Outdoor Storage (Lawns)

I'm driving home today from lunch with my family and I have to slow down because in the middle of a major intersection is a man walking against the lights, his 2 year old child sitting on his shoulders. The man is smoking, but he has both hands on the child.

Society has laws and rules for a reason, sometimes the freedom given to others is disturbingly or needlessly problematic. No, having a house with junk in your front yard is not the same as someone endangering their child with cigarette smoke in a busy intersection. But how does a community stop unwanted expressions of freedom? They communicate it.

We have to be able to communicate what we like and we don't like. But more so there has to be a way regulate that when people ignore it. That's the path that the voting system takes.

What I was looking for is a way around that, allowing people do whatever they want (i.e. put crafting stations out in the middle of an empty lot) but pay a price for that (quicker derogation or loss of functionality). I'm ok going either way though.

 

I played Rift for several years, until they changed to FTP. They had a rather extensive housing system in place where you had complete freedom but it was all instanced. They also had a leader board where you could vote on peoples decoration and designs. To improve their numbers, people would sit in chat offering bribes to anyone who would come and up-vote their designs. There were also very large guilds that would get behind their members and up-vote the designs of their members over those that weren't in the guilds. All this was completely legal and encouraged. Did the best designs get voted higher? Rarely. I more often than not ignored the houses of the larger guilds just because more often than not, the designs were based on numbers and not actual taste. Some of the best designs has some of the fewest votes because no one ever saw them to vote. If you hide decorations based on votes, you are denying the freedom of a true sandbox game and run the risk if missing out on some amazing talent.

Also, as with so much of this game, what you like or what I like or what your neighbor likes is very subjective. Sure, I may hate the look of a house covered with ankhs but then I am not a fan of the new elf house in a hill either. Why is one better than the other? If I am in an "upscale" neighborhood where all the houses are multiple floored village houses, what happens when someone moves in next door with a single room shack? Well, that just doesn't fit...how dare they...we must do something...

No, leave it up to the individuals to decorate how they want. Yea, I know I will see houses that I just loathe going by but the world is large enough that there are plenty of other amazing designs for me to enjoy. Ones that I may have missed if no one voted for them...

 

Not sure I understand. I'm against enforced censoring homes. What I'm suggesting is that if there is going to be any of it whatsoever that it only affects the person who has chosen to do it to his own game, much like they have this option with SPO to "censor" every player out of his game.

 

Regulations, restrictions, laws, etc for safety is one thing. It's entirely different when applied to freedom of expression. If a community wants censorship, that's exactly what a POT is for: a curated community with HOA rules and whatever regulations and restrictions you want to impose on yourselves. That however should not be extended beyond the confines of the POT.

Again, punishing freedoms of expression by sneaking it in via weathering effects is a lovely con game. If there are going to be weathering effects, it should affect every item in the game, be they PC or NPC homes or decorations, as well as the gear your wear and use, as well as infrastructure such as roads, bridges, etc. I'd argue even on agriculture, livestock, animals, even humans. But in no way should it be simply limited to exterior lot decorations.

 

I have to say no on this; The problem is you don't know what a "Positive Rated" means. In political philosophy this is known as the "Mixed Motivation" problem... People vote, yes; but what for? There's a quick guide from my old undergrad introductory text book here, but in game terms what it would mean is people might vote their friends up just out of bias, and wanting to support them; player run towns may have all the lots mass voted for out of communal spirit, or people might just have particular tastes that are seasonal, like "Let's everyone decorate our lots with fish, because it's Fishmas!" and people in on the joke vote each other up... but the votes are permanent.

What I'm getting at is a pure Leaderboard filter doesn't give the person trying to filter much sense of control over what they see. Your tastes are not mine, and neither of us know what other people are voting on. This isn't hypothetical either; When City of Heroes tried to allow player rating for player written arcs, two dominant trends came out; the first was voting for missions which allowed intense farming of experience or resources, rather than interesting writing or entertaining fights; and the second was that once an arc got near the top, it would snowball with likes as people didn't scroll deep into the content looking for undiscovered gems.

Something similar is likely to happen here too. Indeed, I'm not sure I even like the idea of PvE and PvP leaderboards in the game at all. PvPin fixed arenas yes, where it would make sense, or on Bounty Posters to justify why that person is especially sought... and PvE maybe in challenge dungeons... but knowing Crafter A made 100 hammers this week, and Crafter B made 75 and then ranking them against each other in game would just ruin the atmosphere as well as introducing unnecessary competition and temptation to power game.

