Not loving the new housing update

[Noompsky]

Something just feels 'off' this update with the new housing. I mean sure it makes housing a little steamlined however it feels like a banana in a world of apples and oranges. why isnt there any walls surrounding the building for starters? why cant there be more than one entrance? please dont make this the future of the game. I really enjoyed being the one in control of how my buildings looked and felt.

[Triple e]

I like it it makes you kingdom bigger and less tedious.

[Human]

To be honest I fell that the old housing fit better with the rest of the game. You had to place beds and increase coziness just like the other buildings where you place workstations, kilns, forges, lavatories, etc. and then increase the efficiency. The new housing is kinda just "select size and drop on map" which is fine... if all of the buildings were like that.

[Gamatron]

It's a bowl of bananas and apples. The whole game is a mix between a sim and a city builder, a big experiment. There are cons and pros from both genres that I need to weigh and strike a balance. My reasoning has been:

Personality in the dudes are good -> private homes add personality -> Do you want to furnish 10k small apartments?

Here's the line I have need to balance. Doing this would be extremely tedious. Furnishing your temple however, that is a different matter.

The new system is the old apartment room on steroids. The only difference are the thick walls, and the fact that you can dynamically add or remove single houses without deactivating a whole room. Now, you can add thick walls manually if you think it looks prettier. If folk really want the thick walls. I can add those in. But houses do not require maintenance (and they shouldn't), so walls don't serve a purpose. You could thus build the walled houses, and instantly dismantle the walls after to get the resources back as an exploit.

Houses aren't the first room that have this either. Janitors have always been like this, as have chambers. No one has complained about them, which makes me think it's all about the walls.

[Perro Grande]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

It's a bow of bananas and apples. The whole game is a mix between a sim and a city builder, a big experiment. There are cons and pros from both genres that I need to weigh and strike a balance. My reasoning has been:

Personality in the dudes are good -> private homes add personality -> Do you want to furnish 10k small apartments?

Here's the line I have need to balance. Doing this would be extremely tedious. Furnishing your temple however, that is a different matter.

The new system is the old apartment room on steroids. The only difference are the thick walls, and the fact that you can dynamically add or remove single houses without deactivating a whole room. Now, you can add thick walls manually if you think it looks prettier. If folk really want the thick walls. I can add those in. But houses do not require maintenance (and they shouldn't), so walls don't serve a purpose. You could thus build the walled houses, and instantly dismantle the walls after to get the resources back as an exploit.

Houses aren't the first room that have this either. Janitors have always been like this, as have chambers. No one has complained about them, which makes me think it's all about the walls.

If it counts for anything, I like them but I understand why some people don't like the difference in walls.

[Human]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

It's a bowl of bananas and apples. The whole game is a mix between a sim and a city builder, a big experiment. There are cons and pros from both genres that I need to weigh and strike a balance. My reasoning has been:

Personality in the dudes are good -> private homes add personality -> Do you want to furnish 10k small apartments?

Here's the line I have need to balance. Doing this would be extremely tedious. Furnishing your temple however, that is a different matter.

The new system is the old apartment room on steroids. The only difference are the thick walls, and the fact that you can dynamically add or remove single houses without deactivating a whole room. Now, you can add thick walls manually if you think it looks prettier. If folk really want the thick walls. I can add those in. But houses do not require maintenance (and they shouldn't), so walls don't serve a purpose. You could thus build the walled houses, and instantly dismantle the walls after to get the resources back as an exploit.

Houses aren't the first room that have this either. Janitors have always been like this, as have chambers. No one has complained about them, which makes me think it's all about the walls.

Honestly I always thought the old janitor buildings were just placeholder. Like how come all other buildings are expandable, but the janitors weren't? All other buildings have efficiency upgrades, but the janitors don't.

I've outlined why I don't really care for the new housing system elsewhere, but I'll give a quick overview here too.
* the walls aren't consistent with the rest of the game.
** this is mitigated by the fact that you can just surround the new houses in chonky walls to get the old feeling
* the "stamp" system as I call it doesn't feel consistent with much of the rest of the game except for a few buildings: entertainment, hearths, workstation (none of which I really care for)
**To an extent hauler, new guardpost, archery range, janitor, but they all feel more at home with the rest of the game.
*** archery range still requires the selection of the building's area and then the placing of primary furniture
*** janitor still has the option baked in to build chonky walls, their type, and adding doorways which gives it the feeling of the old system instead of the newer stamp system.

I know that they're nitpicky things, but it's why I don't care for the new housing system - it just doesn't feel at home with much of the rest of the game.

I do agree that the new housing is really nice in that you can see them being upgrade by the civs and it can be initially built for no cost.

Honestly since the game is still early access, I just expected that at some point before the game releases there would be an update that would bring all of the buildings more inline with one another - either making all of the walls chonky, all of the walls slim; all of the building being stamps or all of the buildings requiring area, primary furniture, efficiency furniture. There isn't really a reason to go refining things too much right now when it seems that Gamatron is still adding to the game in my opinion.

[⎛⎝Tiùwilo⎠⎞]

"It's objectively better but it just doesn't feel right" always comes off as an aversion to change for no reason other than clinging to old habits. It's not exactly the sort of feedback you can work with.

I suppose the easiest fix would be to include an auto-wall function for housing construction, like with the janitor. I don't think you'd really want to turn housing into a communal room type once more, unless it's like a slave pen or some noble estate that warrants manual decoration.

