What's changed about IDOC's?

[AreYouKidden]

My theory: The veterans here all have their mass amounts of gold, their level 7 metas, and their max storage houses - as such they aren't buying large housing.. With how inflation has occurred, meta pets, relics, all the ways to farm gold at a fast pace, and make ends meet, are costing so much, that people are sinking all the gold they farm back into making their farming more efficient, and these paths, take long lengths of time and large amounts of gold in order to complete them.

What we have is an upper class (vets) who are rich and don't need the housing, and a lower class (new players) who are perpetually poor, want housing but are prioritizing their income into becoming more efficient and trying something new (metas) they didn't have previously.

Housing prices plummet, as the economy sits on a precipice.. Some say the economy is booming because inflation, most pricing is going up higher and higher - but real estate is the real measure, and it's dropping. This is a game, where people don't HAVE to play, they don't HAVE to try and make it.. Many new players will opt to not bother if it's not rectified, or by the time they have enough gold to want to purchase their housing (after these other avenues for sinking gold), they've moved on to another game.

 

[Itsfreerealestate]

My theory is when yall first started, you didn't have a lot of money so when you sold something for 2 million it SEEMED like 20 million because omgomg 2 million thats SO MUCH MONEY so when you think about it previously it seems like it was worth a lot more but now that you have a ton of money 2 milion seems like chump change and 20 million seems like a better price by comparison. Okay well, have a nice day.

 

[Nappaca]

I have been offer 19 mil for my Orc valley 18 by 18 last week I said no.( because it my first house I ever own on uof) and also I rp a Orc so I won't sell unless I was given a very good offer/item that I need

 

[halygon]

You know we (staff) had many many discussions on how to better the IDOC system. What we knew was we did not like it as it was because:

• There was little effort in timing IDOCs
• The same folks with the most numbers always took the loot (monopolized it)
• Did not benefit the shard, only a very specific few

We went back and forth on the approach we would take and wanted to fix the above issues. We wanted to allow folks to actually organize and manage IDOCs and their timers, make it more than just a murder and loot grab event, and also give a little bit back to the community on each IDOC.

I think we accomplished all of this. Oh yeah, it's not the traditional IDOC model as we saw on other popular shards or even OSI, but it works pretty well.

Because there are mobs, you cannot just kill all opposing players and then gate out all the loot -- you have to spend time on killing mobs and looting their corpses. For blue only idocs, this encourages blue on grey fighting among other things. A part of the loot goes to the world so that the random player may get an item that they would not normally have been able to get - great way to have someone's day made. It's fun. It also spreads the wealth in return for additional work (killing mobs).

I get the push back that some of you are giving because I too in a previous life did nothing but IDOC timing. I had spreadsheets with crazy formulas to guesstimate exact timers and build idoc rune libraries and processes for managing idoc runes. Lots of these things can still be done to your advantage, you just have to evolve with the changes.

 

[batman]

Because there are mobs, you cannot just kill all opposing players and then gate out all the loot -- you have to spend time on killing mobs and looting their corpses. For blue only idocs, this encourages blue on grey fighting among other things. A part of the loot goes to the world so that the random player may get an item that they would not normally have been able to get - great way to have someone's day made. It's fun. It also spreads the wealth in return for additional work (killing mobs).

Idocs help all instead of the few!!

 

[Nebula]

You know we (staff) had many many discussions on how to better the IDOC system. What we knew was we did not like it as it was because:

• There was little effort in timing IDOCs
• The same folks with the most numbers always took the loot (monopolized it)
• Did not benefit the shard, only a very specific few

We went back and forth on the approach we would take and wanted to fix the above issues. We wanted to allow folks to actually organize and manage IDOCs and their timers, make it more than just a murder and loot grab event, and also give a little bit back to the community on each IDOC.

I think we accomplished all of this. Oh yeah, it's not the traditional IDOC model as we saw on other popular shards or even OSI, but it works pretty well.

Because there are mobs, you cannot just kill all opposing players and then gate out all the loot -- you have to spend time on killing mobs and looting their corpses. For blue only idocs, this encourages blue on grey fighting among other things. A part of the loot goes to the world so that the random player may get an item that they would not normally have been able to get - great way to have someone's day made. It's fun. It also spreads the wealth in return for additional work (killing mobs).

I get the push back that some of you are giving because I too in a previous life did nothing but IDOC timing. I had spreadsheets with crazy formulas to guesstimate exact timers and build idoc rune libraries and processes for managing idoc runes. Lots of these things can still be done to your advantage, you just have to evolve with the changes.

Everytime I talk to a staff member about IDOCs, they always tend to say that they did not like that you could time Idocs with little effort. What I don't understand is that this is still possible... You can still get almost perfect timers on IDOCs, the only thing thats different is that the window is now 6 hours and causes for idocs to fall at absurd hours in the night or early in the morning while many people are sleeping or at work.

Interms of the mob I think they do the opposite of what you guys want to happen. Whats eaiser to prevent people from getting loot... trying to kill a bunch of people who are all gating out loot or trying to kill a bunch of people who are focused on killing etins then trying to gate out loot. This system legitimately just gives more time for reds to kill the blues at IDOCs.

As for the loot distribution, like its fine, but maybe turn down the amount from 50% to 25%? Like I understand you want it to go to some new player killing monster but dont you think its more likely do end up going to some already rich tamer with maxed pets whos killing 20x the amount of monsters than a new player could kill in a given amount of time? Just a thought

 

[Itsfreerealestate]

As for the loot distribution, like its fine, but maybe turn down the amount from 50% to 25%? Like I understand you want it to go to some new player killing monster but dont you think its more likely do end up going to some already rich tamer with maxed pets whos killing 20x the amount of monsters than a new player could kill in a given amount of time? Just a thought

I've been PKed at just about every IDOC ive been to. Granted it wasn't many but it was frustrating enough to turn me off them for awhile.

The other day, I'm wandering around yew financial and I see ettins, I'm like, there's no ettins here! There were three of them, I killed them all and walked away with some statues in a Christmas box, which made my whole UO day.

Then I found the house that dropped, it was a small house that went under the radar, and I guess runebooks don't go on monsters, because the whole rune library was sitting on the ground for me to take. It made my whole UO month haha

 

[Itsfreerealestate]

Somme players hunt for pks
others hunt for loot
the only thing I'm hunting for
is a house spot that looks good!

 

[Nebula]

I've been PKed at just about every IDOC ive been to. Granted it wasn't many but it was frustrating enough to turn me off them for awhile.

The other day, I'm wandering around yew financial and I see ettins, I'm like, there's no ettins here! There were three of them, I killed them all and walked away with some statues in a Christmas box, which made my whole UO day.

Then I found the house that dropped, it was a small house that went under the radar, and I guess runebooks don't go on monsters, because the whole rune library was sitting on the ground for me to take. It made my whole UO month haha

Thats good to hear there is a point to be made that is the runebook where still on the ground the boxes probably would have been as well

Im glad you got some good stuff!

 

[AreYouKidden]

Blessed items fall to the ground - all other loot is split 50/50 between Ettins and the overworld chest - which gets depleted based on a % roll when a monster dies... It's a grand system..

@halygon I love when I actually see a post explaining the reasoning behind decisions, I've actually read 2 or 3 of them today from you on other topics as well. I'd love to see more of this approach, it really helps to have an honest discussion about things, especially here in the forums where people in the future can read up about it.. Some of these things were talked about in Discord, but unfortunately the nature of conversation there being fast paced, you can't ever find those discussions again.

I may have said it earlier, but I'm a fan of the changes, and of the logic behind the changes. Now take that 6 hour IDOC timer, and make it random sometime between 4 & 6 hours, and you've got a fun filled house fall, that has fighting going on for 2 hours or more, instead of people showing up 5 seconds before it drops...

 

[halygon]

I may have said it earlier, but I'm a fan of the changes, and of the logic behind the changes. Now take that 6 hour IDOC timer, and make it random sometime between 4 & 6 hours, and you've got a fun filled house fall, that has fighting going on for 2 hours or more, instead of people showing up 5 seconds before it drops...

You'd think this is how it would work, but it doesn't. Not many people have 4-6 hours of spare time to sit around a house waiting for it to fall. We tried it before and IDOCs were all but useless as a shard mechanic. We would rather reward those that put in the time to get a good timer.

 

[AreYouKidden]

It'd only be 2 hours (timer between 4-6 hours). Could even make it 1 hour. But I can understand that concept. As it is now, anyone who doesn't catch an IDOC timer early enough is already sitting around for a few hours before it drops, in hopes to catch it. I've never really understood the concept of allowing people to time things to the second, so they can bring in a large force to dominate, to me that just seems to cater to the largest groups/guilds. (IDOC's, Champs, Rare tame-able spawns) Find a timer, monopolize it, PROFIT!.

But I can at least appreciate the thought you guys have put behind it.