I think it's subjective. I don't think player housing is needed.
I have to admit that I rarely used the housing in eq2 when I tried the game and though I bought something in LOTRO, I also never used it.
I would use it if there was extra storage or there was some benefit. I have to admit that I don't like the idea of crafting in player housing becuase that then takes people out of the cities.
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I prefer games to treat housing as optional, like crafting.
I don't like crafting, so I don't want to be made to craft in a game. If other people want to craft, that's fine.
I'm the same way. I despise crafting the way it's done in games. I'd rather just buy things off of people who like crafting. If a game requires crafting or if it looks like I'm going to undergo a lot of hardship if I don't craft I tend to stop playing that game.
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If there's 1 thing that LotRO kinda solved when it came to housing it was the whole "instances vs non-instance" by placing you in a instanced neighborhood that you shared with a certain number of other people because each neighborhood had a limited number of house slots. Now, if houses actually served any purpose other than as your strong boxes, there could've been some neighborhood-level cooperation stuff (quests or other activities).
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
I honestly don't care about player housing, except as a place to store things I don't want to lug around with me all the time. In any game I've ever played where they had player housing, I've never once done anything there that meant anything. I don't think anyone ever came over to my "house" more than a handful of times, I don't think I went to anyone else's "house" very often either. Therefore, decorating my "house" seems pointless if there's hardly anyone who will ever see it.
I'm there to play a game, not show off. Most people are the same.
Wow, this is the first time ever. I'm actually in complete agreement with Cephus!
I've really never seen the point of player housing except as an extended bank. I'd rather be out playing the game than, you know.. logging into a game from my house to.. be in my house. Give me dragons to fight and undead to battle in an MMO, if I wanted to build a nice house I'd load up a game of Sims 3.
I like player housing.. it gives me a hobby to fool around with like fishing.. lol
No offence, but I think questing isnt' needed in a GOOD mmo.. Oh granted, there are times doing an epic quest would be fun, like the EQ1 one's.. But running back and forth from a quest hub (town or camp) to the mob to gain MOST of your exp is boring and agrivating.. I mean really...
Quest Giver says, "I need for you to kill 10 orcs" ------- (quest complete)
Quest Giver says, "well done, however did you happen to collect their teeth, I need 5 of them"........... ( GRRR quest complete)
Quest Giver says, "excellent, oops did I tell you to kill the named one too in the back tent?"......... ( 3rd trip back to the SAME FREAKING CAMP.. quest complete)
This shit was stupid, lazy and a royal pain the arse.. I don't ever remember Frodo or Sam running back and forth to quest givers.. Why can't MMO's just be more like adventuring camps.. IMO todays mmo are to focus'd on NPC involvement and questing.. it's almost like gamers need someone to hold their hand..
I also don't care a bit bout housing, at least not in the sens it is being implemented in any game i had chance to play, namely purly cosmetic vanity thing.
There is a way to change it: logging out in your house could grant you some bonuses, rest xp etc. after coming back. The house's workshop coud be a crafting stations that improves crafing abilities depending on the quality of appliancs it is equipped with and so on, but so far housing is simply to useless and pointless to care for.
It just never pans out to be all people expecti to be or that companies hype it up to be.
UO: Was tolerable but made a mess of the landscape
AC1: Looked nice, implementation was a nightmare IMO, totally under estimated demand
AO: horribly lacklustre
SWG: was ok but ended up being, as someone above said an extended bank, littered the landscape, I did like you could set up a vendor
EQ2: boring, but I did like the fact that you could set up a shop from your instanced apartment
LOTRO: implemented I think just to shut people up about since nothing has been done with them since, nice looking but no real reason to go there other than to drop off loot.
Well, I think you get the idea. The only time I liked player housing was probably SWG. The world was vast enough it wasn't too littered with houses, you could set them up anywhere for the most part, and you could set up a shop out of your house.
The problem I have with housing is implementation. If you make housing too useful, the cities are empty. Not useful enough, empty houses litter the landscape and they serve as little more than virtual vanity decorations.
Other than that, I think they are a waste of time and development resources. If I want to play house decorator, I'll play the sims...or better yet, decorate my own house.
All that being said, I have no problems with them in game for others, I just have no use for them.
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I absolutely grow to LOATHE games that don't care enough about my suspension of disbelief and feeling of "belonging" in their game world to offer me player housing. It literally PISSES ME OFF. If you don't care enough to give players that OPTION....I will eventually (if not right away) cease to care about your bloody game. Period.
And when I say player housing.....I mean highly customizable housing like in EQ2.....NOT like in LotRO.
