Changelogs - 2023

[Cerrera]

Who are you? - A golden fish, i can reward you by filling three of your wishes, if you let me free. - Oh nice, than i want my hands to be beyond horizon. - Your first wish is executed. - Woow so cool, awesome, but its a bit uncomfortable, i cannot see my fingers, think i touched spruce needles so turn my hands back in normal length. - Your second wish is executed. - Oh nice, can see my fingers again, all good. But hey it was so fun, want my hands to be beyond horizon again. - Your third wish is executed. - Woohoo so strange and unusual, ehh forgot that cannot see my fingers, turn my hands back in to normal length.- You have no more wishes left, farewell.

Humm saw that most frequent drop from balys was about 2k with tail, so guessed thats trickery, changes is done and numbers is simply randomized more on low side. but noticed that it doesn't seems to be dependent from how long that balron lives. Now i see, that explains, but does it means that i just believed that they drop less, or they really was? Nop not just tmap ones, every.

No am with all four against any house maintenance costs. You don't have enough with reality? And if something happends, that you cannot log in in that certain period, and all what you did is gone? So whats next a deed to reduce maintenance cost by 100% in auction? Think there is some prejudice that bought privileges is somehow better than earned or those what you have by default.

Fel wrong nerf, By the way i think there is no reason to be there if someone is already hunting in it, you can make better gold somewhere else. And In last period there is almost always someone. Also even if you are not alone, after 2 circles around dungeon you already feel that spawners not catching up, so i guess in that case program could decide that you are macro farming and decrease spawn timer even more, is there a way to make it ''understand'' ? If its even neccessary? Players nerfing it themselves.

Value of resources, have no idea whats wrong with wood,metal and leather, think they goes for a pretty good price, cannot imagine someone buying thousands of them to recycle trashbods, if they were costing even more. But perhaps there is not many people recycling them, so am just dumb . Some misc stuff living hard times now, some stone (considering it comes hard) ointments goes hand in hand with regs, so thats lawfully. guessing when they will reach certain point, people will buy them out to make their experiments, fun or just a profit in future. but yeah those and some other misc dropped really low.

Ps... ahh lol catched up about nerfing wrong was sarcasm , don't want to rewrite again so will leave it as it is.
Yes believe increasing gap also wouldn't be good. There were alternative solution about nerfing eds.

Think this is slippery questions, where turn as want, someone will be unhappy.

Anyway this was done and planned changelogs topic, so i feel like am messing it up by discussing.

[Dirtybook]

I have something to add as well. Most of you won't understand what I am about to say, and will likely disagree with it. Then again, most people are not capable of introspection within themselves to see past the moment they are currently in. So If this is not very well received, I will not be surprised.

I have gone ahead and quit playing UO. I am sure some of you may have ran by where my home used to be, and see a barren lot now. (Unless it's been taken.) I just don't feel like playing anymore. I might re-appear in a year or 2.. we will see how things go. I do however keep up with these forum posts, to keep an eye on any real changes to the server. To see if I want to come back some day. This change log however, I won't lie, made me smirk and chuckle a bit.

It's well known I have no love for the Gold Farmers that dominated the Balron spots, and that I have been very vocal about it. I will make this clear.. I have no issues with wealthy players, that have been on here for a long time and have saved it up, or those that have donated for their wealth either. Or for any combination of the 2. However.. I have had a specific problem with the Gold Farmers for a particular reason, that has nothing to do with any form of jealousy of their wealth on my part. Wealth means very little to me. I can just erase and restart when I wish. Getting back to where I have relayers and other goodies has never been an issue with me. UO is a very easy game to me.

My main issue I have ever had with the Gold Farmers, is what there monopolizing does to the server, and their attitudes. It imposes player based inflation. Argue if you want, but the macro farmers, gold and otherwise hold the highest prices on the server for items on the server. As well as buying up all the Auction items that they can, to profit off the fact no one else can afford them. (I've seen a lot of Auction items on vendors before I left... no one can say they aren't monopolizing those items.) Which others then are subject to the new none-auction prices, because they cannot secure these items as fast as the Farmers can.. This becomes a groupthink issue. The next thing they do, is enforce how people "must" play, as it works to make them more money to enforce a one directional game play, to those who aspire to be like those farmers. Whom have perpetual wealth with little to no effort. They also enforce this by a mean comment here, a rude comment there, and at times, out right making fun of them on World Chat to shame them. Which is a Groupthink tactic of social ostrization, with the aim to push conformity. That will end up making these people more money in the market. Basically, conformity is pushed, to protect the interests of the person/s pushing it. That is in any book on marketing tactics. (Please, support your local library.)

I was making about 2-3 million a day, just using a spellbook in hand, flinging magic spells rather than use a Yumi. (I actually controlled my character, and hunted manually.) I was made fun of for that. However, with this change, it looks like lazy players will actually have to hunt.. like everyone else, and like I had to.. hmmm... Ironic, dontcha think?

Maximum payout, for little to no effort is the fantastical dream of anyone who has worked at a job for more than a year. But as it has been said.. "Absolute power corrupts, absolutely." It makes the people who attain this fantasy position of wealth in a video game, become well... horrible people.

