"Slum" Housing

I think I mentioned this in another thread but I'll suggest it here proper.

Housing will be limited and I agree with the reasons why it is being done. The principles are sound and make sense.

But depending on the population of the game, there are going to be a lot of people who won't be able to own one and will basically be denied the chance to take advantage of that game subsystem.

Further, if housing is one of the selling points of the game too, it's a little unfair to advertise that people will be able to get a house if the real situation is all the real estate is gone (and what little gets bought and sold goes for vast sums that is out of reach of new players).

On the otherhand, if you give everyone the ability to get a house easily, you get horrid UO style urban sprawl and all the houses lack value. And no one really wants that.

My compromise solution would be to create "slum" districts or romanesque style insulae/townhouses in the big cities. All cities have a slum or poor housing area, right?

Players could rent small one room shacks or "apartments" in these districts. But there would be some key differences between the slum housing and regular houses.

A) They'd be instanced. So several people might be using the same door to access their little shack. You would not have any kind of unique footprint in the "persistent" world so to speak.

B) They'd lack some of the things you could do with proper non-instanced housing, like placing vendors, and such.

C) They'd be small - only a single room, or room with a closet or whatever. Most would probably look the same - there may well only be three or four unique designs at most.

This ensures that regular housing is still valuable (it is persistent for all to see and you can do more with it), but if someone wants a little shack or something, they can still get one.

Furthermore if crafting professions such as furniture making or container making exist in the game it will greatly benefit them. If only the limited housing stock exists, then only those people will require chairs, tables, chests, and what have you. With the slum housing, you have a larger market for those crafters to sell their goods to.

 

I just posted another idea regarding this topic, I have a city house, but unlike others I would want everybody to have the chance to get a house, because many love owning a house that can be seen by others.

Others hate houses everywhere...

So a solution imho could be, to allow housing, not quite as open as in UO, but only in certain designated areas...

But to make it optional for players if they want to see houses in the game outside of cities/villages/towns. Could be part of this slider or maybe a checkbox filter or something like that.

That way if you chose to not see other players houses you wouldn't, just like it works with players now. You wouldn't run into an invisible barrier or so, the house would just not be there.

And if you chose to see houses, you would... It doesn't have to be as crowded as it was in UO, but that's Portalariums job to plan it well