Pharcyde's Epic Idea. It's Epic, Hands Down.. No... Noo! Don't Fight it.. Its Epic...

Anywayz I just thought of this epic idea while on a housing thread.

Heres the Basic theme of my epic idea:

So... dump housing, replace it with towne instances or kingdoms. Housing = Most likely not gonna be all too great anyways. Player will own their own Towne that they can manage. Other people can join it through the join instance menu. You will be using platinum, in game gold and player ranks/achievements to load out your towne.

Interested still? Heres how it will work:

Methods of Purchasing For Towne

• In Game Gold - Certain items or services will require in-game gold.
• Platinum - Certain things will require platinum
• Rank/Title/Achievement - To be able to use all items and effects of townes, certain ranks/titles/achievements much be reached to unlock them.

Townes are Universal to Account

Your towne applies to all your characters, so you don't need to make a new towne for each character. The towne will be named after your selected main character of choice. Certain titles may only be achieved by certain races. So a Enchantress can for example: achieve "Soldier" rank on his/hers bear and unlock the Achievement on the Enchantress.

Towne Hosting Customization

So since it will be public, the towne owner will need to be able to control it.

• Owner will be host. Host will be able to boot
• Owner can set who may enter the towne. (Friends, Guild Members, friends of friends, public people, ect)
• Owner can set it to allow people to join it if owner is online or not.
• Owner may choose to not allow people in the ignore list to join towne (buh-bye beggars)

Towne Size and Towne Theme

You will be able to purchase a towne with platinum. You may then purchase default towne themes with platinum or get really nice towne themes by achieving certain ranks or titles. Such as, a golden castle theme would be like achieving 10+ million gold. Yeah that might be a hefty amount, but remember, there will be themes for like achieving 1 million gold, to 5 million and so on. Maxes out at 10 million gold for best gold theme.

• Once you have it purchased, you may purchase one of three sizes. Small --> Medium --> Large
• You may purchase default towne themes for platinum
• You can unlock towne themes for achievements
• Unlocked towne themes will require in-game gold to apply. The better the theme, the more gold it requires.

Themes will vary based on titles. Say the best PvE killcount theme is called "God Slayer". It would be a very very cool looking dungeon theme that require 50,000 PvE kills to achieve.

Towne Items and Services

The Towne Owner may decorate his towne with items, showcases, NPC's and even monsters or bosses if he chooses.

• Owner can set NPC Merchant's in the towne. Owner customizes what Merchant sells. (Price, quality and quantity of items is effected by theme rank of towne)
• Owner can achieve different NPC Merchants be completing quests for that towne. (If all Forest Haven Quests are done, Ellie The Enchantress is unlocked and is able to be put in Towne)
• Owner can display accomplishments in the Hall of Glory. Hall of glory is unlocked after completion of all quests in game. Additional slots of how many accomplishments shown would cost platinum.
• Decorations would be such as wooden statues or all the way up to Blessed Marble showcasing wealth and title.

Accomplishments shown could be like Killing The Overlord 1000 times, so a Wax Figure of the Overlord would be showed in Hall if Owner chooses. Or displaying limited time Holiday items or a cut-scene displaying part of the event.

Stash and Consignment Shoppe

Stash and Consignment Shoppe can be added. Unlocking would be as simple as purchasing with platinum. Other features would require in-game gold or achievements.

• "Gold Expert" Would be the top Consignment Shoppe Rank. It would grant your shoppe top priority. Whenever a item is added from that shoppe, all other shoppes who search that item will see your item first, regardless of price.
• "Master Horder" Would be the top Stash rank, it would give you ability to put in or remove anything in the stash were-ever you are.

Guilds

Player Instances are the perfect place to host guild events.

