Simple changes to Housing to ease disappointment

[Caernach]

From what I understand, the major Housing revamp is not going to happen. May I suggest a list of changes that should be simple and not labor-intensive, and may appease some players that are into the Housing aspect of the game? Of course I am assuming certain things about how the game is programmed and how your databases are set-up.

1 - Fix the Hytbold items. On the AH they list/sort as Large Wall, but they are Large Furniture. Not sure why it's taken 2 years to address this. It can't be that complicated to change an item's designation. If you need a list of those items, I'm sure we players can provide that to you.

2 - Change the Bound housing items from Bind on Acquire to Bind to Account. It's a little frustrating to have to keep switching characters in order to re-arrange furniture. (This, in my opinion, should be done for ALL items, and not just housing.) Once again, I am sure the community would be happy to provide you with a detailed list of housing items that are bind on acquire.

3 - Reduce the cooldown on Travel to Personal/Kinship House to 15 minutes. Or better yet, remove the cooldown altogether. That can be a perk for home ownership and a nice "gimme" to the players who are disappointed about the scrapping of the housing overhaul.

4 - Allow the Special Furniture slots to accept Large and Small Furniture. Unless, of course, this is hard-coded. Actually, any slots/hooks that can be changed to accommodate other furniture pieces should be changed. Since we're not getting new homes or more hooks, at least that would give us *some* amount of decorating freedom.

5 - Grant homeowners an additional 15 storage slots free. You do have a fair amount of players that have been waiting a long time for a Housing revamp, and I think the response to the producer's letter made that clear. A few "gimme" gestures might go a long way toward easing some of that disappointment.

*6 - Add a Stable Master outside each housing area that has Swift Travel only to the nearest major Town.

That's it.

*added. Swift Travel only is suggested so they don't have to map out stable routes to other areas.

[PKCrichton]

Some other things.

1. Stable Masters outside each housing instance that have swift travel to the other housing areas and travel to the nearest town.

2. Fix the Hytbold Housing items. All the 'bookshelves' are Furniture instead of Wall items so they are not able to be put against walls at all right now. This has been bugged since RoR Beta it is long past due to be fixed.

3. I would LIKE for there to be crafting facilities added to the central location of housing instances but I have a feeling this is in the same boat as 'more hooks' in that it would require the housing instances to be reduced to 1 instance that is changed and then would have to be repopulated out. So we would all have to be evicted to get this done.

[Caernach]

Some other things.

1. Stable Masters outside each housing instance that have swift travel to the other housing areas and travel to the nearest town.

2. Fix the Hytbold Housing items. All the 'bookshelves' are Furniture instead of Wall items so they are not able to be put against walls at all right now. This has been bugged since RoR Beta it is long past due to be fixed.

3. I would LIKE for there to be crafting facilities added to the central location of housing instances but I have a feeling this is in the same boat as 'more hooks' in that it would require the housing instances to be reduced to 1 instance that is changed and then would have to be repopulated out. So we would all have to be evicted to get this done.

Yes, I would love to have a stable master in each housing area too, but I thought about the work involved (creating routes, etc). Unless, I guess, ONLY swift travel was available, then they would not have to map out the mount routes. I'd even be happy if they put a stable master out there with a Swift Travel only to the one nearest major town (bree, thorin's hall, etc).

Same with the crafting facility, I was trying to keep it to things that I think the dev team can pull off with minimal effort.

[Jane66]

I would like the ability to put thin furniture into small furniture slots. In the same way that a large furniture slot will hold either a large or a small piece, I'd like a small furniture slot to hold either a small or a thin piece.

[Liarie]

Stable masters near the housing entrances really are a necessity. You can travel to them but not from them. How does this make sense? This should have been in day one of housing.

Anyway, I'd also love to have a ferry from Falathlorn to Celondim, but that would require a ferryman in each instance, which I don't think is possible.

Still, I'd be happy with a stable master with swift travel to the nearest town from just outside the instances.

[HunterGreen]

Another "can't take more than a few minutes" thing they could do is add crafting facilities in the neighborhood centers, as they've long promised. In some cases this won't even involve changing the layout; for instance, in the Bree-Land neighborhoods, there's already a room full of books just waiting for the Study designation, and a workbench-looking object just waiting to be a usable workbench. (No obvious oven, campfire, or forge, but those can't take more than just dropping a copy of an existing one nearby.)

