▒ - NEW IDOC'S CHANGE - ▒

I suppose if a co-owner or friend can no longer enter the house it either means the house has started to decay or they've been unfriended.

will players still know that the house is in a decaying state? maybe they should send an automated out if your account is inactive for 3 months

@Mariah I point the same newsletter and makes no sense!
90% of All the Idocs are because the Owner of the account is NOT active, therefore his house will go Idoc after 90 days, so How is that the The house owner will receive a message when stepping onto the steps of the house as to the current decay status of the house.   when his account is not even active? and how the co-owners are friends of the house will let him know that his house is staging? if the list get cleared too??

@AtomicBetty ;  maybe they should send an automated out if your account is inactive for 3 months.

this would be the best thing , but I dont think they have that option available! to account mgmt system is a mess as it is!!

Why does it matter AR ? You are never the owner of any of these IDOCs you attend so you won't be notified. Why do you care how they word the change, what matters is, the house sign will no longer let scripters know anything. It's a great change, I look forward to how this all plays out.

Lol what is ar gonna do with all those ej accts now

@Garth_Grey , you have no clue buddy...  quite few people here know that I helped save a lot of "friends" houses that went into decay mode!
as far as the changes, really dont affect me at all, and DO trust me on that, The changes will only make alot of people not going to Idocs anymore!.

@Lynk ; you are confusing me with the idocguyperson, all my accounts are paid! 

Thou doth protest too much

not pretesting at all, just asked a question based on the changes on how the owner will get a notification when he step on his house when the acc is not even active!
I can care less for the changes TBH. 

AtlanticRealtor said:

@ Garth_Grey , you have no clue buddy...  quite few people here know that I helped save a lot of "friends" houses that went into decay mode!
as far as the changes, really dont affect me at all, and DO trust me on that, The changes will only make alot of people not going to Idocs anymore!.

@ Lynk  you are confusing me with the idocguyperson, all my accounts are paid! 

I have plenty of clues, my comment to you was, why does it bother you how the server alerts house status ? If you're accounts are paid up, you won't ever have to know how your houses are doing, and you , me and everyone else has no business knowing how others houses are doing. I think this is a fine change and it's long overdue.

@Garth_Grey How would this be a great change?  Nobody would even know the house is in decay. Pretty much eliminating the idocing gameplay. Items would just fall on the ground randomly. Terrible idea imo.

IDOCng gameplay ? LOL It will be as it should be, you want to be an active IDOCing gamplayer, then you can walk the lands looking for houses that have already fallen, the way it should be.

5 years ago. "Hey Devs, people script at idocs, help us!"
Devs: "You got it! Idocs will only fall at 5, 10 or 15h mark now. So regular players have to spend all day at an idoc to have a chance, whereas scripters can show up at exact moment it falls. Genius!"

Today: "Hey Devs, we've been telling you for 5 years the 5/10/15 system sucks. It only helps scripters. (Oh, and lots of other things about idocs suck too and need addressed…).”
Devs: "You got it! House signs will no more show decay. (That way those scripters automatically scouring the land 24/7 looking for fallen houses will be able to loot them all, while regular players no longer get to participate).

Awesome.

Garth_Grey said:

IDOCng gameplay ? LOL It will be as it should be, you want to be an active IDOCing gamplayer, then you can walk the lands looking for houses that have already fallen, the way it should be.

who do you think will scavenger lands....plently of ej bots accounts ...this change look forward to more Scripting for idocs...

I'm pretty sure when players were asking for change, this was not the change they were hoping for. Such a terrible idea.

This is pretty much takes away a piece of the game.

What happens if your payment doesn't go through for some reason and you're away from the game for a while? No one will be able to notify you if your house needs refreshing. Multiple times my houses have been saved by friends notifying me. This is punishing the wrong people and it needs to be rethought.

One alternative solution would be to make it easier for everyone to script a vacuuming macro.  For example the EC needs a "Pick up targeted object" macro action. It already has "Target nearest object" and "Drop held object" macro actions.  What is missing is the "Pick up targeted object" action that goes in between them.

In the past 3 weeks our guild has saved two houses on Chesapeake that were slated to fall. One person we knew and just discorded them a friendly message, his game time ran out and since he hasn't played recently he didnt notice.  Second one we ran by while doing Krampus trade runs, knew a friend of the player and notified them and they notified the player. Two houses saved, two people still paying.

Players seeing the signs is important.  A lot of players still pay for accounts but don't play often, losing a house and it's valued contents can be so demoralizing that those players never return.

Also, if you don't think disabling the signs evens the playing field, you are wrong.  Professional idocers will just use more botted ej accounts to scour the land. 

Violet said:

In the past 3 weeks our guild has saved two houses on Chesapeake that were slated to fall. One person we knew and just discorded them a friendly message, his game time ran out and since he hasn't played recently he didnt notice.  Second one we ran by while doing Krampus trade runs, knew a friend of the player and notified them and they notified the player. Two houses saved, two people still paying.

Players seeing the signs is important.  A lot of players still pay for accounts but don't play often, losing a house and it's valued contents can be so demoralizing that those players never return.

Also, if you don't think disabling the signs evens the playing field, you are wrong.  Professional idocers will just use more botted ej accounts to scour the land. 

This. We've saved several by being able to call people and let them know. Real life sneaks up on you or your credit card gets changed and you don't log in every day so you don't realize your account got locked. This is not the roulette game that some play. This is not realizing it's happening and now there will be no way to stop it.

If a player has quit it does not matter about the decay.  If a player is playing the 90 day lottery you still get notification.   Idoc players lose out. But so do the cheat scripters and the ATL umbra road shard champion house. And the website that gives out decaying location.  This change ruins my EC client legit play style sadly for me.  But it is a SUPER sacrifice to kill all you cheats. Bravo 

I've estimated that an army of 24 botted ej accounts can check on every house on a shard every 8 minutes if they can not read the IDOC status from the house sign.

To the Mods, please, please don't lock this thread. Just clean it when it gets really ridiculously dirty and it's gonna get really stupid in here, but just don't lock it. 🙂

Been suggested before, you want to fix and level up?  Make everything go into a moving crate for the house owner account and is a done deal! Than charge the owner a fee when he or she comes back in order to retrieve the contents!

Mariah said:

May I remind you all that the first rule in the terms of service requires that all posters be treated with respect. This includes the developers.

By all means offer alternative solutions, but keep it polite and respectful

Now time to restrict EJ accts so they cannot be script trawlers 

jadav said:

Even thou, i only attend to fel idocs, i find the change a bit meh.

With the proposed change, no one will ever know when a house goes boom.

The real idocers will.  It’s called effort 

yes about Co-owner I was think about same for weeks.

what if they do this : (if there is a co-owner like on most houses)

-a co-owner must be able to empty the wholly house when Idoc starts.
- if not , then oke.. drop on floor.

-means ," house rights go to co-owner "

if house start idoc. co-owner is able to release ect
take all the stuff whatever it is out off house.


is Idd much beter. stop Idoc runner and scripter and ect.

I vote for this. 100%
 
baad english but swat. you will understand what I mean.

Can you please remove the 5/10/15 hr timers and revert to 7 hrs as-well 

Regarding Co owners, uhh no to those ideas. You want to claim you're helping your friends out, fine, let co owners receive an email saying the account is in jeopardy and if they want to spend their real life money to save a house, I'm good with that. But please spare us your "we help people all of the time " claims. It all comes down to greed, always has.

Garth_Grey said:

(...) You want to claim you're helping your friends out, fine, let co owners receive an email saying the account is in jeopardy and if they want to spend their real life money to save a house, I'm good with that. (...)

I second this part of GG post.

So with this change you would be pretty much eliminating idocing??  This is a type of gameplay and has been around forever.  For someone that plays to search and participate in decaying houses (idocs) you will be ruining the game for them.  I am in agreeance that changes to the system is needed but this is terrible.  I have played ultima since 1997 and seen a lot of changes over the years and this is about one of the worst.  If you take away what people log in and play for you will have players lose interest and eventually quit.  The simple fix take it back to the old set fall time of 7 or 8 hours. Or do a 3 or 6 or 4 and 8 hours something shorter then the 5,10 and 15 we have now.  The system now only benefits the scripters.  

Here is how I would tweak what has been suggested:

-Keep the current suggestion that the public sign will not indicate any decay status. 

-Remove the process that clears that access/friends/co-owners from the house when the decay process starts.  I am ok with the house still becoming private.

-Increase the alert from owners only to any character on the friends/co-owners list.

-Include in the alert, the exact date and time decay can be expected.

