You must let us make ToT rewards account Bound.

Korik · February 10

New leadership:

You have to give us the option to permanently make ToT rewards account bound and let us transfer them around. I'm sure as incoming producer you've seen the truly wild bot situation on Atlantic.

It's just not fun to compete against so many bots for drops. Previous ToTs haven't been so bad, they've been workable. I'm realistic and know you're not going to do anything about bots, I don't care about that, but do something about the rewards so we can at least gear our own characters without having to compete against stacks of AFK archers and sampires skittering around like roaches. You cannot deny that this is a failure of design on the part of your predecessors. This is a failure to design the customer experience around bots which have been a given for a very long time.

So, it's time to reject rigid and misguided design with solutions actually that focus on customer experience, not the ego of the designer.

Pawain · February 10

Korik said:

New leadership:

You cannot deny that this is a failure of design on the part of your predecessors.

Venom · February 10

No way. I've gotten, via trade or even donation, items from previous ToTs that occurred when I was away from the game. Your proposed solution ends that.

While I've been able to play a good bit during Shattered Sanctum, I've had no issue obtaining drops. This is mostly playing as a single archer or thrower.

I did enjoy the previous ToT that allowed me to shard transfer the turn-ins, as I transferred to ATL to obtain more hats from Covetous once that method died down on Cats. Being able to get them and then turn them in on Catskills made it much better, to the point I was able to gift away a number of rewards.

Skett · February 10

The smart move is to eliminate shard bound altogether

almost everyday castles and keeps falling people dont like the direction they have went with many things SB is just one of those

I doubt they will ever admit SB was a huge mistake

username · February 10

I really hope there's some change now that @Kyronix is in charge.

These ToT rewards should have been account bound from the beginning. Botting would be reduced to nearly 0 after bot farms get their items. I could use my items like a true sandbox on whatever character I wanted on my account on whatever server I wanted. It would encourage players to get out and play the game, increase subscriptions, returning players, etc. Would make potions of glorious fortune worthwhile to buy as currently it's more cost effective to just use the gp to buy the drops than buy the potion. Would make the world seem active instead of an army of soulless AFK sampires running 24/7. What a crazy idea!

At this point shard bound needs to remain (unless account bound is implemented) as you'd just be making the bots all focus on Atlantic then transfer their wares to other servers to become even more rich than these ToTs are already making them.

I read in the constellation client discord that these ToTs are made for botters. It's true. Saw screenshots of 30 boxes of 125 of each reward floating around. Rumored that each bots pulled in 100k points x 40 bots being ran. And that's just one guy. Disgusting. These botters contribute nothing to the game whatsoever other than to milk the legitimate players for every coin and then RMT it back to them. We need some targeted bans, but that's a different story.

Skett · February 10

keep killing the game lol

Grimbeard · February 10

Shard bound until equipped then account bound seems to work for wow

Venom · February 10

Grimbeard said:

Shard bound until equipped then account bound seems to work for wow

True. However, it's a far different game and reliant more on set pieces (which obviously one can argue the ToT stuff is essentially). However, my opinion is UO is more based around being able to trade and whatnot.

WoW is also class based in a way UO is not. Plus, quite a few people in UO appear to pay for multiple accounts. Making it account bound would limit what seems to be a decent chunk of the population, especially the more active pop. Case in point, I couldn't equip my brother's characters with equipment I had used.

Iniquity · February 10

Account bound would be horrible for new players and people with multiple accounts, as well as people who miss events for whatever reason. As such i hope this would not be considered.

I would go another direction. Make items available at all times one way or another and you eliminate multiple problems. Bots would lose a significant market and people could farm for items missed or newly needed.

You could still do events such as they are just add the items later to loot tables or blackthorn.after 6 months / year. Bots capitalize on scarcity and fomo, let's stop making this easy for them.

Grimbeard · February 10

Iniquity said:

Account bound would be horrible for new players and people with multiple accounts, as well as people who miss events for whatever reason. As such i hope this would not be considered.

I would go another direction. Make items available at all times one way or another and you eliminate multiple problems. Bots would lose a significant market and people could farm for items missed or newly needed.

You could still do events such as they are just add the items later to loot tables or blackthorn.after 6 months / year. Bots capitalize on scarcity and fomo, let's stop making this easy for them.

Account bound after equipped solves all these concerns

Iniquity · February 10

Grimbeard said:

Iniquity said:

Account bound would be horrible for new players and people with multiple accounts, as well as people who miss events for whatever reason. As such i hope this would not be considered.

