Hometown illustrates problem with uncontrolled house placement

Let's pick up on a point which was well made by Ashlynn [Pax] in another thread:

Towns are going to turn out looking silly if they are going to be filled with a completely uncontrolled mixture of diverse (and incompatible) building styles.

The Devs have set up "Hometown" so we have somewhere we can go to view the complete range of homes. Let's just imagine for moment, without any control on player home placement, the following Hometown view recreated in other towns or villages elsewhere:



See how the grouping of "Adobe" (mud-brick) buildings immediately screams "out-of-place", sitting on lush green grass in a "temperate northern-European" scene surrounded by broad-leaf deciduous trees and (much more appropriate) steep pitched-roof stone buildings.

"Traditional" adobe construction can't cope with wet or cold climates. Mud bricks aren't hard. In fact, they shrink and swell with the weather. An extremely wet climate might turn the bricks back into mud. Not only that, frequent freezing and thawing can make the bricks crumble.

This point is exacerbated the format of these buildings: SOTA has traditional flat-roofed Adobe houses where the adobe mud is also used as the roofing material (rather than thatch or tile). In the foreground we have a building arranged around an enclosed courtyard - that traditional design feature that is a response to hot, dry climates i.e. provides shade, a cool air pool, and protection from hot and dusty winds.

I suggest that there ought to be controls in the game to limit players from placing such houses in unsuitable locations. An adobe house surrounded by snow and pine forests is as out-of-place as a steeply pitched half-timbered home on the edge of a desert.

Now, lets have a look at an adobe house in suitable surroundings:



Ah, much better.

 

Why does it matter if towns look silly? We have the town (village sized POT) of Wizards Rest that will not charge residents taxes unless the game forces that, and every resident is allowed to deocrate their lot as they wish, no town rules or restrictions. So I strongly disagree about adding in game controls to restrict the way some decorated and the house types someone can choose. This is their game also, they need to have choices in their view of fun if possible. So That is a personal preference unique to each of us, and player owned towns solved a lot of things for players in the terms of personal preferences for this game.

Meaning for one the ability to own and live in a player owned town to create the town with themes of havoc, themes of evil, themes of shabby or ran down neighborhoods, and themes of mismatched chaos, themes of underground etc, this town was purchased with RL cash, thus dictatorship is up to the town owner in design and template, and theme. Also meaning players have the ability to create a town based on how they want to play the game, and for some even role play the game is a big draw and real life expense ($) This should not be controled by the developers unless they violate the game rules and terms of service and unless the system and development does not allow for it.. So This should not be limited.

For all we care someone somone who lives and resides in Wizards Rest can have the new battle banner flags all the way around their lot as a fence and yay for them, it is their lot. We we would even encourage that if they said that is what they would like to do.

We go to work in RL and live in life in RL with rules and regulations galore , we dont need to be in RL here if we don't want to. A game of choices as much as possible is what towns can offer, Outside of the TOS ( required terms of services and game performance issues, I dont see problems with creativitiy being stifled and disagree with enforcing controls for how another player chooses to express themselves inside of a player owned town especially, that includes how thier land and home looks.

I absolutely will be able to have fun in spite of their choices. If that causes someone to walk into Wizards Rest and walk out again saying "oooh these mismatch houses and house decorations are too much of an eyesore, I can't stand to look yikes", then so be it., leave and don't live there or visit us. We are a bit out of the way so not a main walkway for anyone

ok edited typos and points after some sleep and points to hopefully make more sense I hope, lol ooh more typos, sleep didn't solve my issues

 

No.

Don't get me wrong. You are 200% right with your statement.
I do agree with you.
BUT.
if we start there, we will have to continue with the decoration of the lots.
Palms in the snow? A birdbath in the desert? A windmill in an underground town?
Yeah that all sucks. But we will have to deal with it.
It's part of the sandbox.

 

Deal with it is wrong .


The Solo Gamers will definatly expect believable Towns.

 

I don't think the solo gamers will have to worry about it.

 

Maybe the houses should be automatically re textured according the sorroundings you place them? Maybe no radically, but with subtle changes to adequate them to the weather. Example: the adobe house could be re textured to light-brown stones, with some fungus and signs of humidity on them, when you place them on a forest biome.

 

I think giving POT owners the ability to control their own towns is the answer.

I know I personally do not want my town to look like the island of misfit toys.

 

So are the devs going to make the Adobe stables in all materials? I doubt it and $25 is a cheap way for a stable to be added to any PoT.

 

I was planning on living in a NPC town but after seeing how ridiculous it can look I think I will be living in a POT instead with a theme.

 

I understand that. But there are 250+ POTs...

My own personal POT should have the aesthetic qualities that I prefer. If not in my POT, then where would I find this?

 

Pure and simply NO. POT owners should be the only ones with the say in how their town is designed.

 

In an NPC town that is the price you pay, if oyu neighbor wants a Pink house in a Log cabin neighborhood, ah well that is what HOA are for.

In a POT sorry that is the POIT owner who is the HOA man in charge.

If you don't like the neighborhood you live in MOVE, the Devs do NOT need to do anything to help with astethitics.

Sorry

 

I agree with the OP about the overall general lameness of the wrong types of housing, but I think its simply too late to do anything about it. You can't limit the use of something people have already purchased.

If this had been considered ahead of time, they could have laid groundwork rules about certain housing only being place-able in certain biomes, but since they have been selling homes for cash, I think it would be a difficult sell to people who have already purchased a house with the belief they could place it anywhere.

 

By the way I should add my point was aimed mainly at the major plot towns and cities - so I am talking Ardoris, Britanny, Etceter, and so on. Each NPC city should have an overall identity in my opinion much like Trinsic in UO for example had a unique look and feel to it.

PoT owners can do whatever they want with their own towns IMO - they bought them.

 

No offense but the pic in the OP I actually think looks pretty good ......

 

Novian mud bricks are made with magic.

 

I do too, actually.

But as a town owner that would like to have this...

I would like to avoid this...


If the rest of New Britannia wants that, fine. But my POT has a theme.

 

Do you want HOAs? Because this is how you get HOAs...

 

I want to be able to exclude home types by default in my POT.

 

Each lot comes with allowed biome tag/s, inherited by the scene biome (known data). Only POT owners can override them, by tagging a lot "biome free".

Each house has biome tag/s associated.

You can't put a desert-tagged house in a swamp-tagged lot.

Problem solved, at database (i.e. batchable) level, and future-proof, when other biomes would be added.

...At commercial/store level however, it's a wasp nest...