Fixing Player Housing

Rangor

If you leave cookies outside your front door, the thieves don't have to break in to find them.

Torinn

@Xaden Fair I guess.  

Aegoth

Kogan said:

Aegoth said:

You have about as much "right" to say no as aggressors have a right to bust your shit in at their whim and fancy. There are no "rights" here. You can do your best to -avoid- conflict, before/during/after it starts, but to say that you have a "right" to that, and to assume you need to be consenting, is laughable at best

Going back a bit, but in terms of "busting someone's shit" at your whim and fancy help pk says otherwise.

That was entirely my point..  as in you have no rights here.

Cooper

Melodie said:

It takes 160 room credits to build a privacy upgrade for a single room in OOS, which translates to 32,000 wood (which has gotten harder to get ahold of now) and 16,000 stone.

At the lowest of wood prices and around 90 gold per stone (I'm trying to be generous and use low prices), you're looking to spend around 25 million gold, or 250 credits, per room of privacy. That's generally at the very lowest. Same goes for stables, and a few other room upgrades.



Edit: I have been sitting on this particular grievance for a long while.

Idea #   : 169

Filed by : Melodie.

Filed on : 2015/01/28 08:36:51

Approved : NO

Idea text:

For out of subdivision homes, remove the double cost of upgrades, while retaining the double cost of building rooms. Building an out of subdivision house is already extremely prohibitive, but to make upgrades cost twice as much (so 400 credits for no-prism instead of 200), on top of paying so much extra for the land itself, seems excessive. This at least keeps it an expensive venue without making it outrageous.

2.5 million gold, not 25 million.

That cost can also be significantly reduced if you mine yourself instead of buying off market. 

Melodie

Yeah, as someone earlier in the thread pointed out, that was a tired brain thing, sorry. I did mean 2.5 million.

And yes, mining does help reduce the cost, but it's still a fairly expensive effort, along with building the room, along with scavenging around for real life weeks to get the wood... for a single upgrade. It's still fairly untenable.

Saeva

I understand that Achaea is a conflict driven game. But it’s is also a relationship driven game. Saying literally nowhere should be safe is to say people should have no space to interact and develop stories and role play in a private setting. This is obviously something a huge portion of the player base wants to be able to do. Not all role play is suitable for a public guard stack. The fact that ships are used inappropriately is due to the fact that homes are insufficient for accommodating their sole purpose. To be a home. A closed door. The welcome mat rolled out or drawn in.

Housing in my prior game had a risk. If you got knocked out, someone could rifle through your belongings and steal a key. You might leave your door unlocked. You may have someone very stealthily follow you in if you aren’t careful much like shops in achaea. But all in all, they were homes you paid for and they were a safe haven for role play. They were highly valued and well utilized parts of the game. 

Achaea already gives little to no privacy to players, even more so with the gem and veil changes. It would be really fantastic to have the opportunity to use a house as a house instead of some pretty lines of description that makes people too anxiously and stressed out to share in with friends. Having to keep all of your items in your home locked away in a chest  or on even worse, just on your person, because of the futility of housing... it’s not positive. It removes the element of sharing.

People are out in the world and in their cities all the time. If they want a place to play away from the all encompassing “you”, I don’t see why that should not be an optional. Hermits will find a way to hermit. But most people aren’t going to sit in their home and never interact with the world. If you aren’t invited to someone’s home, you usually don’t bust in anyway to piss them off. Saying people aren’t entitled to safety is a statement countered by saying you aren’t entitled to invite yourself where you aren’t welcome. That’s what city raids are for, in my own opinion.

Again, it’s all opinion and preference. But it’s seems like the invader mentality, where housing is concerned,  is in the vast minority of this player base. 
Jurixe has proposed some interesting options. It’s would be great to see them considered or expanded upon by admin.

Kiet

Part of the issue with the 'we shouldn't have safety!' thing is that people are gonna find a way to be safe anyway, so what's the point? There is no easy way to remove every single way people can 'avoid consequences.' You'd have to nerf, at a minimum:

- Ships (even if you nerf harbour ships, they can just sail to some fuck-off point and sit there with little chance of anyone finding them)
- Phase
- Temples
- Indoor guard stacks
- House halls with multiple locked doors
- Burrowing
- Nirvana/inferno/iso/chaos plane

And so on. If someone wants to avoid you entirely, they'll find a way. I'm not sure what the 'medium' is where it becomes obnoxious enough to avoid you that most people won't do it (but someone always will) while not ruining it for all the people that just wanna hang out in quiet.

Reyson

Buying no-prism in a room and dropping a monolith is cheap compared to a gem/veil, and has been pointed out, offers a tremendous amount of security, though. If Mindshell's right (and I have no reason to doubt that) and sapience doesn't work in a privacy-upgraded room, then houses are actually superior to random guard stacks, no?

