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So many things to address....
1. First, I want to say that understand why most of you don't play Siege. Thank you for the honest replies. There are some things said here that I don't remember seeing before, so it is good to ask once and while why keeps people away from Siege.
2. I especially want to thank *most* of you for keeping this thread from turning into a "Siege sucks/Prodo shards suck!" meltdown. I saw this thread and almost didn't read it bc I thought for sure, by page 4 it would have deteriorated to the point a lock was imminent.
3. As for housing, I am totally against allowing players to place the smallest house on Siege, for all of the reasons Skylark mentioned. I have always thought it would be cool to get some use out of the inns in all of the towns. People could "rent" a room in one of the inns and place chests in their "room". However, that would probably be very complicated to code. So many things to consider.
4. I have been a crafter for my entire time on Siege (going on 4 years now). Have I been killed mining or sheering sheep? Check. Have I been ganked, rez-killed and dry-looted? Check. Have I ever been killed at the bank or the smithshop? No (although people have tried!!). Does it occur every time I play? No.
5. I was not limited to crafting. I had magery on my template so I often went to champ spawns and hunts with my guild. I sucked, but I could at least heal/rez and throw out some EVs. I also used alchy and the Ecru ring and did some damage with conflag pots and Explo pots. I think you are only limited in the char you play if you allow yourself to be limited. Does that make sense?
I must go to work. Carry on!
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I just took a gallop around the Siege countryside; Malas, Tokuno, and part of Felucca. The amount of available housing space is stunning. There's tons and tons of room! I feel kind-of disgusted with the people who would begrudge the interested people among us even the tinyest house on siege.
There would MOST CERTAINLY BE NO REAL HARM to the existing playerbase of Siege in letting people place a small, refresh-required house! In the context of a house that decays in a week if not refreshed by the account owner, the "hell no" camp hasn't shown me how their inconvenience outweighs the desires of people to come and try it for real. And in the face of how much open space there is, it makes them look, well, spoiled.
After seeing that, I take back what I said about how it would be cool if EA opened up some seperate area of the shard for these little, decay-possible houses. There's no justification for it, and I say that from an admin standpoint. If they decide to do something like this, they should just let people place in the main world, it's not worth their time to make a special housing arrangement in a different world area. If they somehow didn't like the direction it went, they can always change the rules on placement of such decay-prone houses later.
It seems that the people who have their mains on siege are primarily against people being able to place a small second house there. None have acknowledged the possibility of having those small houses fall in a week if the person doesn't refresh them, and how that would impact what they feel are the bad parts of the idea.
And on the other hand, there's a number of people who feel like they want to be more involved with Siege, and that not being able to place anything at all is a big reason they don't stick around.
Some of the existing Siege guys seem to expect people to make some kind of "commitment" to their shard, a commitment that is so big that it requires them to abandon their stuff on their normal, production shards. I think their perspective is out of whack: Siege is the niche, minority, very low population shard, not the other way around. It's not like production shards are some sort of trash and our houses and the system there belong spinning around in the toilet bowl.
I feel that as the low-population shard, the existing, low population can be expected to make consessions to bring the population up and move more active players in. And in this case, it barely qualifies as a consession, they have an embarrassment of open space over there. They'd do just fine with the housing arrangement I described.
And don't forget, all the housing space throughout the whole shard is accessible to reds. It's not like they are all crowding themselves into the Felucca lands or anything, the whole shard really is available to everyone.
I now feel more firmly than ever that it's a great idea to let people place a single, small, owner-refresh-required house on Siege in addition to another house on another shard.
