House of Commons from 1998-09-24

House of Commons from 1998-09-24

DenDragon	Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's Open House.
DenDragon	Tonight's topic is: "Housing & Misc.". Please phrase your questions accordingly.
DenDragon	Glamdring will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Fallo, Troll, Cironian, Drax, Aphrodite.
DenDragon	Please /msg different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load and speed this process up. Do not msg anyone from OSI, myself or Glamdring--these questions will be ignored.
DenDragon	Remember that we may not have the opportunity to answer all of your questions. In addition, some questions may not be answered if the guys from OSI feel that it is not appropriate or that it has been better answered through some other question.
DenDragon	In addition, please do not submit any questions that have already been answered during past conferences. We encourage you to read the logs of the previous Open Houses, which are available at http://uohoc.stratics.com.
DenDragon	Thanks for coming, everyone. We will now begin accepting questions.
DD	One thing before the flood of questions starts--we just want to let you know that a lot of the housing stuff is still undecided, because we want to make sure to get as much input from players as possible
DD	So you will probably get a lot of "not sure yet, but that's a good idea" tonight
RVogel	Hi everyone...Dupre (a.k.a. Rich Vogel) is my new character wihin UOTA.
RVogel	We realize this topic is very important to everyone within UO. We need to find ways to determine home ownership and provide mechanisms for homeownership like changing locks.
DD	So tht said, let's get on with the questions. :)
Glamdring	*Jacques_de_Molay* When I have a guildstone in a house and deleted the master keys, will I have an advatage against other key-copy owners?
DD	Guildstones don't have a concept of "owner"--they know their members and the guildmaster, that's all. We could use that as a way of determining partial ownership, but it won't be very reliable.
Glamdring	*^Rhia-CBR* Hello. I'm not clear on the one house per player idea. Is it one per account or one per character?
RVogel	We not sure what we will do for house limiting but limiting it to one per account is still a huge amount of houses in the world
RVogel	We need to find ways to limit the houses in UO. Just to give you an example..Yew on Atlantic has 2500 houses.
DD	On guildstones: it wouldn't be vry reliable... we're looking at making master key be the ultimate arbiter because so far, it looks like most people have their master keys still
DD	if it gets us 99% of the way there, then that's a good start, and we can look at resolving the remaining ownership conflicts by some other means.
RVogel	We need to find ways to limit the houses in UO. Just to give you an example..Yew on Atlantic has 2500 houses.
DD	On number of houses and going by account or by character...
DD	Even by account may be too many houses. We have tens of thousands of accounts, after all. And even 10,000 houses would be too many
DD	As Rich said, theres 2500 near Yew on Atlantic alone.
DD	So we want to make sure we find a way to make sure that the houses that are there are really cool and valuable ones for the community.
DD	We may have to limit possession of the nicer houses by fame, for example. Or give them only to known contributors--like, priority goes to those who run taverns or shops, or to major guilds.
DD	Whew, I think that catches me up to the current question :)
Glamdring	*SirValiant* Are there any plans to reduce house #'s by allowing players to sell them back to banker NPC's?
DD	Selling houses back is indeed a possibility. It's a nice idea. Selling houses will almost certainly be a part of the final ownership stuff. Whether we use it for the transition we don't know yet, but we'd like to.
Glamdring	*Australis* We all know that you will be opening a Japanese server sometime soon, but what about the possibility of an Australian one? Do you have a definite yes or no? Thanks
RVogel	We currently have no plans of putting a server in Australa. You should get a better connection playing in Japan..:)
Glamdring	*Proteus* Could traps such as the ones in dungeons be placed in houses and only triggered by non owners
DD	They sure could. :) That gets into the realm of home defense.
DD	We'd like to make it so that house owners can install defensive measures in their homes, hire bouncers, etc.
DD	That's mostly for a later phase of the house ownership stuff though.
DD	First has to come the basics: introduce the concept of ownership. Add the ability to transfer ownership. Add the ability to change locks. Probably add "Texas law" so you can kill ibvaders with impunity.
DD	From there, we get into things like "auto-eject" commands, friend lists, all that jazz. There's a LOT of possible stuff that can be done there, and what exactly we'll do will, I'm sure, be a matter of much debate ;)
Glamdring	*GKonner* Why are there still more then one vendor attached to houses?
RVogel	Yes, you are correct. We did not put the vendor limit in this patch. There were too many other issues that players had to deal with like item limits to your bank box. We will be doing this soon.
Glamdring	*Gourry_* Will house ownership include the ability to lock down furniture in ones own house to prevent theft/looting?
