The Thread.

Not trying to bicker, I just saw a lot of assumption in your post and don't really feel there's a huge problem here. It could be a lot worse but there seems to be fewer people hoarding for nothing here than I've seen elsewhere. In your four months here you seem to have gleaned quite a bit more from these forums in regards to housing than I have.

For what it's worth, I do read a lot of what goes on here on the forums and engage where I please. I don't read everything because there's a great deal I can tell I don't give a shit about at a topic glance or right from the OP.

I agree to a point.

The idea isn't aimed at anything other than increasing population and retaining that population

@El Horno once told me I was an idiot for buying a newbie a house. He had nothing invested in the server and I gave him a free home. It pissed me off that he said that then...but

It makes perfect sense now You need players who invest time in this game so they remain to build on their investment.

You can farm for the cash and place a villa within a few days of starting here if you're going hard. A tower a few weeks later if you save up the 500-600k. But it ends there, not because this server is so full like on OSI that housing just wasn't available due to overwhelming demand. No, here you're end game home is a tower which you couldn't place yourself because of overwhelming greed and a rule set that encourages it.

I'm also 4 months in. I don't think there's a problem. All you do OP is make assumptions about people and make personal attacks instead of arguments. This is the only time I'm going to post in this thread.

And there isn't a huge problem now, i mean, there's a problem for sure but it's not out of control..

With other servers closing and articles being written about old school UO and why people still play it, and word of mouth, this server is picking up traction. Would be nice to get ahead of it before it's a reason people leave. Hard to sell forward thinking to a lot of people it seems.

Great story pal. You're none better than I it seems.

This is a persistent state world with literally no intention of an end. Your end game is what you make of it and if it takes you a year or more to get something you desire greatly....that seems like a really really good thing to me. Some people really have strong feelings about the size of their home in UO while others do not. El horno has gone big but cut everything back to what I think is the best house in the game. A small tower. It's got more than enough room to do what matters most to me in UO; storing my gear and having space to train. Hell it's even got nice decorating potential as I've enjoyed several times. Do I want more than that? Hell yeah, the features of the larger homes are nice but not having them wouldn't stop me from playing UO and if it meant a lot, working toward larger homes.


Players are always coming and going and homes are always falling. Getting what you want in this game, aside from clothes people can't bring themselves to part with, is not impossible. It's a challenge.

I don't think IDOC people are any problem at all here. I even accounted for them in my completely not-well-thought-out idea above. Seems totally legit business to me to do the idocs and re-sell the plots or whatever, no problem. Usually these are the deed + 200k towers and whatnot that are reasonable-ish I guess. No harm there.

I did not mention 1 home per account at all. I think you misunderstood what I wrote there.

Yeah you can of course fine a medium plot with enough looking. I placed a brick house for temporary use just a few days ago after a 25 minute search. But consider the actual server population here, then have a gander at the UOR map here.

Bye.

@snap dragon you were the "other such restrictions". The 1 house per account suggestion has just been made ad nauseum around here many times.

I would say byeeeee but you'll be back.

You've already lied in this thread.

You feel the need to make your opinions known in threads I post in about this. Thought I'd tag you so you can just do it here.

And when I say you're not any better than me, I'd point you to the threads where you assume @Broli is the JhelomPK and hijack his sales.

Don't call the pot black.

I appreciate everyone's opinion in the matter, and take each reply seriously.

Right now I don't have time to really express why I think this post, as well as the proposed limitation on number of houses would be bad for the server. I will when I get home and have time to do it, but I'm glad we all have player retention as our main point of interest!

I will address two issues briefly, though. The first is regarding refreshing houses. I totally agree and support having houses go into condemned status if the owner of the house has not logged in to refresh it in the last 6 months. Bring it!!

The second is more personal. C^V currently is comprised of one active player. Me. Any character that isn't mine in the C^V stone is a long standing members who I have not had a chance to talk to regarding the guild. As far as I know, none of them own houses, and I refresh houses for no one. Yes, at one point in time we owned MANY houses around Trinsic, including barrier isle, mostly used to house new players and vendors. That is no longer the case. Those houses were sold/redeeded long ago. Currently C^V (me) owns 1 keep, 1 tower, 1 L shape, 1 patio, and several other small houses in the forest, not blocking the placement of anything larger.

Oh, and one more point. Other than a handful of properties, housing is neither the most valuable or most profitable. Just look at what people are willing to pay for a pair of sandals or the right mask. Some of them given away for free at anniversary events. Hell, I bet I could get at least 2 keeps on grass for the outfit on only one of my guys.

The fuck I will, loco.

I can only speculate. However, there seems to be many many many large houses that are owned by specific people who either keep a ridiculously low profile here, are in refresh mode for years, or are getting friendly refreshes. Falcon's Fort + 2 keeps, Sterling Archer on Ice Island, Bassosh's properties, just about all the large housing in Turtle Bay that belongs to the non-existent TT, that guy who's angry at Blaise so he keep refreshing his keep in NMinoc, whoever owns the Yew Gate fort, list goes on...

I will say that I don't believe any one player owns 15 large houses. Even the wealthiest of players may own 10 houses but out of those 10 they'll own maybe 3 large homes. I'm personally down to 2 forts and a few smalls.

I'm going to leave this thread with just this one comment. I'll re-iterate what I've said many many times before on this same topic. I have always and will always see real estate as a commodity. Whether you believe it hurts player retention or player acquisition is up to you to provide fact based conclusions, something I have yet to see time and time again with this topic. When you come to these forums and claim something is wrong then the onus is on you to provide specific facts (i.e. JoeG left this server 2 days ago stating that he can't place a tower) as to why a problem is really a problem, otherwise you're just making a strong suggestion based on how YOU want to see things run. Which is perfectly fine but it's not proof that something is necessarily going so wrong that it needs attention right now.

It's my opinion that the problem, if there really is any, aren't with the mythical players owning 15 forts. The problem, if any, is with the players who take extended (sometimes indefinite) breaks but continue to refresh for who know's what reason.

That's my two cents, I'm done with this thread. Good luck to ye who venture forward.

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As with the other threads on this exact topic, the only common ground issue I see here is that condemned status is not active.

It is in my humble opinion that all house's have their use, even if only to block the land in which it was placed it. The very act of refreshing it is "using" it enough for me. If only there was a limit to how long friends could keep a house refreshed, I would be content with the current house mechanics. I really don't like the idea of "use" being any a major part of the discussion, because it is so subjective. Who are we to say something isn't being used because it isn't deco'd all nice? And as you mentioned, its 2017, we have family and jobs and life gets busy sometimes. So what if someone sees a property they would love to decorate and "use" but know they can't get around to it for 6 months. Heck they could be active but just not enjoy decorating that much and it winds up on the end of their list of things to do (if you include just decorating and refreshing as "use")

The word "need" in the question makes the answer difficult, as this is a video game and ya, nobody NEEDS 15 large homes, just like nobody NEEDS to be a thief. They WANT 15 large homes, and people WANT to be thieves. And with server population in mind, I enjoy that the great sandbox of sosaria allows people to explore their wants. So long as they are willing to play enough and use them enough so as to keep them refreshed. House's collapse every single day. Not a day goes by where a house isn't collapsing somewhere. House decay is real, and it works, if only we could assure the actual owners were the ones staying invested enough in the server to refresh their houses, not their friends.

A lot of people playing UO freeshards are presented with opportunities to do stuff they never got to do on OSI. I went down that road myself and had a lot of fun, aka at one point I bought up an entire island here, or when I used to live in a fortress. I didn't NEED every spot on the island, and I didn't NEED a house so ridiculously massive as a fortress. I was just doing stuff I had always wanted to do, and UOR allowed it. With new player retention in mind, I do not believe new mechanics should be introduced which serve to limit their dreams.

Lastly, I don't like the slot system personally because it just blindly assumes large houses are bad and small houses are good. Small houses can block a lot of space, in fact a single small house can easily screw up a spot that would normally fit a larger house.
Take as an anecdote @BlackEye, who owns all of barrier island and all of hidden valley. That is a lot of square footage, but living out his UO dreams are OK because they are just smalls. Personally I don't care, as just him refreshing is enough use of them in my book, but I fail to see how that is any different then someone owning a couple fortresses.

It's hard to extract the "red line" of the OP and it's resulting demands. But as the people above me said already, condemned status which limits extended refreshing of houses by friends is missing. I would support that too. Implement it right now, it's good for UO:R.

Apart from that, I don't see any house crisis at all. The demand for small, medium and massive houses isn't large. Most of them that hit the market aren't hot sales. I don't know about fair prices or what newer people consider fair, but when a fort doesn't sell for 10mil, we don't have a problem in my opinion. And when prime Yew houses don't fetch 500k, it's not problematic too. And very good situated towers for 50k-150k above deed aren't a problem either. It might seem problematic that there are so many empty larger houses around our lands, that's true, but there are plenty of house spots still available. And the occupied ones arent really expensive when bought from players. When you can't earn this small amount of gold because of limited gametime then that's no problem either. Just set it as endgame goal to own something larger and play longer until you achieve it.

About the above mentioned Hidden Valley and Barrier Island houses: They are all in use, very frequently even. The footprint is also minimal, they aren't blocking any larger houses, because nothing else fits in there. The demand for small and medium houses is very low anyway. And if small houses are used to block larger placement, they serve a strategic function too. Thus, having a point system which prevents 15 massive houses in one ownership wouldn't hurt us. Except that I don't think it would change much, because I don't know of anybody that owns a larger stock of massive houses. If somebody uses 15 small houses to block the placement of larger houses just for grief, that could be problematic though. But afaik, that doesn't happen here.

The real debate is lost in the minutia.

Will anyone convince someone to change their view on anything in this thread?

I don't really subscribe to the housing crisis theory, but wouldn't condemned status fix a lot of this?

No harm to active players, and helps increase liquidity in the market through a likely moderate increase in housing plots available?

Is there anyone who isn't in favor of condemned status?

There's a reason he doesn't play anymore...You might want to ask around in irc about the current whereabouts of Atraxi....... Maybe UORPvp though

Anywho, I think most people here would agree on one thing.... bringing back 90 day condemned status where the house will be condemned if the actual owner doesn't refresh. In most cases, the people who have moved on and houses are refreshed by friends will probably not come back. I think that would create a little more turnover and get some of these properties back into the market and to good use.

I try not to begrudge people who sit on good properties and personally i try to keep my own down as much as possible, but I certainly understand the frustrations with people who have come and gone who no longer play or play elsewhere, only to have someone who still plays do the dirty work and refresh their houses for them. I know a few houses as well owned by people who don't play anymore to my knowledge and they sit empty, some of which are in pretty good spots... and that kind of burns my ass a little bit. Drop them, sell them, give them away already if you don't care enough about this shard to log in for more than 3 seconds every 2 weeks! I don't mind an ACTIVE player having 15 properties much, because I don't envy them. Been there, done that, was a nightmare to refresh that many properties + others held by guild members who don't play anymore.

One thing I can say about this shard, I've often seen rich vets in irc volunteer to help new players look for houses and find them good house spots fairly quick and give them to the new player for deed only. Additionally , I think many of the "1% er's" here don't have as much housing as we think they might. It's a burden to refresh more than 3 or 4 properties, even if they are close by.

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