One thing that was in the works (maybe) was Club houses on their on streets. This was actually tested on the last day of 1st Beta. A limited number of Groups (1st comers on that day) were allowed to build their on Group Home and their very own street. These were in Groddle. On that day, there were new street signs with Group names on them. Each of those streets had a project to build it and it's own house. These Group streets were reminiscent of the old Quarters (which still existed at the time). What I loved about those streets were the cooperation and sharing that had most of what we loved about the Quarters. They had the Neighborhood feel. So, maybe we can have those while also having Home Streets. I think one idea was that the Group street could be linked to each members Home street. We would have a sign on our home streets that gave access to the Group Home.
I think that most of us belonged to more than one Group so maybe we could have another 5 location sign that gave easy access to 5 Group streets. So, if you belonged to Group 6, you could access it from a Friend's Home street which is one of the streets on the Friends sign.
@BribAnnie, yea, I think I mentioned the group club houses in another thread, but glad you brought them up here. I really was looking forward to those after we tested them out, and was sad that after a year, they still weren't in game by the time it was shut down. I agree it might be an interesting option for the neighborhood idea. In one of my groups, we tried to have an alt/group home, but it wasn't the same as a place we all built together. I like the idea of a group signpost and you'd have to pick your fav five to be able to go to. That would also help with the abandoned houses in a neighborhood since hopefully some folks in the group would remain. I hate to put a membership number on who could build group streets since my other group was rather small; however, it might help to keep everyone from abandoning a group street...maybe put a longevity period on the group before they can build a street...hard to say what would be a good filter to keep fly by night groups from building a location that would eventually be abandoned.
I almost completely forgot about the potential for group homes! I was around way back then, but I either wasn't online at the right time, or wasn't with a group that was chosen so I didn't get to experience it myself, but it was much discussed at the time and I was hoping to see it again! I would love to build and expand a group area with some of the groups I was a part of!
Im for tying us to the world though, i said earlier in the thread , put a stone on our street, and let it tie to one stone in Ur. When clicked on in Ur it brings up a list of houses tied to it. When clicked on from your street it transports you only to the one stone you are tied to. Can only be tied to one stone at a time and costs img to change stones
As for Group Homes im fine with that, provided the group home goes back on the Market or its spot opens up if the group is disbanded, and/ or gets very small or inactive. Alos you cant buy / get a group home unless your Group is a decent size. Although i still think Towers can serve this purpose as well
I dont see the need for two housing systems though, it makes much more sense, to have one Housing System to concentrate on, and if there is additional it needs to have a different purpose, such as Group (Club Houses) or Temples
If New Housing can tie to the world somehow, and we can have some sort of additional signpost 5 is a bit too low. Id prefer a Route signpost and Friend Signpost, they would look different though. Being able to have more neighbors would be great, but i dont think actual neighborhoods would work, part due to the same issues as Old housing had but also lag, and everyones street is the same shape so not sure how housing blocks would work and buying and selling of houses you use credits to upgrade furnitue/walls etc which costs $ is a bad idea, not to mention adding floors etc took a lot of supplies to do. I also cant see housing blocks without a housing Market, they seem to go hand in hand but maybe thats just me, it may just be if houses are perm and arent sold how will there be spots? It makes more sense to develop more things for New Housing, possibly things such as Balconies, Basements, Wall Dividers, Windows,etc etc as well as things like tying to world and different signposts.
@Felix empty home streets are not a problem because they don't take up any room in Ur. Empty houses on Ur streets do take up space. Visiting an empty home street of a player that chose not to continue harms nothing. Empty houses on Ur streets make for discontent if someone wants to move into a house that someone has abandoned - yet could also return to at any time. I find the notion of eviction after X period of time a bit too punishing if RL takes over for a while.
I generally am trying to take a back seat to these sorts of threads since I know this is space for all of you to debate stuff without developer input. In this case, the old housing code is not included. It will not be coming back in the same form it was. Home streets + towers are *certain* to remain a fixture of the game. Group halls have been discussed for months and we're all in favor of having them, though we haven't decided on their implementation (since it's way down the list of Things We Need For a Functioning Game..in fact, it's not even ON that list). Having them on Ur streets is an option, as well as having other hubs where you can walk along streets of clubhouses, leaving Ur undisturbed.
I will step out for now - back to your regularly scheduled debating!
@ladyceres Thanks for weighing in! I had a feeling old housing code wouldn't be something you had to work with and logically from there probably not something we'd see again! Out of curiosity can you speak to what's being discussed about credits? Are there plans for credits to continue to be sold eventually? I can only assume credit-only furniture won't be a thing for the foreseeable future?
