Player housing and player cities do not bring much bang for the buck, especially player cities. Outside of the simplistic UO and SW:G's vast stretches of emptiness, MMO's are about content. In most games there is no room for player cities and player houses. There are thousands of players on every server and they'd each have a house.... where do you put them all? And your engine has to be able to handle houses sprining up from the terrain, and you have to worry about them being planted in places with terrain in the way (say a stream crossing the middle, or a large rock). Lots and LOTS of work for a bullet point on a wish list that won't draw or keep many players. How many people keep playing a game because their house rocked while the rest of the game sucked? Not too many I suspect.
How is an advanced city system with player controlled environment not content? I fail to see how more linear dungeons qualifies as content but a player created world it not.
MMO's are not about playing through what the designers made (What you call 'content'), they are about living in and altering a virtual world as you please.
You comment about ' wont draw many players' is horribly false. Just read this thread and see how many agree. Also, go look up the popularity of SWG and UO, then tell me these player structures are not desired.
Player Cities and Housing is one of the things that I play SWG for. My house (well, really a bunker) is a public display of my achievements in the game that I can open up and show off to anyone due to the fact that SWG's housing isn't instanced.
People take alot of pride in their Player Cities, especially when they're the home of a particular guild - your guild's a nobody unless it has a City associated with it. It's aspects like this that are the reason SWG has always had such a passionate fanbase. You have the opportunity to mark a part of the game as yours and shape the game world in a semi-permanent way. Due to this, no server looks the same.
While most cities are used as "economic hubs", where crafters set up shops and sell their goods, others are used as fortresses. Guilds place bases associated to their faction and protect them against being attacked and destroyed by opposing faction. In the past, these have left to some rather famous battles on many servers. It's not as widly common anymore due to the systems needing to be revamped to be more inline with the current gameplay (planetry control doesn't have as much meaning anymore, nor do many of the City specialities) but it can still be the source of alot of fun.
Player Cities and Housing is one of the things that I play SWG for. My house (well, really a bunker) is a public display of my achievements in the game that I can open up and show off to anyone due to the fact that SWG's housing isn't instanced. People take alot of pride in their Player Cities, especially when they're the home of a particular guild - your guild's a nobody unless it has a City associated with it. It's aspects like this that are the reason SWG has always had such a passionate fanbase. You have the opportunity to mark a part of the game as yours and shape the game world in a semi-permanent way. Due to this, no server looks the same. While most cities are used as "economic hubs", where crafters set up shops and sell their goods, others are used as fortresses. Guilds place bases associated to their faction and protect them against being attacked and destroyed by opposing faction. In the past, these have left to some rather famous battles on many servers. It's not as widly common anymore due to the systems needing to be revamped to be more inline with the current gameplay (planetry control doesn't have as much meaning anymore, nor do many of the City specialities) but it can still be the source of alot of fun.
I can't seem to understand why features like housing and cities are so overlooked.
It's a damn good question - and the only answer I could posit is the lack of BIG mmo successes that have included player housing and cities.
The big success, WoW, doesn't include them. SWG which did, was a total flop. Maybe developers look at this and relegate housing/cities as nice (but non-essential) extras.
It's a big shame, cos player housing/cities is probably the no. 1 thing mmo devs can do to instil a real sense of players having a place in and impact on the gameworld.
Maybe if AoC is successful enough, we'll see a shift towards housing/cities being considered core features for future mmo development.
Player housing and player cities do not bring much bang for the buck, especially player cities. Outside of the simplistic UO and SW:G's vast stretches of emptiness, MMO's are about content. In most games there is no room for player cities and player houses. There are thousands of players on every server and they'd each have a house.... where do you put them all? And your engine has to be able to handle houses sprining up from the terrain, and you have to worry about them being planted in places with terrain in the way (say a stream crossing the middle, or a large rock). Lots and LOTS of work for a bullet point on a wish list that won't draw or keep many players. How many people keep playing a game because their house rocked while the rest of the game sucked? Not too many I suspect.
