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I'm kind of thinking co-owners and friends to a house can refresh it when they open the door or use the sign. If it isn't like that it would probably be changed so it worked that way. We don't want anything decaying if someone is using it, even if it isn't the owner. Since most guild HQs have members at least friended to houses, I don't think we would really need a special rule as long as any member could refresh it.

Houses should decay for sure.

I don't see why we should keep the houses that all the leavers have left here. If they cry about how they lost their house and items that were in it, they shouldn't have quitted at the first place... The good spots should be for those who actually play now and not for the ones who played here for one month when the shard opened.

Pros

It makes players log in more often - If someone doesn't want to play UO because they got bored of it, in the 30 seconds they log on to refresh their house, they won't see anything worth making them stay for. If we have 100 people who log on for 30 seconds just to refresh their house, that translates to a higher player count of 1 player for 50 minutes a day!! Wow what a great help that was :eek:

If players dont log in it eventually, reduces item count - If you want to reduce item count make more stackable items (something all the crafters actually want and doesn't have any cons to doing) and stop people from selling useless crap in the vendor mall like 1 piece of cloth for 1000000 gp...

It supports the fact that we aren't carebear - I don't see how being a carebear server or not has anything to do with this. You earned your items, good job now you get to keep them. Sorry I should say "you earned your items, good job now you should get to keep them". This is like telling an athlete congratulations on setting a world record... but since you haven't competed in the last 8 years we have to take it away from you.

It would show we care more about existing players then ones that bailed - A player is a player and I don't see how a new player is more valuable then a previous player. If anything, someone who previous played INX will have more of an 'allegiance' to it and they will be more likely to stick around compared to a new guy stopping by for 2 days to try it out. What would you prefer; someone coming back and playing for another year, or a new guy coming and stay for 2 days?

It keeps the environment changing, people will venture out more - I don't see how it's a big difference. Houses are locked and if you see a new house or an old house it doesn't change much for you, all it means is you can't have that spot. I stopped playing UO for about 1 - 1 1/2 years, when I came back I could only find 1 other house within a 10-15 minute run of my house so don't tell me there's no space for more houses... And what an exciting environment that is when houses decay; big empty spaces everywhere... I don't know about you but I rather run around the world and see houses with rare and unique items or armor sets on display to make me want to stick around and get these cool items instead of running through the world seeing empty spaces all over the place.

House decay was a sphere feature - Oh so we're supposed to be sphere only now, is that it? Well there are plenty of AOS features on this shard, I guess we better get rid of those.

Cons
People who bailed on us for over 3 months would be upset if they came back. - Aren't suggestions meant to attract players? This suggestion is going to keep people away and instead of being away for 3 months they will be away for 6 months, 12 months, or even forever.

Here's my list of pro's and con's that actually have an influence for people playing:

Pros:
Frees up space

Cons:
Pisses off old players who might come back and find all their stuff gone
Makes the world look empty and there's less cool stuff for others to see when they run around the world

Ryuuku Wrote:Im starting to believe on Smoke when he says you dont read the entire post.

So if they do this you gonna have the money to get a new castle right away when you log in and open the bank.

Actually I did read it all but the refund idea doesn't seem too popular from other posts I read. Maybe I read them wrong but it doesn't seem too popular of an idea, hence why I said you'd have to remake the money.

Shade Wrote:I'd prefer them to drop. Wouldn't make much sense for them to magically fly into someone's bank. We don't have a bank limit so if a player is going to leave and aren't sure about coming back they can bank their things. Like I said though, if people don't want to lose their things they will log in more often. Once every 3 months is more then enough time.

OK great, please email me once this idea is implemented and I'll be sure to sell my house and keep everything in my bank because I know at one point I'll probably take a break from UO for an extended period of time (ex: start school again, get a new job, want to try out a new game (see Darkfall), etc).

Lederoil Wrote:Houses should decay for sure.

I don't see why we should keep the houses that all the leavers have left here. If they cry about how they lost their house and items that were in it, they shouldn't have quitted at the first place... The good spots should be for those who actually play now and not for the ones who played here for one month when the shard opened.