@"Liza Throttlebottom" - We really haven't discussed it too deeply yet; it's really an extremely complicated subject, for reasons that might not be entirely obvious to the community. We know we're going to need donations to keep the servers running. It really depends on how we get organized when the time comes for money to change hands. If we decide that we simply can't be a for-profit organization for lots of complicated reasons, selling credits puts us in a potentially difficult place. If we find ourselves in the position of not getting enough in straight donations to run the servers, selling credits suddenly becomes a need, not a choice. I'm cautiously optimistic that we won't be hurting for donations, but that doesn't automatically mean we won't sell credits either.
Assuming anything at this point might set you up for unnecessary disappointment, so I'd caution against making any assumptions at this time. I will say that regardless of how it all shakes out, I plan to sell premium furniture items to some degree in my tower for those that can't buy credits or donate.
@ladyceres Oh, I totally understand how complicated this must be! There's so much information that us hungry fans can't possibly know! It's easy for us to think of the Eleven project as Glitch, but it's not Glitch and there are totally different concerns and so much that's unknown right now!
I know you might not necessarily have an answer to this, or it might not even be relevent, but : P Is it possible to sell credits without being considered a for-profit business? IE Selling credits just to cover the server costs? Or I suppose that might be what you meant by donations? Sort of the way kickstarter works with donation tiers? Have you guys thought about doing a kickstarter sometime in the future perhaps ? Haha sorry to pelt you with questions I'm sure you don't know the answer to!
Just want to say that when the time comes for money to change hands, if Eleven is looking like it's going to survive for the foreseeable future you can absolutely count on my donation : )
@"Liza Throttlebottom" I don't know anything about the business side of Eleven, but I do know something about business in general. Yes, they can sell things without being a for-profit business. Plenty of "nonprofit" businesses are million-dollar activities--all that matters is that they don't have stocks and shareholders, and that they have a charitable purpose. (Unscrupulous nonprofits are those that funnel 90% of the money they receive into salaries and advertising, and very little toward their cause. Some of the "save the children" orgs are like this; always check the history before donating.)
If Eleven has the legal acumen to set it up, it might be worth registering as a nonprofit--it's no less feasible than the naked clown calenders by the Clown Conservatory (not making that up) or the Harry Potter Alliance. If Harry Potter fans can promote literacy and heroism because of a series of books and movies they love, surely we can promote random kindness and tree-petting because of a game.
Nonprofit orgs can sell things, hire employees, pay for advertising, and do pretty much all the things a normal business does; they just need a charitable or educational purpose for the "extra" money. In this case, several years' worth of "extra" money would be funneled into improving the game. If they ever get to As Improved As Possible, all the devs have salaries, and still have loads of cash, they can either spend it on more salaries to develop the android app version, or set up a slush fund for needy glitchen.
Note that that would be a long ways off... the Organization for Transformative Works, which runs the Archive of Our Own, is a nonprofit that gets (what looks like) a lot of money from membership drives--and those cover server expansions and operating expenses, and that's about it.
If Eleven does look into nonprofit status, I'd recommend they talk to some people from the OTW; Eleven is a fanwork extroaordinaire, and I know they'd love to be aware of it and offer what advice and support they can.
Ok so that was clarified, that Old House Code is gone and were getting New Home houses. Also that Club Houses were discussed but its still up in the air how they will work and its a long way off anyway. But since balconies we had a picture of is the code for them around? they were on the test server in Glitch so I'm curious.
Yep, Eris is on point there. We could give credits in exchange for donations too, while also offering them for separate purchase if we still need to meet our monthly fund-raising goal. But as I say, these comments are all in the abstract. Nothing official has been discussed yet. We will definitely figure it out, consult all the relevant legal bods, and make sure it's all on the level. There MAY be some separation in premium vs not premium items; equally, there may not.
So, the discussion's moved on a bit but I just want to underline one thing about the neighbourhood idea that I particularly like: it can be implemented over and above the current system, so it can be shelved for one day (soon!), but if ever rolled out it wouldn't replace the home street system, only add to it. This would especially be the case if new players under, say, lvl 30 as well as inactive players are not a part of the neighbourhood system. Scaling would present a far smaller problem too if you are only dealing with the player base that is active, in mid- to end-game and who want to participate.
I also wanted to sum up in one place the outline of the system as we worked it out:
-senior players who so desire can link their homestreet or "yard" to a neighbourhood, which has an address linked to a real street in Ur. Neighbourhoods might have a wheel and spoke architecture, where each yard connects on either side to its neighbours, whose yards are reached by walking off the right or left side of the yard. (No clicking on a menu or signpost and one loading screen only. Could be coded like the wormholes.) Yards connect to each other in a wheel and each yard has a connection to the Ur street the neighbourhood is located on.
-yards connect to the real street in Ur via the signpost. Players may have to give up the ability to connect or be connected to other yards via signpost, or perhaps may only be connected to from players whose homestreets do not belong to a neighbourhood.
