Please Monitor Game Changes and Address When They Don't Have the Intended Effect

[Hunter Moon]

I totally understand and applaud trying to find ways to nerf scripters (I hate them with a passion personally); however, when something clearly doesn't work the way it is intended, there should be a post saying "sorry this didn't turn out how we hoped and we are removing this/reverting it to how it was before". I for one would totally understand and applaud the attempt and even more applaud the ability to distance yourselves from an attachment to your fixes and assess their success in a completely clinical manner and proceed from there. I think people become too invested in the changes they suggested or implemented and feel they can't scrap them as incorrect fixes. If they then do later have to make the changes, it leaves a bad taste in the players mouth that it took so long for the change to come and that the developers fought it so much. An open and honest assessment of changes and clear indication that some attempts are being made to address a situation with some failures before success is achieve is a GOOD thing in a business setting. At this point I am referring to random ore and lumberjack spawns and BOS.

Lumberjacking and Mining:
I use to just got out and chop for a few hours a few days to get the wood to turn in for an item I decided I wanted from the Museum. Now I can't possibly get the wood myself without such a time investment it is stupidity itself to even do it. You need 16,667 Frostwood to get a 800k point item. Tell me how long that will take you to lumberjack if your not a scripter??? Yet if you go to Luna and look at the old collection vendors, they seem to always be full of collection items for sale. All this change has done is make it impossible for a normal player to chop the wood or mine the ingots they want to make or turn in for stuff and now they are forced to pay a much higher price to the scripter who hasn't been all that inconvenienced by the changes and now makes even MORE gold for the items. They use to be about 600 to 850k for a 800k pointer and now are 1.8 to 2.5mill. Same for filling BODs. I also now have to buy my ingots because my runes no longer allow me to mine the colored ore I need for the BOD I am working on.

BOS:
There is a whole thread here about peeps using scripts at the ice fiends, in painted caves, and other locals and people are camping them trying to disrupt their scripts. But the normal player doesn't have the time to recall out every few minutes and bank the gold and recall in. This change hasn't hurt the scripters at all but has crippled the chances of any semi-new player of ever raising gold from collecting it. At our Harrower and Champ spawns we don't even pick up the gold most of the time now. We can chain a spawn and end up leaving a few mill on the ground. I truly feel for those poor newbies trying to make a buck in UO now because without the BOS as it was, it has become a hugely time consuming job just to transport the gold let alone earn it in the first place.

Scripters are winning again and this time it is even worse because both changes only end up really hurting the non-scripters while maybe only slightly inconveniencing the scripter, if at all, and at the same time forcing us to buy our ingots and collection items from said scripters

Hunter Moon [HOT] Atlantic

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

Well said.

Community collections are another example of something that nearly worked.
If they were intended to be a gold sink the other items should never have cost less than it would to turn in the gold for that item.
It creates a simple choice buy the item for 12m or hand in items that only cost 4m. As the items are far too tedious for most people to collect and hand in manually and has such a large gold difference it as good as promotes scripting. The scripted item costs signifigantly less than it would to buy so that the scripter can pick any price to sell it for whereby their still making a decent profit but it's cheap enough, compared to buying it for gold, that it sells quickly. As the scripted items enter the market at the lower price it has a secondary negative effect on the origional purpose of gold sink. (if that ever was the intent) Community collections are 1 gold sink and 2 anti-gold sinks combined.

The removal of hand in items would address both, people might even start looting gold off corpses again.

 

[Hunter Moon]

The problem I see with taking out being able to turn items in for the collections is that it allows newer players access to the nicer items with some work on their part. If it is gold only, it will block a lot of players from getting even one piece let alone the few they might want especially since BOS changes are blocking the same people from getting much gold. It is 12 mill for an item in gold so if they wanted two that is a hella lot of money for most people. I just wish they would revert it to where it was even POSSIBLE to get the stuff to turn in yourself instead of having to pay the scripters. I normally do the work myself over a few days a few hours a day... Instead I just had to pay 2 mill to a vendor I am damn sure is a scripters since it is always full of collection items for a taming tally for my husbands crummy tamer so I can get another stable slot till I can work him up more.

Hunter Moon [HOT] Atlantic

 

[Lord Kynd]

i just wish they would break that damned nerf stick already.

