Should tax-free housing be something a player can achieve over time, rather than buying with money?

I would be ok with tax free deeds becoming untaxed if current tax-free deeds then were upgraded to generate a few COTOS each month for the owner (similar to a subscription perk, just one previously paid for). This would be the only fair way I'd see to offset the higher costs incurred by those that acquired packages to get tax-free deeds, to avoid the taxes. Lots could still expire on a time basis. Not saying its a great idea. But its an idea.

 

At some point tax free bundles will be purchaseable in game with cotos. No idea when though.

 

Nope

 

OK, here's a thought.
More players for the game would be beneficial, right? Every new player spends at least the cost of entry to play the game (typically $40), and any returning players (as well as new players) might buy things from the add-on store, thereby generating revenue (not a guarantee by any stretch, but in general, more players leads to more money raised, right?).
The housing is (arguably) the best part of the game, but many new players are turned off by the restricted access to it. Portalarium is afraid to open up access to the housing (beyond row lots anyway) because they don't want to anger the players that paid so much money for what they've got. What if portalarium were to offer up something else to large donators to help ease the sting of opening up access to housing? Beaumaris suggested a monthly COTO payment (maybe that's a good idea, maybe not). What other things would a wealthy land owner like to see in exchange for more access to housing (for new players)? I like to think back to the loyalty gifts that they gave to long-term subscribers back in UO (3 years for a tru-black dye tub and such).

 

Or you know, the row lot they were given for completing Episode 1 could increase with the end of each additional episode (hoping of course we get all five), and by the end they would have a Keep sized lot.

 

Why would you need a tax free deed?

All the cash spent saving up for one can just pay the taxes for years

 

1) When coming back from adventuring, dump everything into one container in your home (in the town scene, not basement). Preferably, keep this container near the basement.

2) Every so often, pick this container up and head into the basement. Sort and organize your bulk crafting fuels and ingredients, preferably somewhere right near the basement entrance. This can be done extremely quickly if you have many containers in a small area, and sort based on the inventory lists as a basis.

3) Craft in basement and pretend SoTA has uber performance!

4) invest in largest possible basement size for your lot. i find the village 5 story stone basement to be pretty massive.

 

I have a tax free village I received for backing the game and honestly I feel most things said here devalue my early investment. I would rather seen and in game option on the property control panel that allows you to upgrade your current deed.
Start with a taxed row 500 gp tax
Upgrade option reduced tax 250 (50 cotos)
Next upgrade tax free (50 more cotos)
Next upgrade increase size to village taxed ( 50 cotos)
Next upgrade reduce taxed
And so forth and so forth
(actual upgrades and cost numbers would need more research and number crunching it's the idea that's important)

(Edit - This should be 1 per account and make any deed upgraded non-tradable.)

Backers would have their deeds start at the level of their current deeds so they would still have something. New player have something to work on and polarium get more cotos purchases

Win, win, win

Just my 2 cents
Thanks

 

NO. Unless the game becomes subscription based. Everyone would like everything for free, but the game can't survive that way. TF housing is one of the big incentives to buy the bigger packages and a major revenue source for Portalarium.

 

No Revenue will be generated without new player encouragement to stay

 

To answer the OP question: No.

Tax free deeds have only come in pledges and bundles, and they serve the purpose of encouraging money to be put into funding the game earlier, when it is needed the most. The cost of the bundle/pledge is a rough equivalent of 2-3 (or more!) years worth of taxes paid with COTOs, so you don't come out ahead unless you play a long time. That $280 deed came out of a bundle worth $550 or so, along with a commission-free merchant, and a bunch of other assorted stuff, some of which is also sold separately.

I know I've seen PA deeds at the COTO merchants. POT row = 85 COTOs, PA row = 99 COTOs, both taxed.

 

250 gold per day of taxes is nothing when you get 500 gp per day just by answering a simple question with the Oracle. The game needs pure gold sinks to fight off inflation.

 

I'd be happy with an in game, non RMT linked method of obtaining tax free lots, just with shorter log in requirements to keep plots free. I got tax free lots from backing, but people need to remember they were backer rewards, not investments. If you're treating game items as investments that's your issue. Port has no obligation to maintain a certain real world value on things because people are speculating. They should make decisions that encourage a healthy playerbase and focus on funds from smaller more frequent purchases than being tied to a small number of speculators which hasn't led to a healthy population.

