Karl Sagan
Grandmaster
I understand your guys' frustrations on this, but honestly.. You can go from POOR to RICH off 1 single idoc (4 hours of work).
If you seen what we seen before we had the random drop timer i think you would lean our way as well. Certain idoc guilds had 10+ houses timed within the 20 minutes of falling, one night i went to a bunch of idocs and the SAME guild scooped up 5 of them, plus all the loot, perfectly timed.
I added the loot up and with the plots it was over 10+ million worth of assets and items, and that was JUST ONE NIGHT.
It was all totally scripted/timed, and they were extremely organized. It was zero risk and all reward while putting next to no effort into the game.
This is why that timer went in, the 4 hour timer makes you pick and choose your IDOCS now, instead of having every single one timed (even the small ones) you only are going to put your time into the ones worth your while. So, in return, this leaves those smaller ones that you would of normally had timed as well and grabbed "just because you could" to newer players or amateur idocers which lets them get more invested and gets their foot in the economy.
If theres a castle IDOC with tons of rares/loot and you also know of a log cabin with SOME loot, you will get your entire guild on that castle because its worth your while. Leaving that Log Cabin to some newbie who feels like he just won the lottery because everyones at that castle.
I don't think i can explain it any better than that. Ask for changes based on the server as a whole and not for your behalf/betterment.
So you see one nights profit from two weeks of tracking those houses. 10 mil / two weeks / a whole guild whose entire premise was to dominate idocs (with members on and checking houses 24/7 since they are from all over the world).
I'm curious, if there is a guild of tamers and they spend their time doing champs, and make 30mil a week, why is that not a problem? What if there's a PK making a million a day farming tamers and provos? A rares dealer getting millions of gp worth of rares in a few minutes by recalling around?
Isn't that the point of becoming an expert at an aspect of UO? To get rich?
Why punish one playstyle?
The only people who bother with idocs now are the ones who are at their computers all day straight (nothing wrong with that, plenty of people did the same thing when the timers were static).
The random timer does NOTHING to stop scripting. Idocs are currently scripted in a more offensive way than before IMO.
All the random timer does is FORCE you to sit an alt at an idoc and watch your screen for hours. If removes the OPTION of spreading those hours out over a bunch of people and times of day.
Anyone could have been timing those idocs you saw Shane. Only one group was. There's a reason for that. It's not some simple 'run a script and then just recall in and profit', and frankly anyone who says that is talking out of their ass. Idocing like we did took a shit load of communication, organization, time, and people dedicated to putting in the work well before the chance of getting a reward.
A 4 hour timer is a terrible mechanic and it does nothing but take away a playstyle that drives communication and teamwork. If you think it's better to concentrate all that idoc loot to the few who can afford to have constant access to their computer, I guess that's what it is.
Fix the problem(scripting) instead of just breaking an aspect of the game so it doesn't have to be dealt with.
I see nothing in your post that is an argument for a random timer.
