Furniture Updates - Quality of Life

[Aldarine]

Hello Team!

A topic that has come up many times lately is, yup you guessed it by looking at the title, furniture. I've put together a list of suggestions that I have thought of with other people as well as looked through the forums for. I thought it would be good to have them in one place so it could be easily reviewed for possible adjustments. Please do read through the suggestions, comment, give feedback and show support or open discussion for modifications. I will continue to update this main post with additional good ideas that are healthy for the server and/or remove those that are not. Thank you as always for your time reading this over!

Current Problem

When players want to be creative and open custom businesses or renovate their homes the process of doing so is both timely and costly. The time and cost associated with obtaining the furniture is a deterrent and does not present feasible options for a vast majority of the server population to renovate, much less try out the system itself.

Suggested Solutions

1. Reduce Furniture Price - At present time as an example, a long wall which costs $2,000 will cover a wall with the length and width of 1 unit by 1 unit. The smallest property size is 1x1x1 and to cover all of the walls this totals out to be $8,000 which is quite absurd of a price. As Property Requests grow more popular and players look to create new areas for roleplay and engagement, the burden of cost lies in two places - the property itself and the furnishings. While the Property Request Bureau in SAGOV is doing great work at trying to keep properties affordable, this then leads to the massive burden of furniture to fill these spaces. Therefore, I believe a reduction in price across the board for ALL AESTHETIC furniture items will be beneficial. Furniture which have utility purpose (doors/safes/storage) can remain as is with their pricing.. A reduction of 80% (furniture costing 1/5th of present cost) would assist with more availability of aesthetic building of environments.

2. Reduce Furniture Weight - With each furniture item weighing 10 vol, a player can only transport so many pieces be it on their person or within their vehicle. This creates the need for very frequent trips to the furniture store or the rounding up of a large group all with trucks to assist. While I do think that trips to the furniture store are good, the amount needed is unnecessary and too high. Using the above example of the 1x1x1 size, 4 long walls are needed to cover the sides which translates to 40 vol. This is the smallest of sizes and with properties being much larger, I believe it becomes clear to see that the amount of furniture needed only exponentially increases thus increasing the number of trips needed - even just to complete the task of what would be considered painting. I think a reduction in weight by 1/4 would help with the ease of transportation. This would make furniture items 2.5 vol as opposed to 10 vol.

3. UTool Furniture Store - While it is amazing that we now have furniture stores in both Los Santos and Paleto, I do think that Sandy Shores could use with one as well. UTool would make a fantastic area for a furniture store and in the future can also expand to include other items that we look towards adding in the future for increased quality of life.

4. Furniture Store Interior - When previewing furniture items, the store interior itself presents with numerous issues. The first is that you cannot always see the full object itself because of visual limitation and also the color is not accurate due to the lighting inside the store. I believe that to fix this one of two things can be done. The first would be to simply overall change the interior of the furniture store and brighten it up and the second would be to make the furniture store into a catalog interface which would show accurate display and colors due to it not being affected by the lighting or angles.

5. Proper Labeling and Categories - Going through the furniture store UI and categories as well as the descriptions, so much more can be done. Now, do not get me wrong, I am aware this is a very large task to go through each items and recategorize and label it, however doing so would be a huge increase in QoL. Creating more categories with accurate labels and furniture names will give players the ability to easily find the items they want for purchase. It would not take massive amounts of time scrolling through searching for which category a specific item falls under only to discover that it's not in the category you would expect. I like to think of the furniture store as aisles in a department store where the above signage is specific and allows for much better navigation.

6. Furniture Return - Many times when a player builds something they either make mistakes and have to repurchase items or they may want to change something up in the future. What comes from this is having excess furniture that players have nothing to do with. Now, player to player sales of furniture is always an option but lets face it, it's not something that is common nor would I presume it ever to be - so how do we help get rid of this excess furniture in a meaningful way. I propose a buyback to the furniture store (or UTool specifically to give it an added purpose) at either 25% or 50% of the original cost. This change would encourage players to change up their interiors for events or new businesses and also take away a bit of the fear of so much lost money.

