Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

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Derrick
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Derrick »

Treysta wrote:Can you define "accounts which are used clearly to just hold houses for another player"? Does the account owner have to play once a month? Once a week? Daily? Do they have to use the houses on their account?
I think that in the asking of this question you understood what difficultly it would be to answer. Any course taken sets up arbitrary restrictions that may very well impact people who you would not feel were abusing the system, such as players with jobs that take them off grid for a month or two; I know we have had these players and they have contacted me when they were taking a long leave of absence.

I don't feel it's justified to tell them to redeed their house and store all the contents etc etc... I think it is reasonable to allow these otherwise active players to have their houses refreshed by a friend in their absence.

However there are certainly people who do make an investment in real estate which rises to the level of abuse. Wherever we set that level is at least somewhat arbitrary and ripe for argument. Unless we clearly post some sort of clear guideline, players who are informed that what they are doing looks abusive will certainly protest with the unfairness of it all. If the level is set too low they might be right; and if it is set to high, will have no effect.

The discussion of housing and the unfairness of it all has been a topic on UOSA for half a decade. We will not likely publish specific rules on what constitutes poor form in house holding; but a general moral rule of "if you know you're doing something wrong, then you are doing something wrong" is worth citing here.

We will continue to monitor for accounting abuse. If your houses are not on your three allowed accounts, it's fair to warn that you are at risk of losing them.
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slyyoungstar
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by slyyoungstar »

Would someone publicly claiming that they have access to 20+ accounts for housing storage purposes be considered abuse?

Although I'm opening the door to a "sly, u mad.com?" It's kinda worth mentioning how some people get constantly looked over when they're publicly abusing guidelines and rubbing people's noses in it

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Derrick
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Derrick »

slyyoungstar wrote:Would someone publicly claiming that they have access to 20+ accounts for housing storage purposes be considered abuse?

Although I'm opening the door to a "sly, u mad.com?" It's kinda worth mentioning how some people get constantly looked over when they're publicly abusing guidelines and rubbing people's noses in it
Yes. Accounts have been locked out in the past for such.

Admission makes it easy. When someone it trying to hide it is when our resources are stretched.
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Treysta
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Treysta »

[15:53] <Vega-> seriously half of the map would be gone if it was actually enforced
^

Skorp
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Skorp »

Rose wrote:At least on UOSA you can still place a small house any time. If this were 1999 T2A you would have no chance to place anything at all.

The tears cried over this topic only serve to slightly dehydrate those who cry them, nothing more. Get over it.
This isn't 1999 T2A, and this isn't UOSA with 1000 people playing. What is the point of a world full of houses if all the houses are empty.

I really like the idea of house upkeep costs dependent on number of houses owned. 5 houses? No charge. 15 houses? Sure, but pay up.

I can't believe it would be that hard to make a script to record IP for who is refreshing houses. It shouldn't be that difficult to determine if one IP is refreshing more than 15 houses and assure the few people doing so have reason to be.

Honestly I'm not crying over this, I'm over it, just giving my 2 cents. I don't see things changing when they've been one way for a long time. But I do think change is good when the same thing that's been done for a long time may not be ideal anymore. At the end of the day you cater to those who were here before and don't play anymore other than refreshing houses or you cater to those who are playing now. You can't make everyone happy.

Elph
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Elph »

No one wants to hunt down specific people and take their stuff away from them, which is why guidelines of some kind are necessary to prevent exploitation on both sides. It is with the same even-handedness that the "era-accuracy" rules are enforced that any housing rules ought to be too. What's fair is fair, and only through specific guidelines without grey areas can fairness take place. The argument here should not be whether or not we ought to have guidelines as such, but what exactly those guidelines should be.

I think it would be much easier to enforce a guideline and help players on a leave of absence if the rule was as such:

1. Players cannot use any account except for their own three accounts.

2. Players taking a leave of absence should consult staff on being granted a temporary exemption from house decay for a specific period of time to be decided before the leave of absence takes place. These exemptions should be publicly posted.

3. Players performing services such as for-fee training and other actions that result in accounts changing hands must be granted official account transfer permission and at no time exceed a limit of 3 accounts being used.



It is good for the server to keep vets around. However, it is to the great detriment of the server that new players should find that there is a lack of housing space and an excess of inactive housing. If we had plentiful housing space, new players would be much less wary to invest time and energy into training here. We must strike some sort of balance between appealing to vets who mostly spend their time in real estate holdings/transactions and providing an environment where new players don't feel suffocated by existing veterans. In a new server with a good environment, space brings possibility to new players, and breathes life into the server. It is for the best that we should allow this to happen.

15 houses is a lot for one person, I think we need to acknowledge this. Some people don't feel comfortable with this limit, but they are a small minority of admittedly very dedicated players. If we are to encourage more dedicated players to stay here, I think we may have to sacrifice the happiness of the few for the happiness of the many.
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Treysta
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Treysta »

^Yep. Since the staff doesn't want to publish specific rules, the housing limit is pretty much a faith-based system. See Derrick's response:
We will not likely publish specific rules on what constitutes poor form in house holding; but a general moral rule of "if you know you're doing something wrong, then you are doing something wrong" is worth citing here.
The problem is twofold.

Without knowing the specific rules, the innocent players who actually do refresh friends houses could potentially overstep a boundary and get their accounts banned.

And on the other hand, those who intentionally circumvent the spirit of the housing limit may be under the impression that they're not doing anything wrong at all, or be unconcerned with the consequences.
^

Bloom
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Bloom »

Derrick said there are rules, everybody knows the rules but it's difficult to enforce and know exactly who is doing what. Life isn't fair. There is a ton of cool houses for sale and inexpensive. Idocs happen every day and some dude is posting the locations in the goddamn forum with a link to Eo's great explanation on how to time them.

Elph
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Elph »

There are rules, but not specific ones. As I said, this makes it hard to enforce fairly, and difficult for players to figure out if they are doing something wrong.

Specific rules will clear up this argument. The discussion should not be about whether they ought to exist, but what exactly they should be.
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WarmApplepie
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by WarmApplepie »

With how lax things seem to be I dont see why people couldnt make accounts with new emails. Staff said they look into activity on those kindve accounts to determine if they are just holder accts or active players. So why not just run bandage making macros or weapon blacksmithing or anything for that matter. Thats 15 more houses a player can have and complys to all of the rules listed above?
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Elph
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Elph »

WarmApplepie wrote:With how lax things seem to be I dont see why people couldnt make accounts with new emails. Staff said they look into activity on those kindve accounts to determine if they are just holder accts or active players. So why not just run bandage making macros or weapon blacksmithing or anything for that matter. Thats 15 more houses a player can have and complys to all of the rules listed above?
Staff have easy access to IP data. If there were a hard and fast rule of no using more than one's own three accounts, it would be simple and fast to find out who was breaking it.

Otherwise staff would basically have to play Inspector Gadget and follow someone around like a super sleuth just to find someone out. All the while probably feeling like a dickhead for being such a narc. It takes a lot of dedication and time for anyone to do that sort of thing.

Which, I will repeat, is the reason why a steady rule should be made, with a (non-player controlled) workaround for leave of absence players. We ought to just be deciding what that rule is.
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Bloom
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Bloom »

I don't understand why you all think the rules aren't specific. 1 house per char, 3 account max. Those are rules, there doesn't seem to be any grey area. The trouble is knowing who is using multiple accounts - which is also, specifically, against the rules as well. There isn't any grey area.

Bloom
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Bloom »

I don't understand why you all think the rules aren't specific. 1 house per char, 3 account max. Those are rules, there doesn't seem to be any grey area. The trouble is knowing who is using multiple accounts - which is also, specifically, against the rules as well. There isn't any grey area.

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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by Rammar »

Bloom wrote:I don't understand why you all think the rules aren't specific. 1 house per char, 3 account max. Those are rules, there doesn't seem to be any grey area. The trouble is knowing who is using multiple accounts - which is also, specifically, against the rules as well. There isn't any grey area.
Except that is not the case. There has been, and continues to be (to the best of my knowledge) an allowance to log into other's accounts (3 total at a time ofc). "For account upkeep" iirc, whatever that means. The problem is, where one person might take this to mean 'refreshing', another might take it to mean 'refreshing condemned', moving loot, getting holiday items, holding/xferring houses, etc. There seems to be enough leeway to get away with any excuse assuming you admit no fault. This also doesn't even touch on those that log in to more than 3 accounts with, and without, permission.

Ultimately there is no reason for allowing it imo. Friend someone if you expect to be gone a while. If you expect to be gone more than 3 months (condemn), with zero chance to log in, chances are you either don't care all that much to bother yourself, or you're very unlikely to ever come back and should have deeded/banked.

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WarmApplepie
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Re: Housing limit. (Now with less libel!)

Post by WarmApplepie »

exactly, since staff openly stated players are allowed to log into "friends" accounts and refresh houses, do whatever. Leaves a LOT of grey area. And since they said, the account must show some sort of "activity" it sure would be easy to just do some normal macros to keep chars logged in.

As far as the IP issue, that's goes against ^^^ as well as other reasons.
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