the votes are in...

go to test to see the winners....

Only 62 votes to get a winner.  Those that cried about a guild deciding the winner.   A Llama won instead.
 😂 

Priceless.

Congrats to the Llamas!!!!

1. Needs the fireplaces removed.  Let us add our own if we want them.  There are other design problems with this but the fireplaces really limit what we can do with it.

2. Replace the pink floor tiles with something more neutral. Grey goes well with that tile set and Grey is a very neutral color for design.  As it stands now the design choices for this due to the colors is severely limited. Very few people can make this their own.  Also the stairway railing going from second to third floor, the last railing piece is actually the wrong one.

3. Both of them... just remove them from the contest. Please.  Have a dev's pick as number three. Only one person in game would mind, the designer of that eyesore.  Maybe she forgot to finish it, I'm not sure, but it's terrible from so many design points and looks half finished.

One and two are fine even if not everyone's cup of team how three got so many votes baffles me as first glance i thought maybe they left it so people could customize to their liking with but a deeper look it seems like it was just left unfinished.....

Ill be using the winning design ASAP and love the fireplace.  It roasts Llama Chops wonderfully.

I am just surprised a Keep won.  I thought we would have to wait a long time. 

I don't have a castle so I have no opinion on the other 2 or three winners.

Thanks to all the devs!  It was fun and will be fun some more.

They did a fine job on #'s 1 & 2. Congratulations!!!
Some shenanigans are going on with 3 though! But Congrats regardless lol

For the record I didn't use any of my 6 votes for the empty castle plot. No regrets. The players spoke for it.

I think there must have been some voting shenanigans going on there, it went pretty much as expected, I wonder how many people will actually replace their current castle/keep with these designs? I know I won't be and nor will any family members. Dot's is pretty but I didn't like the inside as much as the outside, too colourful for me. The other two were just not the best examples of a castle or keep both inside and out, did people vote for them without even looking? 

The Keep layout can be worked around but those 2 castles are a pain in the ass for layout.  The biggest gripe on castles was the floor plans and look what won.  Come on PUB 102

I came in 8th 🙁

Bilbo said:

The Keep layout can be worked around but those 2 castles are a pain in the ass for layout.  The biggest gripe on castles was the floor plans and look what won.  Come on PUB 102

Agreed. I briefly considered making my castle into the new keep for that design. But I'll wait and hope that 102 brings a winner more to my liking.

Ok so.....ooof

Violet said:

1. Needs the fireplaces removed.  Let us add our own if we want them.  There are other design problems with this but the fireplaces really limit what we can do with it.

2. Replace the pink floor tiles with something more neutral. Grey goes well with that tile set and Grey is a very neutral color for design.  As it stands now the design choices for this due to the colors is severely limited. Very few people can make this their own.  Also the stairway railing going from second to third floor, the last railing piece is actually the wrong one.

3. Both of them... just remove them from the contest. Please.  Have a dev's pick as number three. Only one person in game would mind, the designer of that eyesore.  Maybe she forgot to finish it, I'm not sure, but it's terrible from so many design points and looks half finished.

 

I think the really last word in this case here is not yet spoken - but this winner vote #3 is a terrible felt butt in the ar..se to all those who really fret about this content. I'm not really surprised about and in some way i did even expect something like this - so I'm not so bitterly disapointed - but to see this result it only makes me headshaking what's up in peoples mind. None of my worsest nightmares I could have imagine that someone would live in such a house - - and at the end it's our choise if we want to change our plot to crap or leave it as it is.
My own castle certainly will remain oldstyle...

*grumbles* some people should really give up smoking ****....

Democrazy and give folks a choise to choose what they like is certainly fine and important - and this is again a result of this "Time-Consuming-Monster" a small Dev-Team of 5 people have to live with. You cannot be everywhere - but a 5 minute overview and a preview-shoot out next round would really be better - and much more heart-attach-avoiding

Wow those are not at all my taste to be polite 

like someone here has said about closing accounts, I'm closing down 3 accounts in September just tired of this direction. 

not it sure why they just don’t give us 32x32 customizable lots so we can all enjoy our house the way we like them. 

