Reduce player cities size...

no one would to come on a player governed city...

why?

Time to load scene? SAME OF OTHER SCENE (with vendors ... animals... enemies.... etc etc etc...)
ITEMS that can be found on that cities? NOTHING.
ENEMIES? no enemies
FISHING POOLS? no fishing pools
RESOURCES? (trees.. cotton.. etc etc) NONE.
PLAYERS? if you are lucky.. JUST 1 ...the owner of the city.
DECORATIONS? what? no small trees... no signals... nothing.. if you are lucky some owners have made something like a CENTER of city with some things placed like a PUB.. or some vendors stands...

maybe players can starts to go to player cities if:

THE LOADING TIME CAN BE DECREASED ,shrink cities.. remove a lot of NOT USED houses places, maybe someone can create a PVP turnament in a place that is very fast to LOAD.

ADD LOCAL RESOURCES THAT CAN BE HARVESTED and maybe FISHING POOLS on beach (just to see some active component) on a city i've swim (for a lot... and this is a nice idea to reach a party) to an isle without anything (just trees) and i thinked.... WOW nice place... if someone can place a TENT here can be nice. maybe to catch fishes... or make a party.

ADD A MOONGATE ON ALL CITY that can teleport players something like a GATE STATION on NOVIA (near a big city maybe) with this all players that are running on novia without found a way to reach HIDDENVALE.. can enter on a fast loading CITY... enter the GATE.... reach the GATE STATION... and maybe on the GATE STATION find a BOAT to HIDDENVALE

LOT OF ANIMALS... these are small cities without walls.... and without guards... maybe a lot of animals can be a nice thing to see... Rabbits.. Doe.... something that can be VITALIZE the scene. (where are RATS??)

P.S. HOUSE ARE TOO BIG OR HIGH ON THIS GAME... maybe it's necessary to add some rules... 1 BIG HOUSE (3 or 4 storey house) on center of city... and all other houses just 1 o 2 floors... look at OWL'S HEAD... the center is very nice with small WOOD houses... but PLAYERS TOWERS and GIANT BUILDINGS ruin everything...

 

I agree with you on the size issue as well as the decoration issue. As co-owner of a holdfast, I find Its just too darn sprawling, filled with useless space. I suppose it fits other players' ideas of what their town is supposed to look like, however, purposefully choosing a holdfast for smaller amount of territory equals the same instance players receive when they purchased larger towns/cities. They just have more usable space in the instance. Also, decorating one's town can add up quite a bit as the decorations you receive with the town purchase is limited. Perhaps if the instance wasn't so expansive the lack of and cost of decorations (street lights, light sources in obvious places such as bridges, street signs, streets themselves) wouldn't be so glaringly obvious. The vision of our town was a small, walled off seaside town, not a spread out lot. I'm not quite sure how this layout would even be defendable if they were to be part of proposed NPC enemy raids as the inhabitants would be scattered throughout the woodland. Players have argued "why would you want your world to be smaller?" I argue that there are plenty of sprawling scenes to explore already within the world, filled with resources and in some situations enemies. Those are the places to adventure while a POT should have the feel of an organized town (if that is the wish of the owner) and not filled with dead space (scenery for the sake of scenery, devoid of animals/resources) . The POT situation has seemed a bit cookie cutter in the layout approach, likely for technical / time constraints and the overwhelming (and likely unexpected) amount of POTs that were purchased. and it seems like the initial form you had to fill out and describe the layout of the town / description of the NPC's was unnecessary as well seeing as how it didn't help much in helping craft the vision of the town or the residing NPC's. It would've been easier just to show the predetermined layouts instead of going through the trouble of providing an unused layout. The POTs also seem like a way of feeding the add-on store, while a lot of add on content should likely be included with the purchase of the town itself. Let's see if things change, otherwise I suspect the majority of the POT's will be less than appealing in their appearance and to newer players wanting to inhabit them.

 

During the telethon they discussed having a means to change the 'entrance' to the zone, so smaller POTs could have players zone in closer to their main "town" center. No idea if they will implement it for R1, but that may solve the small POT issue (I'm a steward for a holdfast). This would help with running through large empty areas of land searching for the small holdfast town center in the zone.

Also, they are going to begin working on optimizations and this should help decrease loading times.

They also talked about having animals in POTs. Larger towns would have less as more space would be utilized for housing, but a smaller holdfast would have more animals. Again, no idea if for R1 or they had one too many shots

As for the aesthetics, I think it's the right of the POT owner to determine how the layout and house height should be. They can always boot the person for having a tall building in a so-called short building zoned area. The DEVs were floating around some ideas of changing textures possibly to fit a specific theme, such as the sandstone desert houses.

Watch part 2 of the Telethon. Lots of ideas and details in that video.