Topic
Idea: Community Hubs
Issue:
Folks are feeling a bit disconnected from Ur. "Home streets are killing the game!" "I miss my neighbors!" "There's no sense of neighborhood!"
Back in the day a lot of us felt a deep connection to where we lived. As a swamp dweller, I deeply felt this connection with other swamp folk. When I lived in Kajuu - I knew the streets there like the back of my hand. I still do. My first house was a tree house on Fairgower lane and I get reminiscent every time I walk down that street.
This is not a home streets suck! post. I love the home streets. I love the fact that I can control a public street and make it mine. I love the routes. I love seeing what others have done. I love that home streets feel alive - more so than the old housing streets ever did for me, and I lived next to one of my best glitchy friends and we spent a lot of time on our street.
Idea:
Tie folks back to a community hub - but don't permanently tie that hub back to them (to avoid the dead community sense).
Create a hub street in each region - perhaps ones with subway stations and bureaucratic halls. Perhaps a street or two away.Throw up a building such as the old apartment towers or the machine rooms. These will be community halls.
People can select ONE hub to be tied to. When a player joins and selects their street style (meadow, bog, or uralia) they are tied to one of the hubs in that region. You can spend a certain amount of imagination to tie yourself to another region (increasing by level? by number of times switched?).
Just as you get a free teleport to and from your home and back to the last place you were in Ur, you can also get a free teleport to your community hub street from any home street (perhaps /hub). And because your brain is so connected to this place, you can teleport to your hub from any place in Ur without using the map but at the cost of energy (just like any of the saved TP points).
The community hall buildings can be used to post notices. There could be a glitchy chamber of commerce inside which would allow you to search for items for sale in the towers associated with that hub (perhaps this could be done for a small fee - this way folks who want to remain a bit more private may do so by just not paying the fee). Perhaps Helga & Uncle Friendly could expand and have little franchise offices offering a small selection of overpriced goods (good for emergency purposes but not enough to detract from player sellers and/or creating things on your own).
Replies
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Great Idea Vera, I really like the concept of this
+1 - +a billion. I love everything about this.
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I like this idea - I still have a TP point to Desmona Drrive in Muufo, where I had a tree house...
+1 (times lots!) - I wouldn't want it exactly like that but it's a brilliant idea. +1
- This is a fantastic idea! Its a great way to meet people in game :D
- +3.14159265359 (awesome idea!)
- +1 Love this idea!
- This is such a wonderful idea. Thanks for coming up with a way to solve the problem that I and so many others have! +eleventy million
- Yes, Vera, many plusses!!!! This is an excellent idea.
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Wonderful idea, Vera. I miss the bogs :(
I go there and enjoy myself still, but being officially part of them again would be great :) - +1. Great idea for encouraging community. :D I love the home streets and a place to call my own where I can go to relax and organize my stuff, but more ways to connect with the rest of Ur would be great!
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I guess we're back to group halls once again^^
I like most of the ideas at the end of the OP, except these community places should be created and controlled from groups (aka communities...) rather than from regions -
Would LOVE a hub. I used to run into my neighbours all the time out on the streets of Salatu. This would bring back that feel of seeing all the "familiar strangers" in the area.
Fantastic idea, Vera!!! -
+1
Anything that strengthens links between the home street network and Ur gets my vote. -
Thanks for all the support.
In re Group Halls... I was thinking this in addition to them. Not everyone is in a group and some of us are in dozens of them. Some groups are big and strong and some have just a few members left. I'm sure that I'll regularly visit the group halls for some of my groups and rarely, if ever, visit them for some of my other groups.
Also, I'm not sure what the plans are for placing group halls - will they be on streets? Wouldn't that eventually have the same issues that the housing streets had (space, activity, etc)? Having region based hubs gives people a tie to world of Ur (not just a tiny subset of glitchen within it) without those issues. -
i really like this idea!
i'm a new glitch but i constantly hear of what it was like when players were connected to their home regions- "northies" "southies"- and while that often referred to concrete choices in what the homes had to offer it still seemed like a community based thing. from the start I did not feel like i was really connected to ur, and there is no place in the world where i feel particularly "at home". it's all so nebulous.
that said i don't really think that tying players to one of the three default free choices is a great idea. we'd just see a ridiculous amount of people staying with groddle or whatever firebog and uralia...which doesn't seem at all representative and doesn't give good incentive to change. especially since home street style can change so easily. (and as cool as it would be i'd rather see no home street style affiliation with hub at all- that's too difficult, because some regions don't have a street style yet and some regions have proportionately too many and some are subscriber-only and etc...)
rather I think maybe all regions besides quoin-jumping and special regions should have a hub. players start with no affiliation and must venture to said hub to establish one.
since new players are already dropped into the world at random, it's likely that they choose to explore their immediate area and happen across a hub...i think this encourages a greater spread than just defaulting to groddle / firebog / uralia. :)
Edit: or...well maybe a hub in each region isn't right. because then we have no "exotic" or "far-land" areas. i can't really imagine a hub in ilmenskie deeps, as much as i would love it, for example. i don't know. - Love this idea, I am still pretty new to the game too and this sounds like a good way of interacting with people rather than just using your tower as a shop :) +1
- I think this would be great. I miss having neighbours.
- +1, Vera. I miss the old housing for the connection to a street with houses, an address, neighbours. I love my new house, front & back yards - but I feel like we all live on separate planets. I don't mind the idea of joining an area hub (I lived in Bortola). I would pick Bortola but I don't want "my" hub to be tied to my home street style. I would just want to pick my one hub based on nothing but my preference. I think there are enough areas and personal likes to accommodate everyone. Perhaps lower level players would have the option to change hubs once (no penalty) when they reach a certain level (Level 15?). I also hope the hubs are separate from "group halls". Many players never join groups at all. But, in any case, a brilliant idea, Vera!
- +1
- I am very much in favor of something along these lines.
- I really like this idea! +1
- +1 overall...Tied to the world somehow ...yes. Also i agree a hub section for each region, with a office, hall or whatever for the hub IN each region. Minus AL, and the quoin hopping regions, may or may not include the cave regions. However i dont like the idea of spending energy to teleport there. Also style choices should not tie a house to a region or be restricted to a certain region. Both options should be open to us.../home or we CAN walk home....because we are tied to a street in whichever region we pick. You could also have a random teleport at the community hall that only teleports to homes in the same region.
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I agree you home street style and region should be independent. I'd be in trouble... my back yard & front yard look like two different regions and my front yard doesn't match any area in the world that I know of.
I was thinking about brand spankin' new glitches. They're already so overwhelmed and inundated with things. Giving them a big choice of hubs would be overwhelming and it just sort of made sense, to me, to tie their initial hub to the street style. Random would work, too :) - I'm in favor of anything that gets people out in the mapped streets more!
- Great great idea :) I love it!
- to clarify / continue my earlier post, i mean that it seems to make the most sense to start players without an affiliation- as it is now. when a player enters a hub for the first time, it would be a perfect opportunity for an introductory quest which explains what the hubs are, what they do, and so on. and then it would send players off on a quest to explore and find a hub they want to join. :)
- +1
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+1
approve of giving the street style more meaning than just aesthetics, and connecting back streets to the world
the hub building could also change appearance (clean, dirty, messy, broken) according to how much it is being actively used
having a starting destroyed/abandoned hub building, and seeing it getting rebuilded/cleaned with the more people who are connected to it, at the same time underpopulated regions would have a messy/abandoned hub building to match :3 - As much as I love this idea, it doesn't make sense to me to connect it to street style. Not every region has a street style, and some street styles look like multiple regions. I really do think we need something like this that connects us to Ur, though.
- +1 for the idea of neighborhoods of any sort. As long as they a) don't replace the visiting stones and b) are opt in, like the stones are.
- Also, Ur needs Taverns. A building in the community hub where the consumption of food and drink gives a 20% bonus.
- Ooh, Taverns sound interesting.
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So like, each door in the apartment building is a portal to someone's Home Street? That'd be really cool. It'd also make two kinds of neighbors.
+1 - Bump!
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+1
This sounds very interesting. I'm intrigued. - YES! This 1000000000000000000%!
- some form of this would be a great addition