The more time i spend in Dot's castle the more i like it getting used to the colors seems to have softened them a bit for me and i can make the design work !!

Did anyone really think this was going to work? Anybody? Can we have a customizable plot like every other house in the game now? I said from the very beginning what a colossal waste of time this would be. Castle owners are still hosed and it's not right. Once again we wasted a ton of dev time and accomplished nothing and castle owners aren't the least bit satisfied by it. I have no idea what the motivation would be, but I swear they just want us all to get fed up and quit. Custom plot, make some accommodations for terrain for existing properly placed castles, *bam* done. Everyone happy except you know who. Me being right about what a bad idea this contest thing was is the only satisfaction this castle owner got out of this drug out fiasco. I give up, some people just don't have common sense.

I get the idea that all the none owning castle owners decided to try and teach us Castle owners a lesson.  I have a Castle and the design I picked was based on what a hassle it is to get around in a Castle and how I could set up different crafting stations / display areas and just general gathering area and very few of all the designs fit those requirements.  Done of those Castle designs that won will work for anybody.

IMHO these contests in the future will be no different so why even bother.  Look around a see how many spots were taken and nothing was ever done to them, to me it was just a bunch of people that said I don't have a castle so I will take this spot so you can't.  Devs should look at the accounts that have unused plots and ban them from placing any castle or keep spots in the future.

MissE said:

Violet said:

1. Needs the fireplaces removed.  Let us add our own if we want them.  There are other design problems with this but the fireplaces really limit what we can do with it.

2. Replace the pink floor tiles with something more neutral. Grey goes well with that tile set and Grey is a very neutral color for design.  As it stands now the design choices for this due to the colors is severely limited. Very few people can make this their own.  Also the stairway railing going from second to third floor, the last railing piece is actually the wrong one.

3. Both of them... just remove them from the contest. Please.  Have a dev's pick as number three. Only one person in game would mind, the designer of that eyesore.  Maybe she forgot to finish it, I'm not sure, but it's terrible from so many design points and looks half finished.

Agree,

wont be replacing my Keep or Castle.  Don't want fireplaces and pokey corner rooms, hate the  pink  tile choice, not to mention it is near impossible to find your way to the roof, and all those itsy bitsy rooms, and the third one has lots of wasted space and unusable water tiles as well as heaps of tiny rooms and a multitude of floor tiles.  The pink thing is nice to 'look' at for something different from an architechtural viewpoint but would be worse to live in than exisiting castles and impossible to 'edit' due to the tile  choice.

The designs are not 'bad' for the owner, if that is what they want then it is fine.  Just too much stuff in each that is owner specific and not suitable for the majority. 

I wish they would just let us customise our own. So over UO atm, it seems every time they 'do' something that people have been crying out for for ages, they have to do it in such a way that it is borked from the beginning. Lets just make stuff that will IRK everyone rather than just give people what they ask for.

I am sure they really wanna just pee us off til we quit.  

Unsortable jewelry boxes

Hopeless doom modifications, sampires online.

Changes to shadowguard making it again template specific.

Useless rewards for the Eodon mega quests (zippy etc, I mean seriously 'titles'? for all that damn effort)

Absolutely crap Endless Jny restrictions

Hopeless castle/keep contest

It would of been so nice to be able to just customise castles, they could of taken the horrid blue glacial set of tiles out of the mix to avoid that monstrosity but there were a LOT of designs nice designs but sadly too many with silly additions forcing you to have stuff you just don't want.

The day is sure edging close now for me to shut down my 3 accounts.  Every time you think you are gonna get something new and exciting to re-energise you they bork it up. 🙁

 

I just resigned to the fact that we will never get a functional layout and we will continue to live with what we have.  IMHO is most of these designs were done by non castle owners and the voting was done to give us more bad designs.  We do not need a bunch of perty stuff, we need function.

