Thread: Foreclose on player homes already!!!

Situation: I take breaks from the game. Sometimes those breaks might be upwards of 6 months or more. I maintain my sub.

Question: Why should I lose my house?

Also, if you are going to start deleting other peoples houses, why not go ahead and delete their toons as well? Hey, they are using them right?

I am always amazed at how others think they can poke their nose into what other own (or rent) simply because they selfishly WANT IT THEMSELVES. It makes no difference the reason as to why a house is current inactive. It belongs to someone else once purchased UNTIL the game shutsdown.

I think the main reason for keeping things in place is the idea that if a player does return after an extended absence, that everything they had would still be there. That is a valid reason, regardless of the reason that someone had to stop playing. I recently decided that I wanted to buy a house. I went into the neighborhood and looked over all the property locations and made a list of 4-5 in the order of preference. None of the existing neighborhoods had these houses available.

My understanding is that when a particular style (standard, delux, kin) is completely sold out across all existing neighborhoods, that new ones will open to accommodate new buyers. I was prepared to wait for the property I wanted, and I also thought that by waiting for a new area, there would be a better chance that it would be populated by currently active players, so a win win situation.

I ended up getting the house I wanted sooner than expected, when one night there was a discussion in chat from a few people that had come back to the game because of the f2p. 3 different people with 6 months or more of back rent on properties, all of them quickly realized it would be cheaper to let the house go and to purchase new than to pay what was owed. 2 of the 3 were the lot I was looking to buy. They opted not to buy right away, but went ahead and abandoned the existing houses.

In the end, rather than pushing to inconvenience other players, have some patience and look at the options. I seriously doubt that life as we know it will stop because you have to wait for a house in a video game. If this is the biggest worry you have, then I hope we all end up with the same problem. The influx of new players is going to cause new neighborhoods to open more quickly. Sit back, take a deep breath and wait.

Originally Posted by Mikivaup

I am always amazed at how others think they can poke their nose into what other own (or rent) simply because they selfishly WANT IT THEMSELVES. It makes no difference the reason as to why a house is current inactive. It belongs to someone else once purchased UNTIL the game shutsdown.

QFT

On the one hand, things stay as they are, and once in a while a few people whine about not getting exactly the house they want, or coming home to a "dead" neighborhood. On the other, Turbine introduces a system-wide change that can and probably will affect every player eventually (most people I know have taken months-long breaks from the game at some point). The screaming from the latter case is far louder than the former, so that's what Turbine chooses.

I can't imagine how much it would suck for a person who, maybe a year ago or so, cancelled their sub to save money in this economy, and maybe was so unfortunate, they lost their real house. Then, LOTRO becomes Free-to-Play, and the guy thinks maybe he can have some nice free entertainment from this game again, so logs in. And finds he lost his fake home, too. Truly a case of insult to injury.

Originally Posted by Balrock

No hes not remembering incorrectly, I'm a lifetime member and founder and myself amd a few friends lost our homes and all of our stuff that had apparently gone into escrow for 2 weeks. Just because some of us have lifetime memberships does not mean we have to play 24/7.

This had happened to too many people and Turbine changed it to what it is now.

This is correct, players did used to lose their homes due to non-payment, and the uproar was deafening.

I can sympathize with both sides, but there has to be a happy medium someplace. The number of barren neighborhoods from players who are never around - and many who never intend to come back - warrants, to me, another look at how this all might be handled. Give owners a credit for a new home if/when they return? Move all the abandoned homes into a separate neighborhood? I don't honestly know the answer, but there are abandoned homes in the neighborhood where our kin house is, and some of us would like to have those homes so we're all together. Seems pointless to have them sitting under foreclosure for years while folks who could actively use them have to find housing elsewhere.

Agree with OP. After a couple months of non-payment, put everything in escrow indefinitely INCLUDING a token that let's you turn it in to get a new home of the same size. Done.

Originally Posted by Mikivaup

I am always amazed at how others think they can poke their nose into what other own (or rent) simply because they selfishly WANT IT THEMSELVES. It makes no difference the reason as to why a house is current inactive. It belongs to someone else once purchased UNTIL the game shutsdown.

