So Filling Bulk Order Deeds is Tedious - Lets talk changes.

I call them names lovingly, not to trash talk them.

Of course singling them out was easier to make my point. But what I was ultimately wanted to get at was, how many people are actually "breaking" the market. How many care enough to be willing to have the mechanics changed? I have no clue where the market is at regarding ingots, but it can't be lower than 7-8gps per. How less profitable is it to new players? Have those recall miners really swamped the market with ingots to the point new players can't sell theirs? Are we positive about this? If not, then it's no less profitable than when I too GMed two miners by doing a lot of clicking.

Iron won't go lower than 8 because that's what NPCs charge for them. Quite frankly, I'm seeing the prices increasing lately and hopefully that's a result of this change. The problem isn't saturation, it's lack of it because anyone who wanted ingots previously just went and macro-mined them. I've bought thousands when possible because I didn't feel like mining for them. When I did, I went and hunted stone elementals because the pay-out was better.

The people recall mining are building inventory, more than likely, to fill BoDs. They don't want to spend their millions on ingots, so this change is hurting them. If they would just go offer up 12g per DC ingot or so, I bet you would find a whole slew of newer players out there with pack horses picking away at the mountains. Instead, you see droves of thieves in Occlo stealing from mobs and Lumberjacks harvesting trees because at least that builds a capable fighter in the long run too.

Wanna know why Les and I basically stopped farming sheep? Because he can still turn a profit flipping BoDs and just buying cloth.
If players were selling their ingots more, we may see a slight increase in smith BoD reward value, but already it's high enough for me to have made millions with my smith and I barely flip that often. I've never come home from flipping a bag of BoDs thinking "Man, this pack full of checks, gargoyle picks, fort powders and sturdy shovels sure weren't worth the few thousand ingots I burned to make them".

I am sorry, but your experiences are not helping me see how the actions of 2 (or 8 or 15) people have created such a stirr as to completely change the whole mining (and indirectly blacksmithing) mechanics of the game we all love.

Are the mechanics being changed because 90% of the population are complaining? 50%? 10 outspoken veterans? 1 shard owner trying to "fix" something he percieves broken?

Ultimately the question should boil down to: Does the 90% (or at least more than 50%) of the population care enough about what a handful of people are doing so as to have to change the whole mechanics and effectively socially engineer the game? Or does their opinion even matter?

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Just keep regurgitating terminology used in era-accuracy arguments on UOSA Pirul. That's super helpful to make claims about 'social engineering', which is actually a term in reference to psychological manipulation. I assure you, the only social engineering here is on the part of Recall miners attempt to make people think they're a benefit to the shard as opposed to the stark opposite. It's almost disturbing to me when I say that the only Recall miner that was ever a benefit to the shard here, was Red Rover. He actually sold his ingots, at a great price too.

Why not just remove mining and put all ingot types on vendors? That should solve all of these problems.

If Telamon sees it as an issue and takes action, you can trust that he has a lot more data behind the decisions than perhaps are being relayed to the public.
Can we get a count of which players have the majority of BoD rewards and perhaps how that correlates to how many Recall miners they run and for how long each day?


For what it's worth, your superlatives are taking over again. We don't 'all love' Recall mining or its impact on the shard. I enjoyed it for a time but much like getting extra change back at the store, it just never felt right. The actions of the few were simply a view into the potential for damage that absolutely will result from more and more players trying to get into Recall mining.

Likely, but if anything 200 should help concentrate the problem not dilute it. If I say 400 active IP's, we're talking 0.5% of the population are a problem.

The fact you and Blaise are pissed off about it means that 0.5% of the population are pissed off about it. What about the other 99.5%?

Fact of the matter is: where do new players mine the most? Off the top of my head I'd say Mt. Kendall, Delucia, Britain, and I believe Ocllo here has some mining too. Others would hit the area of the North Mines or Dragonhame, but in all my years I only met 2 people who mined so far from town when new.

Did recall miners hit these spots? I know I didn't hit any spots on the mountain side because there weren't enough nodes per spot. I mostly mined caves. I'm pretty sure the rest of the recall miners would agree.

I ask again, how much of the 99.5% of the population (other than you and Blaise) think it was so much of a problem FOR THEM to justify social engineering by changing mechanics?

Chris: If this is something brought about because a group of hardened veterans are complaining that a select few are getting rich by doing nothing, then I'd invite you to rethink this whole approach and study the REAL impact it will have on the new/casual player trying to GM Blacksmithing (or mining). However, if this is something you want to change because you percieve it as a problem, then please save us 10 pages of "suggestions" and come out and say "I don't like that 2 people smelt 1 million ingots in one sitting, so you, the hand of God, can no longer mine for colored ingots like you used to and with your current template because this is my ball, and this is my court."

