What % of population should be able to own land?

Finding available housing land has not been an issue in UO since Trammel - and that was a long time ago....
They added more lands because they realized that people would not stay if they couldn't find a home.
And now, here we are.......
If you dash people's hopes of having their own home, then they will NOT stick around.

 

Well, my 2 cents......100% should be able to own a home if they wish to work towards that goal, and I actually think that it's a good number, I don't believe that 100% (50-60% at any given time) of the people will own a house though, and that for many different reasons.

I would love to own a house, and maybe once we get into Ep 2 or 3, I will make it a goal, but until then *shrugs shoulders*, until then I'm not willing to pay a tax, rental fee or make any part of SotA seem like a chore. I'm not willing to bet on rentals from POT owners, and I surely won't pay anyone real life cash to rent a plot somewhere. I have always kept in mind that it will be a year or more before I have a house....if ever. The KS made that clear to me, maybe not to you, but it did to me.

When it does happen, it will be a crafting and storage facility for as many folks as Port sez I could give a personal chest too. LOL, That's not many at this point. My old friend (the one that got me started here and UO) hasn't logged in and his life has become very busy. In game, I can name a few folks here in SotA but I haven't had the time, and am not very good at the being social thing.

As much as I hate the idea of paying (tax or rental fee) for a lot one way or another, I don't think it would be fair to people already engaged with SotA to change, what I'm sure, was a big draw to folks who wanted to support SotA and recoup, (or to profit) from their money via rentals.

 

My head is spinning from all the good arguments on both sides of the fence and from all the contradictions. I am still in favor of making it possible for anyone to obtain property with hard work. (As someone else already mentioned, this doesn't mean that 100% of folks will end up owning property.)

I want to comment on one argument against widespread property ownership that I will put in my own words, the way I understand it.

"Rare and limited housing is good for the game because it preserves the value of lot deeds and is good for the secondary real estate market (players selling deeds to other players). This healthy secondary real estate market is needed to make backers want to support future episodes of the game."

Assuming that I have understood the argument correctly, I admit that it does have some merit. Speculators might be willing to pour lots of money into the game if they feel that they can sell the purchased assets (in this example, lot deeds) at a profit. As I understand the term "secondary market", only the resale value of deeds is relevant for the sake of this argument.

Nevertheless, I think that this argument only holds water if the aforementioned backers believe that Episode 2, etc. will be successful. They would be foolish to pour money into a game that they believe will flop, regardless of whether deeds are rare or not.

I believe that the scarcity of land ownership in SotA will drive down the popularity of the game. In a worst case scenario, Episode 1 will be met with cold or luke warm acceptance by the broad player community, and speculative backers will withhold their financial support for further episodes which may never meet the light of day.

Luckily (in my opinion), property ownership has become more widespread than some backers originally hoped for. In the coming year we will have an opportunity to see how this plays out.

 

To be fair there are quite a lot of PoT Owners that don't charge you.
All you have to pay is the game tax for your deed.

 

I agree.

 

My question could sound weird but, could you explain the reason ? What's the link between limited housing and the fact that you (and probably other players) bought this game ?

 

Houses? Yeah...heard of that content and chose to leave it.

because 1.) as I learned in this forum, this is a single player game with only an option for multiplaying. I got all I need to enjoy the story and the full single player content and I wont put a cent into this so I can play digital-tee-party (mind you, this is what I learned here). And 2.) didnt you notice that there are people that will need to zone into a scene, so they can zone into another scene to find their houses? No...

And discussing about how many players are supposed to have a house in you oppinion is about the worst thing I got to see today. I know many of you have more then one or even more and you discuss here how many or if any the other should have?


Dont need a house for single player content...just a bank to store items and gold to raise that bankslot limit. And no...I dont teleport...or do recalls, I walk over the map.


*Last week my answer would have sounded differently.

 

I see it the same way. this is one more nail in the coffin for an healthy growing community

 

Housing should equal the number of lots sold with pledges(A), plus the number of lots sold on addon store(B) + 30-50% of that total(A+B) added together. The percentage of players who should be able to own a lot is the population at launch divided by that previously calculated number.

A+B+.5(A+B) = D
Population/D = % who should own homes.

 

Yes. We know how to figure a percentage.
What I want to know is what you think a good number would be.
Or, maybe you are trying to say you have no preference?

 

After all 5 episodes have been released I think the answer will be like 85-90%. For Episode 1 I think the percent should be fairly low 35-40%.

