Regarding the changes on Guild Hue

[Gaara]

Just wanted to throw my 2 cents out here.

The main factor for this is because it's currently possible to own exclusive rights to multiple hues, by having a guild on each of your characters. This has been a gray area, but we haven't prohibited it.

Since when have we been able to create multiple guilds on one account?
Makes me wonder, if this was an issue why not go back to having 1 guild per account or one option that comes into my mind is allowing only one hue to be registered, BUT of course there's a lot of stuff going on behind the curtains and i'm just speaking from a player's perspective.

To me, these changes seem to favor the rich folk. I mean, if someone was able to register a hue for every character, i'm sure they'd have no problem paying the fee...
And what about people who have registered a hue before these changes (costing somewhere between 4-18 million gp depending on how many tubs they've unlocked). If they can't afford to pay the fee (250k-2 million gp per month), the gp invested just goes down the drain?

What if one wishes to keep the hue but cannot afford to pay the fee for all the 8 tubs (if obtained) but could pay the fee of 1 or 2 tubs? And what happens if the guild stone doesn't have enough gp to cover all the tubs, but can cover the fee of 2 tubs, for example.

- Guild menu now has a "remove guild hue" option, which allows you to restore the item's hue. It will make it what it actually was before (for example, if it was a platinum armor, or dyed with a universal dyetub. it won't just become plan colored).
- It's possible to add non-guilded-players to a the list of allowed tub users, if you have any friends you'd like to allow to wear the hue as well.

I like the menu upgrades, nice to be able to register a hue without staff's help, and it's a cool to be able to allow non-guilded-players to wear the hue.

Also, was nice to see 4 staff members online last night

[Sir Blood]

They said that for people who have hues for the guild already at the time of the change...
- 6 months no charge
- after 1st 6 months, they get 6 more at 1/2 price

There is a significant number of inactive guilds out there, this will free up the colors for other players who are active.

Now remember, gold is a lot easier to come by on this server, If you vote 5 days and sell the ED's (assuming you have voted enough to get up to 1ED reward) your tubs won't cost you any play time...

[Sailor Jerry]

This change feels like we're all getting a monthly kick in the sack for the few taking advantage of loosely written rules. I understand and agree with your intent/goal (if it's to free up hues locked down but not used due to vacant players) but this feels more like a shotgun blast to a problem that requires a sniper rifle.

This is a speed bump for alt-hue folks, it's a complete waste of gold for one-hue folks, a risk of lost for those that play in waves and a near total deterrence for the new/majority/life-blood of the server. Not exactly fair to those playing within the intended rules or common sense. Consider the player with one hue, no alts and building a new guild... steep buy-in and steep maintenance cost.

Is it not possible to identify and remove the hues from those with more than one? If these are drivers for this (as mentioned) a fee will not change anything, just a speed bump to them. IMHO the fee portion of this change hurts the majority and in byproduct the health of our community.

I understand the hue aspect of this but I don't understand the tub factor. Why does quantity/types of tubs matter and a compounding factor to fee? Maybe I misunderstood this aspect. Help.

For those that play in waves... can fees be paid in advance or will this be a auto bank deduct similar to renting? Concern: risk of loss

Will there be a refund option considered for those wanting to back out of the hue program and recoup original expenses?

[+Nyx]

This is not a change we made lightly or quickly. It's something that has been being discussed and hashed out amongst the entire staff for well over a year now, with conversations about updating this service going back almost 5 years now. We all participated in these discussions and we all voted in favor of the decision to add recurring fees to hues.

