We need a way to exclude certain housing types

Like the Eye of Sauron.

 

My problem is on the one hand I agree with Drocis (a rarity). Multiple lighthouses look silly. It makes no sense and it looks awful.

On the other hand when you create spaces for player lots, it's unfair to tell the players they can only do certain things with them. Why should lots on Kingsport River be subject to rules that others are not?

If they wanted to protect the integrity of how Kingsport looks with regards to lighthouses, they could have simply not added water lots. This applies for all other kinds of structure too. This is a developer issue.

 

I agree specific to PoTs, we paid for the right to customize our town and decide who lives there. We should also be able to dictate the types of housing we have within.

Regarding NPC towns and PRTs, meh, if they have no other choice, let them hang a lighthouse off the side of a creek that couldn't handle a Johnboat. That's their prerogative.

 

That's why I'm asking for a developer solution, one that stops people from using light houses in stupid situations.

 

I'm unsure what is wrong with threatening ejection to the deed holder? I know if I lived in a nice POT (and I do!) that if there were Town Owner Rules to help keep the look of the place somehow in someones vision, such as one lighthouse, that the lighthouse would be granted (or rather, allowed to be placed) to a player of the town owners choosing (since there is only one, who should get it, town owners choice of course).. or that the town owner place their own and disallow anyone else from placing one, with threat of ejection from the town if they do not comply?

 

O'rly?
That's the problem with this Community and 'immersion'.
It's the proof that it's an empty argument.
Quite a few people in this topic used it already to justify their opinion.
But the Lighthouses in a row is ok. Because you can 'rp around it.
Just lol.

 

I'm hoping the Dev's read the OP, rolled their eyes and moved on.
The last thing we need - with so much to get done in the next few months - is dev time spent on the likes of this.

 

The case I would make is that the land rush will make those homes potentially permanent for the life of the game. So now it certainly better than later.

I understand it's the last hour here before the final wipe and we have a huge number of things to do. I doubt they rolled their eyes though. Every time they've spoken about lighthouses they've been on the side of the argument that says it's not very cool to have them in weird places or to have them in multiple lots in the same town. Unfortunately you may be right though and it might be so low on the priority list at this point that nothing gets down about it.

 

Yeah, the devs don't need to do this, you already have this power!

 

Im for it, I think it should go into npc towns to.

 

Maybe when someone places a house on a lot deed the community of that town votes on if they like the house design or not.

Then if that town community wants 5 lighthouses - fine. If not then you will place a different house for the town community to vote on.

What an idea!

 

Awesome idea. We could call such communities where the players make those decisions Player Run Towns, or PRTs for short.
Seriously though, Portalarium gave them that name, so why not live up to it?

 

Sound like SWG's, right? I don't know I never played that game past beta.

I don't really like the voting system idea though. What if you live in a town where 5 people want nothing but light houses?

I think there's a reasonable standard that could be developed by Portalarium staring with 1 light house on the shoreline.

 

I can see a benifit to default controls for when you aren't around to enforce rules, but nothing like that should go unnoticed for more than a week realistically.

If the biggest issue I need to contend with as a Governor is housing style, I'll consider myself pretty fortunate.

Is it worth the extra coding time? I'll leave this one to the masses to decide. I'm good either way.

 

I see no need for coding - what coding would be needed? All the tools we need for this already exist. Provide feedback to the team at Portalarium that town X looks awful because 19 people rolled into a river town with desert buildings or put up 14 lighthouses. They will then spend time checking on it and working with the players to relocate if they so decide.

It's all already in place. Just bring it up when it happens. Be warned, though the person that paid for that lighthouse is going possibly be upset - much more upset than we are at the "eyesore" that this creates in our minds. There truly is enough of this in real life - do we really have to drag it into our gaming as well?

 

There are things that could be done to support this, but it is too late for Episode 1. Maybe for episode 2 they could do the following:
1. With community consultation create several themes for PRTs, each of which specifies the type of buildings permitted and restrictions on the numbers of some specific types. It does not dictate where buildings of specific types can be placed.
2. When new PRTs are released they come with a default theme. This means that only buildings permitted by that theme can be placed in the PRT.
3. Allow residents to submit a custom theme, provided it would not result in the exclusion of any existing buildings. If a majority vote for the change, the new theme is applied to the PRT.

This would require Portalarium to write code that checks against the theme for a given PRT whenever anyone attempts to place a house there, and refuses placement if it is not permitted by the theme.

There could also be PRTs that have no theme - so-called "free towns", and towns could vote to become free towns. Entropy.

 

I just want to briefly comment on this.

Its not really about active members of the community being upset with what someone is doing with their house. Do you really think that the way towns look in the game doesn't turn people away from the game? I've read a lot of negative reviews; many people complain about it. I know that there are some people here on the forums who are refusing to play the online game because of it.

But, no, I agree... its a bad idea to bring that kind of politics in the game. Which is the direction I think the game will go down if we have players rating other lots affecting whether they're visible and other proposals like that. That will lead to things like ratings griefing. A nasty guild will vote down their enemies ratings.

Which is why it should be simply up to the devs to decide what rules the sandbox has. There are already some, like you can't put certain items indoors.

They've already decided they're not going to do any more house style placement restrictions, though, so I consider it a bit of a moot issue.

 

I was actually joking, a town full of lighthouses is a terrible idea, and if that kind of thing is possible, putting in place some sort of limitation may actually be a good idea

 

Absolutely agree here. Of course the flip-side would be to have some NPC towns where players could not place houses at all and thus have full control of the appearance of the town. The problem with that is the town would be rather dead and empty feeling. Many structures but how realistic would it be to fill them with NPCs that seem like they have actual lives? An in-between would be to only permit players to "buy" an existing structure but that bites heavily into the sand box aspect of the game.

I look forward to seeing what people end up doing in game and how things evolve in time because of the community reacting in-game hopefully avoiding appeals to authority to resolve their issues.