I dunno why everyone hates SWG's housing. For me it was the best part of the game and really fun and I loved exploring peoples cities and going to their vendor's, seeing how they decorated and buying stuff.
The only reason people complain about it seems to be the games lack of any content back in the Pre CU era where the Planets were so empty and had nothing in them. What SOE needed to do was add more quests and dungeons but it never happened.
I don't like either way you suggested, and the SWG was the worst housing system I've ever seen.
Better to have it instanced.
I can only imagine what you might consider better as SWG had one of the most elaborate and well thought of and designed housing systems of any MMo on the market even to date.
Amen.
M M O S S I N C E |1998| P L A Y I N G F A L L E N E A R T H T I M E I N V E S T E D |uo|swg|wow| B E T A T E S T E R |rz|gw|hz|tr|hgl|potbs|potc|gw|hz|wish|fe|wow|df|war|
I'll agree that SWG had the most potential any game when it came to housing,, but due to a lack of foresight and policy, it became a grieving POS or ghosttown.. 80% of all player made cities were either macro bot run ghost towns, or ghost forts.. C'mon folks, putting med size houses side by side to use them as walls was a**nine.. Covert scanners at every spaceport?.. cough.. OH.. you gotta love the 'grass" streets too.. Furthermore I got damn tired of 80% of all trade vendors being run out of a 'house'.. LOL
The problem was.. since this was more sandbox then anything else.. Bad gaming by kids or crazy adults, went unchecked by SOE because no one set up enough rules or policies to control the out of control players that manipulated game features.. I remember when SOE finally stepped in to disactivate the "city militia" feature because people were actually "QUITTING" the game over it.. Typical of SOE, they only step in after it hit them where it hurts, "the pocket book"..
In reponse to the people saying that "TOR is not like SWG, and isn ot the kind of game that would support player housing"... you're probably right. In fact there is a 99.9999999% chance that you're right, but the reality is this... That kind of a game is not going to take market share from WoW, and that is what lucas arts as well as bio ware wants. TOR will be a themepark game like WoW, Lotro, AoC, and every other mmo since WoW. Developers don't realize that that is not what is going to take market share from WoW. Will TOR be profitable for them? absolutely... WIll it take over the industry? absolutely not.
Some people in this thread said that "Tor is a hero game" it is about being a hero, being powerful, iconic battles, etc. TOR will not be a simulation like SWG was, and this is an unfortunate fact. TOR will be nothing new. Lets just be honest here... Bioware is hyping their story lines for each class... but come on lets be realistic. That isn't anything new its just a quest line like in any other game. TBH if the best thing that they can think of to hype about the game is a quest line for each class then I'm pretty confident there isn't going to be anything special in the game at all.
Themepark games are not going to take over the mmo industry. Why? Because a themepark game already controls the industry, and we all know which game im talking about. WoW has a huge player base, and every developer wants to get their hands on it. They have determined countless times since WoW's release that the best way to go about such a task is to simply copy WoW and throw in some new mechanics here and there. It is pretty obvious that this approach does not and will not work. Look at WAR, Aoc, Lotro, etc... They were all hyped just like TOR, but a month after release half of the playerbase was back to WoW.
Something new is the only way to take market share from WoW. It's been years and countless cookie cutter themepark mmos since WoW's release, and WoW is still domintaing the market, but every developer seems to think that they can do just do it better. I love Bioware. I love their rpgs, they're a great company, but they aren't going to do it better. TOR might be better than WoW, but it isn't going to be so much better that it will cause an exodus away from WoW.
I feel like I've said this a hundred times, but players need something new. Lets take a step back here. Think about SWG when it was launched. When you think about the amount of content in that game it is absolutely ridiculous. SWG had and still has way more content than any game releasd since then. The complexity of the game is far beyond that of modern mmos. The industry has been moving backwards unfortunately. There have been some indie developers working on sand box games, but they don't have the funding to do anything big. The next developer that gets sufficient funding and brings out a quality sand box game will take market share from WoW... nothing else will. It has been ages since SWG was launched, and with the jumps in technology the possiblities for a new sand box game are unimaginable.
Unfortunately I don't see the release of a sand box game by a big developer happening in the next 3 years or so. You can call me an SWG fanboi... and I am an SWG fanboi... SWG is probably the most advanced mmorpg ever made in terms of the amount of things you could do, and the complexity of the systems. How can you not want to see that kind of game created with the more advanced technology available today? Even if you didn't like SWG, it would at least be something new. Everyone will get sick of playing the same old themepark "kill 10 rats" move to next zone "kill 10 wolves" move to next zone "kill 10 bears" move to next zone 'kill 10 dragons" eventually....
I love the concept of player housing. However, there needs to be a crafting system that involves a good portion of the economy for it to be practical in my opinion. I do not like the lag that is associated with it when it is in the form of UO or SWG though. I am down for instance based housing though. I don't see it ever happening with TOR though so it is kind of pointless to even discuss at this point.
I'm OK with housing, but it needs to have some functionality further than a place to just fill with your props. If you're going to put housing in, find a way of making it important to the game mechanics as well.
Even in old BBS door games they managed to find some really fun ways of integrating lodging into the game. In Usurper, you could log out in the dormitory and on logging in the next day, find your character killed and looted!.. And sometimes you'd find that your character had woken up, fought and won! OK, that may be a bit too random and hardcore for today, but back then it was quite OK. And it made the concept of lodging an important aspect of the game - not to mention hella fun.
