Alright, time for me to throw my own two cents into the pool, though it may end up being a lot more than that as I have a lot of thoughts on the matter. If this ends up being far too long for anyone to want to read, I apologize, but I want to try and address as many issues as I can in regards to this topic.
To start, a prelude of sorts. I don't like Korvara. Plain and simple. In nearly every single possible way, I think it is a worse experience compared to old G6 mechanically. As a community, people come and go, and things have changed a lot, and so operating with the idea of transplanting the community from one space to the other, and looking at things from the perspective of what either environment offers, I believe G6 offers a much greater variety of things for player expression. I will admit that Korvara has its own draws that I get why people might prefer Korvara overall, but I really do think G6 was a massive step above Korvara, and player housing was one of the factors. I state this outright because I want to acknowledge that I probably have a bias against Korvara, and while I do my best to remove it when speaking of things in as factual a manner as I can, there will likely be some manner of it that remains which is important for me as a writer, and for other people as readers to be aware of.
I could go into a bunch of issues, but keeping things focused, I believe player housing is, in general, a big positive. One of the biggest issues I feel like player housing would address on Korvara would be that Korvara just feels too damn small. Or, perhaps to but it into better context, there isn't enough room for everything players want to do. It is natural in an RP game for players to want to create their own narratives, make their own spaces, and tell their own stories. This can take place through the creation of guilds, homes, or even public spaces. The primary issue is that Korvara has extremely limited space for these sorts of things. In the beginning there was a massive rush to grab land and claim it for people's own, which then got clamped down on, but even at the height, when all buildings were accessible, competition was extremely high. Not to mention, the map design practically forces everything to take place within the extremely close confines of the four nations, which are all a short walk away passing through two to three map tiles at most from nearly every place in Korvara. Korvara itself is roughly... 12 map tiles total, I think? It may be a bit more than that, but less than half of those map tiles contain buildings or spaces for players to readily have room for projects, other than caves or tents in the wilderness. Korvara as a setting is extremely small and constricted, and does not promote players to create their own spaces or stories.
On top of that, the current mapping system is multiple layers of red tape that prohibit people, other than the most insistent, or the most connected. Right now, you have to identify a space you want out of the limited selection, see if anyone is still actively using that space (which, if they are, stops you right there), if they're not you then need to work with the original owner or the ruler/some kind of official of the nation to try and acquire that space, and then from there apply for a mapper to then map your space which in of itself can take an extended period of time from weeks to maybe months if mappers are busy or otherwise occupied on top of all the other administration work you already had to put in to even claim a spot to begin with.
Compare that to player housing from G6? You find a house, and if it's empty, you can use an asagorian item to claim the house, and then you can immediately start using an in-game UI to design and decorate your building. There's something to be said about players who claim houses and never use them, or characters/players who go inactive, but... The already pre-existing solution in G6 was that, if a player did not log into the Byond Key to which the house was owned under every month or so, the house would simply flip back to being free to claim again helped to at least assuage the concern that the player who owned it was just gone. You at least had some certainty they were still an active member of the community, or still doing things at the least. If extra steps are taken to further ensure housing spaces are always in use, then by all means, but quite honestly, the base system as it was is already miles better than what Korvara offers in my opinion.
Moving onto another big point for housing in my opinion is a space for events. In Ye Olden Days, there were no eventmin. People just grabbed a housing space, decorated it for an event, then ran it with either rolls like in a tabletop game (ala DnD as the most well known example), or just had friends/other players play as enemies in mechanical fights. The creation of the eventmin role has been a massive boon to the community of course, but I feel like SL2 has since come to rely a little too much on them. There is nearly no content being run on Korvara that does not directly ask for Eventmin assistance in some way. Eventmin assistance is perfectly fine, but I really don't think people should be reaching out to them for every little thing, from narrations, to decorations, or simply asking them for some extra spectacle or flair. There are plenty of activities or events that players are able to run on their own, which player housing would help to support.
Let's look at an example from other games out there. World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV for example are two of the arguably most popular MMOs out there, and both have extremely prolific RP scenes which I have been a part of. Though MMOs like there are a different beast than a game like SL2, I would argue that SL2 is basically an MMO in miniature. While large scale MMOs have a lot of other things going for them, such as population sizes large enough to support a near constant stream of activity or creative players making their own content, there are still a lot of parallels to be drawn seeing as it's a similar sort of environment that they are all trying to operate in.
