Housing Macros

[Ibn]

We've been receiving a great deal of feedback regarding players who use third-party tools to identify and rapidly purchase houses as they come on the market, making it more difficult for casual players to find an available house.

After some discussion, we determined that the key factor that allowed these bots to acquire housing more quickly than casual players was the ability to use @house available frequently. We've come up with a means to hinder this behavior, and we'd like to hear what you think of it:

* @house available will only be useable once every 24 hours by any character
- and -
* @house available can only be used by characters who are level 20 or higher.

The level 20 restriction is to prevent players (or bots) from deleting characters and creating new ones to get around the timer. We settled on level 20 as you need to be level 20 to purchase a house, so it seemed fair.

This change will put casual players on the same level playing field as the bots -- once every 24 hours.

We'd like to hear what you think of this proposal -- let us know in this thread!

(edited to explain level 20 restriction and to make it clear that the two restrictions are tied together, not an either/or)

[Lagmatic]

24 hours is pretty harsh, for regular people who are looking for a house.

I think 1-2 hours would be a bit easier.

Keep in mind the house macroers have multiple accounts as well. They can have dozens of characters using up their /house available commands, whereas the casual player may only do it once a day. The command should only be usable once per hour per account, rather than per character.

[Crafty]

once every 24 hrs would be better. saying lvl 20+ just means that macroer would have to llevel more.

[Dom on TD]

It's a good thing to try to stop the macros, but don't you think once/24 hours is extreme? What happens to the guy runnin his butt off to get there? I always use the /house available while I'm running to mke sure it's still available. If I take a 10-15 minute stroll accross the desert, I want to know if there's a reward waiting or not. Why not give us a few times to use it? I would be happy with 6, and that would still be drastically less than what I'm sure the macros are doing. It's just a suggestion, and I could be wrong.

[Jelly Belly]

I don't think either of those suggestions are any good. The once per day idea just turns getting a house into pure luck instead of player skill combined with luck that you've just managed to beat someone else.

As for the level restriction on using the /house available command, that does nothing. The reason that people are complaining now is because of the one/few people that are running the housing "macros". All of the characters that I've seen camping the bottom of sub have been over lvl 35. They have to be, to purchase the villa to sell on ebay. So the level 20 restriction is useless.

[xarfet]

i thing the 24 hr timer is a bit much, but having to be lvl 20+ is understandable, since thats the earliest a char can guy a house. if the timer were closer to 4-6 hrs, it might be easier on those that arent around all the time.

[KPD157]

I don't Agree with the Level Restriction there are alot of people with characters over 20.

a 15 Minute timer might be usefull with any added attempts at accessing the Command adding 15 more minutes to it.

Besides that I think most house hunters aren't using a bot to get to a place so having them run out with a player behind the Wheel is fine with me and if I was looking for a house I would check every so often anyway but prolly not every 15 minutes :)

[Ibn]

Apologies, this should have gone into the original post, I'll edit it in...

The level 20 restriction is to prevent players (or bots) from deleting characters and creating new ones to get around the timer. We settled on level 20 as you need to be level 20 to purchase a house, so it seemed fair.

[Hai Youhi]

Instead of limiting the number of times a character can @house available, why not limit the number of housing units that can be purchased on one account within any one time frame?

Say one housing unit (apartment, cottage, villa or mansion) per account per 60 days, combined with a level 20 restriction.

Would some non-macroing players have to wait at times to upgrade? Possibly, but not so different than a quest timer. Would this shut down selling housing on eBay as a primary occupation and give the "normal player" more of a chance? I think so.

Just my two pyreals. Thank you for asking our input.

[Zonomar Xisle]

Its a good idea, but the 24 hour timer may be a bit high.

If a shorter timer doesn't have the desired effect, it could always be raised as needed.

(the timer for puchasing housing seems like good idea too)

[CodyPlaneswalkr]

Just make so you can only do a /house_abandon command for a cottage/villa/mansion only once per 30 days.

[xenophin]

i dont like it, i have protested in the past against macros but...

housing is part of the game, its a first come first served basis, the way forward is to ban all ebayed accounts sales etc. Other than that banning a third party application is wrong unless you plan to ban all 3rd party appliances..tink calc,bs,NB etc included and bring out a patch/upgrade with those included.

Just IMHO.

(and i hate those housing macros as much as the next person.)

[lashmage]

I agree that neither ideas are helping the casual player. Besides that, as a monarch, I ofter watch for houseing for my followers, and that would certainly hinder my value to them.

A better suggestion if I may. Put a three month timer on buying any property per account. And make it so they account has to have been active for 3 months prior to purchase.

[Polgarae]

i agree.. why not limit how many times a month you can purchase a housing unit.. if you have to do it instead of many times you can /house available... some folks like to help others look for housing and have no desire to buy

and btw anyone can delete and have a char to 35 in short work if done right and with help.

** however.. you can argue that its free enterprise to always be on the look out on available housing.. people in RL buy and sell houses constantly.. thats the way economy works.

i dont agree with auto programs that run your char to buy and loot..

[SCM]

Originally posted by Ibn
We've been receiving a great deal of feedback regarding players who use third-party tools to identify and rapidly purchase houses as they come on the market, making it more difficult for casual players to find an available house.

After some discussion, we determined that the key factor that allowed these bots to acquire housing more quickly than casual players was the ability to use @house available frequently. We've come up with a means to hinder this behavior, and we'd like to hear what you think of it:

* @house available will only be useable once every 24 hours by any character.
* @house available can only be used by characters who are level 20 or higher.

This change will put casual players on the same level playing field as the bots -- once every 24 hours.

We'd like to hear what you think of this proposal -- let us know in this thread!

Casual players currently have the ability to type /house available as often as the macro. (type it once, push enter, up key, enter to repeat)
The use of this command once every 24 hours is a good starting point to remove these macro housing bots from the game.
It will also hinder the casual player & it will get back to who got lucky when they typed in the command.
Characters under lvl 20 don't need the command.
Another addittion could be to have apartments & cottages show for people to lvl 34, then add villas at lvl 35 & mansions at lvl 50.
What if there are 5 cottages available, you run to one & it is sold, do you then have to waste the next 30 minutes running to all of the others only to find them sold?
Currently you can /house available to see which are still available.
Limiting the persons options of buying & selling real estate IG, is detrimental to the players ability to move house as often as they wish.
Several people move from settlement to settlement to allow other players to be near their friends or to improve their hunting as they grow, or for a multitude of other reasons.
I personally think your solutions are ill considered & need to be thought through some more.
The main concern of the players is the selling of IG items (Villas) on e-bay.
Stop this & you will remove the housing bots from the game, as you remove their main reason for being there, RL money.

[gaandar]

I think a good solution would be that an account can only buy a house or villa once every 3 or 4 weeks. This would still let someone trade up from a house to a villa or trade villas, they would just need to own the house for at least the wait-time before they did the trade.

EDIT:
The idea of limiting abandon rather than buy is probably a stronger idea. That way a person would not be able to abandon their house, only to find out that their timer is not up on purchasing a new one.

I don't think limiting the "/house available" command is the correct way to fix the problem.

[Yusuki]

Casting my vote for:

[x] One /house abandon per 30 days. No limit on /house available.

Edit: With that said, I'm leery of changing the entire game due to the actions of one (known) person. It seems the player base would be better served with an administrative solution rather than a coding one.

[Dom on TD]

I'm not even sure that the people using that plugin are the problem. At least they are at the keys. I think the ones using House Camper are. They target Villas/Cottages with unpaid maintenance, and the plugin uses the housing crystal thing with the "r" button. When it coms available for purchase, it drags the main pack into the window and clicks the purchase button. They buy housing while they sleep/work. I did have it downloaded at one point. So why not change it to keep a player from dragging tha main pack into the window? It would change the way I pay my maintenance, but if it gives me a chance at a villa, I would be all for it.

[Unicron]

Hello! :D

* @house available will only be useable once every 24 hours by any character.


This possible change really hurts everyone and I think a different route to stop the /house available macros is needed...


* @house available can only be used by characters who are level 20 or higher.


ICKY!!!! This doesn't stop anything. The person running the /house available macro is around level 40 or so (On all servers). I guess in tandam with the above change it would work alright because it limits someone from logging in with level 1 mules and typing /house available with those characters. I still think a better option is needed...



Purchase Timer!

~How about you limit people who have purchased a cottage/villa/mansion to only purchase one every 2 weeks to 1 month (whatever timer is chosen)? So if someone purchases a cottage then decides to drop it they can't go out and purchase another cottage with that character (Or any other characters on account) until their timer for 1 month is up (Make this timer account wide, so people can't login to other characters on the same account and do the same thing). Apartments would not have any specific timer so you would still have the availability of storage without any timer. I think a change like this would work out better because it stops the person(s) who sell on eBAY and drop housing ownership once or twice weekly. The people might still be able to still sell 1 cottage/villa/mansion a month or maybe 5 if he has 5 accounts but it stops him/her from selling 30-40 per month.

[Deathspawner]

I love the idea of abandoning once every 30 days.

Sounds completely fair to me.

[Roberto]

I think the level 20 restriction is a very good idea. I do think that the 24 hour limit is a bit too high, however... perhaps a shorter one, like 4 hours?

[-Strike-]

24 hours seems fine to me. No reason you need to use it so many times. Suck it up and trade for a cottage or villa.

[Myk]

the only way your going tostop the macro is to make it so /house available works 1-2 times per account, not character. People will jusy have multiple accounts for their house macro. Getting to level 20 can be done in 1-3 hours.

[DarthMord]

I'd honestly prefer that you kill all Ebay sales of AC items / housing.

Limiting the /house available command is treating the symptom, not the problem. The problem is that people are able to Ebay (or otherwise auction) off AC items & houses.

If you kill the venues for making real life money off of AC, you don't need to make any changes.

In this case, I honestly believe a policy change should be made instead of an in-game change.

[Unicron]

I love the idea of abandoning once every 30 days.

[dedhed]

Well, i am not in favor of changes in frequency , personally. my reason for this is, the "casual " player is just that , someone who isn't on that much anyway , and a limitation on the command just hurts those who are on more and actively hunting housing. what housing is IG is first-come , first-served , this says to me that the casual player should either be satisfied with an apartment , or should be prepared to spend more time looking .

If the "casual " players are supposed to have the same oppurtunities as the "dedicated" players , then why isn't there enough housing for everyone? If a player wants to spend his/her time checking for and attempting to acquire housing , then the player who tries the hardest should receive rewards comensurate with their efforts, pure and simple.

As for housing "macros" , is the macro simply spamming the /house available command , or is it actually purchasing the housing? If the macro isn't purchasing , then there is nothing wrong imho with a plugin that merely gives the /available command at regular intervals , leaving it to a person at the keyboard to travel to and purchase the dwelling.

Personally , I would simply monitor ebay for any housing sales , then delete the entire accounts of both the seller and purchaser . This would get the message across in no uncertain terms I think. Unless the abode is being sold commercially , I fail to see why the present system is unfair , since only one dwelling per account may be owned , and as mentioned above , first-come, first-served.

[Polgarae]

agree

one abandon per 30 days and at least lvl 20 to purchase a cottage

no limits on /house available

[lashmage]

Ill agree also. But hope that its enough. A camper could just buy 10 accounts, and still sell a villa per month at 70 bucks a pop.

[Kreez]

Thanks for the opportunity to comment Ibn.
The following logs are hypothetical, but probably realistic enough for the sake of this post.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Ibn
* @house available will only be useable once every 24 hours by any character

This will not stop macros.
Example:
@log:
@house_available
you may not use that command for another 15 seconds
@house_available
you may not use that command for another 12 seconds
@house_available
you may not use that command for another 9 seconds
@house_available
you may not use that command for another 6 seconds
@house _available
you may not use that command for another 3 seconds
@house_available
Available Mansions 0
Available Villas 1 12.3n, 16.5w
Available Houses 12.3n, 18.7w, 12.3n, 18.9w, 85.4s, 16.8e
Available Apartments 32
<REALestate: Initiate Alarm:3:10 am>
Found: 1 Villa 12.3n, 16.5w
Found: 3 Houses 12.3n, 18.7w, 12.3n, 18.9w, 85.4s, 16.8e
@house_available
you may not use that command for another 23:59:57
<REALestate: Initiate Alarm: 3:10 am>
.................................................. ........................................
This may stop players:

@log
@house available:
Available Mansions 0
Available Villas 1 12.3n, 16.5w
Available Houses 12.3n, 18.7w, 12.3n, 18.9w, 85.4s, 16.8e
Available Apartments 32
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
......
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
Tusker Goombah hits you in the lower leg for 2 points of damage
............
Player> Darn, forgot to write down the coords. Buffer overrun.
@house available
you may not use that command for another 23:59:57

- and -
* @house available can only be used by characters who are level 20 or higher.

Level 20 is managable inside of 1.5 hours.

The major problem is that the sale of in game items on online auctions or profiteering on virtual goods for real life cash is extremely lucrative. As long as there is good money to be made any sort of non Code of Conduct change will not be effective.

I applaud your intent to provide some answer to the problem, but to do so, you may have to get into the mindset of someone who earns a lot of money selling AC Stuff online.

[Aesthetic]

"one abandon per 30 days"

yup, much better than the solution you have

[sunstreak]

C'mon ibn... you kinow what this is really about.

ebay

99% of Niro's houses (and it is Niro, folks, who does most of the macroing) wind up on ebay. Soul Archmage, at least as far as TD goes; is the other big macroer, only he sells his cottages on ACVault Thistledown. (A search of his posts will reveal he's sold an astonishing number of cottages, (almost one every day), for the last few weeks. In fact he was buying house greif items last night, off the board, to fill up his macro).

Crack down on them. I know ebay is a tenuous situation... so I'm not gonna condone or codemn the AC market on ebay... but I do think you could/should perma-ban anyone with the audacity to sell housing online. You realize they get $120U.S. a pop. It's a very lucrative exchange.

I realize you're unlikely to do this... which is disappointing; so why not make housing available only after being flagged by a quest. That flag would last for, say 30 mins... after which the quest must be repeated. Let's say you can only do the quest every 2 days. -You can choose to make the quest timer longer or shorter in response to how well the system is received. Of course, the quest would need to involve responses that would be hard to script out; and you'd want your admins to regularly troll the dungeon.

I sincerely doubt Niro and the others could continue to dominate the housing market, if you make the ability to buy the house dependant on a time-consuming quest. (Think of things along the lines of the run-around associated with the Gelidite Library and Font of Joji quests).

*Edit: this would only make sense if you make the @house available command useable ONLY by the ppl who are flagged by the quest. Otherwise it'd be chaos.

[Myk]

I think 1 house abandon per 30 days is a better idea too.

[Shinji_Ikhari]

i may be in the minority here, but that's nothing new.


i for one think it's a great idea.


1 per 24 & 20+

[Zariak]

I don't often reply to message on these or any boards but after reading this I have a thing or two to say. I find it interesting that people find it difficult to find any type of housing on any server. With the proper research and time invested anyone can attain any level of housing they wish. On numerous occasions since the introduction of housing I have spent time hunting for new property. I find the hunt of getting a house exilerating. Hunting for writs, trophy items and racing to that open house is a great aspect of the game. The information that is required to buy every house in the game is readily available in numerous places and with very little effort one can put a kit together consisting of all the trophies required to buy a house. I see people in the marketplace everyday asking to buy a cottage, paying outrageous prices for a cottage. Cottages pop up for purchase almost everyday if not more than one. There is no reason for anyone who wants a cottage not to get one. Villas I realize are much more difficult to come by. However, during the months of Nov, Dec, Jan.. I purchased 5 villas and missed 2 others by moments. I've never macroed any time a villa popped up I was in control. This is a very important and at times fun portion of the game for me, I would ask that everyone to take a serious look at any changes that are being considered. If the buying and selling of real-estate is a dynamic that must be changed, ok..but Iwould like a detailed explantation of why. If it's because of macros, then it's the macros that need fixing not the housing market.
There isn't a macro around that can beat me to a house period.

[Bhodi Amashi]

The simple solutions are always best.

What is the key ingredient in buying/selling? In order to sell the property, you must be able to abandon it first. I agree with several of the above posters...limit the @house_abandon command.

I've been in the same cottage since housing first went live. Realistically, how many people change houses on a day to day or even week to week basis?

The idea that you can stop E-Bay sales is not pratical. First it requires a lot of effort, time, and expense. Then when and if you do get it squashed, you must move on to the next site that does the same exact thing. E-Bay isn't the only place you can go to find this type of activity.

[Davidge]

Sorry, I feel that both ideas are terrible. They limit the ability of the legit player from checking often enough to compete. A 24 hour timer on using the command will reduce housing checks to a roll of the dice, a strict gamble based on your timing, your game playing hours, and the random housing drop that "might" hit just as you enter the command.

Please consider this idea, which I mentioned months ago in another post on VN:

Introduce a restriction on how often you can buy a house per month, per account. The restriction timer would be set on housing purchases, not abandons.

This allows house swapping (assuming both parties are outside their respective timers) and allows legitimate first time house buyers to buy housing when it becomes available. It penalizes (rightly so in my opinon) frequent house buyers. It would also reduce the practice of house "stripping" - where a person buys up every house they can as it pops up, empties the chests and hooks of valuables, then dumps the cleaned out house back on the market, or worse . . . transfers it to a holding account for eBay.

[Frax]

If the macro isn't purchasing , then there is nothing wrong imho with a plugin that merely gives the /available command at regular intervals

Yeah, sure. It's COMPLETELY FAIR that one guy locked up the villa market on Solclaim for three months, and is still making it extremely hard for any normal player to get a villa.

You're right! Let's do nothing! Let's leave AC as so many other gamers see it from the outside: A cheating and macroing paradise.

[sunstreak]

Oh, and by the way... the way the macro works, some of the time; is that the macro sits in the bottom of the hub, waiting for an opportunity to open.

An immediate fix can be effected by asking you admins to add the bottom of the hub among the areas they test for macros.

Announce to the players to watch for the housing macros. They'll help.

