"guild housing launched in EQ2 and saw Qeynos and Freeport die virtually over night."

MMOExposed

Housing as described here is HIGHLY unlikely. In multiple interviews Hartsman has stated that if it ever comes it will not be easy to get and also have very few if any amenities. He launched guild housing in EQ2 and saw Qeynos and Freeport die virtually over night. He sees functional housing as a detriment to the over all server community. It is also why there are not bankers and AH in every major zone as well (another interview). He wants to basically force people into the cities to keep them feeling "alive".



Here is just one of the multitude of interviews where he addresses the topic. I selected this one because he is sounding the most diplomatic here http://www.riftwatchers.com/2011/03/...n-the-way-out/ . In otgers he is much more dogmatic hence the "eye roll" comment by the interviewer. It's about 1 min 47 secs from the end.



So might we get some sort of housing? Yeah. At this same time I think it is pretty clear NO amentities. Just look at the guild perks and dummies in the court yard. These are all EQ2 guild hall amenities implemented without the guild hall because he sees what he implemented in EQ2 as a mistake.

I saw this discussion over on Rift, when the topic on Player/Guild Housing came up. Logically it makes sense, that cities would become underpopulated if the player houses and guild halls are too useful and too enjoyable. Why go to a player city, when you can chill out in your Guild Hall or personal virtual house.



this seems to be the main fear developers have against player housing now days, because in game cities would depopulate.



What's the solution to this flaw, in MMORPGs?



Until there a proper way to handle this issue, I don't expect most MMO to have this feature. Maybe a few indies and sandboxes, but I would like this to be a feature found in the general population of MMORPGs. If some developers say they fear issues with this feature, I think it would be best if more minds could come up with the solution.

PyscoJuggalo

"What's the solution to this flaw, in MMORPGs? "

 

Rental property in NPC Cities.  There, next unsolvable complicated problem please.

MMOExposed

Originally posted by PyscoJuggalo

"What's the solution to this flaw, in MMORPGs? "
 
Rental property in NPC Cities.  There next unsolvable complicated problem please.

 

Wouodnt that lead to the same issue?

KenFisher

No surprise really.  Instancing kills main world activity.

PTED

I think Anarchy Online (AO) and to an extent Puzzle Pirates has solved or at least worked around this with instanced housing hubs.

In AO, there would be an apartment block present where you could go to your particular house. In Puzzle Pirates, each type of shop (Smith, Tailor, Shipwright, etc..) would show a list of different shops run by various players that you could enter.

To extend this to a game where you have player controlled cities, you could have specially designated buildings that allow you to traverse various instances of the same physical location. Perhaps even offer a service where someone pays to have their shop being the default instance.

GMan3

    Personally, I think the solution is fairly simple.  Make your Guild Housing so that it has a "Guild Bank" terminal (or Player Housing with a "Personal Bank" terminal), but pretty much nothing else except cosmetics.  Also allow players to bring other players in so you can show it off.

dreamscaper

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

 

 

 

This. Non-instanced housing kills this problem dead.

KenFisher

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

 

I agree.  Personally I favor purchase rather than build, but only because it's easier to program. 

Loke666

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

Well said.

It was instancing that killed Q and Freep, not guildhouses.

Darwa

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

 

 

Something that I thought worked rather well in Vanguard.

Loke666

Originally posted by Robokapp

build...buy...you get the idea. the house is just a house. a pair of walls with an interior. not something behind a loading screen.

not something where people go into an vanish from the outside (virtual) world.

it's simple. they have to complicate it with instancing. it can be so simple...does every building have a loading screen when you get through the door? no. why would a player house need to?

Because every town just have about 6 -25 houses for players in them.

But yeah, it is mainly lazy devs that is behind the whole problem. Let player rent uninstanced houses, and if they don't pay the rent they would eventually get evicted, like IRL so noone who has quit hogs all the good houses.

JimyHumuHumu

 Tibia did something similar, rentable houses. It worked so well in that game, but not sure if its gonna work in mainstream themepark games.

