Housing. A great strength, pricing causing more problems than benefits?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Steevodeevo, Aug 1, 2019.

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Are Property Deed prices in line with Player expectations

  1. Yes, completely

  2. A little pricey, but OK

  3. I understand the prices but can't afford it (I may review or save in game)

  4. They are far to expensive which is sad as I'd love to buy a bigger land deed.

  5. Extortionate, unacceptable. They are killing the game with these prices. Player recruitment and rete

  6. things have gotten dirt cheap lately

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  1. Steevodeevo

    Steevodeevo Avatar

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    SOTA seems to get better every release and particularly recently I see more new player names (or alts! :) ) every time I log in.

    To my eyes :rolleyes:, the game continues to be refined and if only half of the proposed enhancements come to pass in the next year it will survive, then prosper. If it does survive and prosper then in time it must surely become one of the most unique, imaginative online RPG's I have ever played given the pedigree and determination of its Developers.

    An issue for me however is Lot pricing. I was inspired today to bite the bullet and upgrade to a Town Lot from a Village lot. There is a great deal I want to do in my virtual SOTA life but I have run out of space. The step up to a Town Lot from Row or Village lot however seems HUGE! The COTO cost alone (not withstanding the crafting and deco I intended to buy) means around a £120 / $140 purchase .. for a virtual house! \oO/

    For comparison, this is the cost of a full year and 2 months premium sub to Black Desert Online. I do understand that this house is a step up and that it is optional and it will be mine for ever and offers loads of kudos, but ... I do think it is twice what I would be comfortable paying and way too expensive for the health and well being of the game..

    Your thoughts, dear fellow players, are required for my piece of mind..
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2019
  2. Vladamir Begemot

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    In Shroud you can make in game gold and use it to buy crowns. You could pay $0 for that virtual house if you decide to put the time in.

    If you are concerned that you would like to put some money into the game to help it out, you can put a little cash in and earn the rest in game. If the COTO is spent, it's still a win for Port even if you didn't buy it.

    Also ask Stratos, he's selling deeds under price all the time.

    I don't see an option for "things have gotten dirt cheap lately" but that's what I'd click.
     
  3. Steevodeevo

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    Harsh and surprisingly defensive for you sir. As I think you know I love SOTA and am no troll. What I am is 'Joe average' player and in this post I represent them.

    I am aware, as I am sure you know Vlad, that anything can be bought in SOTA for gold, converted to COTOs or otherwise, .... eventually. Eventually is the key word here. The average player does not intend or desire to create a global business empire. Lets consider the average player; How long to earn $120 dollars worth of COTOs to buy a Town lot after deductions to play the game buying kit, potions repairs etc? ... I'd suggest never ever ever.


    things have gotten dirt cheap lately - added
     
  4. Vladamir Begemot

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    It's not meant to be harsh, but when I was a kid we had to walk uphill through 20 feet of snow, both ways!

    But seriously, one doesn't need to be a business magnate to get that many Crowns. I raised over 300k to buy a row deed as a fresh character in 66 hours. That was when loot didn't exist. That was when all deeds were expensive. You can see some strategies at http://tinyurl.com/racetohome

    As I demonstrate in that series, if you want to buy something big you should consider the market of the day and figure out ways to multiply your loot gold. Right now wood is hot. So are mannequins.

    And finally a town home should not be cheap. It's one of the biggest things you can get in the game. The two deeds below it are already free.

    I'll be happy to brainstorm some ways for you to make gold quickly and help you get your home, though.
     
  5. Vladamir Begemot

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    That offer to help you not be broke extends to anyone, including the people who think the prices are extortionate in the poll.

    I know people who have bought towns just with their in game activities, you can too. Pm me and I'll help you figure out a strategy.
     
  6. oplek

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    I don't know how true this is anymore. The problem is that this depends on others' willingness to buy and sell crowns. There's been a few times, particularly after major store releases, where I had gold, and wanted to buy... but I couldn't find any. These days, there's a lot more instances of people buying crowns because they actually want something in the store... and not to sell to players.

    This isn't the stable foundation it used to be, pre-in-game-store.
     
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  7. Barugon

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    Considering that you get free row and village deeds for doing the main story, I think its fine.
     
  8. Bedawyn

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    I think they made some less-than-optimal decisions when originally planning the real estate market in the game, and the game has suffered as a result. I wish it were feasible to start over with a new server and a fresh system, but I know it's not. The biggest problem, I think, isn't the property taxes themselves, but a combination of other aspects that make it difficult to get the type of property you want, so that paying the taxes seems less worth it. For instance: the fact that a row lot in Ardoris or Owl's Head costs the same, in game terms, as a row lot in a ghost town PRT. The fact that a free row deed, with a four-story house and a five-story basement, means many people will have no motivation for a larger lot, which means the economy isn't bringing the price of larger lots down. Even with the free deeds, taxes are difficult for a casual player who wants to "live" immersively.

    (Reporting to the Oracle every two days is neither immersive nor casual, nor is following stats-based systems to earn gold doing OOC things. Earning money in game should never be as annoying and tedious as a real-life job, and for many of us, that's exactly what monitoring the market and farming whatever's selling at the moment would be: The exact opposite of fun.)

    What I think they should have done:
    (1) Made lot sizes that were between Row and Village, and a Tiny size that is half the row lot. Tiny lots would have no basements or dungeons.
    (2) Made the free welcome deed the tiny size, but not limited it to POTs. The starting player doesn't need any more space than that.
    (3) Made ALL the lots in the central areas of NPC towns, and along the main road into town, rental houses only. Players can live there, have freedom to decorate indoors as they please, but can't change the house style and have limited ability to decorate outdoors. This would allow the devs to maintain creative control over quest and storyline areas while still allowing players freedom of expression in less important areas. And since renting would be cheaper than taxes for a lot the same size, it would be more accessible to casual players or to those saving up to buy a lot that size.
    (4) Tied deed prices not just to property size but to population density. All towns should have a pre-determined ideal population (Central Brittany ought to have more people living there than Bramble), and each release recalculates the actual player population compared to the ideal. The free and cheaper deeds can only be used in towns that are at less than their ideal population. If you want to live in a popular overcrowded town, you can, but it will cost more for a deed that allows that.
    (5) Saved player dungeons and larger basements (anything over 2 stories) for episode 2.

    And of course, all the other problems with the economy. If the economy was healthier overall, it would be much easier to save up for the larger lots, and to pay the taxes afterwards.

    Also, I've "earned" far more COTOs on Twitch streams than I have in game. That's.... helpful for me, but it's not the way things ought to be working. You should be playing the game in game, not on Twitch.

    I currently have four row lots: two outskirts deeds, and two regular deeds. Twitch got me one of the regular deeds, the other was a combination of Twitch and bundle-purchased crowns. Selling the subscriber potions is what has paid the taxes on the two POT deeds. But that bundle was my one real-life splurge for the year, and I don't expect to be able to keep the subscription going for more than another month. After that... well, I'm hoping by then my adventurer will be making enough in loot to keep things going. But also, I know the average casual player shouldn't need that much land. I'm a world-builder by nature, and I have big plans for my town, and I don't mind that it will take a lot of effort and time to implement them. The larger lot sizes... you're not just decorating for yourself, they affect the entire ambiance of the town. Even a village lot can completely change the feel of a neighborhood, so yes, they should be restricted by pricing to people who've made an emotional investment over time.

    But new and casual players should be able to get a small safe home (and "safe" means "not under the control of another player") more easily. And yes, even the largest lot sizes need to be accessible to low-income players, given enough time and work. But I'm not convinced that the barriers that exist now are the result of direct lot costs, as opposed to the indirect barriers created by the generally unhealthy economy.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2019
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  9. Barugon

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    Demand drives price, so this is false.
     
  10. Bedawyn

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    In some cases. In others -- more demand makes it easier for the supplier to provide things more cheaply (for instance, the price of tech that always goes down the more people want it, because it's easier to manufacture in bulk). More people buying bigger lots would mean more money for Portalarium, so they'd have the freedom to drop the prices a bit.
     
  11. Barugon

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    In a market where the commodity is limited (like realestate), this doesn't work.
     
  12. Lazlo

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    I think housing is reasonably attainable for players, either through the quests or the player market. A lot of people have moved on from SotA, with their deeds being cycled back into the economy.

    That being said, I dunno how many people are gonna be eager to buy housing or any other expensive items directly from Port given the current state of the game and their history.
     
  13. Vladamir Begemot

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    Novia Market and Brittany Alleys always seem to have crowns for sale.
     
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  14. Bedawyn

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    When POTs can add more lot markers and upgrade their sizes and Port can theoretically add as many new towns as they can fit on the map (and there's a LOT of empty room on the map, even ignoring hypothetical new lands), that limit is so high as to be practically non-existent.
     
  15. Violet Ronso

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    You say that earning gold in an immersive way is difficult, but I did the test the other night, and I could gather enough gold, just straight up gold from gold drops in blood river outskirts to pay one day of row taxes in 5 minutes. 5 minutes of lowest level adventuring got me enough gold for a day, so half an hour and I'm almost goof for a week. Sell the trash I picked up? Double, nearly triple my gains. In an hour, selling all the gear and consumables you picked up in Blood river outskirts, you can gather enough gold to pay a row house for a month.

    And you know what is better? Keep going in higher tiered zones, and the gold and gear drops get better! So you can immerse yourself as an adventurer and get enough gold to pay your house for a month, in approximately one hour!

    If your immersion requires you to head into the mines, you can make tons of gold with all the resources you gather. In fact any kind of gatherer can make a nice pile of gold, woods price is around 100 gold a log, beetle carapace sell for a huge chunk! You just need to do it instead of spending all your time in UT and get a little bit of gold (and heck 1 hour of UT is still around 2k per 1m attenuation run, so you can probably get close to 4k gold nowadays there per run, so 15-17 days of taxes for 1 UT run...
     
  16. majoria70

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    You can ask at anytime if anyone has crowns (cotos) for sale on the trade channel. If you don't have access because you have no orb (well not you particularly but anyone) I'm sure someone who does would be happy to ask for you. I ask about things I'm looking for all the time
     
  17. Jezebel Caerndow

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    I play a lot, I am getting 1000 dropped cotos a week right now. I am a poor person, so I dont have extra money to spend on the crown store. I am a Basic account. Pretty much everything I have is from farming coin in game. I have 23 cf vendors, some town lots and row lots and one village lot not from the quests.
     
  18. oplek

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    I didn't say no COTOs existed anywhere. My point was that, even without Mac and other top-end high-playtime players constantly gobbling up a large portion of the daily allowed COTO drops, there's a finite supply available. So the notion that anyone can just earn enough COTOs in-game only works if we assume that small limited number of people are trying to do that.

    In the real world, the lobster-catching industry has to be very careful about protecting the lobster populations, lest the be overfished. We can't say, "hey come to Maine, because you can feed your family by just catching lobster"... because if lots of people did that, the resource would deplete very quickly, even with 1000 lobsters naturally "dropping" per week. It would be... unwise... to have that notion as some kind of selling point, for living in Maine. It would quickly turn false.

    The only way this could be honestly characterized for Shroud, is if there's an asterisk with fine print saying something like "First 20 customers only."
     
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  19. Jezebel Caerndow

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    Is there a daily limit set? I seem to keep getting them all day long.
     
  20. Oakenhammer

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    There is a server side limit to control the total number dropping, but they've never described how that limit actually works.
     
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