In game costs of owning/having a POT

Thinking aloud here, so sorry if I'm rambling.

So since no plots are in the POT from the beginning it will be quite cumbersome to get any communal activity going on which isn't in someones home.
So if one would want some communal buildings outside the given NPCs, say a farmers' market available to all visitors, you would have to pay to get a lot, then pay to get a house, then pay rent on that house/lot combo.
That means a huge investment in gold (or paying real money).
If you are running a little larger community where you'd want 3-4 communal spots open to all visitors, then that cost would be massive.

Then if there is no way to collect tax, gold from services rendered, or goods sold, or rent, then that gold needs to come from the owner avatar (or paying real money).
The only in-game feature to provide any income for a town that provides services like that seems to be through voluntary donations to the town account.

This seems to me to lead to the conclusion that POTs will need to throw out non-participating or non-gold-contributing lot residents. Since without a steady income they will have to close down any communal buildings. This will lead to a depopulation of some player towns over time, since it will be less demanding/cheaper to live in the ordinary towns.

Since the game itself needs to make some of its money by selling lots the team would need to then increase lot availability in ordinary towns.
etc

Have I missed something? Is there no way to have an income as a POT to pay for communal lots/houses (well appart from attracting people who have rentfree lots they would be willing to have as communal).

 

The cost of player towns is not insignificant and you are correct in saying that there isn't any way to collect rent.

That said, there is no tax due on NPC buildings (afaik). There is no requirement for a town owner to sell lots for real money nor in-game money. It is entirely dependent on the market: will other players want to pay to live in the town? If the player town is attractive then players will want to visit it.

 

Players that own towns can collect taxes manually. This might come from a variety of sources, in game gold, outside money, services, commodities, items, etc...

Could there be high tax rates in some areas? Sure. But that's how taxes work, you raise money and build community resources like roads (as a best example) or police and fire services (as another).

I think the real question would be, wouldn't there be a form of double taxation going on in player owned towns? Think about it, if you join a player owned town that tells you there's a tax for living there, now you have taxes due each month for your home (this goes to "the game") and taxes that go to the town owner for things like "community buildings" and "upkeep".

Seems like a tricky economy to manage, owning a player owned town.

Plus, there's still the question of why anyone would want to visit one player town verses another. How many wardrobe mazes can their be? How many people will be online in the town when you're online (making the town feel "alive")?

Lots of interesting questions about player owned towns.

 

i can say the PORT PHOENIX POT does not charge a tax for living in the town

 

I don't think any POT would want to take rent, unless as a guild, due to the double taxation the baron points out.

But this means that a POT cannot have a "common" house(s) which would be the meeting place and the attractor of visitors.

Empty lots with default houses on them won't have NPCs, and POTs only get about 1 NPC house per 20 player lots or so. All of this will of course work anyway as long as residents are active.

 

Location, Location, Location. Looking to place Fel's freehold on a remote isolated northern rocky coast and hopefully it will draw wanderers, if not well I will have to be happy with my own company LOL.The Freehold wont take rent, but will be for friends, allies and guildy's. Instead of a common house I will place a crafting Pavilion if not on the Town Square it will be as near as I can get it ; plus I get 4 NPC buildings with venders , so it should have an active look.

 

Not sure if we are even going to use the NPC buildings in our town. Everything in our town will be player run. NPC's might get in the way. I guess if you need to buy a "candle" it would be convenient to have an NPC shop keeper.

 

Probably need an NPC bank at a minimum (imho). ;-)

 

The whole player town thing seems very poorly thought out. I think it will tend to pull people away from the main hubs and spread out the population base. It seems like a reactionary event to what players demanded.

 

I don't think it's a bad idea to give the players what the majority demand. After all they are the ones that will be playing and supporting the game for years to come. Am I missing something here? In my opinion having player towns will strengthen the social bond between players and deepen the immersion of the game exponentially. I also do not think player towns will pull players away from "main hubs", due to the fact that these player towns will in themselves become "main hubs". It also sometimes can be good for a game to let the population spread out to ensure that the rest of the game world feels alive and inhabited. It would be pretty boring if as soon as I left a city's walls there was nothing but a desolate, underpopulated environment. I fully support player towns and hope to see them expanded upon in future episodes. Just my two cents.

