This entire discussion started off wrong starting with Mark's announcement of housing.
Should have started out with the goal of this housing feature and how it will enrich RvR and/or communities. As it stands, it feels more like a clumbsy bumbling into "THERES GONNA BE HOUSING" and then not figuring out why or what for until afterwards.
Lets start out with WHY you want to put a housing feature in the game. Why, for what purpose, what benefit, or what end?
Next, how will you make it both enriching to other pillars of the game without detracting from community building and RvR.
And lets not forget what housing did to DAoC, it might have been fun but it was horrible for the community.
How is housing horrible? (I didn't play daoc when it was added so I didn't experience it there).
In open games with non-instanced housing, it added to the community a lot, never took away from it. SWG And UO both are examples of this that did it well. It helped build the communites more then any other housing.
As far as enriching other pillars, it depends on how it's designed.
If housing is vunerable, if other realms can come in, take over lands, capture houses/keeps, then it can add to RVR a lot, by making you have tangible reasons to fight for your homeland, protect it, or in one case, re-take it if the enemy realm captures it.
It will give reasons for players of a realm to "band together" to form communities, build their houseos/keeps close together (will need to have limits to this, so you don't have mega cities of eeryone in a realm together, but rather smaller towns/keeps by themselves) and make all the more important fighting for it.
Of course if you have housing, there are things you can do to make people care more about them:
1. Provide the ability to decorate the houses (this is what makes them personal and unique, some people played SWG just to do this in the game)
2. Allow crafters to craft items in their houses and sell them on vendors at their house.
3. Give reasons for people to build up their keeps and cities. Allow people that own keeps (which should be quite expensive) to build certain things within his little town. Such as Stables that provide horses for people to buy, a market for non-crafters to sell goods they acquire, resources for crafters to buy to craft with, etc.
Basically keeps which give benefits to houses (thus people build near them , creating a small town) and then having a way for the leader of the keep to create an "RTS" like economy building system where they can place various buildings and build up their cities, providing reasons for people to be there and do things within the city, rather then it being a "ghost town" which can happen, you need VALID and real reasons that people should live in cities together and help provide reasons for them to stay there and do things.
If cities were build like RTS games, allowing players to build things like I mentioned, it could open teh way for some of the most advanced and meaningful housing in an mmo to date, and it will enrich the RVR combat when your city is capable of being destroyed or taken over by another realm.
This entire discussion started off wrong starting with Mark's announcement of housing.
Should have started out with the goal of this housing feature and how it will enrich RvR and/or communities. As it stands, it feels more like a clumbsy bumbling into "THERES GONNA BE HOUSING" and then not figuring out why or what for until afterwards.
Lets start out with WHY you want to put a housing feature in the game. Why, for what purpose, what benefit, or what end?
Next, how will you make it both enriching to other pillars of the game without detracting from community building and RvR.
And lets not forget what housing did to DAoC, it might have been fun but it was horrible for the community.
How is housing horrible? (I didn't play daoc when it was added so I didn't experience it there).
In open games with non-instanced housing, it added to the community a lot, never took away from it. SWG And UO both are examples of this that did it well. It helped build the communites more then any other housing.
As far as enriching other pillars, it depends on how it's designed.
If housing is vunerable, if other realms can come in, take over lands, capture houses/keeps, then it can add to RVR a lot, by making you have tangible reasons to fight for your homeland, protect it, or in one case, re-take it if the enemy realm captures it.
It will give reasons for players of a realm to "band together" to form communities, build their houseos/keeps close together (will need to have limits to this, so you don't have mega cities of eeryone in a realm together, but rather smaller towns/keeps by themselves) and make all the more important fighting for it.
Of course if you have housing, there are things you can do to make people care more about them:
1. Provide the ability to decorate the houses (this is what makes them personal and unique, some people played SWG just to do this in the game)
2. Allow crafters to craft items in their houses and sell them on vendors at their house.
3. Give reasons for people to build up their keeps and cities. Allow people that own keeps (which should be quite expensive) to build certain things within his little town. Such as Stables that provide horses for people to buy, a market for non-crafters to sell goods they acquire, resources for crafters to buy to craft with, etc.
Basically keeps which give benefits to houses (thus people build near them , creating a small town) and then having a way for the leader of the keep to create an "RTS" like economy building system where they can place various buildings and build up their cities, providing reasons for people to be there and do things within the city, rather then it being a "ghost town" which can happen, you need VALID and real reasons that people should live in cities together and help provide reasons for them to stay there and do things.
If cities were build like RTS games, allowing players to build things like I mentioned, it could open teh way for some of the most advanced and meaningful housing in an mmo to date, and it will enrich the RVR combat when your city is capable of being destroyed or taken over by another realm.
1) Decoration and stuff of something that is your is fine, but it if fluff and doesn't contribute to RvR or community. You're inside your house playing dolls.
2) For the love of god DO NOT allow crafters to craft inside of their houses. Unless you WANT to never develop a crafting community where people are in a busy city crafting together. This happened in daoc, it isn't theorycrafting. (hehe)
3) I heard this in his podcast too. Your RvR village will be burned down while you're asleep. The only game that has player owned structures that doesn't have this problem is eve online, and thats with very weird strontium timers and stagnant borders. So if the game wants a healthy exciting RvR experience, you'll be able to take over a lot of territory in a couple hours if nobody is there to defend. And you'll lose your house at night.
I'm not looking to say it is the worst idea ever, just some good ideas for housing need to be thought of. Everything you listed is either a bad idea or just won't work.
Another thing I'm terrified of is if the team gets obsessive over this and becomes unwilling to let it go if they can't think of a good way to incorporate housing. How much time money and design time will go into a feature that assumes itself? Will they be unwilling to just say its a bad idea, or change the rest of the game to bend to the requirements of housing. (like putting in strontium timers)
Personally, I think housing should ONLY be implemented in Keeps.
in or AROUND keeps. just like the middle ages.
They'll get burned down on the daily.
the keep doesn't necessarily have to be in the frontier, it could be a keep in the safer areas.
I'm thinking all housing needs to be put in the contested areas. The keeps need to be much harder to take, when it comes down to it. Hard enough to where a small group of 8-16 people can't take an empty Keep at 3am in the morning when everybody is asleep, and long enough to where it can't be blitzkrieged in a matter of minutes during peak times. There needs to be time to allow the owner of the keep to rally his/her forces to defend it.
Ok, so I'm starting to put together some thoughts on this topic and yes Raagnar, it's I'd me from MLF.
In order to promote community, I see housing taking the place of a central NPC city. Have a land layout where houses can be bought for extreme prices (20 people saving for a month) to promote guilds working together and people joining guilds, instead of 100, 5 person guilds called "kewl gang dudes guild". Have the housing land seperate from RvR, but always directly under its influence. So like if your realm controls a portion of the rvr zone, crafters in your town get some sort of proportional bonus.
give the houses like levels, and perks for people to RVR to get money for. Maybe if one realm pulls off the ultimate score (relic keep) it delevels enemy houses or something? What are some other thoughts?
Personally, I think housing should ONLY be implemented in Keeps.
in or AROUND keeps. just like the middle ages.
They'll get burned down on the daily.
the keep doesn't necessarily have to be in the frontier, it could be a keep in the safer areas.
I'm thinking all housing needs to be put in the contested areas. The keeps need to be much harder to take, when it comes down to it. Hard enough to where a small group of 8-16 people can't take an empty Keep at 3am in the morning when everybody is asleep, and long enough to where it can't be blitzkrieged in a matter of minutes during peak times. There needs to be time to allow the owner of the keep to rally his/her forces to defend it.
This is EXACTLY what I meant in my previous post:
Another thing I'm terrified of is if the team gets obsessive over this and becomes unwilling to let it go if they can't think of a good way to incorporate housing. How much time money and design time will go into a feature that assumes itself? Will they be unwilling to just say its a bad idea, or change the rest of the game to bend to the requirements of housing. (like putting in strontium timers)
This is exactly what I mean. A group should absolutely be able to take an empty, undefended keep. Theres no reason not to other than to justify a player losing their house, disregarding that the concept of building a destroyable house in frontier is greatly flawed because players have lifes outside of the game. We sleep, we have jobs, we can't dedicate every waking hour to defending a piece of ingame property from being destroyed.
