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General: Gimme Shelter
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
MMORPG.com columnist Justin Webb writes this article about player housing.
Player housing always comes up on the list of things that players want to see in their games, and rightfully so. The concept of owning a chunk of real estate in the world you love is extremely compelling. At face value, player housing looks like it should be a slam-dunk win for every game that implements it. However, expectations are unrealistically high for this system. Player housing comes with a host of problems, many of which are developmental and/or production based.
Player housing as a global feasible game feature is an artifact left over from the days of MUDs, where the game world was created out of text and imagination. I had my own house in the MUD I played (Terris), that other players could enter and look around. It had things to interact with, and a couple of secrets. I really liked my house, but it wasn’t unique -- flavorful player-owned houses were fairly common.
Read Gimme Shelter.
Comments
Star Wars Galaxies had the best housing features in the MMO world next to maybe UO.
Non-instancing, everyone could come and see it, TONS of space for storage(and decorating) and you could set up crafting stations and vendors for selling.
I don't see the big problem with other games doing this if they put in the effort...
As a long time Star Wars Galaxies player, I can honestly tell you that nothing makes you feel more at 'home' in a MMO than your own virtual home. A 'home-like' location to me is the very foundation of what MMO is all about. Homes = Community. Homes = Social Gatherintgs. Homes = Proof you are there when your character is not.
SWG has a very extensive housing system, including cities, shuttles, and while the biggest 'complaint' is over inactive account real-estate hogging (players that leave the game but their housing remains in prime spots)... and 'cluttering' the world... overall the solutions (housing pack-ups on inactive accounts) and selective planet housing (some planets/worlds don't allow housing)... the benefits FAR outweigh the few drawbacks.
Done properly, I would have to imagine the retention-factor of 'housing-like' features for a MMO is a significant. Player communites build around cities... they bring more in common than just 'faction' alliances or even 'guild' alliances.
And a 'house' does not always mean a structure on a planet... it can be a 'ship' (STO has possibilities there if they expand)... it can be an instanced 'apartment' in an NPC city... so long as there are shared-social spots (player lounges).
The decorate-your-home sub-game attracts a very diverse playerbase... rounds out the community instead of just 'hardcore' PvP players or 'gold-grinder' PvE players. MMO's are build around the premise that its a social game as well.. or at least, they SHOULD be built around that in my humble opinion.
Is it easy? No.
Is is hard to balance? Perhaps.
Is is worth the effort? Absolutely.
While MUDs where 'easier' in adding housing.. they where also 'easier' in ALL aspects of development... 3D game engines are complex by nature, housing does not make that more or less complex than PvP or any other 3D based MMO system.
I would say what made your MUD your home was probably a lot more to do with you being able to 'add a part of yourself' to the world that persisted even when your character/toon was offline.
I sure hope to see more games with a housing-like feature. City of Heroes lost me because a 'shared superhero base' was not the same as my housing complex in Galaxies. Eve lost be because I never connected to anything besides whatever ship I had 'equipped'. Galaxies kept me for years and years after I mastered my first few professions because I was part of a community... a city.. a guild.. a faction.. an economy.. and there was more to do than PvP fight or PvE grind.
SWG/STO/(SWTOR)
This is actually the first article of his I've agreed with and think that he approached correctly.
SWG had huge amounts of open land with nothing in them, so yes they could allow people to build house where they wanted. Depending on the size of the player base to the size of land this can be an issue (See original UO where there were houses on every spot of land that could fit them, ruins the world).
It is also not nearly that easy for games that have a lot of quest areas, dungeon, points of interest, etc. All of that stuff uses up land. SWG had clicks worth of desert that you could plop houses down on and not get in the way of anything. In most fantasy games not far outside of town exist main creatures used in quests. Stick some houses in the way and it becomes annoying for the other players, it can also kill the mood of being out in the dangerous fields when you pass 12 houses on the way.
I'm all for actual on landscape housing but it needs to be designated in areas so as to not detract from specifically designed areas in the world. There also needs to be a point of the houses, like the shops in SWG/vendors in UO. Get rid of the trend of auction houses in every game and make vendors. Make player run towns able to setup NPC vendors(basic goods) along with their own personal vendors. Allow them to place quest NPCs there so that there will be a reason for other players to visit. Now you have the traditional NPC town feel, but players choose the layout and the buildings. But to be clear that is an extremely difficult feat for a company to both implement and have it smoothly work.
A game like GalaXseeds, from what I understand has instanced houses/pods/ships. But they are all group in an "apartment complex" and you can actually visit the others "pods" anchored on this particular planet. Plus the pod is also your vehicle in-between planets (Like someone above mentioned about STO).
I think Wakfu also had something like that planned at the begining ( iI don't know if it's still out there), with a "bottomless" bag tha you could use to buil din your house in plots of lands, add crafting spots, storage, planting slots, and so on.