This shit was stupid, lazy and a royal pain the arse.. I don't ever remember Frodo or Sam running back and forth to quest givers.. Why can't MMO's just be more like adventuring camps.. IMO todays mmo are to focus'd on NPC involvement and questing.. it's almost like gamers need someone to hold their hand..
Frodo and Sam were *cough* spending days~weeks in Mordor avoiding the orcs and everyone else while pretty much traveling a small distance everyday, thanks to Frodo's illness with the Ring.
Now, you wouldn't want to play that, right? Because, after all, just travelling is booooooring when translated to games. How about days of travelling the similar-looking expanse of land with no clear indication of how much further it is till you reach the Mountain? Boring. Even Tolkein cut short the "traveling" bit by just skipping ahead a few days in the book because when put down into narrative form, it's also boring.
I'll amend my first comment to state: Housing isn't necessary in themeparks such as LOTRO, but for games where you can fit housing in without jarring gameplay/lore/etc, I would greatly recommend it, even if it might not be to everyone's tastes. It's one of the few features these days that don't directly involve killing monsters/etc.
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The best player housing I have ever played is definately SWG. That game had so many things wrong with it but had Crafting, Resource Gathering and Player Housing years ahead of any other game in terms of quality. In fact it still does.
Player Housing is apprently quite resource intensive in terms of hardware and databasing. Most games that have it will do it from the ground up, in other words will add it while they developing the game engine initially. I remember a Blizzard dev saying somewhere that if Player Housing was a 5 minute job then it would definately be in WOW by now. Unfortunately, it isn't and takes a lot of planning and dev work to certainly do right.
Would love to see another SWG housing system developed in an MMO.
The italic part is wrong actually.
Blizzard Dev said player housing doesn't fit their vision for their game. Which is to give the players a social feeling through lots of chars on your screen when you are in WoW. Except PVE/PVP group content they prefer people are actually in the 'world' and not holed up in their own 'home'. You lose that 'massive' feeling.
Someone always brings this housing up and I always ask (never get an answer though). How would you solve the problem where everyone don't 'see' each other (since they are all in their house) if you want to give that social experience to your players?
Is it really worth the time to do it right (so old houses don't clutter your world) if it doesn't benefit your players or runs counter to the vision of your game?
And yet instanced dungeons and the phasing mechanic are used quite liverally in WoW, with the same effect of segregating the player population... however most people don't even care.
I think housing is a great addition to an MMO if done well. Not necessarily the 'key,' but definitely worth the time if done correctly. I have memories of people designing and decorating their houses to hold auctions in, it's where guild meetings were done. People would set up an entire casino, or turn it into a large shopping mall with their own vendors.
None of this stuff is necessary. All that can really all be done effectively in a small space where you put an auction house, a guild chat, and a dice mechanic without having to give an individual player anything special, but the point was to offer immersion and freedom.
Having a place to decorate was never important to me. So a random piece of data that only I could access I don't really care about. Having my own house in a world with limited space, where not everyone would have one, made it something I aspired to someday afford.
Originally posted by Ceridith Originally posted by jpnz
Originally posted by honoursword
The best player housing I have ever played is definately SWG. That game had so many things wrong with it but had Crafting, Resource Gathering and Player Housing years ahead of any other game in terms of quality. In fact it still does. Player Housing is apprently quite resource intensive in terms of hardware and databasing. Most games that have it will do it from the ground up, in other words will add it while they developing the game engine initially. I remember a Blizzard dev saying somewhere that if Player Housing was a 5 minute job then it would definately be in WOW by now. Unfortunately, it isn't and takes a lot of planning and dev work to certainly do right. Would love to see another SWG housing system developed in an MMO.
The italic part is wrong actually. Blizzard Dev said player housing doesn't fit their vision for their game. Which is to give the players a social feeling through lots of chars on your screen when you are in WoW. Except PVE/PVP group content they prefer people are actually in the 'world' and not holed up in their own 'home'. You lose that 'massive' feeling. Someone always brings this housing up and I always ask (never get an answer though). How would you solve the problem where everyone don't 'see' each other (since they are all in their house) if you want to give that social experience to your players? Is it really worth the time to do it right (so old houses don't clutter your world) if it doesn't benefit your players or runs counter to the vision of your game? And yet instanced dungeons and the phasing mechanic are used quite liverally in WoW, with the same effect of segregating the player population... however most people don't even care.