Saeva

I have my nonprism rooms. Doesn’t mean that mono won’t decay when I’m dormant here and there. Single mom life’s isn’t hard sometimes and the last thing on my mind is sigil decay. And that is very problematic with no alternative.

Alrena

Saeva said:

I have my nonprism rooms. Doesn’t mean that mono won’t decay when I’m dormant here and there. Single mom life’s isn’t hard sometimes and the last thing on my mind is sigil decay. And that is very problematic with no alternative.

The mono isn't an issue while dormant, since you'd have to be there to have that be a risk. We did already state we're in favour of an eye-sigil upgrade, or simply making it impossible to go through doors as a soul. That would alleviate sigil issues.

Proficy

Idea for a house upgrade to have old gem effect. Take you off QW and only allow people to send you tells on your ally list or something.
Some times i want to be in creeper mode where i dont want people to know im around but still be able to hear and see things.
@Nicola @Makarios

Saeva

Alrena said:

Saeva said:

I have my nonprism rooms. Doesn’t mean that mono won’t decay when I’m dormant here and there. Single mom life’s isn’t hard sometimes and the last thing on my mind is sigil decay. And that is very problematic with no alternative.

The mono isn't an issue while dormant, since you'd have to be there to have that be a risk. We did already state we're in favour of an eye-sigil upgrade, or simply making it impossible to go through doors as a soul. That would alleviate sigil issues.

Erm, I meant to say eye.

Mathilda

Clan/family owned housing please? With the exhorbitant cost of housing in general, it's not uncommon for a handful of people to work together for a project. With the current ownership limitations, though, only one of them can be the "true" owner and it sucks when that person goes dormant.

[Deleted User]

Proficy said:

Take you off QW and only allow people to send you tells on your ally list or something.

This exists already. It's called using a cham tattoo + turning your tells off, then using the inbuilt ALLOWTELLS function. If you wanna be removed from QWHO while in a house, that's what beds are for. Being able to completely disappear from who lists should remain removed.

Accipiter

Just in case people didn't notice, from the promotion announcement:

New to the WARES are:

A plinth of Seleucarian marble: 1 Mayan Crown
This plinth displays 1 item.
The item is placeable/takeable by the plinth's owner only.
This item can only be dropped in housing rooms.
Once dropped PUSH PLINTH to secure it in place.
This item can be unsecured with PULL PLINTH, then take the plinth and drop it elsewhere as desired.

A banded chest: 3 Mayan Crowns
This chest holds up to 50 items, and is open/closeable by its owner only.
Putting/getting items from this chest can only be done when the item is in a housing room.
This item can only be dropped in housing rooms.
Once dropped PUSH CHEST to secure it in place.
This item can be unsecured with PULL CHEST, then take the chest and drop it elsewhere as desired.

NOTE: There will be large scale changes to resource storage in the near future so don't go crazy buying a million of the banded chests for long term resource storage.

Jurixe

First of all, I'm grateful to the admin for these promotion inclusions which show they've obviously been reading this thread and have taken note of some concerns. Thank you for making us feel heard.

Very pleased to see the inclusion of the chest. Does anyone know the answers to the following questions:

Can people interact with the item displayed on the plinth?
Can anyone drop the chest in a house or is it housing owner only?

I love the abode's emblem change but 6MC is a very steep price for that functionality, in my opinion. I'd definitely get it at 1 (maybe 2) MCs but for 6 I could get a scrying bowl...

I'm also fervently hoping that some of these changes will lead into clan housing being made a thing. That's all I want this year!

Tiamat

Love the new shop-of-wonder items. Just bought my first plinth, it looks great in a room and shows the item perfectly; however, I wish the item on the plinth could be examined in the same way as displaycases. 

Examle: 

look displaycase (item123456) || will show how the item looks like.

look plinth (item123456) || just shows the short description 

Kayeil

Tiamat said:

Love the new shop-of-wonder items. Just bought my first plinth, it looks great in a room and shows the item perfectly; however, I wish the item on the plinth could be examined in the same way as displaycases. 

Examle: 

look displaycase (item123456) || will show how the item looks like.

look plinth (item123456) || just shows the short description 

Can you show an example of it?

Tiamat

I will get it soon @kayeil. 

WARNING!! Was testing out the plinth and currently the item is broken, anyone can take the item off the plinth and keep the said item. Would make sure it is resolved before leaving your item on display. I’ll keep you guys posted.

Tiamat

*******************************[ Bug Details ]******************************* Bug ID: 10187 Category: Unassigned Status: Untested Report Text: the new plinth is very buggy, a person was able to grab the item off the plinth, and one cannot really examine the item on the plinth. I hope these things can be fixed, I would at least like to see a way for someone to see the long description of an item on the plinth. the said item that was nabbed never returned to the plinth and had stayed in my inventory. (Converted from issue #82085) Report Appends: Solution Text:

**I hope this doesn’t end up in bug nest**

Arin!