In tibia you had full loot pvp, open world, and people were actually fighting over some of better houses (some with terraces and stuff ). Its basically UO-lite (with just fighting and housing ), but its isometric view really works the best with said rentable houses, as you could place stuff on the floor for people to look at it when passing by (thru the window or doors). And that game still has like 50-60k players online at any given time, i believe? Despite having worse graphics than UO :P My point being, if implemented well, out of those 60k people, you couldnt find a single person who wouldnt want one of houses in that game, because it was well worth it. And it wasnt instanced.

And also, no city only had 10-20 spots each, some had 100's and you had to pay rent every 2 weeks or so, or your house goes back to auction. Im sure how adding a few houses to each town in any mmo couldnt be such a huge problem? Instanced housing usually just ends up as glorified warehouse, so i actually prefer no housing at all than some crappy instance nobody but its owner gets to see.

Cactus-Man

Originally posted by dreamscaper

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

 

 

 

This. Non-instanced housing kills this problem dead.

That doesn't solve the problem at all though,

The issue being brought up is redundancy, having two things that perform the same function means players will find the one that is the most fun or efficient and largely ignore the other.

It doesn't matter if it is instanced or not, if you can do the same things in your house and cities then there is little reason for players to use both.

The only way to solve redundancy is remove one of the options or give the options totally different functionalities.

MMOExposed

Originally posted by Robokapp

build...buy...you get the idea. the house is just a house. a pair of walls with an interior. not something behind a loading screen.
 
not something where people go into an vanish from the outside (virtual) world.
 
it's simple. they have to complicate it with instancing. it can be so simple...does every building have a loading screen when you get through the door? no. why would a player house need to?
 
 
edit: adding onto this idea. I looks at various "npc cities" like stormwind or the few towns I visited in lineage 2. big huge buildings...with one big room and 2 guys sitting in a corner. looking at stormwind for example, how many buildings and stores actually serve a prupose?
 
they're struggling to create cities of "city-like" sizes because they have nothing to fill the builings up with. This is where we can come in. We can make cities, make them grow, by expanding on outskirts, and they only need to give us a handful of key administrative structures like bank, action house, maybe a general goods store etc. We can settle the fields around and form the city. save them the task of figuring out what pointless npc to put in nameless building #23321. should he sell roasted rats or shoe strings?

 

Problem: how would a city like in the WoW example you listed, support persistent player housing for the entire server population?





yeah even with instances inside the persistent player house, wouldn't that still lead to the same issues of Instanced player housing, in that players would go there rather than hang out in the cities?

MMOExposed

Originally posted by Robokapp

naturally a capital city will be
 
1) on a large river or lake, usually river.
2) in a large open field for room for future development.
 
this is true hystorically. well a big open field would easily give room for many houses to be installed. they can have 'upkeep'...with gradual decay if not payed until they stop existing. just so the area isnt littered with crap. can have weekly upkeep and maybe 5 stages of deterioriation (1 per week) and on 6th week full removal.
 
it's...to me its simple. and a town in an open field gives ample space for beginner quests and professions and whatnot to be exercised. the "field" itself could be the hub - not the city. right? space as he asset of value in this context. Maybe as population (measured in numbr of houses) grows, stuff can randomly spawn around the town like ...I'm thinking Majesty here where graveyards, sewers and other monster-spewing things appear naturally as the town grows...
 
there's potential for some great sand here imo. without taking away from the normal gameplay.

 

Well what about the city that's inside a mountain volcano?

what about a city that's inside a sewer? What about a city that's on a tall Clift? What about a city that's in a pyramid? What about a city build onto a giant boat or a giant floating turtle?




well how you suggest these persistent player houses work in a city designed to be unique like the list above?

MMOExposed

Originally posted by JimyHumuHumu

 Tibia did something similar, rentable houses. It worked so well in that game, but not sure if its gonna work in mainstream themepark games.
In tibia you had full loot pvp, open world, and people were actually fighting over some of better houses (some with terraces and stuff ). Its basically UO-lite (with just fighting and housing ), but its isometric view really works the best with said rentable houses, as you could place stuff on the floor for people to look at it when passing by (thru the window or doors). And that game still has like 50-60k players online at any given time, i believe? Despite having worse graphics than UO :P My point being, if implemented well, out of those 60k people, you couldnt find a single person who wouldnt want one of houses in that game, because it was well worth it. And it wasnt instanced.
And also, no city only had 10-20 spots each, some had 100's and you had to pay rent every 2 weeks or so, or your house goes back to auction. Im sure how adding a few houses to each town in any mmo couldnt be such a huge problem? Instanced housing usually just ends up as glorified warehouse, so i actually prefer no housing at all than some crappy instance nobody but its owner gets to see.