I have a very reasonable proposal here in saying, just consider NOT doing housing until you can come up with a good idea for it, instead of fisting it into areas it doesn't belong. Thats all I'm saying.
Edit: I know when I write it seems like I'm screaming, I'm not, thats just how I write, I don't know how not to. LOUD NOISES
MJ keeps mentioning housing. I left daoc before they added housing, so my question really is does housing promote social interaction, or rvr? Also does anyone really care? My guild had a house in UO, but it didn't really promote gameplay other than it was a storage closet and the idea of a universal bank in a game world seems forced and silly; where are they really storing everyone's stuff?
i would prefer housing that was more like a guild hall located within an existing city that is full of people.
For me housing was a HUGE part of the game (UO). There were the PK houses at the crossroads by Brittain. . attacking PK guilds by their homes/towers etc. Getteing attacked at ours by PK guilds. I also had a little house on ice island where I did crafting away from all the mainland chaois. Now housing in CU might not be in the world that way at wich point it is only something that anchors your character a iittle bit more (like LOTRO) but is pretty much, as you said, more storage space.
Housing in CU is a lot more then just putting up a shack and hanging trophies on the wall. Go listen to MJ talk about it in his latest massivly podcast.
Personal houses will be in safe areas, eg 100% non attackable. My guess is you will also be able to set up forges and sell goods there. For RvR, housing takes on a much bigger role. You will be able to do things like construct mines, fortifcations, luber mills, ect.. Those player crafted buildings will help you generate resources and other things. I don't think they have fully hashed out all of the ideas and mechanics yet, but thats the idea. You will also be able to burn/loot/pillage said buildings.
1) Decoration and stuff of something that is your is fine, but it if fluff and doesn't contribute to RvR or community. You're inside your house playing dolls.
2) For the love of god DO NOT allow crafters to craft inside of their houses. Unless you WANT to never develop a crafting community where people are in a busy city crafting together. This happened in daoc, it isn't theorycrafting. (hehe)
3) I heard this in his podcast too. Your RvR village will be burned down while you're asleep. The only game that has player owned structures that doesn't have this problem is eve online, and thats with very weird strontium timers and stagnant borders. So if the game wants a healthy exciting RvR experience, you'll be able to take over a lot of territory in a couple hours if nobody is there to defend. And you'll lose your house at night.
I'm not looking to say it is the worst idea ever, just some good ideas for housing need to be thought of. Everything you listed is either a bad idea or just won't work.
Another thing I'm terrified of is if the team gets obsessive over this and becomes unwilling to let it go if they can't think of a good way to incorporate housing. How much time money and design time will go into a feature that assumes itself? Will they be unwilling to just say its a bad idea, or change the rest of the game to bend to the requirements of housing. (like putting in strontium timers)
1. It's not about playing with "dolls," There are plenty of people out there who like to make things personal and unique. Let me ask you a question, as an rpg player, do you care about your characters looks? Do you use the customization to pick something that you find appealing? Do you make use of a dye system to make your armor look more unique/how you like it? It's the same thing with housing, people enjoy it, you might not but plenty of others do. Not everything has to add directly to rvr/pvp to be rewarding for some players. In both UO and SWG decorating houses was something a ton of people loved to do an dit made the social aspect allt he better for it.
2. Did you play UO? Did you play SWG? I ask this because both of those games allowed people to have forges and other crafting tools placed in their homes. They could then craft their goods at their homes. This in no way "hurt" the community, rather it actually HELPED it. Because it gave them the abiltiy to craft at places other then cities, which allowed two good things:
-2a: It cut down on city-spam, you have to go the forge or things in games wher eit's in a city? It's SUPER CROWDED and people are constantly spamming crap, it's annoying.
-2b: It allowed people to interact more naturally. You could easily just wander around find a small city, browse peoples houses (and see how they've decorated them) find vendors and crafters making things. It gave them a place within this world that they made their own. You could find crafters at specific area's, other crafters could setup their shops nearby and it allowed for healthy competition against crafters.
-2c: This also becomes a huge moneysink. By requiring crafters (and people that wish to decorate their homes) to buy such things, it creates a lot of moneysinks to make the ecnomy more versatile and healthy. Crafters buy forges, you can have small forges, then bigger ones, etc. Then all the other things crafters and people can buy, it makes the economy keep rotating and provides a sense of accomplishment for crafters that make a name for themselves and their goods.
3. This is indeed a problem, it's something that would have to find a way to balance out. Perhaps have it set on timers, where citys/keeps can only be taken over at set times. Whily this is "Gamey" and not realistic, it allows at least for the people who are there to know when their towns/homes are "vunerable" toa ttacka nd allows them the ability to defend it. It would need testing and finding ithe right balance.
Perhaps they coudl also allow NPC based guards, outposts/guard towers, to help protect the city when palyers are gone, so it's not just a ghost town open for attacking at free will.
2) For the love of god DO NOT allow crafters to craft inside of their houses. Unless you WANT to never develop a crafting community where people are in a busy city crafting together. This happened in daoc, it isn't theorycrafting. (hehe)
3) I heard this in his podcast too. Your RvR village will be burned down while you're asleep. The only game that has player owned structures that doesn't have this problem is eve online, and thats with very weird strontium timers and stagnant borders. So if the game wants a healthy exciting RvR experience, you'll be able to take over a lot of territory in a couple hours if nobody is there to defend. And you'll lose your house at night.
I'm not looking to say it is the worst idea ever, just some good ideas for housing need to be thought of. Everything you listed is either a bad idea or just won't work.
Another thing I'm terrified of is if the team gets obsessive over this and becomes unwilling to let it go if they can't think of a good way to incorporate housing. How much time money and design time will go into a feature that assumes itself? Will they be unwilling to just say its a bad idea, or change the rest of the game to bend to the requirements of housing. (like putting in strontium timers)
2. Did you play UO? Did you play SWG? I ask this because both of those games allowed people to have forges and other crafting tools placed in their homes. They could then craft their goods at their homes. This in no way "hurt" the community, rather it actually HELPED it. Because it gave them the abiltiy to craft at places other then cities, which allowed two good things:
-2a: It cut down on city-spam, you have to go the forge or things in games wher eit's in a city? It's SUPER CROWDED and people are constantly spamming crap, it's annoying.
-2b: It allowed people to interact more naturally. You could easily just wander around find a small city, browse peoples houses (and see how they've decorated them) find vendors and crafters making things. It gave them a place within this world that they made their own. You could find crafters at specific area's, other crafters could setup their shops nearby and it allowed for healthy competition against crafters.
-2c: This also becomes a huge moneysink. By requiring crafters (and people that wish to decorate their homes) to buy such things, it creates a lot of moneysinks to make the ecnomy more versatile and healthy. Crafters buy forges, you can have small forges, then bigger ones, etc. Then all the other things crafters and people can buy, it makes the economy keep rotating and provides a sense of accomplishment for crafters that make a name for themselves and their goods.
3. This is indeed a problem, it's something that would have to find a way to balance out. Perhaps have it set on timers, where citys/keeps can only be taken over at set times. Whily this is "Gamey" and not realistic, it allows at least for the people who are there to know when their towns/homes are "vunerable" toa ttacka nd allows them the ability to defend it. It would need testing and finding ithe right balance.
Perhaps they coudl also allow NPC based guards, outposts/guard towers, to help protect the city when palyers are gone, so it's not just a ghost town open for attacking at free will.
I played neither of those but I played daoc. In daoc when housing came out, everyone got their own house, put everything they needed to craft inside of it, and they were never seen again. I just don't think that's what mark had in mind as the ideal when he said he wanted to encourage community building.
Especially when you could put the forges and lathes inside or near keeps, and have them progressively get more powerful so that not all forges are equal. Say you want to forge the hammer or Odin's Wrath, you don't do it at your house, you have to go forge it at a special spot in the frontiers, and people can fight over controlling that territory so they can forge the best stuff.
