New (Taxed and Tax Free) Lot Type: Hovel

So many new players want a home of their own. While some think the inn life is great, many new players (from what I've seen) have no interest in living in an inn and don't want to put up the cash or in game time grinding gold for a row lot or higher.

Wattle and Daub houses, Hovels, Huts, and Tents were all common dwellings in medieval times.

Example:



This little guy right here is a pretty good representation of what a hovel could look like. We've got loads of new players coming into the game that do not want to spend what it takes to get a row lot deed. So, why not make an even smaller option? It fits into the loosely medieval theme we have going.

Hovel: 1/4 or 1/2 the size of a row lot (whatever works better from a development viewpoint). Max 2 story house. Max 1 story basement. Taxed = 250 gold per day. Tax Free works as any other TF lot deed.

Maybe 1 non-merchant NPC. People would just buy these up as merchant huts if vendors were allowed on them. If NPC vendors are allowed on them, limit the amount of hovels that can be owned per account to prevent them from all becoming market stalls. (the second option is probably better)

Why not provide a really affordable solution to new player housing that's a step above renting a room? It would generate more income for Portalarium, and fill a gap that has been present for a long time now.

I want a hovel and I already have several properties ranging from row to town sized!

 

Housing in SOTA is endgame as far as I can tell, or pay 99 bucks for a row lot deed...

 

Housing in sota is either "end game" if you did it via gold grinding or it's "pay X amount of dollars" whenever. That's kind of the point of this wish list post. New players want housing too. Why shouldn't they have an affordable option for something to start out in?

 

@Applerust

Maybe just a camping system, then people can set up tents and other forms of temporary shelter in the wilderness.

Not sure where all these hovels would go.

 

Fun idea and I can see the point, but what's the real benefit?

I could see these being common questions and arguments.
1. How go you get them? By Cash? Row lots are already super limited. Not sure paying 20$ for something even more limited would be of much interest when you can literally stay in an inn for free and get practically the same results (but I do see the allure of stand alone living) 5 or 10$ maybe, but is that price realistic given the amount of work that would probably have to be put in to make it?

2. Row lots are already technically free per day if you visit the oracle.

3. How much time will it take away from what the game really needs a lot of to retain players, more polish on existing content.

4. Having little camps or neighborhoods would be legit.

I really like the idea and I'd be for it, but I'm not sure it has enough pro's to warrant the effort on the developer side at this juncture.

 

I remember In UO we wanted tents bad but never got them, some free shards did create a working system for them. It was nice. With limited storage, place anywhere.

 

You've just described why row lots were introduced.

 

@Paulie Walnuts Aside from creating a new lot type and what goes with that, I'm not sure there is a lot to the development side of it. It's certainly not that involved to model the buildings. I've been 3d modeling for a very long time. The houses would be easy to make.

But hey man, I'll tell you what I tell everyone. This is a wish list sub forum and I'm not a dev. It's not for me to figure out how to implement. It's just my wish

 

Not here to argue. Row lots are out of the financial scope for a lot of people. It's a wishlist and I made a wish.

 

I'm sure 5-10 could be squeezed into several zones. And, in new land areas there could be small villages of hovels. Not to mention POTs.

 

I would agree that it would be nice to have a tent like back in the old UO days, Somewhere out in the world that you can call home and place a few items in a couple chests around your own "Home". The row lot is rather expensive to a new player and it can take months or a year to raise enough funds to buy a row lot, and then trying to get ahead on the rent is tough especially for a casual player. We have the ability to rent out rooms to players. Currently the system is not completely in so it makes it harder to track payments/rent etc. But that system is still based on an "Honor" system and a lot of people do not like getting all their stuff setup to have someone evict them for reason does not matter, and then they have to keep finding a new place to call home. Adding in an option that would allow for smaller tiny homes to be placed around the world seems like a step in the right direction.

Inn Rooms are nice for people who want to use them, but having something that is "yours" makes the difference in a lot of people's game play. A tiny room in an inn is nothing when the decoration limit/container limit is all shared between 15+ people living in one location. As the owner I can not place things in my own home/room because certain people decide to place down a lot of decorations in the room that they rent, and my only two options are to ask them to remove said items, and or evict them and have all the items they worked hard to them decorating the room the way they like, to be sent to the bank.

Thanks for reading this post and I hope it helps in considering adding in something alternative for the new individuals we have playing this wonderful game. Keep up the good work Port, and I look forward to seeing what happens next.

Drilikath

 

@Applerust

They also might as well just make 1-story row homes for all intents and purposes. A 1-story row would be pretty much a hovel.

 

I think you're missing the point. The cost associated with a row lot is prohibitive for some people. A hovel lot would be smaller and cost less. I'm not talking about the rent either. I'm talking about the up front cost of buying a row lot or larger. This is a stepping stone between a rented inn room and a row lot.

