Change to house placement

Now all i want to know it where are all the many complaints?? I assume it's people emailing Mesanna cuz we saw not a one here?  not one on Stratics? Is it in some mysterious Atlantic discord?? More importantly how many to many? If i email Mesanna from all my accounts would that be enough to get a change? 

a friend of a friends friend complained ... echo..........................echo...........................................

I believe in transparency. I also want my issues to get  the same considerations as others.

😂

I wore out my tool before i could get an exact timer.

Pro placers already have it mapped out and can nail it 1st try. 

This only trolls Regular Joe trying to place or resize his house. Sigh.

EDIT: Timer is completely random and all over the place. It went from 20 seconds to over 1.5 minutes before...i wore my tool out again. 

I don't think whoever sent in the many complaints will be happy about this either... kinda reminds me of the idoc revamp when someone decided it was a great idea to delete certain items from falling houses (which noone ever asked for I may add).
Interesting approach

Max_Blackoak said:

I don't think whoever sent in the many complaints will be happy about this either... kinda reminds me of the idoc revamp when someone decided it was a great idea to delete certain items from falling houses (which noone ever asked for I may add).
Interesting approach

Deleting resources and veteran rewards is a good thing not sure what else gets deleted as I do not do idocs but cant imagine its a bad thing.

This is just a huge troll to the players. Might as well just have the tool roll a random size house plot while you're at it.

why is it ever fix to combat scripters seems to hurt the honest players like random resources did

So if you fail to place a house, you have a cooldown timer?

Are the bots trying to place every ms or something?  

Wasn't there just a luna house that fell??

Pawain said:

So if you fail to place a house, you have a cooldown timer?

Are the bots trying to place every ms or something?  

This is new on top of having the idoc cooldown and using the house placement tool too often cooldown.

If you try to place too close to a tree and fail due to invalid terrain, you're now on a cooldown between trying again. If you place a plot and see you can go an extra tile so you cancel, you're now on a cooldown. 

The people that have been placing houses for years have already walked the terrain and mapped out the size and know where to place.

This only hurts those that aren't skilled in placing. 

This is why I am against them spending time specifically to fix bugs.  These are the ones they choose to fix.

But you can still block if you don't fail on the first try?

Pawain said:

This is why I am against them spending time specifically to fix bugs.  These are the ones they choose to fix.

Pawain said:

This is why I am against them spending time specifically to fix bugs.  These are the ones they choose to fix.

But you can still block if you don't fail on the first try?

Idk about the last part. Idocs aren't my thing really. Idk where this came from tbh. Maybe a showing that they're still kinda sorta still working here?

Bug fixes would be great if they didn't dangle a carrot and end up giving us a brick. 

Was it one secret email? Ten ? 20 ? How many complaints does it take??

How is this team so out of touch with the game. Its crazy. 

No worries for the true idoc heroes.. you know the botters with 7 characters smashing through barrels and getting all the goods. They are just concerned with the people actually trying you know on their own to place.

“well, if they remove the triggers (recall and mounting) 
it would be a raffle no?
as you’d just be guessing when to place”

Interesting that they chose to make this "update" to the game before doing anything else... seems like all of their "feedback" is taken via email (I guess?) and their decisions are made in a vacuum these days. Again where was the TC1 testing for players to offer feedback? One of just many "updates" they skip QA (God forbid Misk actually need to do something) and toss it into Prod. It seems like there is very little rhyme or reason for decisions these days... UO has fallen to a pretty sad state imo.

BETTER FIX : Make a timer everyone can see to negate the exploit being used

Sylas_Stormguard said:

BETTER FIX : Make a timer everyone can see to negate the exploit being used

Wouldn’t work. Scripts can act more instantly than a person can manually in response to a visible timer.

Even as a non-PVPer, I think it would be neat if participating in IDOCs flagged everyone involved for PVP regardless of facet. I don’t think it should be considered karma-neutral to scavenge others’ property. This would be too drastic of a change, however, and it would come with a lot of complaints.

loop said:

Sylas_Stormguard said:

BETTER FIX : Make a timer everyone can see to negate the exploit being used

Wouldn’t work. Scripts can act more instantly than a person can manually in response to a visible timer.

Even as a non-PVPer, I think it would be neat if participating in IDOCs flagged everyone involved for PVP regardless of facet. I don’t think it should be considered karma-neutral to scavenge others’ property. This would be too drastic of a change, however, and it would come with a lot of complaints.

Its not meant to fix scripting, its meant to solve the exploit without crippling legit players - solving scripting is another beast

So every fallen house on every shard should have a raffle?

I see why they do not take ideas from the forum.

