▒ - NEW IDOC'S CHANGE - ▒

Ivenor · February 2020

Uriah_Heep said:

monkgamer said:

Uo never has had issues with destroying long time playstyles. No point changing now, just put the stuff in a chest in the owners bank.

QFT

BYP?

QFT: Quantum Field Theory???

Pawain · February 2020

I use the CC with nothing but fingers and a toothpick when needed.

I do not understand why posters think the EC client would stop scripting. It has scripts built in. A poster told us how to change the limits on how many times it can run the same action. It already picks up items and puts them in a chosen container.

As soon as a need to modify it even more arises, it will be modified fast.

Someplayer · February 2020

Thank God they are doing something about the IDOC system. It's not enough though! They need to completely remove the incentive to cheat and script by putting the house items in the home owner's bank or an offline warehouse that they can unlock upon return. You vultures have no right to sweep up an account's worth of items. We, the community, are sick and tired of it! Greed, sickening greed and zero regard for the player and all their hard work. Enough is enough! You cheaters had a good run. Stick it to em Mesanna!

Soldahouse · February 2020

i think this thread has made it known to all that you can now cheat at idocs and not get in trouble. If you thought the cheating was bad a few days ago, you should go to an idoc now. It really needs to stop. Ban all 3rd party programs. Do punkbuster. Delete all items from idocs. Remove the house signs. Put all stuff in a crate for returning players. Make all houses fall on one day every month at same time. Stop all houses from decaying. Put all items on monsters. I don't care what they do, just please do something.

jelinidas · February 2020

Limit EJ accounts to New Haven. Either you like the game or not, mind made up in the first hour. Revamp Haven and *gasp* make it user friendly. Make the scripters use paid accounts and the "team" may actually have to visit random IDOCs and ban away. All they have to do is plant some "marked" loot and see where it lands. As they say...follow the money.

popps · February 2020

Merus said:

After watching and participating in this discussion for months now, I think there are some realities that some players really just do not want to accept:

-- The most popular and easy scripting program for CC does not interact with the UO data stream directly. Because of this, there is no way on the server side to tell the difference between a script action and a player action. Developers realized this years and years ago and proposed a third party program that would be installed as part of UO that would read all the installed programs on your hard drive and block UO if you had unapproved programs installed. UO players killed this as invasive, and rightly so IMO.

-- Creative and complex scripts can be written to perform virtually ANY action in game that is both predictable and repeatable. The only real limits to scripting are the number of variables a script writer is willing to build into the script (given a high level of script writing ability).

If you ask me, when you consider the above and how scripts have abused IDOCs you really only have a couple base alternatives:

-- A house decay system where house contents do not drop with the house. They are either deleted or saved for the owner, or (unrealistically) distributed through other PvM content. This system eliminates the IDOC play style expect for high value plots.

-- Massive GM enforcement at IDOCs based on assumptions. GMs show up at every IDOC and ban accounts of those they suspect of cheating. While this sounds great in theory, it has a couple major flaws. One, there simply isn't enough GM support to make this a reality across the board. Two, since there is no way to prove who is and isn't scripting, it turns into a giant cluster of a GMs word against a players word. You'll ban some cheaters no doubt, but you'll ban some legit players right along with them.

-- A house decay system that has too many variables for scripters to deal with. IMO, the proposed change from the developers is trying to achieve this. I have heard some suggest that scripts will simply start looking for items on the ground instead of reading house signs. Or that scripters will simply document every single house in UO across every shard and then repeatedly check for changes. The question is... will they put in that much effort in their scripts to continue what they do now. The biggest downside of this approach is that for the normal player, this change is more or less the same as the houses not dropping the contents at all because the regular player won't be able to find the IDOC in the first place. Ultimately the harder they try and make it for scripts the harder they make it for the average player, many times exponential harder because players can't play 24/7.

IMO, there is no other option for IDOC's that does not fall into one of these categories.

Where does that leave us? UO DOES have a place where IDOCs are not dominated by scripts. Where the average player has a way to find and predict a house fall in order to show up for a chance at loot. Where GM's are not needed as constant police looking for cheaters. Is it the perfect solution for everyone? ... nope. But IMO, it is the only truly viable option that keeps the average player in the loop for IDOCs, leaves the house contents falling, and eliminates the vacuums. However, for this to be successful, it would also require rekindling something that UO, at least IMO, lost most of many years ago... a sense of community among strangers. UO had IDOCs before Trammel existed. Blue players banded together to fight whether they knew each other or not... and most of the time it worked. People complain there are just too many reds...To borrow a phrase from a recent, popular movie... "But there are more of us, Poe. There are more of us."