Of course you'd say that, you have a static house and your hard earned items and house/house location don't seem to be threatened by this thread... Care to give reasons WHY they should be deleted and not just say they should be?



Here are my counter-suggestions to this thread:

1) Custom houses: When INX first went up the admins didn't want custom houses to be implemented because some people make ugly *ss houses that take away some of the good/rp/mature (whatever you want to call it) feeling to the shard.

Right now I don't see any measures in place to prevent ugly custom houses from being placed so here are a few things that can be done:

1a) Custom houses have to be approved before they're finalized.
1b) Once every month or every two months a GM checks out existing custom houses and deletes the ugly looking ones.
1c) You have a limited amount of time to design your custom house and leave it as a dirt patch before it's deleted and you're re-imbursed for it.

I've run around the world and seen one floor custom houses that just say "Hi" spelt out in different colored tiles. These useless houses are what takes up the precious space that people think there's none left of.

To avoid any biased opinions the GM can take a screen shot, post it in staff forums, and 2 other staff have to agree it's ugly/useless. The items in the house would be banked, the cost of the house reimbursed (fully or partially as a penalty for making an ugly/useless house)


2) Limit houses to 1 or 2 per ACCOUNT. There's no reason you can explain to me that you need more then 2 houses. 1 guild house and 1 personal house at the very most. Hell right now I have a little empty house next to mine just so someone else doesn't put one there...


3) Staff create more static houses in different towns or random spots around the world and put these up for auction. Take 30 minutes to decorate some of the empty houses in towns and maybe some people will want to buy them. Ex: the theatre in the northern part of Britain. This is a nice big house but it's empty and looks ugly right now so there isn't much of a reason to buy it.

Time to start work now, hope you enjoyed today's edition of a day in the mind of Eighty Swords

I think we're going to have to enable house decay to free up space for new houses.
I also think we need to do something to prevent someone to buy 10+ houses just to hog all the good spaces. Someone in staff mentioned a monthly fee if you have more than 3 or so houses.

Something will be done about this soon.

Eighty Swords Wrote:Pros

It makes players log in more often - If someone doesn't want to play UO because they got bored of it, in the 30 seconds they log on to refresh their house, they won't see anything worth making them stay for. If we have 100 people who log on for 30 seconds just to refresh their house, that translates to a higher player count of 1 player for 50 minutes a day!! Wow what a great help that was :eek:

Actually a typical person will have the habit of checking on a few things while they are logging back in. I mean honestly kid, if they are worried about their house enough to log in and refresh it then they obviously have some attachment to the shard and will at the very least troll the forums or go to town and see if anything is new. People won't log in to refresh their house if they don't care to ever play again.

Quote:If players dont log in it eventually, reduces item count - If you want to reduce item count make more stackable items (something all the crafters actually want and doesn't have any cons to doing) and stop people from selling useless crap in the vendor mall like 1 piece of cloth for 1000000 gp...

People tend to hoard items in houses and its hard to believe you would even second guess this considering you have staffed in the past, this is something you should know. A house full of useless junk owned by someone who quit or a vendor with 5 items on it that are overpriced... which adds more to the item count?

Quote:It supports the fact that we aren't carebear - I don't see how being a carebear server or not has anything to do with this. You earned your items, good job now you get to keep them. Sorry I should say "you earned your items, good job now you should get to keep them". This is like telling an athlete congratulations on setting a world record... but since you haven't competed in the last 8 years we have to take it away from you.

It's more like someone not bothering to check their mail (log in) and they didn't get thier insurance bill (renew their house) and it burnt down after the policy lapsed (decayed). Guaranteeing that someones items will be there indefinitely without any risk of them ever being lost is a pretty carebear feature in my eyes.

Quote:It would show we care more about existing players then ones that bailed - A player is a player and I don't see how a new player is more valuable then a previous player. If anything, someone who previous played INX will have more of an 'allegiance' to it and they will be more likely to stick around compared to a new guy stopping by for 2 days to try it out. What would you prefer; someone coming back and playing for another year, or a new guy coming and stay for 2 days?

I didn't say anything about new players in that line you quoted, I was stating that why should people that quit have the same rights to property over the players that stick with us through the good times and the bad. If an existing player wants a plot of land that someone placed a house on and then quit, why shouldn't they eventually be able to get it?

