Time to cry bloody murder!!!!

[Parnoc]

Good Lord, folks. Ya all got yer head in the sand? What just happened? You mean to tell me that after cutting almost 2 million logs since ML colored woods and making runes to all the good color tree spots, they're just gonna disappear? And NO, I'm not a scripter LJ, I did em all with macros on UOAssist and by hand totally. Am I the only one here or are there other hardchoppin' LJ's out there that have poured sweat and blood into finding the good spots and now gettin' em all taken away from us? I know I'm not the only passionate LJ in these woods. I know there's lots of us that love bein' out in the woods alone looking for that wonderful, elusive Frost/Blood/Heart tree!!! Rise up and shout!!! Fill this forum with so many of us that think this way that we'll actually get a Dev's attention. Maybe -- just maybe --they'll say "Hmmm, maybe this isn't the way to stop scripters by takin' away the honest woodchopper's spots, maybe there's another way we can stop the scripting." To me this is a major problem and it's almost a game stopping thing. I thought I'd never say that but I'm sure at that point now. So hit this forum hard!!!! Show 'em we're not the "silent" majority!!!!

 

[Lunaticus]

I am behind you ONE MILLION PERCENT! I think it's ludicrous that EA makes such a drastic change not only to miners and lumberjacks, but also, as a direct result, to crafters as well! PvPers got their own forum to discuss changes, why can't we?? Honestly, this should be OUR game. When I say "our" I'm referring to subscribers. We pay our monthly fee, so should we not get at least A LITTLE bit of say in how our game is run? I'm not asking for approval for stupid, petty stuff; I'm only requesting a little consideration on the behalf of the EA developers when it comes to major, game altering changes. The devs could have, very easily, opened a forum for crafter/resource gatherer types and found out how that segment of the population felt about a change so severe. Heck, they could have created a Stratics poll at the very least! If this was brand new content, and nobody ever spent all the weeks and/or months searching for wood and ore spots, then it wouldn't be such a big deal. But, regardless of the fact that ore was said to be randomized, IT WASN'T! Wood has NEVER been subject to randomization, and to now get this stupid change thrust upon us with no prior notice is just insulting! It's insulting to every player that doesn't script. If EA was so darned worried about scripters, HOW ABOUT ACTUALLY RESPONDING TO PAGES FROM PLAYERS WHO WATCH THE SCRIPTERS IN ACTION????? I guess that's just too much to ask. They'd rather further alienate their long term player base, enact a worthless change to an already broken system, and in the long run, only succeed in slowing down, not stopping scripters.

 

[Flowerpower]

after testing ca. 10 hours after the publish i wrote many, many posts about that at uohall forum. and many complained with me, we made 2 or 3 good and constructive suggestions how such could be avoided or even turned into more game experience. some few said things like: "i have a lj 2 and i like the changes" all they could say further was wether wrong or just silly blaming.

so at least we got it into the FoF and i assume the part with "future adjustments" came out of our constructive complaints. now im really tired and only can hope that they reverse it or bring out very well thought changes soon.

 

[Susie Soong]

Just one change after another, day in and day out, over and over and over...till we all get fed up and walk away from something we have loved for many years.

 

[Guest]

EAMythic did so that this change was not aimed at scripters.

Many voiced their opposition. But it fell on deaf ears. For years I have run a small business, out of my vendor (non-Luna) selling furniture and taking orders for granite items. Now its gone. I will not be taking orders anymore, except for maybe a few friends. Resources are too screwed up for a causal player.
I only harvested what I needed, mainly granite and heartwood/frostwood for furniture, although I stocked every color. I asked other posters who loved this change, to please explain how my 15k total of valorite ingots that I have mined since the introduction of colored ores, was abuse of the old system? I have yet to get an answer.

Also I still would like anyone to explain to me the concept behind "rare" resources when there is an infinite supply of these resources in the game?

I still say that I started to see the abuse of the colored ores/woods when they were added to the community collections (you get the most bang for your buck by turning them in), for wanted/needed items. Before this I so very few scirpters except of iron ingots, much demand for these always as been a good demand.

Take the ores/woods out of these collections, who would script them? Oh there might be a few, there always is, but there is nothing to gain by scripting them, if their only value is to the crafter for enhancements and item creation.

I gonna call BS, on the changes for the system "in the future" How many systems were added over the years, never finished? As far as I am concerned these "future changes" are nothing but vaporware.

I think many lumberjacks/miners are just tried of non-response response. Oh we are making crafting changes you gonna love them. I think many causal players have just started to say screw it. Lets look for another game to spent my time/money on.

I ran a extensive test on my homeshard with the new changes, if you want I can pm you the results and/or the complete run.

 

[Balding_Slowly]

anyone know the odds for the spot to change? I thought the ore always had this chance to change from years ago. The spots might not change all that often.

Doesnt really affect me, but I feel your pain.

 

[Guest]

I have no idea what the change percentages are but they are low. Here I will list for you my test of the new changes on my home shard.


Results of my test to the new changes to resource gathering. (Lumberjacking)
I decide that I wanted to see the affects of the new resources respawn.
The affect that the new system would have with causal players.

Causal players (My definition only) : players who play for 2 hours or less a day.
Or total hours logged in is less than 15 hours a week.

The experiment:
I set up the following:
Using an elf character at grandmaster lumberjack for the knowledge of nature.
(Greater chance of finding colored wood)
I decided to review my colored wood runebooks and remove any runes marked for the

Three (3) rarest woods: Heartwood, Bloodwood, Frostwood.

After review, I found that I had five (5) frostwood spots, three (3) heartwood spots and

(3) bloodwood spots. Giving me a total of eleven (11) runes to use.

I decided to use my rarest spots because :

1) With the new changes, I figured that these spots would have been stripped out already. Giving me a base to see how long it took to respawn the initial color at that spot.
2) There were spots on every facet (felucca and trammel) except tokuno.

3) These were the best spots I personally found and marked since the introduction of colored woods. I used no rune libraries to try and limit the more commonly known spots for colored wood.

I decided to use each rune one hundred (100) times. I would break this down into four

(4) cycles of twenty-five (25) attempts each. At each spot I would lumberjack until I saw

the “There’s not enough wood here to harvest” message. Then I would record what type
of colored wood (if any) received then proceed to the next spot.
I decided to not to keep a total on the number of regular wood harvested. It is a resource
that can be purchased from npcs. Besides I was only interest in the rate and

Volume of colored wood. I completed one (1) each day for four (4) days.

After completing my one hundred (100) uses, the following are the totals for all colored woods.

I have not converted any into boards, not that it matters, just wanted to be
accurate.

OAK ---------------- 17414 LOGS
ASH ---------------- 3794 LOGS
YEW ---------------- 3140 LOGS
HEARTWOOD --- 2770 LOGS
BLOODWOOD --- 6235 LOGS
FROSTWOOD ---- 310 LOGS

AMBER ------------ 11 PIECES

I have a complete record of my four (4) runs, and if you wish I will post/pm them.

Personal observations :

This change will have negative impact on causal players. No longer can a player who
Needs a few boards to either enhance items or make a few items of colored furniture.
Be able to acquire them in their limited playing time. Unless they get a “lucky” strike or purchase them.

Prices will go up. It is just basic supply and demand.

With the current changes a scripter can sit in his home and if near enough to trees,
Just happily chop away and stack up the wood. Because eventually if you respawn enough times
A tree you will get every color.

You might have some people decide to close their accounts.

How do I see vendors with quite a few amber pieces for sale? Could someone review the

Chances of getting amber?

Do you realize how silly this change is? At least logically? I worked my skill up, and I
Went out and searched the lands from these colored wood spots. Why are I and all other
Players now penalized for our efforts? I understand that it is your game. That I just
“rent” access to your servers and you can make changes as you wish. But the point
of this game is to make your company a profit, by providing entertainment to your
paying customer. Making people who have a limited time to enjoy your product is
counter-productive. I realize that Ultima Online is not the real world, but to use an
example: California Redwoods grow out west, you will not find any on the east coast
ever (except maybe in botanical gardens). One year from now the redwoods will still
be out west, five years from now they will still be there. I think you get the point.

 

[Tony Blair]

I toally agree!
These recent changes are ignorant and foolish. Every charcter in this game is able to mark runes to it's ressources, merely crafters (!!) not. I am a customer of EA, I pay for this game and I am not willing to continue with this ridiculous new ressource system.
Thank you.
Lady Nuria Saavedra, Worthless Grandmaster Lumberjack and Miner

 

[Parnoc]

First of all, thanks to all who added to this thread, I'm pretty sure it's not gonna make a difference, but at least we're trying! To Warsong, thanks for the great info, it's really interesting. I'm not as organized as you, but since they changed the wood, I've probably cut 250 or 300k of logs and my observations are very much as yours. It does seem I've seen more changes into Blood just as your stats suggest. The one interesting thing is tho, I have not had ONE tree that was originally Frost turn back to Frost after having another color. And ya wanna cry with me? I had just found the best Frost tree out of the 20 I'd found in my whole UO Lumberjack life, this one was good for 880 logs per session, so 50-70% of the logs off it were Frost and now it's turned into Blood, which ain't bad but it sure ticked me off. Again, thanks folks, and let's keep on complaining - we got hurt - it ain't fair!!!

 

[Keno]

I returned to UO just a few months ago because I remembered how much I enjoyed the gaming and community before - I played for a while but left to go overseas when Third Dawn was in beta. My loves were fishing, crafting and the occasional role playing gig - these provided many fond memories.

Now I come back to find that it isn't what it used to be - in a negative way.
Prices are astronomical, resources are scattered and nearly unattainable for those that have a real world life to live with little time to be online and the PvP'er gets virtually anything their little heart desires and scripters are making cash hand over fist. All the while those that just don't care much for killing our fellow human beings are left out in the cold with little to no hope of a real future. (There's enough of that in the RW over here)

Granted; Anything in life is what you make it! I can still find people willing to help and also those that I can help along on their quests in the game. I can still go out and mine up a few ingots and get the occasional higher ores. I can still chop to my hearts content and find a couple things worth crafting with. There's still that funiture that I want to put upstairs in the house and that bow for my fisherman. I can even fish up a few serpents, take down a few dragons in the caves and grab the occasional white pearl or big fish with my fishing pole... but all in all... it's just doesn't show any signs of positive change in the near future.

Yes, I understand that "you can never go home" because nothing is as it was when you were there before. We and everything around us grows and changes. Afterall, the only thing that remains the same is change. But come on guys...
Why should such minorities, primarily PvP'ers and scripters, receive such a majority of positive attention and change?

Seems that the changes implemented just in the time I've come back do two things:
1. Nerf the weapon and skill abilities persons use, and need, against monsters.
2. Actually increase the need and marketability of products from scripting; there by super inflating the economy thus ruining the experience for other gamers.

Some of the basics, like resource locations, need to remain the same. If you are having problems with scripters then close them down. Don't make everyone else pay for their profit. If they are too much of the base income for the game to survive if you kick them out then what do you think you'll do when everyone else leaves and they have no further market? Won't they leave then too?

Why should I have to study and understand the game mechanics just to have a decent character who can hold his own against a monster? Who has time to go over all those formulas and look into all those equations? When did a Samurai need to have a pinch of Paladin and a smidgen of Necromancy thrown in just to walk down the street confident and proud? What happened to needing tactics to know how to use a weapon, anatomy to better understand your opponent and taming to have a pet or three?

I'm not knocking those that want to get into all those things. I applaud your ability and desire to be the best. And God knows that I enjoy, and appreciate, the engineering of items and history of places that I've been too and want to visit. But just because a calculation doesn't allow you make that one-hit-kill why do you think you can lobby to have it changed so you ruin my game? More importantly: Why does EA think so little of so many that they would listen to those persons in the first place? Have they lost touch with us and focused on just the few? Or is one of their own in that group and doesn't care about us?

I was planning on my wife and a few friends joining me in-game. We were looking for a way to stay in touch and share some time "together" - most of us are overseas and away from home - and I thought that this could be a way to really enjoy things and take our minds (especially being in the Middle East) off of things for a while. But it's all the same everywhere: Conflict, whining and special treatment for a few while the rest just have to suck it up, adjust fire and drive on.

Now I'm faced with a decision: Do I even want to give the tried and true (UO) another shot or is it better to just find something else that may have its finger on the pulse and a hand on the heart of the gamer?

Guess I could always just become a "murderer" and then cry like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum because someone wipped my tail - after I spent all that time to hack the system anyway so I could get that uber/killer character! How dare they?! It isn't fair! Or perhaps I could just let my computer "play" for me while I'm doing my thing in the real world - and actually gain some additional real world cash in the process!!!

I used to feel at home in Sosaria and looked forward to the occasional foray into the city of Britannia... Hope they really do get things straightened out. For all its faults I still enjoy the heck out of this game but we'll see what happens.

Anyone tried Star Wars Galaxies or Lord of the Rings Online?
Galaxies far far away and a mythical land with unending adventure... Not to mention some good books and great movies too.

OK, I'm done complaining. Afterall; It's just a game and it really is my money to do with as I please! So I can build another "home" and make other friends wherever I want.

Now I'm wondering when the next ship leaves the starport *Chewy! You got fur and drool in the control panel again!* or if that giant eagle has room for two on it's back. *Move over Gandolf and let's stop at the barber shop for you on the way.*

Happy hunting everyone and hope they get their priorities in line soon

 

[Guest]

Well my bloodwood total is slightly off.

Because I used known runes for the top 3 colored woods. I had one bloodwood rune which was marked in fel. It only yielded 4 chops total everytime. But thats 80 logs each time I drained it. And it did not stop giving bloodwood, until the 50th time going to that tree and draining it. So right there is 4000 logs of my 6300 approximate bloodwood total. So if you throw that rune out I logged about 2300 bloodwood logs. If you want the complete log of my experiment, let me know. I will pm it too you. It only 15 pages long!

I just posted the results, figured thats what people are interested in.

 

[imported_Stucky]

I've chopped over 100k boards since the switch. I decided that I had a better chance in felucca, so I chopped a bunch of former ash locations there. I've had 0 yew, heart, blood, or frostwood. I find it very hard to believe that this could even be possible given the percentages we were given. I shouldnt be going home with more amber than special wood.

 

[Nicar]

Not sure who would agree with me on this, but this is what I think with mining and lumberjacking. Find your area where you can gather and gather and be at the begging when it respawns. Completely empty out each of your locations. I think someone hit Occlo once, I went there and got lucky with a bloodwood and heartwood right next to eachother. Oh, and make sure noone else is chopping your area. Not sure if it's accurate, but this is my theory.

 

[jelake]

<blockquote><hr>

Completely empty out each of your locations.

[/ QUOTE ]

You could if you needed the wood, but it's not necessary to empty a resource square to trigger it to replenish and possibly change color.

 

[imported_bioras]

No, they didn't do this to fight scripters. What they did was give cheaters a huge boost.
As it stands, the only real defence against scripters is the honest player. But thanks to this little change, a scripter can now hide in a seldom traveled section of woods, and have no fear of being caught.
The real goal was to make rare woods rare. And the did that. I have spent 25 hours out now with not a single frostwood log. Mean while, the wood I am getting in now totally worthless. I have had oak, ash &amp; yew boards for sale on a Luna vendor for less than what I used to sell plain wood for. Guess what...can't sell a single board.
So in the end? Scripters win again. Huge.
Thanks devs!!!!

 

[Dude1598]

For 8 hours with 1 book 16 runes these are my results
Normal 68k
Oak 20k
Ash 4,400
Yew 2,960
Heartwood 1,200
Bloodwood 3,860
Forstwood 0

All runes were marked at normal wood trees

 

[eolsunder1]

Its very funny actually you can see the scripter vendors have shifted all of a sudden, they have a overabundance of regular wood (maybe some oak) and the vendors are FILLED with board deeds.

One vendor had 25 60k deeds filled out, selling at 1.5 gold per board! thats right, 100k for 60k wood. Because they have so much of it, they can't give it away LOL.

For you mathmaticians, thats over 1.5 MILLION boards just on that ONE vendor. trying to offload at rock bottom prices.

So, if your a fletcher or carpenter trainer, you have it made in the game with low bottom cheap wood prices. Too bad if your a lumberjack not scripting.

 

[imported_Eolix]

If EA was so darned worried about scripters, HOW ABOUT ACTUALLY RESPONDING TO PAGES FROM PLAYERS WHO WATCH THE SCRIPTERS IN ACTION????? I guess that's just too much to ask. They'd rather further alienate their long term player base, enact a worthless change to an already broken system, and in the long run, only succeed in slowing down, not stopping scripters.

_______________________

Good Point! If they are into applying money-saving band-aids rather than real fixes how about this;

Limit the amount of rare wood/ore that each character/account can mine/chop in a 24 hour period. I would like to go to the spots I know I can get what I need. Resource limits would take the wind right out of the scripters' sails while still making resource gathering viable for the masses.

I would scale the limits based on rarity with unlimited iron, considerably less Dull Copper, less yet Shadow... up to a minimal amount of Valorite. Even if the restriction on Valorite were 50/day, it's a hell of a lot more than what we are seeing now. It would keep the casual mule busy for a few hours a day with a GUARANTEED return.

As far as randomizing ore, the frequency of ore resets could be changed to once every 6 months or so, not only to keep the scripters off balance, but to lend a little "Mining Fever" realism to the skill. I kind of like the idea of a "Mother Lode" strategy where each reset would feature a random area with a higher concentration of a certain type of ore that would feed a mining frenzy for a limited amount of time before the lode "plays out".

 

[Bill Brasky]

Selling 1mil Frostwood Boards on Legends!

 

[Alex_GL]

Was about to come back. Thought about Lumberjacking. Hell No. Chopping wood was boring before, and now it's even worse: boring + sucks. Hm... what's the point to run around on LJ now? Try to catch your own tail?
Good luck guys.
Good luck UO.
Good luck EA.

 

[chretain32]

I have never been a resources kinda guy but I have paladin that I have trained my LJ on. Do i recieve the bonus we used to get with an axe? does it help any doe di as a swords LJ with an axe?

PM me please

 

[alethra]

I HATE the lumber change. I have been able to find NO frostwood since the change. Not once piece. I'm a casual player and had a couple of spots I could go to if I needed it and now I can't fine a single spot. I've gone all over the forest near minoc and found every other color except that after hours and hours of chopping a little at a time. I've pretty much given up ever finding any frostwood again. This change had really ruined the game for me. With this change and the bos change ... I'm about ready to throw in the towel on this game. It's rapidly becoming something that is no longer fun to play for me.

 

[MorganaMischef]

This is a great idea. I would love to be able to go and chop for a couple hours a day or even til I reached my limit. Speaking of reaching my limit...I'm getting there quick with this new development. With only a few minutes a day/hours a week, it's really hard to get resources when they keep changing the locations of the ore/lumber.

 

[5% Luck]

Ive been a GM LJ for 3 weeks now spent quite a few hours at this and have yet to find frost wood. Ive gathered

700 blood
6000 heart
12000 yew
45000 ash
72000 oak
around 500,000 plain

but no frost!
maybe 75 hours since gm spent!

BLOODY MURDER!

 

[Guest]

OMG! So thats what happened! I just posted this question about why all the special trees werent yielding any logs. Guess I should have read all the threads. I think this was a major mistake. I personally went out and found trees my self to mark for chopping. It took a very long time to find certain trees. Now that all my marked runebooks are useless is maddening. BAD, BAD IDEA!!!

 

[Lunaticus]

I made my first post regarding this subject, on 8-10-07. It's been just over eight months and I still have not gotten a single board of frostwood. Seriously, ZERO frostwood to be found on two different lumberjacks. I realize that the higher end woods were now supposed to be "rare" (more so than they already were, considering that I had only five marked locations that were already well known on my shard), but seriously, EIGHT months and NO frostwood???? Anyone else having this problem? Is there something I'm missing? I'm on LS if that helps.

 

[Lunaticus]

I made my first post regarding this subject, on 8-10-07. It's been just over eight months and I still have not gotten a single board of frostwood. Seriously, ZERO frostwood to be found on two different lumberjacks. I realize that the higher end woods were now supposed to be "rare" (more so than they already were, considering that I had only five marked locations that were already well known on my shard), but seriously, EIGHT months and NO frostwood???? Anyone else having this problem? Is there something I'm missing? I'm on LS if that helps.

 

[Guest]

Nope there is nothing wrong,

this is what EAMythic wants. I lj too and unless you are willing to lj all your time now, it is just about impossible to find any.

the only other option is to become a scriptor. I have notice some players selling frost again on LS. But it could just be scriptors that have not been caught because they are only selling in 1000 lot commodity deeds now. and the price has really shot up.

I have basically given up. I never used frost for the turn in, thought that was the stupidest idea ever, but I used it for enhancing sometimes, but mostly for my furniture business, I have closed this down too. I still get requests from friends/guildies/others from my years of playing LS, I have to turn them down unless they can supply the resources. EAMythic has destroyed a large part of the game for me.

Now I try to find mispriced commodity deeds on vendors to use just for my personal needs. Found 1000 frostwood boards for just 27500 instead of the current 275000 which it is going for.