I would go another direction. Make items available at all times one way or another and you eliminate multiple problems. Bots would lose a significant market and people could farm for items missed or newly needed.

You could still do events such as they are just add the items later to loot tables or blackthorn.after 6 months / year. Bots capitalize on scarcity and fomo, let's stop making this easy for them.

Account bound after equipped solves all these concerns

I disagree there are many instances where I have shared loot, that I have worn, with a friend or my wife etc. That's the beauty of uo over games like wow.

With wow you are constantly getting updates and expansions rendering the bound item obsolete, with uo this doesn't happen as often/ever. Items with wow are generally just trashed with greens after a new expansion, as with uo I can hand them off to someone else.

creampie · February 10

username said:

I really hope there's some change now that @ Kyronix is in charge.

These ToT rewards should have been account bound from the beginning. Botting would be reduced to nearly 0 after bot farms get their items. I could use my items like a true sandbox on whatever character I wanted on my account on whatever server I wanted. It would encourage players to get out and play the game, increase subscriptions, returning players, etc. Would make potions of glorious fortune worthwhile to buy as currently it's more cost effective to just use the gp to buy the drops than buy the potion. Would make the world seem active instead of an army of soulless AFK sampires running 24/7. What a crazy idea!

At this point shard bound needs to remain (unless account bound is implemented) as you'd just be making the bots all focus on Atlantic then transfer their wares to other servers to become even more rich than these ToTs are already making them.

I read in the constellation client discord that these ToTs are made for botters. It's true. Saw screenshots of 30 boxes of 125 of each reward floating around. Rumored that each bots pulled in 100k points x 40 bots being ran. And that's just one guy. Disgusting. These botters contribute nothing to the game whatsoever other than to milk the legitimate players for every coin and then RMT it back to them. We need some targeted bans, but that's a different story.

really dumb post like always... get ride of shard bound and account bound is the only good thing they can do. shard bound and account bound only cause inflation. there was no shard bound before and everything was fine before no brainner like you start to say stupid theory.

Grimbeard · February 10

Get rid of shard shields and transfer tokens entirely..

Tim · February 10

creampie said:

username said:

I really hope there's some change now that @ Kyronix is in charge.

These ToT rewards should have been account bound from the beginning. Botting would be reduced to nearly 0 after bot farms get their items. I could use my items like a true sandbox on whatever character I wanted on my account on whatever server I wanted. It would encourage players to get out and play the game, increase subscriptions, returning players, etc. Would make potions of glorious fortune worthwhile to buy as currently it's more cost effective to just use the gp to buy the drops than buy the potion. Would make the world seem active instead of an army of soulless AFK sampires running 24/7. What a crazy idea!

At this point shard bound needs to remain (unless account bound is implemented) as you'd just be making the bots all focus on Atlantic then transfer their wares to other servers to become even more rich than these ToTs are already making them.

I read in the constellation client discord that these ToTs are made for botters. It's true. Saw screenshots of 30 boxes of 125 of each reward floating around. Rumored that each bots pulled in 100k points x 40 bots being ran. And that's just one guy. Disgusting. These botters contribute nothing to the game whatsoever other than to milk the legitimate players for every coin and then RMT it back to them. We need some targeted bans, but that's a different story.

really dumb post like always... get ride of shard bound and account bound is the only good thing they can do. shard bound and account bound only cause inflation. there was no shard bound before and everything was fine before no brainner like you start to say stupid theory.

"everything was fine before" ????
New to the discussion I take it.

I can't really recall when the complaints started

username · February 11

creampie said:

really dumb post like always... get ride of shard bound and account bound is the only good thing they can do. shard bound and account bound only cause inflation. there was no shard bound before and everything was fine before no brainner like you start to say stupid theory.

Start to talk about bots and look who shows up, right on time. Where's @Cookie at?

OH WOW GOOD ONE GOLLY GEE 'UR DUMB' WOOOAH.

Wasn't constellation clients before and everything was ok. So let's get rid of that one? Oh wait, you can't play without your cheat programs.

Lord_Nythrax · February 11

username said:

These ToT rewards should have been account bound from the beginning. Botting would be reduced to nearly 0 after bot farms get their items. I could use my items like a true sandbox on whatever character I wanted on my account on whatever server I wanted. It would encourage players to get out and play the game, increase subscriptions, returning players, etc. Would make potions of glorious fortune worthwhile to buy as currently it's more cost effective to just use the gp to buy the drops than buy the potion. Would make the world seem active instead of an army of soulless AFK sampires running 24/7. What a crazy idea!

