Thread: LifeTime subscribers shouldnt pay maintainance cost....

Its just terrible to go back in the game to see your house locked... bec you decided to take a break... and besides your a lifetime subscriber... why not give it as a perk ... no maintenance if your a lifetime subscriber.... Pls Pls

It doesn't cost THAT much to maintain... I got a house at lvl 20 with help of a friend and kept it for this long just doing my normal questing habits. Nothing extra...

Originally Posted by Vectorwiz

Its just terrible to go back in the game to see your house locked... bec you decided to take a break... and besides your a lifetime subscriber... why not give it as a perk ... no maintenance if your a lifetime subscriber.... Pls Pls

lol. Lifetime subscription doesn't mean that Turbine plays the game for you while you are away.

Originally Posted by Imirak

lol. Lifetime subscription doesn't mean that Turbine plays the game for you while you are away.

so true.




to short

Originally Posted by Vectorwiz

Its just terrible to go back in the game to see your house locked... bec you decided to take a break... and besides your a lifetime subscriber... why not give it as a perk ... no maintenance if your a lifetime subscriber.... Pls Pls

Nice try, but ... no. It might have made sense once-upon-a-time when lifetime meant you could easily break and come back. With FTP anyone can easily break and come back, so that part of the argument is void.

Without FTP, the only added $$ Turbine could get from lifetimers was expansions. Now we're just as easily swayed to spend in the store as everyone else. So other than a few perks that we already get, there's not much difference between the account types. If you want your house you're gonna have to pay for it, one way or the other.

Originally Posted by Imirak

Lifetime subscription doesn't mean that Turbine plays the game for you while you are away.

QFT

No. I don't even use a house but if I did I would still say no. I have also been playing since launch and would still stick with 'no'. It's a "credit sink". All MMOs have them with some form or another. What do we as players do? Deal with it. The houses are more or less for the role playing aspect of the game. Paying a mortgage is part of RPing in my opinion. Anyone with pride would not ask someone else to pay their mortgage for them so why would your virtual character?

Originally Posted by Elrendos

No. I don't even use a house but if I did I would still say no. I have also been playing since launch and would still stick with 'no'. It's a "credit sink". All MMOs have them with some form or another. What do we as players do? Deal with it. The houses are more or less for the role playing aspect of the game. Paying a mortgage is part of RPing in my opinion. Anyone with pride would not ask someone else to pay their mortgage for them so why would your virtual character?

Interesting perspective. I don't share it but it's nevertheless interesting.

Housing to me is another storage. It's also a place where I can place trophies and get a feeling that my character is more than just something that appears when I log in and out. Same with the kin house. I do zero roleplaying in it ... however, I don't have an issue with people having that aspect of the game.

What I do agree with is that it's a credit sink. I think the rents are a bit excessive. it would be okay once every few months but the maintenance is constant. Especially since the housing is as limited as it is. Even if they just went with Kin Houses, games like City of Heroes put so much more thought into their Super Group bases.

The whole upkeep system is useless now because the houses don't get freed up when you stop paying anyway.

The problem isn't the money, the problem is that you can't pay far enough in advance so you always have to deal with it after you couldn't play for a while.

Someone said it's capped at 5 gold. On a fresh server and a fresh character, I have that around level 30-35.

Originally Posted by Darmokk

The whole upkeep system is useless now because the houses don't get freed up when you stop paying anyway.

The problem isn't the money, the problem is that you can't pay far enough in advance so you always have to deal with it after you couldn't play for a while.

Agreed. They should allow considerably longer maintenance periods like 3 or 4 month. Then when they foreclose, they should kick you with a note towards purchase of another house out so that the land opens up for people playing. I suspect a lot of houses are being held up by folks that will never come back again and wouldn't care if they didn't have the house they had.

Turbine won't foreclose to free up houses anymore, and they won't extend the payment period to be more flexible.

It's really a shame Turbine doesn't spend any time or effort on housing because it is such a nice addition to the wonderful world of LOTR.

In Ultima Online so long as you have a paid, active acct your house is yours. You do not pay a monthly fee on a house that you have bought. However, if you turn off you acct, after 90 days your house begins to decay. After 5 days, you lose your place.

This is a sensible and fair method of housing.

Of course in UO the houses can be customized. You can build them from the ground up, design them, and decorate them as you see fit. No freaking hooks to deal with.

if you could afford the house and probably its not the basic one, i don't really think that getting few golds would be so hard espec gold isnt realy the hardest thing to aquire in this game.

Originally Posted by Imirak

lol. Lifetime subscription doesn't mean that Turbine plays the game for you while you are away.

Well, maybe it should.

A radical thought, but might WB/Turbine consider an opt-in method for subscribers (Lifetime or periodic) who receive TPs every month to have a number of TP deducted to 'pay' housing maintenance if the house is about to go into lockdown on non-payment of maintenance? This would be an election the player would have to actively make, not a default, so a player could not come back and complain that his TPs had been 'stolen' to pay housing maintenance.

The first concern I could see here is that Player X makes this selection, expecting to be away for a fairly short time, then has to stay away longer, his periodic sub runs out and he's not in position (for any of a number of reasons) to renew (a re-issued credit/debit card can do this for you), then his TP balance is eaten away by the house... Maybe this should be restricted to Lifetime subs, but I'd like to see comments (from other players or a Turbine person) - Full disclosure, I have a Lifetime account.

My lifetime account didn't make me the Queen, it just means I don't pay a monthly charge for full game benefits. It doesn't mean I get everything for free. I still have to buy the expansion packs. I still have to purchase a house and pay the rent in a timely manner. I still have to do quests, fight mobs, craft, or whatever else to get ... well, whatever else.

And that's the way it should be.