New Novia World Order Proposal

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Tahru, Jun 8, 2021.

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  1. majoria70

    majoria70 Avatar

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    Many players don't play for many reasons and I'm an example of that. My mother is very old and I'm unable to play when I leave the state to help with her. It's not a choice well it is my choice to be with her and help with her. I don't want anyone disturbing Wizards Rest access while I'm gone. Players are free to claim lots while I'm gone. Making the town invisible on the map is not wanted by me. Many towns have stewards who manage the pot as I do. Having map access is desirable to keep the town viewable whether the governor or stewards are playing.

    It's not going to solve an aliveness feeling for this game to target pots. Other visual markers can be thought out imo. Empty towns have still been paid for to fund this game. Think in the $1000's of dollars. Yes that's right. Wizards Rest isn't the largest town but it did cost thousands of real dollars and surely you can appreciate we don't want to be made invisible for any reason. We want our town to have a chance to thrive even when we aren't there. After all thats very important to offer players choices. It's not about how full or empty a town is.

    I do think governors could set lots to claimable if they care. Anyway when money is involved people won't be on the side of messing with their stuff.

    I agree about the global market item search. We really need it.

    Edited typos
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2021
  2. Tahru

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    No matter who you are nor how much you spent on this game, if you do not log on for long enough, your homes are put in the bank and the lots are reset. That is a fact. There is no value in a POT that has nobody in it and in fact will lose houses anyway. It more than generous to let the POT's sleep for a while. Maybe even bundle in the deal the ability to freeze lot timers in that POT as well, so when the owner comes back everything is there. That would be a great feature in itself as it could give POT owners the ability to stop lot expirations while they are not playing. That is super cool!
     
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  3. Tahru

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    BTW: In your example, when you are away, people are living in your POT. By definition, the pot would not be considered abandoned and hidden. Furthermore, you still are going to log in or lots will expire anyway. If you read OP, there is even all caps AND dictating that the owner does not log in AND residents do either. We are only talking about truly abandoned POTs.
     
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  4. Vesper

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    Fact of the matter is, Portalarium and thus Catnip have an obligation to it's backers. I recognize the spirit of your idea, but for the same reason that every iteration of this idea has gained no traction; so too will this thread. Those who spent thousands and thousands of dollars (inadvisably) in a sense built this game, and in return as promised, they own a virtual stake in it.
    Portnip can not move the goal posts now. While some of what you suggest may have positive impacts, nobody running the show is as shady as Reddit make them out to be. So if an inactive player purchased a POT, it will stay where it is, as was the agreement when they purchased it, so long as inactive players with a city lot in Brittany refresh it in the timeframe based on their purchase pledge said, you get to look at that empty house.
    It is how it is, and it is how it must be.
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2021
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  5. Tahru

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    To begin with they made no such commitment to POT owners for permanent presence even when you leave the game. And this proposal not in any way harm the property or it's location. It's a no-op, just turning up the transparency. But more to the point, I think the main issue is that I did not phrase it correctly. And this thread has helped me simplify the proposal. Please allow me to restate.

    Proposal Revised

    If a POT has NO homes on ANY lots AND the owner has not logged in for some very long period of time, the POT goes invisible until the owner logs in again.

    That is all!

    And this is very similar to the OP because if the owner does not log in, his/her homes were probably vacated per existing lot timers which have been in effect since the land rush.
     
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  6. Vesper

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    They in fact did make that commitment, even if it was just implied, because they outlined no terms or mechanism for a pot to lose its location or existence at time of purchase.
    Now, you want to create an environment that appears more populated? Remove private and party mode.
     
  7. Anpu

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    If you were not aware we have a forum specifically for suggestions/additions to the game here: Wishlist Requests

    Just If you didn't know.
     
  8. Tahru

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    I can't say I agree. For example there are already visual indicators to how populated a POT is and if anyone is home. They could replace the slabs with random shrubbery and there no difference.

    +1 to that. However, I am betting that is a 1,000x harder sell
     
  9. Sulaene Moon

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    What makes a game look less empty, lots of towns (empty or not) dotted around the game or invisible towns?
     
  10. macnlos

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    So let me understand this... you would like them (Portnip) to make changes to disguise the emptiness? Let's assume that Portnip did this, and all underused towns are magically hidden... Then you are left with an overworld map that is empty/barren/devoid. At least now it looks kind of artificially full. But back to reality here, I understand what you are saying... I just disagree with the premise of what it would accomplish.
     