-neighbourhoods would contain between 11-101 yards, with at least ten neighbourhoods per Ur street that allows for this kind of connection. Not all Ur streets have these connections.
-neighbourhood organization would be maintained by either a quorum of neighbours or a neighbourhood founder/captain, who would be able to accept new members, shift yards around to different locations on the circuit, and remove inactive members after a certain grace period.
-in general, inactive players or neighbourhoods made up of inactive players would be removed from the neighbourhood system, losing nothing but their link to the location on Ur. All their possessions, houses, and resource nodes would remain intact.
-neighbourhoods would present a in-game method of creating and maintaining resource routes, and it would be possible to identify resource route type and resource density via the menu interface at the access point on the Ur street.
-neighbourhoods would create another aspect to mid-and end-game play that would foster community and interaction between players, exploration of and a sense of connectedness to Ur, and a sense of adjacency for players in a given neighbourhood, as well as providing players who want one with a real "address".
-maintaining or creating or joining a neighbourhood could be a potential iMG sink for players.
I'm happy to leave it there, or discuss it further here or in a new thread. Thanks for putting up with my new obsession!
Just a thought There are a lot of different play styles among all gaming bases and I'd like to suggest that it might be seen as biased towards those who play as a group to only allow groups to connect to UR,. For your consideration I'd like to suggest that it still be possible for a single player or pair or small group (under 11) to be able to make a connection ( perhaps via a street stone , this might require some high level or being re-imagined at the end game stage (lol as if we even want to reach an end) or via huge img that groups can achieve quicker but even a single player could achieve in time? Or as a unlock for finishing a certain tree skill set, or . . . Glitch of old was always so inclusive of everyone so maybe this would be possible?
@Faereluth : I'm not opposed to that certainly, my initial conception assumed we'd have some one-yard-long neighbourhoods. The issue that was raised was scalability, as allowing shorter neighbourhoods would increase the number of connections needed at the Ur street level. As well, I do think that since one of the needs we're trying to fill here is regaining a sense of community, the emphasis on collective living is not necessarily out of place. I think you can emphasize that without excluding those who prefer absolutely individual play.
I think it could work if as you say, the iMG cost to found a new neighbourhood is very large but still manageable for a very dedicated single glitch or small group of glitchen. I think that in general, you'd want a high cost there but a quite low cost to join an existing neighbourhood.
You'd also lose your very expensive neighbourhood if you went inactive for the designated period of time. And if there are limited slots for neighbourhoods available at particular connection points, you probably wouldn't get your spot back as it would be filled by a new neighbourhood quickly. There would be less risk of this in a group since I think all members would need to be inactive before the entire neighbourhood is removed.
I would like to see some new version of the real estate market with classifieds that tell you where new neighbourhood spots may open up soon, and tell you on what game day and time they will come available. It would probably be interesting if you can bid on upcoming properties rather than leaving hotly contested ones to the vagaries of the fastest internet connection and clicking speed. The classifieds would also list existing neighbourhoods with spaces available for new yards, and maybe any resource requirements if that's a thing. In an ideal world, neighbourhoods could customize their own ad if desired and pay currants to promote it.
One other thing I've been thinking of is the balance between the need to be able to remove yards on resource routes that change their resource layout while staying active., and the concern about human nature and being mean by kicking people out unfairly. I fear it would be too hard to code but ideally, you could toggle a neighbourhood as requiring a minimum balance of one or two resources for all of its member yards, and if a given yard falls below that then the option to remove it would be there just as if it were inactive.
I could write a whole post on the needs of maintaining the routes that, even with tools like the ones BoomAndBust and Grelca wrote for us, were still time consuming, but that's a different thread. The only no-maintenance option involved the web tools that set up a custom route for you based on your needs and required you to click a button in another browser window to teleport you from yard to yard. Overall, if we think the community sense of the routes in worth maintaining, and not just the easy access to resources, we will need some in-game infrastructure. I know that I am reluctant to get back into organizing this stuff, though it did need management under the system as it existed. One thing I find really appealing out the proposed neighbourhood system is that the tools for management are brought in game, democratized, and made as simple as possible.
Could we not use the asslandia tunnel system ( or the old train station type idea) to link between a home street and Ur, As I understood they were somewhat instanced and as such less stressful for servers, I admit this is how I hoped to regain my connection to a part of Ur, I'm not opposed to joining a group but I'd find it very upsetting if after working to link to Ur I might then if I became inactive for IRL reasons find that connection was lost, and maybe with no way to rejoin the group with access to that area hub. besides I think connecting with Ur and neighbors do not necessarily need to be dependent on each other. Just trying to think of simple options that need little maintaining and allow for more fun time to spend with friends.
