Housing Discussion

[AreYouKidden]

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

Well said..

Housing

I didn't anger the player base nearly enough with my tamer post, so this one will for sure do the job. Maybe not, because this is going to be a TLDR and you will just skip this anyway. Trigger warning: TAXES UO Housing is one of the coolest concepts in MMO history, and yet it has almost never...

forums.uooutlands.com

 

[Cabal]

Overall this is one of the best housing problems/issues discussion threads I have observed in quite sometime. It is nice for the admins to have put this situation out to their player base for input as this can be a delicate issue for many and decent, civil discourse between the players has occurred.

I am interested in what the administrators have to say in updating us with the options they are most carefully considering implementing (or have implemented) to combat and manage the housing issues. I feel it will have to definitely be a multi-pronged attack.

I have no special ideas myself. I agree with modifying the refresh rules regarding who can refresh after certain time periods. I agree with tweaking the house decay timer. I agree with some form of taxation if people are allowed multiple houses per account group.

I could potentially agree with one house per account group if vendor/public house doors are lockable, no taxation, and you can house ban people. I can't remember right now if you can ban people from public houses. Hopefully someone can help me with this.

I know the admins aren't fans of this but I believe very minor modifications to the current map to allow some more houses to be placed is something I can agree to. Although, I thought someone mentioned this might have happened.

I think expanding the current inn system (if necessary or possible) is a good idea. I do not like some sort of new "urban structure" for apartments idea.

The new landmass idea I think is viable. Although for me I do not favor a new player only landmass or trailer park landmass (Malasesque). I look back at OSI and think what would have happened if housing would have been open in the Lost Lands as part of the Secondage expansion in 1998? Probably just delayed the creation of the atrocities after it but still would have been cool. I believe it would be difficult but I think the admins here are creative enough to make an awesome second landmass, especially with some of the historical lore they have created.

Hopefully I am correct in thinking the housing issue people are discussing in this thread, are the "pointless, space taking" homes regardless of size that do not appear to be used in anyway, serve no purpose, are empty, and do not appear to be for sale. This ties into the dummy accounts that probably own many of these homes and only serve that purpose.

The issue of people violating the accounts per IP address policy through the use of various programs and how it is tied to housing sounds very difficult. Hopefully, something can be done about it, probably not totally eradicate it, but maybe make it a little more difficult to do. I noticed one individual talk about examining game time on accounts that was done on another server and account validation.

Good luck to the staff and hopefully they will come up with some good ways to manage the housing issue.

 

[AreYouKidden]

Hopefully I am correct in thinking the housing issue people are discussing in this thread, are the "pointless, space taking" homes regardless of size that do not appear to be used in anyway, serve no purpose, are empty, and do not appear to be for sale. This ties into the dummy accounts that probably own many of these homes and only serve that purpose.

The issue of people violating the accounts per IP address policy through the use of various programs and how it is tied to housing sounds very difficult. Hopefully, something can be done about it, probably not totally eradicate it, but maybe make it a little more difficult to do. I noticed one individual talk about examining game time on accounts that was done on another server and account validation.

My issue with the housing is the "inactive" houses - I don't believe they are healthy for the server long term, players feel more tied to a server once they own a piece of it, part of the land, and tend to be more invested when they do. When a person finally moves on from the game, and hangs on to that plot of land, refreshing it regularly with no real effort (just log in/out) - as opposed to upkeep, actually playing etc.. they are stopping future generations from finding a piece of Avadon to draw them in. I have zero issues with the housing economy itself, it's tied to inflation - people can make far more gold selling items or resources now than when the server first launched - so it stands to reason housing should be more expensive. But every dead plot out there, is a hole in the server that doesn't help generate more activity.

Inactive houses are from people moving on, and from VPN's holding houses for a better housing deal, though the latter I don't believe is a major issue compared to the people who burnt out getting their home settled, then got bored and started playing other games.

I don't believe in 1 house per account group - working out upgrades becomes extremely hard then - though with a settled server, it's pretty hard to find two houses side by side to upgrade - with the exception of finding/fighting for IDOC's.