[Vexendynamus]

The Hytbold housing items really deserve some attention.

Another "can't take more than a few minutes" thing they could do is add crafting facilities in the neighborhood centers, as they've long promised.

If kinships gain new features with Update 14 and Update 15, perhaps kin crafting facilities will make the list. They would save me tons of time and I never use 'busy' crafting hubs, anyway.

[Brandon_Blackbird]

Another "can't take more than a few minutes" thing they could do is add crafting facilities in the neighborhood centers, as they've long promised.

Citation needed, please?

[PKCrichton]

Another "can't take more than a few minutes" thing they could do is add crafting facilities in the neighborhood centers, as they've long promised. In some cases this won't even involve changing the layout; for instance, in the Bree-Land neighborhoods, there's already a room full of books just waiting for the Study designation, and a workbench-looking object just waiting to be a usable workbench. (No obvious oven, campfire, or forge, but those can't take more than just dropping a copy of an existing one nearby.)

Here is the twist... We learned from Scarycrow a couple years ago that adding 1 new hook to a house would mean it is added only to that specific house in that specific neighborhood. This is a flaw in the system that every house in every neighborhood are unique to that neighborhood. All the neighborhoods and houses may have originally come from 1 neighborhood for each housing location but now they are dozens of unique neighborhoods. So any changes inside the neighborhoods would require one of two things to happen.

1. Turbine assigns someone to go into each and every neighborhood instance of the 4 housing regions and have them change things neighborhood by neighborhood. NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.

2. Turbine has us all vacate every single house and neighborhood by force and delete all but 1 neighborhood in every region that they then go inside and change anything and everything that can be done quickly. Adding crafting facilities, adding hooks, etc...

Option 2 is the only one that can possibly happen and even that would anger a lot of people... We'd all lose our 'valuable housing locations' all our friend/kin neighborhoods that would then have to be rebuilt. But also comes into question is what about our upkeep? Do we get the weeks and months of upkeep restored to us for this mass eviction so they can upgrade the system?

So really what is Turbine to do? Are they to venture down this road or are they to make small changes that affect housing but don't add anything physically to the neighborhoods themselves?

[Caernach]

Here is the twist... We learned from Scarycrow a couple years ago that adding 1 new hook to a house would mean it is added only to that specific house in that specific neighborhood. This is a flaw in the system that every house in every neighborhood are unique to that neighborhood. All the neighborhoods and houses may have originally come from 1 neighborhood for each housing location but now they are dozens of unique neighborhoods. So any changes inside the neighborhoods would require one of two things to happen.

1. Turbine assigns someone to go into each and every neighborhood instance of the 4 housing regions and have them change things neighborhood by neighborhood. NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.

2. Turbine has us all vacate every single house and neighborhood by force and delete all but 1 neighborhood in every region that they then go inside and change anything and everything that can be done quickly. Adding crafting facilities, adding hooks, etc...

Option 2 is the only one that can possibly happen and even that would anger a lot of people... We'd all lose our 'valuable housing locations' all our friend/kin neighborhoods that would then have to be rebuilt. But also comes into question is what about our upkeep? Do we get the weeks and months of upkeep restored to us for this mass eviction so they can upgrade the system?

So really what is Turbine to do? Are they to venture down this road or are they to make small changes that affect housing but don't add anything physically to the neighborhoods themselves?

I don't understand how each house is unique unto itself rather than pointing back to a template, but that's another discussion altogether. As for evicting everyone so they could revamp housing, maybe they should not assume that the player base would not go for this idea. They have made mistakes in the past that have turned many customers away. Maybe they should ASK the players via a survey or email.

I mean, even on Brandywine once the houses that had been unpaid for lo these many years were finally foreclosed upon, there were lots of empty houses available. The population is simply not what it used to be. If they evict everyone, with current player pop levels it wouldn't be that hard for Kins and kin members to re-establish their neighborhoods the way they like it. And given the ultimate choice of:

-having the inconvenience of being evicted for a few weeks and having to re-decorate your house with the reward being a revamped housing system
or
-staying in your house and nothing ever changes

who knows how many people might choose the inconvenience. I know I would. Hell yeah, evict me if it means I get a revamped housing system.

