Another point, especially for malls... I think Mall owners should be able to evict tenants who dont run a shop after X amount of time... since imagine buying a mall where 5/50 shops were running.... 90% of potential income is reduced...
agreed... what should have happened is the mall owners should have "rented" the mall shops out to people, or sold them at super high prices and expect the deed back with return of collateral after a while. Unfortunately, people got greedy, and that never happened.
So before MA performs dispossession of estate property, or even enables other entities like FPC or the mall owners to do such under certain circumstances, there should be at least a rental system for estates available.
agreed.. However, it'll never happen because then MA would be responsible for seeing to it that things were returned, making the database even more bloated, and their chances of getting sued or something a lot greater. Far easier to just say all sales are final.
The alternative, which exists now, is that people that bought the estates want to sell them for more then they paid. That does happen now, but not often enough to keep all monthly maintainence fees paid up...
Drop the fees and that won't happen as much, as DeeDee said. The reason the fees are too much to pay for most estate holders is because they try to sell something, but then find they are up against a virtual Wal-Mart that is literally everywhere - the auctioneers. The Brown Coat Mafia, like real world massive corporations, are crushing local businesses.
One Solution to this in game economic crisis would be to either make all auctions local to the city they are in (no more global or off world buying), make auctions local - you have to go there to the individual auctioneer where the auction was started to pick the stuff up if you win - no more instant winnings and pickup.
Another Solution, which is a lot more logical - drop the rent fees, and move towards a % of profits type of maintainence fee - if the shop owner makes no money, MA makes no money. If shop owner is smart and makes tons, so do the LA owners and MA in the form of taxes. This would make the profits more based on what sells and does not sell, not a monthly subscription fee like a lot of other mmorpgs... Then, MA should hire some real business people to tutor and work with the shop owners - give them real world business advice, tips, etc. Maybe even work with them to set up supply deals, etc. LA owners should do that sort of thing, but they don't, just like real world lazy landlords, lol.