State of IDOC

Vladimir

Well, thanks @Mesanna for liaten to us.
I just saw the newsletter, i am so glad that you guys will Address this horrible current situation of Idocs.

Pawain

The only horrible issue is the scripters grabbing everything.  

Uriah_Heep

Pawain said:

The only horrible issue is the scripters grabbing everything.  

+1

Sliss

NVM,  please delete.

Garth_Grey

Vladimir said:

Well, thanks @ Mesanna for liaten to us.
I just saw the newsletter, i am so glad that you guys will Address this horrible current situation of Idocs.

That's not what she said, she said they will open up a dialogue, and then after a little while,in my personal opinion,  it will be closed with little to no significant change made.

popps

The way that I would like IDOC to play out, is with IDOC Houses' contents to go into Treasure and MiBs Chests.... and possibly also the Cavern of the Discarded....

BUT, in order NOT to have those IDOC Houses' items get lost, the way it should be handled, to my opinion, is that the Server gets the FULL LIST of whatever the IDOC House has in it.

THEN, whenever a Treasure Hunter or a Fisherman digs up a Chest OR a Hunter kills a creature in the Cavern of the Discarded, some of those items from that house's contents list SPAWN in that chest or on that killed creature's corpse and, in doing so, get cancelled from that IDOC House's contents list.

This way, a little at a time, ALL of the House items would be gotten by players, either Treasure Hunters, Fishermen or hunters at the Cavern of the Discarded and nothing would get lost.

This way, IDOCs' scripters would have no chance to script an IDOC.

Sure, they could then go script hunting at the Cavern of the Discarded or script Treasure Hunting or the fishing up of MiBs, but that is another story and would be more complicated and time consuming, with no guarantees on what items they would get or not.

It would still be better, to my opinion, as to what IDOCs are now where scripting and scriptrs have the monopoly of them with other players not having a chance at IDOC Houses' contents....

Soldahouse

popps said:

This way, a little at a time, ALL of the House items would be gotten by players, either Treasure Hunters, Fishermen or hunters at the Cavern of the Discarded and nothing would get lost.

It would still be better, to my opinion, as to what IDOCs are now where scripting and scriptrs have the monopoly of them with other players not having a chance at IDOC Houses' contents....

What if your not a Thunter, fisher or hunter? You wouldn't be able to get free stuff.  

Been doing IDOCs  since April and I have made over 1 billion gold off items I grabbed at idocs. I don't use packies its just what I can grab right when the house falls. Cheaters are not getting everything at IDOCs. The more people that go to an idoc the less the cheaters get. Every item we grab is an item they don't get. 

I have heard that the cheaters already know every IDOC and when it will fall. Lets give this info to everyone on the shard... 

Make the house a big ball of black smoke or something so noone can tell what any item is that's in the house...

Maybe it would be really good if every item in the house got deleted when it fell. Less items in the game. Lumberjacks could sell their wood, right now you can get 60k boards for 1m. how long does it take chopping trees to get that many? Who right now would go chop trees just to get 60k boards they could sell for 1m? I just used boards as an example.

Maybe put it all in a box so it gives the owners a reason to come back? We need and want more players. 

I think anything the devs do cheaters will find a way to get an advantage. I don't understand why they cant catch them vacuuming at IDOCs.  

Maybe UO should sell gold in the store, players can buy from them and cheaters would go out of business. 

Lets not forget the other cheaters at IDOCs the ones that have house placing cheats. 

I think the only way to fix it is to banned all those cheaters, so find out a way to do that. 

Sorry for long post. 

Soldahouse

or maybe they should make it so no packies can be at IDOCs. 

psycho

I have a question about IDOCs in general. All companies are busy keeping their customers, Infact its way better to for a company to keep one customer instead of getting 10new ones. its huge benefit to keep customers. When a IDOC house goes down, its a customer out the window, why are they not notified that their house is falling?

worst that could happend:  the customer resub to UO and money is made 

Uriah_Heep

We used to get emails, daily, for a week when the subscriptions were about to expire.
Now, nothing.  Postage costs too much, I guess  

The_Higgs_1

They should have harbingers spawn instead of grubbers.  And also have a 100 damage hit everyone when the house falls, this will kill all packie pets and most fresh made characters with no suits.  Also make a non hidable area for a hour after falling, kinda like what the mana spike does in vvv towns.  This will curtail most scripters, and for those that are there can grab stuff and avoid the death from the spawn cause they are actually playing the characters.    You know it was the scripters that complained about the harbingers originally and got them banned to cemetaries.  Bring them back and scripters will lose and good players will win.

