Plat Imbalance

Here are some ideas that I've shared in the past with Telamon, but I think he didn't consider them workable/appropriate. I'll still list them for the purposes of brainstorming.

To keep this shorter than it otherwise would have been, I'll assume everyone already knows how platinum is dropped during a champion spawn, when the boss dies, and when the harrower dies. Some of these ideas are mine, others are not. Some I just made up as I was writing this, but the goal is just to get some ideas out there.

- Significantly increase the chances of plat dropping on normal monsters like liches, harpies, etc. that are not associated with champion spawns.
- Increase chances of plat in all dungeon chests, even lower level chests.
- Increase plat drops for other in-game activities that are under-utilized, like certain types of MOBs that are not farmed much because they don't drop much gold, etc. Ophidians, for example. Or perhaps something like the stablemaster will give you 1 plat for each tamed (non-bonded) dragon turned in.
- Either double the plat drop chance for killing monsters during a champ, or implement a points system of some kind that tracks damage.
- Reduce harrower plat by half, from around 1k to 500. When the harrower dies, the person who summoned the harrower with a scroll can turn the used scroll in to a town guard and gets a 250 plat. The remainder of the plat is dropped when the harrower dies. This rewards the group that put the skull set together, because the harrower itself will be public as explained below.
- Change the harrower score card so that there is a maximum amount of plat any single player gets. Something like 10 plat per player. If there are fewer than 25 players that do minimum damage, the plat is lost. The 250/250 split could be adjusted so the harrower drops more and the scroll gives less.
- Any time a harrower is spawned, it is announced on all town criers and in Discord. Maybe even system message.
- The harrower cannot suck in a player that has 0 follower slots. This might have some unintended consequences but the goal is to do something about tentacles that are nearly impossible to kill due to bad placement, and to give an advantage to dexers and non-tamer builds. The tentacles and harrower itself will still be able to cast spells and life drain these players.
- Create some dexer-friendly monsters or NPCs with a high likelihood of dropping plat. This is sort of like the Keza monsters that are nearly immune to pet damage, but they should still be weak to player spells so that mages can damage them with spells.
- Make champ bosses extremely weak to dexer damage. So a dexer using a plain old GM katana or a power bow or something can cause significant damage without the need for dragons.
- Finally, even though it won't matter as much any more, please fix the champ skull drop mechanic so that a player must be either top damage OR within the few top damagers. Better yet, the player with the highest damage for the overall champ (including underlying tiers) gets the skull.

I like some of the above suggestions. My suggestion would be a totally different direction.

The plat system is a replacement for the vet rewards system of OSI right?

Why not increase monthly welfare plat based on account age?

I like a lot of what Leopold suggested above, it seems well thought out. You could even combine these things, to allow newer folks a route to plat income, while allowing some of us that have been around for a long time access to the same rewards, WTHOUT requiring us to farm the same old champ spawns on a triple box, which many players here really hate doing.

Just to make my point, I want to say that I really don't want to spend my time triple boxing with a bunch of dragons, rolling a script to play for me. I know some peeps enjoy it, great, more power to you, but I have zero interest in that kind of UO. Its not even remotely close to era accurate, but we will leave it at that.

If you increase plat rates as account age increases, you are giving your vets a reason to stick around, while also allowing us to fill out our characters with rune books, ethies, and house decoration ability. The way lockdowns have been reduced here, with the cost of things like carpet and other decorative items in the plat store, basically requires you to triple box a bunch of champs, or you are screwed.

With high plat rates for long term accounts, so much of this would be solved for veteran players, while still providing pathways for newer peeps to go out and get it naturally.

Also, since this would increase the availability of plat, I believe it would also help to bring plat values into a more reasonable range, especially for newer peeps. Plat, imo, shouldn't be something that is so restricted in availability to the average player. It also shouldn't be so easy to grief others out of the ability to gain it. We all know that plat has been a major point of contention around here, for as long as I've been here. Its also proven to be a hotbed of player griefing, from literally everyone involved.

PS: Polls like this are dangerous. They get people excited about potential fixes or changes. If the man in charge, with access to the code, stays gone, none of this matters. So, this is kinda like imagining what you would buy if you won the lottery. Lets approach this with the understanding that you might walk away more frustrated than before.

