1 Instanced House Per Account

Sorry if someone else has posted it.
1 preset location that whenever you open that door you step into your own home instance. This way everyone gets a place to call home. I believe it should be a rather simple home, but it would still function as your own home. Maybe you could charge an extra $10 for the small instanced personal house access.

The incentive to still buy a house will be there because of the variety and the usefulness of a static public viewable house. Now everyone can own a home hassle free and backing will also go up.

 

Agree.

 

We've got a thread about alternative housing. Instanced housing is a solution, but there could be something else as well - tents, wagons, yurts etc. Housing that could be temporarily set up, and would vanish when logged out or "packed" and moved.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/house-alternatives.4222/

 

I have to agree though, although I understand the Yearning to do thing the "ultima online way" I firmly believe that personal instanced house is a much better housing solution then we we have planned for the game (at least in my opinion).

 

I suggested rented instanced rooms and other things. I figure people will want to use their decorations. It sounds like the developers are pretty solid on the No instanced housing deal. I think that means that most house decorations wont have much value.

By episode 5 I expect most people will have a house, and I doubt we'll hit peak player numbers till episode 3 or 5 (depending on how fast they release them). I think there will be a lot of house sharing as there was on UO.

 

I believe the current housing mechanism is fine. It isn't a requirement to have a house, it is a goal.

I have never played a game that had instanced housing where it meant anything. It was just like having a walk-in bank box.

The current housing system will generate more of a community and players will work together to obtain houses and will share them until other opportunities arise.

If there was a view to look at instanced housing, it should be nothing more than a room in an inn, and certainly shouldn't be considered before release 2.

 

Conceptually, I believe if most people have houses, it makes them more valuable, not less. Because you can tie more and more mechanics to housing without there's being an "unfair" haves vs have nots.

Think of your first house as not actually yours. It's like your parent's house. The location is absolutely terrible. You have all sorts or rules for what you can and can't do there, encouraging you to leave as fast as possible. Perhaps certain items get confiscated, as in "you really shouldn't have mandrake, that's dangerous stuff." We don't know what kind of bad karma and / or PvP flags may be on you but any of those may make you wish you'd never gone home.

It doesn't need to be your actually parents'. Invent any other smothering, well meaning, mentor type figure.

 

That's not possible they only have a limited area around towns so how do you fit 20000+ tents in the persistent instances. What about your storage items do they vanish when you log out.

 

We've just been throwing ideas around, for example you could pack it, while moving the storage ("carried by the character " perhaps not accessible at that point) and then unpack it at campsite or wilderness, to use like a temporary home or gathering station during your stay in that place... From what we've seen in R1 and R2 there's some space outside villages and towns, a single tent wouldn't have to take a lot of space. However, it's merely a wish at the moment, to have something like this implemented.

 

Instance housing must be well thought out beyond 'a door that leads to an instanced house'.

The idea behind Sota is a living and evolving world. That's why there is persistence in housing currently.

the idea of an Inn room that operates as a small 'home' after renting from the owner for example.

However I can only support instanced housing if there are certain limits to ensure population of player is spread. The entire population should not be able to rent a room or house in one location with unlimited instances.

While one 'instance' per account is required, there should then be limits to force a spread in player activity amongst the towns. So, to over simplify for the sake of clarity, say there are 1000 player in New Britannia. in New Britannia are 3 Cities, 3 Towns and 4 Villages for ten total locations.

Instances should spawn availability so that there is only room for say, 10% of the total population at any one time. So at launch with 1000 players, there is 100 rooms in each town (perhaps further divided into taverns). Then distance still matters and the economy isn't going to revolve around the 'main' city where those without housing end up congregating. Convenience becomes a comoddity.

Of ccurse further intersting possibiltiies are present by pricing City rooms with higher rent to reflect the desireability of the location, or instead of basing it on rooms per city, rooms per Inn.

Then a city might have 3 Inns, a village only 1 which changes the synamic further but still maintains a world where home is a 'location' not an instance (Even if it is an instance).

To me, i think this is the most elegant solutions as then the instance dwellers can still be 'neighbours' with each other and feel pride for where they live.

 

Everyone will have "instanced" housing. It's called a global bank vault.

 

I would suggest…let them release episode 1…wait a month and take a look again. If there really is a need they will implement something in episode 2 or 3.

But I do hope they find something different than an instanced room…decoration is (more or less) senseless as only yourself can see it and if you still decorate there would be not much room as the instance would have to be smaller than the smallest house you can own...it would be just a place to store your stuff away…but for that I think you will get a bank account…

If you do not own a house…not bad, just become friends with an avatar who has a house and he may give his friend a “kindred”-status. That way you will have in a village with 25 players owned houses maybe 100 avatars living in houses.

But again...I think it's quite too early to complain as we do not know how playing SotA will be...but if you still feel that way after release of episode 1 I do not see a problem with asking the developers to change one or two things.

 

One of the main reasons I'm so excited about this game is that housing is NOT an instance. Having actual towns exist with the majority of the housing being player housing is a wonderful gift to Role Playing. I understand that many people will just say "but I want a house" and to those people I say "roleplaying is far more important".

You really can't expect the type of quality roleplaying and deep community roots to exist in a world where everyone has the same things, and everyone "wins". Without risk, reward means nothing. That's why the game is better having meaningful PVP, and that's why the game will be better having static and limited player housing.

 

Like @Drocis Fondorlatos wrote : "One of the main reasons I've so excited about this game is that housing is NOT an instance". Playerhousing was one aspect i really liked in UO, also in SWG (Starwars Galaxies).

 

This has been discussed in several housing threads already. This idea, that "most" people will have a house by Ep 5 is completely unrealistic on any scale of the imagination. If there are 10,000 players total in the game, this may potentially be possible. Otherwise, a landmass like we've never seen in any online game so far, will be needed to support that many houses.

 

I think it's a great idea. You will find that some who already will own persistent houses will discourage this idea. Just to help you keep it in perspective & don't let it get to you when some people disagree.

I think it's fine to keep persistent housing, but there should be options for the majority of people, like this. Otherwise, the amount of game development that's gone into graphics and mechanics of housing, not to mention house decor, will be to cater to a very small population.

 

Episode one is supposed to have thousands of homes. each episode is supposed to double the total land mass, episode one is the smallest landmass. So it's going to be exponentially bigger. If what we can infer from the world map is true about the total land size I wouldn't be surprised to have 100,000 lots by episode 5. I also wouldn't be surprised if we hit over 3 million players.. so you are right.

 

I can see it's time to post my Instanced Rooms solution again.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hu67bN5nK3vi-dD-OHZ_2BFQNN0ixxTbeGl0NWiN2rY/edit?usp=sharing

In short, it's a way to give people a place to call their own (and further their attachment to the world) without hurting the value of actual housing in the game.

 

Mishri, I know many are privy to the Dev forums, and you may know something some of us don't know. But if RG said he wants 50-150 plots per city, and they keep housing rare, as he has said he wants, then you will need more than 600 cities in order to accommodate 150 plots per city to enable 100,000 houses. Owl's Head has 68 plots. Kingsbridge has about the same amount. So tell me how you figure the landmass will accommodate that many cities to produce that many houses?

In one year, at its peak, UO had 250,000 players. If they have 100K houses by Ep5, then more than half of all players will be homeless. If we have 3 million players, you can just forget about housing.

 

Nice document, LoneStranger. I would have some tweaks, but overall the idea seems pretty sound to me.