Customizing a House for Another Player

Among the many things I have on a UO wish list is wishing you could safely get permission to go into Customization Mode on someone else's house. 

Not everyone is that great at, or even interested in, figuring out how to build a well-done customized house. But they'd likely be interested in having someone else safely build it for them. 

The way it stands, just to help someone decorate effectively you have to be co-owed to their place. That's never comfortable. Not for the homeowner or the person helping to decorate. Players who have more than one account or have trusted people they share properties with likely have all their containers set to the Co-Owner security setting. 

Whenever I'm asked to help decorate and have to be co-owned, I know the owner is anxious about it. And I'm anxious too. I feel I need to stay glued to a one small spot, so I don't make the owner nervous by running around near their containers of items. I even worry about the homeowner misplacing or losing track of an item that has them thinking, Hmm, that decorator was near here and now I can't find my exceptional vorpal bunny slayer.

I wish there were an option on the house sign for the home-owner to target a player (like you would if you were friending them to the house) that allowed for them to go into house customization mode. It wouldn't give access to containers like co-owning does. There's a Revert button already so if the owner hated what the decorator / builder did they could go back to a saved design.

Is this too far-fetched an idea? 

Another option would be to have a sort of “blue print” export/import function.

Player A designs a house, exports blue print deed from the customization menu.
Player A sells or gives the blue print to player B.
Player B goes into custom mode and imports the blueprint.
Player B commits or edits the design.

Something like that might work. But the designer would have to be able to secure a plot to create on. And you can't do that unless you've got an account that doesn't already own a house. 

I suppose something could be worked out where the designer could secure a plot that doesn't condemn their current home. It would have to not allow for any items to be placed or stored. That would hamper the designer, I think. I know a lot of times I'll place items to see how it fits with the build. And I may make lots of changes to a build based on how locked down items look when placed.

Additionally, I foresee problems with people taking up housing spots needlessly. Making land shortage worse.

I can't help but think it would work better for the plot to be owned by a player that could safely grant access to customization mode to another player. 

LilyGrace said:

Something like that might work. But the designer would have to be able to secure a plot to create on. And you can't do that unless you've got an account that doesn't already own a house. 

I suppose something could be worked out where the designer could secure a plot that doesn't condemn their current home. It would have to not allow for any items to be placed or stored. That would hamper the designer, I think. I know a lot of times I'll place items to see how it fits with the build. And I may make lots of changes to a build based on how locked down items look when placed.

Additionally, I foresee problems with people taking up housing spots needlessly. Making land shortage worse.

I can't help but think it would work better for the plot to be owned by a player that could safely grant access to customization mode to another player. 

We can save our design in custom mode maybe be able to create a deed from the save file that another player uses to place a house 

"We can save our design in custom mode maybe be able to create a deed from the save file that another player uses to place a house "

But again, while building, you wouldn't be able to commit the design and see how it looks and where it needs to be tweaked. Well, you could but you'd have to use your own house plot. Which is probably already built and decorated. You're not going to want to tear down your own house and have tons of stuff fall into the moving crate.

If I'm building a new place, I'll get to a point where I like what I see, backup the design, commit, pop out to see how it looks and how you can move around in it. I'll hop back into customization, do more work on it and commit again to see if I like the progress. If I like it, I'll go back in, run a backup, then work on it some more. If I don't like it, I'll hit the revert button. I'll do this many, many times before a place is finished.

I like the creating a deed idea, but I can't really imagine doing an entire design in the ether. You'd have to be able to commit to the design and see how it's working. And though I do have more than one account I don't think I'd be willing to use an 18x18 plot that I'd be willing to tear down all the time in order to create custom house deeds. 

Now, if there were a sort of TC type shard you could go to and create custom house deeds that you could bring back to your home shard, I'd be all for that! 

If the developers were actually in touch with the player base they'd know this type of thing would be more popular than a seasonal shard....UOs greatest strength has always been its permanency 

It would be nice to be able to use TC for it.  However, I could see serious housing designers who have an extra account and do their designs on the slower shards where placing houses is easy, then transferring the deeds to other shards for sale.