In these MMOs, there are no eventmin, as the games are naturally buoyed up by their own substantial playerbase, and other content. However in the RP scenes, it is a mixture of either public player RP, or RP events run by guilds or groups of friends, generally using a roll system to enforce a sense of fairness. That's simply how most RP environments like this function. Again, SL2 lacks the substantial playerbase to support this sort of activity 24/7, but that should be where eventmin come in to bridge the gap and provide content for players, but it is my firm belief that players should be the providers of their own content in RP games.
Jumping back to the topic of housing, houses would massively support these sorts of things. The current mapping system used by eventmin is honestly a workaround that was put in place to provide more detailed maps for large scale public events that eventmin wanted to host on the public overworld map back in G6. Speaking as a former eventmin, it's a bit clunky and kind of a bitch to work with. It requires the placing and layering of several map layers, from the base ground tiles all the way to trees, buildings, or whatever decorations or placeables are needed due to the limited file size allowed for placeables using Dev Tools. It has since been made easier through Dev allowing Eventmin to specify which placeable is on which layer, but even just making the maps in of themselves can be hassle.
I'm not saying this option should be taken away, quite frankly this option provides a lot of flair and visual appeal that really does benefit events. But allowing players to decorate their own spaces and host their own miniature narrative content is something that could help reduce the workload on eventmin, and quite frankly, it's something I'd want to do, as I personally have both run and participated in these sorts of things through WoW, FFXIV, and SL2, and I continue to try and host these sorts of things for my own group of friends. I am currently actively working on these sorts of events for my own character, and being forced to work with eventmin to try and host them in-game is a massive administrative drain on my motivation when I have other things like work or family that contend with my time. If nothing else, on an eventmin level, it'd be another option for them to create a space if they don't like working with the current placeable system used most prevalently on Korvara.
Jumping over to address some issues discussed about the negatives that housing brings and... Quite honestly, I don't find most of them compelling, or at least compelling enough to remove all the positives that housing brings. The most common issue I hear of is the idea that players will squirrel away in player housing and never RP publicly, and... Really, if people want to do that, they're going to do that. Nothing stops someone from moving somewhere isolated, or even just hopping off the game entirely to move a scene onto Discord. You cannot police where players choose to RP. Sometimes people just want to ONLY RP with their friends, and I don't see why that's an issue.
In regards to using them as public spaces, I also don't see why that should be restricted. If, for example, I want to make a bartender or a store owner, or something along those lines, why shouldn't I be allowed to make one and have my own space for it? All the bars and buildings in Korvara are basically owned by now. If I want my character to be a small-time guy, owning his own small place, that very much puts me at odds from being able to work at say... The Venue in Meiaquar, which already has a long established history and people who run/work the place.
Public venues created in player housing are easily managed through the use of the LFG system. A publicly advertised space is open for business and welcomes people to show up, and directions can easily be provided within the text box of the LFG. If a public space is not being advertised, then it's likely not open/being run, or there probably isn't anyone there which precludes it as being a public RP spot to begin with. It's a fairly simple and self-managed system. If someone manages to build a space that outcompetes with other pre-established public spaces in terms of attractiveness for RP, then I honestly believe that should be allowed to happen. Spaces should be allowed to rise or fall based off the merit of what they offer to a community.
On top of allowing for players to run their own businesses or other similar RP opportunities, it further opens up Korvara to being "expanded" upon. If someone wants their character to be from a small isolated village, well... There basically none of those in Korvara, but player housing would allow them to create that space, and through the power of "imagination", you can say it's somewhere else on the island for example. The whole point of player housing is to allow for players to make their own spaces for themselves, or for their characters, and it all provides things that I feel like Korvara is sorely lacking in.
Addressing one final thing, which makes me believe that, despite all my best hopes, housing will likely never be brought to Korvara. It's simply that Korvara is latched on with G6 by the hip. People have often complained about lag, or crashes, or other issues which heavily imply to me (and quite frankly here, I could be speaking out of my ass, if Dev wants to correct me then by all means, I acknowledge this is nothing but an educated assumption on my part) that Dev is working with limited space as far as the game goes at this point. G6 takes up a sizeable about of space, and holds onto a lot of old content that basically cannot be removed due to the fact that older players have spent a lot of time and money on the old content and it would be in poor taste to get rid of to make more room for something as large as remodeling for spaces for player housing. Even on G6, people were running into issues with certain map tiles bleeding over, or the occasional glitch of maps not loading properly. I'm not saying G6 should be removed, quite frankly, I have a lot of nostalgia for G6 and I still hold onto the hope that one day people will hop back over there instead of Korvara as it is my preferred space on SL2, but in the absence of being able to cull older content to make room for newer things, Dev only has the option to optimize what he has or acquire more space. Because of this, while I would love for housing to be brought to Korvara, I do have to acknowledge that I don't think it will be happening, at least not anytime soon.
