Consolidating Ideas for Player Owned Towns Features and Mechanics

Based on the All Player Towns Gathering meeting on Saturday, February 14, 2015, we are starting this thread to help consolidate ideas for Player Owned Towns potential features and mechanics.

For this thread, we are interested in more of the mechanical nature of things to help owners and residents "live" and "manage" the town. We know some features will exist, like lots can be unlocked by the town owner. Various features have been discussed in other threads and we can "URL link" them to replies here as a matter of organization too.

There will likely be agreement and disagreement about such features and mechanics too. I think we can voice our agreement/disagreement with such ideas and our consolidated notes here can state there are mixed agreements on such things.

We can come up with a consolidated list of features (wish list) such as the following. Perhaps this could turn into a Wiki page at some point.

DRAFT ideas are below:

Owner Features:

• Unlock lots for people to place a housing lot deed.
• Evict house owners from lots, and lock the lot location again.
• Administer the Town Message Boards (Residents and Visitors -- each might have different post/read permissions).
• Place items in NPC buildings, like books with town history.
• Assign a co-owner to have all same abilities, but not to demolish the entire Player Owned Town.
• Assign a beneficiary player if the owner leaves, passes away, etc.
• Assign who can put information into the Town Crier (events, history, etc.)

Resident Features:

• Post on a Resident Town Message Board.

Visitor Features:

• Post on a Visitor Town Message Board.
• Interact with the Town Crier to learn about the town, what events are happening, etc.

Other Features:

• NPCs wander all around the town, not just in a small area.
• Town Crier announces events for the town, news, and other information.

Some of these ideas may not be achievable, but at least we can list them in one place for analysis.

Please reply with your ideas, or where other discussions on certain features have taken place. Thanks!

 

I couldn't make the meetings during the week but had intended to come to this one. Totally slipped my mind.

Good post though. No surprises on the list and has come up in previous discussions.

This refers to an in-game message board? This would allow POT admins / mods to write on the board about upcoming events or whatever.

 

Regarding the In-Game Message Board ideas...​

Correct ... this would be an in-game messageboard that would allow player owned towns to communicate most effectively with their residents and visitors. I don't know how much capability would be on the User Interface, nor how much "monitoring" needs to be done by the moderators and such.

I think such an in-game messageboard system could be a break-through (?) in MMORPGs for large guilds and towns. It could be like granting a SotA Forum for each Player Towned Town, but it is accessed in-game. Perhaps the two could even be merged through database technology, who knows toi be accessed from in game too and perhaps also from out of game. There could be global SotA moderators, like there are on SotA Forums now, to ensure nothing inappropriate is written on the in-game messageboards.

I think the hardest part is the UI for the messageboard in the game. UO has a very short and rudimentary interface and display of messageboards on houses. I think SotA should go beyond what UO did and make it more elaborate and capable.

Perhaps in Episode 1, the messageboard opens into a web browser, just like we can now type "/sotawiki Recipes". That could simply help people get to a town's messageboard from within the game, and not have to invest in development of an in-game UI yet. Maybe that could come in Episode 2.

Of course, this would mean up to 200 sub-forums for Player Owned Towns on the SotA Forums; and that was not part of the "purchase". But maybe it could be a feature for a Player Owned Town Add-On separately purchased. Who knows.

These are just some functional thoughts on options, possibilities, and phased-approaches to an in-game Town messageboard.

Has this in game message board idea been discussed before? If so, anyone can please reply with links to those discussions and I will add the links to the OP of this thread as part of this consolidation.

 

Initially I read the idea as being forum based, but then I considered that wasn't the intent since it may necessitate 200 sub-forums (although it would be fair to merge those under the same banner).

But it would be useful, since it could allow players to check up on messages without logging in (and perhaps respond too).

Personally, I'm not fond of this behaviour. The bug submission button does this and it frustrates me when I click it accidentally. I've mostly been playing on a laptop which has fair specs for a laptop but nothing compared to folks on a desktop. This means that opening the page in a browser can be slow for me and in the past it came up in front of the game. If there was an option to disable this behaviour then I'd accept it.

This idea is perhaps the exception to my statement above where I suggest that all ideas had been seen before (the reason why I quoted this issue is that it's the exception ). I suppose the closest idea is a bounty hunter board, and I suppose the town crier has some functionality for informing players about the town but I digress....

