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Publish 90 Banking Changes

Tamais

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Tamais submitted a new Article:

Publish 90 Banking Changes

There have been several changes to the new banking system. The first you will notice when you say bank or click on the banker is the new menu that pops up. You can also click on the banker to open both your bank vault and menu. By clicking on the menu it will close.


The character transfer account is used when you want to move funds from one shard to another. Deposit gold/platinum will put the funds in the account. Use Withdraw gold/platinum to retrieve the funds.

The secure account is only used to put funds in the new house vault.


Using the bank menu to transfer funds...​
 

Duncan McDermott

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The transfer account. Does that mean if I have gold on Catskills for instance that I want to use on Atlantic I only have to deposit the amount I want and will be able to withdraw it on Atlantic? Without transferring a character to do this?
 

Lord Frodo

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The transfer account. Does that mean if I have gold on Catskills for instance that I want to use on Atlantic I only have to deposit the amount I want and will be able to withdraw it on Atlantic? Without transferring a character to do this?
NO That is the amount of gold you will take with you to a different shard just like you use to take checks now alls you have to do is say how much you are taking.
 

Tamais

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Thanks lord frodo, I'll add that to the article to make it clearer. Their explanation wasn't really clear.
 

OREOGL

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they should just put the balance in the pop up menu for the bank.
 

Yadd of Legends

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Stubentiger

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Uff, ok I am old and use the old classic client, apologies ....
Why the hell does the big popup not tell you that balance shows the amount of gold you have?
Ideally the bank box should have a field that shows the amount of gold you have. If you cannot change the gump to display it, consider making balance a menu option on the banker.

Does "open menu to view gump and mouse over for actions" work? I mouse over and nothing is extra displayed .. is still the classic client, but maybe I am just confused :)

Alos there is no reason for the "bank Options" menu to stay when the bank box closes, just tie it together.
If that is not possible consider it not opening automatically but making it a menu on the banker.
 

Cyrah

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Maybe this has been answered. Piles of silver in the bank box will stay piles of silver after publish?
 

Becca

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It is a house transaction , it is to put money into your house wall safe heheh
 

Tamais

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Petra, thank you so much for explaining escrow. One of those things i should have figured out. I will add that to the article. I'll try to post pictures of the bank menu, safe, and trade gump. I'll test today the silver. I do know that i have silver in a box in the bank vault. Thank you to every one sharing info. I'll be adding it to the article. :)
I do have a request. Keep all comments to questions, sharing infomation and constructive suggestions.
 

Tamais

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I will put renaming secure account in the suggestions. It is confusing thank heavens Petra knew :)
 

Tamais

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Thank you Gamer, I saw that silver but wasn't sure if it was the silver Cyrah was wondering about. now to answer that on the article. :)
 

JC the Builder

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I am glad to see something is finally being done to solve all the issues with currency (mainly limit on checks and duping). It was sort of a catch-22 where they could not increase the check size because of duping, but duping 1 million gold checks was already pretty good return.

The only thing that seems to be confusing players is the whole platinum exchange for 1 billion gold. Someone said this is probably because of computer limitations for large numbers. I don't like how it is being handled at all though because we are talking about a very tiny amount of players who have 1 billion gold but you are going to see references to platinum everywhere.

I think I read a solution to this sort of large number problem once was to break up the variable into two variables. So you have gold_storage_one and gold_storage_two. You fill up gold_storage_one until it reaches a limit, in this case 1 billion. Then it overflows into gold_storage_two. For example lets say you have 1.5 billion gold. Gold_storage_one contains 500,000,000 and gold_storage_two has 1 (where each whole number indicates 1 billion gold). This type of work-around would be invisible for players where-as platinum is just added complexity.

*Added*

I just realized the whole way platinum works is exactly how I outlined above. So all they would really need to change is how it is displayed to players. So instead of calling it "1 Platinum and 500,000,000 Gold" they could have it say "1 Billion and 500,000,000 Gold". Or if you want to be really fancy make it completely invisible by smooshing the numbers all together to say "1,5000,000,000 Gold" (so it would be "1," next to "500,000,000").
 
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Kojak

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why do people have problems with plat being 1bil - I just don't get it

do you really want to have to think about converting every time you want to buy something over 100mil ..... uhhhhhhhhhhh .... how many plat is that and how many gold - der - no thx

the fact that plat is something you rarely have to deal with is such a good idea - it really focuses your attention into not making a stupid money mistake when you get into the plat region
 

Theo_GL

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why do people have problems with plat being 1bil - I just don't get it

do you really want to have to think about converting every time you want to buy something over 100mil ..... uhhhhhhhhhhh .... how many plat is that and how many gold - der - no thx

the fact that plat is something you rarely have to deal with is such a good idea - it really focuses your attention into not making a stupid money mistake when you get into the plat region
If Platinum is something you rarely have to deal with then why have it? Whats the point?