If you have the tech, I suggest a soft ban (3 days?) to anyone who's account has owned and released more than two houses a month. -Can you detect such? It would be a step towards perm-banning the macroers. And the ban would have to be for their entire account, on all servers; or they'd just switch their attention to another world.

[Dom on TD]

Originally posted by sunstreak
I sincerely doubt Niro and the others could continue to dominate the housing market, if you make the ability to buy the house dependant on a time-consuming quest. (Think of things along the lines of the run-around associated with the Gelidite Library and Font of Joji quests). [/B]

I think they'd be rich. Those guys would find the quickest way throught the quest and be the best at it, whereas, I wouldn't know the quest, until I found a villa, and by the time I figured it out, they'd already have it. Personally, I'd rather pay the $120 than do the Font of Joji quest with no reward at the end (and there would be no reward if the housing was already puchased).

[boneyard]

i feel its a bad thing you people who just want to buy a house and not sell it on ebay or such. they will have a damn hard time now. they prolly end up by buying it from the board or such.

id rather see the timer on buying a house or such and another time on releasing it like suggested, but not on /house available.

as for people saying they have go after ebay, that doesnt work either, the sellers will just look for other places and sell it there. the fix has to be done ingame.

[Kreez]

Originally posted by Zariak
If the buying and selling of real-estate is a dynamic that must be changed, ok..but Iwould like a detailed explantation of why. If it's because of macros, then it's the macros that need fixing not the housing market.
There isn't a macro around that can beat me to a house period.

People using @house_available macros tied to an alarm are buying up housin in game and auctioning it off on e-bay for cash profit.
This does several things
-introduces a for-profit business into a game dynamic
-removes potential in game content from players unless they pay cash to a non Turbine person
-violates the current Zone code of conduct, and hopefully Turbine's code of conduct.

[KPD157]

I have been Reading the Posts and I have to also agree that one of the biggest factors in reducing abuse of house buying with Bots would be to have a 30 day timer on Abandoning a house set from the time you bought the house.

I also think maybe you could reduce any lag from sending the House Available command by having it once read in on entering the World and just be a repeat for as long as your still in the world.

That would help the Casual player that logs on and wants to know if they can get a house and still reduces the amount of work the server has to do everytime the message to send the House Available is recieved.

[Bhodi Amashi]

"Introduce a restriction on how often you can buy a house per month, per account. The restriction timer would be set on housing purchases, not sales."


What happens when you want to switch who own's the house on the same account? I know several people (for whatever reason) who simply decided they much preferred another character on the same account be the owner. With a buying restriction that would be impossible, but not with @house_abandon.

[phases_ogmaxim]

every 24 hours seems to much, if it were my choice id go with a once per hour or 2. also, the whole house abandon restriction, i like that.. maybe once per every couple of weeks..

[Snowimp]

Wouldn't it be easier to simply make someone wait until their maintenance is due before being allowed to abandon? That gives them approximately 30 days to find a new place before having to pay their own maintenance again.

The exception would be apartments since the rent is due every 3 months instead of one month.

The 24 timer for @house available is a bad idea. As others have stated, sometimes you must do it more than once en route, and if you lose out and there was more than one, you need to be able to re-check. The 24 hr. timer is just silly.

Also, since we have a new influx of folks now able to purchase housing(those who don't have DM, but can now get housing) isn't it time to add more??????

Thank you for your consideration,

Snowy

[Davidge]

What happens when you want to switch who own's the house on the same account? I know several people (for whatever reason) who simply decided they much preferred another character on the same account be the owner. With a buying restriction that would be impossible, but not with @house_abandon.


Actually, it would work to your benefit better with the way I detailed.

Lets assume you want to transfer your house to another character on the same account.

The timer is 30 days.

Your first character bought the house Jan 1st.

If you want to do the transfer before 30 days are up, too bad, but this is the whole point, to prevent abuse like Niro introduced.

Once the 30 days are up, after Jan 30th, you can abandon the house and immediately repurchase it with the second character on your account, no restrictions there at all. The timer is reset and you cannot buy another house on that account for another 30 days, but why would you need to? You're set now. ;)

If you set the timer on both house_abandon and purchase, then the restriction kicks in just as you need to repurchase the house.

Granted, if the timer is set only on abandon, then it has pretty much the same effect as setting it on purchase, with the exception that its slightly more exploitable that way.

[Kreez]

Give each account one dwelling - apt, house, villa.
Have the house upgradable based on level.

Remove the demand and the sales will stop.

Its that easy.

Everything else is really just a bandaid.

[Kreez]

Originally posted by Kreez
Give each account one dwelling - apt, house, villa.
Have the house upgradable based on level.

Remove the demand and the sales will stop.

Its that easy.

Everything else is really just a bandaid.

Or better yet, provide chest(s) for storage based on rental fees in town centers and do away with all but monarchy headquarters houses.

[Lucky Lola]

I agree with everyone else who has said it is simple to make a level 20 char in short order. At most it would take a few hours to do so.
Apartments are just throwaways, given the number available.

It would be nice to see villas, cottages and mansions only available for purchase by chars who have existed for 100 days or more...perhaps that is better than a level restriction? Combine that with restrictions on checking for available houses and that might stem the problem.

[wceviper]

I have tried to help several friends get villas. however, we always seem to get beat by a player who sells the Villa's on ebay for real life money. This makes game play frustrating. Somthing needs to be done about this person. The do this on every server, and has multiple accounts. It would be nice if people would stop buying them, but its always supply and demand! All you have todo is search ebay for "Asheron + Villa". You need to look at it 2 ways.

1. It should be againts CoC.
2. He is making money off of Turbines assets. Since he doesnt own the rights to the game/servers/software, he should have no legal right to sell your property without your permission.

Now that I have made that point, there are 2 ways to fix this problem.

1. Put a timer on housing Purchases. Here is a brief idea how it could work!

a. Do not allow a person to buy the same type of houseing until a 30 day timer is up. There should be a 30 day timer for each type of housing, Apt/Cottage/Villa/Mansion. You need to make it so you can never by a like property within 30 days of a purchase of another like property.
That would allow people to upgrade house from APT to Cottage To Villa To Mansion without any restrictions.

b. You need to display the timers, make it so the player knows when he/she can purchase the next type of like housing.

2. Or you could just perma ban the accounts that advertise/sell housing on Ebay!

Option 1 would require more code, but less police work involved! Option 2 would require More police work, and it would always be an existing problem.

[sunstreak]

Kreez, you're insane... but that bank/rent chest idea proves you are innovatively crazy, lol.

Lone houses/villas make housing unique. The only way all chars could be granted housing is to ghetto-ize houses, and build suburbs. (horrifying).

*p.s. I own a lone cottage, and I cherish it.

[Thunderspeed]

* @house available will only be useable once every 24 hours by any character.


Thats ridiculous. That is going to hurt the players that ARE causually looking for a house. There are better ways to go about this, such as how many houses you can abandon per [x] amount of days.

[Amuk]

Why is housing so desirable? Because we want to keep lots of stuff(storage). People will own multiple account to have several houses and more storage. If storage and the number of houses available was increased, the demand for storage space could be satisfied and this be a dead issue.

So...my thoughts:

The Ideal solution is to add more housing/storage. If more is added, there is no demand... and no selling on e-bay.

2nd best idea...ban the accounts selling lots of houses/villas on e-bay. If it is against the rules for us to buy or sell AC stuff on e-bay say so again and ban those that are doing it.

Since neither of those are likely to get done, there should be an account timer on purchasing a new house. You get 1 house purchase every 30 day for each account.

I was leaning toward a timer on house abandon, but there is nothing to stop them from deleting the char that owns the house and freeing it that way.

Since multiple accounts will still be able to macro buy them, we are back at needing to ban accounts or add more housing again.

[Kreez]

Originally posted by sunstreak
Kreez, you're insane... but that bank/rent chest idea proves you are innovatively crazy, lol.


:D

Alright, for those who value their building site:

Assign one dwelling per account, and make the location player chosable (outside the dires, OP, Etc...) and eliminate the villages...unless players wish to setup a monarchy village.

Get that hookable portal thing going so that villages could have their own portal tie from a launch-point of their choice.

How's that for insane?

;)

[Davidge]

Ibn Said:

After some discussion, we determined that the key factor that allowed these bots to acquire housing more quickly than casual players was the ability to use @house available frequently.


Respectfully, it is my contention that this analysis is flawed. My wife has been diligently searching for a villa for weeks, and she hits that housing command very frequently while she is playing. Two of the villa's that came up were purchased by Niro seconds before she got to the crystal. Both within two weeks of one another.

Placing the timer on the /house available command won't help her or others in the same situation - it only reduces their ability to compete. Placing a re-purchase timer on an account will go much farther in mitigating Niro's effect on the housing economy.

[Grayson]

Agreeing with the masses here. A limit on using the /house_abandon command is a much better idea than limiting how often you can check for an available house.

[Balthazar]

24 hours is too long, and probably the wrong option. A better solution would be to limit the number of times in a 24 hour period a character can use the /house available command. Limiting this to 5-10 uses, will still allow a casual player to find, and more importantly, keep apprised of the status of the open cottage as they are running to it, or frantically trying to gather the item needed, but still majorly restrict the use of bots as the effectivness of the bot vs a player is in the rapid re-running of the command without distraction.

Give a player 5 chances to use it per day. Oh, and also that level 20 thing as well.

[Meri]

I agree that the 24 hour limit will only further limit the chances of casual gamers to get a house. :(

I think limiting the number of purchases or abandon's per account would be much more beneficial. I know this may restrict some players who actively search for available housing for the express purpose of helping allegiance members... but other than going after the individuals who abuse the system... I'm not sure of another solution.

[HKP]

as much as im all for this.....


once every 24hrs is NOT right, make it atleast 3 times in 24hrs.

i think a 1 per 24hrs timer is pushing it.


please think this through abit more clearly befor you mess up the game anymore, seems like this is starting to be a classic Turbine Trade Mark "nerfing games"



:mad:

[Trai]

Originally posted by Ibn

* @house available will only be useable once every 24 hours by any character
- and -
* @house available can only be used by characters who are level 20 or higher.


Really bad idea. People often have legitimate reasons to use house available in a short span of time.

Here's a brief list:
1) Type house available, see that there is a house. Crash before you can write down the coordinates while not running any sort of text capture plugin or using the log command.
2) Type house available, see that there is a house. Start running while not using any sort of text capture. Forget the coordinates then on the run there, get disconnected.
3) Type house available. see that there is a house available then get spammed by 100+ copies of a spell cast by a Mosswart Mire-Witch and crew again while not running a text capture plugin or log command.

Here's a quick list of how a house-macroing who is determined to get around this problem you'd be creating with this idea:
1) Have friends
2) Have allegiance members
3) Have other accounts (the average house macroer will be much better at this than a normal player)

Etc.

Here are some better ideas to correct the situation:
1) Put a timer on how frequently an account on any server can purchase a house. If a player could only buy 1 house per 1 server per account per month, most of this macroing of housing would be stopped or greatly slowed.
2) Give cottage, villa and mansion owners the ability to pay the rent in advance for a length of time greater than 1 month. Most people losing their housing are often doing so because of the short timer. (Well, the only person I know who lost his was my husband. He paid for it, logged out and then we moved and didn't have a liable ISP for a month, so w didn't realize that there was a subserver rollback until AFTER he'd lost his villa.)
3) If you don't intend to change your COC regarding selling of items, actually punish people who get reported selling houses on Ebay after doing some research.

[Jelly Belly]

I agree the <however amount> of time restriction on house abandoning /repurchase could help. But it's not going to stop the macros totally. Multiple accounts means that there's still that 70 dollars per account, per however long the timer is.

It's just going to reduce the amount of money made each month by Niro, it's not going to stop him.

[Enosh]

I think that once in 24 hours is a bit on the harsh side (seems to be a common theme in this thread hehe). A 1-4 hour timer on the command would be enough I'd think.

[Vistal]

uh, guys?

a timer on /house abandon isn't going to work

you'll just have people deleting/restoring chars to drop their current dwelling

[Kreez]

I think that there is an opportunity to deliver that Very High Level of Service by adjusting your Code of Conduct to suit the player opinion right here, Turbine.

Unless sales are stopped, and supply is adjusted to better match demand, profiteering will continue, albeit at a slower pace.

Take the bull by the horns and demonstrate that this sort of profiteering on other players is a behaviour that Turbine will not tolerate, and make it against the Code of Conduct...then ban accounts that engage in this activity by using online-auction logs.

Legally its a nightmare.
Service wise, its a win for all but those few who sell housing online for cash.

[lashmage]

Good points made by everyone. But, lets look at it this way though. For niro and others like this, the availability to use multiple accounts will give them a loop hole. $12.95 per account, but $120 buy back per villa. Hes not taking a big cut in pay. At 15 accounts, provided he gets 15 villas per month, its still a $1605.75 profit per month!

Your going to have to make the purchase timer alot longer to deduce that profit.

[Hai Youhi]

actually Vistal, for that reason my suggestion applied to ACCOUNTS not characters. :D

[Evangeline]

What about a timer on the purchase of the house? Set the use of a covenant crystal on a timer(aside from paying maintenance) to 30 days. And make that per account.

[chakaal]

I have purchased probably 40 houses in my AC career. Many I gave away to clan mates, several times I was just changing locations, and some I sold for ig items.

However I am all for preventing people from buying a house with the sole purpose of later trading it/giving it to someone.


A 24 hour time on /house available is ok, but it definitely will not solve the problem alone.

A 30 day timer on /house abandon I think would be an excellent idea. It would *have* to be BY ACCOUNT. People could exploit by deleting chars to release though.


I still think the best solution may be to make all housing become available on the 1st & 15th of each month. (one during US time, one for EURO time, or just a random/rotating time). (well the BEST solution is to add more housing, since there is clearly demand for it- but I don't think that will happen.. what about a new island full of villas?)

[Thunderspeed]

I was thinking of another idea while reading others opinions, someone suggested this, but I would like to expand on it.


Start off with an apartment. You work your way up to a villa (if you want). Though the process is really, really difficult. I doubt it would cause anymore lag on the server, that much [it probably can't even lag up anymore than it already is, lol].

OR

Just add more storage. Period. Thats why people are paying tons of money for villas. People arn't paying 200-250 sings (going price on Thistledown at this time of writing) to decorate a few more house hooks. This may be the better option because one/two more chests isn't going to lag up the server.

[Anihc]

personnaly I would go 48 hours IBN. I like it :)

[Jelly Belly]

The balance of available housing versus player demand is pretty decent imo.

If we weren't having to compete with Niro.

[Thunderspeed]

Jelly, thats true too.

Niro is 90% of the problem. Like I said before in my thread.. if a villa goes up, and you don't know the location within 15 seconds.. don't even bother trying.

[Rhodoman]

How about adding a house-buying timer, as well.

Most of the housing bots are buying up houses and selling them on ebay or to other players.

Restrict users from buying more than one house per account per 2-3 months.

Casual players will be happy to have a house at all so it won't hinder them greatly, but the bots that flip houses from abandonment to ebay will be hosed.

Edit: Doh. didn't see there were 8 gazillion replies with this suggestion already. Great minds . . . . .

Rho

[Kerlin]

The level 20 requirement is nothing. It's easily attainable in a very short time.

Limiting the @house available command hurts the first time homebuyer perhaps more than it will hurt the "real estate bots".

As has been stated here more than once, the sollution is to limit each account's ability to abandon housing.

Make homeowners hold a housing unit for at least 3 months before allowing it to be abandoned.

That will fix the problem you want fixed without hurting first time homeseekers, or giving the "real estste bots" loopholes to continue their business.

[HeXt]

What about a policy change? :/ You guys need to cut him off at the knees, not just fix it and let him walk away with his money and accounts still intact.

[pea]

I really think 24 hours is *way* too harsh. Let people use it ten or twelve times a day and I think people will be a lot more happy. I don't think you'll see many, if any 'bots' with a tiny limit like that.

[sylphia]

Slapping a 24 hour timer on the /house available command is too much. It may kill the bot, but it will also seriously screw the real players. If I log on for the day and do @house available, and there are no houses available, but one comes up 10 mins later, I am screwed. It is blatantly unfair and has too much Russian Roulette in it. Timers on the command or on how often you can purchase a house are not the answer.

Make the housing bots against the CoC, whether attended or not, and get some enforcement on players who sell them for real money. Dont punish every player in the game just to try and whack the folks abusing the system.

Better yet, scrap the whole housing thing entirely. Its been a huge pain in the ass since the day it was added, in many ways. Add in banking and in the mean time add more RQs as a temp fix, and GIVE every account one, since everyone is going to have DM now anyway. No charge on the RQs, no rent, nothing. Just GIVE one to every player's account and everyone is on even footing with no reason to make a housing bot anymore. Take out all villas and cottages, and MAYBE add a few more mansions to satisfy allegiances. Leave the settlement portals in place for transportation. Nuke the whole damned thing back to the stone age, since thats about the only way to 100% guarantee no more abuse of the system.

If you are going to shaft the regular players, by god do it RIGHT. Get rid of non-RQ housing and end the whole debate. You cant macro and eBay what doesnt exist.

[Entropathic]

@house available will only be useable once every 24 hours by any character.

I don't think this is a feasible solution to the problem. The legitimate uses of multiple calls to @house available don't deserve to be harmed to stop the housing macros.

I think the suggestion here limiting /house abandon is far more flexible and elegant.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

[Thret]

I'll second the call to change storage: why not make chests buyable objects that can be mounted to floor hooks (or, say, cabinets for wall hooks). Make them locked only to the owner and let them set permissions like you can now.

That way, I could keep my chest in my monarchy's mansion, or a particulary neat cave, or on a little spit of land or... whatever an adventurer might prefer. Adding hooks to an (acceptable) area would require an update but it doesn't seem like it would be a nightmare.

This change would turn housing from a storage game to a vanity one - reducing a lot of the demand. From there, a lot of the other ideas might work well.

