▒ - NEW IDOC'S CHANGE - ▒

Uriah_Heep

But isn't it much better to mess up everyone's game than to ban the people who are actually cheating?

Asking for a friend...

Max_Blackoak

This change will not prevent idoc scripters, in fact it will help them by removing their non-scripting competitors.
The problem was not the decay status on the house sign but the third party programs people use to find decaying houses, time when they go idoc and then auto loot when they fall.
Instead of preventing people from loging in using third party programs to solve this problem the devs listened to the wrong crowd and are going to implement a system that will make it near impossible for a non-scripter to find and attend a falling house. The fast decay rate of items isn't helping either.

The worst part about it is that this is mostly a trammel issue but still all facets will be affected by the change. I don't know about felucca on normal shards but on Siege Perilous scripting never was a problem at idocs because of the all fel ruleset.
I'm going to miss the fights over idocs :-/

@Kyronix @Bleak @Mesanna please reconsider this decision, it is a step in the wrong direction!

TimSt

Ivenor said:

A general question: why so much people seems to use CC in monthly auto renewal for their subs and don't buy instead 6 anticipated months two time a year on Origin site???

Personally I use the 6 month auto renewal.  That way I don't have to remember to go buy codes at the Origin site.

AtlanticRealtor

@Ivenor ; agree 100%
everything can go wrong with CC, all my shard shield accs, I apply 2x 6 month GTC and dont need to worry about til next year!

Lady_Storm

Money...
Plain and simple.   
I have done 6 month on the mains for years.. it saves a great deal but when the bills come due and you have that emergency that wipes out the funds to do this and your left with barely the amount to pay for the accounts that month it gets hard.   Another thing I didn't mention we pay for 30 days not 31.. of the 6 months that have that many days... we get thrown off by this. As the mind says I paid for march.. and in truth you did for 99% of the month but for that last day..... this is also a way many house in the past went into decay.... before the 90 day.  

AtlanticRealtor

I hope @Mesanna or anyone else on the team will come and discuss this topic. I believe that moving everything into a moving crate/bank as suggested before will be way better solution.
Lot of return players will most like come back, if they know that they only lost their house and not everything else!

Urge

One day people will learn to stop complaining. Haha. 

I agree with Popps. Distribute into dungeon chests, t-maps and the cavern would be a good fit or just put into a moving crate for the owner. 

Ivenor

AtlanticRealtor said:

I hope @ Mesanna or anyone else on the team will come and discuss this topic. I believe that moving everything into a moving crate/bank as suggested before will be way better solution.
Lot of return players will most like come back, if they know that they only lost their house and not everything else!

I totally agree!

Garth_Grey

Max_Blackoak said:

This change will not prevent idoc scripters, in fact it will help them by removing their non-scripting competitors.
The problem was not the decay status on the house sign but the third party programs people use to find decaying houses, time when they go idoc and then auto loot when they fall.
Instead of preventing people from loging in using third party programs to solve this problem the devs listened to the wrong crowd and are going to implement a system that will make it near impossible for a non-scripter to find and attend a falling house. The fast decay rate of items isn't helping either.

The worst part about it is that this is mostly a trammel issue but still all facets will be affected by the change. I don't know about felucca on normal shards but on Siege Perilous scripting never was a problem at idocs because of the all fel ruleset.
I'm going to miss the fights over idocs :-/

@ Kyronix @ Bleak @ Mesanna please reconsider this decision, it is a step in the wrong direction!

Max, come on brother. The "Scripting was never a problem on Siege" is a ruse..the IDOC fights, yeah those are real and will be sorely missed by those that enjoyed them.

AtlanticRealtor

@Ivenor ; the code is already there, take a look when u convert a classic castle into a custom, everything goes into the moving crate, just move that Crate to the House owners bank, win win.

Ivenor

Lady_Storm said:

Money...
Plain and simple.   
I have done 6 month on the mains for years.. it saves a great deal but when the bills come due and you have that emergency that wipes out the funds to do this and your left with barely the amount to pay for the accounts that month it gets hard.   Another thing I didn't mention we pay for 30 days not 31.. of the 6 months that have that many days... we get thrown off by this. As the mind says I paid for march.. and in truth you did for 99% of the month but for that last day..... this is also a way many house in the past went into decay.... before the 90 day.  