 

To be honest, I think you should have kept your TF POT village deed, and simply reorganized so that you didn't have to make so many trips to the basement.

Like you said, you were really happy, it's just that you put frequently accessed items in your basement which created inconvenience. If you were willing to just reorganize and forego having an idyllic notion of where things should be you could have even removed the need for any basement at all!

 

OK, I checked my steam stats yesterday. I'm currently at over 500 hours. I realize that's a drop in the bucket compared to many of you who have been playing since (or before) persistence, but that is still a size-able number of hours for playing a game. In that time (a little over 3 months), I have paid Portalarium.....

• $40 kickstarter backing (access to game).
• $5 during the first live stream to buy 4 COTOS (done simply to gain access to rewards).
• $50 for a 5-story village basement (stone and timber, I had purchased a tax-free POT village by this point, I'll get to that later)
• $50 for a 5-story village basement (stone, as stone&timber was terrible)
• $7 for a copper bathtub (deco), $12 for short assassin's armor (slutmog in case I ever decide to wear leather), and $16 for satin bodice bundle (slutmog in case I ever decide to wear cloth). All purchased during the R53 livestream for rewards.
• $9 for a rennasaince bedroom set (deco), and $8 for an ornate wooden hot tub (deco) purchased during the R54 livestream for rewards.
• $28 for Burled Wood Antique Furniture Set (deco) during R55 livestream part 1 (rewards)
• $48 for Remote Bank access device (x2), $3 for Kobold Tiled Long Dining Table (deco), and $1 for Kobold Tiled Square Dining Table (deco) during R55 livestream part 2, just because I wanted these things, and best to buy during the sale.

These are direct payments to the devs. Direct support for the game. From a new player.
Now, indirectly, I also purchased....

• $280 for a tax free POT village deed
• $120 for a set of 10 prosperity tools

I call these indirect as I was not buying them directly from Portalarium, I was buying them from another player (Spoon, you are awesome). At some point, someone paid for these though. However, I did pay for these with store credit, I don't know how all of that works out. Ultimately, Portalarium saw money for these items twice, and a player winds up with $400 of store credit.

The leap that I was willing to make (that I expect most new players not to make) was was buying that tax free village deed early on. If I did not have that, I would not have paid for basements, or deco, or remote bank access devices.
I see myself as the typical MMO player. Essentially paying a modest "monthly fee" in the form of buying new items during the livestream each month. Having 1,000 more players like myself would do wonders for the game. Both in terms of population (seeing people on the map, having players to do group activities with, etc...) in addition to the influx of money to Portalarium. But getting 1,000 players to not only overlook the flaws they see in the game, but to put down an extra $400 just to access the housing? It will never happen.

The "free" row lot deed for completing the story (in addition to the tax cut) is a step in the right direction. But I feel like it is not enough. Most new players will not stick with the game long enough to ever see this. Yes, I know all of you players are thingking "but that's so easy". Trust me, as a new player, it is not. Once I was in a guild, 2 high level players (adv level 100+) were able to whisk me through the story in a single evening, but even with that level of help (knowing exactly where to go, and what needed to be done, as well as mowing down all of the enemies), we failed at the obsidian forge several times. If you don't have this level of assistance, I could see a new player getting frustrated and quitting long before completing the story. And if they were persistent, and stuck with it, I could see it taking a few weeks of regular play (a couple hours a day, more on weekends), or months of casual play (MAYBE an hour a night, more on weekends).

My suggestion for using housing to attract/keep new players is as follows.

• Move the the taxed row lot reward up to the completion of your first "outskirts" area. Most new players can complete this in a few hours of play (my first stumble through it probably took 6-10 hours with no assistance). The intro to housing will be a wonderful distraction from some of the later quests in the paths of truth, love, and courage. It will also force new players into the POT's near their starting zone in search of a place to stake their claim. Hopefully they will meet other players, introducing them to the 2 best parts of this game (the players, and the housing) after a modest initial effort.
• Cut the taxes on village level housing as well. Half is good, but more is better. Ideally something like 400 or 450. That way, visiting the oracle every day is enough to not only cover the taxes, but build up a small buffer.
• Have the reward for completing the story be a taxed village deed (either in addition to your existing row lot deed, or upgrade it). This will tempt the new players into larger houses. It may even push them to the add-on store for some fancy deco items.
• Cut the taxes on the larger lots as well. For a town or city, you have to be willing to step outside the comfort zone of the daily oracle stipend. How much is reasonable is up to the devs, but they are currently too high.
• Introduce a loyalty program. After participating in X livestreams (call them sales, call them whatever, but whatever Portalarium is using to track who spends at least $5 during the livestream, or during the 24 hour window or whatever), the player gets a prize! Maybe a free deco item for a single month (the stretch goal rewards). But when you get up into larger numbers, start improving the rewards. Maybe after contributing for 6 months, you can upgrade a row lot deed to tax free? Maybe after 12 months, upgrade a village lot to tax free? Or make lower taxes on a larger lot a reward? Ideally there should be a pool of rewards to choose from, but as the # of times you contribute to the game increases, the rewards should scale up, even to the point of tax free deeds for larger plot sizes (for multiple years of dedication).

