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Vote IDOC changes. @Kyronix, @Mesana

These are the changes I would like to see:


  • Total voters
    134
  • Poll closed .
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celticus

Crazed Zealot
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Hoping that the Devs Ninja-visit us derelict children here and see the vote..
But don't hold your breath too long.
 

Pawain

I Hate Skilling
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I like the drop in packs of all sitters but there are too many heavy items for that and sometimes too many items.

I go after the stack of an item that weighs 7000 stone and drag them away. I will never run out of Reagents. Or wood or iron.
 

Danpal

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The back pack one would make it worse there just come with 20 accounts.
 

Blackie

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Removing the condition from the sign would go a long way to stopping the timers widely used to monitor IDOC fall times. It may stop some from doing them, but probably not all.

The best bet now is to make sure that everyone has access to the stuff people are using to auto-loot and auto-place. I know that's against terms but lets get real, they aren't doing anything about it and haven't for YEARS.
 

celticus

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House should explode throwing items up to 15 screens away!!
Or make them appear randomly anywhere in the game, including all dungeons and overland, maybe even "floating" in the sea? I think the exploding idea may be the best, especially if it also is associated nice explosion graphic!:devil:
 

Cymidei

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Just have items drop into a bank or warehouse. Losing 20+ years worth of stuff is a brutal consequence. Too much of a reward for the scripters.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

celticus

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Item #9 so far seems to be winning : Place ALL items to the house owner's bank box, all 5-6,000 of them, since they CAN actually do it, as they do it in TC1. Sounds like the best solution. But then, I would propose that the items stay in there for XX months, 1-2-12 etc, then the items to randomly disperse to game encounters, anywhere in the game. Not anywhere specific so they can be camped.
This would do several things: Give a chance to the home/castle owner to come back up to XX months, and if they decide NEVER to come back, RETURN those items, some with historical value, to the game and not just disappear. ALSO, this will give incentive for people to actually DO the content from hunting wombats, GD's, etc, and dungeon hunting. Make it so slightly more go to sea monsters, so more people will do the beloved water sports, and watch people go crazy with Ships, and all water sports..??
 

Stinky Pete

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It's sad that whatever they choose to do will probably affect fel IDOCs as well. They work fine as is. Whatever they do, I hope they at least leave Siege alone or do something that will promote the combat found at IDOCs there. I still think the best way to solve the issue is to make the area around the IDOC fel ruleset but folks would whine about that.

So, I just voted to delete it all.
 

ShriNayne

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Seems like most people favour items going to the bank box, but I really can't see them doing that, I just don't think it's possible to put a whole castle worth of stuff into a bank box. Heck I don't think even a very full 18 x 18 would be possible,plus there's the risk that something would go wrong and people lose their stuff anyway. Look at the fiasco we had with returning players and the EJ bank box, it would be a nightmare. Sorry but I just can't see this happening.
My husband and I closed our accounts recently and we emptied a Keep and an 18 x 18 into our banks, beetles and backpacks, there is little chance we will return again but we made our stuff as safe as we could weeks before our subs ran out. People are getting months after they stop paying before their house falls anyway, mostly stopping paying is a choice, not an accident.
 

MissEcho

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Seems like most people favour items going to the bank box, but I really can't see them doing that, I just don't think it's possible to put a whole castle worth of stuff into a bank box. Heck I don't think even a very full 18 x 18 would be possible,plus there's the risk that something would go wrong and people lose their stuff anyway. Look at the fiasco we had with returning players and the EJ bank box, it would be a nightmare. Sorry but I just can't see this happening.
My husband and I closed our accounts recently and we emptied a Keep and an 18 x 18 into our banks, beetles and backpacks, there is little chance we will return again but we made our stuff as safe as we could weeks before our subs ran out. People are getting months after they stop paying before their house falls anyway, mostly stopping paying is a choice, not an accident.
at the end of the day all the 'stuff' is just 111111's and 000000's this isnt real life where stuff is three dimensional. They can store lists of stuff anywhere. You forget they can currently put it ALL into the moving crate. I had 7000 items in mine last time I customised. This would be the same process and the digital crate 'stored'.

I Have too much stuff to bother storing it all again, I have left the game once for 2 yrs and did what you did, even got friends to 'hold' my castle spot etc packed up 5 full accounts. After 2 yrs I was feeling a bit more refreshed, returned and have played an additional 8 yrs.

