This is another topic that the Devs are choosing to ignore.
The whole idoc system need to be changed or go away for good.
The current system only benefit the scripters.
The whole 5-10-15 hours is not working as it should, of 100 houses that goes idoc, way over 90 of them collapse at 15 hours only.
Pls dont allow pack horses near idocs, make the area retricted like you have for new toons or ejs. There is people that bring 25-30 packies to idocs. Everybody know who they are and to make even worst , someone sold them a packie script and now you see 4 or 5 different crews coming to idocs with 20-30 packies each crew, and dry the place out in seconds. You can even see them trying to pick up heavy boxes with their script and you will see bouncing back on the floor every sec bc is too heavy.
Thaj the devs say, page on them???? We paged 1000000000000x and guess what, they keep coming and they are now bringing even more and more and more packies.
No wonder people are quitting.
Pls remove idocs for goods or create a restriction for the use of packies on those areas. Make a way that people cant take the boxes from the floor. Whatever anything at this point.

The last two on Siege dropped at 5 hrs the one before that i think was at 10.  Please Do not remove IDOCS we are having way too much fun on Siege killing each other and fighting for the loot and then the spot (if it is a coveted spot) i would say send the Dark Lady a personal invite to her email on the next IDOC and see if you can get her to look at it, but getting rid of IDOCS is too extreme.  

or they can make all Idocs area like Siege 🙂
but TBH, I have to agree with this topic, the amount of pack horses showing nowadays it is amazing! and they are all controlled by 1 person for sure, most of them, I guess friend their packies to a main account and they loot the place in seconds. 
I also paged many times and nothing, so We are getting to the point that you ask 1x, 10x, 100x and when nothing happens, you just give up and quit doing .

Leonidas said:

or they can make all Idocs area like Siege 🙂
but TBH, I have to agree with this topic, the amount of pack horses showing nowadays it is amazing! and they are all controlled by 1 person for sure, most of them, I guess friend their packies to a main account and they loot the place in seconds. 
I also paged many times and nothing, so We are getting to the point that you ask 1x, 10x, 100x and when nothing happens, you just give up and quit doing .

I could get into that, i don't do many IDOC's on prodo, but the few that i have done I saw the Packy brigade,  kinda sad.  That doesn't happen on Siege cause the Packies would get slaughtered. But don't give up or get discouraged, that's what they want, just keep trying and don't let it get to you.

AnglesWings said:

(...)
Pls dont allow pack horses near idocs, make the area retricted like you have for new toons or ejs. There is people that bring 25-30 packies to idocs. Everybody know who they are and to make even worst , someone sold them a packie script and now you see 4 or 5 different crews coming to idocs with 20-30 packies each crew, and dry the place out in seconds. You can even see them trying to pick up heavy boxes with their script and you will see bouncing back on the floor every sec bc is too heavy.
Thaj the devs say, page on them???? We paged 1000000000000x and guess what, they keep coming and they are now bringing even more and more and more packies.
(...)

My biggest complaint is the 5-10-15 hour timer. Just pick one and stick to it. If devs insist on keeping those random times, then put the time the house went IDOC onto the house sign.

a lot of people already told @Mesanna ; and @Bleak ; and @Kyronix ; that the 5, 10 and 15 hours are NOT working as it should, 90% of the time houses only collapse at the 15 hours, so they 33.33% rate is NOT working, and again this only favor the AFK scripters or the current packies Army.
I agree with you 100% , put the time that the house will collapse on the sign or announce on the Town Cryer or make Packies NOT allowed on the area or don't do anything at all and just delete Idocs from the game. would be nice to log on the shard one day and notice that the luna next door is gone or the castle next to you is gone and the area is open to anyone to plot. would be FAIR game.

Kill the packie exploit and we could end up with a bunch of multiboxers.  The DEVs need to come to these IDOCs as much as possible and bring a BIG BAN HAMMER with them until the scripters get the point.

you cant even get a GM, imagine a Dev.
you page today and 20 days later you will get an email saying, sorry that we missed you in the day that you page!, We will SOON* investigate that!

Idoc loot should go to an auction box, like bidding on a storage locker left behind.  But instead of a winning bid taking it it is a lottery system, you can buy as many tickets on a box as you want.  Nothing is indicated on any given box about it's it's contents other than maybe home owner name and house style.

and than the people with a lot of gold would win (again).
RMT sites would sell gold like crazy!

Not long ago, someone gave an idea that I honestly think is the best solution other than just delete idocs from the game.

Make all houses collapse at the server up.
This would kill all the scripters as they have no way to be on all idocs at the same time or have time to setup their scripts , bc as soon as the server is up, the house would be gone already.
This will be awesome because now you know that all houses will fall at 6am at the east coast shards, all houses on the west coast would fall at 8am, European shards at 12am and japanese shards at 6pm.  So would give at least chouces to anyone do idocs on various shards and all houses would collapse se time as the server up, dividing the people according to their priorities. No more wasting 15 hours waiting, the house would be gone at server up and people can plan their rest of the day.

AnglesWings said:

Not long ago, someone gave an idea that I honestly think is the best solution other than just delete idocs from the game.

Make all houses collapse at the server up.
This would kill all the scripters as they have no way to be on all idocs at the same time or have time to setup their scripts , bc as soon as the server is up, the house would be gone already.
This will be awesome because now you know that all houses will fall at 6am at the east coast shards, all houses on the west coast would fall at 8am, European shards at 12am and japanese shards at 6pm.  So would give at least chouces to anyone do idocs on various shards and all houses would collapse se time as the server up, dividing the people according to their priorities. No more wasting 15 hours waiting, the house would be gone at server up and people can plan their rest of the day.

Just throwing it out there to whoever wants to have some fun...

Grab a Shepard's crook and start herding up a swarm of whatever is aggressive nearby to show the area some love.

