Lumberjacking - WTH!?

[Longforge]

Ok, so I lumberjacked for SIX hours... and I am FAST.

Best I came up with was Bloodwood - ONCE. Heartwood - ONCE.

No Frostwood...

This has to be some kind of joke....

 

[StaticOnAtlantic]

this has been going on for like 3 years join the crowd. Its to "stop" scripters from mass lumber jacking but in turn screws alot of people

 

[WarUltima]

Ok, so I lumberjacked for SIX hours... and I am FAST.

Best I came up with was Bloodwood - ONCE. Heartwood - ONCE.

No Frostwood...

This has to be some kind of joke....

Give up using it for chopping woods...
Use the skill in PvP and it will let you do 2 more damage to others!!!

 

[Longforge]

WOW...

I fully support stopping scripters, no doubt. But to make it utterly impossible to find any sort of top end wood or even Yew wood for that much is completely pointless.

I found and hit 5 new caves mining today and found 7x Valorite spots - 5 Verite Spots and 7 Agapite Spots...

Plus - it's not like there was a huge wood market as there is only a handful of weapons/armor you can make.

I prefer the wood for furniture and deco.

Oh well - I guess that kind of crucial balance is not a priority.

 

[Kiminality]

Its to "stop" scripters from mass lumber jacking but in turn screws alot of people

No it's not.
It was changed to rebalance the rarity of the woods, since with static resource tiles, people would cherry pick what they gathered, ultimately meaning that proportionately more rare wood would be harvested.

The static tiles were exploited by many scripters, in the same way as they were by many legit lumberjacks, and it was that that was targeted with the change.

 

[Raptor85]

Actually it makes it easier for scripters and harder for players...scripters can continually farm out out of the way spots here nobody looks not caring that it took 12 hours to get 200 bloodwood, before they had to go to places people checked and could kill them/page on them. Right now, thankfully, I've found a tree that's given heartwood for 3 weeks now...I'm ready to set up a shrine around the thing praying it stays like this forever. Hard to keep myself supplied with armor when it takes so much time to gather the materials...

 

[Kiminality]

It's more or less the same as it always was, only with increased rarity.
Undeniably, the scripters still benefit, but the amount of benefit they get is more or less directly proportional to the amount of time they spend doing it. If they spend twice as long chopping trees, they'll generally get twice as much

 

[popps]

This is thanking to scripters.

What I do not understand, though, is why, rather than stopping scripting for good, regardless, the ability to script stays but players are penalized with random resource spawns.

Besides, a scripter that has scripts running 24/7 is marginally affected by this change since chances are that at the end of the scripting day "some" high end resources will be mined or chopped anyways. The casual player, instead, is totally out of luck as a few hours of game play cannot compete to the time a scripter can have a script running.

I think and always have said that the solution to the problem was wrongly addressed.

The solution was not randomize resources spawns, IMHO, the solution should have been instead to just make scripting a non possible activity in Ultima Online any longer. Stop it for good.

Yet, even after many months (a year ?) from the mentioning of the now famous "spreadsheet" by Cal, we still see scripting in Ultima Online.

It really is beyond my comprehension (and I find it upsetting) why, an activity such as scripting that has harmed the game and many players so much, would not finally be addressed once and for all.

 

[Derium of ls]

Is it possible to record how much ore/wood/ect an account gathers in an amount of time?

If so maybe put a soft cap after X amount gathered (say, 3 hours worth) and then a hard cap at 5 hours worth of nonstop gathering per day.

Scripters will be working 19 hours less effective a day. unless they use multi accounts, but still that's 19 hours less per account.

I know some people might be against that, but I'd have to imagine the people who gather 5+ hours a day are far and few between. Or Heck, make a weekly cap on it.

or how about a GGS for ore/wood? If you swing an axe at trees 300 times with no top rare wood, then you'll have increased odds per swing until you finally strike some, then it resets again.


I dunno, just some thoughts.

 

[popps]

Is it possible to record how much ore/wood/ect an account gathers in an amount of time?

If so maybe put a soft cap after X amount gathered (say, 3 hours worth) and then a hard cap at 5 hours worth of nonstop gathering per day.

I'd imagine that software coding allows for many things to get done. Not everything is possible, but I would imagine that such a thing could be feasible (correct me if I am wrong).

And, it could be expanded and not just limited to gathering resources but also for Bulk Order Deeds or Heartwood Quests which have been other game activities long scripted.

But the hard cap should be per account, not character, and trial accounts should be barred from being useable at all for activities that could be scripted otherwise, scripters could find work arounds.

I think it would be a good thing for Ultima Online casual players.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

No it's not.
It was changed to rebalance the rarity of the woods, since with static resource tiles, people would cherry pick what they gathered, ultimately meaning that proportionately more rare wood would be harvested.

