Topic
Questions About New Housing and Group Halls -- NOW WITH STOOT ANSWERS!
UPDATE: Scarlett Bearsdale has provided a summary of questions and answers here.
Thanks Scarlett!
** ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS *****************************************
I have many questions in my mind about the new housing and group halls that will be coming to Glitch. I am going to post some of them here. Maybe others have questions they would like to post.
HOUSING QUESTIONS
1. Once the new housing is introduced, what steps will current users need to take to acquire a house and what steps will new users need to take to acquire a house?
2. Will a new house consist of a template that can be extended and added to? If so, will there be one template that everyone starts with, or will there be different starting templates to choose from?
3. Will houses have an exterior that is visible from public space such that any player could pass by, see the house, drop something in front of it, or knock on the door if they wish? If so, will there be ways to customize this exterior to make something that is visually unique?
4. Will there be spaces with clusters of houses similar to the current housing quarters? If so, will there be public access to these spaces such that any player can come into them and wander around?
5. Will the new houses have a permission system that is more flexible and layered than the current permission system which allows anyone who has access to a house to take almost everything that's not locked into a cabinet?
GROUP HALL QUESTIONS
1. Will a group hall look like and function like (a) a building, (b) an outdoor street or streets, (c) an outdoor street or streets with one or more buildings, or (d) any of these a group wants?
2. Will group halls be available only to formal groups or can a collection of players get together and create a "group hall" without also creating a formal group?
3. Will group halls be considered to be owned by their associated group (however such groups are defined), owned by a subset of the group, owned by the entire community, or what?
4. Will group halls be accessible only to those who are members of their associated group, or will there be a more flexible permission system (e.g. public, public w/ blocklist, permanent guest list, limited-time invitation, etc.)?
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Maybe TS will answer some of these questions, maybe not. Either way, I'm interested to know what others want to know :)
UPDATE: See below for some answers from stoot :)
Replies
- @rjstorm Imagination will be earned by actions that give you EXP in todays Glitch.
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rjstorm, that has been asked and answered already.
Q: Would be possible to buy the "imagination" by credits as well? (i.e. for some items or land.)
A: No — you get imagination from the same things which currently give you XP (actions in the world, quest rewards, etc.) It is not something you buy with cash. -
"we are planning on adding tools for players to create some things (picture/story book items, art for house walls, music making and level creation are the leading candidates)."
This excites me immensely! I'd love the ability to create those and create an economy around them (I can imagine "mass market" art/music dealers and artists using their talents to make bespoke creations for those who could afford them). As a cook and foodie, I'd also love the opportunity to create our own recipes -- perhaps a system where you could create "recipe cards" that had the name, image, components, and benefits of a meal, then give or sell them to other players to enable them to make the meal.
Regarding the eventual absence of NPC vendors, my first instinct was negative ("but I LIKE being able to buy two tomatoes if I'm too impatient to grow them!"), but then I recalled my experience with other quasi-MMORPGs that had similar economies (Kingdom of Loathing, Neopets). Yes, if you cared about making money, you had to adjust how you spent time to the vagaries of the market -- find a niche of your own, or just make and sell whatever was in highest demand. In the long run, though, it meant that there was a tighter, self-regulating correspondence between "value" (the desirability of something, due to usefulness or rarity or sheer niftiness) and price. The biggest snags come when something widely desirable has limited availability (as is currently the case with herbs), but that's an issue of game balance that the developers will hopefully resolve.
In conclusion: I'm excited about the new changes, and I'm grateful that Stoot spent time and patience on explaining them in more detail here! -
Sinope, I agree with you that a player driven economy is good, but currently produce and herbs are highly undervalued compared to the time commitment to get them. We know that herbs usually sell between players for far more than their list value, and I expect that if produce vendors disappear then produce will do the same - especially since getting more seeds for produce is onerous (many clicks on piggies and plops, if you misclick you could feed the piggies a whole stack, etc.).
I also worry that without vendors to sell excess things to there will be massive deflation as the supply of goods rapidly outstrips the supply of money.
I don't doubt these problems can be solved, and that's why I've raised them in other threads. I am *so* excited about the idea of an art-based economy where we actually pay each other money for products of creativity and you can "get ahead" by making great pictures of music. I just don't want some underlying economic issue like a lack of money coming into the economy or inflation of the price of basic resources to get in the way of that.
