The problem with blocks or being out in the open is that the buildings are there 24/7 HomeStreets only the ones occupied were actually present at the same time, along with less availability issues, and storage. Which in turn made them much easier to expand with the playerbase without as much of an issue. Old Housing had more shapes and designs but in time Im sure New Housing will get that,. A half way point would make sense such as tying a house to a street but not having set slots, much like having a signpost on the Home Street as well as in Ur, and it lists whos on the block, but no limit as to how many so its easily expandable, and not fully in world. or having a housing section for shops but again same issue if fully in world, a seprate section for markets would make more sense to me. Thats not to say we cant have buildings in Ur, we can and should but due to expansion issues IMO the buildings in UR should be public not private domains, for a few reasons, expansions issues, lack of availability issues, loading, and its very likely if housing or shops are fully in the open more will be unoccupied/abandoned than occupied., which more than anything just looks bad. With being out in the open there needs to be a system of some sort for rent and eviction, otherwise you just continually expand and more and more will become empty, its also much more work to make blocks vs single houses
Historically public buildings in Ur have always been a problem. At one time we had Market Halls, but they did not work suitably. Old housing caused streets and streets of unavailable houses which clogged up the scenery and was inflexible.
For aesthetic reasons I am afraid that I would not like to go gardening or keeping animals in a basement. This was the only feature of Bog Housing which I did not like, and whilst I realise that it would not actually be in a basement (I assume?) even the routine of going downstairs would be something I would not enjoy.
Also, I liked the front gardens, where we could grow things for others and have resources for all. New players could move from house to house gathering resources which were not so readily available otherwise, and making new friends in the process!
I would be in favour of tying houses to a street, as long as we could choose the street and that it did not impinge on the actual landscape of Ur. I did like being 'at home' in a particular region in the old houses, and feeling part of a particular place. That was missing with the new housing.
Also, I liked my tower! Some joint effort or public 'Mall' would not be what I wanted, although of course, I would like it if people wanted public projects and could have them. I even think that Ur is big enough to choose lightly travelled streets to build such things on, but I would like that to be an extra, not a replacement for the housing I liked.
Well, alternately, there could be Dust Motes on streets that represent homes. If you interact with a Dust Mote on a street, you can teleport to the corresponding Home Street. They'd be rather tiny and float around in a specified area.
Some item that tied a house to a street , whatever it may be, would make the most sense and when you click said item it lists the houses, could make it like a directory of sorts with a teleport attached. Still in favor of something only on dead end streets for something like this, one so ppl could know where a house directory stone/post always is, and two it would get ppl to explore a bit more., and tying to a street would give various areas more activity. As for Markets I am in favor of this but again same scaling issues as with housing, although with Markets Im thinking having an entrance next to each Burecratic Hall, as well as the subway and ShimShiri. But since its Markets have it be one big area, again with some sort of directory. However I do think Markets should be rented, upon eviction all items return to the owners house, also something more along the lines of market stalls vs full stores, i still think everyone should have a Tower for whatever purpose but often they were stores, the Market Stalls would be a side thing, and more social too, or have it set up simmilar to Home Streets but Stores have to chose a category to be listed under. Im more in favor of renting though in this case becasue massive amounts of stores to look thru would be an issue as well. But have short term stalls with time limits, so there would always be turnover, and not a gazillion stores to look thru, or could do it where each housing block got a communal store, and all of those would be accessed from the same entrance
I am really sorry @'Lyrical Dejavu' I am finding it hard to completely understand all your points, but I hope I get the gist and am not mistaken.
Yes, something that tied houses to streets would be good. Exploring more was considered to be desirable in the later stages of Glitch, there were concerns by some people that Ur was being deserted and thought it was because housing was removed from the world, I am not sure whether that was so or not.
Market stalls would be a good idea I think, it would be good to have selling in communal sites like market stalls rather than scattered in towers. Good solution to the problem of people abandoning their stalls, which would be a difficulty. Returning stuff to their house would be excellent.
Did you ever see the Market Halls that were tried out at one point? It was before a reset and they never came back, I don't think they ever worked well but they were different from what you have suggested and I think your ideas are better.
