The fortress is a lovely home. It is big and open but in my opinion it has one flaw. The hallways on each side are only 1 tile wide. Dragging heavy items in the hallway is a pain and moving groups or pets fairs no better. I propose that we widen the hallway one tile. Ultimately I want this done so that co-owners can place strongboxes by the door and have a safe place to secure their keys out of reach of other guests. This would be a great way to offer newbies a place to train & store their items without having to give them a home. A great man once said "if you give new players everything they will have no goals to work towards." This is a solution to that problem. It also helps large guilds offer up a communal place to gather & allows members to store items / be safe within the guild home. I think there is even more that can be done with the fortress to improve it. This is the simplest solution and probably the most impacting as it takes away space from court yard.
So your simple solution is to have Chris edit the MUL files and to impact the floorplan (and home decor styling) of every player's fortress on the server? It doesn't sound so simple anymore and it impacts plenty of people's situation for one man's agenda. A better situation would be to have a house sign toggle switch to make strongboxes into strongbags (with the same storage functionality as strongboxes) that can be walked over. Ultimately if you don't like the floorplan to the fortress, then the fortress isn't for you and you should get a castle or keep or village of smalls (which makes the whole "lending a home" to a new player super easy).
I believe the "floors" of the fort are 20z high, while a player is only 16z tall. So you can raise the strongboxes up 17 times with the house deco tool and it should allow passage. (Unless the boxes are 4z or more, which they unfortunately might be. Ugh)
strongboxes are too heavy to raise / lower... yea bags would work pfr... the multi's are already done would just require downloading - which if new items are slated for introduction in a future patch (which at one point they were) this or other multi / map changes could made at that time as well
I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to make strongboxes lighter. They are perma secured so it isn't like that matters. I cant think of any issues being able to lower and raise them could cause.
Another issue I just noticed upon testing: keys don't check range upon use. So even if you were to somehow get strongboxes raised up and put individual door keys in each person's strongbox, a friend of the house could use the FRONT door keys and run into the fortress holding the cursor and unlock any of the inside doors. No need to even access the person's strongbox. At that rate, you may as well make the doors to each of the small rooms unlocked and just advise people to only use the strongboxes. Under current mechanics, I can think of no way to individually designate/secure those rooms for each member. You have to trust your roommates. You COULD make up your own rooms throughout the fortress and use the strongbox's as we use trashbarrels, to block the entrance to that player made room. Since only the strongbox owner could chop it, he (and the house owner) would be the only ones who have access to that cordoned off room.
Because the doors were not re-keyed. The gold key that came with the house was still acting as the master key. Once a door is re-keyed that "master key" no longer works on that door -- must use the new key.
Fortress' original intent was a design for multi-player living. Guild houses etc. Thus your idea of this usage is great. The majority of players here have characters in different guilds. Many of these players have established home, thus they keep their super good stuff either in these homes or in individual character's bank. If speaking for guild housing, only members of the guild would be friend or co-owner. But even these characters should keep their "good" stuff in banks. Have handy stuff stored in the Guild house. If speaking for new player housing, again these players should keep their "good" stuff in banks. As for the strongboxes themselves. I am not familiar with the code on these. Can only co-owners use them or is the code also connected to the character who places it? If co-owner, than wouldn't work for individual storage, as anyone who is co-owned to the home could access any of them. Interesting thread. But I've voted no. It stems back to what El Horno said. "Trust your roommates" Do not co-own/friend players you don't trust. But also keep your good stuff in banks Thanks Marjo Governess of Wispfelt Westra on irc
I took the time to rekey every door in the A^T Guild Hall. I hung every door key within reach of the door. The newbie guest rooms have GM crafted chests and their respective keys are on the rings. If I feel like providing heightened security for anyone using a room, I can remove the keyring and let them risk it as they see fit. The fortress itself is always open but the hallway may be locked and the rooms are all unlocked unless they are in use. Sadly, most people are well on their way to their own home before they ever really need these spaces. While I love the design it is more suited for a shard with 1000 or more players where everyone can't or doesn't want to deal with having a house. I personally don't use strongboxes nor do I really care for them. This solution here provides a modicum of security but it's not foolproof, which is preferable in my opinion.
Strongboxes are inaccessible to anyone but the person who placed the strongbox or the home owner. It's a nice way to sneak in extra storage if you have characters who don't own homes.