How is an advanced city system with player controlled environment not content? I fail to see how more linear dungeons qualifies as content but a player created world it not.
MMO's are not about playing through what the designers made (What you call 'content'), they are about living in and altering a virtual world as you please.
You comment about ' wont draw many players' is horribly false. Just read this thread and see how many agree. Also, go look up the popularity of SWG and UO, then tell me these player structures are not desired.
Advanced city system: Lots of empty, barren ghost towns. See SWG for good examples of this.
Dungeon = content for everyone. Some guild's empty city? Content for them, when they're online, if they're still playing.
MMO's are about having fun. Guild cities that can be plopped down in the middle of no where? Not much fun for most people. They cause urban blight, ruining the landscape for most people.
You want the Sims, not a MMORPG.
And this thread has some people who like houses (I like houses, but having them instanced is the better solution), and a few who think urban blight is a good thing. Hardly a convincing argument. I'm looking at the popularity of UO and SW:G, and it tells me... they aren't that popular. SW:G was never as popular as EQ1 which didn't have houses or cities. UO? It was only popular because it was the only one around for a while. And I seem to remember the screams of people who complained about there being nothing but vast stretches of player housing ruining the game.... funny, that.
..."MMO's are about having fun. Guild cities that can be plopped down in the middle of no where? Not much fun for most people. They cause urban blight, ruining the landscape for most people.
You want the Sims, not a MMORPG"...
That is an MMORPG, your just refering to the average MMOG and the cities could've always been private guild instances in a developing Ip. The reason they became ghost towns in SWG was the NGE Exodus but the clan based instance that's open to all to visit wouldn't cause this issue.
* Life is not black or white, it's shades of grey. But, at it's best/worst, it hints at 32bit color. -Me (a.k.a. RuthlessTimes)
* I do not need to know how to make a better game than you. I just need to know how to cancel my subscription. -Antarious(a slight misquote but the sentiment remains)
I can't seem to understand why features like housing and cities are so overlooked.
It's a damn good question - and the only answer I could posit is the lack of BIG mmo successes that have included player housing and cities.
The big success, WoW, doesn't include them. SWG which did, was a total flop. Maybe developers look at this and relegate housing/cities as nice (but non-essential) extras.
It's a big shame, cos player housing/cities is probably the no. 1 thing mmo devs can do to instil a real sense of players having a place in and impact on the gameworld.
Maybe if AoC is successful enough, we'll see a shift towards housing/cities being considered core features for future mmo development.
WTF swg wasnt a flop..... it was a flop when SOE ruin swg and all vet including myself left swg cuz they wanted to make it more like WOW... thats why it flopped...
WOW is more like a child game you dont even have to think in it...
You can't say SWG was a flop if you never played it. That game was a huge success until sony Screwed the pooch, like they've done with all their other games. After that, the player housing system was the only reason anyone still played. Then they broke THAT! If you say player houses and cities ruin the landscape, blah, blah, blah, then there are always alternatives. What about creating a couple continents or the like that are instanced away from the rest of the game, where people have absolute freedom to build and expand and such. There are always ways to do things better. SWG had the best idea... now it's time for someone to take that idea and improve upon it. It doesn't matter to me how many people, with their mis-guided and un-educated opinions, try to tell me, that player housing is bad. You are flat out wrong, or flat out in-experienced with the subject. No one, who has played and experienced SWG housing and cities in their prime, could ever say, they hated it, or that it made the game worse. Sony did that, all by their lonesome.
IMHO I really enjoy building a plot of land and a city I can say that the most intense crafting system I have ever dealt with is Horizons. You can and most likely will spend Months building up a basic plot 36x36 and there are some very beautiful plots there created by other players.
I can't seem to understand why features like housing and cities are so overlooked. Everyone I know lists their favorite SWG feature as the player city and house system... it was simply amazing. I could go off about how MMOs are no longer virtual worlds but rather single player RPGs, but that's a different topic.