To me, even if he increases the gold on Balron to be more than it is right now which I am sure will be way less than before, it means "some people" will actually have to "try", to make gold.. like the rest of us. Basically making "how" you hunt, a "Preference" (as it should be), not an enforced conformed playing path, with social consequences, should you disobey. (Lots of people get turned off by being told "how" they are allowed to play, and just leave out of frustration, when they find the population at large punishes them for more personal preferences in their game play. Or, people just count them out of the guilds or the quests on the server. Such is the punishment for non-conformity. Many find it much easier to hate, than be kind and tolerant these days.)

Greedy behavior, and intolerance, is more of the problem than the hunting on this server. I honestly don't care if anyone else believes me on this point. The Admin can only sculpt the server to what the players want/need. Clearly, there is a need to stop the players who only benefit them selves, while the "majority" of the players has something to say about it." its not a "minority" of players that have vocalized how they feel. Many leave because they are ignored. So it is easy to discount them from the larger group that has spoken, and claim it's only a minority. (Otherwise, numbers wouldn't be going down.) Don't forget, this is "his" server, and I am on board with his changes, even if I end up disagreeing with any of the changes in the future he may make. I am sure his reasoning has merit. The less he listens to the people constantly telling him what he "needs" to do, the better. Let he man work.

Someone on this thread mentioned how you can make good gold without needing to worry about balron. I agree with him. If you sit there and talk all day, you won't make any gold.. you will just sit there and complain that you don't have any. If the server feels barren to anyone with this change, then you have to ask your self.. are you here to play UO? Or are you here to clout chase and be top dog? Either is fine, but pushing people around isn't needed.

I personally see this as a positive step for the server. Hopefully when +C adjusts the gold, it won't go past 1,250 to 2,500 a kill, but that is his call.

Anyhow. Past all that, I have been to other servers, and believe me.. this one has the least of the issues.

I am going to go read someone worthwhile now.. later.

[Turnabout]

At this point nerf Wrong Fel. so people can't script farming the place anymore. Once the last spot is nerfed the shard will be 100% "balanced" making donations the only decent way to get money, this will also prevent grinders to outbid donators at Grand Auctions.

And it will kill the shard. I agree script farming is bad but don't eliminate something non-script farmers do just because someone else abuses it. If you have a healing script running at any time wouldn't that qualify you as a script farmer? More AFK checks are needed just to make sure AFK farming is not happening.

Just to inform you +C already posted his idea about nerfing 220 Dex. auto heal.

P.S.: edit = bold text fixed.

[Geriatric]

i dont particularly like the idea of house maintence, however im not strongly opposed to it either
the cost that mulke suggested i think is a bit over the top, 500 boards is easy enough, but 500 granite and thats per house plot

it's been a long time since i mined any granite and i havent done it on this server but i get the feeling thats an aweful lot of time to spend in game just for the maintenance of a house ((insert rent is too dam high meme))

i am kinda glad the gold drop on balrons has been nerfed but yeah this does present the problem that some of these script farmers are now pushed out into other areas
there is a very limited amount of high end mobs in trammel
and yeah one could go to felluca (but it could take you ten minutes to half an hour just to get to a farming location)

im willing to bet that the balrons in felluca hyloth havent been killed in months, no one is spending 20 minutes on a boat ride to clear out a dungeon in 10) not when the gold drop is exactly the same as trammel
farming in felluca needs to be incentivised

there are far to many low level mobs, skeletons, wraiths, lizardmen, orcs, ettins trolls

theres not very many mid tier mobs (level 3 adept maps) lichs, ogre lords, dread spiders
4th tier monsters are pretty easy to find theres an entire dungeon full of dragons, and theres lots of demons and elder gazers
5th tier gets pretty hard to find again, blood/poison eles, ancdient and shadow wyrms theres only a few dotted around the place, most of the monsters on the server are catered around very low geared players

some of these dungeons should be re-purposed to spawn different monsters,
trammel wrong, ive never seen anyone in there killing the juka and if anyone did want to kill juka exodus castle is in ilshenar ( a long time ago it used to be filled with ogre lords

covetous level 3 its mainly skeletons and mummies, bump most of the area up to regular liches rather than just one small room

despise, other than farming some spined leather or a place to go while leveling a weapon to wait for deceit to respawn this dungeon is pretty useless, its just 2 levels of ettins, trolls and ogres, with one tiny little island with a couple of ogre lords

hell it doesnt even need to be re=purposed dungeons theres a hell of alot of empty space in T2A lands
theres the 2 snow filled places up the top... theres not much t here but some polar bears and walrus

cyclops valley doesnt have very many cyclops

theres lots of different un-used places on this server where some higher end game could be spawning

[Silent]

The problem was never balron. It was scripting for an entire day while you do other things. specially if you have a desk job. +C already explained several times that afk checks barely catch anyone.

Resource values are the least problem for the tip of this iceberg. Right now what I see is that there was a massive nerf on all shard in places that were newb friendly. You could farm a balron with a bio or some other pets. And we have a dungeon for veterans full of money. Oh yeah, in case you all don't recall wrong also drops - all metals,all wood,gargoyle picaxes, gargoyle knive, all gems and all regs (druid ones too). All this while having a huge Agro and giving good gold. So yeah,please improve the resource values now...