If we can't put food on the table then we can't spend our time making art (well, sort of, in Glitch I suppose if you can't put food on the table then you have to spend *less* time making great art - and we can always just live off meat if it comes down to it). - Are you certain there will be an "art based economy?" I don't recall reading that we will be able to sell the products of our creative endeavors, only that we will be able to create. As in for our homes.
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Although nowhere was it said that there could be an art based economy, there's also no reason to believe that if we are able to create (another thing that only might happen, not will happen) that it will only be for our own homes.
Basically, if any of those creations are able to enter the world as items, then there will be an art based economy, whether the game specifically builds around allowing us to vend those items or not. Because we can always arrange one to one trades. - Question:Will there be an expansion upon the blockmaking industry? To clarify i mean uses for blocks.
- Wow, Saucelah. I am so thankful that we have you, and that you know absolutely everything.
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That's interesting. I didn't actually claim to know anything, just pointed out that you can't claim that it won't happen, and that nowhere did it say that player created items would be for our homes only. Even the last bit was a conditional statement.
I could have been equally as unproductive as you and accused you of knowing absolutely everything for your response to Humbabella, but I did not.
I suppose I did claim, implicitly, that the trade mechanic is not going anywhere, but it seems rather likely that no matter what form the economy takes, there will be times when Glitchen who do not know each other well need to exchange goods. So even if it changes, I can't imagine the trade mechanic going away. - Thanks jdawg for the additional bog homes for those that wanted them...good to see that all the large ones are already gone, but still plenty of others left for those that want them. Appreciate you adding them!
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I asked but this wasn't answered in the Q&A and I really really want to know so please answer. I was really upset that none of my questions were addressed in the first session and I couldn't log on and get in-world for the second session. Whereas other players had tons of their questions answered. Also some of these I just now thought up and didn't ask at all.
1. If we apply a certain style to our housing, say "Bog theme", does that style have to go throughout our entire house area or can we have both a "bog" area and also a "treehouse" area~? Will I be able to have mixed styles?
2. Also will I be able to have more than 1 floor (up / down space not side to side space) in the house I imagine up~? Like my current house has 3 levels, which is awesome.
3. Will we be able to imagine up pens for our animals, or is this something that will simply be a facet of the "old" housing and not available in the new? If so, can we have more than 1 pen, so we can separate our types of animals?
4. Also will we be able to access the map from inside our house space? And thus also will we be able to auto-navigate around our space that we imagine? (Like we can in the 30k and 50k models of home currently available?)
5. And finally will we be given back the amount of currants we spent on our current housing when the housing changes over, or will this just be a loss we'll have to eat with no reimbursement?
I haven't seen the answers to any of these elsewhere but if I've somehow missed them please feel free to post a link to where to find it. *^_^* Thanks guys. - Miso, literally dozens and dozens and dozens of questions went unanswered so stop taking it personally. :) Your fifth question is answered on the very first page of this thread. 'You will get some form or [sic] "credit" for the price of your old house, translated into the new system.
- I just realized something... If we can enter our own imaginations/houses at will from anywhere in Ur, then we literally have a free teleport home that we can use unlimited times in a game day.
- Mal'akh is this confirmed? That's really cool. :>
- Its true, but the basic assumption that your house is close to anything in Ur is off. Houses exist on a separate plane of existence.
- I still want to know where we will be when we exit our housing unit...
- If I understand correctly, when we leave our homes we are our own private street, still imaginary. The street has your house and a signpost with your friends on it so you can visit their home street. You can go to friend's streets and follow their sign post to see their friends streets and so on. Housing and UR are completely different places and I don't know how exactly you get from one to the other.
- I would "imagine" that there will also be a signpost linking to the different regions of UR.
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My thought is that when you leave Ur you'll always go to your front door, but when you leave the housing place, which will probably be totally separate as Octo said, you will go to the exact same place in Ur.
For example, if the change happened tomorrow and you log in and are in Brinlow Vale, then when you leave to visit your house and start expanding there will be a way to return to the main part of Ur. This will leave you back in the same spot in Brinlow Vale. In reverse, when you go back to housing I'd think you'd just be dropped off on the street your house is on, most likely right outside your door. - I also think we will go back to where we had been before going to our house. If it were completely random, people would get annoyed. If it were "pick a region when you leave" it would lower the usefulness of teleporting (which is a cash income source for glitch, so they definitely don't want to mess it up!)
