Fixing Player Housing

Gawi

I think the point tiamat is not that you are getting shit for what you do, but because you came on here whining about changes lol. sorry. i mean, if changes were actually to be made, people were able to upgrade houses, you would still be able to rob dormant people and such, you would still be able to get into peoples houses that couldn't afford the upgrades. though... why would you want to get into those houses, they probably don't have anything. :P 

Reyson

Look up that really famous Spock quote. You know, something something collective good something needs of the few, or the one.

Aralaya

"Logic dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"

Morthif

Seems like everyone has been saying the game needs more gold sinks, reasonably secure and customizable housing feels like a great gold sink. If any asshat can walk away with all your stuff because you couldn't log in for a few weeks and your eye sigil decayed then people aren't going to bother dumping loads of gold into their house. If a reasonable amount of safety and security is afforded then I bet we see the opposite.

Penwize

I feel like people are forgetting that one of Achaea's draws as a living, breathing world is the clear and present threat of loss and danger inherent in its world.  It's a key feature, and something that draws people to high-stakes PvP games like Eve, or to online survival games like Ark and Rust. 

I see a vocal portion of Achaea demanding all of this danger be removed, and a lot of it already has been.  In some ways, I think those changes have been good.  But in other ways, I'm worried about that trend.  As danger has been removed from the game, so has little individual conflicts.  I remember so small stories that were created out of that threat of loss - or from loss itself.  Dontarion stealing the Staff of Nicator from @Rangor and getting an impromptu mini-event. @Zulah forceboarding, kidnapping and ransoming of a Shallamese girl.  These things can't happen anymore.  Those features were removed, and so that avenue of strife can't drive interesting stories anymore.

That's a motivator behind my suggestions so many pages back.  This game thrives on plays and counterplays.  Without that, the game is static, boring.  It becomes just a chat room where nothing happens because nothing is threatening, outside of admin-run events.  I don't want to see that happen. 

Housing definitely needs some changes to liven it up, but changes balanced on keeping the world alive and at least moderately dangerous.  Mitigating danger should require effort, and at the same time loss should be limited to some reasonable amount. 

Mathilda

It's either houses become 100% safe enough to be used regularly (fully decked with interesting tidbits, furniture, and items), or it's not. You don't see houses get used much at all because 1) it's expensive, 2) it's a security risk to all. The first one is by design, and the second one thieves want to keep. Hence, it will remain as a vastly underutilized section of the game

Long live ships

Aralaya

I don't think housing should be 100% secure, that's boring as fuck.
But someone shouldn't be able to clear someone out just because they didn't shell out 2 crowns per item.

Skye

Penwize said:

 I remember so small stories that were created out of that threat of loss - or from loss itself.  Dontarion stealing the Staff of Nicator from @Rangor and getting an impromptu mini-event. @Zulah forceboarding, kidnapping and ransoming of a Shallamese girl. 

The thing about these two examples is that they involve some sort of player interaction. Gemming into a dormant person's house is kind of a one-sided affair.

Melodie

Also both of those events involved Divine in some manner, even if only sparsely, and there's more or less no way a thief auto-grabbing stuff in your house is going to create an event suddenly.

I'm all about Achaea not being a 100% safe haven, and having danger, risk, loss. But I ask this question again, since it didn't ever get answered: If the admin have decided regular theft (person vs person) had to be nerfed so hard because the amount of loss was incredibly high and making players quit the game for good (often over just a minor lapse in security, or being disconnected, etc), why should house theft be treated differently to that?

Penwize

Melodie said:

why should house theft be treated differently to that?

They had metrics indicating regular theft causes player losses directly, so they worked to change that.  Regular theft targeted people of comparatively low investment - people just coming out of newbiedom most of the time.  To retain those players, theft was changed to the more limited version it is now.

There's a marked difference between newer players being affected by theft of that scale, and house theft.  House theft targets established players with enough of an investment to both have a house, and have a need for a stockpile of things that can be stolen. 

Melodie

I think you'd be sorely mistaken to think old theft only chased off newbies, for the most part. It might have targeted them more openly, but I think one of the worst case scenarios was very often midbies and established players getting disconnected in a public locale and being stripped.