As I mentioned in another post , I doubt I will find a castle made by someone else to fit me  good enough,to start all ower with taking down my castle with loads or masonry in it.. I rather keep my laggy one. No1 and 2 was good buildings but fireplaces or pink floors to my deco. No thanks. It was fun to build castles but making a competition of it made it bound to fail. I might go there next time and spend some weeks,but I have no hope to get that crafter and deco friendly place I need
The prob is also you cant build a place exactly as you want it for your playstyle,and think enough ppl will vote for it,so you have to leave gaps so ppl can chose if they want walls doors or arches and thoose buildings looks unfinished and get no votes. So my castle will have to wait for as long as it takes or forever.  We need the empty plot and some improvements to the tool pieces . Why not remove the eyeoring ones and  finish the old sets atleast?

I really hope that the tie between #3 and 4 will see #4 being chosen. #3 is simply horrible while #4 actually allows you to build your own custom castle. Lt. Dan you should have used your 6 accounts to vote for your empty plot!

I think we all went about this the wrong way, it's UO we should have all bribed our friends and guild-mates to vote for us, then we might have got something we liked. I actually feel quite angry about how some of the 'winners' were 'chosen', we waited years for new castles and keeps and this is what we ended up with because some people were so determined to win even though their designs were not particularly liked. I give up. 

jaytin said:

I think we all went about this the wrong way, it's UO we should have all bribed our friends and guild-mates to vote for us, then we might have got something we liked. I actually feel quite angry about how some of the 'winners' were 'chosen', we waited years for new castles and keeps and this is what we ended up with because some people were so determined to win even though their designs were not particularly liked. I give up. 

Some did just that, which is why some of the borg cubes got the number of votes they got.

jaytin said:

I think we all went about this the wrong way, it's UO we should have all bribed our friends and guild-mates to vote for us, then we might have got something we liked. I actually feel quite angry about how some of the 'winners' were 'chosen', we waited years for new castles and keeps and this is what we ended up with because some people were so determined to win even though their designs were not particularly liked. I give up. 

How do you know they were not liked when they in fact received more votes than any other? 

Congrats to the winners! Well done. Just remember you can't please them all

Hope the castle owners enjoy the new designs and the Devs can finally move on and focus on areas affecting a broader playerbase again.

Garth_Grey said:

jaytin said:

I think we all went about this the wrong way, it's UO we should have all bribed our friends and guild-mates to vote for us, then we might have got something we liked. I actually feel quite angry about how some of the 'winners' were 'chosen', we waited years for new castles and keeps and this is what we ended up with because some people were so determined to win even though their designs were not particularly liked. I give up. 

Some did just that, which is why some of the borg cubes got the number of votes they got.

The crowd on Stratics went crazy over the idea of voting a blank spot some days ago lol

We whine and bitch about people wanting to solo UO but then whine and bitch when people make use of the fact that it's an MMO lets all breathe.... what should happen is for them to add the winners to the tool let us convert our current test places and "move into" the new designs for a week or two get our deco and things in see how it looks at least just spend a little time in the design yes Dots castle is bright at first but after an hour or so i got used to it and can deal with it . again i will point out i am willing to bet 80% of the player base has neither a keep or castle and the fact the fact that the dev bothered to at least try to cater to the 20% that do should not be overlooked

I built a keep-sized version of my 18 x 18 on Siege. I knew I could live in it, because I had done.  Result - no one liked it but me.  (no 194 )  Oh well. Seems no one shares my taste. I think I could live in the winning keep, and I like Dot's, though it's not for me.  but I don't think I could live in No. 3.

The disappointing part of this contest really is the pattern we have seen for the part 10 years or so.... a decent concept with utterly horrible execution.

Concept: add some additional housing choices in the keep and castle size footprints.  Allow the community to participate by using their creativity to submit potential designs.  Excellent concept.

Execution:  No design tool when announced years ago.  Delay, delay, delay.  Contest was turned into a player popularity contest or who could buy/recruit enough votes.

Selection of winners should have come from a panel of 3rd party judges who did not have access to the identities of those who submitted the designs.  It would have been nice to have several criteria for the contest that designs would have been scored against and, since this will be a recurring thing, a theme to design.

Amen. couldnt said it better . 

Agreed should have been outsourced to judges 

also I voted on the empty castle lot and accidentally casted 1 vote on wrong plot so the empty lot actually came in 3rd lol 

what ever dots castke design is nice but the building materials are not my stysale, if it was the original castle materials I would use it.  

