This is a winner idea

 

Here's what I think on the price aspect here. I guess, let's just compare shops and portals for a second here to reinforce my point.

There are (in my guesstimation) thousands of little shops scattered around the ECC world. Whether it be in Sweden2's mall, Lancaster's player hub, or a little town shop like mine in Titletown, shops sprawl the landscape. This is just like portals. There's 6 floors of portals. Just like the little town shops, there's an abundance of them.

But, people want traffic. They want the publicity, the opportunity for a greater profit for their shops. Therefore, they turn to the ECC market: the 96 "prime" sales plots. By paying 5k a week for who knows how many weeks, from 4 to 10 to well over 100 (*cough* username and KMax*), users get more travel and publicity.

This would be the same for portals. You want more publicity for your town? Great! You can rent a Premium Portal location in a 1-floor, direct-connected room where it is more evident to the general public, just as you rent a spawnshop.

Basically, my idea is 5k a week with a renewal app like spawnshops. Keeps it managable and prevents that area from being overrun with countless portals. Too cheap and you have a duplicate 6-floor portal room. Too expensive and nobody buys.

TL;DR Rent 'em at the same cost as spawnshops.

 

Great idea.

I think it would be cool if there were tiers of portals, similar to how we have in our market. Maybe this would work similar to spawn shop expires and rentals, i.e. renting a portal location for 4-10 weeks at a time, and being able to snipe expired portals.

I kinda drew a rough sketch of what I think it could look like. We'd number the portals, like we do with spawnshops, and the lowest numbers would be closest to the spawn portal.


Sorry about the image being off :confused: just click it and open in a new tab

Still a +1 on this idea :)

 

What if the premium rooms were available to president+ only that have been on the server for x amount of time?
This means that only members that have established themselves as players on ECC are able to get what new mayors who may just want a spot to have one can't.
New mayors that just want a spot to get one can't, and only people that have obtained the privilege to have such a spot are able to.
Of course there could be exceptions, such as towns that are wildly successful yet the person is only a mayor or hasn't been on ECC for x amount of time, although uncommon.
Premium spots shouldn't be rented, but they could be for free in specific circumstances, and if a player with a premium spot goes offline for x amount of time, their portal is moved back to the normal room and there is another spot for a premium portal.
Haven't read any other comments, so I don't know if this was said just yet.

 

This is a nice idea, definitely clears out some room and helps improve things. What do you think @tanger91?

 

Some of the nicer towns have been run by mayors, and presidents can be just as guilty of "wanting just to have". I think a rental fee would be the best way to do it (because, it's advertising basically). It shouldn't be exorbitant. Just there.

 

I did say there could be exceptions, however, if there was a rental fee, it couldn't be as expensive as the market shops. The market shops bring in a profit by themselves; having the portals up front really just makes it more accessible and although they can bring in buyers, the advantages of a portal in a better spot aren't as good as having a market shop.

 

This is a good point. I agree it should be payed for, but 5k/week is too high

 

My idea is 1 or 2k a week. Easy to make but ensures you can't just hold it forever. Also of course have a maximum rental time.

 

Unlike the market, would it be ideal that once you've reached a max amount of time (say 10 weeks) you aren't able to have it until you wait a certain amount of time? This would allow for a small area of portals, but the ability to have as many towns displayed as possible.
Such as x town buys a spot for 10 weeks. He is not allowed to renew or purchase another spot until another x amount of time has passed. This lets player y get that spot.
A big premium room would be a bad idea; if there were many premium spots, it wouldn't really be premium anymore. So if there is 10 spots, 10 people can have portals at any given time, but after 10 weeks none of those same 10 people would be there, and it would be another group of 10.
Also, no player can have more than one spot. So even if there was a player with 8 portals, only one of those portals could be at the premium room, also allowing for as much variety of towns as possible.

 

Not that design please god no,
Look at the trouble we are having with the spawn shop area,
Have it so all 10-20 are equal distance away from the place you walk in,
Then neither one has a higher market value or is deemed the best features portal,

 

*shrugs* I just kinda did that so it would make "portal sniping" more fun/worthwhile; I'm kinda unusual in that I think our current market design is just fine. I'll sketch out another idea or two though.

 

The suggestion was: We change the town portal room layout to a simpler, more player friendly layout that is easy to navigate and find active towns. In addition, to get rid of the old inactive towns that are just sitting around.

Yet the same thing will happen with this is you enable 'portal sniping'
How many times have you seen row 1's change hands? Once someone gets it, they will have it pretty much forever :p

We want it for new towns to have a opportunity to show off their town and give them a chance to gain more footfall for using it, not for someone to obtain one and simply keep it for ages and ages...

 

Very true, I guess you're right here :p

Here's a couple other ideas (sorry for the ugly lined paper):



That one's a bit more evenly spread out though, but still not perfect as it advantages portals 1-4 and 27-30.



My favorite one so far, most portals are relatively evenly spread from the portals to spawn.

Anyway, enough with drawing up designs, how about we try and get this implemented. :p

 

Another idea is voting for premium spots. Every week there could be a thread where people say which towns they want at the premium room, and then we get to vote on those towns the week after. This would mean only towns that actually earned the spots could have them, and not any town that is just there to be there.

We could put Featured Towns in the portal room, as an example.

 

-1 (to the original post/idea)

1) I don't like the idea of inactivating portals that were paid for.

2a) In the original post, it was mentioned the owners could fill out an app to keep the portals. But what about residents who use a portal in a town where the owner is inactive?

2b)I have a town of which I am not the original owner, and therefore can't create a portal, so I send my residents to the neighboring town portal that is inactive/abandoned. Would these be savable?

3) Although I have no evidence and could be wrong, I think the "builders searching through the portals to find an active town" is greatly exaggerated as there are a lot of ads in chat directed towards builders and plots. Builders also seem to ask for plots in chat regularly and I don't think it is hard for them to find accepting towns.

I personally like the idea of "featured" or "premium" portals. Or both. +1 this modification.

 

+1 option 1 no to option 2