 

[Hunter Moon]

I just wish their nerf stick would hit the intended (read scripters) party and not flail around wacking everyone but...

Hunter Moon [HOT] Atlantic

 

[Loqucious]

Agreed

 

[Lady Aalia]

totally agree ....

Those nerfs havent hit but maybe the noob scripter that cant figure out how to write a script.

As seen on the pictures that i posted 2 days before the forums crashed they are still very busy with script mining and jacking and are making more gold then ever SICE the normal miner /LJ doesnt have any wood or ore to sell since the new changes.

Same as the sending bags ..so they added 3 lines in the script and the whole thing isnt quite non stop anymore.

but the regular player that may even like to go play in Ilishnar better be taking a navigation system to to program the nearest Gypsy Camp since he will be doing alot of running

 

[Hunter Moon]

Yes they have a whole thread on the scripters not slowing down at all with the new BOS changes and I know of quite a few collection vendors who never ever seem to be out of their supply of 2 to 2.5 mill items...

Hunter Moon [HOT] Atlantic

 

[Coppelia]

I already said what I think about it. But once again...
When they realize their change/nerf isn't the best one, they change it back: Dread Spiders change has been reverted to choose a better solution: lower its loot. A lot less problems like that.
So instead of staying blind and deaf with Bag of Sending, they should take their responsabilities and take a better direction. Bring back BoS and lower the gold coins loot of all the game for example. It's time to say Pub 26 loot increase was a bad idea, that mongbats should never have had 36 gold coins.

And of course if they keep adding features that encourage botting, they have no excuse. BOD lottery has to be scripted to see something getting out of it, and apparently devs consider that all crafters have to use runics to be useful. It's old and the only thing done was that useless 6 hours timer. But when you see that they added Heartwood quests with the last expansion, it's like shooting their own feet.
But yeah, when UO will have to close, they'll watch at those stupid designs and they'll say "ah it was great, too bad players are really mean". And they'll blame the incapacity to stop bots on the overwhelmed support staff. Yeah sure, if scripts are killing the game, that must be because GMs aren't enough to stop them... totally not because of the ******** source of ingame income.

I'm with you!

 

[Hunter Moon]

I completely agree on the BODs, but since they are so old, I didn't include them because I was hoping the newer changes would be an easier fix. I don't even do BODs or the Heartwood quests because they are impossible to get anything unless you script and I am totally against that.

Hunter Moon [HOT] Atlantic

 

[Joyous2K]

... when something clearly doesn't work the way it is intended, there should be a post saying "sorry this didn't turn out how we hoped and we are removing this/reverting it to how it was before".

UO reminds of the government. They never admit to doing anything wrong... It's always "This is how we see it on our server, we're not sure why you don't see it that way." or "This is how it has always been, you just have never seen it be that way because of it has never looked that way before." or "This is really old code and it has always worked correctly, when we implemented newer correct code the old code became wonky, but it is still correct. With the next patch you will see things the way we see things."

 

[Madrid]

I don't understand how one is to acquire one of the top end BOD's or Community collections. Just last week I was talking to a friend in game, doing the math and wondering what the Dev Team at the time was thinking.The chances for a heartwood fletching is 1 in 10,000.

I went last week for about an hour and I finished perhaps 30 or so quests before getting tired of hitting make last icon. I would have to spend somewhere around 300 hours of game time doing nothing but heartwood just to have a chance of getting a heartwood runic fletching tool. That's not really something I care to do.

The same holds true for the community collections. Have the Devs even thought about the time required to acquire the materials for the collections I could play for months at a time doing nothing but mining or chopping to acquire that volume of material. On top of that transporting and actually depositing the boards/materials is a whole other slew of labor.

There ought to be more turn in items and a better way for turning them in. The only way to get these items is to script. I certainty don't want to spend the current amount of game time required to get these items doing such motonous tasks, that's not why I play UO as much as I love trade skills. The time required to GM or 120 is one thing but trying to acquire the runics/recipes/collections is way out of balance.

They are in fact promoting scripting the way things are.

 

[Hunter Moon]

Yes, BODs, Heartwood quests, and community collections are so insanely hard to work that they are only feasible for scripters at this point. I use to work the community collections myself when I could jack the lumber, but now with the changes that is impossible. BOS changes also have hurt only those of us who refuse to script. Shame that all of this forces those of us who don't script to buy from those who do...

