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Costs to place City, Keep, or Castles in POTs

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Chris, Feb 13, 2019.

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  1. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    Sometimes the simplest answers aren't the best. I think we're seeing this is very true with several decisions we made long ago for how POTs work. We went with the obvious design of POTs having a total squarefootage that could be placed and houses take up exactly as many square feet as they take up. While this seems fine on the surface,the reality is that it makes POT owners choose between having 1 guy in an awesome castle or 32 friends in Row lots.

    This puts a huge burden on POT owners for costs and planning that is just not cool. Also, many of these lots only have a couple of spots where they can fit in a POT template.

    So, we'll have a patch coming out soon that will dramatically reduce the cost to POT owners for city, keep, and castle lots. Here are the old and new values for the cost to place these deeds in POTs:

    City 2400 --> 1800
    Keep 4800 --> 2400
    Castle 9600 --> 3000

    While still expensive, I think these numbers will make it much more tempting for POT owners to have some of the larger lots available.

    Also, we're still looking into making the special Lord of the Isle castle deed take up zero space for POTs if placed on an Island! More on that later.

    Enjoy!
     
  2. Aartemis

    Aartemis Avatar

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    Thanks Guys! This certainly helps!
     
  3. Brass Knuckles

    Brass Knuckles Avatar

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    That should help, I’d suggest town size would be a good thing to lower as well. I’d add a few more of those if they were lowered.
     
  4. Titania Xylia

    Titania Xylia Avatar

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    Amazing to say the least!

    I own a PoT and have a lot of town and city lots placed, so I'll benefit directly. I'm pumped to say the least. It's not much of a town just my personal deco park for the most part. It's honestly the coolest experience in-game beyond taking down a boss for me.

    I'm curious, from Portalarium's perspective, who this is supposed to help. I think it best aids established towns that are succeeding in growing their guilds or general town residency will benefit from the available space. Is that your sole reasoning for the change? What was the requirement?

    To be clear, I think this is a solid strategy and I would continue to increase the available space available with larger PoT upgrades beyond municipalities: greater muncipalities, twin cities, counties, states, nations, continent, etc. I don't see any reason to limit it beyond technical constraints (i.e. map design restrictions, loading times)

    I think it's great to reward the people that are helping to foster communities in-game, but overall, there is massive amounts of dead towns in-game with available space. I think that's all about us governors not doing what we need to do to draw new residents. Many are not even playing. Is that Port's thinking, as well?

    I love the successful towns and the governors that make the investment (time and money) in making a great in-game experience that's functional, as well. Give them more tools:
    • Reduced deco restrictions (definitely rethink npc buildings)
    • New maps with more available marker placement areas, more densely packed
    • A map we can extend with new areas, even varying biome types, like we start with a grid and add chunks to the map on demand in a grid versus pre-made maps: imagine a forest biome that has a cavern biome extension, a forest biome that has a desert and snowy extension, several island extensions making an archipelago, a city biome that is mostly paved laid out in a grid of built in-road.
    • More sizes to upgrade existing towns to as mentioned above
    • Make more epic deco & rethink the pricing on epic items - these really impact a scene and define the character of a town when you zone in. $50 trees sting a bit :p
    PoTs really made this game functional for many of us. Most players gather there and for good reason. Governors saw needs and met the demands of the players they knew and it didn't cost you guys a thing beyond that initial dev cost.

    Some of these are far cheaper options than others, some could drastically affect where people live and make competition for residents tough, but I wanted to put those ideas out there. The PoT system as-is is amazing.
     
  5. Stryker Sparhawk

    Stryker Sparhawk Avatar

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    I will dissect this more later, so this is reserved space, but, on your comment about diversified biomes, imagine yourself buying an additional POT and stringing them together to make this happen. As long as the cost model is similar at current POT pricing, stringing it together would be ok.
     
  6. redfish

    redfish Avatar

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    I think something that this will benefit is that a lot of POT owners/stewards want to use lots to create public spaces, whether things like gardens, or fairgrounds, or markets, or crafting areas. But it often becomes a trade-off between building these public spaces and giving space to residents, especially for the smaller sized POTs.

