Devs please limit the number of Sheaves of Hay that can be sold by Farmers

@Kyronix and @Mesanna please limit the number of Sheaves of Hay that can be sold by Farmers.  Some players are getting the farmers to sell up to 999 sheaves, buying that, then dropping it in piles in the farmhouses to block other players. Ask GM Marino how long it took to get rid of the hay in the west Moonglow farmhouse in Pacific Fel.

I spent at least three hours today feeding hay to my horse and whoever was dumping the hay would add more to the piles.

TimSt said:

@ Kyronix and @ Mesanna please limit the number of Sheaves of Hay that can be sold by Farmers.  Some players are getting the farmers to sell up to 999 sheaves, buying that, then dropping it in piles in the farmhouses to block other players. Ask GM Marino how long it took to get rid of the hay in the west Moonglow farmhouse in Pacific Fel.

I spent at least three hours today feeding hay to my horse and whoever was dumping the hay would add more to the piles.

Couldn't you kill them?

McDougle said:

TimSt said:

@ Kyronix and @ Mesanna please limit the number of Sheaves of Hay that can be sold by Farmers.  Some players are getting the farmers to sell up to 999 sheaves, buying that, then dropping it in piles in the farmhouses to block other players. Ask GM Marino how long it took to get rid of the hay in the west Moonglow farmhouse in Pacific Fel.

I spent at least three hours today feeding hay to my horse and whoever was dumping the hay would add more to the piles.

Couldn't you kill them?

The Moonglow farmhouses are guard zones.  And the players doing it do it while invisible. You need to constantly cast Reveal.

"hay, bag balls, candellebra, crates, you can put down whatever you want in fel"

Yoshi said:

"hay, bag balls, candellebra, crates, you can put down whatever you want in fel"

I don't think they are disputing that just asking to limit sales of a certain item

@Yoshi, The big issue is they are taking advantage of the hay they can not carry automatically being dumped on the ground in a single pile when purchased. Thus you get piles of up to 999 sheaves of hay automatically getting dumped onto the ground.  

What I am suggesting is limit the hay to 20 and not let it get up to 999.

nice way to stop eggs Scripting i will do same on my server

Maybe fill the farmhouse yourself?

Yoshi said:

"so limit the amount of crates you can craft etc?

i think you can create a macro in EC to pick up hay or whatever is blocking you"

In EC, I applied filter to the object handler so it shows the "egg" only. The filter does not accept more than one entry. Which means to pick up eggs, hay or bagball, we need to disable the filter and when we press to show the object handler, every object will pop up. Unless someone has a way to filter multiple items...

Yoshi said:

"hay, bag balls, candellebra, crates, you can put down whatever you want in fel"

No, harassment is against the ROC in all of UO.  I guess you missed the thread where the player doing this had Their/My account banned for dropping hay and blocking recall spots.

They did write pretty incoherently.

Still terminated.

 

Seth said:

Yoshi said:

"so limit the amount of crates you can craft etc?

i think you can create a macro in EC to pick up hay or whatever is blocking you"

In EC, I applied filter to the object handler so it shows the "egg" only. The filter does not accept more than one entry. Which means to pick up eggs, hay or bagball, we need to disable the filter and when we press to show the object handler, every object will pop up. Unless someone has a way to filter multiple items...

To filter on multiple items you need to modify the function ObjectHandleWindow.CreateObjectHandles in ObjectHandle.lua and add the high lighted line:

TimSt said:

Seth said:

Yoshi said:

"so limit the amount of crates you can craft etc?

i think you can create a macro in EC to pick up hay or whatever is blocking you"

In EC, I applied filter to the object handler so it shows the "egg" only. The filter does not accept more than one entry. Which means to pick up eggs, hay or bagball, we need to disable the filter and when we press to show the object handler, every object will pop up. Unless someone has a way to filter multiple items...

To filter on multiple items you need to modify the function ObjectHandleWindow.CreateObjectHandles in ObjectHandle.lua and add the high lighted line:

Thanks, will try this shortly. This is definitely a great help!

