Plat Imbalance

Triple box taming with 8 followers slots is not Era Accurate, that's why tamers are always "blamed" here.

Yes you can say you could have as many account as you wanted back in the day, but 99% of the people only ran one, and there wasnt an assist that came even close to what razor is able to automate game play where you just need to click where to walk and it would do everything as far killing, healing, curing and vetting goes...

And as Nate said, not everyone wants to be forced to "have" to make triple tamers to be able to acquire plat.

Since staff cared about the distribution of xmas scrolls on dungeons X overworld I don't see why plat distribution wouldn't be an issue to them as well.

Its not about targeting tamers exclusively. Its about the fact that the only real source for platinum is an activity that requires a player to roll around on triple box tamers to participate, which is a style of play that a lot of people don't have any interest in. There needs to be alternatives for people that play the game with different playstyles.

I actually think Chris had it right when he suggested creating rewards specific to champing, very much like dubloons and amibs. THAT makes sense. Why? Because it gives a unique reward pool to the peeps that enjoy that activity.

It makes a lot more sense to reward that system with a specific set of rewards then to lock the entire platinum currency behind one activity.

i dont want to have fishers to pull amibs either...
i dont go on pk runs either...
and i dont run resist on my toons as i choose to have a different build. (major disadvantage in pvp)

we are here playing UOR and most of us live by the UOR COC and Rulesets. its a sandbox and everyone is free to do whatever they want.
is there an inbalance, sure, but blaming tamers for it is not right to me.

i challange any 4 ppl doing a champ with 4 dexer or mage toons + taking the boss down.

any activity in game requires a specific set of skills.

Champ is an activity just like BOD's. just more sensible to risk & failure.

i hope my point is coming across... i dont wish to derail this tread, i personally think its a good opp to express our experiences & perspectives

You are already derailing the topic... Nobody cares about tamers, we are discussing plat only source being champing and harrowers.

You don’t need fishers to pull AMIBs. Throwing nets works just fine. Also you’re suggesting that fishing is the most efficient or only way to get AMIBs, which is blatantly false and a straw man argument. Your other points about needing certain skills is just that, skills and not a template. Champing should not be the major way to accumulate the plat needed for blessed runebooks, but here we are taking about that very fact. If you think nothing should be done that’s your prerogative, just don’t be surprised if it changes because the community feedback isn’t aligned to your opinion.

He gets it

The way the mechanics are right now, if you wanted to steal a skull, you can with a couple of ebolts without doing ANY of the work... Stop complaining and organize better.

Nothing has hurt UOR's economy more than unchecked idocs once BoW left and you don't see us throwing our hands up complaining about that. Instead, we organized and made it apart of our game play to at least challenge you to some of that "free" wealth.

If a new player has questions on how to obtain plat in our current system, we truly enjoy helping others get on their feet as long as they are respectful.

Last time I looked, wasn't plat practically worthless? Like people were barely moving it at 4 or 5k each. People can already triple box and idle in Ocllo or their houses and get like 30 plat or more depending on how many accounts they are rolling above the limit..

New players can buy it just like anyone else I would imagine, doesn't take long to farm 5k or so. People are already sitting on piles and piles of it. As far as getting it in the wild, I remember getting quite a bit from blade spiriting arctic ogres while avoiding pks like any other noob haha

Imo, Xmas scrolls and Amibs have a "Lore" behind them and the rewards match the theme of them.

Plat has a couple items in there that help give an advantage in game but the wait to obtain plat is mainly through Champs. New players can make 3 tamers or 15 tamers if they wanted to. But not everyone wants to champ and for a system that should be generalized and the commodity obtained by a variety of ways, the gap in between those ways and champing is just way to big.

