Resource / Currency Overload: How to solve?

One of our favorite topics to debate is what to do with Plat or Copper or Gold. There's also a significant amount of wood and ingots lying around.

@LanDarr has empowered us to brainstorm some ideas on how to correct this. We have had this convo a lot over the years, but lets try and organize the ideas into a one stop shop. With the new server's 8 second saves, item count isn't so much the issue, but while we have some traction of getting ideas implemented, lets see what sorts of ideas the crowd has.



Topics on the table include reward updates, systemic updates for reward currency acquisition, crafting mechanics to utilize the resources, combination of coins, installment of new coins, etc.

One thing to remember about @LanDarr is that surface level ideas always get questioned. "Make mining generate Plat coins" will always get the response "At what rate?". So flesh out those ideas so they are as meaningful as possible.

It should also be recognized that no one solution will make everyone happy, so lets keep it civil and come up with some great ideas.

Some new plat items idea:
Blessed keyring - Could be selled for a ridiculous amount of plat.
The ring of power - inspired in the Lord of the Rings, why not a very expensive ring that could give you hiding?
T2a houses plat raffle - add those houses in t2a to a plat raffle system.

i think if you balance the price of the items, it could be a exclusive and appealing item and will not affect much.. i think magic jewlery could be a good way to reduce the plat piles of some plat hoarders.. things like add 2 points in magery(for beter reflect spell) for example and also new appelaing deco items...

Awaken Ye Olde Gods of Chaos:

• Players drop X platinum, copper, gold, filled commodity deeds, raw resources, rares, etc upon the shrine of Chaos.
• The items each have assigned point values.
• When X number of points are reached, something cool happens, like the server saves and enters a brief period of unsaved server wars (additionally, red rain falls from the sky, guards are disabled, all NPCs become hostile to players, etc during this time).

Special Rings, Craftable or Otherwise:

• a glow ring: emits torch light, thus freeing the wearer's hand slots from torches/lanterns
• a phantom ring: emits a radius of ghost visibility. Instead of emitting a light like a torch, it reveals ghosts within, say, a three tile radius of the wearer. Skills needed for crafting: tinkering, magery, and spirit speak. Consumes ingots, jewels, reagents, and bones to create.
  • In my view, this offers a more balanced approach to the ghosts hiding in houses problem. It would be fun having to sweep an area manually for phantom invaders. It would also give the ghost an opportunity to evade and try to get away once they realize they're under pursuit. Imagine having to chase the ghost around to ban it. For extra fun, successfully banning a ghost while wearing this ring could not just kick them out of the house, but send them somewhere fun like the depths of khaldun or the altar of the fire temple.
• a decoy ring: double clicking opens a gump that allows the player to select and play a decoy sound (dragon roar, door opening, player death, etc)
• a ring of siren's song: activating this ring displays an arrow similar to the tracking skill, but instead points to the location of your boat (double click ring and target your boat key to bind the ring to your boat)
• a ring of silence: players wearing this ring emit no footstep sounds
• a ring of duality: wearing this ring changes the player's name to whatever name they have bound to the ring

This isnt my idea but it was mentioned on discord and I really thought it was a smart idea: wood and ingots to build new houses, the same way it works already to fill ship plans. Maybe 2000 boards and 500 ingots for a small house, 50000 boards, 10000 ingots and 250 stone ingots for a tower and so on.

Also, the holiday coin raffle still seems popular, maybe create a new plat raffle with unique rewards/hues in a similar fashion.

Both these ideas could be done using existing concepts.

Low code solution would be to implement a new reward vendor or system for turning in large amounts of resources. Would give future flexibility to adjust amounts turned in and also updated rewards to keep it fresh. Allowing them to be turned into the CUB system for copper as well, probably not too many takers on this over the long term.

Double edge sword is any system implemented will probably encourage additional resource gathering and market demand for those items.

