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PATCH Patch Notes for April 22, 2021

"the ones who wander the land will have a chance to get rich, not the crows proffessional IDOC hunters." Those who wandered the land have just as much of a chance as the professional IDOC hunters to find an IDOC or near-IDOC. They always had the same chance to place a house. They always had the same chance to get rich and same chance to loot. What they DON'T DO (i.e. not same) that the "professionals" do is commit large amounts of time to surveying all houses on the shard and the mental effort to keep everything organized, timed, and running smoothly.

There is a TON of work that goes on behind the scenes to "do IDOCs" that your average Joe UO player doesn't see. I love that the ppl winning at idocs are labeled crows but the people that asked for a free fuckin hand-out idoc lottery raffle extravaganza aren't labeled as lazy fucks or just players-bad-at-idocs, even

This is the same, tired idea/argument. The solo player wants the chance to get rich doing content that fundamentally benefits from a group working together. Hence the term MMO. Massively multiplayer. Not single player. I digress


It seems that more and more time is spent on development to counter superior or more volume of gameplay by a certain group of players. It's a shame that staff listen to the loud and small minority of complainers and players that can't or won't learn to get what they want in-game by getting better at the game itself. Why are we patching in all these goofy rules and systems? It's an inherently disadvantaged activity/gameplay for unorganized or solo players. That's it. That's just the nature of the thing itself (house hunting). Patching it and neutering it and putting bandaids on it doesn't do anyone any good.

This is a repeat of the boating system - loud people complaining that they're missing out which results in changes/nerfs to the system. In boating's case, multiple nerfs in a row.

This change, at least FEELS, like it perpetuates the shard vs. single-guild mentality that seems to be taking root among some of the playerbase. Either that or the staff is worried about 'inflation.' The addition and then expansion of the inn system, IMO, counteracts arguments that the changes are b/c of low availability of housing

Lastly, patches on a rotating basis that break up the dominance of an area of gameplay by a single guild will not solve the problem of a dominant guild existing, unless your goal is to push those people to quit. But then you just get a crappier dominant guild. What this does is appease the complainers with changes to mechanics that allow them to get what they want. What this DOESN'T do is prevent the already dominant guild members from learning or adapting to new mechanics faster or better than others and then go on to dominate new gameplay or mechanics again like they already had---- which results in a cycling of complaining>changes>adapt>complaining>changes. What this DOES do is discourage the growth of better-competing guilds by making things easier and giving them what they want for 'free' instead of forcing them to compete at a higher skill level and get what they want by taking or winning it

PS: I have a feeling we will see a 'hotfix' type patch aimed at boating, shortly, that makes it safer and easier for weaker/newer players to be out on the water. That, or is aimed at weakening/hindering the strongest players in some manner. Perhaps both. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, either, but then you run into the problem of losing your core playerbase that plays the most competitively/frequently because nothing is risky or exciting or challenging anymore or because you changed the rules one too-many times and ppl took a step back and realized there's, like, legit virtual reality games popping up nowadays and other newer and shinier things, or if not newer, haven't lost their lustre

PPS: I haven't proofread this for grammar or clarity

By suggesting that it is pushing people to quit your are assuming there are people who only play the game to IDOC, they don't do anything else enjoyable besides looting stuff from a dead account. Seems like a pretty shallow game play loop if they is all they are interested in.

I think your not giving owyn and luthius enough credit. You just assume people complain and they change the system straight away. I have confidence that they have spent time observing and taking notes about the scripting and what goes on with IDOCs, how people roll, their strategies and outcomes and they themselves have observed something that they deem a problem.

Plenty of people complain about different aspects of the game and nothing gets don't about it cause it in the admin opinion those things are irrelevant.
 
I logged in today, cast Create Food, and didn't get a block of cheese. I had it with this shard! I quit!!!*


Create Food
  • Players who have the Wizard's Grimoire upgrades active for the Create Food Spell will no longer create Cheese when casting the spell (will only create Magic Mushrooms)
Complainer said:
This patch is complete trash! I don't want these fricken mushrooms! I liked the cheese appearing the way it was since the beginning of UO! Just because a bunch of mushroom loving newbies are sick of the cheese doesn't mean the devs have to cave to their wishes. Sack up trammies and eat the damn cheese!


*When I say I quit it really is just my crybaby way of trying to get what I want but I will secretly keep playing because every single other UO shard alternative sucks.
 