The static tiles were exploited by many scripters, in the same way as they were by many legit lumberjacks, and it was that that was targeted with the change.

YEP
static spawns are silly.

That is why a rune book of valorite sites or frostwood, wiped out rarity. It is silly.

 

[Merion]

Well, rare would are rare since the change... I'm fine with it. Always found it silly that I could just go out and mine up a few thousand valorite whenever I wanted.

 

[Gheed]

RNG LJ Sucks

 

[Sevin0oo0]

No it's not. It was changed to rebalance the rarity of the woods

Looks like you're in the minority, to the OP, and others, Don't believe that, it's propaganda originally issued by a Dev(now gone I think) and several posters still spread this misinformation. If you Like going for Hours, only finding a handful of top-end ingots/wood, fine, that's your time to play as you want, the Rest of us think it's CRAP - run a Poll and See if posters like how it affects Them and maybe we'll get a wider view of this.

LJ and mining were my first skills, so it's not something new for me

Here's how it affects me:
I have an axer, I don't do tree runs anymore.
I have a miner, I don't do mining runs anymore.
Colored stone availability, stops me from doing deco anymore, no orders anymore.
Colored Wood enhancement/build, I Never think wood anymore, think dye tub.
Colored ore enhancement/builds, I have a few colored ingots left, otherwise I usually never think about this anymore.
I suspect these two skills will be flushed next (mining first), just as my t-mapper was flushed (and I sure wasn't the First to do this)

Most of my chars, I think of them in the same light as I do a soulstone.

 

[Hanna]

....Here's how it affects me:
I have an axer, I don't do tree runs anymore.
I have a miner, I don't do mining runs anymore.
Colored stone availability, stops me from doing deco anymore, no orders anymore.
Colored Wood enhancement/build, I Never think wood anymore, think dye tub.
Colored ore enhancement/builds, I have a few colored ingots left, otherwise I usually never think about this anymore.
I suspect these two skills will be flushed next (mining first), just as my t-mapper was flushed (and I sure wasn't the First to do this)

Most of my chars, I think of them in the same light as I do a soulstone.

But, you failed to stop doing one more thing. You failed to stop paying them for this game.

I quit for much of what you are comlaining about.

 

[[JD]]

They've made LJ so hard/annoying that to make any progress you almost have to BE a scripter.

I trained LJ to 100, only to discover how bad it was. I gave up and bought boards in luna - probably from a scripter.

Not fun, not cool.

But hey, sign me up for those 2 extra damage points. I'll wtfpwnjooooo

 

[Sevin0oo0]

But, you failed to stop doing one more thing. You failed to stop paying them for this game.
I quit for much of what you are comlaining about.

Kinda like crawling out of the desert, Hit an oasis now and then, right now I still have a little water left in the canteen, and a few mores clothes to shed.
Even with Only a weapons fighter, I'd still be playing, being a trammie pvm'r

 

[Kiminality]

Looks like you're in the minority, to the OP, and others, Don't believe that, it's propaganda originally issued by a Dev(now gone I think) and several posters still spread this misinformation.

Wait... So something that was announced and makes a whole lot of sense if you look at it with the barest hint of logic is misinformation, while a theory based on little more than blaming everything bad on scripters is true?

You're like a walking logical fallacy.

 

[KoolAidAddict]

I quit for much of what you are comlaining about.

Still rockin that post count tho eh?

 

[Sevin0oo0]

I'd believe that Kim if i'd been the only one to think it wasn't directed at scripters, however...
And contrary to what anyone thinks, I never said scripters should be eliminated. I don't like mold, but it can have a good function as well.

too lazy to look, but the discussion of scripters came up first, and in pure 'company management' style, the re-distribution/rarity part was worked into the answer w/o directly saying that it was/wasn't for scripters - that makes it a released lie to me.Don't BS words, it either was, or it wasn't. I don't remember few players asking to make ore 'rare' - they got what they wanted, and probably don't even play anymore.
At the time, I thought Cool, this shouldn't really affect me that much anyways. trash the tram/fel rune library's & quit using the skill came next, so it Did have a very profound effect on Non-scripters, and still does.
Go back to your game and enjoy, who knows, maybe one day you'll be giving me your gold, unknowingly

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Actually it makes it easier for scripters and harder for players

Nope, it makes it harder for scriptors since they have to take the randomness into account as well.

Before they could guarantee their hauls of whatever metal they were targeting that day (Shadow, Valorite, etc) simply by having the appropriate veins marked.

Now they have to HOPE the veins produce (and keep producing).

The ONLY real advatage a scriptor has over a player is the lack of fatigue (mental (getting bored) and physical (getting tired)) whereas before they could keep the desired veins farmed and not only provide themselves with endless "rare" ore/wood, but deny the vein to legitimate players.

I have seen FAR fewer script miners where I mine after the change than before because it's no longer as efficient to Recall-Harvest as it is to Strip-Harvest.

