In this thread, wondering about the same thing myself.
Player housing, guild housing, they're awesome and strengthen the bond with your character.
Imagine for instance, in Warcraft (just because it's a game most are familiar with), if you could have a house with statues of yourself, with all the tier sets you'd obtained. I always wanted ffxi to do give me a statue for every set I completed.
Imagine if guild halls had statues of kills the guild had made. In WoW's case, normal would be Silver, heroic would be silver. LFR would be plastic. =P. Every player present at the kill should get a mini statue too. Examining any statue would show the date of the kill.
I swear, decorating your player's house is far more fun than it should be.
Guild housing with guild run shops would be very nice too, with member prices and public prices.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
One more thread of old MMO vets that can't move with the time.
Its 2012, the majority doesn't give a crap about player housing, hence it isnt done.
Plus, if I want to build something, i fire up minecraft,
Nobody is implementing robust and fun housing or guild housing. Most aren't implementing anything at all.. Nothing AAA anyway.
The best housing idea I've heard in a long time was during WoW's WotLK when someone suggested guild housing as airships and zeppelins that flow high above the city. Obviously his sort of setup would need to be instanced or phased.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
One more thread of old MMO vets that can't move with the time.
Its 2012, the majority doesn't give a crap about player housing, hence it isnt done.
Plus, if I want to build something, i fire up minecraft,
Nobody is implementing robust and fun housing or guild housing. Most aren't implementing anything at all.. Nothing AAA anyway.
The best housing idea I've heard in a long time was during WoW's WotLK when someone suggested guild housing as airships and zeppelins that flow high above the city. Obviously his sort of setup would need to be instanced or phased.
Vanguard has great guild/boat and housing.You want to own a houses all over the world ,you can.If you want to hang out in a vast guild house that has crafting facilitys you can.If you want to base yourself in the middle of a vast ocean and use a flying mount from your ship to travel anywhere in the world without loading you can.
Vanguard has great guild/boat and housing.You want to own a houses all over the world ,you can.If you want to hang out in a vast guild house that has crafting facilitys you can.If you want to base yourself in the middle of a vast ocean and use a flying mount from your ship to travel anywhere in the world without loading you can.
I always wondered, when they implemented flying in old-WoW, why you couldn't just fly across the ocean or why a flightmaster couldn't take you. Surely the ocean is wide enough between the three continents and whirlpool vortex, that no loading screen would have been needed.
The distance is quite wide, so you probably would have wanted to just a zeppelin or portal, but the option would have been fun sometimes.
Also, using the X-52 to drop noobs in the middle of the ocean would have been downright awesome for at least the first five times.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Aye, Vanguard has a great Player Housing and optional transport system.
Blizzard proved beyond a doubt that ignoring requests for Playing Housing to be implemented in a MMO does not drastically effect the profit margins of said MMO, so MMO Publishers learned they can also ignore most of what Players ask for.... no matter how mad we collectively get we still subscribe and play and/or buy from the cash shop.
I think if some house only gameplay were added it would make housing more attractive... in games I've seen with housing, the only purpose it serves is to store crap, move some furniture around, and hang out... pretty boring.
I think if some house only gameplay were added it would make housing more attractive... in games I've seen with housing, the only purpose it serves is to store crap, move some furniture around, and hang out... pretty boring.
Some MMOs have done what you suggest... My wife and kids play Wizards 101 and it has Playing Housing where you can even buy a house with a PvP arena, other features like gardening, storing pets to show off, etc.
There are many Players besides just kids that like all the bells and whistles of Wizard 101's PHing, my daughter's house ingame has players running through it and using the PvP arena everytime I look over her shoulder at her game. Her player House is busier than Bree usually is on Elendilmir LotRO. Crazy.
One more thread of old MMO vets that can't move with the time.
Its 2012, the majority doesn't give a crap about player housing, hence it isnt done.
Plus, if I want to build something, i fire up minecraft,
All the Players in Wizard 101 right now would disagree. The Players in other MMOs right now would also disagree.
