Population pressure.

More housing will appear as the game expands. In addition there will always be buyers as well as sellers, it will be down to price.

Work hard within the game and it is likely you will be able to purchase a house.

For players who don't want to take the chance that they may not be able to obtain a lot before all the land has been taken up........back the game to the level required or purchase one from the shop.

 

Now if the Devs would just make FEMA-like-refugee camps on the outskirts of villages, towns, and cities or within slum areas, then players without housing plots can enjoy the rich RPG experience of fighting over a place to put a bedroll. My inner Marxist would love to see the Devs acknowledge and unabashedly promote that sort of social conflict which they seem to be doing with the whole early-access land rush and limited plots. What better reason would one need to PVP? The Haves vs. Have-nots conflict is prime ground for breeding social contempt. If folks could accept this premise and play along with it with eyes wide open, I think fun opportunities can play out and a rich RPG-PVP environment can come into play. I say this with no intended sarcasm -- well maybe a hint of it.

Dealing with the vagabond issue, it seems that there are two ways of handling it:

1) Keep the classical paradigm of level-scaled zones in order to keep the population moving so plots can be swapped out. The downside is that a large segment of the player population will not be able to take advantage of it since the larger bulk is moving along at relatively the same pace of the game and zone progression therefore it's practically useless for them, but could be useful for new players down the road.

2) No level-scaled zones, monsters, or reagents and keep it "first come, first served", thereby giving opportunities for folks to flip their plots for profit. However, there will need to be objectively tantalizing incentives to get players to move rather than subjective ones ,e.g. aesthetic reasons. One way to accomplish this is to dismantle the XP skill advancement exchange system in place of a Stat Advancement Rate system and Trainer System (which I won't really go into here but it does away with XP grind, and skill trees in favor of use-weighted stat gain and learnings skills from trainers through quests, gold sinks, and actually searching for and finding the trainers using investigative techniques such as conversations, reading books, discovering artifacts, observing items and skills being displayed).

I prefer the latter method.

 

If you need a house to be happy, you will work to get one. There will always be houses and lots for sale, and if the prices are too high, nobody will buy them. You are actually going to have to work to get the big reward in this game, what's wrong with that?

 

I agree with this. I do not remember where I heard or read it, but I am confident I saw mention of the world being expanded with each new episode, which would include more housing. With 5 episodes already planned, there will be ample opportunities to get a house along with people possibly renting out houses and selling/moving around. Some players come, some players go. Shroud of the Avatar will seem very much like a living world, and with limited resources, and not letting everyone get everything is exactly one thing with this game I think will retain players for a long time.

 

It was 5 episodes, but last we heard from RG himself is that it sounds like the 5th episode has dropped into the "maybe" category.

 

My preference would have been to give everyone a house. "Everyone" could be people who've completed some like set of quests, the equivalent of being max level and raid ready in WoW.

But since everyone has one, you can start making it important. Perhaps you respawn or recall there. Or this is just enough of a bank or free inn or whatever it is that makes it a place you go. Then make this house not all that good. It's small, ugly, far away, whatever...but something you find yourselves really, really wanting to improve. You're now on the bottom rung of a latter and you can see the things you have to do to improve it.

Lot location improves in two ways. PvP and growth. You may hate the though of 'PvP' but if there's only 100 lots, it's zero sum. And this is PvP by definition - even if it comes down to bidding or votes or whatever - other people's loss is your gain. Growth, as I've suggested, means getting together as a community and doing the kinds of things that turn "village level 3" into "town level 1" whatever those are.

Improving a house itself, involves some kind of resource acquisition. There are many paths to this but some of it is more or less grindable PvE. A lot of doing whatever to make money and trading.

 

Speaking of numbers and speculation, the early number being thrown around for housing was 20%. As in 20% of the players will have a house and 80% will be sleeping in dirt. I think this number came from RG in a chat...not sure (if someone can verify that, it would be great). Say it is true and 20% (give or take) is the soft target. If SotA gains 250k active users...you'll need 50, ooo property lots. That is a crazy amount of space. Take it up to a million active users...you'll need a whopping 200,00 property lots. THAT...is population pressure on the housing market.

Not that my glass is half-empty...but when asked about the housing situation and the standard answer is "well, they'll build more cities and just wait for episode 2"...you can see why I become wary. The numbers look wonky. 200,000 property lots for a million players. How big would the world have to be JUST for the housing aspect?

 

I remember hearing this same number back in March, but currently only %12 have lot deeds. This number includes the 112 that haven't been sold yet.

 

That's why they are making the world modular instead of one persistent world. You can easily scale down the grid to make more POIs, but you can't easily add more terrain to a single zone game. You have to keep in mind that even in UO, which had a very active community, many houses would be abandoned, which eventually led to them decaying. In this game, you pay rent, so that if you don't meet your obligation, the lot goes back on the market. I can see there being fierce competition for houses, and this is going to create a seperate economy on it's own. Somebody is going to sell a "Lord of the Manor" someday and that person will make tens of millions of gold. Some guild will have worked their ass off for that and will have something substancial to show for their effort. This is going to happen on every scale from the afore mentioned manor to the tiniest village house.

Houses should not be something you hand out like candy. If you do, it loses it's meaning. Anyone who just wants to have the experience of a house, but doesn't want to do the work can simply buy and decorate one in offline singleplayer.