These are just ideas to make things fair, don't harrass me if you don't like them:

when an idoc falls, no one can loot it, instead, there is a lottery system that you buy tickets. the lottery chooses randomly from the tickets, and who ever wins gets to take items. multiple winners can be chosen.

or

when the idoc does fall, it goes into a bubble that only one person at a time can go in. The order of the line is randomly given out to each character in proximity, if they leave the proximity they lose their place in line. that way. 


This can also be done where a random people on the shard is given a que which they can recall in and loot, that way its random and everyone eventaully has a shot.

or



all idocs items go into a ticket. those tickets are then randomly sent to random accounts on the shard. just double click the ticket to receive the item. If the ticket isn't used in 72 hours the item is sent to the next random account. 

This way, all players get a chance not just scriptors or campers.

or

each shard has an idoc representative. that representative chooses a day to give out all the loot that has fallen that week, and first come first serve. that person hands out a piece, in order to each person in  line.

Merus said:

Here is how I would tweak what has been suggested:

-Keep the current suggestion that the public sign will not indicate any decay status. 

-Remove the process that clears that access/friends/co-owners from the house when the decay process starts.  I am ok with the house still becoming private.

-Increase the alert from owners only to any character on the friends/co-owners list.

-Include in the alert, the exact date and time decay can be expected.

Well heck, why don't you just ask the Devs to move all items in the house into the bank boxes of friends/co-owners ? They can be tagged and labeled so as to not cause confusion and delay as the friends/co-owners are rifling through their spoils. /smh

Garth_Grey said:

Merus said:

Here is how I would tweak what has been suggested:

-Keep the current suggestion that the public sign will not indicate any decay status. 

-Remove the process that clears that access/friends/co-owners from the house when the decay process starts.  I am ok with the house still becoming private.

-Increase the alert from owners only to any character on the friends/co-owners list.

-Include in the alert, the exact date and time decay can be expected.

Well heck, why don't you just ask the Devs to move all items in the house into the bank boxes of friends/co-owners ? They can be tagged and labeled so as to not cause confusion and delay as the friends/co-owners are rifling through their spoils. /smh

You sound a bit greedy over a strangers pixels.  I have no problem with the actual acquaintances of the house owner getting a chance to let the house owner know or getting first crack at the contents.  

I agree, this is nuts. Is the best solution we could come up with really to prevent that type of game play all together?

I just gotta say:

If AR and Rafman are not happy with the changes, the devs are on the right track.

I also have to say: 

This is a Trammel issue, please leave Fel and Siege alone!

While I applaud the devs for trying to (finally) do something about cheaters/scripters at IDOC's, it's kind of sad that they couldn't just "go after" them, instead of penalizing the honest IDOCers as well. It's KIND OF like saying "well, we are now going after the EM event cheaters, so, there will be no more drops". Instead of, hmm, I don't know, maybe just GOING AFTER THE CHEATERS directly. I mean, come on, pretty much EVERYBODY knows who they are.

I do not see how making it harder to find is getting rid of the gameplay. You just have to look for houses that are already fallen at this point, which yes makes it more difficult, but not done altogether.

Merus said:

Here is how I would tweak what has been suggested:

-Keep the current suggestion that the public sign will not indicate any decay status. 

-Remove the process that clears that access/friends/co-owners from the house when the decay process starts.  I am ok with the house still becoming private.

-Increase the alert from owners only to any character on the friends/co-owners list.

-Include in the alert, the exact date and time decay can be expected.

No info of any kind on the sign.

Why all the crap about notifying co-owners?  My co owners dont have my account info, so notifying them ain't gonna get you any money and game time to refresh the house.  It just gives the co owners time to loot the house before it falls...not good

Just drop it all on the ground when house decays, and make the decay time on the loose house items lengthen to 24 hours before it decays.

Kill EJ with the same publish this goes live in to make the script scouters use paid accounts.

This would be great, would make me and a few others want to run the worlds again exploring lol

If a Super Boss, maybe a Demonic Vulture, spawned when the house dropped that would be interesting. 

The Boss must be defeated before the house contents are released or the empty spot available to place. Have it be such a boss that would terrify even regular EM Event goers. 

Once killed, if you have looting rights (via damage or healing others) you can pick up the house contents, it would be locked down for others.

BOTS would not survive it and any one who ran into this Boss would have no choice but to holler 
for help in chat.

Likely this has some holes in it, but was just an idea that popped in my head and sounded fun.

Garth_Grey said:

Why does it matter AR ? You are never the owner of any of these IDOCs you attend so you won't be notified. Why do you care how they word the change, what matters is, the house sign will no longer let scripters know anything. It's a great change, I look forward to how this all plays out.

It will play out this way:  The scriptors or people who make money by sitting next to their multiple running accounts will be the ones that find 99% of the IDOCS if they fall randomly.  They will notate the ones that seem to have items and just concentrate on those.

1% and the ones that are empty will go to players who just happen to walk by.

Notice how the 2 posters that play the IDOC game here are not unhappy with the change as far as it dropping goes.

They (scripters, not the 2 mentioned above) already walk around daily.  They may need more EJ accounts to walk around more often.

@Mesanna ; @Kyronix ; @Bleak and @Mariah

Last year newsletter , right before the team was getting ready for the holidays, You all said that the plans for the roadmap of 2020 was to "discuss" ideas with the players and Together come up with some solutions for the well known problem.
Now, today I open my email and check the newsletter and I really HOPE that those changes will be DISCUSSED with us players before goes live and it is not already set on stone!
I hope we can hear directly from you guys because Idocs were Not even once mentioned by ANY devs since Thanksgiving on all the already closed topics on this same forum, so again , please do not make any decision before discuss with us the pros and cons.
By removing the house sign status you will help the scripters once again and leaving us regular player speechless again, I hope you all realize that the Pro scripters can scan for grubbers, items, deeds and so many things, 24/7 non stop and loot all. You want to really address the matter, Please listen to what was said before, and make everything inside the house go into the house owners account bank, make a special crate and move that crate into their bank and charge a fee to retrieve the contents when they come back. this was said and suggested by many people and is the best thing to do, you will be saving their contents by when they come back, and if the house going idoc was due for some irl problem or anything, at least they will be happy to knnow that they didnt loose everything other than their house, they will have their soulstones saved, rewards, shard shields, all safe at the bank.

the removing sign idea will only make even worst and only the elite scripters will get all.

But if you decide to not listen to the player ideas and go for the change anyway, at least remove the 5,10,15 hour thing and make all houses for that day to drop at same time, so at least people could walk around all land and search for something, for that period of time, other than not known at all about anything!!  🙁
  

Uriah_Heep said:

Why all the crap about notifying co-owners?  My co owners dont have my account info, so notifying them ain't gonna get you any money and game time to refresh the house.  It just gives the co owners time to loot the house before it falls...not good

Kill EJ with the same publish this goes live in to make the script scouters use paid accounts.

I'm sure this was discussed with the players who matter.  No need muddying up the waters with common folks input.

monkgamer said:

I do not see how making it harder to find is getting rid of the gameplay. You just have to look for houses that are already fallen at this point, which yes makes it more difficult, but not done altogether.

It's not making them harder to find, it's making them impossible to find. IDOC quite literally stands for in danger of collapsing, you will not be able to find any houses that were in danger if this moves forward.
Imagine if you loved fighting dark fathers in doom, but due to some bad actors, the developers decided to randomly kill the dark fathers for you, and you had to run around the game looking for their corpses to loot. Would you not consider this changing your gameplay? Houses just blowing up randomly as if their gas line leaked is the equivalent.
I'm not suggesting that we couldn't adjust to the new system, just that it is a completely new system of play. Many of us play idoc characters and have for a decade or more. It's our style of game play, and is just as relevant as anyone else's.

Zoo said:

 Many of us play idoc characters and have for a decade or more. It's our style of game play, and is just as relevant as anyone else's. 

I agree.  If you play legit as an IDOCer you will miss a lot more than those who use other methods.

It will only slow the scripters down a little.  It took me less than 20 minutes to figure out the steps for a work around for the not showing of the idoc status on the house sign change.

TimSt said:

It will only slow the scripters down a little.  It took me less than 20 minutes to figure out the steps for a work around for the not showing of the idoc status on the house sign change.

Please enlight all the Class then... 🙂

My guess:

You can't walk onto public house steps if the house is IDOC?  

Can they spot Private houses in IDOC?

Ivenor said:

TimSt said:

It will only slow the scripters down a little.  It took me less than 20 minutes to figure out the steps for a work around for the not showing of the idoc status on the house sign change.

Please enlight all the Class then... 🙂

Here is how a scripter can do it:
1. Have Y number of characters randomly look for house signs and mark a rune stone for each house sign found.
2. Split rune stones into X number of groups
3. Assign each group to a different char
4. Have each char recall to each rune stone in their group.
5. Check if house sign exists. 
6. If it exists recall to next rune stone.
7. If house sign does not exist have vacuumers recall to this spot and start vacuuming.
8. repeat steps 4->7 within a few minutes

They do not need to read the house sign.  They just need to know if it exists or not. One character can check 124 houses in 8 to 10 minutes depending on their mana regen.

