Housing. A great strength, pricing causing more problems than benefits?

The only thing that you're bringing up is that this game is premium-priced to the most exorbitant of levels yet has a lot of work to do. Even if this game was perfect had no bugs and ran like a dream, it would still be extremely overpriced. But you make a very good point about value.

 

Also while we discuss this topic of "Are Property Deed Prices in line with player expectations" I'd say that depends on the player and deeds are free now. The most concerning thing in all of this is to me that we have a game that is still here and has a lot of wonderful things in it and still with a lot of things to be improved on. Yet what we do is not learn from our mistakes. I see devs building scenes again and see that they are trying to add more reasons to play and repeat play but not every dev is doing this and we still have scenes that totally don't get visited because of what is lacking in development. I don't agree that working on the cost of deeds and the ideas for them is the best use of time right now.

As mentioned players can get their deeds free and they can either upgrade them or not depending on their situation and preference. We have this situation because this game was designed to be crowdfunded instead of a far better mode for it. There is nothing we can do about that imo poor decision but we can build upon the foundation that we have in many helpful ways which would include a plan and I don't see that happening to the degree that I wish it were happening.

I do believe there should be a way for players to get what they want with in game gold but not necessarily from other players. I think they should have to have goals and work for it as would happen in most games. As quite often this is not the discussion I am interested in so I will leave you all to it. I believe the devs have tried to include more players in the race and will continue to do that as they can. But some things I'd prefer they do to get more funding and players is not something I've heard they will do any time soon.

 

He has got a point though.
And the topic anyway already went away from housing to ports income *shrugs*

 

Bringing that up is NOT a derailment. We cannot have a discussion about deed costs (which is a big part of income for Port, at least it was) and how they shouldn't be acquired with a credit card and not discuss alternate means of income for Port. That's unfair to Portalarium and ignoring the elephant in the room.

Like another Avatar had mentioned, we should just sell skins and recolors for everything already and make houses the vanity sale point for housing, not the deeds.

I agree that Port is trying to reverse this fundamental mistake. Thank you guys.

 

Honestly for me I think what's missing is alternate means to achieve the deeds via in-game efforts.

(storytime!)

In the very beginning (pre persistence), Scoffer and I booted up Sota, made characters, then quickly organized ourselves around the business of going and buying a house deed (from an NPC vendor, for gold, as they used to be sold in those days). We set ourselves a goal, found ourselves a spot in some backwater PRT, and spent the next several days mining, chopping, killing, stealing everything that wasn't nailed down and selling it to get ourselves a house. It was a joyous time and a great achievement. We made plans on how to afford the NEXT biggest house and on what we had to gather to decorate the house. Taxes hadn't been implemented yet, so we didn't have to worry about ongoing upkeep cost or any of that. I honestly think those early days of noobing around and working toward that goal were some of the most fun we had.

Then they started talking about taxes, and it was like, ok I get it, you need some way to make sure that if Scoffer and I stop playing, that another player can claim that lot. We figured it would be a nominal amount to ensure players logged in. We were pretty shocked/discouraged when we saw what the taxes were. They've subsequently been reduced, but still create a "work to pay your rent" environment that is unfortunate. However, there was an alternative - PAY MONEY - get a tax free deed. Ok, no problem, we got some tax free deeds from our pledges and when persistence hit and our number was up in the land rush, we took our shiny $$ purchased deeds from the banks we placed them and set to work decorating them. But all the fun of 'earning' the deed was gone now, that whole process.

I never understood or agreed with the decision to remove deeds-for-gold from the vendors. They were a fantastic cash sink, and the "we need to limit how many deeds are sold because there is only so much land" was never a strong argument (there is still plenty of unclaimed space, some PRTs were removed completely, many of them are still mostly empty, not to mention POT capacity vs. claimed). Taxation (especially at the rates we have to pay) ensures that abandoned lots go away, and the world is big enough to sustain residences for a much larger population that we have, even with the deed giveaways from quests. This has been ameliorated somewhat by moving everything into the COTO store - once again, deeds can be incrementally saved-up-for but you have to touch the real cash market (even in the barest capacity of finding/buying premium currency from another player). Housing is not something you can 'just go do' on your own, between you and the game, without spending real money or trading in game assets with someone who has spent real money.

But this goes back to how being able to simply swipe my card and have a house has removed / cheapened a whole facet of gameplay. There's no more doing beetle runs and selling them to "my contact" to put in the housing fund, or Scoffer sorting through all the junk weapons to sell the high value ones and scrap the low value ones like we did back in the day. I mean sure, you could do it and save for cotos, but its somehow not the same, when you could negate those efforts simply by...buying cotos. And I totally get that Port wants us to buy cotos, needs us to buy cotos. But there is no other path to home ownership except the path that goes via coto. In many other games in this space, there's often a (albeit, high) ingame currency cost for these things which in addition to removing/sinking large sums of money out of the economy, removes some of the "pay to win" perception.

