1 Instanced House Per Account

While I've no objections to instanced rooms or houses they should not be a replacement for persistent, in-world houses, nor should they offer all the advantages of persistent houses. Instanced houses will drive the demand for crafted decorations, but they should not allow anything that would otherwise require activity the open world. This includes crafting and visitors. To do otherwise would undermine much of the interdependency that SotA is attempting to foster.

 

Check out my link above, and welcome to the club. When you're done, I can teach you the secret handshake.

 

You can expect cities like New Britannia to have the 150 or possibly even more lots. at 68 owl's head is around large village size or small town. Per the kickstarter there are supposed to be thousands of village level lots, hundreds of town lots, and dozens of city lots. (specifically they offered 1,500 village lots, 400 town, and 70 city for pre-purchase, and they said there would be plenty more left for in-game purchase)

With the numbers they've given you can expect around 50 in villages, 100 in towns, and 150 in cities on average. lets say we have 5 cities, 750 lots, 40 towns, 4000 lots, 100 villages, 5,000 lots. That puts us at over 10,000 for the opening land mass. That is only 145 of the hexes, and they can make a lot of the villages very similar to save on dev time... I believe last count we had 512x512 hexes? 262,144 total? or is it 256x256? 65536.. been awhile since I looked at that info. In either case, even at 145 hexes being used out of tens of thousands it wont feel like too many villages/towns... (My number of towns possible might be quite high, might want to drop that down to close around 20)

So if we start with 10,000 and each episode is supposed to double the previous episodes land mass, thats + 20,000 in episode 2, (30,000), +60,000 in episode 3 (90,000), +180,000 episode 4 (270,000), +540,000 episode 5 (810,000)..

Alternatively, when they said it would double with each new episode maybe they mean double the original size, so adding 20,000 each time. which leaves us with 90,000. What we've seen with the land masses on the world map though it is entirely possible they did mean doubling the previous total, up to episode 5.. the biggest 2 continents are quite large.

Now these are just numbers I'm pulling out of nowhere we could only have 2 or 3 cities and 20 towns, and 50 villages, most villages not even appearing on the cloth map. this little island we are starting on, the veil has 3 small towns or villages. that appear on the map. so instead of 10,000 maybe we'll only start with 5,000 total lots. Which gives them about half the lots not offered during kickstarter available. So these are just guesses based on the very few numbers we've been given. to me 5,000 lots to start would be a minimum, I'd expect closer to 10,000.

But with these numbers can see how it is possible to get a lot of housing out there, even if they have to make a lot of the villages essentially the same, and nothing more than a place to stop to use the crafting tables and pick up supplies.

 

No to Instanced Housing, but I am warming up to LoneStranger's idea for Instanced Rooms, given the constraints he's placed on it (for example no global instanced rooms -- wherever you rented from an Inn, you have to revisit the same Inn), since I still feel that everyone should have a "home" of some kind, but not everyone should own land. But renting land temporarily (1-3 days permanent decay deed, no renewal) on the other hand would be great for campsites, fairgrounds, fairs, festivals, etc. And as Tek said above, everyone already has a global bank vault for storage.

 

Honestly, People are coming and investing in this game because it breaks the mold of the Mass Market appeal to the lowest common denominator way of thinking. It puts the feeling of achievement back into the hands of the player rather then some game saying "Achievement unlocked!: would you like to post to Facebook"? I often see many threads not just on things like this but on even the bag system, quest system etc... If we wanted to play one of the same old "modern style" MMO's there are a crap ton of them that would be better then this one quite simply put. Frankly, because they have a much higher budget to work with. Let us relive the feeling of achievement for playing a game that rewards some harder work and thought. the internet spoilers on quests and stuff will diminish that feeling enough already

 

I think you should go read Richard's Ultimate RPG missive. While I don't think SotA is exactly the URPG, he wants to harness some of the social/mobile ideas that are becoming more prevalent today. To me, that means we may end up with a way to link and share our achievements in the game. Remember, there is no subscription fee so the best way to grow the game is to spread it to your friends.

 

In terms of a housing 'problem', I still dont believe there is one......I just see a housing market and players sharing/renting.

