Bigger Isn’t Always Better
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
I’ve been in Home for four years now, watching it grow from a small place with little to do into a huge world with too much to keep up with. There are a lot of different things to do now that don’t interest me anyway, and I am sure that this is true for most of the people who come here on a regular basis, but we all find that one thing or a few things that keep our interest in Home alive.
Worth the work
I am a gamer at heart: always have been, since as far back as I can remember. Be it card games or board games or video games of all kinds, it all appeals to me. Home has a slew of games available to us now, but I have to admit that I play very few of them myself. I have only been to Peakvox one time, as an example of my leanings. I just didn’t see the draw there for me. I also don’t frequent the games that require grinding of any type, like Acorn Meadows, Aurora and the Casino, though I did grind at the Casino until I got my penthouse apartment from there as a reward. I have not completed Aurora to level one-hundred yet, and I have been playing it whenever I feel led to do so.
I also don’t frequent the many other games Home has to offer, as I see Home in a different light than as a place to play games. I see it as a place to meet people from all over the globe and get to know them. I have met some amazing people who I would have never had the opportunity to know if it wasn’t for Home, and for that I am grateful for its existence. I play my games elsewhere, outside of Home, with only a few exceptions. I loved Mercia while it lasted, and I also like Home Tycoon, though I tend to go for long periods without visiting it at times.
Home’s first “big” space
The games I do play in Home, though, are ones that many here in the community have made up for ourselves, I speak of the meta-games of fashion shows, estate decorating and machinima. These I find to be fascinating byproducts of the social side of Home, which is the reason I come here at all. These activities are very fulfilling to me, as they let me use my creative side, especially decorating.
All of this leads me to the subject at hand:
Bigger isn’t always better.
When I first came into Home, I thought I would never buy anything. I had never seen anything like it, as it was the first online social site I had ever encountered. I met some very nice people who showed me the ropes, and also showed me their personal estates; after a short time I started to see the worth of owning virtual goods, both homes and clothing. I started to buy things, and found it greatly enhanced my experience in Home.
For quite a while there was little to buy; we were lucky to get an update with new items and spaces every couple of weeks. This changed rapidly as more developers hit the Home front, and now we get such a load of new things each week that it is impossible to keep up with them. I have become very selective in my buying, and one of the things that has turned me off a lot recently is the size of the personal spaces we are being offered.
Beautiful but hard to fill
Let me explain: bigger isn’t always better, because it makes it nigh-impossible to do the one meta-game in Home I like best — decorating. When the first several spaces in Home were created, they were beautiful boxes with little functionality, but they were at least of a size as to be usable for decorating. The first one that came out with a few size issues, in my opinion, was the Luxury Weekend Lake House. It was, at the time, the largest space in Home — and it was also during the period before they increased our furniture slots to a hundred, from the fifty previously offered. Once they gave us the hundred, it was a breeze filling this space and making it look good.
The Silicon Lounge was next, and it still is probably one of the the biggest spaces in Home, perhaps only eclipsed by the Avalon Keep, which is so big it is a decorator’s nightmare. The difference was that it was built completely outdoors and didn’t really have a structure to fill, so though it was over-large, you could still be creative with it, and it did include some burned-in furniture, which always helps.
But the recent trend with personal spaces is to be huge, and I don’t necessarily mean that as a compliment. I like having space as much as the next person, but they have gone over the top with size. At a certain point, it has made me think whether I want the space or not. I love the functionality they have added, but even then I haven’t bought spaces because once I saw them I realized there was just no feasible way to decorate them and make them look full. They are beautiful spaces, don’t get me wrong, and well rendered — but the decorator in me just cries out because as beautiful as they are, I won’t buy them.
A bit too big.
There are some larger spaces that aren’t as difficult to decorate, but this is largely because they have smaller homes within larger outdoor spaces that don’t necessarily need to be filled with decor. Spaces like Palace of the Seven Winds and Jewel of the Skies have smaller areas that you can actually fill quite nicely. It is when you have a huge empty shell of a house that you run into trouble, and that is where some of the newer spaces like nDreams’ Complex 2 and Granzella’s City By the Bay Loft frankly fall really short. Having some burned-in furniture or even decorated rooms like kitchens and baths helps a lot, as long as it leaves plenty of leeway for personalization. But even that can be overcome by the sheer enormity of these spaces and our hundred-item limits.
I can’t believe there was a time when we only had fifty pieces to work with, which was truly daunting at the time. But now with a hundred it seems we have come full-circle and are back to that previous time because we are faced with spaces that gobble up those pieces just as quickly.
I don’t know why this trend is happening, but I hope that developers keep in mind that bigger isn’t always better.
December 26th, 2013 by Burbie52 | 5 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
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I have the same issue at times. Back in the day, it was easy to fill Harbor Studio up. The first largest for me, when we had the 50 limit was the Nebula space.
Now it’s a decor dream.
Here’s a challenge for you. Make your own, using the stage in Loot Back stage studio. Yes only use the stage. I made a place there to show, the Diamond package. It included walls to divide the spaces. Granted it was only a 1br 1 ba, with a good size living area.
I see the big spaces as a interesting challenge to one’s mind. I can agree to a level on how most large personal spaces are over the size of the furniture cap (City By the Bay, a BEAUTIFUL space, is a big big example) but it also depends on the design as well. I’ve managed to fill my Dream Yacht with 98 furniture slots, with almost every nook and cranny decorated.
The Silicon Lounge is different. I rarely go there, though I love it. In fact, too much but it holds no inspiration for me to ever decor that space due to the size.
I’m down for the large spaces on Home. Nothing is better than to walk around in a large space to give me something to do, but I also would like the limit on the furniture placement to be 200. By then, it’ll justify my purchases of these incredibly detailed abodes.
You just made my point. When we had only 50 pieces to work with many of our spaces looked empty when they were over-large. Now we have come full circle and it is the same even though we now can use 100 pieces.
I too love the Dream Yacht and though it was a challenge to decorate I feel satisfied with the results. But some of the spaces we have been given are much larger than the yacht, and I won’t purchase them simply because they are impossible to fill properly. I feel that leaving entire areas virtually empty is not a solution. Two hundred items would be nice, but with Home’s memory restrictions, I doubt it will ever happen.
The Luxury week-end lake house was one of the first personal place I bought. (After the Novus quarters, of course
)
I wanted a pool table, poker, music, maybe a brimstone dancer or two… I quickly discovered the “2 active items limit” (It was in 2011).
Needless to I ran out of items before the place remotly look full! lol
I finally got it to where it was good enough for me. Still one or two area almost empty but it worked. Still having two active items the switch from 50 to 100 didn’t help me that much at the time.
Recently I change the pool table for the Game Mechanics horse race. that gave me a few more slots.
After that, size was one thing I made sure to look at before buying.
I love the large places because the large ones I have are generally crafted well, and hold the promise of being able to do so much with so much land, but yes my favorites are certainly the small ones as I can easily deco them. My favorite place is still the Vigilarium, as it is real small, yet i put a kitchen and bedroom, an office and piano in it. Small and cozy then the micro game of stuffing 100 items in that small space become a challenge. I do remember the time when we had 50 items and 2 actives. WOW, those were trying times.