@Jurixe, have you submitted any IDEAS that we/ I can support? I don’t know that I have anything to add, but I feel silly every time I settle down at Centre Crossing or an indoor guard stack to work on House advancement papers or research something in the news. Thise are things that I would like to be able to do in my house! Curled up with my pets and blankets, and with friends stopping by to chat if they feel like it. As it is, every time I step into my house I feel vaguely anxious to leave because all of the city leaders have pressed house security so heavily and none of my rooms even have anti-prism because I am Small and Poor. So I just hang out on my ship or in heavily populated city areas and do those things

Jurixe

@Arin!

Some of these had made it into the IDEA system many years ago, but were never looked at or put on the backburner for so long that they expired. I felt it wasn't worth putting most of these in unless housing was being considered for a general rework as most of housing's issues are not quick fixes. That's why I created a thread, so that these issues could be discussed and the ideas could be kept somewhere accessible.

You're most welcome to take any of the ideas you found useful here and IDEA it in-game. Security, as always, is the major concern about housing but I'm afraid that's going to fall into the 'Not a Quick Fix' box.

I'm still holding out hope for clan housing!

Morsul

I feel like it's doomed into a catch-22 scenario. The admins won't give housing the time of day because so few people actually make use of it / so few people actually make use of it because admins won't give it the time of day.

Jurixe

Last I'd seen on one of the producer update topics is that housing was being considered for a rework, but I have no idea how far along they are. I agree with that assessment, sadly, but I post about housing about once a year just to remind people that yes, there are players that care about housing being used more and really think it's untapped potential as a gold sink/better facilitate roleplay.

Accipiter

Player housing fragments the playerbase as much as the planes used to. I would prefer if housing was as secure as ships are if only to stop the bitching but I understand the Admin reluctance to make something completely secure.

Iloisee

The admin treated ship hiding by creating a specialization + cost service to remove players from their ships under certain circumstances. They could similarly treat houses -- make them much more secure and create a "kidnapper" service for Marks / active bounty collectors to Minia-style haul the player out of their house and the subdivision. Then they can run to a guard stack and we'll only have the same complaints as before! 

Having read over the first half of this thread... I also very much want housing to be more useable. I think security is actually fairly good minus the dormancy maintenance issue. This, along with item theft, could be improved with special metadata for items legitimately owned by a player, an idea I plan to write up eventually, but it would probably require in-depth coding.

But houses are quite inconvenient to get to, mostly owing to the inability to speedwalk/fast travel home. I don't like the idea of ditching subdivision areas entirely. Perhaps add a free personal landmark slot for each plot owned (or one "primary" plot) and enable speedwalk in subdivisions? Actually, now that I think of it, that probably wouldn't be hard to script on the client-side... Hmm.

Edit: maybe make a security package for rooms costing room credits that non-decays sigils placed in that room, or dramatically increases their lifespan a la stasis. Totems too?

Cailin

I would have to look it up with searchnews for the details, but after this thread, the admin came out with a couple artefacts to sort of put a band-aid on some of the problems. One was a banded chest, which cannot be opened by anyone but the owner (or something like that), and the other was something that let you travel immediately to your house from the subdivision entrance.

Iloisee

Cailin said:

something that let you travel immediately to your house from the subdivision entrance.

Wait what!

Cailin

ANNOUNCE NEWS #4876                                     (02/01/2018 at 00:01) 
From   : Nicola
To     : Everyone
Subject: February in Achaea!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<snip>

The Abode's Emblem (6 Mayan Crowns) will now work from anywhere in the city whose subdivision
contains the attuned housing location.
   It does require full health and almost full mana to use.

New to the WARES are:

A plinth of Seleucarian marble: 1 Mayan Crown
   This plinth displays 1 item.
   The item is placeable/takeable by the plinth's owner only.
   This item can only be dropped in housing rooms.
   Once dropped PUSH PLINTH to secure it in place.
   This item can be unsecured with PULL PLINTH, then take the plinth and drop it elsewhere as
desired.

A banded chest: 3 Mayan Crowns
   This chest holds up to 50 items, and is open/closeable by its owner only.
   Putting/getting items from this chest can only be done when the item is in a housing room.
   This item can only be dropped in housing rooms.
   Once dropped PUSH CHEST to secure it in place.
   This item can be unsecured with PULL CHEST, then take the chest and drop it elsewhere as desired.
  
NOTE: There will be large scale changes to resource storage in the near future so don't go crazy
buying a million of the banded chests for long term resource storage.

So head to www.achaea.com/credits and get your Globes of Shifting Continents today!

Penned by My hand on the 24th of Daedalan, in the year 763 AF.

Found it

Arin!

Guys!!! New housing stuff!!! (And it all costs Crowns, ouch, but also wonderful!)