Homesteads!

Estarra

Housing now available within cities and communes!

We are now offering homesteads to players. These are dwellings within the confines of a city or commune. They are not changeable once fixed (except at a cost). They are more similar to custom pets than they are to manses insofar that you must submit them for approval and once built, they are mapped and fixed.

See HELP HOMESTEAD for details.

Shuyin

Will these rooms count for explorers and will the initial doors that grant entry have perms?

...Just asking.

Enyalida

What part will org leadership play in where homesteads go?

Also, what happens if you move orgs?

Tacita

I feel like it should be default forest for communes, paying to make it urban - because that corresponds with the surrounding area.

Estarra

I believe rooms will count for explorers. Initial doors are ordinary doors with keys that can be broken as normal doors.

Where homes go is up to the city/commune divine pantheon/patron. I assume the divine will ask for suggestions from the org leadership to work with the owner to mutually agree on a suitable location.

Karlach

Forests shoul.. damnit Taci beat me to it.

But yes, I like the option to pay for alternatives to the default, but that default should remain in theme with the organisation it's placed in.

Kiradawea

Estarra said:

I believe rooms will count for explorers. Initial doors are ordinary doors with keys that can be broken as normal doors.

Where homes go is up to the city/commune divine pantheon/patron. I assume the divine will ask for suggestions from the org leadership to work with the owner to mutually agree on a suitable location.

Please no. I'd really rather you not be able to pay for an advantage in explorer rankings.

Besides that though, I love the idea of Homesteads. Just... please don't make them count for explorer rankings.

Enyalida

Will they be deedable to orgs, salable, or otherwise changeable in any way?

EDIT: Nevermind to that lst one.

Enyalida

Replacement question: Will orgs be able to unilaterally lock the doors of these slash will they count as rooms in the area of the org, or as a separate area? Aetolia had some problems with people being able to hole themselves up in their houses and wreck havoc because no one could get in to do anything about it.

Everiine

While I think this is awesome, my main concern is the space--while expensive and I'm sure slow to build at first, what happens when a commune or city is, percentage-wise, more player-homestead than imagined commune/city? And then when people go inactive, you're stuck with all of these empty homesteads littered about like graveyards. This was one of the major problems with the Lord of the Rings: Online housing system--there are entire neighborhoods of houses owned by players that haven't logged in in years, and on some servers, there are no new houses available period because every house in every neighborhood is owned. Assuming (as I hope) that Lusternia will be around for many more years to come, I don't want to enter Serenwilde and find every room has an entrance to a homestead (which breaks all sorts of RP aspects to begin with, filling the forest with so many structures) locked and owned by players no one has heard of or from in years.

Enyalida

That's why I was asking about deeding and closing abilities. One, in Serenwilde specifically, all of the homesteads are extremely likely to be placed in the area with shops, which already is described in the LOOK descriptions as being chock full of structures. We have a LOT of unseen npc members!

My question is:

Will we possibly see the introduction of buildings in this vein for cities/communes to pursue? Basically, a set of mortal builder commands costing gold from commune/city coffers to create org-run buildings? The Steward's ministry could be expanded to govern the creation, expansion, and use of the buildings we make. 

Thul

1000 cred cost is going to keep the whole empty neighborhood thing from happening, I think. Best you'll see is one or maybe two per city/commune for a while.

Questions, though:

Will teleport feature only work on rooms inside the homestead? Can they work between homesteads? Between a homestead and a manse?

Can you build a shop on a homestead? If you can, will it be like an aethershop, or will it be subject to taxes/closure per other city/commune shops?

Can a city/commune set guards on someone's homestead?

Enyalida

Yeah, 1000 credits approaches twice as expensive for the same thing (arguably, a better thing) in other IREs (EDIT: like this). Perhaps it would be good to slash the rooms and the price accordingly, to make small (and cheap) homesteads available.

Shaddus

BRB, rolling a mugwump nihilist that lives underneath the Necromentate.

Karlach

The likelyhood is these will be purchased by entire families or organisations rather than individuals.

That being said, is it possible (considering this is an emailed purchase) to split the cost across several willing people? Say you have 5 people willing to cough up 200 credits each, or allow individuals purchasing their own rooms. This is something I can see people using membership credits on for example, and you can't transfer those to a singular person to purchase everything.


Edit: Furthermore, huge no to explorer ranks affecting these please.

Enyalida

That would be interesting, could we have these deed-able to great houses - and have that actually confer privs on the head of the house?

Estarra

Keep in mind we don't want lots of small and cheap homesteads. Housing should still be primarily through manses. City/commune dwellings are really meant to be prestige items.

