Digital Banking UO Style…
So as the title suggests, How do we want our hard earned gold to be kept… There has been a lot of buzz about if gold should be checks and gold piles or as a number in the bank that any character can dip into?
It has been asked and talked about via the producers communications more than once most recently during the 15th Birthday party for Ultima Online at the Fairfax Mythic HQ. The dark lady her self Mesanna mentioned that gold checks are the most duped item in UO and one idea they have had to combat this is gold conversion,
Bonnie: We also want to talk about doing a currency conversion and getting checks out of the system, because the easiest thing in this game to dupe is checks.
Quote taken from Mesanna talking at the UO 15th Birthday party. Transcript from Ultima Codex & Video @UOForums
The statement was short but has lead to a lot of theories as to how it will be implemented… I have my own theories and I will cover them in this article. But first lets hash out some of the obvious thoughts on what will happen.
This is how our gold looks now..
So I am thinking is this a good idea and more over even if it is a good idea would I like it? First of my thoughts on the idea.. Well there is no real clue as to what would be planned how they the Dev team think it would work or even what their thoughts on it are.. Over on stratics Miri of Sonoma started the thread Stratics Post: Don’t Take My Gold in which there are many ideas on how this could work and from what I can tell the general opinion is that the gold would just show as a number and work for any character on your account.
I have been thinking about how I feel about this and what I feel are the good, the bad and the ugly on how this will effect the game. I mean the obvious good thing from what they said at the 15th anniversary party is that it has the potential to stop duping of gold which okay I can see being a very good plus point how ever it will not stop the duping of items. My biggest hang up with the idea of converting gold into a number is we will loose a huge part of what makes UO an awesome game. The ability to trade your hard earned gold for your much wanted item is really something special.
One thing I have thought is if we have gold account bound like other games, so that you can access it from other characters which would make sense but unlike other games most from my experience do not have players on multiple servers. usually you stick to the one that is in your area.. Unlike UO where a lot of players usually pay visits to other shards for the great Rares events for example. Would it be possible to make gold global like that I wonder? Something to ponder that is for sure…
This is just one way that gold could appear to us in the future
I have one fear in this idea and it stems from the idea of a vendor search system being added… What if and I know this is far fetched but what if using the gold as a number and the vendor search they make a way to buy stuff without every going to the vendor? I would hate to loose the ability to “shop”. I also worry about the fact Mesanna used the term “conversion” does this mean a new rate for gold to try and stabilise the crazy economy that we have. I guess we need to wait and see. II am also sure they will be waiting to see what idea’s pop up on forums and various other sites.
So anyway no matter how this goes it really will change UO forever much in the same way Trammel, AoS and Factions changed our much loved game…
Now i have some things to add to this… This is a amaizng idea of the Devs and Mesanna to put together, this will stop Duping of Check ALSO will stop people getting scammed Millions, Poeple have been scammed over 500Million before, this way could maybe stop that, There also could be another way to stop the scamming, Place a dealer in Luna… NOW this could be far fetched but how this would work is….
Luna Banks Broker
First you would double click the dealer and click the Trade Button, Then the dealer has both your names so he knows who is trading with him, both players will give the Dealer the items (gold and item) and then the Dealer give the oposite people the money and the item, If the money is over 500million, the dealer could be linked to the players Vendor.. so that the money comes from the vendor.. Also the other player has the money put straight into the vendor rather than having to so back and forth from the dealer to the bank to collect all gold…
Now i know what you would be thinking, How would the dealer know that the perosn in the perosn and now a made up name, As you talk in General chat it gives you a player number, This number could be used so that there can be no one making a name the same as the people that are dealing and the dealer get confussed and hand to wrong person Etc….
Also the dealer can only trade with 2 people at a time! so there are no mixed people!
Now if Mesanna makes the gold in Numbers in the paperdoll. this will not be needed as we could just make a trade with otehr player enter the amount you want to trade and there we go it trades item and the gold, the item goes in the players backpack and the gold goes in the players “Bank” (in the paperdoll)…
To be honest with you i think this is a amazing idea, yes like you said there will be douts as some people will say it will ruin UO but i think it will make it better is a way, and also like you said about the money being global, now i have my good and bad points about that and i will tell you them now…
Global Money
Positive: Now with global money being well global! you could go to any shard and get what ever you want yes this could be a good idea and this will mean the Xfer tokens will probs be used alot more as people can afford things on other shards
Negative: This could ruin the Gold System in Ultima, Already over the years the gold has got to a stupid level, think of what would happen is any player could get what ever gold they wanted on what ever shard they wanted? Now this would make the money situation ALOT worse and probs make things more expensive on shards so that the people from other shards will pay more, For some people this would be good….
As you quoted “stop duping of gold which okay I can see being a very good plus point how ever it will not stop the duping of items.” I find this correct, it will not stop duping of items BUT if the duping of gold is stopped then there wont be much gold out there so the items will not go up and up in price…
Vendor System, (dont have to go shopping)
Now this is a bad idea, people love there shops people love stocking loading runes and everything, Luna right now is a shopping mall on Ultima Online, I think if they put it so players dont have to go to vendors anymore it would ruin the trade for shop owners like myself, also like others i know.. i think maybe there could be other ways this could be worked
Maybe… you could have the vendor bag open like normal and then it shows how much money you have in your account (Ultima Online Banking) at the bottom of the bag so you know how much you can spend, now as we are in the vendor area i will bring up a few more things, it will change the vendor options a little as would need to take the amount of gold help by vendor of but that shouldnt matter, you could add *Switch Clothes* Or even get the vendor to say something like…. ” Welcome to ………. i sell ……… hope you have a great time shopping” Something along them lines, of course it would be better if you could make up your own line for it but thats just a example….
General Conversation
However i do love the item you have with the Picture at the top with the Log in to bank and stuff, the money could still be in the bank as you say but once you open the bank there has to be a pin you put in to get inside your bank, now i really do love this idea! the money system could show alot for instance…
1. Gold In Bank
2. Gold On Vendors
3. Silver
But i do think that Pin idea is a amazing idea and i think you should tell mesanna about that idea.. that would help aswell if your account gets hack they still need a pin to get your gold… i do love that idea alot!
Thankyou for reading and im sure you will get back to this comment soon 🙂
From an engineering perspective, this move is perfect. You’ll be taking the hundreds of thousands to millions of individual checks and converting them (mostly in one sweep) to an integer tied to each account. The servers will no longer have to deal with all of these items. That’s a plus. Less load on the server means more load for players and the devs to play with. Kind of like using a an actual bank for your money instead of just having it spread through your pockets, under your mattress, and in a jar on top of the fridge. There’s always a chance for some hiccups, but this is a good thing all-in-all.