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Dream Home

Z

Zyon Rockler

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Since customized housing came in, I had always hoped they would return to add to it and fix it once it became apparent that it was a good change.

It seemed limited but because housing is the biggest draw to the game I always thought they would improve on it.

One of the first things was, that the fact that the older homes seemed limited, like a small home compared to a large house or the fact that you could change a customized house but not an existing home.

One of the reasons, I guess, when you would buy a deed for a house, it made it seem like a positive improvement but with the change in the system you could now place slabs, which to me was a huge negative.

I never liked the foundations. I think they should be optional. I would have liked it better if you could of just purchased land, then when somebody else was in the housing tool they could see what land is owned and what land was not.

Then, you would have the option to customize the land so you could either build on it or use it for other things.

The land rule should allow you to own more land so you could own maybe a 80 x 80 landmass. On it, you could build homes but they would have the same rules where you would need an 8 x 3 spacing, so almost the same. The largest structure that you could place on this land would be an 18 x 18.

Then you would have plots you could place for farming that would grow different things. You could add trees, connect to waterways and roads.

There would probably have to be a new landmass added to accomodate this new land idea. Even some of the water off land could be owned to build docks that are on or connected to your land. New castles, towers and keeps could go into the pick menu. No more slabs. Every size would have a pick that you would place.

They could let players build them on test and then pick winners. A few for each size and type. Then you place and have to build at least the cost of the original design or the building reverts. You could add more but never less, foundations optional.

So, they would really be expanding the housing system by adding tools to make homes and gardens and even farms, a very long list, like fencing, tree types, ponds, stones. Maybe you could add spawns you would buy, like cows, bulls, pigs, goats and sheep. Water wheels, bakeries, peach trees, apple trees, figs, frost wood, blood wood, oak trees.

So, then you have outside decor you could add. Wells, bridges, flowers, paths.

Functional structures that you could place on your land, like a stable, tailor shop or a bank, bar, dock house and so on.

These types of structures you would pay a tax for and if you did not pay that small structure would fall on your land.

Now if this could be done, they should do it. The Devs could make sure there are places that you could not place to maintain game play. Like, mining, chopping trees and spawns.

So, once they would zone out land, the rest would be up to us.

Would be a great gold sink, the size of the land you buy, every item you add and some buildings on the property could continuosly cost money but not everything.

I was thinking maybe 100 of these, 80 x 80's.
 

RaDian FlGith

Babbling Loonie
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Just FYI, the reason all houses have slabs rather than just sitting on the ground is because the way the client(s) draw the graphics for the game, if you had a flower or rock or something you can presently place over sitting under your house, it would actually appear inside your house.

In order to prevent having to have a very narrow amount of housing space, they slapped 'em on slabs.

Might also be to hide the deed that is the physical, in-game object that the game uses to represent your house to itself.

There's a small handful of other reasons for the slab, but graphically, that's the most important reason they exist.



In response to some of the rest, rumor has it at one time they were considering a "kingdoms" expansion that would actually give you the ability to till the land and such, but... that clearly never happened. Shame too, as it would be nice to have a small space around an area that you could do stuff to (ie: gardening in New Magincia).
 
Z

Zyon Rockler

Guest
I can understand why they needed to put the foundation but the fact that you only needed to put a foundation was the problem. If a fully designed house was placed and you could customize but only with the value upward, there would at least be a structure placed and not just a slab.

Also, by being able to choose a design people would have probably just kept the design and some designs could of cost more than others, bringing housing into today's economy.

Also, if they would build a new land and create housing zones that were 80 x 80 they wouldn't have to worry about obstructions. So, you could use the foundation in situations where you had a rock or an obstacle.

Other places you may not need a foundation, so, it could be optional and even if they kept the foundation it would not really affect placing several small structures on your land.

The real question is, Can the Devs create these 80 x 80 homesteads where the land itself can be customized so that the server would recognize the land as being owned by the player with or without the slab or foundations.

So, then it would just be a matter of adding items to the customization tool, so that things could be placed onto the ground itself, possibly paths, waterways and any other type of object.

Then, the next question would be, Could they allow several structures or houses that have foundations to be placed on this land and recognized as being owned by 1 account?

Could these structures then be assigned different decay types as well as assigning the land to be abondened or un-owned.

Just by having 50 of these on each shard would guarantee 50 players for life. I think some of the problem is, when Trammel came out there was a status of house ownership, kind of like the rich and the poor. So, if you didn't own a castle or a tower or an 18 x 18, the house did not matter as much. So, in theory, by adding in more large housing space you creat a larger player base. Ones that could move into home steads or kingoms and those that will move into their old homes to gain a more high class status.
 

old gypsy

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Could the Devs do that? Completely change nearly the entire land mass in UO in the way you've described? I honestly don't know, but I wouldn't think so. For one thing, UO's current development team is under-funded and under-manned. I'm not even certain it would be a good change if they could actually do it.
 