No offense, but this kinda made me chuckle. It's selfish to want a home that's abandoned but not selfish to want to keep a home even when you're not active in the game? They are both selfish and THAT'S OK! It's not wrong to want what you want. But there's a compromise somewhere that will satisfy both sides, yet Turbine doesn't seem interested in finding it .. and I only say that because I've seen and heard nothing from them on this issue since they rescinded the decision to take homes away for non-payment.

actually, ppl complained not about losing their houses, but ALL the stuff inside since escrow only lasts for 14 days. so turbine's AWESOME solution was to simple never foreclose houses. yay. why not change the timer in escrow to unlimited?

at the moment, most of the standard-houses are empty because everybody bought a luxury house, of which the most are locked. so more instances open (which means even MORE precious database load - remember that we won't get more hooks in the house because it would increase DB load?). not to mention the dead neighbourhoods. yay.

It's just another fail at design. no way a kinship can get houses in a neighbourhood to at lease infuse SOME live into the dead neighbourhoods.

Originally Posted by Smorgheim

Calm down spaz.

I'm simply saying that regardless of the reason (lol military) The game has a mechanic that is not working. What does being in the military have to do with it? Lot's of people stop playing for various reasons. Pulling the "but they served their country! derka deeeer!" card is pretty weird.

You need to give a little respect to those who have served their country. I like myself am disabled due to serving my country are quite insulted. Don't besmirch those who did to make your point.

To OP /facepalm

Some people seem to misunderstand the problem. Its not about wanting the abandoned home of another player, atleast thats not it for me since as others pointed out you can just wait for a new neighborhood to open. Its about making housing viable, and in a MMO that means to me there are other real people, lets call them neighbors in this case.

Making sure the houses around you are owned by active player is the first step to viable housing, thats the reason i support it. I don't care what we have to give returning players to make them happy, refund the price, give them a new house furnished with their old stuff etc. I don't want to punish people, i want to improve the gameplay of those that are actively playing the game.

Also the analogy with other peoples chars is plain wrong. An unused char doesn't bother an active player, even if he lies right next to you in the database. That inactive house next to mine though i see every day. And again, it wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't so many of them, and if their count wouldn't be growing further. Again, F2P magnifies the problem by several times, not only has the population seen a sharp increase, we also see more throughput in people trying and giving up the game in addition to basically forcing people to spend money(F2Pers). What exactly are they going to spend their gold on without access to the AH or Horses and with a big popup before level 20 telling them they can buy a house?

Also im sorry if you never saw people in your neighborhood, i did. We had atleast 2 RP guilds in our neighborhood we interacted with regularly, and they had concerts and whatnot going on atleast once per week. Thats something im expecting to see more of btw if people get bothered with layers or F2P players disrupting their RP in the major cities.

Also what people are talking about here are absolute minorities, most people abandoning the game are not serving their country, many other people are never going to come back because they married and stopped gaming or because they simply stopped playing MMOs. I played 8 MMOs or so, and let me tell you that about 6 of them have 0 chance of ever seeing me again. Those actual few that are really serving their country, or really unexpectedly come back after such a long time(for more than just trying out F2P), yeah im all for making it as easy as possible to get them back into the same type of home they had before, in the same location.

But what im saying, and this is something everyone should be able to understand, is that current customers are more important than people who might or might not ever come back and might or might not actually care about the details of their home(i.e. which actual instance of the homestead they where in). You can't argue that housing is basically nothing but a glorified port and storage on one hand and then make getting transferred to some other(new) instance seem like the worst thing you could do to your players.

The only difference between the instances are the people owning the houses in them, if thats a important factor than it should be obvious why we are arguing for this. Those that do not care about the other people in their neighborhood won't be affected, those that do will see an improvement. The current situation is just nasty for all involved that care about their neighborhood, even the returnee that finds his neighbors gone because they resettled in a new instance.

As to Turbine im 90% sure they already have ideas on how to fix, probably alot better ones that what we came up with, but housing is just such a low priority its questioningly if we will ever see an change to it without threads like this where we show the devs we care about it.

