What % of population should be able to own land?

We all read too much into everything - it's our favorite sport around here haha.

How do you quantify rare? I don't know. The percentage will adjust with the number of players. Who knows what backer housing +30% will be at launch. Probably a very high percentage.

If I had to give a number I'd say no greater than 50%. Probably a third for it to be reasonable to be called rare and limited.

Again I will say, Port's reputation and fundraising is on the line with any decision to change the KS pledge. (And you won't see that in this forum because this is mostly hardcore supporters). They could have sold pledges in a different way with a different housing proposal, but they didn't. I would have still contributed just as much probably. People will only tolerate being fooled once.

 

Imagine - Your a new player that joins after the final wipe. You havent heard of this before but your really happy to have found it. You pay the basic price and you join the game...

...to find out that much of the nice content will never be available to you, because...you missed it. Silly you!
...your demanded to ask others for a place to stay, every nice place is taken and people tell you not to worry, other continents will be given later on. Again...you missed it.
...you discover that this was ment as a single player game anyway.


The answer is easy: for each player that pays basic price and feels like making a home in SotA, should be able to get one and be able to put it where he/she likes IF he/she is willing to invest the playtime to get one.
Everything else is resulting in an elite-founder-we-are-better-then-you-because-we-were-here-first.

Should players feel stressed about a digital land rush? I mean really? Who's saying there is not enough nice land for everyone when instancing is the "thing" in this game? Maybe the same people that are making the land?

Its a conspiracy !

 

Me too, I care more about the longevity and sustainability of the game than I do my lots being rare, but that's just me.

Honestly, at this point we have no clue how many people will want housing that tries the game, and we don't know how many people we'll have playing once it's released, or how many will stay. Right now, (if I counted corrected 6088 pledge deeds from lot selection and +30% more, + what deeds are left in the add on store will have a place in the world to be placed) and we have 59,748 total backers is what we know...course there are player owned towns with lots as well to figure in, no telling how many lots they will have too that could fill in a huge gap for those that want to be land owners. Between player owned town lots and being able to rent rooms out, that may be plenty enough to house those wanting housing. We will know for sure the 6 month to 1 year mark after the game is released. I think by then, (if needed) that they can have a plan in place such as apartment style instance rentals or something to help out with need, or there may be no need at all for them. This early we just don't really know the number of people we'll have or the desire for housing to know what's going to be needed or desired.

 

The current plan is that for most players housing should be rare and unobtainable. I would like to see that change to rare and obtainable. Create a pathway so that anyone who wants to put in some really serious effort can eventually own a house - without having to rely on the unpredictable secondary housing marked. People need hope. If you don't give it to them, they'll seek it elsewhere.

 

~SOTA KOA Town & City Camping~
This solution to keeping land ownership rare is as deep as the ocean in possibilities, yet does require programing, but offers a place to "camp" for a limited time and thus allows the homeless to set up a temporary vendor and pitch a tent or park a wagon.
I won't get into that subject any further here off the OP...
~Time Lord~

 

This is an interesting thread. As someone who has less skin in the game overall, I'm not directly as effected as others. My intent is to eventually buy a house, and place it somewhere (preferably in a PRT/NPC town), but I also recognize that it will probably be out in the general boondocks in terms of land placement.

The whole housing/land rush thing has been to inflate and create a "bubble" for virtual property in game, along with competition for prime vendor locations for the economy. This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, since it's been brought up and harped on for sometime throughout the mass debate. It's intended to make people vie for their spot.

There will be deeds available with in-game currency, and I'm hoping as we get new landmasses, the Devs do continue to add more plots for folks. But yeah, I remember the equal excitement and frustrations of UO trying to run around to place a basic house, and running into a serious lack of space at times. First come, first serve has always been the rule of thumb.

 

Why would anyone think the secondary market lacked hope?

Ever hear the phrase, a capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with? I don't think people that work hard in the game to obtain gold will have any problem finding a seller of a deed if they have enough gold.

 

Perhaps I am more tolerant than most.

I would be fine with Portalarium making a statement that they had some goals that they thought they could achieve, but as development progressed they found they could not achieve all of those goals. Maybe tell us some of the challenges and the justifications for changes. I think people would be receptive if they are given the facts.

At the beginning of Kickstarter, I pledged Collector, but I really wanted to have a plot of land. All of the push to pledge to at least Citizen to be sure I was one of the few that could claim land made me finally raise my pledge to Knight at the last minute. Land mattered to me. Within three months I raised my pledge to Baron and then Duke because I wanted the largest lot (city at the time) and a castle, because it was important for the story of the character I wanted to create.

I purchased a town because I wanted a place to create a part of the world, and gave myself the option to live alone in a remote location.

At some point, the fact that it was supposed to be rare completely slipped my mind.

And now, even though it was a major factor in the size of my pledge, I find that I just don't care about rarity any longer.
I think having a piece of property is important to many potential players, and so I think ownership should be possible for anybody willing to pay Portalarium, or work for it in game.

I'm not really sympathetic to the people who purchased land as a real world financial investment, and they're the only folks I can think of that would care if housing is plentiful. If people want to make it a business, maybe they should buy into Portalarium.

 

~What He Said~
+1 !
~Time Lord~

 

Howdy Jarl,
Good point, I should have mentioned the same in my post. Thanks Bud.

 

Three things about that.
1. I have no intention of selling my Keep Lot. I'm holding on to that for roleplaying reasons. The idea that my lot is rare is still very important to me however. If the entire world was full of Keep lots (or City lots) I wouldn't feel good about that. Just like I wouldn't feel good if everyone in the game owned a $300 Obsidian Tower.

When we talk about housing not being rare, we're essentially talking about instanced and meaningless housing. We're talking about giving away the farm for free at the expense of roleplaying. That's simply not in any way the game that I pledged money to. It's been 3 years, we all knew this day was coming, I don't see why it's suddenly acceptable to explore the idea of housing not being rare. If Portalarium would like to make a move like that, I'd appreciate it if they first bought back all the stuff I paid for.

2. Richard Garriott and Star Long have both publicly stated that they had no doubt that some people would use the housing market to speculate using real world money. Although I certainly don't see housing as a legitimate financial vehicle, nor do I think Portalarium sold it that way, I do recognize that a huge amount of funding for this game has been on the backs of speculators. If Portalarium were to undercut those people, I don't think we'd see a successful funding of EP2. I think funding EP2 will be hard enough without giving the speculators the shaft.

3. The message of "everyone should have an opportunity to get housing" is a populace message. Of course the majority of people that play this game will agree with that. In real life, I would agree with that. I'm one of the most liberal people you're ever going to meet in real life. But what I understand about this GAME and real life is that unlike in SOTA you can't farm gold for a living in real life. There's no macro that performs all the boring parts of real life and makes you a home owner. Real life requires a lot more work and a lot less reward. But in SOTA, people can dominate the world just because they have lots of time on their hands. That's a huge difference, and one that we can't just ignore. Time = Money in SOTA.

 

Great post Sir Frank +111111

 

To be fair, I recognize that's been the case for quite awhile now. Still pisses me off in general though, since I'm also one of those people who just wants a damn fun RPG to play, not "Real Estate Simulator". I also don't know how well that's really going to work, since most of the UO-type transactions were driven by a large player market and a fair lack of other online games at the time. Will there really be that large of a market for third party housing sales? I dunno.

I do worry a bit about how it will impact things like roleplaying and communities, since while I see some folks who seem interested in keeping POTs more for the ambiance, there's also sure to be those who are going to look at it strictly as business; profit first, and fun be damned. That's the unease that I've always had about linking the RL money stuff to the game from the get-go. It'll either work, or burn the hell out of a lot of folks, which I'm hoping doesn't happen.

Also, I'm still waiting for the "launch" to see how well things get kicked off, since I do know a lot of folks that are simply waiting for the start date, before they spend a lot of effort on temporary characters. From a long-term perspective, I'm still a little curious how exactly Port intends to keep the finances rolling, since there's neither a subscription fee, and the initial price tag has gone into this development. If we're going to see future episodes and further expansion, they'll need to have a decent carrot to dangle for new and existing players. More housing options and flexibility would probably help.

 

Even at launch, that's not really going to be an indicator of how well the game WILL do in the future. I'd start looking closer after at least 6 months of post-launch metrics. It's way too early to tell right now. I also don't buy into the idea that any one person on this forum has the true historical reasonings of why one MMO failed and another didn't. It's all just personal, unqualified opinion.

 

A phrase that should be replacing the rampant prognostication. No one really knows how much lot sharing there will be, or how many will be playing 6 mo. after launch, or how many want to live in POTs, how well the aftermarket will perform, how many will want a lot, how many lots will be purchased by big money spenders, what percentage of owners are speculators. We don't even know what tools there will be to locate vacant lots.

Suggestions should work regardless of what the unfettered masses may do.

 

One of the greatest posts ive seen in a long time. We disagree on much, but here - you get me.

Also I can not stress this enough - NO ONE is going to sell items for in game gold that costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars unless they are extremely desperate or they've stolen that item. People need to stop this nonsense right now and stop pretending. The truth is, that this "after market" were talking about is all going to be about making more money off of your money spent. And it SCREWS the guys in the game trying to make their way with ingame gold.

The "thriving secondary market" having anything to do with in game gold is - largely - a lie.

If we are not careful then the whole idea that the 'little guy' can make it in the game by just grinding any amount of gold no matter how large - will also be a lie.

 

What I see in this conversation is a number of people that don't have a grasp of how basic economics works, specifically supply and demand.

 

100% of the population has the ability to own land, either through pledging, earning enough in-game gold, or buying on the secondary market. It's all a matter of time, desire and/or cash.

Housing should be scarce but not so scarce it's unattainable. Hard to know at this moment in time, but the balance constructed by the devs seems pretty darn good.

 

I think the devs need to stop selling pots, otherwise this is going to look like China's ghost cities.

 

For many (most?) players the only purchase option is in-game using gold. Very few people will be selling deeds purchased with real money for gold. They are more likely to sell something trivial like dyes (a handy way to convert real money to gold), but not something costing hundreds of dollars. So, almost all deeds available for gold on the secondary market will be those purchased from Portalarium with gold, and demand will greatly outstrip supply. That means ludicrous gold prices that players with jobs won't be able to achieve. The effective result is that many players will not have a realistic path to land ownership.