Empty lots and derelict landscape

Discussion in 'New Player Experience Feedback' started by Mingo Ebonmark, Aug 16, 2018.

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  1. Mingo Ebonmark

    Mingo Ebonmark Avatar

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    As a new player it's sad to see so many empty player towns and empty lots in villages and cities. It would be nice to see more of these lots filled with perhaps deeds that are not for housing.

    A suggestion would be allowing guild masters to be able to place deeds for some kind of "monument of the virtues" with choices such as a small stone statue, or a fountain etc. It could have a plaque to advertise their guild and even perhaps allow guild members to choose it's location to teleport scroll to.

    Thanks for reading!
     
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  2. Floors

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    Some people bought lots and never claimed them, I guess. Some of it is just because they sold too many player towns.
     
  3. majoria70

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    Town governors have many things they can already place. I think as more players complete the questlines to get their row deeds perhaps more towns will fill up. Maybe some town owners who waited release haven't yet come back to the game. I know before I left to help with my mom I had just placed a gustball field in wizards rest. I am a steward there. So we are getting more things to place all the time. Placeable limits do limit us but that just recently go an increase. Hopefully anyone with a empty pot will get incentive enough with some things that come into the game in the future to get it up and running one day;). I love the experience of living in a fairly vibrant and alive town. I really miss it and the town residents since I'm away.
     
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  4. Lars vonDrachental

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    Well I guess if they had some spare time the devs could do something with empty lots...e.g. for each month a lot is unclaimed it is changing its appearance.
    0-1 month = normal short vegetation as it is today
    1-2 months = slightly grown vegetation (e.g. the grass is as high as it would be without a placed lot marker and maybe even some bushes appeared)
    2+ month = wilderness (e.g. the grass is even larger than it would be without a placed lot marker, the bushes are full grown and maybe even some small animals bustle in the thicket…maybe could look like an abandoned garden)

    Or they place a standard house on unclaimed lots like they already do with rows…maybe again with different stages of decay.
    0-1 month = just the empty standard house
    1-2 months = again vegetation starts to grow but maybe also the house starts to decay like the paint starts to weather
    2+ months = the house may look like a long time abandoned house with no paint, boarded up windows, squeaking doors,…
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2018
  5. kaeshiva

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    One of my big personal frustrations is, at persistence back in July 2016, we had "land rush."
    And during "land rush" a lot of prime spots got scooped up by people who, to date over 2 years later, have not logged into or played the game except to log in and reset timers on these claims.
    Some of them get sold, and some of them I expect they plan to play "someday" but it has done a lot to make NPC towns downright unappealing. Meanwhile active players or anyone who came after landrush have no opportunity to use these places.
    And I'm not sure what can be done about it, other than as Lars says above, putting some sort of standard house on it to make it look inhabited.

    This is why I think we've seen such a shift to living in POTs - the customizable layout as well as resident management goes a long way toward keeping things active and hopping.
    The problem with the "PRT" variant is, the marker layouts are not really that great - you may as well live in a POT for the other perks.
     
  6. Sea Bear

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    How about shrinking up all NPC, towns to a size that seems appropriate , even doing away with some.
    Then as the towns begin to get inhabitants have it sprout up some new housing lots until back to it's original planned size.
    In order for a town to be reestablished or founded again, leave a couple lots there in the middle of nowhere, then as players take up residence open up another one here there until town reaches critical size then have it blossom into the next town size up including all the proper NPC buildings and so forth.
    If players move out then after a period of time delete the lots until the town is back down to a minimum.

    Maybe just offer POT Owners who have done nothing with the town they bought way back when a way to trade it for something else in the add on store one time amnesty program, just to get things in balance. Maybe figure in a discounted value depending upon how long a go they purchased their town.
    Just to clean out some of the oversold conditions?

    Might be good for the overall health of all towns and the game in general.

    Then you could sell towns again as the communities actually fill up with active players.
     
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  7. 2112Starman

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    They planned the game properly, made lots and lots of lots. They sold as many PoTs as they could and made millions for dev on the game doing so.

    The problem is, no one is playing. Successful PoTs are either guild towns or market towns. They clearly expected vastly more people playing the game and those people didnt show up so even npc towns are all open and a lot of that is that people figured out living in a good player owned town was better any ways.