Other Unmentioned Facts

• PvP/CTF Arena Signup may be added to towne as well.
• There will be a top 10 most popular towne chart in leaderboard's. Giving people reason to become the best.
• Can charge a small 100 gold fee to enter towne, but well worth the fee considering the extended benefits compared to normal towne.
• Once Fee is added, upkeep starts. Pay for NPC's starts, management of decorations, ect begins.
• If upkeep becomes greater then profit, towne fee stops and upkeep disappears.
• Gold Vaults if owner chooses
• Guild-Hall if owner chooses
• Can add special "Small" dungeons that can only be entered through player townes. The better the theme of towne, the better and harder the dungeon. Special gears can drop.
• Owner can charge small tax for Merchant gears, (potions, ect) dungeon fee's, consignment fee's, ect.

Thats pretty much it, any feedback or additional suggestions are accepted.

If you flame, Your such a shame, which is pretty lame, my fame will tame you :P.

OH GOD YES, -like button-

This has the potential to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Well to achieve that top ten would require a hell of a big investment. Only making money on the top 10. Plus the better the towne, the more upkeep. Say #1 on the list is like a 75,000 gold per hour upkeep. The owner will need to make his place pretty appealing to keep people coming back.

Besides the benefits of the customized towne is much greater than the actual fee's themselves. I can get a 100 gold drop off of one monster in Alien Oasis 2.

Shall I relist benefits?

Top priority in CS, Cheaper NPC merchants W/ better product, the most commonly used merchants in one towne, stash, cs, special dungeons, ect.

Drop the tax on potions and just raise the price of gold by like 5. Still would be cheaper then Ellie in Forest Haven and most of that 5 would go to upkeep.

CS fee's would be the same, except owner would get a very small portion of it, again, most goes to upkeep.

Hell I say if someone invests the time and money to make the best towne in game, they deserve to make a small hourly profit. Not like they will be making massive bank, with the whole upkeep and all.

Will their servers be able to handle thousands of custom built townes, each of them more resource consuming in terms of graphics and customized load-outs than simple player's characters?

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Originally Posted by Physiologic

Will their servers be able to handle thousands of custom built townes, each of them more resource consuming in terms of graphics and customized load-outs than simple player's characters?

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I have no clue. This would be a pretty major update that would bring this game tons of cash. I'm sure they would do all means necessary to make sure this runs smoothly.

Thousands of Townes is no different then thousands of dungeons open. Dungeons are bigger then townes and range from 50-200 enemies (Mega-Maze-Mashup) all moving around. Then if the case is that the servers cannot support that many, just simply make it harder to obtain a towne.

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Originally Posted by Pharcyde

I have no clue. This would be a pretty major update that would bring this game tons of cash. I'm sure they would do all means necessary to make sure this runs smoothly.

Thousands of Townes is no different then thousands of dungeons open. Dungeons are bigger then townes and range from 50-200 enemies (Mega-Maze-Mashup) all moving around. Then if the case is that the servers cannot support that many, just simply make it harder to obtain a towne.

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I'm all for the idea - I love the aspect of customization in MMOs but wondered if their servers could handle a huge amount of saved data like that. The difference between customized townes and dungeons is that dungeons are discarded after 60 seconds when everyone leaves and no one joins, but customized townes won't be, unless of course they implement some sort of a check to discard useless data (i.e. townes that have been abandoned by their maker for a long period of time).

i didnt even have to read past the 1st sentence to say that this is a +10 threaD

I can tell you put a lot of thought into this, and I respect you for that, but I personally would rather just have a housing system. This idea sounds like it would be fun, but really only for the people who own the towns. Thinking in a utilitarian way, they would make more people happy by allowing many the ability to have and customize a house, as opposed to letting a few (the richest) have a town. I envision the house as a smallish space, kinda like father frost's instance. Add some plat bought items to decorate or show off, many players may buy these things, and they'll make plenty of money off it.

I like your idea, but I don't really like the idea of housing at all.. Just reminds me of other games. I'd rather just hack and slash through dungeons and PvP. On the other hand, I'd love to have a place to chill with all my friends without beggars etc. Like the guild hall is a great idea, but I'm not in a guild. Your idea is really complex, and to have something developed at a large scale would be an immense undertaking. I feel like people will just exploit this as a way to show off their friends and money. I like Kujen's idea, but I also like how you thought of being able to pick who you want in your towne (friends, guildies, etc). Overall, nice. :o

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Originally Posted by Physiologic

I'm all for the idea - I love the aspect of customization in MMOs but wondered if their servers could handle a huge amount of saved data like that. The difference between customized townes and dungeons is that dungeons are discarded after 60 seconds when everyone leaves and no one joins, but customized townes won't be, unless of course they implement some sort of a check to discard useless data (i.e. townes that have been abandoned by their maker for a long period of time).

