I have an idea for player housing....
INTRO
For this example, i will use Britain.
So you would create a portal inside the bank and this will take you to a separate server allocated for player housing only. Each city would have a portal AS NEEDED. So you can create a template and once done just copy, paste and add a new portal to a city when a player housing area is full.
To describe how it would look would be to look at the American flag, minus the stars field. So basically just the strips. The white stripes would be land, the red stripes would be water (obviously, the land would be grassy and the water blue etc).
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW <- last row set for vendors. see below.
On each end and in the middle will be a bridge. the land space will allow for each player to have a custom 18x18. each row would allow for example 10 plots. so you can start by creating 5 rows plus 1 row for the vendors.
DETAILED HOUSING
xxx zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
xxx zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
xxx zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz fffffffffff
xxx zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz fffffffffff
xxx ooo zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz fffffffffff
xxx ooo zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz fffffffffff
xxx ooo zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz fffffffffff
The x's above are flowers, the o's represent area for keeping bees (and the water between each strip would then allow for bees -- the flowers on the side + water), the z's represent the 18x18 custom house area and lastly, the f's represent farmland so that everyone can grow crops of every kind. You can even get more detailed by allowing sprinklers and a water troft, with the sprinklers being tied to the water troft so that you can water your farm area, if applicable.
Each area in the actual housing area (z) would allow for vendors as usual.
THE LAST ROW
The last row can allow for a vendor that would sell seeds for crops, specialized fertilizer to make your crops grow faster etc. It would also have a portal that would take you back to your respective city only (in this case, Britain). The last row will also have public vendors that players can place down.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS
I. Reduce latency, shrink databases etc. on the "adventure" server
Well first, by having all the public vendors and housing here, it will reduce databases on the main server which will help with lag. This also goes for housing. Once a player takes a house in the new player housing, their old houses will decay and they will have 30 days to pick up and move all their stuff and then pull up their house and reclaim their money. after that, their house goes poof.
If a player cannot afford the entire 18x18 plot, then you make the plots expandable by just paying the difference. so if they can only afford a 6x6 for example, that's what size they get. HOWEVER the entire 18x18 space is reserved for them so that they can expand over time. This fairly allows each player to have an 18x18, which is plenty of space (each custom house has 3 floors plus the roof - if you need more than that, then you are a space hog for sure).
Guild leaders can place their guild stone on the first floor and use an entire floor for their guild. If they decide to bitch and complain, then you can make a separate portal in brit that would do the same thing for housing minus the bees and flowers and farm and just a custom house (of whatever you decide) and its for guild housing only.
You can even have it so that if a player pages a GM, or you create some kind of schedule, they can request one of their houses be moved in its entirety to the new 18x18 area. However the rest of their houses will still decay in 30 days.
it cleans up all the towns with public vendors so no more mess there. As a player places a public vendor in the new player housing area, their old vendor will decay and eventually go poof into a deed so that eventually all that is left is deeds and then GM's can remove them and clean up the towns.
As previously stated, this reduces the size of databases which will help with latency on the "adventure" server and most of all, if people want to afk for hours or days at a time, they can do it on the player housing server and this way you will reduce latency on the adventure server even more.
II. True city economy
As each city receives one of these new portals to the new player housing when the first fills up, and players place individual vendors as well as a "public" vendor in the last row area, their economy will actually based for that server.
Britain will not be the city where everyone will hang out anymore. For example, if you decide to start with 50 plots per city, then players will hang out in their respective cities. You start by filling each city one at a time. As a city is full, then you open in another city in alphabetical order until each city is full. Then you can open up a new strip on each city. Each row can have lets say 10 plots. So after 5 rows are filled in each city, you can then expand each city by 1 row and once every city row is filled, you can expand another row. This keeps it even and each city will have its own population so to speak.
The bonus is that each city will now have a true economy happening.
Another bonus is all that cleared out land will now allow you to create entrances to new dungeons or even portals to new world servers -- by world i do not mean new shard, but rather new lands to adventure.