@Mahiah, Feel free to delete this comment if it violates the TOS.

JackFlashUk said:

Now time to restrict EJ accts so they cannot be script trawlers 

Absolutely !!

@Kyronix , @Bleak , @Mesanna PLEASE do not permit scripters to use free EJ Accounts to roam the Lands of Sosaria to loot clean any and all Houses that fall !!

Also, PLEASE, make it so that the items dropping on ground from Houses falling, will now have a LONGER decay time. A SIGNIFICANTLY longer decay time.

Otherwise, all these items would likely get lost.

Wouldn't it have been better to have made them spawn in Treasure Chests, SOS Chests and at the Cavern of the Discarded ?

The way it could have been handled, is that any and all items dropping from Homes could go into a huge UO Warehouse and then, randomly, they get taken from the Warehouse and put into Treasure Chests, SOS Chests and on corpses of killed spawn at the Cavern of the Discarded.....

So, players could get, occasionally, the nice surprise of getting something cool from a fallen House into a digged or fished up Chest or in the corpse of a creature killed at the Cavern of the Discarded...

As an alternative, as I said, at least make items from the fallen House be persistent for a lot more time before they decay.

Such ideas make me think, that the developers do no longer care about the people who still play this game and about the history collected by them in form of items, stored in their houses.

Often enough are people notified, that there houses are in decay by some ingame friends, come back and pay for longer. Without such notification there is no chance they could save their stuff and continue playing and paying.

Since this not always works, another example: I was coowner or friend of a house, which went into decay. In that house I had locked down one of my house teleporters. Since the friends list got cleared, I could no longer access and recover my teleporter. Contacting the owner by my known channels failed unfortunately. But I could try to collect it from the IDOC (failed unfortunately due to competition). Well it was only a teleporter. Now imagine some great items from the past, true rares, shard history like my collections of guild stones and whispering roses. House falls without anyone noticing it within the decay period for items, which is far too short for any sane player, to find it randomly. So the history would be lost. In this case I prefer to see these things go into the hands of the IDOC pros (as long as they pay for their accounts) rather than decaying forever.

Or do it as other games - all house content goes into the bank box of the owner, maybe in a mirror of a moving crate. Or store the entire house with content in a void space with the ability for the owner to access/restore it once he returns after paying a service fee. (Sure no ideas, Idocers would like.)

*Salute*
Olahorand

I have to agree with AR ….  there must be a simpler way to deal with IDOC's.  That is fair and not cause the game a massive die off of players in the near future.  

I just got my ear bit off by my son.... 

He is so angry he is yelling about the game that he rarely touches anymore...  His beef is this will in fact cause a massive exodus of players the minute a few of the big castle museums fall and no one is there to save the rare and server birth items that will decay in minutes after they fall....

I agree that this is going far to the right of the real challenge of dealing with the scripters and looters who brazenly get into these decaying homes and set up their stripping of the house in a matter of seconds of a fall...
 At first the idea sounds great... no one will know your house is in danger and will give you time to fix the issue... But as I have said when this idea was offered it comes with heavy baggage..  

Many of us older players have health issues that can side line them and can cause the game to not be looked after till its nearly too late or worse all is gone... and this has happened without the sign change.  Or you don't use the CC or Debit card listed on the account that often and its out of date.... many have lost the game homes to this happening.   Its why the 90 day bit was added along with service players who don't get to a web site too often...


I don't like the idea we could be looking at the end of UO because some player with greedy fingers is willing to do all they can to beat the system. 
Perhaps ..
id like to see other ideas before they pick this one... You cant stop the scripters.. if it was so easy the dev would have done it to get us off their backs ages ago... So we the players must help in giving them a better way.  If you know how they do it.. get off your duff and tell the dev!

I don't like the idea you have to step on the house to get the decay of it... how can I get the state of decay if the account is not on? (by any means it went off in the first place)

My son is so mad that he told me he will not pay for my accounts (with my money btw) if this kills off his hard earned work if he misses the turn on of an account that slipped through his list and was missed till he runs the door to door/account by account log in and house check...  
so Bonnie listen to me on this one  Don't put my account in danger...

But isn't it much better to mess up everyone's game than to ban the people who are actually cheating?

Asking for a friend...

This change will not prevent idoc scripters, in fact it will help them by removing their non-scripting competitors.
The problem was not the decay status on the house sign but the third party programs people use to find decaying houses, time when they go idoc and then auto loot when they fall.
Instead of preventing people from loging in using third party programs to solve this problem the devs listened to the wrong crowd and are going to implement a system that will make it near impossible for a non-scripter to find and attend a falling house. The fast decay rate of items isn't helping either.

The worst part about it is that this is mostly a trammel issue but still all facets will be affected by the change. I don't know about felucca on normal shards but on Siege Perilous scripting never was a problem at idocs because of the all fel ruleset.
I'm going to miss the fights over idocs :-/

@Kyronix @Bleak @Mesanna please reconsider this decision, it is a step in the wrong direction!

Ivenor said:

A general question: why so much people seems to use CC in monthly auto renewal for their subs and don't buy instead 6 anticipated months two time a year on Origin site???

Personally I use the 6 month auto renewal.  That way I don't have to remember to go buy codes at the Origin site.

@Ivenor ; agree 100%
everything can go wrong with CC, all my shard shield accs, I apply 2x 6 month GTC and dont need to worry about til next year!

Money...
Plain and simple.   
I have done 6 month on the mains for years.. it saves a great deal but when the bills come due and you have that emergency that wipes out the funds to do this and your left with barely the amount to pay for the accounts that month it gets hard.   Another thing I didn't mention we pay for 30 days not 31.. of the 6 months that have that many days... we get thrown off by this. As the mind says I paid for march.. and in truth you did for 99% of the month but for that last day..... this is also a way many house in the past went into decay.... before the 90 day.  

I hope @Mesanna or anyone else on the team will come and discuss this topic. I believe that moving everything into a moving crate/bank as suggested before will be way better solution.
Lot of return players will most like come back, if they know that they only lost their house and not everything else!

One day people will learn to stop complaining. Haha. 

I agree with Popps. Distribute into dungeon chests, t-maps and the cavern would be a good fit or just put into a moving crate for the owner. 

AtlanticRealtor said:

I hope @ Mesanna or anyone else on the team will come and discuss this topic. I believe that moving everything into a moving crate/bank as suggested before will be way better solution.
Lot of return players will most like come back, if they know that they only lost their house and not everything else!

I totally agree!

Max_Blackoak said:

This change will not prevent idoc scripters, in fact it will help them by removing their non-scripting competitors.
The problem was not the decay status on the house sign but the third party programs people use to find decaying houses, time when they go idoc and then auto loot when they fall.
Instead of preventing people from loging in using third party programs to solve this problem the devs listened to the wrong crowd and are going to implement a system that will make it near impossible for a non-scripter to find and attend a falling house. The fast decay rate of items isn't helping either.

The worst part about it is that this is mostly a trammel issue but still all facets will be affected by the change. I don't know about felucca on normal shards but on Siege Perilous scripting never was a problem at idocs because of the all fel ruleset.
I'm going to miss the fights over idocs :-/

@ Kyronix @ Bleak @ Mesanna please reconsider this decision, it is a step in the wrong direction!

Max, come on brother. The "Scripting was never a problem on Siege" is a ruse..the IDOC fights, yeah those are real and will be sorely missed by those that enjoyed them.

@Ivenor ; the code is already there, take a look when u convert a classic castle into a custom, everything goes into the moving crate, just move that Crate to the House owners bank, win win.

Lady_Storm said:

Money...
Plain and simple.   
I have done 6 month on the mains for years.. it saves a great deal but when the bills come due and you have that emergency that wipes out the funds to do this and your left with barely the amount to pay for the accounts that month it gets hard.   Another thing I didn't mention we pay for 30 days not 31.. of the 6 months that have that many days... we get thrown off by this. As the mind says I paid for march.. and in truth you did for 99% of the month but for that last day..... this is also a way many house in the past went into decay.... before the 90 day.  

Yup, the old sad "poor people pay more than rich ones" (e.g.: a 1 fare ticket instead of a montly bus card), this I understand VERY well, and unfortunatley for personal experience too. But it seems to me that the percentage of monthly CC renewals is a little too high to be imputable only to this factor...

AtlanticRealtor said:

@ Ivenor  the code is already there, take a look when u convert a classic castle into a custom, everything goes into the moving crate, just move that Crate to the House owners bank, win win.

