Should casual players be able to afford

I agree 100%. I too am Edelman, and I have a tax free village lot with a house that I used some store credit to buy. Mine is located in the NPC town of Kiln. It's not a very high traffic town, so my vendor doesn't get a ton of visitors unfortunately.

Anyway, besides cotton farming for my own use and some to sell (which has barely any value anymore), I really don't use my house for much else. I don't even keep my crafting materials in Kiln because there's no +5 Alchemy table there. Instead I store them in the Etceter bank just south of Kiln. So cotton is literally all I personally use my house for. I really don't need it like you've said. It's just a cool extra thing to have just to say I have it really.

 

I like being in a player owned town. To me it is all about community, and I like to support the guild I am in. I do not bother with vendors ever at my house in a game. To me my house is my house. I do have guild members who have vendors in npc towns that offer me the chance to sell from them. But in truth I enjoy slowly building up what I have. Buying the village lot and deed was an odd move on my part. But it would be wise if SoTA made it clear in their store up front the costs that someone buying a house and deed will face. I would not have bothered with the purchase had I known, and I think many others like me would feel the same way.

 

Pledges that didn't have lots include items that require a house to use. Quests grant rewards that require a house to place. Getting and maintaining a house is clearly a core element of the game, heck it seems like more art and dev hours are devoted to houses, decoration and POTs than anything else these days.

 

Hard to get, simple to maintain should be the model.

Not hard to get, mindless grind to maintain.

 

I think that's more of a function of Portalarium needing to keep the lights on and pay their workers. They need to monetize the game. I am not saying it's the best move from a player's perspective. And I don't really see many pledges that give items that require a house to use - my impression was that most of the pledges included a tax-free deed. Yes, items in the add-on store obviously require a house - but who buys a potted plant if they don't have a house to place it in? And I have not seen many (if any) quests that reward house items. I am not saying they don't exist, but I think it's far and few between.

 

If you look at pledges $80 and up they come with a few decorations.

Honestly they ate likely included in low tiers in good faith and not to lead people to rmt house bundles though.

Just mixed messaging that's unintended

 

In the past year they have focused on crafting, combat, PvE content, persitance lot selection to name the biggest things. This past week they have focused on combat skills, data collection, musical instruments, cooking, in-game economy and Bone armor. More recently, already implimented changes were loot tables, gold faucet tweaking, harvesting rate tweaking, scene uncloning and overworld travel.

Everyone has been affected by everything they have been messing with recently unless you havent been doing much of anything

 

Go look at a video from r21, for a player under level 60 or so without dozens of hours a week to play, none of those have had much affect on how they play. Crafting is still murdering endless wildlife to craft a single glove, combat is still inferior to single player titles that are more than a decade old, PvE content is still the same half dozen enemies reskinned and resized over and over and lots are no longer available to more casual players.

 

Crafting has expanded to include alot more sicne R21.

That is opinion, and cant help but be argued.

there are at least 20 unique character models in PvE at the moment, more than was available in R21

Many casual players play differently than they did in R21. That includes newer crafting, control points, new quests, PvP and playing the market as it is being developed. The ones who are still playing the same way choose not to do anything different than what they've done before.

 

don't forget, you can always make a friend (i know, i'm stretching here, just go with me on this) who likes to harvest and kill stuff. they can give you the materials, and you can just craft to your hearts content without killing stuff.

 

They take up valuable bank space though that JUST HAPPENS to be purchasable in the add-on store.

 

So crafting isn't an endless parade of rubbing x on y to get z, for those that haven't investing the 50 hours or so needed to get into the masterwork and enchanting scene?

Definitely are, and if I ever get to fight one it's going to be awesome I'm sure, but until then it's just bandits, skeletons, zombies, wolves, bears and scorpions. I could go hunt spiders, alligators or slimes, but there really isn't a reason to.

 

correct

 

or, once material prices are low enough, buy the materials and sell what you craft.

 

I couldn't agree more with this!

I think what I dislike about the game's housing model is that it can be difficult to maintain. I have no problem with it being difficult to get, as long as you CAN be guaranteed at least a village-size lot with enough work (only because row houses don't have yard space/outdoor planting/outside decor flexibility). Once you get it, though, it should be relatively simple to maintain.

Unfortunately, the whole model of the game having one-lot/one-house, or unique housing that everyone else can see from the roads and is one player's, is that there are more and less desirable lot locations. My only thought on why housing should be less "easy" (not terribly difficult, but you should have to put some work into it) is so that players who are pretty much inactive do not take up prime real estate. Having dead, occupied lots on a main thoroughfare that's encouraging foot traffic and independent vendor sales will limit the effectiveness of that town's trade.

I both love and hate this setup! I like seeing other people's houses and decorations as I walk down the streets of the various towns, but one issue that has soured things for me is the dramatic increase in the lot taxes from the last release to this one. I have a tax-free town lot and a taxable village lot so I consider myself in good shape, but if I only had the taxable village lot, I would have had a tough time paying taxes on that lot without all the mindless mining I've been doing. Thank goodness I find it relaxing, and I haven't explored a whole lot of other ways to make money (grinding 1 to 2 skull areas was not seeming that feasible to make all the money I'd need since loot is pretty sad in this game so far), and I'm avoiding quests like the plague until they are solid so I don't ruin the full experience.

I'm not really sure what the solution should look like, but I do wish everyone were guaranteed a lot with ENOUGH work and didn't have to sacrifice fun gameplay for farming to keep their lots. Maybe the game went into persistence with housing too soon when not enough options for making tax money are viable, when the economy is still unsettled and being upended by potentially radical changes and when there aren't even enough players to make a "real" economy viable at this time.

Just my thoughts.