    I still think we got a shot, when the Shroud box's go up on Amazon, lets hope they market finally and we get one more rush of people.
     
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  8. Lars vonDrachental

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    @Sea Bear
    I guess some kind of shrinking/thrive could be an option but using some automatics to adjust the size is quite complicated and needs a lot of testing before it can be activated. E.g. it wouldn’t be good if by a calculation failure someone would lose his lot just because the system is shrinking the town and is deleting his property. I guess some manual adjustments sounds more failsafe in this context. E.g. one of the devs is manually adjusting the town’s sizes by activating/deactivating lots each month on release day…but this would take a lot of dev-time each month as there are quite a lot of towns.
    Removing NPC towns seems to be not possible as there are quests and lore but I guess for PRT this could be an option if there is no avatar left in this town. But just as kaeshiva already said it might take a long time until there really is no one left as it can take one year till someone’s lot is unclaimed.
    And about the empty PoTs…well if they are really empty maybe they could be invisible to normal avatars. Just the owner can see his town and only if he is placing at least one lot marker or decoration the PoT gets visible to everyone else…I guess this could be a realizable possibility with not that much dev time needed but I think not that many PoTs would disappear this way as I guess most empty looking PoTs are not really complete empty.
    Maybe instead there could be modes (e.g. live & test) the PoT-owner can switch between and by default a town is in test mode and invisible to normal avatars until the PoT-owner is talking with the town crier to change the mode.
    And about the rebuy option…I don’t know if that would be used that much. I guess the ones who really do not like the PoT have sold them already. So either they still like to have a town but do not find avatars/the time to create a town, have used the ep2-upgrade and wait till they are able to populate the new continent or these PoTs are currently in-stock products waiting at a reseller for a customer. Especially in the reseller-case I do not think it would be a good solution if these PoTs could be exchanged but without data how many are unhappy with their PoT it is difficult to suggest what the devs should do.
     
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  9. 2112Starman

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    I do think one key said here that should be listened to by the devs is starting to place random default buildings (specifically targeting the zones priority such as Asian themed in Adoris). Heck, even give them some basic deco like a fence and such.
     
  10. kaeshiva

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    So here's kinda my summation of 'how things are' with housing. Welcome any additional feedback on it.

    Living in NPC Town:
    -------------------------
    PROs: Skill Trainers on-site, "Wealthy" vendors on site (the ones that pay more for sold loot items) - this only pertains to SOME NPC town, and not to PRTs. Some passing trade/social possibilities. Quests and such in town, story elements (possible).
    CON: No layout control. Single devotional only, or none. Inconsistent, mixed vendor offerings (some seeds but not all, etc.) Often large, long load times, inconvenient amenities. Land rush related issues - empty lots, lot availability in general (ie, not being able to put two lots together to have home and garden)etc. Requires a more expensive deed (PA vs. POT) No tax free deeds of PA type available except via player to player trade. This limits people who would live there but who simply don't have the available deed type or don't want the higher cost. NPC towns whose vendors/NPCs have schedules are frustrating and inconvenient to do business.

    Suggestions: Most of the cons can't be addressed without a rather significant re-think. PRT, particularly empty PRT could be redesigned around a central area with key amenities to make them more appealing. Consider allowing POT deed to claim in PRT but still not major cities - I think we'd likely see quite a few of them fill up if this was possible. Add "pay more" npcs to PRT. Consider adding seed /recipe merchants to PRT that offer a more consistent/complete selection. You could even theme these to appeal to players of different styles. Perhaps add a wagon in PRTs to nearby adventure scenes or add harvestable trees/nodes/etc. in the empty areas around the lot markers. Like a cottonfield, or a mandrake field, or a lake full of black pearls. High density yields of t1 reagent nodes (you could have a coal mine! cmon, a coal mining town!) would certainly give these areas some draw. Where possible consider making the crafting areas in these empty towns use expert level benches.

    Living in Player town:
    ---------------------------
    PRO: Full marker layout control, activity level can be managed by owner, devotionals, most NPCs freely placeable to create central convenient market. Aesthetic controls. Tax free deeds still purchaseable, POT deed generally cheaper (and quest deed). No land rush related issues thanks to EVICT button. No NPC schedules! They stand there, where they are placed, in the rain, and they like it!! (We did give ours an awning, though, we're not heartless).
    CON: No skill trainers, no "pay more" npcs, no story elements (except player-driven), no non-directed traffic (no need to go there ever), incomplete seed inventories on seed vendor (annoying).
    Suggestions: POT already have significantly more appeal due to the above. Be nice if we could get all the seeds, though, and if we could sell 'locally' to the appropriate NPC type, but if this was implemented it would reduce the appeal of NPC towns even further.