 

Event Scheduling

If PoTs had some form of inbuilt support for scheduling events it would be fantastic. If the owner or an assigned manager/managers (or even any resident) could access an interface that had a field for event title, event host, event description, event rewards and event time and displayed these events on a central message board it would make a huge difference to event participation. If it was taken a step further and fields were added for global/local and public/private i think many many people would make use of the system. If an event time was drawing near and the town crier and other NPC made announcements in local chat it will really add to the atmosphere and organisation of player owned/run towns. Local events would be displayed only in the towns in which they were scheduled whereas global events could be displayed in all towns (perhaps even NPC towns and player RUN towns). Event rewards could be drag'n'dropped into a menu during event creation and automaticly be listed in the event reward field. There could even be a feedback option added allowing people to "thumbs up" events after their completion which could accumulate giving event hosts some form of rating that would be displayed for future events they schedule. The more tools we have for community event organisation the better.

 

Random ideas:

POI signpost 'tree'
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/wood-blank-sign-post-26040593.jpg
The concept here is twofold
1)
The owner can go around town and tag a Point-of-Interest into one of 6 slots. That PoI gets coordinates and the owner gives it a text tag like "Fishing Lake" or "BEAR Tavern". (Heavy limits on the text).
A "" text means no sign in that slot (works like a delete without needing to delete stuff UI)
2)
The POT template allows you to place such sign-post-trees in the scene.
Each sign on the tree points in the direction of the coordinates and displays the text tag.

This enables changing PoI without redesigning the scene.

It also allows you to redirect to another sign for better instructions.

Let's take Owls Head as an example.
Let's place three such sign trees.
One at the entrance
One at the road where the inconvenient wagon is located after the sheep
One next to the upper market

Entrance tree signs:
Lunar Rift (kinda obvious)
Center (points towards 2nd sign)

Middle tree signs:
Peddlers row (along the road)
Crafters Pavillion (towards entrance if Pavillion)
Recipes (towards house with crafters recipes - better name)
Inner Market (towards 3rd sign)
Lunar rift

Upper/Inner market tree signs:
Bank
Lord Enmar
Decorations (towards bank entrance)
Bookshop
Peddlers row (towards 2nd sign)


Then when they have an NPC spawn with a traveling market they simply add this to the closest or maybe all three sign lists.

For a POT owner you can then direct visitors to PoI and also easily change them for events or similar.

 

Random Ideas

POT Lot permissions list view
(If people agree I can create a mock-up of this one).

Reasoning:
In one of the POT hangouts along said that POT permissions might inherit from the Lot permission UI. But I think this would be very inadequate. Simply because the Lot permission requires interaction with the Lot sign/stone object and if such movements would be required it would be a nightmare for POT owners.
Thus I think that the owner needs a list view object instead.
(My suggestion would be to tie this to an administrative building in the center of the town. So when you interact with the mayor's desk the administration menu pops up. )
In this view each of the available lots would be listed in number order, Lot1, Lot2, etc.
then the headers would be:
LotNumber; LotSize; OwnedBy; ClaimType; ClaimRight; Permissions; SortTag; Comment
These would function like this;

• LotNumber.
  Just the lot number for designation and reference. READ only
• LotSize
  Just the lot size for reference. READ only
• OwnedBy
  The name of the current owner, or blank if not claimed with a deed. If not empty it enables the Evict button. READ only
• ClaimType
  Here you select which claim functionality you want from a drop down list;
  <Locked> DEFAULT this lot is not claimable, why this should be default is because it should be an active decision.
  <Unlocked> This lot can be claimed by anyone running up to it as per the normal way.
  <Player> This enables the ClaimRight field, which can be used to enter a player name.
  <Guild> This enables the ClaimRight field, which can be used to enter a guild name
• ClaimRight
  Dependent on the ClaimType selection
  If Locked/Unlocked it is disabled
  If <Player> you can enter a single Player name which is verified like friends list etc
  If <Guild> you can enter a single guild name which is verified
• Permissions
  Button. Opens the modal "Sign/Stone" interface of that lot. If you are owner/trustee/kindred you can handle things as you normally could from the permission sign/stone at the lot.
  If you have no special rights you can check out what you normally can as if checking out someone else's lot sign.
  In the Permission dialog one finds the <Evict> button which opens a new interface
• SortTag
  Free text sort tags in drop down combo checkbox list. So that one can more easily handle volumes. For instance one could add made up district names or street names etc. or tag them by something completely different like "BFF" or whatever.
  The whole list then has sort/filter on those tags.
  Imagine handling a metropolis and you will quickly come to a similar conclusion
• Comment
  Free text field. 255 chars. Hover over to get a tooltip with the current text, click it to open a text edit modal window.

