Thread: Foreclose on player homes already!!!

Turbine, if you decide to foreclose on homes, I would like to buy them, fix them up, and resell them. Just let me know when they will be auctioned.

Originally Posted by Stilgaard

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.

Yes, because THAT is what everyone really wants. All they really want is one SPECIFIC house and couldn't care less if it is in a completely static neighborhood FULL of unused locked homes that never change. The yards never change, you never see that a new neighbor moved in, you have ZERO chance of ever seeing anyone else in your neighborhood. When alternatively, perhaps there are a dozen of those VERY houses you have your eye on but have been on accounts which haven't been accessed in 6, 12, 18, months or longer!

The other suggestion I had was if a house is locked out for 6 or more months (heck make it 12 or 18 if you really must), then another player can make an upfront full payment on that house, the account owner is sent an E-mail saying someone is going to purchase it if they don't log into their account, and if in 2-4 weeks that person fails to do so, the house is sold. In this way, an abandoned house CAN be kept FOREVER, unless someone puts in a bid to buy it, and wants to wait up to a month to see if it will be reclaimed by the owner.

At any rate, as I said, in the end Turbine will almost certainly implement a foreclosure system at some point. They will have to. They simply can't keep spawning more and more neighborhoods where more and more of them become completely full of JUST abandoned properties.

Originally Posted by FoxFire

The other suggestion I had was if a house is locked out for 6 or more months (heck make it 12 or 18 if you really must), then another player can make an upfront full payment on that house, the account owner is sent an E-mail saying someone is going to purchase it if they don't log into their account, and if in 2-4 weeks that person fails to do so, the house is sold. In this way, an abandoned house CAN be kept FOREVER, unless someone puts in a bid to buy it, and wants to wait up to a month to see if it will be reclaimed by the owner.

Now that LOTRO is F2P I certainly like and support that idea. When it was sub only this wouldn't work so well since people would have to resubscribe to stop the transaction.

The problem is that you don't know which players are coming back again and which ones are not. Personally I did not even consider buying a house at all early on, because you could lose it if you didn't pay upkeep. I wanted the freedom to be able to take a vacation from the game without losing that investment forever. As soon as they changed the rules to let us keep the houses forever I went and bought one.

Originally Posted by cipher_nemo

Now that LOTRO is F2P I certainly like and support that idea. When it was sub only this wouldn't work so well since people would have to resubscribe to stop the transaction.

Have the original owner have the money and all the house items in perment escrow. So if they do come back, they lost thier hose but have enought money to buy one and will not have to unlock it. Seems better than a multi-gold payment they will have to come up with.

Originally Posted by Lohi

The problem is that you don't know which players are coming back again and which ones are not. Personally I did not even consider buying a house at all early on, because you could lose it if you didn't pay upkeep. I wanted the freedom to be able to take a vacation from the game without losing that investment forever. As soon as they changed the rules to let us keep the houses forever I went and bought one.

The fact they said this is the reason the have to estabilish a permanent escrow and refund some of the money.

How about this twist: Sell the house as cipher_nemo suggested, if the original owner comes back, the new owners items get his items thrown in escrow and purchased money refunded. and the original owner get his house back, but has to get his items back out of escrow, sort of like when Bilbo returned to the Shire

Or give the returning player an offer, "Someone wants to buy your old house, do you accept the offer of Xg (original price) " Yes = the returning player gets the gold, No= the ocuppying player gets the boot and his gold back, the player has to deal with locked house and maintence cost (but his items are in escrow and accessable). If the house has been multiple owners, the senior owner has precidence.

Originally Posted by FoxFire

At any rate, as I said, in the end Turbine will almost certainly implement a foreclosure system at some point. They will have to. They simply can't keep spawning more and more neighborhoods where more and more of them become completely full of JUST abandoned properties.

Why not? I mean really, they are instances. Only a few things of data stored. Probably the biggest thing would be the storage, and that would simply go to the escrow, so nothing lessened there.

