Housing Discussion

[Laughing Skull]

I fully support the rental system with one caveat: I want to be able to have friends over (or have them go as they please with their own key or something).

This is going off on a tangent. But, what are thoughts on like an apartment complex type structure in cities (Think south Prevalia)? I'm thinking urban-vibe, multi level structure with 8x8 rooms all lined up. You can see everyone else in their rooms, you can freely walk in and out of any of the doors (detect hidden & secure door will help battle the scum). I'm thinking a couple large hallways, 10 rooms on each side, maybe make the outside rooms have access from outside.... that's like 60 rooms on one floor, 3 floors will get you 180 rooms. Lobby area included and all. Great place to learn thief protection OR give Lobby Area a CY type tile depending on how bad thievery is.

 

[Nymaeron]

If we want people to have more container space -> widen the scope of renting rooms, which I think is in the works.
If we want more diverse ownership of houses that people would like to decorate -> decrease house per IP limit to 2 from 3.

Which problem are we trying to resolve here?

 

[AreYouKidden]

If we want people to have more container space -> widen the scope of renting rooms, which I think is in the works.
If we want more diverse ownership of houses that people would like to decorate -> decrease house per IP limit to 2 from 3.

Which problem are we trying to resolve here?

All the problems..

 

[Eric]

I am mostly against gold-rush-style new land being added. Once you launch new land, there is no "going back" if the shard's population starts to dwindle. A bunch of empty houses or large vacant open plots absolutely make a shard feel empty, and take away from a big part of the economics of housing.

I also think the inn rental system, and expanding it, misses out on a big thing that makes UO stand out from all the other MMOs. The inn is analogous to instanced housing, and it certainly doesn't feel like you "own a slice of the world". Also, it isn't that great as a gold sink because it's priced in such a way that it isn't expensive enough to take a lot of gold out of the economy, and isn't cheap enough for it to be accommodating for new players, who have a near endless amount of things ahead of them to spend their gold on.

Something I have thought could work similar to the inn system without making it feel like instanced housing would be dynamic landmass: a volcanic archipelago. Interconnected small islands that are managed by and leased through the Seafarers' League. You can lease an island or a 1/6th or 1/3rd section of an island, and once leased, you can place a deeded house on it. Archipelago space is limited, but also dynamic in that unleased islands periodically sink into the sea, and if all islands are leased, sometimes an eruption happens and new interconnected small islands appear. There could also be an "anchor" island, the volcano, that serves as a PoI, and gives players a reason to visit the archipelago besides just to go to their house.

I feel like Owyn could make good use of a "dial" for new housing space that can be turned up to make housing available, or turned it down to constrain the supply when necessary. The downside is that the island landmass would need to be designed upfront, and a lot of the islands would start out "sunken" and not available for lease, and potentially be wasted design effort. It would be a lot of mapwork...

I'm sure someone can read my suggestion and tear apart why it won't work - I won't be offended if you do. I'd rather see someone criticize it than to hear *crickets*

 

[Field-Medic]

I'm about 7 weeks in on Outlands. First week I couldn't stop. Then I took a few days off once I heard about the housing situation. I was crushed, sadden that I didn't hear about this shard much sooner. But I also thought, there needs to be a solution, because this single fact almost deterred me away from the shard, and I know others have left because of it.

-Similar to the inn housing, why not create a "housing instance"
-Housing instance, one can place any size house anytime. The instance can be designed 2 different ways: Single player instance OR a whole instance for all players who own property in the housing instance who can run around. NOW I've heard people say, "This will take people away from the beautiful Outlands map." "This will make the shard seem empty.." etc etc etc --- So here are some possible kickers: You can't steal, kill, or train most skills other than trade skills such as blacksmith, carpentry, etc etc. There are no trees, mountains, bodies of water, so you can't lumberjack, mine, or fish. It's similar to a trammy life, but with rules that will still force players to live and socialize on the original Outlands map.
-Many other rules can be implemented: Instead of charging 5k gold a week like the inn situation... Make the "Housing Instance" a monthly donation subscription, to help support the server. I wouldn't mind paying $1 - $5 a month for the house of my dreams up in the clouds. NOW before people get all cheap and cry, remember we want to support to help keep the server going. So with that said, no this option isn't for everyone, BUT it will quite possibly free up land and bring down some ridiculous prices for houses in the Outlands.

-Players still need to buy a house deed for the instance, but i believe if this is a route that is taken, all housing instance deeds should be fully refunded since there are some disadvantages such as never being able to chop trees around your house or kill monsters... Also when the time comes and someone is able to get a spot on the original map, they can move down w/o losing 10%.

My apologies, i know a lot of people donate so I didn't call everyone cheap.. But $1 - $5 is totally reasonable. Added up, that is less than $60 a year for a game most of us love and want to see carry on over the years + compared to a night at the bar or even dinner, both of which can hit $50+ very quickly.. this is more than a reasonable suggested amount for donating to the best shard I have ever played on.

Lots of routes and rules can be used for my above suggestion. I believe this will free up land in the outlands for players who want something more. There will be a huge decrease in housing demand, bringing prices drastically down. In the end, this idea should make vet to new players very happy and hopeful for their futures on the Outlands, instead of hitting a huge impassable roadblock from the start.

—
I’m also in favor of decreasing from 3 houses to 1 house per IP. Things change, rules change. I think a lot of people will threaten, “oh I’m done with this shard!” But in all honestly, why is it such a deal/gamer breaker that you would quit? Keep the house you like, move your items and get the option to sell deed back for 100%, maybe even 125%. Also maybe give those players extra container/lock down space. If this transition was ever considered, please give 3 months time before houses start becoming IDOC. So those players can still try to sell for more value to a player who doesn’t want to gamble attempting to get that spot if and when it randomly opens up.

 

[getofftheshed]

It's unrealistic to expect that housing would be freely available on the world's largest and most active UO server. Alarm bells should be ringing if you could waltz in and drop a house.

We have a variety of options though: you can purchase a house from a player, you can win an IDOC, you can rent an Inn room while you raise the funds to purchase a house.

Rental Room System - UO Outlands Wiki

uooutlands.com

There is no question real estate drives this game. It's no different than real life.


The solution imo given how launch went which has now severely inflated everything; property tax. Don't need to tax smaller houses or even medium ones, but large houses absolutely should have a property tax. If you have more than one house, you should have too pay large tax for the other. No need for one person to have 3 houses if you're trying to increase new player retention. If you don't pay, you can't refresh and house goes idoc, auction etc. It's no different than real life which people love to mention as one of the great things about UO. The real risk vs reward. Well taxes are real too and this is no different. Land is a commodity, you have created digital land and have a problem with capacity.

There is no doubt there are multiple houses that are owned by the same people on top of the obvious people vpn'ing just for home ownership. You could just as easily tether to your phone, family's phone etc and now you have 6+ more house plots which people absolutely did. It's UO, people will take any advantage they can. Introduce property tax and force people to sell these monsterous houses they have multiples of. And make absolutely sure new houses are for people who have no houses or a wagon.

Also, another option since what you've created is so amazing and may be more obvious; land expansion. Yes, it will fill up right away but at least it will fill up with players who now can get their first house a littler more reasonable( I just want more land cause map is awesome.)

 

[getofftheshed]

I think at the very least it would be wise to go to 1 house per ip. No exceptions. If someone is a MAH well they are sharing a house in real life too so no issue. I mean I just saw someone on discord mention they already have 3 accounts and are requesting more; is there at least a 3 house per ip limit? Prices are already so inflated I'd hope a limit would be in order.


Also, with all the effort you've put into this I imagine you have long vision for this shard. Right now you are at 2 years, still young. Inflation is only going to get worse and worse.

another option I'm sure that has been considered and would get my vote is some kind of trammel landmass for houses. It's just a blank landmass not apart of the real over world. It won't affect market value much because houses in this area won't be nearly as prized as houses in the overworld. Could put limits on the type of houses here too(only 8x8 or so, only certain models. Think of it like the suburbs, no one wants to live there) which will help create a better real estate market.

 

[Trimegistos]

It is pretty funny to see peole against 3 houses per ip. the problem is people using Vpn to have more houses than shard limit. Devs must find a way to police that because they are failing in that task. One house per acc will not solve the house problem. I think it is pretty clear to understand that because people wont stop using vpn with one acc or 3 acc

 

[ADXE]

I think this may solve some of the Housing issues that bother me. Something that I've noticed is that houses around Cities and Moongates tend to be overloaded with Vendors. Maybe this is the underlying issue that needs to be fixed.