Here is my guesses on the system since they never tell us anything concrete :

We need to move to a bank based system. At some point the numbers can get too high so that a single variable would be difficult to display and track the gold amounts in the billions.

By making it 1b gold for platinum - it won't really impact any vendor prices or transactions in game so everything can be expressed in gold still. 50m gold, 30m gold whatever. The vendors, trade gumps, eveything trading in gold. You only use platinm when you break down a plat piece back into milions.

The promise or thought though is that we could get to a an actualy two tier monitary system and stop expressing things in gold. 30m gold, 28m gold etc. A simple 1m to 1 exchange would make it easy. 5 plat, 500,000 gold is 5.5m. As long as you keep the scale its easy.

Guild wars does this i believe with bronze, silver gold pieces. They scale up and prices can be expressed in fractions.

My guess here is they just did it to avoid the 5,554,600,899 bank balance numbers and the like. Thats all. Not an actual currently but just to keep bank balances below 1b gold.
 

BeaIank

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It is because unsigned 32 bit integers can only hold up to 2 power 32, which is 4,294,967,296.
They could migrate over to 64 bit unsigned integers that can hold up to 18,446,744,073,709,551,616, but they are dealing with code compiled for x86 there, and changing it to x64 can cause a whole slew of unexpected bugs.
While x86 can deal with 64 bit integers, it comes with a performance hit that can and will impact the system overall performance when you're dealing with dozens of them. Their database might not be able to hold 64 bit integers as well, or might be able to, but with even more serious performance hits.

So, 1 bil == 1 plat makes sense.
 

Tamais

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I wish the main thread would be broken down somewhat. Over 400 posts, not easy to find a specific answer.
The editors ageees. That is why i did the banking article,Larisa started the thread about crafting. PlayerSkillsFTH (not a Stratiics volunteer) started his wonderful thread about the new masteries. He is doing a through job of testing them. If there is some thing you would like to have its own thread please let us know.
 
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Tamais

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Will be adding how transaction with ncps are affected
 

Spock's Beard

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It is because unsigned 32 bit integers can only hold up to 2 power 32, which is 4,294,967,296.
They could migrate over to 64 bit unsigned integers that can hold up to 18,446,744,073,709,551,616, but they are dealing with code compiled for x86 there, and changing it to x64 can cause a whole slew of unexpected bugs.
While x86 can deal with 64 bit integers, it comes with a performance hit that can and will impact the system overall performance when you're dealing with dozens of them. Their database might not be able to hold 64 bit integers as well, or might be able to, but with even more serious performance hits.

So, 1 bil == 1 plat makes sense.
What does any of that have to do with your conclusion? Even if UO couldn't handle any digit above a million, you could still make platinum a mil and let people have up to a million plat. That would be a trillion gold.
 

BeaIank

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What does any of that have to do with your conclusion? Even if UO couldn't handle any digit above a million, you could still make platinum a mil and let people have up to a million plat. That would be a trillion gold.
Why make people that aren't uber rich deal with two currencies needlessly? It increases complexity when there is no need to do so.
Most of the user base will keep happily dealing only with gold, while the ultra rich will have to deal with platinum for those extremely expensive deals and won't see their fortunes capped at 4 billion.
 

Spock's Beard

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Why make people that aren't uber rich deal with two currencies needlessly? It increases complexity when there is no need to do so.
Because some of us besides the 0.1% trading in billions would like to have some zeroes cut off our tens or hundreds of millions? Because the mil is pretty much the standard unit of commerce? It wouldn't be an issue if this whole banking system didn't reek of having been slapped together as quickly as possible.

Like if this were actually done well, platinum would be a mil, all gold over a billion would convert to platinum automatically, and players would be able to convert gold to platinum and vice versa at will. Someone who wanted to store their 500 million gold as 500 platinum and cut all those zeroes out would be able to do so, and someone who wanted to trade 5 billion gold would just trade 5k platinum. Meanwhile anyone with under a billion who didn't want to screw with platinum at all wouldn't have to.

Simple, benefits everyone, doesn't bother anyone who doesn't want to mess with it.

Instead we get someone just going "Well the game can only hold ten-digit numbers, so just +1 platinum when they hit ten digits I guess" along with crap like this laughable bank gump that pops up every single time you open the bank, layers over the box itself when they overlap, and doesn't even show your balance.

This isn't even good work by freeshard standards.
 

Dizzy

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Will I finally be able to write checks, even if I have insufficient funds? I can do that in real life. It's like magic.
 