What is funny is I decided to upgrade houses today. I looked around to find a good house to buy. I wanted one close to the entrance with snow (so my Yule trees will look good), I decided on 3 Low street, emptied my chest and all my furniture/decorations, and went outside to buy it. I looked and it was not available at all. So, I agree it would nice to find a way to either open up the the unused housing some way - or new neighborhoods.

To be honest, I miss the housing in AC1. It was nice to have non-instanced housing all over the world. You would see a neighborhood just exploring, and could look in on how people decorated (you could open your house so everyone could come in and look at it). I spent countless hours acquiring useless decorations for my AC house. It was awesome to get random tells from strangers who would look at my house and let me know how much they liked it.

There are couple premium houses in each settlement, My daughter has the house right next the entrance and loves it. It sad to see these high profile house locked and unaccessable, some not even decorated.

If your going to leave for a while, please at least decorate the outside of your house with some non-seasonal decorations, like trees, status and such. Skip the hoiday stuff, it looks odd outside the that holiday.

Originally Posted by Thane9

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.

First off, I'm flattered.

Secondly, you type like you have fat hands.

Thirdly, this is a GAME. Why should RL have anything to do with it? IE being away regardless of the reason?

Originally Posted by Arenthil31

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

Being a current person who can give a **** less about what you used to be, I can safely say that you mam, probably smell.

Originally Posted by ArgonautIOI

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.

I can care less about the housing situation, but what about "I was away because of cancer treatment" or "I was in the hospital because of burns I received while saving a burning bus full of puppies".

I'm not sure why it's so hard to understand that these games should not be connected to RL scenarios.

People using the military as some standardized excuse for "video games" should be ashamed of themselves.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go try and use my SAMS Club card to get some LOTRO store items.

Originally Posted by Smorgheim

This has nothing to do with respect. It's using the military as some holy grail for online gaming rules. I can care less about the housing situation, but what about "I was away because of cancer treatment" or "I was in the hospital because of burns I received while saving a burning bus full of puppies".

It's silly.

Are you man enough to go outside in public and express your views? $1000 says you are not. Kinda nice being safe and sound behind a pc monitor where you can say things you'd be too scared to say in public. Here you don't have to back up what you say either do you? You claim you don't care yet you keep replying to people well after you've made yourself look very foolish. Why is that? You seem to think people people are getting upset with your views? I'm not sure who gave you that impression but they lied to you. If you mattered, maybe people would be upset but you don't so......

You realize all we have to do is mark you as Ignored on the forums and you will never exist to us again. After this post, I'll never ever see your existence again. Nothing you can do about it.

Bye-bye.

IBTL.

You know the movie 'Bambi vs. Godzilla'? I think the end scene is coming up.

Originally Posted by Adroc

derp

I Sir, concur.

Originally Posted by Viniel

IBTL.

You know the movie 'Bambi vs. Godzilla'? I think the end scene is coming up.

I have.....never seen this. I must.

Originally Posted by Bradd

To be honest, I miss the housing in AC1. It was nice to have non-instanced housing all over the world.

This is the only game I've been in that had housing. I was in AC1 but it must have been before housing, or I was too low level to have seen it. However I have heard this technique described a lot. The major drawback is that if you let players put houses anywhere, you end up with a mess. Great for incoherent sandbox games like UO but awful for a game that is trying to recreate middle earth. You also need instances to reduce the number of houses you see; if every single house was out in the world it would be cluttered since there are just too many players with houses.

What I would have liked maybe is existing houses with doors that led to instanced houses inside. So that your house fit seemlessly into the game world; one of those alleys in Bree maybe, or up in Little Delving. The isolated homestead style just feels wrong to me, that style of land development just doesn't agree with how I see middle earth.

Originally Posted by Lohi

This is the only game I've been in that had housing. I was in AC1 but it must have been before housing, or I was too low level to have seen it. However I have heard this technique described a lot. The major drawback is that if you let players put houses anywhere, you end up with a mess. Great for incoherent sandbox games like UO but awful for a game that is trying to recreate middle earth. You also need instances to reduce the number of houses you see; if every single house was out in the world it would be cluttered since there are just too many players with houses.