Well, what you would lose would be your one-yard-neighbourhood. I think you could probably often find something in the region if you could put up with living with neighbours. Maybe instead, if you aren't part of the neighbourhood system you could opt to swap you signpost for one that connects to Ur. Probably you wouldn't be able to access those via the menu interface on the Ur street. And it would need to be a hefty iMG cost to swap it or to change the street it points at. And paring inactives does seem like a fair way to deal with bloat.
While any system simmilar to what Scarlet Bearsdale and others said would work, and any way of doing housing blocks need to be somewhat like that or we end up in the same issues as before, it is also extremely complicated, and im not sure its feisable to actually do. Plus having someone in charge of monitoring the neighborhoods is a bad idea, theres too many things that can go wrong. So in in keeping it simple, someway to connect to Ur (an item on your street that connects to a dead end streets makes the most sense to me) , to one location only, without forming static neighborhoods (because thats the biggest issue with neighborhoods) when the same item is clicked from the street it brings up a list of who is linked to it, you can also unlink your house and link to a different street, costs img. And a sign post for routes or things similar, as well as one for friends (have them look different) and thats enough. Could also assign a # address to every house upon creation (joining game) , but it doesnt matter where its connected you keep the same #. We can go street to street as it is via signpost, at any rate we need to be able to edit our neighbors and Ur connection ourselves, or i dont see it working.
Concerning a housing market, player homes need to be perm IMO, but a housing market for Club Houses ( Group Homes) might work. And since they were never added the system for them can be different. Also with group homes buying and selling of them isnt as personal IMO, and not everyone would take part in using them either. And the stipulation of having to make a group AND having X amount of players in the group to be able to purchase a Club House would need to be in effect IMO as well, or the Group could gain lvls due to how active they are, not bonuses or anything just lvls for the group would show/correlate to how active, and there would be a min lvl to be able to purchase a Club House
@Everyone I think there's a single issue we're overlooking here! No matter what we do, the current functionality of home streets is that if you click on someones name you can zap to their homestreet instantaneously. I'd sort of forgotten about that in all my excitement!
But while it might not really ping as an issue to most people to me that gives us Glitchen just a bit too much power in any of the systems we've talked about! Because that means that with Scarlett's neighborhood idea you could just find a friend in every neighborhood and instantly have access to their area of Ur since we can currently move around the 'living dimension' totally at will.
To a slightly lesser extent with Lyrical's idea you'd have access to every dead end street in Ur as long as you kept track of whose house was connected to where!
Maybe having this power makes the game more fun I'm not sure, but to me it pings as making things too easy! And sort of negates the need for teleportation!
I dont think anyone is forgetting you can TP to homestreets easy, its that they want to connect somehow directly to Ur. but as i said someway to connect to a single street ( it wasnt every dead end street just the one you are connected to), and be able to move costs img when you want to, would connect you to Ur even if the conection only went one way, and having 2 signposts one for friends and one for routes would be enough IMO, anything overly complicated would be hard to add and also maintain.
What I was saying was that since you can zap to anyone's home street, even if each homestreet was only connected to one street in Ur, that means you essentially have access to ANY street in Ur with a bit of effort!
(And that that seems a tad unbalanced.)
I'd love to have the 'living dimension' tied to Ur in some meaningful way, but I can't see a way to do it without making everything really really easy!
@Lyrical Dejavu, I like the idea of it being a simple connection, that way we can all feel a part of Ur if we wish, and friends can choose the same stone to connect to thus becoming more of a shared street, plus we get chance to friend others who also choose the same stone, I wonder where the most popular stones would be? haha, and we could have stone parties maybe?
Maybe if the group has a particular resource on their home streets the UR stone could hold that info ( could they be a bit like the good old rock? one of his cousins perhaps)
@Lisa as I recall when in the game we could tp to any street in Ur using the map feature so having access from other players home streets wouldn't really be any different?
@Faereluth I believe we only had either 2 or 5 map teles per game day or something like that : P And those were with Teleportation V. So this new functionality would basically render that moot : P That's all, just a personal opinion : )
I guess the only way to compensate for the TP workaround would be to remove the ability for visitors to TP to neighbourhood yards altogether, whether via signpost or directly through name or webpage, unless you use one of your map teleports. I guess in a way that would make sense, and would treat your homestreet like any other location in Ur. But I'm afraid that would be a pretty powerful disincentive to joining a neighbourhood, ah well, it was a pretty dream while it lasted. I think we've pretty thoroughly demonstrated that the only way to provide links to a place in ur would be to lose all the homestreet inter connectedness except for the physical connection created by the neighbourhood.
Sadly the stone idea has the same flaw unless visitors can't get from the homestreet to Ur, and I think that the potentially huge numbers of people linked to one location with no structure would make server load when using the stone on a random, outward trip unwieldy, and it would negate the sense of "address."
