RDAs are now untrackable Changes

Alucard said:

great news, I like it more!

sadly, of course that the gem of Portal now it's not worth the money spent on it, in fact it is useless
can? add to it, some bonuses, example in search\tracking sexiest girl of Sosaria

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It still has plenty of uses:

1. You can see when an RDA is active - this stops you running around looking when nothing is spawned and also allows you to stop tracking if it gets completed before you find - this is a huge upgrade on how it used to be and a time saver.
2. You can see which type of RDA is active - this could make a difference depending on how many in your group and the capabilities of each - I tended to avoid tracking certain RDA types if I had no backup.
3. You still get the increased drop chance (even if you do less rdas) - I am certain that this works and on a rare occasion you could also see a double relic drop.

Gem - 1m
View Portals - 1m
Drop increase - 2m

4m total investment - that should not take too long to earn. All depends on your numbers when doing the rda and how much you focus on getting the most value from them. Glowing runes are going to be a little rarer now so those should sell well, paragons that spawn drop good gold, powerscrolls are worth a good amount no matter what drops, fragments should hold value at the very least and then you have the potential for relics, boss statues and dragon eggs (from bahamut).

All in all they are still profitable - it just may take a while to recoup your investment.

It's interesting how werkt had RDAs on lock for years and nothing was done, but literally the day after another guild got the scripts, the books and two former werkt expert RDA trackers and were set up to finally give them some competition, *poof* out of the blue it's goodbye RDA tracking.

tinfoil hat much?

@Ariakan99 Thank you for that unbiased post on the gem of portals.. It's refreshing when someone can look at something objectively.

Xiulan said:

It's interesting how werkt had RDAs on lock for years and nothing was done, but literally the day after another guild got the scripts, the books and two former werkt expert RDA trackers and were set up to finally give them some competition, *poof* out of the blue it's goodbye RDA tracking.

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Makes no sense whatsoever. It's about time and effort, werkt simply commits the majority of their time in finding and doing RDAs. Any guild can do it. Also how many years back do you want to go? RDAs have gone through a number of changes, from manual tracking, fixed reset timer, gem, faction RDA, no multiple accounts inside, 3 active RDAs, 1 active RDA. Hell I can probably argue they could be the one area that's gone through the MOST changes on the server. Werkt have just stuck to it more than others that's all. If $ or whoever had decided to put in the same time and effort there would have been huge daily battles (good thing for the server right?). Instead they put their time and effort into other areas of the game (e.g arch daemon)

Xiulan said:

It's interesting how werkt had RDAs on lock for years and nothing was done, but literally the day after another guild got the scripts, the books and two former werkt expert RDA trackers and were set up to finally give them some competition, *poof* out of the blue it's goodbye RDA tracking.

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Plenty of other guilds have the scripts in many variations (easy to google) they just differed in the amount of time they were willing to invest in marking books (most important step imo) and then how often they would like to track vs other stuff like pvp. The decision to change was from Eppy and last I checked he is not in werkt. You can also compete just the same as before - the change has impacted everyone the same. Werkt did so well as they usually have the numbers, that is no different however you are searching for them - more numbers, more chance.

SirLothar said:

Makes no sense whatsoever. It's about time and effort, werkt simply commits the majority of their time in finding and doing RDAs. Any guild can do it. Also how many years back do you want to go? RDAs have gone through a number of changes, from manual tracking, fixed reset timer, gem, faction RDA, no multiple accounts inside, 3 active RDAs, 1 active RDA. Hell I can probably argue they could be the one area that's gone through the MOST changes on the server. Werkt have just stuck to it more than others that's all. If $ or whoever had decided to put in the same time and effort there would have been huge daily battles (good thing for the server right?). Instead they put their time and effort into other areas of the game (e.g arch daemon)

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This was a huge factor towards the view that the 'Werkt RDA Machine' owned all RDAs (majority but not all). $ stopped doing RDAs for their own reasons and found other areas to focus on. They were one of the biggest competitors. EQMS were in the RDA game for a while and had books/scripts but also had a hard time getting people to invest the time in tracking rather than pvp or champs.

Despite what people think - RDAs are not a get rich quick activity usually. If you have a group with big numbers this is even more the case when splitting loot - that 10m (old days) QS does not go far when you have 10+ in the RDA and they spent hours tracking/completing RDAs to get it.

SirLothar said:

Makes no sense whatsoever. It's about time and effort, werkt simply commits the majority of their time in finding and doing RDAs.

