Patch Patch Notes 5/17/24 Everything AND the Kitchen Sink (Hunger, Fishing, Cooking, Vendors, Encounters, Everything else)

[tr1age]

Changelog:

• Added support for TazUO chat hook (probably also works for ClassicUO if they have a built-in chat window and web!)
  
  
  • Change the color of your font in global now in Classic or Taz!
    
    
  • Change the font too in Classic or Taz (Checkmark Override Game Font) :
    
    
• Fix for Chivalry Skillcheck (use Noble Sac to get to 120, no need to be affected by discordance or satyr "tricks")
• Added Order
  
  and Chaos
  
  Badges to the Discord Shop to show your alignment.
• Fixed Serpent Arrow poison strength (lethal only at 120 Poisoning/Archery)
• Added chance to gain poisoning skill when successfully poisoning with Serpent Arrow
• Fixed Pets being able to be leashed and unleashed in Shadow Guard Dungeons
• Added Blockers to prevent Shadowguard Waiting room Encounter spawns over the walls. Can still spawn while waiting. evil grin
• Fixed issue preventing allured, bonded, and uncontrolled undead from going back to the grave
• Increased the following Tamable Spawn % Chance
  
  • Exquisite: Dragons
  • Rare: Tsuki Wolf | Undead Ram | Nightmare
  • Legendary: Shadow Wyrm
• Event Token Exchange: We have adjusted the prices of items on the stone and added new Power Scrolls to balance with Encounters, In game EM Events, and their subsequent event token drops increasing total amounts in the world. This item should always feel very powerful and something to save up for and will even out with all the additions. You should actually get these tokens FASTER now with all the different methods introduced. So while it feels like a "nerf" it is actually just balancing to the new ADDITIONAL content.
  
  
• Add 3 Tiers of Choose your own power scrolls to the Magincia Event Stone:
  • Strong Power Scroll - 110
  • Rare Power Scroll - 115
  • Legendary Power Scroll - 120
• Adj: Changed the way an IDOC house acts slightly with item removal, etc. When a house goes IDOC, all friends, co-owners, and even the owner is removed. This will simplify the code and prevent loop holes in IDOC sniping.
• Added Tomb of Kings region to the Encounter "no fly zone".
• Fix bug with Area Peace for Phased Legendaries by other players.
• add some goodies and Commands for Firebottle and EM events
• Remove artifact label from customized stealable sign to make it easier to read
• Fixed weird spawn area in water of Evil Ice Bear Island of death and despair.
• Fixed Shrine battles being blocked in certain areas.

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Hunger, Fishing, Cooking

🍽️ Hungry, adventurers? Let's talk about some delicious changes we've cooked up! We're not afraid to admit when an idea doesn't quite hit the mark, we've taken your feedback to heart and revamped our approach to food changes and hunger mechanics.

First off, we've made some mouthwatering adjustments to fishing and cooking. Now, acquiring the ingredients for delectable dishes that offer amazing buffs is easier than ever. No more putting in more effort than the reward warrants. We've also fine-tuned the costs of many items to better reflect the effort required to obtain them. Also – we've extended the durations of these food's buffs to make them more desirable, both for personal use and for those savvy entrepreneurs looking to open a bakery on the Global Market.

Having Fishing skill of 100 or higher will now reward you with rarer and extra materials, increasing your output of culinary creations even further for your Global Market domination.

But wait, there's more! No longer will your tummy grumble in protest as you adventure. We've heard your cries for dragon steaks and bags of skittles, *literally, you never ate, so that's all we heard.* As of today, you no longer need to eat to maintain your spellcasting or hit percentage. Instead, we're flipping the script and offering you a bonus for indulging in culinary delights: Stay well-fed, and you'll gain a juicy luck bonus of 100!

So, to all you intrepid souls who allowed us to try something new and offered us invaluable feedback – thank you! We sincerely hope that these changes and additions to cooking, fishing, and the hunger mechanics will leave you feeling satisfied and your hunger thoroughly curbed. Bon appétit! 🎣🍳🍔

• Fishing now gives you a 50% chance, if at or over the skill level of 110, to fish up the rare Dungeon Fish in any Deep Water. (Fishing used to only give you deep water fish at skill 80 and above, we've decided to change that up!)
• Break out those 120 Fishing powerscrolls, you now get a 50% chance to pull up one of each type of fish, deep water and dungeon fish.
• Increased time of buff from food to 10 minutes from 5.
• Added Empty Wooden Bowls to sale items of Chefs and Sea Market Vendor (time to make FRUIT BOWLS!)
• All ingredients on Sea Market Vendor, salt etc have been cut by 75% in price.
• All sea market vendor items can be placed in the food storage container
• Staying well fed now gives you a bonus of 100 luck versus effecting your swing or spell % chance. (we may expand this further as time goes on, but keeping it straight forward for now.)
• We are now basing hunger off a better algorithm. You will become extremely hungry after 90 minutes of not eating.
• You can now eat more before becoming full, allowing you to refresh stamina with food more often and consume your buff food as well. (food has always replenished stamina, so essentially food gave you a form of "stamina potions" but with the ability to eat more, you only need to carry one or the other. This also allows you to eat the better cooked foods if you wish to fill up faster(giving prepared food more value than summoned foods) and you still have room to eat buff food!
  • Yes it is intentional that you can eat a lot more now!
  • Yes prepared food has more fill factor than summoned!
  • The Blessed Bento Box / Lunch box will reduce the weight of food you carry and is at the Magincia Exchange!
  • No you won't get fat.... yet...... j/k... maybe.... no j/k.... hehehehehhe

In case you were wondering here are just SOME of the foods you can make that give your player a buff! (remember we adjusted 300 seconds to 10 minutes)

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Encounters After Encountering Players
We have been listening to player feedback and have made some pretty significant backend improvements to the systems overall. These notes are just part of the greater picture of making these encounters an exciting and dangerous part of your everyday in UOAlive. We hope they continue to bring you all joy and keep the world UOAlive! Remember it is OK to run

• Added over 50 new encounter types for balance and diversity
• Added a total of 10 tiers of difficulty now to help with scaling as players encounter more encounters...
• Added a massive amount of diversity to treasure encounter rewards.
  • Event Tokens, Gold, Powerscrolls, Daily Rares, Resources, more rare items, and so much more!
    
    
• Toned down treasure wave bursts at higher levels and the vibe of being overwhelmed while maintaining difficulty values at both low and high tiers.
• Fixed a bug where escaping/running from encounters contributing to increasing difficulty.
• Added buffer to encounter escape zone, giving the player a warning and 10 seconds to return to the area or the encounter is lost(escaped)
• Added extra check to prevent encounters spawning near active champs
• Improved encounter spawn-ahead algorithm to avoid dropping encounters on your head as much
• Adjusted monster response time to avoid a face full of Dragon Fire or Poison Breath when ambushed
• A metric ton of backend tracking stuff for us to continue to tweak this system to be the best it can be!

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Modern Vendor Listing Process and Improvement to Fees
We've implemented a significant overhaul to how vendor listings and fees function in order to enhance the trading experience for both new and seasoned players:

• Removed Vendor Search Purchase Tax. When purchasing items from vendors, we've eliminated the purchase tax previously imposed. This streamlines the buying process and removes an unnecessary confusion for buyers on who pays this cost.
• Server-Side Gumps for Vendor Listings. Instead of relying on manual antiquated listing methods, players will now use a server-side gump to list their items on vendors. This change aims to make the listing process more user-friendly and accessible to all players New and Old, myself included).
  
  
  • User Friendly Interface
  • Remember Last for bulk listings
  • Fee calculations on the fly with different prices
  • Set any container, bag, or item Not for sale with ease
  • Protection against accidental cancel by saving your user entries if Remember Last is checked (on by default)
  • Easy Clear All Button for long entries.
• Upfront Fees. Listing fees are now charged upfront at the time of listing an item. If a player does not have sufficient gold to cover the listing fee, they will be unable to list the item. This approach encourages responsible listing practices and prevents overextension.
• In the event that a player cancels the listing gump, the item will be returned to their pack. This is different than the previous way this worked with a listing of an item at 999gp if you hit esc or canceled entry.
• Items cannot be sniped while being listed as they will not appear on the vendor search.
• Relisting will bring you back to the default listing gump and will charge you a new Fee. This mimics 99% of other MMO's where if you want to change your price you need to remove the item from the market and then relist, we allow you to do it without removing the physical item.
  
  
• To list a bag/container NOT for sale just enter -1 as the price. We will update this with a checkmark later on.

Goal: Create a more fair vendor economy as those who wish to buy and sell or undercut will need to weigh the fee associated with these types of gambles at time of listing. Removing an item from the market to relist it 1gp lower than your competition now has monetary repercussions. Play the market wisely! We think this will not only help new players get started listing on their own vendors, but also make the market a little less "scummy".

Expanded Clarity on the Ethos of WHY we wanted to make this change. We have been listening to feedback in the Discord and here is a further breakdown:
Let's call this section "Avoid if Economics Isn't Your Cup of Tea (or Coffee)."

As you know, we've recently made significant changes to the vendor listing system on UOAlive. Our goal is to modernize and improve the experience for all players(new and old with an emphasis on new, see #1 below), not to stifle competition or make the market sterile or equalize listings. Here’s a clearer breakdown of why we made these changes and what they mean for you:

Objectives of the Update​

1. Modernization for New Players: The old textual listing system was outdated and caused confusion for both new and veteran players. By updating the interface, we aim to make it easier and more intuitive for everyone to list items correctly. Will it be macro fast? No. But it will be easier for a new player to pickup and use. As you know, we get quite a lot of "never players Ultima Online" before players. So this is important!
2. Upfront Listing Fees: Moving the sales tax from the time of sale to the time of listing makes the costs transparent and immediate. This encourages thoughtful listing rather than flooding the market with items.
3. Discouraging 1gp Wars: The change aims to reduce the practice of undercutting by insignificant amounts repeatedly, which disrupts the market and creates an unpleasant experience for everyone. The key here is repeatedly. Normal economy play, is encouraged!
4. Preventing Misuse of Vendors: By charging the fee upfront, we prevent players from using the vendor system as a trophy shelf for high ticket items at astronomical prices(confusing new players about actual market values) or for circumventing other game systems(house storage, stabling, and others), keeping the market focused on genuine sales.
5. No Vendor Upkeep/Economy: The fees for listing whether it be at sale or on list are an absolute must for the economy. As you know we removed scaling vendor upkeep fees, therefore, listing fees have to exist regardless of when, to keep the economy a fair and continually eb and flow of balance. That is just the kicks for an online MMO that doesn't wipe it's wealth.
6. Clear Fee Communication: The new system makes it clear when fees are applied, addressing confusion about hidden taxes and ensuring everyone understands the costs involved. Remember the same tax was charged ON SALE for all items prior to this.
7. Promoting Community Interaction: This change may encourage more direct selling in global chat or on Discord, fostering a more interactive community environment. And communication is always a bonus in any MMO.

What This Means for You​

• Upfront Transparency: Fees are now charged at the time of listing, making it clear what the costs are and encouraging more thoughtful listings. This helps maintain a balanced and fair marketplace.
• What is "Thoughtful Listings": With the fee applied upfront, you’ll be more likely to list items you genuinely want to sell rather than using the vendor as storage or for showing off.
• Continued Market Play: Market Play remains part of the buy/sell strategy, but the upfront cost means you’ll need to consider if the price adjustment is worth it. This also applies to the person who listed an item below yours—see Tactical Economics:
• Tactical Economics: The new system adds a layer of tactical decision-making. If someone did choose to sell cheaper than another person, and then the other person engages with a cheaper price, they now have to decide if they want to lose their initial fee just to sell cheaper. Players must weigh the cost of listing against potential sales, encouraging more thoughtful and strategic market participation.
• Market Volatility: The aforementioned changes actually foster market stability, reducing erratic fluctuations in prices. This phenomenon mirrors trends observed in contemporary economic landscapes, more modern MMO economies, and broader economic principles.
• Embracing Risk in Listings: This shift also highlights the importance of embracing risk as an integral part of the listing process. For example, if an item doesn't sell at its initial price, sellers may need to adjust prices downwards, potentially incurring listing fees multiple times. However, this process reflects the natural uncertainty inherent in economic activities and encourages sellers to adapt their strategies in a dynamic marketplace. Prior research and market analysis can help sellers make informed decisions, mitigating risks and increasing the likelihood of successful sales.
• Market Stability and Transparency: These calculated sales and the natural ebb and flow of market activity contribute to a more stable marketplace. Sellers adjusting prices based on demand and market conditions help smooth out extreme fluctuations, resulting in a more balanced representation of market "highs and lows." Consequently, the data captured by vendor search systems we have in place, for previous sales offers a clearer reflection of trends and sale prices. This increased transparency empowers participants to make more informed decisions, creating a healthier and more efficient marketplace, without sterilizing the fun nature of playing the market.
• Reduced Scummy Tactics: The new system discourages the constant back-and-forth of 1gp undercutting wars, promoting a healthier market environment. We want competition, but not like this.
• Optional Text Listings: If there is demand, we can reintroduce the old text-based listing as a toggle option, giving you flexibility in how you list items.
• Accessibility: This gump, in whatever state it evolves into over the next weeks, is here to stay to make it more accessible for new players and old.
• Improved Interface Adjustments: We are open to feedback and willing to make adjustments to the interface. For example, a "not for sale" button is already on our radar. Let us know what other features you would like to see! Help us refine it like we did the global market and animal lore.

Final Thoughts​

This update is not about eliminating competition or regulating market dynamics. Undercutting and market play remain integral parts of the game. We’ve aligned our fee structure with those of major MMOs to provide a familiar experience for players and to address the issues that have arisen as our player base has grown. The primary goal is to make the marketplace more user-friendly and transparent.

Thank you for your continued feedback and for being a part of the UOAlive community. We look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on Discord and ask that you give this change some time(we too are going to enjoy the weekend) before drawing conclusions about its effectiveness. That will take time. We are posting this too, to share that there are no "hidden" purposes. We all share a passion for UOAlive and strive to create the best possible experience for every player, even though we know we can't please everyone. We aim to find a balance that benefits the community as a whole.

This change primarily introduces a more modern gump and moves the sales tax, which some players weren't even aware of, to the front of the listing process. We believe this approach is more honest and fair while addressing the above mentioned points.

We understand that change can be challenging, especially with an older game. Please give this update a chance to settle in and then share your feedback on how we can further improve it. Our current focus is on refining the gump based on your feedback ☑️DONE, and we appreciate your patience and input as we work to enhance its functionality.

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