MJ keeps mentioning housing. I left daoc before they added housing, so my question really is does housing promote social interaction, or rvr? Also does anyone really care? My guild had a house in UO, but it didn't really promote gameplay other than it was a storage closet and the idea of a universal bank in a game world seems forced and silly; where are they really storing everyone's stuff?
i would prefer housing that was more like a guild hall located within an existing city that is full of people.
Am wondering if you are being serious or trying to start an arguement, lol. Because housing the level of realism and immersion a PC mmo has is what separates PC mmos from console single player games.
Not having housing in an MMO is like not having any kind of crosshairs in a FPS.
I played neither of those but I played daoc. In daoc when housing came out, everyone got their own house, put everything they needed to craft inside of it, and they were never seen again. I just don't think that's what mark had in mind as the ideal when he said he wanted to encourage community building.
Especially when you could put the forges and lathes inside or near keeps, and have them progressively get more powerful so that not all forges are equal. Say you want to forge the hammer or Odin's Wrath, you don't do it at your house, you have to go forge it at a special spot in the frontiers, and people can fight over controlling that territory so they can forge the best stuff.
Or, you know, just craft alone in your house...
WAs everyone in DAOC a crafter? Because in UO/SWG crafters took a lot of time/work to become decent and have it skilled. A lot of people who weren't crafters pruchased goods from them by physically going to their shops/houses and buying things or ordering it from them personally.
The point of having houses and things be open to "attacking" is so you have a reason for them to both defend and actually CARE about defending it.
If you make keeps able to provide protection for people, such as walls, guard towers, etc it will naturally make people WANT to build together, to put small communties of people together that can build their houses near each other for protection to help keep their homes and things from being easily detroyed by some roving band of zergers.
TAking over a keep and the houses within it's walls shouldn't be an "easy" task, it should require some type of siege equipment and things which should cost a LOT of money that people have to save for and take a decent sized force.
This will promote community, social itneraction, and reasons to fight/defend, that set it apart from most mmo's where you go out in frontiers/pvp area's and fight over a non-personal element that you don't care much about (IE guild wars 2 for instance).
As far as "forges" and things go, why is it so harmful in your opinion to have them in peoples houses? PEople will stil have to physically go there to buy goods, unless there's a global AH (which I'm against, imo a global AH will kill the sense of community for crafters).
It all dependson how it's designed really, and we don't have that much information currently.
I played neither of those but I played daoc. In daoc when housing came out, everyone got their own house, put everything they needed to craft inside of it, and they were never seen again. I just don't think that's what mark had in mind as the ideal when he said he wanted to encourage community building.
Especially when you could put the forges and lathes inside or near keeps, and have them progressively get more powerful so that not all forges are equal. Say you want to forge the hammer or Odin's Wrath, you don't do it at your house, you have to go forge it at a special spot in the frontiers, and people can fight over controlling that territory so they can forge the best stuff.
Or, you know, just craft alone in your house...
If you make keeps able to provide protection for people, such as walls, guard towers, etc it will naturally make people WANT to build together, to put small communties of people together that can build their houses near each other for protection to help keep their homes and things from being easily detroyed by some roving band of zergers.
TAking over a keep and the houses within it's walls shouldn't be an "easy" task, it should require some type of siege equipment and things which should cost a LOT of money that people have to save for and take a decent sized force.
This will promote community, social itneraction, and reasons to fight/defend, that set it apart from most mmo's where you go out in frontiers/pvp area's and fight over a non-personal element that you don't care much about (IE guild wars 2 for instance).
As far as "forges" and things go, why is it so harmful in your opinion to have them in peoples houses? PEople will stil have to physically go there to buy goods, unless there's a global AH (which I'm against, imo a global AH will kill the sense of community for crafters).
It all dependson how it's designed really, and we don't have that much information currently.
Again we're back to saying that taking a keep should be more difficult than in daoc, and more stagnant overall. Are you saying that taking keeps in daoc was too easy/fast, that keeps changed hands too much, or are we compensating for player home investment?
I can appreciate that it would encourage people to band together to defend their stuff, if not for the fact that its all gonna be burned down at night anyways.
As for crafting I guess it really depends on what people think when they say crafting community. A community that interacts over a crafting channel and mailbox vs simply /say "anyone have 20 leather scraps they wanna trade?" to your fellow crafters within close proximity to you.
As for spam, that was never the fault of crafting hubs, that is the fault of poor/no way to advertise that you exist as a crafter to make stuff. And for me most of the spam in the cities (before they added the player owned merchants) was from selling dropped uber loot.
Let me explain my bias for trading and crafting hubs rather than having your own.
When Mark announced CU and said it would be old school where the players had a community, it took me back to the only old-school MMO I have ever played, DAoC. He pointed to things like instances hurting the community due to things like segmentation and doing everything alone, being self-sufficient.
In the beginning, daoc did have crafting hubs. There were one or two spots where you could go in the world and find crafters. For midgard those places were gna faste and jordheim for the most part. You didn't need to /who armor, you could just go there and find a crafter and ask if they could make you something.
That started to change with every new expansion as they added more and more crafting hubs contributing to more segmentation of crafters, where they did their work. By the time they add housing everyone already knew most of the major crafters and had them on speed dial, hell I still know some of their names. Maladon, Ericthered, Exedore, etc. When I got to know these crafters I did not need to /who smith, I met them by simply going to gna faste and asking if anyone could make something for me. They no longer crafted at the hubs though, hardly anyone did after housing was implemented. You nolonger saw the familiar legendary grand masters at work in the crafting district of the cities, they were at home doing special orders.
Maybe I'm a romantic but I used to value seeing other people in MMOs. There is some value in seeing the great crafters do there thing, the new blood walking through the city and seeing the greats work their magic.
So yeah not only am I against crafting inside of homes or segmenting the community by having public services turned private by having one in every home and keep, but I'm actually for limiting the number of places where its even possible to craft. I miss the days when 99% of the crafters did their work in either gna faste and jordhiem.
For a similar reason I don't want to see crafting materials collection to be encouraged as a solo activity like it is in wow and other games, thats why I made that thread the other night for how to include PvE in the game, because I think encouraging people to collect materials in groups is better than them doing it alone, and the best way I know could do that is to have monsters drop mats.
IMO many in this forum are asking for a lot of the stuff that causes there to be no community in new MMOs.
Let me explain my bias for trading and crafting hubs rather than having your own.
When Mark announced CU and said it would be old school where the players had a community, it took me back to the only old-school MMO I have ever played, DAoC. He pointed to things like instances hurting the community due to things like segmentation and doing everything alone, being self-sufficient.
In the beginning, daoc did have crafting hubs. There were one or two spots where you could go in the world and find crafters. For midgard those places were gna faste and jordheim for the most part. You didn't need to /who armor, you could just go there and find a crafter and ask if they could make you something.
That started to change with every new expansion as they added more and more crafting hubs contributing to more segmentation of crafters, where they did their work. By the time they add housing everyone already knew most of the major crafters and had them on speed dial, hell I still know some of their names. Maladon, Ericthered, Exedore, etc. When I got to know these crafters I did not need to /who smith, I met them by simply going to gna faste and asking if anyone could make something for me. They no longer crafted at the hubs though, hardly anyone did after housing was implemented. You nolonger saw the familiar legendary grand masters at work in the crafting district of the cities, they were at home doing special orders.
Maybe I'm a romantic but I used to value seeing other people in MMOs. There is some value in seeing the great crafters do there thing, the new blood walking through the city and seeing the greats work their magic.
So yeah not only am I against crafting inside of homes or segmenting the community by having public services turned private by having one in every home and keep, but I'm actually for limiting the number of places where its even possible to craft. I miss the days when 99% of the crafters did their work in either gna faste and jordhiem.
For a similar reason I don't want to see crafting materials collection to be encouraged as a solo activity like it is in wow and other games, thats why I made that thread the other night for how to include PvE in the game, because I think encouraging people to collect materials in groups is better than them doing it alone, and the best way I know could do that is to have monsters drop mats.
IMO many in this forum are asking for a lot of the stuff that causes there to be no community in new MMOs.
That's the thing, from my experiences in both UO and SWG, which each had both non-instanced housing (you could plop a house pretty much anywhere in the open world) and an economy that relied heavily on player crafting, they were each the most social mmo's I ever played.