Z

Zyon Rockler

Guest
Well I don't think they would be able to change any existing houses. So, it would just be an extension of the existing system.

Kind of like a giant 80 x 80 slab added into the house placement tool, called a HomeStead or Kingdom.

So, you would need a special zoned area for the HomeStead but all the other houses would stay the same.

The reason why I was asking is because it seems like all the coding is already there. You would just need to expand and add things, not really start all over, at least that's what I thought but someone would have to take the time to look at the code for it.

To me, it's just a giant slab that you can place other slabs on and lock down items.

So, if they could hide the larger foundation, the 80 x 80 footprint, it might be an easy upgrade. I have already seen smaller structures placed on larger structures, like a castle with 4 small houses placed on top.

If it would take alot of work, then it would probably not be worth doing for some time but they could at least start experimenting, maybe even put something on Test because other systems might take longer.

In any case, I thought it would be interesting to talk about, just kind of get the idea going of having even larger land owning oportunities.
 

old gypsy

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I don't know about 80 x 80. I'd be happy if it were possible to have just a small garden spot deed that could be placed outside but near the main house and was removable (and would return to the owner's backpack if the house decayed or was demolished).
 

Uvtha

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Meh... I don't think I like the idea of a super ginormous flat land that was all 80x80 houses. I really don't think its necessary, and more over you would have to rely on the people who have those plots to cultivate them in the proper way. First off thats a lot of land to decorate and upkeep, and second off, we all know the many people cannot build/decorate a house as well as UO designed terrain. You would probably just end up with a giant mess of ugly plots, and one or two amazing looking farms.

However things like tillable land, and whatnot I think should absolutely be put into the game. I have always like the idea of farming reagents, or food, or grapes to turn into wine etc. I'm there could be lots of stuff like that.
But I think the houses we have now offer more than enough room for farms etc.

I have also always wanted to turn my house into a dungeon with monsters and everything, and while I could think up a fun system for that, I think it would be very very involved, and would take a ton of time to make work right development wise.

Having houses be flat rather than up on the pedestal would be great as well, but as was posted above its probably more trouble than its worth. It would be cool to not exist, but if it takes up a ton of dev time that could be going to adding actual content, I don't see it as worth the trade off.
 

Ludes

Babbling Loonie
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Uvtha is right.. you'd end up with a bunch of huge borg cubes on uncultivated land with a few real houses or farms sprinkled in.
I wish there was a way to claim land without placing on it though.. that's a pretty good idea.
Could even make a decent gold sink outta that idea.
 

Uvtha

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Uvtha is right.. you'd end up with a bunch of huge borg cubes on uncultivated land with a few real houses or farms sprinkled in.
I wish there was a way to claim land without placing on it though.. that's a pretty good idea.
Could even make a decent gold sink outta that idea.
Heh, Id buy one tile in a bunch of places, and put up statues of my character.
 

G.v.P

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I think the most important technical reason for not having houses larger than Castles might be how they load up for the user. I mean, a Castle is 31x31...and you're talking about an 80x80 plot that would load, or pop-up, as soon as the user walked over into the region. Could possibly kill users on old machines.

Customizable Castles might have the same sort of problem, but otherwise, I'm not sure why the devs focused on 18x18 as the limit.

Items such as house teleporters are perhaps a more resource-affordable way of providing connection between a group of homes, for now.

We already have apple trees and the like we can place in our houses, and there's nothing stopping one from planting resource-bearing plants. As for livestock, well, the game has, for the longest time, went against us in that regard. Sheep, for example, cannot be readily sheared. But I think most importantly there is little incentive to keep livestock at this point, as few shear sheep for cloth once they have an income and things such as milk do not really create useful products. There would probably have to be a post-aesthetic reason to implement these things or else they would remain niche and players might not buy the add-ons.
 

Goldberg-Chessy

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Another elaborate but poorly thought out new home idea that would take up impossibly massive resources to only personally satisfy Zyon?

Must be that time of the week again lol
 

Uvtha

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We already have apple trees and the like we can place in our houses, and there's nothing stopping one from planting resource-bearing plants. As for livestock, well, the game has, for the longest time, went against us in that regard. Sheep, for example, cannot be readily sheared. But I think most importantly there is little incentive to keep livestock at this point, as few shear sheep for cloth once they have an income and things such as milk do not really create useful products. There would probably have to be a post-aesthetic reason to implement these things or else they would remain niche and players might not buy the add-ons.
I've been wanting house pets for like a decade. Cows for milk, Sheep for wool, Giant Spiders for Spider silk!
 