A good railing script on wrong is far better than a balron script.

You could have fixed this with a "no teleport zone" - several times suggested, improve floor traps for railing scripts. Yet, why did you force this?

I can easily farm wrong so I have zero problem with this. I'm honestly looking out for the server overall... This was never about balrons, this was about nuking income. If after reading this you still can't understand what happened, I bid thee farewell.

[Muolke]

i dont particularly like the idea of house maintence, however im not strongly opposed to it either
the cost that mulke suggested i think is a bit over the top, 500 boards is easy enough, but 500 granite and thats per house plot

The amounts I threw out there were just random numbers. You're right about 500 granite being too much. Maybe just 50 granite.

I own about 50 plots so this would cost me a pretty penny but it's not about that...it's about re-balancing the economy and the price of resources which many new players have historically farmed to gain wealth.

[Muolke]

i am kinda glad the gold drop on balrons has been nerfed but yeah this does present the problem that some of these script farmers are now pushed out into other areas
there is a very limited amount of high end mobs in trammel
and yeah one could go to felluca (but it could take you ten minutes to half an hour just to get to a farming location)

im willing to bet that the balrons in felluca hyloth havent been killed in months, no one is spending 20 minutes on a boat ride to clear out a dungeon in 10) not when the gold drop is exactly the same as trammel
farming in felluca needs to be incentivised

1. Script farmers being pushed out to other areas is exactly what is needed. But if you've noticed, some of the top Balron script farmers have either greatly reduced the amount of time they play or quit playing all together...which further reinforces the views some players had about Balron hopping.

2. There are several dungeons that could use a tweak. for as far away as Hythloth is there should be 20-30% more mobs in there to make the trek worth it if someone wants to farm it.

3. Balron gold drops in Felucca shouldn't be nerfed like those in Trammel. Just cap the gold drop to 4,000 gold instead of 8,000 gold.

[Muolke]

Resource values are the least problem for the tip of this iceberg. Right now what I see is that there was a massive nerf on all shard in places that were newb friendly. You could farm a balron with a bio or some other pets. And we have a dungeon for veterans full of money. Oh yeah, in case you all don't recall wrong also drops - all metals,all wood,gargoyle picaxes, gargoyle knive, all gems and all regs (druid ones too). All this while having a huge Agro and giving good gold. So yeah,please improve the resource values now...

Resource values are a problem because many new players relied on it when they started to gain wealth instead of having to rely on getting pets and doing it that way.

When I started playing you could sell regular ingots at 12-14 gold and platinum ingots at 100-120 gold all day long. I'd just go and mine in Felucca all day long.

While wood and ore is dropped by certain mobs in Wrong...it's a waste of time to loot it. The amount you get is very minimal. You're better off going and killing the next group of mobs rather than waiting a few extra seconds each time to loot all that. Same goes for regs...especially druid ones. Fel Wrong is a good farming spot (not the best on the shard btw) if you're the only one in there and over the last 30 days or so more often than not there's always 2-3-4 players running around (which is good btw).

[Geriatric]

theree was one idea i had to give resources more value, but i dont think its a great idea and it would cause the price of a particular type of ingot or wood or leather to spike in value for a period of time
but with each cycle each type would have a high value

you could add another vendor stone to the trinsic area with house decorations or semi-strong boxes (200 - 250 item container) or something else
but the currency form for that stone is resources, wether its wood or ingots etc and it cycles between the different rarities every week or two weeks

part of it working well i think though this stone would need a particular item that most people would want to buy on a regular basis, cos decorations and containers are more of a one and done
so maybe, bandages that heal double the amount of hit points? if +C ever gets around to nerfing the 220 dex insta heal an item like that would be in high demand

[GreenBar]

Not a balron slayer here, only seldom do i kill em but its kind of surprising/disheartening that no one reported there wasn't actually a change in the balron gold drops back in July! I thought there had been because the tmap balrons were only dropping 2k. I feel cheated!

The June 30th restart did reduce the Balron gold drop by removing the high end 3-5k gp drops. I recorded drops went from 2k - 6k range to a 2k - 3k range. While I opened a bug report when the gold drop was reduced again with last weekend's restarts, new range of around 220 to 2250 gp with an average of just over 1k gp, I didn't say anything about the June 30 change as I figured it was the big drops, which were reduced by 50%, that +C was talking about nerfing.

[Geriatric]

im surprised that no one has really thought to just match monster gold with monster hit points

[MagicUser]

im surprised that no one has really thought to just match monster gold with monster hit points

Dragon breath is a % of hp. In order to easily make one-shot mobs, dragons are given more health. I'm not sure we really want a peerless mobs to suddenly start dropping ridiculous amounts of gold either. Not if we're this concerned about scripters and people's access to easy gold. Peerless mobs already have their incentive to go after them, though the weapons market is pretty much non-existent currently.

[+Colibri]

Bump for today's restart. We have a new champion spawn discussion thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14365