BeaIank

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Because some of us besides the 0.1% trading in billions would like to have some zeroes cut off our tens or hundreds of millions? Because the mil is pretty much the standard unit of commerce? It wouldn't be an issue if this whole banking system didn't reek of having been slapped together as quickly as possible.

Like if this were actually done well, platinum would be a mil, all gold over a billion would convert to platinum automatically, and players would be able to convert gold to platinum and vice versa at will. Someone who wanted to store their 500 million gold as 500 platinum and cut all those zeroes out would be able to do so, and someone who wanted to trade 5 billion gold would just trade 5k platinum. Meanwhile anyone with under a billion who didn't want to screw with platinum at all wouldn't have to.

Simple, benefits everyone, doesn't bother anyone who doesn't want to mess with it.

Instead we get someone just going "Well the game can only hold ten-digit numbers, so just +1 platinum when they hit ten digits I guess" along with crap like this laughable bank gump that pops up every single time you open the bank, layers over the box itself when they overlap, and doesn't even show your balance.

This isn't even good work by freeshard standards.
And then get hit by another server performance problem, because functions that check for funds would have to consolidate two different currencies to determine if you have enough gold to purchase goods from NPC and player vendors priced under 1 platinum for every player instead of doing so only for those few with 1 billion plus. That takes more CPU time and stuff like this needs to be taken into consideration when developing such systems.
There is also the fact that most people won't ever see one billion gold on their UO accounts. Heck, at most I got 150 mil on mine once.

And while cutting zeroes sounds like a nice solution, by experience, it isn't really. It never helped us here in Brazil during the 80s when we cut zeroes from our currency more times than I can count in my fingers.
If anything, it would cause NPC commodities/vendor rates to become pricier for the average player.
And trying to force such by making players to deal with two types of currencies is also not a very great idea, first for technical reasons that I have pointed earlier, and because it increases the complexity of the economy system. The game is more complex than it should be as of now. Adding complexity to the economy would only increase the problem tenfold.
 

BeaIank

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@Kyronix We need a gump to donate gold city coffers too. As it is right now, the only way to do so is by dropping stacks of gold at the city herald, 60K at a time.
 

Kirthag

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Suggestions regarding player knowledge of account balances @Kyronix ...

When we pull up the NPC vendor interaction, there is a spot that says "Gold Avail: xxx" which draws value from whatever gold is in a character's pak.
Can that be changed to read the Current Gold Balance (CGB)?



And when purchasing from a Player Vendor, the "agree to purchase" gump shows the amount of the purchase. Is it feasible to include the CGB from the bank accounts as well? Something like this (of course made prettier):




Further, with gold collection, is it being planned that when we loot monsters, the gold is insta-transferred to the bank (a la WoW & other games) to the point where there is no actual gold in use? If so, it would serve to allow players to know their CGB at any time, and wouldn't be a bad idea to change the Character Status Gump to actually show that balance (in CC) and to find a way to display that balance on the character gump of the EC as when we hover over it (see samples below). Maybe showing in relation to million. EG: when the CGB reaches 250,000 it will display .25mil - under that will display actual CGB (or something to that effect).


Now, auto-loot of gold direct to the bank will change how guilds/hunting parties actually share loot - for when we go hunting we do tend to split the gold right then and there. Maybe I'm jumping ahead with that, but knowing how much gold we have readily available for shopping is kinda important and many players tend to budget their gold for various things -- I tend to budget for events I will be hosting (and getting close to doing that again soon).

Some players may budget to buy that special house (particularly on crowded shards), or others will budget for that uber armor set. Whatever the reason, merging all shard monies for an account is okay - just makes budgeting more interesting.


For example...
I have budgeted 300mil for a Event-A and 500mil for Event-B. I tend to keep that gold in check form buried in bags across my banks on a shard. I suppose I will have to set up two Wall Safes, one for each event, and secure the funds that way. Decent way to do that as I tend to go bonkers when buying deco items and don't want my budgeted event funds depleted. I like the idea of the wall safe - can now save more funds without having to juggle between character banks and cannot overspend on my deco sprees. :D
 

Kyronix

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Suggestions regarding player knowledge of account balances @Kyronix ...

When we pull up the NPC vendor interaction, there is a spot that says "Gold Avail: xxx" which draws value from whatever gold is in a character's pak.
Can that be changed to read the Current Gold Balance (CGB)?



And when purchasing from a Player Vendor, the "agree to purchase" gump shows the amount of the purchase. Is it feasible to include the CGB from the bank accounts as well? Something like this (of course made prettier):




Further, with gold collection, is it being planned that when we loot monsters, the gold is insta-transferred to the bank (a la WoW & other games) to the point where there is no actual gold in use? If so, it would serve to allow players to know their CGB at any time, and wouldn't be a bad idea to change the Character Status Gump to actually show that balance (in CC) and to find a way to display that balance on the character gump of the EC as when we hover over it (see samples below). Maybe showing in relation to million. EG: when the CGB reaches 250,000 it will display .25mil - under that will display actual CGB (or something to that effect).


