Announce post #3121: Castles

Autoposter

7/21/2020 at 20:40
Tiur, the Gnosis
Everyone
Castles

Castles are back on! I have updated their pricing. It is quite a bit higher, but less so than expected after I talked with some players. The goal here is to keep them special, but not make them priced out of sane game playing time via milestones.

So the new pricing is a slight bump at the beginning, and an increase ratio of 2 instead of 1.6. This keeps a house in a city fair, but moves wilderness houses into the realm of truly special.

Stone is unchanged.

House Deeds will be redeemed as they are and I'll update any further usage of them with newer pricing. I BELIEVE I built all houses that got in before the temporary hold, message me if not.

-T

PS I really wanted to upgrade the building system a little before I did this, but I have had all cookies withheld already because I made you all wait so long. So that code can take its time, and maybe someday I can have a cookie again.

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 7th of Chakros, in the year 489 MA.

Nisavi

I think the most immediate question, @Tiur, is if those who made our requests prior to the freeze and pricing changes have been grandfathered in since we made our requests prior to the administration decision to put a temporary halt to castles and customization in the interim.

Elene

When you say that the castles are back on for building, and prices are updated, it does mean I can also start on requesting these too?

- Custom entrance
A custom entrance for your building. Note, the price quoted may be higher
depending on specifics requested.
- Buildings : 250,000 Gold.
- Player houses: 150/225/300 credits.

Haven

...

So the new pricing is a slight bump at the beginning, and an increase ratio of 2 instead of 1.6. This keeps a house in a city fair, but moves wilderness houses into the realm of truly special.

Stone is unchanged.

...

PS I really wanted to upgrade the building system a little before I did this, but I have had all cookies withheld already because I made you all wait so long. So that code can take its time, and maybe someday I can have a cookie again.

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 7th of Chakros, in the year 489 MA.

ROOM PRICES
-----------
Base package: 300/600/900 credits
This is the first room of your house, which comes with a free naming and
first customisation.

Extra rooms: 100/150/200 stone commodities each.
The price for any additional rooms added to your house. Descriptions must be
added using the commands in HELP BUILDINGS.

@Tiur What did you mean by upgrading the building system by the way? Are there any further plans to develop the Village and Wilderness tier homes so that the 2:1 ratio is easier to swallow and more appealing?

In their current incarnation, city homes seem like the best bang for your buck. While you are subject to the politics of the ruling regime (they can magically lock you out of your home), you have the general protections of the city guard and added security via access to a separate "neighborhood" area. However, with the other tiers, it feels like we're paying far more for less since village and wilderness homes lose access to the "neighborhood" feature and guard protections. I wonder if I'm not the only one thinking "coolness of location" is not enough for the price differences?

Some proposed fixes and cool features could be like:

1. City Homes: No changes to the base purchase. New power(s) exclusive to the city tier available for purchase. (Example: NATIVE)
   
2. Village homes: Add a generic special entrance/exit command for the base purchase. New power(s) exclusive to the village tier available for purchase. (Example: REKNOWN)
   
3. Wilderness homes: Add a generic special entrance/exit command AND convert room area into "a deeper section of the " (basically the "neighborhood" feature), it'll also make wilderness homes immune to Foci spawns). New power(s) exclusive to the wilderness tier available for purchase. (Example: DISCOVERY) Maybe increase the price for homes in this tier.
   *Note* They'd still have to pay the 300cr to get entrances customized like everyone else.
   

• NATIVE: Being a local has its perks; you know where to find the best deals and the best shortcuts. Your character receives a celerity bonus while inside the city and pays a reduced price to all denizen vendors in the city (i.e., post office letters cost 500g instead of 1,000g / amulets cost 7,500g instead of 15,000g / etc.)
  
• REKNOWN: Your wealth has brought you reknown in this community as an aristrocrat. Your character receives a special Fame line and title unique to the regional area. Special note: Some NPCs may respond differently to the presence of your character as a home owner in the area.
  
