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Player town add-ons

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 12:08 am
by Maahes
Kasimir wrote:What It Means To Have A Player-Run Community: This is very important for us, as staff, to recognize a player-run town so that we may acknowledge it as such. Therefore, I think it's vital that you all know how to define a player-run town. A player-run town does not, necessarily, have to be built by role players. It can be built by any group of people with the dedication to take control of a good sized area through housing and turn individual houses into buildings with a purpose other than storing your loot. The purpose of a player-run town is for communion between a group of players with a common goal. We, as staff, enjoy the idea of player-run towns and offer "some" assistance to futher them. However, for us to recognize a player-run town it depends on you and the effort you put into building an "active" community outside of the usual towns.
You've just run into one of the many player run town on UOSA and found that these towns have custom add-ons such as roads and fences. Now you're wondering how you can get something similar, here are the steps that you will need to take.

1. You will need to build an active guild with as many players as you can.

2. Once you have this guild, the next step is to begin planning and building your village. Having all your guild members place their house in a common area is usually a good way to do this.

3. The main purpose of player towns is to promote active communities and create activity in different areas of our world. This is the key element to obtaining any special add-ons to your city. This means you will need to promote your guild within the community with things such as events, quests, fight nights, anything that will spread your guilds name in a positive way within second age. Because in the end it will be your co-players choice whether or not you get add-ons.

4. The fourth and final step is to gain approval from the players of UOSA. You will need to state your case in the forum on whether or not your guild is deserving of these town add-ons. To do this your, post may contain a poll, activities your guild has held or plan on holding. It is the poll results and comments combined that will decide if any action from staff will be taken to improve your player city.

Player towns are meant to be for the players and by the players, this is why staff will no longer make the decisions about who is deserving and who is not. Staff do not build towns, players do. Any town wishing to add any visual enhancements should already be well established in the community.


Additional notes:
-Any custom town improvement will still cost the guild a substantial amount of resources and gold.
-To limit the progression of town construction, town owners will be limited to only having a small improvements at a time. This is intended to prevent immediate "spring-ups".
-Your town will need to stay maintained(active) in order to prevent any upkeep costs for repairs. In other words, if your add-ons decay due to inactivity, they will need to be payed in full to be repaired.

These guidelines are subject to change at any time. Staff will still reserve the final say on any decision regarding a guild town receiving any improvements.

(This policy, and the addition or removal of new add-ons, are frozen until a new policy can be written to replace this one.)

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 11:18 pm
by Scoott
Cool.

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 9:16 am
by Derrick
Interesting chat I found on stratics:
UO Open House March 4, 1999: http://uohoc.stratics.com/logs/1999-03-04-pub.shtml wrote: Uziel - *Prometheus* I've got a question: Exactly what is the process by which GMs determine who gets special assistance(Items, etc) and who does not? Some role-players get acknoledgement, others do not...
GM_BEAST - This is actually a very involved process.
GM_BEAST - I will breifly explain the process, then I will direct you to two web sites that can elaborate on the process in more detail.
GM_BEAST - What happens it that the Volunteers, Counselors and Seers, as well as the IGMs monitor the various major UO news sites
GM_BEAST - and the traffic into the UO Event Calendar
GM_BEAST - The sites include UOVault, Stratics, and CoB
GM_BEAST - They also keep an eye out on their servers for sites that seem to be the center of player activity
GM_BEAST - They site runs quests, has meetings, and is generally a great source of interest
GM_BEAST - Once they have caught a Volunteer's attention, then they are inspected to make sure that they fit what we feel is a good role-playing venue
GM_BEAST - Open to all players of all playing types, that they are open at all times, and that they run quests on a regular basis
GM_BEAST - We will have about 4 different volunteers write reviews on the venue
GM_BEAST - If they are all positive, then the IGMs will determine whether the location will be assisted or not
GM_BEAST - If they are all glowing, then the IGMs will go along with their recommendations.
GM_BEAST - Here are a couple of places to find information about running a business and getting it "blessed"
GM_BEAST - One place is the web page for a venue called Kazola's Treetop Keg and Winery
GM_BEAST - The URL is http://kazolas.crpgtavern.com/deskofkazola.html
GM_BEAST - The second is from Zerver's Tavern Review
GM_BEAST - http://members.xoom.com/zerver/TheShopKeeper.htm
GM_BEAST - Both of these pages should give you all the information you will need to run a successful business and possibly become "blessed".