Another idea would be to make the housing available notices not machine readable, kind of like images are used to generate "anti-script" tests on websites. You could go to a particular vendor or location, purchase a parchment of available housing and then "read" the listings... forcing the house-sellers to be there in person to read the notices for housing when it comes available.

Whatever you do, do *something*. I find it pathetic that my only option for bigger housing is ebay. As a new player who has no clue where most of these housing settlements are nor where to find most of the housing items... it's paypal or my apartment. I don't mind my apartment, but I do mind the small chest and the tiny backpack. Between that and having four foci, my storage is very cramped... and I've only been playing for weeks, not for years as some here have.

Thanks for the soapbox,

- Thret (Leafcull)

[SCM]

Originally posted by chakaal
II still think the best solution may be to make all housing become available on the 1st & 15th of each month. (one during US time, one for EURO time, or just a random/rotating time). (well the BEST solution is to add more housing, since there is clearly demand for it- but I don't think that will happen.. what about a new island full of villas?)

Silly me thought there were 24 time zones in the world :D
I am constantly amazed by the people who claim it is unfair that something happens IG that is not timed to fit in with their time zone.
It is an online game that knows no clock. You take the good with the bad & hope you get a good break every now & then.
Last night (my time zone, GMT +8) there was a cottage available for at least 20 minutes on Solclaim.
No housing bot got that.
Turbine have stated they will not be adding additional housing, so the idea of an additional Island full of lag is, fortunately, not going to happen.

This thread is a request for considered opinion on what you think of the original posted ideas.
I personally think that they are a poor bandaid approach, but I have alredy stated my opinion earlier & will not do so again.

[Grayson]

As someone on the LC board said, and Vistal repeated here - setting a timer on the /house_abandon command doesn't help, because deleting a character abandons the house automatically.

The timer needs to be on using the covenant crystal. Imo, once every 30 days, *PER ACCOUNT* seems reasonable.

As for tackling eBay - it's very, very difficult to enforce, and I very much doubt it would be viable for Turbine to do. It's been tried by other companies, and folks got around it by changing their auctions from selling the "item", to selling the time spent getting the item. The only company that's managed to (mostly) shut down eBay sales for their game has been Sony.

[GKusnick]

Restricting @house available will not kill the bots. It's not hard to code a script that portals out to the housing settlements and checks out the availability first-hand. A fleet of such traveling bots could survey the entire world several times an hour, without depending on @house available at all. So limiting @house available will just force the bots to change tactics, without really removing their advantage.

[GoliathT]

I've tried thinking of alternate methods but it sure seems like limiting the use of '/house available' is the best way to combat the housing macro - despite making house hunting more difficult for the other 99.9% of the populace :(

Perhaps the limit would work better in practice as a per month rather than per 24 hour period limit? Allow 30 per month instead of 1 per day. In that fashion, once the prospective house hunter sees something in a desired location he/she can still use the availability command to ensure the housing is still available while on the run to it - it if disappears then you can save yourself the trip and the frustration.

It would still kill the macro that needs unlimited queries to function but be a little more flexible for the real players looking for housing.

GT

EDIT: Introducing a requirement that the housing purchaser be PKL for a 5+ minutes may be an alternate approach to the problem.

[MissMae]

I don't see how limiting level 20 will help. Yes it keeps them from deleting characters to get around the 24 hour timer, but the 24 hour timer will hurt the rest of us as much as the housing bots.

All this does is make the housing bot have to find ways around your system.

Why can't the easy thing be done. One house only per account per month.

Simple.

Anyone that says they need the ability to buy and sell more than one a month is going to be in the extreme minority. Who thinks we actually need real estate agents in the game?

Bah. I will never get a villa.


Put a one month timer on there per account, not per character.

Or how about this.. Put a hundred new villas in the game so that there isn't an EBAY market out there and everyone can have housing if they choose. The apartments was a good idea but they suck in reality.

Put two boxes in apartments and a hook on each wall and three on the floor and one on the door. Then people might want an apartment over a cottage and bingo.. no more shortage. No more ebay.

Just some suggestions.

Even if you go with the 24 hour timer... I think you should limit the accounts to one per month.

[sylphia]

Originally posted by GKusnick
Restricting @house available will not kill the bots. It's not hard to code a script that portals out to the housing settlements and checks out the availability first-hand. A fleet of such traveling bots could survey the entire world several times an hour, without depending on @house available at all. So limiting @house available will just force the bots to change tactics, without really removing their advantage.

Good point GK; even i didnt think o fthat one :)

Put this post up in lights so the devs see it. Restricting the command will ONLY hurt the non bots.

[Desert Jade]

Give each account one dwelling - apt, house, villa.
Have the house upgradable based on level.

Remove the demand and the sales will stop.

Its that easy.

Everything else is really just a bandaid.

:) I can see it now... all the chainers rewarded for their efforts with the best housing Dereth has to offer. Nope, no one will complain at all. Didn't macro? Bummer that. You get an apt :D

I truely don't care one way or the other about this. I have my villa, I got it the hard way (camping many settlements over the course of a few months before finally scoring the big one) and since I have zero intention on parting with it this pertains to me not in the slightest.

I do love the mentality though... step on the little man to prevent him from being harmed ;)

I check house available to search for housing for friends. I'll check daily and post on allegiance chat. It is the least I can do for my family.

[WintersebbWilly]

I like the once per 24 hours @house available command. It will help diminish the advantage the macros have over actual players and it retains the element of luck in the search for housing.

edit: I have been reading through the responses and I also agree with the 1 house per account per month limitation.

[Grayson]

The level 20 restriction is meaningless. It's a few hours to get a character up that high, at most.

Was the nerf to Missives done with the knowledge of this change coming? :(

[Fzzt]

I think a combination of timer on the house available command and buying/selling housing per account would make more sense as has been said on this thread already.

The level req is good however I'd bet that most of the people that are using bots to look for housing have multiple accounts so if anything it will just require them to use their other toons.

About the only way to really level the playing field is to limit how often you can buy/sell housing.

I can hear it already, "[Allegiance] IwannaHouse says, "can someone check if the house is still available?" "

Good or bad at least your trying, much better than just sitting back and letting the status quo continue.

Fzzt.

[Askani]

I do not like the once every 24 hours, that penalizes many people but I was thinking to going back to how it was in the beginning.

Creatures dropping trophies that could be traded but the writs were not givable.

No matter what the solution is, someone is gonna be hurt but at least give the regular play and casual player a better chance than a bot.

I remember the thrill of trying to kill shadow knights cause as a melee, I could not touch that nasty virindi and trying to gather enough items and then finding a place and getting there in time to buy it. Man, I have not had a rush like that for a long time.

But yes, we need a solution, I don't think this is the correct one but at least you are working on it. Thank you for that.

[Angieg1]

any effort to slow any macro for profit in this game is welcomed by me.

[Toxeus]

I think this another very poorly considered solution. In fact, it reminds me of the misery I had to deal with when I purchased my first cottage. At that time, you made us "camp" cottages with absolutely no way to know when the housing would become available, then when it did become available, I invariably missed the house. This fostered a "territorial" type of behavior, replete with ill manners and other general nastiness. This was a huge issue with many players at the time.

Now you plan to once again create a lottery system in which the player with the best luck can find a house, while the rest of those who type "/house available" at the wrong time are out of luck. It seems like 15 or 30 minutes would be more reasonable, and nowhere near as punitive to the casual house hunter. I think you are on the right track, but it appears a bit half-baked at this point.

Just for perspective, here is my story: I have a second account, without housing, and I find myself occasionally, when I remember, typing /house available just for giggles to see if I get lucky. I doubt I do it more than once a week, but if I were serious about getting a house, I'd probably type it a few times per playing session, just to be a bit more competitive. I wouldn't use a housing macro to find housing, so I'll probably never find it, but neither would I feel good about having to risk it all with one shot a day.

[Gouru]

The house abandon / buy limits just won't work. One account can buy houses on all worlds (even be logged into multiple worlds simulataneously) so if it gets one villa per month per world, that's like $700 income for a $13 investment. So multiple accounts to buy multiple houses per month is easily affordable.

Any solution has to either make the real world investment much higher, or randomize the ability to get houses where everybody has an equal chance.

The 24 hour limit does add randomization, but still feels like a hack. I would think more brainstorming would make sense.

And haven't lawsuits against selling in game items been remarkably unsuccessful? The claim is they are selling the time spent (which Turbine doesn't own) instead of the item itself. They are providing a for-hire service, which is not illegal.

[Yusuki]

Note to all: Quest timers do not reset when characters are deleted/restored. Coding a "quest timer" on the /house abandon method would work the same way--thus, deleting and restoring wouldn't "reset" this timer. Provided, of course, it were coded similarly to every other quest timer in the game. Not too far a stretch.

As for the desirability of villas, I never wanted one until my tiny little 47-member allegiance could mansion recall to one. Then I wanted one very badly. Storage, I couldn't care less. But to have everyone be able to recall to my mini-mansion?

I like that a lot.

Edit for Gouru: "And haven't lawsuits against selling in game items been remarkably unsuccessful?"

Who needs to sue 'em? Just ban him. "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." And it's simple to find out who he is: Just be the winner on one of his auctions, and complete the sale in-game. Would take about 30 minutes.

[Tindalos]

Someone has pointed out that financially speaking, this will not effect Niro or any other housing macro. This is a great step in the right direction but I think that it doesn't go quite far enough. I agree that there needs to be a limit on the number of times that an account can abandon and purchase housing in game. These steps are just the begining of a real solution. Hit this guy and others like him in their pocketbook.

[Chazcon]

Great ideas.

First I should say that I was a HUGE house trader in the fall of 2002, I had three accounts so I would buy & sell housing with two of the accounts. I don't really remember anyone trading in housing before I did...I never used a plugin, I'd constantly hit @house available, and when I found one open I'd Alt-Tab to AC Explorer, type in the coords and print out the route. Then I'd log in a house trader character - buffed and baned, carrying all the housing items, notes and writs, logged off in the bottom of the sub with carefully chosen portal and LS ties, and carrying portal gems, to give me maximum coverage. I put together charts of all the shortcuts through Dereth. It brought me incredible (virtual) wealth. Once I had 810 sings muled, this was before keyrings. I bought all kinds of good armor & weapons. It was quite an effort but a lot of fun. I didn't rely on a plugin, I ran my butt off to get to the housing.

Anyway, I've never sold any in-game items for real money. I have purchased notes and salvage through eBay. This is going WAY out on the politically correct limb but - I think I started the house trading craze in AC. Feel free to flame me down if you think I am wrong. I just never saw anyone trading housing before me. And everyone who learned of my housing 'business' thought it was unique. Soon a ton of people were doing it, and writing plugins, etc. The bottom dropped out on pricing and I got out of it.

I like the fact that Turbine is concerned about it and is taking steps to make the game more equitable and enjoyable for everyone. The timer idea is a good one; but I rather like Hai Youhi's idea better, where the buying of the house is on a timer.

What about not allowing a character to purchase housing, unless he/she currently owned a lesser dwelling - i.e. to purchase a cottage you need to currently own an apartment, and need to have owned it a certain length of time. You could then qualify to upgrade to the cottage- but not a villa or mansion. Then, to purchase a villa, you would need to have owned a cottage for the required length of time. Same for villa to mansion. This would create a more complex house-purchasing system that might thwart the house traders.

Also, when a house is abandoned for any reason - and has items on the hooks, or in the chests - is it possible/feasible to transfer all those items into any available slots on the five characters for that account? Any items with no slots to go to would be lost, sorting by type/value/etc. This would remove the anguish for people who lose housing for reasons beyond their control, forgetfullness, or due to their own ignorance of the system.

One last thing regarding housing - many houses are owned by characters who are rarely, if ever logged in and don't 'use' the house for it's intended purpose. Have a timer automatically abandon the house after sitting 'vacant' a certain period of time. Allow only the owner of the house to pay maintenance on it. This would 'recycle' housing to people who would use it and appreciate it.

A bit long winded, sorry, just my take on the subject.

[Dom on TD]

Originally posted by Grayson


The timer needs to be on using the covenant crystal. Imo, once every 30 days, *PER ACCOUNT* seems reasonable.


That's a bad idea for many reasons.
#1 you have to use the crystal to find out what the item is. If you don't have it, you'll need to use it again to buy it.
#2 I pay other people's maintenance, as well as chipping in on the mansion maintenance when the opportunity presents itself.
#3 If you check the housing item for house, and don't get it, you'd have to wait a month to try again.

Other possibilities

#1 They should change the item every time a house is abandoned. If I thought there was a chance I might not get the house after it was abandoned, I wouldn't bet $120 on it.

#2 If maintenance lapses have the house condemned. Make it so that it can't be puchased until a random time in the hext update with the rest of the condemed houses. That would cut Niro's profits down to $120/month.

#3 Add more housing, or storage.

Banning his accounts won't help. He'll just start new ones now that DM is unlocked to all accounts. You should try to even the playing field, not Turbine errr nerf everyone else.

[Davidge]

I can hear it already, "[Allegiance] IwannaHouse says, "can someone check if the house is still available?" "


That times 10^n . . .

Ouch!

For that reason alone, please drop the original proposal as stated! ;)

lol

[sylphia]

Originally posted by Gouru

And haven't lawsuits against selling in game items been remarkably unsuccessful? The claim is they are selling the time spent (which Turbine doesn't own) instead of the item itself. They are providing a for-hire service, which is not illegal.

Thats the very problem preventing them from stoping it OUTSIDE the game. But if it were against the CoC to use the bots and all that entails, there is nothing legally preventing them from banning that same player from the game, thereby cutting them off from their method. An additional penalty on acocunts banned for this reason (and this reason only) should be an immediately release of all housing on that account.

Not by any means a perfect solution, but a better deterent, that is less impacting on "proper" players than restricting housing purchases in-game or limiting /commands.

[Lawd]

I like the fact that you are looking into this even though it does not concern me much; I don't get into the housing scene much.

HOWEVER, this particular "fix" would do the opposite of what you intend. It DOES NOT level the playing field but to the contrary it makes it much more uneven. Now players owning the most accounts will have the advantage.

Thanks but keep thinking please =)

[Xed_DT]

If I were looking for a house and I found out that Turbine had restricted my /house available to once per 24 hrs I'ld be majorly ticked.

It only makes getting a house more of "pot luck" than it already is.

How about this. Limit the purchase of a house of ANY KIND to once every 'x' months per account and limit /house available to once per 15 minutes.

I mean that really solves it right? People who use bots to jump/camp/whatever a house do it to sell it and they use an account other than their primary one to do it. So make it so that an account has a "buy house" timer that lasts 3 or 4 months or something like that. That kills the market and then let people /house available every 15 minutes.

[Dom on TD]

Originally posted by Yusuki
Note to all: Quest timers do not reset when characters are deleted/restored. Coding a "quest timer" on the /house abandon method would work the same way--thus, deleting and restoring wouldn't "reset" this timer. Provided, of course, it were coded similarly to every other quest timer in the game. Not too far a stretch.


What timer? He would lose the house when he deletes the character. He would never have to use the abandon command. he'd just delete to abandon the housing.

[Pac-Man]

* @house available will only be useable once every 24 hours by any character

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooo that'd just suck :| ever tried looking for a house? you'd have to pretty good to get one with a 24hr timer... it'd just make it more luck than anything

maby put a limit to the number of times you can hit it.. like say 500


that way if the bot were to continue it would have to space out the time between hitting the command...


- and -
* @house available can only be used by characters who are level 20 or higher.



that would work as long as we get rule one worked out


what about having each acct able to buy 1 house per week?

[Sprawl]

Not a bad approach, but I agree, 24 hours is too long. However making it shorter will keep the macros alive. Every one hour is still worthwhile to macro, long in once and hour and check, is still a huge advantage against the "casual player" you speak of.

Sprawl

[Havo]

You are HELPING the e-bayers! BAD! BAD! BAD! If you can get $100 for a villa then the low cost of an account for one month is nothing! You are even making it easier by letting them buy keys and get a free month! All I have to do it find a Villa that has not been paid for, park a bot that checks the crystal and you have it! Dual log an a few cheap PCs are all you need! Worse without the /house available you take away the competition! Now with people coming back and new players coming on more people will want them. Prices will go up! It will make it even more profitable! BAD! BAD! BAD!

The abandon once every 30 days is the best idea. Then modify the CoC and make it illegal to BUY the housing. The punishment being a ban and make the house available. Once people get the idea that they will loose their account and the house they will stop.

Housing is still a sore spot and needs to be thought out. There are more changes need to let new players get a shot at the better houses. This is the worse idea you could have! The best idea would be to rework the servers to support more houses!

[Magnus McPummel]

the timer shouldnt be on /house available

it should be ...you can only buy/sell a house once a week or longer per account ...covering all worlds the user has chars on per account


this would allow casual users to switch houses but not continually do it over and over.

The effect it would have would be the house could go up for market and actually not be sold immediatly...giving normal players a chance.


Changing /house available is just a bad Idea.


Only other thing I can think of is that those running realestate companies would hire people to buy houses ( AKA purchase of multiple accounts...like 10 accounts)



Maybe you should limit the number of accounts a user can purchase

Also rewrite your user agreement to cover illegal and unauthorized sale of game related items...with the puneshment of account deletion...not banning

[obie]

Limiting the players to get there first house or making getting house very hard to get will just drive the value of house even higher making it even more desirable to sell houses whatever the restrictions.

Here would be my suggestion on how to change house ownership rules.

You should only be able to buy a house once a year per account, UNLESS you are upgrading. Thus if you own an apartment you can abandon it and buy a cottage without restriction, if you own a cottage you can abandon it to buy a villa without restriction, etc. The year timer would restart anytime a residence is bought.

Each player establishes a "homeworld", they can only buy residences on that world. If they change thier home world they imediately lose ownership of thier house and changing home would would not reset the timer. when the "homeworld" is rolled out based on ownership of the house in that owned. Give some warning to people that own houses in multiple worlds to pack up and clear out otherwise is pure luck which one they get.

