3x Crafters for Bulk Order Deeds

I'd like to discuss possible alternatives to requiring three identical crafters to stay on par with anyone else in the BoD game. I don't know how we could go about it but I don't think it's appropriate that three smiths run by one person can pull more bods than one. Sure they put time/resources into training the character, once. Then it's just a BoD pump after that and effectively wasting character slots in order to be on the same level as others in the game. No other template or system in the game is like this. Sure, you can benefit in the form of faster BoD filling if you've gone to this length but it just seems silly to me. You can also 3x account dungeon farm but that has risks of its own.

How could such a mechanic work, without opening up a door for abuse of the system? How can a new player come here, toil away making their blacksmith and play on the same level as anyone else doing BoDs? Perhaps something like a 3 BoD per IP per 6 hour window, would be more fitting?

I may be alone in thinking this is out of whack but I'd like to see what other folks think about it or hear some good justifications for having the same character on three accounts.

I'd like to see a more accessible system for sure. Having 'acquired' a BOD or two through non standard means I'm interested in trying out this accept of the game. Reading the numbers thread has shown me that if I want to be competitive, I need to make three smiths. This feels like a barrier to entry. Perhaps that's by design?

What's to prevent VPN hopping?

Yeah, I noticed the fatal flaw in that potential suggestion a minute ago. I did add that after the fact because I didn't want to bring up the topic without any suggestions at all.

Here are the ways, as far as I can tell, to limit BOD collection:

1) Per character - This is obviously bad for obvious reasons. Moving on
2) Per account - This is today's solution
3) Per account(s) owner, aka per 3 accounts - This would require a way to associate the accounts together that isn't IP and isn't susceptible to people "opting out" of association
4) Per IP - Can be worked around with VPN

Telamon has mentioned concepts of a Household System but I daresay that's a long ways off. That said, if and when it happens, that could be the solution. Perhaps only allow bypassing of the limited pulls, for those who have registered. Unregistered accounts get stuck with per account.

Is the goal to free up more than 12 char slots?

Personally, this has nothing to do with freeing up character slots for me. However, that may be a draw for some.
I just feel stupid having two GM tailor/smiths and feeling like I should make a third (mostly because I work in a partnership for BoDs and the other party has been pulling three bods at a time while I've only been pulling two).

I don't really want more than one account and argued at length against adding the third account when that change was in the works. I'm not going to short myself though out of stubbornness or RP so I followed suit and now have every template I care to use regularly and more. I have a cop char I could delete because he's only played occasionally and same with my battle miner. I just don't think anyone should need 3x character template to be effective in the BoD game. Hell, Double Vision literally had 9 tailors back in the two accounts, one bod per character days.

hahahah

Possibly a method to Link accounts together, IE I Register Bates as my Main account and then list Bates2 and Bates3 as my alt's, Once done then accounts 2 & 3 are no longer eligible for BOD's but account one can collect 3 bods every 6 hours.

Why wouldn't Accounts x IP work? Once your account is associated to a "home" IP it should be pretty easy to keep an eye on if an account *hops* IPs way more often than it should. Or just outright block obtaining BoDs if the account isn't on the home IP without GM intervention.

Ohhhh, perhaps only able to pull from registered IP address? Granted, this would blow for pretty much everyone because most folks are on DHCP. But perhaps a prompt or option in the [profile gump to "Set primary Home IP Address"?
This way I could easily flag my own when I get home. You can only have one and changing will have a forced 6 hour delayed request, once changed.

The problem I see with that, is say you are able to log in at work during the day , to pull your mid-day BOD? Or someone who is traveling, and wants to just log in for a few minutes and refresh house's and pull BODs?

I am very much in favor of your original post, just stating situations that I know people have. Its a tough thing to work around to make it fair to certain situations and protect from abuse for others.

Then again it would be easy enough to set up a VPN to my home computer while traveling, to keep my home IP during that time, but I don't know if that is considered accessible to everyone.

