Isn't it time Castles and Keeps got a makeover?

[EvilPixieWorks]

A friend of mine placed a keep resently, distroying an amazingly beautiful custom house I designed for him. Then today, he asked me to help him decorate this new keep. So, I started thinking… how to manage a totally non-custimizable larger house… something that I havnt even delt with in years. All the houses I have, help friends and so on… all custom designs I dream up. Private space, limit access… no problem. Something doesn’t quite work, go into custom mode and fix it. These old houses are so ridgid, its hard to believe we used never have these options. Well… with exeption of the Castle AND Keep… most houses do have doors that can be set to provide security. No one sits and dreams of finaly being able to place their own small stone tower any more. hehe

For years… and I still do, I have always said the OLD staff always do the better job of graphics in the classic client. The new staff clearly doesn’t care much for it, so they do the least they can at times… with some exception, of course. All the plants. All the clothing. All the pets. Everything before EA got control of the game was the best graphics. Then when ML came out, the Asian theme stuff… it was lacking in that same quality. I was greatly disappointed. The basic graphic of clothing is so dark, you can't get any really nice colors with dye tubs or special cloth rewards. That was only the first time I noticed this decline in quality. I consider the gargoyle stuff (SA) to be dreadful. Most all of it. (Sorry staffers.) They don’t even bother putting names on the walls or aspects of buildings, like they forgot and just ran with it. The last blow was the Gothic and Rustic packs… totally incomplete building sets. BEAUTIFUL… the Gothic, but tragically incomplete. Just the same… going back to the old staff and the old designs… and the old thinking, the way they built our game…

Why did they design the castles and keeps so amazingly poorly?

I’m sure they never foresaw custom house building. Frankly, who wouldn’t want a custom plot the size of a CASTLE when you love designing your own house? I would turn my town of 6 houses into a town of 1 plot, to tell you the truth. Still, the main issue is the gross amount of wasted space. Was the original game world such that they never foresaw house placement shortages? Did they forget buildings should have doors in them like the full tower, the next side down? I know, I loved my full tower before going to a new customized house. Even if we consider these 2 classic designs just outdated and in need of adjustments… why can't they be modified a little?

Think about it. Keeps have 2 large rooms of void space on the first level. Nothing can spawn in them, nothing can recall in them (anymore). Why not add a floor and a couple doors and be able to use the space? Same thing goes with castles. Just with castles, being out door court yards… replace the local grassy ground, snow, or sand… with grass floor tiles? This would solve the wasted space issue. Then… some kind of option to add doors… OR just have the doors sit in every doorway as they normally would. That solves the security issue.

My friend wants some areas of this keep to be private. Using house-to-house vet teleporters for access and blocking doorways with obstacles, I will solve the problem myself. It just makes me wonder why this hasn’t been asked to the staff.

Just thought I would share. I wish the “ask the dev” section actually got answered more then it is. Last post was back in May. Not encouraging.

 

[Sarsmi]

Well, thanks to the grassy areas in keeps and castles you can place those types of buildings where there would otherwise be something in those spaces that would block another type of house (like trees and rocks). So essentially they would have to design a custom plot but with those areas void of anything, and I think it just wasn't something they ever saw a big need to do.

Consider that when they put in custom housing there might have been a 100 or so castles and keeps on any given shard (not sure of the exact number) so the number of affected accounts would be around 1% of the UO population. Of course the population has gone down and people have found new places to gradually put up those high dollar homes, but essentially the number of owners of those types of homes has always been very low percentage. It's never really in their best interest to cater to the low percentages and take up dev time unless it's some kind of critical issue that they have to deal with.

Would be lovely, but it's unlikely they will ever make plots that are shaped as castles and keeps but are customizable.

 

[EvilPixieWorks]

Considering, this keep in question is totally without any obstacles. I’ve only seen one that had a tree growing right through the north most area. Still, I think the option should be considered. Not that they will ever make them fully customizable.