Edit: Sudden idea, how about making a new homestead instance type with permanent foreclosing? Put a * at the end of their name and explain it in a popup or somesuch before buying a house there, that way people that care about these things would just have to relocate on last time and everyone should be happy. Also it wouldn't affect any old customers, and people who decide to buy a house in the new system would know about the limitations in advance.

The Lonely Mountain Band is looking to move en masse into a new neighbhorhood soon, but the plethora of abandoned homes and half-filled neighborhoods makes this difficult. Its kind of like layering only no one ever logs out and you can't move layers...

--Harperella

Yes, this is a game, However if you don't pay rent in RL you lose your house or apt. If you buy a house and stop making payments on your mortgage, you lose your house. This even happens to people in the military.

The answer has been suggested before, and is quite simple. If you are away for an extended period of time (3 mo.?) you lose your house, and a token gets placed in your bags that you carry to the housing broker, that allows you to trade the token for a new house in an availble neighborhood after paying penalty fees. Your stuff comes out of escrow.

There are people that want to move into their kinships housing area, or have a fiend that they would like to move next door to but can't because the houses in the neighborhood are vacant and closed forever. I would like to see more activity in the housing areas in a lot of ways. This is only one small step. Clean out the vacant housing please.

Originally Posted by Ulrek

Some times in life there are things we want and can not have...

Exactly what I was thinking. Man, sometimes I feel like I'm talking to my 6yo nephew when I read these forums. /throws sucker in the dirt

Housing is a joke, All it is to me is a pain in the #@$% extra storage slots. I could care less if people get booted to make room for others, but realize that your new nieghbor will last just about as long as the original owner before they leave game as well. I can't believe someone actually goes to thier house everyday and gets upset about empty houses next to thiers. For real ? Really ? come on ?

I would love to see the Housing area's more accessible via the large cities, like neighborhoods, put in some crafting areas or trading areas, that way the cities and housing areas are both active.
It is sad to see the party areas of the housing areas almost never used. In a sense it's just one big closet or chest.

The housing communities will always be empty. There are very few homes in each neighbor. All the homes are scattered about. The only time I ever see anyone is when we are to the neighborhood center using the vendors or the vault.

You want activities. You want to see people. Remove the common elements. The Skirmish NPCs, vault keeper, vendors, party planner, places to hold events out of each neighborhood. Make a single public instance (community center) that is shared by all the neighborhoods for one race.

We could all stop this nonsense of taking people's homes. Turbine lets us keep them forever because there thousands of customer complaints says - Stop taking my home. More posts made in favor of permanent ownership than have ever been made requesting homes be foreclosed.

IMHO - The issue is not permanent ownership. The issues are:

1) I never see anyone. You never will with neighborhoods.

2) You can not hold events because our group is scattered. A community center would solve this issue. You are likely to be pleasantly surprised to find walk ins from the other kins an individual home owners.

3) A community center might even make crafting facilities acceptable to Turbine. Turbine does not want us hiding in our houses crafting. A crafting center where I can meet all the elvish home owners that craft. Turbine may go for this. It would be very convenient with the 20% discount for raw materials at the vendor.

Originally Posted by Jenara

It's selfish to want a home that's abandoned but not selfish to want to keep a home even when you're not active in the game?

Actually, neither are "selfish". If a house has truly been abandoned, there's nothing wrong with wanting it for yourself. But if it has not been abandoned, there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to keep what you purchased. This has always been especially true for lifetime subscribers, because part of what we were buying with that was the ability to come and go as we please, for the life of the game. If I want to take a 6 month break, I fully expect my house to still be there when I get back (at least once I've paid off my debt).

The problem: nobody but the house owners know whether these houses have really been abandoned or not.

Also, now that they've added this hybrid F2P model, Premium members are essentially "lifetime subscribers" for all the content they've purchased, and they're going to have the same expectations. I have no problems with Turbine nuking all houses abandoned by trial or free accounts for a year... the vast majority of those are never coming back, and few will have much investment in the game anyway. But if people have paid Turbine to play the game, they should get to keep their houses indefinitely.