PS: I have a feeling we will see a 'hotfix' type patch aimed at boating, shortly, that makes it safer and easier for weaker/newer players to be out on the water. That, or is aimed at weakening/hindering the strongest players in some manner. Perhaps both. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, either, but then you run into the problem of losing your core playerbase that plays the most competitively/frequently because nothing is risky or exciting or challenging anymore or because you changed the rules one too-many times and ppl took a step back and realized there's, like, legit virtual reality games popping up nowadays and other newer and shinier things, or if not newer, haven't lost their lustre

PPS: I haven't proofread this for grammar or clarity
There will be a patch coming up. CoM has a seemingly trammel-like environment out there where they can farm with impunity. If a CoM PvMer spots a blue boat on spyglass, the alarm is hit and 7 boats show up in under 20 seconds to make sure that boater continues to farm their 6-8 bosses a day. I'm honestly surprised Luthius hasn't hotfixed it sooner because there is a severe imbalance in who is holding dubs at the moment. On top of that, if a CoM boater is alone scouting, they spot someone, they sound that alarm and have those same 7 boats show up in under 20 seconds to make sure no one else is farming out there. The whole gameplay style of "I'll just afk at my house all day and wait for the alarm to sound so i can swarm people" is extremely lame and needs to be thrown out. If players want boat pvp, it should be found actively on the water and not waiting for a 3rd party application to tell you when your guildmates need 8 people to recall and swarm. The incentive shouldn't be to retain its core toxic playerbase (and it's laughable to think of you as a core boater because you only boat with that protective bubble around you) but rather to incentivize an environment where you don't have to join CoM in order to be able to do anything out there, including doing 6-8 ocean bosses per day and fuck the economy to no end. When the patch goes through and you would like to quit in favor of playing your virtual reality games, go ahead, no one will be clamoring for the "legendary pirate" cromwell to come back.
 
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Oh. Oh no. Oh no, how did I not see this coming? I couldn't have predicted that they would take away loot from pvp content; https://forums.uooutlands.com/index.php?threads/patch-notes-for-march-5-2021-pvp-changes.3486/

Hey, Scrubby, wasn't it you yapping about my dislike to loot changes for the Corpse Creek Contest? I think it was. I gotta say your posts here are pretty fucking cherry to say the least, anyways, I'm glad your pathetic idoc scripts that your com bots ran so nonchalantly got reamed, take care.
 
There is a TON of work that goes on behind the scenes to "do IDOCs" that your average Joe UO player doesn't see.

And the potential profit was disproportionate big with the amount of work involved to prepare for IDOCS. To be honest I hoped that devs would remove from the game all items immediately a house fall, then make an auction for the emptied plot. But that's just me not liking IDOCS.

Ah, and your grammar is very good.
 
I dont do IDOCs, do I dont really care about the IDOC portion, but I think it is a bit lame to announce IDOCs. What ever happened to letting people randomly come upon them? I do like the other changes. Makes it harder for the bigger guilds to take advantage of IDOCs. Just think it would be pretty neat for some rando to be running along and come across an empty plot with a ton of loot.

Also someone else mentioned that instead of deleting 33% of the items, to distribute them among mobs around the world and that seems like a better idea. This way youre not risking deleting rare items and it could increase people getting out and actually killing things in areas mobs arent usually farmed.

Other stuff seems decent though. The pvp hues arent any good, but whatever. I dont pvp for the loots.
 
And the potential profit was disproportionate big with the amount of work involved to prepare for IDOCS. To be honest I hoped that devs would remove from the game all items immediately a house fall, then make an auction for the emptied plot. But that's just me not liking IDOCS.

Ah, and your grammar is very good.

And while we are at it, mobs should no longer drop any loot. The low effort/risk of "tracking on, click mob" on this server is not proportional to the massive rewards that drop.

This would also help with the economy, since 99% of inflation comes from new items and gold in farming. (other 1% being gathering)

Lets lobby for this for the next patch. Thanks!
 
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And the potential profit was disproportionate big with the amount of work involved to prepare for IDOCS. To be honest I hoped that devs would remove from the game all items immediately a house fall, then make an auction for the emptied plot. But that's just me not liking IDOCS.

Ah, and your grammar is very good.
I think having an auction would have been a neat idea, however that would pretty much kill IDOCing. I think the system patched in is a pretty good compromise.

I like the fact that we are now making attempts to get some items out of the world. I also think, at minimum, special and rare drops should be cut in half.... across the board. I think most of us are sitting on tomes packed with aspect items and the like.
 