You would be able to post the designs to the boards so people could see them.

I've suggested the addition of both interior design and architecture as skills many times 

Merus said:

It would be nice to be able to use TC for it.  However, I could see serious housing designers who have an extra account and do their designs on the slower shards where placing houses is easy, then transferring the deeds to other shards for sale.

You would be able to post the designs to the boards so people could see them.

I'm struggling to respond to this. So, you're saying a serious designer would have an extra account they'd use on an underpopulated shard, where land is available. Then they'd create house designs that could later be turned into deeds. Then, based on pictures shown here on the boards, the serious designer would hope someone would buy the custom house deed? How would these deeds be transferred to other shards? I guess the serious designer also has to have transfer tokens to wherever potential buyers may live. My head is spinning.

The whole deedable custom designs idea seems more and more impossible the longer you think about it. You'd have to find land. Create the build. Show the place off. Find a buyer. Be able to turn the build into a sellable, transferrable deed. The buyer, who likely already owns a house, has to then be able to replace their existing house by using this custom deed. <-- None of this is going to happen.

And that all sounds waaay more complicated than adding a 'Decorator Mode' feature to an existing system, that would allow another player to enter customization mode upon invitation.

I started this thread because I think there's a missed opportunity here. I believe there are quite a few players who feel they don't have the knack or the time for house building and decorating. I think it would be big fun to have a system in place that allows players to collaborate on house design and decorating.

Understandably, no one wants to share their log in info in order to let someone make changes to their house build. So, actually building for another player is pretty impossible. The best you can do is try to talk someone through it. It's no easy task to describe how to use the customization menu. And if you're trying to help a player decorate, a lot of times you need to be co-owned to get the work done more easily. And that's not comfortable or secure.

I can sit here all day knowing I'd fall on my sword before I'd ever steal from another player. That's not going to put another player at ease when they co-own me to their house while I try to build something for them. 

And yeah, McDougle, I'm sure this has all been discussed before. There's probably little I could contribute to this board that hasn't already been discussed more than once.  

First step would be able to create a house design on test center. Then be able to save that design in the house menu  as a deed that can be named and goes into your account and can be retrieved from a house sign on any shard. 

That way you could retrieve as many as you want on any shard. Another player would be able to load it from the customize menu.

You'd still need to be able to show off your new design tho, Pawain.  So yeah, I guess a TC type shard would work. Players would have to come and check out the designs on TC or the 'Decorator Shard', so to speak.

But that doesn't help when it comes to helping a player, with an existing house, tweak their design or let you have free reign to decorate. You're not really collaborating with another player with regard to a home they already have making decisions together or bouncing ideas around.

Edited to delete a train of thought tangent I started to go on but got derailed when I stopped to share Fritos with the dogs. LOL

If you are making a home for someone they could see it on TC and bring items they want included in the design.  Or you could post pics on a forum of each floor for those who just want a design someone made.

If you choose a design where containers become under walls, those items go into the moving crate.  But I have seen items go under the house sign when I used to customize my houses. So there are kinks that need worked out.

LilyGrace said:

Merus said:

It would be nice to be able to use TC for it.  However, I could see serious housing designers who have an extra account and do their designs on the slower shards where placing houses is easy, then transferring the deeds to other shards for sale.

You would be able to post the designs to the boards so people could see them.

I'm struggling to respond to this. So, you're saying a serious designer would have an extra account they'd use on an underpopulated shard, where land is available. Then they'd create house designs that could later be turned into deeds. Then, based on pictures shown here on the boards, the serious designer would hope someone would buy the custom house deed? How would these deeds be transferred to other shards? I guess the serious designer also has to have transfer tokens to wherever potential buyers may live. My head is spinning.