The resource randomization was basically two-fold... Return rarity to the upper end resources and to dampen the effect of scripting.

Based on the reaction, it is doing both of these functions.

"What about Ore Carts/Stumps?"

Well it is true that they give an equal chance for all resource types, but only 10 per day.

For example, I have 20 ore carts (I have 22, but let's use round numbers here and go with 20). Each one produces 10 large ore per day. Assuming I harvest each cart BEFORE it maxxes out at 100 and do this for a year, I end up with 73000 large ore (20*10*365). Divided by nine ore types, that's 8111 of each type. So if we multiply by 2, that's 16,222 ingots of each type.

Breaking that down further by smelt chances at 105 mining (100+ gloves) you get:

16,222 iron
16,222 Dull
16,222 Shadow
16,222 Copper
16,222 Bronze
14,600 Gold
12,978 Agapite
11,355 Verite
10,058 Valorite.

Total ingots: 130,101

So you can get 10,000 Valorite per YEAR if you have TWENTY carts.

In mining, a good run of strip mining will give you at least double the Valorite and a MAGNITUDE more of the other colors.

In LUMBERJACKING, there is a MUCH greater argument due to the apparent distribution of wood that even a couple of stumps will serve you MUCH better for the higher end woods.

 

[RawHeadRex]

i stoned gm lj'n

 

[Kiminality]

I'd believe that Kim if i'd been the only one to think it wasn't directed at scripters, however...

Popular opinion about something doesn't make that opinion right.
People believed the world was flat, since there was no proof to the contrary, and it fitted their perspective, but they were still kinda wrong about that.

I'm pretty sure it was explicitly stated, in response to the theories that it was done to stop scripters, that it was in fact done for the very reason I stated.
Although the original design allowed it, it was never intended for people to be able to go out and do mass cherry-picking of resources.
Honestly, it stinks, but the amount of ire this change raised (and still does) just goes to show how deeply rooted it had become.

 

[HD2300]

I'm pretty sure it was explicitly stated, in response to the theories that it was done to stop scripters, that it was in fact done for the very reason I stated.

Like you said, just because someone tells you the earth is flat doesnt mean they are telling you the truth.

Fact 1. Randomized resources didnt stop scripters, and killed lumberjacking for real players.

Fact 2. Devs were embarassed by regular complaints about scripters hogging the known frostwood locations. Randomized resources allowed scripters to script at the ends of the earth out of sight away from real players who would page on them and complain that nothing is being done stop scripters on the forums.

Fact 3. Scripters pay for their accounts too. Stopping scripters means EA loses money. Changing systems that provide more profitable opportunities for scriptors to make money, results in scripters buying more accounts and EA getting more money.

Thanks Draconi for killing lumberjacking for real players. We create worlds [for scripters].

 

[Kiminality]

Like you said, just because someone tells you the earth is flat doesnt mean they are telling you the truth.

Fact 1. Randomized resources didnt stop scripters, and killed lumberjacking for real players.

Fact 2. Devs were embarassed by regular complaints about scripters hogging the known frostwood locations. Randomized resources allowed scripters to script at the ends of the earth out of sight away from real players who would page on them and complain that nothing is being done stop scripters on the forums.

Fact 3. Scripters pay for their accounts too. Stopping scripters means EA loses money. Changing systems that provide more profitable opportunities for scriptors to make money, results in scripters buying more accounts and EA getting more money.

Thanks Draconi for killing lumberjacking for real players. We create worlds [for scripters].

Your "facts" 2 and 3 are merely conjecture. You're drawing conclusions from assumptions, and calling them facts doesn't make them so.
Fact 1 is subjective. For a person with no expectation built from being able to harvest resorces disproportionately to their rarity, the rare resources are simply something that is rare, like so much else in the game.
For a person that has expectations build upon the ability to harvest resources disproportionately, sure, it's probably "ruined" for them.

Now, this argument comes down to "I believe this"/"I believe that".
There's actually no facts that would support either side of it it to the satisfaction of the other. Even if a developer came in and reiterated what they've already said on the subject, folk that disagree would just call it propaganda, and go on believing what they were before.
So, there's no point in it.

 

[Javin]

WOW...

Plus - it's not like there was a huge wood market as there is only a handful of weapons/armor you can make.

QUOTE]

totally off toppic and not meant to be a troll or anything, i doubt it would be construed as, but this paprt made me laugh out for real ! Me and my dirty mind rofl


~J

 

[Petra Fyde]

Kiminality is right, it was done to make the 'rare' woods rare again. However, I'm not sure they meant them to be virtually non-existant.

I chopped enough lesser woods to donate to the library and get a talisman - 550,000 points, without ever seeing a single log of frostwood.

We could maybe ask that the situation be re-examined with a view to possibly adjusting the percentages.