Organizing the first player-run city with a crafting and trading theme

Discussion in 'Player Owned Towns' started by Jatvardur, Jun 5, 2014.

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  1. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    Not yet. I have a plan for how to create one though. I want it to be lore consistent, so it will depend upon quadrant and vicinity to the npc towns. I know roughly where I would like to be, but the devs may not allow it (for whatever reason). So I think getting a consistent lore name will require discussion with devs about exact location. A further consideration is whether to incorporate the themes into the name: e.g.craft-town, or water-town, but in a less obvious way.

    I want to study the map a bit more and see how Richard has used suffixes in reinforcing localized themes, I'd do something similar (if he has done that). This would also apply to street names and regions within the town.
     
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  2. Biblik

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    I have a pretty good working example of designing player cities. Need to publish it out and clean it up should be ready to play with by tomorrow.

    I had a few thoughts to discuss but generally I think it would be nice to have a couple of player unity artists to help with a few customizations if they were needed. Also given the idea of player run towns it would be nice for portalarium to add ability for a group of councilors instead of a single player to govern.
     
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  3. Jatvardur

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    That sounds pretty cool on the software front. Have you seen my mock ups already? :) Also, it would eventually be great to have a dynamic map of the town once the game is up and running. It would be great to have the location of all vendors (with owners) and what they sell. Dunno if that would be too much of a pain, but an idea to think on.

    It would be great to have further clarity on the second issue too. It could be that if I grant players kindred status then they'd have the power to set access rights etc. I mailed the devs on Friday but I imagine they were pretty busy getting the add-on store sorted. Hopefully they will reply next week, I'm just trying to get the ball rolling in terms of discussion with them. Sharing power also means sharing responsibility and costs, which makes sense with me. :) (edit: updated the first post to reflect some of my current thinking and also to include some of my thoughts that I've posted in replies).

    Also going to look at town-to-town embassies and library exchanges as Winfield suggested in the Paxlair thread. That is to say that I welcome agreements with other player-towns.
     
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  4. DavenRock

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    A way to tie cities together would be nice, or a fluid way to move from one player-city to the next. These player cities should be accessible so as they don't feel like ghost-towns when everyone's around the world.

    I like what your doing Jat!
     
  5. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    Town Planning (3rd trial)
    I reworked one of the pictures I have in the 2nd post. The following shows a suggested lay-out for a city if a coastal hex is not permitted.

    [​IMG]

    As before the breakdown of lots is:
    88 Row lots (equiv to 22 vil lots)
    38 Village lots
    8 Town lots (equiv to 16 vil lots)
    6 City lots (equiv to 24 vil lots)

    This gives a total of 100 village lot equivalents (my patent pending method for measuring town sizes :p) with 12 left over as slack.

    I'm also inclined to decrease the number of city lots if the city is land-locked, and to boost row and village sized lots.

    This is just a rough sketch of how things might look. I'm keen to spread the NPC buildings out a bit. If they are all central then the immediate houses become incredibly valuable which sounds cool except that the houses on the edge of town will be far less desirable. In order to preserve some value in the outer lots it makes sense to have either two centres (as above), or to spread the NPC buildings out around the town (no centre). The former seems smarter as I think some NPC buildings will compliment each other in terms of function, and the town looks more natural (not artificial just because we are in a game).


    Town names
    I've done some researching of the world map and tried to match up themes / styles with the areas. The naming convention isn't completely obvious, so had to take some guesses. As I'm currently aiming for a name which is consistent with the lore then I'd had hoped to find more obvious patterns in the place names. The following outlines my research:

    Norgard has a bit of a Nordic flavour: Estgard (Est = East, gard ~ gård), Valhold (play on Valhalla), Oso, Dysborg (a play on Swedish towns with borg), Jaana (is a bit further south, and is a Finnish female name).

    Brittany (and just north of the city) seem to be based on Latin words, and imply things like regality/royalty, fortune and abundance: Equitas, Libris, Fortus, Sanctus, Regalis, Abundis (not so close geographically).

    Celestis has a light theme, and is perhaps the most obvious: Celestis, Solania, Solace, Spectral peaks, Solace bridge

    If this helps anyone else then a citation back to this post would be appreciated. :)

    The other areas are less obvious to me and I'm still debating what theme I'd attribute to them.


    Embassies
    Here is some thinking on how they could work. For simplicity I shall work with two entities: the host and the guest. The host is the city that has the embassy building within its borders, the guest is the visiting "guild" that owns the building.

    Where an embassy exists in a host city it should be presumed that strong links exist (in-/out-of-game) with the guest entity (guild / city). The embassy would be a safe haven for all persons of the guest entity. It wouldn't need to be open to the host city citizens, that is entirely optional (cf Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy).

    Obviously this depends on how permissions work, but I think it would be wise to set the building to open for all residents of the guest city (if possible). Not necessarily kindred but just open access.

    I see two ways to way to play this:

    1) The guest guild is granted a key in the host town to place a building. The building is owned by the guest guild, and access permissions are set by the guests. This essentially means that the host city will have one embassy building per embassy link.