I'm not pissed off about anything. I like the changes. I disliked mass Recall mining, but I was hardly ever even remotely upset about it.
Wanna know where new players mine? It's called Occlo and after that they build their Recall mining macro and you never see them walking again. (I exaggerate slightly, but this is the majority)

You need to stop jumping to conclusions about who's idea it was to make these changes and why. No group of veterans were complaining about it and it is NOT social engineering. Please look up terms before you spout them off like a parrot whose only experience is debating era-accuracy on a dying shard.

The mechanics were changed to curb an excessive amount of resources being gathered automatically, which in turn, effectively ruined the traditional methods. If only a half a dozen actual people can completely trainwreck a trade through automation while they watch Spanktravision, that is a serious problem.

The fact that you're here trying to argue in defense of the automatons, when you don't even play anymore, is a poor attempt at social engineering.

It is social engeneering when you make changes to increase the price of ingots or their supply or demand. It is social engineering when you tell me that I cannot use my crafter to go mine for colored ingots like I used to, because now I need to drop one or two crafting skills to get melee skills, and walk to my nodes.

There was a guy I used to know called Zershii, some of you might have met him. 95% of his time in game he mined. That was it. He was never into PvM. He liked to dabble into PvP, but no more than 5% of his time. Do you think I could attract him here with these changes?

You're right. I don't even play anymore. What do I know.

No, that's called a mechanical change. It would be social engineering to try and convince you that you're evil for wearing clothes and people believed it.

You can go pick up your pickaxe, walk your ass to a cave, or recall to one, mine it out and go smelt your ore. Nothing is stopping you any more than it was before.

Yes, Zershii would probably be delighted to know that as a player who actually PLAYS a miner, he doesn't have to struggle to compete with lazy players who just watch three clients strip-mine the world. Ohh, so sorry you took too long to walk to that ore vein. It's dry now.

I GMed on UOSA walking around the north mines with five pickaxes and a pair of tongs. I'd mine for ore, smelt it, craft the iron into items that I would sell to NPCs, rinse and repeat. I made enough for my first house and continued to mine for ingots to get my Smithy to GM as well. It was fun and challenging because there were monsters and PKs all over the place. Not once did I think "I'm just going to make this automatic because playing the game is just too much to ask".

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The hell are you guys talking about? You're talking like this last patch dealt a death blow to recall mining. In my opinion, this last patch was not much more than a minor inconvenience for recall miners. My macros are just about as efficient as they were prior to the patch. Now I just loop 1 to 16 on a vein location instead of until the metal is gone.

This patch ultimately changed nothing. And that's the entire problem with it! We added a mess of stuff that had little to no effect. We need to decide what our stance is towards recall mining once and for all. Whether that decision is made by the community or just Telamon is irrelevent.

1. Recall Mining is bad for the shard and needs to go. Then let's stop farting around and pull the trigger. We don't need mining trolls, and in-town delays, and no recalls to caves, and no Razer system messages, and afk gumps. Determine what the best strategy is and run with it! What we have now is a mess.
2. Recall Mining is probably bad for the shard and/or it should be kept on a leash. Again, pick the best strategy and run with it. Something that can be adjusted 'on the fly' is ideal, as it can be tweaked if it's too strict or too loose.
3. Recall Mining is good for the shard or I don't care. Then nothing needs to be touched.

1. What the crap. Peace (I believe) and I have recall mined and sold our ingots for over a year. Red Rover mines for two months, undercuts everyone, and he gets all the credit for abusing recall mining for profit! Geez. Granted, he spent nearly every waking moment with his 3 accounts going, but STILL.
2. How is that 'better'? That's exactly what you hate. A macro that automatically generates income. At least the guys flipping BODs are turning their ingots into deco rewards and runic hammers that will probably never be consumed.

I think you mean they won't go higher than 8gp because of the NPCs. They're at about as high as they'll go right now because of that limit right now. I bolster my stockpile with NPC ingots and sell them at 8.75g. (the standard bulk markup)

EXACTLY THIS!

For the record Mutombo and I smelted 1.65 Million Ingots. Iron Ingots from that smelt were just over 1.1 million. We haven't sold any, and the ingot prices remain exactly the same. Very frightening impact our smelt has had on the economy so far...

Many of our recall spots don't interfere with other players. I like to mine inside dungeons, random rocks in the wilderness, guard zone and the orc caves. OSI miners will always remember finding dry veins when trying to mine. This was especially true when in town. Are we really eliminating competition for ore...?

I thought if I put thought and effort into something I could be the best at it... like Sandro in PvP or SL in factions (LOL JK )

Seriously though... Are two guys actions really going to bring about all this change? Is it a crime to gather resources attended and hoard them in your house?

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lol, ok Basoosh, I know I got pretty far fetched there. I just know I bought more ingots off of Rover's vendors than anyone else. Yes, I got some from Peace and a couple other folks here and there, but that's about it. The market for ingots is vacant because people who mine heavy do so for themselves, not for selling ingots.