DD	Whoops, forgot that one. Yes, furniture lockdown will also be part of the "basic package" that gets implemented first.
Glamdring	*Kieron-LS* There's a rumor floating around that players will lose current large smithies because of the unavailability of the other large trade shops to players. Also that large smithies won't be sold anymore. True or untrue?
DD	The FLOOR layout will still be sold, but since crafters will be able to build forges, looms, or whatever into any house, the availability won't matter as much.
DD	So players won't be losing large smithies in that sense... in fact, the shops will gain a lot of variety...
Glamdring	*Dauthi* When exactly will those of us who pride ourselves on how our houses are decorated and such have access to things such as polar bear skin rugs or rugs in general and other decrative items like wall mounted candles and such, also will we ever be able to lock things in place oursleves say with the key?
DD	Well, we hope to keep adding these gradually. We redid the architecture of the crafting skills, so we can now easily add in tons of stuff to them. So we'll be adding stuff like candelabras and paintings and all that.
DD	As far as when exactly--I don't know. There's a lot of priorities jockeying for position there... I think adding basic furniture lockdown and probably some home defense measures are probably a little more important
Glamdring	*Trevor_* Will an item limit be placed on houses? Will the fame limit apply to current house owners?
DD	An item limit was applied on houses last update. :) The limit on items per tile imposes an effective limit on items in a house that is FAR lower than it used to be.
DD	As far as whether the fame limit (or whatever other measure we use--it could be skill-based too, such as only allowing master smiths to get a smithy), whether it applies retroactively will depend on how we convert over
DD	which is NOT something we have settled.
DD	We feel we need to do the functionality of the new housing system fist, and then tackle the issue of converting over second.
Glamdring	*Lord^Gladiator* Can guilds have a guild's house with a "the guild" as owner? So the guildmaster can have his house and the guild one?
DD	Possibly, but one of the things we want to discourage is everyone having private houses... if houses are semi-public or earned by those with real standing in the game (and standing means, in a community sense) then we want to give them preference.
DD	Ideally, we'd like a guildmaster to have a large building for his guild, and for his guild to be worthy of it, and the GM to have one room in the building that is his...
Cironian	*VirulLord* once the house patch is in, will it be possible to remove already existing forges/looms from older houses?
DD	Probably not :(
FrostByghte	*Paran* Will the crafting changes be added before or after the housing changes?
DD	Not sure yet. Right now, we're shooting for simultaneously, but crafting may go in later. We definitely DON'T want to deal with people setting up forges and looms in houses that they then move out of
DD	then we'd have people asking to transfer forges and all that, it'd be messy. So crafting changes will be either with, or after housing. -Mourph- [Wallop:#uohoc] i work for home.com and that joiner/parter at *!*@cs618074-a.cgra1.ab.wave.home.com will be disabled shortly.
DenDragon	Please remember not to send questions to DD or anyone from OSI
Glamdring	*Nejirejian* Will OSI be doing a house wipe in the near future? I would like it if they did
DD	At this time we don't have any plans to do a house wipe... we know many players would like it, we know many would hate it, and we're trying to find out how many are in each camp. :)
DD	There are many ways we can do the transition over, and no matter how we do it, the goal *IS* less houses, so that is what we will be working towards.
DD	But there's many ways to get there, not all as drastic as saying "house wipe."
DD	However, there's that Armageddon spell out there... * DD winks.
Glamdring	*pallmall* My friend and I built the Village of Virtue on Napa are we in trouble of losing our 12 buildings due to fame skill lvl's etc....
DD	pallmall, villages like your sare EXACTLY what we want to KEEP as we reduce houses. That's why we are going to try to find ways to ensure that the buildings that remain are strong centers of roleplaying
DD	Not just big banks.
Cironian	*BlackHandKBH* Is there a timeline for these "phases"?
RVogel	We are in the planning stages for Home ownership. If someone would like to sponsor a website to host ideas on home ownership..that would be great ;).
RVogel	We are looking to get this out to the public very soon.
Glamdring	*badger* I have a two story house that I earned every gp for myself being a bowyer. I now share it with a group of friends. I have low fame as it is impossible for craft characters to gain fame. Will I be allowed to keep my house?
DD	The objective is to get houses into the hands of those who deserve them. Crafters who actually work at their craft are near the top of our list of people who deserve them.