I wont bother doing that again, next time I burn out I will probably just walk away. The though of packing it all up again just turns my stomach. However the result of that would be I would NEVER return.

If I knew there was an idoc crate and my stuff would be safe then who knows I may return for another 10 yrs, won't happen tho if my stuff went idoc.

If you read the thread on the other forum it was raised that you could get your stuff back for a 'fee'. I for one would be happy to pay $3 per month for however long the account was inactive and the stuff was 'stored' to get it back. Not much more than that that tho.
 

ShriNayne

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@MissEcho I totally agree with everything you said! I know it's possible that they COULD do it, but do I actually think they WOULD? No not really...I think any changes they make will still not help the actual IDOC hunters much and it will still be easier for cheaters. I have zero faith left to be honest. :(
 

MissEcho

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@MissEcho I totally agree with everything you said! I know it's possible that they COULD do it, but do I actually think they WOULD? No not really...I think any changes they make will still not help the actual IDOC hunters much and it will still be easier for cheaters. I have zero faith left to be honest. :(
Yeah I am so close to walking away now. I have three of my original 5 accounts open, no way I will pack em again, so if I do walk that will be it. I have like 3 full castles, and 2 full 18 x 18s and a Keep. Just not worth the hassle. The buildings keep you here but even that is on the thin edge now.

The last round of changes to tmaps have pushed me to the brink, when I see stuff that as a mainly solo player I enjoyed being wrecked then it leaves little to be enthused about. (and no it isnt how you do the tmaps, that is fine, it is the absolute crap loot you now get) The current proposed round of stuff in pub 106 leaves me cold. I hate having to jump through hoops to 'achieve' stuff. Whatever happened to just making it easy to have fun, the most impressive events are always the ones when you can get the main reward just by playing ie 'treasures of tokuno' or the halloween dungeons, but no they wanna make this a jump through the hoop event. I mean I have never even done charbylis as it is too much mucking around, I rarely do corgul for the same reason (not to mention the EC crashing blow up graphic), and rarely do scalis as it is also not a 30min mission , and you need a group which is not easy to get.

Kinda get tired of them making everything so convoluted that it becomes a chore.

Lets not mention Doom, Despise, and all the other changes that have made this game a scripters paradise, Idoc being one of the main things, this and the unattended scripter we have running rampant in dark guardian room on oceania that must be a dev or a dev's mate as nothing is ever done about them. I am kinda over the utter crap in the newletter about the so called 'breaches' they have stopped. Whilever this person continues then it is actually Utter crap. There is nothing more to be said on it.
 
The moving crate option, would be a bad idea, lot of people will abuse the system and use as free storage. Plus like others said, is a small team, they have no clue on what and how to fix old bugs, can you imagine this? STOP and think and how many things can go wrong?
I think the removing of the house sign status would be a start but like others said, they can just run their bots/rails 24/7 looking for grubbers instead of house signs ,unless they remove that also.
Tbh, the devs could just burn this idocperson, we all know about him, we all know how he act, talk, we all see him at idocs gating his 10 other accs with packies, doesnt take to much of dev work, since he does that in 20+ shards, every single day. Use him as example. But if this is too much to ask and he is the only one making all the money, cancel idocs for now and come up with a plan.
 

Cyrah

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Ok what is to stop these super smart cheaters from overcoming any changes done? Only way is to remove them from the game and any accounts that they have. Or will have. I wish players items could go into a safe place for their return. What I see from that is cheaters raiding the safe place and getting all they want easier than an idoc.
 

uokings7

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I wouldn't want to get rid of IDOCs. Don't want to remove the items from the area in any way. Possibly just change the timing so they fall at exactly the same time near server up.
 

MalagAste

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The moving crate option, would be a bad idea, lot of people will abuse the system and use as free storage. Plus like others said, is a small team, they have no clue on what and how to fix old bugs, can you imagine this? STOP and think and how many things can go wrong?
I think the removing of the house sign status would be a start but like others said, they can just run their bots/rails 24/7 looking for grubbers instead of house signs ,unless they remove that also.
Tbh, the devs could just burn this idocperson, we all know about him, we all know how he act, talk, we all see him at idocs gating his 10 other accs with packies, doesnt take to much of dev work, since he does that in 20+ shards, every single day. Use him as example. But if this is too much to ask and he is the only one making all the money, cancel idocs for now and come up with a plan.
Problem is like the Avatar guy they spent a long time obliterating every time he logged in there is nothing stopping them from making a new account and doing it all over again.... over and over and over... They have no way to actually ban him from coming back. He can just buy a new account and script up his skills and be back at it in a day or two... Same with the IDOC person... all they need do is load up their scripts and go right back at it....