    2) The host town places a general embassy building which has open access rights to all players. I don't see it being possible to limit the access to just a few, but distinct, guilds. This is less embassy-like since it wouldn't work as a guest-only safe haven but rather would be a generic safe building. However, a player-run mall would have the same access rights. A mall and an embassy have different characters. That said, it could make sense for an embassy to host a library which contains literature and arts from the guests cities. I could see it working on a donation basis: gifts to build links.
     
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  6. Gau2

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    I am very interested. I would love to become part of something ambitious in this new world. I think the player town/city/village done from the beginning will be one of the farsighted things that sets this game far ahead.

    I started UO in '98 and still have an account (I haven't been able to say goodbye ;-o). When I found UO, it was the game I had had been waiting for all my life and now this one appears to have the potential to take that feeling to new levels.

    I will look at your plans and website postings, but my initial impression of your ideas is VERY good. I am interested in all aspects of the game, but I have always loved chopping trees, mining, fishing, carpentry, etc so I would hope to carry on in those traditions.

    Brian
     
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  7. Jatvardur

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    Many thanks for the vote of confidence. :) Glad people like the ideas posted here. Still early in the development stage and keen to receive feedback. There is still a lot of things that we don't know about player towns and what functionality we will have so some of my ideas might not work out exactly.

    Feel free to cast a critical eye over anything or suggest new ideas. You are welcome to join although the cost of joining, as you might have read, is not yet known. :)
     
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  8. Gau2

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    I just wanted to comment on your last landlocked design above. When looking at the row house renderings, I think that more than about ten together make for a very very long city block and a bit monotonous. I do think that most of them together would make for some very cool vendor shops, etc.

    Also, with the assumption that the row houses in a trading oriented city would be a majority of shops, it would seem to me that one would want them laid out with easy access from the periphery (where people would enter the city), perhaps along a sort of "high street"... Otherwise customers are spending a bunch of time getting where they wanted to go. Just a thought.

    Oh, and one more thing, in the aquatic realm, when the row houses are directly on the water, you get a cool Amsterdam effect. Excuse my rambling.

    Btw Jat, are you using this tool? http://sotahousing.com/SotA_Player_Town_Calculator.html

    Brian
     
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  9. Jatvardur

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    Thanks for the feedback. You make a good point about the long rows of housing that I didn't appreciate, but makes a lot of sense. Basically I need to put extra crossroads / intersections in. Will try to modify the designs asap. I think the water based town looks cool, although I suspect many others do too and there could be competition for the idea. :O

    I think having the shops centrally makes sense as it will be easy to go from one to the other. Getting the amount of clustering just right will be the tricky part. Especially if the town is planned on paper without any real feel of how it will end up.


    I've seen that tool but not used it. I did my own calculations in G-docs before that tool existed. ;-)
     
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  10. Gau2

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    Jat, this is something I did to show my idea how row houses intended to be vendors could be arranged. I like the idea of central shopping and simple layout.

    I tried to stick to your conventions of depicting the buildings. I put 4 of the city lots on the water, for choice view. The rest of the lot placements were kind of random.

    The lot totals are:

    Row Houses 84

    Village 43

    Town 8

    City 6

    Keep 1

    That is exactly 67200 sq. meters.

    Oops, I forgot to throw the big keep lot in ;-) I thought why not get luxurious and then I forgot to add it!!!

    I am not sure what to do with the NPC structures, so I just stuck them in like you did. Let me know what you think of the shopping district. And I put some row houses right on the water for the Amsterdam effect I spoke of before.

    Brian
    [​IMG]
     
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  11. Keldrin

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    Since they added the Metropolis size to the add-on store, is the design staying with city? or moving up to the new largest size?
    Also, do we know if player ran cities, will have walls like the NPC cities? or will they have next to no defenses, more like the NPC villages?
     
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  12. Jatvardur

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    Good questions. I was slightly surprised by the new size, I didn't expect it, but given the interest in the number of city lots then it makes sense. I noted 5 player cities mentioned across various threads. Not all might come to fruition but I also wonder how many have purchased / will purchase but keep quiet. The new city size is tempting, and I have a suspicion that at least one player city will become a metropolis.

    No public mention of city walls. I emailed some questions to the devs, the replies centred around the player towns starting from templates then modified as requested by the players.which is what I was expecting. We will get some customization but not complete customization.
     
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  13. Jatvardur

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    @Brian , looks good! A pleasing symmetry to it. You gone for a more grid based layout which I was previously avoiding but this looks nice. The two-core "center" (npc buildings) is similar to an idea I was having but I never drew it. Looks good.

    The keeps and castles take up way too much space, and actually not inclined to place a keep in the city. A lot more houses could be placed instead.

    Thanks for the ideas! I will post later when I have time.
     
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  14. Keldrin

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    Another thing, there will be a tax for owning a city. Can the owner of said city, apply the tax to the base using the lots, so it is automatically paid by the population of the city, rather than there being a struggle for funds, and needing to hunt people down to get the agreed upon taxes from them?
     