In any event, we're dipping our toes in the water here and certainly open to specific suggestions! Feel free to make them!

Enyalida

Introduce a gold-based way for communes/cities to mimic the functionality of the homesteads and create player-driven parts of their org! 

Also, allow the use of manse artifacts in these rooms.

Caerlyr

Really cool. Super cool idea, but man.... The cost.

Shaddus

Serious suggestions:

Allow homesteads in non-org areas, such as off the roads or in places like Zoaka or the undervault.

Reduce cost of homesteads to 250 wilderness/350 in org. This keeps the cost high enough to prevent people from just making homesteads willy-nilly, but allows people to have a home without basically paying 300 dollars.

Allow people to customise their own rooms personally. If you can spend 2k (room name plus room description) in a manse to change a room, 25 credits is a bit exorbitant. Perhaps the same price, or 5k per?

I doubt it's possible, but allow people to activate manse-type artifacts in a homestead, like trade artifacts/flowerbeds/stasis gems and the like.


Above all, give us a reason to do this instead of spending a fraction of the amount and buying a manse. The only real reason I could possibly see to buy a homestead is for Greathouses, or a coolness factor that I'm just not interested in.

Lavinya

As bizarre as it feels to say this, I like that it is expensive. At even 350 credits, I guarantee we would have houses popping up all over the place. Being expensive, it's only going to be your dedicated person that invests in one, meaning it is more likely to be utilised, and hopefully we will see quality over quantity. We don't want the cities to turn into the aetherplex with a zillion fantastical and completely different houses side by side.

I (and still tentatively, mind you) really quite like this idea.

Daraius

I'm okay with them being super expensive. Manses and aetherships fill my player housing needs.

Estarra

Homesteads specifically aren't going to be outside cities or communes. That's reserved for special auctions.

The reason for not being able to customize rooms freely is because these are public rooms, not private manse rooms, and we will insist on admin oversight/review. The price needs to be high enough so it won't be done frequently (i.e., 5k gold is nothing and admin probably wouldn't have time to oversee requests to customize at every whim). I guess the bottom line is homesteads shouldn't really be compared to manses or housing systems in other games, they are unique, prestige dwellings with a different set of rules.

BTW, if you read down to the bottom of the help file, we are allowing manse-type artifacts but we need to know what they are on a case-by-case basis as many of them may need to be set up by the admin or activated by a coder. This is new to us and nothing is automated. If they prove to be popular, we may start coding for more automation and perhaps adding specialty items just for homesteads (an admin suggested magic wardrobes that lead from the homestead to one's manse!).

Rivius

If they get really popular, can we add custom mobs

Shaddus

I don't disagree with the need for a higher cost, but 1k is a bit pricy.

Rivius

I dunno, if you ask me, I'd even wonder if that's pricey enough. If we're going to be polluting our orgs with indelible new rooms, I'd rather people have to really pay an arm and a leg for it so that they're encouraged to make it not-suck.

Enyalida

The idea that players playing in the game world pollute it unless the kid bumpers are up is discouraging. 

As long as these rooms are clearly labled as homesteads and there is some mechanic for org leaders to deal with people causing trouble (outside of god fiat) with their homes, be it by using them as staging grounds for assaults or by having a magical fun sexytimes palace in Celest, I think it'll be alright.

Honestly, in the other games, most of the houses stay locked (magically so) any time the owner isn't around explicitly to open it, so that people can't sneak in and do things like set teleport points or let a bunch of enemies in past guards. With the exception of a few very open and public ones, most players don't see the insides of most houses.

Xenthos

Personally I think they should be called something other than homesteads, and viewed differently. This is a person's chance to add to the culture and vibe of an entire organization. Everyone who comes along later will be able to see what you did.

Why close it off? You already have manses for that. Instead, revel in it. Share your creativity with the world and help it grow!

I say this because it is way way too expensive for a home. It is not, however, too expensive when considered for its true potential.

Xenthos

PS: will any mechanical things allowed for homesteads also be allowed in auction areas?

Enyalida

In part, that is why I want orgs to have a part in this sort of mortal-building-as-player-characters experience. Being able to work together, have a barn raising, and have a real barn there afterwards that lasts and can be explored by other players - without having to basically get a god to do the work for you - would be a huge boon to culture and RP for the communes and cities. If attractively (not 50mil for the first room, 1 mil for the next...) priced, it should also provide a nice org-level gold sink!

Daraius

I was under the impression that orgs can basically already do that. Or I'm not seeing the distinction between that and going through the regular channels to get an addition to your org.