In-game Deed Prices are too low

It's my understanding that in-game deed prices fluctuate depending on where you buy them at. I think that's a bad idea in the case of lot deeds. It's a very high priced item that seems arbitrarily silly to make it have a different price in one town verses another.

But for the sake of argument, let's say that all deed prices are the same no matter where you buy them. I'll use Owl's Head as my working numbers.



I think these numbers are bad for the economy. Why? Because the price of a taxable city lot deed in the add-on store is $2100. So what we're saying here is that it only costs about 381 gold to equal $1. That's extremely cheap, and it lowers the value of cash.

In reality, I'd like to see 1000 gold equal $1 making the cost of a City Lot Deed in-game 2,100,000. This should be the model of all in-game prices, how much does it cost relative to what you can get in the add-on store. So if it costs $20 in the add-on store to buy a hat. NPC's should sell that hat for 2000 gold.

If we don't structure the economy like this, then there will be ways to "gold farm" by finding the best ratio of in-game "stuff" and then selling that stuff for a fraction of the out of game value to make a profit.

I realize that 1000 gold is an arbitrary number, it doesn't have to be 1000, but the number should be leveled across the rest of the game, and I don't believe it is. For example, if we look at Town Lots priced at 400,000, there's a ratio of 445 gold pieces per $1.

We should change this for every item in the game, starting with lot deeds.

 

so let's travel to the land of speculation for a moment:

From the roadmap post...
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/roadmap.52342/#post-571533

if the castle lot is at least 120 million gold in OFFLINE and we'll go half price on half sized lots below -
keep lot at ~60 million gold
city could be ~30 million gold
town at ~15 million gold
village at ~7.5 million gold
row at ~3 million gold

Which is probably a bit too high, but not unreasonable.

In FFXIV, at the beginning of the housing rollout, the small lot for a small house was ~2.5 to 3.5 million gil and then you had to buy the house for another 250k for a small one.

Again, all of it speculation...

 

I've always wondered how Port came up with the prices they put on NPC sold lot deeds. They've been the same for a long time (your noting that they vary in price from vendor to vendor, notwithstanding).
What did/do they have in mind for prices when we go into persistence ?
Are the current prices even close to what they foresee ?
A bit of Port insight here would be nice..........

Oh, just thought of another thing.
The deeds sold in-game on vendors are taxable, so there's that.
But, as far as I know, they work in PRT's, NPC towns and POT's. Correct ?

 

Holy moly ! Trying to wrap my head around how long it would take the average player to accumulate 7.5mill in-game for a Village Lot.
It would certainly require a lot of time and dedication.

 

~Tax Burdens and Play Incentives~
That same city lot of land may not generate a player allot of gold or any gold and is a luxury item, yet it's also an active player item, which means that the tax burden on that same city lot is going to take a single person or a guild a much more interactive time in the game to maintain. "Our active players are good players" and we want to reward them. They have played our game enough to have helped our forums remain active, our player events to have been well supported and our gaming world to seem more alive as well as the feeling of prosperity to the player or players that are active within it. So that in game purchased city lot may be a slightly less real world cash better value than the in game purchased town lot, yet it's tax burden is it's insurance clause insuring that it's held by active players.

@Baron Drocis Fondorlatos ,
"I agree that it seems very different than this when thinking about the deed itself, yet when that deed is placed, it becomes a much more different animal to keep as a taxed pet, much more than the town lot".
~Time Lord~

 

Personal opinion is that all deeds for gold should be completely removed from the game for R31 so that there are no omission bugs on this.
If there is even one NPC selling deeds for gold as today at permanence we are all screwed and looking at a server reset.

So the sooner they remove them the better.

Then after permanence whichever method they chose can be implemented new and fresh.

Or a quick and easy edit of the save file...

 

I am pretty sure deeds won't be sold at all, since there will be the lottery system. The price on those tickets, however.. will be another matter.

 

Speaking of deed lotteries, I'd really like it if they limited ticket sales to one per account. That would give every account an equal chance.

 

It would make sense that if there ever was a lottery, tickets would be the full price of the deed. If you want a ticket - put up the gold for the entire price of the deed and then the winner just gets the deed - and everyone else gets their money back, less administrative fees. It'll be interesting to see them pull off a lottery system though, it makes the whole deed things seem more like online gambling. The gambling part doesn't bother me, I love a good bet but I do think it would function in contradiction to the current online gambling laws of some countries.

Part of me hopes they just sell property deeds outright - there's going to be plenty of places to plop down a house in Ep1- and stringing a deed system along will turn away lots folks that are interested in owning property. The unknowns regarding property are a real turnoff for lots of people, and I mean turnoff as the single biggest reason why some folks are deciding against giving SotA a chance. My gaming org bailed on this game completely and went with CoE - solely because of questions regarding land ownership. It was a real bummer for me since I had upgraded to Duke and bought a POT and a couple extra deeds - I'm having a blast here, but the couple dozen folks that I had lined up to come all went with CoE because of unanswered property questions... and taxes were another big point of contention, I tried to get answers - but there's just not any solid information regarding property and taxes being shared by the devs - and it's a huge deal for players here for the MMO.

