Topic

Group Halls, or Lessons Learned From A Cooperatively-run Tower

As the Community Kitchens group and I work together to create an outlet for their community food service, we're seeing issues that will need to be addressed in Group Halls.

1) Decorating
3 of us were trying to decide on walls, ceilings, floors, and SDB styles.    
There needs to be a way that more than one player at a time can view tentative styles, before they were purchased.
For example:  I had already purchased a ceiling style.  We were trying to find walls that worked. Everyone could see the ceiling style after I applied it, but no one else could see the wall swatches next to it.  

There was no way to test SDB styles against the wall segment, even after I had purchased the wall.  Again, an issue of more than one person being able to see and discuss tentative style choices.

2) Item management
At the moment, only one person can refill and change prices on SDBs.  We'll need to have a way that more than one person can add items to an SDB and change the prices.  These need to be independent of the ability to collect the money from the SDB.

One possibility is that various item management tools be made part of the group member tools choices.  The uber admin (or admins) can assign various membership levels to have different access to the SDB menu items.  

3) Storage management
Related to the item management issue is the restocking issue.  I'd like to have a cabinet with bags that is openable by a certain membership level of that group so they can remove surplus to refill the SDBs.  

4) Tower locking.
From time to time, it would be useful to lock out the general public from the tower while we are resetting the store or tower.  Rather than  tediously changing hundreds of SDBs to not-selling and then changing them back again, it would be nice to be able to lock the front door for a while.  

Posted 5 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Boutiques and Independent Contractors

    Slightly different from group access issue, but still real time, right now wish list.

    It would be nice to have SDBs assignable to individuals, with varying levels of access.
    For example, Alain and WalruZ could each have 12 SDBs that they were responsible for keeping filled, setting prices, and collecting currants.  They should even be able to change the style of the SDB, and use their own credits for upgrades.  

    Neither should be able to access the other's currants.  It might be useful if each could access a storage cabinet and refill the SDBs that were not their own.  

    There still needs to be an uber admin for the entire tower, in case of catastrophic failure of someone's computer, RL pulling people from the game, etc.  
    Posted 5 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Many points. Let me adress collaborative decorating first, because I think there's a case for supporting this in individual towers as well as group halls. First I will describe and some problems, then I'll propose some solutions:

    PROBLEMS

    1. No way for collaborators to preview wall, ceiling and floor treatments. 

    The tower owner could preview, but the collaborators would not. The only way we could figure out what treatments we wanted was by going to our individual towers and communicating by party chat. That worked only because (1) we decided to do walls, ceiling and floor before furniture, (2) we each had a tower with an unfinished room, and (3) we were all subscribers. This method won't work for seeing what a particular wall treatment looks like with furniture already in place, which makes it less likely that we'll redecorate from time to time, even though this is something we'd like to do. Also, if the decorating group includes non-subscribers, having no way for them to preview means it's less likely we'll use subscriber-only items.

    2. No way for collaborators to preview furniture upgrades. 

    After we'd decided on and implemented wall, ceiling and floor treatments, we wanted to see how various styles of SDB would look against our chosen wall style. Rather than have the tower owner spend credits on SDB upgrades just so we could see how they looked, we limited our consideration to things we thought we could envision.

    3. Furniture upgrades were difficult to discuss because no names are shown. 

    "First column, fifth one down" worked because we were all subscribers -- but just barely.

    4. No way for collaborators to provide upgrades on the spot. 

    One collaborator (A) wanted to provide SDBs. Another collaborator (B) wanted to provide the upgrades for those. And of, course, only the tower owner (C) could place the SDBs. Everyone came to the room being decorated so that the plain SDBs could be transferred from A to B. Player B then had to return home, place the SDBs there in order to upgrade them, return the upgraded SDBs to inventory, and then return to the room being decorated so the SDBs could be transferred to player C for actual placement. Not fun.

    Problem 5: There is no way for collaborators to point (c.f. deictic gesture). 

    Collaborators can only describe where they'd like the tower owner to place furniture by using awkward verbal descriptions.

    POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

    A. Provide a 5-minute free preview for decorating upgrades and allow this to be applied to multiple items independently.

    For example, a player could select a wall upgrade and either buy it on the spot or try it for free for 5 minutes. During those 5 minutes, anyone in the room would be able to see the upgrade. The player could then do the same for a table and two chairs in order to see how the upgrades work together. This would satisfy a desire that many players have to be able to see how new furniture looks in a room, whether they are decorating collaboratively or individually.

    B. Let players see the name of furniture upgrades while decorating, e.g. with tooltips.

    C. Let players upgrade furniture items without needing to place them.

    This would require changes to the UI for upgrading, but would give players the option of providing upgrades for another player when and where these are wanted.

    D. Give players a way to point to objects or locations in the game space, e.g. with a graphical pointer that can be called up and moved around.

    This would improve player communication in a number of contexts, collaborative decorating being just one example.
    Posted 5 months ago by Splendora Subscriber! | Permalink
  • One trick is - upgrade the item to a free upgrade while at home.  Then you can change its style from within the furniture menu wherever you are.
    Posted 5 months ago by Scarlett Bearsdale Subscriber! | Permalink
  • That's a good tip, Scarlett, but it wouldn't work in our case. One player had plain SDBs with no upgrades. I was providing the upgrades. So after the other player gave me the plain SDBs, I had to go home to place them before I could do any upgrades.
    Posted 5 months ago by Splendora Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hmm ... could they have been given to the homeowner to upgrade, then to you, and then back to the homeowner?  I THINK as I have never tried that before.
    Posted 5 months ago by Scarlett Bearsdale Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The homeowner did not want to spend credits upgrading the SDBs for the group. It was Splendora's credits that needed to be used, and to do that, Splendora had to be at home.  

    Edit:  oh, wait.  Perhaps that would have worked.
    Posted 5 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yes, what Scarlett suggests would work, but here's what we'd then have:

    Player A gives 20 SDBs to Player C. Player C places each one, upgrades it, and then puts it back in inventory. Player C gives the 20 SDBs to Player B who upgrades them, then gives them back to Player C, who once again places them.

    It saves a trip home and back, but I am a slow typist and could probably be home and back in a shorter time than it would take me to explain -- unless the other players knew what I meant by the "Bearsdale Method."

    It would be faster and more intuitive for Player A to give the SDBs to Player B, who would upgrade them and then give them to Player C for placement.

    It would be even better if SDBs could be given and upgraded by the stack rather than one at a time.
    Posted 5 months ago by Splendora Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh I'm not saying it's a *good* solution ... just a workaround!  
    Posted 5 months ago by Scarlett Bearsdale Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Sounds really fun indeed...I'll just wait for actual collaborative spaces...
    Posted 5 months ago by Lemo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 to all the above !
    Posted 5 months ago by serenitycat Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Grrrrrrrrrrrreat! +1,000,000,000!
    Posted 5 months ago by I'm Chris Subscriber! | Permalink