/house avaliable -- command should be limited to once evey 5 minutes. And only show residences they are able to buy. If they bought an apartment less than a year, it would not show apartments, new Villa owners would only see mansions for sale.

Now that all residence are owned, drop the grief items altogether. This one thing gives the house hunters a leg up on all others.

[Raylin]

Ok, limiting the /house available command is a good start. But I think it hinders the casual player too much as well as the bots.

Limiting the /house abandon command won't help. People will jsut delete the characters to release the house, then restore the character. Poof, the house is released and the timer is circumvented.

The only real solution os to limit how often you can buy a house. I think one house/account every 60 days is more then fair. It won't remove the housing macros permanently, but it will even the playing field alot.

[Morgeneshg]

I think 24 hours is too long.

I would suggest either 6 hours...
-or-
Have it be only every 60 to 120 minutes (random timer) and that if you try to use it again it increases the timer (like chat (SPAM,) @allegiance info, etc)

T/M

[AFWriter]

Ok, first off -- IMHO, the best answer is to define the conduct that is allowable in and out of game.

It seems reasonable to suggest by the content of Ibn's posts -- that while Turbine doesn't condone out of game sales, they will not actively persue these people either.

I mean, it's not to difficult to go to e-Bay and determine the properities and accounts responsible for 90% of the housing transactions.

With that having been said, restricting the @house_available command isn't the best idea -- especially with the opening of the new server in a short (I hope) while.

What I do like however is the restrictions on abandoning a house, but to a scaleable extent.

You should be able to abandon any number of apartments as much as you want. Cottages should be on a 7-10 day timer, Villas on a 10-20 day timer, and Mansions on a 30-day timer.

One thing that would help is approaching the new expansion with fixes to the housing situation. Depending on the development time, I think the long term answer is more of the UO/SWG approach -- you buy the deed to the land, and build/maintain the housing on that deeded piece of property as you wish.

I like the idea in allowing neighborhoods for monarchies and letting individuals decide exactly what they want.

However, as long as out-of-game sales are not tracked (condoned by Turbine or not) and the amount/type of housing available is less than what the community as a whole desires -- there will be a market for this resource, and people trying to exploit it.

Long term, Turbine either needs to:

a) Create more/flexible housing

or

b) Eliminate out-of-game transactions

Anything else is a Band-Aid, and will be worked around by people who stand to profit off of it.

Later,

Don!

[Deven-Kenyon]

I am so sick of el nirro and all of his macro programs and his buying in ac and then selling for rl cash on ebay. That IS breaking your COC and or TOS. He is making a profit off of the work of others and it is wrong. Before you implement any further plans to try and work around others doing the same thing, take care of NIRRO FIRST.

This idea of limiting @house available is a joke, and waste of time. Try and do something with when rent is due, maybe say only then may a player have the option of purchasing another house. Yes, there would be many drawbacks if you went this route. People that auction off housing on the VN boards, or those that trade ig would feel the brunt, but that is a price I personally would pay in order to rid this game of that money grubbing POS nirro. I know of many people in this game that have been trying for a very long time to get a villa, and yes, some don’t have villa kits, and others cannot sit there typing @house available all of the time. And when the chance DOES come up, there is a bot that goes and grabs it right from their grasp. I had to shell out numerous ig items for my villa, when if there wasn’t an el nirro, I MAY have had a decent chance to get one for the normal price.

Also, how about adding MORE villa settlements? There’s ton’s of areas where you can build upon to satiate the masses. I know it’s part of the economy, and in most cases it’s keeping it partially stable, but wise up, all of these “little problems” in this game, stack on top of one another and just add to the frustration that many are going through and those people wind up leaving. So it may seem simple to some, but it’s not to others.

[Eschient]

Oh no, this is not a good solution at all. The first cottage I purchased consisted of three months solid of *war spell war spell war spell @house available* repeat ad nausium. I know I as well as any number of other house hunters use the command at least half a dozen times on the run to an open house. Restricting use of the command does not remove the PROBLEM. In reality, it is more likely to drive UP profits for people like Niro, who can now get people to pay twice as much because they only have one shot a day to even see if there is a house, making it virtually impossible for normal players to aquire housing on their own.

There must be a better solution than this. Put the restrictions on SELLING the houses instead.

[sylphia]

Here is a thought. Lets say That you DO add in the /command timer and you ALSO add in the timer for how often you can purchase a house.

Now, I go and set up 4 accounts and PL the toons to 20 in an hour each.

Finding a house once per month on each of those toons is NOT going to be hard (for me), even with the /command change, because as GK said, all I have to do is spend some legtime running from settlement to settlement. Now, all the casual players who are ALSO limited to 1 /house available per day are going to have a hard time finding a house without goign to similar lengths. That means any house that goes up for sale by a player is going to be that much more valuable, because they are harder for the non-obsessive players to find.

So now I am sitting here with 4 accounts, each with a house onit that I spent some time getting. I hit eBay, and since I know it will be 30 days before I can grab a new house anyway, I set up the auction for 3 weeks instead of 10 days. Given the fact that houses are harder for the average player to ge tnow, that means the folks bidding will be willing to pay MORE money to get them. And since I am in no rush to turn over the house just to go get another one, I can let it sit in auction longer without fear of lost profits.

If I find that my profits arent enough, I just buy up more accounts and repeat while I am waiting for the first 4 to sell. Doing this, I can have new houses on the market every few days. I can conceivably lock the market on housing simply by holding the ones that come up and removing them from the general housing pool; this makes the houses I already have for sale even MORE valuable, since they are a much mor elimited resource now.

And I can do this on every server with each account. Suddenly, it looks like the proposed changes will drastically benefit the eBay seller. They will have NO problem funding several accounts with a single sale. I could make a healthy living off of my AC time if I ever decided to go that route.

[zcipher]

The best solution is to remove /house available entirely. There's no need for it, if someone runs by a settlement and sees a house/villa open they can either buy it or alert their monarchy.

/house available is the debil no matter how it is limited, it will still be abused even with the perimters described, Ibn. Is there really a good reason to have it?

[RathicHG]

every account should be assigned a plot of land when it is created, and yyou sould be able to use special items or combination there of to upgrade it, maybe start as an shack, then a couple gromnies idol eyes mattekar hides, bags of wood/metal salvage whatever, you get a cottage, or more hooks, but keep it to one chest per house for lag reasons and so on and so forth, this would make it so houses are not a comodity, a home for our characters, not a get rich quick scheme, as well as being an on going quest. if dereth will ever be our "home" we should be able to build a house without having to pay rent to a crystal


and how about this, make houses like characters, when they log off they disapear, thus not causing lag

[Morgeneshg]

Or... another idea I just had...

What if you made the housing items random... And implement a system whereby you can put any item in to the buy window but that if you click on buy or send the buy command to the server and have the wrong item in the window, it teleports you to 300 feet over teth?

Or, perhaps, make the items random and add a lot more items to the mix so that a bot couldn't possibly hold all the items... This would mean that you would need to have a real person there to see what the item is, run and get one, then return. I'm sure there are over 300 non-stackable unique items in AC that could be made in to housing items.

edit:

What about having the @house available command only give us the number, not the location (like apartments) that way everyone is on a level playing field running from settlement to settlement looking for an open house when they see one.

T/M

[Dom on TD]

Originally posted by sylphia


And I can do this on every server with each account. Suddenly, it looks like the proposed changes will drastically benefit the eBay seller. They will have NO problem funding several accounts with a single sale. I could make a healthy living off of my AC time if I ever decided to go that route.

OMG!!! You did it!!! You figured out why they're doing this. The house campers will be making more money, and giving more to Turbine. This is a scheme to get subscriptions up. I was wondering why they unlocked DM to everyone, and now we know. It's so the Ebayers will get more accounts to sell housing. I think you're right Sylphia. They should just nuke us all back to the stoneage.

[obie]

If /house available is limited then you then have bots running trough the settlements checking for open houses and after a couple months (if that long) the bots will actually be buying them.

Now think how desirable Villa would be if they were extremely hard to get and how much they would pull in an e-bay auction.

Limiting the number of houses an account can purchase in a set time is the only way to go. Most people only want one per account and it would not affect them.

The disposable account does pose a problem, You may want to make that you have to play a month before buying a cottage and 3 months before being able to buy a villa. A true new player shouldn't be able to get to the level needed in that time and it would be cost prohibative for a player just to maintain an account for 3 months to get a Villa. If they do at least Turbine gets a healthy cut.

[Nuisu Og]

How about making less apartments and more cottages? Most Macros appear out of necessity. Obviously, the macro is not the problem here, too few cottages is.
Solution: Make more Housing.

[sylphia]

Now accepting applications for real estate agents...

Dom, you can be my partner :)

[Morgeneshg]

I have something against the limiting how many houses someone can buy in a short while, though, as it limits legitimate uses.

I recently left my old monarchy. I had a villa on my old primary character (never moved it to my new primary because I was lazy.) A bunch of my vassals decided to leave with me, and my main character became a monarch (after I moved my old mains and vassals 'below' me.) I then transfered my villa to the monarch to have an allegiance home.

A week later a mansion opened up on HG. So I bought it. With the new rules some of you are suggesting, I wouldn't have been able to do that.

I think that to fix this problem they should no longer list locations with @house available and make the housing item for each house randomly generated when it is abandoned. The list of items from which the random selection is made would need to be 300 to 600 items long, preferably.

T/M

[Geomancer]

I think you're fixing the wrong problem.

Instead of limiting use of the /house available command, limit house purchasing per account to once per 30 days. End of problem. If it's still a problem, make it 45 days.


<OT>
Oh and while you're at it, fix it so that only house owners can pay for housing after they cancel their account:

I know of several people who are using multiple cancelled accounts where they'd granted themselves storage access. They just pay the rent and *bam* they've got two, three, 6 chests at their disposal.

If you wanted to be more generous with this, you could start the purge on housing w/cancelled accounts only when that housing type has 0 available.
</OT>

[Zedon]

I like the idea over all, but maybe have 3 times per day to do an @house available. The level 20 part is good.

Much better would be to limit someone to buying a house once ever 2-4 weeks per account.

[Rebel Yell]

Leave everything as is except remove the coords for the house, then it will really be house hunting and it couldn't be macroed.

or

Change the house dynamic so the grief item has to be acquired after the house becomes available through some flag or something, players would have to hunt for the item and the first one who gets it would most likely get the house.

[sylphia]

Everyone advocating the housing timer be upped to 30 days, please read this, seriously:

http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=25673#post25673

[Toxeus]

I think you're fixing the wrong problem.

Instead of limiting use of the /house available command, limit house purchasing per account to once per 30 days. End of problem. If it's still a problem, make it 45 days.

Now that is a good solution, one that doesn't punish legitimate house buyers, but hurts those who buy them simply to trade over and over.

Great idea.

[DrCykosis]

How many Cottages have I bought? Hmmm Probably over 3-4 Dz. How many Sold on Ebay? 0
I use that command at least a dz time a day to find cottages for Friends I think I've bought 3-4 cottages if you count money, or just an item or a writ to friends/clan.
I still do use that command a Dz times a day as I carry about a Dz different Cottage and Villa Items I'll run there and Sell/trade the Item needed if they dont have it :-P

If it's Possible I think the once every 30 days or more would be best.

[CodyPlaneswalkr]

Yes I kinda like the idea of getting rid of the coords. On the other hand it gives an advantage to the neighbors friends.

Also I think that once Turbine has full control over AC that there should be a sticky called "CoC Violations" In this thread people could direct attention to various items for sale. Like if a villa was being auction we could give Turbine the coords and its owner would be banned for CoC violations.

And as far as items go you could have one of your employees bid on every item, most have a buyout so it wouldnt take up to much of your time. And when you go to meet the person IG you could then ban them.

[obie]

I would suggest the timer on buying houses be much longer than a month, I would suggest a year (unless buying a bigger place).

Also that the timer not count down while the account is inactive.

Most players only want one house or a bigger house. The re-sellers and looters are the only ones the buy and sell them with any frequency.

Finally limit to one house per Account

As a side effect, not sure if this is good or bad, you are really hosed if you forget to pay rent.

[AC_Addict]

What I'd rather see is housing (except perhaps apartments) set aside for people who don't let their accounts go inactive and have friends or allegiance members pay their rent.

One way to accomplish this would be that only characters on the account that the cottage, villa, or mansions belong could pay the rent.

I believe there would be a ton more cottaqes and villas available to people that actually play the game.

[Thunderspeed]

Kudos to Turbine for finally getting around to this growing problem. But whatever the solution may be, it should NOT affect the casual player greatly.. because we arn't at fault for the housing shortage. It's the macros.

[Unicron]

Purchase Timer!

~How about you limit people who have purchased a cottage/villa/mansion to only purchase one every 2 weeks to 1 month (whatever timer is chosen)? So if someone purchases a cottage then decides to drop it they can't go out and purchase another cottage with that character (Or any other characters on account) until their timer for 1 month is up (Make this timer account wide, so people can't login to other characters on the same account and do the same thing). Apartments would not have any specific timer so you would still have the availability of storage without any timer. I think a change like this would work out better because it stops the person(s) who sell on eBAY and drop housing ownership once or twice weekly. The people might still be able to still sell 1 cottage/villa/mansion a month or maybe 5 if he has 5 accounts but it stops him/her from selling 30-40 per month.

[Yrsa]

No one has yet noted the other reason this won't work. If a person dedicated to this practice has 5 accounts, that's 25 characters that he can use to run the house available command.

So someone dedicated to this has the opportunity to execute the command roughly once an hour.

They're forced to change tactics but not out of business by this.

Add that on top of this the suggestion that they park their 25 characters in 25 different villa settlements, they can cycle through the characters looking for crystals that are down.

[obie]

after thinking about it, limiting /house available would even give more power to the third party hacks.

There would be groups that would collectively time thier /house available commands to get a good spread and send thier results to a shared location. So the program would check theer first to see if something is open before proceeding, giving even more disadvantage to the casual players.

I see purchase timer as the only way to go. I still say set it at a year. So if you want to swap places with someone, you have to be there a year before you move.

[KPD157]

I still beleive that the house Available command shouldn't be a command that elicits a server response but should be set apon entering the game world. Due to large amounts of people using the command to get houses wether to sell on Ebay or to just have a house in Game.

Also along with this would be a penalty for logging in and out of the game so that if you do it too excessively you will not be able to log in for like 5 minutes or something.

Concerning the 30 Day wait on abandoning the House, I think along with that should be a Transfer of title to the next person in the Account on that world if you should delete the house holder Character. This would help those who accidentally delete as well as hinder those trying to get a house abandoned before the 30 day wait minus killing every character on thier Account.

As for A COC change and or any enforcement over Ebay Sales I think the following sums it up well "Selling Online any Commodities that are in a game is the "Crook" Seller Selling to the "Idiot" Buyer"

Thats all I have to say on this Topic for now and I hope Turbine finds a great way to solve the issue :)

[Taylsah]

Level 20 can be reached in less than an hour these days. Seems like setting the level requirement there would not have the desired affect.

I like the idea of the above poster to have title transfer to another toon on same account if player deletes. I lost a villa when a bug deleted/restored my main.

[Zankov]

Real problem is houseing is first come winner take all - 1st pc to show with a simple items gets it.


Simple fair solution:

Auction houses for writs and/or py. over a 5 day period (high bid is the current leader). 15 min snipe rule etc.

Works fine in the real world. Works fine on the boards for everything else. No reasson it would not work for housing.

/house for_sale --- is new command.

[MIdnightFire7]

I am not sure what I think of the change. Im sure something needs done to stop the selling of housing for real money on e-bay. Limiting to 24 hours of the command is a bit harsh. I play usually 3hrs at a time when i play, and i use the command atleast 1 once a hour because i have been looking for a villa for a while now.

[darkgodz]

I am for the limiting of purchasing/releasing more than the limiting of when and how often I can type the command.

[Ziggy al-Zog Jr]

24 hours is way to harsh! An hour or 2 at the max would accomplish the same thing, but still give a player looking for a house a fair chance at getting it. I like the level restriction.

[Lila_MT]

I'm all for both restrictions.

[NecX]

A restriction on using the @house available command in my opinon is stupid...
If a person is playing and currently looking to see what is open they should be able to look. Though it can be abused by macros, you shouldn't force someone who is playing to not be able to use the command to look for an open house.
That aspect should remain unchanged.

However, on an ACCOUNT level there should be a timer on BOTH the @house abandon command and being able to actually purchase housing...
Have this timer work in a similar way that the timer for the Temple of Forgetfulness (Untrain Skill Gems) and the Temple of Enlightenment (Skill Spec Gems) works.

With the skill gems, if I select an Untrain gem, I cannot pick up a Spec gem until the timer is up.
So in a housing example, make it be if I buy a house, I cannot release it for 30 days. On the other side, if I just released a house by using the @house abandon command make it so I cannot buy another house for 30 days.

[Li of LC]

Ibn:

I applaud Turbine for giving this issue some attention.

I would like to suggest an addition change to the /house functionality. IIRC, "available" houses only show on /house available after someone has tripped through the landblock after the houses are open for purchase.

My suggestion is to put a delay on that information, on the order of two or three hours. This would allow those players like myself who might not have the necessary housing item on that particular character to find it on their mule or beg from a friend or purchase in MP or whatever, and allow monarchs and other players looking out for friends to notify them to do likewise, without Joe Random Exploiterbot showing up in the meanwhile.

[MaddyFF]

Sounds like good suggestions to me as they don't hinder players that wish to trade housing in any way.

[Thian]

Love it. 24 hours is a bit harsh, maybe cut it down to 12 hours. It is very annoying to see the housing bot that sits in the bottom of the Subway on Solclaim waiting to go obtain a house and then sell it on eBay.

Thian

[ban dai jr]

You want to get rid of all the housing problems? simple. Let players buy a deed to a house and put the house anywhere they want it. only one house per account, you cannot trade them. only monarchs can buy a mansion, make some kind of restriction on villas so there aren't too many of them.

