Player Housing

[zabeal]

adding on to what Xandria just said, you could have a village with just a city hall and any other buildings. THis could lead into a few things- inorder to build in city limists, you have to get permision from the ruler of it, and probebly pay them rent on the land. Out side of city limist you can take any land for free, but this could lead into the old PvP buildings discussion:
Every building outside of city limits needs to be defended, becuase it can be broken into, destroyed whatever by anyone who wants to(folling normal pvp rules of course),  but inside a city that is not the case- the owner of a building can set who can enter and when, and nothing is destroyable. How do you get rid of a city then? simple- they would need to have the important buildings that make it a city on the outskirts, so technicly they wouldn\'t be in the city themselves. The city hall can be attacked, and once it is destoyed, everything else is far game! Sound cool?

PS: when I city I mean any sized population center

[Shiyar]

I don\'t know, if it\'s possible to destroy housing that isn\'t within a city, you won\'t have anyone willing to risk starting a new settlement.  I\'m not going to waste a month\'s worth of gold to build a house that I know has a good chance of getting looted and destroyed!

This goes back to my argument that while shops, inns, and NPC structures should be fair game for break-ins and destruction, PC housing should not be subject to such things.  It just leaves open too many options for griefers.  There should be NO WAY of getting into a player\'s house without being on an approved list.  Period.

Of course, you would still have con artists who could try talking their way in...

[Kiva]

Oh yea, let\'s all go break into the NPC houses and destroy them. I bet they\'d like that, and let\'s all build our houses in new york, cause then people can\'t break into them. Or let\'s build a castle in the middle of nowhere, cause then people can\'t break into it, or let\'s deploy NPC guards outside our castle in the city so thieves can just walk in and out of our houses and take anything they want. Good ideas.

[zabeal]

Originally posted by Gronomist
Oh yea, let\'s all go break into the NPC houses and destroy them. I bet they\'d like that, and let\'s all build our houses in new york, cause then people can\'t break into them. Or let\'s build a castle in the middle of nowhere, cause then people can\'t break into it, or let\'s deploy NPC guards outside our castle in the city so thieves can just walk in and out of our houses and take anything they want. Good ideas.

Say again? or edit so I can edit this as a reply?

[Evanchild]

Originally posted by Xandria
Yeah, I think what is meant by free is that you don\'t have to pay for the land if it is not inside the city limits.  You\'d still have to pay for materials, labor, etc. to build a house there.  Still, it would be fun (especially for us merchants) to set up small rest stations between cities, with a few small buildings to sell basic supplies and some lodging.  This would give the game a bit more feeling to it, especially since it seems that the Planeshift world will be so big, that distances between major cities will be quite large.  And it will be nice for those players who want to live in a small community.

Perhaps there would be some rules for becoming a \'city.\'  So if you just drop a house and a shop it won\'t be called a city; it\'ll just be a couple houses by the road.  There must be, for example, a city hall, a temple, and inn, and at least 5 houses to be called a \'town,\' then when it grows to a certain number of residents, it will become a \'city.\'  Or something like that  

well i don\'t think a player can start a \"city\"  but just a very nice camp.  

Shiyar, why couldn\'t you destroy housing outside a city?  I plan on nto building in cities except maybe a shop.

[Xandria]

Originally posted by Evanchild

well i don\'t think a player can start a \"city\"  but just a very nice camp.  

Sure, small encampments could be started with small tents and rudimentary housing, and perhaps later evolving into larger cities.  It\'s always a possibility.

Although it may be possible for a player in later stages of the game to start his/her own city, I was aiming more towards a group of like 5-20 people work together to form a city.  It could possibly arise out of a group of people that get to know each other well throughout the game.  I could see a blacksmith, miner, wizard, innkeeper, bartender, shopkeeper, and a group of fighters with small personal fortunes getting together to start their own city.  Each person contributes to their building, and together they form a town where they can live and roleplay together.

Either this or a guild with enough money could choose to create their own city if they had a good reason for doing so.

