First Day Housing

My thought is that maybe a player could own a tavern and that in that tavern they could rent out rooms maybe for a select amount of gold and that there would be room inside of the tavern for socialization and buying from the bartender maybe. This probably would mean that depending on where your house was built determines how large the tavern. The tenants could sign up for a room and the tavern owner could select which rooms to rent out. There could be a cap on how high the player could charge each tenant so relatively speaking they could opt to choose $0 and just rent it out to a friend or whatever if they feel generous and this could play a role in the how virtuous are you depending on how much you charge. In this sense people could have a temp home. This could also bring about guild homes which could be similar but the people you choose to join your guild would get personal rooms which they could then personally decorate. This all depends on what the developers think on it but yea

 

<i><b>"There could be a cap on how high the player could charge each tenant so relatively speaking they could opt to choose $0 and just rent it out to a friend or whatever if they feel generous and this could play a role in the how virtuous are you depending on how much you charge."</i></b>

I'm hoping we'll have complete capitalism here. There won't be a need for a cap on prices if there is competition, and with 1,470 lots for sale, there should be a great deal of business competition. If competition does lack in one sector, I believe NPC based businesses will put a stop to price gouging and price fixing as well as any crazy price undercutting that might spring up.

 

If I cannot own a house I will not play this game. Even though I already paid for kickstarter, I will be supremely pissed.

 

I must confess I haven't read all posts in this thread but we know there are going to be some expansions which will give probably... more lots for housing so... if you miss out now you can get a spot at the next expansion.

 

One of the things that was brought up in a conversation a while back was that there are primarily village house plots being taken up and the city/town lots will be highly available. Think of like 1000's of village lots, but like only 100-200 town or city houses, this leaves a lot of town and city house plots for the taking. A rat race may then ensue shortly after official release. what does everyone think?

 

I realize money is an important factor to fund the making of SotA, but lets not forget the underlying reason to make the game in the first place; Us, the players. If a player dedicates a lot of time and passion to venture into Shroud of the Avatar (no matter how much or how little money they donated), I believe they deserve the chance to own their own house one day. Not as fast as someone who pre-paid for the right to own a lot/house, but still, there should be the possibility. For me, I imagine a situation similar to UO where I would start with a small simple house and through time and effort, earn a bigger house to call my home. I am fine with not owning the most uber house on prime real estate from the get go. I prefer to have something to work for and look forward to. We don't know for sure how all the technicalities will work yet, but I trust Lord British and his team to come up with a functioning housing system.

 

I'd like to see housing get created as player run and expand their own towns.
e.g. level 1 town has 5 level 1 common buildings and 20 level 1 player homes
a level 2 town allows all of these to be upgrades and adds more, etc.

 

I would not worry too much on your house location at the start. I remember from my experience with UO, its what you sell and for how much that will dictate 'foot through'. Players will travel and find the best selling vendors and those sellers will always have good foot through.

Also events can dictate the popular place to hang out. As an example, you may have a house in remote area, but it could be near a popular pvp spot, or cavern - sells potions/scrolls/armor/weapons. Most towns and cities house vendors will do well, but price competition for goods would be very high so you would get less money for your goods than that guy out in the middle of nowhere; but who is close to a player hot spot (pvp/cavern).

We won't know any of this at the start, but those that find those remote but potentially future populated spots will be the most profitable and I would guess fun to own

 

You can always try the payment plan option. I got citizen level last month, and tested to see what the payment option plan would be like to go to knight. To my surprise it was not bad. $17 per month for 15 months. it ended up being $19 per month with the fees. Seemed worth it to me so I decided to up my pledge to Knight.

Go check out what the monthly fee is on the payment plan. If you get in now it should be stretched across 14 payments. Or you can drop a chunk on upgrading to a higher tier then start the payment plan and the payments will be smaller per month.

 

When I had posted that Isaiah, it was before any plan was announced about payment plans. I was referring to the availability of housing lots being exclusive to people who pay up front rather than "earning" the house the traditional gaming way. I don't have any problem with anyone paying to get a house, I like it actually, I am just one of those rare types of people who was wishing to earn the house through hard "game" work. No problem, i'm going to set myself up soon

 

I actually really like this idea, but not for shops or public houses. Those types of homes make a lot of profit, and as everyone knows, money makes money. If you want a shop, you need to buy a house all your own to build it.

Trust me it won't be a problem. Houses within high traffic areas and within popular villages/towns will quickly either turn into shops or be sold to those who will turn them into shops. Just like in real life (and in UO), everything is about location and the most lucrative spots are where foot traffic is present. That is not to say that there will be no private homes in popular areas, but most will be quickly converted into shops or guild halls. Way too much money to be made with such a location.

This sounds kinda unfair, but truth be told that is how real estate works. The early bird gets the worm and then if you want a piece of the pie you will have to pay. It isnt supposed to be fair to everyone. Those with prime real estate locations will be wealthy because that is were the most lucrative shops will be. Is it fair that only rich people will get those spots to begin with? Perhaps not, but like mentioned before, money makes money.

A trend that was visible in classic UO (which again, this game is a successor to) was that people would band together to buy out a lucrative property and turn it into a 'mall'. Few players could afford to several millions required for a prime spot, but several players banded together could do so and make money back in such a location.