No. I think Blaise wants the ability to walk one guy to the smith/tailor shop instead of 3 in order to get 3 bods and in exchange he is offering a system where new accounts won't have to spend the resources on the extra 2 crafters to compete. It's neither what is referred to as "Trammel" or particularly in anyone's favor as far as I can see.

He must be suffering in overall public opinion to have pulled this one out of the card deck. Usually it's something I can object to vehemently from the from the get go like blessed weapons for everyone...

lol, nice ball bust I guess, but you're gonna have to step up your game if you're going to get on a level with my greatest detractors.

I understand that having joined in August of last year has left you with an almost unimaginable wealth of backdated threads to catch up on. When you're finished though, I assure you, you will find many threads I've started on a whim to simply explore thoughts about the game openly. Thus, you can rest easy knowing that not only is my deck full, it's probably got some extra cards picked up in my worldly adventures and all of them are wild.

It will likely be a fun adventure for you to see what has come to pass as a result, or not, based on them.


For the record, I don't walk to get BODs until after I recall in and the damn NPC is too far away. The cost of building the characters is truly negligible and anyone who thinks otherwise is unfamiliar with how easy it is to make gold and characters in UO now.

*looks very innocent* I was pointing out the merits of your current argument to someone who didn't understand them...

The thing that bothers me about your posts is your signature that takes up half my phone screen... I have nothing against the free exchange of ideas and information since forum trolling seems to be the only thing I have time to do recently... If I play all the cards in my humble deck right, I just might be able to attend the O^S dungeon crawl on Sunday.

Ip's don't work. Some isps flip your IP every couple of hours, others every few days.

I understand why having three tailors/smiths or more could be considered abuse of the system. But, I'm not entirely against it. Several situations comes to mind. I have known players who choose not to farm gold in the traditional ways.....Dungeons, monster spawns, etc. But enjoyed the crafting aspects of the game more. for this style of game play, I don't see it as abuse. They earn their living crafting and bods...Not all crafts give bods...So.. for me, it's not a big deal if this type of player has a vendor shop full of cool bod reward items.

I am against the idea of one bod per ip address every six hours. One of the features of bods, is that you fill a bod..turn it in and can get another bod without waiting the six hours. To me, it seems adjusting all that type of thing would mean heck of a lot of code work.

Another thought I had would be if having three tailors/smiths to collect bods is abusing the system, than how many other character types would fall into same category?

Tamers with more than one tamer, Can bring all to a spawn and clean up. Warriors, same.. on and on.


All that about VPN talk, I don't even know what those letters stand for, let alone do whatever it is. And I know I'm not the only low tech minded person here. so the player having to adjust ip address or whatever, seems to me would be an unfair advantage to those who do know.

One of the advantages to UO, is it is basically a low tech game...You can log into the game, have a fantastic time playing it, without worrying about anything tech

I have met a lot of players who only use razor to connect with game.


Thanks for the thread. a interesting one

best

Westra

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Westra, I think you misunderstood the suggestion. It in no way reduced the amount of BoDs able to be pulled by a single person.


Gideon, the only thing that comes to mind when I read that reply is: Jack of all trades, master of none.
Based on your logic, we should definitely revert it to one pull per character, every 6 hours.

Oh, but I forgot we play an MAORPG here....Multi-Account Online Rarely Played Game.



Cheers.

"I don't think it's appropriate that three smiths run by one person can pull more bods than one. Sure they put time/resources into training the character, once" "Westra, I think you misunderstood the suggestion. It in no way reduced the amount of BoDs able to be pulled by a single person."

I understood perfectly what you meant. IMO a player having a crafter on each account is really no different than a player having three of any play style on their accounts. Yes they can pull more bods than a player with only one crafter...Three tamers with pets can kill more than one tamer with pets.
Three scribes can make heck more scrolls than one....

If you limit one bod per ip per player every six hours, that does limit the amount a single player can pull... Again, you get a bod, fill it, take it back to shop, get another bod....This entire process can take less than a half hour....with the limit the player would have to wait for the sixth hour to roll around.


Westra