I too keep getting sent to nearly empty castles. It has gotten to a point to where I will click on item identifier. This shows a count of the items in the house. If it shows less than 20, I immediately leave without rating the house.
I too keep getting sent to nearly empty castles. It has gotten to a point to where I will click on item identifier. This shows a count of the items in the house. If it shows less than 20, I immediately leave without rating the house.
I agree. All 'new' castles are virtually empty. I've just stopped wasting my time.
I know it's a daunting task to try and figure out a way for us to see decorated homes and weed out the undecorated/nearly undecorated/storage only, homes.
I myself have many highly decorated homes, and not one of them are on the top rated, because they are not being seen, as I'm sure many other wizards feel the same way. I have several other homes that are partially decorated, but I will not list them until I am satisfied that my house is decorated to my standards.
Like I said, I love visiting other wizard's homes even if they are very simply decorated. It's fun to see what others have done, whether it's 'glitched' or not. It's all about the fun in seeing what other people come up with.
I know it's a daunting task to try and figure out a way for us to see decorated homes and weed out the undecorated/nearly undecorated/storage only, homes.
I myself have many highly decorated homes, and not one of them are on the top rated, because they are not being seen, as I'm sure many other wizards feel the same way. I have several other homes that are partially decorated, but I will not list them until I am satisfied that my house is decorated to my standards.
Like I said, I love visiting other wizard's homes even if they are very simply decorated. It's fun to see what others have done, whether it's 'glitched' or not. It's all about the fun in seeing what other people come up with.
I'm glad to read that KI is trying to work on a way to deal with the empty castles. When I first heard of the Castle Tours I was very excited about it and now after spending lots of time going to lots of houses that were empty, or a pet dumping ground or storage unit, I am wondering why I keep trying to find the houses that are suppose to be decorated. I really wish people would stop adding their houses unless they have decorated it or done something to make their place cool to go see. I would like to also add that a good first impression does wonders for getting a good rating. You are more likely to get a better rating if you have your custom signs being welcoming instead of saying something like 'Don't Bug Me'. I went to one house and there was a sign there that I saw just as I appeared stating 'Don't Bug Me' and you know what? I left without bothering to see the house or rate it. If you don't want people there and don't want to be bugged by vistors, don't add your house to the tour.
It would be nice to have a way to know how many people have visited your castle.
It would also make sense to separate the leader boards from the person administering the tours. In the tour house, I notice that book on a stand by the desk -- could you make that the place to check on leader boards? It just seems more logical that way.
We are working on a change that will reduce the chance of you viewing a house that is low rated or is not decorated.
Awesome news! This makes me very happy because I have seen some great houses on the tours and it will be nice to not have to wade through empty houses to get to them.
definately agree with limiting adding a house if it doesnt have a certain amount of items (i dont like the limiting visiting low rated house though)
expanding the leader board to 500 maybe would be great too. acutally showing the rating would be great and being able to see where our own rating is too.
a guestbook would be nice, people could click it and their name would be added to the list of those who have visited our house.
Do we have an exploit going on here with this new update? I have seen postings on the fansites where players are asking who has their house/castle with Winterbane listed on the Castle Tours, so that they could go there just to play Winterbane. I paid real money to get Winterbane. Now anyone can access it through the Castle Tours.
I am LOVING the Castle Tours... However, I have twelve homes on the tours () and none of them have hit the leader boards yet. I would love it if there was a way to tell what my castles have been rated. Thanks! Eric Darkforge
I am LOVING the Castle Tours... However, I have twelve homes on the tours () and none of them have hit the leader boards yet. I would love it if there was a way to tell what my castles have been rated. Thanks! Eric Darkforge
I second this. It would be nice to know how many people have visited our castles, or if people are visiting them. It would also be nice to know what the average rating is.
I also like this idea -- maybe we could add a "guest book" to the castle tours, with some way people could add comments. That way we would know both how many people were visiting, and what they think of our houses. Each house could have its own rating, whether we make it to the "top" lists or not.
That way too those of us who never make it to the leader boards, which is surely most of us, can still know how people like our houses. With so many players, and such limited space on leader boards, the probability of most players getting on those boards is not very great.
Of course, KI could keep filters on the comment books to keep them appropriate -- or even limit them to a chat-menu kind of selection to keep it simple and clean. Not that I personally like the chat menu, but given the style of game this is chat commenting would ensure that no abuses of comments would occur.
Do we have an exploit going on here with this new update? I have seen postings on the fansites where players are asking who has their house/castle with Winterbane listed on the Castle Tours, so that they could go there just to play Winterbane. I paid real money to get Winterbane. Now anyone can access it through the Castle Tours.
