Quarterlogging and shophogging!

[DangerDolphin]

My main issue with how the server handles shops and quarters is that they are highly targeted at individuals and not factions. IMO this is a huge mistake because you often end up with some people who have loads of space in their shop/home and entire groups that cannot get one at all.

With shops, this isn't too bad. You can get together with your faction, pool gold and buy a shop together from another player. If you can find someone willing to sell of course.

Quarters are another matter. There are two aspects that quarters provide:
- Somewhere for private meetings / RP
- Storage

Private meetings are fine and necessary sometimes, but faction quarters are cooler for this because other allies / newer people can get involved in RP as they might be passing by, whereas nobody is going to run into your house unless they're breaking in.

In my experience, storage is used mainly for crafting ingredients, with the occasional spare heavy item that cannot be carried easily. The crafting system in Arelith is designed to promote cooperation between players, so having a common storage area for that (With 100 ingots / silk / dragon blood etc) rather than everyone having their own small stacks is hugely beneficial.

But there are very, very few guild house buildings, and those that do exist are designed as a bunch of locked rooms with private storage in again. Of course you can (and I have seen them used in this way) dedicate the rooms to storage of communal assets, but it's awkward and inconvenient.

Likewise, you can use a personal quarters as a guild house (Myon Sentinels have to do this), but again very awkward RP-wise, and the entire faction is using the same small storage chest. I have also seen groups (such as the goblins in Andunor) with three separate personal quarters that they freely opened to their faction because they couldn't find a proper guild house.

What I would really like to see is:

- Less personal housing, way, way more guild housing.
- More shared storage chests (e.g. 50 slots, center of the building)
- Lots more rooms, with less personal storage (10 slots in 12 rooms instead of 20 slots in 6 would be awesome and a fairer use of database space)
- Some kind of gating to encourage only organised and active factions to get these guild houses. Maybe bidding, or DM application or something.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I think shops are fundamental to the server and can actively promote and stimulate roleplay.

Quarters, on the other hand...

...what is the functional use of a quarter to the majority of characters? Is it really just some sort of private dwelling, where you can have... private conversations?** If it really is all about storage, we should just have more vaults on the server.

I think we actually need fewer quarters, and more faction quarters that can offer semi-private/private places that are geared less to the individual and more to some sort of group-betterment.

One of the strange anachronisms of Arelith is this idea of property-ownership through the vein of quarters. It maybe made sense 150 years ago that all of the settlements fluctuated with population, but there's been an increasing trend lately (through in-game events and dev-talk) that Arelith is far more "established." Some non-Arelithian rando adventurer who shows up for 6 months and gets biggest best property in XYZ seems strange.

Less personal property, more communal property. Who cares about quarterlogging if we don't care about quarters anymore?

**this has also always been dangerous because of the recent upwards trend of the nasties on the server.

[Red Ropes]

Unpopular, yet, perhaps a potential solution would be to tie Guildhalls (boats, actual designated guildhalls) to 30+ RPR. Or at the very least a restriction like that for neutral, non-settlement guild halls.

[Mr_Rieper]

Unpopular, yet, perhaps a potential solution would be to tie Guildhalls (boats, actual designated guildhalls) to 30+ RPR. Or at the very least a restriction like that for neutral, non-settlement guild halls.

If we were to overlook the outcry of that decision, the guildhalls would sit empty. Expecting the handful of 30 RPR players to carry the burden of leading guilds constantly would burn them out very quickly. Or you'd be asking the 10 and 20 RPR players to have to magically know who the 30 RPR players would be, to ask them to hold ownership of the guildhouse on their behalf.

Leading the guildhouses would also be an excellent opportunity for a 20 RPR player to demonstrate that they are deserving of far more. Let's not forget that.

The real issue is that there are not enough generic quarters on the server. Players want to own property and have a private area where they can afk and hold private conversations. The citizen storage was a great idea to help people get access to chests without owning a quarter, but people still want that private space. I'd say a teleporter/generic doorway to a small private room, like cheap shoebox housing, would actually satisfy a lot of player's needs. You have to ask yourself why the Cordor Commons and upper Nomad rooms are always in such high demand, where the factions that own the Mesmer Walk guildhouse struggle to fill it and constantly have outsiders wanting to treat it like the Cordor Commons.