I would pay for another account just to place houses and let them go IDOC then repeat every few days.   🙂

Pawain said:

So every fallen house on every shard should have a raffle?

I see why they do not take ideas from the forum.

I would pay for another account just to place houses and let them go IDOC then repeat every few days.   🙂

AnglesWings said:

Pawain said:

So every fallen house on every shard should have a raffle?

I see why they do not take ideas from the forum.

I would pay for another account just to place houses and let them go IDOC then repeat every few days.   🙂

why? you think LS should be any special?  yes, just pay for another acc.

for a guy that post here everyday on every topic, you sure give a lot of opinion and ideas!!

I am all for IDOC's to be gone. everything is 100% scripted anyway, no one will loose anything as for regular players

Yes not one person has placed a house in UO without a script since busy shards only have spots after a collapse.  I see why you do not post on every thread.

“IF this was a failed attempt to stop scripting advantage:

this is due to a problem with the forum mods/forum rules.

If someone had complaint about house placement scripters
They are unable to post about it here.

Because if you reference the existence of 3rd party programs, thread/post would get closed/deleted and you receive PMs with threats to ban if you even infer that 3rd party clients exist. So how someone going to describe the issue here?

And instead things done behind closed doors so are not subject to peer review

so IF this was the case
Can thank @Mariah and @Rorschach for this blunder

last time I posted a script here to complain about it, I receive such ban threat from mods via PM and script got deleted even though it was redacted and shown only part of script

if someone was able to make complaint here about house placement script and they post their suggestion, it would take all of 10 seconds for everyone to tell them how the script worked
or even/ here is exact script:
and paste

To explain why adding cool-down would not assist”

Yoshi said:

“IF this was a failed attempt to stop scripting advantage:

this is due to a problem with the forum mods/forum rules.

If someone had complaint about house placement scripters
They are unable to post about it here.

Because if you reference the existence of 3rd party programs, thread/post would get closed/deleted and you receive PMs with threats to ban if you even infer that 3rd party clients exist.


And instead things done behind closed doors and are not subject to peer review

so IF this was the case
Can thank @ Mariah and @ Rorschach for this blunder”

For a place that we can not post about things, we sure have a lot of posts....

She reads emails, not the forums.  Probably gets  bunch every day about all types of things.

Pawain said:

Yoshi said:

“IF this was a failed attempt to stop scripting advantage:

this is due to a problem with the forum mods/forum rules.

If someone had complaint about house placement scripters
They are unable to post about it here.

Because if you reference the existence of 3rd party programs, thread/post would get closed/deleted and you receive PMs with threats to ban if you even infer that 3rd party clients exist.


And instead things done behind closed doors and are not subject to peer review

so IF this was the case
Can thank @ Mariah and @ Rorschach for this blunder”

For a place that we can not post about things, we sure have a lot of posts....

She reads emails, not the forums.  Probably gets  bunch every day about all types of things.

So what's a bunch?  If yoshi sends 2 emails about nerve strike debuff he gets a patch  or is it 22? 

“the people who post about it have to brave such threats or use other people’s accounts to post

but most people would be intimidated by PMs threatening to ban”

Sylas_Stormguard said:

loop said:

Sylas_Stormguard said:

BETTER FIX : Make a timer everyone can see to negate the exploit being used

Wouldn’t work. Scripts can act more instantly than a person can manually in response to a visible timer.

Even as a non-PVPer, I think it would be neat if participating in IDOCs flagged everyone involved for PVP regardless of facet. I don’t think it should be considered karma-neutral to scavenge others’ property. This would be too drastic of a change, however, and it would come with a lot of complaints.

Its not meant to fix scripting, its meant to solve the exploit without crippling legit players - solving scripting is another beast

There are very few legit players left.

Yoshi said:

"hmm, i am not sure what this is referring to either,

there already was a cooldown on attempting to place no?

maybe they think they are stopping house placement scripting??

if so, this is not how it works,

the house placement script knows when you can place by attempting to mount an ethy

not keep repeating placement...

So i can't think what the complaints are

"

Grimbeard said:

Pawain said:

Yoshi said:

“IF this was a failed attempt to stop scripting advantage:

this is due to a problem with the forum mods/forum rules.

If someone had complaint about house placement scripters
They are unable to post about it here.

Because if you reference the existence of 3rd party programs, thread/post would get closed/deleted and you receive PMs with threats to ban if you even infer that 3rd party clients exist.


And instead things done behind closed doors and are not subject to peer review

so IF this was the case
Can thank @ Mariah and @ Rorschach for this blunder”

For a place that we can not post about things, we sure have a lot of posts....