Everyone returns to the main city hub from the dungeons and battlegrounds. Now do the same thing with housing...everyone returns to their house. In order for Blizzard to make sure everyone is in the city, the housing would have to be sub-par. To implement housing well, in a way that didn't interfere with their main goal of keeping everyone in the city bopping around together, they'd have to do something different, which would take a lot of work. Nobody at Blizzard has come up with an idea for housing in WoW that wouldn't directly go against their stated goal of making the cities look busy.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Everyone returns to the main city hub from the dungeons and battlegrounds. Now do the same thing with housing...everyone returns to their house. In order for Blizzard to make sure everyone is in the city, the housing would have to be sub-par. To implement housing well, in a way that didn't interfere with their main goal of keeping everyone in the city bopping around together, they'd have to do something different, which would take a lot of work. Nobody at Blizzard has come up with an idea for housing in WoW that wouldn't directly go against their stated goal of making the cities look busy.
And thats the main reason I don't like housing, it can empty out the cities if the houses/guild houses have amenities that are found in the city. Housing needs to provide something different.
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Blizzard says that instanced housing would remove players from the game world.. OK.. I'll buy that..
WAIT..............
Blizzard, with the exception of WG and some dailies YOUR entire end game is instanced.. from BG's, to dungeons to raids.. The game plays like a lobby game.. So.... Blizzard are you just that hypocritally stupid, or are you lying to me? lmaoo I never ever got a reply from Blizzard.. I"m sensing they avoid someone like me because I backed them into a corner they can not come out of .. At times they act like politicians that got caught with their hand in the cookie jar..
I like player housing.. it gives me a hobby to fool around with like fishing.. lol
No offence, but I think questing isnt' needed in a GOOD mmo.. Oh granted, there are times doing an epic quest would be fun, like the EQ1 one's.. But running back and forth from a quest hub (town or camp) to the mob to gain MOST of your exp is boring and agrivating.. I mean really...
Quest Giver says, "I need for you to kill 10 orcs" ------- (quest complete)
Quest Giver says, "well done, however did you happen to collect their teeth, I need 5 of them"........... ( GRRR quest complete)
Quest Giver says, "excellent, oops did I tell you to kill the named one too in the back tent?"......... ( 3rd trip back to the SAME FREAKING CAMP.. quest complete)
This shit was stupid, lazy and a royal pain the arse.. I don't ever remember Frodo or Sam running back and forth to quest givers.. Why can't MMO's just be more like adventuring camps.. IMO todays mmo are to focus'd on NPC involvement and questing.. it's almost like gamers need someone to hold their hand..
But what you are doing is lumping "questing" with "how they are implemented" as opposed to what a quest is.
If you ever played a game like baldur's gate or morrowind or oblivion or "whatever" you are still killing mobs and still questing.
But very rarely are you asked to collect x of y. I do know that Oblvion has a few of those but they sort of fit within the game.
Let's take a morrowind example. I was asked to go get a skull that was in a family tomb.
So I find the tomb and have to fight my way to the area with the skull. Then of course return the skull and get the info I need.
These games need to have a bit more of that. Instead of "go kill x of y" go to the top of the tower of babelroth and bring me back the small locked box. don't open it.
So you go to the tower and have to fight 20 or so monsters to get to the top, get the box and either bring it back or open it for a possible bad effect that opens up another quest.
In some of today's games it's "go to the tower and kill 20 mobs and then collect the skull". They need the "go kill 20" out of the equation and just have players concentrate on an actual task. This way the mob killing is more transparent.
It's not questing that's bad it's how it's implemented.
But that's off subject. Point being, if they are to implement housing, they need to implement it in a way that is meaningful to players but that doesn't separate the players from other players.
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Everyone returns to the main city hub from the dungeons and battlegrounds. Now do the same thing with housing...everyone returns to their house. In order for Blizzard to make sure everyone is in the city, the housing would have to be sub-par. To implement housing well, in a way that didn't interfere with their main goal of keeping everyone in the city bopping around together, they'd have to do something different, which would take a lot of work. Nobody at Blizzard has come up with an idea for housing in WoW that wouldn't directly go against their stated goal of making the cities look busy.
And thats the main reason I don't like housing, it can empty out the cities if the houses/guild houses have amenities that are found in the city. Housing needs to provide something different.
But what are they doing in cities now ?
Waiting for a queue to a dungeon.. (REMOVING them from the game world)
Waiting for a queue to a battleground.. (REMOVING them from the game world)
Waiting for a summon to a raid.. (REMOVING them form the game world)
AFK because there is nothing to do..
playing the economy running between the mailbox, AH and bank.. (normally done by level 1 mule toons)
shopping and calculating how many more dungeons you have to grind to get that new piece of equipment
But it does.. It gives me a hobby to do, like fishing, when I'm not out adventuring.. It beats the hell out of sitting in a city watching people jump around like bunny rabits on drugs.. or people humping the mailbox with their mounts so others can't use the mail box.. LOL Back in the day, when I played EQ1.. IF we had a problem with a person doing that, we'd report it, and within a very short time a GM would show up at the problem "INVIS" and if they witness bad conduct... SOMEONE was going to be put in time out and warned.. I will have to say that GM's during my play on EQ1 were much more available and helpful then WoW.... why is that?