One thing that might help moving forward: offer people taking extended breaks from the game a way to exchange their current house for a token good for buying another house of the same size in the future - free of any debt. This can only be used once per year, and has the advantage of preventing the player from owing any "back maintenance" when they return. One bonus is that even active players wishing to move to a new neighborhood would get a chance to do so once per year - I suspect that would help distribute people in ways that they'd enjoy more.

Khafar

Yula I think that's a great idea.

I remember playing Asheron's Call when they introduced housing the cities went empty and all the crafting and trading was done inside monarchy or individual housing.

I wonder how Dynamic Layering will affect a community area like you are suggesting though.

The solutions are not all that complicated.

Currently the amount of rent in arrears caps at I believe 90%. I have repeatedly suggested that once it hits that amount, the very next week, all of the house,chest and yard contents be placed in a permanent escrow, a certificate for 10% of the house's purchase price be likewise placed in the permanent escrow and the house released. The owner is in no way ANY worse off than they were, in the event they should happen to return.

As for "life" in the neighborhoods... the argument against crafting centers in the neighborhoods is lessened now with the layers popping up in the major town centers anyway. The notion of an instanced neighborhood crafting/vault/vendor center that is shared by all neighborhoods in the homestead is an EXCELLENT idea.

In-game systems to more creatively enable kinships to host party events , sparring tournements and the like in the homesteads would also greatly increase the presence of folks in the homesteads.

Party events: Several tables that could contain food and drink items, and pipeweed. The tables could each hold 10 stacks of items, no charge to put the items there, no charge to remove the items. The kin leader (or someone he/she can assign) purchases the tables from a special vendor and the tables are available for 'x' hours. At the end of the time, any unused items are placed in kin escrow available to the kin leader with a duration of 2 weeks.

Sparring tournaments: An actual tournament score-keeping system under the control of the kin leader or someone he/she can assign.

Originally Posted by ArgonautIOI

I wonder how Dynamic Layering will affect a community area like you are suggesting though.

Presumably like any other... they don't want 50+ people in one small area due to negative impacts on server performance (and on other players). So if a single community area got overcrowded, they'd layer it.

One other suggestion some might like:

• Identify all houses abandoned for a year or more, and the accounts they belong to.
• Send out e-mails to all of those accounts, telling them that they're going to lose their house unless they log in an "reclaim" it within the next 6 months. Logging in is all that's required to reclaim it.
• Make an announcement on various popular gaming forums and sites, to help get people who have changed e-mail addresses since they left the game.
• Do a forced abandonment on all of the unclaimed houses in 6 months.

Is it possible some player who really wanted to keep it will get evicted? Yes, but they'll have been away from the game for a year and a half, and Turbine will have made a good-faith effort to contact them. I suspect the number of "wronged" players would be quite small, and it could free up thousands of abandoned homes.

Khafar

Originally Posted by Smorgheim

Calm down spaz.

I'm simply saying that regardless of the reason (lol military) The game has a mechanic that is not working. What does being in the military have to do with it? Lot's of people stop playing for various reasons. Pulling the "but they served their country! derka deeeer!" card is pretty weird.

First off, reported.

Secondly, you sir are a terrible excuse for a human being to demonstrate such complete lack of respect for those people who sacrifice so much.

Thirdly, this is a GAME. RL trumps a GAME 100% of the time. And people should not be unduely penalized for having real life obligations. PARTICULARLY RL obligations that put them in harms way.

I cannot fathom why it's such a big deal for people. Housing in this game is BARELY an impact on anything but some extra storage space. It's not like this is some sophisticated sandbox game where there are abandoned houses littering the landscape. AND it's not like people who wish to gather and populate an area cannot if they so choose.

IMHO, the upside of having no foreclosures is FAR greater than the cost that comes to people's desire to buy a particular house in a particular instance.

Having a hard time finding a housing instance that has the combination of available houses you'd like to see? Then approach those owners and make an offer to buy them out. The owners aren't available? Try another instance.

Originally Posted by ArgonautIOI

I wonder how Dynamic Layering will affect a community area like you are suggesting though.

