Never played SWG but I did like the housing in DAoC. Had my trophies on display, merchant to sell my crafts and excess loot, nice little garden outside and a place to hang out with friends and guildmates prior to or after are adventures for the day. I don't like that today's mmos are so far away from virtual worlds and little more than combat lobbies.
it isn't a question of need its a question of practicality. few mmos actually need housing. instanced housing is basically a trophy room with no real purpose. non instanced housing which grants you access to community building tools and other benefits in my eyes and depending on the mmo is ESSENTIAL. Eso player housing set within the world would in my eyes make that game a hell of a lot more immersive. tor might greatly benefit from player housing simply due to the ip. would a dungeron slasher mmo need housing NO. do I think housing should also be gated as an end game element YES....think about a guild in eso that claims cyrodil for 24 hours and is granted housing options within cyrodill that would then require to hold the land or lose faction standing then players would have to guard said housing from raids. or tie the in game market to housing where crafters much like is swg could open shops. I don't think many devs outside of soe have really utilized what a great element housing in a virtual world can truly be.
That's an interesting take on housing. I've always seen it as the opposite. IMO, no one wants an online home. They want:
a playground
a trophy case
a buildspace with some permanence
a workstation/utility area
a gathering spot
a event venue
a personal/team staging area for PvP
...anything but a home.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
The only time I ever got into housing was with SWG. I loved setting up my house on that one. Now I don't really care for it anymore but if it's in a game I'd probably waste some time with it.
Having as many different ventures as possible can only add to the different things people can spend time (money) on. I think it makes perfect sense to have many different aspects of a game.
Different strokes for different folks.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
I could care less about housing, but I did enjoy it in Asheron's Call. I did not use it much but the housing was part of the world and it was fun to run by neighborhoods, when they were full.
I personally love housing. I was thrilled when I bought my very first place in Asheron's Call many years ago. It was so competitive at the time and I was so happy to have snatched up a house. We used our guild mansion for many great guild events. It is even better when it is functional. In AC, it was a safe place where you could store things, trade between your characters, etc. My vassals used it extensively.
EQ2 was another game where housing was functional an fun. Some players were so creative too. I spent many a play session looking around. When I got rich enough to buy a mansion, I spent quite a bit of time getting rep items to bring down the costs. Great game, great housing system. LOTRO was fun at first but the hook system was so limiting. In Horizons I loved building my house although the functionality was a bit lacking at the time, at least with what I built.
I think that Wildstar is onto a brilliant concept. I truly enjoyed messing around with my plot of land. Too bad I didn't care for the rest of the game. I really do hope that ESO introduces fun, functional housing at some point.
For me, having a virtual home is rather important. I like playing my MMO Sims between all the other stuff. It isn't just about combat.
I want housing when it makes sence, when the game is more of a virtual fantasy or sci-fi world simulator it makes sense to me. Or overall the game has to be more MMORPG then just a MMO.
If the game is mainly a themepark and it ends up in some private instance then I personaly don't see the need for it.
I want housing when it makes sence, when the game is more of a virtual fantasy or sci-fi world simulator it makes sense to me. Or overall the game has to be more MMORPG then just a MMO.
If the game is mainly a themepark and it ends up in some private instance then I personaly don't see the need for it.
Completely agree, it's a really worthless feature to me if it has no ties into the overall game or it's classes/professions. SWG's and UO's had real uses for crafters and the like. Very few housing systems have had such a use, shadowbanes comes to mind in that it was a core part of the PVP. Other than that I'm drawing a blank as far as useful housing systems go.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You don't need housing, but if it's in a game it better serve some purpose rather than being a pretty little timesink. For instance, you can craft better gear in your house, you get better buffs from resting in a house of certain level, you respawn at your house always so having it fixed up and secure would be beneficial. ETC.
If a house is just tacked on as a facebook app type of thing it's pretty stupid and unnecessary.
we do not play games to be heroic and we dont play them because we cant be a CEO of some company. That is a myth that somehow got some level of credit from (to be frank) bad studies.
We play games for goals. What the specific goals are are less important than the reward to effort equation.
Housing is goal setting
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I think SWG did a wonderful job with the home itself. Taking out filling up the world with homes and storage houses and guild houses and factories and mining facilities, you cant really beat what SWG did.
In fact I would go so far as to say the only problem with it was the limit of items allowed (due to the antiquated technology of the early 2000s).
Being able to create items to place in a house and being able to place them anywhere on a x,y,z axis was amazing. Anybody that actually had any interaction whether it be making one or walking into one of those awesomely made houses cant deny SWG had great housing capabilities. From making fireplaces from bookshelves and braziers to creating zoos from unbound pets and potted plants. It was simply awesome what you could do with it.