Idocs are great.  the packy scripting tho has gotten way out of control.....I can deal with 15 scripters, there after items or what have you …..what I cannot deal with is 1 person "or 2"  there with 20 packys  running a script that auto loads boxes, trunks and any other container.  You cannot compete with it.  they don't even have to be at the pc to do it....they line the house with their packys, 5 on each toon and they run that packy auto load script on each one.....you know I actually counted at a castle once, and the same toon brought in 25 accounts with 5 packys each....everything on the outside walls vanished before people could run to the middle.....its greedy, its selfish and its out of control...…. and Mesanna turns a blind eye to it.  .and after the packys are loaded the scripty bots will sit and flash trying to throw boxes on the horses and they continuously hit the ground  and it just goes on and on until the person controlling the bots comes around to tell all the packys "that are friended to him" to follow him as he stops the scripts on his bots...……. Idocs were the 1 thing I truly enjoyed in uo and I can no longer enjoy them.   Oblivion is amazing.....im shutting my 4 ea accounts down Monday, im done yall. just cant deal with it anymore...……   its been a fun 20! and im gonna try to fall in love with UO again only not here.

you know people time idocs, GMs have been give the exact fall times  and still wont show up....or if they are they are turning their heads to it as well......but I seriously doubt their even showing up......so its not like their having to set in a blind and just wait for their target to walk up on them....they know when to be there, they know the cords.....that is no excuse

So the real problem is scripting and CC client again. Just like the other 100 post. 

Your wrong on 90% fall at 15 hour mark. Yesterday all 5 idocs fell on the 5 hour mark or 10 hour mark. Today I had 6 and 3 fell on the 5 hour mark.  Very few seem to take 15 hours to fall. Im trying to share all Atl idocs with everyone, so I have been going to them last few weeks. I do see packies but I also fill my backpack up, sometimes recalling to empty it out and refill it again. When a big house falls it takes about 5 minutes for everything to be picked up. when its a small house or not much in it, its gone fast. I know there are cheaters I just haven't seen them in the 2 weeks I have been going to idocs and very few last the whole 15 hours. 

you should try idocing on GL, Europa, LA, Drach, Asuka and a couple others...you would see exactly what we are talking about with the packy thing.....

" its been a fun 20! and im gonna try to fall in love with UO again only not here."

Drop by somewhere once in a while and let us know how that goes.

I wonder if there is a way to disable all scripting in the area for a minute after a house falls. It would mean client changes.   That would put an end to the scripting issue.

TimSt said:

I wonder if there is a way to disable all scripting in the area for a minute after a house falls. It would mean client changes.   That would put an end to the scripting issue.

From a programming point of view, that's not possible.

Summoned said:

So the real problem is scripting and CC client again. Just like the other 100 post. 

Maximus_Neximus said:

TimSt said:

I wonder if there is a way to disable all scripting in the area for a minute after a house falls. It would mean client changes.   That would put an end to the scripting issue.

From a programming point of view, that's not possible.

It should be possible considering they were able to re-enable the crafting actions like make-last. They could add an if statement like "if (time < g_timeHouseFell + g_idocTimeLimit) { return; } to each of the scriptable actions.

Summoned said:

So the real problem is scripting and CC client again. Just like the other 100 post. 

You do understand that you can write a script for the EC with the EC and please tell me you do not think that scripts haven't already been written for the EC.

TimSt said:

Maximus_Neximus said:

TimSt said:

I wonder if there is a way to disable all scripting in the area for a minute after a house falls. It would mean client changes.   That would put an end to the scripting issue.

From a programming point of view, that's not possible.

It should be possible considering they were able to re-enable the crafting actions like make-last. They could add an if statement like "if (time < g_timeHouseFell + g_idocTimeLimit) { return; } to each of the scriptable actions.

I don’t see how that would stop a 3rd party script though. I’m fairly new to programming and have only worked with java (and a tiny bit of swift) so far. So maybe I’m missing something. 

They do not have to write something to stop it alls they need to do is look and they can see it running and pull the person to jail which if I am not mistaken stops all activity from that account.

Posts have been removed from this thread, please DO NOT post content that could be deemed as libelous.

Petra_Fyde said:

Question: Would you rather the team spent their time chasing down these accounts, which requires actually catching them in the act, not watching a video, or developing the game and investigating and fixing bugs?

Another Question: If you delegated this task to GMs should they stop answering help calls to do it?  

There are only so many hours in a day and only a finite number of Broadsword employees, rather less than the number of cheaters you can find.  They do catch and remove some, as posted on the newsletters, there is a large difference between what is desirable and what is possible. Many older players understand that. 

Please stop posting that quote. I do not condone cheating, far from it, I condemn it utterly, however as someone who has moderated a forum and removed countless numbers of screen prints showing client hacks over many years, I believe I have a better understanding of the scale of that particular problem and a far less simplistic view on what it would take to fix it.  This thread is not the same problem.

Some disrespectful posts have been removed.

Maximus_Neximus said:

TimSt said:

Maximus_Neximus said:

TimSt said:

I wonder if there is a way to disable all scripting in the area for a minute after a house falls. It would mean client changes.   That would put an end to the scripting issue.

From a programming point of view, that's not possible.

It should be possible considering they were able to re-enable the crafting actions like make-last. They could add an if statement like "if (time < g_timeHouseFell + g_idocTimeLimit) { return; } to each of the scriptable actions.

I don’t see how that would stop a 3rd party script though. I’m fairly new to programming and have only worked with java (and a tiny bit of swift) so far. So maybe I’m missing something. 

The 3rd party script has to call functions provided by the client to get the client to do things like pick up an object.  Think of it this way: your java program calls functions provided by the Android framework. Your program is the 3rd party script and the Android framework would be the UO client.

Don't fret. I have 35 years programming experience and I still miss things.

Something I've learned from my experiences is: coding to handle failure is just as important as coding for success.

MissE said:

Just don't advertise something is going IDOC.  The house owner should get an email, the house should turn idoc with NO notification on the sign and then it should just drop. If your lucky enough to be around when it does you score.  If not tough luck.  Pretty simple solution. 

Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all! 🙂

MissE said:

Just don't advertise something is going IDOC.  The house owner should get an email, the house should turn idoc with NO notification on the sign and then it should just drop. If your lucky enough to be around when it does you score.  If not tough luck.  Pretty simple solution. 

For as many houses ad tons of personalized artifacts I've lost over the years - I like this.
The only people that should matter that a house is falling is the owner. Maybe guild people, but are there really guild houses anymore?

Someone posted about just storing the contents of the account until the account owner returns.  IMHO I think it is an OUTSTANDING idea.  I wounder how many people that lost everything decided not to come back because they didn't want to start over.  By doing this you would have something to start over with.  Sadly this wasn't done from the beginning but it is never to late to do the right thing.

