Architect Archive

I think a pure decay system would be too painful on players:

- Houses/PA Halls: People pay 100k and above for some of these. If they decay (without 100% repairability) and vanish, players will be livid after loosing the contents of the house as well as the house itself. The eventual implosion will have to result in reduced costs on houses, causing us to sell well below the cost of actually building a house.

- Harvesters/Factories: People pay quite a bit for some of these as well. Making them eventually vanish is similar to houses.

- Furniture: Decay on furniture may seem desirable on the surface, but the problem is that people don't NEED furniture to begin with -- it's just a matter of personal taste. Adding decay where furniture just disappears will make the desirability even less than what the decreased item limits did last week.

Due to the resource cost for Architects and expense to players for structures, decay should NEVER actually destroy the structure. I propose that with harvesters/factories, decay causes the harvester/factory to become less efficient over time and produce less output. Through repair kits made by an Architect, the structure could be repaired to 100% working efficiency. With their moving parts, repair kits fit in nicely with factories and harvesters.

Houses don't really have moving parts. Common repair for homes in the real world involves new paint, a new roof, remodeling a room, etc. I propose that houses themselves have ZERO decay. Instead, tie furniture in with houses:

- Make every piece of furniture have a "beautification index" that decays over time (behind the scenes tied to "durability" which could be experimented). When the piece reaches "0", it wouldn't be destroyed, but it just wouldn't contribute to the beautification index anymore. That way, players that just want furniture for looks, but don't care about the effect it has aren't punished.

- Have the furniture in the house make up the house's "beautification index" so that as the furniture decays, the house's beautification index declines.

- Give each house a separate item limit for furniture (25 per lot may actually be doable for this purpose) so that players aren't in effect punished for having furniture. Should they go over their furniture space allowance (per personal taste), more items could be added (and contribute to the house beautification index), but the items would count against the main house item limit.

- When a house's beautification index is the maximum for that type of house, give the player additional storage space equal to the furniture allowance space. This will 1) motivate players to buy furniture, and 2) update/replace their furniture periodically.

- Alternatively to giving players more storage space based on a "beautification index" for the house, cause the house to simply start losing its ability to store as many items. This would require implementation of houses having decay where they begin with a maximum beautification index that decays over time without furniture.

You could even tie in player cities and neighbors in this this idea. A neighbor with a high beautification index on his/her house could influence the beautification index of the houses around it (similar to the real world). Parks and such could do the same.

While I think it's cruel to cause houses, harvesters, factories, and furniture to decay where they disappear, I am thinking structures in player cities such as parks perhaps should be destroyed when they decay. As noone really has details about resource cost and function of these player city structures, however, I will reserve further comment.

The goal here Tstorm, is to figure out how to get architects to have anrecycling business like all the other crafting classes. If nothing we make ever decays, like now, in the long run no one will ever be buying anything from us because they already have it all.

I have already started raising my prices and most consumers are not having a problem with it. They, like we, know its gonna happen.

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Drueric wrote:

The goal here Tstorm, is to figure out how to get architects to have an recycling business like all the other crafting classes. If nothing we make ever decays, like now, in the long run no one will ever be buying anything from us because they already have it all.

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Drueric,

You apparently didn't read my post. Try reading it again. My entire post was about renewable revenue for Architects.

I am 100% against additional forced decay. I was the victim of a bug that cost me my house and all the contents that were inside. With the current lot limit it is impossible to move your stuff from the old structure to the new structure on all types of structures. Now I am in favor of making it where people who forget to pay their maintenance would need a repair kit to get their structure back to 100%. There should be a repair kits for each size of house. Each repair kit would take different amount of resources to make and could be made only by an architect with the necessary skill to make that size house.Each repair kit should take 10% of the resources needed to make the original house.

small house repair kit

medium house repair kit

factory repair kit

large house repair kit

PA hall repair kit

personal harvester repair kit

medium harvester repair kit

large harvester repair kit

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Another thing that would benefit architects would be to make houses modular where people could add on a room. This room would add to their maintenance costs and give them some additional storage capacity. A certain number of modules would equal one lot and a person could design and shape their house the way they want it. When a house gets re-deeded the added modules are lost and would have to be repurchased.

Dumin

ION, Naboo

Chilastra

screw decay......

no one wants to pay 1000X what they paid for their house in maintance only to have it poof eventually

i dont want to be a "plumber" or handy man going around repairing crap...that menial labor is for droids

just give us more things to build....

or, OMG, allow us to customize the houses so all our crap isnt cookie cutter dull...if we had products different than the next guys it would actually create a market...