TP to and from homestreets was unlimited, but TP in world was limited, only a few per Glitch / Eleven day, so every four hours. Also you can have anyone tag along on your TP rides anyway. It was very common for a high end player to TP low lvls around, or ppl would meet somewhere and same thing, so getting somewhere in Ur was never hard to begin with. Plus you had 2 preset TP points and those were unlimited. And lets not forget there were Subways and Asslandia, I dont think tying to Ur makes that any easier really but it would need to be to only one location at a time, and possibly a one sided connection. And nomattter what is done i do think it needs to be kept simple and to be in the control of the individual home owner, much like the signpost anything house related would work best in the hands of the homeowner, and not something that needs to be monitored by a complicated system or ppl
I was wondering about server load as well, i would think along with storage issues, and house availbility issues that the server load was an issue of old neighborhoods, but no idea if that was the case or not. It was also a pain having to set a TP point for your house in Old Housing as you only have 2 preset points
I do like the idea of a prerequiste for getting a Club House/Group Home . Dont want freshly made or inacitve groups to buy up all the group homes. A typical way its set up is to give the group lvls and they get those lvls by doing acitivites. And youd need a minimum lvl to buy a group house too. If say its 11 lvls max they have to be a lvl 5 group minimum to purchase a group home.Considering how this game is set up the simplest way would be to go by favor each group member earns and have a certain # to get to each lvl. For one thing favor is limited in how much you can add per day, and anyone can easily contribute some, unlike if it was currants or resources where it could be accumulated very fast. And you purchase the Group House with the points made from the lvls.This would also avoid rich players buying too many Group Homes up fast since they would be purchased with points and not currants. Plus its fits the game pretty well making a group purchase a collaborative group effort. Also make the Group House go back on the market if the group disbands
I'm personally pro-home street; I had a cave house in the old system and while I did like it aesthetically, I definitely preferred the higher level of customization and egalitarian nature of the home streets. It'd be cool if we could tie it to Ur in some way, tho; I'd enjoy having neighbors! (Plus, clubhouses? Uh, yes please!)
Groups homes is something that eventually, way down the line mind you, its something that the devs said they want to add. But how it will be set up or even if its truly going to be possible, no idea. However the main + old houseing had was a physical neighborhood, and ppl liked the option to buy houses, and houses had different shapes, but both availbility and storage & lack of customization and no set tp point, were problems with it. New housing had plenty of customization and storage option, no avaialibity issues, a set tp pt, the houses were boxy and a signpost instead of a neighborhood being the downside. . As a whole new housing was better imo, plus only if you are on a homestreet is it there, old housing was always there, which was an issue with it. But id be more in favor of something more like homestreets for group homes, so that crowding in world / lag/ or availibility can all be avoided, and have the group house dissapear if the group disbands. We are getting new houseing, so with that in mind modifications to it, im sure will be added....in time of course, towards the end we saw balconies being worked on, we had fireplaces added, so im sure more stuff will be possible
For me the defining change is 3 crucial things: 1.The butler. The butler allowed for friends to give stuff to each other and send messages and see who came by. 2. THE TOWER was one of my favorite things in all of glitch, it allowed for people to have their own markets and have different themed levels or different levels of shop, and if you really wanted to just have a massive flow of img sell things for 1/50th of the original price but tell people to work on your street while they're there. Also: IMG > XP. Having a big house was just came from being rich. Having a big tower came from dedication. 3. routes. allowing players to do charity for other glitchen by being on a route and at the same time getting img was great.
You know, while I love Home Streets and all, I feel like they're rather... disconnected... from Ur. It just bothers me. I'd like houses to be in Ur, but I also don't want these things cluttering up the scenery in regions I've come to enjoy. So, I have a suggestion...
Housing Regions:
These regions have lots of houses, with the density often depending on the style. A Housing Region modeled like a town may have a lot in a high density, with even eleven houses being able to all be on the same street, while a nice, urban-looking housing region may have as few as one per street, with some streets not having any at all. Housing would be integrated directly into the scenery in order to not take away from it.
To talk to a player's butler, you can knock on the door to their house. If the player is online, the butler will notify them, and you can remotely do a few things through the butler, such as relaying messages to the player or letting them into the house.
Inside the house isn't too different, the only real change being that the butler is there now. However, there's no backyard. This is a concern! If there's no backyard, how does someone plant their crops and manage their animals?
The Imaginary Basement. The Imaginary Basement works on the old Housing system—just without the house and the street signs. It's kind of like a Holo-Room powered by imagination instead of holograms, where the stuff is actually physically like that and there. You can go to and from the Imaginary Basement with Basement Stairs. The Imaginary Basement can be customized just like the Home Street system! Choosing backgrounds styles and such... Perhaps it would also be a good time to implement the "HELLA" customizable home street idea somewhere else on this forum.