Sadly the team is incapable of fixing the real issue which is the scripts... There is a "fix" for that... but likely that would be temporary as well.... but it might be far more devastating to players than it is worth. And that's to just end the CC. However, ending the CC would just get the scripters to start focusing their efforts on the EC. Supposedly it's more difficult to do these things in the EC but I'm not sure... I don't cheat and then there are all those who won't use the EC...

Anything they have put in to "Thwart" the scripters only hurts the rest of us more.
 

ShriNayne

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Providing a token in the store that allows a full group to afk macro all day with accelerated gains didn't really help either...
 

MissEcho

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The moving crate option, would be a bad idea, lot of people will abuse the system and use as free storage. Plus like others said, is a small team, they have no clue on what and how to fix old bugs, can you imagine this? STOP and think and how many things can go wrong?
I think the removing of the house sign status would be a start but like others said, they can just run their bots/rails 24/7 looking for grubbers instead of house signs ,unless they remove that also.
Tbh, the devs could just burn this idocperson, we all know about him, we all know how he act, talk, we all see him at idocs gating his 10 other accs with packies, doesnt take to much of dev work, since he does that in 20+ shards, every single day. Use him as example. But if this is too much to ask and he is the only one making all the money, cancel idocs for now and come up with a plan.
How on earth is it 'free storage' ? Storage means you can ACCESS stuff, if you can't play and your house goes idoc you will NOT be accessing anything until you return be it a month or 5 yrs later. As a few have said here and the other forum, they could charge you a 'fee' to get your items back once you have returned and re-subbed. Nothing 'free' about that.

They already have the 'ability' and 'code' to pack up a house. It is called the moving crate. In the last stage of Idoc instead of the joint collapsing with all the items hitting the ground, the items should insta be transported into a moving crate (rename it idoc crate) and that information transported to storage/account bound, then the house falls empty. It would just need to be tweaked.
 

ShriNayne

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I can see why the moving crate idea is popular, but where would it be physically stored? There is no way that number of items can fit into a bank box, or would they all go into some kind of crate vault system? I'm still not sure I would trust them to not mess the whole thing up. If we lose stuff even through the Devs screwing up and game mechanics destroying items accidentally they will not replace a single thing, ever! :(
 

MissEcho

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I can see why the moving crate idea is popular, but where would it be physically stored? There is no way that number of items can fit into a bank box, or would they all go into some kind of crate vault system? I'm still not sure I would trust them to not mess the whole thing up. If we lose stuff even through the Devs screwing up and game mechanics destroying items accidentally they will not replace a single thing, ever! :(
it doesnt have to be 'physically' stored anywhere, it is code. You just have an 'idoc crate' attached to your account and when re-subbing you get a gump that says 'hey you left and your stuff went to this idoc crate, if you wish to recover your stuff please apply your idoc crate storage fee and put in the code number to the store menu' or whatever . You must empty the crate immediately upon applying the code.

If you character copy the stuff you have on you and in your bank is auto copied, if you customise a castle the whole contents of your place goes into the moving crate. If you don't build and commit again that crate will sit there until you do. An idoc crate would just be attached to your account there is no difference.

Everything in this game is just 'code' there is no storage. There is nothing to 'PHYSICALLY' store. Just a bunch of code.
 
it doesnt have to be 'physically' stored anywhere, it is code. You just have an 'idoc crate' attached to your account and when re-subbing you get a gump that says 'hey you left and your stuff went to this idoc crate, if you wish to recover your stuff please apply your idoc crate storage fee and put in the code number to the store menu' or whatever . You must empty the crate immediately upon applying the code.

If you character copy the stuff you have on you and in your bank is auto copied, if you customise a castle the whole contents of your place goes into the moving crate. If you don't build and commit again that crate will sit there until you do. An idoc crate would just be attached to your account there is no difference.