Quote:It keeps the environment changing, people will venture out more - I don't see how it's a big difference. Houses are locked and if you see a new house or an old house it doesn't change much for you, all it means is you can't have that spot. I stopped playing UO for about 1 - 1 1/2 years, when I came back I could only find 1 other house within a 10-15 minute run of my house so don't tell me there's no space for more houses... And what an exciting environment that is when houses decay; big empty spaces everywhere... I don't know about you but I rather run around the world and see houses with rare and unique items or armor sets on display to make me want to stick around and get these cool items instead of running through the world seeing empty spaces all over the place.

Actually what it means is people will go out hunting for decaying houses because by default all items would drop, they will have a chance at obtaining land they wanted and if they get it, they can bring their friends to that area too, and it also gives players the chance to actually form a player run town if they wanted to (right now its practically impossible with every decent large open area taken or clustered with random houses).

Quote:House decay was a sphere feature - Oh so we're supposed to be sphere only now, is that it? Well there are plenty of AOS features on this shard, I guess we better get rid of those.

Well for every AoS feature we recreate, we should make sure a sphere feature is brought back to balance it out :p

Quote:People who bailed on us for over 3 months would be upset if they came back. - Aren't suggestions meant to attract players? This suggestion is going to keep people away and instead of being away for 3 months they will be away for 6 months, 12 months, or even forever.

If someone doesn't log in for 3 months, the chances are they won't ever log in again. Sure some people rarely come back but that seldom happens. If players can't log in once in awhile to check how the shard is doing and whats new then they aren't going to come back so don't expect them too.


Actually I did read it all but the refund idea doesn't seem too popular from other posts I read. Maybe I read them wrong but it doesn't seem too popular of an idea, hence why I said you'd have to remake the money.

Quote:OK great, please email me once this idea is implemented and I'll be sure to sell my house and keep everything in my bank because I know at one point I'll probably take a break from UO for an extended period of time (ex: start school again, get a new job, want to try out a new game (see Darkfall), etc).

Like I said we could easily allow players a way to extend their leave without them worrying about decay. Though seriously, if you aren't going to log on once in 3 months then I can't imagine you would ever really come back. Of course that does happen but it is very rare.

Quote:1a) Custom houses have to be approved before they're finalized.
1b) Once every month or every two months a GM checks out existing custom houses and deletes the ugly looking ones.
1c) You have a limited amount of time to design your custom house and leave it as a dirt patch before it's deleted and you're re-imbursed for it.

Randomly deleting players houses is a better idea then giving a 3 month decay timer? yeah...

Quote:2) Limit houses to 1 or 2 per ACCOUNT. There's no reason you can explain to me that you need more then 2 houses. 1 guild house and 1 personal house at the very most. Hell right now I have a little empty house next to mine just so someone else doesn't put one there...

Here's some reasons; someone wants to open a little shop or they want to run a tavern, they have an order guild on one character and a chaos character on another so they would need two houses just for those guilds (I guess next you would want to limit guildstones per account).
There are reasons like this and more, just because you don't realize them doesn't mean they don't exist.

Quote:3) Staff create more static houses in different towns or random spots around the world and put these up for auction. Take 30 minutes to decorate some of the empty houses in towns and maybe some people will want to buy them. Ex: the theatre in the northern part of Britain. This is a nice big house but it's empty and looks ugly right now so there isn't much of a reason to buy it.

this kind of makes me think that you don't understand how buying statics work... Players pick any static in the world and page to buy it. If it is within our guidelines and a reasonable location we price it for them, at which time they can let us know if they really want to buy it. If so then it goes up for auction. Once a player owns a static they are free to decorate it all they want, and we can even help them add some simple decor to it as well depending on certain circumstances.

In any case, you might not see reason for house decay because you are looking at right now but down the road there will be no room left anywhere. Honestly I think there are only a handful of places that a castle would still fit. Eventually it will be needed so why not do it right before or as we come out of beta. Even if we told people they couldn't build crappy custom houses, normal houses will still continue to accumulate.

