House and/or Lighthouse?

Indeed, Congrats Sir Belrindor!

The Knight's Homes are the finest pledge tier of true value!
I too was disappointed a bit about the wording of it all, but happy with that pledge tier. Now I'm at a Lord level pledge and very unsatisfied with the Lord's house, but happy that I could also choose to place the Knight's homes on my Lord's property.

Arise Sir Knight and ware your pledge with pride
*then upgrade to Lord and join in on the regret
Portalarium needs to show us something more we can pledge for
~Time Lord~

 

Thanks Eriador. I'd seen that video already, and whilst it indeed shows the basements that will be given as pledge rewards, the 5 story basement in the addon store appears 'tiered'. That is to say, it looks to be smaller areas shoved into a space 5 areas deep, and not 5 fuller basement levels like the video would show. So, that's what I'm concerned about and need to see before I purchase it. Is it just a 'smaller' basement, but 5 levels deep, or is it 5 full levels of space and basement. I really wish these basements came with a floorspace description.

 

I found both versions of the 5-storey basements in Kingsport. Wish I could tell you now where they are, but look around in the shops - including the one that is just "offshore" - connected by a little bridge. Look for what seems to be a trapdoor on the floor. That's the basement entrance.
The "town" version is definitely bigger, but the "village" one is still a pretty respectable size, IMO.

 

Honestly from a marketing standpoint, I think the newer add-on homes are SUPPOSED to blow the 'freebies' we get with the pledge tiers out of the water. I mean if I were to be honest, I was flabbergasted at how TINY my Founder Edelmann house was, not to mention the Founder Citizen. I was like... wow, so this is what $500 gets...

If someone doesn't want the status or the tax free lot, they'd be better off just dropping $165 for a village lot, then another $55 picking the AWESOME 2-3 story home of their choice, vs going Citizen or Edelmann and getting one of those tiny houses. Not to mention the cabanas that we now find out can be put in LIEU of your home, not with it, as the wording suggested when I shelled out over $500 to secure my own waterfront cabana 'connected via bridge to my village deed' it said. MMmm hmm. They failed to mention your house would be conspicuously absent upon this village deed. Were it any other game and any other dev team, crap like that would have made me quit on the spot. I had enough with 'marketing deception via obfuscation' with Turbine and is one of the reasons I quit playing LOTRO after over 6 years. I can only imagine that it wasn't intentional deception on Portularium's part, as I have all the faith in the world in RG and the dev team, but merely some idiotic derp oversight on their part. And from all the past threads I've read and people I've talked to, I haven't found ANYONE that thought we were NOT getting the cabanas and lighthouses ALONG with our houses.

However that being said, I still feel they need to make this right, and work with the community to fix it. The advertising materials made us all believe we'd be getting a cabana/lighthouse AND a house and being able to place BOTH. Whether that means they need to resize the housing squares and add a little room to each one to make this possible so we can fit a house AND cabana/lighthouse on the waterfront property, or whether it means they need to bite the bullet and kick us each ANOTHER tax free deed. (Hey, it's their screw up, not ours. Why should we have to kick out another $165 and pay taxes on something just to place what we were promised?)

I'm sure they'll do the right thing, in the end.

Games like this are all about word of mouth, for good or ill. The last thing they ever want to be seen as, is breaking their word.

Saying something may or may not be included in a game is one thing. Having bulletpointed rewards, taking people's money, and then changing it is something entirely different and a huge no-no.

It all boils down to this:

You can't make a game about the 8 Virtues, and then do something that looks like you are pulling the ol' switcheroo on your players.

Personally my world wouldn't end, but for many people that would be a deal-breaker, and the last thing we need is anyone thinking these folks don't keep their word, or feel that they can renig on things after folks have shelled out their hard earned cash.

And please understand, I'm not saying this to be critical and complain. I'm saying this to nip it in the bud and save them from a whirlwind of negative PR. It doesn't take much to set it off, and it's usually simple derpy oversights that cause it.

Making this right with the community would go a thousands miles towards creating and maintaining goodwill and positive word of mouth. Which are absolutely vital and huge in a game like this.

 

Yes, here I think he doesnt show the 5 story village one in the store (we still didnt see that one). He said in the video that the one for Knight is the same that he shows but with 2 floors. I dont know if is true, anyway I think will be similar. But R5 is soon and I think we could check that. I will look around Kingsport!

 

And dont forget that they (RG) said that KS houses will be upgradeable, and even we have the conceptual art of that, and after they said that they will not (I pledge that much high also because of that).

