Why arent you attacking merchants?

[RavenWinterHawk]

How cant I put this for a discussion?


Ok.
Farming gets knocked.
Farming by script gets knocked more.

Duping gets knocked.
Fencing gets knocked.

Selling and buying gold for RL cash gets knocked


3 out of 5 are cheating.

Know to me it falls into 1 category... GETTING GOLD.
Which can be divided into 3 sub categories.

Cheat Gold
Buying Gold (RL cash)
Game acquired Gold

But Gold is Gold is Gold.

So as a Merchant, I take all kinds. I take cheat gold, bought gold, and in game earned gold. I cant tell the difference.

But I do know when lots of gold appears. I can put out HIGH PRICES on items and they tend to sell. Of course items need to be in demand.

I am the perfect fence, launderer, profiteer. My wealth is built on all the above.

If someone dupes a trillion. I dont benefit right away but then I get more gold eventually.

When the dupe is fixed or trillions removed when cheats are caught...
I end up with merchant gold still hanging on my vendors.

My wealth increases.


So why arent merchants attacked more often as problems to the game?

 

[Connor_Graham]

Because we're legitimate business people. Having vendors and selling things you obtain through legal gameplay is part of UO. Unfortunately, there is no way for us to monitor our sales to find out where the gold is coming from. I take heart in the fact that I know that every single item I sell, whether that be ingots to arrows, or artifacts to rares, was obtained 100% by legal gameplay. I know that every person that buys my wares is getting something that they don't have to worry about where it came from, and there are quite a few that buy from me just for that reason.

 

[UO Relic]

Actually they are attacking merchants as well, take a look around Luna you should see some burning rubble from houses they have caught with merchants that have been caught selling dupes.

On Baja I know of 6 houses (3 in Luna) that the Devs burned to the ground, might be even more but I have only come across 6

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Actually they are attacking merchants as well, take a look around Luna you should see some burning rubble from houses they have caught with merchants that have been caught selling dupes.

On Baja I know of 6 houses (3 in Luna) that the Devs burned to the ground, might be even more but I have only come across 6

Those are duper houses.

I mean us merchants suck in the gold.
Now we have no way of knowing what gold is what.
But even with legit wares we profit on cheating.

 

[Tina Small]

You could always suggest that UO implement something like the U.S. government uses to try to prevent or keep track of money laundering. Financial institutions that engage in a currency transaction or related transactions in a 12-month period in excess of $10,000 have to report the transaction to the IRS using a specific form. Casinos are subject to similar requirements. The IRS also has a Suspicious Activity Report form for reporting transactions or attempted transactions involving $5,000 or more. Certain federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies can gain access to the reported information by following certain procedures and subject to certain restrictions.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

You could always suggest that UO implement something like the U.S. government uses to try to prevent or keep track of money laundering. Financial institutions that engage in a currency transaction or related transactions in a 12-month period in excess of $10,000 have to report the transaction to the IRS using a specific form. Casinos are subject to similar requirements. The IRS also has a Suspicious Activity Report form for reporting transactions or attempted transactions involving $5,000 or more. Certain federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies can gain access to the reported information by following certain procedures and subject to certain restrictions.

RTLFC
Maybe in excess of 100 million.

I guess the thought is...
There is a lot of arguing about RL selling, who charges what, the economy, wipe gold....

I think that simply distracts us from the fact that this is all about 2 groups.

1 DUPERS.
2 POWER SCRIPTERS.

I might say scripters but there might be more scripters then are fessing up.

The rest of the arguement er I mean discussions are fun but distract from the inadequate system EA has to catch dupers, inform the player base, seal dupes, punish dupers and obvious scripters.

No matter what approach you take. The only fix is addressing the above 3 lines.

Wipe gold. So what, helps the scripters. Even more shortage.
Wipe event items. So what other stuff is duped.
Make selling gold illegal. So what. It will still be sold and make selling more profitable.

Go the other way.
Seal dupes and cheats. Well its obvious Gold will get redistributed, item prices will adjust.
Punish obvious scripters. Well they wont be around.

Focusing on making it harder and harder for scripters and dupers is the only way to go. The bag of sending, random resources. All outstanding changes. Now they have to address the bod system. Frequency of turning in bods. They need mechanisms that "red flag" after you kill 500 dread spiders IN A ROW. Or mine 3 hours non stop with exact recall spots over and over. All stuff people argue. But... we know how it goes.

"You've mined ore 5 hours today. Go do something else. You are spent." That would be cool. But there is that one player that mines legit 15 hours a day that no one wants to ruin their game style.

 

[Landicine]

Real life example. Take a serial killer, a white collar criminal, a drug dealer, and someone who drove to fast. Beyond all breaking the law to varying degrees, they also need to eat, drink, and purchase various items in life. Some of them will purchase these necessities with ill-gotten gains. The grocer, the baker, and the candlestick maker are doing their respective jobs. They don't have the resources or ability to determine if their customers are law-abiding.

I would say the same applies to UO. I have no way to restrict my vendor only to "honest" players. A merchant who also tries to sell far below the inflated market price isn't doing himself any favors, and probably isn't going to help the honest player.

 

[Tina Small]

Focusing on making it harder and harder for scripters and dupers is the only way to go. The bag of sending, random resources. All outstanding changes. Now they have to address the bod system. Frequency of turning in bods. They need mechanisms that "red flag" after you kill 500 dread spiders IN A ROW. Or mine 3 hours non stop with exact recall spots over and over. All stuff people argue. But... we know how it goes.

"You've mined ore 5 hours today. Go do something else. You are spent." That would be cool. But there is that one player that mines legit 15 hours a day that no one wants to ruin their game style.

To be fair then, you would have to have messages that say, "You've PvP'd five hours today. Go do something else. Your bandages have lost their effectiveness." Or, "You've been guarding this base for five hours already. Go do something else. You're bored silly." Or, "You've been stocking vendors for five hours. Time to go do something else. You need to save your eyesight and sanity for tomorrow's big sale." Right?

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

To be fair then, you would have to have messages that say, "You've PvP'd five hours today. Go do something else. Your bandages have lost their effectiveness." Or, "You've been guarding this base for five hours already. Go do something else. You're bored silly." Or, "You've been stocking vendors for five hours. Time to go do something else. You need to save your eyesight and sanity for tomorrow's big sale." Right?

Thats the problem.
Its not about fair.
The things you mentioned arent keys to scripting for gold or items.

Focusing on the specific game actions that merit the majority of scripting would be the focus.

 

[THP]

JUst ban the use of UO-ASSIST i guess??