It would have the same problem as Bree does. A second layer does not appear until you got 100+ people in the same area. I've seen anything near this number of people crowded in a place like a crafting center.

Sure it could happen. The Lonely Hearts Band on Landoval holds one of their big events. They are likely to have this problem regardless where they hold it. I think they use Bree a lot now. With all the free and premium players, Bree often layers even a small server like Meneldor. Bree was layered Thursday night. I got my tailor in the Auction Hall looked for some stuff to buy.

If Turbine does anything to support big role playing events, I rather it be done for something like a housing community center. It would rather suck for folks running around doing other stuff to be chained by the lag monster in Bree. All because Jilla and her 200 fans were having a party. The current situation is not good because it is frustrating the customers wanting to have a big party.

Originally Posted by Jenara

No offense, but this kinda made me chuckle. It's selfish to want a home that's abandoned but not selfish to want to keep a home even when you're not active in the game? They are both selfish and THAT'S OK! It's not wrong to want what you want. But there's a compromise somewhere that will satisfy both sides, yet Turbine doesn't seem interested in finding it .. and I only say that because I've seen and heard nothing from them on this issue since they rescinded the decision to take homes away for non-payment.

No, it is selfish because people don't stop to think that there are REASONS why someone isn't currently playing but might return at some point. Your home is just like your character...part of your account. If everytime you decided to take a break from the game and not only your home was taken away but also your characters, maybe you might see the point. Other people, that do not own my account, should have nothing to say about my characters nor my house in any way. Those that do so are only pushing their own agenda of greed as they WANT WHAT I HAVE ALREADY PAID FOR. Therefore, they are selfish (or maybe there is a better term for it) for desiring MY spot. So much so that they make continued pleas like this to try to have my things stolen from me.

And now that LOTRO is "f2p" there is no longer something akin to "non-payment". People can come and go as they please and pay a sub as they please. So this argument is pretty much pointless.

Note according to lore, at least in the shire's law, if no one lived in the house for a year, it was considered abandon and could be claimed by someone else.

However Dwarves, believed once you own it you always own it, even after you died. Elves did believe you didn't own anything, just occupied it. I think men's law it was yours until someone else took possession of it.

So Turbine's current rule is that of the Dwarves. This is consistant with their view on names used by characters that are no longer playing. IMHO, the used name situation is actually more anoying than the house situation.

Originally Posted by Smorgheim

YEAH! Active Duty! Last thing I want after coming home from getting shot at is to find my lord of the rings online house on 3 chestnut road has been taken by Teabaggins! I GOTTA HAVE MY PRIORITIES IN LIFE. YEAH, PATRIOTISM! AMERICA AND A1 SAUCE! LOL! FOOTBALL!

Being a former Active Duty US Marine with two tours in Iraq, I can safely say that you sir, are an idiot.

re: Escrow
People should have a reason to look forward to coming back to the game, if they leave. "Escrow" isn't very exciting. I think they should remove upkeeps entirely.

If they're worried about the in-game economy, and need this as an inflation control, they need to talk to the skirmish guys about balancin' them thar bounties a bit so I don't accidentally make 20x my repair costs and maintenance fees while gaming.



re: Boring Neighborhoods
They're boring b/c there's nothing to do in them. Kick the inactives and put another 30 people in the zone, and there's just another 30 people of people using their house as vault space. All you change the name is <old guy you've never seen> to <new guy maybe you'll see when his map is on cooldown>.

Don't get me wrong - I love housing. I have 3 of them, and am about to buy a second kin-hall once I hit the right rank.

But other than pretty up some stuff, there's NO easy way to get OTHER people to the house, very little to do in it, and nothing in the neighborhood other than a discount on repairs/travelling rations that you can get anywhere you're kindred anyway.

Before we start worrying about those AFK jerks that abandoned that house at 4th & Market, let's get the devs to make housing interesting first.

teleport: group - to you house. invitations that work like guardian's acorns to your house. crafting centers in each of the neighborhoods. swift travel out of the neighborhoods to all major hubs. decorations that activate and do fun things. A way to turn nurnian's head off so it doesn't ninja you in to mood_spazzeyes. etc, etc.