Now, i can go to npc, buy a deed for the house i want (different style houses), and then i can put the house down anywhere i want within certain designated areas. Near current settlements, near cities. They cannot be out in the dires or near dungeons. they can only be within a certain distance of current settlements or near the towns.

you can move the house/villa/mansion only 1 time every 3 months or so, but after the first time you move it, it will cost you to move it again, and the cost should go up every time you move it after the first time.
that way, current owners can move without a penalty. players could then move their houses near cities and then maybe there will be some kind of population in them again. or, monarchies could make their own cities.

only problem i see is the potential for massive lag.

[Thunderspeed]

^ Every high mountain and cliff would have a villa on it. Negative on that idea. =/

[ban dai jr]

read more carefully, i said only near current settlements or near cities.

[obie]

Every high mountain and cliff would have a villa on it ...


ewww. UO all over again, suburbia

[Thunderspeed]

Originally posted by ban dai jr
read more carefully, i said only near current settlements or near cities.


Close to a lot of cities and current settlements are mountains, or cliffs overlooking something.

[Mrs_Adventure]

You know, call me lazy.. Cause I don’t want to read 10 pages of replies..

But it seems to me the biggest problem with house buying macros isn't that they're all over the place.. It’s that there is basically ONE person using this macro to make $1000.00 of dollars on ebay while "screwing" the general AC public. This person is known only as Niro =/

Look at his ebay record...http://cgi2.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=niro7

The man has made a killing using his macro. And now to get back at him you're going to make the ability to get a house harder for everyone. How turbine and MS allowed this to happen in the first place is beyond me. How they don’t step in and stop this is another.


If there is such a large demand for cottages and villas that people are making a macro so as to get the house and make money or items off it.. that should tell you one thing.

YOU NEED MORE COTTAGES AND VILLAS! Not to punish everyone for what a few people are doing(AKA, your jump spin fix that sucked.. but was later changed back so <3 to the devs on that one!!)














Simply put.. Ban Niro from the game, and your hose buying macro problem dries up.

[Jaspo]

"Concerning the 30 Day wait on abandoning the House, I think along with that should be a Transfer of title to the next person in the Account on that world if you should delete the house holder Character. This would help those who accidentally delete as well as hinder those trying to get a house abandoned before the 30 day wait minus killing every character on thier Account."


I really like your solution.

You could have deeds transferable in a trade window, but only for other deeds.

[Soul Archmage]

For your information Sunstreaker, I do not macro for houses, yes I was offering to buy some grief items from people who are willing to sell them. Its no secret I use a Decal program that tells me when a house is available its called House Alarm, then I run to it try to get it. Then I run a real estate and sell the cottages at a fair price for anyone who needs one. There is nothing wrong with what I did there. Anyone can do the same thing as well. I then hunt for the grief items that I need. I sell them for MMD notes. sings or plats. Like everyone else does for other items they loot or they want to sell via VNBoards.

My thoughts on this using /house available command once every 24 hours is a joke if you ask me. This is another way to nerf this game more. This game is nearly 5 years old. Its been going downhill and now its getting steeper. I am just trying to give people chance to get a cottage at a reasonable price.

IBN, I am not sure if you realize how many people are quitting because your team decides to nerf alot of stuff that alot of us are custom too. I really think that there are alot of other there for more important than this command. Its Turbines game and I am a player. So be it.

SA

[MagicMoonlight]

24 hours per /house available is way too harsh. For someone who's really looking for a house it will be impossible to find one. Reduce the timer down to something like once every 2 hours or so.

Don't make everyone pay for a few abusing the system Turbine

[AStrange1]

My opinion would be to limit the purchace of a house to 1 per month.

If you bought an apartment/cottage/villa/mansion in the last 30 days, you can not buy another one.

[Elistra]

While I agree with the timer on buying houses, I think you should be able to type /house available as often as you want. What about those of us who keep tabs on it because our littles are looking for cottages and the like?

Even though we might type /house available 10 times a day, we're not doing anything wrong....

[sylphia]

Ban Dai Jnr,
The problem is that each villa or cottage is a bandwidth hog, which was the biggest concern Turbine had in implementing them in the first place. Settlements were arranged in such a way, and PLACED in specific areas, to try and minimize their impact on the servers. Adding more houses ot current settlemtns (especially at tthe whim of a player who isnt loking at server impact) will throw that all out of whack. some settlements will have dozens of houses in them, which would pretty much kill that section of the server. The idea of "homegrown cities" is VERY tempting, and I like it alot. But its not practical. Not to mention that in other games, it has already been established that if players are allowed to pick their own spot, the houses will start to form barriers to travel.

So how do you limit that? Put "hooks" for where houses can be placed? You end up with the same problem all over again, in a different form--limited availablity of hooks to PLACE yoru house on. So add more hooks? And each house hooked adds to the server load. Really, if you want housing available to EVERYONE, it is going to have to be more along the lines of RQs; they have less impact and are easier to add than other housing.

But free-positioned housing wont happen. At least not for villas, mansions and cottages.

[Kreez]

I really find your term Li'ls or littles very charming.
:)

[Trinity Storm]

This should be reconsidered. It will prove detrimental to everyone, not just housing macros. Now it becomes just dumb luck to find housing open? If anything, put a timer on the actual purchasing of a residence per account - those who don't use housing macros will generally not have as much a problem with that.

/house available

Apartments: 2,843,509,345 available
Cottages: 0 available
Villas: 0 available
Mansions: 0 available

*5 minutes later*

/house available

This command is only usable once every 24 hours, good luck finding your home! :o

[Brithell]

I agree with those who feel that limiting the use of the /house available command penalizes people who are in need of housing in addition to those who abuse the option.

I also applaud Turbine for addressing this problem. (Actually I was totally unaware there was a problem since I never sell/buy virtual things on Ebay :) )

As a player who has excelled in acquiring cottages for friends and fellow alliengance members, I have never used a housing macro to do so. It's very frustrating to players who have limited playing time and don't seem to be online when houses come available. I've never sold a cottage in game or out. I've even given away housing items when I come upon a cottage with a low level person who's gotten there before me (or a patron who's trying to help a vassal).

The way housing was implemented in the first place was frustrating. First come first serve is fair, and the randomness of when the houses came open was appropriate to the original plan, but the plan was flawed.

If every account was given a cottage/villa/mansion, there would be no problem (Communistic concept?) other than trade for location. Extra storage could be purchased in game or awarded from a quest.

Again, don't penalize people who honestly search for cottages etc. If you do, you are only avoiding the problem and not solving the real problem.

Thanks for asking :)

Brithell
Leafcull

[Turgis]

I don't think you should limit purchases (what if you just bought a house and want to swap with someone) but I do like the idea of limiting @house abandon. 30 days might be pushing it (or it might not, shrug) I would think maybe 15 or so.

Personally I think buying and selling housing INGAME is a fine way of trying to make some profit INGAME and infact I know people who probably would not have a house if people did not do it. What I don't agree with is people who bot up all the villas and sell them on ebay for cash. I also agree there should be some kind of limit to even how much a normal person can do it, myself I would probably make a limit of every couple days or so but I can see why others would want longer...

Oh to answer the original question IBN put out I think both your options are to harsh and would kill a normal users ability to get a house even more than now.

[obie]

The other option would be to make apartments more attractive. Put two chests (or one big chest) in apartments. Leave Cottages and Villas at thier current chest level.

The people that want to decorate would continue to get cottages and villas, and monarchs would still get villa or mansions.

But people that just want storage would go to apartments.

[Trinity Storm]

Limiting /house abandon is also pointless: Housing macros generally do not rely on a patron or vassals, and you can lose the house you purchased by deleting the character and then restoring information. In essence, this is bypassing the /house abandon command and there is no limit to the amount of times per day you can delete or restore characters. That would hurt the average player more than any house macro lacking an allegiance.

[SnoT]

Just restrict ACCOUNTS not characters. To buying 1 of any type of housing every week or 2 weeks even. I would put it on 2 weeks.


Doing /house available is how people find the open places... If you can only do /house available once is a horrible idea.


It's going to put the same problems basically. Cause you will have the people who can play at all kinda hours who can log on late in the night for others who are at work or are sleeping.


So just make it so you can only purchase a house once every week - 2 weeks. This way people can't buy with multiple accounts just for the purpouse of selling them off.

[gaandar]

If there was an abandon timer, and you still had time left before you could abandon your home, and you tried to delete the character that owned the home,

The system could just not let you delete the character until the timer was up.

[lashmage]

You know... he stand at the bottom of subway, in fact he is there right now. According to the CoC.. (afk while in combat or where you could be attacked) he is most likly UCMing.

[obie]

How about taking out the "/house abandon" command altogether. When the character is deleted that owns the house, the house will not go for sale until the timer is up.

This will take the ability to sell (or trade) a house almost impossible. Since only the owner knows what time the house will go for sale, they could pass the time, item and coords to the that they want to get the house. So it would be possible to give the house.

Could you imagine an e-bay or VN seller saying to a buyer "you have to be there at 10:43pm sharp to get the house."?

[Eric the Grey]

I think the idea of a timer on /house available is a good one, but 24 hours seems a little extreme.

What I would like to see is:

1. A limit to how often one account can purchase a house.

and

2. Make Deeds transferrable. Transferring a deed does not count as a purchase, so if someone wanted to trade up, they could arrange to do so, using secure trading (which is not possible currently), and leaves some options open.


:cool: Eric the Grey

[AlphaSwift]

I think this idea can use some tuning.

/house available once every 24 hours is no good.

Many times while running to a house, I'll need to do several of those commands to (a) make sure the house is still available and (b) make sure I am running to the right coords. Frequently the location gets dropped from my chat buffer as there is a lot of conversation going on. This is particularly true nowadays with allegiance chat.

Even the idea of restricting access to the command for lvl 20+ has problems. Some times players may be rooting through bags on a mule for a housing item and they may need the location of the house as part of a conversation.

If the goal is to defeat the housing macros, you can:

(1) Only allow the /house abandon once every 30 days. However, it would be interesting to see what happens if a toon that owns a house is deleted.

(2) Perhaps you could build an escalating purchase timer. First house purchase on account can be done immediately, second purchase could only be done 30 days after first, third purchase could only be done 60 days after second, fourth purchase could only be done 120 days after third...and so on.

(3) Put a tessera-like lifetime limit on the number of homes an account may purchase.

(4) Have some critters spawn at bottom of sub so the macro bots cannot stand there. At the very least, forcing the bots out of the sub will add a sizable amount of time a casual player on line has to get ahead of the bots.

[gaandar]

How about this:

You need to be RED to buy a house :)

[Khorps]

I haven't read all the pages inbetween the first page and this one. If this is covered by ibn elsewhere, I'd like to hear it again.

Those changes do nothing to stop house-flippers.

It's a little more inconvenient for the macro, but it's also more inconvenient for the player trying to buy a house in-game.

/house abandon shouldn't let the house up for sale immediately.
(I see this idea stated above.)

I'll go further and say that the house should not again be available for sale until after the next patch, when all abandoned houses all go on sale at the same time.

The macro can only get one of these.

The issue comes up that they'd just run more macros, since it is so lucrative. It all comes back to the limp stance against macros.
I came back to AC just this month -- hearing MS is leaving the scene, XP Chains are going away, and a new server.

I'm going to play on the new server where I will probably have a fair chance at a cottage the first while. Then it will be the same as the other servers as far as house availability. When people level up and upgrade to Villas, macros will likely start flipping the cottages.

This looks to me like Turbine is not interested in actually doing something about macros, but merely playing the same PR games that MS used to do. I'm disappointed.

[grim]

this is what i call a "sloppy" fix.

you need to incorperate new outdoor areas accesable only by portals. in these new areas will be lots of cottages and villas away from the main landmass and on seperate servers so they dont impact play on the rest of the world and there should be so many that having empty ones is normal. everyone in ac should have at least a cottage. there shouldnt be any IF one comes available about it. and the real estate "market" should be eliminated entirely. housing was put into the game for people to have a home and storage, not to make people RL or IG cash.

[Hio]

I am ecstatic to see something done about this, but I'm not sure if restricting access to /house available is the answer. I also use the command to check and see if the unit is still available en route.

I think a better idea someone has probably suggested is to restrict the amount of housing units each account is required to purchase each month.

I don't know the answer, but I'm glad you are addressing the problem! :)


*curtsey*
Hio-dontidae (MT)

[Deven-Kenyon]

if you dont like the 30 day idea, or most posted here, then DO AWAY with 3rd party apps all together. that would STOP the macro problem you guys are trying to fix after the deeds have been done.

incorperate the tools into the game and get rid of the plug-ins hence no more problems

[Rauth]

Several responses seem to indicate that these restrictions are unkind or unfair to the "casual player." It would seem to me, the casual player is going to have to depend on random luck to obtain landscape housing regardless of any restrictions on the @house available command. I define casual player as a player that logs in and plays irregularly and usually for less than 10 hours a week. Perhaps, though, it's just a difference in definition.

The once per 24-hour period timer may or may not be circumvented, as indicated in other posts, by a housing macroer using multiple accounts. However, the once per 24-hour period timer will undoubtedly increase the chances that players with multiple accounts, in a larger allegiance and/or with more acquaintances in-game have in obtaining landscape housing. Players that only have one account and/or prefer to play solo or keep to themselves will therefore be affected negatively.

Instead, if it is possible at all to restrict usage of the command per account, instead of per character, I would think a more reasonable restriction would be much less than 24 hours yet significantly more than 5 minutes. This way the whole account is handicapped across all servers and restricted to retrieving @house available only once per xxx minutes. Again, there will be a benefit for being popular or in a large allegiance, but I think that this way there would be more of a chance for both the solo and the casual players to "get lucky" and grab landscape housing. Since there is no skill affecting identifying a dwelling price or availability, we are mostly looking at who can best navigate to a dwelling in a shorter period of time with the most pertinent collection of monster trophies. Yet, with the restrictions a player can indeed get "lucky" and happen to be near the development portal with the proper purchase price at the right moment. I think it is that kind of "randomness" players wanted to see returned in the housing department.

Another modification possible could be a delay in a cottage or villa returning to the "market" that is randomly determined when its maintenance becomes due. It could be a delay in realtime that falls within predefined limits (ie; between 2 and 32 hours) and would be a period in which the housing barrier is lowered (to allow the purchase price to be viewed) but in which the property cannot yet be purchased. This delay period would most likely have to be reset with a server restart (like after application of a patch.)

Something else that may hinder profiteers could be implemented to occur within this delay period - a purging of all items on hooks and in chests. The dwelling will become attractive for being a dwelling, not another random treasure chest. All items on and in a dwelling whose maintenance has expired are already up for grabs for anyone with a character able to purchase that dwelling, this suggestion merely removes any such loot as a feature/bonus to purchasing the dwelling.

As for the level restriction, I think that it is reasonable. I would suggest that attempting to use it return a message for those under Level 20 that they should visit their local scribe or Agent of the Arcanum to learn more about housing and that a detailed informational brochure about housing should be made available in-game. This will help many of the AC players who will now have access to ACDM as well.

[Lonsgard]

I think the simplest way to fix the problem is as such:

Don't mess with timers or anything like that, that only hinders players and Bots, and since the player is actually playing, it hinders them more.

1) Remove ALL settlement portals.
2)Give all characters on an account the ability to summon a (non tieable) portal to their house (or settlement if easier)

This is helpful in two ways. First off, it gives players a feature we've often wanted, an easy way to get other players to our house. Secondly, it makes it much more difficult for a player to quickly to get to a settlement. This reduces the advantage of a bot, as the bot used to be able to plot a very quick route, while now, it will take much running.

[Kawahine]

personally I think that 24 hours is a bit high. a random player would miss out on it whereas someone with multiple accounts could do it a bit more often and still get the much wanted housing.

I do agree however that limiting the number of times that you can purchase/abandon a house should be limited to a per month/quarter type situation.

[CapFan]

My son best described Turbine's current housing proposal: "That's retarded".


Limiting /house Abandon is the BEST thing to do, as it does not prohibit playing characters from aquiring available housing, but will prevent the rampant looting and buy/sell nature of Nirro.

In order to make this change effective, do NOT release the residence upon deletion of the character. Rather, allow the rent to expire (1 to 59 days) and the residence will release naturally. As an added benefit, accidently deleting your character will not result in the loss of your housing.

Also, it is EXCEEDINGLY important that the timer include the FULL ACCOUNT, including all servers. 30 Days between abandons for ALL characters on ALL servers associated with that account.

Finaly, Turbine must enforce the CoC regarding the RL sale of in-game items.


-Cap

[sylphia]

I will try one more time. This is why slapping a timer on the ability to buy a house WILL NOT work:

http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=25673#post25673

If I were to sell a single house at the price Niro sells (roughly $80), that will be enough to fund SIX more accounts for an entire month. Even if I were unable to purchase another house on that server with that account for another month, it provided me with enugh cash to do it 6 more times. There are 7 non-PK servers. That means EACH account can sell 7 houses per month ($560). Even working with only the original account and the 6 accounts purchased through the first house sale, thats $3,920. And that assumes that I immediately sell, rather than holding the housing "hostage" to increase its value. I could easily purchase multiple accounts and buy up a huge chunk of housing on each server, driving the prices up even further and forcing ppl to come to me because they cant catch a house available, since I am buying them all up in-game and seling them out of game.

This isnt a "roof is falling" scenario. This is something I could easily do once Turbine makes purchasing multiple accounts possible again, and that is coming soon. The reason why this is so much more devastaing than doing the same thing for IN GAME items is because the sale on eBay finances the purchase of the additional accounts to do it with. If I were trading for in-game items, I would still have to pay for each account out of pocket.


Edited for math errors.

[obie]

Lets see: Niro sells for Villa $80 about 6 months of monthly fees. A cottage you my get $12 (my guess this is high)

Let each account have to wait six months a after buying a villa before they can buy another house, and one month after buying a cottage.

That was if some poor student reall wants to cover his playing cost selling in-game real-estate who cares. He will not turn a profit, only turbine will make money.

