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

I only differentiate between large and small because the reward scale is differentiated between them, regardless of the actual pinpoint on the matrix. Essentially, you're forfeiting a larger reward (albeit one you already decided to forfeit) than you would for any given small. Though, I see your point -- effort-wise, you put in no more work to achieve it in the first place.

And this bites at the crux of the issue. For some of us, the experience of whats possible is as much a metagame as rare hunters, BOD flippers, or database watchers. We all have our quirks, and it is my opinion that these metagames are just as valid as others -- if they were not, then it should have been outlined more clearly. I know several whom are already losing their interest to log in and tinker. Why should they be punished because they like to spend their time exploring the world while testing novel concepts in automating the process? What specifically makes their enjoyment less valid than your own?

Now, do note I did not imply you stating this outright; I'm simply playing devils advocate with the ideas. This metagame is significant, and its not limited to the people responding in this thread. I absolutely respect that its not your metagame, however, it feels like this aspect of the game is now being forcibly removed after a long history of encouraging such players to thrive (while being active at the keyboard).

I personally feel very strongly that if someone has proven that they are not AFK and actively driving their experience (which is already actively tested via multiple means, especially in the case of mining) and not actively working towards server downfall -- then you are not in a position to judge what that person considers enjoyable. And I do not consider someone working within the rules -- perhaps toes on the line, if you want to be arbitrary -- as someone who is working towards a servers downfall. I don't think any of the known strip miners ever saw their activities that way -- only as a metagame that gave them the drive to achieve further in their chosen profession.

While I do think some of the recent changes were too drastic, I still think some additions such as the troll spawns and limiting the effectiveness of Razor are a good thing. But rather than make these changes on a world-wide scale, why not add new areas for PvM miners? Are the solen hive caves still built into the world? I think it would be great to use them for PvM non-recall mining. Then reduce the rest of the world-wide spawn of the trolls so they are less of an annoyance to recall miners or concentrate them to certain areas. That way there's room for both types of miners and a solid system to ensure attended game play.

I agree with this, and while I was apprehensive about the mining trolls myself, ultimately I found them to be a welcome addition. It just feels to me like the battle miner has become the defacto -- and the fact that it exists at all is fantastic -- but it should not be expected to be every miners endgame if they want to stay competitive.

I also feel disheartened that all the effort I put into making mining regions, four corner books, and marked veins in my public rune library are now useless. Thats weeks of work thats been publically available for anyone to benefit from thats now been negated, and that certainly adds to my frustration.

The Solen mines seems like a perfect place for this kind of content -- all while not changing the underlying feel of the experience.

Lots to read here, but I am getting the basic gist...

My reason for needing massive mining/lj capabilities:
Personally I need a massive mining operation because I run a vendor shop that sells bulk resources... granted business is good because of the massive "need" for those ingots. When iron ingots were plentiful, I could sell them for 7-8gp per. Now that supply is down, demand is the same or up.. Those same iron ingots sell for 8-9gp per. It is now profitable to buy up from the NPC and mark up. So that's what I do. Its faster, safer and more easily done than mining by hand.

I am basically out of the BoD business, I never had the patience to flip endlessly to get better bods. My razor creativity obviously was not up to the task. But I like BoDs, cause as a professional Merchant in UO, I make gold by catering to the BoD customers.

As a Professional In Game merchant, I make most of my in game income through my vendor house. I harvest resources, turn them into products to sell when its profitable and sell the raw resources when its more profitable to do that. My playstyle supports others Playstyles... I make the armor, weapons, scribe, alchemy goods that others use.

So over the last 18 months while some were mass farming Dragons, Elder Gazers, and such to make god in order to support and enjoy their playstyle, I have been mass "farming" resources to make gold in order support yours and mine. Without Merchants, then everyone would have to have their own crafter to support their playstyle habit.

So I am not sure if I like any of these changes, they fundamentally change the way I play the game. It makes my style of play harder. I can see the logic in how these changes came about. However, just like changes in the past, I am going to adapt to them, come up with new and better ways to enjoy the game and continue to suggest ways that I think would improve it. And soon enough other changes will come along that I do like and do benefit my playstyle... ie MORE CRAFTABLES !