About the "water house" problem I want to believe that was a confussion. But I also believe that is mandatory to fix the description of the pledge levels to avoid more riots and to be the most honest possible.

 

For those of you who have Dev+ access, I made a thread about this in the housing forum there. Please give it your perusal and thoughts on the matter, and mayhap we can help make this right for everyone. Thinking about solutions and/or possible substitutions are encouraged.

 

Belrindor: Don't forget about the 5 story basements too. Those are huge! That's what keeps me feeling better especially when they mentioned there will be doors on the rooms in them. My Lord's house has no rooms and a bunch of wasted space. Smaller than the Knight's Keep...so i understand where you are coming from with the small house size thing hehe...Basements are the best thing they added to housing really. Also, I am still hoping they will allow us to put some kind of gardens/planting options inside the house/basement and on the roofs of our houses as well. Don't know if anything official has been said besides indoor planters etc...I'm sure we will not be disappointed in our houses.

 

Those who said that the Lord house is smaller than the Knight´s Keep really must take another look to both. And anyway I think we cannot compare that with the 500$ Citizen "upscale-but small like the hell" one room house. At least, as you said, is nice that they make reallty big basements. That was a good solution about the space. I think that even with all this the house system in Sota is one of the stronger points in the game now.

 

I took some screen shots of the 5 story basement here during R4. Its a first person view of each level. Hope this helps.

Edit: This is the 5 story stone and plaster village basement.

 

Wow, it looks nice!

 

Much better view, thanks. I still want to get an in-persona view of this, however.

Get into it, muck around a bit, and see if I think it'll be any 'bigger' size-wise than the 2 story Knight basement. I wish these things came with a 'total usable size' comment on the description. If I get it it won't be for the stylisation. It'll be for MORE ROOM. Crafters, crafting crafty things, need room to work and store their crafts.

 

I haven't seen the two story knights basement that comes with the knights pledge and its possible that they have yet to complete it. I personally would like to compare the two as well.

 

I cannot find nothing related to the other trhead. Do "they" deleted everything?

 

The other thread in the Dev+ area is currently locked, and seemingly in the process of being gutted.

I have been told that my only reason for creating that thread was to 'troll the forum' by the Moderators, which I find extremely offensive, as I only created that thread after spending 30+ hours watching dev videos and sorting through hundreds of posts, and not finding an answer to my questions. I was also told that other threads on the topic already exist. So, for that reason, it's to be locked.

I really have no response to that, other than the 'disconnect' has to be immense to insinuate such a thing.

Most new members aren't going to spend the time I did to spend countless hours going through the forums and videos before posting a thread to ask a few simple questions.

We will see more new threads on this very topic created? And then what? Will they lock those threads and delete those posts as well?

 

Thanks @Belrindor. Glad the video helped. With regard to the cabana, the video was done in early January. Portalarium has since made it clear that you can place the home or the cabana, but not both simultaneously. With that said, there is still a lot of time to go in the project and I believe they are investigating ways to allow both in order to mitigate the confusion that was caused with the KS write-up. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

 

This thread seems to indicate that purchasing two lots will unlock both sea and a land-based home on each side of the "bridge"... but my understanding from the deep dives was that the basement, if purchased to go with the sea building, would be on the land plot? In effect, that the land plot would stay empty bar for deco, and the basement entrance, but it still belongs to the player with Cabana/Lighthouse/Frigate etc. The logic being that the sea reward was just extending the plot into the sea, (or converting it to a "berth" as a ship location anchor) and not giving someone a guaranteed double-house lot?

Elsewhere it's been clarified that players will have a physical "house deed" of some kind they can trade away, if they don't want a particular style of house; which would have been my only chance to get a Lighthouse/frigate etc as they aren't in the store or at the pledge level I could afford... and we don't know if there are alternative house-boat styles yet that can be purchased in game. However if there really is a "double plot" option for people at that level, then no one is going to sell their unwanted ships etc. They'll just hang on in game until they can buy a second, taxed lot and expand to a double and place their second home on the ground part of the double.

What will happen then, unless every single sea side lot is smaller than a City one, you've just narrowed down the desirable locations considerably, and everyone with that pledge level and up is going to be going for such a location as it has way, way more utility than a standard city lot.

So yes, there really does still need to be more clarity on this, despite the arguments of the past.

 

The wording used in the description of the water-based lot was clarified later on. A water lot is simply a house lot for which the majority of the area is over water.

A house placed on a water lot is attached to the mainland via a bridge, to a small strip of land where you can place your basement entrance.

Examples of how these lots would look like were available in the recent game releases.

Under current thinking, pledges only receive a single lot deed: For use on either a land lot xor a water lot.