What I would have liked maybe is existing houses with doors that led to instanced houses inside. So that your house fit seemlessly into the game world; one of those alleys in Bree maybe, or up in Little Delving. The isolated homestead style just feels wrong to me, that style of land development just doesn't agree with how I see middle earth.

I think that is what EQ2 did. I never played it but the houses in city's were all available, and just instanced to whoever owned it (or had permissions).

Anarchy Online did the same thing with apartments, but player built cities were actually claimed land, which was kind of cool.

I was running through the home area I have clicking on mailboxes of many many houses and they all said "Closed due to failure to pay upkeep". It could free up 12 to 30 houses if they did what it was supposed to. I don't at the moment remember exactly how many houses are in each area but still loads and loads of them were closed but still there. I went to look at buying a kin house as well and again there were 3 spots open rest of them are closed. It isn't possible in my house area on my server for those to be active as there are not that many players here still. Just what is the housing guy who holds items from closed bank vaults there for if its not used? When I expect to possibly be out of play for a time I empty my house of all items including bound items so that if I am gone a year I don't have to pay that fee to get my stuff out of the holding slot. Most housing districts have had houses like this since houses were introduced because a lot of players quit right after that to go to another game and never came back. So what is the deal with all the unbuyable houses and unbuyable kin houses in all the areas?

This reminds me of what SOE decided to do with SWG. I don't know if it was already mentioned earlier but 7 pages is too much to browse through.

Basically a few years back they established a date and time and players all went out and basically 'marked' homes that were known to be old and abandoned. We looked for them and the more we marked, we actually got something out of it. It was actually pretty fun.

From what I remember, basically SOE was able to pack up the home and put it into the old players datapad (an inventory of sorts) and that way the house itself could be physically removed from the game world, and should the original subscriber and owner of the home return to the game, they had their house waiting for them in their inventory, with all the items still there. All they had to do was then find some open land to unpack it. Homes weren't instanced like they are here so players here would basically have to replace or 'fill' an open and available house.

I don't know if something like this could happen in this game but it sure wouldn't hurt to look into it.

Originally Posted by Lohi

This is the only game I've been in that had housing. I was in AC1 but it must have been before housing, or I was too low level to have seen it. However I have heard this technique described a lot. The major drawback is that if you let players put houses anywhere, you end up with a mess.

Players couldn't build houses anywhere they wanted. Turbine build neighbors all over the world and you could buy houses first come, first served.

The difference is that the neighborhoods were not instanced, and there were many more neighborhoods. You actually became friends with your neighbors (since you had to be subscribed and paying your rent to keep your house).

Originally Posted by Smorgheim

I think that is what EQ2 did. I never played it but the houses in city's were all available, and just instanced to whoever owned it (or had permissions).

Anarchy Online did the same thing with apartments, but player built cities were actually claimed land, which was kind of cool.

In EQ2 the housing is instanced. Housing is placed inside of towns and accessed through doors. You can search through a listing on each door to find the owner whose house you wish to visit. There is no limit to the number of characters that can own the same address.

Also, unlike LoTRO where player housing is a complete joke, player housing serves an actual purpose in EQ2: you can sell items directly from your house so that players can avoid paying the Broker tax, which can be pretty heavy on really valuable items.

That's not a bad idea. Perhaps when I get a chance I will hit up every house in my neighborhood to see just how many are abandoned. I do know that the houses to either side of mine have been locked and unchanged since the day I moved into mine (which was well over a year and a half ago). F2P has arrived and neither yard has changed, but I'll have to check to see if they are still locked out, which would indicate that EVEN with f2p they chose not to return.

I do pine for the excitement I would have if a NEW neighbor moved in. Once I saw the yard change I'd check to see if it was a new neighbor, send them a nice Welcome to the Neighborhood mail, and house warming gift. Of course that can never happen as it stands, since those houses will be abandoned indefinitely, and my road will remain ever lonely.

