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!
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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
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Okay, I have MOAR NEW QUESTIONS about new houses. And I know that they may be answered when they implement the deployment, or deploy the implementation or WHATEVER soooooooon, but I want to ask/publicly contemplate them anyway.
So ... one thing that I have been have been anticipating missing is my regular gathering runs to the cave home housing quarters for tree resources. I get a large number of beans/bubbles/cherries by visiting those quarters systematically, and I'm not the only one. So after the housing change, this will be one (of many) significant changes in my game behaviour, and part of me is a bit anxious whenever I do go, thinking that soon, I won't be able to finish a "bean run" (for example) so efficiently - it will take me more time to gather the same number of beans since I'll have to do more backtracking and doubling-back to reach the same number of trees.
My question for the devs is, in the new housing "front yards" or public areas, will we be able to invest imagination into resources like those found in the housing quarters - tree patches and nodes of metal rock?
I hope that we will, because I can see the formation of a group focused on creating gathering routes - you could sign up to belong to a "Bean/Bubble" route, and invest in signpost-links to the two people adjacent to you on the list. People could start the route and move across people's yards gathering as they go yard to yard, knowing that they'd encounter mainly the type of resource they are looking to gather. Hopefully, we'd be able to also be certain of more than one tree per front yard. This would replace the functional part of the existing game behaviour for me, while adding a new element of exploration because I would be travelling places in the housing network I'd likely otherwise never visit.
My question for players, is, would you be interested in investing resources into being a link in a "route" like this? -
Beach Bum: I would imagine they'd give us a few days heads up before they actually do the change. It would be unlike them to do a change of that magnitude without letting us know a little in advance. They gave us about a week or so (maybe two?) advance notice before we were officially reset the final time (though I think they had a post up about what to expect a little while longer than that).
That is an interesting thought, Scarlett. I have done these sorts of runs in my own neighborhood in the past as it's very convenient. I don't know if I'd be a part of one of those sorts of runs or not; it'd probably depend on the limits of people that I can connect to. -
I actually think your question was answered in the live Q&A. Stoot said the public blocks will eventually go away, but that each individual glitch will have a front yard with trees, so that the net effect will be more trees than we had with housing blocks.
So I'm betting more than one tree will be possible, or at least, vets like us will have no trouble creating a street with more than one tree. - Dammit. It's not like I haven't read the damn thing 18 million times by now ><
- Heh. And I forgot to add, I'll definitely be willing to be part of such a route, though I will want to see how it works first, of course.
- I remember that you'll leave your house into a street that will have friends signposts on it, and assumedly an entrance to the world at the spot you left for home from. I don't recall the "with trees" part.
- " I actually think your question was answered in the live Q&A. Stoot said the public blocks will eventually go away, but that each individual glitch will have a front yard with trees, so that the net effect will be more trees than we had with housing blocks." But Stoot DID say this, I remember reading it. So regardless of the reason, we will have the same or more trees than we have now :)
- I am really sad that neighborhoods, houses that you can see all together ON ONE STREET are going away. Signposts are just not the same in terms of neighborliness.
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As a new player, I'd like to toss up my opinion (and please, take this as you will, I haven't been in the game for a month yet) -
I really enjoy the streets, even if I haven't seen other players out and about on them when I am. It's neat to see the different houses and it leads to a feel of a neighborhood.
The only major issue I've seen with the houses is you either get crop or herb gardens, which is difficult when you have both sets of quests. I did try to grow herbs in the community garden, but they were snapped up pretty quickly.
My only question about the house, if we lose everything in our backyard, how will the credits they give us help us to rebuild things? With everything I've collected in under a month, I can't figure out how the ones who have been here for as long as the game has been around are doing it.
I understand we will have the ability to build the houses as we go, but for those of us in a house that's more than a basic starter, will we have that ability right off? For example, Bob Jones lives in a 3 story, 30c house, and John Smith lives in a one room 3500c shelter. Will Bob be able to re-upgrade his house quickly and easily to put things back or will his place look like a hoarder squatted there for a few weeks?
Mostly because I really like my backyard and storage cabinet in my two bedroom house and would want those back asap :) - @Scarlett Bearsdale I'd love to join in on that kind of community activity! :)
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@ Little Miss Giggles, yes, I hope they will give us some advance warning...but since so many have fallen by the wayside, and they have been so non-communicative lately, they really need to consider giving us much more lead time in the warning than in the past, or lots of folks will be caught unawares...since people are now out living their RL, vice playing the game as much as they used to...and most only check in once in a while now.
@ Synnia, it appears that there may be the option to have both types of gardens once the change occurs, so that is a plus to the housing change.
To others that like the neighborhoods...I'm not a dev, but it seems that there may be a way to maintain that neighborhood feel by connecting to those community halls once we get them back. Give that thought, and Scarlett Bearsdale's idea, maybe establishing a group that is of that specific interest, and then building a group hall/street, and then linking to it, might be a way to have that concept come into being when the changes happen. I'm sure there will need to be some work around initially, since it sounds like we'll get our individual housing changes first and then group halls may come a bit later. (One work around might be to have someone develop one of those 'evil' alt accounts, but with a functional name, and then be sure to friend everyone that is interested in that type of functional activity. Then you know you can jump to the account that is "The houses of bean trees", and all the friends on that list will have bean trees in their front yards.). Of course, we all have to wait to see how these changes are actually implemented since they aren't very forthcoming with how it's all going to work yet.
However, we are a creative bunch that will be able to build work arounds for so many of our concerns... ;)