Houses are in limited quantity? ? (Dev) Replied

HERE HERE!

 

They could have hostels or the like where you can purchase the use of a room, studio apartment etc. It would not be as good as having your own plot of land but still a smaller more limited place to call your own. EG.

Daragons Dorm
- Servants Quarters = 1 room which you can decorate in a limited way, eg beds, paintings a chest for storage
- Steward Quarters = 1 room with extra storage
- Commoner Quarters = 2 rooms with the above
- Adventurer Quarters = 2 rooms with extra storage

You get the picture. These limited properties could be rented or purchased. Game mechanics-wise it would be a large building that when entered creates a new instance for your purchased/rented property. It would mean there would not need to be more towns made or cities as it is instanced.

They would not have as much functionality as the actual plots that you can purchase which has only your own house on it, you would not be able to visually upgrade the outside appearance etc. But would, I think, provide something for those players that don't have a lot of free time to charge through the game and try to snap up the property as quickly as possible. Because lets face it, even if there are thousands of plots they will go quickly.

Just a thought...

 

I've never paid real money for any type of virtual property in games. I know some people do and that's fine for them but for me MMO's have always been about the journey and never about the destination and just outright paying even a reasonable amount of real money for a house would be against every grain for why I love playing games.

UO houses were never easy to come by and even the cheapest deeds took a few weeks of daily grinding to earn the gold for (and I never bought the cheap deeds)... I have plenty of spare time I don't have any problem spending even a few weeks to earn up the gold for a medium sized SOTA house.. Makes me feel allot better once I get something really nice knowing I paid for it in the one thing we can never get back.. Time.

My only concern: Since people can just out right by-pass the grind to earn in game gold and instead spend real money for a SOTA house deed.. is hoping by me doing this the long way, that there's still gonna be enough available houses and lots to place them available by the time I get all the gold saved up.

 

Well said Annuk. Maybe light487 can add section 8 welfare housing to the list of suggestions? Its only fair for the people who deserve a house but cant work for them

 

There is a very real possibility that you may really really want a house but wont be able to afford it and the associated taxes/maintenance fees.

Houses will be available for those who want the house bad enough to acquire enough in-game money to buy one.

 

I am very much in the minority here but I really like the idea of limited housing. UO got way out of hand with personal houses everywhere. You couldn't walk two feet without bumping into someone's house. It made it so you could hardly even traverse some parts of the world.

A endless supply of housing also greatly diminishes their value, not cost-wise but in practical terms. What point is there is setting up a blacksmiths shop when it is but one in a thousand?

I think housing rent should be suitably high that it pretty much forces players to form into groups or guilds in order to pay for its upkeep. Want to be a blacksmith in [insert town name] than you will probably have to join one of the few existing blacksmith guilds or find a bunch of people to form your own because you have little hope of financing a house/shop all on your own.

Given the fact that it currently costs you $3000 to obtain a rent free city level house I think it is a safe bet that this is the direction they are going with SotA.

 

Here's the problem as I see it.

If all the city homes are sold on kickstarter then NO in game amount of money will get you a home in a city. You'd have to pay cash. Most likely you'd need to buy the account of the person who paid into the kickstarter.

Personally I'd bet anything housing is pretty scarce in the first round of the game. Once they start adding land to the game though you'll run into the Ultima Online problem of "too much land". Then everyone will have a house. You're still talking about atleast a year's wait on seeing the number of players with a home rise.

 

I agree with Andrew that the city homes will be gone before beta and the chances of getting one in game with gold is highly unlikely. I have a feeling these houses are going to be sold to big guilds who pool their real money. I don't see this as a bad thing though. You can get all the joys of ownership with a town home and probably even with a village home.

 

I have a really hard time believing that they would have all the housing tied up with kickstart campaign and pledges. I bet there are several hundred if not thousands of homes in reserve for when the game begins (maybe even in the beta test). Hopefully, they'll talk about it soon. They really havent talked much about housing and how it will work yet. Perhaps it will be in an upcoming update.

 

As players, we are accustomed to the idea that if we invest enough time/effort we can achieve any in-game goal. But scarce housing suggests a state where once all of the houses are purchased, there is nothing in-game you can do to obtain one.

Now I'm not suggesting that everyone is entitled to one, just that we should have the opportunity. (Opportunity != outcome)

If we could compare housing with raid loot in other games: many/most people did not have the best gear. However, if they invested the time/effort there was a realistic chance of them getting it.