Why? Because:
- the economy needs attention, and for a long time nothing was done by us to help keep it in check (for various reasons). Now that the facets are creeping closer to being finished, we all wanted to start slowly implementing updates that assist in balancing the economy. This is just one of many ways we will be doing so.
- hues are a luxury item, and thus updating them with a new fee schedule was more appropriate than, say, adding more fee losses to houses (which affects far more players more significantly than adding fees to a luxury item).
- the shard has always had far too few gold sinks/possibilities of loss, and it's a big part of why the economy has slowly gotten more unbalanced.
- too many people abused the hues system, and that needed to be corrected. However, since that wasn't strictly against the rules at first, it wouldn't have been right to go and take back the hues from those players hoarding them. We decided instead just to overhaul the entire system, affecting everyone, which is more fair. Further, since we all agreed there needed to be additional fees involved in the hue reservation system anyway, it was a better use of +c's limited coding time to do a change to the entire system than to have him spend those hours on hunting up just the people with many hues only to then have to go back and code these types of changes later.
- this affects everyone equally in proportion to how much they've used or abused this system up to this point. Those with many hues will have many more fees if they want to try to keep them, and those with a single hue with 1-2 tubs will have less fees to juggle. Usage based fees are more fair to everyone.
- the hues were never "yours", if you reserved one- you reserved it. That's very different than ownership, and more subject to significant changes.
- every single thing on the shard is subject to change at any time. Nobody should play here expecting that nothing will ever change regarding any system in the game, that's just silly. We try to make fewer changes to certain types of things (such as houses and relayers), but that doesn't mean it won't ever happen.
- +C makes what changes that +C, and we, feel are best for the continued success of the shard. None of those changes will ever be universally popular or unpopular, that's the nature of the beast. We made this change with full awareness that it would outrage some, probably cause a small number to quit in protest. Knowing that would be likely, we all still felt this change was necessary and good for the shard in the long term. Part of our job is to take the long view of UOEX when making any significant changes. That is what we have done here.
- we didn't want to make it so you could only have characters in one guild per account, as we see that a fair portion of folks have toons active in multiple legitimate guilds. That seemed a silly change and also didn't address economic issues.

To answer some of the questions:
- you can stockpile gold on the guild stone and it will pull from that until it runs out. This way, if you play intermittently, you won't need to worry about losing your hue. Further, anybody in the guild can add gold to the stone to assist with paying for the hue, so if the guildmaster has to be afk for a few months, the hue can be maintained by others.
- there will be no refunds of any kind. Those of you who already own hues paid for the use of those hues, and have benefited from that usage in the time before this change. You can't return your iPhone just because you don't like that your carrier added new fees. While we might have liked to offer it as an option, it's just not feasible given the amount of work it would take.
- I believe that a 'remove tub' option will be forthcoming in +c's next round of updates to this, however as mentioned above it will not provide a refund.
- if a guild stone has gold enough for 2 tubs but not enough for all 8 tubs unlocked on the stone, then the hue will be lost. But, anybody needing to eliminate tubs to cut down on costs will be able to do so.

I'll keep an eye on this thread and answer any questions I can, but if it just turns into a gripe fest then I will lock it, fair warning.

[Wil]

Howdy,

I don't have a hue and wasn't planning on getting one so I have no particular dog in the fight. I do have an opinion.

1. A recurring fee for each hue makes sense to me. Hues are uniquely held. Holding them prevents others' use. The ones assigned to players who are no longer active enough to come up with gold each month should return to the free pool.

2. Recurring fees for each tub, at least for the folks whose tubs are grandfathered, seem rude to me. Unreasonable. Folks paid a lot of gold for those tubs, there was a reasonable expectation that the guild hue tubs were owned free and clear and no other player is blocked or inconvenienced by how many tubs you own for a single hue.

Just my two cents.

-Wil

[+Requiem]

I'd like to address a couple things I don't think Nyx covered.

Why does quantity/types of tubs matter and a compounding factor to fee?

2. Recurring fees for each tub, at least for the folks whose tubs are grandfathered, seem rude to me. Unreasonable. Folks paid a lot of gold for those tubs, there was a reasonable expectation that the guild hue tubs were owned free and clear and no other player is blocked or inconvenienced by how many tubs you own for a single hue.

Because with more tubs you get to color more things. So with that, comes its own fee.

Not exactly fair to those playing within the intended rules or common sense. Consider the player with one hue, no alts and building a new guild... steep buy-in and steep maintenance cost.

Changing the system to charge for a luxury service is a lot more fair than forcibly un-guilding people who have multiple active characters in multiple guilds. I think if you can afford a hue in the first place, you can afford the upkeep on it. Assuming the average month is 30 days, and a single player guild has 1 tub.... 250,000 gold / 30 = 8334 gold per day. Someone brand new to the shard can afford this.

8 tubs would be about 67k a day for a single person. But remember, you're a guild! Everyone should contribute. so this cost goes down (or should) with additional members.

I think one of the issues we have here, is big guilds and rich players giving everything away for free, and not expecting or wanting anything in return. In theory this is awesome, but it teaches people to be dependent, and when the tap eventually gets shut off, they get discouraged and quit, or they get bored because things are too easy.

