[mlaer]

I don't know how Minerealm 5.0 will work. But I guess it will have realms. Once the new map begins, there will probably be a rush for those spawn realms. So I was wondering what do you guys think of these other ideas about the purchasing process of realms to make it more fair. Also, we already know there will be property taxes, so let's discuss those here too.

Purchasing Realms
Auction
-The base price of all realms would be the same. When you try to purchase a realm, it automatically starts a 7 day auction for that realm. To place a bid, you must have enough credits for a higher bid. When you place a bid, your credits are removed from your balance temporarily. The highest bidder after 7 days would win the realm. Other bidders would get their credits back in full.

Peer to Peer
-Realms would sell as normal between players. If the price payed was higher than the market value of the realm, the new market value of the realm would become the price it was sold at.

Property Taxes

Calculated by Property Tax Rate % of Market Value
I think property taxes should be based on the "market value" of your realm. The simplest way to calculate the market value of a realm is dependent on the price that it sold at in auction. The market value of realms will be kept reasonable through the use of regular re-assessment of realms.

And finally once the market value of your realm is calculated, you should be charged the property tax rate every 7 days. Also I think realms should only sell back to the server at the base price, regardless what was payed at auction.

Realm Re-Assessment
All players would have to their realms re-assessed once every so often (month? every 2 months?). The realms would automatically be re-assessed if the "every so often" period runs out. Players could also chose to re-asses their realms more often if they would like, but a maximum frequency of once every 14 days. The main point of this would be to get a fair estimate of the market value of your realm. Re-assessing your realm would take 7 days. If you tried to re-assess your realm, this is what would happen. Other players would have the option to bid on your realm. If nobody bid during those 7 days, the market value of your realm would be reset to the base price of a realm. But if other people bid, then they would be bidding money towards buying that realm. Players would have to put down money towards their bids just like in an auction. At the end of the re-assessment, you would have to make a choice. You could choose to keep the current realm, and it's market value would change to the value of the highest bid. Otherwise you could chose to sell the realm to the server for the base price of a realm. If you chose to sell to the server, then the person who made the highest bid would automatically become the new owner, and would pay that bid amount to the server. You would have 3 days to clean your realm and take whatever you want to keep. After the 3 days, the new owner would get the realm. Other bids would be returned. If you don't do anything, or if you are away from the game at the time of the re-assessment, you will automatically be forced to pay the new tax rate. The value of the realm would be that bid amount.

The Tax Extremes
We should get a good tax rate, that would charge a reasonable amount for realms valued at the base rate as well as the most highly desirable realms. The tax rate might have to change, until we come to a balanced amount. It might not even e linear; base rate might pay X%, 10* base rate might pay more than 10*X%.

I think this way, everyone will have a chance to buy desirable realms at the beginning. Also, realms that are in "high demand" would be naturally forced to pay higher taxes. This way there won't be that many inactive highly desirable realms, and people far away form everyone else could live life with minimal taxes.

I made this post to try and get some constructive discussion going about the future of buying realms and paying taxes. I really hope we can make something with a nice balance. I hope intelli can make this for us (if we like it). I added the option in the poll "Taxes are stupid!" so that people against taxes don't vote against my implementation of taxes. And you really can't be against taxes, since Intelli already said property taxes will be added.

So, what do you think of all these different points?. Since we are going to have taxes, is this how you would like to see them implemented? What do you want to be different?

[ewana1991]

to be honest with you, i think you're making things far too complicated, there is no need to make every realm purchase an auction, because that is just going to drive property prices to crazy heights, making large projects like New Aquaria, Sub Aroura (i know i didn't spell that right) and Sir Daves Cathedral and palaces near impossible to do. It would also allow players to harass others more easily by driving up the price of auctions and buying realms that the first player wants/needs.

My thoughts on property taxes are this: you are charged x% of (the number of realms you own timesed by 10k) on a fortnightly or monthly basisso if you own 5 realms, you would pay say 2% on 50k once a month, or twice a month. That way its fair to everyone. However, if you wanted to tax players by their wealth you'd be better using income tax, but that's a different story! :p
King Spartacus

[mlaer]

Maybe the taxes should not just be based on the market value of your realm.
I think it should also be affected by the market value of the 8 realms that surround your realm.
public realms would of course have the base market value.

So if your realm is surrounded by public realms, and it's market value is X, you would pay less than if your realm was surrounded by private realms of value greater than base value.

[Prodigy9]

It's not a terrible idea, but too complicated for my taste. I'd prefer to not need to keep records of tax information to decide whether to buy a realm.