- Octo what I meant was when we leave our housing *street* / unit / whatever it's called. I want to know how we get from one to another. I like how it is now, when I leave my house I have a location. I'll be sad if that's completely eliminated and housing is entirely separate from Ur. :(
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I suspect it will be a lot like Faunasphere, where there was a World Port in our 'personal areas' that had links to portals in various regions of the world. We will be able to jump 'home' from anywhere and there is a portal at 'home' we will use to reenter the bigger world at a range of spots, to give us access to the various regions of Ur.
This is all speculation of course. But there will be a need for some mechanism like this to give us access to greater Ur. It will be interesting to see how it all meshes with the concept of Teleportation. -
My thought has been that we'll return to the world to where we entered our home. Just like the party packs do- you can be anywhere in the world when you get an invite. You go to the party, and when you're done, you get plopped right back where you were when you got the invitation. I don't think we need anything more complicated than that, with teleportation and subways to access the rest of Ur.
Of course, they may decide to make it more complicated or interesting, and I'm fine with that. :) It will be interesting for sure. - What Miss Giggles said :)
- I'll be upset if we can't access the world map and teleport to locations without leaving our house space. It takes a long time to load streets and it will be a pain in the arse to not access the map inside our new homespaces. -_- Worried.
- Hopefully teleporting out of our homespace, I like that word to describe what I assume will be a front yard sort of street that contains our house as well as the house itself, will be possible? Though I assume there will be a sort of default free teleport back to where you were before you came in.
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It's also totally possible that we will have to access our homespace via street signs - we may choose to designate where, or there may be many placed all over Ur ... returning to the sign we last used to enter. I'm leaning toward one location (or a few) as chosen by you as being more likely. This would make sense given that group owned locations are supposed to be another way to cluster homes "near" each other.
Miso - we were never intended to be able to access the map and map-TP from inside our homes, even the 30 and 50k ones. But we have always been able to TP to our 3 spots from our homes, and to use TP scripts. I do hope that there is some kind of access to the world map from our front yards along with our signposts. - If this was already asked and answered, forgive me. Will the animals pack up with all our belongings, or will we need to start fresh with babies?
- I don't think it's been answered specifically. I'm assuming that there will be some provision for moving animals, but I'm curious how that will work. Will live animals be put in moving boxes? Will they be regressed back to baby stage? Will they simply appear in our new houses? If they simply appear, will we have to quickly imagine land to keep them from being overcrowded? Also, what will happen to the animals in housing quarters once the housing quarters go away?
- Why isn't this stickied? And what happened to the Q & A transcripts?
- I have been off from glitch for like three months because I no longer feel that I have objective in game that I could show off... My trophy table thing already full so I don't feel collecting trophy, I'm no longer fan of experience grinding after all those old time with hardcore MMOs, going to quests a bit hassle than interesting sometimes... so this news excite me. As a big fan of creative building in minecraft (not vanilla one though), I would love to see what kind of creations I could do on Glitch-- especially graphical wise. Also there are so much awesome-looking items on glitch, it would be nice to be able to display them on appropriate locations (kitchen or restaurant scene anyone? Or maybe our own 'private cave' with mineral stones that actually made of those we have collect.)
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I should have thought of this question before the Q & A session...but anyways, hopefully, a staff member can see this and answer:
Since we don't have to move our belongings out of our current houses ("all would be automatic" as mentioned earlier), does that mean our piggies, chickens, butterflies, herbs, crops, and trees would be moved "automatically," as in, will they be in our new houses just like our current ones? If they can't fit in the "new" house, will they converted to seasoned eggs, seasoned beans, and seeds? Or will we have to use the animal youth potions on our animals and harvest herbs/crops before the switch (I guess if this is the case, then we can't save our trees :( ). - I have the same questions as Ari. :)
- *shameless bump* What can I say, some of the things in this thread ought to be on the front page of the forum xP
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I can imagine a good number of people being very happy with the new set of circumstances, and a similar number of people feeling very disappointed. Fundamental changes to a game in progress always have these affects. But the success of any MMOG really depends on the constant influx of new players, some loss of playerbase is entirely inevitable, mostly due to the attraction of other MMOG's. Any game is going to be most entertaining when it's brand new to us, but many of us have very short attention spans whether or not we like the product.
But I expect that I will stick around long enough to see some of this new stuff and try it all out for myself. Sometimes i wonder why people worry over these things as much as they seem to do. - Will we be able to spend our imagination helping our friends build/add to their houses?
- I'm really hoping that our new homes will have "potentially" much larger cabinets. I've got so much stuff cluttering up the floor of my current house that I can never let anyone come inside. And of course this makes the house terribly laggy when everything is loading.
- Do we have an estimated date for release yet? =)
- We were given an estimated release date a few weeks ago. At the time they said 8 weeks. Someone calculated that would be March 7th. Just an estimate, of course.
- Thanks Shep...was just wondering too! Perfect timing for your answer.
- *cough* I think that was me who said March 7th! I apologize, but I forgot it was a leap year! It's actually March 6th, counting the extra day :)
- Sorry, Liza--sometimes I read the posts without looking at who wrote them :).
- No biggie! Just don't want you to quote my shoddy math ;) Gotta make sure my dumb mistake does not confuse the populace, or something :P
- Wooooo, less than a month (potentially)! Can't wait for the new content so that I can get back to enjoying the wonderful world of Ur.
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Since it's unlikely the mods will answer this, since per Blanky's post in the update thread they are too busy to be answering things...does anyone remember if they mentioned what would happen to stuff we had planted. I get that we'll lose our trees...will we lose crops we have planted also (I know we'll lose the plots)? I'm assuming so, but since we don't know the exact date of this big switch it makes me nervous to have stuff planted as we get closer to that time, since I hate the thought of losing a crop of herbs. But I don't want to miss out on plantings either since it might be some time before I have enough of whatever it is going to take to rebuild my crop plots...I sure hope they give us a few days warning...As it gets closer, something like "we plan to switch over in about 3 days, get your last set of plantings/harvestings in..." would be extremely helpful (or pick our last set of crops for us and put it in our 'moving boxes' along with everything else currently in our homes).
On a similar note, does anyone know if the stuff outside our house is going to be going into the moving boxes too? I would hope at at a minimum our gnomes will be moved, but what about any decorations or gifts left at our doorsteps? Will they go poof or come with us? Most of the stuff I decorate with is pretty cheap due to the folks that like to take those items, but it still would be nice to get them back, or have enough warning to collect them before the 'big change' (wow, that sounds like the game is going through well, you know...). - Good question, Beach Bum. I don't remember them answering that one. I would suspect that the stuff outside our homes will NOT move with us (except maybe gnomes).
- Yea, I'm guessing the same thing Shepherdmoon for the stuff outside...it's the crops thing that's been niggling at the back of my head every time I plant a crop now...really hate losing the seed, if I'm not going to have the chance to harvest it, but really hate leaving my gardens cropless when I exit game since it takes a while for some things to grow. Problem is, I don't have the luxury of coming into the game daily, so I don't want to miss the warning for the change...if there even is one...(which they've not been clear about if there will even be a real warning, or if the 'well, in maybe kinda sort of around about 8 weeks, if all goes well' was all the warning we'll get...)
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Well I think of the crops as being "inside" my house (well its a bog-standard house so they are) as far as i'm concerned if its behind my door it's in my house :)
I'm not too fussed about my current stuff though - it doesn't take too long to create new stuff once you've got a decent set of skills and currants. I'm saving up all my energies to be excited about what's to come!! -
Wait wait it's a leap year?? If we have a extra day then how come the release would be March 6th and not the 7th? OMG so confused ~O.o~
Someone's going to have to explain leap years to me and then I'm going to feel like an idiot for not getting it before now. Yeah I swear I'm 29 years old lol... >_<; - As you know, Bob, there are always the same number of days in the week. Stoot said 8 weeks out ... but February has one extra day in it this year, so March begins one day later than usual. So the original estimate, made by some other method than counting ahead 8 weeks on a physical calendar, did not take this into account. In this way, March was believed to begin one day earlier in that 8 week process than is true in reality. The end date, which was originally believed to be March 7, becomes March 6 once you take that into account.