Houses that get evicted or drop move to magic mover (property manager)

Not a new one, or even one i thought of, has been mentioned many times. I just do not remember seeing it mentioned since @Elgarion has started making a list of them, so thought it was worth raising again.

When a property drops or a lot deed is removed (we have all done it in the U menu by accident...) , instead of moving all the items to the players bank, undoing all the work of decoing that property have it move into the magic mover slot.

There is a thing with this, what do you do if the player does not have enough magic mover (property manager) slots left.
There are 2 options with advantages and disadvantages of each that I can think of.

1) Put it into magic mover anyway and allow the player to overload their property manager, but they obviously can't store anything else until it is removed. This would behave as the bank does now and allow for overloading in this special case.
Advantage : Player never loses their time spend decoing a lot for a single mistake.
Disadvantage : Players could use this on alts to get free magic mover slots. Probably more dev work than option 2.

2) Only move it to magic mover if the player has spare slots to move it into else revert back the current bank dump.
Advantage : No way for players to obtuse this to get free slots. Makes buying some extra slots attractive, just in case, from the COTO store which is an Advantage to the Catnip, not necessary the player.
Disadvantage : Player that don't have this knowledge could still lose all there deco time by not really knowing about magic mover mechanics.


Regards
Spung

 

If I recall, Elgarion mentioned if a thread has been locked/removed since he started his list .. it's because it has been added to the list.

 

I agree.

Please send lot deco to Storage in the Property Manager by default, so the decorating work is not destroyed. Decorations should go to the Property Manager Storage instead of the Bank when lot ownership expires, or when a player is kicked from their lot by the town governor.

Decorating takes a lot of time and effort, so it would be really discouraging to have all that work destroyed if the deco was sent to the Bank.

If lot deco went to Storage by default, there would be more well decorated lots, because players would not have to worry about their decorating work being destroyed if something happened to their lot.

Edit: This should apply to player basements and dungeons as well.

 

Yes please.

 

I'm one of the few who came back, found all my house & deco in the bank but decided anyway to rebuild my place.

Most people won't and frankly if I had anything larger than my 4 story row house I wouldn't too.

 

I've done it twice now. Well, one and a half times. There's still a house on an island that my POT's governor gave me to deco up a little easter egg scene for anybody who goes exploring in the town, and I haven't gotten around to restoring it. And one of my necropolis lots, because somewhere around R55 the deco surfaces on the various sizes of stone ruins broke, so I can't actually rebuild it the way it was. (Or make changes to the one that survived on the tax free lot.)

 

-
Here are a few recent comments that highlight why this wishlist request is so important.

If deco was sent to the Property Manager instead of the bank,
it would make POT changes much easier for the POT residents,
and make the game much more welcoming to returning players.

----------

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...r-owned-town-purchase-qs.164904/#post-1298334

... changing the biome will put everything in a town into the lot owner's bank and require everyone to redecorate.
that_shawn_guy, Aug 27, 2020

----------

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...s/re-set-quests-question.165227/#post-1300136

...everything from the lot, housing, crafting, decorations, etc. ended up in the bank because I'd not logged in for over three years
Celthon, Sep 16, 2020

----------

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/housing-question.165419/#post-1301074

So thinking about coming back and 1st thing I noticed is my house and all my belongings are in my bank.
Bubbagrim, Sep 26, 2020

----------

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...u-guys-waiting-for.165691/page-2#post-1302758

Also the fact that my houses went into the bank since I had not been active for awhile has made a HUGE WALL for me returning because the first thing i have to do is find a plot and get space to put things i get from adventuring or placing everything thats in my bank again which can take literally days.
Jayfire, Oct 14, 2020

----------

 

Greetings all
I agree that having your lot expire or Governor kick you is very inconvenient and causes a lot of work to the Avatar to put everything back to the way it was.At which point though do we say this is an Avatar issue and not a Dev issue? The info for expiring lots is in the player guide and is talked about a lot in the forums. It is not a hidden function and the Avatar should take responsibility for knowing the game. Maybe when you claim a lot the message telling you that you successfully claimed a lot should also include information about lot explorations and what happens to the items. Dumping everything in the bank is not the best way to handle this but Dev time in a small company seems to be like asking the devs to have the mobs line up and stand still so I can kill them. I love the Wishlist and fully support the transfer of ideas but think of the time and possible exploits of the suggestion and whose responsibility it is to manage this. As Spungwa said "Disadvantage : Players could use this on alts to get free magic mover slots. Probably more dev work than option 2.". And "Only move it to magic mover if the player has spare slots to move it into else revert back the current bank dump" it would in up in the bank anyway and the avatar would still be confused/upset because they still did not read the Player Guide.

We all spend so much time building our Avatar with the right Weapons, Armor, Skills, and Buffs and to me that is the fun part. So take a little time to know the game and make things easier on yourself. My wishlist item is already on the list. Fix the quest system.

 

The problem with requiring players to transfer their properties to storage is that most players don't decide to leave while they are actually signed in.
The decision usually comes when they have to choose whether to sign back in to SotA, or do something else.

The few times in the past where I have been away from SotA for a month or more have never been a conscious decision.
I just signed out one day, got distracted with real life or other entertainment, and before I knew it, it had been a long time since my last sign in to SotA.

