Finding your lot in life

One of the complaints was finding an empty lot. Perhaps this will be less a problem when those lots cost gold.. but it would be perhaps handy to have the town crier respond to inquiries about available lots. They might give a rough response about there being "no empty lots here in town did you try <town X> to the <direction Y>?", "Sure there are a few", and "Why are you asking me there are tons around?". If a few, they might indicate, which direction to look... "I think there may be one at the north end of the village". For bonus points they could respond differently depending on the player's virtue: very specific, vague, or even lying.

 

I'm totally on board with this idea. It would make things so much easier just to know if anything was available instead of walking up and down every street clicking on all the signs. I gave up looking for a lot in R5 because of this very reason.

 

The pinging tool IMO is plenty sufficient. It's a happy medium between having to run around and closely inspect every single lot vs. having an NPC tell me exactly where I can find an open lot. Forcing players to explore to find open lots also acts as a reward for exploration, in a sense. I placed more than a few houses in UO that I only got because I had a keen eye and a proclivity to wander off the beaten path. If every wandering healer in that game had been able to tell people where the next closest open lot is, I wouldn't have stood a chance, and not one of the players who could have nabbed those spaces under such a system would have ever felt the pride of finding a space. At that point, it's not even really about the house or the lot. It's about the feeling of victory you get from having, in a sense, beaten the odds.

 

I know that sounds bad, but was wonderful in UO when you were exploring and, finally, you found a nice place for a house. You feel even proud of yourself.

 

How about you click the house sign and a lot map (or mini map) of city/town/village comes up showing greyed (empty) lots, and the current house types on occupied lots. Eventually there should be a mini map of each hex, right...

 

This is a great idea! We're going to try to get this in for R6, though it's just going to be announcing how many open lots are available in that town crier's village/city.

 

Also, Please fix Crier to also respond to what is the name of the town/village etc...I couldn't tell which village I was in even after many questions.

 

They should announce that in their bark, though they don't bark nearly often enough I just noticed (thanks to the adding a few minutes to every bark we added in at the last moment for R5)

 

I think for people looking for a spot this is huge Lum. It means the difference of spending a lot of time for nothing (or maybe spending a lot of time eliminating a place when you just didnt know to look harder) vs. Knowing to look elsewhere. Its not a huge spoiler, has an RP feel to it. Im sure the community will love it!

 

Very cool.

One thing I noticed as well: People sometimes got lost finding their own plots--lots of empty houses, etc. Would it be possible to add something like /myaddress or /myhouse that lists the town and 'loc' information for your currently owned plot?

 

Almost all RPGs I start with when the towns seem a bit large and confusing trying to find your away around can be somewhat frustrating. However, it comes with time and then once I know how to easily navigate the streets, to find the smithy for example, I really enjoy the fact that I've learned the town myself and begin to care more about the world more than I would have if I just teleported around, etc.. I think the less aids and the more you get involved with the world and exploration the better. Take the time to learn your town if you plan on living there!

People tend to seek out the destination too quickly, enjoy the ride.

 

In keeping with RG's vision of not making things too easy for the players in the game, thereby taking away the joy of exploration and discovery, the dev team opted for a ground level, horizontal visual beacon for available lots in R5 (activated by pressing the 'P' key). The thicker and slightly more illuminated than mist apparition fit in perfectly with the village landscape. I loved its subtlety and found it very helpful for finding vacant lots, especially on the Saturday when most lots were taken. I'm not convinced anything more than this is needed, however I understand the rationale behind having the town crier declaring how many village/town lots are available in its village and I could live with the idea as long as the housing info the town crier gives is restricted to just numbers.

 

I like LOTRO where you have the name of your homestead, the street address and, who lives there when you get close to a lot. Something similar would be great in SotA and help others find our vendors and such.

 

That is a problem while people are seeing towns for the first time. When the game goes live and people have the opportunity to explore their villages more, they'll learn. I believe the plan is to allow players with coats of arms to hang those from their house's sign, which would be very helpful in the beginning, since you can use those banners as landmarks. I could be wrong about that bit though.