This leaves just one question: What happens to Towers? Well, every Housing Region can have a sort of Market Square or Commercial Zone—a few streets dedicated to the creation of shops around the middle area of the Housing Region. Here, people living in the region can set up shops.
Housing Regions would be diverse in appearance, of course. Some areas may be a hustling and bustling city, with tall buildings and colorful lights. Some may be clear plains, with a cottage here and there and a peaceful atmosphere. Some may be weird and wonderful, like a small, vertical town built on the side of a cliff. Some may be in odd places, like a ville built in an aquatic region with swimming Salmon and seaweed all about.
Likewise, the Commercial Zones would be diverse as well—the city may have a mall, the plains may have a simple square, the vertical town may have a market cave area, and the aquatic region may have a reef.
All in all, it would be more integrated in Ur without getting in the way of what's already there.
Comments
I think that most of us belonged to more than one Group so maybe we could have another 5 location sign that gave easy access to 5 Group streets. So, if you belonged to Group 6, you could access it from a Friend's Home street which is one of the streets on the Friends sign.
As for Group Homes im fine with that, provided the group home goes back on the Market or its spot opens up if the group is disbanded, and/ or gets very small or inactive. Alos you cant buy / get a group home unless your Group is a decent size. Although i still think Towers can serve this purpose as well
I dont see the need for two housing systems though, it makes much more sense, to have one Housing System to concentrate on, and if there is additional it needs to have a different purpose, such as Group (Club Houses) or Temples
If New Housing can tie to the world somehow, and we can have some sort of additional signpost 5 is a bit too low. Id prefer a Route signpost and Friend Signpost, they would look different though. Being able to have more neighbors would be great, but i dont think actual neighborhoods would work, part due to the same issues as Old housing had but also lag, and everyones street is the same shape so not sure how housing blocks would work and buying and selling of houses you use credits to upgrade furnitue/walls etc which costs $ is a bad idea, not to mention adding floors etc took a lot of supplies to do. I also cant see housing blocks without a housing Market, they seem to go hand in hand but maybe thats just me, it may just be if houses are perm and arent sold how will there be spots? It makes more sense to develop more things for New Housing, possibly things such as Balconies, Basements, Wall Dividers, Windows,etc etc as well as things like tying to world and different signposts.
I generally am trying to take a back seat to these sorts of threads since I know this is space for all of you to debate stuff without developer input. In this case, the old housing code is not included. It will not be coming back in the same form it was. Home streets + towers are *certain* to remain a fixture of the game. Group halls have been discussed for months and we're all in favor of having them, though we haven't decided on their implementation (since it's way down the list of Things We Need For a Functioning Game..in fact, it's not even ON that list). Having them on Ur streets is an option, as well as having other hubs where you can walk along streets of clubhouses, leaving Ur undisturbed.
I will step out for now - back to your regularly scheduled debating!
Assuming anything at this point might set you up for unnecessary disappointment, so I'd caution against making any assumptions at this time.
I know you might not necessarily have an answer to this, or it might not even be relevent, but : P Is it possible to sell credits without being considered a for-profit business? IE Selling credits just to cover the server costs? Or I suppose that might be what you meant by donations? Sort of the way kickstarter works with donation tiers? Have you guys thought about doing a kickstarter sometime in the future perhaps
Just want to say that when the time comes for money to change hands, if Eleven is looking like it's going to survive for the foreseeable future you can absolutely count on my donation : )
I don't know anything about the business side of Eleven, but I do know something about business in general. Yes, they can sell things without being a for-profit business. Plenty of "nonprofit" businesses are million-dollar activities--all that matters is that they don't have stocks and shareholders, and that they have a charitable purpose. (Unscrupulous nonprofits are those that funnel 90% of the money they receive into salaries and advertising, and very little toward their cause. Some of the "save the children" orgs are like this; always check the history before donating.)
If Eleven has the legal acumen to set it up, it might be worth registering as a nonprofit--it's no less feasible than the naked clown calenders by the Clown Conservatory (not making that up) or the Harry Potter Alliance. If Harry Potter fans can promote literacy and heroism because of a series of books and movies they love, surely we can promote random kindness and tree-petting because of a game.
Nonprofit orgs can sell things, hire employees, pay for advertising, and do pretty much all the things a normal business does; they just need a charitable or educational purpose for the "extra" money. In this case, several years' worth of "extra" money would be funneled into improving the game. If they ever get to As Improved As Possible, all the devs have salaries, and still have loads of cash, they can either spend it on more salaries to develop the android app version, or set up a slush fund for needy glitchen.
Note that that would be a long ways off... the Organization for Transformative Works, which runs the Archive of Our Own, is a nonprofit that gets (what looks like) a lot of money from membership drives--and those cover server expansions and operating expenses, and that's about it.
