With every release I despise player housing more and more

I wonder if the majority of the complaints would be satisfied if Portalarium fixed the roof busting decoration bug, and made it so chessboards, hottubs, and fountains could only be placed on a complete floor and not precariously balanced on top of smaller items.

Its at least a start to addressing this issue!

 

I'm pretty sure that's what everyone is saying so far....they needcrules for each item they add.

 

I'm not sure that's the case rune... Especially if you take other, similar house threads into consideration.

I know that's what you're advocating for though. Which is totally fine by me.

 

I remember back when I played UO, that u saw a lot of creativity & imagination with player houses. Right now I think something like this is kind of creative, but when the game finally releases, I would think that the home owner would be
using the land for economical purposes, instead of entering it in a home & gardens contest. Regardless of what they do with it, it is his home & he can do with it as he likes.
Thank god there is no damn "home owners association", I would then never, ever, own a house in the game. I would have a bedroll & sleep under the stars every night them deal with those idiots. I had to deal with that in RL when I lived in Florida.
I told my wife, if we ever lived in an association again, I would be subscribing to "Living Single" magazine! So, we know live in the woods of S.W.Michigan, doing what we want.
If u were to ever live next to someone that does this creative lawn art & want to sell your house & lot, please send me a post, we might make a deal.

 

I've walked by this house in Owl's Head...



I mean, with the chess board that size, they're inviting this sort of construction. Again, I'll say it, they took away our ability to create our own houses but now this is what people do anyway. So what has really been averted?

I'm all for people doing anything they want to their lots. What bugs me is the kind of things they design for the games. (And agreed, Santa hats and Christmas trees have no place in a game like this if you asked me).

Let's face it, towns are going to be very, very ugly once players have their way with lawn decor. It won't change game play for anyone though. At least that's a good thing. But immersion is lost.

 

That example is a bit different that simply the existence of chess boards on the property though.

 

They should really add this to the marketing brochure.

 

Why? Would a giant chess board be immersive, if it was alone and on the ground?

I don't think so.

 

I don't know... if I were Portalarium I would think carefully about what items I wanted to introduce into the game. Simply having a large chessboard somewhere in the game isn't anti-immersive, but I think I would have just waited to put in a small one that would sit on a table, less issues.

 

I'm still wondering why it wouldn't be? It's not like the natives would lack the ability to make them.

 

Its hard to find a balance.

Im all for freedom. I loved being able to rotate, resize, and manipulate items with Everquest 2's housing to fit my needs and create new things. But the houses were instanced and personal to each player to do what they wanted.

It gets more complicated the more people you add and it starts to get crowded and there are varying opinions and perspectives. Thats a reason i disliked public free for all Minecraft servers, people would come and go and ravage the shared space like locusts. Everything would be stripped bare with giant craters and 1x1 concrete towers leading into space and it would all look like a unwelcoming mismatched wasteland. Things worked more nicely with a small dedicated server where everyone shared the same goal and were trusted and held accountable for their choices.

A compromise could be that all player towns and player owned things be accessed from a single dock or portal and it brings up a window that lets you search the name of the place to visit giving people their own space out of the way to do whatever they want with.

Or make it some kind of vote to decide if a structure is acceptable, though that kind of thing could be taken advantage of.

 

Ability is one thing. Likelihood is quite another.

 

If you're just talking likelihood than there's be nothing at immersive in a game world.

Different world.. different culture. Immersion can't be exclusive to real Earth standards. Otherwise you'll always be disappointed.

 

The picture I posted with the 4 stacked chess boards, they equal more "living" space than the 2 small floors of the windmill they own.

Over dinner, and just before going to watch the last installment of The Hobbit, I discussed this dilemma with my husband. Not his exact words, but he suggested that placing items outside the house should have a steep cost. This way, it would make people think twice about what they wanted to place there, and how important it was.

On the other hand, people would even view that as a status symbol of wealth, even if it looked like hell.

 

I fear that would be a very unpopular solution. I think just about anything that doesn't have a flat surface on top shouldn't be able to support things on top of it.. with the exception of stuff like plates for food.

Another idea could be to use a basic rule regarding size and/or volume. You could get rough measurements from the size of an object's bounding box.

I'd prefer a solution involving physics though if at all possible.

 

Sorry, but I couldn't resist. Everyone remember this picture in Weekly Update #53 when R1 was just released? This is how they celebrated R1 by promoting player creativity through bugs in stacking



Anyways, this was a great thread to read for viewpoints across the creativity spectrum. But I think the devs know stacking bugs are a problem and they will be fixed over time -- and as players find them. But beyond those, I think they really will give us the freedom to decorate as we wish.

Personally, I'm fine with POTs being curated experiences set by those owners and NPC towns having rules set by the devs. I don't think they're ready to say anything about that for a very long time. Lots of other priorities on their plate.

 

I don't think that your are an abuser of the decoration system. Your mazes are a cool community project and an enrichment of the game. Your mazes have nothing to do with the stuff that is discussed here and therefore it's hard for me to read the second half of your quoted statement.

I think most of the people like your mazes, no need to swing the anti-HOA club

 

We have debated this thread before and yes I agree, this kind of item stacking or ART if you want to call it that, is plain ugly. It subjection and we all have a right to an opinion. I see my kids doing this everyday in Minecraft, not keen to see it in SOTA

Lets stick to the laws of physics. You wont see this oversight in the combat engine so why in the world engine?

On that note if you want to see something really spectacular head to the Bravecoast - turn left on the beach and keep following around the island. You cant miss it.. It's worth a screen shot.

 

Alpha World 1995, eat your heart out! Sorry I couldn't resist posting this...

 

I love the chess board for decorating, it makes a great outdoor dance floor or as shown in the picture a deck for your house. I lived in a house where we built a really neet redwood deck, but hey I like this one better.

So I looked up some Ultima online pictures to remind myself. I really think people could do whatever they could make work regarding decorating Ultima Online. It was a popular past time. We had the dye tubs and the tools at our disposal truly, more so than any other game. I want to see much of that here. Not to be compared with archeage, the housing in archeage is not much of a roleplaying house it is functional and repetative grinding to maintain it to run trade runs that get you killed. I am not speaking from guesswork and not knowing, I do have a house and some land in Archeage and am giving it to a friend when my subscription is up in January.

So the pictures are perhaps blurry, but so fun to remember. Many people coming from Ultima Online will remember fondly. I could take a guess for some this is one of the interests in coming to SOTA. In Ultiima they even did decorating contests for inside and out. Also in Everquest 2 but your houses were instanced, and in Lord of the Rings also instanced . You would only see someones yard if you went into that instanced neighborhood.