In both cases, you mostly take your house with you, to no expanse to the outside world and with the possibility of having it visited/shown to others.
I thought Mythic did a fair job on Dark Age of Camelot housing. They added new zones near capitol cities, bidding for lot locations, multiple housing sizes, lots of decorative options, vaults, consignment and normal merchants, a consignment search board near zone entrance, and a rental system to reclaim inactive housing. One could also assign permission to house entry, vaults, and merchants for friends or everyone. Guild housing was also supported.
In my experience SWG had the best implementation of player housing, guild halls, player-built towns, resource gathering, and crafting. Open world PvP was fun too. I should note that my experience with SWG ended when JTL was released.
You'll see a TON of older games getting this feature within the next year.
Will they do it right? Who knows. We can always hope.
This article is exhibit A of why this genre is so stale. To paraphrase, devs/producers will never do justice to player housing because it's too hard.
Never mind that SWG laid the blueprint seven years ago, and Ultima did it before that (albeit in 2D). Yes, it's too hard, too expensive, no one cares, all they want is more 'content' (which in dev-speak means fedex quests and kill quests).
All of you that want to know why so many mmo's are carbon copies of one another and filled with repetitive/boring gameplay, re-read this article and substitute any innovative feature for 'player housing.'
Really sad.
...
Raise your hand if you own, completly, your own house.
*crickets chirp as a few hands go up*
Raise your hand if you rent or co own a house or apartment?
*knocked over by the wind gust*
Really it's that simple. Everyone doesn't own a 3 bedroom house IRL, and nore did they in the middle ages.
Create a explorable complex with each room being another player house, if you need to add more housing add another floor.
Bam everyone has a house, and the uber rich can sink their money into private housing.
Good point onetruth... But the reality is, developers do not make these decisions, marketing guys and/or /stock holders do.
On the other hand, if housing is parce enough, it is a bragging point in itself, isn't it?
The problem the way most of the current MMO's implement housing, if they even do so, is the instanced version. The lazy way to do it. Now granted many of the these MMO's don't have the land area to support a non instanced version, but that is another problem with the way games are designed these days.
UO's problem was that it introduced too much clutter in the landscape for it's design, yet even with the clutter it was far better than any of the instanced offerings I have seen. SWG's version was by far the best I have seen, because they actually encouraged city design. They also had enough real estate in game to do it.
To do it right it is a huge project, no matter what the design. Not something for a small shop to undertake.
I doubt we will see another game do even close to what SWG offered for some time to come.
I have to agree, I rather enjoyed walking around seeing the inside of other people's houses and some guild halls were truly impressive.
I was in a role playing guild called Shadowclan and we had our guild hall right near a large lake, with guild members owning all the houses around the lake.
It was a great thing to gather up in front of the guild hall before heading out on the evenings killings sprees and reassmbling back there afterwards.
Since all housing had a limited number of "points" you could not anchor everything necessary in one structure, so many of the player houses held the res stones, teleporter npcs, crafting chests etc that overflowed trom the guild hall.
All in all it was a pretty good system so I call shenanigans on the OP saying its too hard or not worth it. Players really loved it, even if it has to be added post launch.
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Vanguard's system is the only one that's even close to SWG, and it is limited by the fact that you can only place certain items. In SWG, you could drop anything in your house and make a decoration out of it: weapons, armor, crafting subcomponents, anything. It did take them awhile to add 360 degree positioning and position above floor level, but when they did it really added a ton of player-generated content to that game.
...
Housing is definately a social feature... and perhaps the 'stakeholders' overlook or undervalue it.. but its certainly a big part of creating a tight, loyal community if you do it properly.
I would think that players like the idea of 'owning' their homes even if not their current 'reality'. Games are fantasy right, not reality.
Where SWG suceeded was that they made planets housing-friendly.. the sandbox-style anticipated this in design... and they created no-build zones, city structures (shuttles/city halls/voting terminals)... and they created vast maps to allow for thousands upon thousands of players to add structures.
SWG didn't cop-out and take a shortcut.. they made housing part of the economy. NPC vendors in player housing for sales... crafters built homes for sale on the market. There was never, ever, a time that the planet was 'filled up' and no room to move. Yes some nice spots are 'taken' but you can still find some really nice locations in the game on even the largest population server.
Its not perfect.. but show me ANY perfect MMO system.
For immersion / feel perspective.. housing is NOT as big a distraction as out-of-theme items like Fairy wings and halo's (don't get me started...). Housing near certain spawn points might be 'bending' the total immersion feel... but thats an acceptable (for me) trade off for a MMO-based games. A little give & take is allowed.. and necessary.. and housing gives way more to the playerbase than it takes away in my experience.
'Setting up shop'... its not just about showing off decorations.. it can be about displaying your 'wares' in a player economy. Showing clothing options.. weapon options.. inspiring other players.