 

I do want to reiterate though that in the future when the expansions come out it seems that more housing WILL be added. At that time it'll be a "rat race" as to who can get a house in the new cities.

I would at least assume the next expansions wont also be kickstarted...

 

If it is bad they probably can do a prepay in game for new lots in the expansion. Allow people to save while waiting. That would almost feel more rewarding

 

Anyone who thinks there should be enough houses for everyone is dead wrong. Look at a game like FFXI, a house was pointless. Everyone had one, same goes for LoTRO, there was infinite houses, so they had no purpose, EvE online, same thing, ect ect. All they became was extended bank slots. Please point out a single non-instanced game that had unlimited housing and it worked. There isn't one. Now also try it with instanced housing and the house had to serve more of a purpose than putting your bank overflow there.

You have to think back to UO, limited houses made a strong economy, it was a great investment and it allowed people to play a Real Estate broker.

If you want a house, then EARN one. Either pony up the cash, or grind out the gold you need to buy one. If you tell me you won;t work extra hours at your job, or you won't spent the time to grind the gold because it's "not worth it", then you shouldn't care about owning a house right?

Either way, I'd rather see a strong economy then everyone getting extra bank storage that takes up the scenery.

 

in 1992 Ultima was sold for $50 & computers were sold for 1000.00 (commodore 64, 5 1/4" floppy drive, t.v. for screen)It took me 4 paychecks to get it all, good to live in parents basement at the time,

Now computers are $500 & Sota w. house is $500 = 1000.00 plus I make more now.

http://www.ultimaaiera.com/blog/new-gallery-richard-garriott-and-warren-spector-circa-1992/

 

^ I LOVE that calculator watch! hahaha

 

Depending on the definition of "dozens", City Deeds will be gone before the game launches due to KS rewards (41 people already). Town deeds should be fine as there are only 30 or so backers at that level. Villages should also be fine.
Course they could probably kick up their KS totals by offering a separate pledge for a village deed. But I doubt we will see that.

 

They hinted on the chat that they will still take pledges after the Kickstarter on their website to likely around the time of alpha if not longer. If people care enough they can save $500. If not, take your chances

 

I'm pretty disappointed with the housing being offered as a reward for real money... Game is already showing signs of pay to win.
Pair that with RG videos mentioning RMT and paying real money for skill trees, I'm suddenly a lot less excited about this game.

Yeah.. the more I think about it I'm gonna have to pass on this one. I was interested up until just now when I put it all together so...good luck to you all. I doubt an experience like UO will ever happen again, it was just a combination of so many things it was lightning in a bottle.

That being said I hope this game does well, but I won't be playing it unless RMT are out of the picture and housing isn't an issue.

 

The housing issue is pretty interesting. It seems that they're limiting the amount of housing in the world in order to make the plots/houses that do exist more valuable, and the locations more valuable still. So yeah, they'll probably be traded for real money outside of the game, or for ridiculous quantities of in-game resources.

In Ultima Online there wasn't enough land for all the players to own houses, not even on all the shards they had, and the world was filled with houses all over the place. Those houses were indestructable for a long time and survived their owners leaving the game, and even when they added house decay there still wasn't enough room for everybody who wanted one. The best houses and best locations were extremely valuable, especially the best spots for opening a shop, and the rare castle plots.

It's pretty reasonable to believe that there will be plenty of people who can afford the cost of a house or even a castle, but be unable to build one because all of the places are filled by active players. No matter how many house spots there are, too. In Ultima Online they eventually caved to player demands and added a new continent that was mostly flat land for player housing, and it was completely filled in a day and people were still unable to place houses. I only got to place my house on that new continent due to a bug, and afterwards I quit the game. Buying a house was such an important, absolute action that I felt like I had "Beaten the Game"; there was nothing left that I wanted to do in UO after that.


Now, all that said I have to say I don't like it, but it does make a certain sense. Now, I happen to have a workaround idea.

<b>Here is my idea.</b> Since there's limited space for houses, manors, and castles, why not give everybody an instanced 'Room at the Inn'? A private space all players have access to, where you can invite your friends, and access it from an innkeeper. That would give the poorest players at least a shadow of a home.

What do you guys think?

 

It think inn housing is a great idea if implemented right. It benefits the city and town home owners wanting to sell because it would increase traffic flow. Plus it helps the economy because it sucks up money to help prevent inflation. Let the users personalize them a bit and that should hold people off.