I can honestly say that it's difficult trying to build a faction when you don't have access to any private areas to meet. People just want a private space to themselves and want to feel like they aren't living on the street. Another idea would be using the temporary shop system on the meeting rooms in the back of the Nomad, so that factions could rent them for an RL hour or two. That would be nice. I think people just want the feeling of privacy, from time to time.

[BobTheSkull]

There is a difference between common quarters and unique quarters.

Common quarters are those plethora of one room, a bed and a chest, rooms that are all over. But they do give you a sense of belonging and that is valuable. I think hording of common quarters has to do with storage space. The advent of citizen storage at banks was brilliant. But a big issue to giving up that quarter as you become less active is that you need to put that stuff somewhere.

Solution: you can buy additional storage at bank, same cost as basic storage gives you additional 20 spots quarters get you. If you want to make this complicated you could script or to not be available if you have a quarter owned but that seems silly. Aside from memory space, there is little reason to limit storage size.

Unique quarters: these are the larger mansions, faction houses, and out of the way/one of a kind places. Here, everyone wants to be unique. And three places are held for, yes, years. And when they do come available it is (I'd place money on it) always passed to an ooc friend. The only solution I have to this is massively increase the upkeep cost of these quarters to be cost prohibitive for non active players. They are "mansions" and extreme cost comes extreme lavishes.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

In my whole time on Arelith, I have never stumbled upon an available non temporary shop. Granted, I have not always been that active. A few weeks ago before tskimg a break a faction i was part of never found its shop after months. Granted most of the faction were nee players and all of is were new to UD so we we probably were never checking the more obscure locations. But as a partislly mercantile focused group, it was frustrating.

[Reallylongunneededplayername]

Make a pirate/become one.

We got a lot of open quarters and shops atm.

Traffic is currently rising due to a few awesome pirates, So, why not give that a shot?

[Durvayas]

In my whole time on Arelith, I have never stumbled upon an available non temporary shop. Granted, I have not always been that active. A few weeks ago before tskimg a break a faction i was part of never found its shop after months. Granted most of the faction were nee players and all of is were new to UD so we we probably were never checking the more obscure locations. But as a partislly mercantile focused group, it was frustrating.

If its a shop worth owning in Andunor, its already got an owner. Andunor is probably the most populated settlement on the server, so housing and shops are always in short supply.
If you don't mind doing serious legwork to turn a profit through intense advertising, I highly suggest you seek the owners of the shops in the colloseum, outpost, mine, spore farm, and 'shipyard' (not treadstone, I mean the poorly named gondola location). Those locations have low foot traffic, and you can usually persuade the owners to sell the shops fairly easily as a result.

The locations are bad, but at least it'd be a start.
Otherwise, be ready to pay substancial gold for a better location in one of the two district markets. Also politick with the politicians controlling those territories.
And forget buying a shop in the hub unless you have, at minimum, 500k to pay for it; those are, bar none, the best performing shops on the server, due to sheer traffic.

[TimeAdept]

I wouldn't drop a hub shop for less than 5 mil because that's how much I could make in a good RL month with it, if not more depending on commissions.

[monkeywithstick]

Would be nice to see some more guildhouses. I can think of a fair few new organisations that have floundered a bit without one and they foster significantly more RP than a similar sized single occupancy quarter.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Pretty much everything that has been said about hogging already is what I would say, so I want to focus my post on the notion of a shop in a bad location. The only true "Bad" shops on the surface are the ones in Myon's bank, and the ones in Sencliff, and that is only true due to accessibility. If less then five percent of the current character base can pass through your area, you are going to have a rougher time then everyone else, but even those can sell rather well if you make sure you keep the prices fair and make sure that you are stocking it with things people in your area will need. Most of the shops in high volume locations are overpriced, and besides the first few days of a new character where I donate to the guy who goes and buys stacks of barkskins from npcs in harder to reach areas of the server for lowbies and then doubles the price, I don't even look at them anymore. You might say that is the issue, but honestly by being awful shops they are doing the out of the way shops a favor, since anyone who knows better (read anyone who makes it on arelith for more then the first few weeks) sure as shit ain't buying from them

[Reallylongunneededplayername]

Sencliff is though, Like 500 times better than Myon, I mean currently everyone is basicly "welcome", It has acces though means that might hinder a few folk, But, Could easily be solved with a little help and then you can come back by portal all the time.