Also, on Atlantic… being one of the better populated shards, you do have areas where the big houses dominate, true… but still, people will fight for even small house space. Other dead shards… you could just about find free keep space at the least. Even castles. Not on Atlantic. Even when comes up for sale, they really aren't interested in gold. Some people just go totally bonkers. One house near Tram Yew moongate, the owner thinks he can sell a max storage house, that’s not even a 18x18 for 200m. It's been for sale for a few years now. Go fig.

Back before AoS… some castle owners thought owning a castle was part of their real life retirement plan. That’s how far I’ve seen the range.

 

[Saphireena]

I hear ya EvilPixie, I was also complaining about this recently in this thread.

I eventually got so fed up with the castle that I demolished it a few days ago and erected 2 18x18 buildings in it's place. Having so much fun customizing now!

I'd been staring at that bloody castle for a decade already, so was time for a change.

 

[Mirt]

Yes its well past time if you ask me. If they can't make it fully customizable they should give options and at least a few different tile schemes.

 

[Igg A Pie]

i hear what you all are sayn but i got to tell you i own and decoed my own castle. it was such a challenge to work with what you had. like the size of the rooms, the hallways and just finding things to fill in space without the place looking cluttered. my biggest complaint is that i should be able to deco the interior courtyard!

 

[EvilPixieWorks]

i hear what you all are sayn but i got to tell you i own and decoed my own castle. it was such a challenge to work with what you had. like the size of the rooms, the hallways and just finding things to fill in space without the place looking cluttered. my biggest complaint is that i should be able to deco the interior courtyard!

Tis part of what I was saying... but overall, on a high-pop shard as Atlantic, few actually have castles... and even fewer use those castles for establishments. No offence, but they all kind of have the same decor... and yes, I'm sure its a challenge. At least the castle ladders came around so you could get up on that wasted roof areas. Some people use the vet teleporters. Still, with no ability to secure rooms, I really question the original design. At least with the full towers, you could have private space. The only change to castles I know about is making it impossible to mark inside the courtyard. Why? So you can easily be attacked OUTSIDE the house, like every other house design, classic or custom. Not exactly what I call progress.

I'm also a big fan of gardening, in game and in real life... so the courtyards really bug me. hehe

 

[Irulia Darkaith]

Well I remember reading a long time ago from someone at UO, that they weren't going to make keeps and castles customizable since the owners of such buildings already enjoy increased storage and a massive plot size.

Rather than just making Keeps and Castles customizable, I think they should introduce customizable plot sizing beyond the 18x18. Why not a 24x18? Obviously there would have to be limits, but I think population size has dropped enough that they could loosen the current plot size structure.

But yeah, regarding your original post...castles are an incredibly bad design compared to what you can do with a current plot.

 

[Painted Elves]

I'd be jazzed about a 20x20 plot, but not much bigger.
I dunno about customizable castles/keeps but I've always thought they should offer them in the newer stone wall types so at least you get a different feel and look....

 

[EvilPixieWorks]

I own a town on Atlantic... 6 buildings, in a clearing... that would easily support a castle if I wanted. I had dreamed if the customized castle ever came about, I would take down all the buildings and rebuild a new town on the custom castle plot. It would be so much work... and I’d maybe need, at very least 3, max storage houses to hold my stuff... maybe 5 to be honest. BUT the long and short of it is... it would be a nightmare.

Then, I think to myself, with someone the players who lack skill in building houses... you could very well end up with gigantic ugly boxes the size of a castle. What fun would that be to look at in passing? lol. I’d rather they leave it alone.

 

[fra Abronsius]

Some make dead ugly designs, others are so beautiful you easily forget the formers

Both are a source of inspiration

 

[flappy6]

forget the custom plots let the players design some new keeps and castles using the old footprints and some with new footprints and maybe pick like 8 as vet rewards(like 5th year not 15 or year 20) give free deed to winners