Being handed my house deed after a few hours of gameplay in the outskirts, and earning my first house deed - are completely different experiences. I feel like we lost something here.
But there is nothing I can do in this game, no sort of monumental or incremental achievement, or quest, that I can do, to get something bigger than a village without tapping into the real money market, at least peripherally. Likewise there's no distinction between earned vs. purchased houses/deeds - they function identically, meaning someone who has done it the hard way, by playing the game, has no recognition or acknowledgement of this - people will just assume they spent cash. Its a small nuance, sure, but it cheapens the experience and feeling of achievement.

I'd love to see more options. Think about earning a city-sized guild hall through 'guild achievements' that was a special deed that could 'only' be a guild chapterhouse, (maybe have specific limited houses for this purpose) perhaps with other placement limitations, but something that players could earn via collective tasks over a period of months. Hell, even being able to work toward 'larger houses/lots' that were fully instanced but would serve the function of storage, recall point, crafting hall, etc. I get paying premium to have your mark on the landscape, but that simply isn't important to everyone.

 

Thank you for this perspective, @kaeshiva! That's part of what I was getting at when I suggested that the free outskirts deed should be smaller, and casual players should be directed toward rental housing. It would allow getting your first "real" property to be an achievement again, while still giving new and free players a basic homebase to start from.

 

I love everything about this, the story, the suggestions. This would be a fantastic way, but people would be upset of their digital "investments "

 

Thank you for articulating what we're trying to say in a story! I hope it helps people that are having a hard time understanding.

(I really hope we never, ever get to the point of needing instanced housing though! Blech! lol)

 

Port put the cart before the horse when it came to pricing housing in this game. They seemed to believe that because some people paid substantial amounts of real money for houses in UO lots would do the same in SOTA.

However the reason that happened in UO was that it was a thriving game that some people were prepared to throw money at to climb to the top of the tree by getting hold of prime spots. To base their property pricing in SOTA on that same premise was at best naive to put it mildly.

The high cost of buying what is in the end nothing but pixels on a screen is one of the many reasons why SOTA got its poor reputation and is still one of the reasons for the very low population. Yes they have improved the situation vastly with the row and village deeds now but unfortunately that ship has sailed as it should have been the situation at persistence or launch not 18 months plus down the road. Plus with the non existent advertising for this game who outside of the regular players is ever going to know things have changed ?

There are many other reasons for the low population which never seem to get sorted either one of which Vlad rightly pointed out amongst the myriad of omissions, odd design decisions and the ropey quest system.

 

I am not sure folks realize that this poll was posted about the website prices...

I am not sure everyone was responding in the poll to what Port charges for things on their website, as outlined in OP commentary as opposed to market prices in game. Would anyone call the store prices for lot conversion Dirt Cheap or downsizing/grading in the process fair or reasonable etc.?

 

This is so true, especially as it relates to Shroud. You could pay for a bunch of experience only to end up putting it into skills that are unbalanced or worthless; thereby minimizing the effectiveness of that accelerated gain. The only way to guarantee that gaming success would be to buy enough experience that you could GM literally everything and even then how effective truly is that?

I dunno, at this juncture I'm kind of split on this argument. Part of me still rankles with ire when I think about buying experience, as all things P2W in video games nowadays irk me. However, there are players currently offering "leveling" services for cash; why shouldn't Portalarium get a piece of that action? They need every darn dollar they can get right now and such a service could help further fund development. No matter how much I hate P2W if it helped get out an Episode 2 I could bear it. Regardless, it's a tricky conversation for sure and I'm definitely torn on it...

 

This game fails when they implement game mechanics that make it so grindy it feels like a job. Another reason why the QoL improvements were so important and continue to be so!

 

Because once the game developer directly gets a piece of that action, they have an incentive to start making the game more painful from an experience/level gaining perspective. They *may* start to tweak things so players decide it is just easier to pay the money for experience. See any mobile game that offers this type of stuff for the possibilities and why it is different when the devs actually sell exp versus a player selling leveling assistance.

 

That's a fair point, which is why if they were to do it, it wouldn't be a direct to player "XP Pool" purchase. Rather, a potion or something that allows the player to get double the experience for a limited amount of time. This way the player still has to "get out" there in order for the purchase to be worthwhile. Technically, you are still earning that experience, just at an accelerated, P2W, rate!

I do think it is a slippery slope though. If they start down that path, where does it stop?

 

They did indeed cart before horse it, for sure.

Some points about that:

• UO was the first MMORPG and thus it was a modern marvel. That energy and marvel at this new way to play games and be social is what drove those sales. The genre is now 20 years old and the competition is steep. There are a LOT of MMORPGs out there to choose from. There's 149 on Steam alone.
  
  
• There were no set "societal rules" about selling in-game stuff for real money and it was all done outside the game mostly on eBay. This practice has been determined to be mostly a detriment to games, not a feature. Most gamers still grumble at cash shops. Try to sell stuff that increases power and not just vanity and you will get strong pushback. Even now.
  
  
• The main reason deed/housing prices were so high on eBay was that the game was overpopulated due to its incredible popularity. People wanted in and they were willing to pay a lot for the luxury of a home in UO. Supply and demand is a basic in business and that's simply what the case was in UO.
  You have to have a demand first. FIRST.
  