Let's try limiting houses to 3 or 4 vendors. That will take away some of the value and let some of the other houses see some activity. The prices will come down on location specific property and maybe we'll see some movement in the market with houses and commodities.

 

[agweber]

It is pretty funny to see peole against 3 houses per ip. the problem is people using Vpn to have more houses than shard limit. Devs must find a way to police that because they are failing in that task. One house per acc will not solve the house problem. I think it is pretty clear to understand that because people wont stop using vpn with one acc or 3 acc

Start validating accounts. Unvalidated accounts can not have houses. I'm not totally sure how/what 'validation' is, but you could at least make it more difficult to mitigate. I'll take a selfie in front of my log-in screen for each of my accounts (even if it is just one right now).

 

[Laughing Skull]

I like the 1 House per IP policy, either that or some substatial tax for 2nd and 3rd houses.

Also, I still like the idea of some type of urban-apartment complex like structures in town. Make innkeepers and shops have a 2nd story with apartments up top. Hell you can do apartments for rent or purchase. I think this would be awesome. Being able to see all the buzz of everyone else, a busy place.

 

[Elric]

I would like houses that can be burned to the ground and the contents along with it. Maybe require something like 100 torches and wielded by 100 players and they have to be 5 tiles away from the house for about 10 minutes before it burns up. This will not only free up housing space but also create conflict as the owner will surely call his friends to come defend the house from arson. Sounds like a win-win.

 

[getofftheshed]

The solution came to me today and is so obvious. Shard wipe. So many reasons to do a shard wipe and housing is just another one that makes the solution so clear.

Shard wipe, 1 house per ip, much slower skill gains. Nerf the hell out of aspect gear and town vendors only have so much gold to buy per day/hours or per player.

Hyperinflation has taken over the shard. I think devs should consider this shard a huge success and do a wipe since we know what needs to be fixed. I would recommend trying to create a housing market(this is what drives everything in UO) that is somewhat natural. With the amount of players on this shard the map should not have filled up with houses as nearly as fast as it did. I think the shard is in a tough spot to retain new players with this kind of inflation. Hundreds of empty houses or people's 2nd, 3rd home just throw everything off.

If i remember correctly at launch you could multi-box in dungeons; now you can't. I read monsters now have 25% more hp. I don't have any opinion on why those decisions were changed but I do know they put any new player after those changes at almost insurmountable disadvantage when to comes to keeping up with inflation.

That plus videos like this of people marco farming gold just make this amazing shard broken(not blaming the player but aspects need nerfed hard). People are farming some of the highest difficulty rated, non-boss, mobs nearly as fast as they spawn. I'd love to see a relaunch, the work the dev team put into this shows this shard deserves a relaunch.

Relaunch this amazing shard, let everyone keep their rares and all their other goodies but wipe it. It will be worth it long run or else this shard will go the way of UO forever, IPY and on and on. Everyone has everything and anyone who wants something has to pay a fortune. Want to get it yourself? Too bad, spawn on lockdown from the 2 tops remaining guilds. Every shard that is allowed to run dies the same way and that is natural to some degree but 3 accounts per ip, 1 house per acct, macroing all combine to speed up the end result instead of a slower burn.

 

[Laughing Skull]

Wiping the server is a dangerous precedent. Things have changed and will continue to change in the future, this game is constantly evolving and growing.

I disagree with so much of what is in your post. A shard wipe won't help housing one bit. What will help housing is limiting the house to 1 per IP, not 1 per account. This will help regardless if the shard is wiped or not. A shard wipe won't help dungeon crowdedness either, if anything it would only exacerbate this problem as everyone would need to get back into dungeons to farm up their wealth again.

Hyperinflation? Now I'll be honest, I don't know all the ins and outs of how this works. Prevalia Coins seem to be pretty stable at around 10k per coin.... for a while now (excluding new, limited items being released to the Prevalia vendor). Let me give you an idea on some of the prices I paid when I was working on my characters about a year ago:

Skill Orbs - 50-60k
MCD - 45k
Command Cores - 70-80k

Too bad, spawn on lockdown from the 2 tops remaining guilds

I literally have never seen an entire guild lock down an entire dungeon. What I have seen is a group lock down an area, but you can simply move to another area or different dungeon. I have seen Urk camp entrances to dungeons, but that is more of a PvP thing and less about a guild controlling the dungeon.

 

[getofftheshed]

Wiping the server is a dangerous precedent. Things have changed and will continue to change in the future, this game is constantly evolving and growing.

I disagree with so much of what is in your post. A shard wipe won't help housing one bit. What will help housing is limiting the house to 1 per IP, not 1 per account. This will help regardless if the shard is wiped or not. A shard wipe won't help dungeon crowdedness either, if anything it would only exacerbate this problem as everyone would need to get back into dungeons to farm up their wealth again.

Hyperinflation? Now I'll be honest, I don't know all the ins and outs of how this works. Prevalia Coins seem to be pretty stable at around 10k per coin.... for a while now (excluding new, limited items being released to the Prevalia vendor). Let me give you an idea on some of the prices I paid when I was working on my characters about a year ago:

Skill Orbs - 50-60k
MCD - 45k
Command Cores - 70-80k



I literally have never seen an entire guild lock down an entire dungeon. What I have seen is a group lock down an area, but you can simply move to another area or different dungeon. I have seen Urk camp entrances to dungeons, but that is more of a PvP thing and less about a guild controlling the dungeon.

who said an entire dungeon? weird how you got that out of what I said.



anyways



another example how aspects have thrown everything off. They are an awesome idea but I don't see how anyone can think this is normal and now that the video is out here comes more inflation.

 

[AreYouKidden]

who said an entire dungeon? weird how you got that out of what I said.



anyways



another example how aspects have thrown everything off. They are an awesome idea but I don't see how anyone can think this is normal and now that the video is out here comes more inflation.

That video was made on the test server with no opposition, and while the template is an amazing farming template, and also high skill level to keep it efficient, it pales when it's single target, and in competition in dungeons - that's the reality - there is competition. Also keep in mind, that you need to farm 50 million gold to get al lthe link slots unlocked to make that template even feasible really - 99% of players are fizzling out before that ever because a reality.

There will always be the top 1-2% who farm above and beyond all other players, that cream will rise to the top after a shard wipe, and the world will be in the same situation in 2 years. The only difference will be the names on all the house deeds - current generation of players will have them, but because you've wiped the shard, you'll have lost any chance of those older players coming back most likely.

The correct way to deal with the housing issue is to find a way to keep housing in the hands of your active players, not in the hands of players who are logging in for 30 seconds every few weeks, to ensure they don't lose their possession - not rewarding players for their past contributions to the game, but instead focusing on their current contributions.

Even the 1 house per IP rule is just a quick fix, to free up 66% of housing - you could accomplish the same thing with creating 66% more landmass. (both come with their own issues...)

 

[Owyn]

We're not wiping the shard.

 

[Snille Blixt]

The idea of owner only refresh seems appealing.

Somebody mentioned this being an issue for extended leaves like deployment.

This part could maybe be handled by putting a storage box concept in place. where somebody could store huge amounts of items for a longer period maybe connected to house function, where you can drop all your stuff in one go to the storage facilitiy and only reclaim all of it at once. The house would still have to be sold if leaving for more than a month but it wouldn't mean having to give up the whole UO life.
So you come back after 6 months. Buy a house and unpack your storage box.

The storage box could be costing something which friends maybe can maintain in the meantime and of course it has to be done in a way to not make it another bank box.

 

[Elric]

Somebody mentioned this being an issue for extended leaves like deployment.

It is a normal tendency for players to think of a scenario that would keep a change from occurring and then going online and stating that such a scenario applies to them personally. It doesn't. It is just a way to make an argument to keep their houses while they go play another game or another shard for awhile.

 

[TheTechnicals]

All these complex solutions would again be solved simply by property tax.
Anyone with a house over say 10x10 can easily afford 10 or 20k per week. If they can't, it drops and we can all have another mode of IDOC.
If someone is taking an extended break, just make sure you have gold in your bank. Simple.
So many systems in place to encourage participation in game, sink gold off the shard, and offer housing solutions (inns) but everyone recoils at the idea of weekly taxes on large homes.
Before anyone wants to fly in and say "well everyone will just live in a 8x8". Lol, k