☼¿☼ Housing...

[AllenHonors]

I think the subject of this speaks for itself and no further context is truly needed, but I shall elaborate.

As a long time fan and my love of UO, one of the first things to look forward to for many players is to find a place to call home. A place to domesticate in our virtual space. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the game imo is having the ability to decorate, furnish, store, and just in general put your own touch of you within our virtual world. As it seems to be here, long time players with the finances to support their love of housing, have hindered this to some degree. Don't get me wrong, having 5-10 plots lumped together is amazing and fun in every aspect. The lack of a housing limit though has started to shine through.

I've heard whispers of a new housing development in the works or some sort of solution for more housing eventually to come. Eagerly look forward to hearing more and learning more about the future housing development other than whispers through a grapevine.

I'd propose a housing limit to some degree. Whether it's 10 houses or 20. Perhaps grandfather the people that have clearly already dropped substantial investments into their virtual housing here. But, it's no longer days of being able to find a home easily for a newer player. Multiple castles being used as "place markers" for someone's future grand scheme of plans.

I spent the best part of my first two weeks back after a bit of a long hiatus from UOEX, searching for housing. Thought I found a perfect spot for a front/back connected 18x18s, but mistakingly placed them on my character before having my old account reinstated and will perhaps lose those plots to others on the prowl when they drop. Housing feels like a chore to hope and pray someone else's places drop or decide to sell a spot for a reasonable price. A way for new comers to the shard to feel like there's assurances they'll have the ability to find a place to call home that's not nestled within the closest confinements of the rules as possible would be nice.

My suggestions... would love to see more static housing available. I know there's some already, but static housing is pretty cool. More options = more cool points. Limits on the amount of houses an account is allowed when/if the next housing development comes along. Something to assure newer players a way to enjoy the part of UO many others like myself really enjoy (a place to call home not being crowded out by people with millions already in the bank).

/endrantfulthoughts

[Deorum]

Hasn’t changed in the 6 years I’ve been here. Doubt it will ever change. There are always people that will make ridiculous amounts of money in this game with absolutely nothing to spend it on other than things like houses. The only alternative I’d offer is approaching some of these mega monstrosity player house cities that are as large or larger than the original cities is to create their own lands for them as part of a new facet full of player-run cities.
I’ve instead turned to trying to find houses in unique spots rather than giant land masses. It would be nice if a benefit of sticking to smaller, non-adjoined houses that are spread out, players were able to sink foundations and add basements, etc for significantly cheap. Less X-Y axis makes cheaper Z axis and vice versa. Or if additional housing slots per account went up cost wise exponentially for each slot. However, the problem has already presented itself and the mega millionaires that already exist would be grandfathered in, so I do t expect much change.

[Yoda]

here is the thing, I could listen to you guys going on about this issue, or I could snag a house slot get a placement tool and show you how badly you guys are whinging about nothing

[Animol]

I could snag a house slot get a placement tool and show you how badly you guys are whinging about nothing

Please do. For starters, I'd like a double 18x18 spot on grass. Thanks in advance.

[+Requiem]

We are aware there is a situation with housing (probably not as bad as you seem to be making it out), and yes we do have plans to address it.

I originally announced it back in January, but as you all know, it's been a difficult year.
( http://uoex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6 ... 285#p69367 )

It got pushed back to handle some other things, add squash some bugs, and whatever else Colibri and Arden are handling on the back end.

What I can say is this. When we talked about it, there were plans to limit housing on normal maps. There was going to be a new option for larger "cities", for those that were interested in that. There was going to be an entire new facet devoted to housing (probably another dupe of malas).

There's a few other surprises we have planned as well, I just can't remember them off the top of my head.

[AllenHonors]

here is the thing, I could listen to you guys going on about this issue, or I could snag a house slot get a placement tool and show you how badly you guys are whinging about nothing

I've snagged a house placement tool. Thanks.
Let me know how easy it is to find a place to nestle in two houses side by side around all the castles and empty plots. I can easily find spots with one 18x18. Pretty simple stuff.

Gotta love when people jump straight to the "i'm tired of hearing people whine about this" as opposed to coming from a point of trying to understand other players concerns.

[AllenHonors]

We are aware there is a situation with housing (probably not as bad as you seem to be making it out), and yes we do have plans to address it.

I originally announced it back in January, but as you all know, it's been a difficult year.
( http://uoex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6 ... 285#p69367 )

I should have replied to this via one thread in my last reply. I'll try to maintain better forum posting etiquette in the future to cut back on postings.

In my eyes, when I see players coming to the forums or global for multiple weeks or longer in hopes to place a keep or couple 18x18s next to one another, there's an issue.

True, it's "not as bad as people are making it out to be", if people want to be nerfed in where and what they're allowed to place to reside in, due to other long timers having staked claim to numerous spots out of sheer dedication to playing here. This situation would get worse as time continues on the same path. I look forward to future housing development changes. Read the previous threads in regards to housing "instances" n etc. Seems like great ideas.

As a returning player trying to integrate into Excelsior again, I'm still new/fresh to the happenings or mishappenings of the ups n downs of things since being back. Just stating things I see from observational perspectives thus far.

[Wil]

Keeps and Castles are scarce on every shard. They're supposed to be. I think that fairly applies to joined houses (e.g. 2x18x18) too.

I'd personally like to see the housing system tweaked so you can upgrade a smaller house to castle-level storage. On most shards I've played that was a non-issue because items in houses persist even if they're not locked down or stored in a secure container. Here it's a nuisance: I have to spread my stuff out among houses, each with a tiny little corner holding a bunch of chests. An 8x8 with 4688 secure storage would make me just as happy as a castle.