  Stahl Sinclair <<Lakeside Beau/Belle>>
  Fame: He has discerned the rumors of the Green Lake and settled in Attica.
  Arbre Aquila <<Djeirani Aristrocrat>>
  Fame: She has been recognized by the Djeirani nobility and raised above the rabble.
  Vyxsis Qizzeke <<Wicked>>
  Fame: She roosts among the Vice Lords in the El'Jaziran Oasis.
  
  Random % chance local NPCs address you with: "Ah, greetings !" (Maybe it's positive or negative depending on regional RP!)
  Random % chance local NPCs preemote @ you upon entrance/exit.
  
  
  
• DISCOVERY: The deeper recesses of the wilderness provides: Your character can now activate the WILDERNESS REFUGE defense. While the defense is active, upon true death, your character will respawn in the base room of your primary home instead of the Caves/Graveyards/etc.
  

This would give each tier a unique element to differentiate between them and offers an opportunity to expand the features into a ton of new cosmetics for credit purchases. Overall, it'd encourage more spending since these perks would still require players to pay for the original extra customizations without devaluing the homes of other players that came before them. Hell, the completionists might even gun for multiple home purchases to collect all the perks! Win, win all around. Thoughts?

Tiur

What I meant by upgrading it was making a lot more of it automatic. You request the house in game, it shows me a message and I approve, etc. Instead of me having to go make it. Same for custom home things like trees and ovens. I also want to redo how the trees work. But it's time consuming!

At the moment I see wilderness/village homes as just prestige. City homes make far more sense. I can be convinced otherwise, as it's one of the things I realize I'm not in line with most people on.

As to your ideas... maybe? The problem is the time it would take, and I'm unsure how popular it would be. Reknown is kinda a neat idea though.. I might want to put in a faction part of it to counter it being too close to paying for a title straight up.

Xavin

Tiur said:

What I meant by upgrading it was making a lot more of it automatic. You request the house in game, it shows me a message and I approve, etc. Instead of me having to go make it. Same for custom home things like trees and ovens. I also want to redo how the trees work. But it's time consuming!

At the moment I see wilderness/village homes as just prestige. City homes make far more sense. I can be convinced otherwise, as it's one of the things I realize I'm not in line with most people on.

As to your ideas... maybe? The problem is the time it would take, and I'm unsure how popular it would be. Reknown is kinda a neat idea though.. I might want to put in a faction part of it to counter it being too close to paying for a title straight up.

Maybe this is a little self-serving, but I largely agree with a lot of what Haven said. Village/wilderness homes carry a lot more risk for the player day-to-day than city homes do, at a pretty significant cost increase for a lot of things. As for prestige...well, that isn't really a big thing. It's not usually a 'oh cool, this person has a house in X village or Y patch of wilderness' sort of thing. Village factions would be cool, but I could see that taking quite a lot of time. After all, how many village areas are there. At the same time, paying for a title wouldn't be a good thing, especially since there is a rankings board for fame. In all, I really thing that there needs to be -something- to make village and wilderness houses more appealing/worth the cost since not only do you pay a higher base price and higher prices for all add-ons outside of a city, you also lose the frankly crazy amount of security that also comes with being in a city - guards in the city proper and being in an isolated area that is incredibly hard to infiltrate or access from the outside.

Saidenn

The cost associated, as I have seen it, is that your house/castle is yours when it is in a village or wilderness. In the city, you run the risk of losing it should you swap factions, or at least losing access to it. When you create a house in a city you do not ultimately control access to it, the city does. This is why I see it as cheaper since there is an inherent risk in the loss of access to the building.

Villages/Wilderness carry no such risk. Once it is down it is yours forever and ever no matter if you're enemied to every single city-state in the game. You control access and you decide who can come and go based entirely upon your whim. I thought this was an understood thing as to the capitalizing cost of housing from city to village to wilderness? Or is it that the risks that were once inherent in being part of a city state and possibly leaving said city-state for the opposite faction (Spirit to Shadow or vice-versa) is no longer any risk at all and the understanding of risk that went with it has vanished from the game?

Haven

Tiur said:

What I meant by upgrading it was making a lot more of it automatic. You request the house in game, it shows me a message and I approve, etc. Instead of me having to go make it. Same for custom home things like trees and ovens. I also want to redo how the trees work. But it's time consuming!

