Suggestion: Extend housing decay

Balor

New Member
After being away on business for several weeks, I logged in to find that my house had decayed and I've lost everything. I joined UOF in 2018 as I travel on business extensively and wanted an old school casual game.

I was excited to see I could buy Dono coins and get a character up and running quickly, and settle into a house. I could sort of get back into playing quickly, given I have a lot more responsibilities now than I did as a teenager playing in the 90s.

Unfortunately, all of the time I spent GMing a bowyer and making slayers is now wasted, as my collection is gone. Everything I bought to gear up and play is gone, and I'm sure several items I got with Dono coins also are down the drain. All my arrows, scrolls, regs, vanqs… all gone.

I'm sure there's a mob of people waiting for houses to decay and it's fun for them, but I'm now leaving the game as I am unable to rebuild what I had, even as brief as it was.

I would suggest adding something to the game with Dono coins that can be used to extend decay times. I spent several hundred dollars on Dono coins and invested in the game for the long haul, but my job is disaster response and I have no control over my location and assignments.

I was dealing with the fact that PKs wipe me out daily, so I stockpiled stuff to "grab and go." I spent weeks stockpiling. I'm back at square one and don't feel like going through it again. I've got like 1.7 mil gold from selling Dono coins, so its not like I can't just buy another house but, heck, why bother?

So, I'm out. I'd just suggest adding something to prevent decay, even if it costs real life money. I have plenty of that. What I don't have is control over my schedule or internet availability. Banks can't hold enough, so a house is necessary.

It's a shame. I was sort of having fun.
 

Nebula

Master
After being away on business for several weeks, I logged in to find that my house had decayed and I've lost everything. I joined UOF in 2018 as I travel on business extensively and wanted an old school casual game.

I was excited to see I could buy Dono coins and get a character up and running quickly, and settle into a house. I could sort of get back into playing quickly, given I have a lot more responsibilities now than I did as a teenager playing in the 90s.

Unfortunately, all of the time I spent GMing a bowyer and making slayers is now wasted, as my collection is gone. Everything I bought to gear up and play is gone, and I'm sure several items I got with Dono coins also are down the drain. All my arrows, scrolls, regs, vanqs… all gone.

I'm sure there's a mob of people waiting for houses to decay and it's fun for them, but I'm now leaving the game as I am unable to rebuild what I had, even as brief as it was.

I would suggest adding something to the game with Dono coins that can be used to extend decay times. I spent several hundred dollars on Dono coins and invested in the game for the long haul, but my job is disaster response and I have no control over my location and assignments.

I was dealing with the fact that PKs wipe me out daily, so I stockpiled stuff to "grab and go." I spent weeks stockpiling. I'm back at square one and don't feel like going through it again. I've got like 1.7 mil gold from selling Dono coins, so its not like I can't just buy another house but, heck, why bother?

So, I'm out. I'd just suggest adding something to prevent decay, even if it costs real life money. I have plenty of that. What I don't have is control over my schedule or internet availability. Banks can't hold enough, so a house is necessary.

It's a shame. I was sort of having fun.
I would say your best bet is to join a guild and ask them to refresh your houses while you are away.
 

halygon

Grandmaster
I travel alot for work too. I just have a personal laptop to use at nights in the hotel. Refreshing isn't an issue for me because of that. My "go" bag just has everything I need for work and personal. Done it for years and years.

I am probably guessing though that this thread has less to do about refreshing houses and more to do about being new and not knowing your house will fall over X amount of time.

The single best thing to learn about UO is that it is risk vs reward and while you can lose it all, you can also gain it all back.
 

lostsoul

Neophyte
With housing at an all-time low and prices sky rocketing for large plots.. I want to suggest the opposite, faster house decay, or making it so that friends CANNOT refresh houses. I totally get why people would not like this, but I am saying this from a server health perspective. For example, I want a 24x24 or a 30x30. I would gladly buy a *very* large amount of donation coins to obtain one, but the real problem is that no one is selling. At the end of the day, Shane, the staff, and the server, get less money in donations as a result of that. Just my 2 cents.
 

lostsoul

Neophyte
As someone who just bought an 18x18 in a desirable location, I had to pay substantially more than what I saw people paying ~1-2 years ago. I was not comparing/contrasting to the prices paid for other virtual goods (relics), but I believe my point is accurate. As the server ages, and more players join/leave the world, many of them hold on to their houses, even if they lose interest in the game. On a single fixed shard like this, that means there is significantly more competition for plots, especially large ones.. Do you have some evidence to the contrary @girana ?
 

Balor

New Member
I was aware of the decay times, but I was sent out of the country for two weeks but got extended to four weeks. I did not attempt to bring my retardedly large gaming laptop with me. I already travel with three luggage pieces and a full laptop.

This thread was for a suggestion for Dono coins to assist with decay times.

I also used to laugh at casual gamers or people that couldn't find time to do simple things. Now I'm one of them.

I gave UOF a whirl, I liked it, but there's too many drawbacks to get back into it. I just made a suggestion on Dono coins to try to prevent this sort of thing in the future.
 

lostsoul

Neophyte
It really sucks that you lost your stuff. I can imagine that would be painful. Any system that keeps housing in the hands of active players instead of inactive players would be great IMO. In your case, I would consider you to be an active player since it was only a matter of weeks (4 weeks) and not like you stepped away for months..
 

girana

Grandmaster
As someone who just bought an 18x18 in a desirable location, I had to pay substantially more than what I saw people paying ~1-2 years ago. I was not comparing/contrasting to the prices paid for other virtual goods (relics), but I believe my point is accurate. As the server ages, and more players join/leave the world, many of them hold on to their houses, even if they lose interest in the game. On a single fixed shard like this, that means there is significantly more competition for plots, especially large ones.. Do you have some evidence to the contrary @girana ?


paying more as ppl did 2 years ago is just smt normal because its way more easy to make gold now as it was 2 years ago.

i did pay 20mil for a 18x18 3.5 years ago and i still think it was cheap (20mil back then is like 60mil now).

i did pay again 20mil for an 18x17 like 3 weeks ago and i was feeling like stealing it.


max storage should be at least 15mil+ even in shit locations making gold got soo easy over the years.

and there is NOTHING to spend gold on.
 

Kyain

Master
paying more as ppl did 2 years ago is just smt normal because its way more easy to make gold now as it was 2 years ago.

i did pay 20mil for a 18x18 3.5 years ago and i still think it was cheap (20mil back then is like 60mil now).

i did pay again 20mil for an 18x17 like 3 weeks ago and i was feeling like stealing it.


max storage should be at least 15mil+ even in shit locations making gold got soo easy over the years.

and there is NOTHING to spend gold on.

after 4 years of playtime i could see you having everything and running out of things to spend gold on, but many many many newer players are not in your position.
 

girana

Grandmaster
it's only easier for you and your maxed metas to make gold now girana... new players are still stifled with less efficient farming methods..


when i made my wealth. there were no metas.


and now its even more easy i trashed tons of low ps that are worth alot now.
 

Amalgam

Journeyman
So your house decayed. Worth quitting? Perhaps.

Would respectfully advise you keep the game installed as you never know when you might relapse. Damn this game!

(Also, install it on the other laptop, because never know when your business trip will be extended :p )

At least you'll have realized by now this is a decent shard and would be hard-pressed to find a better one. If you're committed to playing UO in any capacity at all you should probably stick around. I reckon you could recover your losses quick enough. Most especially if you have been willing to open your wallet in the past. For some, once the seal is broken...

Your suggestion to extend house decay could be viable - but in what way exactly? Pay dono? I would be slightly concerned if options were made available to the paid-up players only, or involved cash payment at all.

However, servers don't pay for themselves so perhaps somewhere on the horizon is an idea which might include fixed-price subscription and essentially renders your account property ageless.

Whatever the prevailing opinion on decay timers, I would prefer in-game solutions. There is the 'Rust' model, which requires instead raw resources for upkeep. Could the contents of your house even contribute towards the decay timer, +/-?

It would be... interesting... if the lockdowns in your house (and finally your secure containers) were to decay one by one before the house itself drops, extending the decay timer each time in the process. It would spell a complete end to IDOC madness, though.

(Not that I am actually 'pro-extension', just happy to jump onto someone's suggestion).

As things stand a good suggestion might include anything which consumes gold. Gold influx is a such a massive problem right now.

But paying gold to maintain a property is traditionally a bad idea and I wouldn't expect it to work here. However, if a player could choose to pay gold instead of manual refresh? Possibly workable. A player could do something like take the house key to a real estate broker in town, hand over the key and write him a fat-ass check. Some gold disappears from the server (yey!), and house stays like new until over.

Gold needs flushing bad.
 

Kerry_Bunk

Novice
The decay is kinda brutal... I left the OSI servers years ago just from lack of interest in the game and lost who knows how many hundreds of millions of items. I've maintained my house just logging in once every week or two to get it refreshed - without really playing for the past year. If I lost my house I'd definitely not come back. The tower beside my house (which is what I wanted) just fell after being there for however long and I just missed it. I think overall the decay time is fair.
 

StegcO

Grandmaster
House prices are low cause big houses are useless except for deco, here we dont have osi weapons with hundreds of different values, here on UOF while you stock reagents, some resource and weapons and suits for pvp (malee, cause for mage there is butler) you no need more spaces.

21 Banks are enought to stock up there relics, resource deeds, rares, ecc.

I have a 14x12 and usually i use half of the total storage.
 
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