Originally posted by VassagoMael Having limited space is what give the housing value. Unlimited space for housing is basically the same thing as instanced housing.
That's fine as long as it doesn't stay there forever after being built, without some kind of upkeep. It was problematic in SWG for most of the games life because houses didn't require any upkeep, they could just sit there abondoned for years.
"SWG's housing system evolved over time as they learned their lessons, but in the end it taught everyone a lot about how to do in-world housing. The only real mistake they made was not having a system in place to clean up abandoned homes properly. Games like LotRO came up with systems such as "Escrow" so that when they took your house from you for not paying the maintenance fee, you could go to an NPC and collect the things you left inside it."
You Forget though, SWG did have a way to clean up abandoned homes, I think it was like Once a year or something, Where they would let you get a mission to go out and call in bombing runs on abandoned homes, then the stuff in it would be packed up and put on the character, so if the person came back later, he could put his house down and get his stuff back.
Yep, house pack up. I swooped on a bitchin space using this, right outside Rori Rebel Outpost. The player doesn't lose anyhting but their spot, and if they had left the game for good it was that much the better for cleaning up.
I think a decay system that allows mobs to spawn in ruins or salvage of the actual structure would be sweet as long as the original player gets his stuff packed up.
This wasn't there for the first few years though and was only implemented when people complained about abandoned houses taking up valuable land.
I have a question about player built / owned housing that exists in the main world of a game (not instanced neighborhoods). The mechanics of it make sense, but what is to prevent running out of room to build new houses?
How did games like SWG handle this?
Back in the day in UO (I think around 03-04) they released the Age of Shadow's xpac that introduce a new landmass and much,much more housing.The problem with this was,that it looked like a housing developemnet for the most part.Freakin houses all over.To me it took the feel of UO out of the game in that area (Malas).
I still play the game but avoid Malas except when looking for good's.
Some day I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull!
Originally posted by VassagoMael Having limited space is what give the housing value. Unlimited space for housing is basically the same thing as instanced housing.
That's fine as long as it doesn't stay there forever after being built, without some kind of upkeep. It was problematic in SWG for most of the games life because houses didn't require any upkeep, they could just sit there abondoned for years.
They did require upkeep but it so cheap 100k credits could last you a year or more. But they did make changes and had the galactic clean up also.
UO did it pretty damn good. For one, when there were no spaces, they did open up some new ones. For another, when a player hadn't been on for a long while, the house became condemned. This create a whole new part of the game too! People would run to the condemned homes just waiting for it to fall to loot, and place their own in its place. It was a pretty great system. Once that was implemented I don't recall ever hearing a complaint about not having a home.
Just have some sort of property tax that gets rid of houses on accounts that dont log in very often.
This is also how you handle guilds by the way, guild halls should just require a large block of property, say an entire city block, and on that they can build a large guild structure. Then let individual guild members have their own instanced appartment within the guild hall. use a PSU style adress system where you can enter your friends instanced dwellings if they let you.
Make actual houses not only expensive but require certain things to get, say permission from the local government/king/whatever that you get after doing something thats hard to do (certain quests, maybe pvp achivements, certain reputation, it could probably vary from location to location for flavor). Perhaps even require certain kinds of community service in the form of requiring certain sorts of donations or quests or something per week to keep your title and ability to own property.
You should also probably make it account based and not character based. Let peoples alts use their houses if they want, but a limit of one per account.
As long as you keep inactive people from clogging up space and provide free/low cost instanced apparements for most people it really shoudn't be that big of a problem.
I think working in guild halls in the system is important however, people who may want something 'more' than a completly generic appartment may feel fine with having a room located in their guilds headquarters.
Every game deals with player housing differently. Mabinogi has several different versions of housing. One is a rented castle your guild can work together to get. Little is known about it because no one can afford it. Another is your personal house you pay with monthly sub and in game renting. These rented houses are the Auction House and they have placement on a map you can visit. There are only so many of these. Another is a free tiny version of instance space you can access anywhere in the world. The small one is attached to all characters from creation and their placement is infinite or as big as the computer used to store our character accounts at Nexon.
Simple For one, SWG had an absolutely massive world in the first place, so It's difficult to run out of space, but say everyone in the game did want a house, people could sell their houses, and teh empire would 'evict' them for prolonged absence had they not logged on in a long enough time to pay their weekly bill. LOVED SWG btw , but anyhoo, and say i were to put housing into a game, the system would go like this; pay for a house initially, plant a plot somewhere in the world (SWG), then pay a high weekly bill. say every otehr spot is taken or your leaving teh game, sell the plot for a higher, or lower price than what you initially bought it for, and someone else now owns your plot. if ever spot is filled and noone is elling, wait for it to start selling then auction with other players on it. Bam. players should also be able to purchase hotels to rent out to other players for money.
Never fear, your dream MMO will be here.... just give me a decade or two to finely hone my Game development and design abilities as well as start a Game Design Studio. Thank you for your patience.
Comments
That's fine as long as it doesn't stay there forever after being built, without some kind of upkeep. It was problematic in SWG for most of the games life because houses didn't require any upkeep, they could just sit there abondoned for years.
This wasn't there for the first few years though and was only implemented when people complained about abandoned houses taking up valuable land.
Back in the day in UO (I think around 03-04) they released the Age of Shadow's xpac that introduce a new landmass and much,much more housing.The problem with this was,that it looked like a housing developemnet for the most part.Freakin houses all over.To me it took the feel of UO out of the game in that area (Malas).
I still play the game but avoid Malas except when looking for good's.
Some day I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull!
Arya Stark
That's fine as long as it doesn't stay there forever after being built, without some kind of upkeep. It was problematic in SWG for most of the games life because houses didn't require any upkeep, they could just sit there abondoned for years.
They did require upkeep but it so cheap 100k credits could last you a year or more.But they did make changes and had the galactic clean up also.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
Just have some sort of property tax that gets rid of houses on accounts that dont log in very often.
This is also how you handle guilds by the way, guild halls should just require a large block of property, say an entire city block, and on that they can build a large guild structure. Then let individual guild members have their own instanced appartment within the guild hall. use a PSU style adress system where you can enter your friends instanced dwellings if they let you.
Make actual houses not only expensive but require certain things to get, say permission from the local government/king/whatever that you get after doing something thats hard to do (certain quests, maybe pvp achivements, certain reputation, it could probably vary from location to location for flavor). Perhaps even require certain kinds of community service in the form of requiring certain sorts of donations or quests or something per week to keep your title and ability to own property.
You should also probably make it account based and not character based. Let peoples alts use their houses if they want, but a limit of one per account.
As long as you keep inactive people from clogging up space and provide free/low cost instanced apparements for most people it really shoudn't be that big of a problem.
I think working in guild halls in the system is important however, people who may want something 'more' than a completly generic appartment may feel fine with having a room located in their guilds headquarters.
Never fear, your dream MMO will be here....
just give me a decade or two to finely hone my Game development
and design abilities as well as start a Game Design Studio.
Thank you for your patience.