What would you even add or change about the system, other than the walls? The quality of the housing is defined by it's size and the furnishings you allow. If you were to manually place or remove those all the time, it'd devolve into micromanagement hell whenever there's a change in prosperity.

[Human]

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Aarki⎠⎞:

I suppose the easiest fix would be to include an auto-wall function for housing construction, like with the janitor. I don't think you'd really want to turn housing into a communal room type once more, unless it's like a slave pen or some noble estate that warrants manual decoration.

What would you even add or change about the system, other than the walls? The quality of the housing is defined by it's size and the furnishings you allow. If you were to manually place or remove those all the time, it'd devolve into micromanagement hell whenever there's a change in prosperity.

I'd recommend that all of the other buildings be changed so they're more inline with the new housing. I know that it would likely take a lot of time and effort which is why I originally mentioned doing it before release instead of now when things are still being added to the game and when the buildings might still see another iteration.

So for example a smithy would just have a small, medium, and large option with thin walls. Thick walls could then be added to reduce noise. The smithy could also be upgraded with materials to do ~things~, I'd suggest making the building produce faster or making it more efficient.

Farms would be the same: small, medium, large sizes and have irrigation added when upgraded with materials.

[⎛⎝Tiùwilo⎠⎞]

You could just build those in whatever layout you'd consider to be S/M/L and save them as blueprints to carry over between different saves.

[Gamatron]

Originally posted by Tostreim:

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Aarki⎠⎞:

I suppose the easiest fix would be to include an auto-wall function for housing construction, like with the janitor. I don't think you'd really want to turn housing into a communal room type once more, unless it's like a slave pen or some noble estate that warrants manual decoration.

What would you even add or change about the system, other than the walls? The quality of the housing is defined by it's size and the furnishings you allow. If you were to manually place or remove those all the time, it'd devolve into micromanagement hell whenever there's a change in prosperity.

I'd recommend that all of the other buildings be changed so they're more inline with the new housing. I know that it would likely take a lot of time and effort which is why I originally mentioned doing it before release instead of now when things are still being added to the game and when the buildings might still see another iteration.

So for example a smithy would just have a small, medium, and large option with thin walls. Thick walls could then be added to reduce noise. The smithy could also be upgraded with materials to do ~things~, I'd suggest making the building produce faster or making it more efficient.

Farms would be the same: small, medium, large sizes and have irrigation added when upgraded with materials.

I understand your sentiment. And I agree, I have at times wondered what the furnishing system actually brings to the table. Many rooms have 2 items that you need to balance out. Is this fun, rewarding, and challenging? In a sense it is, since you get to shape every little thing of your city, and in another sense it's really tedious. That is why I have to some extent separated them where I think it makes sense. The janitor may be most controversial one. In general I don't think it's such a big deal, not to diminish your point. Sim city 2000 was a mix of zooning and static buildings. "Emperor, rise of the middle kingdom" had some as well. And I liked it. The big eye-sore here that might highlight the issue, I recon is the new houses. It can either be because it's new and alien, or that new players have the same reaction, I just have to wait and see. I'm not against slapping the thick walls to them, it would actually make things easier, and perhaps I will do that. We'll see.

[sknnr]

My only gripe with the new system is literally the thin walls lol. However, I do understand the other side of the argument from an "I want to design everything" perspective. I also understand Gamatron's point in trying to blend genres and balancing the two between tedium and fun. I like that the subjects furnish their living space, it adds flavor and a bit of realism, it makes sense. Maybe a compromise would be to retain the apartment, house, dorm, longhouse options but add a custom option where players could at least draw the walls for the house and depending the size, that would allow X number of subjects to move in.

As for the janitor, maybe make the number of janitors that can work in the building dependent on the number of work benches.

[UltimateTobi]

A firm no to changing every building into this "stamp" format as someone affectionally calls it. Might as well play a cookie-clicker game or Stellaris if I just want to click one button and be done with it. A big part of city sim is customization of your city...

[Scotias]

Originally posted by UltimateTobi:

A firm no to changing every building into this "stamp" format as someone affectionally calls it. Might as well play a cookie-clicker game or Stellaris if I just want to click one button and be done with it. A big part of city sim is customization of your city...

Agreed on my part, I mean I mostly copy buildings anyway but the initial design it is nice to be able to have a hand in it :)

A default design would be okay too, as long as I could modify it when placing it.

[COMMANDO]

I also hated the housing at first. Now, I don't want it to change back. I thought space would be an issue, it's not. I'm already at 8.6K pop and still plenty of room(huge map settings so I'm not sure how well a small map will fair). The controls over assigning are there, though I wish there were slightly more control(I have a luxury area for my cantors but some decide to be homeless smelters on the other side of the map despite all work priorities changed).

Give it a chance!

[Snake Bit]

I was confused at first about how the housing worked but after playing it for a bit. I liked it.
Being able to build housing into various districts to compliment the work area it's in.

[Guurt]

I am just coming back to the game after a long vacation. I don't really like any of the plug and play buildings. I think the thing that made the game cool was the ability to design everything however I wanted. If I wanted all the houses to be the same I would design one, and then copy them every time I made more. Not being able to control the shape of the houses is very irritating, and in my opinion is a step in the wrong direction.

Perhaps I will change my mind over time, but I doubt it.

I don't like being forced to make every house, long house, apartment, etc be exactly the same size and shape.