Hunter Moon [HOT] Atlantic

 

[Mister E.]

Hunter, while I am in complete agreement with you the problem is not with the developers. It is the players you should be frustrated with. Due to constant complaints the developers try to make the player base happy, which solves one issue but causes yet another. As long there is someone complaining about a problem there will always be a developer there with a solution. Most often a solution that gets more of an uproar than applause. Vicious circle I know, but it is us players whom do it to ourselves.

 

[Hunter Moon]

Aye I have no problem with them trying a fix, I just don't think it is right to try a fix and when it fails to perform as intended, leave it in and pretend it is working as planned so they don't have to say "this did not work as intended so we are removing/reverting it". I don't mind them trying things out even if it does put me out or cost me some gold and or time, I just want some follow through and real assessment of how the changes are working. If they don't have the intended result, admit it, change it and move on to the next attempt to fix the problem. Try to fix the problems all you want and I will gladly grin and bear the trials and failures and applaud the final success, but only if you don't insist on leaving the failures in and claiming they are the successes.

Hunter Moon [HOT] Atlantic

 

[Thrand Graywolf]

Same as the sending bags ..so they added 3 lines in the script and the whole thing isnt quite non stop anymore.

The bag of sending thing was one of the worst changes they ever made. It cost em a little money, too. I was about to get a seventh char slot and more house storage and when that change went in I decided against it. If the change is still there when SA comes out I might decide against that, too.

I simply can't believe they honestly thought it would have any real effect on scripters...if they did then we're in real trouble because they are really disconnected from every day game play.

What it did do was make guild hunts a major hassle. It's no big deal for me to recall to the bank when I'm alone, but for a group trying to fight in a difficult PVM area with a high spawn rate it's a major pain to cycle people in and out to the bank every ten minutes.

And it kinda kills the Ilshenar dungeons. It used to be fun to fight to the bottom of one and fight back out...but since you can't even get off level one now without being overloaded, what's the point?

If these changes were honestly aimed at scripters...and it's mind boggling if they were...they really are on the wrong track. Making stuff even more irritating is just inviting more scripting.

If they want to fight scripting they need to remove the ability to gain from a script. People script because it takes a lot of repetitive actions to accomplish some things. They can't stop scripting, but they could add in some timers that restricted the benefits people got from running a script for the entire time the server is up every day all week, compared to an "honest" player who just does a couple hours a night.

 

[Mister E.]

I suppose when you view things from a developers eye they would seem rather skewed to you or I. We are talking about two completely different ends of the spectrum, and as such the void of difference is too great to make everyone happy or else level the playing field. As players we dont get to see the coding...and the headache behind it. As developers, I am sure they dont always get the real gist of playing...since they only have past production shard experience and test to draw from.

 

[Wenchkin]

The community collections have always been stupidly boring and frustrating. I've not even started doing any of them, even before the resources change, because they required so many points it's stupid. I'd have preferred quest based or more variety in the turn in items to a change of resource spawns.

Before the change I couldn't get near a frostwood tree for all the bots, now I can get one right on my doorstep. Same with ore. Not to mention the risk of PKs who thought you were a bot simply for using certain trees/caves. Nah, I much prefer the new resources, if the collections were fixed the complaints about resource collection would decrease greatly. Either way, I don't want resources changed.

As for the BOS change, I missed the quick guild break at the bank where we all grabbed coffee, let the dog out etc then regrouped for the next round. Hunting constantly for hours is bad for you anyway - players shouldn't sit intensively playing a game for hours on end. Just carry less stuff and restock yourself as you bank, then you can maximise the gold you bank at a time and lose much less should you die. We all coped before BOS came out, though on some Uhall days, I wonder if I imagined these things lol.

Wenchy

 

[Shakaja]

I totally understand and applaud trying to find ways to nerf scripters (I hate them with a passion personally); however, when something clearly doesn't work the way it is intended, there should be a post saying "sorry this didn't turn out how we hoped and we are removing this/reverting it to how it was before". I for one would totally understand and applaud the attempt and even more applaud the ability to distance yourselves from an attachment to your fixes and assess their success in a completely clinical manner and proceed from there. I think people become too invested in the changes they suggested or implemented and feel they can't scrap them as incorrect fixes. If they then do later have to make the changes, it leaves a bad taste in the players mouth that it took so long for the change to come and that the developers fought it so much. An open and honest assessment of changes and clear indication that some attempts are being made to address a situation with some failures before success is achieve is a GOOD thing in a business setting. At this point I am referring to random ore and lumberjack spawns and BOS.