Players do "give a crap" about Player Housing. Not everyone does, but that goes for all topics.
And as I said in other threads.... if a poster here is going to invoke "The Majority" let me remind them that "The Majority" were brought into MMO Gaming for no other reason than Marketers wanted to profit from a bigger demographic than the standard demographic of people that seek out this form of entertainment ...hence they are here for the wrong reasons and perhaps should seek other entertainment.
If you don't care about Player Housing, nor do your friends... I question whether you should be playing MMOs at all....
Also, all MMO Player become Vets, everyone. It happens faster than you think.
(Don't ever invoke "The Majority" around me. "The Majority" doesn't care much about anything from my experience and I will point it out every time. "The Majority" just floats from what's Hot now to what will be Hot tomorrow.)
Oh and Notch is a fantastic Developer. I don't agree with him on a ton of stuff, but I respect him boatloads. Do not toss his name or his products into a post where you use "The Majority" to prove a point. It's insulting to Notch and he deserves better.
Implementing housing in a way that doesn't look like (and control like) ass is pretty damn hard.
Players want to be able to make a nice-looking house, ideally one that serves a purpose, and that's part of the root of what people have observed here (that only some players want player housing.)
Combine limited payoff with non-trivial cost, and housing often doesn't survive the natural evolution of game design. It's right near the line of acceptability though (which is why it occasionally pops up.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Implementing housing in a way that doesn't look like (and control like) ass is pretty damn hard.
Players want to be able to make a nice-looking house, ideally one that serves a purpose, and that's part of the root of what people have observed here (that only some players want player housing.)
Combine limited payoff with non-trivial cost, and housing often doesn't survive the natural evolution of game design. It's right near the line of acceptability though (which is why it occasionally pops up.)
There's a lot of things in the development of a MMO that is pretty damn hard. That's not an exceptable explanation.
Bottom line is the MMO Publishers are not making MMOs for people that like player housing... they are making MMOs for much larger demographics that want other features.
Make a Interactive Video Game that appeals to the masses that want a game (but not a full featured MMO), call it a MMO just because the Label increases sales, argue with old goats like me that complain how MMOs are being designed the way us old nerds want them to be, ... Success and Profit.
That's why there is no Player Housing in most new MMOs. The Real reason.
Player housing and player owned cities are both resource intensive projects, like creating another game within the game. For as much resources as they take to really develop right, its nothing more than a side attraction, and most people dont really care if its there or not.
Player cities is even harder to make, since you need to gurantee every player can make a city somewhere.
More common is guild towns and cities, since you can make them seigeable.
Basically the reason were not seeing more of this is that not only is developing these systems a huge resource drain, people keep throwing money at the wow parks, and we wont be seeing anything much diffrent for a very long time because of this.
Hope you liked ranked pvp, raids, 5mans, instanced pvp queues cross server. This will be the focus of games for the next 5 years. If you can remember, older games use to do this a whole lot more, it wasnt untill wow showed the world that people want the above mentioned systems and nothing else did games take a left turn and head down the path its currently on.
Givn the tough economic times i wouldnt expect developers to secur investment for anything other than a sure fire success, which doesnt include money spent on stuff like this. Sorry they voted with their wallet and won.
The real problem is world size, space and implementation.
I personally love having player housing like we had in Ultima Online and SWG. I just can't imagine most games with launch populations trying to have player housing. Well not like UO and SWG had...
To me instanced housing like I first saw in Anarchy Online with apartments.. and pretty much what they use in EQ2.. just doesn't cut it.
I used to spend a lot of time in UO wandering around to look at player vendors around the world (no auction hall or search features... had to travel around and see what was for sale). Plus I'd often get attacked by someone while I wandered and pvp would ensue... or I'd get into a random conversation.
I just can't imagine a decent sized game launch... these days... and player housing like that. The forums for new MMO's explode enough as it is... lol.... House Wars the MMO...