Sounds like the stones on dead end streets would be the best thing to 'convert' to allowing people to tie their homestreets to...you could still have the option to go to a random homestreet (but it would now choose from those streets tied to it) or pulling up a directory of homestreets so you select specific ones to go to (in addition to the few friends on your homestreet signpost - still wish there could be more friends on a signpost).
To be honest, I feel like, for this kind of thing, no matter what we come up with, at least someone is going to have an objection. You really can't make changes to this kind of thing without upsetting anyone.
That is very true @Seeen. There are pros and cons of all systems which appeal to different people, don't think there is much to be done about that except voting on major changes I guess.
I agree with the feeling that someone will have a problem with any idea, but I'm not sure I really want to vote on things as integral as housing infrastructure. In the end we have to trust the dev's vision for the world and their capacity to adapt it as needed.
Buuuuuuut just to address @seeen 's idea, the issue with any kind of tie that goes from Ur to home streets (as opposed to purely from homestreets to Ur*) is the problem of scale. How do you address navigating a menu that lists 10,000 homestreets tied to a node? And if you limit each node to [x] number of streets, then how do you limit the number of nodes? And how do you address inactive homestreets? It's tricky, and there is a reason why TS decided to move away from that infrastructure entirely. The system I was playing around with had a limited number of connections to each node but unlimited homestreets could link to each connection - solving the navigation issue but not the "free TP" problem described below. I'm not sure you can solve both issues simultaneously in this game.
*this kind of tie brings up the "free TP" problem: if you can have a link that Glitchen can use freely from homestreets to Ur, then you can freely get anywhere by visiting the right homestreets. And if you're the only one that can use your Ur-link, that means others can't come visiting you via your neighbourhood, reducing the utility of place-ness that is part of the point of wanting neighbourhoods. Frankly, it's a Gordian knot I don't think can be severed satisfactorily.
"How do you address navigating a menu that lists 10,000 homestreets tied to a node? "
Each node would ideally be one home street. Nodes would be extremely small and potentially hard to even notice unless you were looking for them. They'd look kind of like specks of dust flying around—tiny specks, if you will.
"how do you limit the number of nodes?"
You don't. But they're so small and Ur is so big that you could easily fit a lot of nodes in any street without disturbing the scenery.
"And how do you address inactive homestreets?"
It's opt-in—you don't have to have a connecting dust speck if you don't want to. It will also ask you again every month or so if you still want it there. If it never gets an answer, such as if you're inactive, it will assume a "no".
However, I will admit that I have nothing for solving the "free TP" situation. That one is definitely a problem, and one that I particularly dislike because of how much it would discourage exploration of Ur. The only thing I can think of is nodes being one-way-in, one-way-out—you can only exit through the same node you entered with—but that sounds like kind of a mess.
I do have a new idea, though. It integrates homestreets into Ur while at the same time not changing them one bit, while also not changing the regions. I'll type up an explanation a bit later.
I agree @'Scarlet Bearsdale', I am happy to leave things like that to the devs who have to work out the system.
Personally I liked the new housing. It had minor disadvantages but they were outweighed for me by the benefits. I missed my balcony, but then I had a platform in a tree, which was great.
I don't have a problem with 'adopting' a particular street in Ur to relate to if I want, which is what I did, so that it was like a 'home street' without actually being tied to it. Any system is going to have things some people don't like, that is life!
Ok - I won't pursue this much further if you'd like to move on to a different idea, but to respond to your answers, regarding the "tiny speck" solution:
As far as I can tell, this still has the scaling issue - there are now 10,000 nodes attached to a single street. I'm pretty sure that would be a problem on the coding side, especially given the proposed interface (10,000 objects to control as they gently drift through the street or in an area of the street).
Ultimately, I'm not sure what functionality we gain using this setup - we can already get to and from our homestreet from anywhere on Ur, so as the player I don't NEED to go to my hub street to get home. We can already visit any specific person's homestreet by clicking on their name or via their info page on the website, which is good because it will be hard to find a specific homestreet using this system even if I am on the right hub street. And we can already visit random home streets using the Visiting Stones, so this would mean that instead of the randomization happening behind the scenes it happens by way of me picking a random speck and interacting with it. And it loses the function of your original Housing Regions idea, in that you would lose the ability to say, look someone up via their neighbourhood or stroll through a neighbourhood. Neighbours don't necessarily have any sense of being in the same "place" except for running into each other on the hub street IF they are using it to come and go. But I'm sure interested to hear what else you have come up with! I find your ideas really interesting to engage with; they get me thinking and I like that a lot.
