Architect Archive
Thread: Decay Thread
I like the idea very much Zarcath. Very much indeed.
I think like others, that everyone can use the HRK, but only architects make them. I don't think that the percentages should be so high, then not many would keep their houses, other than merchants, because the houses has no use else. But once their is some use of the houses, I like the idea.
For harvesters and factories, let them decay, but can be repaired a couple of times, before they need to be replaced.
I like your idea, but since houses have very little value to most players I don't think it will work right now.
I do think something similar for harvesters would work, in particular if the up the value of having med and large harvesters.
This is whatI would recommend (implement decay on harvesters, since they will always have a demand.:
1. Improve the value of med and heavy harvesters.
a. Personal harvesters should only harvest around 1-1.5 instead of 2 (personal harvesters are to good IMHO)
b. Med should do 4 just like they are now
c.Heavy needs to upgrade to 8 instead of 7
2. Harvesters should have to be 100% condition to be moved. Obviously if they are not maintained they will lower, but even if you pay resources they should slowly decay.
a. Have repair kits
b. Reduce efficiency of the harvester everytime it is redeeded by 5-10%
3. Implement your idea for houses after they implement things to improve housing
a. You should auto heal slowly in your house like a medical center
b. If your laying ona bed the rate should increase (people could set up there own hospital)
c.Implement data terminal so it shows all of the properties you are admin on and all their details. This would allow you to manage your harvesters much more efficiently. Ideally a very high item would allow you to pay maintanence and maybe use a high droid to put power in the harvesters for you.
d. Larger houses should be able to store more stuff
e. Improve furniture
Killbuckner, the demand for new housing will only reach zero if there is never anymore influx of new players. I stand by the idea that houseing decay is a horrible horrible idea.
For RL Home owners out there... you are putting money to maintain your house all the time, a water heater goes out, your roofing needs to be replace in spots, various little things like that (Hey Maintenence pool), but, in a year do you go out and buy a new house? Or have a contractor rip down your old one to build a new one? Absolutely not! Houses should last for a long LONG time. Look in a lot of older towns that have been around since the early 1900's. They are still there beccause they were maintained. Some may not have all the niceties of today's technology, but they are still standing!
Housing decay is the worst possible idea imagineable. Weapons decay cause they get used OFTEN, Armor gets decayed cause it's abused OFTEN, Harvesters may benfit from having a decay because they are used often (However, there is still a maintenece pool eliminating that need for decay). If weapons/armor had a maintenence pool to use... then adding decay to structures would be a good idea. The point is... they don't. The ONLY way to salvage or repair or upkeep a weapon/armor is to get a repair kit.
The architect community needs to completely drop the idea of adding decay to structures (furniture might benefit from decay though). It's a bad idea, it will not get implemented and the coding would be impossible (might as well rewrite the entire game). A lot of ideas and suggestions I've seen come out of the architect community are great... with this exception... it's just a bad idea for the reasons stated above. If you want to hurt our selling market... add decay. I won't own a house if decay were added... and I'm an architect. We will always have new people coming to play the game, they will need houses just like the folks that ar eplaying now may/will need houses. The idea of having a house is having something that as long as the maintenence is paid you have some place to call "home". Lets let this idea drop.
Thanks for your time/patience. Please flame away at me.
Flaming gets us nowhere, so why do it?
First I think it would be an bad idea to implant decay on houses for the moment, as they really has no use, they're just a symbol. Merchant might have use for it, but no one else need them. But if there later is implant something the house can be used for, and is worth it, there should be implanted a decay system on houses like Zarcath suggests.
But it's another thing for harvesters and factories. In real life tools (actually what harvesters and factories are) get loosier over time, though you repair and maintaine it. I can agree that it should not be a month or so if the game is to be real. But this is not a game trying to be realistic, and if tools are decaying the game will have more flow, what will be needed when the market is full.
In Real Life weapons do not decay that fast. There are many weapons that last lifetimes. In real life weapons use bullets that damage the barrel and can wear out over long periods of time. Now if you were using a laser instead, they would last a very very long time. So now that we realize the game has to be fun and not 100% realistic.
Lets look at why we need decay and use houses only, even though I think harvesters should be first on the decay list.
1. Within 2-3 months the market will be saturated with houses.Everyone that wants a house can have one. Heck there are people on my server selling small houses for 3k and there are people doing missions making up to 10k. So they could buy 3 for the price of 1 mission. Theprice will go even lower as demand dies down. People will just give them to friends as a gift, kind of like people did in EQ. Give the newbies low end weapons, butin SWG they can give them low end houses.
2. These deed/houses never decay, so if you decide to quit you can give your house to someone else.
3. Most servers are close to there maximum amount ofpeople in the future there may even be less people on the server. But the supply of houses will stay close to the same (some will get deleted, but not many). As an architect I want there to be a demand always.
So lets say that there are 1000 new people on the server every month (doubt this will happen), they do not buy from someone else that has already had a houseand everyone of them want a house (again doubt it). I could personally make a small house for eachand everyone of them. So if you want there to be 1 to maybe 5 architects per server, then we don't decay.
I would like to know what the goal of a houseing decay system is supposed to accomplish asside from adding a lot of complications and tedium?