If SWG did not have housing.. the game would have been be a shell... a husk.. with no depth. Characters (or ship pods) alone is not an MMO for me. Characters (full) + Ships is closer, but still not quite there.
Characters + Vehicles + Housing... with interaction (combat/crafting/social)... thats the full meal deal MMO.
SWG/STO/(SWTOR)
Agree. I would add that for ease of development:
Apartment/condo-type housing could be instanced. Everyone could enter the same 'complex' lobby entrance and it would zone them into their apartment. Although I mainly enjoy lightly instanced worlds, I don't think this use would hurt my immersion. Not as if you would often have a clown-car effect since people 1. may not come and go at the same times and 2. If they did loiter outside you wouldn't necessarily know they lived there.
I would want it to have the ability for the owner/renter to hand out keys for either single family/clan housing or apartments. Could be individually designated friends, clan mates, party members, etc. Could be time limited.
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Im one that dont never owned a player house and dont miss it, just need a storage/vault so i can put my weapons collection and im done, however for those who like it i can think any solution for this dilema.
maybe instanced house can be the only coherent solution for a MMO, unless you allow fewer ppl per server, so all in can have an open world house.
sorry, i tried =p
mazel tov housing aficionados =p
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Player and guild housing has always been a catching point for me. I enjoy having a place to call my own. I's not really torn between whether housing is open-world or instanced. Both can be very fun, I think, if done well for the system its crafted for.
Personally, I would prefer instanced housing, but done in a way to help negate immersion-breaking factors.
Public/City Housing
As mentioned before, having some sort of instanced apartment arrangement with basic accomodations could do well to support the needs of most players. Being able to decorate a place with anough room to move around would give a single player something to treasure, show off to friends, and give their experience a personal flair.
The real power in housing, though, is in guild housing.
Guild Lands/Housing
Though also instanced, a guild has the advantage of multiple sources of player funds. With enough people banding together, they could purchase a plot of land customizeable to their personal tastes. In the center would be the guild's HQ. This HQ could be anything from the basic motte and bailey to a stone keep, all the way up to a stronghold depending on how much funding the guild wants to put into their lands. These pre-made models can be customized with stronger doors, a moat, etc.
Around the central HQ, guild members may purchase their own house (again, from a pre-made list of models) and customize them with personal banners, trophies, etc. This "guild town" can have purchaseable structures that provide places for players to work their crafting skills or farm goods.
Now, with these structures in place, it provides an opportune setting to have GvG or RvR combat. A rival guild can challenge another to an instanced battle, similar to a BG, for honor, treasure, and whatnot. The challenged guild can either accept or decline, after which, if accepted, the battle will be scheduled for a certain time (similar to a Wintergrasp battle in WoW). If declined, the rival guild can "invade" anyway, but spoils will be less to encourage more civil engagements. The lands of the challenged guild will be the land with the houses/structures in place.
Now these options are crude and subject to debate, but I wanted to get the premise across. I think both player- and guild-type housing can be a great asset to a game for the added features it can provide. I apologize for getting a bit off topic during the course of my typing.
I heard that TOR was leaning towards housing?? Is this just a rumor??
Over the years I've played a lot of mmorpgs and have to say I have yet to see housing done entirely right but imho 2 games came closest to getting it right...
Ultima Online allowed players to build anything they could in any spot it would fit. It was both a good and bad thing. On the positive side it gave a real old world settler feel and allowed players to create thier own backwoods towns and communities. The housing was non-instanced giving it a real world feel....which unfortunately added to the negatives as well. With a large world and housing everywhere it can cause endless foot travel as well as obstruction of hunting areas. Also limited room can cause lots of players to go homeless in the world unhappily.
Imho, the game that got it closest to right was Horizons. Despite all the games flaws housing was on the right track (not sure if it ever reached the right point though). At first players were left unhappy due to housing filling up fast. They had spots specifically set up in neighborhoods around towns themselves as well as deep within the wilderness, desert, mountains, etc. They promised a point would be reached where every player could own their own house but weren't keeping that promise in the players eyes. Then it happened. The announcement of housing islands where all players could gather in their own neighborhoods building not only houses but shared decorations for their whole neighborhood. Trellises, fountains, statues, wells, etc were built. Players built paved roads for their neighborhoods. All was well and good in principle. The problem was houses had no decorations available, no functionality, and pretty much were nothing more than added storage space. In time, workshops were introduced that gave bonus' to crafting skills, holiday decorations were introduced, I'm not sure if standard housing furniture ever became available. I've heard the game is still around as Istaria but haven't checked to see where housing went from there.
Friends and I left WoW after following years of hearing designers promise that "Housing won't be this patch but may be the next or the one after that" only to hear the corporate line changed after the release of Burning Crusade to "there won't ever be housing in WoW". We're still looking for the game with the best balance between casual play, crafting, housing and even soloing/non-forced grouping but still have yet to find it.