DD	A way in which we could accomplish that is to make it so that a group could co-own the house, or by allowing crafting to grant fame somehow, or by letting high skill in crafting make you eligible for buying houses dedicated to a specific craft type
Glamdring	*shamino* What abput catapults? Will it be possible to destroy oposing waring guild's buildings?
DD	Maybe. :) we'd like to allow siege warfare and stuff eventually. But we want to make sure that the first pass of ownership caters to the roleplayers.
DD	As a side note--I am getting a LOT of questions about PvP and stat loss.
DD	Stat loss is here to stay. If you do not want to have stat loss, then PK within the order/chaos system. With the update published to TC TODAY, the fame requirement on order/chaos is GONE.
DD	So you should expect that on the public servers soon.
Glamdring	*Ronan* If fame is required for house ownership, will anything be done to allow non-fighters to gain fame?
DD	We're looking at that. It's tricky to do it without it being abusable though. What I am looking at right now is ways to increase fame based on maybe whther you make exceptional goods, or based on trickier things like whether you actually sell your crafted item, or maybe on the first time you incerase in skill (but not thereafter)....
Glamdring	*Wracu* some of the things that would help villages is the ability to indicate our existence. A Sign post, a fountain or street lamp or 3. That and ways to keep the place from turning into a trailer park.
DD	Recognized villages do I believe get help from the IGMs, but we'd like to move towards some way of towns "incorporating" themselves someday. That's part of the whole townstone idea--we're a long ways for that yet, though.
Glamdring	*Bakura* Was a new Castle design ever decided on? If so, what time frame can we expect to see it?
DD	I actually liked several of the ones on the Vault page. Maybe we can add more than one. No timeline on when that can happen though--doing home ownership ismore important...
Glamdring	*Compassion* Any thoughts on trying to add a feeling of territory with the housing patch ? I would really like to see guilds be able to compete for areas which they would then be able to tax or control in some way. I sure would love it if I saw a message which indicated I was entering a player made city.
DD	We've looking at ways of doing exactly that--dynamic regioning, is what we call it. Dunno about the part about fighting over the land, but creating custom guard zones and stuff that differ from server to server would be very cool.
Glamdring	*LiquidIce* When will the 'second pass' of the reputation system go in, with such things as giving karma to other players, ect?
DD	Well, I'm kinda re-evaluating the thing of just giving karma. It seems that maybe it wouldbe more valuable for something more significant than karma to be given. Maybe tokens adding up tot he virtues, for example.
Glamdring	*Gunther-GL* Will boats be updated the same as houses? Will I be able to get in without a key, claim them first because I built it
DD	I actually don't really know about boats. And as far as tents, honestly, I'm kinda inclined to get rid of the darn things. Seems all they are is vendor-holders. I'd rather move vendors into like the market square in Trinsic, than walk by two dozen of them that are just for vendors as I leave Trinsic.
DD	One thing that has been a common suggestion for tents was the ability to fold 'em up. I'd still like to do that.
Glamdring	*Ashran* since the house owner ship will delete many houses. what will you do about not decaying looms, forges etc.. they will be still there also when a house decays
DD	We will make sure they decay.
Glamdring	*SirValiant* Any hints on what crafting skills will be required to make items such as anvils and looms.. will it be along the lines of Blacksmithy:Forges, Carpentry:Looms, etc..?
DD	We're actually looking at renaming Carpentry to Construction. :)
Glamdring	*Farlander* Will house keys become newbie items? That would really help out because it takes us weeks to make that money. While a 1 day thief can either houe rush you or steal a key.
DD	I get this request a lot, especially from the regulars at rec.games.computer.ultima.online. We might make keys unstealable until ownership goes in. After ownership, though, you can just change the locks, so it doesn't matter all that much.
Glamdring	*Marauder_* Will you add the ability to lock doors inside a house, such as the door to the room on the 3rd floor of a tower?
DD	Maybe, but probably not in the first pass. We could, for example, give tinkers the ability to make locks on doors.... that'd be a nice enhancment to the skill, i think.
DD	Hadn't seen it before but I have bookmarked it now. :)
Glamdring	*Kender_Sonoma* Has the design team considered the potential solutions to the housing problems presented by Tiera at http://web.logicworld.com.au/~kender/urban.html ?? They may be of some help.
DD	Also new to me. I'll bookmark that too!
DD	Also, in response to Dupre's earler mention of putting up a website, looks like Calista did it while the chat was going on!
DD	So there is now a housiong-specific chat board at http://yew.webtoys.net/homes/
DenDragon	ah, efficiency :)
DenDragon	Thanks everyone!
DenDragon	we'll see you at the next meeting!