I would much rather see mechanisms in a future release to make it easy for players to become landlords to rent persistent houses/rooms to players with proper contracts. I would see contracts similar to that of vendor rental deeds in UO. An 'Inn' housing type could even be created containing multiple rooms that could be rented.

I really just see instanced housing as tacky, devaluing the game and visions in general.

 

This is an interesting position. Those features would certainly benefit someone who had, say, multiple tax-free houses and planned on renting them out to earn game money.

 

Hence my like.

 

Thank you for the link. I have no problems with Social Networking as a means to find and obtain a copy of the game. Heck the Digital rights and ease of download vs going to a store and getting a game drastic improvement. Having worked at 2 game companies, I understand the need to meet financial goals and make the game supportable if not profitable. I was merely bringing up some issues with modern systems, some of which you may have noticed people shying away from. Take for example FFXIV or ESO returning to more of a subscription based model. When it comes to anything entertainment oriented be it a magic show or a video game you need to make the fruit obtainable but appear just out of reach, those that grasp a little higher will then recieve a feeling of personal achievement. Take being able to enter Wind and steal a statue in UO, or Successfully waking the sleeper or obtaining an Epic in original EQ. making houses slightly harder to obtain is a feeling of accomplishment. this is compounded by the fact that if you make anything instance-able you detract from a feeling of community and for an MMO that is a bad thing. If people are made to enter an instanced version of their house rather then visit a town hub or knock on their neighbor's door for reagents you miss the ability to interact on a social aspect. This is the same reason global marketing systems while convenient are bad. finding the mom and pop store in the middle of no where that sells healing potions cheap you remember and begin an interaction with. UO and SWG (pre CU and NGE) were probably 2 of the most successful community based games. -- anyway I'm starting to ramble.

 

I dont think any of these are a solution singularly. The solution liss within a combination of instances, non instanced and tents, yurts and slums. I think all combined will be the best possible solution. I do think without instancing only one house should be owned per person otherwise it just fosters land baroning and greed and ppl will just hoard them and gouge people that are trying to be

 

Instanced housing limits player interaction and thus has a negative effect on the community.

 

Do you think people without access (for whatever reason ie. RL finances and/or in-game opportunity) to housing will have a positive effect on the community?
It will force more interaction, as they'll be in the streets all the time.

 

Thank you, friend.

 

Exactly. But to clarify they will probably hang out at the bank or public crafting stations.

 

As i remember back in about 1997 -98-99 , when i was playing Ultima ,approximately 70% if not more , of the players of less then a year was homeless. It was common that you would log off in the Inn, or pitch your bedroll. Not that you wouldn't love to have a home, you just didn't have the funds or couldn't find a open space. One reason for a lot of the shard hoping players did .
IMO, housing should stay rare, gives us all something to strive towards . But on the other hand, i also think there should be more then just [ one] Inn in any town with rooms to rent.
Guess we all will just have to wait and see what the future holds .

 

And be, oh so joyful having to allocate bank space for a zillion crafting items that they have to schlep to a central craft station, to share with others, and always love the fact they don't have significantly more storage, with easy access, right next to their workbench. Yes, the homeless life is the life for me! I'm sure the majority of players buying a game for a promoted item, which they can't obtain because of its rarity, will jump for joy in their homelessness. Me, I'll be joining BillRoy and others, under the bridge in Kingsbridge to eke out our joyful life of homelessness. We'll have social opportunities galore between the crafting stations, bank and living under the bridge! Won't others be so jealous of the amount of social opportunities we'll be afforded!

 

Great! Except they've said no Inns, no instanced rooms, no instanced housing. This is one world, not 20+ shards, with a Fel/Trammel split. Housing was hard to obtain in UO, but this will be far more difficult. Oh joy! Houses sold for hundreds of dollars (I even saw $1000 & $1200) on Ebay. Yes! Give me a way to buy a house for real cash on a black market! It's oh, so the way to go! UO is so yesterday!

 

Ha

haha I sense sarcasm!

I was homeless a long long time in UO. I enjoyed such social interactions!

 

Yes, and didn't you just love the 125 item, 400 stone limit in the bank?