Housing

Jurixe

I've been obsessed with housing lately for no real reason, and in the midst of contemplating my dream house, I came across a few obstacles that had a pretty significantly negative factor in my desire to spend effort and credits on getting a text-house.

1) I want to make a big house with lots of cool features and non decay furniture and whatnot. But I want to make it in the style of a family manor, meaning a lot of people would use it, and I wouldn't want it to be rendered useless when I inevitably, someday, go dormant. I want people to be able to enjoy it after I'm gone, and continue making expansions to reflect a growing /changing family/organisation.

2) The home owner being the only person able to use many of the upgrades, place furniture, set door perms, create, change and destroy rooms and exits, makes the investment significantly less appealing. I would be more than willing to invest in a 400 cr stable upgrade that my allies could use, but for myself...I don't have mounts, so it'd be pointless for myself.

It has been brought up in previous incarnations of the forums that perhaps some aspects of housing could be made into investable powers to allow for more flexibility in house improvements andb expansion. I thought it might be worth a shot to revive the idea and gauge plausibility/feedback from the admin.

In order of most wanted to least wanted:

1) Being able to grant others the ability to drop/place furniture.

Multiple people can already place furniture in org buildings, surely it should be possible to do this also for houses? I think it would encourage people to buy furniture as gifts and such, as well. This was listed in the old forums, but I don't know what came of that.

2) Being able to grant others the ability to create rooms/exits, but not destroy.

This was rejected previously but no reason was given. I suspect it has to do with the fact that rooms and doors are bought with credits, and ownership in case of a falling out is always a contentious issue. I can understand that, but also suggest that it should be the onus of the player to know full well the risks before they decide to do it. People giving credits to another person for the privilege of a room in their house already exists - this would just let them do it on their own without the hassle.

As for the argument that it would sell less houses/plots, I don't think that's true. I would be -much- more likely to buy a room attached to a house with history than make a new one completely from scratch, simply because it would have a far greater roleplay meaning. We have so many plots of land belonging to dormant people anyway that never get used, and the subdivisions only get bigger and bigger.

3) If the above is not possible, perhaps just the ability to edit room descriptions and setting door perms.

This would make it easier for people who own rooms in a building to renovate their own rooms, and it has minimal structural impact - the owner can always change it back and it costs 1000 gold.

As for perms, you can already appoint co-captains on a ship who can set boarding perms, and it's not like you can sink a house!

4) The ability to jointly use some upgrades.

Residents of a house already enjoy all the benefits of the other upgrades as long as they have access - can stables not be the same? I really think it would encourage more people to purchase the substantially expensive upgrade. It could even be limited to a certain number - maybe only one per person not the owner, or maybe only five people could be assigned perms - assuming this is possible.

I hate typing on my phone so that's all for now. Feedback is most welcome, I'd really like to hear about why these may or may not be possible/good ideas, and alternatives if any.

Kaevan

I do have some interest in this.  While not everyone will go for the idea of family RP, I'm sure there are several old and prominent families (Lichlord, Dracotalus, Alexandrian, Aristata, LastGoodbye, Windsong, Sa'Rithven, Lighthawk, Corten, etc.) that could benefit in from this. If some sort of flexibility in plot ownership is not possible, could we perhaps tie it to an organisation like a clan and have it so that only the clan leader can place furniture and such?  Perhaps a investable power in clans/organisations?  There's always the danger of the clan head going inactive before remembering to pass on powers to others, but this could be worked around by investing powers wisely or making the clan 'democratic' (for varying degrees of democracy, anyway).  

In any case, I like the aforementioned idea and would be willing to continue to discuss and hammer out concerns if some individuals are really opposed to it.  

Qwindor

Umm I have the feeling that this will come to being a highclan of a different type or something. Not a bad idea as if you are really doing RP as a family it shouldnt be overly complicated to do so but it would probably require quite a large investment from the coding staff and players to make it even possible.

Edit:
As an addon thought I actually quite like this idea as it would bring even more reason for family RP to come out for the playerbase to really enjoy to an even greater extent.

Jurixe

:O I managed to log on at work! Didn't need to type all that on my phone after all >( also warning, incoming wall of text. I'm sorry! I just find this unexplored avenue really interesting.

A friend and I discussed some of the issues that might potentially crop up with some of the suggestions I made. The primary issue (to my understanding) revolved around players and the potential for abuse for some of these permissions (placing 30 magenta chairs in the living room and not being able to remove them, creating a bunch of nonsense exits and rooms, tampering with the descriptions). To what extent should the permissions extend, and are they even worth doing at all? What happens when the owner destroys rooms and/or doors built by other people, where do the room credits go?

