About Structure Decay And The Need To Speed It Up (Freedom Server)

[Liandria 11]

I'd like to start a discussion about housing decay and why it is needed to speed it up significantly.

After doing some math i found out that a 55 ql housing stonewall not placed on a settlement needs around 919 real life days to decay. I'd say DANG!

Of course the owner of writ of ownership need for that to log in all 1.5 months to stop increased decay.

just after he logged out again he got normal decay again for the next 1.5 months..

Someone might say oh well who got a 55 ql stonewall, but let's take a ql 20 stonewall instead.

My calc says 336 days to decay, i'd say again DANG! Decay is insane slow imho.

Just remember this is unpaid protection of structures in a game where you can BUY very cheap full protection with a settlement deed.

No wonder Wurm is littered with abandoned buildings, which got it's charm of course.

Exploring former settlements is fun.

However this is wasted landspace, not available for other settlers, even paying ones.

You can not "recycle" anything from these structures even with gaping holes in the walls until the last stone falls.

Even if you can set up a settlement, which includes the abandoned buildings, you still need the writ to tear it down.

You can do nothing but wait it do decay.

This is not acceptable.

The decay rate should be increased, or if you got structures on your Town perimeter, these structures should suffer higher decay rates or after some weeks the writs should be transfered. You could email the owner about this is going to happen soon as example.

At last you're the paying customer, the guy with it's abandoned structures pay nothing at all, just block others who want to pay for their deed.

Protecting property is one thing, protecing it unpaid for like 3 years or more, is seen from a economic viewpoint simply insane. More money for CodeClub means faster development of Wurm Online.

Rising subscription numbers will make this Landscape waste to a very sensible topic very soon.

Imho it already is.

[Furia 0]

/sign

[Maximustehgreat 353]

The damage of off deed structures is already high enough, Do not make it any harder than it already is for the noobs!.

-1

[shadowblasta 142]

just tested it but walls inside parameters take more damage, so just run your parameter over

[Keldun 335]

We don't need to make it harder for the noobs. Just make it so that higher ql mainly protects against bashing (for the pvp guys) but has only a low effect on decay.

Edited February 21, 2013 by Keldun

[Protunia 735]

It already speeds up if people don't log in for awhile.

Plus low ql housing decays much faster than higher ql and speeding it up would make new players constantly have to repair and rebuild rather than get to play the game.

[Ronnie 64]

-1

[yarnevk 257]

off-deed decay has already been increased after 1.0 in an attempt to declutter the servers, so are your calculations recent?

I have off-deed stone walls made with 5 QL that took two months to decay. Got them up to 10 last month and already repairing them again, double the quality failed in half the time. Pretty much all I have done on this alt in the last month is fix off-deed fences and shacks. I would deed them if I could but I cannot, it would require an L-shaped deed with a token on the cliff. Making two deeds out of it just leaves half if it on both perimeters, and back to decay.

Edited February 21, 2013 by yarnevk

[Sarcaticous 338]

Exactly how many times are we going to increase decay? Let's make it so nothing will last more than a week. Maybe then all the lazy people who don't want to be bothered with finding empty land will be happy.

I do have to wonder about people who quit the game yet don't want to tear down the buildings they will never use again.

[Shrimpiie 3,665]

Off deed decay is a ton already, and really hard to maintain a noob house I would imagine since I see noob shacks drop all left and right. Also, someone who builds 55ql stone walls is defiantly going to be someone on deed, not leaving their shack for too long off deed as you don't find people who invest so much to be able to build such high ql walls only to leave the game and a small shack. Even 20ql decay very rapidly. Also, your calculations are very off, I had 32ql stone walls created back in August, just recently they were hitting 90dmg and dropping like flies, I'd say it started about 2 weeks ago. Also, they were off deed. So now, decay does not need to be changed whatsoever.

[Emane 158]

-1 Off deed decay with the addition of roof and floors is already a p.i.t.a.

[Emane 158]

We don't need to make it harder for the noobs. Just make it so that higher ql mainly protects against bashing (for the pvp guys) but has only a low effect on decay.

another -1....then would be no reason to imp anything at all.....

[alaskanbob 225]

-1 Off deed decay with the addition of roof and floors is already a p.i.t.a.

^

[Liandria 11]

The decay rate is based on observation and the damage rule per tick 3/wallQL with stonewalls and 10/wallQL with wood walls.

To clear that meant with the above decay rule is decay ticks not days.

Since from observation the number of decay ticks on housewalls is 1/day, the decay rates are plausible. (finished buildings with a writ of ownership) But even with 2 ticks a day (as said never seen that with 1.0) a ql 55 stonewall need years to decay.

