Put Apartments Back in Luirs

[SpyGuy]

Also, both Red Storm and Luir's share a similar lack of "templar supervision", so there's really no justification for Luir's residences to have features that auto-reveal mages.

I'm against residences that are safe, private places to cast magick that aren't the elementalist temples.  But that's a separate conversation.  For Luir's it was always a disconnect if you heard of it happening because in Luir's using magick inside the outpost is punishable by death (following a warning in most cases).

[Armaddict]

If Red Storm can have places that PCs can rent, Luir's definitely should have them too.

I...see very little correlation between the two locations and don't particularly see a reason that either one should dictate anything about the other.  Based off what was said in response to my questions, I lean towards some sort of middle ground that allows for occupancy but some sort of balancing mechanic in terms of using Luir's as an individual/tiny group platform for business.

It's a little weird, because Luir's is a trading post.  So normally it would make sense for all manner of small groups to be there.  But the nature of the population there, as well as the ownership and 'mood' of that ownership in history, makes me think they would not be necessarily that friendly to groups that were doing anything other than bolstering GMH profits.  This leads me to the idea that having storage for materials and crafts would likely lead to a more official arrangement than just owning an apartment.  The apartment itself would be for actual living space.  Decoration, privacy, a place to lift your feet up without the bustle of the End.  So yeah...some sort of short-term arrangement, or limited spaces as suggested, seems the best to me.

I have no idea how prevalent the 'magicker safe haven' or the 'avoid templarate oppression' standpoints are.  I can't think that they were a major driving factor, and I'm actually in favor of rogue mages as long as they're...you know...being rogue-y.  I just think it was about having safer apartments to stash a bunch of things, that's the one that actually makes sense in my head that reasonable people would be drawn to.  I just also think that the idea of a safe space in a place filled with drifters, nomads, tribals, and outlaws on the run from the major centers is kind of a misrepresentation based off of other factors of the game, rather than it being an actual sensible reality.

[Delirium]

1) Make the apartments tiny. Tents and shanties with just enough room for a lockable 200-stone chest that comes with the room, a bedroll, and maybe a shelf and some decorations. The tents and shanties themselves cannot be locked, they have curtains for doors.

2) Do not make what happens inside echo outside, or what happens outside echo inside, but DO have them crime-coded. No happily spamcasting magick, no sparring, no murders, just a place to crash and put your stuff for a while so you can actually stable your mount and interact at the tavern without carrying 3 large bags and being at unbelievably heavy. Oh, and those bags aren't for you, it's because you're trying to meet up with a GMH merchant to give them stuff they want but they're not online yet.

3) Add like 20 of them in the old spot where the tents/shanties used to be, with the above caveats and changes. Let people actually form a transient sort of community there, but since it has almost zero security and no benefits for magicker types, it won't become a cuddle-pile, it'll perform a much needed and more useful function -- a means of providing connection and interaction.

4) The reason Luir's is so important as a place to be able to "crash" aka have a base, even if it's a tiny shitty tent, is because it's smack dab in the middle of the world. That allows characters to mix more with north/south/tribal and that means story and conflict. Right now, it feels too harshly divided between north/south. It's stifling. It's boring.

5) The other reason it's important to be able to have even a shitty, temporary base in Luir's is because how the hell are you going to start a business there if you don't have a place to at least temporarily store stuff so you can sell it while you wait on a warehouse?


I love Luir's. Always have. And even though declared magickers are allowed, casting in the Outpost is a death sentence and fixing the apartments to not be hidden from crime-code will fix that little hiccup that allowed for clusters of happy magicker cabals that could often spamcast to power with no risk. With this fix they'd have to actually go beyond the walls like they're supposed to.

[Mercy]

3) Add like 20 of them in the old spot where the tents/shanties used to be, with the above caveats and changes. Let people actually form a transient sort of community there, but since it has almost zero security and no benefits for magicker types, it won't become a cuddle-pile, it'll perform a much needed and more useful function -- a means of providing connection and interaction.

This makes the min-maxing part of my brain light up like crazy, and that scares me. I'm assuming/hoping 20 is just a spitball number, but that many can/will result in issues of cuddle-fest. Get a couple of people to lock down some rooms between them, even if there's elevating rent rates they can just rotate their rooms. I'm sure there's plenty of ways to code it to prevent this, but I'm under the impression there's no systems in place currently that do this. So that's a thing.

