Are NPC's selling lot deeds yet?

That's better than 99%. And it's going to cost those players much much more gold to pull that off.

 

They'll still pay much less than what the lots are worth on an open market.

 

Still they pay way more than without a lottery. And your forgetting the fact that they prob would have bought them all at this point in the game already... So they would have been worth way more.

 

I agree that they would have underplayed either way. Though when your option is getting a sword to the heart or to the eye, the best bet is to hunt for a third option instead of arguing the relative merits of heart vs eye.

 

I get your stance completely. But after going over all the different options for months on here, I firmly believe this way is less exploitable than the other options. I would have put all my gold into buying up deeds under the old system and some of the other ideas, but I have no interest in buying into the lottery because I already own a house from my pledge.

 

If they were available on the NPC at a fixed price, nobody can sell them at a huge markup, that's the point.
They don't need to be limited on the NPC, because the number of spots you can actually put a deed, is limited.
There's only so many towns and only so many lots.

The only real problem with having them available, in unlimited quanities, is buying one and not having anywhere to place it. But why would you buy one if you had nowhere to place it?
Even then, you could ask a PoT owner to put you down a marker....
This is so much better than the alternative, which is basically locking housing behind a pay wall.

Yes of course deeds are available for purchase for real cash, and some people will go this route. Some people can't, or aren't willing to drop hundreds of dollars on virtual goods in a game they are new to. Its not like spending $20, property is expensive and frankly outside a lot of folks' gaming budgets. So its play for months, hoping for a lotto win, or hoping someone who does win happens to not need it themselves and they sell it for hundreds of thousands of gold. In the meantime, housing is unavailable. This is extremely discouraging to new players and will affect player retention.

When you walk around and see the glorious houses, or the quaint villages, or even the rows with a vendor out front, in every single non-adventure zone, it becomes something you want to have and it is a very big part of the game. It should be something you can save up for, not something that is handed to some people on a platter and locked behind a pay wall for everyone else.

Back before persistence, when I first started playing and didn't have a pledge high enough to include property, my husband and I spent days grinding and mining to save up for our first property deed, and then our first house, and even though it was small and nothing special, it was ours, we earned it, we had a place. We slowly decorated it up, it was our base of operations and we earned it. It was a good feeling. It added so much to the game and allowed us to have a place to share resources, craft, and display things. It was a huge part of the reason why we kept playing and a huge part of the reason why we both ended up pledging up to levels that included housing - because we got to play around with it and saw that we liked t.

I don't understand why its been decided to rob new players of this experience, I would say someone is much more likely to stick with the game and buy a tax free bundle if they can get a taste of what they are missing out on, instead of just resigning themselves to 'never being able to have a house' and then after a few weeks, we see them stop logging in....

 

My bigger complaint is that my pledge came with a bunch of neat furniture items that it looks like are going to spend years in the banks takin up space. That's a bit of a slap in the face to someone willing to invest over $100 for a game years ahead of time.

 

The reason the devs have stated that they don't want to oversell deeds (more deeds than lots) is that they never want someone that purchased a deed with cash (through pledge, bundle, etc) to NOT have a place to put that deed. Coupled with the fact that the devs stated they would never force a pledge deed holder to live in a POT (since some people hate them), means there will always be more lots than deeds in the game.

Since deeds are forced to be limited by these decisions, the devs decided the raffle would be the best way to distribute those remaining deeds. I think you'll see A LOT of POT only deeds up for sale from players for gold because the raffles for all lot sizes are together. Players looking for a city or town deed will be selling lower level deeds if they win them. At over 600 deeds per month, the value for the smaller deeds will drop to meet the demand, and it should give everyone a better chance of finding a home.

 

The only real way to make the lots lottery somewhat fair to those that do not own a lot would be for each person only gets one ticket and then draw out of this.

 

If they implemented it the way you wanted, the initial prices for row lots would have probably been 100k+ gold anyways. And that's about what they cost right now for a row lot for a pot ($85 = around 110k gold). All you need is someone to buy the deed for you from the add-on store and then you pay them with in game gold. I personally would do that if someone asked, and I'm sure there are plenty others that would be willing as well. So that experience you had still exists, you just need to interact with the community to do it, which I think is a good thing.

Also the current system helps in a big way to fund the game and creates a huge gold sink, which is much needed at the moment.

 

I see new lot deeds for sale in the market forum for gold or game items almost every day. Players are also accepting gold for new store items like lot deeds.

 

Well since 90% of all gold is owned by less than 10% of all players, the lottery is the only chance new players have at land at all.
Otherwise, the 10% could buyout 100% of the in game deeds, and you would have to barter with them for the deeds.

 

If they have 90% of the gold they can afford more than 90% of the lottery tickets.

 

Don't forget:

D. You buy a POT lot from the store
E. You buy a POT tax free lot from the store
F. You buy a lot in-game using in-game gold from another player. I have seen LOTS of lots sold for gold in-game between players. The gold price for many is preferable to buying from the SotA store.

 

This guy with a basic $45 account bought a prime Brittany Fields house from me for gold, animal skins, ore and other things he earned playing in the game. I sold it for 92k gold and a bunch of resources. How come you can't do that?

 

I don't need to, appearently I'm on the 10% side..

10% > 0% without the lottery there would already be 0% left for "poor people".

I'm not a fan of the lottery, but honestly the wealth is so skewed, I don't see any other way to give everyone at least some chance of getting an in game deed.

Most likely though, the wealthy will win the lions share everyone else will need to barter with them anyway.

I think the whole thing is skewed, if you want a deed you mostly have to go to the store. Or amass, huge amounts of gold and pay those that went to the store.

If you want to buy in game gold, buy CotO's or Deeds and sell them from in game gold.

As Roger Waters said.
"It all makes perfect sense, expressed in dollars and cents"

 

For the first raffle. And my single bought ticket has still a chance - albeit slim - to overthrow them and all their gold. You don't need all the tickets, you need only the winning ones.

And what about the successive raffles? If they spent all their wealth on the first, how can they monopolize also the next ones?

 

Depending on the resources, I'd say that we can't all find someone willing to sell so far below market value.

 

Honestly, they could sell 10% of the lots each round to finance buying 90% of the tickets in the next round, depending on exact sales at least.

 

And from the purchaser point of view, what difference would be between buying from an NPC or from another player, if the price is the same?