Official Housing Tax Rates

It won't matter to me anyway. I'm melting my taxable lots. Casual players will have to make paying taxes a part of their 30 minute grind. It's fair and this is a fair warning. Even the detail minded will lose their hours of deco. It happens. It's axiomatic. I am confident the devs will create a proper balance.

 

And you likely had no competition for spawns. If this game does as well as everyone hopes, the world will not be a barren wasteland with endless skeletons to kill all to yourself.....

This is some serious coin from a starting player standpoint. I can see being frustrated at the level of effort if I had no friends, no tax free lot, and a desire to have a place to call my own. Housing is a big draw for this game. It's likely why many people want to play it. Hoping that we get more permissions control and the ability to rent rooms soon. New players will rightly need a spot with a chest to call their own and the proposed tax scheme will likely require they spend some time in the game first.

 

Housing typically in an MMO isn't something a new player begins the game owning. Especially large houses that would fit on a City deed, those would be end game projects. Housing in Shroud of the Avatar is suppose to be rare and valuable. Tax rates at the current level will help to moderate someone owning multiple taxed lots and provide a good gold sink.

I feel the taxes are a bit low currently but they are fair enough for the start of the game.

 

My initial thought was that the taxes were too high. Then I realized, no one ever thinks taxes are cheap.

Anyway, loot balancing and a persistent / evolving economy will help us understand how the real impact of these taxes. And, I suspect that the devs will tweak to make it have the effect they want. Lets start with this and give them the feedback as we try it out.

 

Until today, I never truly appreciated that ability to go into Single Player Online and grind. huzzah

 

Ectoplasmic residue is being removed from the game, which takes your profit down to about 1000. Which, based on an average sell price of 33 gold, would require 33 rusty swords in 30 minutes.
Your claim is that you killed 33 humanoids in under 30 minutes with a ~new character? It's not that I don't believe you, but that's really hard to believe.
Just standing around waiting on focus regen would require more time than that. Unless all the humanoids you killed drop more than one rusty sword each?
In which case, I guess North Valeway is one of the greatest money farming zones in the game.

In any case, I think the taxes are high enough to drive away new customers, currently. Just my opinion.

 

It's better to set tax high and then cut it if needs. The other way around will incite some serious nerd rage.

 

I'm only talking about the row. The City is completely unattainable at this point. After some time for inflation or other game balancing that may change....possibly more attainable if an entire guild is working to hold onto one.

And housing is typically something people strive for in the first couple months of playing a game with housing. A row should be easily attainable after a couple of months of playing the game. The new player game here is going to be a bit of a hurdle. They are competing with a bunch of people that are well connected and have paid into the game enough to get some truly helpful items. There's a fine line here.

I'll be curious to see how true new players feel about this.... But it appears to be an undue burden from where I sit. As others have stated, it sounds like a bit of a job.

 

Totally agreed with Greyfox and Roycestein. Deed lot, and house suppose to be hard to get, people always want every game to be easy and fast. Game is fun when its hard and long. If you play less, its just longer and thats the point of playing a game. If you guys want to play easy game wich take 1 month to be at the end game and fully rich, i think you are in the wrong game. SotA is a kind of game where you take the time to appreciated everything in the game, where you take the time to be a greatful artisan who will becore rich and famous after LONG time of playing and working hard. Where you'll be a great fighter after LONG time of fighting and lvling your skill. Or simply somewhere you'll have fun LONG time with your friend and find your way to make your money over a lot of possibility. But every of this road are LONG and suppose to be.

I hope you guys will accept that a day and stop complain about a game soon as it look a little bit hard to get something. Thats why all game are coming so bad and boring, cause they are easy and too fast to end game. Thats my point.

 

Honestly....theres pictures there to prove it...If any prove is needed!!

From the pictures...i started at 11.08....i finished at 11.38.....i made about 500+ in gold in that time...The loot was sold for 1566, ectoplasm making up 460...
So in an hour from that specific location i would make over 4k...now....if it is removed from game then the value would be -900 ...still be over 3k in an hour from a new players starting location.

So your maths that i would be left with 1000 is so wrong its laughable...

Shows you don't know diddly squat then...I never ran out of focus and all i generally did was have auto attack on.....

Everything in your post is wrong...everything!

It was an attempt to show that even a starting player in a beginner's location can still make decent gold. Really it seems some people will argue black is white when its shown to them in pictures as well as words/facts.

