Re: NPC Vendor Prices

[Guest]

Recently the development team fixed an exploit with NPC Vendors (non-player owned) which allowed gold to be freely created at no loss or risk by cheaters. The change is as follows:

<ul>[*]Vendors will no longer sell items to players below their established base values[*]Vendors will no longer buy items for more than their established base values[/list]
This change was made to commodities – not all items. However, this does include resources like wood or ingots, and generic craftables like bolts and arrows.

Previously the system was very dynamic: global prices were reflected by the amount of items being sold and bought by players. This was, I always felt, a solid compromise in design – at least in lieu of the closed resource system originally intended for UO.

Many will remember that very early on UO’s economy was rebuilt as an open faucet system. Later, the team added goldsinks as they felt necessary to solve inflation issues, or remove duped wealth from the game. Vendors went through numerous revisions in their pricing models as well, until we arrived at what we had up until recently.

Impact: we’ve added ceilings and floors to the dynamic model, rather than replace it.

We did this in a hurry, too. Why? Was the exploit new? No, certainly not. The exploit, and its cousins, had been going on for some time. Wasn’t it a simple bug to fix? No, it was an intrinsic flaw with the implementation. Won’t vendor prices rise until something is done to counter it? Yes, vendor prices will rise right now without caps, and player vendors will certainly have an advantage until a more permanent solution is implemented.

You’ll note that I say a permanent solution, which this is not. So why? It was absolutely critical to fix the bug as quickly as possible, while retaining as much of the dynamic model as possible, in order to solve problems with server stability. We do not want to permanently nerf such a fundamentally fun and interesting game mechanic as merchants in UO have been able to enjoy up to now.

So, friend merchants, we must ask your patience. We want to attack cheating head on, and we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of not being able to have our cake and eat it too. Many people legitimately enjoyed the buy low/sell high game, which was of course in no way illegal.

However, to all those who used specific exploits to manipulate the system against its design: We’ll be seeing you soon.

 

[kennykilleduo]

Thank you for response , while you can't spend all day here , this is the kind of info I think alot of us die hard UO players are looking for , truth and not run arounds..

The liitle things add up to big things in the end , makes for a better UO..

 

[Woodbuthcer]

While your looking at vendor systems Draconi you should check out the sell price on shadow Heater Shields.

Nice change helps us commod sellers.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

While your looking at vendor systems Draconi you should check out the sell price on shadow Heater Shields.

Nice change helps us commod sellers.

[/ QUOTE ]Ah, shadow ore. Thanks for pointing that out!

 

[Guest]

It would be interesting to see what prices basic resources would reach if they couldn't be bought cheaply at vendors. At what point would tailors start shearing sheep again?

I would love to see a system that involved shipping/pack-muling large quantities of cargo between cities. This is one area where unfortunately gates and recalls spoil a bit of the fun.

 

[imported_dukarlo]

Great, now is there any reason speedhackers are not being banned despite how many time they are being paged on?

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the explanation. Knowing why something is done, is very helpful, especially when we can expect a greater benefit to come from it later, even if it means some short term pain/adjustments.

Just curious, on Siege we can't sell to NPC vendors, and their base sell prices to us are already 3X higher than regular shards. Will this have any effect on our NPC vendors system?

-Skylark

 

[Babble]

I like the words more permanent ...

 

[Jhym]

?? Aren't shadow and Valorite ore priced items based on the underlying valuation code (which uses durability), and thus not a "problem" as everyone seems to keep believing?

I don't see this as an issue since you have to actually MINE the ore up in order to MAKE the items to sell, and they are not commodity items. Or am I to understand that nobody wants anyone to make any significant profits from their work in this game???

 

[AlanofCats]

<blockquote><hr>

?? Aren't shadow and Valorite ore priced items based on the underlying valuation code (which uses durability), and thus not a "problem" as everyone seems to keep believing?

I don't see this as an issue since you have to actually MINE the ore up in order to MAKE the items to sell, and they are not commodity items. Or am I to understand that nobody wants anyone to make any significant profits from their work in this game???

[/ QUOTE ]

This has been one of the largest holes in script mining. I will be thrilled to se it get plugged. You can still make just as much or more by selling your ingots. Shadow heaters was just a quick way to dump stock.