A lot of newer mmo's these days do a similar system to what you ask for, crafting stations (WoW, Rift, Guild Wars 2, etc) which are found in the main cities. you can go there and see a ton of people just standing around at stations using them to up their crafting and make items.
This creates a place for people that gathered there yes, but it leads to a lot of spamming, and lag in cities where you have all these people bunched up.
I think thekre are more things that matter to this issue rather then having crafters able to craft at their homes and not and I will explain why.
In UO, in eiach town you had public "boards" which people could browse, and on these boards anyone could list things, from crafters advertisingi their goods and their shop locations, to guilds looking for new members, etc. It all felt and looked very "natural" There was no "auction house" of any kind in UO. Now on top of this you still ha dpeople that'd gather in the cities, mainly at the banks (Where you could store things), people naturally grouped here, to talk to other players, find groups, avertise their pets (tamers) and what not.
In SWG on the other hand you had a newer (and more common used) /trade chat channel, where crafters advertised themselves. You also had people that still grouped up outside the starport area's (where people had to use to travel between planets). SWG had a limited Auction house whereby the only thing you could sell on it were low-priced items and resources. You couldn't sell the more expensive goods such as armor weapons that were for better quality levels then "noobie" goods. PEople had to buy those from crafters at their shops and such.
In Both these games you could simply explore around the world, find player houses, vendors sitting nat them and go inside to find crafters and goods to buy. You could generally run into crafters at their houes making items, talk to them, ask them to make something specific for you or just browse what they already had made and buy things. You could also offer services if you sold resources, to help find some for them and trade them.
There was a very natural and a lot more "open" community around this. It created a good NEED for housing, it gave reasons for people to visit other players houses (and not juts get one for themselves, use it for storage and never step foot in someone elses house).
Both of these games had well "known" crafters, but they also had good working economies that worked much like the real world. A crafter would beocme known, he'd jack up his price and charge a premium, then another crafter would move in, setup shop and offer similar quality items at lower prices, they'd get into a competition (sometimes physcially, things could even get heated between rival crafters) and it just created this "live" sense of community, that I never once expeirenced in a game that had AH's or non-house crafting liek that.
The biggest Issue (imo) with crafting and housing is Auction houses. If you have auction houses, especially "global" ones, it will outright KILL any sense of community in terms of social interaction between crafters and their customers. People will simply browse the AH, buy things, sell things, never talking to their crafters mainly. I hate the AH for this, it ruined what was once a very fun experience from older mmo's.
Another issue, as you said, is advertising. There ar eways to handle this, UO did it great imo with it's public board that people could browse (usually found at the bank area in main cities), it fit within the world of UO, wasn't out of place, and it allowed people to advertise their goods without being oto obtuse or spamming galore about it (though this could still happen, don't get me wrong, there' sno real way to stop spamming, in any mmo it will happen).
I thin in the end we both want the same thing, a sense of community for crafters, the interaction and social aspect. We have simply had different experiences. you experienced it through DAOC and that style of crafting, while I experienced it through UO/SWG mainly.
The game is still early, and if it does get made (I hope) this is something I hope they test and find the best way to offer that.
edit - In regards to the keep, I meant that it should be difficult enough that it requires a decent sized force to capture, complete with some type of sieging equipment and preperation to do it, not an easy task.
Also as mentioned, I'd be fine with a timer , there has to be a way you can stop the "midnigiht" raids when the towerns are empty frompeople who are sleeping because of real life. Yes it's gamey as I said , but it's something that benefits the game for ht ebest imo, allowing decent time for people to be on enough to defend and fight at least.
If not, then at least populate the keep/town with NPC guards enough that it stands a chance of defending against smaller groups and what not.
The timers thing would result in realm warfare being the domain of the zerg, same effect strontium timers had on eve. Set the tower to reinforced mode, giving both sides time to organize their zergs. Results in very stagnant borders, like the infamous fortress delve that was only defeated by meta-gaming. And the russian mega-NAPs in the east that will remain there until they shut the servers down in 2040.
It would be sacrificing the ebb and flow of RvR for the sake of protecting your in-game identity. Hey thats MY house, why should they be able to burn it down while I'm asleep or on vacation? Personally I don't like the idea of being at the beach and worrying about my assets in a videogame, so my personal opinion is that building a "house" in a frontier is a bad idea. Guilds claiming keeps and towers is one thing. Building and upgrading fortifications in the frontiers and getting recognition for it is a great idea, but a house? You can't justify something like stront timers with forts and towers, they aren't yours.
As for crafting I'm still of the opinion that there should be visibility to crafting. People who are RvR are out on the front lines with everyone else, not in an instance. To me crafting at home is no less damaging to community than everyone deciding to stop RvRing and to start having duels at home instead.
I believe there are a lot of things that could be done to help form strong communities and a lot of them involve force people to do things a certain way. First step I think is ask yourself, of all the people you remember from your old-school MMO's, where do you first remember running into them and talking to them? I'll list mine out.
I met most of the people that I remember first and foremost at popular / high value pve hubs. Mob camps, dungeon entrances.
Also on both ends of the portal keep both waiting on the train and after arriving at destination.
Also at the crafting hubs and other popular public service locations. By public service I mean things like popular bind stone spots with nearby healers and vault NPCs.
Matching name to avatar is important to me for to say "I remember <this guy>". Some people I came to know and remember and I don't think I even talked to them, I was just in close proximity to them frequently and when we eventually ended up in a group together, we just naturally assisted each other on targets. I learned some on how to play characters in different ways simply by being in close proximity of other berserkers and warriors and watching them more skillfully dispatch monsters.
Also hilarious moments in jordheim when spellcrafters would attempt to imbue an item with too much power and there was an explosion and someone falling over dead, and the interesting conversations that would start. Someone would rezz you, offer advice on how to avoid that from happening.
That stuff just doesn't happen when people do things by themselves or are oversegmented.
Take something like dueling. You can duel anywhere so people do duel everywhere. What if you were to make a special arena for it, a special place for people to duel. All the people that want to duel are now in close proximity and can see each other. They can watch each other fight and learn things from the masters. Non-instanced so not everyone can duel at once but several dueling areas and people had to wait their turn. Lots of people would probably hate the idea because it would seem an unnecessary inconvenience, but it would be interesting to see what net benefit it would cause to community building and making those moments and gaming that stick with you.
Much like removing the convenience of crafting at home. Would seem unnecessary to most in daoc, but there would be suttle benefits not easy to explain.
I know I'm late to the thread but here is my take.
First off there should be at least 4 seperate "areas" that people can build structures on. The center of the map where all the best resources are would be the highly contested area. Then you would have "mile gates" simialr to DaoC OF, but instead of just 2 I was thinking more along the lines of 5-10. This area would be more secure than the contested area due to the mile gate barrier but would still be somewhat vulnerable. Then behind this area you have a few more gates, similar to the relic gates of NF, where you need to have a ram to take them down and the walls have multiple levels to make it a bit easier to defend. This area would have maybe 2-3 gates so it would be a lot harder for an enemy to break into. Finally after this area would be just 1 gate leading to the last area of a realm, this final gate would be extremely difficult to break down.
Anyway once you set up these different areas, each with their own risks/rewards players could then set up shop in whichever area they wanted to. The more risky the area would give them better resources but would also increase their chances of getting their structure destroyed.
Also I don't think players should be able to build whatever they want wherever they want. There should be Hook Points (lots of them everywhere) and you can only build certian types of structures on each hook point. Similar to Vanguard Housing/Horizons Housing.
Finally housing should be like EvE's Space Stations, where you can go to one and pick up player made quests, use the bank and buy/sell things. This also ties into my Hauler/Localized banking idea where supplies will be constantly moving around the realm through player haulers. The more risky areas will have better resrouces and weopons armor but will be more exspensive than the safer areas.
I healed Mistwraith and all I got was this stupid tee-shirt!
The timers thing would result in realm warfare being the domain of the zerg, same effect strontium timers had on eve. Set the tower to reinforced mode, giving both sides time to organize their zergs. Results in very stagnant borders, like the infamous fortress delve that was only defeated by meta-gaming. And the russian mega-NAPs in the east that will remain there until they shut the servers down in 2040.
