Hometown Question/Discussion

I think it's one of the best Portalarium marketing tools ever.

If every add-on store item could have its sketchpad of the item on sale, then I agree: it'd be redundant. But until that day, it's the real one-stop shop-before-shop.

...In a single, convenient place?

 

As I said if it must stay (I don't believe it's required) it should be a scene set up and controlled 100% by Portalarium without any player involvement at all.

 

I think hometown is great, and I'm sorry people got upset that I wanted to get it addressed before it's to late. I didn't mean to upset anyone in anyways, and I'm sorry people felt personally attacked.

 

Absolutely agree.

It was fun and all, but once the game is launched persistent, better keep it strictly under Port's control.

 

Kazyn, Justyn and Jack Knyfe have been handling the project lately. They have put a TON of time into setting up, building, decorating, and coordinating people. They practically BEG for volunteers to decorate. Even Lace helped out with a contest to collect stealables because it takes THOUSANDS of items to decorate these homes. They spend literally a release or more working on this. Portalarium plans to make the zone a "dead zone" for experience in July.. so no one will be gaining GMs there. And Port can track ALL the items going in and out, so I would hope the people who offer to help them do so with the virtues in mind, because it will be a bad day for you if you steal from Hometown after persistence.

 

I don't know if it needs to be in a single, convenient place.

The devs the past have said they want to do a kind of housing ranking system, where player houses could be voted on by the community. They can tie that player driven ranking into a housing showcase somehow.

 

As a marketing tool, it must be as easy as possible to peruse and browse the items that drive up add-on store sales.

Saying "in the secluded POT Xyz at the end of the remote region Abc, there's a semi-hidden copy of the house you want to purchase" may not be exactly the same, marketing-wise.

 

Unfortunately i'm very cynical as are many many players of MMOs. As soon as players start to be given items/resources or access to things that a "normal" player doesn't have access to..........or if you like get "special treatment" by developers then the game will fail. It will be noticed by all and will leave a very bitter taste in the mouths of many.

Not a great idea when the game is persistent.

I'm not taking anything away from the people who have put time and effort into the scene.......but all things must come to an end.....that end should be the final wipe.

 

Selene thank you for the answer, and again I still think there should be a Block in hometown that recognizes the efforts of Kayz, Justyn and Jack Knyfe. I just wanted to know what was being done I did not mean to hurt anyone's feelings at all, yes it's been abused not by the leaders at all I have never seen a manager use anything at all unworthy of any of the trust placed in those people. I can not imagine the stress and heard work and real life time it must take to pull it off. I never meant this post to be taken badly and I'm sorry it did, I get heated and angry. The abuse I have seen has been small stuff and not anything probably even meant it's been wood used for a guild project, or gold given to a friend just to help them a little or really tiny insignificant crap that no one needs to be reported for but it happens, it trickles. I loose my cool and I am hot headed, I do try and it's one of the main reasons I stay off the forums. If I offended anyone I'm truly sorry I said in my first post I just wanted an answer, I got it thank you.

I love you guys and truly I thank you for all the hard work and heart ache that you put up with to do such a good job. I did not mean offense and again I'm sorry.

~Wind Silvermoon~

 

This is ridiculous. You can build another Hometown, but make it legit like everyone else.

 

A clear line must be drawn between company and customer. As soon as that line becomes blurred then there is a problem.

Up until the final wipe it doesn't really matter because as nothing is persistent. As soon as that changes then there should be no blurring whatsoever, if the company decides as part of their marketing they wish to have a town to showcase houses then that is up to the company to put it in place at which point costs will be drawn against their marketing budget.

If a player decides they want to help the company promote the game then that is up to the player to do that out of their own resources without any assistance from Portalarium. If there is a strong perception of favoritism (whether true or not it doesn't matter) the project will fall flat............that result is far more expensive than Portalarium actually hiring staff to do the job that it should really be employing someone to do anyway.

 

As one of the volunteers decorating in Hometown, this whole discussion distresses me to no end. Far from benefiting from the work I've done, I barely manage to pay my row lot tax because of the time I spend in Hometown, and after two months of daily play I'm still confined to 2 and 3 skull areas and I've finally saved up enough gold to buy a spider pet for 4,500 gold. I'm wearing armor that was given to me by generous guildmates. My own house is undecorated. I'm not a crook so I don't steal stuff from the deco storage chests or spend the gold I am given on myself, but this discussion makes me feel like I'm being accused of being one.

I do think it makes sense to have a town that contains one of each kind of dwelling in the game. After Final Wipe why don't the Devs just place the empty undecorated homes in Hometown? That way people can still walk through them. They can get decorating inspiration by visiting player homes.

 

Once there is the magic mover tech implemented, it shouldn't be too hard to do the magic clone.

With that, the staffs can handpick a house with nice deco by a player elsewhere (no more staff resources) and clone the decoration placement into Hometown. The house would look like the one that fully decorated, but all items are owned by staff accounts. That would mitigate the saltiness from those who choose not to help and yet bash the effort of those who do.

 

Yes, me, too. By the time we are done weeks later after a wipe, i'm killing skellies in East Perennial in cotton armor while everyone else has made it to high level dungens making huge lewt. And by then, everyone is rolling in dough and everything in the market is 100 time what i can afford. And I almost never decorate my own home.