 

@Applerust

How much smaller ? Half the size? The only point I was making is row lots are already relatively small, and hovel-sized.

By the way, just for the sake of the discussion, all you really need to do to get a row lot is grind for an hour a day for a month. Its boring, but owning property isn't an out of reach pipe dream.

 

This is what Legacy UO did: source = http://legacy-uo.com/wp/how-to-log-in-and-get-started/

Newbie Tent: I think this is awesome!




Newby tents work like low functioning houses. You can’t lock items down or decorate the interior, you can’t increase storage, etc. You place your tent, and you have a housing spot and an extra storage container in the wild. But don’t forget where you placed it!!

Tents count towards your 1 housing space per account, so if you lose it, you’re in trouble!

Attributes

• Size: 8×8
• Can be placed anywhere a small house can be placed.
• To unpack: double-click the tent bag and target the ground where you’d like to place it.
• Vendors can be placed in tents (note: you must use a ‘contract of employment’ – vendor rentals don’t work).
• Can be dyed (dying changes the color of the tent bag, the tent’s secure backpack (see next item), the tent roof, but not the tent walls).
• Once placed, the tent contains a backpack that is locked down and secure. It must be emptied before the tent can be packed up again.
• Tent bag is newbied
• Cannot be purchased from NPC vendors
• When a tent decays, everything in the backpack also decays.
• Given to all characters once.
• Cannot be placed if the player already has a house.
• To pack up: double-click the bedroll.
• When packed up, the tent bag ends up on the ground (where anyone can pick it up).
• Decay time banking is similar to house banking, up to five days. (In other words, if you place it and log out for five days, it will decay, but if you continue to play, it will not decay.)
• Default tent bag color is beige (like a bedroll).
• Default tent roof color is light gray.
• Tent wall color is light blue.

 

I guess like a lot of things it will depends how it turns out and how much it costs.

 

Worth noting that deeds can be bought in game with cotos, off other players for gold and will be dropping as rare items in supply bundles. Getting a Lot Deed has never been easier to do in-game and there are many players who have just obtained them during gameplay.

 

In the post I said "Hovel: 1/4 or 1/2 the size of a row lot (whatever works better from a development viewpoint). Max 2 story house. Max 1 story basement. Taxed = 250 gold per day. Tax Free works as any other TF lot deed."

4k gold per hour (if you're high enough level to do it) most people make more like 2500 per hour . So, 30 hours = 120k gold @4k per hour. 120k gold is enough to buy a taxed row lot? No, a taxed row is: 270k POT, and PA is 450k currently unless my sources are incorrect.

So, more realistically, 2500 per hour x 30 = 75k per month for newer players (at an hour per day). So, 270,000/2500=108 hours of game play for a taxed POT. That's 3.6 months of casual game play. That's not even considering the cost of repairs or reagents. Not to mention buying new gear or spending the time to grind for the materials for upgraded gear. So on...

TBH @redfish I'm seeing negative reviews from people on steam with 40 hours or less and some of them have to do specifically with housing. The #1 complaint in my guild among new players is housing that's out of reach for them in game. And, it is out of reach for some of them because of their play style, unless they just go buy a bundle. The people that write the bad reviews based solely on housing (which is totally unfair and unreasonable but they do it anyway) may have had a different experience if there were lots a little more within reach.

Can you earn lots through in game play? Absolutely. I earned a TF town lot through in game play. Not everyone is going to put in 5k + hours like me though.

I'm a huge fan of the housing system. I'd just like it to be built upon a little more to cater to the casual player as well as the hardcore/dedicated player. I honestly believe the "Hovel lot" would come closer to achieving that.

 

Buying them with cotos = still cost prohibitive for some people.
Buying them with gold = time prohibitive for some people.
Getting them randomly through bundles is just gambling.

None of this fills the gap I speak of. Is it cool that they added these features? Hell yeah it's cool. Doesn't change the gap between rented inn room and row lot.

 

@Applerust

Just for the record, I've earned 8k-10k g per hour just selling to NPC merchants. And you sell to players, you get more. I'm not trying dismiss anything else you're saying, or saying this to bat down the suggestion in the OP, but I think people overstate how hard it is to earn gold, and I think its important to have that discussion, too.

Personally, I don't think its bad that it might take a few months of casual gameplay to get a housing lot. It means the people who have lots in the game have invested some time in the game. If every new player could get home within a really short time, that might just mean more empty vendors, or more gold farmers. The perception of new players that its hard to get a home without putting in a lot of cash is a problem, but I'm not (personally) sure that making cheaper housing lots is the way to deal with this.

I really still like the the idea of setting up tents in a camping system, and I hope you read that linked thread, if you haven't already.

I also think there should be NPC-run Inns, so players can rent rooms from NPCs in the game without going through players.