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Hmm.. I think we can work around that.

Remember, not everyones gonna have a decked out towne with 75,000 upkeep.

1.) Just remove the if host is online thing and replace it with "if towne is empty for more than 60 seconds".
2.) Make it so you have to be top level in order to even be able to make a towne "Public". That way there isn't thousands of level 1-40 townes that like nobody is gonna enter.
3.) Make List Rent Times, so there will be 100 spots open at a time or so. You can pay rent for ten hours to one day to one week. Once your time is up or your towne empties, its taken off the list. If your towne empties, you will be refunded the amount of gold based on remaining time.

What are your thoughts on this idea? Think it would be more logical for the servers?

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Originally Posted by Kujen

I can tell you put a lot of thought into this, and I respect you for that, but I personally would rather just have a housing system. This idea sounds like it would be fun, but really only for the people who own the towns. Thinking in a utilitarian way, they would make more people happy by allowing many the ability to have and customize a house, as opposed to letting a few (the richest) have a town. I envision the house as a smallish space, kinda like father frost's instance. Add some plat bought items to decorate or show off, many players may buy these things, and they'll make plenty of money off it.

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Perhaps allow them both then?

A personal player owned house and a Kingdom would be really fun for all.

I am a huge fan of player housing, especially after Runescape. Runescape pulled all the plugs into making player housing fun, but it was still a pretty epic fail, houses were like never used. I don't wanna see that happen on PL, I want the same concept to be very successful and used. Maybe we can have the best of both worlds.

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Originally Posted by DawnInfinity

I like your idea, but I don't really like the idea of housing at all.. Just reminds me of other games. I'd rather just hack and slash through dungeons and PvP. On the other hand, I'd love to have a place to chill with all my friends without beggars etc. Like the guild hall is a great idea, but I'm not in a guild. Your idea is really complex, and to have something developed at a large scale would be an immense undertaking. I feel like people will just exploit this as a way to show off their friends and money. I like Kujen's idea, but I also like how you thought of being able to pick who you want in your towne (friends, guildies, etc). Overall, nice. :o

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Understandable, I like hack and slash but it only goes so far for me :P. I think you would enjoy this too, because you can go hack and slash style and unlock the hack n slash themes.

Yeah this would be a huge undertaking, but the rewards would be great. PL would be up to their eyes in money. This update will put tons of purpose into completing the game and even farther beyond that. I know for me, I would be much more active game-wide if there was a achievement to be earned everywhere.

Cool idea. I think a similar feature was used in Guild Wars with Guild Halls. Your idea is just individual based.

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Originally Posted by Pharcyde

Accomplishments shown could be like Killing The Overlord 1000 times, so a Wax Figure of the Overlord would be showed in Hall if Owner chooses. .

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Originally Posted by Kossi

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Mind explaining?
Also..
Mind giving constructive feedback to that portion?
..

Like the overall idea. Make more sense to me to mix town instances like this and guilds. Still curious about what they are planning for guilds, btw.
Maybe you should break your ideas down in several 'easy to implement' steps. (idk but this must be months of development... ). What would be the first aspects you'd settle for (that wouldn't require your town-members to pay in plat the equivalent of two month of a dev / map designer salary? ;)

I really do like some ideas. Im afraid some other might be too epic, I just can't see sts taking notes for v1.8. But Maybe that's just me.


Ps, I wonder how much ppl they allow in one instance for performance issue (30-ish?), hope not.

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Originally Posted by recklessfa

Like the overall idea. Make more sense to me to mix town instances like this and guilds. Still curious about what they are planning for guilds, btw.
Maybe you should break your ideas down in several 'easy to implement' steps. (idk but this must be months of development... ). What would be the first aspects you'd settle for (that wouldn't require your town-members to pay in plat the equivalent of two month of a dev / map designer salary? ;)

I really do like some ideas. Im afraid some other might be too epic, I just can't see sts taking notes for v1.8. But Maybe that's just me.