To start, a prelude of sorts. I don't like Korvara. Plain and simple. In nearly every single possible way, I think it is a worse experience compared to old G6 mechanically. As a community, people come and go, and things have changed a lot, and so operating with the idea of transplanting the community from one space to the other, and looking at things from the perspective of what either environment offers, I believe G6 offers a much greater variety of things for player expression. I will admit that Korvara has its own draws that I get why people might prefer Korvara overall, but I really do think G6 was a massive step above Korvara, and player housing was one of the factors. I state this outright because I want to acknowledge that I probably have a bias against Korvara, and while I do my best to remove it when speaking of things in as factual a manner as I can, there will likely be some manner of it that remains which is important for me as a writer, and for other people as readers to be aware of.
I could go into a bunch of issues, but keeping things focused, I believe player housing is, in general, a big positive. One of the biggest issues I feel like player housing would address on Korvara would be that Korvara just feels too damn small. Or, perhaps to but it into better context, there isn't enough room for everything players want to do. It is natural in an RP game for players to want to create their own narratives, make their own spaces, and tell their own stories. This can take place through the creation of guilds, homes, or even public spaces. The primary issue is that Korvara has extremely limited space for these sorts of things. In the beginning there was a massive rush to grab land and claim it for people's own, which then got clamped down on, but even at the height, when all buildings were accessible, competition was extremely high. Not to mention, the map design practically forces everything to take place within the extremely close confines of the four nations, which are all a short walk away passing through two to three map tiles at most from nearly every place in Korvara. Korvara itself is roughly... 12 map tiles total, I think? It may be a bit more than that, but less than half of those map tiles contain buildings or spaces for players to readily have room for projects, other than caves or tents in the wilderness. Korvara as a setting is extremely small and constricted, and does not promote players to create their own spaces or stories.
On top of that, the current mapping system is multiple layers of red tape that prohibit people, other than the most insistent, or the most connected. Right now, you have to identify a space you want out of the limited selection, see if anyone is still actively using that space (which, if they are, stops you right there), if they're not you then need to work with the original owner or the ruler/some kind of official of the nation to try and acquire that space, and then from there apply for a mapper to then map your space which in of itself can take an extended period of time from weeks to maybe months if mappers are busy or otherwise occupied on top of all the other administration work you already had to put in to even claim a spot to begin with.
Compare that to player housing from G6? You find a house, and if it's empty, you can use an asagorian item to claim the house, and then you can immediately start using an in-game UI to design and decorate your building. There's something to be said about players who claim houses and never use them, or characters/players who go inactive, but... The already pre-existing solution in G6 was that, if a player did not log into the Byond Key to which the house was owned under every month or so, the house would simply flip back to being free to claim again helped to at least assuage the concern that the player who owned it was just gone. You at least had some certainty they were still an active member of the community, or still doing things at the least. If extra steps are taken to further ensure housing spaces are always in use, then by all means, but quite honestly, the base system as it was is already miles better than what Korvara offers in my opinion.
Moving onto another big point for housing in my opinion is a space for events. In Ye Olden Days, there were no eventmin. People just grabbed a housing space, decorated it for an event, then ran it with either rolls like in a tabletop game (ala DnD as the most well known example), or just had friends/other players play as enemies in mechanical fights. The creation of the eventmin role has been a massive boon to the community of course, but I feel like SL2 has since come to rely a little too much on them. There is nearly no content being run on Korvara that does not directly ask for Eventmin assistance in some way. Eventmin assistance is perfectly fine, but I really don't think people should be reaching out to them for every little thing, from narrations, to decorations, or simply asking them for some extra spectacle or flair. There are plenty of activities or events that players are able to run on their own, which player housing would help to support.
Let's look at an example from other games out there. World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV for example are two of the arguably most popular MMOs out there, and both have extremely prolific RP scenes which I have been a part of. Though MMOs like there are a different beast than a game like SL2, I would argue that SL2 is basically an MMO in miniature. While large scale MMOs have a lot of other things going for them, such as population sizes large enough to support a near constant stream of activity or creative players making their own content, there are still a lot of parallels to be drawn seeing as it's a similar sort of environment that they are all trying to operate in.
In these MMOs, there are no eventmin, as the games are naturally buoyed up by their own substantial playerbase, and other content. However in the RP scenes, it is a mixture of either public player RP, or RP events run by guilds or groups of friends, generally using a roll system to enforce a sense of fairness. That's simply how most RP environments like this function. Again, SL2 lacks the substantial playerbase to support this sort of activity 24/7, but that should be where eventmin come in to bridge the gap and provide content for players, but it is my firm belief that players should be the providers of their own content in RP games.
Jumping back to the topic of housing, houses would massively support these sorts of things. The current mapping system used by eventmin is honestly a workaround that was put in place to provide more detailed maps for large scale public events that eventmin wanted to host on the public overworld map back in G6. Speaking as a former eventmin, it's a bit clunky and kind of a bitch to work with. It requires the placing and layering of several map layers, from the base ground tiles all the way to trees, buildings, or whatever decorations or placeables are needed due to the limited file size allowed for placeables using Dev Tools. It has since been made easier through Dev allowing Eventmin to specify which placeable is on which layer, but even just making the maps in of themselves can be hassle.
I'm not saying this option should be taken away, quite frankly this option provides a lot of flair and visual appeal that really does benefit events. But allowing players to decorate their own spaces and host their own miniature narrative content is something that could help reduce the workload on eventmin, and quite frankly, it's something I'd want to do, as I personally have both run and participated in these sorts of things through WoW, FFXIV, and SL2, and I continue to try and host these sorts of things for my own group of friends. I am currently actively working on these sorts of events for my own character, and being forced to work with eventmin to try and host them in-game is a massive administrative drain on my motivation when I have other things like work or family that contend with my time. If nothing else, on an eventmin level, it'd be another option for them to create a space if they don't like working with the current placeable system used most prevalently on Korvara.
Jumping over to address some issues discussed about the negatives that housing brings and... Quite honestly, I don't find most of them compelling, or at least compelling enough to remove all the positives that housing brings. The most common issue I hear of is the idea that players will squirrel away in player housing and never RP publicly, and... Really, if people want to do that, they're going to do that. Nothing stops someone from moving somewhere isolated, or even just hopping off the game entirely to move a scene onto Discord. You cannot police where players choose to RP. Sometimes people just want to ONLY RP with their friends, and I don't see why that's an issue.
In regards to using them as public spaces, I also don't see why that should be restricted. If, for example, I want to make a bartender or a store owner, or something along those lines, why shouldn't I be allowed to make one and have my own space for it? All the bars and buildings in Korvara are basically owned by now. If I want my character to be a small-time guy, owning his own small place, that very much puts me at odds from being able to work at say... The Venue in Meiaquar, which already has a long established history and people who run/work the place.
Public venues created in player housing are easily managed through the use of the LFG system. A publicly advertised space is open for business and welcomes people to show up, and directions can easily be provided within the text box of the LFG. If a public space is not being advertised, then it's likely not open/being run, or there probably isn't anyone there which precludes it as being a public RP spot to begin with. It's a fairly simple and self-managed system. If someone manages to build a space that outcompetes with other pre-established public spaces in terms of attractiveness for RP, then I honestly believe that should be allowed to happen. Spaces should be allowed to rise or fall based off the merit of what they offer to a community.
On top of allowing for players to run their own businesses or other similar RP opportunities, it further opens up Korvara to being "expanded" upon. If someone wants their character to be from a small isolated village, well... There basically none of those in Korvara, but player housing would allow them to create that space, and through the power of "imagination", you can say it's somewhere else on the island for example. The whole point of player housing is to allow for players to make their own spaces for themselves, or for their characters, and it all provides things that I feel like Korvara is sorely lacking in.
Addressing one final thing, which makes me believe that, despite all my best hopes, housing will likely never be brought to Korvara. It's simply that Korvara is latched on with G6 by the hip. People have often complained about lag, or crashes, or other issues which heavily imply to me (and quite frankly here, I could be speaking out of my ass, if Dev wants to correct me then by all means, I acknowledge this is nothing but an educated assumption on my part) that Dev is working with limited space as far as the game goes at this point. G6 takes up a sizeable about of space, and holds onto a lot of old content that basically cannot be removed due to the fact that older players have spent a lot of time and money on the old content and it would be in poor taste to get rid of to make more room for something as large as remodeling for spaces for player housing. Even on G6, people were running into issues with certain map tiles bleeding over, or the occasional glitch of maps not loading properly. I'm not saying G6 should be removed, quite frankly, I have a lot of nostalgia for G6 and I still hold onto the hope that one day people will hop back over there instead of Korvara as it is my preferred space on SL2, but in the absence of being able to cull older content to make room for newer things, Dev only has the option to optimize what he has or acquire more space. Because of this, while I would love for housing to be brought to Korvara, I do have to acknowledge that I don't think it will be happening, at least not anytime soon.
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