Yup, the old sad "poor people pay more than rich ones" (e.g.: a 1 fare ticket instead of a montly bus card), this I understand VERY well, and unfortunatley for personal experience too. But it seems to me that the percentage of monthly CC renewals is a little too high to be imputable only to this factor...

Ivenor

AtlanticRealtor said:

@ Ivenor  the code is already there, take a look when u convert a classic castle into a custom, everything goes into the moving crate, just move that Crate to the House owners bank, win win.

You have me on this 100%!

panoramix2009

 Make everything go into a moving crate for the house owner account and the house can fall empty no loot and when the owner back in game  and owner place or buy a new house he will can remove crate from sign house 

Lady_Storm

Last time the dev were strongly thinking to stop the 90 day decay delay, the players were up in arms over the fact it would effect a great deal of players when through no fault of their own it could happen to anyone.  With banks being lazy or the e mail of notifications not showing up to the right e mail address...   This is the one that is up with that issue. I do so agree that it would be better for returning players to at least have the contents of their house if only to have to buy a new house plot then start a whole new life with nothing but 

Urge

Lady_Storm said:

Last time the dev were strongly thinking to stop the 90 day decay delay, the players were up in arms over the fact it would effect a great deal of players when through no fault of their own it could happen to anyone.  With banks being lazy or the e mail of notifications not showing up to the right e mail address...   This is the one that is up with that issue. I do so agree that it would be better for returning players to at least have the contents of their house if only to have to buy a new house plot then start a whole new life with nothing but 

Picture it Sicily 1922, No jk picture it, someone quits "for good" and decides to pop in on an EJ to see what's going on. They can only see so much of their bank and all their stuff is right there but they can't get into everything. They resub just to see what all they had. 

Lieutenant_Dan

Thank you to the development team for taking the time to address IDOCs!!
I feel that you are on the right track by disabling the decay status on the house signs.  They truly are the root of all evil. 

Please consider the following additional requests to go along with the house sign changes.

    1.  Send multiple e-mails to the account owner at different stages of non-payment so they would have the opportunity to save there house and belongings.
     2.  When the house falls, instead of letting all the items drop on the ground,  Put 100% of the house contents in grubbers.  You could scale the amount of grubbers to the amount of items contained in the house.  This would eliminate the items from decaying without anyone knowing it fell (grubbers don't decay do they?).   
     3.  Increase the stats of grubbers so they are difficult to kill and take some time.  Somewhere along the lines of the mobs on the highest level treasure chests but with more hit points.  The reasoning behind this is eventually the savvy scriptors will develop a way to automate there toons to wander,  detect the loot and finally pick up the loot (fully automated without a human player in control).  Difficult creatures would at the very least force them to be attended.

Pawain

They probably are attented @lieutenant_dan.  If they make money as posters claim. They sit watching their monitors like a security guard all day.

There are plenty of complaints about players scripting content but the player answers the GM within the allowed time.

Cronus

Better variant if put this all items on special auction(on 3 days), Special bounded items(soulstones, shield and etc) move in special crate on account(when player pay for account, he can get this again). Such we can get more optimal and truly system and remove part of gold from game. 
I think the game should strive to remove excess gold.

Ivenor

Cronus said:

Better variant if put this all items on special auction(on 3 days), Special bounded items(soulstones, shield and etc) move in special crate on account(when player pay for account, he can get this again). Such we can get more optimal and truly system and remove part of gold from game. 
I think the game should strive to remove excess gold.

@Kyronix @Mesanna

One thing that I find simply OBSCENE is that SStones of other People give CleanUp Point to WHOEVER Trash them.

This, IMO, MUST change ASAP, because, again IMO, o.c., it shows a TOTAL lack lof respect for the Players' efforts.

I'm not used to make harsh remarks for the sake of it on the Devs choices, but this I say heere Clear & Loud: SSs Trashing MUST END right now!

Giggles

Back in the day I did idocs all the time. Once the 5,10,15 hour fall time went into effect, I quit idocing all together, as did many other people who could not cut away that type of time from their days. 

Now... it just got worse (provided the house sign will continue to notify a general indication of falling minus the decay stage mentioned). Every single change that I have observed made to limit house scripting, has instead made it the only possible way to idoc. So now instead of people using scripts to time the time when they will fall based on the decay stage, people will be using scripts and EJ accounts to simply ghost cam houses in decay all day and night for days on end. No normal honest player will even have a remote chance at attending any future houses, and ONLY people who are scripting will have a chance at being notified when it falls.

If this is the way we are going, the house sign should not even mention that the house is falling at all, or, see above. 

KHAN

Uriah_Heep said:

But isn't it much better to mess up everyone's game than to ban the people who are actually cheating?

Asking for a friend...

Banning the cheaters would be getting WAY too close to doing the RIGHT THING. 

MissE

If you remember way back when they turned the housing back on after a couple of yrs of it being down, we had a few days where houses just dropped with no warning.  It was great.   Now people can just organise themselves to check known housing areas.  Seems simple.  As for the illegal script runners then not sure how they will cope, you could run past a house and 5 mins later it falls.  So unless they have an illegal char at every house on the map lots of people will come across good lootz on the ground.   I would imagine if the devs had any smarts they would be watching for hidden characters just sitting doing nothing.  Who knows tho. It will be interesting.

My preference was that when a house collapse the stuff went into an idoc crate and if/when the person returned they could 'pay' to get their stuff back.  I would of been prepared to pay say $50-80 for the privilege but I guess the devs weren't interested in raising more money for the game. 

As for getting the 'info' when you step on the step, it isn't just cancelled accounts that get this message, bascially anyone moving house after placing another will get that decay warning.  I am sure the devs actually KNOW that if a persons account is inactive that aren't likely to be stepping on steps lol .

Lord_Obsidian_Knight

Idoc'ing is as iconic as the game itself. These changes are terrible and basically eliminate something that has been in the game almost since it was released. I have played since the beginning. There is large part of the player base that enjoys this aspect as do I. You will lose people by these types of radical changes. Why do this when the game seems to be doing so well and is healthy? I am deeply saddened and disappointed. My family all plays and loves to idoc. I will log in less.  

ezikel

this is a terrible fix if its not the worst.its just going to kill allthe idocer and no more pvp for the right of loot or place.nothing is good with this patch .keep showing the decay state and make house falling on a random timer of 12h

Ivenor

To sum up the issue, I see three main Points here that the Devs have to juggle with:

1) Block (or at least limit) the Scripters/Cheaters from "vacuuming up" all the IDOCs stuff;

2) Leave some chance to HONEST IDOC Campers to gain something by their long standing & legitimate play style;

3) Give the Houses owners the possibility to not lose all their stuff by some random life event that block them to timely renew their Subs.

An hard Juggling performance indeed!!!

popps

Lieutenant_Dan said:

Thank you to the development team for taking the time to address IDOCs!!
I feel that you are on the right track by disabling the decay status on the house signs.  They truly are the root of all evil. 

Please consider the following additional requests to go along with the house sign changes.

    1.  Send multiple e-mails to the account owner at different stages of non-payment so they would have the opportunity to save there house and belongings.
     2.  When the house falls, instead of letting all the items drop on the ground,  Put 100% of the house contents in grubbers.  You could scale the amount of grubbers to the amount of items contained in the house.  This would eliminate the items from decaying without anyone knowing it fell (grubbers don't decay do they?).   
     3.  Increase the stats of grubbers so they are difficult to kill and take some time.  Somewhere along the lines of the mobs on the highest level treasure chests but with more hit points.  The reasoning behind this is eventually the savvy scriptors will develop a way to automate there toons to wander,  detect the loot and finally pick up the loot (fully automated without a human player in control).  Difficult creatures would at the very least force them to be attended.

 3.  Increase the stats of grubbers so they are difficult to kill and take some time.

I am sorry, but with the changes, if Houses are going to fall all of a sudden, unexpectedly, and with noone there to wait for it (since it will be impossible to know when a House would fall), then Grubbers simply need to go away for good.

There would be no longer a need for them, not being there any longer any player when a House would fall.

popps

Pawain said:

They probably are attented @ lieutenant_dan.  If they make money as posters claim. They sit watching their monitors like a security guard all day.

There are plenty of complaints about players scripting content but the player answers the GM within the allowed time.