If Eleven does look into nonprofit status, I'd recommend they talk to some people from the OTW; Eleven is a fanwork extroaordinaire, and I know they'd love to be aware of it and offer what advice and support they can.
I also wanted to sum up in one place the outline of the system as we worked it out:
-senior players who so desire can link their homestreet or "yard" to a neighbourhood, which has an address linked to a real street in Ur. Neighbourhoods might have a wheel and spoke architecture, where each yard connects on either side to its neighbours, whose yards are reached by walking off the right or left side of the yard. (No clicking on a menu or signpost and one loading screen only. Could be coded like the wormholes.) Yards connect to each other in a wheel and each yard has a connection to the Ur street the neighbourhood is located on.
-yards connect to the real street in Ur via the signpost. Players may have to give up the ability to connect or be connected to other yards via signpost, or perhaps may only be connected to from players whose homestreets do not belong to a neighbourhood.
-neighbourhoods would contain between 11-101 yards, with at least ten neighbourhoods per Ur street that allows for this kind of connection. Not all Ur streets have these connections.
-neighbourhood organization would be maintained by either a quorum of neighbours or a neighbourhood founder/captain, who would be able to accept new members, shift yards around to different locations on the circuit, and remove inactive members after a certain grace period.
-in general, inactive players or neighbourhoods made up of inactive players would be removed from the neighbourhood system, losing nothing but their link to the location on Ur. All their possessions, houses, and resource nodes would remain intact.
-neighbourhoods would present a in-game method of creating and maintaining resource routes, and it would be possible to identify resource route type and resource density via the menu interface at the access point on the Ur street.
-neighbourhoods would create another aspect to mid-and end-game play that would foster community and interaction between players, exploration of and a sense of connectedness to Ur, and a sense of adjacency for players in a given neighbourhood, as well as providing players who want one with a real "address".
-maintaining or creating or joining a neighbourhood could be a potential iMG sink for players.
I'm happy to leave it there, or discuss it further here or in a new thread. Thanks for putting up with my new obsession!
There are a lot of different play styles among all gaming bases and I'd like to suggest that it might be seen as biased towards those who play as a group to only allow groups to connect to UR,.
For your consideration I'd like to suggest that it still be possible for a single player or pair or small group (under 11) to be able to make a connection ( perhaps via a street stone , this might require some high level or being re-imagined at the end game stage (lol as if we even want to reach an end) or via huge img that groups can achieve quicker but even a single player could achieve in time? Or as a unlock for finishing a certain tree skill set, or . . . Glitch of old was always so inclusive of everyone so maybe this would be possible?
I think it could work if as you say, the iMG cost to found a new neighbourhood is very large but still manageable for a very dedicated single glitch or small group of glitchen. I think that in general, you'd want a high cost there but a quite low cost to join an existing neighbourhood.
You'd also lose your very expensive neighbourhood if you went inactive for the designated period of time. And if there are limited slots for neighbourhoods available at particular connection points, you probably wouldn't get your spot back as it would be filled by a new neighbourhood quickly. There would be less risk of this in a group since I think all members would need to be inactive before the entire neighbourhood is removed.
I would like to see some new version of the real estate market with classifieds that tell you where new neighbourhood spots may open up soon, and tell you on what game day and time they will come available. It would probably be interesting if you can bid on upcoming properties rather than leaving hotly contested ones to the vagaries of the fastest internet connection and clicking speed. The classifieds would also list existing neighbourhoods with spaces available for new yards, and maybe any resource requirements if that's a thing. In an ideal world, neighbourhoods could customize their own ad if desired and pay currants to promote it.
One other thing I've been thinking of is the balance between the need to be able to remove yards on resource routes that change their resource layout while staying active., and the concern about human nature and being mean by kicking people out unfairly. I fear it would be too hard to code but ideally, you could toggle a neighbourhood as requiring a minimum balance of one or two resources for all of its member yards, and if a given yard falls below that then the option to remove it would be there just as if it were inactive.
I could write a whole post on the needs of maintaining the routes that, even with tools like the ones BoomAndBust and Grelca wrote for us, were still time consuming, but that's a different thread. The only no-maintenance option involved the web tools that set up a custom route for you based on your needs and required you to click a button in another browser window to teleport you from yard to yard. Overall, if we think the community sense of the routes in worth maintaining, and not just the easy access to resources, we will need some in-game infrastructure. I know that I am reluctant to get back into organizing this stuff, though it did need management under the system as it existed. One thing I find really appealing out the proposed neighbourhood system is that the tools for management are brought in game, democratized, and made as simple as possible.
Maybe instead, if you aren't part of the neighbourhood system you could opt to swap you signpost for one that connects to Ur. Probably you wouldn't be able to access those via the menu interface on the Ur street. And it would need to be a hefty iMG cost to swap it or to change the street it points at. And paring inactives does seem like a fair way to deal with bloat.