    I think in summary the situation is that the NPC towns don't have much to offer, but they are more exclusive due to deed type and land rush - there's a prestige element, I suppose. Making them "too much better" would likely upset some folks, but if something isn't done, I think we'll continue to see NPC town population dwindle. I have two PA deeds that are currently being used in a POT because there is simply no reason to have them elsewhere, I know my husband has two as well, I'm sure there are plenty of PA deeds being used in POTS precisely because of some of the reasons above - not all of which are applicable to everyone, of course.
     
  11. Vladamir Begemot

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    I like to think of this as early colonial period. Pick your spot, build it up, make it welcoming for the future settlers. Opportunity abounds!
     
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  12. Kara Brae

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    This is a very good summary, thank you! For those players like me who need the daily 500 g from taking the Oracle’s test, the presence of an Oracle in the town I live in is also important. Not every NPC town has one, so when I log in far from home I enter a POT to visit one.

    Another aspect of NPC/PRTs that I notice is that the default entrance is often far away from the town center. I think it is important to have multiple town entrances to choose from, but when you enter one of these towns for the first time, you often have to spend a lot of time running past empty and deserted lots to find anything of value. For the convenience of visitors, the default entrance of an NPC / PRT town should be the one nearest the town center. People living on the outskirts might object to this because the only foot traffic they receive is from people entering from the outskirts and running past their vendors, but judging from my own behavior, this traffic is one-time only. Just recently I entered one of the PRTs at the default entrance. It took me a while to reach the docks down town, but when I did, I exited at the docks so that I could use that entrance going forward. POTs are better in this respect.
     
  13. tyorl999

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    just my 2 words:

    Stop the POT-Raffle ... if you only can win POT-Deeds, noone will move to PRTs

    make the price from PA-Deeds equal to POT-Deeds, so if new players move in and dont find a place to stay, the can join PRTs

    Give PA-Deeds to Bundles, so if you wanna buy a Town or City-Bundle, you dont have to discuss with POT-Governors to place more then a ROW-Lot at their POT

    give more NPC, Orcale a.s.o. to PRTs, as some Avatars post before

    Our guild startet in 2016 in Dorwald with our Pledge-Deedes, a nice PRT near to CB in the middle of nowhere, but as we got an option to join an POT and expand with POT-Bundles, we joined this option
     
  14. liz_the_wiz

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    next to all POT have little green sign posts and these take you to different exits inc docks etc.. for quick zipping about
     
  15. Kara Brae

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    Yes, POTs are awesome! My greatest sorrow in the offline game is that there are no POTs.
     
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  16. Lars vonDrachental

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    Of course it is just a guess but I would assume not that far in the future the devs will offer a possibility that you can “upgrade” your PoT-only deed to a place anywhere deed just as they offer PoT-owner the possibility to upgrade their nested PoT to a EP2-overworldmap PoT.

    Honestly I do not use these that often because I like to see if something has changed but I guess many other avatar like them a lot. I think the only problem is that these teleport spots are fixed and cannot be adjusted to match the towns setup and I think some positions are also "inconveniently" chosen e.g. in grassland are two teleport spots right next to each other (bridge and landing stage).

    @Topic
    In the end the best would be if all lots were claimed by avatars but if that is not possible maybe even some NPCs should fill the gap. I mean the devs could generate some NPCs with corresponding deeds that randomly claim available lots e.g. during the release update process. After claiming a lot these NPCs would place a house (e.g. a magic mover house template from hometown) and stay one month (or more) on this lot until they chose to relocate and move to a new location. I guess once created the number and the claiming-process of those NPCs could be adjusted by the devs manually or automatic e.g. if more than 10 lots unclaimed then create unclaimed lots/2 lot-claiming-NPCs that randomly claim an available lot in town.
    If possible these NPC could even offer some small random quests while they are in town…like I need 5 tables for my house or I need 20 potatoes for dinner.
     
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