Stormay
Apprentice
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 been repeated. The reason is because it has a huge scalability problem. Either housing is based only on deed price, or housing transcends gold value due to scarcity. Most UO servers face both of these issues as the server ages. Unless the population declines (which is actually fairly common on UO servers), housing will only continue on a trajectory of scarcity. Outlands is fortunate to be one of the few servers ever with a consistent and high population, and at this point in its life, Outlands might be in a league of its own.
When we look at the market now, medium-large houses simply aren't really moving. The problem is almost entirely supply side, and larger houses have transcended gold value. If I get a courtyard house, what gold offer would I accept to sell? Almost none, unless it was so outrageous I think I could upgrade. That house at that point is more valuable than gold in most realistic scenarios. I also have absolutely zero motivation to sell, unless I thought I could get a better house. End game housing is a huge part of the UO end game, and besides a 30-day IDOC timer, I have no incentive to ever sell it.
Then you get to the buyers side. Does someone without a courtyard really want one? Sure, but do they want it enough to farm XX millions? Maybe, maybe not. Most people see the effort of farming 15m for a medium sized courtyard house and either decide that the value isn't there, or that the gold would be better invested in advancing their characters in other ways. For example, if you buy store bought bread and a slightly inflated value, it will still make sandwhiches. You might want the artisan bread, but are you going to pay a 20x markup on it? The difference here, is the market has no incentive to actually sell the bread, so that bread is going to stay at 20x markup, or likely even go up.
There are a couple options to help address this. The obvious one is a land expansion for housing. A small expansion doesn't make a dent in the problem, while a massive one might anger people who previously paid a markup for their location. I don't think that is a particularly big deal, bit most importantly, an expansion still doesn't really address the problem of having 0 motivation to ever sell a house. Also, this solution is most likely only temporary, with the effective time based on the size of the expansion, and will only be effective assuming people aren't actually hoarding houses on more than 3 accounts. I am not making any accusations here, I have no idea if it is a problem, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was happening to some extent.
I've been trying to think of a non-punitive solution that motivates someone with 3 large houses to sell. Or motivates someone who is only logging once every 30 days to refresh their mansion. Unfortunately, I am not that creative. I looked at real life examples, despite there being obvious flaws and differences in virtual/irl real-estate, and what I came up with isn't a unique solution that has probably been presented before, but would solve both of these scenarios: property taxes.
Everyone hates taxes. Nobody wants to be penalized for existing. We all agree there. However, property taxes based on the house footprint (except caravans, caravans pay 30x30 pricing because fuck them) might incentivize someone with 3 large houses, where 1-2 see very little use, to sell. It also incentivize the person who only logs once per 30 days to either play more to maintain their house, bring their crew back, or entice them to finally sell to give someone who is active a chance to have a large house.
The big problem here is the numbers. Someone with 3 large houses also probably has enough wealth not to care about paying 20k/month (or whatever) per house, whereas active player without 3 large houses is probably not going to love paying a large amount of gold as just a random fee. Perhaps allow 1 house per player (IP) to be tax exempt/reduced as a homestead exemption, so that people are still incentivized to have an end game house, are incentivized to upgrade, but are de-incentivized to hold on to 3 large houses. Perhaps instead of a raw gold cost to the taxes, tie it to some sort of item, so that some of the gold value of that item is flexible and player-driven. Raw resources maybe?
Maybe instead of calling it taxes, call it upkeep, and have the IDOC timer permanently halved every X days until Y resources are fed into upkeep.
Edit; After speaking to some people about the upkeep idea, VPNs were brought up as potentially being an actual problem. That's not shocking, but I didn't want to dive too far into it until I heard more people mention it.
I think this upkeep idea actually helps address that issue, although the "1 house free"/ homestead exemption could be a problem for curbing VPNs. Perhaps the homestead exemption would entail a 1 time upkeep, however it would be bigger than normal. That might be enough that if someone happened to have more than 3 houses, they would opt to not keep them. It would have to be big enough to be a meaningful choice, maybe not something everyone would choose to do for a smaller house even if they used it. Large enough that someone with an unused house would absolutely not see value from it.
If anyone has a creative solution that incentivizes someone with multiple houses to sell (especially non-punitive), I would love to talk about it with you.
UO Housing is one of the coolest concepts in MMO history, and yet it has almost never been repeated. The reason is because it has a huge scalability problem. Either housing is based only on deed price, or housing transcends gold value due to scarcity. Most UO servers face both of these issues as the server ages. Unless the population declines (which is actually fairly common on UO servers), housing will only continue on a trajectory of scarcity. Outlands is fortunate to be one of the few servers ever with a consistent and high population, and at this point in its life, Outlands might be in a league of its own.
When we look at the market now, medium-large houses simply aren't really moving. The problem is almost entirely supply side, and larger houses have transcended gold value. If I get a courtyard house, what gold offer would I accept to sell? Almost none, unless it was so outrageous I think I could upgrade. That house at that point is more valuable than gold in most realistic scenarios. I also have absolutely zero motivation to sell, unless I thought I could get a better house. End game housing is a huge part of the UO end game, and besides a 30-day IDOC timer, I have no incentive to ever sell it.
Then you get to the buyers side. Does someone without a courtyard really want one? Sure, but do they want it enough to farm XX millions? Maybe, maybe not. Most people see the effort of farming 15m for a medium sized courtyard house and either decide that the value isn't there, or that the gold would be better invested in advancing their characters in other ways. For example, if you buy store bought bread and a slightly inflated value, it will still make sandwhiches. You might want the artisan bread, but are you going to pay a 20x markup on it? The difference here, is the market has no incentive to actually sell the bread, so that bread is going to stay at 20x markup, or likely even go up.
There are a couple options to help address this. The obvious one is a land expansion for housing. A small expansion doesn't make a dent in the problem, while a massive one might anger people who previously paid a markup for their location. I don't think that is a particularly big deal, bit most importantly, an expansion still doesn't really address the problem of having 0 motivation to ever sell a house. Also, this solution is most likely only temporary, with the effective time based on the size of the expansion, and will only be effective assuming people aren't actually hoarding houses on more than 3 accounts. I am not making any accusations here, I have no idea if it is a problem, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was happening to some extent.
I've been trying to think of a non-punitive solution that motivates someone with 3 large houses to sell. Or motivates someone who is only logging once every 30 days to refresh their mansion. Unfortunately, I am not that creative. I looked at real life examples, despite there being obvious flaws and differences in virtual/irl real-estate, and what I came up with isn't a unique solution that has probably been presented before, but would solve both of these scenarios: property taxes.
Everyone hates taxes. Nobody wants to be penalized for existing. We all agree there. However, property taxes based on the house footprint (except caravans, caravans pay 30x30 pricing because fuck them) might incentivize someone with 3 large houses, where 1-2 see very little use, to sell. It also incentivize the person who only logs once per 30 days to either play more to maintain their house, bring their crew back, or entice them to finally sell to give someone who is active a chance to have a large house.
The big problem here is the numbers. Someone with 3 large houses also probably has enough wealth not to care about paying 20k/month (or whatever) per house, whereas active player without 3 large houses is probably not going to love paying a large amount of gold as just a random fee. Perhaps allow 1 house per player (IP) to be tax exempt/reduced as a homestead exemption, so that people are still incentivized to have an end game house, are incentivized to upgrade, but are de-incentivized to hold on to 3 large houses. Perhaps instead of a raw gold cost to the taxes, tie it to some sort of item, so that some of the gold value of that item is flexible and player-driven. Raw resources maybe?
Maybe instead of calling it taxes, call it upkeep, and have the IDOC timer permanently halved every X days until Y resources are fed into upkeep.
Edit; After speaking to some people about the upkeep idea, VPNs were brought up as potentially being an actual problem. That's not shocking, but I didn't want to dive too far into it until I heard more people mention it.
I think this upkeep idea actually helps address that issue, although the "1 house free"/ homestead exemption could be a problem for curbing VPNs. Perhaps the homestead exemption would entail a 1 time upkeep, however it would be bigger than normal. That might be enough that if someone happened to have more than 3 houses, they would opt to not keep them. It would have to be big enough to be a meaningful choice, maybe not something everyone would choose to do for a smaller house even if they used it. Large enough that someone with an unused house would absolutely not see value from it.
If anyone has a creative solution that incentivizes someone with multiple houses to sell (especially non-punitive), I would love to talk about it with you.
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