I was told that there are scripts out there, EXTREMELY creative and complex which can answer to a Game Master....

Minerva_Foxglove

My thoughts.. The scripters and cheaters have to go. Seems to be the root to almost all complaints.  If that makes there will be no warning at the house sign, the owner should have a warning RL  pretty fast after the payment ended. 
Houses could fall from morning maintenance to midnight , counted for each shard. 
And the stuff stay on the ground for a longer time. This would also help the newer players that hunts and expolore in the forests to get a chance of an exiteing experience. 
Im no IDOCer or new player. 20+ years of daily playing and I dont need anything , I just think this idea should have something in it for more players , exept for the scripters.

Polaris

If you guys simply let houses fall.... whether the sign indicates ANYTHING or not.... without going through IDOC stages, it simply will help the scripters who stand there afk. I will highlight a few of the problems in the scenarios below, and then proposed solutions afterwards.

Scenario 1: Houses fall with the house condemned on the sign, with no staging.

People will use VPNs to make EJ accounts on 10-15 computers in their "gaming" room and it will alert them when the houses do fall, at least the ones they choose to camp. They will create and login 50 bots to script loot all items they choose, one at every IDOC in the game. These bots will target deeds, mempos, ethereals, tinker legs, and glacial type items. Honest players will get 0. Bots and scripters will get 100% now instead of 90%.

Scenario 2: Houses fall with the sign displaying 0 messages.

Those bots that run by my house every day constantly... scouring each shard for IDOCs using "pathfinding" will find every IDOC before any legit player there is. They will get all loot that they want on every shard, and will likely be too busy to even loot it all. Bots and scripters will get 90% now... unless they all fall at the same time and honest players can know when to run and look. The bots will have too much to keep up with in this scenario, but will likely focus largely on Atlantic. Bots will still get 75% of all sell-able items.

Proposed Changes: If you wanted to keep IDOCs in game.

Create a tab on the paperdoll that will give all players ALL IDOCs on the shard about 10 minutes before they fall, random times each day. Display 0 messages on the house signs. 0 condemned messaged, 0 staging messages... so that bots do not have time to set up recall points and whatever else they do. Every morning, list every IDOC only. Have them fall at the same time on each shard, so that players will ALL be able to attend. They will ALL know the time as well. As it is right now, only the scripters and cheaters know where IDOCs are and more importantly, they know EXACTLY what time it will fall, despite what they say otherwise. If anyone watches, they would notice a few players know the exact times for 15 IDOCs a day. This is not time spent at IDOCs as they claim, they simply are part of 1 of 2 guilds that run IDOCs. There are only about 2 guilds that do.... not guilds, but ICQ groups. They all script loot and run scripts to time and find houses automatically. They do not even have to find them themselves with sign scripts.... they use BOTs that automatically login/logout at certain times and run the world automatically with pathfinding. This is similar to the "ghost" cams that login/logout and check every champion spawn about once an hour. This is all EJ VPN accounts I am sure, and could care less if they get those deleted from what I have saw. Sort of like "Avatar1, 2, and 3" that logs in and spams in chat all day selling gold on "that" website, I am guessing you guys have deleted him thousands of times. It is also "that" website that now lists a lot of the IDOCs and times already. I never go to that website, because that guy supposedly is a scammer and also buys gold from other Idocers. I also have never agreed to buying gold in my life. To summarize what should be done with this scenario:

1) Create tab on paperdoll, list IDOCs once per day, about 10 minutes before they fall. Make it random times. All fall at same time about 10 minutes after the message. Like a daily event, players can panic and take off if not busy and look at all of the IDOCs, they will fall in exactly 10 minutes after the message pops up (sort of like a you have won this auction message.) Make it exactly 10, not 10 + 10 (Idocs go 10 minutes past)... too much time for bots.

2) EJ accounts should be limited to New Haven. EJ is horribly abused by scripters, as horribly as (youngs) on 2 week trials. I remember writing 10,000 messages of "help" when a few certain players were gating in 50 (young) accounts at every IDOC and standing beside / taking items 0.001 seconds after the house fell. I'm pretty sure you guys made IDOCs private b/c of me complaining. Even if you followed number 1 above, and you took proactive measures like... not allowing EJ account to go through player gates or not allowing them to get the "maps" from the IDOC list, players could still mark runes to castles and simply drop it in the woods somewhere for EJ accounts to recall from. Ie... bots would be vacuuming contents still.