 

Though it seems like POTs are a great way to handle housing demand, be creative, allow for like-minded communities (guilds, PvP areas, etc.).

 

I just think it spreads out development time, which was already at a premium to an area that wasn't originally planned.

As for giving what the "majority" want, I'm not sure that is a way to develop a game. What is the majority for this game? The people on the forums or all backers? Be careful what you wish for.

 

Well a 'scene' has to exist within the hex.....my view is that I'd rather see and extra 40 it so unique scenes rather than the recycled ones.

Player towns also creates more housing areas that many people were getting upset about early on because they were potentially very limited........Don't really get your concerns.

 

We got what we wished for the ability to form our own town in game. And those that did purchase added more $$ into the development fund.
Sorry, but I think you make much ado about tnothing.

 

I didn't necessarily think it was a horrible idea, just that it didn't seem to planned out....

Does this mean that towns being in means that another area gets relegated to the nice to have but we ran out of time?

No one even knows how these towns will work really...so many questions that need to be answered on their inclusion in the map...

Do they get to sit next to a main city...or is there a rule about placement, like it has to be three hexes from a current town? I could see it looking a bit like a shanty town if we get to many especially if the owners let them just stagnate...(there is a monthly fee to have them there of in gold game I assume? that would take care of that.)

Are the developers providing a certain amount of templates or are they designing each town for the backers?

I guess with the whole theory of the game as flux it can work, and don't get me wrong I see the benefit, it's just that we keep getting these add ons with so much left to make a working game. This isn't one of the areas I am worried about, I am like envy said, worried about the amount of hexes they actually will have in game.

 

I see the choice for placement being either a player run town or a game run town, i was hoping a option would be to be able to place a village lot or a town lot in the wild but being instanced and thinning the renters from the player run towns might be a issue why they did not do it that way. The people I see on the forums are not noobs they have gamed for yrs and yrs and pretty much know how to make it work for them given a rule set or a setup.

On take off I will have several row houses and a village or 2, I was thinking on a player run town. When we start out I think we will have about 7 + players and I have friends that have rented off me and still do in several other games for years and that will come in when it goes live based on the free acct, that in itself will let them use the savings for lots and homes ect. Its hard when you do not know what the final setup is but should be pretty hashed out by spring or hopefully sooner.

I will make it work however its set up, would just be easy to decide if I knew all the layout 8 }

There is in the ivory tower the best set of people that have come together to create this and as suggestions go they might see a lot of things that would make it not work or disrupt what is working that we do not see.

All we can do is keep pumping suggestions and ideas and hope for the best 8 }

 

personally I think POT will turn the map into a ghost town for me because I will be playing single player, maybe friend only which will mean there wont be annoying PCs screaming "Die Noob Die" all the time messing up my game play but its also going to mean that if these towns have no NPCs they are going to be really empty

 

Actually this is a huge potential problem, housing was MEANT to be sparse, otherwise with the 2 scale map you could actually have unlimited sizes on the cities because they don't have to take up REAL space. Land was supposed to have real value but with the way things are going I am wondering how much value is left

 

I don't think that will be the case though.

At minimum a POT map will contain villager NPCs, Guards, animals and depending on size a couple of NPC businesses.

Then we have the big genius of Selective Multiplayer Online:
all the NPC vendors of all of those players in the POT will be available to you even in Single player online. So all the wares of all the gathering and crafting will be available to you.
All the buildings set to public will also be available to you.

So as long as its "online" you can in single player partake in the grand player economy without what you percieve as the drawbacks.
Quite smart of @RichardGarriott and @DarkStarr isn't it?

 

Its not the economy I am referring to. If I want to go shopping I will turn off my computer and go down the road Its the NPCs, the quests, the interesting people to talk to etc. without this you might as well have a painting of a town with a list of items to buy instead of a real town to explore