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finding was done full afk that isnt a real investment of time.

Xiulan said:

It's interesting how werkt had RDAs on lock for years and nothing was done, but literally the day after another guild got the scripts, the books and two former werkt expert RDA trackers and were set up to finally give them some competition, *poof* out of the blue it's goodbye RDA tracking.

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Does anyone remember that time that I offered to teach any guild who was interested how to get into the RDA game?

Not one bite.

The fact of the matter is, it wasn't Zerg that was the "real" problem, it was a lack of initiate and commitment. Through the years several small groups and individuals have gotten there fair share from the great and oppressive werkt regime, contrary to popular belief.

But UOF, like the new generation (I feel old saying that) is full of people who prefer, "not keeping score", "participation ribbons", and complaining/protesting about what you don't like instead of doing something about it. SMH.

This isn't the first and won't be the last change. Werkt has members and leaders with innitative and commitment to succeed. And we will adapt as we always have and the cream will continue to rise to the top.


Suck it haters.

P.S. did anyone even consider that making RDAs harder to find will actually bennitit the big guild full of people who are willing to go look for them? LAWL
Thanks @Shane

Tracking was never easy. I tracked for 2 months, 4 to 5 rda per day, and what did I get?

A Nox relic.

These changes only serve to reduce the amount of RDAs people can play in, drive up relic and egg prices, and hurt UO players.

Please revert the changes.

BananaKill said:

Tracking was never easy. I tracked for 2 months, 4 to 5 rda per day, and what did I get?

A Nox relic.

These changes only serve to reduce the amount of RDAs people can play in, drive up relic and egg prices, and hurt UO players.

Please revert the changes.

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Perhaps this change will let staff increase the drop rate in RDA, since they aren't being farmed back to back.

Rather than making it so less people can play, why not make it so everyone can play.

Spawn them only in guard zones and let people play the game.

BananaKill said:

Rather than making it so less people can play, why not make it so everyone can play.

Spawn them only in guard zones and let people play the game.

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Tried that before. Only Werkt and $ bothered to do them.

Remove the RDA spawn entirely then, and add more ways to get fragments, and higher fragment drop rates.

Also increase the relic drop rate, it's abysmal.

BananaKill said:

Remove the RDA spawn entirely then, and add more ways to get fragments, and higher fragment drop rates.

Also increase the relic drop rate, it's abysmal.

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Why not keep it entirely random (like they've made it) so people can stumble into them, while also increasing fragment drop rates (which Shane has already commented he is willing to do - once they collect some data from the change) & adding more ways to get fragments (also Shane has said he'd do), in order to keep the number of RDA's done daily in line with what it was?

It's great to stumble into an RDA as someone who doesn't do them, it's exciting, you get a group together, feel like you've achieved something reward or not at the end..

^ that's precisely the ideal that keeps us on top.

ProdigyOsi said:

Does anyone remember that time that I offered to teach any guild who was interested how to get into the RDA game?

Not one bite.

The fact of the matter is, it wasn't Zerg that was the "real" problem, it was a lack of initiate and commitment. Through the years several small groups and individuals have gotten there fair share from the great and oppressive werkt regime, contrary to popular belief.

But UOF, like the new generation (I feel old saying that) is full of people who prefer, "not keeping score", "participation ribbons", and complaining/protesting about what you don't like instead of doing something about it. SMH.

This isn't the first and won't be the last change. Werkt has members and leaders with innitative and commitment to succeed. And we will adapt as we always have and the cream will continue to rise to the top.


Suck it haters.

P.S. did anyone even consider that making RDAs harder to find will actually bennitit the big guild full of people who are willing to go look for them? LAWL
Thanks @Shane

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Right, and like I was saying, there was finally a group that "did something about it" and got together the resources, the knowledge, the initiative, the commitment and the numbers to give you some competition and the "big fights" everyone always says they want. And literally the next day that shit got nerfed.

No kidding. City gets geared up and then the carpet is ripped out from under them.

Meanwhile bobby123 has 500mil in blood money from locking down Akor and no changes are made whatsoever.

Xiulan said:

It's interesting how werkt had RDAs on lock for years and nothing was done, but literally the day after another guild got the scripts, the books and two former werkt expert RDA trackers and were set up to finally give them some competition, *poof* out of the blue it's goodbye RDA tracking.

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A little suspicious dont you think?