Here was my suggestion for a change to IDOCs from another thread:

-The moment the house goes from greatly to idoc the house and all its contents get teleported to an instanced island and a neon green moon gate appears at the house location. (Think Corgul island) Entering the gate would deposit you at a random location on the island. (note to Devs) Technically, the actual structure of the house need not be recreated... the island could have a standard structure that would have the contents of the house randomly distributed throughout that would vanish to drop the contents. This would make programming the island fairly simple and static other than the contents inside the structure.
-Current placement restrictions begin when the gate appears and remain until the gate disappears.
-The island will be Fel dungeon ruleset (PvP, no mark or recall, no house placement) and be infested with random spawn.
-Leaving the island will be through additional green gates placed on the island (Think Medusa’s lair). Gates will not work if you are flagged and there will be a 2 minute timer before you can return.
-The house will collapse 30 minutes after being teleported.

Other than the “I don’t want to PvP”, this scenario would solve virtually every other issue with IDOCS.

Other than the “I don’t want to PvP”, this scenario would solve virtually every other issue with IDOCS.

The thing is, though, that to a LOT of Ultima Online players, some, since Trammel creation would say the grandest majority of Ultima Online players, "I don't want to PvP" is a BIG issue....

AT that point, MUCH BETTER, at least to my opinion, would be Options # 3 and # 4 of the post https://forum.uo.com/discussion/comment/37294/#Comment_37294 by @Lieutenant_Dan

Urge · February 2020

This is a little awkward with Merus and Popps switching roles.

Merus · February 2020

Urge said:

This is a little awkward with Merus and Popps switching roles.

Switching roles?

Urge · February 2020

Merus said:

Urge said:

This is a little awkward with Merus and Popps switching roles.

Switching roles?

Nothing insulting. Just odd you having a big post and him with a really short response.

MissE · February 2020

No idea why there is all this discussion as to putting stuff into a player bank box. That wouldn't be the idea at all. It is more about attaching the items to a players account.

For example:

House falls up to 7500 items
Items go into a recovery crate (ie something like the moving crate on a house only attached to the players account and accessed via the bank NPC).
Player returns after XYZ yrs (whatever, doesn't matter they are returning, no limit)
Players bank is as per any players bank holds 175 items and operates exactly as any bank.
Player may pay to have their old items returned by paying to access their 'recovery crate' any time after returning ($50-100). This may be any time after they have returned.
Once player pays when going to the bank they have an 'access recovery crate' option on the banking npc.
They have 12 mths to empty the crate, they can do it all at once or in bits and pieces.
A player may only have ONE recovery crate at any time so if a player has a crate, returns, doesn't pay to recover it, and then their stuff goes idoc for a second time then the second idoc generates a new 'recovery crate' that displaces the first.

Would seem a very simple system to me and would make players more likely to return if they know their stuff is still there. (ie when I played WOW the only reason I returned for a while was I knew my stuff was there from before. I wouldn't of bothered if I had to start from scratch)

I don't know, for some reason in UO, people seem to think they have a god given right to the spoils of another player when they leave. Sure when it was a fel ruleset it was a free for all there may of been some game play attached to the idea, but since it has become nothing but a scripters paradise and always will be then it has become a system that focus's on pure greed and whose script works best. Just get rid of the whole thing and maybe create a system that would encourage players to return.

The_Higgs_1 · February 2020

Just stop with this store their stuff forever nonsense, its terrible and they cant afford the server space. Plus the fact that everyone will just quit knowing their stuff is saved. Who cares if a rares museum falls and it all disappears, its a game. EM events are just as corrupt as idocs, get rid of them too.

Polaris · February 2020

MissE said:

No idea why there is all this discussion as to putting stuff into a player bank box. That wouldn't be the idea at all. It is more about attaching the items to a players account.

For example:
House falls up to 7500 items
Items go into a recovery crate (ie something like the moving crate on a house only attached to the players account and accessed via the bank NPC).......................

It seems anytime logical posts appear, 10 illogical ones will follow. I would hate to say the reasons due to.... you get the idea. Some want to keep their IDOCs and will do anything it takes to keep their IDOCs falling to the ground, so they can be vacuumed up by bots.

I dunno who is who, but it feels like every time someone posts a logical answer, people laugh or call it non sense or something. Does anyone else feel that way? The answers are simple, if you want to keep IDOCs.... do as I suggest at the bottom of page 3. Someone else loved the idea also.