The biggest issue IMO is that triple box champing is the only practical way to farm plat. New players need plat the most and aren’t going to have a triple box of tamers ready to go when they start.
To solve, I think the best solution is to greatly increase plat drops from monsters (increased drop rate and amount) and dungeon chests. New players should have some alternative way to farm plat without having to champ.

i would look forward to :

- point system in champ / harrowers that includes PET's damage.
- new plat items, deco but also NON deco. rune bless deed, undestructable deeds for clothing, new house models on the same current house footprints, item bless deeds for certain anny stuff (lantarn, torches) but also Channeling deeds (where you can hold your lantarn or torch)
- new ethies models,
- house mailboxes (owner only can open) but everyone can drop something in it)
-

(ill add more to my own post as i think about it)

I think the changes that make the most sense, aside from complete overhaul of how it currently works, would be to drastically increase the drop rates in other places.

Significantly raise the plat reward for instances, dungeon chests, and regular mob drops. Tmaps as well, could be a really good source for additional plat drops. And all of these things get the players more engaged in various aspects of the game.

As far as making things more equal to current drop rates from champs, it would have to be a significant increase, since the volume dropped from champs/harrowers is pretty high.

Maybe find/kill one off each of the keza special mobs and collect something from them to spawn a boss of some sort,

A revamp to the champ system is on the UOR projects map. Several small non-patched methods have been enacted over the years to help supplement plat income.
The Hidden Rooms provide around 50 locations to find chests with elevated chance at plat and a possible rare.
The Lesser Bosses of UOR provides around 80 locations with monsters that have elevated chance at plat.
The Epic Dungeons provide a short but sharp increase to the chance of plat drops as mini-bosses become common. I do plan to continue these at some point when time allows.

Most champs are done with at least 4 or 5 players, often times more. With those 4 or 5 though, a champ is done in about 45 mins, give or take. Less when people know what they are doing, more if they don't.

Roughly 15-20 plat per champ, using 3 clients, which of course everyone does.

Remember to factor in the harrower plat too. 1k, split between let's say 5 players, who all ran the champs to collect the skulls.

Using 15 to be modest, that's 90 plat from the 6 champs leading up to the harrower, and then if you split the 1k 5 ways, 200 more from that. So 290 plat per harrower cycle. The champs are roughly 45 mins each, harrower can be done in 20 mins pretty easily with a group that knows how, so let's say total time investment of 5 hours, if we give 30 mins for a harrower, again, just to be modest with times. Thats 58 plat per hour.

If you wanna be even more modest, and say it takes 6 hours to do all champs plus the harrower, you would say 48 plat per hour.

Let's call it 8 hours! Still 36 plat per hour.

So whatever it happens to be, the increase in plat drop rate would need to be significant in order to give a similiar payout.

UO Passport holders should receive 5% cashback for plat and holiday coins.

what what WHAAAAAAT..... HIJI ZURU?!??!?!

Just some numbers i can say out of many many champ experiences. I'm not here to bash, only to give a perspective

Solo (i have soloed them all except 1)
coon = +- 1.5-2h
neira = +- 2h
rikktor = +- 3h
mephitis = +-3h
semidar = +-3.5h
oaks = +-3.5h (this one i havent soloed yet but is my estimation)
total: 16.5h


theoretic 4 player (12 boxes)
coon = +- 25m
neira = +- 45m
rikktor = +- 45m
mephitis = +-45m
semidar = +-1h
oaks = +-1h
total: 4.5h

(this is "non contested")
When you add Risk's by contesters and current "buggy" systems into account all of this can totally change your outcome. You can end up with 0 reward

Each champ boss gives between 4 & 6 plat per toon.
During the champ itself you can walk away between 0 & 20 odd plat (TOTALLY RNG)

The harrower needs at least a 4 player crew and 11 boxes
About 30+m (start to end)
Gives between 987 and 1000 plat upon death and done correctly

So if my estimated math is close to a real situation: 5 hours of work done by 4 players using 3 boxes gives
- 987 plat (harrower) split 4 ways (250plat rounded up)
- avg 15-20 plat per champ boss+ spawn *6 = 75 - 120 plat (100 rounded to avg)
350 plat / 5 = 70 plat per hour (in best case scenario)