 

[Guest]

i admit i do use recalls but i spend plenty of time sheering sheep for my cloth, have been for over 9 years now ;-)

 

[Guest]

ooooo.....

... Peeps ...

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

Well done Sirrah and Team !
I just finished posting a long and drawn out explination of this very thing here(don't bother

except for entertainment purposes ... "simple" suggestion for a final "tweak" follows

)

As implemented ... most excellent first pass ...
Capping the rise gp price, of NPC buys = slowing of inflow of GP ... good, doesn't Prevent a starting player of building gp.
disengaging buy/sell of the NPC from 1gp cheaper = good(great) creating a "gap" for players(crafters) to trade in ...
AND
Players intent on only buying from NPCs ... okay ...buying from NPC = gp OUT of the economy (=good)
self limiting ... players will quit when the prices too high ... maybe ... NPC's have unlimited supply and Players will need to generate and price BULK quantities ...
with an eye towards prevailing prices (check the NPC, Check the Vendor, make their own ...

decisions decisions ...)

Overall ...good ... slowed inflow, increased out flow, created a "market" for crafters/returning crafters to work in.

Just ONE problem at this point ... NIX ...(in the link)
NIX is a bottleneck/choke point ... where it maybe possible to set up a "price gouging operation"
IF
The Fall off in current prices charged by NIX ... were to decay (fall) more quickly than any other ONE vendor (NIX = special case)
MAYBE the bottleneck could be "broken" ... widened ... mitigated.
Instead of "long lasting HIGH" selling prices ... over all, for NPC vendors ... a slow fall off (not linked to buying from players)
A slow fall off for all, except NIX (faster higher rate), keeps gp flowing &gt;&gt;&gt;out ...
and leaves the buy from(acquire) decision (check the NPC, Check the Vendor, make their own )

On The Player ...

For your and your Teams consideration ...

Fayled (dancing in the glow of burning houses) Dhreams

 

[Guest]

...

It looks like there has been a concentrated effort to slow the faucet side of the UO economic system based on putting together the different changes of resource randomizations, BoS changes, dragon buffing, and now commodity prices.

My question is now... what are the plans on the back end to push the drain of gold higher to speed up the removal of gold from the game?

 

[Guest]

*smiles* I was a part of this discussion at the Austin, Texas meet up. I hope the team is back on track and we will see the flip side of this coin soon.

 

[Guest]

...

Well it looks like they are moving on the various fronts to at least try and fix problems in the game. We may not always agree on the particulars, but seeing the big picture, I see the idea of where they are headed, just wondering how much further they intend to go.

Part of me also wonders what the end effect will be once they do all of this tweaking in terms of player activity.

 

[Guest]

It is good to see something being done about the cheating and exploiting. As part of the process could you post how many accounts have been banned from the game and perhaps how much gold deleted. I thought perhaps a bulliton Board at the Flaming foundations in LUNA on each shard.

 

[Guest]

From what I was able to gather, crafters will most likely be pleased with the end results.

 

[Cogniac]

<blockquote><hr>

You’ll note that I say a permanent solution, which this is not.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm rather glad for this bit of info.
<ul>[*]Price that the Luna provisioner on the Atlantic shard is buying crossbow bolts from players at: 3gp per[*]Price that the Luna provisioner on the Atlantic shards is selling crossbow bolts to players at: 45gp per[/list]Translation: If you want crossbow bolts and you don't make them yourself, you are outright boned.

 

[Guest]

only if you shop in Luna. I have never paid those kind of prices, I simply know where to shop. No exploits, nothing underhand, just a thorough knowledge of the game.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

From what I was able to gather, crafters will most likely be pleased with the end results.

[/ QUOTE ]

Lets hope so I would like to do some more before I get too old to hold the hammers and saws!

 

[Cogniac]

<blockquote><hr>

only if you shop in Luna. I have never paid those kind of prices, I simply know where to shop. No exploits, nothing underhand, just a thorough knowledge of the game.

[/ QUOTE ]I don't shop in Luna, either. But the idea here is that a lot of people do shop in Luna or some other highly convenient venue. Thus people are gaming those vendors to drive up the prices. Which results in people moving to the next most convenient vendors. Rinse, repeat. Eventually, there won't be a vendor in the entire game that sells bolts/arrows that will be at all viable. Rinse, repeat for all commodities that are affected by this temporary (thankfully) change.