I am also an advocate for allowing people to buy housing in the various towns and settlements, behind any (and many) of the NUMEROUS doors in these places. They could be called 'premium' housing due to their convienient locality, cost more to own per sq. ft. of interior space, but have no yard to decorate. I'm still up-in-the-air as to whether individual doors could lead to multiple owners residences (maybe if it was an apt building type residence). If only a single person could 'own' that door, then the pricing would have to be REALLY steep, quick foreclosure implemented, and perhaps that person could then decorate area around the door in some fashion (like putting up a door hanging).

Originally Posted by Budderfur

Also, unlike LoTRO where player housing is a complete joke,

Why is it a "joke" here? I think it's fine. Maybe there are some features that other games have, but that doesn't reduce this to a mere joke. I know many features some players have asked for either will not work well in this game or setting, or were avoided specifically. Ie, they did not want to put crafting areas in housing specifically because they felt it would reduce the need for players to go to towns.

The housing we have has these nice features:
- Nice to look out, they fit into the lore and world well
- A nice place to hang out and role play, hold parties, both in the house and areas within the homesteads
- A place to put your trophies
- A place to customize and add some individuality
- Discounts on services by owning a home

Features we don't have and may not need:
- bonuses for gaming like stat boosts. (seriously I heard a player say they missed that about our housing which seems weird to me)
- Build anything you want in any shape
- Mega mansion status symbols
- Player built cities

No special treatment.

Burn their houses down and auction off their stuff. That's what they get for not being hardcore.

Originally Posted by aethelberht

...
Here's a thought. When enough houses in a neighborhood get locked, two or three of them should catch fire, ruffians should be pulling copper out of another few, and one lone guy should be peering out the window of another one, a la "Night of the Living Dead." I'd visit that neighborhood.

I LOVE this idea. But let's give Turbine some incentive: put "Housing Instance Ruffians" into the LOTRO Store. You can unleash them on any house owned by someone that hasn't logged on in 6+ months. They then do the things you describe, and after a few days the house is back on the market.

I would pay a LOT of Turbine Points to do that.

Originally Posted by scrumtrelescent

I LOVE this idea. But let's give Turbine some incentive: put "Housing Instance Ruffians" into the LOTRO Store. You can unleash them on any house owned by someone that hasn't logged on in 6+ months. They then do the things you describe, and after a few days the house is back on the market.

I would pay a LOT of Turbine Points to do that.

LOL! Thanks for my first laugh of the day! I really dig that idea! "Send in the Brigands with the torches!!!"

Seriously tho, I would love to be able to buy a house in the same neighborhood (instance) as my kin house. I actually went and checked EVERY other house in there and ALL of them except our kinhouse and 1 house owned by a kinnie are "Closed due to failure to pay upkeep". That just doesn't sit well with me.

Considering escrow only last 30 days, there needs to be some changes.

The only way I would even consider them to allow foreclosure is if they put the items in a special bank account that did not expire in 30 days. It sure in the heck would not be fun to come back and find out all your stuff is gone and you could never get it back.

We also need to ability to sell our houses back. This would fix tons of stuff.

They should go through, first and all the folks who have permabans with houses foreclosed on them, as those folks are never coming back.

They need to fix escrow first to last longer than the current 30 days, then you could foreclose, and then only after a 6 month stretch of non play.

Originally Posted by Zeowyrm

/sigh

Time to go into "Listen here young punk" mode

Clearly you weren't around when this decision was made. I was, as were many others. Fact is, there were a number of posts from military members complaining at losing their homes due to being on active duty. This was during the height of the Iraq conflict mind you, when going overseas for a "few months" could turn into "a few years". There were factions that disputed it then, and have done so since, but Turbine, at the time, chose to do it this way, primarily in honor of the duty the military was doing. I honestly believe if it hadn't been so many vocal military members, it may not have happened. But there it is, and we're probably stuck with it.

And seriously. Learn some respect for the military. It's your very freedom to post **** like that that they fight to protect.

Then maybe its time to set aside some housing areas specifically for military personell.