You have me on this 100%! 🙂

 Make everything go into a moving crate for the house owner account and the house can fall empty no loot and when the owner back in game  and owner place or buy a new house he will can remove crate from sign house 

Last time the dev were strongly thinking to stop the 90 day decay delay, the players were up in arms over the fact it would effect a great deal of players when through no fault of their own it could happen to anyone.  With banks being lazy or the e mail of notifications not showing up to the right e mail address...   This is the one that is up with that issue. I do so agree that it would be better for returning players to at least have the contents of their house if only to have to buy a new house plot then start a whole new life with nothing but 

Lady_Storm said:

Last time the dev were strongly thinking to stop the 90 day decay delay, the players were up in arms over the fact it would effect a great deal of players when through no fault of their own it could happen to anyone.  With banks being lazy or the e mail of notifications not showing up to the right e mail address...   This is the one that is up with that issue. I do so agree that it would be better for returning players to at least have the contents of their house if only to have to buy a new house plot then start a whole new life with nothing but 

Picture it Sicily 1922, No jk picture it, someone quits "for good" and decides to pop in on an EJ to see what's going on. They can only see so much of their bank and all their stuff is right there but they can't get into everything. They resub just to see what all they had. 

Thank you to the development team for taking the time to address IDOCs!!
I feel that you are on the right track by disabling the decay status on the house signs.  They truly are the root of all evil. 

Please consider the following additional requests to go along with the house sign changes.

    1.  Send multiple e-mails to the account owner at different stages of non-payment so they would have the opportunity to save there house and belongings.
     2.  When the house falls, instead of letting all the items drop on the ground,  Put 100% of the house contents in grubbers.  You could scale the amount of grubbers to the amount of items contained in the house.  This would eliminate the items from decaying without anyone knowing it fell (grubbers don't decay do they?).   
     3.  Increase the stats of grubbers so they are difficult to kill and take some time.  Somewhere along the lines of the mobs on the highest level treasure chests but with more hit points.  The reasoning behind this is eventually the savvy scriptors will develop a way to automate there toons to wander,  detect the loot and finally pick up the loot (fully automated without a human player in control).  Difficult creatures would at the very least force them to be attended.

They probably are attented @lieutenant_dan.  If they make money as posters claim. They sit watching their monitors like a security guard all day.

There are plenty of complaints about players scripting content but the player answers the GM within the allowed time.

Better variant if put this all items on special auction(on 3 days), Special bounded items(soulstones, shield and etc) move in special crate on account(when player pay for account, he can get this again). Such we can get more optimal and truly system and remove part of gold from game. 
I think the game should strive to remove excess gold.

Cronus said:

Better variant if put this all items on special auction(on 3 days), Special bounded items(soulstones, shield and etc) move in special crate on account(when player pay for account, he can get this again). Such we can get more optimal and truly system and remove part of gold from game. 
I think the game should strive to remove excess gold.

Back in the day I did idocs all the time. Once the 5,10,15 hour fall time went into effect, I quit idocing all together, as did many other people who could not cut away that type of time from their days. 

Now... it just got worse (provided the house sign will continue to notify a general indication of falling minus the decay stage mentioned). Every single change that I have observed made to limit house scripting, has instead made it the only possible way to idoc. So now instead of people using scripts to time the time when they will fall based on the decay stage, people will be using scripts and EJ accounts to simply ghost cam houses in decay all day and night for days on end. No normal honest player will even have a remote chance at attending any future houses, and ONLY people who are scripting will have a chance at being notified when it falls.

If this is the way we are going, the house sign should not even mention that the house is falling at all, or, see above. 

Uriah_Heep said:

But isn't it much better to mess up everyone's game than to ban the people who are actually cheating?

Asking for a friend...

Banning the cheaters would be getting WAY too close to doing the RIGHT THING. 

Idoc'ing is as iconic as the game itself. These changes are terrible and basically eliminate something that has been in the game almost since it was released. I have played since the beginning. There is large part of the player base that enjoys this aspect as do I. You will lose people by these types of radical changes. Why do this when the game seems to be doing so well and is healthy? I am deeply saddened and disappointed. My family all plays and loves to idoc. I will log in less.  

this is a terrible fix if its not the worst.its just going to kill allthe idocer and no more pvp for the right of loot or place.nothing is good with this patch .keep showing the decay state and make house falling on a random timer of 12h

Lieutenant_Dan said:

Thank you to the development team for taking the time to address IDOCs!!
I feel that you are on the right track by disabling the decay status on the house signs.  They truly are the root of all evil. 

Please consider the following additional requests to go along with the house sign changes.

    1.  Send multiple e-mails to the account owner at different stages of non-payment so they would have the opportunity to save there house and belongings.
     2.  When the house falls, instead of letting all the items drop on the ground,  Put 100% of the house contents in grubbers.  You could scale the amount of grubbers to the amount of items contained in the house.  This would eliminate the items from decaying without anyone knowing it fell (grubbers don't decay do they?).   
     3.  Increase the stats of grubbers so they are difficult to kill and take some time.  Somewhere along the lines of the mobs on the highest level treasure chests but with more hit points.  The reasoning behind this is eventually the savvy scriptors will develop a way to automate there toons to wander,  detect the loot and finally pick up the loot (fully automated without a human player in control).  Difficult creatures would at the very least force them to be attended.

 3.  Increase the stats of grubbers so they are difficult to kill and take some time.

I am sorry, but with the changes, if Houses are going to fall all of a sudden, unexpectedly, and with noone there to wait for it (since it will be impossible to know when a House would fall), then Grubbers simply need to go away for good.

There would be no longer a need for them, not being there any longer any player when a House would fall.

Pawain said:

They probably are attented @ lieutenant_dan.  If they make money as posters claim. They sit watching their monitors like a security guard all day.

There are plenty of complaints about players scripting content but the player answers the GM within the allowed time.

I was told that there are scripts out there, EXTREMELY creative and complex which can answer to a Game Master....

My thoughts.. The scripters and cheaters have to go. Seems to be the root to almost all complaints.  If that makes there will be no warning at the house sign, the owner should have a warning RL  pretty fast after the payment ended. 
Houses could fall from morning maintenance to midnight , counted for each shard. 
And the stuff stay on the ground for a longer time. This would also help the newer players that hunts and expolore in the forests to get a chance of an exiteing experience. 
Im no IDOCer or new player. 20+ years of daily playing and I dont need anything , I just think this idea should have something in it for more players , exept for the scripters.

Polaris said:

.... or do shard wide, random, events... with all houses falling in 10 minutes OR LESS, with EJ accounts being UNABLE to get the maps, with all houses on every shard falling at exactly the same time Randomly each day, and signs NEVER display messages or staging of any sort.

The more I think about it, the funner this begins to sound. All IDOCs finish in 30 minutes also. Then the players can spend more time playing the game. 🙂 🙂  Best of luck guys, good luck and good hunting.

Lol at people who threaten to quit over idocs.  Youre doing it wrong.

Interesting conversational bits.

I still think having GreenAcres Free-For-All event would be fun, but I can see how that will take up EM time (now that they are working on 3 shards). So I understand that being a no.

My second fave would be to just have everything go into a "storage unit" and returning players have to pay extra to get it back. After an additional period (another 90-days? or maybe after a year), then the storage unit is pieced out to GreenAcres for a Free-For-All! 

@Polaris talks some sense in his post, I need to gnaw on it a bit more but it sounds... sound.

And I'm with AR in that ... well.. and yes I've had houses fall on me... the "change" makes no real sense actually.

• If an account holder/homeowner steps on the house steps...
• but wait... that account holder/homeowner is an INACTIVE ACCOUNT!
• So if the account holder/homeowner must first ACTIVATE the account to go step on the stair... to be told the house is IDOC? 
• But... that utterly defeats the purpose of "ADVANCE/DIRECT NOTIFICATION" for the account would *cough* be reactivated and thus the homeowner would be refreshing the house... 

*somewhat confuzzled - so what is the change?!?*

OH... no STATUS on the SIGN...
But that only really eliminates the random-run-by person, like me. The only time I do an IDOC is when I run-by and actually find... SCRIPTERS... camping a house. We all know them and know their tell-tale stance. Seeing a random pack llama in the middle of the woods near some home is another sign there is a ghost-scripter hanging out. So there must be an IDOC nearby, and I investigate, then, sure enough, there is a house from another inactive account. 

*sigh*

TO THE PROGRAMMERS

There must be some way to scan through the housing database, build a bridge to the account database, and ALERT the ACCOUNT HOLDER of house status/decay. If I can scan through a custom AUZBASE and port that data into MySQL for WordPress conversions - map 1973 CADOL data into a modern e-commerce site - I'm sure something similar can be done between the data stores of UO. If you guys are ready to dedicate resources (time/money) into the housing issue - it is essentially a User Account issue as well as User Retention.