Lumberjacking and Mining:
I use to just got out and chop for a few hours a few days to get the wood to turn in for an item I decided I wanted from the Museum. Now I can't possibly get the wood myself without such a time investment it is stupidity itself to even do it. You need 16,667 Frostwood to get a 800k point item. Tell me how long that will take you to lumberjack if your not a scripter??? Yet if you go to Luna and look at the old collection vendors, they seem to always be full of collection items for sale. All this change has done is make it impossible for a normal player to chop the wood or mine the ingots they want to make or turn in for stuff and now they are forced to pay a much higher price to the scripter who hasn't been all that inconvenienced by the changes and now makes even MORE gold for the items. They use to be about 600 to 850k for a 800k pointer and now are 1.8 to 2.5mill. Same for filling BODs. I also now have to buy my ingots because my runes no longer allow me to mine the colored ore I need for the BOD I am working on.

BOS:
There is a whole thread here about peeps using scripts at the ice fiends, in painted caves, and other locals and people are camping them trying to disrupt their scripts. But the normal player doesn't have the time to recall out every few minutes and bank the gold and recall in. This change hasn't hurt the scripters at all but has crippled the chances of any semi-new player of ever raising gold from collecting it. At our Harrower and Champ spawns we don't even pick up the gold most of the time now. We can chain a spawn and end up leaving a few mill on the ground. I truly feel for those poor newbies trying to make a buck in UO now because without the BOS as it was, it has become a hugely time consuming job just to transport the gold let alone earn it in the first place.

Scripters are winning again and this time it is even worse because both changes only end up really hurting the non-scripters while maybe only slightly inconveniencing the scripter, if at all, and at the same time forcing us to buy our ingots and collection items from said scripters

Hunter Moon [HOT] Atlantic

they said that the change to resources wasnt made because of scripters but because of economy reasons. the high end colors are considered rare, and that is what the change was for - to actually make them rare. before you gould gather a few spots and just move between them and farm them and get ****loads of rare resources.

im quite sure bags of sending werent changed neither because of scripters, but again for economy reasons.


also i find it quite comical that people would assume there are changes that are seriously going to affect scripters, there is only one change that could affect them, and that would be ea caring more about the game than about the $10/month and start doing something against them.

 

[manufacturedsoul]

Gonna have to agree here. Since the nerfs to mining, lumberjacking, and BOS. I've not gone mining or lumberjacking a single time since i learned how futile it is. I too am now forced to buy my ingots and wood even though i have a gm miner and gm lumberjack. Not only that but i don't go hunt many pvm monsters anymore either because its just to much of a hassle constantly recalling back and fourth with 10k of gold most of it just gets dropped on the ground only to decay hours later because no one can carry it away. The BOS did more than nerf easy scripting it literally nerfed PVM for ALL legit players.

True back in the day you didn't need BOS to hunt but back in the day a "decent" item didn't costs a few million gold and and "uber" item didn't costs 10's of millions. Now that they do forcing us to literally leave our hunting spot every time we get 10k about 4-8 monsters or die from being overweight has made PVM an almost worthless endeavor unless you like rolling around in NPC shop armor and weapons.

 

[Coppelia]

they said that the change to resources wasnt made because of scripters but because of economy reasons. the high end colors are considered rare, and that is what the change was for - to actually make them rare. before you gould gather a few spots and just move between them and farm them and get ****loads of rare resources.

im quite sure bags of sending werent changed neither because of scripters, but again for economy reasons.

Devs first said Dread Spiders were boosted because they weren't "dread" enough. No mention of scripters. We all knew it was the reason.
Then they found a better solution, they changed the Dread Spiders back to what they were and decreased loot from them. Isn't it strange?
No it isn't. They won't say they're doing changes because of scripters for a reason I don't even want to know because I think it's being cowards.

Bag of Sending change was announced as a way to fix economy. The arguments were those of someone blatently skimming over the economical problems. It was obvious the targets were bots.

