Row Houses are good!

The lot is tax free not the character, so if you sold that row lot deed and house, your no longer got a tax free lot. Its a deed you sell it or trade it away well no more tax free.

 

I think the row houses might actually be my favourite houses. Were I pledging today I'd be inclined to stay within these tiers rather upgrading to my current one.

 

They need an open floor plan option. The small rooms are a little tight, but I do like them.

 

Yeah the 2nd room does seem a tad on the small side, I also think the door should open out of the room, because you have to close the door to move if you add anything in front.

 

They also need a separate laundry room and walk-in closets.

 

That's not how I read it, if you have a tax free deed , it's always tax free, even after selling, it stays with the deed.


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That's what I was thinking, yeah - if you sell (or give) a tax-free pledge deed to someone else, they now have a tax-free deed. If you went and bought a bigger deed from the store, that new deed wouldn't be tax free. The 'tax-free-ness' is tied to the deed and not the purchaser.

 

I agree. So much of the space in the floors is being used by the stairs and walkway. Been looking at it a bit, I actually, like the idea of maybe the top floor being open. and the middle floors having rooms. Also, been toying with the idea of, what if.
Namely, what if there was a wizard row house? The wizard village house used teleporters to move between floors. I was thinking, maybe a red teleporter for down, and blue for up. they could occupy one side, and leave a much bigger room on each floor. My thought, is the floating stairs, leading to the second floor of the row house. Make the windows a bit more wizardy in appearance and shape. Put some runes or some kind of wizard symbol on the entrance door. The roof could be large shingles that are round on the ends, or even a thatched roof. For coolness reasons, plus more useable space, the cost in add-on store could be $10 more for equivalent storied house.
Another thought on the open floor plan concept, what if the top floor was open floor plan... and the way to up to it, was a ladder. So the top floor was a bit more like a attic. It would give more useable open space on the top floor, and might also open up more space on the floor beneath it, due to not needing the space for the up going stairs.

 

Great thread

I visited the 4 story Row House just outside the main entrance to Owl's head proper, pretty impressed with it. Loved the fireplace on the first floor though the rooms upstairs seemed a bit tight due to the dividers.

Some pics :



1st floor with the fireplace, inner room. Stairs to the 2nd floor are to the right but not in this pic.



Standing in the doorway to the 1st floor inner room, you get an idea of the scale. The 1st floor and the 4th floor are the most spacious, the 2nd and 3rd floor the most cramped.



Standing inside the 1st floor inner room with a view of the fireplace.



And here are the 1st floor stairs to the 2nd floor...



The 2nd floor landing, the worst landing of the lot since the stairs to the 3rd floor takes up most of the space. Door leads to the 2nd floor inner room.



...which is a pretty claustrophobic T shaped space.



The 3rd floor landing is actually not much bigger then the 2nd floor's but the open stairway to the right gives it a more open feel. Door leads to the 3rd floor inner room.



Another view of the 3rd floor landing. The inner room of the 3rd floor is just like the 2nd's - a T shaped cramped box.



The 4th floor landing is the best, no stairs to eat up the space. You can have sofa's, chairs and tea/coffee tables here for guests who won't feel that the walls are closing in on them

Door leads to the inner room of the 4th floor.



...which is the best bedroom and sitting room with a balcony to boot.

 

Great pictures, thank you!

I walked around a few of these, both empty and decorated - you can get a surprising amount of stuff into one of these, apparently!

I like the overall idea, but those T-shaped rooms are very cramped and claustrophobic... especially with the doors opening into them, as others have mentioned. I know it's usual to have the door open into a bedroom, but unless they make the rooms bigger I think it would be better to make them open outwards towards the stairwell. I would prefer it if they made the 'outer' rooms (where the stairwells are) a bit smaller, and gave more space to the inner rooms instead.

I'm looking forward to seeing basements - as Numa said, the first and fourth floors of this house are the best, so maybe I would just stick with the 2-story version that comes with the lot and buy a 5-story basement for all my Stuff.

Edit: Also, we totally need sofas...

 

You're welcome @Karrolanth

Completely agree on those room doors on the 2nd and 3rd floors swinging epen outwards instead of inwards. And there is room on the third floor at least to expand the room so it's more livable.