I'm you're average schmuck with 2 little kids, full time job, and about 1-2 hours of play time a night a few nights out of the week. I don't have the time to dedicate to champing even if I were interested. My play time tends to lay within the active hours of pks doing their rounds in dungeons, so getting Plat from bosses after spending the time farming the mobs for them to pop up is out of the question majority of the time. I tried to not be a bitch about it, but at some point I'm just wasting my game time going into a dungeon and being run out because I suck at pvp. Fishing - not for me. I want to hunt for my gold and Plat. I want to scour the lands like we do for Xmas and Thanksgiving to get those rewards. I enjoy t-mapping but to a degree. Too much time in one spot. I want to track some punks down across the landscape get a random satchel full of Plat off a random boss in the middle of no where. Too many mini bosses that spawn in the same spots with multiple people who just recall around to them.

Spawn like Zookeeper animals in the middle of wherever but harder to fight with the chance of a satchel full of Plat and saying hell yea, worth it.

Random ass tree that someone splitting logs and that tree just happens to have a pouch with some Plat in it.

Randomize mining veins in that way too.

Turn those big fish into reward vendor for Plat depending on how many stones.

Etc...

Close the gap with champ Plat vs every other way and create some "Lore" rewards or drops for Champs so they still have something to strive for. Add some tentacle statues and name them so some people can start a collection. Give one of the Champs a pet or something that people can tame and actually utilize in game like the spooky horses and shit or as a tank like Keza and his ostards, maybe not even make them mountable. Wasn't there a game of thrones themed dog drop a few years ago or something that Jumpman got? More things like that. There's an entire market out there that would love to make trades and whatever else out of it.

Plat has always been on the pedestal and a lot of players thing there's only one real way to get it. Champing. And plenty of players either don't have time for it, or just aren't interested.

If you can't join them, beat them.

Let me give my contribution::

Dont listen too much the actual plat kings about what should be changed... champs should not be designed only for triple boxers.. i remember in the past,,.. when the mobs bodies remained in the floor with their loot and this changed after the triple box gang complained... on that time lots of single box tamers(who usually have time to open and check the bodies) got demotivated to champ (was a great source of plat, gold and slayers specially in the last tiers)

I am against any new changes because i am almost sure this will be again something thinked over the actual champ groups.

for me the excess of plat in the market is only because there is no more competition over the champ spawns(the two active champ groups are not fighting each other for the champs) and any initiative of public champing is sabotated by the actual champ group(they go there, champ, get the skull and dont give back to the public champ stack).

What can me done, in my point of view, is::

Create new appealing plat rewards and bring back the possibility of looting the champ spawn.. I saw here some suggestions to increase the plat drop for dungeoners, what would be great too.

appealling plat stuff that could be add without impacting much the gameplay:
-blessed keyrings(for 1 to 2k of plat will not be everyone that could get it, not affecting much the house breaking thiefs
-Blessedd books charged with gate scrolls(people would pay a lot for a 100% chance to gate out)
-Hiding ring((inspired in lord of the rings, where you can hide if no in the line of sigh of the attacker and where you could see the dead folks)

Try to stay on topic Jimmy. I know you can do it.

Also, when you ping your discord channel to come and stack up poll votes, use "@everyone". More peeps will see it.

Get cracking son! This poll aint gonna manipulate itself!

You probably think this was clever and I'm not going to ruin your day and tell you different.

Wipe the server, only source for plat comes from loot on monsters 1/200 1/150 1/100 depending on how hard the mob is. One house per account.... All problems fixed!

I do think there is a problem.

Background
I'm speaking from my experience as a mid-game player here this year-- when I was well beyond the Young program, but not yet equipped to engage in the most high-ROI activities.

I believe this player segment is critical to the health of the shard. If this segment is underserved and retention is poor, Young players will never become old players, old players will not be backfilled, and the shard will die. Meanwhile these players represent a great opportunity-- they have energy many older players lack, and have demonstrated a commitment to sticking around that most Young players sadly never exhibit.