Limiting the # items sold is a whack-a-mole style approach to the issue.

At the root of the issue, is likely usage of EJ accounts during this event cycle. 

I'd rather see some systemic curbs be put on EJ accounts:

1. EJ accounts can no longer be in Felucca.
2. EJ accounts cannot pickup event items like eggs.  (good suggestion from somebody else).
3. EJ accounts cannot get drops during events.

Because more hay piles showed up I've let the GMs know the character's name and ID number. 

Seth said:

TimSt said:

Seth said:

Yoshi said:

"so limit the amount of crates you can craft etc?

i think you can create a macro in EC to pick up hay or whatever is blocking you"

In EC, I applied filter to the object handler so it shows the "egg" only. The filter does not accept more than one entry. Which means to pick up eggs, hay or bagball, we need to disable the filter and when we press to show the object handler, every object will pop up. Unless someone has a way to filter multiple items...

To filter on multiple items you need to modify the function ObjectHandleWindow.CreateObjectHandles in ObjectHandle.lua and add the high lighted line:

Thanks, will try this shortly. This is definitely a great help!

Works perfectly, adding one filter at a time

Pawain said:

Yoshi said:

"hay, bag balls, candellebra, crates, you can put down whatever you want in fel"

No, harassment is against the ROC in all of UO.  I guess you missed the thread where the player doing this had Their/My account banned for dropping hay and blocking recall spots.

They did write pretty incoherently.

Still terminated.

 

I have to admit, I laughed at this.  Killing, stealing, looting in Fel, all ok, but placing a bag ball on the wrong coordinates is a hard NO.  I guess I'm the only one that marks multiple runes to the same locations just in case something is blocking it.  Most egg areas, I mark my runes a bit off to avoid this.  However, this did teach me that if I try to recall into an area and something is blocking my location, I can just page a GM to lay down the banhammer.  Good to know.

Pawain said:

Yoshi said:

"hay, bag balls, candellebra, crates, you can put down whatever you want in fel"

No, harassment is against the ROC in all of UO.  I guess you missed the thread where the player doing this had Their/My account banned for dropping hay and blocking recall spots.

They did write pretty incoherently.

Still terminated.

 

Didn’t this person post that they were able to get their account back?  Was the original ban a mistake?

Relvinian said:

Pawain said:

Yoshi said:

"hay, bag balls, candellebra, crates, you can put down whatever you want in fel"

No, harassment is against the ROC in all of UO.  I guess you missed the thread where the player doing this had Their/My account banned for dropping hay and blocking recall spots.

They did write pretty incoherently.

Still terminated.

 

Didn’t this person post that they were able to get their account back?  Was the original ban a mistake?

No. There was a delay on the termination.  So they thought they were OK. That is the account they were using. Luckily it did not do anything to the linked account I use.

Sarkon said:

Pawain said:

Yoshi said:

"hay, bag balls, candellebra, crates, you can put down whatever you want in fel"

No, harassment is against the ROC in all of UO.  I guess you missed the thread where the player doing this had Their/My account banned for dropping hay and blocking recall spots.

They did write pretty incoherently.

Still terminated.

 

I have to admit, I laughed at this.  Killing, stealing, looting in Fel, all ok, but placing a bag ball on the wrong coordinates is a hard NO.  I guess I'm the only one that marks multiple runes to the same locations just in case something is blocking it.  Most egg areas, I mark my runes a bit off to avoid this.  However, this did teach me that if I try to recall into an area and something is blocking my location, I can just page a GM to lay down the banhammer.  Good to know.

I think "harassment" is subject to the GM when it comes to Fel. You start dropping things in Tram then you are asking for trouble but Fel should operate differently. Perfect example is luring monsters on someone in Tram can get you banned but can't in Fel... so it's harassment on one facet but not on the other. I'd suspect that this blocking should follow suit. If you are doing it in Fel, that's just part of the deal... do it in Tram at your own risk.

**Disclaimer** I don't hunt eggs because it's just too boring to compete for eggs even though they are potentially a better source of turn-in points.