Why is it that this hasn't reemerged in new upcoming games like AoC, Aion, WAR... It seems all these developers worry about are fancy graphics and more quests. Maybe the typical MMOer jas changed, but I can't get over the fact that this isn't a massively desired feature.
Thoughts?
SWG is to this day still my favorite mmo of all time.. I dont know why these features are so overlooked but i do know that i dont compare games to wow when i play i compare to SWG because its more than questing and grinding.. its about your personality and player housing and player cities make you feel that way. idk i need another swg or ima give up on mmos. Ive played thousands of em and there just not good anymore, i dont need 1000 wow clones good lord! its BORING!
I overlook it mainly because there are more prominent features to get hung over about.
Not that i'm against it being implemented; housing is for the most part a fluff feature. Beyond a place to customize for looks, call your own, and maybe have additional storage space, there isn't much functionality to it.
The vast majority of gameplay in MMO's boils down to combat, questing, and dungeons, thus those aspects of a game tend to get more attention from developers and players.
It's a neat feature i'd ideally like to see more often in MMOs, but if the game can't first round out it's most important features to making it a decent rpg, you're left with an unpopular game like Mortal Online, Istaria, Vanguard, Xsyon, etc.
I think this easy do by a list games with without housing
Wow,Rift,Aion,War,
Games with housing or playercites
EQ2,AoC,Vanguard,Mortal Online,City of Heroes,Darkfall,RoM
I think this case of selective vision on players part .I can probably list as much games with player housing or player cities.The TS list AOC on the list forgetting that you can build a guild city.Aion is adding housing in the future,Rifts has talk about housing and based how much the update stuff it won't be long before they add it in,
Stop asking for every game to be the same ,some games have housing and some don't.
One small thing why it is overlooked is becasue of AH. Someone say huh what does this have to do with each other?
Well one of most important features of housing in games where it really mattered like UO and SWG was that you could place NPC that selled your stuff there and essentially run your own shop.
People would go and shop ,economy and social life more alive.
Then AH come. One centralized list with all stuff , it kills player shops and one of important reasons for houing.
I know AH is convenient , I play games with it too. I just think that not having it may actually be a big + for a game.
Player shops, marketplace spaces in cities ,etc
I hope some developer will grow some balls and do very good designed game without AH.
I think SWG did it the right way, they had both but if you bought from the AH you had to pay 20% extra or something like that, it was an excellent solution, it allowed players to buy quickly if they wanted to or go out and explore and visit the merchants personally for a cheaper price.
But in terms of this entire thread, as UO was my first real mmo i am completely biased, my house in UO is what I played for, it was the ultimate 'end game' feature and something that took alot of work to get but when you compare SWG and UO housing (which i personally feel is the proper way to do housing) when you compare that to all these other so called housing it doesnt compare and has resulted in a very unrealistic perception of what housing can actually be.
Bad Housing:
AoC: Instance guild vity that did nothing but look good.
EQ2: Instance flats that did nothing but look good
LOTRO: Instance houses that, yep you guessed it, did nothing but look good
Good Housing:
UO: Uninstanced houses that was a center for crafting, storage and selling
SWG: Uninstanced houses that was a center for crafting, storage and selling
When you look at the example above its clear about 1 thing, UO and SWG has housing fully develeoped and ingame at launch as a core feature, the others were either rushed out or added later as a mere after thought and as such turned out to be utterly crap (maybe EQ can be excluded here as it got alot of attention)
Housing can give you an attachment that is greater than you have to your characters, we all like to own something and having an attachment to something in a mmo leads to much better retention rates, if someone told me 14 years ago that uo would be still be alive today, i would have laugh in thier face but here it is, still alive (barely but alive!) and i bet you alot of that has to do with housing.
I can't seem to understand why features like housing and cities are so overlooked. Everyone I know lists their favorite SWG feature as the player city and house system... it was simply amazing. I could go off about how MMOs are no longer virtual worlds but rather single player RPGs, but that's a different topic.