__________________________________________________________________________________________ I'd like to redirect a bit towards what we're actually looking for from neighbourhoods that is lacking in "new" housing - as people have covered on page one of this thread. I honestly think that (1) and (2) as I describe them below are the key issues, and to an extent it seems like they're in tension with each other:
1) A sense of connection between your home and Ur; that your house and homestreet exist in relation to Ur in a concrete way: "I live in the bogs" "My neighbourhood's Timtim Timm".
2) A sense of connection with one's neighbours - our houses share the same space that we move through communally, we live adjacent to each other to some degree.
As I see it, the issue with solving (1) is solutions result in either the "free TP" problem wrt to moving from homestreets to Ur or the scaling problem wrt creating/maintaining connections to housing areas/hubs/nodes, or both. Further, most of the solutions to the issues in (1) result in losing what we are aiming for in (2), and while I would say that (1) is what many people identify as what they are missing, I think that any proposed system will feel still feel lonely and empty, ultimately, if it doesn't also satisfy (2). Further, I think you could potentially satisfy (2) without (1).
Other issues that have been neglected in this thread, but I think they an be addressed within the new housing framework: 3) A variety of layouts and "frames" for the house interior that are not so box-like, while retaining the customizability of wall/ceiling/floor style and furniture placement of the new housing system.
4) Locked cabinets and other UI issues, mainly relating to privacy/visitors, that can be integrated into new housing without making any substantive changes to infrastructure.
I wanted also to say separately that I still think the only way to gain (1) without the free TP problem is to give up some of the freedoms of the current homestreets system; this could be why connecting your house to a location in Ur is opt-in. You would give up the ability to /home or /house or /tower, because you would have to visit your neighbourhood hub street to get to your homestreet. I think you would also have to lose the ability to set your signpost to anyone who is not also in your neighbourhood, and only people in the neighbourhood would be able to set their signpost to your homestreet.
It still doesn't address the scaling issue, and if the above were the situation it would be even more important that the UI around accessing neighbourhoods and specific homes within neighbourhoods be easy to navigate and uncluttered. Because while (for example) I might be able to go directly to my homestreet via the visiting stone in my neighbourhood, despite my 10,000 neighbours, it would also be important that my friend who wants to visit can get to my front door and not my 10,000 neighbours' without navigating their way through them.
@seeen I think you're underestimating numbers here. It's quite possible we would end up with 10,000 people who want to link their homestreet to say, Cebarkul. I guess my question is, what is stopping there from being 10,000 on one street?
Probably a hard cap, or some form of randomization. Maybe you can only choose the region, not which street it links to, and there's a limit per region.
So what happens when there are more people who want in the system than space exists for them in the region? I'm just pressing this issue because this is exactly the problem that TS ran into, I think? Granted, you have elected to remove people who are inactive, so we'll get to that point more slowly but it still needs to be scaleable.
As much as tying to a street or region would be nice, nomatter how its done, even with limits on how many ppl per area, I still see large scaling issues. Which as somone else stated is why housing was redone, or a large part of why it was at least. Im more in favor of having 2 signposts for each street that looks different, one for neighbors, and one for routes, could simply make a second signpost but in a different color, white for instance. And getting more and more designs for New Housing, since more variety of designs is something that needs to be expanaded on. As for Markets I do think its a good idea, but to make it actually searchable, renting stalls, with time limits, and items return to owner when eviction happens, as well as a limit on how often so there is turn over, maybe something like no more than 3 days in a row, and cant rent again for 7 days....or something along those lines. Everyone would still have their Towers too, Markets would be a more social, less items for sale, and all in one place option....thinking flea market-ish
What if Markets were more like - a front counter in a common place, with a door/link to your tower "behind" you at the counter. The counter could have a limited number of SDBs. Markets could be instanced, the SDBs contents sent to you or lost on market closing. Markets could work like parties, I guess? So you'd start a market, which has a timer, and you can invite people or people could visit random markets currently open via a kind of market-targeted "visiting stone". People can claim a market stall which sets the tower portal link, and lets them fill and set a price on the counter SDBs. Maybe you get to set a few options for styling the counter, background, and awning/sign? Hmm going to sleep on this one!