Now, auto-loot of gold direct to the bank will change how guilds/hunting parties actually share loot - for when we go hunting we do tend to split the gold right then and there. Maybe I'm jumping ahead with that, but knowing how much gold we have readily available for shopping is kinda important and many players tend to budget their gold for various things -- I tend to budget for events I will be hosting (and getting close to doing that again soon).

Some players may budget to buy that special house (particularly on crowded shards), or others will budget for that uber armor set. Whatever the reason, merging all shard monies for an account is okay - just makes budgeting more interesting.


For example...
I have budgeted 300mil for a Event-A and 500mil for Event-B. I tend to keep that gold in check form buried in bags across my banks on a shard. I suppose I will have to set up two Wall Safes, one for each event, and secure the funds that way. Decent way to do that as I tend to go bonkers when buying deco items and don't want my budgeted event funds depleted. I like the idea of the wall safe - can now save more funds without having to juggle between character banks and cannot overspend on my deco sprees. :D
We have no plans to make gold auto-loot. Gold as a physical object will remain in game, and will be deposited when you put it in the bank (either by dropping it, or using a bag/chest of sending). Adding balance information to the gumps you suggested (particularly those in the classic client) is outside the scope of our goals for the initial release of currency conversion.
 

Kirthag

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We have no plans to make gold auto-loot. Gold as a physical object will remain in game, and will be deposited when you put it in the bank (either by dropping it, or using a bag/chest of sending). Adding balance information to the gumps you suggested (particularly those in the classic client) is outside the scope of our goals for the initial release of currency conversion.
Understandable. Just suggesting. Maybe in the future, will keep fingers crossed. Thanks for the responses - especially so late at night for you! :hula:
 

TimberWolf

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It is because unsigned 32 bit integers can only hold up to 2 power 32, which is 4,294,967,296.
They could migrate over to 64 bit unsigned integers that can hold up to 18,446,744,073,709,551,616, but they are dealing with code compiled for x86 there, and changing it to x64 can cause a whole slew of unexpected bugs.
While x86 can deal with 64 bit integers, it comes with a performance hit that can and will impact the system overall performance when you're dealing with dozens of them. Their database might not be able to hold 64 bit integers as well, or might be able to, but with even more serious performance hits.

So, 1 bil == 1 plat makes sense.


Pure BS.... it is simply because they are trying to get rid of duped gold checks sold by third party companies like.. *******O. These companies and other companies presently sell billions of gold daily. Removing checks have nothing to do with anything except making it a little harder for minute by minute deliveries of backpacks full of 100 - 1 million gold checks that occur on most shards!
 

Vor

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Pure BS.... it is simply because they are trying to get rid of duped gold checks sold by third party companies like.. *******O. These companies and other companies presently sell billions of gold daily. Removing checks have nothing to do with anything except making it a little harder for minute by minute deliveries of backpacks full of 100 - 1 million gold checks that occur on most shards!
How does it make it any harder? If anything it makes less work for the delivery people and much easier storage and transfer to clients.
 

TimberWolf

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How does it make it any harder? If anything it makes less work for the delivery people and much easier storage and transfer to clients.
so explain to me how you are going to transfer 500 million to me if you are this nameless third party company?

And how are they going to get gold when 1 million checks disappear from the game?
 

Vor

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so explain to me how you are going to transfer 500 million to me if you are this nameless third party company?

And how are they going to get gold when 1 million checks disappear from the game?
Open trade window. Type in the amount the person has bought. Press accept.

As to how they'll get gold. I have no idea how they get it now. So I can't answer that. But I doubt it'll change much.
 

Leeda

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Uff, ok I am old and use the old classic client, apologies ....
Why the hell does the big popup not tell you that balance shows the amount of gold you have?
Ideally the bank box should have a field that shows the amount of gold you have. If you cannot change the gump to display it, consider making balance a menu option on the banker.

Does "open menu to view gump and mouse over for actions" work? I mouse over and nothing is extra displayed .. is still the classic client, but maybe I am just confused :)

Alos there is no reason for the "bank Options" menu to stay when the bank box closes, just tie it together.
If that is not possible consider it not opening automatically but making it a menu on the banker.

ntal gets paid?
This is confusing as hell! why do they always add difficult stuff?
This is confusing as hell! why do they always add difficu
 

Kojak

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Open trade window. Type in the amount the person has bought. Press accept.

As to how they'll get gold. I have no idea how they get it now. So I can't answer that. But I doubt it'll change much.
it will be interesting to see if they run out though - hehe
 
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