And, no, i don't steal gold, either. I always spend more than I'm given.

I do this because i love this community and want to support it in other ways than only money support.

Maybe because i'm not part of the crafting, i don't see any character advancement advantage. For me, it is the total opposite.

Now i sound like I'm complaining, but it isn't any worse than hearing people whine about how good we have it. Perhaps the best answer is for you all to volunteer and discover the actual 'sweet' life for yourself

 

1,000,000 gold to 'a' player? You just made that up, right?

The most I've ever been given is 20,000 for the largest houses to buy non craftable, non stealable items, and that doesn't cover the indoor and outdoor decoration of a large estate.

Are you passing along wild rumors, or are you possibly confusing the total cost vs. what is given to 'a' player for 'a' house?

If anyone is asking you not to ask these questions, it is probably because they'd rather you ask a truthful question.

 

I have used Hometown several times to check out homes and biomes, and I am really glad that it exists. Do the houses need to be decorated? One could argue that this is an unnecessary luxury, but I disagree. It helps all of us when Portalarium is better funded, and this funding is aided by anything - including decoration - that helps encourage the sale of houses. It also serves as inspiration for those of us with with a deficit of innate skill when it comes to home decoration. I appreciate all the great work done by volunteers to make it possible, however I can't help thinking there must be a better, easier way.

With that in mind I would hope that Portalarium gives some thought to @Roycestein Kaelstrom 's idea of cloning a well decorated home from the community. This could of course be turned into a competition, with the result that the houses chosen to be replicated in Hometown would all be inspirational examples with the best possible chance of resulting in purchases from the add-on store. They would also serve as monuments to the skills and efforts of our player decorators. Perhaps there could be an annual competition with prizes - the kind of thing that helps build communities.

 

I merely propagated what @Spoon has brought up a few days ago when we started discussing the direction of Hometown.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...r-final-wipe-reverse-auction-per-house.51971/

Essentially here is what we have at the table.

1. With the option to convert add-on items to store credits will go away after final one, players maybe more hesitant to buy items from the add-on store until they can see the actual samples. It is possible to ask around until find someone, but Hometown approach is faster and unify overall.
2. Since there is no player out there that would have to all houses, all possible decoration items, and all types of POT in game, it will not be feasible to have players pooled their resource and create a centralized Hometown-liked environment by themselves.
3. The concern over potentially abuse is not entirely impossible. While the current dedicated volunteers are not those who would abuse the system (and they do not deserve to be bashed by this pseudo scenarios), there is no guarantee that we will never eventually run into a worm that end up rot the entire apple.
4. Manage and decorate Hometown is non trivial issue. Allocating a dev or hire a new dev to take over the community would be a wasteful of resource. I would rather than have the designated decorators to work on NPC/PRT town decorations rather than Hometown.

So hopefully, if the staffs can keep the Hometown POT and its sub POTs as is, then be able to clone the houses from existing players. Then from time to time putting add-on store show rooms where it can be easily views by visitors, that might be as good as we can get without using the current community-based model.

 

It wouldn't bother me in the least if those helping to decorate Hometown got skill increases for crafting things for the town display. Yes, they are getting free materials to level up with... but in the same regard, they are spending a great deal of time dedicated to this project instead of advancement in other things like adventure skills, questing, etc. So while they may be getting a slight advantage in some ways, they are missing out on a lot more personal achievements.

However, while I truly respect all the hard work the deco crew has done in Hometown, I would honestly prefer (as a potential home buyer) the houses be completely empty and not decorated at all.

When I run through a house in Hometown now, I have to run around tables and jump over stuff to get to all corners of the rooms to look around. The deco jobs really give the homes that "lived in" feeling and can inspire some deco ideas for people, but all those props can make them feel cluttered when you are just trying to get a feel for the size of the rooms.

Plus, I prefer to see a blank slate to help me visualize how I might decorate it or if something will fit where I want it.

Also, with lag, it becomes very frustrating bumping into everything when trying to get from room to room. My camera can stutter a lot in a home with lots of deco items and squeezing between a table and chairs near a stairway or something can lead to what feels like being in a pinball machine. And when you are running by one home to get to another and the outdoor deco and fencing hasn't loaded yet but creates an invisible wall... that isn't very fun either.

Therefore, I would suggest the houses just be placed and left empty after final wipe. This would require no extra gold nor materials to be given to people setting it up. There would be no "unfair advantage" on skill leveling with free materials. All that would be needed was lot placement and home selection on each lot. This can be done quickly and even by a Dev or a small handful of trusted players. Worst that could happen is someone steals a home... but that could easily be recovered if it ever happened (and most likely never would).

As for giving people a chance to view other add-on store items besides the homes, there could be several additional lots placed where decoration items could be placed for display. Perhaps one lot for pets, one for home deco, one (or two) for outdoor deco, and perhaps NPC's could be placed on another that would be donning all of the wearables? I don't know how hard the last one would be for the Devs, but the rest would be pretty simple to do and not take more than an hour or so to setup.

 

Note that Hometown already have that by the area near the crafting pavilion, but it's just a bunch of items place on the ground next to one another like waiting to be auctioned off. Maybe that's good enough?

 

Yea, that's where I got the idea... except there are some things there that are not available currently on the add-on store.