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And while we are at it, mobs should no longer drop any loot. The low effort/risk of "tracking on, click mob" on this server is not proportional to the massive rewards that drop.

This would also help with the economy, since 99% of inflation comes from new items and gold in farming. (other 1% being gathering)

Lets lobby for this for the next patch. Thanks!
This laughing skull guy just reeks of someone that wants to have some sort of weird devil's advocate debate where he/she attempts to argue merely for the sake of arguing (using half-baked or nearly non-existent points). Usually the underlying/actual reason for arguing every single point to the nth degree is because they've been on the losing end in-game and are bitter because of it and would like to get some sort of revenge or satisfaction out of 'winning' on the forums

Best to just ignore them, honestly, and the best part is you're totally justified in ignoring them because they rarely are actually arguing anything of substance, its usually grammar or other crap irrelevant to the main topic of debate. Their goal isn't to contribute, it's to frustrate people and derail the conversation/topic

There's also a 100% probability that this person is here to do nothing but defend anything and everything about changes to IDOCs and will not concede any point in the conversation to the opposition regardless of how sound the argument is. They're also probably here on behalf of a group of people or a person other than themselves and have no motivation to be constructive

Note: I could be generalizing and he/she could have some decent points. Not sure, b/c I stopped reading his posts after his first response to me made it clear he wasn't grasping my argument, didn't want to, or was pretending not to. Also, that my protest of this patch is secretly because I'm greedy for UO loot, as if I haven't had enough of it after 20 years or as if i havent skipped nearly every idoc in the past 12 months, of which we've won 99% of. Or that I haven't spent literally thousands of dollars on items, some of which I end up giving away for nothing or selling at a slight loss. Yes, it's definitely because I'm greedy and NOT FOR THE REASONS I WROTE IN MY POST THAT WASNT READ OR WAS READ BUT NOT COMPREHENDED. Anyway... yeah, the patch is garbage. The game just gets easier, more automated, more 'equitable', etc., with every patch. It's a dumbing down of the gameplay, which is, maybe, precisely the aim of their patches, if your goal is to just keep as many people as humanly possible hooked to the shard
 
I am not going to respond to your insults. I am trying my best to have an open discussion regarding the complaints I've seen due to this patch. The four major points I've seen are:
  1. Loot was decreased - the server needs this. It needs more of this, even 1/3 of loot is still lucrative.
  2. New time window to place a house - waiting sucks, I agree, however it is still worth the fight considering the value of land at this time
  3. Catering to Solo Casual player vs. Dominant Groups - groups can still choose to dominate. They will just have a smaller window and may potentially be dealing with more people.
  4. Skill ceiling being lowered - This is a 20+ year old game, aside from fine tuning numbers and responding to other player actions nothing about this game is hard.
If certain players of a group in the top echelon are quitting due to these reasons then I think they just can't see past their own wants/needs to understand what is good for the server.

I would love to discuss the complaints I've seen in this thread and listed here, but if no one is willing to do that than nothing can change. All I am hearing are insults thrown in my direction or that I somehow am not picking up on some hidden reason. Like I said, I would love to have an open discussion about this (If I left something out please let me know what it is!) but, based on what I've seen in previous replies, doubt I will get that. I will probably be faced with responses again that they don't want to go into detail, I missed the 'true' intention of the post, more insults, or categorizing my posts as falling under some weird, arbitrary law/theory.
 
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I am not going to respond to your insults. I am trying my best to have an open discussion regarding the complaints I've seen due to this patch. The four major points I've seen are:
  1. Loot was decreased - the server needs this. It needs more of this, even 1/3 of loot is still lucrative.
  2. New time window to place a house - waiting sucks, I agree, however it is still worth the fight considering the value of land at this time
  3. Catering to Solo Casual player vs. Dominant Groups - groups can still choose to dominate. They will just have a smaller window and may potentially be dealing with more people.
  4. Skill ceiling being lowered - This is a 20+ year old game, aside from fine tuning numbers and responding to other player actions nothing about this game is hard.
If certain players of a group in the top echelon are quitting due to these reasons then I think they just can't see past their own wants/needs to understand what is good for the server.