This way there are 2 paths for a player to follow to get to the housing. Either Money (buy directly from the store), or time. Just make sure that the time rewards are visible to new players, so they don't feel that the only way to enjoy the game is to spend large sums of money.

 

I haven't played since a month or so after official launch. I was playing it every day and then it dawned on me that I've spent about $1000 on this game and really don't have much to show for it. That caused me to think long and hard.

I really wanted to enjoy the game, but that feeling of being fleeced kept me from enjoying the game. I spent a lot of money (more than I've spent on most games I've ever played), and I got very little out of doing so. And so many things in the game were still broken.

And to be honest, spending money wasn't even the part that bothered me. It was that no matter how much I spent, I was NEVER going to achieve what others had just because they found the game before I did. I always felt like I was on a second tier of playing while so many others were experiencing the full attributes of the game (which may have been more of a feeling than a reality, but that just never went away).

And I'm not really all that upset at how much I put into the game because to me it had been an investment, but after some time I didn't feel like it was being treated as an investment but a payment for subpar services. Hopefully, that pittance I donated will help the game become better down the line for those who have decided to continue playing. I do check the game's announcements from time to time, but nothing causes me to want to sign in, and part of me suspects that it's been long enough with me out of the game that my house has probably been shuttered and thrown to the curb as well.

By the way, this isn't meant as a complaint (although it probably comes off as one), but as a small piece of information as to why very dedicated (to Ultima and Richard G.) players might not stick with the game. Secretly, I've felt for a long time that the game has a great soul but is still missing a heart (its intentions are great, but an underlying purpose is still missing). The main reason I came back to the forum today was because of the super secret reveal that now may have turned out to be a dance party instead of something much larger, more sinister and a rallying cry for the lands.

 

Analysis on the costs of property ownership.
I took some time to try and put numbers on property ownership. This is an attempt to help out new players.
There are 3 easy ways to obtain property. By easy I mean that they are readily accessible, and nearly always available. Those 3 methods are...

1. Buy directly from Portalarium (the add-on store).
2. Buy in-game using a Golden Crown of the Obsidian (called cotos going forward) vendor.
3. Buy from another player - typically done via a forum thread and paypal transaction, but it's possible to also find a player selling property deeds on their vendors in-game (just much more difficult).

OK, we can compare prices on these, but there's a bit of a snag. Cotos are not readily available in game. In my 500+ hours of playing the game, I've seen maybe 4 of them as drops. This is far too unreliable. In order to come up with the quantities necessary to buy property, we will need a much better way to obtain them. Again, there are a few methods.

1. Buy them directly from Portalarium (the add-on store). Prices range from $0.87 to $1.25 per COTO (the more you buy, the cheaper they become)
2. Buy them in game from other players. This one takes some hunting, but if you browse several player vendors, you'll come across people that are selling COTOS for in-game gold. Best price I've personally seen is 3,600 gold per COTO.
3. Buy (outside of game) from another player. Similar to buying property deeds directly from players, this involves finding a forum thread where someone is selling COTOS, reaching out to them, and a paypal transaction. Best price I've seen here is $0.50 per COTO.

Finally, there's one more factor we need to consider. If you're not up for farming (grinding) massive amounts of gold, or if you're new, and have no idea how to amass such fortunes, you have one option left. Buying gold directly from another player. Again, this involves forum threads, reaching out to a player, and a paypal transaction. Best price I've personally seen is $12 for 100,000 in-game gold.
I'll be using these numbers in calculations going forward. Also, in coming up with a price for "buying a deed from another player" I will be using Cristiano Kimberlin's prices. He has a storefront, so the numbers are readily accessible. His prices are typically high (20-30% higher than you might find in your searching), but his services are readily available, and the risk of being stiffed (paying for a transaction and not receiving your goods) are practically 0%.
With all that said, on with the show.

Player-owned-town, taxed, row-lot: The cheapest entry point for housing. These can only be placed in player owned towns, and you have to pay taxes on them (250 gold every day).

• Buying directly from portalarium: $85
• Buying in-game, using COTOS: 85 COTOS
  • Buying COTOS directly from Portalarium: $73.95 - $106.25
  • Buying COTOS using in game gold: ~306,000 gold
    • Purchasing in-game gold from another player: ~$36
  • Buying COTOS from another player: ~$42.50
• Buying deed directly from another player: ~$40.00

Player-owned-town, taxed, village lot: Twice the size of a row lot! 4x the rent (1,000 gold every day)

• Buying directly from portalarium: $165
• Buying in-game, using COTOS: 165 COTOS
  • Buying COTOS directly from Portalarium: $143.55 - $206.25
  • Buying COTOS using in-game gold: ~594,000 gold
    • Purchasing in-game gold from another player: ~$71.25
  • Buying COTOS from another player: ~$82.50
• Buying deed directly from another player: ~$70.00

Player-owned-town, taxed, town lot: Twice the size of a village lot! double the rent (2,000 gold every day)

• Buying directly from Portalarium: $450
• Buying in-game, using COTOS: 450 COTOS
  • Buying COTOS directly from Portalarium: $391.5 - $562.5
  • Buying COTOS using in-game gold: ~1,620,000
    • Purchasing in-game gold from another player: ~194.40
  • Buying COTOS from another player: ~$225
• Buying deed directly from another player: ~$130 (***currently marked as "on-sale")

Player-owned-town, taxed, city lot: Double the size again! not quite double the rent (3,500 gold every day)

• Buying directly from Portalarium: $1,050
• Buying in-game using COTOS: 1,050 COTOS
  • Buying COTOS directly from Portalarium: $913.5 - $1.312.50
  • Buying COTOS using in-game gold: ~3,780,000 gold
    • Purchaning in-game gold from another player: ~$453.60
  • Buying COTOS from another player: ~$525
• Buying deed directly from another player: ~$250 (***currently marked as "on-sale")

This is just covering the basics. In order to go tax-free, you'd have to increase the numbers by about

• 20%-30% for row lot deeds.
• 50% for village lot deeds
• 120% for town lot deeds
• 300% for city lot deeds

So, if you, as a new player, want to participate in the housing, the cost of entry is...

• $40 for access to the game
• $40-$1050 (or time to farm 300,000-3,800,000 gold) for the property deed (varies by lot size and method you choose to acquire)
• enough time to acquire 250-3,500 gold every day (to maintain the lot, pay your taxes)

In addition to that, Portalarium would really like each active user to contribute an additional $5 per month to help keep the lights on.
Is it really a surprise that new players are turned away by this?

 

I was actually just about to say "Can't you buy a lot deed from a person? I don't think they are bound to account." Here's the answer. More doom and gloom over something that just isn't even true. If you really REALLY want anything in this game, you CAN get it with igg. This is a fact. I really don't get all of the negativity. Work hard. Have a goal. Go get it.

 

Please share the locations you find where deeds can be purchased for in-game gold cheaper than gold prices I've already listed. In my searching to find players selling COTOS for in-game gold, I did stumble upon the occasional property deed for sale, but I didn't want to list it as a resource, as that same deed might be there tomorrow, and it might not be. The most reliable resources I found were in the major market POT towns (novia market, britt mart, and silverdale market) vendors selling COTOS for in-game gold. The best price I saw was I believe on Titania's vendor (sorry if I got the name wrong) in Novia Market at 360,000 in game gold for 100 COTOS (several stacks of 100 COTOS for sale, price varies wildly). If there's a better way to obtain property, please share it.

I believe the property ownership is one of the better parts of this game. I'd just like to see it be more accessible.

 

I grant everybody everything to get by playing even a PoT.

The funding is over, although i spent in total for a Tf PoT Town and Tf PoT Row , i dont mind if this can immediatly be obtained by playing the game.
The Shop should nothing have than ornate Version from 5 - 50 Dollars imho.