Why is it that this hasn't reemerged in new upcoming games like AoC, Aion, WAR... It seems all these developers worry about are fancy graphics and more quests. Maybe the typical MMOer jas changed, but I can't get over the fact that this isn't a massively desired feature.
Thoughts?
The answer is simple, man. The days of player creativity impacting the game world have been gone for years now.
Lastly, when you say "fancy graphics" along with WAR, I take offense to that. WAR's graphics are pretty bad by even the standards of its release in 2008.
Edit: Oh, necro thread? Awesome...
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
It's a design element that requires some thought and planning. It's difficult to implement properly. To me, SWG was the best player housing, and yet it had some flaws, for example:
1) collision detection enabled? then you can drop an item in a hallway effectively trapping someone in a house.
2) placed inappropriately as to grief other gamers. It could be blocking access to a mission objective, blocking access to a portion of map, or named inappropriately as to intentionally cause offense.
3) some people don't like the 'sprawl', the clutter in the gameworld proper.
All three of these could be addressed with some forethought. The advantages to SWG's housing system:
1) allowed players to feel some ownership over an area in the game
2) decorating. Some of us are creative and like to decorate or create something unique
3) sense of community. You could build right next to your ingame best friends and live in a virtual city.
4) adds a layer of social complexity. By adding houses and enabling player cities, you create a dynamic, multitiered interaction between gamers.
5) if you have a little ocd like me, you will be endlessly tinkering with inventory management, item placement, etc.
So there are pluses and minuses. Some people don't like housing. They would be content with virtual spreadsheets. These are people who don't care about looks or appearance or anything distracting to the mathematical or problem solving aspect of the game. Others like myself would like a virtual world. We should have games to satisfy both play styles.
So, why don't we? We've taken a turn in mmo design. We are moving away from virtual worlds and moving toward a more superficial 2 dimensional game design. Everything we understood and anticipated about mmos is coming into question. The very definition is in a state of change. By loose definition, games like Battlefield 2 might be considered an mmo. There are probably some examples on this site of games that are less an mmo than BF2 infact.
In essence, mmos were once akin to 8 course meals. It's difficult, challenging and costly to make 8 courses. So someone decided since people have sweet tooths, to cut out 7 courses and just serve us dessert. How long will it take to get tired of just having dessert? Hopefully soon, and that's probably when we will see some player housing.
It's a design element that requires some thought and planning. It's difficult to implement properly. To me, SWG was the best player housing, and yet it had some flaws, for example:
1) collision detection enabled? then you can drop an item in a hallway effectively trapping someone in a house.
2) placed inappropriately as to grief other gamers. It could be blocking access to a mission objective, blocking access to a portion of map, or named inappropriately as to intentionally cause offense.
3) some people don't like the 'sprawl', the clutter in the gameworld proper.
1- SWG housing didnt have collision detection. you could run thru anythign and everything you placed in a house. be it furniture, players, pets or paintings
2-there were many no build zones near the points of interest. you could not block any mission objectives or zone entrances. you could however name them how you wanted but you had to be pretty close to the house to see and read what the house was named
3-the planets were so massive and the player cities so spread out that this wasnt really a problem until the server shutdowns where anyone and everyone flocked to 3 servers. the player cities were at the cap(couldnt create any more) and all these new poeple needed a place to build their homes.
yes this, and the fact that SOE didnt pack up any houses of non current players for a few years, caused some unsightly areas os house after house in no set fasion. but this was niot until the game was already a ghost town as it was. there were twice as many houses as active players
That pretty much says everything you need to know.
In most forum threads for any new or upcoming rpgs (this has been a trend over the last few years), where there is a discussion about player housing taking place, the general consenus among the majority is always that they don't give two shits about player housing. You always see a few who support it, and the rest of the playerbase could care less.