 

Yet it would also give people with multiple accounts a greater chance of winning.

 

If people are prepared to donate multiples of $45 to the game to increase their chances, I'd say that was a good thing. Much better than having a vastly increased chance of winning because your guild has a huge pool of in-game gold and can buy all the tickets.

 

haha - I try not to get into the p2w conversations because it's always open to interpretation... but that.. haha - that is so much pay to win it made me laugh out loud.

 

Do you really think someone is going to spend $45 to take their chance of winning from 0.01% to 0.02%? I guess some would, but in the vast majority of cases it would be money spent for no return. On the other hand, letting people buy as many tickets as they like is definitely pay to win, given the ability to easily convert real money into in-game gold.

 

Yes, I do think that.

Especially when the lots themselves start trading hands for real money. I also think it's important to understand that not everyone in the game will be participating in the lottery system. I could see there being times when a very small portion of the community would be involved and having multiple accounts would make a big difference.

But I do agree with you that one way or the other there are positives and negatives. I'm not a fan of large guilds gaming the system any more than people with multiple accounts.

 

I probably would. I didn't mean to call you out Womby, your post just struck me funny is all - it does have a big area for spinning into p2w if chances for deed ownership are just about account numbers. Guilds and multi-account holders could all pool their money enough to buy a single land deed and just work the numbers; it would increase their chances of winning exponentially. I think if there ever was a deed lottery - tickets would have to be the full cost of the deed.

 

Well if what @Chris mentioned comes to pass, and physical gold, silver and copper coins appear with all current in-game gold changing to copper (including drops and such) then perhaps the house prices could stay the price they are in gold, while the rest of the economy is dropped via the copper-change-over.

From the AMA Log:

[1:39 PM] Atos: user, for clarification on the coin change thing. First, totally unrelated to Crowns and also, not guaranteed to happen but if we do it, here is how it would probably go. You would log in and find all your gold, converted to copper and it would be an item in your inventory. Copper would be the base/lowest currency. 1 silver would be worth either 10 or 100 copper. 1 gold would be worth either 10 or 100 silver. It would have zero weight on the first release but we would warn people that it would switch to having weight on future releases. Bankers would freely change copper for silver or gold.

 

It's all good.

Tickets being the full cost of the deed is fine, but it still gives a huge advantage to large guilds with vast reserves of gold. The lone, unaffiliated player won't stand a chance. If the money is refunded for non-winning tickets then there is no risk to a large guild spending millions on tickets.
If tickets are limited to one per account then yes, gaming the system is still possible, but is much more painful and has a direct benefit to the game's development.

Let's consider an example. Say only 1,000 people are interested in buying tickets in the next lottery.
Sir Bountiful Moneybags decides to give himself what he thinks will be a 50% chance by spending $45,000 on new $45 pledges.
Unfortunately for him, Lord Croesus has the same idea, so now an extra $90,000 has been spent on the game, and there is still a 33% chance that someone who bought a single ticket will win.

Now contrast that with how easy it would be for a guild to convert a tiny fraction of that $45,000 into enough in-game gold to completely dominate the lottery.

So yes, limiting ticket sales to one per account is not a perfect solution, but it vastly reduces the problems that would arise if any number of tickets could be bought.

EDIT: No sane person would spend that much money to increase their chances to get a single lot deed in a lottery post-wipe, when with the same money they could buy numerous pledges that come with tax free lot deeds right now.

 

I'd disagree.
Such a system would highly favor organized guilds/groups over individuals. This since they would use everyone's account to buy the ticket for each and every lottery.
Which means that a new casual account would have a very very very very very slim chance of winning since they wouldn't be in every lottery over time.
That means that the sense of being able to make any difference to increase one's odds would be a massive frustration for everyone but the large guilds/groups which can count on statistical outcomes over time.
It would also not mitigate one of the big factors which is that a good enough lottery would act as a massive gold sink to remove the overall guild advantage in all other aspects of play.


Luckily for us the dev plan so far has been better then that in that the discussion has been that one might be able to earn tickets for play as well. For instance as rewards in quests or for achievements.
So that one does not skew in favor of owning an account, but rather for playing the game.
Plus that yes you can pour massive amounts of gold into buying tickets, instead of wreaking havoc on the player economy.

 

You raise a valid point. I question however your assumption of perfect minion loyalty.
What are the chances that minion #723, having been given the money to buy a ticket and having won the lottery, will suddenly decide that it is in their best interests to keep the winnings and leave the guild?
That only has to happen once to make repeats of that process seem unwise. The guild is also faced with the prospect of extracting all that money back from its minions. Good luck with that.

As for the gold sink - it's not a gold sink if they pay full price and the losers get their money back, which was my assumption.

 

Would that happen? Yes of course.
Would that be common enough to matter enough for guilds to not game the system anyway? Of course not.

In the proposal of one ticket per account there is no reason for the guild to stop gaming the system to their advantage. The risk of a "thief" does not in any form deter from the potential reward of a deed.

That would be a very counter productive system which they have never mentioned or discussed so I don't see how that would be any starting assumption?
Tickets and the gold to get tickets has to be used for the lotteries to have any of the dev proposed effects.