I agree with Mene_Drachenfels. My 2 Castles will keep as they are.

Thanks to those people who voted for their Guildmates without checking the designs...

I think the winning Castles / Keeps will keep mostly unused. There a lots of better designs! Please give us 32x32 Custom plots! Or give the Designers the chance to use their own Contest Castle! 

It's a shame what people do! I've spend a lot of time to design a complex and fantasyfull Elven Castle. How can it be that an empty plot is on the 4th place and my Castle that nearly everybody I spoke to liked, is not even in the top 40??? That smells like Guildvoting!

Another point is the stupid voting system. 300 Castles / Keeps in a list. We need to click a button behind every entry to gate to the location of it?! Is there no way to put all designs in a row where we all could walk throu and see them all togerther befor we make our vote?

Sorry for my harsh words, but this is crap!

I agree with you, I just feel so angry and upset at how this went, the Devs should know that in UO human nature spoils everything. Sad.

It's just human nature. No one can design your perfect home. It's a very personal issue. It just can't be done. At the very least it would need to be something I could build up like the masonry on the current castles. That's where most designs have a real deal breaker. I pretty much resigned myself when they first announced this whole thing and built up my castle as best I could adding complete floors to the second and third story, I can live with that. But I'm VERY disappointed with the approach they took with this. I can appreciate the work that went into some of these and find them beautiful but it would never work for me. Well the open plot would be cool 😂 I'd be behind that 100%. They'd rather let the game die than listen to us though. I still don't believe they addressed the issue of terrain blocking items. That issue alone will knock half the people outta using new designs even if they wanted to. If one can place the current design there they should have a system to allow the new design to go there. I don't think a newly placed castle should be allowed to go where a castle wouldn't go before but they need to do something. The poll I saw it was like 80%+ weren't interested in the new designs so it's probably beating a dead horse anyway. Then knock off another percentage for not being able to replace and old design with a new one because of terrain. I can't even talk about this lol. I get so upset over how this was handled lol

I know without a doubt someone utilized many, many active accounts to move theirs to the top of the list.  I dunno how you combat that.  Devs should just take note of the nice designs and make their own.  Something that fits with the spirit of up and the classic houses of expectation.

What? UO and cheating in the same sentence? I thought the point was to make a new layout that people would want, not to make your own vision and then vote for yourself multiple times.  🙁

It would be also a good idea to have 5-10 new designs with different Styles after the Contest. Something Like Elves, Gargoles, Water Castles a.s.o. So we all would have a real choice what kind of Castle we would like to have... But now we can choose the flavor of the ****...  

Not sure how that **** got through the filter @Miracle ;
but ya I agree add more prebuilts but better yet just give customizable 32x32 lots 

In hind site..it would have been better had a set land with plots already assigned spots been offered for sight seeing after completion and a gate system to see  ...

  I only was able to see a few castle and keep renderings and none were worth the second look.  I saw personally made.. meaning what would be good for them alone,,,,

   I have great respect for architecture persons who take a shell and mold it to fit many peoples taste..  

Bravo to those who choose different stone and were colorful... 

Many tried A symmetry, great idea but we sometimes forget the west/north side is not easy to be seen and would be best to not fit this method of building. 

Many of you put in tons of tiny rooms...and others tossed in huge large 1 room floors...many put in stairs....these are the bane of every players existence! Don't get me wrong a set of them do wonders in deco...but the placement on many was the major drawback to the house.  

I also want a rooftop... this has always been a big plus even when it took me a rune to get up there! (yes 97 you needed a rune up as the top floor back then was not a written no no but GMS were not happy about it.) I did find the east side door and planting/portch a great idea Real castles had sally ports at ground lvl as a sneaky escape point....

No this idea was not well thought out on the Dev side... but then again they do have tons of work  on their hands.. 

Hopefully ill be able to do a set of keep and castle to give it a try...

lol... just as I expected, the most unusable designs made their way to the top. 

I think we should just be allowed to customize our own castles & keeps. I don't really see any reason that this couldn't be implemented. 

At this point I am all for allowing Castles and Keeps to be customized as IMHO we will never get an open floor Castle/Keep like we have been asking for all these years.