I found two spots for two adjacent 18x18ishs a couple months ago. Sold one of them as a keep with an adjacent 17xsomething that should be joinable as a 17x18. They're hard to find but they do come up once in a while.

If you want an 18x18 I have one for sale for 400k gold. The plot alone is 179k with the house placement tool so I'm not exactly gouging for my time and effort to find it. http://www.uoex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=12318

If you're having trouble finding spots smaller than 18x18, you're doing it wrong. They're everywhere.

[Opopanax]

I think Wil has hit on a very good point about storage. The only real reason I sought out a larger plot was due to the storage limitations of a smaller plot. If there was a way to upgrade storage I would be less bothered about seeking a larger plot. I'm certain that I don't need a castle, but it would be nice to think that I don't need to worry about storage.

[+Requiem]

I can say, storage is something we are also addressing in the update, when it's ready.

[Cornbread]

I agree housing can be annoying for the newer people wanting to expand. As someone who has an enormous compound I can also tell you that I didn't get that overnight. I finally acquired my last two houses a couple months ago, probably 5 years after I started trying to expand. When you look at most of the other enormous houses they took a similar amount of time. A big part of all of us who have the large compounds has been lots of PM's and bribing neighbors to move. I'm guessing just my costs for paying off neighbors has been 250 mil gold plus finding them new plots to place a house or two.

I know I'm not posting any solutions or even real thoughts, just wanted to let the people complaining about our huge compounds that they weren't gifted to us nor did we just get them because we started years ago. Eight years ago when I started all I could place in my current location was one 18x18. I would love to see some cool changes, but I'm also pretty happy and feel good about my accomplishment of gathering such a huge area to build a custom compound.

[Octavius Thorn]

Housing here is awesome and horrible at the same time.. My main home is 4 18x18s with 2 smaller plots to each side. I own 13 plots all together and all of them are built up and decoed out. Most of them could pass for primary residences. I would hate to see limits put on the current facets. I don't like Malas and if that's the big expansion we get that will bum me out, seriously.. I would like to see the rental aspect beefed up with more options available abit but please have it changed to also take funds from your exex( for instance look at all the empty unused buildings in magda Umbra).. I have been here 2 1/2 years the problem to me and the only problem is that players place plots and never build on them or the player who has a ton of classic designs and they are all empty.. Nothing is more frustrating on this shard and I mean NOTHING then running around trying to place an 18x18 or a tower and walking through empty castle/keep after empty castle/keep or a player who been allowed to purchase over 40 plots and they are almost ALL blank after years.. Not to mention there are players who play every day and have random blank plots all over the place.. We have ton of space on this shard, we have an issue with a select few people who are abusing a really nice potential system to build your dream UO home that is really incredible, I mean sinking plots connecting plots, yard wand awesome features.. But a select few are ruining it. How do you police it? I think a hands on case by case basis that is how.

[Silent]

AllenHonors welcome to the server, unfortunately nothing can be done for the moment about this. I would suggest if you cant find a spot, place a smaller plot until one is made available or you end up buying one to Will...

Addressing the discussion so far:

About storage space and limitations, although it is small there needs to be a great deal of calculation to increase this, if you played on other servers you would know that if you logged out on a player house with more than 3-4 years you would probably need GM assistance to be moved since you could not load all the chunk or take a lot of time and cause lag spikes.

About the land occupation there is not much to be said here people make money out of it no one seems to care and you need to walk around the world each day to find a plot, perhaps if you did not allow the selling of plots like people argued with vendor spots (which is the same thing imo) this would no be a problem and you could actually make more money (real one) because players would buy slots to expand their own houses since there would be space...

The newb treatment is worsening day by day in a server which has a fair amount of bank sitter player base, if someone arrives at our server and complaints about something, it is not polite nor is our purpose here to address the issue saying "yeah we've heard that wining many times". If I was arriving here I would tell you to go some place (I'm not allowed to) and go look for another server. No one is forced to be newb friendly but arrogance should not be allowed either it does not help us in any way perhaps in the future these attitudes could suffer staff intervention since it is in their interest as well...

[Golden Temptress]

Just a suggestion, and hey Allen welcome back maybe as a short term solution - an item lockdown/secure increase deed buyable in the ED room that you can apply to any plot so people can store greater amounts in smaller spaces and second idea is to make loads of space free in existing houses by making most common items that are alike all stackable.

I know this isn't a solution for people wanting big plots to deco etc... but it would ease the need for people to have castles for storage hence freeing up loads of castle spots as 1 castle can store all their stuff rather than needing 3 ugly empty castles containing only chests.

Anyways thats my thoughts on this

[graveshadow]

Just a suggestion, and hey Allen welcome back maybe as a short term solution - an item lockdown/secure increase deed buyable in the ED room that you can apply to any plot so people can store greater amounts in smaller spaces and second idea is to make loads of space free in existing houses by making most common items that are alike all stackable.

I know this isn't a solution for people wanting big plots to deco etc... but it would ease the need for people to have castles for storage hence freeing up loads of castle spots as 1 castle can store all their stuff rather than needing 3 ugly empty castles containing only chests.

Anyways thats my thoughts on this

That's a great idea I was wondering how hard it would be to make chests that function like keys for people that store crafted jewelry weps etc kinda like the seed boxes might help with storage issues for some people