Requesting personal properties.

[Soupiest]

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Short description: 

With a brief summary of this suggestion as a whole, while providing some essentials to the suggestion - I personally feel personal properties such as homes, industrial buildings, businesses, and any others I may have left out should be applicable without much limitation or restrictions preventing the player to acquiring an asset that would be used by them. The process should be straightforward and easy but also be debatable, should property management see something concerning with a player's request.

 

Secluded properties should still be an exception, but be more expensive as they give no incentive to a growing environment regarding the playerbase. That's not to say it wouldn't be beneficial in a RP sense because that could entirely be false. Prices should be lower around neighborhoods or in public districts and or towns to advocate and persuade players to want to live around an area where it's likely to ran into a player or two.

 

Detailed description:

Inspired by Jam's thread "need more houses in vespucci!!!" I wanted to go about suggesting something that "I feel" would be necessary to have in our community. The idea of requesting personal properties. Some of you might be thinking or even concerned about how this can't be done due to the fact that we either don't have a bigger playerbase or that most of the houses should be used up, well I disagree. And I think we shouldn't be thinking like that.

 

To backup as to why, first the playerbase is already spread across the whole map, from Los Santos to Paleto Bay. I've seen players RP around the country, and obviously around the city. Mirror Park may be one of the "spots" to run into some roleplay but let's be honest here. Why are we being restricted on housing when the housing itself has spread via a specific branch in GTA World's staff hierarchy or staff as a whole as I don't know who made the overall decision.

 

That being said, I think it's more than necessary to go about allowing property request for personal uses such as houses. Businesses as well, but only to an extent with the final say obviously being from property management. Now, I personally think businesses need a bit more restriction than houses being requested because a business obviously draws in traffic, and that traffic is players. Which the roleplay then becomes organic from said traffic. A lot should go into requesting a business from an individual. Let me also quickly say, when I talk about personal properties and businesses, I specifically mean individuals or players without a faction under their wing, should be able to own said business within reason.

 

Prices should be taken into consideration of the area, if the house itself iconic, is it unique apart from other homes? Is it in a secluded location? What kind of property is it? Iconic homes should obviously be priced more because of the self explanatory remark I just made. Secluded homes should also be costly due to the fact they're well...secluded and will probably be away from civilization. Why should it be? Well, the house is away from civilization. That's about it. Your likelihood to "randomly" stumble onto RP in a secluded location are really slim oppose to getting one in a neighborhood.

 

On the other hand, homes in neighborhoods shouldn't be as costly. This would persuade a majority of players looking for housing in the server, which in return increases the likelihood of running into some roleplay activity. If a player wants a home in the Vespucci? Let them request it, Vinewood Hills? If they have the means to live there with a reason to live there and as to how they'd obtain the house, sure!

 

So pretty much here's the key factors that need to go into requesting a property.

 

The price.

Property type.

The area.

Yearly income.

Description as to why you would live there.

Screenshots?

 

 

Items to add: 

I don't think there needs to be script implementations unless I'm wrong, just mainly some planing on how this would work accordingly with some assistance.

 

How would your suggestion improve the server?

Like a vehicle could be an essential to a player or their roleplay, a house could be seen as the same. It's a player's personal hub, perhaps it even makes up part of who they are. Maybe it's an asset a player desires or maybe it's their end goal for their In-Character retirement. There's various reasoning behind this suggestion. Everyone doesn't wanna live in Davis, everyone doesn't wanna live in Mirror Park, because they just don't see their character fitting the bill to live in either of these areas. 

 

By doing this, you're opening doors and breaking the chains off some of the restrictions regarding properties. You're trusting players with the freedom to desire over a property they wish to sink their time into.

 

Edited May 9, 2018 by Soupiest

[Topinambour]

Yes. Please. <3

[Sammux]

YAS!!!

[norrig]

I've been reading both this and the other discussion about housing, and I hear everyone's feedback and concerns. 

First of all I'd like to refer to this post, which have  been our 'official' stance for a while now:
 

On 27/4/2018 at 1:51 PM, norrig said:

Hi Paul,

Yes there will be more housing/apartments in the future. However, we have to sell a majority of our current unsold housing before we expand, to avoid making every area a ghost town. It's a fine balance between keeping players somewhat together, while at the same time not limiting roleplay or character development. As the playerbase increases, the demand for housing increases, and expansion will happen naturally. (Everyone can monitor the progress through map.gta.world) 

Currently we're allowing businesses and faction HQ's to be bought and placed anywhere on the map. These kinds of properties often guarantees activity in a given area, something which housing doesn't necessarily do, hence why they're limited.

