Housing

[ella]

Hello everyone, long time player here, my account is right now at 1931 days, and I really want to bring up the topic of housing.

I've watched UOSA grow and it's goal of era accuracy be fine tuned over the years and it's safe to say it really has been achieved. It's a goal that's took many years, and many contributing parties, but now I want to ask the community one serious question:

What is everyone's thoughts in regards to limiting housing? i.e. One house per account?

This is a small change that if implemented could really aid in the fostering of growth. I talk to so many more experienced veteran players and many of them have multiple houses, ranging from multiple smalls, to a few mid range, to even a couple castles.

This seems, excessive, and while one house per character maybe was era accurate, it's not something that drastically ruins the game mechanics by changing it.

Limiting one house per account is similar to the admins limiting 3 accounts per player, it's not something that changes the actual play dynamics, the mechanics of pvp or skill gain, but it is a system type decision that effects the over all health of shard: Because back in 1999, very few people had 3 accounts. Why if we've made 3 accounts the common place standard here shouldn't we extend a similar style of reasoning to limiting one house per account?

I'd really like to hear some genuine thoughts on this, genuine discussion, I don't want this to devolve into an argument, but I want veteran, new players, and staff alike, to seriously consider this or at least publicly weigh these considerations in the forum through an exchange between minds.

Thanks,

ella

[Grimoric]

I think it would destroy the house market and that was a big part of the game

Some time around then trammel was released I did read a post from OSI that eatch facet can hold about 3000-3500 houses depending on house sizes placed and about 800 of them can be larger then 7x7 (small house) and all this was under a non T2A map with a mutch more forgiving placment rules. Like the AOS client map we use and we even have more forgiving rules here, all type of stones has always blocking house plancement in this era as an example.

Code: Select all

(Server Publish Jan 24 2000)

The following plants will not block the placement of a house any more:

>All mushrooms 
>All small flowers 
>Poppies 
>Red poppies 
>Orfluer flowers 
>White flowers 
>Foxglove flowers 
>Campion Flowers 
>Snowdrops 

I guess that we have about 200 to 300 active players and that makes it 600 to 900 houses this would give everyone a big home and the market would dry out and die.

/Grim

[Demetrius]

I think it would destroy the house market and that was a big part of the game

Some time around then trammel was released I did read a post from OSI that eatch facet can hold about 3000-3500 houses depending on house sizes placed and about 800 of them can be larger then 7x7 (small house) and all this was under a non T2A map with a mutch more forgiving placment rules. Like the "AOS map" and forgiving rules we have here today.

Code: Select all

(Server Publish Jan 24 2000)

The following plants will not block the placement of a house any more:

>All mushrooms 
>All small flowers 
>Poppies 
>Red poppies 
>Orfluer flowers 
>White flowers 
>Foxglove flowers 
>Campion Flowers 
>Snowdrops 

I guess that we have about 200 to 300 active players and that makes it 600 to 900 houses this would give everyone a big home and the market would dry out and die.

/Grim

The housing market has already dried up and died. Houses that once went for 3-4x deed are now being sold for deed + 5K...and that's assuming that they even sell. Most people have 1 -2 houses that they won't let go of the, rest are just for show. Limiting housing to one per account would be good as most new people are looking for large homes but can't find any because 10 people have all the castles and keeps and won't sell or part with them for newer players. When the server population is this small the housing market is going to dry up quickly anyways not matter what the rule set. New players that are able to get large homes fairly quickly will tell their friends and they just might come and play here. Remember more new players = more targets for Pk's lol.

[Grimoric]

The housing market has already dried up and died. Houses that once went for 3-4x deed are now being sold for deed + 5K...and that's assuming that they even sell. Most people have 1 -2 houses that they won't let go of the, rest are just for show. Limiting housing to one per account would be good as most new people are looking for large homes but can't find any because 10 people have all the castles and keeps and won't sell or part with them for newer players. When the server population is this small the housing market is going to dry up quickly anyways not matter what the rule set. New players that are able to get large homes fairly quickly will tell their friends and they just might come and play here. Remember more new players = more targets for Pk's lol.

Yea I agree that the market have died and that is the issue. I would prefer that a small house in a bad location would costs like 900k in a player to player trade. I loved the real feeling of "owning" a house I had worked for. I'm not a PVP player at all and the part of the game I like playing is dying horrible. With the current housing rules we dont need big houses for pvp or dungeon crawling, there is no item decay inside. A castle or keep is just a status symbol and was horrible hard to get your hands on in T2A era they actually doing us a favor in my opinion.

/Grim

[Demetrius]

The housing market has already dried up and died. Houses that once went for 3-4x deed are now being sold for deed + 5K...and that's assuming that they even sell. Most people have 1 -2 houses that they won't let go of the, rest are just for show. Limiting housing to one per account would be good as most new people are looking for large homes but can't find any because 10 people have all the castles and keeps and won't sell or part with them for newer players. When the server population is this small the housing market is going to dry up quickly anyways not matter what the rule set. New players that are able to get large homes fairly quickly will tell their friends and they just might come and play here. Remember more new players = more targets for Pk's lol.

Yea I agree that the market have died and that is the issue. I would prefer that a small house in a bad location would costs like 900k in a player to player trade. I loved the real feeling of "owning" a house I had worked for. I'm not a PVP player at all and the part of the game I like playing is dying horrible. With the current housing rules we dont need big houses for pvp or dungeon crawling, there is no item decay inside. A castle or keep is just a status symbol and was horrible hard to get your hands on in T2A era they actually doing us a favor in my opinion.

/Grim

I'm not a PvPer either. The trades have suffered greatly. Everyone has a GM trades person and they don't really need to buy from us. The only real solution to the markets is to get more people back here. Not too sure how to do that

[ella]

Like others have said, there currently is no housing market.

Right now we have a bear market when it comes to housing. Players acquire multiple smalls, usually in highly trafficked areas, sit on them, load them with vendors - or not - and as a result things begin to stagnate.

3 account minimum, one house per account, means that each property you place is *desired*, it's the best location each individual has chosen for *their needs*, ending the bear housing market of simply clinging on to excess property.

This seems like an entirely logical progression based on the system decision of 3 account minimum(even though in 1999, account minimums didn't exist). We have 3 account minimum for various logical reasons(it wasn't always like this here!) and this implementation did improve UOSA. (I think limiting players to one... or 2 accounts... would greatly improve the shard, but that's another discussion entirely).

I think a step in the right direction would be to extend this type of reasoning and implement a housing limit of one per account. This really comes down to we are attempting to recreate era accuracy in a era of gameplay that didn't exist! Very few players had multiple accounts back in 1999, let alone did they have dozens of houses(even though there was no rules against it) the limiting factor at that time was money, and CPU speed(UO was a memory hog during that time).

Now days, it's easy to have multiple accounts running, multiple clients, acquire dozens of property, amass an insulated character base that caters to every conceivable need in regards to crafting, farming, pvp, etc. This isn't just a few people who've done this here, this is the majority of the shard. This ruleset enables players to insulate themselves from the greater economic process of trade that drove UO interaction. This I've observed is what is the major cause of the economic cool down that's taken place not only in the housing market, but in trade, and in eventual shard population.

These reasons I've provided are certainly more along the lines of "theory of UO" but I think there is a big disparity here. Taking the steps necessary to curtail that I think begins by simply making a system ruleset that limits housing one per account.

[Light Shade]

The housing market has already dried up and died. Houses that once went for 3-4x deed are now being sold for deed + 5K...

They went for that when 1,000 people were logged in, housing was booming, and the server was hopping.

This statement is worthless.

[Demetrius]

The only way to get out of a bear market is to increase demand for a product (ie housing). The only way that will happen is to get more players here. Without the player base increasing there will be no demand for housing. That goes for the trades as well. Limiting the number of houses to one per account won't really solve the problem. If the player base increases then they can do that but otherwise it doesn't really help anything. As for the solution to player base I don't really know.
What I can tell you is that people are looking for the next greatest game. They will play it for a time and then leave for something else. All MMO's have this problem. The player base is huge at the start and then drops off over time as people leave for the next greatest game and in some cases the game is dead within 1-2 years.
The same thing happened here. Lots of people played here for a while and then numbers fell. They probably won't get back to where they were and eventually Derrick will pull the plug.
But until then we should enjoy the time that we do have here and hopefully things will improve again (population wise).