Really tired, too lazy to type out a big long post on it but does anyone else feel like player housing is sort of... needed in new MMOs? It obviously isn't limited by hardware and there doesn't seem to be an excuse to not get it out.
Mounts, faster travel? Been done ten thousand times over...
End Game raiding to look forward to in your "goals"? Been done ten thousand times over.
But player housing, while it has been done, has never REALLY been a standard for MMOs especially recently.. Why is this? Its something to work towards and something I'd definitely want... I remember my first time in LOTRO being amazed and spending an entire night just going around looking at all of the houses and things people put around them and inside of them.. Its something in the game itself that you can claim is "Yours".. Its something that doesn't disappear when you log off and come back when you're back online.. Its always there!
There are a few different reasons we haven't seen player housing (atleast in its traditional sense) in the new MMORPGs. One of the main ones is that its just not that important to what has become the WOW generation MMO gamer.
Old school MMORPG types played MMORPGs because they enjoyed a gaming experience that allowed them to live out a fantasy life....where the "endgame" is about gaining wealth and reputation among your virutual community. Where better to put all your rare items and other crap on display than your own house.....and what better way to show your reputation and stature than showing off the size of your house?
New school MMORPG types play MMORPGs for action based combat, the "now" experience. The gear they are wearing has become the new "house" in terms of showing off your acomplishments to other players. It's less about living in a virtual world and more about a linear progression based experience.
I think thats the main point there. Some other reasons could include that player housing would require large expansive land spaces (unless its instanced) and would interfear with the carefully planned out questing road map. It would also take players out of their own little personalized story line if a huge house was sitting right in the area your supposed to escort this NPC through.
Everyone returns to the main city hub from the dungeons and battlegrounds. Now do the same thing with housing...everyone returns to their house. In order for Blizzard to make sure everyone is in the city, the housing would have to be sub-par. To implement housing well, in a way that didn't interfere with their main goal of keeping everyone in the city bopping around together, they'd have to do something different, which would take a lot of work. Nobody at Blizzard has come up with an idea for housing in WoW that wouldn't directly go against their stated goal of making the cities look busy.
And thats the main reason I don't like housing, it can empty out the cities if the houses/guild houses have amenities that are found in the city. Housing needs to provide something different.
But what are they doing in cities now ?
Waiting for a queue to a dungeon.. (REMOVING them from the game world)
Waiting for a queue to a battleground.. (REMOVING them from the game world)
Waiting for a summon to a raid.. (REMOVING them form the game world)
AFK because there is nothing to do..
playing the economy running between the mailbox, AH and bank.. (normally done by level 1 mule toons)
shopping and calculating how many more dungeons you have to grind to get that new piece of equipment
But it does.. It gives me a hobby to do, like fishing, when I'm not out adventuring.. It beats the hell out of sitting in a city watching people jump around like bunny rabits on drugs.. or people humping the mailbox with their mounts so others can't use the mail box.. LOL Back in the day, when I played EQ1.. IF we had a problem with a person doing that, we'd report it, and within a very short time a GM would show up at the problem "INVIS" and if they witness bad conduct... SOMEONE was going to be put in time out and warned.. I will have to say that GM's during my play on EQ1 were much more available and helpful then WoW.... why is that?
Oh, I'm not refuting that you dont' enjoy housing and I completely see your reason as a valid one. Where I stumble is having housing offering things that are found in cities such as allowing crafting or buffs.
All the answers in your list could be the player's fault as well. They don't have to wait to be in a queue to do those things. They could be out playing in the world and then when the summons comes they get to a safe place and answer it.
afk because there is nothing to do? I'll introduce them to my mother and she'll find them something to do.
And at least there are players in one area as opposed to having a small subset of everyone separated by housing.
I'm not against housing but I am against it as being an actual reason for players to always stay in one place.
Your examples would never keep me in one place, I'd be out in the world and if the call would come I would then answer it.
Once again, the game developers have given the players a tool and the players bastardize that tool and let it control them.
But maybe that's the deal, maybe tools like that need to be removed.
