Suggested Housing Ownership Change

For the 154th time, I would like to see what others thoughts are.

Problem: Vacant houses everywhere
Suggestion: I suggest we restrict home ownership to one house per account.

Debate: The argument has always been "people should not expect to get a fort unless they out in the work!" or "You cant reward laziness!"
My answer: It has nothing to do with everyone owning a fort, though that would be interesting. This has everything to do with the housing market as a whole. Let me explain: Let's say I owned 1 fort and 2 keeps...sure that's practical. I worked hard, and should be able to reward myself. Now, along with my 3 large houses, I own 12 other small houses surrounding Moongates, Towns, Unique locations. This is where the problem lies.

You see, not everyone wants a LARGE house. In fact, I would be happy with a cool small house next to a town or moongate. That is not very possible right now which is why the housing inflation has been insane, 25 million for a fort? Insane. 70+mill for a small house next to Ocllo? ppfft

Solution: Implement a change to limiting one home per account. (this can be done by disabling ability for non owners to refresh, and rewarding individuals for surrendering their extra properties with maybe a wall deco item of some sort)

Results: New people would have a reason to Play and Stay, rather than just leave. Housing market would correct itself. No more 25mill forts. No more 15mill keeps. MORE PEOPLE TO RP, PVP, AND PVM! WIN FOR ALL!

I think this is currently being worked on?

[12:42:40] <King_Ragnar_Lothbrok> or make it where the actual owner has to refresh
[12:43:08] <King_Ragnar_Lothbrok> atleast once every 2 months

[12:44:55] <~Telamon> That is being worked on, but its complex to retroactively apply
[12:45:02] <~Telamon> without a lot of houses decaying almost immediately
[12:45:21] <~Telamon> it will be added soon though

I support one house per account but don’t really see that happening.

As I own 0 houses I approve this change

People aren't paying 25M for a fort because there's no room to place a tower. People are paying 25M for a fort because there's no room to place forts. This change isn't going to make room for forts. This change will make room for a tower somewhere in the woods, maybe.

Take me, for example, I own 9 houses. Most of those are blockers around my forts which I technically don't need. If I dropped all but 3 houses there still wouldn't be room to place a fort anywhere.

Sure, lots of people are content in smaller homes with no CY's, but if you want a CY you're going to need to fork over some dough at this point in the game.

I would say that you even agree that premium houses should fetch giant price tags, @Air. I mean, you spent 30M on that glow log cabin location, didn't you? That's not a banking nor a direct moongate location and it fetched 30M, easy.

i think it is too late at this point since transition would victimize a lot of people. Plus, prime spots wont fall down with this. I believe that housing market is quite healthy as it is.

High end houses cost alot, low/middle class houses are cheap or for free. Sounds to me like the economy is good right now.

Only thing I could imagine or agree with: Decrease amount of CY houses that one can own.

EDIT: And stop allowing this friend-refreshment thing. So that houses are only refreshed when the account of the owner is used.

Hello, I definitely support this initiative and I think that one house on your account is enough for a comfortable stay! Well, I also belong to the group of people who do not need big houses, I have enough of one house in the city and one for the store near the moongate...

I vote positively

I don't like the idea of one house per account for a few reasons. (I will admit to being a bit biased as I own 12 houses)

(1) As stated above, it wouldn't make more spots for very large houses available. Anyone who owns a Fort/Keep will most likely keep their larger house and ixnay their smaller houses. More small and medium house spots will be available, and even some tower spots, but there's not a shortage of these spots right now.

(2) Real estate will crumble. People who engage in this business practice currently will have to choose between having houses for them to live in, and keeping their ONE house slot on each account available for owning houses they wish to sell. Not only this, there will be less people able to purchase houses, since it won't take long to fill your 3 house slots. And again, as stated above, people will choose to keep their prime spots (near towns and moongates) so those will not become available.

(3) House deco will become very difficult. More than half of my houses are for decoration only. There's only so much deco you can put in one house. It won't take long for one person to deco all 3 of their houses, at which point they can no longer deco for fun, or try new things. Test server will fill up with the houses that people can't place and deco on the live server, and there' s no limit on test accounts, afaik. I am constantly trying new deco ideas in my spare houses. I am currently working on one of my towers. If this is implemented, I would insist on a large boost in lockdowns for all house types, or else you may see deco for fun go away. My decoed houses are for the enjoyment of everyone. Once I finish a deco house (or "finish" I should say, since deco is a type of art and is never complete), I make it public and keep the front door unlocked so anyone coming by can enjoy it.

(4) Guild towns will become much smaller or vanish completely. I own 2 houses in PS Town but I don't wish to live there. I like my island tower and will not be getting rid of it anytime soon. I would have to completely get rid of my PS Town houses if I was limited to 3 houses. I would also lose my entire peninsula that I worked for well over a year to get. Yes, I own an entire peninsula, but it wasn't just GIVEN to me. I worked for a long time to get in touch with the owners of the houses I now own, scrimped and saved, got loans once they became available, made deals with other players who were watching the spots IDOC, and sacrificed rares and other houses I owned, so I could get those houses. Now you tell me I do not deserve them? There is nothing wrong with a player town, or a guild town, but a rule like this would make both nearly impossible.

TL-DR making this policy change wouldn't solve any of the problems you mentioned, but it would destroy some aspects of gaming that many people who play this server enjoy.

If Telamon is indeed working on making it so only house owners can refresh to prevent a condemned status then that solves 75% of the problem. People don't own 15 houses. They just refresh a ton of friends' houses.

I agree large houses will always be expensive, as the market decides that. Please re read my post. Your group always focuses on fort/keeps in your arguement which is why in yellow highlighted text, I explained how it's not large houses that I think needs help. I am talking about the dozens of houses surrounding all moongates, towns, and unique locations. Allowing 15 houses prevents newer players from having a house thays worth a damn or in a cool spot. As far house decorated market, please tell me wherethe deco is in the 200 vacant emptt homes. Guild towns can be grandfathered and given a permanent status, easy fix.

We have 50-75 active players at most. There are way more than 150-225 moongates town, unique spots.

People who make a living from real estate would actually do better with more desirable properties available and on the market. More inventory, more listings.

I don't see this working as an absolute restriction.

I can only imagine Telamon is working on the decay rate with optimum being one house per account.

One house rate = really long / or normal by today's standard.
Two house rate - 50%
Three+ ... refresh daily

You directly used the extreme prices for forts and keeps to help bolster your argument, that's why I picked that part to discuss.

You can replace forts in my argument with unique spots near moongates and my argument is still valid.

Take Iago, for example. He owns several unique spots in the game, the island tower and the yew small tower just to name two. He wouldn't just drop those two houses, or his large house either. Unique spots in the game aren't going to just materialize with this change either.

Will you find a spot for a sandstone 3 screens away from yew gate? Sure. What did that solve? So now a newer player has access to a house that they would have had access to in the first place by buying it from the market. A house that far from the gate is not going to fetch a lot of gold anyway, as seen from one of your recent yew bank sales threads.

I understand that you are against this. I didn't expect you to support any change that releases the strangle hold that some of you guys have on this server and the housing market. How about we let new people voice their opinions. I do enjoy watching you guys scramble to protect your house hoarding though. I personally could care less about any houses. I simply recognize a problem that a new person recognizes every month it seems so I figured we could watch the same people scramble to shoot down any house limit changes.

I don't IDOC anymore, I haven't in about a year now. I was against this change then and I'm against this change now.

You can twist this into it being about money for me all you want. My point is that it's not going to make a difference in the grand scheme of things.

You can make this about new players all you want, in reality a new player doesn't need anything more than an SST and in about 10 minutes of running around you can likely find several decent spots to place an SST. Matter of fact, I thought I did a good job of blocking the areas around my forts but it seems that someone was able to squeeze in a villa, in an excellent spot on the road. That spot has sat empty since I started here 5 years ago.

"New players" who want a tower need to pay tower prices. Those prices are sitting at anywhere from deed to 2x deed, from what I've seen at recent auctions. If you can farm 500k for a tower, then you can farm an additional 25-500K for the market adjustment.

I'll leave it at that. I really don't have a horse in this race, any change won't effect me at all. In reality nothing is likely to change anyway so I'm not sure why I'm even here arguing against it. Have fun beating a dead horse though.

I never said all the empty houses are decoed, altho some are. I was saying that those of us who actively play and do deco will be devastated by a policy change like this.

Am I trying to save my 12 houses? Hell yeah I am. As I stated above, I worked hard to get what I have and I don't want to lose it because you want an easy way to get a prime spot for cheap. Ocllo houses (which you specifically mention) will always be expensive. Prime spots will always be expensive. Unique spots will always be expensive.

Many people don't have 10 or 15 houses. The issue is people refreshing houses for inactive players for years. Limiting house ownership won't solve your problem. Limiting the ability to refresh houses without the owner being active will.

There isn't a house spot shortage on the server. I don't know where you get this idea from. A little more than a year ago I was randomly walking thru a forest and stumbled across an empty space. I plopped a workshop there for 66k. It turned out to be a prime spot and sold for 1.7m. And all it took was some exploration and I found it. You want easy? Doesn't get much easier than that!

You want a good spot? Farm for it, make gold, buy it, or go exploring and find your 1.7m house like I did.

You want Your new player POV? There it is. I was a relatively new player at that time. I hadn't made my first mil yet. I'm not a real estate mogul and definitely wasn't back then. I can tell you from experience that good spots are out there. You just have to put in the elbow grease and you, too, can have a good house.

Btw not all houses near towns are expensive. My Weapons Vault is a log cabin right on the Trinsic Wall, less than a screen from the guardzone. I've seen people try to sell other houses right next door for deed price or just above deed and nobody buys them. I got mine for super cheap.

Ok so to sell a house you have to own it, right? Someone is only allowed to own 3 houses, so what do they do? Not own a house of their own? Just sell houses and bank the gold for no reason? Or are you saying those that sell houses should live in one house and only sell 2 houses at a time? You say your solution will make all the prime spots available, so how in this empty wasteland of vacant house spots will they choose which 2 they want to sell?

Your "solution" doesn't solve problems, it just makes more, and makes the game less fair for those that have put in the time and work to get more. I help new players all the time, but I will say straight up that someone right out of the Young program shouldn't have the same stuff I do. Why? Cuz I worked for it. So should they.

It's not even hard. I'm a friggin fisher. It's not a super lucrative job, and I'm fine with that. If I can have all I have in about a year and a half of fishing, what can someone do in half that time doing something that actually makes good income, like taming?

.

I am glad we elected the All Mighty Cynic to decide what new players need and what they don't need. Since you don't have a dog in this fight, bye Felicia.

Listen, I have held the same stance here for 4+ years. My objectives have always been to increase population and promote pvp and more game play. I am sick and tired of seeing new people come into IRC weekly/monthly and ask the same questions about housing. The comments about vacant housing is a constant occurrence. But you guys who enjoy your 10+ houses go ahead and protect your useless houses in a virtual game, and prevent this shard from becoming even greater than it is. Like I said, this is not an attempt for me to get a cool house for cheap ( I would lose my ass if this was implemented since I paid 30mill for my glow cabin, that's prob not worth it, but Ive always wanted that spot since day 1 so I didn't care).

Just yesterday another new person made a comment about all of the vacant houses and how 1 house per character is crazy ( I don't keep IRC logs so I cannot quote what was actually said).

For the last time, this is a game folks and what is the point of hoarding so many houses? Do you not want to see the population increase? Try for one second to remember this is a game, not real life. (in real life, I believe real estate is the only good investment and I will own 1/2 of Central FL if I could) but I firmly believe this server could grow if we made some serious adjustments to the current housing ownership criteria.

I'm not gonna spend too much time on this because I seriously doubt any changes will come... but I just wanted to say;

Decreasing the number of houses that can be legally owned, from 15 to 3, would absolutely change the housing dynamic. Anyone who would deny that fact is either ill-informed or purposefully spewing bullshit to protect their preferred play style.

Sure this wouldn't fix all of the issues but it would open up more desirable locations. House owners would be forced to prioritize their real estate, keeping the top three and dropping the rest. Sure the top tier houses would still be taken... but so what. That should be expected when you join a server that's five years old. However, many other nice locations would be open or more easily purchased.

As I said earlier, I am all for condemned status for houses. My only concern for a lower house allowance is for people like Rezon who operate, what, 6 new player houses?

He offers a valuable service to this shard and I would hate to see that go away. But if it did, I would not be that upset as I do think we can own far too many houses here.