[Tamaki-Kun]

tldr: House building pretty harsh right now can we get a furniture catalogue item, priced at 500 Asagorians, which lets us see all the furniture items and 'buy' them from it like a shop for free? We already spend Asagorians for houses, so why not?

Hello hello, Shibe from Space here! I've come to provide a rather lengthy and, dare I say, bold suggestion and hopefully sprout a discussion among SL2's House Builders. There's a tldr up there, if you're super lazy like me. I'd appreciate it if you gave this whole thing a read, though!

First, a little background check. Shibe, who are you, exactly, to even dare speak of building? Well, I'm one of many house builders that exist in SL2. I certainly won't claim I'm the best at it, but I'd like to think I know a lot of ins and outs on how these things work. I've built a good dozen houses meant for events and player houses both, worked tirelessly to crank out an environment for everyone to role-play end enjoy, previously with relative ease! 

But now? It's actually kind of difficult to make much progress, especially without grinding a lot of Murai. And by that I mean a lot of Murai. It was already quite a mountain to climb just trying to gather enough Ashwood and Murai to create a decent house. Making it all look pretty. Now, with the taxes, and the prices on the furniture(which I will get to further down this thread), it's taxing and inconvenient to try building a grand house. And trust me, 400 furniture limit? Not enough if you're aiming high(this is coming from someone with 800 furniture limit. 1000 is the cap, by the by).

In light of the crafting update and the newly applied taxes, there's already enough money-sinks in the game that affects everyone globally, which also strangles us builders more than before. 

Let's not forget the fact that with the recent update, it's incredibly aggravating to walk back and forth, back and forth, back and forth between your house and an ASAGO building. God save you if your home was somewhere far away like Voilegarde, Law's End, Nameless Shrine Cave.

This isn't even delving into the annoying four housing merchants(whom have a notorious history of glitching out and vanishing for an entire reboot. But Dev fixed them already, hopefully for good!).


Now let's get on with the nitty and gritty. Firstly, let's review why building houses feel terrible now. Reason number...

1. People don't like being inconvenienced and being forced to walk to their player house to the ASAGO building, or those four aforementioned housing merchants(five, technically, if you count the pumpkin in Darkwood Manor). This wasn't much of a problem, previously, but with all the housing furniture scattered about everywhere in SL2, it's become a major problem.
   
2. People who build houses are 95% of the time poor. Now, you may say 'Shibe, you pulled that percentage out of your bum', but I assure you I can speak this with confidence. Most of us(house builders) depend on other players to dole out and provide us with cash and materials(previously). You won't see us walking around with ten thousand Murai, unless we're on our way to buy a bunch of furniture(previously ashwood, cotton, iron, etc.).
   
3. Taxes. As if it wasn't already heavy on our Murai pouches, taxes has come to claim even more of our hard-earned cash that we're aiming to spend for a player house meant for other players', or your own, enjoyment. Sure it might make sense if the character is, IC, poor and works at it enough to get a better house, but most often player houses are built as event areas or places meant for the public. 
   
4. Inventory space. This is a problem people on lower end devices suffer from more than those with shiny high end ones.  Ever wanted to stock up on your chairs just in case you might need more or you're not sure how many you'll need for a two floor house? If you're playing on a good computer, you can probably afford it. But for those that aren't? I'm sorry, but whenever you open your home tab after stocking up around 100~200+ items? Your dreamseeker's going to slow down, ranging from 'this isn't so bad' to 'oh my god it hasn't stopped freezing for ten seconds now'. God save you again if you even try making keys from doors and try renaming them, because it will happen again.
   
5. Now this is something I've been baffled by the most. Why should I, the guy that spent 500 Asagorians on a ticket, need to spend more Murai to buy furniture for a player house that I bought? Isn't it already enough to spend what is, commonly known as, the equivalent of 50,000 Murai for a house ticket? Why do we need to spend 10,000~(ranging to an extreme 50,000~+) more Murai just to make the house we bought with real money(or hard earned Murai if you bought Asagorians from another player) prettier?
   
6. It takes a lot of time building player houses as is. The process of setting down floor tiles, wall tiles, and mapping out a good layout to use takes a while. This adds onto issue number 1. This can burn us out a lot.
   