The change of ressource spawn for mining and lumberjacking was beyond reasonnable doubt to touch automated recall miners/lumberjacks.

 

[Shakaja]

i can tell you why. even thoo they arent very good programmers, they still are programmers and can judge quite well what will stop scripting and what wont. and they are quite aware of the fact that pretty much everything that can be done by a player can also be done by a script. so they know they can only stop scripters from doing something if they remove it from the game or ban them from the game. and both options arent very effective as banning means less money per month and removing means noone will be able to do it anymore, and the only ones hurt will be the ones that enjoyed doing it - and that definitely arent the scripters.

 

[Hanna]

Totaly agree with OP.

The scripters love the resource changes mine and chop wood right next to their houses and sometimes in their houses, with almost no worry of reds now. Their scripts are much easier to adapt now to moving to a new area if a red finds them. I also agree that limiting the amount of hours an activity like that can be done for in a day would have been a much better solution.

LUMBERJACKING
In tram I never had that much trouble getting to frostwood trees I found myself (which I spent a month doing), the only ones that were always being emptied were the someone sold the locations for to the entire shard. So scripters were not the ones really working those either for the most part, just too much competition for the trees.

MINING
I went out and mined several hours a day for a few days to test it out. Wasn't worth the effort and almost imposible to get the ingots I need to fill a few lower end bods aside from iron ones. And I used a prospectors tool. Mining stone was a complete futile waste of time. I still see the mining scripts going for the scripters that use the spot recall scripts in tram. But I see alot less real miners.

BOS CHANGES
I havent really PVMed in the last month, yesterday I went to terathan keep (lower part) and found it very irrating that I had a choice between playing the game and running back and forth so that I could keep gold I looted. And it really irrates me because, evreryday my thief went in the dojo, there is strphanie plugging away at the fan dancers 23/7 with her darkwood set and exiler. With her script not having to suffer to irriation at all from the changes.

ARTY DROPS/RUNIC CHANGES
Saturating the game with items to balance PVP, can only have one effect on PVM. That is to leave little incentive to play the game. Although I am glad they finnaly fixed the runics, they did little to tackle the problem of people scripting for runics 23/7. So now that the initial oh we love that change has worn off (or soon to be close to that), why should a crafter bother to play. Everyone already has everything or is very close to getting to that point.

EXCESSIVE TEDIUM & CLICKS BUILT INTO EVERY ACTION
Yeah I know you did it to stop scripters, hows that working for ya? Not good, but UO will never admit it. Just look at the spring cleaning turn ins. One at a time and then you have to do it all over again with the tickets - what the heck was that for - why not just credit the points???

 

[Killian]

I had a Vacation from UO for about 5 months...

I just came back last week, and I finally worked my guts up to go out and hunt some things...

... what a surprise,, I do my normal thing, I go out hunt, get a few decent items to maybe enhance, and load up on some gold... I whip out my BOS to send the gold back to my bank.. with 11 charges left, I double click the bag, then proceed to click on the gold... I notice this odd message pop up.....

" there is not enough charges on this item to send this much weight " or something along the lines of that.. Caught me off gaurd... so I thought MAYBE it just was a bug, and attempt it again... no use....

Well.. honestly, that just right there killed PVM for me.. I then took my gold, recalled to the bank, droped it off, and logged out.

So, being a Honest and Casual player.. ( no I don't get enjoyment out of being EXTREME and mining or lumberjacking for months straight just to get something that shouldn't be that hard to get) I never have had over 5 mill in my bank once, NEVER paid for gold, and only made some money off things I managed to get and sell if I didn't keep them. And I've been on UO since 2000...
<rant>
Why this thread rocks? The points brought out make me see that people are starting to be on the same page as how I felt a long time ago... You want to know why there are scripters in the first place?... you need to be EXTREME to even get something..

Remember back in UO's high days... Vanq weapons... almost everybody had a good chance to get.. it was fun to get, and they were the best Class of weapons to get, no need to slave for months doing a single thing to get something, just go out have fun and get it. There was VERY few scripters back then... if any to be honest, why? you didn't need to.. you just simply needed to play the game to get what you wanted.

Things also broke or were lost, so you always had to replace things.. BALANCE easy to get top end items, easy to break top end items as with everything else. Easy to lose items due to body Decay and no item insurence... as much as I hated that, I miss it now.