On the unique charm of UO
For me, the defining feature of the UO experience is that it is primarily mechanics-centered, rather than property-centered. That is, at its inception and through the UO:R era, it was not possible to make "winning" at the game inevitable merely by possessing an item, or by achieving a level of character development. In PvM, our toons are quite squishy-- your 7xGM skillset does not impress balrons. And in PvP, there is no item that confers real power which cannot be stolen or looted, and even the most powerful items are not "hit the win-button" OP.

There are some property mechanics... you can own a house, and you can horde stuff inside of it until losing a loadout becomes a non-issue. But the stuff you horde does not become more potent over time. You just get more of the same things; they're basically commodities, and some amount of those commodities is accessible very, very early in the game.

As a result, UO is not very grindy. With a flat skill-tree and an open world, the adventures are ad hoc, and you can be very creative in how you tackle them. Your toons need to grow stronger of course, but you are not prohibited from trying to tackle a big monster or another player because you do not have Legendary magery and a vanquishing weapon.

The compelling acquisitions over time in UO are knowledge of the game's mechanics, not powerful items. And I believe that's what makes this game fun. I've never asked a veteran who didn't wistfully agree that UO was at its best when there was still a lot to learn... when you felt the achievement of taking down a big mob for the first time without dying, or you felt inspired after seeing someone else use tactics that hadn't yet occurred to you.

Problem #1: some plat rewards impact gameplay, and are inaccessible to newer players
In the vein of the above, I think that keeping game mechanics behind a grind-wall is antithetical to what makes UO engaging, and puts the shard at risk by forcing mid-game players to play parts of the game they don't find engaging in order to gain access to those they do find engaging.

Most of the items in the UOR reward store are cosmetic or nuisance-level convenient, with two exceptions: blessed runebooks and ethereal mounts.

Free movement is an extremely powerful game mechanic... If we were to remove the Recall and Gate Travel spells from UO, it would be radically different. And changing them so they could only be used from fixed points, rather than from anywhere you can go while carrying a rune in your backpack, would also make it radically different (imagine how easy it would be to follow people to farming and T-map spots...). Effective usage of these spells as they currently exist is something that players acquire over time, and become more effective in general as they master them.

Blessed runebooks ensure that this mechanic is available to a given toon in all circumstances-- they cannot be stolen or looted, and they never decay. A player with a blessed runebook is able to leverage this mechanic to the maximum of their own ability, even after losing everything they were carrying. A player without one either loses this ability upon death (and losing their runes), regresses into an "initiate travel only from a fixed point" mechanic, or must pay a rune-copying tax in time or cash.

I don't think I'm overstating that this is a very powerful thing-- there are guides all over this forum saying "do what you have to do, but get your first blessed runebook ASAP because it makes a huge difference". I.e. this is understood to be a game-impacting mechanic. If you're not sure you agree, consider this: if we made blessed runebooks behave like un-blessed books when being held by a toon on an account over 24 months, would that be disruptive to you? What if we removed them from the game entirely?

The rewards store charges 250plat for a blessed runebook. Maxing idle time over 3 accounts, that's many months of not having access to this powerful mechanic even if you fully understand how it works (and anyone who played OSI certainly does). At current market prices that 250plat would fetch 1-1.25mil gold, which is probably achievable in less time.... But I submit that it's better for player-retention and thus the health of our shard if our newer players spend their early months playing content they find engaging, rather than dumping their precious free time into this weird Farming Ogre Lords Online game.

Ethys I have less to say about... They are less powerful, but do still enable certain playstyles impossible without them-- e.g. folks using the "elementalist" build have noted that using a regular mount isn't possible because the summoned elementals aggro them immediately; e.g. a naked thief can be a threat after resurrecting in COTD, but not without an ethy.

Finally, house lockdowns *would* be a concern if there were a lack of places to drop small houses on this shard. There isn't, so it's not, but if we had a housing crisis it would be problematic to let the rich keep hording while the poor have to work the fields in their plat farms.

