[Eighty Swords]

Pros

It makes players log in more often - If someone doesn't want to play UO because they got bored of it, in the 30 seconds they log on to refresh their house, they won't see anything worth making them stay for. If we have 100 people who log on for 30 seconds just to refresh their house, that translates to a higher player count of 1 player for 50 minutes a day!! Wow what a great help that was :eek:

Actually a typical person will have the habit of checking on a few things while they are logging back in. I mean honestly kid, if they are worried about their house enough to log in and refresh it then they obviously have some attachment to the shard and will at the very least troll the forums or go to town and see if anything is new. People won't log in to refresh their house if they don't care to ever play again.

Look BUDDY, I'm not a kid and I'm not acting like one by logically arguing the points you brought up so if you really feel the necessity to address me by something other then my ingame name, try Matt. Maybe you missed the example I gave of myself; I stopped playing INX for about 1 to 1 1/2 years but I still came back. And if this house decay idea had of been in place during that time I can tell you for sure all I would have done is log in to refresh my house, like I've been doing lately for my D2 characters for when I get bored of UO and go back to D2, which unfortunately is looking more like a possibility. In those 30 seconds I log in to refresh my house I wouldn't run around thinking 'I wonder if this dungeon is changed' or 'I wonder what new crafts there are' because I didn't have the time to spend on UO in the time I wasn't playing. And I can also tell you depending on how much I lost from this if I missed my required login then I wouldn't have come back and would have called it quits there.

If you want to reduce item count make more stackable items (something all the crafters actually want and doesn't have any cons to doing) and stop people from selling useless crap in the vendor mall like 1 piece of cloth for 1000000 gp...

People tend to hoard items in houses and its hard to believe you would even second guess this considering you have staffed in the past, this is something you should know. A house full of useless junk owned by someone who quit or a vendor with 5 items on it that are overpriced... which adds more to the item count?

Well if we are so desperate to reduce the item count every last item counts and let's make sure to get rid of those 5 items on vendors! lol. The more serious part of that suggestion was to make more stackable items, especially craft related items. I have like 200+ granite pieces but that could instead be 4-5 items. That applies for every player who mined granite, even more so for people like Rabbi who probably have thousands of granite pieces and not just a few hundred like me. This also applies for training carpentry; stackable wooden shields or q-staffs instead of having a bag of 1k wooden shields.

And yes I was staff, but I didn't run around looking through players houses...

The scary part of some people's persistent need to reduce the item count is that if with 40 regular players we are worried about 600k items, I'd hate to see how paranoid these people are about having 2 to 3 times the amount of players and items. What's next, capping it at 10k items per player? As I said in my last post, if this idea is implemented I might just delete my house and store everything in my bank. Item count isn't reduced by people doing that...

It supports the fact that we aren't carebear - I don't see how being a carebear server or not has anything to do with this. You earned your items, good job now you get to keep them. Sorry I should say "you earned your items, good job now you should get to keep them". This is like telling an athlete congratulations on setting a world record... but since you haven't competed in the last 8 years we have to take it away from you.

It's more like someone not bothering to check their mail (log in) and they didn't get thier insurance bill (renew their house) and it burnt down after the policy lapsed (decayed). Guaranteeing that someones items will be there indefinitely without any risk of them ever being lost is a pretty carebear feature in my eyes.

Well that's a very drastic comparison... You're comparing real life to a video game you can put aside because you got bored with it. I'd like to see you do that with real life 'ah I don't feel like working for 3 months but I won't let anyone know' *3 months later* 'what do you mean I was fired?' I still don't see how it's care bear letting someone keep the items they worked for. In my opinion it's better then having an all you can eat buffet (looting items from a decayed house).

Since we both like analagies, let's take another look at my athlete one; an athlete sets a world record in 1992 but then someone in 2009 comes CLOSE but doesn't actually beat it, it's like taking the record away from the person in 1992 and giving it to the person in 2009 just because they participated more recently. Does that sound right or fair to you? If so you live in one sick and twisted world!

It would show we care more about existing players then ones that bailed - A player is a player and I don't see how a new player is more valuable then a previous player. If anything, someone who previous played INX will have more of an 'allegiance' to it and they will be more likely to stick around compared to a new guy stopping by for 2 days to try it out. What would you prefer; someone coming back and playing for another year, or a new guy coming and stay for 2 days?

I didn't say anything about new players in that line you quoted, I was stating that why should people that quit have the same rights to property over the players that stick with us through the good times and the bad. If an existing player wants a plot of land that someone placed a house on and then quit, why shouldn't they eventually be able to get it?

OK so you didn't explicitly say anything about new players, but you sure are insinuating it by arguing that someone has more claim to a plot of land when they come to the server after the person who originally claimed it. And even then it might not be a case of who has been on INX longer but who saved up the money to put a house there first. Now you're penalizing someone because they worked harder but due to present circumstances they can't log in. This suggestion just ISN'T logical to me no matter how it's argued...

You say we should value the players who stick with INX through the thick and thin, ups and downs, good times and bad times, well it's not always a choice to stop playing UO for an extended period of time because you just don't want to play. There are such things as external motivating factors such as school and work that need to be given higher priorities then a game you play for fun.

In any case it looks like this idea is getting implemented despite my objections (no, I don't expect to be all powerful but it would be nice to be explained why my opinions don't have any merit and not just being told the idea is getting implemented. That's not directed at you Shade as you are taking the time to discuss the points with me, but it's directed at some other people who just say 'yes, let's do it yesterday'). So if this idea is in fact implemented with this quote/point of yours as the main justification and driving force behind it, I sincerely hope the same applies to static houses because what right does someone have to an unused static over someone else?

It keeps the environment changing, people will venture out more - I don't see how it's a big difference. Houses are locked and if you see a new house or an old house it doesn't change much for you, all it means is you can't have that spot. I stopped playing UO for about 1 - 1 1/2 years, when I came back I could only find 1 other house within a 10-15 minute run of my house so don't tell me there's no space for more houses... And what an exciting environment that is when houses decay; big empty spaces everywhere... I don't know about you but I rather run around the world and see houses with rare and unique items or armor sets on display to make me want to stick around and get these cool items instead of running through the world seeing empty spaces all over the place.

Actually what it means is people will go out hunting for decaying houses because by default all items would drop, they will have a chance at obtaining land they wanted and if they get it, they can bring their friends to that area too, and it also gives players the chance to actually form a player run town if they wanted to (right now its practically impossible with every decent large open area taken or clustered with random houses).

My next argument is based on 2 figures, adjust them to reflect what they really are or will be. In any case this argument stays true. Let's say there's a 3 month decay time on unvisited houses starting tomorrow and items decay after being on the ground for 30 minutes... for the next 3 months no extra activity is generated because no house will have reached that 3 month decay period. Then suddenly 200 houses decay and tons of items drop to the ground. For the next 30 minutes people will scour the world looking for the free treasure (now that's carebearish; giving people items because they stumbled upon them and didn't even have to kill a single monster to get them).

*continued in next post, out of characters...*