Pawain said:

Relvinian said:

Pawain said:

Yoshi said:

"hay, bag balls, candellebra, crates, you can put down whatever you want in fel"

No, harassment is against the ROC in all of UO.  I guess you missed the thread where the player doing this had Their/My account banned for dropping hay and blocking recall spots.

They did write pretty incoherently.

Still terminated.

 

Didn’t this person post that they were able to get their account back?  Was the original ban a mistake?

No. There was a delay on the termination.  So they thought they were OK. That is the account they were using. Luckily it did not do anything to the linked account I use.

I think maybe we are not talking about the same person or you misunderstood.  The person I am talking about posted that they were able to recover their account after being terminated.

sorry if the text is small it says
"The message I was able to read while in prison stated, ""your account has been terminated"". (( or words to that effect)) Had to fill out that BS support ticket to get it back.
Stupid arse me didnt capture that text. BTW, I could still log into account after it was terminated, but in PRISON, that is how I found the link for support@uo.com by scrolling back thru my chat log. And had account reinstated so I could log into game.

Totally agree with the negativity. Thats why I rant incoherently here. The Devs, GM's and Moderators of the UO site do read this. Maybe next event, the wont let EJ player do certain quests.

Be Safe."

@Relvinian ; same person.  They thought they were terminated and then were able to log in for another day.   If the forum user name looks like this it was the same person. HxZxL 

Notice they stopped posting on both forums, they quit playing UO.

Since the email to that account is mine, they could not see what was happening by EA. 

They were put under further investigation until a decision was made.  The next day the decision was made:

Here is the Email:

They did choose some lame reasons IMO.  There are better to understand rules that were violated.

Pawain said:

@ Relvinian  same person.  They thought they were terminated and then were able to log in for another day.   If the forum user name looks like this it was the same person. HxZxL 

Notice they stopped posting on both forums, they quit playing UO.

Since the email to that account is mine, they could not see what was happening by EA. 

They were put under further investigation until a decision was made.  The next day the decision was made:

Here is the Email:

Your account xxxxxxxx for Ultima Online has been prohibited from accessing all servers due to violations of our Code of Conduct. You will not be able to log onto this account again. The details of the violation are as follows:

GM petition number 0000000

Service Termination for Ultima Online Account:  XXXXXX

Your Ultima Online account has been terminated from the Ultima Online service due to the following violation of the Rules of Conduct.

Violation: Exploitation of Ultima Online game/service mechanics

Date/Time: 5/23/2022 4:55:12 PM

Shard: Lake Superior

Character: xxxxxxxxx

Log of incident: I witnessed the player placing hay sheafs, to block egg and rune spots. I deleted at least over 100 of them, witnessing him put down more and deleting them. A photograph was taken of the players backpack for proof.

Rules of Conduct: 13) You may not use the Ultima Online Service or the Ultima Online Web Site for any activities other than activities that are permitted within the game world.

Rules of Conduct: 19) You will not exploit any bug in the Ultima Online product or the Ultima Online Service. You will not intentionally use or share any bug found within Ultima Online, whether or not it grants an unfair advantage, is real or fictitious. You will not communicate the existence of any such bug (either directly or indirectly) to any other user of the Ultima Online Service. You will report any such exploit using the bug reporting methods as described by the Ultima Online Service at http://www.uo.com/mailBug.html.

Rules of Conduct: 20) You will not intentionally accept an item that has been “bugged” or otherwise manipulated outside of the designed game mechanics from anyone inside or outside the game world. The Ultima Online team has the right to confiscate any such illegal items, even if a player had no prior knowledge of the item’s origin, no reparation will be made.

The Rules of Conduct defines that you may not use features of the Ultima Online service for any reasons other than what each feature is designed to do. Any exploitative behavior and activity is not permitted on the Ultima Online service and is strictly enforced.

Ultima Online exists only because of its community, and as that sort of anti-social behavior completely contravenes the spirit of the game, we will remove it in order to protect the rule-abiding members of the service.

If you feel that this termination is unwarranted, or if you wish to dispute the claims of this email, we ask that you please email dispute@ ultimaonline.com so that they can review any possible discrepancies of this event.