Bilbo said:

Someone posted about just storing the contents of the account until the account owner returns.  IMHO I think it is an OUTSTANDING idea.  I wounder how many people that lost everything decided not to come back because they didn't want to start over.  By doing this you would have something to start over with.  Sadly this wasn't done from the beginning but it is never to late to do the right thing.

How many people would you this "feature" in a Bad way?   Free storage!!
load the house, close the account, after 90 days, everything would go to a free storage!

AnglesWings said:

Bilbo said:

Someone posted about just storing the contents of the account until the account owner returns.  IMHO I think it is an OUTSTANDING idea.  I wounder how many people that lost everything decided not to come back because they didn't want to start over.  By doing this you would have something to start over with.  Sadly this wasn't done from the beginning but it is never to late to do the right thing.

How many people would you this "feature" in a Bad way?   Free storage!!
load the house, close the account, after 90 days, everything would go to a free storage!

And in order to get it back they would have to re-sub the account and I would block this type of account from EJ.  So if you tried to make an old account EJ and could not then you would know which accounts had, I will call it other storage on that account.  As far as the free storage we are talking the cloud not some hard drive at UO.  It is not really free because it would only apply to paid accounts in good standings and it would cost a 1 month sub just to look at what is there.  UO already stores your char (125 items + what your wear, I think it is 13 max + 125 items Beatle) 263 items and your bank box 175 items X 7 Chars is app 3066 items + 7500 for a %60 castle that's 10,566 and with current storage that really is chump change.

Now lets say you re-sub with all those items and you can not place a castle to unload everything, well I guess you need to open more housing accounts to hold it all because it needs to be along the line of a char xfer with 5 packies you have X amount of time to unload them before it goes poof, same with the extra storage, lets say 7 days before it goes poof.

Just like I mentioned before! the 2 best idea to stop this madness would be:

1) Remove the House Status of the House sign, this would stop 90% of the scripters, is there a way around? sure, they would have to change their script to random path find the game 24/7 looking for Grubbers. This would be fair to all the players, you log one day and your neighbor house is gone, a castle or a luna and no one is there!!


2) This is also a Fair idea, make all the houses fall at the server up, no way anyone can set their scripts that fast. The server is UP and the contents are on the floor already, they would have to choose where to go (priorities) because all the shards goes down at 6am (respecting each shard time zone). so this would give us choices on where to do Idocs!.  you would have a whole bunch idocs at 6am (ET)  , few more at 8am (et) , few more at Jap shards at 6pm (ET) and than European shards at 12am (ET). 
with the idea of all IDOCS collapse at server up, would give us the choice on which one to attend, less people trying to place houses, because we will have lot of different options and best of all, no more 5,10,15 BS,  Houses will be gone at 6am and we can actually plan our days and not worry on have to come back 10 or 15 HOURS later.

AnglesWings said:

Just like I mentioned before! the 2 best idea to stop this madness would be:

1) Remove the House Status of the House sign, this would stop 90% of the scripters, is there a way around? sure, they would have to change their script to random path find the game 24/7 looking for Grubbers. This would be fair to all the players, you log one day and your neighbor house is gone, a castle or a luna and no one is there!!


2) This is also a Fair idea, make all the houses fall at the server up, no way anyone can set their scripts that fast. The server is UP and the contents are on the floor already, they would have to choose where to go (priorities) because all the shards goes down at 6am (respecting each shard time zone). so this would give us choices on where to do Idocs!.  you would have a whole bunch idocs at 6am (ET)  , few more at 8am (et) , few more at Jap shards at 6pm (ET) and than European shards at 12am (ET). 
with the idea of all IDOCS collapse at server up, would give us the choice on which one to attend, less people trying to place houses, because we will have lot of different options and best of all, no more 5,10,15 BS,  Houses will be gone at 6am and we can actually plan our days and not worry on have to come back 10 or 15 HOURS later.

Both solutions are totally fine by me.

AnglesWings said:

make all the houses fall at the server up, no way anyone can set their scripts that fast. The server is UP and the contents are on the floor already, they would have to choose where to go (priorities) because all the shards goes down at 6am (respecting each shard time zone). so this would give us choices on where to do Idocs!.  you would have a whole bunch idocs at 6am (ET)  , few more at 8am (et) , few more at Jap shards at 6pm (ET) and than European shards at 12am (ET). 
with the idea of all IDOCS collapse at server up, would give us the choice on which one to attend, less people trying to place houses, because we will have lot of different options and best of all, no more 5,10,15 BS,  Houses will be gone at 6am and we can actually plan our days and not worry on have to come back 10 or 15 HOURS later.

They use scripts to log on and they are already there with beetles because they already knew where to go and their scripts are already running 1 sec after log on.  X amount of accounts log on/dismount pre-friended beetles and master account loads all beetles open gate everybody says all follow me and they walk through gate.  This sucks but sadly this is what UO has become and if there is a hint of which house is going to fall then this will happen or they log on with spy cams on the most desirable places and all show up in less than 1 min to same location.

IMHO the only way to solve current IDOCs is to do away with them.  They either go poof and all is lost or they are stored awaiting the accounts return.

IDOC's ideas I have read here have big gaping holes in them..   blocking packies?? Oh where do I begin on this one.  That's the first one that hit me. Ok you get them to block all pack animal for say 3 18s size in a square area.. sounds reasonable to most who are set to do a fall but what about the home owners around in that no pack animal zone? I do hope you and the dev see the mounting trouble with this. I sure do.
Ok lets not quibble on this issue  a real change is needed to stop the major macro'ers who rip off all others at these falls.  The stripping is so vast and we all know they are making a killing in the gold department selling the ill gotten gains. Then selling the gold and plat they get to players or the gold seller's sites. The high end goods are also being sold on these sites for RL $
This must end.  
My Idea is:
   There is an easer resolve and it might take a good chunk of gold off the game... sell the whole plot/house, lock, stock, and junk.. But you don't get to keep the house it will decay (read forward).

