Houses are in limited quantity? ? (Dev) Replied

Sure I like the "room at the inn" idea as well.

So long as the room was smaller than a village home. That way having a village home still felt like a significant trading up. I'd also like it if the instanced room had some form of limited storage mechanism (like limited lockdowns in UO).


Lastly, I agree with you after I got my Luna house and several hundred million gold, I always felt like I had beaten UO.

 

I agree with everyone who says that homes should be rare and drive the game's player-driven investment economy - I too think that the most deserving home-owners are the most active players; especially if I've got to walk past their house every time I make my way to the bank or the blacksmith. Players who thoroughly enjoy the game enough to invest their time and efforts into owning a home in the city deserve it - and I too think homes belong in and around the game-world cities and towns and villages; I always thought that thousands of little castles in the middle of the woods (and later populated by neon-colored-clothed NPC vendors) made very little sense.

As far as people paying $500 of real-world cash for a game-world house - good on them, and good on Mr. Garriott for offering it. Obviously if no one thought it was worth the cash then they'd go un-sold - but that of course isn't what's happening. I happen to not have $500 for a game-world house either but that only really gets me down when I think about how great it would be to have an extra $500 in disposable income - it certainly doesn't make me any less excited about the game. Please don't protest the fact that you might be snubbed out of owning a virtual house in a game that's yet to exist - if you're able to think about it objectively you might see that quite frankly someone who's willing to invest $500 into this game project does in fact deserve more of a reward than someone who isn't or even someone who can't.

That being said, any members of the development team reading this should probably take note - some players' participation hinges on housing; why? I think players enjoy owning part of the game-world that persists and can be decorated and seen by fellow players - and I don't think that necessarily means that everyone needs to own a house but I do think that a sense of ownership and personal aesthetic is a common vein in this player-base. Maybe there are other avenues this could be established in.

My own reasons for finally buying a house in Ultima Online were centered around creating a guild - and it took all of the members of the guild putting their cash together to afford it - we were casual players who were solely interested in role-playing community warfare; we were all gold-poor. We bought the smallest 1-room house in the middle of the plains north of Minoc and spent all of our time pretending we lived in the upstairs of a fellow role-players' bar outside of Britain - there was no upstairs; thank you role-playing!

 

@Harrijasotzaile

One of the best written thoughts on this housing issues. Very balanced.

 

Wow did this guy just nail it.

 

I mentioned this in the sticky but there is a way to cater to both sides of the discussion. Leave housing the way it is, but as a soft cap. If people wish to buy a lot in a village, town, or city that's already full, they should be able to, but a MUCH high cost, say 2-3 times the original base cost (I'm just throwing out numbers, they can be tweaked and balanced as needed). This means that eventually, anyone that puts enough time and effort into it, will get their house where they want it regardless of how popular this game gets.

These extra plots can't be bought by people that already own a plot of land. They'd need to abandon their old one first before they could get the new one.

For example say a city has 48 lots for houses. The base cost is 1,000,000 gold (I'm using random numbers here). Any house above and beyond the 48, up to 96, would cost 3,000,000 gold. Any new lot beyond 96 up to 124 would cost 9,000,000 gold, etc, etc,.

This means that people can eventually get their house wherever they want, however in the big cities and possibly even towns, it's just not a feasible option unless you're very dedicated to this game, and you're rewarded as a result by being able to get that lucrative property.

The three options I saw proposed in the update wouldn't work very well. They mentioned option 3 would be ruined by gold farmers, option 1 would as well. Gold farmers could outbid anyone and the gold farmers would be able to dominate and dictate the housing market, possibly even more completely than option 3. Option 2 throws an RNG element into the pot and I can tell you right now, RNG is not the way to go for something as popular as housing. It will upset a great many people. For nice extras, sure, it'd be great, but for something that many will consider integral and core to their game play enjoyment, it's not a smart idea.

My option doesn't prevent the addition of new property later. Perhaps new lots open up in that city scenario I mentioned earlier. These new lots are in more desirable locations of the city for the standard base cost. They're a steal and people would want them.

Limiting something like housing is tricky because everyone wants to feel like they can have their own castle to rest and relax. However if you make it too relaxed you'll get UO all over again.

 

If a place is full. It is full.

 

Arthain has a point.

The dev team are saying "multiplayer online" not "Massive Multiplayer Online".
We don't know the quantity of the housing lots, but at least those who are interested should be enabled to get a proper house.

 

Everyone has the same chance now and when the game actually starts. You either work hard in real life and drop the $500 plus or work when the game comes out. Everyone is only guaranteed a house in the single player game. They are not going to pollute the world with housing everywhere you can go.