I would prefer also.... let the contents of the PLAYERS house go into a "storage vault" which they can reclaim with a "storage key" which costs about 100,000 sovereigns. A win win for UO. No more script site, no more arguments about it, no more gold selling as their money will run dry, no more gen chat being plagued by it, NO MORE. That idea of "no more" scares the life out of some... to answer your question @MissE .

They are the player's items. If Skelee Weinee still had the contents of his castle.... he would have kept playing. If Ryu had his items, he would have stayed. How many people do you guys think lost ALL and then were like.... forget that, I'm not repeating the last 10 years again.......... Everyone would quit were they to lose their houses by whatever mis-fortuitous event. On the converse... MANY would come back if they knew Ultima Online was once and for all rid of the scripters and cheaters.

Polaris · February 2020

The_Higgs_1 said:

Just stop with this store their stuff forever nonsense, its terrible and they cant afford the server space. Plus the fact that everyone will just quit knowing their stuff is saved. Who cares if a rares museum falls and it all disappears, its a game. EM events are just as corrupt as idocs, get rid of them too.

What difference would it be to the server were the items to go to a storage vault.... or were vacuumed up by bots? The items would still be in the game...... minus a few vines and plants.

A one time storage into a "vault" would be far better actually. It could even be stored outside of any server..... it would actually Greatly improve the server. None of those items would be being loaded anywhere. Also... none of those "bots" would be running around....

Let the items go into a storage vault please Devs? Most of you know of a few people who have decided to "sell all" on Stratics. While I am unsure of the reasons why long time players quit, I have been begging my wife for years now. Coincidentally.... I have not been to an IDOC in a few years as well. The players are sick of it........ take IDOCs out of the game. Please......?

Ivenor · February 2020

The_Higgs_1 said:

Just stop with this store their stuff forever nonsense, its terrible and they cant afford the server space. Plus the fact that everyone will just quit knowing their stuff is saved. Who cares if a rares museum falls and it all disappears, its a game. EM events are just as corrupt as idocs, get rid of them too.

That fact is that this is NOT a FREE game.

Many people playstyle is TOTALLY centered on Rares Collection, House Deco, etc., and in that they have frequently invested A LOT of time & REAL money, and a big chunk of that money (under the form of Paid Account Subs, etc.) has gone to keep the lights on in Britannia for Fel PvPer(v)s and such too.

No Player, still IMO, has the moral right to say "since this is not my way of playing UO, who cares what happens to things that other kind of Players considers important, and in which they spent time & money": this, even before being callous, is simply suicide, gamewise speaking.

This said, and considering that, again, at a static DB level, the difference in storage costs between 175 and 7,500 items is NEGLIGIBLE (and that could be recovered anyway ten or hundredfold making Returning Player pay a - reasonable... - fee to have their stuff back), there is NO real reason to let people prized possession to vanish. Especially there is, IMO, no reason AT ALL to let highly personal items as SoulStone and other Account Bond items not to be "deep freeze stored" if a house with them in falls.

Myabe (?) there was a reason in more florid times to have SStones giving a so high CUB value, but surely it is no more the case today...

I.

JollyJade · February 2020

Polaris said:

They are the player's items. If Skelee Weinee still had the contents of his castle.... he would have kept playing. If Ryu had his items, he would have stayed. How many people do you guys think lost ALL and then were like.... forget that, I'm not repeating the last 10 years again.......... Everyone would quit were they to lose their houses by whatever mis-fortuitous event. On the converse... MANY would come back if they knew Ultima Online was once and for all rid of the scripters and cheaters.

While I can't deny that they might have still paid their houses, I doubt anyone not paying his account for more then 90 days really cares or plays anymore. Everyone playing the game once in 90 days does not lose his castle or the like..

The IDOC change is ok. Would be better to just delete everything though to encourage playing the actual game content... instead of vendoring the same 15 year old item over and over again.

"rares" are also produced 100+ every month, so there would be no shortage even without idoc loot..

Sad thing though is how none of the known IDOC cheaters (lets not @ them this time) seems to get touched at all. Might need more EJ accounts as well lol.

Max_Blackoak · February 2020

all these suggestions are nice in their own right, however, they're all only scratching the surface and none of them tackles the root of the problem.

The root of the problem is third party programs that allow for automated actions (scripts). This doesn't solely apply to idocs, it also applies to PvP, afk resource farming, etc. etc. Unless this problem is taken care of you'll never get this sorted out.

