Suggestion: remove timers from peerless keys

I'd like to do more peerless content, but if i'm going to do it i'd like to be able to farm the keys then use them at my leisure, not have to worry about them expiring.  I like being able to get 5-6 sets of keys for, say, zipa ready and not have to worry about it again for a while.

I understand why the timers were put in place when ML was first released, but I'm not really sure it's an issue anymore. It seems to just get in the way of doing otherwise enjoyable content.

And make them vendorable 🙂

I'd agree with both.

Remove timers - or make them longer (20 days?). 6 days doesn't seem that much these days! So many times I farm keys, and they go poof before I've got round to them...

And make them Vendorable - definitely, it would add to trade, and give a purpose for gatherers.

Yep.

No way, here is how the system is supposed to work:
guilds get together to obtain the keys and do the bosses together, that’s why they’re not vendorable and have a timer on the keys.

here is what you want: to solo getting the keys in bulk, vendor them, encouraging other sampires to solo the bosses.

why don’t you just play the game offline if you don’t want to find friends?

Mervyn said:

why don’t you just play the game offline if you don’t want to find friends?

Offline UO, thats a whole new thread.

They've already increased the timers from a few hours to a week, and one week is plenty. The whole point of the timers is to prevent people from stockpiling the keys.

Mervyn said:

No way, here is how the system is supposed to work:
guilds get together to obtain the keys and do the bosses together, that’s why they’re not vendorable and have a timer on the keys.

I don't think you have any idea how the system is supposed to work or why the keys aren't vendorable and have timers. It's cute that this is how you'd like it to work, but in practice, I don't always have time or contacts to scrounge up a party to get a full set of keys then do the boss. I'd like to be able to get a key here, a key there, then hit the boss when I'm ready, have collected them all, and have a couple people to go with. This doesn't always happen in the current lifespan, and it shouldn't have to. I'd happily invite others, and announce it in chat and bring anyone else that wanted to go as well. Vendorable would be fine, but I'm okay with non-vendorable too.

YES @North_LS

 Mervyn said:

No way, here is how the system is supposed to work:
guilds get together to obtain the keys and do the bosses together, that’s why they’re not vendorable and have a timer on the keys.

here is what you want: to solo getting the keys in bulk, vendor them, encouraging other sampires to solo the bosses.

why don’t you just play the game offline if you don’t want to find friends?

Of course I knew you would disagree. 😂

The issue of Sampires is a separate topic in my opinion - you cannot run the game based on a fear of Sampires - maybe they need to be fixed.

This concept would encourage and increase the relationship between gatherers, traders and hunters - I've always thought that is a good thing, to have activity in an economy. There is little of it these days, this is one thing that could help.

I personally think having no timer may be too extreme, maybe up it to 2 weeks - I do the entire guild scenario as you know, and none of this is any skin off my nose. But something to encourage gathering/trading/hunting cannot be a bad thing.

Keep the timer, make it a few hours even, then allow a character to eat the keys  and earn ONE entry to the peerless, allow that entry to last forever, and once keyed a character cannot eat another key until they have used the first one.

Or make the keys last like 6 hours and give unlimited entries until they disappear.

But please do not make them vendorable.

Pinkerton said:

But please do not make them vendorable.

Why not?

There is a market of players with a lot of gold, and little time, who would happily buy keys to hunt content. They are endgame hunters.

There are newer players, or those who enjoy gathering, who may want some gold.

Then there are traders.

This suggestion helps the whole gamecycle.

I agree the keys cannot be permanent, as stockpiling things does seem to cause issues.

But I've often collected stuff, then due to a tough working week, failed to use them, which makes my original effort wasted.

There's no timer for Zipa keys and those seem to work out okay. I do zipa 1-2x a week with a fairly large group - if i had the time to go through the quest chain and get the keys i use them, if not, i hit up a vendor and someone who had extra time to do it a few times gets paid for it. win-win, right? Farming and vendoring the keys is also a great way for someone new or recently returned to the game to make in-game gold and get themselves up to speed to do more content. I don't see the downside to updating peerless keys to work the same way. 

Mervyn said:

No way, here is how the system is supposed to work:
guilds get together to obtain the keys and do the bosses together, that’s why they’re not vendorable and have a timer on the keys.

here is what you want: to solo getting the keys in bulk, vendor them, encouraging other sampires to solo the bosses.

why don’t you just play the game offline if you don’t want to find friends?

you mean you think they should not have increased brittle durability from 75 to 255? 

North_LS said:

There's no timer for Zipa keys and those seem to work out okay. I do zipa 1-2x a week with a fairly large group -

I'll be trying to solo Zipa soon before I try in a group.  What is he vulnerable to?