To what extent and in what way do you feel the points costs of rewards should change if everything is account bound, bearing in mind that these events are expected to keep players occupied for substantial periods of time?

Mizzlyn · February 11

I don't know if its possible, but if you could account bound the items that are shard transferred on all toons. This would cut down on farming low pop shards to move to ATL to sell for profits. Maybe?

username · February 11

Lord_Nythrax said:

username said:

These ToT rewards should have been account bound from the beginning. Botting would be reduced to nearly 0 after bot farms get their items. I could use my items like a true sandbox on whatever character I wanted on my account on whatever server I wanted. It would encourage players to get out and play the game, increase subscriptions, returning players, etc. Would make potions of glorious fortune worthwhile to buy as currently it's more cost effective to just use the gp to buy the drops than buy the potion. Would make the world seem active instead of an army of soulless AFK sampires running 24/7. What a crazy idea!

To what extent and in what way do you feel the points costs of rewards should change if everything is account bound, bearing in mind that these events are expected to keep players occupied for substantial periods of time?

That's not the case at all. These ToTs last 3 months to give everyone ample time to get their own stuff at their own pace, not to keep us occupied. At 3 months if you're an active player trying to get rewards there's no excuse for not being able to obtain what you need for yourself, even across multiple shards.

As far as point->item cost I'm not set in stone on this. I personally feel if the items become account bound across the board the prices could be reduced as others have stated they have multiple accounts with multiple different templates that may not be able to farm as fast. Plus, these items have no inherent market value, can't be sold/traded, so reducing the cost could be beneficial to the players and alleviate fears of not being able to gear all the characters across all their accounts. However, I wouldn't have a problem with keeping the point costs the same if it means account bound became a thing. Again, not set in stone on this one, is really irrelevant until the devs decide to go account bound. Then we could discuss this.

Pawain · February 11

Only allow legit clients to log on and watch how fast this issue goes away.

qwery · February 11

I fully support blocking all unofficial client connections and implementing permanent bans for accounts with multiple connection attempts. With a new producer at the helm, I'm hopeful we can finally move forward on this. If we don't see any changes though, I'll just have to vote with my wallet and cancel my subscription.

Mizzlyn · February 11

I'm not a computer savant by any means, but what prevents the login servers from identifying official vs unofficial clients? I mean is this something they could do relatively easily or would it require constant maintenance as the illegal clients changed to adapt?

username · February 11

Mizzlyn said:

I'm not a computer savant by any means, but what prevents the login servers from identifying official vs unofficial clients? I mean is this something they could do relatively easily or would it require constant maintenance as the illegal clients changed to adapt?

It is incredibly easy based on what we saw a month or so back. The problem is, they did it completely wrong. There was some sort of packet that the server would emit and the illegal clients didn't know how to handle it so they disconnected.

Okay, so do it this way instead @Bleak @Kyronix :

Have the server emit a useless packet. Could be as simple as the data contained is just 'ping'. When the client receives it, any official client will simply respond 'pong' (ah this brings me back to my IRC days, if ya know ya know). Do this every 5 minutes to all active connections. If the client fails to respond properly don't disconnect them like they did last time. Instead, put a mark on the account.

Now, you're collecting data secretly and nobody knows. I page on a character suspected of being a 3rd party client cheater? Check the marks on the account.

>10 marks? 24h ban for 3rd party programs, as are illegal in the ToS/RoC already. Reset marks to 0. Rinse and repeat.

Of course, they'll eventually catch on. You could go a step further and create a dynamic/random data that would change every 15 minutes. Something sneaky like this would sent a shockwave through cheater clients and I would bet you the usage would go to 0 pretty fast

Mizzlyn · February 11

Ty for making it understandable

psycho · February 11

I am against the topic "account bound" on event items.

It works well the way it is designed now, with "Shard bound" items. The items are locked to a shard and not shipped over to Atlantic, all shards have items and not just atlantic.

As said previously in the thread, event running over 3-4 months should give enough time for anyone to farm their favorite item on their chosen shard.

What I am against is event items comming back over and over, or different versions of the same items, or even worse event items comming back at a different cost. With the previous two events Cora covetous and The hives, theres plenty of items available.