Hence my suggestion: develop the 2d client and EC client to where they do the exact same thing and implement features that UOAssist and the various map programs out there offer. Then ban all third party programs. Don't allow any of them to connect to the official shards. Problem solved.

MissE · February 2020

Max_Blackoak said:

all these suggestions are nice in their own right, however, they're all only scratching the surface and none of them tackles the root of the problem.
The root of the problem is third party programs that allow for automated actions (scripts). This doesn't solely apply to idocs, it also applies to PvP, afk resource farming, etc. etc. Unless this problem is taken care of you'll never get this sorted out.

Hence my suggestion: develop the 2d client and EC client to where they do the exact same thing and implement features that UOAssist and the various map programs out there offer. Then ban all third party programs. Don't allow any of them to connect to the official shards. Problem solved.

Sadly it has been what over 21 years and they still can't stop just the dude crapping on in general chat, nor stop the script miners nor stop the scripting lumberjacks and don't get me started on the multiboxers at events that are still running rampant, certainly on Oceania, it is the same bunch every event and the EM's know them as they see em and yet there they still are. I know the EM's have no power to do anything, but they see em as much as the rest of us and I know they 'report' to Mesanna, yet next event get out the popcorn they will be there again. Nothing is done. and after 21 odd yrs nothing will be done.

Every time the devs do anything to stop the scripters all it does is effect the general player. Mining and Lumberjacking, lets randomise the resources to stop the scripters, naaaaaaa didn't work, made it easier for em and totally screwed the casual player. Change the time on idocs from 0-7hrs to 5/10/15, didn't stop em helped em in fact made it so much worse for the avg player. Stop the placement of houses direct on idoc fall... again, hampered the general player made it a script fest for house placement, the list of all the 'attempted' fixes always seems to benefit the very people they are trying to stop.

Initially I thought taking the info off the sign would be a solution, but seems all those who are in the 'know' now say that they will just get EJ accounts running unaided around and around picking up all the loot. I wouldn't know as I have never scripted, but if that is the case then this change will again do what all other 'changes' have done, do nothing but aid the cheaters even more.

They can ban all third party programs now ... if they could, but they don't so it is either that they don't know how, or they don't wanna put in the effort. I assume is the first, at least I hope so.

Getting rid of the cc would probably stop it but that isn't ever gonna happen. Even if they did then I guess the cheaters would then concentrate all their efforts into corrupting the EC.

I don't see any solution and have seen no solutions here that will stop the cheats. Hence why I say bugger it just put the stuff into a recovery crate and kill the whole sorry mess. Turn it into a win for returning players.

Either that just make the whole lot go 'poof' and be done with it. You don't know what is in a house when your sitting outside of it so you ain't gonna miss what you don't know is there. AS for all the 'i dont wanna see all my friends stuff disappear, or the waaa waaa the history will go.... well hmmm they didnt' give a toss about when they quit playing so why should you? If they did they would of passed on account details to their so called 'friends' now wouldn't they?

I know my 'friends' have always given me account details when leaving to avoid all the Idoc stuff, and I have emptied at least 12 places by this means.

Anyways by all accounts the 'new' solution is no solution so I guess the scripters will win again if you believe all the knowledgeable scripters out there and their prognosis.

Uriah_Heep · February 2020

Amen, MissE, amen.

Polaris · February 2020

MissE said:

Hence why I say bugger it just put the stuff into a recovery crate and kill the whole sorry mess. Turn it into a win for returning players.

Exactly... This is the best solution possible. Most effective and easiest for the Devs. Don't forget too, we can always have new "blackrock" events later at some point for boxes. We can have new "rubble" events later possibly. Anything that has been done can be done again.

Some items out there may become true rares.... such as my "items of exceptional quality" colored ore sets..... they may never be completed at all. I accept that. I am willing to accept that. In fact... if the cheaters could no longer cheat, and the gold "buyers" could no longer BUY every rare in the game. My collection might actually INCREASE. As it is right now, I have about 500k...... I have no chance of buying an item when it comes up, the normal "buyers" buy it all anyway. They have like 20p it seems..............

Stop the cheating.... please stop IDOCs altogether. Help returning players... help UO. Move IDOC items into a storage vault, please Devs.

popps · February 2020

The_Higgs_1 said:

Just stop with this store their stuff forever nonsense, its terrible and they cant afford the server space. Plus the fact that everyone will just quit knowing their stuff is saved. Who cares if a rares museum falls and it all disappears, its a game. EM events are just as corrupt as idocs, get rid of them too.