Also, both Red Storm and Luir's share a similar lack of "templar supervision", so there's really no justification for Luir's residences to have features that auto-reveal mages.

Auto-reveal and crim-code are not quite the same thing. The former implies that as walking through the door an alarm sounds and you're hauled off to a dusty prison cave. The latter means you can't just start gicking up your tent like you live in a soundproof booth. It also means you can't turn your tent into a brawlhalla, laying money bets on the stump or the mul. Not magick specific but definitely impacts those sorts.


I haven't been around in a hot minute, let alone in Luir's, so my opinions are purely speculation based off second-hand information (by and large from this thread). Personally I really enjoy playing independent types, as I enjoy played clanned PCs. They, in my experience, tend to have pretty distinctly different experiences which I enjoy. I am wary of having a comfortable "safe haven". Even if the comfort is a veneer, if that veneer doesn't get pulled back for you specifically then it might as well be a real thing. It changes the dynamic in my experience, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but I feel it should come with it's own limitations and risks if you want to have a slice of safety to call your own.

Maybe instead of adding shanties, throw in a room you have to pay to enter that has lockable chests in it? "Rent" a chest. Throw your stuff in. Come back to get your stuff before you leave and turn in your key, killing your tab. Have a guard or few in the room. Adds a layer of insecurity and transparency to the whole process. Maybe there are certain things you'd feel really uncomfortable leaving there and decide are better kept on your person. So on. This could run into the whole no current coded support issue however.

[Troicha]

It's a little weird, because Luir's is a trading post.  So normally it would make sense for all manner of small groups to be there.  But the nature of the population there, as well as the ownership and 'mood' of that ownership in history, makes me think they would not be necessarily that friendly to groups that were doing anything other than bolstering GMH profits.

I lean toward expanding non-Kuraci presence in Luir's for clans that have political and mercantile agreements with Luir's already. Things like a Sun Runner sleeping and small storage area, similarly with Arabet and other tribals. This would provide more incentive and support for those types to interface with Luir's more often, thus driving traffic to a central location, while also being justifiable IC (from a Kuraci perspective, not necessarily those of the tribes in question). It could also almost certainly be achieved largely by player action.

[Delirium]

Yeah, 20 was a ballpark number. 10-15 is fine too but if people are really doing the apartment roulette thing to lock down tents they can then add their friends to, no number is going to stop them. Except having higher numbers of tents so other people have at least a fighting chance.

That's just players being greedy and there's nothing you can do about it.

I don't see increasing rent prices as being a thing, as it'd require new code nor would it be fair to those with lower and offpeak playtimes.

Fakir definitely misunderstood me, you wouldn't get a glaring sign over your head that you're a magicker. You just aren't allowed to cast magick in the outpost without consequences, just like you aren't allowed to attack and murder people without consequence.

[Halaster]

I'm not really going to comment on whether or not we'll ever re-introduce apartments or something like it in Luir's.  But the general reasoning was to lessen the dilution of the playerbase over multiple play centers.  Tuluk reopening added a new (returned) major play center, but staff felt the need to remove the incentives to play somewhere else to accommodate given the size of our playerbase, and Luir's made sense.  If we had 80 people on every night we could justify that additional play center, but we don't.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that we experiment with ideas sometimes.  Was removing the apartments from Luir's the best idea we've ever had?  That remains to be seen.  But a big change like that takes time before we really see the results and see how things play out.  If there are changes again, I don't imagine they'll be too soon as we need to give the current layout some time to see how it goes.

[th3kaiser]

Thanks for the answer Hal.

Just my own opinion here. I've never appreciated it when staff attempt to use their soft power to influence how and where we play. Closing things to make players play in a manner staff wants has always felt icky to me. Let players make their own decisions about this sort of thing. Is this place too empty right now? That's fine, because nobody wants to be there because they're not having fun with it. And that's all I have to say about it.

[X-D]

I would simply DRASTICALLY reduce the rent time. Luirs is a trading post, lodgings should be like cheap motels. Cannot rent by the month, can by the week...rent renew every 48RL hours or poof. Oh, and cannot "rent with someone".

[Quell]

I would simply DRASTICALLY reduce the rent time. Luirs is a trading post, lodgings should be like cheap motels. Cannot rent by the month, can by the week...rent renew every 48RL hours or poof. Oh, and cannot "rent with someone".

That'd actually be an interesting option to throw into every civilized area.

[X-D]

I would also make it so if in apartment when rent runs out, you log in out on the street.