Lady_Storm

Back in the day.. 1997 to be exact there was no trouble with idoc's   it was fel rules... death and timing was a real thing and macroing was in its infancy.   It was not perfect but it could be called fair.   
Now in todays hyper macro world the player who haunts idoc's  for financial gain is big business. Some of us who go get run over by the mobs of multiboxing packie laden player who is out to clean up and make a real life dime.   
I have seen the sweeping vaccume of the said horde.  They leave not even crumbs for the rest of us... and when I say crumbs I am not joking.  They even take the plants!
 Now I do take the leavings if I find they can be used by the new players.
 For years I have offered different ideas to change the system to something more fair and honest.. its a hard thing when many have become jaded by the unfair players who have made it hell. 
I do agree it would be fair to all if the house and its things just poofed but then I look over the house falls I have gotten over the 22 years I have done them... server births, rares, rewards, things of use that were very hard to get and made my and guildsmates lives much better for getting of them.  Its a super hard thing to play Justice  her scales are heavy and come with pain and heartache for all if misused.   
I do not envy the task Mesanna  has to please all of you.   Prehaps putting all of the house contents in a crate attached to the account... so that if the owner reups there is incentive to keep in game?  

I gave up on idoc's… 

Margrette

Lady_Storm said:

  Prehaps putting all of the house contents in a crate attached to the account... so that if the owner reups there is incentive to keep in game?  

I have often wondered what the state of UO would be today if this had been done a long time ago.

Tim

Uriah_Heep said:

We used to get emails, daily, for a week when the subscriptions were about to expire.
Now, nothing.  Postage costs too much, I guess  

Many  Countries have laws that prevent companies from sending you email with out your clear permission. So unless you give them permission to nag you ..... 

A government plan to stop spam that worked as well as expected. 

Uriah_Heep

I would consider signing up to play the game as permission... oh well

Pawain

Uriah_Heep said:

I would consider signing up to play the game as permission... oh well

Signing up for a game gives them permission to sell your email!  LOL Farmville.

Most are sold for rubles.  That is part of the tax that would bring in enough money to give everyone 1000 a month.  Thats how much emails are sold over and over.

Send emails... not so lucrative.

Radst

So...IDOC is about two things: Plot and Items

Lets talk Items first:

Items should NOT be fair game to loot anymore. People have RL to attend to, and they can forget to apply gamecode or for whatever issues. People should not suffer and lose their valuable game items.

FIX: All items will be packed into an "IDOC crate" (similar to Moving Crate) and go to the owner account. When owner re-sub the game, he cannot yet gain access to this IDOC crate. He must first pay another "IDOC fee" to cover the months that he missed out. (Perhaps you buy an "IDOC Crate code" and apply via in-game Help menu, or on account management website to trigger the claim menu; for example)

This is Win-Win for the owner and Broadsword. Owner keeps items, and BS gets revenue back.

We must move beyond the old mindset of "IDOC Loots", because now there are so much memories involved. So many 10+ year houses are still around.

There is no "exploit" here or taking advantage of the system to "hoard" 5000 items in the crate, coz owner still must pay to get items back.


Now lets talk about Plot.

Also no more fighting over the plot (using cheats or not).

When a house falls, it creates a "Ballot Sign" that accepts one entry per account, and after X hours it will randomly choose a winner. If after X hours there are no entries (ie. no one wants this plot), the sign disappears and the plot is open to the public again.

See the beauty: 100% removes cheating FINALLY, and everyone gets EQUAL chance.

AND when IDOC is finally obsolete, the playerbase will finally return to actually playing the game content. Just look at Atlantic, so many people are now doing just IDOC on daily basis because IDOC is really the only content worth doing.