 

Random ideas:

Donation Box decoration object.

Any player can double click and select how much to donate which goes to owner of lot/pot depending in placement.

Add to the addon store ($10) for anyone to purchase and place in their lots.

Add such addon store boxes to the perk list for POTs. (Holdfast1, Xroads 2, Town 3, City 4, Metro 5)

Add functionality to POT owners to place and lock down within the POT. If restrictions are necessary then we need at least the ability to add them to POT NPC lots.


Reasoning:
More money to the game
Fair for all regardless of where you live
POTs still get the needed object

 

Random Ideas

Player Owned Town - Tartan

Reasoning:
Since CoA is for early pledgers only, but POTs need some differentiator as well.
Then we don't want something unique texture for every single one, but just like with CoA if you set up some rules these can be generated on the fly instead of static resources.
http://www.scotweb.co.uk/tartandesign/design/
You can generate thousands just based on
16 colors
4 stripe sizes (fine, thin, medium, wide) where each size is x2/twice the size of the former

So depending on POT size you get to select a tartan.
Small POT gets
2 colors, and 2 or 4 alternating stripes.
Medium POT gets
2 or 3 colors, and 2 or 4 alternating stripes
Large POT gets
2-4 colors, and 2 or 4 or 6 alternating stripes

Try it out, its a big difference

 

Random Ideas

Episode2?

POT Districts/Municipality

If one owns a really large POT one soon sees the need to divide that up in more manageable units where you can delegate responsibilities and power.

For instance a metropolis with 4 guilds in it. Giving all four guilds power over all Lots in the whole Metro will soon lead to disaster. Giving all to a few will soon degrade into mini-popes or missing administration.
The solution should be to assign Lots to a District and delegate power over that district to a Guild or a player.

 

Great work!

 

Great work he says, yet he hasn't "liked" or stated which ideas he agrees with.
Hmmm.
Might need some spirits to loosen his tongue....

 

Need a short "tooltip" blurb on the overland map. So as to not confuse and instead entice visitors.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-or-description-for-scene-npct-prt-pot.19863/

 

I like all the ideas..

 

Random idea:

Addon store - Decoration Resource object

Not just for POTs but most useful for organized communities.

Concept is a very large decoration asset which brings a resource with it.
In order to "stock" it you need to bring a resource 'seed' gathered/tamed from the wild.
Then in order to keep it 'alive' and spawning you need a craftable consumable and regular care.

Example:

Asset:
RABBIT HILL
5m diameter round green hill with bushes
Maximum population: 18
'Seed object':
Captured/tamed rabbits from the wild. Minimum seed 4 for 'spawn'
Consumable:
"Rabbit salad", made on Cooking station from Lettuce, Carrot and Grain.
If fed daily for a week and is at minimum seed number, spawn starts with +20% rabbits to the population.

Asset:
Fishing pond
'Seed object':
Captured live fish (only a specific breed, you can't breed any fish)
Minimum seed 4 for 'spawn'
Consumable:
"Fish food" , made on Cooking station from Potatoes, (other) Fish, Bread.
If fed daily for a week and is at minimum seed number, spawn starts with +20% fish to the population.

Etc.
you get the concept.
Plants seems to be coming so that would be a different feature but some such could fit here as well.

 

Ya this seems like a great way to handle gardening as well. Chicken coops, could be another.

It might be interesting to take it far... (EP3 maybe haha) where animals eat, defecate, age, acquire illnesses (if you don't clean up their mess regularly), need gender specific & proper age to breed, have traps to capture live, and more.

 

Even breed horses to be able to sell as riding mounts, cows, bears, deer, wolves ect.

 

Have you discussed the possibility of town sieges etc? Might be an interesting feature for guild warfare. Mercenary and alliance system would also be nice. Maybe there can be trade routes between player towns, that can be robbed etc etc...

 

1: Pot labels on overland map could have drop down menus allowing you direct access to suburbs.
2: Allow Pots that are accessed only from another pot to dynamically place the link to the in areas specified by the governor of the "main" pot.
3: Allow linking pots to dynamically change the link from one pot to another. Picking objects from a preset list. Wagon, sewer, cave, fissure, bridge etc
4: Give the Governors and senior officials of the town notification when player enters or leaves the town. This would help facilitate interactions and liven up the towns trying to attract new residents or support trade.
5: Allow Pot owners to pick NPC merchant races.