Bart, running a macro to pull resources while you go PK on an alt is not being the best at mining. Razor is the best at mining. This isn't about two guys, it's about the entire mentality that recall mining is the de facto standard here and anyone denying that is just dreaming. The vast majority of those GM miner chars on the shard did not actually go out and play the game. They got their profile setup, then someone clicked 'Start'.

I am just as guilty but as I've said, I see the detriment of it.

Reducing the ability to flip BoDs, but increasing the chances of better BoDs WHEN you turn in BoDs, would negate the need for 100,000+ ingots. I literally need like a quarter million DC/Shadow ingots just to fill complete BoD sets I have piled up. To me this doesn't mean we need more ingots/miners, it means we need fewer BoDs. I'm crazy though, so what do I know.

At this point, I consider Colored BOD flipping a lost cause. It's not worth a miner's time to mine the ingots, it's not worth my time to try to pursue the ingots, and even if I get a handful, it's not worth spending them on flips when I could use them to fill out the semi-useful DC and shadow ring/chain sets I have put together.

If people want to spend a ton of time mining ingots, they're likely doing us all a favor from a competitive standpoint, because with the current common exchange rates they'd be better served killing blood elementals.

If the shard goal is to get people macro-mining less, I do agree with Pirul that that is social engineering. I also agree with Basoosh that the methods used to make this happen have been partly helpful, and partly superfluous.

The whole point of this thread though was to talk about the notion that the shard goal is to not have people spending hours a day filling BODs. And as an extension, not spend hours a day mining and/or macro-mining. All of the other arguments are our own doing.

To that end, I still don't see a better idea than simply lowering the item count requirement on BODs. If you increase the chance of getting high-end BODs, you're just making the rich richer. Lowering the item count requirement, though, in some ways does not increase the rate at which we acquire rewards. (To nitpick, it does a little bit, since it lets us flip things we otherwise wouldn't have, so it's not a PERFECT solution to my criteria either).

Frankly, I think a perfect balance would be lowering the item count requirement and increasing the portion of Large BODs given so that it's 25% rather than 20%. That way we spend less time flipping, but flip a few more BODs, and the net is about the same rate of reward accumulation we have presently. It would also lower the barrier to entry a bit, since people seem to like to find larges as a first step to filling a set, more than they like starting with a random small.

I love this thread.

I see a lot of "knee jerk reaction" and "oh come on only 2 people abused it THAT bad." (im paraphrasing, and generalizing, as I often do)

How about this perspective: The powers that be recognized a potential for exploit (read: not illegal under the current ruleset, but demonstrating the potential for harming other peoples game experience), and decided, wisely, to nip it in the bud. It's just that if 2 people can do it, others can surely copy it. Personally I'm betting "those guys" are planning to dominate the runic market...but I don't know them personally, nor do I have a grudge against them.

Ive played a lot of MMO's in my day, and rarely is "oh shit the game is ruined" the time to do something about...unexpected playstyles.

As far as balancing non-recall miners against recall miners...I still feel that if people were willing to pay a "fair" amount for another players time, then things would smooth out. Your convenience has to be worth something. When you offer me 8gp for valorite ingots, that's really disheartening, and discouraging as far as my chosen profession.

I don't claim to know the "fair" price for colored ingots. I also want to reiterate that I'm only talking about colored ingots. I dont ever hope to sell iron ingots more than a fraction higher than a vendor does. Just do the math...if Johnny can mine X ingots an hour, or get X gold doing practically anything else...how much gold does Johnny want for his ingots? Hint: its not 8gp. (it's not a whole lot higher than 8, however) The current "value" of ingots got where it is based on people devoting a maximum of 33% of their time to each character engaging in the activity. I completely realize how ridiculous it is to expect ingot buyers to simply choose to start paying more. I feel the only way to increase the "value" of colored ingots is to give them a use, other than smithing bods. Maybe tinkering bods will need them, and the market will get a shot of adrenaline. Better yet, perhaps colored armor could be balanced to be considered "fieldable". I hope current smithing bod players don't consider a rise in cost of colored ingots as a threat: the value of smithing bod rewards should go up, naturally as the ingot value also goes up.

I'm still mining. I keep trying to point out(in various ways) that masonry elementals are way way way more profitable per kill, compared to traditional elementals. As far as my street cred: my elemental slayer (Boom Boom Ray) is creeping up the boards on ore elemental kills. I'm doing fine as far as making my money, I don't need anything, nor am I complaining. I just like getting involved in nasty arguments.

If you've read this far, please feel free to attack my intelligence, character, demeanor, sanity, what have you.

But no buds have been nipped!

This needs to be a UO:R T Shirt.

I'm Pro-BDF too.

Exactly. It's sheep farms all over. Buncha changes to discourage/annoy sheep farms which are just another source of 100% automated income. Whole fort/castle spots taken up just for a couple sheep tiles - and this doesn't have an impact on the economy/housing/new players? Allow it, or don't allow it.