I would love to discuss the complaints I've seen in this thread and listed here, but if no one is willing to do that than nothing can change. All I am hearing are insults thrown in my direction or that I somehow am not picking up on some hidden reason. Like I said, I would love to have an open discussion about this (If I left something out please let me know what it is!) but, based on what I've seen in previous replies, doubt I will get that. I will probably be faced with responses again that they don't want to go into detail, I missed the 'true' intention of the post, more insults, or categorizing my posts as falling under some weird, arbitrary law/theory.
That point that went over your head this time is that it is a waste of time to have a serious discussion with you, because you have been insincere and assumptive since the start. We insult you because your thickness is frustrating. A Poe's Law masterpiece of stupidity vs insincerity. If you are trolling us, well done. If you are sincere, yikes...

Stop shitting up the thread, we've already covered this anyway.

There's also a 100% probability that this person is here to do nothing but defend anything and everything about changes to IDOCs and will not concede any point in the conversation to the opposition regardless of how sound the argument is. They're also probably here on behalf of a group of people or a person other than themselves and have no motivation to be constructive

There are always players who are emotionally attached to a game and become argumentative towards "can do no wrong." Not so much a devil's advocate as becoming personally insulted by any daring to have criticism. Hence the ego-defensive emotional behavior of flat out blocking out any negative points made that are sound. Hence the old anything done is "best for the shard." Self aware or not (usually not though).


For the record as well there is plenty of cool and good shit done here often in patches. Before anyone gets any ideas the other way that I am somehow just the opposite of the above.

It's a dumbing down of the gameplay, which is, maybe, precisely the aim of their patches, if your goal is to just keep as many people as humanly possible hooked to the shard

Correct. And it works, but only short term. Like a big cup of coffee with 6 spoons of sugar, it feels good until it crashes hard.

The issue is these sorts of changes that pander to a lowest common denominator work short term. They bring in 4-5 casual normies who play in the evening or weekend for every 1 hardcore player it pushes away. This has a big stimulating effect on population in the short term. This is why we have this slow bleed of Trammel and WoW style gameplay. The original creators did the knee-jerk reaction version of it because they realized this overnight, and out of fear. Which was Trammel.

The issue with a free shard in the age of up and coming VR and 4k graphics etc, is the hardcore players you turned away for a quick pop boost dont care about those things, the casual players do. The casual mouthbreathers are fickle and just play whatever flashes across their eyes. Grind keeps them interested, it doesn't give them sunk cost fallacy or any sort of dedication. So suddenly you have a much bigger house of cards playerbase, with an awful foundation that weathers nothing. It could be a mistake, it could be a bad patch, it could be sunshine and warm weather, some effect suddenly has a downward cascading effect on these casual and fickle players. The same upward effect rising population had on bringing in the tourists has the same effect going in reverse, and lower population begets lower population and these sorts of players leave over it. There are no hardcore players around as a baseline to weather it but a dozen, so it's a dead shard. Seen it a thousand times.


It could be an "it's different this time" situation. But rarely is that phrase true. I hope it is, but the fact this is the first genuine conversation I've had with another person about this doesn't make me feel good.

The above post is 100% pure conjecture by someone upset about changes. No one knows how changes will pan out over time - that's ridiculous. Every game is unique -- No one could have known a free server for a 20 year old game would have thousands of players daily. A few elite players being pissed off about an IDOC change isn't a prologue to the demise of the server.

The direction the Admin team has steered this server so far has been spot on. I (as well as a majority of posters in this thread alone) understand the need for the change and have confidence this change is another step in the right direction. Unfortunately, there are a scant few who will whine and complain regardless. Ultimately, only time will tell..... until then, this server just continues to grow and grow.

lol...well done sir
 
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The above post is 100% pure conjecture by someone upset about changes. No one knows how changes will pan out over time - that's ridiculous. Every game is unique -- No one could have known a free server for a 20 year old game would have thousands of players daily. A few elite players being pissed off about an IDOC change isn't a prologue to the demise of the server.

The direction the Admin team has steered this server so far has been spot on. I (as well as a majority of posters in this thread alone) understand the need for the change and have confidence this change is another step in the right direction. Unfortunately, there are a scant few who will whine and complain regardless. Ultimately, only time will tell..... until then, this server just continues to grow and grow.
 
Come to think of it, this patch might actually end up increasing the actual liquid supply of resources, if you can somehow measure that. Maybe not, but there's a possibility. I know anytime I/we get loot from our IDOCs it just goes into our houses or guild shelf, for the most part... I bet more gets sequestered away than goes up for sale on buy/sell.