The full Service Rules of Conduct are included below:

Blah blah blah

They did choose some lame reasons IMO.  There are better to understand rules that were violated.

So that account was yours and you should have been banned also for letting them use your account.
(b) sell, grant a security interest in, or transfer reproductions of all or any portion of the Services to other parties in any way not expressly authorized herein, nor shall you rent, lease or license all or any portion of the Services to others;

You are responsible for the activity on your EA Account. Your EA Account may be suspended or terminated if someone else uses it to engage in activity that violates this Agreement.

• Sell, buy, trade or otherwise transfer or offer to transfer your EA Account, any personal access to EA Services, or any EA Content associated with your EA Account, including EA Virtual Currency and other Entitlements, either within an EA Service or on a third-party website, or in connection with any out-of-game transaction, unless expressly authorized by EA.

The EA Services include Content and Entitlements. Content is the software, technology, text, forum posts, chat posts, profiles, widgets, messages, links, emails, music, sound, graphics, pictures, video, code, and all audio visual or other material appearing on or coming from EA Services, as well as the design and appearance of our websites. Content also includes user-generated Content ("UGC"). UGC includes EA Account personas, forum posts, profile content and other Content contributed by users to EA Services. All Content is either owned by EA or its licensors, or is licensed to EA and its licensors pursuant to Section 5 below.

Nope their account was given to me thru an email from Mesanna probably in 2018.  The EJ account was linked to it.

I do not know how to unlink it.  I do not know the password of that account.

I received no warnings on the account I have, Officer Frodo.

I got some swamp land and a bridge for sell

I get it, truth is not something you can understand.

Thank you for sharing the details Pawain 

Pawain said:

@ Relvinian  same person.  They thought they were terminated and then were able to log in for another day.   If the forum user name looks like this it was the same person. HxZxL 

Notice they stopped posting on both forums, they quit playing UO.

Since the email to that account is mine, they could not see what was happening by EA. 

They were put under further investigation until a decision was made.  The next day the decision was made:

Here is the Email:

Your account xxxxxxxx for Ultima Online has been prohibited from accessing all servers due to violations of our Code of Conduct. You will not be able to log onto this account again. The details of the violation are as follows:

GM petition number 0000000

Service Termination for Ultima Online Account:  XXXXXX

Your Ultima Online account has been terminated from the Ultima Online service due to the following violation of the Rules of Conduct.

Violation: Exploitation of Ultima Online game/service mechanics

Date/Time: 5/23/2022 4:55:12 PM

Shard: Lake Superior

Character: xxxxxxxxx

Log of incident: I witnessed the player placing hay sheafs, to block egg and rune spots. I deleted at least over 100 of them, witnessing him put down more and deleting them. A photograph was taken of the players backpack for proof.

Rules of Conduct: 13) You may not use the Ultima Online Service or the Ultima Online Web Site for any activities other than activities that are permitted within the game world.

Rules of Conduct: 19) You will not exploit any bug in the Ultima Online product or the Ultima Online Service. You will not intentionally use or share any bug found within Ultima Online, whether or not it grants an unfair advantage, is real or fictitious. You will not communicate the existence of any such bug (either directly or indirectly) to any other user of the Ultima Online Service. You will report any such exploit using the bug reporting methods as described by the Ultima Online Service at http://www.uo.com/mailBug.html.

Rules of Conduct: 20) You will not intentionally accept an item that has been “bugged” or otherwise manipulated outside of the designed game mechanics from anyone inside or outside the game world. The Ultima Online team has the right to confiscate any such illegal items, even if a player had no prior knowledge of the item’s origin, no reparation will be made.

The Rules of Conduct defines that you may not use features of the Ultima Online service for any reasons other than what each feature is designed to do. Any exploitative behavior and activity is not permitted on the Ultima Online service and is strictly enforced.

Ultima Online exists only because of its community, and as that sort of anti-social behavior completely contravenes the spirit of the game, we will remove it in order to protect the rule-abiding members of the service.