By adding gold sinks like this, I think it will help the shard overall, as people will naturally come together more, and have group goals to work towards again.

Is it not possible to identify and remove the hues from those with more than one? If these are drivers for this (as mentioned) a fee will not change anything, just a speed bump to them. IMHO the fee portion of this change hurts the majority and in byproduct the health of our community.

Makes me wonder, if this was an issue why not go back to having 1 guild per account or one option that comes into my mind is allowing only one hue to be registered

It would be possible to identify, and remove those hues, but less fair in the grand scheme of things. If we took them away from certain people, who acquired them perfectly legally, that wouldn't be fair to those people. If we tax everybody - they have the chance to keep what was allowed to happen in the past, just like everyone else. The rule change affects everyone equally. Pay for your reserved hue(s), or lose them. They have to pay more to do so, so it is likely they will give some up, which will free up some long held colors.

I think it's also important to note, that some people have reserved hues that no longer even play here. They log on minimally to refresh their account in case they ever do decide to come back, but aren't active in any sense of the word. Now, with this fee, they too have a chance to keep their hue, but only if they want to spend time or money here, which means they either put in hours playing and earning it, or donate to the shard, both of which are acceptable in my opinion.

[Miranda Ventrata]

I like it all, however perhaps maybe have a cap on the rentals so the smaller struggling guilds can have a chance?, Maybe keep it at 250k per, but cap it at 1 mill per month or something.

[+Nyx]

Smaller, struggling guilds will have something to work towards as a group. Not having a guild hue doesn't hinder a guild from existing or functioning, so if they can't afford it at present then they've got a nice group goal readymade.

[Sailor Jerry]

It all makes much more sense and thank you for taking the time to explain the backstory.

I look forward to the upcoming changes even though I will most likely have questions.

This is not a change we made lightly or quickly. It's something that has been being discussed and hashed out amongst the entire staff for well over a year now, with conversations about updating this service going back almost 5 years now. We all participated in these discussions and we all voted in favor of the decision to add recurring fees to hues.

Why? Because:
- the economy needs attention, and for a long time nothing was done by us to help keep it in check (for various reasons). Now that the facets are creeping closer to being finished, we all wanted to start slowly implementing updates that assist in balancing the economy. This is just one of many ways we will be doing so.
- hues are a luxury item, and thus updating them with a new fee schedule was more appropriate than, say, adding more fee losses to houses (which affects far more players more significantly than adding fees to a luxury item).
- the shard has always had far too few gold sinks/possibilities of loss, and it's a big part of why the economy has slowly gotten more unbalanced.
- too many people abused the hues system, and that needed to be corrected. However, since that wasn't strictly against the rules at first, it wouldn't have been right to go and take back the hues from those players hoarding them. We decided instead just to overhaul the entire system, affecting everyone, which is more fair. Further, since we all agreed there needed to be additional fees involved in the hue reservation system anyway, it was a better use of +c's limited coding time to do a change to the entire system than to have him spend those hours on hunting up just the people with many hues only to then have to go back and code these types of changes later.
- this affects everyone equally in proportion to how much they've used or abused this system up to this point. Those with many hues will have many more fees if they want to try to keep them, and those with a single hue with 1-2 tubs will have less fees to juggle. Usage based fees are more fair to everyone.
- the hues were never "yours", if you reserved one- you reserved it. That's very different than ownership, and more subject to significant changes.
- every single thing on the shard is subject to change at any time. Nobody should play here expecting that nothing will ever change regarding any system in the game, that's just silly. We try to make fewer changes to certain types of things (such as houses and relayers), but that doesn't mean it won't ever happen.
- +C makes what changes that +C, and we, feel are best for the continued success of the shard. None of those changes will ever be universally popular or unpopular, that's the nature of the beast. We made this change with full awareness that it would outrage some, probably cause a small number to quit in protest. Knowing that would be likely, we all still felt this change was necessary and good for the shard in the long term. Part of our job is to take the long view of UOEX when making any significant changes. That is what we have done here.
- we didn't want to make it so you could only have characters in one guild per account, as we see that a fair portion of folks have toons active in multiple legitimate guilds. That seemed a silly change and also didn't address economic issues.