It's a shame the AFK system is basically proven useless to prevent mass resource gathering. Instead of fixing it you're telling us how much it fails and destroy automated resource gathering altogether. I'm still shocked about the bluntness with which automated resource gathering has been patched out. That's not how you perfect a long established and largely well-running economy, that's how you destroy it. Fundamentally changing the rules two years into the servers life time will just not work for many people that have arranged with mechanics. Please update the official Code of Conduct

Steering and controlling a running economy requires small but effective changes and careful observation of the results. Central banks around the world change their interest rate by 0.25% and stock market goes crazy.
So yeah why not fix the AFK system when you think it fails so badly ? I'm totally okay with that ! I even made some suggestions how to make the penalties more grave. Add some stat-loss for repeated offenders. Drop their Magery to 0 or their associated resource gathering skill when caught AFK. That will really hurt and cost more than just jail time to recover from. Maybe even add fines for being caught AFK. Caught for the third time ? Stay jailed until you pay a 50k fine. Next time it's 250k and so on.

With what's been going on now you are also creating a huge uncertainty. Who knows what's gonna happen next - you've proven that core mechanics of the economy are not safe from arbitrary changes. For an economy to thrive, you have to provide a solid framework and a system everybody can rely on. Players are going to consider twice if it's worth investing their time into a system that might get reworked again the next time someone smelts 1mil ingots. I know some people here don't like my macro-economical view on things but that's how it works - we're no exception from the basic standards of how an economies works and this is just a prime example. You're turning a free market with an overwhelming demand into a more and more regulated market by crippling the supply side. This thread is now trying to add more regulations to the demand side so that it matches the crippled supply again ?

Well have it your way. Turn mining into yet another PvM activity and turn the caves into dungeons. Only one step is missing here. Add colored ingots to NPC vendors at a 1gp markup per color level and everybody is happy. Oh yeah in that case BOD filling should get an AFK gump.

Another thing I was thinking about. Why not add a 1 minute delay between turning in a BOD and being able to pull a new one ? This would add some kind of limit to how many BODs can be flipped per time.

Everything wodan said was very well stated and insightful, except the one min delay for bod flipping.

I've said it many times. Anyone who understands economic issues would look at the ingot market and see, there is none! The ingot economy needs stimulus, not further regulation and restriction. I suggest we go back to troll patch rules and then somehow give a mining bonus to people who do not recall mine. I feel that is the least punitive fix to the automated/non-automated issue, which seems to be at the core of this whole debate.

As Wodan stated, these kind of changes absolutely create uncertainty in the market place and with people playing this server. Regulatory uncertainty is bad for the economy in the real world, and it's bad for the economy of Britannia.

So in summary:

(1) Let's stimulate the ingot market by giving a bonus to non-automated, non-recall miners.

(2) Let's refrain from punitive and restrictive regulations against razor gameplay

(3) Let's strengthen user confidence and regulatory certainty by standing by the shard's long established rules which state razor is allowable so long as it's attended.

I have other points that elude me @6am in the morning

I want to end by asking that staff provide some clarity about this CuB suggestion with the BoDs.

I believe we really need to tread carefully into the world of overly customizing the BoD game. My concern is having any kind of BoD trading program in place in which you can trace in BoDs you do not want and get BoDs you do want, or even receiving copper coins that can then be used to purchase BoDs that you do want. A lot of people have invested many many months into collecting and turning in BoDs and accumulating rarer BoDs. I think implementing such systems would have two negative consequences:

(1) It would be a slight to those who have spent time with BoDs up until now

(2) It would adulterate the familiar OSI BoD system and steer us more towards being a custom content shard.

Yes the BoD game is tough, but that's how it was designed, and intended to be. We love/hate it because it is so hard.

All that being said I may be completely misunderstanding the CuB suggestion, so any elaboration or clarity would be appreciated.

Thanks for the support

Regarding the BOD flip timer, I'm trying to come up with creative ways to manage the BOD turnover rate for Telamon.
Would you prefer AFK checks for BOD filling ?

Turning in BODs results in an item reward and a gold reward which makes it comparable with selling stuff to vendors. Selling stuff to vendors has been greatly limited by the fact they only buy five items at once and start dropping their prices after getting 25 items in their inventory. No such limit is in place for turning in BODs. I'm sure Dalavar has some numbers regarding the average gold payout per ingot for some of the BOD types.