It would be sacrificing the ebb and flow of RvR for the sake of protecting your in-game identity. Hey thats MY house, why should they be able to burn it down while I'm asleep or on vacation? Personally I don't like the idea of being at the beach and worrying about my assets in a videogame, so my personal opinion is that building a "house" in a frontier is a bad idea. Guilds claiming keeps and towers is one thing. Building and upgrading fortifications in the frontiers and getting recognition for it is a great idea, but a house? You can't justify something like stront timers with forts and towers, they aren't yours.
As for crafting I'm still of the opinion that there should be visibility to crafting. People who are RvR are out on the front lines with everyone else, not in an instance. To me crafting at home is no less damaging to community than everyone deciding to stop RvRing and to start having duels at home instead.
I believe there are a lot of things that could be done to help form strong communities and a lot of them involve force people to do things a certain way. First step I think is ask yourself, of all the people you remember from your old-school MMO's, where do you first remember running into them and talking to them? I'll list mine out.
I met most of the people that I remember first and foremost at popular / high value pve hubs. Mob camps, dungeon entrances.
Also on both ends of the portal keep both waiting on the train and after arriving at destination.
Also at the crafting hubs and other popular public service locations. By public service I mean things like popular bind stone spots with nearby healers and vault NPCs.
Matching name to avatar is important to me for to say "I remember ". Some people I came to know and remember and I don't think I even talked to them, I was just in close proximity to them frequently and when we eventually ended up in a group together, we just naturally assisted each other on targets. I learned some on how to play characters in different ways simply by being in close proximity of other berserkers and warriors and watching them more skillfully dispatch monsters.
Also hilarious moments in jordheim when spellcrafters would attempt to imbue an item with too much power and there was an explosion and someone falling over dead, and the interesting conversations that would start. Someone would rezz you, offer advice on how to avoid that from happening.
That stuff just doesn't happen when people do things by themselves or are oversegmented.
Take something like dueling. You can duel anywhere so people do duel everywhere. What if you were to make a special arena for it, a special place for people to duel. All the people that want to duel are now in close proximity and can see each other. They can watch each other fight and learn things from the masters. Non-instanced so not everyone can duel at once but several dueling areas and people had to wait their turn. Lots of people would probably hate the idea because it would seem an unnecessary inconvenience, but it would be interesting to see what net benefit it would cause to community building and making those moments and gaming that stick with you.
Much like removing the convenience of crafting at home. Would seem unnecessary to most in daoc, but there would be suttle benefits not easy to explain.
I'm not too familiar with Eve (Combat was a huge turn off for me in that game, so mind numbling boring fo ra space game imo), but with the timer system, as I said, it'd hav eto be balanced out and tested, it could shift, to give players different times and open areas to have a more natural flow of combat and sieges, but even if there's no timer, there has to be something in place to stop midnight rushing of some guild who specifically has all of it's members get up at 3am when most people are asleep in the real world and rushes over all the towns. If not a timer then they need to populate the town with npc guards and soldiers, so it's not just a simple cakewalk taking over a ghost town with no one there.
Regarding this line specifically, "You can't justify something like stront timers with forts and towers, they aren't yours."
To me that's the point of why I DO want people to be able to build there, Taking over "forts and towers" that are NPC controlled (See Warhamer and guild wars 2) takes away the importance of doing those things. It will switch hands back and fourth and you have 0 tangible connection to it.
Whereas if people actually BUILT those things, a keep pops up in the frontier, then people build their homes around it (for the protection it offers) that makes the point of defending it all the more important and personal, because that's peoples homes and they know the other people that live there with them. IT's not just some generic "npc" controlled keep or tower that is copy and pasted around the landscape, that kind of thing was done in both Warhammer online and Guild Wars 2 , it got repeitive in both games and people didn't really care too much abou them, just groups of peple that'd take them over, logout, then login a few hours later to see another group had taken them. There was mostly just behind the scenes buffs for your server/alliance and that was that. It had no impact really on losing them.
Also regarding metting people, duels and crafting, again I think our expeirence is different and thus is why we see this differently.
You talk about meeting people in at pve hubs, dungeons, mob camps. For me I met most people that I still keep in touch with to this day mainly from the bank area in UO (where people would hang out to talk, etc, as the main storage area outside of housing it was natural for people to converge there) and SWG's starports, however I also met MANY people out in the world at their houses and communities.
From your experience with crafting you assume that having it as houses will detract from the "community" but in my expeirnece with UO and SWG, it had the complete opposite affect.
Crafters had their own houses, they made into shops. You couldn't buy goods on any kind of global AH for most things, you had to physically go to crafters hops and things. You could go there, talk to them, meet people who were buying their goods (the well known crafters usually had many people there at their house/shop).
On top of this, it helped reinfore the importance of homes. Crafters would open shops within a community of other homes/guilds, which led to more interaction naturally out int he world, rather then simply at the "cities" or hubs.
You talk about dueling, I Will tell you a small story.
I have dueled many people throughout my time playing mmo's, and some games have had "arenas" for dueling, but usually it's treated more like battlegrounds, where you join, fight against people, etc) apart from the usual /duel in mmo's where you do it yourself.
I hardly remember any of those games.
You know what I do remember the most? Dueling in UO. Perhaps it's just a time passed, and the mindset of players has changed. However in the early mmo's (UO, AC, EQ) they seemed a loooooot more social.
In UO my guild had a small keep just east of Britiana, nearby just a stones throw away was another guild KFG (IIRC). They routinely held popular "tournaments" wher emany players would show up and duel each other tournament style, leaving a winner to get a prize and other goods. It was completely player controlled and even GM's would take part (not using any gm powers or anything, that wouldn't be fair lol). and hang out with people there. IPt was quite popular and fun to do, and was faaaaar more memorable then any other "duel" type of system in any other mmorpg I played, because it felt natural and you had crowds of real people watching it.
Again, I think it's just our (different) experiences, for me housing and crafting in them promoted community, but to you it didn't. I don't know if it's the design that was different or what (I didn't play DAOC then so I can't say from experience like you can).
Was the housing in Daoc "disconnected" fromt he main world? (IE in it's own instance/zone), I think that's part of the problem if so.
In UO and SWG housing eixisted within the game world, it wasn' tinstanced in any way, so it was natural for people to just "come across' houses and communities , find cirafter shops, browse, etc.
I think if this is the case that is the main thing that made the difference between daoc and UO/SWG housing and our experiences in each.
Instancing houses (even if it's zone based) puts it into it's own "bubble" and makes it feel disconnected from the world. It's one of the quickest ways to take down the "community" aspect housing brings to the game.
I know I'm late to the thread but here is my take.
First off there should be at least 4 seperate "areas" that people can build structures on. The center of the map where all the best resources are would be the highly contested area. Then you would have "mile gates" simialr to DaoC OF, but instead of just 2 I was thinking more along the lines of 5-10. This area would be more secure than the contested area due to the mile gate barrier but would still be somewhat vulnerable. Then behind this area you have a few more gates, similar to the relic gates of NF, where you need to have a ram to take them down and the walls have multiple levels to make it a bit easier to defend. This area would have maybe 2-3 gates so it would be a lot harder for an enemy to break into. Finally after this area would be just 1 gate leading to the last area of a realm, this final gate would be extremely difficult to break down.
Anyway once you set up these different areas, each with their own risks/rewards players could then set up shop in whichever area they wanted to. The more risky the area would give them better resources but would also increase their chances of getting their structure destroyed.
Also I don't think players should be able to build whatever they want wherever they want. There should be Hook Points (lots of them everywhere) and you can only build certian types of structures on each hook point. Similar to Vanguard Housing/Horizons Housing.
Finally housing should be like EvE's Space Stations, where you can go to one and pick up player made quests, use the bank and buy/sell things. This also ties into my Hauler/Localized banking idea where supplies will be constantly moving around the realm through player haulers. The more risky areas will have better resrouces and weopons armor but will be more exspensive than the safer areas.
Comments
How is housing horrible? (I didn't play daoc when it was added so I didn't experience it there).
In open games with non-instanced housing, it added to the community a lot, never took away from it. SWG And UO both are examples of this that did it well. It helped build the communites more then any other housing.
