchases. After a few purchases the discount goes away and you must work the virtue back up again.

Making millions per hour buying and selling cannot be done using the discount.

You yourself said in your OP "1) Stop all forms of decay." That right there would enable exactly what you are arguing against. If Honesty didn't decay when used, then yes it could be power gamed by scripters to make millions.

 

[Sir_Bolo]

You yourself said in your OP "stop all forms of decay."

I think that Wizal was talking about stopping all forms of time-based decay in his OP, not decay on use...

 

[Wizal the Fox]

I give up.
Some people apparently can't read english.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

I give up.
Some people apparently can't read english.

Ok, after re-reading the thread a third time, I think I found where you are actually saying that timed-based decay should be stopped but that the decay on use should remain.

The thing is, that solution doesn't really work best for each virtue. It seems fit well for Honesty but for Compassion, I think decay on use sucks balls. I think Justice a bit borked with decay on use too.

I definitely think decay over time sucks for Sacrifice but that decay on use was too much before. I think I remember reading that it's less now. I haven't used Sacrifice since the change.

 

[Frarc]

Its not that hard to maintain the Virtues.

If you can't keep them up maybe you not worth to be a Virtuous Knight.
The Virtues are a way of life.
​

 

[Arcus]

I give up.
Some people apparently can't read english.

Maybe you cannot articulate yourself properly?

 

[KingHen]

I honestly cannot come up with one good reason for my honor to decay. Not one. Nothing... Nada...

It goes away enough while I use it, there is absolutely no reason for me to lose it for nothing.

None whatsoever...

 

[Miri of Sonoma]

Its not that hard to maintain the Virtues.

If you can't keep them up maybe you not worth to be a Virtuous Knight.
The Virtues are a way of life.
​

Indeed!! I call them my virtue chores and with the addition of Honesty, they truly are CHORES!! *chuckles* Still as you say, 'tis the life of a virtuous knight..*smiles*

 

[Mirt]

My only big issue is compassion. If I rez folks at an EM event bam. There goes a week of work. Maybe my EM's just like killing us more... or maybe my friends die to much....

 

[Raptor85]

Its not that hard to maintain the Virtues.

If you can't keep them up maybe you not worth to be a Virtuous Knight.
The Virtues are a way of life.
​

er, seem to be missing justice there

 

[Frarc]

er, seem to be missing justice there

Yes thats because i can not get Virtue of Justice in a normal way.

There are two ways :

Find and kill Murderers. But I'm a terrible PvPer and probably kill zero of them.

Or find some red friends and kill them over and over. But personally i find that cheating.I don't want with my Knight of Virtues to get my Virtues in a dishonest way.

So I'm not worthy of Knight of Justice and i won't have it.I would like to have it but it don't bother me i can't.
However i always I'm a supporter of the idea to gain in Virtues in multiple ways. Like i suggested on the TC forum to tied fighting in the upgraded new dungeons like Shame to gain in the Virtue opposite of the dungeon.

 

[Raptor85]

That's kinda my point though, old decay for justice you needed to kill one red every week or two to maintain, wasn't really a huge deal (even if you're not that great a pvper you could get lucky in that amount of time, just go to wherever the pvp is on your shard, all kill, and hope for the best), didn't need to cheat. New system basicly forces you to farm a friend, bring said friend along to the spawn and continue farming him there, and then keep farming him after the spawn, the amount of upkeep needed for justice now is quite riduculous to the point where, as said, the reward for justice just not being worth the time invested. (much like if you were to actually use honesty, are 3 weeks worth of work really worth 20k gold?)

 

[elspeth]

I'm a tamer and haven't had too much trouble keeping my compassion up even with pet deaths and the like. However, I have not been to a big EM or guild event or anything like that yet. It is fine as it is for casual gameplay as it is now but I do worry about what will happen in a big event.

I'm not even bothering with honesty though, it is hard to gain and it sounds super rough.

 

[Raptor85]

the new honesty items at least are worth picking up and keeping

 

[Lord_Puffy]

anything fixed in 5 minutes is amazing with uo.

 

[Lord_Puffy]

seriously tho, look atsome of the little bugs thatstill exsist... 14 years later