If you feel that this termination is unwarranted, or if you wish to dispute the claims of this email, we ask that you please email dispute@ ultimaonline.com so that they can review any possible discrepancies of this event.

The full Service Rules of Conduct are included below:

Blah blah blah

They did choose some lame reasons IMO.  There are better to understand rules that were violated.

That's interesting and I was thinking the same thing on the reasons. Those could technically be applied to anyone. Everyone that was able to play the first day of this event could technically have been banned for exploiting the spawn points based on rule #19. 

If this was done in Tram then like I said before, they were asking for trouble and I'd expect to see something like "banned for griefing players in Tram using hay to block recall spots" but if this was done in Fel; I'd say it was a heavy hand approach for a facet that should be much more open to unsavory tactics (if you don't like those tactics then stay in Tram is my thought).

Also ironic to me they are banning someone dropping hay manually but don't bother with the automated scripters also in those spots collecting eggs. The note says the GM watched them which is something I'd also expect them to do to a suspected bot that's scripting. If something is suspect then it would be easy enough to send them to jail (or many others tests) to see their initial reaction yet they choose to turn a blind eye and rather watch someone dropping hay instead.

The player dropping hay paged on the "scripter". There are 3 emails with those tickets.

But as you noticed. The person banned was the hay dropper.

Getting back to the issue at hand.  @Kyronix ; How about instead of limiting the selling of sheaves of hay they are made stackable. This would allow those of us who are cleaning them up to feed entire piles to our horses, chicken lizards, CUs all at once instead of 1 sheave at a time.

TimSt said:

Getting back to the issue at hand.  @ Kyronix  How about instead of limiting the selling of sheaves of hay they are made stackable. This would allow those of us who are cleaning them up to feed entire piles to our horses, chicken lizards, CUs all at once instead of 1 sheave at a time.

That would help when feeding battle chickens. Individuals take up too much space.

Hay is generally flammable, so it's curious why firefields and wildfire couldn't be used to efficiently remove it from the game world.  Notice the barrels in the underwater keying phase -- they can be targeted and are highly susceptible to Flamestrike, yet spells like meteor swarm, and the firefields have no effect.  Hmm.

Another way of looking at this thread -- if the UO team only had the resources to make one code change associated with the issues around egg collection, which would you recommend, of all the things proposed in this thread?

I would suggest limiting the farmers to having 20 sheaves of hay in stock. Feeding a pile of 20 to my CU would take a minute. Something I could live with.  Making the hay stackable could create issues for those trying to get chicken lizards to lay an egg.

TimSt said:

@ Kyronix and @ Mesanna please limit the number of Sheaves of Hay that can be sold by Farmers.  Some players are getting the farmers to sell up to 999 sheaves, buying that, then dropping it in piles in the farmhouses to block other players. Ask GM Marino how long it took to get rid of the hay in the west Moonglow farmhouse in Pacific Fel.

I spent at least three hours today feeding hay to my horse and whoever was dumping the hay would add more to the piles.

TimSt said:

I would suggest limiting the farmers to having 20 sheaves of hay in stock. Feeding a pile of 20 to my CU would take a minute. Something I could live with.  Making the hay stackable could create issues for those trying to get chicken lizards to lay an egg.

Is the issue of blocking players with hay sheaves (or various other items) the more important?  That seemed the original focus of this thread.  Chicken lizards seem like a red herring.

Solving the root cause of why that is happening (and variations of it that which pre-date, and will post date this egg event) seems more impactful than a change to the behavior of the vendor sales for this item.   What type of accounts do you think are the source of problems here?

Separate from this, the GM's could just proactively watch the farms, and watch who is buying these hay bales and dumping them to block, and ban those players.  No code change needed for that.

The GMs can not be on 24/7 to monitor the farms. Yesterday I watched the GM's monitor the fields on Pacific. After they left for the day the hay droppers came back and started dropping hay.

In theory , the GM's may have banned or otherwise disciplined some players.  They really don't need to be on 24/7 to do that.  Odds are, its just a small number of underlying human players behind this.