As far as enriching other pillars, it depends on how it's designed.
If housing is vunerable, if other realms can come in, take over lands, capture houses/keeps, then it can add to RVR a lot, by making you have tangible reasons to fight for your homeland, protect it, or in one case, re-take it if the enemy realm captures it.
It will give reasons for players of a realm to "band together" to form communities, build their houseos/keeps close together (will need to have limits to this, so you don't have mega cities of eeryone in a realm together, but rather smaller towns/keeps by themselves) and make all the more important fighting for it.
Of course if you have housing, there are things you can do to make people care more about them:
1. Provide the ability to decorate the houses (this is what makes them personal and unique, some people played SWG just to do this in the game)
2. Allow crafters to craft items in their houses and sell them on vendors at their house.
3. Give reasons for people to build up their keeps and cities. Allow people that own keeps (which should be quite expensive) to build certain things within his little town. Such as Stables that provide horses for people to buy, a market for non-crafters to sell goods they acquire, resources for crafters to buy to craft with, etc.
Basically keeps which give benefits to houses (thus people build near them , creating a small town) and then having a way for the leader of the keep to create an "RTS" like economy building system where they can place various buildings and build up their cities, providing reasons for people to be there and do things within the city, rather then it being a "ghost town" which can happen, you need VALID and real reasons that people should live in cities together and help provide reasons for them to stay there and do things.
If cities were build like RTS games, allowing players to build things like I mentioned, it could open teh way for some of the most advanced and meaningful housing in an mmo to date, and it will enrich the RVR combat when your city is capable of being destroyed or taken over by another realm.
1) Decoration and stuff of something that is your is fine, but it if fluff and doesn't contribute to RvR or community. You're inside your house playing dolls.
2) For the love of god DO NOT allow crafters to craft inside of their houses. Unless you WANT to never develop a crafting community where people are in a busy city crafting together. This happened in daoc, it isn't theorycrafting. (hehe)
3) I heard this in his podcast too. Your RvR village will be burned down while you're asleep. The only game that has player owned structures that doesn't have this problem is eve online, and thats with very weird strontium timers and stagnant borders. So if the game wants a healthy exciting RvR experience, you'll be able to take over a lot of territory in a couple hours if nobody is there to defend. And you'll lose your house at night.
I'm not looking to say it is the worst idea ever, just some good ideas for housing need to be thought of. Everything you listed is either a bad idea or just won't work.
Another thing I'm terrified of is if the team gets obsessive over this and becomes unwilling to let it go if they can't think of a good way to incorporate housing. How much time money and design time will go into a feature that assumes itself? Will they be unwilling to just say its a bad idea, or change the rest of the game to bend to the requirements of housing. (like putting in strontium timers)
I'm thinking all housing needs to be put in the contested areas. The keeps need to be much harder to take, when it comes down to it. Hard enough to where a small group of 8-16 people can't take an empty Keep at 3am in the morning when everybody is asleep, and long enough to where it can't be blitzkrieged in a matter of minutes during peak times. There needs to be time to allow the owner of the keep to rally his/her forces to defend it.
Ok, so I'm starting to put together some thoughts on this topic and yes Raagnar, it's I'd me from MLF.
In order to promote community, I see housing taking the place of a central NPC city. Have a land layout where houses can be bought for extreme prices (20 people saving for a month) to promote guilds working together and people joining guilds, instead of 100, 5 person guilds called "kewl gang dudes guild". Have the housing land seperate from RvR, but always directly under its influence. So like if your realm controls a portion of the rvr zone, crafters in your town get some sort of proportional bonus.
give the houses like levels, and perks for people to RVR to get money for. Maybe if one realm pulls off the ultimate score (relic keep) it delevels enemy houses or something? What are some other thoughts?
This is EXACTLY what I meant in my previous post:
Another thing I'm terrified of is if the team gets obsessive over this and becomes unwilling to let it go if they can't think of a good way to incorporate housing. How much time money and design time will go into a feature that assumes itself? Will they be unwilling to just say its a bad idea, or change the rest of the game to bend to the requirements of housing. (like putting in strontium timers)
This is exactly what I mean. A group should absolutely be able to take an empty, undefended keep. Theres no reason not to other than to justify a player losing their house, disregarding that the concept of building a destroyable house in frontier is greatly flawed because players have lifes outside of the game. We sleep, we have jobs, we can't dedicate every waking hour to defending a piece of ingame property from being destroyed.
I have a very reasonable proposal here in saying, just consider NOT doing housing until you can come up with a good idea for it, instead of fisting it into areas it doesn't belong. Thats all I'm saying.
Edit: I know when I write it seems like I'm screaming, I'm not, thats just how I write, I don't know how not to. LOUD NOISES
For me housing was a HUGE part of the game (UO). There were the PK houses at the crossroads by Brittain. . attacking PK guilds by their homes/towers etc. Getteing attacked at ours by PK guilds. I also had a little house on ice island where I did crafting away from all the mainland chaois. Now housing in CU might not be in the world that way at wich point it is only something that anchors your character a iittle bit more (like LOTRO) but is pretty much, as you said, more storage space.
For RPers it is more useful though.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
Housing in CU is a lot more then just putting up a shack and hanging trophies on the wall. Go listen to MJ talk about it in his latest massivly podcast.
Personal houses will be in safe areas, eg 100% non attackable. My guess is you will also be able to set up forges and sell goods there. For RvR, housing takes on a much bigger role. You will be able to do things like construct mines, fortifcations, luber mills, ect.. Those player crafted buildings will help you generate resources and other things. I don't think they have fully hashed out all of the ideas and mechanics yet, but thats the idea. You will also be able to burn/loot/pillage said buildings.
1. It's not about playing with "dolls," There are plenty of people out there who like to make things personal and unique. Let me ask you a question, as an rpg player, do you care about your characters looks? Do you use the customization to pick something that you find appealing? Do you make use of a dye system to make your armor look more unique/how you like it? It's the same thing with housing, people enjoy it, you might not but plenty of others do. Not everything has to add directly to rvr/pvp to be rewarding for some players. In both UO and SWG decorating houses was something a ton of people loved to do an dit made the social aspect allt he better for it.
2. Did you play UO? Did you play SWG? I ask this because both of those games allowed people to have forges and other crafting tools placed in their homes. They could then craft their goods at their homes. This in no way "hurt" the community, rather it actually HELPED it. Because it gave them the abiltiy to craft at places other then cities, which allowed two good things:
-2a: It cut down on city-spam, you have to go the forge or things in games wher eit's in a city? It's SUPER CROWDED and people are constantly spamming crap, it's annoying.
-2b: It allowed people to interact more naturally. You could easily just wander around find a small city, browse peoples houses (and see how they've decorated them) find vendors and crafters making things. It gave them a place within this world that they made their own. You could find crafters at specific area's, other crafters could setup their shops nearby and it allowed for healthy competition against crafters.
-2c: This also becomes a huge moneysink. By requiring crafters (and people that wish to decorate their homes) to buy such things, it creates a lot of moneysinks to make the ecnomy more versatile and healthy. Crafters buy forges, you can have small forges, then bigger ones, etc. Then all the other things crafters and people can buy, it makes the economy keep rotating and provides a sense of accomplishment for crafters that make a name for themselves and their goods.
3. This is indeed a problem, it's something that would have to find a way to balance out. Perhaps have it set on timers, where citys/keeps can only be taken over at set times. Whily this is "Gamey" and not realistic, it allows at least for the people who are there to know when their towns/homes are "vunerable" toa ttacka nd allows them the ability to defend it. It would need testing and finding ithe right balance.
Perhaps they coudl also allow NPC based guards, outposts/guard towers, to help protect the city when palyers are gone, so it's not just a ghost town open for attacking at free will.
I played neither of those but I played daoc. In daoc when housing came out, everyone got their own house, put everything they needed to craft inside of it, and they were never seen again. I just don't think that's what mark had in mind as the ideal when he said he wanted to encourage community building.
Especially when you could put the forges and lathes inside or near keeps, and have them progressively get more powerful so that not all forges are equal. Say you want to forge the hammer or Odin's Wrath, you don't do it at your house, you have to go forge it at a special spot in the frontiers, and people can fight over controlling that territory so they can forge the best stuff.
