House tax

[Fink]

Putting this here so I don't forget about the idea.

This has come up in the IRC channel, as a way to introduce an economic drain, and to make houses something you think about a bit more.

The idea is a per-square tax on houses, that accrues over time, which a player must pay. It could work like this:

1. Each square in a particular house costs X AU + a varying amount per day logged in (logged-in day, so we don't penalize people taking a break).
2. This tax accrues up to, say, 60 days (to avoid overdoing it if someone hits a rough patch).
3. This tax must be paid every X days (say, 15 or 30).


Here's how the values could be arrived at:

The tax on a house is per square. The value that must be paid per square is more for large houses than small houses (larger houses are more sought after).

Let's use a base value per square of 10au. We increase this per-square tax by looking at the size of the house. Let's use .2 AU, and multiply that by the number of squares in a house. So, the base value of 10 AU, plus our "bigger the house, the more each square is taxed" modifier,  is the amount the player pays in tax per square for that house.

Here's an example:

A 25 square house:
 Base: 10AU per square
 Extra: .2 AU times 25 squares, or 5AU.
So, the per-square tax for the house is 10AU + 5AU, or 15AU.
The house is 25 squares in size, so the player pays 25 times 15 AU tax per square, or 375AU per day.


A 400 square castle:
 Base: 10AU per square
 Extra: .2 AU times 400 squares, or 80AU.
So, the per-square tax for the house is 10AU + 80AU, or 90AU.
The castle is 400 squares in size, so the player pays 400 times 90 AU tax per square, or 36,000AU per day.

Looking at that .2 deal, I realise we could probably even double it, and still end up with a very reasonable per-day tax. While these numbers may seem scary to some, keep in mind that someone playing deep will often not even bring up a ring of speed that's less that +10 - we could seriously gouge the high level players, and it would still be completely fine.

[Fink]

The next question is how to we make it stick? We need to lock something off from the player who doesn't pay their house tax, but we need to choose something that doesn't make it impossible to accrue more money.

So, for example, we probably would not want to lock the player's house - what if they died and have no gear or money? They'll need to get in their house.

We could mess with the shops for that player, but, for example, we wouldn't want to make the shops refuse to buy from the player because that could severly impede the player being able to make cash to catch up on the taxes.

We *do*, however, want the penalty to be important, and one that is as important to someone at the bottom as someone who is low level and playing shallow.

So, what kind of thing could we do for the person who is behind on their taxes that hurts, makes them want to immediately gather money to pay off the debt, but doesn't impede them from gathering cash?

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It would be nice if it was something sensible and straight-forward. But, if it becomes difficult to think of something that would work, we could then look at more wierd and brutal stuff, like, say, draining exp at a quick rate (with the particular penalty for people who have maxxed their exp that the first hit will drop them to their level 50 max experience ).

The idea is that we need something that will result in the player wanting to immediately dive and get loot, pronto, with no mucking about or "hah! I have some much X, I dont really care anymore about the tax!" etc.

[Warrior]

The idea about adding a tax to both houses and artifacts might be a very good one, I think houses needs to be dealt with somehow and that it is more critical than for artifacts.
However, as I said in the artifact tax post I think people should pay a tax for every day of the year, if they play or not. People won't log on for a quick talk or play if they know that it's gonna cost them many thousands just to be there for a few minutes. I'd say just add a certain fixed amount for each square that you'll have to pay once a month, for access to your house. Maybe like 250 pr square pr month or something.

Low on battery...need to continue later.

[Fink]

I completely agree with your point, Warrior, about wanting to avoid a situation where people don't want to log on, for fear of accruing costs.  We definitely don't want that kind of scenario, and it was in that vein that I started thinking about the "taxable day" idea. My thinking was to try to envision a setup that accomodates people popping on casually, and doesn't discourage them from doing so. I started thinking about that more with the Art tax idea, so you can see those comments there.

I avoided the idea of a flat per-day tax, in hopes of not discouraging people from taking breaks. I kind of like that, in MAng, you can take off for months-long breaks, and still come back to where you are. I'm sure some of the longevity of the game arises from that, so we wouldn't want to discourage it. This is what led me to mention a 60-day maximum, or something along those lines.

In the end, tho, I think a "play day" as a taxable day may be better for houses too. We would need to think about what is a simple, but accomodating, set of rules that are easy to understand that defines when the game considers you as "playing" vs just saying hi, or stopping in to rescue someone.

On that count, I think the real problem is simply one of rescues. Its easy to say that, at the very least, if you just hang in town, you dont create a "play day" tax. Rescues become the problem, because it's hard to distinguish between a tricky rescue that takes some time and actually diving to play. This bit would certainly take some thinking - I definitely see what you mean about the attractiveness of just using a flat per-day tax.

[Ashi]

The problem with all the houses and arts being taken is that they are almost always being held by inactive players. Giving them a tax break for not logging in won't solve any hoarding issues. Repossession of inactive artifacts is not such a bad idea if players know beforehand that their artifacts will be taken after a long period of inactivity.

There was once a player who maliciously hoarded artifacts-- he purposely stoped playing so nobody could get his artifacts anymore. The administrator's solution was to enable those artifacts to be found again, so there were two Cubragols floating around the server, etc.

