POT Only Lot Deeds Discussion

Discussion in 'Housing & Lots' started by Poor game design, Feb 21, 2017.

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  1. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    Problem:
    • Portalarium is selling POT ONLY lot deeds without the ability to ensure there will be lots available to claim without adding more POTs (something they said they would not do).
    • Dynamic POT owners can instantly change the total available lots in the game.
    Additional concerns:
    • Some players that have POT ONLY lot deeds may not get the needed permission from POT owners to claim a lot in a dynamic or static POT.
    • Assuming the population of the game increases and more POT ONLY lot deeds are available to players, at some point there may very well be more POT ONLY lot deeds in circulation than there are available lots to place them in.
    I think POT only lot deeds are great and are overall a net positive to the game and the continued funding of the game, however I'm concerned that once we launch the game we may not have a "good" way to deal with the above realities.

    Questions:
    • How do we manage selling additional POT ONLY lot deeds with available lots in the game when that number can be dynamically increased or reduced (either by upgrading bundles or by POT owners changing the layout of their towns) without restriction?
    • How do we manage selling additional POT ONLY lot deeds when POTs can not be expanded for EP1?
    • How do we manage giving away more POT ONLY lot deeds via the lottery system when the above two items are true?
    • How do we manage selling or giving away more POT ONLY lot deeds when some POT space may be in use with place anywhere lot deeds?
    Worst Case Scenario:

    The game becomes more popular and the overall population of active players reaches tens of thousands. In-game housing is completely full and Portalarium stops selling additional housing in the add-on store and can no longer sell bundles with housing.

    Meanwhile, some player owned towns decide that they want to capitalize on the strong demand for housing and begin to limit who can claim a lot in their towns. Some charge in-game gold as a tax, while others charge real life cash.

    In addition, some town owners decided to change the layout of their towns for various reasons and what used to be a cluster of sprawling cityscape's has now become a more rural looking assortment of villages with a collective loss of hundreds of available lots.

    The end result being some players that have POT ONLY deeds can't seem to find anywhere in the game to use them. It's now too late for an eloquent fix that does not involve creating more POT's.

    It seems to me that the best way to prevent this type of worst case scenario without impacting Portalarium's revenue stream would be to somehow restrict some of the freedom and flexibility that players have in moving around from town to town or changing the size and scope of their POTs.
     
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2017
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  2. StarLord

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    There already is a **WARNING** in the description when you buy a POT deed, but it is not really obvious and you have to scroll down.
    Also it should be added that even if you can place a lot in first place you still could be evicted by the POT owner later.
    So I agree that this might/will become a problem.
    You only use an odd wording "Worst Case Scenario: The game becomes more popular and the overall population of active players reaches tens of thousands".
    I would call it a Best Case Scenario....
     
  3. Drocis the Devious

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    Yes, agreed there is a warning about parts of this concern on the website already. But my feeling would be that just creating a warning would not be enough. We can see this being an almost likely problem if our population grows so my goal would be to avoid that problem by thinking about it and reacting now verses later when it's too late. This is not the kind of thing we want to say "sorry" about. It would really piss me off if I bought a deed but there was no where to put it. We're fare from having that problem today, but we're not far from seeing that it could be a very real problem tomorrow.

    You have to view that scenario holistically. It's not a best case if people buy POT ONLY lot deeds but have no where to put them. That's not the kind of game we want to make.


    This is almost like climate change. It's not going to be acceptable for world leaders and large companies to say "Sorry we destroyed everything and you're living in a cave, but good news! We've decided to reduce CO2 emissions 50%!" after the fact, ya know? :)
     
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  4. 2112Starman

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    I dont see it as an issue. Most PoT's are empty. I have not had time to recruit people into my PoT and I probably never will. I have had 40+ open lots open for a year now and only 1 person has ever moved in (lost them when I moved the PoT but I think they were already gone from game any ways). I have everything available and sitting out for use that an entry level player could need in a city. *If* we get population, my PoT will eventually hold over flow people in my guild but everyone is welcome.

    Like UO, I think its good that housing is restricted, it creates value. We have "renting" coming in, I have the 5 story keep basement with 50+ rooms in it that I would be willing to rent out later for very low rent if needed. Our main guild PoT has several locations already sitting and waiting to rent out rooms to people in need.

    I did a stroll through the game yesterday, several big cities and I am amazed at how even now, the vast majority of houses have been placed and never used (looking at names, many are big players who clearly have lots of deed and took the spot to sell later). If we get ten thousand actives then maybe a lot of those spots will be picked up by active people.
     
  5. Drocis the Devious

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    It's definitely not an issue today. There's no doubt about that.

    The water is getting warmer, the ice is melting, animals are moving from their natural habitats. The sky is clear if you don't live in China. What's the worry about?

    Oh wait, we're talking about housing in SOTA. I don't think we should wait until launch to figure this out. That's kind of the point of me bringing it up now, so that we think about a solution preventing the worst case scenario from ever happening.
     
  6. Gideon Thrax

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    Over 300 POTs in game.

    With most of them being dynamic the availability of locations for POT restricted deeds is going to vary from many, many thousands to well over 100,000 potential markers; and that's just POTs.

    The warning on each and every POT deed sale page is pretty straight forward to boot - I'm not seeing any big problems brewing here.

    from the add-on store:
     
  7. Datendrache

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    This is a problem known in the business community as "a good problem to have."