As far as pvp and theivery goes, I\'d say that if pvp is not going to be allowed in general except for arenas, then perhaps the city mayor could have an option whether to allow pvp/looting in the city, and if so what the rules for it are.  They could choose to have a safe city where there is absolutely no pvp and no stealing from pc or npc housing, or completely opposite with complete pvp (players would receive some kind of warning when approaching such a city) and theft of housing.  This would mean that anyone entering the city would be fair game to it\'s inhabitants, and would be killed on sight by the city guards if they were caught stealing.

Just don\'t take my thoughts on pvp seriously, because I don\'t invest much time thinking about it.  I am an advocate of abosolutely no pvp outside of arenas, and that\'s just how I am  

[hook]

Shiyar, read you PM!!

[shadowrunner]

20 at least I think

[Vash]

The building of your own constructions in a game is very attractive, but for game mechanics a realy big challenge.
The first problem I could come up with is that problably everyone who logs on the server, and with a free server that are a lot of people, would want to build his own house. A problem with this is that the whole server will be crouded in no time with all those houses. To prevent such a thing 2 things could be done. I personally think they should be combined.

- Like in above posts, building a house should be expensive. That way the treshold for building a house will become higher, and less people will build one.

- Houses should be destructible by other players. This way houses are build and destroyed. But people as Xandria don\'t like pvp. That\'s a problem. But think it this way: A MMORPG must have resemblance with a real \'natural\' world. And in a real violent world nobody would think \'bout building his expensive house in the middle of nowhere if he thinks he can\'t defend it. So what you need to build your own house is protection from it being destroyed. This can be gained by living in a community, where always are people to defend your community. So this way people will have a natural urge to build their house in a city, and lonely weird placed houses require a great effort in defending it, or will be destroyed.

Of course there is the problem that on the internet there are people who think it\'s fun to ruin somebody\'s hard work. Because they can\'t do that in real life, they do it on the net. I myself don\'t really know a good solution to these people. You can see them as the occasional horde of orcs rampaging over a city, only then with human faces. Or you can ban them of the server. Or which is MY best solution; make an community army/militia consisting of NPC\'s. This is totally sponsored by the people of the community with the sole purpose of defending the community. The only thing is that those NPC\'s should be able to outwit the occasional lame destroying PC, and powerfull enough to really beat up high level lamers.
Also fun is the managing of this community, which takes an active player, thereby an community head. Politics!

All this combined should create player created and designed cities which don\'t become too big, too weird placed, and are \'natural\', that is, don\'t require managing from above to keep them the proper shape.

[zabeal]

completely agree with you Vash, one of the big problems is allowing PvP for people who want it, and disabling it for people who don\'t want it at the same time. One solution is to have people choice when they create their charactor, and then have benifits for each to make up for the competely differnt play styles they\'d have to have. But that\'s getting off topic so....
As I said before, I think building in towns should have fees, but would make breaking in/ destroying it impossible even if you are PvP enabled. Then if build outside, and are PvP disabled, people could do damage, but not really break in or destroy your building. It would just be like a big deturent, then spent a lot of energy attacking you, so maybe you should consider moving somewheres else... players who are PvP enabled would be able to buld cheaper since they could log in one day and find their building gone or taken over.

[Vash]

But what will happen with the houses build outside the town by pvp disabled people, who abandon their house? Your way it will be their forever, poluting the map/level/environment whatever. That\'s my main concern, when you enable building by players, hundreds of those out of place undestructable houses will turn up in \'the lonely quiet and very beautifull but poluted by players forest\'

[lostprophet]

There needs to be a way to limit building, otherwise the entire game will be covered in houses, and you won\'t be able to walk either side of a road without smashing someone\'s window. You\'d have to not only pay for the land, but apply for planning permission form the devs too.

[Monketh]

Yes, and the devs could be bugged(some message sys would be nesscesary) for the \"Bulldozing\" of abandoned non-pvp housing.

[Plaidmonkey]

Some really good ideas here

But there is always the choice between a completely player-run, realistic world (no disabling PvP in a city, just good defense through politics and militia) and a perhaps more friendly computer-run world (being able to disable PvP attacks ans such).

I think it would be really cool to come across a new, frontier town, made mostly of tents, but also an inn complete with dining area  :] Sort of gives off a friendly feeling.

[lostprophet]

If there was no such thing as newbs, a completely player run world would be an excellent idea (after all, real life sorts itself out). I like the idea of new cities growing over time, and existing cities growing.