When that idea get implemented I hope you are going to send a mail to everyone who played and have mail archived telling about that new change.

Thats Why I think it should be when we get out of beta and send the emails to the old players, with a special note about that new change.

This is a great idea. Can't wait for it to be implemented, the sooner the better. I definately think only owners and co-owners should beable to refresh houses by entering it. Statics should be left alone (my oppinion) unless they are clearly never comming back. BTW Shade, very good pros and cons!

Quote:When that idea get implemented I hope you are going to send a mail to everyone who played and have mail archived telling about that new change.

It might get people to log on so they don't loose all their stuff...

personally i think the emails should be sent out now so u can get a playerbase going....

Shade Wrote:

Eighty Swords Wrote:Pros

It makes players log in more often - If someone doesn't want to play UO because they got bored of it, in the 30 seconds they log on to refresh their house, they won't see anything worth making them stay for. If we have 100 people who log on for 30 seconds just to refresh their house, that translates to a higher player count of 1 player for 50 minutes a day!! Wow what a great help that was :eek:

Actually a typical person will have the habit of checking on a few things while they are logging back in. I mean honestly kid, if they are worried about their house enough to log in and refresh it then they obviously have some attachment to the shard and will at the very least troll the forums or go to town and see if anything is new. People won't log in to refresh their house if they don't care to ever play again.

Look BUDDY, I'm not a kid and I'm not acting like one by logically arguing the points you brought up so if you really feel the necessity to address me by something other then my ingame name, try Matt. Maybe you missed the example I gave of myself; I stopped playing INX for about 1 to 1 1/2 years but I still came back. And if this house decay idea had of been in place during that time I can tell you for sure all I would have done is log in to refresh my house, like I've been doing lately for my D2 characters for when I get bored of UO and go back to D2, which unfortunately is looking more like a possibility. In those 30 seconds I log in to refresh my house I wouldn't run around thinking 'I wonder if this dungeon is changed' or 'I wonder what new crafts there are' because I didn't have the time to spend on UO in the time I wasn't playing. And I can also tell you depending on how much I lost from this if I missed my required login then I wouldn't have come back and would have called it quits there.

Shade Wrote:

Eighty Swords Wrote:If you want to reduce item count make more stackable items (something all the crafters actually want and doesn't have any cons to doing) and stop people from selling useless crap in the vendor mall like 1 piece of cloth for 1000000 gp...

People tend to hoard items in houses and its hard to believe you would even second guess this considering you have staffed in the past, this is something you should know. A house full of useless junk owned by someone who quit or a vendor with 5 items on it that are overpriced... which adds more to the item count?

Well if we are so desperate to reduce the item count every last item counts and let's make sure to get rid of those 5 items on vendors! lol. The more serious part of that suggestion was to make more stackable items, especially craft related items. I have like 200+ granite pieces but that could instead be 4-5 items. That applies for every player who mined granite, even more so for people like Rabbi who probably have thousands of granite pieces and not just a few hundred like me. This also applies for training carpentry; stackable wooden shields or q-staffs instead of having a bag of 1k wooden shields.

And yes I was staff, but I didn't run around looking through players houses...

The scary part of some people's persistent need to reduce the item count is that if with 40 regular players we are worried about 600k items, I'd hate to see how paranoid these people are about having 2 to 3 times the amount of players and items. What's next, capping it at 10k items per player? As I said in my last post, if this idea is implemented I might just delete my house and store everything in my bank. Item count isn't reduced by people doing that...

Shade Wrote:

Eighty Swords Wrote:It supports the fact that we aren't carebear - I don't see how being a carebear server or not has anything to do with this. You earned your items, good job now you get to keep them. Sorry I should say "you earned your items, good job now you should get to keep them". This is like telling an athlete congratulations on setting a world record... but since you haven't competed in the last 8 years we have to take it away from you.

It's more like someone not bothering to check their mail (log in) and they didn't get thier insurance bill (renew their house) and it burnt down after the policy lapsed (decayed). Guaranteeing that someones items will be there indefinitely without any risk of them ever being lost is a pretty carebear feature in my eyes.