Here is how it could go:  At the end of the 90 days of grace which we get now an additional time will be added where the house will go "Pending" **  giving roughly 5 days for the owner claim.*    
(there will be no house sign announcement of its status but a city message stone similar to the TC1 Stone with listing of houses gone past the Pending to the Stone stage and their location for you to find)
A Bidding Stone will then be placed House contents will go in the moving crate. So no peeking!
All bids of gold or plat will then be non refundable so bid wisely,  At the end of the stones timer the winner will have access to the house and its contents for 24*** hours if not empty by then the whole thing will drop to the ground and open the space to all for placement any junk will be up for grabs … or decay.  
The winner can at any time of the 24*** hours after excepting the win can select the drop option on the house stone and place his or her own in its place.  
This is the only bright spot to the spending the gold I can see happening. Other then the decay bit as stated above.
Many of you must be by now decrying the loss of the plot to the gold hogs of the game, but to be honest all contents are a pig in a poke...  As for placing the winning account is the only one allowed to place... if you understand they must bid and pay with the account that paid the stone.
You might find some houses not bid on 

*  As with most of us our CC's and EA billing has a way of messing up, so this time after the 90 days is the last saving grace the Dev give us now as all know the owner can claim the house up to 2 hours before it go's poof. So no change. 

**There will be no shown timer on this "Pending" stage for public to count on. The 5 days is a suggestion only.

*** this is up to the Dev for the exact time to give mind you... 

I wish @Mesanna ; @Misk ; @Kyronix @Bleak ; please GODS of UO read and consider this option.

So in your version @Lady_Storm the rich get the contents and the house plot, what a way to support the RMT sites, nice.  

Since returning to uo, I have been to one medium sized idoc. I waited around for hours as usual. When the house fell almost everything was picked up right away. I was blown away by that. Only grabbed 2 containers and it was basically junk. 

Would be cool if it was not advertised at all, the contents dropped, and stayed on the ground until maintenance or until it’s all been found and taken. That would definitely even out the playing field I think. 

Bilbo said:

Someone posted about just storing the contents of the account until the account owner returns.  IMHO I think it is an OUTSTANDING idea.  I wounder how many people that lost everything decided not to come back because they didn't want to start over.  By doing this you would have something to start over with.  Sadly this wasn't done from the beginning but it is never to late to do the right thing.

In my opinion it's a HORRIBLE idea. Considering how many people take advantage of/abuse the "90 day game" (I don't, my accounts are paid for 12 months of every year) how many people do you think would just quit paying whenever they didn't feel like playing, knowing that all of their items would still be there for them if/when they decided to start paying again. I can tell you, personally, if this where the case, given the current state of the game, with the Developers UNWILLINGNESS to deal with scripters/RMT people, if I could quit paying, and know my "stuff" would be waiting for me, I could/would drop at least 5 accounts IN A HEARTBEAT!

I enjoyed IDOCS, and actually opened several additional accounts in order to "work them better". I did a lot of them. BUT, I used no scripts, and physically ran around checking with 1 character. When the house fell, I would load 1 character and his packies, then move to the next one. Rinse and repeat. All "legal". I have no problem with 20-50 people at an IDOC, AS LONG AS THEY WERE ALL LOOTING "LEGALLY". Now we nothing but scripters at IDOCs. I am at the point that I almost don't need several of those accounts, and am trying to figure out how to shut them down.

The bottom line is: IDOC's are fun, as long as everyone has the same chance to loot. What has killed that fun, are the scripters. Please don't tell me that @Mesanna @Kyronix @Bleak can't spot them. HECK, if they can't, them something is very wrong, because even I can spot them, and I am a computer idiot. 

There are ZERO VALID REASONS for the developers NOT to enforce the ToS, and ban the scripters/cheaters/RMT, and MANY reasons to do so. 

How many people have gotten tired of the rampant cheating and RMT's, and have said to heck with it, and just quit the game? I know of at least 100 accounts gone, and I am only 1 person.

@Mesanna @Bleak @Kyronix Please DO YOUR JOB and deal with these people. There is no VALID reason not to do so. To continue to allow/turn a blind eye to them is spitting in the face of the honest players.

I would love to hear the REAL reason why they can't/don't/won't enforce their own rules! 

MONEY MONEY MONEY  BS/DAoC/UO enforce EAs rules and EA is and has always been about the GREEN.  Hell yes they all know what you are/are not running just by looking at the data stream.

KHAN said:

Bilbo said:

Someone posted about just storing the contents of the account until the account owner returns.  IMHO I think it is an OUTSTANDING idea.  I wounder how many people that lost everything decided not to come back because they didn't want to start over.  By doing this you would have something to start over with.  Sadly this wasn't done from the beginning but it is never to late to do the right thing.

In my opinion it's a HORRIBLE idea. Considering how many people take advantage of/abuse the "90 day game" (I don't, my accounts are paid for 12 months of every year) how many people do you think would just quit paying whenever they didn't feel like playing, knowing that all of their items would still be there for them if/when they decided to start paying again. I can tell you, personally, if this where the case, given the current state of the game, with the Developers UNWILLINGNESS to deal with scripters/RMT people, if I could quit paying, and know my "stuff" would be waiting for me, I could/would drop at least 5 accounts IN A HEARTBEAT!

I enjoyed IDOCS, and actually opened several additional accounts in order to "work them better". I did a lot of them. BUT, I used no scripts, and physically ran around checking with 1 character. When the house fell, I would load 1 character and his packies, then move to the next one. Rinse and repeat. All "legal". I have no problem with 20-50 people at an IDOC, AS LONG AS THEY WERE ALL LOOTING "LEGALLY". Now we nothing but scripters at IDOCs. I am at the point that I almost don't need several of those accounts, and am trying to figure out how to shut them down.

The bottom line is: IDOC's are fun, as long as everyone has the same chance to loot. What has killed that fun, are the scripters. Please don't tell me that @ Mesanna @ Kyronix @ Bleak can't spot them. HECK, if they can't, them something is very wrong, because even I can spot them, and I am a computer idiot. 

There are ZERO VALID REASONS for the developers NOT to enforce the ToS, and ban the scripters/cheaters/RMT, and MANY reasons to do so. 

How many people have gotten tired of the rampant cheating and RMT's, and have said to heck with it, and just quit the game? I know of at least 100 accounts gone, and I am only 1 person.

@ Mesanna @ Bleak @ Kyronix Please DO YOUR JOB and deal with these people. There is no VALID reason not to do so. To continue to allow/turn a blind eye to them is spitting in the face of the honest players.

I would love to hear the REAL reason why they can't/don't/won't enforce their own rules! 