When it comes to houses, I think changing how they are generated would solve a lot of problems. The first ring outside town is usually cluttered with clumps of tiny houses that aren't too helpful. The outer ring often has decent large houses but ample room for more. Making the houses larger in the town/first ring and generating more houses in the outer ring would keep everyone happy for a long time. It also seems like it wouldn't require any major deviation from the gameplay we are all used to, as opposed to a taxation system...

[Ashi]

One way to deal with the issue of big players having too much money and nowhere to spend it is to add another ring with massive houses. (I've been an advocate of vault designs myself.) When there are houses going for $10M+ you suddenly have a good reason to save up.

As for players that consider 10M-20M to be pocket change, we probably should try to stop punishing them just for being rich. It takes a long time to get that far and they deserve it, I guess.

[Fink]

[quote author=Ashi link=board=thinktank;num=1185853035;start=0#4 date=08/02/07 at 15:12:17]The problem with all the houses and arts being taken is that they are almost always being held by inactive players. Giving them a tax break for not logging in won't solve any hoarding issues. [/quote]

Well, these may be two separate issues, that, if broken appart, can maybe be addressed without too much hastle.

Houses are a problem because there aren't enough of them. I really like the idea that, in mang, I can come back after a six month break to find my houses still around. This is great, I think, and keeps players coming back (which is a good thing). Instances tend to last a few years at a time, and the real problem we have with houses is simply that we dont have three years worth of them.

So, I would advocate, as Ashi has mentioned on the house front, that we simply respond to the supply problem, so we end up with enough housing to last long enough. If you roll around the out-of-town, you can see some hugely inefficient housing going on. Some levels have just a few, others are packed with semi-useless one or two square houses.

We should be more straight-forward in the house-level generation, with the goal of packing in houses carefully, and not allowing an un-useful houses to be generated. We have a *huuuge* amount of room to use in the levels around town that are just blank space.

In town, we probably might juuuuust skate by with a moderate number of players being able to get a town house. Here, we could institute a simple mechanism whereby a player is only able to own one town house at a time. Combine this with making sure that all are moderately ok-sized (but still with a spread of size, so low level players can afford something small, higher level players something a bit bigger to hold their keys, etc).

On the house front, I want to be clear about my ideas of rent that I talked about in other threads: the concept of rent was not intended to address the issue of housing supply, but instead to introduce an economic drain into the game that focuses on the owners of large and multiple houses (ie, high level players with loads of cash sitting around).



Artifacts are another issue. I like, as I think you have mentioned liking as well Ashi, the idea that art in mangband is rare and special. This is kind of a fun thing in an MP game. I suspect that an underlying problem with art currently is that MAngband treats them just ilke any other item, when to the player they are hugely special. There is simply no reason why a player who has gotten one and finds another wouldnt happily pick it up and equip that second, third, etc as well. These incredibly rare and powerful items have no real presence in the game that fits their specialness. It was this that led me to think about the idea of making artifacts something that take effort to not only find, but to contunie to own - with the goal of both mopping up money from the economy and, with careful tuning, making it unlreasistic to be able to own more than one or two.

[Fink]

I started replying to Warrior in another thread, but realize that I should keep the discussion focused on housing, as an example of draining money over time, here in the appropriate thread.


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I sense a possible trend of "let's not penalize the high end player with new arbitrary stuff."

I want to respond to this with the idea that maybe the high end players are getting a deal by spending a moderate sum on something that last a long long time.

An example of this is houses: the cost to buy a house is fairly moderate. Its a one-shot expense, and you now have something that will last, and benefit you, for potentially years. If you spread the up front cost over the lifespan of the benefit that it provides, you can see that we are kind of undercharing for things.

The problem, tho, is that you cant know in advance what the lifespan of something will be. If we charged, say, 75 million AU for a huge castle, that may make sense for a player who is going to own that castle for two and a half years. But, if that player is one who is going to buy it, and king/retire 5 months later, then the price now is kind of steep: two people are effectively paying two different prices, when amortized over the life of the item in question (here, a castle).

It was this idea that led me to the housing rent idea: it lets us scale the cost exactly to the lifespan of the benefit the housing provides. The shorter term player ends up paying a fairly similar cost per period as the longer term player does.

This has, of course, the side benefit of draining money, but also matches the benefit recieved to the cost incurred.

So, I present this as an example where a player is effectively getting a "free" (so to speak) bonus from the game by buying something at a moderate cost (huge castle for ten million) and then getting use of it for as long as they play (which can be years for an instance).

So, the idea of ongoing costs, when matched to ongoing benefit, isn't necessarily a negative or penalistic thing: it lets us charge a player for what they are recieving in a way that matches the amount of benefit they get.

[Berendol]

Hmmm. Renting and taxing are two different ideas.

I could see renting "virtual apartments" in a shop-like scenario, or some as-of-yet uncreated generated map thing. You know, go upstairs from the Weapon Store to your 12x15 one bedroom apartment #107 on the 3rd floor. If you don't pay your rent, you lose the apartment and they dump all your stuff out on the street for everyone to pick at. Just like in real life, right?