+Scarlett Bearsdale i like the front counter common place market with link/door to my tower! but hopefully with instances that last longer than parties. maybe even a whole week. that way if i'm creative enough i'll have time to find customers, throw grand opening party, have sales or holiday special discounts, etc.... i also like the visiting stone. i am hoping that whatever solution is decided, it includes more ways for me to be found by other glitchen that aren't on my friends list yet
Market need to be timed in some manner imo, otherwise scaling issues, plus they need to be easily searchable, also i think they should be in a central location, so a market square/ hub.
Comments
For aesthetic reasons I am afraid that I would not like to go gardening or keeping animals in a basement. This was the only feature of Bog Housing which I did not like, and whilst I realise that it would not actually be in a basement (I assume?) even the routine of going downstairs would be something I would not enjoy.
Also, I liked the front gardens, where we could grow things for others and have resources for all. New players could move from house to house gathering resources which were not so readily available otherwise, and making new friends in the process!
I would be in favour of tying houses to a street, as long as we could choose the street and that it did not impinge on the actual landscape of Ur. I did like being 'at home' in a particular region in the old houses, and feeling part of a particular place. That was missing with the new housing.
Also, I liked my tower! Some joint effort or public 'Mall' would not be what I wanted, although of course, I would like it if people wanted public projects and could have them. I even think that Ur is big enough to choose lightly travelled streets to build such things on, but I would like that to be an extra, not a replacement for the housing I liked.
Yes, something that tied houses to streets would be good. Exploring more was considered to be desirable in the later stages of Glitch, there were concerns by some people that Ur was being deserted and thought it was because housing was removed from the world, I am not sure whether that was so or not.
Market stalls would be a good idea I think, it would be good to have selling in communal sites like market stalls rather than scattered in towers. Good solution to the problem of people abandoning their stalls, which would be a difficulty. Returning stuff to their house would be excellent.
Did you ever see the Market Halls that were tried out at one point? It was before a reset and they never came back, I don't think they ever worked well but they were different from what you have suggested and I think your ideas are better.
Buuuuuuut just to address @seeen 's idea, the issue with any kind of tie that goes from Ur to home streets (as opposed to purely from homestreets to Ur*) is the problem of scale. How do you address navigating a menu that lists 10,000 homestreets tied to a node? And if you limit each node to [x] number of streets, then how do you limit the number of nodes? And how do you address inactive homestreets? It's tricky, and there is a reason why TS decided to move away from that infrastructure entirely. The system I was playing around with had a limited number of connections to each node but unlimited homestreets could link to each connection - solving the navigation issue but not the "free TP" problem described below. I'm not sure you can solve both issues simultaneously in this game.
*this kind of tie brings up the "free TP" problem: if you can have a link that Glitchen can use freely from homestreets to Ur, then you can freely get anywhere by visiting the right homestreets. And if you're the only one that can use your Ur-link, that means others can't come visiting you via your neighbourhood, reducing the utility of place-ness that is part of the point of wanting neighbourhoods. Frankly, it's a Gordian knot I don't think can be severed satisfactorily.
Each node would ideally be one home street. Nodes would be extremely small and potentially hard to even notice unless you were looking for them. They'd look kind of like specks of dust flying around—tiny specks, if you will.
"how do you limit the number of nodes?"
You don't. But they're so small and Ur is so big that you could easily fit a lot of nodes in any street without disturbing the scenery.
"And how do you address inactive homestreets?"
It's opt-in—you don't have to have a connecting dust speck if you don't want to. It will also ask you again every month or so if you still want it there. If it never gets an answer, such as if you're inactive, it will assume a "no".
However, I will admit that I have nothing for solving the "free TP" situation. That one is definitely a problem, and one that I particularly dislike because of how much it would discourage exploration of Ur. The only thing I can think of is nodes being one-way-in, one-way-out—you can only exit through the same node you entered with—but that sounds like kind of a mess.
I do have a new idea, though. It integrates homestreets into Ur while at the same time not changing them one bit, while also not changing the regions. I'll type up an explanation a bit later.
