Suggested Housing Ownership Change

I understand my suggestion is extreme, but if Trump has taught me anything...shoot for the stars and if you make it to the moon, you did a good job. #MAGA

There is such an easy fix for people like Rezon and RP guild towns: just make those towns non-decay-able.

Who owns the houses? It doesn't matter If they don't decay if they don't exist

As someone who has joined the server in the last month, I feel somewhat deflated that anything larger than a small is out of reach unless I want to tamer farm/haggle and idoc camp.

I understand that hard work should be rewarded, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to dedicate such an excess amount of time to a game as old as UO.

I love the game and I love the attention to era detail on this server, but I feel as though to truly compete with the inflated house values, I'd need to join the multi-box tamer crowd.

I'm content playing my simple warrior and slowly farming gold, the way I used to on Atlantic/Oceania. I'm not overly content with the economic imbalance.

Moonglow Sandstone

Large L-Shape

Large Marble

Large Brick

SST

All these are easily obtainable farming with a warrior in a fairly short about of time. If you don't want to buy from anyone, you can get in IRC, there are people who will go out and help you find a spot to place a house for deed cost.

It's nice to have goals to work towards.
Large Towers are 500k-1 Mil and that's the top house for most people. If you want a fort/castle you have to really work for it.


I do think a time limit on friends refreshing without the owner if a good idea

Exactly like Ahirman describes it. Nobody needs a tamer to get a tower.

Your assumptions are incorrect. There are a few toxic "people" here running interference with their atypical deceptive fear mongering.

You can get whatever house you want large tower and down with standard effort.

You can place medium homes yourself with standard effort.

The "people" force feeding the idea that this is otherwise need ran off this server or held accountable and stripped of credibility.

They've also been caught creating new forum accounts to use for situations like this.

Frankly I think the next big update should be removing these "people" entirely.

I'm not sure anyone against 15 houses per person / 3 accounts is saying it is hard to place a Villa and smaller. Anyone who claims that is simply not taking 5 minutes to run through Britannia.

The two contentious points of discussion as I see them are:

1. Some people have close to 15 houses for whatever reason. Some of these people use some of their 15 to hold unique or cool spots that if they were restricted to say 3 houses, they would let fall. Like maybe a house near a graveyard. Or some other unique spot. By forcing them back to 3 houses, some cool / interesting spots would open up to someone else who really would live in it.

2. The fact that friends of a house can refresh forever, leads to a different kind of house hoarding. Someone who owns say 5 houses quits with a vague intention of returning can ask friends in game to keep refreshing their properties all the while not counting against the active players amount. By enabling "condemned", some cool / interesting spots would open up to someone else who really would live in it.

And my response to both items:

1. Chris has already stated that the average house per person is like 4.something, I think. So people like Kirby are in fact rare. It is in fact pretty darn hard to remember to refresh so many properties. At least it was for me when I had 4 at my highest #... But then again, take one property for example. The Western Cove moongate Villa is owned by PS. The sign says so at least. It looks vacant. Cove Militia members would love to occupy that spot and actively live out of it as part of our RP war against the Orx. Is someone like Kirby just sitting on that nice piece of property? In the remote chance that they might deco it? Who really cares if it is deco'ed. Are people actively living out of it? By enforcing a less than 15 house limit, maybe that property would be opened up for someone like my guild that would use it.

2. As I stated before, this really should be change # 1 to housing if in fact Chris is considering any changes at all. If you want to keep a piece of property in a game with finite land as a resource, you should be bothered to log in your darn self and click a sign or open a door. Of course exceptions like serving in the military, or illness, etc is a different matter. I believe Chris is even willing to turn off the decay in these situations. So that is a moot point. There should be no reason your friends can eternally refresh a property if you the owner can't log in yourself. That's just selfish.

I stand with you on your response #2 and maybe that is where I should have focused my attention from the beginning. I may have been distracted by the hundreds of small, empty house blockers that have been preventing placement of keeps and towers. Or the Hundreds of small blockers that are preventing villa placement in cool places. Or the 20-30 small blockers around moongates, towns and shrines that are preventing people to actually live their and enjoy them. Regardless, I know restricting home ownership is far from attainable at this time, but I hope by bringing up this topic, more attention will be given to it. I love the idea that houses decay if owners don't refresh it themselves. Unfortunately for us, that would have meant that @POTHEAD s chaos shrine rune library would have fallen (since we refreshed for over 3 years for him?), @ebola houses would fall shortly after, hell, even my houses would have fallen. But I agree that this type of change would be an awesome start!! And this would open up a LOT of nice property! (except for the fact that @Sheepdog , @Earsnot , @bart simpson , @merlin8666 @Ron Jeremy and the other iderp2.0 would be the only ones who benefit from this while they use their 15 house slots, each, to gobble them up and make an insane profit selling back to the public for a ridiculously inflated price. but that's OK, because peoples choice, @Cynic, decides how and what we buy and at what price, right?)

You're a salty one, aren't you? You should get off that salty horse of yours, you've benefited from high property prices in the past. Such a hypocrite to point at people who have idocced on this server only to benefit from it as well. Unless you're willing to start selling property at what you believe it should be really worth, then you're a hypocrite, plain and simple.

Right there, in this very quoted text, points out how much of a hypocrite you really are. If you were really in this for the new player and for reducing unused properties then you would have stopped refreshing your friends homes a long time ago. Yet, you continue to refresh a property that you could have let fall so that a poor new player could place a home there.

But, sure, the idoc crew will continue to control the market in real estate. Just like they did before I joined them, just like they did while I was with them, and just like they will continue to do now that I've retired from them. Everything has a price and where there are people willing to pay 25M for a fort there will be a group of players willing to continue to push that price up - that's how any market works. You seem to have an understanding since you were trying to get an insane amount of gold for a blocker your placed too, right?

This is about a server wide change. Simple minded folk wouldn't understand that, unless it benefited them directly. All you guys care about is how to fatten your pockets in a virtual world. I figured no one would ever pay my asking price for my small blocker outside of Vesper (hence the price), so your assumption that I have a thirst for the same type of greed as you and your crew do, is wrong. If someone did, then shame on them. There is no hypocrisy here. That is the only home that Pothead owned, that I knew of. He never really told us why he left, so we weren't sure what happened. Out of respect, we refreshed it, yes. One tower does not affect the housing market, but keep throwing up deflections from the truth.

Properties are only going for what they are because you guys are controlling the market, just like you did with the plat train etc. Good on you for putting in that much effort, but it's a shame that a HUGE part of the economy here is controlled by a select few. That is the problem.

Server wide change so that a new player can place a house outside yew moongate? You have to try and get your arguments straight. Are you complaining that forts and keeps are highly prices or are you complaining that people own 10+ houses? Do you think that the idoccers are hoarding 10 premium properties each? I can tell you that's most certainly not happening as any significant property is placed on forums no sooner than bodies decay from under the house sign (as evidenced in many sales threads).

Tons of vacant houses everywhere? In what way? I just did a quick lap around Yew and think I found, maybe, 6 legit empty houses. The rest of them have decoration or have chests inside that have items. If your argument is against all the players who obviously don't play here anymore yet their houses still stand, then sure - knock those things down. Houses that belong to players who don't play here anymore, and are being refreshed by friends like you, clog up the map just the same. Put your money where your mouth is, sell your vesper blocker to a noob for deed and stop refreshing friends houses who no longer play here. You won't do it, though, you aren't as stupid as you come off as ( I think).

100% hypocrisy. After 3 years you don't hear from someone you think they are going to magically appear and hold you accountable for not refreshing their house? Get real. But you're right, 1 tower doesn't affect a thing. Multiply your behavior server wide and you have a problem, just like you defended it here today - so will everyone else who does it.

You admit that there's a problem with vacant houses everywhere yet you contribute to it! You're currently selling an SST a few screens from Yew bank, if it doesn't sell are you just going to deed it and call it a day? I doubt it. How about the Vesper blocker? It obviously has value, not likely 13.5M, but it has value so you're not just goint to drop it, right? I mean, right here we have 2 empty houses clogging the map owned by the guy who wants less houses clogging the map.

ILL DO WHAT YOU DO! Easy, so that I can say I'm not contributing.. GUYS ALL MY BLOCKERS ARE 13.5M, if you want to live outside my fort just pay me 13.5M. There, now I'm not contributing to the problem either.

Air you're not going to go far insulting people like this. Could there be some truth in what you say? Possibly. But it would be far better for your case if you focused on facts.

You should point out that #2 actually benefits idoc crews as it creates more decaying houses. #1 seems like a nerf to them, but it isn't. What it will do is weed out the less desirable properties and ones decaying will be more valuable.

Isn't it because there is very limited space for massive homes, and wealth is generated far too easily here?

Seeing the landscape littered with empty homes is kind of a bummer (I'm guilty as well), but still, very few houses are out of reach for even a fairly casual player.

My homes have been sitting unused for several months but when I think about the amount of time I've put in here previously, the fun I've had, and my desire to put in more time in the future, I'm not gonna feel bad about it. Please don't taketh awayeth.

I think this would fix a lot of things. If the owner account hasn't logged in for 6 months, IDOC it regardless who's friended.

The Genie is out of the bottle on limiting home ownership, though. That's one of those things that needs to be set at the opening of the server.

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@RIN idk about the West Cove house you mentioned but I will be happy to look into it for you. I've never heard it mentioned, but gimme a bit and I'll see what I can do.

I admit I own a lot of houses. Some are from my attempt at new player housing, and those will go away soon. 2 are in PS Town and are heavily decorated and regularly used. I doubt I have any houses considered "prime" spots. Maybe the best is my island Tower, but considering the spawn and how often I die on my front steps after recalling in, I would hardly consider it a "great" property.

Half of them make up Kirby's Korner peninsula, and I'll be the first to admit I'm being selfish and hoarding those spots. I like having my own peninsula and worked hard to get it, so, yeah. I am working on decorating the houses so at least they won't be empty eyesores but that is a long process. I don't halfass my deco and it's a bunch of houses. I am currently in the planning stage for most of them.

My Vesper ranger hut and my Trinsic loggy get used regularly.

I think I have 1 house that is there just because. I've considered selling it for months but I'm not sure how to price it, so I just refresh until I figure it out.

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Lightshade, I hope you dont take offense at this question... but how many homes does KoS / you own? I see tons with the cross on top... especially near the Yew moongate.

You obviously have a reading comprehension problem.

Salty? My problem is, once again, this server has 50 active people and I want more. I want us all to have a reason to play more, not sit on IRC and pvp there. I want us to have a reason to log on with all sorts of new players everywhere. But whatever.

I don't disagree, server birth would be the ideal time to implement that.

I will end my post/rant with this. If everyone here is happy with the inflated housing market, are ok running around in a mostly empty world and finding maybe 5-6 people playing at any given time then I have no reason to even bring this/these topics up. I for one, remember the days when I first started here with champ spawns being ran all day long, in all dungeons. PvM'ers farming all over all day. People grinding daily to buy their first tower/keep for 1-3million gold. PvP all over the place. What changed? we sure didn't see an increase in population, we saw and decline in active players and the rise of an idoc group who did a hell of a job taming nearly every economic aspect of this server. From houses, to Tmaps, to Furniture sales, to ancient treasure chests, to amids (basically, average people are buying other peoples stuff {that these guys earned by afk getting timers on idocs} obtained for free, at their set market prices. The hundreds of idocs secured by this group and the massive wealth accumulated allowed them to take complete control over the economy here. Convince me that I am wrong.

Cynic "o you think that the idoccers are hoarding 10 premium properties each? I can tell you that's most certainly not happening as any significant property is placed on forums no sooner than bodies decay from under the house sign (as evidenced in many sales threads)."

No, I am not saying that. But with a house ownership limitation, you wouldn't be able to drop 2 blockers on each account to hoard the property. You wouldn't be able to keep the fort prices up over 20mill. People would chose between large houses and great locations.

Blah, blah, and blah. Keep defending your empire, iderp.