I visited a house today that had Winterbane and Pagoda. WOW, it was sure crowded!
Once someone visits a house that has one or both of the dungeons, they bring all of their friends, and even beg others who are visiting to help them through.
I'm not sure what to think about it. I have Pagoda at one one my listed houses, and I'm going to check and see if there are a lot of people there. I might just block it off until me and/or my actual friends want to use it.
I agree with many of the comments that it is a great idea, but needs quite a bit of adjustments before this is a part of the game I will spend anymore time on. I have spent several hours each day for six days trying to visit assorted styles of homes and castles.
Most of the places I was sent to either did not comply with the listing, or were completely vacant - except for a pagoda and winterbane right where you enter. I agree that it is not proper that I spent real money to buy winterbane and now anyone can just access it through house tours. Maybe these special dungeons should be rendered inactive for house tours.
I find it hard to believe the currently top rated maze ever got to the top of the list. There is no maze in the entire place! Must be the person has lots of friends voting for free access to winterbane.
I do hope KI does some form of review before allowing a listing to insure that it is in the proper category and is indeed decorated beyond a free dungeon and a few pets running around.
It appears that some players have no idea what category to list their house in. Maybe there should be a mini tutorial a player must read before their first listing.
Also how about reserving the name of the house owner until after grading the house. This would prevent other players from "stacking the deck" for a friend's house thus giving a poorly decorated house with a dungeon enough "votes" to move it to the top of a list.
KI has a great idea, but moved it to the real game way too soon. This should have had more time in the test realm to weed out the flaws.
I will give it awhile and hopefully KI will resolve the issues and figure out a way to display quality houses, not ones that have a free dungeon or a player with lots of friends.
With all my above gripes, I will say that I have seen several fantastic houses and one truly spectacular mystical house. I thank those home owners for a bright light in an almost endless sea of boredom.
I agree with many of the comments that it is a great idea, but needs quite a bit of adjustments before this is a part of the game I will spend anymore time on. I have spent several hours each day for six days trying to visit assorted styles of homes and castles.
Most of the places I was sent to either did not comply with the listing, or were completely vacant - except for a pagoda and winterbane right where you enter. I agree that it is not proper that I spent real money to buy winterbane and now anyone can just access it through house tours. Maybe these special dungeons should be rendered inactive for house tours.
I find it hard to believe the currently top rated maze ever got to the top of the list. There is no maze in the entire place! Must be the person has lots of friends voting for free access to winterbane.
I do hope KI does some form of review before allowing a listing to insure that it is in the proper category and is indeed decorated beyond a free dungeon and a few pets running around.
It appears that some players have no idea what category to list their house in. Maybe there should be a mini tutorial a player must read before their first listing.
Also how about reserving the name of the house owner until after grading the house. This would prevent other players from "stacking the deck" for a friend's house thus giving a poorly decorated house with a dungeon enough "votes" to move it to the top of a list.
KI has a great idea, but moved it to the real game way too soon. This should have had more time in the test realm to weed out the flaws.
I will give it awhile and hopefully KI will resolve the issues and figure out a way to display quality houses, not ones that have a free dungeon or a player with lots of friends.
With all my above gripes, I will say that I have seen several fantastic houses and one truly spectacular mystical house. I thank those home owners for a bright light in an almost endless sea of boredom.
Rowan Story Dreamer
This is a really great comment Rowan. Though several hours a day is a lot more time than I have spent, I have to say that your observations are right on.
I too have seen several really amazing houses, and a lot of houses that never should have been allowed on the tour at all. I have also seen houses on the leader boards that I was not very impressed with, and wonder how they got there, when other houses on the tours that obviously had a lot more care put into them are not up.
The special dungeons (winterbane/pagoda) thing is difficult, though. People buy those dungeons in part to make their homes fun for guests, and the house tourists are guests in the homes. How could you separate out the tourists from other guests? I suppose maybe if they put a block on the dungeons that was activated by the real estate cat lady, but not by ports to a friend? Seems like a tricky bit of programming to separate out visitors who are already in the houses, and only block the tourists, while allowing other guests to jump in the dungeon. And then what happens if a tourist is there, and gets his friend to port, then leaves, and ports back to his friend? If on the other hand the dungeon was blocked to everyone while the house is on the tour, that also seems not to work -- it is like punishing the owner of the dungeon for putting his/her house on tour. I agree it is an exploit; but it is a real difficult one to resolve.
Anyway, thanks for the post -- great observations.
Possibly the simple fix for special dungeons in homes is to make the sigils active only when the home owner is present.