Originally Posted by Mikivaup

No, it is selfish because people don't stop to think that there are REASONS why someone isn't currently playing but might return at some point. Your home is just like your character...part of your account. If everytime you decided to take a break from the game and not only your home was taken away but also your characters, maybe you might see the point. Other people, that do not own my account, should have nothing to say about my characters nor my house in any way. Those that do so are only pushing their own agenda of greed as they WANT WHAT I HAVE ALREADY PAID FOR. Therefore, they are selfish (or maybe there is a better term for it) for desiring MY spot. So much so that they make continued pleas like this to try to have my things stolen from me.

And now that LOTRO is "f2p" there is no longer something akin to "non-payment". People can come and go as they please and pay a sub as they please. So this argument is pretty much pointless.

There is a big difference between your char and your home. For one you rent your home with ingame money, and it already gets unusable if you miss payments. For another we are talking about giving you either back your money and stuff or simply giving you another home, a copy of your old in a new instance. However that copy would only be created if you come back, saving server resources and freeing up space for active players in your old instance.

Personally i would be fine with that and do not see the issue. People shouldn't be inconvenienced because of my absence and something i currently have no use for. Why would you insist on keeping not only your home but also your instance? If you have a active kinship in the instance they wouldn't let your house lapse, they prolly have rights to use it anyway if your going away for a long while. If your not in a kinship or its inactive, whats the point of keeping your instance?

Again, i would very much like to see a solution to this that doesn't inconvenience anyone. I fully understand that people would be unhappy with coming back and having lost everything. Personally i still think the best idea would be to leave the old system be as it is, and instead offer a new kind of homestead instances with foreclosure enabled(which exist seperately from the current instances). Maybe via a tab on the instance panel like skirmish/classic join.

oft-debated subject since year one. I hope they maintain the status quo, they have far too many things/issues going on atm imo to re-address this and stir up the ashes of the past.

After taking a long break from LOTRO I came back to "locked" houses. Much of my valualble items where in the houses and I could not access them until I paid the amount. It took over 30 gold to unlock all the guild halls (2), deluxe houses (2) and small houses (2).

Personally I would have much preferred to have my items in escrow and have a token or gold towards buying a new house. While I would have possibly lost the existing neighborhood I was in, it would have given me the opertunity to buy into a new area altoughter.

Now that I have 50 shared storage slots and 17 characters on my main accounts, I hardly have anything in my houses except decorations. I do keep them full of potions, food and primo (for level) equipment to quickly load up a character with adventuring needs, all my truely valuable items are no longer kept in houses. If I take a break again I don't know If I would every pay off the houses, but I would just keep them there as monuments.

Give some encouragement to free them up, I think you may have many free up from people the find shared slots, storemap skills and storage mules everything they need in a house without the maintenence issue.

I do not know if this has been beaten to death, but...

I know single players that own half a neghborhood using free trials and letting a person on their main account pay the upkeep. Yes, dead accounts, that own houses, paid by paying accounts. One person owning 20+ houses for storage. I find that to be kinda crazy. They eat things up and auction off choice ones for cash to pay for the others. It is like the AH mini game to them. Obviously this should not be able to happen, but...it does...

Originally Posted by rocketeer8015

Some people seem to misunderstand the problem. Its not about wanting the abandoned home of another player, atleast thats not it for me since as others pointed out you can just wait for a new neighborhood to open. Its about making housing viable, and in a MMO that means to me there are other real people, lets call them neighbors in this case.

Making sure the houses around you are owned by active player is the first step to viable housing

Except others have repeatedly pointed out that even when housing first came out, and all the owned houses were owned by active people, neighborhoods were STILL dead...

Your suggestion has already been tried (and failed) to make housing the vibrant social centers people keep asking for. And the downsides to what you are asking for (housing foreclosures) have been beat into the dust so many times it's sad.

As someone else earlier in the thread mentioned, seeing Yet Another Housing Foreclosure Thread is like finding a familiar old sweater.... although it seems more to me like the sweater's been sitting in the swamp and is infested by small rodents and gets less appealing every time I see it.