  15. Gau2

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    I think I agree that Keeps and Castles are a waste. Besides, they should probably be exceedingly rare...to preserve the grandiosity ;-) Also, I am not particularly fond of symmetrical grid style cities, but I know what I like when I go shopping! I like things close together and easy to get to. I like BIG and WIDE pedestrian walkways with benches and greenery. I think that cross shape thing I came up with breaks up the monotony of one main street. I could envision a big fountain in the middle or maybe a town crier sort of podium or both. I also like beauty in a city, so let's not forget parks and common things like a festival grounds or tournament arena! I also appreciate large imposing buildings like courts, city halls, cathedrals, etc. They let you know that the people of that town mean business ;-)

    When I started experimenting with row house layouts, I came to the conclusion that single row house lines would give more "shopkeepers" frontage on your main drag/high street. This would be critical to keeping the customers and tenants happy. As for the people that want a row house not as a shop, take one on the water or in the back of the water front jobbies.

    I also wanted to address the issue of one person holding the keys to the city, so to speak... I do think it would be nice if there was a way to leave the keys in the hands of equals. To me it would be best if those were the town councilmen. They might be equally financially invested with real life $. If one of them wants out, then someone new buys them out. Democracy is good, but also inefficient. If your leaders are a trustworthy sort...no worries. I met several of those people over the years in UO ;-)...and a few scammers ;-( Initially one person would probably handle the purchase and initial setup, for expediency. But then hopefully as Jat has said, there could be some kind of kindredy town councilly sort of arrangement.

    Brian
     
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  16. Biblik

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    This is definitely going to he the hardest part of starting a city with others. Too hard to trust people you barely know. A good resolution would be a council relevant to the size of the city requiring said members to have a percentage vote to perform certain actions like expulsion.
     
  17. Gau2

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    I think if you just make sure your weasel radar is on, you will be able to spot the bad folk. I think the hardest part of starting the city is finding the required number of people that can see your vision! If they are feeling the good vibe, then they get on board. I highly doubt that someone dedicated to this game in a high degree would somehow screw over people that were agreeing to be part of their town. Just my opinion. Besides, don't "barely know" them. Read their old posts, read their intent and vision and then finally, get to know them. I am not sending money to start a city to someone unless I feel I do know them! Oh yeah, no offense to people of West Africa, but I can think of one country in particular where I would exercise a bit more diligence before wiring SotA city startup funds!!!!!! ;-P

    Brian
     
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  18. Jatvardur

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    My understanding is this:
    • There is no requirement for a tax to be levied against residents by the town owner. Whether it is possible I don't think has been clarified.
    • If a player buys a house within in-game money or from the add-on store then they pay their in-game tax as usual.
    • A player-run town purchased with in-game gold will be charged a tax but at the town level. Whether an owner can tax the residents to cover this remains to be seen.
     
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  19. Jatvardur

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    Interestingly, buildings which are highly symmetric on the inside tend to cause confusion (people get lost) because everything looks the same. Some asymmetry allows people to get their bearings. We can create a symmetry template then tweak it. I like the idea of wide avenues too, and a large open central space for gatherings. All can work. Ideally the devs would commit to telling us explicitly what is / isn't possible so we can make firmer plans.

    Getting the balance of row lot / to other sizes will be important. I'd like to keep the row lot houses happy since they will make up the majority, I also suspect that many city lot owners will have a city house in an NPC town then (say) a row lot / village lot in a player-run town.


    town council
    (brainstorming -- we don't yet know what's possible)

    A town council makes sense. I would't want to police everything and try to resolve all matters by myself. I wouldn't expect, nor require equal investment but would appreciate if many people were willing to make small contributions. I wouldn't necessarily require the town council to have to make a financial contribution: I'd prefer to have people who are motivated to be part of the town council and will carry out a good job. Another question is whether to have a democratic process and perhaps to weight people's votes by the amount they contribute. The best way to do it might be to give council positions to the highest backers (if they want the position) and then to have a few more elected positions. I'd aim to keep the council small so that managing relationships doesn't become a job within itself. A rough plan would be to have 2 - 3 council members who I appoint because they are high level backers, and then 3 elected positions. I could see there being an elected chairman of the council (Mayor). Ultimately I would have the power to pull the plug but it isn't in my interest to do that: I see that as a contingency. Inactive or harmful councils would be very disruptive to the town.
     
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  20. Jatvardur

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    See the previous post to Brian.

    To address trust I would recommend the threads I made on my guild website. I discuss many ideas about how to build trust via public postings. If I agree to something in public then a lot of people will see it. If I then renege on something my name will sour quickly among a lot of people. That doesn't mitigate risk to zero, but I'd hope it goes a long way to build trust. To re-iterate Brian I also hope that my posts give a good impression too. If it helps folks can connect with me on G+ or Twitter. FB / LinkedIn are also possibilities but I tend to use them less or not at all for connecting publicly.
     
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