Cities And Housing Archive

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Jhett wrote:

I posted this in a reply to another thread, but I am curious what you guys think so I am starting a new thread. As they say, 'discuss...'

By now you likely know that there is a plan to eliminate houses poofing when their maintenance reaches zero. At some point in the new process the house gets "condemned." Here is what I think should happen at that point. Mayors should have the option to allow condemned buildings to either remain in their city or remove them. IF a condemned building is removed, a small container is put down in it's place. This container will have every itme in it that was inside the condemned structure. Additionally, the container still takes up the alloted lots of the original structure. No items can be placed inside this container, they can only be removed. The only person that can open the container is the owner of the original structure. In order to open the container, the person must first pay all back maintenance AND all back taxes he or she owes. (and even if they DO pay the back rate, they have a very limited time to use the container so that it doesn't turn into perm-storage) This seems win/win for all parties involved. The city removes deadwood and gains some real estate back, plus has the option for gaining back lost revenue and the structure owner still won't lose their stuff. Seems like the best of both worlds. As an additional plus, there could be a timer on this container that, once expired, would allow the mayor to hire a smuggler to open the container and get the items out.

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I've read a lot of suggestions from people saying that the mayor should be given the right to remove a player's house without the player's consent. Part of the problem is that mayors think that they own the virtual land on which a city lies. They do not. If I have a house in a city with maintenance paid up, and money in the bank automatically paying for the maintenance, then I have every right for my house to still be standing there for as long as I pay Sony $15 a month -- even if I my house lies on a server other than my "main" server -- even if I decide to take a 6 month hiatus from playing the game but still pay my $15 a month. It would be so wrong on many levels for another player to lay claim to a piece of land which I've already laid claim to first.

The only fair way to free up a plot of land is the deleting of houses of cancelled accounts -- which the Devs have already weighed in and said will happen. The problem all these mayors have with this solution is that they've never seen a character purge and they're assuming that the Devsare lying aboutthe character purges.The solution would be to conduct frequent character purges of cancelled accounts. Bi-Monthly character purges is a reasonable amount of time.

• If a house decays to 25% condition it becomes Condemned.


• A Condemned house can't be used until it is repaired to full.


• A Condemend house has a sign named "<NAME's CONDEMNED STRUCTURE>"


• Optionally a Condemened House has smoke and fire effects.


• If a Condemned house is not repaired before going to 0% condition it vanishes.

This way the owner or user of the structure will have a clear and obvious second chance to save the house from destruction. With a 25% threshold it should still give a week of time between being condemned and its vanishing. If I was to guess the intent of this feature it is due to CSR issue volumes related to people loosing stuff in destroyed house incidents and if this is the case my proposal would fit the bill.