Game Guides Archive
Thread: Friday Feature August 12th House Packup Guide
Valkyrie36 wrote:
Nice info...thanks.
I would like this game feature to someday be extended to Mayors. It would be nice if a town mayor could pack houses up and shift them around in town. Let the mayor pack it up and place it in his datapad. The mayor can do two things than 1) Drop it someplace else in town 2) Transfer it to the owners datapad. If the mayor logs out and its still in his datapad, it would be automatically transfered to the owner. Also make it so residence is maintained throught this process.
These are great ideas and came up in the discussion threads for Test Center. We passed that info along to the team 
Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl
Community Relations Manager
Thunderheart wrote:
macnider123123 wrote:
Is this feature intended to facillitate a future server merge?
Nope. This was to facilitate the fact that after the CU, certain parts of the galaxy were much more dangerous than before. People needed an easier way to move to move their houses "as-is" and not have to redecorate. Plus its a neat feature
Ok, how about this:
Is this feature intended to facillitate a future character purge?
**Edit** Ok, looks like TH posted the answer while I was composing, but I think this could be a useful suggestion anyway.
A common complaint of players is that there are houses/structures with years of maintenance (potentially even more with the auto-deposit feature) placed by players who are no longer in the game.
The idea of a character purge was put forth....(quick search)....(stupid Lithium).....(search again)....(dang it)...a while ago. Buteven with a 6 month grace period after account cancelation, there was still the worry about players eventually coming back to find all their prior accomplishments erased. Personally, I'd say let them start over if they didn't properly pack / store their belongings, but I'm not a publisher of an MMO.
Enter: House Packup. After a certain period of time after account cancelation (say five months), houses owned by that character are flagged for destruction. Any characters on the admin list and any player with a vendor in the house (if they're no longer on the admin list) get an emailnotification. A month later, the house is packed up and placed into the owner's datapad. If the player chooses to come back (and the maintenance doesn't run out), they still have everything they left with, with the exception of the parcel of land they were taking up. All they have to do is find an open spot, place their house, and all is well.
Factories could be packed up the same way (to retain any contents of the input/output hoppers). Personally, I'd like to see harvesters get auto-deeded back into the owner's inventory, but maybe an argument could be made to "packup" these since that'd retain any resources in the hopper.
What'dya think?
Message Edited by sciguyCO on 08-12-2005 01:31 PM
Thunderheart wrote:
Valkyrie36 wrote:
Nice info...thanks.I would like this game feature to someday be extended to Mayors. It would be nice if a town mayor could pack houses up and shift them around in town. Let the mayor pack it up and place it in his datapad. The mayor can do two things than 1) Drop it someplace else in town 2) Transfer it to the owners datapad. If the mayor logs out and its still in his datapad, it would be automatically transfered to the owner. Also make it so residence is maintained throught this process.
These are great ideas and came up in the discussion threads for Test Center. We passed that info along to the team
An AWESOME concept! It'd make it so much easier to clean up city clutter and to make cities look more like, well, cities.
So lets say I hae a large house and 2 free lots, I pack up my large house (I still have 2 free lots) go to another planet. Can I then drop my large house? Will the system realize I am reusing those 5 lots dedicated to the packed house?
And now the biggie- When I pack my carefully decorated Naboo house, can I drop it on ANY planet or are we still stuck with the planet limitiations (i.e. no naboos on Coreillia or Talus)?
Thunderheart wrote:
CommanderFarley wrote:
Tony_Danza wrote:
Any chance that this feature will be used to auto-pack house that are no longer used, or owned by players who no longer play?
Yes, will the Housing Purge be released concurrently, or shortly after the House Pack-up feature hits live?
Neither - - this feature was to accommodate folks whose houses were in dangerous locations after the CU.FWIW, when the housing purge happens, we'll give folks lots of advanced notice!
I suggest that you purge by packing up the houses. If there are vendors inside, the vendors and all items on them get deleted.
And the same thing should happen to harvesters.
As for "city maintenance"... It would be amazing if Mayors could "arrange" the city somehow. As it is, my mayor places all houses on his lot one at a time then transfers it to the new owner. This is the only reliable way to make sure the city planning works out properly. This is tedious of course and existing cities are basically out of luck without really making a mess.
tralita_tusnami wrote:
TRALITA FULLY SUPPORTS THIS FRIDAY FEATURE WITH GREAT FEELINGS OF TIDING AND JOY
Thanks Tralita 
/offers beer and pie
Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl
Community Relations Manager
QuiJonOz wrote:
Once this goes live, condemned structures on inactive accounts should be automatically packed up. This will clear space for paying customers without forcing anyone to lose any possessions.
this would be so great if all inactive houses would auto pack to owners datapad after a certian ammount of downtime, this would fix the "ghost town: effect that most cities have after the CU with all the houses in core being abandoned.