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I consider housing a waste of development resources. They are nothing more than glorified storage spaces. They are stupidly expensive and the last thing I want to do or worry about in a game is paying and keeping up with rent. I'd much rather have more space at the banker than having to go out of my way to get to my house to store things and I certainly don't want to have to grind gold for hours a month in order to keep up with rent. I also can't think of anything more irritating to have a house, pay all that frakking cash, then take a break from the game only to come back to a repossessed house and property. Any mechanic that is designed to reverse my progress is a game breaker for me.
OH.. don't get me wrong Sorath.. I'm just saying that I think a game that focus's PRIMARLY on quest is silly and lazy, and is a HUGE time sink.. I like quest here and there, but there are times I just want to go out and adventure and earn exp whatever I want to do.. There are days I just want to earn exp and coin without running back and forth between quest givers.. I actually enjoyed my time farming "giants" in EQ1.. LOL Great exp and coin that I could NOT make doing quest..
IMO.. Questing should be no more important then simple mob random killing.. I actually feel that questiong should be a side activity what takes time to complete.. Get rid of the easy travel, make people explore and adventure the world.. I was playing EQ2 this morning and had to chuckle at the simple fomula they follow as well.. In my opinion too many worlds have too many wondering mobs.. Really? I can see a pack of wolves by a den.. but 50 wolves roaming around seperate from each other on someones farm? <laughs> or the Bandit camps, watching human beings walk around like lost sheep waiting to be picked off one by one.. LOL
This is the 21st century and this is all the better thinking we can get from devs? I atleast did like some of the mob interactions like the programmed in CoX.. Atleast those thugs were doing something such as destroying a car.. lol I really wish devs would refine the old worlds, instead of giving us easy target shooting galleries.. LOL
Even a guildie of mine who is usually not interested in house decoration at al , likes being able to put his questing trophies up for display in his EQ2 house.
So yeah, I think it can be important. I like to see it as one of the features to make the gameplay more diverse. But there are also examples of housing that I dont care for. When I played Vanguard, houselocations were too far away and not very usefull. So why even bother with it. Same goes for housing in Anarchy Online. That was useless too.
SWG housing however is unparallelled. The way the playercity system and playerhousing work in that game is something we probably wont see anymore. EQ2 housing is also great, although not even close to having the same amount of features that SWG housing offers. Both games have made housing even usefull, not only for storage, but also being able to craft and have npcs in them that offer services.
I don't know if it is needed in games now a days, but I personally for one Loved it!
Never did in game housing, until I started playing Runes of Magic. Then - fell in love with my 2-story beautiful house!
So many cool things I could buy and put in there besides doing all my trade skills @ home also.
It was so nice doing that, instead of running ALL around the city trying to remember where which npc was!
Loved just chilling in my home by my fireplace, watching the flames dance on a cold winter (RL) morn. Inviting friends in to chat & show off your home also!!
I miss it greatly! ROM & EQ2 definately have their housing down for players!!
I wish that WoW would implement housing, but from what I have read over the years.. the census of players & god forbid Blizzard Entertainment is: No.. No - NO!!
So, housing will be a fond memory, until I either go back to EQ2 or ROM.
OH.. don't get me wrong Sorath.. I'm just saying that I think a game that focus's PRIMARLY on quest is silly and lazy, and is a HUGE time sink.. I like quest here and there, but there are times I just want to go out and adventure and earn exp whatever I want to do.. There are days I just want to earn exp and coin without running back and forth between quest givers.. I actually enjoyed my time farming "giants" in EQ1.. LOL Great exp and coin that I could NOT
Oh I hear you. That's pretty much how I play these games. I have played most of LOTRO exactly like that.
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Comments
I think it's subjective. I don't think player housing is needed.
I have to admit that I rarely used the housing in eq2 when I tried the game and though I bought something in LOTRO, I also never used it.
I would use it if there was extra storage or there was some benefit. I have to admit that I don't like the idea of crafting in player housing becuase that then takes people out of the cities.
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I'm the same way. I despise crafting the way it's done in games. I'd rather just buy things off of people who like crafting. If a game requires crafting or if it looks like I'm going to undergo a lot of hardship if I don't craft I tend to stop playing that game.
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If there's 1 thing that LotRO kinda solved when it came to housing it was the whole "instances vs non-instance" by placing you in a instanced neighborhood that you shared with a certain number of other people because each neighborhood had a limited number of house slots. Now, if houses actually served any purpose other than as your strong boxes, there could've been some neighborhood-level cooperation stuff (quests or other activities).
Wow, this is the first time ever. I'm actually in complete agreement with Cephus!
I've really never seen the point of player housing except as an extended bank. I'd rather be out playing the game than, you know.. logging into a game from my house to.. be in my house. Give me dragons to fight and undead to battle in an MMO, if I wanted to build a nice house I'd load up a game of Sims 3.