 

[Guest]

Prices are only going to rise as high as people pay. If they get too inflated the owners won't get sales. And we can all collect our own resources if we chose to which is an extra balance. Besides, this isn't the perma fix...

Wenchy

 

[kennykilleduo]

This is 100% active on all shards right?

 

[Guest]

Well for a lot of us, it sucks. Trying to get colored wood to make stuff with was bad enough, but at least selling all the normal wood you ended up with was an option. I could go to different carpenter an tinker shops, and sell the wood for between 5-11 gold each. Now all EVERYONE buys it for is 3 gold.

If the resources were not randowm, this would be ok. But since you have to cut 95 regualr wood, to get 1 colored wood," % wise", It is almost not even being close to worth the effort any more.

 

[Theo_GL]

<blockquote><hr>


While your looking at vendor systems Draconi you should check out the sell price on shadow Heater Shields.

Nice change helps us commod sellers.


[/ QUOTE ]

I would like to recommend a basic Economics class to the UO Hallers that have never taken econ.

The heater shield issue (the fact that Shadow EX heaters are bought from NPC's at much higher prices than regular ingots) is actually artificially inflating the price of Shadow ingots and currently HELPING commodity dealers.

Right now you can get about 35gp per shadow ingot by selling shields. That is why shadow ingots have a bit higher price than they normally would.

If the heater shield issue is removed, then the floor on ingots could conceivably fall to 0. As it is now, the floor is around 35 as anyone selling for less is bought out and a profit turned by simply crafting/selling them.

Now, Shadow ingots won't go down to 0 of course, but they will settle in somewhere slightly above DC ingots - probably at 28-30 each.

So - if they 'fix' the heater shield issue - then commodity brokers are actually hurt as a 'demand' for their ingots is removed and they supply will increase and the price floor is removed.

This is all BASIC BASIC economics folks. Econ 101 from your local institution of higher learning.

 

[Guest]

Nix (Doom vendor) on Europa: sell bolts @58gp per, arrows @ 65gp per!

What's it like on other shards? How high will they go?

 

[Basara]

Back when I was taking Bandages down to Nix to sell (the most profit and least offensive thing to sell - I made them from dyed reward cloth to pay for my skull and the insurance I was sure to use up while there, and be unlikely even under the current rules set to see an arty), Bandages would be about 40-65 when I went in, with arrows averaging 5 more than bandages (45-70) and bolts 10 more (50-75). So, I'd typically take 16000 bandages down (and give about a quarter of them away to the other players), while carrying 500-3500 bolts or arrows (arrows were easier to get, from rat archers, while gathering spined leather) to sell.

I'd end up spending 2-3 hours there, lose about 400k insurance, and more often than not come out without an arty. (I run with only about 200 luck, and my character has 0 resist spells, because of having 200 points in Cart &amp; LP that I refuse to stone off, because I'm GM of the shard THB chapter).

 

[imported_GalenKnighthawke]

I don't know how I feel about this (other than that I'm glad I'm stocked up on bandages), but either way, thank you for your willingness to tackle unglamorous but important "core" game issues.

You've all had an impressive last couple of weeks!

-Galen's player

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

We want to attack cheating head on

[/ QUOTE ]

While I'm certainly against "cheating"...you folks need to rethink how you go about taking it on. Far as I can tell at this time, you've failed because you managed to piss off more non-cheaters than cheaters.

Honestly...if I lose too many more friends to frustration with the dev team's heavy handed tactics I'll be playing the game alone. Who cares if there's no cheaters when the servers are empty?

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Part of me also wonders what the end effect will be once they do all of this tweaking in terms of player activity.

[/ QUOTE ]

Very low I'm afraid.

These changes have almost wiped out the guild I used to PVM with twice a week. No one has the heart to even try anymore.

None of us were crafters, none of us scripted or gathered resources, and none of us had anywhere near enough gold to even pool together for a single Crimson Cincture...so I doubt we were the target of the changes. But even so, they've made a major impact on our fun.

