The rate at which houses die needs to be slowed dramatically.
 

Five days ago I repaired my house to 100%. Now it's already down to 95%. I can't check the scripts right now to make sure, but if this remains constant, it seems like houses are dying at a rate of about 1% per day. After a little more than three months, a player's house will fall, along with all of their items.

It may have made sense when Kingdoms was more popular to have such a fast rate to prevent overcrowding. Now, however, there's no excuse for it. All it does is discourage players from returning after their houses have fallen. I've experienced this before—it was only because a friend helped me out that I returned after losing everything in my house.

Either the house rate should be slowed so that a house takes about a year to fall, or it should be possible to retrieve items from fallen houses; maybe both. The latter is more difficult but not impossible—in fact, I think it would be a good idea to allow returning players to get items from their fallen houses to help encourage them to play GK again (perhaps with some caveats to prevent them returning, USDing all their items, then never getting back on).

I vote for a mixture of both, the rate does need to be slowed somewhat and recovering items should also be possible so that owning a house isn't just a gamble sometimes. Something could happen in your life that forces you to be unable to log on for say a month, it's very easy to lose your house like that.

I think it would be interesting and also more incentive to the house-owner that it should be where that if your house breaks down, that recovery of said items are allowed by anyone to be looted, which would work rather well if the houses life-expectancy were to be given more time.

p.s: I wish I could sleep ;_;

sounds fun, having a raiding party on the expected day of some1's house to fall and a "griefer" repairs the house

That would be more rp based, say the door crumbles first and you have 60 seconds to pick items up before the level is closed off for the owner to recover their items in his/her own time. Would encourage use of locked chests, multiple levels and hiding important heavy stuff.

I'm more for an idea like this one. Perhaps when the house is at 0% you could "kick the door down" and loot it. Once the door has been kicked down the house will remain active for 2 days, after that the whole house collapses. Perhaps a collapsed house could leave behind more building material then they currently do.

However... I think the rate which houses deteriorate at is fine.

Granted you are wealthy enough to buy house kits/materials in bulk and can just use wings/warp to your house I presume?

I don't like the looting idea. It may be better than the current system in that items remain in circulation, but it still discourages players from returning. Anyone who has quit for a time and lost a house knows how hard it is returning without any of your items.

Can you explain why you don't think it should be slowed?

I can't understand how you could defend letting more houses fall when islands are so empty and the playercount is so low. There's a reason most item-based popular games don't delete your stuff after 3 months—they realize it's a terrible way to get players to return.

Players frequently leave GK throughout their life, later returning and amassing an even larger fortune. If houses continue to fall at their current rate it will prevent exactly this sort of "monopolized" behaviour. If the items within their houses are attainable to opportunistic new-bs then it will help evenly distribute the wealth. I believe this is exactly what "Supaman771" would like to see (who is that guy? I've never seen him on GK?).

cause you know that gk playerbase is about to boom.

BAM, he got you all.

death of a houses = idgaf about gk nemore

wonder y gk have no players???

edit- got damnit john beat me to it

needs to be slowed down mos def.

any1 who says otherwise is retarded

I agree with Crono and say that allowing the looting of a home left abandoned to collapse and rot should be allowed, as long as the longevity of houses is extended so that the owner of said house can keep his **** together while those who don't keep it remembered to keep it repaired simply get what is coming to them for leaving their items unused, uncared for and not circulated around. Simply brings a balance of maintenance to the game, which I think for an RPG style server, is rather necessary to keep interest in one way or another.

I actually stopped playing the server years and years ago when my house died on Dustari. Had 2 warhammers in it, monkey sandals, and some other goodies that were very rare at the time.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...g?t=1241884881

but in reality slower house dieing only benefits current/old players, we need a way to be more friendly to newer players

I just don't understand why people but these awesome rares in their house? Everything good/rare has been pretty well kept on me.. ;x

But ya, houses do collapse/die too fast. The looting part could be fun though.. ;p

Well sometimes people choose to lower weight rather than hold onto everything they're hoarding. Me personally, i have a back-up set incase anything ever happened, that weighs over 100kg, I'd rather not have that on me at all times. Large amounts of plat are also undesirable to hold onto but still valuable enough to deter someone from coming back if they lost it all.

ya for sparring you gotta min max your ****. carriying 800kg just isnt viable in a spar

Me and some friends built a house, but we never new they collasped. 3 months later we lost everythong

y gk die it good server???

Bringing back old players and helping new ones aren't mutually exclusive. A larger playercount benefits anyone. I'd agree that some changes need to be made to help new players, though.

Maybe houses shouldn't deteriorate at all, let the kingdoms automatically loot/destroy houses where their owner was inactive (or hasn't visited their house) for more than a year.

Anyone can have a house on any Kingdom, me being able to walk up to your house just because you're on my island and I deem you inactive (which could be two weeks not playing compared to my daily activity)?

I think it'd be cool if it had some guidelines otherwise, but I like the idea of looting because it gives a lot of new players a chance to explore and find broken houses that are filled with wealth; instead of a Governor or a King finding the loot, making the rich richer.

I agree with houses dying too fast, and especially that you can't get back in to loot when the house breaks down. Recently my house died down due to some extreme lag or glitch of the server, I wasn't able to loot ****. Yes I agree.

It might be a good idea to have houses start to look decrepit as their constitution goes down.

Holy hell, that is uglier then ****.

a mix of between, i say.

if your inactive, lets say, a month, your house slows down the deterioration or just stops, while if your active, it stays with the same speed it currently have.

i dont think looting is a good idea however, since the only way with my suggestion the house would be loot-able would be if your active (or inactive and the deterioration continues)

You shouldn't be punished for being active. If this was the case, people would build houses on their alternate accounts, give themselves a key duplicate, and never log on the account that actually owns the house.

I agree completely. I was sad when I logged on and my house I had worked so hard on was gone.

true, but then what's the use for stones, nails and boards to repair it?
those items would become useless..
hmm..

they are all used to craft furniture. nobody enjoys grinding that **** just to repair their house. believe me nobody would give a **** if those 3 items lost their purpose (not that they would)

You realize most items on GK are useless, right?

This is still an important issue which has not been addressed. My house is at 15% now. If it had been destroyed during the time the server was offline, I would probably never play Kingdoms again.

If it were destroyed while the server was offline I would have checked logs and restored it anyways.

Welcome to every form of RPG.

lol Yeah MANY MANY useless items, that don't do anything. :p