Just to start, I would disable vendors selling ingots. The idea being to get players out into the world to gather resources and slow down the accumulation of those materials. I don't think it will be possible to cut down on the amount of resources while also having them be easy to obtain in huge quantities within minutes. I would also like to see people doing things out in the world so that it feels more alive.

I imagine people probably hoard particular materials due to the BOD system and the rewards - mostly hammers. Really feels like playing the lotto with the BOD system. This is just off the top of my head but maybe allow players to buy equivalent weapons with platinum. I am unsure what amounts would be fair as I don't have access to the data.

You could also implement a system that would either convert resources such as logs / ingots / hides into platinum or add recipes for crafters to be able to craft magical items using a large number of resources. This could even be done via quest givers who might accept 10000 ingots to enchant a blade. Then the player would need to have a hilt, etc until all parts are accumulated and a crafter can then piece them together. This still leaves the BOD lotto but also gives players other avenues to make targeted items while reducing hoarding.

How about start working on the UOR Projects Map that was posted by Keza 1 and a half year ago and got nothing done besides anniversary?

Anything done there will create a gold/plat/copper sink

http://uorforum.com/threads/uor-projects-map.55854/

I like this idea. Being able to purchase X amount of materials off a vendor, then rinse & repeating until that vendor stocks 999 items is a problem. The moneybags of the server can effectively allow a constant flow of new regs / materials coming into circulation without actually putting in the work. Also, not to stray too off topic is housing. It should be limited to a lower amount of total houses OR housing should not be a risk-free investment which is what it is right now. Allowing deeds to be returned for 100% value has created the UO:R housing problem, which is people just placing cool house spots with the intention of future use or with the purpose in mind to flip for a profit. This means empty houses that are not being used, but placed cause "Why not?". You all are also attempting to fix a problem that essentially deals with hoarding, when this game really encourages hoarding. Take a look at some of the useless items in the game like deco type things or different hued clothes. Serves absolutely no practical purpose, yet people have houses packed full of it.

Another consideration would be to require some sort of 'upkeep' fee in order to refresh your houses. It is unrealistic to think that your houses would never need repairs over the years. This upkeep fee (Lord British tax if you prefer) would be in the form of - wood, ingots, gold, reagents etc. or a combination of a little bit of everything. This would effectively create the money/resource sink you are wanting and also tackle another problem, which is excess housing. Larger houses like castles, forts etc would have a larger upkeep fee and be an even bigger money sink, which would only make sense. Going forward, people may downsize quite a bit or drop many of their empty houses instead of paying an upkeep fee, thus freeing up many house plots around the map.

Ogrotten Ya ummm no to the sink requiring different amount of random stuff. I along with others are gonna quit if we are being forced to do something that is not in line with I want to do. Same to Hayes I wouldn't be into that either. More forced crap to do. I would be gone for the last time. Also a invisible and phantom ring would be be overpowered. The one would be like have 8 skills.

Custom housing that is optional. That would require money and resources to keep up would be a better idea. Require stuff to build it that you don't get back if you change your mind and change it. You could have old housing be free and custom housing would require maintenance fee/stuff. Make it a escalated system where the more you add, the cost and maintenance go up. Like getting the 10tb upgrade cost more than the 9th for the same thing. The size of the lot would also affect it getting more costly with the larger footprint.

I’m new here roughly a year old.
My opinions would be to slowly reverse the trend housing has gone in.

First,) a clear warning in preparation that all items exploiting the z axis will decay starting on a specific date.
Second,) a clear warning that only one house per account will be available with a mechanism to claim a chosen property as your primary residence before a specific date and the rest will decay.
Then, possibly, The server could slowly implement the customization feature for housing that could require gold/copper/plat as a resource sink.

But honestly, I might not have been around long enough to make suggestions yet, so that’s my contribution to this thread.

Being able to switch fort/keep/castle/tower/sst to sandstone/marble for some obscene amount of ingots (metal and stones) and lumber. Custom/dyed house doors, wood/ingots for custom, plat for dyes. Metal armor dye kits for some combination of regs and plat/copper, or ingots for vanilla metal hues (e.g. shadow).