 

Did that game even have NPC cities? If so, were they only buildings? If a game has NPC cities, I would like them to be interesting in design, such as Ironforge in WoW which is built into a mountain/volcano .can something like that be built into a MMO by players? What about some of the cities seen in GW2, can that be built by players in any sort of MMO?

jezvin

Houseing dosn't make sense with cities

If you want people to live in the cities they would need apartments, houses are usually far away from cities and built around smaller communities

best thing is for instanced apartments something like FFXI where you have your mog house

Other than that there is simply no room in a city for houseing it takes up way to much space.

Unless you do what GW2 is doing and gives everyone a whole district where they could have their house but that seems a bit much really.

MMOExposed

Originally posted by jezvin

Houseing dosn't make sense with cities
If you want people to live in the cities they would need apartments, houses are usually far away from cities and built around smaller communities
best thing is for instanced apartments something like FFXI where you have your mog house
Other than that there is simply no room in a city for houseing it takes up way to much space.
Unless you do what GW2 is doing and gives everyone a whole district where they could have their house but that seems a bit much really.

 

Well since in gw2 the house district is Instanced away from the city, doesn't that cause the same effect of Instanced housing, in that it removes players from the city?



player housing seem like a interesting concept feature if done well. But I like the interesting npc city designs that developers make. I havnt seen a MMO with player made cities, come close to the design that I seen from developer made cities.

Hedeon

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Originally posted by jezvin

 

 

Well since in gw2 the house district is Instanced away from the city, doesn't that cause the same effect of Instanced housing, in that it removes players from the city?



player housing seem like a interesting concept feature if done well. But I like the interesting npc city designs that developers make. I havnt seen a MMO with player made cities, come close to the design that I seen from developer made cities.

dont know how it will be in gw2 with this, but main reason the big cities went dead in EQ2 is that everything you need is in the guild house....auction, tradeskill trainers, portals.... everything you d need.

TheLizardbones

Player housing is like many other game features that requires the rest of the game to be designed around the idea of it existing. You can't just add player housing to a game and magically make the game better. Just like harsh death penalties and player shops. For it to work and make the game better, you need something similar to Ultima Online or Dark Age of Camelot.

For housing to work in a game like Rift, players would have to use the housing a minimal amount of time...basically as a place to park their character when they log out or for the people who want to role play having a house. The only utility feature you could have would be a trophy room. Don't even get started on thinking up housing 'camps' outside of the cities...that would require a very large rewrite of the game's code and it's not going to happen.

So, instanced housing, inside the city with minimal features, serving as an alternative to getting 'rested XP' from a cantina or bar. If you want something more, you'll have to play a different game because more robust housing requires a game built around the idea that the player housing is going to exist and that it's going to be a main feature of the game.

jezvin

Originally posted by MMOExposed

 

 

Well since in gw2 the house district is Instanced away from the city, doesn't that cause the same effect of Instanced housing, in that it removes players from the city?



player housing seem like a interesting concept feature if done well. But I like the interesting npc city designs that developers make. I havnt seen a MMO with player made cities, come close to the design that I seen from developer made cities.

Both cities are kinda the same thing, developers have to give the players what they use to build the cities

Darkfall had player made cities that were designed by the developers and only able to be built one way and a lot were pretty cool and different.

Thats what I don't really like about the GW2 thing cause its such a big area, assumeing they have nothing important in there then it would be ok, but if your instanced  house in the city was just like your place to put things/decorate like in FFXI it dosn't bring people away form the city because everything else they do is in the city. and it's just one doorway that everyone goes to.

dagon3

Pretty simple solution , keep it instanced and let people decorate . Give extra rest xp if you log out in a house.

Have xtra bank storage in it but thats it. DO NOT let people put crafting tables in there house or guild halls make everything still needed to play the game in the cities where people will HAVE to go to progress there toon.

Guild halls same thing decorate, maybe a guild bank , make it so that to get guild buffs etc you visit the guild hall instead of just getting them instantly. NO crafting tables etc once again.

They did that in eq2 and thats why the cities went ghost town. No reason to go there anymore.