I do believe in upkeep for houses - the theory being to keep an estate in top notch order, you need to sink some time & resources into it. Repair your roof, your walls etc.. It shouldn't be overly heavy - and it should scale based on the size of the house. The reason it should scale on the size of your house, because 1 30x30 house takes up 8 - 8x8 plots, so for someone owning the largest plot, that's 7 less people who can own their piece of Avadon. Upkeep will push houses into IDOC state faster once people move on - and get that land back to multiple people.

I also believe in taxing players who have multiple houses on their account group - it should scale based on the number of houses you have - because again your over indulging and stopping another player from owning a house.

I don't begrudge anyone owning multiple houses, but if 1 person wants to own 3 - 30x30 homes (not sure anyone does), that's 24 people who aren't able to squeeze an 8x8 on the map.. They should have to continuously pay for it.

 

[getofftheshed]

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...)

I've been playing lately. Go to any daemon spawn and look what is happening especially in the two popular ones with blood daemons or the drowned ones. People are steamrolling them and get this. I'd say 90% of the players are not even looting the 150 regs and I'd say around 30%-40% are not even looting the 900+ gold. That is how meaningless 150 regs and 900 gold has become, they are not even worth the weight to carry... IF that isn't a sign there is a problem then we obviously have completely different mindsets on how an economy should function.

 

[getofftheshed]

We're not wiping the shard.

I only suggest it because it is worth it, long run. Shard only two years old and land is filled with a ton of empty houses. Surely that isn't what you want?

Just imagine how cool it would be with your guys' skills. You let everyone know that shard wipe is happening at end of this year so they have almost 10 months to finish up whatever they want to do. You can make some story events out of it and sometime around Christmas it happens and world is wiped. When we come back you can have new landmass if you want to add(might as well future proof it), fix anything you want to fix with game mechanics and players can keep all the items they have accumulated so far like statues and rares.

When shard goes live again you can make rule changes to housing. 1 house per IP will make a much needed difference. I'd also say nerf the heck out of aspect gear.

Change barding so people can't just peace mobs to death.

Also, an overworld dungeon would be cool. A large, ,multi-room, multi-floor castle we could go room to room and clear similar to a WoW raid.



Anyone who says they won't return if you wipe is full of it or if you think people will be upset they won't. It's UO, no one stops for good.

 

[Cabal]

My issue with the housing is the "inactive" houses - I don't believe they are healthy for the server long term, players feel more tied to a server once they own a piece of it, part of the land, and tend to be more invested when they do. When a person finally moves on from the game, and hangs on to that plot of land, refreshing it regularly with no real effort (just log in/out) - as opposed to upkeep, actually playing etc.. they are stopping future generations from finding a piece of Avadon to draw them in. I have zero issues with the housing economy itself, it's tied to inflation - people can make far more gold selling items or resources now than when the server first launched - so it stands to reason housing should be more expensive. But every dead plot out there, is a hole in the server that doesn't help generate more activity.

Inactive houses are from people moving on, and from VPN's holding houses for a better housing deal, though the latter I don't believe is a major issue compared to the people who burnt out getting their home settled, then got bored and started playing other games.

I don't believe in 1 house per account group - working out upgrades becomes extremely hard then - though with a settled server, it's pretty hard to find two houses side by side to upgrade - with the exception of finding/fighting for IDOC's.

I do believe in upkeep for houses - the theory being to keep an estate in top notch order, you need to sink some time & resources into it. Repair your roof, your walls etc.. It shouldn't be overly heavy - and it should scale based on the size of the house. The reason it should scale on the size of your house, because 1 30x30 house takes up 8 - 8x8 plots, so for someone owning the largest plot, that's 7 less people who can own their piece of Avadon. Upkeep will push houses into IDOC state faster once people move on - and get that land back to multiple people.

I also believe in taxing players who have multiple houses on their account group - it should scale based on the number of houses you have - because again your over indulging and stopping another player from owning a house.

I don't begrudge anyone owning multiple houses, but if 1 person wants to own 3 - 30x30 homes (not sure anyone does), that's 24 people who aren't able to squeeze an 8x8 on the map.. They should have to continuously pay for it.

I agree with combatting inactive housing. I agree with taxation/upkeep and your ideas regarding taxation/upkeep seem reasonable and logical.

