Greetings fellow housing enthusiasts! I really enjoy the housing in this game and, until recently, the decorating community and homeshow community channel. There are a few things I have noticed that are really starting to turn some exceptionally positive people away from wanting to become involved and/or walking away from the game entirely. We have a community of varying skill and design styles. Not everyone is going to enjoy the same things as another. If we were all the same it would be so boring. So I find myself speaking out to plea with the community to PLEASE consider the following: 1) Don't downplay another's creative opinion because it's not your flavor. DO, instead, find ONE THING that you do like in a home, and compliment the designer. Just like you, they spend many hours being creative. If you don't like it, that's fine, but it isn't necessary for you to be disrespectful by telling them so unless they've specifically asked you if you like or dislike it. This is one of the main reasons people are finding it discouraging to participate in events. 2) To use, or not to use the Layout Editor. We all have our preferences. If you use it, great, if you don't that's great too. One way is not better than the other, don't be rude to people who don't do what you do or make them feel a type of way because it isn't your preference. This is another reason people are feeling discouraged from participating in the community and events. 3) Don't tell someone their opinion is not worth listening to because YOU don't think it's important. Everyone's opinion is equally important, no one is above another, and it is a very negative and disrespectful thing to do. This is another reason people are feeling discouraged from participating in the community and events. 4) A nod of respect goes a long way! If you're going to replicate, borrow, or otherwise recreate someone's designs, take a few minutes to put a player-written book in the house that says whom/where you got the idea from. If you've asked the designer, or not, leave a book to let visitors know where you got your inspiration. Each home has up to 1,000 player written books alloted to their own item count, if you're using books in your design you can easily slide this into one of them. It's a matter of respect. We share ideas, we don't steal them. This is a reason some very exceptional decorators aren't publishing or sharing their homes. 5) Take advantage of spreadsheets, Layout Editor Home Organizer, player made dungeons, the ability to rename your storage houses, and home depots! People are listing house items on the broker for obscene prices that they have no intention of actually selling so they know where to find things and it is screwing up our economy for house items, raising prices on basic things for no reason, and making it harder for people to get started in or continuing to decorate. A friend of mine bought something because they had the coin to buy it, and the seller was very nasty to them because they didn't actually want to sell it and only wanted to know where the item was. 6) Contest events, fansites, and videos. There are some really amazing people in the community who take time out of their lives and money out of their pocket to set up contest events, create websites, and make videos for others to enjoy. A three minute video can actually take several hours to edit. A website can take many hours to do just a few adjustments. Event preparation and organization can take weeks to organize. If you're not going to participate, don't throw shade at the people who are working hard to do something for the community. If you are participating, remember to be patient, these things take time, and to thank the people who are setting up contests, fansites, and videos. 7) Tour and be toured! Reciprocate a vote request. If you're going to ask people to tour your home to upvote it, especially asking people to come from other servers, make sure you are also going out of your way and doing the same. Some servers are being left out of this by the vast majority, and it is glaringly obvious. We know that some servers are more populated than others, and some people have full slots and can't make characters to vote on other servers. If you can't make it to another server, that's fine, just don't be upset and complain about it when others can't either. Don't wait to be asked, take a little time to tour on other servers when you can. This encourages people to continue to publish homes and get involved in the community events. 8) Be mindful of what you say. The in-game homeshow channel has become very combative as of late. You never know what someone is dealing with on the other side of the screen. Just because people are in the channel when you do a /chatwho doesn't mean they can see the channel, are at their computer, etc. A friend of mine logged in to find a reprieve by decorating after finding out some very bad news, she said hello, and immediately someone else spent an hour complaining that people didn't say hi to them but said hello to those just logging in. It caused so much chaos and the ongoing arguement between several people that, instead of her finding some time to escape the reality of her health, made her feel guilty for being friendly and saying hello. If you're having a bad day, sometimes it's better to not say anything and take a break from chatting. Don't make your problems a problem in communicating good vibes to others. Homeshow is a family, yes, and we all love sharing accomplishments and talking about designs. Having said that, it isn't necessary to beg for money to pay bills, buy your medications, or kronos to pay for your account, lament your family woes or have explicit discussions about sex, menstration, politics, religion, or other controvecial topics. People play the game to get away from that, and these sort of topics should be had in a different type of private channels. As supportive as everyone wants to be, if you have real life issues such as needing medications, trouble paying your bills, or just needing a professional to talk to there are plenty of FREE resources out there. The minute by minute lamenting and play by plays are only adding to the negativity that's been happening. It's not a place this should be happening. Can we please have our friendly homeshow community back with a heavy focus on homes and uplifting decorators and leave all that other stuff out of it?
