Eivyonydd, on Mar 23 2009, 01:57 PM, said:
While I don't dispute that you can get these sort of things, I don't know that everyone is looking for that, so while it has been great for you, I'm unconvinced it is a reason for everyone to have a house.
I guess the problem stems from the fact that as a character living in a world you need to live somewhere. You say we can't live at the sanctuaries, but that actually makes less sense. As a level 1 character I can be there, but as a level 3 character who might be 2-3 months older I can't.
I guess that goes back to the idea of what stage you are playing your character at. I personally don't think Vyon has progressed beyond the Sanctuary stage, though perhaps he sees it more like a hostel. Or maybe he does have a cabin or something in the Nymph homeland. There is no portal there anyway so it takes hours to leave it and go somewhere else.
This is true, but it's also not the only reason I'd decided to make housing mandatory; there's also the fact that people in general require a roof over their heads and I think that should extend to our characters.
I agree to an extent on the difficulties of level versus actual development, but as I said earlier, Sanctuaries do have limited size IC and, for management purposes, it was decided that free shelter should only apply to the first couple of levels. OOC, we only offered free/cheap shelter in the first place because some members were having trouble making even the z200 for an apartment, but it was felt that by level 3 those difficulties should be over and even the poorest of character should be able to afford the cheaper flats - or at the very least a room in the cafe (which, as we've been having this discussion, I've realised should be more an OOC representative of multiple hostel-type places, rather than a single IC offering, since that would also be unrealistic and get rather over-crowded very quickly >_>).
For Vyon, I'd have assumed that his free shelter came in the form of Chloris' cottage rather than the Sanctuary anyway, but what happens with his housing really depends on what he'll do next (once the Nymph plot's over); if he stays with Chloris, I'd probably ask you to pay the z20-100 for the
room option currently listed under Le Bon. ^^
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Well I'm not going to peek at someone else's thread anyway, but I do think that having a thread where you are allowed to post consecutive posts is possible good. There might not be anybody to play off, but you can still write and add to your personal story over time. Like I say though I'm not sure that this should be a house exactly. It should be whatever the character wants. It could be their living on the street thread, and perhaps others are invited in, or their roving the countryside thread, or their building up their farm thread.
I also think these should be more privilege rather than compulsory. But then perhaps only the higher level "houses" come with a personal thread, while the really cheap houses are just a place to lay your head.
I don't see why not - I think part of the fun of a forum RP (as opposed to one-on-one) is that you get to read other peoples' threads and see what other characters are up to.
I do think what you're suggesting is what we already have, though.
I mean, yes, housing's more (at least, more easily) geared towards people who buy an actual house/apartment, but the options are there to buy land instead and I'm open to adding more options for things like having a character living in hotels. Those characters who are living on the streets or in cardboard boxes would still have a permanent thread in the housing forum but wouldn't need to buy anything as long as they played out the struggles of such a lifestyle. The same would be true of Roving Nymphs, actually, assuming they always slept rough; if they lived in hotels, as I said earlier, they'd be expected to pay the minimum housing fee just so there's some consistency and because they'd be gaining certain benefits from having a roof over their heads that those living on the streets wouldn't.
There's also the option of posting in a character's journal in the form of short-stories, diaries, etc, for storylines that you have no intention of opening to other characters and that don't take place in housing (which extends to roaming, etc, too).
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Xanth, on Mar 23 2009, 09:11 PM, said:
Well, in this context I tend to disagree about money not being a resource, as we (or certainly I, as both a member and an admin) tend to view a member's bank account as reflective of their character's. When I see that a character has ζ250, I assume that they're struggling to make ends meet; whereas if I saw ζ10,000, I'd assume they were fairly well-off.
I'm not sure I agree here. I don't know if Vyon is comfortable or struggling, but I wouldn't call him well off, yet my money reflects that I am. I want to buy a bunch of Karma, because I think that is potentially more reflective of Vyon's position. Does the fact that he goes from $3000+ to $10 or so change his monetary status.
I agree that something that gave an indication of monetary status would be good. I mean could Vyon really afford to buy all that stuff from Aunt Jane? I don't know. We just assume he did. I thought I would be spending my sidebar money but you said that that money is for other stuff. So we have to assume Vyon has the cash. But maybe he doesn't. The guy who lives on teh street most certainly doesn't have much in the way of cash.
