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Housing? When will developers learn?
ironhorse1010
Member UncommonPosts: 12
Either making housing for the open world or just leave it out of the game. Wildstar has really cool housing features but its instanced. Instanced housing leaves it so you and a few of your friends visit or no one does? If they want to make it instanced at least make it a huge instance where tons of people live? Much larger than LOTRO instances. Or just leave it out of the game it just ties up resources and devs that could be working on bugs or just have less devs and a better Free 2 Play game. I dont know it is just my opinion. When SWG came I loved the housing it was as close to perfect as anyone has gotten to housing. Yes it would leave houses everywhere but then you make larger maps. I mean really look at the size of Darkfalls map it is gigantic. You could even designate housing neighborhoods like Archeage is doing that is still better than instanced housing. It will probably take 5-10 years for devs to learn that instanced housing is just a bad route to go down and I think Wildstar boxed themselves in with instanced housing? Imagine if they had a bigger map and an open world like SWG? They would be leaders in the industry for years. Like I said just my opinion.
Hey devs if you really want a great game? Open world housing is where its at to get those that love housing and even those on the fence about it.
Comments
a good open world housing has to be tied to a criminal system or it wont work well. Having a house where anyone can enter but there is nothing to do inside is not needed, thats why they make open houses in towns so you can enter (like WoW inns). A good open world housing would allow players to both rob or even destroy parts of someone´s house, resulting in criminal charges for that player, etc etc etc. And if the house is outside of a city then PvP can happen.
I would like that type of housing, but it will most likely never happen in mmos.
Nope... Instanced, yes, BUT go to the neighbor tab and you can visit ANYONE that has flagged their plot as open for visits (button at the lower left). I've been visiting complete strangers plots and marveling at some of the creativity (some... not so much). I think it's a really nice compromise.
Why is this good exactly?
This is the kind of stuff that keeps me OUT of games like that.
I make a nice house just for someone to come trash it? why is this good??
Just charge money every week to keep your house, you cant pay in advance and if you dont pay, you lose the land. That way there arent empty houses everywhere.
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
No and double no. Open world housing does not equate to having one's home open to the world. UO didn't do this, SWG didn't do this. Nor any iteration of the lesser instanced versions that devs have gotta use to doing. It's called setting permissions. A simple message of: "That does not belong to you." would suffice. I mean most players would understand that players that spend hours upon hours tweaking their abodes to their liking shouldn't be subject to some passerby's fit of boredom.
Devs have been getting off easy by skimming off the top when it comes to adding more things for players to do (and SEE) when creating their versions of virtual playgrounds. They don't need another being thought up by players themselves. I'm in the camp of if you cannot do it right, don't do it at all. The only type of instance housing I can take besides open housing is housing instances. For instance (no pun intended), in FFXIV they have residential zones for each city. This allows all Free Companies to claim a plot for their Company estate, while inside there is a instance were each member can purchase a private chamber. So you can literally explore the zone looking (and entering) all the different Free Company estates. And when you get to the door for private chambers, you are presented with a list of members who occupy each room. And each person can name their room, set permissions and decorate to them to their likings.
I was looking so forward to housing in Wildstar. But once they switched to individual instances, I wrote it off as another failed housing system. I mean what good is it to get all creative if only you and your friends can see what you made? That's like personal stories in GW2, you make all these important decisions but hey only you can see them! About as useful as an imaginary friend.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Aye or it could be as simple as the door is locked!
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
What you should do then is learn the developers on how to have custom, open world housing in a MMO.
Did you think what it would be like walking into an area where there are 50 completely custom built houses different from each other?
(to me)(so people don't get confused) instance housing doesn't matter. if the action I take in the house do not have any correlation to what I do outside of the house then we have a problem.
Like in old EQ2 what you did and built in your home had zero affect for your game play outside of the home. One has to work extra hard to make a worse housing system then that.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Sorry, I think your lobbing this rock in the wrong direction....
looking past your game comments I see hardware and comm issues...
we are getting close but it will be probably another 5 to 10 years...
It depends on you ( not this guy but all of you as a community) ....
stop yelling at the gaming devs and instead yell at:
1) Your internet provider... (make them go faster...) (and don't even accept that the billing rates need to go up....)
2) Your operating system provider (primarily Apple and Microsoft) (they need to realize that faster hardware was not created for them to waste with worthless software additions that don't help 97% of their users) (that would be the non-corporate part of us...)
Just my opinion....
alternate opinions welcomed...
I have a life, its just different from yours.....
Exactly. In UO, housing was set up in a way that a player could share the use of an item, but have it locked down so you couldn't vandalize it. So players would lay out dye tubs for others to use, set certain vendors to give out recall runes to that location, allow players the use of their blacksmithing equipment. Some of these things really, REALLY came in handy to traveling players who may have gotten lost and was in dire need of repairs or a recall rune set for town. These things had a real impact on building a sense of a truly organic and dynamic player population.
I mean if devs are really that worried about houses being abandoned by the masses, then allow for a system where a NPCs (or even humanoid mobs) could move into abandoned houses that players aren't using. There are ways to handle the abandoned house issue without giving up on open world housing all together.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
and the thing is, a development company really has to go a bit out of their way to NOT think of these things. Its not like these are rocket science ideas nor are they that hard.