[Lotion]

Apartments with variable maximum rent lengths would be neat. Sometimes you're only stopping in for a little bit and only need a room for a little while. The option for longer term storage solutions, especially for those who want to have an MMH warehouse but do not yet have one would be good.

[Troicha]

I would simply DRASTICALLY reduce the rent time. Luirs is a trading post, lodgings should be like cheap motels. Cannot rent by the month, can by the week...rent renew every 48RL hours or poof. Oh, and cannot "rent with someone".

I find this idea deliciously amusing in light of the fact that Kurac is also known for its whores.

[X-D]

How the idea came to me honestly.

[Brokkr]

I've never appreciated it when staff attempt to use their soft power to influence how and where we play. Closing things to make players play in a manner staff wants has always felt icky to me.

There were unforeseen consequences to adding housing to Luirs.  The game had existing 20 years without housing in Luirs.  We had several options on what we could do, we chose to essentially do a bit of a revert. Another option would have been to leave Allanak in control of Luirs, for instance.

It was less trying to force players to play a certain way than undoing the unintended consequences of our prior actions.

[SpyGuy]

I've never appreciated it when staff attempt to use their soft power to influence how and where we play. Closing things to make players play in a manner staff wants has always felt icky to me.

There were unforeseen consequences to adding housing to Luirs.  The game had existing 20 years without housing in Luirs.  We had several options on what we could do, we chose to essentially do a bit of a revert. Another option would have been to leave Allanak in control of Luirs, for instance.

It was less trying to force players to play a certain way than undoing the unintended consequences of our prior actions.

While all true the game is also different than it was 5 or 20 years ago. Tribal roleplay moved out of the Tablelands and became more focused on Luir's.  In the old days Kurac owned the Outpost and usually had PCs stationed there and later it was the Garrison.  I don't think the recent changes to GMH hunters are a substitute for this. This may be anecdotal but there seem to be more long-lived PCs around and those are more likely to want a place they can settle down in.  The playerbase has aged, free time is harder to come by and apartments may have become expected so that PCs can have a place to store their mementos, raise a virtual family, whatever.

Obviously this was staff's decision.  I'm just trying to point out that the changes to Luir's weren't made in a bubble.  The game changed around Luir's becoming a center of play.  For current plots based around Nak and Tuluk I would argue a thriving Luir's would be beneficial. But at the end of the day any time there are big changes some of us will be disappointed.

[Athapaxis]

A few things to note on this:

1 - When the Garrison was active, those tents were being checked regularly.  The locks were incredibly easy to pick.
2 - I am aware of multiple 'gicks who were chased out of town or killed by the Garrison during that time
3 - The activity in Luir's led to much more activity in the other cities because its where deals were made, plots were hatched and people rested and restocked on the way from one place to another.
4 - The way to keep player numbers up is to keep the game fun.  A more active and busy Luir's has (in my experience) consistently been one of the most fun parts of the game.

With that said, I don't think the Garrison is coming back any time soon, so that changes things some.  It does seem like crim-flagged tents would help.  Don't put in lockable chests - if people want that make them provide them.  You can make the tents "lockable" but if they're the level they were before almost anyone with the basic skill will be able to get in.  I think this would improve the game without the adverse effects previously seen.

[Armaddict]

3 - The activity in Luir's led to much more activity in the other cities because its where deals were made, plots were hatched and people rested and restocked on the way from one place to another.

That's only traveling people.  And that's kind of an exaggeration in the first place.  This literally hatched an entire thread about problems with the other locations, when the problems weren't with the other locations, they just improved one location too far.

It was less trying to force players to play a certain way than undoing the unintended consequences of our prior actions.

Of course you'd say something like this, when my favorite accusation is that you guys say that you'll trial things but never end up undoing it.  Of course you would.  Just to spite me.

[roughneck]

Affordable rent for private residence anywhere is a problem and anti-thematic. It's easy mode.

Make guarded communal tents with lockable chests.

1 tent with 10 chests at 500 per month each - that's business baby!

It also ACTUALLY encourages interaction and roleplay instead of hording and solo play. Instead of someone cooking and crafting by themselves, they now are doing it in a communal area. If you want to mudsex in private, rent a room at the tavern. 

[Riev]

Affordable rent for private residence anywhere is a problem and anti-thematic. It's easy mode.

Make guarded communal tents with lockable chests.

1 tent with 10 chests at 500 per month each - that's business baby!