3rd party sites gone. Cheaters gone. Scripters gone. Britannia is a beautiful place once more. Happy Ending for the majority.

MissE

Radst said:

So...IDOC is about two things: Plot and Items

Lets talk Items first:

Items should NOT be fair game to loot anymore. People have RL to attend to, and they can forget to apply gamecode or for whatever issues. People should not suffer and lose their valuable game items.

FIX: All items will be packed into an "IDOC crate" (similar to Moving Crate) and go to the owner account. When owner re-sub the game, he cannot yet gain access to this IDOC crate. He must first pay another "IDOC fee" to cover the months that he missed out. (Perhaps you buy an "IDOC Crate code" and apply via in-game Help menu, or on account management website to trigger the claim menu; for example)

This is Win-Win for the owner and Broadsword. Owner keeps items, and BS gets revenue back.

We must move beyond the old mindset of "IDOC Loots", because now there are so much memories involved. So many 10+ year houses are still around.

There is no "exploit" here or taking advantage of the system to "hoard" 5000 items in the crate, coz owner still must pay to get items back.


Now lets talk about Plot.

Also no more fighting over the plot (using cheats or not).

When a house falls, it creates a "Ballot Sign" that accepts one entry per account, and after X hours it will randomly choose a winner. If after X hours there are no entries (ie. no one wants this plot), the sign disappears and the plot is open to the public again.

See the beauty: 100% removes cheating FINALLY, and everyone gets EQUAL chance.

AND when IDOC is finally obsolete, the playerbase will finally return to actually playing the game content. Just look at Atlantic, so many people are now doing just IDOC on daily basis because IDOC is really the only content worth doing.

3rd party sites gone. Cheaters gone. Scripters gone. Britannia is a beautiful place once more. Happy Ending for the majority.

Re Items, I also think they should go to an idoc crate, however, asking someone to pay the full fee for the whole time the account may of been 'inactive' to retrieve their stuff is a bit much, given that they are not playing, not accessing content, have missed all the anniversary and event gifts, and  for whatever reason have been unable to play.  Even UO burnout is a good enough reason to take 2-3 yrs off when you have been playing for the amount of years some of us have.  The person will be losing their 'plot' be it small or castle size. 

If you wanna hit em up for the full PLAYING fee are you then gonna give their account the 'lost' vet reward status?. I would expect that if you were gonna make me pay as if I had never been gone just to get my stuff back.  If you wanted to charge me the full fee I would NEVER return on that basis.

That being said a proportion of the fee say $3 per month would be reasonable to recover your stuff.   Call it a storage fee.   You have the option to recover your stuff or not when you resub and log back in and should have 3 mths to pay the 'fee'.  The stuff is not 'accessible' until the fee is paid.   If you choose not to then the stuff should just disappear after 3 months as if it never existed.

I know if I left, couldn't play etc and my stuff went into an idoc crate I MAY return to a full sub if I knew my stuff was there. However right now if my stuff went idoc and I lost my stuff I KNOW I would never bother to return, so there is a good reason to 'hold' the stuff as it would be a temptation to return. I would be prepared to pay the storage fee but certainly not a full sub for however long I hadn't played.  That is just out and out GREED.

The rest of what you posted I don't  have any issues with.

Kirthag

Radst said:

So...IDOC is about two things: Plot and Items

Lets talk Items first:

Items should NOT be fair game to loot anymore. People have RL to attend to, and they can forget to apply gamecode or for whatever issues. People should not suffer and lose their valuable game items.

FIX: All items will be packed into an "IDOC crate" (similar to Moving Crate) and go to the owner account. When owner re-sub the game, he cannot yet gain access to this IDOC crate. He must first pay another "IDOC fee" to cover the months that he missed out. (Perhaps you buy an "IDOC Crate code" and apply via in-game Help menu, or on account management website to trigger the claim menu; for example)

This is Win-Win for the owner and Broadsword. Owner keeps items, and BS gets revenue back.

We must move beyond the old mindset of "IDOC Loots", because now there are so much memories involved. So many 10+ year houses are still around.

There is no "exploit" here or taking advantage of the system to "hoard" 5000 items in the crate, coz owner still must pay to get items back.