You will pay your accounts no matter what, you don't even use the 90 day scam so please do not try to make me believe that you will close down 5 of your accounts or you would have already done it.
The 90 day people will still use the 90 day pay .
The people that play awhile will still play a while and quit no matter what and save app 400 items per char.
IDOCs are not fun and the cheaters have been here from the day they mistakenly published the code for the client on a disk.  So IDOCs have been cheated/scripted for a very long time and here you are still paying/playing, the only difference is they are getting more bolder about the way they do things.

We all play UO with the knowledge that there are costs to our addiction.
EA is money hungry
EA will not or can not afford to ban all those RMT or Cheating accounts because there is not enough of us left paying to support the game.
Without a way to get people back your way will kill UO so which of our solution is better for the game.  How many people would have returned knowing that they did not lose everything due to real life situations.  I know active duty personal that while deployed lost accounts and EA did nothing to help so they quit all together and no EA is not just a phone call away no matter what you think.

Please keep posts respectful. Attacks on other posters or Broadsword staff are not acceptable.

 🙁 

Add another stage of demolition that blocks packies and EJ from entering the footprint of the house after it falls.  You can grab what you can carry. After a minute the ban on packies and EJ ends.  That should reduce the amount of stuff the scriptors can grab on initial house fall.  If they want to grab more then they have to pony up with more paid subscriptions.

Everybody that was friended to that house will already know what day it will fall so from server up till 10 hrs later the house will drop and people already have cams at spawns do you really think they can't place one there with a script running to alert them and watch all the scripter show at once.  I love the idea but I live in the real world and the word will get out that a house at this spot just went into the IDOCs stage and people already know how long that lasts so they will already know the date it will drop and they are already camping/spying all the current IDOCs so what will stop them from camping/spying these new IDOCs.

Bilbo please read my post again...   you will find it doesn't favor them,  in fact if it was done as I put it, no house sign to tell if a house is going to go till a stone shows up. No way to trace it  unless the fall is given by a EA leak or a BS leak.   Because all billing info is private.   

Yes falls have over the years been fun but these days with all the advanced macroing the bad elements have at their finger tips is amazing and disheartening. There is no way the average player can beat a macro from sweeping the area and filling every packie at their disposal.. and when you have 2 or 3 of these showing up and sitting close to the area size the macro can pull your not gunna get squat for all that time.  That s not fair to any of us.  But you are thinking the Dev will do this  when I know very well they will sit on their hands and think it will stop on its own or give a speech in the newsletter to handle it.  A handful of GMs only go so far... and many of these falls are way after hours when the office is closed.  

@Lady_Storm ;  I have been reading this and the thread on  stratics and some one just posted this question.

KHAN said:I would love to hear the REAL reason why they can't/don't/won't enforce their own rules! 

Because it's money and pays their jobs? Simple as that..

Bilbo said:

MONEY MONEY MONEY  BS/DAoC/UO enforce EAs rules and EA is and has always been about the GREEN.  Hell yes they all know what you are/are not running just by looking at the data stream.

Direct link into your brain i tell ya. They can even see if youre wearing pants while talking to them.

JollyJade said:

Bilbo said:

MONEY MONEY MONEY  BS/DAoC/UO enforce EAs rules and EA is and has always been about the GREEN.  Hell yes they all know what you are/are not running just by looking at the data stream.

Direct link into your brain i tell ya. They can even see if youre wearing pants while talking to them.

  /

Easy solution will he remove the house sign status, or like Mesanna suggested on the last M&G auction the place.

House will start staging.
House will go sl, sw, fw, gw and finally idoc, after 24 hour been idoc, house will go OSI and a auction safe goes into steps or house sign option , for bidding and just like any OSI house , would run 7 days, allowing people to bid foe the contents or entire house.
After the 7 days been OSI, if no one bid than the house just collapse the same way it is now.

But the reality is, the Devs team is small, they already "planned" their year, so none od those nice idead will happen anyway, so the faster solution is remove the house sign status.

I have been to loads of fel idocs and gotten everything without any scripts, you just turn up on a red and spam thunderstorm. This all sounds like trammel only issues. 

I only do fel idocs for this reason and would encourage others to take a similar approach when choosing a house location.

Mervyn is right. OMG!  LOL!  I just agreed with Mervyn!  It must be a sign of the UO apocalypse.

Seriously, the Dev Team needs to take a stand and start laying down the Ban Hammer on the scriptards as I call them.  Also start slapping the gold sites with DMCA violations.   I can tell you for 100% certain that these scumbags do not pay for UO.   I got it straight from one of em's mouth!   He hadn't paid for UO in FIFTEEN YEARS!   He goes to that website that dumps books all over  every shard and buys game time codes for gold.   These are the same scriptards that script every idoc.   

Let's look at the nasty circle:   Scriptard scripts an idoc and lets say for giggles he get a bunch of high end EM event items.   Mr. Scriptard then hauls his cookies to Atlantic and sells items for billions and billions of gold.   Then Mr. Scriptard goes to THAT website  and buys some gametime codes for gold.  That website turns around and sells for real life money. 

The real question is why haven't the Devs shut these websites down?  Inquiring minds want to know!!!

@Luc_of_Legends BS/DAoC/UO does not own DAoC/UO EA does and do you think a judge will issue a DMCA after EA has allowed this to go on for 20 years?  I am not advocating for the Scriptoids but EA has already set a precedence by not enforcing their ToS for the last 20 years and now you want a judge to enforce it, IMHO i do not see it happening.  Also for the guy that bought gametime with UO Gold at some point along the line some one had to pay cash for the gametime, this would also mean that buying anything ingame that cost real money would need to fall into the same category as the gametime you are talking about.  I truly wish there was a way to stop the cheating without endangering UO.

Anyone who wants to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement is typically required to do so within the applicable time limit. The U.S. Copyright Act requires a civil lawsuit to be filed within three years after the claim accrued. This statute of limitations applies in all U.S. states.

Kind of looks like 17 years to late.

First under fair discloser my preference would be to do away with IDOCs. It always felt to me like seeing someone's obituary in the paper and heading over to see what might be "just lying around".

But that being said I have a suggestion that would make them more entertaining and do away with scripters. My idea should be fairly easy to implement as most of what it does is already implemented in housing.