Cetric said:

I know without a doubt someone utilized many, many active accounts to move theirs to the top of the list.  I dunno how you combat that.  Devs should just take note of the nice designs and make their own.  Something that fits with the spirit of up and the classic houses of expectation.

Let me start off by saying I'm not a fan of someone being able to use 60 accounts to get their design selected.  With that said it is NOT cheating.  The devs put forth the rules.  The devs created a system that would dilute the votes (300 choices is foolish and alllowed this to occur). All this person did (if in fact they did) was use his/hers resources to accomplish a goal. Good for them.  I'm also glad they are keeping 60 accounts active and doing more than their share to keep UO funded!

And all 60 of those accounts were paid for, they were not free accounts so where the hell is the "cheating" people.  Stop with the damn cheating bull crap.

After reading this thread I can see why the developers didn't really want to touch castle/keep designs.
Yes as in the real world democracy sucks, they let the wrong people vote and they voted the wrong way. So unless you can make constructive suggestions on how to make the process better for everyone calm down. If you don't like the winners no one is forcing you to use one.

If you haven't written me off as a troll (I'm not) I would like to make some points

1. First to all the entrants thanks for your effort and I hope you had fun.
2. If you insist on a European castle look first tell me why in a world of mages, dragons etc anyone would bother building easily destroyed walls. Half the monsters in the game could go over or though any castle wall ever built.
3. I believe the developers have indicated that customization of a lot the size of a keep is beyond the capabilities of the existing core program and I believe them. I sometimes get lag going by a 18X18 let alone even a modestly decked out castle.
4. UO is a game who's only purpose is to have fun. I had fun helping with the wife's entry (292) and looking forward to doing my own next time. I just wish there had been a way to get some feed back.
5. I really enjoyed seeing what other players could come up with and will be stealing some of their ideas next time.
6. If 4 & 5 do not apply to you sorry please go back to what you were doing before the contest.
7. Just to be clear none of the winners rock my boat but congrats to them anyway. My taste in buildings like my sense of humour is not for everyone.

Tim said:

UO is a game who's only purpose is to have fun.

I had a blast running around looking at every house, taking notes, screen shots, making my own house. There was like 30 different plots that blew my mind and it was really hard to narrow it down to just 3. I did go back and revisit the top 20. that gave me an idea of what uo players want and it broke my heart. it made me realize that what I like isn't anything that others might like, but that is ok. I really hope that some of you great amazing builders will continue to make your awesome houses. I know that im discouraged and don't want to make something that I could never have. I really hope others don't feel the same. What Tim said is something I think we all need to remember. "UO is a game who's only purpose is to have fun" enjoy all

Re-posting this from the other forum because it's spot on.

I will preface this post with this: I didn't submit a design and I barely use my castle (since I primarily play on a different shard now than it is located) and don't have a keep, so I don't have much of a dog in this race. I started to build something, but between the crashing and the other demands on my time, it just wasn't worth it. Building a custom castle for a contest caught my interest and attention from the very first announcement (a year and a half ago...), but I wasn't able to give it my best effort and that's my problem and no one else's.

I highly doubt I will be converting my castle to either of the winning castle designs (assuming these are the final winners). They just aren't to my taste as is, and I will leave my criticisms of the designs at that.

However, I'm not disappointed in the results of this contest--because my expectations were set by everything that led up to this. This contest has been consistently unthought and ill-communicated from the very beginning, and every step has been painful and wasteful of player and dev time. No part of this contest seems to have been operated with any kind of forward planning, critical thought, or quality control. It's been so consistently poorly executed that I have actually wondered if it was being deliberately mishandled for some reason.

And so I reiterate:

I'd rather walk past the odd crystal Borg cube or lava/swamp/waterfall monstrosity than watch this train keep wrecking and players continuing to be disappointed over and over again.

I got genuinely excited for this contest when it was first announced, and that is really the worst part of all of this for me because ultimately it has done more to erode my faith in UO than just about anything else I can think of (and I can think of some doozies)... the sheer mundanity and obviousness of failure of vision and logical planning is deeply discouraging and bodes poorly for the game's future. This contest should have been an easy slam dunk, not a painful exercise in confusion and time-wasting. It could have been done.

