Housing Shortage

[Jug]

Hello!

We are currently short of housing on mangband.org. If you have more than two houses could you please make efforts to sell some of the extra ones. This would be much appreciated by your fellow players who are struggling to find one.

The worst offenders will be put on a public "list of shame" in the town centre, and your names shall ever be uttered as curses by the peoples of Middle Earth.

[Hades]

Should be able to build your own houses or have a sence of a shop that you pay that builds a house for you according to your preferences. That would be kool. Maybe wipe out all the houses and have a "Contractor Office" in town where you can hire the "Workers" To build your house.... Hmm, Sounds kind of lame but yeah my thought haha =P

[Ashi]

Well, that didn't take long, did it! Even with 13 server wipes to get a decent amount of houses...

Actually, a quick run around town shows that only the areas directly North, South, and West of town are mostly full. That leaves nine maps that are nearly untouched! Anyone willing to run through some trees or go more than one map from town will find LOTS of houses available.

Of course, I'll always close down shop if there's good reason to do so.

[Jug]

We're not about to start deleting your character if you have 3 or 4 houses. But some characters have over 20 houses, which is just crazy.

[Ashi]

What I find odd is that not many people are buying castles on this server. The huge houses used to be highly sought after... maybe there is no longer any incentive to buy them?

[Ace]

This sounds to my like the same as in "artifact" shortage where no one will help me :)

Also you cannot compare someone with 20 super small houses at the end of town with someone who has the big castles near town. Lastly the price for houses in town where higher, so wasn't that the price to pay?

To keep things simple again - 1 house per player. And then we need to unify some house sizes, to avoid those 3 tiles huts and to have similar decend house sizes.

This will also greatly limit the availability of "exceptional" items :)

However that will probably lead to 1 character having 10 shopkeepers .....

So maybe make houses even more expensive :)

Maybe each new player should get "a free house" to start with should be of smallest size of course :)

[PowerWyrm]

I bet half of the houses in town are not owned because they are too expensive for midlevel players. They should be available at normal price.
As far as I'm concerned, half of my characters are brave, so I don't see a reason to buy houses for chars that will lose them as soon as they die, and the other half don't buy houses either since nobody barely buys from my houses anyway. I'd really love to see a limit on how many houses a character can have (maybe not 1, but a small number depending on charlevel), but this will force to rethink houses in term of size and number.

[Jug]

Here's a little bit of context, 50% of all the houses owned in the game are owned by only 8 characters.

[Jug]

This sounds to my like the same as in "artifact" shortage where no one will help me :)

This is nothing at all like the artifact situation. 91 artifacts are found, and only 2 or 3 are owned by characters who have not logged in recently (despite the popular myth). This leaves just under 50 findable. There have also been extra ego items designed specifically to compensate for the fact that there are generally less arts available than in vanilla.

What help did you want?

[Ace]

Oh this seems to be a "very hot" subject here in the forums :) I am sorry if that came out the wrong way.

Maybe I can explain it better: I don't know how many artifacts are findable or who has them atm. All i wanted to say is, that if a certain artifact is gone, no one else can have it and it's the same with a house. There is only one house directly next to shop 7 for example. If someone got it no one else may. Obviously the impact on the game is not comparable, but I wanted to highlight the general principle of the game "First come, first served" :)

If these are new server rules to abide I will of course follow these rules as anyone else would. I am the last person of not doing so. I think I have with 1 char 4 houses in town, another 4 SE and a big castle 3 houses far NW = 11 houses. So next time I am on will sell some houses as it has been asked.

Please don't take my post as "whining" but as constructive criticisms or my point of view :)

Oh one addition ..
Most houses are very small. Imho it's better to limit to "tiles" instead of no. houses...

[Ashi]

I think players should be encouraged to own fewer houses, not fewer squares, so that they will consolidate most of their 20 small houses into maybe 2-3 big houses. Of course, someone with 20 houses must have good reason to not already be doing this, not least of which is the fact that he has saved well over 1 million gold in buying small houses only.

I also think that punishing someone for having 20 houses is a really bad idea, because it would probably just make him angry. What if he were trying to enjoy the new player shop feature when someone comes along who refuses to participate in the new feature and acts all superior because he doesn't have any houses? This doesn't really help the cause for a friendly mangband environment...

Maybe the best plan would be to discount house prices in the four squares farthest from town, i.e. the ones not covered by the online map (or maybe just the entire outside ring). The demand for houses way out there is almost nonexistant; lowering the prices there would first reward people who want to take some extra effort instead of buying "prime" real estate, and second make the huge houses more readily available to middle level characters who are struggling for cash. I think a 25-50% discount would not be unreasonable.

Actually, the system of making people pay more for prime real estate has proven very effective in town, so maybe now is a good time to try scaling it to the surrounding areas?

[PowerWyrm]

Also think about it... a 5x5 house costs 100k, a 10x10 house costs 2 million... what would you buy? a 10x10 one or 4 5x5 ones?
BTW, there's a nice feature in TomeNET: list houses. Instead of having houses where you "drop" items with only 1 item on each square, you have houses like the town shops or the old Vanilla Home. Implement those instead of the MAngband style houses, make them carry at most 48 items and allow a limited number of houses per player and you have the house problem resolved.

[serina]

I've never had any problems finding a house. Maybe finding the right house in centre square, but with speed +10 or more, it's really fast to run 2 maps South or West. I don't really know if there are other places with alot of housing and no trees available.

1 house in centre square for the items you find alot later on should do. IE. potions, *ID*, staves, that's it I think, actually. Or just use 1 house in centre-square to fill up for making 1 trip to an out-laying house with an inventory full of keepers. Doesn't take long.

ZAL

[Ace]

Hi!

Some ideas to improve the current house system. As usual the good houses are always full and with the current limitations in place you even have to plan a few hours in to move your stuff in and out of your old houses because of the maximum house limitation.

Also it's unfair because ppl who had the luck to "grab" a castle can make huge amounts of money by having cool shops and a lot of available tiles for stuff, while the other players who would have the money can only buy two normal houses. When both houses are full and there is a bigger one available how are you supposed to buy that house and make the move?

Ok, you say 1 house per person - but then we still need an easy way to move things between old and new house. Maybe this would work:
- 2nd house only allowed for [X no. of logins | until disconnect] then the older one gets cleared,
- increase the house limit again
- change the way we count the space - instead of houses count tiles

I think all players should have an equal chance to grab a good house. Maybe the super small houses should be removed and replaced with more usable houses.

I know there are already plans to implement some "building creator" but I see already problems by players blocking entire passages to other sectors with their newly founded houses :) So this should be well tested before giving control over to players. :)

[Emulord]

Nice post resurrection.
Anyway, as far as I know, the housing situation seems pretty good. Moving your stuff to increase in house size is only tricky if you have both houses completely full before you decide to move. If you plan ahead this is never a concern.
Or, if you didnt plan ahead, a house move is a good reason to get rid of your excess stuff.
I think the current 2 house rule is a good one.