In regards to player owned towns/cities

It seems that a rent system should be in place for the towns to use automatically. The payment of rent would serve as a cash sink like what is in place already, however the additional funds would goto a city treasury. The city owner could be given many options on how they want to spend these funds. Perhaps the cash could be spent to increase the number of guards in the town, or upgrade such guards with better gear if they are at a guard cap. A lower population town may not generate enough funds to maintain the max number of guard, or whatever else NPC's that could be beneficial to a town. Treasury money could also be spent on gold only add ons, for the town. Decoration items, holiday things, town specific celebrations (like fireworks), or many other options that give a unique lore to each town. Further options could include giving combat or crafting buffs to the citizens of a town. The buffs would come with a timer, and various buff powers would be determined by how much funds are spent.

There are many ideas i can come up with that involves having a town treasury. The main idea for having these options come from a need to role-play owning a city, other than having an ability to grant or restrict citizens. A town owner could have town meetings to discuss what their citizens want more, or have a plan for what is being saved up. Having a town should be more meaningful than having a say in placement, but should come with extensive role-play opportunities.

More options for town role-play
Trade deals between towns
office/political titles that can be granted
*Sheriff
*Judge
*Commander of the guards
*Treasurer
*City Guard

Buying a town via donation is worth the cost if were paying for the role-play mechanics.

 

No.

There need be no game supported taxation. There need be nothing more than there already is.

 

Well haven't they already said that players will have to pay rent on their lots/houses (and vendors maybe)? (Other than the rent-free pledge ones of course.) I don't see why that rent couldn't go into the town treasury for stuff like town beautification... sounds like a nice idea.

On the other hand then you get into... who is responsible for the funds, who do they answer to, how are they spent...... and.. other accounting stuff - yuck. Ok that's kind of too much like real life! lol

Oh bother, a classic Libran-style quandary in my head.

Bleh. Ok i could go either way, but i don't want to be my town's treasurer, saying that right now, up front.
[Hey don't judge me -I have trouble giving the right change in Monopoly!]

 

If you own a Town and want rent you need to RP and collect it from the players yourself.
Personally I can't see why anyone would be asking players for rent to live in a town, You will be making all the rules maybe the types of houses you will allow and if you decide you don't like them kick them out.
If they set up a mechanic to collect rent for you then you should lose your right to evict if the rent is paid.

 

Rude, you should troll somebody else.

That is true, however it seems that eviction is a rarely needed mechanic. Most town owners i am certain will want to have and keep the most population they have available. Evection is something that would only come for inactive citizens, who in essence are not paying rent anyhow.

The system of designing a town at a cost is nice, but will not be worth my donation without an involved interactive lore. I would only buy a town for the purpose of role-play owning a town. This is not some get rich by nickel and dime using rent as an excuse. I am suggesting meaningful town decisions that would include the participation of the entire town. I am no programming expert, but I am sure there are many options available that would not be exploitable. If a dev can assure me that buying a town will allow interactive role-play, I can be in for that. Merely deciding the names and npcs of a town, along with types of housing lots is not worth the cost. I would just be paying for them make a town I really have no control over except who lives there. That is about the same as when I have tea parties with my daughter and drink imaginary tea with our imaginary pastries.

 

If you decide on roleplaying a town then you would be looking to attract players that share your vision of the Town.
If players come into your town and have bought their lot from the add-on shop or later with in game gold they will already be paying tax into the systems gold sink. If they don't want to have to spend hours a week making the game tax plus what you decide to charge you may have a scene of empty lots.

 

But it isn't because the game imposed rent on lots is a gold sink, designed to take money Out of the system. Should you them divert that into the coffers of a town owner, not only are you destroying the original purpose of the tax, but you're diverting all of that money into the hands of an individual who has no obligation to do anything with it. It's simply profit.

Please note my signature. I'm the owner of a Village. I've spent $1500.00 US for the privileged of owing a player run settlement and do NOT want this, nor do I think there should be any game supported method to automatically collect rent.

 

I agree with Rufus' point. A lot rent system in player owned towns could easily be role played by the land lord. And I think it should be incumbent on the town lord to do that to create interaction with renters, be a real town lord that the population sees, and one who explains the values of renting from that town, vs. just an absent lord who collects coin simply because the game does it for him or her. I assume that this fee would be on top of whatever the game charges as the gold sink for ongoing maintainence of non-pledge houses and lots. Games dont have to do everything for us, and this is an area where role played may be better.

 

It really does not matter to me either way, I can find role-play opportunities. The difference for me is the developers want us to spend a large amount of money to build town that we have no meaningful control over. Without that aspect, I would be perfectly happy living in someone else's town. I do have somewhat of a biased experience from Star wars galaxies. Player made towns was a fantastic system without rival. The larger the population, the more structures you could build. The town owner had full control of each and all buildings, to include permissions, taxes, ect. All of those features came with just paying the months fee. At the lowest cost of around $800, we have an opportunity to design a town, but not much else. Thats a lot of monthly payments for a fraction of the features. I can live without it, but a meaningful option will make the donation worth it to me.

 

Well I would think that having the town only allows the opportunity - that the level of RP and involvement of the people living there would be the key ingredient you're looking for - and that's not something the devs can put in - fortunately, because it allows us to give each town its own unique look and feel. Its own unique activities also.

And Wagram, we're not talking being slumlords here, collecting rents and evicting tenants - omg the horror! (Well i'm not anyway, yuck!) Damn what kind of horrible dystopian game would it be then??