G.v.P

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I've been wanting house pets for like a decade. Cows for milk, Sheep for wool, Giant Spiders for Spider silk!
So I just noticed a minor bug...an empty pitcher is called "a pitcher of water" when you buy it off an NPC barkeeper. Hm.



Can't say I've ever milked a cow in UO before, but just for you Uvtha. :)

Don't mind the crappy IDOC loot mess in my pack ;D
 
Z

Zyon Rockler

Guest
I agree but knowing now what we know about custom housing .. We can do a better job to stop the ugly!

Like, when you open the house up to customize it, you will get a list of items and those items will have spacing to stop things from getting to ugly.. They can add alot of tricks to stop the ugly.

So, that would be for placing in the yard or on the land. It would just be a list of customizable items, like we choose walls but they would be items. Like, a water fountain or a bridge or some type of farm plot.

As far as it being to much of a large house, the largest house placed on the 80 x 80 would be an 18 x 18. The other structures would have to be tested. So, that's still the same. The rest of the land is land unless you pay tax on another structure.

Deco could be added in packs so that you could buy different types of content for placing in your yard that would then be added to the tool. So, players can't just do whatever and the structures you pay tax on are prebuilt, like a stable or a bank, you would NOT pay tax on the home itself.

When I started I was in a 4 x 4, now i'm in an 18 x 18, that's how many times the size. So, if you look at it in that perspective, this would be normal growth. 80 x 80 is about the size of 4 18 x 18's together and on a homestead, most of this would be land,
like grass or a field.

So, what's left? Farm plots, trees, wells. I don't see it getting to ugly but they should consider rules.

Like wall types that are available. If one type is chosen then maybe other could not be used.

The spacing of objects, so that the object takes up so much space to prevent some type of crowding or strange stacking, so no matter what combination of design is used, it will look pretty.

Now, you might say that's impossible but for example: If you had a 4 x 4 garden, a beautiful fountain, a well and 4 trees, the combinations could be millions for what the exact order would
be but they would all look pretty, if there was a spacing rule between each object.

You would just need to add variety so they don't all look the same.

Like having a tax on structures. For example: In the customization list, there's a stable listed at 400 tax a week. Now, you place that on your homestead and the next person sees the tax is now 800 a week. So, the more stables that are being used, the higher the tax would be.

This would prevent people from placing a stable just for their own personal use. So, as long as players can afford the tax they can keep the structure on their land.

Other structures could be added that are functional, like a winery or you might decide on a grape growing plot. Maybe you won't be able to have but one structure, which means you would
have to work with others in some cases.

They don't have to make the new land all flat, they just need new land because the current land cannot support 80 x 80s.

If the could add on snap on gardens, farms and docks to current homes, that would be great, in addition too.

If you keep the locks at the same number as an 18 x 18 for an 80 x 80, you should be improving the performance of the server. There would be less locks in any given area. For example: Loading 4 18 x 18s verse loading 1 80 x 80 with the max locks of 1 18 x 18. So, it's item based.

Also, the land mass might load better because it's not loading chests of items. Items locked down outside come from the house deco tool while in customization. Stuff added by the devs not
the players.

So, if you do fill up the yard space, it might load better than you think. You would have to test things like, large farms and cow pens.

That's where the coding comes in because you could place items on the server itself and have no load time at all. So, it depends if they use a slab or can mark off owned land. That way you would see everything on the ground all the time. It would become a server structure.

A side note, for live stock you would place a value for a buyer and place demand and use only the resource for the demand.

Like, a simple sale for gold or even a complex system for demand at city shops where they go low stock causing X and Y factors.

Also, the fact of supplying, you may receive some type of reward.
:)
 

Jade of Sonoma

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- - - etc - -

I never liked the foundations. I think they should be optional. I would have liked it better if you could of just purchased land, then when somebody else was in the housing tool they could see what land is owned and what land was not.

- - etc --
Well thought out but as others say, problematic. But hey.. the foundations .. they could be changed?

I've always wanted to have a better selection of foundations -
to not see them -
get rid of them by illusion:
How about foundations that suit landscapes: SNOW .. GRASS . .

- - and building tiles to suit the environment - Eg: igloos on the snow. *giggles*
 
Z

Zyon Rockler

Guest
Igloos would be neat. I think things like that add alot to the feel of a game. You could even do whole expansions with those themes.

I didn't want to turn this into a size matters thread but i'm curious now how much size really does matter. Like, Steven says, "From dusk to dawn."

If you look up the WIKI and you read after Dawns Expansion you will see they were at about 100,000 and when custom housing came in they jumped to 250,000. Now, i'm not sure if these numbers are correct but what it shows is that when custom housing came in it might of been the most popular feature among players.