Firstly, it seems only common sense to me that you should only invest said powers to people you trust that won't screw up your house with stupid things like the above. Even if they do, you should be able to undo all the damage and remove that person from your permissions as you are the owner. It is your responsibility to invest this sort of power only to people that you know will use it wisely, the same way you wouldn't let someone you didn't trust captain your ship.

With the contentious issue of room credit ownership, I've already touched on this briefly above but perhaps I can expand a bit more here. People who want to buy rooms to add on to a house should know all the inherent risks that come along with it. They should understand the fact that the house does not belong to them, and therefore if they choose to expend the credits to buy and build a room and the owner later returns and demolishes it, they shouldn't expect a refund. If it were possible to make it so that whoever builds a room gets the credits once destroyed, that would be good, but I don't think it's necessary. They should go to the homeowner - if they wanted a 100% secure investment, they would get their own property. 

This is not, as said above, any different from what is already happening now in that people are giving credits to homeowners to build rooms for them - perhaps only different in that the homeowner has already given their consent and so will be less likely to find fault with the room and destroy it. However, the risk is still there.

The issue with dropping furniture that the owner/other house users might not like, as said above, can also be remedied if it was possible to also give repossession privileges to other people. I'm in two minds about this - it could be potentially dangerous. Perhaps there could be a compromise by only allowing people to drop 1-3 pieces of furniture per room to prevent abuse. The owner, of course, would not be subject to this limitation.

For description-changing abilities, we considered an idea which would involve the ability for the homeowner to 'lock' certain room descriptions and make them unchangeable. So you wouldn't have to worry about other people messing up your grand ballroom, but they'd still be able to modify their bedroom or make small renovations in other less important rooms. I don't know if this is actually possible, but at least it's an idea to think about.

The only reason I didn't mention @Kaevan's idea regarding clan ownership is because I looked through the previous thread and it said org-owned houses would not be allowed. Maybe times have changed, though. I certainly don't see anything wrong with clans, at least, being able to build small subdivision clanhalls - I really think it would promote roleplay and it would solve a lot of the issues up there - the rooms would be clan-funded, the description/furniture/room creation powers could be invested based on rank, the clan leader would own the house - not so very different from a real House, I suppose, simply with far less mechanical advantages. But I don't see this as a bad thing. More avenues of roleplay, particularly community-based roleplay are always, to me, a good thing. The possibilities are endless - you could have a thieves' hideout, family clans, and so much more. It might (I'm eternally hopeful) also encourage a higher standard and investment into roleplay to make it worth it to have something as important and potentially identity-building as an official clan house.

There is always the possibility of it devolving into a fight if parties don't agree, but to be honest, I don't think (and this is a common argument, I know) that we should have to balance things around the lowest common denominator and ruin what could potentially be a very fun experience for other people. It's not really much different from two people sharing the cost for a ship, but only one of them can own it - you just have to trust that the other person won't run away with it, else you're out of luck.

Just going to end this wall of text with a disclaimer that I have no idea about coding ability and/or coding time that would be needed for any of this, but I figure if we're going to bother to dream, we may as well dream big. You can't know it's a no till you bring it up! I also know that many of the suggestions proposed above might simply be not feasible or not worth the time, and that's fine. I just thought I'd at least bring it up to find out the answer.

tl;dr: Lots of reasons and discussion about the proposed ideas, and if I had to choose I'd only really want the description privs/lock, the furniture drop perms, house door perms, and the ability to jointly use stables. Congratulations for reading through all of that if you did!

Riley

This was the idea August had with the Vallah Estate in Mhaldor, each member having their own rooms, door privs, etc. Unfortunately it never got past his room and the main estate, and than Riley was the only one using the estate at all, with no privs to do anything

Sarapis

If we were to do this, we'd be much more likely to do it as clan houses than the other way. The other way is messy. However, of necessity, room credits would cost more for a clan, since you're effectively creating a way for people to transfer room credits to each other (create 1 person clan, build house, transfer clan to other person). For the same reason, were the messier method to be considered, the house owner could definitely not receive back any value in credits from what other people in the house did, in terms of credits of any kind.

Anaidiana

I, too would like to be able to give perms to things like stables and the regen room.

Rinzai

Just some of my history on this, after I had like 10 rooms in Actar, I inquired what it would take for something like this, and it would have to be Organizationally owned, ( HighClan) but I have no means to pull it off.  The other downside was that I was told it would require tearing it all down, and rebuilding because you can't switch lands that have housing on it.

