IDOC Monopoly

firec

I'd like to put in my two cents about IDOCs, since I represent what is likely Broadswords most desired player, a new or returning one.

Since returning to UO about a year ago, I have found housing, particularly the acquisition of housing to be the most stressful part about the game. I play on Atlantic mostly, for reference.

When I first got back, I was easily able to find space for a small house, which I setup and began my journey pretty quickly. I had outgrown it pretty fast. Thankfully, some hero named Spring has a runebook setup with runes to every IDOC, and within a month I was able to find an abandoned spot with enough space available to place a villa... Which was my first house when I played originally back in 99, so there was a lot of nostalgia that came with it.

I quickly realized I would outgrow that space as well. Within about 8 months I was searching for larger spots again.... Only this time I was finding it impossible to place. I would camp out at the spots and try to snag them, yet somehow, some guy would beat me EVERY SINGLE TIME. It became apparent that I was not going to be able to acquire a house through this method, and I was likely going to have to buy one if I wanted a bigger space.

I refused. The only person who was selling houses was the same person who was snagging them every time. Regardless of how this person was acquiring them, whether it is by fair methods or through scripts, they represented a direct competitor. And I refused to play THEIR game. So this left me stuck in my house.

That is, until the other day. A guild member was quitting, and he gifted me their house. I just finished setting up and moving in, and I am satisfied.

For now.

There will once again some point in the future, where I will have to come into direct competition with this person and their monopoly. And at that point.... Well, I'd rather quit then be forced into an unfair game.


Anyhow, I've seen some pretty good suggestions to how to resolve the IDOC situation. I like the way the items are awarded, especially when it's in Fel, it creates a nice little spontaneous competitive area for a while. The only thing I would change is the stuff that gets deleted from the house, I think there's too many things that end up being removed from the game in this method.

As for the house itself.... My best solution would be to hold a blind auction for it, one bid per account. All money is taken when the bid is made, and all money returned to everyone except the winner. if nobody bids, it just goes to an empty space

For those who don't know, it would look something like this. Nobody can see anyone else's bids

Player 1 bids 2mil, and 2 mil is taken from their account 
Player 2 bids 1mil, and 1 mil is taken from their account 
Player 3 bids 10mil, and 10 mil is taken from their account 

Bidding is over
Player 3 gets the house
Player 2 gets their 1mil back
Player 1 gets their 2 mil back

This would also act as a gold sink


Anyhow, this would help level the playing field in terms of how housing is done.

Just my two cents, but for me, this has been probably the most frustrating part of the game experience so far.

username

I appreciate your perspective. Not many returning or new players these days.

Simple housing raffle system would be sufficient enough. Best part is this system already exists so would just have to be adapted to IDOCs with minimal dev time taken away from precious NL. Maybe add nominal fee (5m-10m) to enter. 

However! I have mentioned in other threads that it sounds like the most recent IDOC changes are final and they don't care otherwise, from what they've said at M&Gs. You know, those changes that have only helped the non-legit players. I'm so happy I'm out of the housing market as I absolutely wouldn't buy from these players either. Good on you for not caving.

I'm on my way out of the game because of similar aspects of the game that are just ignored by the devs. I'll be sure to give my houses to a new(er) player instead of letting them fall.

JackFlashUk

How do you combat the rich RMT seller who bids 700m for a 18x18, outbids everyone then slap a 1.5p price on it.  

You can’t win against this industrial scale cheating unless there is a desire too, and that will take more effort than a certain lead dev will allow, and more brain power than they posses. 

The current team cannot use a 25 year old code,  that’s why they want to create a new No shard, but in a nano second the cheats that are far more clever will overcome obstacles and take over NL

fir what it’s worth I feel they need to close the 2D client and them make everyone play via the EC but have a 2D model within  that way any interface etc like Pincos is legal

then not bullshit cheating for house placement etc and any kind of bot 

but as above the current dev team are not capable. Which is not the problem, not asking or employing people that can is the problem 

firec

Username, thanks for the constructive comment. It's sad but true, without necessary changes a lot of people will quit, it's an uphill battle for sure. In regards to the raffle system, while it is good, I think it still places the advantage to the people who are monopolizing the system. They have far more accounts than a standard user would, and still have an unfair advantage.

Jack, we don't need to insult people or teams here. I get it though, anger is a stage of grief, and it seems a lot of us are feeling the same way, grief over the perceived and tangible feeling of abandonment. I would just truly like to see an improvement made to this system, as it genuinely impacts my personal gameplay. In your counter argument, there is a flaw

If a person with unimaginable wealth wins the bids for 750mil and wins, that 750 mil will still get taken from them by the game. If they turn around and sell for 1.5p, their max profit is only 750mil, vs the 1.5p that it currently is in the existing system. Either way, this impacts their income directly, and will also over time work to correct the market to appropriate levels. Instead of an unfair advantage, it implements a system that will remove those advantages.