This improvement shouldn't take much dev time. It should be rather easy to make lot deco transfer to the Property Manager instead of the bank.

And implementing this change would be very profitable for the devs:
- It would greatly increase retention of returning players.
- It would encourage more players to deco their lots in POTs, since they would not have to worry about their work being destroyed. When new players see well decorated lots, it improves their game immersion, which helps with new player retention.

Overloading the Property Manager would not hurt the game revenue.
Players purchase more Property Manager slots when they want to swap out different decoration ideas on their lots.
If anything, sending deco to the Property Manager by default would encourage players to purchase more slots, because they could put more time and effort into trying out decoration ideas without worrying about losing their work.

----------

 

Agreed; I think the problem is more a matter of life getting in the way than not knowing how taxes work. Especially given that the ones who are hurt most are those with several properties with large amounts of deco- hardly the kind of player who is unaware of the game's mechanics.

 

Not to mention, but with dungeons now.. you can lose hundreds of hours of effort because you got busy at work and got out of the habit of playing regularly.

 

Greetings Wilfred
I love you optimism. I have the same optimism but I am also a programmer and a Devils advocate when it comes to what players should and would do. I am a firm believer that people should learn from their mistakes. If I have an appointment to meet some one and I forget to put it into my calendar and missed it there are consequences for me. I have to reschedule and try to rebuild that persons trust or I might loose valuable time rescheduling the meeting or worse case loosing money. If only I have read my schedule. Or is it just my bad memory and no body should hold me accountable?

What if I have multiple lots like I do and I only have 1 open magic mover space. Should I be allowed to store 10 expired lots in magic mover when everyone else has to buy extra slots to store theirs? What if I was doing this on purpose because I knew they would be saved and I didn't have to buy anything? A lot of people might do that.

Lastly, only the devs can say how much time it would take to modify the current system, test it for bugs and exploits, and have it work as designed after all the dev and user testing.

I have an angle on each shoulder and I listen to both of them but I like the nice one more.

Edit:Life does interrupt play on many occasions @Cora Cuz'avich but the timeline of the expiration of a lot is to log in once every 120 days at the least depending on the lot type.

 

For tax free deeds. I don't play often enough these days to make enough gold to be able to pay my taxes for months in advance anymore. Partly due to real life being busy, and partly due to lack of new content. This is likely not an issue for players who play a lot.

Regardless, every time I've suggested this improvement, it's been with the caveat that you have enough open magic mover slots. If your slots are all full, or you have fewer slots than properties, any lots that expired beyond your number of available slots would still go to the bank, not to additional temporary slots.

 

It's perplexing to me that they haven't implemented this yet. They want people to come back and play yet when they do, they find that their whole life is crammed into their bank box and all their previous effort was wasted.

 

The reality is that some players will lose interest for a few months or years, and then come back to check out what has changed and improved.

When a player comes back after a long time away from SotA, what should the game response be?

- You're back. As punishment for being away for so long, we destroyed all the hard work you put into decorating, and dumped all your stuff in the bank. Serves you right for forgetting to store your stuff before taking such a long break from this game!

Or:

- Welcome back! We've saved your deco in the Property Manager, so all your hard work is not lost. Just find a new lot, move your deco back onto the lot, and pick up right where you left off.

Which response is going to work better to engage returning players?

----------

Also, the current game design really discourages players from decorating in POTs.
Currently, the POT governor has the power to destroy all the work a resident has put into decorating, by kicking them off the lot.

With the way that everything currently gets sent to the bank when a player is kicked from a lot, I would never put much effort into decorating in a POT, because the POT owner could destroy all my deco work in an instant.

The benefits of purchasing extra Property Manager slots are more for active players anyway.

On my lots, I currently have deco set ups for:
- My main house
- Open air farming
- Greenhouse farming

So I already have two set ups in storage. I swap between them depending on whether I am farming, and what farming speed I want.

At some point I want to add additional deco set ups for:
- Gustball fields (both sizes)
- Alternate houses
- Alternate arena basements
- Experimenting with other deco designs (both on my lots and in my dungeons)

So I have purchased lots of extra Property Manager slots just to be able to store all the extra deco that I want to set up.

If a player has enough properties, basements, and dungeons that they would overload the property manager if they went inactive, it would still be in the game's best interest to let them overload and store everything in the Property Manager, so they would have a good experience whenever they come back.

I agree, but our SotA devs are smart, so I'm hopeful that they will be able to get it fixed quickly.

----------

 

yes please!!!! this one is very important. I run a market and I feel so bad when I have to boot a player that has been away longer than my rules, especially if they have an amazing deco shop. Or even if I forget to pay my keep my biggest fear having to spend months redoing it all... having it go straight to mover would be a life saver as well I can only imagine how many people who had this happen that got mad enough to quite because of issue with them being unable to log in because of real life issues

 

-
The question below was asked on the Jan. 8 Friday Stream.

28:42 shadowvice: !question
Can expired lots go to empty property manager slot? This could go a long way for returning players.

Atos fixing bugs, taking Q&A, and giving out free stuff!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/866292214

----------