Originally Posted by BellusDuFenna

You know, there is another solution to this which might make things a little better, but still preserve the locked houses for their current owners.

NPCs.

From what I've seen, a lot of players complain that their neighborhoods are "dead", because they are filled with locked properties, so they seem like ghost towns. Well, one solution to that would be for NPCs to spawn at any house locked for an extended amount of time. These NPCs would just wander around the property, maybe sleep in a hammock or start a little garden there, and could be talked to briefly if approached (probably saying something to the effect of them being Caretakers for the property, or long-lost cousins of the owner). When the owner returns and unlocks the property, the NPCs disappear.

In this way, active players would be helped in two ways:

1) Their neighborhoods would have some activity, even if it is just NPCs for the most part, and thus not seem so barren.

2) If, while looking to buy a home, you see lots of spawned NPCs, you would have a clear indication that this neighborhood doesn't have many active players, or has none at all. that would give them a fair warning not to buy in that neighborhood, if they wanted to own a home in an active neighborhood.

I am completely against taking away locked homes from old players, and now that the game is F2P, those players could return at any time to unlock those houses, making the idea of just taking them away a really bad one. Turbine wants to entice the old players to come back, and taking away those player's old houses would not be very welcoming, now would it?

Just saying.

Now that is an excellent idea.

Total noob here but since I've owned a house I've yet to see any houses with "Locked" signs or "Forclosed" signs. I've also yet to see any of my neighbors. Everytime I go to my house to put up some new decoration or get something out of the chest I'm the only one there and like everyone else (I assume) I don't stay long either. I get done what I need to then back out into the world.

So If seeing all these locked houses is bothering people it seems to me the mechanic doesn't really need to be changed at all. Just get rid of the signs.

That way when you go to your neighborhood to visit your house you have no idea house houses are locked and who's aren't.

First thing Housing as it stands in LOTRO sucks. Has from release. It was a quick fix to forums full of people demanding housing now.

Housing are ghost towns because other than dropping stuff into your extra vault there is NO REASON TO GO THERE!

Want to see great housing, check out Dark Age of Camelot. Best player housing I have seen in any game and I have played most.

But to our problem here in LOTRO over all it's a simple fix really. Idea wise anyway, coding may make it hard to do but I am sure it could be done.

Set up the auto pay mentioned in this thread. Also have the fund box part of the housing maintenance so you can set it up to have people add funds to it just like you can let people pay your rent now.

Let us sell them back, as mentioned in this thread. Even at 1/2 to 3/4 price it would help.

Housing is instanced, so storage can be too. Once a house has not had rent for 6 months have all items in that house moved to storage, that never goes away. The house goes up for sell. If the player ever returns, all items are there to be picked up. If there house never sold then they could move back in for a fee and if it did sell give them 75% of the selling price to help them buy a new one.

later

Originally Posted by Combak

Housing are ghost towns because other than dropping stuff into your extra vault there is NO REASON TO GO THERE!

Might help if they put the crafting stuff (work bench, forge, oven, etc...) and an auction house in each neighborhood I bet they'd be less ghost townish.

I would like to see Turbine do away with housing neighborhoods and have housing moved into towns. The houses would instances (as they are now) off of doors to houses in towns.

This idea is a total ripoff from EQ2 housing, but it works and their housing system is one of the best. Moving housing to towns keeps population in towns and allows easy access to the housing. It would solve the problem of ghost town housing instances. Players could still visit and view other player and guild housing. The housing items for front yards could be moved to a back yard, which would essentially be a room off the back of the house.

One of the negatives to this sort of housing is players and guilds can't show off their front yards to all players.

Housing the great miss....

Why it missed?
1) No one goes to kin house, because rarely a reason to.
2) Houses in areas such as where you kin house is... never come up for sale...they are locked out forever...
3) No Quick travel from Housing area to local town. (you can QT to it, but not back! >.<)
4) Not located in main city or town, aka Bree, Rivendell, etc.. placed really far removed from where people want to be.
5) You can't sell your house & get your money back! >.<
6) Shared storage now removes the need to use your house chests to transfer stuff around... so pointless to use personal house chests.