I propose either removing these blessed runebooks and ethys from the store/game entirely (seriously), reducing their price in plat (perhaps make books reachable in 8-10 weeks of account-idling), or making plat itself cheaper / more plentiful.

Problem #2: the champing/harrower bottleneck on plat income creates unhealthy competition
The champ/harrower mechanic is the only high ROI path that a limited-time player can pursue to acquire plat at this time. This creates a bottleneck, and competition that I think is bad for the shard. That is, if it were competition between groups that truly welcomed the competition, it would be healthy. But it is not welcome, and is not healthy.

The events on either side of the MiD/ONE truce earlier this year demonstrated this. I will not re-hash that because I don't want my point lost in nit-picks about who threw the first stone. The important thing is that those groups have struggled harder for dominance in that arena than others because the ROI is so high and there is no real alternative, and the intensity of those struggles has crossed the line from "this is a part of the game we play together" to "I don't want to play with you, and I'm willing to do things that will make you stop playing".

Trying to run people off is not good for any community, and it's especially not good when it's happening between very large groups with a lot of influence on the shard as a whole. I submit that it would be better to lower the ROI than to allow that status quo to persist, although I don't favor that solution because that would remove the opportunity for people/groups who are *not* part of that problem.

I've also seen proposals to make champ skull-yield chances based on damage dealt or mobs killed, with the hope that everyone who shows up would just push hard for max damage. That's a nice dream of everyone politely PvM'ing together, but it seems obvious to me that the easiest way to guarantee top damage is to kill all of the competition... player toons are squishy, and you don't have to have a full pack of perfect pets to win if you go that way.

I propose instead that alternate high-ROI plat streams be introduced, preferably ones that aren't centralized on a small handful of map locations.

T-Map chests are an obvious pick. If the payout for level 5-6 chests were significantly higher it would give solo players access to a solid plat stream without coercing them into aligning with one of these two major groups, and could provide a pressure-relief valve for groups who want to farm plat in earnest but don't feel like fighting off raiders. If the payout were still lower ROI than champing, then champing would still be worth organizing groups around, or provide end-game veterans the same flex-for-gain opportunities they get out of solo'ing today.

What about plat rewards for Justice kills? AFAIK Justice doesn't do anything on this shard-- it'd be neat if when I kill someone with 20+ short murder counts, I received a little stack in my inventory.

Increased boss drops have been proposed, and I agree that sounds like a good idea.

Problem #3: all of the significant plat streams available now require the use of tamers
Referring back to the top, one of the beauties of UO is that you can approach the game creatively. It is entirely possible to fund yourself into a house full of stuff and a set of well-stocked vendors, all while roleplaying a completely pacifist character.

But not if you want platinum coins! :lol: For that you'll need a combat character, and if you want to make a purchase more than once a year you're going to need tamers in particular.

My trouble with that is that I find playing tamers nauseatingly boring. I like playing Ultima Online, which is a descendant of the Ultima series of single-player fantasy/roleplaying games, augmented by interesting multi-player mechanics. I don't so much enjoy watching reruns of Low-Fi Dragon Battles Online, which is what it feels like when I drag my pets out and stand around saying all kill, Vas Rel Por, and applying bandages every now and then.

BOD rewards including some kind of plat payout would be a great way to continue feeding that ecosystem (which is good for everyone), without forcing people to create tamers and go out into dungeons.

Plat drops from provokable mobs would also be great.

Plat drops from pet-immune mobs would be awesome. Not only would it drive up the value of weapons, it would also (presumably) give people a reason to actually bring valuable weapons out into public dungeons... which would be awesome for thieves, a class of character that is friggin useless here compared to my memories of OSI.

Implement a poker table or blackjack table where the house is the server.

I would vote to update vendor rewards to increase plat value, but I had to vote no change since we seem to be headed in the opposite direction.

Changes being suggested here will crash plat value. Yea I know it's artificially inflated, so are diamonds which are pretty valuable.

I don't understand the problem, new players don't need blessed rune books or ethys and I had no problem getting those things inside 6 months. Should it not be a reward to work for something?