Accipiter

Mathilda said:

It's either houses become 100% safe enough to be used regularly (fully decked with interesting tidbits, furniture, and items), or it's not. You don't see houses get used much at all because 1) it's expensive, 2) it's a security risk to all. The first one is by design, and the second one thieves want to keep. Hence, it will remain as a vastly underutilized section of the game

Long live ships

I don't believe 2 is as big a factor as you seem to. Houses were well used when they were implemented and they were a lot more expensive then than they are now. It is just the expectation of safety has gone -way- up. Back when guildhalls were a thing people stood around outside the entrance to them chatting, that was the meeting places for many people if they didn't want the free for all of Fish St and Xroads, now if you even think about standing anywhere near an estate you get reamed.

Say you lose something that costs 200k, that is 20 credits at today's prices, about $8 if you get them in a tiny package. Why are you crying about that?

Say someone does get into a house, unless they are a monk pretty much everything area-wide has been removed so just let them sit there attempting to brazier.

The expectation of safety is so high now days, but what you can actually lose is so low I don't understand what people are complaining about.

Mathilda

$8 is approximately a whole third of my daily salary. Not everyone lives in the luxury of the US or western Europe.

Torinn

My only thing is, stealing from a house without sigils would be done whether they're  dormant or not.  Nobody can tell if X person has neglected their due diligence to secure their things out of laziness or carlessness, or if they're dormant.  Stealing stuff from houses is kinda a mean thing to do but it's not on the theif to somehow know if this particular person is still around or not.  What if there was a dormancy command that could safeguard your stuff for an extended time but couldn't be abused?  It'd protect your stuff for maybe a consistent drain on your bank account and couldn't be used constantly.  Once your gold is gone, then you need to either figure out how to move your stuff, put more gold in, or you've been away for so long you probably aren't coming back

Kogan

Aegoth said:

There are ways to protect your belongings even in dormancy

Going back to this we all don't plan to go dormant and nobody should be punished in any sense for going dormant. Regardless of investment in anything.

Torinn said:

My only thing is, stealing from a house without sigils would be done whether they're  dormant or not.  Nobody can tell if X person has neglected their due diligence to secure their things out of laziness or carlessness, or if they're dormant. 

I read your whole post, but I kinda stopped putting much thought into it here considering honours works and tells me when someone is unranked. Which I've always thought to be the meaning of dormant. The plot owner is shown in the room description. Not to mention you pretty much know. Its not like you don't have all day to contemplate it with how safe phase is anyways. 

Reyson

My big problem with 'cool stuff happened cuz of theft!' (or anything else, for that matter) as an argument is that for every instance of something truly excellent coming of it, there are dozens, if not hundreds of instances of it being boring, frustrating, workaday, and not really adding anything to Achaea as a game.

Kyrra

I’m using figurines from stockings to customise shit for my house and make it resetting to rooms.

Always an idea for the people sitting on dozens of them.

Melodie

Trust me, I have a list of things I'd like to do if I had dozens of figurines.

Jurixe

What I think a lot of people are missing, especially re: 'safe' houses and lockable chests, is that these things already exist.

A ship is a safe house.
A 2MC display case is a lockable artie chest.

What I am proposing is simply a reskin of these functions. Make houses have the same capacity for security as ships, but gate them behind expensive price tags. Give me a lockable artie chest that isn't a display case because sometimes I don't want to display things I want to store.

That's it. Would I like it if they were affordable? Sure. But I'm not discussing the economics of that. I just want housing brought up to par with ships for housing usefulness and functionality. In these aspects, I'm not suggesting anything new. If that is your reason for objecting, bear that in mind.

But if you are universally objecting to safe places, that's more understandable, but that's also why I suggested gating it behind high prices. There's a reason not everyone has a ship, but it's a goal for people. If they can save up for it or afford it, they should have the option to get it. Right now even if I were rich, I couldn't make my home a ship. I doubt having the option would hamper theft and conflict all that much than it already is from ships.