On top of the decorating part the houses and guild halls were meeting points for guilds. Not everybody enjoyed them for sure but I know I spent 3/4ths of my time in SWG in my guild hall or my home. or at the very least within 1km of them. They were social points.
Also with the ability to place vendors and NOT have a world wide auction house the crafters could create themselves an identity. A lot of things sold by crafters were made to order. You could always tell the great crafters from the bad ones because the good ones put effort into their storefront.
Housing, while not necessary in today's games, can make the game so much more than it is when done correctly.
oh man my best houses I made in UO god was a blast finding the perfect local and building it up id make pvp trap houses where people fall into a dungeon and we drop in and kill them and run out a locked gate oh man the fun we had
imo there is no point to an mmo that doesnt offer immersion, and how can you have immersion if you have no place that is your own?
Doesnt have to be realistic in terms of application, but it is hard to remain involved in something that offers no application to rl for an extended period of time.You dont just run around for your entire life hoarding trinkets with no where to display them.
Housing imo is mandatory for any mmo seeking to provide any semblance of a functional reality in game. Though if you are just looking to pew pew your way to godhood then i doubt you care about immersion or really anything but shiny objects and big numbers.
The main reason why I like to see housing in a MMO is for immersion reason. But then I only saw it meaningful executed in SWG. Vanguard had some nice ideas in this direction too, but well we know how that went. Playercities in Anarchy Online were a nice idea too, although not greatly executed. I guess its a tough job to get right.
Anyway, housing and especially player cities, makes the world feel more immersive to me. Even if it means that the whole surface of the planet can be covered in houses (SWG). The player cities were community building features in SWG. To me owning a house in SWG made your toon belong to that world.
Housing in later MMO's became more about fluff without actually adding any meaningful mechanics to it. Sometimes trying to come up with gimmicky mechanics to make people visit your house (EQ2 trade tax etc, although their guild houses are community building).
Even people in SWG who didn't care about decorating a house, still liked to be part of a city for other reasons. For crafting benefits, or just as guild owning a city for pvp purpose. Housing also played a role for entertainers and in the bounty hunting system. It just made sense. More so then the superficial crap that newer MMO's come up with.
Dungeon Keeper and Quest for epic loot let you build homes with traps and monsters that other players/npcs raided. I'd like to see that in an mmo. An mmo needs mini-games and such to give players something else to do.
Housing is another thing for players to do in a game. If you don't like it you don't have to do it. It's something to work on between quests and if done right it's something you can do if you don't have much time that night. Since W* and ESO are subscription based we as players want to get the most for our money. If that means we have the option to putter around our home when we have a spare hour during the week or while we're watching a TV show, then that's good for the players.
All good heroes' journeys begin with a young man or woman settling down and living happily ever after. No wait—that's not how it goes. Generally speaking, few things are as unattractive to brave, danger-seeking types as domestic life, and that's why heroic stories start with the protagonist not going toward home, but away from it. With that in mind, and since most of us play MMOs in order to feel heroic, why is it important to us to own an online home?
Theres so many ways to make a players home actually be useful even for the people that are not so much into decorating and so on. I took me a coupple of years or so before I started to actually put stuff into place in my EQ2 home, instead of just throwing stuff in there to lower "status costs/rent". But after awhile I got into it and actually started to enjoy creating different cool stuff to look at. Then just before I quit, I had a great travel hub, crafting area, storage etc. that I called home. Thing is there most be SO MANY ways you can make features for housing that are fun and useful for the players. In Eq2 they had -ports, crafting tables, storage, daily buffs and you could go to a playrrs hoise and get a discount on items you purchased from them. Im sure Ive.forgot alot of feats, but that was some of them. Im sure devs can find some awesome feats for housing.
Comments
so say we all
That's an interesting take on housing. I've always seen it as the opposite. IMO, no one wants an online home. They want:
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Having as many different ventures as possible can only add to the different things people can spend time (money) on. I think it makes perfect sense to have many different aspects of a game.
Different strokes for different folks.
--John Ruskin
I personally love housing. I was thrilled when I bought my very first place in Asheron's Call many years ago. It was so competitive at the time and I was so happy to have snatched up a house. We used our guild mansion for many great guild events. It is even better when it is functional. In AC, it was a safe place where you could store things, trade between your characters, etc. My vassals used it extensively.
EQ2 was another game where housing was functional an fun. Some players were so creative too. I spent many a play session looking around. When I got rich enough to buy a mansion, I spent quite a bit of time getting rep items to bring down the costs. Great game, great housing system. LOTRO was fun at first but the hook system was so limiting. In Horizons I loved building my house although the functionality was a bit lacking at the time, at least with what I built.
I think that Wildstar is onto a brilliant concept. I truly enjoyed messing around with my plot of land. Too bad I didn't care for the rest of the game. I really do hope that ESO introduces fun, functional housing at some point.