Well that's a very drastic comparison... You're comparing real life to a video game you can put aside because you got bored with it. I'd like to see you do that with real life 'ah I don't feel like working for 3 months but I won't let anyone know' *3 months later* 'what do you mean I was fired?' I still don't see how it's care bear letting someone keep the items they worked for. In my opinion it's better then having an all you can eat buffet (looting items from a decayed house).

Since we both like analagies, let's take another look at my athlete one; an athlete sets a world record in 1992 but then someone in 2009 comes CLOSE but doesn't actually beat it, it's like taking the record away from the person in 1992 and giving it to the person in 2009 just because they participated more recently. Does that sound right or fair to you? If so you live in one sick and twisted world!

Shade Wrote:

Eighty Swords Wrote:It would show we care more about existing players then ones that bailed - A player is a player and I don't see how a new player is more valuable then a previous player. If anything, someone who previous played INX will have more of an 'allegiance' to it and they will be more likely to stick around compared to a new guy stopping by for 2 days to try it out. What would you prefer; someone coming back and playing for another year, or a new guy coming and stay for 2 days?

I didn't say anything about new players in that line you quoted, I was stating that why should people that quit have the same rights to property over the players that stick with us through the good times and the bad. If an existing player wants a plot of land that someone placed a house on and then quit, why shouldn't they eventually be able to get it?

OK so you didn't explicitly say anything about new players, but you sure are insinuating it by arguing that someone has more claim to a plot of land when they come to the server after the person who originally claimed it. And even then it might not be a case of who has been on INX longer but who saved up the money to put a house there first. Now you're penalizing someone because they worked harder but due to present circumstances they can't log in. This suggestion just ISN'T logical to me no matter how it's argued...

You say we should value the players who stick with INX through the thick and thin, ups and downs, good times and bad times, well it's not always a choice to stop playing UO for an extended period of time because you just don't want to play. There are such things as external motivating factors such as school and work that need to be given higher priorities then a game you play for fun.

In any case it looks like this idea is getting implemented despite my objections (no, I don't expect to be all powerful but it would be nice to be explained why my opinions don't have any merit and not just being told the idea is getting implemented. That's not directed at you Shade as you are taking the time to discuss the points with me, but it's directed at some other people who just say 'yes, let's do it yesterday'). So if this idea is in fact implemented with this quote/point of yours as the main justification and driving force behind it, I sincerely hope the same applies to static houses because what right does someone have to an unused static over someone else?

Shade Wrote:

Eighty Swords Wrote:It keeps the environment changing, people will venture out more - I don't see how it's a big difference. Houses are locked and if you see a new house or an old house it doesn't change much for you, all it means is you can't have that spot. I stopped playing UO for about 1 - 1 1/2 years, when I came back I could only find 1 other house within a 10-15 minute run of my house so don't tell me there's no space for more houses... And what an exciting environment that is when houses decay; big empty spaces everywhere... I don't know about you but I rather run around the world and see houses with rare and unique items or armor sets on display to make me want to stick around and get these cool items instead of running through the world seeing empty spaces all over the place.

Actually what it means is people will go out hunting for decaying houses because by default all items would drop, they will have a chance at obtaining land they wanted and if they get it, they can bring their friends to that area too, and it also gives players the chance to actually form a player run town if they wanted to (right now its practically impossible with every decent large open area taken or clustered with random houses).

My next argument is based on 2 figures, adjust them to reflect what they really are or will be. In any case this argument stays true. Let's say there's a 3 month decay time on unvisited houses starting tomorrow and items decay after being on the ground for 30 minutes... for the next 3 months no extra activity is generated because no house will have reached that 3 month decay period. Then suddenly 200 houses decay and tons of items drop to the ground. For the next 30 minutes people will scour the world looking for the free treasure (now that's carebearish; giving people items because they stumbled upon them and didn't even have to kill a single monster to get them).

*continued in next post, out of characters...*

Once the 30 minutes are up it's back to the same old same old afk macroing or afk sitting in pits. I can't foresee many people running all over the world every other day to look for decayed houses, not to mention that narrow window they have between the house decaying and the items decaying.

If all this is to generate 30 minutes of activity every 3 months or so, give me a staff instead and I'll generate 30 minutes of fun for people every day!