Concerning a housing market, player homes need to be perm IMO, but a housing market for Club Houses ( Group Homes) might work. And since they were never added the system for them can be different. Also with group homes buying and selling of them isnt as personal IMO, and not everyone would take part in using them either. And the stipulation of having to make a group AND having X amount of players in the group to be able to purchase a Club House would need to be in effect IMO as well, or the Group could gain lvls due to how active they are, not bonuses or anything just lvls for the group would show/correlate to how active, and there would be a min lvl to be able to purchase a Club House
But while it might not really ping as an issue to most people to me that gives us Glitchen just a bit too much power in any of the systems we've talked about! Because that means that with Scarlett's neighborhood idea you could just find a friend in every neighborhood and instantly have access to their area of Ur since we can currently move around the 'living dimension' totally at will.
To a slightly lesser extent with Lyrical's idea you'd have access to every dead end street in Ur as long as you kept track of whose house was connected to where!
Maybe having this power makes the game more fun I'm not sure, but to me it pings as making things too easy! And sort of negates the need for teleportation!
(And that that seems a tad unbalanced.)
I'd love to have the 'living dimension' tied to Ur in some meaningful way, but I can't see a way to do it without making everything really really easy!
Maybe if the group has a particular resource on their home streets the UR stone could hold that info ( could they be a bit like the good old rock? one of his cousins perhaps)
@Lisa as I recall when in the game we could tp to any street in Ur using the map feature so having access from other players home streets wouldn't really be any different?
Sadly the stone idea has the same flaw unless visitors can't get from the homestreet to Ur, and I think that the potentially huge numbers of people linked to one location with no structure would make server load when using the stone on a random, outward trip unwieldy, and it would negate the sense of "address."
I was wondering about server load as well, i would think along with storage issues, and house availbility issues that the server load was an issue of old neighborhoods, but no idea if that was the case or not. It was also a pain having to set a TP point for your house in Old Housing as you only have 2 preset points
I do like the idea of a prerequiste for getting a Club House/Group Home . Dont want freshly made or inacitve groups to buy up all the group homes. A typical way its set up is to give the group lvls and they get those lvls by doing acitivites. And youd need a minimum lvl to buy a group house too. If say its 11 lvls max they have to be a lvl 5 group minimum to purchase a group home.Considering how this game is set up the simplest way would be to go by favor each group member earns and have a certain # to get to each lvl. For one thing favor is limited in how much you can add per day, and anyone can easily contribute some, unlike if it was currants or resources where it could be accumulated very fast. And you purchase the Group House with the points made from the lvls.This would also avoid rich players buying too many Group Homes up fast since they would be purchased with points and not currants. Plus its fits the game pretty well making a group purchase a collaborative group effort. Also make the Group House go back on the market if the group disbands
It'd be cool if we could tie it to Ur in some way, tho; I'd enjoy having neighbors!
(Plus, clubhouses? Uh, yes please!)
Housing Regions:
These regions have lots of houses, with the density often depending on the style. A Housing Region modeled like a town may have a lot in a high density, with even eleven houses being able to all be on the same street, while a nice, urban-looking housing region may have as few as one per street, with some streets not having any at all. Housing would be integrated directly into the scenery in order to not take away from it.
To talk to a player's butler, you can knock on the door to their house. If the player is online, the butler will notify them, and you can remotely do a few things through the butler, such as relaying messages to the player or letting them into the house.
Inside the house isn't too different, the only real change being that the butler is there now. However, there's no backyard. This is a concern! If there's no backyard, how does someone plant their crops and manage their animals?
The Imaginary Basement. The Imaginary Basement works on the old Housing system—just without the house and the street signs. It's kind of like a Holo-Room powered by imagination instead of holograms, where the stuff is actually physically like that and there. You can go to and from the Imaginary Basement with Basement Stairs. The Imaginary Basement can be customized just like the Home Street system! Choosing backgrounds styles and such... Perhaps it would also be a good time to implement the "HELLA" customizable home street idea somewhere else on this forum.
This leaves just one question: What happens to Towers? Well, every Housing Region can have a sort of Market Square or Commercial Zone—a few streets dedicated to the creation of shops around the middle area of the Housing Region. Here, people living in the region can set up shops.
Housing Regions would be diverse in appearance, of course. Some areas may be a hustling and bustling city, with tall buildings and colorful lights. Some may be clear plains, with a cottage here and there and a peaceful atmosphere. Some may be weird and wonderful, like a small, vertical town built on the side of a cliff. Some may be in odd places, like a ville built in an aquatic region with swimming Salmon and seaweed all about.
Likewise, the Commercial Zones would be diverse as well—the city may have a mall, the plains may have a simple square, the vertical town may have a market cave area, and the aquatic region may have a reef.
All in all, it would be more integrated in Ur without getting in the way of what's already there.