Absolutely I would prefer the AFK check. I think the AFK gump has been the most effective solution to managing unattended gameplay. It's brilliant in its simplicity and inescapably effective. Most of all it does not fundamentally alter established game mechanics

Back to problem solving...

Root Cause Analysis - So far I have seen a lot of treating the symptoms and not the problem. Treating the symptoms is good, it gives you time to do root cause analysis and come up with the right 'cure'

Mining has been getting a lot of "treatment" lately, but is it the problem or a symptom. People mine for 3 basic reasons:

1. People need ingots to train certain skills like Tinker & Blacksmithing
2. People need ingots to craft items to use/sell
3. People need ingots for the Blacksmtih BoD system (Carpentry BoDs soon as they include tinkering)

For #1 & #2 you can mine in the classic and currently limited macro way to fill the need.

#3 is the unquenchable monster that traditional means cannot satisfy. It has led to strip mining, rampant bots bleeding caves dry and abuses of the AFK system.

So what is it about #3 that makes traditional mining methods ineffective?
1. High end rewards take too many ingots to satisfy?
I thought they were excessive, but not out of reach of traditional methods before the failure return was fixed. Now that its fixed, I think its a non issue.

2. Desirable BoDs are too rare for the patience of the current player base given the 6 hour cycle window and the one BoD per acct restrictions.
Enter the concept of flipping. You can reset this 6 hour timer by flipping bods. You fill the junk BoD, thereby using resources and you get another pull at the BoD slot machine to try for a better BoD.

So in my analysis, Mining is NOT the problem, but the symptom of a problem. The problem is Desirable BoDs are too rare for the patience of the current player base given the 6 hour cycle window and the one BoD per acct restrictions.
Now I feel Telamon is doing his best to address the symptom(s) until a "cure" can be found for the problem. You cant ignore the symptoms and just treat the problems cause you may kill the patient in the meantime. However, you cannot JUST treat the symptom and ignore the problem.

So here are some "options" for treating the problem. Some are painful, some would not be acceptable, but lets get them out on the table.

1. Eliminate Flipping all together. - If you cant reset the timer, there is not need to fill junk bonds, there is no need for mass ingots to support flipping. Junk BoDs would either accumulate in a corner or get trashed. This is akin to amputation. This should not be done in and of itself, but possible in some combination with other changes. It should only be done as a last resort to save the patient. I don't think we are there yet.

2. Change the Flipping timer - Right now you get another pull at the BoD slot machine immediately. Say for every flip, you cut one hour off the waiting period. You could even put a cap on the amount it could be reduced I think this would actually encourage more flipping. More junk bods being bought and sold and more ingots needed. It only slows down the BoD Gambling addiction, You need to put 6 BoDs in to pull the handle instead of 1

3. Change the BoD system. - Right now there are too many combinations of items, quality and ore colors for "for the patience of the current player base" Reduce the combination possibilities, get rid of the 20 different ways to get a single item. Introduce a reward tier system where if you have a 3rd tier bod turn in, you get to choose from a list of 3rd tier rewards. Do this up and down the scale of rewards. That way the BoD filler has some choice in their reward. They can decide for themselves if they would rather have a sturdy tool, mining gloves, Garg Pickaxe, Garg shovle or Fort Powder charges. Rotate and change low end rewards according to season, schedule or events going on to give relevance to them. The underlying idea here is to release into the world rewards at the current rate, but yet take away the number of ingots

Personally I like #3 in combination with #2 with a couple twists. If you decide to flip, you only reward is reduced timer with a max reduction. With #3 you get fewer options on the Slot Machine, so your odds go up of getting a desirable bod. With fewer options, it becomes easier to put together meaningful sets to get rewards. With the flipping timer changes, you cannot theoretically endlessly pull the BoD slot machine handle non stop. With the removal of the rewards from pure flipping, there is not hedging. You put your money in a real slot machine, it does not give you change back if you don't win. I like the idea of a tiered reward system so that you can choose the reward that best suits your desire, playstyle or set of items you are trying to complete.

Sorry if this is so obvious that most of you already innately understand it, but I have found it helpful to write it all out for clarity.

So go ahead, tear it up, criticize it all you like, but do us all ONE favor, for every criticism, come up with an alternate suggestion. Otherwise it just looks like whining.