Now lets talk about Plot.

Also no more fighting over the plot (using cheats or not).

When a house falls, it creates a "Ballot Sign" that accepts one entry per account, and after X hours it will randomly choose a winner. If after X hours there are no entries (ie. no one wants this plot), the sign disappears and the plot is open to the public again.

See the beauty: 100% removes cheating FINALLY, and everyone gets EQUAL chance.

AND when IDOC is finally obsolete, the playerbase will finally return to actually playing the game content. Just look at Atlantic, so many people are now doing just IDOC on daily basis because IDOC is really the only content worth doing.

3rd party sites gone. Cheaters gone. Scripters gone. Britannia is a beautiful place once more. Happy Ending for the majority.

I've lost houses to IDOC - either life got in the way or I just lost heart and left for a while - and of all the conversations that have sprung up on this issue on the various forums, Radst's post contains the best ideas ever.

But, I am with MissE on the fee bit. A storage fee (per month or per year) would be an easier pill to swallow than the full account fee. If I gotta pay the full fee, I want my house back in its original location with all the vet rewards too boot. Yeah, not gonna happen.

Technically, items are all just rows in a DB until claimed, so I don't think this should be too hard of a pill to swallow for Broadsword to manage. Things to deal with would be rented vendors (where do they go?) and things that may not belong to the house owner (but that would fall to player honor and not a Broadsword issue). Some brainstorming would be necessary, but damn, @Radst - awesome ideas!

I would add one caveat to reclaiming - A person would need to have a house again before claiming the IDOC crate - this would help prevent nefarious players from abusing the IDOC crate for storage while selling things off. After all, where would they put all the stuff? Imagine a maxed castle being reclaimed! Perhaps to tweak it, after paying the reclamation fee, they have 14 days to empty the IDOC crate (similar to shard transfer). 

@Mesanna @Kyronix @Bleak
Here's the conversation starter.


ETA:
Yes, doing this would essentially "kill" a playstyle (the IDOCer), but really, wouldn't reclamation of subscriptions (with a bit of a back-payment carrot) be a more reasonable alternative? I would rather more people come back than IDOCers grab loots - or even worse, the items just disappear. I'm still looking for my Whispering Rose which went away in the first house I lost, (A Whispering Rose from Kirthag). I fear it is really gone.

Returning to the game would have been an easier decision for me if everything was in an IDOC crate. Probably would have come back sooner that first time. I remember the conversations with people via ICQ when I came back..

Me: HAY! I'm baaAAaack!
Someone: Welcome home!
Me: What changed in UO?
Someone: Your house fell.
Me: Well **&%^ - why for come back?
Someone: Lots of people took your pixels.
Me: What about the library? All those carefully written books!
Someone: Oh, those decayed. You know people don't read.
Me: *crying* But those were PRICELESS! Some written by (names redacted)
Someone: Exactly why they decayed. Priceless. Is ironic, no?
Me: Why for come back then?!? *cries*
Someone: Because we miss you? 



Some people say to pay the subscription and put the payment on a CC or DC and not think about it again. In reality, there are people who just cannot do that for various reasons that need not be explained. They use Origin, get time codes, and apply them to the account. For whatever reason, and sometimes for extended periods, this cannot be done. Be it a person is in theatre (combat zone), moved to low internet access area (especially overseas), business travel (and offline for extended periods), or down on luck (laid off, income changes, etc.). I love that BS (and other online companies) have multiple ways of paying for subscriptions, but sometimes kaka happens.


I can see this being beneficial for the following:
Returning players
 - obviously
Friends/Family of Deceased players
 - the ability for others to pay the reclamation fee to get much-beloved items rather than they be lost
 - this would need some thought, but I think this one would be doable for both BS and interested players

Uriah_Heep

Radst said:

, so many people are now doing just IDOC on daily basis because IDOC is really the only content worth doing.

QFT

And not too sure on the content now for anything.
Dooom,  had fun.  Recall in when you had a few moments to play, kill stuff, get points.
Kotl...hmmm not so much if you wanted to get fair amount of drops you had to do the whole 
         convoluted put out the fire and buy 800k worth of power coils, etc etc.
Cult...run in and kill things.
Khaldun...worse of the lot, had to actually mine and LJ to getg materials to make special                                weapons before you could have a chance at anything.
This year?  who knows, it's all over the place lol.