Apparently if it doesn't involve "pwning face" it isn't content worth adding. I definitely think alot of it has to do with the fact that MMORPGs are mainstream entertainment now, and were niche prior to WoW. The mentality of the generation of youth that these games are being designed for is alot different than someone who grew up with an Atari or Colecovision.
I m for once a hardcore pvp player that want a player housing as in SWG and in daoc.
well and most of my friends want in the game also we want to own a a part of the game
or yo aint getting our cash hint off
Therefor after over 10 years of sitting a space ship and been promising a walk in stations and some player housing in eve online I going back and take my subcash thats about 14 euro *20 = 280 euro each month to a game that provide with player housing.
That pretty much says everything you need to know.
In most forum threads for any new or upcoming rpgs (this has been a trend over the last few years), where there is a discussion about player housing taking place, the general consenus among the majority is always that they don't give two shits about player housing. You always see a few who support it, and the rest of the playerbase could care less.
Apparently if it doesn't involve "pwning face" it isn't content worth adding. I definitely think alot of it has to do with the fact that MMORPGs are mainstream entertainment now, and were niche prior to WoW. The mentality of the generation of youth that these games are being designed for is alot different than someone who grew up with an Atari or Colecovision.
I think the problem with player housing is it had better serve a purpose other than a place to sit by yourself and look at the decorations on your walls that you got for doing things in game. Thats what achievement lists are for LOL.
Now, I'd be all for player housing if it was actually integrated into the game and wasn't just for people to go by themselves and chill out. If there was a steal mechanic or a burn it down mechanic or an invasion mechanic or a vandalism mechanic or if they were an integral part of the economy somehow mechanic, then I would find them interesting.
I personally don't understand why people want housing simply to decorate so only they can see it. But that is just my opinion of course...
GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind" 1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN 2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements
Think about it. What would a player house do except to be a glorified bank vault? All the hack-n-slash games are focused on combat & adventure. Players will not be spending a lot of time in their house.
Development resource is limited. I would much rather a developer spends their resources on new areas, new quests and new items as opposed to player housing.
I think you have been playing the wrong MMO then.
There are someb MMO that have a vast amount of content and what the OP is asking for.
Comments
Say what you want about Shadowbane, but the city building/siege stuff was pretty cool.
How is an advanced city system with player controlled environment not content? I fail to see how more linear dungeons qualifies as content but a player created world it not.
MMO's are not about playing through what the designers made (What you call 'content'), they are about living in and altering a virtual world as you please.
You comment about ' wont draw many players' is horribly false. Just read this thread and see how many agree. Also, go look up the popularity of SWG and UO, then tell me these player structures are not desired.
-------------------------
Player Cities and Housing is one of the things that I play SWG for. My house (well, really a bunker) is a public display of my achievements in the game that I can open up and show off to anyone due to the fact that SWG's housing isn't instanced.
People take alot of pride in their Player Cities, especially when they're the home of a particular guild - your guild's a nobody unless it has a City associated with it. It's aspects like this that are the reason SWG has always had such a passionate fanbase. You have the opportunity to mark a part of the game as yours and shape the game world in a semi-permanent way. Due to this, no server looks the same.
While most cities are used as "economic hubs", where crafters set up shops and sell their goods, others are used as fortresses. Guilds place bases associated to their faction and protect them against being attacked and destroyed by opposing faction. In the past, these have left to some rather famous battles on many servers. It's not as widly common anymore due to the systems needing to be revamped to be more inline with the current gameplay (planetry control doesn't have as much meaning anymore, nor do many of the City specialities) but it can still be the source of alot of fun.
Agree 100%
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The big success, WoW, doesn't include them. SWG which did, was a total flop. Maybe developers look at this and relegate housing/cities as nice (but non-essential) extras.
It's a big shame, cos player housing/cities is probably the no. 1 thing mmo devs can do to instil a real sense of players having a place in and impact on the gameworld.
Maybe if AoC is successful enough, we'll see a shift towards housing/cities being considered core features for future mmo development.