Now funny enough many make comments how champers "print" plat as if its automated or scripted or done afk.
I myself feel the need to say that doing champ, even with the most advanced macro's and scripts, wont make you complete a champ within the above mentioned avg timers. It takes a decent amount of effort, interaction & mechanic knowledge to optimize all of that or even complete the champ safe & sound. So it actually needs the player to "play"

unlike those:
auto reagentsbuyers
auto selllers (scrolls, gems, ect)
auto miners
auto bodders
auto gold (it happened in the past) and fame farmers (still does happen till today)
auto idoc (idoc timer bots)
auto fishers
auto dungeon T chests
auto godknowswhatmore

Last but not least. These champs are not restricted to a select players or groups. Everyone can do these, but not many have the stamina or RL time freedom to go 5 hours deep. Also it takes "not much" but some extended trial & failure to optimize. I seen groups doing a 4man neira or rikktor over 3 hours long. Clearly they were new to it but they must have given up along their attempts. This being said, it took "experienced" players countless hours to become effecient. Till today i still know peepz with a shit ton of champ hours that wouldnt make it. Just like I suck at many other things in UOR. (all bs & salt aside) Only saying that you have great pvpers, great bodders, great pvmers, great miners ect.... you invest time & effort in something, you will prevail.

I only hope that, whatever the "changes" or outcomes are, staff & owner takes into account the "real ingame risk vs reward" and "time & effort to complete" into account. It can quickly become very "unbalanced". Not saying im not open for change, by all means, we all need some change from time to time. By unbalanced i mean = no risk vs high risk for the same plat reward. You'll end up with a even more non playing players that run macrs/scripts all day long.

ps: will you also touch base on the unbalanced "anni" reward/scavanger problematic?

why would you want to prevent someone from an avenue of gameplay?


Easy changes would be plat store changes to make plat more appealing, and to add more ways to aquire it. All of which have been said.

1. Put Hiji Zuru in charge
2. ??????
3. Profit!!!


All joking aside, there is no need to adjust the plat drops at all. People sat on plat coin and HC because there was nothing left to buy. What needs to happen is update the plat store. Pretty much everyone has everything they want from it at some point... but it would have been nice to have new items even every year. Telamon doesn't' have to spoil people here with new items every month or so like elsewhere but even if new items were included in the plat store it would be better than nothing. Both high end items, and lower to medium end plat items like deco stuff that isn't seasonal items, but a new skin of a dresser or a small stove, things like that.

Include new items in the plat store at least semi regularly, along with new items in the HC store, and the market will regulate itself.

The UOR project map has been there for 9 months and nothing has been done, except 10th anniversary, so tbh at this point we are not expecting anything from there, since Telamon is gone and without any prospect of coming back anytime soon...

The 3 events created by you, despite being fun to play and take part, are FAR from able to be a consistent plat drop.... The lesser bosses of UOR would need a way bigger chance of plat, to be "worth" farming, if they at least had statues drop or other higher end items like the normal bosses it would make them a little more appealing, right now there's nobody out there that will actually go up and "farm" the lesser bosses, like people farm Efreets/Ophidian Matriarchs for their bosses chance of statues.

This is not about the market regulating itself, is about ways of new players acquiring plat compared to old vets, since the changes on Xmas Event was aimed at that, they were asked "what about plat, then?" and Peace came up with this thread.

Updating the reward store will spark a high demand for plat, which benefits who? Whoever has more plat. So it's not about just updating the store, there must be other ways to acquire plat then playing the game on triple box tamers 12h a day to be able to have a consistent amount of plat income.

I agree with most of the suggestions made, to increase plat drops from regular monsters, t-map chests, dungeon lockpicking chests and other felucca activities. I'd be against increasing plat drops on Xmas Scrolls, Amibs and Lvl 7 maps, as they involve 0 risk associated with the activity.

maybe im too ignorant but how is a new player, prevented or restricted of making 3 tamers, get 6 dragons & go do champs? you dont even need bondslots to do champs, just a reserve or dragons (thats how i started)

if i want CBD's, i buy them or i BOD myself.
if i want to kill Pk's i can go look for them, doesnt mean im gonna succeed either.
arent the possibility or capabilities the same for everyone? why "old vets"

in all seriousness, 75% of the active players here are ALL older than 2 years. even the 6month old new player, that knows how to play UO, can make 3X tamer and start champing.

anyone can make a PK
anyone can make fishers
anyone can make tamers (and problably has 1 or more)

i get the feeling that tamers templates are being accused at all times, when it comes to plat, champ, harrower, gold... pvp... always the tamers fault.

if be curious to see ppl doing champ & harrowers without tamers.... good luck...