Proposed use of empty building in towns...

When I first started playing UO back in 98 I always wondered why in the heck there is so many empty buildings in the towns! Always baffled me. Through the years I hoped those were for some weird added content or something but nothing ever came of them. When T2A came out and nothing was done with them I thought how cool it would be if players could lease those buildings for guilds or vendor shops etc. Remember back when you needed repairs and not everyone had a GM smith so you'd go to the Smith in the north of Brit and find one and get your junk repaired. Was always fun! Anyway I always thought it would be cool to have those houses available to players to RENT!! Not own..Rent would be steep too to live INSIDE the city!

I havent the slightest idea if this should be implemented just thought it would be sweet.

If I remember correctly, at one point I heard about a player shard making static houses player livable, out come was very buggy. I could be totally wrong.

I do like the idea. Years ago I role-played a character who lived in one of the cabins inside the township of Minoc. Had to keep valuables in bank, but with a bed roll and kindling, could log out in her "own" cabin.

The staff has put some of the empty buildings to use. Several are faction strongholds. I've never been in factions, so I don't know if a faction character can instant log or have private containers within the strongholds.


Always fun to read new ideas. Thanks for posting this thread.


Marjo (in game) Governess of Wispfelt

Westra on irc.

What you're describing is scenery for the players to play out their plays.

newme, thats would be kind of cool! I guess since that was bugged badly maybe making them like flea markets for player vendors. Could be cool.

wylwrk, Im not sure what you mean by that. lol

I think that would be a great idea. I'd like to see certain buildings leased for player run events, in which they are given "house abilities" like banning people, locking things down, etc. for an X amount of time to be purchased. That way events can be held in town and more controllable by the players. Once the time runs out, all items inside are unlocked and will decay at the normal rate.

I like the idea of putting them to use, but definitely not for player run vendors!

defiance did this, rent was irl money

I remembered one fly by night player run shard had some house placed where the butcher in West Britain is, near the bank, and one of the GM's who was probably some middle school kid used it as a personal clubhouse for him and his buddies. I tried running in too but they banned me haha

Its a fun thought but I would be against the idea of players holding these buildings for long periods of time, also for use as vendor houses.

Players holding these houses for personal use for long periods of time would be complicated, supplies of this type of housing would be limited leading to disagreements on who can or can not have one, and the effort that would go into this would not make sense to implement.

Player vendors in town would take business away from true player vendor housing, I feel vendor placement in its current state is perfectly fine.

That being said I also would find both ideas to be tacky, and would take away the professional feel UOR has done a great job of providing us here.


I would be fine with very short term event "renting" of unused buildings, maybe just a boot or ban option, and for no more then an hour or two, as the event would require.

Just my 2 cents.

I'd rather just see more NPC's put in the Town Buildings, personally.

Fill them with rare spawn points on a randomizer.


Support random rare spawns!

lol, there is no way our staff would make anything in game payable by real life money.

Interesting to see how other servers do things which I'm glad ours doesn't

Lots of good thoughts here..Making them able to be rented by players for a certain period of time would be cool but like it was mentioned it would be best for events etc. The reason I bring it up at all is because I feel like it would pull some of the players back in to towns. Like someone else said above players would sit on these and never sell...Well thats already happening with the best vendor houses on the shard Example being the ones by yew bank. I personally dont have the desire to run a vendor but I do think it would be sweet to be able to go to britain and enter one of the many vacant houses where PLAYERS have placed their Rare home deco vendors or go next door where players have placed their reg vendors or bulk resources etc. Each building could have all the vendors selling the same type stuff. That would create a price war I think. Who wouldn't want to buy stuff cheaper? Also i dont think there are enough people on UOR who are interested in running vendors that placement would become an issue right off and who says Britain is the only city this could be done in? Nearly every city has plenty of unused buildings. Anyway just a few thoughts. Also I wouldnt place a banker there either.

If it ever ends up that players Are able to rent these spaces I must insist on a random interior Balron spawn..... Yeah.

I was actually thinking about this the other day when I was in Delucia where the Paladins should spawn on the north end of town (its barren).

1. Rent + vendor upkeep + lease with the option to renew the lease at the same price IF nobody is willing to pay more (lease bidding war)

2. Super expensive gold sink 10mill+ with a 7 day decay timer and friends can't refresh. (Prevent eternal refresh status)

and every so often one of them becomes sick and tired with the guards harassing them day in and day out and they revolt with pitchforks and begin stabbing the locals.

I am on board with this idea.

Made me lol

I like it the way it is. Sometimes it's nice to go to some quiet corner with Scholastica and bow to each other over and over, if you know what I mean...

The empty buildings make good scenery, and I certainly am not looking for clutter on the streets. Back in the day players might hold wedding ceremonies or hold parties at NPC buildings. As for leasing? Meh...

There is in fact a RunUO add-on called Knive's Twon Houses which does exactly as it described here. You can set up any 3 dimensional area to be a "home" which can be rented or sold.

It needs to be used with caution though. I have it implemented on a server I run and intend to use it as a gold sink. Someone renting a house in a town should have to pay a lot of money for it. I spoke with Telamon about it when I was trying to set it up and he felt that it was too buggy. It does have some issues but since being modified by a third party it is a lot better. I am sure that if Telamon wanted to he could fix the problems with it but I think the fact that it is NOT implemented here after this length of time probably shows he doesn't want it.

I think that selling a plot in town outright would be a bit too elitist and, more importantly, would devalue other vendor shops, but renting the spot for a lot of gold or platinum for a limited time, I see as potentially reasonable and a useful gold sink.

Also to take an example, the little market building in Britain NW of the East bank I have set up as a town house because it would make a perfect vendor shop but I would not sell it to an individual as that would imbalance other vendor shops, but I am considering renting out spots in there for select product vendors to dedicated merchant players, perhaps to provide newbies with the wares they need.

There is also the potential for setting up an area of land as a town house and adding props to it in keeping with its intended purpose. In Origin's UO, a couple of well-known blacksmiths would set up in Ocllo at the blacksmith table (outside) at a regular time slot and repair people's armour. They had no protection while they provided this service - which was great for roleplay! - but that could be solved with town houses by friending the blacksmith or only allowing access by blacksmiths >= 100 so that they could ban thieves or trouble makers from the house and have a strongbox for their supplies.

It's a very powerful piece of software.

FB

Atlantic '97 to '99, Siege Perilous '99-2002.

I played on a shard where you could rent out a room in an inn, for a modest price. You couldn't lock anything down or anything like that, but you did have access to a little trunk that you could keep things in. Rent was modest, as it was mostly set up for new players to have a place to hang out while they macro'ed, etc. It was actually really fun and interesting, and you got a key that worked for as long as you paid the price on the room, which you had to pay daily at the front desk.

Anyway, I thought that it was cool, and it totally fit within the realms of expectation for a shard like this. Perhaps a few of the empty homes could be turned into boarding houses or hostels or something like that, with just a chest in a small room that could be locked? I know I would appreciate it, as long as PKs couldn't somehow hack the rules and slaughter noobs.