Rather than recount an exhaustive breakdown of everything that went wrong, let's posit what SHOULD have happened:

• Some kind of castle/keep customization tool should have been available BEFORE the contest was announced. That could have been what we had on Test Center. It could have been a standalone utility or even an emulator given provisional approval for this purpose. It should NOT have been guesswork, photoshop, or graph paper and happy thoughts.
• Only AFTER the tool was ready and tested (or at least CLOSE to ready) should there have been an official announcement. This announcement needed to include, FROM THE BEGINNING:
  • A clear deadline for entry.
  • Clear and reasonable criteria and rules. For example:
    • A theme: for the first contest, for example, only actual castles/keeps of classic UO building materials would be permitted. Future contests could include Tokuno, gargoyle, or other materials, but an initial narrow focus would simplify selection and probably result in higher quality comparablestructures. If possible, adjust the aforementioned tool to only include permissible materials each time the contest is run to eliminate any doubt.
    • All floors and rooms must be accessible by foot. Teleporter tiles allowed, but not as the only means to reach a given area.
    • Building must be structurally sound and complete. No missing corners or dangling floor tiles or stairways to nowhere, etc.
    • No unwalkable flooring tiles (water, swamp, lava).
    • No non-housing tool pieces should be visible in the final design. No furniture, no deco, no ladders, no crafted stone addons, etc.
    • At least 75% of the plot must contain structure. Lawn or empty plot may make up no more than 25% of the ground level of the plot.
    • Materials used together should be complimentary in the vein of classic UO art and buildings.
    • Entries should be designed with general use in mind to offer players the most versatility if the design is chosen.
    • Entries must be in good taste and conform to the TOS. I think this is the only rule they actually had. It's good, but insufficient.
  • Clear standards for what buildings would or would not be eligible for conversion upon contest completion. Some people waited a year and a half in anticipation only to find out at the last minute that the rock in their courtyard would keep them from being able to convert anyway.
• Entries should be as anonymous as possible, but possible for anyone to view in full.
• A panel of judges would choose three castles and three keeps.
  • Devs would be best, and (hopefully) the most impartial.
  • Alternatively, I would suggest EMs, imperfect though that may be. They should, ideally, not know whose entry was whose. They should definitely not be judges if they or anyone in their family or closest circle of fellow players made the cut.
  • Alternatively, if player voting is considered a must (which I could understand from the perspective of players wanting to participate in the selection):
    • All invalid and low-quality entries should be eliminated, leaving only high-quality valid ones for perusal. Around 10 or so would be pretty good, unless there was just an incredible output of amazing work.
    • There should be one stone for castles and one for keeps, and each account gets one vote on each one. With a strong purge of invalid entries, what is left should be high enough quality that even if voting shenanigans occur, which they will (please see the endless drama from governor system for more details), at least we'd end up with something decent.
    • The best way to vote for this, actually, would probably be for the voting to take place within the house sign of an actual prodo castle or keep. If you have a castle, you can vote, one time, for a castle design. If you have twenty castles, you can vote twenty times for a castle design. This would ensure that the people most invested in an alternative design would be the ones choosing rather than people voting for their friends or whoever paid them the most, or a pack of trolls picking the worst thing they could (which could easily happen, and I'm surprised didn't). I don't know how feasible that is programming-wise but it would surely cut down the vast majority of the voting problems.

I'm sure that could be elaborated upon for further clarity or adjusted for practical behind-the-scenes considerations I am unfamiliar with, but you get the idea. Preparation before launch and clarity throughout. Yes, there would still be complaints. There will always be complaints. But with enough clarity up front there is less room for them, and probably less validity unless something truly messed up is happening.

This could have been done so much better. But I'm not disappointed, because that implies I expected better than was delivered. At this point and on this topic, I didn't.

So I say yes, customization for all, because this contest as executed has been a huge expenditure of both player and dev time for a highly debatable result and a lot of disappointment and anger. To be done well, something like this requires a lot of thought and effort and coordination and dev time, and frankly I think that time is better spent elsewhere given the small minority of players affected by alternate castle/keep design possibilities.