How is an advanced city system with player controlled environment not content? I fail to see how more linear dungeons qualifies as content but a player created world it not.
MMO's are not about playing through what the designers made (What you call 'content'), they are about living in and altering a virtual world as you please.
You comment about ' wont draw many players' is horribly false. Just read this thread and see how many agree. Also, go look up the popularity of SWG and UO, then tell me these player structures are not desired.
Advanced city system: Lots of empty, barren ghost towns. See SWG for good examples of this.
Dungeon = content for everyone. Some guild's empty city? Content for them, when they're online, if they're still playing.
MMO's are about having fun. Guild cities that can be plopped down in the middle of no where? Not much fun for most people. They cause urban blight, ruining the landscape for most people.
You want the Sims, not a MMORPG.
And this thread has some people who like houses (I like houses, but having them instanced is the better solution), and a few who think urban blight is a good thing. Hardly a convincing argument. I'm looking at the popularity of UO and SW:G, and it tells me... they aren't that popular. SW:G was never as popular as EQ1 which didn't have houses or cities. UO? It was only popular because it was the only one around for a while. And I seem to remember the screams of people who complained about there being nothing but vast stretches of player housing ruining the game.... funny, that.
Because being different in the MMORPG industry is a sin. Innovation scares developers into dark corners.
@ Eric'
..."MMO's are about having fun. Guild cities that can be plopped down in the middle of no where? Not much fun for most people. They cause urban blight, ruining the landscape for most people.
You want the Sims, not a MMORPG"...
That is an MMORPG, your just refering to the average MMOG and the cities could've always been private guild instances in a developing Ip. The reason they became ghost towns in SWG was the NGE Exodus but the clan based instance that's open to all to visit wouldn't cause this issue.
* Life is not black or white, it's shades of grey. But, at it's best/worst, it hints at 32bit color. -Me (a.k.a. RuthlessTimes)
* I do not need to know how to make a better game than you. I just need to know how to cancel my subscription. -Antarious(a slight misquote but the sentiment remains)
The big success, WoW, doesn't include them. SWG which did, was a total flop. Maybe developers look at this and relegate housing/cities as nice (but non-essential) extras.
It's a big shame, cos player housing/cities is probably the no. 1 thing mmo devs can do to instil a real sense of players having a place in and impact on the gameworld.
Maybe if AoC is successful enough, we'll see a shift towards housing/cities being considered core features for future mmo development.
WTF swg wasnt a flop..... it was a flop when SOE ruin swg and all vet including myself left swg cuz they wanted to make it more like WOW... thats why it flopped...WOW is more like a child game you dont even have to think in it...
You can't say SWG was a flop if you never played it. That game was a huge success until sony Screwed the pooch, like they've done with all their other games. After that, the player housing system was the only reason anyone still played. Then they broke THAT! If you say player houses and cities ruin the landscape, blah, blah, blah, then there are always alternatives. What about creating a couple continents or the like that are instanced away from the rest of the game, where people have absolute freedom to build and expand and such. There are always ways to do things better. SWG had the best idea... now it's time for someone to take that idea and improve upon it. It doesn't matter to me how many people, with their mis-guided and un-educated opinions, try to tell me, that player housing is bad. You are flat out wrong, or flat out in-experienced with the subject. No one, who has played and experienced SWG housing and cities in their prime, could ever say, they hated it, or that it made the game worse. Sony did that, all by their lonesome.
IMHO I really enjoy building a plot of land and a city I can say that the most intense crafting system I have ever dealt with is Horizons. You can and most likely will spend Months building up a basic plot 36x36 and there are some very beautiful plots there created by other players.
SWG is to this day still my favorite mmo of all time.. I dont know why these features are so overlooked but i do know that i dont compare games to wow when i play i compare to SWG because its more than questing and grinding.. its about your personality and player housing and player cities make you feel that way. idk i need another swg or ima give up on mmos. Ive played thousands of em and there just not good anymore, i dont need 1000 wow clones good lord! its BORING!
