So I was playing for a bit tonight and raising my Construction skill while finishing up some random missions in S1 and scavenging. Man it takes a metric crapton of wood to level Construction... anyhow, just out of idle curiosity I tried to place one of the pop tents I had in my pack and lo and behold it placed in the first spot I tried. The thing that makes this interesting is that I tried for an hour before the last patch to place one in the same area and I never did find anywhere that would allow me to place. So that means they certainly did relax the placement requirements for camps at least... by quite a bit.
------------------------- "Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
So I was playing for a bit tonight and raising my Construction skill while finishing up some random missions in S1 and scavenging. Man it takes a metric crapton of wood to level Construction... anyhow, just out of idle curiosity I tried to place one of the pop tents I had in my pack and lo and behold it placed in the first spot I tried. The thing that makes this interesting is that I tried for an hour before the last patch to place one in the same area and I never did find anywhere that would allow me to place. So that means they certainly did relax the placement requirements for camps at least... by quite a bit.
WOOHOO!!! Thanks for the heads up! I didn't know that they had worked on that! YAY! Today...I'm goin' campin'! w00t! lol
I have to vote no in the biggest possible way against "instanced" housing.
I really don't want instanced housing either. I would much prefer housing that everyone can interact with in a meaningful way. Such as being able to see it, walk up to it, walk around it, see things inside through the windows, and even go inside it and interact if they are allowed to. I just can't think of how to accomplish it without adding tons of lag to the game and making parts of the land feel like giant desert trailer parks... I hope they can figure it out.
------------------------- "Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
One way of doing things "quasi instanced" might be to have zoned housing which changes based on population. So, let's say there's a trailer park outside of Embry. When it starts, it's 2-3 small trailers. Click on any trailer, poof, you're in your house. As more people buy homes, it expands, so that eventually it's 10 or 15 trailers, which might represent 200 players.
One other thing is that there's no fast travel in FE. This means if your house is phyiscally fixed, it could end up being hours from where you're currently adventuring. That could be the biggest issue -- who wants a house that's too far away? And who wants to "move" every time you go up a few levels?
One way of doing things "quasi instanced" might be to have zoned housing which changes based on population. So, let's say there's a trailer park outside of Embry. When it starts, it's 2-3 small trailers. Click on any trailer, poof, you're in your house. As more people buy homes, it expands, so that eventually it's 10 or 15 trailers, which might represent 200 players. One other thing is that there's no fast travel in FE. This means if your house is phyiscally fixed, it could end up being hours from where you're currently adventuring. That could be the biggest issue -- who wants a house that's too far away? And who wants to "move" every time you go up a few levels?
This was pretty much the same idea I had.
Just a few small "communities" of beat up trailers or tents/camps on the outskirts of bigger towns....and yes....instanced. People there really is no way to NOT use instancing without causing an ugly landscape loaded with lag. So far as I know....that just can't be done. If anyone knows otherwise....you should CERTAINLY say so. But I haven't seen it. This is not a 2D Ultima Online here....sure it can be done with graphics that NON-demanding, but we're talking an entirely different kind of graphics here.
Oh sure, Vanguard did it....BUT....Vanguard's game world DWARFS this one.....seriously. There's no comparison between the size of Telon and The Grand Canyon Province....at least not right now. And regardless of what people think, EQ2's housing just WORKED, as far as not causing lag, still encouraging friends to visit, etc, and being centrally located, easy to access. Although....I don't think it's necessary, particularly in a game with this THEME, to make housing inside the cities. But you're right in saying....why would we want yet ONE MORE far away place to have to travel to for housing? So what's wrong with the idea I had earlier in the thread. Apparently no one liked it, since no one commented on it, but it would serve several purposes well:
-It would be CLOSE to towns, while not inside them
-Instancing would prevent lag and clutter
-Anyone can still come inside your house to visit...it's not like it's locked to the world... O.o
-It would keep with the wasteland theme (you'd have to re-read what I said in my previous post)
And like you just said....it could show signs of growth, but that growth would be limited because of instancing, so as not to pollute the world with more unnecessary junk. Of course, unless you wanted to make the houses themselves salvagable and able to be scavenged after someone abandons them for a few months or something....still....that's a long time for empty dwellings to be all about.
I don't think player housing for a game like this...is going to be an easy task for the developers. Someone is not going to be happy. They have to look at it from a practical standpoint on multiple levels and I'm just not convinced that what some people are wanting can be seamlessly executed with the type of graphics we have today, and the limitations of the size of the game world, and lack of high speed travel. Ultra realism is not worth sacrificing game performance, in my opinion. But...meh....I guess I'm just a realist or fatalist, I'm not sure which.