The whole deedable custom designs idea seems more and more impossible the longer you think about it. You'd have to find land. Create the build. Show the place off. Find a buyer. Be able to turn the build into a sellable, transferrable deed. The buyer, who likely already owns a house, has to then be able to replace their existing house by using this custom deed. <-- None of this is going to happen.

And that all sounds waaay more complicated than adding a 'Decorator Mode' feature to an existing system, that would allow another player to enter customization mode upon invitation.

I started this thread because I think there's a missed opportunity here. I believe there are quite a few players who feel they don't have the knack or the time for house building and decorating. I think it would be big fun to have a system in place that allows players to collaborate on house design and decorating.

Understandably, no one wants to share their log in info in order to let someone make changes to their house build. So, actually building for another player is pretty impossible. The best you can do is try to talk someone through it. It's no easy task to describe how to use the customization menu. And if you're trying to help a player decorate, a lot of times you need to be co-owned to get the work done more easily. And that's not comfortable or secure.

I can sit here all day knowing I'd fall on my sword before I'd ever steal from another player. That's not going to put another player at ease when they co-own me to their house while I try to build something for them. 

And yeah, McDougle, I'm sure this has all been discussed before. There's probably little I could contribute to this board that hasn't already been discussed more than once.  

I guess it comes from a perspective of someone who has, or has access to, shard shields… and that a lot of folks use the forums to see castle/keep designs from the contest.

I could easily see using an account to build houses on Napa, take pictures of them for the forums and send 20/30 of that deed to ATL and stick them on a vendor… presuming my ability to design produced demand for those designs.

Probably more of a “my designs that someone else might like” type of deal than accepting custom orders in advance.

But the ability to do it on TC would be much better, I’m just not sure how you get the design deed from TC to production without unintended consequences.

I guess to me it just sounds a lot easier to add an Architect or Designer or Decorator (whatever you want to call it) button to an already existing House Customization feature that's already a part of a house menu. 

Anywho, I can wish in one hand, etc., etc.

 To be honest I'd kill for some kind of guest decorator system in MMORPGs, and I might even be willing to pay people (in game currency) for help with this sort of thing if it was to ever happen, as I tend to be pants at it. I've played RIFT, ESO, SWTOR, and of course UO all of which have housing systems and as much as I like the idea of having your own little place to call home I usually wind up creating something that is like a dump more than a living space. I can never get things positioned right. The only game I remember being decent at it in was "Star Wars Galaxies" and that game went away a long time ago. 

 As it is I need to fix my existing UO house as I realized after the fact I used the wrong type of stone for the top floor so when you stand outside my basic cube doesn't even have a solid texture (sighs). One day they will come up with another system like this I'm decent with. 🙂

Save existing house design on a house design deed to resell to others.

The design deed can be applied any plot of the same size.

Advantages:
No need to mess with house security and risk getting bugs.
Designer can propose several design on the his own plot, and buyer can pick the best. 
Switch design by redeeding and applying a new design.

Therumancer said:

 To be honest I'd kill for some kind of guest decorator system in MMORPGs, ..., as I tend to be pants at it. 

AHAHAHA! I'd never heard that expression. I looked up, pants slang. I am totally going to steal that expression. That #@%! looks like a pile of pants! LOL

1. (UK, slang) Rubbish; something worthless.
   You're talking pants!

   The film was a load [or pile] of pants.

I would love to have the ability to purchase a new design for my smaller house.  There are some very creative people in this game, but I am not one of them.

Merus said:

Another option would be to have a sort of “blue print” export/import function.

Player A designs a house, exports blue print deed from the customization menu.
Player A sells or gives the blue print to player B.
Player B goes into custom mode and imports the blueprint.
Player B commits or edits the design.

Love this idea. Would be neat if it could all be managed by just clicking another player’s house sign. I often run around to get house decorating ideas.

UO has the best housing system of any MMO I think, and a feature like this would play to its strengths, add a social aspect, and potentially a new area in the economy.

Thumbs up on the blue print idea.  I really wish I had the design eye that others due for house customization.  I'd gladly pay a fair sum for nice house blue prints.