We that die to our selves will live forever.
I overlook it mainly because there are more prominent features to get hung over about.
Not that i'm against it being implemented; housing is for the most part a fluff feature. Beyond a place to customize for looks, call your own, and maybe have additional storage space, there isn't much functionality to it.
The vast majority of gameplay in MMO's boils down to combat, questing, and dungeons, thus those aspects of a game tend to get more attention from developers and players.
It's a neat feature i'd ideally like to see more often in MMOs, but if the game can't first round out it's most important features to making it a decent rpg, you're left with an unpopular game like Mortal Online, Istaria, Vanguard, Xsyon, etc.
I think this easy do by a list games with without housing
Wow,Rift,Aion,War,
Games with housing or playercites
EQ2,AoC,Vanguard,Mortal Online,City of Heroes,Darkfall,RoM
I think this case of selective vision on players part .I can probably list as much games with player housing or player cities.The TS list AOC on the list forgetting that you can build a guild city.Aion is adding housing in the future,Rifts has talk about housing and based how much the update stuff it won't be long before they add it in,
Stop asking for every game to be the same ,some games have housing and some don't.
One small thing why it is overlooked is becasue of AH. Someone say huh what does this have to do with each other?
Well one of most important features of housing in games where it really mattered like UO and SWG was that you could place NPC that selled your stuff there and essentially run your own shop.
People would go and shop ,economy and social life more alive.
Then AH come. One centralized list with all stuff , it kills player shops and one of important reasons for houing.
I know AH is convenient , I play games with it too. I just think that not having it may actually be a big + for a game.
Player shops, marketplace spaces in cities ,etc
I hope some developer will grow some balls and do very good designed game without AH.
I think SWG did it the right way, they had both but if you bought from the AH you had to pay 20% extra or something like that, it was an excellent solution, it allowed players to buy quickly if they wanted to or go out and explore and visit the merchants personally for a cheaper price.
But in terms of this entire thread, as UO was my first real mmo i am completely biased, my house in UO is what I played for, it was the ultimate 'end game' feature and something that took alot of work to get but when you compare SWG and UO housing (which i personally feel is the proper way to do housing) when you compare that to all these other so called housing it doesnt compare and has resulted in a very unrealistic perception of what housing can actually be.
Bad Housing:
AoC: Instance guild vity that did nothing but look good.
EQ2: Instance flats that did nothing but look good
LOTRO: Instance houses that, yep you guessed it, did nothing but look good
Good Housing:
UO: Uninstanced houses that was a center for crafting, storage and selling
SWG: Uninstanced houses that was a center for crafting, storage and selling
When you look at the example above its clear about 1 thing, UO and SWG has housing fully develeoped and ingame at launch as a core feature, the others were either rushed out or added later as a mere after thought and as such turned out to be utterly crap (maybe EQ can be excluded here as it got alot of attention)
Housing can give you an attachment that is greater than you have to your characters, we all like to own something and having an attachment to something in a mmo leads to much better retention rates, if someone told me 14 years ago that uo would be still be alive today, i would have laugh in thier face but here it is, still alive (barely but alive!) and i bet you alot of that has to do with housing.
Holy thread necro!
I too wish more games had quality housing like we had in UO or SWG. Hopefully someday we will see them make a comeback.
The answer is simple, man. The days of player creativity impacting the game world have been gone for years now.
Lastly, when you say "fancy graphics" along with WAR, I take offense to that. WAR's graphics are pretty bad by even the standards of its release in 2008.
Edit: Oh, necro thread? Awesome...
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
It's a design element that requires some thought and planning. It's difficult to implement properly. To me, SWG was the best player housing, and yet it had some flaws, for example:
1) collision detection enabled? then you can drop an item in a hallway effectively trapping someone in a house.