BananaKill said:

No kidding. City gets geared up and then the carpet is ripped out from under them.

Meanwhile bobby123 has 500mil in blood money from locking down Akor and no changes are made whatsoever.

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Bobby made his fortune long before akor/warlock/warden/rdas were spawning the way we see them today.

Xiulan said:

Right, and like I was saying, there was finally a group that "did something about it" and got together the resources, the knowledge, the initiative, the commitment and the numbers to give you some competition and the "big fights" everyone always says they want. And literally the next day that shit got nerfed.

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RDA changes have been on the cards for a long time to reduce the level of automation in finding them. The most recent list of changes:

• Removal of faction rda - effectively a free rda as an access gate spawned in the owning faction base which you then exited on the other side and gated non faction chars to.
• Randomised timer instead of every 6 hours.
• Reduction of spawn from 3 portals at once to a single portal on a reduced timer.
• Increased spawn locations - they used to be restricted to overland and no towns - no they include all towns and dungeons - more area = harder to find.
• Removal of the gate name - to prevent fully automated tracking macros from looking for this name in the tracking gump.
• Paragons spawning in portals - if more than 3 members then rda mobs (including the dragon boss!) can turn paragon. Increasing the difficulty and making it harder to complete before a rival may find you.

ALL these changes were put in to try and prevent large guilds from script finding and completing these before others had a chance. It sounds a bit paranoid to say these changes were put in (by a non werkt dev) because someone else decided to challenge werkt.

But as Calsifer said - a large organised group is always going to have the advantage.

lest we forget:

• preventing ghosts from zoning through the faction portal (before it was removed).
• Removing the ability to, "attack command" ToH.
• Preventing logout in RDAs by porting you to Brit bank
• Preventing exploitation of the above by porting you outside instead.
• Changing to a variable respawn time.

And remember, at one point Werkt was nothing and $, @Messremb's crew (PCH allience) and @Ariakan99's crew (Hi) got them all. We decided to get into the game and the rest is history.

Anyone else could have, and still can, do the same.

Also more people, more advantage (in finding them, loot distribution/dilution is another thing entirely) that's just math. But that assumes others are trying. We only have a "monopoly" because people don't try. They just want to, stumble upon" one.

I am not much for there being a big conspiracy. Staff didn't like that the RDA tracking became so systematic. I knew that we were due for another change when WERKT was the only ones that were actively looking for them anymore.

The change before this one we had several guilds all tracking and we had frequent battles between WERKT, SQUAD, $, EQMS, and MAGA. That was when RDA books became wide spread and everyone was afk tracking. Then the decision was made to take the text "a Mysterious Gate" off of the portal. This made it so you had to actually watch the tracking gump. Pretty much everyone else threw their hands up and said "screw it."

So then one active guild is the only one left that is even trying. Even with WERKT getting a high percentage of the "wild" RDAs it wasnt like we had a monopoly on meta eggs and relics or were flooding the market. Look at the price trends for those items. They have been steadily reducing since portal fragments were added ti treasure chests and other relic drop content was added, 2 new champs and mini bosses.

I really dont get the staff's motivation for wanting to make them harder to find because 1 guild was the only one trying. I would have gone back over the historu of changes and see what worked better. Its not like the system has always been broken and they never got it right. They just have to be willing to admit when they made a change and it didnt work and to try to go back to where it worked best and apply a different strategy.

Personally I would have worked to make them more accessible to average people again so they dont have to make a huge investment of their game time to set asside 2-3 characters to look for one if they wanted. The harder they made them to track the more exclusive they became. Currently it is unsure if they are worth the time at all to even try to look for them.

I know some people will argue, "Oh Well. They are supposed to be random. Its better if people dont look for them and they are stumbled upon." That may sound nice but it really doesnt make much sense to offer some fun content and then tell people you dont really want them to go look for it. "Hey loyal players! We have these cool mini dungeons with challenging monsters and valuable rewards. They will spawn randomly around the world. We're going to make them so hard to find that almost no one will play them."

Those that think that tracking for them takes away from them being random seem to also be the same people that are excited that they will increase portal fragment drops. How is that make them random? May as well call them PDAs, Private Dungeon Adventures. That will end up being the majority being played.

I am really not that bummed out about thr change. I, like Trusty, am excited to see what we can put our focus towards instead. The reason I am commenting is because the motivations behind the progression in changes didnt fix the problems they were trying to address.