 

I imagine if a place is full that means all the internal predetermined areas are already filled in. These new houses could be in suburbs on the outskirts of the main village/town/city proper. These could be areas that housed unlimited number of houses but at increasingly higher costs. They could be communities entirely dedicated to player housing right next to the city/town/village. It wouldn't have the lucrative awesomely amazing location that the internal plots have but at least you have the location and protection provided by being associated with the area and you still get some traffic from the others that live in the same suburb that you do.

I'm also not saying allow players to put houses anywhere, the locations are still controlled to some regard. You'd never see the one-offs unless the devs specifically planned it.

 

Who knows. You may be right, but I don't think you'll see anything like that until year 2 or 3. What I think will happen is you'll see a lot of groups of people owning houses or hopefully they'll allow renting out of rooms in houses.

 

They did mention you would have some sort of "permissions" on your house, so no reason players with houses couldn't time share out their houses. After all, most people will play adventurers and explorers, so you wouldn't be at your house all the time. It makes sense to allow others to pay a fee to use their house when they are "away".

Since we are talking about filtered matchmaking, the game could keep just filter out "renter" and "owner" out of each others world. Those that want share their house and play together could be "roommates" and be filtered in together. All could be fee based with the "owner" getting the rent.

As a owner you get to decorate and so on, but as a renter or roommate you see the house as is and just get your own storage. You could also use the NPC vendor, but the spoils still go to the "owner". The trick is figuring out evictions, but this might not be an issue if there are at least banks or something you can have for storage without a house.

I think this would take the sting out of limited housing, help the in game economy, and lead to some great RP in the game. However, if I could plunk down $500 I would lock the door and yell at you kids to get off my lawn!

 

I think the goal is to keep the sting in limited housing. Based on the video with Markee Dragon, LB intends houses to be valuable commodities, and does NOT want the urban sprawl that UO had. I have seen nothing that indicates that everyone who wants a house will have one. Granted, the eventual expansions will create more lots, but as to whether there will be enough lots even then is anyone's guess.

 

I think limited quantity housing is a bad idea. Why? Simple, it will create two kinds of customers for the game, the "have" and the "have not" (and can never have). That isn't a fair way to run an online game, and I suspect many of the "have not" will simply stop playing.

The developers must come up with a way for everybody able to own a house in the game, if they put the time, effort and gold in it of course. Anything else would be unfair and will anger a large part of the player base. As it is now, houses will only be for those able to farm gold the fastest, aka the power gamers, which are a minority. You don't start a game on a good basis if you piss of the majority of your potential customer base.

 

If having a house is more important than the storyline and world RG will be developing, than maybe The Sims rather than SotA is the game for you.

 

Having a house is part of the game and of the world just like the story. No need to be rude and condescending towards people who enjoy that aspect.

 

Quit with the "its not fair" korrigan. Everyone has the same chance. While i agree it would be nice to have temp housing options like renting, no one is owed a house. It will be an achievement to those who work hard and the world will eventually expand. If things arent going well in beta, maybe they will adjust by adding project baseed welfare housing to those that feel entitled.

 

It's not condescension. Shroud of the Avatar is not a game about houses. If houses are that important to you, a game than concentrates on houses might be better suited to your gaming style.

 

Nope I won't quit, and giving your opinion is welcome on this forum last time I checked, so I will keep on giving it.

It's a game, something people play for fun. If someone gathers the gold for a house in one month, and another person needs 6 months to gather it, both should have access to a house, the first person will just get it faster. A player is not a second class customer just because he plays less and has a life outside of video games. Actually, the slower player will most likely play and therefore fund the game for longer than the hardcore one who beats all content in a couple of months, whines about the lack of content, and finally quits.

 

Houses for everyone was a good idea in UO in theory, but in practice, it was a lousy idea. Houses all over the landscape degraded the game, and even then, not everyone had a house. I think RG learned from that, and decided that houses would be part of SotA, but only in those parts of the game where they added to the game, not detracted from it.

There are 16000 contributors so far. On release I hope there will be tens of thousands more, or even hundreds of thousands. Unless they adopt a system of virtual housing developments that take up no game space, not everyone will get a house. If that is a game breaker for you, that is something you need to come to grips with now rather than later.

 

@Owain:

First, you should stop assuming that for people enjoying housing, housing is the major feature of a game. It's one of the features among all.

And yeah, if I save for a house only to discover all have been taken and I can't get one, I will not be happy. And you can bet a vast majority of people won't be happy either.

And that's why I voice my opinion on the matter NOW, as you said, in order to stop the developers from making a mistake that will cost them a significant amount of players, aka customers. Such a game is also a business meant to make money, and you don't make money by treating a non negligible part of your customers as second class citizen.

Imagine you go to a restaurant, and want some fish. Of course, you have the money to pay, you are correctly dressed, and you behave politely. But the waiter tells you "sorry, the fish is only for the tables over there, here you can only get meat. Well, restricted housing is the same. We are all customers of the "Shroud of the Avatar" restaurant, so we should all have access to all the features if we manage to gather the required currency and supplies to acquire them.