For stone fences there might be diffrent rules. It's pretty fast decay on those, probably doubled. Still slow if you think that they might last for months if higher ql. They are a real annoyance if built at large to secure land for owners that are long gone.

For all that complain about too high decay offdeed, buy a damn settlement deed, pay your upkeep and stop whining. You got no reason for...

A sizeable deed of 10x10 with 5 perimeter around cost only 1 silver a month upkeep, founding is 10 silver BUT 6 silver are already inside the stone for upkeep. so for 10 € you get a 10x10 landsize where NOTHING decay at all, and that granted for 5 real life months ...

That's charity from CodeClub, not really business imho.

[Wulfgar 1,119]

+1 to increased decay on houses outside deeds (if that hasn't changed with 1.0 which I haven't heard of before).

+10000000 to increased decay on FENCES outside deeds. They last 10x longer than houses at least.

[alaskanbob 225]

The decay rate is based on observation and the damage rule per tick 3/wallQL with stonewalls and 10/wallQL with wood walls.

To clear that meant with the above decay rule is decay ticks not days.

Since from observation the number of decay ticks on housewalls is 1/day, the decay rates are plausible. (finished buildings with a writ of ownership) But even with 2 ticks a day (as said never seen that with 1.0) a ql 55 stonewall need years to decay.

For stone fences there might be diffrent rules. It's pretty fast decay on those, probably doubled. Still slow if you think that they might last for months if higher ql. They are a real annoyance if built at large to secure land for owners that are long gone.

For all that complain about too high decay offdeed, buy a damn settlement deed, pay your upkeep and stop whining. You got no reason for...

A sizeable deed of 10x10 with 5 perimeter around cost only 1 silver a month upkeep, founding is 10 silver BUT 6 silver are already inside the stone for upkeep. so for 10 € you get a 10x10 landsize where NOTHING decay at all, and that granted for 5 real life months ...

That's charity from CodeClub, not really business imho.

Except for...not everyone who wants to jump into the game wants to spend money right away. They might dottle around for a month or two moving around/sight seeing & finding a place they like. & for some people who are new & don't know all the ins and outs if their first experience is logging in after 2 days and finding their 1x1 they spent a few hours making with a missing side..might be a turn off.

[Wulfgar 1,119]

Except for...not everyone who wants to jump into the game wants to spend money right away. They might dottle around for a month or two moving around/sight seeing & finding a place they like. & for some people who are new & don't know all the ins and outs if their first experience is logging in after 2 days and finding their 1x1 they spent a few hours making with a missing side..might be a turn off.

Thats true but Rolf could code it so that houses doesn't decay at all the first few weeks.

Also decay needs to be explained much better, maybe with huge red letters across the screen when you start playing. The problem is not only with houses. A new player could spend hours building a BSB, it would be 5QL and it could be gone the next week.

There still is a problem with experienced players blocking large parts of land (from new players that might actually use it) with high QL houses/fences that literally last years without repairs.

[alaskanbob 225]

Thats true but Rolf could code it so that houses doesn't decay at all the first few weeks.

Also decay needs to be explained much better, maybe with huge red letters across the screen when you start playing. The problem is not only with houses. A new player could spend hours building a BSB, it would be 5QL and it could be gone the next week.

There still is a problem with experienced players blocking large parts of land (from new players that might actually use it) with high QL houses/fences that literally last years without repairs.

Universal no decay on houses for a month & then after say 2x-3x what it is currently? Off deed houses certainly would be smaller lol. I think the bigger problem here seems to be fences. Bsbs/fsbs random things like that not decaying aren't such a big issue. Seems the fencing off a few hundred tiles and then never really being used aspect gets to more people. Dunno, feels like there are some legit uses of tree farms and vineyards and such. Other people like to have some buffer zone around them but don't want to pay for it. Never had an issue with space myself so I'm on the fence about it. Have passed an occasional seemingly unused pen but nothing too big except xhairy's I think. & hardly anyone lives up in north Indy anyway.

[Eobersig 1,006]

[Epic here, on serenity]

I think that more decay is needed - not necessarily on walls and houses, but for many other things. The landscape is littered with beds, hedges, bulk bins, food bins, chests, looms, stools, armour stands, barrels, forges and ovens. Ah, and locks and keys of course ...

Why, oh why decays a solid stone house faster than a wooden bed? The abandoned stone house might be gone since long, but the furniture that was in it will occupy the spot for another 3 months or so. Since one also cannot re-use many of these thing (why can't I take an empty chest or armour stand?) they clutter the landscape and have zero use anyway.

Therefore: personally I think decay of houses and walls is okay as is, but other items not on a deed or in a house should decay really, really fast, 2 weeks RL time and it should be gone.

[KunAlt 844]

-1

Decay is allready fine as is.

[Ayes 3,715]

The title of this post is about *structure decay* and the first sentence further clarifys that as being "housing decay", so I don't think the discussion should diverge onto fencing-stone wall decay, as they can be handled in a different way easily by catapulting them down, by people who are not too lazy to do so.

As for off deed housing decay, I think increasing the decay rate on it is a bad idea since many, many players do not have deeds yet are still premium and just build their homesteads on available free land. Then add in free players, deed holders who build structures on their perimiters and deed holders who just build a small house at a more remote location for a getaway for occassional use. Increased housing decay would have a negative impact on all these structures simply for the sake of other players who don't like seeing them in those locations, this in turn being a poor justification for increased housing decay rate.

A few helpful steps to reduce *abandonded* housing clutter *might* be the following:

1. After the writ holder of a house has not logged on for 30 days, impose a rapid decay rate on the structure. How much determined by the Devs. As is, this rapid decay rate is some nebulous between 30-45 day number which has never been clarified and made known to the playerbase, so set it at a straight 30 days and inform the playerbase that it is so. Tweak this decay rate as necessary if it is not rapid enough to make any significant difference in reducing abandonded housing.

2. After one house wall has decayed the house contents are no longer secure so there is no real necessity to protect the remaining walls from destruction. At this point players on PvE servers should be allowed to bash and catapult down the remaining house walls with the same impact as they would have upon wood fence and stone walls. This would eliminate the validity of any complaints of the "eyesores" of abandonded buildings, since then if they were too hurtful to anyones vision they could simply divert some of their time to the task of removing them from the vicinity.

In closing, I would strongly object to any increased off deed house wall decay applied to active player houses, as there are many active players who build houses off deed for valid reasons who enjoy their use. These players should not be penalized for the sake of others who don't like the fact that some of them may stop playing and their houses will remain around the area decaying away. A blanket approach of increasing off deed decay on *all* off deed housing is shortsighted. More specific targeted methods such as I suggested above should be sought out instead that will not have a negative impact on active players with off deed housing.

=Ayes=

[Hordern 2,177]

Well it's not as slow as the OP suggests, a 21QL low stone wall will decay in about 2.5 months on Golden Valley which has 3x decay, so it would be around 7 months for a 20QL wall on the rest of Freedom rather than the 11 months mentioned in the OP:

/>http://wurmpedia.com/index.php/Empirical_Evaluation_of_Fences

[Furia 0]

He means "housing walls" not fences ....fences can be destroyed thats not the problem, but HOUSING WALLS with a writ takes to long to decay, thats the fact. (no settlement!)

Edited February 21, 2013 by Furia

[Cally 96]

The trouble with being able to bash a house that is missing a wall is that what's to stop someone from bashing a house that hasn't decayed but rather is in the process of being built.

[Liandria 11]

Again, everyone whining about decay, there is a easy solution. BUY a F! Deed.

Nobody can tell me that you are unable to build a QL10 stone/wood wall after a week play if you want it. Really get a grip. That wall last 52 decay ticks if wood and 169 ticks if made from stone. So even a nub can craft buildings that last a month RL at least. Time enough to hone your skills to build a ql 20 wall that last 7 months. And of course it's a motivation to train to be able to build better structures that last longer. Repairing is a good way to get more skill anyway.

Beeing able to build houses everywhere you want without paying anything should be limited. Building fences should only be allowed around your house and only like 5-10 tiles around it. Without settlement you should only be able to keep two writ of ownership. If you want more buy a Settlement deed. Housing on a deed should not be limited. The deed owner can hold all deeds of the settlement.

Just as reminder, deed upkeep is used to fill trader with new money. So that's an economy thingy. The more people pay upkeep the more traders can buy stuff.

As GM Epiphron has stated i'm a bit off with the time, so it seem to be 1.5 decay ticks a day not 1 as i assumed.

However 7 months until a ql20 stonewall decays is WAY too long.

Based on these data a Ql50 stonewall need 612 days to decay. And again you have to wait until the LAST wall and the building plan fall to be able to reuse the land.

Buildings on Town perimeters need fast decay (as long not owned by deed holder or a settler of this town), just like the increased decay after 1.5 months.

There are a lot cheapriders here seemingly. They want all for free. Some play modest and got a house and some farmland around, others do at first surrounding their 100x100 with a fence or better high ql stonefences. My aim is against the latter.

I have seen far too often landgrabbing from the finest, and yes alot of those don't even got a settlement stone.

Part of these tactics is littering small shacks everywhere on that ground to prevent placing of a Settlement deed by PAYING customers.

Everyone should be able to get a house in Wurm. These greedy people and the long decay prevent that. Good settlement places are rare on Exodus, most is littered with decay junk.

Time to change that.