Or, you know, just craft alone in your house...
Am wondering if you are being serious or trying to start an arguement, lol. Because housing the level of realism and immersion a PC mmo has is what separates PC mmos from console single player games.
Not having housing in an MMO is like not having any kind of crosshairs in a FPS.
WAs everyone in DAOC a crafter? Because in UO/SWG crafters took a lot of time/work to become decent and have it skilled. A lot of people who weren't crafters pruchased goods from them by physically going to their shops/houses and buying things or ordering it from them personally.
The point of having houses and things be open to "attacking" is so you have a reason for them to both defend and actually CARE about defending it.
If you make keeps able to provide protection for people, such as walls, guard towers, etc it will naturally make people WANT to build together, to put small communties of people together that can build their houses near each other for protection to help keep their homes and things from being easily detroyed by some roving band of zergers.
TAking over a keep and the houses within it's walls shouldn't be an "easy" task, it should require some type of siege equipment and things which should cost a LOT of money that people have to save for and take a decent sized force.
This will promote community, social itneraction, and reasons to fight/defend, that set it apart from most mmo's where you go out in frontiers/pvp area's and fight over a non-personal element that you don't care much about (IE guild wars 2 for instance).
As far as "forges" and things go, why is it so harmful in your opinion to have them in peoples houses? PEople will stil have to physically go there to buy goods, unless there's a global AH (which I'm against, imo a global AH will kill the sense of community for crafters).
It all dependson how it's designed really, and we don't have that much information currently.
Again we're back to saying that taking a keep should be more difficult than in daoc, and more stagnant overall. Are you saying that taking keeps in daoc was too easy/fast, that keeps changed hands too much, or are we compensating for player home investment?
I can appreciate that it would encourage people to band together to defend their stuff, if not for the fact that its all gonna be burned down at night anyways.
As for crafting I guess it really depends on what people think when they say crafting community. A community that interacts over a crafting channel and mailbox vs simply /say "anyone have 20 leather scraps they wanna trade?" to your fellow crafters within close proximity to you.
As for spam, that was never the fault of crafting hubs, that is the fault of poor/no way to advertise that you exist as a crafter to make stuff. And for me most of the spam in the cities (before they added the player owned merchants) was from selling dropped uber loot.
Let me explain my bias for trading and crafting hubs rather than having your own.
When Mark announced CU and said it would be old school where the players had a community, it took me back to the only old-school MMO I have ever played, DAoC. He pointed to things like instances hurting the community due to things like segmentation and doing everything alone, being self-sufficient.
In the beginning, daoc did have crafting hubs. There were one or two spots where you could go in the world and find crafters. For midgard those places were gna faste and jordheim for the most part. You didn't need to /who armor, you could just go there and find a crafter and ask if they could make you something.
That started to change with every new expansion as they added more and more crafting hubs contributing to more segmentation of crafters, where they did their work. By the time they add housing everyone already knew most of the major crafters and had them on speed dial, hell I still know some of their names. Maladon, Ericthered, Exedore, etc. When I got to know these crafters I did not need to /who smith, I met them by simply going to gna faste and asking if anyone could make something for me. They no longer crafted at the hubs though, hardly anyone did after housing was implemented. You nolonger saw the familiar legendary grand masters at work in the crafting district of the cities, they were at home doing special orders.
Maybe I'm a romantic but I used to value seeing other people in MMOs. There is some value in seeing the great crafters do there thing, the new blood walking through the city and seeing the greats work their magic.
So yeah not only am I against crafting inside of homes or segmenting the community by having public services turned private by having one in every home and keep, but I'm actually for limiting the number of places where its even possible to craft. I miss the days when 99% of the crafters did their work in either gna faste and jordhiem.
For a similar reason I don't want to see crafting materials collection to be encouraged as a solo activity like it is in wow and other games, thats why I made that thread the other night for how to include PvE in the game, because I think encouraging people to collect materials in groups is better than them doing it alone, and the best way I know could do that is to have monsters drop mats.
IMO many in this forum are asking for a lot of the stuff that causes there to be no community in new MMOs.
That's the thing, from my experiences in both UO and SWG, which each had both non-instanced housing (you could plop a house pretty much anywhere in the open world) and an economy that relied heavily on player crafting, they were each the most social mmo's I ever played.
A lot of newer mmo's these days do a similar system to what you ask for, crafting stations (WoW, Rift, Guild Wars 2, etc) which are found in the main cities. you can go there and see a ton of people just standing around at stations using them to up their crafting and make items.
This creates a place for people that gathered there yes, but it leads to a lot of spamming, and lag in cities where you have all these people bunched up.
I think thekre are more things that matter to this issue rather then having crafters able to craft at their homes and not and I will explain why.
In UO, in eiach town you had public "boards" which people could browse, and on these boards anyone could list things, from crafters advertisingi their goods and their shop locations, to guilds looking for new members, etc. It all felt and looked very "natural" There was no "auction house" of any kind in UO. Now on top of this you still ha dpeople that'd gather in the cities, mainly at the banks (Where you could store things), people naturally grouped here, to talk to other players, find groups, avertise their pets (tamers) and what not.
In SWG on the other hand you had a newer (and more common used) /trade chat channel, where crafters advertised themselves. You also had people that still grouped up outside the starport area's (where people had to use to travel between planets). SWG had a limited Auction house whereby the only thing you could sell on it were low-priced items and resources. You couldn't sell the more expensive goods such as armor weapons that were for better quality levels then "noobie" goods. PEople had to buy those from crafters at their shops and such.
In Both these games you could simply explore around the world, find player houses, vendors sitting nat them and go inside to find crafters and goods to buy. You could generally run into crafters at their houes making items, talk to them, ask them to make something specific for you or just browse what they already had made and buy things. You could also offer services if you sold resources, to help find some for them and trade them.
There was a very natural and a lot more "open" community around this. It created a good NEED for housing, it gave reasons for people to visit other players houses (and not juts get one for themselves, use it for storage and never step foot in someone elses house).
Both of these games had well "known" crafters, but they also had good working economies that worked much like the real world. A crafter would beocme known, he'd jack up his price and charge a premium, then another crafter would move in, setup shop and offer similar quality items at lower prices, they'd get into a competition (sometimes physcially, things could even get heated between rival crafters) and it just created this "live" sense of community, that I never once expeirenced in a game that had AH's or non-house crafting liek that.
The biggest Issue (imo) with crafting and housing is Auction houses. If you have auction houses, especially "global" ones, it will outright KILL any sense of community in terms of social interaction between crafters and their customers. People will simply browse the AH, buy things, sell things, never talking to their crafters mainly. I hate the AH for this, it ruined what was once a very fun experience from older mmo's.
Another issue, as you said, is advertising. There ar eways to handle this, UO did it great imo with it's public board that people could browse (usually found at the bank area in main cities), it fit within the world of UO, wasn't out of place, and it allowed people to advertise their goods without being oto obtuse or spamming galore about it (though this could still happen, don't get me wrong, there' sno real way to stop spamming, in any mmo it will happen).
I thin in the end we both want the same thing, a sense of community for crafters, the interaction and social aspect. We have simply had different experiences. you experienced it through DAOC and that style of crafting, while I experienced it through UO/SWG mainly.
The game is still early, and if it does get made (I hope) this is something I hope they test and find the best way to offer that.
edit - In regards to the keep, I meant that it should be difficult enough that it requires a decent sized force to capture, complete with some type of sieging equipment and preperation to do it, not an easy task.
Also as mentioned, I'd be fine with a timer , there has to be a way you can stop the "midnigiht" raids when the towerns are empty frompeople who are sleeping because of real life. Yes it's gamey as I said , but it's something that benefits the game for ht ebest imo, allowing decent time for people to be on enough to defend and fight at least.
If not, then at least populate the keep/town with NPC guards enough that it stands a chance of defending against smaller groups and what not.
The timers thing would result in realm warfare being the domain of the zerg, same effect strontium timers had on eve. Set the tower to reinforced mode, giving both sides time to organize their zergs. Results in very stagnant borders, like the infamous fortress delve that was only defeated by meta-gaming. And the russian mega-NAPs in the east that will remain there until they shut the servers down in 2040.