For me, having a virtual home is rather important. I like playing my MMO Sims between all the other stuff. It isn't just about combat.
I want housing when it makes sence, when the game is more of a virtual fantasy or sci-fi world simulator it makes sense to me. Or overall the game has to be more MMORPG then just a MMO.
If the game is mainly a themepark and it ends up in some private instance then I personaly don't see the need for it.
Completely agree, it's a really worthless feature to me if it has no ties into the overall game or it's classes/professions. SWG's and UO's had real uses for crafters and the like. Very few housing systems have had such a use, shadowbanes comes to mind in that it was a core part of the PVP. Other than that I'm drawing a blank as far as useful housing systems go.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You don't need housing, but if it's in a game it better serve some purpose rather than being a pretty little timesink. For instance, you can craft better gear in your house, you get better buffs from resting in a house of certain level, you respawn at your house always so having it fixed up and secure would be beneficial. ETC.
If a house is just tacked on as a facebook app type of thing it's pretty stupid and unnecessary.
we do not play games to be heroic and we dont play them because we cant be a CEO of some company. That is a myth that somehow got some level of credit from (to be frank) bad studies.
We play games for goals. What the specific goals are are less important than the reward to effort equation.
Housing is goal setting
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I think SWG did a wonderful job with the home itself. Taking out filling up the world with homes and storage houses and guild houses and factories and mining facilities, you cant really beat what SWG did.
In fact I would go so far as to say the only problem with it was the limit of items allowed (due to the antiquated technology of the early 2000s).
Being able to create items to place in a house and being able to place them anywhere on a x,y,z axis was amazing. Anybody that actually had any interaction whether it be making one or walking into one of those awesomely made houses cant deny SWG had great housing capabilities. From making fireplaces from bookshelves and braziers to creating zoos from unbound pets and potted plants. It was simply awesome what you could do with it.
On top of the decorating part the houses and guild halls were meeting points for guilds. Not everybody enjoyed them for sure but I know I spent 3/4ths of my time in SWG in my guild hall or my home. or at the very least within 1km of them. They were social points.
Also with the ability to place vendors and NOT have a world wide auction house the crafters could create themselves an identity. A lot of things sold by crafters were made to order. You could always tell the great crafters from the bad ones because the good ones put effort into their storefront.
Housing, while not necessary in today's games, can make the game so much more than it is when done correctly.
It'd be great to park your bum in your own gaff, than in an inn or the side of a mountain somewhere when going offline.
Would have to be open world too - not interested in instanced housing or neighbourhoods, hopefully SoTA will fulfill my wishes...
imo there is no point to an mmo that doesnt offer immersion, and how can you have immersion if you have no place that is your own?
Doesnt have to be realistic in terms of application, but it is hard to remain involved in something that offers no application to rl for an extended period of time.You dont just run around for your entire life hoarding trinkets with no where to display them.
Housing imo is mandatory for any mmo seeking to provide any semblance of a functional reality in game. Though if you are just looking to pew pew your way to godhood then i doubt you care about immersion or really anything but shiny objects and big numbers.
The main reason why I like to see housing in a MMO is for immersion reason. But then I only saw it meaningful executed in SWG. Vanguard had some nice ideas in this direction too, but well we know how that went. Playercities in Anarchy Online were a nice idea too, although not greatly executed. I guess its a tough job to get right.
Anyway, housing and especially player cities, makes the world feel more immersive to me. Even if it means that the whole surface of the planet can be covered in houses (SWG). The player cities were community building features in SWG. To me owning a house in SWG made your toon belong to that world.
Housing in later MMO's became more about fluff without actually adding any meaningful mechanics to it. Sometimes trying to come up with gimmicky mechanics to make people visit your house (EQ2 trade tax etc, although their guild houses are community building).
Even people in SWG who didn't care about decorating a house, still liked to be part of a city for other reasons. For crafting benefits, or just as guild owning a city for pvp purpose. Housing also played a role for entertainers and in the bounty hunting system. It just made sense. More so then the superficial crap that newer MMO's come up with.
is this freaking article for real????
They already banned roleplaying from mmorpg's and now housing is not done anymore in mmo's.
Guess mmorpg's ARE dead and becoming just quest lobby games if it is up to some people these days.
Online roleplaying games used to be about doing whatever you wanted in a virtual "life"......not just fighting skills and lvl's.
Housing has always been part of real mmorpg's but it was up you IF you wanted one.
why dont we make pong online and call it the next generation of mmorpg's????
we dont NEED housing, we WANT it.
there is a difference
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
It's only housing if you can place it anywhere virtually.
Otherwise it's equally useless and lame for all. You can put stuff there!!
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"