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Something other than Player Housing
Thornrage
Member UncommonPosts: 659
Being a SWG vet, I was once a very strong supporter of player housing. However, over the past 10 years I have realized that player housing is not worth the resources needed to be done in a way that most people want. Rift and other games have made it an instanced area and I find it isn't really worth messing around with.
I have an idea.
Why do we want player housing? Obviously I cannot speak for everyone, but my main reason was to show off my trophies and other collected items and decorate my house to impress my friends. Some use it for storage.
Impressing our friends; most likely our friends are in the same guild. So why not have a guild hall that can be instanced, similar to how Age of Conan did it if you want, and have small apartments within the guild hall for the guild members.
The layout of the guild hall could be 1st floor = guild business and then starting with floor 2 you can have 10 apartments. Each apartment is taken by a guild member who can then decorate their small 2 or 3 room apartment as they want or they could just store items. If the guild gets an 11th member, then a new floor is added to this instanced guild hall with 10 more apartments. So on and so forth.
This keeps the world clear of cluttered houses and guild halls and still allows for friends within a guild to impress their other friends with their interior design expertise.
Your thoughts?
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
Comments
I would rather see a proper main town- a real hub where people can trade, upgrade or just sit and shoot the breeze. I would then have instanced housing but in the form of apartment blocks or tenements or something. That way the house would at least be a destination as well, or at least another site worth seeing within a destination town.
As they are currently (i.e. Rift) they exist everywhere and nowhere. You can instatravel there but it is just lost in some instance that feels entirely beyond the borders of the game. They aren't a destination, they are just a place you jump into to dump your crap on occasion.
My only experience with player housing was in UO and It was fantastic and one of the the main hang outs for me, my friends and our guild(s). It was a combination of storage, a place you could show off your stuff, a place to set up a store and a safe place from danger.
My friends / guild and I were either hanging out at one of our houses, the house that we as a guild purchased or out and about at other peoples houses doing any number of things. This was not instanced at all and all houses just existed out in the game world for all to see. It was pretty cool all the random things that we experienced at our houses. A big part of the fun, for me and my friends, was that we would get into scraps with other players and the house played a huge part. Many fun filled hours were spent this way as both attackers and defenders.
The open world, FFA PVP nature of UO allowed this kind of conflict dynamic. Then they added a whole new land to the game called Trammel where PVP was only allowed for those who had joined one of 2 opposing factions (Chaos or Order). Even there the community that was created around your houses in this no PVP land was fantastic. You got to know your neighbors and did things together. There was a definite neighborhood feel and it was quite common to run over to a neighbors house to ask for help with something, or if you ran out of some material or something while you were crafting or making potions and needed to borrow some.
Technically speaking housing today in an instanced environment should still allow players to build the same "neighborhood" community but I feel because its separated from the "real" world makes it feel too separate somehow. Also, there is no real need for a house that I can tell. In UO the need was more storage for stuff, a place to do your crafting or a place of your own to set up a vendor to sell stuff for you.
You hit the nail on the head with instanced housing!
My favorite form of housing is world housing. And IMO Asheron's Call did it best. In AC you had about 300-400 houses set out in the world and of those only about 100 were Villas or Mansions. Otherwise known as valuable housing. Not everyone could afford it nor could everyone get one. Plus they acted as a very high level value of currency and exchange because housing deeds could be traded and they were very valuable. Especially if you had access to an out of the way house near a popular farming space or near the sea.
The issue is developers have this notion that when they introduce something like housing that everyone should have access to it, when in actuality this mantra does not hold true to activities such as raiding or endgame activities. If developers treated housing as an activity that was meant for the elite like say hardcore raiding then you would have a system meant to be influential in the world especially economies.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I hate main towns, it forces players to skip being out in the world and traveling. IMO every town should have intrinsic value and require travel to get certain things.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I think games like Wildstar and FFXIV are doing housing right. Rift has a very robust housing system as well.
I use houses for showing off some of the cool furniture and things that I have collected or bought. I don't mind an instanced based housing system (usually the homes are cheaper that way) because they normally don't have that high of an upkeep cost (if any) and I don't know if I'm going to be on vacation for a week or two and lose my home because I didn't pay the 50 gp or something.
I also use houses as a place to go away for a little bit. Even in an MMORPG, sometimes I just want to get away from the hustle and bustle of the other players and have my little room I can go to that is all mine and personal.
I also really like the idea of a guild hall that adds rooms for everyone that joins. That is pretty neat, and I could see that being popular. My only concern would be as people join and leave, your room might move around. Unless its made so when someone leaves, their room is just empty until someone joins and takes it.