  
• There is a whole new generation of gamers out there that don't know anything about UO or the legend of Lord British and Darkstarr. "If you build it, they will come" does not apply to them and thus a very large part of the mmorpg playerbase.

I really wish I had a time machine so I could provide this kind of market analysis when it could have avoided this problem. Again, I see that the devs are working on this daily and I REALLY look forward to the future.

HA! Triggered!

 

If I'm surprised by anything in that poll, it's how evenly distributed it is.

Repeating this. The original intent was for larger lots to be guild-level accomplishments. And large backers too, of course.

This is my understanding as well. Also, blue and orange bundles use the same system. However it seems to be skewed heavily in favor of higher tier content. You might not ever see either with tier 5 content.

And now the cost of wood is starting to be a factor! Mannequins are probably making that even worse. But that's not Port's fault. If it means there are actual new players, then I'm okay with it.

A bigger house does not make you more powerful. You can already put enough containers on a village lot to have more than enough storage. Nobody needs a lot bigger than village for just themselves, no matter how much they may want it.

That's roughly what I did when I was new back in R20-R22. In the final week I had a house on a PRT lot. Then I spent the next two 3-month resets trying to do better and better economically. Then I was all worn out and rested the next three months before persistence came.

Those are the "pain points" that Starr refers to intentionally trying to avoid. If you think SotA is harsh, you probably haven't played many MMOs. Just try to play LOTRO as strictly free, for instance. When even how much money you can hold at one time is monetized, that's a severe pain point. Also each region having its own coin objects with a stack-based inventory limit system. Only ten bucks to remove all that from your inventory, unless you wait until the one or two weeks a year it's on sale for 75% off! Fast travel? Gotta subscribe first!

 

I think this is a very important thing to note. Players are now given *two* deeds for free for following the quest line. One is trivially obtained early on. You can, quite frankly, store a massive amount of items in a row house as well. A row house allows for *50* containers to be placed. If you use containers that allow for 300 slots, then you can have 15,000 slots in containers in a row house *alone*. Since many items stack, that's many 100's of thousands of items. I.e., no one needs more than a *row* just for themselves, quite frankly, at least for storage.

There are only two cases where having lots larger than a row have any particular importance:

a) You want to play Sim House. I.e., you like spending exorbitant amounts of time and resources crafting decorations (or buying them from the crown store or player vendors for IGG) to decorate your home, and don't mind the endless bugs that rarely to never get fixed with the various housing options, so losing your decor in a wall, etc, is just fine with you,

or

b) You want to try your hand at the absolutely insane gardening system where to make a profit you either have to be (1) an insomniac or (2) work from home so you can get full watering on the crops in order to turn a measly profit.

Really, this poll entirely misses the point -- Housing is an optional thing, and size of lot has virtually no value outside of the above. Sadly, there's no option for that in the poll.

 

Not only that, but you can also buy a basement for your row house, for 1,000 IN GAME GOLD, which will allow for 250 more containers, thus an extra 75,000 Items to store. Clearly, this is more than enough for anyone. Set yourself up near a crafting pavilion in a POT, and you are good to go, you have everything you need to do anything in the game, now the grind starts!

 

Oh right, I forgot about the basement, thank you!! So this poll literally makes no sense, as lot size is immaterial to the ability to succeed in this game. Anything larger than a row is purely for vanity unless one is wanting to do agriculture.

 

Playing devil's advocate here perhaps, since I'm on the "larger lots should only be for dedicated players" side. But it could just as easily be said that top-end weapons and armor are also vanity items. Sure, you may need them for high-end fighting. Just as you need larger lots for some types of decorating. All depends on what your playstyle is and how you define "winning."

While I wouldn't have chosen a game that was just based on decorating, I'd have been even less likely to choose a game just based on fighting. I... accept... that allowing players to decorate -- and more importantly, to do the kind of worldbuilding that decoration enables -- was probably a lesser priority for the devs than the fighting. But I don't get the impression that they consider it a second-class-citizen playstyle, or I wouldn't still be here.

For me, "winning" means having a town where my imagination can paint a immersive mini-world and where no one else can come ruin my fun. That means, eventually (in the very very very long view) I will need a town lot for a guard headquarters and public training area, a city or keep lot for a seasonal festivals area, and the castle lot both to create a realistically diverse population and to keep anyone else from claiming it (since it's too close to everything else to not dominate the landscape).

And I'm determined to one day talk the devs into giving us a house based on the monastery keep in Highvale, because it's gorgeous and I wants it like precious and I'm pretty sure it's not going to fit on a village lot, though I may be wrong. And I see no reason why that goal should be any less important than someone else's goal to reach X amount of xp or have 15 GMs or to solo whatever the popular spot of the day is. I don't mind working for my goals as much as they work for theirs -- but I don't want to be told that my goals don't matter or that I should adopt their goals instead.

That said, most of what I want for my town? Will be achieved with a bunch of row and village lots. Whether the larger lots will be achievable on my budget, with my playstyle? We'll find out -- but it won't be any time soon.