Kyronix replied already to a request for customisable castle plots in the test centre forum...

Kyronix said:

Skett said:

Can we please get customizable castle and keep lots on all shards 

There's an enormous performance tradeoff when the server has to stream every object in a house multi (which is what happens in a custom house) as opposed to loading it from the client that you already have downloaded (which is what happens in the pre-fab houses).  Because of this custom castle and keep plots are not likely to be seen outside of TC.

Wait a damn second..... reread the post by Kyronix. 

Might I point out every shard with the exception of Atlantic is now near empty but for the few places you can put one of these buildings Keeps and Castles are the majority of the dwellings there!  How in the world can the loading of custom built anything drain on servers when there is little but those Castles and Keeps??? 

And you cant tell me if every square inch on shard was custom houses of any size wouldn't put the same load on the same servers.

Wake up and smell the coffee Kyronix. Some of us know the limits of servers and the equipment.   We are not dumb or so lite in the noodle to not know when smoke is blowing up our skirts.

I know for a fact after listening to Mesanna at many of the MEET &GREETS the major down side to allowing a custom Castle or Keep is the threat of a "BORG CUBE" and the pain in the neck complaints that will follow.  I cant blame her or any of you for not wanting this. I have seen a few of these cubes and the hideous sight they make along with the troubles it makes for neighbors

Let's face it... a plot will never be granted so this voting bit on someone's pet building is the point of fact here.  When I think of a castle or keep I imagine something close to the original but with a few changes to room placement, doors, use of teleporter's and stairs in the right place. 

On keeps the unused area's should be dolled out to enlarge the back rooms get rid of the stairs and add in doors... the top rooms to the tower points without the stairs can be nice size work rooms  or what ever you like...   See small changes make it a new place.

Mesanna pointed out this is 1 of many design opportunity's to get a chance at adding your design to the tool for the rest of us.  I'd like to see a gate to a designated area for viewing and voting.

jaytin said:

Kyronix replied already to a request for customisable castle plots in the test centre forum...

Kyronix said:

Skett said:

Can we please get customizable castle and keep lots on all shards 

There's an enormous performance tradeoff when the server has to stream every object in a house multi (which is what happens in a custom house) as opposed to loading it from the client that you already have downloaded (which is what happens in the pre-fab houses).  Because of this custom castle and keep plots are not likely to be seen outside of TC.

That makes sense...though I wish it weren't true!

Still, what Ry posted holds true...I am usually the one waving her pom-poms but this contest has really disappointed me from the very beginning. I have so much faith in our team but after this it's wavering just a little bit....I hope they learn from this and make things different for the next one.

~Larisa
(sorry my main acct is down right now!)

By the way............

The change to the tool or the house menu wont happen for a long time.... so this argument is rather early in the process..

lot of salty ppl here because their designs didnt win

It is not because their design didn't win but more to the fact that the designs that did win are worse floor plans than what we already have.

No winners yet.  Field is down to 40 and the winners are yet to be selected.

ZekeTerra said:

No winners yet.  Field is down to 40 and the winners are yet to be selected.

???? explain .... thought the voting was finished.

MissE said:

ZekeTerra said:

No winners yet.  Field is down to 40 and the winners are yet to be selected.

???? explain .... thought the voting was finished.

They added new rules after they did not like the outcome of the voting...

It's hidden somewhere deep in the wiki and was never announced. BS will just pick some winners from top 40 as they see fit.

At least that's the rules we got today.. could change tomorrow of course..

I went back and looked at the list of 40.. and not sure how I missed it but there is one that I actually could live in! Classic stone, good space for craftin gand garden beds as well as storage and deco. Congrats Gucci for your TMC castle, I guess my three votes hadnt made much difference anyways

I liked the Gucci one too, fingers-crossed for that....

Thanks for liking my castle.   The original version had a water moat but I was given some feedback that since you can't put anything on water tiles it was wasted space so I changed it to grass instead (though I really liked the water).  I wish there had been a way to give castle builders feedback before the voting process because some of the designs just had some small issues that could have been remedied easy.  Maybe they should let us put up a bulletin board or something during the next contest.