Shade Wrote:

Eighty Swords Wrote:People who bailed on us for over 3 months would be upset if they came back. - Aren't suggestions meant to attract players? This suggestion is going to keep people away and instead of being away for 3 months they will be away for 6 months, 12 months, or even forever.

If someone doesn't log in for 3 months, the chances are they won't ever log in again. Sure some people rarely come back but that seldom happens. If players can't log in once in awhile to check how the shard is doing and whats new then they aren't going to come back so don't expect them too.

The example of me coming back might just be one example, but it's an example none the less of someone coming back and by implementing this house decay, instead of this being a rare scenario, it will be even more rare or even never happen.

Shade Wrote:

Eighty Swords Wrote:OK great, please email me once this idea is implemented and I'll be sure to sell my house and keep everything in my bank because I know at one point I'll probably take a break from UO for an extended period of time (ex: start school again, get a new job, want to try out a new game (see Darkfall), etc).

Like I said we could easily allow players a way to extend their leave without them worrying about decay. Though seriously, if you aren't going to log on once in 3 months then I can't imagine you would ever really come back. Of course that does happen but it is very rare.

Well if the staff are willing to grant extended leaves of absence (sounds like I'm arguing something with my boss) that would help some people who have legitimate reasons other then 'I'm bored with UO'. I just hope the conditions to get an extended decay period aren't too severe and something like difficult term starting with school are valid.

Again, see the example of me returning. And right around the same time that I came back, smoke, luda krishna, and scarecrow all came back too! And we didn't even talk to each other to plan it, it just happened all of a sudden. I wonder if we all would have stayed if we lost everything we earned the last time we were here. Ok so smoke got banned and that's why he lost all of his stuff so that's a bit different of an issue. But I wonder if we all would have stayed if we lost almost every item we earned in the first 1-2 years the shard was up (there were good times and bad times back then too).

Shade Wrote:

Eighty Swords Wrote:1a) Custom houses have to be approved before they're finalized.
1b) Once every month or every two months a GM checks out existing custom houses and deletes the ugly looking ones.
1c) You have a limited amount of time to design your custom house and leave it as a dirt patch before it's deleted and you're re-imbursed for it.

Randomly deleting players houses is a better idea then giving a 3 month decay timer? yeah...

You completely misunderstood the idea. Only one portion of the idea is to delete the ugly houses that are in no way being used. I'm not talking about someone who designed an ugly house and is actually using it, I'm talking about the useless houses you'll find in the world if you explore enough. Just like the example I gave; a 1 floor house that just says 'Hi'... You can check the last time someone entered the house to make sure it wasn't just made yesterday as a joke.

What about points 1a and 1c from that suggestion? I see you didn't comment on those so I don't know if that means you agree or disagree with them...

Shade Wrote:

Quote:2) Limit houses to 1 or 2 per ACCOUNT. There's no reason you can explain to me that you need more then 2 houses. 1 guild house and 1 personal house at the very most. Hell right now I have a little empty house next to mine just so someone else doesn't put one there...

Here's some reasons; someone wants to open a little shop or they want to run a tavern, they have an order guild on one character and a chaos character on another so they would need two houses just for those guilds (I guess next you would want to limit guildstones per account).
There are reasons like this and more, just because you don't realize them doesn't mean they don't exist.

Well as smart as I am I can't think of EVERYTHING. I don't know of many people (or anyone for that matter) who has characters in different guilds. I didn't say it has to be capped at 1 or 2, I used that as an example. Make it 2 or 3 if really needed.

Besides, if there is a cap of 1, 2, 3, or whatever amount, like all things in life people will have to choose what is more important to them. Just like how I have to choose what kind of player I am; crafter, hunter, pker. I don't have time for all 3 so I do a compromise and do 50/30/20 or 50/50, etc. Or how I have to choose which craft to train since I don't have enough gold to train them all, or how I want to buy a PS3 and 360 but only have the money for 1 so I buy the PS3... The same decision will have to be made whether you want characters in different guilds, if you want to run a shop (more or less done by the vendor mall by the way), etc.