Broadsword's reasoning for not removing or further extending key timers was that it would somehow "invalidated the content," which, sorry Kyronix, is just easily dismissed bull. Someone would still have to engage the content to acquire all the keys necessary for an encounter - there's no getting around that. 

What does it matter if someone uses their keys within a week or two months later? Why does it matter who farmed the keys vs who uses them?

Further, if someone enjoys gathering keys and is happy to sell them, why shouldn't they be able to vendor them? That would be an actual economic change that would be hard for scripters to completely dominate and create a playstyle that diminishes nothing. 

"Whaa sampires!" is just deflection.

Mervyn said:

you mean you think they should not have increased brittle durability from 75 to 255? 

TimSt said:

North_LS said:

There's no timer for Zipa keys and those seem to work out okay. I do zipa 1-2x a week with a fairly large group -

I'll be trying to solo Zipa soon before I try in a group.  What is he vulnerable to?

Making them vendorable is a win-win for everybody.

A guild - as Mervin thinks it should work - can still do the content on their own and have a fun night (just like it always was).

A single player who is not able to solo a boss can play the key-farming content and just sell them (as of now, there is no incentive for that).

A group that does not have the time to farm endless set of keys can buy keys and have a fun time doing content they otherwise would never do (as of now, farming keys before a group run is a real PITA).

Everybody wins with that. Only the bitter that want to ruin the fun in UO in general are arguing against it.

Any thoughts @Kyronix?

I vote for removing the timers completely.

So often it takes longer to gather keys than the boss encounter itself.

I don't have a sampire.  I often play my 20 minutes a day solo, and I enjoy running into other people.  I play with others if there's an opportunity, but usually there isn't.

I don't even attempt Exodus.  The keys would expire long before I could use them.

Dizzy said:

I don't have a sampire.  I often play my 20 minutes a day solo, and I enjoy running into other people.  I play with others if there's an opportunity, but usually there isn't.

I don't even attempt Exodus.  The keys would expire long before I could use them.

This. My play time is often later than that of the folks i do group stuff with, and is definitely later than the organized group hunts on my shard. It'd be nice if I could farm a few sets of keys when im solo on weeknights here and there, then when my group *is* on at the same time as me, chain the boss a few times with the keys i'd collected over the past couple weeks.

Lower populations and more scattered playtimes as many of us are working adults now with other responsibilities make things like key timers and forced group play not work so well. That's what I like about Zipa and shadowguard - I can collect my quest keys or room keys solo (mostly) so I'm ready to go when my playtime does coincide with a friends, and i dont have to scramble to do the prereqs only to run short on time and end up scrapping the main event.

Pinkerton said:

But please do not make them vendorable.

MissE said:

I can't count the amount of times I have gathered exodus keys and had 20 robes and only 2 daggers, and 5 rites, 10 alters etc.   Not enough to take a group of 5 people in due to the totally STUPID idea of every member of the group needing a set of keys. As for them being craftable that is the biggest joke of all with the type of ingredients needed, lmao off 'taint' for goodness sake what bright spark decided that was a good idea?   That should be changed to being ONE set of keys per group as other encounters.  @ Kyronix

By the time you get the full amount needed to get your group in half the group has then logged as you are out of time. Time after time they go 'poof' in my cupboard as the urge to spend hours farming for the additional keys has gone or the group has logged. 

I hardly ever farm exodus keys anymore for this reason, some weekends people will come, some weekends chests full of keys which amount to many hours worth of running through exodus dungeon go poof.

At this point I throw them in a guild chest and just pray someone ends up using them before the timer goes, and that's that I've just barely used keys before that have 15 minutes left.  I halfway understand any caution with exodus though maybe to limit scrolls.  But peerless I don't see any point, I mean you can spend an entire day killing peerless with not one thing dropping worth anything now a days, some niche items(minus 2-3 specific drops).

And still no feedback 

I"m at the point now where I say "put it all on the ingame store". If it's priced reasonably, hell why not. Put it all on there, PS's, keys, everything !!

I can’t believe how lazy people have gotten, the keys were designed this way for a reason, they didn’t accidentally go to the trouble of putting a timer on and accidentally make them non vendorable.

Whatever next? Make the champs never ever revert so you can get half way, go out to lunch and come back and complete it?

The keys are part of the encounter, quit trying to jump to the end content (the boss). 

Mervyn said:

I can’t believe how lazy people have gotten, the keys were designed this way for a reason, they didn’t accidentally go to the trouble of putting a timer on and accidentally make them non vendorable.