1. Rather than have the house collapse transfer the "ownership" to a "No player" account. 
2. Then set access to public and security on all containers to "Owner Only"
3. I would also like all "locked down" and deeded items put into containers but that might make it too big a programming project. That would make it impossible to know whether all the "good" items are gone and where in the house they are.
4. At random times over the next week or two, a random container switches to "Anyone" and/or deeded or locked down item released.
5. When a new container switches to "Anyone", any already at "Anyone" are unsecured and allowed to fade away as normal. Hopefully someone found it and got the contents but if not "easy come easy go"
6. Also at random times (once an hour ?) any player in the house is "Banished". The odds of an honest player being caught by this are very slim. How much time would you spend checking for open containers and is there any other reason to be in the IDOC staring at the screen? But a scripter wouldn't last long and would at least have to set up an other robot.
7. EJ characters would be allowed in the house but as I understand it could not even check if a container is openable so would be useless to a cheater.
8. After the last item is released a timer till final collapse is started.

This method would allow everyone to participate not just those who happened to be on at the time of the collapse. Some thing else to do when you do your BOD run. Not that I really care but I would think PvPs would enjoy something to fight over for a week or more rather the just an hour. As I see it the only losers would be scripters and resellers. 

Of course the Devil is in the details, is a week or two too long? Should the "Banish" be less often at the start and more often as time goes on? What about "containers" that are useful in their own right like the new repair bench?

PS to the off topic posts if the record companies couldn't shut down music sharing sites how do you expect the Devs to shut the resellers down?

Bilbo said:

@ Luc_of_Legends BS/DAoC/UO does not own DAoC/UO EA does and do you think a judge will issue a DMCA after EA has allowed this to go on for 20 years?  I am not advocating for the Scriptoids but EA has already set a precedence by not enforcing their ToS for the last 20 years and now you want a judge to enforce it, IMHO i do not see it happening.  Also for the guy that bought gametime with UO Gold at some point along the line some one had to pay cash for the gametime, this would also mean that buying anything ingame that cost real money would need to fall into the same category as the gametime you are talking about.  I truly wish there was a way to stop the cheating without endangering UO.

Billbo did you miss completely that EA OWNS Broadsword?  It's what is known as a subsidiary.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a subsidiary as:

subsidiary

 noun

plural subsidiaries

Definition of subsidiary (Entry 2 of 2)

: one that is subsidiary especially : a company wholly controlled by another

Okay, while wholly control, a subsidiary will operate as a company within a company.   Let me elaborate; while Broadsword gets it operating budget from and is answerable to EA. Broadsword has it's own company structure. That structure is something like this Rob Denton is the head honcho.   Then below him is Bonnie Armstrong in charge of UO and Collin Viteri (?) in charge of DAoC.  Then below them are their respective team etc.

The long and short of is its still EA anyway you slice it. 

Bilbo said:

Anyone who wants to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement is typically required to do so within the applicable time limit. The U.S. Copyright Act requires a civil lawsuit to be filed within three years after the claim accrued. This statute of limitations applies in all U.S. states.

Kind of looks like 17 years to late.

Okay, I don't claim to know law very well but the proverbial fly-in-the-ointment is that both UO and many of the RMT websites PREDATE  the DMCA.  Secondly you are talk about the copyright act.   I am referring the  Digital Millennium Copyright Act.   

Which was passed in 1998.   UO and many of the rmt sites predate this so its a legal conundrum.   The biggest reason they didn't do anything is that Origin/EA wasn't sure it was worth the gamble.  The internet was still in its infancy and they would be one of the first to go after something like this.  At the time I'm sure their legal department probably didn't think it was worth it.  They did not have the foresight (nor did anyone else at the time)  to see how BIG a problem these guys were going to become.  It is the unfortunate side effect of being the FIRST.  Everyone else like Blizzard,Standing Stone Games, Microsoft(XboxLive), Sony, and Nintendo learned from OUR MISTAKES. 


  

@Luc_of_Legends EA DOES NOT OWN BS.  In case you missed it 

Mythic devs form new studio, take over DAoC and Ultima Online
https://www.engadget.com/2014/02/05/mythic-devs-form-new-studio-take-over-daoc-and-ultima-online/

Video game company EA to close storied studio in Fairfax
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/video-game-company-ea-to-close-storied-studio-in-fairfax/2014/06/06/897b48bc-ec24-11e3-93d2-edd4be1f5d9e_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d10f8e7ebd1c 

EA hired BS to run DAoC/UO.  EA collects all money from subs/Origin store sells.  EA pays BS to maintain DAoC/UO.  BS must follow EAs ToS as EA still owns DAoC/UO.

What is the statute of limitations on intellectual property?

Infringement of a copyright may result in civil and/or criminal liability. The statute of limitations for criminal proceedings is five years, while for a civil action it is three years. 17 U.S.C. §507. Copyrights and patents are easily confused but are two very different intellectual property interests.


It is still all based on copyright infringement and EA gave up that right a long long time ago.

I can not pass a law today and convict you of it for something you did 20 years ago.

This thread is getting rather off topic, can we get it back on track please?

  

Mariah said:

This thread is getting rather off topic, can we get it back on track please?

Nominated for understatement of the year <span>🙂</span>

Lot of people been talking  about this topic and the most suggested option will be to remove the status of the house from the sign, as many people said, the majority of the rails system used nowadays, read the condition status of the houses:



Remove that from the house sign and at least 1/2 of the people running Rails will be mad , because they cant script , what they cant find.

I said 1/2 , because the other 1/2 are always 20 steps ahead of anyone in this game. 

They run their websites (members only) with all shards idocs, locations, time on each house and so on, we all know who "they" are. If you take the house sign off the game , you will hurt only the 1/2 brainers running rails, but the "expert" ones, can switch the house signs option for looking for groubers on the entire map all day, 24/7 on all shards and if the script find, make sound an alarm and voila, they have the idocs all for themselves again!!! , so there is not a win win situation at all, either you hurt them all or nothing!.


The other solution that I have , which will benefit the GAME ITESELF and Hurt them all.


the changes will be the follow.


House will start Stage as it is now, giving the normal 5 days staging process (Slight, Sworn, Fairly, Greatly and Idoc) which will give 7 days total to the owner either refresh the house or transfer, same way as it is now.


After 7 days, House will go MANDATORY OSI and Players will have a choice to BID on the OWNERSHIP of the house*.

Player MUST have a Paid Account and FREE of any Houses on that Account, as the new House would be transferred to THAT account that Bid, this will make fair to everyone, because , even people with 30+ accounts, would need to have the accounts Paid and No houses on it, this will force people to buy more and more subscription. you follow what I am thinking....
Think about the Gold Sink that this will generate if a castle is falling or a Luna, the system should work the same way as an auction safe, takes the gold instantly from the account until the next person outbid and so on. Only people with No houses will be able to bid on it and NO ACCESS to the HOUSE at all, so you can either Score HUGE or Nada, or if you want to be nice to players, just show the amount of storage on the house, so we will know if it is empty!


After 7 days of been OSI, which will give time to people remove their vendors, if any, or people to Bid on it, if NO ONE bid on it, than the house will collapse as it is now!.

I think the easiest thing for all to do is what im doing. Just go mark them all and share them with everyone. You get 40 people at an idoc the cheaters cant grab everything. I really think they will stop going to them if they cant get all items. They don't seem to be showing up on atl. Big full 18x18 houses take 5 minutes to clear out. it will not hurt to try it. the stuff some of you guys think might help will only cause tons of work for the dev team if they can even do it. Just go try it for a month and see what happens. 

@Radst ; YES

NO WAY IN $%^^ should they ever be allowed to go to an auction type because only the uber rich will get them and still remain uber rich.  Gold sellers/cheaters/scriptors would love this.

Bilbo said:

@ Radst  YES

NO WAY IN $%^^ should they ever be allowed to go to an auction type because only the uber rich will get them and still remain uber rich.  Gold sellers/cheaters/scriptors would love this.

Once in a lifetime I totally agree with Bilbo. 😂

MissE said:

Just don't advertise something is going IDOC.  The house owner should get an email, the house should turn idoc with NO notification on the sign and then it should just drop. If your lucky enough to be around when it does you score.  If not tough luck.  Pretty simple solution. 

LMFAO that's by far the worst idea Ive ever heard! You do know how scripting works right? I hope you also realize the vast majority of idoc scripters have no life or job and on game 24/7. All they would have to do is right a simple script to rail the shard and give a ding everytime something of value was on floor with a disregard for locked down/secured items. THEY would score all day every day and no one else would. 

MissE said:

It is just so simple, stop the sign advertising the house condition as I said above.  If ya don't know it is idoc you can't script it, can't camp it, cant get organized with a hundred packies.

No need for all the above complicated solutions.  No packy banning, or time changes or storing stuff, or stopping them completely. 

The WHOLE problem will instantly STOP if people don't know a joint is in idoc state. 

Send the owner an email, kick the co-owners/friends etc off as currently happens so that IF that person has any friends/guildies that bother to go to their house they won't be able to get in so will get a heads up on it and can contact the owner if needed and/or organize with those friended to the house or guildmates to check their FRIENDS property for when it drops and gather as much as possible, as it should be, friends first.  

Let it drop anytime within 10 hrs of it going idoc.

People who are out actually PLAYING the game and getting around the facets will be the lucky ones to stumble across goods on the ground rather than the scripted bots do the idoc checking. 

It is the simplest solution out. No idea why there needs to be a heap of discussion over something so easily fixed. @ Kyronix

PLEASE DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS PERSON! they are either uneducated about scripters or they have a script waiting to hit play on! That is worse then the 5-10-15 hour they did which ONLY catered to stay at home scripters, this would be them scoring 100% of the time! @Kyronix

My first idea was to have ALL houses drop at server up for respective shards. Kinda like grabbing daily spawned items back in the day. However that still kind of caters to the jobless, who can just have ppl logging in all over. Plus you can write scripts to autolog and start looting, so those afk stealthing llamas would end up winning all the time, we all know who that is. I think the greatest idea is no more of this staging. If the person doesn't refresh before 90 days then his/her loss for cycling and being cheap. On the 91st day. The house opens to auction. An Auction safe drops in front and you have to bid on the place. You have to have an account open, paid for, and not have a house on account. Then 24 hours to place bid. I say a "first price, sealed bid," auction should be set. Everyone gets one bid, highest bidder takes it without knowing what everyone else bids. With that many houses u cant have 10min rules and auction safes aren't fair with the last second bids. I do think the houses should be open to public so everyone knows what they are bidding on though. That would be a great gold sink to, because all the gold would go to the game, not to another person, and more subs would be purchased to buy these houses, so more income for the devs to create new things! just saying

@Kyronix @Mesanna

cytex said:

My first idea was to have ALL houses drop at server up for respective shards. Kinda like grabbing daily spawned items back in the day. However that still kind of caters to the jobless, who can just have ppl logging in all over. Plus you can write scripts to autolog and start looting, so those afk stealthing llamas would end up winning all the time, we all know who that is. I think the greatest idea is no more of this staging. If the person doesn't refresh before 90 days then his/her loss for cycling and being cheap. On the 91st day. The house opens to auction. An Auction safe drops in front and you have to bid on the place. You have to have an account open, paid for, and not have a house on account. Then 24 hours to place bid. I say a "first price, sealed bid," auction should be set. Everyone gets one bid, highest bidder takes it without knowing what everyone else bids. With that many houses u cant have 10min rules and auction safes aren't fair with the last second bids. I do think the houses should be open to public so everyone knows what they are bidding on though. That would be a great gold sink to, because all the gold would go to the game, not to another person, and more subs would be purchased to buy these houses, so more income for the devs to create new things! just saying

@ Kyronix @ Mesanna

Do you understand that "1 account equal 1 bid" will favorite the rich with dozen of Account, right?

Keep it simple.
Just remove the status on the house sign on all facets with Trammel ruleset. Let´s have people out exploring and roam the lands again.
All this talk about how the scripters will just do this and that and get all the loot then just sounds like scaremongering to me.

Keep it as is in Felucca and on Siege/Mugen where it´s player justice monitored.

Something that I brought up during an IDOC last night. When a house falls randomly scatter the loot across the land mass.  Kind of like if a tornado came along and flung the insides of the house to the far reaches.

TimSt said:

Something that I brought up during an IDOC last night. When a house falls randomly scatter the loot across the land mass.  Kind of like if a tornado came along and flung the insides of the house to the far reaches.

Outstanding idea, exploding houses.  That sounds like fun.  You might be in your house and get hit by falling items, LOL.

TimSt said:

Something that I brought up during an IDOC last night. When a house falls randomly scatter the loot across the land mass.  Kind of like if a tornado came along and flung the insides of the house to the far reaches.