I don't know.

Is there a way to do a poll? As in just yes or no, are you happy with the current way housing is handled? If nobody cares except a few people, I guess it's irrelevant anyway.

shootgun

I agree with the bidding system or raffle system. But whatever we have needs to change ASAP. I have been following the guy that is placing houses for around a month now. I have friended his discord handle from 10-15 accounts acting like a noob house buyer. The guy in the question will place the house every single time. I made sure he placed 22 different 18x18 houses in 2 weeks once.

If there is a large house, this guy will place it. He also uses some kind of exploit to make others DC if he believes the area is going to be contested. 

Every single guild mate or in game friend of mine reported this guy dozens of times. No action was taken. This made many players believe that game is free to cheat or use exploits now. Every single player I know started using what is known as cheat client now.

I recently learned that UO only has 2 developers, so ever since then I am doing my best not curse. But, this topic, and lack of action about it, is making it extremely hard.

Lord_Nabin

Since we are thinking outside the box, Let's think way outside the box. 

How would you feel about a complete moratorium on house placements starting now. 

Then lets say you join NL. You work your way through a season which in some way shape or form allows you to earn an account bound house placement tool that has one successful placement use that you can transfer with your character to the normal shards and you get to place a house. 

*throws another log on the fire and takes a sip of his Good Old Moonglow Red*

Feigr

Lord_Nabin said:

Since we are thinking outside the box, Let's think way outside the box. 

How would you feel about a complete moratorium on house placements starting now. 

Then lets say you join NL. You work your way through a season which in some way shape or form allows you to earn an account bound house placement tool that has one successful placement use that you can transfer with your character to the normal shards and you get to place a house. 

*throws another log on the fire and takes a sip of his Good Old Moonglow Red*

The devil is in the details on that one.

And even if the details were pretty reasonable, I don't think many people argue that the people doing the things causing limited supply are bad at the game.  At best your proposal would make someone I feel is abusing the system have to do an extra step and at worst it would make that step more difficult for the casual player that doesn't know the systems as well. It would also give the person doing it more credibility to do it.

OP, Chessy has plenty of space and a good healthy community.  There are other shards besides Atlantic.

Feigr

If someone is in a business causing every other customer to have a poor experience, it doesn't matter if they are breaking rules or anything "technically."  They should still be removed for intentionally doing it.

And that's my three cents on it.

At some point you have to step in for the community.

shootgun

Feigr said:

If someone is in a business causing every other customer to have a poor experience, it doesn't matter if they are breaking rules or anything "technically."  They should still be removed for intentionally doing it.

Only if mesanna shared your opinion.

firec

Nabin....


Yanno, I think stopping all house placement might be a good idea. The new legacy part not so much, I have no interest in playing new legacy. That's just an extra step. But. Stopping the placement of houses by this individual, and all individuals, until a better, more fair solution could be reached. I'd absolutely support that.

Feigr, the analogy between other businesses is a pretty good comparison. When I used to be in retail way back in the day, every black Friday we would have swarms of resellers line up early and attempt to purchase all the deals before everyone else. The business would usually make the decision to limit these purchases, as the resellers generally worked as a team and as such had unfair advantages over the other shoppers.

Once again though, if what shootgun says is true and messanna doesn't care about whether her customers are happy or not, it's irrelevant.

Is messanna like ceo of broadsword? Or just like some middle manager on a dated game. I just ask this because if enough of her customers are upset and there's enough tangible evidence of loss of subscription or profits, I would assume something would be done to remedy things more expediently. I saw a uo Skype or zoom call a while back and the only thing I remembered was the poor qa guy falling asleep.

Lord_Frodo

Lord_Nabin said:

Since we are thinking outside the box, Let's think way outside the box. 

How would you feel about a complete moratorium on house placements starting now. 

Then lets say you join NL. You work your way through a season which in some way shape or form allows you to earn an account bound house placement tool that has one successful placement use that you can transfer with your character to the normal shards and you get to place a house. 

*throws another log on the fire and takes a sip of his Good Old Moonglow Red*

Sadly those are paid accounts that are placing those houses so they would take those paid accounts to NL and get the house placement tool you describe and still be able to place on prodo shards.

Theo

The conspiracy theorist in me feels like the house placer has a tie in with the dev team. Why else would blatant cheating be allowed for what 10 years now?

House auction is the way to go.  24 hours. Highest bid wins.  Show the highest bid on the sign.  Could someone always outbid everyone to get the house? Sure. But then what’s the profit margin when you just spent 1go more than anyone was willing to pay? 1gp.   Right now it’s 100% profit.  