Maybe instead of the same two-sided shouting match that always winds up in the same old tired rut, we could have a housing discussion that actually tries a new tack?

Originally Posted by khanute

Housing is a joke, All it is to me is a pain in the #@$% extra storage slots. I could care less if people get booted to make room for others, but realize that your new nieghbor will last just about as long as the original owner before they leave game as well. I can't believe someone actually goes to thier house everyday and gets upset about empty houses next to thiers. For real ? Really ? come on ?

Actually, even if you never even saw your neighbors, if the locked houses were foreclosed on, you could AT LEAST get to notice that a new neighbor moved in, and they would decorate their yard differently, and might keep it open for you to see how they've done their interior space. And if that neighbor let's his account lapse, in a few months you might see a NEW neighbor move in. In THIS way, at least, you still have a vibrant active neighborhood, whether you bump into your neighbors or not.

I like the idea where if you see a locked home you like, that's been locked for at least say 6 months, you can place a payment on that house, and then the account owner is sent an E-mail saying their house has been requested for purchase by another player, and if they don't log in within 2 weeks to pay their upkeep, the house will be sold to the player who requested the purchase, and their things will go into Escrow indefinately.

Originally Posted by Stilgaard

You might want to go back and check the patch notes for the changes after housing was introduced.

http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Relea...ok_13_Official

I guess it's my memory that's incorrect! Thanks for the memory jog.

I actually did try to find the patch notes, and was unable too.

Perhaps (and I'm sure this has been mentioned) they need to add a button on the cancel screen, with two choices: 1) I need to cancel now, but I plan on coming back, and 2) I don't plan on returning.

This way lifers always keep their house (unless canceled), and Turbine could somewhat distinguish between different reasons to cancel. Of course it wouldn't be 100% fail-proof, but it may be better then leaving it as is or making any broad changes.

Housing is a goldmine for Turbine, and I bet they know it. My guess is we'll see sweeping changes to housing sooner then later.

Originally Posted by Drogo1

Except others have repeatedly pointed out that even when housing first came out, and all the owned houses were owned by active people, neighborhoods were STILL dead...

Your suggestion has already been tried (and failed) to make housing the vibrant social centers people keep asking for. And the downsides to what you are asking for (housing foreclosures) have been beat into the dust so many times it's sad.

As someone else earlier in the thread mentioned, seeing Yet Another Housing Foreclosure Thread is like finding a familiar old sweater.... although it seems more to me like the sweater's been sitting in the swamp and is infested by small rodents and gets less appealing every time I see it.

Maybe instead of the same two-sided shouting match that always winds up in the same old tired rut, we could have a housing discussion that actually tries a new tack?

And i have said my experiences are different, i see no point though to argue such a subjective thing though so i won't. Obviously if you had an active RP guild in your homestead liking the semi privacy of it you would see more people than if your neighborhood is full of raiders who only used their houses for storage and a backup port. Also i don't think you actually read my suggestions, since the last one actually does not have any repercussions to current or future homeowners unless they intentionally buy a new house in a special homestead instance.

Also the very fact that this keeps cropping up, and keeps being such a two sided discussion shows that players care about it, opinions are divided, and that it should get more dev attention than it currently does. Besides what would be the point of making housing more attractive if 90% of your neighborhood is dead? You still wouldn't see anyone even if it was the most awesome place in ME. So like i said, any changes to housing can only be a first step. Doing some polish here or there is a waste of time as the whole system is broken from both social and functional perspectives.

I actually have fairly specific ideas how to help housing, which i already aired in the proper forum, besides the foreclosure thing which on its own wouldn't make homesteads vibrant social centers obviously(which i never said btw, thats someone else argument but not mine).

The problem and reason why i partially support this foreclosure thing seperately from other housing changes is because it takes so much time. If we want to make cool(tm) changes to housing in a year, we have to now start tidying up the system now, instead of adding another 200 halfdead homesteads to the problem.