What are your actual goals? There HAS to be a better way of accomplishing them.
I would agree to Housing Repair Kits *if* anyone could use them. That and the decay rates seem a bit too fast, maybe multiply your timers by 1.5.
Try and think from the customer's point of view as well (although I wholeheartedlyagree you need a steady income stream past the initial housing purchase). If there was a decay and an architect had to come out and fix my house I could see the following happen..
You just get back from an extended vacation, login to find yourhouse condemned and about to 'poof' with all your items in them. You get as much as you can out of the house and attempt to contact an architect. The connection is never made and buh-bye house and the rest of the stuff you can't get out. Think I would buy another house again? Probably not, too much of a hassle. Now if I could pop out a repair kit that an architectcrafted and that I had purchased ahead of time I would be OK.
I use this example because in UO the initial, undocumentedhouse decay from logging in was *three days* and I was out of town for five. Boy I was peeved when I got back.
-There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
It is a noteworthy idea, however the repair kits are quite steep in terms of resource cost. Maybe if they were a little less you could leave the time frame the same. However, something like this needs to be implemented in order to keep the profession alive. On similar note, would PA Halls be included in this?
I don't think you guys are honestly sitting down and putting any creative energy into half of your posts before youwrite them (at least the majority of architects who just want to whine about item decay).
There is ALWAYS going to be housing need, this has been time tested in life itself (I can tell the real home owners and real estate experts by gauging their posts). Whining about "We need item decay on houses because I'm afraid we won't have a job in a few months". The truth of the matter is I'm willing to bet this idea would never be implemented. Why? The very counter to your anxiety. If I buy a medium house for 120K and I know it's going to decay after a while, I just won't buy one, period. The MAJORITY of players right now (counter to your presumptive theories) are casual players who don't make that much money but once, and who enjoy the game for what it is.
I totally sympathize with staying in business, it's how my real estate firm works. Housing decay would never work for the player economy, and you'll quickly find it working to just the paranoia you whine about day in, and day out. You'll lose a HUGE percent of your sales. And "storms that would roll in and destroy houses"...? If you guys want micromanagement, go play Sims (great games, tho =) ).
Don't be surprised when this idea is never implemented (has anyone even considered WHY there is maintenance fee in the first place?). The players whose house disappears because of failure to pay fees will be back in short order.
Surrealknyte in real life houses due decay and also people replace them with a better house. The old house is torn down, it doesn't magically appear as a dead that can be moved to werever you want.
As a real estate agent, in real life most houses are old houses and being resold. Think of a city that has a high population and no room to put down new houses. Then think that people could magically move their houses around and they never decayed. In that area there will be low demand for building new houses.
If every house that was ever built didn't decay in some form, there would be no business for new houses since the land would be full of them.
Now I do agree that there needs to be away to increase demand for houses.
Daisame wrote:
I would like to know what the goal of a houseing decay system is supposed to accomplish asside from adding a lot of complications and tedium?
What are your actual goals? There HAS to be a better way of accomplishing them.
The goal is to create an environment where the architect is needed, long term.
If nothing an architect makes ever decays, the system will reach a critical point where supply so far exceeds demand, that the class is worthless. Even new players will not be able to stop this from happening, not nearly at a rate that will be required to keep a fair amount of architects in business.
What we want to add in single use item, made by architects only, that is used to repair homes and other architect made goods, such as furniture and harvesters. These would be purchsed by players to maintain their goods. Different quality items would provide varrying levels of repair. We would also like to see qualtiy in our homes and equipment have an impact on the rate that the items need repairs.
I think we all agree we want the process to be simple and able to be performed by the owner, not the architect. I personally agree with the suggestion that harvesters should have finite lifespans, but houses should be permanant as long as maintained.
Example:
Steve buys a large house from me, along with 4 Large Home Maintenance Kits. The house I made for Steve has an Experimented Durability Rating 75%, materials were a litte thin this month. The 4 Maintenance kits he purchased required 25% of the materials required to build a large house, so if I sold him the Large house for 120k (randome number) and the 4 kits for 100k (cut him a break for buying 4 up front). Now, each maintenance kit has an experimented value of 87%, so each will extend the life of his home for 26.1 days (a 100% kit would last 30 days) But, since his home was only rated at 75% durable, it would require a kit every 22.5 days, and his kits would only last around 19.5 days due to the 75% durabilty of his home. Steve goes out, plants his hme, opens the kit hopper on the house control panel, deposits the 4 kits and then hits the lot rent menu item and pays his planetary lot rent fee. (Yes, I think they should call it lot rent instead of maintenance, makes more sense IMHO) The staus item would tell Steve exactly how long the durabilty on his house is, and e-mail him well before it's about to expire. If it should expire, Steve get's an e-mail saying his place in condemed and has 15days to repair it or it will be torn down.
So, for 240k Steve get's a large home and 4 kits, thats good for 100.5 days, or 3 months. Now, can Steve resonably gather 120k in the next 3 months to help maintain his home?
Just my thoughts, hope the illustration helped a little, even though my mathis probly a bit off =)
The architect also then has a item needed in the home market that he can provide.