I know this won't be a popular suggestion for alot of people, but back when I was on OSI Ren I believe it was one house per account. As the server's popularity grows the world is gonna fill up pretty fast. I just think 15 houses per person is a little much. Three would be a bit more realistic and people would have options. I am optimistic and see this great server growing exponentially with players as we go forward. Picture how it will look in a year or two or more. Anyways, just wanna hear people's thoughts on the subject.
I think there is some intention to limit it to 10 homes per household, but cutting folks to one per account is drastic. I would totally approve of the change but would not get much support. There is already a thread about this I think. The main arguments were guild establishments and vendor homes. A serious vendor may actually have need/desire for 5-10 vendor homes, let alone their own residence(s). Personally, I'm capped out and I own five buildings that are specifically for the guild. I would be much happier if I could only have a single house and not have to worry about all these other properties. However, the role of King has it's burdens I suppose.
I can see what you're saying about the guilds and player communities and such. But maybe a player community could also be composed of various players living in the same area and such. While serious player vendors right now might be needing that many spots, I'm trying to picture how its gonna be for someone starting a vendor location a year from now when any reasonable vendor spot is taken by a small percentage of the population owning fifteen houses each. I know it might not be a huge issue right now, but just thinking about the future as the population swells.
Very unpopular suggestion. A lot of the players here would only have to look back to ... "a certain server that many played on before coming here" ... to know exactly what it will look like. Random terrible smalls going for 2-3x deed, and everything else scaling up to "F'ing insane" for anything Tower & Up sized. I'm totally behind this, and I say that as someone who currently owns 7 homes but only actually uses 2 of those.
I currently own 9 houses. 4 of these comprise 2/3 of the C^V Trinsic Estates New Player Housing Community...4 of these are C^V guild buildings: C^V Countryside Events Center (training keep), The Great Hall of the Vigilant (C^V guild hall), Atraxi's Artisan Alcove (C^V public crafting hall), and our sandstone which is still under construction...then 1 of these is the small tower I live in. When I decide what house I want, I plan on buying a larger house that I will move in to, opening the small tower on Barrier Isle to guild use. Considering that I am in charge of the Trinsic Estates New Player Housing program, I can assure you that owning only 4 of the 6 Trinsic Estates houses is a major pain. I currently have 1 house open that I can't do anything with because the owner of the empty house is on a short vacation. Limiting me to only 3 houses would do away with most of the C^V property AND the temporary housing that I offer to new players. I don't hunt. I don't pvp. I don't get enjoyment out of the same things that other players do. I prefer to spend my time helping new players who can then go on to do whatever it is that they enjoy doing. Taking away my houses would severely limit my ability to do this.
Almost all of mine are set up for new player housing, one is a rune library. They all have private add ons for character building. One has both public and private add ons (its the moonglow marble workshop by the rune library). Got 3 empty 2 are saving a large tower spot for which I am waiting for a patio to fall. The third empty is a large tower in East Brit I will be making my permanent home once i finish building my crafter. Damn mining sucks. I see a lot of new players and the population is growing but I am having trouble canvassing people to use my houses
That's really great help new players and letting them use your houses. But as a once new player myself, my first goal here on uor was to buy and place my own house. It was the greatest feeling. The britaniannan dream! lol. It just seems like 15 houses per is gonna severely limit the ability to do that for new players in the near future.
Well of course it will. The server will run out of housing room eventually, there's no getting around that. But, changing housing to 1 per account would disrupt my playstyle, because my goal in game centers around having a lot of houses.
I remember the days on OSI where there was one home per account, I also remember having to purchase my only house with real money through EBAY as a result! Now obviously I highly doubt our player population would ever become that large, but limiting housing to one per account still seems drastic. I like many, have been here since Beta...giving this wonderful shard a shot while many players on other shards scoffed at the idea of starting accounts here. As such I've placed a few modest homes not only for personal use, but also as future investments. I also own a few homes directly next to my private residence simply as a barrier against unwanted douchey neighbors. As of right now there is still plenty of room out there for large homes, and small homes alike. Perhaps in the future this concern could be raised again, but as of right now I see it as a non issue.
This is another example of a solution in search of a problem. Sure, on OSI it was tough to place a small, but OSI had 10000 times the number of players. If UOR has a stable online count of 5000, then I could see placing a limit on housing. As it sits, you can still run out an place a castle on UOR and there are many keep spots that can function like a castle thanks to the custom UOR Large Keep and the ability to purchase additional lockdowns/secure. Also, nobody is really paying big bucks for premium housing spots either. Placing limits on house ownership isn't going to attract more players, it's just going to piss off existing players. Say "No!" to UO socialism.
I knew that it would be an unpopular suggestion, about a topic that restricts existing players, but I just wanted to share my optimism for the future of the best UO server I've ever been a part of.
I'm down for it, during era the only multi house accounts were grandfathered, and they were a pain to keep refreshed. Everyone is holding on to nice house spots to sell them later, why not free them up for other players. Three house spots is plenty. If you want a spot, move from one of your other three. I'm not going era accurate crazy or anything, but I think it'd clear up areas for new players and make people think hard about what they wanted to own, instead of locking down everything in sight.
I don't think this is a problem currently, but could see it becoming one in the future, should UOR continue to grow. This is a pretty interesting topic, I think you can make a very valid argument in favor of either side. If things were changed to 1 house/account, would it be a hard cut-off, or would existing multi-house owners be grandfathered in and be allowed to keep their additional properties?
I can see this being an issue as the shard grows and addressing it sooner rather than later would be beneficial. I'm a proponent of one house per account but I can see other people needing/actively using more for various reasons. I think two houses per account would be a nice middle ground for anyone requiring more. Anyone that is currently over the limit would be grandfathered in forever. Although that means they would be locked into every house that they currently own and could never transfer or place another until they are under the account limit. As mentioned earlier, maintaining so many houses is very tedious so I don't believe having 15 houses on grandfathered accounts would be a problem in the long run and if someone really wanted all 15 they would be free to keep them. As it is, a ton of housing/vendor spots are taken up with place holders and just sit empty. Don't take that as a complaint, I've got my (future) tower plot claimed and have never cared for anything larger. But I can feel for the new players on down the road that are late to the party and have to pay out the nose for any spot above a 7x7. Just my .02
Eventually a median system enforcing players to define their accounts into a "household" will be implemented requiring players to take an additional step in order to place more houses. This household system will be used to manage platinum distribution, BOD collection, house ownership, and holiday awards for each Ip address. Currently players register their accounts in order to bind them to an email address, however this is an optional process. At some point this process will be upgraded to a required step in order to utilize multiple accounts for the things listed above. Thus 3 players might play in the same house, but would only be allowed to collect x bod's every 6 hours, and own 10-15 houses per household. At last check there are around 600 houses on the server. The server has room for 3000-4000 houses. Each month between 10-12 million gold leaves the economy due to house deeds > house decay. During the UOR period players were allowed 1 house per character, and this allowed an individual player to build and provide a community for other players. From guild development, to new player housing this allows our players endless potential for accomplishments and land ownership. Some players love the life of the peasant, hobo, bank pvper. While other players don't feel happy unless they own a fortress filled with loot. In the end, house decay is one of the best gold sinks in Ultima Online during this era and is one of the reasons after almost a year our economy is still strong and balanced. For every 100 gold that enters the economy 90 gold leaves the economy over the same period of time. TLR Version - Eventually yes we will implement something to make sure house hoarding is managed, but have no plans to remove 1 house per character. Any ownership at the time of a system addition would be grandfathered. Historical Note: If you do some historical of UO free shards, very few, if any shards have succeeded with the 1 house per account rule. Some of the most spectacular shard failures had 1 house per account.