Shade Wrote:

Eighty Swords Wrote:3) Staff create more static houses in different towns or random spots around the world and put these up for auction. Take 30 minutes to decorate some of the empty houses in towns and maybe some people will want to buy them. Ex: the theatre in the northern part of Britain. This is a nice big house but it's empty and looks ugly right now so there isn't much of a reason to buy it.

this kind of makes me think that you don't understand how buying statics work... Players pick any static in the world and page to buy it. If it is within our guidelines and a reasonable location we price it for them, at which time they can let us know if they really want to buy it. If so then it goes up for auction. Once a player owns a static they are free to decorate it all they want, and we can even help them add some simple decor to it as well depending on certain circumstances.

Yes I understand how statics work, and what I was getting at is that maybe some people buy an already decorated static because they don't want to make a custom house and decorate it from scratch, or they want to have it decorated with items you can't normally get.

This suggestion also came from the fact that people are saying we are running out of available plots of land or there aren't that many statics remaining, so a tentative solution is to decorate existing statics or make new ones on the edge of town. The great thing about making a custom house as a staff is you can shape it however you want. It doesn't have to be 13x13 or 18x18, you can make it 10*30 or 30*15, L shaped, etc.

Shade Wrote:In any case, you might not see reason for house decay because you are looking at right now but down the road there will be no room left anywhere. Honestly I think there are only a handful of places that a castle would still fit. Eventually it will be needed so why not do it right before or as we come out of beta. Even if we told people they couldn't build crappy custom houses, normal houses will still continue to accumulate.

You're right, to some degree I am only considering how it is right now and I understand the concept of preventative measures and why you want to implement this idea now. That said, right now there are plenty of places left you just need to explore and not give up because there's already a house at the first place you want to put one or because there's a house within 5 minutes or even 1 minute.

I also firmly believe there are less drastic measures that can be taken before this suggestion has to be used and these measures should be explored before pissing off people with this suggestion.

Ryuuku Wrote:When that idea get implemented I hope you are going to send a mail to everyone who played and have mail archived telling about that new change.

Agreed. Not very fair to do delete a house on someone that has no idea this is happening. It would also be nice if the person could be emailed when it's say 1 week before their house is deleted so if they think they ever will come back they will know they have to refresh it every 30 days or however often because it's very easy to forget about an email 2 months later when it took you only 1 minute to read.



Overall I don't like this idea of forcing someone to stay around and log in every x weeks or days just to make sure their stuff doesn't disappear on them after they worked so hard. In my opinion if someone wants to take an extended break, let them. As Shade said; if people want to quit they'll quit, well if they want to come back, they'll come back when they're ready and this suggestion really won't encourage them to come back!

Well, it looks like the consensus is leaning towards implementing this so I'll go ahead and brainstorm possible problems to take into consideration.

1) If a house decays, you won't be able to reach the items that "drop" on the top floors of the house. Maybe they should fall to the ground when a house decays instead of floating.

2) A house should be able to be flagged as no-decay or you should at least be able to modify the decay timer. This could be useful if people have to take a break from UO but intend to return. For instance, I'm going to be moving to Japan for a foreign exchange program for 6 months in January and I won't be able to log in during that time, which basically means I have to either let my house decay, move all my items and delete my house and hope that the spot is still there for me (and then the terrible process of rebuilding a custom house.), or give out my account info to someone else to have them refresh it which shouldn't be an option.

3) Doors that are deleted and replaced may not refresh the house duration. (guild doors, re-hued doors)

4) If this is just to get rid of the problem with tons of houses being used as placeholders, (for example, Rabbi's 30 or so houses that block off the whole area north of minoc mines), it's not going to work since the player would just run to refresh all those houses once a month or so.

5) Allow any friend/coowner/owner who uses the door to refresh the sign, OR let a simple login on the account that owns the house refresh the duration. Otherwise, it's just one more bit of hassle that's being added. I know UO is kindof built around hassle, but I think that today's gaming crowd is getting more accustomed to games that don't require constant babysitting.


--EDIT--
This isn't showing support for the idea. I don't like the idea of house decay at all.