There are mechanics they could use.. but to do it right you can't have instances (in my opinion) and that affects world design and population distribution during peak periods. Even with Mechanics in place.. you kinow someone (or some group) is not going to get a house (or city) and then the forums gain a new fiery section...
If another game launches with a SWG type housing/city setup... I definitely want the ability to disassemble anything someone builds in my yard. Waking up and walking outside to find my entire house surrounded by harvestors was like... not cool. Which eventually led to my building a compound but anyway... we are probably in the era of instanced housing or no housing for a while.
Well a perfect housing/city building system for me would be one where you could build a large variety of buildings anywhere in the world. Palisades, stone walls, villages, kingdoms.. the whole damn cake. having space to be able to fit all this is another thing. Maybe have an awesome sieging system where it gives everyone a great chance to take over land so every player has a chance to build... of course if they want to keep their land for a long time they would need to have proper defenses so they won't be easily sieged. Or maybe if its a futuristic MMO, you could go into outerspace and then you'd have an almost infinite amount of room to work with. WHOOO KNOWSSS?!!!!!!!!
Crap like this is just hard to implement correctly IMO. Archeage seems to be doing a decent job so far though, from what I've seen of it. BUT WE SHALL SEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!
There's a lot of things in the development of a MMO that is pretty damn hard. That's not an exceptable explanation.
Bottom line is the MMO Publishers are not making MMOs for people that like player housing... they are making MMOs for much larger demographics that want other features.
Make a Interactive Video Game that appeals to the masses that want a game (but not a full featured MMO), call it a MMO just because the Label increases sales, argue with old goats like me that complain how MMOs are being designed the way us old nerds want them to be, ... Success and Profit.
That's why there is no Player Housing in most new MMOs. The Real reason.
Difficulty vs. Benefit is the reality of the situation. Whether you consider it acceptable or not is beside the point. Whether you've concocted your own bizarre reason is beside the point.
Even MMO developers and designers and people who care about players having fun recognize that housing is a less efficient way of delivering that fun than other options.
Again, it skirts the line so we'll certainly see more games deliver player housing in the future, but it's a costly thing to implement in a way that doesn't suck, and even if it doesn't suck there are players simply not interested in that type of gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There's a lot of things in the development of a MMO that is pretty damn hard. That's not an exceptable explanation.
Bottom line is the MMO Publishers are not making MMOs for people that like player housing... they are making MMOs for much larger demographics that want other features.
Make a Interactive Video Game that appeals to the masses that want a game (but not a full featured MMO), call it a MMO just because the Label increases sales, argue with old goats like me that complain how MMOs are being designed the way us old nerds want them to be, ... Success and Profit.
That's why there is no Player Housing in most new MMOs. The Real reason.
Difficulty vs. Benefit is the reality of the situation. Whether you consider it acceptable or not is beside the point. Whether you've concocted your own bizarre reason is beside the point.
Even MMO developers and designers and people who care about players having fun recognize that housing is a less efficient way of delivering that fun than other options.
Again, it skirts the line so we'll certainly see more games deliver player housing in the future, but it's a costly thing to implement in a way that doesn't suck, and even if it doesn't suck there are players simply not interested in that type of gameplay.
A concocted reason? Not concocted at all. Some MMO Publishers have even admitted to it. It's American Capitalism at it's finest. if you haven't seen it yet look around. Seriously it's blantantly obvious us Nerds from years ago aren't the target audience now of MMOs, nor are the young Nerds the target audience either.
If you feel it's ok for profit to be more important than customers, that is your right. I don't believe in that any more... I used to.
Infact I nolonger support Capitalism in general, at least not Western style. I have seen what Capitalism can do and how ugly it can be. I consider MMOs to be a hobby, to be Art, to be a pasttime... and not "Investments" and not even a real business. I don't think they should ever be investments in the typical sense and now I understand how sports fans felt about thier pasttimes decades ago when they saw them turned into money machines instead of just Baseball, or Football... I get it now. Of course I also disagree with the idea of "For-Profit Hospitals" just to name another area of Western Society that I believe that has run off the tracks so to speak.
