Architect Archive

At the time that page was put up, those were the issues that were the most discussed at the time. However, that page is very out-of-date, and yes, our correspondant has been MIA for quite some time. ArchAngel was doing a very good job when he was here, but his lack of presence lately is indicating to me that it may be time for a change. Its been 2 weeks since hes even logged in to the boards, and a month since we've seen any content related posts. Id like to say thanks to him though, because as I said, when he was here, he did do a great job of staying on top of the issues and at least communicating them to the devs, although he was often frustrated by the lack of response from them(we STILL dont know if the disabled experimentation on effectiveness on the fusions and solars was intentional or not.). So thanks ArchAngel, but it appears its time to find a new correspondant.

Houses should not have decay, thats the whole point of maitenance. You're paying to keep your house from falling into disrepair, you already pay to prevent decay, why make home owners do more, especially now that many of us have taxes on top of maitenance. The ability to color and hue furniture would be a huge boon and increase sales but personally a wouldn't object to a very slow decay.

Well even though any increase in furniture types would be amazing rugs should be first on that list. I don't care if they are all the exact same size, shape, and color and with no design I want a fricken rug. There are so many rooms that one would just complete it it is sickening to realize that we don't have that option. Also paintings. They don't have to be screenshot paintings made by actual players (no matter how incredible that would be it just isn't feasible) however there are a few shots of the Agrilat Fountains, a Bothan overlooking Eisley and more and more of these hanging around everywhere, why not let them be craftable or at least attainable via NPC quests like the grunda.

I agree that this list is out of date. Beingone of the more interior design focused architects, I would very much like to see the following changes:

1) The correction to furniture schematics (these have been repeatedly documented in other posts so I won't repeat them here).

2) The addition of new furniture schematics. I have seen countless rugs/interior lights/paintings and various furniture pieces scattered around the galaxy that architects have no access too. Our selection at this time is very limited. As the artwork for these objects has already been done, it would seem an easy effort to create new architect schematics.

3) Expanding on the above: lighting, lighting, lighting! The kind that works too--during all hours of the day!

4) The ability to customize the color of furniture (and as icing on the cake, interior house walls?). Armorsmiths and tailors already have access to color palettes--it would be great if we did too.

5) The ability to move objects along a vertical axis--or if that is technically difficult to do, then preset a number of objects to an appropriate vertical height. Backpacks and spice tea (two examples) drop along at a higher vertical position than other objects. It would be great if paintings, wall lamps, and some other decorative items did the same.

6) Increase housing item limits--at least for large houses. I understand the database limitations that forced the reduction of item limits to 75 per lot. I don't like it but I'm not going to argue against it here. What I am going to suggest is that although small and medium houses take 2 lots and have an appropriate 150 item cap, larges houses that take 6 lots only have a 250 cap (instead of 450) and PA halls the same paltry 250 for an 8 or 9 lot structure. This particular disparity hasn't resulted in less items, but rather less large houses and more small ones. Just about every crafter I know puts up 3 smalls houses instead of one large. This has led to the littering of the landscape with more housing objects while not decreasing the number of items stored in the DB. Please at least consider raising large houses to their appropriate 450 item limit.

7) And while I'm at it, just a personal peeve:no more narrow entry corridors!Most housing floorplans open to a narrow corridor. I'm thinking of medium and large Tatooines, both small Naboos, PA Halls, Large Naboo, etc. While I suspect this might have been to give objects in the larger rooms time to load, we're all aware that upon entering a building there is a delay before interior objects load--and we are usually past these narrow halls before they load anyway. I find these corridors architecturally annoying. They are usually dark, ugly, and hard to decorate. New house schematics with large entries would be great.

This is just a list of furniture/housing issues off the top of my head. I'm sure I missed some. Oh, and just to even out these demands with a bit of gratitude, thanks for good job that was done on city structures. I especially like the multiple style options for gardens, streetlamps, and statues.

Tess Dagonet
Corbantis

Yes, you pay to prevent decay on a house, but after a while (reasonable of time whatever that may be), it should take you more money to keep it in its pristine condition. I.e. if you current mediums is 34/hr mx rate, oh after 6mos is should be 68/hr (just a ballpark figure, dont hurt me).

Rather than increase the maintanance why not have it like, it just decays and decays until a master architect fixes it? Like a renewal/renovation?

You know old homes can stay in good conditions they just need to be maintained and occasionally reconditioned, I think reconditioning would be a good way to make money. Get an Architect he reconditions the house.

First, I just want to say I am no longer an Architect, but these are the things I thought that should be changed about the Architect.

1 - Architects need more lots - the amount of resources that an architect needs exceeds any other proffession, Structure factory takes 2 lots, most architects can't even enjoy having a Large house because then they would be pretty much out of lots.

2 - Guild halls should have been done like the City Hall. If an Architect were to place a city hall, then he doesn't even have enough space for a Structure factory unless he lived on tatooine.

3 - An idea for lots would be to copy the Creature Handling Proffession. Make it so that Architects gain more lots as they progress higher in the Architect tree.

4 - If Architect's are the hardest artisan skill to achieve, then why would anyone object to making them the most profitable. If clothe can decay, then furniture should decay (maybe at a much slower rate, because it doesn't take damage). Why not create a maintanence kit that people can buy to repair their houses. How many people really just pay rent and their houses is perfectly fine, they have to go to home depot once in a while right?

5 - There really needs to be more furniture to craft and should be able to customize them. Furniture is so boring right now, you can't find anything to match unless you use the same piece of furniture everywhere.

6 - Furniture also needs to be able to be moved vertically. Should make placing furnitures something more like "The Sims," how there is a partially visible example of the furniture that moves around following your mouse and you click to place or rotate it using some key. I forgot, but i think you get the idea better if you checked out "The Sims."

