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Housing Discussion

Sorry, just saw this thread now, after posting a somewhat drastic revolution to the age-old housing issue on the Suggestions Forum. Should have posted here instead.

TLDR: Phase out all individual houses with rented 'semi-instanced' off-map houses with the full functionality of present houses. Persistant on-map houses are only for guild achievements.
 
you can't add co-owners or share the rental with other accounts.

This is actually a big part of why I completely bypassed the inn system as well.

I did read somewhere (discord maybe) that they are working on some inn system improvements. I think that has the capability of alleviating some of the pressure on low-end real estate prices, especially if they can make the inn rooms a bit more "desirable".
 
Wow, a lot of good information and ideas here, love it. Based on what I've heard from admin, taxes/upkeep and limiting by IP are not options. So, we need to think of other ideas.

I think the solution lies somewhere with building upon, or improving the inn rental system. IRL, what has happened every time we run out of room? We build up! I still like the idea of creating apartments/condos you can own in the big cities of outlands. You can go up multiple stories if needed. This will add an urban style vibe and add to the immersion of the game (I don't like the idea of instanced anything). You can freely co-own whoever you want, add people, ban people. Basically this would operate like a normal house, but just in city limits.
 
I still like the idea of creating apartments/condos you can own in the big cities of outlands. You can go up multiple stories if needed. This will add an urban style vibe and add to the immersion of the game (I don't like the idea of instanced anything). You can freely co-own whoever you want, add people, ban people. Basically this would operate like a normal house, but just in city limits.

I actually like this a lot, and it isn't like it would have to be thematically jarring, either.

Do a search for Chester, England for an example of urban/dense multi-level living that fits in the aesthetic that Andaria and Prevalia pulls from.

Create a vendor rental system for the first floor of said building (i.e. server-owned first floor), and use the upper two to three levels for housing - either rented monthly, or purchased.

Unfortunately, this is another example of a time consuming idea with a crapload of mapwork. Maybe Owyn could point everyone to the map editing tools he uses and hold a building-design contest in order to get other people to do a lot of the legwork for him. The "prize" for winning is that your building gets added to the shard and you get your character name on the sign or something.
 
I know absolutely nothing of what goes into creating artwork/content. But, if it is any easier instead of going up, go down. like dungeons...... think Mausoleum where those tormented souls are. You can share a common hallway, or even a common central area.

Lots of possibilities, what if this common area allows vendor placement?
 
I like the last point on Owyns list regarding lockable public doors. If a house could in a sense be used for both private and public functionality. But, maybe not all of the doors - maybe just a room. I think small houses could have basements or a garage of sorts, perhaps similar to the inn rental concept where it's kind of instanced. Maybe if there was a benefit of using the smaller houses to free up server real-estate space, but still having a private or lockable accesses area (trapdoor/teleporter, or a innkeeper-type contract that you could interact with to enter), and still allowing or a private-to-friends/guilds option (so multiple accounts could share a small house still).

As another point, in the real world where real estate is limited (cities), people tend to build up and down rather than outward. Perhaps it could be an option in a certain (new?) area(s) to only allow these types of houses so a large house can't be placed and take up 5 house spots in one just because the owner is rich - to benefit the server spacing.

IDOCs would need to be considered with the private storage area, not sure if it would work similar to the innkeeper rental situation (where those items go to the persons bank queue in the event of collapse (or if implemented, a lack of funds).
 
I haven't bothered with the rentals simply because you can't add co-owners or share the rental with other accounts.
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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).


I think this nails the problem perfectly. UOO has introduced many new systems of character enhancements that cost a lot of gold. On a server with a saturated housing market, should a new player farm for a house or for the character?