Hmm; I haven't seen a lot of nasty behavior in the forum here (either I've been lucky, or my natural aversion to drama makes me tune it out/leave that thread), but yeah, sometimes the chat channel can get a little heavy-duty indeed. And it's harder at times to tune that out, without leaving the channel (no guarantee it'll come back... X-P) or just trying to focus on what you're doing (like decorating!) instead. That being said, definitely, we could use a return to civility; most of the time, we not only like/love the channel for its accessibility across multiple worlds, but also to get away from other channels' "stuff and nonsense." It might be channel creep... :-/ Number 5 puzzled me, at least the behavior of shocked people who had stuff bought from them on the Broker. I, too, will frequently panic-stuff things onto the Broker just to have some place to put them out of my Inventory and/or before I can get to a house of mine to chuck it all into (and slam the door behind and hope it shuts; can be very confusing later when I go to look for something using Search and panic again when I can't find it... "Oh, right, the Broker! D'oh!" /facepalm). But I don't offer it up for sale! That is an option (just say "no" ;->)! If someone's been working the Broker for this long, they ought to recognize that as a thing. :-/ As a matter of fact, the default on the Broker is "Listed: No" and you have to jump through lots and lots of hoops to actually put it up on sale; if they just hit the List Item for Sale button, it will show as a Yes, but in red, indicating they could get more money for the thing from a merchant. Maybe the red is to get folks' attention...but yeah, in order to sell anything for more than 9,999,999 plat, they gotta work at it (trust me; I have the aggravated Carpal Tunnel to prove it...), so why would they in the first place if they didn't want to actually sell it? I'm confused. :-/ Uwk
The way it was described to me was that the person stuffs things in their broker and lists them between six million and 20 million or higher so they can easily find out which character it is on. If you have an alternative interface installed, it only takes a few clicks to do this. This is a big issue on Antonia Bayle, there are roughly 50-60 pages of their alts listing items like this. It has also increased what people are charging for items that are listed in this upper millions range that usually sell for a few silvers or a few gold (player made or easily looted) to hundreds of platinum. Aside from them doing this to mess up the economy, or make a few quick million from a player who is unaware of where to find these items, it confuses me and my circle of friends as well.
Good on you for speaking out. Things have gotten pretty dreary in the chat channel with all the complaining about RL stuff. Seems some people are struggling in their every day life and are drowning the chat channel with things that should be said in whispers to their friends or spouses and taking their frustrations out on others. Its got to the point where myself and a lot of people in my guild have left the channel because we're tired of the drama being caused and constant desire to treat the chat channel as a free therapy session or place to guilt trip people into giving them kronos or money so they can keep playing a (free to play) game. Regarding #5 I had this happen to me too. I bought an item from the AB broker that isn't available to get anymore and the person sent me a tell asking if I'd 'give' it back because they didn't want to sell it in the first place. I should add that they didn't want to give me my 12m plat back, just expected me to hand over the item because it was on their alt's broker so they knew what house it was in and that I was in the wrong for buying it.
I can't say I've seen a lot of drama in the Homeshow channel, but it wouldn't surprise me. I'm with Uwk, tho - I try to avoid and ignore it as best I can. I definitely haven't seen anyone pan-handling for help with RL things like prescriptions, bills, or even buying kronos. Heck, I'd love to get some free kronos, but I'm sure not going to go asking for them from other players just because I cannot afford to by any with in-game or RL money. I'm with everyone else re:#5, tho. Why even list the item for sale??? Until the House Item Depot came out, I used the broker extensively to store stuff, but never with it being listed for sale. I just found it easy and larger capacity than only using my house vaults because all it takes to browse my stuff was a market board in any house I may be working on. Sooo easy. The people who list things for exorbitant amounts and then have a fit when it actually sells even tho they didn't want it to obviously have huge problems and/or mental deficiencies in my humble opinion. I sure wouldn't sell it back to them, let alone give it back without a refund.
it is one of the reasons I pulled out of swaps and neighborhoods, I am doing the AS one only because im decorating my own home and i know i wont win but im trying to have fun with it.
I had in the past been sort of guilty of #5, but if someone purchased soemthing I knowingly listed too high thinking no one would buy it genuinely, I sent the most of the money back to them with an apology. (did not ask for it back though, that's crazy!) Which the person then said no way, and sent it back to me. Q! It was a back and forth for a bit, but I care about the community a lot so would never intentionally try to ruin the market or anything like that. FORTUNATELY after MUCH begging for MANY years and trying to guilt the dev's into fairness and equality for carpenters, we now have the home depot so this should never be an issue. (thank you Dev's!) Also if the chat was starting to get bad and bring me down, I just leave it, sadly, I have had done that many days because of the sh*t storm I am going through personally, I am trying to eascape via the game, and I can't do that tbecause I really love people and want to help them. It hurts me to see others hurting. (When I am so overwhelmed already) I have to just click it off, not because I don't care but because it really genuinely hurts my heart that someone else is going through bad things too, and there's nothing I can do about it except say I am sorry, and that doesn't feel good enough to me. 10 Mental Health Apps for When You Can't Afford Therapy https://www.appliedbehavioranalysisprograms.com › lists I hope this helps some.