That way you could share your premium dungeon with friends, but prevent the seemingly abuse of them through the house tours. Unless, of course, the homeowner wants to stay logged on and spinning in their house. But that is a different topic I won't even venture into today.
The home owner would not have to enter the dungeon, and as soon as the friends entered the dungeon, the home owner could do as they please, even log out.
1st Question Yes! If want it to be limited don't go on display! 2nd Question Yes!
StormStrong101, KI replied and the answer was NO. Once the castle is placed on the tour that setting is over-ridden allowing anyone to access the castle in question. I agree, however, if you don't want strangers in your house, don't put it on the list. Same with Winterbane and Pagoda. If you don't want strangers using it, don't place it on the grounds of your castle on the tour. You can always pick it up and store it in your back pack until you are ready to use it. Simply place it on your lot when you need it...problem solved ;P
We are working on a change that will reduce the chance of you viewing a house that is low rated or is not decorated.
Is there anything that can be done for homes that are not in the right classification? There are a lot of houses in the Top-Rated Maze category that don't have a maze. Everyone loves mazes so people are placing their homes in this category so they get visited, maze or not.
There should be another category for museums. Some people have amazing museums set up that have items that have long since retired, and it would be nice to see.
Ki, to address the issue of entryway's being blocked, could there be programming implemented that prompts the user they can not block the entryway of a home on the castle tours, and if there is a blocked entryway, a prompt that stops them from being able to add the castle until it's removed?
A little more clarification on categories might help. There are people that are beyond creative and utilize the various "glitches" to create amazing places. It would be helpful to know which category those type of homes need to be in- Decorated? Magical? Crazy? or maybe even their own...most tourists I've talked to don't like seeing homes that have stuff thrown everywhere with no rhyme or reason so the crazy category wouldn't really be could for this type of home, because it gets skipped by most "tourists" and it runs the risk of getting burried if people don't rate them.
For homes that are clearly mis-categorized or empty, have a button the tourists can press on the rating window that says "incorrect category", "empty", etc. I just don't have a clue as to what would happen after that cause I doubt KI has time to go to all those homes to verify there is an issue and either move them or remove the house from the tour and notify the owner......
Is there a way to see homes that are NOT on the leader board? I've seen some amazing places but because people aren't rating them, they aren't on the leader board and should be above most that are.
Has anyone considered a monthly contest for the homes? Players vote on each type of house,(Massive Fantasy Palace, Sun Palace, Death House, etc) and the one with the most votes for their type receive a decorative housing item like a framed medal. There would have to be rules to keep it fair like no one can win it more than once a year, etc.
Do we have an exploit going on here with this new update? I have seen postings on the fansites where players are asking who has their house/castle with Winterbane listed on the Castle Tours, so that they could go there just to play Winterbane. I paid real money to get Winterbane. Now anyone can access it through the Castle Tours.
Yes, anything on the property can be accessed, just like it is when you have friends port to you at home. If you don't want people accessing something, like Winterbane or Pagoda, the current options are:
1-Don't add the castle on the tour. 2-Don't place the item, dungeon, games, etc on the property. You can keep it in your back pack, lock the item so you don't sell it by accident, and place it when you are ready to use it.
I too paid real money for Winterbane and Pagoda but I have no problem with people using it. There are kids out there who's parents cant afford stuff like this and those that do have it don't want to spend their time on line letting friends port to them so they can use the instance. I have no problem with people using mine that I don't know. What's the big deal, it's not costing more money for them to use it, they can't damage or change anything, and it's not like they are stopping you from using it.
I have been enjoying castle tours but I have found some issues and have suggested solutions to them. I think once all the kinks of castle tours are worked out that it will not only an inspiration for wizards but a way for players to draw pride from an alternative place than to having a pocket full of crowns or a giant castle (I don't give ratings to castles because they had lots of games in them or cost a lot of crowns, I give them ratings because the wizard put in effort to their home and has tastefully (or crazily in some cases), and successfully, made a wonderful castle)
First off (as stated in other comments) there are often castles that are sparsely decorated. I understand that KI is working on a solution and I think that is great. As a suggestion to solve this, predetermined phrases could be offered during the rating process, so if a castle is given a low rating a good reason is given to as why that was. This could help sort out homes that shouldn't be included in castle tours.
I am also unaware of a way to find out where your castle is in the standings and of the average rating. I am assuming that this is how KI sorts them so I don't think it would be to hard to add this option to castle tours.
Please take these suggestions into consideration and thank you castle tours.
) and none of them have hit the leader boards yet. I would love it if there was a way to tell what my castles have been rated.
Emma MythHunter
Rowan Story Dreamer