In regards to ATL - get off ATL. There are reasonably populated shards where you can place a 18x18 anytime you want a customized keeps are relatively cheap.  

I only go to ATL to sell junk then bring the gold back to my humble shard.  Enough people to have fun but wide open housing.  

JackFlashUk

Theo said:

The conspiracy theorist in me feels like the house placer has a tie in with the dev team. Why else would blatant cheating be allowed for what 10 years now?

House auction is the way to go.  24 hours. Highest bid wins.  Show the highest bid on the sign.  Could someone always outbid everyone to get the house? Sure. But then what’s the profit margin when you just spent 1go more than anyone was willing to pay? 1gp.   Right now it’s 100% profit.  

In regards to ATL - get off ATL. There are reasonably populated shards where you can place a 18x18 anytime you want a customized keeps are relatively cheap.  

I only go to ATL to sell junk then bring the gold back to my humble shard.  Enough people to have fun but wide open housing.  

The house place will outbid everyone else then recoup with even more inflated prices 

Riner

They already have an excellent answer to this age-old problem. The same answer they just used to shift ownership of the fallen Abyss houses. Place a pylon at the location where the house fell, allow 3 days for people to click the pylon and submit information. Random draw for the new owner after that time. Only they can place the new building. Only thing I would add is make this work only for 18x18 and above plots. Simple, fair, no one person or group can hold the monopoly on the market.

Lord_Frodo

Let the RNG decide if you place with a random roll of the dice every time you try to place a house of an IDOC for say 48 hours.

keven2002

I'll start by saying: I don't do IDOCs and I don't really care one way or the other about them (leave them as they are or completely remove them; doesn't matter to me).

It seems like the solution of "RNG - people click a stone" is similar to the way loot is divided now (that people complain about). If they did make the "lottery" change the person that is using 10-20 accounts to place houses is still getting 10-20x more chances than someone with only 1 account (aka that new or returning player). I can also see the conspiracy of "The Dev team is just giving the houses to X housing person". At least by trying to place a plot, people feel like they might have some control.

I'm not sure how much better it would be but I'm thinking if the empty housing plots were held open for an unknown amount of days and then opened all at the same time if that would be slightly better. Even if they housing person has 20 accounts but there are 10 open plots all "opening" for placement at the same time they will need to decide where to allocate the accounts which reduces the number of their accounts trying to place at some (or all) or the locations. Ideally this would reduce the total number or people at the same place trying to place.

Feigr

I don't think even that would work for the same reasons you argued earlier in your post. 

The solution, outside of keeps/castles, is just to stop abandoning all the shards that have plenty of space.

Oh, and this will fire up a lot of people, delete all the keeps/castles that are empty and obviously just there to be sold.

Theo

JackFlashUk said:

Theo said:

The conspiracy theorist in me feels like the house placer has a tie in with the dev team. Why else would blatant cheating be allowed for what 10 years now?

House auction is the way to go.  24 hours. Highest bid wins.  Show the highest bid on the sign.  Could someone always outbid everyone to get the house? Sure. But then what’s the profit margin when you just spent 1go more than anyone was willing to pay? 1gp.   Right now it’s 100% profit.  

In regards to ATL - get off ATL. There are reasonably populated shards where you can place a 18x18 anytime you want a customized keeps are relatively cheap.  

I only go to ATL to sell junk then bring the gold back to my humble shard.  Enough people to have fun but wide open housing.  

The house place will outbid everyone else then recoup with even more inflated prices 

They don’t have unlimited gold. The gold is deleted creating a huge gold sink.  Eventually there won’t be enough gold to buy them all at inflated prices.  I don’t mean to speak basic economics to you but this is a huge chance to cut down the money supply and there will be little profit it in for a house hoarder.   Right now said house is placed for free. Sold for 1 plat. 1 plat is sold for $60.  Money never leaves the system.  Bid for 1p. 1p is deleted by UO.  Where does that person buy the 1plat for the house?  Sure you can try to buy and hold a few houses but eventually a house hoarder runs out of capital.  And the buyer can just bid 1plat on the next house.  Honestly this would be a huge boost for the economy greatly reducing the money supply and pushing down house prices.   

Basic economics.  

JackFlashUk

Theo said:

The conspiracy theorist in me feels like the house placer has a tie in with the dev team. Why else would blatant cheating be allowed for what 10 years now?

House auction is the way to go.  24 hours. Highest bid wins.  Show the highest bid on the sign.  Could someone always outbid everyone to get the house? Sure. But then what’s the profit margin when you just spent 1go more than anyone was willing to pay? 1gp.   Right now it’s 100% profit.  