I would however limit "/house available" commands to about 5 minute intervals. I would even go as far a put a "/house wanted" option that tells the server to send you a message when a house is available for sale (assuming you are allowed to purchase per the timer)

[Kellin]

A few ideas to counter some of the issues listed so far:

1. Limiting purchase or abandon stops "regular" players from trading or upgrading housing as well as automated characters. OK, so put two possible conditions in place instead - the first being a 30 day limit on purchase/abandon as listed OR characters TRADING deeds would be able to do so on an unlimited basis.

2. Change the settlement portal dynamics. Currently settlement portals are tieable, which makes sense for people trying to get mules to settlements in safety as many of the portal locations aren't hospitable to lower level characters. However, this leaves it open for a realtor to scout villas with unpaid maintenance, tie characters to settlement portals and recall them there. Move the settlement portals for each set of cities into the apartment complexes in each city so that they can be accessed in safety, then remove the ability to tie or recall them.

3. Eliminate "special items" from purchase costs and replace it with "housing tokens" purchased from the Agent of the Arcanum. Housing tokens would be limited to one per account and to purchase one, all the requirements for that type of housing must be met. You can have a housing token while owning housing currently as long as the token is NOT for the same housing type - example: a R6 monarch with a villa may purchase a mansion token but not a villa token. Going back to the previous idea, they are not limited in trading housing either laterally (by a deed swap) or upwards to a mansion, but someone who owns a villa would not be able to purchase a villa token for x number of days after transfer. This removes the realtor's advantage in having characters dedicated to holding all housing items where the "regular" player would need to find the item.

4. Abandoned Mines is a dungeon, not the waiting room at the Greyhound terminal. With the advent of Marketplace, "regular" players rarely spend time hanging around in Subway/Hub. Would it be a problem to add a spawn or two at the bottom? Certainly a live player could effectively avoid or combat a spawn, while an unattending housing macro would not wish to risk banning by combat.

5. Add an additional chest storage hook to cottages and enhance mansion storage so they become attractive again. The primary attractions of villas are a.) allegiance recall and b.) storage. If you reduce the demand for villas by enhancing appeal of cottages and mansions, common sense says that the market will follow.

Finally, I don't really like any of these as a "solution" to the current problem, though I think that several would be great enhancements or additions to the housing dynamic. I hate the idea that the game changes to defeat the behavior of (in this case) one person. This isn't fixing a bug or an exploit, this is changing a game dynamic for 8 world populations and, honestly, based on the flexibility and ingenuity of macro programmers combined with the financial incentive to do so, I would lay odds that new code would be in place to work around any restrictions put in place within a week of implementation.

That said, at this point, there are only three issue specific choices - status quo, elimination of Ebay sales of AC items (either by policy or selective enforcement) or game changes to make such sales produce negligible profits. As the original post indicates, the current strategy is not directly targeting the problem as presented, Ebay sales of housing - rather it is focused on making housing more difficult to acquire in an automated way. I would suggest returning to the drawing board with the actual problem as presented and see if that sparks new strategies that address the individuals rather than the populations as a whole. As it stands right now, the most common side effect that I see coming from this is an increase in the cost of housing, both in game and on Ebay rather than the desired effect of fair competition for housing.

Thanks. :)

[sylphia]

Obie,
That kind of restriction on all players is ridiculous. It will only hurt the ones that ARENT selling houses for money.

If I purchase one account, sell a villa on it for $80, then turn around and buy 6 more acounts, each of which I acquire a villa on, I make a total of $560 (minus $91 for my initial investment, leaving a profit of $469). Since I can no longer purchase ANY form of housing with those accounts, even on other servers, since I am limited to one house per ACCOUNT per 6 moinths, I drop those first 7 accoutns and buy 6 more. Out of that, I keep 5 houses' worth of the cash ($400) and buy 6 more accounts ($78) with the 6th. I then abandon those 6 accoutns and purchase 6 more, again keeping 5 houses' sales for pure profit.

You cannot stop this with higher timers. If the player is doing this to make money, they will have no problem with the constant new purchase of accounts, since it is easily fundable with a single house sale. And again, that assumes he sells that low, given that he is effectively cornering the market on housing.

I fully agree that this needs to be stopped, but so far the ideas only hurt the "good" players and HELP the eBay sellers. The timer one has the most potential damage.


Edited to correct some bad math

[Helbereth]

24 hours before I can type /house available again, eh? That's pretty rediculous. I personally, if I were trying to track down a house, would use the command several times. I don't immediately commit coordinates to memory, and how am I to know if I'm running out to a cottage that's already taken?

Implimenting this will make it a LOT harder for an average player to seek housing. Houses can be abandoned in the middle of the day. They could be abandoned 2 seconds after you imput the command. It seems pretty unfair to make house hunting that much of a chore to prevent a few macroers.

All I know is I'm glad I already own a house 'cause you can be sure I'd never bother looking if this system was implimented.

[Vehementi]

Ibn, that proposed solution is a messy workaround. Find something better. I have no real suggestion other than to say that that solution is just sloppy and not good enough.

[obie]

Sylphia

To stop account roll over, put an age requirement on the character to buy a residence as well as well. 4 months for a villa and a week for a cottage. For a true new character this would not issue, a true new play would not normally have a the resources or opertunity to buy a villa before 4 months.

Most players want a cottage, then some day move up to a villa. Yes you would have to wait 6 months to trade villas with someone but, I would say that is less intrusive in not being able to find one in the first place.

edit it would be interesting to see what happens on the new server.

Selling house for in-game items is as much as a problem as selling on ebay, just less anoying.

[sylphia]

Obie,
Thats getting better :) But once again you are punishing the regular player more than the eBayer. You have made it a bit harder for him to do business, but he is already sitting on housing to drive up the prices. FOrcing age timers simply means he sits on the houses longer, making them worth more and keeping them unavailable--driving u their value even more as the housing pool gets smaller. He can afford to wait out the timers on new accounts, because his bids just keep getting bigger and bigger.

Meanwhile, Joe Newbie, who actually would have no trouble getting what was needed to own and maintain a house inside of a couple of weeks, cannot purcahse a house for 2 months, just because someone ELSE is abusing the system. Why should he be penalized? I would find waiting for a house 6 months EXTREMELY intrusive on my game play.

The problem here is that we have to come up with something that crushes the ability to effectively sell in-game items for real world cash that DOESNT hurt the regular player. Its not ok to bork it for everyone just to nail the guy abusing it.

[obie]

There is a limit how much people are willing to pay for a Villa. Either in Game Items or Real Money. If they are worth enough for the Ebay seller to wait 4 months to buy one to sell, the it should not be to much to as the Regular play wait as long. I doubt there are many player that owned a villa in thier first 6 months of play, so impact to a new player would be minimal.

(note a 4 month timer would require 5 months of subscriptions, thus eating into $65 of his sale, I would not expect him to continue sellling for long at that margin)

Also Nero, has a little more compitition now in getting to villas, Check the VN boards.

Edit: I said a week for a cottage.

[Rhesus]

Players will just create a remote server that will store available housing and the time the housing was registered as available.

All you need is a couple hundred people running a tiny plug-in that automatically reports available housing data on a regular basis.

In fact, it would work something like this (the reports would be scoped by server):

1. Login to game world.
2. Check local client house available timer (stored in local XML file).
3. Check remote server for last house available report.
4. If the remote server has not received a house available report in the last {X} minutes and your house available timer has expired, send house available report.
5. Include a command like /house forsale that will poll the remote server and return a list of all speculatively open housing as of last report to server.
6. The most recent house available report would overwrite the previous house available report.


Please consider an account-based /house abandon or an account-based house purchase plan. The /house available timer is ENTIRELY too easy to get around.

[Per]

I don't mind house macroes for the most part, but there's one big reason that I don't like them.

When my former monarch had quit the game, he was giving his villa to a friend. I was on my monarch's account, and my friend's sister was on his account for the trade.

I abandoned the villa, and she was putting the purchase in and was short on cash by one note. My monarch didn't have the note but had the cash throughout the packs, so I was handing her the cash in increments to finish the purchase. when a macro came up and bought the villa out from under us.

I know for the most part, people are understanding, and would have let us finish the purchase if they knew it was a trade. But macros don't have the option to hear those things, or see what's happening.

You run into the same problem that you ran into with combat macroers... it's automatic grief play.

I wouldn't mind if the bot plugins WOULDN'T buy a house if there are people on the radar, or something like that.

Let's face it, trade is part of the economy, I've never had a problem with people being real estate agents. I think it gives people an opportunity to buy houses who usually wouldn't be given the chance.

What does annoy me too, is when you see the real estate agents' trade bots with people's personal belongings, much of which is inscribed. That's just cold.

[AC_Addict]

The underlying issue here seems to be that we don't think there are enough cottages, and villas, not sure about mansions....and when some do become available they are scooped up by the same people using macros.

Addressing the issue that there isn't enough housing:

I like the idea of a timer on how often you can sell housing, though I'm thinking who cares how often apts are sold.

I like the idea of having the rent expire sooner.

And, again, I think that only the toons on the account that own the house should be able to pay the rent, again with the possible exception of apts.

Thus cutting down on a lot of the premium housing being owned by toons who don't play AC for months at a time as they're off playing the newest multiplayer game of the month.

[Niac_TD]

Edited because I skipped two pages and missed the fact that what I had to way had already been addressed...carry on

[sylphia]

Obie, you would be surprised at how much players will pay for in game items, esp ones that are limited resources items. It would more than make up for any loss due to extra "rent" on subscriptions.

Besides, I dont believe Turbine would ever institute something that far fetched. It simply has WAY too negative of an impact, without actually stopping the eBayer at all.

[Gesica]

I didn't bother to read all 13 pages of this thread, but I will say why all of these suggestions will only help increase value of villas on eBay and hinder chances for casual players to obtain them by fair means.

Being a plugin developer myself, I could easily modify my code to compensate for any changes (not that I necessarily would).

24 Hour Timer - /house available once only
A central 'server' (such as IRC channel) can be created and with hundreds of people running a common plugin, each person would automatically perform /house available and report the results to that channel. The plugin would alert EVERYONE using this plugin if one of the clients reports an open house.

The plugin can be programmed to perform /house available ONLY if another client has not reported results within the last X minutes/seconds. Once it has reported once, it will not report again for 24 hours. Let's use a setting of 1 min (60 secs) for example. This would require 1440 clients to run the plugin. If the masses ran this plugin, the 24 hour timer is pointless because those 1440 clients could potentially be getting /house available reports every minute. If you used a report setting of 5 minutes, this would require only 288 clients to run the plugin, all 288 of which would get a /house available report every 5 mins from the central server.

30 Day timer on /house abandon
Not only would this reduce the amount of houses actually opening (because yes people do abandon their houses), it would only INCREASE value of house sales on ebay. With houses so hard to find IG AC real estate agents are able to increase their prices. Many Real Estate agents as it is now, have upwards of 10 accounts. With a 30 day timer this means that if real estate agents are able to collect 10 villas every month, with the price increase on villas they'd still be making a profitable amount of money.

Level limit (20+) on doing the /house availabe command
This is bypassed by the central server idea above. Macros are already over level 20, and they wouldn't need to delete and remake if they can get reports from a central server every X minutes.

Now I forget what the other suggestions were, but I can probably think of a way around anything thats been suggested so far. What you need to do is hack down on the ebay sales.

People will always find a way to get around the system, and whatever changes that are made, it will only hurt the casual player MORE than it would housing agents. Agents would still run their automatic house purchasing macros. You might be able to slow them down, but in the process EVERYONE is being affected including the casual player.

[Gouru]

Unfortunately, the only way I can see to stop these sales is to remove the profit. Limiting the /house available command will do little, I'm afraid some people underestimate how well organized these entrepreneurs are. When a $13 per month investment can easily bring in $500-$700 (selling a villa on each world) per month, then there is room for a LOT of accounts to be checking regularly (10 accounts costs $130, you could check 50 times a day (every half hour), even miss out on a few and still make good profit on resale. Limiting it to once a month also does not limit that obscene profits this endeavor has.

Banning accounts might have better affect. Have admins check for houses being sold on ebay. Verify the ownership of the home, ban the account and immediately release the home.

They could start multiple accounts, but as each gets banned and the house removed, the cost of these accounts goes up, to the point where it is no longer profitable.

But as long as these huge profits remain, stopgap measures like this one are not likely to have much affect.

[Gouru]

Another possiblity?

When a house becomes available due to non-payment of rent (not due to releasing of the house), make it so that it does not become available for resale for 4 hours.

There will be crowds at the house all trying to be the first to buy it, and some lucky person will be the winner and roundly cursed by all the other would-be buyers, but at least this way everybody has an equal chance at the house and it would be difficult for a single player to corner the market.

Or a lottery. To enter the villa lottery you pay the first months rent and complete a lottery quest. Anytime a villa becomes available then a person is chosen at random from the lottery pool and becomes the owner of the house. This would have protections to make sure only 'active' players are in the pool, and there are kinks / special cases that need to be worked out, but once again it gives player an equal chance at new homes.

For both of these to work, there also has to be a method for existing home owners to sell a house without dropping. Trading writs comes to mind.

And All of this would require new tech I'm sure, so don't know how technically feasable it is.

[Escanor]

Originally posted by Hai Youhi
Instead of limiting the number of times a character can @house available, why not limit the number of housing units that can be purchased on one account within any one time frame?

Say one housing unit (apartment, cottage, villa or mansion) per account per 60 days, combined with a level 20 restriction.

Would some non-macroing players have to wait at times to upgrade? Possibly, but not so different than a quest timer. Would this shut down selling housing on eBay as a primary occupation and give the "normal player" more of a chance? I think so.

Just my two pyreals. Thank you for asking our input.

This is BY FAR a better idea than the one proposed by Turbine. Once a "legitimate" player has purchased their home, they will not be negatively affected by not being able to purchased another one until 60 days have passed. On the other hand, the once per 24 @house available limit, well ... this is already on page 14 with not many "thumbs up" reviews.

[Hopeslayer]

I dont like that idea about the 1 per 24 hour, i agree that i know when i was looking for a house i used it 30 times in an hour just to try and get it..



They key to getting a house really isnt Casual.. If you want a house get the items before then and have them redy.

you can make it there and get the house before any macro.



Ebay is bad but lets not mess up people who use it legaly.


Trading is a part of game so i dont like the 1 per 60 days thing either. I know i have Boght a cottage and traded it , Real estate is like any trade good. Ebay is the problem. It should be hard to take 5 min a day to watch a bot that is standing there and the second a house comes up it goes runing out to it.

Make using a bot to obtain houses a banable offence, if your not at keyboard to obtain a house then make it like macroing.



SOme bots are good others are not. if they were trading for ingame items there wouldnt be as much of a stink, but he is Ebaying them and making real cash from it.

[Niro7]

Hello everybody.
I want to explain something because I see a lot of lie and misunderstanding here on the boards.

First of all, all my macro does, is doing @house available every 15 sec and does alarm if villa is open. I have to sit at the computer or stay nearby to run to the villa manually. I have enough competitors who do the same. May be I have better routes or timing but I win pretty often (not always). I dont believe if it's possible to write such macro that can do automated run and buy process.

So, it's my WORK here, not that I leave running working computers, coming back after few hours and see: wow, i have new 2 villas in my hands.



Oh, got this today by email (ebay system):

To member: niro7
From member: bousada
--------------------
You sir are a ****ing *******! I can't wait till the Dev's do away with scum sucking morons like yourself. I hope you get hacked!

Yokan, Leafcull server
--------------------

Very clever and it makes you a good name, mr Yokan.

[Ellis]

I don't know if you already know or not, but there were two players on the Thistledown server who decided in mid December (after a confrontation with a house hunter) to put 'everything they have' into making sure something is done about houses being sold online.
I know they followed through with it as I have, since December, overheard them on several occasions discussing their activities.

I don't pay attention to everything they say so I don't know everything they've done but I have heard them talk about posting many messages on message boards under different names, submitting multiple suggestions (under different names) and submitting several e-mails from different addresses.

I'd say there's a good chance that the majority of this "Great deal of feedback" is just these two guys.


Just heads up.


PS:
As a side note, those same two guys cuss a great deal in game and seem to never get banned for it ..did the policy on language become more lenient at some point during the past year?
I'd be glad to provide their character names if you'd like (just e-mail me).

[sunstreak]

lashmage is probably Niro; as his defense is: he spends money on those accounts, so he spends money on hating AC...

Sure, sell villas on ebay... make Turbine itself run ebay auctions for housing. Make Villas an expansion like Dark Majesty used to be.

See what ppl say if Turbine, not Niro/etc. sell housing on ebay, Make housing an acquisition, one which is expensive.

[sunstreak]

Niro, I know you mean well... but I know, from trolling AC VNThistledown, that you are deluded.

PPL hate you. Your name is almost a swear-word, you're that hated!

I'm so sorry, but the community holds you in contempt. I know you mean well... but no one appreciates your proficiency at aquiring housing. Literally, your name is almost a curse... how sad is that? I know that's not your intention!

[Neros]

The 24 hour timer on /house available is a bad decision that as mentioned, will be quickly bypassed by a third party application.

I managed to wrangle a villa at the beginning of this patch simply by trying /house available every few minutes while I gathered some remaining housing items. Of course, I checked the hub and noticed that Niro/Nirro/Al Niro/Mir/etc was not there - else I would have given up immediately. Server population was low also (due to a restart late in the day/no decal/etc). Of course, the first person that ran up after I purchased it questioned if I was Niro or a macro.

With a restriction on /house available, I would have had NO chance of finding and purchasing that villa without 3rd party assistance.

Other solutions I like:

- Some timer on purchasing housing. 30 days, 1 week, 2 weeks...
- Quicker release on inactive housing (unpaid accounts). More houses, less demand for eBay.
- eBay crackdown. Ban offending accounts.
- Monsters in the portal room of Hub.
- One house per account, not server.
- Raise the cost of purchase and maintenance of villas.