It also ACTUALLY encourages interaction and roleplay instead of hording and solo play. Instead of someone cooking and crafting by themselves, they now are doing it in a communal area. If you want to mudsex in private, rent a room at the tavern.

I am surprisingly down with more 'communal living' areas, with locable shelves or chests.

[Patuk]

We have communal living areas. They are called clan compounds, and they are far safer than any apartment you could hope to rent.

[Troicha]

This is in line with other suggestions in the thread, but I make it as a kind of full package.

Upthread it has been noted that the primary benefit of apartments/shanties in Luir's was allowing a base of storage. It has also been noted that apartments as they stand tend to have a silo effect on the playerbase, where people spend time in their 'safe' alone space. Too, there are IC concerns that keep Kurac from unilaterally providing apartments in Luir's (namely, competition with Nenyuk and all the pain that would bring).

A proposal I feel neatly solves all these issues:

Have a communal crafting space, probably a large-ish pavilion, or even attached to the Storm's End, again to drive players closer together. Have various benefits in this space, such as tables/benches for sitting, and access to various immovable tools (like a fire and certain tools which give a bonus to other common crafts that aren't coming to mind right now, but nothing too fancy).

Also in this space, have a number of lockable containers, able to be rented from Kurac via interaction with an NPC on-site. This could be half-a-dozen footlockers, a dozen chests, whatever staff and the driving players feel would fit the area. Rent should be paid much like it is for apartments, or else you lose access to your chest until your rent is renewed. Since from an IC perspective the point is to drive petty trade to the Outpost, containers are one per person, and anyone discovered creating a cabal to monopolize rental space is dealt with harshly. (How such things are discovered and dealt with is probably best left as an IC exercise.)

Notably this proposal includes no private space whatsoever, only private storage. Thus all the potential difficulties with private or perceived-private space are avoided. This is not a place to practice magick or other illegal activitiy, and not just because of a crimflag you could theoretically wait to expire, but because other players (as well as NPCs) might catch you. It is structured to encourage people to RP together while crafting or carrying out business, rather than sitting alone. Finally, such a thing could probably be handled by Kuraci player drive with staff support, rather than being a strictly staff-led initiative, since as I see it this doesn't impinge enough on any other GMH's business that it should be impossible, though obviously it would take the usual amount of baksheesh to achieve in-game.

[Fredd]

I've never appreciated it when staff attempt to use their soft power to influence how and where we play. Closing things to make players play in a manner staff wants has always felt icky to me.

There were unforeseen consequences to adding housing to Luirs.  The game had existing 20 years without housing in Luirs.  We had several options on what we could do, we chose to essentially do a bit of a revert. Another option would have been to leave Allanak in control of Luirs, for instance.

It was less trying to force players to play a certain way than undoing the unintended consequences of our prior actions.

What was the unforseen consequences, I'm curious.

[Lotion]

Smaller capacity of the shanty town tents mixed with the larger capacity of the shared yard rooms gave it a much nicer open feeling. There are other apartments with shared hallway rooms but people usually just decorate sort of put up a statue or something as a decoration and they are uninteresting. At the Shanty Town people would put workbenches, campfires, chairs, and other cool stuff that would be communally used. In the Shanty Town you got to know your neighbors. Those shared communal rooms were so good and I would want future Luir's Apartments to be nearly the same but with more space so that people don't get meta pk-d for a shanty.

[Delirium]

While all true the game is also different than it was 5 or 20 years ago. Tribal roleplay moved out of the Tablelands and became more focused on Luir's.  In the old days Kurac owned the Outpost and usually had PCs stationed there and later it was the Garrison.  I don't think the recent changes to GMH hunters are a substitute for this. This may be anecdotal but there seem to be more long-lived PCs around and those are more likely to want a place they can settle down in.  The playerbase has aged, free time is harder to come by and apartments may have become expected so that PCs can have a place to store their mementos, raise a virtual family, whatever.

Obviously this was staff's decision.  I'm just trying to point out that the changes to Luir's weren't made in a bubble.  The game changed around Luir's becoming a center of play.  For current plots based around Nak and Tuluk I would argue a thriving Luir's would be beneficial. But at the end of the day any time there are big changes some of us will be disappointed.

+1 yep.

But also mostly because it's bad for interaction to not have a place to stash stuff while you're waiting on that person you're trading with or when you ride in from a hunting trip and you've got average strength. Sucks to be you sucka. Guess you're stuck at the firepit while everybody else hangs out at the bar.