[imported_Ryuuku]

• Every time owner/coowner/friend opens the door or dclick the sign, the timer is reset to 0.
  
  

I think that how it had to work too, just owner refresh is lame, some houses are used as guild house or used by more than 1 player, so if the owner stop playing (with no warning )those people gonna have problem.

[Eighty Swords]

I still think that this is trying to fix something that isn't broken.

Things that this would fix:
Lack of house space (doesn't exist in the slightest)
Statics being owned by people who have quit. (this is legit)
Item count (negligible. I'm pretty sure a server in the year 2009 can handle running a server of a game that was released in 1997, and there are better ways of lowering item counts)

Things that this would hurt:
Returning players (with as few players as we have at the moment, we don't want to alienate the people who have quit for a while and decide to come back. Lets face it, noone will devote their entire gaming lives to one game. You play UO some, you play something else, you come back to UO. Who are we to put a time limit on that?)
Vacationing players (a 3 month decay means that you're telling the player, you can't leave for more than 3 months or we'll take your shit from you. Then, if they do decide to leave, some GM has to come set their house to not decay.)

I agree with everything you said here. Unfortunately Sindern we're on the losing side and it seems a full-fledged system will be implemented shortly.

I'm a big fan of the system that I suggested earlier in the thread. Let me recap the main points:

• Add a timer to each house that starts counting when the script is added.
  
• Every time owner/coowner/friend opens the door or dclick the sign, the timer is reset to 0.
  
• Add a {.checkhousetimer X} command where X is the number of months you want to check for.
  
• Add a .condemn command. Use it and target a sign and the house will delete after 7 days (1 week). You could even have it broadcast that a house has been condemned.
  
• Condemn all houses that aren't refreshed after 6 months.
  
• An owner/coowner/friend can dclick the sign/door after a house is condemned to un-condemn it and reset the timer to 0.
  

This sounds like it's a lot of work for GMs, but it's really not. Just use .checkhousetimer every few days and condemn the houses that are unused. You'll very rarely get one that's past 6 months since they'll nearly always be refreshed unless the player quits.

After 6 months, you'd see a surge in un-used houses that you can go to and check out and .condemn. After that, you'll hardly see any of them.

I'm not a big fan of having everything automated. For instance, if you see a house in the middle of nowhere with lots of stuff inside, you can leave it alone and reset its timer since it's not in a prime location and the player has a lot invested in it. You can also check to see who the player is to see the likelihood of them coming back. However, if it's in a prime location, is a static or is empty, condemn it.

Maybe I didn't understand this part 100%, but from the way I read it it sounds like the GMs decide what house to condemn and if that's right, I don't like it because it leaves too much gray area and people will start calling staff corrupt and saying stuff like 'HEY! GM XYZ didn't erase ginz's house because ginz is a GM but the house hasn't been used in 1 year so why's it still there?!?!' or 'HEY! GM XYZ didn't erase player abc's house because he's a friend with the GM'.

[imported_Sindern]

I suppose you could just condemn all houses past 6 months. The best part is that the players can't see how long the house has been inactive so unless someone in the staff is telling them how long, there's no problem. It's a good way to get rid of crap houses, but leave the ones that look like people might return to them.

I agree with everything you said here. Unfortunately Sindern we're on the losing side and it seems a full-fledged system will be implemented shortly.

It's really a terrible plan that isn't needed. The things that it's intended to fix will NOT be fixed, and it just creates hassle for players. I think that with a game this old, you should be trying to find the funnest parts of it and drawing those out instead of throwing big "FUs" to the players by making them do extra work or making it harder because we want to be HARDCORE LOL. Making PVP/PVE "hardcore" is fine with me, but if I wanted to be a hardcore accountant, I'd get a job and get paid for it.

-edit-
As an afterthought, you could also have the idle time of the house displayed when someone besides the owner dclicks the sign so that you can see if it's past the timer. Then, if it was a static that they wanted to buy or if they wanted to place a house in that spot, a GM could condemn the house.

[imported_Shade]

For some reason you seem to think that opening your house door once every 3 months is a chore....

To put this simply, if you are active and don't go to a specific house once in 3 months obviously you don't care about it anyways and if you are inactive you are just eating up space another player may want. Which in turn gets people to log on to check things out instead of just trolling the forums and deciding if they should come back or not.

I honestly do not see one logical reason not to do this other then "wah I have to recall to my house once every 3 months," especially when players would have the option to extend the house decay period if requested.

[imported_LudaKrishna]

i hope whoever has a key can do it, cuz like rabbi let me and tech macro in his keep, we are not co-owners or owners but we have keys to it and use it.

[imported_Shade]

Yeah, I would imagine that wouldn't be hard to change. After all, we aren't trying to punish or hinder anyone with this feature, it is simply opening up possibilities to the players who are still active and will remain so. Most games delete accounts after x amount of time of inactivity, all we are talking about here is making sure that those who choose not to play anymore aren't interfering with current gameplay.

I'd honestly prefer it that way though Luda. Even if Rabbi never came back (lol) the simple fact that the keep is being used is enough reason for me to want it to stay.

[smoke]

Yeah, I would imagine that wouldn't be hard to change. After all, we aren't trying to punish or hinder anyone with this feature, it is simply opening up possibilities to the players who are still active and will remain so. Most games delete accounts after x amount of time of inactivity, all we are talking about here is making sure that those who choose not to play anymore aren't interfering with current gameplay.

I'd honestly prefer it that way though Luda. Even if Rabbi never came back (lol) the simple fact that the keep is being used is enough reason for me to want it to stay.

will statics be deowned by players after certain ammount of time too then?