Here's an alternative solution:

Add a timer to all the houses that check to see how long it has been since the house has been used (door opened or sign used by the owner/co-owner/friend). Have a command in-game for GMs to use that will show houses or statics that haven't been used in 6 months. GMs can see those houses, then go to the location to check it out. If the house is a worthless house (or static) or the player has quit, then the GM can delete it and put a deed or check in the player's bank box (you could add a command for that also.)

I think that a case-by-case basis is going to be the best bet. Implement that timer, then wait 6 months to see which houses still haven't been used and start deleting houses and opening up statics.

The other benefit is that you have clear logs of when the house was deleted, by whom, and you can explain what happened if the player came back later.


Oh, and as far as item count, we're being a little silly. Think of shards like NOS that had 500+ players back in 2001 or so. TONS more items and players than we have right now, yet they were able to run fine on machines that run at what, an eighth of the capacity of modern machines? Item count is fine and there are betters solutions to lowering it than house decay. That's just another "pro" to use to support house decay that doesn't really matter at all.

Sindern Wrote:Here's an alternative solution:

Add a timer to all the houses that check to see how long it has been since the house has been used (door opened or sign used by the owner/co-owner/friend). Have a command in-game for GMs to use that will show houses or statics that haven't been used in 6 months. GMs can see those houses, then go to the location to check it out. If the house is a worthless house (or static) or the player has quit, then the GM can delete it and put a deed or check in the player's bank box (you could add a command for that also.)

I think that a case-by-case basis is going to be the best bet. Implement that timer, then wait 6 months to see which houses still haven't been used and start deleting houses and opening up statics.

The other benefit is that you have clear logs of when the house was deleted, by whom, and you can explain what happened if the player came back later.

Yay for Sindern!! I think your alternate suggestion combined with some of my suggestions would be a much better solution to the 'lack of space' (although that's a pretty absurd statement as I maintain there's still plenty of space left).

1) Custom houses have to be approved before they're finalized.

This is very easy to do and only requires two things;

-A tweak to custom houses so you have to be GM level or higher to finalize
-A staff member makes a sticky in the general section of the forums called 'Make House Approvals Here' and they give a simple explanation like 'We now require custom houses to be approved before they are finalized. When you are absolutely certain you are done designing your house leave your character name here and we will check out the house to approve it. If we approve we will finalize the house for you and withdraw the money from your bank.' If we do not approve we will PM you regarding any changes that need to be made. When these changes are made please repost in this thread.

2) A GM checks out existing custom houses and deletes the ugly and useless ones.

I didn't clearly explain this the first time I mentioned this so I'll give it another shot... A staff would look over all existing custom houses to find which ones are 'invalid'. Here are some examples of what I qualify as invalid;

-A house that has stayed as a dirt patch for x months and when a staff opens it up to see what it looks like there hasn't been any designing done to it.
-A single floor house with no items, doors, walls, and just different colored tiles to say something like 'Hi' or 'BOO!'.

What I'm NOT talking about here is personal taste in what does or doesn't look cool. I find my house very nice and others might not like it, and this wouldn't qualify as an invalid house.

3) You have a limited amount of time to design your custom house and leave it as a dirt patch before it's deleted and you're re-imbursed for it.

Once you place your custom house you have x days or x weeks to finalize it and submit it for approval. If the house is not finalized within this period, a message is sent to the staff to notify them and they can look to see if the house is pending approval or talk to the player to find out what happened before the house is deleted and re-imbursed.

4) Limit houses to X amount per ACCOUNT.

Shade gave some examples of why you might need more then 1 or 2 houses so set a reasonable amount and not unlimited. Like Sindern said; Rabbi has 30 houses north of Minoc (I don't know if it's true or not or if it's an exageration) and if these aren't actually being used then this is just wasting that precious space there's so little of left according to some people. And I don't mean 'being used' as in they each have 1 or 2 chests with a few items in them, but actually being used and visited on a semi-regular basis.

Personally I don't think you need more then 2 houses and if for some reason you do then you should have to decide what's more important to you; characters in different guilds or 1 guild house and 1 personal house, etc. (just because you're in more then 1 guild doesn't mean you're the guildmaster or guildhouse owner). Just like how I described in my last post where you have to choose what skills you will train, or what you will spend most of your time doing on INX, etc.