Thats my opinion. than add a profession that lets you make things for decoration for the houses and halls.

 

Kyleran

DAOC had the same issue, once player housing was implemented, the cities emptied out.  Like all MMORPG features, there is a plus and minus to every feature, I enjoyed hanging out in my guild's villiage (guild hall and players houses around a small lake) but did miss the interaction in cities.

A couple of ideas to prevent this.

1)  Don't allow player housing to be totallyself sufficient.  Force people to return to the cities to craft, (or heal, or trade)  I know in EQ2 my guild had 10 or more people crafting in our Guild house's basement crafting room. Take that away and those folks would have been at the crafting stages outside our front door. 

2)  Limit the number of houses like they did in Lineage 2 and put them up for auction when one comes available. Only the rich get a house and it is close to the city.

3)  Or in a PVP environment, make players fight over them like is the case in a game like DF or EVE.

Or accept the fact players really don't want to interact with random strangers all that much, they'd much prefer to hang out with their guildmates.  In earlier MMO's this would have been a mistake, but with today's game community I easily understand where this attitude comes from.

 

 

Mendel

Originally posted by Cactus-Man

Originally posted by dreamscaper

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

 

 

 

This. Non-instanced housing kills this problem dead.

That doesn't solve the problem at all though,

The issue being brought up is redundancy, having two things that perform the same function means players will find the one that is the most fun or efficient and largely ignore the other.

It doesn't matter if it is instanced or not, if you can do the same things in your house and cities then there is little reason for players to use both.

The only way to solve redundancy is remove one of the options or give the options totally different functionalities.

I'm with Cactus-Man here.  Having dedicated space for housing doesn't really eliminate the problem, it changes it.  Non-instanced housing, even rented, means that there is a draw to pull players from the 'city centers'.

And non-instancing brings other issues, as well.  Games don't currently have mechanisms for 'ownership' of real estate within the continuous world.  The developers have to keep other people out of the space you've rented, and that's pretty easy to do with a loading screen.  Additionally, there's a whole security issue.  How many people are willing to put down their ultravaluable Sword_Of_Uberness_081623 when just anyone can pick it up?  So, it's your room/house/palace, if the developers don't keep interlopers away, your sword will be looted almost before you can blink.  Normal social rules, conventions and taboos are too easily ignored in a computer game, and implementing such moral behavior into a game would probably be nightmarish.  Most all of the fantasy-based games have some sort of burgler or thief class, even.  I can already hear the 'we wanna break and enter' cry now.

For the forseeable future, instanced housing is easier for the developers to implement.  But I think the issues associated with instanced housing are far easier to live with than a non-instanced alternative.

Loktofeit

Originally posted by PyscoJuggalo

"What's the solution to this flaw, in MMORPGs? "

Rental property in NPC Cities.  There, next unsolvable complicated problem please.

Exactly. Puzzle Pirates is a great example of that. The OP really hasn't played much other than WoW, so a lot of this stuff is foreign to him.

 

"Player housing is like many other game features that requires the rest of the game to be designed around the idea of it existing. You can't just add player housing to a game and magically make the game better." -lizardbones

 

Agreed. The world has to either be designed to accommodate housing or built ot support the mechanics that the housing is introduced to provide. To clarify that second part, no one wants a place to 'live' in an MMO. They want a place for storage, selling, utility, meeting, etc. If the game doesn't support the mechanic being introduced with housing then the housing breaks the design of the game.

 

Some examples:

 

UO was built with the intent of players building and owning their own cities. It was made withthe intent of players shopping, fighting and crafting in houses. Houses added value to those areas of gameplay, enriching the player gathering experience. Conversely, house placement was not regulated when it was introduced, and hunting grounds were covered in what was often referred to as 'urban sprawls' - in that aspect, houses broke hunting.

 

AC introduced housing away from the cities. Much of AC's gameplay was centered around meeting in key cities (Mayoi, Arwic, Qalabar, Eastham). This emptied the cities and broke player interaction.

 

EVE added outposts that players could own and battle over. This was directly in line with the design of the game, giving players not only more places to gather but more reasons to gather there.

 

Loktofeit

Originally posted by darwa

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

Something that I thought worked rather well in Vanguard.

Worked well in UO, as well.