In future please don't respond to any of my posts as i really cant be bothered arguing the facts with you.

 

For further clarification, and to correct things I might have said before due to a misunderstanding, I asked Darkstarr directly about a concern that I had and he assured me that it was the time element (1hr/wk,etc) that had precedence and that the rate of earnings from gameplay would be adjusted on Port's end to match that reality, and not as I incorrectly assumed that the players are expected to make radical changes to their gameplay to meet the numbers themselves.

If I understood correctly this time, the stated numbers are their baseline to tune the economy to, not our baseline to try to afford.

 

All well and good - I don't want an "easy" game to beat in a month and move on. However, almost everyone on these boards did get housing easily - we bought it, and tax free to boot.

However, most of the playerbase will not have done this; making housing "hard" or "a job" will not do this game any favors. As noted above, this is a fine line indeed.

Many saying housing should be hard are sitting with their own tax free houses and investment. Step into the $45 player's shoes and this game looks...not so great unless those row and village tax rates are fairly easy to maintain.

Again, I have no idea if the new rates are reasonable. I hope they are. I hope Port did a lot more than just wing it with those numbers.

I just don't want this game to be empty at launch for the sake of protecting pledges or for being meant to be "hard". I am happy with all of the money I have put into this, but honestly there is no way I would play as a non pledge player, even before these new rates came out.

 

Unfortunately it also penalizes the pot owner who wanted to provide amenities like a pavilion or community garden or similar stuff.

As for the now proposed (maybe it ain't set in stone yet?) tax rate.. I bought a Town Lot for $450, now if I did my math right (if I didn't someone will surely correct me) it would cost me ~$144/yr if I went the cash route and paid with COTO. 1/3 of the purchase price? I am SO glad RL ain't mirroring THAT ;p

 

If the intent is to balance the game to the amount of gold earned by the average user within an hour, I think that's fine. The big problem is they cannot use ANY of US to set that baseline. We are not the average user, especially average new user. We are a bunch of diehards funding a game still in development. Many people have been here for years and know the tricks to grind. Many people here have spent thousands of dollars on lots and houses and pledges and even towns. There is nothing "average" about this particular player base. I think that should be remembered when trying to expand the reach of the game to new users (who probably are not as crazy as we are).

 

A few things about that...
1. There are tax free POT options in the bundle store. (hopefully we'll get town and city options soon)
2. You could conceivably mix in-game gold and COTO's together to water down the $144/yr rate.
3. Beyond what Greyfox said about this being a good gold sink and leveling out the playing field a bit so that one person can't have a monopoly on multiple lots - that's true. But the FIRST reason we have taxes is so that inactive players (those that don't pay their taxes) give up locations that might be desired by other players. UO had a big problem with that and the developers have figured out a way to reduced that. Brittany Central might be the big hot spot during the land rush, and most of those people won't be paying taxes. But other areas of the game will have tax payers and this helps promote faster change and more opportunity to casual and new players.

 

From what DarkStarr said to me, their intention is actually the opposite, which is where we might be going wrong in understanding this. They're not trying to balance the game to the average amount of earnings. The plan is to tune the amount of earnings the game gives out to match how much gold they want us to earn per hour.

 

I know the taxes seem high at the moment, but play for a week or two and the taxes won't be really so bad. Players can prepay the taxes, which does help just grind for an hour so and your house will be paid for period of time. Does anyone know how far in advance one can pay for taxes?

 

One of the things making a bundle less attractive for me is I don't need another account. You can't (unless it's changed?) use the row lot as empty land to garden if you wanted. I was were to spend the loot...$550 for a Village sized bundle it'd make a LOT more sense to spend another $20 and get another Edelmann pledge.
I always wished we could have had more of an ala carte way to upgrade a pledge if you just wanted the next size up lot.

Agree on #3

 

Oh no, you can get 200 bundles all on the same account!

The reason why is because all the bundles go last in the land rush, so there's no need to make someone get a new account. It's awesome.

@Berek
We should try to make this more clear to people (especially during the telethon) because if there's interest in the bundles we don't want people to hold back because of incorrect perception.

 

Not really here nor there - but since the bundle comes with a copy of the game - if it were me, I'd put the bundle on a separate account... transfer all the goodies to my main, then gift the otherwise empty Ep1 included account to a friend and hound them into playing.