I agree with, think it was MissE, when she said just turn on ToT again, or something.   We don't need triple strong mobs, special mobs, nor do we need hoops to have to jump thru before we can kill em.  We just need a decent reason to DO them again.  I don't, however, ever foresee this becoming reality, as it seems everything has to be more and more convoluted.

And Mariah, this is not a personal attack nor spam, it's my thoughts.

Radst

I can agree with MissE. Details can be worked out later, but that's the general approach. Owner will have to resub and pay something extra to access the IDOC Crate. There is no abuse here. Having a house first before claiming the Crate is also a great idea..etc.

I have had friends who lost the entire castles full of stuff from 10+ years of playing, only to came back some months later. But the damage was too hard to take on, so they didn't stay. Then came back again for the 2nd time some months later; same thing and finally quit for good. Sad story.

There are also people who resub'd the VERY NEXT DAY after IDOC, and re-built their houses on the same spot. Some houses or spots weren't even unique, but obviously it meant something to them.

We know UO is a pixel world and we also learned that Feelings are real, even in UO. That's why we did what we did to help. Saving the items can only ensure more revenue for Broadsword than the current system. So, why not?

steven

dont want idocs pay your game time. dont want idocs dont cheat to get ban so your home falls.. theres noting wrong with idocs.

Vladimir

Say the guy that gate 10 toons with 5 packies each on every idoc on every shard. I will vote and suggest to cancel idocs.

The_Higgs_1

I still think best option is to have it spawn X number of monsters at collapse and make the area unhidable for a hour.  This will kill all packy type pets and fresh chars who run any type of script.  People who are there legitly will make out like bandits for once.  The monster I would choose is either harbinger or night terrors.  Also put them on a leash so they cant be drug out.  Problem solved.

Tim

I think the best and simplest solution is just link the moving box to the account instead of the house. When a house is dropped put everything into moving box and when the account places a new house it's still in the moving box. 

It can't really be used as "free storage" as you have to place a house to get at any of it and then it counts to house storage. I can't see any difference in this than the stuff in an inactive accounts bank box. Charging an extra fee to get at this would be complicated and a turn off for any returning player. "To return I have to pay for an account and then more just to get my stuff ?"

The only issue I see is crossing shards. It's pretty much locking the barn door after horses are extinct but it could be handled by a warning and placing a house in a different shard dumps the box and the player loses it all. If not destroyed it could be either dumped in "Cavern of the Discarded" or random locations on the home shard. Shard bound would of course have to be handled one of these ways. If that seem to extreme maybe XX% of the moving box chosen at random is dumped for cross shard moves?

Yes this could be used by anyone just moving from one house to another but would that be a bad thing? 

I forgot to add. My perspective on IDCs is the last one I really did well at I later found out according to rumour was the result of a hacked account. 

Sliss

I am not sure how to solve the items part, but about the plot... what about auctioning it off? Yes, the filthy rich will get it, but that's already happening. With the auction though imagine the gold sink it will create?

steven

the in game economy will crash , 100k items be 1-5m, 18-20m items will be 100m+. so up u, idocs are fine,we save old items and rares and keep prices low, no idocs and u will lose old items and rares and prices be nuts up to u

Tim

steven said:

the in game economy will crash , 100k items be 1-5m, 18-20m items will be 100m+. so up u, idocs are fine,we save old items and rares and keep prices low, no idocs and u will lose old items and rares and prices be nuts up to u

??? that's like saying the economy will crash because the price of Picasso went up. The majority of things people spend gold on do not come from idocs. 

Garth_Grey

The "we save old items and rares" is a crock. The occasional museum, meh, they aren't getting the visits people claim they're getting. If player A has item B in his house locked down , out of view then no one ever sees it, and it's not missed. If House A collapses item B disappears and no one ever sees it, period.

Vladimir

@Tim and @Garth_Grey that non sense  english and logic is coming out the idocguy, fyi, if idocs go away, he will be homeless.