Posted on UO U.Hall

Recently the development team fixed an exploit with NPC Vendors (non-player owned) which allowed gold to be freely created at no loss or risk by cheaters. The change is as follows:

• Vendors will no longer sell items to players below their established base values
• Vendors will no longer buy items for more than their established base values

This change was made to commodities – not all items. However, this does include resources like wood or ingots, and generic craftables like bolts and arrows.

Previously the system was very dynamic: global prices were reflected by the amount of items being sold and bought by players. This was, I always felt, a solid compromise in design – at least in lieu of the closed resource system originally intended for UO.

Many will remember that very early on UO’s economy was rebuilt as an open faucet system. Later, the team added goldsinks as they felt necessary to solve inflation issues, or remove duped wealth from the game. Vendors went through numerous revisions in their pricing models as well, until we arrived at what we had up until recently.

Impact: we’ve added ceilings and floors to the dynamic model, rather than replace it.

We did this in a hurry, too. Why? Was the exploit new? No, certainly not. The exploit, and its cousins, had been going on for some time. Wasn’t it a simple bug to fix? No, it was an intrinsic flaw with the implementation. Won’t vendor prices rise until something is done to counter it? Yes, vendor prices will rise right now without caps, and player vendors will certainly have an advantage until a more permanent solution is implemented.

You’ll note that I say a permanent solution, which this is not. So why? It was absolutely critical to fix the bug as quickly as possible, while retaining as much of the dynamic model as possible, in order to solve problems with server stability. We do not want to permanently nerf such a fundamentally fun and interesting game mechanic as merchants in UO have been able to enjoy up to now.

So, friend merchants, we must ask your patience. We want to attack cheating head on, and we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of not being able to have our cake and eat it too. Many people legitimately enjoyed the buy low/sell high game, which was of course in no way illegal.

However, to all those who used specific exploits to manipulate the system against its design: We’ll be seeing you soon.

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Tim "Draconi" Cotten - UO Lead Designer - EA Mythic

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Comment

While your looking at vendor systems Draconi you should check out the sell price on shadow Heater Shields.

Nice change helps us commod sellers.

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Ah, shadow ore. Thanks for pointing that out!

Tim "Draconi" Cotten - UO Lead Designer - EA Mythic

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Guess alot of the bigger vendor houses will be a bit grumpy..

But i think this is great!

Very nice and about time too

I'm confused. I've never sold anything to npcs. All I got is that the prices will just keep going up?

While I understand the need to address the "buy it for nothing, take it across the street and turn it into a million gold" problem, I can't stand the fact I can't simply chop wood and sell it to NPC's any longer. It was always such a thrill to find an NPC willing to pay 6gp per board, or some such, then race to chop as much as I could before someone else took advantage of the situation. I never got rich doing it, but it at least covered my insurance, etc. Ah well, guess I will find another way to use my useless lumberjack/mule now. *sigh*

On the other hand, I am glad to see the issue addressed and scripters/cheaters lives made tougher.