Ps, I wonder how much ppl they allow in one instance for performance issue (30-ish?), hope not.

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Thankyou very much for your feedback.

Well I will try to make this idea as perfect as possible. Of course there will always be players personal complications and since I'm not a dev, I don't know exactly what their goals are or how big of a task this actually is. Thats why I give Devs full power to manipulate and adjust this idea as they see fit.

Sorry I didn't quite understand what you meant with this part "What would be the first aspects you'd settle for (that wouldn't require your town-members to pay in plat the equivalent of two month of a dev / map designer salary?)"
Do you mean like what would I settle for in the mean time while the devs work on the remaining content?

As for easy to implement steps:

1.) Towne Themes - One New Theme for Every 10 levels. I just thought of something new, there are three sizes, so thats three map themes for one theme. I would replace the map size with map workability, like how many NPC's you can add or just scrap map size all together. Then decide how many themes can be unlocked by achievements. I would say just scrap the lower themes all together and make the "top themes" the "only themes" for that achievement. As default should work good until the other themes are unlocked. Layouts would be two sets: Open camp like Forest Haven or Castle layout. Only thing that would change with theme are the backgrounds, so changing doesn't relocate all your vendors, ect.

2.) Determine what services vendors and other npc's would have. Like what items will and will not be in player-owned townes

3.) Make constants, like guild hall and hall of fame. No matter what theme is in place, these will remain the same.

4.) Vendors, Stash, Consignment shoppe, decorations cannot be placed freely. There will be set locations to place items, so no excess data is needed for the "free placement" option.

5.) All other options or achievements effect only certain parts. So if you unlock Achievement "Master Horder" it doesn't change your stash at all, just gives you a ability. Consignment shoppe would be just for looks, when you press it, it just connects to main consignment shoppe vs. rewriting code for a alternate shoppe.

Thats all I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure if I was one of the devs, I would be able to think of better ways of simplifying this since I would be doing work on charts, graphs, paper, ect and not the top of my head.


If any of the ideas are too extreme, I'm sure we can find a way to tone them down pretty easy.

P.S. Max would be 25 players per towne.

Cool idea; not going to happen. At least any time soon. The thing is, people will go more for making your avatar you actually play as look cooler and play better. So chances are, Spacetime will (wisely) go the way of more character customization both in looks and effectiveness. Starting with rings. :)

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i want to be able to buy a boss or monster and put it into a cage in my town. zombie might cost 1-2 plat and a ao3 boss could cost 10-20 plat. the town owner could make his monsters in the cage or cages fight. it would be really cool i think.

Yeah, that doesn't sound remotely like cockfights or dogfighting <sarcasm>. Not a good thing to introduce young minds to.

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Originally Posted by Pharcyde

Hmm.. I think we can work around that.

Remember, not everyones gonna have a decked out towne with 75,000 upkeep.

1.) Just remove the if host is online thing and replace it with "if towne is empty for more than 60 seconds".
2.) Make it so you have to be top level in order to even be able to make a towne "Public". That way there isn't thousands of level 1-40 townes that like nobody is gonna enter.
3.) Make List Rent Times, so there will be 100 spots open at a time or so. You can pay rent for ten hours to one day to one week. Once your time is up or your towne empties, its taken off the list. If your towne empties, you will be refunded the amount of gold based on remaining time.

What are your thoughts on this idea? Think it would be more logical for the servers?

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I think rent might work just like how the Consignment Shoppe uses a time-limit for items to reduce extra data clutter. Or, my point could be moot altogether if STS decides to just purchase more servers for this purpose (from the looks of things it looks like they are headed towards more servers/higher quality servers).

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Originally Posted by Lesrider

Yeah, that doesn't sound remotely like cockfights or dogfighting <sarcasm>. Not a good thing to introduce young minds to.

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A young generation of Michael Vicks!