I don't exactly have a whole lot to say about the subject, personally I'd rather see the entire house system be removed. Yet for those folks who spend 500k a month on renting one of those things, do you agree with the price?

It encourages a grind in my opinion, which I know many people hate to do. I'm in favor of dropping the price down a considerable amount. Maybe 250k monthly?

(now before you start hating on me, I don't even own one of the things)

IIRC, the original intention was for the houses to be a money sink for gold hoarders, and there was some thought about eventually lowering the prices once a chunk of the server's gold surplus had been whittled away. I've no idea on current server economics, but maybe that point's been reached.

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Named Most Influential Character, Amia Awards 2011

500k a month is a drop in the bucket for some of the 'old money' that we have around. But it's a huge sink for newer people.

There's really no way to make a gold sink anymore, as you can make money like it's nothing, and a lot of people have 100's of millions and there's just nothing to spend it on. Raising prices to the point where you hit those people likely wouldn't encourage them to actually buy into it, but would keep everyone else out.

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ANT ALARM

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And you know this how?

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uh ppl have opened a barter menu and shown me a vast sum of money to brag?

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ANT ALARM

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That doesn't make it a lot of people. It's true of some, though.

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Currently playing:
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Doing fire giants and killing all the spawns will get you around 60k.

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Heh I must be poor then, I have at present 160k, less after restocking my arrows last night! I could never afford a house even if my char thought about trying to live it one! She may buy a tent at some point!

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When it rains, look for rainbows.
When it's dark, look for stars.

Are housing prices the same everywhere? Maybe they could be adjusted according to neighborhood. So a house in Wharftown could be a good bit cheaper than one in a nice part of Cordor.

That's true, the less popular and out of the way places might well be cheaper to encourage people to go there... though an argument could be made that such a change should be taken up ICly by travelers and locals with the right officials! heh

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When it rains, look for rainbows.
When it's dark, look for stars.

I can only think of about 3-4 that are active and their players play no other characters...


That said farming isn't fun for me. Gold is precious but not typically so for the conceptual characters I play. It's needed for somethings and for me it's a paid in the ass to get. with out really having a dedicated partner to play with spending money on a house is a waste with the current pricing now.

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Hmm. My opinion is that I like the cost. It makes the amount of use low, which is good, considering its a antisocial way to get plot immunity barring miraculous dm intervention.

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a.k.a. Audrey Zinata

While I'm sure there are some that have hundreds of millions, I don't think that's the majority, it's a small minority. If I add up all my characters, I might have 100 mil, and that's accumulated over 5 years on many characters. That said, I'd never show that off in a barter window, and I have to question anyone that felt the need to do so. My "mains" typically have 5-15 million though at any given time. Though, in all honesty gold is less valuable the more you have.

As for the housing! While on the one hand, I do think the prices are ridiculously high, I don't want to reduce them and encourage more people into hiding. Too many times people are in "private" doing gods-know-what, but one thing they are not doing is socializing and expanding their interactions.

My vote is.... make player housing more temporary, remove the monthly rentals, do daily or weekly. That's just off the top of my head, so I might have something better later.

Check out the prices here. It was implemented at one million for the month-deluxe back in 2009. They chopped that in half in July 2012.

Considering what the rental system is (purely a gold sink - they are not necessary for the server in any other capacity other than starting faction areas maybe, which is again not a necessity to get a faction area), I think it's better to keep the prices the way they are. And I say that as a player of a character who's probably struggling a little bit to pay rent on a newish character who should not be homeless (and IC'ly owns the house)!

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I was most active with the community when I had a house consistently. Correlation =/= effect.
Limiting factors will not make people be less antisocial. My strong suggestion is to not use Negative to promote positive but rather promote positive with positive. Try and organize larger meet ups or mini events. Even just as players your characters can get together and do something. The trick is making it interesting.

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just go steal someone's house or town, that's free.

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bad man

An alternative suggestion would be to make it town dependable. For example Cordor North is prolly cheaper than Cordor East. Or Warftown and BEndir Dale are likely cheaper than Kohlingen and Cordor. Ostland is cheaper than Wiltun...etc etc.

Some diversity might be fun although I have no issue with the current prices so far. You gotta work for what you own! As Jes said, it used to be crazy and since there is an item sell cap, it was good that they cut the prices.

Right now the prices are ridiculously, immersion-shatteringly high. How is it that 99% of NPCs aren't living in the gutters? If you think housing causes isolationist RP, then the solution is to make them less impenetrable, not having them be so expensive that only a few can afford them.

That said, I'm troubled by the line of thinking some people have that forms of RP they don't like should be punished and restricted, but then that's nothing new around here.

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Currently playing:
Aven Brinyflask
Safaya Dalai
Riyit
Chsera Hile

(Credits to Raua for the sprite, sauce -here-.)

500k is the price for the monthly cost of a deluxe package.

Its cheaper if you get it weekly which is 100k per week.

My main char does pay the 500k monthly upkeep and its not hard to get that much.

There are cheaper versions

The Basic is 100k per month and the Standard at 250k per month.

100k a week is okay, id just like to see it changed to 400k for a month to match.

Also 14,286 a day would be sweeeeeeet. Given i only ever need the place for a once in awhile private meeting.

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House Auvrea'Kan Crafts and Services is now open and prepared to discuss orders.

I always figured it was an incentive to get people to pay weekly, and therefore ensure the PC were there actively, rather than monthly in which the house stays "tied up" longer, even if you're not there to use it. Though really, the extra 100k doesn't phase me and I'll go for the month just so I won't be worrying about logging on to keep my PC's house if I don't feel like it whatever particular day.

I will echo that gold sinks have very limited effectiveness until you limit the income in the system. When my PC isn't sitting on loads of GP, honestly it does encourage a bit of grinding, and I feel compelled to scrounge up however much I need to stay "even" after making the purchase. The main limiter in making gold now is time and what stomach one has for grinding. Which as we all know is a very high limit, almost nonexistent. The only thing keeping any one PC from raising millions of gold is their player's willingness or unwillingness to beat spawns into shiny new coins.

To that end, I say we forget the gold sink aim of housing for the moment. If it the prices need to be lowered to be more attractive to people, do it. Focus on getting them used at all for RP's sake. There are many unowned houses, but a majority(?) of PCs without them, so the issue there is either those PCs/players dont care for houses as a setting for their some of their RP, or they're too expensive to bother with it. As for the whole exclusive RP thing, I'll say as I said before, access to houses isn't a guarantee to access to the RP some people feel they are being cheated out of. You don't spy on someone and they just say "oh, come join the fun." Modern defense of property laws be damned, they will try to kill you. And if they don't want other people involved, they'll find somewhere in our huge two servers to meet without other people anyway. It's, frankly, silly to assume otherwise as no one owes it to anyone else to include people in all their RP any more than their actual PCs want to include others in their schemes, projects, or personal lives. That's why it's on DMs to make sure their plots encourage(or even require) the involvement of different groups. While inclusive RP is certainly something we should strive towards as players, it's no ones responsibility to go about it more than our PCs ICly would... but that's getting into other topics.

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