Nope, I'd much sooner see individual lot filtering applied (assuming it's possible), and blacksmiths and blackguards be known by their actions only, not compared to each other.

 

That is the funny thing about leaderboards in general. They are always manipulated wastes of time. Always a fraud. So it is a great idea in having a house leaderboard alongside a PvP leaderboard as it is quite fitting in my opinion. Both in terms of respect, stature, and time/money waste in developing them.

 

There are all kinds of decency laws (rules) that exist for the good of collective society. This is nothing new.

I agree that if there are weather effects they should impact everything, giving housing more value and purpose. However, this does beg the question, is this too much of an advantage for people with housing? I would say no, because people can rent housing if they need it.

But back on point, there's a difference between freedom and anarchy. Freedom of expression is already limited via the TOS. So the idea that people can just do whatever they want wherever they want is a facility.

 

I'm sure the home owner is a wonderful player. That's not what this was about. There are 100's of other homes I could've picked to take a screen shot of and the one in the OP was tame in comparison to others....Please don't take offense that I selected this screen shot over another players. It wasn't personal, just a good example of an observation I had.

 

Ok, I finally re-read what you posted and now I realize how bad my reading comprehension skills can be. I love this idea more having read it a few times over.

The idea that the poorly rated items on someone's lawn won't be hidden, they'll just not be visible unless you move onto their lot...that's good.

 

You are correct about the TOS but it's a far cry from personal objections to someone's lawn decoration, which is the original objection of the OP. Again, if you want a more curated experience, live in a POT you own or another where you have similar personal interests with others.

I'm not advocating anarchy and total freedom to do whatever you want or say such as racism or hate speech or other TOS-worthy items, but seriously, lawn decoration is anarchy? The horror.

 

Adding weather damage to items left outside is going too far. How tedious. I understand that crafters are pushing hard for decaying items for obvious reasons, but i cant be bothered with keeping tabs on everythings state of decay etc. Its a game for me, not the workhouse.

Frankly im not going to keep tabs on such items. I wouldn't buy or use them. I would have an empty yard.

 

And to the value and point of housing?

 

It wasn't really my suggestion. I think the game has to allow for the fact that people aren't going to be online 24 hours a day, and not punish people for going offline, so I don't think there should be any offline decay. As far as I understand, it wasn't Drocis' suggestion either; I think he was suggesting a one-time weatherproofing. I don't know that would be the best idea either though.

 

This thread makes me want to junk up my front yard just to annoy the people who are overly annoyed by junked-up yards.

 

Your house would blend right in.

 

Perhaps finding an answer to the converse may be informative: What is the point of having any lot space around a house? Does it have a use other than to store tents and hedges?

 

Let us:

- not tax design preferences
- not, for the love of all that is holy, have decay for outside crafting tables and other items (if you need more realism, I suggest having pets produce feces their owners must pick up and dispose of)
- have the ability to highlight properties we find especially beautiful or interesting, not as a bogus popularity contest but as a way for others to learn about special properties
- have the option to turn off viewing everyone's yard per Chris' suggestion

 

That's a very constructive way to approach this. However, I'm not sure there's an easy and reasonable answer.

People use their front lawns for all sorts of things, but generally speaking the ones that "look the best" are the ones that are well kept and don't have junk in them. This is true now, it would be true in New Britannia. I don't see any (read ANY) NPC homes where junk is thrown all over the yard. It's a player problem.

So at the end of the day the problem is that there's currently no reason not to put what you access the most in your front yard. It's more accessible, it's centralized, and there's no negative for doing so. (that is unless you find it to be an eyesore)

But I totally agree, if there were a reasonable incentive to use the space for something else, that would be the best thing to do - carrot over the stick.

 

You miss the point, Budner. It's not about realism, it's about perspective and immerssion. This is a medieval fantasy roleplaying game.

• Techno music is not appropriate.
• Driving cars is not appropriate.
• Flying around in a space ship is not appropriate.
• Putting all your stuff in the front yard and leaving your house completely empty is not appropriate.

We're talking about bare bones immerssion here. Hey everybody, buy this house for your character to live in. You'll be neighbors with people that don't use their house because it's too limiting and they'd have to open a door up to get to their crafting area. So they'll be standing around a pile of junk crafting. Don't worry about them, they're just playing a "game".

 

What is immersive about restriction?