Community Hangout - Towns/Housing

It is too late for me, anyway since you are discussing this... my biggest issue with town ownershipis is that only one person effectively rules the whole town now. This makes things clear and simple, but it would be nice if people could co-own towns and get keys to lots they pay for (either now with dollars during pooling money for the purchase or later in game when it is done with ingame currency).
I am not quite comfortable with this system, because if I am about to live in player owned town, I can pay for my lot(s), however I have no control over them, or I can find someone generous enough to let me live in their town for free, however they have to pay for my lot(s) and I do not like that either.

So I would like to see some discussion about options how to make co-owning town viable.

Other things I am interessted in - secret passages connecting basements, underground cities, and options to allow PvP only at part of the town (rough district).

 

I would like to see more player/trades buying and selling instead of NPCs.

 

That's actually the plan (as I understand it). There is a single master GUI that will (presumably) list all houses and you would set the lot permissions there. I suspect they will permission groups similar to kindred / trustee. The POT owner is the master owner of all lots, while someone who 'buy's from the POT owner will be a trustee of that individual lot.

My guess is that you'd click the lot number within the GUI and then enter the player name and set the permission to 'trustee'. I'd guess that the box where you enter the player name has a search function so you can auto-complete (as with the friends list). Naively, I think all the functions are there so it should be a case of pulling it together.

As you point out there can be any other way of doing it.

 

Hey guys!

I wanted to toss out a reminder that this is going to be in a few days. I still have 5 seats available. If anyone is interested in talking this stuff out feel free to attend!

 

Ah rats! I'll be at a wedding that weekend. This one looks like fun.

 

That's a great point. As an owner of a town, I would love the opportunity to host events, celebrations, "conventions", etc. This would require a level of control over the scenery myself, as well as the ability to give permissions for that level of control to designated representatives. That lends itself to levels to a discussion on different levels of permissions on the town level, and then levels of permissions on the lot level.

A tree of permissions for macro control at the Town Owner level would be easy to manage, as well as a similar tree for permissions at the lot level. I'm not a coder, so I'm not sure how easy it would be, but being able to have the flexibility of creating neighborhoods with their own leadership would be a great addition, especially at the town and above level. But...I digress.

Spero

 

Duke V.,

I would like to attend.

Respectfully,

Spero Gottskraft

 

I have several more things I would to hear other opinions on.

1. Do they plan to sell towns after the lunch of the game? If yes should there be a difference to the now sold towns, like taxes?
2. Port said it is possible to gain a town over ingame gold. We know these town will have taxes on it, but what else will be different? Do we can design the layout but have to use existings scenes? Do we have to choose between town layout and can only decide on the lotsizes?
3. I know it is early, but can a town move? For example when EP2 is out and the town wants to move to the new continent?
4. What will happen with a ingame bought town if the owner can't pay the taxes?
5. Can we change the leader of a town if he wants it? Sell the rights to another person?
6. What will happen with death towns? Owner inactive, no player living there.

 

I would also like to participate in the Hangout if there is room.

I have some ideas from building player towns in the past in UO. We are also trying out player town ideas in the SotA Releases.

I'm focused on building a town that operates like a town using a metropolis and one or more scenes. We've tested some fairground ideas, large number of kindred and trustee accesses to lots, and several events. We are currently working on ideas for how a group of people may use a house as an establishment / factory / store (not just an NPC store, but an over the counter store with real people).

I have some thoughts about the single ownership of player owned towns too ("rights of survivorship, bankruptcy, disappearance, etc.") -- a main thought is the owner should do things in game and out of game to assure his/her citizens the town will not go poof, ... or the owner might not choose to make those assurances. People will need to carefully decide which town they join/purchase a lot from and see if they like the "terms".

Growing up in UO, we built towns without "town level" mechanics ... we just had single house mechanics. We were really successful building towns, but it was painful in some regards. Hopefully the Player Owned Towns capabilities will help and they already promise to: key/un-key lots for specific house owners, and free up house locations in downtown that became dormant. That was the hardest part of building a town... waiting for non-citizens to leave the area so more citizens could move in. It took about 1-2 years to have a solid housing area built up for PaxLair in UO.

I look forward to the Hangout.

 

Myself and another guildie went together to purchase a holdfast for our guild. Mostly just so everyone is guaranteed an available lot (plenty of row house lots can be fit in a holdfast!). Even if it's just myself and her living there, I was willing to put up the cost of the town so that guildies wouldn't have to be spread all over tarnation if they didn't want to be. We may consider renting out extra space to people (especially if they want to join), but guildies will always have a space for them available.

 

Would love to get a seat!

Se'an Silverfoot of PaxLair

 

Please sign me up.

 

Seats saved.

One seat remains.

 

Glad you made it in time.

I nominate @Spoon. ;-)

 

I wish I could, but 2 in the morning is too late for this yuro.
Next time gadget, next time.

 

Another great reason to move the hangout earlier.

Although it should be 1am? Central + 7 for you?

 

I don't think that we should ask @Duke Violation to move something which he has already scheduled. It's better that those who has already signed up get what they expect when they expect it, I'm looking forward to what they will bring up and will check it out afterwards.
Then the good Duke has promised to consider the time zones for some other time. That is very nice of him considering it is less convenient for him.
For the topic of player-towns and housing I think there is plenty to talk about, so maybe having a second talk on this isn't a bad idea. And if the good Duke has trouble with his schedules then maybe us yuros could get tips on setting up a similar thing ourselves.

 

Incoming test link... as a reminder this hangout is going to be in 24 hours and there is one seat remaining.

Cheers!

 

I'd love to be there but can't guarantee I shall be around

 

After sending out my test message I found two people who said they would be unavailable. We are back to three seats being available. If you're unsure you're welcome to watch this thread and I'll post a join link AFTER I send it to the people who have already RSVPd seats. Thanks!