Solution to unusued housing: ONLY homeowner's account can refresh

We have talks about land expansion in hopes it solves some sort of "housing crisis".

While there are issues surrounding housing, I fail to see how adding more plots will solve the core issues.

The crux of the problem is two-fold.

1) a single player can place up to 15 houses
2) players can refresh other player's houses by being friended/co-owned

IMO, until these two things are looked at, mainly the 2nd one, we will continue to see unused housing filling up desired plots.

Here is an illustration of unused housing being refreshed for YEARS.


When this is possible, how is adding more plots going to solve the issue?

15 houses or not, remove the ability for non-owners to refresh housing to force homeowners to be active. Only then will we see this issue resolved.

Right on! Don't forget stormhold, paws, ..

But KoS was a founding guild here and they deserve all the homes in prime territory.



Anyways.

I ran this whole area once a week, every week for over a year clicking every sign to check....stuff.....no one lives in these. They were/are COMPLETELY unused and are refreshed at the same time. Except KOS rune library. That’s used.

Once they forgot to refresh 2 of the log cabins up near deadwood. They dropped. I didn’t replace them because who wants to live in side by side log cabins in a totally dead area? Few days later I was running the zone and the log cabins were back up, decod EXACTLY the same. Unused still.

Unproductive repsonse.

I'd like to see a wipe. Make bankboxes hold unlimited items and give people a month to empty their houses into their banks. Then, DROP the server. Patch in 1 house per acct.

We should have a 'dislike' button.

I'm all for only owner account refreshing though. Perhaps also your two linked accounts being able to refresh too. Long dead characters owning houses is the only real housing problem we have, imho.

You're right, we should.

I dislike your response to my comment

Yes, i agree. I ran that zone for awhile and all those properties are empty ( many unlocked ) and serve no other purpose unless KOS is planning a major come back soon. I dont see the point in allowing that all to refresh indefinitely. Although it may collapse the market around yew a bit-- so be it.

@Lightshade

Just remove unlimited friend refreshes and i think a major problem will resolve itself. If you haven't refreshed a place in a year-- you shouldn't come back to a still standing keep/fort/castle anyway.

What actual, measurable evidence do any of us have to support that housing is a problem? Samo and Fenrir said they're here for operational support. That means Chris is the one we have to persuade. Emotional appeals only go so far and serve no real purpose; they're too subjective and provide anecdotal evidence at best. We don't have access to analytics, so we don't have data to support an argument that housing even affects the server one way or another.

The two most important questions I have are this:

Is there information from past posts that provides any insight into Chris' perception of housing and his overall goals for the server?

Does anyone have anything measurable and empirical to bring to the table that can be used to convince him that housing is even a problem?

Someone being here a long time is not evidence. A lot of empty houses is not indicative of a shard-shattering problem. Out of 15+ threads, what hard evidence has been gathered that we can use?

Honestly, theres probably even more than those properties that are vacant/forever refresh mode in yew. I can think of a few other clusters in that area.

@FartBarf as a zone runner for idocing you figure it out what group of homes is on what refresh timer. Most of those KOS houses are completely empty. They just take up all that real estate. Again the real problem is NOT that one can't find a place for a small/medium sized house. They are all over that area. The problem is the keeps/forts/towers cannot be found and the places that take up that spot are completely empty/vacant.

I understand that some original guildmates who are still around may want to keep these properties as a memorial to the early days and early guilds for the server and i understand that. Maybe a solution is a specific memorial home designed for guilds like KOS in return of them dropping all their props they can keep one never to decay that is just a tad unique in appearance. Maybe like a old tattered looking keep or something. Maybe we remove a few trees somewhere so that this could be placed and not take up an existing spot up.
I think that's a decent trade off personally.

Few days later CrazyDaze has them redecorated and you're are calling it unused? Might be the dumbest thing I've read in months.

Anywho, he sold it last week, so feel free to rejoice.

Just like 2 weeks or so ago we did let 4 homes fall because the owners were MIA. Lander and Sir Dire.

So to the new owner of the L-shape by the KoS library, you're welcome. To the owner of the large tower in the woods south of Yew, you're welcome. To the people fighting over the large tower spot in Snake's Pass, you're welcome.

To the rest of you...you are liars and full of crap. Half the KoS houses on this server are not even KoS members, they're literally trolling you. Sadly, you're too stupid to figure it out.

Yes, this was just a small example and my point is not that this is an issue, more so that, given a land mass expansion, wouldn't we see this type of behavior continue?

...and if you're wondering about my lack of civility it's because, after 6 years of this crap, I am sick of hearing it. Just had a flood at my home that broke the 100 year FEMA flood maps and I've got dumbass children tagging me on a wizards forum about a problem that is not me.

You can't always get what you want. If someone doesn't want to let go of a house, get over it and stop with the BS attacks.

Now I'm gonna go back to moving semi loads of debris and try to get back to a normal life where I might give a flying F about your nonsensical wizard tears.

Quit adding shit to my shit piles!

Wasn't mean to be an attack and sorry you're dealing with issues at home.

The fact of the matter is, this is happening with a few different players. The Yew houses are just the extreme example.

So before they start taking developer time for to add more land plots, maybe you could consider, and encouraging others, to begin selling off some of these properties at deed price to the newer playerbase?

People can do as they wish with their houses. I will never tell them what to do just as you should never do so either. I have stated that I am FULLY onboard with houses going condemned. Put it in and quit complaining about KoS. We are simply not the problem at all. We let houses of inactive players fall. If you don't like how the players who are around and logging in live their lives, get over it.

...and for the record, your map isn't even accurate.

Can you or anyone prove that this has had measurable and significant effect on the server, detrimental or otherwise?

Empty houses do not automatically constitute a problem. If anyone can prove that all of these massive houses caught in refresh mode have directly resulted in net loss of potential players or any other factor that will call the viability of keeping the server running into question, then all of these empty houses are an actual problem and all of these solutions people are throwing at the wall have merit. If nobody can prove it, then all of these threads are at best just good ideas; at worst, a list of demands.

If people actually think that the man who made, markets, and runs with a lot of his own money is going to embrace this notion that empty housing so large a problem that it requires systemic change--for which he might feel contrary to, mind you--brought up by a small section of the playerbase and without quantifiable evidence, I sincerely hope those people aren't gamblers.

If it helps to know, I write persuasive proposals to facilitate organizational change for a living. If this is all a desire for actual change that will help this server and not a bunch of 30-something adolescents screaming into the void about how they can't have the big houses in their online toy, I may be one guy on this forum you want to have on your team when it comes time to talk to Chris. Because I agree that empty housing is a problem. But, again, I am not the one anybody has to convince.

Is it just me, or is it insanely awesome and ironic that such a well-written post came from a cat with the forum name FartBarf?

Map is based on the house sign names, so it's as accurate as that. Also, doesn't include the other areas of the map you refresh, including the continued grouping at the Yew crossroads, putting you well over 50+ houses on refresh mode.

If the developers add land mass to alleviate the perceived issues of not enough spots, I believe, this can become detrimental to current active homeowners who's property could stand to lose value.

Why should friends of long gone players be able to keep property standing? Especially, if those players that are in friend refresh mode are hardly active themselves.