Potential Touria Housing: Input needed

[+Nyx]

+V has been considering allowing some housing to be placed in Touria's green acres area.

He's considering charging a fee to have your compound moved there, and part of the fee will include a wall/fence placed 10-tiles out from your plots on all sides. This way you would never have a neighbor closer than 10 tiles. You would also not be able to place houses inside this 10-tile area, but you would be allowed to place yard items if they reached into that portion.

If, in addition to your already joined plots, you wanted us to place additional placeholder plots for future use (thus expanding your fenced area), you'd be charged a fee per plot, and dependent on the plot size.

Now, these ideas are in their infancy and are subject to drastic changes, but we wanted to get a gauge of whether this would be something desirable - particularly for those of you with huge compounds of 10+ plots.

We're interested to hear from both sides - if you're not interested, why not? If you are interested - what terms would you find acceptable enough to sign up?

[Ishamael]

Are we talking about a one time fee or a monthly kind of deal? To have my own personal walled plot sounds really awesome, even though I will probably never own more than 4 (I have 2 now).

[+Nyx]

One-time fee, nothing repeating. We'd probably put a minimum plot requirement to move into the area, I'd say 4 personally since that's still a big chunk of space freed up in other facets.

[+Nyx]

We'd also started to discuss potentially letting someone who is utilizing this service to say "I'm planning to eventually have 20 18x18" and they could pay the service fee for those extra plots that they didn't already have yet, we'd fence in that much space for them. Then if, say, a year from then they hadn't added 2-3 plots, they'd lose the extra space. That's something that would require a lot of effort on our part, though, so instead we might end up just putting each new occupant in a different corner of the green acres sections, until we ran out of corners. Then from there, start fiddling with how to squeeze everyone in and still allow everyone tons of room to expand if they so desired. It'd probably require a bit of discussion with each new person going in, to see what their long-term goals were for their housing.

[moonsongtx]

Would it be possible to move more than one joint plot into the same enclosure? Such as I have our guild house that is 6 plots and my private house that is 4 plots. I'd like them to be kept separate (not joining the actual two groups of plots together but to put them in one "yard"?)

[+Nyx]

I don't see why not, especially if they're all owned by you.

Even if not, that could be another good potential use for this service - creating little guild towns out of everyone's houses and the guild halls. There'd probably be some kinks needing to be worked out in terms of "what happens when one person living in the 'city' goes ballistic and needs to be kicked out of the guild", but it's not an insurmountable issue

Heck, it could also be nice for couples/families who want to have their plots close together but not all share one compound.


+R also had a good idea that I'll need to run by +V, which was to break the available space up into certain sized chunks - space for 20x20 plots of 18x18's, 10x10 of them, 5x5 and so on. Then a player would just purchase a section based on the size they want. One flat fee for the chunk of space. That'd make it a lot easier to manage fitting everyone in.

[Alpharius]

Would there be space between the fenced in areas like a road or something? Or would it be wall to wall fences?

[+Nyx]

Probably there would be pathways for ease of access. I suppose the person who bought a section could decide if they wanted a gate in the fence to give access to the path, but it would be something that would have a small fee to change after the fact since the staff would have to do it. So if they added a gate but then 6 months later wanted it closed off, they'd pay a service fee.

[Melkor]

Hi there, First I will say that I think this is a fantastic idea to offer players. However I voted no myself. I will elaborate as you asked. I have an 8 slot "Castle City" (I call it) on Ice Island in Britannia. First off I like the idea of living in Britannia over the other facets. I also really like the idea of players who are walking the lands, exploring or whatever to come across my place. I put a lot of work into it (years worth and it's still not quite done lol) and I like the idea of people seeing it. Britannia doesn't have a lot of space for large structures, just by the way the map is setup. I have one of, if not the biggest player structure in Britannia which I think is pretty cool. Another big factor for me is that I like to be beside water and I would like to get a dock one day. (if anyone has one forsale [pm Melkor) My place started out as 4 slots and I slowly expanded as other houses dropped around it. It's at the point now where I'm happy with the size and no longer desire to expand. There is also a snow mound that my place is built around, basically my castle is built around the contours of the land and water so it fits right in nicely there, if i moved it to an open land, it might appear oddly shaped. Lastly, after years of living and expanding where I am, there is a degree of nostalgia to that spot.

I will say that there was a time before I got my first 4 slots established, that the idea of trying to find a large area for housing felt quite daunting, and had this option been available back then, I would have jumped at the chance to take advantage of this offer. Also, just as I feel living in Britannia feels kind of prestigious, so does the idea of living in green acres.

I hope my explanation wasn't too long, but housing is one of my favorite things about UO and UOEX.

On another note, when it comes time for you to look for players to build or deco buildings in your facet +Nyx, I'd like to be considered. Check out my Ice Island Castle City to get a taste for my style if you like. Thanks.

[+Nyx]

I totally understand your reasoning, and if it was me personally I would feel the same way. I was concerned that folks would not be interested in green acres in particular, because it's just flat grassy area. Sure, you could do a -ton- with that with the yard wand and some creativity, but for myself when I was building houses on OSI, I always tried to find the most interesting looking locales - on the water, near odd structures or terrain, and so on. You do lose some of that when going to a place like green acres. But, I also wouldn't be opposed to plopping down some trees and rocks if the owner desired, in spots where they wouldn't have houses, to sorta liven the area up. I dunno if +V will agree with/approve of that idea, but it's something I'd thought might be a concern for those particularly attached to aesthetically pleasing locations.

For Elysium building, I'll definitely consider you. I think I'll probably have to open up some sort of application thread when the time comes. We have so many great deco'ers on the shard, but part of it is also personality since they'll have to work closely with me and it's no use if I can't even have a conversation with the person. I figured some sort of process involved in selecting folks would at least help make sure that the folks who do the building will be fun to work with. Baby Spendy is first up for building since she won that deco contest awhile back, and I think she's going to be able to start on it soon. So hopefully in the next month or two I'll be ready for the next person.

[Alpharius]

If you want someone to build a pyramid or two, keep me in mind! I love pyramids and places that give off an "evil" vibe. (I have no hope of being considered, I realize)

[Deacon]

I like the idea of moving a plot/plots over to the new facet. I am concerned however that the people who have the 4 plot and up spaces move theirs, is there anything that's going to be able to keep them from turning right around and filling up the spot they just vacated? I love deco and house designing, always have, and I cannot wait to start spreading my wings with the yard wand. That item almost made me drool on myself.

[+Nyx]

Well, the cost for additional house slots is pretty high so I don't think that would be much of an issue. Even if someone has extra plots they're not using now, if they've moved their main compound to this area and have the ability to expand then generally speaking I think that's what folks will do. Some might keep a plot in another facet for say a guild house or a vendor shop but I don't think we'd see a lot of folks going back wasting plots to re-reserve the spot they just moved from.

[ambivalence]

im abstaining from voting but just wanted to mention i think it'd be a fantastic idea to "sell" guilds space to construct compounds that they normally wouldn't be able to in the wild due to limited space/viability.

[+Nyx]

Yeah, at this point it seems +V is leaning toward selling the spots in large chunks, the buyer will pick which size they want and that's what they get. We'll put nice paths all through the area, maybe a big park/garden here and there.