I have not really experienced this in the past since I'm not on the same schedule as most of you (as I am european ), but for the folks offended when others don't reply to their hello's, I'd like to remind them that we are decorators. Sometimes, we get really focused on what we are doing and we don't look at the chat much if at all. Heck, I miss a lot of my fellow guildmates' messages and they never take it as a personal attack.
Thank you for posting this. I want to say that if I ever say something in chat or in a video that you are offended by just know that I do NOT ever mean it in a negative way. I have fibro and sometimes my brain thinks one thing and my mouth says something totally different. I don't notice doing it most of the time, but sometimes I catch myself. I am also a pretty blunt person and sometimes things come out of my mouth (fingers) very raw, and I don't always explain what I am trying to say. Usually because I am tired or having a harder fibro day then realize. Just so everyone is clear, I love all houses this community puts out even those decorated by new people. I am still learning after all these years that is why most of us find it fun because we can see our growth as decorators. If I don't sound excited about your house as much as you think I should have been it is NOT your house, it is totally me. Sometimes I don't get sleep for days and most days I only get a couple of hours which is normally interrupted a few times with me waking up. Fibro makes most of us feel like we have the flu all the time which doesn't help right now cuz I am dealing with long covid. Please keep that in mind when you watch my videos. I might mention I am sick in channel just so people know why the videos are taking longer. As far as #6... Please please please be patient with me. I am the only one (that I know about) doing videos for deco events. I also do videos of house item previews and other miscellaneous videos. The process takes much more time than people expect since I have to make sure everything still works because updates sometimes make things break. I need time to warm up so sometimes it takes me lots of retries. Sometimes the video has error and cannot be fixed (corrupted or something). Even when there were others helping split up deco event house tours it would take a few days for all the videos to be posted. I really am excited to see everyone's houses/guildhalls but I am completely behind on my list and also events. My hubby still hasn't moved his work computer into another room so he can close the door for me to do videos which means doing videos in middle of night getting no sleep or doing them before he wakes up on weekends. As far as #4... I see so many houses...before I started doing videos, I would spend so much time touring everyone's houses and vote on them, etc. I have a horrible memory without factoring in fibro or my other health issues. Names are very hard for me. I have called myself the wrong name and people very close to me. I try to mention I might steal something from someone's house. I won't remember later if I actually do "steal" something. I have given up on lists of ideas I want to use. If I give someone a tour, I make sure to mention it is stolen but don't remember from which decorator(s) and/or make a point to point out something I know for sure I didn't steal. I see so many RL house tours everything is a blur in my crazy brain.
Edriliane, Edriliane...er.......GC? Yes! Hi! /wave Uwk aka eleven toons in EU in GC... ;-> (and who speaks 0 French [though it actually helps with any drama if you can't understand what's being said ;->] and also completely understands about being wrapped up in a project )
Folks should understand technical difficulties; with my own issues, I'm often just jazzed if I can finish in the same month, let alone by the actual due date, so I have no problems with you or any other videographer taking all the time you need. Seriously: would you like some additional help with that? Do you resent being the only one doing the videos these days? Or do you really enjoy it so much there's no resentment, just worries about our enjoyment and desire to see the videos ASAP? What can we do to help (what do you use for equipment and programs? I've probably asked before, but that was like eons ago, and I'm sure things have improved since then)? Maybe I shouldn't be so bloody wordy in the Books of the House (kind of a reflex, after puzzling Niboota and the others for so long ["What the heck is this supposed to be? Why is that thing here? What does this mean?"]; I feel the urge to explain everything), so you don't feel like you have to read it all (though it is appreciated ;->)? Same here; I actually hang on to real estate "post card" ads even though we live in an apartment and aren't in the market for a house in RL any time soon. I'll go to their websites and download pictures of places they've recently sold or have listed, just to get ideas there. ;-> As far as "stealing"/being inspired/etc., it's always nice to be acknowledged, and so help me, I've claimed credit for "inventing" stuff someone else thought up like 4-5 years before (Great Minds Think Alike, or "we're drawing from the same well!" or some such excuse on my part after having it pointed out... ), but we can't always remember where we first saw such awesome ideas, and even the first time we saw it, it might've been second or third hand already (the first decorators from when EQ2 was in Beta might be able to have an argument... ;->). The one thing we can't do is get hacked off in RL about it and grumble about legal issues, since none of this is our actual intellectual property; it's DBG's. And even they might get inspired by something we've come up with and possibly design a new thing based on an invention of ours. That being said, I have seen entire house layouts completely lifted from someone else, and the lifter claiming full, original credit for it, which is tacky. :-/ If someone's gonna copy everything from a place, or "buy" a layout and fill it with their own items or whatever, they should say so. Uwk
Stupid, stupid double posting... "The server did not respond in time. Please try again." So I click on the X button to remove the annoyance from my screen, only to find out that lo and behold, it not only responded in time indeed, it did so with interest! Compounded, even! :-/ Uwk
Ok for #4 um after so many years and years of playing you cant remember everything you saw from somewhere unless your really nutso and write it all down. unless you copying someone's home top to bottom then you should say in a book because you liked their house or whatever, otherwise it just gets painful. And for #8 I normally don't get a reply back anymore so I've kind of not playing anymore and times I used to be on was the rl stuff id try to get back to game convo, and honestly I've given up (now rl fun or funny convo yeah I can handle but the depressing stuff I already am don't need yours or help adding to it makes it depressing to log into game). I liked chatting in game and half the reason id log in and now I just log in for events. #5 no I'm not using spreadsheets I use my broker (but I don't post unless I'm selling junk), but have moved to the house item depo because I could buy one. but I don't post mine for millions there are people who think us decorators are dumb and will buy their junk for millions. The broker eco is so messed up its not even funny there is crafted stuff (non rare ing) selling for way too much, and the merchant bought stuff as well. And don't forget there are toxic people everywhere and only thing you can do is ignore them. Like gen chat, sadly its only place to see when guide events are up (the forum for guides isn't always accurate). #6 yeah there is some shade , generally like the side eye and not open, if your participating in something. I don't get why, either way I don't care. And also don't get mad when I tell more info on the forums, not going to give you and spam the chat with rules and how to. Btw to Oaky your fine dear, never had anything bad from you. Sorry your the only vid person I know it takes a lot to do it, not easy.
If you do not wish to leave the channel, but want a break from it? Tabs!! Give some channels their own tabs where they can happily scroll all by themselves for a while. I stopped taking commissions when I first became ill nearly a decade ago, I do not always finish my own builds, it would terribly stress me to worry about yours too! Ocarinah we are happy that you are here, take all the time you need.
I don't resent anything. I am fine if I am the only one or if there are dozens of people doing videos. I don't mind if multiple video the same house. I cannot tell you how many times I ran into another videographer in the same house at the same time as me and it always made me laugh. I have never had an issue with any of that. I was always open to helping people learn how to video (check out my Helpful Tips thread). As far as my equipment...I don't think anyone really wants to know what I use since it is always over the top even though my rig is getting old now. We are waiting to move before we get new rigs which we build ourselves. And there are plans for a much much bigger storage for tons more videos. Every time a software or internet company asks for our rig info the response is always, it's not you it is us. I always have to reduce my video settings before doing videos because of complaints with the 4k videos not being able to play on other people's computers. There are plans on me having my own room or hubby having his own room or both so I can record any time which we be very helpful with me staying caught up on videos. Crosses fingers...hopefully we will move before end of the year. I do have some medical tests coming up to figure out if something more serious is causing me to be super sick. Will let everyone know what is going on when I know more. I switched from the first video software to the one Niboota was using before even 1st year of videoing was over due to the video and audio not matching up with the first software. I haven't changed since, but I do sometimes use Microsoft's video editing software to make the bloopers videos by cutting and pasting funny clips together. I have had one person interested in starting to do videos and gave info plus offered to help out when needed. I was very interested in what kind cuz I do keep a spreadsheet of what videos have been completed. When I see someone looking for specific house or house type or what not I do try to give them info so they can go view house or video.
This is what I do with Gen Chat. Until Heroes Fest and then I haul it back over to my main tab so I can see which puppets are up. Then Heroes Fest ends and back to a separate tab it goes til next year! No one needs that much ridiculous drama in their lives. Sometimes if I'm super into a project I'll also slide Homeshow into it's own tab so I don't get distracted by chatting. Sorry. Wasn't trying to derail the thread with my chat habits. In full agreement though that sometimes a break from any chat channel is necessary and helpful.
You're probably going to noticed the price on crafted rare items sky rocket now the chance of harvesting rares at lower tiers has been drastically reduced. I've notice the prices of the rares on the broker are now insane which will reflect back into house items prices becoming unforeseeable expensive for the decorators.
What happened to the lower tier chances? :-/ Hadn't noticed or heard of that, unless you count it starting at Xegonite... X-P And for goodness sake, devs, don't we have enough bloody problems with sky-rocketing prices in RL already?? >:-/ Uwk
