Patch 88 - Feb 21, 2009: House Decay, Protection Stacking

[Derrick]

• Edible campfire embers
• Increased use delays on house deeds
• Ghosts can doubleclick moongates to use them.
• Animals herded will give up if they cannot reach their destination
• Fixes protection spell stacking on clothing and jewelry
• Fixed issues with peacemaking, especially causing peaced pets to attack who they are following.
• House decay changed to 14 days
  • Houses are grandfathered until refreshed
  • Each stage of house decay is adjusted proportionately
• Boat Decay changed to 14 days
  • Boat decay messages revised to reflect updated decay time
• Dexterity corrections for Ostards and Nightmares
• Guild affiliation corrections for some NPC vendors
  • Some unaffiliated vendors are now members of the merchants guild
  • Veterinarians are now in the healers guild.
  • A bug allowing players not in any NPC guild to receive discounts has been fixed.
• You will only be able to initiate an attack on a player or NPC if you are within 15 tiles and have line of sight to them. Jan 19 1999 OSI Patch

[Daolin]

Quick question on the guilds since its in the patch. Will joining the mage guild give you reagent discounts? I don't remember guilds giving any discounts really. Maybe it was the others and I never noticed.

[Derrick]

You do get discounts when you are a member of that NPC's guild, or if you have max fame; but most reagents are too cheap to see the discount. the discount is on the per item price and rounded to the nearest gold piece, so you won't see discounting on items that cost less than 5gp

[alatar]

• Fixes protection spell stacking on clothing and jewelry

no more 60+ armor med suits..

<-- is birthday today

[platy]

Is it really your birthday? If so happy bday man!
My bday was thursday (19th)

[Kefka]

Happy b'day lol

my bday is mar 2nd!

[Mens Rea]

I notice that friends of the house get the same message as owners of the house. IE a friend of a house can accept the 14 day menu by double clicking on the house sign.

This is not good, I think a rollback of this change until the friend/co-owner issue is addressed is required- non-owners should not be able to make such changes.

[RoadKill]

I notice that friends of the house get the same message as owners of the house. IE a friend of a house can accept the 14 day menu by double clicking on the house sign.

This is not good, I think a rollback of this change until the friend/co-owner issue is addressed is required- non-owners should not be able to make such changes.

I sorta agree...

There are some houses that the owners don't even play anymore and have been refreshed by their friends for months... these houses should fall into the 14 day category. (maybe give them a 30 day "1 time extension"?)

[platy]

I went to europe last summer and asked coffee to refresh my bux tower.. I was gone for about 1/5 months..
Friending someone doesn't always mean you give them a safe place to log out.. sometimes people do it TO keep their houses refreshed..

[Derrick]

The change of decay time for houses occurs the next time the house is refreshed, because friends can refresh houses, they will also be able to accept the notice of the change the to the decay timer. Saying no to that menu cancels the refresh of the house. The only real alternative here would be to not allow friends to refresh houses though.

We had a 90day house decay time when the shard opened, and when we went down to 30 days we used this same system with no problems.

It is a good point that people who do not read the forums, which i think is many, may not be aware of the new decay time if a friend refreshed their house first. I'll put a notice in the MOTD and let it run for a while.

[Mens Rea]

I just think it's unfair on house owners to allow people with far, far, far less claim/rights to the house to be able to confirm a MAJOR change to the status of a house.

Imagine leaving and returning to find your house decayed. You were gone 3 weeks, and in the meantime the person you friended saw the opportunity to CHANGE THE STATUS OF YOUR HOUSE and cause it to decay without your knowledge.

I am far from convinced that this was an intentional way to have the decay change operate- especially given that when the 90 day/30 day change was made there was what- 15% the number of houses on the shard than there is now?

[venox]

i agree, i dont see any need to change house decay, even in the name of T2A accuracy.
time is only a meassure of scale. and its not like 30days is doing any harm/play/interact or feel of t2a.

[Derrick]

While I think there are some good points being made here on the way the status is changing, I wish it could have been addressed prior to the change. Blocking friends from refreshing during this period, or allowing friends to refresh, but without changing the decay time both would have equally as objectionable possibilities.

The chances of someone being gone for almost 30 days and having a friend refresh only within the first 15, causing the house to decay unexpectedly before the owners return, even though the friend was notified of the decay change and would likely be aware of the owners extended absence is remote but not negligible.

If anyone has any suggestions on how that risk might be mitigated at this point, please let me know.

[venox]

auto refresh all houses for 1 month from the time the patch went in?

[Derrick]

That's the only thing that came to my mind that would relive Mens Rea's concerns. All we'd have to actually do is refresh all the houses on the shard on the 14th day after the patch; but I'm certainly not convinced that this is the type of thing we should do.