Again, I don't see how changing the quantity of hay that you can buy really has any material impact on the systemic issues that are the root cause behind the problem you (and others) reported.  It's more likely than not that much of the problematic behavior is originating from EJ accounts.

Even changing a bunch of items so they inherently don't block (why does a bagball block, and a bag not block??) would be better than changing the vendor quantity.  Some PK guilds block exit sparkles in FEL with items, to prevent ghosts from leaving.  That's a long standing issue.   Odds are this is originating from EJ accounts as well.

I think you are missing the point. Unlike the other things that can block, hay is bought on the spot where you want it drop. Even in a spot you can not drop the other items such as behind doors where even circle of transparency does not show the spot.  The other blocking things must be carried from somewhere else. This limits you to 125 items and 599 stone at a  time. Hay's limit is 999 items at 9990 stone and they are purchased right at the spot you want them to drop.

TimSt said:

I think you are missing the point. Unlike the other things that can block, hay is bought on the spot where you want it drop. Even in a spot you can not drop the other items such as behind doors where even circle of transparency does not show the spot.  The other blocking things must be carried from somewhere else. This limits you to 125 items and 599 stone at a  time. Hay's limit is 999 items at 9990 stone and they are purchased right at the spot you want them to drop.

So, if hay (and other items) were changed to not block, that would still be a problem?  (it may need to be narrowed to items not locked down, but that's implementation detail weeds).

Thought experiment -- assume it's mostly EJ accounts that are the source of the egg scripting, and mostly EJ accounts that are then trying to combat the scripters using logic against the terms of service...  Would curbing what EJ accounts can do remedy this problem, and a host of other problems at the same time?

Hay seems like a short lived manifestation -- that will likely not be heard about again come July -- of a larger problem.

If eggs only spawned in FEL, and EJ accounts couldn't be in FEL, wouldn't that be a more interesting world to be in?  That would force people to risk using paid accounts for suspect behavior, amongst other benefits.

 This whole conversation makes me think of Haystack Calhoun, a pro-wrestler so old he predates even UO and makes my father go "yeah I remember him from when I was a kid". Primordial knowledge here kids.... 

 Well that, and the point that simply making the hay passable seems like the most easy, common sense, fix to the entire problem as I understand it. I wouldn't think it would take that much coding I'd hope.... 

 So far I've been fortunate and have not run into this problem. Though I admit in my short time seriously egg hunting I have seen some odd things like a character with the unlikely name of "Egg" sitting on top of an egg spawn location. 

 I also saw a gargoyle named "Testerone" who I am guessing is one of the GM test characters sitting outside of Destard doing something, so I guess they are monitoring various aspects of the current event..... unless that was simply someone trying to spell "Testosterone" and coming as close as they could. Given that he looked evil and a name like that is vintage PK stuff it's remotely possible. 🙂 
 
 At any rate, all joking aside at times like this ask yourselves "If this was an old episode of Thundercats, what would Lion-O have to do to prove his wisdom". Oh wait that was another bad 90s joke. 

 

There have not been any piles of hay for a few days. Either the perps got banned or they got bored.  I was providing the GMs with the names and ID numbers of the perps when I saw them drop the hay. Good thing I was providing the ID numbers because the perps where not happy with me and started naming their characters after my characters. 

TimSt said:

There have not been any piles of hay for a few days. Either the perps got banned or they got bored.  I was providing the GMs with the names and ID numbers of the perps when I saw them drop the hay. Good thing I was providing the ID numbers because the perps where not happy with me and started naming their characters after my characters. 

how did u see ID numbers?

Seth said:

TimSt said:

There have not been any piles of hay for a few days. Either the perps got banned or they got bored.  I was providing the GMs with the names and ID numbers of the perps when I saw them drop the hay. Good thing I was providing the ID numbers because the perps where not happy with me and started naming their characters after my characters. 

how did u see ID numbers?

General Chat, along with a character's name, a number is displayed.... if you pay attention, that number is the same regardless which character you use from your account... that is because it identifies the account to which the character pertains and, therefore, all characters in that account share that same number.... and that is across Shards too, I understand... 

That is at least my understanding of it.