The row house basement extension packs an incredible amount of underground space for such a small lot. It should allow owners to segment living space (above) from crafting and storage space (below).

I can see why owners of much larger village or city lots might opt for a row house instead. There would be so much yardage left for gardens, stables and even theatres/stages.

 

They are good but could be better by making the rooms larger and the hall areas larger.

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Oh and I had a dream last night that lots could snap and adapt to different house types.. Lol.

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I found a 2-story row house, and was very disappointed to see that the second floor, although it has a big 'landing' like the top floor of the 4-story version, still has one of those tiny T-shaped inner rooms. I was hoping it would be like the top floor of the tall house, and I'm not sure why it isn't.

Seems like a design flaw to me - if you only have two floors, you need the space to be usable and not so cramped! It would be better to remove the walls upstairs and make it one big room than to leave it as it is now, although I'd prefer to see it laid out like the 4-story top floor. (Sans balcony - or even with one, if they want to be nice!)

Both the houses I'm comparing are the blue-roofed style so I'm not sure if the others are laid out differently, but I thought it was only the external look and maybe the interior wall finish that changed.

 

There is currently way too much dev focus on player housing (which isn't even a primary game mechanic). I just hope our current predicament doesn't contribute to the game being a buggy mess upon release! Houses are cool, but come on man.

 

Heh... the people who paid a lot of money for a big house might disagree with you, but yeah... a properly-working game is more important than fixing a cramped room design!

If they have devs who are dedicated to the tasks associated with housing, though, and it wouldn't take time away from other stuff, a small redesign of the layout might be in order.

 

If anyone follows the daily Standup Corner posts, you'd see that housing is not the only thing the devs are working on

 

Don't worry they are making a complete game. According to the chart they released a few weeks back, the majority of the money raised for this game has come from Citizen and higher pledges. Even though it is a smaller group of people that group generated the most funds. So why not make sure that part of the game is flushed out. Also it helps fund raise having those done first, and allowing people to check out what those houses are like. People might upgrade their pledge just to get the next tier of house.

Let me ask you this... If you have a house would you rather have a knight's keep or a Knight Marshal house?

If that is a meaningless question to you, then don't worry about housing at all. They will make this game anyway. Just ignore the houses, but you should definitely be thankful for those houses because the people that bought them are playing a big part in funding this game.

 

well... the knight marshal house is better than the knight keep. The extra story does give a more imposing image.
But, my main thing is, is it better to be last tier selecting a town lot? Or first tier selecting a village lot?
It's probably better to have the town lot in the long run. But it's not by a very large margin I don't think.
When I discussed this with a friend who backed the game with me, with the idea of sharing a house, he thought it might be better for him to upgrade from explorer to ancestor. There's a number of bonuses to that, both physical and digital, and was a $135 upgrade versus a $400. And, since my tier includes a 4 story row home, I can hand that to him. Having a presence in 2 different towns/cities, may be a good thing. A way to have 2 vendors, selling my goods. Not sure, maybe a tax free row lot and a tax free village lot, will compete with a town lot.
And.... actually, the cost to move from explorer to citizen, is almost the same as moving from knight to knight marshal. $410 vs $400. I'm pretty sure 2 tax free village lots will be worth at least as much as one town lot. and there's a ton of bonuses doing that.At this point, I don't think either of us feel we need 2 village lots though.

 

I slapped one of these four story blue houses on a village lot to get a feel for it myself. I like the house a lot - but I have to second the notion that those T-shaped front rooms on levels 2 + 3 are super cramped. I guess you could store shelving & chests in there.

You can probably only fit a couple crafting benches inside too, due to their physical length. While this isn't an issue with a village lot because you have all that outside space to work with, anyone restricted to a row lot space who wants to craft at home will need to invest in a decent amount of basement storage.

The other issue with slapping the four story blue roof on a village lot is that... well, it looks very out of place. It looks great in a dense town environment but if you place it in a forested village (as I did) then boy does it look "wrong". Especially when your neighbor has that rustic three story and you feel bad owning the local eyesore. The completely blank side and rear walls don't help but then any windows there would be pretty redundant on a row lot.

I guess the point I want to convey is that while the row houses are pretty great, they are no substitute for the likes of a knight tower or even a good two or three story village house.