If you read up on houses and lots you will see that rent will be charged by the game automatically for these things. I think the suggestion was for whatever was collected of these automatic, programmed rents in a player town to go to a town treasury rather than being flushed out into cyber limbo as a kind of gold sink. At least that was my take on what the OP was suggesting....

 

It seems there is a communication error, or you did not read my post correctly. The obey would goto a treasury, that once its there the gold can then be considered in the sink. The money could only be spent on insignificant things that involve the town itself. Like awarding a title would cost x amount, putting up a banner would cost x amount. The same features could be done at only the hands of the town owner, but that does not create an equal contribution. Rent is really the only way to fairly divide the town responsibility. Additionally, I had said that the full rent value would not need to enter the treasury. The values could be cut in half or even less. Either way its a fantastic gold sink that is more meaningful than rent being "just and upkeep cost"

 

To what purpose? Town decorations as a reward for collecting rent? Would these decorations need be purchase from a crafter that produced them? There aren't supposed to be any items in the game that aren't crafted by a crafter... If so, your reward simply turns town ownership into a competition to see who can collect the most 'points' to decorate their town... The Treasury isn't Treasury at all... but a reward pool for having people that pay rent. If, on the other hand, you could trade these points for items produced by the game, you're circumventing one of the pricipal tenet of the design... all items crafted by players.

 

In UO they were just house's placed on a map, It was the RP people that created the Towns structure and executed it, not a game mechanic to save them the trouble of doing anything.

 

That is true "ish" Currently in uo (the one owned by mystic) players can own the cities now. Yes I still play that game and pay there monthly fees. My guild owns the city of Vesper, and along with it Vesper now has buildings that it has not had in 15 years. No there is no rent system, but its not really needed anyway. The town owning system is so much fun to role-play, people are quick to donate large sums of cash because they can. The focus of my thread is "there is a specific pledge/donation for the building of towns." Well you really can't make a good game without having some towns. But other than having a say in the design process, the cost is not meaningful enough for me. If there is good possibility to add features in the future, that is great, if it is not meant to be, well thats fine too.

 

Ignoring the ad hominem... It's not my concept. It's Mr. Garriot's.

 

Do you not realize that they already have NPC vendors that sell items, and there is reward loot like in the video section showing a throne made out of bones. Obviously not all items will be made by crafters. Lord British's concept is that the "best" items will come from crafters, he never said that "all" items come from crafters. Either way that is not the topic of this post.

 

Yes... a few selling basic consumables, and a couple of temporary vendors selling boot-strap goods... Which were planned, and planned to be removed once the economy no longer has need of them.

But, what do I know... I've only been around since the kickstarter.

 

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My thoughts on a more interactive player town system is not much different that many other ideas. Many people are looking for some additional meaningful uses to buying/owning a player town. Here is a list of ideas generated by other players found in different threads.

Unique or rare resource located in a town.
Unique clothing items produced in a single town.
Town farming land and opportunities for the smaller civilizations.
City titles have been mentioned by more people than just me.
Badges or awards for visiting a town/ having visited all the towns.
Animal farms

Many threads discuss a rent system in various different details

This topic is a discussion of a combination of ideas to make both mechanics more meaningful. A unique aspect or interaction of a town, and more meaning use of taxing a house for upkeep.

 

@xanatos
Most of these are covered in the dev vid I link to here.
They said that stuff like Town Decorations is definately E2-3 stuff. I think that rent collecting or features like it will be the same.

This due to all the other *must* features they have discovered along the way. Like functionality for naming inheritors if someone goes AWOL etc.

>Unique or rare resource located in a town.
Won't happen in E1. Mentinoed in vid. Due to not wanting to risk exploits there will be no spawn creatures or resources in player town instances. (There was some other place where Lum I think hinted that it might happen randomly in the hex landscape outside the player owned lots though as a normal feature in all hex templates. So the smaller the town the bigger the chance I guess...)

> Unique clothing items produced in a single town.
Unique clothing is already part of crafting everywhere.You can already make this with the pattern tools, if you just teach eachother the one to use - there can be knockoffs of course too - which is fun.
But they talked about unique stuff like chests with your crest or somesuch.
My tip would be to check out the unity tutorials and have some such things ready for your submission. That way they can say yes/no to stuff directly. If you want them to create it for you then it is out - no way they would have time for that.
Just take existing stuff - and add something like the crest to it, or a special funfact or somesuch.
Garriott loved ideas like using the printing press to give hints and then creating player quests where players sandbox the quests for other players.
by the looks they give eachother actual quests or such is not going to happen E1.

> Town farming land and opportunities for the smaller civilizations.
Farming is a feature for all, it is just easier for a player town to make it happen.

> City titles have been mentioned by more people than just me.
Won't happen E1, see vid. They disliked most of such stuff. But they said they would look into having statistics available for "fun", like the sum of the net worth of a player town's residents for bragging rights etc.
They like word-of-mouth much better, as in UO style.

> Badges or awards for visiting a town/ having visited all the towns.
Not unique to player towns and something which in the ordinary context has been mentioned as something nice to have, we have had no indication whether it will make the cut though. I would think twice about collect the badges for the pvp ones though... =)

> Animal farms
This one is the only one I don't know if they like/dislike. But again this would be a game feature not a player town feature. So like all crafting - its easier for player towns due to design but could equally well happen elsewhere.
What was mentioned though in the vid above though was that you can populate with animals as you wish - so just like you see in game towns chickens or somesuch - you can have that. They said that a cat lady with 40 cats is totally fine if you want it.