I see all this profit garbage in American Society now as compared to years ago as concocted and convoluted, so I guess we don't agree. This idea that everything in life must include Profit is what's bizarre to me.
We don't see eye to eye and it really has nothing to do with MMOs. I agree to disagree.
Think about it. What would a player house do except to be a glorified bank vault? All the hack-n-slash games are focused on combat & adventure. Players will not be spending a lot of time in their house.
Development resource is limited. I would much rather a developer spends their resources on new areas, new quests and new items as opposed to player housing.
Saved me from typing it. A huge plus 1.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
I really enjoy player housing if done properly. SWG and EQ2 are my 2 favorite examples of good player housing. Aion's upcoming patch has some nice looking housing features as well.
In SWG I would decorate my house when I was bored of combat and space content. It gave you more options when you were reaching burnout. Any additional content options are good for a game.
Think about it. What would a player house do except to be a glorified bank vault? All the hack-n-slash games are focused on combat & adventure. Players will not be spending a lot of time in their house.
Development resource is limited. I would much rather a developer spends their resources on new areas, new quests and new items as opposed to player housing.
Saved me from typing it. A huge plus 1.
if a game is mainly a combat game with not much open world out there, then houses won't make a whole lot of sense in the first place. but if it was more open then there could be other possibilities. sieging other player cities, being able to craft and sell from your houses, make a little community of houses and be happy people. maybe there could be other features that make a house more worthwhile to own. like if you have enough houses you could turn it into a city or something. i dont know, some crap like that. if devs put some of their time into it to make it a main part of their game rather than a little gimmick it could turn out interesting.
Think about it. What would a player house do except to be a glorified bank vault? All the hack-n-slash games are focused on combat & adventure. Players will not be spending a lot of time in their house.
Development resource is limited. I would much rather a developer spends their resources on new areas, new quests and new items as opposed to player housing.
Saved me from typing it. A huge plus 1.
if a game is mainly a combat game with not much open world out there, then houses won't make a whole lot of sense in the first place. but if it was more open then there could be other possibilities. sieging other player cities, being able to craft and sell from your houses, make a little community of houses and be happy people. maybe there could be other features that make a house more worthwhile to own. like if you have enough houses you could turn it into a city or something. i dont know, some crap like that. if devs put some of their time into it to make it a main part of their game rather than a little gimmick it could turn out interesting.
You are talking about PVP gameplay though, and I am a PVE gamer.
Sieging someones area isnt in the cards.
I see the gaming world as a place for all to enjoy. Plopping down houses ala SWG is a huge waste of the space IMO. Just a ghost town waiting to happen. If a game wants stuff like housing, then I would prefer instanced housing ala EQ2.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Think about it. What would a player house do except to be a glorified bank vault? All the hack-n-slash games are focused on combat & adventure. Players will not be spending a lot of time in their house.
Development resource is limited. I would much rather a developer spends their resources on new areas, new quests and new items as opposed to player housing.
Saved me from typing it. A huge plus 1.
if a game is mainly a combat game with not much open world out there, then houses won't make a whole lot of sense in the first place. but if it was more open then there could be other possibilities. sieging other player cities, being able to craft and sell from your houses, make a little community of houses and be happy people. maybe there could be other features that make a house more worthwhile to own. like if you have enough houses you could turn it into a city or something. i dont know, some crap like that. if devs put some of their time into it to make it a main part of their game rather than a little gimmick it could turn out interesting.
You are talking about PVP gameplay though, and I am a PVE gamer.
Sieging someones area isnt in the cards.
I see the gaming world as a place for all to enjoy. Plopping down houses ala SWG is a huge waste of the space IMO. Just a ghost town waiting to happen. If a game wants stuff like housing, then I would prefer instanced housing ala EQ2.
yeah exactly, there you go lol. i was just saying an example. devs could make a good and interesting housing system that fits their game. for example the instanced housing you're talking about.
Its not a terrible idea for devs to put some more thought into player housing/cities. i just hate it when devs put in a housing system and it ends up being extremely shallow and worthless.