7 - It is very time consuming and annoying to move. Not only is our inventory too small to move but we have to replace the furniture where it was, while using this terrible system for placing furniture.

8 - I think the terrains should change when placing a house, the same way it changes when there is an npc base that spawns. So, many houses fit somewhere but some are stuck with a ditch right in front of the house or on the side. It is so ugly, i mean if we can add a swimming pool or something to cover that ditch, cool, but how many buildings do you see that have a ditch that could be used as a canal right at the front entrance. Buildings can't be aligned together in any nice order because the terrain is so bad.

9 - I'll add when I have time.

Dominius
Guild Leader
Exiled Force - Chilastra
Master Doctor, Master Entertainer, Master Medic,
Retired: Architect, Artisans, Brawler,
Creature Handler, Marksman, Pistoleer, Scout,

Does anyone know about equipment factories?

For the past few months EFs will only show the owner of the factory as the creator of both the crate and of the individual item even after 'getting item from crate'... this is very inconvenient... for those of us that share EFs for us to have our name as the creator of something we have made we must get the last owner to transfer the EF to us while we are using it... and then must be available when the next person needs to use it

please fix this

thanks

Hello,

this is not an issues list but some ideas:

- warehouses
- concrete floor for player cities (and other textures : marble, neat grass...)
- walls for player cities
- player cities bridges
- player cities zoos to store and heal pets
- player cities garage to store and repair vehicules
- some tool to level smalls hills and place houses on unbildable smalls rocks, spots of water...
- make item capacity match slots taken.
- make chests able to hold items like bags.

Bravo! Excellent list! I'd just like to add my biggest pet peeves. The lighting issue, though I hear that is in the process of being fixed. Verticle movement of items in houses! This is also something I hear is in the process of being fixed. If these things are indeed being addressed what kind of time frame are we looking at? I think if things that are on the list are being addressed then it would really make people happy to know that. It would probably quiet a lot of grumbling if you just said "yes we are adding lights. should be in about 2 months. You can expect these new things..." or something like that.

Anyway thats it for me.

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In particular, he seems fixated on adding decay on furniture and houses (beyond normal maintenance) to increase business.

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I was looking in here just to see if anything new and interesting was going to happen concerning houses, city structures, etc. I hate to say this but, if the above mentioned happens it will only result in reducing the market.

I own a large house not because it’s functional (250 item limit is terrible) but because I get a kick out of decorating the place, and it’s cool looking. If all of my relatively expensive furniture started to decay, I like many others would not be replacing the items. In addition, the maint on my large is high enough as it is, if it went up any higher, I'd loose the large house and maybe go to a small.

Remember, player housing and especially furniture are entirely overhead to the majority of the player base.


If you want to increase sales, here are some ideas.

1. Allow the quality of the house to vary depending on the quality of the materials used. Using higher quality materials would produce a house with a lower maint cost.

2. Create new housing schematics. Corellian houses look identical to generic houses, as a Corellian house owner, I'd be thrilled to see a few new housing options for me. The Naboo Mediums are beautiful, I’d love to see something like that for Corellians.

3. Add purpose to furniture. I have shelves, and chests that can't hold anything. Why not change these so they can store say 20 - 50 items w/o counting against the overall storage of the house. NOTE: To prevent having them used as backpacks, add a downer effect when you're carrying them like spice does to your HAM. Maybe restrict the number to 5 so we don’t overload your dbases. This might also help reduce cross server lot trades for storage.

4. Add new furniture, variety is everything guys.

5. In house lighting. The free standing lamp hasn’t lit anything up since the game came out. How about fixing these things. In addition, why not come out with an assortment of in house lighting players can use.

6. Houses with a garage. Going back to the idea about new housing schematics… Why not take advantage of the vehicle patch, and make new houses that have garages attached for vehicle repair. Also, don’t forget, we’d like our player city garages asap.

Anyway, just a few thoughts, I hope you guys give some of them serious consideration.

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Arnwald wrote:
Hello,

this is not an issues list but some ideas:

- warehouses
- concrete floor for player cities (and other textures : marble, neat grass...)
- walls for player cities
- player cities bridges
- player cities zoos to store and heal pets
- player cities garage to store and repair vehicules
- some tool to level smalls hills and place houses on unbildable smalls rocks, spots of water...
- make item capacity match slots taken.
- make chests able to hold items like bags.

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I second that!!

Not sure why you guys released player cities w/o the ability to level the land. Thought for this would be, when the City hall is place, all the land is leveled for the max ratious of the city. The leveled land could be left as grass, or given a street like texture depending on the Mayors preference. You guys could have also come up with cool city templates, with roads and place holders for houses.

Anyway, Arnwald's list is great.

I am not an architect, but here are some things that are really anoying to normaly players:

1. Tweek the house/factory/harv vs. Slot
my suggestion: Take slot value up to 100 and make placements as follows (just suggestion):
- small house -5 slots
- medium house - 10 slots
- large house -15 slots
- personal harv - 10 slots
- medium harv - 12 slots
- large harv -15 slots
- factory - 7 slots
- vendors - 3 slots
- full city (PA-Hall, City Hall, Med-Center, Cantina, Shuttle Port, Cloning Center) - 100 slots

a) have slot value experimentable.
b) storage space is experimentable.
c) have architects get 1-2 extra slots per box (like CH)

2. Tweek storage vs house size
my suggestion: doesn't matter what size the house is, the relation to storage depends on slot size,maintenance, and experimenting:
small house:maint. x slot size + storage / 2= storage space (18 x 5 + 10 / 2= 50)

3. Examining House deeds
With the default naming of a small house, there is no way to know if it's round or square, if it takes 1 or 2 slots, etc, etc.

just my 2cents worth