2) placed inappropriately as to grief other gamers. It could be blocking access to a mission objective, blocking access to a portion of map, or named inappropriately as to intentionally cause offense.
3) some people don't like the 'sprawl', the clutter in the gameworld proper.
All three of these could be addressed with some forethought. The advantages to SWG's housing system:
1) allowed players to feel some ownership over an area in the game
2) decorating. Some of us are creative and like to decorate or create something unique
3) sense of community. You could build right next to your ingame best friends and live in a virtual city.
4) adds a layer of social complexity. By adding houses and enabling player cities, you create a dynamic, multitiered interaction between gamers.
5) if you have a little ocd like me, you will be endlessly tinkering with inventory management, item placement, etc.
So there are pluses and minuses. Some people don't like housing. They would be content with virtual spreadsheets. These are people who don't care about looks or appearance or anything distracting to the mathematical or problem solving aspect of the game. Others like myself would like a virtual world. We should have games to satisfy both play styles.
So, why don't we? We've taken a turn in mmo design. We are moving away from virtual worlds and moving toward a more superficial 2 dimensional game design. Everything we understood and anticipated about mmos is coming into question. The very definition is in a state of change. By loose definition, games like Battlefield 2 might be considered an mmo. There are probably some examples on this site of games that are less an mmo than BF2 infact.
In essence, mmos were once akin to 8 course meals. It's difficult, challenging and costly to make 8 courses. So someone decided since people have sweet tooths, to cut out 7 courses and just serve us dessert. How long will it take to get tired of just having dessert? Hopefully soon, and that's probably when we will see some player housing.
1- SWG housing didnt have collision detection. you could run thru anythign and everything you placed in a house. be it furniture, players, pets or paintings
2-there were many no build zones near the points of interest. you could not block any mission objectives or zone entrances. you could however name them how you wanted but you had to be pretty close to the house to see and read what the house was named
3-the planets were so massive and the player cities so spread out that this wasnt really a problem until the server shutdowns where anyone and everyone flocked to 3 servers. the player cities were at the cap(couldnt create any more) and all these new poeple needed a place to build their homes.
yes this, and the fact that SOE didnt pack up any houses of non current players for a few years, caused some unsightly areas os house after house in no set fasion. but this was niot until the game was already a ghost town as it was. there were twice as many houses as active players
It is probably my favorite aspect of RPGs. It's too bad that it is often neglected.
That pretty much says everything you need to know.
In most forum threads for any new or upcoming rpgs (this has been a trend over the last few years), where there is a discussion about player housing taking place, the general consenus among the majority is always that they don't give two shits about player housing. You always see a few who support it, and the rest of the playerbase could care less.
Apparently if it doesn't involve "pwning face" it isn't content worth adding. I definitely think alot of it has to do with the fact that MMORPGs are mainstream entertainment now, and were niche prior to WoW. The mentality of the generation of youth that these games are being designed for is alot different than someone who grew up with an Atari or Colecovision.
well
I m for once a hardcore pvp player that want a player housing as in SWG and in daoc.
well and most of my friends want in the game also we want to own a a part of the game
or yo aint getting our cash hint off
Therefor after over 10 years of sitting a space ship and been promising a walk in stations and some player housing in eve online I going back and take my subcash thats about 14 euro *20 = 280 euro each month to a game that provide with player housing.
I think the problem with player housing is it had better serve a purpose other than a place to sit by yourself and look at the decorations on your walls that you got for doing things in game. Thats what achievement lists are for LOL.
Now, I'd be all for player housing if it was actually integrated into the game and wasn't just for people to go by themselves and chill out. If there was a steal mechanic or a burn it down mechanic or an invasion mechanic or a vandalism mechanic or if they were an integral part of the economy somehow mechanic, then I would find them interesting.
I personally don't understand why people want housing simply to decorate so only they can see it. But that is just my opinion of course...
GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements
I think you have been playing the wrong MMO then.
There are someb MMO that have a vast amount of content and what the OP is asking for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5lXH4PIxww