Player housing is one of those features I like in theory. In reality, it never works out the way I want. Player houses need to serve some purpose beyond storage and simple fluff. In an mmorpg, who just hangs out in their virtual house? That just sounds like the epitome of laziness. Sitting on the couch at home in real life isn't enough, we have to do it in a game too.
I'm not going to grind the money to build and furnish a home just for the sake of doing it. Especially if that money could be used for making better gear which will be useful.
Make player houses serve a purpose that affects the game world. Also, make them destructable and/or conquerable. If that happens maybe there would be a little more interest in them.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
Comments
In this thread, wondering about the same thing myself.
Player housing, guild housing, they're awesome and strengthen the bond with your character.
Imagine for instance, in Warcraft (just because it's a game most are familiar with), if you could have a house with statues of yourself, with all the tier sets you'd obtained. I always wanted ffxi to do give me a statue for every set I completed.
Imagine if guild halls had statues of kills the guild had made. In WoW's case, normal would be Silver, heroic would be silver. LFR would be plastic. =P. Every player present at the kill should get a mini statue too. Examining any statue would show the date of the kill.
I swear, decorating your player's house is far more fun than it should be.
Guild housing with guild run shops would be very nice too, with member prices and public prices.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
One more thread of old MMO vets that can't move with the time.
Its 2012, the majority doesn't give a crap about player housing, hence it isnt done.
Plus, if I want to build something, i fire up minecraft,
"I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."
Fixed it for you,thank me later.
Nobody is implementing robust and fun housing or guild housing. Most aren't implementing anything at all.. Nothing AAA anyway.
The best housing idea I've heard in a long time was during WoW's WotLK when someone suggested guild housing as airships and zeppelins that flow high above the city. Obviously his sort of setup would need to be instanced or phased.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Vanguard has great guild/boat and housing.You want to own a houses all over the world ,you can.If you want to hang out in a vast guild house that has crafting facilitys you can.If you want to base yourself in the middle of a vast ocean and use a flying mount from your ship to travel anywhere in the world without loading you can.
I always wondered, when they implemented flying in old-WoW, why you couldn't just fly across the ocean or why a flightmaster couldn't take you. Surely the ocean is wide enough between the three continents and whirlpool vortex, that no loading screen would have been needed.
The distance is quite wide, so you probably would have wanted to just a zeppelin or portal, but the option would have been fun sometimes.
Also, using the X-52 to drop noobs in the middle of the ocean would have been downright awesome for at least the first five times.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Aye, Vanguard has a great Player Housing and optional transport system.
Blizzard proved beyond a doubt that ignoring requests for Playing Housing to be implemented in a MMO does not drastically effect the profit margins of said MMO, so MMO Publishers learned they can also ignore most of what Players ask for.... no matter how mad we collectively get we still subscribe and play and/or buy from the cash shop.
Pathetic really.
I think if some house only gameplay were added it would make housing more attractive... in games I've seen with housing, the only purpose it serves is to store crap, move some furniture around, and hang out... pretty boring.
Some MMOs have done what you suggest... My wife and kids play Wizards 101 and it has Playing Housing where you can even buy a house with a PvP arena, other features like gardening, storing pets to show off, etc.
There are many Players besides just kids that like all the bells and whistles of Wizard 101's PHing, my daughter's house ingame has players running through it and using the PvP arena everytime I look over her shoulder at her game. Her player House is busier than Bree usually is on Elendilmir LotRO. Crazy.
All the Players in Wizard 101 right now would disagree. The Players in other MMOs right now would also disagree.
Players do "give a crap" about Player Housing. Not everyone does, but that goes for all topics.
And as I said in other threads.... if a poster here is going to invoke "The Majority" let me remind them that "The Majority" were brought into MMO Gaming for no other reason than Marketers wanted to profit from a bigger demographic than the standard demographic of people that seek out this form of entertainment ...hence they are here for the wrong reasons and perhaps should seek other entertainment.