I'll admit the system's flawed, but honestly, whatever system we chose would be just as flawed. To answer your question, though, I didn't question if Vyon could afford all that stuff because the number under his avatar suggested he could, so even though the money didn't really change hands, it was dependent on how much money you've earned. If you only had $10, I would have discussed some kind of alternative with you. And, if it had been a usershop as opposed to an NPC owned one, you would've had to pay for real.
But yeah, if he went down to only $10, I would tend to assume he'd spent all his money IC too. Of course, it's not an ideal situation because, as you said, we could have rich homeless people running around, but it seems to work for the most part and doesn't often come up anyway, though I would be open to alternatives. I did post a feedback thread a while ago about potentially removing the currency system in favour of alternatives, but the general consensus was that it aids the roleplay and that we should keep it, so I haven't thought much about it since.
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I couldn't agree more, but I don't think her sidebar cash is reflective of the work she does. Additionally it isn't really something you get to roleplay - certainly not all the time. I think teh site used to work this way a lot more when the shops were a big thing. Now I wonder if you would be better off using experience/EFcash to buy something like wealthy, healthy income, rich etc... Which by having you know where the character stands in terms of wealth. Vyon is likely something like getting by, man living on teh street might be no income, Cal might have a rich inheritance if he hadn't bee disowned.
Actually, I'd beg to differ. A large percentage of her posts mention her work at the shop, whether she's actually in the shop or not, and she takes great pride in her work and her work ethic, so while it's not all the time, the boutique is mentioned quite a lot. ^^ The same can be said for other characters: for a current example, Zephyr's life revolves around his smithy even though he doesn't like dealing with customers, and a large portion of Russ's posts for him also mention the shop; and in the past, characters like Suka mentioned their shops regularly. I'm not really sure if things have changed so much as we've just got fewer active characters so there's less activity in all areas and usershops have suffered with it.
I did wonder about adding some kind of option for people to apply for riches like that, but I can see a lot of problems with it, not least the fact that I couldn't allow everyone to do so and there'd be a danger of people feeling it was unfair or getting upset. Not to mention that I think there are already a lot of ways for people to make money that encourage participation in both IC and OOC aspects of the site, which, from an admin perspective, is kind of a big deal, so I have to be careful (I have also tried a few different types of "point" system, like the plot points, that didn't turn out so well so I tend to prefer not to add any more). Which is not to say we can't explore this, though.
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I agree again, but I guess I see it differently. You can spend cash on Karma which you can turn into cool armour or weapons, possibly powers one day. You can spend cash on a house. You can also buy OOC things, and in some ways the way the money is used is more OOC anyway. I guess you turn money into karma by donating it, but you could equally have the money be some kind of experience system where you decide that your characters actions have earned him karma, or enough gold to buy a house.
I really dig the prize shop as you have developed it. And a lot of my thoughts and ideas here are stemming from the way you developed it.
Of course a lot of this is getting into way different territory. The thing we are really discussing here is the nature of housing and should it be mandatory. I don't understand the current buying a house system, so I really shouldn't comment on other ways where mandatory housing would suit me, but I'm not sure with the current system it would be right.
I can think of many ways of getting cash out of people though.
Hmm, well, for that matter, a character's post count is used to determine their level (primarily post count, at least) so we do already have a kind of experience system in place, but I guess I'm not really seeing the point of developing something new with it when we already have most of the things you've mentioned through currency.
Going back to the issue of mandatory housing, I'd probably want that regardless of how houses were paid for because, as I've said, one of the (if not
the) main reason for bringing it up was for IC realism and OOC fairness, which we'd want from any system. And while I can see a lot of merit in the experience system you've suggested, I also think we'd have just as many, if different, quirks to deal with.
I guess I'm also not really seeing why you want to change things, as it seems to me like most of what you've suggested is already available, but I may not be fully grasping what your suggestions are.
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hear me out though, even if my post is really shortttttttttt.
and then after that it could be like, you must buy some shelter otherwise you'll get a smack.
for the input guys. 