    If this ever did become an issue, Episode 2 might be out that much faster, which will allow for more POTs.

    Engineer
     
  8. Drocis the Devious

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    Yes, that's true.

    But I actually don't think it's a good problem to have. Just like you don't sell cars you haven't made yet (unless you tell your customers that upfront) you shouldn't sell POT ONLY deeds if there's no space for them. In the worst case scenario, it's easy for me to see how this could happen before PORT has the ability to prevent it, and having people wait for EP2 is not an acceptable solution to a supply and demand crisis that could've easily been prevented.

    Btw, what we call this in the business community is developing a bad reputation. Which could impact future sales, like in EP2.
     
  9. Greyfox

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    Like Climate Change the current "FIX" is far worse than the possible problem.

    The Climate Change fix, everyone stop breathing and go live in a cave if you're still breathing. Shroud Deed Fix, stop selling POT deeds.

    Much like climate change advocates, I suspect you have an ulterior motive for your concern. How about we wait on imposing draconian measures until a problem becomes more evident?

    Do you happen to own a lot of stock in POT deeds, a POT, or Carbon Credit companies?
     
  10. 2112Starman

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    I think you falsely tied the two together. There may be financial benefit to a stand on PoTs like that but attributing climate change to profit motivation is false ("alternative motivation" that is more on the line with "alternative facts"). Most people just want their great/great grand kids to live.
     
  11. Drocis the Devious

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    I imagine we'll end up doing that here as well as on Earth. But please let's not derail the thread (any of us) with this comparison any longer.

    Perhaps we'll look back on this thread in the future with different feelings about it? I'll be fine with being proven wrong, but will you be fine with being proven wrong?

    As for profit motive on my part, the easy thing to do is watch Portalarium over sell POT ONLY deeds. That's the best thing that could happen to me as a POT owner. My POT will be completely full, and if someone leaves there will always be someone to take their place.
     
  12. Greyfox

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    BDF,

    You "derailed" your own thread into a climate change discussion. If you don't want to discuss climate change then stop discussing climate change. Lets leave emotionally charged, grandchildren out of our supporting evidence for our debates as well.

    I stand by my opinion of lets wait and see. Implementation of draconian measures now would cause more serious immediate problems.
     
  13. 2112Starman

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    So we agree on this, supporting evidence is important. I'd love to hear yours for the debate.

    If 98% of the developers of this game agree that PoT deeds are working based on their imperial data of statistics in the game they have accumulated over several years then I support them. If however, a player who wants to bank roll on PoT deeds with a financial motivation with no imperial data at all as well as spamming it over and over until simple minded people started believing it, I would be very worried, I would seriously consider the sources.
     
  14. jammaplaya

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    If every single POT was full, my vote would be for raffling off new POTs.

    Works to make new available spots, and sinks gold
     
  15. lafe1969

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    i don't know about anyone else, but if I spent thousands of dollars on a PoT and suddenly I was told that I was being limited in how I could reconfigure it so that someone with a row lot deed wasn't inconvenienced, I'd be rather pissed.

    If a problem with PoT lot availability occurs, screwing PoT owners, who are probably Portalarium's best customers, probably isn't the way to go. (And no, ATM I am not a PoT owner)
     
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  16. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    That comes a little late, don't you think?
     
  17. Drocis the Devious

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    No, not really. Poratalarium can't afford to be in a situation where they oversold POT ONLY lot deeds, so better late than never.

    I can imagine them thinking they're being very conservative estimating the number of available POT lots vs. what they've sold. There's probably a threshold number they're using that seems reasonable, however this whole thing could potentially blow up within a month ahead or behind the official launch (just like people didn't expect 500k+ people to show up for UO) and I simply don't see our ability to react to that situation as being something that has good solutions ready to go. They could potentially give existing POT owners incentives to create more available space. They could sell more POTs. They could arbitrarily change the way POT ONLY deeds work (by saying that they now work in PRTs too!). But none of these solutions seem like good ones to me. So in my mind the time is now to start thinking about how they handle overflow.
     
  18. Gideon Thrax

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    Maybe they could sell limited numbers of POT deeds and monitor how many POT deeds they award during raffles and adjust as needed?

    Oh wait - they already do that.
     
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  19. Drocis the Devious

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    The answers to these questions are not as simple as "we'll monitor it and stop selling POT ONLY deeds when we run out of space".

    Imagine this problem as being more like an airline. You can't just put oversold ticket holders on the next flight to Chicago because there are no more flights. So if you oversell the flight, there are not going to be a lot of good solutions to this problem. Hence you either have to take steps to not oversell the flight or you have to prepare for the likelihood of the flight being oversold and make arrangements that are suitable for that situation.

    But here's the catch, if you're telling yourself that you're simply going to not oversell the flight, you have to be kidding yourself because 1. You don't have any control over the demand, which could potentially be extremely high once you announce the flight schedule (launch). 2. You don't control how many seats are available on the plane. It literally changes on a daily basis and has the potential to change drastically the more people we get buying a ticket for the flight. In other words, you as an airline have to sell far less tickets for the flight than you probably could if you didn't care about overselling. That negatively impacts your bottom line, and that's not something you ever want to do.
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2017
  20. Gideon Thrax

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    The aviation industry is also a huge contributor to global warming.
     
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