Okay Shibe, you stated your 'numbers'. How about you show us those prices on furniture? Isn't the new update better on our Murai storage?

Depends! But if I were answer it as honestly as I could? Ab-so-lute-ly not!

Previously, a chair costs around 45 Murai(15 per 1 Ashwood), not counting reputation. Now? It costs a whopping 60(+10% Tax rate). Chairs are by far one of the most common furniture items you usually use. Those Onigan chairs? Cotton costs 10 Murai, and while I forget how many you needed at the time, I can say for certainty it definitely did not cost me 60(+10% Tax rate) Murai when I grabbed them.

Sure, there are items like Big Trees that needed a whopping 10 Ashwood(150 Murai) that costs 60(+10% Tax rate, because I hate the new taxing system) Murai now, and that's great! Heck, items that were hard to craft like those light sources which required nerif's blood, or the various paintings that needed really weird materials are easy to get and buy now! I'm pleased with those!

But again, why do we need to buy furniture items with Murai for a donation item?


What do you propose?

This is where we get to the daring and bold part. What I propose is simple, and one of these ideas is one that I heard from another fellow house builder that I really like.

• Abolish the Murai requirement from furniture items entirely. There is no need to add a Murai sink for players who oftentimes don't have any Murai to begin with. We're all basically your slaves working to provide you an area for your own amusement, over and over until the next, new shiny area comes up for everyone to flock to and abandon the last one.
  
• Provide house builders with a furniture catalogue item of sorts, priced at 500 Asagorians in the donation shop, where all furniture is listed and free to take, with an unlimited quantity. This will solve so many problems player house builders have, and would only serve to motivate them further into creating more wonderful environments. Once again I see absolutely no reason as to why we must grind Murai on an already taxing and time-consuming process that is building, so please, just give these furniture to us for free. There literally will not be any impact on the economy(despite how broken it already is, house builders excluded) if we're given this feature.
  

Is there anything else you'd like to say, Shibe?

I know I can speak for all player house builders when I say we build these environments not just for us, but for the community as well. As divided we all are, we all just want to enjoy the game. I firmly believe that improving house builders' quality of life with the furniture catalogue is a great step in the right direction, and this isn't just my bias speaking. Please hear me out and give your thoughts on this!

[DerpyMcPandos]

This.

I am glad this thread appeared and wholeheartedly agree with all points raised, being a builder myself who enjoys helping others create event spaces. However, I will add my two cents to this, and say that from a theoretical point of view, there is no reason to have such a high barrier to entry to this part of the game.

I do not wish to speak authoritatively of the community at large, but it appears that the largest pull for roleplay in this game is the events in player houses. The World itself, while expansive, limits imaginations and many players will use their houses to execute events and more detailed plotlines by themselves or with the assistance of an Event Runner or Administrator. People often tire of the same forms of roleplay found in public areas or of sparring and will often move indoors to player-houses that are run as bars and restaurants. Furthermore, people often do not find much appeal to be had in roleplaying while grinding out BDPs or doing other PVE content.

Ergo, it makes no sense in my mind to limit and force players to cough up asagos/patrions to sell to others for murai or to be forced to languish for hours solo-grinding just so you can have a nice house. The Money-sink argument and curbing the "1%" of rich members of the game is a valid argument, but that perhaps neglects the biggest part of those individuals' state of mind.

They are hoarders and will not spend the murai and instead use it as a status symbol in and of itself. Increasing the cost of house-building only draws the ultra-rich away from spending time to build things that benefit the community and to channeling that into personal vanity projects they can show off to their friends.

While I'd rather not ramble on about this, I do believe it is in everyone's best interests that a different system to the one that is currently in place be made and implemented.

[Maksimum_Fire]

this, this, so much this.  Some of the larger player house projects that people pool resources and work together as a team for can take up to or more than eight hundred pieces of furniture, to make the place look particularly dolled up or because of the necessary measures taken to make furniture more functional than it can be, sometimes.  Not only is heading back and forth unpleasant due to all the reasons mentioned by Tamaki, but it also makes it much less possible to hide the fact you're working on an event space and preparing it for an event soon to come.