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  11. kaeshiva

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    I don't disagree with any particular points in the opening premise.

    I'm a POT owner who is currently on hiatus myself (due largely degrading performance/lag/hitching finally reaching a point too frustrating to play) but, who is planning to come back once that improves or I invest in better hardware. At least there's like, stuff in my POT though, rather than it being bedrock-empty lol.

    So, a couple things really.

    First, the massive size of the world and all the different towns to go in, at first, was really impressive. It was like whoaaa this game is so big. But after you visit a dozen or so POTs, a lot of them start to feel pretty same-y. Same random mix of housing styles mishmashed about, and you see a lot of recurring things, like long lines of row houses of varying material type and height, usually right along the water or near the entrance. Most POTs are 80% empty land with clusters of housing/shops near the entry point or exit markers. This isn't a complaint or criticism as such, just, after a while,there's not a lot of reason to go see some new place unless its one of the rare gems where the POT owner has done a fantastic job coming up with some sort of overall connecting theme, or if its a really active market town. And as a new player, you don't know where those are, so you end up going where people tell you key things can be found and there's just no reason to go anywhere else unless you're visiting someone who lives there.

    Then there was all the empty ones. There's degrees of empty. There's like nobody's online, empty, which may be ok to run around, but then there's empty, like you go in and you may as well be in the blank POT template without so much as a single marker placed or house in sight. That was just a waste of two load screens. Or there's languishing, outdated vendors with overpriced wares from 3 years ago that have been picked over many times. I completely understand why both of these scenarios create a poor experience.

    So I mean, yeah, we could hide the inactive ones sure, but that's not really solving the problem, because the inactivity thresholds suggested wouldn't really solve the problem. Even I manage to log on once a month, for a few minutes to do stuff, but the other 29.9 days of the month there's not a thing going on. Wont really help.

    Instead, I'd look at ways to promote active hubs. A list of global online players, perhaps, sorted by areas gathered, maybe with tabs for residential and non-residential areas. Would give an idea of where are good places to go (and yeah, yeah yeah, you can hide yourself if that's your thing.) You can kinda use the friends list for this, but what about all the friends you haven't met yet?

    There's a visual indicator on the overland indicating how many lots are claimed (how built up the pot icon is) and whether anyone's home (if there's smoke coming out of chimneys) but these aren't immediately obvious and because everything's so far apart, walking into a town with chimneysmoke and then covering the actual square footage of the place trying to locate whoever it is that is home, is not really realistic. The reality is without going to the forums you don't know which pots are active, which seek residents, etc as there are no tools for this inside the game itself and a lot of people just don't do the forum thing at all. I think looking at options in more or less this direction would do more to bring people together, other than just "hide scenes nobody goes to" since the rules to hide it would have to be pretty restrictive to have a noticeable effect.
     
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  12. Tahru

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  13. Time Lord

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    Most active towns lists tracked on our current leaderboards? :)

    I'd like that, NPC as well as POTs all in the same most active listing.
    I think that would greatly increase commerce competition as well.


    That may also help condense players to seem more populated.
    A list like that would leave the ghost towns behind in activity.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jun 11, 2021
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  14. FrostII

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  15. Time Lord

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    When looking at this possible solution, how should something like that be tracked, counted or measured?
    • Number of payer entrances?
    • Number of player exits?
    • Number of player log in's?
    • or Number of what?
    I'm thinking entrances or exits, because many towns (NPC and POTs) have players just refreshing their houses or collecting their daily Oracle gold & Exp.
    I also think both NPC and POT's be included all in the same list without separation, because this is all about how active our towns are, regardless of POT or NPC.

    I thought about that all week of what should be the measure, but I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough about what could be tracked/counted to make a good judge of such things.
    What should our leader board be counting to indicate actual activity, or what can it track? o_O~TL~
     
  16. CarlNZ

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    I like the proposal. The game feels incredibly empty, funneling the players towards fewer locations is a good concept. There's little value in empty towns with no active governor or residents.
     
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  17. Time Lord

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    Here is the Catnip answer which I managed to ask on the weekly live stream (though I do not understand the answer)...

    They say something about the API Stream?
    ~The Answer is between 39:30 and 40:50~

    attn: @that_shawn_guy :)

    ~TL~
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2021
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