She reads emails, not the forums.  Probably gets  bunch every day about all types of things.

So what's a bunch?  If yoshi sends 2 emails about nerve strike debuff he gets a patch  or is it 22? 

Another idoc and as usual svoystvo guy places again.

Pawain said:

Grimbeard said:

Pawain said:

Yoshi said:

“IF this was a failed attempt to stop scripting advantage:

this is due to a problem with the forum mods/forum rules.

If someone had complaint about house placement scripters
They are unable to post about it here.

Because if you reference the existence of 3rd party programs, thread/post would get closed/deleted and you receive PMs with threats to ban if you even infer that 3rd party clients exist.


And instead things done behind closed doors and are not subject to peer review

so IF this was the case
Can thank @ Mariah and @ Rorschach for this blunder”

For a place that we can not post about things, we sure have a lot of posts....

She reads emails, not the forums.  Probably gets  bunch every day about all types of things.

So what's a bunch?  If yoshi sends 2 emails about nerve strike debuff he gets a patch  or is it 22? 

Original is my preference

 

“This can’t be an attempted change to stop house scripters. Must be some other complaint 

because I don’t have any coding knowledge at all, i even have learning difficulties but am able to deduce by reading the script that one attempt is made to place the house only and adding a cool-down would not affect it.

So somebody must know what the complaint was and what this change does to help that complaint. “

CovenantX said:

, I guess the anti-cheat crowed isn't vocal enough?  I can't say i've seen that many people complaining about house placement as I have scripts, bots, and pvp-related cheats though...  Devs need to get those priorities straight.

Well said. The problem is that the Dev team isn't transparent at all with almost anything so it's easy enough to claim "based on a large number of complaints" and the general UO population has no idea if that's true. It's possible there were 20/30/40 complaints but for some reason, I just don't think that is true because house placement probably only effects people on ATL (most other shards you can place a house right now with no competition). I think it's more likely that it was something like 5-10 complaints by random people or 1 complaint by a well known house scripter (to help get even more market share). Without the transparency we'll never know what it was, but I'm sure this is how Mesanna likes it. 

I'm not going as far as saying Mesanna is in on anything malicious (aside from maybe playing favorites with people she likes), and honestly if I had to guess it's probably a "fix" that she thought would actually help non-scipting players but unfortunately she, along with the rest of the Dev team, probably don't play UO much anymore so they don't know how the house placement scripting works. 

All that said, I think it's very hard to believe that there were more complaints about house placement as opposed to something like bots / pvp scripts / lack of engagement from Dev team. Seems like just another random thing that jumped to the top of the priority list on a whim. 

EDIT** One thing I will say is that I think accepting suggestions via email is overall just bad practice. It's very easy to create 10-15 emails and send Mesanna an email with the same idea. Suddenly there are several emails saying the same thing when in reality it might just be 1 or 2 people (with a lot of time on their hands) that might not even have more than 1 paid account. A better idea would be to create a submission system via this forum where you need to login to submit it. It's a 3 fold win where it creates more traffic to the forums for discussion and it's going to ensure only paid accounts are submitting ideas and it all can be tracked and audited if needed. Of course, we know that will never happen though because that would allow people to be held accountable.

keven2002 said:

CovenantX said:

, I guess the anti-cheat crowed isn't vocal enough?  I can't say i've seen that many people complaining about house placement as I have scripts, bots, and pvp-related cheats though...  Devs need to get those priorities straight.

Well said. The problem is that the Dev team isn't transparent at all with almost anything so it's easy enough to claim "based on a large number of complaints" and the general UO population has no idea if that's true. It's possible there were 20/30/40 complaints but for some reason, I just don't think that is true because house placement probably only effects people on ATL (most other shards you can place a house right now with no competition). I think it's more likely that it was something like 5-10 complaints by random people or 1 complaint by a well known house scripter (to help get even more market share). Without the transparency we'll never know what it was, but I'm sure this is how Mesanna likes it. 

I'm not going as far as saying Mesanna is in on anything malicious (aside from maybe playing favorites with people she likes), and honestly if I had to guess it's probably a "fix" that she thought would actually help non-scipting players but unfortunately she, along with the rest of the Dev team, probably don't play UO much anymore so they don't know how the house placement scripting works. 

All that said, I think it's very hard to believe that there were more complaints about house placement as opposed to something like bots / pvp scripts / lack of engagement from Dev team. Seems like just another random thing that jumped to the top of the priority list on a whim. 

I'm glad keven2002 is a mini McDougle these days as he is much more articulate than i 

 😂 

How about this as a solution: All attempts to place a house in area of a idoc are put into a pool of pending placements and after 5 minutes a random house is pulled out of the pool and is placed. One entry in the pool per master account is allowed. Similar to a raffle system.