As a casual player, with no Decal, this change would be detrimental to my playing experience. Perhaps instead of punishing the entire playerbase, removing the offending player(s) would serve more good?

[Prosonic]

ok i have been one of the lucky ones to get a so called "free" villa in the past 6 months but i only done it by chance as another person showed as soon as i hit the buy button mind u i had every trophy item in my pack as i new it was needed to beat the pro's, i was using a plugin to check just like the people who do it for cash the fact that they are doing it for money and are out to beat normal house wanting players to sell the same house to them is whats wrong.

People who email ebay sellers with abuse? please kids sit down and ask your perents to teach you respect.

Turbine:
Have a poll (not that everyone will vote but gives you and idea)
limit the @house available command to 5 min this will reduce server load and allow house hunters to still check and have a fair chance.

The abandon house command 30 day timer seems the wtg for me, that way people doing villa swaps can swap and so can people up/down grading.

For the ebay house sellers (YES i have done it also) it was good when it lasted time for a real job huh?

Prosonic - Leafcull

[spud]

s'pose you guys could loosen up the timer on the cookies just a little bit? ain't nothing like creative impromptu post being shattered by a post timer :( :(

I guess I'll try to recap it... blehh...

I think the majority of suggested solutions are missing the point.

Aside from the abandon timer, the only way you are going to level out the house purchasing playing field is to reduce the amount of information the automated 'real estate agents' receive.

If you provide no coords, Oracle cannot route there.

If you must be on surface to receive visual indicators, dungeon dwellers will not know.

Displays as this would be optioned on in the F11 area, as when I get my shack, I don't need to see anything else.

I simply suggest taking advantage of the existing advantages the game already has with the player over the program: the player does actually *see* the game, so make it worth his while.

Thanks!!!

[ShaunaEyebright]

I, too, feel that limiting the /house available command to once/24 hours isn't the way to go. It may hinder the macroers, but it also hinders the legitimate house buyers too much.

Limiting the /house abandon command would be a much more effective means of hampering the macroers. Sure, it might inconvenience a few people on occasion, but I don't know of anyone who has had DIRE need to abandon their house within 30 days of buying it.

Take a cue from real life: there are no restrictions on investigating the real estate market in your town, but I guarantee your landlord would be pretty mad if you tried to terminate your lease a week after moving in. :eek:

I do, however, support restricting the /house available command to level 20+, seeing as how there's no real reason for a character under 20 to need it.


Even better, make it so that you can abandon all you want, but you cannot BUY any dwelling within 30 days of buying another. :cool:


BTW, thanks for asking for our feedback on this issue, Ibn & co. :D

[MaddyFF]

Maybe a timer somewhere between one and 24 hours?

[Centaur Vulcan]

The easiest way to stop the house macroers is to remover the @house available command. Go back to running around for weeks looking high and low for a house that was open, thats how I found mine :D

[Rafein]

@house available once ever 4 hours, but make it account wide instead fo character wide. So once used, write it down, cause no one else on the account can get the info for 4 hours.

having a 30 day timer between abandoning a house is also a very good idea.

Increasing the prices would also help. money is easy to get, so maybe 5 MMD's for a villa and 2 for a cottage. And change all housing buy items to Golden Gromnies. 1m for Cottage, 3 for Villa, 5 for mansion. This change would mean the amount of money spent to get a house would probably not equal the return value.

[Niro7]

Another part.

I was selling housing on ebay for 2+ years already (total 4 years in AC ebay market). And people never cared about me.

But when I moved to sub (coz I noticed other competitors sitting in sub), people noticed me and started to say loud words. Unlucky competitors (hello, Lasivian) started to post topics in different forums about "bad bad house bot Niro".

People started to count my profites (like it's not America but some communist country. 55k per year? haha.. wish i'd have that much). It's just a envy here.

I say: eBay is good for the game. My customers can say that too. I heard many times that it's much easier to earn $70 or $80 and buy the villa from me on eBay than collect sings within few weeks/months to TRY to buy the villa in game (villa auctions on acvaults for example). Many of them never saw more than 20 sings ever.

Everyone can buy villa from me, safe and easy, at any time. Many of them WILL NEVER have a chance to buy the villa in game.

Look at my feedback on ebay. no single negative from 700+ customers with 596 unicue positive feedbacks. People are glad to use my services. My customers want to get pleasure from the game, not tedious work in collecting sings or waiting for available villa. I'm a professional real estater, I do my work well and i give them what they want for a reward.

So dont say that I'm taking off the villas from casual player. I'm not hoarding them, I'm returning them to the players who want them.

Btw, i'm not living in US so excuse my mistakes in english.

[Yinchi]

Those who buy housing using macros have more than one account, in fact, they could have several, they have the ability to log on and ask for /house several times.

Those who do honestly want a house would not have this ability, they would be the one's being penalized. I help vassals to obtain homes (I am monarch) by using this often, I would lose that ability. Also if you are desperately looking for the item, you like to check and make sure the house is still there before you go back.

The level 20 is fine since no one needs a house below a level 20 but I don't see it as much of a deterrant if those who are grabbing up housing have characters over that level. But it might help.

A timer on how often one account can purchase a home would help.

[Albion_the_Grey]

You are profiting by denying others who DON`T make a living playing ebay.
You are taking away from some youngsters/adults who DON`T have 70-80 to spend on something that isn`t real.

Of course there is a demand .... HOW mant accounts do you and other like yourself have that are used strictly for owning houses/Villas?

This is a story about someone with Multiple accounts , selling multiple villa on ebay strictly for profit.

How many villas do you sell in a month?
You aren`t providing a service to the community, you are doing a diservice.


Options

change the rental timers to match that of apts and have the abandon house every 90 days

have venders sell chests that can be used with apts, etc and hope the server holds..

ignore it

go after ANYONE who sells any in game items on ebay, be it a shard or a villa or an account

[Gawa Ibn Edwas]

I say: eBay is good for the game. My customers can say that too. I heard many times that it's much easier to earn $70 or $80 and buy the villa from me on eBay than collect sings within few weeks/months to TRY to buy the villa in game (villa auctions on acvaults for example). Many of them never saw more than 20 sings ever.

Well, duh. Your part of the reason why those people cannot buy a house themselves: the casual player does not stand a chance against someone dedicated to monitoring for new houses. If you'd stop with your activities, those people would have more chance getting a house. Though, it would indeed not solve the problem that people would still be able to auction houses.

One of my gripes against the current system of distributing houses that it allows people to sell them for RL money. Basically it connects my RL amount of money to my ingame chances for a house: if I have more money in my normal life, I have a higher chance of getting a villa (by buying it), so if you have very little money to spend on this game, you will absolutely not have the same chance of getting a house. You could even say that it (unintentionally!) discriminates people with less money than others. This should be fixed, I believe that in a game everyone should have the same chance for a villa and that it should not be based on you RL amount of money.

Limiting the use of the /house available command is silly imho, as said many times before this post, it effects the casual player even more. A timer on buying houses still allows someone with multiple accounts to buy houses and sell them.

It'd be better to remove the profit made by selling houses, either for RL money or ingame items. I've seen a few suggestions in the above posts, which are quite interesting. Having a housing distribution system which will randomly select a player and give him the available house solves a lot of problems. You could enter a pool of players waiting for a house and the system would randomly select players from this pool and make them the owner of the house, wether the player is currently online or not. Both casual and dedicated players now have the same chance and nobody will be able to sell houses for profit. This idea needs some tweaking, since people should still be able to trade houses. Maybe there could be some swapping system for houses :) Shouldn't be hard to implement, as every house comes with a deed.

Removing the /house available command alltogether still allows a macro to run around and use the settlement portals to buy houses. Removing houses is not very attractive to a lot of users, lol. Giving RQs more storage still allows people to make money by selling houses.

I inderstand that more houses is not really an option and it does not solve the current problems either. Not only does it bring performance problems, but eventually we'd run out of houses again. More RQs does not help either, I believe that there are over 500 available of those on Solclaim atm, so adding more certainly does not decrease the value of the other types of houses.

I've seen a few other interesting things in the previous posts. Such as using deactivated accounts and pay for the rent for the houses on those accounts, thus allowing you to have more storage for "free". This could (and should?) be fixed by allowing you to pay for the rent only if the account is inactive. Perhaps houses should contain a bit more storage to compensate this.

I own a villa, yes. :)

[Kyxon]

Level 20 is fine, but once every 24 hours seems crazy.
The restrictions should not be placed on the /house available command, but rather the /house abandon command.

Don't make it harder to get a house, make it harder to sell one.

[sylphia]

Knock off that silliness about raising rent and purchase costs. All that does is hurt those of us WITH housing already and those trying to "legitimately" buy one. If an agent purchases a house for resale, part of the cost to the new owner is whatever it cost the AGENT to buy it. All raising purchase cost does is raise what the agent asks for; it doesnt prevent the sale in any way. Raising the rent in no way hurts the agent; it only hurts the players who own the house in the end; the agent doesnt keep the house long enough to pay the rent in the first place.

Removing coords from the prompt will NOT stop agents. If the command tells them ther eis a house available PERIOD, they already know where all the houses are, adn they can hit them much faster because they already know the portal networks intimately. It may slow them down but it ALSO slows down everyone ELSE looking for that house.

Limiting the number of times you can /house available per day WONT stop agents; there are plenty of ways around it. Limiting the numebr of houses an account can purchas eina given time frame WONT stop it; it will only lead to longer auction times and more accounts being purchased to get around it.

The ONLY way you are ever going to stop this nonsense is to make housing no longer a limited item. If EVERY account created automatically came with a housing unit, then there would be no reason to purchase one. Obviously, Turbine cannot add endless amounts of villas and cottages due to server load issues, so that would mean RQs for everyone. And that would mean getting rid of all non-RQ housing. Which means EVERYONE who currently has a mansion, villa or cottage will lose it and be given an RQ instead.

Which of course would mean most of those players would promptly quit the game. Just how badly do you want this resolved? because if you want to nail the agents, the ONLY way you can do it is to put the screws to everyone else.

[Ivy_Windchaser]

To be blatant, often in-game changes or fixes to the system to prevent abuse are too quickly circumvented by our very inventive user population. Usually for a system change to be effective, it has to overwhelmingly limit the legitimate players (which I agree will occur if a 24-hour limit on /house available or character cap for access to /house available since it's only supposed to apply to areas your character has physically been, anyway, no?).

I agree that relieving the demand for housing will help, but this won't be solved through giving more storage to the current set of housing. The people that are most adversely affected by Nirro and the like are not those who need *more* storage (they could just get apartments for every account, if that was the issue) but getting a house altogether. Thus increasing storage on the houses that are already present won't fix the problem of automated buying plug-ins or reselling for money on Ebay. Nirro will just get the those houses, too.

In the end, the most effective method (albeit more time-consuming) to stop exploitation of the system is to make selling housing for real money against the CoC (if it isn't already) and policing those forums where such selling could occur. Turbine has promised us better customer service and I'm hoping proactive, empowered CSR's and admin's will be a part of said promise. This should fit in with their duties, a quick sweep over ebay once a work-day or perhaps an arrangement with ebay to make such policing easier. Having Turbine representatives with discretion over account banning might frighten some people, but it's the only thing that ever put a dent in UCM anyway, and the reason why that was ineffective is that there wasn't a sizable force of admins to follow through with it.

As for buying housing with a bot and trading it for in-game treasure, I find it to be slimy but a lot more acceptable than selling for real life money. Restricting that type of behavior might well require a system-wide, in-game fix, but this point, I'm much more worried about the ebaying Nirro's of Dereth than I am the botting traders.

If we want to end the trade of housing as a commodity altogether, whether in-game or out, then the best suggestion I've read in this very lengthy thread has been a limitation on how frequently you can /buy a house (not just /abandon, since that would simply be limiting the time-table of a seller and require them to sit on these houses for months on end). Those just casually switching houses for a different view wouldn't be adversely affected; they'd just have to wait a month or so, like they do with skill despec/detrain/spec or the timers on a timer-based quest item they might have accidentally botched.

[kittens]

i don't think it is a good idea cause the honest people are being punished along with the money hungry people who have to sell on ebay at least imo they are money hungry and nothing else the root of alot of evil

[Jelly Belly]

This is a game that we all play for enjoyment. We aren't making a living off of it. We just play to play.

Six servers having to compete with a person who has a minimum of three accounts logged in various places, and a runner in the bottom of the subway at all times other than when all three of the accounts I have identified currently own villas is just wrong. We aren't playing this game to spend our playtime staring at the screen watching Real Estate type /house available every five minutes. The rest of us have taken the time to gather items, and when we see a house/villa pop up we stop what we are doing to go get it. Niro on the other hand is exploiting the very basis of this game.

I don't see anything wrong with the housing system as is, I just see a problem with one person exploting it to the point that the rest of the player base can't compete with him. You'd think that it'd be easier for Turbine to just take care of this one person than spend the time and resources to change the existing system to work around him.

[Hitower]

I wonder if the ebay sellers declare their earnings to their respective tax authorities.....

[juz]

It's probably a silly idea, but something totally left of center here..

Why not make use of the current players location (landblock) as a way to control the frequency of the @house available command?

Not sure of the best way to implement this, but for instance, if you're current location wasn't varied enough, only allow the command to work once.

The advantage here would be if someone spotted an available house, they usually do the sprint to it.. Because the character is running and changing location, they would be able to issue the command again..

Maybe even limit the degree of info reported depending on location.. Move half a click from your initial postion where you first @house available and report the basic info "there are houses available", move a full click away, report that "There are 3 houses available" (if there were 3 when you first did the command, that would mean the house you are heading to is still free).. Move 2 clicks, and it will report the actual coords again..

(that's just a quick example that came to my head as I was reading this thread)..

The advantage of this would be the casual player who needs a house can still hunt them down, and check on availability on their way to the house..

Disadvantage would be macros could add a path to run so that they were running the set distance needed..

This would, however take the bots out of the subway (turn off the ability to even check for houses in the sub or something maybe?)..

Effectively the bots would have to be out in the open running some decent distances - and if they have a set path, coming across someone who is obviously just running a set route would be failry easy to spot (I think).

Anyway, just a totally different approach to the problem.. You could add this to some degree to some of the already suggested ideas and maybe get a working method.

Food for thought...

[sylphia]

Niro just makes the problem stand out more. The problem is the fact that houses (which most players WANT), as opposed to RQs (which most players DONT WANT) are a limited game resource. Making housing open faster or slower or changing how often you canbuy or sell or how often you can poll the server for an update on available houses wont change that simple fact: there arent enough houses to go around for every player in the game. To say nothing of players with multiple accounts. So long as housing is limited, it will always be exploitable.

Some players complain about eBaying in-game items in general (I am one of them). Notice that there is relatively little complaint about sings or post patch GSA or anythign along that nature. The huge uproar over housing is because there are only so many of them, and you either have one or you dont. You can go kill virindi and hollows and you WILL eventually pick up a sing key. If you have LP, you WILL eventually carve one. No amount of mob-bashing or chest-pulls is ever going to land you a deed to a house.

If you want to stop the exploit, you HAVE to change the system that is allowing it. Unfortunately, adding more villas and cottages isnt feasible, so we have to come up with a solution that can be implemented. But first we have to all be on the same page on what is causing this problem to occur inthe first place and what is allowing it to continue: the limitation of housing.

[Marzz]

I agree with the proposed changes ... finding housing is tough enough without players using bots!!!!!

[Kellin]

Addressing Niro7's statements:

This is not a thread about IG housing sales or auctions. If someone wants a villa or a house IG, they CAN get it using IG items and some effort when it comes available, be it their own or the efforts of friends or allegiance.

Auctions on ACVault are, by and large, by people who OWN the villas and are selling or trading theirs. This discussion is about villas that come on the open market due to non payment. To use your argument about the casual player being closed out of auction by owner - the ONLY villas available to the casual player without a stock of trade fodder are the ones you are purchasing for resale.

If you remove ALL open market villa housing by purchasing it and placing it on Ebay, yes, it becomes the only venue for such purchase. Of course it becomes easier for your customers as they are the ones looking for cash solutions. Again, not what this thread is about.

As to your argument that you are doing a service for casual players, why don't you purchase cottages? Seems like a $10 Ebay cottage would be far more accessible to the population you claim to serve, yes? But, $10 cottages at 3 per account less cost of the account is a net gain of $17 per month instead of $227. So lets scratch altruism, shall we?

This thread is about the player who does not have the resources to purchase from a player/owner in an auction, does not choose to or does not have the resources to purchase on Ebay for cash and wants an opportunity to buy housing by putting the purchase price in a covenant stone. Can you cover exactly how these players are aided by your actions?

[Syrlacc]

When are you going to stop making all players suffer the consequences of the actions of the few? This is a huge inconvenience for players who are really trying hard to find a cottage or villa. Just make house macros against the CoC and perma-ban their accounts.

[ferastu]

I am definitely a 'casual player', only reaching level 96 in 3+ years of playing on my main toon.

However, one thing that I can compete with is the ability to get housing. I spent hours of my time visiting every housing portal so I could compile a list of items by settlement. Then more time figuring out the best combination of LS and portal recalls to have the quickest access to the most housing hubs.

I then got in the habit of typing /house available endlessly as I hunted. As soon as I saw an available villa I would be recalling, leaving the hunting behind. I have been able to acquire a total of 4 villas doing this because I have sacrificed xp earnings for the housing I wanted. In my opinion that is no different than someone spending a night (or several) trying to kill the Queen, etc.

As an fyi to those that may complain about someone having more than their 'fair share' of villas. I do not currently own 4 villas and I have never sold (for ingame or outofgame currency) any of them.

My suggestions.
1. Stop the ebay sales. Although this may be tough since some method will always be found around this.

2. Restrict an account to one cottage and one villa purchase per 30 days. This allows for some slight movement of housing between friends. Although the house hunters will just get as many multiple accounts as they need. So this one doesn't seem as good on second thought.

Although if #1 was ruthlessly enforced the hunters would quickly find all their accounts banned and be unable to open new accounts on their existing CC's. Would they go through the hassle of getting new CC's for a $70-$80 profit?