Which all goes back to Customer Service, Public Relations, and Marketing.

Is it all really about IDOC and the playstyle?

It is really about the Scripters and the rampant scripting that has plagued UO since forever. The scripters are taking advantage of the IDOC feature - once that hole has been plugged (**cough**) then they will find some other feature to take advantage of. THAT is the issue really. Right now, IDOCs are profitable enough for the scripters to invest their resources. Remove that profitability (say, move house contents into storage - see above) - because so much has been vested into scripting, the people behind such will just find another feature to script. We see this with EM events and drops, Blackthorn's Dungeon, etc. We saw it in the past with Swoops and other boss content.

What I'm saying is that IDOC is highly profitable, kill that profit and the scripters will still want ROI and will find something else and just adjust their scripts. It is business for them, NOT ENTERTAINMENT.


The best for all involved would be to temporarily shut down the entire IDOC feature, and dedicate resources to kill scripting. Invest in a service agreement if you must (battleye.com for example) and suck up the subscription losses, for there will be a loss there. IF Broadsword spins it well, it could mean a huge return of players who have left because of the scripting (although they never say so, they just stop paying), may even lure back those who are doing the free-shard thing. You could promote it at E3 as "... the grand-daddy of MMOs takes on the Scripters - FOREVER..." 

The bad thing is not the IDOC (well, maybe the 5/10/15... but I digress), the REAL ISSUE is the scripting.

Last I saw bank boxes can hold a max of 175 items....

So here goes,
1.Player gets bored, owns a castle , leaves game, castle falls, 7500 somehow goes to a bank box? 7500 into 175? The player never returns, 7500 lost items

2. Player gets bored, owns a castle , leaves game, castle falls, 7500 somehow goes to a bank box?  The player  returns, 7500 in bank, So he/she will HAVE to somehow get a castle to be able to collect things.  Good luck on Atl shard.

Or are you suggesting that the 7500 items can be cherry picked as and when they return??
What about EJ acct rights, can they access 7500 items?

Of course the ABUSE this can lead to with RMT sellers having closed a throw away acct LOADED with stuff in a house hidden away somewhere is huge.  Wait 120 days and get free access to items.  Over 100's of accts. yes. that works very well for scripters.  

Clearly these stupid suggestions are NOT coming from idocers as we would NEVER want items to go to a bank box of a player that will prob NEVER return.  

Can a Dev actually enlighten us as to howe many players actually return after quitting and houses fall? of Course they cant, but I would suggest its low

It has already been mentioned that the script cheats are creating scripts to look for grubbers already

SCRIPTERS WIN AGAIN

A scripter at an idoc tried to convince me that they were not using an illegal script looter but was in fact using UO assist.  Now many years ago when I played 2D I am sure there was not a looter in there.

This is a poor fix once again. Punishing the legit players,  not that there are many idocers now that are legit. Many running some out of looter as I mentioned above. Many, not all, we know who they are, so not going to name names......

WHY CAN'T ALL 3RD PARTY SCRIPTS BE BLOCKED.

Punish everyone because of the cheaters. Cheaters will overcome Great move once again

Idocs are now once and for all DEAD for idocers. Business as usual with a few tweaks for the scripters and EJ abusers 

JackFlashUk said:

Last I saw bank boxes can hold a max of 175 items....

So here goes,
1.Player gets bored, owns a castle , leaves game, castle falls, 7500 somehow goes to a bank box? 7500 into 175? The player never returns, 7500 lost items

(...)

True.  The only reason that an 18x18 can't have the same lockdowns and storage as a castle is mostly because, TBH, they just don't want to make that happen.  No idea why, unless they are somehow benefitting from the high $$$ paid for castle spots on busier shards...

@Ivenor just to help others understand game mechanics and current system, lets help clarify!
Current EJ accounts can NOT access their bank contents, so the so call Abuse system , will not exist, Lets use the example of his falling castle scenario with the 7000+ items, those items will be into a house moving crate or something, like suggested before and the "return" player if ever come back will only be able to access if he subscribe again, so as you can see the system is already there and EJ accounts can NOT access them, until they pay. also something that can be add to prevent the "abuse" if any, even if the person subscribe back again, he can only access his regular bank storage, but the "saved" house moving crate he will be forced to plot or buy a house on any shard that he may pick and than retrieve.

You claimed that the suggestion is also not coming from an "Idocer" and Here I am as an Idocer also suggesting that If they will change something and prevent any further problems, may as well have the entire content of the house goes into the moving crate / bank / account owner and is done. Find something else to play on UO.

Ivenor said:

JackFlashUk said:

Last I saw bank boxes can hold a max of 175 items....

So here goes,
1.Player gets bored, owns a castle , leaves game, castle falls, 7500 somehow goes to a bank box? 7500 into 175? The player never returns, 7500 lost items

(...)

Ehr, Jack, do you realize that we are NOT speaking of REAL Objects & Space here, yes? 😂

We are speaking only of DB pointers (BBox of Toon A has tot iteration of Item X, tot of Item Y, and so on), and the difference in REAL storage (Cloud memory & processing) costs between 175 & 7500 STATIC (considering that the Player is NOT accessing them) DB POINTERS is NEGLIGIBLE???

With 60% bonus an 18x18 is over 3838 storage or something like at a castle 7.5k storage. How does that fit in a bank box. How can you access it when and if you return.  And what if you decide to come back from Europa Like I did and start on Atlantic, are my 7500 going to have a fee transfer with me. Or are the 7500 items going to be stuck on a shard you dont even play.
Or that you are forced to return to a ghost shard just to get you old crap back ?

it does not make any sense.  You are being rewarded by quitting and returning when you don’t deserve it because you stop paying subs.  It’s a joke right?

all this dancing around is still not tackling the obvious problem.  Scripting and cheating at idocs.  

EJ accts can access a part of the bank box.    

Uriah_Heep said:

True.  The only reason that an 18x18 can't have the same lockdowns and storage as a castle is mostly because, TBH, they just don't want to make that happen.  No idea why, unless they are somehow benefitting from the high $$$ paid for castle spots on busier shards...

IMO more as a way to incentivate players that are interested in Houses to have something to aspire to (bigger Houses), and, clearly, to make some money in the process, to keep the lights on: NEGLIGIBLE is NOT the same as ZERO when you scale it up for the whole ACTIVE UO made of [(25 Shards) x (2 Facet each)] + 2 Siege Shards + TC... 🙂

AtlanticRealtor said:

@ Ivenor just to help others understand game mechanics and current system, lets help clarify!
Current EJ accounts can NOT access their bank contents, so the so call Abuse system , will not exist, Lets use the example of his falling castle scenario with the 7000+ items, those items will be into a house moving crate or something, like suggested before and the "return" player if ever come back will only be able to access if he subscribe again, so as you can see the system is already there and EJ accounts can NOT access them, until they pay. also something that can be add to prevent the "abuse" if any, even if the person subscribe back again, he can only access his regular bank storage, but the "saved" house moving crate he will be forced to plot or buy a house on any shard that he may pick and than retrieve.

You claimed that the suggestion is also not coming from an "Idocer" and Here I am as an Idocer also suggesting that If they will change something and prevent any further problems, may as well have the entire content of the house goes into the moving crate / bank / account owner and is done. Find something else to play on UO.

How do you put 7500 items into a 3838 house when you return and you are lucky enough to place a max storage ATL house without abusing game mechanics.  Leave all the extra items safely in the crate until you wish to access them ?

Ban scripters and that kills all RMT sites. Return idocs to 7hr fall time. Keep signs. Get rid of placement rimer

ans yes. Incase it did not sink in. Ban scripters 

I agree.  The players who suck up every item in 3 seconds is the issue. 

The signs and timers did not need to change.  Now they will scout around 24 hours a day and send in the cleanup crew when they find the items that fell <15 mins ago.

See no evil.......problem solved.

Account goes inactive. House falls. Everything safe in crate in bank.  eJ opened 120 days later and checks bank. You see 25 items. Not that one. Switch to another EJ acct. check bank. Ah yes that’s the one. Full of high end items. Fire up,acct.  the abuse of game mechanics is obvious   

New rules just help scripters.  Alway do. If you dont return idocs to a 7 hr fall time within the shards usual 2/3 hour fall window only scripters win.  No sane player will just aimlessly trawl their shard in the hope of finding and idoc

while toy are at it you need to increase decay time aswell so some has a slight chance of finding something

so no house sign. 5/10/15 hr fall windows. Lol what a joke   There is not a legal player on this Earth that is going to pay fees just to run sounds endlessly looking for idocs.   And if there is. Then come see me and I will give you a wake up slap

 😂  I never get threads locked.   

Pawain said:

 😂  I never get threads locked.   