I like player housing.. it gives me a hobby to fool around with like fishing.. lol
No offence, but I think questing isnt' needed in a GOOD mmo.. Oh granted, there are times doing an epic quest would be fun, like the EQ1 one's.. But running back and forth from a quest hub (town or camp) to the mob to gain MOST of your exp is boring and agrivating.. I mean really...
Quest Giver says, "I need for you to kill 10 orcs" ------- (quest complete)
Quest Giver says, "well done, however did you happen to collect their teeth, I need 5 of them"........... ( GRRR quest complete)
Quest Giver says, "excellent, oops did I tell you to kill the named one too in the back tent?"......... ( 3rd trip back to the SAME FREAKING CAMP.. quest complete)
This shit was stupid, lazy and a royal pain the arse.. I don't ever remember Frodo or Sam running back and forth to quest givers.. Why can't MMO's just be more like adventuring camps.. IMO todays mmo are to focus'd on NPC involvement and questing.. it's almost like gamers need someone to hold their hand..
I also don't care a bit bout housing, at least not in the sens it is being implemented in any game i had chance to play, namely purly cosmetic vanity thing.
There is a way to change it: logging out in your house could grant you some bonuses, rest xp etc. after coming back. The house's workshop coud be a crafting stations that improves crafing abilities depending on the quality of appliancs it is equipped with and so on, but so far housing is simply to useless and pointless to care for.
Housing wasn't enough to offset the generally lackluster feel of EQ2 for me. It's solid fun, but I wouldn't call it the key to enjoyment.
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wizard 101 has player housing.
it serves both as a vanity thing and has a crafting station.
many drops from monsters are furniture.
you get a dorm room for free and can upgrade for relatively cheap and get a basic castle and upgrade from there.
They are buyable with ingame gold.
there is Vanity housing which costs real money. (the latest let's you duel at your home.)
Not for me or many I know.
It just never pans out to be all people expecti to be or that companies hype it up to be.
UO: Was tolerable but made a mess of the landscape
AC1: Looked nice, implementation was a nightmare IMO, totally under estimated demand
AO: horribly lacklustre
SWG: was ok but ended up being, as someone above said an extended bank, littered the landscape, I did like you could set up a vendor
EQ2: boring, but I did like the fact that you could set up a shop from your instanced apartment
LOTRO: implemented I think just to shut people up about since nothing has been done with them since, nice looking but no real reason to go there other than to drop off loot.
Well, I think you get the idea. The only time I liked player housing was probably SWG. The world was vast enough it wasn't too littered with houses, you could set them up anywhere for the most part, and you could set up a shop out of your house.
The problem I have with housing is implementation. If you make housing too useful, the cities are empty. Not useful enough, empty houses litter the landscape and they serve as little more than virtual vanity decorations.
Other than that, I think they are a waste of time and development resources. If I want to play house decorator, I'll play the sims...or better yet, decorate my own house.
All that being said, I have no problems with them in game for others, I just have no use for them.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
I absolutely grow to LOATHE games that don't care enough about my suspension of disbelief and feeling of "belonging" in their game world to offer me player housing. It literally PISSES ME OFF. If you don't care enough to give players that OPTION....I will eventually (if not right away) cease to care about your bloody game. Period.
And when I say player housing.....I mean highly customizable housing like in EQ2.....NOT like in LotRO.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Frodo and Sam were *cough* spending days~weeks in Mordor avoiding the orcs and everyone else while pretty much traveling a small distance everyday, thanks to Frodo's illness with the Ring.
Now, you wouldn't want to play that, right? Because, after all, just travelling is booooooring when translated to games. How about days of travelling the similar-looking expanse of land with no clear indication of how much further it is till you reach the Mountain? Boring. Even Tolkein cut short the "traveling" bit by just skipping ahead a few days in the book because when put down into narrative form, it's also boring.
I'll amend my first comment to state: Housing isn't necessary in themeparks such as LOTRO, but for games where you can fit housing in without jarring gameplay/lore/etc, I would greatly recommend it, even if it might not be to everyone's tastes. It's one of the few features these days that don't directly involve killing monsters/etc.
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And yet instanced dungeons and the phasing mechanic are used quite liverally in WoW, with the same effect of segregating the player population... however most people don't even care.
I think housing is a great addition to an MMO if done well. Not necessarily the 'key,' but definitely worth the time if done correctly. I have memories of people designing and decorating their houses to hold auctions in, it's where guild meetings were done. People would set up an entire casino, or turn it into a large shopping mall with their own vendors.
None of this stuff is necessary. All that can really all be done effectively in a small space where you put an auction house, a guild chat, and a dice mechanic without having to give an individual player anything special, but the point was to offer immersion and freedom.