If the devs want to kill scripting... kills the outragous things you have to do accomlplish to get things in the game.. make people able to get the items with out having to slave (script) for them. Done. Make stuff go buh bye too.. yes we all hated losing stuff, but, it added value and adventure and excitement to UO. Who honestly cares if EVERYbody has the same stuff you do, think people shouldn't enjoy the game as much as you? and GRR Quit nerfing everything before the UO community takes that nerf stick and breaks it...
</rant>

I Just want the Fun back in UO. And I don't want like seeing the Dev's just run buck wild on UO while totally ignoring the obvious reasons.. You make things to hard.. people cheat. People can be lazy (and they want rewards quickly) and the bottom line is UO is a game, not a life. (though it feels like a life some times) I Come to play, and get rewarded to play, not come to "work", if not slave labour, to get rewards. there will always be people who are power gamers and get things faster and more often than others.. oh well.. but not everybody is a power gamer nor should UO be about that...

Grr.. I could rant away a whole book on things to fix UO, that doesn't include reverting to pre-aos, but can be done with some logic and common sense. And get people back into the game.. lol

One more thing.. whats a healthy time limit to play a game in a day? 2-3 hours maybe 4 if you have nothing else to do... Keep that in mind as well...

Done! (sorry if it's massive and big, and even a little off topic, I just felt I needed explode after I tried using my BOS last night )

 

[MalagAste]

I have to agree about a few things.... the changes to mining and lumberjacking pretty much killed either of those for me...... It's now soooo frustrating to try to get what I need I just don't care anymore.... and forget getting stone!!!!!!!! What a nightmare...

Changes to the Bag of Sending means I've had to totally quit using some of my characters for hunting.... they simply don't have enough strength or room in their pack to make it worthwhile to hunt with them.... I mean when you can only carry less than 5k of gold then what's the point? I mean cost you more in points of chivy than you can make.....

As far as the 10,000 clicks to do anything yeah... it's not good..... a guildy of mine was just asking me about making Kegs today..... I told him ah..... go buy the full ones off someone...... too much of a pain to make them.... would be better if the game knew you had all the material and you could just click one thing...... "make keg/barrel" and be finished.....

Collections.... I quickly got the wood together to turn in ages ago to get my Minax armor that was fairly easy.... however now with lumberjacking changes... I'll likely never do that again...... as far as the zoo goes.... I've been turning in things over and over and have yet to make enough points there to actually get anything...... Started doing that shortly after this all began...... I figure UO will die out before I ever actually get the neat little crane statuette.

 

[Hunter Moon]

In one of the recent updates or town hall meetings, I don't remember exactly where I read it, they said the BOS change was for scripters. It seemed like it was an offhanded comment from how I read it so... Even if they say it is to even out the economy, it is mostly the poor or new player who the BOS change hurts so I don't see how the change works to even it out. Those who already have tons of gold might not like the change, but those who don't or just got started have no chance to collect any through hunting with the change so it is making the gap between the haves and have nots harder to bridge.

Hunter Moon [HOT] Atlantic

 

[Hunter Moon]

as far as the zoo goes.... I've been turning in things over and over and have yet to make enough points there to actually get anything...... Started doing that shortly after this all began...... I figure UO will die out before I ever actually get the neat little crane statuette. [/url]

LOL I started turning in pets and after doing it for about a week looked at my points and went... NO WAY and ended up just buying the statues I wanted. I do sometimes find some cheap on a vendor, but that is rare and I normally just do without or pony up the gold. I would actually like to do this on my tamer and feel like it was going somewhere, but as it is now, that isn't going to happen.

Hunter Moon [HOT] Atlantic

 

[Omnius]

Scripters wouldn't bother me if they weren't complimented by dupers. The two in conjunction is a bit heavy for the economy of any game to handle.

Duping has been curbed from what I understand. Now, the devs need to limit the effectiveness of scripting. This can only be done with enhanced monster AI.

 

[Hunter Moon]

Yes both are things that need to be addressed, but I am hoping it is easier to change back something that didn't turn out the way they planned then they say it is to make new huge sweeping changes. Maybe that way we could get some of the changes that actually hurt the normal player more than the scripters fixed quickly

Hunter Moon [HOT] Atlantic