[ARCHIVE] Lot pricing strategy

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ddfczm

ddfczm

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Hey everyone.

I've started working on some of the lot management backend. Although it probably wont be enforced for a while I did a bit of work on land pricing and figured this may be an interesting topic for discussion.

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  1. Does anyone remember anything about the original pricing strategy?
  2. Failing that, how do you think we should price lots?
This is what I've implemented for now:
  • Land has a base price depending on terrain type. Rock is 3000, Grass is 4000 and Snow and sand are 5000.
  • The higher the elevation the greater the price. $19 per elevation increment (there are 255 increments)
  • Every edge that faces water adds 5000 to the price
  • If every edge faces water (an island), 10000 is added to the price

Thoughts?
 
If I remember correctly, what you implemented comes very very close to the original games pricing.
Islands and beachside lots were the most expansive ones, along with snow, because they reflect that terrain in the actual lot just like the Sims 1 does on Vacation Island. Rock and grass were sort of moderate to cheap because they're the "normal" green grass lots, though if you wanted to buy a lot on a hill or mountain you would have to pay more because EAxis just loved those "house on the hill" references...
 
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Looks amazing! And yes, I do believe the pricing of the lots are correct that you have, since the beginning funds we got were 10K simoleans if I'm not mistaken... very nice work Rhys! :D:cool:
 
This scaling looks like it makes sense. I don't think anyone worked out how the pricing worked back when the game was online, but this looks pretty close. Make sure you also consider lots that are on steep ground as unbuyable, and mirror the logic to our client. I only really know of one video which shows some lot prices...

Tori Sim said:
Looks amazing! And yes, I do believe the pricing of the lots are correct that you have, since the beginning funds we got were 10K simoleans if I'm not mistaken... very nice work Rhys! :D:cool:
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I didn't do anything... :p
 
RHY3756547 said:
Make sure you also consider lots that are on steep ground as unbuyable, and mirror the logic to our client.
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Will do.

@mallhew Yea Luc and the EA Land team worked on a design for dynamic lot pricing based on the economy. I suspect we will end up with a simple economy first and then maybe some dynamic elements if there is much demand for it. EA Land did it for pay out / pay in reasons I think Not sure pay outs are high on the priority list here although I could see pay ins used as a way to help fund servers.
 
Personally, I'd just add in the dynamic economy elements since the present money making objects were easy to beat in the original and will likely remain so in FreeSO.
 
I believe there was one additional factor worked into lot prices, and that was your neighbors. I seem to recall it being more expensive to buy a lot in the middle of a big neighborhood (one of the ones that ended up on the city map) than it was to buy an identical type lot somewhere else.

I could be remembering wrong though.
 
ddfczm said:
Will do.

@mallhew Yea Luc and the EA Land team worked on a design for dynamic lot pricing based on the economy. I suspect we will end up with a simple economy first and then maybe some dynamic elements if there is much demand for it. EA Land did it for pay out / pay in reasons I think Not sure pay outs are high on the priority list here although I could see pay ins used as a way to help fund servers.
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I found it evry strange how obessed the game was regarding fixing the economy, taking Real Life Transactions out of the picture, yeah, there were several billionaires in the game but the game wasn't "broken" enough was it? I never enjoyed the dynamic, it broke the game in numerous ways (objects like buyable fences skyrocketed because there were so many duplicates).

I'd much prefer a simple economy system in general without any dynamic changes. To me it was the enjoyment of roleplaying/hanging out that really made The Sims Online TSO, not the fact that the economy was basically "broken".
 
RHY3756547 said:
This scaling looks like it makes sense. I don't think anyone worked out how the pricing worked back when the game was online, but this looks pretty close. Make sure you also consider lots that are on steep ground as unbuyable, and mirror the logic to our client. I only really know of one video which shows some lot prices...


I didn't do anything... :p
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Oops, my bad, needed more coffee I suppose lol :p
great job DD! :D:D
 
TheMarshmallowBear said:
I found it evry strange how obessed the game was regarding fixing the economy, taking Real Life Transactions out of the picture, yeah, there were several billionaires in the game but the game wasn't "broken" enough was it? I never enjoyed the dynamic, it broke the game in numerous ways (objects like buyable fences skyrocketed because there were so many duplicates).

I'd much prefer a simple economy system in general without any dynamic changes. To me it was the enjoyment of roleplaying/hanging out that really made The Sims Online TSO, not the fact that the economy was basically "broken".
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TSO was pretty broken after a while. Ironically, the biggest offender was jobs. Part of their design was to help get a jump start without waiting on money lots to open. Unfortunately, they paid out less then money lots. Since the economy remained the same, they were quickly abandoned by the players.
 
I think a good balance would be making it easy to start out and get property, but difficult to get the best and stay rich (people would need active roommates to sustain mansion). Perhaps utility bills like in single player would enforce this better. Roleplaying in TSO is a lot of fun but having more gameplay possibilities is never a bad thing.
 
Would be hard to define, and would need to modify test trees on all electrical objects. The return of the repo man could be interesting (effects still in tso), but it would be a challenge to make him take only buyable goods and not like, your pets. Could always lock sims out of their house when they get too far in debt (10k?), at which point their debt would freeze until they pay it off (go to other people's money lots, borrow money from friends..)

That also raises further questions. Would bills only rack up when the lot is open? Could they rack up when it's closed, but slower? etc.
 
I'm starting to understand why money system (networth, billing, ect...) was never fully implanted in time.
 
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Marvin732 said:
Why ? I don't understand they economic back then
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Well, they had a schedule of course. Networth and billing were shown in previews, alphas, and possibly beta but were taken out at that last moment. Possibly was too complex to finish in time.
 
Lot pricing looks pretty cool, it's starting to resemble the original more and more :)

the problem with the economy is that they never implemented a truly dynamic economy in the game, they said they would get around to it but the all they did was just manually adjust the prices for everything themselves, so i think it actually ended up hurting things a lot more. A truly dynamic economy would use information like payout rates, total amount of money in the economy and other things like that to adjust prices and payouts for everything. Also, if there are too many billionaires in the game, some kind of dynamic progressive tax system or some kind of money sinks would help drain excessive money from the economy.

Maybe richer people can hire NPC's to keep lots online or work as chefs, waiters, maids, etc. at the cost of an hourly fee of some kind. Maybe like hiring temp workers.
 
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