BOD filling removes gold from the economy, by adding less gold to the economy than comparable activities. I could spend two minutes filling and flipping a BOD for like 400 gold coins to be added to the economy (and the equivalent of a couple thousand being transferred to other players for ingots and such), or I could get 2,000 gold coins directly to me, added to the economy, during that time killing monsters. I'm going to do one or the other.

Specific to BOD flipping if the concern by staff is that its generating money/items on the flip so they need to nerf razor and consider it "gathering" - remove the reward on flips, or limit the reward (money or worthless pickaxe) to X a day. Allow people to use razor to chain fill them if they choose to write ellaborate macros and choose to burn resources if they wish because they've oddly? found enjoyment in filling all their BODs and rolling the dice to get a better colored one they want.

This should squelch any concern that BOD flipping is generating gross profits for people. It's a level playing field, anyone is welcome to write the macros and participate if they find that type of game play interesting. People that are hardcore flippers are taking the money now of course but I have a feeling that if the reward was removed after X amount of flips within a 24hr period you will still have at least a few people that will flip anyway, and that doesn't necessarily mean it's broken or they are playing the game wrong.

Nail, meet hammer. Spot on with the sentiment here. People aren't concerned and reacting because their game has been altered -- thats an aspect of it, but its not the instigator. The reason people are so nonplussed is the extremely arbitrary nature of these changes. "A couple bad apples spoiled the bunch" seems to be the underlying motif -- and everyone is getting punished for it. Furthermore, it leaves one wondering what the next move will be -- given that everything seems up for grabs vs pre-established concepts.

Wodan hit it spot on also with that this seems to be more about you implicating the AFK system for not doing its job. If the only thing preventing you from allowing triggering on gather messages is the outlay of repercussions, you absolutely should start banning people after 10 offenses. Frankly, this should have never been a question -- and 10 offenses is pretty damn lenient. Please, by all means, stop being seen as someone who is reluctant to pull the trigger on banning caustic elements -- and ban them. If you have empirical evidence of them completely unable to adhere to rules, I imagine most the community will not only be ok with such bans, they will agree that they are justified.

Here is my two cents, a lot of this I've already discussed with Chris.

My opinion is that micro mining is not a hindrance to the economy, especially if it attended. It literally just saves you from carpel tunnel syndrome by allowing a macro do to the work that you could, while you watch the screen. Technology has advanced and we have macros that now do the work that couldn't before (circa 1996).

If you cut off the supply of ingots, especially colored ones, you are increases the expense of doing a single BOD. If it costs me 30,000gp gold to do a valorite BOD now, but in two months it costs me 100,000gp to do the same BOD, I am probably not going to do it all together. If you want to singlehandedly affect the price of BOD rewards, either 1) change the rewards on a rotational basis or 2) increase the difficulty of drawing a high level BOD.

The NPCs still sell ingots at 8gp each, and people buy them there. If the user's were selling ingots for 4 and 5gp each, then I'd be a little concerned. But again, the economy will heal itself.

Not to get political, but I believe prices trickle down. That is, keep changing the BOD rewards! If there is a new decorative item you can get, demand for BODs will increase, ingots will be in higher demand, people will be re-invigorated.

Let's keep it simple, we don't need a lot of small patchwork fixes on overly complicated systems. We need one system, with minor tweaks here and there to obtain efficiency. Although I don't mind the idea of the gargoyle shovel as an addition to the BOD system, I don't think it should be a replacement for the traditional methods of gathering resources.

Edit: I don't see the harm in macro filling BOD rewards? It's taking resources out of the economy, and if you're getting a shitty runic hammer and 1200 gold, you've just spend probably 3000-5000 gold on ingots. Flipping is also fine too, it takes a ton of ingots out of the system.

Why does everyone want to make BoDs easier? Its a freaking end game quest. Quite a few people have invested untolds amounts of ingame wealth and real life time into collecting BoDs. No one seems concerned with what making high end BoDs easier to get will do to those people's time and investment.

More importantly all these suggested changes are all some weird custom content. This is not a custom content shard.

The truth is, there is not a problem here. So what? Some people play the game with razor more than others. Big deal. UOR is about letting people play there game how they want. I do not understand why everything has to be "balanced" which actually means nerfed.