In regards to ATL - get off ATL. There are reasonably populated shards where you can place a 18x18 anytime you want a customized keeps are relatively cheap.  

I only go to ATL to sell junk then bring the gold back to my humble shard.  Enough people to have fun but wide open housing.  

The house placer will outbid everyone else then recoup with even more inflated prices. Welcome to the world of 2 plat houses 

Grimbeard

Having a single shopping shard that everyone has equal free access to would fix this instantly 

Pawain

Grimbeard said:

Having a single shopping shard that everyone has equal free access to would fix this instantly 

So unlimited housing?  Players are on Atlantic because it is the most crowded, not because they can pay inflated prices for items.

Feigr

Pie in the sky... they could just allow transfers at will like FF14 for everyone.  Then it wouldn't matter. In FF14 players can move around servers almost (not completely to be fair) seamlessly.

shootgun

@Kyronix @Mesanna can we please get a yay/nay on this please?

Here is the summary of discussion so far. A player has been using exploits to place houses in Atlantic. From what I counted in 15 days he placed 22 different 18x18 or similar sized houses. He has a monopoly on large size houses at Atlantic. He is also a very well known RMT. You can see the extend of his monopoly at https://discord.com/channels/396412397037944834/773309638266716161/1222717876931133481 to be clear, this is part of his current inventory. You can find him in game and ask him to see other houses.

This player has been reported probably millions of times but no action was taken.

What we are asking for is to change the house placement rules. Most people want it to be a raffle, some others want it to be bidding based.

In my humble opinion it can be raffle with some entrance fee depending on the size of the house. This way you can distribute the house using RNG and create a gold sink at the same time. This will also stop people from applying to every raffle.

What do you think?

Feigr

At the very least have a conversation with the player to not negatively impact customer experience even if they are technically within the rules.

shootgun

Feigr said:

At the very least have a conversation with the player to not negatively impact customer experience even if they are technically within the rules.

This guy is making at least 2k to 3k dollars a month just from his RMT and house sales. Talking will not make him give up on that.

Feigr

No, but it's a soft warning and then they can take action if they choose to.  If they don't choose to then it's obvious they prioritize that user or multiple users over the integrity of the game and it's customer's continued enjoyment.  For whatever reason.

Could also be that they just know doing something like what I'm recommending is just going to result in someone else replacing them and there's some line of people waiting to do the same thing.  I'm not omnipotent.  They could know something I don't. 

It'd be pretty cool to get an adult answer about it though.

I don't think the answer is "Don't buy from them." People want houses.  It's part of the game.

shootgun

Lets wait and see what @Kyronix and @Mesanna @Mesanna1 has to say. I have a feeling we might not get answers or changes. They might be willing to let the exploit user get away with it since this fix will take time or it is permanently out of scope.

Grimbeard

When you can stop RMT and you don't it's easy to buy into conspiracy theories 

Whitewolf

ya know i used to fill the same way on the housing situation on Atlantic, but then one day i was like well im done with the drama and the toxicity that is Atlantic, i play UO to get a break from real life, so i decided to check out other servers, im so glad i did, i now own my own castle for the first time in 20 years and im loving the server in on now, we do alot of server activties such has hunts and events, no drama no toxicity, im loving it, my point is there is like 20 other servers out there, most of them you can log on and place a castle, can place a 18x18 almost anywhere. so instead of coming here and constantly complaining about the housing issues, just go some where else, Atlantic is the only one that has the issues there is like 20 other servers out there with no issues.

Grimbeard

Whitewolf said:

ya know i used to fill the same way on the housing situation on Atlantic, but then one day i was like well im done with the drama and the toxicity that is Atlantic, i play UO to get a break from real life, so i decided to check out other servers, im so glad i did, i now own my own castle for the first time in 20 years and im loving the server in on now, we do alot of server activties such has hunts and events, no drama no toxicity, im loving it, my point is there is like 20 other servers out there, most of them you can log on and place a castle, can place a 18x18 almost anywhere. so instead of coming here and constantly complaining about the housing issues, just go some where else, Atlantic is the only one that has the issues there is like 20 other servers out there with no issues.

I agree 100% just transfer to trashlantic for shopping then back home  but not everyone can afford to buy tokens and vets with shard shields have unfair advantage 

Feigr

I mean, to be fair here, I've never had trouble finding someone willing to move stuff for me on Chessy.  One pretty well known PVPer that regularly kills me and loots stuff still did it for me honestly once.

I don't like to use the "Ask someone" and it makes my skin crawl, but I waffle back and forth on that issue.  People will really help you if you ask and transfers have always been a premium thing.

I do waffle on the issue though.  Not a couple hours ago I mentioned that FFXIV lets you move around for free.