To answer some of the questions:
- you can stockpile gold on the guild stone and it will pull from that until it runs out. This way, if you play intermittently, you won't need to worry about losing your hue. Further, anybody in the guild can add gold to the stone to assist with paying for the hue, so if the guildmaster has to be afk for a few months, the hue can be maintained by others.
- there will be no refunds of any kind. Those of you who already own hues paid for the use of those hues, and have benefited from that usage in the time before this change. You can't return your iPhone just because you don't like that your carrier added new fees. While we might have liked to offer it as an option, it's just not feasible given the amount of work it would take.
- I believe that a 'remove tub' option will be forthcoming in +c's next round of updates to this, however as mentioned above it will not provide a refund.
- if a guild stone has gold enough for 2 tubs but not enough for all 8 tubs unlocked on the stone, then the hue will be lost. But, anybody needing to eliminate tubs to cut down on costs will be able to do so.

I'll keep an eye on this thread and answer any questions I can, but if it just turns into a gripe fest then I will lock it, fair warning.

[Sailor Jerry]

Because with more tubs you get to color more things. So with that, comes its own fee.

I see your perspective but I don't agree. I feel this should be about the hue not the four tubs I purchased. But I am a guest here and if you all think it will help the economy I am onboard.

I think if you can afford a hue in the first place, you can afford the upkeep on it.

Good point.

8 tubs would be about 67k a day for a single person.

Ouch! (slaps and reminds self I said I was onboard)

I think one of the issues we have here, is big guilds and rich players giving everything away for free, and not expecting or wanting anything in return. In theory this is awesome, but it teaches people to be dependent, and when the tap eventually gets shut off, they get discouraged and quit, or they get bored because things are too easy.

I stand guilty of this and agree it's a bad practice.

If we took them away from certain people, who acquired them perfectly legally, that wouldn't be fair to those people.

Very good point and totally agree.

Another great example of why this shard is #1(IMHO)... thoughtful, time intensive process along with the patience to explain. Most shard would say deal with it or ball-kick anyone who dared question their reasoning.

Thank you for taking the time to explain Req!

*off to earn my tub allowance

[Annachie]

Oh great I can just see it now.

"What's the guild event for today?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTjC6rxHz8g

[Melkor]

Is it possible to reduce the number of tubs attached to guild stone down to 1? I'd rather pay for uni tubs and only 250k per month.

I prefer no monthly fee

[ForrestElf]

Why not just make every hue available for everyone? Then theres no need for this chance.
Guilds can still benefit of registering hue so they dont need to use so much uni dye tubs.
I think it would be more equal for everyone and guilds dont need to be worry for losing dyetubs they already bought.

[+Colibri]

Well it's not a perfect solution but I think it's still the best of all alternatives.

-For example, if there would be a limit to how many members a guild needs to have/keep the hue, that's hard to monitor, time consuming. Any number would be arbitrary... if the limit is set to let's say 10, then there's a guild with 8 people and they wouldn't be able keep it (or they'd just get 2 "friends" to join... promotes multi accounting as well).
-If the requirement would be for the guild to be "active"... well just having to login once a month wont really solve anything, there are a lot of houses out there owned by players who aren't really active, but still have no problem logging in once a month.
-As for making hues available for everyone: the point of guild hues is to have your guildies look alike, kind of like a uniform. If there's no exclusive right to use of a hue, then it loses this function.

Btw, a very cool thing (main feature basically) with this change is that now you can actually control who has the guild hue, it's not tradeable with non-guildies... there's a feature i havent coded yet, it will be possible to reset the color of all items/pets currently dyed with the hue. Well, as a player loses membership their items should automatically un-dye, it's doable but i dont know if i'll take the time to code that. Also, it used to be possible to dye clothing with it, then cut down the clothing into cloth, craft items with it even if you're not in the guild anymore.

As for removing the individual tubs, yes that option will be available for those who want to cut down on expenses. And I kinda like the idea of there being a separate fee for actual hue use, and then lesser fees for each tub. We'll think it thru.

thoughtful, time intensive process along with the patience to explain. Most shard would say deal with it or ball-kick anyone who dared question their reasoning.

Thank you for noticing!

[Sailor Jerry]

on the hue use fee... maybe consider putting this (small per use) fee onto the user. This would help spread the responsibility among the members, rather than adding another GM duty or guild pulse to corral.

Even better (if possible) allow the GM to set the per-use fee.