 

[AreYouKidden]

I've been playing lately. Go to any daemon spawn and look what is happening especially in the two popular ones with blood daemons or the drowned ones. People are steamrolling them and get this. I'd say 90% of the players are not even looting the 150 regs and I'd say around 30%-40% are not even looting the 900+ gold. That is how meaningless 150 regs and 900 gold has become, they are not even worth the weight to carry... IF that isn't a sign there is a problem then we obviously have completely different mindsets on how an economy should function.

That's a sign of an active 2 year player who is set, and doesn't care about gold - and is only interested in farming the 250k wilderness society as fast as they can, and increasing the experience on their mastery chain due to how big of a grind it is, possibly someone grinding seasonal gold farmed rankings. On top of that so many min maxers look at the weight of reagents compared to gold, and never pick them up, some of them look at number of clicks when looting a mob slowing them down getting in their way of XP earned... That doesn't mean the value of gold is entirely shot here. It's actually somewhat a sign of a healthy economy - in that we have soo many newer players all buying into skill scrolls & orbs, and such, driving the value up on them, that more established players only bother with looting those special items, because they have purchased all they could ever want.

 

[Rephren]

So, in reading all the replies, again AYK makes many excellent suggestions and obviously housing has become an issue.

Yes, having a house should be a valuable thing.
Yes, it should be difficult and extremely rewarding to be able to afford your own home. It was. Now, the shard has become filled with empty houses. Just run through any packed housing area, you will see many empty wagons and 8x8's which are holding houses people place through VPN's. Not gonna name any guild names but it is happening. Also, as AYK mentions, people shouldn't keep being rewarded for their past contributions to the shard, having moved on to other games but logging in once a month for 5 seconds to refresh their houses and move on again just because they like "having their plot on Outlands" but there is a high probability they will never return to actively play.

That being said, as someone said, everyone recoils in horror at property taxes. OK, fine then let's make houses require resources. Iron and Boards, specifically. It is in line with upkeep on houses. It was floated a while back, it seems to be slowly gaining traction. It can start off low for small houses such as wagons and 8x8s. Maybe, 2k iron 2k boards per month. Getting more and more for bigger houses. This will really help a lot.

The amount of houses hogging valuable Outlands land has now become a problem. As the small discussion in the Real Estate discord earlier, there are also now no wagon spots left anywhere. The real estate guys are convinced Outlands is now officially full. New players want to know they can own their own piece, as AYK, they will be more invested and will play longer. I don't have a problem with people owning 3 properties per IP. I have a problem with empty houses that sit for a year or more doing nothing but blocking people expanding their houses, or letting new players own a house.

Maybe property can be dealt up in sizes per IP? up to 12x12 3 allowed per IP, 21x21 only 2 allowed per IP (can't own a third house), 30x30 only one allowed per IP (can't own a second or third house on their IP).

Just some ideas, hopefully a solution is brought in the next few months otherwise we're going to see some serious problems for new players, which is the lifeblood of any server.

 

[TheTechnicals]

So, in reading all the replies, again AYK makes many excellent suggestions and obviously housing has become an issue.

Yes, having a house should be a valuable thing.
Yes, it should be difficult and extremely rewarding to be able to afford your own home. It was. Now, the shard has become filled with empty houses. Just run through any .....

What's the difference between overly-complex resources required to keep homes alive and just having a tax? People will just go buy ingots/boards.

Make the tax flat at 20gp per tile per week. If you're in an 8x8 that's 1280 gold per week. Peanuts.
If you're in a 30x30 that's 18k/week. If you're going to take up 900 tiles of land and deny it to others, pay for it. You somehow got the scratch to afford a mansion you can pay the upkeep.

 

[Lemora]

I still dont understand what all the hubbub is about.

Theres plenty of houses for sale on the vendor every day.

Housing isnt even the most expensive thing on this shard. For the price of one gold link you can easily have a house on every account, just willy nilly buying off the vendor right now.

Owyn is quoted as saying the whole tax thing wont happen because its entirely un-fun and way too irl bad times.

If population doubles from here, yeah maybe you rethink idoc timers. Housing situation seems more fine and the least of concern the more I play here.

 

[Rephren]

What's the difference between overly-complex resources required to keep homes alive and just having a tax? People will just go buy ingots/boards.

Make the tax flat at 20gp per tile per week. If you're in an 8x8 that's 1280 gold per week. Peanuts.
If you're in a 30x30 that's 18k/week. If you're going to take up 900 tiles of land and deny it to others, pay for it. You somehow got the scratch to afford a mansion you can pay the upkeep.

Because it is part of immersion into upkeep on houses. Also it gives the player an option to mine/lumber the wood themselves, creating more interest in gathering, potentially.

Or, we could always just do nothing and keep everything the same as it is and see 8x8's going up in price exponentially. I joined a year ago, 8x8 was 200k. I bought 2 8x8's for 200k and one under 200k. Now? 400%-500% increase. February 2022? Where are the new players? Oh, in inns until they manage to grind out a few mil for a small house. Not the best situation for a shard. There have been examples in the past of other servers where new players arriving started tapering off, because they saw how difficult it is to own a piece of the server land and how advanced everyone else is, and that the grind to get started looks intimidating. This is not conjecture, MMORPG's have been going for decades, the history is there, clear to see. The fact people have identified housing as a possible issue coming up in the next year, is not people being bored and wanting to moan over something.

Anyway, I'm not here to convince people who refuse to acknowledge the problem, I'm just here to help suggest it could become an issue and help suggest possible solutions, along with others. I always say to my team at work, if you see a problem, come to me, but come with at least one possible solution. I'm trying to do the same.

 

[Elric]

It would much easier to do nothing instead of having continued discussions of fairness and the economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole . Luckily I see many other shards pop up on Reddit that probably have an abundance of land to build homes on.

 

[Lemora]

Well if they follow such economically backwards and oppressive socialist nonsense I am indeed sure they have plenty of open land. The realm of UO shards is indeed a free market. Enjoy.

 

[Cabal]

While I agree with the statements above from Lemora and Elric, it was the administrators that started this thread to begin with. So instead of getting into political ideologies and economics, too much, I view it differently. I view this more as a business situation, where the admins have created a product or provide a service and we are their customers or consumers. So they are asking their customers about their product/service.

The admins can correct me if I am wrong but I feel like this discussion is about how they can potentially improve upon their product and/or provide a better service to their customers/consumers.

 

[Eric]

So changing the subject away from the very clear off topic nature of trying to compare ultima online free shards to nation-state economies, how about another suggestion:

Require an hour of active playtime before you can refresh your house - people who are logging in just to refresh, likely barely only give enough of a crap to do something for literally 2 minutes each month. Make it just a bit more inconvenient, and I think a lot more unused houses will collapse.

 

[Lemora]

While I agree with the statements above from Lemora and Elric, it was the administrators that started this thread to begin with. So instead of getting into political ideologies and economics, too much, I view it differently. I view this more as a business situation, where the admins have created a product or provide a service and we are their customers or consumers. So they are asking their customers about their product/service.

The admins can correct me if I am wrong but I feel like this discussion is about how they can potentially improve upon their product and/or provide a better service to their customers/consumers.

I dont mean to insert politics. However UO shards, having watched many rise and fall and interacting with all of their markets, are very free markets that operate on pure human emotion and response, so they very, one might even say eerily, resemble and mirror real life markets.

Except unlike real life where a person is attached at the hip to his property location and the burdens of moving (and therefore more succesptible to oppressive regulation), a UO player can up and leave at any time. This is why Owyn is quoted as saying such an idea would never be implemented. All it would do is turn away players.

The type of player who works hard to establish himself wants to be left alone, and these are long term players not bothered by a normal functioning market (if not simply feeling a bit of temporary demand stress). Players too lazy to check the real estate vendor every other day, and farm a few nights to get a house, are of course by human nature the ones that want the market adjusted to fit their desires. This is the tragedy of the commons scenario (disguised as """"fairness"""") that is analogous to real life. That road always ends in destruction.

So changing the subject away from the very clear off topic nature of trying to compare ultima online free shards to nation-state economies,

Except, no offense, if you understood macroeconomics youd know that they are actually very much analogous and parallel. Which is why it came up. But I digress. If no one wants to take it there (and I didnt really except being very offended by the notions of the post up there, because I really love this shard) then thats fine, and I only disagree and want to point out that the thought they are not similar is interestingly, wrong.