Just stop with this store their stuff forever nonsense, its terrible and they cant afford the server space.

How much server space a few lines of text would take ?

I mean, it is not necessary to save the art work and any large file but, simply, I would imagine, a text file listing one by 1 the items contained in the House.

It if it magic items or artifacts, save as text their properties.

Then, "eventually", if the player asks to retrieve them AT THAT POINT they would be generated with their art etc.

For for being stored, I think, a mere text file would be needed and these, that I know of, that very, but VERY little space.

Or am I wrong in my thinking ?

AtomicBetty · February 2020

Why are Endless Journey accounts part of this discussion? They can't pick up loot for 30 mins after an IDOC how is that a problem related to idocs?

Zoo · February 2020

Merus said:

After watching and participating in this discussion for months now, I think there are some realities that some players really just do not want to accept:

1. The most popular and easy scripting program for CC does not interact with the UO data stream directly. Because of this, there is no way on the server side to tell the difference between a script action and a player action. Developers realized this years and years ago and proposed a third party program that would be installed as part of UO that would read all the installed programs on your hard drive and block UO if you had unapproved programs installed. UO players killed this as invasive, and rightly so IMO.

2. Creative and complex scripts can be written to perform virtually ANY action in game that is both predictable and repeatable. The only real limits to scripting are the number of variables a script writer is willing to build into the script (given a high level of script writing ability).

3. A house decay system that has too many variables for scripters to deal with. IMO, the proposed change from the developers is trying to achieve this. I have heard some suggest that scripts will simply start looking for items on the ground instead of reading house signs. Or that scripters will simply document every single house in UO across every shard and then repeatedly check for changes. The question is... will they put in that much effort in their scripts to continue what they do now. The biggest downside of this approach is that for the normal player, this change is more or less the same as the houses not dropping the contents at all because the regular player won't be able to find the IDOC in the first place. Ultimately the harder they try and make it for scripts the harder they make it for the average player, many times exponential harder because players can't play 24/7.

Well said, I couldn't agree more!

To add a bit to the discussion:

1. It's worth mentioning that although the software you are referring to may be the most common, it is not what is being used to scout IDOCs. It is limited in its pathfinding ability in ways that other programs are not (implementations of A* -like algorithms in the newer stuff). Also, this other software uses a packet cloning technique which makes it, in principle, even more difficult to detect. Also, much of the looting is being done with scavengers on uoassist clones, not with scripting at all. This last point may be splitting hairs, but still.

2. Agreed, and just to prove your point, I'm aware of a project to automate the roof encounter. It appears to be pretty close to completion. That encounter was written in a unique way to dissuade players from scripting, and yet here we are. Never underestimate determined players!

3. Scripters won't even have to look for items on the ground, if a house recently fell, the game tells you this if you know what to look for. This is the most likely reason some of the more notorious players in this thread are attempting to get others on board with throwing loot into a secure container. If we treat house looting as the main problem, you will forget that they make their money on house placement. If these changes go into effect, it will have no impact whatsoever on the uo realtors. A clever programmer can easily detect the fall, and place a new house completely automatedly. These proposed changes will only make it more difficult for the casual and honest IDOCers. The same thing happened when they implemented the 5/10/15 ruleset. Now scripters with autolooting scripts can recall in at the right times and have at it, and fewer honest players go because they have lives and can't be on the pc 10 hours a day.

I applaud the desire to make changes, but I feel the devs should take a step back and approach this problem holistically. Just removing the decay status from the sign is only going to make the scripting issues worse, at the cost of everyone else.

Garth_Grey · February 2020

AtomicBetty said:

Why are Endless Journey accounts part of this discussion? They can't pick up loot for 30 mins after an IDOC how is that a problem related to idocs?

What shard are you playing on where EJs can't pick up loot off of the ground ?

Mesanna · February 2020

So glad everyone is invested in IDOC's!

We have read your comments and went back to the drawing board to come up with a fair and reasonable solution to this problem. After we finalize everything we will be putting this on Test Center 1 for everyone to check out. This is not an easy fix that will make everyone happy but we have a few ideas that hit all your concerns. Please stay tuned and we will be letting you guys know more when we have something solid to show you.

As of right now we will be locking this thread and starting a new one when we have the changes in.

Thank all of you for being so passionate about a game we all love!

Mesanna

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Cheers MissE

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