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 9:45 am
by Wise
Nice find derrick, I like this, its similar to how we are doing things here now, but we dont have the voulenteers rather the community, which I think in a smaller shard is what has to be done :)

Its unfortunate that those links are broken though

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 1:02 pm
by Kraarug
So, RP was an important aspect to getting a guild town?

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:03 pm
by BlackFoot
im surprised well maybe not, how close the UOSA system is to how osi did it :D
except with the player base isntead of 4 volunteeres deciding haha

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 9:33 am
by Thesbus
I spoke in game with GM Yoda but some things he didn't have the answer to. Instead of asking you in game Derrick I figured I would make a post so you only have to answer the question once.

1) What are the limitations to a player run town? Yoda told me we could not get banks or guards...but can we get other town services..NPC vendors, specific town shaped buildings (styles that are not purchasable), moats around buildings?

2) Can we get spawned graveyards like the one north of brit or the one outside moonglow?

3) In general we just want to know how drastically a guild can petition to change the face of Sosaria...or are we limited to pure cosmetics.

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 12:45 pm
by Maahes
This system is based very highly on the opinion of UOSA and its players. This means the players will usually decide what they think is acceptable as an addition to the land here on Second Age.

Now to answer your questions more specifically:

1)Any NPC, with the exception of healer and bartender, are a very rare addition and will require a lot of work and upkeep. Also there are those which will not be added such as the Banker and guards. We have never added specific vendors to a town, it is usually the town duty to stock their own vendors. Buildings have also been very rare, only a tent has been added for a town.

2) If a graveyard is part of your proposal to the shard and is accepted, small spawns have been added before and we have had very successful undead themed towns in the past.

3) Go through the proposal threads in the Crossroads Tavern, you will get an idea of what players usually look for. You will also get good examples of successful applications as well as bad ones. If you want anything added to your town, I suggest you have very good reasoning and are able to back up your merit and demonstrating these things in your application is key.

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 1:28 pm
by Hicha
I was wondering how players are able to acquire items like a lamp post outside their house. I noticed Bigoud has a lamp post outside his Yew vendor mall, yet a vendor mall doesn't exactly qualify as a player town.

There is also a lamp post in front of a single 7x7 house just southeast of Trinsic moongate, which is front of a keep/castle (don't remember, been awhile since I've been down there.) Maybe this used to be a player town, not sure, but if it just takes gold to get outdoor decor I'd like in on it.

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 3:52 pm
by Maahes
hiicha wrote:I was wondering how players are able to acquire items like a lamp post outside their house. I noticed Bigoud has a lamp post outside his Yew vendor mall, yet a vendor mall doesn't exactly qualify as a player town.

There is also a lamp post in front of a single 7x7 house just southeast of Trinsic moongate, which is front of a keep/castle (don't remember, been awhile since I've been down there.) Maybe this used to be a player town, not sure, but if it just takes gold to get outdoor decor I'd like in on it.
These lamp posts were most likely acquired through the trophy turn in system as unique items.

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 2:42 pm
by Pro
how did PEE get addons w/o requesting on the forums?

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 7:03 pm
by Derrick
PEE had additions which pre-dated this post, and they were moved when they related their town.

It should be added if it doesn't already so so above, that no statics on the map are in the possession or belong to any player or player group, and we reserve the right to add or remove in-world decorations at any time.

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2009 2:14 am
by Pro
make the fence higher please you can't see it sometimes ;[

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 1:36 pm
by BlackFoot
Jonric: What aspects of the UO community are you happiest about?

Designer Dragon: I think it's probably the in-game community centers, the player-run taverns and the like. UO offers facilities for furnishing them and decorating them, and players really like that. The player-run establishments are what gives each shard its own unique flavor, and are a major part of the success of UO, to my mind.

Re: Player town add-ons

Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2011 7:43 pm
by GuardianKnight
This system may have been well intentioned but it didn't account for the trend in our community to make it "cool" to hate someone publicly. So you get nothing now unless you are popular and have not gotten on any guilds bad sides.

This community hates this community. That's how I have seen it shortly after watching many forum threads and IRC. At this point, if you ask for a town addon, you will only garner some kind of jealousy and a down vote because the rest of the community knows that they would get the same treatment.

There is much love for the staff here and the idea of UO in the T2A era, but everyone here secretly hates the server because of it's cut off date. It's been mentioned many times by a few people that the cut off date leaves the game broken.

Your population is cynical and angry. That's how I have seen it and that's why I stopped playing a while back. To much negative energy.