This post can serve as the official discussion thread regarding housing mechanics. Make sure to keep the discussion positive and factual.
Property taxes on homes in excess of 1, per account, based on home size! While I like tighter ownership restrictions I think this would be the only beneficial change for the shard and its players. Otherwise, party on Wayne!
I dig what someone (MikeK, I think) said about 3 houses per account in the previous thread. That sounds like a good compromise to me. It's not too crazy of a change and should allow people enough houses to not interfere with whatever plans they have (so long as those plans aren't to hoard houses). As for implementation, have it be grandfathered in. Someone with 5 houses on their account keeps those houses but as soon as one of them falls or is deeded, they can't place another until their overall total goes back to under 3.
@Chris Do you have any statistics about home ownership that may be useful? I am interested to know how many houses there are on average active account and per IP. It has always been my assumption that the vast majority of us don't have even near 15 houses.
I'd be interested in seeing data regarding houses that have remained standing but empty for greater than 3 months.
I still think the biggest issue with housing is that people seem to think that their wants and wishes should out-weigh someone else's wants and wishes based on the mentality of "I want it and I want it now" or "i'm doing something better than them". Its a completely absurd notion void of logic on so many levels and these people rarely give any actual consideration to the other person's wants and wishes. They typically cannot see past themselves. Telling someone that they can't plan for the future because someone else wants to do something else now is just silly. Most of the problems, when you really start digging into it, come down to just that. Even the supposedly revered veterans that supposedly quit the server over housing, at the very root of things, are just petty and jealous people who wanted a specific spot that someone wouldn't sell them. It had nothing to do with a broken mechanic, it was just their foolish belief that what they wanted to do was more important than what someone else wanted to do. I, also, would love to see the numbers. That having been said, I probably wouldn't think much of them either way. Even the dreaded IDOC guilds holding billions of houses waiting for them to appreciate in value I think are okay because at the end of the day...there wasn't another group putting the same effort into it that they were so they should be rewarded for their efforts. Punishing winners is illogical. Punishing people for having been lucky enough to be somewhere before you is illogical. It leads to a slippery slope where you can just take anything and I don't like that path. I see it enough in real life and i'd hate to see more of it in-game. If people have an issue with house prices, it is NOT because of 15 houses per account. I've been on servers with 500 active people where there were hardly any house spots available. The housing prices were quite low until IDOC Guilds started colluding and price fixing. Thanks to player turnover, he prices of housing have very little to do with the housing available on Free Shards and have no real correlation with the OSI/EA shard housing prices. Do I think the price fixing that all the IDOC Guilds do is a good thing? No, I do not. There is a distinct difference in housing prices when IDOC guilds are running on a shard and when they are not. That is very directly where any "supposed" problems with housing prices are almost always at. When there are not huge IDOC guilds running on a shard, the prices of housing are much lower. I've seen it on every free shard that ever had this going on. On this server I have sold Prime Fortress locations for 4 million gold pieces. Now you can't sell one for less than 8 million gold pieces. The difference? Organized IDOC Guilds...not shard population. That having been said, I don't think its something that Staff should step in on because at the end of the day, people are paying those prices and allowing them to drive up the prices. If people didn't pay those prices, then they couldn't drive the prices up. tldr; Stop hating on someone for having been there first, having more and/or better people on their team, or for having plans that don't further your own selfish goals under the rules that we are given. Note: I would have left housing at 1 house per account from the start, but going back now is not an option and I certainly would move on from this server if someone socialized my time and efforts.
lol shouldnt this be in a pm to telamon... I would like to see data specifically on all of Lightshades "family member" accounts, I am going to go around and take a screenshot of every house in the world with [KoS] on the sign and then post it here, hopefully it doesn't fill my hard drive.
That was a whole lot of "waaaa waaaa IDOC guilds". Quite frankly, I don't take part in that part of their play but I'm pretty sure they actually just sell all the homes straight away. They're not hoarding anything but the pixels that came from the interior, unless it's actually a home they want. I could be mistaken but from what I've seen them doing and seen go up for sale on forums.....holding houses is not their game. Zerging and taking all your stuff is though.
Housing works like any other commodity: supply and demand. Anyone can own a fort if they really want to, you just need the gold and patience for it. I've watched somewhat new players here go from broke to fort in what seems like a month or less. Hell, I've seen Mindless do that at least 3 times now and Hatecrime has done it probably more. I don't see anything wrong with the current ruleset. You can still find towers at deed, if not just very slightly above deed. Even keeps are still very reasonable. If you want a fort on a 3+ year old server handed to you then too effing bad. Bitching about having to pay 2M for a keep but being OK with some random pair of sandals selling for 10M is absurd. We should only allow 1 pair of l33t sandals per account. Organized IDOC guilds don't horde property, watch the trade forums and you'll see that they don't. The damn island tower sold like a week after it fell and Infantry's fort did as well. The IDOC guilds aren't the problem and if you think bringing that argument to Telamon, of all people, will hold any weight you're crazy.
Eh. People have kept houses surrounding mine for just spite since 2013. I think that's a little supportive of the idea that you can own too many houses on UO:R. I would have preferred 1 house per account personally. Actually I would have preferred 1 account per person as well. But I can't imagine these things changing in the future in any way. Also none of this really matters as long as people can log on to accounts that aren't theirs. Even just for a few minutes to refresh houses or place one and get friended. Without a good and trustworthy method of limiting account access none of this will be enforceable. For the record, napo and I own three houses total. I think owning 15 houses is awful, even if I didn't express this because I didn't like the attitude of that guy in the thread that got locked.
Does that include the communal Minax blocker house? Cheers again for that one. I'm back up to four houses presently but three are for guild use and ultimately I could consolidate to one if it were ever going to happen here.
I would be in favor of limited houses. I would also expect no one to be grandfathered either. Everyone gets the same deal. IF this is up for any consideration in changes.
you can have your one house per account the moment pet bonding is reduced in kind #salty #bitter #smarmy seriously though, finding a house is a non issue imo... forcasting the need for change and planning ahead, i think aforementioned idea of house tax was a good one
I'm also in favor of limiting houses, I only own 2 currently and have only had 3 max ever in my time here (yes, the third being the beautiful A^T crystal garden). I don't understand why anyone needs 15 houses. Like it has been said already though, none of this matters until account sharing is dealt with properly.
1 House, I think Ive had 2 at the most at one time ever in UO. I don't understand having a ton of houses.
So the biggest guild on the server isn't supposed to have this many houses? Maybe I missed something? idk But now that you've posted these screen shots I will go rename the few other houses I own to KoS. This will help in the attempt to fill your hard drive with KoS housing.