[cdq1958]

I don't understand how each house is unique unto itself rather than pointing back to a template, but that's another discussion altogether. As for evicting everyone so they could revamp housing, maybe they should not assume that the player base would not go for this idea. They have made mistakes in the past that have turned many customers away. Maybe they should ASK the players via a survey or email.

I mean, even on Brandywine once the houses that had been unpaid for lo these many years were finally foreclosed upon, there were lots of empty houses available. The population is simply not what it used to be. If they evict everyone, with current player pop levels it wouldn't be that hard for Kins and kin members to re-establish their neighborhoods the way they like it. And given the ultimate choice of:

-having the inconvenience of being evicted for a few weeks and having to re-decorate your house with the reward being a revamped housing system
or
-staying in your house and nothing ever changes

who knows how many people might choose the inconvenience. I know I would. Hell yeah, evict me if it means I get a revamped housing system.

I'll give you my answer. I'd rather have nothing change than be evicted for any length of time. As it is now, housing works just fine. It may be broken under the hood, so to speak, but for me any overhaul that requires eviction is a deal-breaker.

[GozmitJosh]

i wouldn't mind being able to buy a kinship house with one character/account.

With the increasing amount of items that have become available, we have limited space. The option to add hooks is out probably from the tedious work it would be to add a hook for every single house in the game.

If "kinship" sized houses become scarce for actual kinships then depending on how much work it would be, there can be more neighborhoods added.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Turbine does not have to put the crafting facilities inside the housing instances. They could be put outside. That would only require four sets of vendors and facilities. Another option would be to create a single public racial crafting instance if there is a lack of landscape space outside of the housing portal.

[Nymphonic]

I'll give you my answer. I'd rather have nothing change than be evicted for any length of time. As it is now, housing works just fine. It may be broken under the hood, so to speak, but for me any overhaul that requires eviction is a deal-breaker.

For me, I have no problem with being evicted because I can sleep in a hotel in the Shire. What I'm concerned about is something being messed up in my remodeled house.

[HunterGreen]

Here is the twist... We learned from Scarycrow a couple years ago that adding 1 new hook to a house would mean it is added only to that specific house in that specific neighborhood. This is a flaw in the system that every house in every neighborhood are unique to that neighborhood. All the neighborhoods and houses may have originally come from 1 neighborhood for each housing location but now they are dozens of unique neighborhoods. So any changes inside the neighborhoods would require one of two things to happen.

Ah, that does make that change I discussed take a couple of hours of someone's time, then. It's still fairly quick for a neighborhood but now multiply that by... how many neighborhoods are there now? Maybe a hundred total?

Although I note they did make a change in chests in all houses at once, so either they already did this once, or what applies to hooks might not apply to everything, and then it may or may not affect things like turning a visible but not functional workbench into a functional one.

[Dolamrothdame]

Absolutely the stable master. I'd settle for ST to the closest town. I get ever so tired of having to ride into Bree or Michel Delving. It was silly to put the housing so far away from the cities in the first place-suburbs didn't exist in medieval towns. If folks could get back out quickly, they'd be more likely to come home.

And seconded for the cool-down as well. What positive result is achieved by making folks wait an hour before they can use their personal house link again?

I'd be up for a temporary eviction if it meant revamped housing. I'd definitely deal.

I also like the suggestions about making the hooks more flexible, including the central hook. That is such a huge waste.

And yes, the Rohan furniture thing. I've got a credenza sitting stupidly out in the middle of the floor. This is a small thing, but it's telling. Please fix these very attractive items so that people can actually use them!

I would also like to see VIPs be able to buy basic houses for their alts with TP. There are tons of basic houses sitting empty. It would liven up the neighborhoods if there weren't so many empty houses. People start with a basic house, then get a deluxe as soon as they can afford it, so the basic houses are usually the last to fill in a neighborhood, if they fill at all. My alts would love to have places of their own, and they're not as picky as my mains.

[Sapience]

Another "can't take more than a few minutes" thing they could do....

Notihng 'takes a few minutes'. As an example just adding an item to the check box list for the dialog suppression tool takes about an hour or so, then testing, then QA approval. So the single most 'simple' thing you might possibly imagine actually takes several hours all totaled.