Everything in this game is just 'code' there is no storage. There is nothing to 'PHYSICALLY' store. Just a bunch of code.
Exactly my point of abuse.
Lets use your own example, person own a castle full, 6000 items, everyrhing goes into a crate, he come back a year, receive that message that he have his idoc crate available, he know his bank can only hold 120 items, so he need to place a castle, since he cant find an open place to place one or maybe he doesnt have the gold, so instead he place a 10x10 and now he can access his idoc crate with 6000+ items?? And you cant see this been abused?
 
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Uriah Heep

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LOL

Yeah I'm gonna abuse the hell outta that LOL

Bring it on
 

MissEcho

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Exactly my point of abuse.
Lets use your own example, person own a castle full, 6000 items, everyrhing goes into a crate, he come back a year, receive that message that he have his idoc crate available, he know his bank can only hold 120 items, so he need to place a castle, since he cant find an open place to place one or maybe he doesnt have the gold, so instead he place a 10x10 and now he can access his idoc crate with 6000+ items?? And you cant see this been abused?
LOL seriously dude, the devs wouldn't set it up like that they are NOT idiots. And frankly I AM NOT an idiot either.

If you had an idoc crate that you could access on returning and paying your subscription, you would have like ONE - TWO weeks to empty it and it then disappears. They ALREADY have this apply to transfer crates and character copy items.

The fact you think it could possibly operate as you just stated makes me shake my head in wonder.
 

bourne

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How about during collapse, release powerful toxin that kills or harms all non-ridden pets in the immediate area of the idoc? Or a flash burn to both pets and players, just like in T-Chests, so the scripters have to keep healing pets and themselves?
So go ahead and bring 5 packies etc. The AoE from the idoc would kill them and the scripter would have to make new scripts to heal them continuously, that will fail, since the scripters would need to heal themselves.
Make it so that the idoc is associated with Lethal poison as soon as someone steps in house that is demolished, or some other AOE.
Or anything that would require attention, and also prevent the stashing away everything.
This would force people to loot, get lethal poisoned, grab 1-2 items, then run out to heal and dump items to packie, then back again. Really really slow down the multi-grabs.
That would slow the scripters a little bit maybe? This plus the sign not showing status may be winners..
After all, all the dust from the collapse should be toxic right?
Make the grabbers in general WORK for it a little.
 
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Max Blackoak

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am I correct in assuming that this is only a Trammel issue?

In Fel every packanimal would be killed instantly by players. So whatever changes you come up with could you please only make them affect Trammel idocs? I like my battles over idocs on Siege.
 

celticus

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So I witnessed an IDOC on ATL tonight. Fell 2:AM.
There were about 7-8 characters there with several with 5 blue beetles. As soon as it fell every thing from the large house was sucked up INSANTLY in less than 5 seconds!
So what these guys are doing is using outside programs or grabbers, I presume they must get overloaded, then they call their packies/beetles in since they cannot move, then they load the packies and away they go. So to stop this, first of all the devs have no way of controlling the grabber programs. There must be a way to stop this. One way would be to have an AOE locally that would tend to kill the overloaded players, and cause them to continuously heal, and if they call their packies in, kill the packies also. The AoE should last a while also, plus when the scripter is killed everyone should be allowed to loot their bodies. The packies do that as well normally when they die, everything drops.
The AoE idea may work, since its already implemented in game with T-hunting. Maybe..
There must be other ways to stop this cold also. Any ideas welcome.
 
@MissEcho like every time the devs fix something, we have zero bugs right? I am so confident, that they will fix this 100% without breaking anything else. GL.

@celticus , congrats on the Atl Idoc, now imagine that experience , 24/7 on 20 shards and you will tell me if that dont piss you of, normal players have NO chance.
 

Uriah Heep

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The fact that sooo many IDOCs now are loaded should tell you that those players didnt move to another shard or facet, they left the game with no intention of returning, or a lot of that stuff would have been banked.

The fact that there are so many IDOCs now, should tell you how people feel about the games direction. Lookout, here come da cheerleaders, don't get hit by a pompom...

Facts are facts, cheer on people, UO is being led off the cliff.
 

Theo_GL

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Option missing : House is open to the public. Takes bids. Highest bidder gets the house and all items. This way if 4 plat worth of items fall - the price will be bid up to 4P and the 4P will be removed from the economy and we don't have loot inflation of 4P of items being handed out to people for free (scripters, players etc).
 