 

I was going to post on this very thing. People can say "work for it and you can get a house" all they want but it's a matter of simple mathematics (lets go with the 20% figure we've heard used so about 5000 plots - it could actually be much less). Most people won't have one and likely won't ever get one. Even if SotA only gets another 25k active players after launch that 20% figure shrinks to 10% making acquisition even more unlikely.

Not a problem you might think at first but this is now officially one of the "main features of the game" that will no doubt tie into many other subsystems. But a main feature relevent to a very minor number of players. Housing is the face of all their marketing so far and it's what all the gaming sites talk about when they mention SotA. I have this feeling there are going to be a lot of angry and frustrated players who come into this game post launch being told they can get a house they can decorate and how it is such a big part of the game only to find that they really actually can't unless they are willing to pay $300 for a one-room shack on ebay. If any of you think there are a few too many complaints over housing limitation now, just wait until the game launches.

Surely I can't be the only one who finds the situation a little silly?

 

This

 

Yes, I read your post the first time. Feel free to post it a third but I don't see the point in replying if you have nothing further to add. But you seemed to miss that A) no one has asked they be handed out like candy, just that it be an achievable thing in the game, and B) the much stated official expectation that people will be playing the game in Open Online Mode which suggests much less of a focus on single player. Furthermore we don't know what the restrictions are for offline housing anyway.

 

I think we're dealing with all sorts of play styles - people who want a house right away (because I should always have everything!), people who are willing to work for a house, and those who couldn't care less about a house. Who knows how many are in each, with a spectrum in between.

And I will always want my lot to be worth much more than $300, so that I can cash out my pledge if I stop playing! Don't worry I will give you a good deal.

 

Kal, I understand what you're trying to say. We are not so far apart as you may think. Myself, as well as many others, are not afraid of "work." We are not asking for hand-outs. We are saying that from what we can tell...the projected numbers concerning housing look...a bit off. Way off. Although the game is "modular" as you say, they will not be able to keep up with demand. This means there will not be near enough housing to go around. On the positive side of things, that will mean that housing will have both in-game and out of game value. Great. People can make a profit in RL by selling virtue property. Like I said..great.

On the negative side...Kal, this is where you and I come in. Both you and I want to work hard in the game and earn our own way. But odds are...we won't get that chance (implying that it will be insanely hard and borderline unfair). THAT is what we are saying. THAT is our fear. That unless you pledge a certain amount of RL money to the game, buy from the Add-On store, or check out E-Bay...we won't be getting property. That's not my "opinion" Kal...that is what the numbers are saying. Project a million players. Take the percentage of people owning homes down to a paltry and depressing 1%. That is still 10,000 property lots. Honestly Kal...be honest now...can you really envision 10,000 property lots in SotA at launch? I didn't think so. Neither can I...and that is concerning.

Lastly, I also understand what you are saying when you say "Anyone who just wants to have the experience of a house, but doesn't want to do the work can simply buy and decorate one in offline singleplayer." I would agree that the offline single player version of the game does have value. But I would also go on and say that solving a problem for an online game by going offline to play is not an "elegant solution." If that is the solution...then we are asking the wrong questions....

You are singing to the choir my friend...

 

You're pulling numbers out of thin air. Why not say there will be 10 million players? Then only .01% will have a chance to get a house. Nothing has been officially stated by Portalarium/Lord British except that around 20% of the players should have a house. That implies that they are ready to scale the POIs as necessary to accomodate demand. If it's really going to be as bad as you think, pay the money to guarantee a house now, and sell it for a profit when you move on to another game.

It's funny that I have to argue the scalability of this game as an MMO in this thread, and defend that it's even an MMO at all in others.

 

Yes, I am. The title of the thread is "Population Pressure." The concept is how will the player population of SotA impact housing availability. "Pulling numbers out of thing air" or projecting what the player base is going to be at launch is definitely warranted in this instance.

Apparently, you didn't care for the "one million" example. Alright. Let us use 250,000. That is only 10 times the number of backers. I think this is reasonable considering that the game is at least a year from launch. Plug in the argreed upon 20% number for people with housing and we come up with 50,000 property lots. At this point, you believe that the game will "scale up to accomodate demand." I prefer that we simply agree to disagree. I personally have trouble envisioning that and would be infinitely more comfortable with some sort of instanced housing in conjunction with the existing housing format...if only to relieve immense pressure brought on by the player population.

So...that's it. No anger. Nothing against you. Nothing against the game. Just trying to grasp concepts from within the game, question them a bit, throw everything against a wall and see what sticks. By doing this, I certainly hope that I don't need to sell my house and move on to another game....

 

Can we get a confirmation/clarification from the devs regarding this thread and it's speculation? Some of us are on the fence about purchasing house deeds prior to launch and would love some kind of firm understand of how the system will work.

 

I am on the fence about raising my pledge to edelmann or not. I have a guildie at edelmann who will list me as co owner. I want to know if I will be able to use that vendor as my own. Can anyone shed light on that?

 

To mitigate the problem with limited housing, I invite you all to read my piece on the matter:

Instanced Rooms
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hu67bN5nK3vi-dD-OHZ_2BFQNN0ixxTbeGl0NWiN2rY

 

It seems like a reasonable system LS. I can't find any faults with the logic, especially if people are SO concerned they won't have a place of their own.