EXCELSIOR DAILY

[+Colibri]

In the next few days, I'll be making the changes from the "Caveat venditor" thread, as well as 2 other things that came up since then.
Caveat venditor thread: http://www.uoex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=74546#p74546

List of changes
- When buying an item, the confirmation gump will tell you what type of item it is. Whether it's a weapon, armor, ethereal, deco, resource, tool.... That will hopefully clear up future issues where someone thinks they're buying something, but actually gets a different thing.
- Sales will no longer be final in absolute terms, but staff might undo a trade if it seems misleading. In case of misleading sales, it's then possible to review what the system description was, and if it was incorrect, the trade will be reversed. (along with a correction to the system-generated-description, so that the same kind of item isn't an issue in the future). And with that corrected description, the item can be placed on the vendor again.
- Vendors are getting an anti-raid feature. It will be possible to limit how many items a single player can buy in a certain timespan (e.g. 3 items in 24 hours). This has been an issue since the dawn of time, where some want to make items priced for newbies, or make a sale to advertise the vendor or the shop. What usually happens is that someone out there is very happy to get a load of cheap stuff, which they sell on their own vendor. This feature will be disabled by default, and customizable by vendor owner/coowners. An alternative idea was to mark items so that they can't be re-sold for a certain duration (sort of like temporary account binding) but this is a simpler solution, both in terms of coding and with less confusion with players wondering why this item is now account bound.
- Vendors will display their co-owners publicly. So if there's any vendor that you not just co-own, but are a "shadow owner" of, be sure to make proper arrangements to keep your identity a secret A few weeks back a player owned something like 10 vendors through additional accounts, and having co-owner information visible to everyone, would probably be noticed by players.
- Some items to be restricted from selling on vendors: skill balls (character bound ones), and certains types of special tubs. Items that are basically account-bound or character-bound, but not using the standard account-bound system.

[+Colibri]

We now have an improved confirmation gump when buying an item from a player-owned vendor. It will tell you what kind of item it is, the item's name, item displayed in a small rectangle... as well as the information that was already there - seller's description and price. As for the other upgrades related to vendors, although they're in progress, they will have to wait.

I'm going on vacation for 2 weeks, and it's usually not a good idea to make any changes that could break stuff just before, since debugging and restarting the server on a laptop under a tree is quite challenging. I'll continue to check the status of the server several times per day, and I plan to check in almost every day to see if there's anything critical that needs my attention. But +Kimane will be around every day to keep an eye on things. Have fun!

[+Colibri]

I'm back from vacation and I'd like to post the plans for the coming weeks/months.

As I've mentioned before, the current focus since last summer is on fixing a big pile of issues, and re-organizing to make things run smooth in the long run. While I was hoping I'd be done with it this spring, there's still some things left over that need to be taken care of. It's hard to be creative with a cluttered desk, and things breaking left and right.

First thing will be to finish the vendor upgrades (details in the previous post in this thread). And to take care of the numerous recent tickets that have piled up in the helpsystem.

(Unrelated to the shard, I have to finish an app for a company, this is something that will likely take a week of intensive work, delaying tasks for the shard).

We're behind schedule on the planned monthly auctions, so we're going to have 3 auctions very close together. First one probably on August 22nd. And one of the auctions will likely take place during the week, so that those who always work on weekends can attend as well.
FYI, the next IDOC will likely be in late september.

I will take the time to do 2 batches of bug fixes (a batch of bugfixes is a fun 2-day 12-hour session where I just go and fix as much as I can, followed by a server restart, and then babysitting the server in case something goes wrong).

After this is finished, I'll see what goes on the next list. There's still that list of back-end fixes (various errors being reported by the server, some more cleaning up, basically things that don't show). But of the things that can be seen, priorities are: finishing up the Mentor Society, so that we can have an active team of mentors; player-organized-event rewards automation, so there's no need to wait for staff to get your participation items; freshening up of the codex and staff tools for simpler and consistent enforcement of the rules.

Enjoy the game!

[+Colibri]

Server has just been restarted. The Changelog is a bit out of date, so i'll just post this quick info here:

Player vendors now display names of co-owners(s). If you own a vendor, in the main vendor menu at the bottom you'll see the "Anti-raid" feature. Basically, you can set how many items a player can buy in a specific timeframe. You can set it to be between 1-250 items, and the timeframe to be between 1 minute and 7 days (168 hours).

So, you can set it to be 1 item per hour, or 10 items per day, or whatever variation you think will suit best for the kinds of items you're selling. This works on a per-vendor per-player basis, alt characters included. So if you have 3 vendors with 1item/1hour limit on each, one player can still buy 3 items every hour, one from each vendor.

Glad to be able to cross this off from my todo list

[+Colibri]

IDOC event this weekend

There will be a mass house drop event (In danger of collapse - IDOC) this Saturday at 20:00 shard time.

