I'm crying about the town crier

The recent decision to make all POTs have a static town crier that also acts as a bank is understandable. But I think it's a bad decision.

By doing this, we're putting a BANK at the front of every town. So every town now has the shortest route to the bank being the moment you go into the scene to wherever the town crier is. Currently that is not the exact same spot in every POT, which is unfair in some ways, good in others.

So I can't help but ask, why have a bank building then if the town crier is also a bank? Yes, of course there are some reasons I could come up with here, but they're not very compelling reasons to make this draconian change where all town criers are mandatory and also act as a bank.

Not only are banking town criers unimmerssive. But they also undercut whatever the town theme may be trying to accomplish. In the case of Rat's Nest, I don't want people zoning into the front of the scene just to drop off their stuff in the bank. I want them to walk through the town. I want them to see the vendors and shops. I want them to gather near the bank and the town square.

Having the town crier become a replacement for all of that is very damaging to my POT functionality.

But in addition if we are looking for ways to take a players inventory that is no longer living in the town and put it somewhere they can get to it, this is STILL a bad decision. Because if the concern is that a players might get griefed by POT owners, then the last place you want to put their stuff is in the town that they're being griefed at.

So why not make town criers only act as town criers (not as banks) and allow POT owners to move them wherever they want to? Then if someone leaves the POT the items they leave behind can be magically moved to one of the larger towns like Ardoris, Resolute, Brittany, or Aerie.

 

My thoughts on this are as follows:

1 - If the town actually has a physical bank (which could be mandatory even if small) then the town crier should give directions when asked about it and optionally the bank icon placed in the compass.
2- As to POT items, if everything is in the bank in a town and the player wants to move these items to another town then there should be a function for this. Since this could be abused, have it with a cooldown (1 day, 1 week, whatever) so that people cannot move things from place to place on a whim. When used only the items in that towns bank will be moved to the new town and the cooldown is applied.

 

To me it's like getting a free bank, so you effectively get another type of building you can put in your POT. To me that is well worth whatever minor drop off in traffic you might see if people just go to your town to bank.

Remember that almost all the people who will bank in your town will be town residents. Because there's no global banking, I doubt I'll bank ANYWHERE except my home POT.

 

That's a good alternative, Ravenclaw.

 

We *have* to have a bank in every scene with a player house. This is not optional (otherwise items could become inaccessible/lost) Thus why we have to have a mandatory bank NPC in each scene.

 

Yup.. I agree with the need for the bank npc but does this mean the town crier at the gate needs to fill this post?

 

I'd still place an NPC bank. Why? Because I don't want to walk from the center of my town where the crafting house is to the bank at the edge of the map. Ergo I will an NPC bank building next to the crafting shop / crafting buildings.

Exactly. Also, the game becomes much harder to play if you live in a small town that couldn't "afford" an NPC bank. It is one of these times that practicality and fairness dominate over immersion.

 

I can understand this, but what if the Town Crier only functions as a banker if there is no Bank in the scene. I'd love if both existed that the Town Crier acted like the one in Solania, that offers the mail quest but doesn't have bank functions.

 

My thoughts on this:

Change this mandatory NPC to "Town Official", place him in a "chamber of commerce / welcome center", which is the first building you would come to in a Player Owned Town. He'd act like the gatekeeper to the town, greeting new visitors to the scene and offering them information.

 

What if the town crier only acted as a holder of lost goods, but not a fully functional bank? so you can't drop things off there, only pick up your 'lost' stuff from him? Would that appease all parties and make the function of banks more useful? (or this town official that Jack Knyfe brings up) ;D

 

I don't like the town crier being a bank as well. Imagine when announcements are being made and everyone is gathered so close around him chatting as they bank and you can't read a word on screen of what he's saying. Also, the chat window will be going a mile a minute.

Immersion mentioned earlier is definitely lost.

I like a banker behind a bank cage. Immersion! For that matter, I think all town criers should be up on top of a small one person stage or even a tree stump if the town scene calls for that. One others can't hop onto so his words stay clear above other conversations.

Further, town crier should be for game/town owner announcements. Put an 'information center' at the main entry point to a town with an NPC who offers a list of town NPC services available, directions to shops, specific persons homes, lists of interesting unique town sites like statuies, nature preserves, etc.

 

1. I like Ravenclaws solution, see above.
2. I don't understand why each POT or non-POT has to have a bank. If a town doesn't have a bank, why can't they just send all their items to the nearest large town? Nothing would "inaccessible/lost" it would just require some travel. Now if you're saying the fail safe for "system errors" that result in items going back to the bank because we don't know what else to do with them. I understand that. I'm not trying to put undo burden on small towns either. But I really dislike the town crier being used in this way and I'm looking for alternatives. So why not have the "system error" items be collectible through the town crier (only if a bank is not present)?

 

Because if a bank is not present in that scene, items when removing a house may become lost. We don't have the ability to send housing items to a bank in another scene because of how scenes are generated/set up.

As for the other suggested solutions - on a theoretical level they all work. On a practical level, this all requires development time. Probably the most doable solution is simply to not spawn the default town crier if a bank exists in the scene - but what if the town owner then removes the bank? This is a lot of conditional spawning that we simply can't do right now.

 

Are you going to be in the dev hangout about POT on Monday? I'll likely bring this topic up in a roundabout way for a 60 second conversation/recap so people understand the what/why.

If you are there, mind taking a stab at explaining it? If not, mind giving Chris or someone else a heads up?

 

I'm going to be here all day Monday, not scheduled for the POT hangout but I'll probably be in chat. Chris is familiar with the issue and looking over my shoulder as I type this!

 

I see. Thank you for explaining.

Hmmm. Hopefully you guys will come up with some kind of work around.

If Bank, town crier directs to Bank. If no, bank, town crier is open for business.

 

Could have so the town crier only is for taking things out of your bank not putting them in.
That way is no serious problem if someone removes the bank from a town as you still is able to get the items from it
And still is a advantage with having a bank in the town.

 

Often pragmatism is best. Glad the devs make decisions like these.

 

As a POT owner, I would be perfectly fine with making my bank 100% static, never to be removed or moved.

 

How are these items different from a backend data perspective than items marked as "Reward" which are accessible at all banks? Is there no way to convert them to that data type, so the player can go to any bank anywhere to retrieve his items?

Feature creep is fun