I think the stated goal of limited housing needs to maintained for Episode 1 and gradually relaxed with each new Episode. Not everyone can have a house to start but as the game grows over time then everyone (who wants to own a house) will eventually have one. As more land mass is added and more funding opportunities appear with each episode the percent of the population that acquire land can and will go up. It will take take time, patience, and coin (in-game or out).

Just my $.03

 

Wohoo - ok. *puts the gloves on*
It has to be hard to be alone like you and I understand if you're pickering at people who are part of communities and listen to them. And what I should and what not - it's my decision. I speak for whomever I like. Take it or leave it.

Nonsense. Trammel and Malas solved housing-problems. Everyone who wanted one, got one.

*sigh* It's hard to discuss the topic with someone who has no idea of game-marketing. Archeage is free2play. SotA is not. Archeage is a korean game with many players from asia and tho it is published in the western world by Trion they didn't get much attendance. 1 Mio? *LOL* http://steamcharts.com/app/304030

Portalarium collected money wherever they did get it and promissing everyone what they wanted to hear. I don't care about your major reason because following that is the death of a - maybe - interesting game. They shouldn't listen to loudmouth like you.

You see - losing manners isn't that difficult and talking at your level is easy. And no - I don't care for your answer.

*puts off the gloves*

 

With such charts I guess we will have 100% people having an house !

 

You do know that the chart is wrong even for linked accounts that actually play over steam?
Not to mention those that are linked but use the launcher and those that aren't linked at all.

 

You'r right about non linked at all (but that mean players who... don't play, so not players!) and players using Portalarium launcher.

But does it make a huge difference ? We are far from thousands of players.

And why would Steam charts be wrong about people using Steam client ??

 

The reality of all the back and forth is that coming up with a percentage is too exact. There are too many factors at play that can't be measured. It can't be too small, and it can't be too big for all the reasons stated here already. Prudent, educated guessing and then evaluation and adjustment are all that's possible. Any exact percentage is just a hypothesis that would have to be tested and then adjusted.

One thing about the design is a reality. Simply put, housing was sold as a RARE. Just like how it would kill fundraising to sell something in the add-on store and then make it generally available in game, or how it would kill collecting/exploring to make something hard to acquire in game as a RARE and then make it easy to acquire, to make housing super available at this point would do harm and damage. Is this more than the harm and damage that some see in not having widely available housing? I don't know. No one knows precisely. We can say though that because Port made the decision to sell housing as a RARE, it has to be. To change that fundamentally would kill Port's reputation. I would never trust a company who sold something as limited and then gave them away to anyone who wanted one. Certain issues have this already teetering on the brink.

To put forth an idea however, since I am saying stick with the design principle: I would advocate for a better and more expandable bank. And then get back to working on the story/quests/companions/world building so people have a ton more to enjoy in the world and will not be inclined to stay home!

 

There is an exhausting explanation how and why the chart is wrong hidden somewhere in this forum. I am too lazy to find it ^^.
But you are right, it wouldn't boost us to 10000/h at the moment of course. Just wanted to point out that it isn't THAT bad either.

 

I think everyone should have a chance to have some sort of housing. Since there's a big concern from some backers that want to keep housing limited in some way to keep deeds like pledge deeds valuable, perhaps other forms of housing could be used and keep that possible. It's been suggested before and I like the idea of having apartment (instanced) type of rentals for people (Sort of like what we had in Asheron's Call), and being able to rent rooms out to others too will be nice (I'd charge 0 gold if possible ). Those 2 choices give people a chance to have a place to put their belongings and deco a bit and they could still have a chance to save up and buy bigger places in game once they've gathered enough gold to do so, if they wanted to...and that wouldn't devalue the housing market I don't think.

 

~Rare Land Ownership~
Although I do agree with what @Ice Queen is saying here, we would have a sort of "breach of player investment contract" if there's nothing rare about owning land in SOTA. I personally could care less, yet others would disagree and hold Portalarium to that advertised value of their early pledges.
The problem doesn't get much more simple than that, which is constricting this subject's flexibility.
Rare and Limited... that's the stumbling block issue... "how to keep that promise and how to promise more in keeping it"...
Otherwise I would totally agree with 100% housing ability
~Time Lord~

 

Yeah, I'm not asking for people to figure out what the percentage is or will be. I'm asking what number they think it ought to be. And of course there won't be any testing or adjustments. I'm just trying to get a feel for what the majority of players want.

Unfortunately, people are reading way too much into the question.