I have already sent out reminder emails a few weeks ago, and I'll be sending another reminder tomorrow. If you know anyone who's house is in danger of collapse or greatly worn, and they would like to keep it, please let them know. Ideally, the only houses that should drop, are ones owned by players who won't play anymore. We have to free up land and server resources, but with as few casualties as possible.

(BTW, those who can't login because they currently don't have a computer, can also reply to my email reminder, and their account is manually refreshed. Most people have email on their phones these days, so that should suffice. )

There will also be a week-long donation bonus, starting on saturday. The notification is already up on the uoex.net/donations page.

[+Colibri]

Housing upgrades/fixes and other news

Housing upgrades
Today's restart brought a handful of fixes and improvements to the House Positioning System. The full technical list is in the changelogs, basically these were the various issues reported by players or found since this feature was added in July 2019, and I just got down to fixing all of the issues. The project is now officialy complete ... cleanup has to be done in a timely manner, more time that goes by, the harder it is to remember how everything works and to fix it.

Link to Changelogs topic (scroll to October 22nd for details on the housing improvements)

There's a cool upgrade as part of this package, but it's not on the server yet, it will be at the next restart. If you have a house that's sunken for more than just the foundation, you will be able to sink it either just foundation, or just 1st floor, up to whatever floor the house is sinkable to.

Housing harrasment issues
There have been a few cases of "land squatters", a player placing a house next to someone, just to try and sell it to that person. Or to place a house with intention to obstruct view, to annoy the owner of the existing house, possibly even to get them to move out.
Now, generally any player can place a house anywhere, but since this is not about just having a house, I've given this some thought. The general direction is that, such house placement is not allowed on this server.

If you want to place a house, and it's nearby someone else, that's fine. The house placement validation checks for the necesary gaps between houses, and well it can also happen that someone will build a tall house right infront of yours.

However, if a house is placed just for the purpose of annoying someone, or to try and get money from them in exchange for you to move out, that goes against the general spirit of our world and community.

I have not yet shaped this problem into a rule that could be enforced, but for now I'd just like to raise awareness about this issue - and that it's not allowed. If a certain house seems to have been placed as a form of harrasment, it might be moved (with the movement fees being charged to the player at the very least...).

Changelogs now available
I have just updated the Changelogs (last addition to those topics was in February).
Changelogs - Winter & Spring 2020
Changelogs - Summer & Autumn 2020


Account age certificate
Our players would like to host player-organized events for newbies. Now, us staff can place a special moongate that only allows some players to go through, for example players with an account up to a certain age. Since we can't manally place such gates for every player-ran event, I've made an upgrade to the [account menu that can help event hosts determine who's young enough to participate.

Just type [account - and in the menu click "More info: housing, decay times..." -> then, you'll see a button labeled "Display account age to another player".

[+Colibri]

Donation bonus is active until November 1st

The current donation bonus was extended for a week. Although the bonus was active, it wasn't announced on the towncriers or on the forum, so it has been extended for a week - until Sunday, November 1st, at 23:59 shard time.

The book is also raffled every day until Sunday. The raffle drawing is at 20:00 shard time - on the raffle stone at Trinsic bank (next to the entrance to the ED room).

[+Colibri]

Happy thansksgiving! If you haven't been online yesterday to hear the towncriers, there's a giftstone at the Town Center - come by and doubleclick it to get your gift. The giftstone will be on there throughout the weekend.

[+Colibri]

What happened to Makoto Zento vendors?

If you visit the Makoto Zento vendor mall, you'll notice there's very few vendors there. Here's why, so I don't have to reply to everyone in separate helpsystem tickets.

Both Makoto Zento and Town Center have a system for removing inactive vendors. It scans for vendors that haven't been restocked in a while, and removes them. However, if there are already enough vacant chairs, it doesn't remove any inactive vendor. This is to balance the clearing effectiveness across various market conditions, there's so many configurations on this server and I can't circle thru all of them every week, so this system can keep just enough vacant seats, to make it possible to get a vendor, while not completely clearing out a vendor mall.

They are configured differently in each shop.
Town center: 9 days vendor inactivity, but at most 3 empty chairs
Makoto zento: 14 days vendor inactivity, but at most 8 empty chairs.

When I was fixing a bug that made it possible to enter the "next vacant spot" raffle, while already having a vendor, I broke the thing that counts empty seats. It always reported 0 vacant chairs.
So while there were several vacant chairs at Makoto Zento, and the area was quite filled, now the system thought that there's actually 0 vacant chairs - therefor, let's make some room!

The bug has been fixed, pending restart to be applied. Now, although Makoto Zento seems rather empty, I won't be taking several hours or a whole day to undo the things that this bug caused. The vendors that have been restocked within the last 2 weeks still remain at Makoto Zento, which is plenty. If a vendor hasn't been restocked that long, it probably didn't sell much, or the owner didn't stop by to refresh their offer recently.

Sorry about the bug! In a way, the basic functionality of the inactive-vendor-remover worked well, but the extra addon of the system not being too agressive failed. If your vendor was cleared, you can still get another one, just doubleclick a vacant chair.

