Decaying Houses

Hi,
I read the housing article on Polygon
http://www.polygon.com/2013/9/13/4724762/lord-british-and-the-oklahoma-land-rush
someone mentioned in the comments about UO they found houses set to decay and it seemed they could take them over.
I remember reading in the forums if you didnt logont to your account for 6 months it automatically would put your house in your inventory and take off the lot. So it seems we won't have that aspect.

Will we have decaying houses in this game?

 

Yes. Please see: http://sotawiki.net/index.php?title=Property_deed

 

I would guess that the game will be able to pull the tax from your bank account so that should (hopefully) be automatic. But you still would need to at least log in every 5 months (as explained in the link posted above) to ensure it doesn't decay.

 

I'm going to throw in a semi-related comment here in the hopes that the devs see this and "think about it". So at 5 months for Citizen level, + one month per tier above that, land plots have to have some kind of activity on the owners account. What's going to ensure that this control is working? Is a dev going to review a log as an added safe guard to ensure that right around the 5 month mark all the Citizen level backers are not losing their homes due to poor coding?

The reason I ask is because I can just see something like this happening. You have all these people that are actively playing the game, and then on day one of month 6 their lots go up for sale! Mass Chaos times 100, I won't even go into the hypothecial situations that could happen trying to sort that out. Just know that it's not as simple as going to the backup tapes to figure out how it was supposed to work.

To sum this up...don't just rely on automation for this. Devs, you'd better have someone manually approving homes that will go up for sale, at least for the first few months until you know the system is working as intended.

 

I'd talked about it a few times here, my guild would do what we called "house sitting", and there was another guild we were in competition with. We'd scour the lands and post guards on collapsing sites (24 hr. watch, we had people in NA, EU, and AUS) and as soon as the building decayed enough you could start to pulling out loot. It was kind of like an ice cube melting, where you had to work the outsides as it gradually collapsed inward.

You couldn't claim the house itself though, after it was finally gone you could claim the land, that's how we provided new guildies with houses/lots. Our new people all got houses this way, it the lot was an upgrade for a current member they could choose to take it if they donated thier old place to the new person. We'd use the loot to help build the guildie's house so they could have a size and design they liked.

Also the mostly civilized "house sitting" always degenerated exciting and brutal Guild vs. Guild PvP, that way the new people earned thier place among us and thier new house. Even passive people who didn't like fighting had to atleast grab loot and try to run it to the nearest guildie's house and sneak back for more. But fighting wasn't required, you just had to be willing to help those who faught for you.

 

I hope so.

 

That will come from play testing. They can put accelerated decay schedules in during the Beta, for example. Plus, I'd imagine you will get spammed via email at some set intervals of increasing frequency towards the actual decay date. Requireing human review isn't feasible as the game matures and grows over 5 episodes and 5 continent expansions.

 

I never played UO but did anyone who didn't log in at all for 6 months really miss their house if/when they came back? I've left games for years to come back and my whole guild was gone and a server full of strangers. I am not so sure losing my house would be that bad in the grand scheme of things at that point. I could see if I were deployed or something. I usually treat the game almost like a new one when I return to it after a very long absence.

 

Also since you are using real money (at this point anyways, and quite a lot of it too) and not strictly in-game gold like in UO, they probably won't just have your house disolve.

 

I don't believe most people paid $120 to $10,000 for thier home in UO.

 

Most probably didn't really miss it, and expected it to be gone if they ever returned.
I've always just collected my best stuff (in UO) and put it in the bank, dropped other good stuff on the ground at the bank for others to pick up and abandoned everything else.
Or given my place to somone who didn't have a house.

But there are people who have kept thier sub (paying) for many years and just log in occasionaly to keep it, like they can't let the memories or time invested go.

*incase you didn't know, the house main door had to be opened/closed or used by yourself or an authorized friend to maintain it as a "used/in-use" residence, so if the door didn't get used for a certain amount of time by you or somone on your friend list the decay process would start, but could be reverted by you or an authorized person using the door.

 

I might be misunderstanding, but I thought you retain your deed or something like that. I ASSuMEd that you'd still have all of those things when you log back in again but it's probably dangerous to do so.

This one time in EQ2 I logged in 2 years later to find out that one of my alts' name had an X added to the end of it (this happens during server merges, the oldest character with the highest level gets to keep their name the other character's name gets appended with an X) and the person who had my alt's name was this weird pervert who kept saying gross stuff in serverwide chat. The petition that I wrote for a name change probably still has people over at SOE chuckling.

 

Yes, you can keep your deed, but the plots available are limited. So if you log back in there's no guarantee that you'll have anywhere to use it. It's my understanding that in "old" UO, housing wasn't limited (expect by land) and so everyone just put houses down on every piece of land in the game. This is not the case in SotA.

Which begs the question, will the devs oversell deeds to people (kind of like airlines) so that they can ensure all the available "seats" are taken? Or will they do a 1 for 1 and only sell the same number of deeds that have lots in the game? I don't think they've answered this question yet.

 

There won't be enough plots for everyone by design? That is unfortunate. How is this supposed to make the game better?

 

That's a very reasonable question. I think the answer is two fold:

1) The devs learned from UO and realized that they couldn't just make all the land claimable. That they had to limit housing ownership in some way by design. Else they make housing some kind of instance allowing everyone to get it, but also making it meaningless in the process.

2) The devs wanted housing to have some kind of meaningful benefit.

From the add-on store:

I believe that the cost and the benefits listed above, will create a community of people fully invested in the game. My theory is that these people will intend to play the game for a long period of time and build the community from within, creating roleplaying opporunities and generally making the world seem more alive.

 

I like the housing in EQ2, a good example of how everyone can have affordable in-game fully customizable housing.

 

I do love my houses but it is unfortunate that they are all instances and you don't navigate to "your house" with any sort of sense of place. The benefit is that everyone can live near areas where lots of players have to go because the area you chose is a nexus point that most people can travel the world the easiest (but this is after almost 10 years of content creation.)

 

I don't want everyone to have a house.......why should they?

 

How does limiting the opportunity to have this make the game better? Shouldn't players who could afford to acquire land/housing through adventuring/crafting/selling loot or harvestables/enriching the community somehow have these opportunities available to them? I can't see a good reason to limit players in this manner.

 

What or who makes the decision of who gets a house? I don't want anyone who doesn't want a house to be forced to get one, but I think if someone wants one and is willing to do what they need (adventuring/playing/paying) to get one, they should be able to.) Maybe I don't want you to have a house. Why should you? What then?