Ultimately, Turbine WILL need to address this issue, and I'm sorry but ALL you folk who think houses should be kept forever WILL be on the losing side of it, because that's NOT going to happen. Except for maybe Lifetime Account holders, abandoned houses WILL need to be foreclosed on.

As the game ages, and more and more new players arrive and old players leave indefinitely or for years, countless new housing instances would need to be opened up, and you will eventually get entire neighborhoods that are entirely abandoned properties or might have one or two active players maintaining a home.

I think Turbine will address this issue down the road, and a foreclosure solution will be implemented. I would recommend that they keep a players housing items in Escrow forever, and even give them a token to get a new home if they should log back in. And sadly for those military folks, this will simply have to be ONE MORE painful sacrifice you are willing to make for the defense of your country (or at least for the defense of the greedy wealthy fear-mongering use-troops-as-fodder-to-make-them-wealthier of your country).

I'm glad they reserved my 7G home when I came back on September 8th this year. I paid either 4 or 5G in fees to unlock it, but it was there for me almost a year later.

To the OP and those who agree with him: you have to understand that the house is also the only long-term way to hold all of those decorations and rewards players worked their rear end off to get. On top of that, it's not like each player has a unique house or real-estate location that's being held back from other players. If more housing is needed, Turbine can just add more neighborhoods (they're all identical copies of each other in terms of real estate and houses).

If you can't get the specific house you want because they're all occupied or reserved in all the neighborhoods of the racial housing area you want, don't blame the players. Blame Turbine for not opening up more neighborhoods in a timely manner.

Homes should be difficult to initially get into, but then it should be easy to get back into a home after a foreclosure.

For instance, normal prices should be charged to buy a home. When a home is foreclosed, there shouldn't be heavy punitive damages. Everything should simply go into escrow. When a player wants it, they pay a quick housing fee on a new house and everything pops back.

Clean up the vacant trash, but make it so that a person doesn't really lose anything. They might have to pick a new housing location, but it's a simple and easy process to do so.

Originally Posted by Banaticus

Clean up the vacant trash, but make it so that a person doesn't really lose anything. They might have to pick a new housing location, but it's a simple and easy process to do so.

I didn't have to change my location, nor was I given any option to do so. I'm not sure if you were saying you'd like to see/should see that change or if you were explaining what happens?

Originally Posted by cipher_nemo

If you can't get the specific house you want because they're all occupied or reserved in all the neighborhoods of the racial housing area you want, don't blame the players. Blame Turbine for not opening up more neighborhoods in a timely manner.

begone with your common sense.. this thread is about rawrblamemorage due to players not getting what they want right freaking now!


Been hearing the same argument since Housing was opened and they changed it, the only difference is the names that bring it up every 3-6 weeks.

Bottom line, what difference does it make to YOU as a player what someone else does with a virtual pixelhouse they shelled out their gold for?

Would it it make a difference if someone was gone for 6-8 months and the house was locked, yet they came back and gladly paid to reopen it (like above somewhere), or a player like me, a lifetimer who hasn't seriously played in months, yet still finds the time to log in once a month to make sure my house is paid up in full.. either way, the house is getting used exactly the same amount of time.. ZERO.

The system is in place for everyone to get a house who wants one, you just need to either
1. learn to 'work' the system, or
2. be patient enough for a new homestead to open and pounce on your own personal 4 Wending way.

I doubt Turbine is going to do a danged thing until there are 250+ neighborhoods filled up in all 4 racial neighborhoods on at least 2-3 servers... that's along way off even after these years the housing system has been available and broken.

Originally Posted by Stilgaard

begone with your common sense.. this thread is about rawrblamemorage due to players not getting what they want right freaking now!

(...)

I doubt Turbine is going to do a danged thing until there are 250+ neighborhoods filled up in all 4 racial neighborhoods on at least 2-3 servers... that's along way off even after these years the housing system has been available and broken.

Indeed. It's the reason I didn't abandon my house for another one a year ago: because I couldn't find the Deluxe home I really wanted. It's a shame to hear that hasn't changed and that all home locations aren't available across any combination of neighborhoods. But I certainly won't make a flame bait thread like the OP when complaining about it.