Having a place to decorate was never important to me. So a random piece of data that only I could access I don't really care about. Having my own house in a world with limited space, where not everyone would have one, made it something I aspired to someday afford.
All depends on how it's done I guess.
Blizzard Dev said player housing doesn't fit their vision for their game. Which is to give the players a social feeling through lots of chars on your screen when you are in WoW. Except PVE/PVP group content they prefer people are actually in the 'world' and not holed up in their own 'home'. You lose that 'massive' feeling.
Someone always brings this housing up and I always ask (never get an answer though). How would you solve the problem where everyone don't 'see' each other (since they are all in their house) if you want to give that social experience to your players?
Is it really worth the time to do it right (so old houses don't clutter your world) if it doesn't benefit your players or runs counter to the vision of your game?
And yet instanced dungeons and the phasing mechanic are used quite liverally in WoW, with the same effect of segregating the player population... however most people don't even care.
Everyone returns to the main city hub from the dungeons and battlegrounds. Now do the same thing with housing...everyone returns to their house. In order for Blizzard to make sure everyone is in the city, the housing would have to be sub-par. To implement housing well, in a way that didn't interfere with their main goal of keeping everyone in the city bopping around together, they'd have to do something different, which would take a lot of work. Nobody at Blizzard has come up with an idea for housing in WoW that wouldn't directly go against their stated goal of making the cities look busy.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
And thats the main reason I don't like housing, it can empty out the cities if the houses/guild houses have amenities that are found in the city. Housing needs to provide something different.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Exactly Ceridith..
Blizzard says that instanced housing would remove players from the game world.. OK.. I'll buy that..
WAIT..............
Blizzard, with the exception of WG and some dailies YOUR entire end game is instanced.. from BG's, to dungeons to raids.. The game plays like a lobby game.. So.... Blizzard are you just that hypocritally stupid, or are you lying to me? lmaoo I never ever got a reply from Blizzard.. I"m sensing they avoid someone like me because I backed them into a corner they can not come out of ..
At times they act like politicians that got caught with their hand in the cookie jar..
But what you are doing is lumping "questing" with "how they are implemented" as opposed to what a quest is.
If you ever played a game like baldur's gate or morrowind or oblivion or "whatever" you are still killing mobs and still questing.
But very rarely are you asked to collect x of y. I do know that Oblvion has a few of those but they sort of fit within the game.
Let's take a morrowind example. I was asked to go get a skull that was in a family tomb.
So I find the tomb and have to fight my way to the area with the skull. Then of course return the skull and get the info I need.
These games need to have a bit more of that. Instead of "go kill x of y" go to the top of the tower of babelroth and bring me back the small locked box. don't open it.
So you go to the tower and have to fight 20 or so monsters to get to the top, get the box and either bring it back or open it for a possible bad effect that opens up another quest.
In some of today's games it's "go to the tower and kill 20 mobs and then collect the skull". They need the "go kill 20" out of the equation and just have players concentrate on an actual task. This way the mob killing is more transparent.
It's not questing that's bad it's how it's implemented.
But that's off subject. Point being, if they are to implement housing, they need to implement it in a way that is meaningful to players but that doesn't separate the players from other players.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
But what are they doing in cities now ?
Waiting for a queue to a dungeon.. (REMOVING them from the game world)
Waiting for a queue to a battleground.. (REMOVING them from the game world)
Waiting for a summon to a raid.. (REMOVING them form the game world)
AFK because there is nothing to do..
playing the economy running between the mailbox, AH and bank.. (normally done by level 1 mule toons)
shopping and calculating how many more dungeons you have to grind to get that new piece of equipment
But it does.. It gives me a hobby to do, like fishing, when I'm not out adventuring.. It beats the hell out of sitting in a city watching people jump around like bunny rabits on drugs.. or people humping the mailbox with their mounts so others can't use the mail box.. LOL Back in the day, when I played EQ1.. IF we had a problem with a person doing that, we'd report it, and within a very short time a GM would show up at the problem "INVIS" and if they witness bad conduct... SOMEONE was going to be put in time out and warned.. I will have to say that GM's during my play on EQ1 were much more available and helpful then WoW.... why is that?
There are a few different reasons we haven't seen player housing (atleast in its traditional sense) in the new MMORPGs. One of the main ones is that its just not that important to what has become the WOW generation MMO gamer.
Old school MMORPG types played MMORPGs because they enjoyed a gaming experience that allowed them to live out a fantasy life....where the "endgame" is about gaining wealth and reputation among your virutual community. Where better to put all your rare items and other crap on display than your own house.....and what better way to show your reputation and stature than showing off the size of your house?
