Permanent Ownership of Quarters/Shops/Ships

[Peacewhisper]

There is a very noticeable phenomenon of characters owning choice estates in one city (sometimes multiple with their retainers/family members), but spending all of their time (or even holding government positions) in other settlements.

Please tie ownership of "noble" estates to citizenship.

There's also a very noticeable pattern of these estates not being owned by nobles or people who act like nobles, because the landed noble title or the epic reputation feat let just about anyone buy them and hold them forever. I almost never see them owned by a person with the first name of Lord or Lady.

Usually they are given to friends of the current settlement leader, or held forever by some large faction. Some of these factions seem OOC, as I've accidentally caught them using the same faction for different shops across different characters. And suspiciously, even when these places change owners and all of their occupants, they don't ever seem to change their names. Like a ship of Theseus you have to wonder if it's really the same ship anymore or not.

It makes the noble award feel pointless since you'll rarely get to bid on these places and if you ever get one good luck having any kind of grace period to recruit and fill the rooms before one of these large groups breaks in and sees an empty room then cry bullies you out of it because they "need the space." and "you aren't using it."

Sorry if this post is ranting and overly negative. I think overall the player housing system improved a ton with the introduction of the bidding system. I just think there are still a few glaring instances of abuse and entitlement that have stood out to me over the years of playing. Fix those problems and I think everything will be perfect. Best solution imo is probably a timer so nobody holds any lease for more than a year, and maybe crack down on player made forever factions that aren't essential to a settlement or location just handing the lease back and forth to each other across multiple characters. Oh and get rid of landed nobles. And make Epic Reputation separate from Nobility, they are not the same thing.

[Yensent]

Meanwhile, in the last 2 months three noble homes/estates have gone up to bid in Cordor…a couple of them more than once.

[Peacewhisper]

Meanwhile, in the last 2 months three noble homes/estates have gone up to bid in Cordor…a couple of them more than once.

I don't play in Cordor but remember when they had similar issues. Admittedly it's a very small minority of people hogging quarters like this. The main problem for noble characters is they have to compete in bidding with everyone who has a feat or is buddies with the settlement leader, so noble exclusive housing isn't actually noble exclusive and isn't seen as such, people call them guild halls IC and use them as guild halls. And factions tend to hold properties longer than individual players since they pass the lease back and forth. But that's a tangent that is only barely related to this thread.

[Dr Mantis Toboggan MD]

As the saying goes, it's better to burn out than fade away, use the larger quarter/shop/temple to generate some RP, make some money and then move on before people get bored of you. Hogging properties for real life years seems pretty selfish to me.

[Aeryeris]

I almost never see them owned by a person with the first name of Lord or Lady.

Could you please explain what you mean by this? I don't quite understand.

[Peacewhisper]

I almost never see them owned by a person with the first name of Lord or Lady.

Could you please explain what you mean by this? I don't quite understand.

I mean that noble estates rarely get used as actual noble estates, and instead get used as guild halls for factions. So instead of "House Fancypants" you see stuff like "Barbarian College" or "Raggedy Andy's Clubhouse." And you end up with people wearing potato sacks who are either made landed nobles or just grabbed the epic reputation feat owning these big mansions and talking down to actual nobles who have the noble award from character creation. Sometimes people still refer to them as estates but I just as often see them referred to as guild halls and almost never as noble houses. It's just kind of jarring and immersion breaking but I can't even blame the factions for buying up these properties and using them for that since we've never had actual good guild halls added to the server in any significant number.

Edit2: Please just make the fancy noble mansions actually noble exclusive, and add more guild halls designed for that purpose that people can purchase if they have epic reputation or the settlement leader's blessing. Everyone would be happier.

[Dreams]

It’s worse than that. Factions have a greater bidding power than individuals because they’re able to abuse the system by bidding en masse, then buying internal quarters to trigger the release to the desired member, trying again a few times if it doesn’t work. It happens all across the server and it’s why factions appear to be so embedded in places with those guildhall setups.