[Discussion] Town Showcase and Visibility

I think some sort of portal room would be nice. Do you think warp signs could be used instead to combat the lag caused by portals? #MakeTownsGreatAgain

 

Monthly town spotlights.

Users submit town applications to the spotlight by a certain time, then the community votes on which get to be in the spotlight.

Town owner gets prize (GC/ECD) and a /warp to their town from spawn so users at spawn can warp there to see their cool town.

Would bring back motivation and incentive to build dope stuff.

 

So, to get the elephant in the room out of the way, there is always going to be those who get pissy if there is any sort of financial reward involved with town showcases (similar to how the old Town of the Month) because of “stolen builds” and what defines that

With that being said, as one of the few people left on the server who primarily does building over everything else, a town showcase is a splendid idea!

Ideally, some sort of incentive would be good to have more people actively building stuff (like an ECD reward per town or something, maybe a lored item or forum medal), but we go back to the elephant in the room and those people who would be super against that.

 

Giant cube floating in the middle of spawn with portals leading to each town

 

Honestly the greatest thing from back in the day was the town portal “room” (for lack of a better term). It encouraged people to just walk around towns and visit towns especially if they go unadvertised or just simply are there. I dont remember what it cost to have a portal, but making the portal cheap would have more town visibility.
In addition, i dont remember what it was like, but if we do a similar layout where it was a cube with multiple levels and 3 layers to each floor, it should be first come first serve and just filled as GA’s do the apps or whatever. I think it detracts from the point to have a bid for “1st row town portals”

 

Not sure on the logistics or amount of work involved, but I have seen servers have a GUI with clickable /warps, potentially this is something @Videowiz92 could get involved in. If possible then there would be no reason why you couldn’t have a “town of the month” too that sits centre stage of the GUI. Could easily break warps down into categories too, farms, plots, builds etc etc

 

It's really weird, two day ago I was thinking about ECC while working, and I had a thought pop into my head that it'd be awesome if there was a place in spawn, a "room" of sorts, where new players could walk in, and there'd be portals to different towns, farms/plot towns/markets/etc. I absolutely think it'd be a great idea to do this.

It'd be cool if people could decorate the portals to their towns. And, to prevent there being portals to towns that have an owner that isn't as active anymore, I think the portals should change every 45 days. Why 45? It's longer than 30 days, so it'd be less of an extensive workload for the people involved to maybe have to switch the portal plot to another town when the time-frame is up, but not so long that having a portal there to an inactive town would be an issue.

I like what Zedo said, there being 3 floors and having it be first-come-first-serve for which floor/which order you'd get a portal in, and a small price tag for the portal. Another application to have available to fill out under Mayor+. I'd rather see the people who acted the quickest get the first floor, versus the people with the biggest pockets. That would show player dedication and excitement about showing off their towns.

I think it'd be really clever, and helpful/more organized, if there was a sign by each portal, explaining what kind of town it was (farm, market, plots, various/mix). This would help new and old players alike navigate the area easier and find what kind of town they want to visit. There could even be a spot on the application for the player to list what kind their town is.

All of this would get people a little more excited about putting the effort into building (or finishing) their towns. This is actually why the thought popped into my head the other day.

As far as a reward of sorts like others were mentioning, I don't think that's necessary. If people really want players visiting their towns, having the portal to their town at spawn would be reward enough. The portal area also brings another way of advertising towns; a super easy way.

So, long story short, I'm down for this idea. Though I will say, if a warp sign would help with lag, like Pixel mentioned, then that would be a much better idea than a portal itself. That would still give the player a small area to decorate.

 

I like the idea of a central area with a small space (maybe 10x10?) that's customizable by each Mayor to advertise their town. Events has a lot of cool spaces that could be used for this. It doesn't have to be at spawn.

I also agree with the idea of there being a nominal fee and application process to weed out the half-hearted efforts. The sign idea is also a good one. Like a lift sign, only it takes you to a defined destination, rather than up/down. Not sure what's possible in this regard.

+1 from me.

No prizes though. That requires voting/judging and everybody that doesn't win feels like they lost. Besides we need money out of the economy, not in.

 

Might i also add stupidly ugly; if you use these "tele-pads" the warp owner could then decorate said area for the pad if desired

 

My tired brain late last night got these confused with warp signs. The "tele-pad" would be the best option!

 

We used to have a spawn-town portal building. It was quite fun to hop around in that and explore new towns at random.

 

Could put it under ground

 

Why miss the opportunity to bring back the giant eye sore

 

How about 2-3 towns monthly get chosen to be showcased, in a centralized section at spawn we have kinda large portals going to the selected towns, and a prize could be a forum medal

 

I see a lot of the town spotlights and stuff like that, the one fear that I have is that after the initial excitement around it, it might be forgotten entirely. I like the idea of maybe creating a larger portal room and allowing people to decorate their portal area or something like that. Nothing big, maybe a 5x5 area in front of the portal. To prevent any towns from just being there with inactive owners, maybe once a year do something like an lwc cleanup where a GA goes ahead and checks the /seen date on the town's official owner to see if they are inactive and then clean up the area.

 

I love the sectioned floors concept, looking forward to seeing other people's builds!

 

Would it potentially be better to have a 5x5 area or maybe a 7x7? It is just a singular sign that can be centered into an odd-numbered space, but i feel as though a 10x10 may be too big for just a warp sign and decoration.