Cosmetics, especially ones that are somewhat tied to a bigger item like a house, tend to be pretty good sinks without affecting gameplay balance.

Shameless promotion of an idea I posted elsewhere a long time ago: "PvM Survival Mode" arena where a player or perhaps small team of players enters an enclosed space and faces waves of monsters that increase in difficulty/complexity with each successive round.

It begins with simple foes such as a mongbat for round one, then a headless one round 2, then zombie, skeleton, lizardman, ettin, troll, ogre, etc etc all the way up to Dragons, Balrons, Bosses, etc. There could also be groups of different monsters to make things more interesting: for example 50 mongbats all at once, a horde of orcs or undead, Lord British himself, or silly stuff like a barefisted Chuck Norris with 2000 strength.

This type of gameplay element could involve many things, or be kept fairly simple. The arena could be a gold/plat/copper/resource sink by requiring a participation fee to take on the challenge. It could be accessed with an instanced gate item (like an AMIB) or it could be a public space with seating for spectators like the PvP arenas. There could be trophies for players who make it to level 100, uber rare drops by special monsters, or simply no loot but a public leaderboard for bragging rights for the ultimate PvMers.

I disagree. Imagine the cost of regs if the only way to get them was killing magic monsters and chests? And it's only iron ore that can be farmed out of vendors, no colors. Farming up the vendors and keeping them stocked is work. No real difference to house mining or anything else really.

Forcing taxes and accumulation of resources for housing sounds miserable. Forcing playstyles (accumulation of resources) or just causing a player to have to give gold to another player cause they don't mind accumulating more resources doesn't actually address a problem. Just wastes gameplay time with an unnecessary hurdle.

No age limit for suggestions!

Can you give some insight into what a sink might look like? 60k logs, etc and what you consider a small or large sink?

A server I used to play used a lottery as an effective gold sink, you could make it work for other resources too. Once per month put up a unique prize - a 1 of 1 hue pair of sandals or torch etc, or even something bigger like a hooded shroud of shadows - and watch people dump mad money in for tickets.

You could also do a public auction for uniques too - an auction in which you bid in ingots, for a 1 of 1 deco rare, etc

I'd say that we'd want some combination of sinks between large and small. Not every large sink is going to be attractive to our 1% crowd, but with smaller sinks driving demand for goods it can still generate a net benefit to the economy. I just get a little leery about sinks that generate an item that could potentially be traded, like savage kin paint, as that can have unintended side effects or counteract the sink.

I would like to second the idea that Gossow mentioned earlier of singular rare lotteries and also suggest one that is a gold only lottery. It could happen weekly/biweekly/monthly. Fifty percent of the gold contributed to the pot is deleted. The other fifty percent is given to the winner. The tickets cost 1k gold per.

I'd also expand on the concept (this is not my original idea, but one from another server I play on.) by suggesting a housing lottery based on the idoc system. Some houses idoc normally, others are put into a lottery that run for a week and tickets can be purchased for 1k gold as well. All gold contributed is removed from the server.

I wouldn't be really concerned about 1 of 1 uniques being traded in the market. The point is to remove gold from the economy and the lottery does exactly that.Would the lotteries allow for the rich to get richer? Yeah it will, but there is still a chance for newer players and those who buy 200-500k worth of tickets to score big due to the almighty RNG.

As far as excess resources are concerned I would like to offer up the idea of a "Tradesmen Merchant" vendor that offers special housing deco in exchange for x amount of ingots/wood. Have the items value tiered by the resources quality. Iron ingots give you basic looking, but new items. Valorite ingots are used to purchase animated or really awesome deco. The same thing would be applied to lumber resources.

Removing plat from the economy is a simple one. Offer more items in the existing store. Those items could range from updated holiday only deco items, veteran quality of life items like the blessed key rings Xavant suggested to a set of hued mounts that utilize the ethereal mount mechanics. The colors, of course, would be selected to remain true to the servers era accurate goals.