MalagAste

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How would anyone know if the IDOCs are loaded? Most normal players who try to do one barely see anything at all before it's vacuumed up... I wouldn't know if anything "good" fell it vanishes before I can even register what I saw.

THAT is the problem which could be solved if the stuff went somewhere else... like to a lotto system... 1 ticket per account period. You get a chance at random loot if you win... things could be divided up into equal lots. Ten winners drawn or something..

Or it could get distrubuted into loot from high-end mobs... T-Maps and MIBs... Do the roof get some IDOC loot along with the stuff you normally get... Kill Lady M get some IDOC loot... Exodus, Corgul, Scalis... all that. Give people more reason to go fighting stuff... Could even do Fel Champs ...


I would HATE for it to be put as an Auction that only serves the rich... a lottery would be far better.
 

Maximus Neximus

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I change my mind.

Have a lottery to win the house. If you win the house, you get a week to choose to keep it or your current one. During that time you can choose to unlock/keep any or all items inside. Only one lottery entry per active/paid account and you can only have one “extra” house at a time.
 

Theo_GL

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How would anyone know if the IDOCs are loaded? Most normal players who try to do one barely see anything at all before it's vacuumed up... I wouldn't know if anything "good" fell it vanishes before I can even register what I saw.

THAT is the problem which could be solved if the stuff went somewhere else... like to a lotto system... 1 ticket per account period. You get a chance at random loot if you win... things could be divided up into equal lots. Ten winners drawn or something..

Or it could get distrubuted into loot from high-end mobs... T-Maps and MIBs... Do the roof get some IDOC loot along with the stuff you normally get... Kill Lady M get some IDOC loot... Exodus, Corgul, Scalis... all that. Give people more reason to go fighting stuff... Could even do Fel Champs ...


I would HATE for it to be put as an Auction that only serves the rich... a lottery would be far better.
You missed the first point - house is open so you can see the items/containers.

Lottery only works in RL because people pay in $100m for the lottery to pay out $80m. If people put in $2m and they paid out $100m then there would be massive inflation - ala what UO has experienced. Everyone whines about the economy its because we lost 80% of the playerbase and their assets have been distributed providing too much of everything. If someone had to PAY for it - then you wouldnt' have the loot inflation. Thats the point of paying for it.

Everyone wants a hand out in the game. Its whats ruining it.

If you dont' want people paying for it - then just delete all IDOCS. Remove the items - no loot inflation.
 

celticus

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@MissEcho like every time the devs fix something, we have zero bugs right? I am so confident, that they will fix this 100% without breaking anything else. GL.

@celticus , congrats on the Atl Idoc, now imagine that experience , 24/7 on 20 shards and you will tell me if that dont piss you of, normal players have NO chance.
Yep. It took 3 seconds at best I think. But I was able to get a nice little bunch of raw meat for my pets, like 50 pieces or so. Its ok. There were 2 paintings there you could see from outside, they were on the roof. One said 250 power of fortification on it loaded, the other one was a painting that was semi-loaded with Alacrity scrolls? These were the ones and other things instantly sucked in by the scripters. This was over in seconds! Just incredible to watch. Never seen one before like this. Tried to find these type paintings on the wiki, no luck. Dont even know what they were..
 

celticus

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A good solution may be to allow newby accounts to get some nice stuff by chance just by fighting anything, including mongbats, balrons, gd's, WWs, Shadow wyrms, and AW's, or even spawning randomly in dungeon boxes here and there, just anywhere. That may chop the scripters down to size, and allow the good word going out that "Wow! Today I was boxing in despise, and
you forgot to add an option to get the devs to get off their arses and stop script cheaters and block all 3rd party programs and block EJ accts from going anywhere near idocs
You are implying though, that they should be capable of detecting third party illegal programs, but they really are not capable of doing so. Also it is not possible for them to sit for hours at the idocs to see who is doing whet there. So that is a lost cause. There has to be something else that would fudge with the overloaded scripter who then calls in their packies and load them up all 5 of them. An area effect may serve to do that, that would also kill the packies that have only a few hit points. So people would only bring no packies? I dunno, maybe.
 

MissEcho

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@MissEcho like every time the devs fix something, we have zero bugs right? I am so confident, that they will fix this 100% without breaking anything else. GL.