At the moment I see wilderness/village homes as just prestige. City homes make far more sense. I can be convinced otherwise, as it's one of the things I realize I'm not in line with most people on.

As to your ideas... maybe? The problem is the time it would take, and I'm unsure how popular it would be. Reknown is kinda a neat idea though.. I might want to put in a faction part of it to counter it being too close to paying for a title straight up.

I agree that village/wilderness homes were just prestige initially because the pricing for them at 300/375/whatever the last tier was, were so close together. The trade off for vanity and flexibility felt more in tune as you weren't paying too much more from the baseline. Now? That reality has changed dramatically since you're looking at double to triple the price for what ultimately amounts to less.

While I don't have access to the numbers you do, I'm inclined to believe if the exclusive perks for the various tiers were made enticing enough and gradually expanded upon over time, the ROI would be worthwhile on multiple fronts from player engagement to sales potential.

Saidenn said:

The cost associated, as I have seen it, is that your house/castle is yours when it is in a village or wilderness. In the city, you run the risk of losing it should you swap factions, or at least losing access to it. When you create a house in a city you do not ultimately control access to it, the city does. This is why I see it as cheaper since there is an inherent risk in the loss of access to the building.

Villages/Wilderness carry no such risk. Once it is down it is yours forever and ever no matter if you're enemied to every single city-state in the game. You control access and you decide who can come and go based entirely upon your whim. I thought this was an understood thing as to the capitalizing cost of housing from city to village to wilderness? Or is it that the risks that were once inherent in being part of a city state and possibly leaving said city-state for the opposite faction (Spirit to Shadow or vice-versa) is no longer any risk at all and the understanding of risk that went with it has vanished from the game?

Cities offer general protection in the form of guards and because of the security lapses homes of inactive players caused the city in the era of raiding, player homes were eventually changed many years ago to different areas called "neighborhoods" which in turn added an extra layer of security for both the player and the city. The trade off with cities have always been that you are subject to the culture/laws of the time. At least until you ponied up more credits to have your home moved elsewhere. Aside from these two elements and the area type, anything you can do with city homes, you can do with the village/wilderness equivalent and vice versa.

Stine

Saidenn said:

They move your house for you to different cities if you ask them when you switch cities. Or they have many, many times in the past.

Tiur

There's a movement fee, but yeah, houses move.

Elene

That's pretty much why I settled on a village estate (the other half of the reason is 'cause it fits my roleplay so well ). To me, it justifies the cost of paying extra for a house out of city boundaries. If I had a city-based house and depending on where my roleplay takes me, I may find myself wanting to shift it elsewhere. There's additional cost in the movement, though, and even if it's a one-time cost to shift, I'd rather not want to have to pay it. 

Admittedly, there are still good benefits to building a house in a city though - security (guards, unprismable as being in a different area) and reduced building cost, while village/wilderness houses allow freedom and prestige at the cost of being more expensive.

Peeeeersonally, I do see where people are coming from. Looking purely at the material benefits, there are clear reasons to own a house in cities especially if you don't think there will be any risk or reason why you'll be losing access to it anytime soon. Sure, the roleplay freedom and lustre of owning a village/wilderness house is pretty awesome, but once that wears off, that's all there is. 

Xavin

I feel like the benefits of neighborhoods cannot be understated. You cannot access neighborhoods via portal (or at least that is what was stated about them back when they were introduced), and you can't prism to one from another neighborhood room. Short of burrowing in to someone's house or following in when someone enters, you're not going to get in. Wilderness and village houses are afforded none of these protections and you pay a premium for them still.

Iazamat

Honestly, I've chosen a village house, and I'd just settle for it being built at this point. And I've only waited two weeks. I've heard of people waiting months, which is just ridiculous. We're paying for these things and doing all of the heavy lifting in room titles/descriptions/etc. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to handle the installation.

Naos

It shouldn't. It really shouldn't. I'm not sure who you're messaging for a reminder, but I almost always suggest people MMSG Razmael/Keroc on top of Tiur, or CC them in an email. The likelihood of it being tended to is far greater.