It would be sacrificing the ebb and flow of RvR for the sake of protecting your in-game identity. Hey thats MY house, why should they be able to burn it down while I'm asleep or on vacation? Personally I don't like the idea of being at the beach and worrying about my assets in a videogame, so my personal opinion is that building a "house" in a frontier is a bad idea. Guilds claiming keeps and towers is one thing. Building and upgrading fortifications in the frontiers and getting recognition for it is a great idea, but a house? You can't justify something like stront timers with forts and towers, they aren't yours.
As for crafting I'm still of the opinion that there should be visibility to crafting. People who are RvR are out on the front lines with everyone else, not in an instance. To me crafting at home is no less damaging to community than everyone deciding to stop RvRing and to start having duels at home instead.
I believe there are a lot of things that could be done to help form strong communities and a lot of them involve force people to do things a certain way. First step I think is ask yourself, of all the people you remember from your old-school MMO's, where do you first remember running into them and talking to them? I'll list mine out.
I met most of the people that I remember first and foremost at popular / high value pve hubs. Mob camps, dungeon entrances.
Also on both ends of the portal keep both waiting on the train and after arriving at destination.
Also at the crafting hubs and other popular public service locations. By public service I mean things like popular bind stone spots with nearby healers and vault NPCs.
Matching name to avatar is important to me for to say "I remember <this guy>". Some people I came to know and remember and I don't think I even talked to them, I was just in close proximity to them frequently and when we eventually ended up in a group together, we just naturally assisted each other on targets. I learned some on how to play characters in different ways simply by being in close proximity of other berserkers and warriors and watching them more skillfully dispatch monsters.
Also hilarious moments in jordheim when spellcrafters would attempt to imbue an item with too much power and there was an explosion and someone falling over dead, and the interesting conversations that would start. Someone would rezz you, offer advice on how to avoid that from happening.
That stuff just doesn't happen when people do things by themselves or are oversegmented.
Take something like dueling. You can duel anywhere so people do duel everywhere. What if you were to make a special arena for it, a special place for people to duel. All the people that want to duel are now in close proximity and can see each other. They can watch each other fight and learn things from the masters. Non-instanced so not everyone can duel at once but several dueling areas and people had to wait their turn. Lots of people would probably hate the idea because it would seem an unnecessary inconvenience, but it would be interesting to see what net benefit it would cause to community building and making those moments and gaming that stick with you.
Much like removing the convenience of crafting at home. Would seem unnecessary to most in daoc, but there would be suttle benefits not easy to explain.
I know I'm late to the thread but here is my take.
First off there should be at least 4 seperate "areas" that people can build structures on. The center of the map where all the best resources are would be the highly contested area. Then you would have "mile gates" simialr to DaoC OF, but instead of just 2 I was thinking more along the lines of 5-10. This area would be more secure than the contested area due to the mile gate barrier but would still be somewhat vulnerable. Then behind this area you have a few more gates, similar to the relic gates of NF, where you need to have a ram to take them down and the walls have multiple levels to make it a bit easier to defend. This area would have maybe 2-3 gates so it would be a lot harder for an enemy to break into. Finally after this area would be just 1 gate leading to the last area of a realm, this final gate would be extremely difficult to break down.
Anyway once you set up these different areas, each with their own risks/rewards players could then set up shop in whichever area they wanted to. The more risky the area would give them better resources but would also increase their chances of getting their structure destroyed.
Also I don't think players should be able to build whatever they want wherever they want. There should be Hook Points (lots of them everywhere) and you can only build certian types of structures on each hook point. Similar to Vanguard Housing/Horizons Housing.
Finally housing should be like EvE's Space Stations, where you can go to one and pick up player made quests, use the bank and buy/sell things. This also ties into my Hauler/Localized banking idea where supplies will be constantly moving around the realm through player haulers. The more risky areas will have better resrouces and weopons armor but will be more exspensive than the safer areas.
I healed Mistwraith and all I got was this stupid tee-shirt!
I'm not too familiar with Eve (Combat was a huge turn off for me in that game, so mind numbling boring fo ra space game imo), but with the timer system, as I said, it'd hav eto be balanced out and tested, it could shift, to give players different times and open areas to have a more natural flow of combat and sieges, but even if there's no timer, there has to be something in place to stop midnight rushing of some guild who specifically has all of it's members get up at 3am when most people are asleep in the real world and rushes over all the towns. If not a timer then they need to populate the town with npc guards and soldiers, so it's not just a simple cakewalk taking over a ghost town with no one there.
Regarding this line specifically, "You can't justify something like stront timers with forts and towers, they aren't yours."
To me that's the point of why I DO want people to be able to build there, Taking over "forts and towers" that are NPC controlled (See Warhamer and guild wars 2) takes away the importance of doing those things. It will switch hands back and fourth and you have 0 tangible connection to it.
Whereas if people actually BUILT those things, a keep pops up in the frontier, then people build their homes around it (for the protection it offers) that makes the point of defending it all the more important and personal, because that's peoples homes and they know the other people that live there with them. IT's not just some generic "npc" controlled keep or tower that is copy and pasted around the landscape, that kind of thing was done in both Warhammer online and Guild Wars 2 , it got repeitive in both games and people didn't really care too much abou them, just groups of peple that'd take them over, logout, then login a few hours later to see another group had taken them. There was mostly just behind the scenes buffs for your server/alliance and that was that. It had no impact really on losing them.
Also regarding metting people, duels and crafting, again I think our expeirence is different and thus is why we see this differently.
You talk about meeting people in at pve hubs, dungeons, mob camps. For me I met most people that I still keep in touch with to this day mainly from the bank area in UO (where people would hang out to talk, etc, as the main storage area outside of housing it was natural for people to converge there) and SWG's starports, however I also met MANY people out in the world at their houses and communities.
From your experience with crafting you assume that having it as houses will detract from the "community" but in my expeirnece with UO and SWG, it had the complete opposite affect.
Crafters had their own houses, they made into shops. You couldn't buy goods on any kind of global AH for most things, you had to physically go to crafters hops and things. You could go there, talk to them, meet people who were buying their goods (the well known crafters usually had many people there at their house/shop).
On top of this, it helped reinfore the importance of homes. Crafters would open shops within a community of other homes/guilds, which led to more interaction naturally out int he world, rather then simply at the "cities" or hubs.
You talk about dueling, I Will tell you a small story.
I have dueled many people throughout my time playing mmo's, and some games have had "arenas" for dueling, but usually it's treated more like battlegrounds, where you join, fight against people, etc) apart from the usual /duel in mmo's where you do it yourself.
I hardly remember any of those games.
You know what I do remember the most? Dueling in UO. Perhaps it's just a time passed, and the mindset of players has changed. However in the early mmo's (UO, AC, EQ) they seemed a loooooot more social.
In UO my guild had a small keep just east of Britiana, nearby just a stones throw away was another guild KFG (IIRC). They routinely held popular "tournaments" wher emany players would show up and duel each other tournament style, leaving a winner to get a prize and other goods. It was completely player controlled and even GM's would take part (not using any gm powers or anything, that wouldn't be fair lol). and hang out with people there. IPt was quite popular and fun to do, and was faaaaar more memorable then any other "duel" type of system in any other mmorpg I played, because it felt natural and you had crowds of real people watching it.
Again, I think it's just our (different) experiences, for me housing and crafting in them promoted community, but to you it didn't. I don't know if it's the design that was different or what (I didn't play DAOC then so I can't say from experience like you can).
Was the housing in Daoc "disconnected" fromt he main world? (IE in it's own instance/zone), I think that's part of the problem if so.
In UO and SWG housing eixisted within the game world, it wasn' tinstanced in any way, so it was natural for people to just "come across' houses and communities , find cirafter shops, browse, etc.
I think if this is the case that is the main thing that made the difference between daoc and UO/SWG housing and our experiences in each.
Instancing houses (even if it's zone based) puts it into it's own "bubble" and makes it feel disconnected from the world. It's one of the quickest ways to take down the "community" aspect housing brings to the game.
^^ This. I like this idea. As far as housing goes, wear (or do) what you dig!