Fixing up housing:
1) Put in button that the owner & anyone who has permission from the owner can click "on active duty" and the house will remain and follow the current rules until they return.
2) If this button is not pushed, the house is foreclosed on & goes up for sale. All items are stored in escrow and build up a "Storage Fee" to be paid when the person returns. Meaning it could stay in escrow forever vs having the house locked out forever.

A quick housing story.. In our Lineage days I purchased a house for the kin.. the best one it the game, right in the middle of the largest city at the time. It is where we had meetings, events, laughed, joked, had weddings (i've done quite a few), helped each other and in general just hung out while regenerating or looting our stuff. We'd have people just drop by .. while walking through the main town and say hi.. and even spend some time chatting or hunting with the team. It was a central part of getting members & sometimes just random visitors to interact with each other... this is what housing should be for.. and focused toward.

How the Housing system worked:
1) Auction - Buy & sell houses. (only a limited amount in each town)
2) Place bid... keep bidding until you hopefully win.
3) Sell house to make a profit or at least get your money back.
4) Didn't pay your upkeep? - Goes back up for auction... you loose it...

House cost $128,000.. had years of fun in it, hundreds of hunts & events, raffles, and great times just chatting with members.... sold it when it was my time to move on for 60 million... Gave it all to members.

Lets get a normal auction system going... in the main towns.. none of this way out in the middle of no where stuff... or at least put in some quick travels and let those houses go back up for sale... set a time.. 3-6-12-18-24 months... and most importantly.. give people a reason to go there!

One last idea...Get that party vendor working.. by the chairs.. Party planner NPC.. Fireworks, beer, food maybe even change the look of the area for weddings, birthdays, etc...

*bows with much respect*

- Lord Kismet

Originally Posted by Combak

Housing are ghost towns because other than dropping stuff into your extra vault there is NO REASON TO GO THERE!

Then why am I in a house right now with about 30 other people having a good time?

Want to see great housing, check out Dark Age of Camelot. Best player housing I have seen in any game and I have played most.

Why? What makes it great?

Originally Posted by Lord_Kismet

4) Not located in main city or town, aka Bree, Rivendell, etc.. placed really far removed from where people want to be.

This is very much on purpose, as is not giving people lots of reasons to spend any serious time at houses. Because there are 100s of neighborhoods (and only a few thousand players on at one time), encouraging people to spend much time at their houses means a massive dilution of players from a relative handful of well-populated social centers to hundreds of tiny ones. They had that problem with Asheron's Call, and once players have those features they cannot be taken away later. In AC they tried a variety of things to get people to come back to the near-empty towns, with pretty limited success.

Anything they do to make houses more attractive to spend lots of time at will be done very, very carefully.

6) Shared storage now removes the need to use your house chests to transfer stuff around... so pointless to use personal house chests.

More storage is never "pointless" IMO.

Fixing up housing:
1) Put in button that the owner & anyone who has permission from the owner can click "on active duty" and the house will remain and follow the current rules until they return.
2) If this button is not pushed, the house is foreclosed on & goes up for sale.

If you mean that someone has to keep on "activating" my house for me if I take a break from the game for 6 months (or else I'll get evicted and some other player will get my great location)... no thanks. I might be able to live with that if they let me prepay my maintenance for an entire year, though. My longest break so far has been 4 months, but I doubt I'll ever take a full year off until I'm truly done with the game. I'll at least come back to check out expansions once a year until then...

3) Sell house to make a profit or at least get your money back.

Ugh. No thanks. This would mean gold-sellers and other real-estate speculators would camp neighborhoods and snarf up all of the most popular properties as soon as a new neighborhood opened up, then extort ridiculous prices for them from other players.

Khafar

Originally Posted by Elderban

The problem is is that people that haven't played since houses were introduced still have a house sitting somewhere in a neighborhood that says "Closed due to failure to pay upkeep" and said house cannot be purchased by anyone else, so it sits there...empty...and will remain that way until Turbine fixes things or until they shut the servers down when (or if) we reach Mordor.

Based on Turbines lack of interest in doing anything with housing since they introduced it in 2007, I am leaning towards the latter.

Sooooo true. They implemented a housing system with a ton of potential, then did absolutely NOTHING with it. Youd think in 3 years they could have at least gotten rid of the god-awful hookpoint system.

I personally hate housing in this game, but then I was forever spoiled by EQ2's brilliant implementation.

Originally Posted by Khafar

This is very much on purpose, as is not giving people lots of reasons to spend any serious time at houses. Because there are 100s of neighborhoods (and only a few thousand players on at one time), encouraging people to spend much time at their houses means a massive dilution of players from a relative handful of well-populated social centers to hundreds of tiny ones. They had that problem with Asheron's Call, and once players have those features they cannot be taken away later. In AC they tried a variety of things to get people to come back to the near-empty towns, with pretty limited success.

Anything they do to make houses more attractive to spend lots of time at will be done very, very carefully.

Khafar

Wait you are saying that the housing system is horrible because if it was good people would spend too much time in them?! Wow I never thought of it that way lolololllllllllll....

Originally Posted by Halcyon8

I don't get it.
If you don't log in within 6 months, why should you get to keep your house? You left the game that long, I think it's fair to say your house should be available to other responsible players who actually pay their upkeep and regularly log into the game.

If you come back after 6 months to a year and you start complaining on the forums how your house was taken, you deserved it.
The servers can only spawn so much space to store all the data.

Why should a house become a lifetime trophy when the player will not play for their entire lifetime?
I mean really, at what point will that house become available? When the servers close down and LOTRO is finished?

Turbine please reconsider this.

No. Just plain no. If I took a break from the game and I got punished for it, I'd never come back. Period. And YOU would stop seeing new content because I wouldn't be the only one quitting over it. All so that you can buy that house that is vacant for a time and is none of your business. You can buy the same house in another neighborhood. If you want one of MY houses, too bad. They aren't for sale. When I leave the game for awhile it is because I've been playing LOTRO since August 6th of 2006. I go through periods of burn-out and need a break. But that doesn't warrant taking my house away.

This thread is one of the many reasons why they need to be rid of the upkeep cost of houses. Upkeep achieves NOTHING. It doesn't force players to stay active in the game or keep housing up to date - in fact it does the exact opposite and causes casual playing owners to abandon the house; not by choice but because they don't play enough to keep paying for a house.

The only reason anyone ever complains about a house isn't because they don't see the owner standing on the front doorstep, but because they see the sign that says "foreclosed because of lack of payment." If there was no upkeep fee, no one would see this stupid notice and no one would know whether the house is vacant or not. It would just be assumed that the house is owned and used - end of story, time to go find the same house in another neighborhood.

The upkeep fee also does not serve as a money sink. Players with lots of money don't miss the small fee of upkeep. It doesn't affect their enormous bottom line. They remain rich. Those who can't afford it, don't pay and the house becomes vacant and closed.

There are other reasons. Being forced to pay upkeep means that the house is not mine. Never was, never will be. In other words, I don't own a piece of the game world. That's forbidden in LOTRO for some reason, in spite of the fact that it is one of the basic rules of MMO creation "players should have the opportunity to OWN a piece of the game world (note that it doesn't say rent or lease) which gives them a vested interest in maintaining a presence in the game." The present system ENCOURAGES letting the house be closed. It discourages interest in that element, and housing is supposed to be a sandbox feature that helps keep players interested in the game. Sandbox features are usually included so that players can take a break from the daily grind of questing and killing.

Housing upkeep does not (proven by now after three years of this sort of thread popping up) achieve any of the things that Turbine hoped it would. It does not keep players playing, it does not force players to stay in the game to keep their house, it does not fulfill the purpose of a money sink. It's just there. It is an annoyance and discourages maintaining a house. And it causes this kind of thread to pop up at least every week!

Get rid of housing upkeep fees and most of these problems will just go away.