All of the permissions though to my land are generally clan based, and then allowing ranks and what not to control room access with door permissions has worked out decently for my needs. But I would be behind investible powers to allow others to do a Room Upgrade (excluding those that could be negative, like no roof?)

Jurixe

Sarapis said:

If we were to do this, we'd be much more likely to do it as clan houses than the other way. The other way is messy. However, of necessity, room credits would cost more for a clan, since you're effectively creating a way for people to transfer room credits to each other (create 1 person clan, build house, transfer clan to other person). For the same reason, were the messier method to be considered, the house owner could definitely not receive back any value in credits from what other people in the house did, in terms of credits of any kind.

I would be fine with the owner not getting back value, really. That seems fair.

Would we be talking about double cost, too, in terms of clan houses? I'm not really understanding the rationale about transferring room credits - surely people can just transfer credits to the other person to buy the room credit, if that was the intended purpose? Buying a clan for the sole purpose of building a room and then transferring it to the other person seems a really inefficient way to do things, not to mention expensive...That being said, clan houses would not cater to people that just want shared housing without giving it to a clan, but I think I personally would be willing to settle for clan houses.

Also for another question - would currently existing houses be able to be transferred to clan ownership as a one time thing? For instance, even if this is approved, I don't know how long it would take and I'd like to build the house now to use, but I want to eventually have it owned by the clan. Would I then just have to be patient and wait for this to go in, or would I be able to let the clan 'claim' it later on?

Sarapis

Jurixe said:

Sarapis said:

If we were to do this, we'd be much more likely to do it as clan houses than the other way. The other way is messy. However, of necessity, room credits would cost more for a clan, since you're effectively creating a way for people to transfer room credits to each other (create 1 person clan, build house, transfer clan to other person). For the same reason, were the messier method to be considered, the house owner could definitely not receive back any value in credits from what other people in the house did, in terms of credits of any kind.

I would be fine with the owner not getting back value, really. That seems fair.

Would we be talking about double cost, too, in terms of clan houses? I'm not really understanding the rationale about transferring room credits - surely people can just transfer credits to the other person to buy the room credit, if that was the intended purpose? Buying a clan for the sole purpose of building a room and then transferring it to the other person seems a really inefficient way to do things, not to mention expensive...That being said, clan houses would not cater to people that just want shared housing without giving it to a clan, but I think I personally would be willing to settle for clan houses.

Also for another question - would currently existing houses be able to be transferred to clan ownership as a one time thing? For instance, even if this is approved, I don't know how long it would take and I'd like to build the house now to use, but I want to eventually have it owned by the clan. Would I then just have to be patient and wait for this to go in, or would I be able to let the clan 'claim' it later on?

The rationale around not being able to transfer room credits is that once you've sunk credits into something, we don't let you pull value back out and transfer it/sell it to someone else. You get bound credits back from selling room/door credits because of this.

I can't really answer the rest of your questions I'm afraid because I have no idea if anything like this will go in right now, nor any idea on the details if it did. Sorry!

Tekk

Maybe the solution is not to use credits, but gold? It was always my understanding that buy something with credits = yours forever. Buy it with gold and it has the ability to be organizational owned. Like ships or clans. 

Xith

I'd say allow clans to possess their own credit pool and door/room credit pool so they can build their own house rooms, no extra cost. But this means properties owned by a clan are transferred along with clans in the case of used clans being given.

Example:

1. deposit 500 unbound credits in a clan's bank/inventory

2. clan credits convert 300 to bound

3. buy 5 room credits FOR <clan>

4. designate a plot as org-owned

5. add an investable power to clans/orgs for HOUSING commands

Ta da?

Anaidiana

or (and here's a wild idea) - to help with the allies aspect of housing upgrades (stables, regen rooms, etc).....allow us to set perms on those upgrades the same exact way as with a door/library/ship boarding.

housingupgrade allow member Sentaari would allow all the Sentaari (r.i.p.) to use that housing upgrade IN THAT ROOM ONLY. If it needs to be a paid for perk, I'd be fine for throwing down a room credit to allow that (yes, going with the costs for in subs vs out of subs), so if I wanted to let in my Nerai too, I'd have to cough up the creds for the extra permissions permit.

Jurixe

Any idea from the admin if there's a chance any variation on these ideas would be accepted at all? *hopeful* I recognise they won't be high priority, but as this ties heavily into a large-scale project of mine that I'm trying to do, I'd love to know if there's a chance at all so I can figure out what to do for my end.