New school MMORPG types play MMORPGs for action based combat, the "now" experience. The gear they are wearing has become the new "house" in terms of showing off your acomplishments to other players. It's less about living in a virtual world and more about a linear progression based experience.
I think thats the main point there. Some other reasons could include that player housing would require large expansive land spaces (unless its instanced) and would interfear with the carefully planned out questing road map. It would also take players out of their own little personalized story line if a huge house was sitting right in the area your supposed to escort this NPC through.
Oh, I'm not refuting that you dont' enjoy housing and I completely see your reason as a valid one. Where I stumble is having housing offering things that are found in cities such as allowing crafting or buffs.
All the answers in your list could be the player's fault as well. They don't have to wait to be in a queue to do those things. They could be out playing in the world and then when the summons comes they get to a safe place and answer it.
afk because there is nothing to do? I'll introduce them to my mother and she'll find them something to do.
And at least there are players in one area as opposed to having a small subset of everyone separated by housing.
I'm not against housing but I am against it as being an actual reason for players to always stay in one place.
Your examples would never keep me in one place, I'd be out in the world and if the call would come I would then answer it.
Once again, the game developers have given the players a tool and the players bastardize that tool and let it control them.
But maybe that's the deal, maybe tools like that need to be removed.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I consider housing a waste of development resources. They are nothing more than glorified storage spaces. They are stupidly expensive and the last thing I want to do or worry about in a game is paying and keeping up with rent. I'd much rather have more space at the banker than having to go out of my way to get to my house to store things and I certainly don't want to have to grind gold for hours a month in order to keep up with rent. I also can't think of anything more irritating to have a house, pay all that frakking cash, then take a break from the game only to come back to a repossessed house and property. Any mechanic that is designed to reverse my progress is a game breaker for me.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
OH.. don't get me wrong Sorath.. I'm just saying that I think a game that focus's PRIMARLY on quest is silly and lazy, and is a HUGE time sink.. I like quest here and there, but there are times I just want to go out and adventure and earn exp whatever I want to do.. There are days I just want to earn exp and coin without running back and forth between quest givers.. I actually enjoyed my time farming "giants" in EQ1.. LOL Great exp and coin that I could NOT make doing quest..
IMO.. Questing should be no more important then simple mob random killing.. I actually feel that questiong should be a side activity what takes time to complete.. Get rid of the easy travel, make people explore and adventure the world.. I was playing EQ2 this morning and had to chuckle at the simple fomula they follow as well.. In my opinion too many worlds have too many wondering mobs.. Really? I can see a pack of wolves by a den.. but 50 wolves roaming around seperate from each other on someones farm? <laughs> or the Bandit camps, watching human beings walk around like lost sheep waiting to be picked off one by one.. LOL
This is the 21st century and this is all the better thinking we can get from devs? I atleast did like some of the mob interactions like the programmed in CoX.. Atleast those thugs were doing something such as destroying a car.. lol I really wish devs would refine the old worlds, instead of giving us easy target shooting galleries.. LOL
Even a guildie of mine who is usually not interested in house decoration at al , likes being able to put his questing trophies up for display in his EQ2 house.
So yeah, I think it can be important. I like to see it as one of the features to make the gameplay more diverse. But there are also examples of housing that I dont care for. When I played Vanguard, houselocations were too far away and not very usefull. So why even bother with it. Same goes for housing in Anarchy Online. That was useless too.
SWG housing however is unparallelled. The way the playercity system and playerhousing work in that game is something we probably wont see anymore. EQ2 housing is also great, although not even close to having the same amount of features that SWG housing offers. Both games have made housing even usefull, not only for storage, but also being able to craft and have npcs in them that offer services.
I don't know if it is needed in games now a days, but I personally for one Loved it!
Never did in game housing, until I started playing Runes of Magic. Then - fell in love with my 2-story beautiful house!
So many cool things I could buy and put in there besides doing all my trade skills @ home also.
It was so nice doing that, instead of running ALL around the city trying to remember where which npc was!
Loved just chilling in my home by my fireplace, watching the flames dance on a cold winter (RL) morn.
Inviting friends in to chat & show off your home also!! 
I miss it greatly! ROM & EQ2 definately have their housing down for players!!
I wish that WoW would implement housing, but from what I have read over the years.. the census of players & god forbid Blizzard Entertainment is: No.. No - NO!!
So, housing will be a fond memory, until I either go back to EQ2 or ROM.
"Huntress"
Oh I hear you. That's pretty much how I play these games. I have played most of LOTRO exactly like that.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo