Silly Question On Real Estate

Now, I know the "trite" answer is, "It's real-estate, it's speculative, DUH!"...

But as founders and benefactors, getting plots of land before the game has had a chance to really "grow", to see what's going to be popular where, how would we be able to pick a good VILLAGE to build in, let alone a good plot within that village?

I guess I'm wondering if there's going to be some sort of "atlas" available in advance that will include useful data about the world at large, and where we can exercise our deeds within that world? Or is it really going to be something of a crapshoot?

 

I am founding this on absolutely nothing but my instincts/opinion/educated guess, but I doubt anything done during Alpha or Beta will cover over once it is released live, sooo, we will have the better part of a year to figure out where good spots are going to be, whether or not they allow housing in Alpha/Beta (no idea if this has been addressed or not).

 

Yeah, since they did mention they would do several wipes during Alpha and Beta, I would think that nothing would carry over to the final live release. So we do indeed have plenty of time to select a few favorite spots and then we'll just have to cross our fingers and hope that they're not grabbed up by the higher tier pledgers in the mad rush on release day (By the way, I doubt we'll get a highly detailed atlas before Alpha!)

 

I think the only Atlas we are going to get is what we pick up and log for our selves as we move forward. That said, it won't be an entire crapshoot, but I think this makes things much more interesting.

 

The closest thing to an advance look inside the plot locations is alpha/beta access. Don't you get giddy just thinking about it? It will be just like the first day of UO- we'll have RPers, PvPers, PvEers, and Crafters all together (to some extent) trying to kill RG with fire fields (hopefully Rainz shows up).

 

I posted essentially the same thing in the Dev forums, and it seemed most people were not all that concerned about it. I still think there is something to consider.

 

i would guess a guild/clan would want to try and control most plots in a town, or atleast a neighborhood in the town

 

I was just hoping for this kind of thing in order to start writing up some stories. Having an atlas, even a woefully incomplete one, would at least give us some names of V/T/C and other locations. I'm sure things will trickle out during the Alpha and pour out during the Beta...but it would be nice to have a little something now...

 

Do you think the stories Hickman is writing up will give us some of this info? I think it could.

 

It will be one piece of it. But like I said before a main issue for me would be the neighbors. If everyone wanting to be in your VTC is going to be the same type of crafter, it's going to stink. Or if everyone else is part of a PK guild or something. I think that other dimensions are location of resources, centrality on roads/transport routes, proximity to water, NPC merchants, and many more.

 

One thing I just remembered this morning that I think we might have overlooked in this thread - haven't the devs said a player can voluntarily pack up their home and move it any time they want? Do you remember if that means we can choose to leave a VTC any time and move to a different VTC?

 

Chris Spears told us that if we found a plot we liked better than the one we owned, we could choose the new plot and have the Magical Moving Company move our stuff from the old plot to the new one. That averts the problem with packing up and releasing the old plot, just to find somebody had moved into our intended new plot while we were away.

I'm not sure I understand what your concern is.

 

Hey Sir Frank, I think we just addressed the OP's concern. There shouldn't be any concern about being the first to get land and then being at a disadvantage to people who join the game weeks, months, years later. I remember that comment about the Magical Moving Company now that you mention it, so we should all be set.

 

Wait a second. I don't think this resolves anything. Let me give you an example: Say you got a town lot through KS. You make your placement. 2 weeks go by and you realize everyone in your town is part of a guild that is hostile to you and are all the same type of crafter. Plus, it's way off to the side of the map and no one visits. The reasons don't really matter. So you decide to move, but 2 weeks into the game, the number of lots you can choose will be diminished. Now you are forced to choose among the leftovers - the least desirable lots.

Initial placement still matters quite a deal no matter how easy you can move. Once the game goes live, your choices start to be greatly limited.

 

Assuming that the number of lots is roughly equal to the number of people who pledged high enough/bought a lot in the addon store, then you might be right. You'd have to wait for a new land or for someone to get bored. Therefore, it is important you do your research. However, I think there will be more, so that the people who buy the game at launch will have a reason to work toward owning their own. And since you don't have to release your lot to get a new one, you can explore and find a new one, and determine if it's better than what you first picked.

There is a balance between having enough lots available, and making them scarce enough to have value. I think they can have the number of available lots be more than sufficient, while making their position be what drives their value.

If we go back to your example, you have an advantage in a sense. You can sell your lot (or sell the action of releasing the lot) to someone who is in that guild who wants to be near their guildmates. You make a couple bucks to tide you over until the next set of lots are released.

 

I hear what you're saying, and I'm going to add another dimension because that's just the kind of complex guy I am!

Figuring out your neighbors and other factors before the game starts enhances the role-playing and promotes more stable communities. Basically it will make the initial backers happier. It will mean less disappointment when you find that your town is not located anywhere near the resources you want to craft, or that your neighbors are the kind to decorate their facades with body parts (I'm not into that). To me $500, $1500, $3500 is a lot to contribute with the chance that your initial placement may really suck and that you then have to stand in line behind everyone else, even non-backers.

 

At some point, it's just part of the game. If I go fight that dragon and I die and can never recover my stuff (don't know if this is how the game will work, but it's an example). Should I be able to rewind and make a different choice? No, of course not. I'd have to deal with it and move on. That's kind of how I see the housing thing. If you make an incorrect decision, or even just decide that you want to move for some other reason, then part of playing the game for you will be to seek out a new location. That might involve waiting for someone to give up on their game and go inactive, wait for a new settlement to be created, a new land mass to open up, or pay someone to move.

 

I don't know if that's a fair comparison. You can decide to wait on the dragon and make a prudential choice based on knowledge of the game, your abilities, strength of dragons and all sorts of factors. You can choose to fight the dragon when you're ready. Plus, losing something that just happened in-game is not like losing something that you pledge real money to obtain.

With housing you have to decide - and perhaps without any information or very little to go on. You don't get to choose when you feel you're ready to make a decision after weighing options. And if you make a wrong choice, except for the tax-free benefit, you lose real value from your contibution. Now I'm perfectly detached from my contribution even if the game never gets made. But, there are ways to share information and give players the chance to make informed choices ahead of time. So why not?

 

One of my ideas is to create a segment on the dev+ forums a month prior to launch with a thread for each VTC. Have the devs post information about the place as the first post, and then let future neighbors start to talk about why they might choose that town, their guilds, what they want to do and role-play, etc. Neighbors can start to sort themselves out and you already start to build a cool community from the get go. Since information on the settlements will be available from alpha/beta - why not? This takes hardly any additional work.

Plus if everyone pre-sorts, the worry abour the initial land rush is lessened. That is, if you can trust what people post!

 

I think it would be much more exciting to see how housing breaks up guilds and reforms them with the surroundings being a big influence. These surroundings could be proximity to enemy guilds, or just geographical location. To allow guilds to control towns so easily from day one is not the direction development should take. If someone wants to be located with their guild for the purpose of town control, I think it is something that should be a collaborated project with up and downs that would make it take months -- if not years -- to complete and it shouldn't be cheap if guilds try the quick route of buying up lots that are already settled. My view may be the extreme, but it would be completely uninteresting to see a guild own 51% of all the property in any given town, just 10 minutes after the game launchs.