If you don't care about Player Housing, nor do your friends... I question whether you should be playing MMOs at all....
Also, all MMO Player become Vets, everyone. It happens faster than you think.
(Don't ever invoke "The Majority" around me. "The Majority" doesn't care much about anything from my experience and I will point it out every time. "The Majority" just floats from what's Hot now to what will be Hot tomorrow.)
Oh and Notch is a fantastic Developer. I don't agree with him on a ton of stuff, but I respect him boatloads. Do not toss his name or his products into a post where you use "The Majority" to prove a point. It's insulting to Notch and he deserves better.
Implementing housing in a way that doesn't look like (and control like) ass is pretty damn hard.
Players want to be able to make a nice-looking house, ideally one that serves a purpose, and that's part of the root of what people have observed here (that only some players want player housing.)
Combine limited payoff with non-trivial cost, and housing often doesn't survive the natural evolution of game design. It's right near the line of acceptability though (which is why it occasionally pops up.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There's a lot of things in the development of a MMO that is pretty damn hard. That's not an exceptable explanation.
Bottom line is the MMO Publishers are not making MMOs for people that like player housing... they are making MMOs for much larger demographics that want other features.
Make a Interactive Video Game that appeals to the masses that want a game (but not a full featured MMO), call it a MMO just because the Label increases sales, argue with old goats like me that complain how MMOs are being designed the way us old nerds want them to be, ... Success and Profit.
That's why there is no Player Housing in most new MMOs. The Real reason.
Player housing and player owned cities are both resource intensive projects, like creating another game within the game. For as much resources as they take to really develop right, its nothing more than a side attraction, and most people dont really care if its there or not.
Player cities is even harder to make, since you need to gurantee every player can make a city somewhere.
More common is guild towns and cities, since you can make them seigeable.
Basically the reason were not seeing more of this is that not only is developing these systems a huge resource drain, people keep throwing money at the wow parks, and we wont be seeing anything much diffrent for a very long time because of this.
Hope you liked ranked pvp, raids, 5mans, instanced pvp queues cross server. This will be the focus of games for the next 5 years. If you can remember, older games use to do this a whole lot more, it wasnt untill wow showed the world that people want the above mentioned systems and nothing else did games take a left turn and head down the path its currently on.
Givn the tough economic times i wouldnt expect developers to secur investment for anything other than a sure fire success, which doesnt include money spent on stuff like this. Sorry they voted with their wallet and won.
The real problem is world size, space and implementation.
I personally love having player housing like we had in Ultima Online and SWG. I just can't imagine most games with launch populations trying to have player housing. Well not like UO and SWG had...
To me instanced housing like I first saw in Anarchy Online with apartments.. and pretty much what they use in EQ2.. just doesn't cut it.
I used to spend a lot of time in UO wandering around to look at player vendors around the world (no auction hall or search features... had to travel around and see what was for sale). Plus I'd often get attacked by someone while I wandered and pvp would ensue... or I'd get into a random conversation.
I just can't imagine a decent sized game launch... these days... and player housing like that. The forums for new MMO's explode enough as it is... lol.... House Wars the MMO...
There are mechanics they could use.. but to do it right you can't have instances (in my opinion) and that affects world design and population distribution during peak periods. Even with Mechanics in place.. you kinow someone (or some group) is not going to get a house (or city) and then the forums gain a new fiery section...
If another game launches with a SWG type housing/city setup... I definitely want the ability to disassemble anything someone builds in my yard. Waking up and walking outside to find my entire house surrounded by harvestors was like... not cool. Which eventually led to my building a compound but anyway... we are probably in the era of instanced housing or no housing for a while.
Well a perfect housing/city building system for me would be one where you could build a large variety of buildings anywhere in the world. Palisades, stone walls, villages, kingdoms.. the whole damn cake. having space to be able to fit all this is another thing. Maybe have an awesome sieging system where it gives everyone a great chance to take over land so every player has a chance to build... of course if they want to keep their land for a long time they would need to have proper defenses so they won't be easily sieged. Or maybe if its a futuristic MMO, you could go into outerspace and then you'd have an almost infinite amount of room to work with. WHOOO KNOWSSS?!!!!!!!!
