Housing Research and Testimonials needed!

Nepoke

Hello friends!

In this time of great turmoil, I was going to vomit my opinion about player housing onto the forums. However, when I started typing, I realized I didn't actually have much experience about player housing in past games, nor was I really ever interested in owning anything virtual. So instead of theorizing about something that can't be tested and I have relatively little experience in, I'd like to reasearch the topic first!

I'm interested in two things:

1. Testimonials from players who owned houses or struggled with past systems. (Below are some examples you can write about, but write whatever you like!)
   • Was the housing experience more positive or negative as a whole?
   • Was it easy to get a house?
   • Was owning a house meaningful?
   • Were there abuses in the system (bots/exploits/rmt)?
   • Did you do it for rp or was there profit involved?
   • How did housing affect player behavior, as in did special housing "metas" evolve?
2. Research material links in the form of videos, forum posts, polls and anything historical that can be shared.

I'm looking for anything from Ultima Online to New World. Please share your experience so we can all gain perspective!

iccer

So I've played Archeage, but it's been 7-8 years at this point since I quit. I'll try my best to answer some of those, as best as I remember.

1. Was it easy to get a house? - Well, yes and no. During the rush in the first few days/weeks of game, you would have to be really fast to grab a piece of land, but it was very much possible for almost anyone. For a while, during peak popularity of the game, if you were late to the party, it's unlikely that you would've found a spot anywhere. I'm fairly sure once the game stabilized a bit, that some space would free up eventually. That being said, I have managed to get a house and a farm plot, on start, and on a fresh server start a year or so after launch, without being a sweaty minmaxing hardcore player.
2. Was owning a house meaningful? - To me it was. House less so (even though it was nice), but more so a farm plot. You could farm a bunch of stuff, either to craft stuff, or to sell raw mats. There were even some rare, very valuable drops like thunderstruck trees, before they got ruined by being included in the cash shop. Having a farm plot meant you could really farm up stuff, do crafting, trade runs, all with the stuff your own farm produced. It also felt rewarding and relaxing to just not be constantly fighting stuff, or players, but rather taking a break to go plant or harvest stuff, check the market, see if you could make some profit, etc.
3. Were there abuses in the system (bots/exploits/rmt)? - Most definitely. Multiboxing was a problem in general, not just for the housing system.
4. Did you do it for rp or was there profit involved? - More so for profit, but it also felt like a nice break from the grind and combat, it was nice to come to your own piece of land and just plant different stuff. It was especially nice if you were next to your guildmates, since you all had a little area out in the world where you would often run into each other and play together in general. You kind of felt connected in a way, rather than just being in different parts of the world in game. If your house was in the pvp zone, it was also kind of interesting dealing with running into enemy players (though it would suck at times).
5. How did housing affect player behavior? - I'm not sure about this one, it was a long time ago since I played the game.

Nepoke

@iccer Valuable information! I suppose I should reword the last question to be more specific. What I'm sort of after is hearing if any sort of housing "metas" formed, like guilds land grabbing to bug other guilds, or people taking land they don't want because it might go up in value etc.

Can you elaborate on the multiboxing if you can? Did people make industrial tree farms and macro them for big wood? Was this a popular enough practice to impact housing availability?

iccer

Nepoke wrote: »

@iccer Valuable information! I suppose I should reword the last question to be more specific. What I'm sort of after is hearing if any sort of housing "metas" formed, like guilds land grabbing to bug other guilds, or people taking land they don't want because it might go up in value etc.

Can you elaborate on the multiboxing if you can? Did people make industrial tree farms and macro them for big wood? Was this a popular enough practice to impact housing availability?

I don't really remember anything about housing metas, if there were any. But players, or rather bots, absolutely would try to grab land to then sell it later on.

Multiboxing in general was a problem because a game had something called a Labor system.
As a "premium" user, you'd regenerate labor passively at a higher rate, even while not playing the game. As a non-premium, I think you only regenerated it while being online, at a lower rate.
Labor was spent on crafting, processing, opening coinpurses, etc. Mostly anything outside of combat required labor. It was p2w, as they ended up selling labor potions that would give you a certain amount of labor points.

Now someone who's multiboxing can exploit the system, obviously, to get ahead of everyone else, because they have more capacity to farm, process, and craft stuff.

How would that multiboxing affect housing? Well some people that were multiboxing and botting meant that the available land plots were easily grabbed by those players/bots, as they would often camp a spot or teleport around and just insta grab a land plot as soon as it opened up. As you'd imagine, they would then try to sell that plot of land to other players.

I can't believe it's been 7 years since I played the game already, so I definitely might be wrong on some details here, as I don't remember everything.

Noaani

iccer wrote: »

Nepoke wrote: »

@iccer Valuable information! I suppose I should reword the last question to be more specific. What I'm sort of after is hearing if any sort of housing "metas" formed, like guilds land grabbing to bug other guilds, or people taking land they don't want because it might go up in value etc.

Can you elaborate on the multiboxing if you can? Did people make industrial tree farms and macro them for big wood? Was this a popular enough practice to impact housing availability?

I don't really remember anything about housing metas, if there were any. But players, or rather bots, absolutely would try to grab land to then sell it later on.

Multiboxing in general was a problem because a game had something called a Labor system.
As a "premium" user, you'd regenerate labor passively at a higher rate, even while not playing the game. As a non-premium, I think you only regenerated it while being online, at a lower rate.
Labor was spent on crafting, processing, opening coinpurses, etc. Mostly anything outside of combat required labor. It was p2w, as they ended up selling labor potions that would give you a certain amount of labor points.

Now someone who's multiboxing can exploit the system, obviously, to get ahead of everyone else, because they have more capacity to farm, process, and craft stuff.

How would that multiboxing affect housing? Well some people that were multiboxing and botting meant that the available land plots were easily grabbed by those players/bots, as they would often camp a spot or teleport around and just insta grab a land plot as soon as it opened up. As you'd imagine, they would then try to sell that plot of land to other players.

I can't believe it's been 7 years since I played the game already, so I definitely might be wrong on some details here, as I don't remember everything.

Actually, the value to having multiple accounts was in the reduced tax rate, not the increase in labor.

When I played Archeage I ran multiple accounts, but I also owned almost half the player land in one of the Aurora zones (Marcala). If I attempted to own that land under one account, the tax would have made it unprofitable. With multiple accounts (and all three of the farms that dont increase your tax rate), it was actually kind of cheap.

As to labor, I never bought any labor potions, yet when I left the game I had well over half a million labor stored away in potions. Since a days worth of labor regen was 2440, that meant I had 200 days worth of additional labor just sitting there to use.

Nepoke

I don't think FFXIV players are doing okay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2ZdrzfkmgI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJIrKB3dfIs

I saw some calculations that FFXIV housing is actually meeting the demand quite well, but it doesn't seem to feel that way to everyone.

Sybil_Lanel

Nepoke wrote: »

I don't think FFXIV players are doing okay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2ZdrzfkmgI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJIrKB3dfIs

I saw some calculations that FFXIV housing is actually meeting the demand quite well, but it doesn't seem to feel that way to everyone.

It's definitely better now. The past system kinda sucked.

Nepoke

@Sybil_Lanel Are you referring to the first-come-first-serve lots added? Or just the fact that now there's enough housing with the number of wards being good now?