Be good! 🙂

Mariah said:

Be good! 🙂

Done! 😂

Spawn difficult monsters with each IDOC when it falls.  Similar to grubbers but much tougher to kill and with a lot more hit points.  Something like the Blackthorn dungeon captains but with +- 10,000 HP each. 
Scale the amount of monsters that spawn to the amount of contents that the falling house is holding.
Put 100% of the house contents on the monsters.

This would turn the IDOC into a little mini event of sorts.
Everyone there killing the IDOC monsters gets a fair share with the loot split when loot rights is divided up on the corpses.  Loot scripting problem is solved with nothing on the ground to vacuum up.

They started with grubbers but unfortunately grubbers only take a few items from the house.  They are also way to easy to kill.  If they made them deadly and with a lot more hit points then grubbers would work.

They could also leave the house signs displaying the decay status if they do the above.  But the only problem with leaving the house signs on is that it doesn't do anything to address script house placers (house placing is still a problem with scripters even with the timer on the placement tool).
That being said I am still all for shutting the house signs off so long as they e-mail the account owner during different stages of non-payment.

After reading it all here's my 02 cents :

- Remove the ''step message thing'' and instead put the state of the house back on the house sign but only visible to the players that were : friend/co-owners/access to the house in question. (Can still clear those people from house access at decay start, but make them able to see the state of the house on the sign) . Problem fixed , I like this whole new idea overall , complicate the scripters life to detect idocs by +1000% , it's a step in a good direction.

quickblade said:

After reading it all here's my 02 cents :

- Remove the ''step message thing'' and instead put the state of the house back on the house sign but only visible to the players that were : friend/co-owners/access to the house in question. (Can still clear those people from house access at decay start, but make them able to see the state of the house on the sign) . Problem fixed , I like this whole new idea overall , complicate the scripters life to detect idocs by +1000% , it's a step in a good direction.

Or, only paying accounts can see the status.

Im happy something is getting done. My 1st vote was for stopping the cheating if that couldn't be done then 2nd vote was for putting stuff in a crate for when players came back. 

having friends only see the house sign doesn't really matter I don't think. houses fall in 5 days so instead of clicking on sign you now see if you can still step in house. If you cant then better hurry and let friend know something is up. 

5, 10, 15 thing... Its  good. Some players are not at home to do 5 hour idocs so they get the ones at 15 hours. 

As idoc are right now you don't have to cheat to find or time them, just spend a stupid amount of time doing it. With the change we might see a new playstyle, folks just running the lands looking for free stuff all over the ground or castle spots. I don't think this is going to stop the cheaters, I think this might help them because they will set up programs to search for items and spots without having to play the game and will have no competition from other players picking up free items or placing.  But then again maybe this will stop the cheaters and they will not be able to search everywhere all the time. 

Please don't make all items go on a monster. There are some players in this game that don't have fighters and as it is now we only get those neat deco items if we buy them, get lucky on a holiday gift or pick them up for free off the ground. 

I don't think hiding the statues on the house sign is fixing the problem at all, but im glad something is getting done. 

Garth_Grey said:

Max_Blackoak said:

This change will not prevent idoc scripters, in fact it will help them by removing their non-scripting competitors.
The problem was not the decay status on the house sign but the third party programs people use to find decaying houses, time when they go idoc and then auto loot when they fall.
Instead of preventing people from loging in using third party programs to solve this problem the devs listened to the wrong crowd and are going to implement a system that will make it near impossible for a non-scripter to find and attend a falling house. The fast decay rate of items isn't helping either.

The worst part about it is that this is mostly a trammel issue but still all facets will be affected by the change. I don't know about felucca on normal shards but on Siege Perilous scripting never was a problem at idocs because of the all fel ruleset.
I'm going to miss the fights over idocs :-/

@ Kyronix @ Bleak @ Mesanna please reconsider this decision, it is a step in the wrong direction!

Max, come on brother. The "Scripting was never a problem on Siege" is a ruse..the IDOC fights, yeah those are real and will be sorely missed by those that enjoyed them.

Never have I seen scripters with 5 pack horses each vacuming up all items in seconds when the house dropped. They and their pack horses wouldn't have lasted long enough.

JackFlashUk said:

WHY CAN'T ALL 3RD PARTY SCRIPTS BE BLOCKED.

Punish everyone because of the cheaters. Cheaters will overcome Great move once again

Idocs are now once and for all DEAD for idocers. Business as usual with a few tweaks for the scripters and EJ abusers 

quote for truth... :-(

After reading more, I have a new idea, an amalgamation of some I read here:

1. only paid accounts can see the status of a falling house
2. When the house falls, all the items fall into separate boxes
3. only paid accounts have access to those boxes, and there is a random delay from picking items up from the chests, so no macros or scripts can nab the items form those chests immediately.

or to support UO:


only accounts that purchase a "clean up crew" token with origin coins, can loot the boxes. This token lasts for 30 days, and costs 10 dollars, and is good for getting items from chests that fall from idocs for that month. Or maybe 5 dollars a month etc That way, the idoc fun stays, but you gotta kinda pay for access. This increases the ods since not everyone will pay, and cuts out those randoms completely.

Or those tokens are given out randomly to people, so everyone has a chance?

Just shooting out ideas

Is there anyway for them to ban pack animals from a large area around a house that has fallen? 

monkgamer said:

After reading more, I have a new idea, an amalgamation of some I read here:

1. only paid accounts can see the status of a falling house

Paid accounts are the ones bringing in all the EJ vacuum cleaners. Actual EJ players have no storage and can't place vendors.

These changes remove all competition from the cheaters. Instead of getting 90% of items, they will now get 99% of items. They have bots, sort of like ghost cams at champ spawns that login / logout at every champion spawn once per hour to see if it is active. The same bot'ing programs spam messages over and over in general chat selling gold, there are never "people" there. They have the same bots that are programmed to login every 20 minutes and start their route. It takes hours to run the world... that's why they use 10 bots on Atlantic. On other shards... they only have to use 4 or 5 because of the profit margin and competition being lower. The teams split up, and each run several bots on each shard to find Idocs.

They will now simply program their bots to.... search for "fallen contents" on the ground rather than "scanning house signs." They will know all loot locations 2 or 3 hours before any honest player. Not just that... you won't even find items on the ground before they disappear most likely. They will, they will now get 99% of the loot instead of 90%.

Attaching the Moving crate to the bank box as read only container should not be a big problem. No abuse by EJ possible.

Overloaded moving crate would block the bank box, therefor an incentive to place a house again.

Placing the moving crate too full for the house it is reclaimed in would block locking down any items, so you can only take from it, what fits in your backpack unto the total number is lower than what the house supports.

(I don't care if it is 500 or 7500 items - I never understood why initially the items one can lock down are different for players paying the same fee.)

*Salute*
Olahorand

LOL

Just do away with the 2d client, put UO on Steam, you'll get new subscribers after they see the EC graphics and they'll more than make up for the loss of 2d players. 🙂 In all seriousness, this will absolutely put to bed scripting, so why not do it ? See what happens. Somebody had to say it, and it's no sillier than other ideas being tossed around.

monkgamer said:

only accounts that purchase a "clean up crew" token with origin coins, can loot the boxes. This token lasts for 30 days, and costs 10 dollars, and is good for getting items from chests that fall from idocs for that month. Or maybe 5 dollars a month etc That way, the idoc fun stays, but you gotta kinda pay for access. This increases the ods since not everyone will pay, and cuts out those randoms completely.

Or those tokens are given out randomly to people, so everyone has a chance?

Just shooting out ideas


More pay to win...

*sigh*

In that case, I think the idea of putting  items in a box and in the characters bank a good idea.

Or to keep idoc gameplay going.. putting all the drops in a chest and somehow control the way that gets doled out.

Keeping the way it is now, or their new proposed changes, will still allow those botters to get items and probably end up on real money sites.

My vote is for removing idoc gameplay and lettign people keep their stuff or DRASTICALLY changing how those items are doled out.

Just shutdown EJ accts, they are only used for illegal reasons on 99.8% of them.  Either that or they have to be extremely limited to almost nothing in which case people wont use them might as well just stop them.  Since EJ came out the amount of illegal farming and scripting has gone up at least 500%.  This alone will stop a huge amount of cheating,  at least make the people pay to cheat since you wont stop them!!!!

How about just putting all contents of an idoc in a moving crate that the owner will have 30 days to unpack. Anything left inside the crate at the end of 30 days is auctioned off to highest bidder with no knowledge of what or how many items are inside the auction.

AtomicBetty said:

How about just putting all contents of an idoc in a moving crate that the owner will have 30 days to unpack. Anything left inside the crate at the end of 30 days is auctioned off to highest bidder with no knowledge of what or how many items are inside the auction.

all idoc items just go randomly into paying subscriber players banks. never know what you will get, or when you will get it or if you get anything.