This makes sense but then why did UO lose players? You have to ask yourself how much the size of a house matters. If you have an 18 x 18, you might be more likely to stay than if you had a 4 x 4.

I think this could be figured out by projecting the number of large houses and the number of current active players and see if the 2 ranges match.

If it's true that size is what holds the players then the population would be equal to the number of large houses possible and the draw to the game would be large housing.
 

Jade of Sonoma

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Size matters. I was quite content with the house in the picture above .. but moved my vendors to Luna City Friend's Shop .. and went after bigger houses to hold all my plants and other numerous items which the game started offering, and, as you can see by my sig picture below, I don't run vendors any longer so cut the labels and house out of the above picture to make a sig pic.

With all the craft resources require and the Collectibles, and all the new items from EM events/Sharme/etc etc etc these days .. where does anyone keep it all? Toss it in Brit Clean up?

Many players would love a lot the size of a castle which is 32 tiles X 32 tiles for a farm/stable/house/gardens ... water ..
 

old gypsy

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You have to ask yourself how much the size of a house matters. If you have an 18 x 18, you might be more likely to stay than if you had a 4 x 4.
I suppose that, for most players, having a large house matters. I know I enjoy mine. However, of more concern to me is storage capacity. Even if I only had a 7x7, if it had plenty of storage there would be no question about it... I'd definitely remain in the game. I just don't think 80x80 is a good idea. A limited area of tillable ground around one's home would be better, in my opinion.
 
Z

Zyon Rockler

Guest
I agree. You have to allow smaller homes more capacity just to keep up with the game. I would still caution though that it might not be the functionality that is the most important.

Having a pinacle to thrive for might be what is necessary to draw people towards a goal, not that it is necessary everyone owns an 80 x 80, just that it exists.

Also, the size of farm plots could depend on the output of crops. So, larger farms may produce more. It's hard to imagine what size farm would be good for production or if several crops or types of farms would be available.

But as you add to the system to allow for this it doesn't matter what size you create them as long as the fields are adjustable sizes.

I would create most functional buildings to be small but I would also create some large but I would definitely make sure there were some grand sizes, something you could advertise, something that would be bigger than all the other games.

The 80 x 80 would be the largest and you would probably find players living in them that were the most loyal to the game and the most dedicated.
 
W

Woodsman

Guest
I suppose that, for most players, having a large house matters. I know I enjoy mine. However, of more concern to me is storage capacity. Even if I only had a 7x7, if it had plenty of storage there would be no question about it... I'd definitely remain in the game.
If you had the storage of an 18x18 in smaller homes, I'd be all over them - there are a lot of places that I would love to place a home, but the placeable size is limited. Maybe not a 7x7, but something not too much larger. Plus I like some of the pre-built homes quite a bit.

I'm in the process of donating/selling off a bunch of junk since I am wanting to get down to a single account and have my valuables in the bank, so I may in fact accomplish getting by with a smaller home should I choose to do so.

But it sure would be nice to have more storage in smaller homes.

I wouldn't mind seeing a slightly larger version of the "Small Stone Tower", because that's always been my favorite of the small pre-builts.

I know that goes against the thread of having access to larger plots, but it is related. It's also doable.
 
Z

Zyon Rockler

Guest
Yeah they are 2 seperate problems but without focusing on larger homes most people probably wouldn't have thought about smaller homes.

If I knew that customers wanted larger homes and the only way to keep people in the game was to create more, then that's exactly what I would do. I would cut down trees, flatten ground, open up land for placing, make the landscape look better and be more functional, just to keep people happy in their homes.

The reason adding lockdowns to smaller homes is not the solution is because they are just to small. I would say most people use small houses to block places for bigger houses or because that is all that is available to them.

So, the simple solution is to add more large housing and if you can see that as being your weakness then turning it into your strength by creating even larger homes should have a profound affect in a positive way reversing alot of the negative that has already been caused.

I don't believe in the word impossible or can't. The fact is, if you can imagine it you can make it possible. It's just some people believe things are impossible. That's the only thing that stops something.

Imagine owning a small house and moving all of your stuff into it, you couldn't do it. What if you had a small house and you placed a soul forge?

The old style UO, where you just had a bed and a chest and a chair and a desk, that was fine but today people want things to make their own and having a large home is part of that and for the people that find that boring and already have that, it's end game. It's time to put in farms and expand the land that can be owned.

Now, you might not get around to it for 5 to 10 years but that will not change that fact of its' necessity and the problem that smaller homes cause on the community.
 

LordDrago

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Uvtha is right.. you'd end up with a bunch of huge borg cubes on uncultivated land with a few real houses or farms sprinkled in.
We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your houses. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile
 
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