I like this idea best. There could even be a shard wide message and even an earthquake sound if they want people to participate.

I get that people (not scriptors) put a lot of time into finding, and sitting, timing etc of the homes that are going to fall, but many things have changed over time and it seems that this is something that can be implemented. I am trying to think of one of the events where things were blown up and scattered. I know the original Blackrock event did that.

Gidge said:

TimSt said:

Something that I brought up during an IDOC last night. When a house falls randomly scatter the loot across the land mass.  Kind of like if a tornado came along and flung the insides of the house to the far reaches.

Please make a new post and put a poll up for this with a simple yes or no!

I like this idea best. There could even be a shard wide message and even an earthquake sound if they want people to participate.

I get that people (not scriptors) put a lot of time into finding, and sitting, timing etc of the homes that are going to fall, but many things have changed over time and it seems that this is something that can be implemented. I am trying to think of one of the events where things were blown up and scattered. I know the original Blackrock event did that.

Magincia Invasion too...

TimSt said:

Something that I brought up during an IDOC last night. When a house falls randomly scatter the loot across the land mass.  Kind of like if a tornado came along and flung the insides of the house to the far reaches.

Ohhhh!! This sounds FUN!

What a scavenger hunt that would be! Imagine! You're sitting in your home doing BoDs when a siren sounds - TORNADO WARNING! You wait for the all clear, go outside, and BAMF! Sitting at your doorstep is the latest drop from an EM! Or perhaps some Dread Lord's head (a la old-skool pvp days), or wait, there's a pile of crafted masonry blocks and walls all colorful from special dyes!

Kinda hilarious if you ask me, but I love the idea. Not sure how that would be programmed -

OR... maybe everything winds up in the dump (Rat Man's lair in the Abyss) but make it an arena ruleset where ppl fight not only ratmen but each other for the loots.

That would also be fun.

I have to agree with the original poster. We have a player on Atlantic who has now made it his new priority to mark every idoc daily and put it out on his house steps for the public to access. In itself that seems like a nice service to help others but really it's the worst of a double edged sword. What this is doing and what is actually taking place is not helping the normal player find idocs but instead every hacker in the game now simply has to go to this public book for fast access with zero effort.  I used to love idocs, spent like 6 hours a week looking for them, and was always able to grab one or two chests making my endless hours of looking for them worth it every day after I got home from work. Now Im lucky if I can literally grab a single item worth 100k gold because every hacker in the game has gravitated to these books on our server. All that this is doing now is making the idoc experience the worst it has ever been. You spend 15 hours waiting for it to fall only to get scraps if even that much. Meanwhile, all the hackers stroll off with packies full of loot among a small percentage of total players at the falling house. It is time for IDOCs to end, we are at that point now where it must sadly stop.

Road_House said:

" What this is doing and what is actually taking place is not helping the normal player find idocs but instead every hacker in the game now simply has to go to this public book for fast access with zero effort.  I used to love idocs, spent like 6 hours a week looking for them, and was always able to grab one or two chests making my endless hours of looking for them worth it every day after I got home from work. Now Im lucky if I can literally grab a single item worth 100k gold because every hacker in the game has gravitated to these books on our server. All that this is doing now is making the idoc experience the worst it has ever been. You spend 15 hours waiting for it to fall only to get scraps if even that much. Meanwhile, all the hackers stroll off with packies full of loot among a small percentage of total players at the falling house. "

1st the cheaters were already going to the IDOCs and taking all items. They have a cheat that shows them where all idocs are, and don't even have to click house signs.
2nd if we have 40 people at one idoc when it falls everyone grabs one item that is less the cheaters get and  now more people get stuff not just a few that would get everything.
3rd I try to mark them all but I know I miss some. you don't have to spend 6 hours a week looking anymore, but you could spend one hour a week and help me out. 
4th I really do try to get the times and share with everyone so people don't have to wait 15 hours standing at a house to fall. 
5th just looked at one vendor shop everyone says is the biggest cheater around and his vendors are almost empty, go look. 


I know that what Im doing is making some of you really really mad, I hear it in chat, but there are so many that are having fun going to the idocs. many show me the items they get or tell me how happy they are they got one item they always wanted. me marking books and sharing isn't helping the cheaters they already went to all idocs and got all items. im helping out the folks that don't have tons of time to play. every item we pick up is one less item the cheaters get.

I cant understand why you want to get rid of them now. Before just a select few with their friends and the cheaters went to them and got all items.  now many go to them and most get some items. sometimes those items are worth 10m sometimes they are just trash. 

Doing this also helps out the folks that want to PvP.  just go to a big felucca idoc and see everyone running for their life or chasing a person to kill. I knew I was going to make some mad and im sorry for that but I have made so many more happy. I really think this is hurting the cheaters and helping out UO players. 

@Soldahouse, Thank you for finding the houses and letting people know about them.  Thanks to you I have filled up my bank box twice with items that I got at various IDOCs.  I would like to start up a similar thing on my home shard of Pacific.

Get rid of script programs, get rid of EJ at idocs, get rid of pack animals at idocs.  moniter them and Messana, when someone gives you the time and place how about actually going to the idoc and seeing the cheating for yourself?
Atlantic idocs are a joke right now, and it does not help when a disgruntled player decides to place public rune books on her house for everyone to go without anyone putting in the work to find them for themselves.
This does not teter the scripters, it just makes their life even easier

Summoned said:

So the real problem is scripting and CC client again. Just like the other 100 post. 

YES 100%

TimSt said:

@Soldahouse, Thank you for finding the houses and letting people know about them.  Thanks to you I have filled up my bank box twice with items that I got at various IDOCs.  I would like to start up a similar thing on my home shard of Pacific.

My suggestion to you is to discover and use a brain to create an exclusive idoc guild, keep the idocs to your members and friends as this will stop the influx of scripters who use your books and force them back out looking for them again. Go ahead and make your books but make them exclusive to your guild house. Now you have your giant mob, you can spam away for members and make a massive guild that does the idocs. Now you will have the chance to teach people all about the idoc community, according to the limited knowledge you have on it, and then you can be exclusive. And the best part of all is that it will remove most of the disgust people have for what you are doing and open up a new server guild that you could run. The outcome will result in a huge drop in idoc scripting, at least with these insane pack horses which is unlike anything I have ever seen before in UO in all the years I have played. 

This thread is becoming too personal and possible suggestions seem to have dried up