Crap like this is just hard to implement correctly IMO. Archeage seems to be doing a decent job so far though, from what I've seen of it. BUT WE SHALL SEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!
Difficulty vs. Benefit is the reality of the situation. Whether you consider it acceptable or not is beside the point. Whether you've concocted your own bizarre reason is beside the point.
Even MMO developers and designers and people who care about players having fun recognize that housing is a less efficient way of delivering that fun than other options.
Again, it skirts the line so we'll certainly see more games deliver player housing in the future, but it's a costly thing to implement in a way that doesn't suck, and even if it doesn't suck there are players simply not interested in that type of gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
A concocted reason? Not concocted at all. Some MMO Publishers have even admitted to it. It's American Capitalism at it's finest. if you haven't seen it yet look around. Seriously it's blantantly obvious us Nerds from years ago aren't the target audience now of MMOs, nor are the young Nerds the target audience either.
If you feel it's ok for profit to be more important than customers, that is your right. I don't believe in that any more... I used to.
Infact I nolonger support Capitalism in general, at least not Western style. I have seen what Capitalism can do and how ugly it can be. I consider MMOs to be a hobby, to be Art, to be a pasttime... and not "Investments" and not even a real business. I don't think they should ever be investments in the typical sense and now I understand how sports fans felt about thier pasttimes decades ago when they saw them turned into money machines instead of just Baseball, or Football... I get it now. Of course I also disagree with the idea of "For-Profit Hospitals" just to name another area of Western Society that I believe that has run off the tracks so to speak.
I see all this profit garbage in American Society now as compared to years ago as concocted and convoluted, so I guess we don't agree. This idea that everything in life must include Profit is what's bizarre to me.
We don't see eye to eye and it really has nothing to do with MMOs. I agree to disagree.
Present Reality can be changed.
Saved me from typing it. A huge plus 1.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
I really enjoy player housing if done properly. SWG and EQ2 are my 2 favorite examples of good player housing. Aion's upcoming patch has some nice looking housing features as well.
In SWG I would decorate my house when I was bored of combat and space content. It gave you more options when you were reaching burnout. Any additional content options are good for a game.
if a game is mainly a combat game with not much open world out there, then houses won't make a whole lot of sense in the first place. but if it was more open then there could be other possibilities. sieging other player cities, being able to craft and sell from your houses, make a little community of houses and be happy people. maybe there could be other features that make a house more worthwhile to own. like if you have enough houses you could turn it into a city or something. i dont know, some crap like that. if devs put some of their time into it to make it a main part of their game rather than a little gimmick it could turn out interesting.
You are talking about PVP gameplay though, and I am a PVE gamer.
Sieging someones area isnt in the cards.
I see the gaming world as a place for all to enjoy. Plopping down houses ala SWG is a huge waste of the space IMO. Just a ghost town waiting to happen. If a game wants stuff like housing, then I would prefer instanced housing ala EQ2.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
yeah exactly, there you go lol. i was just saying an example. devs could make a good and interesting housing system that fits their game. for example the instanced housing you're talking about.
Its not a terrible idea for devs to put some more thought into player housing/cities. i just hate it when devs put in a housing system and it ends up being extremely shallow and worthless.
Yeah and this thread is from 2008...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Player housing is one of those features I like in theory. In reality, it never works out the way I want. Player houses need to serve some purpose beyond storage and simple fluff. In an mmorpg, who just hangs out in their virtual house? That just sounds like the epitome of laziness. Sitting on the couch at home in real life isn't enough, we have to do it in a game too.
I'm not going to grind the money to build and furnish a home just for the sake of doing it. Especially if that money could be used for making better gear which will be useful.
Make player houses serve a purpose that affects the game world. Also, make them destructable and/or conquerable. If that happens maybe there would be a little more interest in them.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville