Poll: Apartment Pricing

[Vanth]

Please respond with the typical/average level of your experience with all your characters that have had apartments.

[mansa]

I found - Rent was hard to make when I was playing a leader in a clan, but very easy to make when I was an independent.

[Malken]

I found - Rent was hard to make when I was playing a leader in a clan, but very easy to make when I was an independent.

Correction, for me. Rent was hard to make when I was playing in a clan, leader or not, but VERY easy to make when I'm an independent.

[Gunnerblaster]

Lots of perks come with an apartment. Both obvious and not so.

Depends on where your renting, the security, likeliness that it'll be ransacked, etc.

With an independant, Non-clan PC, I could probably pull in enough to cover rent from time to time.

[Gimfalisette]

I agree with the above statements. Rent is very difficult for clanned characters to cover, assuming they want to rent a place with reasonable security and space. (One room with basically no security since it can be picked by any newbie burglar is not what I'd call reasonable.) Covering rent, for indie characters, seems to be a breeze.

Examples:
-- The cheapest apartments in Allanak cost approximately 250 coins per RL week. They are one room and easily pickable. IIRC, it's about the same in Tuluk--possibly more like 150 coins per RL week.
-- The next level up of apartments in Allanak or Tuluk costs approximately 400 to 600 coins per RL week. These are two-room places which are secure enough that they generally aren't burgled constantly.
-- A basic Kadian or Salarri hunter makes 500 coins per IC month (every 2 RL weeks) after their probationary period. They also get free food and water.
-- A basic militia or Legions soldier makes 250 coins or less per IC month (every 2 RL weeks) after promotion. They also get free food or water.

So pretty much what you see in the cities is that clanned characters are always rooming together, at least 2 to 3 per apartment, and often still have difficulty covering the rent. Most clanned characters who do have apartments, seem to be able to "sneak" some kind of money on the side besides just their clan salary, or they'd have no way to afford apartments.

[Medena]

Most of my clanned commoner characters have considered an apartment to be a luxury beyond their means.  The couple of them who did get one did so only after they'd had several promotions and had a fair amount of coins tucked away in the bank.

[Rindan]

It depends.  If I am in a clan, it is pretty much ruled out because clannies just don't make enough and generally have a barracks that suits just fine.  If I am an independent criminal, it is very hard to make rent because crime generally doesn't pay all that well.  If I am an independent who just walks over 'sid mints, err, goes mining, then the cost is trivial.

The real issue with being an independent and keeping an apartment, especially if you are not mining, is that your income tends to come in starts and stops, but you have to pay for your apartment at fixed intervals.  This is further complicated by the fact that if you get an apartment and play less or take a little break, your apartment vanishes or you can't afford it.  Apartments can be more of a pain in the ass than they are worth.

[Lizzie]

I picked #3 but this part "but I have no problem making it" is untrue. I don't have a big problem making it, but it isn't insignificant either. Most of the time it seems just about right.

[Dalmeth]

Whenever I have an independent, it's generally a simple matter of getting coin.  The trouble is, I hate scrabbling for coin.  Whenever my character gets to a comfortable place in coin, he spends his time either socializing or expanding  into new areas, exploratory work.  No matter how you look at it, rent takes a significant chunk of coin.  So while the cost of an apartment is significant, I'm always able to take some measure to get enough money to pay the rent.

[path]

What Lizzie said is exactly true for me.

[Fathi]

I've never rented an apartment solo with a character for any time longer than one rent cycle. Any time I've ever actually used an apartment as a place to live, it's been a fairly nice apartment rented with anywhere from 1 to 3 other people, so rent was never an issue since I only had to pay it every few cycles.

[Kalden]

250 coins a RL week. 9250 a RL year. 9250/8.5 = ~1090 coins per Zalanthan year. This seems at least middle-class to me, especially when you consider the extra costs of food and water. People need around half a gallon of water per day, so 25 sid there. Food is at least another 25 sid on top of that, and probably triple that. 50*693=17325 coins + 1090 = 18415 coins per year, which would require an income of about 28 coins per day to pay. Of course, the rent can be covered by a few people, which significantly decreases the cost. Looking at the actual "virtual" costs of living is different than the coded costs, of course, but I think it's best when they match up.

I'd like lower-scaled apartments available for 50-100 coins per month. We already have suitable ones IG, in the SW corner of the city. Unfortunately they aren't for rent. Plus 'rinthers should have even cheaper apartments available in the 'rinth, as well as even shittier, cheaper food. It'd be nice if there were some empty rooms in the 'rinth that were just save rooms, and people could have the option of installing an easily breakable/pickable lock (I do think cheap locks/doors should be breakable). Since the 'rinth isn't going to be added to, these are suggestions for the future slum areas.

Coming from a mainly criminal background, rent has always been very difficult for me to afford, to the point of not being worth it. I'm also very active when I'm playing, so the water&food costs hit me hard. Independent hunters can sometimes get a lot of food&water for free, but I don't really know what their financial situation is. When I play a ranger, I'm usually a d-elf, so I can't add much comment there. This does offer some limited insight into why there is a dearth of criminals: the economics of playing a criminal are more difficult than the economics of other classes.

[Cutthroat]

I don't know. 250 always seemed like a lot to me for a pretty crappy one-room apartment. I think people in my apartment-infested neighborhood in NYC, I would guess people tend to pay roughly 25% of their monthly income or so on an apartment, per month. If you think about it that way, people getting paid 250 'sid a month and needing to dump 100% of it into an apartment every month seems somewhat unrealistic. Also, people making 1000 sid a month and wanting to spend 25% of it on their apartment probably wouldn't like to stay in a 250 'sid dump anyway.

[Lizzie]

What's all this about 250 sids every RL week? It's once every TWO RL weeks for the cheapest places. I've seen the "nicer" places go for around 450-500 every two weeks. If you think the cheapest apartments cost 250 sids every RL week, then you're looking in the wrong buildings.

[YellowCactus]

Not enough options.  I'm more of the opinion that rent is WAY WAY WAY too cheap right now.
-Yc

[Maybe42or54]

Well, I've only had two apartments. That is because only two characters of mine could afford it. I've had Sargeants, and lieutenants in the bynn, merchant house merchants, noble house employees, merchant house employees, and a few independents.

I've always wished the apartment prices were a different amount based on if you are a local, a house employee, or the militia soldier.

[Barzalene]

In Arm 2, I'd like to see far less people renting apartments. What I'd love instead, are places that offer storage, and inns that offer various options, from meeting rooms for some affordable amount of sid, to rooms of various levels of plushness that cost less to rent than a comparable apartment does for the month but more than an apartment does for a night. I think that would mean that people could do whatever they need to be doing that requires a room, but spending less time locked up in apartments alone or in small groups for more extended periods of time.

[Gimfalisette]

What's all this about 250 sids every RL week? It's once every TWO RL weeks for the cheapest places. I've seen the "nicer" places go for around 450-500 every two weeks. If you think the cheapest apartments cost 250 sids every RL week, then you're looking in the wrong buildings.

Apartments                                                         (General)

  Many inhabitants of Zalanthas' major cities live in less than ideal
conditions, and even a dirty room with no more than four walls and a ceiling
can be considered a luxury.

  Some apartment complexes will allow you to rent rooms there.  At the
entrance of such a place there will be an NPC that responds to the
following commands.  Not all living spaces are rentable via an NPC and thus
some require other means to come by.

list                       View each apartment, its number, and its
                            price per 125 days of rental.
rent apartment (number)    Pay for and rent a given apartment.
rent renew                 Adds 125 days to your time, but cannot make
                            your time exceed 300 days. You will pay a
                            fraction of your rent for early payment.
rent time                  See how many days are remaining on your
                            apartment.
rent with (person)         Add a co-owner of your apartment.
rent with nobody           Remove all co-owners of your apartment.

Examples:
  > rent apartment 5
  > rent with elf

Note:
  If your time reaches zero your room may be rented to someone else; pay
your rent before this happens.  You can only rent one apartment at a time,
and there may be other limitations on what apartments allow you, how
many people can live in each apartment, and so on.

  Note that "days" in this help file are given as in-character days.
See the help file on time for information on converting from in-character
to real-life time and back.

See also:
  time

125 days per rent cycle in game, divided by 16 game days per RL day, is 7.8 RL days per rent cycle. All rent cycles are thus approximately one RL week. Like I stated, the cheapest apartments in Allanak are 250 coins per RL week.

[Malken]

My 30 days old Kadius Lieutenant could not afford an apartment, it was paid by his boss after many years of service, but my 1 day old independant "traders" (rangers, warriors, merchants, burglars, assassins, magickers) can all afford apartments easily.

On a slight derail, I don't understand why clanned people don't get at least triple of what they make now.. Sometimes I just have to laugh when someone thinks that their offer of free water and a cot is the greatest thing in the world (even if ICly, it probably is).

[Cerelum]

On a slight derail, I don't understand why clanned people don't get at least triple of what they make now.. Sometimes I just have to laugh when someone thinks that their offer of free water and a cot is the greatest thing in the world (even if ICly, it probably is).

Agree totally, another good point and reason why I very rarely am clanned.

J-rod

[Salt Merchant]

Rent is especially bad in Storm. I think it's meant for characters existing on a tailor's income there. For an independent spice hunter, just paying for water is a problem, much less an apartment.

[Rindan]

Rent is especially bad in Storm. I think it's meant for characters existing on a tailor's income there. For an independent spice hunter, just paying for water is a problem, much less an apartment.

Spice sifting is for suckers and "secret" magikers and defliers.

[Maybe42or54]

On a slight derail, I don't understand why clanned people don't get at least triple of what they make now.. Sometimes I just have to laugh when someone thinks that their offer of free water and a cot is the greatest thing in the world (even if ICly, it probably is).

Agree totally, another good point and reason why I very rarely am clanned.

J-rod

I don't think that is a problem. I think the problem is there is too many people being unbias when they should be bias. Clannies should get a discounted rent because they are good for the money, while those foreign jobs should pay more as they probably ain't going to be paying again.

[flurry]

As others have pointed out, there seems to be a large disparity in affordability for clanned and unclanned characters.

For me, I haven't found in particularly easy with any characters, clanned or not.  I've had characters who kept apartments through several rent cycles, but it would normally take almost all their earnings to cover it.

I think the affordability is -highly- dependent on someone's approach to the game.  One flaw I think the economy has currently is that it rewards powerplaying too much.  Some people push the economy to the limit and amass ridiculous fortunes.  When that happens, luxury apartments -- even one in every building -- seems to be a trivial expense. /rant

[Akaramu]

On a slight derail, I don't understand why clanned people don't get at least triple of what they make now.. Sometimes I just have to laugh when someone thinks that their offer of free water and a cot is the greatest thing in the world (even if ICly, it probably is).

Agree totally, another good point and reason why I very rarely am clanned.

J-rod

Why is making large amounts of money such a big deal for every one of your PC's?