bod experiments and other such things

[Asty]

Just turned in 44 bow bulk order deeds, each ranging from 10-20 non-exceptional bows.
Here's the haul:

a little over 8600 gold

100 pine boards,
90 ash boards,
70 yew boards,
80 ebony boards,
60 oak boards,
20 purpleheart boards,

aaaand... 37 sturdy hatchets.

Now, in theory, sturdy hatchets are great. 180 uses per, plus you get grade A logs!
Only thing is, grade A logs seem to be a little useless. As near as I can determine their only purpose is for shipbuilding.
So in order to get a use out of this reward, these sturdy hatchets, I have to divide my lumberjacking haul almost in half between wood that's useful and wood that largely isn't.

To look at things a little differently, the bowyer I gave the deeds to is buying bows at 23 gold per.

Assuming all of the bulk order deeds were for 10 bows, that would have been a haul of just over 10K gold for selling them. Since it was a mix of 10, 15, and 20, a more realistic haul would be about 15K.

So, we're looking at a little less than double the gold for no wood or hatchet rewards. Free wood is nice and all, but you're going to be getting that by lumberjacking anyways. Doesn't look like I can sell the hatchets to an NPC, either. So pretty much my only choice at the moment is to trash them, since it doesn't look like grade a logs or sturdy hatchets have much of a market.

Perhaps a solution would be to make an easy way for Grade A logs to be converted into regular logs or boards? That seems like the least amount of work.

Another potential solution would be to implement a method similar to how shovels work once you can mine for stone.

[Adrias]

any reason you are turning in sbods? should save those to put into lbods.

Another factor you left out is the advantage of being able to get a new bod when you turn in one, so you got all the rewards +44 more bods.

[Asty]

Turning them in and getting new ones really isn't much of an advantage, though. You're still out the materials used to make all of those items, and as I outlined those materials could be put to much better use.

My point is, relatively speaking I did a fair amount of work to complete these, using a fair amount of resources, yet the reward for completing them, especially such a number of them, seems rather substandard.

I'd rather avoid a discussion about large bods at this point, since that whole system seems... broken, and would only lead to a potentially huge debate regarding the viability of 100% crafter characters vs general monster hunting folk, and that's not something I want to get into just yet.

[Adrias]

small bods only have two points

1) to fill in large bods
2) to turn in to get a new bod

They are not meant to make you rich

[Asty]

Make me rich, certainly not. Be worth the amount of time and materials invested, absolutely.

I mean, your supposition that small bods only have two points is kind of the problem. They should be more than filler or a revolving door loophole.

When you add in the fact that you can get a 105 powerscroll from a small taming bod it only further calls into question the balance of the system.

[Side]

First of all, 105 scrolls are worthless, really. You're never going to sell one and if you use one you'll be replacing it sooner then later.

Rewards in the BoD system, like several systems in game, is based on an investment of time and materials to gain a reward. It takes nothing (ie no time and a much smaller amount of materials) to fill a small Bod then to wait until you have all of the smalls to fill a large BoD. Thus, the rewards are not worth doing it, actually promoting you to hang onto your smalls and wait to fill a large for a real reward.


Also, yes. Taming is vastly favored and extremely unbalanced across the board on this server. That's not going to change, you're better off accepting it.

[Asty]

Cool, so it's a seemingly valuable reward that's actually worth nothing because you can only realistically collect it? Seems like I mentioned something like that in my initial post.

Sure. An investment of time and materials to gain a reward. I'm all for that. It's the amount of time and materials vs that reward that I'm critical of.

[Ceara]

The entire BOD system needs to change, I agree.

It's been at least two years since any of that was even looked at last.

The problem is, they like to rake up the donations but do not come around to spend enough time to talk with us, especially on the forums regarding these problems. None of the threads regarding the Carpentry BOD changes back in October 2010 were ever really commented on by admins and it seems they've completely forgotten about it now. The script and items were made by a player to help out, and they were probably never even removed from the email attachment for testing.

Their top priority is to find and repair lag. And I think there was a passing comment in global chat last autumn about implementing a new auction system in addition to Exex. That's what they are working on instead of fixing old problems. I'm all for repairing lag. But after that's finished, the old problems should be repaired before adding new bling to the server. Otherwise it's like sweeping dirt under a rug. But there always comes a time when the dirt pile swept under the rug becomes too obvious and then you are stuck with a much bigger problem.

The only reason people do the BODs is to get items of value they can use or sell. Such as the +skill hammers, +skill clothing, powders and stains of durability, organics, leather.

When the BOD requires you to make all Exceptional, and you have 120 skill, you will still fail to make Exceptional on some items and go through a lot of materials to fill the BOD. And to top it all off, there are crafted items you can't even chop to get some materials back. And as the original poster pointed out, you get pennies for BODs. Or sometimes nothing at all except a minute gold check of 1086 gold with Carpentry, after going through 1000 wood to fill the Exceptional BOD. Whoopie.

So a few players hang on to the hope of getting the top BOD rewards, and constantly collect BODs for the off chance to get that one small BOD that will complete a 6x20 for a 33% chance at a good reward. So the game database will continue to grow and grow as the BODs are collected and stored in mass quantity.

The way I see it, if all current staff are too busy dealing with petty player matters/pages and creating events, it's time you go out there and search for more help in programming/scripting. There are so many out-of-work programmers available that have nothing else better to do but play a game while they sit at home collecting unemployment or social assistance, but are willing to work for the benefit of all, and out of love for the game itself. Tap that resource and get more staff involved that can do more than just serve as nannies who slap hands for bad behavior.

That means loosening the controls a bit and let someone else in there that can do some good. Having one single programmer for a tiny game of 50 players is one thing. But now you're reaching 300 active players a day. One programmer with full access to the server isn't enough any more.

[Spartan]

I completely agree with a change in the BoD system. Ive been on this shard for over a yr now and have collected BoDs almost the entire time. It takes alot of resources and time to fill BoDs and the rewards are good, but do need an improvement along with some %'s on reward items.....like the 75% chance for runic hammer 25% for colored anvi, for example(ive gotten 3 colored anvils of same type in 1 yr . theres alot of useless items on the lists like mentioned earlier in this post and not only in carp. I also remember the player who made the scripts necessary for a BoD system change yet i have heard nothin more than, "I emailed the scripts to +C and he says they'll be implemented by next week." Its been months. Maybe it is time for the shard to pick up another scripter/programmer or w/e to work out these issues while other staff handles players/events etc.

[Nelapsi]

The way I see it, if all current staff are too busy dealing with petty player matters/pages and creating events, it's time you go out there and search for more help in programming/scripting. There are so many out-of-work programmers available that have nothing else better to do but play a game while they sit at home collecting unemployment or social assistance, but are willing to work for the benefit of all, and out of love for the game itself. Tap that resource and get more staff involved that can do more than just serve as nannies who slap hands for bad behavior.

That means loosening the controls a bit and let someone else in there that can do some good. Having one single programmer for a tiny game of 50 players is one thing. But now you're reaching 300 active players a day. One programmer with full access to the server isn't enough any more.

I've tried, I understand and respect +C wishes for certain things like nothing that requires modifications to system code. I emailed him a while back and offered to fix just the small issues in the carp bod script regarding names and pictures not matching up and still waiting on a reply. He is very bad about email so I have learned first hand.

I do agree with you completely, at 200+ people playing on the server everyday it is starting to show signs and cracks of only one developer doing things. If I have caught on to certain things he has said I fairly sure the shard sits in a repository, so it wouldn't tough to put together a team to work on issues. The problem comes on testing, +C doesn't like to waste his time on broken stuff (I understand and agree with him on this completely), when you send him code it better be working, tested for bugs, issues and balance. He then merely needs to make a quick check over the code, run it a few times and put in place.

But hey, can't get blood from a rock so I stopped trying to.

[Ceara]

Also in Tailor BODs the Exceptional shoe category, the BODs given by the Tailor seem to never be shoes. It's been months since I've seen one and I collect BODs about 3x per day.

Sandals, Boots, Thigh boots in Exceptional, plain and colored leather. I have over 50 large BODs that require the Exceptional shoes, with no small BODs to fill them.

[Asty]

Speaking purely hypothetically here, how would you feel if a comprehensive and correct revamp to the entire bod system happened, but you'd lose your current incomplete orders? Ideally being able to turn them in somewhere for -something- (easiest could be tokens or gold or some such) but what if you had to lose all of the work you've put into completing them to pave the way for a better system?

[Nelapsi]

Speaking purely hypothetically here, how would you feel if a comprehensive and correct revamp to the entire bod system happened, but you'd lose your current incomplete orders? Ideally being able to turn them in somewhere for -something- (easiest could be tokens or gold or some such) but what if you had to lose all of the work you've put into completing them to pave the way for a better system?

Speaking personally, I have tons of full books waiting for the fixed system, this would be a show stopper for me. Personally I fail to see why it is needed to destroy an entire system that works, all that needs to be straightened out right now are the rewards. Fixed, cleaned up and equal when compared to the other skills. I'd also like to see tinkerer, scribe and alchemist bods as well.

Then finally when all this gets cleaned up and working, would be interesting to see some larger bods that use different craft bods and it's own reward table.

[Asty]

The system doesn't work, though.

Even if an improved reward system was implemented you're still chasing after small bods to fill large ones.

I'm guessing most of you juggle several characters to get multiple bods, buy them when available, using whatever methods you can to find the small bods you need to fill the large ones, when that's even possible.

Best case scenario, you're still a craftsmen relying on luck of the draw.

[Danilo Thann]

I could be wrong on this, because Taming bods didnt exist on OSI when i played, but i highly doubt I am wrong, because I know that ORGANIC material and bio tools didn't exist on OSI. To my best knowledge is those things like ED's are +C's baby. Having said all that, i wonder why he hasn't taken 5 minutes to look over the other systems and fix/repair/add to them like he obviously did for Taming Bod's when he first wrote the scripts for it.

--Some one mention something about taming BoD's being over powered, another person said to deal with it because we reside on a so called TAMER server. Fair enough. I'm not mentioning names because that would be pointless. I'm also not agreeing or disagreeing with those assessments. What I find ridiculous is that if taming was left alone for awhile and the rest of the playing field was looked at & bolstered like the BoD systems and perhaps Treasure hunting/Fishing rewards. Then the EX shard could brag some more, and actually be number one, because it gives to everyone and their minds fantasy, instead of just the Tamers.

--I agree with the need for more Programmers, because events are fun, new content is fun as well. But what made UO fun before it was Free was the content, and it seems to be broken. Skill rings (+11 healing) useless. T-maps useless or at least boring. BoD's are tedious, hard to gather, and should probably have there own trading page on the EX shard. Lost Lands where?.. the most unused playable content on this shard is the lost lands, and the only reason it hasn't been scrapped is its resource gathering possibilities.

I could go on and on here, but what really matters is what +Colibri thinks and wants.

I will say in closing, if its about the donations, then my opinion is this. +C, the longer people stay interested, the longer they will remain on this server, donating to the cause; because they don't just love it, their in love with it. I have lost way to many UO EX friends, 90% tamers, because they became bored here. Boredom = no more donations.