Lets just leave bods alone. The existing system and drops works great. If anything lets rework the reward matrix slightly so that we dont get so many garbage pickaxes. All these ideas about being able to trade for bods with the npc to get the bods you want? Thats custom content!!! And it will totally defeat the purpose of bods. Collect them all and trade with other players. I cant believe I'm actually going to say this guys, but be patient. There will come a time when we are all running around with VAL RUNICs. Just be patient.

As for mining.

• Go back to Troll Patch rules
• Shut down some mines for the supposed "swarms" of people who want to mine by hand (Just wait these mines will be vacant)
• Give people who want to mine by hand some sorta bonus of sorts so they feel they can compete with macros
• Stop trying to customize everything! We came to UOR bc we wanted UOR not some weird custom shard

I strongly disagree with your suggestions.

Both #1/#2 are mechanisms that were in place with UOR. They worked fine and make a lot of sense.
UO is about grinding why shouldn't bod players be allowed to grind just as other people are allowed to grind?? tampering with the flip timer or those mechanism will result in (a) a custom content, unrealistic shard; (b) another modification to detour people from choosing to play the game in whatever way they choose. I see people grind for hours killing monsters. No one complains. A few people choose to grind away at BoDs and apparently everyone is up in arms about it. I think people think that BoD filling is more fun or more profitable than it really is??? BoDs is a money pit. I've sold all my rares to fund this insatiable machine. No one appreciates the amount of time and money we have poured into. They only see that we've mined a few ingots and filled a few bods. Other people are welcome to pursue this undertaking, but other people choose to spend their time at keys or interacting with people, collecting rares, whatever. I do not do that. I have chosen to dedicate my time entirely to BoDs.

#3 I agree with partially in the sense that the reward matrix needs to be reworked slightly on the bottom end. The "tiered" idea is again just hitting the easy button and causing some sort of customized shard and also a big eff-you to those people who have spent so much time collecting bods. These rewards are end game items. We cannot just hit the easy button here. I remember back when this server was in Beta. I expressed my concern then to Chris that everyone would be running around with val/ver hammers and magic weapons dropped from tmaps and mobs would be useless. Chris assured me that that would not happen. He was not kidding. He made runics very hard to get and so it should remain. If you hit the easy button on this matrix then you are going to piss off PvPers and then PvMers are going to complain bc PKs are rolling through dungeons dealing 50 hp swings with spears and its just gonna roll on down.

In the above post I outlined my suggestions.

Rework low end of BoD matrix
Go back to Troll Patch rules
Give a bonus to at keys miners
Make some at keys mining caves in which you cannot recall
Do not make any radical changes to BoD system; it worked on OSI. I do not understand why everyone thinks its broken. Its not broken.

I have said this a million times. I do not understand why everyone is making it their business to dictate to other players on how they should play the game. Its a ludacrious notion to me. I think Blaise wastes his time GMing his little guild with their meetings and running around on his "naturalist." But I dont make it my business to go tell him to change up his game play and be more productive! Its not my business. I personally enjoy being productive. I get off to accomplishing goals. I work out every day. I build complex finacial models at work. I could just use the ones they provide... but I dont enjoy that. In game I measure my success by how productive I am. I weigh my time usage in game by what moves me towards my goals the quickest. Why is it suddenly everyone's business on how some players choose to play the game? If the economy or the community were being effected by those player's play style it would make total sense. But not one ingot I've ever mined has hit the market. My Ingots sit in my house. I look at them and use them for bods. Why do I have provide rationale to everyone for why I like having 1,000,000 ingots? No one demands that Les or Markos or Upgraydde provide rationale for having every useless pretty looking pixel on the game. No one demands rationale from Gideon for having to have castles filled with sheep. And I'd go so far as to argue that the sheep have more impact on the economy than me, because he sells his cloth! Nothing I do has any impact on anyone. I barely interact with people on this server. I mind my own business and do BoDs and I just simply do not understand why everyone gives a rats ___ about how I choose to spend my time or how others who play like me choose to spend theirs.

Tirade over. Deep breath.... I feel better.

Im going to go hug Mutombo. Hes furry and happy and UOR is frustrating me. Good day

Sorry I appreciate how the game was designed, not how people designed software to cheat it. I never owned a GameShark either. Automated gameplay is not game play, it's a show you run and watch. Just because you wrote the script and developed the actors, doesn't make it any more actual UO play.

