Castles and houses, was Re: [CF List] The 'dis'economy of crossfire

[Kevin R. Bulgrien]

At 11:46 PM 8/30/02, you wrote:

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      The castle idea is an interesting one.
     
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      I'd abstract it to all houses.
     
     
I agree even though I also agree that it could get out of hand...

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      It would probably be more interesting to implement this idea on the maps-bigworld, since there is a lot more empty real-estate.
     
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      You could start out buying a 'deed' from a nearby town.  Various deeds available (huts, houses, castles, towers, etc).
     
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      The owner of the deed goes out into the wilderness, and applies the deed.  The appropriate building is then created on that space (some sanity checking is done to make sure it is ok to build there, eg, not on a road, river, etc).
     
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      The basic layout of the building is determined by the type of deed you bought.  Thus, a tower might have relatively small levels, but several of them.  A hut may have just one room, castles many rooms and levels, etc.  In thus way, you at least reduce some of the mundaneness of the player having to put down walls and whatnot.  this also removes any trickiness of trying to deal with expanding with staircases on so forth.
     
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      When you use the deed, it remains in your inventory, but not as a way to create a new building - to show you own the current one.  Only the person with the deed can do things like change the floors, bushes, etc.  The user could sell/give this deed to some other player if he wanted.  If he didn't pay his taxes, his deed may get re-possessed and the town puts up for sale.  IF no one buys it, the house gets demolished.
     
     
I like the homesteading approach here...  Simple, yet effective, and avoids
the complications of in-town building.  There is even an unused real-estate
agent building already in the current maps.

There need to be designated homesteading areas, so that no one makes a
new map building that might conflict with a user created structure that
got added into CVS later.

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      The idea of buying scrolls (contracts) to do decoration makes the most sense - it is much easier to implement this idea than trying to integrate an editor.
     
     
The "yard" could retain the characteristics of the original square.  Perhaps
only the yard or landscaping (viewable to other players) could be changed.
I'm thinking of the Tower of the Stars, where jumping into the tower from the
main map really jumps you into a microcosm that has a fairly large area with
"another" tower inside.

I rather think the inside of the building would be static except for
furniture.  You pick the theme when you pick the wall/floor only in the
sense that you know what it is before you buy the structure, or maybe
you can only change the theme on a floor by floor basis.

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      Perhaps the building has some areas only accessible to the deed holder, like an area that has a bunch of keys he can give to friends that may visit, as well as access to 'display' cases where the owner can display some artifacts he has acquired, as sort of a way to 'show off' what he has done.
     
     
Hm... like fenced areas in the yard that are accessible by tunnel? Or, simply
fenced areas in the "ground level" or "foyer" where there is no security.

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      I think to some extent for this to be more appealing to the players, other players need to be able to see what they have done.  I'm not sure how much work I would do making up a house in the game if no one else would ever see it.  So perhaps things like only the deed holder being able to pick up/move furniture or many other things within his own house.
     
     
This improves appeal, especially for a few players I know who really get into
the whole fix-up-your-apartment thing... I've already seen it happen, but,
then there isn't a way to show it off.  Its not your typical draw to a
hack/slash game, but if it works... I think its great to have different
types of people playing.  Some of these people would play more if there
were goals like this to achieve even at lower levels.  You can actually
work to improve your "home", not just improve yourself.  

I rather think, though, that letting people walk around all my piles of
effects would be boorish.  No point in showing my pantry or stash of
practical replacement items, but there is a lot of point in having some
space that is where you can show your prized weapon collection in a fenced
off area that is only accessible from a stair into a secured area.

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      The idea of needing artifacts for certain things make sense - I think the idea of deeds/houses would really be a way for players to show things off (ala the statue idea).  If no one could see what you have done, I would think the idea of building castles would not be as interesting.
     
     
Yes.

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Overall, this looks like a lot of work, but, it strikes me as being very
worthy to explore and think about how to come up with something balanced.
I want to do this kind of thing, but so far haven't figured out how to
do maps.  This would give players a way to express themselves without
requiring them to master map making.  You can't tell me this wouldn't
widen interest in the game...