From what I understand, the major Housing revamp is not going to happen. May I suggest a list of changes that should be simple and not labor-intensive, and may appease some players that are into the Housing aspect of the game? Of course I am assuming certain things about how the game is programmed and how your databases are set-up.

1 - Fix the Hytbold items. On the AH they list/sort as Large Wall, but they are Large Furniture. Not sure why it's taken 2 years to address this. It can't be that complicated to change an item's designation. If you need a list of those items, I'm sure we players can provide that to you.

2 - Change the Bound housing items from Bind on Acquire to Bind to Account. It's a little frustrating to have to keep switching characters in order to re-arrange furniture. (This, in my opinion, should be done for ALL items, and not just housing.) Once again, I am sure the community would be happy to provide you with a detailed list of housing items that are bind on acquire.

3 - Reduce the cooldown on Travel to Personal/Kinship House to 15 minutes. Or better yet, remove the cooldown altogether. That can be a perk for home ownership and a nice "gimme" to the players who are disappointed about the scrapping of the housing overhaul.

4 - Allow the Special Furniture slots to accept Large and Small Furniture. Unless, of course, this is hard-coded. Actually, any slots/hooks that can be changed to accommodate other furniture pieces should be changed. Since we're not getting new homes or more hooks, at least that would give us *some* amount of decorating freedom.

5 - Grant homeowners an additional 15 storage slots free. You do have a fair amount of players that have been waiting a long time for a Housing revamp, and I think the response to the producer's letter made that clear. A few "gimme" gestures might go a long way toward easing some of that disappointment.

*6 - Add a Stable Master outside each housing area that has Swift Travel only to the nearest major Town.

That's it.

*added. Swift Travel only is suggested so they don't have to map out stable routes to other areas.

Nothing on this list is "simple and not labor-intensive."

In fact, #4 is almost 100% certain to require major revisions to the entire hook system. It's also very likely to break every piece of furniture as every piece of special, large, and small furniture would need to be updated to match the new restrictions or lack there-of.

#6 would be extremely labor intensive especially in the testing stage.

Even the one thing you might think qualifies as "simple and not labor-intensive", changing items to bind to account, requires every item being changed to not only be updated, but then tested to make sure they are in fact bound to account. Extremely labor intensive.

[Radbug]

Notihng 'takes a few minutes'. As an example just adding an item to the check box list for the dialog suppression tool takes about an hour or so, then testing, then QA approval. So the single most 'simple' thing you might possibly imagine actually takes several hours all totaled.




Nothing on this list is "simple and not labor-intensive."

In fact, #4 is almost 100% certain to require major revisions to the entire hook system. It's also very likely to break every piece of furniture as every piece of special, large, and small furniture would need to be updated to match the new restrictions or lack there-of.

#6 would be extremely labor intensive especially in the testing stage.

Even the one thing you might think qualifies as "simple and not labor-intensive", changing items to bind to account, requires every item being changed to not only be updated, but then tested to make sure they are in fact bound to account. Extremely labor intensive.

So what exactly was supposed to happen with the 'Major Housing Revamp' if the things on that list are considered too difficult?

[Yula_the_Mighty]

So what exactly was supposed to happen with the 'Major Housing Revamp' if the things on that list are considered too difficult?

I suspect what happened is that the more the senior developers dug into the housing system to identify what needed to be done. The estimated costs kept going up until it went past the maximum acceptable cost. Hence the major housing revamp was cancelled.

Where I work as a software developer. It is extremely common that the detailed cost analysis comes back with a much higher figure than the napkin numbers that were used to justify starting the process. You might start with 100 features on a white board. At each step of the process moving toward release to the customers some of these features will die (be canceled). Very few of them get from white board - brain storm session to live. Those that make it to live are massively changed from the original concept.

This high failure rate and massive change is why a lot companies do not like to talk about features early on. Our failure rate for new products is over 80%. Most new products before being introduced to potential customers. I do not know what other companies and market segments are like. You can find information on new drugs - something like 90% of drugs that do something useful never get to general release.

[Leixy]

I am sure the time requirements are a lot for the housing revamp, yet, it makes you wonder how on earth turbine can quote, feature, estimate costs, approve, build, test, fix, test, fix, test, ... beta test, release, patch an entire new region or expansion if they can't afford to monetize / update already existing content like housing.

[Beaniemooch]

I am sure the time requirements are a lot for the housing revamp, yet, it makes you wonder how on earth turbine can quote, feature, estimate costs, approve, build, test, fix, test, fix, test, ... beta test, release, patch an entire new region or expansion if they can't afford to monetize / update already existing content like housing.

It is often easier and cheaper to build something new than it is to re-do something older.

[Jewl_of_the_lake]

could we at least get the hytbold items fixed?

[Nymphonic]

I suspect what happened is that the more the senior developers dug into the housing system to identify what needed to be done. The estimated costs kept going up until it went past the maximum acceptable cost. Hence the major housing revamp was cancelled.

Where I work as a software developer. It is extremely common that the detailed cost analysis comes back with a much higher figure than the napkin numbers that were used to justify starting the process. You might start with 100 features on a white board. At each step of the process moving toward release to the customers some of these features will die (be canceled). Very few of them get from white board - brain storm session to live. Those that make it to live are massively changed from the original concept.

This high failure rate and massive change is why a lot companies do not like to talk about features early on. Our failure rate for new products is over 80%. Most new products before being introduced to potential customers. I do not know what other companies and market segments are like. You can find information on new drugs - something like 90% of drugs that do something useful never get to general release.

Same thing with my job in maintenance.

Manager: "Nymph, I need an estimate to have the north area covered in concrete. Should cost X amount of dollars"

Me, after having someone from maintenance department come out and punch in numbers: "Manager, it will cost Y amount of dollars, not X".

Manager, after look of shock: "Nymph, let's go with half of what I wanted".

[Radbug]

I suspect what happened is that the more the senior developers dug into the housing system to identify what needed to be done. The estimated costs kept going up until it went past the maximum acceptable cost. Hence the major housing revamp was cancelled.

Where I work as a software developer. It is extremely common that the detailed cost analysis comes back with a much higher figure than the napkin numbers that were used to justify starting the process.

Obviously, and not exclusive to the software industry. But we were told that the revamp was cancelled because it did not meet expected standards of quality, not because of cost (not that I buy that explanation of course).

Same thing with my job in maintenance.

Manager: "Nymph, I need an estimate to have the north area covered in concrete. Should cost X amount of dollars"

Me, after having someone from maintenance department come out and punch in numbers: "Manager, it will cost Y amount of dollars, not X".

Manager, after look of shock: "Nymph, let's go with half of what I wanted".

This would mirror my experiences in just about anything that involves money. So, back to my question - what exactly was supposed to happen in this 'Major Housing Revamp'? Or was it announced not in one producer's letter, but two, with no detailed cost analysis?

And frankly, to say that fixing the Hytbold item descriptors is too labour intensive is about as embarrassing as STILL having the same crafting icons 6 months after HD launched. You can fit a lot of "several hours" in 2 years.

[HunterGreen]

Notihng 'takes a few minutes'. As an example just adding an item to the check box list for the dialog suppression tool takes about an hour or so, then testing, then QA approval. So the single most 'simple' thing you might possibly imagine actually takes several hours all totaled.

As both a developer and a builder I'm familiar with how users can't really tell what takes a long time, and how no kind of coding doesn't require testing. But the whole point of this particular one, just adding existing crafting facilities to existing locations, is that it doesn't (I suspect) entail any coding. It's just going to a particular spot in the world and putting a workbench there, and I still believe this literally takes a few minutes. The reason I think that is I have seen, for instance during the 'end of beta' party, builders dropping objects into the world in real time and taking mere minutes to build a stairway into the sky out of furniture, spawning dozens of copies of NPCs running around Edoras, creating working ballistae throughout Bree in minutes, etc.

Now, I have to admit I didn't see them spawning the "Superior Workbench" object that way, so perhaps there's something unusual about that one that makes it take longer, but that seems unlikely to me. And I did already admit above that if they have to do it separately in every one of the neighborhoods in every server that "just takes a few minutes" multiplies out into many hours. And of course it might make more sense to avoid that aspect of doing it scores of times per server by doing it with some coding, in which case, back to what you said above.

But if it really were going to one spot in each of four neighborhoods and spawning four objects there and then positioning them, that is, if you don't have to do it per server and per neighborhood, and if it's just copying an object, and there's really no coding required, then it's quite reasonable to expect it would really take just a few minutes.