You can call my gameplay a waste of time all you like but at least I play the game and didn't invent a new game out of how to automatically do what others are doing the way the game was designed.

You are not productive in game, at all. Razor is productive for you. You already live and breathe by the 'Easy Button'.


Also, for what it's worth, the largest guild on the shard is hardly little. I'm sorry iE never took off because you took off 10x more.

I'm knew to the shard but what I understand of it is :
-Automated razor grind : ok
-Automated razor farm : not ok

The thing is with collect skills you can't tell the difference betwenn grind and farm so... it's considered farm.

I think it's pretty fair.

I think that many of the most heated debaters in this discussion have made it very personal right out, which makes it near impossible for any true rational discussion. It seems both sides have drawn conclusions about the character of the other, without really discussing anything of import.

I fully support anything that reduces as much as possible fully automated play-style. I appreciate very much the hard work that people have put in to writing elaborate scripts that allow them to hit one key stroke and then allow their character to automatically run through mechanics and actions, however, I respectfully ask that we all define this as 'fully-automated'. I am completely fine with somebody hording 1,000,000,000,000,000 ingots, gold, whatever, but if you have acquired them by means of fully automated game play, I oppose it wholeheartedly.

If you won't ready my post any further (because you've already decided that Telamon is against you and your opinion has no say) then at least agree to stop using 'era accuracy' as an argument in this discussion. As I understand it, the goal for this shard has never been strict and absolutely adherence to Era Accurate (UOSA tried that and failed); Era Accuracy is used as a guideline to determine what 'suggestions' will be considered as far as CONTENT, but not MECHANICS. I would define the vision of this shard, as I see it, as "Assurance for Longevity". Now you are all going to respond to my post immediately and say that these changes kill longevity, but hear me out, what will kill longevity worse than anything, are

1) removal of non-consensual risk (i.e. the true definition of trammel) and
2) full-automation (playing with NPC's).

I left OSI UO a long time ago, because when I visited (after 5 years away) it was empty. I was walking around in a virtual realm, all by myself and when I finally ran into somebody, it seemed terribly pathetic when he tried to bribe me to stay by offering me all kinds of gold to just stay around. If I wanted to do that, I'd find my own package of RUNuo, set my stats and skills to 1,000 each, and spawn Balrons, all by myself. You can argue that these changes hurt your specific playstyle because, just out of principle, you should be able to use full automation to suit your playstyle. But I beg you to set aside your personal pride for a moment and truly think of what will be best for this shard? Will your ability to accumulate 1,000,0000000000000000000000000000 ingots by full on automation truly be necessary for the longevity of the shard? If so, please explain how? Are you stating you will leave based purely on the principle that you cannot do this? I'm sorry but there are more people joining this shard every week(way more than the 3-4 main people contributing to this thread), and if they are not able to compete in any way with the full-on-automatons they will most likely begin to mimic the same behavior just to compete.

I am however a fan of hybrid approach. It is clear that this game, with it's core mechanics is severely monotonous and repetitive. Since none of us clearly expect Telamon to spend his time 'policing' each of us to make sure we are all 'obeying' the honor code and playing attended all the time, there has to be something put in place.

On the other hand, I do hope that we can offer up solutions to this and perhaps get some replies from Tela and staff regarding alternatives to creating 'new' content to ensure attended playing for mining and crafting. Providing motivation for player interactions should be the key.

I am ok with permanent account bans if somebody fails the AFK gumps 10 times in a row. After 10 times, it is clear that you are not making any effort to ahere to the shard rules.

As a concluding thought from Jupiter, please tell me what the reasoning is behind fully automating your play style? What other game style can compete with it? I could theoretically automate recalling in to kill shadow wyrms, but the amount of time it would take would guarantee a visit from pks and there would be no guarantee that I'd be able to collect the fruits of my automated efforts at anywhere near the same rate as a recall miner.

I agree with on those dissenters is the way in which we were notified this was an issue. I think a warning is always preferable over immediate action. But in this case I think if a warning had been given, the response would have been the same.

I do feel bad for corruption's rune library of ore locations, they do seem to be impacted negatively since there are many cave locations that are now gone. I will have to check some of my own random rune locations to see if they are affected, but I don't think I had too many caves.