Thank you

Venom · February 11

@Iniquity I agree with Iniquity.

I do think it's a good point to make rewards regularly available. I think some balance of limited time with the items recurring would be nice. The devs could also make a specific name for the original spawn of new items for the rarity factor some may crave.

KroDuK · February 11

ALL the old selection should always return at every events.. something best in slot (heresy) that was MAINSTREAMED (very easy to acquired in HUGE quantity.. since cheaters can farm them 24/7) on top of being shard bound-heretic stuff on a sandbox plus VERY limited on dead shard vendor/economy... there is so much problem with those events items.. where to begin..

Fix the cheat engine problem.. u just solve 50% of the problem here (shard bound) then all u need to work is the balance.. LIMITING the heresy.. to bring back the choices.. When someone shows up wearing a full set of heretic BIS items from those events.. I see this as let's remove the 720 skill point limits.. powercreep problem.. 0 balance.. limit it! hard&softcap!!
On one hand the designer refused to boost skill point to 800/ good call (while doing the opposite with skills on gears) while doing a heretic buffet for BIS.. *slow golf clap*

Knowing how things are.. (they refuse to ban the cheater while promoting them and designing main events FOR them)
The only solution is legit shard.. those shard doesn'T need shard bound.. only the ban world free client would need that type of limitation.. so they can't flod our market or come bot our shard to move them on their shard.. a Ban World tag instead of shard bound.. players could still buy currency from affialiate.. shop on the cheater ban world and move stuff ON the legit shard..

To give you an example.. it's like if u couldn't move ban world (shard bound) items ON ATL.. but u could move them OUTSIDE ATL.. so in the meantime shard bound should be, not transferable on ATL (or any crowded shard) but u can move them OUTSIDE of them.. it would offer a temporary solution for returning players.. deal with affiliates and go shop.

I still believe a full EA cash shop would be a better solution than affiliates.. so the money could be reinvest by hiring more actual dev.

You don't fix an heresy by another heresy..y'all have lost your marbles.. cope with the cheat engine if u want but if u do.. do it.. do not ask for a worse heresy than shard bound with account bound cuz of those said cheaters.. this is madness.

PS:

Mizzlyn said:

I don't know if its possible, but if you could account bound the items that are shard transferred on all toons. This would cut down on farming low pop shards to move to ATL to sell for profits. Maybe?

Even this... this is the best account bound suggestion i've seen.. it would fix a tons of issues.. i could buy them on ATL and use them on a dead shard.. I could even move from my dead shard once i'm rdy to compete for ATL and PvP there.. but this is still an heresy.. it's adding another WTF layers instead of fixing the CORE problem, this is BAD design.. them cheaters making the game worst and we suggesting making the sandbox even worse than it is cuz of them.. wake up call?!

Edit: just to make sure y'all understand.. this solution would only badly impact the non bots lover users.. cuz them bots users have WAYYY to much heresy shard bound items to care if they are account bound or not... while making the game a lesser sandbox.. those cheater would still keep tchou tchou'ing 24/7 every event on multiple shards (even more shard the cookie of this world would already be on Legends and adding to the bots numbers on that dead shard) and sell their booty on every shards their heart desire.. account bound would badly impact the non bot lovers.. while benefiting the bots lovers (they can now transfer a fully geared PvP user on dead shard to bot 24/7 and flood it's market)

As for the bound account instead shard bound off the bat.. when u claim it.. i don't even consider this on a sandbox.. u killing the game cuz of non sense (coping/not really with legion of bots)
As for the when u equip it.. similar problem to mizz idea.. mizz idea is just better off the bat and yet..

We need to fire the entire community for giving such ideas to the designer.

Lord_Nythrax · February 11

username said:

Mizzlyn said:

I'm not a computer savant by any means, but what prevents the login servers from identifying official vs unofficial clients? I mean is this something they could do relatively easily or would it require constant maintenance as the illegal clients changed to adapt?

It is incredibly easy based on what we saw a month or so back. The problem is, they did it completely wrong.

The problem is that the developers have proven that they're unwilling to ban paid accounts for any reason. They were never equipped to win a long-term technical war given that there's only like two developers left who know how to code. They could have handed out escalating bans instead of just attempting a couple of easily-circumvented tricks meant to make the clients disconnect, but they didn't.

The "war on third party" is over, and the third parties won. This has been a humiliating chapter for the game, and I double @Kyronix and pals ever even mention it again.