Pretty much always, the only parts of the world that actually move and that many people, alongside myself, feel can be impacted by players are locations that are controlled by players.  That's why this game has such a strong focus on player housing- because all of this setting's most attractive features, the locations that draw actual interest, eeeeverything that isn't the very rare public event- is made by players, for players, out of the players' own pockets.  Making this a more tedious process, as well as typically more costly than it already is, is not very welcoming.

I think that steps need to be taken to support builders much more than this given, really, just how much they contribute to SL2, but I think starting out with a donation item that makes furniture easy-to-buy and free is an excellent step to take.  The more welcome our players can feel starting out with building houses, the better.

[Fern]

I'm no house builder but I can attest to frequently seeing house builders needing funding from others in order to make beautiful player houses. I'm one of those people that tend to ask a house builder to make an event space I need because I'm no good at making it myself.

I can also attest to player houses generally being one of the most attractive things for roleplaying spots even outside of events, and aesthetic does matter a ton. People want to make it look good, so it can feel good to be in that area if that makes sense.

And yes, the 'rich' people lean towards hoarding the murai rather than actually spending it. Obviously this doesn't apply to everyone, but it's a common enough practice. As it stands people really don't like grinding because it's considered very tedious, and I'm not gonna go into much detail about that because you've likely heard it for ages already.

I'm gonna be honest and say that, if I was new to SL2 and found out that it would take that extreme amount of effort to get a decent looking player house, I would be less inclined to grabbing an Asago House Ticket. I'm no game design expert, but I think the people here have made pretty solid points, and they're worth hearing out.

[Turadis]

100% support. I have felt intimidated to get into event hosting and house building because of the immense expense and time sink that expense demands. It is not so bad if you seek only to construct a small home environment for your character. But so much of the playerbase uses the housing tools to create event spaces, dungeons, and other great roleplaying content. This behavior should be encouraged, and be maximally accessible for those interested in trying it for themselves. Paying 5 bucks to maximize one's content creation potential seems like a fair trade.

[WaifuApple]

As someone who can't stop spending on furniture I am in full support of this. The amount of real money that has gone into this build I've been making for a group of people at some point to get it somewhere has been about $56 or so, and that is a lot of money to dedicate to a house, to then have to sink tons of Murai into it too. And with the fact you have to walk between the house and the bank to get that furniture, you can often overspend trying to make sure you ACTUALLY have the right amount of furniture you need, because it would be tedious to just go back and forth and you don't want to make multiple trips.

The need for real money at some point to be able to create spaces for the community is already a very large deterrent as is, but the murai costs that stack on top of it are honestly the nail in the coffin for all but the dedicated. Not everyone has the express permission to spawn things to create an event space with, either, so it's a detriment, too, to the desire of players to run events. Because they likely just don't have a private space away from the overworld to drive narrative with.

This would do nothing but good in my opinion.

[Balor]

A catalogue would be ideal. Please.

[Tanasinn]

Rather than making all furniture available for free purchase, I feel like it should be set up to somehow just allow people to place all furniture in their own home, so it doesn't generate as a 'real' item in their inventory. Furniture has been removed from being able to be broken down, and generally only exists as clutter anyway.

It should simply cut out the middle-man at that point, while removing the chance of someone accidentally typing one too many 0's and flooding their inventory with furniture, or merely trading tons of furniture to other people to cut out their sink too.

[MakeshiftWalrus]

As long as it doesn't become the sole method of furniture acquisition, or become a case of locking people out of more furniture choices, this would be fine in my opinion.

[Kiss]

All I can say is I struggle to build a NORMAL house (Or map in specific). I often time just opt out of buying furniture because the amount of effort to run around like a headless chook, buy furniture, grind for the money and then realize i need to put something away or I missed a furniture- Anyway yeah. I am 100% down for the Planner, hell you can bump the price up of it  too if you want to compensate for free furniture. Say like 600 Asagos or hell even the first 10$ Item. Im sure people wouldn't mind paying 5 more bucks for free furniture.

On a semi related note- can I always ask a suggestion for perhaps changing the way the DISCS work too? Perhaps an easier way to just view them all like how the Furniture catalogue would work instead of just clicking through each one individually. Im sure someone has a better way of explaining it but its important to the discussion!