A new player, as well as a returning player who let their old house go, will probably want to prioritize the new systems instead of farming a long time for an expensive house from the secondary market. Two years ago, my (only) 8x8 cost 50k, in a cute spot. It fit right into my char development path, still let me buy skillscrolls and balls and later aspect stuff. Nowadays, a wagon in the swamp would cost the newb 500k, and an 8x8 1.5 mil? Probably they (and certainly I) would prefer to rent for a prolonged period, but only if the rented house/room had the functionality of a true house.

Combining this with my (probably too drastic) proposal in my housing revolution post in the suggestions forum:

What if all small houses (wagons and 8x8) were nice looking semi-instanced rented houses on a special map, with the full housing funcionality?

That would be an organic step 1 for a new player (plus a returning player who never cared about big houses in UO), paying a weekly rent. A good number of those new players (and of players like me) will leave again after 3-4 months ... but they won't clog the map with small houses that they refresh for a year and leave for IDOC thereafter.

Step 2, once you have your characters developed and aspected and balled and whatnot, and if you now wished to farm 20 million for a CY... ok, you will happily buy that and hop over to the main map. Making houses a big goal instead of a catch 22 bump in your character development.
 
Earning a house is much more meaningful if you cant go whack mobs at 70s for a few hours and go place an 8x8.

People want things hard to achieve, and it gives them more meaning when one does. Shards that make it easy to own housing die quickly for this reason.

If someone doesnt want to work hard and a house for them is just added storage space you recall to, then that is fine, but lowering the standards to the lowest common denominator is unhealthy to an economy.

Again, housing is fine. If you dont want the current housing economy, opt out with bank improvements and the inn system.

Edit: Instanced anything is generally not UO and should be avoided. The whole reason Owyn made the map smaller, and the dungeons designed so well, is to knock players into each other. A guy can argue house sitting is instanced enough. Although I have no problem with it, all it does is solidify a players roots to a shard and immerson because it is personal property in the overworld. But now its a tangent.
 
Again, housing is fine. If you dont want the current housing economy, opt out with bank improvements and the inn system.

I'd agree with this sentiment if the bank improvements or inn system were improved to actually be meaningful. This server encourages players to use 3 accounts, so you may as well just have a bunch of bank characters on your accounts while you're getting started (very non-classic UO since nobody would pay subs for that) rather than paying for a room rental. Rental rooms need to allow you to consolidate your stuff between accounts to have any value in my opinion.

That said, this server is always going to have more of a struggle with housing than any live UO shards had simply because it has no subs. The subs made it much more likely for housing to decay, and I think the window to refresh was even shorter as well. I think it was only about 7 days during T2A era.
 
I'd agree with this sentiment if the bank improvements or inn system were improved to actually be meaningful

What would you suggest to make Inn Rentals more meaningful? There are currently 250 rooms rented, and we'd like to improve and expand the system as it's already been a huge success.
 
Earning a house is much more meaningful if you cant go whack mobs at 70s for a few hours and go place an 8x8.

People want things hard to achieve, and it gives them more meaning when one does. Shards that make it easy to own housing die quickly for this reason.

If someone doesnt want to work hard and a house for them is just added storage space you recall to, then that is fine, but lowering the standards to the lowest common denominator is unhealthy to an economy.

Again, housing is fine. If you dont want the current housing economy, opt out with bank improvements and the inn system.

Edit: Instanced anything is generally not UO and should be avoided. The whole reason Owyn made the map smaller, and the dungeons designed so well, is to knock players into each other. A guy can argue house sitting is instanced enough. Although I have no problem with it, all it does is solidify a players roots to a shard and immerson because it is personal property in the overworld. But now its a tangent.

housing should be hard to achieve yes... but hard in the right way. was it hard for the people at the beginning to "earn" a house? no it was not.

the "difficulty" in "earning" a house now is trying to buy it off someone who was "here first" and is erotic roleplaying as a land baron, while holding a dozen houses on his "friend's" account or his "son's" account
 
housing should be hard to achieve yes... but hard in the right way. was it hard for the people at the beginning to "earn" a house? no it was not.

the "difficulty" in "earning" a house now is trying to buy it off someone who was "here first" and is erotic roleplaying as a land baron, while holding a dozen houses on his "friend's" account or his "son's" account
1. Nature of some being here before others is how anything is. Just have to deal with it. This should not be a playing field leveled, that is a dangerous precedent. Even the early days of this shard were not easy, it was night and day competition to get the best spots by chopping wood as fast as possible. This only spread out from there. I dont think there was ever really a day on this shard it was easy outside of a remote 8x8. Which is how it should be.