[+Colibri]

Winter quests and deco, Holiday gift, Donation bonus.


Happy holidays
As the year is coming to a close, we want to wish you a happy holiday season, a fun and socially-isolated new year's party, and lots of success, happiness, health and luck in the year 2021.

There's not much development going on during the holidays, but both me and +Kimane will be online almost every day to take care of the misc daily issues.



Winter quests
The winter quest is open until January 3rd.
For more information on how the quests work, please read this post: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11837&p=68903

Disclaimer: since these quests are built with a system that is hard to debug and maintain, the quests are on an as-is basis. If you run into problems, you can send a help request, but I may not be able to fix the issue.
Warning: You only have one attempt to fight Jack Frost. Prepare well.

To enter the winter quests area, go to Moonglow, the entrance is to the north-west of the bank.

holidays-quests.png (164.31 KiB) Viewed 6726 times

Holiday deco stone and Gift stone at the Town Center
Come by the Town Center and browse a selection of Xmasy and Winter decorations. The items can be bought with tokens.
Be sure to doubleclick the Gift stone to get this year's collectibles.

holidays-towncenter.png (272.11 KiB) Viewed 6723 times

December donation bonus
There's a 25% ED bonus, as well as a special Stronger Wooden box (can hold 1000 items) for your first donation of 30 EUR or more.

There's also a raffle stone at the entrance to the ED room (next to the Trinsic bank). A stronger wooden box is raffled every 3 days.

holidays-edstone.png (17.93 KiB) Viewed 6690 times

[+Colibri]

Server instability and remedies.

1. On Feb 9th around 20:00 to 21:00 shard time there was an unexpected reconfiguration of our website (by the webhost), website was offline for about 2 hours, and whoever wanted to vote at the time couldn't get the voting links, therefor there was no confirmation of a valid vote.

2. Today on Feb 11th around 15:00 shard time there were global internet problems, which caused the website to not be able to fetch voting data from the shard. This also means votes on the topsites couldn't be made.

3. Today on Feb 11th at 21:35 the server crashed. Today there was a major upgrade to some back-end code, and although i've thoughrally tested it in development, there was a bug that couldn't be found in testing. For more info see this post: viewtopic.php?p=77393#p77393

Remedies:
- I just ran a script that manually validated all failed votes. If you voted recently, and have a failed vote, you can go claim your reward now. Even if you didn't actually do the vote at the time, you still get the full reward as if you had. There were a total of 35 such vote sessions that were manually validated (some from the 9th, some from the 11th).
- I coded in an ability to put an exemption on "Consecutive-daily achievements". There's the "Topsite Voting Achievement", and the "Monthly pass" using world teleporters every day achievement. If you skip just one day, it gets reset to zero. Now i've made it so that I can set a time period, during which even if you didn't do the achievement that day, you still keep your count. (because of shard revert, downtime, or website-voting issues). It even gets automatically triggered for 48 hours when the shard detects that there's been a revert.
- Since there was a revert, and a 2 hour downtime, some of you missed your bee potioning schedules. At the towncenter, there's currently a "Pine needle stone" which you can use to synchronize your bees. The stone will be there for 72 hours after the crash.
- The shard is now probably stable, but there's a higher chance of crash/downtime than on an average day. So until Monday noon, the shard is configured to save every 15 minutes (which should on average result in just a 7.5 minute downtime, if it were to come to that).

[+Colibri]

This week I finally got time to dedicate to PortalV2 development.

Here's a screenshot of mobile-friendly mode.
Still quite some way to go, but the chat part will be just one implementation of the infrastructure that i'm building.

2021-03-16 portal development.png (80.48 KiB) Viewed 5280 times

[+Colibri]

Browser issues? Just found a way to fix it.

This is most common with those of you who vote on topsites, and the voting stone tries to open the uoex.net website with some extra identifier, the voting-session-token. If something doesn't work there's also the workaround to use a 9-digit code that you enter manually.

I was searching for a solution to this a few times already, got a few ideas, but no actual fix. Just tinkered with it yesterday, and found how to fix it.

Instructions are on the wiki: https://www.uoex.net/wiki/Fix_Browser_Opening

[+Colibri]

Planned server migration - longer downtime than usual.

On Monday, May 10th, we will be switching to a new server. I am planning the switch to be done at around noon shard time, I can't predict exactly when, but I will announce it an hour in advance. If all goes well, there will be a 1-hour downtime, but could turn into 2 or even 3 hours for it all to come online (including all additional features, like voting rewards, portal, and whatever else there is that needs lots of clicking/copying/configuring).

[+Colibri]

Rule change: announcements in public chat.

The rule now also states that the player must be at the keyboard when posting an announcement.

Added clarification/exception about announcements that are relevant to all players, e.g. champ spawn & boss spawns: there can be 5 announcements, spaced at least 5 minutes apart.
(This was already an internal rule - we didn't consider such announcements to go by the same rules as buying/selling/guild-recruiting, but now it's written on the codex for all to see).

These rules will start to be enfoced with Monday (May 10th).