Since ships are here to stay, I must assume it's properties are too. So why not for houses, where at least the RP scope is wider and more customisable?

Solnir

Props to Jurixe for trying to keep this thread on the rails despite everyone else fighting against that.

Reyson

Jurixe said:

What I think a lot of people are missing, especially re: 'safe' houses and lockable chests, is that these things already exist.

A ship is a safe house.
A 2MC display case is a lockable artie chest.

What I am proposing is simply a reskin of these functions. Make houses have the same capacity for security as ships, but gate them behind expensive price tags. Give me a lockable artie chest that isn't a display case because sometimes I don't want to display things I want to store.

That's it. Would I like it if they were affordable? Sure. But I'm not discussing the economics of that. I just want housing brought up to par with ships for housing usefulness and functionality. In these aspects, I'm not suggesting anything new. If that is your reason for objecting, bear that in mind.

But if you are universally objecting to safe places, that's more understandable, but that's also why I suggested gating it behind high prices. There's a reason not everyone has a ship, but it's a goal for people. If they can save up for it or afford it, they should have the option to get it. Right now even if I were rich, I couldn't make my home a ship. I doubt having the option would hamper theft and conflict all that much than it already is from ships.

Since ships are here to stay, I must assume it's properties are too. So why not for houses, where at least the RP scope is wider and more customisable?

I'd like a few more options for making a place come alive with displayed items, particularly if you do have something cool that you can show off. And given how rare it is that people use furnishing skills, adding functionality to furnishing seems like a good way to get more people involved in that particular gold sink- though maybe highly customised housing is too niche an activity for it to be widespread? Not sure about that!

Alternatively, I'd like to see room upgrades be employed for a few new things, as I've mentioned before; wall-mounting would be pretty neat, as would pedestals in the style of a trophy room. I'm sure they'd be pretty hefty, given the cost of the other security-themed upgrades available, so it'd be a pretty decent investment, I suspect. I'm good with that.

Keorin

The risks of being in my subdivision house are higher then the risks to standing on a guardstack, and so I won't bother visiting my house unless the privacy is needed.

The risks of me forgetting to upkeep all my sigils is higher then the probability that item theft will work, so I won't put anything valuable in a house.

I'm all for risk. I like staying Dauntless when I have the gold, because I like knowing I can get attacked whenever. But the only thing the risks in housing do for me is make it so I'll likely never invest seriously into it. My problem isn't that housing's not completely safe, it's that it's usually less safe then just not bothering at all. Especially since losing items to someone coming in as a soul, or getting prismed to because I looked away for the wrong two minutes aren't just risks, they're one-sided, boring risks.

Torinn

"unranked" means retired, not dormant, doesn't it?  

Solnir

No. "He/She has given up the adventuring life." is retired. Unranked is either less than level 30 or dormant.

Mathilda

Nah, "given up the adventuring life" is retired. "Unranked in Achaea" means they haven't logged in for iirc 30 RL days straight.

Kogan

Torinn said:

"unranked" means retired, not dormant, doesn't it?  

Is this why all those people got kicked from their House?

Torinn

No, that was intentional :P. 

Didn't know about the unranked and dormancy.  I swear I saw plenty of people whose last login was longer than 30 days and didn't have that.  Maybe I just didn't notice

Tiamat

Pretty sure I stole the dagger that made Pentharian. Gave it to a god and they have since sat on it. Not my fault I RP’ed something important and admin sat on it. All I can do is try.

*pretty sure this breaks the BS I don’t do anything but grief because I just am who I am approach, people like to attempt to pin me as.* 

This was was less than a year ago on top of it

if I was a total asshole I would have just kept it.

Tiamat

I didn’t want to make this public but since my character is on display at this point, might as well tell the truth. 

Wanted to give admin the benefit of the doubt.

Rispok

To be honest I skipped a few pages.

As somebody who uses ships, I can say that today alone, I interacted positively with 35 other players.

I don't know if there is benefit to veil being able to see what I am up to, or if there is detriment to having a prism to my boat, but it's not something I think needs a change from how it currently is.