2. VPN abuse is niche but real and agree. I dont think its rampant enough to have an impact on the market, though. But agree I hope they find a way to stop it just on principle.
 
What would you suggest to make Inn Rentals more meaningful? There are currently 250 rooms rented, and we'd like to improve and expand the system as it's already been a huge success.


This is great to hear. The rental rooms already are (once again) proof that you guys are the best. Not afraid to think out of the UO (sand-)box, if it helps.

My wishlist in descending order of priority:

1. Being able to friend/co-owner my chars from my other accounts (this is a deal breaker for me). The interaction between chars with different roles, being able to jointly use kegs and containers for IDing, sorting etc) is the most important feature of a house for me.

2. Being able to recall out (not gate out), because of joint runebooks.

3. Have some make-believe 'surrounding' for the room instead of the present pitch black, to help with suspension of disbelief.

I'm ok with the decay restrictions / containers.

If this were implemented, I'd probably stick with a rented room until leaving, instead of my usual refreshing of a smallish house until a long vacation comes up. I typically play for 4-5 months every year and a half or so. Playstyle is solo carebear without many ambitions, so maybe I don't belong to your target audience.

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I'd go actually much further than this and substitute 8x8s and wagons completely with semi-instanced fully functional 8x8s on islands, preventing new placements on the normal map after an 8x8 or wagon falls. This would make rentals an affordable stepping stone for new player development in a saturated housing market. It also would alleviate the pressure on the big house market (more available space). And it would make it unneccessary to hold small houses /wagons around your property before expanding. But something like that would be quite blasphemic for many.
 
I didnt know you couldnt recall out. That seems fine but there may be a reason for it being implemented in the first place.

A tiny 1-2 co-owner list would seem appropriate. Besides people like myself who like to play dollhouse, for most people its about single location to organize loot. Then again if staff stick with the idea that the inn system is still best to push people towards a house (not more user friendly, just bigger and better) then this may not be a good idea.
 
What would you suggest to make Inn Rentals more meaningful? There are currently 250 rooms rented, and we'd like to improve and expand the system as it's already been a huge success.

If the goal is to help new players, my suggestion is to allow co-owners or possibly link all 3 accounts on the same IP so they can share the same rented room. I think people may forget how hard it is to get started on Outlands as a real new player (without being brought in by friends). It's a struggle to farm up your first set of kegs, to pay for bandages, reagents, etc. What I've done to date is making bankers on my other two accounts to store excess items, and using one of my accounts to sit in the arena to transfer items. This system works fine and is free, but affordable housing solves that problem in a much smoother way.

Currently, I'd be more likely to use a rented room for more storage on my "main" after buying a house. Then I can use my house for shared loot, and my rental room for item overflow and more efficient container ID usage.
 
1. Nature of some being here before others is how anything is. Just have to deal with it. This should not be a playing field leveled, that is a dangerous precedent. Even the early days of this shard were not easy, it was night and day competition to get the best spots by chopping wood as fast as possible. This only spread out from there. I dont think there was ever really a day on this shard it was easy outside of a remote 8x8. Which is how it should be.

2. VPN abuse is niche but real and agree. I dont think its rampant enough to have an impact on the market, though. But agree I hope they find a way to stop it just on principle.

it may not be as niche as you think. and not even referring to VPN specifically. it has been admitted that people/guilds have their friends who are either inactive or dont play the game anymore log in to refresh houses so they can hold more land
 
it may not be as niche as you think. and not even referring to VPN specifically. it has been admitted that people/guilds have their friends who are either inactive or dont play the game anymore log in to refresh houses so they can hold more land
I think this is more rife than VPN's even. It takes seconds for a person who doesn't play anymore to login, and refresh 3 houses. People who did play here understand how valuable it is for the people who still do, to have them login and refresh such houses.

Just look at the streamers, you have guys who used to stream constantly, but now are playing other games like Rust, and streaming that and haven't played UO in months. But you can bet they are refreshing their houses. I'm not saying you aren't allowed to play other games, I am just hoping for some kind of system that forces people wanting to refresh their houses to have to actually put in some kind of play per month in order to refresh.

Probably a pipe dream. Oh well.
 
Good Evening,
I read this entire thread and wanted to weigh in. Up front, I am a new player this is my first time playing UO in almost 10 years, this Shard is awesome, I am having so much fun and enjoying running from PK's, cutting wool off sheep to make bandages and save money, it's thrilling, really. This is the most fun i've had since UO:R and I am so thankful to have found this shard and be playing here. It's also amazing to have Dev's that care about the player base.

Currently, the housing market is way out of my price range, the cost of buying reagents to train, equipment, etc keep it very far out of reach, and that's quite alright, it took me months in the old UO to have my first small house, and man did it feel good to get it. The difference then, versus now, is that in the T2A days, before Trammel, when I played on Chesapeake, a very highly populated Shard at the time, it was always possible to score a small house if you were patient, and with the deed blessed, you could wander around with impunity trying every gap in the trees you saw. That deed cost something like 30k if my memory serves me. If you didn't have the patience for that, since space was VERY hard to come by, a modest home could be found from a player for like 100k, often less, and something a little more if the location was nice. There's a huge difference between 100k and the 500k houses are going for now.

The inn system is super creative and cool, i'd be a player on that, but I got my girlfriend into it and one of the big draws of the house is how it easily facilitates the sharing of items. If Inn rooms could have co-owners, that could be a huge improvement, that said, the paying 5k a week for a room is reaching into the pocket of new players, while older ones have no taxes. I am ok with no taxes, who on earth except bureaucrats actually like them? Just saying it's one more thing keeping that 500k goal out of your reach.

I agree whole-heartedly with the notion that it shouldn't be super easy to get a house, but I also see the point people are trying to make that it's currently a bit too hard to break into. I am a pvper at heart and have no time or need for large decorated dwellings, a building with 5 secure chests stacked along a wall and a few kegs locked down is probably as far as i'll ever go. Asking a player such as myself (I am sure I am not alone) to spend 70 hours using a meta farming method to achieve that seems a bit much. Furthermore, the prices will continue to increase, and the farming people do to make that money will drive the prices of other items up as well.

I believe the most logical answer is lowering the IDOC time, with a system in place for those that need to take long breaks. More houses falling gives more people a chance, if you randomize the IDOC timer that's a plus to make camping multiple sites harder.

I read quite a few people harping on 'what about the military?' I am active duty Army, and currently overseas (Korea). Luckily I am able to play still, I am no stranger to the Army sending me places and the inconvenience it can cause. For those that are deployed, a deployment doesn't happen overnight, and before it occurs, one goes through a checklist of things first. You put your US cellphone on pause, you perhaps cancel your lease, if you have pets, children, obligations stateside you make arrangements for them. If the admins could work out something for people (not just military) who have to take a break for a long time, that would be wonderful. That being said, the US Military (huge) accounts for about 0.5% of the entire population. Of those, the vast majority are not in a situation where they can't refresh their house, if it means that much to them. In old UO on times I had to be away, I had friends and guildmates I trusted enough to log into my account and flip my door open. The vast majority of the people with inactive houses aren't on overseas deployments.