Yes I miss the bulletin board .. But water tiles large as a moat would be a problem. We need tiles as pressie or drop that we can walk on. Sush nice things we could create then!

I like a moat too, but grass is also okay! You did a really nice job, it's still a castle but more useful.

When building my monstrosity, I tried to put in what I felt everyone could use. A few rooms, a safe open area with grass, freedom of doors or arches. two open floors with the ability to add walls. a few grassy spots for flowers or vendors or decorations. I felt that I was clueless if the grassy areas I had out front and to the sides were going to be able to have things locked down or literally be open areas. I would have appreciated feedback as well. I almost placed a little plot out front for communication. Maybe a community build next time.

And to the person who doesn't know what the Borg reference is....

It is an alien ship on Star Trek. a Big Cube. 🙂

I don't think it could be too bad if people designed their own.  Castle, keep, 18x18, 15x15, whatever, they need to ban those hideous crystal housetile sets tho.

Yeah that crystal is just an eyesore. *shudder*

One persons eyesore is the next persons masterpiece.
I personally like the odd piece of crystal if used in moderation.

Borg Cubes may not be the prettiest thing but they are the most efficient/functional design and gives you the max floor space.

Don't want max floor space.., now lock downs  is a total different ballgame!!

the ideal castle for me, is that the hallway must be 4 tiles wide, so I can walk past raised gardens.
 The castle we have now is 3 tiles wide and you cant place a large bed there... Also the stairs must be in the front. I don't like going all the way to the back in order to access the other stairs

Why have hall ways at all, just more wasted space.

Violet said:

Cinderella said:

the ideal castle for me, is that the hallway must be 4 tiles wide, so I can walk past raised gardens.
 The castle we have now is 3 tiles wide and you cant place a large bed there... Also the stairs must be in the front. I don't like going all the way to the back in order to access the other stairs

See, I think 4 tile wide hallways are a waste of space. 3 tiles wide allows me to use them as deco/collection walls with no wasted space. And that there is a problem with the castle designs. Everyone wants something else. Though my question is, just how many garden beds are people wanting space for?

well I used to have 17 raised gardens. when growing the sugar cane, it pokes through the floor above. And you cant walk around them. When the plants are visible you can't walk past them on the floor above... and you can't teleport past them, so you have to go the long way around on the castle... I do have a raised paver roof but I will not place them on it, for fear that a paver will go down one space and then I would lose it like I did a lighthouse, not knowing a gaza had done that. when you axe it, it would be destroyed just like my lighthouse was... Also with the current castle you can't grow anything tall on the current roof, cause the pavers will fall.

What can I say, I like to grow plants... And I know there are many people who do also

Bilbo said:

Why have hall ways at all, just more wasted space.

well I guess I should have said if you have to put a hallway in, make it 4 tiles wide... that way we can walk around the raised gardens... I want to be able to use a full size garden and if its narrow, can't walk past them, also the sugar cane pokes through the floor, so I can't walk past it & can't teleport over the spot, can't see the floor on the other side. 

And obviously i'm not the only person who thought about wider hallways. Dots castle has the 4 tile wide hallway. When I first looked at it I wasn't crazy for the floor tiles. After I looked at it some more I realized I could use my gazas that I have already in my current castle to cover it up. Then again there is always carpet...

Cinderella said:

Bilbo said:

Why have hall ways at all, just more wasted space.

well I guess I should have said if you have to put a hallway in, make it 4 tiles wide... that way we can walk around the raised gardens... I want to be able to use a full size garden and if its narrow, can't walk past them, also the sugar cane pokes through the floor, so I can't walk past it & can't teleport over the spot, can't see the floor on the other side. 

And obviously i'm not the only person who thought about wider hallways. Dots castle has the 4 tile wide hallway. When I first looked at it I wasn't crazy for the floor tiles. After I looked at it some more I realized I could use my gazas that I have already in my current castle to cover it up. Then again there is always carpet...

I understand about the hallways but if they would just remove all the inside walls in both the Castle and Keep and then move the stairs/put in teleport tiles in the southeast/southwest corners and be done with it.  Adding another full open floor wouldn't hurt either.