    @Titania Xylia Being able to set the default building style for row homes.

    If we're talking about gluing together a grid of biomes btw you might as well bring up the issuee of map size, because you still have holdfasts on maps designed for metros.
     
  7. Elrond

    Elrond Avatar

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    Still costs alot of space but Its a great step forward . For me its all about the no of vendors that can be placed vs acres occupied . Rows still represent best option . Hope to see some visual improvements for towns on world map in the future . Different looks and size based on town upgrade or number of people residing there . Maybe allow some guild banners placed near towns on world map.
     
  8. redfish

    redfish Avatar

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    I stillthink it would be cool if you could see the town coat of arms from the world map somehow.

    When we were on the forums discussing the Overland map, I showed some examples of Medieval maps where the coat of arms were actually shown on the map. For example,
    [​IMG]

    Now, this wouldn't necessarily be the case in the game. For NPC towns, its true you could potentially show the coat of arms on the map above the banner that shows the city name. However, you could also show it on the UI dialog asking you to choose your scene entrance.

    We don't currently have something similar for POTs as they all have one default entrance, though honestly there are arguments it should exist; sometimes you enter a POT from a boat, and other times from a road, so it would make sense to have a system where you have multiple default entrances, and they can be chosen from the Overland. At any case, we still have the mouseover that shows the scene details, and that could also be a place to shown the town coat of arms.

    I would also like to see more work done some time down the road on making the Overland representation of the POT visually appear closer to whats actually in it.
     
  9. Sea Bear

    Sea Bear Avatar

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    Thank you Chris,

    I like the decision. Helps someone like me who likes to go big with community lots, but had to buy up in Pot size to do it and still have space for future residents.
    My second thought was with the number of larger lot sizes on the rise. It should be a boon for all this deco stuff laying around on vendors. I like to see a healthy demand for in game items, creates an economy that works for all players.
     
  10. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    You should do this for the founder deeds too.
     
  11. Tazar

    Tazar Avatar

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    @Chris - Currently, the size of space used in the town determines the number of homes showing on the overland map pads... I am curious if an adjustment will be made here as well since space used will be smaller after the change. My concern is that a town with larger lots suddenly using less space might lose a home or two on the overland making the town seem less active than it really is.
     
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  12. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    I'm pretty sure that the number if houses shown on the overworld is based purely on the number of lots claimed, not the size.
     
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  13. Cirsee

    Cirsee Avatar

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    OMG all of this yes please! And rethink devotionals as NPC buildings please. I just can't afford a metropolis, but I would love to be able to use all the buildings my town came with and the NPCs. Seems silly to have things I can't use. Another nice plus, doubt this would happen, but you should give a town center type deed with the town for placement of vendors and such. It is really costly for Governors to buy deeds and keep those going. I spend a good deal of time trying to deco which eats into my adventuring time. Of course I do love deco, but a girl needs to have some gold to eat too.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2019
  14. Senash Kasigal

    Senash Kasigal Avatar

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    We will do. Thx for 13.800 :D
    After this change we are back to roughly 75k. Means 27k free space for new Avatars or for lot upgrades.
     
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  15. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    @Chris
    Can we also please get crafting stations placeable as POT deco?
     
  16. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    I always find someone that wants to move In to Dara Brae until they find the two devotionals I have set up are not the ones they need and vice versa. So I end up losing them to a larger POT
     
  17. Fionwyn Wyldemane

    Fionwyn Wyldemane Avatar

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    Well @Chris I have to say I almost fell off my chair with this announcement, it is just that deee-licious! :p

    Thank you for revisiting the lot sizes for City, Keep and Castle. While it always made sense to me mathematically that each lot size up the chain is double the preceding lot size, it'll be wonderful for POT owners to design those massive parks, mazes, homes or whatever and have the space to keep them up rather than stored away after an event.

    Huzzah!!
     
  18. Terrence Phillip

    Terrence Phillip Avatar

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    This!!!!
     
  19. Mishikal

    Mishikal Avatar

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    Actual lot sizes aren't changing right? Just what they "cost" in terms of POT land area?
     
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  20. Sean Silverfoot

    Sean Silverfoot Avatar

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    Correct Sir.
     
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