3. At some point remove the /house available command. Replace it with a new feature within Turbine Chat that is squelchable (filter -housing). Every 5 minutes open housing (minus apartments) is broadcast to the entire server. Everyone is now on an equal footing.

[sylphia]

Ferastu,
#3 is a nice idea. But I bet some poor Turbanite in charge of monitoring server-calls just fell over in a dead feint :) In any case, it really only automates things more for bots, removing one of the necessary things for their programs to work.

[Tar Valon]

I don't think there is any sure cure here. But I like the "30 day timer". There is alot of timers currently in game and peeps seem to adjust quite well to them. I also believe you need to do a scan or whatever you call it and eliminate every house that is on an inactive account. That would free up alot of housing.

I do applaud the housing in AC. The best of any game I have ever played.

Note: Housing bots need to be treated like UCM bots.

[Rebel Yell]

Yes free up all housing held my inactive accounts - after a warning period.

[Tazz Girl]

Why can't ya add more housing in general? After all, when i purchased the dark majesty expansion pack that was the whole purpose i bought it. If you don't have enough server space then why did you add this to the game to begin with? It only encourages us to find other means (which in most cases means ebay or some other way of trading for these cottages, villas, mansions) which costs us even more money and headaches. I personally want a villa...how do i get one? well, its almost impossible to get one the right way. So...i find myself drawn to ebay and we are talkin REAL LIFE CASH for one (and they aren't cheap!) Maybe instead of puttin these limits into place you should look at the cause of the problem....not enough housing to go around! :(

[zathros]

If you go this route, I'd like to see a 20 hour timer instead of 24. That would allow people to check once a night when they log on instead of checking every once in a while until their timer goes off.

[Rakulp]

Greetings,

Ibn, I think by the number of responses received so far, you're getting the idea that there are a lot of people who play this game who really want to help you out in these kinds of problem areas.

I also think that most of the responses raise good, serious issues with Turbine's proposed way of dealing with the situation. I won't repeat the flaws, but I think both methods are definitely not going to fix the problem, but instead penalizes all AC players.

Time limits also will have a negative effect on regular AC players. For example, I purchased a villa on Solclaim, and then within 30 minutes, swapped it for another villa right next door to my best friend on that world. No real life Washington's changed hands, just two people swapped pixels to help both out (the other villa was a stand alone with a great view! :) )

Purchase limits could also have a negative effect, as there are some who love to look out for members of their allegiance/guild who need housing. They may find a cottage, buy it, and then transfer it to their guildmate when that person is online. Again, no CoC infraction, just people helping where they can.

It seems that the real problem here is two fold. Not cracking down on known CoC infractions, and a lack of satisfactory housing.

I don't know if you plan on doing anything about those who break the CoC. In the past, you've been able to fall back on the excuse that Microsoft ran things. It is my hope that when Turbine has all the keys to the house that stronger enforcement of the rules will occur.

As for housing, I bet if you took a poll, most people would feel very unsatisfied with an apartment. Two wall hooks and one floor hook does not much in the way of trophy gathering. The price is right, in maintenance costs, but I believe most people would prefer a cottage or villa.

The reason given in the past for the lack of more cottages, and even more storage, has been "lag". I encourage you not to accept that as the stone wall in front of you, but as a challenge to find a way past that wall!

I wish I could give you a specific suggestion, but, alas, I have little to none computer programming knowledge. But if you have been able to come up with all the great advancements that you already have in this game in the past 4 1/2 years, then I'm confident that with the right incentive, you can find the best way to fix these concerns!

Good luck!

[Julian's Touch]

My opinion :

I have my villa in Qalaba'r since the day it opened (at landbridge portal) i think it's the 2 febuary 2002. I don't have a second account, and i use the /house available like 3 times per day

Just to check if a cottage is available , if there is one, i send the tell to a friend i know he is looking for one, or just on allegiance chat (on irc allegiance channel before), and if one need it, i go run tie the portal or go hunt for the key item while the guy and other get writ and so.

So i would be very disapointed to not be able to help people to get an house.

Having a timer on 24h for someone looking for an house is just very bad, like the 1rst answer says : "it will be pure luck"


The level restriction is appriopriate. Housing start at level 20, fine commands start at level 20.

The difference between the macro and the casual player is that the macro buy more than 1 house / month
So the answer , i think, has to act on this level

Make a timer by account to buy 1 house (cottage or villa, not sure about mansion) once by month.
Or use the /house abandon once by month (which is the same, but maybe easier)

[otto mo beale]

Think 24 is a bit high. 6-12 might be a bit more appropriate. I just have a sinking feeling the Niros of the world will jump this hurdle as all have before him.

This will help peeps in large guilds who can have friends doing this for them. It will hurt those in small guilds and solo guys.

[Darkavenger]

Wow This is one hell of a thread only took me 3 hours excluding coffee breaks to read it all. But In The Coven's true form of putting a new twist on things lets have a lookie..... :D

Now as a quick fix putting timers on /house available would work however 24 hours(once every 2-4may be better) hours is far too long and as already posted there are ways around the by creating plugins etc that report back to allegiance databases (which we would all then start complaining about again) and again timer on /house abandon would also work again only as a quick fix.

Timers However on the ability to purchase over several months yea I this would work but again still does not address the major problem and that is AVAILABLITY.

Some of these problems can be address via
A: only allowing an ACTIVE accounts to own an house check to be made when maintainance taken(your gonna be rewriting your loggins payment ect why not include this).

B: Making is possible for the Deeds to be securely traded so that villa's can be safely traded via 2 people when trade like this as happened then the person buying will have the 30 days to pay maintainance.

C: Allowing more pack space in all properties. then the need for cottages/villa's etc becomes only a cosmetic one thus drastically reducing values on ebay etc.

D: Make is possible to manually Transfer a Property within an account ie to one of your other toons if your doing character remake etc. something like having to log in character that originally bought House and typing /house transfer -<ToonName>

E: Also to address the big glowy delete problem on the login page that attracts so many Kiddies(make it smaller less obviuos and move it please into a corner). another way around the loss of houses due to accidental deletion could be that when a character is deleted it the property automatically defaults to the next highest character on that account if they dont meet the requirement then they get 30 days to make the requirement or lose house.

some of these could be used as quick fixes but now i got the cooking pot on how about the following adding too.....


It's the mechanics of housing that is a problem and to me I feel the mechanics should be looked at so lets try look at this problem from a different angle.

(Please Feel free to shoot after the post) ;)

Okay We are all waiting for the 'Holy Grail of an Expansion'

so why don't turbine look at some of these idea's and completely overhaul the mechanics of housing with the release of the exapansion.

1: As Sylphia as already mentioned @ Lets nuke'em and go back to the stoneage@.
well i don't like this idea but there could be some fun with doing something similar there is the point of lag caused on servers due to these settlements hooks etc. So why don't we have a patch where Bael'Zharon(or whoever) plays an april fools joke on all the citizens of dereth and picks up all the cottages and villa's Settlements (LEAVE the cottages and villa's already ingame that are in solitary positions too these are unique and should remain so) leaving just the mansions cos he fear's the enmassed armies of all the monarchies (this would show some mansion love thus making them worth the trouble of getting again) and moves them to another landmass away from the main landmass and also onto there own servers (hell they could have these like floating citadels with force field placed on them by asheron so we don't fall off edges etc). now to get to these new landmasses or floating settlements have portal hubs like the appartments are or you could just leave settlement portals as they are already placed. and then have more dungeons added like the hub/sub which have drops around dereth so we don't have to spend 2 hours running manaully to a dungeon location (damn there are enough buff bots portal bots to cover most of dereth with there portal ties anyhoo) this would massively reduce lag on the main landmass.

2: Allow a portal scroll that allows a toon the ability to open portals to their settlement would be a bonus too.

3: To address the availabilty issue this could be done in expansion by having each settlement segrated into plots of land with just a basic foundation then using a mixture of salvage,cash and writs etc you can build up your own home expanding over say over several months to cottage (Month1) ---> villa(Month2-3) only if your highest toon on that account meets the requirements. however those toons that already own properties keep the size property they already own.
if maintainance is missed the property would then collapse back to basic foundation **All Items Within** transfer back to owner if they have available slots. this would then kill off the housing ebay scene. but would still leave people that have actually **PLAYED** the ability to trade a property that had been built up over several months (see note B and D) and again with a tranferable deed that can only be traded between characters that meet the requirements for each property type this would keep the IG housing trades still possible and safe.

Okies its back to me Vodka and Lemon
but thats just a few of my thoughts.

Darkavenger

edited cos i spelt my name wrong 'Hic' :p

[Zeds]

game mechanics is not the way to get rid of housing macros

banning ebay sales is the way to do it.

scenario: Turbine sends Ebay a nice letter from thier lawyers stating that all items/code/etc concerning AC are the sole property of Turbine , and that conducting of sales/auctions of said materials would result in legal action=Ebay drops AC sales

some sales would move to other arenas but none are known as well or would fetch the seller the amounts that Ebay does = macroer sees no or low profit =no more housing macros

[Bivitar]

IBN: I hope you get to this post, I only made it to the third page :D

From what I read, there are few problems with timers.

If you make a 30 day abandon timer, which would slow some trades down, unless it’s for the entire account, That’s still seven servers and five characters each. Selling 35 villas a month is still a nice bit of change.

The other potential problem is that if someone deletes a character, the character loses all housing and allegiance information (do quest times go too?). So even with an abandon timer, they can just delete, lose the house, then recover the character and buy another villa. I’m sure this could be accounted for in the new tech, but unless it’s planned for, it’s a loophole.

Some ideas:

- Abandon timer per account, regardless of character deletion.

- Instead of cords to the house/villa, only give the town the settlement portal is in:
Villas: 3 available; 1 Arwic; 2 Tou-Tou
Cottages: 5 available: 2 Yaraq; 1 Eastham; 2 Mayoi

- Admin/backend tracking of housing ownership history. This will go far in pinpointing abuse.

Want to really fix this?

- Threaten to sue Ebay for allowing sales of YOUR intellectual property, which is clearly a violation of the EULA! Other online games have stopped the sales, you can too!

- Ban those accounts and Credit Card Numbers of players where you have enough evidence to make a connection. Admins are already passing “judgement” on players and accounts when it comes to UCM.

- Start winning ebay auctions, meet them in game, and then ban/delete the accounts once you know for sure. Won’t take long for some healthy paranoia to slow down the over the counter sales. You’ll never stop it, but it’s just too easy to do it now.

Whatever the team decides to do, remember some players will do their best to manipulate and twist it to their advantage.

Thanks for asking our opinions before any action was taken, and for addressing an ugly side of what is a great game.

[AriCat]

I don't like the once every 24 hours! I often hit the /house available just to run out to them to see what they are! I use it like a mini adventure. I would miss that... :(

How about making it so that an account can't buy a house more then once a month or once every couple of months?

I just hate to lose that /house available. I enjoy the runs to the open house. Often I bring housing items just to give to those trying to buy.

I have no problem with the level 20+, as you said.. you need to be level 20 to buy anyway.


AriCat

[Zalliun]

This is the same approach that was made to stop drain macroers.

Lets nerf a function and hurt real players while doing it.


Is the problem that a few gets all the villas or gets them and ebays them ? ,

if its the last why not throw a few legal people at ebay its clearly against the current ToS

Personally i dont see the problem as long as there are apartments free.

[Darken Lore]

I havent read through all the replies so far as I am at work and dont have time,

but why not get rid of the '@house available' command completely as well as make a 30 day limit on purchases? Or atleast get rid of the coords when one is available.

It would make it random luck to be able to find and buy a home.

[MeTaGarfield]

I skipped about 10 pages that basically reiterade the same thing (or at leas the first six pages did).

I have a few other proposals:

1:
Only add new housing to /house available at fixed times with random intervals (maybe 12-48 hours).
Only add housing that has been available for at least two hours at the time of update.
Remove housing that is sold (to avoid wild goose chases).

This will help house trasnfers as these will never show up.
People accidently deleting a character, will have a fair chance to repurchase their dwelling.
The 24/7 people of course will still have an advantage as they will be there when the change takes place but some people may actually run into a house before it is announced (pure luck of course, but possible).

2:
With the proposals on limiting /house abandon, who are you going to handle character deletion?
Limits per account of course helps out.


And then I have this great idea for a new house hunter plugin:

Use the /a channel for house hunting.

Most allegiances will have at least a buff bot or a trader on somewhere at all times.

So instead of '/house avalable' you type '/a housing'.

If no one reports that they have current information (say an hour old) you do '/house available' and then send the info through the /a channel.

All this is taken care of automatically by the allegiance real estate plugin.

If you do not want to clobber the allegiance channel with the actual data, there are ways around it:

/a housingquery

Everyone else runing the plugin now sends a /tell giving you the timestamp of their latest /house available.
If that is fresh enough you ask for their data instead of doing /house available yourself.
If someone has an old timestamp, you tell them the data for the update you just got. (To spread the word.)

If you chose to do a /house available, you use either tells or the allegiance channel to spread the information.


All this communicatin nealty packaged in a plugin.



And ain't I a dandy for coming up with more ways to abuse this wonderful new spamchannel?

[Dragonsrage_HG]

Sorry if this is a repost, but why dont we just do like many of the other MMORPGs out there and make it agenst the CoC and Perma Ban acount that sell stuff on Ebay or other online sites.

I know EQ did this a few years back because their players got in an up roar about it just like we are now.

This would be the easyest way to stop this.

Dragonsrage

[SuzySwiftblade]

I agree every 24 hrs is harsh...putting a timer on being able to purchase a dwelling per account is good idea BUT consider this...

Why do we seek the larger housing?

1. More storage... solution let us add another pack to the lids of our chest.

2. Smaller allegiance can now recall to Villas...very nice many smaller allegiances cannot get the rank 6 required for mansions
BUT

this really screwed up the value of mansions...but this is another topic in it self !

As far as macro's go...takes the fun out of the game !

[Jas-of-HG]

I'm glad Turbine is looking at this situation!

This is a bad solution, though...

I agree with many of the above posters... make the restriction on how many times you may purchase a house in a given amount of time.

Oh, and get aggressive with the abuser(s), and perma ban 'em.

[Logan]

1. Isnt the solution very similar then the "Let people only kill one monster within 24 hours" to prevent powerleveling?

2. Limit the amount of houses a single account can buy per month

Is there anybody that plays "normal" who buysmore then one villa, cottage, appartment, mansion a month? maybe even longer?

Worst thing is to buy a cottage just to notice that a villa is free so you run there to get this, but there is realy no need to buy more then one..isnt it?

Your solution would give me the chance to do a house available nearly every hour. (4 accounts). Those abusers surely can afford 5 or more accounts easily. (and lvl 20 is not a big problem).

Maybe dedicate a +Admin for a bit of time to track down those people and ban theri accounts (when they hold the house preferably...and after the auction on ebay is over..so their reputation there will go down too)

[Bhodi Amashi]

"Only allowing an ACTIVE accounts to own an house check to be made when maintainance taken(your gonna be rewriting your loggins payment ect why not include this)."

No issues here.... Why should 1 account be able to pay for another inactive account's house?

"Making is possible for the Deeds to be securely traded so that villa's can be safely traded via 2 people when trade like this as happened then the person buying will have the 30 days to pay maintainance."

Another great idea. Much better than abandoning and then wishing everything goes well.

"Make is possible to manually Transfer a Property within an account ie to one of your other toons if your doing character remake etc. something like having to log in character that originally bought House and typing /house transfer -<ToonName>"

I like this one too...another good suggestion.

[Bob Down]

What scares me is that you guys in Boston seriously think that's a good solution to a macro issue. (hold me now, I'm scared)

So what about this scenario. Non-decal users dont have any filtering in place, unlike most players. You're trying to help these people, I'm assuming (and it's not an assumption I'm laying money on). As they run off to buy this house, theyre hit with melee damage and god knows what else... the house coords, as a result, disappear off the chat buffer.

So non-decal-running Joe Average just lost all clue as to where his prize is. MEANWHILE decal using Joe Lessaverage has them coords still, because his bot makes use of this little exploit called a clipboard.

Feel silly yet? You damn-well should.

Besides the stupidity of the fix, the whole argument is a tad moot. Housing isn't all that hard to come by and it's certainly not a game breaking issue regardless.

[Darkavenger]

Oh and is it me or has anybody else noticed all the peeps that been screamin for changes etc have stopped posting..... hmmm must be because nearly all of the solutions the **Players** are coming up exclude them too.. LoL talk about shooting selves in FooT :D

[Expended Soul]

Originally posted by Davidge
Introduce a restriction on how often you can buy a house per month, per account. The restriction timer would be set on housing purchases, not abandons.


I totally agree.

[Rojon]

A 24 hour timer will effectively prohibit any casual player from ever purchasing housing again, and it won't stop the macroers from getting their housing.

Why?

Its very simple. Five characters divided by 24 hours means doing a check every five hours.

Make that two accounts and its every 2.5 hours.

Make it three accounts and we're down to every 1.5 hours.

I'm no genius by a long shot but even I could write a macro to do that.

Level 20? It might take me all of a day to level 3 accounts worth of characters to level 20 at most.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings Ibn, but this solution won't work and will only hurt the casual player.

The real answer is to ban accounts selling homes on eBay and release their housing. That means actually doing it by hand and devoting someone to do it full-time (me? :)) but that's the only effective way of doing it that won't hurt the casual players.

[Chak]

Stop pandering to the whiners, Please. I really like to play this game. A change of this sort is not going to enhance or degrade my playing expierence. It appears this change will only satisfy a small minority of players in the name fairness. Nothing is fair heh?
That's what makes things fun.
Chak

[Darwich]

I think that the purchase of a house is what should be limited.

Like a quest timer. Apartments 1 per account per month, Cottage 1 per account per 2 months, Villa one per account per 6 months, and Mansion 1 per account per 6 months.

In addition the timers should not prevent someone from upgrading from an apartment to a cottage or villa, or down grading from a mansion to another housing unit.