@celticus , congrats on the Atl Idoc, now imagine that experience , 24/7 on 20 shards and you will tell me if that dont piss you of, normal players have NO chance.
Hmm so your suggestion is the that devs NEVER do anything then as they can't do anything without bugs? Great Idea, we may as well all pack up and go home. I have no idea what that comment has to do with anything discussed here.

They ALREADY have 90% of the code done to put stuff in a storage crate (char copy, transfers, moving crate are all based on the same principle). You just don't like the idea of Idocs becoming redundant so you must be an idoc'er.

Right now the way Idocs run about 2% of the population would get a look in, and that 2% are the mob who are cheating and making real life dollars off the misery of other peoples losses.

I have done my share of idocs in the past and rarely got anything worth the camp due to the cheaters and since it changed to 5, 10, 15 hour wait times gave it away as a total bad waste of time.

I would now rather someone's house go into storage on the off chance of them returning if they knew their stuff would be there upon return rather than a bunch of vultures hanging around just waiting to grab as much stuff as they can to flog off to the highest bidder. It is really soul destroying to sit and watch the vulture attitude of these people and to watch a castle load of stuff just disappear into the ether in seconds which just shows the amount of blatant cheating that is going on with them now. Not to mention that last round of changes making stuff drop at 5, 10, 15 hrs an absolute BOON to those who cheat as 'normal' people can't afford to spend 15 hours watching a building unless you were lucky enough to 'be' there when it went from greatly to idoc so you could clock the fall window.

If there was any way to have idoc's fall that allowed for fairness and to remove those obviously cheating I would be ok with it, but so far every single change made in recent years to multiple game scenarios has actually benefited the scripters/cheaters at the expense of the wider community. ie changes to mining, lumberjacking, em events, idocs. Sadly it is a reflection on the gaming community that people have to cheat to 'win' and there is zero respect for the other players.
 

celticus

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It really has to be something that would have the least chance of causing issues with the code otherwise, also no big programming thing. To start with : start with not to show status on sign except for the house owner. See how this plays out. This would be a major fly in the pie for mr avatar and his buddies the scripter gold monguls with their grabber programs..lol.
 

MalagAste

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It really has to be something that would have the least chance of causing issues with the code otherwise, also no big programming thing. To start with : start with not to show status on sign except for the house owner. See how this plays out. This would be a major fly in the pie for mr avatar and his buddies the scripter gold monguls with their grabber programs..lol.
If they did that you would just see the house bot checkers 10 times more often than the once per day or so that you see them now as they would continually be searching for houses that have fallen... rather than just running past checking signs...

Scripters will still know.

I prefer the lottery idea or putting it in T-Map and mob loot...

I thought about it being saved for "returning" players... but let's be honest... probably 70% of the players who quit aren't coming back. And what about people that die and aren't coming back.... that stuff just goes to their account no one will ever see again... now I personally am glad that I was able to get stuff from my friends who've passed away... think about that for a min..... your good friend dies and the stuff is just gone... no more chance of coming across anything with their name on it... it's gone forever ... I don't much like that idea.

The other problem with that idea is what if they had a castle.... they come back to UO and best they can do is a 10x 10 or 18x18... what happens to the other 4k in stuff they had??? Are they stuck forever not being able to access it or do they have to get rid of all that stuff??? Pretty sure that would disgust and discourage them.. think about how many go EJ and are annoyed with not being able to get the stuff out of their bankbox. Imagine that on MUCH grander scale.... they go EJ thinking they can come back and now have a house full of stuff they can't access as well as a bankbox full of things... No, I think that would be more harmful than good.
 

Cyrah

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No decay on the sign sound good. Are you sure they cannot find a way to read it anyway? Maybe they are working on that right now? Have the items go somewhere far far away. No grubbers no ground toys. Then the fight is over the plot. Another cheat for that? Yea. Already is one.

What I do not want is auctions. Find some way new players or returns can at least have chance at some items. Lotto? Like above post. It is great that this is being thought about by the team. Yay!
 

MissEcho

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If they did that you would just see the house bot checkers 10 times more often than the once per day or so that you see them now as they would continually be searching for houses that have fallen... rather than just running past checking signs...

Scripters will still know.

I prefer the lottery idea or putting it in T-Map and mob loot...

I thought about it being saved for "returning" players... but let's be honest... probably 70% of the players who quit aren't coming back. And what about people that die and aren't coming back.... that stuff just goes to their account no one will ever see again... now I personally am glad that I was able to get stuff from my friends who've passed away... think about that for a min..... your good friend dies and the stuff is just gone... no more chance of coming across anything with their name on it... it's gone forever ... I don't much like that idea.

The other problem with that idea is what if they had a castle.... they come back to UO and best they can do is a 10x 10 or 18x18... what happens to the other 4k in stuff they had??? Are they stuck forever not being able to access it or do they have to get rid of all that stuff??? Pretty sure that would disgust and discourage them.. think about how many go EJ and are annoyed with not being able to get the stuff out of their bankbox. Imagine that on MUCH grander scale.... they go EJ thinking they can come back and now have a house full of stuff they can't access as well as a bankbox full of things... No, I think that would be more harmful than good.
In 2009 when my old guild broke up and the others went to WOW I was given the account details of them to tidy up their houses, bank stuff and get whatever I could for their houses. I gave these to 'friends' as had no need for $$ or more property. I have since had 2 friends of mine pass away in game since 2015 they were married and were the people responsible for me actually joining the game back in 2003. The first went in September 2015 and her hubby just this past January 2019. Neither were old and neither death was 'expected. As a 'friend' I was given their account details and was asked to 'clean up' their online life by their son as they knew I played with them and had attended both funerals and worked with one for many years. Neither of them whenever we discussed Idocs ever gave the impression that they would be happy to have ppl picking over their stuff, for the vultures to get. In fact Pete, actually told me a number of times he would rather toss it in the bin than allow the 'buzzards' as he put it to get it. Another friend contacted me about 3 months ago to advise they were not gonna play, again, they gave me their account details to 'clean up for them'. In all cases these 'friends' were real friends and managed to arrange for their stuff to be dealt with.

If someone is a real friend and does not intend to play then they will attend to their stuff or give you access to sort it out especially if they never intend to come back.

As for if someone has a castle worth of stuff and returns that is up to them, they can keep 3800 of their 7k items if their place was packed to the gils and all they have is an 18 x 18 which they can get on pretty much any shard. Most people probably have 3k worth of stuff they can toss anyways, as it is craftable or easily replaceable. But it would be their choice, they may elect to claim their Idoc crate once they have re-established a dwelling. I would think they could code it so that the idoc crate just sits until such time as they activate a code to reclaim it. They obviously cant use it until then but there would not need to be any rush for them reactivate it. They could also set up vendors for excess stuff. I doubt it would be anything like EJ as this would NOT be a bank box as per the EJ accounts but a whole separate crate like the moving crate.. I am sure they could code whatever using similar script attached to the account. Frankly if they can claim back 4k of their best items instead of NONE I would think they would be well happy. Give them 2-3 weeks to empty the crate before anything left in it disappears.

This game actually needs LESS items than it has and I guarantee you that probably a minimum of 60% of items swept up by the professional script idocer's ends up in the bin, if not 90%. They are only interested in the money making bits and everything else would just be dumped. They have zero care for 'old' items of historic significance nor for personal momentos, all that is just pure garbage to them. Wouldn't surprise me that if an item didn't have a minimum value of 1m gold it would also go direct to the bin possibly even anything worth less than 5m.
 

Rafman

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No offense OP, but all of these options kind of suck.

1. Cancel all IDOCs. No....a lot of players really enjoy the playstyle, and have for years, cancelling them is silly

2.Remove stage of decay...if anything, this just makes it easier for scripter. You can't manually sit by an idoc for 6 days straight, but a scripter probably can.

3. Cancel the 5-10-15 hour thing. Sure I suppose - the new system is idiotic. Still - you're not exactly bringing forth any new ideas.

4. Buffer/in-game encounters? Not sure what you mean exactly. Like - each idoc creates its own spawn/monsters you kill for loot? Sounds way too complicated to develop for. Also - some castles are empty, and some 7x7s have tons of containers, seems weird to have more to less spawn ratio...Not 100% sure i understand this option though.

5. It's probably easier for a scripter to loot from a treasure chest than it is from the ground. And it's probably harder for someone to manually do so. Don't think this helps.

6. Drop all items in backpacks. Lots of problems here. First, some would just bring 10+ accounts for advantage. Mostly - think of an idoc castle - there might be over 5M stones worth of items there. Simply put - items won't fit in people's backpacks. Also - even if they did fit - i don't want to spend the next 4 hours sorting through thousands of junk items i need to remove from my backpack that were automatically put there...

7. Reward bank and randomly claim with Fellowship points. Ok....again, think of that castle with those thousands of items. Are you claiming each piece of ingot separately? 500 separate chairs? Seems like this could get silly fast. I haven't played much so not very familiar with fellowship points - but i'm sure there are ways to cheat that system and gain a bunch of points fast, and so the same people would end up with all the loot faster.

8. Permanently delete all items. Why? If you don't like idocs personally - just pretend this is how it works and never go do them and you'll be happy. And others who do like them can continue getting loot. This is extreme.

9. Place all items in the bank account of house owner. Few problems....One, idocs have always been a part of the game, you're essentially taking away a big playstyle that people enjoy. Not sure that's smart. Two - think back to the castle with all those thousands of items. It won't all fit in a bank...

10. Leave idocs as they are. Well - personally, I hate the current system, so i'd welcome some change, i just think your ideas are seriously lacking.

11. I don't care either way. I think that's part of the problem - so many of the people who vote and participate in idoc discussions around here are usually some who never actually do idocs, nor care to. Not sure why their opinion should matter all that much. To give a parallel - i don't think i've ever filled a BOD in uo. When discussions about changing the BOD system arise here - i'll be sure to not have a vocal voice in a system i don't even really participate in.


Here are some actual problems with IDOCS with potential suggestions:

1. You can't see inside a public house anymore. This is really, really lame for me. You spend hours scouting for idocs - let's say you come up with 10, half public and half private. Historically, with the public ones, you always had the ability to walk inside and assess the goods. Looks good, or crap? Than decide if it's worth your time. With private - it's a bit of a gamble. With the system today, it's all random. Kind of loses its luster. I wish they would allow idocs to be public again. At the very least - allow them to be publicly entered until the final "IDOC" stage - then you can make them private if you want.

2. The timers suck. Too long - 5/10/15 hours needs to go away. Most of the time, the only people who have an accurate "time" on an idoc is obtained through illegal method. Why not even the playing field, and give all players a fighting chance? Few ways to do this, here's one suggestion. When the house is within one hour of fall time - have the house sign turn RED, to alert players. To be clear - you would still leave the 5/10/15h timer, or go back to 7h idoc timer - the only change is when it's 1h away, make sign go red, to let everyone know it's coming soon and people can be ready. This allows players to more casually keep track of idocs while playing the game, checking on the hour, but when the sign is RED it's go-time, so you get there and wait, without losing your whole day.

3. As for the items inside the house....well i'd have to understand the dev's ability to "sort" through items a bit better to give some actual suggestions. Maybe make it a bit harder to obtain some of the more valuable/rare items vs others, depending on what the dev's abilities are here in terms of recognizing higher end items vs not. But you simply can't treat all idoc items the same (think of the castle with 5000 individual items) - or it would get ridiculous fast.

4. Placing houses. I think the current "placing timer" was brought in to give players a chance to loot items first. Instead of house being placed, and everything ending up under sign, this system today gives players a chance to "loot first". Great - if that's truly the idea, let's work with that. Same idea as the sign turning red 1 hour before house falls - why not give players a "5 minute warning" before a spot opens up for placement. Maybe it's a sound in-game, or maybe a temporary sign appears in-game after the house falls and before we can place saying "You cannot place a house here at this time" - but 5 mins before you can place, the writing on sign changes to "Placement to open within 5 minutes". That way all players know to prepare and try their hardest then, leveling the playfield. And at the same time - get rid of the stupid house tool "timeout" issue. 5 minute warning - let everyone "mash their buttons" during those 5 mins to get lucky. It's not any faster to "mash a button" manually than it would be with a script - so gives everyone an even playing field.

Basically - there are many possibilities to improve, or "fix" idocs. Most of the ideas laid out in the OP are really poor.
 

Cyrah

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Then Rafman /Stephanie what are your ideas? Amazing how this thread brings out people. Two of you anyway.
 

MalagAste

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Nothing you suggested levels the playing field when the scripters loot the stuff before it even hits the ground or can be registered by actual players who don't cheat.

All your offering is making it 100x easier for the scripters...
 

Cyrah

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Rafman is not the only one showing up here to whine. I am glad the cheating kingdom is going to crumble.
 
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