I apologize for how long this suggestion is but again, appreciate the time to read it. All of these changes are QoL changes to encourage more players to utilize the store and building systems for aesthetic and roleplay reasons. I would love to see more creativity and the fact that the furniture system and aspects surrounding it are such a barrier, easing it would only provide positive outcomes.

Please provide any and all feedback - I look forward to reading!

[QuirkyMayhem]

+1
 Reduce Furniture Price 
Decorating a simple house or apartment can end up costing you a bucket load especially if you've just paid $1m+ for an empty property.

Reduce Furniture Weight 
Weight is also a thing that can be a problem especially for those people who don't have vans or trucks and live on the other side of the city, it can be a pain constantly going back and forth for a handful of items at a time. 

UTool Furniture Store  -
I can see it being useful for those living in sandy and the surrounding areas.

Furniture Store Interior 

Not being able to see all the stuff can get real annoying and its a big gamble if you do decide to buy something you can't see like the big ceiling lights.

Proper Labeling and Categories 
Proper labelling would be a god send especially when you are revisiting because you need another 1 or 2 of the same item and you can't remember the number of it, or even sending someone who is helping you build can be a task to get the correct item due to the interior of the furniture store.

Furniture Return 
Even if its just a percentage of what you paid for it. $2k can become a lot to waste on the wrong wall then not being able to return it.

Edited February 28, 2022 by QuirkyMayhem

[Charlie Mchoe]

+1

[dominykas]

1. Reduce Furniture Price
Great concept; not only would this be beneficial, but it would also encourage other players who aren't generally associated with constructions to take advantage of this feature at a reasonable cost.

2. Reduce Furniture Weight

Unfortunately, I must disagree with this proposal because I believe the weight of the furniture is quite realistic and fits common building/construction criteria for a property's interior design. (Personal opinion, don't take it to heart if you disagree.)

3. UTool Furniture Store

It's just a small but significant addition that makes perfect sense.

4. Furniture Store Interior

I propose adding a feature that allows you to preview your chosen item in a variety of interiors. (+1 to change the interior of furniture stores.)
5. Proper Labeling and Categories

I couldn't agree with you more; it would make life a lot easier for individuals who choose to do their own interior design.

6. Furniture Return

Great proposal; I was thinking about a potential 50% return cost from the initial price before even reading this suggestion until the end.

 

Overall, amazing proposals that I completely agree with and believe should be incorporated because I believe it would have a significant positive impact on most players, even if they aren't keen in construction. Hopefully, because of your community outreach, this will become a reality much sooner than anticipated.
 

 

 

 

[Celestial]

+1

[Ash]

1. Reduce Furniture Price - YES PLEASE. I have spent about  1mil+ on furnishing a property for something that's effectively purely for RP and not profit. Pain.

2. Reduce Furniture Weight - I'm indifferent to this personally but I can see how it'd be a huge pain in the ass for people not walking distance from the store.

3. UTool Furniture Store - Why not.

4. Furniture Store Interior - An interior with time set to 12 for max brightness and ability to walk around the object instead of fixed angle would be great.  Maybe re-use the existing edit-furniture thing and make it so when you select something it pops in front of you with editable XYZ but cannot be placed. Waiting 20 seconds for a portrait to spin around is the WORST. 

5. Proper Labeling and Categories - I will LITERALLY dedicate my own time to this effort of categorising our existing furniture, just point me in the right direction in how to do that in a format that works for you devs. Here's some categories off the top of my head: Bar, Office, Outside, Small Misc, Large Misc. Honestly just sorting out the clusterfuck that is "Misc" would be so valuable. 

6. Furniture Return - I'm indifferent to this one personally, it'd be neat but I don't think it's anywhere near as vital as the ones highlighted above. With furniture price reduction this'd be less impactful anyway. Even if this is super minor and like 5% at an extreme it'd at least feel like it's not going completely to waste by leaving it as trash to despawn.
EDIT: OR..HEAR ME OUT..Sold furniture goes to a pool that's buyable from other players as a second-hand furniture. So a limited store that only sells what other people have sold. e.g. you sell your old wall to them for 25% of the normal price, and someone else can buy it for 50% of the original price. So if you wanna take your chances you could go to this return place to see if they have the item you want and if they don't then you buy it new.

Overall I hugely support building changes as I love furnishing and having it be that bit more accessible would be valuable, especially with the increase in business property acquiring.

[Aldarine]

3 hours ago, dominykas said:

2. Reduce Furniture Weight

Unfortunately, I must disagree with this proposal because I believe the weight of the furniture is quite realistic and fits common building/construction criteria for a property's interior design. (Personal opinion, don't take it to heart if you disagree.)

Thank you for this feedback! There are some items that are very small such as a table settings that are purchased individually to then be placed within a property for decoration. For items like this it is very 'off balance' from the larger ones where it would make sense. Would you be opposed to a reduction of half to 5 vol as opposed to 10 vol to basically split the difference?

[QuirkyMayhem]

3 hours ago, DrPathetic said:

Waiting 20 seconds for a portrait to spin around is the WORST. 

THIS 

Edited February 28, 2022 by QuirkyMayhem

[HighTV]

+1

These two things seem very easy to implement and they only stand to add event/business RP to the server!

Quote

 

1. Reduce Furniture Price - At present time as an example, a long wall which costs $2,000 will cover a wall with the length and width of 1 unit by 1 unit. The smallest property size is 1x1x1 and to cover all of the walls this totals out to be $8,000 which is quite absurd of a price. As Property Requests grow more popular and players look to create new areas for roleplay and engagement, the burden of cost lies in two places - the property itself and the furnishings. While the Property Request Bureau in SAGOV is doing great work at trying to keep properties affordable, this then leads to the massive burden of furniture to fill these spaces. Therefore, I believe a reduction in price across the board for ALL AESTHETIC furniture items will be beneficial. Furniture which have utility purpose (doors/safes/storage) can remain as is with their pricing.. A reduction of 80% (furniture costing 1/5th of present cost) would assist with more availability of aesthetic building of environments.

2. Reduce Furniture Weight - With each furniture item weighing 10 vol, a player can only transport so many pieces be it on their person or within their vehicle. This creates the need for very frequent trips to the furniture store or the rounding up of a large group all with trucks to assist. While I do think that trips to the furniture store are good, the amount needed is unnecessary and too high. Using the above example of the 1x1x1 size, 4 long walls are needed to cover the sides which translates to 40 vol. This is the smallest of sizes and with properties being much larger, I believe it becomes clear to see that the amount of furniture needed only exponentially increases thus increasing the number of trips needed - even just to complete the task of what would be considered painting. I think a reduction in weight by 1/4 would help with the ease of transportation. This would make furniture items 2.5 vol as opposed to 10 vol.

 

[Victor Einhart]

@Gaz. and I just finished a rather large interior (~1.6 million worth of items between the two of us) and I agree the volume of furniture was a major detriment and required a bunch of trips. Not only that, it was a chore to then unload all the items just a couple at a time to get them all into the interior so they could be placed. I think the majority of the time spent was simply inventory management and carrying items around so a quality of life change to volume - while maybe unrealistic to carry half a dozen sofas - would cut down on this pain significantly.

[dominykas]

12 hours ago, Aldarine said:

Thank you for this feedback! There are some items that are very small such as a table settings that are purchased individually to then be placed within a property for decoration. For items like this it is very 'off balance' from the larger ones where it would make sense. Would you be opposed to a reduction of half to 5 vol as opposed to 10 vol to basically split the difference?

In all honesty, I was so concentrated on the larger walls and other interior design elements that I entirely forgot about the minor objects. I absolutely agree with you that the weight of these smaller goods should be reduced because it makes perfect sense. Thank you for actually reading the feedback.

Edited March 1, 2022 by dominykas

[Puzzling]

Most of this was implemented. Cool suggestion

Maybe edit down to the remaining topics that aren't implemented yet, such as U-Tool, Store Interior and Organization?

[GR_Seb]

Having a furniture store is an inconvinience in EVERY ASPECT.  People should have access to a building menu with all objects for cheap price. After all, we're limited to like 10 interiors total instead of the 100 existing.