As for Myon, There is really no easy acces for anyone, Elves included.

You can portal "nearby" and have to deal with mobs and one semi-boss or you wait for the right hour to take the caravan.

Then there is a portal, I always been in favor for a "public Myon" and an Elf only Myon, The farest we got were two shops outside.
Honestly, Drop it all outside, Bank, hin, Inn and all the shops.

But anyway, Come to Sencliff, We like your coin.

[Xerah]

I'd say that the Castle Gloom ones give the elf ones a run for their money. Since the Myon ones are okay-ish if there is a good elf population.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Castle Gloom has shops?

[Xerah]

How would a PC leader be able to get rid of people from the city who are camping quarters? The rules from the DMs state that you need to inform then wait 7 days to make sure they are active. This should be a problem for everyone on an OOC basis and you should want these people gone if they are not using it.

Okay, cool, not a problem. But the problem is that people take those actions as ICly and call out claims of tyranny, lies, making up rules, and etc.

This is the reason why people don't do it. What's the benefit to you as the leader? Pretty much nothing, so any leader who wants to keep their reputation would never do it.


I feel like I'm playing this weird game of IC and OOC that I wish I never touched.

[monkeywithstick]

How would a PC leader be able to get rid of people from the city who are camping quarters? The rules from the DMs state that you need to inform then wait 7 days to make sure they are active. This should be a problem for everyone on an OOC basis.

Okay, cool, not a problem. But the problem is that people take those actions as ICly and call out claims of tyranny, lies, making up rules, and etc.

This is the reason why people don't do it. What's the benefit to you as the leader? Pretty much nothing, so any leader who wants to keep their reputation would never do it.

Really does bear re-iterating.

Also attempting to solve an OOC problem IC is a path fraught with awkwardness and meta. Whether your actions are motivated by OOC goodwill/problem solving/malice/whatever they will be taken IC and used as ammunition. I prefer my IC reactions to be because of IC things not because I was awkwardly attempting to fix an OOC issue. (Not aimed at anyone here, I've seen this kind of thinking really explode at people in LRP before)

[Subutai]

Okay, cool, not a problem. But the problem is that people take those actions as ICly and call out claims of tyranny, lies, making up rules, and etc.

This is really more a topic for another thread, but I feel like this is huge problem on the server just in general. Surface leadership seems to be extremely hamstrung by this idea that good leaders only ever do kind, loving, friendly things, and as soon as they do anything else, suddenly they lose the next election in a landslide because everyone's decided they're completely evil.

I'm not sure how to fix this, and again, it's a topic for another thread, but I really do feel that the surface suffers significantly from voters' apparent need for leadership to be 100% unquestionably good-aligned and opposed to any kind of confrontation or controversy.

[helitron]

How would a PC leader be able to get rid of people from the city who are camping quarters? The rules from the DMs state that you need to inform then wait 7 days to make sure they are active. This should be a problem for everyone on an OOC basis and you should want these people gone if they are not using it.

Okay, cool, not a problem. But the problem is that people take those actions as ICly and call out claims of tyranny, lies, making up rules, and etc.

This is the reason why people don't do it. What's the benefit to you as the leader? Pretty much nothing, so any leader who wants to keep their reputation would never do it.


I feel like I'm playing this weird game of IC and OOC that I wish I never touched.

I think the major problem in this case is that false assumptions are being made about persons not being active OOC, and then calling them parasites IC - just because settlement leader X does not happen to see them when X is online. Keep in mind that some play during other time slots or cannot be online 24/7. I can tell you that the majority of folks being accused in that case are active and they have the right to respond IC to that. Accusations of parasitism also do not help much, btw.

And sorry, but the entire action sounds to me more like an attempt to get hold of a better property.

[Xerah]

I think the major problem in this case is that false assumptions are being made about persons not being active OOC, and then calling them parasites IC - just because settlement leader X does not happen to see them when X is online. Keep in mind that some play during other time slots or cannot be online 24/7. I can tell you that the majority of folks being accused in that case are active and they have the right to respond IC to that. Accusations of parasitism also do not help much, btw.

And sorry, but the entire action sounds to me more like an attempt to get hold of a better property.

This is getting far into IC stuff, but the character is an uncaring CHA8 wizard and is being RPed like that. Maybe a player is active, maybe they are not, but the only way to do anything about is to follow that process.

Subutai really hit the issue on the head though.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Subtai made a point that ties into a *cough* Feedback I made some time ago, that terms should really be longer. A month is not enough time to kiss the Snuggybear of every group that got you elected -and- get cool things done unless arelith is all you do. God forbid you piss off the wrong group by actually trying to do something, and you are just sunk because now you only have two weeks or so to gather a new alliance that took you months leading in to build. That may be a feature and not a bug, but its still going to be hard to start from scratch if your term goes that way if its a two month term instead of one.

[RedGiant]

I think RedGiant really hit the nailed on the head when he said...

1 quarter/shop rule is sufficient.
You can't hog these when you can have only 1.
All else is "I want that."

There is a notion in this thread that Settlement leaders hands are tied when, in actuality, I have had to leave Settlements for nonsense harassment and/or ridiculous dispossession under the existing rules. I'm not the only one.

As the king of cookies, and generally the one who opposes taking things away from players, the one decent remedy here is a few more unaligned shops/quarters to accommodate the increase in players.

[The GrumpyCat]

Just a suggestion for settlment leaders:

Let's say you want to evict someone (for whatever reason) but you can't catch them online, then one option you can do is hire other people and give THEM the power to evict from property. The eviction rp needs to be done by the person doing the mechanical eviction not neccesarly by the settlment leader.
Try to find people who do slightly different time zones to you, and/or who may be a little less known - so that if someone is being cheeky and trying to avoid rping with you to avoid the eviction rp, then you have options.
And again - if you're convinced that the person owning the property is basicaly not logging in at all - then by all means contact us and we'll do a check. If they really are just logging on to refresh, we'll talk to them.

[BobTheSkull]

How would a PC leader be able to get rid of people from the city who are camping quarters? The rules from the DMs state that you need to inform then wait 7 days to make sure they are active. This should be a problem for everyone on an OOC basis.

Okay, cool, not a problem. But the problem is that people take those actions as ICly and call out claims of tyranny, lies, making up rules, and etc.

This is the reason why people don't do it. What's the benefit to you as the leader? Pretty much nothing, so any leader who wants to keep their reputation would never do it.

Really does bear re-iterating.

Also attempting to solve an OOC problem IC is a path fraught with awkwardness and meta. Whether your actions are motivated by OOC goodwill/problem solving/malice/whatever they will be taken IC and used as ammunition. I prefer my IC reactions to be because of IC things not because I was awkwardly attempting to fix an OOC issue. (Not aimed at anyone here, I've seen this kind of thinking really explode at people in LRP before)

This exact thing just happened in Myon with the Sentinels (guard). Myon has no faction quarters so with the coronal's blessing one of the two Manor houses was designated as the Sentinels faction headquarters. The leader (Yansolla) had to been unavailable for a couple RL months, and the interim commander was going on vacation RL for a few weeks so he couldn't hold the faction quarter. So a sgt in the Sentinels, Artariel, too and held it until they came back as well as stepping up and effectively leading the Sentinels in the leadership absence. They had their personal quarter in the tower at this time. The king of myon supported this arrangement. The commander of the sentinels supported this arrangement. The interim commander knew and speed the arrangement. All IG.

Then there started to be anonymous messages on message boards about Artariel holding two quarters. Then there started to be complaints by presumably the same player on discord. They were told all of the above. But they kept leaving anonymous messages in game or posting in discord about it. Finally a DM message came to Artariel that they had two quarters and would lose one.

Artariel tried to reach out to the DM to get clarification. They had no personal use of the sentinel hq, and the sentinels are the only active faction in myon. Ultimately he couldn't reach anyone and the quarter went to another player.
Artariel's player finally decided that Arelith is a game, it should be fun, and weeks of getting harassed anonymously by a player for doing it right, to ultimately having a DM take sides without investigating was too much.

To be clear this isn't a slam on the DMs, but it is a very strong example of how big the "me, me, me" "I want" nature of some players ruins and punishes the fun, role play, and good intentions of those that make the effort to do things right in game.

[Subutai]

I've been thinking about this, and I feel like the lack of general access quarters and shops is a (probably large) part of the reason that folks like Xerah come under so much OOC fire for doing IC evictions for IC reasons. Often times, getting a shop or quarter, even a less-than-stellar one, can take a very long time and once someone gets evicted, there's only a very slim chance they'd be able to get another quarter or shop even in a different town. This might be fine for people who use their quarter as storage and nothing else, but really hits hard if your character actually does any RP in their home, or if they do a lot of mercantile/shop RP for their character.

It's not so much that it leads to interesting RP in having to go and find a new place to settle as it leads to OOC frustration that the way to find a new place to settle is to basically just spend hour after hour circling around available general quarters and available general shops trying to find one that's available. Instead of adding to RP, it's much more likely to take away RP, since now instead of spending IG time RPing, you're spending IG time quarter/shop hunting.

If we want to encourage IC evictions and such, which I think we do, we really, really need to work on the issues of general lack of availability of general quarters, quarters that are shared with too many others and have low fixture limits, shops in halfway-decent locations, etc. IC actions like being evicted shouldn't lead to OOC consequences, like having to spend all your IG time running from area to area hoping to catch a lease that's expired instead of RPing, which is the current situation.

Note on another topic: People keep going back and forth here about the 1-Quarter/Shop-per-Player rule. Last time this topic came up, there were a lot of accusations about players having multiple CD keys and holding multiple quarters/shops that way. Has that become an issue of the past? I would be honestly surprised if it has.

[Liareth]

How would a PC leader be able to get rid of people from the city who are camping quarters? The rules from the DMs state that you need to inform then wait 7 days to make sure they are active. This should be a problem for everyone on an OOC basis.

Okay, cool, not a problem. But the problem is that people take those actions as ICly and call out claims of tyranny, lies, making up rules, and etc.

This is the reason why people don't do it. What's the benefit to you as the leader? Pretty much nothing, so any leader who wants to keep their reputation would never do it.

Really does bear re-iterating.

Also attempting to solve an OOC problem IC is a path fraught with awkwardness and meta. Whether your actions are motivated by OOC goodwill/problem solving/malice/whatever they will be taken IC and used as ammunition. I prefer my IC reactions to be because of IC things not because I was awkwardly attempting to fix an OOC issue. (Not aimed at anyone here, I've seen this kind of thinking really explode at people in LRP before)

This exact thing just happened in Myon with the Sentinels (guard). Myon has no faction quarters so with the coronal's blessing one of the two Manor houses was designated as the Sentinels faction headquarters. The leader (Yansolla) had to been unavailable for a couple RL months, and the interim commander was going on vacation RL for a few weeks so he couldn't hold the faction quarter. So a sgt in the Sentinels, Artariel, too and held it until they came back as well as stepping up and effectively leading the Sentinels in the leadership absence. They had their personal quarter in the tower at this time. The king of myon supported this arrangement. The commander of the sentinels supported this arrangement. The interim commander knew and speed the arrangement. All IG.

Then there started to be anonymous messages on message boards about Artariel holding two quarters. Then there started to be complaints by presumably the same player on discord. They were told all of the above. But they kept leaving anonymous messages in game or posting in discord about it. Finally a DM message came to Artariel that they had two quarters and would lose one.

Artariel tried to reach out to the DM to get clarification. They had no personal use of the sentinel hq, and the sentinels are the only active faction in myon. Ultimately he couldn't reach anyone and the quarter went to another player.
Artariel's player finally decided that Arelith is a game, it should be fun, and weeks of getting harassed anonymously by a player for doing it right, to ultimately having a DM take sides without investigating was too much.

To be clear this isn't a slam on the DMs, but it is a very strong example of how big the "me, me, me" "I want" nature of some players ruins and punishes the fun, role play, and good intentions of those that make the effort to do things right in game.

This is a great example of why rules should be enforced via mechanics wherever possible. If it were simply impossible to own two quarters at the same time (can't purchase a second if you already own one) then this would never have happened.