Whatever next? Make the champs never ever revert so you can get half way, go out to lunch and come back and complete it?

The keys are part of the encounter, quit trying to jump to the end content (the boss). 

waste the time? It’s called an encounter, you’re supposed to experience the whole thing, not just buy the keys and do boss after boss. I’m sure more of them would get done yes. There would be a whole key to boss production line, but that is not the point. 

Its like saying you should be able to just buy the arrarat equipment, you’re supposed to do the quest. 

Also 6 days is a long time. 

Mervyn said:

Also 6 days is a long time. 

In your opinion. I would love for no timers personally.

I also feel the timers should be a lot longer or gone.  There are players who like to do that part of the quest more than they like to go inside.  Would also help Community Event coordinators if they did not have timers.

 Mervyn said:

Also 6 days is a long time. 

This is the bit I want to pick up on, 6 days just doesn't seem that long for me anymore, time flies by.

Say it takes 10 of us 2 hours to collect the Exodus keys one evening, it can then be too late, or many of us cannot commit to completing the encounter itself, so we put it off for another day. My working week is so busy, I don't get so much time in the evenings, the odd evening here or there can be filled up with pvp, other events, you never know how it's going to go, it isn't easy often to pull a group back together. I find it hardest with Exodus I guess as a team.

Others - Peerless, are not really a problem, though like someone has said, we collect keys, leave them in a guild chest, and hope someone uses them, or if it's one we want to solo - just don't get round to it.

I'd happily have the timer extended. I'd even get rid of the timer if people felt it wasn't game-breaking. If someone wanted to argue it was game-breaking for some reason, and having keys stacked up was an issue - I could buy it.

Making them Vendorable - would add to the Gaming Cycle, it would enhance the game for new players, gathering focused players, traders, and endgame hunters - all a good thing.

You talk about Lazyness - maybe it is on the part of the buyer - but the collecting effort is still being put in by someone - it's just someone else. So there is ultimately no change in the level of effort required.

The only 2 weakness I see are - which people are avoiding mentioning;

1. Script key farming - they could be farmed in unlimited quantities by scripters.
2. Sampires - They can then just go out and solo stuff non-stop from the script farmed keys - thus killing off another market and content style and making the game too easy.

I think ultimately - these are the 2 issues preventing this concept.

It brings the whole debate around to - Sampires and Script farming need to be fixed - then we can have nice things ingame again, and the game can run in a better way for the players. So you have to accept this could be an outcome, or you find a solution, or, you do nothing, and keep living in fear of these issues and hamstringing the players over this. You all know my solutions re Sampires and Script Farming - I won't bore you again, or divert the thread into these controversial areas.

Cookie said:

The only 2 weakness I see are - which people are avoiding mentioning;

1. Script key farming - they could be farmed in unlimited quantities by scripters.
2. Sampires - They can then just go out and solo stuff non-stop from the script farmed keys - thus killing off another market and content style and making the game too easy.

I think ultimately - these are the 2 issues preventing this concept.

 Banning cheaters would have slowed the diminished interest in much of the content, instead it's gone on so long the damage is already done,

Suppose they were like plants, or chicken lizard eggs. Putting them in a secure container suspends the timer, plants don't grow, eggs don't mature. Keys don't decay?  I'm not really in favour of vendors selling them though.

Mervyn said:

I can’t believe how lazy people have gotten, the keys were designed this way for a reason, they didn’t accidentally go to the trouble of putting a timer on and accidentally make them non vendorable.

Whatever next? Make the champs never ever revert so you can get half way, go out to lunch and come back and complete it?

The keys are part of the encounter, quit trying to jump to the end content (the boss). 

LMAO. they didnt start with a timer, i believe one was added due to our script / multibox friends monopolizing the key drops and selling them at massively inflated prices when ML first came out. This should no longer be an issue for several reasons - its no longer new and exciting content, game population has ebbed quite a bit since then, and the worst offenders on that sort of behavior have been recently curtailed. As such there is no longer a need for a timer - what was designed as a way to make peerless encounters accessible to more people has gotten to the point where it has the opposite effect as the game has evolved. Conditions change, content that doesnt change with them dies just as peerless runs have.

Are you that guy who stands on his porch shaking his cane at kids yelling GET OFF MY LAWN?

Petra_Fyde said:

Putting them in a secure container suspends the timer

That would be nice.

Vendors are a pretty secure container. I would be down with the timer stopping once it leaves a player backpack and enters another secure pack like a vendor. Once it's purchased, the timer starts back up.

if they place goalposts on the lawn, I can guarantee the kids will be kicking a football on it, that is why the goalposts were moved in the first place. Get off my lawn!