I think a combination of lord of the rings style and horizons style.
An instanced town or camp, so you can go and see the inside and outside of everyone's house. But have the variety that horizons has, dozens of different houses, crafting machines, silos (could do something different for storage in this game), walls, plants. Then give them the ability to stack things in and on each other for even more variety. Would be nice.
Or maybe even a tale in the dessert way where I can design every thing about the house. Although making each individual brick is really really boring.
Venge Sunsoar
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Comments
So I was playing for a bit tonight and raising my Construction skill while finishing up some random missions in S1 and scavenging. Man it takes a metric crapton of wood to level Construction... anyhow, just out of idle curiosity I tried to place one of the pop tents I had in my pack and lo and behold it placed in the first spot I tried. The thing that makes this interesting is that I tried for an hour before the last patch to place one in the same area and I never did find anywhere that would allow me to place. So that means they certainly did relax the placement requirements for camps at least... by quite a bit.
-------------------------
"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
WOOHOO!!! Thanks for the heads up! I didn't know that they had worked on that! YAY! Today...I'm goin' campin'! w00t! lol
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I have to vote no in the biggest possible way against "instanced" housing.
I really don't want instanced housing either. I would much prefer housing that everyone can interact with in a meaningful way. Such as being able to see it, walk up to it, walk around it, see things inside through the windows, and even go inside it and interact if they are allowed to. I just can't think of how to accomplish it without adding tons of lag to the game and making parts of the land feel like giant desert trailer parks... I hope they can figure it out.
-------------------------
"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
One way of doing things "quasi instanced" might be to have zoned housing which changes based on population. So, let's say there's a trailer park outside of Embry. When it starts, it's 2-3 small trailers. Click on any trailer, poof, you're in your house. As more people buy homes, it expands, so that eventually it's 10 or 15 trailers, which might represent 200 players.
One other thing is that there's no fast travel in FE. This means if your house is phyiscally fixed, it could end up being hours from where you're currently adventuring. That could be the biggest issue -- who wants a house that's too far away? And who wants to "move" every time you go up a few levels?
This was pretty much the same idea I had.
Just a few small "communities" of beat up trailers or tents/camps on the outskirts of bigger towns....and yes....instanced. People there really is no way to NOT use instancing without causing an ugly landscape loaded with lag. So far as I know....that just can't be done. If anyone knows otherwise....you should CERTAINLY say so. But I haven't seen it. This is not a 2D Ultima Online here....sure it can be done with graphics that NON-demanding, but we're talking an entirely different kind of graphics here.
Oh sure, Vanguard did it....BUT....Vanguard's game world DWARFS this one.....seriously. There's no comparison between the size of Telon and The Grand Canyon Province....at least not right now. And regardless of what people think, EQ2's housing just WORKED, as far as not causing lag, still encouraging friends to visit, etc, and being centrally located, easy to access. Although....I don't think it's necessary, particularly in a game with this THEME, to make housing inside the cities. But you're right in saying....why would we want yet ONE MORE far away place to have to travel to for housing? So what's wrong with the idea I had earlier in the thread. Apparently no one liked it, since no one commented on it, but it would serve several purposes well:
-It would be CLOSE to towns, while not inside them
-Instancing would prevent lag and clutter
-Anyone can still come inside your house to visit...it's not like it's locked to the world... O.o
-It would keep with the wasteland theme (you'd have to re-read what I said in my previous post)
And like you just said....it could show signs of growth, but that growth would be limited because of instancing, so as not to pollute the world with more unnecessary junk. Of course, unless you wanted to make the houses themselves salvagable and able to be scavenged after someone abandons them for a few months or something....still....that's a long time for empty dwellings to be all about.
I don't think player housing for a game like this...is going to be an easy task for the developers. Someone is not going to be happy. They have to look at it from a practical standpoint on multiple levels and I'm just not convinced that what some people are wanting can be seamlessly executed with the type of graphics we have today, and the limitations of the size of the game world, and lack of high speed travel. Ultra realism is not worth sacrificing game performance, in my opinion. But...meh....I guess I'm just a realist or fatalist, I'm not sure which.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I think a combination of lord of the rings style and horizons style.
An instanced town or camp, so you can go and see the inside and outside of everyone's house. But have the variety that horizons has, dozens of different houses, crafting machines, silos (could do something different for storage in this game), walls, plants. Then give them the ability to stack things in and on each other for even more variety. Would be nice.
Or maybe even a tale in the dessert way where I can design every thing about the house. Although making each individual brick is really really boring.
Venge Sunsoar