[News] FoF: Antsy with Anticipation

[Justy]

I just wanted to chime in and say that I support this insurance fix. If this repairs one of the factors contributing to the insurance bug then its a good idea. In addition, I don't recall anyone saying that the insured items need to be removed from your vendors. If you put it on as a convenience well just don't do it anymore. Find another way to give some bennies to your shoppers. I own a small shop so this insurance/vendor change doesn't really affect me. It would be much easier if the dev team just has the item drop the insurance tag automatically when an item is put on a vendor. That would make it easier for all concerned.

 

[Guest]

You know, given that there has long been a heated debate over whether the legendary insurance bug even exists it only seems fitting that, if this is indeed a fix for it, that it would evoke a debate over whether there was anything to fix.

 

[luners]

<blockquote><hr>

Because if you insure an item, then sell it to someone else, it will still say [insured] but it is NOT insured for them, only for you - so if they die, it won't stay with them.

Oh, and the stable slots question got covered last week.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have bought many items insured by other characters of other account.
But insurance of these items are actually working.
Is this a bug?
I'm confused.

 

[imported_gawin]

OK this has been said before and will be said again.

The famed or fabled insurance bug IS real it is recreatable.

It has been over 3 years since a group of us sent the information in on exact tiles on a specific shard where it would happen every single time you died on the specific spot.

Some guilds have learned of these spots and will X you in with fields and kill you in that spot so that your blessed and insured items drop.

So this is a REAL bug and is NOT the peeps fault for not having autorenew or money as neither of these have any effect what so ever on BLESSED items dropping and they will too in these tiles.

They have known and have been able to re create the problem why it hasnt been fixed yet is up to the dev team to answer.

 

[MaryForUo]

OK OK!
Insurance or not insurance? blessed or not blessed?

Until Jeremy'll say something more about this, we can only continue to
write words....until page 40?

So....what about this?

<blockquote><hr>

Next week should be exciting - we can't wait to get this build up on Test. It's just so satisfying to clean up so many of these old issues, plus the event has been a long time coming!

Jeremy


[/ QUOTE ]

i really'd like to know more about the upcoming event!

 

[Guest]

ouch - I had actually never heard that.

(I didn't mean to sound like I was disbelieving it, just that it has been complained about so long that it has a sort of mythic quality to it)

 

[imported_Skrag]

<blockquote><hr>

some of you may remember that the clock has been ticking in Moonglow for quite some time. Well, that clock is winding down...

[/ QUOTE ]

I really can't remember the quarter-page of crappy fanfic that got posted somewhere a year and a half ago that you guys are passing off as the story. WTF is the plot again?

 

[imported_Fran Fury]

There was a separate thread started by someone to kind of sum up the ticking clock that I admit..I knew nothing about.

Ticking Clock Summary

And I wanted to bump this back to the front page in hopes that Jeremy will come clear some things up tomorrow when she is back to work

 

[Cowgoesmoo]

<blockquote><hr>

<blockquote><hr>

Because if you insure an item, then sell it to someone else, it will still say [insured] but it is NOT insured for them, only for you - so if they die, it won't stay with them.

[/ QUOTE ]I just placed an insured item on my vendor, bought the item with a character from another account, let the character die, resurrected the character and the item was in the character’s back pack. So, judging by a quick test, I would have to say that your statement is not accurate.

In the past I have moved insured items from character to character and have never encountered any problems with an item insured on one character failing work on another.

[/ QUOTE ]

Has anyone looked at this a bit closer to make sure that the reinsurance money is coming out to the bank account of the char that died and not that of the char that insured the item?

Also I think that the comment that this could be referring to future functionality is quite possibly valid.

 

[Basara]

It might also be that if the person doing the original insure had autorenew off, and the purchaser has it on, that it might not autorenew.

 

[imported_revenant2]

<blockquote><hr>

It might also be that if the person doing the original insure had autorenew off, and the purchaser has it on, that it might not autorenew.

[/ QUOTE ]

Very interesting thought, if SOME of the insurance bug drops (not all) might be caused by such things.

It might be something as simple as the original insurer being logged off, though.

One could test this fairly easily.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

I have to agree with Util here on this one

Have any of you stopped to think that although what Jeremy stated would appear to be incorrect, that she is in fact right and that is how insurance is SUPPOSED to work, thereby making the real insurance bug the fact that people arent losing things that they themselves did not insure.

Perhaps something hasnt been working right all along and insurance is supposed to cancel or whatever when items change hands, except it only works on the rare occasion (which is when people scream insurance bug)

It does kinda make sense if you think about it....if you buy a boat or a car or something else, you arent covered by the insurance that the first owner paid, you have to rebuy your own. Would make sense if thats how insurance was supposed to function in game as well.

Although it doesnt change the fact that yea obviously something somewhere is messed up no matter which way its supposed to work, perhaps if you look at it from a different angle you can see another option that they are trying to resolve instead of just argueing how horrible it is. We all know AOS was full of broken messy code, so maybe someone has just finally figured it out and realize what the problem is and they are trying to repair it to how it should have been... I dunno just another theory

[/ QUOTE ]

That sounds very logical. I am pretty sure we are now honor bound to kill you for presenting such a theory. (I hope all your stuff is insured!)

-Skylark

 

[Guest]

I checked with QA, and no, I'm not crazy It may not happen every time - I don't have the specific repro steps in front of me - but there is a reproducible bug where the situation I described above can happen, and this is a very bad thing.

 

[imported_revenant2]

Hey Jeremy - - not to pester, but just wondering...

There was mention of etheral mounts being changed to take only 3 seconds to summon instead of 5. Is this maybe happening soon? This seems the perfect time to do it, with the way the pet balls being changed will affect remount in PVP after a dismount.

 

[imported_Fran Fury]

<blockquote><hr>

I checked with QA, and no, I'm not crazy It may not happen every time - I don't have the specific repro steps in front of me - but there is a reproducible bug where the situation I described above can happen, and this is a very bad thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh your still crazy alright just maybe not wrong about this.

I would have to say it probably happens very very rarely but if it does then I guess it should be fixed. It will take people awhile to get used to it but eventually people will start remembering to insure items as soon as they buy them. It is still going to hurt the fel shops though.

 

[imported_Sarphus]

nice catch!

Insurance bugs are the kinds of things that make players really grumpy.

 

[imported_revenant2]

<blockquote><hr>

I would have to say it probably happens very very rarely but if it does then I guess it should be fixed. It will take people awhile to get used to it but eventually people will start remembering to insure items as soon as they buy them. It is still going to hurt the fel shops though.

[/ QUOTE ]

Would be cool if there were an option to auto-insure an item upon purchase so you couldn't be killed or have it stolen right after you buy it.

 

[imported_The_Dude_]

Just curious does this effect the sharing of items between characters? I , like others i know, share suits between there characters. Does this mean everytime i switch suits between them I would have to uninsure and then reinsure everything?

 

[imported_Fran Fury]

<blockquote><hr>

Just curious does this effect the sharing of items between characters? I , like others i know, share suits between there characters. Does this mean everytime i switch suits between them I would have to uninsure and then reinsure everything?

[/ QUOTE ]

Jeremy,I am also curious if this bug is only vendor related? I also switch suits between my characters sometimes on 2 different accounts. Although I have never encountered a problem...it would be my luck that now that you have discovered it..I will too.

 

[Guest]

I have QA looking at it now, but insurance is character-related, not account- or item-related. It's entirely possible that the insurance won't work properly if the character wearing the item isn't the one who insured the item.

 

[Otis Firefly]

im doing the same and was just about to ask this myself. i just havnt died on the other char yet and im not sure if i wanna test it out! lol

 

[Guest]

OK, I think I have it straight now - there are a couple of factors:

- Item insurance is tied to the character that insures it. If you insure the item before you sell/trade it, when that char dies, it's your insurance that works - and you who pays for it.

- If this happens, the character wearing the item won't auto-reinsure it, even if their auto-insurance is turned on, because they never insured it in the first place.

We can repro this consistently, and believe it's the cause of the vast majority of "insurance bug" reports.

 

[AirmidCecht]

So in effect we may have been paying for another person's insurance cost if they died wearing an item they purchased or received from us?

I have given away countless insured items to players, in fact I make sure it is insured before giving it away. You would think my bank account would read zero since the majority of the players I give things to are new and returning players who have been known to die more than a few times on our hunts. Come to think of it I've watched em die on community hunts and manage to keep their items no matter how many times a balron munches their toes.

Or maybe I just read your statement wrong, Jeremy. Color me confused.

 

[Otis Firefly]

thats exactly what shes saying, except that you would only be nailed for the first death. at least thats what im getting out of that

 

[Guest]

You pay for it once, then it shouldn't auto-insure. So... do you notice if you lose one, or a few, pieces worth of insurance? I'm not sure I would.

 

[AirmidCecht]

I may not but a newer player would if they lost a whole suit given them *cheesy grin*

I'll test it out now though I'm not sure that I hope you're right, hehe.

 

[Otis Firefly]

so the problem is that some of these things slip through and remain insured and fine, but on any givin death they can just go un insured if it wasnt that char who infact insured it?

 

[imported_revenant2]

<blockquote><hr>

OK, I think I have it straight now - there are a couple of factors:

- Item insurance is tied to the character that insures it. If you insure the item before you sell/trade it, when that char dies, it's your insurance that works - and you who pays for it.

- If this happens, the character wearing the item won't auto-reinsure it, even if their auto-insurance is turned on, because they never insured it in the first place.

We can repro this consistently, and believe it's the cause of the vast majority of "insurance bug" reports.

[/ QUOTE ]

Please have them think of ways that players who understand how this works could use it to steal from others. If there are any, those will wanna be fixed. Like, I wonder if you passed items to someone for repair and then they uninsured the items and re-insured them, if that could be used to try to get people to drop their gear. If it's that simple to affect someone else's chance of dropping their items, there does need to be some means other than player watchfulness to deal with it, it's too easy to hit uninformed players with something like that.

(edit: I did some testing just now and it's not as simple as someone else passing you an insured item and then you go off and die and it won't autoinsure, that's good from that standpoint.)

Also, keep in mind that there are incidents where blessed items drop, and items lie on the corpse with the 'insured' tag on them. If your guys are able to make symptoms like that, then that's spectacular, but if not, then only one part of this seems solved. Runebooks and a chiv book fell to a corpse in one instance. Freaky.

 

[AirmidCecht]

<blockquote><hr>

thats exactly what shes saying, except that you would only be nailed for the first death. at least thats what im getting out of that

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok I am by no means an expert tester but this is more for my own understanding.
*I took a new account and had a friend give me some insured sleeves.
*I selected to auto renew insured items.
*We went to the bank and checked our balances.
*We went to a dungeon and I promptly died.
*He rez'd me and I had the sleeves in my backpack.
*We went back to the bank and my bank account reflected a loss while his remained unchanged.
*I checked to make sure auto renew was still selected and it was. It did not cancel itself.
*We went back to dungeon and upon death and rez I again had sleeves in my backpack.
*Bank account again reflected a loss to my funds but not to his.

Perhaps I should buy the items off a vendor to see if that is the missing link here?
**edited to reflect same circumstances tried after buying off of vendor with same results**

 

[Otis Firefly]

well from what im getting from her posts is this is supposed to be acting this way, the fact that its not! is the bug...you can try all day and have it always insured to you, but then randomly have it uninsured on you at any time on any givin death if you didnt insure it yourself, i dunno..but im not willing to take the chance that shes wrong with my gear..re insuring for the hell of it.

 

[imported_The_Dude_]

Ok im having a really hard time grasping this. I have used 2 suits on about 4-5 characters for over 3years now. Nothing has came uninsured and hopefully nothing will(knocks on wood).

But with this so called fix your putting in i will now have to uninsure and then reinsure my suit everytime i switch it from my characters? I'm not exactly sure how this helps people. Its a huge inconveniance. To me it seems theres more a chance of someone dropping something with this new way. Either you forget to uninsure/insure or your uninsuring/insuring and miss click an item or click to many times.

I just dont get how this helps. I guess if the mysterious insurance bug gets fixed it works but this to me is just a big annoyance.

 

[imported_Hanna]

<blockquote><hr>

OK, I think I have it straight now - there are a couple of factors:

- Item insurance is tied to the character that insures it. If you insure the item before you sell/trade it, when that char dies, it's your insurance that works - and you who pays for it.

- If this happens, the character wearing the item won't auto-reinsure it, even if their auto-insurance is turned on, because they never insured it in the first place.

We can repro this consistently, and believe it's the cause of the vast majority of "insurance bug" reports.

[/ QUOTE ]Insurance is pre-paid, it only recharges if it auto-renews. When I buy an insured piece it is already paid for and it DOES auto-renew from my character's bank account. The only times I have had the insurance bug hit is when a different character on my own account insured the item. Each time it was only one item. They did not become uninsured. I had to loot them off my corpse still insured, and no I was not overweight.

Also once I looted blessed leggings of ember off a lich lord - now how did that happen??

 

[imported_Tina Small]

<blockquote><hr>

OK, I think I have it straight now - there are a couple of factors:

- Item insurance is tied to the character that insures it. If you insure the item before you sell/trade it, when that char dies, it's your insurance that works - and you who pays for it.

- If this happens, the character wearing the item won't auto-reinsure it, even if their auto-insurance is turned on, because they never insured it in the first place.

We can repro this consistently, and believe it's the cause of the vast majority of "insurance bug" reports.

[/ QUOTE ]

Jeremy, is this problem only occurring when the insured articles are passed between characters on the same account? I know I have insured items and passed them on to my other characters way too many times to count and in three and a half years of playing have NEVER been hit by the insurance bug. I've only had stuff drop on one occasion when I forgot to turn on auto renew.

Perhaps in my case I escaped the problem you say you've been able to replicate because I was usually handing the insured articles to a character on another account. However, I know I've also made up bags of insured items, stuck them in a chest, and then pulled them out with another character on the same account and have never had insurance renewal problems or problems with items dropping. I would think if the auto renewal was hitting up the account of the original insurer, some of my characters would be flat broke by now and they're not. I've also insured items and then transferred them to another shard and the recipients have never had insurance renewal problems. I'd think that would definitely cause a problem if the insurance renewal was linked to a character that was on a completely different shard, wouldn't it??

Something just doesn't sound right here and I guess the skeptic in me is starting to think that this is just another attempt at creating a NEW gold sink and a way to get some of the better items out of the game. Sorry if that sounds particularly harsh to you guys working on the game, but gold sinks and getting rid of in-game items seems to be a definite trend lately and this seems like a not-so-clever way to accelerate it.

Color me not terribly impressed if this is what you're really up to. For me it will just be another straw landing on this old camel's back. One of these days the tweaks you're making are just gonna be too much to take.

 

[Guest]

*blinks* Complaint after complaint about the insurance bug, and when we think we've found the cause, you accuse us of putting in a stealth gold sink?

I'm not sure of the exact details here - as I said, I don't have the repro steps. There are probably factors I'm missing. But we've proved to our satisfaction that using items that someone else insured can lead to flaky behavior from the insurance system. Insure your own items!

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

*blinks* Complaint after complaint about the insurance bug, and when we think we've found the cause, you accuse us of putting in a stealth gold sink?

[/ QUOTE ]

*glances at Jeremy's location*

LOL...just curious, which circle are you in now?

-Skylark

 

[imported_Tina Small]

<blockquote><hr>

*blinks* Complaint after complaint about the insurance bug, and when we think we've found the cause, you accuse us of putting in a stealth gold sink?

I'm not sure of the exact details here - as I said, I don't have the repro steps. There are probably factors I'm missing. But we've proved to our satisfaction that using items that someone else insured can lead to flaky behavior from the insurance system. Insure your own items!

[/ QUOTE ]

I've never complained about the "insurance bug." Have never experienced it either. And yes, I guess I believe you'll slide in as many stealthy gold sinks as you think the players will tolerate. What I wish you would do instead is put in some desirable gold sinks. The punitive ones just plain stink.

 

[AlanofCats]

Wow... frustration already? You've been back less than a week! I'd say the fel folks have good reason to complain. Does this mean I'll have to reinsure items that I switch out between characters? Between accounts? What if I buy it from someone via a trade window? Are we allowed to trade insured items? Ah that's right you don't have the repro steps. Prolly shouldn't have brought it up in the FoF then. Seems like EA tradition though. Insurance system is bugged? OK lets fix the vendors!

Fix the issue not the symptom!

 

[imported_Tina Small]

<blockquote><hr>

*blinks* Complaint after complaint about the insurance bug, and when we think we've found the cause, you accuse us of putting in a stealth gold sink?


[/ QUOTE ]

Jeremy, I just wanted to expand on what I said earlier. I don't mind that you're trying to put in gold sinks and also trying to get items out of the game through loss of durability or other means. I understand that for many players the daily grind of trying to make gold to acquire items is what what keeps them playing and paying. But it becomes very frustrating when it seems like the methods being used to slow down the accrual of gold and items also have the effect of discouraging people from even playing. You do things like randomize ore and lumber and then on top of that throw in the BREs. Wouldn't the randomization have been enough? The BREs were just insult on top of injury and I'm glad you finally turned them off. Another example is nerfing the BOS and almost simultaneously slowing down the spawn rate in multiple places. And all of this is happening in an environment where events are practically non-existent and the few that do occur happen at odd times and are sparsely attended.

I have generally tried to stay pretty positive and supportive of what you guys are doing with a limited staff. But this whole topic of fixing the insurance bug, coupled with mysterious comments about other changes being made that won't be announced (if at all) until after they are published, smacks of more manipulation of the game to achieve some hidden objectives.

I keep telling myself that what you're after in the long run is to lower the amount of gold in the game and get as many existing items out of the game so people keep playing to make gold and you can introduce an improved crafting system to make better but less durable items. That would be truly wonderful, Jeremy, if you guys can get us to that point. But in the meantime it seems like a lot of incremental changes are being done based on faulty research and/or by people with limited understanding of the game. I'm not saying I understand the game any better than you do....I'm 100% certain there are many many things about UO that you know that I'm completely unaware of. However, this "solution" just seems like it's off-track somehow.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

*blinks* Complaint after complaint about the insurance bug, and when we think we've found the cause, you accuse us of putting in a stealth gold sink?

I'm not sure of the exact details here - as I said, I don't have the repro steps. There are probably factors I'm missing. But we've proved to our satisfaction that using items that someone else insured can lead to flaky behavior from the insurance system. Insure your own items!

[/ QUOTE ]Well done for tracking down the possible cause of the insurance bug and all that. However I can't say I like your fix.

Basically what we need is that if an item says it is insured then it is insured for the wearer by the wearer- automatically changing as the item moves between people.

Any other behaviour is just wrong and can only continue to cause 'insured' items to be lost.

At the very least change the text "Insured" to "Insured by this character" or "Insured by another character" as appropriate so that we really know whether an item we are wearing is insured by the character wearing it.

Or if you really want a gold sink then allow us to bless items for a reasonable amount, say 250K (416 deaths equivalence in insurance), then we can be sure items aren't going to be lost.

 

[Guest]

I'll have to do some more research into the underlying issue to figure out what's going on - but the goal is to prevent unexpected item loss. The gold involved doesn't have anything at all to do with it.

As for the other stuff that we're not talking about yet - they're exploit fixes, and we'd really not like to tell everybody where the holes are before we patch them. Sorry!

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

<blockquote><hr>

I'll have to do some more research into the underlying issue to figure out what's going on - but the goal is to prevent unexpected item loss. The gold involved doesn't have anything at all to do with it.

As for the other stuff that we're not talking about yet - they're exploit fixes, and we'd really not like to tell everybody where the holes are before we patch them. Sorry!

[/ QUOTE ]

and a mighty fine goal that is ...

The one thing a lot of the Noes are missing ...
from a VENDOR ... it might NOT always be the case ... where an "insured item" PROPERLY always without fails(ever)
Transfers "who insured when" TO the current holder

taking the vendor out of the loop ...MAY narrow the search for the intermitent cause of "insured" items falling to a corpse.

save yourself some time:
Is there ... or Is there NOT ... ANY reports of "mysterious loss" of "insured items" ... not related to "auto renew" ... gold available in bank ...

"mysterious loss" of "insured items" .


Thanks

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

oh yeah ...

get a minute and wade in
here

just look ... no comment required

yet

 

[imported_The_Dude_]

My replies are not complaints nor questions of gold sinks. I'm merely trying to figure out how to keep my items mine.

Like i said i switch suits weapon jewels all the time between more then one character. I want to know if now i have to uninsure then reinsure to make sure that i keep my items mine. I have plenty of gold and do not care. I just want to make sure i know how to make my items mine and not someones b-day.

Someone stated making it say insured by..... which would be nice. Also someone stated once it says insured it should be the item and it trasnfers to character to character as long as they have the auto renew on.

So again please more information for people who use one suit on more then one character and what we will need to do.

 

[imported_Ozymandies]

"Why does crafting with a runic sewing kit NOT add any properties to hats?"

I am going to go out on a limb here and say it has something to do with clothing bless deeds. Not entirely consistent that they spawn as loot, but who knows what the thinking was?

OZ

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

I checked with QA, and no, I'm not crazy It may not happen every time - I don't have the specific repro steps in front of me - but there is a reproducible bug where the situation I described above can happen, and this is a very bad thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

If it's a reproducible bug, fix the bug.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

We can repro this consistently, and believe it's the cause of the vast majority of "insurance bug" reports.

[/ QUOTE ]

Then instead of making it impossible to sell insured items...fix the dang bug. Even if you can't buy an insured item off a vendor there's nothing to stop people trading items directly.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

But we've proved to our satisfaction that using items that someone else insured can lead to flaky behavior from the insurance system. Insure your own items!

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sorry, but that is simply not acceptable from professionals...which you guys are pretending to be, right?

If you have a reproducible way to make insurance come off an item...fix it directly. Attempting to hide the problem through this vendor fix is just not the right thing to do. The problem will still be there.

 

[imported_revenant2]

grrrrrrrr

I'm glad that those of you who have never experienced it have never had to endure it, and you've never seen any of your friends standing there, fresh-rez and naked with nothing to put on, wondering if they should quit for real. But geez there's clearly no alterior motive, like a gold sink, to the change Jeremy mentioned. Its not gold sink material at all, its trying to deal with something that is horrible when it happens.

Any fix that helps deal with this is great, even if it's a patch up job. That's how bad this bug can be when it hits.

The thousands of Fel people who are too busy in-game to read or post on these boards will no doubt be massively appreciative of any change that will help prevent them from losing their stuff this way. Just tell them "well, its part of the fix for the Insurance Bug that you can't insure an item that's on a vendor" and surely, most of them will be like "wow okay". We all know people this has happened to, if not had it happen to ourselves.

If they say they can reproduce a problem with an item that is insured by one person and then worn by another, then they surely can. If it were easy to make happen, it woulda been identified and fixed long ago. I did some testing and didn't get it to happen, but I also didn't have a second account to test with and I'd have to dual client and so on, and none of my buddies are on who could help me right now. I didn't get to test many aspects of it myself, I don't mind though, since they already have the information they need.

There may be stuff which, if they announced it all now, could be used by people to steal your stuff. Let's see what we learn after it all comes out, it's not real long to wait now. I'm sure looking forward to the next patch.

I had an insured item disappear recently. It was with a pet ball that I had recently gotten, and perhaps somebody else had insured it. I usually get my body back on my tamer but that one time I didn't. Too bad I had not been thinking to open the corpse and peek, I would have loved to see if the item was "insured" as it was lying there.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

the goal is to prevent unexpected item loss.

[/ QUOTE ]

So what happens if you trade items directly? Or if you have a single item, like a crimson cincture, that you hand off between your own characters?

If the goal is to prevent item loss, then how does simply hiding the problem in one case accomplish the goal?

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

*ahem*
then how does simply <u>hiding</u> Fixing the problem in one case

changes the state of the ONE instance of item transferal ...

not "hiding"