Personally I liked the new housing. It had minor disadvantages but they were outweighed for me by the benefits. I missed my balcony, but then I had a platform in a tree, which was great.
I don't have a problem with 'adopting' a particular street in Ur to relate to if I want, which is what I did, so that it was like a 'home street' without actually being tied to it. Any system is going to have things some people don't like, that is life!
As far as I can tell, this still has the scaling issue - there are now 10,000 nodes attached to a single street. I'm pretty sure that would be a problem on the coding side, especially given the proposed interface (10,000 objects to control as they gently drift through the street or in an area of the street).
Ultimately, I'm not sure what functionality we gain using this setup - we can already get to and from our homestreet from anywhere on Ur, so as the player I don't NEED to go to my hub street to get home. We can already visit any specific person's homestreet by clicking on their name or via their info page on the website, which is good because it will be hard to find a specific homestreet using this system even if I am on the right hub street. And we can already visit random home streets using the Visiting Stones, so this would mean that instead of the randomization happening behind the scenes it happens by way of me picking a random speck and interacting with it. And it loses the function of your original Housing Regions idea, in that you would lose the ability to say, look someone up via their neighbourhood or stroll through a neighbourhood. Neighbours don't necessarily have any sense of being in the same "place" except for running into each other on the hub street IF they are using it to come and go.
But I'm sure interested to hear what else you have come up with! I find your ideas really interesting to engage with; they get me thinking and I like that a lot.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
I'd like to redirect a bit towards what we're actually looking for from neighbourhoods that is lacking in "new" housing - as people have covered on page one of this thread. I honestly think that (1) and (2) as I describe them below are the key issues, and to an extent it seems like they're in tension with each other:
1) A sense of connection between your home and Ur; that your house and homestreet exist in relation to Ur in a concrete way: "I live in the bogs" "My neighbourhood's Timtim Timm".
2) A sense of connection with one's neighbours - our houses share the same space that we move through communally, we live adjacent to each other to some degree.
As I see it, the issue with solving (1) is solutions result in either the "free TP" problem wrt to moving from homestreets to Ur or the scaling problem wrt creating/maintaining connections to housing areas/hubs/nodes, or both. Further, most of the solutions to the issues in (1) result in losing what we are aiming for in (2), and while I would say that (1) is what many people identify as what they are missing, I think that any proposed system will feel still feel lonely and empty, ultimately, if it doesn't also satisfy (2). Further, I think you could potentially satisfy (2) without (1).
Other issues that have been neglected in this thread, but I think they an be addressed within the new housing framework:
3) A variety of layouts and "frames" for the house interior that are not so box-like, while retaining the customizability of wall/ceiling/floor style and furniture placement of the new housing system.
4) Locked cabinets and other UI issues, mainly relating to privacy/visitors, that can be integrated into new housing without making any substantive changes to infrastructure.
...No it doesn't. Why would all 10,000 be on the same street? That's absurd.
Anyway, I'm still working on a different idea that may work better for a little more integration without disturbing things too much.
I think you would also have to lose the ability to set your signpost to anyone who is not also in your neighbourhood, and only people in the neighbourhood would be able to set their signpost to your homestreet.
It still doesn't address the scaling issue, and if the above were the situation it would be even more important that the UI around accessing neighbourhoods and specific homes within neighbourhoods be easy to navigate and uncluttered. Because while (for example) I might be able to go directly to my homestreet via the visiting stone in my neighbourhood, despite my 10,000 neighbours, it would also be important that my friend who wants to visit can get to my front door and not my 10,000 neighbours' without navigating their way through them.
I'm quickly losing interest in this concept, by the way. My ideas are fickle.
To clarify, I can't force myself to think too long on a single idea. It's likely that my thoughts will randomly turn to this again in awhile.
Markets could be instanced, the SDBs contents sent to you or lost on market closing. Markets could work like parties, I guess? So you'd start a market, which has a timer, and you can invite people or people could visit random markets currently open via a kind of market-targeted "visiting stone". People can claim a market stall which sets the tower portal link, and lets them fill and set a price on the counter SDBs. Maybe you get to set a few options for styling the counter, background, and awning/sign? Hmm going to sleep on this one!
edit: taking this to a new thread, I think!