We would take half a dozen or so warriors out on PVM treks one or two times a week...more often than not to Ilshenar.

It used to be a lot of fun to do an Ilshenar dungeon top to bottom and then fight back out. But now...what's the point? We barely get in the door before we're overloaded with gold...and we're nowhere near rich enough to fight to the bottom without making any gold to cover insurance costs. The item loot is such a joke no one even looks at it anymore, so there's really nothing worth looting but gold. Take away gold and what is the point to the no-recall dungeons in Ilshenar and the Terathan Keep?

One of our other favorite spots was the Ilshenar champ spawns, especially the one in the jungle near Valor. Now that entire area is basically a no-go because of paragon greater dragons. There's absolutely no fun in being slaughtered without hope.

We'd also go to Doom for a few days at a time, staying until the armor absolutely had to be repaired. But to do that the archers had to buy arrows..and with the prices now going up without limit that seems like it's about to become impractical as well. Gee thanks.

I'm fine with the idea of reducing gold in the world. I can't even imagine the folks who complain that their bank vault is full of 1 mil checks. But the way they are going about it is just not smart. It's like using a sledge hammer to tack a note to a bulletin board.

If they want less gold in the world...why didn't they just adjust the loot tables so stuff dropped less gold?

Limit the number of times a day a bag of sending can be used per account, don't charge so much by weight that it's essentially useless.

Add real AI to the monsters, don't just increase their stats to the point they are unbeatable to poor ole warriors.

And if you want to freeze the buy point on vendors then freeze the sell point, too, because with the buy point so low it's pointless then the auto-adjust will never kick in to lower the cost since no one will sell anymore.

I just wish they would think more about what they are doing. There's ways to accomplish the exact same stuff without impacting so many people who aren't exploiting the game but just want to have fun.

 

[Smokin]

Not really understanding this, does this mean your going back to the old system where prices stayed the same and you had to buy out vendors to build them up. I really hope thats what it is.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

While your looking at vendor systems Draconi you should check out the sell price on shadow Heater Shields.

Nice change helps us commod sellers.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you have some issue with this why dont you put in the time and effort to create a miner/smith instead of crying here?

 

[Gheed]

<blockquote><hr>

<blockquote><hr>

While your looking at vendor systems Draconi you should check out the sell price on shadow Heater Shields.

Nice change helps us commod sellers.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you have some issue with this why dont you put in the time and effort to create a miner/smith instead of crying here?

[/ QUOTE ]

I have a miner/smith and I have an issue with this. This is one of the two reasons I can think of that mining got nuked. Before mining got rng'd to oblivion, nearly every fel shadow ore spot I had marked had a scriptor attatched to it. In fact I used to hit those spots on my tamer, precast paralyze and wait for them to pop in. My mare loved them.

Why? because every whack on the mountainside was an easy 140 gps. I have watched many a scriptor recall in and out of their homes for hours. Most were pretty consistant @15 seconds out and 5 seconds to unload. If every trip out averaged 25 large ore thats 50 ingots. That translates to 1500ish gps every 20 seconds from shadow heaters. Thats 4500 gps/minute...270k/hour...over 6mil/day.

Now multi instance hack a client on one machine or set up virtual machines on one box and duplicate this over all shards. Load balance over several machines and set up multi bots on each shard..say 5. Now each shard is pulling in 30 mil/day....one fella with a handful of robust boxes could be practically printing his/her own money....all from an npc who has a fetish for shadow heaters.

I'll would be glad to see that change....if it has any bearing what so ever in getting my beloved profession back to normal.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your reply. I guess I have spent 8 years playing this game for fun instead of figuring out how to print money which wouldnt be fun for me. I didnt know about this shadow shield thing til this week. No wonder all the screaming is going on.

*heads back to have fun*

 

[Cogniac]

<blockquote><hr>

Nix (Doom vendor) on Europa: sell bolts @58gp per, arrows @ 65gp per!

What's it like on other shards? How high will they go?

[/ QUOTE ]

Right after the Gauntlet changes went in, crossbow bolts hit 81gp per down there on Atlantic. I assume it is nearing that amount again. There is no reason not to buy them down there at any price, because all of the gold you get is essentially meant to be spent inside, because you'd waste far more money trying to get it out and get back in.