Comments
I dunno why everyone hates SWG's housing. For me it was the best part of the game and really fun and I loved exploring peoples cities and going to their vendor's, seeing how they decorated and buying stuff.
The only reason people complain about it seems to be the games lack of any content back in the Pre CU era where the Planets were so empty and had nothing in them. What SOE needed to do was add more quests and dungeons but it never happened.
I can only imagine what you might consider better as SWG had one of the most elaborate and well thought of and designed housing systems of any MMo on the market even to date.
Amen.
M M O S S I N C E |1998|
P L A Y I N G F A L L E N E A R T H
T I M E I N V E S T E D |uo|swg|wow|
B E T A T E S T E R |rz|gw|hz|tr|hgl|potbs|potc|gw|hz|wish|fe|wow|df|war|
I'll agree that SWG had the most potential any game when it came to housing,, but due to a lack of foresight and policy, it became a grieving POS or ghosttown.. 80% of all player made cities were either macro bot run ghost towns, or ghost forts.. C'mon folks, putting med size houses side by side to use them as walls was a**nine.. Covert scanners at every spaceport?.. cough.. OH.. you gotta love the 'grass" streets too.. Furthermore I got damn tired of 80% of all trade vendors being run out of a 'house'.. LOL
The problem was.. since this was more sandbox then anything else.. Bad gaming by kids or crazy adults, went unchecked by SOE because no one set up enough rules or policies to control the out of control players that manipulated game features.. I remember when SOE finally stepped in to disactivate the "city militia" feature because people were actually "QUITTING" the game over it.. Typical of SOE, they only step in after it hit them where it hurts, "the pocket book"..
In reponse to the people saying that "TOR is not like SWG, and isn ot the kind of game that would support player housing"... you're probably right. In fact there is a 99.9999999% chance that you're right, but the reality is this... That kind of a game is not going to take market share from WoW, and that is what lucas arts as well as bio ware wants. TOR will be a themepark game like WoW, Lotro, AoC, and every other mmo since WoW. Developers don't realize that that is not what is going to take market share from WoW. Will TOR be profitable for them? absolutely... WIll it take over the industry? absolutely not.
Some people in this thread said that "Tor is a hero game" it is about being a hero, being powerful, iconic battles, etc. TOR will not be a simulation like SWG was, and this is an unfortunate fact. TOR will be nothing new. Lets just be honest here... Bioware is hyping their story lines for each class... but come on lets be realistic. That isn't anything new its just a quest line like in any other game. TBH if the best thing that they can think of to hype about the game is a quest line for each class then I'm pretty confident there isn't going to be anything special in the game at all.
Themepark games are not going to take over the mmo industry. Why? Because a themepark game already controls the industry, and we all know which game im talking about. WoW has a huge player base, and every developer wants to get their hands on it. They have determined countless times since WoW's release that the best way to go about such a task is to simply copy WoW and throw in some new mechanics here and there. It is pretty obvious that this approach does not and will not work. Look at WAR, Aoc, Lotro, etc... They were all hyped just like TOR, but a month after release half of the playerbase was back to WoW.
Something new is the only way to take market share from WoW. It's been years and countless cookie cutter themepark mmos since WoW's release, and WoW is still domintaing the market, but every developer seems to think that they can do just do it better. I love Bioware. I love their rpgs, they're a great company, but they aren't going to do it better. TOR might be better than WoW, but it isn't going to be so much better that it will cause an exodus away from WoW.
I feel like I've said this a hundred times, but players need something new. Lets take a step back here. Think about SWG when it was launched. When you think about the amount of content in that game it is absolutely ridiculous. SWG had and still has way more content than any game releasd since then. The complexity of the game is far beyond that of modern mmos. The industry has been moving backwards unfortunately. There have been some indie developers working on sand box games, but they don't have the funding to do anything big. The next developer that gets sufficient funding and brings out a quality sand box game will take market share from WoW... nothing else will. It has been ages since SWG was launched, and with the jumps in technology the possiblities for a new sand box game are unimaginable.
Unfortunately I don't see the release of a sand box game by a big developer happening in the next 3 years or so. You can call me an SWG fanboi... and I am an SWG fanboi... SWG is probably the most advanced mmorpg ever made in terms of the amount of things you could do, and the complexity of the systems. How can you not want to see that kind of game created with the more advanced technology available today? Even if you didn't like SWG, it would at least be something new. Everyone will get sick of playing the same old themepark "kill 10 rats" move to next zone "kill 10 wolves" move to next zone "kill 10 bears" move to next zone 'kill 10 dragons" eventually....
I love the concept of player housing. However, there needs to be a crafting system that involves a good portion of the economy for it to be practical in my opinion. I do not like the lag that is associated with it when it is in the form of UO or SWG though. I am down for instance based housing though. I don't see it ever happening with TOR though so it is kind of pointless to even discuss at this point.
I'm OK with housing, but it needs to have some functionality further than a place to just fill with your props. If you're going to put housing in, find a way of making it important to the game mechanics as well.
Even in old BBS door games they managed to find some really fun ways of integrating lodging into the game. In Usurper, you could log out in the dormitory and on logging in the next day, find your character killed and looted!.. And sometimes you'd find that your character had woken up, fought and won!
OK, that may be a bit too random and hardcore for today, but back then it was quite OK. And it made the concept of lodging an important aspect of the game - not to mention hella fun. 