On the eternal quest for that one perfect MMO.
Sorry but when it comes to instanced housing then no other mmo comes close to EQ2, that's not just my opinion but very universal in the mmo world.
I don't mean a main town where you sit and wait for dungeon finder to pop. I mean a main town as in a capital city within an open world with certain exclusive items/ shops etc. that compel people to visit from time to time.
Main NPC towns and non-instanced player housing need to be one in the same place before Player Housing will really, really be where it should be.
Imagine a WoW (common point of reference) where all of the houses in Stormwind that are currently just closed doors are player owned houses, and even the NPC shops (only ever used for repairs and occasional crafting mats) were player owned shops too.
Yeah, not everyone could have one, but that is the point.
And there is also Ironforge, and Ogrimar, and Undercity, and...
oh my bad
/rollseyes
I find very little useful in player housing, I am not impressed by mindless dick-waving and showing off, I don't care about trophies and I don't give a damn about showing off. I find such things terribly shallow and people who engage in them even shallower. If I have a house, I use it for storage, nothing more and lots of games don't really even allow you to do that, they want you to use their system where they can charge you for more space.
So whether a game has player housing or not is largely irrelevant to me. I'd much rather play a good game with a good community.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Make player housing mean something.
I like the idea of housing being limited. I like the idea that there is a limited number of housing in cities which can create a market based on desirability of location. Player housing would be for those who made owning a house a goal for themselves, and spent the time playing the market. It would act as a reward for those players, something to be known for in game. To keep it balanced, your house would go up for sale if u didn't log in for a reasonable amount of time. This way houses belonged to active members of the community.
Owning a house should have pros and cons.
Maybe once you own a house, this is your respawn location. In a world where travel times might mean something, house location might be important. So new players could own a house in a small town with no recourses while veteran players owned houses in main cities and player hubs. The pros would be extra storage, hang out spot, etc
If player housing was something to work for, and not just given, and if it had a market with balanced mechanics, then I would be interested!
simple, non instanced housing:
1. plot size is either defined by the game or by the player or by the faction leaders
2. plots have to be bought from the faction's government and are either predefined places or just random in any part of the owned territory
3. landownership means taxes, and the player has a cut in its earnings for keeping the plot
4. the plot can be used to build from communitary to private buildings, be it social, housing or business.
5. the plot can be sold for a sum in the game and its buildings can be either sold with it, or demolished (furnitures would be retrieved to the owner BTW)
6. buildings are indestructable unless the faction looses the territory, its in war/invasion or if the player looses the ownership and the state takes charge of clearing the plot.
7. players loose ownership of the plot if they stop paying the tax for a prolongued time or if the territory is taken by other faction. the player will have a time to evacuate its goods before the plot becomes vacant for sale.
8. when a building is already in place of a vacant plot, it remains there be it if the new owner wants to use it or wanst to demolish it. buildings are automatically demolished if no one buys the plot after certain time. then the state takes charge of the demolition
9. cities are built by this mechanic, with general faction stuff like roads and strategic buildings (town halls, capitols etc) being derived from the same plot system (walls too).
10. faction buildings are subject to enemy destruction. leaders will decide if they want to destroy the buildings or just change ownership of them.
notes:
NPC cities are as propense to this mechanics as player owned ones. but they can only be claimed or destroyed in factional warfare events. and not by the general public
that's a good example for a good player housing mechanic
Free Realms, Rift, EQ2, the Kings Isle games and several other MMOs are doing players housing as the personal sandbox area because that's what players have shown that's what they do want. You can still show things off and impress friends by inviting them over or even simply leaving your house public.
What advantages are you seeing with the guild hall system over the public house system?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
They expanded on it based on the popularity of Free Realms' and SWCWA's housing. It is one of the most extensive housing systems out there, especially when you include the guild halls.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
EQ2 used instanced apartments within existing city buildings. It works perfectly fine for apartment style housing. The instancing of it doesn't break immersion at all except that you don't have to walk to the correct door.
Age of Conan style guild cities was lame because you couldn't happen upon one on accident. You knew where to find ALL of them, just a matter of knowing which instance your guilds (or others) were in.
Games can have lower resources by allowing the creation of guild cities, and then allowing instanced apartment within those cities for more personal decoration. You could have a minimum number of guild member requirement and high maintenance cost to limit the number of guild cities. This allows players to be able to "build anywhere" without filling the landscape with player housing.
just for clarification. Peak = Top or Apex, etc. Pique = stimulate, as in you have piqued my interest. I know, it's the internet and it doesn't matter, BUT I know I felt better after learning this
I like the way you think!
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre