Housing Discussion

[Fayne]

This is why living in hamlets sucks. :p.

You could always pack up and move!

Yeah, but all of the nicer homes in the major towns are taken, if not all of them. I know Shadgard currently only has two measly one-room homes for sale currently (at least, they're measly if you already own a bigger, more ecpensive house). I know those are there to have a place until you can upgrade later, but it can be hard to upgrade when no houses ever open up in those towns. People who live there managed to get their hands on either the best or the best they could manage, and they aren't eager to give those up. Some people don't even look at houses again once they own one. I guess it'd be nice to either have more bigger, unique homes added, or have the ones that we do have and aren't used become available again. I know this is supposed to be happening soon, thanks to the housing registration system, and I personally can't wait. I'm gonna set out into the world and look for the biggest, bestest house I can afford when it does.


Unrelated: Boo Shadgard, yay Corvus! :P I'd like to see an event someday where one of them manages to occupy the other's town for a month or two before it gets taken back. We need another Shadgard-Corvus war! And do it now while Mistral is being all weird and [crap]!

[Rias]

I'm not planning on adding big, unique homes in any significant numbers. They take a ton of effort and creative juice, when more likely than not, someone will buy them and never use them, but refuse to give them up for people who would actually utilize them. Or if the people do "use" them, they just use them to dump all their stuff in like a glorified storage vault. (Note: I know some people do make use of their unique/fancy homes. Kudos to them.)

Some moderately-sized homes (i.e. not single-room) are being added to Mistral Lake and Shadgard very soon, though.

[Fayne]

Oooooh, yay! I always like new homes.

As for people not using homes, yeah, I don't like that. For storage the one-room homes work just as well as the big, fancy ones that make me jealous. My home may not be decorated all fancy, and it might be a bit cluttered at times with random things, but I do make regular use of it! I gotta admit though, I'd prefer to live in a town instead of a hamlet, especially one so far away. And I'd prefer a wilderness home over both other options, but those things are about as rare as celestium. I know of three, two of which I assume are owned and one that was attempted to be sold about a year and a half ago and never was because the older players were told to stay away and the newer players assumed they didn't have enough money to outbid each other. I still want that house!

[lin]

I'm not planning on adding big, unique homes in any significant numbers. They take a ton of effort and creative juice, when more likely than not, someone will buy them and never use them, but refuse to give them up for people who would actually utilize them. Or if the people do "use" them, they just use them to dump all their stuff in like a glorified storage vault. (Note: I know some people do make use of their unique/fancy homes. Kudos to them.)

About that, what if we provided the room descs?

[Acarin]

Would it be possible to open up some no perk one room condo type structures in the major towns that are essentially unlimited or is this not likely to ever happen?

I know you guys don't currently support housing for ANY alts, but I do have 2 very well established characters and it's always strange to me that I have to keep Zuki homeless due to Acarin's wonderful cave (which I don't want to give up due to its prime location... and ocelot). I do see them both as my main, to some extent.

The idea would be that such housing would always be available to anyone and it might help to cut down on some GM effort in releasing new smaller homes (kind of like personal quarters from some of the guilds).

[Kent]

I have to sympathise with Zuki here. It is boggling that Zuki is compelled
by strange forces to never purchase any sort of a home.

This idea of buying a one room condo (essentially an inn room he gets to
purchase) would go a long way.

[Rias]

Moved housing discussion to this new topic.

[Fayne]

Thanks Rias. We were starting to hijack thay last topic.


Is it against policy to own a house on more than just one character? I always thought it was okay for someone to own a house on just one other alt, as long as that alt is an active character and not just sitting around collecting dust most of the time. I assumed this because I know at least one or two people own a hoise on two different characters.

Honestly, we'll have more homes than players once the inactive ones are freed up, so I don't see why every player should be limited to one home. You might as well ask everyone not to rent out the same rooms in inns for more than a month at a time, or ask Artisans to let the crafting rooms they rent become available again after a while. I feel like as long as the character is active they have a right to own a home, and if they become inactive or retired then the home should be made available again.

[Acarin]

Thanks Rias. We were starting to hijack thay last topic.


Is it against policy to own a house on more than just one character? I always thought it was okay for someone to own a house on just one other alt, as long as that alt is an active character and not just sitting around collecting dust most of the time. I assumed this because I know at least one or two people own a hoise on two different characters.

Honestly, we'll have more homes than players once the inactive ones are freed up, so I don't see why every player should be limited to one home. You might as well ask everyone not to rent out the same rooms in inns for more than a month at a time, or ask Artisans to let the crafting rooms they rent become available again after a while. I feel like as long as the character is active they have a right to own a home, and if they become inactive or retired then the home should be made available again.

I was told by Zoiya that Zuki should not purchase a house and that only one is allowed per player. This may not represent current policy or practice, however, I will respect this until told otherwise by the GM/Dev team.

[Liani]

I feel like something should be done about it and indeed I'm glad that it seems to be in the works. I do know of a person with two alts who owns a house on both and it seems unfair to me, seeing that they haven't been around in over a year.

[Rias]

Each player should have one house total. Without some restriction, we would be swimming in houses - the vast majority of them unused, and it'd be pretty hard to target your own house next to those 20 others in the same room because most people seem to think all their characters should own their own homes. Add to that the extra server load of all those extra rooms full of junk that the inactive owners haven't seen or touched for years.

Most of the inactive homeowners came out of the woodwork when it was announced that unused homes would be reclaimed and put back up for sale, so they could claim their homes and keep them collecting their dust and safe from interlopers who would have enjoyed the unique homes. As a sad result, hardly any are going back up for sale.

I prefer having one house per player, regardless of number of alts or dedication to said alts, similar to my feelings on special event involvement. I don't care how many characters someone has and how awesome they play them - they're still one player, and other players should have the chance to get nice things for one of their characters, too, instead of a few alt-armies gobbling up all the nice stuff. That said, I don't make these kinds of decisions anymore, so I probably won't bother discussing further on the subject.

P.S. If you know a single player who has multiple homes via their alts, please send an email to jirato@contrarium.net with the information.

[Fayne]

Can't these be handled on a case-by-case basis? I mean, as much as I hate taking things from other people, if you aren't actively playing the game we have bank vaults to store your stuff in. As much as I would hate to log in one day and find that my house was no longer mine, or be told that since I wasn't actively playing my hoise was going back up for sale, I couldn't really be mad about it, because I'm ruining the player experience by preventing active members from having a decent home.

Maybe we could have random purges every so often? Let them be unannounced, and if a house hasn't been entered by a PC between purges, or in a set amount of time, then they go back up for sale? Or finally implement the tax system so you at least have to play enough to have the riln for that? There just has to be a solution to this problem that will prevent the people who don't want to lose their house just because even though they aren't playing and using it from coming back for as long as it takes to keep it from going away. Maybe offer to transfer all items inside to a bank vault in the owner's name in the same city, and give them at least a partial refund on the house? That way at least if they do decide to ever come back they can still have their stuff and get a new house again easily.

[Acarin]

I guess my question then would be whether items in home/guild cell storage take up more room than those stored in bank vaults.

One possibility would be to limit the storage space in smaller units to prevent "junk" from accumulating and gathering dust (i.e. furnished units with janitor coming by for anything on the floor and limited containers). Renting inn rooms becomes quite costly overtime as does dropping items in the bank vault.

To be quite honest about this, at a minimum I would just like a better less painful option for storage than current bank vaults (pulling 60 chests when I find a locksmith is a time consuming pain and it's also impossible to organize bank vaults) and inn rooms (too much unkeep).

Maybe a revamp of the bank vault system would be possible and would help to relieve some of the demand for homes? Pay an x riln fee to access a personal vault (like a small storage pod) which you can enter and store items in manually without using the store/retrieve commands? Possible in only one town per character but the bank vault can be shipped to another for a huge fee?

[Acarin]

Can't these be handled on a case-by-case basis? I mean, as much as I hate taking things from other people, if you aren't actively playing the game we have bank vaults to store your stuff in. As much as I would hate to log in one day and find that my house was no longer mine, or be told that since I wasn't actively playing my hoise was going back up for sale, I couldn't really be mad about it, because I'm ruining the player experience by preventing active members from having a decent home.

Maybe we could have random purges every so often? Let them be unannounced, and if a house hasn't been entered by a PC between purges, or in a set amount of time, then they go back up for sale? Or finally implement the tax system so you at least have to play enough to have the riln for that? There just has to be a solution to this problem that will prevent the people who don't want to lose their house just because even though they aren't playing and using it from coming back for as long as it takes to keep it from going away. Maybe offer to transfer all items inside to a bank vault in the owner's name in the same city, and give them at least a partial refund on the house? That way at least if they do decide to ever come back they can still have their stuff and get a new house again easily.

I think people would be more likely to give up their homes if they had some compensation and didn't have to deal with the transfer. There's some good ideas in here. Saying you get nothing for giving up your home to people isn't the greatest motivation to do it.

EDIT: Throwing in both upkeep on houses and compensation for giving them up (or at least a system for resale to the town) might relieve some of the housing issues.

[Fayne]

Maybe a revamp of the bank vault system would be possible and would help to relieve some of the demand for homes? Pay an x riln fee to access a personal vault (like a small storage pod) which you can enter and store items in manually without using the store/retrieve commands? Possible in only one town per character but the bank vault can be shipped to another for a huge fee?

I like this idea. We used to have a lot of instanced rooms for certain guilds, like the Trader forges back in the Old Coalition HQ. I know some instanced rooms are still in the game, like the super secret ones for those super secret people, or the barracks for mercs (unless those got changed). Maybe bank vaults could be instanced rooms used like Acarin suggested, simply being a room that you could throw things in and leave them there. They could be like mail, only accessible from one location, and it would even solve the problem of heavier items not being storable in vaults. Make handcarts and wagons unable to go into them (obviously), and then there you go.

The only problem is I bet doing it this way would take up much more memory, since if I understand the way vaults work, it actually stores those items in a different way than ones actually in the world, and it makes their file size smaller in some way. I suppose the vault rooms could be unloaded and reloaded in much the same way, but then you risk lag every time someone accesses it, especially if they wanna horde things.

I personally think the way vaults work now is probably the best and easiest way to manage them, and unfortunately that also results in them being a [witch] to work with in-game. Vaults may be more convenient memory-wise, but houses are more convenient organization-wise, and that makes houses more popular for storage. Only way to fix it would be to make houses more inconvenient than vaults, or make vaults more convenient than houses, or a combination of both.

[Acarin]

If you made vaults instanced rooms, you could simply limit the storage size (something reasonably large) on them and have only one container in each. The contents of the container could be translated into the same format as the current bank system upon leaving the vault (maybe?). I guess I'm basically just saying that having a way to access vault items where the transfer command could be used for storing or retrieving would be a great asset, and may even impact the desirability of housing (I wouldn't feel like I needed a house for Zuki if this functionality was available).

[Jirato]

Vault revamp has been on the list but is one of those things that keeps getting pushed back.

Also, I'm not entirely sure if it was ever officially Stated "one home per player". Will have to take some time to look through old home discussions on the BBS before I start throwing a fit over one person owning multiple homes on multiple alts. I do appreciate those people who have emailed me already though.

Also, you can keep an Inn room for over a year and still spend less than on a home, just saying. Inn rooms are great.

[Rias]

Also, you can keep an Inn room for over a year and still spend less than on a home, just saying. Inn rooms are great.

Go Inn Rooms! They're awesome and you don't have to feel like you need to stick to one place long-term. Good for the rovers.

[Dorn]

Also, you can keep an Inn room for over a year and still spend less than on a home, just saying. Inn rooms are great.

Go Inn Rooms! They're awesome and you don't have to feel like you need to stick to one place long-term. Good for the rovers.

Any chance of those in Corvus? Even if it is a small little place... Murky's could have a room, or two right?

[lin]

Or if the people do "use" them, they just use them to dump all their stuff in like a glorified storage vault.

What if alongside houses we had generic storage spaces one can buy/rent? That could potentially relief the demand for houses. Houses with nice descs and stuffs would then be more likely to be used for RP rather than mechanical benefit, and I'm pretty sure no one would care if the storage units had a bland copypasted desc.

[Jirato]

Just wanted to add here so no one is surprised when this happens.

Talks of property tax and reclaiming inactive houses has been going on for over a year now. We're finally moving forward with it. Development is slow as always, but don't be surprised if you see property tax come up by this Spring. What does this mean, exactly? You'll have to visit the housing office of your town and pay a fee of half a percent of the total cost of your home monthly. That's only 100 riln a month for a 1 room house, so, not that bad at all.

What will happen if you can't pay? If you miss multiple months payments in a row, everything in your house will be moved to your bank vault, your locks will be changed, and the house will be re-listed for sale.

Also, I won't hide it. I have a strong dislike for hamlet homes. They don't really fit the original intent of hamlets as event fodder. The point is the wilderness is supposed to be an extremely dangerous and violent place. These little hamlets have no protections that places such as Mistral Lake, Haiban, Shadgard, and Corvus have. They're prone to frequent and very violent attacks. It's a hard life, living in a hamlet. So, any homes in hamlets are going away. Morhollow is a bit special since it has a guild headquarters and all. I view it as a little bit more than just a hamlet. They will be keeping their homes. But if you have a home anywhere else than Corvus, Haiban, Mistral Lake, Morhollow, or Shadgard don't expect to keep it long.

[Rias]

if you have a home anywhere else than Corvus, Haiban, Mistral Lake, or Morhollow, don't expect to keep it long.

/mustachetwirl

[Dorn]

if you have a home anywhere else than Corvus, Haiban, Mistral Lake, or Morhollow, don't expect to keep it long.

/mustachetwirl

/me races ahead of the GMs with a torch.

[Jirato]

Fixed.

[Rias]

It's okay, nobody doubted homes were fine in Shadgard, because it's the best town.