I am going to keep playing here no matter what, because this is awesome, and I think this Dev team will come up with a good solution. Alot of great ideas in this thread, and I do understand where the old heads are coming from, I was once of you once. Just asking for you to take a moment to view this through the eyes of a new player that isn't just here for PVP like I am, where owning a house is their main goal. You will lose that player, that's one less body to shop at your vendor, be your friend, or get smoked by your PK in a dungeon crawl. :)

Thanks for listening, have a great day!
 
Hi guys apologies for the large amount of text. These are my thoughts and ideas on what we could potentially do to fix the current housing problem. The purpose of this isn’t to provide final solutions and I don’t think that the ideas here are perfect but I am a firm believer that sharing your thoughts can often spark an even better idea in someone else’s mind. I have read through this thread and some of the ideas here have already been mentioned, however I have expanded on some of them where relevant. So with that said here are some thoughts.

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Clear areas

As in real life when a company wants to build houses they have to excavate the land before doing so. Shovels exist yet we are blocked by a little bump in the land, or a shrub or branch. Either allow people to pay to clear areas, or clear areas to allow for more houses

Pros:- More space for players. Doesn’t require any additions to the map.

Cons:- Established players might just expand their homes into the new land. Will strip away resource gathering areas. Ugly land with houses as far as the eyes can see.



Create more land

There is a big ocean of space that could have extra land put in it. Also I assume because this map is smaller than OSI it’s entirely possible to just add more tiles to the sides of the map to create more ocean and more landed if needed.

If this is done it has to be done intelligently. Otherwise you will just have the rich people sail over there and place their huge mansions. By intelligently I mean, design the new space with pre-set “plot” sizes, say 10 x 9s or 8 x 8, 11 x 13s. Something that someone could actually live out of. To design these plot sizes you would just need to purposefully place shrubs or twigs or other placement blocking tiles in “random” spots to block off areas. Limiting the size of plots that can be placed.

Pros:- Blocking tiles stops rich players buying up 3-5 houses to place a larger mansion. Very efficient use of space. Pre-determined sizes prevents sub optimal placements because of placed shrubs, 10 plots = 10 houses.

Cons:- Have to create a new land, could compensate with possibly creating a new dungeon at this area to give it more purpose.

**** I like this idea but as always rich people are going to be creating accounts with VPNs to place houses so here are some ideas to stop that.

Land restricted (at least for the first week…) to active players who don’t own houses on any account. You could also have it so it would be offered to new players in a GUMP, maybe like a lottery if conditions are met, maybe just a straight up calculation. I’m not sure what the calculation would be because I don’t know what metrics the Admins are privy to. However variables it could include are. Account age, Activity, No other houses previously or currently owned, No linked accounts with houses. The “Activity” can be gamed by people never logging out for their “activity” which is why other metrics are important such as. Gold/week, Monster kills/week etc.


Room Rental Fixes

The room rental system is nice; it allows people to have somewhere to store their stuff. However, its implementation makes it not good to use. A room rental should come with at least some of the benefits of owning a house. As it is now its just a glorified bank box. One of the major benefits of owning a house is the ability to store things for all your characters to use. This should be part of the room rental. It should be rented for the account and usable for every character on the account.

Possibly add the ability to rent different sized rooms for different costs, upgrade rooms for lock downs, allow recall into and out of room.



Apartments (Instancing similar to room rentals)

The ability to flat out purchase an apartment for a set fee. The apartment can be upgraded in the same way a house can be upgraded. Different sized apartments to purchase. The same restrictions apply in regards to IDOC if the apartment isn’t used. If someone finds a house to buy onland and wants to sell their apartment the sell price is 50% of the purchase price.

Pros:- Would reduce housing demand and the ridiculous prices. Because the same IDOC policy would be in place and the apartment is instanced. Goods that normally would of ended up in hands of other players are now removed from the server reducing overall wealth.

Cons:- Kinda lonely having all black around your apartment. Still not as good as a house, no resource gathering nearby.



Apartments (New house deed)

Create a deed that when placed creates a 2 - 3 level plot. Each floor is its own house and can have individual owners. The person that places the plot does (or doesn’t) own any of the floors. Each floor can be sold off to other players the same way a house is. If a floor were to IDOC, all goods in the apartment get kicked out to the ground outside, the floor returns control of the initial plot placer. Or it could also be placed on the housing market for a price. If someone purchases it the money is liquidated.

Pros:- Potentially double available housing. People could replace their 8x8 with a 2 floor 8x8 and sell off one of the levels.

Cons:- I’m not sure how easy this would be to implement or even if it’s possible with current game mechanics. Owner would have to "buy back" floors if they wanted to remove the deed and replace with another building.



Forced selling

So this will be a very unpopular idea for those house hoarders. I have scoured the land looking at houses and there is a large portion of places that aren’t even being used. Simply being held by people. This again will rely on metrics collected by the admins but if they just go through their data about how often a house is accessed as well as comparing the amount of items/change of items in the house it should be easy to detect the houses that are just being refreshed, and houses that are being used.

Once a house is detected as not being used it is placed onto the housing market for sale at 125%-150% of the deed value. The player owning it is not able to remove it from the market, no accounts of the player are allowed to buy it back, if it doesn’t sell on the market the house goes into IDOC, or is removed completely or is offered to a player at deed price like a lottery based on a calculation of account age, activity, gold earned, monsters killed, no other houses across all accounts and must have available gold to buy the deed.

Things like ACTIVITY should be have a hard limit. For example if the hard limit on gold earn / week was 100k, then earning 200k a week wouldn’t increase your weighting in the calculation. This is to try and include everyone in the lottery and not just the people with lots of free time. Of course these details should be a secret or again people will try to game the system.

Pros:- Puts pressure on holders to stop holding and start selling. More realisic house prices on the housing market... Sick of looking at caravans for 1.5 mill+

Cons:- Puts pressure on holders to stop holding and start selling



Limit housing based on size

There is a limit of 3 accounts per person, 1 house per account. So someone can have 3 houses in total, but if they own what would be deemed a large house, do they really need 3 houses?

If you own what would be deemed a large house, like a 16 x or a 17 x something, then that is the only house allowed on all 3 of your accounts. Because houses can be upgraded ad infinitum to increase secures and lockdowns there is no need for someone to have extra houses. 1 house this size should easily be able to accommodate 3 accounts. To aid in this, reduce the cost of upgrading secures in the property.

Pros:- Stops people hoarding 3 large houses they probably dont even use unless they are just filling them full of vendors.

Cons:- Will upset some long term players who have 3 large houses. Not sure how many people this would affect. You will probably have the data on that.


Family Playing (Audit)

There are measures in place to allow family’s to have extra accounts from the same IP because of playing with their partner/kid etc. If the wife and kid(s) or house mates play they could potentially have up to 9 -12 accounts from a single IP. But the question is, do they actually play the game or are they just “playing” for the purpose of holding a house.

I’ve looked over the guide lines, and I, being a single male who lives by himself, could easily get people to pose in a picture, use their email addresses and idle in a discord channel (All they would have to do is just mute the channel and forget about it). Just because someone has "proven" that they have family doesn’t mean that any of the members actually play the game. An audit should be done on a regular basis to check if these privileged households do indeed have genuinely active players and not just inactive home owners.

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So here are my thoughts guys, please feel free to critique maybe we can come up with some better ideas.
 
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Bringing up this post again because housing prices have really exploded in the past couple months.

Clearly this is driven by inflation and higher player counts, the solution to both problems as I proposed previously is a property tax on housing. It would fix several issues at once, and encourage more active gameplay which is what the admins claim to want.

If someone can't afford 10-50k/wk for their 30x30, perhaps they should downsize