Once we've sold at least half of the current unsold, we'll have a community talk about expanding and where to, but for now it's too soon.


 

 

To elaborate a bit, I don't believe our current server population can support essentially adding in the entire map, I fear we'd spread too far making every area feel like a ghost town. It seems like the playerbase is split about wanting to centralize and not to centralize. We've been through issues with this in past (Sandy Shores descript for anyone who remembers).  

The whole debate is not so much about the technical parts (how we add the houses), it's not so much about where we add them, it's not about which houses. It's all about the main question, should we add more housing? 
I see the positives, I do, but I also see the negatives. 

 

As I've said since I took over property management a couple of months ago, we will add more housing once the playerbase supports it, the dream is to one day have a playerbase large enough to support adding in the entire map. 

We set a goal about 2 months ago, sell 50% of the current unsold and we'll have a discussion about what to do. We're not even near 50% right now. 
We have to fully tackle the overall question before we move into the practical and technical ways to do it. 

We have daily discussions about "Where is everyone?" "interior roleplayers", "group roleplayers" and similar. We have valid concerns about new- and soloplayers being unable to find other players. We had multiple street gang factions close down as they rarely RP'ed/interacted with anyone but their own group. We have daily ingame tickets, discord questions and forum topics about that exact issue, "where is everyone?". To have a thriving roleplay community you need interactions, it's the whole premise and point of roleplay. At the same time, housing can also increase interactions and can spawn a whole new "hot spot" just by simply having them. It's all about finding that balance and it goes hand-in-hand with the size of the playerbase. 

I'm not saying my stance is the correct stance, I'm not saying I have the perfect solution. My point is adding housing may be cool and cheap in the short term, but is it good in the long-term? Are we even ready for it? Do we have enough players to support it? What about our current areas? There is so many potentially devastating side effects or consequences that we can not ignore. If the majority disagrees with me, I will of course respect that and add more housing, but is it good for the community as a whole, is it the right decision?  
 

[Guest Ingram]

No.

Reason: Gonna be hell of a job to handle house requests, gonna be arguments, people gonna want to buy that same property, real estate money hunger players will abuse it and things will fuck up that every property will be on some sort of auction this way, no. 

Edited May 9, 2018 by Ingram

[Soupiest]

6 minutes ago, norrig said:

I've been reading both this and the other discussion about housing, and I hear everyone's feedback and concerns. 

First of all I'd like to refer to this post, which have  been our 'official' stance for a while now:
 

 

To elaborate a bit, I don't believe our current server population can support essentially adding in the entire map, I fear we'd spread too far making every area feel like a ghost town. It seems like the playerbase is split about wanting to centralize and not to centralize. We've been through issues with this in past (Sandy Shores descript for anyone who remembers).  

The whole debate is not so much about the technical parts (how we add the houses), it's not so much about where we add them, it's not about which houses. It's all about the main question, should we add more housing? 
I see the positives, I do, but I also see the negatives. 

 

As I've said since I took over property management a couple of months ago, we will add more housing once the playerbase supports it, the dream is to one day have a playerbase large enough to support adding in the entire map. 

We set a goal about 2 months ago, sell 50% of the current unsold and we'll have a discussion about what to do. We're not even near 50% right now. 
We have to fully tackle the overall question before we move into the practical and technical ways to do it. 

We have daily discussions about "Where is everyone?" "interior roleplayers", "group roleplayers" and similar. We have valid concerns about new- and soloplayers being unable to find other players. We had multiple street gang factions close down as they rarely RP'ed/interacted with anyone but their own group. We have daily ingame tickets, discord questions and forum topics about that exact issue, "where is everyone?". To have a thriving roleplay community you need interactions, it's the whole premise and point of roleplay. At the same time, housing can also increase interactions and can spawn a whole new "hot spot" just by simply having them. It's all about finding that balance and it goes hand-in-hand with the size of the playerbase. 

I'm not saying my stance is the correct stance, I'm not saying I have the perfect solution. My point is adding housing may be cool and cheap in the short term, but is it good in the long-term? Are we even ready for it? Do we have enough players to support it? What about our current areas? There is so many potentially devastating side effects or consequences that we can not ignore. If the majority disagrees with me, I will of course respect that and add more housing, but is it good for the community as a whole, is it the right decision?  
 