Thalon · February 12

I played on three different servers during the Treasures of the Shattered Sanctum Event:

1) Atlantic : absurdly busy with "players" and hard to imagine that a good number of them weren't bots.

2) Pacific :medium population. Plenty of space to earn drops. I'm certain there were non-humans farming drops due to the numbers of cats and dogs their bots killed. May the ghosts of those animals haunt them to the end of their days!

3) Origin : very low population, even seeing other players in battle was rare.

I do sympathize with anyone that calls Atlantic home, in small spawn towns like Moonglow, the presence of massive groups of throwers/archers would make earning drops impossible at times. However, the Solen hives were also available to earn drops, which I did see a few other players and I suspect they were very human, not bots.

As a player, I'm fine with Shard-Bound drops for events. Unfortunately, Shard-Bound and Account-Bound once equipped won't solve the problem. The same people that abused the system during this event will do it again.

Making items straight-up Account-Bound is the only game-mechanic based solution that would work. There is no point to farming hundreds of duplicate items only your account can use. I don't like the idea much as I actually gifted several drop items to friends this time around. On the other hand, if the servers weren't so crowded, they could have probably earned more of their own rewards....

Theo · February 12

Few things -

First they could catch the bots if they wanted. Just track number of drops per toon. I played a lot. Got thousands. I’m nowhere near the script players. They have tens of thousands. They are on all day every day. Look at your top 75 drop toons - those are your bots. The fact that they ran for 2+ months straight tells me they don’t care. They want the sub money and cheating is ok. There is no other explanation and all the ‘you should do this or that etc’ is a waste of time. They are easy to find. On Chessy the last week almost all toons doing the event were bots. It was easy to spot.

Next - I play by hand. I get multiples of the items for toons who can’t effectively fight and I also helped out guild members get drops. Account bound drops is a no go. However I also have shard shields. When these drops are part of my toons armor - I can’t transfer and leave armor behind. I’m not making a new suit to shard hop. 80% of my suit is these overpowered drops. I need a way to travel with them.

Last -

I love the event for what it is but we had a guidie return and missed the balron armor. Only way to get it now is to pay a scripted out the nose for a set. All these rewards should be added to community collections or clean up. Figure out the points that make sense. Like drops are 500k-1m so a 100pt item is 50-100m fine - but allow people to buy it up or obtain it some other way besides getting from scripted. Put me in charge. I’ll figure the point system out. I’m retired. Hit me up Kryonix. Now’s the time.

username · February 12

Thalon said:

I played on three different servers during the Treasures of the Shattered Sanctum Event:

1) Atlantic : absurdly busy with "players" and hard to imagine that a good number of them weren't bots.
2) Pacific :medium population. Plenty of space to earn drops. I'm certain there were non-humans farming drops due to the numbers of cats and dogs their bots killed. May the ghosts of those animals haunt them to the end of their days!
3) Origin : very low population, even seeing other players in battle was rare.

I do sympathize with anyone that calls Atlantic home, in small spawn towns like Moonglow, the presence of massive groups of throwers/archers would make earning drops impossible at times. However, the Solen hives were also available to earn drops, which I did see a few other players and I suspect they were very human, not bots.

As a player, I'm fine with Shard-Bound drops for events. Unfortunately, Shard-Bound and Account-Bound once equipped won't solve the problem. The same people that abused the system during this event will do it again.

Making items straight-up Account-Bound is the only game-mechanic based solution that would work. There is no point to farming hundreds of duplicate items only your account can use. I don't like the idea much as I actually gifted several drop items to friends this time around. On the other hand, if the servers weren't so crowded, they could have probably earned more of their own rewards....

Very well put post. I completely agree with everything you said, especially how the 'bind on equip' won't work. In fact, I think that's the absolute worst idea as only the bot farms can profit and then the end user is stuck with a value-less item. As you allude to, account bound surely isn't the most ideal solution I think we can all agree. It does solve several issues very fast, three being the most complained about in these ToTs: bots farming infinite, potions of fortune not worth buying/using and not being able to transfer the items (shard bound).

There are two ways of going forward. Ban the bots or implement a mechanic that stops them. Unfortunately...

Lord_Nythrax said:
The problem is that the developers have proven that they're unwilling to ban paid accounts for any reason.

... does seem true given they've had perfect opportunities to action accounts instead of simply DCing them from the game world. So what's left is 'account bound'.

KroDuK · February 12

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

You must let us make ToT rewards account Bound.

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