Didn't LOTRO do instanced housing neighborhoods?
Perfect blend of open world as you get to have neighbors, and instanced as it doesn't clutter the world.
Guilds with enough status/points/whatever can have their own neighboorhoods for their members, make their neighborhood public or private, their individual houses public/private...
Seems to solve all the problems IMO.
You may be the best pve/pvp guild but do you have the best neighborhood? the best house? make it public and hang your walls with rare items and trophies, put vendors in public housing districts...
Seems like a no-brainer to me.
I wasn't very knowledgeable about Lotro's housing. Seeing that makes me a bit interested in seeing it in action for myself.
This was quite interesting, a good analyzation of the reality of player housing.
(My opinion past this point, do NOT read if you don't have the time/don't care)
Though I can't help but notice you failed to mention RuneScape's player housing. Not a big fan of it myself, tried it, notably expensive and requiring a good amount of materials to increase the skill level and build things. RuneScape's was customizable to a good point, you could build in several different ways pertaining to the dimensions set by your current skill level and have one of several different looks to your overall housing theme (ie. brick, stone, wood, etc.). You could also live in different locations pertaining to your needs. And combine the ability to set up trophies showing your greatness and the feature that lets others visit your house... there's your player housing. Lazy? Kind of, but it gets the job done. Another kind of player housing that you did not mention is the, what I like to call, "dedication" type. Don't think I've seen or heard of it anywhere else but if you take a quick look at Graal Kingdoms while having a gold subscription you'll notice that on the other islands there are many different houses. This system works a little differently though, it relies on "higher-ups" to expand and to fully customize your house requires an administrator to upload a level you custom-made yourself. Now, the reason that I call it "dedication" is this: In order to build the house you must gather a great amount of materials, in order to keep your house alive you must continually add the same materials to it, in smaller amounts, but still, you get the idea. Although the instance method may be lazy, it can be made to work. Also, I could see the system Graal Kingdoms has working but it may have to be put into a more popular game. Bringing me to my last point: World of Warcraft. First of all, if you are a WoW flamer, shut up now, put your opinions under the game's forum. If you are to take a peek into the plethora of 3-D models, with a model viewer, that have taken a back-seat ride with the game you may notice some things... 1. You can look at bosses and their animations(cool!) 2. There are some hefty, non-muscular, humans here! 3. There are already models created upon the idea of player housing. This just goes to show you that the idea just must be considered at one point in time in the game's development history. Now the reason I bring this up after the Graal Kingdoms thing, is that the system could well be implemented in a popular MMO with adjustments of course... Some being: The building does not decay so fast (maybe), the decaying process is frozen when your account is, the system does not rely on "higher-ups" so much(of course), blahblah(whatever else you may think of...) Main point being: There can be many more ideas in order to perfect the system of player housing, what is that term again? "Think outside the box." I believe...
WOW, I got carried away!
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Read Gimme Shelter.
My, how things have changed.
It wasn't long ago that housing was seen as a horrid abomination, ruining games, being poorly designed and destroying communities.
"Gimme shelter" seems an odd name for this piece, as well, since - of all the possible uses for a player owned structure - that is the one least desired by players.
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
Champions online although maybe not to everyone's tastes might have a solution to the server overcrowding problem that could be a solution to the housing over crowding problem. you see although many games boast open 3d world that you can explore with little or no instances, the chances you will actually see more than 40 or so other players in one place at any one time are actualyy quite slim. And these situations usually occur while in a 40 man raid, pvp instance or guild gathering's. Anyone who has played champions might of noticed that although they can communicate with everyone in the zone through zone chat, there are no more than around 100 players in your zone and the other players are spread about several identical zones. The player simply then has the option to switch between server zones to get to the zone that their team mates are on or the zone that has the least lag or the largest population to find people in. Whenever a player go's to a new zone without chosing any specific zone, it chooses at random (zone population dependant) which zone the player ends up in. this would make the opportunity for people to stumble across a players house that might catch their eye because it is suitably designed and decorated to their tastes and at the same time allow players to have some form of input as to the external appearance of their player owned home as well as more choice as to were it might possibly be located and the space it takes up in the game world.
I felt the housing in EQ2 was very well done . It was also made available early on to the newer players and not only could you decorate extensively but you could actually set up a shop in your home to sell items from.
You could enter others homes to shop there wares and look at what they had done with there decorating prowess. I found it by far the most engaging housing I have personally experienced. It added greatly to a robust economy for furnishings. If you visited a persons home to make a purchase rather than the auction house there was a fairly attractive discount 15-20% I believe it was.
When you try placing furnishings and such inside a home in an MMO you begin to realize the challanges it creates as far as programming the physics goes. In many games it seems to be added in haphazardly to say "we have housing"