 

numbered for easy responsed:

1 - When placement first commenced? Ridiculously hard. Several dozen people camped out for each prime spot. Several months/years after initial placement? Ridiculously easy, as long as you had the millions in gold to pay for it. Granted the UO economy was shot, and it is difficult to compare prices, but lets say that a full suit of plate armor made out of a rare/exotic metal cost about 10K. A relatively small (not the smallest) house in a prime location could fetch several million. These figures fluctuated and I am sure the values are completely different now, I was just giving an example of prices during a period in which I played (which was years and years ago). Point is there was always a market if you were willing to pay.

2 - Aside from a place to call your own, a house provided you with storage area for all your belongings, a lot more storage space than the bank could provide. You could decorate your house however you wanted and it provided a safe and secure place to practice certain skills (like any crafting trade). A house was instant wealth, if at any time you needed gold for whatever investment, you could sell your home to a player and have a very significant sum of money to play with. Houses were used as guild halls, game halls (chess etc), shopping centers, places to lure and kill other payers, and a spot to split or store your spoils of war or haul from treasure hunts. They were pretty much everything a home is in real life.

3 - Either extremely critical or totally irrelevant depending on what you wanted that house's purpose to be. If you wanted to make money via vendors, location was the *only* important thing. You could have had a single room shack by a city and made enough money from vendors to buy a Tower elsewhere (third largest building in the game, after castles and keeps). Location also mattered if you wanted the house to be easily accessible to guild members or new alternate characters. Some of us bought up super prime real estate on popular roads just so we could PvP and PK out of them, these places turned into constant action zones where you would go if you wanted to kill criminals or if you wanted to become a criminal. Some locations were more specific, for instance some needed a house next to a dungeon or a mountain for mining. Some wanted a spot in the forest for easy access to lumber or by animal spawn zones for the leather.

The beautify of UO, something that has not appeared in [m]any other MMOs is that you got to choose what you wanted to be, what you wanted to do and where you wanted to do it. You were not limited to dungeon raiding or PvP. You could do anything you wanted and with that you were faced with an infinite amount of possibility and choices. This game promises to do that again, only better (UO went to **** as Richard Garriott lost more and more control over his creation when EA took over).


hope that helped you decide. Cheers

 

Can't really describe it any better. I reactivated my account a couple of years ago and it just was not the same. I see a bright future with SotA.

 

Thanks.


I hadn't really elaborate but player housing in UO was a huge extension of that freedom. No where did it say what house you should get. You were free to purchase and sell in the open marketplace to suit your needs. If you wanted to build a miner/blacksmith you could buy a small house by a mountain and use it as a workshop/factory. Later you could sell it and get a house that is more suited to sell your wares (now that you have mastered blacksmithing and mining you dont need a mining house). And so many more people chose a secluded house to just stash their rewards from adventuring in the world... to keep and display their trophies. You could even make furniture and get paid by other players to decorate houses. There was an entire economy and game play style built around people who enjoyed real estate markets and decorating.

 

I can't stress enough that housing aspect was my favorite thing in UO. I worked damn hard to get my cabin and i'm sure i spent more time hauling stuff to my house, crafting and selling than any other thing.

All the other MMOs with their "great" storylines and other game mechanics could never keep me interested in the game as long as housing did in UO.

 

What about apartments? A large building where each person can get their own small home. The apartment could then be instanced to accommodate as many homes as necessary. It wouldn't be much but it would give everyone a chance at owning a place to call their own.

 

Ooh ooh, better yet what if you could turn your plot into an apartment and charge rent to all your tenants.

 

I had a tiny house in Felu near the moongate that sold nothing more than bags with 50 of each reg in it and overpriced bandaids. The PVPers made me rich. LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION! I sold that house for as much as my tower in the swamp near trinsic.

 

Completely true. A lot of PvPers and especially PKers were very wealthy. Instead of sitting in front of the bank holding a neon rod looking like a tard we chose to *play* the game and PvP/PK etc. When you need some reagents or bandages quickly, even if they are three times the going rate it doesnt really matter... we had millions in the bank so those kinds of vendors were always sell outs. You could make millions just selling overpriced expandable gear that everyone needed. The more traffic a vendor has, the more convenience it offers the more money it will make, regardless of cost.

I had a large marble by the yew gate in fel which while didnt have any vendors was a hotbed of PvP and PK activity 24/7. At one point I was offered a straight up trade for a Keep. Thats how much location matters (just like in real life).

 

I loved the housing system in Asheron's Call. I don't play the game anymore, so I don't know what housing is like now, but when I was playing it last around 2004 the houses cost some money, but also special items that took work to get. You'd have to collect X amount of money, and then 3 or 4 different rare items. It helped to slow the buying process enough that it took a couple of days to sell out. And then the devs would release new batches of houses at different times of the day or night, giving everyone around the world a chance to have houses come up for sale during their peak time. If the devs do something like that here then that could really help. I think I would rather wait a couple of weeks for a batch of housing plots to open and get one I really want, instead of having them all available up front and end up taking whatever I can get because I wasn't fast enough.