Or lottery. each idoc chest is lotteried off for tickets. tickets cost certain amount of gold.

Garth_Grey said:

Just do away with the 2d client, put UO on Steam, you'll get new subscribers after they see the EC graphics and they'll more than make up for the loss of 2d players. 🙂 In all seriousness, this will absolutely put to bed scripting, so why not do it ? See what happens. Somebody had to say it, and it's no sillier than other ideas being tossed around.

Oh my days. We can actually agree on something 

JollyJade said:

Ivenor said:

HEY FOLKS: SHUT YA ALL THE HOLES FOR ONE SEC, WILLYA???

Do you realize that we are having a 4 PAGES LONG discussion WHITOUT ANYONE INSULTING ANYONE OTHER and thus forcing the Mods to lock the Thread???

Methink this is a Britanniabreaking record, and we deserve a collective hug!!! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️  😂

If I told people to shut up in capital letters @ Mariah would give me a count and delete it. It's just her usual double standards. 

You can make simple scripts to do actions while your at the computer and nothing like the scripts on the cc.... The cc is the problem and needs to be fixed just Google all the scripts for the cc and then for the EC and see that the EC does nothing close at all afk

JollyJade said:

Ivenor said:

HEY FOLKS: SHUT YA ALL THE HOLES FOR ONE SEC, WILLYA???

Do you realize that we are having a 4 PAGES LONG discussion WHITOUT ANYONE INSULTING ANYONE OTHER and thus forcing the Mods to lock the Thread???

Methink this is a Britanniabreaking record, and we deserve a collective hug!!! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️  😂

If I told people to shut up in capital letters @ Mariah would give me a count and delete it. It's just her usual double standards. 

@Mariah ; should actually perma ban you this time, for insulting her methods of moderation on the official forums and for making yet another attempt to get a thread locked.

To go with now not displaying the house sign make EJ accounts only usable on the EC client and those throw away bots disappear ... Sure they can still use paying accounts but they actually risking loosing that account

Garth_Grey said:

JollyJade said:

If I told people to shut up in capital letters @ Mariah would give me a count and delete it. It's just her usual double standards. 

@ Mariah  should actually perma ban you this time, for insulting her methods of moderation on the official forums and for making yet another attempt to get a thread locked.

+ + +  Get rid of the irrelevant and self pity posts.

There is a lot of good theory crafting going on in this thread.  It's given me a chance to think how things will work out with house signs and my opinion is beginning to sway towards leaving the house signs the way they are.

My initial thoughts were if they couldn't tell the house was in the decay process via the sign that it would remove the buffer time for a single player to set up a dozen accounts to script loot the contents in a matter of seconds when it finally does fall.  Which is true to a certain degree but it still wouldn't stop them from dominating with the use illegal scripts. 
Instead of bots wandering around marking runes and logging decaying houses the bots would now be wandering around and gating other script bots to it's location for the sole purpose of looting when it detects idoc loot laying on the ground.  It is my belief that they would have new scripts written within days of the launch to be able to do this process fully automated and unattended 24/7 365 days a year on all shards.  NOT good and not something any legitimate would be able to compete against. 

So what do you do to combat script looting at IDOCs?  
Well in the simplest terms their bots are just picking stuff up off the ground right?
Okay simple.  Don't let any of the house contents hit the ground.  Problem solved.

I mean really?  An ENTIRE UO life savings just laying on the ground to be picked up?!?  It's just to easy!

I'll say it again.  DON'T LET ANY OF THE HOUSE CONTENTS HIT THE GROUND!

Oh but what do we do with the house contents if it doesn't hit the ground you ask?  There are several options.  Some have been suggested in this thread which i will elaborate on and give my 2 cents.  I'm sure there are other ideas that haven't been thought up yet as well and we can discuss the pro's and cons of those when they do.  But the important part to remember, and i'll say it again.  Don't let any of the house contents hit the ground! 


Option #1
     Put all House contents in a moving crate for the owner to retrieve from his/her bank box when and IF they return.
This appears to be the most logical and humane thing to do to give players that quit incentive to return.   I'm only about 10% behind this idea and 90% opposed for several reasons listed below
.
 The 90% opposed part.
IDOCs would be done.  A long standing play style for years would be eliminated.  Even though i stopped doing idocs (because of the cheaters) it would sadden me to see the tradition gone.
If the player never returns for whatever reason (permanent lack of interest, banned, death ect ect) then any contents of significant importance to shard history would be lost forever.
If a player knows he/she is quieting they are already  fully capable of putting valuables in their bank boxes.  Not doing so makes loosing those items kind of there own fault.
Players would exploit and abuse the ability to send all of the house contents into their bank box.  Essentially getting free storage at no cost.  I can see this abuse causing UO to loose paid subscriptions. 

The 10% approved part
As an incentive for returning players I feel that all account bound items such as soulstones and shard shields should be moved to a moving crate and placed in the players bank box.


Option #2
     Put 100% of the house contents on tough monsters that spawn when the house falls. Minus account bound items that would get sent to a moving crate.  The amount of monsters would be scaled to the amount of contents in the house. The monsters should be tough enough to kill anyone that isn't fully attended and capable of defending themselves.  The monsters should also have enough hit points so that everyone attending has time to do enough damage to get looting rights.  The captains from Blackthorns dungeon would work well for this scenerio (or something similar in strength,  HP's and offensive power)

 I'm thinking each IDOC would turn into a little mini event where everyone attending would not only be fighting for looting rights but also for there lives.  
 When each monster dies the loot from the house on that monster would be divided up FAIRLY to all of those attending that did enough damage to get looting rights.
If you want another players life savings for free?  Well you're just going to have to fight for it.


Option #3
     Put everything except account bound items in random Trove treasure chests.  Throw treasure hunters a bone!  The loot from IDOCs is kinda like treasure right?  

This would work in combating script looters and actually sounds really cool but for reasons stated above I wouldn't be for it.  Again it would kill the long standing tradition of doing IDOCs.

Option #4
   Create new treasure maps that strictly contain the contents of an IDOCed house when it falls. 
Give the treasure maps a name.  Perhaps something like "Lost Treasures of (players name on house)"
Place these new treasure maps on mobs that spawn when the house falls (similar to option #2).
The maps would then be distributed to everyone that got looting rights on the mobs.  They could even drop in your pack like artifacts when the mob dies.
You can then go dig them up at your leisure on your treasure hunter to see if you got anything good or not.

There's 4 options in combating script looters.  Some old some new.  I would be interested in hearing what you guys would consider doing with the loot if it no longer hits the ground.



To summarize my thoughts on how to proceed with script looters we should deal with 4 major aspects.
1-  Don't do anything that would completely eliminate the long standing tradition of IDOCing.
2-  Do completely eliminate the scripters abilities and advantages they have now
3-  Make IDOCs challenging and expand on the content rather than removing it.
4-  Give players that quit an incentive to return by placing their account bound items in their bank boxes

And with that i will say this one last time lol

'DON'T LET ANY OF THE HOUSE CONTENTS HIT THE GROUND'

Max_Blackoak said:

I really think the only alternative to this pseudo fix is to simply ban all third party programs. If that means they'll have to ban UOAssist then so be it.

Work the features that the oficially allowed programs like UOAssist, UOCartographer etc. offered into the respective clients. What the devs did with the most recent changes to the classic client (record suits, potion macros etc.) was a step into the right direction. Expand on this to replace UOAssist and the map programs out there and then simply ban all third party programs and enforce that rule.

This would take care of the entire scripting issue, including idoc scripters and it wouldn't punish those who play the game by the rules.

@ Mesanna @ Kyronix @ Bleak please consider this option. If this means you'll have to spend more time on it to fix this, I'm sure most would be happy to wait a little longer.

The only post that's realistic and the only post that makes sense. The root of damn near 99% of UO's issues are the 3rd party programs that allow players to script. Just kill it already.

If they got rid of the CC to eliminate scripting I would bet my account that a new script engine that supports the EC would be created within months (if it doesn't already exist).  Back to square one but without our CC.

Max_Blackoak said:

I really think the only alternative to this pseudo fix is to simply ban all third party programs. If that means they'll have to ban UOAssist then so be it.

Work the features that the oficially allowed programs like UOAssist, UOCartographer etc. offered into the respective clients. What the devs did with the most recent changes to the classic client (record suits, potion macros etc.) was a step into the right direction. Expand on this to replace UOAssist and the map programs out there and then simply ban all third party programs and enforce that rule.

This would take care of the entire scripting issue, including idoc scripters and it wouldn't punish those who play the game by the rules.

@ Mesanna @ Kyronix @ Bleak please consider this option. If this means you'll have to spend more time on it to fix this, I'm sure most would be happy to wait a little longer.

Yes this would be the ideal solution for IDOC's along with so many other scripts unrelated to idocs that plague UO.
I'm 100% with this under two conditions
     1-  It would have to be 100% fool proof guaranteed to block all current scripting methods used now and no way for savvy programmers to work around anti script measures.  It would REALY have to work.  Can they do that?
     2-  Vast improvements to the CC to include a better map and macro abilities.  Specifically the ability to use the mouse wheel for targeting (pretty much the only reason i still use UOAssist).

Lieutenant_Dan said:

There is a lot of good theory crafting going on in this thread.  It's given me a chance to think how things will work out with house signs and my opinion is beginning to sway towards leaving the house signs the way they are.

My initial thoughts were if they couldn't tell the house was in the decay process via the sign that it would remove the buffer time for a single player to set up a dozen accounts to script loot the contents in a matter of seconds when it finally does fall.  Which is true to a certain degree but it still wouldn't stop them from dominating with the use illegal scripts. 
Instead of bots wandering around marking runes and logging decaying houses the bots would now be wandering around and gating other script bots to it's location for the sole purpose of looting when it detects idoc loot laying on the ground.  It is my belief that they would have new scripts written within days of the launch to be able to do this process fully automated and unattended 24/7 365 days a year on all shards.  NOT good and not something any legitimate would be able to compete against. 

So what do you do to combat script looting at IDOCs?  
Well in the simplest terms their bots are just picking stuff up off the ground right?
Okay simple.  Don't let any of the house contents hit the ground.  Problem solved.

I mean really?  An ENTIRE UO life savings just laying on the ground to be picked up?!?  It's just to easy!

I'll say it again.  DON'T LET ANY OF THE HOUSE CONTENTS HIT THE GROUND!

Oh but what do we do with the house contents if it doesn't hit the ground you ask?  There are several options.  Some have been suggested in this thread which i will elaborate on and give my 2 cents.  I'm sure there are other ideas that haven't been thought up yet as well and we can discuss the pro's and cons of those when they do.  But the important part to remember, and i'll say it again.  Don't let any of the house contents hit the ground! 


Option #1
     Put all House contents in a moving crate for the owner to retrieve from his/her bank box when and IF they return.
This appears to be the most logical and humane thing to do to give players that quit incentive to return.   I'm only about 10% behind this idea and 90% opposed for several reasons listed below
.
 The 90% opposed part.
IDOCs would be done.  A long standing play style for years would be eliminated.  Even though i stopped doing idocs (because of the cheaters) it would sadden me to see the tradition gone.
If the player never returns for whatever reason (permanent lack of interest, banned, death ect ect) then any contents of significant importance to shard history would be lost forever.
If a player knows he/she is quieting they are already  fully capable of putting valuables in their bank boxes.  Not doing so makes loosing those items kind of there own fault.
Players would exploit and abuse the ability to send all of the house contents into their bank box.  Essentially getting free storage at no cost.  I can see this abuse causing UO to loose paid subscriptions. 

The 10% approved part
As an incentive for returning players I feel that all account bound items such as soulstones and shard shields should be moved to a moving crate and placed in the players bank box.


Option #2
     Put 100% of the house contents on tough monsters that spawn when the house falls. Minus account bound items that would get sent to a moving crate.  The amount of monsters would be scaled to the amount of contents in the house. The monsters should be tough enough to kill anyone that isn't fully attended and capable of defending themselves.  The monsters should also have enough hit points so that everyone attending has time to do enough damage to get looting rights.  The captains from Blackthorns dungeon would work well for this scenerio (or something similar in strength,  HP's and offensive power)

 I'm thinking each IDOC would turn into a little mini event where everyone attending would not only be fighting for looting rights but also for there lives.  
 When each monster dies the loot from the house on that monster would be divided up FAIRLY to all of those attending that did enough damage to get looting rights.
If you want another players life savings for free?  Well you're just going to have to fight for it.


Option #3
     Put everything except account bound items in random Trove treasure chests.  Throw treasure hunters a bone!  The loot from IDOCs is kinda like treasure right?  

This would work in combating script looters and actually sounds really cool but for reasons stated above I wouldn't be for it.  Again it would kill the long standing tradition of doing IDOCs.

Option #4
   Create new treasure maps that strictly contain the contents of an IDOCed house when it falls. 
Give the treasure maps a name.  Perhaps something like "Lost Treasures of (players name on house)"
Place these new treasure maps on mobs that spawn when the house falls (similar to option #2).
The maps would then be distributed to everyone that got looting rights on the mobs.  They could even drop in your pack like artifacts when the mob dies.
You can then go dig them up at your leisure on your treasure hunter to see if you got anything good or not.

There's 4 options in combating script looters.  Some old some new.  I would be interested in hearing what you guys would consider doing with the loot if it no longer hits the ground.



To summarize my thoughts on how to proceed with script looters we should deal with 4 major aspects.
1-  Don't do anything that would completely eliminate the long standing tradition of IDOCing.
2-  Do completely eliminate the scripters abilities and advantages they have now
3-  Make IDOCs challenging and expand on the content rather than removing it.
4-  Give players that quit an incentive to return by placing their account bound items in their bank boxes

And with that i will say this one last time lol

'DON'T LET ANY OF THE HOUSE CONTENTS HIT THE GROUND'

@Kyronix , @Bleak , @Mesanna , please, listen to this player !!

The Alternative options sound very interesting to me and would likely take scripters out of the picture....

Not all scripters, though, since we know that there are ALSO BOTs out there with scripts that enable them to "also" fight, but still, it would reduce the issue or at least make life for scripters a bit harder.....

Then, if you go with Alternative Options # 3 or 4, I think only manually controlled Characters could handle them, the scripted BOTs often used to Farm some Spawns I have doubts that could be used to script these....

So, hopefully, chosing either Option # 3 or Option # 4 the IDOCs scripting would have been dealt with most effectively....

Please, at least consider such alternatives and do not introduce changes that would still let Scripters have it their way.

Thanks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

monkgamer said:

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

QFT

Here is the reality. The OVERWHELMING, and only, problem with IDOC's is the SCRIPTERS/CHEATERS. But for some reason, the devs, can't/won't ban them. Even though EVERYONE knows who they are (except the devs?). Including the one's who script place houses, and sell houses and accounts for RMT (which Mesanna has had proof sent to her). Making changes that will only HELP them (which is what the proposed change actually does) is like pouring gasoline on a fire, and spitting in the face of the honest players.  

UNTIL SCRIPTERS/CHEATERS ARE BANNED, NOTHING WILL CHANGE, and honest players will continue to get fed up, and quit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

KHAN said:

Here is the reality. The OVERWHELMING, and only, problem with IDOC's is the SCRIPTERS/CHEATERS. But for some reason, the devs, can't/won't ban them. Even though EVERYONE knows who they are (except the devs?). Including the one's who script place houses, and sell houses and accounts for RMT (which Mesanna has had proof sent to her). Making changes that will only HELP them (which is what the proposed change actually does) is like pouring gasoline on a fire, and spitting in the face of the honest players.  

UNTIL SCRIPTERS/CHEATERS ARE BANNED, NOTHING WILL CHANGE, and honest players will continue to get fed up, and quit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

aaand THIS!!!!!

The development team really only has 3 options when dealing with scripters

1- Ban the scripters. 
According to the news letter they're getting them but other than that i'm not seing it.  The script looters at IDOCs are so blatantly obvious yet we see the same people doing it over and over again.  How they get away with it i dont know.  Perhaps the GM lacks sufficient proof.
 
2- Block 3rd party programs so scripts can not be ran
I'm not sure if this is even possible but if it is I would give up UOAssist and Pinco's for it to happen.

3- The soft approach.  Tweak game mechanics to make it difficult to script.
This is clearly the way they're going and it seems to be the most labor intensive as they would have to deal with each problem with a case by case solution.  Not only that but it only works if done correctly for each case otherwise the people scripting will simply adjust with a newer script.

Uriah_Heep said:

monkgamer said:

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

QFT

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

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

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

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

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

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

Merus said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Urge said:

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

Switching roles?

Merus said:

Urge said:

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

Switching roles?

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

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

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

MissE said:

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

For example:

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

The_Higgs_1 said:

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

The_Higgs_1 said:

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

Polaris said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Max_Blackoak said:

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

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

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

Amen, MissE, amen.  

MissE said:

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

The_Higgs_1 said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or am I wrong in my thinking ?

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

Merus said:

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

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

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


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

Well said, I couldn't agree more!

To add a bit to the discussion:

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

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

AtomicBetty said:

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

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

So glad everyone is invested in IDOC's! 

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

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

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

Mesanna