Now I'm hesitant to drop 1k plat on house deco if it will be easier to farm in the future. Might be better to sell it all now and cut my losses.

There's a gold imbalance, should we make that easier to get too?

I understand there's a big wealth gap. A poker table with a house cut would be a good thing for the economy IMO. That can address the imbalance issue while also not crashing the artificial value of what I worked for. I feel sorry for the people who watched their plat decrease from 10k, what a disaster.

I don't know why I like dead end topics, but it's interesting to look at people's opinions and where individually everyone wants to go.

Enjoy the great UOR while you have access. We all feel that the water has bloomed, but it has happened in the past, so we have a chance, though.

As for platinum, I get it one by one from the loot of low-level monsters. For me, gold has always solved my needs. If I need platinum, I buy it.

I'm solo and I'm not interested in global issues, I don't have them and I enjoy UOR when I give it a little bit of time.

But the real problem is crying over expensive rune books, PK's runs and other nonsense. And of course the idiotic 24/7 event center.
Edit (incorrect translation): Crying boys about PK's, supposedly expensive books, ethy's and other tears, it slows down those who want a simple game. And of course Trammel green gates are out of place.

Enjoy UO lovers, winners and all those who have UO in their hearts! Cry and moan weaklings!

<<< Well said Bill!

Regards,
Kir.

I think the issue is more simple. What is plat supposed to be?

If it is a reward for active play and our version of a veteran reward as @NCCML pointed out (which the website states it is and the welfare system actually implies it is based on implementation)... then ALL avenues of play should generate as much plat as any other avenue of play:

For example AFK Check systems should give out plat as much, if not more, than they gump you as I am clearly at the keyboard playing on (most likely 1 box to avoid jail):
Turning in complete bods should generate a tip chance for plat.
Mining / Lumberjacking/ Fishing should generate a chance for plat ("You notice a shiny coin burried in the rubble", "...in a hole in the tree", "... in the fishes mouth". Why does it have to be tied to the mobs that spawn and then their subsequent "chance").

As people mentioned regular hunting should generate better plat odds,. Doing tmaps should generate way more plat, etc.

But if we think plat is a reward for Champing (like Doubloons are a reward for amibs and hcoins are a reward for holidays)... well then you should remove welfare plat and you should change the website so that its just the champ reward system. Then there really isn't an issue. As @Labeler pointed our, there's a lot of risk / reward in champing and that's true and great.

The biggest issue to plat being the champ coin would be a reward revamp. It needs its own rewards that don't include the sole avenue to obtain house lockdowns, rune book blessing, and general ethies. Nothing fundamentally important to the game is tied to hcoins or doubloons. Sure there is a new ethy skin in hcoins, sure both have dyes and masks and other types of books and deco... but nothing fundamental to UO is only obtainable in that way, they are Plat (the "general vet reward").

In summary - vet rewards should reward everyone for doing anything and rewards should be UOR fundamental items. To make champs still worthwhile - they would need their own rewards (largescall update which you said was off the table). Or remove the idea that plat is a vet reward and make it only come from champs - but still would need a reward update so that items necessary to play at an "end game level" arn't tied to champing only.

So unfortunatly, the i really think the overhaul to champing/plat is needed. Whether that's on the plat distribution side (then what's the reason to champ) or on the reward side (how else does a non champer get ethies without just making champers rich and not removing coin from the economy when buyin). It needs its own reward or everything else needs to lose plat.

Plat can't be both systems...

Introduce a new coin and have it be the reward for completing champs.

Launch a new, very high-end rewards program featuring vanity/convenience items that can only be purchased using this new coin.

Similar to CUB, find a way to incentivize those of us sitting on big stacks of plat to burn + convert it to said coin.

Plat emissions rate drops, total plat supply drops, plat:gold value (theoretically) regains homeostasis, and new items/features are introduced into the ecosystem.