 

I really do see your concern @norrig. I really do. But my suggestion here not only advocates for just housing, but for other properties as I mentioned, businesses. In one of my paragraphs, I mentioned exactly how these businesses organically produce traffic, which then produces roleplay.

 

Though, as you stated, there are indeed daily discussions of this topic. The map is really huge, and we can't strive to bring a very exact perfect experience to the table. Players will still be spread across the map as usual even if homes were to be added across the map or not, a difference wouldn't be made at all. We can't seclude players into a specific area of the map. Though, everyone would easily be able to stumble onto roleplay activity. But if we did open the map out, it's logical to conclude that it would be a bit difficult to find some players. Which makes this topic even more difficult to discuss and to come to a conclusion.

 

I honestly feel like player housing wouldn't make the situation worse, where there's already players scattered across the map as is. Should we add more player housing? Yes, though I would like it in this form than having multiple admins run around, spamming some command or something to lay down a house. 

 

 

8 minutes ago, Ingram said:

No.

Reason: Gonna be hell of a job to handle house requests, gonna be arguments, people gonna want to buy that same property, real estate money hunger players will abuse it and things will fuck up that every property will be on some sort of auction this way, no.

"Gonna be hell of a job to handle house request..."

 

It'll make things more organized rather than adding 500 houses in one area that a small majority probably won't buy.

 

"Gonna be arguments, people gonna want to buy that same property."

 

Like the saying goes, you snooze you lose. First come, first serve. Though, it's up to the player to go about selling it in the future.

 

"Real estate money hunger players will abuse it..."

 

Like construction companies, I suggested Real Estate companies to be a factor in selling the property, it doesn't mean that one company would go about owning it. I just wanted to suggest an RP interaction to this suggestion. It's up to the community if they'd want this in or not. Besides, I'm sure property management will deal with something like this if it goes south.

 

"...on some sort of auction this way, no."

 

I know, I hate the idea of auctions and hated them ever since. In no way did I specifically mention a property should be auctioned off. I don't think that assumption was necessary..

[Guest Ingram]

You seem to focus so much on what you want you dismiss the logic of it.

[Atiku]

I feel as though there should be the potential to request for certain houses or areas, but you'd need a seriously good reason and application for wanting to move there. For example, say you've had a good faction in an area without much or houses for a period of time, if you wrote a good application requesting for some houses they could be added.

 

However, there really shouldn't be a system where people can be like "oooo I like that house, I'll have that one please" because that's creating unnecessary work, would lead to people who just job grind hogging up all the good property and in the long-term could have some pretty negative implications for the server going forward. Unless there's a real reason why your character/faction should have a house, the current stock of housing is fine.

Edited May 9, 2018 by Atiku

[Topinambour]

While I understand the rationale behind not wanting to spread the playerbase too thin, I am not entirely sure having properties more spread out would make the issue worse somehow.

 

Some areas, like Sandy Shores or Paleto, cater to a very specific type of RP (countryside for Paleto, methhead redneck in Sandy). Making properties available there could indeed drive some players away from central LS and create local communities, which would essentially reduce the amount of people in central LS. 

 

This being said, it's not necessarily the case for all areas. Many players will want to get a place because it makes sense for their character to live there, but not necessarily remain restricted to that area. E.g.: I bought a place in Alta for my char because she's a downtown rat and loves city centers, but I have no specific plan to stay there and never leave. I go there when I have some interior RP to do like a housewarming party, when I log off, and that's it. 

 

The issue, however, is that if a character has no reason to live in Davis, Downtown Vinewood or Mirror Park, he's kind of screwed. He will have to either RP living in his car until (hopefully, someday) more properties are added in the proper area that makes sense for his character, or he will have to change his character concept and visual identity to fit whatever is available. 

 

Of course it's not a major compromise, but it's sad that such a compromise has to be done, since it's not as necessary as one would think. Most players don't restrict themselves or their RP to the area where they own a property. Especially since in most cases, people who own a property and want to hang out there will hang out inside: so whether they're inside in Mirror Park or inside in Chumash won't change much overall. ^^ 

[shaobadman]

i really like jam's suggestion for the overall method of adding more houses

 

perhaps in the future you can set up polls for the next neighbourhood in which houses will be set up, for people to vote on