To the devs - better housing please!

Selenus

Hi devs,

Can we please have access to better individual housing? These 7x7 are highly restrictive, we can barely do anything for decoration + trophies out on display + storage.

Is there a particular reason why housing is limited to 7x7? Is this anything to do with the limitation that devs would like to see people physically travelling (thus the housing areas) rather than marking everywhere? Because this point is moot due to the 'teleport to house' option provided by vendor search.

Even just the option to upgrade to a 8x7 'small stone tower' or a 7x7 'small stone workshop'/'small marble workshop' would give us more room for our items and to display our things.
Ideally I think a lot of players would like to have access to even bigger housing... not thinking keeps and castles but even the mid-tier houses like the 15x14 'large house with patio' are really popular.

Are there any plans to improve housing? Please consider this, it would add a lot of fun for us and an additional gold sink / something to aim/save for. 
Thanks!

LilyGrace

Hear! Hear! For sure add the workshops and small towers. 

But what if we had a house building contest, like we've had for castles and keeps, but instead for 8x8 / 8x9 and 8x10's, the price goes up incrementally.

It'd be a great gold sink. It would take the burden off Dev's needing to create new styles. It would add fun. It would add interest to the landscape. It would feel more like old world UO.

I don't mind that a lot of room was made for housing. But I do hate that all of it is what would be called clear-cutting of trees in the real world. Between only allowing us smalls and clear-cutting all the trees it's pretty flat and monotonous looking out there.

 

Kel

What we have, currently, is such a departure from what we're used to. Bigger houses would be cool. Houses with more floors would be cool. But that may also clutter and make the constant traveling through the housing areas, Dagger especially, a PITA. Maybe we don't need the housing zones though.

Now that we have Vendor Search, having houses be more spread out makes more sense than it did on beta. One of the big reasons for not wanting to allow free placement might be marking runes, etc. Or maybe there's some seasonal stuff coming. I'd like to hear more from the team about housing and why we have the current system and if it could change.

LilyGrace

How about a combo plate? Keep land cleared like they have for housing now. Please, with next year's do overs, leave some trees so it doesn't look like a parking lot out there. And Let us place houses as we used to. Let us place houses in clearings all around the world. 

Traveling, running through forests, around houses placed where players chose to place, moving around whatever obstacles hasn't ever stopped us before tho. Having houses placed in straight rows for ease of travel seems like an odd idea to me

Jepeth

Pie in the sky idea: steal how SWG did player cities and introduce politician as an advanced skill in NL. Enough houses in your player city lets you upgrade your area with streets, foliage, infrastructure, and eventually a recall plinth or moon gate.

Selenus

For me the primary concern is how restrictive they are - barely space to put 3 pieces of furniture and 2 chests, let alone display items. Ideal solution would be either more housing areas / allow people to place anywhere, and most importantly, bigger/better house designs from the original templates. I understand custom housing could be hard work but even just adding the original deeds from the game would go a long way.

Grimbeard

I don't think the developers anticipated players wanting to decorate on a shard that gets wiped truly the players behavior thus far shows how out of touch the team is and the unreasonable  unrealistic demands of the players shows they are no better 

Selenus

Grimbeard said:

I don't think the developers anticipated players wanting to decorate on a shard that gets wiped truly the players behavior thus far shows how out of touch the team is and the unreasonable  unrealistic demands of the players shows they are no better 

What's unreasonable or unrealistic about wanting bigger housing? It's a 1-year long server, not 1-month. Many players' lifespan for a game lasts less than a year. Players should be able to fully enjoy the UO experience while they are around.

I have raised this before but there's a lot of players that don't play Production servers nor will they after the shattering, they just want to enjoy a 'fresh' server where not nearly everyone is fully established with millions in the bank.

The devs actually gave themselves more work by creating 'housing areas' and disabling housing throughout the map; be easier to just have housing enabled anywhere and expand the list of houses you can choose to place. The whole 'physically walking to someone's house' concept became completely moot the moment fast travel was enabled through vendor search.
I understand if they want to keep housing areas since they're already in, but please add bigger houses (and more housing areas if needed) so we can enjoy that facet of the game, which is not a small part of UO.

LilyGrace

It's an interesting concept, Jepeth. I left SWG before any of that came along. I have to say it seems like a system that has the possibility of creating a lot of ranker between players but maybe I don't fully understand how it worked.

I hear what you're saying, Selenus. I think creating custom housing would be more of an investment of time than I'd be willing to make, considering the game is seasonal and will go poof after a year. You kinda want to hustle while the hustling's good.

But more choices and letting us place as we used to, find a nice spot and set down your house. First come first serve for that location, all sounds good to me.

And I do think bringing new designs in, that are a reasonable size but not land hogs would give us the ability to be creative in ways we enjoy with our houses, and would be a great way to improve and bring interest to the landscape. 

I think a lot of players would jump at the chance to create housing designs for NL in another TC contest. Again, it takes the burden off Dev's when they've enough on their plates already. It let's players be creative, and would ultimately give us more choices on NL, which I'd bet most everyone would enjoy. 