3) Pathfinding should be deleted from the game for players. It's okay for pets and npcs.... players DO NOT and SHOULD NOT need this. It's an exploit that players are using to run the world on bots. This was brought up on Stratics several time by hardcore scripters themselves trying to fix the issues for all.

Doing number 1 alone would be hugely effective. All players receive a gump once per day that IDOCs will fall in 10 minutes (not 20!!!!!). They see all of them and can picks maps to whichever they want. Players panic, recall, run, and try to get there before the houses fall and items are gone. I stress the importance of 10 minutes...... any more and this will be worse than it is now. 10 minutes would be extremely great however, it would be a random mini event every day. But I encourage you to look at number 2 above too, as it would still be abused. As it is now, bots are standing at every IDOC already..... number 1 alone would be hugely effective, as I said.

Proposed Changes: If you DO NOT want to keep IDOCs in game.

Simply have the contents of all players houses go into a bank vault awaiting their return. When and if the players return, they will be able to sell, trade, and enjoy Ultima once again. If players want to retrieve the storage from their "houses box".... they must pay the storage costs of say $100 or so. If not, they still have their original bank box and characters. They also have the security of knowing that when they save up an extra $100, they can retrieve their castle's belongings. Players would come back, players would stay. This is far to late to bring back most, but would be a good step in the right direction of player retention. The cons would be that, a million rares "buyers".... notice I did not say "collectors"..... would be angry because they could no longer buy every rare in the game with their gold they bought from "that" website. You would also get about 10 people on 100 accounts complaining and closing accounts because they can no longer feed off of Ultima. The pros would be that.... "that" website would soon be out of business. Scripters would be out of business. NORMAL trading, selling, and collecting could resume once more. The "pros" already have advantages in that area too, as they have bought accounts with 32 shard shields and already have maxed out archers going to events on every single shard. This could be fixed by limiting event drops to like 2 per month for each account or something. To summarize what should be done in this scenario:

1) Contents of house go into a bank box awaiting players return. Players pay a premium of about $100 for the storage of said items upon their return. Give them like a year or so.

2) Limit the amount of event drops players can get per month. This would increase trading and selling. If someone has 50 accounts still, that would be good for UO and they would have an advantage both.

-Do Not Auction or Sell players contents.- I really should not need to state why this is a horrible idea? I have about 1m gold at the moment...... collusion and hand shaking among group members would abound. The ICQ groups would get all items again.

I really do not know what else you could do to fix houses falling and being scripted. Those guys have your guy's number I believe, regardless of the case, they will adapt. The problems were horrible though, are.... I had about 10 of my best friends quit due to scripters at IDOCs. We just want to play Ultima in the end, but when people rage out on scripters, bots, and cheating.... it's hard to find the will to play much. Either of these options above would allow IDOCs to be finished in 30 minutes a day. Normal game play can resume... and you guys can then focus your attention on dungeons, mobs, and loot as we should as well. Let us focus on playing the game.... not playing IDOCs. No one should be doing IDOCs in Ultima 20 hours a day... either do away with them altogether and save contents.... or do shard wide, random, events... with all houses falling in 10 minutes OR LESS, with EJ accounts being UNABLE to get the maps, with all houses on every shard falling at exactly the same time Randomly each day, and signs NEVER display messages or staging of any sort.

That's the best way I can think of for you guys. I know my ideas are great... that's why I took the time to write them, as I love UO more than anyone.... and likely complain more than anyone. Please take my bitterness with a grain of salt, my ideas to heart, and my plans to action. Good luck and good hunting, see you all in game.

Polaris

Polaris said:

.... or do shard wide, random, events... with all houses falling in 10 minutes OR LESS, with EJ accounts being UNABLE to get the maps, with all houses on every shard falling at exactly the same time Randomly each day, and signs NEVER display messages or staging of any sort.

The more I think about it, the funner this begins to sound. All IDOCs finish in 30 minutes also. Then the players can spend more time playing the game.   Best of luck guys, good luck and good hunting.