How about a player created quest totem. Only place I have ever seen that tried is Xyson
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Two totally different focuses doesn't make for a very good comparison. From DAOC, to EQ2, to the implementation in W*, TOR and WOW today. Instanced housing is little more than fluff, At least W* ties theirs to actual game-play to be fair to them... It makes sense to instance said housing, as the world is designed for a different form of content than UO or SWG ever were. They spend a lot more resource on that world content comparatively to those two games. Calling it lazy or what have you is quite short sighted IMO especially if we're making comparisons.
UO and SWG had some of the most static non interesting content you'll ever see in a MMO. The only plus to any world content in SWG was that it sparked a familiarity. Very little of SWG's environments were handcrafted. The landscape was ridiculously put together. WIth all the massive drops up and down yet two feet apart.
It's truly apples and oranges.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
housing in the large AAA games is completely and totally fluff. We all completely agree, but its not fluff BECAUSE you have a loading screen. That logic is asine.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I prefer the Open world housing of Asheron's Call. Where the owner can set permissions for who can enter or remove items from your chests'. It is also set up in such a way that there are housing plots so only a certain percentage of players will ever own a house this makes housing a prime candidate for economical prowess. It also alleviates the ugliness of having open world housing being placed anywhere.
My only qualms with AC's method of housing is that the player themselves couldn't build their house because they were preplaced. I would of preferred to have static plots but the player able to build ontop of those plots.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I have been very surprised at how well the free open world of Wurm Online is working. it contains pretty much all the features people say would cause problems but yet it doesn't. The reason seems to be in the details of the rules engine but over all..yeah...Terraform anywhere, build anywhere and yet no major problems.
they also have permissions on everything. The key is deeds, so if I own a deed you cant build on it. but its totally possible to block me in. It would take a month but it could be done.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
The rent system isn't perfect either. Sooner or later everyone suffers burnout on even their favorite MMO (or close enough to everyone at least). Losing the house you've spent so much time on when you don't log in for a month is pretty good motivation to stay gone. And that last part is something developers care quite a bit about. Player gone = income gone.
Of course it's even worse when you wind up in the hospital for a month, or crap like moving and not having internet for several weeks ruins it for you.
I do agree that some jackass coming in and thrashing everything would keep me miles away from the game too. Or at least never to bother with housing in that particular MMO.
There are tons of good reasons for developers to choose instanced housing, and only very few to go for outdoors (the number one reason being the feeding of one's ePeen), so it hardly surprises me that most of them go with option number one.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
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 one game that i feel did it better than any other game i played was Horizons. In Horizons your guild would buy some land (open world) and guild members would build their house within that area on a plot of their choosing. Housing all came in different designs based on your race and everyone was able to pitch in and help you build your house if they had spare resources. You would also have to build silo's to hold your resources as well as being able to build other decorations etc.
Also as a guild you could pitch in a build your own crafting stations within your guild land, effectively your guild is creating it's own town. Players not affiliated with a guild still get a plot of land.
Pity the rest of the game wasn't that good and i believe it was brought back to life under the name Istaria.
Isn't most features in mmos fluff? Isn't that what makes things feel immersive? All the little things coming together to make a believable world. Housing is fluff. I need that fluff. Im supposed to believe every hero around me is homeless? Instanced or not, doesn't matter to me. Its something I can customize and people can see it and its there when I log off.
Swg housing was great. Wildstar, rift, and ffxiv all have great housing. Swtors looks good too.
Every mmo I have played that has housing has done it a little differently and they have all been pretty good. Isn't that a sought after characteristic? Variety? What's this push to replicate whatever favorite type of feature? I enjoyed swg for almost 9 years. But Im not trying to make everything swg. Its ok to miss it or look back with nostalgia. But that's good enough for me. I don't want swg again. I had swg. It had its time. I enjoyed it. But if I wanted swg in every mmo from here on out, I'd never be satisfied. And I'd miss out on experiencing something done exceptionally well because of bias. Then I'm not really gaming anymore.
Finally a former swg person that says it the way it should be said!
As far as housing goes, instanced is fine as long as it is an instanced zone with other peoples houses visible.
So many people brought up so many good ideas I dont know where to start? And to the guy who brought up hardware? I never thought about that?
But anyways I dont know who sees these threads but I think when you bring all the comments together you literally have the dream housing and a developer should get right on top of all this. Can you imagine a game like wildstar with larger maps? Like maybe you were going around the planet? Then houses up in the air decorated? That would be really cool. I think open housing not just for neighbors but for anyone that passes by? That was the SWG housing and it rocked. Have guildhalls decorated?
I need to delve deeper into the FFXIV ones theirs sound cool but sound a bit like the LOTRO version? Not sure?
Why wouldn't you want to replicate the best features of many different games and put them in to one game? Wouldn't it make sense to take the very best (at least in your own opinion) features and make the best game possible? If a company did implement housing like SWG's it would not be SWG's housing. The game wouldn't be SWG2. It is just a feature not the entire game.
Because it leads to being all around jaded over something you have no control over.
Thats like looking at SWG's musician profession and saying, "They should have done it like Rock Band". Then saying their race courses shouldve been like GT. Their melee shouldve been Virtua Fighter 5, their ranged like CoD... where does it end?
Then we get posts like, "when will devs learn that what we want is our definition of whatever we think the best is of every game we ever played rolled into a virtual world."
Thats basically what happens around here on a smaller scale all the time. And the result is usually people being negative about some game, or the people who play them, or they start trying to find blame, or any other non-constructive thing you can think of that tears down the community.