What makes apartments better than other apartments?

[Lotion]

Apartments are save rooms that player characters can pay money to have semi-exclusive access to. Even so there's some apartments that are way better than others and I'm not just talking about room capacity.

The Shanty Town is just absolutely the best apartment in the game. The way it's setup encourages neighbors to interact and make relationships. But the thing is it's not just save rooms outside of the apartments that makes people interact like that. There's a few apartments in Allanak where there are hallways which are also save rooms.

What else sets Shanty Town apart?

[mansa]

Redesigned game design at least 10 years into the future based on habits of the playerbase.

[Lotion]

Redesigned game design at least 10 years into the future based on habits of the playerbase.

Can you unpack all of what you mean with this statement for those of us who have been playing for under a year?

[rohenne]

what i noticed when i played in redstorm is that if you give apartments a common space and a cookfire, people will hang out there

[Maso]

what i noticed when i played in redstorm is that if you give apartments a common space and a cookfire, people will hang out there

Yeah, I think the cookfire helps. It kind of says "this is a room to hang in" a bit more than JUST a save. Also hallways...It's unlikely I'd choose to hang out in a hallway.

[mansa]

Redesigned game design at least 10 years into the future based on habits of the playerbase.

Can you unpack all of what you mean with this statement for those of us who have been playing for under a year?

Sure.

What else sets Shanty Town apart?

Shanty Town, by of Luir's Outpost, is the most recent automated player housing implemented in the game, and has the benefit of being created with examples of what has not worked with player housing in the past.




A mansa's version of the History of Player Housing:
In the past, players would submit a whole house description to immortals who would implement this into the game.  They would pay templars for access, and the templars would provide the keys.

Problems with this:
#1 - Favoritism for getting player housing created.
#2 - Had to find a templar character to supply the keys
#3 - Keys would get lost frequently, and had to be requested from a templar, who would wish up to get a staff member to load a key

Then, House Nenyuk was opened for the playerbase, and took over the role of providing keys to the playerbase for their apartments they would rent.  An apartment complex was implemented, and the only way to get access was to find a Nenyuk player in game.

Problems with this:
#1 - Had to find a Player to get access
#2 - Rent couldn't be paid on time, because they needed to find the player in game.
#3 - Keys would be lost frequently, and could only be retrieved from the Player, who would email their clan immortals asking for keys to be loaded.


Then, an automated script was created and loaded into some Nenyuk NPCs, who would act as landlords.  These NPCs would provide keys to players after they have paid rent.  Rent renewal was also automated.  More Apartment Complexes were created, designed to have a hallway, and apartment doors on the sides of of the hallways.
The capacity of these rooms were large.  Players would rent out all the rooms, and turn them into tiny warehouses / sparring areas / murder dens.

Problems with this:
#1 - Room Capacity was very large.  This allowed players to stockpile all the items in the game into the rooms, and actually made the game lag when it saved the rooms.  This let players create tiny warehouses
#2 - Players never left their apartments, because the player housing acted like estates.  Players didn't join clans, because they stockpiled everything in their warehouse apartment.
#3 - There was no limitation to who could rent what apartment, nor what could happen within the apartments.


As time went on, a more official "Player Clan" housing got implemented in actual warehouses.  This allowed player groups to be created, and have a "correct" destination to store all their goods.  Players stopped using their apartments as mini-warehouses, and the storage capacity of these apartments were manually shrunk.
Player habits created a more 'common' room for cooking and eating, like the newer apartments in Red Storm, and that created movement of players from their safe rooms to a non-safe room to do regular actions like cooking and eating.

Then the shanty town player housing got implemented, with some game design in mind:
1) Not a warehouse
2) Limited storage space
3) Reasons to leave the safe rooms