By the way, there are very few of us who are 'pissed' about the IDOC changes. Most of us just shake our heads in a nonliteral sense. We've already cleaned up on all the good IDOCs from the changes to owner refresh being required. Next major IDOCs won't be for a bit until 'hardcore/veterans' like me start quitting, which they are. It's harder to notice though bc the hardcore types will refresh their houses for years without playing
 
By the way, there are very few of us who are 'pissed' about the IDOC changes. Most of us just shake our heads in a nonliteral sense. We've already cleaned up on all the good IDOCs from the changes to owner refresh being required. Next major IDOCs won't be for a bit until 'hardcore/veterans' like me start quitting, which they are. It's harder to notice though bc the hardcore types will refresh their houses for years without playing
This is a spot on observation, and a constant across UO shards. Hardcore players with sunk cost fallacy and or attachment to the thousands of hours of effort put in will refresh for a long time, even those with no intent to ever play again, just due to the feeling of value and personal property. Similar to if you had to refresh the Game Boy you beat to hell in middle school every month or it dissappears from your closet. Eventually the care fades, but it takes a long time for hardcore players. Every shard I have played on, the last two things to fade away when they die are rares and housing. Most take a year to several before space actually opens up. Once it finally materializes and cascades, you have a dozen players who, even if everyone wanted 3 castles wouldnt fill the map, so housing hits an irreversible bottom where plots are worthless and the housing market is deed value. There is a sort of inverse moores law curve to the death of a shard, and they dont realize when the sharp angle hits because evidence in many aspects is lagged by a year or more (not just in housing)

Although these shards are entertaining, watching people place temporary keeps at 2pm on Saturday to duel someone they shit talked on discord in (and thats the joke, thats the only time they log in), no one casual finds it attractive at all. Which is why as far as I am aware no shard has ever recovered. At first glance it seems a well made or interesting shard should still be attractive to casual players, but these dead shards are always evidence that for casuals 90% of the attraction is population. Which is why the cascade cascades and there is no recovery. Which is why hanging on to your hardcore playerbase matters more than any patch, any graphical update, any concern for "participation" in niche aspects of a game that a niche group of hardcore players go for. This is also why housing market pains are a GOOD thing, but that is a tangent for that other thread.
 
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By the way, there are very few of us who are 'pissed' about the IDOC changes. Most of us just shake our heads in a nonliteral sense. We've already cleaned up on all the good IDOCs from the changes to owner refresh being required. Next major IDOCs won't be for a bit until 'hardcore/veterans' like me start quitting, which they are. It's harder to notice though bc the hardcore types will refresh their houses for years without playing

So if all the good IDOCs are gone then why are you complaining? You've already got all the best stuff from the IDOCs and now your so full of greed you dont even want to share the scraps that are left with other people? Or are you scared of competition?


Which is why hanging on to your hardcore playerbase matters more than any patch, any graphical update, any concern for "participation" in niche aspects of a game that a niche group of hardcore players go for. This is also why housing market pains are a GOOD thing, but that is a tangent for that other thread.

You have to look at the flip side, servers cost money, the developers time costs money, the support staff cost money. What do hardcore "niche groups" have? When it comes to IDOCS/Boating or whatever other high value aspect of the game that is dominated by the very few?

Money...

They have heaps of money and/or items property(ies) worth heaps of money. So when they need something from the Prev merchant or when a sale comes on, they got the ingame cash already to buy whatever they want or they just buy the coins off another player. And what do new players not have? Money, but they want things, they want the cloth and the lantern and hairdye or whatever, so they donate real money to get those items. That real money is what pays for the "hardcore niche players" gameplay. Not them dedicating their time to dominating IDOCs, or dominating boating, that does not pay the bills of this server.

Monopolies are illegal in the real world, i dont see why you should allow a couple of people to monopolise parts of the game. The game is for everyone to play and enjoy. Does this mean everyone should get a shot at an IDOC if they want to? Maybe, maybe not, time will tell. Does this mean they need some boating changes for newer boaters? Maybe, maybe not. The cost to get a large boat is very low, low enough that any new player could get one very quickly, but theyll soon give up on boating when they get killed within 15 minutes of being on the water by a speed boat that gives you no chance to escape. Maybe the "Civilian" flag should reduce your loot to 50% but make you blue to others on the water? Who knows, but im sure if the team sees any problems in the game they will try to fix things.

** Just like to add i have no idea what became of UO after Trammel was created, i quit about 6 months after it happened, i tried a couple of custom servers for a few days in the early 00's but they all sucked, i gave up on UO until Outlands. So to my understanding there wasnt anything in the game that everyone could get involved in if they wanted.
 
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