TimSt said:

How about this as a solution:

Yoshi said:

TimSt said:

How about this as a solution:

"Solution to what?

we still don't know what the complaints were"

The scripted placement that happens faster than human can place manually.

"that was not the complaint, or else they would've made a change to address that issue"

Yoshi said:

"that was not the complaint, or else they would've made a change to address that issue"

Well. The fella that i've been helping that was completely new to UO quit because of all this dumb crap. He was slowly noticing the bugs, seeing the cheats and the complete lack of support we're so fondly known for and had enough with whatever the hell this change was supposed to do. 


You guys ran one more (paid account) off. Great job! 

what has it done? i went to test and tried placing a house several times and never got any timer. 

Victim_Of_Siege said:

what has it done? i went to test and tried placing a house several times and never got any timer. 

ROFL good catch. The change doesn't even apply to test center. 

Try it on regular server. You don't have to commit to the plot. Drop a plot cancel and try again. 

Victim_Of_Siege said:

what has it done? i went to test and tried placing a house several times and never got any timer. 

Maybe test didn't get the patch? I mean no need to test it right 

Skett said:

I just tried on Pac and first attempt was a go then 2nd 3rd 4th etc for at least 50sec then tool timed out so its working as intended with the new up date

not sure what the up date is trying to stop but when Im trying to place using the cc client I need several attempts so this change is a really messed up change that punishes once again the honest players .

Maybe the "many" who asked for it use something other than CC

Okay, so after attempting to place on regular shards, there's a 50 second timer?

Again I'll point out the folks running these scripts not using CC

Please @Mesanna , either stop idoc/ placement all together or address this BS. Scripters don't need to use the tool more than 1 time. So how about when you double click the tool and choose a house, after 10 secs ghost house disappear forcing them to click tool again, that timer will work. Because when they have the ghost up, they just need the trigger to place the already chosen house. They don't time out using 3rd clients, they can also read the packet in the area with high end scripts that will trigger the placement the moment area is open. Or like others said using ethereal Mountain trigger. That guy svoxxxx os playing all of them for the past 3 or 4 month , I mean 100% of them

I just have to say, this is one more (in a long line of) example of our Dev team being completely and utterly out of touch with the game.

The “fix” does nothing to address the issues associated with the cheating that goes on relative to house placement in competitive locations… NOTHING!

All it does is add another layer of hassle to honest players trying to place or resize their house.

Without dismissing all the work our team does (which is sometimes not obvious), I really do think the game would benefit from someone with more advanced critical thinking and problem solving skills.

Enhanced Client house placement ftw..

"yeah i'm sure someone can write a script for it in EC"

AnglesWings said:

I just checked, nothing really changed, only that now u have to wait couple more secs to use the tool, but the scripters dont use the tool, so this was a waste of their time.

@ Yoshi   raffle, just like they did with old new mag, you will receive a scroll to place the area, if you are the winner.

or like they did before, with a stone in the area, 1 entry per PAID account

that will resolve the problem

So what's this change actually do? I couldn't quite discern it from this thread and I definitely couldn't discern it from the original post itself.

JohnKnighthawke said:

So what's this change actually do? I couldn't quite discern it from this thread and I definitely couldn't discern it from the original post itself.

after your first placement attempt, you cannot attempt it for at least a minute. It brings up the house but you cannot actually place it. it just disappears on attempt with no failure method. after the minute is up you get another one attempt. this happens until you place it or give up.

You just get a true message over and over 

JohnKnighthawke said:

So what's this change actually do? I couldn't quite discern it from this thread and I definitely couldn't discern it from the original post itself.

If you try to place and hit invalid terrain you're on a very random cooldown timer. If you put a ghost plot down and see you can go bigger before you confirm and cancel that plot to make bigger, you're on the random cooldown timer. 

It wouldn't be so bad if they had used like words and stuff to make it clear it's on a cooldown. But they didn't so we have a problem. You just can't drop the ghost plot down again until the cooldown is finished. Trying during the cooldown also counts towards wearing your tool out cooldown which is bogus and adds 15-20 more minutes. 

My problem is that it does nothing but inconvenience regular people. It doesn't stop the first try attempt. It stops people that haven't played for 10-20 years and have no idea how to really place a house. 

• Make the ghost house disappear after 10-15 secs, than everybody will be hit with new cool down.
• address the ethereal mount trigger
• address the 3rd part software reading packets, that allow them to know when exactly to place.
• raffle tickets?
• screw it all, delete all idocs from game.