Im not super interested in taking this into political discussion, but it is at least interesting and in my opinion this thread had already run its course anyway.

 

[Cabal]

Lemora and Elric I like your thoughts and ideas. I agree there are parallels to be seen and I do find it somewhat interesting regarding real life economics and politics. I agree with not just trying to make things a cake walk into housing and manipulating housing to make it easy in various ways.

I have always thought this thread was generated for the purpose of combatting "housing waste" or "land waste" on the shard. I myself are not looking for some serious housing or economy manipulating systems to be put in place.

So I am glad Owyn would not implement taxes as yes that would be not fun. I did agree with it if it would be necessary to combat my aforementioned housing waste issue.

Yes Lemora I could agree this thread has potentially ran it's course as the same ideas are being rehashed and rediscussed. That is why I have been interested if the admins have decided upon anything.

 

[Lemora]

Well the problem is a lot of different angles to any potential housing issue are getting muddied up.

The main issues I see are:
- House refreshing. In my opinion not an issue. Im sorry if your neighbors empty house is an eyesore, but you cant assume his motive. It is also quite selfish to demand action and removal of property of someone else because of how you feel about it and your assumed motives. Sure there are people who just refresh monthly. What if they are just really busy? What if they are sick and its a relative logging on? We have no idea. Also a player dedicated enough to keep their house standing IS something to still keep because that means they will be back, otherwise it would IDOC. Im torn on this one, but on sheer principle of natural property rights, lessaize faire.

- House hoarding. This definitely is an issue. And I am not sure what can be done to stop it as Owyn has explained. Just today or yesterday on Discord someone was very blatantly holding more than three houses and dropped for a CY but theres not much to do to stop it with VPN. I would prefer to see houses limited to 1 per IP, or account group. Or possibly keep it at 3 but implement some shard wide registration of account group. The former might not even be enough because "my brother" etc. This would be the one regulation sort of measure that I think would actually work and be healthy, market wise, if it could even be implemented.

- House cost. I do not think this is an issue. There are plenty of houses for sale on the vendor every day reasonably for the population and current gold inflation. Ive been playing this shard for months, and havent bought one yet because Im picky and I also dont farm, so its slow and been watching. One has to ignore the dumb overpriced houses that sit, and just watch daily to see the housing market price wise and volume moving is fine considering the level of farming here and how short of time one can earn one, and people act like nothing is available at all and that isnt true.

I would personally as well like to see a shorter IDOC and have posted such in the past. But in my opinion the only issue needed urgent addressing is hoarding abuse, but again, I have no idea how to solve that. What is needed definitely isnt any sort of broad sweeping communal regulation that hurts everyone, but I digress as that horse is pulp at this point.

See, theres plenty still to talk about after all.

 

[Eric]

edited to remove off topic comment.

On topic:

I don't agree with a shorter IDOC.

I'd much rather see active playtime used to keep houses intact, vs the legacy IDOC process, or taxes. (edit: I'm not passionately against preserving the status quo, or taxes for that matter - either won't affect my playing on the shard)

I have mixed opinions on if hoarding is actually the main problem or not. There are tons of empty houses of all sizes (not a single chest). The answer as to why they are empty is something only the shard admins could find out, and even then they would be using a lot of incomplete information.

Hell, my house looks like a parked house to any passerby, because I'm too busy playing the game and selling all my items to raise gold to even decorate it!

 

[Markar]

I think the biggest improvement from a new player's perspective would be upgrading the room rental system. I found out about the rental system fairly late, and although I still don't have a real house, I haven't bothered with the rentals simply because you can't add co-owners or share the rental with other accounts. Even new players are generally playing up two or three accounts (say two for sparring and one for crafting), and the biggest draw for housing is so you can consolidate your loot and kegs. Even if you can't add accounts from other IP addresses (which I would prefer, just increase the cost to say 10k/week), I would at least use the system then. As it stands, housing prices are getting worse and worse, with the cheapest wagons running about 500k now. Between aspect, skill balls, skill scrolls, and cost of raising skills, I think many people would prefer to use a rental room for a longer period of time while working on those more essential parts of the game, and then upgrading to a real house when they want the cosmetics (and larger space).