Housing and rent cost reductions

Good post and very true. For my properties, my "subscription" is $20 per month. I buy COTOs during the monthly Telethon, and also receive fun rewards. It's a pretty good system.

If I play a bunch during the month, and have gold, I have the option to pay my rents with IGG and skip my "subscription". It's a pretty good system.

An improvement would be to sell taxed deeds for IGG so more people would take advantage this great system. For someone to pay $150+for a village deed may be a stretch, but this same person would probably be willing to set down the deed for $10 monthly. $10 monthly adds up.

It is the same idea as the cell phone companies giving you the phone for cheep so that you pay for their service. Or Microsoft charging a subscription for their Office Suite instead of selling the individual products at a higher price.

In this model for SotA, Port would sell the deeds moderately for IGG, and players would have access to unlimited deeds. This should result in the placing of many more taxed deeds, which should then result in the monthly purchase of COTOs to support those deeds (after the IGG on the forums runs out lol).
As an added bonus, towns would be more populated, and the market for crafted deco would increase, as would deco sales in the add-on store.

The downside would be the devaluation of the deeds players have previously paid $150+for. I personally would lose hundreds, so that sucks, but I look at it like I supported the game and here it is.

It just doesn't make sense to me to see empty lots and towns and the deeds blocked by a paywall.

 

I agree there is plenty of real-estate right now, but I also feel like it could get eaten up really quickly once every player starts getting free row deeds. You'll see veterans helping their friends through the main quest as quickly as possible to get them that row lot so they hopefully stick around (it only took me 4 hours to get my shroud the second time through at AL 85). If they plop that down, and it's non-taxed, and then they still don't like the game - it could take like 3-6 months for it to poof, with it being easy to extend that to years by just logging in a few times a year.

We already see an epidemic of essentially dead lots in prime locations. Imagine if hundreds or thousands of players suddenly were rewarded with Tax-Free row lot deeds. 6 months down the road, that could lead to new players having literally nowhere to place their free row lot deed.


Making them tax-free is just too much in my opinion, and devalues existing tax-free lots that were purchased with real money.


Tweaking the current tax rates is a much better idea, but we need to have a fact based discussion about what is reasonable. Maybe the developers could assist with some of their internal metrics. Seems like AL-50 and beyond, making 5000 gold per hour is pretty easy if you aren't blowing up all the loot for scrap materials. Play for an hour and a half, and you can potentially pay the entire week's taxes for a Village lot at current taxes. The problem being that you have no gold left for other things. What about gear costs, consumables, etc? When we factor those prices in, your net gold per hour rate plummets probably to something like 1000-2000 gold per hour - if that. This is where we could use some real metrics to try and figure out what a reasonable tax rate would be. My guess would be it needs to be somewhere around 250/750/2000/4000 (row/village/town/city) per day.

 

You're paying 240$ a year for property taxes in a video game. Just throwing that out there.

 

People are still paying $15/month ($180/year) to play WoW...without any property.

 

They're paying $180 a year to play WoW. You aren't paying to play the game, you're paying property tax in the game. You can convince yourself that it is the same thing but it isn't.

 

Way I see it, if you stop paying either company, the game eventually stops growing, withers and dies.
At least with SOTA, you don't HAVE To pay the money; you can use in-game gold for taxes.
Some people don't have a problem supporting the game and content they use.

 

What about if they remove completely the taxes for our first lot? or increase the taxes depending how many we own. Some options;

OPTION 1

First lot we own, tax-free. Keep same tax prices for all the rest lots we have.

OPTION 2

Taxes linked to the number of lots we own.

1st row lot - 100g/d
2nd row lot - 300g/d
3rd row lot - 500g/d

1st village lot - 300g/d
2nd village lot - 500g/d
3rd village lot - 1000g/d

* tax prices are an example

 

Lol so true.

Yeah when you look at it that way it's pretty crazy. But that's the point, I would never spend $240 on SotA, but somehow I'm OK at $20 a month and love the telethon trinkets.
I know it's dumb, but it works. I am emotionally invested in the properties I have spent so much time decoing, I like them and continue to pay.

Also I wouldn't have to pay at all if I played an used my IGG. I have the gold, but still buy COTOs because I support the game, and enjoy the telethon trinkets. Also dumb I know, but it's what happens...

 

As far as regular gold sinks go, the good ones are ones that affect everyone, because otherwise it makes it hard for devs to balance the game.

So lets say the devs decide people are making way too much gold, and they base that opinion on people who are selling using tax-free lots and commission-free vendors. To control this, they increase crafting costs, and this cuts down the gold being made by people with no taxes or commissions to pay. But it ends up unduly affecting people who do pay taxes.

At any rate, keeping people logged in because they feel forced to grind a lot is not a way to make the game fun, it just makes it feel grindy. A player might do that for a while because he decides he wants to do something with a house, but then eventually just realize its not worth it and quit the game.

Yea, there are still a couple of problems here.

One is that if you're putting up a town sized house or larger for a guild, its still incredibly hard for the average guild to collect dues from guild members to pay taxes, so it will end up with a few people putting the money upfront. It requires a lot of grinding in the end.

Another is that the taxes just aren't worth it, as it stands. Its more worth just saving and pooling enough money to buy a tax-free deed, than to buy a taxed deed and pour that gold into taxes, which is a black hole that sucks up your gold.

The primary benefit of taxes IMO is that its a much much much better system than spawn camping was in UO. People should be able to take a vacation from the game without worrying their home will disappear. Taxes are just a way to put skin in the game and show some involvement.

 

This talk of "my investment would be devalued" is why they should never have tied the LOTS to a $$$ amount. Sell all the pixels you want to put ON the lot for $$, but leave the acquiring of the lot itself through in game means.

Other games (EVE comes to mind) have a tax on property... after a fashion. EVE, in this instance, just calls it fuel...

 

There are even more issues with selling pixels as selling lots IMO.

Anyway, as long as Portalarium is upfront and transparent about things like tax rates will always be under review, there will be more lots sold in the future, etc. I don't see that much complexity. People who buy things as "investments" should be aware of all the variables involved that could be subject to change.

 

I wouldn't mind paying a 15$ a month subscription fee and I actually enjoy spending 5$ during the telethons but I'd never pay 240$ a year for property taxes in a video game. Everyone is different.

 

Most people don't have a problem supporting the game and content they use. This doesn't necessarily translate into paying property taxes in a video-game. Like I said above, I wouldn't mind paying a subscription to play the game in fact I prefer that to being nickeled and dimed to death paying property taxes and micro transactions.

 

IGG costs time, a lot of time. I'd rather play the game doing things that I enjoy doing in the game when I get the time to play it instead of grinding mobs for gold.

 

This is the main reason why I think this quest row reward needs to be taxfree, then everyone else can just consider what ever you that is tax is a luxory item and not a requirement.

@everyone , great job on this thread!!
So many great ideas

 

I agree with you. Tie it to activity not IGG or Cash. But I suspect they're making too much money from people of different minds to cut it off.

 

Well and the more people with the row house will want deco and other items, possibly sell a row to village upgrade as a addon option for this reward house.

 

This is true. Bigger houses need more items!

 

I see what you are saying, very interesting. Same $20 player output, but a different game/funding structure.

 

I'd like to see taxes in the game become meaningful.

IRL, taxes go to projects (for example) in the area. Would be nice to see some thought put into that. Some perks, something as a benefit for paying taxes.

thoughts?