If you are pursuing this idea of decay as correspondent, DROP IT NOW.

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Ropock wrote:

I'll be honest, the GCW idea is the best one I've heard so far. Why do you have to be involved in the GCW to sell these structures?

If you are involved, well, you'll only sell to your side. If you're neutral, you can be a profiteer and sell to the highest bidder, or to anyone. If you're a peace activist, just don't build them.

Seems to me to be a pretty good idea.

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lets see we could build TURRETS AND BRIDGES AND WALLS ....

decay is just dumb...give us additional things to build.....

Well,

I have an idea. As the architect(well actually the builder of the item) we should get something back for the maintainence. My thoughts were that for most buildings we get 30-40% of the upkeep paid back to us.

I want Largest Chance, but I don't think it should decay so fast where I am bothered with all these people for houses. And I don't think people should have to make a whoe new house because re decorating my guild house (spent 20 hours on it) would suck.

It needs to be a system where the house owner buts a new deed every few months and just deposits it into the house.

Yeah thats it decay..SOE can use this to sell the game...Own your own home and keep buying it over and over when it destroys itself..Hmmm i wouldnt buy this game is that was on the box..

Think of ideas in that manner ..I know there are already problem but for sovling things think about your answer as if it was something that was on a games box and if you would buy it if it was there..

1) remove the ability to redeed housing. Unless you live in a trailor, this makes no sense.

2) make it so maintenance continuously increases as the home gets older. Just like real life. If re-deeding is left in, make it so the deed remembers it's old maintenance. Display "construction date" on the deed.

Everyone will have their own threshold of pain, but with the maintenance steadily increasing, there will be demand for new houses to be built to replace old ones without having to have an arbitrary decay which also doesnt make much sense. A maintained house can last forever (in game turns) barring flood, fire, war, or taxes, provided it is maintained.

Regards,

Artuk

I'm all for the idea of making turrets etc for the GCW.

I'm for the maint. rate increasing over time idea, but instead of having to destroy/build the house again, just let the owner buy a new deed of the same house type and drop that deed into the Structure termainl or something(sorta like what another player said but instead of the deed transforming to maint. cost, the deed reset the age timer of the structure), I think people would be more receptive to this idea because it won't force them to pick up all the furniture and destroy the house and placing a new one down and moving the furniture back in again

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Cyberthugg wrote:

Zar this is an excerpt from a very long complete redesign of the architect profession that I have been posting about.

VII. Decay/Fees

A. Residential Structures do not decay. Ever. (This is how it currently is.) Maintenance fee changed to Property Tax. (Could also add system to where location determined the amount of tax the owner(s) must pay.) Redeed cost as normal.(maybe balanced a bit better for the various sizes.)

B. Commercial Structures do not decay for a set period of time. This time as well as thier decay rate when they do start to decay can be altered through experimentation. Maintenance costs begin rising until the owner must replace the decaying structures. (This system would halt the functionality of acommercial structure until the owner bought and fed a new deed of the same lot size into the old structure. The structure decay wait times/rates would be reset to those of the new deed.) (Essentially this will allow a person to replace a building without having to move everything out and destroying the old structure. The old interior would simply overwrite the one on the new deed.) Redeed cost becomes Rebuild cost.

C. Industrial Structures Decay from the start but the rate can be affected by several by several factors. Experimentation, Maintenance Technicians(New profession) or Maintenance Droids. Functionality decays as time wears on until the owner has no choice but to replace the structure. Decay is also reduced to 1/10th normal when the structure is off however if the structure is unattended for a set period of time it will vanish. There is no redeed cost however redeeding reduces functionality by 5% each time.

D. Military structures do not decay nor do they cost maintenance. They can however be damaged by opposing factions requiring repair to become functional again. Repaired items are gradually reduced in efficiency each time they are repaired. there is a redeed cost associated with these items.

E.Graphics for exteriors change to match the decay of the structure.

the complete post can be found here and I do update it once a week as new groovy ideas are introduced and old ones become unnecessary IMO.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=architect&message.id=12814

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Very nice post! I agree to it all, except maybe with the residental houses.. what do you mean with taxes, who gets those taxes, and why? And this is not going to give us more money if they are just fed to the game eh?