Kalsey

Even the Small Stone Workshop or the Small Marble Workshop would be much more enjoyable.  They are still 7 X7 so not much would have to change at this time.

We would be able to place a mailbox, message board, and vendors.

There are items crafters can make and BODs rewards, like rugs, paintings, furniture that are mostly useless for individual housing.  Maybe keep us crafters off welfare.

It would be great if the DEVs would consider this for this first year,  don't think it would take much work and next year maybe be more generous?  Please??????????

I said please.

LilyGrace

Grimbeard said:

I don't think the developers anticipated players wanting to decorate on a shard that gets wiped truly the players behavior thus far shows how out of touch the team is and the unreasonable  unrealistic demands of the players shows they are no better 

Relax, GrimDougle, no one is forcing you to decorate or worry about game aesthetics. 

Grimbeard

LilyGrace said:

Grimbeard said:

I don't think the developers anticipated players wanting to decorate on a shard that gets wiped truly the players behavior thus far shows how out of touch the team is and the unreasonable  unrealistic demands of the players shows they are no better 

Relax, GrimDougle, no one is forcing you to decorate or worry about game aesthetics. 

You people are crazy the developers gave you your hard not at all UO shard now you've done nothing but complain and ask them to turn it into UO

LilyGrace

I’ll file your last post here with the rest of your posts where you don’t know what you’re talking about, McBeard. 

Selenus

Grimbeard said:

LilyGrace said:

Grimbeard said:

I don't think the developers anticipated players wanting to decorate on a shard that gets wiped truly the players behavior thus far shows how out of touch the team is and the unreasonable  unrealistic demands of the players shows they are no better 

Relax, GrimDougle, no one is forcing you to decorate or worry about game aesthetics. 

You people are crazy the developers gave you your hard not at all UO shard now you've done nothing but complain and ask them to turn it into UO

I mean, your statements don't connect to one another, it's almost like you want to be inflammatory just for the sake of it. Oh wait, you do.

Housing is a core element of UO and should be properly present (rather than this neutered version) in any version of the game. Sure, a lot of things about this shard are more 'casual', and some a lot more restrictive than UO. 7x7 housing seems like an unnecessary restriction, and vendor search porting completely negates the 'physically travel around and see people' approach.

PS: You also seem to be out of touch with a lot of the community. There's a *lot* of players who are playing not because it's different, but because it's a fresh server where not everyone is established with tens of millions in the bank. I respect that there's different reasons to play this server: some only want to gather some trophies to take back to Prodo, some want a different spin, some want a simplified version of UO. Providing us with bigger/better housing doesn't take away from any of these goals, just enriches the playing experience for others.

Arnold7

Read though this rather quickly, but think the answer is there isn’t room.  Every time I go to Atlantic I just keep running into housing.  It’s so congested I don’t really enjoy going there.  I am guessing that’s why houses are so small and inventory is limited.  I think the NL houses look like crap too, but I am thinking their size has more to do with space and server limitations than anything else.

Pawain

Arnold7 said:

Read though this rather quickly, but think the answer is there isn’t room.  Every time I go to Atlantic I just keep running into housing.  It’s so congested I don’t really enjoy going there.  I am guessing that’s why houses are so small and inventory is limited.  I think the NL houses look like crap too, but I am thinking their size has more to do with space and server limitations than anything else.

Yup and there is no place for castles everywhere.  Since Atl is full and players can have an Atl house and an NL house.  There is no reason to think NL wont be full also.  It has less land mass for houses already.

Would be nice to have that little house with the farm plot that @LilyGrace made as an example.

Also a poster had a great idea to make neighborhoods that houses fit into a spot like Tokuno and New Mag have.

Selenus

Arnold7 said:

Read though this rather quickly, but think the answer is there isn’t room.  Every time I go to Atlantic I just keep running into housing.  It’s so congested I don’t really enjoy going there.  I am guessing that’s why houses are so small and inventory is limited.  I think the NL houses look like crap too, but I am thinking their size has more to do with space and server limitations than anything else.

Hey Arnold. I think the situation is as it is on prodo for two reasons: Firstly, the servers have been up for MANY years. That's going to result in people having accumulated insane wealth and many players over the years. Secondly, the player base on production shards is higher, so it's going to have more people.

Not saying they should unlock keeps and castles (which occupy insane amounts of space) for individuals on NL, the biggest houses should be kept for guilds. But individuals should be able to get the mid tier 15x15 houses. They could also expand the housing areas if they want to keep the 'housing areas' approach. Or, alternatively, just unlock placing in more areas in the world. There's no lack of space, just needs to be enabled.

LilyGrace

Probably not the best thing for game performance but I always have the box checked for displaying contents of public houses because I'm always curious to see how houses are decorated. I made a point of tooling around my neighborhood on my newly bonded llama, (yay ridable llamas)...

My observation is the vast majority of houses set to public are decorated inside and often outside on the steps. My guess is a lot of the houses set to private are also decorated.